《Ebony's Fable》
Chapter 1: Chilly Summer Day
''That went well.'' Ebony thought.
Hoping he did reasonably well on his interview, Ebony was on the way back home from his job interview for the summer holidays. It was a hot midsummer afternoon and Ebony had always hated the heat. Shielding his eyes from the blinding rays, Ebony blinked, opening his eyes to see white. Absolute white from every angle, slightly stunning Ebony, ¡°Is the heat getting to me?¡±.
Another blink or two revealed more white but of different shades, Ebony began to make out outlines of trees, and white dots in the air, ¡¯snow¡¯, he thought. That¡¯s when it hit him, the chilling cold. But Ebony was no stranger to the cold, he loved the cold.
Before he managed to take in his surroundings, he heard a grunt, soft as it was. A snow white-furred boar unlike he¡¯s ever seen. A metre tall and twice as long preparing for a charge, it huffed out a white breath and began its charge with a snort, aiming right at Ebony. There was slightly less than 10 metres between them, ¡®more than enough time to get out of its way¡¯, or so he thought but the boar covered more than half that distance in a single kick, surprising Ebony even though it wasn¡¯t shown on his face.
Ebony leapt out of the way when he saw it prepare its charge saving his hide but he underestimated its speed and was knocked away by its passing flank on his left. Tumbling through the deep snow for metres. It felt like a truck had rammed into his left arm and side, his left arm was broken and his shoulders and the area around his ribs were aching badly.
Despite the intense pain and sudden situation, he was placed in, Ebony was shockingly calm. He mustered what strength he could and ran for cover behind a tree thick enough to get out of sight of the still charging boar. It either didn¡¯t realise that it hit its target or couldn¡¯t stop mid-charge to change direction. Whichever it was, it was a blessing for Ebony as he was moving much slower than he¡¯d like to due to the snow that was halfway up his calves, the pain wrecking his side and the slowly seeping cold. He calmly inhaled and exhaled to get his breathing under control as to avoid catching the massive boar¡¯s attention. Not bleeding was another windfall for Ebony, hoping that the boar¡¯s senses weren¡¯t that sharp he silently waited.
He was quite a distance away by now, having been flung off to the side and the relentless charge of the boar. The trees blocked his view of the boar but he knew it¡¯d stopped its charge and was looking around for its prey and meal while snorting. Making its way towards his direction, Ebony slowly adjusted his position to keep out of its sight. Only when he was sure the boar lost his tracks did he relax his nerves, tightening them again when he heard a bell tinkle.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Meditation learned¡¯
Meditation - Maintaining a calm and clear state of mind in a stationary position to increase mana and stamina regeneration rate by 1.0% per level. Reduced Perception and slight increase of pain resistance when in the state of meditation.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Lesser Stealth learned¡¯
Lesser Stealth - Moving silently out of sight, very slightly increases the ability to move around lightly, reducing the sound of footsteps and presence per level.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Meditation level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Meditation level up 2 ¡ú 3¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Lesser Stealth level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
¡
¡®???¡¯
¡®Have I been reading too many web novels or light novels?¡¯ Being a fan of the litrpg genre there was only one word that came to mind, ¡®Status.¡¯ he thought, surprisingly ecstatic when it worked.
Name: Ebony Rime
Class: N/A
Subclass: N/A
Profession: N/A
Health: 47/60
Stamina: 41/60
Mana: 100/100
Strength: 5
Vitality: 6
Constitution: 9
Endurance: 6
Agility: 7
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 10
Perception: 7
Generic Skills:
Meditation Lvl 3
Lesser Stealth Lvl 2
¡®A lucid dream?¡¯ Ebony deliberated, the pain wrecking his arm answering his question.
Ebony Rime, age 20. The only living relatives he had seen were his parents. Standing at 178cm tall, he had a fit and toned body from the physical training he was taught by his mother. Personal hobbies include reading fantasy, with swords and magic being the theme. He inherited a resting bitch face from his mother and calmness from his father.
Making his way back home from an interview wearing a bleached white shirt, black formal pants, dress shoes, and a travel watch which was a gift from his parents when he turned 15. Only belongings on him being a backpack with his resume, his steel thermos flask that he carries around for his hot green tea, a sandwich for lunch, his wallet and his phone? ¡®Where¡¯s my phone?¡¯ Ebony tried to recall to no avail. His sandwich was squished from rolling through the snow but still edible.
High rise buildings turned to towering forestation, at least most trees were familiar to him such as the pine, oak, birch, evergreens, and map¡
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Identify learned¡¯
Identify - Identify the world around you, allowing one to glimpse basic information of the target.
¡®Well¡can¡¯t say that was unexpected.¡¯ Though having spawned, teleported, summoned or whatever nonsense that transported him right in front of a buff boar in an awfully cold maybe magical forest was truly beyond his wildest dreams.
¡®Could have been worse¡¯. Going back to his status, a very game-like panel in his head he felt like he could physically see a light blue screen in front of him but at the same time couldn¡¯t as the information was all in his mind. The information on it basically doesn¡¯t differ much from the litrpg novels or manga that he had read.
The statistics were pretty self-explanatory, but it was all guesswork based on his reading experience so far. Simple maths tells him 1 point in Vitality equates to 10 health points and the same goes for Endurance for Stamina and Wisdom for Mana.
Mana screams magic to Ebony and he can¡¯t say he isn¡¯t excited though it¡¯s not showing on his face with his dead facial expressions. Although he has no reference to compare his stats to, his relatively low health is concerning. A single graze from that boar has taken 13 points of health. He would probably have died if he was a split second late in his decision to leap to the side, taking it head on would¡¯ve mutilated him.
His stats average out at 7 with Wisdom and Constitution above average and strength being his lowest stat. ¡®All that training was for naught¡¯ he thought.
Discovering what each stat does exactly might be helpful but not seeing a level indicator with no class, sub-class or profession Ebony doesn¡¯t see how he¡¯ll be able to gain stats to confirm his speculation on what each stat does.
Watching his status panel stamina gauge jump to 42/60 he started timing a minute on his still working travel watch to check how fast he recovers. Ending up at 48/60 by the end of the minute. 6 per minute or perhaps 10% of his maximum stamina per minute it unsurprisingly didn¡¯t apply to his health as it stayed at 47/60. Not being able to see, feel or use any mana he left that aside for now.
Going to his skills it seems like he can gain skills just by doing stuff but the limitations of the skills are questionable as of yet. Ebony¡¯s pretty damn sure that he could meditate any time whether he¡¯s stationary or on the move even when he was running and rolling about earlier.
Keeping Meditation up, Ebony started moving away from where he saw the boar going towards. He needed to find shelter, some tea and sandwiches wouldn''t last him for long either. He could hardly raise his arm but he could still make a weak grip if he really needed to.
[Hoarfrost Pine Tree]
[Snow]
[Hoarfrost Pine Tree]
[Snow]
[Hoarfrost Maple Shrub]
[Snow]
[Hoarfrost Maple Tree]
Identifying his surroundings to get any helpful information, snow, trees and shrubs were all he could see. Interestingly all the trees were of the hoarfrost variety, perhaps he was in a hoarfrost forest of sorts. The scenery was unchanged for another half an hour or so of trudging through the snow until he identified something new in a small clearing of about 10 metres in diameter with a lone tree in the centre.
[Vital Hoarfrost Crabapple Tree (Inferior) - The Vital Hoarfrost Crabapple Tree absorbs vitality from its vicinity]
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Identify level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
Ignoring the skill level he gained Ebony scrambled towards it, sighting a tree full of bright red crabapples. They were the brightest crabapples he''d seen, they were bigger than a cherry and he could fit about 6 to 7 of them in his hands. He identified the fruit not expecting more than ¡®Vital Hoarfrost Crabapple¡¯ but was pleasantly surprised by the results.
[Vital Hoarfrost Crabapple (Inferior) - The overflowing vitality absorbed by the Vital Hoarfrost Crabapple Tree fills its fruit. Restores 10 HP when consumed]
¡°...How convenient.¡± He wondered if it was a stroke of good luck or if these trees were common here. The tree was pretty short and the fruits were hanging just slightly above his head. Ebony immediately plucked one off and took a bite, it was seedless so he just popped the other half in. It was juicy for a fruit in this cold weather and too sweet for his liking. Ebony watched his health recover and felt a warm flow in his body right after he consumed it going from 47/60 to 50/60, stopping there.
¡®...what happened to ¡®Restores 10 HP when consumed?¡¯ His side and shoulder still hurt and his broken arm didn¡¯t heal.
Munching on another crabapple he observed his health until an intense shock ran through his left arm leaving him in a cold sweat. His health went up by 1 but Ebony wasn¡¯t going to try that again anytime soon since he was starting to shiver from the cold despite having always been strong against it, the sweat was not helping either.
¡®Seems like numbers shown aren¡¯t absolute and perhaps differing levels of damage to the body such as damaged or broken bones requires a stronger healing.¡¯
Ebony started picking off as many of the ripe crabapples as he could fit in his backpack, tossing the useless resume out while he was at it. Who needed a resume when he now has a mental resume in the form of a status page?
Managing to stuff a whopping 137 crabapples into his pack after eating his sandwich since he was hungry anyway. He shoved 5 more into each of his pockets. With how low his vitality was, every magical healing fruit counted, as his life depended on it.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Meditation mutated into Persistent Meditation¡¯
Persistent Meditation - Maintaining a calm and clear state of mind even on the move increasing mana and stamina regeneration rate by 1.0% per level. Slight increase of pain resistance when in the state of meditation.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 3 ¡ú 4¡¯
¡®Good to know that I¡¯m not limited by the skill rather skills are limited by what I can or cannot do¡¯ Meditation has always come about as natural to Ebony as breathing since he has practised it for as long as he can remember. The skill didn¡¯t change much after mutating just that he can use it while moving around and it no longer affects his perception, fortunately, the skill doesn¡¯t reset in level either.
Despite being seemingly in no rush, Ebony was in quite a pickle here. He was getting colder and colder and he was not equipped for this weather. The sun, a darker shade of orange over wherever he was now, was slowly starting to set.
Moving in the dark would be less than ideal, not knowing what could be out there he was already lucky he hasn¡¯t seen any wildlife or maybe, hasn¡¯t been seen by any wildlife would be more accurate.
Preparing to continue his trek with his increasingly numb feet, he paused after his first step when he saw something coming out from behind cover on his right and staring at him with its dull grey eyes. Right after thinking, he was lucky not to see any wildlife.
[Hoarfrost wolf pup Lvl 4]
He Identified, looking not much different from an arctic wolf it was normal sized with greyish white fur. The sound of snow trudging broke his line of thought when another 2 wolves came into sight. This time larger, but not quite rivalling the boar in height or length. One of them lazily nudged the pup towards him, too disdainful to even glance at their prey.
[Hoarfrost Wolf Lvl ??]
[Hoarfrost Wolf Lvl ??]
¡®...They¡¯re using me to teach their pup how to hunt.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s heart started thumping but he wasn¡¯t feeling fear of potentially being hunted. He was feeling shameful at being disdained by mere wolves, disrupting his Persistent Meditation for a second. Nonetheless, now''s not the time for such pointless thoughts and the truth was that Ebony didn¡¯t stand a chance against the wolves with even escape being questionable as they had levels and stat advantages.
¡®Wolves again¡ How many years has it been?¡¯
With Persistent Meditation running again Ebony started to analyse his situation as fast and calmly as he could, maintaining eye contact with the pup. A pack choke-full of magical healing fruits? Check. Pockets with said fruits? Check. Fractured arm? Check. Dense snow everywhere? Check. Direction with the densest shrub population? Check. The only silver lining being that the adult wolves will likely just keep an eye on him and not make a move unless their pup was in danger.
¡°Doable.¡± Ebony muttered with a hint of a smile that would¡¯ve surprised himself if he saw himself in a mirror now. Ebony started moving slowly towards some of the thickest trees closest to him, managing to take one full step before the pup started leaping after him to close the distance. Ebony hurled a crabapple towards the pup without aiming before darting off into deeper woods keeping an eye on the pup and probable parents.
The pup dodged the unknown projectile reflexively, buying Ebony another metre or two but not enough to get away from the pup¡¯s vision. It continued its chase excitedly, with a speed rivalling that of the boar¡¯s, it was about to reach Ebony in seconds. Right before its final leap with its jaws wide open, Ebony made a swift 180 turn and mustered the strongest turning kick he could at neck level which was the pup¡¯s favoured weak spot. His kick struck true onto the pup¡¯s jaw but he almost sprained his ankle as the pup was like a block of wood.
Skidding to a stop, the pup was disoriented by the kick. Not missing this chance he dived for the sea of shrubs, getting partially buried in snow. Making sure he stays out of sight of the pup he went deeper and deeper as fast and quietly as he could. Ebony was making great progress away from the pup due to how wide and short maple shrubs around were, it provided incredible cover.
Until he heard a low growl that stunned him in place, it wasn¡¯t from the direction of the pup. It was one of the parent wolves. They went to their pup¡¯s side and were evidently unworried about it despite the kick Ebony landed on earlier, they were urging it towards Ebony¡¯s direction.
¡®At least the parents aren¡¯t interested.¡¯ Ebony mentally commented as he made a run for it. His location was found anyway and he was not risking laying still after putting so much distance between them.
The landscape in Ebony¡¯s field of vision slowly started changing, the shrubs were beginning to thin out and he was spotting a different colour than white, grey and brown for once. ¡®Red maple?¡¯ he thought as he saw three-bladed dark red maple leaves under a layer of snow on them. The surrounding terrain quickly turned into one with only maple shrubs and trees that were quickly thinning out.
Ebony had been slowing down in his escape from the ever increasing numbness and stiffness in his feet and entire body. Devouring a crabapple, bracing for the shock through his left arm that didn¡¯t come. He was hopeful that the warm stream through his body will drive some of the chills out which thankfully did.
The pup was already on Ebony¡¯s tail who had less and less cover. His stamina was dropping and it was getting harder and harder to see with the creeping darkness that came with the setting of the sun. ¡®If it¡¯s just the pup there should be no issue. The adult pair is another problem altogether though.¡¯
A loud howl broke his chain of thoughts, catching Ebony¡¯s attention as the pup stopped chasing him just a dozen metres away. Slightly further away were the 2 parent wolves that added low growls that Ebony felt a sense of warning in. It elicited a whine out of the pup but withdrew to their side regardless of its complaints. Together, they wandered off into the distance completely dismissing Ebony.
¡®Why would they give up the hunt all of a sudden?¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t believe they gave up prey when they were so close to getting him just because it was getting dark. The only reason he could come up with was that he was no longer worth chasing after he ran into the territory of the red maple. ¡®Is there something more dangerous here?¡¯ Ebony thought back to wolves¡¯ growling.
Ebony slumped down against a tree exhausted, he didn¡¯t know what unseen dangers could be around this area but he wasn¡¯t going to risk going back out to be hunted by the wolves that may still be in the vicinity, waiting for their prey to exit.
The interlude allowed Ebony to catch his breath and look at his notifications that have been ringing softly in his head during his entire escape.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 4 ¡ú 5¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Identify level up 2 ¡ú 3¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 5 ¡ú 6¡¯
¡®You have been inflicted with mild frostbite - Slightly affecting physical movement and increases stamina consumption¡¯
It was quite a wonder that he only suffered mild frostbite with how he covered himself in snow and he didn¡¯t even notice how it affected physical movement perhaps due to the increased pain resistance from Persistent Meditation running the entire time or maybe his higher Constitution stat.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Lesser Stealth level up 2 ¡ú 4¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Cold Resistance gained¡¯
Cold Resistance (Passive) - Extended periods of exposure to the cold allowed your body to develop a general resistance to the cold. 1.0% more resistant to cold per level.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Running learned¡¯
Running - Run at 80% + 1.0% Agility per level
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Treading Step learned¡¯
Treading Step (Passive) - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Treading Step allows one to travel through most terrains with more ease, slightly increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by 1.0% per level.
¡®Hmm..¡¯ Ebony pondered, Cold Resistance was ¡®gained¡¯ instead of ¡®learned¡¯ which made some sense to Ebony. He had gotten 2 skills related to movement. Running was pretty basic and good to have but it doesn¡¯t help much unless he¡¯s able to get it to higher levels and Ebony is not even sure if there is a level cap on skills or whether there¡¯s a limit to the number of generic skills.
Ebony noticed that most of the skills seem to operate on percentages and will increase with skill level placing quite some importance on skill level. Getting 1% better at what you do every level might sound pathetic but it reminded him of the continuous improvement thing he read somewhere. If he got 1% better everyday for a year he would end up 37 times better or something like that, just substituted with levels now.
Treading Step was more interesting, he probably got it due to being able to thread through the thick snow without even slipping and he wasn¡¯t even wearing the right shoes for this environment. ¡®travel through most terrains with more ease slightly increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level¡¯ was vague but the main point of interest is how the skill increases movement speed and not just the Agility stat. Seeing how it was apparently a passive skill it should stack with the Running skill.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 6 ¡ú 7¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Cold Resistance level up 1 ¡ú 3¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Running level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Treading Step level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 7 ¡ú 8¡¯
Persistent Meditation seems really easy to level seeing how it¡¯s already at lvl 8. The increase in mana regeneration didn¡¯t do crap for him right now but stamina regeneration on the other hand was doing its part despite the tiny increase with his current skill level.
Looking around to plan his next course of action, Ebony was shocked out of Persistent Meditation when the leaves on the maple tree he was laying against burst into flames and a wave of chilling air hit him. He scrambled away from the tree, turning around to see the tree in blue flames and noticing that the same was happening to all the trees and shrubs around him. Fortunately, they were spread out and Ebony wasn¡¯t hiding in a shrub or he would have been set aflame too.
Kicking Persistent Meditation back on he calmed down, Ebony can feel the freezing cold that the bright blue flames were emitting. Ebony overlooked that he was in a world with magical healing fruits and only now recalled to Identify the damn unsuspecting tree.
[Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree (Uncommon) - The leaves of the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree will spontaneously combust ice elemental mana into freezing flames of frostblaze to cool itself and its surroundings down. Utilising the cold to toughen itself and grow.]
¡®Those wolves were probably aware of this and avoided the area, I need to get the habit of Identifying stuff, the description is literally a warning sign that says ¡°Hey watch out I combust from time to time¡±.¡¯ As if that wasn¡¯t enough to give Ebony a wake up call, a light ringing of a system notification rang in his head.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have been inflicted with severe frostbite - Affecting physical movement, increases stamina consumption and continuously takes damage until status is removed¡¯
¡®¡when will my stream of bad luck end?¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Cold Resistance level up 3 ¡ú 4¡¯
¡®...¡¯
Chapter 2: Ice Pop
Ebony was in quite a dilemma, looking back to where he ran from, it was almost pitch black if not for the blue flames that¡¯s still being emitted from the Frostblaze Amur Maple Trees and Shrubs. Going back will put him back in the same situation where unseen dangers and monsters may lurk.
While staying in this area may potentially freeze him to death, Ebony ultimately decided to just stay where he was within the territory of the self-combusting trees.
His logic was that he had a stock of crabapples that could keep his health topped off and while he could gain Cold Resistance he seriously doubted he was going to gain a Monster Resistance skill. If the trees could ward off the wolves it would likely ward other monsters off too anyway. Honestly, Ebony was just too tired to continue moving about.
Sitting down not too close or too far from the original tree he was laying against he checked his Status while keeping an eye on surrounding trees, observing how long the flames would last. ¡®Status¡¯
Name: Ebony Rime
Class: N/A
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: N/A
Health: 41/60
Stamina: 16/60
Mana: 100/100
Strength: 5
Vitality: 6
Constitution: 9
Endurance: 6
Agility: 7
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 10
Perception: 7
Generic Skills:
Persistent Meditation Lvl 8
Lesser Stealth Lvl 4
Identify Lvl 3
Cold Resistance Lvl 4
Running Lvl 2
Treading Step Lvl 2
A few new skills and skill levels here and there were comforting to see despite the little use they have now. Checking the crabapples he¡¯s depending on, he found that they were mostly in good condition except the 7 in his pant pockets which were a little squished from running about. One was missing and probably fell out in his haste. Eating one of the squished ones, he watched his HP slowly recover again. Only this time it restored all 10 HP that the description that Identified gave said it would. Strange.
Feeling the warm flow of energy through his body again, the crabapple had the effect of warding off the cold but Identify didn¡¯t give such information, maybe being at too low a level. Using the light from the flames, Ebony checked his watch habitually, showing that it was 3:47. Ebony was transported into this snowy place when it was about 2 in the afternoon, though it obviously isn¡¯t noon in this place. His watch was working fine as far as he could tell.
Trusting his watch, it¡¯s been a little under 2 hours since he¡¯s been here and his life had already been threatened twice, thrice if nature counts. Waiting for a minute to pass again his HP dropped by 2 points, dead in 30 minutes if he was at full HP. No sleep for the weak, a lesson Ebony learned the hard way long ago. A Vital crabapple heals 10HP, Ebony had a total of 143. If he took 1 every 5 minutes it would last him slightly under 12 hours at this rate.
With there being nothing much he could do, Ebony meditated silently while taking in the sight of this magical world. Gazing into the sky, the moon was pretty normal. There was also only one over here, just looking bigger and brighter than Earth¡¯s.
In a short while, the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree¡¯s blue flames slowly flickered out as with the others in his surroundings though he can still see the bright blue flames deeper in the maple¡¯s territory. Light blue particles in the air caught his attention, he didn¡¯t see them due to how faint they were compared to the burning leaves in the area. No, he wasn¡¯t seeing them at all. He felt them. It was a weird sensation Ebony never felt before.
Ebony went back closer to the tree and noticed a thin layer of ice forming on its trunk and leaves and felt the surrounding temperature rising a little, he calmly watched the tree like an idiot. Not noticing his HP has already dropped to 31.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Cold Resistance level up 4 ¡ú 5¡¯
His Cold Resistance seems to be rising quickly perhaps due to actually taking damage. Disregarding the skill level gained, Ebony continued staring at the tree while popping 2 crabapples like candies into his mouth. Ebony could faintly feel the blue particles going towards the tree and attaching themselves onto the tree and seeping into it. Another layer of ice forming and dissipating till he could no longer feel any particles in the air.
¡®The leaves of the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree will spontaneously combust into freezing flames of frostblaze to cool itself and its surroundings down. Utilising the cold to toughen itself and grow¡¯
¡®Utilising the cold to toughen itself and grow was likely what it was doing but what were those blue particles? It''s not like I can ¡®see¡¯ cold. And since when did I have another sensory organ to feel those particles?¡¯ sitting back down against the tree Ebony got another notification.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Severe frostbite has deteriorated into mild frostbite - Slightly affecting physical movement and increases stamina consumption¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 8 ¡ú 9¡¯
Finally able to relax a little, Ebony rested. He doesn¡¯t have a tendency to ponder on questions he has no answers to. Humming some of his favourite BGMs and anime theme songs softly to pass the time in this eerily silent forest, somewhat forgetting it may attract unwanted attention. However, nothing came. In another half an hour, he gained a level in both Cold Resistance and Persistent Meditation and the trees combusted into flames again, lasting for 15 minutes. He got severe frostbite again and had to eat another 3 crabapples to combat the cold and damage.
Gaining 2 levels in both Cold Resistance and Persistent Meditation. Ebony observed the supernatural phenomena of the trees absorbing the light blue particles again. The light blue particles seem to be produced by the freezing flames which are reabsorbed by themselves forming a layer of ice that seeps into the tree and is repeated over and over again till all the particles are absorbed.
Just like that, time passed quietly with the exception of the soft humming coming from Ebony. When his Cold resistance hit lvl 15 he no longer got severe frostbite when the flames came alive. With only mild frostbite when it did, and no frostbite at all when the cold or maybe the light blue particles, is absorbed by the Frostblaze Amur Maples.
As an experiment, he left some damage unhealed to see if health regenerates when he¡¯s no longer taking damage and was pleasantly surprised that it did at 1 point of health healed in over an hour. Saving him some of his crabapples that were his lifeline.
Persistent Meditation didn¡¯t slow down in levelling for some reason reaching lvl 18, Ebony even got a Humming skill, redundant as it was it got to lvl 4.
Humming - Humming musical melodies producing minor effects to mood depending on melody. Very slightly increases in effect per level.
Ebony tried touching the light blue particles which he thinks should be mana or ice mana, if that was a thing. He couldn¡¯t physically touch them, they just went through his hand and back out making him feel the slight chill they emitted.
Seeing his skills level was more addicting than he imagined, somewhat understanding how level grinders feel. It has only been about 4 hours since he sat down but he wanted to move deeper into the Frostblaze Maples¡¯ region as he could see that the forest deeper burns brighter for longer and more frequently than the trees in the outskirts he was in. His Cold Resistance would level faster if he took damage from the cold and higher skill levels could only be beneficial for him right?
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Resuming his trek, energised with his stamina full. Ebony went deeper all while Identifying all that he sees to look out for dangers, points of interest or just to level the skill. It was an uneventful trek, he took a break when his stamina hit 20 and continued once it was full again. The trees and shrubs'' density got thinner and thinner, the temperature lowering till he got mild frostbite again.
Ebony trekked on till Treading Step and Identify levelled once and he began to see something slightly different.
[Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree (Rare) - The leaves of the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree will spontaneously combust ice elemental mana into freezing flames of Frostblaze to cool itself and its surroundings down. Utilising the cold to toughen itself and grow.]
The difference was in the rarity tag that changed from uncommon to rare and its corresponding colour. The flames were of a lighter shade of blue and they were noticeably taller and thicker. The maple leaves were a lighter shade of red but Ebony could be seeing things wrong in the night.
There was a significant drop in temperature as Ebony was inflicted with severe frostbite again. Ebony was going to continue his training montage again but was slightly shocked that his body felt much stiffer and the damage he was taking from the frostbite was almost twice as high as before.
Quickly putting some distance Ebony was glad that the trees weren¡¯t as close to each other in this area. He may still have over a hundred crabapples but they were finite and he didn¡¯t want to waste them when he¡¯s not in mortal danger. Besides, Ebony couldn¡¯t eat the crabapples if he was frozen stiff before he consumed it.
Ebony¡¯s routine continued, the rare variant of the Frostblaze Amur Maple stayed alight for twice as long. When the flames died down Ebony saw or felt that the number of particles increased greatly, at least 3 times as many as the uncommon one. His new senses felt natural, as if he had them all along.
Experimenting more with them was easier with how much there was in the air. He tried clasping onto a bunch with his good arm hoping to keep them in place but the same happened and they phased through his grip sending him a tiny chill. Pondering on the idea that those particles were mana particles perhaps he should just ¡®think¡¯ of keeping them in place instead. Ebony believed that this was a world with magic or he wanted to believe it.
Griping another handful and imagining the particles stopping Ebony looked upon his clenched fist and waited and waited... It didn¡¯t phase through his hand! Unclenching his fist Ebony felt about a dozen particles unmoving above his palms. Delighted, Ebony tried to move them with his mind or thoughts. Slowly but surely, he saw them move according to his will surprisingly easily.
Pushing them to move closer together and trying to merge them proved successful. He continued combining more particles from his surroundings seeing how much he can control at the same time but then what he saw and a system notification made him pause momentarily. A bead of ice formed over his palm where the mana was gathering. Ebony was enchanted by it, by the fact that he made that appear by will, a notification solidifying his internal joy.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Ice Mana Manipulation learned¡¯
Ice Mana Manipulation - Ability to move and shape Ice Elemental Mana at will using mana. Ability to manipulate Ice Mana increases slightly per level.
Classification: Ice Magic
¡°Hot damn, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be, can I call myself a wizard now?¡± Ebony murmured, unaware just how many would¡¯ve felt so aggrieved by the comment.
Just like any full-grown man with a newfound toy Ebony played around with his new skill. Only doing so for a short while left him somewhat disappointed. Trying to shape a simple ice cube the size of his fingertip almost took him a full minute and his MP gauge showed 96/100. It was wholly inefficient. At least with his current abilities or skill level, with how long it took to form such a small quantity of ice it wasn¡¯t practical to use in battle. Furthermore, Ebony could only form simple shapes like a ball, cube or sheet of ice easily.
On the bright side, the Ice Mana Manipulation skill was levelling quickly, it was already lvl 3 after Ebony tried to form an ice knife or dagger of sorts but ran out of mana halfway through the process. The construct was pretty pathetic as Ebony could break the ¡®blade¡¯ apart with his hands and he couldn¡¯t form the edges to be at any respectable sharpness.
The rare Frostblaze Maple didn¡¯t combust for roughly a full hour, Ebony¡¯s MP regenerated by 12 in the meantime. 10% of his max mana per hour or so he estimated. Finally being somewhat useful, Persistent Meditation increased his regeneration by 18%.
Hours passed.
By daybreak Ebony was sitting under the rare Frostblaze Maple tree with a thin layer of snow and ice on his skin and clothes. Unbothered by it he took out a crabapple to munch on leaving him with 111 of them. He was still taking damage from severe frostbite even with his Cold Resistance at lvl 23. It was bearable due to his originally high pain resistance or maybe Persistent Meditation which levelled all the way to 27 had helped there with the increase in pain resistance.
Humming and Ice Mana Manipulation levelled twice each. Ice Mana Manipulation only levelled twice due to how slow Ebony¡¯s mana regenerates even with Persistent Meditation constantly running. Overall, it was awfully satisfying to watch his skills grow in real-time. If there was one thing Ebony loved about his current predicament is that he¡¯s in a world where he can easily perceive his growth in ability through the status page. Although he has no idea how fast skills are supposed to level up, he felt that the current rate was really fast, especially Persistent Meditation. It was practically a passive skill for Ebony at this point with how he doesn¡¯t even have to think to run the skill.
His watch is telling him that it¡¯s 5:34, about 14 hours since night fell. The nights were either longer since it¡¯s winter or the day and night cycle wasn¡¯t exactly the same as Earth¡¯s.
Ebony was tempted to do his morning routine training out of sheer habit but it would leave him too exhausted to explore like he planned to. He heard movement from his surroundings which proved that the area wasn¡¯t safe from animals like he thought it was.
Ebony turned towards the noise and watched as a lump of snow moved. Staying alert, he saw the lump of snow being shaken off its body.
Revealing itself fully, it was very eye-catching or perhaps it was the opposite. It was a turtle about the size of an adult sea turtle. The turtle looked like any other he¡¯s seen except that it was not unlike a moving ice sculpture having its entire body from its head, shell, legs to the tiny short tail being light blue and almost translucent. It easily blended in the environment.
[Ice Crystal Turtle Hatchling Lvl 8]
It was 4 levels higher than the wolf pup but Ebony didn¡¯t feel much danger from it, maybe it was due to it being a turtle which shouldn¡¯t be any faster than a wolf. Or maybe it was because of how freaking cute it was. It was worrisome that he didn¡¯t notice them in such close proximity to him but Ebony wasn¡¯t one to worry about a fact that he couldn¡¯t change. After all, an entire night passed with them there and it wasn¡¯t as if he was attacked. Yet.
Ebony escaped from a wolf, though it was just a pup and it was still learning to hunt, he doubted the turtle could chase him if he tried to run despite the advantage of levels it had over Ebony.
More lumps of snow revealed themselves to be undercover turtles, 2 more were lvl 8 hatchlings like the first. Then Ebony felt as if the ground shook as 2 car sized turtles woke up as well. ¡°Hot damn¡ I must have been blind to not notice those humongous piles of snow¡±, Ebony couldn¡¯t help but mutter. In his defence, it was dark and a lump of snow here and there wasn¡¯t exactly unusual in this forest.
[Ice Crystal Turtle Lvl ???]
[Ice Crystal Turtle Lvl ???]
They looked around and glanced at Ebony before ignoring him and walking towards the 3 hatchlings. Nudging them on, they went towards a Frostblaze maple tree. Intrigued, Ebony observed as one of the huge turtles opened its jaws and twisted its neck 90 degrees before taking a bite at the tree. The turtles had a mouth like that of a snapping turtle with a sharp ridge on its top and bottom jaw. The extra mark in its level didn¡¯t mean shit to Ebony when it just meant they needed even less effort to munch him up.
The snapping of wood echoed in the silent forest loudly, as the turtle slowly released its bite on the tree. Two gaping holes could be seen on the tree while the other large turtle which Ebony mentally labelled as mama turtle nudged the hatchling over to the tree. Papa turtle took another bite at a different angle producing more holes in the tree.
Moving closer to them, Ebony saw each hatchling chomping on a hole or at least that¡¯s what it looked like to him. Staying in that position for a minute or two before letting the poor tree off, a glint reflected in Ebony¡¯s eyes. Cyan coloured liquid could be seen flowing out of the tree which Ebony assumed was magically coloured maple sap.
The hatchlings backed off a little and retreated back into their shells, making way for papa and mama turtles to enjoy their drink of maple sap, taking much longer before stopping. Mama turtle puffed out blue mist on the tree, sealing the holes on it in ice. Either with magic or something it could do naturally.
Ebony didn¡¯t think they could do that naturally but it was more evident for him to feel the ice elemental mana in its breath after playing around with it for hours. Ebony¡¯s Ice Mana Manipulation only allows him to exert control over the present ice mana in his surroundings while the turtle obviously produced the mist with its own mana.
Before Ebony could continue pondering on how he would be able to do the same with his own mana he noticed the mama turtle staring at him. Staring back lazily, Ebony was unbothered due to the lack of hostility from them. Mama turtle looked back to the tree where Ebony could see that there was one hole left unsealed. Ebony was surprisingly indifferent towards the intelligent creature, no point wasting precious energy being surprised by everything happening.
¡®Is it telling me to drink that too?¡¯ being kinda apprehensive towards that notion.
Although Ebony didn¡¯t happen to find any sources of water and he couldn¡¯t exactly melt the snow without a source of fire or pot for it. It didn''t mean he was inclined to drink some sap from a tree that burns itself. Just because it was safe to drink for the turtles didn¡¯t mean it was going to be the same for him.
Mama turtle hissed or grumbled, whatever noise it made, as if urging Ebony to hurry up. Not testing the creature¡¯s patience, Ebony went up to the tree right beside mama turtle. Much more intimidating up close its head was at the same height as Ebony. It could probably split Ebony in half with the strong jaws it had or outright freeze him with magic.
A steady stream of sap was leaking out of the Maple tree, taking out his already empty flask he collected the sap that looked like a cocktail. Startled in his mind when his flask had ice forming where the sap touched, fortunately, it didn¡¯t freeze through the flask.
[Frostblaze Amur Maple Sap (Rare) - Ice mana absorbed by the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree condenses in its sap before being circulated throughout the tree to strengthen it.]
Mama turtle sealed the hole then looked at Ebony and nudged him as with its children, not expecting that caused him to lose his balance due to how hard the ¡®nudge¡¯ was spilling some of the sap on his left hand. Sizzling, a sharp pain flashes through slowly turning to numbness and literal bone-chilling cold.
¡®And here I thought that finally, not everything was trying to kill me over here. Turns out that when a seemingly friendly giant turtle is treating me to a drink, it¡¯s actually preparing a Ebony flavoured ice pop.¡¯
Chapter 3: Turtle Ride
Not much sap was spilt on him but Ebony couldn¡¯t feel his hand anymore, losing the ability to move his fingers. Having taken damage to his health from that, Ebony could feel the dense ice mana slowly creeping up his skin going into his flesh and finally bones.
¡®Hmm...if I used ice mana manipulation to remove the ice mana from my body could I essentially thaw myself?¡¯. Recalling the information Identify gave him, the sap is essentially liquified and condensed ice mana that the tree produced so Ebony should be able to manipulate it.
After playing around with ice mana for a night he noticed that they do not bend to his will as he initially thought. He could faintly feel something leaving his body and controlling them to move ice mana was what the skill Ice Mana Manipulation refers to. That something was most likely his own mana, he could not see his mana but it felt extremely natural to move to him as if it was another limb he had all along.
It explained why so much mana was used to do so little, it was extremely inefficient and when his mana leaves his body he can feel that his control over it weakening the further away it is from him. Now he understands why magicians are usually depicted with them forming fireballs atop their palms. It was very easy to focus his control over mana on his palm making manipulation faster and more efficient mana-wise.
From the experiments he did Ebony found that he could form 3 ice cubes simultaneously but his mana scattered and escaped his control when he tried to form the fourth. At least he found out that his control was based on his ability to focus and multitask.
Right before Ebony was going to push the ice mana out of his hand he paused, ¡®If a tree can use ice mana to strengthen itself can¡¯t I do the same?¡¯.
Following that train of thought, Ebony began manipulating the ice mana to spread up his arm. No expression of the stabbing pain from the cold and damage he was taking could be seen on his deadpan face as Ebony¡¯s hand turned pale to purple. Much less effort and mana were used to manipulate ice when it was in his body but Ebony was beginning to feel stupid when his entire left arm was frozen stiff and he was almost down to a quarter of his MP and only 38 HP remaining.
¡®Did I really think I was a freaking tree when I had this idea? Maybe I¡¯m doing this wrong.¡¯ What Ebony was doing was like taking a knife and spreading the ice mana like butter over his arm basically thinning out the density of ice mana from his hand throughout his arm leaving the ice mana where it was to save mana.
Thinking back to the description ¡®Ice mana absorbed by the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree condenses in its sap before being circulated throughout the tree to strengthen it.¡¯
¡®The tree could clearly absorb ice mana from the surroundings to strengthen it but it didn¡¯t directly infuse ice mana onto itself but rather condensed the mana before circulating it...Circulating.¡¯ Perhaps he had to keep the ice mana moving in his body instead of just leaving them in place.
Popping in a crabapple, Ebony focused on moving all the ice mana throughout his body. He had trouble at first but a mental visualisation of his blood circulating through his body helped to smoothen the process. Ebony shivered as he ate his healing fruits as he took damage, hardly half a minute passed when all the ice mana had dissipated through his body together with his MP.
Ebony had no idea if it had strengthened his body but it definitely didn¡¯t feel good to be semi-frozen internally. At least he no longer had any ice mana in his body and his left hand was back to his normal state, broken. A crabapple or two helped remove the remaining cold.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 27 ¡ú 30¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Cold Resistance level up 23 ¡ú 24¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Ice Mana Manipulation level up 5 ¡ú 9¡¯
Ebony had no idea how Persistent Meditation is levelling faster than Cold Resistance when he literally froze himself but he¡¯ll take when can get.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Icebody Enhancement learned¡¯
Icebody Enhancement - Assimilation of Ice Elemental Mana into your physical body increases your Constitution by (15% + 1.0%) of Intelligence, Strength and Endurance by (10% + 1.0%) of Intelligence. Agility is decreased by a static 20% and damage from heat based attacks are increased by 30%.
Consumes 50 MP/min
Classification: Ice Magic - Body Enhancement Magic
¡®How are these skills considered ¡®Generic¡¯?¡¯ putting that thought aside, it seems that Ebony was right. Though it doesn¡¯t permanently strengthen him, getting a skill was pretty damn cool too. The skill was as inefficient as it can be, at full mana, Ebony could only use it for 2 minutes tops. Even decreasing his agility when in use. At least at its current level, it was practically useless for Ebony right now.
¡®But how would the skill work? Will I need the Frostblaze maple sap for the ice mana required to use the skill or will my MP alone be enough to activate the skill?¡¯ Ebony wanted to test his new skill so badly but even with Persistent Meditation at lvl 30, a quick calculation told Ebony that it would take almost 8 hours to fully recover his MP or slightly under 4 hours to use the skill for a minute.
Before he could continue complaining about his mana regeneration speed, he was ¡®nudged¡¯ again by mama turtle. Only a little ligher this time.
¡®Oh crap I forgot about her¡¡¯. Looking back at it, Ebony thought he could see the mirth in its eyes when it opened its jaws wide. ¡®Oh¡ shit, it¡¯s going to make me into a popsicle because I didn¡¯t fall into its honey trap.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t get the chance to roll out of the way as he was too close to it before its jaws came closing down on his waist. More like half his body from the sheer size of the turtle.
¡®Didn¡¯t expect being eaten by a giant magical turtle to be how I will die.¡¯ It wasn¡¯t as if he gave up but there just wasn¡¯t anything Ebony could do against it, literally in the jaws of his predator he couldn¡¯t even run. Ebony was at the mercy and whims of the creature and oh how he hated it. Helplessness.
Yet the tearing of his flesh, the splatter of his blood and the crunching of his bones didn¡¯t come as the mama turtle lifted Ebony off the ground and onto its back before letting him go. Papa turtle was in front and started walking when the hatchlings head came out of its shell and they started... sliding?
The snow was parting on the ground under them, pushing them forward. They were kinda adorable to Ebony with the heads stretched out and legs tucked in their shell moving around like a sledge. Mama turtle followed behind with Ebony atop its shell, not exactly the most comfortable seat.
Having no idea where they plan on taking him to, Ebony was kinda interested to see where they were going and didn¡¯t see a reason to resist, not that he could resist the kidnapping. They were moving at about a quick jog¡¯s pace which was pretty fast considering they were turtles. If the sun over here rises from the east as well then they were moving towards where Ebony decided was north-west, he kept a mental map of the place since he came to this world or wherever the heck he was. Believing it was going to be helpful someday, it was also one of the things his father taught him to do while travelling.
It was noticeable that the temperature was dropping where they were going with the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree bursting into flames as they passed by them. Unsure if it was his imagination the flames of the rare variety of the tree were of a lighter shade of blue than the uncommon ones. Ebony didn¡¯t see any other animal or perhaps monsters would be more accurate, the whole time. Making it a silent road trip other than the sound of them moving through the snow.
The hatchlings slowed to a stop after about half an hour when papa and mama turtles retracted their legs into their shells as well. They burst of with a swoosh. Ebony almost flew off the turtle as they accelerated to insane speeds, they were on a whole nother level compared to their hatchlings. Faster than a speeding car, they carried Ebony and their hatchlings along while weaving between the trees and shrubs with a finesse that Ebony didn¡¯t think they had.
The journey continued like that for 2 hours, the piercing cold winds ramming into Ebony allowed him to gain another level in Cold Resistance. Persistent Meditation and Humming gained a level each as well, his skills seem to have greatly slowed down in levelling.
There was no change in scenery the entire time. The forest was freaking large if anything was to be said about it. Thinking that they either stopped for a break as they didn¡¯t have any mana left or were just tired, mama turtle got Ebony off its back and they picked another random tree for another drink.
The ride was honestly pretty fun at the start, it wasn¡¯t every day that you get to ride on a giant turtle sledge but it wasn¡¯t exactly the most comfortable ride with his arms numb from holding on to its shell. At least his butt didn¡¯t hurt since the ride had been relatively smooth. The increasing cold and layer of frost on his skin and hair did make things a little less comfortable.
After the hatchlings had their fill, they hid back in the shells like earlier most likely to deal with the dense ice mana in their bodies. Parent turtles stared at Ebony as if expecting him to do the same, he just waved and shook his head to decline but they were having none of that. Pushing him towards icy hell, ¡®Do they think I¡¯m their child or something, which part of me do you think looks like a turtle?¡¯
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Taking his flask out to show them that he already had some didn¡¯t work, what more when he tried to uncap his flask he realised it was tightly sealed shut, probably frozen from the inside. Negotiations have failed and it seems like Ebony has to freeze his own tongue off.
Worst comes to worst he has enough mana to use Icebody Enhancement for almost a minute, though he won¡¯t be able to test if he could use the skill without the sap at least he wouldn¡¯t have to risk turning into a popsicle if it was just a sip of sap.
Being forced to kiss a tree by a turtle, magical or not was a secret Ebony was going to keep to himself. He went in for it quickly and swallowed even quicker, pushing the skill to circulate the ice mana around his body as he pushed his first kiss away. It worked, but not before it froze his mouth shut. Keeping his eerie calmness, he noticed it took much less mana to run the skill when he used the ice mana from the sap compared to the advertised mana consumption that his skill description had.
Ebony¡¯s body felt stiffer under the effects of the skill. Although he can¡¯t feel if his endurance is increased, his body felt tougher and the stiffness in his joints were probably the effect of decreased agility. The giant turtles seemed to be satisfied by that as they sealed the hole up and waited for the hatchlings to be done. Probably doing something similar to Icebody Enhancement, maybe that¡¯s why they took Ebony along.
Ebony took the initiative to climb atop one of the turtles. This time the mirth in their expression didn¡¯t escape his eye. He didn¡¯t gain any skill level despite almost freezing his tongue off; perhaps it was because he was not actually in danger of freezing his tongue off, but who knows.
They were about to start moving off when a screeching hoot rammed his eardrum, a white flash in the corner of his vision flew atop them and stopped a couple metres short of reaching them. It looked no different from a snowy owl but Identify told him otherwise.
[Snow Gale Strix Lvl ??]
Aiming at Ebony it dived, only to be met by a wave of white frost. It landed encased in ice and mama turtle under Ebony raised a foot and slammed down on it. The sound of crushed ice echoed even with the layer of snow muffling it, the turtle moved on as if nothing happened and their journey continued.
Slightly spooked, Ebony saw that the owl or strix was frozen down to its bones. Seeing how it was a creature living in such a cold environment he could only assume it was resistant to cold, what more with levels. Obviously, the turtles didn¡¯t give a damn about any of that and Ebony had to think twice about getting away from them. They weren¡¯t hostile and could be considered his protector now anyway.
Fatigue was starting to kick in as Ebony hadn''t slept a wink since coming here but he wasn¡¯t going to fall asleep on his magical sledge anytime soon. Another mundane hour of meditation and humming passed when they stopped again. Thinking they were going to drink maple sap again, Ebony attempted to get off of mama turtle only to be stopped by a head nudge.
They started sinking into the snow fast, seeing no panic from the giant turtles Ebony could tell they were using magic to do that. Getting a gaze from papa turtle, Ebony vaguely thought that it was telling him to hold his breath and keep his mouth and eyes shut. Of course, it was just his imagination. When the snow went up to his neck a large pocket of space or air was kept around his head. Courtesy of either one of the large turtles.
Ebony grabbed onto mama turtle¡¯s shell as they accelerated downwards into the cold darkness. There didn¡¯t seem to be much resistance from the snow which showed much about the magical finesse that they¡¯re showing off.
They continued this way for more than half an hour, the snow was only halfway up his calves when standing so he had no idea how in the world they could dig downwards as fast as they did for so long. His heart rate couldn¡¯t help speeding up as he was running out of air but his mind only went deeper into meditation as he calmed himself down.
Feeling the change in direction as they ¡®walked¡¯ forward they slowly exited the snow only for Ebony to see something he would never forget. ¡°Beautiful¡¡± he couldn¡¯t help but exclaim under his breath. Exploring the sights of nature could be said to be in his blood as what his parents always told him as they were born travellers too, but this was a sight to behold.
Something in the air here was boring down on him, his heart rate usually calm as a lake was starting to accelerate for some unknown reason. Ebony thought it was just from the lack of air earlier so he ignored it. It felt like something was pushing down on him as well, making his body feel heavy but he also got used to it quickly. What''s worse was that his sense for ice mana was blind as he was completely drowned in them. He felt a large majority of them retreat from his immediate surroundings and go towards mama and papa turtle before he froze. Figuratively.
It was an underground dome but the ceiling was at least dozens of kilometres tall, he couldn¡¯t see the other side of the dome from where he emerged from. Why? Because a literal mountain of a turtle was smack dab in the middle of the dome, from where he was he estimated it to be at least 200 metres long, perhaps just as wide and even taller or thicker. How could he even see underground? Because the thing catching his eye wasn¡¯t even the massive behemoth but what was towering above it.
It wasn¡¯t something new as he had already been seeing it for hours on end, it was a Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree and it was frickin majestic.
It was alight in flames practically white in colour, standing hundreds if not thousands of metres tall with its crown easily covering the entire behemoth under it and more. Staying a few kilometres away from it didn¡¯t seem to matter as Ebony could feel the biting cold on his skin. He was pretty sure that he was not frozen solid thanks to the turtles. He was too far away from it to Identify or see any other detail. The turtle family was leisurely walking towards the snow domes or igloo-looking snow lumps surrounding the behemoth. There were dozens of them around each of different sizes.
¡®Are they all Ice Crystal Turtles?¡¯ recalling that the lumps of snow were similar to the snow lumps the turtle family came out from, Ebony watched as they passed them by without incident. Arriving at a lump much larger than the ones containing papa and mama turtle, they stopped and hissed towards it.
Moments later the snow collapsed, revealing another turtle thrice as large. A wave of mental pressure hammered into Ebony, slowing his thoughts as if he was swimming in mud. Papa and mama turtle hissed as if communicating with the creature, the soft hisses was deafening to his ears and his head felt like it was going to split any time now.
After a nod from the creature, the mental pressure receded as if it was never there. Ebony didn¡¯t even realise when he was already let down on the ground in front of it, with the family of five walking off and covering themselves in makeshift snow blankets.
[Glacial Snow Crystal Turtle Lvl ???]
Receiving the lazy gaze the creature gave him with his own they stared in silence for what felt like hours. It wasn¡¯t translucent light blue like the turtle family but opaque white instead, intelligence gleaming in its eyes. The additional question mark and blue colour in its level didn¡¯t escape his notice but it made no difference to Ebony in his situation but he did gain a level in Identify. Wondering what he was brought here for he heard a deep voice echo.
¡°Greetings... Human.¡± The thought reverberated in Ebony¡¯s mind; it wasn''t in any language he¡¯d heard or if it was a language at all but he understood the contents. ¡®Telepathy? Magic? Cool, just didn¡¯t expect the first one I¡¯d communicate with in this world to be a turtle.¡¯
¡°Hello turtle.¡± Ebony replied in thought unsure if it would work since he didn¡¯t know telepathy.
¡°You can call me Gen.¡± the glacial crystal turtle replied unamused.
¡°Nice to meet you, Gen. My name¡¯s Ebony, may I know why have I been brought here or where are we to begin with?¡± Ebony responded, hoping to know what the creatures wanted from him.
¡°Ebony. My apologies for Sei and Ton¡¯s rudeness, my brethren have brought you here as you have the potential to help us.¡± Gen said.
¡°Help you?¡± Ebony questioned, nothing came to mind that he could do for some giant turtle with magical means, Sei and Ton were probably mama and papa turtles. Ebony thought it to be a load of bullshit.
¡°There lays our progenitor and on it lays the gift it left for its offspring. The Frostblaze Amur is not just our sustenance it is our faith and source of power¡¡± Gen said, weariness apparent in his voice. The giant turtle probably didn''t see the need to point or even look at the even more massive turtle for Ebony to realised who or what Gen was referring to.
¡°You have displayed talent and potential in reinforcing your body with ice mana despite being unawakened, hence you have been invited to our home.¡± Gen continued.
¡°...That doesn¡¯t explain what I can help you with, I have only just learnt how to manipulate ice mana and I highly doubt there¡¯s anything I can do that you are unable to.¡± Ebony replied, he was doubtful that they brought him here to help them just because he could use Icebody Enhancement, after all, they could do it too and probably much better than he can.
¡°The Frostblaze Amur grew on our progenitor by absorbing its essence while they were still living... In the battle long past against the eastern barbarian. Our progenitor was victorious but did not expect the last blow of the eastern barbarian to be aimed at the Frostblaze Amur instead, desecrating it with his weapon. Unable to remove it, our progenitor¡¯s essence slowly seeped out. The Frostblaze Amur forest above merely the last vestiges of our progenitor¡¯s bled essence.¡± Gen explained.
¡®...is it saying the whole forest grew from some leaked essence, whatever essence was that turtle was a mad lad.¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡°The eldest in our generation fed the Frostblaze Amur with its essence in our progenitor¡¯s place to keep it alive. However, we have grown weaker with every generation as the Frostblaze Amur weakens. I am the third generation to sustain it but none of our kind has gotten strong enough to keep it fed¡ Without the fourth generation this is where our lineage will end if the Frostblaze Amur continues to leak essence¡ Fewer and fewer have come anywhere near our forest as it is bare with the exception of Frostblaze Amur and us. Seeking help in the removal of the weapon plaguing us we have invited other sentient creatures like you to aid us over the generations but remain unsuccessful to this day.¡± Gen continued, exhaustion in his mental voice.
¡°So you want my help in removing that weapon? If not even your progenitor was able to remove it, it would be impossible for me to do so either.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Naturally I am aware of that, the weapon has been soaking in its sap for generations even I would not be spared from being frozen if I so much as touch the weapon. Removing it would not only require a strong warrior like that of the eastern barbarian but an even stronger body and resistance to cold and ice magic¡ The closest sentient settlement to us for the time being is home to the Frost Elves. While they are extremely proficient with ice magic, warriors are almost non-existent in their race and neither are they talented in body enhancement magic... You are unawakened and yet have talent in both ice magic and body enhancement magic. We merely hoped that you will grow stronger and help us before our lineage ends. I plead with you, Ebony, save us. In exchange you can have that which plagues us, the sap of our progenitor Frostblaze Amur and our eternal gratitude.¡± Gen said, laying his head on the ground which Ebony assumed was their gesture for bowing.
¡°I can¡¯t promise you anything but sure I don¡¯t mind lending a hand if I ever get capable of helping you. You scratch my back and I¡¯ll scratch yours.¡± Ebony replied in his monotonous and nonchalant tone.
¡°...Thank you. I don¡¯t require any back scratching.¡± Gen thanked.
¡°Can I ask you something?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Of course, I will answer you to the best of my knowledge.¡± Gen replied.
¡°What do you mean by unawakened?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°...¡±
Chapter 4: Grind
¡°You¡ you do not know of awakenings?¡± Gen asked with widened eyes.
¡°No, I just appeared here yesterday.¡± Ebony answered, seeing no reason to hide the fact.
¡°Appeared?¡± Gen asked, his already narrowed eyes narrowed further.
¡°Yes, I do not know where I am but where I¡¯m from there is no mana much less magic or magical telepathic turtles at least not that I knew off.¡± Ebony explained.
¡°Inconceivable¡ there would be no life without mana as it is part of one¡¯s essence. No matter, back to your question I believe you can see your status, awakening refers to obtaining a class. Unawakened are identified as their race and would not have a level, hence calling you Human.¡± Gen replied while shrugging off what Ebony said as a load of nonsense.
¡°How do I get a Class?¡± Ebony asked, he couldn¡¯t bother explaining his origins to a turtle if it doesn¡¯t believe him.
¡°When skills reach a certain level you will naturally get to take up a Class.¡± Gen said.
¡°What level do the skills have to get to?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°The higher the better. 25 for Classing, not all skills have associated Classes. You will require multiple skills. It would be best to think thrice on any Classes you have met the requirements for as they follow you for life¡ My apologies. I do not know if it is the same for creatures who gained sapience like us with sapient born creatures like you.¡± Gen replied dejectedly.
¡°I see... oh yeah how are you able to communicate with me like this? Some kind of magic?¡± curious, Ebony questioned. Persistent Meditation was already past that level so he needed more skills to reach that level.
¡°With this tool that¡¯s handed down from generation to generation, I¡¯m unaware of its origins but it is likely made by other sapient creatures that gave it to our kind. Inserting mana into it allows me to communicate conceptual thoughts, mental images and more regardless of language. I¡¯m not really an expert when it comes to these devices.¡± Gen replied while raising its front right leg showing off a band tied to it with a tiny light purple gem in the middle.
¡®Damn that¡¯s convenient, it probably helped them in getting help from different races that passed by. Oh yeah, he mentioned Frost Elves around the area, to think I would get the chance to see living breathing elves. Let¡¯s hope they aren¡¯t hostile to humans.¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡°If there¡¯s nothing else I will return to rest... please feel free to stay for as long as you like, you can ask me anything if you have any questions. When you want to leave I will get Ton to carry you out.¡± Gen said, he was obviously drained either from the conversation or by feeding the Frostblaze Amur its essence or both. Feeding its ¡®essence¡¯ probably meant feeding it its lifeforce or something similar.
¡°Could I trouble you to make me a snow dome as well, hollow on the inside with space for me to enter and exit. I would like to rest as well.¡± Ebony requested.
¡°Of course, that¡¯s no trouble.¡± Gen answered when an igloo was raised a dozen metres away from him instantly.
¡°Thank you Gen.¡± Ebony thanked and walked towards the igloo when Gen retreated into its shell and snow dome. The igloo was well made and easily twice his height and about 10 metres in diameter. Finally able to relax for real with a modicum of safety, Ebony collapsed onto the snow and fell asleep without care.
Waking up half a day later, Ebony pushed himself off the ground and started his stretching and body conditioning. Flexibility was always emphasised when he trained as it improves the range of motion of his joints, he stretched from head to toe and started his callisthenics. Drenched in sweat after an hour he finished up with a cool-down stretch.
Calling up the notifications that he ignored he had gained a new skill and some skill levels.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mental Mapping learned¡¯
Mental Mapping - Mapping your journey in your mind you can call up a mental map of anywhere you have been to and have seen. Increases accuracy and ability to recall maps slightly every level.
¡®The perfect skill for every travel lover.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 31 ¡ú 33¡¯
¡®It even levels when I¡¯m asleep...¡¯
It was surprisingly warm in the igloo despite sleeping in a pile of snow, Cold Resistance didn¡¯t level.
Recovering his stamina in less than 10 minutes he left the igloo, Gen was still in his snow dome and Ebony decided to explore without bothering it.
He was roughly half a kilometre away from the progenitor turtle, Identify only had a range of about 5 metres which is kinda short but complaining wouldn¡¯t increase the range. Strolling towards it, Ebony wanted to see the weapon that was stuck to the tree.
A short walk later he realised he underestimated what a behemoth it was, he was in front of its head and he couldn¡¯t even see the top of the beast.
[Corpse of ????]
¡®Hmm?¡¯ Ebony let out as his eyes stung a little for a second not expecting pain from using Identify.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Identify level up 5 ¡ú 9¡¯
¡®Wow¡ now that¡¯s a mad flex. Its leaked essence created a forest who knows how huge and identifying its corpse gave me 4 levels in Identify and I still don¡¯t know what it is. Now how do I get on top of it?¡¯ Ebony had wanted to see the weapon stuck in the tree. Looking around he found protruding tree roots across its shell. Going for the nearest one he tried to pull on it to test its strength but it didn¡¯t even budge so he got to climbing.
The turtle was partially buried in snow so it was an slope that got less and less steep. The roots were thick and numerous making the climb slightly easier though it was a long climb. He made it to the top of its shell in less than half an hour, he had been taking his time. The ¡®ground¡¯ was littered with 3-bladed maple leaves over a metre long, dashing towards the trunk, he Identified the tree. He didn¡¯t realise a large majority of ice mana in the surroundings were actively avoiding him.
[Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree of ?? (Ancient) - Evolved from absorbing the essence of ?? The leaves of the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree will spontaneously combust ice elemental mana into freezing flames of Frostblaze to cool itself and its surroundings down. Utilising the cold to toughen itself and grow]
[Dried leaf of the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree of ?? - Leaf of the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree off ?? fallen off and withered with time.]
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Identify level up 9 ¡ú 11¡¯
A burning icicle was sticking out of the trunk high up above where he was.
¡®That should be the weapon, it''s frozen but why is it combusting like the leaves?¡¯ Unable to Identify it from where he was, Ebony ran back where he came from and climbed down the behemoth at full speed. ¡®No way I¡¯m touching that tree.¡¯ Ebony thought as ice formed on his skin he was quickly freezing up just being in the vicinity of the tree. Fortunately, he prepared some crabapples in his pockets.
The ice mana was so dense there that he was practically swimming in it, going down much quicker than when he climbed up. Ebony returned to his igloo while pondering his situation. He couldn¡¯t stay here for long as he didn¡¯t see any source of food or water if you didn¡¯t count snow. He would have to ask Gen if there was anything edible here for humans to be sure. A little over a hundred crabapples could only last him so long, and even the large territory of the Frostblaze Amur above doesn¡¯t have any food so he would have to travel out of it to find food.
It¡¯s the best place to train his ice magic though, with a much higher ice mana density here he could reduce the mana usage to level his skills up faster. Which brought him back to testing Icebody Enhancement without using external ice mana.
After he was able to manipulate ice mana, Ebony started to be able to feel the mana in his body faintly though he had no idea where it was coming from or being produced from. Mana was colourless and formless as far as he could tell. Nothing happened after circulating his mana for a while, ¡®Is external ice mana really required? The skill description didn¡¯t have any sort of requirement other than the MP cost though.¡¯
Moving mana around his own body didn¡¯t consume his MP but it didn¡¯t strengthen him either, ¡®Weird¡¡¯ chanting or saying skill names out loud did come to mind but it wasn¡¯t like he did that earlier and it felt kinda stupid to say out your skill name. Still, it didn¡¯t hurt to try, with no idea what to chant the skill name was all Ebony had.
¡°Icebody Enhancement¡± he muttered, imagining ice mana circulating like his blood being pumped throughout his body, feeling a slight chill through his body. He was almost speechless when he felt the skill running. Before he knew it, the mana circulating in his body was ice mana, he didn¡¯t use the ambient ice mana though.
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Turning the buff on and off a couple more times quickly to test it, he wanted to know how the skill worked in more detail. An empty MP gauge and 1 level in Icebody Enhancement later, Ebony found out that thankfully he didn¡¯t actually have to voice out the skill name just thinking it worked out. He just needed to get used to it. The power of imagination perhaps.
Focusing inward, his mana converts to ice mana when he activates Icebody Enhancement too fast for him to ¡®see¡¯ how, but once he manages to reproduce the conversion manually he could probably use the skill without¡ using the skill? Not sure if it was worth the effort if he could just mentally will the activation of the skill but it just felt more natural to Ebony, like learning to use a new limb he had. Besides, if he figured out how to manually convert his mana to a different element he could try many things with it.
Now that he doesn¡¯t have any MP left Ebony checked his status to see what skill he should grind a few quick levels up.
Name: Ebony Rime
Class: N/A
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: N/A
Health: 53/60
Stamina: 60/60
Mana: 1/100
Strength: 5
Vitality: 6
Constitution: 9
Endurance: 6
Agility: 7
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 10
Perception: 7
Generic Skills:
Persistent Meditation Lvl 33
Lesser Stealth Lvl 4
Identify Lvl 11
Cold Resistance Lvl 25
Running Lvl 2
Treading Step Lvl 3
Humming Lvl 7
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 9
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 2
Mental Mapping Lvl 1
Stats didn¡¯t change at all but his repertoire of skills had increased a bit. His HP healed up to 53 perhaps repeatedly eating those crabapples had some effect on healing his arm or perhaps it was him getting actual rest and sleep or both.
Deciding to train Running and Treading Step to help traversing around, Ebony started running towards one end of the underground dome. Planning to map out the whole underground dome while he was at it. But before that, he stopped somewhere without any turtle snow lumps and found a random empty spot.
Obviously needing to clear his bowels somewhere remotely private, digging a hole in the snow and making do with snow as wipes. Not exactly comfortable or hygienic but he had to make do, should¡¯ve gotten some leaves instead.
With his business done, Ebony ran towards the dome walls and his training montage started. Running normally for the first few minutes and then with Treading Step activated after he noticed his stamina dropping slightly faster when in use, about 2-3 points more per minute even though the skill description didn¡¯t specify stamina usage like with Icebody Enhancement and MP cost.
¡®Anime protagonists, and even villians get their BGM for their training montages and here I am humming my own BGM...that¡¯s a bit sad to think about, should I stop? Nah.¡¯ Ebony mused as recalled some theme songs he liked.
The underground dome was large, Ebony¡¯s stamina was almost half after running part way through. When his SP was empty he still managed to control his breath and he could still move so he continued running to test if it was possible to move if he ever runs out of SP. About 3 minutes in, he got a notification
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have over exhausted your body. Agility decreased by 50%, Perception decreased by 30% and Stamina regeneration rate decreased by 50% for 10 minutes.¡¯
Ignoring it, Ebony continued testing the limits. Running and Treading Step each got a level already due to its low level. Controlling his breathing he ran for another 10 minutes before falling into the snowy ground.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have severely over exhausted your body. Agility decreased by 80%, Perception decreased by 50% and Stamina regeneration rate decreased by 80% for 30 minutes.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Running level up 3 ¡ú 5¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Treading Step level up 4 ¡ú 6¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 33 ¡ú 34¡¯
¡®Levelling speed is increased when pushing limits but the decrease in SP recovery rate causes it to not be worthwhile, at low levels at least. I have to wait for too long to recover to continue training.¡¯ Ebony thought while laying down. He could still move, albeit barely. But he didn¡¯t want to make it worse or risk permanent damage to his body so he just rested and meditated.
After appearing in this place, as calm as Ebony was, his state of mind was not as it usually was. Even though he loved travelling or the litrpg like world he¡¯s in now it wasn¡¯t like he had nothing back on Earth. He had a somewhat good relationship with his 2 maybe alive relatives, his parents, though he hasn¡¯t seen them in years as they were world touring.
He was planning to do the same when he had some savings, though that plan is moot now. He wasn''t worried about his parents but didn¡¯t want them to worry about him. But that was meh, not so important. They haven¡¯t even contacted him for years. Ebony had not been distraught by the fact but it only started sinking in now that he had no way of communicating with them or if it was possible to go back. It hardly bothered him though. He already didn¡¯t get in contact with them for a long time and he wasn¡¯t really attached to the empty house he always returns to.
There¡¯s no point worrying about something he couldn¡¯t do anything about so he put that aside, ¡®There¡¯s a way here, there¡¯ll be a way back.¡¯ Ebony consoled himself as he cleared his thoughts and closed his eyes. Opening them what felt like seconds later when he got a notification for another level for Persistent Meditation, noticing that about an hour had already passed and his stamina was full again Ebony continued his run.
The underground dome was at least 15 kilometres in circumference seeing how he was around 2-3 km away from mount turtle when he arrived and if it was directly in the centre that would give a diameter of 4-6 km multiplying that by 3.14 would give us approximately 12.5 to over 18 km in circumference. Ebony could usually run about 8 km before even feeling like he was exerting himself and he guessed that the dome was closer to 18 km in circumference based on his run. The previous short run from the wolf pup must have been pretty intense for him to tire so quickly.
Repeating the cycle, Ebony ran and ran. When his SP was empty he stopped instead of pushing himself like earlier. With Persistent Meditation at lvl 35 it only took about 7 and a half minutes to recover his stamina fully, Ebony rinsed and repeated like a machine and made another obvious discovery which was that his muscles would still hurt and tire even with his stamina full.
Returning to his igloo when his MP was almost full. It was a fruitful training with Running reaching lvl 13, Treading Step lvl 15, Humming lvl 9 and Persistent Meditation lvl 36. The underground dome was empty plains throughout with the exception of mount turtle tree and dozen snow lump turtle homes only in front of mount turtle¡¯s head.
Back in his igloo, Ebony was going to practise Ice Mana Manipulation instead of Icebody Enhancement this time. He found it weird that he didn¡¯t get a Mana Manipulation skill and instead, the ice mana version, as he was controlling his mana as well. ¡®Maybe there wasn¡¯t a Mana Manipulation skill like how there wasn¡¯t a moving your arms and legs skill.¡¯ he speculated.
Ice mana was abundant here but Ebony wanted to try some exercises that may help improve his control over ice mana rather than making large quantities of anything made of ice. His previous ice cube compressing method formed ice that was brittle and it wasted lots of mana to just jam it together.
Particle by particle, he tried to merge them in a line. Forming a thin thread made of ice, he wanted to make the thinnest, straighest thread he could that wouldn''t break when held horizontally. Starting off with 10 cm length threads, the thread was waving when the ice mana was still under his control. When it reached the length that Ebony decided was 10 cm, he removed his control over it while pinching one end and it broke off instantly.
¡®I guess trying to make it hair thin from the get go was too much to ask.¡¯ Ebony complained while retrying over and over again till it reached a thickness where it wouldn''t fall apart on itself. Paper thin. Failed. Twice of that. Failed. Double that. Failed. Double that. Failed. Double that. Success.
¡®More of a thin rod than a thread but it''s a start. I should try making 2-3 of them at the same time and perhaps compressing more ice mana so that I can slowly make them thinner and tougher.¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Ice Mana Manipulation level up 9 ¡ú 10¡¯
Ebony was about to disregard the notification when another notification rang.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Self-taught Apprentice Ice Mage - Requirements: Achieved Lvl 10 Ice Mana Manipulation with no prior knowledge of ice magic and no one to receive said knowledge from.
¡®Finally, a class, hmm a lvl 10 requirement seems really low compared to 25 that Gen said and my other skills reached lvl 10 too. Do they not have an associated class?¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Chosen Class will be bound to you and can never be changed. Choose ¡®Self-taught Apprentice Ice Mage¡¯ as your Class?¡¯
¡®That¡¯s new, it''s actually giving useful information for once though Gen already told me. I should hold off on picking a class if that¡¯s the case. I know too little about classes to make an informed decision. Don¡¯t want to choose a weak class if I can expand my choices, my skills levels are still low I think and higher levels and requirements for classes could only be better right? The notification also doesn¡¯t tell what I could get from choosing the class, assuming getting a class will give me skills or stats. At least I wasn¡¯t forced to take the first class I was offered.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Calm Apprentice Ice Mage - Requirements: Lvl 25 Persistent Meditation, Lvl 10 Ice Mana Manipulation¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Chosen Class will be bound to you and can never be changed. Choose ¡®Calm Apprentice Ice Mage¡¯ as your Class?¡¯
¡®No requirements for knowledge and only skill levels for this class. I should try to get more skills and if the requirements were the same for other skills level 10 and level 25 seems like the bar for them to trigger getting a class. I wonder If I got Ice Mana Manipulation to level 25 would I get another class¡ well, only one way to find out. Grinding.¡¯
With no more notifications popping up, Ebony continued playing with rods of ice waving around like a whip. He tried bringing up the class choosing notification with a thought and it was possible so he wasn¡¯t forced to make a choice now.
Emptying his mana pool again, he gained another 3 levels in Ice Mana Manipulation and a level in Persistent Meditation. The ice mana filled environment was making it very mana efficient for Ebony. With time on his hands he was thinking of looking for Gen.
Chapter 5: Progenitor Sap
Standing in front of Gen''s snow lump, Ebony was wondering how to go around calling it and decided to knock on it like any other polite person would. He thought it was a rock with how hard it was when he knocked, stepping back after knocking Ebony waited. Knocking again when there was no response from Gen after a while. Ebony tried calling, shouting and kicking the snow lump only leaving him in pain with how hard it was.
Giving up, he went to look for mama or papa turtles instead or Sei and Ton as Gen called them. Remembering where they were, Ebony went up to their dome and got a response this time. Sei or mama turtle came out of its shell and if Ebony had to guess turtle expressions, she looked somewhat annoyed that she was disturbed. Gesturing towards Gen, Ebony hoped it understood what he wanted.
Hissing towards Gen a few times, Sei got back into its shell and covered itself. Disregarding Ebony and going back to whatever turtles do in their homes. A familiar wave of mental pressure hammered into his head again before receding, it was unpleasant and if not for how Ebony was always in meditation it would have affected him even more.
¡°Hey Gen, sorry to disturb you but I had some things to ask of you.¡± Ebony spoke out loud before it clicked that he just had to think and hope Gen could hear his mental signal.
¡°...Ebony¡ go ahead.¡± Gen pried his eyes open.
¡°Is there any food here? Food for humans.¡± Ebony wanted to try his luck asking. If there was, then he was in no real rush to get out of here.
¡°If humans eat leaves and drink sap, yes.¡± Gen replied seriously.
¡°...Unfortunately not. You mentioned Frost Elves being close, are they hostile to humans and could you get me out of here in 2 or 3 days?" It would have been okay if the leaves and sap didn¡¯t threaten to freeze him.
¡°...I am unaware of the relation between races apart from my own. We are hidden most of the time and do not interact with others. The Frost Elves haven¡¯t ventured deep into our forests for a long time. Ton will bring you up when you decide to do so.¡± Gen answered honestly. The pauses in his speech didn''t seem deliberate.
¡°Thank you, Gen. Could you get Ton to lead me to the Frost Elves settlement if possible? Oh, and do you have anything that I can use to fend for myself, unawakened and all, I¡¯m not sure of the dangers there are up there either.¡± Ebony pushed his luck a little.
¡°Ton will only bring you to the edge of our forest¡ I will get him to direct you towards their settlement¡ if I remember correctly it''s only a day away from the edge of our forest¡ as I¡¯d mentioned the only thing useful for you would be the sap of the progenitor Frostblaze Amur and the only weapon present is the one stuck up there.¡± Gen said while looking towards the progeniturtle.
¡°Then could I get the sap and also some of the dried leaves of your progenitor Frostblaze Amur?¡± Ebony asked, remembering the dried leaves he saw laying around mount turtle he thought he could use them as wipes. As for the sap, he only asked on a whim.
¡°...Fresh ones taste better¡the dried ones are crispy but bitter. But you¡¯ll have to try the other trees¡¯ leaves instead, your jaws and teeth will shatter before a mark can be made on the progenitor Frostblaze Amur leaves even though the tree has weakened it is not something an unawakened can eat¡ Now that you mentioned, they should serve you well as a weapon.¡± Gen gave his critique about leaf flavours and texture.
¡°I wasn¡¯t planning on eating them but dried leaves as a weapon? How am I supposed to use it?¡± Ebony asked. It was kinda ridiculous to him that Gen said his jaws and teeth would shatter if he tried eating it.
¡®Just how tough was this thing? Should I be swinging and smashing monsters with it since it''s so tough, oh wait, don¡¯t tell me the blades of the leaves are sharp. Naturally growing leaf blades sounds awesome enough, good thing I haven¡¯t used them to wipe my ass.¡¯
¡°They should be of a minimal toughness and I could just make them sharp enough to cut into monsters around the parts where you are headed... Of course, they¡¯re not very durable with how old they are and would break from repeated impact after a while. It''s about time to eat so let¡¯s go get them now.¡± Gen replied as the snow under Ebony rose and encased him up till his waist faster than he could react to.
Moving faster than when he was riding Sei, they arrived before mount turtle in seconds and Ebony knew Gen was moving ¡®slowly¡¯. Ebony rose into the air and onto Gen as the snow under Gen rippled like a wave and launched both of them upwards, landing onto progeniturtle without impact.
¡®That was fun, I have to learn how to do that. Magic is awesome.¡¯
¡°Gen, I will freeze to death if I¡¯m up here too long.¡± Ebony informed that he was taking damage from the close proximity he was to the tree. Still as unfazed by the situation as if it was any other day.
Right after he said that, he no longer felt the freezing chill, stunned that he could no longer feel ice mana around him. Originally, he could feel ice mana a little beyond 3 metres away from himself. Guessing that Perception stat was affecting the range. It was still cold but not to the point of taking damage.
Ebony only manipulates ice mana up to half a metre away from himself to save MP which obviously wasn¡¯t a concern for Gen here. Remembering what he wanted to ask since he¡¯s no longer at risk ¡°Gen how do you manipulate snow? I don¡¯t feel any ice mana in them and can¡¯t manipulate it to move like you do.¡±
¡°Snow magic is a different magic from ice magic altogether. If you can¡¯t sense snow mana you can¡¯t manipulate them as with any other types of magic... Born as an Ice Crystal Turtle, being able to use both ice and snow magic comes to us naturally as a racial trait so to say. Rare amongst¡ monsters¡ we are born with sufficient sentience, to gain sapience is to willingly reject the world¡¯s ambient essence. In exchange we do not level to our natural limits with time but gain the potential to go further in the form of a ¡®Class¡¯. All sapient creatures have the capacity to take a class, my race is an Ice Crystal Turtle but I was better at snow magic thus my class.¡±
¡°So Sei, Ton and the others are not sapient and are unawakened as well?¡±
¡°Well, they do have some ability to think but they have not yet taken up a class and are unconsciously taking in some ambient essence, they can be considered partially sapient¡ There are 2 other sapient amongst our kind, currently venturing deeper west to train and eventually take my place. After you leave, do not venture further west past our forest¡ you will not survive.¡±
¡°Good to know, I assume there are a lot of strong monsters in there.¡±
¡°It would not take a monster to kill you, the mana density and environment alone is enough for that.¡±
¡°...How reassuring.¡±
¡°Follow me.¡± Gen said, releasing Ebony from its snow grip. They walked towards where Ebony went earlier, below the tiny needle protruding from the trunk. Tiny from where he saw it anyway, with the distance he was away from it Ebony couldn¡¯t see it clearly.
Removing the surrounding ice mana did not remove the cold completely but it did help a lot, the temperature still dropped the closer he got to the tree. When he got near the base of the tree he could see a big bowl made of what he assumed was ice and all he could see was the burning white flame just like the trees¡¯ burning fire.
¡®Don¡¯t tell me even its sap burns¡¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡°How¡¯s your mana looking?¡± Gen asked.
¡°Hmm? Low, I was practising manipulation before looking for you.¡± The random question brought Ebony back to the present.
¡°Do you have the Meditation skill? Use it. I¡¯ll be preparing my spell in the meantime.¡± Gen said, staring at Ebony sending chills down his back.
¡°I have been using it all along, I have Persistent Meditation. Why do I need mana? What spell?¡± Ebony asked with suspicion, getting a really bad feeling from where this is going.
¡°...Persistent Meditation?¡± Gen questioned, ignoring Ebony¡¯s questions
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¡°Yeah, it has the same effects as Meditation but I can use it on the move and it doesn''t have the reduction in perception. You haven¡¯t answered my questions.¡± Ebony badgered, his gut feeling was that he may not exactly like what was going to happen.
¡°Meditation while moving...wonderful...wonderful¡ Oh yes, I am preparing a spell to assist you to temper your body with the progenitor¡¯s sap¡¡± Gen murmured while going back into its shell, still repelling the ice mana in the surroundings for Ebony.
¡®I guess worrying is pointless when I have nowhere to run even if I can¡¯t shake off the bad feeling I¡¯m getting. But it sounds like good stuff.¡¯ Ebony thought sitting down and closing his eyes he meditated.
The Meditation skill didn¡¯t really make sense to Ebony, it says ¡®calm and clear state of mind¡¯ but his mind was occupied by way more questions than he usually had since coming here. Well many things don¡¯t make sense to him now so there really wasn¡¯t a point worrying about it. Other than the skill description being inaccurate compared to what he can actually do, he had no issues with the skill effects.
A few cold silent hours with the exception of 2 level up notifications for Persistent Meditation later, when Ebony realised what a damn mistake it was to keep running like a fool making himself both thirsty and hungry in a place where he couldn¡¯t get either though he could always stuff some snow in his mouth for water in the worst case. Gen¡¯s voice reverberated in Ebony''s head ¡°Are you ready?¡± sounding both lazy and serious.
¡°Why do you even need to use a spell for?¡±
¡°Did you really think you could consume the progenitor¡¯s sap as it is? An unawakened like you would have been frozen before even getting this close to it if not for me¡ Originally, I would have let you have a drop of it and let you circulate and seep it in your body as best you could before you ran out of mana before freezing you in a non-damaging spell and removing the excess essence from you before you actually freeze yourself to death... We would have repeated that up to 3 times, if your physique was compatible with the progenitor sap it would be improved which will be greatly beneficial for you...in many ways.¡± Gen explained.
¡°Gen I¡¯m not drinking that if I can¡¯t even stay close to it without turning into a popsicle much less do that repeatedly.¡±
¡°...It is less risky than you think¡ I have done it thrice and none has died with my control, though, only one was compatible enough to slightly improve her physique. It is not necessary to do it multiple times as long as you can assimilate enough essence into your body. Any more than a certain amount would damage your body instead of strengthening your physique.¡±
¡°...Let¡¯s say I accept that explanation but what did you mean by ¡®Originally¡¯? Are we not doing that anymore?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Yes, the situation has changed with your Persistent Meditation skill. Normally I would leave you in a half sealed state where I can control the amount of sap you are exposed to to a non-lethal dosage and you would still be able to manipulate your own mana within your body. When you run out of mana I would completely seal you in ice and remove what you couldn¡¯t take in before letting you out to recover both health and mana.¡±
¡°How would Persistent Meditation help? Even with it it would take many hours to recover my mana.¡± Ebony was sceptical, even with Persistent Meditation at level 39 his mana regenerated at 13.9 per hour. It would take more than 3 hours to even use Icebody Enhancement for even a minute, outrageously inefficient to Ebony.
¡°Is it not about how much mana you regenerate, I am aware of your pitiful mana pool and regeneration as an unawakened. Am I wrong to say that you can use Persistent Meditation even when you are casting?¡± Gen said without a hint of contempt of how ¡®pitiful¡¯ Ebony¡¯s mana pool was.
¡°Nope, I can feel it running even when I was practising enhancement magic.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Haha¡ How wondrous! Yes, the fact that you can regenerate mana when casting is what changes the plan.¡± Gen exclaimed, it was the first that he sounded so excited and for a second Ebony thought Gen¡¯s lazy glare at him changed though it could¡¯ve been his imagination.
¡°Ebony, when one is casting a spell their mana stops regenerating during the casting duration including channelled skills and enhancement magic, for me, or any other races that I know of or have helped with this process. Sealing to protect you from harm and unsealing to allow you to recover, truly a waste of our progenitor¡¯s sap. The duration that the previous 3 were exposed to the sap was too short for any sort of proper strengthening. Since you are able to regenerate mana when casting I will instead leave you in a half sealed state throughout the process... My plan was to attempt to find a balance where you can assimilate an extremely low dosage of essence over an extended period of time.¡±
¡°Sounds simple enough, I think. If you¡¯re telling me I won¡¯t be in danger and this will make me stronger, then by all means let¡¯s do it. I am slightly confused on what I am supposed to do though, you mentioned assimilating essence and manipulating my mana in my own body but how do I assimilate essence? What is essence?¡± Ebony answered, a boost in strength and no risk of dying was obviously welcomed. As for being careful and suspicious? Bah, too much brain power needed for that. They could kill or harm him any time even without some plot. All Gen had to do was stop protecting him from the cold and he would be dead in minutes or seconds even.
The thought that almost anything here can control his life and death sucked. Almost getting rammed to death by a boar sucked. Being used to train a wolf pup how to hunt sucked. Pushed around by some turtles sucked. Being called pitiful sucked even harder.
¡®They may expect something in return from me but I¡¯ll take what I can now. Gen has no reason to lie to me and has given me some helpful information so far. It was also thanks to Sei that I was brought here, despite not being so gentle and kind of forced him to, but still.¡¯
¡°The danger is minimal as long as you don¡¯t freeze to death instantly, essence is essentially the combination of a living being¡¯s lifeforce and mana. All you have to do is manipulate the ice elemental mana to seep into your entire body as evenly as possible, bones and organs included of course and leave the rest to me. My seal will prevent the lifeforce portion from escaping as well. The catch here is to lower the output to an absurdly small degree where your mana regeneration can keep up to your usage.¡± Gen clarified. Somehow, the ''absurdly'' sounded emphasised.
Taking a deep breath Ebony in his indifferent mental tone, ¡°Ready whenever you are.¡±
¡°Good.¡± Gen breathed out, blasting a chilling mist at Ebony, encasing him completely in ice.
Ebony was completely sealed in a block of ice, the extreme cold hit his body but only for a moment before he stopped feeling the cold. Perhaps not feeling anything at all was more accurate, he couldn¡¯t move or even breathe but he didn¡¯t feel any discomfort or pain. ¡®Is this similar to a state of cryopreservation? But if I can still think my brain should still need oxygen to function. Relax Ebony, this is magic, this is magic.¡¯ Ebony convinced himself.
He could still think and his sense of sight was still working, the ice was so clear that there wasn¡¯t much distortion in his vision. Ebony was facing up towards the massive tree and could still see the tree burning brightly.
¡®If this is the tree in its dying moment I would love to see it when it''s lifely.¡¯ A passing thought hit Ebony as he appreciated its beauty at an inappropriate time.
¡°We¡¯ll begin.¡± Gen sent, the connection apparently not affected by the seal.
The bowl of white with a hint of blue flames floated above Ebony while he watched as it slowly, ever so slightly tilted till a drop of sap still burning dripped onto his enclosure. Ebony was wrong when he thought he lost his sense of feeling or touch as a piercing cold engulfed him.
The seal wasn¡¯t there just for Gen to control the amount that was exposed to Ebony but also to evenly spread the sap throughout his body alighting Ebony into a human torch.
Ebony used Icebody Enhancement for a second before regaining his calm, he had to conserve his mana and use only as much mana as he regenerated to manipulate the ice mana to seep into every corner of his body. Slightly stunned when he had difficulty ¡®grabbing¡¯ onto the ice mana, it was dissipating extremely quickly.
Falling deeper into focus, Ebony pushed aside the feeling of chilling pain, realising that the liquid sap actually hasn¡¯t touched his body but just the ¡®flames¡¯ of the sap. He could only try to assert control over the ¡®flames¡¯ while he waits for the liquid sap to reach him but to no avail.
A long minute later, he was finally about to manipulate some ice mana, pulling it into his body. ¡®Gen said to manipulate ice mana to seep into my entire body, basically every inch and cell of my body. This¡¯ll be a long night.¡¯ He thought.
Sensing his mana trickle down, Ebony sent a thought to Gen to slow down hoping the mental connection was still there. The decrease was almost unnoticeable and an unknown amount of time passed from numerous trial and error of adjusting the flow.
Succeeding in achieving equilibrium, Ebony slowly manipulated and mentally visualised having ice mana to enter his skin, fat, muscle, nerves, bones and organs, trying to get every single cell in his body to take a dip in ice elemental mana.
Not giving up on pulling in the ¡®flames¡¯ Ebony attempted it over and over again, failing every time, getting closer to succeeding every time. They were fundamentally still ice mana so he should logically be able to manipulate it with his skill.
Observing, perceiving every attempt Ebony believed the truth of the ¡®flames¡¯ to be ice mana that bursts into a gaseous like state. The Frostblaze Amur Maple was, according to Identify, combusting ice elemental mana. If manipulating mana into his body was akin to grabbing a handful of water and spreading onto himself then trying to control combusted mana was like grabbing a handful of air.
An undetermined amount of time passed until Ebony''s first successful attempt and it was certainly not the last. Even Gen didn''t sense Ebony''s success with the minor control over the flames. The issue was his method of utilising mana as it was a brand new ¡®organ¡¯ to him, to put it into words a cup was better at holding water than a hand. Since this new organ of his had no defined form he merely had to meld it around the flames to manipulate. He took some time to get used to it but he managed and gradually got better and better. His usage of mana greatly increased in efficiency over time as he increased his intake of ice mana with the amount of mana used to manipulate it.
Ebony¡¯s state of immense concentration gradually turned into an automated process without realising it himself. Gen releasing a tiny drop of sap every so often. The sap spreading throughout the ice encasement. Ebony pulling in every bit of ice mana he could into his body. His body burning both inside and out went unnoticed by himself. Requesting an increase in dosage from time to time, not even knocked out of his stupor when his mana regeneration spiked and the amount of sap he was taking in more than doubled. His mind was completely blank.
Chapter 6: Physique
Thud
The sound of something hitting the ground woken Ebony from his stupor but his mind was clearer than ever and he never felt calmer. He was let out of the ice cryopreservation before he was woken but he wasn''t sure at which point in time he was freed. Looking around to see Gen hidden in his shell and the large ice bowl beside Ebony. Actually, Ebony had only assumed Gen was male from his gruff and deep mental voice. The shape of its shell was similar to Ton but maybe Ton and Gen were female instead. The bowl dropping was likely where the sound came from. It was empty.
¡®Looks like I used up all the sap, hope that Gen¡¯s not mad about that. Is he asleep in there? It felt like only a short time passed though.¡¯ Ebony assumed.
Incessant ringing pounded in his head as Ebony sat down to rest as well, he recalled hearing some notification that he ignored throughout the process and its all coming at once.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation level up 39 ¡ú 43¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Ice Mana Manipulation level up 13 ¡ú 22¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Persistent Meditation evolved into Deep Persistent Meditation¡¯
Deep Persistent Meditation - Maintaining a state of mind of intense serenity, calmness and clarity every waking moment increasing mana and stamina regeneration rate by 2.5% per level. Slightly increased perception when in the state of meditation. Increased pain resistance.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Deep Persistent Meditation level up 43 ¡ú 45¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Cold Resistance evolved into Sheer Cold Resistance¡¯
Sheer Cold Resistance (Passive) - Extended periods of exposure to the sheer cold allowed your body to develop a strong resistance to the cold. 2.5% more resistant to cold per level.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Physique has been tempered into Frostblaze Physique¡¯
Frostblaze Physique (Passive) - By absorbing and assimilating freezing flames into your body having it seeped into even your very bones and organs your physique has been changed into one of the Frostblaze. Melding your mana into your body, your physical body is now partially made of mana, being inseparable, 25% of your mana regeneration also regenerates your health. Natural resistance to cold is increased by 50%. Natural resistance to heat decreased by 30%. Reduced physical needs of sustenance and sleep.
¡®Woah, now those are some gains. 6 levels and another evolution in Meditation, 9 levels in Ice Mana Manipulation, an evolution in both Cold Resistance and Persistent Meditation and also a tempered physique?¡¯
¡®So skill mutation changed the skill in some way while evolution just made whatever it does better? 2.5% is a large improvement from 1.0%.¡¯
Persistent Meditation probably evolved when his mana manipulation turned automatic, he was able to manipulate mana without much mental effort. Ice Mana Manipulation had great gains since it was basically all he was doing.
Cold Resistance was not making much sense to Ebony now, a quick check confirmed he didn¡¯t take a single damage to his HP but it still managed to induce a skill evolution though it didn¡¯t level even once.
¡®Maybe Gen¡¯s semi-cryopreservation affected it in some way.¡¯
Frostblaze Physique gave Ebony even more questions, honestly he only expected his stats like strength and constitution to increase when Gen said it would strengthen his physique. His stats remained unchanged, he didn¡¯t feel stronger or tougher when he tried to flex and pinch himself.
His skin did feel different though it was smoother, fairer and paler, not exactly albino but paler than he¡¯s ever been.
¡®I thought the sap was for strengthening, not a beauty treatment,¡¯ he joked.
¡®Jokes aside, the main takeaway is that my body is apparently part mana now, a quarter of my MP regeneration will heal HP as well. That¡¯s kinda freaking awesome, wouldn¡¯t Deep Persistent Meditation regenerate HP, SP and MP? But would that mean my MP regeneration has decreased by a quarter? Will have to find out when I take damage and use some MP. Will my hand not heal? All this on HP regeneration but my HP is still stuck at 53 and I still can¡¯t form a proper grip with my left hand. Is natural resistance to cold any different from the cold resistance skill or does it mean his base resistance? Most likely base resistance. It¡¯s not all good though, now I¡¯m even weaker to heat than I already was. Or well, heat based attacks deal 30% more damage. Reduced physical needs of sustenance and sleep. Should mean I need less food, water and sleep, maybe even air.¡¯ Ebony ruminated.
¡°Ebony¡ were you successful¡¡± Gen whispered in his head, sounding incredibly weaker than before.
¡°Yes. Yes, we were.¡± Ebony replied, knowing that he was successful due to Gen¡¯s help
¡°...Good. Good. 3 moons have passed and I feared your body was unable to handle anymore. You were actually this close to not waking up anymore. Fortunately my worries were unfounded as you even managed to take in everything.¡± Gen didn¡¯t sound like he was joking.
¡®3 whole days passed? Felt like hours to me, must have been due to Deep Persistent Meditation.¡¯ Ebony ignored the comment about not waking up ever again. He was up and about so no point worrying about something that didn''t happen. He was just curious since his HP didn¡¯t budge at all, could he die with HP remaining?
¡°Thank you, Gen. I am in your debt, I am sorry I used all your precious sap up. When I get strong enough I¡¯ll definitely come back and get rid of the weapon that plagues your kind.¡±
¡°Mmm...get on, I have to get back to recover my mana and feed the progenitor essence right away.¡±
¡°Sure, let¡¯s go.¡± Ebony said, climbing onto Gen. He already bothered Gen for 3 straight days, unaware of the specifics of the process for Gen but it was definitely not as simple as keeping him in a seal and pouring sap on him, there was still the essence or lifeforce part that Ebony didn¡¯t understand. From how tired Gen seemed no doubt was he low on stamina and mana. Not wanting to trouble him any further, Ebony hastily got on his shell.
Gen¡¯s lethargy obviously didn¡¯t impede his ability as they sped back down even faster than when they came up. Arriving at Gen¡¯s original spot almost immediately, Ebony got off his back and something else landed beside him.
¡°You should rest too, let your body adjust. Don¡¯t leave yet.¡± Gen instructed before Ebony could even glance at what was beside him and cooped up back into a snow dome.
A stick was sticking out of the snowy ground, it was a leaf Ebony forgot he wanted. Half stabbed into the ground. Unable to form a tight grip with his left hand he could only use his good arm to pull it out.
Pulling it out by its stalk, Ebony was kinda embarrassed when he had difficulty doing so. ¡®Thank goodness there¡¯s no one looking, this isn¡¯t exactly Excalibur.¡¯
It was almost as tall as him at about 1.5 metres in length, the stalk took almost ? of that length. It was a 3 bladed maple leaf with 2 blades at the side being oddly short in comparison with the main blade that¡¯s more than a metre in length. Wider than both palms put side by side, all in all it looks like a large sword in the shape of a leaf.
Nonplussed at its weight, Ebony dragged it along the snow back to his igloo.
¡®No wonder Gen said it would serve well as a weapon. I can¡¯t bend or break it as expected and it¡¯s sharp too, it¡¯s a greatsword in disguise. But first off is food, I¡¯m starving. And sleep.¡¯ Ebony thought as he fiddled around with the dried leaf.
Having made the mistake of wearing his body down with all the running, he lost a lot of water content from sweating. All the mental effort in trying to control his output of mana in the beginning was also wearing him out. Even with his Frostblaze Physique apparently reducing his need to eat and sleep, going without them for 3 days was still too much.
Gobbling up thirtyish crabapples, unconcerned about what a damn waste it was for its healing effect before falling asleep there and then.
Checking his watch when he woke up refreshed he didn¡¯t even know how long he slept since he didn¡¯t check his watch before he fell asleep. Fortunately, his watch seemed to have survived being frozen as it was still ticking. It was the only memento he had left from his family after all, it would suck to lose it.
Taking stock, he still had 73 crabapples left and a fruit only diet was not working so well for Ebony. ¡®I would be fine with eating only fruits if they were glorious plums but I could really use a nice warm meal now.¡¯ Ebony fantasised about his beloved plums together with soup, meat and alcohol.
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¡®Gen¡¯s still recovering and he told me not to leave yet so what better to do than levelling some skills up?¡¯ Ebony thought.
Giving his status a quick look while he was at it, there weren''t any skill levels gained from sleeping this time. Though he did notice his HP going up to 55, it seems like he was actually healing this time, as slow as it was, it was better than nothing. Reckoning it was all the healing crabapples or his new physique at work. Likely both.
Reevaluating how he trained his skills, Ebony scraped the thought of grinding his Running the way he did. His current shoes were not made for running and gave him some blisters though it healed when he woke up.
He did his daily stretches and training, then ran less intensly, then he trained his Ice Mana Manipulation and body enhancement magic. But if he was going to fight anything or anyone at all he should have trained his body together with his magic. After all, he needs to get used to fighting with everything he has at his disposal. It was really dumb of him not to move when he used Icebody Enhancement.
The plan was to train his body while using Icebody Enhancement to get used to the buff and decrease in agility. And since he had a huge ¡®leaf¡¯ blade he might as well try swinging it around.
Pulling in surrounding ice mana to conserve his own MP, Ebony was rammed across the snow tumbling around hard. Coming to a stop he quickly stood up and looked towards what hit him only to see Sei standing there. Feeling no hostility from her, Ebony could only wonder what she wanted from him. Perhaps it was only a friendly greeting for turtles to send someone flying with a giant snowball.
Finally feeling pain in his side where he was hit, he only just noticed he took 8 damage from that and he couldn¡¯t move his left arm anymore. ¡°What did you do to deserve this?¡± He couldn¡¯t help murmuring to his left arm.
Not to brag but Ebony believed himself to have a high tolerance for pain. Even now, there was no change in his inscrutable expressionless face. Getting increased pain resistance from Deep Persistent Meditation only accentuated the fact. Unsure if it was beneficial if his response to pain was lagging.
Sensing an immense amount of ice mana from Sei heightened his alert despite being unable to come up with a reason for whatever she was doing to him. Slowly another Sei formed in front of Ebony, an ice sculpture copy of Sei.
Hissing at Ebony to get his attention they shared a long look before Sei knocked the dried leaf sword over. ¡®Haha¡ what better way to train to fight than to fight?¡¯ Enlightened, Ebony picked up his leaf with his one good arm.
It was heavy, he estimated it was around 8 to 10 kilos, he could pick it up but with its size and dimensions it would be a struggle to swing it as a sword like he used to. Ebony has always liked swinging his old wooden sword with one hand so he wasn¡¯t that bothered by the handicap. However, even a heavy greatsword like the zweihander was only about 2-4 kilos, this was in a class of its own.
Clone Sei charged straight at Ebony, reminiscent of the boar albeit larger. This time, Ebony was on guard with new skills and Treading Step didn¡¯t just increase his movement speed it was also his footwork that he had long learnt from his mother. Dodging aside and slashing upwards at its protruded neck when it passed him, leaving a thin mark on it.
¡®It¡¯s tough and this leaf is too heavy for me to even hold upright.¡¯ Ebony let the leaf rest on the ground digging into snow trying to imitate a longsword stance, the fool¡¯s guard. The leaf had no pommel or crossguard and it almost slipped out of his grip when he landed the scratch on clone Sei, freezing his hand to the leaf so that he doesn¡¯t lose his grip or cut his fingers out by accident.
Ebony still didn¡¯t know how to convert his mana to ice mana like his Icebody Enhancement does so he had to use the ice mana in the surrounding to do this, surprised that it didn¡¯t hurt or even feel that cold.
Clone Sei turned and closed the distance between them, using its head like a club, it swung at Ebony. Blocking it with the leaf was a bad move since he was sent tumbling again. Trying to use Icebody Enhancement again Ebony noticed that he couldn¡¯t manipulate the ice mana, as if solidified and held in air, he couldn¡¯t budge them at all.
Sei hissed again, ¡®The ice mana is under her control huh.¡¯ Ebony thought as he gave up wrestling control over the ice mana. Running Icebody Enhancement with his own mana, hoping that she couldn¡¯t stop that had worked. It wouldn¡¯t last long so he had to make the best of it, no matter how small the buff was now, every bit counts.
Already in front of Ebony, clone Sei opened wide for a bite which Ebony greeted with a full powered thrust. Clone Sei had no throat though, it bit on the leaf and swung it back together with Ebony. Sliding to a stop, Ebony ran towards its back aiming for its short tail. Feeling his joints being slightly stiff affected his movements, most likely a side effect of Icebody Enhancement and its drop in agility.
Honestly with Icebody Enhancement only at lvl 2 the 17% rise in Constitution and 12% rise in Strength and Endurance based on his Intelligence was not worth decreasing his agility by a static 20% at all, of course it was another story when his skill level and Intelligence stat increased. It was training and he had to start somewhere so Ebony didn''t stop using it.
Ebony tried to attack it as much as he could, moving around the clone''s big body and avoiding its front and head. He wasn¡¯t doing much more than shaving some ice off but that didn¡¯t stop him from trying. His mana depleted quickly and so was his stamina, keeping his breath as steady as always was the best he could do to conserve stamina. Only when he couldn¡¯t raise his leaf anymore did he realise clone Sei was not even moving anymore.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Treading Step level up 15 ¡ú 16¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Icebody Enhancement level up 2 ¡ú 4¡¯
Two levels in Icebody Enhancement was pretty good for such short usage of it. Training magic skills was highly inefficient, if his wisdom was any lower it would take days or even weeks to get the skill to level 10 to prompt getting a class. If everyone¡¯s mana regeneration was 10% of their maximum per hour, it would take 10 hours fully recover and with Icebody Enhancement as his only example consuming 50 MP per minute, training it to level 25 or higher would maybe even take months or longer as it gets harder and harder to level a skill the higher it goes. Of course this is not counting any other methods of recovering mana, if there were HP healing fruits having MP healing ones wouldn¡¯t be weird right?
Deep Persistent Meditation - Maintaining a state of mind of intense serenity, calmness and clarity every waking moment increasing mana and stamina regeneration rate by 2.5% [112.5%] per level. Slightly increased perception when in the state of Mediation. Increased pain resistance.
Thinking of bringing up the skill info for Deep Persistent Meditation went smoothly and there was even a calculated value based on his skill level. If what Gen said about not being able to regenerate mana while casting magic was true then Persistent Meditation would be extremely useful in the long run. Even now, it helped by more than doubling his mana regeneration but the most noticeable effect as of now was his stamina he was back up on his feet in less than 5 minutes.
Taking the chance to train with his leaf sword, his earlier usage could only be described as pathetic if he had to say so himself. Its weight and bulkiness caused it to pull along Ebony¡¯s body when he swung it with power throwing him off balance the whole time.
Testing different forms, swings and thrusts till he ran out of stamina again. It just didn¡¯t fall into place smoothly like he¡¯s used to. With how heavy and slow it was, every swing would leave him wide open. It was also difficult to transit from one swing to another. He had to kick the body of the leaf upwards to thrust it and the tip of the leaf would drop to the ground as he didn¡¯t have leverage to hold it in place for long with a single arm. It strained his forearm.
Continuing with his somewhat foolish motions whenever his stamina recovered. Feeling a little more comfortable with it after prancing around with it but not exactly there yet. Standing up for his 4th cycle, clone Sei moved as well. It didn¡¯t attack immediately but started¡ splitting, it split off into 3 smaller versions of it instead.
¡°Time for round 2.¡± Ebony said while watching the 3 not exactly mini Seis come after him from different directions.
They were going for bites at his legs and torso, dodging two aimed at his feet and slashing at the one aiming at his torso. It let go of the leaf this time but there was a thin layer of ice left of the surface which Ebony could only assume was going to be injected into his body if it bit him.
The assault continued as Ebony dodged, blocked and countered whenever he could with the ice sculptures getting more and more coordinated in their attacks. They even started to use some ice magic though low in lethality, ice sheets on the ground to make Ebony slip though he didn¡¯t fall for that and snowballs the size of tennis balls for projectiles.
They stopped their assault again when Ebony slipped and got his face planted with snowballs. His stamina was dropping faster than against lifesize clone Sei. Perhaps due the increase in intensity and numbers of attacks, traps and projectiles he had to watch out for.
He didn¡¯t gain any skill levels, possibly from what a short time he lasted but it was good training for Treading Steps. He was also starting to get around the weight of the leaf from deflecting snowballs. He just had to move along with the pull from his swings and twist his body rather than transiting from one slash to another. Letting his swings flow as one continuous motion.
Having multiple opponents helped him realise this as he had to block a series of attacks that hardly had any gaps in between for him to take advantage of to change his guard. Turning and kicking a snowball aimed for his chest Ebony used the momentum to complete the 360 turn for a slash with his blade. ¡®Hmm? This might work.¡¯
Using a sword of this proportion with a single hand was seriously flawed. Wide swing breaks his stance leaving him wide open, twisting and turning left his back wide open as well. Mixing in kicks could reduce his openings but it would be difficult if he had to dodge and kick at the same time.
Right as his stamina recovered, Ebony was met with a snowball flying towards his face which he barely managed to avoid by jerking his head aside.
¡®She was actually keeping tabs on how fast I recovered¡ hot damn.¡¯ Impressed by how smart Sei was, Ebony believed she was changing how she attacked him based on his abilities that he showed.
The first clone Sei was too tough for Ebony and just whacking or getting whacked by it didn¡¯t really help. Making 3 smaller ones instead helped train his judgement when facing multiple attacks that he could react to. The forming sheets of ice on the ground and projectiles trained his footwork and reaction.
The 3 ice turtles were slightly faster this time and changed their tactics as well. One of them jumped up high, kept its legs into its shell and started spinning like a top towards Ebony. Obviously seeing it coming Ebony was going to avoid it rather face it head on, only to be stopped by the other two ice turtles. Jumping out of the way just before the spinning leap landed deep into the snowy ground. The two ice turtles only managed to graze his pants.
¡®That would more than just break a bone or two.¡¯ Ebony was undisturbed by the fact, the pressure only calming him down.
Sei¡¯s added new tactics or changed old ones from time to time, never letting Ebony get used to any one type of attack. Snowballs slowly increased in number and projectile speed. Freezing his feet onto the ground. Walls of snow to block his retreat. Chains of ice from the ground pulling his arm or leaf away to leave him open to snowballs.
Relentless, Sei even started pushing Ebony to fight in an exhausted state with his Agility, Perception and SP regeneration rate decreased. Ebony welcomed the challenge, the higher the pressure the faster he would get stronger.
Chapter 7: Sleepless Nights
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Treading Step level up 16 ¡ú 20¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Deep Persistent Meditation level up 45 ¡ú 46¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Running level up 13 ¡ú 15¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Icebody Enhancement level up 4 ¡ú 7¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery learned¡¯
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery - Mastery of a two-handed greatsword with a single-arm through balance and deftness. Strength decreases by 30%, Agility increases by 15% while wielding a greatsword single-handedly. Very slightly improves balance, stability, deftness and dexterity per level.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery level up 1 ¡ú 5¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Kicking Mastery learned¡¯
Kicking Mastery - Mastery of using one¡¯s legs to attack and defend. Kicking has the effect of up to 80% + 1.0% Strength and Agility.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Kicking Mastery level up 1 ¡ú 10¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Apprentice Warrior - Requirement: Any close-range fighting Mastery Lvl 10¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Chosen Class will be bound to you and can never be changed. Choose ¡®Apprentice Warrior¡¯ as your Class?¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Apprentice Martial Artist - Requirement: Any weaponless close-range fighting Mastery Lvl 10¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Chosen Class will be bound to you and can never be changed. Choose ¡®Apprentice Martial Artist¡¯ as your Class?¡¯
¡®Hmm, a single skill for two classes? What would be the difference?¡¯ Putting the thought aside as he wasn¡¯t planning to take either of them.
Sei stopped and walked off after hours of playing with Ebony either giving him a break, was tired herself or both. His MP recovered fully twice and he managed to get used to the buff and debuff of Icebody Enhancement. Treading Step had impressive gains from all the running and dodging. Best of yet, he managed to get the hang of swinging the leaf. Adding Kicking Mastery to his repertoire was a great idea since he had always been great at kicking, punching not so much. But that was just relative, he was better than most anyway when it came to fighting. He had long noticed that skills that he actually trained before levelled extremely quickly.
Ebony had no idea how skills were determined when the leaf was actually classified as a greatsword but he¡¯s not complaining so he¡¯ll take it.
All the jumping around and projectile deflection helped as it was quite like sword dancing to use the momentum of a slash to dance around and follow the flow and weight of the leaf.
His wrist was in pain and body sore all over as he laid in his igloo eating his diminished stock of crabapples. During the spar, Ebony already noted that his mana regeneration fortunately did not decrease by a quarter. While his health, which he took damage from the training, was at about 6 per hour. It either also recovers at 10% of his maximum per hour like mana which was highly unlikely or according to what the notification said about 25% of his mana regen also healing his health.
Lvl 46 Deep Persistent Meditation [(46 x 2.5% = 115%) + 100%] 100 = 2.15. He had a 2.15 times multiplier to his base regen of 10MP/hour, equaling to 21.5MP/hour. A quarter of that would be¡ eh roughly 5.3. If physique wasn¡¯t trolling him, Ebony would take it as health regen was at 1% of maximum per hour with his HP at 60 it would be 0.6 roughly adding up.
Healing up to 52 HP again since he took some light hits, Ebony was a little concerned his arm was never gonna heal but didn¡¯t let what he couldn¡¯t do anything about bother him. Having increased health regen based on mana regen but no drop in mana regen was a little too good to be true to Ebony and he believed there were other unseen negative implications of having your physical body partially made of mana.
Taking a nap since he didn¡¯t have much mana left, his body was too sore and there wasn¡¯t anything else to do.
Bursting out of his snow burial about 2 hours later, he found Ton by the side this time. Ton was slightly bigger and had a jagged edged shell like Gen, likely the difference between male and females. At least Ton turned the snow back to its loose state before collapsing his igloo on him as it was originally rock solid.
Rising up from the ground, a clone Ton formed but bigger than original and made of snow instead of ice. Seems like they each have their own speciality. Ton returned back into its shell, not even looking as snow clone Ton advanced. Ebony dashed for his weapon not far from him and also tossed his back full of crabapples far away so that they don''t get squashed in the battle.
At his fastest speed he¡¯d moved, Ebony darted and aimed for snow clone Ton¡¯s neck going on the offensive before it could, decapitating it easily. Ebony didn¡¯t feel much resistance from it so no rock hard snow here. Its head instantly regrew and Ebony training began again.
Ebony was doing much better against a single bulky opponent this time round. After getting some deep cuts in, clone Ton hardened and he could no longer directly split it apart. Two long tendrils of snow came out of its back and started whipping at Ebony.
Cutting it off with his leaf tired him out too much as they¡¯ll just extend from clone Ton¡¯s back again so he dodged them instead but it was by no means easy as they were fully under Ton¡¯s control as the whips could change direction in mid air.
Snowball projectiles, pitfall traps, snow rising up to his ankle and hardening preventing him from dodging was all present as well. This was Ton¡¯s home turf and he still wasn¡¯t taking Ebony seriously with him hiding in its shell, Ebony had no idea how it was watching him move to make such accurate attacks and traps at just the right time and place.
Ton hardened the whips smacking him, giving him many bruises across his whole body. Letting Ebony rest before round 2 but aware of how fast Ebony got tired and recovered. The number of whips increased to 5 which absolutely manhandled Ebony so badly, Ton had to remove 1 so that Ebony even had a chance.
He had to come up with a way to deal with the whips as he had the most trouble with them. Suddenly remembering when ice clone Seis bit his leaf it froze a little, Ebony wondered if he could do the same. While he couldn¡¯t exactly freeze snow it was sure to be useful against other monsters. He wanted to try injecting ice mana with every hit his sword lands. It would be pretty cool if he could inject ice mana and freeze a monster inside out.
Pulling in ice mana from the surroundings got him a look from Ton but was ignored when he layered it on his leaf instead. It seemed like both Sei and Ton were stopping him from using Icebody Enhancement with the ambient ice mana for some reason.
Just covering the entire leaf in a thin layer of ice took more than 30 MP, his plan failed before it even began since he hadn¡¯t fully recovered his mana. At least he had an ice sword to play around with. Ah, leaf.
Ebony passed out during round 5, his stamina might have recovered fully over and over again but his body couldn¡¯t take any more. It was already quite a miracle fighting clone Sei for more than 10 hours with only a few minutes in between each round of beatings.
???
¡°Ebony¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Wake up Ebony¡± Gen called out again.
¡°...mm. I¡¯m awake. What¡¯s up Gen.¡± Ebony replied as if he was never asleep, his deep and gruff voice gave him out though. He forgot he didn¡¯t have to speak out loud since Gen wouldn¡¯t understand him anyway.
¡°...Are you okay?¡± Gen asked.
¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I?¡± confused by the question he questioned back, mentally this time.
¡°...Nevermind¡ Did you get the Ice Crystal Physique?¡± Gen shut his eyes and asked.
¡°No, Frostblaze Physique. Is Ice Crystal Physique the physique that the one that succeeded got? Was I supposed to get an Ice Crystal Physique?¡±
¡°...What physique you end up with is beyond me. The one that I helped with was Allumi, a level 100 Ice Mage no, the last she visited before venturing further west she was¡ level 283 Great Glacial Mage. Reckless... with her strength.¡±
¡°Sounds powerful and all, she still couldn¡¯t pull Excalibur out?¡±
¡°Excalibur? No, that would be getting way ahead of herself. I wondered why she bothered trying at her level. According to Allumi the Ice Crystal Physique attuned her body and mana to ice mana. Increasing her cold resistance by 30% and 10% of mana regenerated is ice mana, increasing her casting speed for ice magic but decreasing her resistance to heat by 20%. It was even a trigger for her Class Evolution. Could you tell me about your¡ Frostblaze Physique¡¡±
Ebony read out the notification to Gen word for word seeing no reason to hide anything. Frostblaze Physique had given him a higher increase in cold resistance but also a decrease in heat resistance. The Ice Crystal Physique also has no mention of the partial mana body or reduced need for sustenance and sleep but regenerating ice mana and increased cast speed was pretty cool too. No clue about Class Evolution but it was probably something good.
¡°By the way, is there any difference between increasing natural resistance and the cold resistance that the skill gives us?¡±
¡°Natural resistance refers to your base resistance, the resistance skills increase your resistance based on your natural resistance.¡±
¡®There''s no number for cold resistance so it should be like a hidden stat if there was such a thing but this should mean it¡¯ll stack with the skill.¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡°Melding your mana into your body¡ should be due to soaking your body in your own mana for long enough. Fascinating¡ the fact that you are unawakened was a boon as well. An awakened has much higher stats and would find it difficult to improve their physique with such means so it was already surprising Allumi actually succeeded when she did this at level 100. Even when her physical stats were low as a mage¡ Although there aren¡¯t any obvious demerits other than the decrease in heat resistance there will likely be other implications.¡±
¡°Implications like?¡±
¡°In Allumi¡¯s case, by regenerating ice mana, part of the mana pool couldn¡¯t be used for anything other than ice magic. Though it¡¯s not so much a demerit for an ice mage, my point being that not everything is explained in your ¡®notification¡¯ as you call it. You will have to find out the specifics yourself.¡±
¡°Yeah, well when I cast enhancement magic it did feel smoother and I could activate it pretty fast though I couldn¡¯t really compare to how it was previously. Oh by the way, when Sei and Ton were playing around with me they kept stopping me from drawing ice mana to strengthen myself and Sei was trying to tell me something as well, any idea why?¡±
¡°Of course¡ It is one thing to use ambient mana to cast spells. Another to use it for enhancement magic. Like how monsters can gain complete sapience from denying ambient essence, sapient creatures who take in too much of it can turn into a fiend, losing their class, rationality and sense of self in exchange for an explosive increase in stats. Though not much essence will be introduced into your body there is still a minuscule amount of essence that is... attached to ambient mana.¡±
¡°I see¡¡± Ebony murmured, ¡°Gen¡ Thanks for the hospitality so far but I think I¡¯ll get going soon, maybe after another session of beatings with Sei and Ton. I will come back to visit when I can and if this Allumi hasn¡¯t returned and removed the weapon for you, I will.¡±
¡°...No, thank you. Ton and Sei should be going up to feed as well, I have instructed them where to let you off. Just go straight where they¡¯ll point you and you should get to the Frost Elves¡¯ village in a day or two. As for Allumi...¡±
¡°... I see.¡± Ebony stopped prodding, if Gen didn¡¯t want to tell him then there was no reason to dig into it. Perhaps it was a long time ago and she died long ago but who knows.
???
Sitting on Ton¡¯s back after saying his goodbyes to Gen they started sliding towards where they came from. Gen¡¯s goodbye ¡°You¡¯re not allowed to die.¡± ¡°Get stronger soon.¡± ¡°You are welcome to come back any time.¡± were more like orders. Orders that Ebony was glad to follow.
Passing by all the other doorless igloos, at some point Ebony realised those were probably graves. He¡¯d seen Sei, Ton and even the hatchlings moving about and leaving for the surface probably to eat but none of the other domes moved at all. They could be hibernating or were like Gen but Ebony doubted that. He did say there were 2 others but no 4th generation to take over him.
Gen encased the leaf in ice and when Ebony Identified it, it only showed ¡®Ice¡¯. Not frozen leaf or frozen dried leaf and there was no rarity tag either. The Frost Elves knew about their forest but perhaps even some of the oldest Frost Elf wouldn¡¯t know about this underground dome and Gen wanted to keep this place known to as few as possible. They seem to have some sort of deal between them.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Something about not wanting some guy to find out their ¡®legacy¡¯ still lives. Ebony obliged and promised to keep this location and frostblaze maples secret. He was apparently lucky beyond belief he even stumbled upon this place, possibly another reason Sei and Ton took him in. A snowstorm should apparently always be surrounding their maple tree territory and beyond. A spell.
Gen wouldn¡¯t tell him why it was down now but it was obviously a problem for them. More surprising was the fact that he would shift the surface forest from time to time. He would¡¯ve never came so far out if the spell wasn¡¯t down. Like what? If Ebony wanted to come back he would need some luck and to be strong enough. It''s a whole portion of a forest covered in a constant blizzard. How hard could it be to find?
The leaf couldn¡¯t be seen through the ice and the edges were smoothen out, looking more like a sword. It would break once the mana in it ran out but it¡¯ll last about three or four weeks by Gen¡¯s estimation not considering damage done to it.
Ebony gained another level in Treading Step, Icebody Enhancement, Humming, 2 in Single-handed Greatsword Mastery and Kicking Mastery after a 3-4 hour grind. He started humming halfway through and found it helped him get into the groove. Hopefully he could find some food soon, he only had 46 crabapples left and he had enough of it already. A proper meal, bed, toilet and bath would be perfect now. And clothes, though he doesn¡¯t feel cold anymore with his cold resistance increasing so much his clothes were a mess from beatings he took.
Ebony asked Gen what level clone Seis or Tons exhibited was compared to other monsters, discounting all the projectiles, traps and what not since low level monsters mostly wouldn''t have such versatility with magic or even any magic at all. Just based on their physical stats alone they were apparently only about level 5 - 6 in terms of toughness but the power or speed shown was apparently level 2 - 3¡
At the same level monsters had overwhelming stat advantages, when Ebony told him about almost outrunning a level 4 wolf pup. Gen response was that if monsters had enough intelligence to teach their pup to learn how to hunt they were more like the Ice Crystal Turtles who lost their part monster stat advantage. There was a low chance they were like Gen and the turtles though. Actual monsters were more like the first boar or the snow gale strix attacking most creatures on sight. Less tactic more chomping.
It was pretty depressing that he wouldn¡¯t even be able to cut into a level 5 monster much less match their strength or speed but sooner or later he¡¯ll close the gap when his skill levels rise.
It was dark when they reached the surface, the whole family came up to the surface but after Ton nudged the hatchling as a show of affection they separated. Ebony waved back at Sei and the hatchlings not sure if they understood the gesture.
Unsure if they were where they entered, Ebony continued his mental map assuming they were for now. Holding onto the edges of Ton¡¯s shell as he sped off with impatience. Moving much faster now that the hatchlings weren¡¯t following. His arm threatened to tear off just by holding on to Ton¡¯s shell.
The frostblaze amur maples were always a sight to behold, they slowly thickened as Ton moved. As the trees of lower rarity increased and the colour of flames deepened in blue as they left the turtles¡¯ territory.
It wasn¡¯t long before the maples thinned out again and a more normal variety of trees appeared within sight again. Not long later, Ton let Ebony down and a snowball shot out of its mouth into the distance. He didn¡¯t want to get too close to the Frost Elves to be spotted.
¡°Thanks Ton.¡± Ebony said, patting his shell, getting a nod in return before it literally burst with such speed the snow knocked Ebony a couple metres back. Evidently holding back with Ebony atop.
¡®Next time you won¡¯t need such concerns.¡¯ Ebony convinced himself.
It was a nice coincidence that the sun was beginning to rise so Ebony started walking towards where Ton shot the snowball. Holding onto his leafblade as he doesn¡¯t have sheath or belt for it and he was thinking of trying to make one out of ice when he takes a break.
Finally having his journey be more normal, he saw squirrels with acorns and nuts. They were Identified as [Squirrel] without a level so he could only assume there were still normal animals out and about. He picked the nuts that he could find, they were walnuts but Ebony was glad to have a change in flavour.
They weren¡¯t too difficult to crack and had a lot of flesh but were more bitter than any walnuts he''s had. Food was food so he picked them as he tried to stay on course. Ebony was taking it slow; he continued forming the ice threads or thin rods as he hummed along. Stopping whenever his MP drops to 70, saving some in case he needed to use body enhancement magic.
Half a day passed uneventfully as Ebony had a bag full of walnuts, crabapples and flask of backup rare ice mana potion which still freezes his tongue off if he doesn¡¯t use Icebody Enhancement immediately. According to Gen, the Frostblaze Amur Maple removes the ambient essence and is safe to consume.
So were dead monsters, as long as they weren¡¯t poisonous or anything. Their essence would mostly be gone since their lifeforce or health would be emptied out when they died. Mana would escape their body once dead. He doesn¡¯t have to worry about the essence in monster meat.
Gen was stunned silent when Ebony asked about how to convert his own mana into ice elemental mana to use ice magic without using ambient ice mana. He gave a look that said ¡°How the hell have you been using Ice Enhancement Magic all this time?¡± to which Ebony replied with the truth that he was somewhat forced by Sei.
He didn¡¯t have any idea on how to teach Ebony something so¡ instinctual to his race. It was the biggest reason monsters or races reside in areas with mana that they are more accustomed to using. Even a fire mage would be at a disadvantage against an ice mage if they were fighting in this environment, though it doesn¡¯t necessarily mean the ice mage would win.
The crunching of snow caught Ebony¡¯s attention, a rabbit with oversized fangs popped out of its burrow not far from him.
[Frostfang Rabbit Lvl 5]
It hopped high towards Ebony with its fangs wide open, it was fast but jumping so high gave Ebony lots of time to dodge it. Side stepping and slashing at where he was going to land his fangs, the rabbit bit onto his leaf. While it supposedly had high stats it still weighed the same as a normal rabbit, sending it flying into a tree.
Not letting up, Ebony dashed at full speed aiming a stab through its face, landing on its neck only to draw a little blood. The heavy blade really messed with his aim.
¡®Damn stats.¡¯ Ebony complained, with such a heavy weapon striking at his full power and he still couldn¡¯t damage it much.
The rabbit knocked the blade aside and hopped for another bite at Ebony. Repeating the same thing over and over again, It was dumb. Really dumb. Jumping high and aiming for his neck was its only attack, Ebony could draw blood so it was only a matter of time despite its tough body. Ebony tried aiming for its mouth and eyes but it always managed to bite onto his leaf where Ebony had to start swinging and stabbing it against a tree before it let go.
Running away obviously didn¡¯t come to its mind as Ebony hacked at it, using Icebody Enhancement for the 18% increase in strength to force the blade down its throat. 18% of 6 points in Intelligence was only about 1 more stat point but that was still better than nothing.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Frostfang Rabbit Lvl 5]. No experience is gained due to maxed level.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery level up 7 ¡ú 8¡¯
¡®Maxed level my ass, seems like staying classless for too long won¡¯t be a plan.¡¯ Ebony thought, taking a break to recover his stamina and eat a little before moving off again. Thankfully his sense of direction wasn¡¯t that bad and with Mental Mapping he knew where he needed to be going.
He didn¡¯t have the ability to make fire and wasn¡¯t about to eat raw rabbit. Carrying it would slow him and might attract other predators so Ebony decided to leave it since he wasn¡¯t starving or anything. He covered it in snow before moving off, not forgetting to get rid of the blood and fat on his blade as best as he could with snow. Fortunately not much got onto him.
Ebony kept going for hours and hours. The forest was silent and didn¡¯t have many creatures moving about.
After another lvl 3 rabbit kill and no skill levels it was about to get dark so Ebony started to look for somewhere safe but everywhere he looked was the same forest. Not about to camp under a tree this time with rabbits ready to kill making their burrows so close to one.
¡®Should I just move throughout the night too? Dying in my sleep would be pathetic. But there¡¯s no burning trees to light the way this time and losing my only direction to civilization wouldn''t even be funny.¡¯ Ebony contemplated but ultimately decided not to move through the night; it was too easy to get lost and he would rather not risk it.
Not so much a clearing but finding the largest spot without trees or bush, Ebony sat and meditated. He was the type that could stay up a night or two without much issue even before coming here. Unsure if it was due to Deep Persistent Meditation or his Frostblaze physique but he hardly felt sleepy so he planned to train his Ice Mana Manipulation.
It was level 20, only 5 levels away from the cut-off point for class requirements. He also stopped himself from humming which¡¯ll give his position away.
It was so dark he couldn¡¯t see his hand placed in front of himself, a cloudy night indeed. Doing his ice thread thing, 4 at a time was still his limit but he got much better. They could actually be called threads now so he started to weave them to improve his control. Well and also cover the small holes or cuts in his shirt.
Ebony knew that Deep Persistent Meditation messed with his perception of time, even normal Meditation affected it but with the skill it seemed way worse as it hardly felt like minutes passed when daybreak arrived. He did hear disturbing sounds in the middle of the night but nothing that knocked him out of his grinding trance. Gaining a level in Deep Persistent Meditation and 2 in Ice Mana Manipulation.
He was aware of his surroundings though, Deep Persistent Meditation also supposedly increased his perception but it was too small for Ebony to notice any difference at its current level.
Ebony made a full shoulder belt out of ice, feeling somewhat proud of his creation. Since it was made of ice he didn¡¯t really need any knowledge on how to weave as he could just freeze or join the threads together. He had to weave many layers together so it could withstand the weight of the leaf.
It wasn¡¯t perfect but it fit. He mentally facepalmed when he realised it was just a belt and he didn¡¯t make a holder for the leaf. He ended up directly freezing the body of the leaf onto the back of the belt as it was already daybreak. He wanted to get moving quickly and had no time to ¡®weave¡¯.
Leafblade and bag on back he started running no longer having to carry the leaf awkwardly due to its size and shape. It felt liberating to move faster than he''s ever had with Running and Treading Step increasing his speed. It was slight but Ebony doesn¡¯t sink as much into the snow where his feet lands either, most likely from the increase in level of Treading Step.
It wasn¡¯t long before something jumped out of a bush attacking Ebony, barely able to dodge it he got a cut on his chest.
[Arctic Fox Lvl 4]
A name more familiar to him and it looked just like the one he knew too, it was snowy white like almost everything he¡¯d been seeing since coming here. Swiping its claws at Ebony, it was easy to predict its intentions like with the Frostfang Rabbit but it was pointless as Ebony couldn¡¯t move fast enough. Getting another cut around his shoulders while he rolled out of the way.
Unlike the rabbit, the Arctic Fox charged directly forward instead of jumping and leaving itself wide open. Quickly snapping his leaf out of its frozen lock, Ebony used its large body to cover his vitals as the fox seemed to aim for his chest and neck.
¡®Just a bigger snowball.¡¯ Ebony told himself as the fox leaped for his neck with its mouth wide open. Flaring with Icebody Enhancement it met Ebony¡¯s leaf and its head went flying. While it was faster than the rabbit, it was certainly less sturdy. Ebony wondered if that single level difference was that large or if it was a difference between the 2 different animals.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Arctic Fox Lvl 4]. No experience is gained due to maxed level.¡¯
Too bad it was trying to kill Ebony, if not he wouldn¡¯t have to kill it.
¡®What a waste of food and experience.¡¯ Ebony was not adverse to killing but he didn¡¯t want to kill if he wasn¡¯t going to eat them. Unless they were trying to eat him instead of course.
The cuts were shallow but his blood still stained his clothes red. Checking his HP to see how much he lost Ebony ended up more surprised by the fact that his MP dropped more than he calculated.
Before getting the Frostblaze physique Ebony could somewhat feel that his mana was regenerating and coming somewhere around his head. When he got the Frostblaze physique he could more accurately feel that every part of his body had mana, though it was still extremely faint and weak.
He was bleeding not just blood but mana as well. Glad to have noticed this early on, Ebony continued running towards his destination. His bleeding quickly stopped as well and after almost an hour it was completely healed without so much as a scab or mark. The only thing remaining was his own dried blood stuck to his skin.
The little bit of blood didn¡¯t seem to attract any monsters as Ebony continued his run, resting before his stamina hit critical levels. Another half a day passed without any more attacks, though he did see Arctic Foxes hunting Frostfang Rabbit and them hunting squirrels he wasn¡¯t on their radar.
¡®Get there in a day or two¡ at Gen¡¯s speed or mine?¡¯ If Gen calculated the distance according to his speed Ebony wouldn¡¯t be getting there in weeks, maybe months. Dismissing the idea as the area he was in was not considered deep in the forest and the monsters¡¯ levels were low it shouldn¡¯t be too far before he reaches.
Another nightfall was coming and Running has already reached lvl 19 gaining 4 full levels while Treading Step gained 2 reaching 23. Even Lesser Stealth gained a level reaching lvl 5. Covering as much distance as he could before it was completely dark again a high pitched scream echoed through the forest.
Ebony found himself running towards it before he knew it. First of all, it sounded human. Secondly, so far the only things that showed up were low level rabbits and foxes which he could somewhat handle. Finally, Ebony couldn¡¯t come up with a reason not to go. If they were Frost Elves, they could lead him to their village. As long as they were friendly to humans of course. Hopefully.
It wasn¡¯t far and Ebony got there in time to see a familiar looking boar preparing to charge at a small figure on the ground. It was getting dark so Ebony assumed it was a child. Sprinting, Ebony grabbed the figure out of the way right before the boar charged right into a thick pine tree, causing it to tremble slightly.
[Hoarfrost Boarlet Lvl 7]
Higher level than the rabbit or fox but even dumber than either of them. When he escaped from it the first time he couldn¡¯t Identify it but Ebony still lost it with considerable ease. The ¡®boarlet¡¯ was huge but charging straight was all it seemed to do. It couldn¡¯t change its direction mid charge and with those small beady eyes it had it easily lost him in the dark.
There was really no point trying to kill it, he wasn¡¯t going to eat it and he wouldn¡¯t gain experience anyway. He¡¯ll come back for them soon.
¡°******* ******* **** ******** ****¡± The child in his hands was talking pretty fast but it would have been incomprehensible to Ebony even if she talked slowly.
Remembering he was carrying a child he let them down. There was still some light and Ebony could see it was a 12-13ish young girl. Light bluish skin with beautiful features, her ears were indeed pointed, just a little though.
[Frost Elf]
Identifying her, she doesn¡¯t have a level and if what Gen said was to be believed, she was also unawakened.
¡°Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?¡± Ebony said with his usual monotonous voice remembering a comedic gold line. He expected this to happen so he wasn¡¯t disappointed he wouldn¡¯t be able to communicate with them. At least she didn¡¯t seem hostile after seeing him so that¡¯s one good sign.
¡°***** *** ******* ******* *** ******* ****¡± The young girl was confused but she didn¡¯t stop talking.
¡°...yeah, I¡¯ve got no clue either but if you¡¯re thanking me, you¡¯re welcomed.¡± Ebony replied.
She was talking a lot to which Ebony could only try to signal to her that he had no idea what she was saying. Trying his best with hand signals, asking her if she could guide him to her village or settlement. Though it seemed like she was just as lost and it got too dark to move around anyway.
She squatted down against a tree and, not sure if he heard right but she was sobbing softly.
¡®Oh man, I¡¯m not good with crying kids.¡¯ Ebony thought as he sat beside her, patting her head.
She eventually stopped crying and fell asleep. Ebony couldn¡¯t sleep and at this point was impressed by himself that he stayed up for so long even after all the running and short fights. It was really uncomfortable with his clothes soaked in sweat and moist from snow that melted against his skin but another night of meditation and manipulation helped pass the night quickly.
Chapter 8: Clovis Thoya
¡°******! ******!¡±
Hearing shouts in the middle of the night, Ebony quickly woke the girl up. She shook the grogginess off and started shouting back excitedly when she heard the calls. If he had to guess, it was whoever was looking for her. There was only a single voice and it was pretty deep so Ebony assumed it was a male Frost Elf. The footsteps trudging through the snow came close and he was clearly surprised by Ebony¡¯s presence.
[Ice Archer Lvl ??]
¡°****** **** ********* *** *****¡±
Wariness in the man¡¯s voice when he saw Ebony. The moon was up and Ebony could still make out that the man was talking to him, not just because he was pointed at with a nocked bow of course. Ebony wondered up to what level could he Identify, though he was certain he wouldn¡¯t be able to fight back anyway.
¡°** *** *** ****** ***¡± The little Frost Elf evidently explained things since he put the bow down and even bowed apologetically. There was no change in Ebony¡¯s expression throughout the exchange even with an arrow pointed at him, Ebony didn¡¯t really blame the elf for being wary with him being so suspicious anyway.
¡°You wouldn¡¯t happen to have the communication gem that Gen had, do you?¡± Ebony asked without much hope. Standing closer, he could see that stories depicting elves being handsome and beautiful weren¡¯t exaggerated. The Frost Elf had clean and sharp facial features, a slender body wearing medieval-looking leather armour with a bow and quiver of arrows on his back.
He seemed more stunned than surprised when he found out Ebony doesn¡¯t speak their language so humans and elves should logically speak the same language here. The elves spoke to each other for a while before they started moving along. The archer shot an arrow into the sky that burst into shards of ice. A signal of sorts maybe?
The young girl pulled Ebony along as the man guided them through the forest, unbothered by the darkness. Since they weren¡¯t hostile and the man even apologised to Ebony, the chances of them throwing him in an underground dungeon or prison to interrogate him seemed low.
Ebony was trying to get to the village anyway so he obviously followed without resistance. 30 minutes of walking later Ebony could see light in the distance, reaching not long after.
It was a large village based on its size, wooden walls about 7-8 metres tall surrounded them. There were 2 more [Ice Archer]s whose levels he couldn¡¯t Identify standing guard at the wooden gate. The Frost Elf guiding him called out to them after they finished chit-chatting, giving Ebony looks from time to time as they were let through.
Their guide was likely a guard too, from the same set of leather armour they were wearing to their familiarity with each other. Bringing them into what he guessed was the guardhouse or office. No underground dungeon, just another 2 Frost Elves.
[Master Tailor Lvl ???]
[Master Crofter Lvl ???]
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Identify Level up 11 ¡ú 12¡¯
¡®Everyone¡¯s high level around here. The lady tailor went up to hug the young girl while the slender man just patted her head. Parents, Ebony assumed. All the Frost Elves so far had light blue skin, white hair and were tall and slender but they looked remarkably alike so no surprise there.
Only noticing Ebony after the scolding they gave her. Giving the young girl another chance to reexplain her story. Ebony was pulled along after they thanked the guards and left the guardhouse.
Wooden houses and cabins filled the streets and they arrived at one of the bigger cabins in the area. With a large yard and garden which was likely the field or croft of the male Frost Elf. There was a wooden sign with the logo of a coat or robe at the front door.
It was an awkward night and honestly, Ebony almost thought he preferred being back out in the forest. That was before he was shown the bath, ice-cold just the way he liked them. No longer as cold as it should feel with his increased resistance. They even clothed him in the softest, most comfortable set of clothes he¡¯d ever worn. As expected of a level ??? tailor.
Bowing deeply and thanking them to show his gratitude even if they couldn¡¯t understand him when he was given a guest room, bed and all. It wasn¡¯t the first time Ebony had given the wrong impression because of his dead facial expressions so, seeing how bowing was also a thing here he presumed it wasn¡¯t considered rude to them.
Ebony was filled with questions but he had no way to ask anyway so he just collapsed onto the soft soft bed.
???
¡°Hello?¡± A soft voice rang.
¡°...¡± Ebony sat up from lying down, looking fresher than before.
¡°You¡¯re awake! Good Morning.¡± The young girl from the night earlier had a cheerful tone to it, even mentally.
¡°...Good Morning. You had that communication crystal thing after all.¡± Ebony replied, seeing a similar light purple gem on the necklace the young elf was wearing.
¡°Father borrowed it from old man Nat earlier this morning. Thank you for saving me last night. I am Clovis. You are?¡±
¡°Ebony, no problem. I couldn¡¯t just walk away when a young girl like you screamed for help and cried to sleep.¡±
¡°I..I am a BOY! And I didn''t scr...scream for help, or cry...¡± Clovis mentally exclaimed, getting quieter towards the end, embarrassed.
¡°...I see, sorry about that Clovis.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised with how both men and women Frost Elves looked so stunning. Children had softer features anyway and it wasn¡¯t uncommon to mistake a young boy for a young girl right?
¡°N..No it''s okay. But why don¡¯t you speak Elcrian? What language were you speaking? And why were you in the forest in the first place? You are classless too. Humans don¡¯t frequently come out this way, much less classless. Your clothes are weird too, even mother has never seen anything like that. Where are you from?¡± Clovis barraged Ebony with questions.
¡®Talkative.¡¯ was the only word that came to mind.
¡°I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t remember anything before I woke up in the forest a few days ago.¡± Half lying, Ebony feigned memory loss as it was the best way to explain not even understanding the language. Clovis didn¡¯t even catch on that Ebony knew about the communication gem.
He could also ask all his questions even if they were common sense here and it wouldn¡¯t be as suspicious as he could blame that all on memory loss.
The questions and answers went on for a while before Clovis said he was running out of mana. Identifying the necklace gave him a bunch of question marks until he Identified it after Clovis told him it was a Mental Thought Imagery Translator Transceiver and explained its functions. Mouthful.
[Mental Thought Imagery Translator Transceiver (Uncommon) - Send conceptual mental thoughts and images to another entity within 5 metres by injecting mana and specifying a target to mentally link to. Consumes 3MP/Min]
Borrowing it from Clovis, Ebony tried injecting mana into it and it was easier than he thought. Perhaps too trusting, but Clovis easily believed the memory loss shtick. It turned into a lecture instead of a question and answer with Ebony using his mana to supply the necklace.
???
Ebony was on Elcra where the majority of the races speak Elcrian, though some may have kept to their traditional languages. Races namely, Human, Elves, Dwarves and Beastmen with Foxmen, Wolfmen and Lizardmen being the bulk of them.
This Frost Elf village was called Arcta, lying on the outskirts of Hoarfrost Glade, the forest they were in. Not so much a town, just a large village. Other races rarely come here due to the environment. They had the same 4 seasons and it was currently, according to Clovis, one of the hotter summers they had which Ebony could only be thankful for or he would have frozen to death by now.
All the races share something in common and it was that they are only able to gain skills, classes, stats and whatnot after they turned exactly 15 years of age. Before turning 15, one was as normal as he was before coming here. No notifications, no skills, nothing. The difference was that they had mana and the ability to use it but most wouldn¡¯t be able to do much with it without their mana pool growing till a reasonable size and the talent to sense and manipulate their own mana.
No other races could stand living in Hoarfrost Glade classless for long as they can¡¯t take the cold temperatures. It was home to the Frost Elves since their natural cold resistance was high.
There wasn¡¯t much here either, produce was low, they didn¡¯t have much variety to the crops they grow even with farmers being a class with skills to increase yield or quality. They procure meat by hunting monsters, the most common being the frostfang rabbits, hoarfrost boars, deer and more. The foxes don¡¯t taste good and some of the fox beastmen may be offended by it or so Clovis says. The wolfmen on the hand couldn¡¯t care less about eating wolves themselves. They didn¡¯t see each other as the same race or species at all.
It was quite a revelation that the currency used here was in the form of not coins, notes or some rare metal but Mana. It was a power source for almost everything. To be more accurate it was mana ores. It was hard to tell by seeing this village but technology is supposedly pretty advanced. Maybe not scientifically but magically. Even home appliances like lights and cooking stoves run on mana.
Ebony was thinking about inflation when everybody can produce mana, wouldn¡¯t levelling and adding stats to the Wisdom stat just make higher level people much richer than those who didn¡¯t. Clovis did address this issue he brought up which, while true to a certain extent, didn¡¯t change things much on the larger scale.
All the races had different base stats when reaching the age of 15.
Dwarves had higher Strength and Constitution stat but below average Intelligence and Wisdom.
Beastmen differ from one another but mostly had higher Vitality, Strength, Endurance and Perception but they had the lowest Intelligence and Wisdom stat out of the 4 major races with the exception of the Foxmen who were the exact opposite.
Elves have the lowest physical stats but also have high Perception and the highest Intelligence and Wisdom.
Humans were the oddball with average stats overall, weaker than Dwarves and Beastmen and dumber than elves basically. Humans had the biggest population size by a long shot and according to Clovis it was weird that few humans always seem to have some that have either really high physical stat or really high magical ones, standing out from the other humans. Most humans lean towards physical stat too though. Whereas, such cases were incredibly rare amongst the other races where their natural stats hardly differ from one another.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
There were unknown numbers, possibly an infinite number of classes but they were roughly categorised as combat classes, production or crafting classes, and support classes. Combat classes are the most popular as in any world where strength does the talking and it''s even more prevalent when every individual can level and gain power. That, and monsters were a real threat.
Dungeons are a thing here and dungeon breaks have destroyed cities many times over history so strong people are always in demand. Almost every Beastmen with the exception of the foxes and most Dwarves combat class holders are warriors, with their natural talent lying in physical skills. Capitalising on their strength, a large portion of the stats they gain go to their physical stat as they would not use mana to fight. If they added their precious stats to a stat they are not able to utilise fully in battle would be foolish as their lives were on the line.
Most combat Elves were either Archers or Mages or both, either with hybrid classes or with their sub-class. Human mages were pretty uncommon but not exactly rare either. For these mages who focus on their magical stats they tend to save their mana to actually use in battle and couldn¡¯t just spend it wishy washy. It''s still true that mages are the richest lot due to their higher mana regeneration they just spend the most as well. Just thinking that every magic spell used in combat was throwing money at your enemies... sounds fun. Here¡¯s 500 bucks in your face! have another thousand up your ass!
Mana is used everywhere and is a power source that doesn¡¯t drop in value. Whereas, a reason for not using coins was that metals were better used to make weapons or armour and other building materials. Many crafters and support classes also require mana to do whatever their class was about.
[Mana Ore (Common) - Solidified mana (1000/1000)]
Clovis showed Ebony a small 2cm transparent crystal dipyramid or was it a trigonal dipyramid? Whatever the shape was called it was like a battery that absorbs one¡¯s excess mana when placed onto what Clovis called the Myriad Bracelet.
Ebony understood it as like the smartphone of this world. Literally everyone wears one of these myriad bracelets, it was a thick bracelet or perhaps wide was the word. It has multiple slots in the same shape as the mana ore where one could be slotted in to absorb one excess mana. There were all sorts of gems made into the same shape with many different applications.
There was even one called a Callstone which was basically making a phone call, the range and mana consumption was based on the quality though. The number of other Callstone it could link up to is quite limited as well.
Another interesting fact Ebony learned was what happens to your regeneration when your HP, SP or MP is full. It leaks out as overflowing essence. Essence was simply the combination of all 3, stamina to a lesser extent. Much easier to visualise than Gen abstract explanation.
Mana ores are mined, resized and shaped into its current form as a standard form so every appliance or machine, etc. can use the same mana ore as a battery. Placing 1 or 2 on their myriad bracelet is the norm so that no mana was wasted when they were full on MP, especially when they fell asleep.
The myriad bracelet was the one facilitating the movement of mana, depending on the quality of the bracelet the mana transfer efficiency differs too. One with 70-75% mana efficiency was considered decent.
Clovis was the hyperactive type and seemed excited about explaining any and everything.
Like how the myriad bracelet was made by history¡¯s greatest inventor, a human called Zenin roughly 1200 years ago who was apparently still alive by turning himself half golem to extend his lifespan. To be fair to Clovis, these stories were indeed interesting to Ebony, it let him get a glimpse of what Elcra had to offer.
Ebony was right that the days were longer as 28 hours made a day, 14 hours for both day and night. 60 seconds still makes a minute and 60 minutes still makes an hour. 7 days a week, 4 weeks a month with exactly 28 days every month and 14 months in a year or 392 days. It wasn¡¯t too hard to wrap his head around.
Summer and winter lasted for 4 months each while spring and autumn lasted 3. It was easy to tell when the seasons change as the moon changes colour as well. The current summer moon was white. Come autumn it would turn light orange and slowly darken and turn red by the end of autumn. Darkening red till light completely goes out by the middle of winter with the moon being black, making winter travel during the night extremely dangerous. The moon gradually brightens to a dark purple, getting lighter and lighter till summer comes round again.
Oh how Ebony looked forward to seeing all the different sights the seasons will bring to a single place.
???
Ebony returned the necklace when his mana was running low, Clovis¡¯s colourful expressions were the complete opposite of Ebony¡¯s. Turning excited to stunned silent to jumping around excited, running out of the room shouting what Ebony guessed either meant mother or father.
It was bright out now and Ebony could truly see that elves¡¯ beauty wasn¡¯t exaggerated at all, he couldn¡¯t be blamed for thinking Clovis was a girl.
Used to Clovis¡¯s antics, his mother just nodded along and patted his head. Taking the necklace off him and putting it on herself. The necklace could be considered an antique or relic as it was a singular slot myriad bracelet in a sense.
¡°Hello, young human, I¡¯m Roya Thoya, this child¡¯s mother. Once again, we are truly grateful you have saved our foolish son. Thank you.¡± Roya spoke out like Clovis but it was also translated and sent to him mentally. Unlike Ebony who just kept his mouth shut the whole time when communicating telepathically. She bowed and pushed Clovis to do the same to which Ebony returned the bow to be polite.
¡°Greetings, I am Ebony Rime. I didn¡¯t do much, I was lost in the area and couldn¡¯t ignore a scream much less ignore a young child in danger after I¡¯ve seen it. Rather, thank you for your hospitality. The bath was great, these are the most comfortable set of clothes I have worn and I hadn''t rested so well for quite a while.¡± Ebony replied with his own gratitude. Being polite was only natural to someone who¡¯d helped you was what he had always been taught. Besides, praising a tailors clothes would never go wrong right?
¡°...It¡¯s the least we could do. Would you like to join us for breakfast?¡± Roya asked.
¡°That would be wonderful.¡± Ebony replied.
Ebony ate with Clovis and Roya. Clovis¡¯s father, Halvis, had already ate and was tending to his field.
Breakfast was bread, cream stew and fruit salad. The bread was cold, dry and hard but perfect with soup, the stew was thick and filled with white, green and black vegetables with hoarfrost boar meat. The white ones were carrots and green was, as always, broccoli, the black tubers tasted exactly like potatoes while boar was the tastiest pork he had.
The servings were huge, apparently lunch wasn¡¯t a thing here. They ate 2 meals a day, breakfast and dinner but had much larger portion sizes.
¡°Wait! You can¡¯t eat that.¡± Roya stopped Ebony when he reached for the fruit salad with slices of blue fruits.
¡°Oh. I¡¯m sorry.¡± Ebony pulled his hands back.
¡°No, you misunderstood, those are frost plums. We Frost Elves could eat them normally but without high cold resistance or Constitution stat it wouldn¡¯t just freeze humans tongue off if you manage to get it to your stomach you may even freeze to death over time.¡± Roya explained, glad she stopped Ebony on time.
¡°...Did you say plums?¡±
¡°Ye..yes, why do you ask?¡± Roya sounded confused by how serious Ebony sounded compared to his already stoic voice.
¡°It¡¯ll be fine. I won¡¯t freeze.¡± Ebony strongly stated, taking a slice with his wooden fork shoving it in. His natural cold resistance increased by 50% and with Sheer Cold Resistance at lvl 26 increasing his cold resistance by another 65%. Even if it still freezes his tongue off it was a risk Ebony was willing to take. They say durian, mango, papaya or mangosteen was the king/queen of fruits. Then to Ebony plums were the emperor, no, the god of fruits. All hail the mighty plums. Even their flowers were Ebony¡¯s favourite.
It had a texture like frozen canned peaches and tasted sweet first then sour. Cooling. Not anywhere close to freezing one¡¯s tongue off or freezing one from inside out. ¡®New favourite, need more.¡¯
¡°Ah..are you okay?¡± Roya¡¯s concerned look brought Ebony back.
¡°Yes, the meal was delicious. As were the frost plums. Thank you.¡± Ebony gave his sincere compliments.
¡°As long as you are okay. Thank you for the compliment, I will cook for you anytime.¡± They may be called Frost Elves but those he had met so far were all warm people.
Clovis added on but without the long named gem necklacehe had no idea what he said.
¡°...Roya. I have a favour to ask of you.¡± Ebony said.
???
Ebony wanted to find someone who could teach him Elcrian, an inn or somewhere he could stay for a while and perhaps a job where he could earn his keep. He didn¡¯t want to bother Clovis¡¯s family any further.
His plans were rendered moot though. First of all there were no inns, since hardly anyone else came. There just wasn¡¯t a need to run an inn, though there were more empty houses around than Ebony thought was necessary. Secondly, no one really needed a classless human for any job if he didn¡¯t have the related skills needed. Even cleaning jobs have skill level requirements, if they really manage to find a job it would mostly pay peanuts.
What more a single day worth of food actually costs 500 to 800 mana, food supplies were low here with their crop yield being low and they don¡¯t have any domesticated farm animals or monsters. Hunting was their only meat source, which made meat expensive. Most of the elves also have quite some of the stats gained from levelling put into wisdom. Combat, production or support, every Frost Elf can use ice magic, so mana was valued less here compared to other races and food cost a few times more than other towns and cities.
Well, a quick mental calculation told Ebony that if he didn¡¯t spend mana anywhere else he could actually still feed himself. 21.75 MP/hour and 28 hours a day he made a little more than 600 mana a day. But he wanted to quickly train his magic up so he couldn¡¯t bear to spend his mana this way, it wouldn¡¯t be enough even if he needed less food and he could just go vegan. He also didn¡¯t have a myriad bracelet or any mana ores.
Most importantly Roya was insistent on ¡®not letting their son¡¯s saviour live somewhere else when he could stay with them.¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t dissuade her otherwise but he himself was insistent on not taking advantage of their hospitality. They managed to come to a compromise and this was where Clovis came in.
Clovis was surprisingly already 16 years old and was trying to get a scholar type class. He even had what they called a tier 2 skill of the skill Teaching called Educate. Clovis needed not just things to educate but also someone to educate to level the skill so they happily offered to have Clovis teach Ebony Elcrian. There were few kids his age around so it was hard to train his skill.
Ebony wanted to pay them when he was able to but Roya argued that people pay others to help them level certain skills up so they broke even here where Ebony would get to learn the language and Clovis can level his skill.
As for his rent and food, Clovis apparently mentioned Ebony having more mana than himself when operating the telepathy gem. This shocked Roya more than Ebony having amnesia or not knowing the language.
Roya was actually expecting another baby and was looking for some help with her work. Ebony was suspicious his help was needed for her work, chores and housework he could understand but after the talk on skill and skill level requirements no way could he help an unknown level tailor with her work.
The nearest town to Arcta was south-east of here and a merchant comes every 3~5 months to trade. Roya still had quite a few custom orders that she hadn¡¯t finished and the merchant was going to return in about 1 to 2 months. Due to the hotter summer they were having, she has also been receiving a lot of orders from their neighbourhood for what they called a frostsilk blanket or curtain that apparently keeps them cool while sleeping or lowers the temperature in their house slightly.
¡°Ebony, you made this by weaving threads made of ice and layering them didn¡¯t you?¡± Roya said, pointing towards the shoulder belt Ebony made out of ice. Not sure how she knew that, it just looked like a block of ice from outside.
¡°Yes, why do you ask?¡±
¡°Well the design is¡ horrible but the workmanship is not bad for a classless human. What''s more it''s made of pure ice mana manipulation and no other tailoring skill used to make it. The villagers are badgering me for the blankets and curtains but there¡¯s too much for me to handle alone with the orders that I have to finish soon. They don¡¯t require rare or high skill levels and I¡¯ll teach you Mana Weaving.¡±
Unable to refuse their insistence and kindness, Ebony was going to stay at their house while learning the language and helping at least 4 hours a day with the blankets and curtains. He couldn¡¯t help with Halvis¡¯s work and they wouldn¡¯t let him do anymore than that either, wanting him to save his mana and energy for training his own skills to get a class soon.
He was going to stay till the merchant arrived and see if he could somehow hitchhike to the nearest town, Plainston. Nearest wasn''t remotely near and they were convinced Ebony couldn¡¯t make the journey on foot.
It was going to be slow living and a lot of learning for awhile. Ebony couldn¡¯t wait to travel and see what Elcra had to offer but there was no rush. He had to prepare, he needed to know more about classes, skills, stats and much more. Things were going really well, he was lucky Frost Elves weren¡¯t hostile, lucky he saved Clovis instead of staying hidden, even luckier that Clovis was knowledgeable and most of all, lucky they were warm and nice people.
He may have been brought here unknowingly. Almost killed by a passing boar. Chased by a wolf pup. Almost freezing to death after being somewhat forced to drink potentially fatal sap. But it wasn¡¯t so bad, Ebony liked this world. Gen and the Ice Crystal Turtles helped him, Clovis and his family were gentle and warm people even to a suspicious stranger of a different race. Both knowing there just wasn¡¯t anything they could have gained from him.
¡®At least for now.¡¯ Ebony humoured himself.
Chapter 9: Basics
¡°What do you think about that human, dear?¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°You know what I mean¡ he¡¯s clearly suspicious.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°The journey from Plainston is too far and dangerous for an unclassed to make it. A human that appeared out of nowhere, wearing clothes of make that even you don¡¯t recognize and claims to have lost his memories and doesn¡¯t even know Elcrian? That¡¯s a classic convenient lie otherworlders use to hide their ignorance and you know it. He¡¯s obviously had a space mage help him or teleported here through other means. What motives would he have to get close to our village, our family?¡±
¡°You think too much honey. All we know is that Ebony saved Clovis¡¯s life and you know he¡¯s no liar. That¡¯s more than enough for us to offer him our greatest hospitality.¡±
¡°Clovis is still too young and he¡¯s gullible just like you dear. Almost anyone can trick him if they want to.¡±
¡°Like how you trick me into marrying you?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°I know you mean well Halvis, but he¡¯s also a young boy and got stranded in a stone-cold forest alone, unclassed even!¡±
¡°Roya, you¡¯ve seen that ice blade. How dense the ice mana in it was. It¡¯s impossible for an unclassed human to make that, something about it is weird. I don¡¯t even think I could come close to duplicating that. Someone must have helped him, someone who had extremely high mastery over ice magic. Perhaps even the boarlet was set by him to go after Clovis while he played hero to gain our trust. They have bad eyesight so it¡¯s not too hard to lose them in the dark.¡±
¡°Enough Halvis. I know you are thinking for our safety but I will not have you speak poorly of our son¡¯s saviour before even given time to understand him. He has clearly been very polite so far. Don¡¯t worry so much Halvis, what could he do to harm us? He¡¯s just an unclassed and even if he had a hidden guardian protecting him it doesn¡¯t mean he means us harm. Good will is repaid by good will Halvis.¡±
¡°...I know I know, but you¡¯ve heard the stories about how otherworlders treat us¡¡±
¡°We can only find out if the stories were true by experiencing and observing him ourselves. You know better than to judge an individual by their collective.¡±
¡°...Haa¡we¡¯ll just observe him for now I guess¡ I did not trick you into marrying me, I charmed you, with my skills, dashing looks and my unending love for you.¡± Halvis gave up on persuading his wife and added with a smirk.
¡°You wish. That human child will turn out more dashing than you, his ice blue hair and pitch black irises matched with that cold expression of his would send chills down any young woman¡¯s back.¡± Roya beamed back with jest.
¡°Oh no! My wife¡¯s turning into a child predator!¡± Halvis played along. Going on to planting a kiss on her, feeling just a tinge salty over the comment on the young human''s looks.
¡°Jealous?¡± Roya asked smugly. Inwardly overjoyed seeing her husband¡¯s reaction.
???
Name: Ebony Rime
Class: N/A
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: N/A
Health: 60/60
Stamina: 60/60
Mana: 100/100
Strength: 5
Vitality: 6
Constitution: 9
Endurance: 6
Agility: 7
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 10
Perception: 7
Generic Skills:
Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 51
Lesser Stealth Lvl 5
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 26
Running Lvl 25
Treading Step Lvl 27
Humming Lvl 15
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 27
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 20
Mental Mapping Lvl 1
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery Lvl 16
Kicking Mastery Lvl 22
Mana Weaving Lvl 11
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 5
Spiritual Meditator - Requirements: Meditation type skill Lvl 50
Ice Mage - Requirements: Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25
Meditative Ice Mage - Requirements: Meditation type skill Lvl 50 & Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25
Apprentice Swordsman - Requirement: Any type of sword Mastery Lvl 10
Runner - Requirements: Running Lvl 25
Quick Traveller - Requirements: 2 Movement type skills Lvl 25
Humming Traveller - Requirements: Any Movement type skill Level 25 & Humming Lvl 10
Apprentice Enhancement Mage - Requirements: Any Enhancement Magic Lvl 10
Ice Enhancement Mage - Requirements: Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25 & Any Ice Enhancement Magic Lvl 10
Apprentice Ice Swordsman - Requirements: Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 10, Any Ice Enhancement Magic Lvl 10 & Any type of sword Mastery Lvl 10
Relentless Swordsman - Requirements: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 50 & Any type of sword Mastery Lvl 10
Meditative Ice Swordsman - Requirements: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 50, Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25, Level 25 Movement type skill & Any type of sword Mastery Lvl 10
Meditative Ice Enhancer Swordsman - Requirements: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 50, Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25, Any Ice Enhancement Magic Lvl 10, Treading Step Lvl 25 & Any type of sword Mastery Lvl 10
Apprentice Tailor - Requirements: Any tailoring skill Lvl 10
Apprentice Mana Tailor - Requirements: Any Mana tailoring skills Lvl 10
Ice Weaver - Requirements: Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25, Mana Weaving Lvl 10
2 peaceful weeks flew by as Ebony¡¯s days were filled with activity. Every time a skill reaches the level threshold which was 10, 25 & 50 so far he would get notifications for classes that require those skills. He didn¡¯t get the ¡®self-taught¡¯ version for Ice Mage anymore, probably due to learning a little from Gen and Clovis.
He learned quite a lot in these 2 weeks, Clovis was really talkative but a really good teacher too. With the help of the telepathic gem learning a language was incredibly simple, no picture books required. By the end of the first day, Ebony already learnt many simple words and phrases used in daily life.
They got permission to remove the gem from the necklace to place it on Clovis¡¯s myriad bracelet so that the mana could be supplied from a Mana Ore. The necklace was basically a single slot myriad bracelet. Clovis¡¯s myriad bracelet had 5 slots and all slots were connected by mana linkways. It was really a convenient item but they didn¡¯t have any extras so Ebony would have to get one himself from the merchant or when he gets to Plainston.
The English skill just came up when he tried speaking a little and it just jumped to lvl 8. Ebony could already speak Elcrian pretty fluently with little accent, after all he did know Chinese, Japanese and a little German and Russian from his travelling with his parents. He didn¡¯t bother getting those skills or levelling English though. Elcrian was actually simpler though there are some words he couldn¡¯t quite pronounce right.
The written form of Elcrian consisted of symbols of shapes like circles, triangles, straight and curved lines. There were only 15 characters and Ebony got them down quickly. Numerals were really simple too, 0 was a circle, 1 was a circle with a dot in the centre, 2 was with a horizontal line and 3 was a triangle, 4 had another dot in the triangle, 5 a line and so on till 9 which was a circle with three triangles within. Simple but drawing them was quite a hassle. Looking at a string of numbers took some getting used to.
The Thoya family had a respectable study that they built up for Clovis since he¡¯d always liked books. Not just Elvish, there were Humans, Dwarven and though few, Beastmen written books too. Clovis taught Ebony the language through history, folktales, stories and more. The book Ebony is currently reading titled; Foundations of Classes, Sub-Classes, Profession, Skills and Stats was truly mind opening and Ebony was glad he didn¡¯t just take Apprentice Ice Mage classes he first met the requirements for.
Like the notification informed him, getting a Class was a permanent decision. There was absolutely no known way of changing it. Which was to say future development to your class was somewhat limited by your starting class.
First of all, skills and skill levels. Talent was very real here, two people could do the same thing for example cooking but one may get the cooking skill while the other may not. If both got the Cooking skill they could both spend the same time cooking the same dishes but their skill level may level at a different rate. They call this ¡®talent¡¯ Natural Potential.
The max level of a skill is also dependent on one¡¯s natural potential. Frost Elves or Elves in general are said to have almost no natural potential with the sword. They either couldn¡¯t get the sword mastery skill at all or can hardly level it up to lvl 10 to even get the Apprentice Warrior or Apprentice Swordsman Class. Their natural potential with archery or ice magic on the other hand was outstanding, even the least talented with these skills could level it to 18-20 or so in a short time frame.
When one was under 15 years old they wouldn¡¯t have skills but it didn¡¯t mean training was pointless. Whatever they did before 15 would be going into their skills once they got them rapidly levelling up. Excluding some skills like resistance skills for example. The skills would slow down in levelling and hit their limit within days, exactly what happened to Ebony.
Ebony was 20 this year so most of his ¡®skills¡¯ were practised for 5 more years than others here, except for magic of course. Skills don¡¯t have a limit to levels as far as they know. They weren¡¯t exactly ¡®maxed out¡¯ the skills level up increasingly slowly if not at all as one reaches their Natural Potential for it. The first level after the ¡®max¡¯ may take 3-5 days, the next would take a week then weeks turn into months and then years.
¡®Wait a minute. I¡¯m not considered 20 over here.¡¯ Ebony recalled the time difference between worlds.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
24 hrs x 365.25 days x roughly 20.5 years = need a calculator, or troublesome manual calculations, fortunately Ebony was pretty damn good with mental calculations.
Roughly 179703 hours old. 28hrs x 28 days x 14 months = 10976hours/year. 179703hrs / 10976 hrs/year = 16.37 years old.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mental Arithmetic learned¡¯
Mental Arithmetic - Ability to perform basic arithmetic operations mentally. Complexity of arithmetics, speed and accuracy increases slightly with Intelligence and skill level.
¡®Sweet. But Clovis is the same age as me?¡¯ Ebony took a double take at the 12-13 year old looking elf. Well at least Ebony wasn¡¯t lagging behind people his age as most pick up a class after about half a year of training and picking up skills. The richer or more ambitious take who took their time for better classes was also about 16-17.
Most people don¡¯t wait and train their skills for years as staying classless was just costly. Quickly getting a class and a few levels to start working(or producing money) to decrease the family burden. The rich merchants or nobles who don''t have such worries would have their child take their time to get more and higher skill levels to get stronger, better classes. Even so, one is still limited by their natural potential so there¡¯s just no reason to stay classless for longer than necessary.
Ebony hit this ¡®max¡¯ level a few days back but he wanted Icebody Enhancement and Single-handed Greatsword Mastery to get to level 25. He wasn¡¯t going to wait for years of course, there was a method to increase their natural potential and the Frost Elves called it the stimulation rite which just sounded wrong to Ebony.
The ¡®simplest¡¯ way was just to kill a monster at least 10 levels higher than you. When one reaches their maxed level, 0 for classless, they no longer gain experience but the first monster 10 levels above them that they kill would go on increasing their natural potential.
Every 10 levels was a benchmark, killing a lvl 10 or lvl 19 monster had no known difference in increased natural potential but killing a monster 20 lvls above would induce another increase in natural potential. Just that it was impossible for a classless to kill a lvl 20 monster without external help.
Parents or relatives will watch and perhaps trap the monster while the child will use all means to kill it. The less help received the more beneficial it would be. Not as easy as it sounds with how high a level 10 monster¡¯s stat is compared to a classless even trying to hurt it would be tough.
Still, monsters'' weak points are still there. The Frost Elves usual tactic was finding a lvl 10 Hoarfrost Boar the older elf would freeze them in place and the young elf would either shoot arrows at their eyes or into their mouth, use ice magic or both and bleed them out. They were big clumsy targets after all.
No clue if the other races do it too but it was apparently common knowledge so they most likely did it too.
How much the ¡®max¡¯ level rises really depends on how much work was done by the individual themselves but the average in Arcta was about 4-6 lvls in the skills that they used in the rite and 1-3 in all other generic skills.
The night Clovis was in the forest was when he sneaked out to test his new skill called Ice Vines. He used it as a trap and managed to ensnare a level 6 Arctic Fox.
He set the vines under the snow, set squirrel meat drugged with some kind of sleeping agent, and waited till the Arctic Fox got caught in it. According to Clovis, he wanted the Ice Vines to entangle and pierce the target and freeze it inside out. But his Intelligence and skill level was too low; the vines couldn¡¯t pierce the Arctic Foxes skin.
Clovis waited a long time before the Fox got baited, he manipulated the vines to crawl into its mouth and slowly froze it to death. He only had enough mana to use the skill once and all the waiting only recovered enough for him to manipulate it. By the time he managed to kill it by himself it was already dark out and he was kind of lost, the boarlet and Ebony arrived not too much later.
Ice vines was the only combat skill Clovis learnt since he wasn¡¯t really interested in fighting but he still wanted to get as much out of the stimulation rite as possible and if he could trap the monster by himself, he would likely benefit more from it.
The ice vines were just a patch of tangled ropes of ice about 30 cm in diameter with a few thorns and they weren¡¯t even sharp. Ebony tried to step on it for it to reach out and bind itself onto his leg. It had a much stronger grip than he expected but Ebony managed to break free with a bit of struggling, unlike Ton¡¯s snow whips. The fox would break free for sure if not for drugging it.
Skills were widely categorised by the percentage increase the skill gave. 1.0% per level increase skills were tier 1 skills like Running, Treading Step and Icebody Enhancement. Tier 2 skills were skills that gave a 2.5% increase per level like Deep Persistent Meditation or Sheer Cold Resistance. Skills like Lesser Stealth, Mental Mapping or Humming that increase ¡®slightly¡¯ or ¡®very slightly¡¯ were considered unranked or untiered skills.
Naturally, not every skill could be properly ranked like that, like Identify. Well, it is considered tier 1 despite that. Each level in Identify allows one to Identify a person or monster 5 lvls above their own. Which is to say Ebony¡¯s lvl 12 Identify could let him Identify a lvl 60 entity, if he was lvl 5 he would be able to identify up to lvl 65. The higher tier skill would be Appraise which can Identify 10 lvls above their own and also gives more information than Identify.
After choosing a class the generic skills that were part of the class requirement would turn to class skills and their ¡®max¡¯ level would be greatly raised along with the ability to gain experience from killing monsters. Non-combat classes gain more experience from doing whatever their class does instead of killing monsters of course.
The book dubbed ¡®Apprentice¡¯ or some other similar sounding classes as handicapped classes due to the low requirement in skill level. According to the book one would be able to level from level 0 - 100 before facing a bottleneck, the Class Evolution. Similar to when choosing a Class skill level requirement is the most common factor limiting one¡¯s advancement.
Choosing a class would actually put one into a comatose state, the duration differs from class to class and person to person. The biggest benefits of getting a class and what separates one from another would be the Class Fortification. One¡¯s body, mind and supposedly soul evolves, getting the perks.
There were all sorts of perks depending on the skill requirement for the class. Ice Mage may give a 100% bonus casting speed with Ice Magic, 100% Mana Efficiency with Ice Magic or even 100% Intelligence with all Ice Magic. Out of 10 Ice Mages, all 10 may all have different bonuses. There were still common bonuses amongst most though.
This was where the author of the book got more hypothetical with nothing absolute. His theory was that what one does before getting the class would affect the bonuses gained.
An Archer who focused on firing fast would have a bonus related to Agility when using the bow, another who focused on charged shots or heavy bows would get a bonus related to Strength and one who focused on training their accuracy would get a Perception related bonus.
Clovis added that this was currently the most believed theory and was proving to be more and more accurate. There used to be some who believed it was based on one''s stats and those with higher Strength stat would get a Strength buff etc. It was quite easily put aside as nonsense as it was really easy to find out when you can train a large group of people especially in the army. Imperial army and noble families actually got down the regimes to guarantee some class bonuses based on their training and not beginning stats so that theory was quickly debunked.
The more skills required for a class the more bonuses received from a class. An Apprentice class or more accurately, a lvl 10 required skill would give a 50% bonus while a normal class would gain a 100% bonus. There was no mention of a lvl 50 required skill so Ebony had to casually ask Clovis if there was any higher requirement after 25.
Being long winded as he was, Clovis went into storytelling mode and told him about how even the Frost Elves¡¯ most talented Glacial Arch Mage in history was recorded to have reach lvl 40 in Ice Mana Manipulation before reaching his natural potential limit and after his stimulation rite and some years of training he managed to hit the lvl 50 requirement.
There were some other stories about other races¡¯ war heroes or something but all Ebony concluded was that people obviously kept such things secret and that Clovis didn¡¯t actually know how much of a buff a lvl 50 requirement class would give.
A single Core Skill slot will also be gained after every Class Evolution. A Core Skill has much higher Natural Potential and also has a higher chance to undergo skill evolution or mutations more easily compared to generic or even class skills.
Sub-Classes and Professions weren¡¯t much different from a Class in terms of requirement to get them and their bonuses.
Any and every Class, Sub-Class and Professions are the same regarding skill slots and stat points gained a level. A Class has a total of 15 skill slots, Sub-Class has 10 and Profession has 5 no matter the type or level. A level gained in ones'' Class gives 10 stats, Sub-Classes gives 5 and Profession only gives 1 stat point in the profession focused stat, not having the choice of what to put the stat into. At least for level 0 to 100, which as a group was known as Journeymen.
The book was filled with ¡®general¡¯ knowledge but it helped Ebony immensely as he didn¡¯t have to go in blind.
There was no system or higher being that gave skills to people. When Ebony asked about the notifications in his head like who or what was talking to them, Clovis just laughed.
They believe it to be a natural phenomenon, something like the laws of nature. Since no one is ¡®given¡¯ any skill, all skills are gained or learned by one¡¯s own effort or actions. Even skills gained when getting or evolving a Class are derived from one''s actions.
An example is a swordsman who trains his stab over and over or tends to stab a lot when fighting. Getting a Class may get him the Stab skill or something along the lines.
No skill is truly given, only gained.
Strength increases physical might allowing one to perform feats of physical strength.
Strength was pretty self explanatory but it was nice to know that having too high a strength stat compared to Constitution can make one break their own bones from their own strength.
Actual physical change like being more muscular is quite a natural change when adding Strength stat. Adding Constitution is said to counter this effect slightly since Constitution was said to make one¡¯s body denser. Muscles, bones, the whole body.
Vitality is the measure of health points and health regeneration. 1 point = 10HP = 1% regeneration per hour.
The regeneration made it clear to Ebony that he regenerates 1% of his total health per hour. Damage to bones or organs would interfere with natural healing obviously. Base regeneration seemed to differ for some races too, wolf and lizard beastman were said to have 2% regeneration per hour. The numbers for these are quite a sham and really depends on the severity of one¡¯s injury.
Without treatment from a doctor, healer or maybe even a bone mage his left arm wasn¡¯t supposed to be able to heal quickly. Even with a higher Vitality stat, broken bones or a hole in your lungs wouldn¡¯t heal from natural regeneration.
Well, Ebony''s Frostblaze Physique clearly changed his body as his arm was completely healed by the third day of not worsening his injury. Unsure if it was due to his mana regeneration contributing to his health regeneration or due to his body being partially made of mana. Probably both.
People used to believe increasing Vitality would increase one''s lifespan but it was easily disproved as warriors with much higher Vitality than mages or crafters don¡¯t live any longer than either of them.
What is believed to affect lifespan outside of race is Class Evolutions. A level 100 human that hasn¡¯t undergone Class evolution would have a lifespan of about 150 to 200 years. While a level 100 human who evolved has a lifespan of 350 to 400 years.
Just undergoing Classing would practically double Ebony¡¯s current life expectancy. Ebony never really thought much about immortality but a human¡¯s lifespan was truly short. No harm in living longer. But living forever? Ebony wondered if there was anything worth living forever for.
Constitution determines the toughness and resilience of your body and its resistance to abnormal statuses.
All stats interact with each other in some way, not sure how accurate the book was but the authors estimated that a combined Strength and Agility stat that is 5 times more than ones¡¯ Constitution stat is when one starts to damage themselves with their own power and speed.
It also stated that Constitution was like a base for not just physical but magical and elemental resilience. Just having a much, much smaller effect. Increasing Constitution increases all elemental resistance by an extremely small amount.
Races have differing effects of natural base resistances. Like Frost Elves having high natural resistance to cold.
It is hard to see any difference in damage taken from any element with even a 100 stat point difference and there were too many factors to take into consideration when calculating damage taken.
One point Ebony noted was that a higher Constitution doesn¡¯t only make it harder for one to get damaged but also harder to heal for healing magic.
It is also said that a higher Constitution would have the effect of reducing need for sustenance. Something about the body being able to be more energy efficient. Breaking down food better and receiving more from it, resulting in less wastage. Which means less food comes out as poop and urine. Much wow.
Endurance determines one¡¯s max stamina and stamina regeneration rate reducing the need for rest/sleep.
1 = 10 SP = 10% regeneration per min.
Confirming regeneration rate again there wasn¡¯t much to say about Endurance. Base stamina regeneration was believed to be the same for almost all races known.
Physical skills don''t show stamina cost as it is dependent on Strength and Agility. The higher ones¡¯ power or speed the higher the consumption of stamina. At the same time, the higher one¡¯s Constitution or how energy efficient one was, the lower the consumption of stamina for every physical movement and action.
As with Constitution, with a high enough Endurance theoretically, one would need less sleep or rest. There was more proof for this since higher levelled individuals indeed needed less rest than lower levelled ones. But it brought about questions on which stat affected the needs of the body more.
Agility increases your speed, reaction speed and reflexes/dexterity.
Though the stat was called Agility, it increases one''s speed and their ability to control said speed with increasing dexterity too.
As with Strength, having too high an Agility compared to Constitution would cause their body to break down in some not so pleasant ways.
Intelligence influences the might of your spells and thinking capacity/processing speed
Intelligence, the muscle of the mind as some might call it.
Clovis had a long debate with himself on whether Intelligence affected reaction speed more or Agility. It¡¯s not confirmed but even physical classes would not neglect Intelligence too much.
From what Ebony heard, it was hard to tell but he believed Intelligence would play the bigger role with increased reaction speed. After all, the brain is in charge of that. But what would he know of how stats worked?
Wisdom determines max mana and mana regeneration rate. 1 = 10MP = 10% regeneration per hour.
Once again proving his calculations on regeneration right. Wisdom was also said to be the toughness of ones¡¯ mind, having a very small effect of increasing defence against mental magic or similar schools of magic. Once again there wasn¡¯t much evidence to prove this line theory. Those who were high level enough to feel the difference wouldn¡¯t just share such information.
Poor wolf and lizard beastmen were said to have 5% regeneration per hour. In a world where mana was money they basically had half the paycheck. Though, they were mostly warriors so doubling their health regeneration would probably be more useful for them.
Perception increases your senses that allows you to see and feel your surroundings more clearly.
The stat that failed Ebony the most since coming to Elcra. In its defence, everything had the same shade of white and grey in the snowy forest. How would he know that giant turtles were hiding under the snow?
¡®Senses¡¯ was pretty vague but Clovis confirmed it meant all five of them and more. Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
Some classes like rare archer classes have bonuses that increase sight more, based on the Perception stat. There were classes like these for other stats too, more specific for their class.
All in all, balance was key according to the authors of the book. Too high of a Strength and Agility and your body would be able to handle the stress, neither would one be able to last long without enough Endurance.
Much higher Intelligence compared to Wisdom is said to have similar effects. Headaches, dizziness, losing consciousness or even permanently damaging ones¡¯ brain. Not enough Intelligence to keep up with your speed and having too high an Agility would be pointless.
Perception was less studied but you would still need to add some stats into Perception. As all your other stats rise regardless of physical or mental/magical your senses need to be able to keep up.
Chapter 10: Routine
Over the past 2 weeks Ebony¡¯s daily schedule was roughly waking up at the 4th hour, completing his routine body conditioning and full body stretching that he changed a little focusing a lot more on wrist, legs and ankle flexibility by then a morning run till the 6th hour when the sun rose. From the 6th to 10th hour he and Clovis would be at the village ¡®Playground¡¯, which was actually a training square.
Largely a shooting range for archers and ice mages alike and also an open space for light spars. Their preferred sidearm of choice was knives and daggers. The Frost Elves were also pretty decent with them, they had some rogues classers and hunter classers that use it as their main weapon of choice too.
The Hunter class was a different class from Archers or Rogues and needed tracking, stealth and one type of combat skill.
Frost Elves don¡¯t have children often, so aside from a couple children that looked like they were 5-7 which translated to 8-9 years old to Ebony, Clovis was the oldest one there that hasn¡¯t gotten a class.
They can already use ice mana manipulation but due to their extremely small manapool they were taught to focus on their control. Meaning forming different shapes of ice cubes and eating them. Adorable.
Ice magic wasn¡¯t the only magic they could use of course, some used snow, some wood, a rare few used air and according to Clovis their strongest hunter was a Mist Hunter. Honestly sounding cool and silly at the same time. Is he hunting mist?
The training square was mostly populated with young Frost Elves that picked combat classes. Other than the hunter classes all the others were required to be village guards till they hit lvl 80 or were considered as strong as an average lvl 80.
Those that hit this lvl could either choose to continue serving as a guard or form a team with others to go dungeon delving. The weakest dungeon they know of in Hoarfrost Glade is said to have monsters in the level range of 65 - 100.
The first 10ish levels were so easy to gain you could just train your skills and level without killing any monsters. Lvl 30 - 80 was the Frost Elves lagging period, taking decades to reach lvl 80. Only those that took combat classes of course.
They took turns rotating as guards and taking hunting trips but nearby monsters were low levelled and they couldn¡¯t go too far out as it was dangerous and the trip would take too long causing the advancement to be very slow at this stage. Well they had roughly 2.5 times longer lifespans than humans at the same level and were only considered adults when they turned a century old, very young adults.
Many curious eyes were on him the first few days he went to the playground as the only human. Many felt that the giant blade he swung around was ridiculous. Ebony didn¡¯t interact with most of them since they focused on their archery and magic in the shooting range.
The only ones he interacted with were a [Snow Rogue Lvl 12] girl, Tiha, that looked 13-14 but was actually 17 and a [Ice Mage Lvl 16] 18 year old boy, Qane that was supposedly trying to train how to wield a knife to get a melee Sub Class. Though Ebony suspects Qane just doesn¡¯t want the Tiha to get close to Ebony from the looks he gave her all the time.
The playground had training bows, arrows, daggers, knives and some other weapons Ebony didn¡¯t recognize and a whole range of traps. All weapons made of the bark of the Venbark tree, its durability and elasticity made it ideal for both the training bows and melee options.
Tiha used dual daggers around 6 gers long, the blade reaching the elbows of her short arms. Held backhanded, she moved and swung with skill. Always hiding one of her blades behind her back.
Ebony took some time to translate Elcra¡¯s unit measurement for length or distance and mass with Clovis.
Gar: 5mm, Ger: 5cm, Gir: 5m, Gor: 5km, Gur: 5000km
Tav: 5mg, Tev: 5g, Tiv: 5kg, Tov: 5000Kg, Tuv: 5,000,000kg
There was an unnoticeable error margin. They were on some ridiculous scales and there were supposedly bigger units of measurement. Ebony asked about the distance to Plainston to get an idea of how large Elcra was. ¡°I think it was..a little under 2 Gurs.¡±
¡®Gurs? Hot damn. Isn¡¯t that like half of the Great wall or like a quarter across Earth? No wonder they were convinced I couldn¡¯t make the trip.¡¯
¡°Don¡¯t worry Eb..Ebo..Eb. I won¡¯t bully little Clo¡¯s friends.¡± Tiha said. Clovis introduced Ebony to these two who were the closest to his age before running off to the area designated for traps to play alone. Ebony¡¯s name translated to Elcrian was a little hard to pronounce for the young Frost Elf.
Ebony had asked his parents why the heck they named their son after a tree and it was his extremely dark black irises and hair that sparked the thought. Sadly, he found out his hair changed colour likely from the process of getting his physique. They wanted him to grow up durable(so he could take a beating from his mother) and apparently ebony wood had the ability to take high polish which they wanted him to be able to polish his mind and character (so that he won¡¯t go crazy being forced to sit still and meditate in all sort of conditions when he was not even 2 yet).
Body toughened by his mother, mind by his father.
Ebony hated the idea of hitting a woman or girl in this case, but that didn¡¯t mean he would hold back or go easy against an opponent. Painful memories of his mother beating that thought right out of him flashed in his mind.
¡®Never go easy in a fight Ebony, Never.¡¯ was a lesson he learnt time and time again, sprains, pulled muscle, fractured bones and snapped tendons. Good times.
Concerned about his morality for a second for planning to swing a giant blade taller than the little girl and wanting to make a blunted ice copy that could trigger his Greatsword mastery skill only for Tiha to grab his blade and swing it like a badminton racket kicking up a snow cloud from the wind pressure alone.
¡°Groundless worries little Eb. You¡¯ll never hit me with this bulky thing.¡±
¡°...¡± To think the day would come when a little loli would call Ebony little. How does she even know he was younger than her? Because he was unclassed or unawakened?
Just in case, Ebony took a random wooden dagger and hacked at his blade with all his strength. Seeing no damage on either of them satisfied him. Tiha just laughed at his antics and moved. Fast. Tiha was too fast for Ebony even when she was obviously trying to control her speed, standing behind Ebony pushing one wooden dagger against his back.
¡°Let''s play.¡±
Ashamed to say but Ebony just didn¡¯t stand a chance against Tiha. That said he never lost badly unless she used her speed and power to push him.
Walking back with cracked bones here and there at first as both Tiha and Qane were still getting used to controlling their strength slowly reduced injuries over the two weeks to cuts and bruises. Ebony didn¡¯t land a single hit with his blade even after 2 weeks of sparring with them. They were small targets and a big slow blade was a no go. Kicking worked better to distract and create distance when they got close.
No matter how fast he tried to dodge they just sped up, chasing after him. Though he made them trip quite a few times by predicting and timing his dodges. They weren¡¯t as used to fighting as Ebony that was for sure, especially Qane. Slashing diagonally, Ebony just sidestepped and Icebody Enhanced kneed him in the solar plexus, sending him rolling onto the ground, coughing but hardly hurt. Thoroughly impressing Tiha and a few others that were watching.
Qane got a boo or two and didn¡¯t train with Ebony for a week, even though he was a mage he was level 16 and shouldn¡¯t have gotten hit like that by an unclassed.
Going a different direction on the way back to get groceries in Arcta¡¯s trading square, a marketplace with food stalls, fruit, vegetable stalls and hunters showing off their game. Clovis also used this chance to get Ebony to learn daily speech.
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Ebony got well acquainted with the Elf lady selling frost plums quickly, showering awkward sounding praises he learnt at first before his pronunciation was accurate.
Currency was the shaped mana ore but was referred to by colour. Rarities of objects and items go from Inferior, Common, Uncommon, Rare. Like the colour Identifying them gives, a Black was an inferior mana ore which holds up to 100MP, a Grey or common - 1000MP, a Green or uncommon - 10,000MP and Blue or rare 100,000MP. A Black could get him 3-4 frost plums depending on the vendor''s mood. Boar meat is the cheapest due to the size of a single boar, rabbit was pricier. Half a tiv of boar meat costs 4-5 Blacks while the same weight of rabbit could be double that price.
Mana ores are generally fully filled before using them to trade. Ebony kinda assumed they would carry those medieval pouches or satchels with drawstrings to carry their money, which he did see some Frost Elves wearing on their hips. Clovis kept the mana ores he got from Roya in a thin wooden rectangular box with 3 equal segments 2 of them filled with Blacks and the other with a few greys.
Bringing back groceries, Ebony would wash up and have late breakfast with Clovis. Clovis lectures Ebony till the 14th hour. Ebony mostly listens and nodded, rarely asking any questions. Clovis was a good teacher.
The 14th to 15th hour was self reading and writing practice. By the 15th hour, all the mana he spent would have been recovered and he learnt Mana Weaving from Roya. Using the frostsilk cotton that was going to be tossed away due to their lower quality to practise.
Pure mana was inert, different materials could take different amounts of mana before reaching what Roya called mana saturation. Simple enough, it was like adding sugar to a cup of water once saturated the sugar wouldn¡¯t dissolve anymore.
Frostsilk cotton looked no different from the cotton balls he¡¯d seen pictures of. Ebony couldn¡¯t see mana, so Roya¡¯s explanations were all he had. Pushing mana into the cotton until the cotton moved with his mana, forming threads with them and then weaving them. No equipment, no loom or anything, how long would it take to even make anything with this?
Roya taught Ebony all the basics and left him to practise till he could make a piece of cloth she was satisfied with before she let him help. Ebony hasn''t passed even after 2 weeks. Control of mana was key, Roya could turn the cotton to dust by forcing more mana than the cotton could take into it. Ebony had no trouble with this of course, Roya made robes for magicians and frostsilk cotton could take a lot of mana. There was no way he was turning anything to dust or damage any materials.
It was quite a sight to see her at work, putting her hand into a tray full of cotton and watching them turn to evenly thick threads in seconds. Controlling hundreds of threads at the same time, she made a long sleeved t-shirt for Ebony in minutes. Ebony could only control 4 at the same time, though she acted shocked at the fact it seemed like sarcasm to Ebony. She said she was able to do that due to her tailoring skills and was not able to replicate what Ebony did but he took that comment with a grain of salt.
Ebony''s mana pool dries up in less than 15 mins every session so all he did the past 2 weeks was turning raw cotton into threads of even thickness. Perhaps not even enough for a pair of socks or gloves after 2 weeks of effort so progress was slow in this regard.
The rest of the 15th hour was spent reading tailoring books which had tips and techniques similar to knitting techniques. How to make shirts, pants, socks, gloves, hats, robes, coats, mantles, etc. They didn¡¯t have tea or coffee and preferred juices, which was obviously frost plum juice. A brown stick was ground into powder and a little was added into the juice, it tasted quite similar to cinnamon. Outright heavenly.
The 16th to 20th hour was spent training himself in their front yard, trying to incorporate kicking with his sword fighting and Treading Steps but kicking would always leave him in a state where he wouldn¡¯t be able to dodge easily. Trying to optimise and refine a new personal fighting style was a relaxing way to pass the time and level some skills. Near the 20th hour he would use Icebody Enhancement to get used to moving with the stiffness and increase in strength.
The Thoya family were hooked on some of the tunes that Ebony hummed during his training, like the Beethoven Virus and some of his favourite theme songs. Ebony didn¡¯t hum loudly but they probably heard him with their most likely buffed up Perception stat and Clovis probably caught him humming whether he was reading or training.
The sun mostly disappeared from the horizon when the 20th hour came.
The 20th to 21st hour was bathing and helping to clean the house together with preparations for dinner. Thank goodness bathing was a thing here. They had a wooden bathtub with something that looked like a tap that had a water mana ore on it. [Water Mana Ore 8532/10000 (Uncommon)] the Identify skill worked differently for everyone and it was even based on one¡¯s own knowledge but that was questionable, he didn¡¯t know what a vital hoarfrost crabapple or frostblaze amur maple was before Identifying them.
There was a knob to twist to adjust the flow of water, not so different from any tap. Lighting up and producing a stream of water. The stove worked similarly but Identify just gave him [Stove]. Weird.
Other than the black potatoes called ashen tubers, many ingredients were actually the same as what Ebony was used to seeing. There weren¡¯t any leafy vegetables grown in these parts due to the cold. The Thoya family was quite well to do and meat was on the dinner table daily.
Ebony had dinner together with the 3 of them at the 21st hour with Clovis telling them how his day went and Roya asking Ebony how he was doing in his new environment. It was painfully obvious how much she treated Ebony like a toddler which probably wasn¡¯t wrong in her opinion. Halvis on the other hand, though polite, didn''t talk to Ebony much which felt more natural to Ebony since he was a perfect stranger to them to begin with and he preferred not having to talk so much anyway.
The food looked good but tasted better than most of what he had before. Roya¡¯s Profession was a chef and she had skills that improve one¡¯s cooking to the next level. Pun intended. The serving size was roughly 1.5 times more than he was used to but despite having needed less food he ate the same amount as Halvis, almost feeling bad about it. Perhaps it was all the training or longer days or missing lunch or Roya insisting that a growing boy needed to eat more.
After dinner, Ebony would help wash the dishes before getting shoo-ed to play with Clovis. Clovis, who Ebony suspects doesn¡¯t have the meditation skill would have recovered all his mana spent in the playground by this hour. He would practice his Ice Vines in the corner of the front yard and Ebony would watch him cast it without using the surrounding ice mana, which seemed wasteful not to use it to cast.
Ebony asked and it seemed they were just taught to use magic using their own mana so that they could still use ice magic even without the presence of ice mana in the air, which made a lot of sense. Ice magic came naturally to the Frost Elves and Clovis couldn¡¯t explain well on how to convert mana to ice mana internally. Fundamentally he just needed to change or will his mana to take on the properties of ice mana.
Since he could use Icebody Enhancement, he was starting to be able to observe how his mana changed. He should be able to use ice magic without ambient ice mana soon. Joining Clovis in the study on the second floor of their 2 storey cabin after he finished ¡®playing¡¯ which meant his mana pool was empty. Clovis would check his reading and writing and correct him on some minor mistakes otherwise Ebony did pretty well and was learning really fast.
They had ¡®normal¡¯ paper, a little light brownish in colour that Ebony couldn¡¯t tear or rip even if he tried or so Clovis advertised but Ebony didn¡¯t try. He already tried breaking a single thread Roya made out of cotton to his internal dismay felt like tugging on a steel wire so he didn¡¯t bother trying anyway paper was probably precious. They had quill pens and something similar to a pencil which Ebony preferred.
Clovis would start yawning around the 24th hour when Roya would come to get him to go to sleep as it was his bedtime. He needed 10 hours of sleep a day and would sleep from the 24th hour till the 6th hour. Elves in general apparently slept a little more compared to other races.
Ebony would retreat to his guest room at the end of the same floor. It was not large with only a bed at the left corner, a wooden table and chair against the wall on the right with a window in the middle facing the street. A wardrobe by the side of the door, unlike the study which had lamps powered by mana ores too the rest of the house uses a luminescent or glow in the dark liquid they called [Phos].
The most common light source on Elcra is produced by a plant called [Phostor]. Not able to be grown in Arcta, it had to be bought from the merchants when they came around. Phos was a transparent liquid like water just a little more viscous, basically plant dew. Halvis would take a bucket of phos to put under the sun for the day. It would absorb sunlight and would produce a light orange glow in the dark. Table lamps were tall cup like glasses, it couldn¡¯t be turned off so there was a reverse cup with a small knob used to cover it.
Fortunately it could be reused for years as it evaporated slowly, even more so in Arcta, their only concern was spilling it.
From the 24th hour to the 26th hour Ebony would sit on the bed with his legs crossed and meditate. His father called Persistent Meditation, moving meditation and stopped making him practice meditation when Ebony achieved moving meditation when he turned 5 but he never stopped his habit of meditating every day, every hour, every minute and every second. His father didn''t even know that he could do so. Ebony''s continued persistence in improving his state of mind let him achieve it over time.
Using the Icebody Enhancement he tried to lower its output to replicate what he did when he assimilated the sap he had no success over 2 weeks. However, he was able to create a cube of ice with his own mana by the end of the first week. Feeling how his mana changed when he used Icebody Enhancement it felt natural, he was actually already doing it whenever he cast Icebody Enhancement he just wasn¡¯t aware due to how natural it felt to him like a body part he didn¡¯t know he had.
Ending his day at the 26th hour by going to sleep and the cycle repeats when the 4th hour hits again. Ebony used to sleep 7 hours a day for 24 hours, 9 if he was feeling lazy. Now he was fully rested after 6 hours of sleep for a 28 hour day. Kudos to the Frostblaze physique, more time awake was more time to grind skill levels.
Chapter 11: Stimulation Rite
Today is the day Halvis is bringing Clovis out for his stimulation rite and Ebony was going along.
Admittedly not a fighter, his high stats alone could let him walk unhindered in their immediate surroundings. ¡®Immediate¡¯ was around a hundred gors or so radius from Arcta. That was 500 km or more¡
¡°Going out Mr. Thoya?¡± One of the two guards at the gate asked.
¡°Ah, is it that day already? Good luck out there Clovis.¡± The other young guard smiled at Clovis.
Ebony recognized them from the playground but wasn¡¯t well acquainted with them. Both guards being [Ice Archer Lvl 33] and [Ice Archer Lvl 37] respectively still frequent the playground to practice or level their skills before or after their shift.
Most frost elves that Ebony saw had 3 ? and was identified green, only the youths in the playground were grey and within Ebony¡¯s Identify level range. Arcta was relatively safe and didn¡¯t really get any monster attacks. Young frost elves were just stationed here as part of their duties. It was a summer time job for them, only during this period of time was it safe for them to stand guard.
¡°I¡¯ll take a monster down all by myself!¡± Clovis harrumph, crossing his arms.
¡°Hahahaha¡± the 2 guards cracked up with Halvis unable to hold back a chuckle too. Ebony somewhat understood the difficulty of the task. Even harming a level 5 monster was tough, trying to kill a monster 10 levels above you was no easy feat, even more so as an unclassed.
The only armour he¡¯d seen any elf guard wear was standard leather armour. Archers and rogues had the version where the leather armour only covered one side of the shoulder or didn¡¯t have sleeves, most likely so the armour doesn¡¯t affect their archery or movement. Mages had the full leather armour, the Thoya brand robes for mages were not handed out to the village guards after all. Their robes which Halvis and Clovis were wearing were made of the frostsilk cotton Halvis grew, limited in supply. Halvis wasn¡¯t the only one growing it but he was the highest level one and his frostsilk cotton was of the highest quality in Arcta making a great match with Roya¡¯s mana tailoring.
Ebony couldn¡¯t Identify an armour or clothing that someone was wearing and would only receive the person''s class and level. But Halvis¡¯s robe was in a word impressive, they called it robes but it looked very similar to a duffel in design that reached his knees while Clovis¡¯s was closer to a trench coat. Halvis¡¯ was faint blue while Clovis¡¯ was white like the cotton he weaved. Roya had shown Ebony some of her works and all were light blue like Halvis¡¯ but Clovis wouldn¡¯t be able to move properly if Roya made one from the same quality of frostsilk cotton for him.
Being extremely unscientific, even the ones sized for humans weighed 6 to 10 tivs the higher the quality of frostsilk cotton used the heavier. That was about 30 - 50 kilos, Ebony wasn¡¯t sure how much medieval armour on Earth weighed but he was pretty frickin sure even a full set of plate armour wouldn¡¯t weigh as much and unlike other armours which spreads the weight of the armour evenly across the body, these ¡®robes¡¯ lay fully on one¡¯s shoulders.
Roya¡¯s robes were all plain and unadorned, simple but wonderful designs. Ebony really liked the designs, but all he is currently wearing was Halvis¡¯ old long-sleeved shirt and pants which Roya refitted for him and they bought a pair of brown leather boots with thick soles and reached above his ankles. They borrowed one of the sleeveless [Leather Armour(Common)]s that he could fit in from the guard house so he had some modicum of protection. He didn¡¯t like the armour all together as it was a little restrictive.
Honestly the best piece of equipment he has so far was this pair of [Leather Boots(Inferior)]. A good pair of boots are really important when travelling, especially with this terrain. Carrying his bag with his juice-filled thermos, wallet and 12 remaining healing crabapples. He finished up the sap by experimenting with it. They apparently go bad pretty quickly and lower in effectiveness over time after they¡¯ve been plucked off their tree.
The Frost Elves knew about them of course, but there can only be one of them in a wide area since they absorb vitality so they couldn¡¯t plant it and they don¡¯t pick inferior ones as it was useless for them. The inferior ones were left to grow till at least common before getting picked. The village herbalist family would then buy them to make salves and pills. They didn¡¯t make potions for some reason, perhaps freezing and not convenient to carry around.
He was still wearing his travel watch, although he didn¡¯t want it to break he didn¡¯t want to leave it away from himself. They didn¡¯t bring any food since the plan was to be back by dinner and they just had breakfast.
¡°Alright, let¡¯s go.¡± Halvis said, picking up both Clovis and Ebony under his arms. It was like a steel bar was holding him in place. Halvis pushed off the ground covering the 2 guards in snow as he sped off. Faster than Ton and Sei but he was still checking if Clovis and Ebony were fine and adjusted his speed accordingly. He couldn¡¯t tell shit from Ebony''s expressions but Clovis was obviously not feeling very good.
Moving in a little towards the right of the Frostblaze Amur forest where Ebony came from. Halvis wanted to quickly go deep enough where lvl 10 monsters start showing up. Ebony didn¡¯t forget to try mapping the area the best he could.
Slowing down to a stop and putting the both of them down after 15 mins. He covered more distance than Ebony did in 2 days. It was much less comfortable than riding Sei and Ton but Ebony had no complaints. Clovis was on the ground rubbing his sides and complaining.
¡°Okay we¡¯re here, there shouldn¡¯t be many of them in these parts and I¡¯ll intervene if another monster comes up while you¡¯re fighting one. Clovis, I understand your enthusiasm of wanting to complete the stimulation rite by yourself but just your Ice Vines alone would hardly be enough¡ I¡¯ll let you try but don¡¯t be stubborn and ask me for help if you need it okay?¡± Halvis squatted down and told Clovis firmly. All elves in general were tall and slender, both Roya and Halvis were a head taller than Ebony hitting 2 metres in height and they were only of average height among elves. Possibly another reason Ebony was treated as a young child.
¡°Mhmm. I know, father.¡± Clovis acknowledged.
¡°Good. Ebony, I don¡¯t remember seeing you practice any skills to trap or slow an enemy. Do you need me to hold down a monster for you?¡± Halvis asked, it seemed to Ebony that he was slowly opening up to him and not being as guarded over the 2 weeks he had been with them.
¡°No, Mr. Thoya. I want to try completing the rite by myself as well.¡± Ebony answered monotonously.
Halvis frowned. ¡°Halvis is fine, don¡¯t be so stiff. Alright, I¡¯ll be watching you two and don¡¯t go too far out and don¡¯t separate from each other. Clovis stay focused and don¡¯t be distracted by any plants you see growing around. Ebony don¡¯t be shy and call me to step in if you¡¯re in danger, you too Clovis! I wouldn¡¯t get the end of it from Roya if either of you got injured.¡± he nagged in Roya¡¯s place but obviously worried as well.
¡°Yes father.¡± Clovis replied but was already too excited to start, while Ebony just nodded. Halvis jumped and hid in the trees. The less involvement he had the more they could gain, or so they believed.
¡°Let¡¯s do it like we discussed Ebony! I¡¯ll track any monster tracks we find and if it''s a Frostfang Rabbit or Hoarfrost Boar it''s your target and if it''s an Arctic Fox or Snowskin Monkey then it¡¯s mine. Any birds, Strix we ignore and any wolf, bear or err elk and we run for our lives.¡± Clovis repeated, whispering ¡®elk¡¯ it was kinda cute seeing him act scared.
Clovis had briefly explained the nearby wildlife to Ebony, normal animal populations like squirrels and deer were usually hunted by the monsters. There were monster versions for them too though. Ebony has never seen a Snowskin Monkey but it was described as a furless white monkey. They shouldn¡¯t see any wolves, bears or elks in these parts but if there was a single trace of them they would get away at first sight.
[Frost Bear]s were commonly found to be at least level 60 and were a lot stronger and tougher than other monsters of the same level. [Snowdrift Wolf] didn¡¯t have a reliable level range, it was not rare for them to find a level 8 Snowdrift wolf to be chased by hundreds if not thousands of Snowdrift wolves of an extremely wide level range. What¡¯s worse was how good they were at camouflaging in this environment. Wolves were smart, pack hunters in any world, stat buffed monster or not.
It was a different type of wolf than the Hoarfrost Wolves he¡¯d seen and Clovis never even heard of the Hoarfrost Wolf. Probably like Gen said they gained sapience and got classes and were Identified differently, not that Ebony told Clovis. Since Gen didn¡¯t seem to want to spread the fact that he was there, Ebony would reveal as little as he knew about it.
Last of all, the absolute big boss of the area of Hoarfrost Glade that majority of the Frost Elves venture to. The [Glacial Tungsten Antler Elk], if the name wasn¡¯t awesome enough the stories of its strength surely were. Fully grown elks were spotted to be level 200 - 250 or higher. The chances of meeting an elk here were close to zero but they still needed to be wary, just in case the elks wandered out further than they usually do.
They were quite a sore spot for the Frost Elves in ¡®recent¡¯ years. A little over a 150 years ago, a group of young village guards were out on a hunting trip and killed a baby glacial tungsten antler elk out of greed for their extremely valuable antlers when the parent went to hunt. They went back and celebrated their successful hunt thinking that the parent elks were unaware of the culprits. Though they should¡¯ve long been warned against doing so.
Obviously they were wrong and the village was attacked by just 2 elks just that night, ramming through their walls like paper. Their charge didn¡¯t stop till they reached the house where the group of elves were celebrating, tearing them apart and taking their child¡¯s antlers back. Their path of destruction were unhindered by all the other houses and elves. They went on a rampage killing any Frost Elf they saw, many lives were lost that night including Clovis¡¯s grandparents.
They were only fortunate their village chief just returned from their scheduled dungeon clearing to prevent dungeon breaks. The village chief and his party just returned tired and low on stamina and mana, they only managed to kill one of the elks while the other escaped. The elks were only level 210, lower than any of the village chief¡¯s party members.
Other older stories of them solo hunting a pack of thousand wolves 30 even 50 levels above their own felt a little exaggerated with Clovis¡¯s storytelling skills but Ebony got the point.
The monsters the 2 of them were going after were mostly in the lvl 5 - 20 range, all monsters were born level 0 and quickly level up to their racial limits as time passed. Those Ebony had seen were probably all new born as it only takes days to a week for them to level to their natural limits. For example the hoarfrost boar was said to reach lvl 25 fully grown and no longer able to absorb ambient essence at the same rate. Any monster that broke the norms of their racial limits likely killed and eaten a lot of people. Being able to level past their limits by consuming other sources of essence was why most monsters take a kill on sight approach.
Ebony chose the rabbits due to how repetitive their attacks were, even if they were faster, stronger and tougher at a higher level Ebony believed he wouldn¡¯t have much trouble with them as long as they don¡¯t have any other attack patterns and he was able to hurt them.
The boars, no longer identified as boarlet once reaching lvl 10 were also another choice. Easy to dodge if he could see them charging from a mile away. Horrible sight, inability to turn swiftly and easy target for his unnaturally huge blade. Definitely not for something as petty as revenge. Yes, definitely not.
Foxes were small enough for Clovis¡¯s self concocted drugs to work quickly and Ice Vines to capture completely. As long as his drugs worked well enough to weaken it so that it can¡¯t break itself free. Snowskin Monkeys had weak bodies and were not as fast as foxes, though they were more agile and tended to stay up on the tree they were not too hard to bait with drugged food. It was rare to find a low level one though.
Picking a random direction, Clovis focused on looking for fresh tracks while Ebony kept a lookout. Movement under the snow, predators coming down from the trees was where his focus was on, they were fragile compared to monsters and a sneak attack was all it took to kill them. Only depend on yourself to save your own life.
It didn¡¯t take long before Clovis found fox and rabbit prints with some blood around, probably a fight happened not too long ago. Following the tracks they saw a [Arctic Fox Lvl 14] with the head of a rabbit in its mouth. They backed off before it noticed them and went on to look for another target. Lvl 14 was more the Clovis bargained for and having already eaten it would be harder to bait it with drugged deer meat.
Slightly impressed by Clovis¡¯s tracking skill, he seemed to have found their burrow by following faint tracks from where the fox came from. Watching him set his trap a couple girs away while he stays further back so that he wouldn¡¯t be considered as help or interference. Ebony felt the tree he laid against shake a little, looking up to see Halvis sitting on one of the thicker branches. Ebony wasn¡¯t much of a tree climber and he preferred to have his feet on the ground so he stayed where he was.
Closing his eyes, Clovis focused and put both his hands forward, mumbling. A patch of vines started forming near his feet after about 10 seconds, unfeasible in a fight but considered pretty fast even for an elf. Chanting is not necessary for any magic but many mages try to do so, making their own chant can help them visualise their spell and cast a little faster or stronger. Even so, there was said to be no Chanting skill so the effects are psychological at best.
Covering the vines in the snow he took out half a leg of deer, fur and all still present. Its blood was drying up but it should still work. Placing it to look as inconspicuous as he could, he hid behind the closest tree away from the burrow, drew a small bow fit for his size and nocked an arrow. He was no better than average with it using elven standards but it was his only other form of attack if he doesn¡¯t have enough mana to deal damage.
The snowy landscape was usually silent if not for any monster fights or movement in the snow but the wait seemed to put more attention on the current silence. Ebony could only see how nervous and excited Clovis was, breathing uneven, hands trembling. He was not fit for hunting or fighting like he said, even animals would be able to notice him there much less monsters with levels and stats.
Bamm
Hearing a loud knocking sound to his right, Ebony saw a [Hoarfrost Boarlet] in the distance 2-3 hundred metres away. No, not a boarlet anymore it was the size of a minivan or SUV now. It rammed into a thick tree, probably what the noise was. The tree was sturdier than it looked and was still standing. Ebony saw that Halvis had long been looking at the boar but didn¡¯t alert either of them, he smiled at Ebony when he looked at him.
Watching it shake itself off, Ebony noticed it was facing this direction and it wouldn''t take long for it to discover Clovis if it wasn¡¯t too blind. There was only one thing for Ebony to do. Intercept it before it could target Clovis. His target just delivered himself to his front door after all, it would be rude not to give it the cold welcome it deserved.
Dashing off with his fastest speed towards the boar before it starts preparing its charge. With Running and Treading Step at lvl 25 and 27 he can move at 105% of his pathetic 7 Agility plus an additional 27% movement speed.
Running - Run at 80% + 1.0% [25%] Agility per level
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Treading Step (Passive) - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Treading Step allows one to travel through most terrains with more ease, slightly increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by 1.0% [27%] per level.
Ebony has never been much of a sprinter and more of a marathon runner type but his personal record for a 100m sprint was still about 13.5s. If that was 80% of his Agility, (100m/13.5s = 7.407m/s) x (105/80)x (127/100) = 12.3465m/s putting him atop Earth¡¯s fastest human, he was also just running and not sprinting and could keep this speed up for as long as his stamina lasts. He was carrying a heavy blade so probably a little slower than he calculated.
Over the 2 weeks he had testing running normally, just moving with Treading Steps, with both and even checked his walking speed. Running was similar to an active skill where his speed of running increases while running, a walk, jog or even sprint wouldn¡¯t trigger the speed buff. Treading Steps as it stated was a passive skill which Ebony could turn off if he tried to walk normally. Otherwise the movement speed buff from Trending Steps would increase his speed when walking, jogging, running, sprinting or even crawling although the effect was somewhat lowered when he tried to climb a tree, his movement indeed increased. His tests confirmed that his calculations were roughly right.
Ebony tried to hide from its line of sight while he ran towards it but he was overly cautious as the boar was still huffing and shaking itself off. The impact of hitting its head was likely stronger than it expected. Seeing how near it was to the tree, Ebony got an idea and quickly leaped for the closest low hanging branch, pulling himself up onto it. Moving from tree to tree wasn¡¯t as hard as it sounded when the trees were close together. Landing on the tree the boar rammed into, it only took him about half a minute to get here and the boar was still sniffing around, its eyesight really was horrible with its beady eyes.
[Hoarfrost Boar Lvl 15]
Getting close enough to Identify its level, 5 levels above 10 wasn¡¯t enough to stop Ebony from trying.
Drawing his blade, he aimed and let Icebody Enhancement run as he jumped off, stabbing right at its eye from above it when it looked up without hesitation. May as well completely blind it while he still could, even if its body was 10 or 20 times tougher than a normal boar Ebony doesn¡¯t think its eye would be as tough as steel.
The boar noticed too late but reacted fast, jerking its head to the side at the last second but getting a deep cut on its right eye and across its face. It squealed in rage, completely losing it as it jumped and swung its head around haphazardly hoping to hit whatever hit him. Unfortunately only landing hits on air.
Ebony landed on the ground and spun together with his large blade aiming for its legs, he needed to remove its mobility after its perception. His blade scraped against the boar''s leg with a disturbed screech, only giving its fur a trim. ¡®As expected I guess.¡¯ It seems like he could only go for its weak spots like its eyes, snout and maybe ears.
It seemed to stop rampaging as it kicked at Ebony after he slashed at its leg, landing on Ebony''s torso as he was sent flying. Ebony managed to react and push himself half a step away but it wasn¡¯t enough. Flying off high and fast, intense pain wrecking his stomach and ribs as he could not help but cough out blood. Hitting a few branches till he managed to grab onto one and fell, landing on a lower branch. Halvis was watching but Ebony didn¡¯t see the need to call him.
Health: 14/60
Stamina: 44/60
Mana: 73/100
Quickly deactivating Icebody Enhancement to conserve mana, Ebony almost regretted it as his bones creaked and he took another point of damage. With Icebody Enhancement at lvl 20 he gained a 35% Intelligence buff to his Constitution which was a 2.45 stat point increment, not a small number to his low stats. If all stats had the same value that would mean his body was (2.45/9) x 100% = 27.2% tougher.
¡®Thanks leather armour common, I shouldn''t have put you below leather boots Inferior.¡¯ Ebony thought. Though how much it helped against a blunt strike like that was doubtful he would have been dead if not for Icebody Enhancement at its current level and the armour. While how effective the armour was in reducing impact was questionable, it was better than nothing.
Despite the broken ribs and damaged internals Ebony¡¯s breathing was deep and steady while there was no change to his heart rate as if he was taking a stroll in the park. Of course, no one would be able to tell he was injured from his usual resting bitch face.
Quickly taking out a few crabapples and munching on them as he felt the pain relieve quickly. Health: 42/60. Each of the crabapple only healed 6HP due to the reduced effect or due to his damage to his bones. Eating another healed him to 44HP, he stopped since he already knew it would be a waste to eat anymore.
Another fact he found out when he got a cracked bone from Tiha was that he takes damage to his mana as well when his bones break. Bleeding also causes him to lose mana so he would have to be careful of that. The increased regeneration obviously came with a price.
Quickly jumping off from the flimsy looking tree he was on to a thicker more stable looking tree as the boar charged right into the tree he landed on. He underestimated mr. tree as it stood ramrod straight and unharmed, other than the loss of some bark despite being one of the thinner trees.
Ebony wanted to use the trees to his advantage seeing how the boar couldn¡¯t climb or knock a tree down even with its unreasonable strength but he couldn¡¯t get a good hit in with his large unbalanced sword and had to take the height of the branches into account.
¡®How the heck did I not think of that first?¡¯ Ebony thought of an obvious idea as the boar continued ramming into the tree.
Rodeo time. Leaping onto the boar again when it was squealing and shaking its head from tree ramming. With Icebody Enhancement running again he sat on the boar and held on as hard as he could with his legs around it and left hand gripping its fur tight. He gave his ice blade one good swing at its snout from above its head, giving it a tiny little cut.
It seemed unbothered by the attack as it tried to shake Ebony off its back. Ebony tried to stab at its neck but he couldn¡¯t even get through its fur. Damn stats. He wasn¡¯t in a good position to stab into its mouth either and it was swinging its head left and right so much it looked like it was spasming.
It was about to ram itself sideways onto the closest tree as Ebony let go and rolled into the snowy ground before he took another hit. Sitting on it wasn¡¯t such a good idea after all. Quickly dashing and jumping for a nearby tree branch, he felt another shock from his ribs as he hung on with only his left hand grabbing the branch and right hand his leaf. He ignored it like a passing fart and flung himself up and onto the tree and stopped casting Icebody Enhancement again. He was down to 36MP and 35SP already.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Lesser Stealth level up 5 ¡ú 6¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Icebody Enhancement level up 20 ¡ú 21¡¯
¡®It really does level faster in a real fight.¡¯ Ebony thought as he hasn¡¯t seen Icebody Enhancement level for days.
Not going well was a nice way to put it, he had no effective way of harming it while every movement of it could potentially kill him. Ebony never felt any real danger from it, the only thing it had was its strength and tough body. It was dumber than a rock, with hardly any attack patterns other than charging and ramming. Ebony didn¡¯t feel the thrill of battle like with Ton and Sei. How unfortunate.
Ebony jumped back down, slashing towards its other eye with Icebody Enhancement on again. Reacting properly this time, the boar bit onto the tip of the ice blade hard, shattering more than a quarter of the blade. It was already beginning to weaken so Ebony wasn¡¯t really surprised. The swing caused him to spin as he landed, he followed his momentum and continued his spin going around its side to its back.
The boar turned along with Ebony but Ebony stuck as close to the boar''s body as possible and kept moving together with the boar. Trying to get to his back, the both of them were turning round and round and the boar looked like a puppy chasing its own tail. Ebony was spinning like a ballerina as he finally reached its back, he spun once more with the remaining broken blade poised and aimed right where its ass was. Pushing forward with all his strength he held the blade with both hands so that he wouldn¡¯t get the 30% Strength debuff from Single-handed Greatsword Mastery. He didn¡¯t manage to get the normal Greatsword Mastery even after his arm healed and he tried swinging the greatsword normally with both hands for hours to no avail.
Hitting true, the broken blade stabbed right into it with half of the blade still sticking out with the handle. The boar squealed with utmost rage again standing up on its hind legs from pain that it''s never experienced. Taking the opportunity to give it another push while he still had mana for Icebody Enhancement, Ebony kicked with all his power at the blade handle. Driving the ice blade all the way in with only the tip of the handle still sticking out.
Flaring Treading Steps and Running to the max while he got up another tree before the boar unleashes its naked rage at Ebony. It rammed and rammed against the tree but all it did was cause the sturdy tree to shake and leaves drop. It started bleeding from its head and was slowing down after a few minutes.
Ebony knew that stabbing his blade up its ass wasn¡¯t enough to kill it but he was sure he got some important internal organs. ¡®Hmm? Something¡¯s not right.¡¯ The boar should be more than tough enough but it looked like it was death''s door and its movement was getting very stiff. It suddenly stopped moving and fell onto its side.
Ebony didn¡¯t hesitate to get down, the boar was too dumb to play dead, or so he thought. The boar wasn¡¯t even looking at Ebony anymore, just huffing. It was freezing. How?
Walking around it to check what caused it, Ebony just noticed it¡¯s anal injury didn¡¯t bleed at all. There was a spreading layer of ice around its butt, slowly creeping up its body. Ebony watched on as it froze to death, turning into a sculpture of ice.
¡®Seems like I owe Gen another.¡¯ Ebony added to memory.
It wasn¡¯t dead yet even as a sculpture as Ebony hadn''t received any notifications of a kill. Ebony just kept a lookout while he waited.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Hoarfrost Boar Lvl 15]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 10 levels or more above your own, sufficient potential experience accumulated. Experience converted to Natural Potential.¡¯
Seeing the message he expected, he started moving back to where Clovis was. Clovis already told him the message one would see and it was as he explained. If he had a class and could gain levels, this message wouldn¡¯t appear even if he killed a monster 10 levels or more above him and he would just gain additional experience relative to his level.
He was quite a distance away from their original spot since he was sent flying away towards the other direction but he was in no rush.
¡°Very impressive. Are you still hurt from that kick?¡± Ebony heard Halvis¡¯ voice somewhere above him as he ran back to where he was standing earlier.
¡°Thank you. I am fine.¡± Ebony replied succinctly. Ebony wasn¡¯t proud of the achievement, he likely would have taken much longer to wear and bleed out the boar, maybe even fail to kill it if not for the ice blade Gen made for him freezing the boar. Ebony guessed that the blade broke in the boar''s internals and the ice mana started freezing it to death when he got released inside the boar.
Finding the tree Halvis was sitting on, Ebony sat down on the ground and meditated while they watched as Clovis was still lying in wait.
Ebony didn¡¯t think the excitable Clovis had this much patience as they waited more than half an hour before a pair of foxes came out of their burrow. Clovis panicked when he saw 2 foxes instead of one but managed to calm himself down as they waited for them to fall for his bait.
The deer leg had long been dried up and chilled but they seem to fall for the bait all too easily. The first one who saw the leg leaped towards it, bit it and leaped away from the spot back outside their burrow as the 2 foxes ate with glee. It was a [Arctic Fox Level 9] and [Arctic Fox Level 10].
Ebony wondered how this flawed plan even worked the first time Clovis tried it. Clovis was obviously disheartened; it wasn¡¯t only one fox and they didn¡¯t even stay on the spot that he cast his vines. At least he wasn¡¯t hasty and continued observing, hopeful that the dosage of the drug was good enough to knock both of them out.
It worked pretty fast and both foxes actually started wobbling and fell to their sides, paralyzed or knocked out. Paralyzed, they were still somewhat aware of their surroundings. Clovis quickly dashed out towards them the poison he made wouldn¡¯t last as long as he expected since the dosage was lowered so he acted quickly.
He stood still a short distance away from them and started casting his Ice Vines again, on the lvl 10 fox. He had enough mana for another cast. He manipulated the vines to wrap the fox up as much as he could but didn¡¯t notice the other fox was already up and leaped with its claws aiming for Clovis'' throat.
A shadow flew from above Ebony faster than anyone present could react too and shot through the lvl 9 fox¡¯s head while it was in mid-air and through the tree behind it and into the snowy ground. The exploded fox head got blood all over Clovis while he screamed.
¡°Focus Clovis, your vines won¡¯t hold any longer. They were only partially affected by your cold poison, they had some resistance against cold to begin with. It''s only natural they aren¡¯t that affected by it if the dosage was lowered, they feigned weakness to bait you out. Do you need my help?¡± Halvis patiently explained.
The fox struggled free from the ice vines as Clovis fought against it and tried to manipulate the vines to keep it down but to no avail as the fox was much stronger than a couple of vines made of ice. Nervous, he panicked and let go of his control over the vines as he drew his bow from his back again.
He was too slow as the fox broke free once Clovis let the control of his spell down and it let the opportunity go as it attacked Clovis before he even managed to nock an arrow. Clovis shut his eyes, fearing the incoming attack but it never came.
He slowly opened his eyes to see the fox yelping with its neck under Halvis¡¯ vice grip. He brightened up at first but was quickly disappointed by himself.
¡°It¡¯s alright Clovis, you did well. Don¡¯t worry about it, you know that hardly anyone from our village has managed to complete the stimulation rite by themselves for hundreds of years. You aren¡¯t even planning to be a fighter but a scholar. I am very proud that you have taken the rite seriously, making that cold poison, training your ice vines and taking up a little archery even though you don¡¯t enjoy it.¡± Halvis told his son.
¡°Mhmm, I know.¡± Clovis sniffled. He clearly understood the difficulty of the task.
¡®Hardly anyone managed to complete it themselves in hundreds of years?¡¯ Ebony found this to be harder to believe. They had magic here, if all the young elves were at Clovis¡¯ standard then it would make sense but they weren¡¯t. Even if classless had a very limited mana pool and could only cast a spell or 2 before running out they still had archery. They can just hide up in the tree and shoot arrows till they kill one, it shouldn¡¯t be impossible.
The biggest issue was doing damage to the monsters and avoiding damage. Without any body enhancement magic and with their considerably weaker bodies the Frost Elves probably can¡¯t afford to take a single hit. That only limits their target choices to those that can¡¯t climb up these sturdy trees like the boar. Then all they have to do is to repeatedly aim for its vitals right?
As Ebony was contemplating about the issue, Halvis went ahead and froze the fox with its 4 limbs spread wide apart onto a tree while it struggled in vain. It was really pitiful and Ebony couldn¡¯t say he agrees with such a method but it was kill or be killed since it tried to kill Clovis it risked being killed itself.
Halvis stepped back while Clovis started drawing his arrow and shooting, that¡¯s when Ebony found the problem. The arrow bounced right off the fox, it was almost comical. Bows here are similarly rated by tivs, the draw weight or strength required to fully draw the bow once. The Frost Elves were physically weak, it wasn¡¯t so bad after they get a class and can put some stats there but as a classless they don¡¯t have that advantage.
Clovis is using a 3 tiv training bow, their arrows are all fully wooden as they had no metal workers at all. That¡¯s a 15kg draw weight bow, if Ebony¡¯s not wrong that is a draw weight for human children or teenagers perhaps a little more. Which to be fair, Clovis was considered a child but even standing so close there was no way it could hurt the monsters much.
¡°Aim for its eyes or its mouth Clovis.¡± Halvis gave Ebony a side glance as he said this, having seen Ebony aim for other orifices. It''s too good of a weakness to shy from though, most animals, humans included, don''t defend that area much compared to their faces or body.
Clovis kept shooting and shooting, his aim wasn¡¯t perfect but he stood so close it was almost impossible to miss with it stuck in place. The fox closed its eyes when he found that the arrows couldn¡¯t pierce through its eyelid but it was only delaying its death. Reusing the arrows till they broke, the fox¡¯s resistance gradually ceased and Clovis coated his final arrow¡¯s head with a layer of ice. It looked at Clovis as he released the arrow going straight into its mouth, down its throat.
Clovis was panting and his arms were trembling so much Ebony didn¡¯t think it was possible from such a lightweight bow. ¡®It should just be elves with such a disadvantage for the stimulation rite, magic takes too much mana and is too weak at low skill levels. Beastmen who are physically strong should have a bigger advantage in the early levels since stamina recovers so much faster than mana.¡¯
¡°Heheh¡ I got it.¡± Clovis happily announced.
Chapter 12: Village Chief
¡°Honey, I told you he was not normal.¡±
¡°And I told you not to talk about Ebony like that.¡±
¡°If he isn¡¯t a half frost elf half human then he¡¯s definitely some other race from another world. He has those weird clothes and pack. He has an unnaturally high cold resistance for a human. He even has more mana than Clovis! You didn¡¯t see how he fought that hoarfrost boar, he is not JUST a highly trained warrior. He puts those deranged Imperial recruits we saw back in the days to shame.¡±
¡°...Don¡¯t you think you''re going a little too far there? You must be exaggerating. Cold resistance is not too hard to gain and we both know he has a meditation skill. What more all your points just means we have to treat him even better, not shun him away or be rude.
Besides, you yourself know over the past weeks that he really isn¡¯t faking memory loss. How could someone who has the ability to cross worlds not know of such¡ common sense. Maybe he is some noble or comes from a rich family, another world or not. He really is ignorant about everything, probably losing his memories after coming over.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t mean to do that¡I just want you to be more wary. The fact that someone so young has a meditation skill is even weirder. But no, I wasn¡¯t exaggerating in the slightest. He fought without fear, when he noticed the boar coming he immediately moved to face it. There was no hesitation, no pauses when he was against it, a natural. His ever expressionless face was no facade, he took a direct hit from the boar and didn¡¯t even flinch. Other than the blood coughing.¡±
¡°HE WHAT!? And you didn¡¯t stop it?! What if he died? I know he has an ice type body enhancement skill but there¡¯s no guarantee he would be able to take a hit from a lvl 10.¡±
¡°That¡¯s the thing, I was about to intervene when he looked at me as if to stop me. He saw the attack coming. I¡¯m telling you, he just couldn¡¯t dodge in time but he wanted to take the hit. Or he just didn¡¯t want me to intervene, I am sure of it. He wasn¡¯t just dancing with the boar he was dancing with death. And it was lvl 15.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°I¡¯m not telling you this because I want to kick him out before he brings us trouble, I¡¯m just saying you were right and we should treat him better. No harm earning his favour right?
The village chief should be returning from his dungeon clearings these few days right? I was thinking of asking him to let Ebony have one of the weapons in the village warehouse, there should be some that he could use. He did lose that precious blade of his, though I don¡¯t know where he got that from it shouldn¡¯t have been possible for him to succeed the rite so easily if not for that blade.
At the same time we can ask what the village chief thinks of him, whether or not he is a danger to us or the village.¡±
¡°You¡¯re finally making some sense. Okay let¡¯s do that. How¡¯s your yield this time?¡±
¡°Well, it actually wasn¡¯t as bad as I thought it would be from the summer heat so we do have some leeway.¡±
¡°Good. Now explain in detail how he fought to me.¡±
¡°...Roya. You¡¯re planning to make him a robe? He¡¯s a warrior though. Never mind. He did say the leather armour we borrowed was restrictive. It was not fitted to his size but If leather armour was considered restrictive to him I doubt he would wear any other armour anyway. Besides, if there¡¯s one thing I like about Ebony is that he has good taste in clothing.¡±
¡°Sweet talking me won¡¯t work, you changed your tune about him so quickly.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not true, I have always properly treated him as a guest. Even more so after we found that he really was lacking common sense.¡±
¡°Fineeee, fine. Just tell me how he fought.¡±
???
It''s been 3 days since the stimulation rite and Ebony¡¯s daily routine didn¡¯t change except the fact that his skills were levelling at a visible pace again.
Mental Mapping gained a level when he returned from the rite.
Running and Ice Mana Manipulation gained a level each as well.
Treading Step levelled twice, Humming and Mana Weaving 3 times and Icebody Enhancement and Kicking Mastery levelled 4 times.
Finally, Single-Handed Greatsword Mastery gained a whopping 7 levels. Deep Persistent Meditation surprisingly didn¡¯t level at all.
Also gaining a new skill, Dish Washing and having it level to level 2.
He probably only got it after so long because Roya always stopped him part way through. That or he was talentless at washing dishes but that shouldn¡¯t be, he had been washing dishes for himself for a long time now.
There was also a Cleaning skill which is known to merge with Dish Washing and some other skills like Laundry to become Housekeeping. Which at lvl 25 gives the Housekeeper Profession.
Dish Washing - Ability to clean and remove stains from dishes, utensils and kitchenware increases by 1.0% per level. Slightly increases dishwashing speed and efficiency every level.
When Icebody Enhancement reached level 25 he got the related class pop ups again. Enhancement Mage, Ice Enhancement Mage etc. Many had the same Class name but the class requirements just showed level 25 instead of level 10. He got the non apprentice version of Warrior and Martial Artist when Kicking Mastery reached level 25.
Obviously, with no greatsword he couldn¡¯t train his greatsword skill. He used a full mana pool and then some, to recreate the leafblade, same dimensions and all. His version was much lighter as one would expect but worse of all he couldn¡¯t feel his mastery skill trigger.
It was kinda of an intuitive feeling and as Ebony read, skills came naturally to one and he could feel that the skill was not triggering.
He got Halvis to make him one as well and giving it a couple swings he could feel his Greatsword Mastery in effect again. Asking Halvis only for him to say that Roya would tell him more as she could explain about craft better than him. It''s been 3 days since and there was no follow up but Ebony was in no rush, he had skill levels to raise.
There was no numerical value for Natural Potential as far as they know so it is hard to tell how much one has gained from the rite. The skills used more would gain more.
Crafting class can gain Natural Potential by crafting something better than their skill level suggests. The easiest way for them would be to craft using better base materials or ingredients.
Who decided whether the crafted item was better or not? Ebony had no idea. His blade of ice obviously wasn¡¯t considered a greatsword despite looking the same.
Since Ebony could stably convert his mana to ice mana he has been testing making all sorts of stuff with it. Repetition was not the only condition for something to consider as a skill.
It was unclear exactly how and why certain actions start to be considered generic skills. Repetition is the most reliable way of trying to cause a certain action to turn into a skill.
Getting a Class or a Class Evolution has a chance of turning these unseen efforts into a skill. All other generic skills one has would also receive some benefit. There was a small chance that the skill would undergo skill evolution to a higher tier.
This is also the reason some try to gain as many generic skills as possible before getting a Class or Class Evolution. Although some also theorise that the more skills one has the less chance each skill has to evolve since there should be some sort of limit as the energy or potential gained during Class Evolutions have to be split amongst more skills.
On the way back from the playground to have breakfast, Ebony saw that Roya and Halvis were joining them. They usually ate earlier than them while they were at the playground as they had work to do so this was a first.
¡°Father! Mother! What¡¯s the occasion?¡± Clovis called out as he ran towards them.
¡°Sit down, we¡¯ll talk over breakfast.¡± Roya replied.
Breakfast was salad with some kind of nuts, bread, boar bacon, sausages and frost plums. They didn¡¯t have any eggs here but Ebony welcomed having a bacon equivalent.
Ebony was concerned about eating monster meat after Gen told him not to take in ambient essence which was what monsters took in. Fortunately he remembered to ask Gen about it too and the answer makes more sense to him after knowing essence was a combination of health, stamina and mana.
Killing a monster would mean their health has zeroed out and stamina and mana would quickly dissipate from their body. As long as he doesn¡¯t eat a monster live there should not be any issues with eating monster meat.
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¡°It isn''t any occasion, the village chief returned last night and we were asking him if Ebony here could take one of the swords left in the village warehouse.¡± Roya explained as they started on breakfast after saying their thanks for the food.
¡°Can I go too, pleaseee!¡± Clovis pleaded, staring at Roya with his wide eyed puppy look as he stabbed a slice of bacon with his 3 pronged wooden fork.
¡°No, you¡¯re staying home with me. I need you to watch the phos as it sun charges while dad will go with Ebony. Is that okay with you Ebony?¡± Roya asked.
¡°Yes.¡± Ebony answered, despite having some questions like why there were swords if none of them used them. He could ask later anyway. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Ebony had no qualms following their customs or culture so he didn¡¯t forget his thanks either.
Roya smiled while piling more food for Ebony, Ebony ate a lot despite even though he thought he needed less food. Probably due to the excessive physical training he did, even if his stamina recovers very fast his body still gets sore and it needs to rest and recover.
He hardly bulked up though, his muscles were even a little denser than they were before. He was sure he was slightly stronger but sadly no there was no stat increase to prove if it were true.
A stream of grumbles, whines and complaints came out of Clovis¡¯s mouth but he was firmly shot down in his attempts to go out with a ¡®grounded from the study¡¯ threat.
Finishing breakfast and helping with the dishes with a level gained in Dish Washing later, Halvis and Ebony promptly left. Dressed in another set of long sleeved shirt and pants, his leather boots with thick comfy socks and embarrassingly enough new underwear that Roya made.
Ebony didn¡¯t know when or how she got the chance to look at his own triangular briefs but she copied the design and thank goodness for his normal dead facial expressions cause he didn¡¯t know how to react when he caught Roya placing a few sets of briefs on his table.
She was discreet and didn''t say anything about it either so Ebony was grateful for it of course, it fit almost too well like any other shirt she made for him and was too damn comfortable.
¡°Ebony do you know what overflowing essence is?¡± Halvis started the conversation as he has more often been doing so.
¡°Yes, Clovis has explained it to me and I read up on it as well.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Good, the village chief is a high level mage. Though he should have fully recovered his mana from his trip I believe he might still be in meditation. Even with an unclassed''s low Perception stat you should be able to feel the effects of overflowing Wisdom from him so just a heads up. Don¡¯t panic¡nevermind, you should be fine.¡±
¡°Mmm. Why are there swords in the village? None of the Frost Elves pick up swordsmanship right?¡± Ebony asked flatly.
¡°Ah, well we Frost Elves aren¡¯t the only ones that delve into Hoarfrost Glade after all. It is uncommon but there are other races¡¯ that travel here. For rare monster parts, crafting materials or ingredients for all sorts of crafts whether weapons, armours, potions or more. Mostly for Ice, snow or other elemental materials that could easily be found here.¡± Halvis explained.
¡°I see. The swords are left by other races¡¯ warriors or swordsmen who died in the forest and were picked up when found by the villagers.¡± Ebony concluded. It wasn¡¯t hard to guess, Arcta had zero blacksmiths or anyone who could or would work with metal.
All their weapons, bows, arrows, daggers and knives were made of wood or other monster parts. Made by wood mages, woodsmiths or wood workers, many wood mages pick up woodsmith as a Sub-Class or Profession or vice versa with woodsmiths picking wood mage as a Sub-Class.
Ebony doubted they would make wooden swords to sell either.
¡°How astute, if Clovis was half as sharp he would do much better as a scholar. Yes, from the forest or in dungeons they would be brought back and sold to the merchant company that comes round every so often.¡± Halvis praised.
¡°So the swords in the village were either recently found or not worth the merchants¡¯ effort of buying and reselling.¡± Ebony said.
¡°Very sharp, unfortunately it isn¡¯t like they pop out of nowhere and neither do prepared fighters die all the time. There weren''t any new blades found this time round so what¡¯s left are the accumulated unsold blades. That isn¡¯t to say that they are all useless or broken, they are all common rank and as you said not worth transporting the distance to sell. But perfect for a beginner warrior or swordsman.¡± Halvis continued.
¡°...Thank you, Halvis. Your family has done a great deal for me, I will definitely repay you in any way I can in future.¡± Ebony said sincerely. At least that''s what he tried sounding but his voice came out as flatly as always.
¡°Enough with that nonsense, you saved my son¡¯s life. That¡¯s worth more than anything we have done or can offer to do for you. The Thoya family will always be indebted to you. Okay we¡¯re reaching soon. You remember how we greet people right?¡± Halvis brushed off before asking.
¡°...I remember. Tet.¡± Ebony replied while showing his hand to Halvis. The handshake equivalent of this world was kinda cute to Ebony. Teting with an acquaintance, stranger or people one is not very familiar with is basically touching all five finger tips together, good friends touch fingers and palms, essentially high fiving. Family members, lovers high five and clasp hands, interlocking fingers. Cute.
Only lizardmen had 3 fingers and a thumb but the greeting was the same.
Ebony realised that they weren¡¯t walking towards the centre of the village like he assumed where the village chief would be. Rather, they were going towards the outskirts of the village, not too far from the village walls. Stopping in front of a cabin not too different from any other. All the houses in Arcta were spaced pretty far apart from one another giving them a large yard though the Thoya family cabin was on a different scale due to Halvis¡¯s croft as he calls it.
As they got closer to the cabin, a familiar feeling of something boring down in his head was present in the air. Knowing what this pressure was now and with Halvis¡¯s earlier warning, Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised.
There was no comparison with Gen¡¯s, if Gen¡¯s was like a building weighing down on him then the village chief¡¯s was only about a barbell weighing down on his mind. Uncomfortable but the effect on him was weak.
Overflowing essence was generally split into 3 different types, Vitality, Wisdom and Endurance.
Overflowing Vitality or health puts forth a phantom physical pressure causing others with a lower vitality or more accurately health regen to feel like their bodies are heavier and make it harder for them to move if they are not used to it.
Mostly felt from warriors and the like, pretty uncommon to face this from people due to the nature of health¡¯s low regeneration rate. Monsters tend to have high vitality and health regeneration rate but effect is usually weak unless there¡¯s a big level difference and therefore stat difference.
Overflowing Wisdom or mana puts forth a phantom mental pressure that causes others with a lower wisdom or more accurately mana regen to feel like their minds are in mud making them think or process slower causing them to feel as if one is moving or talking really fast when they are in fact lagging.
Mostly felt from mages and perhaps crafters like Roya who work heavily with mana. Not that rare to face this effect due the nature of mana¡¯s regeneration rate and mana dissipates into the surroundings the slowest out of the three resources.
This should have been what he felt from Gen but it seemed like Gen could control it to some extent.
Overflowing Endurance or stamina puts forth a phantom exhaustive force that causes others with a lower Endurance or more accurately stamina regen, hearts¡¯ to race, getting breathless and feeling tired.
Overflowing Endurance is said to be so rare some don¡¯t believe it to be a thing. Whether warrior or mage or support classes, one would usually only put so many stats into Endurance.
With limited stat points they needed to split their stat points wisely. But, the main reason is the nature of stamina. Stamina dissipates into the surroundings so fast one wouldn¡¯t be able to feel it before it reaches them.
Ebony remembered the feeling when he just entered the underground dome guessing it was due to this but his senses as an unclassed were too weak. Unclassed tend to not be able to feel any of this shtick unless it''s extremely obvious.
Ebony understood all this nonsense as aura, after getting a Class one would apparently be able to feel these resources in their body a little more instinctually. When Perception stat gets high enough anyone can roughly gauge the strength of a person or monster based on this aura.
Halvis gave a look at Ebony before knocking on the door, uncaring if he was disturbing the chief¡¯s meditation.
The door opened after a short while, a lady Frost Elf answered the door. Half a head taller than even Halvis, she dwarfed Ebony at least in terms of height and she was slender as with any elf he¡¯d seen. She had a more mature look, like that of a middle-aged woman but that was probably due to the long lifespans and she was obviously much older than she looked.
Inwardly, Halvis was kinda shocked he didn¡¯t see any changes to Ebony¡¯s gait or expression. Well, not so much expression as he already gave up trying to find the thing called facial expression from Ebony.
He pushed the thought aside thinking that perhaps Ebony¡¯s Perception stat was even lower than he thought. He himself took some time to get used to the feeling and it gradually weakened as he levelled and had his Wisdom increase. Madam Ophelia was wearing her Myriad Bracelet so she wasn¡¯t leaking mana but the village chief doesn¡¯t have the habit of wearing his during meditation.
[Great Wood Archer Lvl ???]
¡®Below lvl 300, or exactly 300 but haven¡¯t undergone Class Evolution yet.¡¯ Ebony thought after Identifying her and noticing the green colour.
Ebony had already learnt that the colour of Identification doesn¡¯t only tell an item or object''s rarity it also tells whether a person or monster had completed their evolution. Which was to say Gen was even above that, a benchmark for before Ebony would try helping them.
¡°Halvis. You didn¡¯t have to come all the way over, we would have brought our robes to you for our robes¡¯ patch up. This time round went smoothly and they didn¡¯t receive too much damage. Except Enya¡¯s right sleeve getting torn off.¡± the tall Elf lady said as she and Halvis greeted each other by touching their fingertips together. Halvis used his right hand while she used her left.
¡°Madam Ophelia, it is but a short trip and we¡¯ll come over to collect any robes needing maintenance any time you need but that is not the purpose of my visit today. I am looking for the chief to ask if I could let this young man here pick a sword from the village warehouse.¡± Halvis explained after a little brown nosing, gesturing towards Ebony.
¡°Greetings Madam Ophelia.¡± Ebony curtsied with a light bow before teting the same way as Halvis. The weaker, lower levelled, lower in status, junior etc. would use their right hand while the other uses their left or would otherwise be considered as rude or as if you were looking down on the other party if you offered the left hand while being weaker, younger, etc.
¡°Oh. And what is a young human doing here? Wait, it might be summer but aren¡¯t you cold wearing so little? Halvis, you should know better that unclassed humans can¡¯t handle the cold well. Come on in first, I¡¯ll get my husband before we continue.¡± Ophelia hurried them in.
The interior was basically the same as the Thoyas, they sat at the table and were served glorious frost plum juice after they made it clear that Ebony had high enough cold resistance before Ophelia went to get the village chief.
¡®Are all Frost Elves so nice?¡¯ Ebony thought, feeling the genuine concern she had. Perhaps it was their small community and they weren¡¯t hostile to visitors of another race. Everyone he had interacted with had been welcoming of his presence. Other than Qane, who mostly ignores or gives Ebony stares didn¡¯t do much against him if you didn¡¯t count the daily challenges.
The pressure in the air lifted and Ebony could hear another set of footsteps walking towards them. The village chief had a stern looking face, looking middle-aged as well and standing as tall as Ophelia. His name was Orren Wit but everyone just calls him chief or so Halvis told him.
[Great Ice Mage Lvl ???]
He got similar results from Identify, everyone in this room could probably kill him with less effort than squashing a bug. Greetings were exchanged and they got down to talking.
Chapter 13: Greatsword
¡°So Ebony here woke up in the forest without any memories, chanced upon little Clovis who sneaked out of the village getting attacked by a hoarfrost boarlet and saved him.
He has been a guest at the Thoya household for the past weeks and since he seemed to have had a sword that broke during the rite and you want to get him one from the village warehouse?¡± Orren summarised.
¡°Yes Chief.¡±
¡°Ridiculous. A saviour of one of our own is one of our own themselves. You didn¡¯t have to ask me for something such a small issue, beside those swords are just a waste of space to us. Ebony you can take any that you fancy, a pity we don¡¯t have any good swords that we could gift you.¡±
¡°Thank you.¡± There was much he could have said but a simple thanks was plenty and meant more than any flowery language Ebony could come up with.
¡°Mmm. Halvis, just take Ebony there and let him take his pick later.¡±
¡°Yes Chief. Ebony why don¡¯t you return ahead of me first, you listen to Clovis talk around this time of the day don¡¯t you? He must be feeling lonely by now. I have things to discuss with the Chief and will bring you to take your pick a little later.¡± Halvis asked Ebony, eliciting a raised brow from the other Elves that went unnoticed by Ebony.
¡°Okay.¡± Ebony preferred to return to being productive anyway.
???
It wasn¡¯t till half past the 14th hour that Halvis came looking for Ebony. The warehouse was pretty far away, about half an hour walk away.
There were no guards, no locks, nothing. Simply a large wooden building like that of a barn with a thick layer of snow piled up at the doorstep. Halvis waved his hand and all the snow blocking the door parted.
Crates and boxes laid around and stacked up high, a few empty shelves here and there.
¡°The warehouse is mostly used to keep some food stockpiled for winter so it''s mostly empty now and will slowly fill up during autumn. The only thing here now should be the spoils, monster parts or other materials that the village guards and dungeon clearing teams collect that we¡¯ll try to sell to the merchant.
There are few herbs growing around these parts so we usually keep any we find and just sell or even give them to the village herbalist, the Lasil family.¡± Halvis explained as he made his way towards the corner of the building.
¡°Could you help look around as well? Someone probably moved it aside or kept them in one of these boxes.¡±
¡°Of course.¡± Ebony started from the corners of the room.
They weren¡¯t lying around anywhere on the ground so they started opening crates.
The square crates or cubes were a metre by a metre or they would call it a fifth of a gir which was a little silly and long winded.
Since he didn¡¯t think the swords would fit in those, they narrowed it down to the rectangular ones which were half the height and trice the length.
¡°Finally. Get over here Ebony, I found them.¡± Halvis called out.
They took almost an hour of looking through the many crates.
By the time Ebony made his way there, Halvis had already taken the swords out and laid them against the crates.
He also saw some shields inside but didn¡¯t bother with them, they were not his thing.
¡®That¡¯s more than I thought there would be.'' Ebony counted 12 of them from left to right.
¡°Take your pick, they are all Common rank. Those that travel all the way here wouldn¡¯t be using a inferior rank weapon and even if we find them we don¡¯t bother bringing those back. The broken ones are also long tossed away so these are generally in working conditions. I¡¯ll go out and make a few targets for you so take your time.¡± Halvis left as he said.
6 of them were longswords or claymore types, 3 of them were ridiculously large blades that Ebony wasn¡¯t sure how to categorise, 2 of them were shortswords, 1 of them were thin fencing type swords, the estoc or rapier.
It wasn¡¯t hard to tell that large two handed swords were the preference here.
There was the help of stats to wield big heavy weapons and if monsters tend to be large like the boar it is understandable that weapons had to scale up too.
They were all double edged blades as well.
Ebony started from the [Steel Estoc (Common)]. It had a basket hilt and was about a metre long.
Ebony drew it and stabbed a few times before putting it aside. Obviously wasn¡¯t considered a greatsword, it was too light for Ebony to feel comfortable with it too.
Ebony did like stabbing though, he had tried practising a lot of stabbing with the greatsword.
He gave a swing or 2 with the one handed shortswords too but didn¡¯t bother with them too much.
One by one he tried out all of the swords.
Of the 6 two-handed longswords, only 3 of them seem large or heavy or whatever it is that causes a sword to be considered a greatsword by the mastery skill.
The Thoya family didn¡¯t have any books regarding this so Ebony came up blank on this.
For the 3 anime sized swords, Ebony could barely lift them with all his strength or even not lift them at all so he gave up on them.
The blade handles were thick enough that he couldn¡¯t form a full grip. They were most likely made for other races who were larger on average.
They were all over 2 metres long like that of a zweihander but wider, thicker and of course heavier.
Even if he had a higher Strength stat Ebony wouldn¡¯t choose any of them.
They were too unwieldy even with two hands, wielding them with a single hand?
It wasn¡¯t even about strength anymore, he would have no balance and fight properly for it.
Ebony already mentally picked his favourite already but he still took all 3 that his skill considered greatswords out to the open field outside the warehouse.
Seeing a few humanoid, boar, deer and wolf snow sculptures. They were honestly pretty crude compared to Ton¡¯s life like clones but Ebony wasn¡¯t going to say that.
Putting the swords that he lugged out down, he drew the 1.6 metre long cross blade [Harden Steel Sword (Common)] and ran towards the human snowman.
Decapitating its head without resistance but he unconsciously used two hands, his left supporting the lower handle to give the extra oomph. The grip was a little too thick to fully grip as well so he quickly sheathed it back.
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery didn¡¯t make much sense, they weren¡¯t even designed to be wielded like that. But Ebony wasn¡¯t able to get the normal Greatsword Mastery. Did he have no talent for it? Did having his version of Mastery stop him from getting the normal one?
Ebony didn¡¯t know but didn¡¯t bother since he was beginning to work things out already anyway. His free hand could be used to focus his Ice Magic while it''s free anyway.
Next up was [Compressed Steel Sword (Common)] and the heaviest of the 3. Which was still lighter than the damn leaf mind you.
Standing at the same height as Ebony it was about 1 and a half palms wide and the thickest part of the blade was almost 2 cm thick. Unthinkable for swords from Earth but perhaps necessary for monster hunting. Thicker blades are more durable, it is no wonder the swords were so heavy.
This one had a deep fuller in the centre of the blade, the grip was comfortable and the roughly 35cm long handle, almost reaching the end of his elbows made Ebony able to grip higher and had much better balance.
He mowed through from snow sculpture to snow sculpture with considerable ease. Lighter, better grip, better balance, a longer reach and about half as wide as the leaf blade which made it easy for him to twist and recover the sword after a stab.
If there was one problem it was the long and thin cross guard would get in the way of his spinning and he had to be wary of downward slashes that may hit his own leg. The blade had a sharp edge but Ebony could spot a chip or two.
Finally, his chosen one.
Ebony was pretty surprised by the familiar design, unlike all the other western, medieval or fantasy looking blades this one was different.
Just a tinge bit shorter than himself it should be 1.75 metres or so in length with the grip taking a full 40 cm of it, extending past his elbow a little even when he gripped close to the guard.
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This sword being the only sword that doesn¡¯t have a cross guard but a simple rectangular block with its edges curved out. The grip was wooden and fit well in his hands.
It was a straight sword with its blade completely flat, a bit thinner than the previous one. Similar in width to the second blade, it was dark brownish red, reddish-brown. The pommel was like a small rounded orb being part of the handle and not a separate part.
[Compressed Bronze Sword (Common)] its design is almost a copy of the Chinese Han Jian, just flatter and straighter, if there was a version as large as this anyway.
Ebony danced with it, he really liked everything about it. It didn¡¯t impede his movements in any way with its very straight and balanced body.
At roughly 7-8 kilos or 1.4-1.6 tiv, Ebony could actually lift the tip of the sword off the ground for an extended period of time.
Pulling the sword close to his body in an attempt to copy the ox guard but with one hand, the other in front of himself like aiming for a badminton swing. He took a large step forward and stabbed at the snow boar''s face, completely swallowing the blade. Swinging upwards, the snow sculpture collapsed as Ebony tried to sheath the sword.
Too bad for him he failed miserably, he tried to look cool but he hadn¡¯t practised sheathing since his leaf blade had no need for a sheath or scabbard.
Furthermore, the sword was long and weighty. Trying to sheath smoothly was actually a challenge, thank goodness the blade wasn¡¯t any longer and the grip was unnaturally long.
The scabbard was wooden and black like ebony, simple and undecorated.
¡°Excellent display, looks like you have decided. Interesting choice, If I¡¯m not wrong that sword is of Xeng make but I could be wrong I never took much notice of swords anyhow.¡± Halvis spoke up.
¡°Thank you, yes I have.¡± Ebony answered as he laid it against the walls of the warehouse before taking the rejects and returning them to the original place, placing all of them back in the crates as he softly hummed. Unknowing that he was heard. They quickly put the place back the way it was and made their way back.
The Xengs are the largest collective, human group on the continent that wasn¡¯t directly under the Empire''s rule. Not to say they were a large group of people but everyone else was just an Imperial citizen under the Empire.
The city of Xienor could be considered an anomaly on the continent, the entire continent was under a single rule which was the Empire. Yet, they were not hostile to each other and they followed the Empires¡¯ law as well when out of their city, they just had their own ruler. Why didn¡¯t the Empire bring them under their rule then? Well, it was none of Ebony¡¯s business.
¡®Haha, so he can express emotions after all. Roya and the chief were right after all.¡¯ Halvis couldn¡¯t help thinking as he heard the slightly cheerful and upbeat hum.
Ebony was normal in that he could feel happy, sad, angry, shock, surprise and all the other ¡®normal¡¯ emotions he just wasn¡¯t good at expressing them and he was numb to most.
???
¡°The Chief thinks Ebony¡¯s not from another world?¡±
¡°No, what he said made sense. How could we have missed that?¡±
¡°What do you mean? Can you just tell me what he said already?¡±
¡°...Ebony might have been a mana slave or at least one that¡¯s in the middle of ¡®training¡¯. He either somehow escaped or was released for some reason. His high mana pool, loss of memories, most likely tier 2 meditation type skill, his stoicism, not even knowing Elcrian and also his presence so far away from Imperial lands. All boils down to someone keeping mana slaves in secret, far from the Empire.¡±
¡°!? Keeping mana slaves has been completely abolished by the current Emperor. They must be seeking death. There¡¯s no way they released Ebony, they must be looking for him as we speak. We can¡¯t let those elling bastards take him, that poor boy.¡±
¡°They must not be far from Arcta, chief reckons that they already know Ebony is with us. Since they haven¡¯t taken any actions against us they shouldn¡¯t be too strong. Now that the chief is back they would have no chance to get Ebony as long as he doesn¡¯t leave the village unguarded.¡±
¡°We must have missed it since it was abolished before we travelled and hardly saw any of them. The remainder were hired by the Imperial council to maintain city and town barriers.¡±
¡°I thought the same. The chief said to treat him the same as we would our own and wouldn¡¯t matter even if he was an otherworlder.¡±
¡°We already do. Let¡¯s just hope he doesn¡¯t pick a ¡®Meditative¡¯ Class.¡±
¡°Haha, I highly doubt that he wouldn¡¯t. Nevermind that, how¡¯s his robe coming along?¡±
¡°Perfectly, it''s a work I¡¯m proud of. Your common quality cotton is also slightly improving in quality, especially how much mana it can withstand.¡±
¡°I still got quite a ways to go before being able to get them to Uncommon in a reasonable time frame though. The natural mana density of soil, snow and ice here just isn¡¯t good enough.¡±
¡°It''s okay, we¡¯re both improving at a fast pace and you know it.¡±
¡°I know. Speaking of improving, you¡¯ll never guess that Ebony was actually happy about getting a sword. I think he is slowly starting to show emotions.¡±
¡°Happy? Ebony? That¡¯s hard to believe.¡±
¡°...¡±
???
On the night of the day Ebony got his new beloved.
He just finished his actual meditation session. It''s a habit despite not needing to sit still and meditate and he was not planning to stop, even more so when there are skill levels for it now.
Checking his status as usual before he went to sleep.
Name: Ebony Rime
Class: N/A
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: N/A
Health: 57/60
Stamina: 60/60
Mana: 100/100
Strength: 5
Vitality: 6
Constitution: 9
Endurance: 6
Agility: 7
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 10
Perception: 7
Generic Skills:
Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 51
Lesser Stealth Lvl 6
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 26
Running Lvl 26
Treading Step Lvl 29
Humming Lvl 18
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 28
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 25
Mental Mapping Lvl 2
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery Lvl 23
Kicking Mastery Lvl 26
Mana Weaving Lvl 14
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 5
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 1
Dish Washing Lvl 3
Meditative Ice Enhancer Swordsman - Requirements: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 50, Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25, Any Ice Enhancement Magic Lvl 25, Treading Step Lvl 25 & Any type of sword Mastery Lvl 10
Seems like being partially made of mana was truly more beneficial than not. Though he wasn¡¯t fully healed even after 3 days this time he could feel himself getting better, his bones could heal reasonably fast.
¡®Close. But I¡¯m still missing something. How irksome.¡¯ Ebony thought as he mentally skimmed through all that he learnt about Classes.
He had learnt a lot but it barely scratches the surface of all there is to know about them. People don¡¯t write down and publish all the truly good stuff after all.
A simple way to gauge the quality of a Class was how many skills were required for it.
It directly relates to how many bonuses one gains after or during the Class Fortification. Basically no one took a single skill requirement Class anymore.
The most used examples of Classes require 2 or 3 skills. 4 is pretty uncommon but not exactly rare which Clovis¡¯s Research Scholar is under.
Nobody has publicly announced the Classes and skills required for any Classes requiring 4 or more skills. Academies and master-disciple relationships for crafters may have some of this knowledge ¡®shared¡¯ or passed down.
There was no general education for all so academies were mostly attended by the rich, nobles or sponsored highly talented commoners.
Crafting Classes are more often passed down in master-disciple relations or so Roya and Halvis had told him. They apparently travelled to Empire lands a little in the past.
The number of skills required only tells how many bonuses one would gain. The skill level required tells the percentage buff gained. Simple as that.
The more unique Classes would be like Ebony first offered Class that he no longer has access to.
Self-taught Apprentice Ice Mage - Requirements: Achieved Lvl 10 Ice Mana Manipulation with no prior knowledge of Ice Magic and no one to impart said knowledge from.
Requirements beyond a skill, these Classes are the more unique ones. They would still receive the same number and same percentage buff of bonus but have been said to have hidden benefits.
As to what kind of benefits, only those that have these Classes would know and they may actually not even know it themselves.
Meditative Ice Enhancer Swordsman, any ice enhancement magic requirement changed from lvl 10 to 25 when his Icebody Enhancement reached lvl 25.
The Class name remains the same, the only skill left to get to 25 would be Single-handed Greatsword Mastery. Only 2 more levels and he would be able to get a Class with 5 types of bonuses.
It sounded really good but Ebony couldn¡¯t help but feel something amiss.
¡°There¡¯s something reeeaally important that I¡¯m forgetting.¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help saying.
That something was at the tip of his tongue but he just didn¡¯t know what it was.
Perhaps even he, Ebony Rime was getting excited about gaining power or gaining the ability to grow further, to Level. And that was clouding his mind. Ludicrous.
Ebony will not have that, he demolished that speck of cloudiness faster than it appeared. Mental clarity may not allow one to see all but it lets one see more. He remembered. He never forgot.
There was only one thing one can do at times like this. Sleep.
The more one tries to dig for missing pieces the further it will drop into the depths of one¡¯s mind.
Chapter 14: Profession
Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t have a eureka moment after waking up about 4 hours later.
Ebony went about his daily routine as per usual but with a brand err... old sword. There wasn¡¯t any rust on it, even if bronze was more resistant to corrosion or rusting, the sword shouldn¡¯t be that old right?
He didn¡¯t know jackshit about sword maintenance but he could still give this baby a good wipe down.
It was a very web or light novel event to happen but he obviously didn¡¯t find some legendary weapon in some small village¡¯s dusty warehouse. If anything it would be the weapon stuck in the maple tree.
Ebony didn¡¯t know what rarity the colour red was for so it could only mean rarer than Rare.
The morning was uneventful as always but Roya came to look for Ebony when it was his turning frostsilk cotton into frostsilk threads time. He had long known he was baited, he was in no way a help to her frostsilk blanket bullshit. Now he was mentally questioning if Roya even needed help or if she was even pregnant or not.
Making a few short threads used up his entire mana pool, after all this time he only had a bowl full of threads.
He had read up on the tailoring books and theoretically knew how to make quite a few things. He just hasn''t tried his hand at it.
There were no needles, no machines, no equipment in the house. Roya¡¯s only tool was her mana and her skills. Ebony had no way to reasonably start making anything at all.
¡°Ebony, I presume you¡¯re about to pick a Class soon with your skill levels rising again after the rite. You should be coming close to your desired Class. Ah don¡¯t rush to pick the Class if you haven¡¯t gotten a conditioning type skill okay, every strong fighter would have at least 1 no matter how weak it seems at first.¡±
¡°...I¡¯m not sure about whether I am close to my desired Class. And yes, I am still trying to get the conditioning type skill.¡±
¡°That¡¯s good but what do you mean? You have been working on a specific skill set haven¡¯t you?¡±
¡°Yes, but I feel like I¡¯m missing something.¡±
Roya laughed but quickly tried to hide it. ¡°That¡¯s good. Many humans tend to rush, I guess many tend to rush and not just humans. Getting a Class allows one to quickly gain strength, skills and much more. Choosing a Class is a very important decision as it is irreversible and decides your future path. It is good to take your time to decide wisely and go with what you feel speaks to you more.¡±
¡°Irreversible. I know. As with many decisions in life. You were looking for me?¡±
¡°Yes, you know that you have an unnaturally large mana pool don¡¯t you? Seeing your talent with ice magic that¡¯s even higher than some Frost Elves together with your features truly makes me wonder if you are a half. Never mind, I was trying to suggest some things to you.¡±
¡°Such as?¡±
¡°You¡¯ve read the book Foundations of Classes, Sub-Classes, Profession, Skills and Stats. I wanted to suggest a Profession that I think you should go for or at least consider. Want to make a guess? It''s one of the examples in the book.¡±
¡°...Mana Meister.¡±
¡°That¡¯s right! You¡¯re really sharp as always.¡±
¡°It caught my eye but the requirements for the Profession weren''t written.¡±
¡°Mana Meister is one of the most famous Professions or Sub-Classes for mages or any crafters that rely heavily on mana after all. With your already large mana pool and talent for magic, ice magic at least, Mana Meister would go extremely well with your Class as long as you pick a magic focused Class. It¡¯s obvious that you plan to be combat focused so I would not recommend picking Mana Meister as your Sub-Class but rather to take a magic type Sub-Class. It will further improve the value of being a Mana Meister.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°The requirements for Mana Meister aren¡¯t a secret. Despite knowing the requirements and benefits of the Class, the number of humans who have it are few and far between. Popular amongst Elves and Foxmens but even so, uncommon.¡± Roya said.
¡®Is she going to tell me the requirements or not?¡¯ Ebony secretly thought.
¡°Are you a Mana Meister?¡± Ebony knew Roya was a Tailor and a Chef, perhaps her Sub-Class was Mana Meister.
¡°No, I did aim to be one and got the skills required too but the skills got placed into my Class so I could no longer meet the requirement to be one. Having the same Class as another doesn¡¯t mean you have the same skills and vice versa after all.¡±
¡®So her Class is Master Mana Tailor, Profession is Chef. I don¡¯t know her Sub-Class but I¡¯m gonna bet it¡¯s a crafting type to enhance her craft in some way.¡¯
¡°So what are the required skills? Elves and foxmen, known for their talent for magic hence, mana, have difficulty getting it. If it¡¯s as popular as you say but few have obtained it I can only imagine it¡¯s not easy to get.¡±
¡°2 mana manipulation type skills. There is no handicapped apprentice version for Mana Meister so you¡¯ll have to get them to lvl 25. Mana Weaving is considered a mana manipulation skill so you just need one more. For someone like you with a large mana pool there is no better supportive skill than Mana Compression.¡±
¡°Tha...¡±
¡°There is no need for thanks between us. You should try to get the skill before choosing your Class so that it can benefit from the Class''s Evolutionary Potential. It is also the reason why it is uncommon for us to have it, after getting a magic type class, there is a chance such mana manipulation skills go under class skills. Like me.¡± Roya said and high fived or tetted Ebony. No longer the five finger touch, meaning he was treated as a close friend.
¡°...¡±
¡°Do you know where our unit for length or distance, ger, came from?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°If ambient mana is formed into a sphere or orb, 1 point of mana will be exactly 1 ger in diameter. Though you won¡¯t be able to see mana you should be able to feel it. Try forming one now but, with your own mana. Not within your body.¡± What Roya said was only true for the unclassed and if they didn¡¯t manipulate its density somehow.
Ebony raised his hands, palms facing up, he tried to move exactly 1 point of mana to form a sphere. It was pretty easy, he had already played around with his mana enough to control it to this degree with ease.
He could feel a small invisible to the eye, ball atop his palm. Without a ruler Ebony could only estimate but it seemed larger than 5cm in diameter.
¡°Wow. Effortlessly.¡± Roya whispered. ¡°You are a born mage. Mana is not much different from any other matter in its current state; it has similar properties to gas or air. Now try to compress that sphere of mana, keep it at 1 point of mana and don¡¯t add any more mana to it.¡±
Ebony was about to try but how was he supposed to compress it?
He shrugged, obviously with mental hands. He tried to apply pressure evenly across the surface of the sphere to compress it. He was faced with resistance from his own mana for the first time.
The resistance was strong, like it was trying to tell Ebony how much it doesn¡¯t want to be made smaller. Despite the strong resistance Ebony felt like it budged and buckled under his mentally applied force.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mana Compression learned¡¯
Mana Compression - Compressing mana to increase its density. Mana is compressed by 1.0% per level.
Roya seemed to notice Ebony¡¯s pause and asked, ¡°You got Lesser Mana Compression already? That was fast!¡±
¡°No, I got Mana Compression.¡±
¡°...Really?¡± Roya asked in disbelief.
¡°Really. It''s a good thing right?¡±
¡°O..of course, it''s more than just good. I was worried Class Evolutionary Potential wasn¡¯t going to be enough to evolve Lesser Mana Compression to Mana Compression but who was I kidding¡¡± Roya spoke very softly. Compressing mana shouldn¡¯t be that easy of a feat, Ebony guessed.
¡°You just have to train both Mana Weaving and Mana Compression to lvl 25 and you should be able to pick it either as a Sub-Class or Profession after you get your Class. There¡¯s one thing about Mana Compression that the skill doesn¡¯t tell you and it¡¯s that mana density is directly proportional to the power of the spells you used with compressed mana. Compressing mana by a single percent increases the effect of Intelligence by a single percent. The catch is that the amount of mana used for any magic is increased directly proportionally as well.¡±
¡°Why? If a spell used 50 mana and I were to compress all 50 mana by 1% the power of the spell would increase by 1%. The mana is compressed but it is still essentially 50 points of mana isn¡¯t it?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Good question. The best answer I can give you is that spells or magic uses mana as a volume and not its density. Using the same example, compressing 50 points of mana by 1% will leave you with 49.5 points of mana not 50. So unlike this exercise you¡¯ll have to put in more mana rather than keeping it at the same amount of mana. Once you get comfortable at compressing mana you should try finding out for yourself.¡± Roya explained.
¡°I see. Thank you, I have learnt much.¡±
¡°Haaa. You¡¯re welcome. Just remember that everything boils down to mana.¡± Roya sighed and left the room.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Ebony had no idea why she sighed, was it because he thanked her again after she said not to, or was it because she was still shocked that he got the tier 1 version of the skill and not the untiered ¡®lesser¡¯ version.
Everything boils down to mana.
Ebony heard Roya saying this multiple times; it had a pretty literal meaning in this world.
Everything had mana.
If there was air there was air mana, water had water mana, earth had earth mana and fire had fire mana. If there''s light there¡¯s light mana, take light mana away and you would have dark mana, take that away too and there would still be space mana and all sorts of other natural mana, time, gravity and any other nonsense. Take every type of mana you can think of away from that and you would still be left with void and void mana.
Hearing this phrase again scratched his mental itch even harder of whatever he¡¯s forgetting.
¡®Hot damn. This is annoying. What am I missing? Something about mana in some way?¡¯
Pushing the thought aside again, he continued weaving cotton into threads.
He was going to train Mana Compression during the time he trains ice and enhancement magic. They already reached the required level and reached their limit already.
It took him 3 days to level Ice Mana Manipulation by 1 lvl based on what he read the normal curve for levelling time after reaching the limit increased exponentially.
The next level might take a week, then the next a month, a year, a decade, more or even never. Seeing he had no chance at getting them to lvl 50 he might as well spend his mana elsewhere.
Besides, Mana Compression was so efficient to train, he only had to use a single mana and even though he can¡¯t collect back the mana, which he tried before, the cost was low.
The 16th hour soon came so Ebony made his way to his usual spot for his physical training. The reason for keeping up the training routine so hard was for a conditioning type skill. Ebony was glad he found out about this type of skill. The difference between combat Classers who have it and those that don¡¯t would gulf over time with and without this skill.
Strength Conditioning (Passive) - Strengthening your body through deliberate taxation of the body increasing Strength by 0.01% per level.
Endurance Conditioning (Passive) - Strengthening your body through deliberate taxation of the body increasing Endurance by 0.01% per level.
Constitution Conditioning (Passive) - Strengthening your body through deliberate taxation of the body increasing Constitution by 0.01% per level.
Agility Conditioning (Passive) - Strengthening your body through deliberate taxation of the body increasing Agility by 0.01% per level.
Intelligence Conditioning (Passive) - Strengthening your mind through deliberate taxation of the mind increasing Intelligence by 0.01% per level.
These were the most common ones and how to get them was quite literal. If he lifted weights over and over he should be able to get Strength Conditioning. Wisdom and Perception Conditioning wasn¡¯t in the book but it should exist too. The question was what kind of training one needs to do to be considered taxation of Wisdom or Perception.
The reason people go to academies or benefits of joining the army was mostly for their tried and true training that could give these conditioning type skills. Of course, they had better skills, the best type of training regimes give a conditioning skill that increases multiple stats after all.
The percentage might seem very small and it was very small but this wasn¡¯t a world with only skills but also skill levels. It¡¯ll stack soon enough. It is the agreed the most common but hardest type of skill to obtain and level due to the raw amount of time and effort needed.
There were no known Classes associated with these skills due to how hard it was to level them and there wasn¡¯t an apprentice version either for those that left their Sub-Class or Professions blank till their conditioning skill hit lvl 10.
Not bothered that he hadn''t gotten any one of them since he was aiming to get a combined one anyway, Ebony continued training.
He had to get used to his new weapon anyway. It felt really good to swing, faster, smoother and more accurate than he was with the leaf blade.
Though not fully accustomed to it after a mere 3 hours it was pretty good already.
The biggest problem was sheathing the damn unreasonably long sword. With its length it was impractical to hang by his hip so he refitted his old ice belt buckle to hang the scabbard on his back. But the thing wasn¡¯t designed to sheath that way. With the handle being 40cm the blade itself was 1.35m. He couldn¡¯t figure out how to sheath it smoothly.
He tried just carrying the scabbard in his left hand but it got in the way and kept him off balance.
His mana has regenerated to over 90 near the end of the 4 hours that he trains, so he was about to use Icebody Enhancement for his magic enhanced physical training, the last portion. Ebony jerked as he stopped himself from casting Icebody Enhancement.
¡°Hot freaking damn. How the heck did I forget that?¡± Ebony whispered monotonously to himself.
He placed it in the corner of his mind since he didn¡¯t know what Class Evolution was before but Gen mentioned the ice mage who got the Ice Crystal Physique, Allumi had her physique trigger a Class Evolution. That translates to having her physique as a Class requirement.
Ebony saw no reason why his physique wouldn¡¯t count either so he was still missing something else. When he was about to use Icebody Enhancement to circulate ice mana, it just clicked into place. His mana, his body being partially made of mana, his physique, a gift.
Frostblaze Physique. Frostblaze Physique. Frostblaze Physique. Frostblaze Physique. Frostblaze Physique.
¡®Frostblaze¡can I do that too?¡¯
Ebony was familiar with what it was. He didn¡¯t just burn in it for 3 days, he took it and smeared it into every inch of his body inside out. It even changed his hair colour which he wasn¡¯t pleased about when he found out. Knowing what it was and being able to do it was 2 different things altogether.
It should be considered as ice magic, the Frostblaze Amur Maple uses ice elemental mana and spontaneously combust it into flames of frost. He was also able to manipulate it with Ice Mana Manipulation.
How do you combust mana?
Ebony was in the middle of his training and since he didn¡¯t know where to begin he finished up his training first. No surprise, he didn¡¯t gain any skill levels or the conditioning skill.
He washed up and had dinner with the Thoya family, undisrupted by his sudden awareness of what he had, what he wanted.
He picked a random book to read in the study, Clovis did his own studying after dinner. Same as usual. Time flew and Clovis¡¯s bed time came, Ebony returned to his room as well.
His mana was topped off again.
However, he didn¡¯t get anxious. He trained Mana Compression. Forming an orb above his palms he thought ¡®Why should I do it one at a time?¡¯ as he formed another 3 orbs reaching his limit at 4.
Starting to compress them his focus was too spread out so he dispersed one of them. At 3, it was unstable and he couldn¡¯t compress it evenly throughout the 3 orbs so he settled for 2 and it was perfect.
As always, Ebony was meditating while he was compressing his mana.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mana Compression level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mana Compression level up 2 ¡ú 3¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mana Compression level up 3 ¡ú 4¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mana Compression level up 4 ¡ú 5¡¯
The skill levelled quickly at its low level but the internal pressure pushing back against his mental hands seemed to increase by more than 1% per for every percent he compresses it so it was getting much harder to compress. Dispersing one of the orbs he continued pushing through. Mana Compression reached lvl 6 before Ebony could no longer hold the compressed mana up together and it burst apart, dispersing.
¡®Hmm? Hahaha that must be a sign for me.¡¯ No one would have been able to tell that Ebony was laughing in his head by looking at his face.
Ebony meditated a little before raising his palms again, he conjured a sphere of ice taking 15 mana to make one the same size of the pure mana sphere. Then nothing, he stared at the sphere of ice and nothing seemed to be happening.
Ebony obviously knew that compressing it wouldn¡¯t make it combust into flames and that wasn¡¯t what he was doing. He was recalling his 3 day freezing bath more specifically the way ice mana ¡®combusted¡¯. Trying to do the opposite of compression and expanding the ice sphere instead.
He failed or succeeded after 5 or so minutes when the sphere of ice broke into hundreds of tiny ice shards. There was hardly any force behind it so he didn¡¯t get hurt or break anything. Seeing the result he knew he was going at this from the wrong angle. Even if he put more mental force doing that it would at best increase the strength of the exploding sphere of ice.
The keyword was combustion not expansion. Ebony knew how it worked. He manipulated it before with Ice Mana Manipulation. He just needed to recreate it.
Recalling the sight of burning trees, the burning cold through his very bones, organs and nerves.
Combustion was a high temperature chemical reaction, obviously not true for ice mana. The tree spontaneously combust ice mana which means they self-heat or perhaps self-cool in this case.
This time he used just a single point of mana to turn to ice. It was a small shard that looked like it could melt any time.
Ebony visualised the flames, then down to the mana and for some reason imagined them as molecules. He started shaking it up, to move it, to excite it. Nothing worked.
Everything boils down to mana.
¡®It''s getting late. Forget it, I''ll try again tomorrow after another try.¡¯ Ebony thought. Seeing his mana pool at half he pooled them all together and couldn¡¯t help but thinking ¡®might as well just boil all of this. He mentally pushed inside the mana hoping it would add bubbles and ¡®boil¡¯ the thing.
It surprisingly worked. A little too well perhaps.
The ice mana really ¡®boiled¡¯, there was no change from what he can see from the larger sphere of ice but his sense tells him otherwise. He kept forcing pressure into every point of ice mana, he began to feel it reach a tipping point as the mana vibrated uncontrollably.
He gave one final push as if he was pushing off the ground one last time after hundreds of push ups.
His face was met with a familiar blue flame for a fraction of a second as he felt all the mana in his control burn up so quickly he didn¡¯t notice until it was all gone. He heard the sweet sweet bell of a notification but it wasn¡¯t the time to look at it. Why?
His face was frozen in a thin layer of ice and he couldn¡¯t breathe.
Thankfully, he managed to claw it off his face without any damage and it only felt like a cool drink¡¯s temperature at best.
One good thing about being weak was the inability to hurt oneself. Though the thought itself was pretty hurtful. Coming back to the important things.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Requirements: Tempering your body into one of the Frostblaze Physique and stepping on the path of the blazing frost. Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 50, Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25, Any Ice Enhancement Magic Lvl 25, Treading Step Lvl 25 & Any type of Sword Mastery Lvl 10
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Chosen Class will be bound to you and can never be changed. Choose ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze¡¯ as your Class?¡¯
¡®Oooh I am oh so close.¡¯
Chapter 15: Class
Two days later.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mana Compression level up 5 ¡ú 8¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Ice Mana Manipulation level up 28 ¡ú 29¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mental Arithmetic level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Dish Washing level up 3 ¡ú 4¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Physical Conditioning learned¡¯
Physical Conditioning (Passive) - Strengthening your body through deliberate taxation of the body increasing Endurance, Constitution and Agility by 0.01% per level.
¡®Mum¡ You liar. There¡¯s no way this is normal training for a child that hardly learnt to walk¡¡¯
Missing just Strength stat for all the physical stats, not including Perception.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery level up 23 ¡ú 24¡¯
¡®Almost there.¡¯
Three days later.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mana Compression level up 8 ¡ú 10¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Ice Mana Manipulation level up 29 ¡ú 30¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Icebody Enhancement level up 25 ¡ú 26¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Kicking Mastery level up 26 ¡ú 27¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Mana Weaving level up 14 ¡ú 16¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Magical Conditioning learned¡¯
Magical Conditioning (Passive) - Deliberate taxation of mana of increasing number of cast and speed of gathering mana. Increasing ability to multicast and casting speed by 0.01% per level.
¡®Hot damn. Too bad there¡¯s no stat buff but I¡¯ll take it.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery level up 24 ¡ú 25¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Requirements: Tempering your body into one of the Frostblaze Physique and stepping on the path of the blazing frost. Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 50, Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25, Any Ice Enhancement Magic Lvl 25, Treading Step Lvl 25 & Any type of Sword Mastery Lvl 25
¡®Finally, I really doubt any other skill will hit 50 in a reasonable time frame or whether it¡¯ll ever reach 50. This is it.¡¯ was what Ebony thought, but he didn¡¯t stop his training for it continued his routine as if nothing happened. Peaceful days.
Ebony knew it wouldn¡¯t last, he was all good for peaceful days but there¡¯s a whole new world to explore. Battles to fight, monsters to hunt, skills to learn, levels to gain, people to meet.
Ice Mana Manipulation started levelling again after he started to combust it but his entire mana pool could not even maintain a flame for a single second. He had been doing all kinds of mental calculations to see if it was worth waiting and training, gaining a level in Mental Arithmetic 3 days ago.
It was evening and almost time for dinner again. Ebony walked out of the bath hearing Clovis shouting, it was nothing new but the content of his shout certainly was.
¡°MOTHER! FATHER! I GOT IT! I GOT KNOWLEDGE CONNECTION TO LEVEL 25!¡± the excitable child exclaimed.
His excitement and happiness were returned with the same from his parents. Ebony himself would be shocked if he noticed the extremely small curl and hint of smile on his face. His facial muscles weren¡¯t dead after all!
Roya was cooking up an extra dish and seemed to be cooking more than usual. A lot more. It was either a tradition to eat up and stock up on sustenance before getting a Class or Class Evolution or there was an actual reason behind it. It was also recommended to be full on all resources, HP, SP and MP.
No backed reason for whether it affects the process but Ebony wasn¡¯t going to risk it. He¡¯ll be in peak condition as always when he is going through the process. He was already fully healed by now and his HP was back to 60.
¡°I am going to get my Class tonight as well.¡± Ebony stated when things quietened down as if it was the most natural thing.
They showed the same amount of joy and excitement with the news and Clovis looked like he was going to pop. Frost elves. No, Thoya family. Warm people, a nice home.
Ebony made it a goal, if there¡¯s one thing he won¡¯t learn from his parents it would be to leave his child when after he turned 15, putting him through their ¡®Trial¡¯ and the yearly messages dwindled to no contact for the past few years. He shivered remembering the ¡®Trial¡¯.
Ebony was so stuffed after the meal, he could feel food at the back of his throat. He took a walk with Clovis, not doing any training at all this time. To keep their resources full for the long awaited time. Except stamina but that¡¯ll recover quickly anyway.
For the first time, Clovis didn¡¯t say anything for record breaking time. Outside of the time he¡¯s reading of course.
For the first time, Ebony was the one to break the silence. Saying whatever came to mind.
¡°Clovis, wanna see who wakes up first? The first to wake losses.¡±
¡°Okay! If I win¡ if I win you owe me any 1 book that I don¡¯t already have.¡± Clovis didn¡¯t sound cheerful for once, aware that Ebony wasn¡¯t going to stay here forever.
¡°Sure, if I win you will tell your parents that you want to travel to the Imperial Capital when you grow old enough and that you dream to be the Royal Librarian.¡± Ebony remembered the apparent secret that he was keeping from Roya and Halvis. He was more surprised that Clovis could even keep a secret
¡°Wha. No no no. I¡¡±
¡°Clovis, be more confident. Not just in yourself but your parents, I¡¯m sure they¡¯ll listen to what you have to say. You¡®re doing well for now but you¡¯re limiting yourself as a scholar when you have mostly finished with your study¡¯s pool of knowledge¡±
¡°...You¡¯re on! But if you lose you owe me 10 books instead, each a different subject.¡± Clovis quickly agreed. He knew the limits of what he could achieve as a scholar in a small village like Arcta.
¡°Deal.¡± Ebony was confident as he always was.
Classing would put one in a sleeping or comatose state. It is not completely accurate but it was generally proven true that the longer one stayed in that state the greater the change that the body, mind and soul underwent.
Based on what he¡¯d learnt about it, this process is to allow one to acclimatise to the stats that one will be gaining as they level.
Not to adjust to the upper limits of their power but their lower limits. If someone had a 1000 points in strength they would easily kill and harm their own baby or child if they had one and couldn¡¯t control their strength to an extremely low output.
Knowledge was power.
Ebony thought back to all the light novels he¡¯d read. Why did the protagonists¡¯ always have to suffer some kind of extremely unlucky, bad painful start before they can grow stronger. ¡®Wait. Was my beginning here considered unlucky or painful in any way? Nah no way.¡¯
Ebony couldn¡¯t have been any luckier, so lucky it was a little unbelievable. If he didn¡¯t run from the first boar the direction that he did, nor the wolf and enter the Frostblaze Amur territory. If he didn¡¯t feel like further freezing himself and going deeper, he wouldn¡¯t have met Sei and the other turtles nor would he be forced fed a liquid that would turn him into a popsicle.
If he didn¡¯t learn how to manipulate ice mana before that he wouldn¡¯t have been able to learn Icebody Enhancement. Wouldn¡¯t have been brought to their home. Wouldn¡¯t have been given so much by Gen. Wouldn¡¯t know where the Frost Elves were. Wouldn¡¯t have met Clovis. Wouldn¡¯t have saved him. Wouldn¡¯t have been able to learn so much. Wouldn¡¯t have been able to be given so much by the Thoya family.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But Ebony wouldn¡¯t bet on it. His actions was what got him here, except being isekai¡¯ed out of nowhere. He was not given favour, he had taken from them.
Enough.
Clovis and Ebony returned directly to their rooms, not even going to the study for their nightly read.
Ebony sat down on the bed and did as he always does. Meditate. Not being full on MP wasn¡¯t the reason. Just simple meditation to keep his mind clear and unclouded.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Deep Persistent Meditation level up 51 ¡ú 52¡¯
¡®I guess that¡¯s my cue.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Requirements: Tempering your body into one of the Frostblaze Physique and stepping on the path of the blazing frost. Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 50, Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 25, Any Ice Enhancement Magic Lvl 25, Treading Step Lvl 25 & Any type of Sword Mastery Lvl 25
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Chosen Class will be bound to you and can never be changed. Choose ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze¡¯ as your Class?¡¯
Ebony lay down on the bed comfortably. Unbothered, unhurried. Calmly.
¡°Yes.¡±
???
Ebony hardly ever dreamed, almost completely never.
Every time he sleeps, it is a complete blank in his head till he wakes up as if he never went to sleep. He slowly began to be unable to feel the difference between sleep and meditation.
Closing his eyes and opening them to find the hours passed.
This time was not so different in that he didn¡¯t dream and he woke up not knowing the time. It was bright out though, so he at least took the whole night for the process.
Everything else was different.
He felt as if the space in his head widened so much that he felt like he was floating. It felt almost imaginary and suddenly felt so natural as if it was always that way.
He stood up feeling his legs go a little numb, spreading through his body though weaker than how his legs felt. It quickly went away too and he tried moving his body a little feeling the changes in them.
It was intoxicating. Is this the feeling of evolution? He could get addicted to this.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze Fortification Completed.¡±
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class changed to Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze¡¯
¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze Fortification:
Base Mana and Stamina regeneration increased by 250%
Mana efficiency with Ice Magic increased by 100%
Mana efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic increased by 100%
Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword with one hand increase by 100%
Movement speed increased by 100%
1 Core Skill Slot gained
Generic Skills Converted to Class Skills:
Deep Persistent Meditation
Treading Step
Ice Mana Manipulation
Icebody Enhancement
Stolen novel; please report.
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery
Stemmed Class Skills:
Frost Coating - Coating an object with ice elemental mana to deal ice elemental damage or increase ice elemental resistance. Coating has the effect of 20% + 1.0% Intelligence. Consumes 300 MP
Classification: Ice Magic
Ice spike - Conjure a spike of ice to fling, has the effect of 30% + 1.0% Intelligence. Consumes 30 MP/Spike.
Classification: Ice Magic
Two-handed Power Stab - Using 2 hands, footwork and one¡¯s full body weight to stab with all your power. Has the effect of 100% + 1.0% Strength.
Generic Skills Evolved:
Lesser Stealth evolved into Stealth
Stealth - Moving silently out of sight, slightly increases the ability to move around lightly and unnoticed, reducing the sound of footsteps and presence by 1.0% per level.¡¯
Stemmed Generic Skills:
Peak Performance - Ability to perform at your peak regardless of stamina levels, body or mental conditions at all times improves by 1.0% per level.
¡®Hot damn¡am I mentally seeing things right?¡¯ Ebony thought.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Empty Skill Slot
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 0
Class Skills:
Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 52
Treading Step Lvl 29
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 30
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 26
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery Lvl 25
Frost Coating Lvl 1
Ice Spike Lvl 1
Two-handed Power Stab Lvl 1
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: N/A
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 6
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 26
Running Lvl 26
Humming Lvl 18
Mental Mapping Lvl 2
Kicking Mastery Lvl 27
Mana Weaving Lvl 16
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 5
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 2
Dish Washing Lvl 4
Mana Compression Lvl 10
Physical Conditioning Lvl 1
Magical Conditioning Lvl 1
Peak Performance Lvl 1
Health: 37/60
Stamina: 38/60
Mana: 4/100
Strength: 5
Vitality: 6
Constitution: 9
Endurance: 6
Agility: 7
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 10
Perception: 7
There was a lot of change in his status.
First was the Core Skill slot, placed even above Class. Any skill can be chosen to be ones¡¯ Core Skill. It will bind it to one¡¯s soul and the natural potential of the skill will increase almost explosively. Usually the best or most talented skill of a person is chosen.
His Class and Class skill was next. The first 5 skills were his old skills so nothing new there except that they should now be able to level at ¡®normal¡¯ speeds again. Once again due to natural potential. The next 3 were new skills. Stemmed from his actions or so they say, so they believed.
Frost Coating should be from when he tried to cover or inject ice mana into his swings when he trained with Sei and Ton. He only ended up coating the leaf in ice.
Ice Spike should be from his training of forming needles, shards of ice not too different from the shape of the mana ores and mentally tossing them. It was just too weak and he was a little too slow in forming them to use in battle.
Two-handed Power Stab should be from when he stabbed the boar up his. And also his normal training of course. He had to try if it would count the Single-handed Greatsword Mastery decrease in 30% Strength. As obvious as it sounded that it shouldn¡¯t, he still had to test it himself.
7 Empty Class Skill slots, a total of 15. No issues there. Sub-Class and Profession stayed unchanged. Generic Skills evolution wise, a little disappointing. Only Lesser Stealth, which Ebony hardly relies on, evolved. Probably also due to it being untiered and them having a good chance to evolve during Classing.
Ebony liked the stemmed generic skill even more than the 3 new Class skills. Peak Performance, true to its name. When stamina drops, the body gets tired, breathing and heart rate accelerates. The mind gets tired too as both mana and stamina drops, usage of magic worsens it. Ebony was trained to move his body with muscle ache, body and mental fatigue in mind so he was doing this pretty well already. The skill only serves to heighten his ability, as with all skills.
The rest was the same old same old.
His resources moved down together with his stats. Unchanged stats but to think he actually lost health, stamina and mana. No wonder it was recommended to be full. His stamina probably dropped much further; it just recovered too quickly.
Finally, the most obvious boon of Classing. Not shown on his status but it came up in a thought after focusing on his Class.
¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze Fortification:
Base Mana and Stamina regeneration increased by 250%
Mana efficiency with Ice Magic increased by 100%
Mana efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic increased by 100%
Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword with one hand increase by 100%
Movement speed increased by 100%¡¯
A good chance for Ebony. He stared at his 3 resources, Deep Persistent Meditation running as usual. This time with his watch ready and Mental Arithmetic ready.
A minute. His stamina was actually already almost full before the minute started.
Two minutes.
Five minutes.
Ten Minutes
One hour.
Two hours. All of them were full for awhile now but Ebony didn''t even twitch a single muscle. Unmoving, calculations were running in his head at full speed. He did notice he was much faster at calculating, perhaps it was just his imagination or due to the Classing somehow. Or he was just overwhelmed by his own calculations.
Whew. Ebony breathed out. ¡®This is insane.¡¯
Firstly, he didn¡¯t get 5 kinds of bonuses, he got 6. Mana and stamina regeneration was a 2-in-1. Thanks to meditation type skills. Base regeneration. Stamina recovers at 10% per minute and mana 10% per hour. It was the same for most races as unclassed. Of course, Ebony wouldn¡¯t be the only one to increase it in his Classing. At least, he shouldn¡¯t be.
After waiting it out, he was sure it was now 35% per minute and 35% per hour respectively for stamina and mana. At this moment, Ebony understood how completely broken Deep Persistent Meditation was.
Deep Persistent Meditation - Maintaining a state of mind of intense serenity, calmness and clarity every waking moment increasing Mana and Stamina regeneration rate by 2.5% [130%] per level. Slightly increased perception when in the state of Mediation. Increased pain resistance.
Using his past formula that still holds true, he has a 2.3 times multiplier to that. Stamina was (6/min x 3.5 = 21/min) x 2.3 = 48.3 stamina per minute. Topped up in less than 2 minutes. For mana, (10/hour x 3.5 = 35/hour) x 2.3 = 80.5 mana per hour or 1.342 MP/min.
As if not enough, a quarter of 80.5 was 20.125. His health recovers at 20.125 + 0.6 = 20.725 per hour. He just had to find out how it affected his ability to heal from broken bones or other internal damage. He also bled mana so he had to watch out for that.
Gen¡¯s surprise at his skill was not unwarranted. It wasn¡¯t just about his recovery speed, it was about how it was almost always running. His talk about mana applied to stamina too, like how running, jumping or exercise in general causes stamina to drop or be consumed. You couldn¡¯t recover stamina while running after all, but, what if you were walking or if the exertion of energy was not enough to cause stamina to drop. Output < input.
Casting magic requires one to manipulate their mana and mental muscles which causes one to stop recovering mana in a sense not so different from stamina. Deep Persistent Meditation circumvented this, directly letting Ebony regenerate stamina and mana whether he was fighting, running or casting magic.
Ebony felt his stomach grumble loudly, seems like stuffing himself was the right move after all.
He left the room to look for anyone to find out how long he was out cold.
Taking a frost plum from the basket on the dining table and digging right into it. He walked around, Clovis wasn¡¯t in his room. Ebony won. He didn¡¯t doubt that he would have won anyway. He checked the study but he wasn¡¯t there either. Playground perhaps?
Taking another 2 more frost plums as he passed the dining table. Walking out to see all of the Thoya family members out in the field. The adults watching Clovis with his eyes closed and hands placed in front of him, Ebony could tell that he was casting Ice Vines.
This time, Ebony could feel the so-called phantom pressure on his body, overflowing Vitality from both Roya and Halvis. It was as if someone was trying to push him into the ground making his body feel slightly heavier.
The feeling was extremely faint either due to his weak ability to perceive it or them having lower Vitality then their level suggest. They weren¡¯t warriors after all. People usually didn¡¯t have to worry about overflowing Wisdom since most would have a myriad bracelet and mana ore absorbing the excess.
Roya and Halvis already noticed Ebony walking out and the look of joy wouldn¡¯t have escaped anyone''s eyes. All of them watched on as vines a metre wide in diameter formed in front of Clovis. He was much faster than he used to be and the range or rather, the size of the vines increased a lot.
[Scholar Lvl 4]
¡®What? Already?¡¯ Ebony knew Identify doesn¡¯t inform him of the full Class. Roya was a Master Mana Tailor and Halvis was a Master Frostsilk Cotton Crofter. Similarly, Clovis shouldn''t just be a simple Scholar. He was more surprised Clovis already reached level 4.
Clovis opened his eyes triumphantly, seeing Ebony standing there his smile widened instead of getting sad over his loss.
¡°How long was I out?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help asking after seeing Clovis¡¯s level.
¡°Clovis woke up around the 18th hour yesterday. It''s already the 12th hour today. You were out for one and a half days. Unbelievable.¡± Halvis answered his query with a little disbelief at the end.
As for what he meant by ''unbelievable'' only he knew.
Ebony was a little surprised by it too. Apprentice Classes average out at 6-8 hours of coma. Normal classes with 3 skill requirements take about 15 hours. They went to Classing at around the 21st hour, a little later for Ebony since he meditated. Clovis took roughly 25 hours. Ebony counted from the 22nd hour, a full day would be 28 hours + 6 hours till midnight + 12 hours till the current time. 46 hours. He was out cold.
¡°I won, Clovis. Don¡¯t forget okay. It doesn¡¯t have to be any time soon.¡±
¡°...Oh¡th..that¡¯s right. I won¡¯t forget.¡± Clovis was hit with realisation and got dejected quickly before showing a more determined look. It raised a few eyebrows but they didn¡¯t ask.
¡°Alright. Let¡¯s go back in, it¡¯s really hot out here. I¡¯ll make something for you real quick Ebony. You must be starving.¡± Roya cheered with complaints as she clapped her hands together. Their definition of ''hot'' was obviously a little different, water would probably freeze if left out here for long enough.
Halvis went towards his croft after clasping hands with Roya. Considered an intimate act here and not to be done in public. Couples lock elbows in public instead. Bamboozling Ebony more than he thought possible when he first found out. How was that less than hand holding?
Though he was informed that the first few levels were easy to gain he didn¡¯t think Clovis would have reached level 4 in a few hours. Without going out to fight. Oh wait. He¡¯s a freaking scholar, he would gain more from studying.
¡°Roya, from today I¡¯ll hunt for food for us. I have not been contributing for long enough.¡± Ebony stated. It was not much but he had to start giving back some day. Why not start now, as little as it was.
¡°What! No no. You don¡¯t have to, you know we are not lacking in mana ores. It¡¯s dangerous outside and you only just got a Class. We don¡¯t need you to pay us back anything, we are the ones indebted to you.¡± Roya seemed more anxious about Ebony¡¯s decision than her cooking as she dropped her ladle.
¡°No. You guys have done more for me than I can ever for you. Besides, I have to start somewhere. The merchant from Plainston would be coming in a few weeks, I would be travelling then and will have to rely on my own strength to protect myself. I would have gone out of Arcta to hunt anyways, bringing back food on the table is only natural.¡± Ebony explained, stunning Roya silent for a while seemingly in deep thought.
¡°...¡±
¡°I won¡¯t go too far. I am already aware of the surrounding areas and their danger levels. Even young frost Elves, village guards to be, go out to hunt. I¡¯ll be fine.¡± Ebony continued, considering her silence. Besides, with Ebony''s feet and speed everywhere that he could reach and get back to Arcta on the same day was not really dangerous. Even if Ebony''s movement speed was 10 times faster.
¡°They go out in teams, with at least one guard off duty to accompany them.¡± Roya fought back insistently.
¡°I¡¯ll learn tracking from Clovis. I want to go alone, the only one I can depend on to protect myself is ultimately me myself.¡± Ebony planned to learn tracking from Clovis for quite some time, it was an important skill to track animals and monsters. Not just to hunt them down but also to hide from risks that one is not ready for, the second part not persuading Ebony himself. He wouldn¡¯t back down on going out. Alone.
¡°...¡± Roya stopped with her objections and the conversation just ended after she told Ebony not to go out of the village for today at least. Ebony had no qualms with that.
He ate well.
This time of the day was usually the lecture with Clovis then self studying but seeing how focused Clovis was he didn¡¯t want to disturb him. Probably had new skills and more levels and skill levels to gain so Ebony just continued with the book he was on about the various types of plants Elcra had. He wanted to know what was edible and what wasn¡¯t for his travels. He was in no rush to test his new body and skills and kept to his routine.
The differences between Earth and Elcra were not too large in many aspects. The vegetables and animals that exist on Earth have many that exist here too. Elcra had a bigger variety though, the same could be said for elements, materials or metals.
He got to his thread making session again after reading but not completing the thick book. He managed to make quite some more threads than before and gained a level in Mana Weaving. Still not trying to make anything with it.
Once emptied, he went on to the tailoring books and did mental imagery for tailoring.
The 16th hour came and it was time to train again.
Chapter 16: Levelling
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Deep Persistent Meditation level up 52 ¡ú 53¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Treading Step level up 29 ¡ú 30¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Icebody Enhancement level up 26 ¡ú 27¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery level up 25 ¡ú 26¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Ice Spike level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Two-handed Power Stab level up 1 ¡ú 8¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Peak Performance level up 1 ¡ú 10¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level 0 ¡ú 1, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level 1 ¡ú 2, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®That was fun.¡¯ If he wasn¡¯t so limited by his mana he would have focused more on magic. With his stamina regeneration he didn¡¯t stop for a break the entire 4 hours, pushing Peak Performance through the roof.
He had stat points now but he hasn¡¯t spent any of them. He had more calculations to do.
Mana efficiency was so damn good.
100% increase in mana efficiency halved his cost for magic. Ice Spike said to cost 30 MP, only took 15.
He could only cast an incomplete Frost Coating since it cost 300 MP or 150 in his case. But he wondered how it worked, it said to coat an object but it wasn¡¯t like the size of said object was stated. Ebony didn''t try to practise it yet, with his small mana pool. With ice mana efficiency, he could make more ice with less mana.
Icebody Enhancement was quite the winner, it was classified as both Ice Magic and Body Enhancement Magic and Ebony found it to consume 12.5 MP/min which means it was halved once for both his 100% increase in mana efficiency for Ice Magic and Body Enhancement Magic.
With a full mana pool, he could keep the buff running for 8 minutes, more if you count his regeneration during this period of time.
Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword with one hand increase by 100%. This was a controversial topic between warriors and swordsmen. Warriors and martial artists.
This kind of buff was extremely dependent on the weapon you carry. Warriors are more generalized and the known buffs for them apply to many weapons or no weapon at all.
According to Halvis, there were many more warriors than swordsmen. If your weapon broke in a battle and you had no backup, that¡¯s it for swordsmen or weapon related Fortifications.
Ebony didn¡¯t think it was so bad that he didn¡¯t get those stat buff types like increasing Strength or Agility. He had always been a technique over pure power type anyway.
He was very satisfied with the buff he got. He didn¡¯t feel like he was going to trip by holding the heavy sword upright. Transitions between stabs, slashes and all his turning and twisting was a lot smoother and he felt less bad about his flawed swordsmanship.
Movement Speed was simple. Simply awesome.
He could control it pretty well after some time. Similar to his earlier tests with Running and Treading Step, it didn¡¯t raise his Agility and only movement. He could walk, run, jump and even crawl faster.
Twice as fast. And that¡¯s with Running active only. The Fortification said Movement Speed but Ebony believed ¡®base¡¯ movement speed was more accurate. He felt like he was stepping on air when he tried Treading Steps.
Treading Step (Passive) - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Treading Step allows one to travel through most terrains with more ease, slightly increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by 1.0% [30%] per level.
Using his old 7.407m/s calculations again, it doubled to 14.814m/s x (106/80) x (130/100) = 25.517m/s. Rounding down to 25.5 for easier calculations and most likely inconsistent speed. Of course, that was just when he was travelling, he might not be able to fight while Running and would just have Treading Steps active at roughly 19.26m/s.
Ebony sprained his ankle in his run, it seemed like it was possible for his skill level to exceed his body''s tolerance limit. He had to be careful of this and put points into Constitution to prevent his physical ability from hurting himself.
With Peak Performance and Deep Persistent Meditation, a sprain was no issue and he could still run as usual with a sprained ankle. Pain never bothered him anyway.
It was not easy to figure out, the Running skill specifically said ¡®Agility¡¯ while Treading Step separated that and increased movement speed.
Through his tests, Ebony decided that under Agility or any other stat, there are sub categories and movement speed was one under Agility and it was what increased by 100% by the Class Fortification. The numb feeling from his legs and body was likely due to these changes.
Ebony continued his mental calculations while in the bath. Gaining a level in Mental Arithmetic.
At the dinner table, Ebony noticed Halvis wasn¡¯t here. They started eating without him and he returned soon enough and joined them.
¡°You can go out and hunt after you learn Tracking from Clovis and hit lvl 10.¡± Halvis was the one who spoke up. Ebony didn¡¯t think they would be so against him going out. Roya didn¡¯t seem to be happy about it after all.
¡°Thank you for understanding.¡±
¡°Sure! We can start with the basic footprint identification and differentiation later.¡±
¡°Speaking of Identification, what do I Identify as?¡± The question seemed to spark interest. Seemed like none of them Identified Ebony yet. Or Appraise which Roya had, the tier 2 version of Identify.
¡°OH! I forgot to Identify you.¡± Clovis exclaimed.
¡°...¡±
¡°You Identify as a [Meditative Ice Swordsman]. That¡¯s cool, what¡¯s that I never heard of a meditative Class. Is it the Meditation skill? You have the Meditation skill!? And it even reached lvl 25? Can you teach me? I have tried before but the explanation for the skill is vague. Keeping your mind calm and clear? How do you think of nothing?¡± Clovis obviously didn¡¯t notice Ebony¡¯s mana regeneration speed.
¡°The first step is to not be so excited about each and everything. Meditation is not just about keeping your mind calm and clear but also your heart, or mental state would be more accurate. Undisturbed mind. Neither is it keeping your mind clear of thought, just to sieve out the white noise of life. The mental distractions. Quite the opposite, constant practice can allow one to be more focused, more aware, rather than a mind that is clear of thought. I think you won¡¯t be getting it any time soon, with how easily distracted you are. ¡± Ebony shot Clovis down. He was more intrigued by Roya¡¯s reaction. ¡®Could she see my actual Class name?¡¯ Ebony thought but Roya didn¡¯t reveal anything while they continued having a joyous dinner.
???
¡°Why?¡±
¡°He¡¯s not wrong. He won¡¯t be staying here forever, that was clear from the start. He needs to grow and get strong enough to protect himself.¡±
¡°What did the chief say? Didn¡¯t he say those bastards were looking for Ebony and would take any chances they have when Ebony leaves the village.¡±
¡°He was actually doubtful if there was anyone looking for Ebony anyway.¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°What are the odds a Classless can escape? Practically zero. Since releasing him is also not possible. Perhaps someone already found them, killed them and then released the mana slaves. A plausible reason for Ebony being so close to the village was someone was passing by, found their hideout destroyed but didn''t want to be bothered to take care of them. What are the odds Ebony knew where our village was if he doesn¡¯t have any memories? He was led here by someone.¡±
¡°That¡¯s all hypothetically speaking and why would Ebony be the only one if that was the case.¡±
¡°All our assumptions have been hypothetical so far. The truth is no one has tried coming after Ebony at all. Don¡¯t worry, the chief wouldn¡¯t take the risk either. He¡¯s sending Enya to follow Ebony in secret.¡±
¡°Hmmph! That¡¯s the least she should do for not taking care of the robe that I made.¡±
¡°So what did Appraisal tell you? I got [Meditative Ice Swordsman] as well.¡±
¡°...Same here. You know my Appraisal skill leans towards appraising tailored items.¡±
¡°Yeah but there are times you can Identify differently than us.¡±
¡°I was just worried the ¡®Meditative¡¯ will bring him trouble. I know there are others with it in the Empire but none are as young as him.¡±
¡°He¡¯ll be even safer in the Empire. Few would dare associating themselves with him, fearing trouble.¡±
¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m worried about. The poor boy won¡¯t be able to make friends or join a party easily.¡±
¡°Haha. That¡¯s where I disagree. I think he¡¯ll attract them like how my cotton attracts frost maggots.¡±
¡°What makes you think so?¡±
¡°He¡¯s too good.¡±
¡°?? You¡¯re not making any sense.¡±
¡°You haven¡¯t seen him train. Or fight.¡± Halvis felt a certain body part in his lower body tighten.
???
Just reading books wasn¡¯t enough to learn the Tracking skill so Clovis and Ebony were going to go out of the village the next day.
Only in the surroundings, still within sight of the village though. Safe enough that the 2 worrywarts aren¡¯t worried. There aren¡¯t even any monsters above lvl 5 in the area.
The night passed quickly.
4 levels were gained in Mana Compression, 1 in Mental Arithmetic. His speed of progress increased. He had been doing quite a lot of calculations and found that even his meditation was not active when he focused on calculations but it didn¡¯t stop him.
Why hadn¡¯t he stopped his calculations?
What in the world was Ebony calculating that caused him to level Mental Arithmetic twice already?
It was kinda obvious. What else could he be counting but stats and stat placement?
Ebony woke up at the 4th hour again and went about his conditioning as per usual.
The 6th hour came and this time Roya already made breakfast for today. Clovis and Ebony went out early, Ebony was going in the same set of clothes he did during the rite but without the leather armour as with Clovis.
They left after the repetitive warnings not to go too far by Roya.
Coincidentally the same 2 guards were at the gate. Ebony hasn¡¯t seen the guard that brought Clovis and him back again but he didn¡¯t ask either.
¡°Hey! Congratulations [Scholar] and¡ [Meditative Ice Swordsman]? A hybrid Class like us? You won¡¯t regret it!¡± one of them said.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Ebony didn¡¯t understand the reason for the particular comment but wasn¡¯t bothered by it. He wasn¡¯t regretting anything.
¡°Going out to test your new skills? Don¡¯t go too far out okay. We are the ones that have to go after you if you don¡¯t return in time.¡± the other guard asked, understanding everyone who just Classed was excited to go test their new skills.
¡°Thanks! We won¡¯t, we¡¯ll be back soon.¡± Clovis replied. Ebony just bowed a little.
He didn¡¯t bring the lousy back sling and was just carrying his sword with his left hand. They made their way to the foliage and Clovis began his lecture.
If Educate was a skill requirement for Clovis''s Class, Ebony was willing to bet he got a related buff to teaching.
He was talking less, explaining more. It didn¡¯t take long to find a few rabbit and fox tracks.
Ebony recognised many prints already but was still learning about how to track their stride, direction, weight and even their condition. Clovis let Ebony trace the tracks himself.
[Frostfang Rabbit Lvl 4]
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Tracking learned¡¯
Tracking - Identify traces left by animals, monsters and people and track them to their source. Ability to trace and track fresh tracks increase by 1.0% per level.
¡®That was easy. Clovis¡¯s skill likely helped accelerate the process, maybe he can be a teacher instead.¡¯
¡°I got the skill. We can go back now.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not going to kill it?¡±
¡°It isn¡¯t trying to kill me. It is still young and doesn''t have much meat on it. It is low level and hence little experience. I have no reason to kill it. I also promised not to hunt until I¡¯m lvl 10¡±
¡°Oh I see. That makes sense, leave it for a few days and if it survives it would be higher level, bigger with more meat and more valuable, either as food or experience. It also isn¡¯t a threat to us or the village.¡±
¡°That¡¯s right.¡±
???
Ebony did want the Tracking skill but it was not his point of focus. If he couldn¡¯t find a monster the monster will find him, if not then all''s well.
As for why he didn¡¯t kill the rabbit, all the points Clovis pointed out were right and was how he used to think about hunting. However, his main reason changed after his stimulation rite.
The fight would be too boring, he was not even satisfied with the lvl 15 boar. Sure, he could have died in that single kick received but he never really felt like his life was in danger throughout the short battle.
There was no thrill in killing for experience or food. Okay fine maybe there was, rabbit tasted pretty good and he hasn¡¯t tasted the feeling of adding stats after levelling.
The first 10 levels were extremely easy to gain, Clovis got to lvl 4 in hours after all.
Ebony estimated he needed 2 to 3 days to get to level 10. Since he needed to train his new skills and test how stats will affect his movements anyway, a 2-3 days delay was acceptable.
They directly went to the playground since it was still early and split up going their own way.
Qane was sparring with Tiha, he was getting a little better at moving his body but still nowhere close to Tiha. Tiha was pretty good after all, Ebony might even give her a passing mark for her age. No, her size, she was older than him, damn. And who was he to judge?
¡°Hey! Little Eb, come play with me! Why are you so late today? And why didn¡¯t you come yesterday?¡± Tiha called as she knocked Qane aside like a doll.
She levelled to 14 in the meantime while Qane reached 17, they don¡¯t go hunting which explains their slow levelling. Reaching lvl 30 in this manner took a very long time but their skill levels and technical capability would be leagues above others.
¡°OOOH! You Classed, no wonder you weren¡¯t here. Yay! Now we can finally play normally. I see you have a new weapon.¡± Tiha concluded by herself.
''Normally'' probably meant not holding back. She had never ¡®won¡¯ against Ebony even once without overpowering him with pure strength and speed after all, it didn¡¯t break her confidence as she continued sparring against Ebony whenever they could.
¡°Yeah, I haven¡¯t added any stats but don¡¯t think you can overpower me with them anymore.¡± Ebony replied with flat confidence.
¡°Wait! Ebony, I challenge you to a duel!¡± Qane cut in.
Now that Ebony had a Class it was no longer considered bullying if anyone used the advantage of stats and levels. Duels or spars were the same thing to Ebony.
Qane was probably waiting for Ebony to get a Class before he proposed this challenge. He was still 15 levels ahead of Ebony with even higher level skills. He also didn¡¯t have to fight in close combat but more like the mage he was.
¡°Sure.¡± Time for Ebony to see if Qane was a better mage than he was a fighter.
The playground was pretty large so they had plenty of space. Standing 2 girs apart with Tiha being the referee or judge. Qane was already mumbling, should be his chant.
Chanting was no Skill and magic didn¡¯t require chants, it only served to help people visualise the spell better. Either helpful in easing the formation of the skill or the casting speed of the spell.
No idea if it was considered cheating to start his chant before the fight began but Ebony didn¡¯t care, he needed to give him the mage a chance anyway.
Low level mages are known to be extremely disadvantages against warriors due to their slow casting and once out of mana, useless in battle.
Even Ebony takes about 5 to 6 seconds to form a single Ice Spike, the speed at which it gets thrown was lower than if he were to toss it by hand for now.
Currently, Ebony wouldn¡¯t use it in battle, 5-6 seconds was way too long and that was when he was not doing anything else if he was moving about and fighting, even Ebony would slow down with his attention split. Fortunately, it seemed like he got lots of room for improvement and should be able to bring his casting speed up by a bit.
¡°Gooo!¡± Tiha exclaimed.
Ebony jumped to the side when a single rope of ice tried to hold his feet down, this overused trick was surprisingly popular. Qane was far enough from Ebony for him to sense the ice mana but he had long noticed the concentration of ice mana near his feet. But 2 girs was too short a distance for Ebony to cross.
Closing the distance almost instantly, Ebony aimed to grab Qane''s hand or sleeve since they love putting their hands forward for casting. Qane, obviously panicked by how close Ebony got to him in absolutely no time but didn¡¯t mess up his cast.
When Ebony was just about to reach Qane a thin wall of ice rose from the ground, separating the 2 duelists.
Another pre-prepared spell, Ebony thought. He somewhat underestimated the young Frost Elf, he was prepared.
The ice wall was only a little taller than Ebony and half as wide but Ebony decided to just jump over it. Qane was still standing pretty close to the wall but was looking at the sides of the wall, aiming his now complete spell. An arrow of ice.
Qane reacted and shifted his aim up but not fast enough as Ebony grabbed his left hand and easily pulled him onto the ground, locking both his hands facing himself, belly on the ground. The ice arrow fell as Qane''s control over it was lost.
¡°I..I lost.¡± Qane declared.
¡°That was good. Against another user of ice magic you set the vines too close and can easily be noticed by the opponent. The ice wall was unexpected and your timing for it was just right. You should have distanced yourself as much as you could in that time, distance is your advantage as a mage against a close ranged warrior.¡± Ebony advised.
¡°Ye..yeah.¡± Qane was still a little shaken by his loss against Ebony who was much lower level even when he was using magic this time.
¡°Let¡¯s train and get stronger together. I noticed you probably hardly added any stats into your physical side. Even mages need Agility and a little of the other stats and I thought you wanted a melee Sub-Class?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t want to be bothered by childish grudges so was trying to smooth things out.
¡°I was, but I am still focusing on my mage Class to at least lvl 20 before I get my Sub-Class. I still have quite some time till I hit lvl 30 and join the village guards and skill levels are more important anyway.¡± Qane explained, still sounding a little salty.
¡°It''s my turn! Little Eb you¡¯re so much faster now you liar, you must have added Agility. I¡¯m not going to hold back any longer.¡± Tiha said
Ebony held his sword, having frozen the small sword guard with the scabbard so that the scabbard wouldn¡¯t come loose. He was hoping Qane wouldn¡¯t bother him much anymore cause he wasn¡¯t much of a training partner with his low physical stats and even lower ability at close ranged battle.
¡°Bring it on.¡±
Tiha seemed to have disappeared from where she was standing, moving a lot faster than she ever had against Ebony. She stabbed and slashed but Ebony seemed to always be steps ahead of her. Despite being much slower he was dodging many of her strikes, for those that he couldn¡¯t dodge he managed to block.
The most irksome thing for Tiha was that Ebony was always positioned in a way that she had a hard time turning around dishing out attacks, always putting pressure on her from her blind spot. She had never fought against anyone like Ebony.
Her sister only taught her how to use dual daggers, how to move fast and how to attack aggressively.
It worked against the other Frost Elves and even those a few levels higher couldn¡¯t beat her but she just couldn¡¯t land a clean hit against Ebony.
Not counting breaking his wrists when he tried blocking her attack or when he just barely dodged and got cut by the wind pressure. He was so much more fun.
???
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level 2 ¡ú 3, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level 3 ¡ú 4, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level 4 ¡ú 5, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Treading Step level up 30 ¡ú 31¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Icebody Enhancement level up 27 ¡ú 28¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery level up 26 ¡ú 27¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Kicking Mastery level up 27 ¡ú 28¡¯
¡®I gained more in less time. Seems like actual combat is really the best way for combat Classes.¡¯ Ebony was contemplating if he should get Clovis to spar with him but dismissed the idea.
Clovis was even worse than Qane in terms of fighting. At least Qane was taught well or learnt well that a mage needs to be prepared, remembering the 2 pre-cast spells. One to hold down the opponent and a defensive back up.
Tiha¡¯s high speed and power was perfect to push him and feel pressure. It was unfortunate he got the hang of her attack patterns long ago and made it so easy for him to predict and anticipate her next step.
She has got technique but was stiff in her usage, not enough battle experience but she was improving fast, as was Ebony. She was a snow rogue but hasn¡¯t used any snow magic against Ebony yet, saying that she hasn¡¯t practised them much.
No longer taking any lectures as both Clovis and Ebony got down to their own reading and studying. Ebony even got Elcrian to lvl 6 part way through.
With his crazily increased mana regeneration rate, he had so much more mana to use for training so, while reading he had two mana spheres above his head, compressing.
He decided to keep that up at all times due to the little mana it required. It was training for compressing mana and multitasking.
One thing he noted was that it was harder for compressed mana to be converted to ice mana for the Ice Shard skill so he had to practice that too if he wanted to be able to throw compressed spells around.
Yes, above his head. Using his hands was pretty limiting and though he had always been able to do this 2 was the most he can manage for now if it wasn¡¯t focussed from his hands. Doing this was training so that he could form or cast spells without his hands.
Down to Mana Weaving, his output of threads almost tripled and he gained another level in it, reaching lvl 18.
At this rate, he was planning to actually make the cloth Roya wanted him to make soon. He was rereading one of the tailoring books, the part on gloves.
Many Frost Elves who are both archers and mages wear something called casting gloves. They can use the bow and don''t have to carry a staff or wand at the same time.
Casting gloves have roughly the same function of increasing mana gathering speed, have an auto mana compression function or elemental buffs. Well, there were all sorts of functions and would depend on the staff/wand/glove themselves.
Ebony would not be able to make one of course, he could make the glove but he doesn¡¯t have the skills to make it have such functions. The book he was reading didn¡¯t have information on casting gloves anyway, just a normal book on how to make gloves
Roya came to check his workstation as usual, observing the pile of threads and eying the page that Ebony was on. She clapped loudly, disrupting Ebony.
¡°I got an idea, I changed my mind, your first assignment will be a left glove, for yourself. If it¡¯s satisfactory I will make it a casting glove for you.¡±
¡°Really?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Oh it¡¯s not going to be so easy okay. When it comes to my craft I have extremely high standards and I won¡¯t work on crafts I don¡¯t approve of. Think of it as a challenge.¡± Roya proudly claimed.
¡°Challenge accepted.¡± Ebony might not welcome being given more things and favours but a challenge? Always.
By the end of his time for tailoring training he gained a level in Mana Compression, reaching lvl 14. He still wasn¡¯t able to form a stable third mana sphere above his head but he was getting there.
Instead of training his new Ice Spike, he focused more on keeping Icebody Enhancement up while he shadowswordswing, his version of shadowboxing.
He levelled once reaching 6 and gaining another 10 stat points.
Peak Performance levelled 4 times. Single-handed Greatsword Mastery, Icebody Enhancement and Two-handed Power Stab levelled twice each. Humming and Deep Persistent Meditation levelled once.
It was nice to see Deep Persistent Meditation level again.
¡°I won¡¯t be joining you after dinner Clovis. I plan to bind my Core Skill tonight and still want to make it in time for tomorrow morning¡¯s...playdate.¡± Ebony informed them, still uncomfortable with the term they use for the 2 of them going to train in the playground.
¡°Have you decided on the skill you want as your Core Skill already?¡± Halvis asked curiously.
¡°You should think carefully on what skill you choose as your Core Skill. You won¡¯t be able to change it and in a way it is as important a choice as your Class. You can still wait and learn a better, higher-tiered skill before deciding. You¡¯re still so young.¡± Roya hurriedly persuaded.
¡°I have decided. There¡¯s no skill better suited for me. This skill has followed me for life and will continue to do so as my first Core Skill.¡± Ebony had no doubt.
¡°...Is...Is it your meditation type skill?¡± Roya''s reaction was a little weird to Ebony but he couldn¡¯t tell why.
¡°Yes.¡± Ebony saw no reason to hide. But the reaction from both Roya and Halvis was really not what he expected.
Roya actually cried, ¡°Oh you poor boy¡¡± while Halvis reached to pat his head and asked him not to worry about his past.
¡®??? What the heck is going on?¡¯ Ebony was absolutely confused by their reactions and they wouldn¡¯t even answer him properly when asked what they were going on about.
He looked at Clovis for help but he showed even more confusion than Ebony.
Chapter 17: Beginning
A Core Skill.
Any of his skills can be bound as a Core Skill regardless of whether it is a Class, Sub-Class, Profession or Generic Skill. The bound skill will explosively increase in natural potential which was to say faster levelling speed and easier to evolve and/or mutate.
Once again, it has something to do with his soul and he would be placed to sleep or a comatose state but it shouldn¡¯t take nearly as long.
He wanted to train with Tiha in the morning and quickly hit level 10 so he was going to start early tonight to prevent wasting too much time.
He dispersed the mana sphere and meditated in silence. After half an hour, he brought his status up and placed his attention to the empty Core Skill slot.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Bind Class Skill ¡®Deep Persistent Meditation¡¯ as your Core Skill?¡¯
¡®Yes.¡¯ Ebony mentally replied.
He was already lying down comfortably and once again felt himself slowly fall unconscious.
An unknown amount of time passed when Ebony woke up again, no different from any day. He didn¡¯t feel any change as obvious as when he got his Class.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Deep Persistent Meditation has been bound as your Core Skill.¡¯
¡®Hmm? That¡¯s all? No skill evolution? That¡¯s too bad I guess.¡¯ Ebony thought.
It was less special than he imagined.
Looking out of the window it was still dark out, the sun hadn''t risen so it was still not the 6th hour and time for training. He had no idea what time it was but his natural clock which had gotten pretty accurate in his time on Elcra was saying it shouldn¡¯t be too long before the sun rose.
Why didn¡¯t he use his watch?
He obviously forgot to check what time he fell asleep and his watch was a 12 hour one he hadn¡¯t relied on for a long time other than counting seconds for his calculations for skill training.
Since he was already awake and he didn¡¯t feel like sleeping, he got up, washed up and started his training again.
No time to lose.
The merchant would be reaching in 2-6 weeks, a wide range but nonetheless, he got limited time to get as strong as he could before his journey in this world actually started.
The day passed as time flowed.
It must have been pretty early when Ebony woke up as he reached lvl 7 before the sun rose and went to spar with Tiha.
Some of those young working village guards had been noticing how Ebony being lower level, slower and weaker had been coping with the spar against Tiha.
Tiha seemed pretty famous amongst them but then again there weren¡¯t many young and while the Village was relatively large, the population wasn''t.
Too bad they didn¡¯t want to spar with such someone too low levelled. Ebony reached lvl 9 at the end of the intense spar, cuts and bruises sustained early on were fully healed at the end of the 4 hour session. Mana body was awesome.
He didn¡¯t get a level in the next 4 hour session but since his recovery speed increased so much, he trained after dinner too instead of just chilling and watching Clovis.
Finally, he hit the much desired level 10 before his reading at night.
Clovis was only still level 5 but elves in general never rushed with levelling, they had a long lifespan after all.
Tomorrow, Ebony would allocate his stats and then the day after that will be the day.
The next day came as quickly as the previous day went.
The 4th hour.
Ebony did his conditioning but something was different today.
Every few minutes Ebony added a stat point. Not randomly, of course. He was blasting Mental Arithmetic at full force again.
Running, Treading Steps, kicking, sword swinging, stabbing, jumping and dancing around. Ebony didn¡¯t stop trying all kinds of weird movements together with activating all many of his skills as he calculated. Watching his stamina especially closely.
Ebony didn''t exactly plan his stats to be allocated how they did by the end and when he added his last 100th point. It was not exactly how he wanted his build to be but that was because he decided to focus on his physical portion for now.
Perhaps he wasn¡¯t doing this right, Ebony thought but it was only the first 10 levels he would find out if he should change his stat allocation after actually monster hunting. Putting food on the table.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 58
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 10
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 35
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 32
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 34
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery Lvl 33
Frost Coating Lvl 1
Ice Spike Lvl 3
Two-handed Power Stab Lvl 14
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: N/A
Health: 200/200
Stamina: 298/300
Mana: 104/250
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 15
Vitality: 20
Constitution: 20
Endurance: 30
Agility: 20
Intelligence: 11
Wisdom: 25
Perception: 15
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 6
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 26
Running Lvl 28
Humming Lvl 19
Mental Mapping Lvl 2
Kicking Mastery Lvl 29
Mana Weaving Lvl 20
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 6
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 5
Dish Washing Lvl 5
Mana Compression Lvl 21
Physical Conditioning Lvl 2
Magical Conditioning Lvl 2
Peak Performance Lvl 21
Tracking Lvl 1
His skills levelled considerably. Mana Compression benefitted the most from his almost ceaseless practice, exceeding even Mana Weaving.
Strength. He wanted to at least be able to swing his sword with more ease and be able to carry it around for long periods of time before his arms got sore. He didn¡¯t want to put too much into it either as he doesn''t depend on strength as much as the other stats to begin with.
Vitality. A little more generous with this since it was basically his life.
Constitution. Ebony wanted to put more into Constitution but settled for 20. To Ebony, Constitution had so many benefits.
Endurance. The first stat he even placed. The reason he was calculating so damn much. The higher the Strength the higher the consumption of stamina if one exerts that much strength, energy or power. Same with Agility.
So Ebony did all his running around and every physical skill while staring and calculating his stamina loss. Adding point after point into Endurance.
Endurance didn¡¯t just increase his max stamina, it increased his stamina regeneration. Slowly, Ebony¡¯s stamina stopped dropping as he physically exerted himself as hard as he could. This was no secret but no damn one would throw so many stats into Endurance and not be able to harm a single monster of the same level.
Even Ebony¡¯s 250% increase wasn¡¯t enough. His absolutely broken Core Skill made him take this route. Unlike the known Meditation skills which require people to be stationary, his Persistent version circumvents this problem.
Only when his stamina stopped budging did he add point after point to both Agility and Strength, adding to Endurance when he sees it drop. The other reason was that he wanted to feel the changes in his body as he added these stat points, to get used to it.
Agility. He preferred speed over power because, speed. No other reason. Speed was obviously superior to strength. At least to Ebony.
Ebony thinks he almost got the ratio of Strength, Agility and Endurance down to fit his needs.
He wasn¡¯t too happy about his Perception stat but it was too important not to add any into it so he begrudgingly pushed it to 15. Feeling the changes in his 5 senses. His sight was noticeably clearer, hearing sharper, smell of the cotton croft, taste of the chilly air and feeling the groves of his sword handle a little more clearly.
After all that, he was only left with 20 stat points. He wanted to just toss all of that into Wisdom obviously to take advantage of the 250% fortification and his Core Skill. But he felt bad for Intelligence and his body enhancement was dependent on it after all. He would treat these 2 stats better soon enough, he promised himself.
This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
It wasn¡¯t known why the first 10 levels were so easy to gain but the next level onward slows down considerably.
Ebony went on the day as usual but Halvis and Roya obviously knew he was ready to go out the next day. He was making a few preparations after all.
He absolutely destroyed Tiha at the playground with his newfound speed and power, absolutely stunning her when he moved.
The rest of the training in the day was used to familiarise himself with his new stats.
With Endurance at 30, his natural regeneration at 105 SP per minute and Deep Persistent Meditation at level 58. Ebony was regenerating 257.25 stamina in a minute.
For mana, 214.375 per hour or 3.57 per minute. Still a distance away from his goal when he saw the bonus he got from Classing. Running Icebody Enhancement perpetually.
¡°Please remember not to go too deep. You know the parts where you absolutely cannot go right?¡± Roya reminded.
¡°Yes. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll be fine. What do you want for dinner tomorrow?¡± Ebony asked as nonchalantly flat toned as always.
¡°Haa..we are fine with anything you catch, just don¡¯t be too reckless and run if a higher level monster wanders into where you are.¡± Roya nagged.
Ebony nodded but didn¡¯t reply. Clovis was quiet for once, he was pretty sad about not being able to spend as much time with Ebony but understood anyway. He had his own levelling to do in his research and study anyway.
???
Ebony changed his schedule to waking up at the 4th hour and leaving immediately going in the direction they went for the stimulation rite but he was going to go deeper because of course he would.
He was just going to hold on to his sword without the belt. He took along a borrowed leather knapsack, much larger than his own bag to carry his game.
He knew how to process and prepare game but it has been a few years since he last did. Bringing along a sharp wooden knife, ropes to hang and let blood out and clean cloth and bags for the meat.
He didn¡¯t forget his packed breakfast from Roya, it was dinner leftovers and packed in two large wooden boxes, just like bento boxes. Also a few frost plums and his bottle of water.
Ebony had two spheres of mana directly above him now, a little distraction is all it takes for them to get dispersed. He would only compress one at a time though. He would compress one to the limit he can, let them return to the original size and then compress the other. Rinse and repeat.
He greeted the 2 guards at the gate who were another pair of guards he didn¡¯t recognise. They didn¡¯t stop him as he exited the village. It was still dark out but he jogged a little away from the village before bursting into half his full speed.
Ridiculous was the only word he could use to describe it. How did high level people not already break the planet?
With his Agility increasing to 20 and his Running and Treading Steps gaining some levels his movement speed has increased by a lot.
Furthermore, just running wouldn¡¯t even cost his stamina to drop. If the battle or his movements were intense enough he would still use a tiny bit of stamina.
What this meant was Ebony¡¯s movement speed alone practically tripled.
More importantly, it meant that Ebony couldn¡¯t even run at his top speed without tearing a muscle or spraining his ankle. Pathetic.
A calculated top speed of 75m/s or 270km/h the speed of a high speed train and he couldn¡¯t even withstand his own speed.
At half speed, he was moving a little slower than Halvis was when carrying both him and Clovis. Moving with Treading Steps alone, every step pushed him girs forward. He should not take too long to reach the same area. Slowly increasing his speed to push Peak Performance.
He passed a few rabbits and foxes and ignored them all. Reaching the spot they had before, he passed the area without hesitation. His map could expand again.
Spending over an hour just travelling, the levels of monsters slowly climbed from tens to twenties. He was much further in but nowhere forbidden for him yet. He saw some of the monster monkeys already but didn¡¯t want to eat monkey meat. He would deal with them when they come for him.
Starting to look for tracks, it was obvious that not only were the monster levels rising, the number of them too.
[Frost Fur Deer Lvl 22]
Ebony stayed out of sight and ignored it. His target would be a deer. Just not this particular one. They were large but still normal sized for a deer.
Like the name suggests it had bluish-white fur as if the tip of its furs had a layer of frost over it. Ebony estimated it to weigh over a hundred kilos, edible meat is usually about half of that. Even if monsters have stats and higher muscle and bone density it shouldn¡¯t be too much more at such low levels according to what he¡¯d learned.
Ebony himself felt his own body getting denser by a bit after adding Constitution. Nothing drastic, perhaps he gained a little weight, his size stayed the same and no changes can be seen from outside.
[Frost Fur Deer Lvl 27]
¡®That¡¯s more like it.¡¯ Finding a different one not too long later. Perfect that he didn¡¯t see any other monster near it. Perfect that it also noticed him and was already treating him as prey.
It didn¡¯t bother waiting to come too close as it opened its mouth and an icicle formed in seconds and it released the icicle towards Ebony¡¯s head. Barely dodging it only because of the current distance. A monster that uses magic. Good.
Ebony quickly drew his sword as he closed the distance, tossing the scabbard aside for now.
It already had another icicle ready and shot at Ebony again. Treading Step gave him a smooth burst of speed as he continued forward, the icicle missed completely.
The deer closed its mouth and got to its antler poised ram charge.
Icebody enhanced, Ebony skidded to a complete stop in front of its charge. Posing with his sword by his side, too lazy to hold a stance he waited till the last second before the deer arrived.
Casually turning back with his left leg, pivoting on his right, his sword came crashing into its antlers in a 360 backspin.
However, Ebony still didn¡¯t fully understand when they said that monsters at the same level have a lot higher stats than people.
Numbing shock spread from his fingertips and palm to his whole arm as he felt like he just hit something rock hard. Thankfully, the spin and deflection didn¡¯t push the deer away at all but it pushed himself to the side.
Backstepping to create some distance. This was no blind boar. The deer turned in its charge and started wildly swinging its head increasing the range of his attacks. Or perhaps to prevent Ebony from doing what he did again.
Despite failing once, Ebony stood still again. Pulling his sword handle against his chest he watched the deer that looked like it was trying to shovel snow out of the way left and right.
Two handed Power Stab!
His strike landed right in its face, cutting through its whole eye together with brain bits as his sword exited through the back of its head. Ebony¡¯s grip tightened as his palm''s skin tore, wrist, elbows, shoulders and knees cracked. He planted his feet firmly as they dug through girs of snow.
The deer screamed as it tried to retreat, the bones were too hard for Ebony to drive the sword any deeper with a slash and he couldn¡¯t pull it out either.
Not wanting to let it go, Ebony quickly grabbed onto its antlers and swung himself onto the deer, letting go of his sword. One of the mana spheres above his head which he didn¡¯t stop maintaining was slowly converting and a spike of ice was forming as he fed them the mana they required.
The deer vehemently struggled to shake Ebony off by sprinting, hopping and kicking its hind legs but Ebony had an iron tight grip around its chest with his legs. He got low and hugged it tight so that he wouldn¡¯t get flung off as well.
As Ebony was forming a compressed Ice Spike, he started to get the second mana sphere ready as he knew that one wouldn¡¯t be enough with his low Intelligence and skill level.
The Ice Spike above him that was finally ready, shot for its remaining eye. At this distance it was harder to miss. Fortunately, the eye was still an easy weak spot and the deer was completely blinded now with both its eyes down for the count.
Ice Spike after Ice Spike struck the poor deer face since Ebony¡¯s Ice Spike couldn¡¯t pierce its body. It was too blind or stupid to try to ram against a tree.
Eventually running out of mana, the deer wasn¡¯t dead yet but was not far from it as it collapsed on the ground. Face frozen, breathing cut. Ebony shouldn¡¯t have frozen the bleeding but the deer¡¯s face was only so large.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Frost Fur Deer Lvl 27], enemy 10 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level up 10 - 13, 30 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Core Skill Deep Persistent Meditation level up 58 - 59¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Single-Handed Greatsword Mastery level up 33 - 34¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Two Handed Power Stab level up 14 - 16¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Icebody Enhancement level up 34 - 35¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Ice Spike level up 3 - 7¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ Generic Skill Mana Compression level up 21 - 22¡¯
¡®This is a lot more rewarding than I thought. Clovis'' experience pool concentration talk wasn¡¯t baseless after all. Haven¡¯t read any books on it though.¡¯
Wiping the deer''s blood off his face from when he stabbed the deer. He got the thick ropes and wooden knife out. The first step should be to drain the blood out of it.
Pulling his sword out with difficulty, he moved onto hacking at its neck to decapitate it. It took a lot of effort to get through bone and avoid being too bloodied. He didn¡¯t forget to pick his scabbard back up.
Tying one of its hind legs and hanging it up a random tree branch before skinning it with the knife. It was tough and he wasn¡¯t that skilful but he managed. Gutting it and removing its internal organs that he¡¯s mostly not going to bother with, careful not to break into its stomach or intestines.
Got down with his hands to remove the bones and it required him to use Icebody Enhancement with the little mana he recovered. After that was just separating the cuts of meat, the 4 legs were left club-like and tied together while he wrapped the other meaty portions in clean cloth bags.
The good thing about hunting in the cold was that the game wouldn¡¯t spoil easily from the heat.
Ebony wasted quite a little meat here and there due to his poor processing so, he estimated 60kg of product packed in his bag. Blood and fat on his clothes was annoying to say the least. He cleaned himself with a cloth but there was nothing he could do about the absorbed blood on his shirt.
Unworried about attracting any monsters from all the blood on the red patch of snow. Ebony rested against the tree where he hung the deer and started eating breakfast without a care in the world.
He was mostly healed by the time he finished processing the deer. Just his cracked bones taking more time but they didn¡¯t sustain too much damage anyway and should be fully healed soon enough with his regeneration.
Obviously, despite him eating a lot more than usual they were not going to finish eating 12 tivs of venison in a night. His preparations included asking Mrs Calhy, the frost plum lady whom he was on surprisingly good terms with, to introduce him to someone from the market who was willing to buy his game from him to sell.
This way, Ebony could start making money both to repay the Thoya family and to get ready for his trip. Money was a necessity after all.
He could set up a stall himself like many young hunters but he didn¡¯t want to waste so much time and it was too much trouble, he was no salesman.
Mr Herrid gave a rundown on the types of game he would buy and the price he would pay for them.
Boar was the cheapest due to how large and easy they were to hunt while rabbit had the highest price. Rabbit was pretty popular and their small size makes it all the more expensive.
Too bad that the frost fang rabbits are said to rarely exceed lvl 15. Either their natural limit or them getting hunted before getting higher. Same with the boar at around lvl 20.
Ebony would later realise it was because it was currently summer.
Mr Herrid sold deer meat at 11-13 blacks a tiv. Since he had to profit too his proposed price to buy from Ebony was 4 Blacks a tiv. Mrs Calhy was a tough negotiator and pushed the price up to 6 Blacks a tiv.
Ebony was very grateful for that and told himself to buy more frost plums from her.
Deer level ranges pretty wide so it was his main target for hunting and selling but that¡¯s not the only reason. Another monster populating this area were the monkeys.
They were apparently a nuisance to the village. When their numbers get high enough there were occasions where they would come and throw magical snowballs both at and over the village walls. Basically pests that he was told to remove if he could.
Just as he was keeping his empty bento boxes he heard leaves rustling. Hearing ''ooos'' and ''ahhs'' as he calmly picked his sword up just in time to deflect 3 snowballs that felt harder than they were supposed too.
¡®How polite of you to wait till I was finished eating.¡¯ Ebony planned a swift death for them for their politeness but he might not have the capability to do so yet. As with the deer.
[Snowskin Monkey Lvl 16]
[Snowskin Monkey Lvl 16]
[Snowskin Monkey Lvl 17]
[Snowskin Monkey Lvl 17]
[Snowskin Monkey Lvl 19]
They really were furless as Ebony spotted 5 of them spread out around him on trees. The lvl 17s and 19 jumped off and came at Ebony with hands as claws while the lvl 16 continued their snowball assault.
With Treading Step and his observation and prediction, they were all too easy to dodge. They didn¡¯t come anywhere close to the magical diversity that Sei and Ton had.
When Ebony blocked a claw with his sword he was a little surprised to see it cut into them easily but more of their skin reforming like a gathering of snow. Looks like he had to cut deep to injure them. Their weak defence made them a target for young Frost Elves undergoing their rite it seems.
He played them with movement speed alone. They couldn¡¯t hit him at all as he gave a flying knee to the lvl 17 monkey''s face as it flew back and hit the tree behind it. Landing on his foot and turning kicked the other to the same effect. Keeping up his spin as the lvl 19 screamed and claws for his neck.
His ankle muscles tore and joints in his leg creaked, the spin was too fast and the weight of his blade popped his shoulders out of place. His body was too weak to handle his movement speed and power. Unacceptable.
Peak Performance and his usual ignorance of pain caused him to move as if all was well. Though Deep Persistent Meditation¡¯s increase in pain resistance helped, he never cared about the pain portion anyway, just that broken bones and torn muscles would affect his range of motion.
The blade went unhindered through its hands and neck. Decapitating and disarming. They had weak defences and bodies but higher regeneration is what Ebony assumed and he was right.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Snowskin Monkey Lvl 19], experience is gained.¡¯
The rest of the monkeys were easily dispatched, a single strike each. Monsters he fought so far didn¡¯t know how to run. It was like a foreign concept to them.
The 2 lvl 16 who were acting as support actually came down for him when he finished up with the lvl 17s making his life easier. He just kicked and deflected their reasonably slow snow projectiles.
This particular breed of monkeys wasn¡¯t eaten by Frost Elves. Ebony didn¡¯t have to care about wasting food if they came attacking him for the deer organs he left in the open as bait.
Sadly due to their habits, they were also pests targets of the village.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level up 13 - 14, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Core Skill Deep Persistent Meditation level up 59 - 60¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Single-Handed Greatsword Mastery level up 34 - 35¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Treading Step level up 35 - 36¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Peak Performance level up 21 - 22¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Kicking Mastery level up 29 - 30¡¯
Chapter 18: Melee
''Awww ell, only a short month back to spend with my cute little sister and I have to babysit someone. A human child. Why do I need to protect a human child? What the heck is a human child doing here anyway? It may be particularly hot this summer but young humans seem to be especially weak to the cold.
Chief said I¡¯ll understand once I see him, understand what?
In the short time that I was out my little cutie seemed to have improved a lot. They grow up so fast. I want to be there in her younger years more so we don¡¯t grow apart as she ages. So many other siblings grow apart due to the elves'' usual difference in age being so far apart.''
She kept going on about this ¡®little Eb¡¯ that was younger and apparently she couldn¡¯t defeat him in their spars despite being younger than her. This was shocking, their family hasn¡¯t been beaten in close combat by any their age in their village and her younger sister was even more talented than her by a little. How proud she was of her.
There weren''t any younger Frost Elves that she recalled had Eb in their name. Her sister can¡¯t seem to remember his full name either. ¡®His¡¯, Enya will have to find this boy for a talk one day.
The young human was apparently under Roya¡¯s and Halvis¡¯s care in his stay. So at least there was one good thing about babysitting him. The previous time she got her robes completely destroyed by testing a new skill on it and pissed off Roya so badly she didn¡¯t make a new one for her before the dungeon clears. That was a real close shave.
She was the only close combatant on the party so in her defence it was obvious she was going to take damage more often.
She noted the additional weak essence and mana signature from the Thoya house and put some effort into recognising it so that she¡¯ll know when he moves.
''Ugh he woke up and is leaving so early and I was planning to relax a little since we just came back. Let¡¯s see what all the fuss is about the human child.''
[Meditative Ice Swordsman Lvl 10]
''Meditative?! Not even Elves that young would have levelled meditation to 25. Those elling trash should have been weeded out years ago. So that¡¯s what the chief meant.
And he¡¯s human...that¡¯s pretty rare for them to be...No matter, we treat any meditative Class holder as a treasured guest regardless of race anyway.
He¡¯s been in Arcta for a while now, If I''m not wrong. Chief didn¡¯t mention any attacks so I should just be a precaution for him.
Wait, he''s a hybrid Class holder? Those aren¡¯t exactly popular amongst humans. Did they teach him ice magic? Double cast? Not yet, he¡¯s only compressing one at a time but he¡¯ll get there sooner or later, could other Meditators no, humans do that at that age?
He left.
This direction leads to the rite procession area. Suitable for a lvl 10.
Oh? He is pretty fast for his level, Agility focused swordsman? No, that sword is too large, unlikely. But he should still have put quite some points in Agility.
A movement type skill, interesting one too, he leaves shallow prints in the snow. It¡¯s like he¡¯s moving off the ground before his feet fully land. Different from ours, so none of us taught him that.
He¡¯s not getting out of breath either so Endurance too.
Expected of a physical Class but that would mean lower on the mental end. I guess that¡¯s why hybrid Classes aren¡¯t popular, unlike us with a natural affinity with ice magic. Physically weaker than other warriors and magically weaker than other mages.
Maybe not in his case. Meditator would likely mean he doubled his mana and stamina pool. I heard there were some who got regeneration rate increased when meditating or even some who got 50% each but who knows and it is essentially the same anyway.
He¡¯s not stopping? Does he not know he¡¯s arrived? He¡¯s going too deep for his level for an inexperienced child. Should I stop him? I was told not to interfere with whatever he was doing though, just protect his life if he was in danger. I¡¯ll just watch for now.
At least he didn¡¯t engage that deer twice his level... Oh. He picked one even higher level, is he overconfident?
No fear in his eyes, unchanging expression as he stood still against its charge.
Is he crazy or dumb, why is he standing still?
Enhancement Magic, ice elemental. But that¡¯s not enough to close the gap between them should I stop it? Why do I feel like he¡¯s going to be fine? He reminds me of old Kor, like nothing that happens can phase them. Irritating.
I should be able to make it in time to stop it anyway so I¡¯ll just see what he¡¯s up to.
¡
He wasn¡¯t at full speed earlier. Impressive counter. Now he should understand the difference in strength, what will he do now?
Is he planning to face it head on again? It¡¯s swinging its antlers so wildly to counter what he did before though.
Wow, did he time that blow or was it a coincidence? The force from the deer¡¯s charge helped to stab it in deeper, he just had to hold his ground and he did.
He let go of his weapon?! Really? Oh he still had magic, average cast speed for one of us that age. Power...extremely weak. He probably didn¡¯t have much stat for Intelligence and seems like he hasn''t trained the skill much.
Large mana pool as expected, he hasn¡¯t even stopped running his enhancement skill. He¡¯s won this from his first attack really, just had to let it bleed out.
He¡¯s really fearless, butchering it right here. Aww, what a waste. Does he even have a related skill for it?
A few snowskins have been watching him for a while. Doesn¡¯t seem like he noticed. This child¡ eating right where he dissected his prey. I¡¯m getting a headache from watching.
The snowskins are cautious as usual, do they think they''re being baited? At this point, I¡¯m thinking the same damn thing as them. He¡¯s got to be doing this on purpose.
He was baiting them after all¡ he finished them off pretty easily. We have more trouble against snowskins than deers since they are agile, small and can move around the trees. Young archers and mages tend to miss, only chosen for the rite due to their weak defence. The elders can easily hold them down to prevent missing.
He¡¯s...treating this as a picnic. Sitting amongst the bodies, drinking and eating plums¡ is he humming?
He¡¯s too lazy to track them down so he left the deer organs as bait.
What on ell is wrong with this human child?
???
Seems like this was monkey territory. That or monkeys love deer meat. Or monkey meat.
Another two groups of monkeys came attacking him, 4 and 5 in each. He didn¡¯t even have to wait ten minutes before an attack.
None higher than lvl 17.
Ebony got to level 15 and then some for his skills.
Finally seeing another deer in the distance Ebony picked up all his stuff and chased it.
Well, it also seemed to have noticed Ebony and was already moving his way so ¡®chase¡¯ might not have been accurate. It was level 25.
¡®This was disappointing, I was playing it safe for Roya and Halvis but I should go deeper next time.¡¯
Ebony took it down in almost the exact same way but with more ease and less damage to himself.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Game Processing learned.¡¯
Game Processing - Ability to butcher, bleed out, remove skin, fur, scale of hunted game, remove its organs, cut its meat into different parts with the barest of tools improves by 1.0% per level.
A useful skill and about the same amount of meat later. 24 tivs was heavy and weighed him down quite a bit even with higher strength.
His pack was full as the deer legs were bulky so he was ready to return.
He had directly tossed 20 points into Constitution and 30 into Wisdom.
Having his body break down from his own strength and speed was silly.
If his skill level keeps rising, when he is capped out on levels and have no more stat points to add he wouldn¡¯t have a strong enough body to perform his best. He wanted to train his magic more so more mana was obviously good.
With him able to go at full speed without injuring himself he got back to the village quickly.
It was only about the 9th hour and Mr Herrid¡¯s stall was open. Ebony decided to keep 2 tivs and a single leg, the rest sold for 90 Blacks or 9 Greys. He took 50 Blacks and 4 Greys.
The lowered price was due to his poor handling, damaged cuts and even pieces of bones in some cuts.
Too lazy to bargain and he did only just get a skill to improve on it so he took what he could.
¡°You¡¯re a little earlier today Ebony!¡± Mrs Calhy called out.
¡°Yes, I started hunting today and just got back. I wanted to buy your plums with the first earnings I made.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Oh you sweet boy of course, as usual?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°A little extras as a congratulatory gift for your first hunt.¡±
¡°Thank you. I might patronise you more often in the days to come. I will only be here till the Z&Z merchants arrive, then hopefully join them on their journey to Plainston.¡±
¡°Oh my. That¡¯s fast, you¡¯ve only been here for a short while, why not stay on a little longer?¡±
¡°I want to travel and see all that this world has to offer.¡±
¡°But you¡¯re still so young! And travelling alone is dangerous.¡±
¡°Never too early to start. Danger is everywhere.¡±
¡°...don¡¯t forget to visit. I''d hate to lose a good customer. Oh! Please come in winter, you¡¯ll be able to see the plums blossom. They¡¯re the greatest sight that the whole hoarfrost glade has to offer. When your cold resistance is high enough of course.¡±
¡°I will.¡± Ebony would love to see the flowers.
It was not exactly a very manly taste but he loved flowers and floral decorations are always present in his house.
He returned and left the meat and plums in their ¡®refrigerator¡¯ which was a large rectangular box perhaps chest was a better word for it and inlaid completely in ice.
It was segmented into 4 for fruits, vegetables, meat and a small section for some bottles, juices and whatnot.
He didn¡¯t see any of the Thoyas since they were all busy at this hour.
Washing the cloth bags, cloths and his icky hands that he used to dig into the deer. Literally.
He left the blood on his clothes alone.
It was time for another hunt.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
???
¡°Here are the robes for you and the chief.¡±
¡°Thank you dear, hold on while I¡¯ll get your maintenance fee.¡±
¡°It¡¯s our pleasure.¡±
¡°Okay here you go. Ah yes, Orren got a transmission that they have set off Plainston yesterday and should arrive in the coming week or so if no problems come up.¡±
¡°Thank you. They¡¯re coming already?¡±
¡°Yes. They should be taking advantage of the weather. The heat and thin snow make their journey a lot easier and lower risk after all.¡±
¡°...Thank you for informing me. I¡¯ll take my leave.¡±
???
Back to his previous picnic spot before the 10th hour hit.
Ebony''s strengthened body let him travel at his top speed only for him to realise that his low Intelligence and Perception was problematic.
Too fast to notice a thin branch as he passed and got a deep cut on his arm. Noticed it too late and reacted even later.
Stat balancing was troublesome.
It wasn¡¯t a really big deal but Ebony wanted absolute control over his body and minds¡¯ capabilities.
He went further and further.
The occasional attacks from monkeys and foxes were met with a swift death all around the same level as him. Ebony started feeling the levelling slow down as he hasn¡¯t levelled after 10 of them, all a few levels above him.
The attacks got more and more frequent while their levels slowly climbed.
A [Snow Crawler Lvl 21] leaped for him from under the snow.
Landing on his arm, coiling itself up and tightening its grip on his arm as if trying to strangle it. Ebony grabbed its neck before it could go further up his body. He couldn¡¯t squash it to death so he had no choice but to cut it down.
It looked like a snake but with 4 legs like that of a lizard, greyish white scales like most of the monsters he¡¯d seen here so far.
It was the weakest monster in terms of Strength that Ebony had seen as he was able to pull it out from its grip on his arm.
With Icebody Enhancement on of course. It was the fastest magic that he could activate on the go.
Ebony thinks that it may be due to his body being part mana and the nature of Icebody Enhancement was circulating ice mana throughout his body.
It was a funny sight. Such a huge sword for such a small monster.
Elcra was large. Very large. Ebony didn¡¯t want to look at any maps because he wanted to build his own but that didn¡¯t mean he didn¡¯t learn about the area and their approximate size.
Any attacks from monsters under lvl 25, Ebony got away without injury. Dodging all attacks.
Finally stopping after an hour of travelling at where he decided was a good spot.
There were the varieties of monsters he had seen before plus he finally started seeing birds. He spotted another one of the owls or Strix at lvl 28. But he stayed clear from it; he had no good way to fight an aerial monster.
[Frost Reindeer Lvl 35]
[Frost Reindeer Lvl 36]
They were about the same size as the deer, a little furrier and their antlers curved to form a c shape. Both had dagger sized ice shards that started forming between their antlers instead of the mouth of the deer when they saw Ebony moving towards them.
Still far away, Ebony kicked up Icebody Enhancement and beelined for them. They surprisingly didn¡¯t fire at him as he closed the distance.
Cutting down from above on the Lvl 36 reindeer, stopping short on its antlers as it blocked. It fired its shot dangerously close to his head which he barely managed to avoid.
He was watching out for the shot after all. But a sharp impact knocked him across the snow from his left. Ebony saw part of the ice shard sticking out of his left arm. The reindeers timed and worked better together than he thought.
The pain quickly numbed out but his arm would not be much help in this fight. It felt cold but only like that of a cool drink, it was interesting to note that his blood didn¡¯t freeze nor did he get frostbite or any discomfort from the low temperatures of the attack.
Well, the bleeding mana part did suck balls but there was little bleeding anyway.
Rolling to the side as another shard came at him. One after another he was moving to the side as the shots came at regular intervals, trying to keep him from getting close to them again.
With each of them only capable of dishing out one shot every 2 or so seconds it wasn¡¯t too hard to dodge and move forward until he got real close. His Treading Step and movement speed buff made him move dozens of metres every step. Even with Icebody Enhancement lowering his Agility.
They seem to start getting closer to each other as Ebony closes in on them. They were not very good at moving sideways as Ebony went from their left to right and they could keep up turning and aiming.
Ebony shut Icebody Enhancement off as he dodged; he had limited mana and the Agility debuff was unnecessary. The reindeers target practice went on for quite a long time, always pushing Ebony back when he was too close for comfort. Using this chance to try to get the shard out of his arm.
15 mins in and the floor full of ice shards under the snow later. The reindeers noticeably slowed down in their shooting. Running out of mana, they also seemed to weaken or tire somehow.
While Ebony was still as good to go as if the fight had just begun. His arm healed enough to move and exert strength but still in pretty bad shape. Peak Performance probably helped, allowing him to move it so well.
The reindeers'' lag allowed Ebony to get right up to them again as Icebody Enhancement flared back on. A power stab aimed at the lvl 36 reindeer¡¯s chest from the side as it didn¡¯t turn to block in time.
As if a hard rock, his blade tip dug into its chest. Stopped by pure muscle a ger in. Pulling it right out and unleashed as much slashes and stabs as he could before jumping back from another ice shard the lvl 35 unleashed.
Managing to give the reindeer a shallow wound and a haircut. But in his eyes it was just a matter of time before they were taken down. They were out of juice but not Ebony, he was almost fully topped up at 282/300 stamina.
They fended each other with their antlers as Ebony kept circling them. Literally.
Sword blows landed on them whenever there was an opening. A circle was slowly drawn on the snow as Ebony kept them within it.
Running was not in these monsters'' instincts, this was what Ebony noticed so far and it held true for these reindeer.
Always trying to charge out and attack Ebony instead of running away which they should have been able to. But instead charge back into the circle trying to attack him only to be encircled by one man again.
Keeping them moving in circles prevented them from charging in a straight line a little. Eventually, blood stained the white forest and the reindeers were huffing, exhausted, out of breath. Easy target for a power stab through their mouth or eyes and brain. No ass strikes if he wanted their flesh for meat after all.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Frost Reindeer Lvl 36], enemy 20 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level up 15 - 17, 20 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Frost Fur Deer Lvl 35], enemy 10 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Should I have killed them the other way around?¡¯
These monsters¡¯ magical prowess are kind of a joke, just like Ebony¡¯s. One simple elemental ball at a time.
Sei and Ton¡¯s mastery of magic was on another level themselves. Clones, vines, projectiles all mixed with coordinated physical attacks.
It was the kind of fight he was looking forward to but he had been disappointed with the battles so far. Though they were obviously intelligent, unlike these monsters. Higher level monsters should be able to control their instinct to kill to some extent, learning to retreat or not pick fights at all.
Nothing to worry about since he himself was still at a low level.
Thinking of training his magic more now that his mana pool and recovery is decent. He needed to reach his limit for his casting speed and he was thinking of a defensive and binding skill like Qane. Being able to call up a shield would have prevented him from getting hit by that boar.
The reindeers had more injury on them but he tried his best to get all the cuts of meat he could. He needed to bring more water around, it got really messy and all the blood was getting really disgusting.
He turned into a magnet for monsters though. They seemed more interested in killing him than trying to steal his pack with the goodies. Seeing that, he just left the pack alone and dashed out.
1 group of monkeys turned to 2, then 3, deer and even a family of birds, [Arctic Terns Lvl 31] started chasing him. Fighting each other while they were at it.
The terns were a bird Ebony heard of but they were a lot bigger than what he remembered from seeing on the net. About the size of an owl. They were too fast and agile in the air for Ebony to have any chance of hitting them.
It would be a different story if they tried to attack him but it seemed like they had a grudge with the monkeys more than they do with him.
Ebony joined the mini melee, taking any chances that he could to land a power stab here, ice spike there. Ice spike worked on the snowskin monkeys, hurting them a little but not enough to cause them to bleed. Even with his speed and ability to dodge and tip toe around the monkeys with so many of them every time he stopped to land a blow he takes a few himself.
Mostly light blows from claws on his body, protecting his vitals. He was wary of another blow like the boar''s kick, he had been lucky no bone fragments pierced his lungs. No amount of regeneration can save him from that, he would need to remove the foreign object.
The terns were able to pick off the deer with touch and go pecks while they avoided their icicles with ease.
The snowskins showed quite the ability to jump off trees and slapped them right out of the air. Light pecks from them were defended by having the snow on the skin move to the spot where they were getting hit.
A reindeer bit one monkey in its mouth while an icicle in between its antlers shot at another, penetrating their defences unlike Ebony¡¯s magic spell.
Ebony dealt as much damage to the monkeys and terns on the ground before they started dying out. The deer and reindeers were left as they were the hardest to kill in terms of health and defence.
He would get some experience as long as he contributed to the kill. The remaining two terns surprisingly flew off, leaving the battleground with a deer, a reindeer and 3 monkeys.
Supposedly, experience is gained even without killing. Since experience could be gained through training alone, it made little sense if he wouldn¡¯t gain experience just because he didn¡¯t kill.
The similar cervides was having a shootout with each other while Ebony fought with the snowskins.
The intense melee had even him in his highest concentration, deciding when to attack and when to receive an attack instead of dodging.
Less than half an hour in and his stamina was at 143/300 and mana at 173/550.
He sustained cuts on his arms and legs from blocking and kicking and another blow to the body that he couldn¡¯t dodge leaving him with a broken rib or two at 98/200 HP.
His blood was the same red colour as always, mana or not. An on-the-spot fix to reduce his mana loss and blood loss was freezing a layer of ice over his cuts. It worked a lot better than he thought, his blood wasn¡¯t frozen by his own ice and he was able to close the wounds. With his cold resistance, ice cold temperatures were merely cooling to his body.
Icebody Enhancement might have played a part there and he was used to the stiffness from ice on or in his body. He was able to see and feel that his muscles were stiffer from it, the higher level the skill got the more obviously he was feeling his body turn to ice.
Ebony stood atop the monkeys and the [Frost Reindeer Lvl 39] stood atop the deer. It screamed or shrilled in its victory while it made Ebony its final target.
It clearly hasn¡¯t run out of mana as it charged up another shot while it moved for a tackle. Ebony met its charge with his own, gaining momentum for more power in his power stab. His only concern was the enemy''s ice spike which it¡¯ll likely fire right as they collided. It would be hard to dodge when he is exerting all his strength in an attack.
Changing his mind, he managed to spin once before they closed the distance and landed a single handed chop downwards in between its antlers where the icicle was. He managed to destroy it but not harm the reindeer, its charge unhindered rammed right into his right arm completely knocking him off.
Health: 37/200
Sadly, a tree was in the way and he slammed right into it as well, sword knocked off to the side. Right elbow popping right out, pain and shock caused Deep Persistent Meditation to flicker on and off.
Quickly rolling towards his sword and picking it up with his left. He heard the tree he knocked against had its bark breaking off from another ramming charge right as he rolled.
Ebony had trained both his arms to wield the sword. While it was not exactly perfect with his non-dominant arm, it was sufficient.
A deep breath or two stabilised his mental state again as he stabbed out at its ears while it was shaking its dizziness off. It struck both its ears and eyes with how close they were together, but not deep. With his right arm useless he couldn¡¯t do a proper two handed power stab. Even with Peak Performance, he wouldn¡¯t put his arm under any more stress. Or couldn¡¯t.
Ebony knew there wasn¡¯t much left at his disposal against it so he pushed all his mana into Frost Coating in a last ditch attempt. He initially wanted the skill to inject ice mana into an enemy instead of it just a coating anyway.
His sword was quickly covered in a layer of ice but he didn¡¯t let it stop there as he manually manipulated it to enter the wound. Aiming to freeze its brain.
The good news was that it actually worked as the coating moved from sword handle to blade to its internals. The bad news was that he was already low on mana and approaching 0. It was almost impossible to manipulate your mana in another¡¯s body so all he could do was push every bit of the ice mana in as hard as he could.
The reindeer wasn¡¯t dead as it flung Ebony off in rage. Too weak to hold on to his blade he was flung off but was able to keep on his feet and Treading Steps helped create distance.
The blade stuck frozen in it as it wildly swung its head around, trying to remove it. He knew he managed to push lots of ice mana in but it obviously had high cold resistance as well.
Its shrilling and screaming weakened in time as it slowly collapsed onto its side, taking its last chilly breath.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Frost Reindeer Lvl 39], enemy 20 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Oh man that hurt, but a melee a day keeps the doctors away.¡¯ Ebony thought as he pushed his elbow back into place with his working arm as if he was used to it.
He didn¡¯t seem to care about the infections that he might get from the act. He was more bothered by the smell in the air, all the blood and fat. Also how all that only got him to lvl 18.
Thinking that he needed to get out of here as soon as possible with his current condition Ebony gathered his things.
It was a waste but he couldn¡¯t quite process his game with his right arm the way it was. The forest animals and monsters will eat them and his pack was full from the first 2 anyway.
Chapter 19: Gift of Home
It didn¡¯t take too much trouble for Ebony to get back but all the blood on him shocked the village guards a little.
He sneaked back into the Thoya household without any of the Thoyas finding out and quickly washed up and changed out of his ripped up clothes.
He had already unfroze all his wounds and they mostly started scabbing up already with the exception of his elbow. It stopped bleeding for a while now but quite a bit of flesh was still showing and thankfully, the cold water made it sting less.
A little crack here and there was one thing, his elbow popping out was another. Unsure if it would help, he put point after point into Vitality stopping after 5. His max health did increase but he didn¡¯t magically heal up. The remaining 25 unspent stat points were distributed, 5 into Intelligence and 20 into Wisdom.
At this point he was healing more from Wisdom than Vitality anyway. He got into a new set of clothes after cleaning himself up.
Luckily, all the shirts were long sleeved and he could easily cover his wounds. With his deadpan face, pain resistance and Peak Performance no one should be able to find out he had gotten heavily injured.
The lingering smell of blood in the air could be blamed on the game he brought back. Too bad the fur and antlers for them weren''t really that in demand or he could have sold them too. They could be sold to the merchants coming here but well, he roughed up the fur too much anyway.
It was a little past the 16th hour and his mana had recovered almost fully during his trip back to Arcta.
One thing he noticed earlier was how damn hungry he was. It didn¡¯t make sense to him, his physique was supposed to decrease that need and Constitution which he now had in spades at 40, supposedly makes the body more energy efficient getting more out of less from his food.
Too tired and hungry from the battle to continue his training directly. He went to get some snacks before getting to his mana weaving. Spending half of his 750 mana pool on making threads and finally beginning to weave a glove together.
He made his threads as thin as possible as Roya suggested.
Dispersing the 2 mana spheres he kept up to speed up the process. Coiling and twisting three threads into one and three of that into another one. Taking a full hour to turn them all into strings.
The wonderful thing about mana weaving was that he was able to connect the threads together perfectly. With how fine he managed to make his mana when two ends of a string came in contact he could untangle the strings to threads and merge them together better. No loose ends this way.
4 strings floated and weaved in and out, crisscrossing around his left wrist with a gap in the centre. Releasing control of one and pulling another string to connect to the strings around his wrist going into the gap left behind. Giving him a full ring the size of his wrist of long strings hanging off them.
Whatever frostsilk cotton was, it was tough. Even the ones he was using, which were inferior ranked. He could tear the strings apart easily with his new strength but possibly not if they were made into something like a piece of cloth. Obviously cutting them was a different thing altogether. Less likely with the right skills improving the end product, like Roya¡¯s.
Low on mana again and not exactly sure how to continue, he picked up the book again.
He completely misjudged how much material was needed. This was no yarn and he was not knitting though pretty close, he was using strings. He needed more than the 100+ metres of yarn needed to knit a pair of gloves.Thankfully he was only making 1 glove and his mana pool and regeneration was much larger now.
With mana weaving it was also a lot simpler, he didn¡¯t have to worry about corners or thumbs and fingers or ending it off when he could just connect the two strings together.
He continued working on his loop of strings, making the wrist part about ? gers then he had to add another layer to it. Layering such that the crisscrosses don¡¯t align and then another layer after that.
With the 3 layer base he moved up to the palms then thumb before running out of strings and threads.
It was time for dinner before he knew it.
¡°What on Elcra did you do?¡± Roya asked with her jaws wide open after they sat at the table and she appraised Ebony to be at lvl 18.
¡°What do you mean?¡± Ebony replied, confused by the question.
¡°How did you get to lvl 18 already?¡± Halvis continued for Roya.
¡°By hunting. How else? I made 2 trips and came back too late to sell that batch to Mr Herrid, I¡¯ll take it to him tomorrow morning before my hunt.¡±
¡°What did you¡ actually nevermind. Make sure you don¡¯t go past anywhere you start seeing bird type monsters like arctic terns okay?¡± Halvis warned.
¡°Yes, I won¡¯t.¡± Ebony replied honestly.
He knew that past there weren''t many monsters above lvl 40 in the direction he went. There was a large gap full of flying monsters in between that ranged above lvl 60. It was another reason for the lagging in the Frost Elves levelling from 30 to 80. There weren¡¯t many monsters in the 40 - 60 range any place close to their village.
If the stimulation rite area where he was in was southwest of the village, then the area with monsters ranging from lvl 40 - 60 was northwest but the known area for them was very far away. From what he knew it was not a distance he could cover in a day or two. This means that the spot that he was at earlier today was already the best spot for him to level and it was a little disappointing.
¡°Ebony I have news from the village chief that the Z&Z company merchant has started making their way here and is expected to arrive in about a week.¡± Halvis announced.
¡°...I see.¡± Ebony had less time than he thought.
¡°What!! Already?! Aren¡¯t they too early? Why are they so early this time?¡± Clovis bombarded with questions, unhappy about the news.
Clovis was sensible and was just shocked by the sudden news but understood it was going to happen sooner or later.
Ebony asked Roya and Halvis to share about their time outside the village. The structure of society. The customs. Any dos and don¡¯ts that he had to be aware of. Dinner time was storytelling time for them and was enough to distract Clovis.
???
¡°What kind of monster have you had me guarding, Chief?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t call him that, Enya. I¡¯m sure even with your thick skull you understand why I got you to do it.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not what I mean, I understand the reason and I¡¯m all for it. I was just saying that kid... human, is not normal. Are all humans that¡ crazy?¡±
¡°Explain.¡±
¡°I just don¡¯t know what he is. He is a hybrid warrior. It seems like he is heavily agility focused yet his body is strong enough to take hits from a monster 20 levels above it. His ridiculous stamina and mana pool can¡¯t even be explained by his meditative class. He¡¯s too low levelled to have so much stat in agility, constitution, endurance and wisdom. But that¡¯s not the craziest part. He took an enemy 10 levels above him for breakfast and 20 for an after snack. Dozens of them. Are all...mana slaves that emotionless? That fearless? I thought it was just human arrogance like the ones we¡¯d seen in the towers but it was composure like that of old Kor¡¯s.¡±
¡°...you¡¯re sure you were following the right person?¡±
¡°...are you joking chief? Of course I¡¯m sure.¡±
¡°Dozens of monsters 20 levels above him? As a level 10? With low skill levels? Composure like Korben¡¯s, he¡¯s only a little more than 10 years old and you compare him to old Korben? A guardian from Arcin? Is it really that surprising? It''s not a very incredible feat, any of us could do that too, just maybe not when we were so young. Those youngins like you from Arcin could do worse. You didn¡¯t let him die right?¡±
¡°You don¡¯t believe me do you? I¡¯m being serious here!¡±
¡°Fine. It doesn¡¯t matter. Just continue protecting him for now, he should be leaving for Plainston in a week. You just have to escort them to the edge of the glades¡¯ and your job is done. For now, I need you to scout a gurs¡¯ radius from the village for any remnants or hidden mana production facilities.¡±
¡°...you¡¯re the slave driver here.¡±
???
Giving his body a well deserved break, Ebony practised his magic instead.
Without mana compression. An ice spike formed above his hand in about 3 secs. Another formed about his head in about 5 secs. Each is almost 2 gers or 10 cm long but only about a tenth as thick.
Testing to find out that it was a little faster to compress mana then convert them to ice mana than it was to compress ice mana. There was no difference in their quality from both ways. His range of control over it was about 3 fifths a gir or 3 metres away from him.
Imagining a bow and placing the spike on its string to fire worked better than he thought but the projectile speed was considerably slow. Only like that of a normal arrow from a normal bow, not the magically or stat enhanced speed that this world had.
The effective range was only about 2 girs, his accuracy needed a little work but he wasn¡¯t too bad. He was using the thick block of ice Halvis made in the yard as a target.
After about 25 shots he was down to half his mana pool at 375/750. He tried not to use his hands and then tried shooting the maximum 4 shots he could at a time. His accuracy suffers but not too drastically. With practice, he believed he could perfect it, sooner or later.
He thought of what kind of defence type skill he wanted to be able to do. Definitely not the type Qane used. Prepared in advance, stuck in the ground. No, Ebony was more mobile unlike the complete mage types, he needed to be able to call up a shield fast and the shield should be able to follow him unlike a wall.
There were many types of shields but, if he ever needed a shield he obviously wanted it to cover his entire body. What if there were laser beams like spells that he couldn¡¯t dodge. So something large.
A tower shield was too bulky to move. He decided to make one like that of a heater shield. The type with two engrailed top, why? Because he thought it would be cool of course.
Mental imaging seemed to be very important when casting magic and it really had solid results to back the logic so Ebony tried to think of the strongest, toughest thing that could be used as an image for his shield.
Surprisingly, the image he saw when he first arrived in the underground dome appeared in his mind.
The progeniturtle. Its titan shell, carrying the entirety of the majestic Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree. The thing was no joke if a single leaf was so damn heavy.
Creating a plate of ice and forming its shape into a single scale of their shell, copying their curvatures and all. Each one bigger than his hands, fingers stretched out. Remembering how Roya¡¯s tailoring books all had similarities in layering them, he did the same with his ice scales. Once he stuck one on to another he could control them as a singular object anyway so it wasn¡¯t too hard.
He would have ran out of mana if not for his regeneration. The final product was the heater shield he imagined but, in the design of turtle scales. 1.8 metres long, almost a metre wide and only 2cm thick each ¡®scale¡¯ or plate being 1cm. He didn¡¯t have mana to make it thicker for now. It was curved or rounded outwards like that of a convex mirror and turtle shell.
He didn¡¯t get a skill for it yet but he was betting on it. He needed to be able to form the whole thing in one go instead of making it like crafting something. This could be said to be a prototype.
He had one week. He¡¯ll go hunting around that spot in the morning and early afternoon. Hunting was physical training plus levelling.
Sell his game, save some travel fees to buy the necessary things when he got to Plainston. Like the Myriad Bracelet.
Mana Weaving till dinner.
Magic training at night. He had tried lighting a flame again but felt that it was pointless to train that at this point. Even with a full 750 mana he could hardly keep combusting ice flame for more than two seconds.
He needed even less sleep now before he woke up naturally.
He found out the reason for his constant hunger from Clovis. It was really obvious, it wasn¡¯t like he was not spending stamina but rather recovering them too quickly.
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Stamina had to come from somewhere and it was the energy he got from food. With how fast and how much stamina he was consuming his body was constantly burning energy. Of course he would get hungry, he only ate more and more everyday.
Thinking about it, the merchants were moving very slowly. 2 gurs was 10,000km and a week would mean they only traveled 1400ish km a day. Even if they only moved in the day which is 14 hours that would mean they were only moving at 140km/h.
Well, the road was not straight, they were carrying a whole village''s worth of wares and monster attacks were more common than not so maybe that wasn¡¯t too slow.
???
8 days later. At the dinner table.
¡°Ebony, they are expected to arrive tomorrow afternoon. Don¡¯t go hunting anymore.¡± Halvis said. The atmosphere at the dining table had been getting heavier as the days passed.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony acknowledged.
¡°Clovis. Aren¡¯t you forgetting something?¡± Ebony continued, quickly changing the subject.
He liked it more when they were cheerful, they were a warm family. He was deeply indebted to them.
¡°Huh? O...ooh. Yes. ermm. Father. Mother. I have something to tell you.¡± Clovis caught on.
¡°Sure, go ahead.¡± Roya answered for them. They seem to know what was going on.
¡°That is err¡ the thing is I¡ I want to be the Royal Librarian. I want to travel to the Capital one day. There¡¯s so much more I don¡¯t know, so much more I want to know. And I can¡¯t do that here¡ I just wanted to let you guys know.¡± Clovis forced every drop of courage he had to speak his mind
¡°¡°...¡±¡± The silence at the table was deafening in Clovis¡¯s ears.
¡°We know. Of course we would. Since the day you aimed to be a scholar, travelling out of this small village was only natural. Working up the courage to tell us mustn''t have been easy. That¡¯s my boy.¡± Halvis broke the silence.
¡°We won¡¯t stop you but! We have conditions. One, you need to have some way to protect yourself. A sub-class or a profession, we don¡¯t care. Shh. don¡¯t interrupt me. Two, you will only go after you either reach lvl 200 or you turn 100 and become an adult. Lastly, we will be going with you. We still have a house in the Capital after all.¡± Roya stated.
She didn¡¯t want this conversation to come up so early when Clovis was still so young but expected this day to come ages ago. Ebony¡¯s presence might have spurred his growth a little, and their little deal with each other.
¡°...only a profession, okay? I have no problem with number 2 but how come you never told me we had a house in the Capital?¡± Clovis backed down on not having a combat related class.
The 100 years old or lvl 200 requirement seemed a little too long for Ebony but time was relative to the two races. Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised they had a house somewhere else, they had many stories of their travels.
¡°Hahaha. Clovis, we were living there for a time until your mother started expecting you. We didn¡¯t want you to grow up without any friends so we came back here. There were hardly any frost elves there after all. Your mother and I ran our own store and were pretty well to do. Why do you think the biggest merchant company on the entire continent even bother coming here to trade with us? They didn¡¯t even have a branch in Plainston before we moved back here.¡± Halvis explained.
It made sense to Ebony, Roya and Halvis no longer had a family in Arcta and when they turned of age they left the village as there wasn¡¯t much left for them here. It was not a happy place for them since both of them lost 3-4 generations of their family here.
Ebony didn''t know how old they were now but, if they were adults before they left it would mean they are at least in the hundreds and Clovis was 16 already. They settled down back here for their child¡ It really brings up some pleasant memories of his own parents who did the same. At least till he was 15.
Dinner went on as per usual, Ebony¡¯s side tracking succeeded as the mood improved.
In these 8 days, he made 3 left gloves, each better than the last. All failing to meet Roya¡¯s bottom line. He was about to complete the 4th and last glove.
Roya never taught or gave any tips or tricks nor did she say what was wrong about his craft so Ebony could only depend on himself and the book.
Joining the last strings together he brought it to Roya. He didn¡¯t have time to make another after this final attempt.
¡°Ah Ebony, perfect timing.¡± Roya said when Ebony walked in, Halvis was in her work room as well for reasons unknown to him.
¡°I have brought my latest glove here.¡± Ebony said. She took the glove and was appraising it before speaking out.
¡°...you¡¯re really born to be a Mana Meister. Okay, you pass. What kind of casting glove do you want it to be? Since this is purely made of frostsilk cotton the choices are quite limited and the material quality only allows it to hold one type of runic enchantment. The general increased mana gathering speed, automatic mana compression are both possible. Mana to ice mana conversion speed increase and ice mana compression is possible too. If you were going to be using it in a place like here I would have recommended the ice mana absorption option, it¡¯ll absorb ambient ice mana and enhance your spells a little. But it¡¯ll be useless if there isn¡¯t much ice mana in the air.¡±
¡®So her Sub-Class had something to do with runes.¡¯
¡°Is it possible for it to be a spell acclimatization casting glove?¡± Ebony thought and asked different things.
¡°Hmm? You sure read up a lot. Hmm¡it might be possible for an Ice spell but only one. Are you sure you want a spell acclimatization casting glove? Those are limited in usage, especially for one that can only acclimate to a single spell.¡± Roya answered.
¡°Yes, if it''s possible then, that¡¯s the one I want.¡± Ebony was pretty happy about it being possible.
A Spell Acclimatization enchantment or rune allows the staff/wand/casting glove to acclimate or memorise a spell. The formation of the spell to be specific. It¡¯ll slowly memorise the movement of mana and the more the spell is used through that weapon the more it helps to form the spell faster. The mana for the spell moves more smoothly through them with use.
¡°Alright, you can watch. What type of spell is it? Can you cast it here without damaging my workstation?¡± Roya asked. She needed Ebony to wear the glove and cast the spell for her to specify the mana pathways needed for the spell.
¡°Defensive. Yes, it''s a shield.¡± Ebony answered.
This was the first time he¡¯ll be seeing her make anything magical.
¡°That¡¯s a good choice. You can cast it faster and faster, it will be handy in saving your life. A pity for the low quality material used¡¡± Roya clapped with understanding.
¡°...did you know? My family used to be a family of crafters, mana crafters. I only had talent for tailoring and mana weaving but that¡¯s not even a fraction of what mana can do. What I taught you for weaving can be applied to many materials and elements, of course not everything is compatible but, you get the gist.¡± Roya spoke out again.
Ebony kept quiet as Roya continued. Halvis hadn¡¯t said anything as of yet and was just standing there.
She raised her palms towards the table when the corner of the wooden table suddenly moved, bent, reshaped like a fork was pointed out of the table. Connected.
¡°That was not wood manipulation. You know how Mana Weaving is to push mana into cotton till you can move it? Well the same can be done for many raw materials but like I said about compatibility this portion of the table is now brittle. Everything boils down to mana. I merely used mana to punch the wood mana out of shape, or into shape in this case. I don¡¯t even have the right skill for it.¡± Roya explained as she flicked the protruding wood with her finger, breaking it into fragments.
¡°You can already get Mana Meister as your Sub-Class or Profession can¡¯t you? I can tell your Mana Weaving and Mana Compression already hit the natural block. You were going to take it tonight weren¡¯t you? Try copying what I did and see if your Mana Weaving skill can mutate or evolve into Mana Smithing, Mana Crafting, Mana Fashioning, Mana Architect or the like.¡± it seemed like it pained Roya when she said this.
Memories of her family plaguing her, even so, she advised Ebony. Showed more paths to Ebony.
¡°...Okay.¡± Roya already went so far in helping him, it would be rude to reject at this point. His Mana Weaving and Mana Compression had indeed not levelled for 2-3 days.
He touched the table, his mana stopped on the surface of the wooden table. A foreign body, foreign mana to Ebony. Wood mana, but they were gaps in between them. He forced his mana in, Roya did say all she did was punch the mana out of shape. It didn¡¯t feel right and she didn¡¯t have the skills anyway so he tried something different. He couldn¡¯t assert control over the foreign mana unlike ice mana which was to say he couldn¡¯t use wood magic.
He filled as much of the gap as he could with his mana. The mana in the table was tough, unmoving.
He knew all the furniture was made by wood mage cum woodworkers so it was obviously not a normal wooden table.
Instead of ¡®punching¡¯ he tried to push them, making the foreign mana closer together while the gaps expanded.
Slowly but surely a protrusion on the table appeared, like that of a bubble on bubble wrap. Rising up and expanding into an orb on a stick like an arcade game control stick. Taking a full 25 minutes. It was awkward in the room.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic skill Mana Weaving evolved into Mana Moulding¡¯
Mana Moulding - Inject mana into raw materials and alter their arrangement of mana through mana manipulation alone, moulding and reshaping it as desired with sufficient mental force. Increases fine control over mana by 2.5% per level.
¡®Ooo tier 2. Nice.¡¯
¡°Mmm. It evolved into Mana Moulding.¡± Ebony announced. He could find out more about the skill if she knew about it after all.
¡°...I¡¯ve not heard of that one but since it evolved, it should be tier 2 instead of 1 now. That should give you a better fortification unlike with skill mutation where it would stay at the same tier. Come, put on your glove and cast your defensive spell as accurately and smoothly as you can.¡± Roya seemed a little disappointed that Ebony didn¡¯t get a familiar skill to her. Perhaps, she wanted her family¡¯s skills to carry on in some way.
The glove fit his hand perfectly, the material was smooth and cooling. White in colour, a simple glove without design reaching a little beyond his wrist. It was thin enough such that it didn¡¯t hinder his movement in any way and his sense of touch was only a tinge bit affected.
A shield looking like his prototype slowly formed in front of his palms. 8 secs.
For such a large creation, it was his current limit. He felt a different mana in his glove despite having run his own mana through it so many times throughout its creation. Roya¡¯s mana was like a tiger watching its pup, his mana, as he cast his spell. It followed his own and forged a pathway along where his mana moved.
Layered Ice Carapace - Conjure a shield made of Ice, designed after a turtle¡¯s shell to let nothing through. Layered to increase its defences, it is possible to increase the number of layers of shell with mana. One-layered Ice Carapace has the effect of 80% + 2.5% Intelligence, second, third, fourth and fifth layer adds a static 30%, 20%, 10% & 5% Intelligence.
Consumes 750 MP/Layer
Classification: Ice Magic
He only made it two layers since he used some mana with the table but with his current mana pool after levelling some, his limit was 3. His glove lit up in a cool blue light as Roya told him to hold his spell and move it around. He manipulated it to move forwards, backwards, up and down, left and right.
His magic or mental range increased to 4 fifths a gir or 4 metres over the week. Symbols and circles Ebony was unfamiliar with appeared on the back of his gloves before settling into it and disappearing from sight.
Halvis knocked on his shield a little before flicking his finger at it, breaking it into pieces with ease. Ebony received the mental feedback of the broken carapace like a light knock on his mind. Halvis didn¡¯t say anything about it.
¡°It¡¯s done. You should try not to use any other spell through the glove so that the acclimatization doesn¡¯t get ruined. Okay, Hal could you go get it? Come Ebony, we got a gift for you. Don¡¯t reject us so fast. I personally made it just for you. It is not safe out there so I made it in hopes that it can protect you.¡± Halvis didn''t have to walk far before stopping.
Halvis returned with a folded robe in his hands. ¡°Here, Ebony, try it on. It''s made with 3 types of materials including my frostsilk cotton. I know you don¡¯t like restrictive armor, and Roya had customised this according to how I saw your fight. Every robe she makes is custom made, this was made to be on the lighter side but it seemed like Roya went a little overboard with the thickness compared to what she planned.¡±
It was a duffle coat similar to that of Halvis¡¯ but with a tall collar up to the back of his head. Very dark blue, almost black in colour. It didn¡¯t have toggles because they may get cut loose so four large buttons replaced them, hidden under a flap like that of a jacket zipper.
The coat reached mid thigh above his knees, so that it wouldn¡¯t hinder his movements. It stuck close and firmly to his body so it was less likely to get caught in claws or what not. Heavy even with his Strength now at 20, weighing almost 6 tivs.
[Robe of the Ice Swordsman (Uncommon) - Tailored for both an ice mage and a swordsman]
Ebony¡¯s Identify doesn¡¯t tell him much about items until he found out more about it himself but he was really surprised by the result.
¡°It is highly resistant to cuts, slashes and basically sharp things. Weaker monsters wouldn¡¯t even be able to bite through it. It is almost completely useless against blunt physical force so be careful of that. This leaves your legs defenceless but we decided you would prefer mobility over that. This chain on the inside of the left wrist part can be attached to your myriad bracelet.
The innermost layer of frostsilk cotton can ward off both cold and heat a little and has some resistance against ice magic.
The middle layer is the skin of a type of snake monster that uses enhancement magic, it is receptive to mana and you can charge mana into it to increase the robes defences by quite a bit, mixing with the other 2 layers increases both ice and physical defence. I estimate it to be able to take up to 5000 mana but it also depends on the strength of your mana so take note.
The final outer layer is made from web a of spider type monster that uses metal magic, it is very tough and durable but stays flexible.
There is a hood hidden in the collar hence its thickness here. After you attach to your myriad bracelet you can use mana and manipulate it to cover your head. I¡¯ll teach you some tricks later on.
They are all made of common rank materials so even though this piece was lucky enough to be considered as uncommon it should barely be able to match the abilities of one. This is the lightest it could get as with so many materials.¡± Roya introduced without stopping.
¡°You¡¯re a growing boy, don''t forget to eat more, keep yourself cool. I mean warm. There are many things other than training or levelling. Speak out a little more, make some friends out there¡ take good care of yourself.¡± Roya¡¯s eyes moistened, worry apparent in her shaking voice. Halvis tried to comfort her but his silence was speaking lots as well
Ebony didn¡¯t know what to say. He was touched.
The robe was made just for him, designed just for him. But that wasn¡¯t why he was touched.
He didn¡¯t think he would ever get treated like¡ family again. Their concern, their worries for him. Ebony felt it. It was too real. He didn¡¯t expect to feel like this, especially not in a foreign world, from a foreign race. He was just a stranger to them weeks ago, clearly suspicious but they didn¡¯t shun him. Instead they opened up to him, treated him like their own.
He did the one thing he thought was better than any word of thanks could and pulled both of them in for a hug. Something he hadn¡¯t done for a long, long time. Yet, he was pulling himself in for the hug with his low strength. With how tall both of them were he could only reach for their waist or torsos.
¡°I will take care of myself. You guys take care of yourselves, Clovis as well. Thank you for taking care of me for so long, I will never forget it. I¡¯ll make sure to visit. Thank you for the robe, it¡¯ll surely keep me from harm. I love it.¡± words spewed out naturally as Ebony said his heartfelt thoughts.
He was taking from them again, yet he was too weak to push their care and concern away. He also didn¡¯t want to push them aside anymore.
The Thoya¡¯s were stunned by the sudden display of affection and gratitude from the usually stoic Ebony. They knew he was expressionless not emotionless but he never displayed so much of it before.
His mysteriously high capabilities were ignored now. He was just a child like Clovis, just wounded and lost without any memories in an unknown place. He just needed some love. A family.
They hugged back. Patting his head like they did for Clovis.
¡°Visit? This is already your home. You better not forget your way back.¡± Halvis told Ebony off.
Chapter 20: Departure
¡®Home¡¯ Ebony pondered.
He sat on the bed and meditated.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Mana Meister - Requirements: 2 types of mana manipulation skills Lvl 25¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Class is bound. Choose Mana Meister as your Sub-Class?¡¯
No.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Class is bound. Choose Mana Meister as your Profession?¡¯
Yes.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Chosen Profession will be bound to you and can never be changed. Choose ¡®Mana Meister¡¯ as your Profession?¡¯
Yes.
As with Classing, getting a Sub-Class or Profession will knock one out but usually for a shorter duration.
Perhaps he wasn¡¯t in his best state but for once Ebony dreamt. Dreamt of the place he once called home, unknown to him from when did he no longer consider that that house was not his home. Probably when it emptied out and he was the only one returning there.
It felt weird.
Ebony knew that even this place didn''t completely feel like home. As rude as that may be to Roya and Halvis. Perhaps he just hasn''t been here long enough. Or he just wasn''t fully attached to this house yet.
Waking up six hours later, he didn¡¯t feel any obvious changes like when he took his Class.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Mana Meister Fortification Completed.¡±
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession changed to Mana Meister¡¯
¡®Mana Meister Fortification:
Mana Compressibility increased by 100%
Mana Resilience increased by 100%
Generic Skills Converted to Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding
Mana Compression
Stemmed Profession Skills:
Mana Perception (Passive) - Ability to perceive mana improves by 1.0% per level.
Profession Skill Evolved:
Mana Compression evolved into Sheer Mana Compression
Sheer Mana Compression - Compressing mana to increase its density. Mana is compressed by 2.5% per level.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 81
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 33
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 49
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 48
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 50
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery Lvl 46
Frost Injection Lvl 17
Ice Spike Lvl 22
Two-handed Power Stab Lvl 23
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 3
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 0
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 28
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 34
Mana Perception Lvl 1
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 226/250
Stamina: 333/500
Mana: 8/1150
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 20
Vitality: 25
Constitution: 70
Endurance: 50
Agility: 35
Intelligence: 46
Wisdom: 115
Perception: 25
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 6
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 26
Running Lvl 29
Humming Lvl 22
Mental Mapping Lvl 5
Kicking Mastery Lvl 31
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 6
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 7
Dish Washing Lvl 7
Physical Conditioning Lvl 3
Magical Conditioning Lvl 3
Peak Performance Lvl 28
Tracking Lvl 3
Game Processing Lvl 7
His Core skill levelled like no tomorrow, not slowing down much even now.
He levelled 15 times, hunting at the same spot, the higher level he got, the slower he levelled. He once tried going a little further in but when decapitated eagles started falling out of the sky and a few cut and toppled trees here and there got him to skedaddle.
He couldn¡¯t cut down a single thin tree without a heck lot of effort. And headless birds of unknown levels dropping down on him was more than enough for him to know that whatever was there was beyond him for now.
Ebony had been fighting with his left hand wielding his sword as his right elbow only healed after 5 days. Even with his mega enhanced regeneration, it took a long time. A broken bone takes more to heal than a cracked bone. There was still a white mark where his elbow popped out from but it seemed like it would heal and not leave a scar soon enough.
The good thing was that his greatsword mastery levelled quickly and he even changed his style up a little when he could switch his sword arm from left to right mid swings. It made transitions between his attacks smoother.
Frost Coating mutated into Frost Injection after he tried the same thing with the reindeer a couple more times.
Frost Injection - Imbued Ice Elemental Mana into your body or weapon to inject into an entity, freezing it internally. Has the effect of 70% + 1.0% Intelligence.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
He could charge any amount of mana he wants into his greatsword and every time it gets into contact with an opponent it would leave a mark of ice.
If it manages to enter the bloodstream it would only stay around the affected area which may not be the best move as it stops any bleeding too. Cutting deep enough to freeze some important organs was incredibly effective though.
Snowskins and Terns had become his target practice for Ice Spike, hitting a target was one thing, hitting a moving target was another and a flying target with three dimensional movement another.
With good enough prediction ability, he was starting to be able to hit snowskins where he wanted to hit them but flying targets had to be caught off guard. Catching them off guard was almost impossible with his current skill set though.
He didn¡¯t use Two-handed Power Stab for the first two days to let his flesh and muscle heal some more first. After that he slowly eased it back into his fights while pushing Peak Performance.
He got Layered Ice Carapace quite recently and it cost too much mana to freely train for now. The good thing was he could cast it then put some effort and a tiny bit of mana to maintain it. It left him able to cast 3 uncompressed Ice Spike at a time but carrying a huge ass shield without too much mobility issue was more than beneficial.
The further away it was the weaker his control over it. The shield wouldn¡¯t disappear without his mana but he needed a little mana to hold and move it around. Casting Icebody Enhancement didn¡¯t seem to take any effort at all and doesn¡¯t disrupt or take up one of his possible casts.
The basic train of thought for evolving skills to a higher tier was simple. Using less to do more.
Your level or stats don¡¯t matter.
For example, even if you trained the skill for years or decades, if you are not able to use the same amount of strength to exert more force then the skill would merely level and not evolve.
Ebony could now sustain three mana spheres above him and compress two at the same time, pulsing between the three. Getting the Profession was just enough to tip him over to get a skill evolution.
Mana Perception was vague as balls. He heard of the Skill and it was a Skill almost every mage would want to get sooner or later. He currently couldn¡¯t feel any difference with its current level.
For stats, he realised after trying to bait a large number of monsters to fight a large group melee that the intense battle really eats into his concentration and stamina. This likely also helped push his Core Skill to the limit.
Watching the battle clearly, knowing when to strike, how to strike, when to dodge, when to block, when to counter and counter in what way. The works.
Ebony was slowly getting back his into his groove. It had been years since he fought wild beasts and he was using unfamiliar weapons such as ice magic.
5 point to Strength for a little extra edge, now he would need to add a little more to handle the weighted coat better.
Leaving Vitality alone for now. Monsters below level 10 have a hard time giving him injuries with Icebody Enhancement now with Constitution at 70 and Intelligence getting a sweet buff to 46. 65% of 46 was a 29.9 buff to his Constitution and 27.6 buff to his Strength and Endurance.
The bigger problem was all the knockback from the sheer strength of the monsters.
For some reasons the increase in Endurance does not show any increase in max stamina in his status. He could feel the increase in regeneration though, instinctually? He didn¡¯t know how.
A 15 increase in Agility for the increase in speed, he needed to react faster rather than move faster now. He was probably wrong about his movement speed calculations as the faster he went the more he was affected by air resistance and all other nonsense at work.
Intelligence getting some love got 30 points in. Wisdom got 40 while Perception got 10.
Stamina regen at 529.375/min while mana regens at 1,217.5625/hr or 20.29/min.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Yes. Ebony could run Icebody Enhancement for as long as he liked now.
The rest of his generic skills only got a few levels here and there.
Mana Compressibility increased by 100%. He formed a mana sphere and mentally pushed. The resistance he felt from his own mana pushing back indeed decreased by a lot. He added more mana in, keeping its size the same as 1 point of mana while compressing it.
If he didn¡¯t try forcing more than his skill level suggests, which was training the skill, it was quite effortless to compress it by 170%. If compressing a 15MP Ice Spike by 1% makes it cost 15.15MP he can now compress it all the way till it costs 40.5MP. According to Roya, it will gain a directly proportional Intelligence buff.
The effect of Intelligence on his Ice Spike spell was generally increasing the Ice Spike hardness, lowering its temperature a little somehow and raising the upper limit of his projectile speed. There were other minor effects he hadn¡¯t found out yet.
So, if he really compressed his Ice Spike to that degree would his 46 Intelligence Ice Spike have the effect of a 124.2 Intelligence Ice Spike? He¡¯ll have to find out.
Mana Resilience increased by 100%. This was more questionable.
What the heck was Mana Resilience?
Ebony hasn¡¯t seen this term in any book he had read. There weren¡¯t many books on magic and mana in the Thoya¡¯s family study to begin with, it was understandable that he hasn¡¯t seen the term. Roya should be more familiar with the subject.
Just from the name itself it was pretty self explanatory that his mana would be more resilient?
What did that mean?
His spells would be harder?
An Ice Spike formed in front of Ebony in about 3 seconds and he tried to break it. Thanks to all his experiments he knew his spells well enough.
It really did get harder to break, but he was unsure if it really was twice as hard or was tough the right word? It didn¡¯t mean a lot when ice was an element that wasn¡¯t exactly the toughest to begin with but this was extremely good news for his Layered Ice Carapace.
¡®Wait¡does that mean what I think it means?¡¯ Ebony moved for the wooden knife he used for skinning and game processing.
It didn¡¯t lose much sharpness since the day he started using it. He tried to poke himself with it, pushing with more and more strength to find that he couldn¡¯t even pierce his own skin. He did get a bruise and scratch after putting enough force in. those healed up quickly enough for it to seem like the injury was imaginary.
Ice mana flowed in him, with Icebody Enhancement on he couldn¡¯t even scratch himself anymore. Even with his greatsword. He wasn¡¯t that mad to hack at himself with all his strength.
Ebony¡¯s body was partially made of mana, when he got his Class he could feel it more clearly but it was just a foggy picture of his body and it still was. That was how he felt his mana leaking when his bones got damaged or when he bled, he couldn¡¯t stop it or control the leak so he was forced to freeze his wounds when he received cuts.
¡®Hot damn. This resilience buff couldn¡¯t fit me any better.¡¯ Ebony was betting that a quarter or 25% of his body was made of mana, mostly just because 25% of his mana regeneration regenerated his health too. Even so, it was like a buff to his Constitution.
It was still in the middle of the night so Ebony just meditated and trained his Mana Compression skill. 3 much larger spheres were above him, no point using just 1 point of mana when he had loads to spare now.
It wasn¡¯t like he was going to leave Arcta today, the merchant came here to trade after all.
Ebony followed Clovis to the playground today, spending more time with him.
He sparred with Tiha for the first time in a while. They were shocked by his level but not jealous, they believed that it was much more important to improve their skills first which wasn¡¯t wrong.
Ebony¡¯s ability with the greatsword was much better now and he was able to deftly block both of Tiha¡¯s dagger with a timely sweep, spin and ending with a counter.
Ebony never chatted while he was in the middle of sparring but he always stopped his blows just in time, always going for any openings. Somehow, Tiha would show an ah-ha expression and she rarely made the same mistake and showed the same opening again. She was a fast learner.
She was sad to hear that Ebony was going to leave but happy for him too. Qane on the other hand seemed ecstatic at Ebony¡¯s news.
Shopping together with Clovis afterwards, Ebony bought as many frost plums as he could as he said his farewells to Mrs Calhy and Mr Herrid. Promising to visit to see the plum blossoms one winter.
8 days worth of hunts got him almost 2000 Blacks worth of mana ores.
If he managed to get 12 tivs a deer or reindeer which was his main selling monster meat. Transporting 4 a day, around 48 tivs of meat was sold a day. Ebony got talked down to selling each tiv for 5 Blacks because Mr Herrid didn¡¯t need so much and Ebony was not his only supplier. 1920 Blacks in total. He spent over a hundred over the 8 days on frost plums and even more just now.
It got slightly harder to find hunts over time but the population of wildlife didn''t seem to decrease too much.
Now his assets are a total of 150 Greys and 215 Blacks. He amassed it and left most of it in his room, not having a pouch or anything for it. The coat Roya made for him had 2 large pockets on the inside so he could keep it there.
In the study, reading the book Clovis used to teach him vocabulary. Ebony heard snow crunching outside the window.
Looking out he saw 3 truck sized covered wooden wagons or caravans about a gir long, 3 fifths as wide and more than 2 fifths as tall by the side of the road. The wheels were wide and thick like car tyres, made to traverse the snowy region. They were each pulled by a single massive ram looking animal, half the size of the covered wagon.
The occupants started to alight and look around. The man who sat at the front wagon with the person driving the wagon walked up to the cabin hiding out of sight from where Ebony was. Ebony continued reading like nothing happened.
Only about 5 mins later did Halvis come to get Ebony.
¡°Ebony, they¡¯re here. Come out and greet them.¡± Halvis called out. He was glad Ebony finally opened up a little last night.
¡°Okay.¡± Ebony said, no hint of whatever happened last night or any anxious or excited feelings appeared on his face. But he was kinda excited to finally see another human or the other races. Not that he didn¡¯t treat the Frost Elves like any other human.
¡°There he is. Come Ebony, meet Andel. Manager of the Plainston branch of the Z&Z Company and an old acquaintance of ours.¡± Roya said.
¡°Haha, you flatter me Mrs Thoya. Greetings young man, I¡¯m Andel Yegg, small time mer.. merchant and manager.¡± Andel reached out for a tet which Ebony politely returned with his right hand.
Ebony saw Andel¡¯s eyes comically widen as he tetted back and stuttered a little. ¡®Did I do it wrongly? Right hand for the lower level or younger right?¡¯ Ebony thought. While the two Frost Elves chuckled softly, unsurprised by the reaction.
[Great Merchant - Lvl ???]
At level 33 and Identify at level 12, Ebony could Identify up to level 98 but it didn¡¯t seem to help much.
Ebony felt bad that he imagined a manager or a merchant of a fantasy and medieval world to be fat and round.
Andel was as tall as him and one of the buffest man Ebony had seen. He was wearing a thick furred coat but Ebony could see his bulging muscles threatening to rip themselves of its constraints. Dark brown hair and clean, sharp facial features a bright salesman smile on his face. A human as far as Ebony could tell.
¡°Nice to meet you, my name is Ebony Rime.¡± Ebony replied, ignoring his reaction for now since he didn¡¯t think he did anything wrong or come off as rude.
¡°My apologies, Ebony, I would like to have a word with Mr and Mrs Thoya in private real quick.¡± Andel apologised for his rudeness and asked the three of them.
Ebony nodded and said that he¡¯ll be in the study if they needed him.
It didn¡¯t take long before he was called back, he didn¡¯t know what that was about but he didn¡¯t really care either.
¡°Sorry about that Ebony, I¡¯ve heard the story. You¡¯re warmly welcomed on our caravan to Plainston!¡± Andel spoke out louder and more sounding more excited than necessary.
¡°Thank you. I am willing to pay for the trip and do any work you need me to. I can help move luggage, clean, wash and I am not too bad of a fighter.¡± Ebony took it like an interview where he was trying to sell his skills.
It was only natural that he thought the caravan to required a fee was like a bus fare or plane ticket. If he didn¡¯t have enough, he could only try selling his abilities to work.
¡°Hahaha. There is no need for any of that, you will be a guest on our caravan. We were going to make the trip back anyway. What''s another passenger?¡± Ebony thought he saw a hint of pity before Andel laughed it off. Probably his imagination, why would he be pitied? Ebony never cared about how others see him anyway.
¡°...I will do my part.¡± Ebony ended off.
Halvis got Ebony to help him move some of the smaller filled crates from Roya¡¯s workshop out to the merchant¡¯s wagon. He passed by many more crates left outside the house by the merchant''s porters, 2 humans and he spotted one with pointy furry ears, a beastman. But he didn¡¯t know which race amongst the beastmen.
The crates left there were filled with different materials for the next batch of Roya¡¯s orders. Every robe Roya made was ordered. Custom made. At least according to Halvis. Halvis and Ebony handed the crates probably with robes to the porters.
Andel came back after directing his porters where to place the crates and for them to handle them with care.
¡°That should be all the materials for this round. We¡¯ll set up at the village square for 2 days as usual. Ebony, we will leave on the 5th hour of the 3rd day. Meet us at the village gate, I¡¯ll introduce you to our escort team then. They ran off looking for an available house to rest as soon as we arrived.¡±
¡°Okay, I¡¯ll be there on time.¡±
After they left towards the village square, Andel shouted impossibly loud, announcing their arrival as they moved towards the square.
They sell all sorts of foodstuff especially vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices that couldn¡¯t be found or grown here. Phos was also sold by the barrels and other merchandise could be ordered in advance. Clovis¡¯s books were one example but they were not easy to obtain where they were.
¡°Did I mess up tetting?¡± Ebony asked Halvis about the weird reaction from Andel.
¡°Hmm? Ohh. Haha. No, you didn¡¯t. He was merely surprised. Scared shitless would be more accurate actually.¡± Halvis caught on to what Ebony was curious about.
¡°Scared by what?¡± Ebony was confused, he didn¡¯t exactly think that he looked ugly enough to shock someone on sight. He only got better and better looking as his Constitution stat increased. Getting his physique also changed his looks like his hair and skin colour.
His skin clung tighter and tighter to his body, pores reduced in size making his skin smoother, tougher than ever yet, retaining its suppleness. His muscles and bones get denser and denser. If his body was toned before it was now chiselled as if he didn¡¯t have enough muscle mass to condense anymore.
¡°By your ridiculous mana of course. You need to get a Myriad Bracelet as soon as you get to Plainston or you¡¯ll be scaring those not used to it everywhere you go. You know you¡¯re producing more mana than an average lvl 100 mage right? We guessed that you got your meditation skill to at least lvl 50 before your Class by now, there¡¯s no other explanation. Though I don¡¯t know how much of a buff you got, try not to let people find out about your crazy mana regeneration, for now just keep using as much mana as you can on the move. Like you always do. Most wouldn¡¯t be able to tell exactly how much mana you¡¯re producing unless they¡¯re much higher level or have a high mana sensitivity.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°It won¡¯t be a problem once you¡¯re at a much higher level since it¡¯s not surprising for someone high level to regenerate a lot of mana. But lvl 33? And without a Sub-Class or Profession that regenerates more mana than a lvl 100 mage? The good thing is that even at that level of overflowing mana the range before it dissipates is small so it won¡¯t be detected easily unless people get close to you.¡±
¡°I will take note.¡± Ebony replied and got Icebody Enhancement going.
1,217.5625 MP/hr would require someone without the 250% buff to have 1217 stat points in Wisdom or 12175 MP. 100 levels in one¡¯s Class would be a 1000 stat points, no one in their right mind would put all that into Wisdom. 100 levels in one¡¯s Sub-Class would be 500 stat points and Profession would give 100 that depends on the Profession itself.
¡®Okay yeah, no.¡¯ Good thing overflowing mana could be easily hidden once he got a Myriad Bracelet and some empty mana ores.
Another way of hiding his mana was through manual mana manipulation but that was a pretty hard to learn technique apparently.
Two days passed in a flash.
Ebony only did his daily conditioning and practised on Layered Ice Carapace with his [Acclimatization Casting Glove (Common)] outside of his usual practices with mana.
Deep Persistent Meditation levelled once, Ice Spike twice, Layered Ice Carapace trice and Icebody Enhancement 5 times. Reaching level 10 in Mana Meister just a few hours ago.
Now only needing a little over 3 hours of sleep a day before waking up naturally. Mana Moulding gained 5 levels, Sheer Mana Compression gained 8 and Mana Perception gained 3.
Not surprising to find out that Mana Meister¡¯s Profession-focused stat was Wisdom, his Wisdom increased by 10 points reaching 125.
Wisdom seems to help in increasing his range of control over mana and a tiny bit in increasing his ability to form more mana spheres at once or multicasting in general. His range bordered 5 metres or 1 gir and he was on the cusp of casting 5 spells at the same time. Though that may be due to Magical Conditioning as well.
Over the roughly 3 - 4 weeks he¡¯d been here, his hair had grown uncomfortably long. He didn¡¯t know how to cut his own hair and Halvis offered to trim it for him. The Frost Elves mostly had long hair, even the males. With the exception for the children like Clovis so it wasn¡¯t his first time trimming hair. Now Ebony had his short hair again.
He didn¡¯t want any sad farewells with Clovis so he just left a see you in a bit note and that he¡¯ll get him any interesting books he sees on his travels. Ambushed at the door by Roya and Halvis, a hug here and a head pat there later, Ebony left for the village gate.
The caravan was there by the side checking their wheels, equipment and inventory.
Andel waved when he saw Ebony.
Perhaps to see them off, the village chief, Orren Wit was here with an unfamiliar female Frost Elf by his side.
Introductions and greetings were in order.
The 3 porters he saw were also the drivers or handlers of the rams. The two humans were [Coachman Lvl 59] and [Coachman Lvl 62]. Looking not too old, perhaps approaching middle age.
The level 59 coachman was Larry Pot, average looking with a thick beard dark brown like his hair. The other only introduced himself as Wattel, a little bit older with a similar dark brown mustache and thick head of hair and attitude.
The final [Coachman Lvl 52], Greg Mace with his pointy ears and a tail, silverish in colour as with his hair was a wolfman. All other features were not unlike humans, Ebony read that each individual showed different amounts of wolf-like or beast-like traits; some had claws instead of nails or had fur over their entire body.
The coachmans were also the porters since stats and skill made things easier, they probably had high Strength. All of them had a stocky build though not as impressive as Andel.
The escort party was exactly how Ebony imagined an adventurer party would look like.
Fergus Emer, Elven [Wind Archer lvl 58] about as tall as Ebony which means he was probably still considered a child elf. Handsome like any random Frost Elf he¡¯d seen but with pale skin instead of light blue, otherwise not too dissimilar to the Frost Elves.
He was a little haughty when he introduced himself but toned it down after tetting with Ebony. Maybe due to their inherent ability with mana. Dressed in a similar robe-like dress of the Frost Elves, sleeveless leather armour with leather bracers, a wooden bow and quiver of arrows.
Chris Parle, human [Warrior Lvl 53] standing a little shorter than Ebony had beige colour hair. Armed with a broadsword on his hip and a knife or dagger peeked out from his back under his thick furred cape. His armour spotted metal pieces around his chest and shoulders over leather parts. He was polite and charismatic, the popular type Ebony usually shy away from.
Dina Fang, human [Rogue lvl 51] the only woman on the escort team or the entire caravan party. A full head shorter than Ebony, slim and her leather armour covered her assets if she had any. Shoulder length brown hair, clean facial features more cute than pretty.
After seeing beautiful lady elves for long enough it was an unfair comparison. She had both bows and daggers, throwing knives by her thighs. Dismissive of Ebony at best, disturbed by Ebony fingers after tetting. Another perceptive one.
Rowent Igor, human [Fire Mage Lvl 57] only a little taller than Dina. He had a skinny face with murky dark red eyes and hair. The first thing he said when tetting was ¡°Why on ell would a human pick a hybrid Class?¡± before his eyes widened and he went ¡°OHH! I see, interesting.¡±
Perhaps it was a mage or scholar thing, but he had lots of questions. Good thing for Ebony too as he could ask questions of his own on the trip.
Like all the humans in the group, he was wearing a warm-looking furred jacket or coat. He was fully covered though so Ebony couldn''t see what kind of armour he wore. Carrying an iconic looking wooden staff curled at the top, holding a smaller than fist sized red orb. Unfortunately, Ebony didn''t see the famous tall cone like hat of wizards.
Top Thud, Lizardman [Warrior Lvl 60] introduced himself as the leader of the escort team. At least 2.2 metres or 0.44 gir tall(metric system was obviously superior), muscles thick and chest wide. He had scales over his entire body and his face was reptilian, a humanoid lizard was accurate enough to describe him. A thick tail protruded from his back and a metal tip like cone covered the end of his tail. Also wearing winter clothing, he spotted a thick metal buckler big enough to cover much of his wide chest and a sword by his hip.
¡°Enya here will escort you out of Hoarfrost Glade. Ebony, it was a pleasure having you here in Arcta, feel free to visit any time. We hardly have any visitors as it is.¡± Orren said, addressing the merchants and Ebony.
¡°Enya Tu, Don¡¯t worry I won¡¯t take your prey, I will only intervene if necessary.¡± Enya declared.
She was on the shorter side for an adult Frost Elf at about 1.9 metres. The only different thing was that she didn¡¯t have the usual long hair they had. She had the strongest presence Ebony didn¡¯t feel from the village chief or his wife.
She didn¡¯t do anything but stand there yet the air around her seemed so heavy, getting close enough to tet was enough for Ebony to feel like someone was forcing him down on the ground. Even raising his hands to tet seemed like weights tied his arms down.
[Master Snow Rogue Lvl ???]
This was the indicator that she was an adult despite her height or hair. Overflowing Vitality, a lot more obvious than he ever felt. The Thoyas weren¡¯t fighters so they didn¡¯t heavily emphasise on Vitality while Orren was a Mage and Ophelia an Archer. Why didn¡¯t he feel it when he was with Gen?
¡°So you¡¯re Ebony. I heard you¡¯ve been playing with my sister, her skills improved quite a bit in a short time.¡± Enya said.
¡®That just sounds wrong... Snow Rogue, so she¡¯s Tiha¡¯s sister.¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡°Yes, I¡¯m Ebony. Sparring with Tiha was helpful for both of us.¡±
Andel couldn¡¯t decline Orren¡¯s hospitality even when there shouldn¡¯t be anything dangerous enough to require someone like Enya with their escort team only in the 50s.
Everything was in order and all aboard the wagon.
Chapter 21: Getting to Know
¡°Was it really the right choice to use up all your sap?¡±
¡°...it was the only choice.¡± Leaves rustled despite there being no wind underground.
¡°...¡±
¡°I don¡¯t have much time left... his arrival could be fate. The flawless spatial tear no. Distortion? Tore the blizzard cover apart, we moved to the safest areas to get it back up but it just so happens he appeared in our territory.
Just so happens to learn ice magic and body enhancement magic in a short time and that monstrous ability with mana. I never thought the day would come when there is another that can utilise the flames like we do.
It''s a pity I cannot last long enough without your essence for you to complete your evolution. If it really comes down to it, don¡¯t give up your life like your predecessors. Just let me die already. Your son and daughter haven''t returned with the previous expectant and there would be no one to take care of our descendants. As long as I could survive long enough for your evolution we might not face impending extinction.¡±
¡°We can only hope Ebony gets strong enough and is willing to help us. If only I could learn his Persistent Meditation, it''s too bad tier 4 skills are so hard to mutate and I don¡¯t understand how it''s possible to meditate on the move.¡±
¡°The Frostblaze Physique as he said he had, is our only hope left. He is the first with such a physique despite having performed that so many times. Coincidence. Maybe¡ Maybe not¡ Come on Gen, let¡¯s move deeper in¡The burden on you would lighten.¡±
¡°...Yes.¡±
???
The covered flap of the wagon billowed. The [Brawn Rams Lvl 50] trudged through snow at speeds of a car, it was honestly pretty impressive if you took into account the weights of the wagons with inventory and people. Just Roya¡¯s robes alone weighed literal tons. But it was just sooo slow for Ebony now, there was nothing much to do during the ride except practice his mana manipulation skills and humming.
Ebony was wrong about monsters having no survival instincts or acting like normal animals. That was only true for young, low level monsters. They could actually pick the right prey and run from predators.
The front wagon had Wattel and Top at the front seat with Andel in the wagon. The second was driven by Greg with Dina and Fergus on board. The third was driven by Larry with Rowent, Chris and Ebony on board. Enya was sleeping on top of the middle wagon.
It was expected to be a 7 day trip, 3 days to get out of Hoarfrost Glade and 4 more from there to get to Plainston. They were delayed by a new camp of kobolds nearer to Plainston when they were on the way here.
They were moving northeast from Arcta and Ebony looked out to get his Mental Map expanding as they travelled. Chris was asking about Ebony¡¯s sword and where or who he learnt swordsmanship from. Rowent was discussing magic and Classes with Ebony.
Humans were a balanced race. That was to say they didn¡¯t excel in any one area compared to the other races. Physically weaker than most Beastmen and Dwarves and magically weaker than Elfs and Foxmen. A hybrid Class fits other races more since their natural traits cover their weakness. Elves are more magically inclined and a little fewer stats focused on their magical side didn¡¯t hurt them much.
Human warriors are already weaker than Dwarven and Beastmen warriors and human mages weaker than Elven. Hybrid Classed humans widen their variety of skills but the balance between physical and magical stat makes them jacks and masters of none. Of course, that was just in general and with the right Sub-Class and Profession some are able to make it work.
The rams would pull them along for 6 hours before stopping for an hour for water and rest before another 6 hour travel. Only moving 12 hours a day before resting for the night is the limit of their endurance or they¡¯ll risk the rams not being able to move much the next day. Some monsters like the brawn rams that aren¡¯t too violent are easier to influence, domesticate or tame. The Coachmen had some of these skills to keep the driven monsters tame and follow instructions.
The ride was surprisingly smooth and there was no discomfort even though he was just sitting on the wagon floor. Either due to the flat smooth surface of snow or the wagons had a surprisingly good suspension system.
The 1 hour break for the rams was the time when the escort team and Ebony could stretch their legs. Usually, 3 of them would search the nearby area for any game and wild edible vegetation they could find for dinner or breakfast. The remaining 2 will standby and protect the coachmen and Andel, they will swap for the next hour''s break. Though it seems like Andel was more than proficient enough at protecting himself from any nearby threat with his short sword and high level.
Enya volunteered to stay put and shooed all 6 of them to go ¡®play¡¯.
Ebony never travelled this direction much but from what he knew they were only monsters like the rabbit, boar and the like there was also a bird type called the [Huffin Puffin]. It apparently uses air magic to either kick up snow or play tricks on travellers with them. A non-aggressive monster that children Frost Elves play with, it was more of a naughty animal than a monster.
¡°Ebony, our team has a culture of a game of hunt at times like this. Would you like to join?¡± the Lizardman and leader, Top, spoke out. So far Ebony hasn¡¯t heard any slang or accent differences between races. A slur of tongue at most.
¡°Sure, what are the rules?¡±
¡°Simple. The one who brings back the most number of prey wins, edible of course. The level, size or type doesn¡¯t matter. There is hardly any wild vegetation here so we¡¯ll exclude that. From what we noticed, this current spot doesn¡¯t have any above level 20 so it should not be too unfair for you. The winner is exempted from the day''s cooking and washing duties, the rest are losers.¡±
¡°What about draws?¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°Then all are losers and split the work accordingly.¡± Top replied.
¡°That rarely happens, also we have a time limit of 1 hour. Just be back before we move off. Haa¡ I¡¯m not looking forward to this.¡± Rowent the fire mage sighed. He was unmotivated for the hunt.
¡°Of course, I¡¯m going to win by a landslide again.¡± Fergus the elven wind archer supplemented. The archer probably had quite the advantage in hunting with his range and perception. The limited time and wide area were advantageous for him.
¡°As usual Ro, burning our dinner again won¡¯t count towards your score. Whatever method you use to hunt only the ones that are in an edible condition counts.¡± Chris added, followed by another sigh from the fire mage.
¡°Perfect chance to see if you can carry your own weight and feed yourself.¡± Dina the rogue said. She was the only one who showed that Ebony wasn¡¯t so welcomed but seemingly reasonable so far or so Ebony thinks.
¡°Hey! Don¡¯t be so mean to the kid Dina. You know.¡± Chris called out and whispered.
¡°Bahh, so what if he doesn¡¯t have any memories? The past is the past, he was lucky enough to make it out he needs to make the best of it. What¡¯s important is that he is an extra mouth to feed and our job doesn¡¯t include babysitting. I have no qualms as long as he doesn¡¯t burden us.¡± Dina pragmatically said.
Ebony agreed with her views that he should make the best of his time, living in the present for the future not for the past. Though he didn¡¯t lose his memories he had no idea what they were talking about, make it out of where?
¡°I will prove to be a positive addition.¡± Ebony stopped Chris from saying more.
¡°Good. Let the hunt begin.¡± Top nodded at Ebony¡¯s confidence.
The past few days where Ebony didn¡¯t hunt and physically exert too much effort really showed Ebony that as long as he didn¡¯t spend much stamina he needed much less food to sustain himself. After a normal day of running and hunting he ate almost 3 times as much as he used to during each meal. Devouring a whole leg of a deer and more was quite the experience.
The escort team had an advantage in stats and levels but Ebony was more familiar with the area and the monster''s habits.
Ebony tried to move as light as a feather regardless of his now increased weight, he couldn¡¯t measure but if Ebony weighed 90kg or 18 tivs before coming here from his high muscle mass and bone density then he estimated he was now approaching 100kg or 20 tivs.
Ebony was wearing the normal set of clothing he wore to hunt, his leather boots, his new robe or coat, a single left hand casting glove and his trusty sword which he now carries on his hip on the back. Roya even added well placed straps for it on his robe. He finally managed to somewhat sheath and unsheath his blade more fluidly with its current placement.
The bag he used to bring along got too bloodied by his hunts so he was given it, he folded his old bag and kept it inside along with all his belongings which was his old wallet, bottle, a big bunch of frost plums, a short cylindrical wooden container with a green salve inside and 2 more set of clothing and many more sets of underwear.
He still wore his watch which surprisingly didn¡¯t get much damage yet despite his fights. His money was kept in his coat, he was stunned to find 10 Greens in the pockets with a note on what he needed to buy when he got to Plainston, when did they stuff it there, Ebony didn¡¯t know.
The green salve was made by their resident herbalist family the Lasil family, and was an ointment that could stop bleeding and increase healing speed by quite a bit on the affected area. He didn¡¯t think he needed it but you never know. He left the knapsack-like bag on the wagon.
The hefty coat was causing him to sink into the snow despite his Treading Step at its current level. It really pulled him down by a bit. Yet the speed he took off surprised the escort team. Everyone split up due to the relatively safe area they were in, except Rowent who opted to follow Dina.
The hour quickly passed and they converged and counted their scores. Top caught 3 rabbits all cleanly decapitated. Chris got a single boarlet and a tern. Rowent came back with nothing. Dina got 2 rabbits but Ebony couldn¡¯t see any blood or damage on them. Fergus got a decisive 4 terns and 3 rabbits. Ebony eked out 3 rabbits and 1 tern.
Clearly showing his hunting skills, Dina was placated and the others were impressed. Ebony¡¯s tern was too damaged by his Ice Spike and the frozen bits weren¡¯t desired either so his score was 3. Still, coming in second when he was so at a much lower level wasn¡¯t too bad. He had a pretty good advantage as he was already familiar with where rabbits hid and what tracks they left.
They skinned, gutted and treated their dinner with care and hung them on hooks outside the wagon as they moved on unbothered by attacks. The rams were enough to discourage most monsters from attacks. The side of the wagons were also hanging familiar looking handheld oil or kerosene lamps but filled with phos to sun charge. Giving them some light when needed at night.
Night quickly came and they cleared the snow on the ground and got some wood to burn and start a fire. It was simple enough with a fire mage around. The good thing that the escorts loved was that they didn¡¯t have to carry much personal luggage when they slept on the wagons; they didn¡¯t need to make tents either.
A giant ass pot big enough to stuff a whole deer if he tied the legs up together was used. Top unscrewed his waterskin and pointed the round cap at the pot. A stream of water came out of the cap and into the pot. The normal vegetables like carrots, potatoes and onions were placed in, together with rabbit meat and bones to make rabbit stew. The terns were roasted over the fire. They had salt and pepper on hand too.
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¡°Ebony, meet our company''s most popular product amongst travellers!¡± Andel said as he showed a rectangular brown object tied up in a thin rope like a bento to Ebony. The escort team and even the coachmen just facepalmed at the attempt of advertisement.
¡°Try some, just take a piece and drop it in your bowl of stew. Don¡¯t you dare drop it in the pot okay.¡± Andel passed it to Ebony.
It was actually a paper like material but the surface was smooth and felt a little like plastic, probably waterproof. Ebony untied and unwrapped it to find brown cubes roughly 1 cm in length, width and height. He counted 5 by 10 by 3 so there were 150 of these cubes in a pack. He tossed a cube into his bowl of stew or soup. He watched as the cube expanded almost 3 times in size as it absorbed the liquid. He took a bite.
¡ it was just bread.
¡°Hahaha what do you think? We call it the Souper Bread. Compact and easy to bring around, you can have bread anywhere you go. A single small pack like this can keep travellers or dungeon clearers fed for long enough.¡±
¡°...¡± no one reacted to the horrible naming.
¡®Souper Bread? Seriously.¡¯
The stew didn¡¯t taste too bad but it was obvious none of them were cooks, though they might have the skill. Andel and the coachmen left for their wagons after dinner. It was quite easy to wash the dishes with the bottle cap water tap.
¡°So what do you plan to do when you get to Plainston?¡± Chris asked.
¡°I plan to freelance for a start.¡± Ebony answered. Freelancers were basically adventurers from the stories he heard and read.
¡°I guess that¡¯s how most people start off.¡± Chris shrugged.
¡°Plainston is a small town, freelancing will get you nowhere. There aren¡¯t even many quests that will allow a freelancer to stand out and get commissioned or job offers.¡± Dina added constructively. She seemed to approve of Ebony''s presence now. The quick change in attitude didn''t matter much to Ebony.
¡°Monsters in the surrounding area of Plainston don¡¯t even exceed level 50. We are considered elites of Plainston to be able to be hired by the Z&Z Company. Yet we are hard-pressed for advancement in that small place. There aren¡¯t any dungeon towers around either so it is a safe but quiet town.¡± Top said.
¡°Freelancing is a good idea if you want to keep your freedom to move around but it''s hard to achieve much by freelancing. Even more so in such a small corner of the Empire. Getting attached to a big and influential company might not be a bad idea if you¡¯re capable enough to get job offers.¡± Chris continued.
¡°I prefer to move about freely. Freelancing will only be a means to earn enough for my travels. Isn¡¯t it restrictive for you guys as your advancement is hindered by a contract?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Well it''s not so bad, we get teamed up with almost equally competent party members and when the company decides we¡¯re good enough to handle escorting trips at another branch we can still fight reasonably levelled monsters.¡± Chris said.
¡°Getting contracted to a company like this is basically a slow and steady but safer route of advancement. Freelancing at dangerous areas allow for much faster advancements with enough luck, but many unprepared parties die without anyone knowing.¡± Rowent joined in.
¡°Another benefit is obviously knowledge, if you prove loyal and capable enough the company offers chances to pick up some skills they kept obtaining over the years. You also gain connections as you move up the ladder and move from branch to branch. Only famous and reputed freelancer parties are trusted enough for important, well paying jobs.¡±
¡°If you really want to be on the fast track then the best thing would be to find a dungeon tower close to your level. It is the most lucrative and dangerous way and high level dungeon clearers have immense prestige since they are at the forefront of stopping dungeon breaks.¡± Top said
¡°Too bad low level dungeons are so rare there aren¡¯t any around the towns and city surrounding Plainston either. Monster populations aren¡¯t that high either so most of us advance elling slow in these parts.¡± Fergus complained.
¡°Enough chatting. Let¡¯s see what you¡¯ve got, Ebony! The night is the time we have for training.¡± Top concluded the conversation with an invitation for a spar.
¡°Okay.¡±
1vs1 seemed to be their standard and they would rotate. For the first match Fergus against Rowent. Dina against Top and Chris against Ebony.
Fergus and Rowent went into the trees. Dina did as well but Top stayed where he was. Chris and Ebony remained in the clearing they were in.
¡°Let me see what a swordsman can do. I won¡¯t go easy on you.¡± Chris stated.
¡°Okay. Good.¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t ask for more.
With Icebody Enhancement running all along, Ebony took the initiative since he was the weaker party he wanted to get Chris off guard. Ebony pushed off and drew his sword back handed as if trying to throw a right hook. The speed at which Ebony closed the distance indeed surprised Chris but he seemed to have expected the right side swing and already poised a hanging left sword guard.
Not letting himself stop short there Ebony quickly spun and adjusted his grip to a normal one. Only for a punch to crash into his side, it didn¡¯t hurt much but it easily pushed him away.
¡°Ouch, crap how are you so tough? The Thoya branded robe? I didn¡¯t think I would get to see one of the branded works.¡±
Ebony was on the offensive as he swung and swung. All his blows were parried, blocked or countered. He was slower and weaker by a lot when it came to physical stats.
Ebony didn¡¯t do too badly himself, his vast experience in fighting people helped him avoid, counter with kicks and predict attacks. On the other hand animal hunting or monster fighting was one of his weaker points in comparison, it could be seen from his first few fights where he got heavy injuries where he didn¡¯t expect certain monster actions. His weakest point was his swordplay. He always fought hand to hand, sometimes with a knife but he had basically zero experience in swordfighting.
Plenty of combat experience helped with his hunting but his swordsmanship held him back, mistakes in judgements in battle was what caused his elbow to pop out as well. It improved over the week but this was his first actual sword fight.
¡°Wow. You¡¯re good but why not a warrior? your swordsmanship seems... self taught? I¡¯ve not seen that style but why on Elcra would you wield a greatsword designed for 2 hands with one?¡± Chris said as he stopped the spar when neither got a hit in after a while.
¡°Yes, self-taught. One of my arms was too injured to hold the sword when I first got the skill, I tried wielding it somewhat normally but can¡¯t seem to get the mastery skill.¡± Ebony explained.
¡°Gahh, that¡¯s just bad luck. Still, you need some serious work on swordplay to get rid of its kinks. I can see you tried to use fluidity to smooth it out but your movements are still wide and any warrior can see where you aim to strike from a mile away. Any attack you carry out leaves you wide open, incorporating kicks and your weirdly impressive footwork helps but there are still glaring openings for any decent warrior let alone other swordsman.¡±
¡°Swap out.¡± Fergus came over at this point and called. Chris waved and went to spar with Top while Dina spared against Rowent.
¡°You can have a gir handicap.¡± Fergus told Ebony. Standing just 5 metres away from Ebony despite being an archer. Unsure if he was confident or arrogant. Ebony didn¡¯t even need to take a full step for his blade to reach Fergus.
Fergus reacted with insane speeds and a gust of wind rustled Ebony''s hair as Fergus jumped back and onto a tree, drawing his bow at the same time.
¡®Hot damn¡ invisible arrows of wind?¡¯ Ebony thought as he saw no arrows on the bowstring. Two Ice Spikes formed in seconds while Ebony chased to close the distance. Firing them whenever a shot was ready, completely missing them at the speed they were moving at.
Ebony was faster than Chris when it came to movement speed but Fergus seemed to keep the distance between them constant as he was jumping backwards and shooting arrows of air. Every single time Fergus lets go of his bowstring Ebony would get knocked back by a strong gust of wind. Fergus didn¡¯t make them piercing since it was just a spar.
Ebony tried to predict the trajectory of the invisible arrows but he didn¡¯t manage to dodge a single freaking arrow. Betting that Fergus could control the arrows¡¯ trajectory with magic to some extent. Wind arrows landing on his legs caused him to sprawl onto the snow face down, but he quickly got used to it and rolled with it, literally.
He cast a single layer shield to stop the knockback effect of the wind arrows while he continued his chase but it didn¡¯t help one bit. Whether he puts his shield in front, behind, above, closer or further an arrow always seems to find its way around the shield, knocking him around like a ragdoll.
The spar ended soon. This was his biggest loss yet. He couldn¡¯t chase him, couldn¡¯t land a hit with his projectiles, couldn¡¯t even block, dodge or shrug off a single attack.
¡°Are you sure you¡¯re human and not half frost elf or something?¡± Fergus asked as they made their way back.
¡°Yes, why do you ask?¡±
¡°Well for one, you¡¯re a freaking triple caster. Even amongst elves, only the average adult can triple cast. And then of course there¡¯s your insane mana, the others haven¡¯t noticed but even a meditative class doesn¡¯t have so much mana. Don¡¯t keep enhancement magic up for too long, you¡¯re going to get mana poisoning and it''s not going to be pretty.¡±
¡°...thanks for the advice.¡±
¡°No problem any elf would treat meditative Classers well after all.¡±
Ebony couldn¡¯t ask for the reason and what mana poisoning was before they swapped out again. Ebony with Dina, Fergus with Top and Chris with Rowent.
If Tiha was aggressive and fast, then Dina was agile and skillful. She used a similar twin dagger style but she was blinding fast and agile with it. Changing directions of her swings numerous times mid swing, Ebony¡¯s bulky sword couldn¡¯t keep up to block it.
His movement speed helped in dodging blows and prior spars with Tiha helped him predict and anticipate better. Easily taking advantage of Ebony¡¯s blind spots while she kited him, Ebony back hooked with his legs to keep her at a distance so that her short dagger is harder to reach him.
Dina dodged Ebony''s slow blows with ease but was getting pissed that she was actually having a hard time landing any real blows. All in all, it was thanks to Ebony¡¯s abundant experience in combat that let him do well enough despite the level and stat difference.
The fourth round was Fergus with Chris, Top with Dina and Ebony with Rowent.
¡°Finally another mage to battle with. There just aren¡¯t many in Plainston, even Fergus is mainly an archer.¡± Rowent express.
¡°I have not practised magic for long, please excuse my terrible display if any.¡± Ebony spoke out as he sheathed his greatsword.
¡°Haha no problem, you¡¯re so young and a hybrid at the same time so it¡¯s only natural if your repertoire of spells is still growing. Okay, let¡¯s begin.¡± Rowent laughed. They were 3 girs apart, further than his previous spars.
Rowent raised a single hand forward as a spear of fire formed in a second. The snow around Rowent melted as Ebony could feel the sweltering heat from where he was. Starting to sweat from this distance.
¡®Crap. My heat resistance decreased by 30% from my physique and I¡¯ve always hated the damn heat.¡¯ Ebony realised as he quickly started casting his Layered Ice Carapace with his left hand, casting glove on. Even so it still takes him 6 seconds to form a single layer shield at the moment.
He quickly jumped aside as he felt like he was getting roasted alive as the spear passed by him. Still it was enough to disrupt his cast or mental state. HP: 244/250
¡®Hot damn. The thing didn¡¯t even touch me. Wait a minute, does the 30% debuff from Icebody Enhancement to heat based damage stack with my debuff from my physique?¡¯ Ebony hastened his cast as he ran around, sweating more than a full day''s hunt. He was firing Ice Spikes as he ran but he realised that Rowent¡¯s spear of fire didn¡¯t just fly off and dissipate; it was actually still within his range of control as the spear flew towards Ebony.
Rowent was no slouch of a mage that stood still. His feet were on fire as he chased after Ebony, on fire as in, flames were propelling his feet. He was melting all the snow in his path. Though he was still much slower than Ebony he somewhat kept up as he controlled the spear of fire to slow Ebony down.
The spear spun horizontally at Ebony¡¯s neck as he quickly ducked and rolled. The spear didn¡¯t stop there as it rotated in air and started piercing at Ebony. Not letting Ebony get up and run off. Ebony¡¯s lousy attempts at Ice Spikes was just wasting his mana. He already shut off Icebody Enhancement so that he doesn¡¯t take damage just by being near the spear.
He needed all the mana he could get and didn¡¯t have to worry about overflowing mana since he was not full on mana anyway. His shield manifested in time to block a stab from above. The spear landed on the shield, Ebony somewhat expected it to just melt through his shield instantly but that didn¡¯t happen.
Something worse happened, just like what would happen if you splashed water on a wall. The spear of flames spread out over the entire shield and engulfed it. The flames encroached the whole shield but was still under Rowent¡¯s control as a thin needle of fire stabbed out and stopped short in between Ebony¡¯s eye. Ebony raised both hands in surrender and Rowent dissipated his magic. Ebony¡¯s shield was largely melted. The night darkened again with the withdrawal of flames.
¡°Haa..haa¡ y.. you..you elling bastard making me run like that. TRIPLE FREAKING CASTING ARE YOU KIDDING ME? TERRIBLE DISPLAY MY ASS, YOU SHOW OFF!¡± Rowent panted and panted but it didn¡¯t stop him from shouting.
¡°My control, range and speed of casting is nowhere near how adept you were in controlling your flames.¡± Ebony replied honestly awed by Rowent¡¯s mastery with manipulation. He could actually quadra cast but he wasn¡¯t about to add oil onto fire.
¡°Haa..haa. You¡¯re only 16 this year aren¡¯t you? I¡¯m already 29 this year, it took me 3 years of suffering from poverty before I even got my Class at 18. I trained my control for 5 years, heating up bath water at an inn as a job before freelancing at 23, Dina¡¯s current age, for 4 years. Getting an offer to join Z&Z was only 2 years ago. 11 years. 11 years and I¡¯m still at lvl 53 and just learnt how to double cast while you''ve had a Class for weeks, you¡¯re already lvl 33 and you can triple cast.¡± Rowent said as he tried to catch his breath. He whispered something too softly at the end for Ebony to catch.
¡°Control and speed can be improved through training, my conditioning skill increases range and speed. I also heard that Wisdom also increases range a tiny bit but I¡¯m not sure if that¡¯s true.¡± Rowent explained.
He shooed Ebony away to Top as they rotated, Rowent and Ebony haven¡¯t sparred with Top while Fergus and Chris haven¡¯t spared with Dina. Rowent and Fergus sat out for a break and watched while the close ranged fighters sparred.
Chapter 22: Shower
¡°You don¡¯t have to fight physical against physical or magical against magical. Since you¡¯re an Ice Swordsman you can fight me like one.¡± Top said, obviously aware of how Ebony previously fought. Ebony nodded in acknowledgement, the previous battles already showed him that they were no pushovers.
Top was supposedly their leader so he most likely had the strength to back it up. All of them seem to respect him quite a bit from what Ebony observed so far.
Icebody Enhancement flared back on, even so, Ebony was regenerating mana. His current regen at 22.24/min. MP: 477/1250, casting Layered Ice Carapace twice and many Ice Spikes still ate into his mana pool quite a bit.
He didn¡¯t compress any of his spells since it was just a spar. His greatsword frosted over as a chilling mist seemed to come out of it and a thin layer of ice encased the blade, he charged or imbued 177 mana into it.
Ebony charged out with Treading Step pushed to the limit and a Two-handed Power Stab flew at Top¡¯s chest while one Ice Spike arrived at his face and another swerving in towards Top¡¯s sword arm at the same time. Top stepped to the side, away from the stab while his buckler poised to deflect it, he dodged the spike towards his head and cut down the one going for his arm.
His sword didn¡¯t stop as Ebony''s side and back were wide open and in his blade''s line of movement. Yet surprising him was how Ebony twisted his body with such flexibility and agility even though he was in the middle of a supposedly full power thrust. A back thrust to his head came from under Top as Ebony kicked out with force.
Top barely jerked his head back in time to see that Ebony already landed but didn¡¯t cut his momentum as he spun for a slash to his torso. Blocking with his sword but not feeling any impact he noticed the slash was a feint as Ebony moved his greatsword from his right to left hand. Top was met with a flurry of slashes and kicks as Ice Spikes formed near his blind spots and fired at him at almost point blank.
¡°Is he pressuring leader back?¡± Fergus asked.
¡°Leader hasn¡¯t used any skills at all.¡± Rowent plainly stated.
¡°Still he¡¯s pretty impressive, he¡¯s over 20 levels under and with his age and fast track his skill levels are lacking to say the least. If he manages to close the distance with me I¡¯ll have some trouble.¡± Fergus added.
¡°A weird style of battle but effective enough to cover his sub-par swordsmanship and magic. What¡¯s bothering me is that he hasn¡¯t even stopped to catch his breath once in that intense offensive push and at that level how much mana does he have to keep firing those spikes? The ice mana density should be a lot lower around here this summer.¡±
¡°Well he is a meditative class holder after all that means both his stamina and mana pool is crazy large. He was actually using enhancement magic throughout our spar and still has mana to spar now. He should have 100% mana efficiency with Ice magic and double the mana pool.
With much of his stats geared towards Wisdom, his strength is obviously lower so his consumption of stamina should be lower. Only his movement speed is fast when he tried to chase me earlier, at least a refined tier 1 movement type skill but his Agility itself isn¡¯t that high. It also isn¡¯t out of the norm for a warrior or swordsman to have skills to reduce stamina consumption. Your question should be about his nonsensical battle sense.¡± Fergus analysed. No one expected that Ebony would get an increase in regeneration since one shouldn¡¯t be able to recover while casting or fighting so intensely.
¡°...your logic is sound. But what do you mean by battle sense?¡± Rowent inquisited.
¡°You youngins don¡¯t have an eye for such things do you? What kind of beast do you think is hiding under that human skin? 16 and he is crammed with more battle experience than any of the 3 of you. His lack of hesitation, decision making on the fly, his constant positioning, placement and timing of skills and attacks is not something a 16 year old should have. It¡¯s also how he¡¯s pushing the leader back with untrained sword and magic skills.¡±
¡°Hey! Don¡¯t call me youngin, you¡¯re 57 and still not even an adult while I¡¯m a full fledged man you¡¯re still a child.¡±
¡°Shut up! I¡¯m no child.¡±
¡°You shut up!¡±
¡°NO YOU SHUT UP!¡±
While the conversation turned into a childish argument, Ebony was running out of options. Every strike blocked by the buckler or sword sends a numbing shock into his arms and kicks only serve as a distraction. Ebony always moved to place himself into Top¡¯s blindspot but he was too fast at moving himself away.
Top¡¯s buckler was riddled with scars of ice but only a thin layer that could easily be scrapped off. He seemed to tire of the exchange as something rammed into Ebony''s stomach before he could react to it. Tumbling round and round and smoothly standing back up in a guarding stance. Top¡¯s metal covered tail was reaching out where he hit Ebony, something Ebony didn¡¯t expect nor would it have helped with how slow he was in comparison.
¡°Enough.¡± was all Top said before noting that Chris and Dina had ended off as well. They swapped and Ebony sat with Chris as they watched the exchange. There was much for Ebony to learn from them, the way a sword fight goes and the way a mage fights was all new to Ebony.
It was clear to see that they were all holding back a whole lot when sparring with Ebony as the intensity of their exchange of blows was much higher. Fergus against Dina¡¯s battle was actually quite similar to his. Fergus kept his distance constant as he rained shot after shot of wind blasts. Dina¡¯s throwing knife met an invisible wall and couldn¡¯t reach Fergus but they didn¡¯t fly off, just stopping in mid air in front of Fergus.
The throwing knives whipped back and started moving erratically as Dina danced. The knives were attached to extremely thin wires as branches started falling as the wires passed through them. Ebony couldn¡¯t see the wires in the dark but the swishing of air told him that he wouldn¡¯t want to go any closer to those.
As if there was a barrier of wind or air, the knives and wires were too light to reach or break through it. Dina had the same problem as Ebony that they couldn¡¯t seem to get close enough to get into close combat with the archer.
The surrounding temperature raised uncomfortably as a head-sized fireball formed atop Rowent¡¯s staffs¡¯ orb. A ring of fire 3 or so metres away from Rowent in the centre appeared as he knocked the butt of the staff on the ground. Top charged with his shield raised in front of him. A smaller fireball shot out from the head-size fireball and on and on, a chain of fireballs shot out at Top. He backhanded some with his shield, blowing snow on the ground towards the ring of fire from wind pressure alone.
Forced to dodge some as he could let his shield keep taking a barrage of fireballs, Top still managed to close the distance. He jumped over the ring of fire, sword raised. Rowent¡¯s fireball turned into a spear and stabbed out at the mid air lizardman as the ring of fire disappeared and flames puffed from his feet again.
The lizardman swatted the spear of fire with his tail as he landed and chased after the running mage who kept up with his projectile spells. Ebony didn¡¯t expect to see Top toss his round buckler like a certain superhero, tripping Rowent and ending the battle there.
Rowent would have lost sooner or later in Ebony¡¯s eyes. Mages just don¡¯t have the endurance that warriors do. If he wasn¡¯t able to suppress the warrior like he did with Ebony then it was a battle of attrition. Since he couldn¡¯t keep the warrior at a distance then he would be defeated when he was out of mana.
Warriors could still move a little without stamina albeit barely but you can¡¯t cast spells without mana. Even if the surroundings were filled with fire mana, it still required the mage to have a tiny bit of mana to manipulate them. At least that''s what Ebony thought.
¡°So, what do you think?¡± Chris asked.
¡°You¡¯re all strong. I have much to learn. More training to do.¡± Ebony answered.
¡°Are you trying to create your own style of sword mastery? I don¡¯t know of any schools that use a greatsword like that. I bet your mastery is still an untiered skill. Physical skills are quite limited compared to magical spells so warriors and swordsmen alike put a lot of emphasis on the basic mastery skill.¡±
¡°...yes, I have gotten used to my current style and I believe I can make it work somehow.¡±
¡°The good thing about swordsmen is that the distinction between types of swords slowly fade out with level and skill with the blade. With Strength stat whether it''s a one-handed sword, two-handed sword, short sword, greatsword it slowly matters less as long as you can wield them as proficient as with whatever type of mastery you currently have.¡±
¡°Really?¡±
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¡°I¡¯ve heard that the differentiation between types of weapons held starts to blur at higher tier masteries. Who decides whether a short sword is short or not? The wielder of course. Leader¡¯s single handed sword may as well be a double handed one for us humans with his size.¡±
¡°I see. Then why take warrior over swordsman?¡±
¡°Warriors have a higher chance of getting direct physical fortifications during Classing and Class Evolutions. Rather than picking a swordsman when I don¡¯t have any legacy or master with a high tier sword style. I¡¯m not crazy enough to believe I¡¯m good enough to develop sword style on my own. I may be dead on the job before I succeed. No offence.¡±
¡°None taken.¡±
Most of them needed to sleep 5-6 hours a day while Rowent and Fergus needed a little more. They spent the rest of the night with their own training as did Ebony. They split the guard duty for watching out for danger between them in twos.
The escort team doesn¡¯t bring tents as they just had bedding and slept in the large wagons. The centre wagon was for Dina herself. The front was usually the coachmans and Andel with at least one of the escort team members while the guys shared the last. There was enough space since they took turns taking watch.
Ebony needed less sleep and was planning to take the time to train up his weaker skills.
???
¡°INCOMING!!¡± The shout woke Ebony up just as he fell asleep not long ago after his watch. Quickly getting out of his bedding he grabbed his greatsword and exited the wagon. He never took off his coat just in case.
A rock hard fist smashed into his head from above just as he exited the wagon. Not hard enough to deal any damage but hard enough to hurt.
¡°False alarm, false alarm. Go back to sleep, people.¡± a soft voice rang out. Chris who just woke up went back to sleep, still groggy.
Rubbing his head, Ebony looked up to see Enya waving them back to sleep. Rowent and Fergus were the ones keeping watch and they were just as confused since they clearly felt a frightening presence nearby but it disappeared all of a sudden.
¡°My apologies, my mana ores filled up a tiny bit of my mana leaked.¡± Enya informed the two of them.
¡°Ah? Oh, it''s okay Miss Tu. Sorry for the disturbance caused.¡± Rowent and Fergus both bowed embarrassingly for the exaggerated reaction. Enya just nodded back before turning to Ebony and lifting him up with ease and jumping into the trees.
¡°What¡¯s wrong Miss Enya? Why did you bring me here?¡± Ebony asked, confused.
¡°Because your idiocy was what caused their alarm.¡±
¡°? What did I do?¡±
¡°You fell asleep and stopped casting magic, your mana filled up and started leaking. To them, a mage and an elf, a monster leaning towards magic and mana far above their own ability was nearby. They are more sensitive to mana but not enough to pinpoint where it came from since I covered it up with my mana quickly.¡±
¡°...I will take note. Thank you.¡±
¡®This is really troublesome. I can¡¯t cast Icebody Enhancement while I¡¯m asleep and it''s not like I can turn my Core Skill off.¡¯ For Ebony it was much harder to not meditate than to meditate unless he was under some kind of emotional turmoil or if he was under enough physical pain to knock him out of it, that or he was literally knocked unconscious.
¡°Can you knock me out?¡± Ebony asked in all seriousness.
¡°What?¡± The question baffled Enya.
¡°Well my mana won¡¯t recover as fast if I¡¯m unconscious right?¡± Ebony said, recalling what Clovis told him about a mage being knocked out in battle who woke up with the same amount of mana. It was a cover for his meditation skill running all the time.
¡°...¡± Enya walked away, ignoring Ebony.
Daybreak came quickly and they ate dry rations like jerky and souper bread for breakfast. Ebony ate normal amounts since he didn¡¯t spend much stamina.
The journey continued with Rowent teaching some tricks to Ebony. With so much time on their hands they also played some card games. Their cards are numbered 0 to 9, 6 copies each in a deck. They had some weird games, one was similar to black jack another poker but Ebony wasn¡¯t very good at them.
He wanted to introduce some board games but he wasn¡¯t good at chess. As for reversi he could make a board out of ice but can¡¯t colour them black and white. He tried to carve a 0 and a 1 to differentiate but it was hard to see the board so he gave that up for now.
He made jenga blocks but the ice blocks stuck together. Despite the stability, the wagon was moving as well so that was a flop.
¡°Why is it so dark, isn¡¯t it about the 12th to 13th hour now?¡± Rowent suddenly asked as he peeked out of the covered flap.
¡°Those clouds look dark as heck. Ebony, does that happen often?¡± Chris asked.
¡°No. It hasn¡¯t gotten this cloudy or dark for the entire time I have been here.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°PROTECT THE RAMS AND THE WAGONS! IT¡¯S GONNA HAIL!¡± Andel yelled out. It wasn¡¯t his first trip here.
¡°Ell! Isn¡¯t it summer? Why the heck is it hailing?!¡± Dina cried out as every escort party member jumped out of the covered wagons and got on top except for the ones already sitting beside the coachmans.
They quickly pulled to a stop and the coachmans hid in the covered wagons.
¡°Dina come to the front Wagon and support me. Chris move forward and support Fergus. Ebony and Rowent stay there and take the rear. Holler if you don¡¯t have enough mana and if Ebony can¡¯t handle it. Focus on deflection and keeping damage to the rams as low as possible.
Andel moved to the rear together with Ebony and Rowent perhaps because Ebony was the weakest link. Even as a merchant Andel had a sword and he should at least have the physical stats to protect himself if not skills.
As for Enya, she disappeared earlier in the morning going who knows where.
¡°It''s coming!¡± someone called out.
One or two shards of ice not unlike Ebony¡¯s Ice Spike started dropping from the sky. Then the rain of ice came crashing down. Top swatted, blocked and cut them away. Dina was wildly swinging her throwing knives, knocking and slicing as many shards as possible with the wires that had surprising accuracy. Chris stood on the seat and focused on protecting the ram as no hail seemed to fall on their wagon.
The hail curved and avoided the wagon, Fergus casting something to encase it but the hail got heavier and heavier. Pieces of ice got sharper and sharper, heavier and heavier. He started shooting the larger pieces before they got through his barrier of wind.
A floating wall of fire covered the last ram and part of the wagon. Ebony had long prepared his shield, creating 3 single layered ones covering a large portion of the wagon. He stood under the empty spot with Andel and cut and knocked away as many as they could. Turning Icebody Enhancement off to get as much mana regenerated as possible, he didn¡¯t think the hail would harm him much nor did he need a strength buff.
The peppering of hail only got worse over time and large areas of effect spells like Fergus¡¯s and Rowent¡¯s were eating into their mana pool fast. This was no normal hail, Ebony could feel it when the shards got close to him. The hail contained ice mana more condensed than his current compression limit.
The rams were in distress as they couldn¡¯t hide anywhere and inevitably got hit with their size. Thankfully their strong bodies and thick fur protected them pretty well. They just curled up and closed their eyes to keep themselves smaller and protect their weak spots. Making it easier to protect them.
The rain of hail was too numerous to deflect every single one and Ebony got hit by many of them. His coat protected him well but the weight of hail dropping kept increasing and Ebony probably got bruises from the repeated blunt damage. Severely underestimated the weather in a magical world.
Every wagons¡¯ cloth cover was riddled with holes by now, fortunately the wagon itself seemed to be built tough and didn¡¯t get much structural damage.
¡°I¡¯m running low!¡± Rowent was the first to call out.
¡°GAH!¡± Andel screamed as one of the pieces landed on his head. Evidently not skilled with the sword, Ebony quickly dragged him into the wagon before he panicked too hard.
¡°My Ice shields are breaking and I¡¯m out of mana for another cast too. ¡± Ebony shields have cracks showing up. Even with 22.24MP/min recovered it hardly matters when not much time has passed and each shield cost 375 MP to cast. They did consume less mana to maintain.
¡°Dina help Fergus before he runs low too. Chris get to the last wagon now! Rowent stand down and attend to Andel when you can. Ebony, stand down if you can¡¯t handle any more.¡± Top ordered.
All the snow surrounding the wagon and rams and more shifted when they were on the move.
¡°Can¡¯t even leave you kids alone for a few minutes. Just a tiny shower put you in that state.¡± Enya voiced her displeasure.
Like a tent, all of them were covered under 2 roofs of thick snow and no hail passed through them. Some heaved a sigh of relief as they quickly tended to Andel but fortunately it was just a cut and bruise on his cheek.
The rams were mostly fine, just frightened, only the cover of the wagons got holes here and there. The wagons themselves and the cargo were all undamaged, though they were frosted over a little that should be solved easily with Rowent around.
Chris and Dina sustained quite a few cuts on their furred jackets and coats but nothing serious, their armour held but Chris was complaining about his sword edge getting damaged. Unsure if it was smart or dumb but Ebony had kept the sheath on and it didn¡¯t get damaged.
Fergus, Rowent and Top were completely unharmed. Though Rowent was having a headache from reaching close to empty mana pool, a problem that Ebony doesn¡¯t seem to have.
They watched as the snowless ground in front and behind them got assaulted by the hail. Andel and the others thanked Enya for her assistance. Though they probably wouldn¡¯t die from the hail, their merchandise and mode of transport would be in danger if that continued.
The sky slowly cleared up in about an hour and the coachmans already calmed the rams down. They continued their journey at a brisker pace. Luckily, the holes in the ground were small and the wide wheels of the carriages didn¡¯t trip or get stuck in them.
Complaints about the cold wind blowing came about nonstop. Chris was hurdling up against a small fireball Rowent lit up which Ebony stayed away from.
Ebony was sitting out front with Larry, listening to him chat about how life has been doing and increasing the size of his Mental Map. Plainston is a quiet little town where many weren¡¯t that ambitious, he had been a coachman for decades but life only turned out a little better when the Z&Z company hired him since their pay was higher than most other jobs he could find. Asking how Ebony wasn¡¯t scared of fighting, putting their lives at risk daily is what combat classers do if they are active on the field after all.
Chapter 23: Magic
¡°What is magic.¡± Rowent said rather than asked. Top, Fergus and Ebony sitting around the campfire to watch the soup boil.
¡°There are technically infinite types of magic. Mana forms the world and everything boils down to mana. To be considered the most base form of magic would be to manipulate the said mana. Manipulating fire mana is fire magic, ice mana would be ice magic. Why can some perceive different elements of mana while others don¡¯t? Everyone has different levels of¡ attune-ness to different elements. Affinity perhaps. Race plays quite a role in determining this affinity with different elements.¡± Rowent went on explaining.
Top could apparently use water magic but he was no expert according to the lizardman himself.
¡°Elves in general are more attuned towards more common natural elements in nature. Air, water, earth, wood and so on but not limited to. Dwarves tend to be able to perceive metal, earth and fire. Beastman and humans are more out there and other than the most common 4, water, fire, earth and air which is almost everywhere and their derivative elements. They always have a certain few that have affinity as Rowent calls it, to other rare elements. Ice for example is uncommon amongst humans. Since ice mana doesn¡¯t naturally exist in many areas ice mages are a little more rare.¡± Fergus continued on.
¡°Logically speaking as long as one can perceive the mana, manipulate it with your own and turn that to actually manipulating that element they can learn any type of magic. If you¡¯re trying to learn new magic your first step is really just to try feeling out another type of mana.¡± Rowent said.
¡°...what about body enhancement magic? There is no body enhancement mana is there?¡± Ebony asked and Top was interested too.
¡°Body Enhancement magic is arcane in nature. There are also many other types of magic like body enhancement magic that uses just your mana alone to bring out different effects. Body enhancement magic is fundamentally reinforcing one¡¯s body with their own mana based on the inherent properties of pure mana itself. The fabled healing magic is also said to be arcane in nature. Now that you mention, I guess you can consider arcane type magic to be the most common and one that everyone can use since many high level combatants even and actually especially warriors pick up body enhancement magic sooner or later.¡±
¡°What other types of arcane type magic are there? I would like to try to see if I can perceive it like you say.¡± Ebony asked. Since he was planning to get a magic type or mage type Sub-Class, he needed to learn another type of magic. Any other ice magic he learns now would just get placed under his Class.
¡°Hmm¡I¡¯m not really sure. What do you say, Fergus?¡± Rowent asked the Elven archer.
¡°It''s hard to say. Body enhancement and healing magic would be the most common examples I can think of. The key point of arcane natured magic is using the inherent qualities and properties of mana to produce different effects. It brings me the question if healing magic is really arcane. In a sense, every being is capable of arcane magic as long as they can use their own mana to a certain extent. Yet, healers are oh so rare that only cities have them and only because the Empire dispatches at least one to each city. And even that is because the Life Queen opened a school in the Capital to teach healing magic. For free.¡± Fergus gave his opinions.
The Life Queen was actually the current queen of the Empire and also the greatest healer in all of their continents¡¯ history. The current king was just as much a hero as the queen in how many lives they protected and saved. He was supposedly the strongest barrier mage and every town and city¡¯s barriers are produced by him or the royal family. Casualties and destroyed towns and cities from dungeon breaks or monster hoards are at an all time low the past century or so.
¡°So as long as I can use my mana to produce certain effects without altering their properties to other elements¡¯ it¡¯ll be considered another type of magic.¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Well¡ yeah I guess. Wait, you can alter your mana¡¯s properties already? Please, please don¡¯t tell me you¡¯re a conjurer!¡± Rowent desperately begged.
¡°Ha ha, wow that would make you a second order mage under the mage association¡¯s classification. Andel got us to ask if you were planning to buy ice mana ores to cast magic but it seems unnecessary now.¡± Fergus laughed.
All mages can be considered to be part of the mage association. A first order mage is able to cast magic by manipulating said element and can cast a single spell. Warriors who can use body enhancement magic don¡¯t count as mages.
A second order mage needs to be able to conjure the element with their own mana and not just manipulate the surrounding mana and be able to double or triple cast. Rowent just got recognised as second order mage a year or two ago. Considered a very talented mage amongst humans based on his young age and it won¡¯t be long before he, Fergus and Top be transferred to a bigger branch. Chris and Dina were younger at 25 and 23, still considered new and inexperienced in the Z&Z company¡¯s standards.
Levels and skill tiers don¡¯t matter in their classification. You can be level 200 but still be considered a first order mage if you can¡¯t conjure and double cast. Only second order mages and above are actually considered actual mages by the bulk of them.
Third order mages are few and far between. They are said to be able to influence any mana of their element with their thoughts or words within their range. They should at least be able to quadra cast too. To put that into perspective if someone cast a fireball at a third order fire mage they would be able to stop it, take over control over it or just outright dispel the fireball as long as the fireball wasn¡¯t cast by an equally strong or stronger third order mage.
The Intelligence stat supposedly affects one¡¯s control over their own mana too so lvl 200 third order mages aren¡¯t necessarily able to dispel a level 250 second order mage¡¯s spell. They might be able to stop or slow the spell, redirect the spell a little and exert different levels of control over another mage''s magic.
There were apparently fourth order mages but they didn¡¯t bother sharing what fourth order mages could do. They might not know themselves.
Moving on to their individual training after another spar. Ebony''s Profession skills continue to rise through the levels. His Class remained the same level but he did get a level or two in his skills, Layered Ice Carapace and Icebody Enhancement improving the most.
During his watch with Dina, she offered to spar again which Ebony obliged. This time she used both the wired throwing knives and dagger wielding. Quite the menace she was, Ebony¡¯s single layered shield got sliced in half without so much as slowing down the wires. Blocking with his ice mana imbued greatsword let the wires coil up his sword which Dina pulled hard. Ebony didn¡¯t let go and let himself get pulled forward, pulling his own lower body forward into a flying side kick.
She tried to stab Ebony¡¯s foot but two icicles flew at her from different directions, she cut both down but resorted to dodging the kick without enough time to counter. Her wires were frozen and stuck to Ebony¡¯s blade. She only used 1, perhaps to go easy on Ebony. Ebony skidded to a stop and quickly tugged back hard with his greatsword like a fishing rod.
It was like pulling a rope stuck to the wall and Dina didn¡¯t budge. He dashed forward as Ice Spikes continued being formed and shot at times where she least expected. A two-handed power stab stopped just short of reaching Dina. Not because he was holding his blow back but because he didn¡¯t realise where another wire coiled around his blade and was holding it back from reaching Dina.
The wire reached out from behind him, seeing the shine from where his Frost Injection was moving towards. It was connected to a thicker tree branch and Dina showed that she was pulling on something. He didn¡¯t see when she threw out another throwing knife or when it managed to entangle his sword to a tree.
Dina got Ebony to remove the ice before her wires got significantly damaged.
Back to rest, Ebony kept thinking of different types of magic he read about from web novels as he hummed a soft lullaby so as not to disturb the others¡¯ sleep. One of the things he was asked to get was an Elemental Sensitivity Potion or Pill. It will increase his ability to perceive different types of mana present and from there he could try to manipulate it and learn another type of magic. Enhancing the value of being a Mana Meister.
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They were sold by the mage association and were the to go to when most wanted to be a mage. It was an almost miraculous item in mosts'' eyes. In a world where so many believe talent to be a deciding factor this potion or pill allows one to circumvent it somewhat. Some nobles even rely on constant use of it to learn rarer and more obscure magic.
Ebony was pleasantly surprised to hear that as a second order mage he has some benefits from the association. One of them being a discount to things sold by them.
Still, Ebony was getting bored of doing almost nothing during the trip other than training his Mana Meister skills. Yet, he can¡¯t think of any magic that is arcane in nature. Different novels have different explanations after all. Some say lightning was arcane, some say lightning was a derivative of air or wind.
Thinking back on the properties of mana that Roya taught him, he¡¯ll have to move in that direction. Other than ice mana he really doesn¡¯t think he can perceive any other. When he deeply meditates it seems like there is another type of mana all around him at all times but it was imaginary at best.
Pure mana was inert. Its normal state is similar to gaseous elements like air or fire. The mana in the air, not air mana but just pure mana, in Hoarfrost glade was said to be denser and it was also what hindered the low level escorts to feel Ebony¡¯s mana above his head since his own mana was less dense or just as dense at the moment.
Compress it enough and it would have some liquid-like properties, some of its other properties change a little too. Compress it even further and you can technically make your own mana ore.
Mana ores are not exactly ores, they are not minerals or gems but like what Identify tells him it was just solidified mana. When mana is dense enough to solidify it gains a weird property, that its solid form doesn¡¯t disappear immediately when its mana is used up. It basically turned into a rechargeable battery. The inferior ones, or Blacks can be emptied out and recharged up to 5 times before dissolving into nothing.
Ebony couldn¡¯t come up with any ideas on what mana can do that isn¡¯t elemental. Body enhancement magic was reinforcing one¡¯s body with mana itself, his version being using ice mana instead. But what else can he do with pure mana that wouldn¡¯t be considered mana manipulation skills like his Mana Meister skills? Moving it, shaping it, condensing it were all just manipulating mana not bringing any sort of physical effects.
Ebony was going to give up and go to sleep after waking the next shift up but stopped himself as his lullaby echoed in his head. ¡®What about sound?¡¯ Ebony thought.
Since there was an infinite number of magic, sound magic should be a type of magic too. But what was sound? Just vibrations aren¡¯t they? He tried just making his mana spheres vibrate but it obviously didn¡¯t work. First of all, it was just manipulating his mana as he also did. Second, it wasn¡¯t like he was hearing any sounds from his mana in this dark and quiet forest.
Time passed with Ebony failing through the night.
¡°We should be out of Hoarfrost Glade before night falls.¡± Andel estimated. Ebony could feel it getting warmer already.
¡°Gahh that means uneven hills for days after that, my poor butt can¡¯t take it.¡± Fergus complained. A stretch of short hills apparently divided Hoarfrost Glade from Imperial lands.
¡°If you¡¯re taking the front, watch out for attacks.¡± Chris told Ebony. Monster attacks seem to be more frequent in the range of hills.
¡°Not just from monsters. Report any suspicious movements.¡± Top added.
¡°Yeah, roadside thugs or some of the more well informed bandits always seem to know where we¡¯ll be and wait out to ambush us. The merchandise from Arcta is quite valuable since it''s one of the few sources for ice elemental items and materials in the surrounding towns and cities. The number one priority will be the Thoya¡¯s mage robes. We¡¯ll debrief some edited strategies tonight with Ebony now coming along.¡± Andel said.
Their movement and route to Arcta was kept secret but it never hurts to be careful.
¡°¡°Yes Boss.¡±¡± they called out.
Back on the move, Ebony asked Rowent¡¯s and Fergus¡¯s opinions on whether sound magic was viable or if it was considered arcane in nature.
¡°Good question. Now that you mention it is kinda weird how many bards end up learning sound magic like a rare few doctors learning healing magic to become a healer. I never thought about it much but it would make sense. I always thought they were just pushing mana into their instruments as they play music. I would presume it counts as arcane and we should all be able to learn it. Do you play an instrument?¡±
¡°I dabbled in some. It''s okay, I don''t need an instrument to test if it''s possible.¡± Ebony replied but was a little shy to just start humming here.
Ebony tried to move some mana to his throat or vocal cord as he hummed some motivational training montage music. He was going about it wrong since he didn¡¯t get any sound magic or sound mana manipulation after a long time.
Seems like he would really have to manipulate sound to get sound mana manipulation. Rowent didn¡¯t seem to know the concept of sound just being vibrations through the air heard by people.
A strix dropped down and landed on Ebony¡¯s lap as he was sitting out front. He didn¡¯t react since he knew it was dead already.
¡°Aww can¡¯t you at least act scared or something?¡± Fergus called out from the second wagon.
¡°I told you so now gimme that Black.¡± Rowent said and Chris nodded along. They were betting on whether Ebony''s facial expression would change¡
Ebony hasn¡¯t seen Fergus use a single arrow from his quiver. The strix was bloodless, it was strangled to death by Fergus arrows of wind. Ebony had seen the skill on the previous day''s hunt. Fergus would let loose an invisible arrow, the birds or rabbits neck would twist harder and harder as they struggled against the now rope of wind trying to twist their necks off.
It was supposedly a very weak skill only good against monsters much lower level than himself since he needed to concentrate a lot, it was not feasible in an actual fight.
Ebony focused on vibrating mana itself when he hummed, not too different to when he first tried to combust ice mana.
The day went peacefully without hailing again and night came when they thanked Enya for her help again and said their goodbyes. Ebony asked her to thank Roya and Halvis for him again.
¡®Finally another colour.¡¯ Ebony thought as he saw green in the distance. It was white, grey, white, brown, white, blue, white everywhere in Hoarfrost Glade. Red was only his blood and his preys¡¯, there were also the maples he saw when he just arrived but only the lowest rarity ones were red.
They set up a campfire and started preparing dinner. Fergus was almost always the winner for the hunts, but he still helped anyway.
¡°Okay, we probably won¡¯t come across any thieves or bandits tomorrow but the chances are higher on the second and third day.¡± Andel started.
¡°Yes. Likely, they seem to be getting more active recently. It wouldn¡¯t surprise me if a few thief groups from the surrounding towns have made the Bubble Hills their home.¡± Top added.
Bubble Hills was the name of the hill range past Hoarfrost Glade, named after how the hills look like bubbles formed when water boils. The winding paths of the hill range were what dissuaded Ebony from going travelling himself, it was easy to get lost.
¡°We should not have to worry about individual thieves since they wouldn¡¯t dare attack our company¡¯s caravan when they know every one of our caravans has an elite escort group. Unless they are very strong and confident to take us down. In case of such individuals, we¡¯ll mark them with the company''s stainer and give up the goods. Well, no strong individual dares to rob us anyway so it¡¯ll unlikely happen.¡± Andel briefed. The confidence in the largest company¡¯s influence was real, their caravan marked with their logo.
¡°Small groups of thieves numbering 3-5 around our levels we fight, capture if possible, kill if not. Ebony you can give support with your projectiles but you¡¯re not allowed to join the battle if any. Use your shields and run if needed, but try not to gain their attention to begin with. With your speed perhaps only runners or rogues at your level can chase you.
Larger groups from 5-20 should not have many of our level in this corner of the continent so we¡¯ll fight and react accordingly, only leave capture for those with bounties in this case. We wouldn¡¯t have the option of letting them live in a messy fight. In this case, Ebony can go ahead and help pick off the weaker members of the group, thugs around here are hardly even close to your skill. Capture only if the situation allows.
Any group larger than 20 we run as Fergus, Rowent and Ebony would keep them at a distance. Chris, Dina and I would hold off any leaders or those that passed through with enough persistence. Wattel, Larry and Grey we might need you to push the rams harder if this happens. The 3 on the wagons will be on protection duty for them as well, look out for arrows or rocks. I would bet my tail there wouldn¡¯t be a mage but just be cautious.¡± Top gave the outline of the dos when attacked. Everyone nodded in agreement since it was nothing complicated.
They were convinced an attack was going to happen.
¡®Oh man, I finished my frost plums already.¡¯ Ebony nonchalantly thought.
Chapter 24: Expected Ambush, Unexpected Battle
¡°It¡¯s so hot.¡± Ebony said. He was drenched in sweat from head to toe, lying face down under the covers of the wagon.
¡°Hahaha, you look like you¡¯re about to die.¡± Rowent laughed at Ebony''s expense. He was more than used to the heat.
¡°It¡¯s hot but you¡¯re exaggerating a little. How are you so weak to the heat, with that skin I would say you have never been exposed to the sun.¡± Chris remarked. Already having taken off their jackets and coats they weren¡¯t even sweating. Ebony¡¯s robe was his armour and not winter clothing so he still had it on, it was cooling to wear it anyway.
¡°Come on, you need me to give you some heat resistance training later?¡± Rowent suggested.
¡°...yes please.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think of that. Honestly being considerably close to Hoarfrost Glade there was still some cool wind from time to time but it wasn¡¯t good enough for Ebony.
¡°Ah good timing, wasn¡¯t there a tiny spring somewhere we previously stopped for a break?¡± Chris said.
¡°Muahahaha, then it''s heat resi¡ then we can finally have a warm bath.¡± Rowent mischievously rubbed his hands together.
¡°Emm wait, I think that was somewhere else.¡± Chris tried to shift the conversation, regretting what he just mentioned.
¡°GUYS! Let¡¯s stop by the spring again and have a quick bath!¡± Rowent ignored Chris¡¯s attempts and shouted to the 2 wagons in front.
¡°Hahaha, sure I could do with a bath!¡± Andel surprisingly agreed.
They didn¡¯t take long to reach the spring since the coachmen knew where it was, Ebony¡¯s betting they have a similar skill to his Mental Mapping.
The ¡®spring¡¯ was about the size of a full swimming pool, it wasn¡¯t that deep and would only reach Ebony¡¯s waist standing up. The water was coming from above towards the hill to the side.
Wattel and Greg declined to join. Maybe Greg didn¡¯t want to get his fur wet. Dina would go after the guys.
They all had a towel like cloth covering their lower half as their weapons weren¡¯t far from them, Top was taking guard. It was like an onsen experience.
The cool water in the spring revived Ebony, he rarely sweated since adding stats to Constitution and Endurance so it wasn¡¯t too uncomfortable without showering for a few days. The summer heat out of Hoarfrost Glade was killing him, with Icebody Enhancement on most of the time it was even worse.
¡°Oooh that¡¯s chilly, can you give us a little warm up Ro.¡± Andel shivered as he asked.
¡°Oh? Hehe. That was exactly what I was planning to do, boss. Don¡¯t worry, I have heated bath water for years, I am a bath heater expert.¡± Rowent chuckled at the coincidence.
¡°Heated hands go!¡± Rowent¡¯s hand got bright red and he placed them in the spring.
The water slowly heated up to a comfortable temperature.
¡°Ahh, that hits the spot.¡± Fergus relaxed.
¡°Uhm, actually I think I¡¯m done dipping.¡± Chris tried to escape.
¡°Bah you smell the worst out of all of us being sweaty from your hunts, spars and training.¡± Andel grabbed onto Chris¡¯s wrist before he stepped out. Andel was muscular, and those muscles weren¡¯t for show. He had the highest strength stat here being the highest level here too. His vice grip was not something Chris could escape from.
¡°Ro, don¡¯t you think that¡¯s enough?¡± Fergus called out soon. The temperature was getting hot and Ebony felt like he was about to take damage. He kept mum and meditated in silence but his weakness to heat was really troublesome.
¡°It''s okay Ro, keep it going. These kids don¡¯t know how good warming old bones feels.¡± Andel seemed like he was in cahoots with Rowent¡¯s plan to train heat resistance as he edged him on.
It didn''t take long for Fergus to catch on and cry out in complaints. ¡°GAH, I know what you¡¯re doing Ro. Stop it! My flawless skin is getting scalded.
¡°Didn¡¯t you catch my hints earlier?¡± Chris asked, having resolved himself to fate.
¡°Bah, you both need more training if this is enough to burn you. Look! Learn from Ebony, he hasn¡¯t even said a word of complaints and looks like he¡¯s just taking a normal bath.¡± Andel had a surprising tolerance for heat but was also sweating. Steam has already started to rise from the spring. Ebony submerged himself with his eyes closed and holding a breath.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Heat Resistance gained¡¯
Heat Resistance (Passive) - Extended periods of exposure to the heat allowed your body to develop a general resistance to the heat. 1.0% more resistant to heat per level.
HP: 218/250. 210/250. 204/250. 198/250. 193/250.
The water boiled, the only ones remaining was Ebony and Rowent at this point. Rowent also stopped turning up the heat. Ebony had long been scalded. Having a high Constitution helped a little but it wasn¡¯t enough.
He had long turned Icebody Enhancement off, he didn¡¯t need a decrease in resistance to heat and his mana was burning along with his body anyway.
The levels of the skill quickly raised to level 8, he was still taking damage just lower amounts and slower. The physical torment was great at pushing his Core Skill too, seeing how the burn was strong enough to knock him in and out of meditation. Yet, pain and discomfort couldn¡¯t be seen on his face. He was just so damn good at acting tough.
He quickly dragged himself out before getting dangerously low and cooking himself alive. Rowent raised the temperature even more after that.
¡°Hey! Are you alright? You¡¯re scalded all over, why go so far?¡± Chris was shocked by Ebony''s peeled skin and how red he was all over with blisters. He originally thought that since he dived in and didn¡¯t see Ebony in any pain he was able to handle it but he was obviously wrong.
¡°Yeah resistance training is done slowly over years to get them to reasonable levels, harming your body like that may give you permanent injuries that even healers may not be able to heal if not treated quickly.¡±
¡°...There is a saying, ¡®what doesn¡¯t kill you makes you stronger.¡¯ but my mother taught me that the truth is that only what kills you can make you stronger.¡± Ebony said.
¡®Well she actually said something like, ¡®when you try to kill yourself hard enough others¡¯ attempt at trying to do so by the same way will only seem laughable.¡¯ but that¡¯s close enough I guess. It''s like she knows about resistances man.¡¯
The escort party probably also has cold resistance yet they still wear warm clothing. That¡¯s something Ebony doesn¡¯t understand when it¡¯s possible to gain resistance against it. Sure, at some point it¡¯ll slow down at getting levels like Ebony did before but getting themselves warm would only slow it further or completely stop won¡¯t it?
The truth was at a certain point, you would feel cold or hot without taking damage and your resistance would hardly level. Always putting one in an uncomfortable range where it was cold/hot yet not enough to harm them.
Taking damage and having your body recover from it is the fastest known way to level resistance skill. He had an advantage of a strong regeneration and the ability for even his bones to heal and stick back together is beyond normal humans or even some beastmen.
To evolve resistances is to withstand a degree higher than what your body is supposed to be tolerant against. Which was to say it was hard to survive from that level of damage.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, I have a habit of bringing burn ointment after burning myself so many times experimenting.¡± Rowent said, walking out steaming. He didn¡¯t have bad burns like Ebony, his heat resistance was evident.
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¡°Thank you. Could you help me train my heat resistance again?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help but ask, it was a bother when they had much more limited mana than Ebony.
¡°Sure! Tonight, but not for too long I need to save mana just in case.¡± Rowent seemed to have some sadistic intent towards burning people but Ebony benefitted from it so alls well.
Ebony politely refused the ointment saying it was more beneficial to heal naturally and that the burns weren¡¯t as bad as they looked. Top and Dina took turns, neither complaining about the hot water.
The long stretch of rolling hills from afar was quite the sight but only when they started travelling through it did he not appreciate it. Their journey continued and it started to get more¡hilly. Uneven was an understatement and they bumped and jerked from left to right.
¡°Ughh. If only we could pass through the flatter sections.¡± Fergus complained.
¡°This is the safest route we know.¡± Top said as a matter of course.
¡°The only thing we need to look out for should be the Mud Marmots and Cysaru. Outside of bandits.¡± Top added.
Mud Marmots, supposedly pack monsters that use entire hills as their den or burrows. They often move underground and pop up for surprise attacks. If there were enough of them they could collapse the whole wagon together with the rams into a deep pool of mud. Fully grown they ranged from level 30 - 60.
Cysaru, they described it like a raptor on 2 thick legs and long scythe-like arms. This was a solo hunter and much more dangerous. The good point was that it was a fully physical beast with no magical means known. Ranging above level 65 at least, they were the most dangerous monsters in their current route.
A couple of pot holes appeared from time to time but no marmots showed up, as if testing their reactions. They only made the caravan members more uptight from the bumpy ride.
Ebony found another more useful way to spend his mana and train his other skills. Using his casting glove he cast the maximum number of Layered Ice Carapace under the wagon as they moved. Keeping his control over them as they moved proved to be good mental training.
Since he could recover mana any time, whenever he regenerated enough mana he added a layer on to one of them keeping at least more than half his mana pool in the event of any attacks. Now there were 4, 3 layered shields under their wagon, whenever no one was looking he would move the shield around as swiftly and accurately as he could. To the sides or back of the wagon, getting ready for any event of projectiles.
There was something like a soft cap on how fast one can cast or move their spell, probably partly due to stats like Intelligence and Wisdom and partly due to class fortification if any. Practice and training can help approach that soft cap. The conditioning type skill should be what raises the cap or lets one push past the cap.
Right now, Ebony still has not reached the limits of his own ability since he could still increase his speed of forming Ice Spikes. It takes just under 2 seconds for him to form 1 and he usually only uses 2 that cycles, another to control a shield. The last was back up, a surprise element so to say, besides using more only splits his focus and undermines his control and accuracy. Training was another thing altogether, he was on the verge of holding a fifth point of focus.
With the rate he was pushing his casting glove each single layer shield takes about 4 seconds to cast. Adding a layer on was almost twice as fast. The journey continued uneventfully till night fell again.
They got more variety of vegetables this time and made the soup and souper bread taste more flavourful. There was less game though, luckily Ebony wasn¡¯t too hungry with only training in the night. He had 2 shields floating behind him as they ate.
¡°I know you want to train up your skill but you should rest up and recover your mana in the event of any raids. We need you to be at your best during your watch at least.¡± was what Top said when he held 3 shields. They didn¡¯t know Ebony was recovering mana at the same time and Ebony wasn¡¯t planning on telling them either. Casting magic also eats up mental stamina in a sense but Ebony didn¡¯t feel any sort of mental exhaustion as of yet. Deep Persistent Meditation for the win.
With both shields at 5 layers, they were a bit larger with more curvature and a whole lot thicker. It was possible to add more layers but the effects should be small enough to not be worth the mana. Ebony was now compressing the shield as much as he could.
Their toughness was enough to surprise everyone during their spars. Ebony took a defensive approach with 2 tough shields. Training with Chris and Top was great for sword fighting experience. Dina gave him great reaction training, how agile she was also showed the many weak spots his swordsmanship had. Rowent and Fergus were both flexible with their magic, it helped Ebony learn fighting patterns of a mage and archer.
Ebony also trained his Heat Resistance, shirtless so that he doesn¡¯t damage his coat of course. It was a great relief for his shoulders that were aching badly. Not running Icebody Enhancement, his strength lowered and the robe was too heavy for him through the spars. It held him down by a fair margin.
When Ebony calculated that each of his shields contained about 3000 MP, it started feeling¡heavy. It didn¡¯t stop him from jamming as much mana as he could into them. Seeing Rowent¡¯s cool ass spear of fire also made him change his Ice Spikes shape into a sword. 15 mana was too little so he just formed swords of ice, copying his current weapons¡¯ dimensions.
It took quite some effort to make it sharp, the end product was light and its length made it considerably brittle. Still he wanted to copy Gen¡¯s. With Frost Injection perhaps he could make his projectiles stab into his enemies and move into their bodies, freezing their internals.
For now it was copying and pasting as many swords as easily as he could to evolve or mutate the Ice Spike skill.
¡®I can use Deep Persistent Meditation asleep, using other skills or spells should be possible too.¡¯ Ebony thought.
Letting go control of his shield wouldn¡¯t cause them to disappear but they¡¯ll definitely melt over time. His previous copies on the ground were already melting a little. His concern was recovering so much mana he scares the escort party accidentally.
None of them seem to have heard of any skill that let¡¯s one cast spells sleeping but neither did they deny the possibility since ¡®anything is possible¡¯ held a different meaning with skills and stats. Now Ebony slept outside the wagon with his shield right above him. Every time he falls asleep and loses the mental grip of his shield it would drop right on him, smashing him awake with their current weight and density.
They moved out in the morning, eating rations on the move with the party trying to hold back their laughter over his broken nose and still reddish skin.
They didn¡¯t check but Ebony attached 5 layered shields that he fully compressed to his limit to the bottom of the wagon. When he fully compresses one he¡¯ll switch them out to the somewhat melted ones and bring them back to their original state. He didn¡¯t realise that he was creating disposable shields and that he can just swap out mid battle if he broke one in the middle of a fight.
There was one stuck under every wagon, while Ebony was still holding onto 4 more incomplete ones. He added handles to them in the event the others could use them too.
The thing he hated more than the heat was how many insects there were and all the creepy noises they made. Hoarfrost Glade was almost always quiet even when there were monsters fighting nearby but the Bubbles hills felt so teaming with insect wildlife. The closest thing to an insect in Hoarfrost Glade he saw was the snow crawlers and they were more like snakes. Ebony wanted to turn back already.
A weird scream echoed from the front as the wagon pulled to the side, sending Ebony and Rowent tumbling. Chris knocked twice from the front seat, a signal for danger. Monsters.
¡°Crap. Watch yourself and defend Andel and the others, that¡¯s gonna take all of us.¡± Rowent said after spotting the threat.
It was too far to Identify for Ebony but he saw what resembles a raptor, smaller than the huge boars in Hoarfrost Glade but longer. Its thick legs suggest great jumping power and those¡ arms were like a grim reaper''s scythe. No one mentioned anything about a club-like tail to him but it should be the Cysaru they described.
The party of 5 quickly gathered but it seems like even Top was undecided in whether to fight or flight. It clearly wasn¡¯t one of the dumb ones Ebony had hunted. It was watching them unmoving like they were doing so too.
¡°Aberrant.¡± Fergus whispered.
¡°Boss Andel. Start running or you won¡¯t get a chance anymore. Fergus, level?¡± Top ordered.
¡°Nascent Cysaru, level¡73. That¡¯s not all, we¡¯re being watched. 3 archers, high 40s. 2 rogues, low 40s. 1 warrior, 55. All human. They are blocking the path behind us.¡± Fergus reported.
They were currently between a few hills and it was a one way track. The non-combatants were all distressed but stayed silent except Wattel who was still calm but grabbing the reins tight waiting for the right opportunity. It was not his first time being ambushed by both monsters and bandits.
¡°...they¡¯re mocking us. They led it here somehow, once we¡¯re dead they could just take the cargo after it¡¯s done eating us. Can¡¯t even bother hiding from us anymore impatient, arrogant bastards.¡± indignation filled Dina¡¯s low grumble.
¡°It¡¯s been watching for too long, is it under their control?¡± Chris asked, the staring got to him and he was actually shaking a little.
¡°Impossible, aberrant monsters have but killing, eating, shiting and breaking past their limits in mind. But it''s weird, Cysaru¡¯s known limit should be a 90s to a hundred; it''s only 73 yet already an aberrant. Whatever it is, it''s not normal. Your orders, leader.¡± Rowent voiced his doubts as he got his staff warmed up.
¡°Chris and Dina follow Ebony and open a path from the back. Fergus and Ro¡make it out alive.¡±
¡°I¡¯m staying too!¡± Dina exclaimed.
¡°Chris and Ebony don''t have enough ranged prowess, 2 of them alone might not be enough to open a path. Furthermore, Ebony is not obliged to fight, protect or do our jobs as Z&Z¡¯s escort party. Ebony, I am sorry for pushing this onto you.¡± Top apologised.
Dina wasn''t happy with the decision, Chris and Dina were the youngest and most inexperienced in their party so she knew that she was just a burden to the 3 of them staying.
¡°No problem, they probably wouldn¡¯t let me go anyway. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll at least make sure none of them bothers you.¡± Ebony said in his usual monotonous tone, as if he expected this to happen. Deep down he was truly as calm as he appeared to be anyway.
Top smiled at the not completely unfounded confidence.
¡°MOVE!¡± as if a starter pistol sounded the still picture changed at his bellow.
Chapter 25: Weak
The rams roared as they quickly turned around. The air hissed as arrows were let loose aiming at the rams. The front wagon with Chris, middle with Ebony and last with Dina.
Chris cut them down with a single swing of his blade. Dina swung her arms with seemingly nothing in them but the arrows split into pieces and flew out of the air. Both looked towards Ebony to check on him but he handled himself as well as always. One of his shields floated, blocking the arrows while the 2 that by passed it were smacked away with ease.
¡®Weak.¡¯ his fully compressed 5 layered shield was just scratched or nicked either deflecting or bouncing the arrows off.
¡°Stick closer!¡± Chris called out to the coaches. The path was wide enough for 2 of the wagons to move together. The one Ebony was on moved up beside Chris¡¯s while Dina¡¯s closed the gap. The barrage of arrows continued from the 3, now seen archers. Most likely backed by a skill at the rate they were firing. They were just wasting arrows if anything.
2 shadows popped out from their covers as the rams charged past them. They aimed dripping daggers at the rams but Dina was long aware of them and her throwing knives found their way into their leather armour. Eliciting a scream and shriek from them. They panicked but managed to block more throwing knives towards their faces. Their daggers likely had poison or something on them.
Ebony shot his Ice Spikes at them as well, finding them doing their job and actually hitting for once. Another shadow jumped out from wherever he was hiding from. Ebony found a flash of blue flying towards him, his shield couldn¡¯t move to defend him in time but he managed to guard with his greatsword.
The force rammed him right off the top of the covered wagon as he flew past Dina. Nobody saw the 4 shadows that flew past from under the wagons, along with Ebony. Leaving only the 3 fully strengthened ones stuck under them.
¡°Ebony!¡± Chris jumped off and made his way to the new offender and warrior.
¡°Hahaha! You chumps, and you call yourself elites. What a joke! Just 3 kids who haven¡¯t outgrown their diapers, always protect your mage you dimwits!¡± the sword wielding warrior said as he surprisingly went after Ebony. Perhaps because he thought Ebony was the weakest link and also thinking that a mage was more important to deal with first. He probably hasn¡¯t identified Ebony, nor did he see the huge ass blade he was waving around.
¡°Dina, protect the caravan I¡¯m gonna get help Ebony!¡± Chris turned back to call out as he dashed after the warrior, possibly leader of the group.
¡°Don¡¯t fall back too much. We don¡¯t know if they got any more hiding.¡± Dina said as she fought both rogues with her dagger and somehow still swiping down any stray arrows flying towards them.
¡°Hey! You fools, keep him off me while I get rid of the damn mage!¡± the hoarse voice of the warrior yelled.
The throwing knife didn¡¯t bite deep as one of the rogues slipped away to intercept Chris who was stopped by a couple of arrows. Two archers were supporting the one holding Dina off while the other helped keep Chris from following the warrior.
¡°Tchh! Ebony! That¡¯s a mana blade, just hold him off long enough and it¡¯ll run out of mana quickly.¡± irritation and stress filled Chris''s voice as he was forced to fight the rogue with ranged support. He was the weakest of their party despite being 2 levels higher than Dina, because he hasn¡¯t picked up a Sub-Class. It was also the reason why Ebony felt like he could defeat him in a real battle if push comes to shove.
¡®Was that a flying slash of a blade? Hot damn! Right out of an anime.¡¯ Ebony thought as he skidded to a stop. It wasn¡¯t as strong as it looked as Ebony was unharmed.
¡®Mana blade? So that was just a physical manifestation of mana, seems like a waste of mana from how little it managed to do. A battle of attrition? With me?¡¯
¡°HAHA! MEDITATIVE and only level 33! We¡¯ve hit the elling jackpot people! Change of plans. We''re taking this one alive.¡± the bald and bearded man in old beaten leather armour and sword and shield burst out in joy. Stunned right as he said that as he hurriedly raised his shield, blocking an ice infused power stab.
Ebony let 2 of the shields down by the side while the other 2 went smashing the warrior in between. He had about 3 quarters of his mana pool now. Ice mana circulated through his body for his enhancement.
¡®Hmm¡ Is it Intelligence or Wisdom that affects how fast or strong I can move my magic? Probably Intelligence.¡¯ a thought popped up as the bald warrior knocked his shields aside
[Warrior Lvl 55]
Ebony thought of using the shields to bash his enemy as an idea from Rowent. It is a mana saving trick he used but requires a heck lot of control and its range and speed are pretty limited compared to Rowent. Ebony followed up exchanging blows with the bald warrior.
¡°Hahaha. As if being low level wasn¡¯t enough you just had to choose to be a hybrid. You¡¯re too weak and slow just give up and come be my mana generator. Don¡¯t worry I¡¯ll treat you well and catch some prey to power level you, you just have to add all your stats to Wisdom.¡± He couldn¡¯t stop talking as he parried and blocked but he was actually starting to sweat as he had no real training in fighting.
The warrior¡¯s sword and shield was slowly getting covered in ice. He was faster and stronger than Ebony but pushed into a defensive position. The stupid shields and occasional ice shards flying at him were annoying the heck out of him.
¡°Enough!¡± his blade glowed as he swung diagonally at Ebony, not even in reach but a familiar blue wave flew out of it. This time both employed shields managed to cover Ebony. The first completely shattered as the second cracked but stayed firm. The bald warrior saw that and sent another wave of mana over.
¡®Can¡¯t he stop laughing or something?¡¯
Ebony just stepped aside now that he saw it coming, he brought another shield up as he continued his flurry. He swept the warrior off his feet with a leg sweep but he quickly rolled before Ebony could follow up with a stab.
¡°You cocky bastard!¡± The warrior was getting more and more pissed, getting pushed around by Ebony like that. He was like a child with a sharp weapon. Worse than Tiha at handling himself. He activated his mana blade to full power as he wildly swung around.
Ebony quickly put some distance between them as he weaved in and out dodging every flying slash with considerable ease. An Ice Spike pierced the man¡¯s shoulder and another at the back of his knee in his wild rage.
¡°GAH!!¡± he screamed. A single step brought Ebony right up to him again, his greatsword stabbing right through the man¡¯s shoulder and onto the ground. His wound and blood froze over as he screamed again.
¡°Quiet, my ears hurt. Are you wanted?¡± Ebony asked as he stayed on top of the man gripping his greatsword and pumping more ice mana in as frozen portions started spreading from the warriors shoulder.
¡°Arghh! Let me go you bastard! I¡¯m Boom from Lure, they won¡¯t let you go if you kill me.¡±
¡°Are you wanted?¡±
¡°Are you daft! Of course I am! I said I¡¯m Boom from Lure!¡± a fitting name for such a loud mouth.
¡°So you still have value.¡± Ebony used his foot to shut the man¡¯s mouth and froze it shut. Stabbing his other arm and both thighs before freezing the wounds shut. Encasing him between the curves of the 2 large shields and freezing them together as a cage. He kept knocking the warrior¡¯s head till he knocked him out before dashing back to support Dina and Chris but they were finishing up too.
One headless rogue on the ground while Dina went to fish out the archers. Ebony was just in time to see Chris stabbing the other rogue through his stomach as he struggled to catch his last breath, coughing blood on Chris¡¯s face instead. Chris was covered in blood and not just with the rogue¡¯s but some were also his own but Ebony didn¡¯t see any large or lethal wounds.
¡°You okay? Any large wounds? I can freeze them shut if you¡¯re bleeding too badly.¡± Ebony asked in his usual indifferent tone of voice, though he was feeling a tinge of concern. It was the first time he saw a headless human body or someone getting killed but even he was surprised by his own calmness towards the fact. The blood, gore and smell didn¡¯t seem all too different from when he slayed and hunted animals and monsters.
Ebony had never cared about the species of monsters that tried to kill him. Anyone or thing that was trying to kill him should only expect to be killed too. That was a fact beaten into him long ago, yet, even he was not sure if he would stay as calm as he always was if he killed someone. He was sure he wouldn¡¯t hesitate to kill anyone after his life, human or not but it was true killing them wasn¡¯t the first thing to come to mind.
¡°Haa..haa. I¡¯m fine, you..you took him down already?¡± Chris panted, he sounded more downcast than actually wondering if Ebony took the warrior down already. Since the warrior was right beside Ebony, captured and knocked out. Faster than he did and the warrior was the leader and highest level, even if he was fighting the rogue together with an archer or two he was 20 levels higher than Ebony. His confidence had been taking a heavy blow through their spars already, but now it was almost shattered. ¡®What kind of an ¡®elite¡¯ am I?¡¯
The caravan had already stopped to the side as Andel waved them over. Dina also walked over from the other end.
¡°Everybody alright?¡±
¡°...yes.¡± Chris replied
¡°Yes.¡± Ebony plainly said.
For someone at level 55, the bandit or thief was too weak other than his higher physical stat. It seemed like they didn''t train much or had weak untiered, low skill levels, unlike the escort team members. It was clear to Ebony the bandit warrior never properly learnt to fight, only using brute force.
¡°What are your orders, boss.¡± Dina asked instead but it didn¡¯t sound like a question.
¡°First of all, who is that?¡± Andel pointed to the caged baldy.
¡°He said he¡¯s Boom from Lure.¡±
¡°What?¡± Andel was astonished. Dina just raised a brow while Chris widened his eyes.
¡°Is he some kind of big shot?¡± Ebony asked, seeing their reaction.
¡°Boss your orders.¡± Dina ignored the question. Impatient.
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¡°Oh yeah that can wait, we¡¯ll move further away from the aberrant. Wattel spotted a large enough hill with a cave that can hide us away from the aberrant¡¯s eye for a while.¡±
¡°Boss!¡±
¡°I haven¡¯t finished, it isn¡¯t too far and there shouldn¡¯t be any threat in the way. Dina go and help the others, aim to survive and escape, not to kill.¡±
¡°Yes!¡± She already turned away and ran as she answered.
¡°I¡¯ll go too.¡± Ebony said. He let the bald warrior roll on the ground in his shelled enclosure as 3 shields under the wagons freed itself and Ebony picked the last one up on the way. He was too fast for Andel to stop neither did he have to follow his orders. Since there wasn¡¯t any danger and it was nearby he was more interested in the aberrant monster.
It was supposedly very strong and the 3 most experienced on their team didn¡¯t seem too confident beating it.
¡°Hey wait for me!¡± Chris was about to run after them but was pulled back by Andel.
¡°Stay right there young man! You¡¯re our only escort left, I didn¡¯t even want to let Dina go but Top and the others will need all the help they can to escape. Letting Dina go will also let them know we¡¯ve dealt with the bandits and they don¡¯t have to hold the aberrant back any longer. She¡¯s faster on her feet as well. I need you to clear our path and watch Boom. I¡¯ll prepare some ropes if Ebony¡¯s spell runs out.¡±
¡°...Why didn¡¯t you stop Ebony then?¡± Chris sceptically asked.
¡°He¡¯s not our escort. You are. He understands the risk and seeing how he can capture Boom in such a short time uninjured he can handle himself.¡±
¡°You just don¡¯t think I¡¯m strong enough to back them up¡¡±
¡°Chris¡ don¡¯t worry. You¡¯re not weak. Ebony already has a Sub-Class, you don¡¯t. Don¡¯t be disheartened and train harder if you don¡¯t think you¡¯re good enough. Right now we need you here¡± Andel lied.
Andel''s Appraise skill already showed him that Ebony just had a Class. He was old enough to know how fragile a youths¡¯ heart was when they were compared to more talented peers their age, especially proud ones that go around being called ¡®elites¡¯.
The Thoyas¡¯ already mentioned what an oddity Ebony was to him and that he was to indulge Ebony''s requests if possible. He was just a small time merchant, he couldn¡¯t afford to lose the Thoya brand. Even though Roya no longer put their brand on her robes sold to them their robes are a hot seller.
¡®The lady frost elf guide even found a destroyed underground mana facility. I shouldn¡¯t stick my hand into these muddy waters. Just treat him cordially and with respect and hope he quickly leaves for greener pastures.¡¯
¡°...yes boss.¡±
???
Minutes ago.
¡°MOVE!¡±
The three of them split up. Top charging to face it, Fergus to his left and Rowent to his right.
Fergus drew and nocked 2 actual arrows on his bow, pulling the full weight behind the string of his longbow.
An orb of fire formed above Rowent¡¯s staff as it grew larger then smaller, getting compressed.
The scythed raptor remained still, it couldn¡¯t help but grin. That creeped out the three of them, all of them stayed their hands and magic. This aberrant was not killing them on sight, the situation felt weirder and weirder.
Top stood 3 girs away, sword and shield ready.
¡°Why isn¡¯t it attacking?¡± Fergus asked, bow aimed wind swirling around him.
¡°Pa..tieeenceee.¡± it hissed.
¡°Holy crap, It speaks!¡± Rowent was shocked but his spell casting wasn¡¯t interrupted nor was his focus.
¡°Sooo¡ caaaan youuu.¡± it hissed again, the grin not wiped from his face.
¡°What do you want? We mean no harm.¡±
¡°Ssshh¡ that¡¯sss exactlyyy what I wantss. I waass proomisssed¡ ¡®eliteess¡¯ tooo batttlleess.¡± It hissed before its grin seemed to grow wider.
¡°¡°¡¡±¡±
¡°Iff youu manaaagee to huurr..haaahaa¡hurttt meee. Perrrhaapss I-ee caan lett youuu goo alivveee.¡± it¡¯s voice was hoarse and laughter crude and it obviously didn¡¯t put any of them in its eyes.
¡°As you wish!¡± arrows whistled as Fergus called out.
Two arrows cut through the air as they were on their way to its eyes. It raised its thick and wide scythe arm and blocked the arrows, the arrows merrily bounced off. Metallic clinking sounded. A row of fireballs streamed at the raptor¡¯s side as Top chopped at its neck.
Every fireball landed cleanly on it but it was unmoved. It crossed its scythe with Top¡¯s sword as they stared at each other. Top didn¡¯t stop there and rained heavy, relentless chops. The Cysaru was like an expert in its field as it repelled every blow with skill and grace. Ignoring every fireball and now only closing his eyes when an arrow was right in front of it.
Top took a deep breath and blew or spit a gushing stream of water in its face from his mouth. Using the opportunity to move to its side and giving its flank a good ol¡¯ pierce. His sword stopped short with another clink of metal striking.
Normal Cysaru had thick brown leathery skin. This talking Nascent Cysaru had thick pitch black scales, looking like that of a pangolins and it wasn¡¯t for show as Top only made a white dot of a mark on it. Fergus¡¯s wind assisted arrows did absolutely nothing and Rowent Fireball was like the passing wind to it.
¡°Haaa¡isss thaaaattt all?¡± disappointment in its voice.
The Cysaru¡¯s thick tail swiped at Top, away sending him flying. Top managed to erect water around his buckler as he blocked the tail swipe with his buckler. It was not an uncommon attack among his people and he saw it coming but it was not good enough as his water barrier splattered and cracks filled his buckler and his arms creaked but survived the blow.
¡°You wish. Ro, we¡¯ll cover you. Prepare that.¡± Top spit out the blood in his mouth.
Fergus took that signal to stop with his cautious pokes. Another arrow found its way to the Cysaru¡¯s mouth, it bit on it like a snack.
¡°Got you.¡± the wooden shaft of the arrow wiggled and shifted as with all the others bounced off on the ground. Wooden vines entangled its mouth shut as the previous arrows on the ground climbed up its thick legs wrapping it up good.
Fergus didn¡¯t let up as he continued firing at its feet. The wooden arrows rooted it to the ground as Fergus strengthened them with more wood from his arrows. The roots climbed up the Cysaru up to its hips as it thickened. Fergus was as much of a wood mage as he was a wind archer.
Top didn¡¯t just watch, he kept the raptor¡¯s scythe arms from cutting itself loose by keeping it busy. Every exchange shaking his bones and his arms numb.
Rowent had long started his personal chant. His hair blown back as a ball of air was being formed in front of his left palm not unlike Fergus¡¯s magic. He raised his staff with his right as flames spurted forth, swirling and getting absorbed by the ball of air. He wasn¡¯t just a damn good fire mage, he was also an air mage.
This combined spell of his was a no holds barred spell that he created, he only had enough mana for a single cast and it required his utmost concentration.
The waves of heat singed the grass on the ground around him but he didn¡¯t stop. His outstretched hands started to burn but he was not done. His sleeves caught on fire but he was unbothered. His eyebrows and hair lit on fire, his bomb was ready.
¡°GET LOST!¡± Rowent was addressing all 3 of them.
Top quickly jumped back and continued to increase the distance between them while Fergus did the same. At full speed. Rowent held the spell back for another second before letting it loose at the arrogant Cysaru.
The Cysaru grin only deepened, Top¡¯s attempt at stopping it from cutting the roots from its legs were unnecessary since it didn¡¯t even think of trying to escape. It wouldn¡¯t even need its arms to cut the roots, its strong, thick legs could easily break itself free from the flimsy roots. It hadn¡¯t even planned on going after Rowent to stop his chant.
It felt the broiling mana approaching, the scorching heat burning the ground and air as it made its way to it. It watched as the spell came into contact with his glossy black scales. It gently touched and¡ detonated in the largest blast of force it ever felt. With him at the centre a 2 gir radius of flames burned for what felt like forever to the 3 escort party but only seconds passed.
¡°Fergus keep the flames going for as long as you can!¡± Rowent called out to Fergus as he knelt from exhaustion and brushed off whatever flames were on his clothes and hair, his hair only singed from the flames.
Fergus complied and the flames that were still going swirled like a mini tornado. He didn¡¯t manage to keep it up for long as the fire mana ran out.
¡°Ro. Get a mana regen pill out, it''s not dead. Fergus hold it down as much as you can.¡±
¡°I know it''s not dead. Damn beast.¡± Rowent replied as none of them received the notification.
He was reluctant to use a mana regen pill since it was kinda poisonous to the body and overuse was not recommended. It forcefully increased one¡¯s mana regeneration speed by multiple times so it was also a waste for someone of his level.
¡°The heat is in the way. I rather not waste mana to dissipate the heat.¡±
Top shot a stream of water from his mouth again right where the Cysaru was. Water sizzled as steam rose, the raptor¡¯s form appeared through the steam and smoke.
¡°Keeek keek. Thaaankss forrr wasshhinggg thee ssooott offf meee. I-ee havvee sseenn eeenougghh.¡± The Cysaru coughed out smoke and its scales lost their gloss but if there was any lasting damage, it couldn¡¯t be seen.
¡°Shit. Do you think the others are done with the riff raffs?¡± Rowent cursed.
¡°...It¡¯s hard to say. Dina should be able to cope with the 3 archers with them being apprentice types as long as the warrior doesn¡¯t stop her from taking them down first she can pick them off in time. Chris could help with the rogues but he¡¯s not exactly ready yet.¡±
¡°Enough chit chat. We¡¯ll keep it from chasing them for as long as we can.¡±
¡°Ssshh. Youuu peeoplle don¡¯tt undeeerstandss, yooourr aaalliess arre oonly goonnee because i-ee leett themm. Yoouu anndd yoouu cann liivee. Yoouu, i-ee haavee noo neeed forr a baatth seervaantt.¡± It took its time speaking, pointing its scythe arm at Rowent, Fergus then Top and, for the first time since they saw it. Leaped, from its original spot which was now in cinders.
Top instinctually moved for a roll and brought his shield up as fast as he could. Only moving a little to the left with his arm reaching up to his belly before his reaper arrived. The Cysaru¡¯s scythe pierced right along the top of the buckler and into Top¡¯s chest, coming right out of his back.
It aimed right at the centre where it thought Top¡¯s heart was but pierced through his lungs instead. But no matter, it thought, with such a gaping hole in his lungs he wouldn¡¯t survive long anyway.
¡°¡°LEADER!!¡±¡± a fire spear and barrage of arrows had been launched as soon as the Cysaru finished talking but it only hit where the Cysaru had been. The fire spear quickly made a u-turn as they both cried out.
Rowent¡¯s feet went up in flames and pushed him forward at his maximum speed, Fergus desperately charged enough wind to attempt to push the monster away from their leader.
The Cysaru removed its arm as Top fell back onto his side, blood gushing forth from his wound and his mouth. He was struggling to move any part of his body but strength was quickly leaving his body. Rowent pointed his staff at its face as he stood in between the two within seconds. His spear of fire aided by Fergus¡¯s wind magic burst forth landing on it and perhaps surprising it, pushed him back a gir or two.
Rowent quickly turned and grabbed Top out of the way, forcing a dark red pill he prepared down his leader¡¯s throat.
¡°RO, BEHIND YOU!¡±
Fergus¡¯s shots of arrows and wooden entangle were but a nuisance that achieved nothing at slowing the beast down.
Fortunately, Rowent managed to react to his call. Slamming the butt of his staff down on the ground as he grabbed Top with his other hand. A burst of flame erupted from the point of impact as he tried to cover Top¡¯s body while they rolled away from where they were with the propulsion from his flames.
Wiping away his nosebleed from the overexertion and side effects of the mana regen pill, he was bone dry on mana now. He didn¡¯t manage to prevent Top from getting hurt from the last second manoeuvre as he was much smaller than the lizardman.
¡°Crud, I don¡¯t want to die.¡± he merely bought themselves another second at most.
Chapter 26: Greetings
The Cysaru hadn¡¯t been taking them seriously since the start, even now. That was the only reason they even lasted this long anyway. A double mage like Rowent was as good as a sitting duck without mana, he didn¡¯t even have the strength to carry Top away.
¡°Stop! You want us alive don¡¯t you?!¡± Fergus yelled.
¡°A meerree flliigghtt offf faanccyy, buttt noottt aaanymoore.¡± it teased with its wide grin as it squinted with those large bright yellow eyes. It stood before Rowent and Top, it wasn¡¯t very big for a monster but it was like a titan was looming down on them.
It took its own sweet time, maybe savouring the moment his prey fell before it.
¡°SSSHH!¡± it hissed as he swung his head back. A knife found its way into its eye but not too deep.
¡°Pull back!! We¡¯re done here!¡± Dina shouted, rushing just in time to stop the guillotine over her party members¡¯ necks.
¡°Oh thank Dina the saviour, I love you so damn much! Fergus! Quick help me drag this lug of a leader.¡± Rowent sincerely cried out. The pill he fed Top could only slow his bleeding by a large margin and helped increase health regeneration a little, even with his high vitality and lizardmans¡¯ inherently higher regeneration he needed actual medical care or he¡¯ll die at this rate.
The good news was Dina, whose Profession was a first aider of sorts, was here. The bad news was that she was the only one in the condition of distracting the monster. Fergus was already low on mana as well and it was already obvious nothing he did was enough to distract the monster.
¡°Tchh freaking hills, there aren¡¯t many trees I can use for my wires.¡± Dina cursed under her breath as the wire on her out thrown knife in the Cysaru''s eye loosened and coilled around its neck. She already threw more around its scythe like arms to keep it in check but there was no stable footing or landmark she could use to actually hold it back.
???
Like a guitar string snapping, the Cysaru lightly touched its arms on Dina''s wires, cutting them easily. The initial surprise was over, it wasn¡¯t really injured and its eye would heal in time. It was only intrigued by the newcomer who managed to hurt itself.
Planning to keep its promise, it was never really gonna kill the fire mage or archer. The Cysaru didn¡¯t seem like it but it was burnt pretty badly internally, the wind archer prolonged and enhanced the damage by a little but it caused him damage all the same.
Scaring the mage was only having a little fun, it really just planned to kill the tailed one. To think another one came back to meet it in battle. Excellent.
¡°Grrreee!¡± It was about to say hello to the newcomer but something cold flew into its mouth just as it opened its wonderful jaws to speak their tongue.
???
¡°Ebony?! Why did you come back? This one¡¯s too much for you, run back now!¡± Surprisingly, Dina was the one who called out.
¡°Since you¡¯re already here, we could really use some strong arms and fast legs. Get Top out of here first, he needs medical help as soon as possible.¡± Rowent asked realistically. Ebony was a warrior fast on his feet, Fergus could use the chance to distract the monster for another second or two buying them more time.
*Crunch*
¡°Chiiilllyyy. Maaaggnifiiiceentt. Reeelllaaxxss, oonnly thhee taaileed one hazz tooo dieee.¡± The Cysaru crushed the ice in its mouth.
¡°Smokes! It¡¯s talking! Did I mishear?!¡± Dina was so shocked she almost dropped her weapons.
¡®A talking monster¡ even Gen couldn¡¯t. Wait no it¡¯s because I didn¡¯t understand Elcrian but I think Gen did try to speak to me. So is it like Gen? Losing monster stats to gain smarts and the ability to get a class? So it¡¯s only trying to kill Top for some reason, why? Cause he doesn¡¯t like the fact they both have tails?¡¯ Ebony pondered.
¡°It talks alright. Don¡¯t listen to it, it just tried to kill me along with the leader.¡± Rowent verified.
¡°Wait a second Ro, I think it means what it says.¡± Fergus said.
¡°...¡±
¡°Finnaaallly usssingg thhaat heaaad thhaat youuu prriddee youurrseelvvess offf pooinnttyy eaaareddd onneee.¡±
¡°Explain, Fergus.¡± Rowent ignored the creature.
¡°I¡¯m sure you know what I mean, Ro. It has been playing with us the whole time. I bet we would be dead within seconds or less if it was trying to kill us from the get go. It initiated conversation, gave us terms and acted almost...civil. It took damage from your fire blast probably from my attacks too but none from Leader. It never attacked and took all our hits defensively the whole time, letting us take our own sweet time talking. It knew we were planning to give him a big one but never tried to stop us either.¡± Fergus explained, his eyes never having left the grinning and patient creature.
¡°It turned back on its words and tried to kill me too!¡± Rowent pointed out.
¡°...¡± Fergus couldn¡¯t deny. He himself was still doubtful of a monster''s whimsical words.
¡°Doonnee chhaatting? I-ee willl beee taakiingg himmm nowww ifff youuu haavvee noothinng leefftt tooo saaayy.¡±
¡°What will it take for you to let him go?¡± Ebony thought there was no harm asking if it really was civil like Fergus said. It didn¡¯t seem violent like the monsters he¡¯d seen and it really was just standing there and listening in on them.
¡°Hmmm? Kek, I-ee meeerreelyy leeet youuu go beecauusee a leveell 33 acctuaallly manaageed tooo caatchh meee offf gaaurrdd. Doonntt thiinnkk tooo higghlly offf yourrselff, youuu diiidd noottt manaagee tooo hurrtt meee aannd haavee nooo qualiiifiicaationsss tooo neeegootiateee wiithh meee.¡±
¡®It can Identify me. It might really be like Gen and have skills and a Class.¡¯
¡°So if I, a level 33 manage to cause damage to you. You¡¯ll let Top go free.¡± Ebony asked. He was still as calm as always as he tried to think of ways he could deal damage to a beast much tougher than anyone present.
*Rwoaar!*
Its roar shook the air and the very ground they stood on as if the angriest beast was unleashed upon the world. It was actually roaring with laughter at the funny joke. Even its ¡®lessers¡¯, higher levelled than it could hardly harm him much less a non monster 40 levels lower than it.
¡°Suuurree. Trrryy anyythiingg attt yourrr disssppoosaall¡ yoouu thrree caaan leaaavee noow, brrinngg thhee taaileed oneee tooo. Ifff yoouu failll youuu shallll beee myyy meaall insstteeads." It decided to humor the funny one for his foolishness, even letting the bath servant go since it didn¡¯t really matter which one it eats.
Though the tailed one had a lot more meat, if its own scales were any indication it would be that biting through it would be troublesome.
¡°Okay. Wait a minute.¡± Ebony replied. The threat of being eaten not even bothering him one bit. Eat or be eaten was something he was aware of every hunt, a stronger beast or not didn¡¯t change the fact.
Fergus and Rowent already gathered beside Top who was wheezing badly yet unconscious. The wound was gigantic and it was quite a wonder he wasn¡¯t dead yet. Dina was standing in front of them with her back facing them still watching the monster¡¯s nonchalant behaviour.
¡°I¡®ll help freeze the bleeding.¡±
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¡°Wait. Lizardmen are weak to the cold, you might kill him if you freeze his blood in his current state. Just shut his wound so that he doesn¡¯t lose any more blood. The pill we fed him should help close the internal wounds and replenish his blood a little. It¡¯s fortunate Lizardmen can regrow the flesh and bones, even organs, with the help of some healing he should be able to make it.¡±
¡°Why Ebony? You didn¡¯t have to do this for us? We can still fight our way out of this. With you here we can leave the leader in your hands as we hold it back and retreat.¡±
¡°If you could hold him back we wouldn¡¯t be holding this conversation.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t want to refer to it as a monster and just assumed it was male.
¡°...¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry. I¡¯m not doing this for you guys. He is confident but so am I. Just go.¡± Ebony sealed a thin layer of ice over Top¡¯s chest and back.
Dina unwillingly left with eyes that look like she was trying to burn a hole into Ebony. She was full of rage, she wanted to fight yet seeing how little her seniors were able to do she was even more scared than angry. She was so angry at herself she couldn¡¯t speak out to stop Ebony. So ashamed she was kinda happy she could actually go free without seeing any of her party members die. She didn¡¯t wipe her tears away.
Rowent and Fergus both had complicated looks and what they were thinking was beyond what Dina was imagining.
Ebony walked towards the Cysaru, 4 shields in tow. He hardly used any mana in the previous fight. Moving back here without Icebody Enhancement to regenerate more mana, but not much since they weren¡¯t really that far away to begin with.
Fighting or trying to deal damage in close combat would just be suicidal. Ebony had learnt enough from his silly suicidal attempts at fighting monsters with his sword. His low strength wasn¡¯t helping even with his body enhancement he bet he wouldn¡¯t be able to do crap.
As for magical means, he wasn¡¯t really much better at it with Ice Spikes literally being eaten by it like a frozen cookie.
There was only one thing that came to mind. One thing he could dish out to solve a problem and that was to dump all his mana at the problem.. Ebony felt blinder as he left Hoarfrost Glade behind him, the ice mana in the air thinned out quickly and they weren''t ice mana where they were now.
3 of his 4 shields were fully compressed 5 Layered Ice Carapaces while the last was a little damaged and wasn¡¯t 5 layers either. A single max powered shield was basically a compression of over 6000 mana. A ridiculous sum for someone of Ebony¡¯s level, and this was with his 100% mana efficiency with ice magic. Mana Compression is already playing a huge part in its low level. Furthermore his mana was 100% more compressible, making it easier and less mentally draining to compress mana
It wouldn¡¯t have been possible if he couldn¡¯t regenerate his mana while casting, they were all constantly brought back into his control as he casted them.
???
¡°Noott usssinngg thaaatt stticck oofff yoouurss?¡± The grinning Cysaru tilted its head. She was used to seeing the weird sharp ¡®sticks¡¯ that the lanky people like to use as they didn¡¯t have awesome sharp hands like hers. Ebony had his sword sheathed, not planning on using it.
¡°I have something better to show you. It''s called a handshake, a greeting from where I came from.¡± Ebony said as he reached out to grab the blunt side or top of its scythe hands. His hands were just large enough to wrap his fingers around the tip of the scythe. Griping just tight enough to bleed, the scythe arms obviously extremely sharp.
His left hand was touching his shields which were stacked up together by his side. He began imbuing every drop of his mana into his hands and drawing even more from his shields.
Getting more and more intrigued by this weirdly calm person. The Cysaru had met and even eaten a few of his kind. All that came face to face with her were filled with fear and dread. Some acted dead, some cried, some fought even as their body failed them, the stronger ones thought they were ¡®lucky¡¯ to find such a rare ¡®catch¡¯.
Those who thought that were usually quite a few levels above herself perhaps around level 120, though she hated the look they gave her like she was prey so, she usually ate anyone or thing that was higher level than her.
She didn¡¯t know why but she always gave chances to those lower level than herself. Perhaps she wanted those higher level than her to give her a chance as well if she ever met one stronger than herself. Perhaps she didn¡¯t feel like ¡®bullying¡¯ them, but the concept was a little foreign to her. She only learnt how to speak recently after all and her memories don''t go far back.
This person instead was obviously one of the weakest¡ human, she tried to recall their race. Yet, she didn¡¯t feel or smell the usual fear that they have when against her. She looked at his hands holding onto hers, cold. But that was it. There was nothing special, nor did it hurt her.
She couldn¡¯t sense ice mana or use any magic so she didn¡¯t know how much mana was being imbued into Ebony''s hands. She did see the floating shield decrease in size over time but didn¡¯t think much of it.
???
Ebony¡¯s hand started to freeze up in a literal sense as his shields slowly disappeared. He wasn¡¯t pushing his mana into the Cysaru yet though, at most his blood was starting to freeze and stick to its scythe arm.
By the time two of his shields disappeared and their mana went into his hand he had long lost all feeling in his hand. It was frozen solid after all, he was glad the Cysaru was either arrogant enough or polite enough to keep still and really do nothing but observe. His fingers, maybe even his hand would fall off and shatter at this rate. He couldn¡¯t use any more ice mana unless he didn¡¯t want his hand any more.
¡°Isss thaat alll?¡± the Cysaru was even more confused at where this human¡¯s confidence or calm was coming from now. He stopped moving and now doesn''t seem to be doing anything anymore.
¡°Thanks for waiting. I hope you¡¯ll keep your word.¡± The Cysaru''s instinct alarmed her to pull her arm back but she was a little too late. Dark blue appeared in her sights and she felt her arm growing more and more numb. She quickly pulled her arm away, slicing all 4 of Ebony fingertips off. But the dark blue flames wouldn¡¯t go out, slowly climbing up her arm.
She waved it off, but it wouldn¡¯t go out. Watching it climb up her hand started to scare her as she felt the sharp intense chill piercing through her scales and into her muscles and flesh before she slowly lost feeling in them. She swung her arms around more and more desperately.
¡°Try stabbing into the ground.¡± The calm voice now seemed chilling to her but she thought the idea was good anyway and didn¡¯t sense any hostility in his words. She swung downwards, the flames spreading to the ground and thankfully, the flames seemed to go out quickly but a sense of distress was creeping up as she looked at her arms.
The flames didn¡¯t spread much and it was actually about to burn out soon since the mana expenditure was insane to keep it up. Ebony had tried to get a skill with them but even with a full mana pool he couldn¡¯t even keep flames of frost burning for half a minute.
For reasons he was not aware of, they were a lot colder than his normal ice magic. Since it was not physical damage he doubted the Cysaru had much resistance to cold and was pretty sure if the Cysaru was just going to stay still and take the hit, throwing whatever mana in his control should do quite some damage to the confident reaper.
A light breeze blew and the small frozen grass patch shattered under them.
¡°...Whaaatt wwaass ttthhaat?¡± the Cysaru asked as she looked up from her arm, covered in ice up till her elbow or end of the sharp parts of her scythe arm.
¡°A greeting. I¡¯m Ebony, what about you?¡± Ebony replied while picking up his fingertips. He tried to stick them back on and hopefully, he could either heal them right back on or he would have to regenerate them. He believed he could regrow them with his physique that¡¯s no longer fully human, he did recover from his elbow popping right out.
¡°...I-ee dooo noott haavee anyythhinngg tooo goo byeee.¡±
¡°It''s called a name, allows one to identify and differentiate between people. Could I give you one? A name I mean.¡±
¡°...Alllooowwedd, Ebbonnyy. I-ee aapoloogissee foor thhe diissreespecct, sttroongg onne. Andd allsoo foorr gooinng baacck onn myy wwordd.¡± she lowered her head, giving a glance to the now frozen back on fingertips.
¡°It¡¯s alright, I am far from being strong. How about Obsidian if you¡¯re a guy or Obsius if you¡¯re not? Sorry, I can¡¯t really tell. Named after your obsidian like scales, hard, dark and glossy.¡± Ebony proposed after seeing her obsidian like scales.
¡°I-ee aamm a feemaalee. Obbsiiuss¡ I-ee liikee itt. Thaankk youu.¡± Obsius said.
¡°No problem, Obsius. What are your plans?¡±
¡°Seeaarchh forr allll thhe stonggestt fooess iinn theesse hiills aanndd reeiggnn suuprreemmee.¡±
¡°The Bubble Hills is merely a small stretch of hills on the map. You should practice speaking more and when you reign supreme over these hills travel throughout the continent. There are also stronger foes, higher mountains, deeper oceans. The world is a big place.¡±
¡°Inntrrigguinngg. I-eee shhaall grooww tooo bee thhee stroongeestt. Youuu tooo Ebboonyy, weee shaaall haavve ann acctuaal baattlee wwhheen wee meeett aaggaiin.¡± Obsius hissed and squatted. Jumping off with enough strength to make a small crater on the ground, almost blowing Ebony off his feet. She jumped over entire hills as she disappeared from sight.
Ebony was going to help draw as much of the ice mana in her arm away as he could, it wouldn¡¯t heal her but at least it would help a little. She seemed eager to leave and he didn¡¯t manage to stop her fast enough.
He hadn¡¯t levelled once since leaving the village but his Mana Meister did level, especially his Profession skills and Layered Ice Carapace and Icebody Enhancement. His other skills levelled slowly even with the nightly spars and training.
Ebony made his way back and started to appreciate the Tracking skill. Dina and Fergus didn¡¯t usually leave easy to spot footprints but they were carrying their large, heavy leader so fresh tracks weren¡¯t too hard to spot and follow.
Chapter 27: Underground Again
It didn¡¯t take long before Ebony stood ahead of another not-so-different hill where their tracks ended. He found the cave entrance that was a little hidden from plain sight. The entrance was full of green grass growing inside for some reason so it was not easily spotted from afar. It was pretty large though, the caravan supposedly entered as well.
The cave slowly darkened and grass was almost non-existent other than weeds as Ebony delved deeper.
In less than 5 minutes of travelling and following the one way straight tunnel of the cave, he started to see it brighten and hear some movements.
¡°Who¡¯s there!¡± a familiar voice echoed in alarm.
¡°Ebony.¡± Ebony replied calmly as he stepped into the light of a single phoslamp. That¡¯s when Ebony realised something was off. There was only a single phoslamp and Ebony only saw Rowent sitting there with Top laying on the side.
¡°Ebony! You¡¯re alive! That¡¯s great! How did you escape?¡± Rowent seemed genuinely glad Ebony was not dead.
¡°She let me go like she said.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Who¡¯s she?¡± Rowent was confused.
¡°The Nascent Cysaru.¡± he answered.
¡°You really managed to cause it damage and it really let you go?¡± Rowent¡¯s jaw dropped. He looked really exhausted with how he was staying limp there, only moving his mouth and facial expressions.
¡°She. and yes. Where are the others?¡± Ebony insisted on how Obsius should be referred to.
¡°Oh. We don¡¯t know¡we stopped here for Dina to treat Top but most of our supplies are kept on the wagons. We still keep the most important stuff on us so she had some blood clotting salves and bandages. Top has mostly stabilised with the pill at work he¡¯s out of danger for now.
Fergus and Dina confirmed that it was mostly safe around here, we found the tracks going deeper but then it stopped at the end of a straight path, a dead end. Only this phoslamp was found on the ground where their tracks ended.
Both of them went to scout the other split paths to look for them, none of us sensed any presence of monsters so I stayed here with Top.¡± Rowent explained the circumstances.
How did three large wagons with just as large rams disappear in a cave?
Ebony didn¡¯t manage to ask before another voice echoed from the other side where he came from.
¡°Hey Ro, did they come back through here? I don¡¯t see them anywhere.¡± Fergus slowly stepped into the range of the phoslamp¡¯s warm light.
¡°Ebony! You¡¯re alive thank goodness!¡± he continued, surprised as he saw Ebony.
¡°Yes, I¡¯m alive.¡±
¡°Rooo. Is Fergus back? I searched every other path on the right but they aren¡¯t there.¡± Dina¡¯s called out before showing herself.
¡°...E..Ebony?¡± Dina was stunned.
¡°...Did none of you think I wouldn¡¯t die or something?¡± Ebony got enough of their reactions like they expected him to die.
¡°¡°...¡±¡±
They quickly went over their situation. Ebony didn¡¯t die. The monster and bandit threat was temporarily gone. Top was heavily injured but he¡¯ll survive. Rowent was down for the count for any battle for a while, his stamina seemed to be recovering slowly and his mana apparently was rock bottom and would regenerate a lot slower for days due to a side effect of a pill.
Fergus was tired and his mana was low as well but could still fight. Ebony showed Dina his fingers, surprising himself when he unfroze the layer of ice sticking together that, though barely, the bones actually connected again. It¡¯ll heal was all she said but her mind seemed to be elsewhere the entire time. Dina was in the best condition physically, not including her diminishing stamina.
Then there was an entire caravan missing with all its passengers in a cave where there weren''t many paths. Leaving just a single phoslamp with their tracks ending in a dead end.
¡°What on ell¡ where the heck did they go?¡± Rowent complained while pushing himself up, using the dirt wall to support his body. Fergus and Dina were silent, thinking deeply. Wondering if there were any tracks they missed or paths they didn¡¯t see.
¡°Didn¡¯t you say that mud marmots use these hills as their dens?¡± Ebony broke the silence.
¡°...ELL!¡±
¡°Crap¡¡±
¡°Let¡¯s go¡ Fergus, stay here with Rowent and leader. Ebony¡ could you help me?¡± Dina stood up but realised the condition of her teammates. Though they haven¡¯t seen a single shadow of a monster she couldn¡¯t just let Rowent and Top here, knowing a mud marmot could pop right out of the ground anytime anywhere now. Ebony had long proven his capabilities and mud marmots shouldn¡¯t be too high levelled, they had strength in numbers and another pair of hands and eyes would help greatly.
Fergus wasn¡¯t in the best of condition though he didn¡¯t show it, Dina knew him well enough to know he was already pushing himself. The skilful Elf still had his ways of protecting Rowent and Top if it comes down to it, even without much mana.
Ebony on the other hand, didn¡¯t even seem like he had been in a fight or had been running around. Though he always had that look on his face, Dina didn¡¯t think he was tired at all.
¡°Of course. Where to?¡± Ebony still needed directions to Plainston, helping them would speed things up.
Dina brought Ebony deeper into the cave, her perception was probably much higher than Ebony¡¯s as it was starting to get dark enough that Ebony couldn¡¯t see past a few metres. She might have skills that helped seeing in the dark for all Ebony knew.
A three-way split appeared in front of them as Dina continued forward through the middle one. Her speed was higher than Ebony¡¯s but he could tell it was just normal running maybe with a stealth skill to reduce sound or footprints in the ground but he didn¡¯t see any special footwork so it was probably just her higher base Agility.
Ebony noticed the ground sloping downwards ever so slightly as they turned around many corners and turns. The size of the ¡®cave¡¯ in the hill surprised him a little. In a minute or so, they stopped before a dead end.
Dina punched the wall. Hard. Producing a ¡®thud¡¯ sound and the wall shook.
¡°It''s thick but I think it''s hollow, I can hear it. Quick, help me. Aim lower, It should go downwards. The others probably fell in one of their fake mud covers which they quickly covered up and hardened. Damn, they¡¯re in deep trouble. It¡¯s been quite some time already. Chris should be able to handle a few marmots and the boss should have no problem helping with the stat difference. Marmots should be like cute pets to him but they are on their last legs now with their stamina, if they are still alive.¡± Dina said as she continued trying to punch through the wall. She didn¡¯t have any ways of dealing blunt damage to break a wall.
Neither did Ebony, but it didn¡¯t stop him from dissing out kicks and thrusts. The wall or ground wasn¡¯t that hard and his blade was able to stab through. With enough holes where Dina said feels the hollowest, the force from Ebony kicks and Dina¡¯s punches start to crack it.
One final punch from Dina broke a large hole spanning from the wall to the ground under them. They fell.
¡®Hot damn. That¡¯s deep and wide.¡¯ Ebony thought. They landed tens of metres down where he saw the 5 lights spaced out around him, 2 phoslamps hung on the back of each wagon so all the wagons were here minus the lamp they left as a clue up there. The fall didn¡¯t hurt too badly as their feet and legs stabbed into the muddy ground.
¡°Haahh.. Haa..haaah. Fi..finaally. Sa..save me.¡± a weak panting voice called out.
Ebony looked around, the phoslamps were bright enough to give him enough vision. The wagons were half sunken into the ground, the 3 coachmans were struggling to keep the rams to calm down and keep their heads up and above the mud as they sank together. Andel was fending off 4 dark brown marmots about the size of a corgi or bulldog, body sunk to his thighs. Behind him was Chris who only had his head and neck above the ground.
Dina already pushed off to help Andel when she got a hold of the situation. Ebony plucked his feet out of the mud and took 2 steps to reach Chris who was dozens of metres away. The consistency of the ground was weird, magic was obviously at play here.
¡°Hang on.¡± Ebony dug his hand into the ground to look for a part where he could pull Chris from.
¡°..Lower to the left.¡± Chris weakly said. He was trying to catch his breath at the same time. Ebony reached somewhere he thought to be Chris¡¯s armpit and quickly grabbed and pulled. Pulling caused himself to sink as well but Ebony quickly froze the mud where his feet were with what little mana he regenerated in the meantime, increasing the surface area he had to step on.
¡°Watch out, mud marmots are lurkers. They¡¯re only about level 38 to 45, we took about 15 of them down. Many are under us, trying to drag the caravan down. The others are just watching us and waiting for their peers to drown us out before taking a bite. Ahh! My leg! ¡± Chris now had his chest above ground. Mud marmots had surprisingly hunting tactics of letting others do the work and taking credit for it when the time was ripe.
¡°The ground is actually only ankle deep, some will distract you while others pull you further down. Don¡¯t stand in the same spot for too long.¡± Ebony carried Chris out and brought him to the top of the wagon. Chris was covered in mud but the mix of blood and mud on his legs and tears in his leather armour was enough to show his bad condition and exhaustion.
Thud
Dina landed beside them with Andel in tow. He actually wasn¡¯t injured much, as expected of his level but he was tired as well.
¡°Wh..where are the others?¡± Chris finally noticed.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
¡°Alive. Up there. Top¡¯s injured, Rowent and Fergus are not in the condition to look for you.¡± Dina succinctly explained. She quickly swung into one of the still half above ground wagons and back out. With a waterskin and another bag in hand, she uncapped the waterskin and pointed the cap at Chris. Water streamed out and she washed away the mud and blood cake, giving first aid to Chris.
¡°That¡¯s good you all made it out. Haa¡ and now we¡¯re stuck here. Mud marmots live in groups of hundreds if not more, with us here for so long their pack is probably on their way here from wherever they went hunting.¡± Andel sighed. He should have been more vigilant in a hill with a cave in Bubble Hills, it was his mistake thinking anywhere was safer than out in the open with an aberrant around.
There were no movements. 19 dead marmot lay around them, the wagons and ram stopped sinking but they had to keep the rams from struggling. They were underground with walls all around, perhaps a little smaller than a football field and had no way up dozens of metres to the only entrance or exit they saw.
¡°I should be able to get us up there but without the caravan.¡± Dina said. With her physical stats and wires she was able to carry them and jump out but there was no way they could move the heavy, bulky wagons and rams. They couldn¡¯t even pull them out of the mud.
¡°No! You¡¯re going to leave Polly here?!¡± Larry called out from where he was. Polly was the ram under his care, he was obviously concerned for it.
¡°Get Chris out first, there should be another way out. A merchant never leaves his merchandise.¡± Andel ordered. Chris could hardly stand and grip his weapon anymore.
Andel got all of them except Chris to pull the front ram with the one behind pushing to get rams and wagon out of the sinkhole. Andel had insane physical strength, Ebony bet he could carry the entire ram up himself. When one freed itself it was easy to get them to pull each other out with reins.
¡°I¡¯ll be back soon.¡± Dina put Chris¡¯s arm over her shoulders, threw a few throwing knives towards the opening, jumped and pulled themselves out. ¡®What did the knives secure themselves to?¡¯ was something Ebony didn¡¯t bother asking.
¡°I¡¯m sorry you had to deal with this even though I promised a safe journey as a guest, Ebony.¡± Andel apologised.
¡°It''s okay, I said I¡¯ll do my part to help. More importantly, back up and stay together.¡± Ebony replied, confusing Andel. He looked up and cursed.
¡°Shit! They are here!¡± the exit sealed up. The ground, walls and even ceiling had heads popping out as more dog sized marmots climbed out.
[Mud Marmot Lvl 41]
[Mud Marmot Lvl 39]
[Mud Marmot Lvl 40]
[Mud Marmot Lvl 41]
[Mud Marmot Lvl 42]
¡
More and more popped out and surrounded them. Ebony pushed Icebody Enhancement to the max as he swung at the mud balls aimed at the people behind him. It had only been about 20 minutes since he emptied his mana, he didn¡¯t even regenerate enough to cast another Layered Ice Carapace. He had left the 2 remaining shield up above because they didn¡¯t fit through the hole
Since he could only rely on physical close combat now he might as well use body enhancement. Ebony moved to the closest marmot and hacked. The muddy ground did nothing to slow him down as Treading Steps didn¡¯t let him sink into the ground before moving off from that spot.
The mud marmot''s weapons were their 2 front fangs and claws.
Ebony gripped hard, making sure his fingers didn''t fall off; he was starting to get the hang of using a greatsword normally. Two hands or one didn¡¯t matter, he was sure his mastery skill was going to mutate or evolve sooner or later.
Ebony flashed and circled around the wagon blocking and countering any marmot before they had the chance to land a hit past him. Their bodies were not tough, projectiles slow and only their strength was higher than Ebony. Their favourite evasive measure was to hide underground.
An upwards swing flew towards a leaping marmot going after his head, decapitating the offending marmot.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Mud Marmot Lvl 40], experience is gained.¡¯
The ringing was only the beginning of Ebony¡¯s massacre. Surrounding him proved useless as he danced around them, his greatsword always finding its way to separate their heads. Treading Steps trumped their attempts at trying to sink him as he never stayed in the same spot.
The marmots didn¡¯t stop appearing, for every 1 Ebony slew another 2 seemed to take its place. Ebony had their blood all over him, their numbers didn¡¯t matter. They focused all their efforts on Ebony when they realised they couldn¡¯t get to the rams or coachmans.
It worked out even better for Ebony that he didn¡¯t have to protect the caravan. Heads flew as they littered the floor but the marmots believed they could take a single prey down sooner or later when it tires out. It always worked, they had the numbers for it.
Just not this time.
Ebony was ceaseless. Unslowing. Taking them down one by one as if he was chopping cabbages. In time, the ground had more corpses than land. The rate at which marmots appeared greatly slowed and then there were none. The toughest, most likely alpha was level 47 with 3 lackeys by its side. But it was nothing special either, same old moves and tactics. Boring.
¡®Do I have a thing for decapitation? Nah it¡¯s just such a sure and easy way to make sure of kills.¡¯ Ebony thought as he wiped the blood off his face. Over a hundred mud marmot laid dead around them. Ebony only gained 3 levels and he was pretty sure he was close to levelling at 33 already so it was only 2 and a bit. He held on to the 30 stat points for now.
¡°All of you alright? That should be all of them.¡± Ebony checked on the non-fighters, he was sure he didn¡¯t let anything hit them but it couldn¡¯t hurt to check.
¡°..ye..yeah.¡± The 4 of them had similar reactions. Shaking in fear, they had the expression of dread on their face. Seeing an almost unending amount of monsters showing up and surrounding them must have been frightening as they had little to no capabilities at fending themselves from monster attacks. At least, that was what Ebony thought they were afraid of.
???
¡®What the¡freaking ell! What kind of beast is he?! How is he completely unwinded fighting for such an intense and extended battle? Every single one of those marmots are higher level than him! Just how?¡¯
Andel tried to stay composed but the way Ebony fought scared the crap out of him. He didn¡¯t understand how Ebony could move like that in this environment. Chris and him kept getting stuck and even tripped in the mud. Just after taking 5 down was impressive enough for Chris who didn¡¯t have a Sub-Class. Even with his higher level than the marmots.
Chris took 8 down while Andel himself 7, yet that left Chris gasping like he was catching his last breath. Andel had very high stats compared to these low level creatures but he didn¡¯t know how to fight. Even his sword mastery was the weakest and he didn¡¯t have an active skill for it.
But the beast in human skin in front of him looked like he was coming back from an after meal walk. No exhaustion or emotion on his face. A fraction of the amount that he decapitated was enough to cause Chris and Andel to panic and stress about but this beast merely treated them like prey that delivered themselves to his doorstep.
Andel estimated that he would need at least all 3 of his senior escort members to deal with the horde. The entire party of 5 would be needed to completely protect the caravan and its goods and even then they would receive some light injuries. Rowent and Fergus the heavy hitters of his escort team would do well enough but they may not last with limited mana. ¡®I didn¡¯t even see him use any magic¡¡¯
¡°E..Ebony, do you think you can reach up there or at least break the wall from here.¡± Andel calmed himself down.
¡°...I¡¯ll try.¡± Ebony replied but he was doubtful. He couldn¡¯t reach up that high, with or without all the weight of his robe and greatsword bringing him down.
An icicle formed above his head as it flew towards where the exit was. It managed to hit but didn¡¯t do much but stuck there. Another icicle formed but its shape and size slowly changed to one of a spear like Rowent¡¯s. It flew and pierced deep into the ceiling. Another one formed but seemed to have the shape of a hammer and released to meet the butt of the spear.
A small hole broke as dirt crumbled down from above them. But it wasn¡¯t due to Ebony¡¯s effort as they could see Dina from above, desperately trying to break the wall or floor down.
¡°Wait up there Dina, we¡¯re fine.¡± Andel called out.
¡°Huu. Fergus went to scout the perimeter of the hill, the thinnest or closest you are from the edge of the hill is on your right.¡± Dina sighed in relief only to be shocked by the bodies she could see around them. She must have thought something bad happened when she returned to see a closed wall. She wasn¡¯t wrong though, something bad did happen.
She then pointed towards a wall where they found to be the closest to the edge of the hill.
They got the rams ramming at the wall and Andel complained about not bringing a shovel. More than half an hour went by before light broke in from the cracks and they freed themselves from the marmots¡¯ den. They reconnected the reins to the rams and pulled the wagons along.
It was a long day for the Z&Z merchants. They quickly found a spot to rest and wash the rams and wagons off all the mud. The waterskin with the cap that can produce water was such a useful thing to have. It was about to turn night soon so they made camp.
Ebony almost forgot that Boom was caught by him, he was actually laying in one of the wagons. His shields held, and Boom''s mouth was gagged but was still unconscious for some reason.
Ebony scrubbed his robes off and found blood to wash off easily. He changed into a fresh set of clothes, thankful that he had 3 sets. The novels about these adventures that he read rarely seem to address this problem, clean clothing is a must for Ebony. He was glad he hardly sweated with the increase in stats.
They were eating marmot stew and Ebony can¡¯t say that he appreciates the strong flavour.
¡°Ebony¡Thank you, for saving us. I don¡¯t think we would have been able to get the leader out without your help if the aberrant didn¡¯t let him or us go.¡± Fergus bowed.
¡°Ayy we owe you a big one.¡± Rowent added on.
Dina stayed silent throughout the meal while Top was still out cold. They asked Ebony how he got away to which he said that he just injected enough ice mana into Obsius to deal damage. She then accidentally sliced his fingers off but left as promised. He didn¡¯t really lie to them. Dina didn¡¯t ask about the many marmot corpses she saw and Andel didn¡¯t bring it up either so there was less for Ebony to explain.
Andel offered to stand watch in Top¡¯s place for the night.
Rowent still seemed badly affected by the after effects of the pill he ate and knocked out after eating.
Chris did his own light training, not enough to reopen his wounds, he left Ebony with his leather armour which Ebony wanted to try mending the tears.
Fergus went to meditate in peace before his watch and Dina was the only one up for a spar.
They crossed blades with daggers, Ice Spikes that shaped more and more like small swords with throwing knives. Metal hitting metal rang in the hills, any stray monsters taken down by one of them. Neither spoke as they sparred. Ebony hardly got his arms or legs wrapped up in wires anymore, getting used to avoiding where her throwing knives passed.
¡°...I¡¯m sorry.¡±
¡°What for?¡± Ebony tilted his head in confusion.
¡°For leaving you to fight our battles. Twice.¡±
¡°You did what you could.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t! I ran from Obsius the moment you got it¡¯s attention. I escaped from the marmot¡¯s den right before they arrived and didn¡¯t even manage to go back to help in time.¡±
¡°You were the first to rush back into the fight with a¡monster that none of you thought possible to defeat to save your party members. First to rush desperately to Andel and the others when you found out they were in trouble.¡±
¡°So what¡I wasn¡¯t able to do anything.¡±
¡°You stopped Obsius from killing Rowent and Top. They couldn¡¯t leave without your help with their condition. Without your first aid, Top and Chris would be in trouble. You killed the marmots so that I could get Chris out. Always standing out to be the first to face danger for your team is something I greatly respect you for.¡±
¡°...¡± Dina didn¡¯t seem convinced but didn¡¯t continue arguing. She just let her mixed feelings out as they continued their spar. She seemed more and more pissed that she couldn¡¯t even decisively beat or tire someone many levels lower than her out. Other than forcefully pushing him around with pure strength and speed.
Chapter 28: Loot Pile
¡°What do you think the best stat is?¡± Rowent asked in their leisure journey.
¡°Constitution.¡± Ebony replied without hesitation.
¡°Why? That¡¯s a surprise, I kinda expected you would say Endurance or Wisdom with your ridiculous resource pools. Well your Strength and Intelligence stat seems really low so do you really focus your stat around Constitution?¡± Rowent was surprised by the unexpected answer.
¡°Endurance and Wisdom are both important but in the end they are supportive stats and don¡¯t always relate to battle capabilities directly. Adding Strength increases one¡¯s muscle mass and also condenses that muscle mass a bit.
Adding Agility seems to work on the nerves in our body, perhaps making them more receptive, react faster to the body¡¯s signal increasing our speed and dexterity. I can¡¯t really feel how adding Vitality affects the body but it basically increases our lifeforce, a resource like Endurance and Wisdom.
Intelligence is the muscle of the mind not unlike Strength. Constitution is objectively the best stat as I noticed that it doesn¡¯t only help to increase the density of our muscles and bones but like Strength also increases my body mass though to a lesser extent. I am guessing adding Agility increases muscle mass as well but less than Strength.
Constitution allows one to take more punishment, physical, magical or even elemental although to a much lesser extent. It makes the body more energy efficient, I noticed with an increase of Constitution stamina consumption lowers as well.¡± Ebony listed out. He missed out Perception but it was also a stat he found more and more important.
Despite having Wisdom being his highest stat Ebony truly believed Constitution to be the most superior stat. It was a stat that relates to every other stat. Constitution was like the engine of his body; the others were merely the fuel.
¡°But even with a high Constitution it would be difficult to take hits from similarly levelled monsters. If you were to invest in Strength, Intelligence or Agility it would directly increase your ability in battle and you would be able to actually cause harm to whatever¡¯s trying to kill you. A monster¡¯s Vitality is much higher after all, an increase in Constitution wouldn¡¯t help to outlast it, comparatively.¡± Rowent argued against Ebony''s logic.
Ebony had realised that many of them had the ¡®I just need to kill them faster than they can kill me mentality¡¯ thereby most only keep Constitution high enough to withstand their own power.
¡°That is where skills come into play. With skills and skill levels one can easily increase their capability to dish out more power than their Strength or Intelligence stat suggests.¡±
¡°All the more reason to capitalise our advantage in that by propping up our power stats up. Perhaps you do not realise yet but skill levels easily cap out when we reach the limits of our natural potential. It is what haunts everyone and prevents them from continued evolution.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t that exactly the reason we train and learn to further improve our skills? In terms of power stats, untiered and tier 1 skills at roughly the same level would still put us under monsters but once a skill reaches tier 2 one can roughly square of against normal monsters of the same level at only a slight stat disadvantage.¡±
¡°That¡¯s easier said than done, most pick up untiered skills perhaps Classing with some tier 1 skills. Many would have at most 1 maybe 2 tier 2 skills which are likely their Core skill. Years of training would merely level the skill up, perhaps a few untiered and tier 1 skills would refine or evolve with enough dedicated effort.¡±
Their discussion went on with no real conclusion, though neither of them was looking for a conclusion. These discussions helped widen their perspective, with different views shown to both of them they stood to understand a lot. ''Knowledge is power'' was one thing they both agreed on.
They continued their journey with Top having woken up once for some water before falling asleep again. Boom was fed some concoction by Dina and was forced asleep so that no one had to hear him screaming his lungs out about who he was. They were going to split his bounty up with Ebony having caught him and them having to transport him, 80 to 20.
Fergus was back to normal after some rest and meditation. Rowent was getting better but it was best if he didn¡¯t cast magic too heavily. Chris got very silent after the ordeal and focused on solo training. Top was not in a good condition, he¡¯ll heal but he might be out of commission for months even with a lizardmans¡¯ regenerative prowess. It might push his promotion to a bigger city branch back but it should not be a big issue. Injuries were more than common in their line of work.
Ebony did a poor job with trying to repair the leather armour. Mana Moulding and Mana Perception at work, pouring his mana into leather. The leather was not as receptive to mana as frostsilk cotton, Mana Perception helped Ebony increase his sensitivity to his own mana. Focusing down to a fibrous level, he tried to force them to weave back together.
It worked but the fibres were noticeably damaged like when Roya forcefully shaped the wooden table, the integrity of the material itself was compromised. At least Chris had armour to wear for now but he¡¯ll have to get a new one when he can.
The passed through Bubble hills with only 2 more minor attacks from groups of tens of mud marmots. Even encountering a normal level 63 Cysaru. Fergus, Dina and Ebony fought well together to fend it off. The spars let each of them understand their capabilities in battle.
Chris had to fight off stray marmots that took the chance while the 3 of them were distracted with the Cysaru that was attacking. Rowent supported him with a few small but well timed spells.
Ebony was surprised by the strength and toughness of the Cysaru and more surprised that they didn¡¯t manage to kill it. It actually had the brains to retreat and not fight to the death though. Dina got light cuts from the fight while Ebony got a hit by a full swing from its scythe to his torso.
It easily pierced through both of his pre-prepare fully condensed 5 layered shields; the resulting blow landed on his ribs and sent him flying. Far. His robes saved him there with only a scratch on it, most of the damage he received was from the physical blow itself. Broken bones were easy to hide from the others but it felt like his internals were shaken up quite a bit so Ebony was actually very injured.
Even so, from Rowent''s description, this particular Cysaru was much weaker than Obsius. They should not have a problem in hunting it if Top and Rowent were in their best state.
Just going about the day normally was enough for him to feel like he was pushing Peak Performance, even more so when he continued sparring with them and his went on with his normal training like nothing happened.
When they got out of Bubble Hills the next day, Top was already awake. He continued resting and going in and out of sleep mode, he managed to eat some food to replenish some energy and nutrients he greatly needed.
The scenery out of the hills was literally just an extremely wide plain with just the ground with grass and sky with clouds and a sun. It was a panoramic scene out of a movie. Ebony didn¡¯t see any roads at all as no road led to Hoarfrost Glade, if they travelled a little off course, he would see some dirt roads connecting the surrounding towns.
The common monsters in these parts are still the marmots perhaps of a different variant like Earth Marmot or something. Gazelle-like monsters, foxes, kangaroos or wallabies based on their description. As usual, pack monsters like hyenas and wolves were generally avoided like a plague.
They would be lucky if they met a [Tynite Bison], almost every part of its body was a small treasure. Their scales are a very popular material for scale armour, horns and bones great for weapons from daggers to swords. Their flesh was apparently delicious too.
Monsters had another general classification. Most were unclassified or just normal monsters who at adulthood were mostly aggressive towards most. The Cysaru were considered elites and could defeat any normal monster their level with ease but still aggressive towards almost anyone or thing. Nobles was a classification higher, roughly the same in strength with elites but with enough intelligence to know what fights to pick and what not too. They were many times more dangerous. It was also said that aberrants usually come from noble monsters but aberrants were on another scale altogether.
The Tynite Bison was also somewhat of an elite monster with their toughness and strength alone. It was extremely aggressive and won¡¯t let anything in its sight go, so that¡¯s a worrying thing for their obviously large caravan. The silver lining for the escort party was the relatively low levels of basically any monster in the plains. Including the bison.
Being so far from Hoarfrost Glade now, Ebony was almost despairing from the summer heat. At least in Bubble Hills there were times when the hills shade them some. Here, even the breeze feels like an oven just opened and blew at him.
Ebony slapped himself mentally. He could use freaking ice magic, since this level of heat wasn¡¯t enough to train heat resistance he could use ice magic to cool himself down right?
Comfort. The reason why the other''s wore warm clothing. Ebony broke down and lost to the heat faster than anyone would''ve thought.
Since he was trying to cool himself, making ice cubes was a little pointless. Aiming to cool the wagon perhaps he should copy the environment in Arcta or Hoarfrost Glade. Just creating or conjuring ice mana around him and let it disperse.
Ebony did just that and adjusted the output of ice mana to cool the interior. Rowent was not bothered in the least by the heat but he enjoyed the coolness only for a short while before complaining that Ebony was overdoing it.
Ebony kept the ice mana in his range which reached about 5 metres now. Covering the wagon like it was air conditioned was a good way to spend his mana without letting it overflow or use Icebody Enhancement for too long.
Keeping it up for long enough let Ebony realise that he could train his Mana Perception by sensing the ice mana in the surroundings. Closing his eyes to meditate, he was a little taken aback that he could feel where there was an absence of ice mana which was where the cargo, Rowent and Chris were.
He could vaguely make out their blurry forms and when they moved the ice mana moved aside as well with a tiny bit sticking to their skin or melting away from the heat and their body heat.
¡®Hot damn. I could really use a sensory type skill. This can help train my Mana Perception as well anyway¡¯ despite being able to help train Mana Perception, Ebony thought that the density of ice mana was too thin to ¡®see¡¯ clearly so he ignored Rowent¡¯s complaints as he increase the output till it was denser than the environment in Arcta.
Obviously, Ebony didn''t know that the environment in Arcta had thin ice mana due to summer and also the Frost Elves utilising the ice mana in the surroundings. Like Halvis, whose croft had drained ice mana from the surroundings for his frostsilk cotton.
He never realised that he could do this in Arcta either due to being completely surrounded by ice mana all the time or that he wasn¡¯t as sensitive or perceptive to ice mana as he was now. His Perception stat was higher now than when he was unclassed.
Rowent clambered out to the front seat while Chris actually stayed and said that he wanted to train his cold resistance.
They stopped their hunting games during breaks with Top no longer able to participate. In the plains, any edible game sighted that went after them was shot down by one of them who sat on the front with the coaches. Only Chris was left out without any ranged capabilities. Rowent was getting better and was getting back in the game with light warm ups, only slightly cooking their food with his magic before processing them.
The journey turned bland but comfortable, they managed to get a brown tailed turkey which tasted great roasted over an open flame with just salt and pepper.
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It should only take 2 more days of straight travel before they reach Plainston, as long as nothing happens.
¡°Boss! Look there!¡± Fergus called out even though he was just sitting beside Andel in Top¡¯s place. He pointed to their 10 o¡¯clock direction if this world uses a 12 hour clock which they obviously didn¡¯t. Ebony poked his head out the front flap of his wagon but didn''t see anything in that direction.
¡°What¡¯s there Fergus? Danger?¡± Fergus''s Perception or one of his Archer skills must have allowed him to see much further. Even Andel couldn¡¯t see anything and asked for confirmation.
¡°Tynite Bison. Sorry I mean Tynite Bisons. They are fighting each other over a dead gazelle.¡± Fergus reported.
¡°Ohh. This close to town? We¡¯re lucky to find 2 without them being hunted already. Go ahead, we need to cover some of the expenses we accrued on this return trip.¡± Andel said. Elite or not, the Bisons were known to only reach level 45 at best, the escort party should be able to take them down.
The wagons needed some repair, they used 2 pretty expensive pills, Top needed actual treatment, his armour and Chris¡¯s needed to either be repaired or replaced. Another good thing about being contracted to a company was that these side benefits of provided equipment and discounted or maybe even fully paid medical treatment was something greatly desired by many.
Adventuring or freelancing here holds many risks. Equipment was expensive and good equipment is even more so. Injuries are even more common when one takes on the associated dangers, even Ebony has taken many supposedly heavy injuries that should not heal for months or maybe years if he was a normal human.
Any large injuries can keep one out of a job for a long time and medical treatment bills easily pile up such that most safer jobs don¡¯t earn them enough to earn a living or even break even with their equipment maintenance fees.
¡°2? No boss, there are 8 of them. Or 4 couples, tynites tend to move in pairs.¡±
¡°8?! No way we¡¯ll be able to get all of them. It took 3 of you to take two level 41 Tynite Bison down last time. Without Top there¡¯ll be no one able to hold it in place long enough to take it down.¡±
¡°We can wait till they finish battling it out. Tynite bisons¡¯ don¡¯t leave until either they die or their enemy does after all. The others wouldn¡¯t retreat even if they were losing as is their nature. We can just fight the champs after.¡± Rowent said.
¡°If they really are couples that means there will likely be 2 remaining, they are kinda protective of their partners for a monster as aggressive as them. I find it unlikely they would like their partner to get ganged up on and killed. Even if only 1 survives it would be the strongest of them.¡± Dina added.
¡°Yeah, but with them all being tynite bisons the winner would definitely not come out unharmed in a battle with 8 of them.¡± Rowent was optimistic about their chances.
¡°Guys, that¡¯s true and all but without the leader to hold the hulking beast back we can¡¯t even beat 1 of them. Oh and I think it¡¯s going to be a couple of level 38 bison who''s going to come out victorious. They¡¯re almost winning already, come on what¡¯s the plan?¡± Fergus cut in.
¡°If you can¡¯t beat them why not just wait for them to leave, there will still be 6 dead for you to claim right?¡± Ebony asked, confused that they have difficulty killing a monster so far below their level. They are still calm unlike when facing the Cysaru so maybe they just can¡¯t kill it due to the bison¡¯s tough body but can still escape with relative ease.
¡°Nah they even eat their own kind, they won¡¯t even leave scraps for us after they''re done.¡± Rowent explained.
¡°The fight is finishing soon, what¡¯s the plan boss?¡± Fergus urged.
¡°... 2 level 38 right? Chris, do you think you can hold it down long enough for the others to deal enough damage?¡± Andel pondered.
¡°Yeah, the bigger one has got a limp in right hind leg. The other is still relatively unharmed but its movements are getting sluggish.¡± The Elven Archer never stopped keeping an eye on the battle.
¡°...yes I will keep the sluggish one busy. The others can deal with the injured one at that time.¡± Chris said with more confidence after hearing their current condition from Fergus.
¡°Ebony¡¯s shields would be very helpful. You guys know how crazy tough they are for his level.¡± Dina said. Ebony calculated his full powered Layered Ice Carapace now had the effect of about 341 Intelligence.
The skill reached level 19, gaining a full 13 levels.
80%+(19x2.5%)+30%+20%+10%+5% = 192.5%. Sheer Mana Compression at level 57 allowed him to compress the spell by 57x2.5%=142.5%. Double that from his fortification to 285%.
Compressed effect + original effect = total effect
(192.5/100)x285 = 548.625% + 192.5% = 741.125%.
46 Intelligence x 741.125% = 340.9175
He hasn¡¯t touched his 30 stat points and his Intelligence is still 46. Ebony had no way of knowing if he calculated that correctly. He briefly ran through with Clovis on the calculation of skill effects so he thinks he shouldn¡¯t be too far off with this formula. Compressing mana by 1% makes it 1% more effective and from what Roya said it should be based on the skill effect and not directly from his Intelligence stat.
Ebony even tried calculating compressed mana effect with his intelligence stat [(46/100)x285]+46=177.1 instead and multiplied that by the skill effect of 192.5% giving him the same result of 340.9175 so he should not be wrong in his calculations.
Furthermore, the effect of 100% Mana Resilience was more and more apparent making his shield spell tough as nails. Though it has been broken many times now.
¡°Yeah, how about it Ebony? We¡¯ll split shares of their materials equally between us 5.¡± Rowent asked, he could melt Ebony¡¯s shields with some effort but he was aware of their physical toughness. It could easily block Chris¡¯s, Dina¡¯s attacks and even Fergus¡¯s physical arrows. While Fergus¡¯s arrows could dig into his shield and shatter it inside out, that would take all of Fergus¡¯s focus and Ebony could easily close the gap between them within that time.
The spoils that they get could either be given to their company and given some kind of internal currency like contribution points to trade for better equipment or other stuff. Or they could sell it and directly get mana ores for them. It was one of the few ways they could earn extra income outside of their salary. Which was honestly pretty low according to them since they have a whole lot of additional benefits.
¡°Sure.¡± Ebony was planning to fight if they were going to anyway, getting a share of whatever was even better.
Boom was awake for some time, they couldn¡¯t keep knocking him out so he was making a lot of muffled screams. Ebony just froze his mouth shut after they gave him some water and souper bread or ''water'' bread since they didn¡¯t think he deserved their food.
¡°Boss stay close to us, but not too close. Let¡¯s go, we¡¯re pretty close to them already.¡± Fergus said as they got their equipment in place and jumped out of the caravan.
¡°I see them. Oh, they¡¯re feasting on the gazelle already. Good timing.¡± Dina said. As the 3 of them ran in front. Rowent was slower even with his flame boosted movement skill. Fergus was by far the speediest followed by Dina and Ebony who almost matched her movement speed then Rowent and lastly Chris.
¡°Ebony, Chris take the smaller one. Fergus, Dina let¡¯s launch a surprise attack on the injured one. Okay, never mind they saw us.¡± Rowent¡¯s staff was already preheated like an oven and a fireball had formed above it.
[Tynite Bison Lvl 38]
[Tynite Bison Lvl 38]
Ebony had long found out that he had a preconceived misperception of the range of Identify. He could easily extend the range to his visible range of sight and adding Perception stat helps as well. Of course he still had to be able to see the object, person or monster clearly.
The Tynite Bison was a little larger than a 7 seater family car. Thick long horns curved in front of their head like a bident, their whole body was silverish-grey in colour. A scaled bison was quite the sight to behold especially when they were charging at you like a tank.
Multiple shadows of Fergus¡¯s extremely fast, wind boosted arrows flew to meet the larger bison¡¯s feet. It landed and rooted the bison, tripping it but the ¡®roots¡¯ tore as well. It skidded head first into the ground as a spear of fire landed on it right after. It screamed from the burn and not so much the fall.
More arrows were released but none aimed at the 2 bisons, rather, at 4 different corners. The arrows turned into roots as Fergus continued shooting and strengthening the roots. Dina swung her arms with seemingly nothing left in them, the bison who got up to resume its charge stopped like something was pulling it back. The roots got dragged out of the ground a little but held strong as the multiple wires connecting them to the bison¡¯s legs and neck held.
Ebony and Chris had moved to the side with Ebony mentally carrying along 2 of his prepared shields and shooting his sword shaped Ice Spikes to get the smaller bison¡¯s attention. It worked well as they separated the 2 bisons.
Chris rushed up to the bison for a few good strikes but they didn¡¯t do much against the bison¡¯s scales. The bison kicked at Chris but Ebony managed to move his carapace shield to block the kick.
Chris, like Ebony, only held a sword in hand and didn¡¯t have a shield like Top. He also didn¡¯t have a movement skill like Ebony and didn¡¯t manage to evade in time. Thankfully for Ebony''s shield, he didn''t get hit.
Ebony had moved behind it while it was distracted with Chris, with enhancement magic on, he unleashed a power stab not unlike his stimulation rite with plenty of slightly compressed ice mana imbued to inject and Treading Step pushing him to his limit. Ass strike.
Thrust
His greatsword didn¡¯t manage to stab deep into its internals before the bison did a horse kick in rage. Landing on Ebony¡¯s other shield he kept at his side as he jumped back in evasion. A layer of frost spread through its backside as it continued its rage and charged after Ebony, ignoring Chris.
Ebony tried to keep close and circle it but it was surprisingly good at turning and changing directions. Not letting Ebony go and out of its charge. The occasional ice sword projectiles did little to change its course, it deftly blocked those aimed at its face and eyes with its horns. Ebony''s ice swords shattered on impact and didn''t do much.
Any that landed on its tough metal like body just shattered and left a thin layer of ice stuck on it. It was insufficient to slow it down.
Chris jumped forwards at this point to its bottom right with a clean slash to its eye, it adjusted its head and clashed with its horn. Chris gripped hard as he dug into the ground in an attempt to stop it.
Perhaps due to the bison''s sluggishness, Chris actually managed to stop it after skidding metres away. He quickly disengaged and slashed out again, successfully enraging it more by blinding one of its eyes. Ebony didn¡¯t let the chance go as a fully compressed Ice Spike found its way into its other eye.
Chris followed up to hack at its legs to reduce its mobility. The bison was fully covered in scales from head to toe so the belly was not a weak point either. Ebony supported Chris by blocking any head smashes and kicks, using the other shield to nudge it into place from time to time. A projectile will land on the areas where Chris focused on hacking.
When the bison tripped on its side from the continuous hacking at its feet Ebony leapt at the chance with another power stab into its gasping mouth. It struggled for some time but frost spread through its mouth, throat and head.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Tynite Bison Lvl 38], partial experience is gained.¡¯
The partial experience gained supposedly depends on how much one contributed to the kill but there was no real way to quantify it.
¡°Wow. Well done, two of you. We saw that you seem to be able to handle it so we didn¡¯t interfere.¡± Rowent clapped. They were done with the other bison faster than they thought due to its leg injury and exhaustion after an intense fight with the other bison.
¡°Finally some luck on this trip. Boss! Get over here we¡¯re clear.¡± Fergus commented.
¡°Ehm guys can we split it into 6 instead¡? Leader could use the mana ores.¡± Dina raised her hand but looked at Ebony. She was certain her party members would be fine with it but Ebony had no need to split his share with them.
¡°That¡¯s a great idea.¡±
¡°Yeah no problem.¡±
¡°Of course.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
With mutual agreement, Dina, Ebony and Chris got to dismantling the Tynite Bisons. They gather all of them near the wagons. Rowent didn¡¯t have the strength or skill for it and Fergus didn¡¯t have the skill for it. They stood watch as the 3 processed the bison.
After a couple hours of tough processing. They got a total of 14 intact horns, all 32 hoofs, a whole lot of scales and bones. They couldn¡¯t fit all the meat on the wagons as there was not enough space. Ebony offered a solution, making a few large ice boxes for them to store reasonably fresh and then attached them to the sides of the wagons. There were more than a few broken bones and scales but even then each bison had hundreds of scales with their large sizes.
Ebony didn¡¯t want the bones due to their shapes making it hard to fit in his bag. After Andel helped to calculate the price of all the parts Ebony got his share of 4 horns, 6 hoofs and a hundred scales the size of both his palms put together. They were about 2 fifths a ger thick or 2 cm. The good thing was he could easily stack the scales but it still completely filled up his larger knapsack like bag.
He could directly sell it to Andel or use it for other purposes but Ebony would decide that later after he got to Plainston. The [Tynite scale (Common)] was surprisingly light for its size and toughness which made it a very popular material for armours and weapons in these parts.
Chapter 29: Elva
Elcra consists of 2 continents, Elva and Tova. Separated by a vast sea, Fissure. With a couple of islands in between them.
Elva had one and only one ruling power in the form of the Empire. The Empire of Ebbing Waves had Beastmen, Dwarves, Elves and Humans coexisting in their cities, towns and villages. Obviously, it hasn''t always been the case.
When Elva was still split amongst the races they waged wars against each other for breakfast and backstabbed each other for dinner. Each race had their own strength to stand for themselves.
Beastman had strong warriors with strong regenerative powers.
Dwarves were great craftsmen and their weapons and armour shined more than their warriors yet their warriors are equally strong in terms of physical strength. Perhaps even stronger than the beastmen when it came to pure strength.
Elves were magical powerhouses that brought devastation to battlefields with their magic. There were just a lot fewer of them but it mattered not when they tend to outlive the other races. They didn¡¯t like the Dwarves and neither did the Dwarves like them. The beastmen didn¡¯t like anyone and waged wars even amongst themselves, between the same subspecies or not.
Humans were mediocre but numerous. What irks the other races was their cunning minds and the fact that at any point in time there were always a handful that were much more powerful than their peers. Unlike the other races more attuned towards certain magic, humans had the widest range of types of magic as well, giving them variety.
That was a point in history where no one had a single day with a modicum of safety. Monster hordes or even solo monsters easily wipe a village or town off the map. A dungeon break was a natural disaster that no one managed to control.
Yet that wasn¡¯t all. One day, the indigenous race of Trolls from Tova found a way to cross the vast Fissure Sea and laid waste to Elva with their almost undying bodies that put the beastmens to shame. Whether they cut their heads off or smashed their bodies to a pulp with earth magic it didn¡¯t matter and the trolls would have their bodies regenerated in the matter of hours or even minutes depending on the relative strength of the trolls themselves. They exhibited weak control of water and earth magic and were mostly physical fighters.
They are cruel predators looking to eat anyone they defeated in battle. Elva managed to fend off the first wave of trolls with many casualties only because of the small group sent. Yet, it was only so as the first group was a scouting party.
Wave after wave, the numbers of trolls coming increased.
Elva stood no chance while divided, so the cunning humans proposed to combine their strength. Dwarves would make weapons and armours, beastmen their warriors and Elves their mages. So what did the humans do? They took command with their cunning to push the Trolls back?
Of course not.
None of the races could stand being ordered around by the one they thought to be the weakest race. Yet even their pride couldn¡¯t survive long enough. The wars amongst themselves gradually stopped as they received more attacks from the Trolls, pointing their blades towards Tova instead.
It wasn¡¯t enough.
More and more died and some of the other races proposed to combine their forces again. They tried. But discrimination against each other was too strong, their pride fought back. Ultimately, their pride meant absolutely nothing to the trolls and overwhelming power.
War evolved into an invasion.
The people of that time, fighters or not didn¡¯t see much hope in defending themselves against the trolls anymore. They didn¡¯t think of being subordinates of the trolls either since the trolls just ate any who went to submit themselves to them.
At one of the darkest periods of the history of Elva, a certain group of humans that looked a little different than normal human residents of Elva showed themselves. They showed themselves in eastern Elva and were pretty far from the battlefront. They didn¡¯t propose cooperation this time nor did they start protecting the people of Elva from the trolls.
They declared complete domination of Elva. Not war but domination. There hadn¡¯t been many internal wars on Elva for a long time with the threat of the trolls, dungeon breaks and monster horde looming on them every second of the day.
Obviously, people didn¡¯t take them seriously. A group of hundred or so slightly different looking humans didn¡¯t matter much to them on the scale of things. They were proven wrong fast. And hard.
It hardly took this small group 10 years to bring the entire continent to listen to their words. Every single one of them split up into even smaller groups, each going in different directions.
Every group conquered and suppressed entire cities and kingdoms a few times a day. It was just a matter of time for them to cross the distance of the continent. The main kingdoms of every single race toppled like dominoes to this group of people that were referred to as the Eastern Barbarians.
The Eastern Barbarians didn¡¯t destroy the armies or kill any of the other races¡¯ strongest warriors. They went around challenging every single person who wanted to fight them and suppressed them without killing many.
When their domination was complete they implemented many changes. They reorganised all the armies or different races but none disrespected them and obliged their words like a wish that they must fulfil.
It took time for changes to actually see results but slowly they began to push the trolls back for the first time. The Eastern Barbarians themselves rarely come out to fight the trolls. They had one leader they called Empress and her words were ¡®Fight your battles yourselves, trash.¡¯
And then they did. Other than the major changes they implemented the Eastern Barbarians left and returned to their home, uncaring for their claim of domination. The change they implemented didn¡¯t revert and the races got friendly to each other in the span of a few centuries under the roof of the Empire. A few centuries was a very short time for races to reduce their discrimination against each other. Especially for the older generation, grudges ran deep.
When people asked the Eastern Barbarians why they didn¡¯t rule the Empire the replies they got were along the lines of; ¡®not worth the effort¡¯ or ¡®what¡¯s the point of ruling a bunch of weaklings?¡¯ The only thing their Empress graced them with was a name for the Empire which was Ebbing Waves. Hoping that every generation would ebb and be stronger and better than the last.
Today, the races truly coexisted in the Empire of Ebbing Waves. Only small tribes like the Frost Elves remained in small tribal villages. They weren¡¯t shunned and neither did they shun others which was quite a long way Elva had come regarding racial discrimination. This happened many thousand years ago.
The ruling structure was more¡structured than what Ebony thought a medieval fantasy world would have.
Firstly, they had the king. Chosen and voted for amongst the nobles from the 4 Archdukes. There was only 1 Archduke for Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Beastmen each. So the Empire would usually have 3 archduke families and 1 royal family at a time.
The current royal family was human, the Lord household. Navin Lord the Barrier King. Yvette Lord the Life Queen.
Chosen for the immense contribution to the Empire making them stronger. Protecting cities and towns with their barriers and saving too many lifes to count.
Below the archdukes were the dukes and duchesses, Marquis and Marchioness, Earl and Countess, Viscount and Viscountess and finally Barons And Baroness. Pretty standard to Ebony so far, the thing he was surprised about was that there was more law and order than he thought. Especially after seeing the escort party kill those bandits as if it was a natural thing.
Apparently, any commoner family could gain nobility as long as they meet some conditions. A tier 2 skill lineage and challenging a noble family to a duel to take their place. As simple as that. A tier 2 skill lineage basically means they would have to prove that their tier 2 skill is somewhat unique to their family and can be taught and handed down in their family. Dukes and above required tier 3 skill lineages, some even had more than 1 tier 3 lineage skill.
This lineage thing was also what cemented the nobles¡¯ power. People who got their Classes from a tier 2 skill or higher were almost always better at the things they do. Excluding the number of skills required for the said Class of course.
As for tier 3 skills, it would be redundant as Classless could never learn them before their life runs dry. They would only learn their families tier 3 skill after their Classing and decades of training. They might not even be able to learn it before evolving to Master or higher if their talent was insufficient.
It was quite common for nobles to pick the skill handed down in their family as their Core Skill. After many generations, their lineage skill only gets better and better after being refined by every generation.
Then there was the one known as the Emperor or Empress for some reasons even though the king and/or queen was the one who was ruling the Empire.
The Emperor is merely a title given to the strongest known person on Elva. The current Emperor, Oplot Qoriq was said to be invincible, impenetrable and all that crap about being almighty. Oplot was personally the leader of the Guardian Knights of the Empire which was honestly a little weird to Ebony.
Calling the leader of a knight army under the Empire, Emperor who was under the King just seems silly but Clovis clarified that the Guardian Knights were a school the Emperor opened to train guardian knights and they were not directly serving the empire. Though the funny thing was the guardian knights always fought together with Empire armies if there were any monster hordes or dungeon breaks.
The last attack from Tova was almost a century ago when Oplot stood out to fight and be announced Emperor soon after repelling them. Oplot was a guardian knight that has not been seen using his shield. He never needed to.
Trolls¡¯ immense physical strength could not harm a single hair on his body. Magical or physical, Oplot had never been seen being damaged or hurt by anything. It was also largely unknown how he deals damage as he doesn¡¯t carry weapons but seems to be able to use every known magic like its natural.
The Eastern Barbarians that Ebony had long heard of from Gen himself did not go forgotten in history. Ebony held no grudge against them, even Gen didn''t seem to. Ebony knew it was only natural for the strong to seek the stronger, he himself just wasn¡¯t at that stage yet.
The Eastern Barbarians grew and expanded into the current city of Xienor. They didn¡¯t care at first but being called barbarians for long enough started to piss them off so they clarified that they were to be referred to as Xengs. Nowadays, there were not as reclusive as they used to be and some Xengs could be seen from time to time travelling the continent.
The greatsword he carried around was also made by them. They had the strongest swordsmen, strongest mages, and maybe even the best craftsmen were Xengs.
After learning all this did Ebony understand why the Empire didn¡¯t conquer the Xengs, because they were the ones that had been conquered. The Empress title was also probably made for them as a form of respect and deference to them.
Religion on Elva was pretty practical. They revered actual people and not some concept or form of a higher being like gods and goddesses though some believe in them too it was not the same kind of reverence.
The Sovereign Temple of Heroes was an enormous temple with not just the statues of all the previous Empresses and Emperors but also great heroes throughout history like the Life Queen and Barrier King both making the cut as well.
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A large majority of the people in the Sovereign Temple were Empresses. Almost every past Empress was a Xeng, the only few times like the current generation was because they were either low key or the previous Empress handed over to a young Empress that hasn¡¯t grown strong enough yet. Apparently strong Xengs tend to be women and were nonsensically strong for their level while their men were better craftsmen than they were warriors in general but it wasn¡¯t always the case.
Each Sovereign had their own titles. Oplot the Indestructible, Life Queen, Barrier King for example. They built the temple for the first Empress of Xengs at first and revered her as the First Empress as no one knew her name and it hasn¡¯t been written down in any book.
Yet, the first thing she did when she found out was to obliterate every temple, every mention and every city or town that called her that. No one had seen the Xengs or Eastern Barbarians with such wrath, wrath that the Empire was not able to handle. She was then known as the Cruel Empress. The Cruel Empress was pleased with the title and left it at that, giving them silent consent to build whatever statues they want.
Each city or town are generally patrons to one of the Sovereigns and their temple would only hold 1 or 2 statues unlike the main temple in the Capital city. While the Cruel Empress had her firm believers, the most widespread today was the Life Queen. Plainston was also one of the towns that were patrons to the Life Queen.
???
They continued on their way after a meal of bison stew. Ebony didn¡¯t stop training his skills and testing different things with his magic for the next 2 days till the town came into view. He made surprising progress in creating new skills and he even got sound magic.
Mana Vibration - Ability to vibrate mana in such a way to produce sound. Ability to manipulate vibrations to produce desired sounds increases slightly per level.
Classification: Sound Magic
There was no Sound Mana Manipulation as far as they knew and thankfully it fell under generic skills and not his Mana Meister Profession so he had the choice of it being one of the skills for the requirement under a Sub-Class. Ebony guessed that it was because it was classified as sound magic and not a pure mana manipulation skill. He actually got the skill together with another skill which mutated, Humming.
Battle Hum - Inducing mana vibrations into your hum of musical melodies producing minor effects of increased stat of 0.01% of Intelligence depending on melody per level.
Consumes 10MP/Min
Classification: Sound Magic
This was a skill that was pretty out there and something Ebony didn¡¯t aim to get. He suddenly thought of pushing mana to go along with the vibration of his throat and when he hummed tsuna awakens. The buff was pathetically unnoticeable but found out that he could get a Strength, Agility or even Intelligence buff depending on what kind of tune he hummed.
Honestly the biggest waste of mana with the almost non-existent buff but Ebony believed it¡¯ll stack up sooner or later. He found that he could extend the effect to anyone in his range for a slightly more than 10MP/Min cost based on range and number of targets.
He would need to manipulate the mana though so it would take one of his casts if he were to extend it to someone else. Pretty pointless to do so now.
The worse thing was that if Ebony wanted to use Battle Hum properly in a fight he had to control his breath such that it didn''t affect his humming. Despite Ebony''s almost wondrous control with his breathing to slow his own heartbeat and be more stamina efficient he found it too difficult if the fight was physically demanding.
It was impractical so he just trained it during normal humming for now. As long as he doesn¡¯t incorporate mana into it he could still hum normally but why would he not. He had mana to spare.
He got the perception skill he wanted together with another skill that was about discharging ice mana into his surroundings to freeze or slow his opponents. They merged when he got both of them into a skill called Frost Mist Perception Sphere.
Frost Mist Perception Sphere - Release Ice Elemental Mana into your surroundings in a sphere with you at the centre. Has the effect of 10% + 1.0% Intelligence. Perceiving the absence of Ice Mana gives you another form of sight. Has the effect of 10% + 1.0% of Perception and 100% of Mana Perception.
Consumes 100 MP/Min
Classification: Ice Magic
The mana consumption was due to ice mana melting from the heat and he had to keep it up. The skill also took into account his range of 5 metres, he could reduce the range to reduce mana consumption. The further he pushed the mana to, the more mana it would take in an increasing fashion due to the volume of mana needed increasing exponentially.
The skill causes a thin white mist or fog to surround him like when one opens a freezer. The effect it has on slowing or freezing others is pretty small and so was his ¡®sight¡¯ but it has an additional effect of affecting other¡¯s sight. Including himself, so he will have to level the skill quite a bit if he doesn¡¯t want it to be more detrimental for himself.
Well, the white mist isn¡¯t so thick that it affects sight much so the effect is not so apparent. Not unless he releases a whole chunk of compressed mana.
Ebony was a little surprised when he got the choice whether he wanted to let his skill mutate or get a new skill.
Ice Sword - Conjure a sword of Ice, has the effect of 80% + 1.0% Intelligence.
Consumes 250MP/Sword
Classification: Ice Magic
He received the choice of letting Ice Spike mutate or just having Ice Sword take one of his skill slots. Ebony asked the others their opinions and why this happens. Ice Sword was just changing Ice Spikes size and shape.
The reason for the choice was the significant increase in mana consumption. If he were to mutate it, when he wanted to create an Ice Spike with less mana he would no longer get the 30 + whatever percentage buff with the same amount of mana. Letting it take another skill slot lets him keep both skills separately.
Ebony chose to mutate it in the end. Even if he wouldn¡¯t be able to sustain the mana consumption now he would sooner or later, or so he believes. The thing about Ice Sword was that he doesn¡¯t have to fling it as a projectile to use it effectively, though he can do that too. It was inspired by Rowent¡¯s spear, though Rowent used it the way he does to save mana. Class Skill slots were limited and he wanted to keep them free if he ever learnt a stronger skill in future.
He checked his status to see how far he¡¯s come.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 95
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 36
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 53
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 55
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 65
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery Lvl 50
Frost Injection Lvl 32
Ice Sword Lvl 32
Two-handed Power Stab Lvl 26
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 20
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 2
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 17
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 38
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 59
Mana Perception Lvl 12
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 242/250
Stamina: 500/500
Mana: 990/1320
Unallocated stat points: 30
Strength: 20
Vitality: 25
Constitution: 70
Endurance: 50
Agility: 35
Intelligence: 46
Wisdom: 132
Perception: 25
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 6
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 28
Running Lvl 29
Battle Hum Lvl 26
Mental Mapping Lvl 7
Kicking Mastery Lvl 33
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 6
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 8
Dish Washing Lvl 8
Physical Conditioning Lvl 4
Magical Conditioning Lvl 4
Peak Performance Lvl 32
Tracking Lvl 5
Game Processing Lvl 10
Heat Resistance Lvl 11
Mana Vibration Lvl 3
His Core Skill was as per usual on drugs and levels with time. His Class skills saw more development in the magic department. Especially Icebody Enhancement, Frost Injection and Layered Ice Carapace.
His Profession also stood to gain experience when he uses compressed mana in battle. He focused more on Sheer Mana Compression for an increase in combat capability.
Mana Perception was getting useful to train together with his Frost Mist Perception Sphere since the skill was also dependent on Mana Perception. The 7 levels gained in Mana Meister gave 7 points in Wisdom and Ebony was stuck on where to add the 30 stat points so he had been keeping it undecided.
He was mostly healed up from the Cysaru¡¯s attack and no longer had his movements affected.
Mana Injection or imbuing ice mana into himself without circulating it was a new method Ebony used to train Sheer Cold Resistance which he figured he could do when freezing Obsius. Ebony was a Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze without any skills relating to the combusting flames due to the outrageous mana required that Ebony currently doesn¡¯t have.
He got a prompt for a Sub-Class for Battle Hum reaching level 25 called the Bardic Amplifier. It obviously wasn¡¯t what Ebony was looking for in a Sub-Class. His other generic skills improved here and there with Conditioning leveling once just last night.
Rowent being down without magic for some time slowed his Heat Resistance training, he also didn¡¯t want to waste much mana in case of a fight.
According to the loudmouth Boom, there were other minor groups who wanted to raid them too but he called dibs on them. They followed them since they left the town, staying in Bubble hills and finding Obsius who didn¡¯t attack them after some secret tricks they pulled.
The Z&Z Company kept the contents of their merchandise secret for a long time so, few are really sure what the goods on them were. Most assumed they were just ice type materials that they put out on sale after every trip to Arcta and that alone was pretty profitable.
They would long be dead if anyone with bad intentions found out about the Thoya¡¯s robes. Even an escort party 10 times as strong wouldn¡¯t be enough if that was the case.
¡°We¡¯re almost there.¡±
Chapter 30: Scarlet
''Hmphh. Grandma just left me in the middle of the forest after my Sub-Class procession was over, running off without a care. Telling me to take care of myself and wander around wherever I feel like it is so irresponsible of her. Forget it, it''s not the first time she just left me alone in the middle of nowhere.
She brought me all the way across Elva to this barren place saying it was a crossroad of fate for me but there¡¯s hardly anything here. The imperials we¡¯ve met are all so weak here, even the monsters are so pathetic. There aren¡¯t even any dungeons anywhere near from what the previous town informed us of.
How is this a crossroad of fate? There isn¡¯t anywhere or anything that can help make me stronger faster here.
Oh, it''s the edge of the forest already. A road, great, I do want to sleep on a bed, have a nice bath and proper kitchen. If I remember correctly it should be a town, either West Timber, Plainston or the small mining town I don¡¯t remember the name of.''
¡°Halt. Ahh?! Oh err¡ miss¡ the town¡¯s entrance fee¡¡± the [Apprentice Warrior Lvl 42] stopped Scarlet. His expression of shock was something Scarlet had long been used to when most Imperials saw her.
¡°How much? And which town is this?¡± Scarlet asked. She was initially dumbfounded that there were still people taking apprentice Classes but it was clear to her now that it was not that uncommon in these parts. The surrounding area must be incredibly safe if a level 42 can be a guard on duty.
¡°2..2 Greys ma¡¯am. This is the town of Plainston.¡± the town guard replied, changing his form of address nervously.
¡°...are you sure?¡± Scarlet¡¯s voice deepened and it didn¡¯t seem like a question when she said it. Small towns like this in relatively safe places usually only set their prices in 2-5 Blacks. Did they think she was an easy to trick fool?
¡°Wait a minute, miss. We dare not trick you. Please don¡¯t misunderstand us, this is the new price set by Baron Foil, it has also been approved by the higher nobles.¡± the other older looking town guard who was also an apprentice warrior defended.
¡°Ye..yes. The Quest Hall had received a message from the nearest Mage¡¯s Tower saying that mana irregularities were found near Plainston. They confirmed that a dungeon tower is forming as we speak and the Baron has already applied for a stronger barrier crystal. The increase in price is only natural.¡± the nervous town guard explained.
¡°...I see. The estimated strength of the dungeon?¡± Scarlet pulled out 2 Greys. Her grandma was right again with her divination. To think she would encounter a newly forming dungeon, usually perfect for young and low level fighters.
¡°I heard they are still determining it and the Quest Hall should receive more information over the next 2 days or so.¡± the older town guard said.
¡°Thank you. Where¡¯s the Quest Hall?¡± Scarlet thanked and entered the city towards where the town guards pointed her to.
She walked into the open doors of one of the largest buildings in the town. The Quest Hall also acted as something like a town hall where the many administrative matters are done here. Every one of them were roughly the same design so it was easy for her to make her way around.
Getting all sorts of looks and stares before they quickly turned away when she faced their direction.
Pathetic, but more importantly how rude of them. Does not a single imperial know how to look in people¡¯s eye when they talk?
¡°Hello Miss, how may we help you?¡± The lady clerk managed to stay professional despite the surprise she got from her latest visitor.
¡°What information is there on the new dungeon tower?¡± Scarlet cut to the chase.
¡°Ah, you sure are quick to hear the news miss. We know that it is closest to us towards northeast and should form no further than a few hundred gors away. More accurate readings will have to wait but the initial density readings obtained showed that it should not surpass common. The unlucky or perhaps lucky thing is how vast the area it seems to be drawing mana from. It should take weeks before it actually forms but it would likely be a relatively large dungeon tower.¡± the clerk explained.
A few hundred gors was not a large distance for monsters that has enhanced stats. It was not strange for a newly formed dungeon to be weaker. A dungeon tower forming was always seen as both a boon and not. A new dungeon like this will cause people to flock like birds towards Plainston. Many known dungeons have now grown to the point where people below level 100 aren¡¯t able to survive in.
A reasonably levelled dungeon around 60 or higher are the majority¡¯s favourite. The young could stand a chance to level many times faster. Retaining their young looks after evolution while their lifespan extends. Too high level a dungeon and people may not even stay there for long enough.
Furthermore, it was estimated to be a large dungeon. Meaning less competition. Plainston was likely undergoing rapid expansion in the next few weeks. All the Quest Halls are connected and those ambitious freelancers would race here, prices of everything would soar as well. Plainston turned into a land of opportunity or as her grandma said a crossroad of fate.
Scarlet asked for more information about the town, its surrounding monster populations, the current quests available and a good inn to stay for an extended period of time.
She took note of the usual quest that is almost always on their boards about some kind of rare monster part in the area. She would just have to look out for these monsters and bring the parts back and it was an easy non-time sensitive way of earning some ores.
She quickly got to the largest inn around which had available rooms and paid for a month¡¯s stay before the prices got jacked up. The room was clean and simple with a bed, chest, wardrobe, table and chair. They had a bath too and she just had to pay by use, which she did. It felt good to be clean again. She also asked to borrow the kitchen as she was used to cooking her own meals.
After her dinner she went to the town training square for her training only to find the square mostly empty. She wanted to face palm at the laziness of the people here. No wonder they were so weak.
It was night time and she returned for another bath and checked her status before she went to sleep as a habit.
Name: Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin
Core Skill: Violent Heart Acceleration Lvl 91
Class: Genius Sword Witch of Flames Lvl 40
Class Skills:
Streaking Sprint Lvl 78
Fire Mana Control Lvl 93
Cascade Dual Longsword Mastery Lvl 96
Cascading Laceration Lvl 73
Heated Blade Lvl 68
Spear of Flame Lvl 60
Pinpoint Perforation Lvl 71
Sphere of Immolation Lvl 49
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Wind Lightning Butcher Lvl 4
Sub-Class Skills:
Wind Mana Manipulation Lvl 32
Streamline Wind Enhancement Lvl 34
Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 35
Pulsating Lightning Enhancement Lvl 38
Lightning Inoculation Lvl 29
Revolving Razorwind Film Lvl 27
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Combat Chef Lvl 37
Profession Skills:
Combat Cooking Lvl 65
Heat Perception Lvl 72
Live Ingredient Processing Lvl 77
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 350/350
Stamina: 412/500
Mana: 154/550 [660]
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 59
Vitality: 35
Constitution: 50
Endurance: 50
Agility: 130 [260]
Intelligence: 65
Wisdom: 55
Perception: 70
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Generic Skills:
Xenese Lvl 9
Elcrian Lvl 9
Appraise Lvl 18
Running Lvl 33
Housekeeping Lvl 15
Sheer Agility Conditioning Lvl 9
Strength Conditioning Lvl 9
Intelligence Conditioning Lvl 8
Endurance Conditioning Lvl 8
Perception Conditioning Lvl 7
Silent Step Lvl 11
Pain Resistance Lvl 28
Combat Tenacity Lvl 36
Sheer Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 37
Immense Divination Resistance Lvl 59
Mana Compression Lvl 13
Mana Expansion Lvl 22
Sheer Heat Resistance Lvl 40
Sheer Poison Resistance Lvl 21
Cold Resistance Lvl 15
Earth Resistance Lvl 16
Sheer Wind Resistance Lvl 29
Sheer Lightning Resistance Lvl 31
Blood Mana Manipulation Lvl 22
Mental Supersaturation Lvl 20
Scent Tracing Lvl 27
Mental Processing Acceleration Lvl 28
Sublime Instinct Lvl 5
Seeing her Sub-Class already at level 4 she added her stats accordingly.
''Fortifications,'' she thought.
Fortifications:
Class: Genius Sword Witch of Flames
Mana Efficiency with Fire Magic increased by 250%
Fire Magic increased in heat by 250%
Casting Speed with Fire Magic is increased by 100%
Attack Speed when dual-wielding longswords increased by 250%,
Agility increased in effect by 100%
Sub-Class: Wind Lightning Butcher
Casting Speed with Lightning Magic is increased by 100%
Casting Speed with Wind Magic is increased by 100%
Mana Efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic is increased by 100%
Profession: Combat Chef
Control of heat increased by 100%
Control of precision when handling ingredients increased by 100%
''Hmm¡ Lightning magic uses too much mana in comparison to wind magic and I didn¡¯t get mana efficiency like with fire magic. My Sub-Class¡¯s fortifications are a little lacklustre compared to my Class but I guess it''s only natural. Besides, casting speed is great too. I''ll aim for mana efficiency for both before Master ranked evolution.
Magic is too mana intensive. I can only use magic a little in battle before running dry. Mana Expansion helps to decrease mana cost but my magic gets weaker with it. Mana Compression is just silly for now, it would only be helpful in the long run so it¡¯s not like I should ignore it.
Only Fire Magic is sustainable enough with 250% mana efficiency and now enhancement magic can be used for a short burst as well. Mental Supersaturation increased my mana pool by 20% but I already reached my limit on it for months. If only I could evolve the skill now.
I should try to get my Conditioning skills to the same level and then attempt to merge them.
Did I take too long to decide on my Core Skill? There were hardly any chances in battle to use it, the monsters here are so weak. Well, a dungeon tower is going to form so I¡¯ll have plenty of chances soon.
Oh, I forgot that I need to apply for a party¡Bah, stupid imperial rules of needing a party of 5 before being allowed in.
I guess I¡¯ll go after some hunting tomorrow. Bubble Hills for Cysaru arms, the plains for some Tynite horns or scale plates or the forest for some herbs and mushrooms. I got bored of the forest so maybe the hills, looking around the wide plains might be a nice change of pace too but tynite bisons are only about my level. Nevermind I¡¯ll decide tomorrow, just some mental exercises and conditioning and then it¡¯s time to sleep.
???
¡®Oh my goodness, this ¡®turkey¡¯ smells delicious.¡¯
Gulp
¡®Delicious! Maybe my discovery of turkey is the crossroad of fate grandma was referring to.¡¯
Scarlet wandered the plains in the direction of Bubble Hills, deciding to just run around and hunt the one she encountered first. She leisurely streaked past the lands with blurring speeds that put even those Runner Classers to shame.
A pair of tynite bisons appeared in her vision as Mental Processing Acceleration helped accelerate her thought process, increasing her speed of thought and also casting speed. Scarlet wanted to utilise her Sub-Class to get it through its lower levels first.
Drawing both her longswords she imbued 30 mana worth of lightning mana into each of them. Sparks of blue zapped on her skin as a single Pulsating Lightning Enhancement step took her in between the 2 bisons who were sharing a dead uncooked meal.
Her swords sparked as wind howled and swished around them. She swung both hands down across their necks. The splatter of blood seemed to avoid her as she was spotless.
The bison were obviously enraged from the disturbance in their meal but the sudden literal shock stunned them for a short second. Enough for Scarlet to rain dozens of cascading blows, each strike increasing in strength and speed. She didn¡¯t stop at decapitation as her longswords were like her kitchen knives at work.
Their heads flew as she dissected their bodies into scales, flesh, organs, bones in the matter of minutes. Wind magic helped to clean the farm animal and her twin blades absorbed the blood. They landed on a large cloth that no one but her noticed when she pulled it out or where she pulled it out from.
¡®They do have pretty tough scales and body but to think they are considered ¡®elite¡¯ monsters. Luckily I didn¡¯t cook them with Heated Blade. They don¡¯t look so appetising after that turkey.
Do I have enough mana to get to level 10? I¡¯ll just try, just 2 more levels anyway. Then I¡¯ll go back early, I still have to register an application for that stupid party. Well, I guess dungeons are much more dangerous. Even I couldn¡¯t fight or keep watch forever. My mana and stamina will run out fast if the dungeon is in the level 70 range¡ Fine a party isn¡¯t a stupid idea. Please, they don¡¯t have to be strong, just enough to not hold me back.''
Scarlet roamed around, looking for whatever looked delicious. The weather was nice and while there weren''t many monsters around she still managed to find a few with her speed and Scent Tracing.
¡®Okay level 10, perfect. Time to return. I will have to take the longer running, better paying jobs. The 2 Greys entrance fee is a scam for their own expansion, the barrier isn¡¯t even used unless invaded.¡¯
Scarlet sped back to Plainston and noticed there was already a line outside the gate, news spread fast and people acted just as fast. She tossed 2 Greys over before they stopped her and entered, making her way to the Quest Hall again.
Scarlet stopped as something caught her attention. She was passing by a small side alley when she saw a man with a large sword in hand reaching out to grab a small boy on the ground. She literally burst into action as she drew one of her blades and placed it in between the man¡¯s outreached hand and the young scrawny boy. Crossing the short distance almost instantly.
¡®Despicable, these imperials¡¯ would even raise their hands against a powerless child.¡¯
The man slowly pulled his hand back, Scarlet didn¡¯t let him go as she poised for Pinpoint Perforations to disarm the thug. Thrusting stabs at his wrist, elbows and shoulders. Scarlet didn¡¯t expect the man to be able to dodge and move aside in time. She didn¡¯t use any skills and was not seriously trying to hurt the man but it was plenty surprising for her.
Thinking that the man was higher level than she thought, she no longer held back. She drew her other longsword and a flurry of slashes rained down on the man. It was only then that the creeping feeling in Scarlet grew, her new skill helped recognise the feeling.
This man was not normal but she couldn¡¯t quite put her finger on it. She ignored it as her strikes landed causing a disturbing sound of metal scratching against each other to echo through the alleyway.
¡°STOP BULLYING MISTER!¡± a high pitched voice screamed as Scarlet felt a tug on her mantle.
Seeing the little kid pulling on her helped calm her down.
¡°I¡¯m afraid there is a misunderstanding.¡± another unknown voice echoed. Something about the voice that seems to calm her further.
Scarlet looked around, only realising that there were 4 other men laying on the ground with their arms and legs frozen together and their mouths sealed with ice as well. The little boy was crying while he quickly hid behind the man she attacked trying to hide from her. Her Mental Processing Acceleration ran as she analysed.
¡®Oh no, whoops?¡¯ Scarlet thought. She mentally berated herself for jumping to conclusions before taking actions. The man didn¡¯t even draw his sword and was using it with the sheath on. Fortunately, she didn¡¯t try to kill the man outright and that he was able to dodge¡
¡®I forgot to Appraise him too¡¡¯
[Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze Lvl 36] - [ ]
¡®Wh..what? He¡¯s lower level than me and no Sub-Class either? And he managed to react to my first strike? Now that I see, he¡¯s not injured. No. It¡¯s his robe that¡¯s tough, I didn¡¯t use full strength but to think I only scratched it. It¡¯s well made.
That¡¯s not important, his heart rate is so slow and stable, 20, 30 beats a minute?! A skill? He didn¡¯t take me seriously at all despite getting attacked out of the blue. Can someone really be that calm when a blade was pointed at them and actually landed on them? Only if they were much stronger and had absolute confidence¡ is he looking down on me?''
Scarlet looked at the man properly for the first time. Blue hair, clean sharp features and those eyes¡ they felt endless and she felt like she was ultimately seeing herself in those eyes of his.
¡®At least he isn¡¯t like the other rude imperials that can¡¯t even look at people¡¯s eyes when they''re talking.¡¯ Looking closer he doesn¡¯t look fully imperial, maybe he has some Xeng blood too. That greatsword is Xeng-make too, but the design is really old.
That would make sense, now she understood what her Sublime Instinct was telling her, this person was strong but meant no harm and was not hostile to her. She was probably still stronger than him by a large margin though. Probably.
¡®Meditative huh, I really want that Combat Meditation mother used to tell me about but I don¡¯t know how to do that. Frostblaze? Is he both an ice and fire mage? I only see ice being used here and there aren¡¯t any remnant fire mana anywhere, I guess he doesn¡¯t want to cause any damage in town.¡¯ Scarlet scanned the alleyway quickly.
¡®Hmm. Why is he just staying still? Did his heart just stop for a second there? Nah I must be imagining things.¡¯ Scarlet had all sorts of things going through her mind but less than a second had passed.
¡°Yes, I¡¯m afraid so. I¡¯m sorry for attacking you. I thought you were trying to harm the little boy.¡± Scarlet moved to rub the little boys¡¯ head only to be rejected by him hiding behind the man.
¡°Mmm. It¡¯s okay, I could tell you weren¡¯t trying to harm me. Hey there, come here. Thank the lady, she was trying to help you as well.¡± the man said and got the little boy to show himself.
¡°Ah. Ermm th..thank you mister. Thank you, miss.¡± The scrawny boy looks to be around 7 or 8. He reached his fingers out as a greeting which Scarlet obliged by removing her left glove and tetting.
¡°My name is Ivan. What¡¯s about you, mister and miss. Ehm, please come to my house! I think we have some leftover russell stew.¡± Ivan proposed, remembering what his father taught him to be polite and repay kindness with kindness.
¡°Hello Ivan, I¡¯m Ebony.¡± The man called Ebony also removed his glove and tetted with Ivan. He put his glove back on and raised his right hand towards Scarlet in greeting.
¡°Ebony Rime. You are?¡± Ebony reintroduced as monotonous as always.
¡°Scarlet Rhael.¡± Scarlet didn¡¯t think someone as confident as Ebony would tet with his right hand as if acknowledging his inferiority. ¡®¡his fingers are so cold.¡¯
¡°I have never seen such beautiful swordsmanship, Scarlet.¡± The name seemed to roll off Ebony''s tongue but the compliment seemed sarcastic to Scarlet in his tone of voice yet her Sublime Instinct were telling her he meant what he said.
¡°Halt! What¡¯s going on here?¡± an armed and uniformed town guard showed himself together with his patrol colleague. Town guards were always fashionably late after all.
The town guards then brought the 3 of them back to one of their guardhouses, maybe even the only guardhouse as it was a small town.
The boy explained that he was given grocery ores to get a week''s worth of dinner, he was small and always got pushed around when he used the main road and the side alley was a faster way too. Then he got surrounded and his Blacks were taken, that¡¯s when Ebony came to save the day.
When Ebony was going to help him stand up, Scarlet came into the story thinking Ebony was in cahoots with the 4 thugs or apprentice rogues and apprentice martial artists.
The town guards easily let them go soon after since they knew the thugs. They accompanied the boy to the market and brought him home. As expected, when the boy¡¯s mother saw Scarlet she just thanked her and pulled her boy back in. Ignoring the young boy¡¯s complaints.
¡°Sorry about that, now you can¡¯t have any russell stew. She probably didn¡¯t let us in because of me.¡± Scarlet said as the door closed on them. She was well aware that she was the reason why they were not welcomed. No matter, she couldn''t eat here anyway. There was no privacy.
¡°Mmm. I should get going. Farewell.¡± The man called Ebony didn''t seem to care.
¡°Wait where are you going? I want to apologise for attacking you and damaging your robe. And causing you not to be able to eat.¡± Scarlet didn''t know why she said what she did but the man''s tone was irksome.
¡°It¡¯s alright. I¡¯m going to the Quest Hall to register.¡± Ebony casually replied.
¡°I was on my way there too. Let¡¯s go.¡± It was quite coincidental that Scarlet was going there anyway. But why did it seem like he was trying to get away from her? He didn''t look like those that were afraid of her. Weird.
Chapter 31: Shopping
¡°Since we¡¯re almost there it¡¯s time for an after expedition review. It''s not an expedition per se but you get it.¡± Rowent said.
¡°Ebony, you should join us. We basically talk about what we did right, wrong and what could be done better. Then we talk about each other¡¯s strengths and weaknesses in combat.¡± Fergus explained.
¡°Okay.¡±
¡°We were underprepared for hail even though we travelled to Hoarfrost Glade. Summer or not it was a possibility. It was my oversight.¡± Andel got the ball rolling.
¡°One escort party may be insufficient now. I think Lure has suspicions on what we obtained from Arcta already. With their usual tactics of getting monsters to distract us while their lackeys go after the boss and the caravan. We were lucky Ebony was here to help us too, your help was crucial Ebony. Thank you.¡± Fergus thanked. They followed up showing their gratitude in Top¡¯s place as well.
They went on talking about not splitting up and letting 1 of them follow the caravan into the cave. Safer route or not they were not prepared enough for the trip to and fro Arcta which was a little surprising to Ebony. Haven¡¯t they completed the trip and transaction with Arcta multiple times already? According to them, hardly any of the things that happened this time occurred in their previous trip while Chris and Dina were a relatively new addition.
¡°Chris needs some ranged options. Dina¡ your throwing knives and wires have limited use depending on the terrain but other than that I don¡¯t see any issue. Rowent, you lack defensive or evasive measures like Fergus and Dina who are quick on their feet. Fergus, I¡¯m not too sure what an archer really needs but maybe your offensive capabilities are on the weaker side.¡± Ebony gave his honest opinions.
¡°Aren''t my flare steps an evasive measure? Or my ring of fire? And a fire mage¡¯s advantage is in offensive capability.¡± Rowent defended.
¡°Most warriors, rogues or archers can chase after you. You have less stamina than them as well. Your ring of fire is stationary, you¡¯ll run out of mana sooner or later.¡± Ebony pushed on. They continued back and forth on each other''s strengths and weaknesses.
Sadly, all they had for Ebony was that he just needed more practice with his swordsmanship and magic in terms of control. All in all, the escort party¡¯s skills are such that they have their party members to support them and hide each other''s weaknesses and show each other''s strength. Like how Fergus could make wooden root holds for Dina¡¯s wires. Or Top and Chris were the vanguard with support from Dina and Fergus while Rowent was the damage dealer.
Ebony¡¯s array of skills that covers many fronts are more suitable for solo yet he could fight in a party as well. The minus was that the larger array of skills made him have less focus on each of them and their skill levels were relatively lower.
¡°Halt! Oh, you¡¯re back Mr. Andel.¡± They reached the gate and were stopped by the guard.
The town walls were made of dull grey stone and were at least 15 metres tall and almost 5 metres thick. Ebony wondered what these walls could even do against monsters but well there were supposedly barriers and they do get the height advantage. The wall may or may not be made using magic as well so perhaps they were much tougher than they look.
¡°Yeah. It took longer than usual. Here, we caught Boom from Lure. Can you get the captain?¡± Andel replied. He was kinda famous in the small town, a merchant as high level as him doesn''t usually stay in a small place like Plainston but go for greener pastures.
¡°From Lure?! Sure, I''ll go now.¡± One of the apprentice warriors left running. Ebony was a little surprised that people took apprentice classes when they knew about the strength difference in Classes. What more, there were town guards.
¡°Here¡¯s 20 Blacks for the 10 of us.¡± Andel pulled his pouch out. He had long known the cheap 2 Black entrance fee.
¡°Sorry Mr.Andel, the entrance fee is now 2 Greys per person per entry.¡±
¡°WHAT?! Who are you trying to rob?¡± Andel was enraged by the 10 times difference.
¡°Woah woah, please calm down Mr.Andel. Have your people not informed you? A dungeon tower is forming close to Plainston, the increase in price is accepted by the higher nobles already. Where¡¯s Boom? We¡¯ll take him over from here. His bounty was 3 Greys and 8 Blacks but as he now has connections to Lure the bounty would be 1 Green. Would you like to deduct the fee from the bounty?¡± a bearded [Warrior Lvl 78] showed himself. He was the guard captain.
¡®He¡¯s worth less than a deer?¡¯ Ebony thought but remembered that food was a lot more expensive in Arcta. Elves also value mana ores less.
Lure was an organisation that has been spreading in this region and had been reaching out more and more. Their standard strategy of luring monsters to attack merchant caravans and then swooping down when they were unaware to first kill either the monster pulling the wagons or the coachman. After that was easy pickings for them as long as the merchant¡¯s escort party was distracted for them.
It was not known how they lured monsters but they have been making more and more enemies. Becoming a regional threat, any associated with them had higher bounties due to this.
Andel gave all 8 Greys to Ebony as he paid for Ebony¡¯s fee, they were splitting it 8-2 as discussed.
Ebony watched as they took a wooden handcuff, basically a wooden plank with 2 holes for hands. It was inlaid with metal and there was what looked like a mana ore but yellow in colour. The confusing thing about mana ores was that they were all naturally transparent, even though they were called Black, Greys, Greens and so on.
They used to colour it somehow but there were too many scams so it was just natural to Identify them now. If they were rich enough or had nothing better to do they could crush the mana ores too. Each rarity got harder and harder than the previous one.
They quickly paid up and got on their way, Ebony followed them on their caravan to visit their shop to get the things he would need.
¡°Can a wooden board really hold warriors down?¡± Ebony asked, curious.
¡°Hahaha. Of course not. Did you see the yellow crystal on it? The handlocks are specially made, unlike the myriad bracelet that just takes overflowing mana the handlock forcefully drains stuff. The yellow ones drain stamina, there are blue ones that drain mana but usually used on mages. There are hardly any mages here so stamina ones are more useful for them. Bigger cities and towns would have stronger ones that drain both, leaving them helpless.¡± Rowent explained.
¡°It''s also used in prisons so escape is unlikely. The mana is used to power barriers and how much they produce is kinda part of their sentence as well.¡± Fergus continued.
That was kinda interesting, a warrior without stamina and a mage without mana is no different from a normal person if you don¡¯t count their stronger body and mind.
¡°What about stamina? Can they do anything with it?¡± Ebony asked about the yellow crystal.
¡°I heard they tried making some sort of stamina regeneration potion or stimulants with it in the past but it had horrible side effects as they aren¡¯t compatible with people. They are essentially other¡¯s stamina and mana signatures and others can¡¯t just use it willy nilly.¡± Rowent said.
¡°Our phantom big boss is irregularly commissioned by the royals and nobles to make stuff and I think they found a way to convert stamina to mana or other power sources. No idea if it''s true though, never been in a prison and I hope I never will.¡± Fergus shrugged.
¡°The Empire seems to know about his location better than our own company.¡± Dina commented.
Their ¡®big boss¡¯ should be the inventor, Zenin the half golem if he¡¯s not wrong. The Empire sure has their ways if they can find someone their own company rarely gets ahold of.
The caravan continued strolling through the streets as Ebony saw that it really wasn¡¯t what he expected. There were more glass windows than he thought, for one. And some stores even had something like a tv screen, displaying their wares like a powerpoint slide.
Buildings were mostly stone and wood, all the houses were bigger than he was used to, like in Arcata. It was reasonable though, the size of some of the races like Lizardmen and the height of the Elves had to be taken into account. Doors and ceilings of a single floor were at least 3 fifths a gir or 3 metres tall.
Sure Roya and Halvis already told him but it was another thing seeing for himself. He should see higher tech stuff as he got closer to the Capital too.
They travelled past many houses and shophouses as they went further into the town. Stopping before a building almost 3 times larger than the other stores he saw, about the size of a small mall. Ebony and Andel alighted as Larry, Wattel and Grey brought the rams and goods to the back.
The others have long either gone back to their home or stayed with Top after bringing him to see the town doctor. Healers were so rare that small towns like this didn¡¯t have any, they would either have to go to a city or a larger town if they needed a healer.
¡°LACY!¡± Andel shouted in his impossibly loud voice. Ebony was getting more and more certain it was a merchant skill with how loud he was. Sounds of clambering came from within as they entered the store. The inside was like a departmental general store and had all sorts of things Ebony had not seen before.
¡°Ye..yes! I¡¯m here, boss.¡± a pretty face with long dirty blonde hair showed herself. She got a scolding about not ¡®calling¡¯ Andel and informing him about the dungeon forming. Dina and Chris seemed excited about the news but Fergus and Rowent didn¡¯t, there was a chance they would be relocated before they could go dungeon exploring.
Ebony looked around while Andel was scolding his employee, especially the myriad bracelet section that he really needed. Too bad he had no idea what was good and what wasn¡¯t.
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¡°Hello, mister Ebony. How can I help you?¡± Lacy came and called out
¡°I am looking for a myriad bracelet. Could you introduce them to me?¡±
¡°Of course. The cheapest ones we have are made of treated leather with at least 60% mana efficiency and have 3 slots. The preferred option for warriors would be treated leather with compressed iron or steel edge to withstand strong impacts. They have at least 65% mana efficiency and up to 5 slots.
I personally recommend this one, it is made from a strong and mana conducive alloy with soft leather encasing it to make it more comfortable. They have at least 75% mana efficiency and up to 10 slots. It is an uncommon tagged bracelet and is a little more pricey though. But you won¡¯t have to worry about it breaking or having your fitted slots drop out.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll take this one, how much is it?¡± Ebony looked at the simple looking, wide, thick black bracelet. It was not decorated like some of them which were the more popular choices for fighters or freelancers.
¡°Thank you! Sir, one with 5 slots cost 2 Greens and 3 Greys. The one with 7 cost 3 Greens and the one with 10 cost 5 Greens.¡± that was roughly the price he expected after asking. His assets right now were 150 Greys, 215 Blacks from Arcta, 10 Greens from Roya and Halvis and 8 more Greys from the bounty.
¡°I¡¯ll take the one with 7 slots, I need a callstone as well and is the Elemental Sensitivity Potion ordered by the Thoya family here yet?¡± Ebony still had other things to buy and 7 slots should be more than enough for now. Lacy brought Ebony to the callstones and let him look at them himself since Identify should be able to tell him enough.
Lacy went to check if the Elemental Sensitivity Potion was here. That was usually sold by the mage association but the Z&Z company had enough pull to get it for him too. There wasn¡¯t a branch here in Plainston so Halvis had put in an order a while back when they decided Ebony would need it.
[Callstone (Inferior) - Send sound over to another linked callstone within 100km. Consumes 10MP/km/s. Linked to 0/3 callstones]
It was interesting that Identify shows him kilometres and others would apparently see the units they were familiar with. Girs, gors and so on. This callstone was another invention of Zenin who was also the boss of Z&Z which was Zenin and Zaya. Zaya was his wife and supposedly the greatest merchant known in history. Though both couldn¡¯t be found most of the time the company still ran by itself.
How it works seemed to be a mix of sound and mind magic. The touching of callstones for a minute or so, creates a link with mind magic. Sending mana from a mana ore slotted in the myriad bracelet into it and mentally thinking of who to ¡®call¡¯. The other party would soon receive a signal and can decide to pick up or not. The one calling is the one who supplies the mana cost.
The signal wouldn¡¯t go anywhere if the other party was out of range and of course people don¡¯t call unless it was a matter of importance due to the mana cost. They were the same shapes as the mana ores as a standardisation so that all could fit in the myriad bracelet slots.
[Callstone (Common) - Send sound over to another linked callstone within 1000km. Consumes 8MP/km/s. Linked to 0/5 callstones]
Ebony was kinda glad that Elcra wasn¡¯t so medieval, the myriad bracelet and callstone would be the closest thing to a phone for him.
[Callstone (Uncommon) - Send sound over to another linked callstone within 10000km. Consumes 5MP/km/s. Linked to 0/10 callstones]
Ebony was leaning towards the uncommon one because having just 5 contacts seemed pointless and the mana efficiency is better for the rarer one. The range also lost to the power of the internet, especially with the size of Elcra. Yet, Ebony didn¡¯t have so many people to call here.
¡°Here¡¯s your Elemental Sensitivity Potion, Ebony. So, what do you think of our store? I''ll give you a discount for all the help we received. Don¡¯t reject me so fast, we may have lost a lot more if you weren¡¯t with us so just take it.¡± Andel came back with a square wooden box. The item too precious for his clumsy clerk to handle
¡°Mmm. How much is this?¡± Ebony took the wooden box.
¡°Oh this. Mrs.Thoya already paid for it. Use it wisely. If you really want to know, let¡¯s just say that the price of this thing is in the Blues range. Of course, if you were a higher order mage you could get some discounts from the mage association. It¡¯s still really expensive though.¡±
Elemental Sensitivity Potion (Uncommon) - Temporarily increase sensitivity to numerous elemental mana found naturally by 100 to 1000% for 1 hour.
¡°If it¡¯s your first time taking this it should have a very strong effect, probably close to the limit of 1000%. Okay now, you¡¯re going to be freelancing right? Oh and with the new dungeon tower forming you should probably stay in Plainston for a while. It¡¯s too big an opportunity to miss.¡± Andel went on to show the merchandise that Ebony would need.
He needed a better bag, there was no spatial storage, unfortunately. Those were rich people items that can hardly be found in these parts. Their bags are all made to withstand strong forces and some had different magic in place.
Ebony got the most popular one with something called preservation magic. It could keep his food fresh or the materials he got will stay in good condition for about 3 times as long. It was very large and had many straps and pouches for different uses.
He then got their version of a tent which was really such a great design. Like that of an umbrella with a thick metal ring as the handle, ropes coiled it up. The ropes were connected to 2 metal stakes hidden with the cloth and when uncoiled he just needed to stab one stake in the ground and pull the other. The tent would unfold and voila, it was cylindrical and the floor mat had two layers which was a built-in blanket attached to the corners.
Ebony got the fully black coloured one to stay hidden in the night. The bag had 2 straps at the bottom to hold the tent cum sleeping bag.
He then bought 3 packs of souper bread for a total of 450 cubes. All things considered, the souper bread was actually useful with how little space they took. Ebony ate a whole lot if he were to fight for a long time so he could eat more of them. It should last months.
He got one of the magical waterskins. There were a few types, one had the cap that was some kind of converter that after slotting a mana ore, will convert the mana to water mana and come out from the bottom.
The other required the use of water mana ores which were more rare but can produce more water and are more mana efficient. It could even absorb water mana from the environment and was the mana saving version. It was the most expensive and water mana ores were both pricy and hard to obtain.
There was also a dual converter that can make hot water which Ebony got. Making hot water cost more mana but mana was something Ebony wouldn¡¯t have to worry about. The converter one made more sense to get, normal mana ores were much more obtainable than water mana ores.
He also got one of those phoslamps, there were ones made of some transparent crystal or those made by glass workers. The best ones were made by glass mages cum glass workers, Ebony just got a common one together with some common phos. It should give him a one to one ratio, leaving it in the sun for 1 hour should let it glow for 1 hour in the dark.
Ebony got rid of 200 Blacks, 120 Greys and 9 Greens after a discount. Leaving him with 15 Blacks, 30 Greys and 1 Green.
Andel gave Ebony directions of the Quest Hall which he will have to register for and also the location of a good inn he knows. He said his goodbyes and left with his new equipment, he still had the tynite materials which he could turn in at the Quest Hall for Quest points.
The bloody bag was gotten rid of but Ebony was a very sentimental and possessive person so he still had all the stuff from Earth. His watch retired from his wrist as he put on the myriad bracelet and played with the metal clips and locks that pushed up to open the slot and clamps back down to hold mana ores or any other crystals in place. He put the uncommon callstone into one of it but it was useless for now without any empty mana ores on hand. Nor anyone to call.
The Quest Hall was also where other administrative matters were handled and Ebony could exchange filled mana ores with empty ones¡¯. There were different rates at different places but this town was pretty close to a common mana ore mining town and the rates for Greys were pretty good. They kinda control how rich people can get in this manner or at least how fast they can get richer.
¡®Basically this world¡¯s tax system, you want more mana ore? Pay more mana ore.¡¯
Ebony tried to remember the directions he was given and it wasn¡¯t too hard to find since the Quest Hall was one of the largest buildings. Another thing Ebony noticed as he walked the streets was how roughly less than half of the people he saw had apprentice classes. The low standards were a little surprising but the people here lived peacefully as far as he could tell.
Seeing the price of food in the market he passed by he was dumbfounded by the prices in Arcta. 2 or 3 Blacks was enough for a decent day¡¯s worth of food here.
¡°Ahh! Please stop! I need those Blacks to get food.¡± a high pitched voice caught Ebony¡¯s attention. He went towards the alley he heard it from. Seeing an [Apprentice Martial Artist Lvl 21] carrying a small boy by the hair as he was kicking him.
¡°Well, we need it to prepare some equipment for the dungeon that¡¯s going to form soon.¡±
¡°Be honoured boy, your Blacks are going to help protect the town. No, when freelancers and dungeon clearers start to pour in, Plainston will expand into a city.¡±
¡®That¡¯s right boy, be honoured.¡¯ Ebony thought.
Ebony moved in and grabbed onto the martial artist hand that was holding onto the boy faster than anyone present could react. He screamed in pain and let go of the boy as Ebony¡¯s ice mana imbued hand started freezing his hand, he pulled the young martial artist into a lock and froze both of his hands together.
Ebony pushed him aside and took his greatsword to block an incoming knife that was a little cute, like a fruit knife. The rogue gave wild swings with the knife as a kick met his stomach and he flew against the alley wall. With no suspense, Ebony took the other 2 apprentice martial artists and rogue down as well.
Freezing their hands, legs and finally mouth shut too so that he doesn''t have to listen to their screams and ¡®do you know who i am¡¯ nonsense.
¡®Of course I don¡¯t know.¡¯ he thought as he proceeded to knock them out with his still sheathed greatsword.
¡°You alri¡¡± Ebony was going to give the young boy a hand as he fell onto his butt and stayed there but a long, thin blade caused him to stop.
¡®Another thug? I didn¡¯t even see where he came from. Fast. I should back off.¡¯ Treading Step barely pushed Ebony away as he dodged the dozens of stabs to his joints.
¡®Woah. Such accuracy. Hmm. It¡¯s a woman, did she think I was picking on the kid? Well, she was only aiming to disarm me so maybe. I¡¯ll just try to dodge for now.¡¯ Ebony calmly deduced as usual.
He took this chance to see that the person attacking was a woman. He couldn¡¯t tell from the face since she was wearing a thick full white mask that covered everything but her eyes. She had long flowing bright red hair tied in a ponytail that reached her hips. Yet all of that wasn¡¯t what told him it was a woman but, even when she was wearing mantle-like clothing also red in colour her curves couldn¡¯t be completely hidden. They were honestly extremely eye catching and attention grabbing but Ebony wasn''t distracted.
She drew her other thin longsword that seemed to be bathed in blood as they were both red in colour. Flat, straight double edged longsword not too dissimilar to his own.
What came next was her display of swordsmanship that encaptivated Ebony even more. It was graceful, fluid and violent. Ebony had nowhere to dodge in the small alleyway and could only try his best to not get hit somewhere important. He was overconfident as he couldn¡¯t even see her blades as she landed slash after slash on him.
¡°STOP BULLYING MISTER!¡± he heard the boy shout and pull on the woman¡¯s mantle.
¡°I¡¯m afraid there is a misunderstanding,¡± Ebony said as he turned to her and kept his greatsword back on the straps of his coat. The woman started looking around before looking at Ebony for the first time.
Ebony looked into her eyes, the only thing not hidden by her thick white mask which he now noticed had a red and orange bird feather that decorated the left side of her mask.
Her eyes were once again burning red. Ebony found himself staring and it felt like those eyes could burn through him. Something else broke him out of stupor.
¡®Did I just stop meditating? Impossible¡ No¡ now I remember. This is something dad warned me about. Crap. I thought he was talking nonsense at that time.¡¯ Ebony was shocked that he got out of Deep Persistent Meditation without a strong stimulus of pain or emotional breakdown.
Chapter 32: Failed To Escape
¡°Ebony. There will come a day you meet someone who can break your mental state of calm. You will know just by looking at that person.¡±
¡°Dad, is that really possible? Looking at someone can stop my meditation? It didn''t even stop when mum broke my leg.¡± Ebony recollected.
¡°I know you won¡¯t believe it. But if one day you really meet such a person there are 2 things you should... no, you must do.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°That person will be your achilles heel. One, you run. As far as you can. Don¡¯t even interact with this person. You can never win. Never. Two, if your escape fails. Then good luck, you better keep this person on your good side and never let her out of your sight.¡±
¡°You are kidding right?¡±
¡°Of course not. Just look at me and your mother.¡±
¡®...¡¯
???
¡®Holy crap. Is it those eyes? Or is it those assets? Had I always been such a simp? I need to get away from her as soon as possible.¡¯ Ebony felt his life of getting beaten and broken down by his mother flash past his mind as he almost fell into panic again as he calmed himself down. Deep Persistent Meditation slowly kicking back on.
¡°Yes, I¡¯m afraid so. I¡¯m sorry for attacking you. I thought you were trying to harm the little boy.¡± The woman reached out to rub the kid¡¯s head but he hid behind Ebony.
¡°Mmm. It¡¯s okay, I could tell you weren¡¯t trying to harm me. Hey there, come here. Thank the lady, she was trying to help you as well.¡± Ebony replied and tried to get the boy from hiding.
¡°Ah. Ermm th..thank you mister. Thank you, miss.¡± he seemed confused at first but managed to get a hold of the situation.
¡°My name is Ivan. What¡¯s about you, mister and miss. Ehm, please come to my house! I think we have some leftover russell stew.¡± Ivan introduced and asked.
¡°Hello Ivan, I¡¯m Ebony.¡± Ebony replied and tetted.
¡°Ebony Rime. You are?¡± ¡®Why did I reintroduce myself? Why did I ask for her name? I need to scram. No, it¡¯s okay I need her name so I can avoid her if I ever hear it.¡¯ Ebony''s thoughts and words didn¡¯t match as he politely greeted as the lower level one. She was identified as [Fire Swordswoman Lvl 40] and Ebony didn¡¯t forget their culture that the lower level one should use their right hand.
Ebony once again found himself staring. At her hands this time, they were so slender and so fair it looked almost fragile. That was not what got his attention but the thick callus on her extremely slender and fair hands, her fingers, palms they were covered in calluses.
Rivalling Ebony¡¯s calluses in fact, it was not easy to have calluses with enhanced stats like Constitution. With Ebony¡¯s regeneration they heal pretty quickly but constantly wearing them down allowed them to stay there for some time. That would mean the woman also constantly trains, and it would only make sense with her impeccable swordsmanship.
¡°Scarlet Rhael.¡± ¡®Scarlet¡the name fits her well.¡¯
¡°I have never seen such beautiful swordsmanship, Scarlet.¡± ¡®Hot damn. What am I saying? At least I didn¡¯t say that her hands look beautiful or her eyes. Crap. I¡¯m like a middle schooler in love. It¡¯s okay. Chill. I am just praising her and meant it, I am always honest this is no different. I should leave now.¡¯
¡°Halt! What¡¯s going on here?¡± ¡®Damn it the guards are here, if they¡¯re anything like the police I would need to follow them to give a statement or something.¡¯ Ebony was right, after a quick explanation the 2 guards got him to remove the ice cuffs while they used their own.
The guards seemed surprised when they looked at Ebony like when he just entered the town as well. Did he look that much different from the people here? That shouldn¡¯t be the case, then maybe a hybrid class is just surprising here. Ebony also noticed the weird reactions they have when they saw Scarlet confirming that a hybrid class was not something they saw every day.
Everyone who saw Ebony for the first time after arriving in Plainston gave him weird looks so far, except Ivan and Scarlet. Ivan probably because he couldn¡¯t use Identify, Scarlet perhaps hid it behind her mask but it didn¡¯t feel like it. She was a hybrid class herself so no surprise there.
They started walking towards the gate again where their office was when Ebony got an unexpected ring in his head.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Divination Resistance gained¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Divination Resistance level up 1 ¡ú 2¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Divination Resistance level up 2 ¡ú 3¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Divination Resistance level up 3 ¡ú 4¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Divination Resistance evolved into Sheer Divination Resistance¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Divination Resistance level up 4¡ú 5¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Divination Resistance level up 5 ¡ú 6¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Divination Resistance level up 6 ¡ú 7¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Divination Resistance level up 7 ¡ú 8¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Divination Resistance level up 8 ¡ú 9¡¯
¡®Hmm? Divination? Like seeing the future? Who¡¯s divining me and what for? Is she a diviner or something?¡¯ Ebony thought it was getting creepy as he just got to Plainston not long ago and he was starting not to like the place already. He didn¡¯t bother looking around to see who was divining him as he didn¡¯t think it would help since he couldn¡¯t stop it anyway.
Scarlet¡¯s Class was a [Fire Swordswoman Lvl 40], even if her Sub-Class or Profession was a diviner it shouldn¡¯t be possible to get his resistance to the second tier like that so he thought it shouldn¡¯t be her.
His mental state stabilised shortly, instead of turning on and off repeatedly. Now that his mana regeneration is at 25.9575 per min, just using Icebody Enhancement at 12.5MP/Min doesn¡¯t cut it anymore. Casting a shield in town seems out of place too. Normally, 6 mana per minute would require someone to have 360 points in Wisdom. It didn¡¯t feel too ridiculous but Ebony still tried casting compressed Icebody Enhancement.
Ebony got the idea of using compressed Icebody Enhancement a while back. He still has not gotten the hang of it though.
Casting Icebody Enhancement was quite natural for him, almost like breathing. He would have to make it a two-step process if he wanted to compress the mana first then circulate it. If only he could directly produce compressed mana or have his mana compress itself by will.
Rowent and Fergus told him that the mage association had libraries open to all mages but the good stuff were for higher order mages or those that contributed to the association enough. Such as publishing their own books which many don''t like to do, they want to keep some secrets to themselves after all. Ebony would make a trip there when he can.
The process was drab but the guards were familiar with the process, looks like thugs are common here. The guard captain Ebony saw earlier was the only one who had a metal chest piece, the rest of them hardly had metal pieces in their standard armour. There were still quite some normal warriors in the office that did deskwork instead, the apprentice warriors were their grunts who did most guard duty and patrols.
Town or city guard was supposedly a profession and they have many different fortifications as well. Those that make patrolling or spotting trouble easier, or making them have some kind of buff when protecting the town or city.
Ebony walked Ivan to shop for groceries with Scarlet and was planning to walk him home since he was in no rush. He was glad the phrase ''out of sight out of mind'' didn¡¯t lie to him as his Core Skill was working normally again.
It didn¡¯t take long before they arrived at Ivan¡¯s home where he ran in calling his mother but not before telling the both of them not to go away. The awkward wait outside the door didn¡¯t seem to bother either Ebony or Scarlet.
A middle aged gentle looking [Apprentice Tailor Lvl ???] arrived at the door. She greeted and bowed, thanking them politely for helping her son before she stuttered so badly Ebony thought she was lagging out.
Ebony couldn¡¯t tell whether she was more shocked by looking at Scarlet or himself, perhaps fear was more accurate. She quickly excused herself and closed the door on them, Ebony could still hear Ivan complaining and asking his mother why she shut the door on them.
¡°Sorry about that, now you can¡¯t have any russell stew. She probably didn¡¯t let us in because of me.¡± Scarlet broke the awkward silence. The russell stew was the least of his worries; he just didn¡¯t want to be rude or disappoint Ivan. Ebony couldn¡¯t be more glad at the chance to escape.
¡°Mmm. I should get going. Farewell.¡± Ebony succinctly said, not bothering to argue who¡¯s fault it was that she shut the door on them. Ebony attempted to flee.
¡°Wait where are you going? I want to apologise for attacking you and damaging your robe. And causing you not to be able to eat.¡± Scarlet hindered his attempt to flee.
¡°It¡¯s alright. I¡¯m going to the Quest Hall to register.¡± Ebony tried to flee again.
¡°I was on my way there too. Let¡¯s go.¡± Ebony has failed to escape.
¡®Is it too late to say I was going to find an inn?¡¯ Ebony thought as Scarlet led the way to the Quest Hall. At least she was quiet and Ebony didn¡¯t have to listen to her deep, clear and honestly sexy voice. ¡®And that was under her mask, how is she breathing through it?¡¯
The Quest Hall was even larger than the Z&Z Company store, the large double doors were left wide open. It was close to what Ebony imagined those guild halls look like but the ¡®quest board¡¯ was a screen instead of an actual board. The place was segregated into different segments for freelancers there for jobs and the town administrative stuff.
There were many round tables at the side where parties were having a drink and just chatting. Seeing Dwarves for the first time was interesting, they were about half his height and jam packed full of muscles making them almost as wide as they were tall. When taking into account their armour they were almost a round ball of muscle and metal. Their weapons of choice were either huge war axes and hammer, or smaller ones with a shield.
Ebony hasn¡¯t seen a single fully metal armoured human like those medieval knights, as much as he thought it was impractical it would have been cool to see. With stats and skills, it might not be as impractical as he thinks either. He made his way to line up at the counters, Scarlet took a different line.
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As usual, he was getting weird looks but this was something he was already used to since he was on Earth. He didn¡¯t care then and he didn¡¯t care now.
¡°Hello sir, how may I help you?¡± the counter lady receptionist asked. Brownish hair was likely the most common colour hair amongst humans here.
¡°Registering as a freelancer.¡±
¡°No problem, could you help fill up this form please?¡±
¡°Of course.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think he would do paperwork again. It didn¡¯t take long to fill up the form, the thing was quite a few spots were optional to fill up. He put down his name and age, the Class, Sub-Class and Profession was optional since many don¡¯t like to share but they still needed to give some information like if they were a close range combatant, warrior, knight, rogue etc.
Ebony just put down himself as a hybrid Ice swordsman. The other questions asked if he had certain skills like first aid or healing type skills. He submitted the form which the receptionist lady took and got him to wait.
¡°Okay sir, here¡¯s your quester crystal. Please try not to lose it as it will cost you to replace it and all unupdated quest points will not be refunded so please remember to update at the closest Quest Hall as often as you can.¡± The receptionist handed over another one of those crystals that can fit in his myriad bracelet. Ebony slotted it into one of the empty slots as she explained how things worked around here.
Anyone could post a quest in the Quest Hall for all sorts of nonsense like finding a lost bird or ring as long as they put a reward up for it and it would also cost them a tiny bit to keep a quest posted so that people don¡¯t flood them with nonsensical quests.
Monster hunting quests which are usually put up by the town or city themselves require a certain level of quest points held so that weak and new freelancers don¡¯t bite more than they can chew. Other than that, they do not stop level 50 people from hunting level 100 monsters for example.
Requests for rare or hard to find items, ingredients and materials are also the norm. The Quest Hall is actually all connected throughout the Empire and it is possible to see other quests from other places or post quests at other places for materials that can¡¯t be found where they are. Of course it would cost the poster even more ores since contacting further places requires more mana as well.
Someone new like Ebony would only be able to take on the sillier chore kind of quests or picking some grass grown in the forest or something that doesn''t have a quest point requirement. Ebony already knew these which was why he kept the tynite bison materials.
Material types quest didn¡¯t really have to be picked up and could just be handed in as long as he had those materials so it was a quick and easy way of raking quest points up he learnt from Halvis. The Thoya couple used to be freelancers when they just started their journey, though it was more of a pastime for them and they didn¡¯t go through with it, not being fighters and all.
The standard party size like the escort party was 5 members. Ebony noticed the trend of having a single Dwarf or Beastman like Lizard and Wolfmen as the heavily armoured and most likely tank of the team. Humans tended to be the warriors or rogues while Elves were their ranged archers or mages but Ebony didn¡¯t see any Elves or mages here.
Freelancers didn¡¯t have to be in a party but to enter a dungeon tower it was required to be in a party of 5.
Dungeons or dungeon towers were called as such as in basically every dungeon, there would either be a way up or a way down. How many levels they have can change as they can expand.
Why 5? Ebony tried asking before. It was the average number of apprentice Classers required to safely kill a monster of the same level. That was to say it took 5 level 30 people to kill a single level 30 monster relatively safely. That was more shocking than surprising even if they were an apprentice class, a 50% buff to anything should be pretty significant. Did they not have the stimulation rite the Frost Elves did? Even the unclassed can kill a monster at least 10 levels above them albeit with help.
Dungeons were believed to be a living organism due to their ability to grow and adapt. Though they can be born or formed at different strengths. Much has been discovered about dungeons yet little is known. Every dungeon is unique in their own way but there are many similarities between them too.
For example, dungeons try to attract people to go in and try to kill them to absorb them. Most dungeons leave the equipment alone and put them in chests to attract more people. Unlike natural monsters, dungeons spawn them as they wish, using their own energy or as theorised, essence. When the dungeon senses too many of its monsters being killed by a certain party they would either make monsters avoid the party or bring down everything they have to kill whatever¡¯s harming the dungeon.
Another point to note on dungeons is that how they evolve and grow also depends on who or what is invading it. A fire type dungeon that continually kills and absorbs water mages either gains a lot of resistance against them, becomes partly or fully water dungeon after long enough or both. If a ton of warriors died in the same dungeon over many years the dungeon monsters also tended to have more physically inclined monsters.
That was when the Empire made it an imperial law to be in a party of 5 that isn¡¯t like 5 mages or 5 warriors. There are some exceptions of course, you just need to be strong enough. They classify the dungeons as common, uncommon and rare according to the monster levels found on the first floor within.
A Master class like master warrior, archer or great mage can enter common dungeons in 3s. A Grandmaster class can enter a common dungeon solo.
A warrior after the lvl 100 Class Evolution would be a master warrior which after their level 300 Class Evolution would be a grandmaster warrior while a mage would become a great mage then grand mage. Swordsman would become sword master and sword grandmaster, pretty simple. After that was the ranks of kings but that seemed a little distant for now. Few actually go in with less than a full party of 5.
The dungeon entrance would almost definitely be guarded at all times and Ebony didn¡¯t have the stealth skills to sneak in. He also didn¡¯t want to bother sneaking around and was not completely against having a party though, he preferred fighting and hunting alone.
He exchanged every single one of his mana ores for empty ones, Blacks were 1 to 4, Greys 1 to 6 and Greens were 1 to 2. Those were some huge taxes but they apparently go to paying the imperial miners and mana ore shapers or gem, jewellery artisans who standardised the shape and quality to make sure all are exactly the same.
Anything higher in rarity was worth more than the sum of the mana inside since they were more rare too. Since mana ores of different rarity were basically more and more compressed mana there were many things that dense mana could do that low rarity mana ores couldn¡¯t.
Ebony just slotted every highest rarity one and let his mana overflow without issue for the first time. People usually don¡¯t put more than 2 since the overflowing mana splits among all of them evenly. He was planning to quickly exchange for more as soon as the next morning, he needed higher rarity mana ores and a whole lot of them.
Even at 75% mana efficiency, he fills them up at 19.49 mana per min. A Grey would only take a little less than an hour to fill while a Green that holds 10,000 mana would take just under 9 hours. At least he could fit quite a few in his bracelet and doesn¡¯t have to worry about falling asleep in town.
Imperial miners are considered a pretty ¡®high-class¡¯ job that many common people that don''t want to fight, aspire to be. Since the whole continent was Empire lands and the Xengs don¡¯t give a shit, every mana ore quarry found was Empire property. Nobles or not, those who were found keeping a mine hidden and not reported didn¡¯t end up well.
He went to the line that Scarlet lined up earlier only to see Scarlet waiting at the side. He applied for a party that the Quest Hall could help do, if people don¡¯t already have one. The good thing about having the Quest Hall party people up was that they consider what a balanced party would need and put what they believe to be a good team together.
They would try to put at least one person with the minimal first aid skill or skills along the line. They sure were trying hard to keep people alive, first aid skills were pretty popular to learn since it tended to put you in a better team and people may try harder to keep them alive too.
Ebony followed the receptionist¡¯s advice and put himself up for a delayed partying. The dungeon would take weeks or maybe more to form and he could rake up more quest points and levels in the meantime to get partied with higher levelled people. There were also going to be a lot more people rushing into Plainston and even applying through their own town or city¡¯s Quest Hall.
Ebony almost got worried that Scarlet, who was looking over would come and disrupt his plans, luckily for him she didn¡¯t say anything. He went to look at the available quests but many were boring old quests so he just set his eyes on the materials and ingredients that were in demand and took note of them.
This way he could just go hunting and bring back things of value, he didn¡¯t really need the money or mana ores rewarded actually. He already produced more than what these quests could reward him anyway but if higher quest points gave him better credit rating which gives him a higher chance at getting better, stronger party members then it was worth the trouble.
He didn¡¯t want to kill monsters for nothing, if they were trying to kill him and their parts were useful then he would feel better as to not wasting their lives. He wanted to just leave the Quest Hall like that but Scarlet was obviously waiting for him as she was looking at the same part of the screen that he was looking at.
¡°New dungeons tend to have monsters at level 50 as the weakest lot on the first floor. I suggest rushed levelling for now, there is always time for skill levelling when you reach 100.¡± Scarlet said.
¡°That was the plan. Any hunting spots you recommend?¡± Ebony had already calmed down and he was planning to do what Scarlet had suggested so he just asked since she seemed to know the area.
¡°Deeper into the woods towards southeast has a herd type purely physical monster, Rhoats, Ranges from 50 to 70. I heard the Bubble Hills has Mud Marmots that live in large groups as well, they have a larger level range. Younger dens of level 30s to mature dens of level 80s but they are harder to find as they hide underground and can use mud magic.¡± The Rhoats sound like a good target for Ebony but hunting them would likely be less productive for his skills.
The Bubble Hills were actually more dangerous than he thought as there were many monsters above 100 there; the route he took here really was the safest. The plains was a large expanse and might not be easy to spot many monsters.
¡°Thank you for the information. If that¡¯s all I will take my leave, a pleasure meeting you.¡± Ebony said and attempted to flee again. He was sincere about thanking her but what he didn¡¯t know was that Scarlet could feel that he didn¡¯t fully mean the second half of his words. Ebony gave a courtesy bow of head before walking out towards the door.
¡®Am I so unpleasant he can¡¯t even say it was a pleasure meeting me without so much sarcasm?¡¯ Scarlet thought. She was low-key pissed for reasons she herself was unsure of, it¡¯s not like she ever cared what people thought of her. She had long been used to people being nervous or fearing being near her but this man, Ebony didn¡¯t only look down on her it felt to her as if he couldn¡¯t stand being anywhere near her for even a second more.
¡®Forget it¡¯ she thought. Scarlet was gonna go back to the inn and cook more food for herself to swallow her anger. She could almost taste the turkey on her tongue as she thought about what to make, she did catch a few more extras.
Ebony was walking towards where the Inn Andel recommended but it was not hard to notice Scarlet had been going the same direction as him for quite a while now. ¡®She¡¯s not following me is she?¡¯ Ebony sped up.
Once he saw the sign board, Espol¡¯s Inn, Ebony quickly entered the thick wooden doors. The person he talked to was a dwarven woman who was quite hard to tell apart from their men, muscular, bearded, round but she was wearing a dress or skirt.
There was only one room free for a single person on the third floor, it would cost him 8 Blacks for a night which was actually higher than what Andel said it would be. They were probably starting to increase the price as people swarmed in.
Ebony was thinking about how long he should rent the room for, he would be here for a while. He would hate it if he didn¡¯t manage to find somewhere to rest if he didn¡¯t rent it long enough or if the price skyrocketed after this. Even if he didn¡¯t really worry about money
Someone entered the inn at this point and Ebony turned to see it was Scarlet.
¡°Just one night ma¡¯am.¡± Ebony decisively said. He instantly decided to sleep in the forest or hills.
¡°That¡¯ll be 8 Blacks. Food is separately paid at the canteen on the first floor, right at the back over there.¡± the bearded lady pointed.
¡°Alri..¡±Ebony checked his pockets before he facepalmed at exchanging all his ores for empty ones. 8 transparent crystals dropped onto the counter in his dilemma, it was a little awkward to stand there and wait for the ores to fill up.
¡°Take that as my apology for attacking you, you exchanged all your ores didn¡¯t you? Wait in your room, I''ll cook something for you as an apology for the stew.¡± Scarlet said before walking up the stairs.
¡°Here¡¯s your key, third floor room 304. Second room on the right. By the way, the Xeng lady that paid for you is in room 303 right across the hall.¡± The dwarven lady rubbed it in. The room was already paid for and it was getting late to look for another inn. It would also be incredibly rude of Ebony to just walk off now after she said she¡¯ll cook for him, it just wasn¡¯t Ebony to walk off like that.
¡®Was that really necessary? So she¡¯s a Xeng, strong as they say. I can take Chris on without much effort now he just has higher stats and he¡¯s level 53.¡¯ Ebony thought the receptionist¡¯s comment to be really redundant but the fact that Scarlet was a Xeng was new. How she knew Scarlet was a Xeng was a mystery to Ebony but he didn¡¯t want to ask the nosy lady more.
Scarlet was only lvl 40, perhaps she had a Sub-Class about the same level but Ebony didn¡¯t think he could beat her even if he used everything at his disposal. With the speed she had shown, running may only be possible if she doesn¡¯t catch up fast enough so that he could just out run her with his stamina.
He would be dead even faster if she used fire magic. Ebony''s weakness to fire and/or heat was getting concerning especially when fire mages were one of the more common mages according to the Z&Z escort party.
Ebony got to his room and put his things down. He had more things but the load had lightened on him without the tynite materials. He did get a few Greens for them which was yet again more than a single Boom from Lure but he exchanged them too¡
He went to take a bath and relaxed on the bed while massaging himself from the soreness of wearing the heavy coat. He took the chance to wash his dirtied set of clothes and underwear.
If there was one thing Ebony thought was as good as his ability to meditate it was his ability to massage muscle and bodily pain away. He was constantly beaten and broken down and had long practice on how to give amazing massages for his parents and himself.
He was a little sad that he didn''t have a skill for it yet but it might be because he couldn¡¯t massage himself properly as there were hard to reach places.
Knock knock knock
¡®Haa. Why does it sound like the devil is knocking on the door?¡¯
Chapter 33: Rhoat
Scarlet was at the door holding a large tray of food, still dressed in her battle wear of mantle, twin longswords and leather boots with a bit of added height of heels uncovered by her mantle. She was quite tall, standing only a little shorter than Ebony, perhaps 175cm in height. Her slender form looked like a breeze can topple her but the strength from her strikes that even damaged his robes said otherwise.
¡°Here. Enjoy.¡± Scarlet handed the tray over and left. Ebony was surprised and glad, the natural thing would be to eat together right? Fortunately not. Ebony didn¡¯t even realise his own disappointment at not being able to see what¡¯s under her mask over his happiness of lesser contact with Scarlet.
There was a large plate with two thick pieces of what looked like steak with green vegetables at the side with carrots. A bowl of white creamy soup, a plate with 3 white steamed buns not unlike the Chinese steamed bun his mother made at home. Finally, a pie looking pastry on a smaller plate.
It was pretty weird, his mother proclaimed to be Asian but her last name was Stone. At least, it didn¡¯t go to nothing as Ebony loved her food. Probably why he liked rice over bread.
The soup was potato soup, perhaps it was russell soup, there were normal looking potatoes here too and not just the black ones. The steak was likely bison as Ebony recognised the smell with his enhanced Perception and sense of smell. It was in between medium rare and medium well and the juices were flooding his tastebuds.
The vegetables were lightly roasted and retained most of their fresh flavour. The buns were actually turkey meat buns, the turkey had been minced with vegetables and plenty of pepper giving it a nice spicy kick. Ebony loved spicy and sour foods, this was the first spicy food he had since coming to Elcra but spice from pepper was different from chilly. The pie was a fruit pie, he didn¡¯t know what fruit but the sauce was reddish and the cubes of fruit were sweet but not overbearing.
Ebony finished every bite and morsel of food on the tray in no time at all. It was the most delicious meal of Ebony''s short life. He took the dishes down to the kitchen to wash and stood outside of Scarlet¡¯s door. The employees just took the dishes away from him, confirming that they were their dishes and not Scarlet''s.
¡°Thanks for the meal, it was delicious,¡± Ebony said, not bothering to knock or check if she was in.
Ebony returned to his room and was finally alone again for some full on multi magic tasking. The room had a light white mist around as Frost Mist Perception Sphere ran. He couldn¡¯t keep it running for long at 100 mana per minute if he used it at his max range of 5 metres so he decreased it to a measly 1 metre radius. The mana cost reduced drastically for every metre. The bed had a layer of frost as he sat on it.
He vibrated the ice mana in Frost Mist Perception and found that it was possible to use them to create sound too. Ebony wanted to recreate the sounds of different instruments through Mana Vibrations alone. Starting with his favourite, the piano, he tried to reproduce the sounds key by key for all 88 of them one by one with his memory alone.
Battle Hum rang together to get rhythm going as he tried all sorts of bgm or theme songs. His goal was to use battle hum with Mana Vibrations so he doesn¡¯t actually have to hum and disrupt his breath. Ebony bet that the Elemental Sensitivity Potion would work together with his Mana Perception in some way and this was the best way to push Mana Perception now. He had no idea that elemental sensitivity had nothing to do with his perception of mana.
Whatever remaining mana he had was conjured into ice mana, compressed and imbued into himself to train his cold resistance. Ebony made a lot of progress throughout the night, the higher his Core Skill level rises the less sleep he seems to need. Ebony also put 10 points into Agility, 15 into Intelligence and 5 into Perception.
Before the sun rose he stopped magic training and just meditated before getting all his stuff on and leaving. The overflowing mana getting absorbed by his bracelet.
He left the town and sped off at new speeds, uninhibited by the decrease in Agility from Icebody Enhancement. He was headed towards the forest Scarlet mentioned.
To not bore himself from boring travel he used Frost Mist Perception Sphere and Mana Vibrations to continue recreating piano keys again but made the radius even smaller, lower output than his mana regeneration in case he needed the mana. He needed a little more focus at keeping the Frost Mist Perception Sphere following him at high speeds.
He then cast a Layered Ice Carapace and slowly increased the number of layers such that he doesn¡¯t drop below 3 quarters of his mana. Regenerating mana while casting for the win.
Overloading his casting glove in the manner he did cause it to improve fast. He could easily cast a single-layered shield in almost 2 seconds now, which wasn¡¯t fast but better.
Training Frost Mist Perception Sphere, Mana Vibrations, Mana Perception, Layered Ice Carapace and Deep Persistent Meditation at the same time on the move. Ebony still wasn¡¯t satisfied with it. He drew his greatsword and started dancing with it while he ran and ran, using a Treading Step boosted Two-Handed Power Stab from time to time.
It slowed his forward motion a lot but Ebony didn¡¯t care, he glanced at his stamina levels. Stamina: 499/500. It hasn¡¯t dropped for a long time now, a quick mental calculation told him he regenerated around 421 stamina per minute as long as Deep Persistent Meditation kept running.
Ebony played around with wielding it with both one hand, two and switching amongst his hands. Making it as fluid as he could, he could feel that he was really close to evolving his mastery.
The monsters in the plains who came at Ebony were sliced down without Ebony stopping. Ebony only stopped to bury them if he didn¡¯t need their materials or meat. He had long had the habit of burying their bodies, it was a lot easier in Hoarfrost Glade as he just had to clear some snow up and didn¡¯t bury the monkeys deep. Ebony made handles on his shield again and used it as a makeshift shovel.
Ebony did pass through a party or two here but they either didn¡¯t see him or didn¡¯t care about a crazy wacko almost haphazardly swinging a greatsword around with a light fog and eerie sounds covering him together with a giant floating turtle shelled-like ice shield behind him.
The big bulky bag really got in the way so he hung it on the inside of his now 5 layered shield which he started compressing. The 2 curves on the top of it were perfect for hooking his bag on, like shoulders but he still lightly froze it on so that it wouldn¡¯t drop.
He started to see trees in a few hours and still unsatisfied, Ebony jumped onto a tree branch and pushed Treading Step to see if he could really move as if terrain didn¡¯t matter. A single step took him from tree to tree and back to the ground before going up onto the trees again. Ebony was pretty awesome at parkouring but practice makes perfect, he wanted to be more agile than a monkey in their own homeground. Although there weren¡¯t known monkey monsters in this unnamed forest.
Ebony¡¯s low strength caused him to do little harm to even level 30 monsters if not struck right but if he could damage them then he didn¡¯t bother using Icebody Enhancement so that he could improve on his swordsmanship.
He saw a weird creature he had never seen and closed up to Identify it, having gotten used to Identifying things from a much further distance.
[Rhoat Lvl 52]
The Rhoat stood on 2 thick legs, a head shorter than Ebony but much longer and tailed. Its back was round and wide looking like a turtles¡¯ shell but the expansion and contractions on it with mucus seeping out was a little disgusting, it didn¡¯t smell pleasant either. Its ovalish head only had a single eye, 2 holes on where Ebony assumed were cheeks and a large ass mouth with many sets of shark like teeth. It was completely brownish and greenish, somewhat camouflaging itself.
Scarlet said they were pack monsters but this poor guy was alone in a relatively open spot, since they¡¯re purely physical they shouldn''t be hiding underground or other magic. Of course she could be lying too but Ebony doubted it.
Ebony stopped training his magic and got a roughly 5% compressed Icebody Enhancement going, he was slowly but surely getting the hang of it. His Strength and Endurance getting about 42 stat point buff while Constitution received about 45. He should finally rival the average warrior¡¯s Strength stat at his level with enhancement magic.
The Rhoat, aggressive as it looked, was the first to take the leap and chomp at Ebony.
Ebony met it with his usual sidestep dodge and counter only to almost widen his eyes in surprise as the muscle shell thing on its back morphed into a giant arm, punching Ebony.
¡®So that¡¯s the rhoats¡¯ vital muscle thing? It¡¯s one of the components in the pill Top ate right? I can see that.¡¯ another reason to hunt Rhoats are that they have something called a vital muscle and was used in some crafts like making a potion that increases muscle tissue regeneration speed. Though the description of it was a small fist sized ball and not a literal superhuman sized fist of muscle.
Ebony¡¯s Layered Ice Carapace that was on stand-by moved to defend him. He didn¡¯t just stand there and got around it, slashing at wherever looked like a weak spot.
The Rhoat didn¡¯t have any particularly hard spots and was just muscle upon muscle, they were thick but Ebony managed to land light cuts and bleeding. The cuts had mucus and muscle cover it and it was as if the Rhoat never got damaged.
The giant arm on its back morphed into all kinds of shapes like a hammer, axe, feet and kept trying to whack Ebony in some fashion but Ebony didn¡¯t even need to try for his shield to be able to cope with it.
An Ice Sword which was shaped after his own flew in from behind Ebony, right where the Rhoat tried to bite his head off. It only takes a second to form one now but a second was too slow for Ebony so, he would at best form it and hide or ¡®hold¡¯ onto it until he feels is the best time to use. It hit.
Stabbing pretty deep but the Rhoat stopped it by biting on it, the resilience of Ebony¡¯s magic or perhaps mana was starting to show as it required the level 52 Rhoat a second bite.
His Layered Ice Carapace took dozens and dozens of blunt blows with ease and the curvature of it was wonderful at sliding the not so sharp muscle blows. Ebony was also unconsciously adjusting his shield to take less pressure and force. Especially when the Rhoat was pissed at the shield for blocking its every attempt at smashing Ebony and started to focus on breaking the shield itself. Ebony just has his shield retreat, not to take pointless damage.
Ebony watched as the mucus tried to cover the Rhoat''s face and froze instead, having difficulty healing itself. It was surprisingly weak to cold and Ebony wasn¡¯t going to let his greatest advantage go. Imbuing enough ice mana into his greatsword to produce a chilly mist sinking to the ground.
The cuts Ebony landed now greatly slowed in healing or perhaps being covered up by its other muscle mass. The Rhoat got more and more defensive as it started to use less of the back shell muscle. The muscle mass going into its limbs and tail to protect itself better from strikes.
It was actually capable of condensing its muscles to make itself smaller and denser. It got faster and harder for Ebony strikes to dig in. The more disturbing fact was it slowly got more humanoid or more Ebony shaped, with one of its arms sword shaped and the other, shield.
It didn¡¯t manage to completely copy the form, too bad its adaptation was a little too late as a huge portion of its body when condensed was frozen stiff and couldn¡¯t move well. It eventually collapsed onto the ground on its own, still breathing and spasming. It didn¡¯t seem to have any sort of vocal cords as it was mostly silent, its single eye staring at Ebony.
Right before he could put it out of misery a small shadow shot out of its body and into the air, splatting onto a tree.
The brownish green fluid splattered on the green was releasing a foul rancid smell that could cause passing birds to faint.
¡®My money is on it calling its buddies.¡¯ the smell didn¡¯t even cause a single nerve or muscle on Ebony¡¯s face to twitch, he could have stopped the Rhoat but what for? This way he didn¡¯t have to go look for monsters trying to kill him.
His shield had a few faint cracks on it but he was already pushing his excess mana to repair and further condensing it as he decapitated the Rhoat. With enhancement on, he still had roughly 6 mana per min to spare elsewhere. Deciding not to use Ice Sword anymore after the first one, the excess mana went into his shield and Mana Injection into his sword.
¡®It''s not dead?¡¯ Ebony thought as the muscles of the body and head squirmed towards each other, it was pretty grotesque but Ebony was a huge movie guy and it was interesting to see something like this in real life. He also didn¡¯t get the kill notification.
Ebony let the head and body meet and connect before stabbing it and injecting more ice mana into it. Luckily for Ebony it didn¡¯t take more mana than he produced to freeze the mass of muscle.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Rhoat Lvl 52], enemy 10 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
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Though it was not easy to calculate how much experience it was required to level, many have attempted to give a rough estimate. The imperial army had a lot of people to train and gather data from so there were some rough estimates for low level combatants.
A level 30 would roughly need over a hundred solo lvl 30 monster kills. Most people staying in parties would take many days to weeks if they hunt 10 monsters their level a day, unlike Ebony, others had limited stamina and mana. Monsters a level or 2 higher might lower the number needed by about 10 or so but there were too many unknown factors to take into account.
Parties of 5 would require over 500 monsters at level 30 to level 31? Ridiculous, and the party members wouldn¡¯t even level at the same rate as experience gained was not equal amongst the number of people but decided by some kind of contribution. So perhaps, the more skilled ones would level faster while the rest suffered a slow levelling rate.
Furthermore, that¡¯s only if they hunted monsters their level, Ebony saw some parties of apprentice ranks hunting those lower level than them. Why? Well, monsters don¡¯t always travel solo, they actually tend to be in small groups. It takes 5 apprentice ranks to safely hunt something of their level without harm. All things considered it''s all about risk management, if they are not satisfied with being weak and their slow progress then they should place their aim higher.
The parties with normal non-apprentice Classes are much stronger on average and could safely hunt those higher level than themselves.
Ebony learnt more about the experience pool theory Clovis told him. Everyone on the same level had the same sized experience pool or bucket. Imagine a bucket but with a film or filter over it, a concentrator or diluter so to speak.
Killing a monster at the same level pours a cup of ¡®experience¡¯ into the bucket but the film wouldn¡¯t do anything as the experience is the same concentration as what one needs.
A monster of a higher level would provide a more concentrated experience which the filter would dilute to match one¡¯s own necessary concentration. 10 levels higher was the bench mark where your filter is unable to dilute completely and concentrated experience enters your bucket.
The theory is that the concentrated experience is not able to diffuse in the experience pool but forcefully expands in volume to match one¡¯s own experience concentration which was where the additional experience was from.
Lower level monster¡¯s experience will instead get concentrated by the filter before entering your experience pool. Too low a level and the experience will not be concentrated enough to enter your pool or bucket. Though it shouldn¡¯t be no experience they may be stuck in the filter waiting for more experience to concentrate before letting through the filter and into the pool.
Some say that everyone¡¯s experience pool was the same size regardless of level and only the required concentration or density of experience increases with level but whether the amount of experience required to level increases or the concentration required increases doesn¡¯t mean anything to Ebony since it just means it gets harder to level as he levels.
Seeing just some skill levels here and there, Ebony was planning to just aim for at least 10 levels higher than him, 20 would be perfect. It shouldn¡¯t take many Rhoats for another level or 10.
Ebony wanted to continue watching the mass of muscle that even though dead, kept on compressing itself and shattering the ice embedded into it but the noises and shaking ground told him its friends were coming.
[Rhoat Lvl 55]
[Rhoat Lvl 52]
[Rhoat Lvl 54]
¡®I should start moving deeper so that they can call stronger allies.¡¯ The Rhoats were just shy of the level range he wanted them to be. It was interesting to see them in all shapes and sizes. One was wolf-like, another tigerish shape and the last was similar to the one he saw before. All had the same shell like back.
Ebony only used his shield, Icebody Enhancement, Ice Injection and his swordplay with a power stab or 2 every now and then when the situation allowed. He got used to their movements fast and with Treading Steps he played around with them and had them in the palm of his hands.
With every strike he landed their movement turned stiffer, their healing or regeneration not able to work as advertised for them, helped further. They were a poor match up against Ebony.
He just didn¡¯t expect the wolf one to eat the remains of his first kill that turned into a fist sized ball which should be the vital muscle. Ebony was busy with the other 2 and although he could have stopped it if he really tried with his shield he was slightly curious to see what else they had up their sleeves.
The wolfish Rhoat retched and their grotesque muscle contractions and expansions were even more apparent. Its transformation took a few minutes in the time that Ebony managed to kill the other 2 and gain a level in his Class. He was just watching as it transformed into the form the first one tried to take before it died.
¡®Ooo interesting, some kind of muscle memory dna nonsense?¡¯ Ebony already had new training plans from this ability of theirs alone. They were able to morph into different forms to counter specific opponents or copy them since the first one tried to copy Ebony, giving them all unique forms depending on what they have fought before. When they die all the muscle either contracts to the max or have some wither and rot away but seem to keep some kind or data within that others of its kind can copy.
¡®No wonder they were herd monsters. They eat each other to continue evolving.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t take too long to dispatch the transformed Rhoat too.
He waited for all of them to become fist sized before encasing them in ice and tossing them into his bag. His bag had many compartments so his clothes were safe and clean away from the disgusting ball but keeping it in ice was just an extra precaution.
Ebony rushed towards the direction the Rhoat backups came from going deeper and deeper. He defrosted all 3 vital muscles and fed the first Rhoat he saw. It actually didn¡¯t rush up to attack Ebony seeing his actions and ate all 3 of them. Ebony fought the other 3 Rhoats right behind in the meantime, stopping them from eating the vital muscles.
The new transformation took even longer, almost 15 minutes. When it was done it didn¡¯t even hesitate to jump at Ebony who stood a distance away.
Was it the fact that Ebony killed the previous 4 got ingrained into the vital muscle or just monster logic of killing anything? Ebony didn¡¯t know and didn¡¯t care, was it a cruel experiment? Nah, he was merely giving them a chance right?
The current Rhoat was humanoid with a huge sword arm and shield arm, Ebony tried to prolong fighting it to see if they can learn how to fight like a human. The Rhoat decided the shield to be a bad idea and made another sword arm out of it. Maybe cause Ebony didn¡¯t hold the shield itself and it could not make a floating meat shield.
Interesting but silly, its flesh wasn¡¯t sharp nor was it as hard as Ebony¡¯s sword. Ebony continued his experiments till he got to the area where they moved in tens and were all at least 20 levels higher than him. The additional experience from 10 and 20 levels higher were significant as he gained another level hitting 38.
He realised that they were trying to copy their enemy''s form, he had seen the other monsters of their form like the wolf and tiger but they were not his target so he ignored them for the most part. Though Ebony did see one or two human shaped ones before he fed them his ball vital muscle with at least 20 to 30 generations of change already.
A stray [Talwolf Lvl 42] who tried to bite his head off was processed into its parts minus its bones and organs for his dinner. He was beginning to think just one wolf wasn¡¯t enough for him with how much energy he was expending non-stop. Ebony kept its pelt, bones and fangs.
Their ability to learn was not too shabby, they stopped trying to completely copy Ebony and kept themselves flexible to every form change they had. Maybe they had to eat their kill to fully copy the muscle composition of an enemy. They tend to grow fast, agile and strong legs to avoid or keep up with Ebony¡¯s footwork now.
With the increase in their numbers Ebony had needed another shield which he dipped into his mana pool for.
Level 60s could cause larger cracks on a 5 layered one but his first bag carrying one was already fully compressed by now and they had no such luck at destroying it. Ebony had added 10 stat points to Intelligence and the other 10 to Wisdom just to even things out a little more with the monsters.
The nameless forest wasn¡¯t considered large by Elcra¡¯s standard but it was by no means small. Even so, it wasn¡¯t like monsters were everywhere. When he was tracking their mucus down he would practice his magic and perception and compress his Layered Ice Carapace.
There were some personal tricks Rowent taught him at training and expanding his range that he was going to try when he could afford to, he wasn¡¯t going to do it when he needed the mana in the case of an attack.
As Mana Perception levels he could feel pure mana in the surroundings more and more clearly, yet it doesn¡¯t interfere with his other physical senses. To a small extent, he could exert some tiny control over it but it wasn¡¯t worth the effort at the moment. Other than his own there were no ice elemental mana in the area but there was one more type of mana that was unknown to him. He couldn¡¯t quite bring his attention onto the mana yet for some reasons, was elemental affinity really a thing?
Ebony got more and more used to fighting Rhoats and doesn¡¯t even bother with those under 20 levels higher than him. A single good stab in them and enough ice mana was enough to badly incapacitate their mucus and muscle movement and contractions.
Affecting more than just the area he wounded them, they couldn¡¯t use the muscle mass there to heal or transform, it stops them from changing into some forms. The muscles got stiff and they were just a wiggling mass of target.
They had no bones and were soft-bodied, even their higher level didn¡¯t change the fact or widen the gap enough.
The sun went down then up, down and up again and again. 3 days passed.
Ebony¡¯s only break was his meal time. He knew how to start a fire but had no pot to cook so roasted wolf and birds with recognised herbs, and water bread instead of souper bread was eaten.
Sleep? Even before stats were introduced to him, staying awake a night or two wasn¡¯t anything special. But fighting almost non-stop for 3 days and nights was not just staying awake and was on another scale all together.
Pushing himself over his limits was so nostalgic, his daily life on Earth after his ¡®trial¡¯ was just normal, boring to the limit training. Then came stats and skills, and it got harder and harder to even feel like he reached his limits. Physical exhaustion was one thing, even with stamina showing an almost full bar he could feel his body creak a little with every step he took. Yet, he was more familiar with it than anything, Peak Performance pushing through it as a breath of fresh air.
Mental exhaustion on the other hand was something completely new to Ebony. With moving meditation or Persistent Meditation here Ebony didn¡¯t think it would be possible to feel mentally tired. Oh how ecstatic he was when he realised that he could still make progress in his mental state.
He had, on multiple occasions trained his body till he collapsed yet every single time he was clearly thinking, feeling and sensing everything going on as he laid on the ground. Even if someone saw him on the ground they didn¡¯t think anything was wrong with him since his heartbeat and breathing was normal. Ebony thought that no amount of physical exertion can pressure his mental state anymore. Mental exercises weren¡¯t working too well for him either but it was something.
Here, his body changed. Evolved. There were much greater heights he could reach for and he would.
The constant use of Mana Compression, Mana Perception and all things magic, in general, was a real mental workout. Ebony did all that while constantly training whatever physical skill he could. All that while constantly looking out for battles, watching out for danger.
His only disappointment in progress was his sword mastery which he knew was close to tipping over. But nothing in the forest could help him improve his mastery. It reminded him of Scarlet¡¯s swordsmanship which was something he admired and could only hope to reach. His mind was no longer so disturbed thinking of her, he should be able to act naturally if he sees her again.
That said, Ebony was starting to think he went a little too far at thinning the herd when it got harder to find monsters, he had already scoured the whole forest and only there were few he considered as hunting targets now. He was looking at his last target before he returned to Plainston for a good old bath.
[Rhoat Lvl 70]
It was solo and Ebony had been watching it for almost 2 hours or so due to it being a little different from the others. If level 70 was a monster¡¯s supposed limit then they would have to get others'' essence and not just ambient one¡¯s. It wouldn¡¯t be weird for monsters to kill people so a few level differences would be natural.
But this Rhoat was in the form of a ball the size of a large yoga exercise ball, with a single eye and huge ass mouth. Ebony watched it from a far on a tree branch because it saw the Rhoat eat another living Rhoat and not the vital muscle. A cannibal Rhoat.
Not so fascinating considering their powers of gaining the other Rhoats muscle memory but Ebony hadn¡¯t seen any infighting amongst themselves nor a cannibal as long as the other party was still alive.
The more interesting thing was that it kept moving in Ebony¡¯s direction by growing 4 wolf-like legs out even when he was sure it didn¡¯t notice him. Then he remembered his disgusting, now almost black ball of Condense Vital Muscle, it was ultra attractive to Rhoats now. Ebony didn¡¯t bother counting but it passed through at least a hundred mouths now. The previous few who ate it gained a few levels after their transformations.
¡®A perfect final hunt before some real food and sleep.¡¯ Ebony thought. His body and mind long past their limits. He turned off his Frost Mist and the piano playing stopped. He mentally picked up the 2 new fully compressed 5 Layered Ice Carapace and 1 fully compressed sword of ice that he was using like Rowent used his spear of fire. Leaving one cast free after he imbued 500 MP into his drawn greatsword. His shields did break a few times during mid group battle which he had to replace a few times.
Icebody Enhancement, roughly 20% compressed ice mana flowed through his body. He was slightly translucent now and was a pretty freaky sight, he could see through his skin and observe his muscles a little. Though only his face and right hand was showing on the outside since the rest of his body was covered.
Only now did Ebony think ice magic was usually depicted blue or light blue in colour, even his sense perceives ice mana in blue. Even the fact that he perceives colour in mana eluded him till now, he just never thought about it much. His Ice Sword though was white and transparent like ice cubes in a cold drink. He was no expert but even he knew that the white was air bubbles or minerals, since he formed it with mana there shouldn¡¯t be minerals.
His Layered Ice Carapace on the other hand was light blue with no white in it. He formed and created the spell with a lot more care than Ice Sword. It was probably due to sticking the ice mana so close and structurally sound, copying the scales of a turtle. If he¡¯s not wrong when ice turns or looks blue it was because it absorbed colours of the light spectrum other than blue or something.
Logically the air bubbles in ice would make it weaker or more brittle right? Ebony thought he should try forming his Ice Sword by structuring the ice mana in it better. It may make it tougher though the science he knew may not mean anything magically it wouldn¡¯t hurt to try.
The denser his ice magic, the bluer it gets though not obvious, it was there. Then he thought to his frost flames, they were dark blue. The Frostblaze Amur Maples he had seen was lighter in blue, but they got lighter in colour as the rarity increased. The main one growing on progeniturtle was basically white in colour. Did they work differently?
No point thinking so much but he should be able to use combusting ice mana more and more soon with his current amount and regeneration of mana.
¡°Hey buddy, looking for this?¡± Ebony unfroze the stinky black condensed vital muscle. He could experiment more with his own magic any other time.
Chapter 34: Spirit
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 111
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 49
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 59
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 60
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 77
Single-handed Greatsword Mastery Lvl 54
Frost Injection Lvl 54
Ice Sword Lvl 35
Two-handed Power Stab Lvl 40
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 38
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 23
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: N/A
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 42
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 38
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 82
Mana Perception Lvl 32
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 300/300
Stamina: 500/500
Mana: 1208/1870
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 30
Vitality: 30
Constitution: 80
Endurance: 50
Agility: 60
Intelligence: 101
Wisdom: 187
Perception: 50
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 10
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 28
Running Lvl 29
Battle Hum Lvl 28
Mental Mapping Lvl 8
Kicking Mastery Lvl 34
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 6
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 10
Dish Washing Lvl 8
Physical Conditioning Lvl 5
Magical Conditioning Lvl 5
Peak Performance Lvl 36
Tracking Lvl 9
Game Processing Lvl 10
Heat Resistance Lvl 11
Mana Vibration Lvl 23
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
Many of Ebony¡¯s skills may be lagging in levels compared to his Class level but his Core Skill alone was far ahead.
The little Strength increase of 10 was just so that he could shoulder the weight of the robe better and he kinda felt that he needed some more Strength when he wasn¡¯t using enhancement magic.
Being ganged up on made him take some heavy hits and the 5 Vitality was somewhat an insurance. His self healing or regeneration was fast, small cuts heal in a minute or so.
He wanted to have an even tougher body but he cut into Constitution a lot as he really doesn¡¯t get hit much with his footwork and ability to predict their movements. His stat points went into Perception as it really was an area he had long wanted to beef up.
Perception was supportive in battle but just as important as any other stat. Improved senses helped with his decision making, having better and more accurate predictions of an enemy¡¯s muscle and joint movement, line of sight and so on.
His divination resistance gained 3 levels at the same time one day ago in the middle of his hunt, it was another reason he buffed up Perception. The feeling of someone watching him grew stronger but he didn¡¯t notice anyone nearby constantly monitoring him even with an increase with Perception. Increasing Perception only made the feeling that someone was watching him more obvious.
It didn¡¯t bother him at all though, Deep Persistent Meditation going strong as usual. There would always be people watching whether you know it or not and others¡¯ perception of him rarely mattered to Ebony. Their motive for watching or divining him was more interesting to him than worrying.
He doubted he would need any more Endurance for a long time. Agility got a decent 15 points in. Aiming to be some sort of mage in his Sub-Class, Intelligence would pay off more and more and it already was.
25 levels in his Profession gave 25 points in Wisdom while Ebony pumped another 20 in. Using compressed skills in battle gave his Profession its fair share of experience. Perception got its well deserved 30 stat points, it would help when he returned to use the magic potion.
???
Rhoats usually move and attack aggressively regardless of position or whatsoever. Staying up on a tree, 9 out of 10 times, calling out to them would get them to jump or climb up unless they had ranged attacks. This particular cannibal Rhoat had the same reaction but different actions.
Ebony didn¡¯t expect it to charge up to the tree he was on and morph back into a mouth ball before impact, taking a bite of the tree. Engulfing its girth entirely, chomping it in half.
Ebony had hung off his floating shield with his free hand, lightly landing on the ground. He couldn¡¯t fly or even float but he could slow and guide his fall with it. Sooner or later, he believed he could hover while standing on it.
Not planning to give it the enhancement drug known as the condensed vital muscle for now, Ebony faced it like any other Rhoat he had been facing the past 3 days. The Rhoat¡¯s level of 70 wasn¡¯t all that special compared to the level difference Ebony had fought with already, its speed and power similar to its peers despite being a cannibal.
Its transformations are nothing special, just everything in this forest that Ebony had found other Rhoats being able to transform, a few human weapon types and humanoid shapes. However, its ability to switch and mix parts and use them to sling itself was unique.
It held onto two close trees, pushed back and slingshotted itself, turning into a battle axe mid-flight. Ebony saw it coming a mile away and dodged it but the cannibal Rhoat didn¡¯t falter. It whipped an arm muscle around as it passed a tree, coiling and curling around it. The immense centrifugal force shot it back at Ebony before the tree got rooted out of the ground.
It turned part wolf and part ball headed with its head being 5 times larger than it should be, aiming to swallow Ebony up. Ebony sidestepped, with his shield close to his side facing the mouth and Ice Sword right where he was.
The Rhoat, too fast to stop its flight, managed to shut its mouth and flew through Ebony¡¯s Ice Sword. The Ice Sword was intact where it was and the Rhoat crashed into tree after tree, digging into the earth with its many claws and feet. It was surprisingly unharmed, Ebony saw it open a hole in itself where it was going to land on his sword as it flew past. Dodging the strike with its flexibility in altering, contracting and expanding its muscles.
Having seen enough, Ebony tossed the condensed vital muscle to it. Completely stopping its charge, it extended a neck and mouth to eat it out of the air and backed up while staring at Ebony with its single eye. It swallowed after a few seconds of staring. The higher level Rhoats took a shorter time consuming but the more generations Ebony got it the less it mattered. The previous level 70 Rhoat took a half an hour writhing around.
The cannibal Rhoat exploded in volume almost instantly, then deflated, like a balloon. No. It was pulsing like a heart, Ebony could even hear it.
Ebony¡¯s opinion on the cannibal was that it was flexible in its usage of every form, very much so. Other than that, it wasn¡¯t any different from the others. He already got used to every form they had and with nothing new to look forward to Ebony just fed it what it wanted.
The ball of muscle pulsing stopped in under 5 minutes.
It morphed into a familiar humanoid figure, 2 normal muscular legs and 2 thick log-like arms without hands that it started using for the previous tens of generations. It had long realised blunt force worked much better on Ebony. Another 2 flexible tentacles grew from its back, used to disrupt Ebony¡¯s 2 shields.
A few generations ago they used them to wrap and hold onto his shield for the other Rhoats to attack Ebony. Ebony couldn¡¯t get his shield out of their hold with his Intelligence or mental pull being too weak. It didn¡¯t end nicely for the Rhoat when Ebony combusted his shield. They learned to only keep his shields busy instead of holding them in place the painful, numbing way.
Ebony gave it more than enough time, he closed the distance almost instantly. They tried to come up with many different forms to counter Ebony but gave up after about 50 or so generations. Now they tend to make a run for it after completing their ¡®digestion¡¯ of the vital muscle. Seems like even brainless, Ebony was able to carve it into their muscle memory that they were a horrible match for ice magic.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Fighting in his usual battle trance, his body moving without input from his mind. His weird, stupid ideas in battle has harmed himself more than his opponents most of the time. Having his mind clear fit him better, his body is more than capable of fighting without much additional input.
The cannibal Rhoat was nothing special, Ebony dodged and weaved as he slashed out again and again. Stabbing at it, it split a hole open in itself but Ebony didn¡¯t stop there. He swung up while turning to its back and following up with another slash.
The cannibal Rhoat seemed to be able to secrete a lot more mucus than the others to counter the ice mana a little but it was only a matter of time at this rate. The Rhoat was actually retreating as it attacked Ebony with caution as with many previous generations of Rhoats.
It settled for touch and go attacks, quickly retrieving its whip like muscles after a smack or two. The previous generations had tried grabbing and holding Ebony in place. When it grabbed onto Ebony¡¯s legs to stop him from moving around them so well, he injected ice mana into them from the contact.
They couldn¡¯t touch him while even a little scratch Ebony landed was slowly killing them and causing them to lose mobility. His thick shields are more than enough to block its blows and strikes, his movement speed enough to keep up with it to prevent it from escaping. Especially when they lose speed after every strike from Ebony.
The cannibal Rhoat liked slingshotting itself away with its whip-like arms. Its burst of speed was something Ebony didn¡¯t have, Ebony¡¯s Treading Steps was more on consistent top speed rather than short bursts of acceleration. The earlier Frost Injections were just enough to help Ebony keep up the chase.
When Ebony got a hold of its tentacle and forced ice mana into it, ice and frost crept up to the bulk of the Rhoat. It used its log-like arm to smash into it to shatter some of the frozen muscle mass and free itself. It probably had a brain or something within all the muscle mass, being pretty smart. It had an eye and teeth that moved and shifted around its body as well.
It spit, or shot from some part of its body, mucus at Ebony but missed terribly. No Rhoat was coming to its rescue, first of all only similarly levelled Rhoats would come or so Ebony noticed. Hardly any high level ones remain in the forest. Secondly, this Rhoat was avoided by other Rhoats or so Ebony had seen for the time he watched the cannibal. Lastly, no amount of them can stop Ebony anyway.
An Ice Sword flew and broke the thinner branch it hung on to, causing its fall and Ebony stabbing right into its eye. Only using just enough mana to kill it, he didn¡¯t want to damage the vital muscle too much.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Rhoat Lvl 70], enemy 20 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level up 49 - 50, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Treading Step level up 59 - 60¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery level up 54 - 55¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Frost Injection level up 54 - 55¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Layered Ice Carapace level up 38 - 39¡¯
His Mana Meister and generic skills didn¡¯t get any levels and neither did his Core Skill which was rare. Repetition alone was only gonna level his mastery, he would need a stronger push to evolve his Greatsword Mastery. He could use the greatsword pretty fluently already, a single hand or two was interchangeably used depending on his needs.
He allocated all 10 stat points into Wisdom instead of holding onto them.
After waiting for a little, the Rhoat corpse condensed into a [Condensed Vital Muscle (Common)]. It wasn¡¯t any special after all, the ball looked the same as it previously was. Ebony picked it up and went back to the tree he left his bag on, he left it there after his first shield broke. He didn¡¯t want his bag getting damaged since he just bought it and he doubted it was tougher than his Layered Ice Carapace spell.
His Mental Map was a 3D map of what he had seen so it was not hard to find it. Wisdom also helps with memory and Ebony¡¯s memory was originally pretty good already.
He cast Frost Mist Perception Sphere and vibrated them to play simple piano tunes. It actually also trained his Ice Mana Manipulation. He carried both shields along as he hummed and made his way back to Plainston. He stuck both shields together and stacking them, hoping it would look like he was triple casting instead of quadra. But, he didn¡¯t really care if anyone found out so it was just a minor attempt at hiding it.
It didn¡¯t take long before Plainston¡¯s walls were in sight.
¡°HALT!¡± a deep voice reverberated through the air. It was coming from atop the town walls and Ebony could see some archers aiming their bow and arrows at him.
¡®They sure like saying halt.¡¯ Ebony stopped a couple hundred metres away from Plainston.
He looked up to see a middle aged human archer or at least he was geared like one, he was too far for Ebony to Identify. Ebony looked at the one who shouted and didn¡¯t bother raising his hands. Waiting to see why they stopped him.
¡°Dispel your magic and identify yourself or be recognised as a threat and dealt with like one!¡± the guard captain in charge of the archers ordered. He was standing with 3 other archers while a few more were clambering up beside them.
¡®Can¡¯t they see I¡¯m human? My mist isn¡¯t so thick he can¡¯t see me furthermore, the archers should have decent Perception. Maybe people aren¡¯t allowed to cast magic close to towns and cities?¡¯ Ebony thought as he stopped casting, the 2 shields dropping as well. He was trying to play One Summer¡¯s Day as well but recreating a single key and putting together a whole piece were completely different.
Ebony didn¡¯t like shouting, he was looking at the man who shouted and was thinking if he could use Mana Vibrations by putting mana into his throat and directing it towards him. Ebony saw that the guard sighed, slapping the head of a younger looking archer, waving the archers away before jumping down the walls and making his way to Ebony. The man stopped a distance away from Ebony and called out again.
¡°My apologies for stopping you like that. One of my men mistook you for a recently reported spirit or banshee from the woods.¡± the man bowed.
[Archer Lvl 75]
¡°Mmm. Can you tell me more? I didn¡¯t see anything like that while I was there.¡± Ebony asked, unperturbed from the small event of having arrows pointed at him. He was more interested in the spirit talk. He searched the whole forest but there was nothing like that. How would he fight a spirit? Could physical attacks land or work? Is it intangible? Will his magic pass through it as well? How would it attack Ebony if it was intangible? Were the questions he had rather than caring for his apologies, they were just doing their jobs anyway.
¡°The Quest Hall has received multiple reports from freelancers and passing travellers that they spotted a ghast like floating fog that produces all sorts of disturbing noises. It was sighted moving through the forest at high speeds and is said to use ice magic.
It is haunting the forest of its inhabitants and the high level rhoats are said to be hunted down. The Quest Hall just set it to be approximately level 80 and has advised the freelancers and local towns Quest Halls to avoid the area. It is likely you didn¡¯t meet the monster. A request by the town itself has already been posted so you shouldn¡¯t go there until a high level party takes it down.¡± the guard explained.
¡®Is that me he¡¯s talking about? Disturbing noise, I mean I¡¯m still new at this sound magic thing okay?¡¯ Ebony almost mentally facepalmed himself. He moved around trees and land really quickly and hunted monsters almost as quickly Ebony was pretty sure there was no such monster in there.
¡°Has anyone taken the quest yet?¡± Ebony asked. He wouldn¡¯t like to waste their efforts chasing a non-existent monster or better yet, hunt him down.
¡°There aren¡¯t any parties that high level around these parts and hardly any are crazy enough to hunt a spirit or ghost type without the right skills for it. There aren¡¯t even many mages here. If the spirit isn¡¯t taken care of soon, the bounty for it may go up enough so that parties from the closest city may take it up. Oh wait, if I¡¯m not wrong the Xeng lady left town earlier towards the woods. Damn, the Xeng women really live up to their prestige and name, if the stories about them weren¡¯t exaggerated then it shouldn¡¯t be an issue for long. Didn¡¯t even bat an eye at the approximated level 80 even though she was only level 46. And she¡¯s going alone.¡±
¡°...are there many Xengs in this town?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Nah, how can that be? This countryside is far from them, though they aren''t exactly a rare sight nowadays. We are lucky to spot one in our town. Seeing her level she probably came for the new dungeon. I think her name was Scarlet?¡±
¡®...They sent Scarlet to hunt me down? Hot. Damn. I don¡¯t know how good she is with fire magic but her swordsmanship and speed alone is more than enough to kill me before I know it.¡¯ Ebony thought. He was pretty good at gauging one¡¯s strength if he had to say so.
He was brought around the world to challenge more types of martial artists than he could count. There were more underground rings than he imagined on Earth, too bad they were mostly pretty boring matches. Ebony didn¡¯t know how his mother found so many hidden experts or hermits and monks to fight with him. None came even close to the beat downs his mother gave him but some were pretty damn good.
He had seen some strong people on Elcra. Though the levels of power were on a completely different scale. Gen, he couldn¡¯t feel anything. It might be his senses being weak as an unclassed or that Gen was hiding it somehow, but he was definitely the strongest creature Ebony has seen so far by a long shot.
The village chief, Orren Wit and his wife Ophelia were both at a high level. They exude strength in their slender bodies despite being mage and archer. Yet, they didn¡¯t seem unsurpassable as with Enya, the rogue Frost Elf.
On the escort team, Rowent and Dina were the most talented. Rowent has talent with magic, Dina was quite the talented fighter overall. Fergus was experienced, perhaps like many or all Elves. Their long life lets them experience more. Top had insight and leadership, his personal strength honestly not that remarkable. Chris was similar to those young disciples Ebony sparred with, training his technique for years but never been in many real fights or battles.
Ebony was confident at beating all of them currently, with the exception of Fergus. If he tried to keep Ebony away and run. Fergus was probably still faster than Ebony though he can probably catch up and tire him out with time. He was weak to Rowent¡¯s fire magic sure, but he could probably dodge them and either wear Rowent out of mana or just block it long enough to get close to him.
He didn¡¯t really fight Obsius but she was strong too. Strength beyond just levels.
Scarlet was a different kind of strong like Orren, Ophelia or Enya with their levels. A different kind of talent like Rowent and Dina. A born fighter. Whether it was the way she walked or carried herself in general, she breathes battle.
¡®Fighting her for real¡ sounds exciting.¡¯ Ebony was wondering if he should go back for a good fight. He hasn¡¯t fought anyone his level he thought he couldn¡¯t beat.
¡°I see. Can I enter town now?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Yes, of course. But please try not to use magic in town.¡± it was weird they didn¡¯t think the spirit was Ebony from the similarities but Ebony didn¡¯t care. It may be his level and Class that doesn¡¯t match hence, a coincidence to them.
The entrance fee was actually raised again to 3 Greys but Ebony had already filled up more than that so he could still enter. According to them, the dungeon seemed to be larger than they initially estimated. Dungeon size had no direct relation to the supposed rarity of the dungeon. This meant that it could accommodate even more people and the town was going under even bigger expansions.
Earth and stone mages are on their way to build the town walls, some already arrived and were checking the surrounding earth. There were even rumours that Plainston will likely be expanded to a city. They needed stone conjurers as well since transporting so much stone would be no easy feat.
Ebony directly went to the Quest Hall to see if any of the wolf pelts and parts or the vital muscle were requested. There is a surprising demand for the pelt, for light leather armour. The bones and fangs are more for small daggers and knives rather than armour.
Most Humans and Elves he had seen spotted lighter armour, Dwarves and Beastmen had a higher amount of metal pieces like chest piece or shoulder pads but none was in a full suit of metal armour.
Rhoats were apparently a common monster in the region and not just that particular forest. The vital muscle was a local material commonly used to make muscle regenerative potions. It is also a component for a few different types of potions. There is a constant and stable demand for it, it speeds up the healing of muscle and tissue damage by a good margin depending on the herbalist, alchemist or the like.
The condensed vital muscle was considered rare since it hardly appears. Most probably didn¡¯t know they could make it the way Ebony did. They were troublesome opponents for many parties due to the group sizes and levels. About 30-40% of the parties Ebony saw in the Quest Hall consisted of apprentices, they took easier and safer requests. The majority ranges from the level 30 to 50, most younger looking than the apprentice counterparts.
The Z&Z escort party were considered elites here and it seems like most parties go for greener pastures once they reach about level 50 here. The forest was too small to accommodate so many parties despite the perfect level range of Rhoats for them. There were many other easier prey to hunt too.
Ebony found the surprising request for the condense vital muscle was from Andel and the pay was pretty good for a common rarity material.
¡®Hmm. Perhaps to speed up Top¡¯s healing? I guess I can bring it to them directly.¡¯ Ebony concluded from the usage of the material.
Ebony traded in the mana ores he had again, this time remembering to keep some Greys and Blacks for expenses. He got a Green and some Greys from his materials, he no longer bothered counting as he slotted empty ores into his bracelet. He previously already filled his up. With his regeneration, Ebony earned more than he could by working if he didn¡¯t spend his mana on training magic.
Elcra¡¯s currency didn¡¯t make much sense to him at first but seeing how so many things, even a water bottle used mana as a power source showed him the need and dependence they had on mana ores or mana. Ebony wondered if they would ever run out of mana ores from mining but it seemed like the Empire had found a way to make mana ores.
Theoretically, they were just solidified mana or highly compressed mana so even Ebony should one day be able to make it. It was a weird property of mana that they can be recharged after they are solidified. What material is an empty mana ore? It''s not actually an ore or a metal right?
Ebony looked up to see Scarlet standing beside him as he was slotting the ores in his bracelet.
¡°Ah, Miss Scarlet. Did you manage to slay the rumoured spirit?¡± The receptionist called out. It garnered looks from parties all around, their enhanced senses easily catching drift of the conversation. The nearby woods was a popular hunting ground after all and the presence of a level 80 spirit was concerning.
¡°It is no longer a threat.¡± Scarlet glanced at Ebony.
¡®Busted huh. When did she start watching me? I didn¡¯t notice her at all. I really don¡¯t think she was the one divining me.¡¯ Ebony nodded expressionlessly at her.
Somewhat thankful he wouldn¡¯t get in any kind of trouble this way. After calming down, Ebony realised his previously embarrassingly exaggerated reactions. His fathers words must have affected him a little, he should just treat her like he treats anyone else and there should be no problem. His heart and mind calmer than ever before, it even seems stronger after the exertion from the long hunt.
The Quest Hall was noisy with cheers and whispers. Cheers from the parties who could travel there again, whispers of both awe and fear. Ebony got many weird looks from people but Scarlet received those of trepidation. Ebony was used to both and ignored every single one.
Scarlet was a [Fire Swordswoman Lvl 47] now, 7 levels since he saw her 3 days ago. She wasn¡¯t slacking either but if Ebony stayed and fought for 3 days straight against monsters much higher level and she came and went into town it would only mean she hunted even higher level monsters to get to that level already. Ebony was getting more and more interested in a spar with her rather than avoiding her now.
Chapter 35: Duel
¡°Thank you. For the inn and also this.¡± Ebony said and tetted in greetings, no longer actively avoiding Scarlet.
Gloves seemed to be worn by most people, even in summer. Maybe it was a freelancer or traveller thing.
¡°...You owe me one.¡± Scarlet eyes burned into Ebony¡¯s.
¡°...¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know what to say. He wanted to propose a spar but he was kinda tired and wanted to rest soon. There was an awkward silence between them as they stared each other down.
The receptionist held a tray with mana ores on it but she seemed nervous and didn¡¯t dare to call out to them for some reason.
¡°How would you like me to pay you back?¡± Ebony asked. Scarlet declined the bounty which confused the receptionist, she was unsure of what to do in such cases.
¡°How about a duel?¡± Scarlet asked. It seemed like she was just as interested in a fight.
¡°Perfect.¡± looks like Ebony wasn¡¯t the only one who was itching to fight.
¡°Any free space? There¡¯s a spirit to slay.¡± Scarlet asked the confused receptionist.
¡°?? If you¡¯re asking if the duelling grounds are open then yes, there should be many free rooms now.¡± The confused reception was even more confused by the statement.
Practically every town and city had a public arena not unlike a colosseum, it was an integral part of their culture. They were more for public tournaments and events so it wasn¡¯t open all day.
A public training ground can also be found in any Empire town or city. However, these training grounds are not safe for most when levels and skills get high enough.
Every Quest Hall has a large underground space, toughened earth and fortified by magic in some fashion. Conflicts between parties and individuals are commonly settled through duels. Parties can train and work on their teamwork here as well.
It was almost tradition for parties arranged by the Quest Hall to duel each other to understand what each other can do. If the gap in strength between the members were too large they could also reapply for another party and which the Quest Hall would take into account. It would take time and luck to match up with equally strong people though so most settle with what they¡¯ve got.
Ebony paid a tiny fee to use the duelling grounds as they call it. They were brought to a well lit spiral staircase towards the basement. They went deeper than Ebony imagined, at least 10 floors down or at least 50 metres underground. The floor and walls were stone and the lights were normal looking lamps on the walls. They were more like Clovis¡¯s table lamps using mana as an energy source instead of phos. Rich of them as expected.
They arrived at another double door not unlike their entrance. It didn¡¯t feel like he was underground at all with the spacious feeling and even more when he saw the wide open space beyond the opened doors.
It was bright as if he was on ground level and at the very least the size of 5 football fields put together. Ebony saw many earth mages over level 100 at the side. The Quest Hall was already undergoing expansion and he did seem to recall seeing people survey the perimeter of the Quest Hall building.
The ceiling was really high up and the dirt floor field was split into multiple ¡®rooms¡¯. The place was basically an underground stadium, the entrance was to the seats high up. Looking down to the square field that had lines dug into the floor, separating and dividing the field into 9.
Some of the lines were lit up in white and there were people within the box, duelling. Coincidentally, Ebony saw a missed arrow fly past a warrior. The arrow deflected off air and landed back in the box within the lighted lines. Ebony saw the arrow impacted into something as light reflected on the invisible walls. Barriers of some kind.
The fee to use this place seemed a little low for the measures put in place. The barriers probably use more mana than he paid. It was kind of a complimentary benefit for the freelancers, part of their taxes of exchanging filled mana ores for empty ones probably go into maintaining the place.
It looks like it was Scarlet¡¯s first time here as well as they looked around curiously. There were only a handful of people on the seat watching the duels. 4 duels taking place at the same time. The one with 10 people in were using 2 boxes worth of space and was a party vs party duel. The other 3 were 1 on 1 duels taking one slot each.
The employee handed them over to the similarly uniformed people overwatching the duelling grounds. They gave some instructions seeing the curious look the both of them had. They just had to walk into one of the free boxes and give them a signal. They would put up the barriers and once the lines boxing them in lighted up, the barriers were up and they could begin. The employees weren¡¯t mages so Ebony could only assume they used some kind of magic technology.
Ebony could hear metal clashing and shouting, cursing. The barriers were not soundproof. The Elcrian curse, ell sounded a lot like hell without pronouncing the h.
They both jumped down to the duelling ground and walked to the empty spot they were asked to take.
Standing near each other, both knew it would be a close range fight. Their thoughts unknown to each other.
???
¡®There¡¯s nothing much here¡ The Cysarus were okay. I¡¯ll look for those 90 and above, a few of them a day should get me to 50 soon enough. I heard there were earth, or was it mud? golems in some parts but they are around 130 to 200¡hmm. I probably shouldn¡¯t try¡ fire, wind, lightning and swords aren¡¯t that good a match for them. Maybe I should¡Nevermind, I¡¯ll drop these inedible scythe arms and continue hunting Cysarus I guess.¡¯ Scarlet pondered as she walked towards the Quest Hall.
¡®It¡¯s noisy in here today.¡¯
The people were complaining amongst themselves while the Quest Hall personnel were busy with the quest board and party complaints.
¡®Avoid the woods? An ice type spirit? Around level 80? Interesting. I¡¯ve never fought a spirit type. They are usually much higher level and why would one be in the middle of a forest? They like dark, damp places don¡¯t they?
Ice type. Likely a stray from Hoarfrost Glade. Since only one was sighted a dungeon break is unlikely. I guess I¡¯ll take the quest, sounds interesting. I could hunt a Rhoat group or two on the way. It was getting boring anyway. Cysaru meat is tough and rubbery. Wait, the spirit doesn¡¯t have flesh does it? I wouldn¡¯t want to eat those things anyway¡¡¯
Scarlet got information about the spirit haunting the nearby woods. She was intrigued by such a low level spirit type found so close.
¡®The new dungeon tower¡¯s size rating has been raised from average to large. That means it has at least 15 floors right? I forgot. I¡¯ll find out soon enough.¡¯ She checked for the updates regularly since the dungeon was the only reason she was staying in this town. Her grandma may be meddlesome but her divination was always right, since she said this place was a crossroad of fate it would be worth the wait.
Scarlet left Plainston for the woods which was only a couple dozen of minutes away with her speed. Her Sub-Class had gained considerable levels and a lot of the stats were placed into Constitution and Endurance while Intelligence and Wisdom got a few here and there. She gets Strength from her Profession as well so she didn¡¯t bother with it too much for now.
With her Core Skill she didn¡¯t really need too much Strength or Agility for now. Besides, her agility was doubled with her Class Fortification. Scarlet was so happy to see that it was a conditionless Agility speed buff. Probably no one else would have a Fortification like that. Only runners with the movement speed buff and good movement skills could catch up to her and it wasn¡¯t like they could beat her.
From her studies, a single point of Constitution can withstand 6 points of Strength or 8 points of Agility. The calculation gets iffy when considering both but Agility has less impact on the body. Training can also help the body get used to higher amounts of force and pressure. There should be skills that help with that as well, her Combat Tenacity helps with the pain in her shoulders and wrists but it was not nearly enough anymore.
At 130 Agility with the effect of 260 and attack speed up till 910¡ Wind magic helps with air resistance but neither wind or lightning increases her Constitution. Scarlet could barely use a portion of her speed. However, spending so much of her stat points into Constitution seems like a horrible waste and Combat Tenacity doesn¡¯t actually make her body stronger either. Thankfully her Core Skill helps a tiny bit.
Her doubled Agility was one thing. Her 2.5 times attack speed on top of that was basically useless unless she broke her own arms. Her Cascading mastery and Laceration was another thing¡ While she could still swing her broken arms a few times she didn''t have a habit of causing irreparable harm to herself like that. At that speed she also had to worry about her coordination of her strikes.
¡®The entrance fee raised again¡ what a scam. Going out daily wouldn¡¯t be worth it for most of the parties here.¡¯ She mentally commented. It wasn''t expensive but in a barren town and area, the fee was horrendous.
¡®Hmm. I can¡¯t find any Rhoat about 60¡ the temperature is a little lower too, just a tiny bit though. The ice type spirit¡¯s hunting them down. Without prey it would probably leave soon enough anyway but if it has enough intelligence to not hunt the weaker ones is it an aberrant? That would be great. I doubt so though.¡¯
Scarlet reached the woods in a short while and was looking around for some prey, in no rush to find a single spirit. She only spotted the usual monsters while the Rhoats seemed to be actively avoiding areas. The remaining ones were either newborn or just young.
She moved towards where they were avoiding, trying to keep her speed down so that the wind pressure and sound doesn¡¯t alert the spirit. Scarlet already saw areas with frozen grass and frost on branches. She kept her distance when she saw a thin white fog on a tree.
It wasn¡¯t moving, it may be resting but undead don¡¯t have a need for stamina so most likely it was just recovering mana. Scarlet gave a better look to see that it had a human form, she knew the reports were nonsense by this point. She moved around to see who it was, staying far away.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
¡®That¡¯s¡ Ebony right? What is he doing up there? I forgot I told him about the Rhoats. He¡¯s not one of those weak imperials after all since he¡¯s hunting Rhoats alone at level 36¡¯
[Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 49] [ ]
¡®What? 49 already. He doesn¡¯t have a Sub-Class yet but to level so fast would mean he went for the strongest ones. No wonder I couldn¡¯t find any mature Rhoats, how long has he been fighting though? I didn¡¯t see him in town after he said my food was¡delicious. I-I knew that of course. Weird guy, I can¡¯t tell if he¡¯s avoiding me or not after that.¡¯
Scarlet was wondering why Ebony was wasting mana on the fog that could hardly hide him. She noticed the 2 shields as well. Triple casting. Too far to hear the mana vibrations but she was already pretty impressed. She could barely triple cast, usually only double casting in battle. It takes too much focus and ability to multitask to cast mid battle.
She went for an enhancement build that was more for close range and physical combat style. Enhancement magic didn¡¯t require nearly as much thought or focus and can easily have the body get used to casting them.
Scarlet noticed the Rhoat Ebony was observing. It did seem a little odd seeing how it was alone and its shape is a lot different than the usual Rhoat. Watching it eat a live Rhoat was pretty interesting and disgusting at the same time, it started chasing Ebony too. The mist cleared and he took a black orb out. ¡®Condense vital muscle, no wonder. But are they usually that dark in colour?¡¯
The Rhoat¡¯s fighting style was weird. Scarlet saw Ebony feeding it the condensed vital muscle before realising how smart Ebony¡¯s idea was. He was obviously unsatisfied with their strength and was trying to make them stronger against him. Scarlet was a little surprised to see the Rhoat trying to escape immediately after digesting the vital muscle. Low level monsters rarely do that, Ebony probably carved fear into them.
¡®But how? How many did he hunt already? Rhoats are one of the more stupid creatures.¡¯
It was a pathetic sight that it ran almost immediately. The strength of Ebony''s shield was quite shocking and she assumed it to be a tier 2 skill or a really high level and refined tier 1 one. To not get damaged by a monster so much higher in level was quite the feat.
His speed was meh to Scarlet but his footwork to move so lightly as if he didn¡¯t touch the ground or surface was impressive. He moved from tree to tree to ground as if it was flat ground. She guessed it was either a tier 2 movement skill and one not as simple as pure speed like her Streaking Sprint or he had a Class Fortification with a tier 1 movement skill. He was much more agile than herself, it was not easy to change directions as smoothly as he did with her movement skill that was focused on pure speed.
The only painful thing to see was his swordsmanship. Likely self taught, she had never seen the style. Ebony finished it off fast and the mist came back.
¡®Will he not run out of mana? Why doesn¡¯t he stop casting and recover mana? Even combat meditation requires calm in a high intensity battle to recover mana if I remember correctly. The large shields should use a lot of mana¡ Meditative classes have quite the advantage¡ I want a proper duel with him now.¡¯ Scarlet was pretty jealous about the abundance of mana, it can help speed up training magic as well as make a mage more sustainable in a fight. Especially a low level mage.
She was too far to see the little details like Ebony¡¯s enhancement magic that made him translucent. Seeing Ebony going back towards the town, she stayed to hunt for dinner but it didn¡¯t take long. It was pretty funny to see Ebony stopped by the guards. The arrows aren¡¯t even a threat to him and neither was the guard captain or anyone in Plainston now. With the exception of the town noble or his guards and the Quest Hall¡¯s personnel.
Scarlet was thinking if she should ask Ebony to party up for the dungeon, he was definitely not going to be a burden and it would be difficult to find someone as strong as him within the local towns and cities. His attitude towards her urged her not to, but he was polite enough to thank her for the food. He was the only one not fearing and treating her like some monster too.
Well, she¡¯ll decide after she has a chance to spar with him.
???
The thick lines on the ground lit as a transparent barrier can be seen rising and deployed. It goes all the way up and boxed them in.
They drew their swords and Scarlet''s twin longswords were a sight for sore eyes. Ebony didn¡¯t know what type of material was crimson red like that. It was straight double edged and had a flat body like Ebony¡¯s, almost just as long but less than half as wide.
Ebony wasn¡¯t going to go easy as usual. Icebody Enhancement ran at full power, his translucent look garnering a raised brow from Scarlet and was the start signal of the duel. Ebony was great at prediction and moved the second her ankle shifted. She already eyeballed where she was moving toward so it was not too difficult for Ebony to know where to move.
He quickly cast a 2 layer shield but it¡¯ll take a second or two for that. His bulky greatsword barely deflected a strike before another came at him. Treading Step didn¡¯t help keep the distance but he could easily see where Scarlet planned to move or where her attack was coming from by checking her line of sight, shoulders, wrist and ankle movement.
It was a little pointless when Ebony couldn¡¯t see her slashes due to how fast they were. The 87 stat point buff to his strength was used as a knockback to push her out of position so that his shield had time to get up and going. Her twin blades move smoothly and never obstruct one another.
Each slash and every strike seem to be devised for the next strike to be harder to dodge or block. A random light slash cut halfway through his shield. Ebony was quickly adding layers to it which takes much less time than casting it.
He couldn¡¯t move the heavy shield fast enough to block her strikes that seemed to come from every direction. He tried sending an Ice Sword to keep her off which she matched with a spear of fire. Ebony was sweating just being near the thing. She controlled it in a similar fashion to Rowent but it vaporised the Ice Sword in less than a second, the spear being much hotter than Ebony was used to.
¡®How much mana is in that thing?¡¯ Ebony thought, not imagining it was due to other factors. His ability to stay multiple steps ahead of his opponents and shifting his body to dodge by a hair¡¯s breadth was waning. Scarlet¡¯s speed and power kept increasing, like she was holding back on him earlier. He placed his large sword in her sword¡¯s path ahead of time but it was not enough as she easily changed the trajectory of her slashes.
Ebony couldn¡¯t tell with the mask on but Scarlet was frowning, visibly pissed that so many of her attacks were dodged by such an unnoticeably small margin. It showed that at the same speed he was superior and easily read her movements.
The tough shield kept getting tougher and the sheer size of it was annoying, being a hybrid he didn¡¯t have to spare a hand to carry the damn bulky shield. Deep gashes quickly fill up and thicken, turning blows that cause gashes to cuts then to scratches. It was so big it entirely blocked Ebony out of sight and his footwork let him move out from either side and land a sneaky blow.
She was not used to taking blows and the enhanced blow sends her skidding backwards a lot. The blocking resets her Cascading Laceration¡¯s increase of speed of strikes and Cascade Dual Longsword Mastery static increase of Strength and Agility. It didn¡¯t matter for now since she still couldn¡¯t safely use her full attack speed without injuring herself and she wasn¡¯t nearly at her fastest.
Scarlet was using Revolving Razorwind Film on both her longswords in the beginning which wasted a lot of her mana. Mana which she hasn¡¯t recovered after the day¡¯s hunt. Using fire magic seemed a little unfair which was why she dispersed her spear of fire but it was a mistake. She only has enough mana for Heated Blade or Lightning Inoculation which didn¡¯t require a set amount of mana.
The 5 Layered Ice Carapace uses almost Ebony¡¯s entire mana pool but he was regenerating mana fast. Spare mana aside from Icebody Enhancement went into compressing it. There was not much Ebony could do against Scarlet. She only allowed him to land a blow or two, now she was too fast and getting faster. Her strikes were getting heavier every second.
Ebony relied on his trusty shield that kept getting tougher as well. Scarlet thrust out with insane speed, her longsword digging an inch or two into his shield. The result seemed to have angered her as Ebony heard vaporising like that of a droplet of water touching a hot pan. Seeing steam rising from the front of the shield he quickly disengaged together with his shield.
He could sense the large hole in the Layered Ice Carapace. If there was one advantage he had over basically anyone of his level it was mana. Seeing how she didn¡¯t use magic much could only mean she was limited by it. He was obviously right since Scarlet didn¡¯t let him disengage.
She sliced his shield in half without so much as a trickle of resistance and stabbed out with her other blade at Ebony. Ebony heard her click her tongue when her blade landed on the flat body of Ebony¡¯s greatsword, pushing him back a step.
Scarlet¡¯s blade steamed out and was no longer burning bright red, just normal crimson red. It was still hot though. Scarlet ran out of mana, Ebony had little tricks left. They purely exchanged physical blow after blow. Ebony noticed Scarlet¡¯s breathing kept increasing, her intake of air more and more, almost haggard.
It was a very enlightening exchange. Scarlet showed Ebony all the weak spots in his swordsmanship which he changed and adjusted mid battle. He was getting pushed back until he hit the barrier and had nowhere left to dodge, Scarlet held her stab on Ebony''s neck.
¡°I lost.¡± Ebony admitted defeat. A drop of blood slid down Scarlet¡¯s longsword. The duel didn¡¯t last more than 2 or 3 minutes.
¡°...it doesn¡¯t count. You don¡¯t have a Sub-Class yet, it wasn¡¯t a fair duel.¡± Scarlet said.
¡°You held back plenty, not having a Sub-Class is no excuse.¡± Ebony caught the fact that she knew he didn¡¯t have a Sub-Class. She had a second tier Identify, Appraise if he¡¯s not wrong or some other kind of appraisal skill or item.
¡°...I didn¡¯t hold back. My swordsmanship and sword skill increases in speed and power every strike. If anything you were the one holding back.¡± She wasn¡¯t really lying, she used her Core Skill at the end there but it takes time to build up to her full power and her body couldn¡¯t take too much anyway.
¡°I would not do something that rude.¡± Ebony wouldn¡¯t go easy against any opponent but it was true that none of his blows were planned to land on her, perhaps she could tell.
¡°Then why didn¡¯t you use your fire magic? You¡¯re a Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze aren¡¯t you?¡± Scarlet pointed out.
¡®She can see my full Class? That¡¯s concerning but if people who can see it assume I use fire magic it shouldn¡¯t be too big an issue. I should ask if there are items that can hide my Class though.¡¯
¡°Yes, but I don¡¯t have any skill for that yet.¡± Ebony told the truth, he was a Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze and didn¡¯t have any skill for fire magic. It seemed like it wasn¡¯t enough to appease Scarlet.
¡°Hmmph¡± they eased off after she seemed to pout and sheathed their blades. Ebony let Icebody Enhancement go to regenerate his mana. He could charge his mana ores this way. He wiped the blood off and the healed spot on his neck didn¡¯t escape Scarlet¡¯s eye. She didn¡¯t think too much of it, confident of her control that didn¡¯t go further than just past the skin.
Ebony hand signalled the guy in charge and the barrier was removed.
¡°Do you¡¡± Scarlet trailed off.
¡°Do I?¡± Ebony tilted his head with his deadpan face.
¡°Do you want to party up?¡± Scarlet said softly.
¡°...¡±
¡°We probably won¡¯t be teamed up with anyone close to our capabilities. The dungeon will attract lots of people, sure, but if there are any talented imperials they would be closer to the Empire Capital. Most would be ambitious youth wanting to gain quick and easy strength. Those our age are around level 20 or 30 at best, most people around these part Class with untiered or tier 1 skills.¡± Scarlet explained.
Ebony himself has seen the standards of the average party hunting in the forest. The young were inexperienced like they have never been in a battle, those looking slightly older but still at such low levels were those that fought safe battles.
¡®She was looking over when I filled the form wasn¡¯t she¡¡¯ Scarlet was around 16 or 17 too if she said ¡®our age¡¯ that would translate to 20 Earth years.
It was a pretty good idea, Ebony didn¡¯t really want to fight similarly levelled monsters in a party. It would be a waste of time and effort.
¡°Okay.¡± Ebony held out a hand for a handshake before pulling it back immediately. A handshake and a ¡®nice working with you¡¯ was a habit that would translate differently here. Scarlet didn¡¯t seem to notice anything wrong. Perfect.
Ebony could stand to learn a lot from sparring with her anyway.
They went back up and changed their application to a joint one. There were lots of whispers from people around but neither of them even gave those whispering a glance.
Chapter 36: Elemental Affinity
Ebony went to the same inn again since he didn¡¯t know any other and was too lazy to look for another. The inn was obviously well to do seeing how there were [Master Architect]s around. The surrounding buildings were emptied out and being demolished, likely bought by the inn owner for expansion.
By some alignment of stars, Ebony got the same room which was just cleared on the same day or so the dwarven lady says. The price hasn¡¯t risen and Ebony did keep some ores on him, he rented it for a week this time.
For the first time here, he was going to eat restaurant food. It was¡lacklustre, after eating Roya¡¯s food, a supposedly high level chef and Scarlet¡¯s. It was still better than his own field cooking though. They had a noodle similar to pasta which was new. He had been eating bread for so long noodles were a great change, he preferred rice though. They had a translation for rice so Ebony was sure it was a thing over here.
Ebony went for a bath and washed his clothes and boots. He might need a change of boots already, they were wearing out fast. Checking his equipment he also noticed small chips on his greatsword¡¯s edges, a whole lot of scratches too. It might be due to its age and was no longer holding up well, the spars with Chris and Top didn¡¯t cause this much damage. Halvis did say it was unsold due to its comparatively low quality.
The damage looks relatively fresh too, probably Scarlet or the Rhoat hunt. Or both.
His robe''s only damage was from Scarlet. The scratches were light, he could mend it but he felt that his skills were a little too¡trashy to repair it. Sure he was more familiar with the fibrous material compared to Chris¡¯s leather armor but he didn¡¯t want to make it worse. Roya¡¯s robes were a work of art. He could hardly tell how many threads were used to make it, much less how fine they were and the weaving was so complicated he gave up on repairing it for now.
He just remembered that he could connect the robe to his myriad bracelet which he did just that. If he charged it earlier it might not even have gotten damaged¡He followed Roya¡¯s instruction and manipulated mana to the collar. He could bring up a hood that covers his head. It was easy to do and didn¡¯t require focus at all. The robe could take up to 5000 mana if he recalled correctly. It really was the perfect piece of defensive equipment for him, with his mana being more ¡®resilient¡¯ and all.
Ebony fell asleep seconds after lying down. Waking up hours later with a level in his Core Skill, rested and refreshed. He quickly swapped out the almost filled mana ores, he remembered to slot all the Greens and Greys he had before sleeping just in case he was knocked out longer than he expected. Blacks would get bothersome to change since he would have to change it in minutes.
It was still night, Ebony meditated to peak mental condition as normal. He felt his surroundings, senses shut off. Silence. He could feel the mana in his body a little clearer now. Ebony had long wondered if everything was made of mana wouldn¡¯t everyone be made of mana?
Flesh mana, blood mana, bone mana, etc. His physique specifically mentioned his body being made of mana though. Now that his Mana Perception improved, some things were made clearer to him. It was true that there were probably all types of mana, but there was also unattributed or pure mana. Mana he regenerated or produced wasn''t exactly pure and it was a little different from pure mana in the air. He couldn''t be exactly sure as his senses were not accurate. It was just a vague feeling.
His Mana Vibration or sound magic had the widest range since vibrations between mana will transfer to the pure mana in the air just like normal sound through air.
Rather than his body not being made of flesh and blood, his flesh and blood was no longer made up of just those mana but also partially his own regenerated mana. It somewhat explains how he can heal or regenerate damage to his bones or organs so quickly, even regenerating flesh, muscles, tissues and whatnot.
Why did Ebony lose mana when he took hits? His closest guess was that his mana pool was no longer existing just in his head or mental state; rather, his whole body had become his mana pool.
Yet, that didn¡¯t make much sense either. If he emptied out his mana, it wasn¡¯t like the mana in his body disappeared. He would have to test if he could stop losing mana after a certain amount of damage taken.
He had another interesting idea of compressing the mana in his body but had no idea how to get around doing that. It wasn¡¯t that much of an issue since his Icebody Enhancement worked similarly but the mana in his body was too fine to control for now. He would still try of course. With his mana resilience increased and his body being partially mana couldn¡¯t he increase the toughness of his body in this manner? Constitution be damned.
Would his mana pool increase this way? Can he compress mana in his mana pool, casting with pre-compressed mana like what those staffs and wands do. Wouldn¡¯t his mana pool be increased in size if he could decompress the mana before using it for magic?
Even if he could he didn¡¯t know how to do either of that yet. Knowing too little about mana, magic and the body.
Pushing his senses outwards, Ebony could also feel the mana in the air. Pure mana, the absence of ice mana, the blackish dark purple mana, another darker blue mana. It was still pretty weird that his perception for mana can ¡®see¡¯ colour. It was great he would not be completely blind if he ever loses an eye or two, there was more incentive for training another sensory capability.
Ebony knew he wouldn¡¯t always be unharmed in a battle, he couldn¡¯t be sure if he could regenerate loss of senses like sight either. It was only beneficial for him to be prepared for such cases.
He took out the [Elemental Sensitivity Potion] from its wooden box. It was contained in a round bottom flask not unlike those in a laboratory. The liquid was pitch black in colour, it didn¡¯t seem too out of place since many soda¡¯s were similar in colour. Ebony uncorked and drank the contents in one go. The taste was mind numbing in every sense of the word.
They did tell him the effects it would have but the numbness went away in a second. It was supposed to last a few minutes but the effects sort of dissolved the moment it reached his mind. Probably Deep Persistent Meditation¡¯s doing, there was little that could disrupt his mind. Mental magic sounded interesting though, it would be a good idea to find a mental mage to test some things.
The purple so dark it was near black was blocking everything in his mind¡¯s sight. There were another 2 tones of blue that wasn¡¯t the ice mana he was familiar with, although it was much sparser in the air. A brown coloured mana was near the ground, stationary. Colourless mana that wasn¡¯t pure mana was fixed in place all around too. They were orderly and other mana passed through it like it wasn¡¯t there.
Ebony made some guesses, the blue was water mana and something else. He could use ice magic, being able to use water shouldn¡¯t be too far fetched.
The brown was either wood which the floor was made off or earth from dirt that was on the floor. Ebony was guessing it was earth due to its sparseness.
The colourless mana could be air, or the types of gases for all he knew. But air should move around at least so he had no idea what it was. It was the faintest one and Ebony couldn''t really ''catch'' on to its presence.
The black¡ darkness perhaps. It was night time and wouldn¡¯t be too weird for darkness mana to fill the entire room.
Darkness felt a little off though. The mana was radiating from every object within his senses, even himself to a very small degree.
With no time to waste he used his own mana to grab at the mana from the one most prominent to him to the least. The potion only lasts an hour and he only had this one try.
He used to think he was using his mana to move ice mana to cast ice magic. It was true at first, his own mana was used to cover and guide ice mana. However, when he got Ice Mana Manipulation Ebony was directly manipulating ice mana itself or he should be able to. He didn¡¯t, that was why he used so much mana for so little return in the beginning.
This hour let him realise the small truth that elemental affinity was a real thing. Just because he could sense the different elemental mana didn¡¯t necessarily mean he could manipulate it. His mana directly scraped off the brown mana, went through the colourless mana and slid off one of the blue mana. None of these mana felt ¡®right¡¯ or natural like when he manipulated ice mana. They seem to reject him.
The other blue mana seem to constantly disappear and reappear, never staying still. It didn¡¯t reject him the way the other mana did though, it was just harder to catch on. It acted like a naughty child that kept escaping his grasp.
Stolen novel; please report.
The dark purple mana instead was almost as receptive to him as ice mana. He spent about 45 minutes focusing on it alone.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Gravity Mana Manipulation learned¡¯
Gravity Mana Manipulation - Ability to move and shape Gravity Elemental Mana at will using mana. Ability to manipulate Gravity Mana increases slightly per level.
Classification: Gravity magic
¡®Gravity¡ now that I think of it, such a large planet has about the same gravitational strength as Earth?¡¯ Ebony thought. The power to control gravity sounded great and he could imagine ways it could match with ice magic. His thoughts went a little off tangent about the strength of gravity on Elcra though. He hardly felt any heavier or lighter since he came here but never really thought about it till now.
Since he already got the manipulation skill he could play with it later. He spent the remaining time with the other blue mana that wouldn¡¯t sit still but didn¡¯t manage to get the manipulation skill in the end.
The effects of the potions wore off and it was like he was missing or lacking something in his mind. It was only momentary and a weak feeling at best.
Gravity mana from the ground was the strongest. Ebony was no expert but from what little he knew, everything with mass attracts one another. The greater the mass, the greater the pull between two objects/bodies. Ebony wouldn¡¯t use the word radiate but gravity mana seems to be appearing out of nowhere from the edge of an object¡¯s ¡influence.
The lighter the object, the smaller the radius where gravity mana starts popping up. No it wasn¡¯t popping up, it was closer to say it was cycling in a spherical fashion. If that made any sense at all.
Starting small, Ebony found it easier to aid the movement of gravity mana towards where it wanted to go than to do the opposite. Essentially all of the gravity mana within his range of perception was getting pulled downwards into the ground, small objects including himself have too small amounts of gravity mana to matter much as there wasn¡¯t much he could manipulate.
He didn¡¯t have to worry about conjuring gravity mana anytime soon. It shouldn¡¯t be common to have places without gravity anyway.
Ebony helped push the gravity mana towards where it was going. Which was to say, increase the strength of gravity on himself and whatever was around him. He could hardly feel the increase but he knew he was doing something.
You would almost never find those who had rare magic as a main Class holder. Gravity, space, time were some famous ones that were known to be powerful. There were many more of course. It was due to the downright outrageous amount of mana required.
It may take an unclassed a lifetime just to get the manipulation skill to level 25. Not every Class has an apprentice version and these rarer magic usually doesn¡¯t have it. That was not including the skill or spell they need to create which would be impossible with such a small mana pool.
According to Clovis and the books Ebony had read, unclassed 15 year old humans had an average of 3-4 Wisdom. Dwarves had a bit higher at 4-5. Elves had an known average of 7-8 while Beastmen excluding foxmen had 1-3. That was just sad, the few mages around was understandable.
Ebony estimated increasing the strength of gravity in a 1 metre radius from him to use as half as much mana as keeping ice mana combusting in the same time frame. This was when he had 100% ice magic mana efficiency so it was still possible for him to keep up the usage.
When the sun rose he stopped casting to fill up some mana ores, detaching his robe¡¯s connection for now. The quester crystal thing was really useless so he just kept that in a random robe pocket. Going down for breakfast, unfortunately, eggs weren¡¯t on the menu. They obviously exist here too, perhaps just not sold in this town.
Ebony went to the Z&Z company store to look for Andel or any of the escort party to hand them the condensed vital muscle. Maybe to exchange contacts with them too, they were the few people he knew here anyway.
Since he already knew the way, he could go back to Arcta on his own too to get either Roya¡¯s or Halvis contact. It wouldn¡¯t take anywhere near a week with his speed but he felt that there was no need. It hasn¡¯t been long and was a little weird to go back there so quickly
¡°Welcome to Z&Z, how may I help you?¡± a different lady was at the door this time. The beauty standards in this world were a lot higher with stats and Class Evolution actually changing the body.
Their store was already in the middle of work and expansion, not different from the rest of the town. Their scale of expansion is only below that of the Quest Hall.
Ebony just asked for Andel and gave his name, not just anyone knew Andel¡¯s name according to the man himself. The clerk also complied easily, probably having heard of Ebony.
¡°Hey Eh?! Ebony! What can I do for you today?¡± Andel called out but coughed out in surprise for some reason. Maybe he didn¡¯t expect Ebony to come back so soon. Andel was actually just shocked by Ebony¡¯s level.
¡°I saw the request for a condensed vital muscle. Here. It''s for Top isn¡¯t it?¡± Ebony took the thing out and tossed it over.
¡°Ah? Oh¡ you found this? I mean, you hunted Rhoats?¡± Andel¡¯s expression changed from confusion to shock as he caught the heavy ball. It would explain his level and the absence of a Sub-Class sure sped his levelling up.
¡°Yeah? How else would I get that?¡± Ebony returned the question
¡°Yeah¡ anyway, the others are out there in the back, do you want to see them?¡± Andel seems to have given up.
¡°Sure.¡± Ebony saw no reason to refuse.
They actually had a training ground for their escort personnel. There was the public square too but not many people go there other than the youngins without a Class. Well the public one was actually just an empty plot of land and wasn¡¯t exactly a ¡®training ground¡¯. The one here had targets and equipment at least.
Ebony didn¡¯t see anyone else but the ones he knew, even Top was watching by the side. Ebony went over and exchanged greetings. Top bowed in thanks for saving him, he was visibly depressed. Ebony could see he had difficulty breathing, the injury worse than he initially thought.
Their spar didn¡¯t go on long and Ebony caught up with what was going on. The new dungeon forming changed things up for them quite a bit.
Fergus and Rowent no longer wanted to be transferred for obvious reasons of a faster advancement here. As they were contracted, they couldn¡¯t just go into dungeons willy nilly. They needed permission from their higher ups, they said they were more than qualified or had enough contribution to have their request approved. They would be getting more escort parties from other branches due to the expansion.
Fergus and Rowent were quite recognised for their skill and talent. Chris and Dina were young but Dina was also being watched as an up and coming talent. Top was quite trusted for his leadership skill apparently. That was the problem, they couldn¡¯t get approval with Top¡¯s current state. The company didn¡¯t allow a different party member or outsider either.
The condensed vital muscle was pretty rare but not impossible to find. Andel did them a favour by using his name to put up a request but they were the one¡¯s paying for it. They had a contracted alchemist a city over and were grateful for the first good news in a while that Ebony got them one. They were much clearer on his capabilities and didn¡¯t question where or how he got it.
Even with the concoction, Top''s injury wouldn¡¯t fully heal in time, he might just heal enough to get the green light to go dungeoning. It really depends on how fast they can get the medicine made or how long it¡¯ll take the dungeon to fully form.
They really didn¡¯t have much freedom and Ebony wouldn¡¯t contract himself to a company for any reason. They couldn¡¯t even go out to the nearest woods or plains for a leisure hunt without permission. If they receive injuries outside of their duties they would need to pay for their own medical fees.
None of them held onto a callstone. It was a little weird since callstone wasn''t that expensive. Didn''t they have to be easily contactable for work reasons? Andel¡¯s bracelet was half filled with callstones but all were filled up with company and business contacts or so he says. Were they making up excuses not to give Ebony their contacts?
''Whatever.''
¡°Any good blacksmiths to recommend?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Here in Plainston? No. None of them are even half decent.¡± Fergus said.
¡°Actually none in the surrounding towns or even the closest city have any decent blacksmith. The oldies are stuck at level 100 apprentice blacksmith and youths are apprentice blacksmiths that are apprenticed to apprentices.¡± Rowent dissed the local blacksmiths.
¡°What about your equipment?¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°Haha they are the very reason why people bother signing harsh contracts. All our equipment is supplied by company contracted blacksmiths. Z&Z has a pretty long history already, they have methods of training many, many classes.¡± Rowent explained.
¡°Many long running companies have their own secrets, skills, classes and all that. Our company has pretty much everything, though our blacksmiths are not the best, they aren¡¯t too far from it.¡± Fergus added.
¡°The good things are mostly circulated between our company¡¯s members and we exchange them with our internal currency. A client like you would at best be able to get the relatively newer smiths¡¯ in training¡¯s work.¡± Dina cut in.
Fergus and Rowent obviously had the best equipment, the bow and staff both looking expensive. Chris and Dina haven''t accumulated enough for better equipment outside the standard issue.
Ebony participated in a short duel with them before leaving for the inn again. He was going to focus on training his magic and get a Sub-Class before the dungeon fully formed. He should get there sooner than his Class and the increase of mana he had.
Chapter 37: Upgrade
Ebony made a sphere of mana not unlike his compression training, pushing as much mana into without compressing it. The sphere expanded to his limit of more than 5 metres, he kept pulling everything back into as small a sphere as he could then pushed it to its limit again.
It apparently helps with expanding his range, at the same time training his Mana Compression. Using Frost Mist Perception Sphere would help train the skill and Ice Mana Manipulation at the same time. Multitasking to the limit, he also increased the strength of gravity around him, pulsing it to extend his range as well.
He didn¡¯t want to cause a commotion with sound magic but found that he could just stabilise the surrounding mana at the edge of his control to stay unmoving and sound wouldn¡¯t pass through. Essentially soundproofing his sound magic.
For the heck of it, to increase his number of casts sooner or later he casted his Ice Sword and tried to reform it from the start again. He wanted to remove the air bubbles in them, he needed to restructure the ice mana that constituted it.
He didn¡¯t study materials or design and didn¡¯t know what internal structure would make a strong sword.
His Layered Ice Carapace was modelled after Gen¡¯s and the progeniturtle¡¯s shell. He visualised and created it step by step, scale by scale, the ice mana within it configured and structured to withstand blows from outside, with the curvature of it changed many times from trial and error.
Maybe he should use an image for his Ice Sword too. But what image? He couldn¡¯t think of any so he did a simple restruconstruction of its internal structure. Just making them neater and closer together so there aren¡¯t air bubbles in them.
When he could he would force a fifth cast over and over, frost mist took one, gravity took one, sound took one, Ice Sword took the last. The fifth was using Layered Ice Carapace, to increase the speed of cast if possible, the second objective was to cast one as thick as possible from the get go.
He couldn¡¯t cast compressed spells from the get go yet but it should be possible. He may have made some mistakes in his calculations of how much mana went into his spells and how much stronger his spells get by getting compressed. He doesn¡¯t always have time to fully compress a spell after all. He was getting faster but it wasn¡¯t nearly fast enough to his liking.
He wasn¡¯t going to put his shield down in the dungeon so he at least wanted to double check how much mana he can squeeze into it and estimate its strength.
Layered Ice Carapace at level 39, [80% + (39x2.5%) + 30% + 20% + 10% + 5%] = 242.5% Intelligence. For 5 layers.
Sheer Mana Compression at level 82, 82 x 2.5% = 205%. Did he double this for the 100% increase in mana compressibility previously? 205% x 2 = 410%.
5 layered carapace requires 750MP/2 = 375 x 5 = (1875MP x 410%) + 1875 = 9562.5 mana for a full powered shield.
Compressed effect + original effect = total effect (242.5/100)x410 = 994.25% + 242.5% = 1236.75%. 101 Intelligence x 1236.75% = 1249.1175
¡®...does it really have the effect of 1249 Intelligence?¡¯ Ebony doubted his calculations quite a little.
The number seems a little over what he expected. Furthermore, his mana was twice as resilient or tough. No wonder once fully compressed, the Rhoats could barely damage them.
He obviously didn¡¯t have so much mana to compress in a 2 to 3 minute duel with Scarlet so it was still understandable it got sliced.
He wasn¡¯t able to keep up a fifth cast but it didn¡¯t stop him from trying. Ebony meditated as usual in his trance state magic training till he heard his door being knocked. He mentally dropped his ice sword and shield, ice, gravity and vibrations of mana settling down.
¡°Are you trying to freeze the building?¡± Scarlet was standing beyond the door in her usual garb.
¡°...No.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t realise that just because he pulled his ice mana back didn¡¯t mean the temperature of the surroundings wouldn¡¯t be affected. He could tell that she was folding her arms under her mantle, silently waiting for an explanation perhaps.
A wave of heat slapped his entire body and the room heated up considerably.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, I may have gone overboard with my practice.¡± Ebony said to the people that walked out of their rooms and were looking over too. His honesty somewhat appeased the people. Maybe they liked the cooling chill on a hot summer day.
Scarlet asked if he would like to spar. He obliged. He hasn¡¯t trained his body for the day.
His routine changed again, he would have breakfast in the morning. Train his magic till the evening, spar with Scarlet in the public training square if it were just physical and no magic was used. His own physical training after that, then dinner and magic training again till bedtime. Requiring less and less sleep before he was fully rested.
He asked Scarlet if there was anywhere he could train out of sight without bothering people.
The Quest Hall should have built such facilities that he can pay for. It was like the duelling grounds but a smaller, more personal space. They should have a few of such rooms underground already.
It was a little more pricey so he made sure to use only regenerated mana, keeping his pool full he can charge his ores when he was doing his physical training.
It might get suspicious if he trades in mana ores daily but he did have a meditative class and he could say he didn¡¯t spend much of his mana. Obviously, he made sure that the Quest Hall didn¡¯t or doesn¡¯t spy on the people using the training rooms.
Fortunately or surprisingly, they had laws against that and the Quest Hall was a government agency of sorts.
He couldn¡¯t do anything against the unknown person divining him who may or may not be spying on him right now.
The magicless sparing with Scarlet did wonders for him and his mastery evolved on the second day.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Single-handed Greatsword Mastery evolved into Flowing Greatsword Mastery¡¯
Flowing Greatsword Mastery - Mastery of a greatsword with enough fluidity, balance and deftness to disregard its large, bulky size and heavy weight. Strength decreases by 20%, Agility increases by 10% while wielding a greatsword single-handedly. Strength increases by 20%, Agility decreases by 10% while wielding a greatsword with both hands. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increases by 1.0% per level.
Battle Hum has also mutated into Battle Song after 3 days. Basically, he didn¡¯t need to hum to produce the same effects though he could still hum it out.
Battle Song - Cast songs of battle with mana vibrations, musical melodies producing minor effects of increased stat of 0.01% of Intelligence depending on melody per level.
Consumes 30MP/Min
Classification: Sound Magic
He didn¡¯t know what ¡®songs of battle¡¯ meant but he knew it referred to the different bgms he tried imitating. The good thing was that even though he only knew how to play the piano it wasn¡¯t like he was playing an instrument.
He just had to recreate a certain sound he remembered and he could ¡®play¡¯ another type of instrument. It wasn¡¯t easy but he was just sitting there when he was magic casting so he had time. The increase in mana cost wasn¡¯t all that much.
When Mana Vibrations hit level 25 too he got a prompt for a Sub-Class. Bardic Mage, its requirements being Mana Vibrations and Battle Song hitting level 25. Despite all the effort his Battle Song didn¡¯t level past 31 after days and Mana Vibrations was slowly rising past that but it didn¡¯t seem likely to hit 50 either.
He got a simple gravity spell from what he did called Magnified Gravity Field.
Magnified Gravity Field - Increase the gravitational pull towards the ground by 1.0% per level
Consumes 250MP/Min
Classification: Gravity magic
The skill effect was not within Ebony¡¯s expectations. It doesn¡¯t scale according to his Intelligence stat. He brought the question to Rowent and it should be due to the fact that all he was doing was guide the elemental mana to do exactly what it does already. He wasn¡¯t making the mana do something else that was out of its nature with the power of his mind.
It was pretty pointless now since it only adds weight to himself which may be good for training but the effects in battle have yet to be seen. Especially with the mana cost, Ebony focused all his training on being more mana efficient with gravity mana so that he could get a mana efficiency fortification.
With that mana cost, it was difficult even for Ebony to train the skill much, even if that was the cost for a 5 metre radius calculation like his Frost Mist Perception Sphere. His range expanded to 6.5ish metres over the week. Since he couldn¡¯t rely on this skill to hit level 25 anytime soon he tried to think of different things he could do with gravity.
His control over gravity mana got stronger but he still couldn¡¯t form a sphere of gravity mana with nothing in it. Gravity mana forcefully travels where it wants or where it''s supposed too. Since controlling surrounding gravity mana was too costly and he couldn¡¯t separate and control an individual body of gravity mana, Ebony was down to the gravity mana his body was¡producing?
His vocabulary for something he didn¡¯t completely understand was limited.
He either had a set amount of gravity mana according to his mass which spherically revolved from outside his body to inside, or, as he had mass he produced gravity at the edge of his mass¡¯s influence that pulls anything towards himself and disappears the moment the mana reaches his body. He preferred the first line of thought.
Ebony''s bright idea was to let gravity mana on his or from his body to do the opposite. As light and weak the pull was, there was a force of attraction. He first forcefully slowed down the pull to his body all around. He succeeded pretty easily, he kept it up till he managed to completely stop the gravity mana to stop moving towards him.
Obviously, it wasn¡¯t like he was antigravity or anything. He was still getting pulled towards the ground, he was just no longer pulling anything towards himself. Clearly, with how weak the original effect was, stopping the pull didn¡¯t do shit.
Reversing the direction of gravity mana instead, that did things. And oh was it fun. The skill name was not funny though.
Repulsive Body - Reversing the flow of gravity of your body to repel matter. Has the effect of 0% + 1.0% Intelligence
Consumes 50 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
There was nothing repulsive about his body right?
It was a little weird that there was a 0% but it informed him how weak the gravitational pull towards his body and that the spell itself wasn¡¯t all that strong. Spells he had so far usually had a starting stat value like 70% or 80% Intelligence or something similar.
It was a ¡®body¡¯ skill yet sadly not body enhancement magic. Well, it wasn¡¯t like his body was strengthened so it kinda makes sense. Though the word was ¡®body¡¯ it wasn¡¯t like he was repelling his clothes and greatsword, he could easily extend the reversion of gravity mana to his clothes and sword.
He was probably subconsciously already doing that since the gravitational pull of them was incomparably weak, practically non-existent.
When he formed the spell he was reversing the gravity mana from all his clothing without him realising anyway. The spell doesn¡¯t do anything noticeable at the moment but he was loving the idea of pushing or repelling attacks when the skill gets stronger.
The range of where gravity mana starts or where it reaches from his body was extremely small. Unlike the ground or planet which pulls even birds down. It was only a fraction of a single cm from his body, he could increase the range but focus on the speed and strength of the reverse rotation and also mana efficiency.
Despite a week¡¯s worth of effort none of his gravity classified skills reached level 25 yet. He might have spread himself a little thin even with how much mana he had.
Because of how Rare rarity mana ores or Blues were, trading Greens for them were not on a 10 to 1 rate although the amount of mana within them was equal. The rate here was 18 filled Greens for a single empty Blue there even had a limited amount of Blues they could trade out. It didn¡¯t matter much since no one would do such a foolish exchange.
Not even Ebony. At least not yet, his regeneration wasn¡¯t so bad he needed a Blue which could hold up to 100,000 mana.
He was going out of town today. He wanted to concentrate and get his Sub-Class as soon as possible but his greatsword was in such bad condition it was a few steps away from breaking, snapping or shattering.
The most decent blacksmith was probably a dwarven smith that runs his shop in the closest city, Teld City. It was also the only city in these plains.
It was 2 towns away but not actually too far if he were to go straight and directly there. He has saved up more than enough for a simple repair or maintenance but not if he were needed to get a new, better one.
Of course, Ebony tried just using his Ice Sword as an alternative but it snaps or shatters with strong impacts even when fully compressed.
While ice itself wasn¡¯t all that hard or tough with magic it was certainly possible to make it as strong if not stronger than crafted weapons.
Easier said than done as all weapons were made by smiths or crafters with Classes, skills and fortifications to back them up.
The distance was a little more than from Arcta to Plainston around 2 gurs which was about 10,000km but there was no hill in between and there was even a dirt road all the way there. He wasn¡¯t supposed to run on small roads at his speed but he shouldn¡¯t get lost as long as he follows the road.
With his speed and stamina, he can get there in less than a day with time to spare. The trip to Plainston took so long because of the heavy cargo and then travelling the ¡®safe¡¯ route through Bubble Hills. A rough estimation of his speed based on skill level and Agility stat was about over 250m/s there was so much error here that Ebony didn¡¯t bother too much.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He didn¡¯t know how to calculate air resistance and drag, how much slower he was with his robe on and everything. If he remembers correctly the speed of sound in air was 343m/s. Pretty sure Scarlet was much faster than that but there weren''t any sonic booms or breaking of the sound barrier when they fought. Well, if every warrior above level 100 were to produce sonic booms with every move the world wouldn¡¯t be a very nice place to live in.
Clovis¡¯s apt answer to ¡®what about the laws of physics?¡¯ was ¡°what¡¯s that?¡±. Ebony has learnt to blame things on the presence of mana and magic.
Ebony informed Scarlet he wasn¡¯t going to spar with her today and left town when the gates opened at the 6th hour. He also extended his rent of the inn¡¯s room to a month since he was going to be there for a while. Their daily spars had been helpful for his sword fighting training. Scarlet¡¯s mastery of the blades was something Ebony could only hope to reach one day.
With or without magic, he was always on the defensive. It was the same no matter how he changed things up. He usually gets better at fighting the same opponent by getting the rhythm and habits down and countering them.
It was the first time he didn¡¯t get much result from his adaptations. It just didn¡¯t matter how he changed the way he approached the battle. Her speed was one thing but her sword mastery or style alone trumps and adapts to his changes just as well. That and she was also changing her battle tactics as she fought Ebony, on the fly. Ebony could hope for no better opponent. Rival.
Ebony travelled without practising his magic for once. When he tried carrying a full powered Layered Ice Carapace it was too heavy to lift with a single hand or even with both hands. It would slow him down if he played around with his sword too. He took the chance to charge up his robe¡¯s mana capacity.
The standardised gate opening hours for cities and towns were from the 6th hour to the 26th hour in the Empire.
Stepping out of the gates after double checking which road to follow from the guard, Ebony could see many people at work. Earth mages, all past a level 100 were surveying the area outside and waving their wands or staff from time to time, chanting. They were making sure the earth was able to handle weight without collapsing but there was supposedly not much to worry about in these plains.
The stone mages had started laying out a thicker and taller wall. Plainston was going to expand into a city, the noble in charge was either going to be changed or something, Ebony wasn¡¯t sure. The person in charge of the walls was an old level 300 great stone mage or so they say.
He was churning out the stones, either through conjuring them or compressing and making sure the delivered stone was up to the required standard. Doing it alone was not possible even for a mage of his magnitude, he was overseeing the whole operation of all the mages. Not sure where all of them came from but the Empire sure was taking a new dungeon seriously.
A long line of merchant wagons and caravans were getting their cargo checked before entry. From foodstuff to materials to equipment.
The town was getting noisier and busier by the day. The number of normal fighters, non-apprentice, was increasing and other than the wall builder mages Ebony had also started to spot an Elven mage here and there. The standard of equipment he saw on people was slightly better than what he used to see.
The town was overpopulated and according to Scarlet, the number of jobs was at an all time low. Monsters throughout the plains and forest were being overhunted. She had to go further towards the hills or even another town for her daily monster hunt.
More and more fights were occurring between parties and individual freelancers as well. It was nothing unusual but the situation will only get worse with the increase in competition over a decreasing number of jobs. Plainston was a relatively safe and quiet town to begin with. Until the dungeon opens there is not much the Quest Hall or government can do to calm the people down.
The town guards were getting new blood sent by the higher nobles or Empire themselves. The current ones would either have to be redeployed to other towns or undergo another round of training. They would not be capable of keeping order in Plainston otherwise.
It was a pretty pleasant trip to see the sights. Of course, there wasn¡¯t much to see, just the grass on the land and clouds in the sky. There were hardly any stray monsters near the roads and Ebony would pass by travelling merchants, parties and Runners.
Parties most likely took escort quests from smaller individual peddlers or merchants towards Plainston for a quick buck before they arrived. The smarter ones stayed in other towns doing small jobs, waiting for the news of the opened dungeon. It was too late to buy land in Plainston now since they already stopped the sale of land for now.
[Runner]''s main job was delivering parcels and packages. Communication was possible with the callstone but some urgent or small items that can¡¯t wait for a merchant or peddler were delivered through their services. Some companies like Z&Z obviously had their own contracted [Runner]s.
Unsurprisingly, they were faster than Ebony or at least as fast as him. Other than movement skills they pick up skills that help protect cargo or increase the amount they can carry. Those and a whole lot of stealth and tracking skills, the good ones anyway, according to Fergus. It was another popular Class together with miners. If anything like a monster attack happens they have a high chance of getting away after all.
His robe only took about 2 hours to fully charge before his mana was overfilled into his mana ores. Thinking he shouldn¡¯t waste time, he casted Repulsive Body. Sadly unable to benefit from body enhancement magic 100% mana efficiency. When he stopped moving, it was able to repel wind by a tiny bit but travelling at his speed, the repulsion didn¡¯t do much yet.
The trip was uneventful before the City of Teld appeared in his sights. The walls were much taller and thicker, it looked like it could actually stop monsters. The traffic wasn¡¯t so bad and they had more manpower, Ebony was allowed in smoothly after paying the fee, it was the same as the current Plainston¡¯s fee.
The city guard was kind enough to point him towards Brand¡¯s Blacksmith. A relatively ¡®young¡¯ dwarven blacksmith that runs his own little store with him as the sole blacksmith. They say humans have the shortest lifespan followed by beastmen, dwarves and elves. Beastmen only had a tiny bit longer estimated lifespan than humans and dwarves roughly 1.5 times that of humans.
Brand Balke was Top¡¯s acquaintance or friend that he recommended seeing how Ebony was looking for a blacksmith. He was a self made blacksmith who made it to level 100 with self learnt techniques which was pretty rare that he was able to run a store in a city with self learnt techniques.
The city was a lot larger than Plainston but the roads and buildings were orderly. The store was nearer to the outskirts of the city, but not that bad a location.
It was like a small shophouse, two storeys tall. There was a human girl tending to the customers who called out a welcome to him as he entered. Ebony could hear the sounds of consistent hammering from outside.
The shop was displaying an array of short swords, long swords on one side, bows on the other. The centre had a glass covered piece probably displaying the smith¡¯s best works. He was a weapon smith as their sign board was the picture of a sword, bow and arrow and hammer. No armour was on display either.
The centre had a huge silver-coloured war hammer propped up, on its side was a greatsword sheathed in its black scabbard there was a large gem on the centre of the sword or rain guard. There was also a red coloured wooden recurve bow with 2 red gems above and below where one would hold the bow.
Ebony couldn¡¯t Identify them, guessing it was the glass at work. It seems like it was possible to stop identification-type skills.
¡°Welcome, sir. Perhaps I can help you find what you¡¯re looking for?¡± the lady came over and asked after settling the other dwarven warrior looking between a hammer and his pouch.
¡°Repair and maintenance. Greatsword.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Boss Balke is currently working and you might have to wait until he¡¯s done for him to appraise your greatsword.¡± the lady explained.
¡°I¡¯ll wait and look around first.¡± Ebony said. There were a few battle axes and maces but the majority were war hammers, swords and bows. Not a single wand or staff was present.
Most of them were close to what Ebony remembered a bastard sword looked like. Ebony saw that most warriors here that used swords were equipped with a one-handed sword and a shield. Those that carry larger swords like Chris and Ebony were rarer at least amongst human warriors.
The larger beastman warriors preferred heavier classed blunt weapons if they didn¡¯t have a sword and shield. Like a mace or battle axe. Ebony has only seen dwarven warriors carry war hammers or axes.
There was another bearded human warrior waiting in the store like him instead of looking at the wares. A short and buff ball of muscle came out with a sword and handed it to this human warrior. They talked about his blade for a bit and the human took out his pouch and paid for it before leaving.
¡°Hello, can you take a look at my greatsword? How much would repairing it cost?¡± Ebony walked over just as the dwarf sat on a chair behind the countertop. He pulled his weapon out and left it on the countertop. The dwarf frowned possibly due to disturbing his break but stood up and climbed up a step or two. A stool or step was hidden behind the counter.
[Blacksmith Lvl 102]
He passed the level 100 Class Evolution. Balke unsheathed the greatsword and gave it a look, taking out a tiny hammer from his front leather apron pocket and lightly tapping the body and edge of the blade.
¡°Gahh! Wha tha¡¯ell have you been doing tha this baby? The compression skill and techniques used is pretty darn good. This is Xeng made ain¡¯t it boy?... Ice¡ I see, ya fool. This is just normal bronze, if the smith didn¡¯t do a good job with compression it would have shattered long ago. Ya put ice mana into it didn¡¯t ya? The bronze might be a little resistant to cold but ya overdid it, I don¡¯t know how long it has been subjected to ice mana but the bronze inside is a step from completely breaking apart.¡± Balke the smith didn¡¯t look at Ebony weirdly unlike most others. He could tell Ebony pushed ice mana or some mana into it which harmed the internal structure of the blade.
¡°Can it be repaired?¡±
¡°...it won¡¯t be worth it. The material itself isn¡¯t that compatible to be used with ice mana. I could restore the blade itself to the same levels of compression, probably more. But I don¡¯t have such delicate control over its internal structure. It will need to be reforged. Even so, it won¡¯t be able to handle ice mana the way you have been pushing it. It¡¯ll shatter in battle sooner or later¡ my advice would be to get a different weapon or you can have this upgraded if you don¡¯t want to change.¡± Balke seemed confident in repairing it, the end product would not be exactly the same though.
¡°...what upgrades would be appropriate?¡±
¡°Well¡ ah say upgrades but there are not many materials bronze can work with... Since yer an ice mage I would say making an alloy with icerock steel for toughness and durability, it is not uncommon and pretty affordable with us being so close to the glades.
Verglas aluminium is considerably tough in an alloy and will naturally absorb ice mana onto its surface, I can even make it self compress the absorbed ice mana to a small degree.
This will keep its internals safe and as a natural ice type material the alloy would be much more resistant or acceptant to ice mana. It''s rarer but I won¡¯t need to use much of it.¡± Balke listed the materials he thought would work well with ice magic and practical enough such that the materials can be found.
Icerock steel was tougher and more durable but with Ebony¡¯s usage of ice mana, he was going to need his sword to be able to withstand a lot of ice mana. He was also worried it would interfere with his injection of ice mana if it absorbs his ice mana to its surface.
¡°How much ice mana do you think it¡¯ll be able to take before it starts being damaging to the blade?¡±
¡°Eh that¡¯s hard to say, there¡¯s factors like your Intelligence, skills and class fortification to take into account. The more verglas aluminium in there, the more ice mana it can withstand. If ah really had to put a number the highest limit would be 500 mana of a normal ice mage using a Common rarity piece, perhaps.¡± The numbers seemed horrible to Ebony. That was just the number to safely use it so it wasn¡¯t as if he could push more mana into it.
¡°Are there any other options? One that can withstand a lot of ice mana and not just push it to its surface.¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Aye, but the main body of this greatsword is just made of common bronze. The resultant alloy would be either too fragile or brittle if you use a much higher quality metal. It would be a waste of good quality metal too, may as well make a new sword altogether. Meditative ehh¡ adding a pinch of tungsten rime to the verglas aluminium bronze alloy could work to counteract the absorption of mana. It is highly receptive to ice mana and can make it as durable as if icerock steel was used.¡±
¡°That¡¯s fine.¡± Ebony liked the nice coincidence of rime.
¡°Ah¡¯m not finished tungsten rime is a Rare quality material at least, it¡¯s bloody rare and just as expensive. You are better off having a new sword made from scratch. Ah can make a Common one that is stronger and tougher and still be cheaper than the tungsten rime itself.¡±
¡°Can it be similar in dimensions to the current one? A straight, flat, double edged.¡±
¡°...nay. I don¡¯t know how the Xengs make a blade so flat and straight that doesn¡¯t bend or snap under pressure. Curved swords should cut better but... I say reforge but I would keep its structure the same, the verglas aluminium and tungsten rime will merely be an addition.¡± Spouting these words seems to have taken Balke a great deal of effort.
¡°I want to upgrade it.¡±
¡°Fine! You stubborn brat! I can get the verglas aluminium but you¡¯re going to have to find tungsten rime yourself. The zees may have some hidden around somewhere but it¡¯s gonna cost ya I tell ya. My services plus the verglas aluminium will cost¡ 16 Greens.¡± Balke complained and calculated.
Ebony wanted him to use the maximum amount of Uncommon rarity verglas aluminium without compromising durability so that it could withstand more mana. Still, the material itself should have been more than 5-7 Greens in cost.
¡°Thank you, please get the verglas aluminium. I will be back when I manage to obtain tungsten rime.¡± The ¡®zees¡¯ or Zzzs that Balke referred to was just Z&Z company. It was a household name on the continent. Ebony was pretty sure he heard them transporting some when he travelled with them so they should have some.
He left for the branch in this city, they weren¡¯t hard to find. They did have tungsten rime. Even the smallest pebble, smaller than a standardised ore fitted in the myriad bracelet cost 1 Blue and 32 Greens. That was only because they were so close to Hoarfrost Glade the prices spiked up the further away they got. It wasn¡¯t a metal but a shiny cyan crystal.
They only kept a small handful in this city store and most of it was transported further and deeper into the Empire for people that actually demanded these rare materials. Ebony only had enough to trade for a single Blue. He went to the city¡¯s Quest Hall which was much more bustling than the original Plainston¡¯s hall.
He traded in his Greens for a Blue. He started charging the Blue and remaining Greens he had. To Ebony it was only a matter of time before he could afford it. He was too lazy to look for an inn so he just went to the public training square to do some physical training. He would have rented a personal room under the Quest Hall if he was practising magic.
A quick mental calculation told him he needed over 50 hours to fill up a single Blue including the 75% mana transfer efficiency. A lot longer than he planned to stay but he had no choice. He didn¡¯t stop his trance like physical training, sword swinging, dancing and kicking unless his Greens filled up and he went to exchange them again.
On the second day, he was getting some weird looks, weirder than normal.
On the third day, people started calling out to him. Long periods of exertion was good for his Core skill too. It seemed like Peak Performance has reached its limit for a while now, getting stuck at level 36.
His Flowing Greatsword Mastery which reached level 67 over the week of sparring with Scarlet levelled twice more, hitting level 69.
Two-handed Power Stab was rarely used against Scarlet since it only opened himself to attacks and only levelled twice in that week to 42. Ebony used the 3 days to practice it over and over again, finding a way for his footwork and sword mastery to flow and close the opening that he leaves himself by stabbing out with his whole body weight. It levelled 5 times hitting level 47.
Treading Step levelled thrice in the week, once during the travel to Teld and another 2 times in these 3 days. Now it was level 66.
Deep Persistent Meditation that slowed down in levelling due to its high level, hit 119.
He quickly went to get the tungsten rime that was still available and brought it to Balke. Balke was surprised Ebony really came back with the material too. He can work on it immediately and would take at least 6 hours. He didn¡¯t really need the entire pebble, the alloy may not be able to take the entire pebble or so he says.
Ebony took the time to finally practice Repulsive Body again while he walked around the city and checked the sights and what the city had to offer. The thing about gravity magic was that there was a set amount of gravity mana in every entity, body or object with mass. He couldn¡¯t conjure gravity mana like he did with ice mana yet.
He manually reversed the flow of gravity, increasing its speed as much as possible showing little to no observable effects. He used every imaginable trick he could to be more efficient with mana.
Micromanaging every single point of gravity mana was not the right way. Controlling gravity mana to push out from a central point and letting it flow itself helped a bit but the gravity mana would flow back normally after a short while if Ebony no longer mentally reversed the mana flow.
The city was a lot bigger than he thought. His stupor-like walk felt like a minute had passed when he found himself standing before the blacksmith¡¯s store again.
His meditation really messes with his time perception, it made a 3 day continuous training seem like a short while has passed. He probably wouldn¡¯t be able to tell the time if he wasn¡¯t charging mana ores.
¡°Whooh. Here. Ah don¡¯t know how or what the Xeng craftsman did but they crafted it with improvements or upgrades to be put in place. The compressed bronze could take up more verglas aluminium than ah expected and the resulting alloy was able to saturate almost the entire piece of tungsten rime. Only powdered remains are left of it.¡± Balke ruffled his dirty sooty hair with his blackened hands. He placed Ebony¡¯s greatsword on the countertop.
Ebony drew it to see that the dimensions of the blade didn¡¯t change at all. The body of the greatsword was originally dark brownish red or reddish brown now the blade seemed translucent pale purple.
Balke showed Ebony the verglas aluminium, it was a translucent silverish metal while the tungsten rime was a cyan crystal. Their addition clearly affected the colour of the greatsword but it wasn¡¯t so bad.
Tungsten rime was actually a by-product of the glacial tungsten antler elk magic. They would find tracks of where they fought before and the remnants of their magic or perhaps physical attacks causes tungsten rime to be left behind. The really rare stuff would be the glacial tungsten antler itself though.
According to Balke it was only possible to keep its dimension due to him having a higher compression skill level than the original smith.
There wasn¡¯t much of an increase in weight since the aluminium was not all that heavy. Imbuing ice mana into it should no longer cause it to be damaged by too much or at all. It was sharpened and the chips and scratches were all gone, even having a light polish.
Ebony paid up the price Balke first stated, even though he said he used more material than expected. He thanked Ebony for the chance to work with a Xeng craft. Ebony left him with the powdered remains of rime too, he had no use for it.
Ebony quickly sped back to Plainston with Repulsive Body and Battle Song cast.
Chapter 38: Sub-Class
¡°Bring me the list.¡±
¡°This is all of them at the moment, Sire.¡±
¡°...All boring. Help me sieve out the apprentice class, normal warriors, archers, rogues and mages.¡±
¡°Certainly.¡±
¡
¡°That¡¯s all there is?¡±
¡°...It is near the edge of the Empire, Sire. Even if many have flocked over, the talented and blessed are few. Those that have a certain level of ability would likely be in a party already.¡±
¡°Haa. Alright, I hope there are some interesting ones here.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Poison warrior? Over 60 year old and still level 64? Smoke Rogue? Such high quest points but only level 48¡±
¡°That one is the son of a merchant, Sire.¡±
¡°I see¡ hmm? A hybrid classed human? Ooo this one is interesting, an ice swordsman. Woah 16 and he¡¯s already level 36? Okay, put me with him.¡±
¡°As you wish Sire. He has one party member already, her information is right under his.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s see. What?! A Xeng is actually all the way out here? Hahaha! Great, I can see if they really are as nonsensically strong as the stories say.¡±
???
Another 2 monotonous weeks passed with Ebony focusing on his magic together with sparring with Scarlet. The town has expanded many times over. Many new buildings were built. The mage association opened a branch with their mage tower here, right in the centre of Plainston.
Mages sure love towers.
The mage tower was not just a place where they kept their knowledge and did their research. It was also the main defensive structure against monsters or otherwise, invasions. They were not open to the public yet for some reason so Ebony hasn¡¯t visited them.
An arena or they call it a colosseum was built as well or maybe it was expanded, Ebony didn¡¯t remember since he didn¡¯t see one before.
Somehow, Plainston¡¯s noble wasn¡¯t kicked out and was still in charge. The city walls were mostly completed already, the speed of construction here was impressive. Magic and skills sure made things convenient and efficient.
The more interesting thing that happened was obviously the classes he was able to take.
Gravity Mage - Requirements: Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 25 & Repulsive Body Lvl 25
Pretty basic and one that he knew was coming.
Bardic Gravity Mage - Requirements: Mana Vibration Lvl 25 & Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 25
He was pretty glad they could merge.
Orchestral Gravity Conductor - Requirements: Reversing the gravitational flow of your body¡¯s mass without so much as a thought. Masterful recreation of numerous instrumental and non-instrumental vibrations through mana alone. Mana Vibration Lvl 25, Battle Song Lvl 25, Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 25 & Repulsive Body Lvl 25
Despite putting in the same amount of time and effort for his magic it was easy to see the skewness in skill levelling. What they call talent was truly limiting.
Battle Song was stuck at 32 for the past two weeks while Mana Vibration was stuck at 33. He was multitasking or casting but Gravity Mana Manipulation went past them in days staying at 35 for the past 5 days while Repulsive Body hasn¡¯t levelled past 37 for 4 days even with all the time and mana he had spent on it.
The time and mana spent wasn¡¯t wasted of course. He tried to change things up whenever he could or make the gravity mana do what it did but better and more efficiently.
After one type of instrument for example string instruments was recreated, other string instrumental sounds were easier to recreate. Now he had a wide choice of piano, violin, guitar, bass, drums, cellos and a couple more sounds he could make the sound off.
He could even ¡®talk¡¯ without talking anymore. His voice reverberated through the mana in the air without opening his mouth.
He was recreating some of his favourite songs with the original singer¡¯s voice and all, the language may be incomprehensible to the people here but Ebony believed music was a universal language.
He kept reversing the gravitational flow and casting Repulsive Body that he unknowingly cast it while he was asleep. Deep Persistent Meditation obviously helped a lot in this regard. Unlike Icebody Enhancement which never required much effort to cast, Ebony was manually manipulating gravity mana almost every minute of the day. The effort paid back and he was deciding on putting the same if not more effort into Icebody Enhancement.
His maximum range of Mana Perception and control reached over 9 metres.
It will require focus and may or may not break him out of Deep Persistent Meditation but he could form a fifth cast if he really needed too.
A single second to cast Layered Ice Carapace seemed to be the limit to how fast he could get it. His spell acclimatisation glove probably reached the limit to how much it would help too, it was only a Common quality item after all.
Its mana pathways had smoothened out so much by now. The good news was he could easily cast a 5 layered one on the go if he had the mana for it, it wouldn¡¯t even take much longer. Mana compression being the only thing that would take a little more time.
Ebony didn¡¯t think he could get the skills to level 50. Even if he could, it would take years and the diminishing returns may not be worth it. He might die of old age not knowing his skills could no longer level. Time waits for no one.
Sub-Classes were more limited than Classes to begin with. Though some might rush their Class, few would rush to get their Sub-Class. There would be the advantage of stats to power through or get and train rarer skills. However, they are known to have a limit of 3 fortifications or at least no one has publicised themselves having 4.
Even for those that spent decades on their skills or had their Class over level 100. Only after another round of evolution would the number and quality of fortification increase. So, despite Orchestral Gravity Conductor requiring 4 skills Ebony may not get 4 types of fortifications.
Anyhow, Ebony has obviously decided on classing already.
The mana in the air was thin, absorbed by the slowly stabilizing dungeon from days ago.
The training square expanded and had protective walls in place but the sheer number of people caused a lot of friction between young freelancers or dungeon clearer wannabes.
Some even picked fights with Ebony and Scarlet, for all sorts of reasons like taking up the little space they had for too long. Ebony¡¯s face pissing them off was actually the most nostalgic reason they gave since his facial expression had been giving him such problems since his time on Earth.
Only people 20 or 30 levels higher than Scarlet dared challenge her. It didn¡¯t make a difference, she didn¡¯t even need to use magic. Scarlet had consistently gone out to hunt and she hit level 53, admittedly having a Sub-class which she focussed on. Ebony wasn¡¯t much of a match for her and it was more and more obvious as the days passed.
When he said he was classing she was even nice enough to cook a scrumptious meal for him again. More like a feast but he ate every morsel. The food she cooked was a completely different style of cuisine than inn food.
Ebony shouldn¡¯t have tried avoiding her from the beginning. She was good company, never talking much during their spars or at all. It''s been 3 weeks yet the number of words they spoke to each other could be counted.
From time to time he would find the others for a short spar too. Chris has picked up a Sub-Class in the meantime and whatever it was it gave him a whole lot of Strength, his fighting style has gotten a lot more aggressive as well.
With Mana Perception at its current level he found that Dina¡¯s wires were tougher than they looked as they were reinforced with her mana. She also controlled the wires to a certain extent with mana.
Fergus still had his way of keeping his distance but there was little he could do against Ebony anymore. Well, Ebony couldn¡¯t take him down either. His actual arrows could actually root his shield to the ground. Ebony couldn¡¯t free his shield without cutting the roots down, his Intelligence or skill being weaker comparatively.
Rowent had a pretty awesome skill that he hadn''t shown till then. He removed all the air in his surroundings, Ebony found that Constitution probably really reduced the need for oxygen too. He just needed to disrupt his cast or knock him down within the span of a breath. He was a fire mage that was an anti fire mage, he said it doesn¡¯t work well if the opponent was a fire conjuror as well but it could easily eat up their mana if they wanted to keep the fire going.
Mages couldn¡¯t manipulate the air, water, blood, bone etc. in another¡¯s body due to the extreme difficulty. The target¡¯s mana apparently interrupts foreign mana manipulation.
The strength difference between the mage and the target needs to be enormous but the fact that it wasn¡¯t impossible was a little unnerving. It was mostly a battle between the mage''s Intelligence and skills against their target''s Wisdom and defences if any. Such as Resistance skills.
After many ¡®friendly¡¯ and unfriendly duels with others, it was clear that the escort party truly were ¡®elites¡¯ in comparison to most other freelancers.
That aside, he calmly meditated again after his feast.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have met the requirements to obtain the class: Orchestral Gravity Conductor - Requirements: Reversing the gravitational flow of your body¡¯s mass without so much as a thought. Masterful recreation of numerous instrumental and non-instrumental vibrations through mana alone. Mana Vibration Lvl 25, Battle Song Lvl 25, Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 25 & Repulsive Body Lvl 25¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Class is bound. Choose Orchestral Gravity Conductor as your Sub-Class?¡¯
Yes.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®A Chosen Sub-Class will be bound to you and can never be changed. Choose ¡®Orchestral Gravity Conductor¡¯ as your Sub-Class?¡¯
Yes.
???
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Orchestral Gravity Conductor Fortification Completed.¡±
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class changed to Orchestral Gravity Conductor¡¯
¡®Orchestral Gravity Conductor Fortification:
Mana efficiency with Sound Magic increased by 100%
Mana efficiency with Gravity Magic increased by 100%
Body¡¯s natural gravitational flow reversed and increased by 100%
Generic Skills Converted to Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song
Mana Vibration
Gravity Mana Manipulation
Magnified Gravity Field
Repulsive Body
Stemmed Sub-Class Skills:
Vibrational Gravity Sense (Passive) - Perceive the movement of mana and gravitational waves in your surroundings. Has the effect of 10% + 1.0% Perception and 100% of Mana Perception.
Ebony had the weirdest, indescribable feeling when he woke up almost an entire day later. Noticing nothing wrong with his body he checked the notifications. The mana efficiency with both types of magic seemed really natural. He was pretty confident he was going to get that, for some reason it feels instinctual to find ways to be more efficient with mana.
The last one of reversing his body¡¯s gravitational flow was probably where the weird feeling was coming from. There was nothing natural about it. The same amount of gravity mana from his body but was twice as strong. Well, he preferred a gravity fortification more than sound, the applications of gravity in battle should show more effect than sound¡probably.
The skills moved to his Sub-Class and the stemmed skill was nothing special. It overlapped with his Frost Mist Perception Sphere, it just wasn¡¯t a magic skill and didn¡¯t inflict damage or require his Intelligence stat. Sooner or later within his range of mana sense, his sense of sight would be inferior to his other senses.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Sadly, none of his skills evolved.
Race: Human
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Deep Persistent Meditation Lvl 124
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 50
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 67
Ice Mana Manipulation Lvl 66
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 77
Flowing Greatsword Mastery Lvl 80
Frost Injection Lvl 56
Ice Sword Lvl 52
Two-handed Power Stab Lvl 50
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 51
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 61
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Orchestral Gravity Conductor Lvl 0
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 32
Mana Vibration Lvl 33
Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 35
Magnified Gravity Field Lvl 4
Repulsive Body Lvl 37
Vibrational Gravity Sense Lvl 1
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 42
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 42
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 94
Mana Perception Lvl 55
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 135/300
Stamina: 335/500
Mana: 36/1970
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 30
Vitality: 30
Constitution: 80
Endurance: 50
Agility: 60
Intelligence: 101
Wisdom: 197
Perception: 50
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 10
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 28
Running Lvl 29
Mental Mapping Lvl 9
Kicking Mastery Lvl 34
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 6
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 12
Dish Washing Lvl 8
Physical Conditioning Lvl 7
Magical Conditioning Lvl 7
Peak Performance Lvl 36
Tracking Lvl 9
Game Processing Lvl 10
Heat Resistance Lvl 18
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
He noticed the drop in his resources again but they were rising back up, health at a faster pace than it should, while stamina a little slower and mana about the same speed as usual.
The range of the gravitational waves or mana exuding from his body was less than a quarter of a cm. He conjured a pebble of ice and dropped it onto his open palms. Nothing. Not floating, not shifting aside.
He had a bit of mana left and it was regenerating quickly, he cast Repulsive Body.
It propped right out of contact with his palms, sliding to the sides and finally off his palms. Fortunately, his ability to manipulate gravity mana can extend the reversal of gravitational flow to his clothes and weapons. He had been doing it long enough for it to reverse naturally, almost as easy as breathing. He has yet to test it on his shield or if he could do it without touching it.
Doubling his natural gravitational flow or whatever shouldn¡¯t be strong enough to push aside a pebble with Repulsive Body at level 37 or a 74% buff. Likely only possible since it scaled with Intelligence. The Intelligence stat was getting more and more value for Ebony.
He rested and meditated before standing up, the additional passive sense was disorientating. He might be able to turn it off if he tried but why would he? His mental clarity helped sieve information he didn¡¯t directly need away but it¡¯ll need some getting used to.
In his senses, every object in the room was radiating extremely dark purple colour waves. The lower their masses the weaker the waves. When he waved his hands in front of him he felt the pure mana in the air move aside, the same thing happened when he tossed the pebble of ice in the air.
His room wasn¡¯t large, his senses stopped at the walls, door, windows and ceiling. He couldn¡¯t sense past their gravitational waves other than the little bit of floor outside his room from under the door gap.
Something was on the floor, he went and picked it up finding it to be a note that slipped in from under the door. It was from Scarlet, telling him to look for her right after he woke up.
Paper wasn¡¯t as uncommon or rare as he thought. Only the ones used for good books made to last many years, centuries or perhaps thousands of years were expensive. Market-bought ingredients and road stalls sell food wrapped in paper bags too.
He left his room and knocked on the door across the hall without thought. The hallway was dimly lit by pholamps on the wall. Ebony just realised he started classing late at night and having the phoslamp on or uncovered meant that it was the next night already. That or hardly any time had passed where he was unconscious. Doubtful.
Perhaps he should have waited for the next morning? He was extremely hungry after the classing so he should at least have gotten a bite before disturbing Scarlet.
¡®Well, she did say right after. I hope I didn¡¯t wake her up.¡¯ Ebony thought, not planning to knock again if she didn¡¯t hear the first.
Gravitational sense couldn¡¯t pass through walls or at least not yet, the vibrational mana part did better in this regard. His mana sense ranged past 9 metres now, it could pass through not just under the door gap but vaguely through the mini gaps in the mana of the door itself.
It was useless if nothing moved, he couldn¡¯t tell what was what and was no different from being blind if the gravitational part wasn¡¯t able to sense the stationary objects. At least not with his current Perception or Mana Perception. One sensed motion, the other recognized bodies of matter. The additional sensory skill may be more useful than his other skills.
He felt and heard movement from Scarlet¡¯s room, feet landed on the ground past the wooden doors. Whatever she was doing behind the doors she was taking her time.
The same old thick white mask only showing her burning red eyes peeked out from the small opened door gap.
¡°You¡¯re done? Hold on.¡± Scarlet ordered before Ebony could apologise for the bad timing. She didn¡¯t seem to be bothered or annoyed that Ebony woke her up but that wasn¡¯t where his focus was on. She turned back leaving the door slightly ajar, Ebony could see her in a simple one piece dress, completely bright red as usual.
Pajamas, it covered her entirely till her ankles and only hands and dainty feet were bare. She had her hair down and flowing instead of her usual tall ponytail, like a flowing river. A river of blood that is. Ebony had been amazed at how she kept such long hair without it getting in the way of battle, especially with her close combat style.
It was completely dark in her room and she only left a small gap on the door ajar. The problem was his gravitational sense checking her out. He couldn¡¯t see or sense any features but Ebony has got to say her figure was more perfect than he thought possible. There was a gravity defying part but it wasn¡¯t what caught his attention, at least not all his attention.
Her mask was what caught most of his attention¡ It was radiating so damn much gravity mana for a small mask even if it was thick. Ebony estimated it weighed more than him together with his equipment, robes and greatsword. It wasn''t just a little bit more either. It should be far heavier.
Scarlet¡¯s mask was held in place by what looked like 2 leather straps, one behind her neck under where her usual ponytail would be and another above it. He didn¡¯t think she could walk around wearing that even with her strength. The weird thing is that the constant gravitational waves towards the ground which pull everything towards it, were avoiding her mask or slipping off it as they came into contact with it.
Ebony guessed it meant the mask was somehow made to be lighter than its mass suggests since it was basically free from the effects of gravity. Ebony would be lying if he said he wasn¡¯t intrigued by the material of the mask or how it''s made.
Scarlet quickly picked something up in the darkness and returned with a large tray again. Food. It was still steaming hot and the smell made his stomach grumble. She pushed the tray onto Ebony without saying anything.
¡°You didn¡¯t have to.¡± Ebony said that, but he thought that Scarlet was being really considerate. She obviously knew one would be very hungry after a classing and had made him a full meal beforehand.
¡°...Eat.¡± she shut the door on Ebony after saying that. Ebony noticed she had been concerned about the damage to his greatsword since it was largely damaged by her. She just didn¡¯t say anything about it, even the earlier meal before he classed might have been her way of paying back. Her twin longswords on the other hand didn¡¯t even get its polish blemished.
¡°Thank you. The food you cook is always delicious.¡± Scarlet was probably tired from her busy day and couldn¡¯t wait to go back to sleep but thanking her was the least he could do.
Ebony was surprised to see a very familiar dish. His late night dinner consisted of a large mug of fruit juice, a plate of 3 baked potatoes salted and loaded with sour cream, bacon bits and spring onions. A clear soup that had lots of onions and vegetables in it.
Slabs of lamb chops, Ebony didn¡¯t really like mutton all that much because they usually had a heavy scent or flavour but Scarlet¡¯s didn¡¯t have any of that and was very tender.
And finally a stir fried cubes of meat with glistering goldenish red sauce, it tasted like boar meat he had in Arcta. It was sweet and sour pork, one of his favourite dishes and he fell in love with the dish once more.
He cleaned that up and returned the dishes as usual before beginning his magic training again. Ebony planned to go out for hunts and earn some ores outside of filling them up. He wanted to get his Sub-Class as far as he could before the dungeon fully opened. It shouldn¡¯t be more than a week before it completely stabilises according to the current updates the Quest Hall is giving.
Ebony or rather, everyone who applied for a party was also informed when he went to the Quest Hall for ore exchanges that they finalised most party applications and gave them a date for something like a grand meet up in 4 no... in 3 days.
Fortunately, he classed in time and 3 days should be enough to get to a respectable level. The meet up was somewhat traditional for any new party put together by the Quest Hall. If they don¡¯t like each other they could still change or even opt out of the party.
Essentially, an event that¡¯s mostly decided by battle capabilities. Every member would duel each other in the underground duelling grounds. If there is a member that was obviously much stronger than the others, he or she definitely wouldn¡¯t want to be dragged down and fight or aim for lower levels of danger and monsters.
Ebony did have a problem he had with his Sub-Class, and it was that none of his skills were direct combat skills. For it to gain more experience than his main Class he would have to kill a monster using more of his Sub-Class skills than his other skills.
Unlikely, or more like impossible at the moment.
They were all supportive skills at best, though he will still gain experience and level them up in battle as long as he uses the skills since they do do something. The effects are just really pathetically weak right now.
He had to come up with offensive sound or gravity magic as soon as possible. Maybe he should have done that before he classed¡ Ebony had quite some effects or spells that he could come up with from reading experience or just imagination but gravity magic would be too mana intensive to train quickly.
He also had to learn how to utilise a portion of the gravitational waves or mana of the planet itself to even form a ball or something before he could do anything magical with it since he hasn¡¯t been able to study the make up of gravity mana to conjure it yet. He¡¯ll have to stick to Magnified Gravity Field and Repulsive Body for now, with half the mana cost it should be possible to use Magnified Gravity Field for a short while.
Sound magic on the other hand was pretty interesting itself. From what he understood it was capable of both physical and mental effects or damage. There are even actual sonic weapons on Earth. He could try creating some sort of extremely high frequency vibrations or sound waves to mentally disturb or even injure both people and monsters.
The next was more obvious, vibro weapons or vibrating blades to cut better was a little standard but it probably works. Ebony didn¡¯t want to and couldn¡¯t vibrate the metal alloy of his sword itself since he didn¡¯t want to damage it by accident. He¡¯ll either envelope it with his own mana or ice mana from imbuement and try to create micro vibrations at his highest speed possible.
He decided on ice mana since he almost always imbued ice mana into his greatsword in a battle unless he was sparing. He made it such that there was a whole layer of ice on the sword, he wanted it to affect the blade itself as little as possible. Ebony could either make his blade like a chainsaw or those ultrasonic vibration blades. Obviously, the ultrasonic vibration type made more sense.
Ebony didn¡¯t know how they work and he was using manual manipulation of mana to vibrate so it was just trial and error for now. He had to make as small and fast a movement as possible of the ice or normal pure mana to create the effect.
The first aim would be to reach ¡®ultrasonic¡¯ which was to 20000 hertz or something. It was impossible for Ebony at the moment but it didn¡¯t stop him from trying. One thing to note when he played Battle Song was that Mana Compression had no effect with Sound Magic or at least in buffing skills like Battle Song. Vibrating compressed mana didn¡¯t make it stronger or anything. At least, Ebony hasn''t figured out how to make use of it.
???
Ebony gained a few levels in his Sub-Class by the time the sun rose. Each level in Sub-Class gave him 5 stat points he could freely allocate. He suited up and left for the Quest Hall, trading in his ores, checking out the latest news and dungeon information and available quests.
His room was colder than any other room due to the multiple fully compressed shields lying around. They don¡¯t melt as easily anymore as long as he didn¡¯t use it against Scarlet¡¯s fire magic.
He made 2 of them float very close to his back, it will look like he was carrying them on his back from the front. Ebony couldn¡¯t be seen from the back since his shields were large enough to cover him entirely. It didn¡¯t get in the way much when he was on the street since there were many beastman and even a few human warriors larger than him and his shields together.
Ebony didn¡¯t know but some were calling him the emotionless turtleman, shellback human and such.
Ebony thought it would be a good idea to start stocking up on higher rarity mana ores. He actually couldn¡¯t just trade in Blues just like that since they were rare shit. He only found out when he upgraded his greatsword. Normal civilians have a limit quota of 1 Blue a month. Around these parts anyway.
A tiny bit of quest points is enough to consider one as a working freelancer and they can trade up to 2. Freelancers needed a certain amount of quest points to trade full Blues for more empty Blues and they were pretty limited in number too. This wasn¡¯t including quest rewards and only trade ins. Of course, quests that pay out Blues were never easy.
Nothing higher in rarity was traded by the Quest Hall.
The Quest Halls throughout the Empire were connected by means similar to the callstone. There were screens for the latest Empire news and local news. With how large the continent was, local news was more reliable as the ¡®latest¡¯ news.
The biggest news recently was the loss of a town extremely far northeast from Plainston 4 months or so ago. Completely destroyed without a single brick or stone left, a hole hundreds of metres deep appeared where the town was. The Empire didn¡¯t even have time to react or know what did that, at least that¡¯s what they reported but Ebony didn¡¯t think a town would disappear overnight without them knowing.
There was no news on the dungeon other than the 5 to 10 day estimation before the gate stabilised and then warning people not to get near and absorbed by the dungeon.
The monsters absorbed by the dungeon will likely appear as dungeon monsters in some form or way. The ambient mana in the surrounding area will likely affect the environment inside the dungeon. A lot of information on the forming dungeon can be glimpsed and predicted this way.
When the gate stabilises the Empire will send a party working directly under the imperial government to collect some data before letting others in.
Mostly retired dungeon clearers. They would record and publish data in the Quest Hall on stuff like how thin the air or oxygen levels are, relative gravity, time ratios and other general environmental information.
Bubble Hill is much larger than the nearby woods and Ebony didn¡¯t explore it much. There should be lots of other monsters in there. He just noted the quests for materials or special singular wanted monsters before leaving towards the hills.
Chapter 39: Bubble Hills
Ebony didn¡¯t play around with multicasting and practising this time. He didn¡¯t have the spare mana for it. Battle Song consumes 30 MP/Min and Repulsive Body consumes 100. Even with 100% mana efficiency for both of them it would be 15 and 50 mana per minute.
Mana cost stipulated by skill definition wasn¡¯t absolute, he knew this long ago. He can manually try to be more efficient with it. Using less or even more mana to bring down or up the effects of the skill was also possible and this was not considering Mana Compression.
Skills like Frost Mist Perception Sphere and Battle Song also took into account range. He once casted Battle Song with Scarlet in range and tried to buff her too. It worked and also doubled his mana consumption. The mana consumption numbers given in the skill summary was likely using a gir''s range or 5 metres range or so his experiments told him.
Skills like Ice Sword or Layered Ice Carapace were more accurate on mana cost. Using less mana might make a failed, incomplete version or maybe not even being able to cast the spell if you¡¯re emptied out on mana.
For example, his mana regeneration was currently around 47.1 mana per minute. If he were to cast Repulsive Body till his mana pool runs dry he could actually still cast a weaker Repulsive Body as long as Deep Persistent Meditation was still running. The skill wouldn¡¯t have the effect stated by the level of the skill, 37% of intelligence would likely scale down to whatever percentage of mana was used to cast the skill.
It wasn¡¯t ideal though. Not pushing the skill to the limit means that it won¡¯t be pushed to the limit like it should and would not level at an optimal or faster rate.
Ebony only casted Battle Song as he ran towards the hills, he believed in the potential of Battle Song. The thing about sound magic was how low mana cost its skills were. Bringing the range of Battle Song down to cover only himself made the skill cost next to nothing. He observed that his body absorbs the mana that was spent to cast battle songs or perhaps the mana diffused into his body, same thing.
Of course, the skill does next to nothing together with the mana cost at the moment.
This time, not following the same route he took here. Ebony would map out the other areas of Bubble Hill.
He almost fell after he took a few steps, he quickly stopped and regulated his breathing and stabilised his Core Skill.
¡®Vibrational Gravity Sense¡can normal people even fight properly with this?¡¯ Ebony was hit with a whole lot of information.
The amount of mana he passed by, moving bodies, static bodies. It wasn¡¯t so bad when he walked slowly but it did catch him off guard when he sped up. The Intelligence stat improved his mental processing speed and probably what stopped him from vomiting right now since he invested quite a bit into it by now.
Ebony moved off again, starting slow and speeding up from there. His normal sight and senses together with his new senses was overloading his mind. He was hit with an epiphany when he thought of a mainstream training method. Blindfolding himself with a clean cloth he bought to wipe blood, fat and bone bits from his greatsword.
Calming was not the word Ebony would use to describe the sensation of moving fast with your senses of ¡®sight¡¯ pushed down to under 10 metres. Worse was when a single step of his surpasses his range of ¡®sight¡¯. Who knew if there was a cliff or wall right beyond where he could sense? This may even be better training for his meditation. The unknown was a fearful thing.
The good thing was the 3 dimensional sight, he could ¡®see¡¯ behind and above him as clearly as it was right in front of him. ''Clearly'' meant blurry. Vibrational Gravity Sense and Mana Perception levels were not high enough.
Novels, manga and anime truly didn''t betray expectations. This training method was perfect for getting used to his new senses. He already gained a level in Vibrational Gravity Sense. Only opening his eyes and bringing the blindfold down to check if he was in the right direction. He was beginning to think the blindfold was redundant.
Ebony was only running normally in the beginning, forcing himself not to use Treading Steps until his mind could sort out the information properly. He slowly increased his speed but it still took him much longer to reach the edge of Bubble Hills from the plains.
Even the ground or earth had pure mana outside of earth mana. That was how Ebony could vaguely feel a little bit through the ground and under him. It was also how his senses could slip through wooden doors and walls just that it was too weak to actually sense through solid objects if they covered his entire range as the gravitational sense would block it.
Moving without his sense of sight was not working so well in the hill range, unlike the plains he just passed. He was previously moving through flat land with nothing blocking him but now a misstep can send him smashing into a tree or hill.
He ditched the blindfolding for now and started to mix and merge his normal senses with his new one at higher speeds.
He stepped on a muddy puddle where a few clawed arms tried to grab him. Ebony already noticed before they reached him and a single step was enough to push himself away. A few mud marmots were attacking him. Ebony closed his eyes, he was going to do this his old fashion way.
¡®It''s been quite awhile.¡¯
Ebony only picked up the sword because it was a personal hobby and also because he thought it was cool. The monsters that he had seen when he just arrived here were also all huge like the boar and Sen, Ton and the other turtles. He didn¡¯t imagine himself punching and kicking such large monsters into a bloody pulp, it may have been just as cool but he was experienced enough to get annoyed with all the blood on him.
He sensed 4 marmots showing themselves. Ebony was resolved on not using a single Class skill for them with the exception of Treading Step, his shield standing by on the side. He quickly removed his casting glove and kept it within his robes.
Battle Song and Repulsive Body going on strong.
One of the marmots already jumped and clawed at his neck. Ebony cross blocked with his hand and grabbed onto its wrist. Slamming it onto the ground, stabbing his other hand out to where its eyes were. He failed to crush its eye so he dug his fingers in, grabbed and pulled hard. Deaf to its screams.
The other marmots only just reacted to its fellow¡¯s shriek. One of them came for a bite as the other 2 manipulated the mud below Ebony¡¯s feet to sink him in.
Ebony changed his grip on the poor marmot onto the back of its neck and turned to the marmot aiming to bite him. Placing the marmot¡¯s neck in his grip in the attacker¡¯s path. The attacker couldn¡¯t stop itself mid air and neither did it stop its bite in time with its speed. Chomping down hard on its kind.
It quickly let go as Ebony kicked it off into the bushes. The marmot¡¯s were not huge or heavy but they still had a monster¡¯s strength and toughness. Ebony took the chance using his fingers to dig into its freshly opened wound. It didn¡¯t stay still and let Ebony do what he wanted and struggled to bite Ebony despite holes in its neck.
Ebony jammed his free hand right into its throat as hard and far down as he could, keeping its mouth wide open and without strength to bite down. He moved his hand around to find whatever it could grab.
Both marmots manipulating mud stopped what they were doing when Ebony was knee deep in mud. He stood still without struggling against it.
One swiped out its claws at his thigh and the other his chest.
Ebony swung the marmot in his hands, knocking the one aiming at his thighs away. Though only a few metres away. The marmot which had an arm stuffed in its mouth struggled, it bit down with whatever strength it could manifest. Unable to pierce Ebony¡¯s sleeves.
He poised the marmot''s belly to the claw going for his chest. It cut deep but the marmot couldn¡¯t even cry out in pain. Only stopping its attempts at chomping Ebony¡¯s arm off.
Ebony gave a knee to the attacking marmot, axe kicked it into the mud before kicking it away all with the same leg.
The belly wound was perfect, once again he dug his fingers and hand into the largest cut. Managing to get a good grip, he pulled his disgusting saliva and gut fluid covered hand out from its mouth to grip into the same wound. Trying to tear it apart proved difficult with his strength, he didn¡¯t have Icebody Enhancement on either.
Even so, it didn¡¯t take long before the notification of a kill, levels and skill levels came up.
Ebony went on to take the other 3 marmots down in a similarly swift and brutal manner, no hesitations or lagging in any of his moves. When it was down to 2 of them he had to switch things up a bit to get them to injure each other so that it was easier to tear them apart.
The marmots were around mid 30s. His notification categorised them as 10 or more levels lower than him which was to say his main class was used as the benchmark. He still gained a few levels for his Sub-Class since it was under level 10 before the fight.
He decided to take the hunt leisurely, only waiting for monsters to attack him. It usually doesn¡¯t take long as long as there are monsters nearby. Ebony left the icky blood and gut on him as it is, even after burying the marmots. It was actually sliding or dripping off him smoothly. Perhaps from Repulsive Body. He didn¡¯t want to eat the marmots, it was a pity but they attacked him. Then again, he was the one who delivered himself here. He was at fault but he didn¡¯t feel guilty.
His stat points were mostly distributed between Wisdom and Intelligence for now. Constitution and Perception were the second choices that he debated on.
Like Battle Song where compressing mana doesn¡¯t bring up its effects, Repulsive Body was the same. Not because the effect doesn¡¯t increase but because he doesn¡¯t have more gravity mana to compress. He could conjure ice mana which was how he compresses his ice spell.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
He could likely compress Magnified Gravity Field once his manipulation over it was good enough. He could pull the surrounding gravity mana of the planet to strengthen and compress around a certain area.
Single instrumental bgms or anime osts usually gave him a single stat buff. Strength was the most common, Agility and Endurance came after. In his current repertoire, the best ones he played were fast paced and what he thought to be epic that gave him both Strength and Agility.
The surprising thing was that relaxing meditative music or jazz and classical music could buff Intelligence or Wisdom. Ebony couldn¡¯t tell if there was an increase in maximum mana but even if it was minuscule he was pretty sure his mana regeneration speed did increase. He was getting sensitive to how much mana he regenerates.
Battle Song at level 35 now, gave a buff of 0.35% scaled with Intelligence. A stat buff of under 1 or under half a single stat point does absolutely nothing. He also didn¡¯t have a fortification for it but since it doesn¡¯t require much mana or even effort to cast he could just keep it going.
It made travel and battle less bland too.
¡®Compressing mana should work though. The mana is absorbed by the body to buff it isn¡¯t it?¡¯ Ebony reconsidered the possibility of increasing its effect with Mana Compression. There was a bardic amplifier class, no way such a weak buff was all he could come up with.
Compressing mana to vibrate may or may not affect the sound produced but if it was going to buff the body or mind compressed mana should still equally strengthen his magic. Logically anyway.
He needed to read up more on sound magic and gravity magic. His current spells for them were likely flawed here and there since he made them up himself. Either by imagination or from stories he read.
There were actually a few goats around. They had levels but didn¡¯t attack him on sight so he left them alone.
Ebony was now in unfamiliar parts of the hill. He jogged around at lower speeds.
He came across a level 63 Cysaru after a few random minor monster attacks in a few hours which may be lucky or unlucky.
Luckily it was probably still very young and hence, its low level. Unlucky because fighting it without his Class skills may very well be impossible. He was mostly fighting supportively the previous time he took it on with Rowent and the others.
The beast was too fast and strong for him, he wasn¡¯t too stubborn and Icebody Enhancement came on. His skin and muscle took a translucent glint of blue, turning into ice. His Constitution increased by over a hundred while Strength and Endurance increased over 90 stat points.
A few steps took him right beside the scythed reaper, Ebony kicked out with explosive strength. The loud blow didn¡¯t even cause the Cysaru to stumble.
It slightly turned and cut down with its sharp pointy arms. Ebony shifted his upper body to the side to dodge it by the skin of his teeth. It was a reflexive movement and he was as calm as ever.
He punched, poked, strangled, locked, kicked, swept and thrust whenever and wherever was suitable. Dancing with death, with the reaper. Any strike could cut through him regardless of the more than double Constitution. His robes may protect him but he doubted it can stop a good stab from the Cysaru. Even fully infused with 5000 mana in it, he never tested it before though.
He only used his shields when he knew he couldn''t dodge or avoid a blow in time. Ebony didn¡¯t dare put his arms inside the Cysaru¡¯s throat either. It had jaws large enough to swallow his whole arm. They were in a stalemate where neither was harming each other.
His blows without a greatsword wasn¡¯t doing much but slowly got the Cysaru more agitated. Ebony started imbuing ice mana into his hands and legs. He didn¡¯t have much mana with him running both Repulsive Body and Icebody Enhancement but he just lowered the output to Repulsive Body when needed.
Every strike and blow drove ice mana into the Cysaru¡¯s body. Ebony observed that the sword was a better method of driving ice mana into his enemy¡¯s body. Some of the ice mana from kicking and punching stuck onto its skin instead of getting deep into its body. Normal Cysarus had skin instead of scales like Obsius.
¡®Hmm why didn¡¯t I think of that?¡¯ Ebony remembered some story about increasing the weight of the opponent with every blow or something. He also started the microvibration of the mana in his strikes.
He didn¡¯t know where to start but the point was to increase the effect of gravity on the opponent where he hits. Ebony tried manipulating gravity mana in all sorts of ways.
Right now he wanted to see Scarlet¡¯s mask and observe it again. He wanted to make gravity do the opposite of what the mask does. All his current attempts were not that different from what Magnified Gravity Field does and increase the pull of gravity over the whole area instead of a certain part.
Ebony concentrated his attacks on the Cysaru¡¯s neck and arms where the ¡®handle¡¯ or non-bladed part was.
In time, these parts were covered in ice. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands of blows landed on them by now. The fight went on for literal hours. The Cysaru kept getting slower and stiffer, its breath getting misty over time.
A good hard kick broke its arm off where he focused his ice mana into. The Cysaru not even noticing any pain since it was completely numbed out long ago. The same happened to its other arm after a couple more kicks. It was lying on the ground gasping and shivering for a while now.
Its neck was a lot thicker than its arms so it took some effort, a final axe kick separated the Cysaru¡¯s head from its body.
It was more than 10 levels higher than him and his Sub-Class gained a full 8 levels for it despite the little it did, perhaps the level difference being much larger.
¡®I should¡¯ve done this from the start. Less blood and grime.¡¯ Ebony felt a little dejected for not dealing with the previous monsters this cleaner way. It would¡¯ve been more efficient against the weaker monster than tearing their bodies apart too.
Ebony kept the 2 scythe arms in his bag and got to processing the Cysaru but the flesh was ruined or unprocessable in its frozen state. It was too big to keep in his bag whole and sadly, removing the ice mana in it wouldn¡¯t completely thaw the thing properly. At least the scythe was intact since he didn¡¯t touch it much other than the scrawny ¡®handle¡¯ part.
His 3D Mental Map was expanding well.
Night was approaching after a small hunt or 2.
Ebony quickly skedaddled and changed directions when he saw one of the hills collapse or cave in. He unknowingly got to one of the more dangerous areas.
Ebony watched from afar, it was a battle.
Ebony spent about a month and a half in Arcta, including the 5 or so days he wandered around the underground frostflame territory and finding his way to Arcta. Travelling to Plainston in a week, fighting rhoats for 3 days, concentrating on magic for a week, another 3 days in Teld City, two more weeks of magic.
Ebony had been on Elcra for over 2 months, almost 3 months now. 77 or 78 days to be exact. When he arrived it was the beginning of Summer over here.
Midsummer was when the moonlight was the brightest and whitest. Now it was slowly darkening and had a tinge of orange in it. It¡¯ll be autumn in a month or so, but the moonlight was still pretty bright and his Perception improved a lot from the time he was a normal human.
He couldn¡¯t Identify the monsters from so far but he could see it was another Cysaru fighting something humanoid over 3 metres tall and wide. Ebony assumed it was a mud golem, its body consisted of uneven pieces of mud like a large rock and stuck together. Its limbs were like thick clubs as well.
The Cysaru was much more impressive than the one he fought earlier on. It might be the distance and the lack of light but it was a whole lot faster and the wind pressure from its attacks were more apparent.
Ebony heard of mud golems around Bubble hills; it should be over level 130 all the way to 200. Cysarus on the other hand doesn''t seem to pass 100. From the looks of things though, it was owning the golem.
The golem used mud magic differently from the marmots. It was more direct and smashed around with hardened mud, using mud to slow the Cysaru down when it stabbed its scythe into the golem. It didn¡¯t slow the Cysaru down. Its limbs were sliced out repeatedly but the golem reattached it like nothing happened over and over again.
The golem didn¡¯t have a head, just a bulky torso with bulky limbs. The Cysaru deftly hopped to the side from an incoming punch before slicing the entire arm off again. The golem seemed to proactively soften the parts that were going to be attacked or cut off.
Its other scythe flew towards the thickest part of the golem¡¯s torso but didn¡¯t manage to cut through.
It was stuck. The golem took the chance, more mud from the torso moving to hold the Cysaru in place as it hammered at the Cysaru with its club-like arms. A mistake. It hammered the Cysaru out from its own hold, the Cysaru didn¡¯t retreat and continued slicing and dicing.
The mud golem¡¯s reattachment of limbs got slower and the amount of mud mass on it reduced over time. There was a limit to its regeneration, likely mana.
The Cysaru was victorious.
The mud golem had a darker shade of brown coloured orb in its torso. Its core. It was cut in half and the Cysaru gobbled both halfs up.
Ebony¡¯s senses picked up all the mana above him violently shifted aside with his new magical senses. He quickly leaped and rolled aside.
The ground shook hard. Ebony¡¯s shields quickly flew closer to his body, he turned and looked but only saw a thick log covering his sight and smashing towards him.
He instinctively brought both shields together as he tried to push himself back with a Treading Step. He didn¡¯t leap off in time as a brutal impact landed on his 2 fully powered shields. The impact went straight to his mind as he couldn¡¯t hold it in place.
The shields were pushed back violently smashing into Ebony who turned to let his left side take the blow. He already had Icebody Enhancement gushing forth, compressed to its limit of around 30% by now. Nonetheless, his left arm and legs numbed out from impact as his breath threatened to leave his lungs.
30% of his maximum compressibility and not compressing the spell by 30%. That was Ebony''s current limit where he could instantly compress the mana without thought or conscious compressing.
Ebony was still knocked off his feet and sent tumbling into the distance. The outer Layered Ice Carapace had deep cracks in it and the second one wasn¡¯t spared from damage either.
His Vibrational Gravity Sense already noted the attacker to be a golem similarly sized to the one the Cysaru was fighting.
He flipped himself back onto his feet and ran to the side at maximum speed, the pain in his legs was completely ignored. Repulsive Body simmered down a lot as he needed the mana.
The golem was already on to him as it jumped for another hulk smash like its first sneak attack on Ebony.
The golem was extremely slow for its level but it was by no means slow to Ebony.
Fortunately, it couldn¡¯t adjust its landing in mid-air and Ebony saw it coming so he managed to avoid the ground shaking and fatal blow. Ebony looked back to Identify it.
[Mud Golem Lvl ???]
Identify at level 12 lets him identify people or monsters 60 levels higher than his class level. He could only Identify up to level 110 so it was no surprise he couldn¡¯t get its level.
The golem was faster than Ebony but a lot less agile. It still caught up to Ebony who shut Icebody Enhancement off which took 20% of his Agility away.
He couldn¡¯t take hits from it and neither could he dodge the lumbering giant for long. He couldn¡¯t outrun it either.
Ebony feared death but he was not one bit anxious, he was calmer than ever instead. Maybe he wasn¡¯t truly as calm as he thought, he was getting excited.
Chapter 40: Who’s Flexing Now?
Fear and excitement was replaced with tranquil calm almost as soon as it came.
Ebony made a sharp turn to face the golem. Opting out of Icebody Enhancement as he needs the Agility, he¡¯ll be able to put it back on fast if he needs to take a blow. The golem couldn¡¯t make a sharp turn like Ebony as it skidded to a stop.
2 Ice Swords flew towards the golem before he completed his turn. The golem didn¡¯t stop it from stabbing into it. It didn¡¯t have anything that looked like eyes but Ebony was sure it could sense things just as well as if it had them.
The Ice Swords stabbed lightly into the golem. Perhaps it really didn¡¯t see them but it didn¡¯t pluck them out as it lumbered towards Ebony.
There were not many trees around for Ebony to hide and swerve around. Bushes did nothing to stop a blow from the golem or hinder its sight.
Ebony manipulated his Ice Swords to inject themselves into the golem. The light frost and thin layer of ice in it either went unnoticed or it just didn¡¯t care.
Ebony continued using this tactic, he weaved between any environmental fixtures and sent Ice Swords into the golem. He didn¡¯t know if it was working as it didn¡¯t slow down at all. He had put his casting glove back on in this short interval.
He was going downhill now which was perfect as the golem had slight difficulty moving downwards.
The golem slowed down its chase and slammed both log-like arms into the ground. A large area of ground around it rippled and turned to mud, Ebony fell right into it. It was deep, the mud covered him up to his thighs.
The golem leapt for a twin armed smash again, when its arm left the ground the mud returned to its normal earthen consistency. Ebony struggled to free himself, pushing himself up with his hands. The silly golem shouldn¡¯t have leapt so high. It gave him time to free himself and move away from the landing spot but not far enough.
His shield rushed to protect him together with ice mana circulating within him at full speed, Icebody Enhancement on for the extra defense just in case. The ground turned to mud where he was standing again as the golem landed, he sank to his ankles. The golem followed up with a backhand swing that crashed right into both his shields and him. His mental muscles couldn''t hold the shield in place to defend himself.
His outer shield completely shattered into chunks and fragments, Ebony probably couldn¡¯t put the pieces together and use them as a proper shield anymore. He was sent flying even further this time and his ankle and hand had a disturbing crack sounding out. The mud held his ankles down, Ebony would be lucky if it was merely dislocated.
He still tried to bring the biggest chunks along, they were precious extremely compressed ice mana. It would take time and focus if he were to put it back together into a spell.
Ebony managed to stay on his feet but he felt the burn in his ankles, it was swelling up pretty badly. Stopping himself from getting blown back even further by digging into the ground with his feet.
Ebony no longer backed down from the aggressive golem.
He met it with his own aggression.
The golem didn¡¯t let up and continued after Ebony who was not running this time.
Ebony dodged an overhead swing, going under it and power stabbing with his drawn and ice mana imbued greatsword. Ebony didn¡¯t forget to cast compressed Icebody Enhancement for the power buff.
It struck the golem but didn¡¯t get more than a finger¡¯s length deep. He injected every drop of ice mana he could in a blast before disengaging with a quick and light sweeping slash.
It was pretty annoying that Ebony had to raise his arms and blade to go over his head due to its length and size. How ¡®light¡¯ the greatsword was to Ebony now was also taking away the weight and power advantage of using a greatsword.
Ebony stuck close to the giant, not letting it have the charge up and impact its size and strength gave it. Almost all his remaining mana went into Ice Injection and an Ice Sword or 2.
When the golem¡¯s movements started to get stiff, Ebony felt the mana in the ground vibrate a whole lot. It was climbing on to the golem. Ebony didn¡¯t know what it was up to but he didn¡¯t like it.
It was tough since the ice mana was getting deep into the golem''s body but Ebony managed to manipulate every bit of ice mana in the golem to combust at the same time.
Frosty mist leaked out from the areas where most ice mana was injected in. Dark blue flames spurted out from within it for less than a second before being extinguished. His flames of frost suppressed by the mud body of the golem.
¡®I didn¡¯t get enough mana in yet.¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t want to combust the ice mana that quickly but the golem was likely replacing its hardening and frozen mud with fresh mud from the ground. Doing so would remove the ice mana from it and Ebony¡¯s efforts would be wasted so he had no choice but to combust it in advance.
Chunks of the mud golem hardened and flew off its body. It merely replaced his mud body with new mud from the ground.
The situation wasn¡¯t looking good for Ebony, the golem was back to full speed and power while Ebony¡¯s injured ankle and overall aching body would have slowed him down if not for Peak Performance. Even that had a limit.
Fortunately, Icebody Enhancement has another function not described. The low temperatures of his body when casting Icebody Enhancement somewhat dulls pain even further, even acting like an ice pack for his swollen ankle. Despite all the pain resistance and Ebony¡¯s ability to ignore bodily injuries, his movements were affected. Trying to push Treading Steps too far might be a bad idea.
Ebony was dipping into freshly regenerated mana, his pool emptying out already. He had one moderately damaged shield left and he couldn¡¯t form another shield or sword without the mana for them.
He wouldn¡¯t have fought the golem if he didn¡¯t see the Cysaru beating it.
The golem was more of a magic based creature than a physical one. Reforming its body takes mana and casting magic stops their regeneration. Ebony will outlast any creature that couldn¡¯t do the same as him. Or so he thinks.
The golem didn¡¯t have many attack patterns, its movements large and predictable. Although Ebony could predict a few steps ahead the golem due to how predictable it was, it was too damn fast now that it wasn¡¯t hindered by ice mana.
Ebony was pushing all his mana into imbuement and Ice Injection, continuing what he did. The golem didn¡¯t remove the affected areas immediately, likely due to mana constraints.
Ebony didn¡¯t believe it could reform its body without limit. He personally witnessed the Cysaru wear it down, slicing its body and limbs over and over again.
Another heavy blow landed on his shield which broke it and the golem¡¯s strike didn¡¯t stop there fully. The wild swing continued forth, smashing into Ebony¡¯s upper belly. He reflexively tightened his muscles .
His ribs shattered on impact, Ebony felt something puncture as a handful of blood was forcefully coughed out.
Ebony was sent tumbling down the hill, luckily no tree was in the way. He rolled and rolled, trying to reduce impact as much as he could.
Breathing hurt like a bitch, his lungs might have had a hole in there now. The only silver lining was that the rib was still stuck there, plugging the hole and that he was still alive.
HP: 29/300
¡®Haha, maybe not for long.¡¯ Ebony breathing continued to be deep and measured.
Ebony was not even surprised that he had gotten hit by a potentially fatal attack, he was filled with a sense of serenity. The multiple notifications he received so far on skill levels didn¡¯t catch his attention as usual.
His will to fight and come out victorious unwavered. Resolute.
He could feel the mana in his robe was emptied out too.
He didn¡¯t put more mana into it of course, he didn¡¯t have any left to spare. Another amazing property of his robe was that he could fill the mana up from attached mana ores too. The mana ores he left on already emptied out though, there wasn''t much mana in them to begin with. He would probably be dead by now without it.
He didn¡¯t dare to let Icebody Enhancement go off, it was preventing his internal conditions from worsening. The impact made him lose all his mana, and he realised some stuff about his body.
Ebony stood up again, feeling intense pain but unperturbed by it. He looked at the golem who was walking in his direction, it was pretty far off and it seemed like it didn¡¯t know where Ebony landed. Ebony guessed that its senses were similar to Vibrational Gravity Sense, the golem probably had a much larger range though.
When it got close enough it jerked its body towards where Ebony was before starting its lumbering dash.
Ebony gathered as many broken chunks of his fully compressed Layered Ice Carapace as he could. There were thousands and thousands of ice mana in them. It was his last ditch attempt, his final weapon was his shield.
He stuck them together and sent it to the golem. The golem once again didn¡¯t bother blocking, rather it couldn¡¯t sense things in the air. Its senses were likely limited to things connected to the ground, that was why practically all of Ebony¡¯s Ice Swords landed. Ebony didn¡¯t notice the fact.
The ice chunks spread themselves across its torso and upper body as a freezing blast of wind slapped into Ebony¡¯s broken body. The blast of dark blue flames chilled even the ground and air.
The golem felt nothing as it continued its dash. It was burning brightly in the night.
The flames were not covered by mud this time, it burned as ice mana spread over its body. The flames appeared to be spontaneous as Ebony felt the compressed ice mana cause the contacted ice mana already in the golem¡¯s body to combust.
The lumbering giant had ice over it but continued moving, slowing down. It quickly got mud up from the ground to cover itself or perhaps swap out its hardened and frozen mud. The mud froze the instant they touched the flames.
Mud fought cold flames of frost.
The golem didn¡¯t stop trying to bring up more mud to pat the flames out and recover mobility to its body. The golem finally noticed its predicament and fell onto the ground and rolled itself from side to side. His attempts of ridding Ebony¡¯s flames of frost were futile.
Ebony didn¡¯t stand there and watch. His flames would run out fast due to its insane consumption.
He didn¡¯t care about his beaten and broken body, Peak Performance, Icebody Enhancement and Deep Persistent Meditation were working to allow his body to move the way he wanted it to.
He unleashed his greatest flurry of attacks where the golem was most frozen. The frozen parts were brittle like how ice was. The golem didn¡¯t even feel his attacks since it doesn¡¯t have a sense of pain. It was frantically trying to regain its normal body mass as Ebony shattered frozen parts of its body.
The golem was no threat when it was ¡®disarmed¡¯ in a literal sense.
Mud and earth from the ground struggled to rise from the ground to encapsulate it.
Ebony¡¯s flames had long gone out, he didn¡¯t stop smashing his greatsword into it¡¯s torso where its core should be.
The golem was out of mana.
Ebony was full of stamina.
Even so Ebony¡¯s attack slowed down.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Mud Golem Lvl 136], enemy 80 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level up 50 - 55, 50 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Orchestral Gravity Conductor level up 16 - 30, 70 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Mana Meister level up 42 - 46, 4 Wisdom stat gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Core Skill Deep Persistent Meditation level up 124 - 129¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Treading Step level up 67 - 70¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Ice Mana Manipulation level up 66 - 71¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Icebody Enhancement level up 77 - 79¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Flowing Greatsword Mastery level up 80 - 81¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Frost Injection level up 56 - 64¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Ice Sword level up 52 - 55¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Two-Handed Power Stab level up 50 - 52¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Layered Ice Carapace level up 51 - 54¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Battle Song level up 35 - 43¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Mana Vibration level up 34 - 39¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Body level up 40 - 41¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Vibrational Gravity Sense level up 13 - 20¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Mana Perception level up 55 - 56¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Stealth level up 10 - 12¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Peak Performance level up 36 - 39¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t use Mana Meister¡¯s skills much so it was a pleasant surprise it got 4 levels.
His Class got the bulk of the experience. Ebony used almost every Class skill at his disposal except for Frost Mist Perception Sphere.
He had Battle Song on almost the entire time unknowingly. Repulsive Body was only casted at the start.
Ebony¡¯s new senses were actually very helpful, it saved him from the first leaping smash.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
His Sub-Class and its skills levelled a few times before this fight, from the other marmot hunts. Magnified Gravity Field levelled once to level 5. It probably only levelled so much because of its comparatively lower level.
Stealth was probably him trying to stay out of the golem¡¯s sight. Peak Performance surprisingly levelled again, pushing past what he thought was his limit.
He dug out the broken golem core he froze and smashed. It may not be worth anything in its broken state but he¡¯ll try his luck.
Ebony wanted to look for somewhere safe but his body no longer listened well to him. Still, he managed to find a nice tree to lay back on. Forcing himself to climb a little higher onto its branches.
He closed his eyes and continued his meditation as usual. His senses weren¡¯t cut off, they were heightened.
Ebony slowly eased Icebody Enhancement off.
The smaller fragments of his ribs have mostly dissolved back into mana. Ebony was not sure if dissolve was the right word to use. The larger fragments shifted themselves back into position but Ebony¡¯s reckless movements and attacks scrambled them and even opened more wounds inside his chest.
He manipulated the mana in the larger piece stabbing his lung, gently pulling it out. More blood spilled but it quickly stopped without Ebony¡¯s intervention. Fortunately, he could actually manipulate the mana in his bones to move the bone fragments. He hadn''t been sure if it would¡¯ve worked but it sure did.
Thank goodness he wasn¡¯t fully human anymore. Ebony was still learning more and more about his new physique. He wondered if the ability to manipulate his body or rather the mana in his body was instinctual or not. The current situation is telling him yes was the answer.
Ebony had Mana Perception working at full throttle, making sure he wasn''t moving the wrong thing to the wrong place.
He shifted the larger fragment and pieced his ribs back together. When all parts were where they were supposed to be his body should be able to regenerate and heal itself naturally.
Ebony had long figured that Icebody Enhancement helped to slow his own blood flow too so when all was back in place he used it to prevent himself from bleeding out internally. Even if that wasn¡¯t enough he could always freeze the wounds shut with a little finesse with Ice Mana Manipulation. Whether it would affect his healing was another question altogether.
Looking at just the numbers he should be healing almost 9 health per minute. Health regeneration numbers were never very accurate since many factors will affect it. His Vitality alone should heal him by 3 health points per hour¡
His partially mana body simplified it. His entire body really did become his mana pool so to speak.
Ebony only just realised earlier, when his mana pool hit rock bottom. The mana in his body, skin, muscle, blood, bone, organs etc. really did get siphoned out or used up when he didn¡¯t have mana left.
When that happened, his body acted like how he remembers it when is injured. Normally.
Earlier, mana that he didn¡¯t use for Icebody Enhancement rushed to all his cells. Perhaps, they regenerated from the cells itself, he couldn¡¯t tell with his Mana Perception at his level. It was too fast and he was too busy to take note either.
Even if his Vitality was ten times higher than a normal human and health regeneration ten times higher, healing cuts visibly fast was unlikely. Much less broken bones or punctured organs. And his Vitality wasn¡¯t so high either.
Having his body partially made of mana allowed him to join or reconnect tissues easily. Ebony thought it was oddly similar to the process of Mana Weaving or his Mana Moulding.
Ruptured blood vessels regenerated and reconnected. Bruises both external and internal fading. Torn muscles reconnect back as if they were never torn and bones stick back together, down to the molecular level.
His body can regenerate cells from mana alone, but what makes up the other non-mana portion of his cells?
He would likely be in a weakened state for a while even if he regenerates his body parts back to normal. The regenerated cells were not exactly the same as the parts that weren¡¯t injured.
They weren¡¯t¡full. Maybe it was nutrients or the other essential components of what makes a particular cell function the way they do. His mana alone wasn¡¯t able to recreate it perfectly. So he will still have to rest and recover normally, though at an accelerated pace.
When he could somewhat move normally again he took off back where he came from. Not overdoing it with his magic since he wanted to recover first.
Ebony only walked but he wasn¡¯t slow with Treading Steps. He tried to stay out of sight using bushes and trees whenever he could. The swelling in his ankle went down quite a bit by now and Ebony didn¡¯t have too much trouble walking.
He slayed another batch of marmots who thought he would be a good tasty target with utmost efficiency. Slicing their heads off before they knew it. Ebony was not in a mood to fool around with his gravity magic but still found himself burying them.
The city gates should be closed at this time but he didn¡¯t want to stay in Bubble Hills for much longer. He stayed in the plains with Plainston in sight.
Setting up his tent that he never used before with a little fiddling. Sitting crossed leg and meditating in the tent. It didn¡¯t sit right with him to fall asleep here out in the open. Tent or not.
He played around with Repulsive Body again when he could. Since he didn¡¯t have additional gravity mana from his body and robes to compress he did his best and brought the reverse circulation of gravity mana even closer to his skin and clothes.
Essentially, it will reduce the range of effect of where the pushing force from his body will reach but it should also increase the concentration and power or force of push. Essentially gravity mana compression.
It worked pretty well, he pushed it down from below a quarter of a cm to possibly a single millimetre or less.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Body refined¡¯
Repulsive Body - Reversing the flow of gravity of your body to repel matter. Has the effect of 15% + 1.0% Intelligence
Consumes 100 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
Ebony was aware of what skill refinement was. He had learnt it from Clovis early on. Skill refinement was simply improving a skill such that there were notable effects but the potential or rather, tier was not raised. Basically the skill was slightly changed into a similar skill but not drastically enough to consider it to have evolved. In Clovis¡¯s words it was like a ¡®lesser¡¯ or degraded skill evolution.
A static 15% improvement was pretty sweet. Considering his fortifications, it was like a 30% power up.
In time, the sun rose.
Ebony packed up and made his way back to Plainston. The guards didn¡¯t appreciate his smell. Dried blood and gut from his brutal slaughter.
Ebony must have casted Repulsive Body to include the dried blood on him like his clothes and weapon so it wasn¡¯t as if he could clean himself with the spell. The guards did recognise Ebony and let him in after paying the fee though. Bloody people coming in wasn¡¯t a very rare sight. At least Ebony wiped off most of the mud off him, except those already dried and dirtied into his clothes.
He garnered looks of disgust but he never bothered with them, this time wasn¡¯t any different.
Reaching the inn to bump into Scarlet coming out. For some reason he backed off and kept his distance.
Scarlet seemed to frown under her masks before her eyes visibly widened.
¡®I hope I don¡¯t smell too bad¡ wait I didn¡¯t tell her I wasn¡¯t going to spar yesterday. Did she wait? Nah, she has her own training anyway.¡¯ Ebony recalled.
¡°What did you fight? you¡¯re¡injured?¡± Scarlet asked before Ebony could apologise for not showing up without notice.
Ebony didn¡¯t know why or what was it about the way she asked that didn¡¯t feel¡right to him but he put it aside as he was imagining things. There was nothing wrong with her questions after all.
She probably caught on to his level, 5 levels in a day meant he fought and hunted instead of levelling through pure training. It was a little surprising that she could tell he was injured though. Most signs of injuries should have healed furthermore, most of his injuries that were from blunt damage were internal.
¡°A couple of marmots and a Cysaru.¡± Ebony answered. He was intently staring at her mask though it was his senses observing it.
Now that Scarlet was equipped, Ebony can tell that her swords weren¡¯t ordinary with his Vibrational Gravity Sense. He estimated that, going by weight alone each of her twin swords weighed 7-8 times his greatsword. There was something in the pommel area of the pommelless swords that was actively pushing aside some of the gravity mana pulling them down. Whatever it was likely messed with his new senses as well so it may be even heavier than Ebony estimated.
If Ebony had to guess it was what allowed weaker, lower levelled people to carry weapons made of much stronger, denser materials. It seems like it was a detachable part, when her Strength gets higher she¡¯ll likely take it off the attachment for a heavier swing. Interesting.
¡°And?¡± Scarlet obviously didn¡¯t buy Ebony¡¯s reply.
Her Appraisal skill showed her the level 55 and [Bardic Gravity Mage Lvl 30], though slightly taken aback by his Sub-Class due to how rare gravity mages were she knew it was probably not as simple as her Appraisal results.
Appraisal can usually show the full Class name but will have a similar effect on Sub-Class as Identify. She¡¯ll need the third tier of Identify to read the actual Sub-Class and peak at one¡¯s Profession.
¡°A golem. 136.¡±
¡°Okay.¡± Scarlet just walked off after Ebony replied.
Ebony can guess that she was going to hunt a mud golem. He didn¡¯t bother stopping her, she could easily run away from the ¡®slow¡¯ giants. Besides, the golems were the ones who should be running away. They¡¯ll probably dry up and crumble from her fire magic.
Ebony relaxed as he washed himself of mud and blood cake, using plenty of scented soap the inn provided. Dirt and blood came right off his robes with water and a bit of scrubbing but his clothes needed some real effort to get it clean again.
His boots were a goner but he was going to get a new pair anyway. He was going to make a stop at the zees before the party meet up event the next day in any case. They should have some generic off the shelf boots if he¡¯ll just stop by any equipment store for it.
He went to sleep in a fresh set of clothing leaving his laundry to dry. He woke up in 3 hours with many of his ores filled up, it was the first thing he checks after waking up nowadays.
His HP read 300/300 but his Mana Perception is telling him a whole lot of his body was just pure mana. Sleeping let him recover quite a bit but still not completely. He didn¡¯t exactly feel weakened but more like some kind of physical exhaustion.
He did his stretching together with his magic conditioning. It was still early since he came into the city when the gates opened. After a few hours of light training, his robes were dry and he left for the Quest Hall with the Cysaru arms and the broken golem core pieces.
He traded in whatever ore he could leaving some spending cash. He got an empty Blue traded for filled Greens and still had left over Greens. He¡¯ll need higher quest points to trade any more Blues this month.
Weight of the mana ores was the easiest way to tell them apart. A nice revelation he noticed a while back was that his new gravity sense lets him tell apart the mana ores without touching or carrying them. The higher the rarity the denser they were obviously. He just needed to note the amount of gravity mana in each rarity and he¡¯ll be able to tell them apart without Identifying them.
Ebony wouldn¡¯t be able to tell them apart if there was a pouch full of them. His senses being iffy and confusing when 2 or more objects come into contact with each other. They would sort of lump up into one ¡®body¡¯ or ¡®entity¡¯ and his current familiarity with Vibrational Gravity Sense was not enough to tell them apart if there were Blacks, Greys and Greens all in one pouch.
To begin with, his senses are too poor to pick up such weak gravitational waves or mana. The planet''s gravitational mana completely covering them unless Ebony was really close and focusing on them.
The Cysaru scythe arms were gobbled up by some request but he could apparently supply blacksmiths directly.
It is common for a freelancer to be in a partnership with a blacksmith.
Blacksmiths need good materials to improve their skills faster. Equipment was too expensive for a new freelancer to buy. Poor equipment breaks or requires high maintenance fees too and breaking even was the best than a new freelancer could usually do if their party was decent.
Partnership was beneficial for both parties of roughly equal capabilities.
The most common terms were the fighter would supply most of the materials they get and pay a largely discounted price for equipment. Repair and maintenance was either largely discounted or even waived off depending on their agreement.
The crafter would improve his skills and it was also branding for their crafts. People will obviously take note of strong fighters and the equipment they wear isn¡¯t always left out of consideration.
Partnerships don¡¯t always work out well though. More often than not, equipment breaks. Strong fighters will be unhappy with poor equipment while good crafters blame weak, inexperienced fighters for constantly breaking their crafts.
Younger freelancers obviously want a good craftsman for high quality equipment. Equipment can let them take on stronger foes and improve their battle capability letting them get stronger faster by fighting stronger monsters.
Fresh crafters without so much as a year of experience wouldn¡¯t have it that good since people wouldn¡¯t likely look at their crafts much less get into a contract with them. Those that managed to stay a crafter through the early levels obviously want a strong fighter to wear their equipment. They can get better materials, reputation of the crafts and of course, speed through skill levels and such.
Balance was not easy to find and pride on both sides tended to be the problem. The weaker, less capable party needs to agree on ridiculous demands and it depends on how desperate they are for them to partner up or not.
People like Ebony who didn¡¯t have such partnerships or are not contracted to companies were the only ones actually completing these requests for materials.
From hanging around in the populated but not crowded Quest Hall it seemed to Ebony that many parties were looking to make a name for themselves hoping to catch the attention of a well established company to be their contracted party.
The high flyers were the ones that plan to make it out as dungeon clearers who were a very respected bunch, respected for their strength. They are also the ones keeping dungeons from dungeon breaks which in turn protects the general public.
Ebony went to the Z&Z company shop.
Andel was no longer here. Top told Ebony that after their expansion was completed Andel wasn¡¯t fit to be a manager here anymore. He was faced with the decision to be something like a co-manager basically demoting him by a rank or being transferred to another town branch.
Co-manager may sound nice but all the good deals are handled by the manager. Andel would have a hard time levelling up so he obviously opted to transfer and keep his post.
Top healed very well. The maker of his potion kept asking them how they got such a high quality condensed vital muscle and it worked wonders. By now, his injuries which would take months to heal naturally had recovered by more than 80%. He was in something like rehab to get back to his ¡®top¡¯ shape now.
Thinking about it, Ebony¡¯s current state of weakness was close in effect to being not in his top shape.
Top recovering, Rowent, Fergus and his contribution and talent together with another one of their rising stars Dina and Chris who got a lot stronger got them to be able to stay here in Plainston for the dungeon.
They have long applied for a leave which they were entitled to for their own training purposes. They still did escorts from time to time but only short ones to nearby towns and cities.
They took some risks to level quickly, their teamwork allowing them to fight reasonably higher level monsters. Chris and Dina hit 60 the last time he saw them, Rowent and Top mid 60s. Rowent caught up to Top due to him not being able to contribute as much as he usually did. Fergus surpassed them in the high 60s.
It was no surprise, Fergus was by far the strongest in a sense. Elves had the tendency to suppress their levels for skills which was actually a really good idea if one wanted a stronger class or fortification. They had the leeway with their lifespan. Ebony believes Fergus could level even faster if he wasn¡¯t held back by his team or wanted to keep a certain level of safety for the not so mobile mage and inexperienced warrior.
He got a common rarity pair of black boots that almost reached his mid calves and swapped them out to break in his new boots. Ebony still wasn¡¯t exactly rich, spending the majority of his mana on magic training.
Thinking that having a potion on hand would be safer after the run in with the golem, he looked around and asked for recommendations for dungeon stuff. The stuff on the shelves they called potions weren¡¯t really all that magical to Ebony.
Speed up blood clotting, increase tissue regeneration, speed up production of blood. Practically all have minor side effects that are harmful for the body if overused. Essentially speeding up the natural healing of the body, draining on their energy, nutrients or essence or whatever the people here call it.
They had better ones not on the shelves but they didn''t sell it to anybody and it was expensive shit. Ebony didn¡¯t really need any of them with his physique the way it was now. He just bought 2 general increased regeneration one¡¯s that were in long thin test tubes commonly seen in laboratories back on Earth.
They were made like the phoslamp¡¯s glass or crystal and were very tough to break apparently. Liquid potions were the go to for almost everyone only because they are fast acting and freelancers on the verge of death couldn¡¯t wait for the effects of a pill to kick in. At least for these relatively low quality potions. It might have been better to go to a specialty shop like an alchemist¡¯s or herbalist¡¯s shop. Too bad there weren¡¯t any in Plainston open yet.
Even though alchemists are pretty uncommon there should usually be 1 or 2 such potions shops in every town. Plainston was really at the edge of the countryside to not have one till now.
Ebony always found it weird there was an entire section on shovels and the fact that he saw many had a shovel clung to their bag straps. Even his bag had a holder for the shovel and it was placed at the side and made to be very easy to take out or hook back.
They were apparently what everyone who went into a dungeon would bring. There was a wide range of shovels which the sales lady kindly introduced to Ebony. Ebony got the recommended one since he didn¡¯t know much about them. It was wide and sharp enough to be a weapon, a shovel.
¡®Digging for treasure maybe?¡¯ Ebony made a random guess on the use of the shovel. It would be more convenient to bury prey he didn¡¯t eat or collect parts from anyway. He also bought more souper bread. He eats a lot if he uses too much stamina or continually fights and people spend quite some time in the dungeon.
They had quite a variety of dried jerky meat too. They were not nearly as compact as the souper bread but he still got enough to last him a week if he ate sparingly as a snack or something.
He didn¡¯t look for Top and the other¡¯s since they were likely out hunting.
Ebony went back to the inn and tried creating the spells he wanted to again, multitasking with his normal magic training. He was more interested in his gravity increasing attack idea. He didn¡¯t manage to observe Scarlet¡¯s mask and swords long enough so he didn¡¯t manage to come up with any solid ideas.
The mana vibration one had more progress. He went about it the wrong way trying to manually force them make so many micromovements. He covered his hand in ice mana. Just knocking it onto another object was enough for one mana to vibrate and pass it to another.
It was obvious that was what made the sound but he didn¡¯t think about it consciously. He just had to put his focus on one point and the vibrations will travel amongst the mana themselves. It was a whole lot easier to reach a high frequency.
Come the time for his physical training he made his way to the training square to see that Scarlet was already there. The lady mad flexed her 5 more levels as well and without so much as a scratch on her.
Chapter 41: Party Gathering
Ebony was only able to survive early in the battle, due to his, possibly over 2500 Intelligence powered Layered Ice Carapace. He was not sure how 100% Mana Resilience worked even if it doesn¡¯t just multiply like that it was still over a thousand Intelligence. It was much stronger now that his stats increased.
Scarlet however, didn¡¯t have any defensive skills or spells as far as he was aware. It may be because he never managed to make her use it but he doubted it. Scarlet¡¯s fighting style is on the extremely aggressive end of the spectrum.
Any attacks that she couldn¡¯t counter she would evade with ease. The lumbering giant probably got played around without landing a single hit which Scarlet wouldn¡¯t survive if it did. Though she was agile and had skilful evasive measures she probably didn¡¯t need it with her pure speed being more than enough.
5 levels in his Class gave him 50 stat points. 30 levels in his Sub-Class gave him 150 stat points. The 4 from Profession was automatically added to Wisdom.
Strength: 30
Vitality: 30
Constitution: 100
Endurance: 50
Agility: 70
Intelligence: 161
Wisdom: 301
Perception: 60
20 in Constitution, 10 in Agility, 60 in Intelligence, 100 in Wisdom and 10 in Perception. His stats steadily skewed towards the magical side but he didn¡¯t want to let his physical side fall behind too much.
Strength and Endurance was buffed by enhancement magic and thereby Intelligence so Ebony hasn¡¯t seen the need for these stats for now. He didn¡¯t even need an Endurance buff to sustain himself.
He wanted some more Vitality, especially after the grievous injuries he sustained. Regeneration through mana was not complete. Ebony just couldn¡¯t bring himself to add the stat for now, stat points don¡¯t come by easily after all.
Constitution was still his favourite stat. More so than Wisdom if it didn¡¯t give him more mana and mana regeneration. He just felt like his physical body was getting more perfect with every stat added into Constitution. It lets him withstand Icebody Enhancement even as it gets stronger as well.
Agility was the way to go but it was sadly debuffed by Icebody Enhancement.
Intelligence was the stat for intellects like himself.
Wisdom was for a dumb fool like himself, he needed as much as he could get to prevent his death.
Perception was the alarm for danger, his thick skull may need more of it.
Ebony¡¯s Layered Ice Carapace should be freaking indestructible by anyone his level or higher now. Even melting it should take some time. Naive.
His mana regeneration hitting around 74.2 a minute, roughly 1.24 mana per second.
He took the remaining shield in his room together with a newly formed one to compare. Scarlet helped him prove the new one was much stronger. The mana used was him of a higher Intelligence stat. The old one melted a little but the difference was too staggering to matter.
Ebony could tell Scarlet was so exhausted her movements and judgements were off base. He stopped and told her to go back and rest. She only glared at Ebony before nodding and walking off. Ebony followed her, walking side by side. He was not fully rested and healed either.
Both of them noticed many things about each other¡¯s fighting style and pattern but never told each other anything.
They improved and refined what they needed to by themselves. Ebony thought it would have been rude to someone of her ability. As did Scarlet.
Ebony was going towards the cafeteria in the inn but Scarlet pulled on the collar of his robe and said, ¡°I¡¯ll cook. Wait.¡±
¡°...I¡¯m very hungry.¡± Ebony added, his body needed the energy and nutrients to recover. Scarlet was already going towards the kitchen in the back without acknowledging his words. No one stopped Scarlet as if she was an employee.
Ebony was actually very happy, her food and the food the inn offered were on a whole nother scale. Actually, the cooks in the inn have been improving a lot since the first time he ate here. He suspected the cooks were learning from Scarlet either by watching her or being tutored by her. He doubted she would personally teach them though.
Scarlet evidently heard what Ebony said when he saw the serving size almost tripled, and the amount she usually gave him was already huge. It was a very fulfilling and nutritious meal.
Ebony still ate alone in his room, never having eaten with Scarlet or saw her face. He was curious but that was all.
The next day was the huge gathering event at the Quest Hall and duelling grounds both having expanded many times over.
Ebony continued his practice and experimentation. Undisturbed.
After he didn''t feel as bloated from dinner, he slept for longer than usual. Waking up fully energised and stretching a little, he was probably just a day away before complete recovery.
His Blue was not fully filled but he transferred 5000 to his robe to fully charge again. They were white marks of scratches on the front and side where he got pummelled but they were not too obvious. He didn¡¯t dare to compress the mana in the robe or even attempt to do so for now. Roya did say it depended on his mana and he shouldn¡¯t put the materials under too much stress.
He stood outside his room and waited for Scarlet, planning to go with her since they were supposedly in the same party.
His senses and perception good enough to tell that she hasn¡¯t left her room. It was a little creepy honestly, being able to sense a person¡¯s ¡®presence¡¯ so clearly. It wasn¡¯t his Vibration Gravity Sense since he couldn¡¯t perceive through walls.
Ebony didn¡¯t wait long before she walked out. They nodded to each other without a word and left.
The city was bustling, even more so today near the Quest Hall. The government personnel handled them pretty well, leading those who were here for partying up to the duelling grounds. Their operations continued as per normal.
Ebony Identified quite a few earth and stone mages, likely those that stayed after the wall building. The government or nobles probably didn¡¯t have enough of such mages. The mages probably took the quest of wall building as a nice paying side job that trains their skills as well and then just staying in Plainston. Waiting for the dungeon.
The quality of equipment was slightly higher than before. The lower levels Ebony was seeing was at least 70, many 80s and a few low 90s.
Plainston¡¯s original freelancers were either forced to find work at other towns temporarily or those slightly better off managed to make a foothold and complete some leftover jobs.
Ebony heard there were quite a number of reported deaths recently. Younger freelancers that tried to power level, mostly. They likely wanted to join in on the opportunity.
People were openly avoiding Scarlet and him.
Once again Ebony¡¯s heightened sense hearing whispers loud and soft like;
¡°Hey, that¡¯s a meditator, keep your distance!¡±
¡°Freaking ell! Is that a Xeng?! For real? I¡¯ve never seen one man. That body of hers though¡¡±
¡°Woah! SHH! Are you crazy!?¡±
¡°Oh ell. We won¡¯t get in trouble being caught beside him will we?¡±
¡°They really do wear full face masks. Creepy shit, how does she breathe through that mask?¡±
He found out the weird looks he was getting was due to being a meditative class. He just didn¡¯t know why people didn¡¯t even dare associate with him or a meditator/meditative classes.
He didn¡¯t bring up the topic to Scarlet since the way she was treated seemed worse. She was treated like some kind of legendary creature that they didn¡¯t want to poke around.
Well, neither of them even gave these people a glance.
The new duelling cum training grounds were truly expansive. There was a clear separation between multiple fields.
It was quite a wonder that they managed to make a place like this with just magic.
There were lines of people queuing up getting their numbers of which spot to go to which would be where the party would meet up and introduce each other. And fight. Naturally.
Ebony and Scarlet were set to go to one of the corner ¡®rooms¡¯ of the second field from the right. Each field was basically what he saw the first time he came before it expanded. Now having 5 fields instead of 1.
The personal training rooms were actual rooms with earthen walls so that people can¡¯t see each other and there were different sizes and quality ones available for rent. These rooms were deeper underground, below the duelling grounds.
Someone was already there when they got there.
A [Stone Mage Lvl 85]. Scrawny, a full head shorter than Ebony. Short light greyish hair. Wearing what was likely a black magician¡¯s robe, those that cover the whole body with a hoodie.
Carrying a staff that wasn¡¯t wooden or twisted, one made of rock or stone. There was a shard about the same size as Rowent¡¯s staff but also stone grey in colour instead of red. It wasn¡¯t orb shaped like Rowent¡¯s though.
Ebony guessed it was a Stone Mana Ore or something similar, with crafted effects to strengthen the type of magic they use.
For non-conjurors that don''t have the type of mana naturally in different environments, they needed a source of the mana so it was not rare for any mage to carry around their elemental type mana ore just in case.
Only the currency was made into standardised shapes fit into the myriad bracelets. It wasn¡¯t like the ores come in the same size or shapes naturally.
The stone mage looked like the shy kid type. Childish facial features and a little fidgety with nervousness. He looked at them before looking back on the ground and back to them again.
¡°Er. erhm. I.I mm¡± the boy bit his tongue.
¡°Let¡¯s wait for the others before we introduce each other.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t want to repeat himself. They might as well wait for 2 more to arrive. They didn¡¯t need to wait long before someone else made their way towards them. Rather, the new guy landed with force, shaking the ground..
¡°Yo yo yo! You¡¯re in the presence of the great Hector! Wait, I''m not the last one here? Damn, dramatic lateness failed.¡± The man landed by punching a small crater into the ground. He stood and spread his arms open as if expecting applause. His claims of being great wasn¡¯t too far off as his class surprised the 3 of them. Only the stone mage reacted visibly though.
[Quadra Elemental Mage Lvl 72]
¡®Woah, 4 elements? How many of them are fortified? There was no official recorded limit for how many fortifications there can be for a Class unlike Sub-Class.¡¯ Ebony thought. He guessed 5 was the limit for the first Classing though. The amount naturally rose as they underwent evolutions.
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His reaction was more in tune with Scarlet¡¯s. Itching to spar and see what the man calling himself Hector can do. It was already rare to see a normal mage much less one that could use 4 elements. It was the most impressive sounding class Ebony had Identified.
Hector had bright hot pink slightly messy hair, a colour Ebony hasn¡¯t seen on anyone¡¯s head. He was similar to Chris in a way that had a charismatic feeling. He was at least half a head taller than Ebony and a little bulkier too.
Ebony had to admit the man was much more handsome than anyone he had seen though. The elves were more beautiful than handsome, including the males.
Hector was garbed in a white long sleeved shirt with brown trousers or pants and leather boots. Decked in scale armour, a type of scale that Ebony doesn¡¯t recognise. Each scale was dark blue in colour and quite small in size, there were numerous scales that fit seamlessly over his body without discomfort or restriction in movement.
The armour set didn¡¯t have any shoulder pads but he had vambraces on both arms along with a pair of gauntlets. They looked really sleek and his entire set of armour was made of the same type of scales. That was his upper body armour and he had greaves and upper leg pieces of scale armour as well. A helmet hung on his side, hooked onto a latch around his hip perhaps.
It was not armour that Ebony expected a mage to wear.
Hector wasn¡¯t simple. That was Ebony¡¯s first impression especially when he got close enough within his senses.
The armour was heavy shit, much heavier than his robes. That was to be expected but the thing was it didn¡¯t have anything like Scarlet¡¯s longswords or mask to make it lighter. The man was walking around as if he wasn¡¯t wearing armour when it probably weighed over a hundred kilograms.
He was not just any mage.
Scarlet on the other hand was not surprised about the armour. Her Appraisal results gave her [Quadra Elemental Enhancement Mage Lvl 72] and [Martial Artist Lvl 71]. As for what kind of martial artist, she¡¯ll find out when they start fighting. She was looking at the stone mage more, she couldn¡¯t appraise his Sub-Class. It was not blank, it only showed ???. An item, perhaps.
As Scarlet and Ebony were inspecting the other 2, they were being inspected by them too. The fidgety boy never looked at them for long before looking away somewhere.
Ebony was pleasantly surprised the 2 of them were partied with such high level members. Well, the Quest Hall obviously knew the party was going to be dungeoning and not many as low level as them applied.
The Quest Hall probably also took into account their expected progress or potential before partying them up.
¡°Hey! We don¡¯t really have to wait for the last guy, let''s just start checking what we are capable of. The introductions can be done when the last one arrives. Little guy, you can pick someone you want to have a go at first!¡± Hector suggested and offered the stone mage a choice.
They agreed that the 1 on 1 can begin first without the last person. The stone mage picked Ebony, while Hector gave him a thumbs up. Ebony was honestly more interested in fighting the quadra elemental mage, the man seemed like the rowdy or hyperactive type which he didn¡¯t really prefer over the quiet and shy type though.
They didn¡¯t bother getting the barriers up, the 4 of them roughly took half of the area each.
Ebony faced the boy, he was no longer looking away. They were 10 girs or 50 metres away from each other. Somewhat a handicap for mages. It was a pathetically short distance to anyone with a decent movement skill or Agility.
The boy raised and pointed his staff at Ebony, a sharp rock like his former Ice Shard formed in a split second. The boy quickly slammed the butt of his staff on the ground without firing the rock as Ebony was no longer standing there.
The stone mage slid to the left without taking a single step, dodging a turning kick to his head. Getting this close, Ebony realised that the mage was covered in something heavy under the robe. A suit made of stone he guessed. Pretty smart way to utilise magic to move himself.
Just as Ebony thought, the boy had stone cover his entire head leaving eye and nose holes. He didn¡¯t make it very thick though.
Ebony shifted his upper body slightly, letting the stone projectile pass him. Stone mass was coming out from under the large wavy sleeves forming a large spiked mace from one hand and a tower shield from the other. The scrawny boy who was beefed up with stone didn¡¯t carry it. Manipulating it like Ebony instead.
The shield was kept close to himself while his mace lashed out at Ebony. His range of control was wider than Ebony too but it didn¡¯t seem it was by much more, 12-13 metres or so Ebony estimated. The boy also had to let his tower shield down before he could cast a projectile or trap. Double casting.
Ebony tested the opponent¡¯s shield with his own Ice Sword, his spell almost completely shattering itself on impact.
The mace was not even controlled well enough to be considered a nuisance. Ebony got Icebody Enhancement running as he decided it was enough. He took a single step to cross the short distance again and got beside the boy, surprising him.
The boy tried to manipulate the stone suit on his body to move away but he wasn¡¯t quick enough. He stopped shooting projectiles which had been missing and got the tower shield or stone wall to cover himself.
Ebony gave a normal turning kick with all his force and bodyweight, producing a loud snapping sound. The stone mage was at least good and fast enough with his defence to move around Ebony¡¯s agile kicks that kept coming from different directions.
Enhanced, Ebony had as much as if not more Strength than any warrior or martial artist his level. 173 Strength was not nearly enough to break a skill level and Intelligence stat enhanced stone shield. Ebony started compressing his Icebody Enhancement but he knew it wouldn¡¯t be enough so he imbued ice mana into his kicks as well.
Ice mana couldn¡¯t dig deep inside stone that well and Ebony wasn¡¯t using his sword to inject it more efficiently either but it didn¡¯t matter. Ebony continuously hammered kicks into the boy¡¯s stone defence as the layer of ice on it got thicker and thicker before the whole front was covered in ice.
With Ebony''s speed, hundreds of kicks rained down on the stone shield before breaking and crumbling. The boy tried his best to manipulate his mace to get Ebony off him but he was not too fluent with it. Ebony being so close to him made him fear hitting himself and it wasn¡¯t like Ebony was going to let a clumsy controlled mace hit him.
The stone mage admitted his loss but they both knew neither was doing their absolute best. The mage likely didn¡¯t even have more than 10 or 20 stat points put into any of his physical stat except maybe Vitality and Constitution.
His offensive, defensive and even evasive measures were all magical. He was probably saving mana to spar and duel with the others. Ebony also didn¡¯t see him use any other type of skills or magic. He doubted the boy didn¡¯t have a Sub-Class but taking his stat distribution into account it was on the magical side of things.
They looked towards Hector¡¯s and Scarlet¡¯s duel.
¡®Did he just punch Scarlet¡¯s sword aside.¡¯ Ebony thought as he saw Hector punching the flat edge of Scarlet¡¯s sword mid swing.
Ebony had long noticed the peculiarity of Scarlet¡¯s swordsmanship. Her attacks get faster and stronger as she attacks. It was to the point that Ebony wondered if there was a limit to how much faster or stronger they can get.
Seeing her attacks he can tell it was her at her slowest. Hector was disrupting her flow, each deflection broke her combo and she had to restart her strikes.
Scarlet¡¯s swords sparked with electricity. Hector ye-ouched and pulled back his fist, slamming them into each other before smiling and continuing his skillful defection. The lightning magic or electricity seemingly not affecting him anymore. This time his movements looked stiffer than before and he failed to deflect a few strikes which he didn¡¯t manage to fully dodge.
Hector¡¯s scale armour screeched when he got numerous slashes on him. He had over 10 levels over Scarlet but was still not nearly as fast as her despite his skill. Scarlet had turned the electricity down when she saw it didn¡¯t have an effect.
Hector slammed his fist into each other again and his movements seemed a whole lot more fluid again. Inwardly, Hector was getting a bad feeling as the woman he was duelling started getting faster and stronger again. Not just by a little. He was hearing a certain sound in the air as the atmosphere seemed to thicken.
He smiled and knocked his knuckles and fist together again. Ebony could feel the wind together with mana blowing against him. Moving away from Hector. Ebony hasn¡¯t seen the quadra elemental mage use a single spell but like Scarlet, Hector got a whole lot faster and their exchange of blows were giving off louder sounds and stronger wind pressure.
Hector¡¯s scale armour was getting a lot of scratches as Scarlet¡¯s swings got too fast for his punches to catch up. He kept his arms close whenever possible to block his armpits which weren¡¯t covered by armour. Scarlet had been aiming stabs and thrust at this weak point of his. Sadistic.
¡°I give up! I give up! Enough enough! my poor armour can¡¯t take it anymore.¡± Hector called out but laughed it off at the end, patting himself down to dust off the shavings of his scale armour.
¡°Oh hey you guys are done too? Who won? Let me guess, the swordsman over there. Mr stone mage will need to save mana for 3 more fights after all.¡± Hector, who looked over to see them watching, asked.
¡°Ye..yes.¡± The stone mage replied softly.
¡°...¡± Ebony stayed silent, not sure what to reply.
Hector chose to duel with Ebony next which no one had an issue with.
Ebony immediately got compressed Icebody Enhancement on. He wouldn¡¯t be able to keep up otherwise. Ebony would be slower than Hector a whole lot but it shouldn¡¯t change the situation much. He was much slower than Scarlet but can still keep her attacks off him after all.
Besides, fighting a martial artist? It was his specialty. He even got the chance to see the quadra elemental mage¡¯s fighting style. It was like boxing but also a mix with karate. 100% punching with a damn decent footwork.
¡°Holy¡ chill man how much mana are you pumping into that enhancement spell?¡± Hector said when he saw Ebony turn translucent light blue. As an elemental enhancement mage himself he knew that it would take a lot of mana before physical changes of the element will show.
They stood a lot closer as if they both knew it was going to be close combat. Ebony felt it this time. One of the blue mana he tried to manipulate was in Hector¡¯s body. Rather than circulating it was more like lubricating and flowing over his muscles and tendons. It was just a foggy sense of it since it was already hard enough to perceive with his current level of Mana Perception.
Ebony was still unaware that Mana Perception doesn''t help increase his ability to sense other elemental mana.
Both pushed forward to meet each other. Hector gave a simple and straight forwards punch meeting Ebony¡¯s simple turning kick. For some reasons Ebony himself was unaware, he felt like facing Hector in a more straightforward exchange rather than taking him down as fast as possible.
Fist met feet.
Hector called out in pain, pulling back his fist and laughing. He slammed his fists together again, a habit maybe? This time Ebony felt the brown mana he was familiar with creeping up from within him. It covered his skin and bones, nothing physically showed up on his body but it was clearly enhancement magic. He was running 2 types of enhancement magic at the same time.
Hector shook his hand off from punching himself before punching out at Ebony again, this time his fist was much tougher. The power behind his punch increased. Ebony was pushed back. Ebony didn¡¯t just let that continue. The two of them were in a brawl of kicks meeting punches, Ebony kept trying to circulate more compressed ice mana but his power and more obviously speed was lacking.
Ebony took the body blows without so much as a flinch as Hector did the same with his kicks that landed. Technique and prediction brought him far to ignore the large gap in stats. Of course, Ebony wasn¡¯t the only one who had trained almost all their life. Ebony could tell that Hector had plenty of experience fighting. He didn¡¯t want to drag this out so he used the same tactic he had been using. Ice Injection.
Hector obviously noticed the chill and foreign mana in his body with every blow. He took measures and slammed his fist together yet again. A wave of warmth blew out from Hector. Ebony felt his ice mana melt in Hector¡¯s body. Ebony guessed it was water magic, earth magic and now fire magic.
Ebony had no way of confirming without being able to perceive it but Hector had fire mana pumping from his heart. His blood was literally pumping fire mana through his body. Steam rising from his body from the melting ice.
He shut it off when all the ice melted but Ebony had more than enough mana to spare to keep knocking ice mana into his body. He hasn¡¯t even eaten into his mana pool.
Hector switched to fire and earth enhancement, he got slower and less agile but stronger. It countered Ebony¡¯s ice mana but Ebony¡¯s counter was to pump even more ice mana in as if scoffing at his attempts.
Sizzling can be heard every time Ebony¡¯s legs landed on Hector¡¯s body.
¡°Stop stop stop! Chill man, you still have 2 more fights to go. You bully. Mana bully.¡± Hector stopped in almost the same way as before. He was kinda comical actually.
This was merely a practice, a chance for each member to roughly gauge each other¡¯s strength. No one fought like they were trying to kill each other.
If there was a large gap in strength they would likely opt out of the party. No one wanted to be held back by weaker party members. Splitting experience in 5 though not equally was bad enough. Who wanted to fight monsters lower level than themselves because their party didn¡¯t want to?
Scarlet and the stone mage were actually watching them fight. They either finished or wanted to watch first.
¡°Done? Let¡¯s do a final swa¡¡± Hector said before the 4 of them jumped back. Well, the stone mage looked like he flew back, his feet off the ground for a second.
Bang!
A loud impact sounded from the area where they stood. A stick was sticking out of the small crater on the ground.
¡°...what are those people thinking? How can they put 2 level 50s, a low 70 and mid 80 with me?¡± The person didn¡¯t speak loud but all of them could hear him clearly.
He was standing on the edge of the seating above, they were at the corner of the duelling grounds and the barriers weren¡¯t up. Holding a large bow, he was likely the one who shot the stick on the ground.
[Archer Lvl 94]
¡°This must be a mistake. There¡¯s no way they¡¯ll put together a party with such a large level gap. I¡¯m gonna withdraw.¡± The archer turned to walk off after putting his bow away.
The stone mage swiped his staff which was pointing downwards up, towards the archer. A large stone spear like that of a mounted ballista bolt formed in less than a second and was released with enough force that it kicked up dust from the ground and made Ebony¡¯s duffle robe ripple.
The speed of formation of the large spear surprised Ebony. It was almost enough such that the mage wouldn¡¯t be at a disadvantage against a physically inclined warrior. Needless to say, only if he could keep the spell casting and control up for the duration of a battle.
The massive thing penetrated the wall right behind the archer right in front of his nose. The wall behind was also the second floor of seats, it crumbled down to the archer''s feet. It blocked the archer¡¯s path, his expression darkened. He frowned and looked back over as he dusted himself off from the debris.
¡°Why don¡¯t you have a go at us before you decide who¡¯s the one making a mistake?¡± The previously nervous and shy stone mage was no longer present. He was now confident and defiant for reasons unknown.
¡°The heck? That was hella cool! I gotta take down that line.¡± Hector actually took out a book and was penning it down.
Chapter 42: Target Practice
The archer leaped right over staring the stone mage down from above, taller than Ebony and slightly taller than Hector. He had a long face with an angular chin. They were all clean shaven, Ebony never grew facial hair so he had the luck of not needing to shave.
The archer¡¯s most eye-catching feature was his unnaturally long arms. His hands could almost touch his knees when he stood straight with his arms by his side.
He had a dark colour scheme chainmail over leather armour, his bow looked impressive. Ebony had not seen such a large and heavy looking bow before. It was almost as tall as the archer himself and the thickest part was as thick as his arm.
Two quivers of arrows on his back were long and had a larger opening for ease of drawing an arrow that long. The arrows looked metallic, all of them. A curved dagger was on the back of his hips.
Despite all of Ebony¡¯s practice, he hated sheathing and unsheathing his greatsword. It didn¡¯t have the halfway slit or whatever to make it easier. Being so bulky Ebony was beginning to think he needed another method of drawing his greatsword.
The archer had a mean glare but the stone mage didn¡¯t back down from the intimidation.
¡°Have a go? No need. If every one of you can take even a single shot from me, I¡¯ll eat my words and babysit y¡¯all.¡± The archer ridiculed but then he looked at Hector, his brow raised. When he looked at Ebony he frowned so hard his brows were about to meet. His jaw was about to drop when he saw Scarlet, appearing to want to say something else but holding himself back. Perhaps, the stone mage''s level and attitude barely met his expectations. While Ebony and Scarlet¡¯s level was too low for him to accept as a party member.
Ebony forgot that the archer was already aware of their level. The archer just Identified them again since he only cared about their level at first. Not expecting anyone with a rare Class from this backwater town turned city.
¡°Haughty much?¡± Hector scoffed.
The other three didn¡¯t bother commenting. Challenge accepted.
The contenders stood a distance away, roughly half the space they had. The no longer shy stone mage was up first.
¡°Hey hey don¡¯t you think his character changed real quick.¡± Hector poked Ebony¡¯s side. He took off his gauntlet for a tet, the hand for the lower party. He apparently acknowledged the 2 of them as his betters or seniors. He just high fived Ebony saying there was no need to be so stiff.
A chill went down Hector¡¯s back when he tried to do the same with Scarlet. His instincts told him to stop whatever he was doing and his hands and fingers concurred. The temperature seemed to have lowered as Hector stiffened up but he looked around to find nothing wrong.
¡°Mmm. Personal grudge maybe?¡± Ebony said. The archer didn¡¯t recognise the mage though so it may not be right.
The archer drew his arrow and pulled back, charging or aiming. He didn¡¯t take the shot immediately. The bow was so long, the archer wouldn¡¯t have been able to fully draw it if it weren¡¯t for his unnaturally long arms.
¡°A power archer, there aren¡¯t many of those around. With his attitude he is probably some noble with an archer type lineage.¡± Hector commented. Scarlet even nodded but didn¡¯t look away from the archer and mage. Ebony had no idea what a power archer was but it was obvious enough from the name.
¡®Hmm? Why did he say power archer? The huge bow?¡¯ A passing thought hit Ebony. The people of this world seemed to be pretty good at guessing other¡¯s skillset. It was probably just a natural day to day thing to do that became part of their culture. Ebony should learn to judge these things too, it¡¯ll make Ebony better at grasping information about his opponent.
His knowledge on all things Class, skills, stats and fortification needed a lot of brushing up for it to be any use. He also needed to gain the habit of guessing what others can do but it just seems like too much trouble. Ebony wasn¡¯t the type to think too much in battle either. He was more the go with the flow, act first, think later type. Except when he just teleported or whatever magic brought him here.
2 hands about 5 to 6 times bigger than a human¡¯s was formed from stone and floated in front of the stone mage.
Ebony frowned inwardly, there was no change in his expression but he noticed the mana in the surroundings was quickly thinning out. Getting drained towards the archer or rather his metal arrow.
¡°He¡¯s draining the mana in the atmosphere¡ and aiming for his neck.¡± Ebony felt like he needed to add on. It was too late to do anything about it as the arrogant archer let the bowstring and arrow loose.
Ebony believed that he saw a layer of white cloud or mist form in the arrow¡¯s path as a strong gust of wind hit them. He didn¡¯t even manage to see the shadow of the arrow. They saw the stone mage getting pushed off his feet and sent flying a long way back as the arrow appeared where it was stopped.
One of the stone hands was placed in the arrow¡¯s trajectory while the other was behind it grabbing on the end of the arrow as the first was completely pierced and had a large hole in it. The scrawny stone mage¡¯s actual hands were also covered in stone as he was gripping the arrow head and shaft. He was unmoving as he looked down to the ground. He dropped his staff to catch the arrow right at the point of impact.
Blood dripped onto the dirt ground. The field appeared silent despite many other battles going on around them.
The sound of something shattering echoed loudly as the mage stared back at the archer. His hands were dripping blood but his body was unharmed other than the dent in the neck area of his stone suit. Ebony saw that the metal arrow head and even shaft was crushed into tiny pieces. No one managed to see how he crushed a thick metal arrow though.
¡°Hmph. Passable.¡± The remark went through deaf ears.
¡°Haha! I¡¯m next!¡± Hector was rubbing his hands together as if excited instead of worried after watching the shot.
Hector took the same spot. He got into a wide stance with his right arm pulled back after smashing his fist together. His skin visibly darkened in tone, then it got redder as if he was placed in a sauna. He was literally steaming after that with steam rising from under his armour and clothes, his bright pink hair standing up. Then the steam around him billowed and settled down.
¡®Hair standing obviously means he¡¯s powered up right?¡¯ Ebony applied common sense.
Hector punched out as he saw the bowstring slip from the archer¡¯s fingers. Ebony was watching Hector instead of the archer this time. He thought he saw Hector punch out many times in that split second, the air in front of it appeared to compress as he lashed out.
¡°SUPERRR PAAANCH!¡± Hector screamed. He took a step forward with his punch landing on the tip of the metal arrowhead. That might not have been right as the arrow didn¡¯t even touch Hector¡¯s gauntlets. No one noticed at the high speeds of the exchange. Scarlet might have been able to if she didn¡¯t stand as far away as they did.
Ebony moved forward in front of Scarlet reflexively. The impact directly demolished the metal arrow into splinters and sharp fragments. They stabbed into the ground and were blown in every direction from the force of the impact.
The stone mage got his suit up to cover his face in time as the fragments peppered off of him. Ebony blocked those that were sent his and Scarlet¡¯s way. She was half way through bringing her mantle to cover herself though. She was a little stunned for not reacting before Ebony and thanked Ebony after she realised he covered her.
Hector burst out into laughter, completely unharmed.
¡°How was that? Jerk.¡± The question pissed the archer off but at least he meant what he said about eating his words. Hector did cross the 20 level gap.
Ebony heard a beating or thumping sound. He knew it was Scarlet¡¯s broken skill at work. Some kind of body enhancement that pushes her physical stats to unreasonable levels. Without a single drop of mana, it was ridiculous. Though it was easy to tell her breathing and heart rate increased a lot and she gets exhausted easily using it.
Things got really dangerous when steam rose from under her mantle and clothes. For both of them. Thankfully, Scarlet had enough self control to stop the spar whenever that happened.
Scarlet walked up but the archer didn¡¯t draw his arrow. His facial expression was like someone trying to bite down a bullet.
¡°Miss. I meant no offence earlier. We don¡¡± the archer spoke up before being cut off by Scarlet.
¡°Shut up. Shoot.¡± Scarlet commanded. The archer gulped, not even doubting for a second that his level advantage meant little.
¡®Even an arrogant guy like him is afraid of Scarlet? No, afraid of the Xengs. The Xengs really hammered fear and respect into the people of Elcra.¡¯
Despite that, he didn¡¯t hold back, the mana in the area was mostly sucked up dry by now. Well, he cowered out and shifted his aim to Scarlet¡¯s shoulder. Only pissing her off more, to her the act was the same as looking down on her. Her opinion of the archer dropped further.
Scarlet didn¡¯t even draw her twin swords until he fired his shot.
Her longsword flashed and returned to their scabbard just as quick. They heard the impact and saw 2 long sticks rebounding and landing on the ground. Hector whistled while the stone mage who uncovered his head again literally had his jaw drop.
The arrow was sliced in half and was almost half melted. Fortunately for the party behind Scarlet, they were slinging magic around and got their barriers up.
Ebony got confused when Hector who was standing behind him started bowing to the seats and other parties who were duelling each other. It was in his new 360 directional senses and he didn¡¯t see it directly since Hector was behind him but he assumed there was someone watching them from the seats that Hector knew.
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¡°Hey hey hey, you¡¯re really going up there? You¡¯re almost 40 levels apart!¡± Hector asked and pulled Ebony back. Even the scrawny boy looked concerned. Clearly neither of them thought too highly of him unlike the blind confidence they had that Scarlet could deal with it.
¡°You didn¡¯t ask her that.¡± Ebony looked towards Scarlet as he replied.
¡°That¡¯s¡¡± Hector had his tongue tied. Ebony passed Scarlet by and casted the full 5 Layered Ice Carapace taking a bit more than a second to cast.
Like how he can compress Icebody Enhancement. He can instantly cast compressed spells up to the same degree. 30% or so of his limit. His mana being twice as compressible made things a lot easier. Practically his entire mana pool was drained as he pushed his regenerated sum into it.
Did he need to? Maybe not, but just to be on the safe side. The archer was taking his own sweet time too. Perhaps because there was not much mana in the atmosphere for him to drain.
¡°You¡¯re not going to stop them?¡±
¡°What for?¡±
¡°What for? Wha.¡± the voice not managing to finish his sentence.
The shot fired as they heard a screeching of metal before a familiar rebounding of the metal arrow.
¡°How¡¡± the archer whispered to himself. Either no one heard him or no one cared.
There was a deep gorge where the arrow scraped by his shield. The curve of the turtle shell shield redirected the arrow. It was only made of a little more than 3000 mana so roughly one-third of the maximum amount of mana and strength that it can reach.
The archer held back more, not fully drawing his bow and didn¡¯t waste his own mana into his shot. Perhaps, going easy on someone so far below his level. Not wanting to kill Ebony or the shots take more stamina and mana than he thought. Still Ebony was pretty impressed by the damage capability of the shot if at full power.
They didn¡¯t bother sparing with the archer since they saw what he could do already. There was little point in wasting more time. Hector came out victorious over the now shy again stone mage. Scarlet and Ebony didn¡¯t spar again since they had long been sparring with each other.
¡°You can call me Hector! Nice ta meetcha. The party seems plenty strong despite the level gap. Vanguard offensive fighter.¡± the energetic fighter introduced.
¡°I¡¯m Tuffock Tile. Tuffock is fine. Specialise in offensive stone magic. I¡¯m a doctor too.¡± The stone spear he sent firing off was pretty impressive compared to his defensive capability.
He was even the team medic. Most teams would get a first aider profession at best, a doctor was more uncommon. Hoping for a healer would merely be a dream, even the city healer hasn¡¯t arrived after being dispatched many weeks back.
¡°Ebony. Vanguard with some ranged capability. Forte is¡ toughness.¡± Ebony simply introduced. If he really had to point out a forte it would be toughness or having a defensive role.
¡°Scarlet. Vanguard. Speed. Chef.¡± Scarlet¡¯s introduction was even simpler.
¡°...My name is Ryley Vigoureed. Heavy archer and scout. I take my earlier words back. Even so, this party has no balance at all. We don¡¯t have enough firepower.¡± Ryley carried himself with pride even after his failed attempts at getting out of the party.
He was not wrong though. With 3 of them mainly close ranged fighters, Ebony doesn¡¯t see Hector having any ranged spells despite being a quadra elemental mage. Though he could just not have used them in the duels.
Scarlet and Ebony himself preferred close range battles even though both had some ranged spells. Essentially, they had 3 hybrid classes that didn''t specialise in the normal roles of a tanker, damage dealer etc.
¡°We have plenty of firepower. Ebony with that tough ass shield can help take the front. Scarlet and I should be plenty to keep any monster¡¯s off of you 2 while you fire away.¡± Hector gave his opinion. He was genuinely impressed by the toughness of Ebony¡¯s shield. The spell was constructed pretty speedily for something so massive as well.
¡°Wi..with Ebony and mi.miss Scarlet¡¯s strength we can easily let them take higher level monsters on themselves and they¡¯ll close the level gap quickly. We should be able to go pretty far once they hit 70.¡± Tuffock said. The tough facade he had on disappeared.
¡°We still don¡¯t know the relative strength of the dungeon.¡± Ryley said.
¡°A fresh dungeon usually has the first floor to consist of monsters found in the nearby places of where it forms. I bet there won¡¯t be any above 50.¡± Hector was more well informed than Ebony gave the man credit for.
¡°Th..they reported the dungeon to be on the lower end of a large dungeon range. It¡¯s just an estimate but it shouldn¡¯t be too far off. That means there are at least 21 floors, there should easily be lots of monsters since the dungeon is newborn.¡± Tuffock said.
Small dungeons are roughly 5 to 10 floors. Medium ones have 11 to 20. Large has 21 to 50. Very large dungeons are up till a 100. The estimated range the Quest Hall publishes is just a rough gauge calculated somehow or another. Something about how much mana or the range of surroundings that the dungeon absorbs mana from.
Dungeons are said to be living and there have been many who researched dungeons all their life. There are many different types but some behavioural patterns of dungeons have been studied. Like how new dungeons tend to spawn lots of monsters. Some theories are that the dungeon does so to experiment and understand itself and its environment or invaders.
¡°We are aiming to clear it. Agreed?¡± Ryley''s attitude about the party changed drastically. Mostly because of Scarlet¡¯s presence and how he didn¡¯t manage to break a spell of someone almost 40 levels under him. Holding back or not. He only identified them afterwards, only the puny stone mage didn¡¯t seem special but he was a doctor. Pretty lucky to have one in the party.
He wasn¡¯t trying to kill Ebony and didn¡¯t use his own mana so the shot was weakened but it was still unexpected to be blocked without even causing much damage to a quickly conjured shield. A conjurer, talented but nothing too special. Ex-mana slave.
As a noble, he knew that something was up. A young mana slave when mana slavery have been banned for many decades was only trouble. Still, the reason why hybrids were not looked well upon for humans was that they didn¡¯t have a racial advantage over the others, like higher physical or magical capability. A mana slave or meditator class completely bridges the disadvantage.
Then the completely unheard of quadra elemental mage. The weird noisy man didn¡¯t even use a spell to destroy his heavy steel arrow. Another hybrid. One with explosive power.
The Xeng. Hybrid or not didn¡¯t matter. Being on the same party as a Xeng? His ¡®grandson of a viscount¡¯ status means nothing in front of her. If they manage to clear the dungeon and establish themselves as a bonafide dungeon clearer party, his fame and status will shoot through the roof.
It wouldn¡¯t be impossible for his family to give their all to groom him into the next viscount if he really managed to ride on a Xeng¡¯s coattail.
Ryley might be foolish but he was still educated enough to know the benefits. His pride can be put aside for now, he¡¯ll let them know who¡¯s the boss sooner or later. It was the only reason he apologised.
The pesky stone mage though. He¡¯ll have to knock him down a peg or two when he gets the chance. First, he needs to change his image or at least not destroy it any further. Getting on the good side of the Xeng woman is his first priority.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony replied with his monotonous nod.
¡°HAHA! Course we are!¡± Hector pumped his fist.
¡°Ye.yeah!...¡± Tuffock tightened the grip on his staff as his voice trailed off. He really was acting weird, it was as if his earlier outrage was from a different person. He wasn¡¯t even looking angrily at Ryley or anything like that.
¡°Don¡¯t hold us back.¡± Scarlet said to no one in particular. Who the ¡®us¡¯ was referring to was also unknown.
¡°Great. Now roles. I propose as the highest level and eldest to be the party leader¡¡± Ryley only glanced at Scarlet as he said this. He actually wanted to give the role to her, to bootlick. Then he remembered the Xengs almost never do anything they consider ¡®bothersome¡¯ and he should carry himself with confidence instead.
¡°Heh.¡± Hector crossed his arm as he looked at Ryley but didn¡¯t say anything more.
As expected no one disagreed. Ryley was right that Scarlet couldn¡¯t be bothered. Ebony felt the same, he was no leader and he was the lowest level as well. He didn¡¯t like such roles either. Tuffock was just looking at his feet.
¡°That¡¯s that. Ta. Taf-frog will be our rearguard firepower and doctor. Ebony can take the front most vanguard and give range support where possible. Hector and Scarlet will be the side vanguard. I¡¯ll be the scout and rear firepower as well. Our personal equipment and supplies are individual responsibilities. Scarlet, can I assume you¡¯ll take care of our food?¡± Ryley delegated. Whether he mispronounced Tuffock¡¯s name on purpose was up to debate.
¡°It¡¯s Tuffock! Get it right or do I have to make it right, huh?¡± Tuffock slammed a fist into an open palm which his stone hands copied. His expression of shyness turned to one of rage and annoyance before turning meek again and picking his staff back up.
¡®Bi-polar maybe?¡¯ Ebony thought. It might be troublesome to deal with the sudden changes in personality but it sure was interesting to see.
¡°Yes. Carry food around as well. Dungeon monsters are spawned meat, toxic to the body.¡± Scarlet replied with the longest sentence she said so far, completely ignoring the shoutout. Food seems to be what she talked most about other than fighting.
It was news to Ebony and apparently, even Ryley and Tuffock were surprised that dungeon monsters were toxic. It was more common than not that people ate the monsters in the dungeon as it was a precious source of food. What other sources of food were there in the dungeons?
¡°I can do minor equipment maintenance. The workmanship is poor and only physical works without magical properties though.¡± Ebony felt like he should contribute a little more. He did need to start mending his poor robes. He actually didn¡¯t dare to mess around with good quality stuff that has magical effects in them.
The party was a little stunned by his words.
¡°Wait really?¡± Hector asked. Ebony didn¡¯t think it would garner so much attention.
¡°May I?¡± Instead of answering Ebony looked at Tuffock and his robes which had small cuts and a few holes here and there. It didn¡¯t look like expensive equipment and it was cloth or fabric was a material Ebony was more familiar with.
Tuffock blankly nodded his head multiple times. He was going to take the robe off but Ebony stopped him. Pinching around the area with a cut he gently pushed his mana into the robe. It easily went in, he guided it to the cut and felt the mana not being able to move further without coming out of the robe¡¯s material.
He used his mana to surround the cut where the fibres got disconnected. Brought them close together and weaved them in and out following the robe¡¯s original pattern. It didn¡¯t require more materials but the integrity of the robe itself wasn¡¯t really repaired. He just mended the cut to look like it wasn¡¯t there anymore. At least there weren¡¯t loose threads this way
¡°Holy crap. I didn¡¯t just see that, did I guys?¡± Hector rubbed his eyes. Their reactions seem exaggerated to Ebony.
¡°You didn¡¯t. Our chances of going through the dungeon in a single expedition just rose.¡± Ryley said.
The thing about equipment was that they wear down and eventually break. Constant battles only serve to make the issue worse. The greatest reason parties have to come back out and return to the dungeon was that their equipment broke and they couldn¡¯t go much further.
Equipment, no matter how poor, gave people a sense of security. Few dare to continue pushing with torn armour or chipped weapons.
¡°I¡¯m only familiar with fabric and fibres. Never worked on weapons, metals or scales before.¡± Ebony made himself clear.
¡°That¡¯s still pretty damn convenient.¡± the comment receiving nods.
¡°Great. Can we leave these minor maintenance to you?¡± Ryley asked.
¡°Sure.¡±
Chapter 43: Resolve
''So that¡¯s the ice swordsman hybrid and the Xeng woman. She really is wearing a full mask. The other guy¡seems like a normal stone mage, looks young for a human mage for one. Time for my dramatic entrance.¡¯
¡°Yo yo yo! You¡¯re in the presence of the great Hector! Wait, I''m not the last one here? Damn, dramatic lateness failed.¡±
¡®Damn it I didn¡¯t check for the last guy. Whatever, let¡¯s see. WHAT THE HECK! Meditative? A mana slave? But he''s so young, a slaver? Should I report this? Nono, if he¡¯s moving around publically like this the slavers should long be dealt with.
Frostblaze¡ where did I hear that from? Can¡¯t recall, a minor branch of magic maybe.
Oh level 55 already, in just weeks and without going into a dungeon. Bardic gravity mage?! Interesting!
The Xeng is similarly a¡ woah what the heck? Genius Sword Witch of Flames? There are classes with ¡®genius¡¯ in it? So she has 250% fortification? That¡¯s sick man. It would take forever for me to get 4 elements to that level with only 7 Wisdom as an unclassed, if not impossible.
Her Sub-Class seems more normal, a wind lightning mage.
Their levels are similar, they''re both hybrids too. Maybe she or the Xengs destroyed the mana farm and he followed her until now? Nevermind. I want to test them out now.¡¯
¡°Hey! We don¡¯t really have to wait for the last guy, let''s just start checking what we are capable of. The introductions can be done when the guy arrives. Little guy, you can pick someone you want to have a go at first!¡±
¡®So he chose him. Either way is fine.
Freak she¡¯s fast. I need both wind and water enhancement. She used wind to envelop her swords, I can¡¯t land my punches well.
Oww lightning is unfair, that hurts. I¡¯ll turn wind off and earth on for now. Damn I can¡¯t keep up this way. What¡¯s that beating sound? She can still go faster and stronger? How much was she holding back? No, how much is she still holding back?
I¡¯ll have to use wind, water and earth together then. Can¡¯t keep it up for long though.
Freaking shit, it¡¯s not enough. She¡¯s too damn fast I can hardly follow her hands with my eyes much less deflect them.¡¯
¡°I give up! I give up! Enough enough!, my poor amour can¡¯t take it any more.¡±
¡®Man, my deepsea scaled snake armour took quite the beating. Forget it, it¡¯s just a cheap set of armour.¡¯
¡°Oh hey you guys are done too? Who won? Let me guess, the swordsman over there. Mr stone mage will need to save mana for 3 more fights after all.¡±
¡®To level so much over such a short time shows that he¡¯s stepping over levels. The kid looks like a normal stone mage. Hmm. Haha, one that has a secret. An item to hide their sub-class isn¡¯t cheap. Maybe he isn¡¯t even a stone mage but stone mage is his sub-class instead. This party is getting more interesting.¡¯
¡°Ye..yes.¡± the one with secrets replied. Ebony, the meditative ice swordsman, stayed silent. Hector already knew his name when he saw his profile.
¡®Damn, do mana slavers really erase people¡¯s memories so that they can have a ¡®clear and calm¡¯ mind nonsense? They did say it really works and children are brainwashed over years so that they can quickly become meditators.
Since he¡¯s not just a meditator he was probably saved or escaped before he classed. But bardic¡ sound magic. Did the slaver use sound magic as well? Hypnotism together with brainwashing, the slavers aren¡¯t just any random group.¡¯
¡°Holy¡ chill man how much mana are you pumping into that enhancement spell?¡±
¡®His body just turned into crystal. No, ice. Ice enhancement magic and he¡¯s not playing around. I will have to use my enhancement almost at full capacity for effects to show on my body.
This guy¡he''s not planning on fighting me without his sword is he? What kind of ¡®swordsman¡¯ does that? I¡¯ll just use water for now.
Ouchh! Hahaha! He¡¯s tough, and strong. Well, that¡¯s about right, if I remember correctly basic ice enhancement gives Constitution, Strength and Endurance for the most part, it still depends on the spell itself but that should be about right.
Damn is he really a swordsman and not a martial artist? He¡¯s elling good. I need earth enhancement for defence.
This guy¡ I¡¯m so much faster. How is he hitting me and evading my blows by just gars? Annoying! It¡¯s like fighting Wel in close combat. If he¡¯s not blocking, countering or hitting me I feel like I''m just hitting air.
Slamming ice mana into me to slow me down. Pretty effective. I can see how he kills stronger monsters with his skill and this ability to slow monsters down.
Fireheart Pump should allow my blood to melt the ice but I don¡¯t really like the feeling. It makes me sweat. Wait¡ he¡¯s not going to stop pushing ice mana into me is he?¡¯
¡°Stop stop stop! Chill man, you still have 2 more fights to go. You bully. Mana bully.¡± Hector couldn¡¯t help complaining.
¡°Done? Let¡¯s do a final sw¡¡±
Something was flying towards the duelling party that cut Hector¡¯s words off. Everyone reacted well.
¡°...what are those people thinking? How can they put 2 level 50s, a low 70 and mid 80 with me?¡± the voice was ear-grating.
¡®Who¡¯s this bastard? Don¡¯t tell me he''s the last party member?¡¯
¡°This must be a mistake. There¡¯s no way they¡¯ll put together a party with such a large level gap. I¡¯m gonna withdraw.¡±
¡®Damn, it really is the last guy and the 3 of them were interesting enough. I was about to see what the stone mage had to offer.¡¯
¡°Why don¡¯t you have a go at us before you decide who¡¯s the one making a mistake?¡± The stone mage''s attitude did a complete one-eighty turn.
¡®That line was pretty cool. I knew it! This guy is pretty interesting too. I need to take it down in my cool quotes notebook.¡¯
¡°The heck? That was hella cool! I gotta take down that line.¡± Hector took out his notebook and was penning the line down, thinking he could use it one day.
¡°Have a go? No need. If everyone of you can take even a single shot from me, I¡¯ll eat my words and babysit y¡¯all.¡± Hector didn¡¯t even need to guess to know that this guy was some low noble.
¡°Haughty much?¡± he couldn¡¯t help but say. His hands didn¡¯t stop writing the words down before keeping his notebook.
¡°Hey hey don¡¯t you think his character changed real quick.¡± He poked the ice swordsman¡¯s sides.
¡°Mmm. Personal grudge maybe?¡± so he said but it seemed unlikely to Hector.
¡°A power archer, there aren¡¯t many of those around. With his attitude he is probably some noble with an archer type lineage.¡± Looking at the archer¡¯s bow and charging stance it was obvious to Hector that the man was a power archer.
¡®I didn¡¯t get Wel to check the local nobles. I should make a call later.¡¯
¡°He¡¯s draining the mana in the atmosphere¡ and aiming for his neck.¡± the ice swordsman said.
¡®Draining mana. Common amongst many archer lineages. Can this guy see the trajectory or something? Can the stone mage really take it? From the looks of it this noble is either the child of a baron or viscount family. Tier 2 lineage and likely his core skill at best.
It would depend on how many concurrent skills he¡¯s using to shoot a single arrow. He¡¯s not crazy enough to really try to kill the boy right?
Ha! The boy did it. But how did he shatter the arrow in his grip? Damn I couldn¡¯t see from here.
Now it¡¯s my turn, I need to show off after losing twice in a row. What if they think I¡¯m some weak stuff? NO! I can¡¯t let that happen, I should go with a bang.¡¯
¡°Hmph. Passable.¡± The remark was grating to the ears.
¡°Haha! I¡¯m next!¡± Hector was getting pumped up. He got all 4 elemental enhancements going, his body can¡¯t take it for long but he didn¡¯t need to keep it up for long.
The arrow was let loose.
¡°SUPERRR PAAANCH!¡± Hector punched out with his Coalesce Punch, managing to merge 5 punches to land at basically the same time.
His earth enhancement has always been focused on his muscles. Increasing mostly Strength then, Constitution and finally Endurance like ice and stone but at different degrees. The decrease in Agility and flexibility was horrible though.
Water through his blood increases his Agility, Vitality and Endurance. It decreases Strength since it dilutes blood and oxygen levels. Only by a small amount of buff and debuff each but it makes him very agile and his movements smoothen by a whole lot. The decrease in Strength wasn¡¯t all that much either. It lets him pull off many techniques otherwise impossible for the normal him. Water was the elemental to go to for most fights, it was incredibly balanced.
Fire pumps from his heart, in his blood through his whole body increasing Strength and Agility. More Strength than earth and more Agility than water. It was damaging and reduced Endurance though, Hector didn¡¯t use it as much due to that.
Wind was the perfect elemental enhancement to go with his water enhancement. His breath filled and the enhancement counters the decrease in Strength of water enhancement. Taking in too much air into his lungs and blood flow has caused heavy injuries back then and almost killed him. It has always been intensely difficult to manipulate multiple elemental mana at the same time after all.
Each punch of Coalesce Punch was assisted with compressing air on the surface of his fist.
Hector watched as the tip of the metal arrow was dented inwards before it even touched his fist. The arrow crumpled from its own force before being blasted into smithereens by his Coalesce Punch, better named ¡®Super Panch¡¯
¡°How was that? Jerk.¡±
¡®Heh, that should be enough to shock and awe them ain¡¯t it.¡¯ Hector looked around. The ice swordsman who kicked his ass had no change in expression since he saw him.
¡®No no, it must be because of all the brainwashing. I¡¯m sure he was awed by my super panch.¡¯
The Xeng lady¡¯s¡stupid mask is in the way.
¡®Yes yes, she must be shocked by my punch under that thick mask of hers.¡¯
The stone mage boy¡covered in a stone suit from head to toe. No surprise or awestruck expression when he brought the stone down.
¡®Ha ha. He must have been so amazed he hid it behind his stone armour but being as shy as he was he must have not wanted to show such expression. Yeah all of them have been stunned silent by my super panch.¡¯
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¡
¡®Ha. Should I have used that?
At least this noble is smart enough not to offend her for no reason. He¡¯s been well educated and not too foolish, workable.
Oh man, that face of his when she asked him to shut up is priceless.
Shit its that beating sound again. How is she planning to handle the shot though? Fire, wind or lightning are mostly offensive and evasive at best. I don¡¯t imagine her having much defensive potential. And her stats are far below the noble¡¯s.¡¯
¡
Oh mahh elling hell hole.
She sliced the damn thing in half. Right down the centre.
She really is elling scary. And now that I see, that body is freaking hot too¡
What am I thinking? Ughh should I pick up a girl at the bar later. I must be crazy to think that way of a Xeng. I bet someone is watching her or us right now.
They say the Xengs are all-seeing and those walking around the Empire at such a young age and low level are on the watch by one of their oldies or something. I really wonder if that¡¯s true.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Divination Resistance level up 31 ¡ú 33¡¯
¡®HOLY SHEIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! I¡¯m so sorry! I mean no harm. I really don¡¯t!¡¯ Hector bowed deeply towards many directions hoping he didn¡¯t just offend someone that can erase him without lifting a finger. Fortunately none of his soon-to-be party members were watching since they were busy with the sliced arrow. His head didn¡¯t go pop either.
¡
A¡a mind reader and divination mage? That¡¯s too damn much¡ Mental Resistance didn¡¯t level though.
¡
¡®Man, I know the Xeng lady would have some way of dealing with a power shot but the ice swordsman too?
I don¡¯t believe he''s going to kick the damn arrow.
Is he as good with the sword as her? Wait, is he being taught swordsmanship by her? Lucky bastard. That seems unlikely though, he is carrying a single greatsword instead.
I should stop them before someone dies.
What for? She asked what for? Is she so confident he can deal with it?
A shield? What? What an extravagant waste of mana, that¡¯s huge as ell! Over 3000 mana maybe? With mana efficiency which should be common enough as a fortification that¡¯s still at least 1500 mana.
Spells depended on stats and skill level. No way that¡¯s enough to cover a 40 level gap.
The archer¡¯s skill is at least tier 2 if he doesn''t slouch around and was trained with his lineage skill. With 2 or more skills powering the shot. It also wouldn¡¯t be weird for his skills to reach the 110 requirement and surpass that by now.
That heavy bow looks to be at least 75 or maybe even more than 100 tiv bow. Drawing the bow consecutively should not be easy even at level 90s unless he has a very unbalanced Strength ratio. Yeah. He is either too lazy to shoot a fully drawn arrow or just decided to go easy on him.
¡wow. That shield spell is impressive. Meditator is so unfair.
It doesn¡¯t add up. The Ebony guy¡¯s Wisdom and Intelligence is definitely high but his speed isn¡¯t shabby either. Most base elemental body enhancement has a flaw or decreased stat. Ice and earth or Constitution enhancing ones usually reduce Agility. At least for most basic and tier one enhancement spells. No doubt that weak enhancement isn''t tier two.
Even if the noble archer held back, is a level 55¡¯s Intelligence for the spell high enough to take it on? Definitely a tier 2 spell at least then. Maybe it¡¯s his Core Skill, even if it¡¯s not, it''s at least at level 90 to come out with that little damage unless the spell is a combination spell or has more tricks behind it than just a simple ice shield spell.
He spent at least a few hundred mana fighting me. I didn¡¯t get to see his fight with the stone boy but I saw broken and frozen stone laying there earlier though it got blasted all around by my awesome punch now. Another couple hundred to freeze stone.
He might have double the size of his mana pool to cast so much and still be able to cast that huge shield or just have lots of Wisdom but Intelligence should still be his highest stat.
It¡¯s not exactly without demerit though this would mean he needs 20 hours to recover his entire pool if he doesn¡¯t get a chance to meditate.
No way, the slavers are good enough to use sound and mind magic. They likely ¡®conditioned¡¯ his mind to work fast and not about capacity.
100% mana and stamina regeneration it is. Warriors and mages be damned. I should¡¯ve gotten the meditation skill to 25¡ forget it I don¡¯t have the talent as with most so young.
I classed last year when I was 20, spending 5 years to get all 4 elemental enhancements together with their manipulation counterparts to 25. Even meeting the requirements for my desired Sub-Class and Profession before that, getting all 3 classings in a combined Classing.
But I¡¯ve been taught meditation since I was a kid. Over 10 years and it¡¯s only level 15 now¡
I made the right choice. This party is only getting more interesting. My journey will start here with these people.
???
¡°My cute girl. Be careful of the pink haired boy and blue haired boy.¡± a cheeky aged voice called out.
¡°Grandma? So you still remember me? Leaving me and running off like that, I thought you no longer care about your granddaughter.¡± Scarlet replied on the callstone embedded on the inner side of her mask. The call was initiated by her grandmother so she didn¡¯t have to spend any mana.
¡°Oh my, was my sweetie lonely without your little ol¡¯ granny?¡± The old lady teased.
¡°Hmph! You¡¯re the one always complaining about being lonely when I¡¯m not around.¡± Scarlet showed a side she only shows to her family.
¡°Sniff sniff sniff. My own grandchild doesn¡¯t care about me anymore now that she has a few cute boys by her side. Granny will be so lonely when one of them steals you away from me.¡± Scarlet¡¯s grandmother¡¯s exaggerated sniffing and fake crying could be heard through the purely mental connection unlike normal callstone¡¯s with a sound function.
¡°Ebony is just a good sparring partner, grandma. Stop it with the fake crying.¡± Scarlet had long been used to her grandmother¡¯s antics.
¡°Oh? So this Ebony boy is the only one that came to mind when I said cute boys. Hehehe. I see I see ¡®just a good sparring partner¡¯ was it?¡± Scarlet can imagine the smirk on her grandmother¡¯s face at this moment.
¡°...if you keep up with your nonsense I¡¯m going to end the call, grandma.¡± Scarlet knew that she couldn¡¯t fall to her tricks and provocation.
¡°Now now I just wanted to play around with my cute little grandchild a little. But granny still won¡¯t agree with just anybody trying to take your hand. He¡¯ll have to get my approval first.¡± Scarlet¡¯s grandmother tried to pacify but couldn¡¯t help add on.
¡°I¡¯m going to cut the connection, grandma.¡± Scarlet threatened.
¡°Hold on a second young lady, I didn¡¯t raise you to be rude to your little ol¡¯ granny. I only raised you to be rude to people you find bothersome and annoying.¡± Chided the granny.
¡°...¡±
¡°Now, like I said, be careful around the pink haired boy called Hector or something. He is destined for...greatness in a sense. As for your dear sparring partner¡ never mind granny will leave your decisions to you.¡± Going back to the purpose of her call.
¡°Grandma, you¡¯re scaring people around me by divining them again aren¡¯t you? No wonder he acted weird after he saw me. What do you mean by leaving me to my decisions?¡± Scarlet never forgot Ebony initially openly avoided her, recalling her nefariously playful grandmother and her tendencies made some sense of Ebony¡¯s reactions.
¡°Heheeh, you¡¯re in trouble now my cute little girl. The boy¡¯s the first thing that came to mind huh? You didn¡¯t even concern yourself with me asking you to be careful. The more ¡®greatness¡¯ in one¡¯s future the more danger they will face. He will likely be one of the main winners or beneficiaries of this crossroad of fate that I told you about.
The dungeon will likely be the reason for it. With you being on the same team, the benefits should extend to your party. As with the danger. That is to say, if you take the wrong road you¡¯ll be plummeting to your deaths or worse. All I''m saying is that your party will have over 95% chance of someone dying in the near future. I hope you won¡¯t be one of them. Be careful child.
For the boy you call Ebony. I peeked at him twice. Both gave me roughly the same results. Results that are new even to me. Everyone I have divined was to peek at their future obviously. As for Ebony, I can¡¯t see anything regarding himself. His future is pretty blank but not completely, unwritten so to speak but there is one thing I saw on both attempts.
Anyway, don''t you know that one of the greatest hobbies of a Seer is to scare people out of nowhere by raising their divination resistance. Their reactions never get old. Ha ha ha!
Remember that one time I peeked on a criminal on the run from the imperials after he managed to sneak away? He shat his pants like a baby. He kept on running and running then, hid in a dungeon even though the imperials had long lost his tracks. Ha! And then he died in there since he was too paranoid to come out. Well, maybe I went too far with that one. I did sneak a peek at him every time he left the dungeon, levelling his divination resistance.¡±
¡°Grandma¡¡±
¡°Oh! Oh. Oh, and that time a century or two ago when I divined little Navin right before he was about to fall asleep for a year or so. That was so funny, he thought it was a national crisis and now his palace and almost every archduke and duke¡¯s palaces, castles, and mansions are fully equipped with anti divination that¡¯s a little troublesome to peek through. They put so much time, effort and resources in that that they didn¡¯t manage to fully defend a few cities from the trolls¡¯ invasion. And they thought that the loss of those cities were what the bad omen was when they could¡¯ve avoided it if they didn¡¯t spend so much on a sub-par anti-divination system.
I did feel bad about that one so I got your father to do a little clean up of the naughty trolls. Fortunately they could evacuate the people in time.
Oh! And that one time where¡¡± Scarlet¡¯s grandmother explained and went on to her old stories. She would not stop for hours and hours at this rate and Scarlet had to stop her before she got into it.
¡°I remember, grandma. You have told me many times already. You didn¡¯t finish what you were saying, what did you see on both attempts?¡±
¡°I knew it girl, you¡¯re doomed. You just can¡¯t stop thinking of that Ebony boy ri.¡± Scarlet cut the mental connection before her grandmother could finish what she was saying.
She had enough of her nonsense. Her divinations are almost always on point but at the same time divinations are in the end, just predictions. The only reason why her grandmother is always teasing her like this was that telling Scarlet will likely affect her predictions in a way and that she wasn¡¯t going to tell Scarlet anyway.
It was better not to continue listening to her ridiculous and nonsensical teasing since she probably won¡¯t tell her what she saw anyway. Ebony was a hard to find duelling and sparring partner to train her skills and fighting judgement.
He was a few months younger than her but fighting him felt like she was training with one of her seniors or elders with many years of fighting experience. Ebony seemed to know every move she¡¯ll make before she even moves. Otherwise there was no way he could¡¯ve kept up with her speed.
The only unfortunate part was his most likely self taught swordsmanship. It was originally quite painful to watch but he was sanding the edges and flaws with every spar and it was now...barely decent. With his flexibility, smooth flow, transitions, footwork and most importantly prediction or judgement ability a well timed swing could parry her swords and it never stops there as if a continuous flow or a river.
Scarlet was even more irritated and annoyed to find out that Ebony was still holding back much of his skills.
Earlier in the day, during the party meetup event it was the first time she saw what she thought was the true capabilities of Ebony. Furthermore, the fact that Ebony was seriously trying and landing blows on Hector told her that he never took their spars seriously. His blows are always only aimed right before it lands and never on her body and only his parries and counters have the feeling of strength or resistance.
He fought with a martial artist barehanded without any related fortifications or maybe even without any skills except maybe a generic kicking skill he uses from time to time.
Sure, the Hector guy who was surprisingly well trained, didn¡¯t use any active skills like the one he used to destroy the metal arrow. But Ebony was a hybrid mage and swordsman! Not a martial artist or a barehanded close ranged fighter, even his Sub-Class.
Just how was he trained to be that strong? How hard has he been training? No matter the time, day or night, Scarlet has always been disturbed by the absurd mana radiating from his room. The icy mist was nice when it was just a little. She had high heat resistance and everything but sparring with her Core Skill was extremely uncomfortable since her body gets really hot. If there was a side effect to her Core Skill it was that it made her easily irritable when her body gets uncomfortably hot. It made her more rash in battle and her control of magic more volatile and explosive.
There was rarely a time when Ebony only used ¡®a little¡¯ mana. She had to immolate the inn sometimes when it got too cold.
No one complains about it in the day since, either no one was in their rooms or they just enjoy the cool air in the unbearably hot Summer. The summer heat was pretty bad for most and it usually gets really hot in the rooms. It was just a lot colder at night, luckily Ebony seemed to be training his Sub-Class skills recently for his classing.
Scarlet had never heard sound from his room so he could at least keep sound magic in control and gravity magic should be reasonably weak at low levels so no one would notice other than mages and those more sensitive and perceptive towards mana in general.
The one thing she knew was that he never stops training. Even when he was walking around or eating, he had magic running. He wakes up earlier than she did, and goes to sleep later than she does. That or he doesn¡¯t need to sleep, because the mana radiating from him never stops, ever.
She had long been used to ultra high exposure or density of overflowing mana from her hometown. Gaining strong resistance against it, it even feels more natural to her compared to the normal atmosphere in imperial lands.
Long having recognised and familiarised with Ebony¡¯s mana signature, it was different from what she was used to. There was the presence of vitality in his mana. Inhuman.
Scarlet has always thought that even if she lost in strength she will never lose in hard work to gain strength. She thought she was desperate enough for power. She was clearly proven wrong. What was pushing him, motivating him to train so hard?
Whatever it was, It only served to push her harder.
Chapter 44: Bar
After the introduction, none of them wanted to stay for the team duelling with other parties.
Hector suggested going for a drink, only Scarlet declined. Hector seemed unexpectedly happy about that while Ryley almost declined to drink as well but changed his mind on second thought.
Ebony did like alcohol. The inns and taverns are open in the day even though only breakfast and dinner are proper meal times. People here drink during the day and have snacks too.
Beer, ale and mead were the most common with wine and hard liquor being stuff not really sold in small taverns and inns.
The best compliment Ebony could give to the beers he tried here was that it was horrible. The ales were decent at best, it was interesting to try. Mead was good and more expensive but too sweet for his liking. He would like to try the wine or other liquors when he got the chance to as well. Ebony knew there was wine made in Arcta too, Roya never let him touch those since he was considered underage to them.
They walked out the Quest Hall and Hector led the way to an establishment he recommended.
The city walls and many important buildings and structures were complete but the city itself was widely empty.
Many empty plots of land were getting filled up with construction material, wood, stone etc. There were many areas filled with tents.
The only reason the city walls were built so quickly was that the city management and government prioritised it and got conjurors to create and strengthen stone. The conjurors are mostly all the older and higher level mages. The young ones couldn¡¯t conjure these materials and took building quests instead. There weren¡¯t many young mages either.
With so many people coming into the city there were more people who didn¡¯t have a roof over their head than those that had. Mostly the freelancers that flocked in. The noble in charge had given the notice and allowed people to lay out tents at certain unused areas. It usually wasn¡¯t allowed.
There were plenty of workers and architects that could build houses in literal days but there was a lack of building materials. Every single day lines of caravans bring in food and construction materials.
The amount of food consumed a day skyrocketed and there was a lack there too. The monsters in the plains and nearby woods were basically almost wiped out. They even started sending people to start cutting the forest down for wood.
Rhoats were a common regional monster despite their usefulness as an ingredient they could easily be found in many forests, caves and such. Sadly for them, it meant no one was worried about wiping their population out.
Plainston also had difficulty getting food transported from the 3 great farm cities. Cities that Ebony was quite interested in visiting. The Empire dedicated 3 cities to solely farming and food production. The 3 cities were only smaller than the capital. Their overall land space was many times larger than any other city. They were all too far from Plainston and centralised so that food could be distributed to different parts of the continent that way.
All the greatest farmers and food produce comes from these 3 farms that are humongous according to Halvis and Roya. The 3 city lords are also the 3 greatest producers of all things foodstuff on the continent and have as much if not even more authority than nobles in their land.
Prices for food have been skyrocketing in Plainston and families have resorted to eating from their own stock till things die down and the freelancers get the hell out of their town or rather, city.
Less well to do freelancers hunt their own food if they even managed to find any game. If not they ate zee¡¯s rations, the merchant company hardly raised their prices if at all but even they had limited stock.
Z&Z or zee¡¯s had many escort parties but didn¡¯t actually require them when the road here was crowded and pretty much cleared from monsters.
Hector brought them pretty far out, about half an hour walk. It was out of the range of the old town so, likely a newer establishment. Henry''s Bar or so it says on the signboard. It was a quaint little store, Ebony could see space for a dozen round tables that can fit 5 with plenty of space in between tables.
¡°Old man, 4 of your best ales over here!¡± Hector called out as soon as they entered and took a random table since only 2 other tables had a couple of people drinking and chatting. It was still early morning and not exactly a peak hour for drinking.
The man at the counter was skinny with a full mustache and beard but it didn¡¯t hide some of the wrinkles on his face. He was busy wiping a large wooden mug from a pile of them. Probably from the night before. Putting it down he got 4 mugs to the wooden barrel labelled Henry¡¯s Fantastic Ale.
¡°The ale here is not too bad. To reintroduce myself, call me Hector. Wind, water, earth and fire enhancement mage, Sub-Class Regimental Fist, Profession Body Builder. Ah, you don¡¯t have to share if you¡¯re not comfortable with it, I just thought it would be better for us if we are aware of what each other can do.¡±
¡°Ryley, grandson of viscount Vigoureed. As I¡¯ve said earlier, heavy archer and scout.¡±
¡°Tu, Tuffock Tile. S..Stone mage, no. no Sub-Class. Doctor but, skills are still low in level. Better to bring some of your own medical supplies.¡±
Ebony was pretty surprised that he had no Sub-Class yet despite being level 85 already. He didn¡¯t have Appraise like Scarlet and Hector. More like most people only had Identify.
Ryley was also surprised to learn that he didn¡¯t have a Sub-Class yet. It meant that all of them stopped his shot though not his strongest shot despite the advantage he had in level.
Hector didn¡¯t say anything and continued smiling as he looked at each of them as they introduced themselves. He didn¡¯t believe Tuffock¡¯s lies for even a second nor did he call him out for it.
¡°Ebony, Ice Swordsman. Sound and gravity mage. Mana Meister.¡±
¡°Gravity mage?! Mana Meister? You¡¯re trying to fool us right?¡± Ryley¡¯s eye¡¯s opened wide along with Tuffock¡¯s surprise as well.
The owner or bartender brought the ale over.
¡°4 ales, it¡¯s on your tab Hector.¡±
¡°Alright, thanks old man.¡±
Ebony used Magnified Gravity Field, pushing the range down to only their table. He was kinda embarrassed. It was too weak to even feel much of the effect if they weren¡¯t sensitive to it. The original 250 mana per minute was halved by his efficiency and when range is brought down from the standardised 5 metres, the mana cost was acceptable.
He raised his hand to tet with Ryley, having Repulsive Body on all along. Ryley was confused since they already exchanged greetings earlier but he played along after Ebony¡¯s silent insistence.
¡°What are you trying to do? Didn¡¯t we already exchan¡ what.¡± Ryley quickly pulled his hand back when he felt the weird feeling coming from Ebony¡¯s fingertips. The feeling was a little creepy honestly. It didn¡¯t feel like wind was blowing against him more like he was pushed away, repelled though the force was weak.
¡°I just classed my Sub-Class 2 days ago.¡± Ebony was hoping he didn¡¯t seem weak in front of his party members since he was already the lowest level.
The Stone mage not having a Sub-Class made him feel a little better. Hector¡¯s classes were interesting, a full enhancement mage with multiple elements that buffs his sub class and not the other way around. A Body Builder Profession probably gave him Constitution but any other physical stat sounds possible too. It might have good passive skills too.
Hector was a little stunned that Ebony levelled to 30 in 2 days but it was not as impressive as it sound when his main class was already 50 and over so it was only an initial surprise. Gravity mages were rare but he had seen his own share and even got gravity resistance training along with a plethora of other resistances.
He wanted to know what Ebony did to make the noble who suddenly turned to being moderately bearable, surprised. Ebony obliged when he put his hand close too. The weak push when nothing was in between their almost touching hands made him tilt his head.
It was not the first time he saw a gravity mage nor was it the first time he witnessed or read about gravity magic. Whatever Ebony did was not gravity magic that he knew of. He never even heard of such a spell or anything similar.
Hector was wondering more on what fortifications Ebony got from being a Mana Meister. A lot of the artillery line up of mages in the Imperial army tried to get Mana Meister with a small percentage of them actually being one. Many or maybe all Elven mages or not kept the Profession blank till they can get Mana Meister so it was not a surprise.
With Ebony being a Meditative Class it made even more sense to be a Mana Meister. It was widely known that it was impossible to get 2 of the same fortifications even if the classes were similar in skill scope.
Hector read a lot but he could only guess at what fortifications Ebony had since almost no one was willing to share their fortifications with people.
¡°What can you do with sound magic?¡±
¡°...little.¡± to lighten his embarrassment though it wasn¡¯t shown on his face Ebony played Enchanter, one of the tavern or bard music that he liked. He was in the mood, being in a tavern-like bar and all. He usually suppressed sound so that only he can hear it but sound magic had by far the largest range since he just had to increase the volume and mana vibrations will pass on in the air and surrounding mana as well.
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They didn¡¯t understand the language but seemed impressed by the song. The bartender looked over while other patrons were pleasantly surprised by the service.
¡°What is this tune called? I have never heard of it.¡±
¡°Enchanter.¡± Ebony replied Hector.
¡°There¡¯s a strength enhancement?¡±
¡°You can tell? It¡¯s probably less than a single stat point. I wanted to use mana compression to strengthen the buff but it doesn¡¯t seem to work for some reason.¡± Ebony was impressed that he could tell.
¡°I can feel that you¡¯re just letting the mana push into our bodies. Being sensitive to enhancement magic and all, sound magic is similar.¡±
¡°Ma.mana compression should work¡¡± Tuffock said.
¡°Yeah, there are many bards who are sound mages. I heard it¡¯s a common technique or skill to compress mana in their instruments before sending compressed enhancements to their allies. They''re a welcome addition to many parties.¡± Hector said.
¡°My grandfather¡¯s old party had a bardic cum sound mage. He shared some stuff about sound magic to his party which they told us a little about. I don¡¯t know the specifics as I¡¯m no mage but it should be something about sending compressed sound mana into your target.¡± Ryley constructively added after putting down the mug of ale with a single sip. Clearly not liking the ale.
¡°You are just using your mana to create sound and letting it move through and air mana aren¡¯t you? Compressing your own mana obviously wouldn¡¯t work if you don¡¯t compress the mana that is absorbed or sent into your target.¡±
Hector replied with enough logic that Ebony felt stupid for just compressing the mana he manually vibrates but not letting them move away or into his body. Ebony usually just puts himself into a mana sphere like the Frost Mist Perception Sphere and uses it like a speaker vibrating and compressing the mana and letting sound travel by itself.
The ice mana that he absorbs from a Frost Mist Perception Sphere is usually pushed to Icebody Enhancement to conserve mana.
He never really tried just letting his compressed mana just seep into his body and not do anything with it. How was he so stupid not to know that the mana that he allowed to buff his body wasn¡¯t exactly compressed?
His mana was being gently pushed towards the 4 people in his party including himself, the mana consumption being 4 times higher than usual. Even so, it hardly cost half as much as the stated 30 mana a minute or even 15 which included the mana efficiency.
One thing he found out was that he needed to adjust his Mana Vibrations when using compressed mana since the sound produced was slightly changed. It was lower and deeper.
Ebony started filling the area around their table with his mana. Compressing it as much as he could, Battle Song stopped for now. He regenerated quite a bit of his mana in the time they took to get to this bar and his regeneration still exceeds his output.
Based on Mana Compression¡¯s skill level he can compress mana up to 235% more, with fortification it was 470% or 4.7 times more dense. Not yet visible to the naked eye but to a mage¡¯s senses?
When the air was filled with Ebony¡¯s mana, Hector and Tuffock already realised since the current ambient mana density was painfully low. Ebony closed his eyes and even shut his senses off for a bit. He needed to concentrate and hold the mana so that it didn¡¯t disperse. He didn¡¯t need to but it was his first time trying so he wanted to be in his best state.
When it was condensed by 1.5 times and still being denser, Tuffock started to get fidgety.
2 times and Tuffock seemed to be excited for some reason. Hector had a raised brow. Ryley noticed a weird feeling in the atmosphere too and it was getting uncomfortable
2.5 times and Tuffock put a hand to his head and another on the table preventing himself from falling onto it and started breathing and blinking faster. Ryley felt giddy, like something was getting into his head. His head felt like it was filled with mud. Hector, who was chugging on his ale like nobodies¡¯ business, stopped drinking and a ¡®ho?¡¯¡¯ slipped out of his mouth.
3 times and Tuffock had a nosebleed. Ryley noticed something wrong and moved away from the table in slow steps, shaking his head to clear it when he suddenly felt like his mind cleared when he got out of range. Not even a minute has passed since Ebony suddenly ignored them. Hector stopped drinking and his expression darkened but didn¡¯t look like anything was wrong with him.
3.5 times. Tuffock fainted, Hector carried him out and left him on another chair with Ryley who was asking Hector what was happening. He was shushed by Hector. Hector returned to drinking as he contemplated in silence. He could somewhat guess what the profession¡¯s fortification was.
4 times. Hector was no longer as composed. He tried to meditate but it always takes him time and effort to get into the state of meditation. The mana in the air kept distracting him. It wasn''t like that during his high mana density exposure training. Hector wouldn¡¯t even call this high mana density but there was something else in the mana that wasn¡¯t just mana. Mana this thin shouldn¡¯t affect him much.
4.5 times. Hector was feeling the reaction slowing effect. The world around him seems to have sped up a tiny bit when in fact he was thinking and processing thoughts slower. ¡®What the? His mana is so¡heavy.¡¯
He was not unfamiliar with the feeling, there are many dangerous areas with higher than normal mana densities. The effect was extremely weak to him, he could completely ignore it since he had long adapted to this level of mana density but not so much to normal people.
The reason he couldn¡¯t seem to be able to meditate was that it wasn¡¯t just mana density that was disturbing him.
Dungeons obviously had different mana densities in them and even warriors and non-magical fighters should get adapted to it or they wouldn¡¯t be able to move and fight like they usually do.
It was natural as the overflowing mana or wisdom of higher level magical or not monsters and mages was on a different scale. The natural mana density in some cities was a lot higher than normal.
Not many knew but, the city or town barrier had absorption capabilities. Even when not in operation the mana that people leaked out was absorbed though not exactly efficiently and most of the mana would be lost to the atmosphere or unabsorbed.
The Quest Hall¡¯s underground duelling and private training grounds had similar technology. That¡¯s the only reason why the duelling grounds were so cheap or even free to use. Private training rooms were tougher and had more functions so it costs to rent it.
4.7 times and Ebony started the Battle Song and opened his eyes and senses. Seeing that Tuffock and Ryley was not at the table confused him a little.
He felt his mana seeping into him and Hector, it went into their bodies. He tested his grip, it was still a small buff but there was definitely a huge improvement. He could easily keep the mana density around him high though the consumption increased a lot if he was extending Battle Song to other people. It didn''t actually take as much effort and focus as he thought.
Maybe he should just extend a string of compressed mana instead of a dome or sphere of compressed mana to surround them next time.
¡°Thanks for telling me that. It was really helpful. Can you tell me more? About sound or gravity magic or just magic in general.¡± Ebony asked. He learnt some tricks and whatnot about ice magic and ice already felt completely natural to him.
There were only mentions of sound and gravity magic in the books that Clovis had. There weren''t any spells or properties of those magics.
¡°Shouldn¡¯t your teacher or master already have taught you? These should be pretty much basic to a sound or gravity mage.¡± Hector asked in confusion. If the Xengs were willing to save him and he was following one of them around, it wouldn''t be too weird if they taught him some things.
¡°I learnt magic by myself and some knowledge from books and some friends.¡± Ebony was referring to Rowent and Fergus¡¯s help. He didn¡¯t talk to them about sound and gravity magic though.
¡°You taught yourself sound and gravity magic?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°...No elling way.¡±
¡°Yes.¡± There was nothing Ebony could do if Hector didn¡¯t believe him but his monotonous voice and tone always had its way of convincing people. Ebony was also an extremely good liar. He just rarely ever lies, he doesn¡¯t even remember if he had told a lie.
Tuffock had woken up and they walked back to the table seeing Ebony talking to Hector with music in the air again. The weird sensation was not gone but they felt something on their skin. Others in the bar could hear the music but the compressed Battle Song using his mana to buff his party was only limited to them.
¡°What happened?¡± Ryley asked.
¡°Ebony increased the surrounding mana density. The 2 of you know that dungeons have higher mana densities don¡¯t you? You should train and adapt to it. The Quest Hall here might not have one of these rooms that stimulate high mana densities though.¡±
¡°Can..can you help me train, Ebony? It would help when we go in as well.¡± Tuffock asked.
It was also useful to get them used to it so that they can get the buff but there was no real point in that due to Ebony short range and how weak the buff was even 4.7 times stronger.
¡°...I would like that as well.¡±
Ryley also knew common sense like dungeon mana density being higher but he never thought it would have such strong effects. He didn¡¯t think it would matter and was expecting it to be the same as when they were out here.
Being the first to walk away earlier, he was now afraid that he would embarrass himself in front of Scarlet when they started dungeon diving or climbing. Dungeon towers always go either downwards or upwards, therefore the name dungeon tower.
Ebony thought he was showing his weakness of sound and gravity magic but he was actually standing out to be more and more impressive to all of them.
¡°If it¡¯s for a few hours a day, no problem.¡±
After filling the surroundings with mana he could still train his other magic once he regenerated his mana back. He couldn¡¯t just fill a room with mana and let them stay there while he walks away since the mana would dissipate.
According to Hector, the Quest Hall in Plainston didn¡¯t have a room that could retain mana density levels.
There was actually a unit or gauge for mana density. Created who knows how long ago. Ebony wondered why no one told him something so useful.
Hector and Tuffock seemed to be the only ones aware. Maybe it was a mage thing but the Frost Elves, Rowent and Fergus didn¡¯t tell him either.
The equipment used to measure it was too expensive but the Quest Hall should have such equipment. Mana density was one of the things they would measure when the first party goes into a new dungeon.
They continued drinking and chatting about all sorts of stuff starting from skills and spells. Hector getting more and more drunk, rowdier and rowdier. Ryley also drank some and appeared to have gotten over his disgust over the ale¡¯s taste.
Tuffock controlled himself but was looking flushed.
Ebony facial expressions or mannerisms didn¡¯t change at all. He felt that it was a pity but meditation made him so clear headed alcohol didn¡¯t work so well on him. He would have to drink a ton to even feel some effects.
¡°So.. hic. What¡¯s up with you and Scarlet huh? You applied for a party together didn¡¯t you?¡± Hector muttered. Ebony didn¡¯t realise that it was weird that Hector knew about it.
¡°... They. They came into the duelling grounds. Together. As well.¡± Tuffock shrugged to complete the sentence.
Ryley, who didn¡¯t speak much either, was interested in the topic.
¡°You know Scarlet before this?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡®I don¡¯t like where this conversation is going.¡¯
Chapter 45: Playing Around
¡°I only met her a few weeks ago, here in Plainston.¡±
¡°Nah wayyy. That kent beh all. She ain¡¯t ass cold ta ya as ta uss.¡±
¡°Ye. yes. You protected. he.her from the metal fragments and. And she didn¡¯t... didn¡¯t look annoyed.¡±
¡°Really? The Xengs are all proud. Very proud. I heard getting protected by someone not part of their family, relatives or close friends irritates and displeases them greatly. They think they are being looked down on for needing you to protect them against something they are more than capable of defending themselves from.¡±
¡®...really? She didn¡¯t seem angry though.¡¯ Ebony tried to recall but then all he remembered was her mask in the way.
¡°We fought. She¡¯s a good training partner. Partied together for a strong party.¡±
¡°Ya can beat herr?¡± Hector was probably one of those that¡¯s not so good at holding their liquor. He was thinking that his earlier guess that the Xengs taught Ebony how to fight, was wrong since a few weeks wasn¡¯t enough to train him to this level of skill.
Since he was saved before he classed it should have been long even if he was lying about knowing her for a few weeks or lying about his age of 16.
¡°No.¡± Not even close was what Ebony wanted to reply. Her fire magic could counter him almost perfectly if he depended on ice magic. Enhancement actually makes him even weaker to fire than he already was.
She could easily melt his ice shield with a little effort and Ebony wasn¡¯t sure frost flames would make a difference. Her blades enhanced with fire magic were insanely hot, much hotter than Rowent¡¯s fire spear.
Even his strongest Layered Ice Carapace melts halfway through with a single slash. That was before he levelled and strengthened them even further with higher Intelligence but still scary hot.
The only way he could imagine ¡®beating¡¯ her would be to outlast and tire her out. That would be easier but only if she doesn¡¯t use her speed to take him down from the start.
Ebony was confident in his defensive and evasion abilities so he could probably outlast her if she couldn¡¯t use the heart thumping buff at full power and take him out with a surprise attack. The other problem will likely be her getting stronger as time passes but it comes at high stamina costs.
¡°Whathe bout me? Do you think you can beat me at full power? I can only run all 4 elemental enhancements for less than 3 seconds before my body can¡¯t take it. My super panch was at¡ 70% power? And I have stronger punches.¡±
¡°I would win.¡±
¡®Hands down.¡¯ he mentally added.
Hector stopped drinking and didn¡¯t look as drunk anymore.
¡°Oh wanna try and find out?¡±
¡°There¡¯s nothing to find out. I would beat you with absolute ease. You don¡¯t even have much mana left now do you?¡±
¡°Tomorrow, when you guys meet for the mana density training.¡±
¡°Sure.¡±
???
¡°Ell! This is not fair, let¡¯s go again.¡±
¡°You said that a few times now.¡±
¡°...How did you lock my arms around my head with your legs?¡±
¡°You saw how.¡±
¡°You spar with Scarlet in the public square don¡¯t you? I will be there tonight as well. Rematch.¡±
¡°Sure, I haven¡¯t practised locks with my arms in a while.¡±
¡°ARRHHH!¡±
¡
Hector screamed but didn¡¯t sound too disheartened to Ebony.
He had another punching skill that was just punching a whole lot leaving afterimages to try making Ebony misjudge where his fist was so that Ebony couldn¡¯t counter.
It was all too easy to predict but the speed did make it hard for his Vibrational Gravity sense to follow. Ebony almost got dizzy if he didn¡¯t sieve out the mental information he received.
Like Hector said he couldn¡¯t run all elemental enhancements at the same time. It takes a huge toll on both his body and mind. The mana consumption of running 4 enhancements was pretty damn high too.
He ran out of mana a while after attempting a good full power blow which Ebony blocked with his now full powered shield he brought in advance to test if Hector¡¯s super panch could break it.
Ebony was impressed that he actually made a deep spider web like crack where his fist landed. This was his strongest shield he could prepare now. It was multiple times stronger than the one Ryley shot at.
¡°Oh not bad. I actually needed to use a whopping 300 mana to repair that.¡±
Ebony kinda liked fooling around with Hector. He actually needed way more mana than that if he were to fully repair it with compressed ice mana.
¡°Grrh gahh!¡± His screams and complaints echoed through the duelling grounds. Ebony''s monotonous tone served to piss him off further, even though Ebony actually meant it as a compliment.
Hector was crazy pushy about his shield being a cheat, Ebony didn¡¯t hide that he didn¡¯t have enough mana to fully compress the shield he haphazardly conjured for the arrow.
Hector, who figured mana compression to be one of Ebony¡¯s specialties, wasn''t too surprised that with preparation, Ebony¡¯s spells and magic would be much stronger. It was the same for any mage.
With a bit of calculation, the numbers were a little crazy but Ebony¡¯s strong shield came at the price of insane mana cost. A cost that Ebony could pay. Hector was aware that those artillery mages in the army could charge a spell for literal days for freakishly impressive power.
But it was not possible to regenerate mana as they casted so not all types of mages can charge a spell like that if their mana pool didn¡¯t allow it. That or it was a combined spell of multiple mages. Fire magic for example will just disperse over time too quickly compared to earth, stone, ice or other solid elements.
Other than beating up Hector without really beating him up, Ebony filled a private training room with his compressed mana for Ryley and Tuffock. He didn¡¯t think Scarlet needed it so he did not invite her.
Hector was surprisingly very well learned, perhaps that¡¯s how he was a mage controlling 4 elements.
Ebony got a lot to experiment with and he got a few ideas that might work.
Firstly, sound magic. His original idea of making a vibro blade or something similar should be workable.
Ebony continued trying to make a core mana vibrate and letting the mana over his blade vibrate. Increasing the frequency as much as possible.
Next, gravity magic.
Ebony shared a problem he had that was the limited amount of gravity mana there was that he could control in every object.
According to the unexpectedly knowledgeable quadra elemental mage, it was a problem discussed by many gravity mages.
There were some books written about it in the mage tower of the mage association. Were such books really open for the public? Ebony didn¡¯t bother asking.
Hector said that most gravity mages like Ebony had it for their Sub-Class, no surprise there with the mana requirements. But there are Elves and Dwarves who Classed as gravity mages.
Rare or higher elements like gravity are apparently extremely hard even for Elves to copy their properties with pure mana to conjure it.
The standard manipulation practice for it was basically speeding up and slowing down gravity mana that draws towards the ground. Basically Magnified Gravity Field.
Another was to reduce the effects of gravity on themselves. Like how it was extremely difficult to manipulate someone¡¯s blood or air in their lungs it also extends to their gravity. Not exactly sure how that worked but that¡¯s what was tested and verified.
One of the harder basic practices was to pull gravity mana away from an object or the planet itself and to form a ball with it. This completely cuts off an extremely small portion of the total gravity mana of the planet or whatever object used. Obviously it was no easy feat and requires a strong control over gravity mana.
Ebony was unable to do it yet. He could slow it down, maybe even stop a small amount for a short while. But that was the best he could do. He couldn¡¯t make it form shapes much less ball it up and compress it to form black hole or anything like that.
Hector never heard of a spell like Ebony¡¯s. Ebony explained that he just reversed the flow of gravity mana on his body.
The people here understood physics better than he thought. Perhaps only because magic allowed them to play around with the natural elements. Ebony probably didn¡¯t understand it as well as they do. Of course, it was probably not physics as he knows it.
Hector said different areas on the continent had different strengths of gravity and it was not uniformed throughout the continent much less the planet. This obviously made no sense to Ebony. But it matters not, Ebony had decided not to think too much about the different rules and laws of the world. There just wasn¡¯t any point in getting confused about how things work here.
A question of Hector¡¯s bought Ebony attention.
¡°Reverse the flow of gravity? Fascinating. Then where does gravity mana start or where does it go?¡±
¡°To the body''s centre of mass. Oh.¡±
¡°Oh what?¡±
¡°Oh thanks. I got a good idea that can strengthen my spell even further.¡±
¡°...Bastard.¡±
Ebony has confirmed with his new senses that if gravity moved normally in his body it moved and went into his body. It doesn¡¯t exactly move to the centre of mass but throughout his body, towards the general directions of his centre of mass. Below his belly button.
As if trying to collapse his own body mass on itself but obviously too weak to do so.
Now that his natural flow was reversed it instead moved out of his body to right above his skin and whatever he extends the spell too, including his clothes and even weapon.
Why let it travel in or out from his body?
There was a whole lot of mana that was moving across his body if he thought about it that way. He could just make his gravity mana not seep back into his body.
Ebony wanted to make all the mana flow in a similar reverse fashion but only on the layer right above his skin. Bringing every bit of gravity mana out of his body.
It was harder than he thought it would be. The gravity mana just doesn¡¯t want to leave where it¡¯s supposed to move by. It constantly moved like waves into and out of his body. The method wasn¡¯t working as he thought it would be. Reversing it was already unnatural.
Ebony tried to stop the gravity mana from moving entirely first. Easy success since he could reverse it easily.
Then he tried to push the gravity mana away from his body starting from the centre. It was like trying to blow up a plastic ball with air. Ebony was tested on his gravity mana manipulation and strength of his mind or Intelligence.
Millimetre by millimetre. Ebony succeeded.
The outermost layer of gravity mana was pushed further. Sensing that, Ebony mentally held it in place, not letting it move any further from his skin. Ebony was essentially removing the effects of gravity from his body.
The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Every little bit he pushed the gravity to not return to, the gravity mana pushed back even harder. Ebony slowly started Repulsive Body and made sure gravity mana doesn¡¯t return to where he pushed it away from. Partial success.
He could run Repulsive Body like Icebody Enhancement, it doesn¡¯t exactly take focus and didn¡¯t take one of his cast away from him. Hector was the same, clearly some magic took less mental effort than others. Practice played a large part as well.
Forcefully refusing entry to parts of his body angered the nature of gravity mana. That took concentration.
The mana density training ended for Ryley and Tuffock but Ebony continued what he was doing as he returned to the inn. He has basically recovered from the golem¡¯s attack by now.
Ebony didn¡¯t stop forcing gravity mana out of the flow in his body but the flow was disrupted when he pushed a quarter of it out from the centre of his mass. They were forced to travel a shorter path and were moving faster and more violently. He was not sure how to fix it and neither did he know of a pathway that can make it flow more smoothly.
¡®Forget it. This isn¡¯t natural anyway, I¡¯ll just force my way through.¡¯
And so he did. Even with a normal human¡¯s Constitution, the forces of their own gravitational pull were too weak to matter. Despite being strengthened by his skill level and Intelligence stat, Ebony didn¡¯t even feel much physically. His Constitution was not like a normal human after all.
Mentally, on the other hand, was a different issue.
The pressure turned from blowing up a plastic balloon to a wooden one when he was half way through. He wasn¡¯t actually blowing up a wooden ball, it was just an analogy for the pressure he was facing.
3 quarters there and it felt like he was pushing against steel. The space where the gravity mana was flowing was erratic. It didn¡¯t follow the natural almost spherical cyclical flow anymore but the general direction of the gravitational wave was still from in to out.
? and he was pushing against a reinforced concrete wall. His progress was so slow it seemed to have stopped.
9/10 and it was pushing back against Ebony¡¯s control. Unwilling.
The many ¡®tings¡¯ were ignored as usual, Ebony pushed back and forth, playing along with his body mass¡¯s forces.
Every wave of push brought the rampant gravity mana further out of his body, albeit practically unnoticeably so.
A moment.
Ten hours.
Ebony didn¡¯t feel the difference from the passage of time.
Ebony¡¯s eyelids opened.
¡®I should get going, I¡¯m late.¡¯ Ebony thought as he checked the time.
He succeeded. Checking the many notifications as he got ready to go to the training square. It was slightly past the time he usually spars with Scarlet already. The number of notifications was pretty surprising for such a short time. He compiled skill level ups into a single one as usual so that they don¡¯t repeat.
He stood up but slipped and fell face front, he put his hands forward to stop his fall but slipped again with his face slamming towards the ground. Yet, his face didn¡¯t feel any impact nor did he feel contact of his hands to the ground.
Ebony was just shy of touching the ground. It could be said that he was floating but Repulsive Body¡¯s layer was really close to his skin so it was hard to tell if one didn¡¯t look closely.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Body level up 41 ¡ú 43¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Gravity Mana Manipulation level up 38 ¡ú 42¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Body refined¡¯
Repulsive Body - Reversing the flow of gravity of your body to repel matter. Has the effect of 30% + 1.0% Intelligence.
Consumes 100 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Core Skill Deep Persistent Meditation level up 129 ¡ú 132¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Sheer Mana Compression level up 94 ¡ú 98¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Sheer Mana Perception level up 56 ¡ú 58¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Body level up 43 ¡ú 44¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Body mutated in Repulsive Membrane¡¯
Repulsive Membrane - Expel gravity mana out of matter and envelope it as a thin membrane. The flow of gravity is reversed to repel matter. Has the effect of 50% + 1.0% Intelligence.
Consumes 200 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Membrane level up 44 ¡ú 46¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Membrane refined¡¯
Repulsive Membrane - Expel gravity mana out of matter and envelope it as a thin membrane. The flow of gravity is reversed to repel matter. Has the effect of 80% + 1.0% Intelligence.
Consumes 150 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Membrane level up 46 ¡ú 47¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Orchestral Gravity Conductor level up 30 - 31, 5 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Membrane refined¡¯
Repulsive Membrane - Expel gravity mana out of matter and envelope it as a thin membrane. The flow of gravity is reversed to repel matter. Has the effect of 100% + 1.0% Intelligence.
Consumes 150 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Membrane level up 47 ¡ú 50¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Repulsive Membrane evolved into Chaotic Repulsive Membrane¡¯
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane - Forcefully expel gravity mana out of matter and envelope it as a thin membrane. The flow of gravity is reversed to repel matter. The membranous film defies natural order, and the gravitational field of mass is greatly disrupted causing the gravitational waves of the membrane to be chaotic and disorderly. Has the effect of 120% + 2.5% Intelligence.
Consumes 150 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Gravity Mana Manipulation level up 42 ¡ú 59¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Orchestral Gravity Conductor level up 31 - 32, 5 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®...To begin with, to use magic is to defy nature isn¡¯t it.¡¯
Seems like defying natural order was the fastest way to improve magic skills.
Ebony knew he could level up through skill training alone as what many young Elves do but it rarely happened to him after level 10. This way of levelling was the slow accumulation of experience.
What he was doing was essentially Mana Compression since he didn¡¯t let it escape further from him. The mana cost was increased because he needed to force the gravity from returning into his body. He didn¡¯t need to reverse the flow since his body¡¯s natural flow was already reversed but he needed to extend it to his clothing and stuff.
His robes wouldn¡¯t touch his skin and would float up when he didn¡¯t consciously extend the membrane to it. Even with how heavy it was. Fortunately, he made what the skill calls a membrane, thin. Otherwise his underwear, pants and boots would threaten to rip if he didn¡¯t manipulate it properly.
He did a quick calculation, 120% + (50x2.5%) = 245%. Considering it was strengthened by his fortification it would be 490% of his Intelligence or about 789.
Ebony stopped running the skill so that he could walk properly. The gravity mana rushed back into his body. Ebony felt like he was tightly wrapped in cling wrap for a split second. The chaotic gravity mana quickly settled itself and was back to normal. Ebony wondered if his skill level gets too high would he crush himself with his own spell? It was unlikely, he could still manipulate gravity mana to return to him more gently.
He left for the training square and was out on the streets. He wanted to draw his greatsword and test on it as well but he was walking in the middle of a populated street and he could wait.
Ebony expected skill mutations and refinements at most since he kept feeling the increase in strength of repulsion. The spell also fundamentally changed which caused the mutation.
Now, Ebony needed to consciously prevent the chaotic gravity mana from going back to normal when casting the spell. That was the only place where his mana was spent. He didn¡¯t speed up the flow to strengthen it like Repulsive body. Rather, he couldn¡¯t.
He couldn¡¯t even grab hold of the erratically moving gravity mana. Since it was already moving too fast by itself, there was no need for Ebony to slow it down. He just needed to shield his skin from letting the spell stop.
The problem was that it takes up a cast and needs practice before he can cast it as effortlessly as before.
Ebony reached the public square, going to their usual spot near a corner. Rarely did anyone else use the spot since many knew the particular timing that Scarlet and Ebony would be there.
Ebony saw Scarlet in sight, on the ground. His body moved before any other thought invaded his mind.
He lashed out with a kick on the face of the person pushing Scarlet down.
¡°Hey, Wha! Urrgh!¡± Hector saw Ebony coming in and called out but a boot expanded rapidly in his view.
Hector didn¡¯t manage to defend or dodge with him on all fours down atop Scarlet, a disturbing crack sounded but he managed to get his body enhancements up. His body flew and tumbled, almost knocking into someone else before slamming onto the walls that were built after they expanded.
¡°HEY! That hurt like a bitch! What was that for!?¡± The kick apparently did less damage than it sounded.
¡®Hmm? Am I irritated? Or is this anger? Why?¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t notice that the slightest sign of a frown could be seen on his face.
Scarlet had already stood back up, patting dirt off herself, she was not new to Ebony''s dead facial expressions and was quite surprised to feel that Ebony was frowning and felt angry. No, he was boiling with rage just under the surface.
Something else brought her attention away. Her skill Sublime Instinct doesn¡¯t have the ability that allows her to feel someone¡¯s emotions. She didn¡¯t realise it the first time but she couldn¡¯t pick up other people¡¯s weak emotions or anything like that.
For strong emotions, it was so obvious that someone was visibly angry that one didn¡¯t need to have a skill to tell. So why is she picking up Ebony¡¯s subtle thoughts or feelings?
Perhaps, under his expressionless facade were really strong emotions. Or so Scarlet thought, it was not surprising when she thought about it this way. Only with such strong feelings does he grow in power at such speed. So she put the thought aside.
¡°Are you okay?¡± Ebony asked Scarlet, ignoring Hector who ran back.
¡°? Why wouldn¡¯t I be? Oh¡ You... you misunderstood.¡± Scarlet tilted her head in confusion before piecing the puzzle together.
¡®Why can¡¯t I stop Violent Heart Acceleration?¡¯ Scarlet turned away, unable to look at Ebony for some reason.
If Ebony ever found out what he missed, in future he would curse the mask that was in the way.
¡°What did¡¡±
¡°Hey! Ebony, you bastard. How could you sneak attack me like that? Even if you think you couldn¡¯t beat me, did you have to resort to sneak attacks?¡±
¡°Shouldn¡¯t you know why?¡±
¡°Hah?! What kinda crap are you saying¡ hahahaha! I see, I see. I knew it!¡±
Hector seemed to have come to some realisation before laughing out loud like the mad man he was.
Scarlet was annoyed by the laugh and the ¡®I knew it!¡¯ sounded so familiar for some reason and she didn¡¯t like it.
Hector went on to explain that someone behind Scarlet was using magic even though it was highly looked down upon for doing so in the public training square. A few stray earth balls were flying toward Scarlet when they were in the middle of an intense exchange.
Hector knocked Scarlet aside since he saw it coming. Scarlet who thought Hector was going in for a tackle kicked his feet because he got too close.
And well he fell forward, pushing Scarlet down with him. Scarlet saw the projectiles and understood before they apologised to each other and was about to stand up when Ebony smashed his nose in since he turned to face the kick.
¡°...Sorry.¡±
¡°Pssh. This is a public square no way anyone would be crazy enough to do that, besides it''s not like I got the guts to go after her. Public square or not.¡± Hector came in close for a soft whisper. He didn¡¯t seem that angry anymore. Ebony was getting more ashamed of himself reacting without thinking but it was how he always was in a sense.
Thinking he could test his evolved skill, Ebony asked Hector to give him a punch as pay back. It would make him feel better and wash off his embarrassment for overreacting. They were in public and would Hector even be able to force Scarlet to do something against her wishes?
¡®I lost my calm? Again? Maybe dad wasn¡¯t exaggerating after all. Damn¡¡¯
¡°You sure?¡±
¡°Yes, go ahead.¡±
¡°Here I go then. Eat this!¡±
Hector punched out, there was no skill used but it was still a properly thrown punch with some of his strength behind it. He didn¡¯t hold back much, probably not exactly happy about getting a kick to the face. He aimed for Ebony''s face too.
¡®hmm?¡¯
Ebony¡¯s head was knocked backwards but he slid back like there was no friction. This time he managed to keep himself balanced and not fall. When Hector¡¯s fist almost touched him, he could feel the membrane that separated his skin and Hector¡¯s fist, caved in closer to his skin and pushed into him.
Knocking his head back and the force pushed him but he still didn¡¯t feel contact with Hector¡¯s fist.
Hector looked at his fist and then jabbed out multiple punches.
¡°...Why the heck did it feel so weird? That gravity skill of yours? Was it so damn tough?¡±
¡°...I was playing around with the spell earlier. It levelled 9 times, refined once, mutated once then refined twice again and then it evolved.¡±
Hector¡¯s jaw dropped as his eye seemed to pop, blinking furiously as he scratched his ear.
¡°...Come again?¡±
Chapter 46: Golem Hunt
¡°It was all thanks to you, Hector.¡±
¡°...you¡¯re quite the wretched rascal aren¡¯t you.¡±
Now that Hector said that, Ebony did seem a little meaner to Hector. It was kinda fun messing with him.
They then went on to spar with each other.
Ebony had to face the large issue of not being able to grip onto the ground without his feet touching it or having any friction.
Since he could extend it to his clothing it could also retrieve it but it was actually slightly more troublesome. The chaotic and disorderly flow got worse when he removed the membrane from the soles of his feet.
Testing a little running and Treading Step when he was sure he got the trick down then he went on with his normal spar.
Sword training with Scarlet and just annoying Hector with his new and improved skill. With traction he could stop himself from getting pushed back as much.
Extending Chaotic Repulsive Membrane to his greatsword did take a bit of effort and more mana. The results were¡mixed.
Crossing blades pushed both blades from touching each other after the initial impact unless the strength placed into their strikes was really high.
It will push Scarlet¡¯s sword away or aside, making it slide away and slash more easily. At the same time the force also pushes Ebony¡¯s greatsword back.
Ebony found the problem to be his reverse flow for his greatsword was not as perfect as his body¡¯s or clothes which stuck close.
The flow wasn¡¯t sharp. Not fitted to the sharpness of his greatsword. He worked on it with gravity manipulation. Stopping his body¡¯s membrane and just focusing on his sword to conserve mana.
When Ebony slashed out hard and was counter the knockback was strong enough to cause him to pull back and spin. The feeling was like hitting a rubber hammer down on the ground and it rebounding back hard.
He needed to get used to it and adjust his style accordingly. The knockback could either be controlled or he could stiffen and use the push back against his opponent and not himself or use the knockback for his own momentum.
Using it for his own momentum actually fit his current sword style better as long as he could smoothly transit it to the next strike.
Ebony asked Hector saying he had something to test and got him to have his body enhanced.
He gripped Hector¡¯s wrist without touching it and using any strength. It was enough for Hector to feel a vice-like grip.
There was no contact or friction, Ebony tried to grip tighter but Hector got him to quickly stop.
As long as Ebony can wrap his fingers around something the repulsive force was more than strong enough for a ¡®grip¡¯. He tried to pick up a rock without extending his spell on it but it was either pushed around or crushed when lightly pinched.
Ebony figured he could manually manipulate gravity mana when he wants to pick something up or touch something if the spell was on.
He imagined he could pick a nice good rock and toss it, taking away the extension of his spell at the last second to repel the rock a good bit. He tested throwing a few rocks against the walls. It took quite a few attempts to get the hang of the timing and good control of gravity mana.
It actually did propel the things he tried to throw. By a lot. With a little practice, it could be a nifty trick.
Ebony got Hector to shoot a projectile at him. The quadra elemental mage either didn¡¯t have a normal projectile spell or didn¡¯t want to use it. He just made a ball of dirt from the ground with manipulation and tossed it at Ebony baseball style.
It didn¡¯t manage to touch him, much less dirty his clothes.
Ebony was tempted to ask Ryley or any archer around to shoot an arrow at him. Hector managed to find a willing level 40 young archer to shoot at him. Just a normal shot without skill other than mastery.
Aimed at his shoulder, Ebony watched carefully to see the arrow come really close in contact. It poked his robes a little before swerving and pushed to the side, then falling.
The archer was stunned by Ebony¡¯s robes, unaware a spell was at work.
The evolved spell was pretty awesome but it had its limits. It wasn¡¯t an actual wall or shield that directly defends him but can easily repel and redirect attacks including and maybe especially projectiles. A sharp, fast or strong attack can bypass his repulsion more easily.
Scarlet¡¯s sword for example doesn¡¯t face much repulsion when touching his skin when they tested it. Too bad for Ebony he wasn¡¯t swordproved. At least he should be water or blood-proof now.
The dungeon hasn¡¯t opened yet. There was no need for them to go to the Quest Hall to check since most people would know once it opened or so people told him. He wasn¡¯t sure how people would just know it when it opened but didn¡¯t bother asking.
¡°Want to hunt golem¡¯s together?¡± Scarlet asked before they went back. It was a surprising suggestion. She didn¡¯t seem to like golems from what she told him previously. Ebony honestly felt and guessed it was because they were not edible.
¡°The mud golems in Bubble Hills? Aren¡¯t those at least 130s?¡±
¡°Yes. So? We¡¯ve slayed them. They are one of the weakest 130s in existence. It is summer, so maybe the hills are too dry for them to exert their power.¡±
¡°...you monsters. I guess the two of you should be able to take one down.¡±
¡°Alone.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°We hunted a golem each, alone.¡± Ebony explained.
¡°...you guys aren¡¯t messing with me are you? If not then sure, let¡¯s go. Wanna make it a party thing? It¡¯s a good chance to practice some teamwork and see each other¡¯s capabilities on the field.¡± Hector thought that if the mud golem were found in Bubble Hills it was probably due the poor environment for them that they were weak.
¡°Mmm, good idea.¡± Ebony replied.
Scarlet shrugged, that was her goal anyway.
Mud golems were considered a ¡®very weak¡¯ monster of their level. They were slow and clumsy, their attack patterns repetitive and predictable. Intelligence almost non-existent amongst the lesser mud golems.
The Cysarus could beat them even with the level gap.
Hector said he knew where the other 2 were staying and would inform them.
Scarlet stood noticeably further away from Ebony when they walked back to the inn. She appeared to be more absent minded as well.
Ebony was kinda hoping she would stop him and say that she would cook for him again but to his disappointment it didn''t happen.
The inn¡¯s food, which actually wasn¡¯t all that bad, was almost tasteless to Ebony now.
It was also more expensive now that prices have risen and Ebony just thought that it was such a waste. Even so, a full meal was cheaper than ingredient cost in Arcta. Ebony was confused why they don¡¯t trade with Plainston more. Or why he didn¡¯t see a single human or other races in Arcta despite the Frost Elves not unwelcoming to others. He could always ask when he returned to Arcta.
Night went and day came.
The party met up at the city gate with Ryley and Hector being a little late. Tuffock was nervously waiting there before Ebony and Scarlet arrived.
Ebony brought along a fully compressed Layered Ice Carapace. He was using too much mana either practising or charging an ore or two to prepare a second one.
Scarlet was still acting a little absent minded since the day before and seemed to be keeping more distance with him. It was kinda perfect for him, it made things easier for him this way too so he didn¡¯t say anything.
When they moved out after the whole party gathered it was immediately obvious that they couldn¡¯t move at similar paces.
Scarlet shot forward like a bullet with Ryley barely managing to keep up, Ebony was lagging behind quite a bit. She was taking it easy and looking back to check on the party.
Ebony noticed Hector¡¯s footwork behind him being a little unique. A short observation told him it was fit for his close-ranged combat style. Short burst of speed and not for travelling long distances. He wasn¡¯t using enhancement and neither was Scarlet.
Tuffock was left behind with no one being able to see him behind them soon enough.
After a few minutes, Ebony caught up to see both in front of him waiting ahead. Hector came after and breathed out loudly as if a sigh.
Tuffock¡ Ebony backtracked to find him huffing and puffing like his life depended on it.
Ebony got close to him and was about to ask if he was alright before Tuffock spoke up first.
¡°Haa.. Haaa.. Haaa. Are you freaking bastards trying to torment a poor mage!?¡± Tuffock¡¯s face was scrunched up in rage as he panted.
¡®Maybe it¡¯s a split personality instead.¡¯ Ebony thought.
Tuffock turned meek almost immediately after the outburst but he didn¡¯t apologise for it or say anything about it.
¡®Does he not remember what he said or just too shy about it?¡¯
Ebony put his arm around Tuffock as he carried him by his side and ran to where the others were waiting.
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¡°Slow.¡± Scarlet complained.
¡°Yeah, the dungeon will be large. We don¡¯t want to stay in there forever, we need to move fast especially on the first few floors.¡± Ryley wasn¡¯t happy but tried to be as reasonably polite as he could in front of Scarlet.
His pride as a speedy scout was trampled on when Scarlet was slightly ahead of him.
¡°Couldn¡¯t you move a lot faster when we duelled?¡±
¡°Move..movement by stone manipulation. Consumes mana. Me..mentally tiring.¡± Tuffock was still trying to catch his breath.
¡°...Tuffock, try hanging off my ice shield. I should be able to carry you while we move.¡± Ebony proposed.
With an increase in Intelligence, the strength and speed of control of his spells have improved as well. The 10 stat points from the 2 levels gain in his Sub-Class was put into Intelligence, reaching 171.
Compared to his normal movement speed, it was too slow, but it was much faster than Tuffock running.
¡°Bu..but won¡¯t it tire you out? It¡¯s a waste of mana too.¡± Tuffock looked concerned.
The amount of mana used for just moving masses of ice around was low enough that Ebony didn¡¯t realise it. Others would have, since they aren¡¯t able to regenerate mana while they cast.
Tuffock suit of stone armour was reduced to a upper armour, a chest plate that he was wearing under his robes. Ebony only knew that due to his gravitational senses.
Constant casting was supposedly mentally tiring too, why didn¡¯t Ebony know that?
¡°It¡¯s alright, I have been carrying it around all along anyway.¡±
Ebony turned his shield with the curve inward part facing the sky, getting Tuffock to sit comfortably and hold tight. They continued towards Bubble Hills and deeper in.
Ebony was slowed down a bit though, Tuffock was pretty light if you didn¡¯t consider his stone armour.
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane is much harder to cast on something not in contact with Ebony. Even normal reversing of the gravitational mana was tough so Ebony didn¡¯t use it on his shield. Or rather he wasn¡¯t able to do it without fully focusing on gravity manipulation.
Ryley showed his scouting or detection skill by informing them of what monsters were hiding in which directions. The monster population being pretty low, the hills were more silent than usual.
Not many people hunt Cysarus or mud golems so there should still be many of them. While normal monsters are not that different from animals and are given birth. Creatures like golems are either man made or formed by nature.
Monsters can reach a certain level in days or even faster but golems or spirits that are formed by nature can reach high levels in minutes. Mud golems range from 130 onwards, it would be almost impossible to find one at level 1. It really depends on the environment and its natural elemental mana levels though.
No one found where in Bubble Hills they were being formed from but it was probably from deep underground with thicker mana and essence together with some other element that forms the core of the golem.
Ebony broke the previous core but if he was able to drain the golem dry without breaking it, the core will go into a sleep mode or something similar.
A very popular material for staff and wands because they can absorb that type of elemental mana from the surrounding. He had no idea if it was what¡¯s used for Tuffock or Rowent¡¯s staff though.
With a little crafting magic and adding of functions a good sustainable staff can be made. The broken core isn¡¯t useless of course. They can still be treated and placed into Hector¡¯s armour or gauntlets for example. The most popular enchantment or function was obviously mana efficiency or increasing that particular spell or elemental power.
The party got deeper and deeper into the hills, none went into caves or underground. Even when they found tracks of them.
Getting ganged by large groups of golems would be suicide even for them.
¡°Group of 5, 138 to 143.¡± Scarlet pulled back and reported.
¡°3 of them, 2 are 147 the last is 148.¡± Ryley called out from a short tree, coming from another direction.
Hector and Tuffock were resting, they weren¡¯t really out of breath or anything but stamina consumption was an issue for Hector. Ebony didn''t have to guess to know that the heavy armour weighed him down lots.
Ebony was getting weird looks from Tuffock, Hector and Ryley as they alternated between him and his shield floating around.
They decided to take on the group of 3 with Tuffock being the most nervous and asking if they should really take them on. Ryley didn''t say anything but he was unnerved too. Hector was excited and pumped up like usual.
Unlike Scarlet and Ebony who didn¡¯t show much reaction or anxiousness the others were stressed out.
Ebony thought that a single hit from the golem could kill them all, Hector might survive a blow with all his enhancements on but he couldn¡¯t keep his enhancements up forever.
¡°Can you guys really keep it busy?¡± Ryley was looking at the 3 hybrid vanguards as he asked. The two ranged attackers weren¡¯t going to be in danger for a short period of time.
Ryley should be able to run away if anything happens but Tuffock would be on his own if the 3 vanguards went up and died.
¡°HA! Bring it on golem.¡± Hector smashed his fist together.
Ebony and Scarlet didn¡¯t bother replying as the golems were in sight.
Other than the roles, they didn¡¯t have any planning on how it would go.
Somehow or the other, Ebony and Hector took the 147 ones while Scarlet already had a spear of fire smashing into the other.
The blast of heat blew towards the two of them and Ebony felt really uncomfortable about it. He had Icebody Enhancement on already after all.
It startled the golems.
Ebony could hear and see steam and smoke coming from the golem that got hit.
¡®Hot damn¡it dried up and crumbled. That¡¯s some crazy firepower. Pun intended.¡¯
¡°Holy shit!¡± Hector had a similar reaction but he already ran up to the charging golem.
Two shadows flew past their heads both slamming into the golem that Scarlet hit. Ryley and Tuffock didn¡¯t slack off.
Ebony let his new and improved shield take on the golem who was hulk smashing towards him.
He previously used 2 shields but they probably weren''t as strong as the current. His shield didn¡¯t go unharmed as the golem this time was stronger as well.
Ryley¡¯s arrows were coming slowly but they tended to hit the mark and hit the thinner joints of the golem, chipping some mass away. With how close they were it would be pathetic if he missed. He was focusing fire on the one Scarlet was fighting while stone lances were sent to support Hector and Ebony.
Tuffock was not standing as far away as Ryley as he reused the large stone lances. They stabbed in like dropping a ball into a muddy puddle, not dealing much damage. The golems only moved to pluck them out when the stone lances were hindering their movements.
The one Scarlet fought was struggling to move with stiff and dried up joints.
Tuffock managed to pluck the lance out before the golem could use it themselves. He changed the 2 lances into maces and started whacking away.
Ebony sent ice swords into his and Hector¡¯s golem not too far away. He got to injecting ice mana into his target. Tuffock and Hector caught on to the tactic, punching and smashing at frozen parts.
¡°SUPERRR PAANCH!¡±
A blast of air came from Hector¡¯s direction when the golem was blown back as it tumbled. He did have some explosive punches. To think he could push back the much higher levelled golem. Even if it was just by a little, it demonstrated the amount of power behind his super panch.
¡°Eat another thousand punches, sucker! Regimental fists! Ahhhhh!¡±
Hector kept shouting as he didn¡¯t let up. Numerous furious punches came out and left afterimages in the air as he punched around the chest of the golem where its core was. His overall damage was considerably weak as the golem was a whole lot tougher.
Ebony had successfully gotten an Ice Sword stabbed into both its elbows so it wasn¡¯t able to swipe Hector away. The golem was quickly trying to get more mud to regain its mass and mobility.
Ebony was busy with his own and didn¡¯t help Hector anymore, he needed mana himself. His speed still being much lower than the golem.
Ebony compressed Icebody Enhancement to his limit. He really needed to learn a way to keep a mana pool of compressed mana so that he could cast already fully compressed spells.
He can slowly compress external spells but that wasn¡¯t the case for Icebody Enhancement. Ebony couldn¡¯t seem to increase it anymore than 30% of his limit but it was impressive enough.
30% of 490% was 147%. Icebody Enhancement cost 12.5 MP/Min after both ice and enhancement mana efficiency. Ebony was always consciously trying to be more mana efficient as well.
12.5 + [(12.5/100) x 147] = 30.875MP/Min.
Icebody Enhancement level 79. Constitution buff 15% +79% = 94% of Intelligence. Strength and Endurance 89% of Intelligence.
Intelligence of 171 + [(171/100) x 147] = 422.37.
(422.39/100) x 94 = 397.0466 Constitution buff.
(422.39/100) x 89 = 375.9271 Strength and Endurance buff.
Ebony thought that he was in dire need of speed and Agility. He was as strong and tough if not stronger and tougher than any warrior his level. The fact that Ebony can keep it up as long as his Core Skill and body can take it meant to him that his hybrid build was working out perfectly well.
Thinking about it he should train Icebody Enhancement more. Improve, refine or mutate it if he can, the Agility debuff was annoying.
The rest of his excess mana was sent directly into the golem¡¯s body with Frost Injection. Still too weak to cause deep wounds, Ebony hacked frozen mud away bit by bit. The golem didn¡¯t just let that happen as it protected itself with thickened arms.
They were at a stalemate with neither being able to do much to each other. Ebony bet he could wear out the golem now that his defensive and evasive capabilities were satisfactory.
After a short while, arrows came stabbing into the golem¡¯s chest from the back.
Ebony didn¡¯t even touch the level 148 golem and didn¡¯t get partial experience but he knew that Scarlet was already done with her target.
Playing it a little riskier he let his shield take all the attacks while he went in for an overhead slash after a power stab. Ebony didn¡¯t forget to have Battle Song and Chaotic Repulsive Membrane on for their share of experience.
He limited the membrane to his sword at first, it helped splatter mud onto him. Getting the membrane on quick enough that the mud cleanly slid off him.
The golem was getting slower and stiffer anyway so evasion was getting easier.
Ryley¡¯s arrow shot it through from under its arm and the golem stopped moving, the arrow getting half stuck in it.
The golem struggled to remove the arrow before Ebony stuck his sword where the arrow was and froze it. Ebony got the notification for partial experience and multiple levels a short while later.
They went to back Hector and Tuffock up, they weren¡¯t looking so good. The golem seemed to be back at full power as they didn¡¯t have a way to slow it down like Ebony freezing it or Scarlet baking it. Scarlet was definitely in her enhanced state as her speed and power were on another level.
She de-limbed the golem with a single slash for each limb but it happened so fast the golem lost all 4 limbs at practically the same time. Its torso falling to the ground as mud and earth tried to rise and reform its body.
Ebony stayed where he was as a blast of heat came forth again, even hotter this time. The air around Scarlet was burning as was the ground.
The ground cracked and dried up and the golem couldn¡¯t get its body together. Scarlet merely straightened her hands with one of her swords that burned and stabbed right into its core.
Ebony got another notification but fewer levels and experience.
She waved her hands and the fire on the ground was extinguished.
¡®Could she have slayed all of them herself?¡¯
Ebony thought there was a possibility but her chances were low. Her physical enhancement skill needed time to get to its strongest and even then Ebony suspected it was a lower strength buff than his own.
Her speed buff was ridiculous though, together with a Constitution and possibly Vitality buff. Her swordsmanship that increases in speed and power also requires time to build up.
With her unique swordsmanship she could still overpower a buffed up Ebony. She didn¡¯t really need to overpower him though, she was fast enough to disregard a small strength difference. The longer she fights the stronger she gets but her stamina consumption skyrockets accordingly.
She couldn¡¯t solo all three of them could she?
Chapter 47: Awaited Day
A while back. Right after Ebony split off from Hector.
Ebony pulled the other golem away as Hector pushed his golem back so Tuffock couldn¡¯t help both. Possibly because Hector told the others that Ebony could handle himself, Tuffock went to back Hector up instead.
Hector looked like he was doing well as he pummelled the golem over and over again. However, it didn¡¯t last.
The golem constantly recovered and pulled mud mass back onto its body protecting its core. Ebony¡¯s help in freezing its arms were removed as well. The golem started retaliating.
Hector jerked back off in a burst of speed. He didn¡¯t dare take a hit from a golem 70 levels over himself. Now that he had the chance to rethink his choices in life, coming to challenge the golem was a pretty bad idea.
Although he was stronger, faster and tougher than Ebony with or without 3 elemental enhancement running at the same time he didn¡¯t think he could take a hit from the golem with the lousy armour he had on.
Tuffock¡¯s mace crossed blows with the golem.
Hector didn¡¯t let the opportunity go as he merged 3 punches which didn¡¯t take as much charge effort as the one he used to shatter Ryley¡¯s arrows. Aimed at the golem¡¯s thinner joints since his earlier effort to get to its core failed. The golem defended it with it¡¯s all.
Turning wind enhancement off for fire.
He did test draining water or earth from the mud golem since mud was just water and earth but it was foolish of him.
Challenging a golem to drain its elements from it was nothing short of madness. It was hard enough to do so on other people much less a golem made of the element themself. Even a lesser elemental or a random third order mage shouldn¡¯t be able to do it.
His gauntlets were customised to take on his elements but the heated punches did little to dry it, unlike Scarlet¡¯s spell. Dents in the golem¡¯s joints appeared but that was hardly harmful to the golem.
Tuffock¡¯s maces turned to locks and weighed the golem¡¯s arms down.
¡°Nice!¡±
Hector rejoiced too early as the golem merely got its mud around it like a liquid and freed itself. It used the motion of raising its arms when it freed itself to smash towards Hector who let his guard down.
Hector got his arms up to guard himself reflexively and his feet pushed off from where he was but he didn¡¯t react fast enough. He braced for impact.
Tuffock¡¯s stone locks on the ground spiked up as it turned into a makeshift wall, defending Hector for all it¡¯s worth. He had a skill for it and it was at a respectable strength as he did help build the city¡¯s walls.
¡°Ghh!¡± Hector clenched his teeth as the broken stone wall crashed into him. He was knocked back far but the stone wall took the brunt of the damage.
¡°Thanks Tuff!¡± Hector was pleased as punch that the mage on his team wasn¡¯t useless like many human mages were. For one that is as young as Tuffock anyway. He assumed he was as young as he looked and gave him a nickname.
Tuffock twitched in displeasure at the nickname but Hector didn¡¯t notice as he looked at the golem. Hector¡¯s arms were in pain, his vambraces didn¡¯t fully protect him. The golem didn¡¯t just stop there either. It jumped. So did Hector.
They were pushed on the defensive as Tuffock got to using the mana and energy in his staff to conjure lances of stone. Skill backed spells obviously did a whole lot of damage more than manipulation based attacks. Manipulation based attacks were like the Mastery skills of weapons for mages.
The mud golem removed any stone that dug deep into its chest. Tuffock and Hector will run out of mana before long at this rate.
¡°5 seconds!¡± Tuffock called out to Hector. Hector thought it was the other Tuffock talking with his shouting so loud but seeing the nervous look on his face told him otherwise.
¡°Alright! Give it a big one!¡± Hector caught on quickly. Tuffock said he was more of an offensive mage, all of the strongest magic spells took time and effort to cast.
Smashing his fist together with power. Hector burst forward to meet the golem in a direct exchange fully enhanced. Perhaps sensing danger the golem quickly gathered mud and got to protecting his core against Hector¡¯s rush of punches.
Hundreds of stone shards a little bigger than Ebony¡¯s old ice shards formed above Tuffock¡¯s raised staff.
¡°Now!¡±
Hector steamed off as he burst away to the side, exhausted and in pain from the conflicting elements in his body. He overshot his time limit a little.
Tuffock¡¯s stone barrage rained down on the golem.
The ground shook. Not just from the spell, the golem rammed its fist on the ground. The ground turned to mud and swallowed up Hector who was still not too far away.
The golem looked like a porcupine with so many stone shards sticking out of it but only a few touched his core. It ejected the shards back out of its body.
Tuffock wasn¡¯t about to let his own stone hurt himself but Hector, half swallowed into the ground, wasn''t so lucky. One of them cut into his uncovered shoulder and another ricocheted off his helmet. He didn¡¯t wear an armour piece for his shoulders so that his punches weren¡¯t restricted.
Hector managed to get himself out with a little water and earth manipulation but he wasn¡¯t looking so good. Mana was low and his body exhausted and in pain. His head was ringing from the stone shard that rammed into his helmet.
Tuffock was also huffing and catching his breath. Casting a large spell was mentally exhausting.
They looked upon the golem who went back to full shape and was ready to attack them before watching as its limbs fell off its body. A gust of wind smacked into them at the same time before being hit by a wave of intense heat.
The next thing they knew they received the confirmation of the golem¡¯s death.
¡®What in the world? That¡¯s just ridiculous¡¡¯ Hector thought. The stories he had heard about the Xengs didn¡¯t seem outrageous now.
???
¡°You okay?¡± Ebony asked. He observed his new party members'' state.
Scarlet was literally steaming as she was breathing hard under that mask of hers. He could tell she was trying to control it but her shaking arms told him that she was not in the best of condition.
Ryley was picking up his metal arrows with a look of disgust on his face as he took out what Ebony guessed was his waterskin cap. It might be a stand alone bottle cap. He was washing the mud off his arrows.
Tuffock had a tight frown but didn¡¯t look like he was injured anywhere. Just some mud on the edges of his robe.
Hector looked like took a mud bath not unlike how Ebony was the first time he got covered in mud.
He was obviously worn out as Tuffock removed the stone shard in his shoulder. It didn¡¯t stab deep since the golem merely pushed it out of his body.
Other than that, they were mostly in one piece.
¡°Ye..yeah.¡± Hector replied.
Before they could continue talking, they heard the crackling of thunder. They looked up to see dark clouds gathering at an unnatural speed.
¡°Hell yeah!¡±
¡°Finally.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°...Let¡¯s go back.¡±
The others seem to be aware of something Ebony didn¡¯t know about. Scarlet called for a return even though Ebony thought she would be more than happy to continue hunting.
The clouds moved away from them and it got darker and darker. Ebony could see the crackling within the clouds.
The party wouldn¡¯t be able to make it back to Plainston in time if they walked so they had to at least jog at a reasonable pace. Ebony got another passenger on board his shield. He offered to carry Scarlet along on another shield but only got a glare in return.
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It took 4 days or so to traverse from the edge of Bubble Hills to Plainston on a cargo-filled wagon. With how slow they were going and them only travelling for half of the day it made sense that people could cover that distance in a much shorter time span with stats and running skills.
They made it back to Plainston in a few hours, taking about twice as much time as it took to get them there.
Throughout the journey, the brewing thunderstorm only got worse. There was no rain and neither did lightning strike. Ebony only noticed that the clouds were gathering towards where the dungeon was supposed to be. He also asked them what was up with the weather.
The unexpectedly knowledgeable Hector who got up and running half way through the journey answered.
Basically, something about the world catching on to the fact that a dungeon has or was forming and taking its essence. The weather was caused by the world¡¯s action. It would strike the dungeon and seal it from taking any more of the world¡¯s essence.
This in turn, stabilises the dungeon entrance and locks it where it is. The entrance would no longer be dangerous to get close to and people will be able to enter safely.
It was no normal lightning strike though. So far people have only determined it to have elements of earth, water, wind, fire, lightning, light, dark, shadow, space, gravity, void and astral. Time mana was also hypothesised but no time mage has confirmed the theory.
Time mages were the stuff of legends, Hector didn¡¯t even think there were any living time mages in the current age. Scarlet also shook her head when he asked if there were any Xeng time mages.
The pure elementless mana in the air was getting heavy in Ebony¡¯s senses.
Just as they were lining up to enter the city, everyone who was staring at the sky saw a pitch black cylinder of ¡®light¡¯ descend in the distance.
Ebony imagined the atmospheric mana feeling anger and at the same time something else. Merely imagination or so Ebony thought.
According to his party. The city would send a party to check it out almost immediately and the dungeon should be open to approved parties by tomorrow.
They planned to split up and gather by morning tomorrow to find each other going towards the Z&Z company store.
Ebony bought more food because they were going to be in the dungeon longer than he thought. He bought 2 more bags like his current one, folding them and keeping them in his bag. Ebony was actually quite the hoarder, a very possessive one. He didn¡¯t know what he could get in the dungeon but it would be a shame if he couldn¡¯t carry it out.
The Souper Bread expands in water or soup but is only about 5 times its size and Ebony could eat quite a few every meal so he bought loads of it. He also bought a lot of thick, sliced and barbecued jerky. Together with dry-packed biscuits with dried fruits. Unfortunately, there were no plum flavoured ones, much less frost plums which most people couldn¡¯t eat.
It wasn¡¯t really enough for meals but enough to survive on as snacks for at least a week or more. With his reduced need for sustenance and Constitution stat he could survive much longer as long as he doesn¡¯t consume too much energy and stamina fighting.
Scarlet said she would take care of the food so this much should be enough even if they were to separate for whatever reason.
Ebony didn¡¯t forget to get daily necessities as well like this world''s version of mouthwash. Ebony had been using a toothbrush made of ice though his breath doesn¡¯t really stink or how food doesn¡¯t stick to his teeth much anymore. It was a habit.
He got a spare waterskin just in case too.
There was a small tube called a lighttube that he bought as well. It was basically a flashlight. The technology to convert mana to light mana was not there yet so it uses a light elemental shard of mana ore. Those were pretty rare, the one in the lighttube was only an inferior rarity piece.
It could be controlled by twisting a knob. The maximum range would be a 5 metre radius and could last about 3 hours at full power. It was better than nothing. Ebony didn¡¯t think there would be a source of light to charge his phoslamp all the time in the dungeon.
The last things he got were a few iron ores, pieces of leather, fabrics, 2 wooden planks, a tynite bison scale. He had long wanted to mess around and practice his Mana Moulding but never had much time for it.
Seeing the party getting exhausted in one fight and his experience with Z&Z escort party told him that there would be quite a bit of down time to rest.
Another cause of concern for him was travelling. If the dungeon was as big as they believed it to be they would travel a whole lot. Running at full speed the whole way was not possible. They only did that today since they were planning for a short hunt.
They needed another mode of travel. One that was reasonably fast and took much less stamina. Riding on monsters or a horse was out of the question. They would need to feed a mount and skills for riding for it to be more effective as well. Ebony could only think of cycling but there weren¡¯t bicycles here.
The other¡¯s went back and so did Ebony but Scarlet didn¡¯t follow back. She was going towards the market. They were likely still going to spar again later since neither said anything about cancelling it.
Ebony hasn¡¯t cast and trained any of his magic since after the golem fight. He wanted to charge up his ores and trade them in for more.
His source of water was mana, inferior mana ores or Blacks disintegrate after 5 or so charges and he had no idea how many times they had been charged before he obtained them.
Ebony was kinda excited to go into a dungeon but It didn¡¯t stop him from meditating.
???
¡°Big boss Pet, boss Hard, boss Tough. Reporting.
¡°Speak.¡±
¡°Yes, boss Hard. A total of 133 of our men including me have managed to gather. 26 parties and the other 3 have gotten into another party.¡±
The man recognised his boss¡¯s voice over the callstone easily. Boss Hard was usually the one doing the talking when they commute anyway.
¡°...their relative strengths?¡±
¡°Ah. 75 of them are in the 90s, 39 already level 100 and just need to reach evolution requirements. 9 of them are in the low 100s, 5 of them 110s, the other 2 120s while Ged, Lalt and I are in the 150s. Don¡¯t worry boss! Our men are all elites and can each take any monster 10 levels above themselves alone without much harm.¡±
The man reporting started sweating as he bowed when his bosses scoffed when he called their men elites. He also didn¡¯t know what to say since their men were scouted by the bosses themselves.
¡°...not enough. Communicate with each other when the entrance to the next levels are found. Only engage in levelling when the dungeon monsters are at least 30 levels above them.¡±
¡°Thi..thirty!? But boss Hard, the monsters will group up and 20 levels above is already hard enough even in a party of 5. We¡¯ll suffer many losses if we order them to fight up till 30 and above.¡±
¡°We?¡±
¡°N..no I mean you, boss Hard.¡± The reporting man wanted to slap himself for saying that the orders were from him as well. Their men always took orders from him and probably never met their actual bosses so he accidentally misspoke.
¡°If they die, they die. I only need strong men. The current group isn¡¯t enough to take those beasts down. Did you forget that a new dungeon''s monsters are greatly weakened?¡±
¡°...the Xeng?¡± the man wondered who his boss referred to as beasts. Even if practically the entire city was aware of the Xeng¡¯s presence, she was still so young and low levelled. Most thought their renowned strength to be a load of bull. Funny thing, few tried to test the truth of their fame.
As for the weakened monsters, rather than forget, he just didn¡¯t know about it. It wasn¡¯t like he ever saw or been in a freshly born dungeon.
¡°And the mana slave.¡±
¡°The one that the new recruit Boom or something told us? Why did we even bother saving that trash that got caught so easily? He was lucky they wanted to bring him elsewhere to get information out of him or we wouldn¡¯t have a chance to get him.¡±
¡°...did you send men to test him out? What did those that tried say?¡±
¡°Monster.¡±
¡°That¡¯s right. A monster.¡±
¡°But why not just take them down now? At their level we can easily take them down now but if they were to get stronger we would lose the chance.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t understand that mana slave''s value. You were born after mana slaves were abolished so it¡¯s no surprise. Meditators do one thing to level up. Meditate. Even at the end of their life, few have levelled beyond a hundred. Those that do are those high trash nobles who had mana slaves. This mana slave is of a combat class.¡±
¡°...he will be a cash cow if he manages to evolve further?¡±
¡°Close. His strength changes things. We want him on our side. While he¡¯s still young we can pull him to our side. Inform me when our men complete their evolution. Same tactic. Observe the dungeon¡¯s behavioural patterns, get a hang of what to do to make it spawn and gather as many monsters as possible. The men will attack together and you¡¯ll swoop in with Ged and Lalt to save them.¡±
¡°...Will you be showing up boss?¡±
¡°If we need to.¡±
¡°Yes boss.¡±
¡°One more thing. Include the Xeng. She is to be kept alive.¡±
¡°Yes big boss Pet.¡± he noticed the change in speaker and the absolute graveness of the order. He didn¡¯t need to know the reason. The man, Tewa, couldn''t wrap his head around some things. Letting the new recruit Boom live was one.
He couldn¡¯t possibly have sent his level 90 men to spar with the level 50 mana slave. So he only paid some random people to pick a fight with him. They weren¡¯t even harmed or injured but seemed to be spiritless or disappointed in something. Tewa could tell, their pride was crushed if they had any.
Tewa sent people in increasing levels from 50 to 70 but they all couldn¡¯t even touch the mana slave. No one higher wanted to pick a nonsensical fight over a small sum of Greys or even Greens.
The Xeng on the other hand, had his men itching to challenge. No one would laugh even if they had a 40 level or more against them.
It was even worse. They feared the monster in human skin.
A 40 level difference was a 400 stat point difference. Considering Sub-Class, assuming they were roughly the same level would put them at a 600 stat point difference.
How the el does anyone cover that difference in base stat and strength?
The first few he sent said she was too damn fast to even counter. So he sent the fastest rogues that haven''t evolved but it made little difference.
Also coming to a new dungeon was a waste of time and effort.
Even if it was a large dungeon, Tewa doubts it to have monsters much higher than his own level. They were gathered by his bosses and trained at different places to one day help his bosses rise in Lure.
Coming here honestly seems to be a waste of time. At least for him and the others who are further into the hundreds.
He was actually in a different dungeon before coming to Plainston but orders were orders.
At least he didn¡¯t face complaints from the guys since a new dungeon had its allure and they should still be able to gain experience unlike him who would have difficulty even finding something his level to hunt.
Chapter 48: Dungeon Delving
Ebony got 5 levels in his Class, 10 in his Sub-Class and 6 in his Profession. Reaching 60, 42 and 52 respectively.
Excluding the 6 points to Wisdom he still had 100 unspent stat points. Ebony contemplated for 2 seconds. Then he slammed all 100 into Wisdom.
His current stats were more than enough for most monsters but he found himself lacking mana to train all his magic at the same time. Even though he had been getting more and more mana efficient with his skills and they cost less than stated by the skill it just wasn¡¯t enough.
A topic that came up in conversation was that the level of elemental manipulation skill, Ice Mana Manipulation for example actually affects mana efficiency although it¡¯s not stated. The tier 2 for manipulation type skill is mana control and would help further reduce mana costs. The degree of mana efficiency was just said to be too low to matter at low levels.
Ebony is betting people spent years to reach spell level requirement only because it took them so long to recover enough mana to practice magic. Outside of knowledge and spell creation.
Speaking of spell creation, Ebony believes he was close to getting a vibrational blade spell for sound magic.
When Chaotic Repulsive Membrane is on, he couldn¡¯t vibrate the outer layer of gravity mana. Like the spell name suggests the gravity mana never stays in one place and is too messy to form a proper movement with it.
He could either cover his greatsword in a thin film of mana or use the ice mana he imbued into it. Ebony found it to have actual physical effects and to cut smoother already. Just a bit more before it turns into a skill.
As for his problem with speed, not just movement speed, he was thinking more towards gravity magic. Something like Magnified Gravity Field but the opposite and only working on himself. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane actually does repel gravity mana but not as well as other physical objects. Nonetheless, it helped increase his speed as his body feels lighter.
Ebony was still observing Scarlet¡¯s masks and twin swords on how they reflect gravity mana or push gravity mana aside.
For movement speed, he could probably play around with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. Like how he propels the things he tosses, he just needed to manipulate the spell well enough to repel his body off the ground. He just needed a good grip on the ground for it to work effectively.
He gained a few skill levels here and there but enough to make a big difference. Except for Frost Injection which got 10 whole levels.
After sparring with Scarlet who seems to have mostly gotten over her exhaustion from golem hunting, Ebony prepared his Layered Ice Carapace. It only took less than 3 hours for 1 full powered one now. Ebony prepared 3.
What used to be a short nap was now a full day¡¯s sleep. His mana ores filled again.
Ebony didn¡¯t forget to use the bathroom to clear his system. He hadn¡¯t taken a dump for literal weeks and not peed for days. The increase in Constitution surely affected it and perhaps, the biological need for that would no longer be there after a few evolutions.
The party met at the Quest Hall where Ebony traded in all his ores again.
It was extremely crowded with a lot of people and parties Ebony hadn''t seen around. The other parties¡¯ relative strengths were much higher. Ebony only noticed the large number of people over level hundred after seeing them gathered like this.
Most of them probably established parties and not the lot that applied for a party like him. No wonder he didn¡¯t see them in the duelling grounds when he met with his party.
The turtle shell near his back was large and thick enough to hinder people¡¯s movement, together with his half filled bag hung on it.
Ryley was decked out in 3 quivers of arrows. Ebony could see different types but he wasn¡¯t sure what the different types were. There were both wooden and metal arrows. He also carried a large bag like Ebony but it looked half empty.
Tuffock on the other hand had a fully packed bag that he seemed to struggle to carry. He should really invest in some physical stats. From what Ebony could see his Strength and Agility were only 3 to 5 times that of a normal unclassed human. Ebony couldn¡¯t say much about Strength since he was also around 6 times his original stat of 5.
Hector looked ready to rumble and no sign of his previous injuries were on him. He had his helmet that didn''t cover his face and line of sight. The set of armour was clean and polished again with no mud or dirt on it any more. His luggage was a leather knapsack on the smaller side.
Scarlet who was nowhere to be found earlier also arrived. She seemed no different from usual. While she didn¡¯t look to be carrying anything other than her weapons, Ebony had long realised that she was carrying a bag like the old drawstring one that Halvis and Roya let him use for his game with his new senses. Just smaller and perhaps more delicate but he had never seen what it looked like since she carried it under her mantle.
Where did she keep all the food? The ones who had smaller luggage probably had bags that had expanded space in them.
Looking around, Ebony could really see that swords were not a popular weapon of choice.
Seeing Top, Chris, the loud bandit and Scarlet made Ebony think that swords were the main close range weapon of choice. He was obviously wrong. Other than [Warrior]s there were also [Axeman]s, a rare [Hammerman] who was a dwarf. A few carried halberds as well. The common point was that most carried thick heavy weapons
People were tapping their feet impatiently. Some started complaining to the staff, asking why they aren¡¯t done with the preliminary checks yet. What was the point of asking the staff? It''s not like they were out in the field.
¡°SILENCE!¡± A large man stood from the second floor and shouted.
The murmuring dulled down.
[Warrior Lvl 100]
The man was clad in a full plate of silver armour, minus the helmet. It was the first time Ebony had seen someone wearing full plate armour. The man looked not quite middle aged but not exactly very young either. He was a large and buff man.
Ebony had heard the whispers and found that the man shouting was the city lord. Baron Foil or something. Apparently, he had just taken over the role of baron from his father. His level was pretty damn low after all.
The people, especially those higher levelled parties weren¡¯t happy with his attitude. They were higher level than the noble but no one voiced a loud complaint.
¡°I¡¯ve just received the report from the dispatched dungeon clearer party. The details will be posted shortly, I declare the dungeon of Plainston named Ordina to be open!¡±
Ebony could hear the sentence even from outside the Quest Hall, it was probably announced to the whole city.
Deafening cheers resounded throughout the city.
It was honestly hard on the ears so Ebony silenced it out for himself with a bubble of mana that he forced still. He had been able to do it to silence his own music for others so it was easy to do. Seeing Scarlet annoyed by the noise too he extended it to her. She looked confused for a moment before looking at Ebony.
Hector was busy cheering along while Tuffock was nervously pulling his hood over his head. Ryley was also annoyed but it was obvious he was kinda excited for the dungeon run as well. It was likely all of their first time into a dungeon.
Some parties just up and left but others were looking at the details posted. Of course, only the first floor''s details were posted.
Ordina 1st Floor:
Size Classification - Large
Environment - Plains/Grassland
Behaviour (Subject to change) - Very Aggressive
Mana density (Subject to change) - 2.1 MPC
Time Ratio - 1 : 1
Gravity Ratio - 2.8 : 1
There was some other info like the prevalent elemental mana in the dungeon but that was all about the same as where they were. It was supposedly very humid, perhaps due to the summer heat. There was sunlight in there but they were unconfirmed on the day and night cycle.
The unit for mana seems to be Mana Particle Concentration or MPC. It was useless information for Ebony and most people actually. He didn¡¯t even know what the mana density was now.
Hector said it didn¡¯t matter much since it would probably drop as the dungeon just got sealed or stabilised. According to his estimates the current mana density was 0.7 MPC so it was around 3 times denser in the first floor of Ordina.
There was nothing surprising about the time ratio. Since dungeons take in mana and essence from the surroundings when they are forming they tend to copy the natural environment of where they form.
The average time ratio for most dungeons was only around 0.8 to 1.2 of the normal time flow. The gravity ratio stunned many people though.
There were many reasons why a new dungeon was so popular. A large one, even more so. It was known that dungeons either shrink when sealed or gradually expand over a couple of years before stabilising in size. Whether it was because of the seal or just a normal behaviour of dungeons to expand many times over in a few years was debatable. This was the chance to shorten travel time and expedition length so it was a great opportunity to push for appropriate levels depending on party and monster levels.
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Their party said little as they moved off towards the dungeon. It was about 1200km northeast or over 200 gors away. It shouldn¡¯t take much longer than when they came back from Bubble Hills if they travelled fast.
Only Ebony would bother ¡®wasting¡¯ the energy and stamina to run at full speed to travel. The others would be exhausted before even fighting. Ebony carried Tuffock on one of his shields again. They were still one of the faster parties to arrive.
The dungeon entrance was not what Ebony expected. They were in the middle of an open grassland with a black screen about 30 or so metres in height and half as wide.
Ebony walked around, it was extremely thin with nothing different seeing it from the front or back.
He could tell the stone fence built around it was made by man and the ¡®gate¡¯ bordering the black screen was also made by people, mages.
Ebony imagined a cave or tall tower since it was called a dungeon tower but got a portal styled dungeon instead. It wasn¡¯t disappointing though. They just had to have approved party composition and they were free to enter. At least they didn¡¯t need a fee to enter a dungeon.
The sensation of passing through the black screen was¡unsettling to say the least.
Ebony was just unsure if he even passed through the entrance as the view as he passed through was almost exactly the same. A wide open light yellowish green grassland. There was a sky, though no sun or clouds were in sight there was daylight.
There were a few minor differences.
People vomiting on the ground all over. Ryley was one of them. Tuffock seemed a little uneasy but was still okay. The other 3 of them were perfectly fine and normal.
The increase in weight. The force pulling their bodies down was heavy. The gravitational waves of gravity mana in Ebony¡¯s senses even thicker. Ebony had Chaotic Repulsive Membrane on together with some relaxing bgm. His mana dropped by about 2 MP per minute, almost breaking even with his current regeneration.
It was hot. Humid.
Enough that Ebony would be sweating in a few moments.
The mana was denser but didn¡¯t make much a difference to Ebony. It apparently causes spells to react differently though.
They said the dungeon behaviour was very aggressive but not a single monster was in sight. Perhaps the first party here cleared them all. There was no body or blood or sign of battle at all though.
Some archers who got their bearings together were shooting arrows into the distance. They probably had fantastic eyesight and Perception. Whether they were just trying to get their aim right with the increase in gravity or actually shooting at monsters was unknown to Ebony.
The people started to move away from the crowded entrance as they got used to the increase in gravity. Ebony still kept track of Scarlet¡¯s mask and twin swords that seem to be unaffected by the increase in gravity.
¡°Ugh. How are all of you fine?¡±
¡°Haha Ryley, it¡¯s common sense to wrap yourself in mana before going through a spatial gate like a dungeon¡¯s.¡±
¡°Ye..yes, I heard of that too. It..it worked better than I tho¡thought it would.¡±
Scarlet nodded to their comments.
¡®What? Wrap myself in mana?¡¯ Ebony did no such thing.
¡°What?! And you couldn¡¯t tell me that earlier? Damn mages and hybrids! Ugh, the mana density here is high¡¡±
¡°I thought everyone knew.¡± Hector replied as if a matter of fact.
Ryley''s expression was indescribable but he had no time to argue. He was busy getting used to the mana density levels. The added weight from the increased gravity wasn¡¯t all too bad when your strength stat was high. Just needed some getting used to.
They walked in a randomly picked direction. Ryley, who got over the vomiting, reported the monsters to have an average of level 80 which was surprisingly high for a new dungeon, especially for the first floor. It was already beyond everyone¡¯s expectations.
The current plan was to search for the way up or down to the next level. They assumed it was up.
Downward dungeon towers tend to be underground cavern-like or maze-like, dark and enclosed spaces were not uncommon. Of course, that was only the general trend. Dungeon towers that go downwards also have wide open spaces or bright daylight. Dungeon towers that require climbing up also might have cave or maze-like floors. So there was no guarantee which type this was at the moment.
[Geoat Lvl 82]
¡°What is that?¡± Ebony was looking at a gazelle like monster with 2 long and thin horns but, its neck was all muscle with no skin or fur and so was its torso area. It had claws for hoofs and shorter limbs. A group of 7 of them stood ahead of them.
¡°Du..dungeon work. Merged monsters. I..I guess it''s the plain¡¯s gazelle mixed with some Rhoat elements and maybe something else.¡± Tuffock replied.
The moment the Geoat or whatever the heck it was saw them, it charged like no tomorrow. Without rhyme or reason.
Ryley showed his prowess by shooting a single arrow from the side that managed to cleanly punch through 2 of them through the chest area that wasn¡¯t muscle. They dug through the ground a long way and didn¡¯t stand up again. Presumably dead.
His rate of fire was a little slow but he still managed to land an arrow on another Geoat before they arrived near the party. It missed the mark and landed on its torso as the Geoat had its front half leap forward, stretching its muscled torso.
One of the 4 other Geoat stretched out its neck like a bullet shooting forward. Horns pointed out poised to shoot through Hector¡¯s body.
Hector slammed his fists into each other before sidestepping with a burst of speed and punching the Geoat right on its face. Similar to how he deflected Scarlet¡¯s sword in Ebony¡¯s opinion.
The Geoat stood on twos as it clawed out with its front legs and screamed in rage.
Hector deftly punched the claws aside with his right hand and his left followed up with a hook to the jaws. The Geoat''s neck limb snapped backwards before returning like nothing happened. Like the Rhoats, it didn¡¯t seem to have bones in its neck or any part more Rhoat like than gazelle like.
Hector laughed and got to having a solo punch out with the Geoat.
Their fighting style was not so different from a Rhoat but with a set of hard and sharp horns with claws on their hoofs. Ebony had no trouble keeping up with them once Icebody Enhancement kicked in. He was eating into his mana pool with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and a relaxing Battle Song on but it was of no concern. He didn¡¯t think he needed a proper physical buff from Battle Song so he used it for the slightest increase in mana regeneration.
The muscle parts were weak to freezing and cold like Rhoats and Ebony took the Geoat that aimed for him.
Tuffock had the 2 large stone hands grabbing onto the neck of another Geoat. Strangling it didn¡¯t seem to do much. Tuffock raised his staff a little and the stone hands lifted the poor thing up into the air as it tried to stretch out its lower body for his claws to kick at Tuffock.
Tuffock got to swinging the Geoat and smashing it into the ground. Over and over again. It only elicited rage filled screams but didn¡¯t seem to do much damage.
One of the stone hands let go of its neck, back off a little and turned into a lance. Tuffock swung his staff forward, the lance propelled and pierced into the floating target. It wasn¡¯t dead yet as the stone lance that stuck into the ground was manipulated to remove itself. Tuffock stabbed the lance at the Geoat again and again, the Geoat¡¯s tough body and strong vitality extended its torture.
Ebony turned to look at Scarlet¡¯s battle but there was none.
On the ground beside her was¡
¡®Hot damn.¡¯
There were pieces of fur, a bunch of bones, a pile of organs, some cooked sliced meat that had smoke rising from it and a bundle of roast meat. It even smelled delicious.
¡°I thought dungeon meat was toxic?"
¡°Hmm? Oh. Habit.¡± Scarlet looked where Ebony was looking at and scratched her mask with a finger as if embarrassed. Unable to look straight at Ebony.
¡®What kind of habit is that? She cooked the Geoat alive as she processed it? With her swords and fire magic? While fighting?¡¯
¡°Woah! This dungeon is thirsty for blood, man.¡± Hector came back with bloodied fists.
Ryley dealt with the one that he didn¡¯t kill with a single shot already.
¡°This is so unfair, none of you got dirtied.¡± Hector complained.
He was the only one fighting with his fist. Ebony could now let the blood, fat and all that sticky icky gore slide off him with his membrane. Wonderful.
Tuffock was one thing for not fighting in close combat but how did Scarlet not get any blood on her if she sliced the monster. Her swords didn¡¯t get any mud on them from the golem hunt either.
Ebony watched as the dead bodies on the ground including the processed one dissolved into liquid goo and into the ground.
¡°N..noo. I..I forget to retrieve my stone¡± Tuffock softly exclaimed.
¡°This is one really thirsty dungeon. It¡¯s retrieving whatever it can so quickly. It must still be unstable from the world¡¯s seal, it should usually be unable to absorb foreign mana and matter by now. I mean, not at this ridiculous speed anyway.¡± Hector commented. Ebony saw some of Tuffock''s stone pieces get absorbed into the ground as well.
¡°We..well. At least we can look forward to the raw materials produced by the dungeon.¡±
¡°Hahaha! Well said.¡±
Ebony was glad to see Ryley just as confused, it seems like only Ryley and Ebony were so clueless about dungeoning.
Apparently, dungeons have loot but equipment loot was just the dungeon picking up dead people¡¯s equipment and putting them in chests to attract more people in them.
Dungeons are not able to absorb foreign matter after that black cylinder of light landed on them. Some say it¡¯s due to the world sealing them that they lose the ability to do so. Though they would be able to change the equipment of dead people by adding their own elements into them. So some people said that the dungeon just chooses not to absorb the equipment but leave it to attract people.
Spells are deconstructed to mana and moved elsewhere to form other kinds of raw materials that also serve to attract people or monsters in. The dungeon can absorb a tiny bit of essence this way.
Spawned dungeon monsters are the eyes and ears of the dungeon. Each dungeon reacts differently to monsters being killed or whatnot. If the party killing them was too strong some dungeons might have monsters avoid the party to lose less. Some would send more monsters to get rid of the threat.
They are also the mouths of the dungeon used to devour dungeon delvers for essence and eventual growth.
It was pretty weird for dungeons to just collect the monster corpses like that. They usually leave it for dungeon delvers to eat or collect their parts. It was another form of attraction for people.
Basically, the more people that die in the dungeon the better. Better for the dungeon and also other people, since the loot gets better.
¡®No wonder they don¡¯t collect an entrance fee.¡¯
The government also expects people to report deaths so that they can predict the growth of the dungeon. They might stop warriors from going in if too many of them died in there.
It seems like people dying here is always good for the economy.
Chapter 49: First Floor
As aggressive as they claim the dungeon to be, there were too many people around.
Larger groups of part gazelle part Rhoat monsters have attacked them but they could always see other parties facing the same monsters.
Another monster that prowled the grassland was the kobolds he heard Rowent and the others have fought. They were less than a metre tall with a lizard and wolf mix of facial features and their bodies were furless and scaleless. Skin much like humans. Not sure if they were changed by the dungeon in any form since the Identified as [Kobold]s.
They wore half metal half leather armour, not unlike the freelancers Ebony had seen and used an array of weapons, mostly clubs, hatchets or bow and arrows. Their ability with them was crude but had quite a lot of speed and power to them. At least they were stronger than an enhanced Ebony. Not as awesome as it sounds considering their level gap. Ebony¡¯s movement speed almost rivals theirs.
As with the Geoats, they didn¡¯t seem to have much intelligence and it was; kill on sight for them. The party dealt with them but if there was one thing to say about their party was that their teamwork was nothing short of horrible. They essentially split the monsters up and fight their own battles most of the time.
It was quite troubling for them when the kobolds started fighting together with the Geoats. The last battle even had the kobolds riding the Geoats. They even started to have a semblance of teamwork, likely learning from other parties'' fighting styles.
The dungeon also wasn¡¯t so dumb, too many monsters have been killed in a short period of time and the number of attacks greatly reduced over the span of 3 to 4 hours.
Ebony had no qualms mass killing these almost mindless monsters. They were the dungeon¡¯s robots. He didn¡¯t sense life in them.
Sadly, they didn¡¯t make much progress in terms of exploration. Still, the grassland was large and Ryley and Scarlet who separated from time to time scouted ahead but didn¡¯t find any way up or down yet. Ebony never stopped his 3D Mental Mapping.
Tuffock fought defensively seeing the constant attacks, he was conserving mana. So was Hector, he got slower and less efficient in fighting. Ebony guessed he was using perhaps just 1 type of enhancement at any one time.
Ebony saw Scarlet¡dissect the Geoats with heated swords and the heated sphere thing does the roasting. She didn¡¯t seem too tired as it hardly took her much effort to slay a single one or well, ten of them. She didn¡¯t leave the kobolds uncooked either.
Ryley was troubled by quickly picking and reusing his arrows as the dungeon tried to take unattended foreign material a little fast. Fortunately, Hector was right and the dungeon¡¯s behaviour or ability to do so was slowing down.
Ebony was Ebony. As efficient as always. The number of enemies didn¡¯t really change the way he fought. His shields were only used to take some hits for Tuffock so far.
¡°Stamina and mana levels. 70%, 90%¡± Ryley demanded after sharing his own. He was the highest level with the highest stats and didn¡¯t use magic so it was no surprise his resources were still mostly topped up. Ebony wondered where he used mana on.
¡°Half and half.¡± Hector replied. Understanding the need to know each others¡¯ conditions before moving forward.
It was actually pretty impressive for him to have fought 7 or 8 consecutive battles and still have half his resources. The enemies had higher stats than him which made it even harder to deal with them as efficiently as their party did.
¡°3..3 quarters and thi..thirty percent.¡±
Tuffock stayed almost stationary throughout battles and he hopped on Ebony¡¯s shield for movement so he still had most of his stamina. He probably didn¡¯t use much of his staff¡¯s power since there was not much need to. As a dedicated mage but with no Sub-Class and its stats, still having thirty percent mana was pretty awesome. Ebony would have emptied out by the first or second battle with the way he spends mana.
¡°60, 85.¡±
Ebony was pretty sure Scarlet used fire magic more than a few times. Being the lowest level after Ebony made her exert quite some stamina. She just slew her enemies so much faster than Hector did.
¡°...Enough.¡± What was Ebony supposed to say? 100% stamina? 95% mana?
The party was obviously not happy with his words. He wasn¡¯t exactly being cooperative and it was hard to plan what¡¯s next if they didn¡¯t know each other¡¯s conditions.
¡°90?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t really like to lie but they weren¡¯t gonna believe him if he said he had full stamina.
¡°You¡¯re kidding¡ and why¡¯s that a question?¡± Hector had visible doubt written all over his face that wasn¡¯t hidden under his helmet.
¡°Wh..what about your mana? Yo..you¡¯ve been manipulating those shields for forever now. Aa.and I haven¡¯t seen you without your ice elemental enhancement.¡±
¡°Will you believe me if I told you that both are over 90%¡± Ebony felt better that he wasn¡¯t exactly lying now. They ignored him after that with grumbles and complaints, mostly from Hector.
There was still daylight and they weren¡¯t tired.
It was not easy to level up even with the 20 level gap. Ebony only levelled once for his main class.
Ebony was unaware that dungeon monsters don¡¯t give as much experience as natural born monsters. Even if they mostly fought solo battles the experience sometimes split among each other as well.
One thing he figured was that Battle Song doesn¡¯t buff his allies if the mana wasn¡¯t his. Which was to say people out of his almost 10 metre range wouldn¡¯t get the buff even if they can hear the song. Even then, if he didn¡¯t fill the 10 radius with his own mana, compressed or not, they still wouldn¡¯t get the buff. A little disappointing but it made sense to Ebony. It would take too much effort and focus if he were to try the string of compressed mana idea. Wasn¡¯t worth it for the minuscule increase, at the moment.
It was a little safer now that they don¡¯t see any monsters around.
Ryley, Scarlet and Ebony split up and scouted while Hector stayed with Tuffock to protect him. Hector should conserve his resources for an eventual battle as well.
They also exchanged contacts on the callstone. They should be able to reach each other within the same dungeon even on different floors since they were in the same space. Communication with people outside the dungeon wasn¡¯t possible though. At least not with their callstones.
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Ebony played with it a little. He couldn¡¯t send any messages through it if the other party doesn¡¯t ¡®pick up¡¯ or accept the link. He could talk or call multiple people at the same time. The mana cost was taken from the closest connected mana ore in his myriad bracelet. The caller was the one who supplied the mana cost.
Hector¡¯s was of higher rarity, it had a wider range and even transmission speed. There would be a lag depending on the distance between the two callers. If Ebony was out of range of his callstone, Hector can still call Ebony if they were within the range of his callstone but not vice versa. He had to speak up into it and the sound would come out from the bracelet or callstone itself. Though they were connected by mental magic it seems like it was not a telepathic tool. So others can overhear the contents of his call.
Monsters shouldn¡¯t be able to spawn just anywhere so they likely didn¡¯t have to worry about monsters popping up beside or behind them. There should be spawn points or spawning nodes as they call it. Camping it would be pointless since the dungeon can just move the nodes. Send more monsters to kill the party camping there, do other stuff to get rid of the party or just not use that spawn point.
Ebony thought he was seeing things when bushes started growing from time to time. It was still grassland for as far as his eye could see.
They got Hector and Tuffock to move in a straight line as the 3 of them branched off forward.
Ebony saw 2 parties with 9 people in a ¡®death battle¡¯ with over a mix of over 30 Geoats and kobolds. There was what looked like a large crop circle with weird shapes and lines on the ground. Maybe it was the spawning node.
Ebony just linked to all 4 of his party members and told them his general direction before moving to assist. He thought he wouldn¡¯t be declined or seen as taking their prey since there was half a body getting eaten by 2 Geoats and a kobold. The other half had probably already been eaten.
The levels of the two parties were around 85-90 but they didn¡¯t seem too capable of fending the wave of monsters off. Hardly any other than the archer and rogue was uninjured if not exhausted.
Unfortunately for them, Ebony was incapable of mowing the monsters down. Even a good hit from Ebony caused naught but a deep gash. Monsters were also different from the animals he used to hunt barehanded on Earth. They could move their bodies as per normal even with deep wounds or what should have been heavy injuries. Ebony¡¯s offensive ability being considerably weak.
9 of them were fighting on 2 main fronts, they were being boxed in.
The party of 4 was doing much worse with a gap in their formation. The gap was likely a warrior or vanguard, only a rogue and a dwarven warrior, armour clad with a thick shield, held the line with 2 archers supporting them. Their enemies numbered 13, mostly kobolds.
The Dwarf seemed pretty capable though. For some reason, most of the kobolds were focusing attacks on the Dwarf and he managed to defend against most attacks.
1 of the archers was down on the ground with crude arrows sticking out of her right shoulder and thigh.
The rogue was trying his best but his ribs were probably injured, maybe even broken or so Ebony thought from the way he moved and protected his side.
Ebony stabbed all 3 of his shields down, covering the archer that got shot. It shocked and scared them at first seeing 3 huge blue masses flying towards them.
He appeared beside the steadily overwhelmed Dwarf with a few steps and lightened the pressure off of him. Ebony gave a wide horizontal swing with his bulky but now not so heavy greatsword. It struck nothing as the Geoats and kobolds jumped back to avoid the blow.
¡°Rogue. Get within the shields.¡±
Ebony had realised that dungeon monsters were a little attracted to him, seeing how he had been targeted by the bulk of the monsters when their party got attacked.
He pushed the majority of them back away from the Dwarf with a pushing charge similar to when he was playing around with his swordsmanship while running when he hunted those Rhoats. Promptly flashing a compressed Frost Mist Perception Sphere for a second, not so much for perception really. The 2 Geoats and 5 club and hatchet swinging kobolds were covered in a thick layer of frost on their skin.
An Ice Sword formed above Ebony as it was let loose at the kobold archer who pulled its bowstring back. It dodged. At least it had to roll away and had its shot interrupted.
The rogue apparently didn¡¯t take Ebony¡¯s advice as he took the chance and went after the 4 archer kobolds. Reckless. At any rate, Ebony wasn¡¯t one to comment about recklessness.
The relatively uninjured archer didn¡¯t let the opportunity go either and sent two arrows barrelling into the one of Geoats who had their necks and torso stiffen from their weakness to cold and frost.
The Dwarf was visibly exhausted as his arm holding a war axe limped down but the slowed kobold was relatively easier to handle.
There were 2 more Geoats that Ebony couldn¡¯t get in his range.
Ebony wanted to take down at least one kobold to lighten the load of the Dwarf but the healthy Geoats stepped in to push Ebony away from the party.
The monsters were dead set on getting another one killed but realised they were unable to break Ebony¡¯s shield.
The injured rogue played himself as he couldn¡¯t even keep up with the kobold archers anymore with his sluggish movements. The other 3 kobold were shooting one after the other to get him. They obviously managed to do so.
The group of kobold archers was out of Ebony¡¯s range to send a shield to defend him. Ebony could send his shield flying like a projectile but it¡¯ll do more harm than good. It won¡¯t be in his control once it is more than 10 metres away from him.
Ebony¡¯s movement speed was fast and should be able to reach him within a few steps. If he wasn¡¯t delayed and pulled down by 2 Geoats anyway.
A blood curdling scream escaped the rogue¡¯s mouth as an arrow found its way into his eye. Then mouth. Stomach. Heart.
Ebony didn¡¯t need to check to know that he was dead.
The archer who supported the Dwarf was also targeted by those less affected by Ebony¡¯s frost. Too distracted by keeping pressure off the Dwarf, the kobold archers turned to land an arrow right into the archer¡¯s side. It was aimed at his stomach but the kobold either missed the mark or the archer managed to move slightly right before it hit.
Ebony stayed as calm as ever even with the death of the rogue.
He wasn¡¯t able to instantly kill the 2 Geoats like Scarlet or Ryley who had insane firepower. However, enough ice mana had been dished out into his enemies bodies for Ebony to flash away with another Treading Step. Protecting the archer.
Having no leeway, he retook the shields from the downed archer. Using them to push and smash into the nearby monsters. Trying to box them up together like they did to the party. In hindsight, he should have done this to begin with but, he only just thought of it.
Perhaps, he wasn¡¯t calm enough to think of this idea at the start. Perhaps, he chose to step in to help them before coming up with any idea. Doesn¡¯t matter which it was. He already let one die.
The 3 shields moved in tandem, they shifted around along with Ebony. Ebony¡¯s greatsword didn¡¯t stop swinging.
The Geoats were only knocked around when they were caught off guard, having noticed it, they could easily resist or even push back against Ebony¡¯s shields. The kobolds were pretty helpless against the heavy, bulky and massive things.
The Dwarf called for the archer to take shots at the kobold archers.
It was at this moment that he saw a gaping hole appear where the kobold heart was. A long metal arrow on the ground in front of it. What caused a small crater to appear outside the dungeon only managed to dig into the ground without causing much destruction.
Ryley was probably in range already.
The surrounding temperature rose sharply.
Scarlet descended.
So did the monsters.
Into the afterlife, if they had one.
Chapter 50: Camping
''Not enough offensive skills¡¡¯
Ebony was pretty awed by Scarlet¡¯s and even Hector''s damage potential. Especially Scarlet.
He had focused on defensive and evasive skills so much that he lacked killing power or efficiency.
If a few strikes or less was enough to take a monster down he wouldn¡¯t have to have let that rogue get killed.
Sure, Chaotic Repulsive Membrane helped quite a bit with its current strength and so did the high frequency mana vibrations. Insufficient.
Ice magic was the one he was best at and also the one he felt the most natural with. Yet, ice wasn¡¯t much suitable for explosive power like fire or lightning that Scarlet seemed to be using. He only just found out she used lightning magic as well.
Apparently, she just got her Sub-Class up to ¡®unshameful¡¯ to show.
She could literally zap hundreds of metres or even a kilometre faster than he could blink with what he dubbed as ¡®Flash Step¡¯. It was mana intensive so it wasn¡¯t like she could constantly use it but that was a very useful skill.
Sound and gravity magic had lesser direct offensive capability for now. At least he thought so with his limited and weaker control and manipulation over these elements.
Ice¡ wasn¡¯t much of an element for destructive capacity. It was decent for both defence and offence but it was more of a crowd control or debuffing element.
His current style was just to ram as much ice mana into the physically stronger monster while evading, blocking or countering attacks. When their movements stiffen enough that he had the upper hand in physical stats then he would finish it off.
He didn¡¯t think there was any issue with his battle style.
Ebony had the speed, footwork and prediction for evasion. A shield of ice tougher than a steel shield that can cover his entire body that he can move around at will. Even without that, his improving swordsmanship was enough to deflect, parry and counter most simple attacks. He had lower strength but was able to take the blow of monsters to add to his rotation and counter with more force.
His flexibility and balance with the slightly oversized greatsword was vastly higher than when he first swung the giant frozen leaf Gen gave him.
His increasingly unending mana lets him dish out enough mana to turn a monster into an ice sculpture and continues to improve as well. His unmatched endurance and stamina lets him outlast any enemy that constantly weakens and slows from his ice mana anyway.
Undead type monsters were said to have unlimited stamina as well so he wasn¡¯t really unmatched since he knew he would still get tired after extended fighting or training. His increasing Agility also made it such that he was eating into his stamina more. Just a tiny bit though.
Ebony decided to go with ice magic for a good offensive option. It was more realistic than sound or gravity for the moment. His control over the element being much higher and he was able to conjure ice mana.
A physical skill might be good too. Two-handed Power Stab was a little lacklustre and he was trying to change it somehow now that he could wield the greatsword with more dexterity with one or both hands. It was not exactly a bad skill. If he manages to lunge his sword deep enough into a monster all he has to do is hang on and inject a huge load of ice mana and the monster is as good as dead.
Back to the situation at hand.
The Dwarf was the party leader. His party found the spawning node with the other party. In short, they planed to share and camp the node while the dungeon was still dumb enough to randomly spawn monsters on a hunting spree.
It worked out well at first as they took turns. They just underestimated the dungeon a little too much. It was obviously aware its monsters were constantly being killed as its ¡®eyes¡¯ spawned. It sent two groups from different directions to remove the 2 parties.
They made excuses like being tired after hours of killing and fighting the freshly spawned monsters. They split and took a group each. The Dwarf party¡¯s archer was injured first then the dead warrior died protecting her or so they said. Then it was as Ebony saw.
Unfortunately, by the time Scarlet and Ryley got here, the other party had 3 of their members dead already. The other 2 were heavily injured as well. The spawn node actually didn¡¯t stay unused as a few Geoats were spawned and attacked them from the back. The 2 were lucky Scarlet reached them in time.
Ebony stepped in to help since it would¡¯ve left a bad taste to let them die when he was there and could do something to prevent it. Well, he didn¡¯t really think about it much and moved without much thought.
He initially thought that they accidentally came across a large group of monsters and were in trouble. Hearing that they were basically asking for it by camping a spawn node without being strong enough to handle it made him think that they deserve it.
Scarlet, Ryley and Ebony walked off and ignored their pleas for help to walk them back to the dungeon entrance. Pathetic.
None of them gave a shit anymore. Ebony had the same expressionless look as always. Ryley had a look of disgust and muttered that they were just trash that bit off more than they can chew and that it was a waste of his time coming here. Scarlet had an unreadable expression with her mask but it was obvious she no longer bothered with the 2 parties anymore.
Hector only arrived and met up with the 3 of them with Tuffock on his back as they walked towards him. He was getting really noisy and annoying when no one answered him about what happened.
They continued their 3 way split exploration. Only once did Hector call them back for backup and support. Ebony reached the fastest since he was not nearly as far away as the other 2. He witnessed the huge bombardment of stone shards that Tuffock casted.
There were much fewer monster attacks now but it wasn¡¯t like there weren¡¯t any.
Tuffock had a lightly injured arm, getting cut by an arrow from a kobold. He didn¡¯t call up his suit in time or didn¡¯t have a cast for it. The stone barrage took all of his focus apparently.
¡°Tch!¡± The tongue clicking seemed a little uncharacteristic of Tuffock but what did he know about him?
Ebony knew it wasn¡¯t as if Tuffock could multicast more or better than him. Rowent and Fergus having explained some basics or general types of spells already.
A single ¡®cast¡¯ was similar to having a single hand. Most low level mages would form a base element mass of mana like a fireball, iceball, snowball, stone shard etc. The simplest form of attack spell was to use that as a projectile. Changing their shape into weapons like swords and spears were minor differences between mages and their preference.
It wasn¡¯t as if you could only hold a single ball of dirt in one hand. Barrage spells like Tuffock were like holding many balls in his hand and tossing them. It has a wider range of effect but each individual shard or ¡®ball¡¯ couldn¡¯t be controlled so intricately so it took away accuracy and perhaps power as well. There was likely the drawback of longer casting time and higher mana cost as well.
Like how Roya said she was controlling hundreds or thousands of threads at the same time she was actually only using a single cast unlike how Ebony manually controlled 4 singular threads with full control over them. Though she probably had other skills for that too.
Ebony also only uses a single cast in a sense when he sticks all of his shields together to carry. It was slower to move around due to the weight and how much focus he put into it but it wasn¡¯t so much a drawback.
¡®Should I try to make a barrage type spell? There¡¯s no harm, It would be good for large groups of monsters. Accuracy would matter little if there¡¯s a lot of monsters and mana isn¡¯t really a concern.¡¯
He was also really good at multitasking or multicasting so he could still fight close combat while conjuring as many projectiles as he can so casting time was not an issue that couldn¡¯t be minimised.
Tuffock washed the cut with some water, applied a green salve like paste and bandaged his arm by himself with practised motions.
With how many times he had gotten his body broken down he was also somewhat proficient with normal first aid so he could tell Tuffock was more efficient and proficient than him.
They continued exploring but there was really not much to explore or see.
Ryley reported to have seen the wall of the dungeon. Scarlet confirmed a while later. They converged together since it was starting to get dark and they have slowed down from exhaustion.
Normal people wouldn¡¯t exactly run or move at such a high pace just to explore but no one was really a normal person with their physical stats.
Cross checking each other''s biological clock it seems like it was just about time it was getting dark outside the dungeon as well. It was pretty safe to assume that the day and night cycle was the same as outside by now. It was usually a common factor anyway.
The wall was just an earthen wall that rose up for as far as Ebony could see.
¡°Can dungeon walls be broken?¡±
Ebony wondered if he broke the walls would they be out where they came from. They did come through a portal like door so probably not.
¡°HAAHAHAA! Of course not! Are you really that naive?¡± Tuffock laughed in his loud voice and tone. Ebony mentally called this Tuffock, Tuffock 2.
¡°The elements in the dungeon can be manipulated by mages. Including the walls. But taking control past a certain extent and the dungeon would rip control back and reconstruct their walls. No one has broken dungeon walls before.¡± Hector gave a more constructive comment.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
¡°...It¡¯s possible. I would advise against trying though. I heard that it¡¯s just chaotic space beyond dungeon walls and the spatial storm will just tear anything and everything apart. Or so I was told.¡± Scarlet contradicted the other 2.
They were stunned but didn¡¯t even bother arguing, Hector just piled questions about the topic. They seem to believe anything Scarlet told them. Hector took out a different, thicker notebook than the previous one and wrote down whatever information Scarlet divulged. Too bad she didn¡¯t say much before staying silent again.
They were leisurely walking along the walls, looking for any type of entrance or exit. Seemingly tired of running around anymore. Only when it was about to get real dark did Ryley say to prepare for camp at a spot relatively clear of monsters. They actually haven¡¯t been attacked for a while and it had gotten pretty damn quiet around.
No other party was anywhere close to them or within Ryley¡¯s sight either.
They set their tents up and Ebony confirmed that Hector¡¯s and Scarlet¡¯s bag was much bigger than they look as they obviously pulled out things that should not fit in bags of that size.
Their tents were spaced out a little but stuck reasonably close.
As per everything on Scarlet, her bag was red in colour. The bottom of her bag had the design of a flame that rose partially up to the sides of the bag. Her tent was dark red though so it wasn¡¯t all that eye-catching.
It was time for dinner. Ebony was hungry and couldn¡¯t wait to eat Scarlet¡¯s cooking. There were not many trees around, much less firewood.
It wasn¡¯t shown on his face but he was shocked to see Scarlet pulling out an entire stove out of her bag. Hearing, reading and imaging something like a dimensional ring or bag of holding was one thing but seeing it was another.
The stove had 3 red gems spread apart. It even came with a table top and a sink with a tap that had a blue gem in it. Scarlet took out a smaller case, chopping board and then a chest 2 metres long, 1 metre wide and tall.
Just how much could her almost empty looking bag hold?
The smaller case was filled with many different knives.
The chest was something he was familiar with. A refrigerator.
¡°Woah you brought such a large preserve box? And a chilled preserve box?¡±
Hector called it a chilled preserve box. Seems like it had preservation magic together with an ice mana ore or something similar keeping its contents chilled and preserved in whatever state it was in when left inside for as long as it could. Just like how his bag had some kind of preservation magic working as well.
They saw a few defeathered turkeys, many clear containers like glass or plastic with meat in them. It was all meat.
She continued to take another chest out with vegetables and even fruits in them.
Then bottles and jars of seasoning, oil, and sauces were taken out onto her tabletop.
A huge ass pot that could probably fit Tuffock in fetal position was brought out together with a wok that could rival it in size.
¡°Need any help?¡±
Ebony asked, seeing how Ryley retreated into his tent after getting them to stand watch first. Perhaps he was too tired seeing how they were running around for hours. The increase in gravity had made moving around more tiring after all. Even Ebony was affected by it, there was no issue when they didn¡¯t move. In a battle and running around? It caused some mistakes in battle.
Hector took the look out with Tuffock. They seem to be getting along well, they did stay together most of the time and Hector had been calling him Tuff after Tuffock somewhat saved him from the mud golem hunt.
¡°No.¡±
Getting rejected outright, he watched Scarlet cook. Every motion and gesture of hers seemed to get engraved into his mind. Ebony just attributed it to his enhanced memory from the rise in Wisdom stat.
Scarlet removed her gloves, washed her hands, untied her ponytail, roughly braided it and tied her hair into a big braided bun then washed her hands again thoroughly. It was a new look to him, her usual ponytail was nice but this looked good on her as well. Stunning.
She washed the vegetables and started to prepare them. Slicing, dicing and chopping the ingredients so fast but precisely that it was over in a blink of an eye.
¡°...could you help fill the pot with water?¡±
Scarlet was likely bothered by him standing there and staring intently so she asked him to do something. Ebony was glad to oblige.
The pot cover had a water mana convertor thing as well, under the lid. Ebony operated it with a twist like his waterskin.
The water flow wasn¡¯t slow but the pot was huge so it took time. Scarlet looked like she was marinating or seasoning the cuts of meat she had taken out. She put those aside and kept them in clean, clear containers. Likely for another day¡¯s meal and not dinner tonight.
The sizzling of fat and oil reached his ear as Scarlet was stir frying something with the metal spatula in hand. She got Ebony to start the fire under the pot as well. It was pretty intuitive and not any different from the stoves he used. There was a knob he could turn to control the red gem to spit fire.
Scarlet got him to stop after seeing the water reach a certain 60 percentish mark. She seemed to hesitate a little but started giving extremely detailed and precise instructions to Ebony as she cooked.
All the ingredients on the table top were neatly separated into many wooden bowls and plates. She got him to add ingredients in a very particular order and went to timing them between each other in seconds. It was not too hard to follow. Scarlet quickly finished her cooking before taking over and getting him to stop what he was doing. Kicking him out of the outdoor kitchen.
The soup would take some more time.
Ebony got the idea of making some chairs and a table, truly doubting Scarlet would bring those even if she had the space or capacity to bring them.
They were simple enough to make. Ebony just conjured 5 cylindrical logs of ice as stools or a seat. A 4 legged round table was conjured as well. He made sure they were stable and strong enough to carry some weight.
Magic sure made things convenient.
The others were surprised by the setup. Hector shot right up after sitting due to the cold seat. He added a layer of earth so that he didn¡¯t chill his butt. Tuffock declined the offer and just adjusted some of his stone chest armour to his butt. Ryley simply pulled a thick cloth out.
Though he was pretty sure light would attract monsters none of them seemed to care. They put their uncovered phoslamps around and on the table. There were ribs, steaks, kebabs, salad and what looked like a plate of stir fried cabbages with sliced carrots.
¡°Ho..how extravagant¡¡±
¡°HAA! This is the first time I see such a luxurious feast out on the field.¡±
¡°...hmm. Impressive.¡±
¡°Thanks for the food, Scarlet. Let¡¯s eat.¡±
The wooden bowls and plates Scarlet brought out were large. Creamy white soup was the standard or most common soup here. A single sip was enough to get the guys going and fighting for food. Hector had 4 bowls of soup, Ryley and Tuffock had 2.
Scarlet didn¡¯t sit at the table. She said she already got her portion and hid in her tent to eat. Only coming out from time to time to get another serving of soup. Mask still on.
Ebony ate the most.
Halfway through the meal, Ryley requested Ebony for arrows the same dimensions as his own. Sturdy ones. It wasn¡¯t too hard for him, he didn¡¯t even need to stop eating.
Ryley pulled his bow out, stepped away from the table and shot 7 compressed ice arrows into the night sky. Ebony got partial experience for 3 kills.
He didn¡¯t think Ryley was that alert. None of them noticed any monsters. He couldn¡¯t even see any monsters or how far away they were with how dark it had gotten.
Ryley probably didn¡¯t want to lose any of his arrows or was too lazy to pick them up.
They had confirmed that the dungeon no longer eats up foreign materials like it did in the start. Something about the world¡¯s seal kicking into effect. Otherwise, even their tents would be devoured by the dungeon immediately. Dungeons shouldn¡¯t have been able to just eat his arrow directly like it did.
They finished their meal with Hector lying down and patting his stomach as he burped. Tuffock wiped his mouth with the sleeves of his robes as he sat on the floor and closed his eyes, meditating. Ryley went to take an after dinner walk saying he will be on the lookout. Scarlet came out of her tent with her empty dishes. She went to clear the dishes on the table.
¡°I¡¯ll help you.¡±
¡°No need.¡±
¡°It¡¯s alright, I have the Dish Washing skill.¡±
Scarlet¡¯s dramatic reaction of dropping the bowl she had on hand onto the table was not what Ebony expected. Hector and Tuffock who heard him, hardly reacted so he didn¡¯t think it was a surprising skill to have.
Ebony wouldn¡¯t know that both of them thought that an ex-mana slave or one that was in mindst of training to be a meditator class having a domestic type skill like Dish Washing wasn¡¯t anything out of the ordinary. They more or less expected him to have such skills.
Scarlet on the other hand was stunned as men don¡¯t take up skills like Dish Washing, Cleaning or Housekeeping. It didn¡¯t matter if they were Imperial men or Xeng men, they just seemed to look down and it was like a shameful skill for a man to have. Sure some common men might have helped around the house and washed dishes, but few bothered to get the skill when they turned fifteen. Concentrating more on skills they actually want for their Classing.
Scarlet never got her head around what could be shameful about having a useful skill for daily life so she was a little surprised Ebony offered to help much less admit to having the skill. Furthermore, he was a training maniac.
¡°O..okay. Thank you.¡±
They stood beside each other at the sink as he handed clean dishes to her to dry and keep in her magical bag. Neither spoke a word.
¡°I''m in a dungeon aren¡¯t I? Hey Tuff, why do we have to watch a couple develop their relations in a dungeon. No, they¡¯re more like an old married couple instead. One looks cold as ice and the other acts cold as ice. Crap.¡±
¡°Th..It..It¡¯s pretty nice. Co..compared to other parties I had been in. You all are really strong too. Especially the 2 of them. Heh, what a deal. If we could get one of them could we get the other at this rate?¡±
Hector was starting to get used to the fact that Tuffock sometimes sounds and acts a little different. He was a little confused at the second half of his sentence though. He wouldn¡¯t be able to get it out of Tuffock on what he meant by it though.
¡°Hey! What do you mean, especially the 2 of them? I¡¯m just as strong.¡± Hector complained as he beat his chest.
¡°Do..don¡¯t lie. We..we all saw your ass ge..getting kicked.¡± The stuttering and nervous Tuffock obviously got more comfortable around Hector.
¡°Grhh. What did you say you bastard? Wait, don¡¯t you dare run away! I¡¯m gonna kick your ass.¡±
Ebony ignored the commotion in the background.
A stray ball of earth and dirt landed in the sink with soapy dishes. Ebony did sense it coming with his Vibrational Gravity Sense but didn¡¯t really react quick enough.
The surrounding temperature rose but Hector had a chill run down his spine.
¡°Uhh¡ I¡¯m gonna go for a walk. Byeee. Gaahh! Spaare meeee!¡±
¡®This party isn¡¯t so bad.¡¯ He thought as he washed the dirty dishes again, Scarlet no longer beside him. Ebony did not realise his weird desire to go and beat Hector up as well. It was just a few dirty dishes, he could always wash them again so why was he bothered by it?
¡°Guh! TUFF! You traitor!¡± Hector tripped on a large rock that wasn¡¯t originally there. It wasn¡¯t like he could outrun Scarlet anyway.
Chapter 51: Night
Hector came back with Ryley on his back, the tip of his hair singed . Ryley was asleep, or unconscious with a frown.
¡°Looks like he¡¯s not used to the mana density. He did run around the whole day.¡± Hector said with singed hair.
¡°Will he be okay?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°The mana density isn¡¯t all that high. It¡¯s a little lower than what you dished out so he should be up soon. A day or two and he should fully get used to it.¡± Hector just tossed the man into his tent.
They split the night watch duty up between the four of them.
Normal humans needed roughly 10 hours of sleep a full day of 28 hours. Having Classed or evolved once lowered it to an average of 8 hours. Warriors and even archers needed less sleep than mages in general which led to the ¡®higher Endurance = less sleep needed¡¯ theory.
Tuffock needed the most and claimed to need at least 7 hours before fully rested. As embarrassed as he was, nobody blamed him for it. Ebony already knew that that was pretty good for a mage already.
Hector and Scarlet needed 5 to 6. Though all of them could probably go 2 or 3 days without sleep they won¡¯t be at their best which may be dangerous.
Ebony needed a little more than 2 hours a day. Saying meditation could reduce the need for sleep was a good and acceptable excuse to them.
Naturally, It wasn¡¯t time for sleep yet.
Since the day and night cycle was the same, they had 14 hours of day and 14 hours for night.
Hector got them to sit around the centre where their tents had been set up. Taking out a stony whitish-pink spherical orb the size of a walnut.
¡°Here, my precious baby. We can use it together, we¡¯ll have to take turns to stay on watch though.¡± Hector caressed the pearl gently.
¡°Wo..woaah¡ th..that¡¯s¡¡± Tuffock had his mouth wide open, he could probably fit his fist into his mouth with how wide it was.
¡°Heh. Awesome right? It¡¯s a Rare calming pearl I managed to get. It can increase the speed at which you can get into the state of meditation by 25 to 28%. It even increases the effect of meditation type skills by 3 to 5%.¡±
¡®Oh? There¡¯s something like that?¡¯
¡°Increases the effect of meditation type skills? Is the increase based on the level of the skill?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help but be curious.
¡°Of course! I wouldn¡¯t be able to become a 4 elemental mage in a few years if it wasn¡¯t for my baby here.¡± Hector proudly showed his pearl off. What he didn¡¯t say was that only the increase in speed to get into the state of meditation was helpful for him. His low level in meditation caused the increase in effect of 3 to 5% to be minimal. It was still better than nothing.
The calming pearl was always in effect and being within 3 fifths of a gir or 3 metres could let one feel the calming aura or so Hector advertised. Since they wouldn¡¯t be aware of their surroundings and couldn¡¯t move they had to take turns.
It was his most prized possession. A treasure to any mage or so he says.
He carefully passed it to Tuffock who was basically begging to touch it. Ebony also got to hold it. It was smooth and cool to touch, even to him. He couldn¡¯t feel a lick of the aura Hector said it had. He was already in a state of meditation but there was no noticeable increase in his mana or stamina regeneration rate.
He handed it back to Hector.
¡°Can¡¯t you at least act impressed?¡± Hector looked disappointed not getting a reaction out of him.
¡°It doesn¡¯t work.¡±
¡°? What do you mean it doesn¡¯t work? It¡¯s the real thing okay. If you slander my baby again I won¡¯t let you near it anymore.¡± Hector protected his pearl with his body, hugging it close.
¡°...I didn¡¯t mean to say it was fake.¡± Tuffock¡¯s reaction was good enough to tell that it was the real thing. Scarlet also gave an uncomfortable stare when he said it didn¡¯t work.
¡°Then what did you mean?¡±
¡°I can¡¯t feel any calming aura or any aura that you¡¯re talking about.¡±
Many things went through Hector¡¯s and Tuffock¡¯s heads all at the same time. This was a Rare calming pearl, one that was pretty large. The aura covering them entirely was strong enough that Hector wasn¡¯t even as mad or excited as usual.
Scarlet on the other hand was digging into her bag. She pulled out something that fit in her palm comfortably. It was shiny, reflecting the orange glow from their phoslamps. It was clear light pink and resembled the calming pearl Hector brought out.
There were a few differences. One was the carved curvy and wavy lines all over the pearl, he could see the light fog or white mist it was releasing. The other was that it was at least 3 times bigger. Lastly, he felt a weird feeling coming from it.
It was the calming aura Hector mentioned.
¡°Oh my¡ass. Is that an elling enchanted calming pearl? You rich show off.¡±
¡°W..woow¡¡±
The 2 mages had more and more exaggerated expressions. They got to closing their eyes and shutting up real quick though.
¡°Can you feel anything?¡± She couldn''t be bother to correct the fact that it wasn''t enchanted but runic in nature.
¡°A little.¡±
¡°Only a little?¡±
¡®It increases the ease of going into meditation by 80 to 90% and he only feels a little of the aura?¡¯ Scarlet thought. It was pretty ridiculous, her¡¯s was even worked on and gives a 20 to 25% increase in the effect of meditation. The range was up to a full gir as well.
Keeping it in a spatially expanded bag with other magic enhancements sealed the effect which Hector¡¯s bag had as well. It didn¡¯t really matter since it wasn¡¯t like it was of use when they were on the move or in battle. Not exactly useless since the calming effect was beneficial in a battle but it was not all that powerful of an effect. It was one of her most expensive and rarest belongings. She didn¡¯t have Meditation yet but it even worked for her natural mana regeneration.
Scarlet had a tiny bit of trust in the party, since Hector didn¡¯t hide his, she didn¡¯t see the problem with showing it. She wouldn¡¯t have brought it out if she wasn¡¯t curious about what Ebony said. This was rare enough for a Grand mage or even an Arch mage to kill her for. As long as they were crazy enough to disregard the fact that she was a Xeng. On second thoughts she may have been a little rash by bringing it out.
Ebony¡¯s Battle Song was a little embarrassing to show to suggest helping them due to the minuscule increase of mana regeneration.
He stayed on the lookout while doing his stretching and conditioning, both physical and magical. He was still trying to increase his range of mana control. He noticed he needed to improve how he moved multiple shields or even his ice swords.
He tried to form as many swords made of ice at the same time. 5 was his limit. Perhaps it was a habit but he put effort into making all of them as perfect as possible. That wasn¡¯t how it should go if he wanted a barrage type skill though. At the same time, he didn¡¯t want to settle for anything less than his best.
He could still mentally hold on all 5 ice swords with one mental ¡®hand¡¯ or cast, then go on forming more but it just felt off somehow. That may or may not be how other mages cast barrage type spells, the long cast time would make sense if that was the case. The inability to cast other spells due to the immense focus needed to do so would also make sense.
Having no bright ideas, he just had the shield shift and fly around, getting the swords to attack himself and having his shields move to protect himself. Testing as many angles or directions as he could.
The swords were much lighter than his shields and could move much faster. They were uncompressed of course.
Most of the time they could pass through his shields if they came from the opposite direction. He lightly knocked it aside with his greatsword. Essentially fighting himself. It was not very effective since he knew where the attacks would be coming from as he controlled them.
He was reminded of the time he was training with Sei and Ton. They had made ice and snow clones of themselves to fight him with manipulation alone.
¡®I should try to do that some time as well. It would be interesting if I could fight multiple copies of myself. Or make ice copies of myself and fight for me.¡¯
Thinking that it would be pretty good manipulation training he got right into making an ice sculpture. It was the same size and roughly the same dimensions as himself but he didn¡¯t bother adding every feature and detail like his clothes or facial features.
He manipulated its hands and fingers to grab onto an ice sword. It was harder than he thought it would be. Mentally tossing and shooting a projectile was like a two dimensional and thoughtless action but, moving the ice sculpture was a three dimensional motion.
He had to move the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and fingers all individually. Like coding a robot. It took half a minute just having it grab a sword.
He had renewed admiration for how Sei and Ton pushed him with just manipulation alone. They weren¡¯t even very high level from what he remembered.
¡®Could I beat them now?¡¯ Ebony shook his head. They may not have a very high level but they weren¡¯t monsters that he had fought. They were another race altogether like Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Beastmen.
From his experiment and past experience fighting them, their magical prowess was leagues higher than his. At least he shouldn''t get knocked around that easily anymore. Even if they were holding back most of their power previously.
After an unknown amount of time, Scarlet and the others came and she sparred with him as usual.
She didn¡¯t hold back her magic this time. Fire and lightning. Apparently, she had been using wind magic on her blades all along.
Ebony¡¯s shield melted so fast under her glowing red swords that recently started to have a thin layer of flames covering it. Its temperature is many times higher than it looks. It was due to the material of her weapons as his upgraded sword was the same in that it took a lot more ice mana before ice appeared on its surface.
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He kept getting pushed back with nowhere to run or hide.
Steam rose with every clash.
It blocked neither of their perceptions. His Vibrational Gravity Sense or the ability to sieve the information gained, is starting to catch up to speed with high speed movements. The ice mana in the air was basically Frost Mist Perception Sphere at work as well. They didn¡¯t really clash or flood his senses.
Scarlet¡¯s Heat Perception easily differentiates levels of heat. Ebony¡¯s body was at least half as cold as normal humans. Scarlet long recognised his heat signature. Their enhanced eyesight was more than enough anyway.
Ebony mentally grabbed all but one of the ice swords lying on the ground and chunked it towards Scarlet to create distance. Scarlet just exploded in heat, the very air burning together with the grass on the ground. Nothing reached her.
¡°Extinguish.¡±
It was very soft but Ebony heard her whispering.
As if listening to her, the fire on the ground burned out and the brightened dungeon dimmed down again.
¡®Did she say that as a habit or was she commanding the fire to be extinguished?¡¯ It would be pretty amazing if Scarlet could control fire with her words.
Noticing the tipping of Scarlet¡¯s foot, he pushed himself to the side at his max speed. Dodging the unseen menace, who practically teleported towards him and pointed a longsword to his neck. She left little sparks of electricity where she blasted off.
The very mana trembled at her arrival and movement. Shockwaves strong enough to knock a person off his feet pushed forward as well.
Ebony twisted his body and placed his greatsword where he expected her to move to. The clash of her sword thrust on the flat side of his greatsword blew him back a step, he used the momentum and spun on the spot. Following up as he let one hand carry it and flow into a backhanded swing.
It was too slow to even faze her.
The remaining ice sword jerked up from the ground behind Scarlet and shot toward her. As if expecting it, she lightly swung one hand and shattered it all while parrying his attack with her other longsword. His body fully spun to face her again, he gripped his blade with both hands again and forcefully pushed her back with his higher, enhanced strength.
Well, it didn''t buy him enough time or distance to do anything meaningful as he was defeated again.
They swapped around and fought the others as well but none of the fights was as exciting or helped him improve much. Fighting against Hector was still fine as he could push Ebony with his superior stats. He also showed some skills Ebony hasn¡¯t seen him use.
There was not much to say against Tuffock and Ryley who woke up partway through and joined. Ebony just had to close the distance between them and it was game over for them.
Ryley was somewhat decent with daggers but reacted a little sluggishly in close combat. Perhaps the increase in gravity, likely the fact that he was not fully used to the mana density as well.
If not for Ebony¡¯s movement speed and shields, Tuffock was more than capable of keeping his distance with his enemies while counter-attacking. He said he was an offence-focused mage but didn¡¯t want to show Ebony the offensive spells, less the stone lance. Yet.
After that, they went on with a little light training of their own with Ryley just retreating to his tent after saying he¡¯ll take the last shift closer to the morning.
Hector asked for one of his shields with a deep melted cut in it for his weight training. It was for his Profession, Body Builder. He did all sorts of exercises which was pretty intriguing, since there were stats here he didn¡¯t think weight training would be a thing.
Watching a little was enough to tell that the exercises were not for him. He would lose his flexibility if he were to train his muscles like that.
Ebony continued his training and creation of spells till the others slowly went to sleep. He had to go easy on magic since most of his mana was gone by now.
He sat down in his tent to meditate and focused on his perception skills. It was not his watch time and he would stay out of sight from his party members for now. He took out the various raw materials and tried to use Mana Moulding to alter their shape.
Scarlet lent him her calming pearl pretty easily despite how seemingly expensive or rare the item was. The effect was pretty light on him but he did have faster mana regeneration by about 5%. Why did it not work as advertised to him was a question no one here could answer.
He repaired his shields when he could.
Ebony didn¡¯t feel like sleeping. He felt a little bad when he realised his Vibrational Gravity Sense allowed him to sense past the thin fabric of tents. He could sense Scarlet taking off her mask and untying her hair to let it fall. She took out a cylindrical item from her bag, uncapped it and put her finger in. Smearing whatever contents in it over her hands.
Applying hand lotion, maybe? He did notice that her calluses were thinning out and smoothing out when they tetted each other in the mornings. Even his own was reduced. He attributed it to the increase in Constitution and also the increase in health regeneration; it was Wisdom for him but Scarlet probably had higher vitality now. It was a bit of a pity but she was a girl after all, she didn¡¯t seem all that embarrassed or ashamed of them though so he was a little surprised she used hand lotion. Well, he could be wrong about the lotion thing.
He could also feel Hector outside his tent cleaning his armour and Tuffock outside mentally juggling 2 stones, trying to pick a third once in a while. He didn¡¯t register any of their actions but Scarlet¡¯s though. Ebony quickly shut his senses off as well as he could when she started stripping down. He felt oddly guilty even though he wasn¡¯t peeking on her intentionally.
¡®She¡¯s really the greatest training for meditation.¡¯ Ebony thought. Scarlet repeatedly broke his calm sometimes even without doing anything.
Tuffock came to call him for a switch. He continued his changing and expanding training routine. He realised that his skill levels were rising slower and slower compared to his class levels.
He was about to wake Scarlet up for her turn but she came out by herself seeing him stretch.
¡°What are you doing? You can rest now.¡±
¡°Stretching. It¡¯s okay, I slept already.¡±
Scarlet tilted her head and asked what kind of stretching. Ebony didn¡¯t think they didn¡¯t have the concept of stretching, he explained it was to keep himself flexible, increase his range of motion and warm his body up for training. Constantly distracted by how nice she smelled, a floral scent. Darn increased senses.
She was clearly interested so he taught her a few exercises. He found that she was already as flexible if not more flexible than himself.
Ebony didn¡¯t expect her to start another conversation. They rarely chatted outside of what was necessary and he thought she was avoiding him earlier.
¡°Why do you train so hard? What is pushing you to grow stronger?¡±
¡°...¡±
There was a long pause and silence. Only when Scarlet was about to say he didn¡¯t have to answer, did he speak up.
¡°Fear. Fear is what¡¯s pushing me to grow stronger. Faster.¡±
It was an unexpected answer.
Fear seems to be the furthest emotion she imagined a level 50 going to pick a fight with a level 136 golem had. She never felt him being fearful of her when most imperials were either.
Sure, they were a pretty good match for golem since ice and fire worked surprisingly well to weaken them and their extremely slow speed was the only reason they were able to hunt them but it was still a level gap not just anyone fearful would take on.
Ebony thought back. It was true. He has been living in fear since he came to Elcra. Be it the first night he spent training his Cold Resistance under the frostblaze amur maple tree. The first night after leaving the underground dome, he moved through the night instead of sleeping on a tree. The time he spent 3 days hunting rhoats non-stop. The 3 days he spent training non-stop in Teld city. Hard working? He was just scared of dying in his sleep.
¡°Fear of?¡± Scarlet asked.
Ebony was afraid of getting killed by some random monster in his sleep in Arcta. Afraid of being killed by Rhoats. Afraid of being killed by unknown forces he can do nothing against.
¡°...Fear of being helpless.¡±
Even without hearing stories and news of the things happening on Elcra, there was one thing he was afraid of the most. It was being helpless. He couldn¡¯t stand being helpless.
Any random monster or person could kill him any time of the day if they found him unlikable. A random aberrant monster can walk into a city and massacre every living being if it wishes. A dungeon break may occur and monsters beyond his level may stampede the city or town he was sleeping in at any time. Some extremely high level monsters may sneeze and kill him with it.
A random fight between 2 strong people can get him killed just from a stray attack or the side effects of their spells and physical strength may turn him to dust or a mush of flesh, blood and gore.
Everything was just on a different scale than what he was used to.
The only thing Ebony thought he could do was to get stronger and get less helpless as his power grows. His early focus on defensive and evasive measures was further proof.
¡°How strong do you think you have to be to not be considered helpless?¡±
¡°Stronger.¡±
Strong was never enough. It will never be enough. There was also someone, something stronger. Ebony understood. He had never been the strongest. But it didn¡¯t mean he couldn¡¯t get stronger.
¡°...Why did you save those people? That time with the young boy as well.¡± she changed the subject after a short pause. Ebony didn¡¯t know what Scarlet was getting at but he didn¡¯t ponder about it.
¡°Only regret things that you¡¯ve never done, not regret things that you have done. My mother taught me that. I fully agree with it. It¡¯s partly why I train and train. I would regret not training hard enough if I wasn¡¯t strong enough when it mattered but I would never regret having trained for getting strong enough.
I would have regretted standing by and not helping the boy when I was there but will not regret anything if I did something. Same with the 2 parties, whatever their circumstances were, I didn¡¯t know in advance. But I don¡¯t regret helping, I might not have saved everyone but I would have regretted letting them die when I could stop it.
Well¡it¡¯s a pretty silly thing to say. For one, I don¡¯t regret not dying. But even so...¡± Ebony felt weird, he never shared his feelings with anyone like that. The conversation was fresh to him, he oddly didn¡¯t feel restrained at telling Scarlet these things.
¡®Only regret things that you¡¯ve never done, not regret things that you have done¡I see.¡¯
Scarlet stood up without a word. They sparred again.
This time she gave comments. How he should move his greatsword. How he used his magic. She had little to say about most but his swordsmanship, about how stupid and unrefined it was.
Ebony didn¡¯t hold back and taught her breathing patterns to conserve stamina as much as possible too. It was not easy for her. She fessed up that her enhancement skill was actually a fully physical enhancement skill without using a single drop of mana.
She consciously increases her heart rate to increase her physical stats all round. Vitality, Constitution, Strength and Agility. The only limiting factor was that her stamina consumption rises proportionally to her increase in stats and also how much her body can handle before having her veins burst and rupture. It was not easy to slow down once it started so she had to control it a little. How? She didn¡¯t mention.
The increase in heart rate made it difficult to control her breathing but Ebony¡¯s input did seem to help. The problem she always had was that her breath had to fit her aggressive and intense combat style and rhythm. The creepy thing was he had made the breathing technique to fit her.
It was no wonder he could predict where she was going to move or attack. He even taught her how he always seemed to be ahead of her despite her speed. Her line of sight when she wants to move, the tipping and direction of her toes, the twitch of her shoulders and wrist.
¡®What does he see when he fights?¡¯ It was a little freaky. Ebony could observe all the little details and act to counter them in split seconds of an intense exchange? It was already beyond what mere training or lectures could teach her. It had to be hammered into her reflexes if she wanted to copy him. Her intelligence stat and Mental Acceleration may help but how would she fight normally if she had to take into account every single twitch or jerk from her opponent.
To Ebony, it really was just a reflexive kind of ability. He doesn¡¯t really think things through when he is in battle. It was too cumbersome. It was better to just know what to do and when to do it. He didn¡¯t know how to teach that.
They continued for hours till Scarlet stopped to rest.
Ebony went to wake Hector up. Sensing and hearing him snoring. He pushed Frost Mist Perception Sphere which was hardly used for perception recently, surrounding Hector¡¯s tent. He wondered how much he needed to compress it before Hector woke up. He didn¡¯t expect the tent to be able to ward ice mana off a little so he just opened the flap and moved his ice mana in.
Hector woke up with frosty hair including his brows and lashes. He wanted to chase Ebony but was shivering too badly.
¡®I won¡¯t forget this, Ebony!¡¯ Hector wanted to scream out but his teeth were clattering from the cold.
Chapter 52: Meet
Breakfast was fruit salad including apples, melons and a grape like fruit more on the sour side. Fresh toast with sausages, beans and pan-fried mushrooms. A thick warm beverage that was a little milky. Ebony pondered why he bothered bringing all the lousy jerky or stupid souper bread. Disappointed with the lack of eggs again.
¡°Did ya see the two-tailed fox yesterday? Damn was she hot. Why did you just leave? We could have chatted them up a little.¡± Hector said to the guys at the table before gulping his drink down.
¡°¡°...¡±¡±
¡°Have you guys heard of the tale behind the number of fox tails they have?¡± Hector changed the subject when no one replied to him.
¡°No.¡± Ebony answered. He didn¡¯t see many fox beastmen yet, the other party which he didn¡¯t help first and had 3 of their party members die had a fox tailed female mage who survived.
¡°They grow a tail after every evolution don¡¯t they?¡± Ryley added on.
¡°Yeah, they said that as long as one has at least half or even a quarter of the bloodline of the fox people they would be born with a single fox tail. They would grow a tail when they classed up and also after every evolution. According to their lore, one would become a god when they have nine tails.¡±
¡®Nine tailed fox? God? I thought they didn¡¯t believe in gods. It would be pretty cool to see a nine tailed fox though.¡¯
¡°Th..the archduke and archduchess of beastmen are currently fox people ri..right?¡±
¡°That¡¯s right. The archduchess Medina Fyre has been a five tailed fox since she rose up to the ranks of an archduchess. Archduke Fyre himself only gained or grew a fifth tail 70 to 80 years ago.¡± Ryley received basic education as a noble and it was expected of him to study such things. Obviously, he had never seen the archduke and archduchess before.
¡°It makes it hard to believe if there really is a nine tailed fox. At the levels of power of the archdukes, they could hardly advance anymore. They are the only 2 five-tailed foxes after all. Well it¡¯s hard to say. The fox and wolf beastmen are said to have the greatest and longest lineage of the beastmen. Fox people are said to inhabit many worlds outside of Elcra too. They claimed the lore of a nine tailed fox to be true till this day.¡±
¡°Many worlds?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help but pick out.
¡°Uhmm¡ Ah forget it, it''s not a secret or anything. It is unsure when exactly in the past, but Elcra has people starting to claim they came from another world using space magic. It had long been proven true and there should be quite some otherworlders on Elcra even now. Fortunately, most of them couldn¡¯t be bothered with the ongoings of the Empire.¡± Hector looked a little troubled before telling Ebony.
¡®Space magic. That¡¯s right, I came here out of nowhere. It wasn¡¯t like I was summoned here by someone, seeing no one came and said they summoned me. Teleported here? By who? My parents would be the most suspicious honestly. I knew they raised me funny. In the 5 to 6 years they were gone it wasn¡¯t like any of the skills they taught me were useful in daily life.
Meditation. Fighting. Hunting. 15 year old trial?
Coincidence? I think not.¡¯
The more Ebony thought about it the more suspicious he was of his parents. None of the skills he thought were useless on Earth was useless here. Much of what he was taught was turned into actual ¡®Skills¡¯ here. Were they preparing him for this? Were they the ones who sent him here? Why? He didn¡¯t know. However, he didn¡¯t think it was just sheer coincidence.
There was once, well not really once but he was really close to dying on Earth yet, he woke up not knowing what happened. Or how his broken body, bones and tendons can fully recover after his mother crushed them. Multiple times. They fed and applied medicine and he¡¯ll be back in full health with his body tougher than it ever was.
It wasn¡¯t like Ebony wasn¡¯t suspicious. Especially after learning about Elcra. Skills. Stats. Magic.
He didn¡¯t find anything weird when he was young but he knew that his body shouldn¡¯t have been able to recover so completely with Earth¡¯s technology and medical advancement.
Hector telling him about other worlds didn¡¯t really mean much to Ebony.
Other than his family, there wasn¡¯t anything he was looking forward to seeing back on Earth anymore. There was so much more to explore here. But with his new suspicions, he wondered if his family was right here all along. They didn¡¯t contact him much after leaving him when he finished their so called trial.
The guys continued chatting, Hector was the one talking and coming up with topics while the other 3 commented from time to time.
They cleaned and packed up, getting ready to move on.
Ebony didn¡¯t waste the ice mana from the chairs and table. He converted them into Ice Swords. Sticking them behind his shields. This way he can carry them mentally without another cast.
They continued exploring along the walls, choosing to go in the same direction this time. Their pace was more leisure compared to the day before since Scarlet and Ryley were conserving stamina. Ryley had a better complexion after a night¡¯s sleep.
The lucky or unlucky thing was that Ryley said to have found the stairs after just half an hour.
There was a hole in the wall with the stairs that curved along the inside or rather outside of the walls upwards. It wasn¡¯t all that dark but where the light came from was unknown.
They regrouped and climbed together, seeing no reason to stay on this floor. Ebony did want to fully complete the Mental Map he had of the dungeon, but there was no reason to slow the party down for it. He could always come back when he had time.
¡°Haa. ha. Ho..how far do these stairs go?¡± Tuffock panted.
¡°Sit on one of my shields. The stairway is wide enough for it.¡± Ebony said.
They had been climbing up for 15 mins at a normal human¡¯s max running speed. Well, it was a slow walk for Ebony but that was thanks to his Treading Step.
They sped up with Hector hopping on as well. He was heavy.
Arriving when they saw it brightening up.
It was a forest. Normal looking forest.
Ebony was a little bored with the dungeon. It was less than he expected. First a normal grassland and now a forest. What next? Mountains?
A quick scout by Ryley told them that there were kobolds again. A spider-like monster that hides atop trees called [Forest Weavers]. And also something he called [Gale Leopard]s. Their levels were high 80s to mid 90s. Monster density was much lower but other than the gale leopards the other 2 stayed in at least groups of 8.
It wasn¡¯t exactly like a normal forest in that it was noticeably hotter than it was on the first floor. Enough to make Ebony sweat under his clothes. Curses.
He should get Scarlet to help raise his heat resistance more directly.
The party was still moving somewhat separately. They weren¡¯t much of a party in a sense. Scarlet, Ebony and Ryley moved on their own with Hector and Tuffock staying together. This way Ebony could have Icebody Enhancement on all the time as well. He had been getting mana to compress instantly more and more to his max. It is around 35% now.
One thing was they knew there was not much treasure to be found in a fresh dungeon so they were not much on in-depth exploration. The second was that Scarlet and also Ebony wanted higher level opponents. Ryley seems to be more focused on clearing the dungeon as fast as possible.
The second floor was smaller or less wide than the first. Ryley already reported seeing a pillar rising up to the sky or ceiling. He guessed it was in the centre of the whole floor.
Ebony saw a cluster of trees that were connected by humongous brown webs. It appeared like the tree trunks were connected since they had the same colour.
He quickly stepped back, dodging a webshot that could cover his whole body.
[Forest Weaver Lvl 88]
[Forest Weaver Lvl 86]
[Forest Weaver Lvl 89]
[Forest Weaver Lvl 90]
[Forest Weaver Lvl 88]
[Forest Weaver Lvl 87]
[Forest Weaver Lvl 87]
[Forest Weaver Lvl 86]
[Forest Weaver Lvl 88]
Ebony spotted 9 of them showing themselves. Whether a few more were being camouflaged up in the trees? He couldn¡¯t tell. They were furry brown and leaf green in colour and he could see them changing colour here and there, either a racial ability like a chameleon or a skill.
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They were the size of a large dog, their height reaching Ebony¡¯s knees. Unlike normal insects with 3 part bodies, head, thorax and abdomen, they only had a roundish head and abdomen. 6 legs sprouting out from its abdomen. More eyes than Ebony had time to count on its face with a large toothy mouth. It was disgusting.
Ebony didn¡¯t like insects, they were just creepy. Arcta¡¯s forest hardly had any. The dungeon didn¡¯t recreate small insects either so it was always silent on the first and second floor minus the sound of combat, screeching and screaming of dying monsters. And people.
They started chasing Ebony. Some moved through the trees, a couple on the ground. Those with high ground shot their webs with surprising accuracy, right ahead of where Ebony was moving towards. Thankfully, Ebony had trained his Treading Steps in a forest. Easily changing directions light footedly just as the tip of his boots touched the ground.
They were only slightly faster than Ebony.
The ones that shot webs needed to stop where they were to take a shot. Ebony didn¡¯t. He took the chance when they stopped and unleashed an Ice Sword up 2 of their asses, pointing towards Ebony.
Seeing no reason to run back to Hector or the others, Ebony stopped. There didn¡¯t seem to be anymore spiders.
He released compressed frost mist into the air, unworried about hindering his allies. Though his senses only reach 10 metres, it wasn¡¯t as if he couldn¡¯t let the icy mist flow beyond his range of perception.
It worked better than he thought. The weavers stopped shooting webs. The single forest weaver¡¯s jumping charge coming for a bite was easily dodged. They relied on sight quite a little.
Ebony didn¡¯t stop freezing the air, it ate into his mana pool a little but the effects it came with were worth it. They were a little blinded but Ebony could ¡®see¡¯ as well as if his eyes were uncovered. Sensing their every move as the mana in the surrounding vibrate, the ice mana shifting and their gravity signature moving.
Ebony slashed down hard. It sliced through the head of the forest weaver without much resistance. Their furry bodies were softer than the Geoats by a large margin. It wasn¡¯t dead but it froze up, both its head and movements. It was jerking and shivering.
The rest of them in the range of his mist slowly acted the same way. It was just a matter of hacking them down now.
The remaining 4 forest weavers in the trees heard the death cries of its allies and the 2 uninjured ones randomly unloaded their bodily fluids into the white misty area where they heard the cries coming from. The 2 whose asses were freezing from the ice swords jumped into the fray.
Ebony sensed the webs entering his perception but he couldn¡¯t dodge it in time since he just completed a power stab, taking the life of the last creepy spider in his mist. Their blood slid right off Ebony, who had Chaotic Repulsive Membrane going strong. Convenient.
The web was shot with enough force to push through his membrane and landed on his right foot, a large volume pushed aside onto the ground. Ebony was pretty interested to observe the phenomena but now wasn¡¯t the time.
The webs were slowly freezing and hardening up. It gave the opportunity for the 2 who just entered to go for a nice chomp of an ice sculptured human known as Ebony. Ebony easily blocked it with his greatsword since only his feet were tied down.
Ebony tried to move his feet. The web broke apart from his pants then shattered into many pieces, being frozen already.
The 2 weavers who entered only sent themselves to his doorsteps. It wasn¡¯t hard to get to the remaining 2 web shooting ones too. It wasn¡¯t as if they were running away.
Ebony stopped releasing ice mana into the air. Leaving the area and moving to where the party said to gather before moving towards the ¡®pillar¡¯ rising up to the sky.
Anyone who came here would see a thick layer of ice and frost covering the trees, grass, ground and dead corpses of the forest weavers. Well, as long as the dungeon hasn¡¯t got to absorbing the ice mana and corpses. From Ebony¡¯s observation, it already stopped doing that immediately after its monsters died.
Ebony saw Scarlet on the way. She was fighting. No, slaying. What looked like a pair of normal leopards, their fur brighter yellow and spots darker black than Ebony remembered it to be. Hector and Tuffock were also already standing aside and watching.
[Gale Leopard Lvl 95]
[Gale Leopard Lvl 95]
They were a lot faster than the forest weavers. Keeping up with Scarlet¡¯s speed. Ebony hair and robes billowed from the strong winds.
¡®She¡¯s not as fast as usual.¡¯
Scarlet was using wind magic to confront the gale leopards. She got bored of it relatively quickly and slaughtered them into piping hot cuts of roast meat.
Both of them were levelling quickly. Scarlet reached level 68 and Ebony 63 after the previous battle. His Sub-Class reached 47 and Profession 56. The 4 levels in Profession meant 4 Wisdom stats, 55 stat points from the 3 and 5 levels from his Class and Sub-Class.
Ebony allocated 30 points to Agility and 25 to Intelligence. Another thing he noticed was that Icebody Enhancement¡¯s static decrease of Agility was not static at all when he used compressed ice mana. His joints and muscles would stiffen even more. If it wasn¡¯t for his ¡®Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword with one hand increased by 100%¡¯ Class fortification it may have been difficult to move as fluidly as he does.
At least cold resistance levelled once. It had been awhile.
Seeing Scarlet process and cook monsters like that had him realised that the way her attacks when sparring with him were similar. ¡®Was she planning to cut me up and cook me like that too?¡¯
¡°How do you cut and slice up a moving opponent and cook them like that?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help but ask as he closed their distance.
¡°Hmm? Oh uhm¡ My profession is called ¡®Combat Chef¡¯, I have a skill called ¡®Live Ingredient Processing¡¯ which helps increase my ability to prepare and process live ingredients.¡±
¡®Combat Chef¡kinda expected her to be a chef from how good her food and cooking was. But not a Profession I¡¯ve heard of or read about.¡¯
¡°...Just curious but, do people consider as ingredients?¡± Ebony asked just as Hector and Tuffock, who were slower, came. They were stunned by his question, with enhanced perception they might have heard Scarlet telling her profession too.
Scarlet started to look away and fiddle with her thumb and fingers.
¡°Y..yesh.¡± She sounded oddly embarrassed as she covered her mask with both hands. The action was a little redundant with her mask already in the way.
¡®She bit her tongue. Cute.¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡®Holy shit! That¡¯s scary as hell!¡¯ Both Hector and Tuffock stepped back, keeping their distance. They already saw how Scarlet sliced apart monsters so brutally yet efficiently and imagined themselves on a plate.
Ebony on the other hand didn¡¯t think it to be brutal. Compared to him tearing and breaking them apart with his bare hands, Scarlet only looked extremely graceful and elegant with her methods.
The party decided to stay together from now on after Ryley joined up. Ryley was panting pretty hard. The next level likely has monsters in the high 90s and maybe even 100. All of them were strong individually and could probably take most monsters of that level themselves but the monsters were getting larger in group size.
Ebony offered to carry Tuffock on his shield again but kicked the heavy Hector off when he tried to climb on. They continued on as they let Ebony, Scarlet and Hector take on the groups of monsters that attacked. They were the lowest level and would gain the most out of it anyway.
Only after 15 or so minutes of a slow jog did Ebony see the dark pillar rising up into the sky. What they didn¡¯t expect was to hear the sound of combat and a voice giving commands. They were voices Ebony was familiar with.
¡°Ro! Need some help here.¡± Top called out as he struggled to get free from the webs on his feet.
¡°Already on it.¡± Rowent replied as he burned the webs off with a small controlled flame. All while slapping a forest weaver with a spear of fire. What was with mages and spears or lances?
A blast of wind blew away the webs that went after Rowent. Wooden arrows impaled weavers that had their limbs splayed open as they hung in the air as if caught by their own webs. They were tied up by Dina¡¯s wires, helplessly watching themselves getting pierced by arrows that grew roots that wriggled into their bodies and crushed their organs.
¡°ARHH!¡± Chris yelled as he slashed down with his entire body weight behind it, chopping the head of the weaver about to bite Rowent.
¡°There was a team faster than us?¡± Ryley seemed dismayed by the fact. Ebony didn¡¯t know why he was surprised or disappointed, there were many parties that were over level 100. There were surely parties faster than them, right? Even if they move unrealistically fast for an exploration, maybe other parties were lucky and found the entrance up to the second floor on the first day. There was also the chance that there were more than one entrance or stairs from the first floor to the second.
¡°They''re pretty good. All in the 70s yet they¡¯re fighting so many monsters practically in the 90s. Not as good as us of course.¡±
¡°Mu..much better teamwork. A solid team.¡±
¡°...not useless.¡±
¡°I know them. They¡¯re one of Z&Z¡¯s escort parties.¡±
¡°Ah. Zees company¡¯s. No wonder they work so well together. Ebony, you know them?¡±
¡°Yeah, they helped me awhile back.¡± Ebony waved to Fergus who already noticed them.
¡°Hey guys, look over, it¡¯s Ebony.¡± Fergus pointed in Ebony¡¯s direction.
¡°Hello. You all move pretty fast.¡± Ebony walked up and tetted each of them. Dina was busy checking the webs out and sticking them into empty bottles though.
¡°Greetings to you too, Ebony.¡± Top replied.
¡°Fergus found the stairs relatively quickly even though we didn¡¯t rush to be the first to enter Ordina.¡± Rowent explained.
¡°We had to move a little through the night as well to get here of course.¡± Top added. With their movement speed other than Fergus and Dina, it was unlikely they were ahead of Ebony if they didn¡¯t spend as much time on the move.
¡°Pshh. pshh. Ebony come here.¡± Rowent beckoned Ebony and pulled him close.
¡°That¡¯s your party? Is that the Xeng women the whole tow..ah, city was talking about?¡±
¡°Mmm. Scarlet, Hector, Tuffock and Ryley. My fellow party members. This is Top and his party, Fergus, Rowent, Chris and Dina.¡± Ebony took Rowent¡¯s arm off his shoulders before introducing them to each other.
They tetted each other in order. Ebony noted that every one of them gave their respects to Scarlet even with their higher level. Scarlet also didn¡¯t take her gloves off. No one did, in the dungeon. Ryley looked upon the interaction impatiently.
¡°Were you planning to go towards that pillar?¡± Top asked.
¡°It¡¯s the most obvious place to go. Of course.¡± Ryley answered with annoyance.
¡°Haahaahaha! Wanna move together?¡± Hector brushed Ryley aside with a laugh.
¡°It¡¯s okay, we were planning to hunt here for sometime for a few levels. The next floor might be a little too dangerous for us now.¡± Top answered for the team.
¡°We should continue. We can handle the monster here pretty well.¡± Chris pushed for advancement. Ebony has rarely talked to Chris for some time now. It was obvious that he was avoiding Ebony a little. Ebony didn¡¯t know why but he didn¡¯t care either. It was just a pity, Chris changed a little in his easygoing temperament. He heard how hard Chris has been pushing his training even after getting his Sub-Class.
¡°No. We¡¯ve already pushed to the 2nd floor. Even if you don¡¯t need to get accustomed to the gravity here, I do.¡± Top shot Chris down. Ordina¡¯s environment wasn¡¯t easy on warriors or anyone really.
¡°Heh! That¡¯s right, listen to your leader. Your complexion is red and you were obviously tired from the battle. Come on, let¡¯s move on.¡± Ryley urged. He left and marched on towards the pillar without looking back.
There were frowns from many of them.
¡°Sorry about that. We¡¯ll be going ahead. See you guys around. Take care.¡± Ebony apologised for his party member¡¯s rude behaviour before bidding goodbye.
Chapter 53: Closer Apart
It was more and more apparent that they were not the first party to reach the second floor. They did find signs of battles as they carried on. Fallen trees, deep gouges in the earth, blood. The dungeon not repairing the damage instantly.
They got closer and closer to the pillar. It was grey in colour and rose all the way to ¡®sky¡¯. Ebony didn¡¯t exactly see the ceiling so it was hard to say if there was a fake ceiling.
They didn¡¯t actively look for monsters to hunt but that didn¡¯t stop them from coming for their party. Receiving two groups of attacks from 5 gale leopard riding kobolds and a swarm of over 20 forest weavers. Still, it was not enough for a level for any of them.
Hector kept complaining about how Scarlet and Ebony could come out clean from blood and fat. He started to use air manipulation to push the blood away but with his method of punching monsters to death it was not easy to keep himself blood free. His ¡®super panch¡¯ blows everything away but it wasn¡¯t like he uses it all the time.
It was a pretty interesting skill. While Ebony couldn¡¯t copy Scarlet¡¯s twin longsword style, he thought it was possible to copy Hector¡¯s. He would punch out at a spot less than a millimetre away from his target, pull back his fist and punch just almost at the same spot but unnoticeably further away from the target. Doing it extremely quickly merges the forces of multiple punches to land at the same time.
Ebony realised Hector was only able to use it in his fastest and strongest enhanced state. Merging 5 punches in one was the strongest punch Ebony had seen him use. Ebony had his Vibrational senses to thank for being able to notice it. With 1 or 2 body enhancements Hector ¡®normal¡¯ attacks were 2, maybe 3 merged punches. It was not a 1 + 1 = 2 kinda skill.
The difficulty of merging the forces of multiple blows to land at the same time basically increases exponentially with the number of blows. The power of the merged forces was also a lot more than the number of blows suggests.
Hector¡¯s footwork or movement skill was similar but not exactly a merging of multiple forces, hence the short but intense bursts of speed.
Sonic Overlay - Induce high frequency vibrations onto an entity directly or indirectly, predominantly used on sharp weapons to increase its cutting edge. Frequency increases by 1.0% per level.
Consumes MP
Classification: Sound Magic
The skill Ebony just acquired in the last fight. The explanation was iffy. The ¡®directly or indirectly¡¯ part should be referring to how Ebony was swapping between vibrating the greatsword itself, the layer of ice mana or pure mana that he plastered onto the greatsword. The best so far was directly. There was no point doing it to his ice mana when it was constantly being injected into his foes as he landed attack after attack.
If Ebony had to put a number to it, it was 20,000 hertz or cycles per second, that was the number that was considered ultrasonic on Earth anyway.
It doesn¡¯t scale with Intelligence despite being considered sound magic. Odd.
Its effects are fully physical so, maybe it wasn¡¯t that odd. It wasn¡¯t like he used his mana to directly attack his foes, so the effect of Intelligence was not carried onto the skill.
Currently, Ebony¡¯s blade would have the repulsive membrane ¡®cut¡¯ or come into contact first. He made the pushing force of the membrane as sharp as possible. Going through the pushing force, there would be the icy layer chilling anything it touches. Then the high frequency blade would help cut and slash into his opponents.
The interesting thing he observed was how the membrane which was right over his skin, clothes or greatsword was interacting with objects touching him. The webs that shot past his membrane attached to his skin without much problem. The area where the membrane was still working, the webs just stretched and stretched without breaking apart. Ebony might want to collect some of the webs like Dina, to experiment with it.
The remarkable part was how the ice mana that Ebony lets touch the membrane was propelled outwards. That was to say the Chaotic Repulsive Membrane helped push ice mana away from his blade, further and deeper into the body of whatever Ebony cut into. If he allowed it.
It is more effective than it sounded. A good strike at a joint or anywhere important was enough to incapacitate a whole limb or more. With the amount of ice mana he injects anyway.
They stood in front of the massive pillar. Tower may be a more accurate term. It was dozens of metres wide in diameter and of unknown height. There was an entrance or doorway that led inside. Stairs again. It spiralled all the way up.
¡°It¡it¡¯s made of stone.¡±
¡°Does it really matter what it¡¯s made of?¡± Ryley replied in irritation.
¡°What¡¯s with you? The mana getting to ya? You¡¯d sha stop and adjust then. It¡¯ll likely only get denser as we go up. Don¡¯t want ya to faint on us mid battle.¡±
¡°Piss off! I¡¯ve already adjusted to the mana concentration. Let¡¯s just move on.¡±
And so they did.
The spiral stairs would have been dizzying to look at for most if they looked up for too long.
Ryley walked in front. The stairs were wide enough for three of them to climb up side by side with space to spare but they walked in a single file.
¡°Wa..wait. Tr..trap.¡±
¡°...I know. Skip those 2 steps. Just follow my footsteps.¡± Ryley said without turning back.
Ebony couldn¡¯t see anything different with the steps of the stairs since nothing was moving, his senses didn¡¯t feel anything out of place either. Tuffock probably felt it with his stone mana perception or the like.
Ryley was a self proclaimed scout so maybe he had a trap spotting skill.
Whatever Ryley missed, Tuffock pointed out. They got up without setting any traps off. To Ebony, it just felt like they were messing with him and there weren''t any traps at all. They climbed onto flat ground, the stairs they just climbed were in a hole on the ground.
¡°Whoopie. A mountain range.¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t have sounded more dead but there was no difference from his usual tone.
Like he said, the third floor was a mountain range. It was tightly packed and the terrain was many times more rugged than Bubble Hills. They were much taller too.
¡°Let¡¯s get on top of that one there for a better view.¡±
They crossed the second floor pretty fast but still took a couple of hours even with its relatively smaller size. Moving at a pretty ridiculous pace was not easy on any of them. Most of them.
Still, they climbed the closest and tallest mountain to get a good view of the area.
It was pretty steep, and Ebony estimated them to be an average of 4 to 5 kilometres or the people here would call it a gor. For the shorter mountains.
Ebony helped Tuffock again to speed things along.
Still, they took 4 hours to get to the summit. Mountain climbing was not running in a straight flat line and they weren¡¯t moving anywhere near their top speed. The relatively fast climb was not easy on the body.
They don¡¯t look good. Hector still seemed relatively fine, huffing and wiping his sweat away. Scarlet didn¡¯t seem any different than Ebony. Tuffock with the lowest physical stats didn¡¯t have time to acclimate to the lower oxygen levels. He even had pills for that, which was a little surprising, but he was down for the count lying on Ebony¡¯s shield now. Ryley¡¯s complexion looked pretty bad and almost purple but he didn¡¯t say anything as they took a break on the summit.
He was the highest level but obviously not big on Constitution as an archer focused on Strength and not even as fast as Scarlet.
Ebony had oxygen deprivation training before, his physique¡¯s need for sustenance including air was also reduced. Together with Constitution, basically 10 times better than when he was a normal human made it pretty easy on Ebony.
Adding any amount of stats will require breaking into them. It takes time and practice to get used to increased physical or non-physical stat. It was a reason why one shouldn¡¯t dump a large amount of stats in one go.
It was hot enough for Ebony to sweat but not enough to raise his heat resistance reasonably so he finally gave up and had misty frost cooling him down the whole time. Hector and even Scarlet sneaking closer to him during the climb. Ebony didn¡¯t think the fire mages needed or wanted to cool down.
Ebony took in the view. It was amazing.
The mountain range and valleys went on for as far as he could see. Smack dab centre at the edges of his vision was a blurry shadow that overcasted any mountain. Ebony had to look up even standing so far away from it.
¡°That¡¯s probably where we need to go.¡± Ryley spoke up.
There were a few large rocks where each of them looked for a spot to sit. Taking a uncontested break.
Ebony took out his jerky, chewing on it.
The stares he was receiving were so heavy but Scarlet didn¡¯t reply when he asked what was up or even when he offered some.
¡°Aren¡¯t you thirsty?¡±
¡°There¡¯s a water mana ore under this.¡± Scarlet tapped her mask.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
¡®Convenient. Maybe she¡¯s hungry as well but doesn¡¯t want to take her mask off.¡¯ Ebony thought as she kept staring at Ebony eating. Her stamina consumption was probably extremely high if she constantly fought or moved with such speed and power. He truly doubted there was a jerky or food mana convertor. There wasn¡¯t even one for light.
She was a chef who cooked monsters live. She¡¯s got to be a foodie.
Ebony tried playing calming, relaxing music for them. He didn¡¯t think they noticed the increase in their mana regeneration but at least music was appreciated.
An hour later, they discussed their plans for real for the first time.
¡°So far I see a bear type monster, the gale leopards are here too. Kobolds again, I suspect they are high kobolds though. They look bigger with more armour. Leather and metal. Too far to Identify their levels.¡± Ryley reported.
¡°They shouldn¡¯t exceed a hundred. We should move and fight together from now on. Honestly, we ain¡¯t got a lick of team play.¡± Hector proposed.
¡°O..okay. I think so too, we..we should not rush through this floor.¡± Tuffock looked down on the ground as he fumbled his fingers under his robes.
¡°Mmm.¡± All 3 of their vanguards were fighting by themselves so that they don¡¯t interfere with each other and get experience split up previously but it would not be a good idea to keep that up. It was more difficult for Ryley and Tuffock to support them if they split up.
Ebony honestly thought they really needed to adjust to the low oxygen levels and higher gravity as well. It was easy to see that it affected every one of them. Including Ebony himself.
Ebony had been copying Scarlet¡¯s mask and longswords but whatever he was doing to push away gravity mana from pulling him towards the ground was slightly different in the way they worked. He was merely pushing aside the gravity mana. Scarlet¡¯s equipment was as if the gravity mana couldn¡¯t latch onto them. Hence, making them feel lighter.
¡°Bear¡¡± Ebony whispered to himself as they started to move off down the mountain peak.
¡°What about bears?¡± Hector heard Ebony whisper.
¡°...Nothing. Just nostalgic. I was forced to fight bears before I came here.¡±
¡°What¡¯s so special about those bears?¡±
¡°Nothing at all. They were normal bears. I was thrown into a jungle filled with them when I turned 15.¡± Ebony said. He wasn¡¯t going to take that back since counting the years here, he wouldn¡¯t have been 15 but younger.
¡°Bears for you? It was falcons and snakes for me.¡± Scarlet said something that could be easily understood but the conversation steered towards Ebony and Scarlet sharing their experiences when they were thrown somewhere dangerous when they turned 15.
Scarlet was more and more sure Ebony was a Xeng or part Xeng like her. The imperials are so babied they don¡¯t do something like throwing their kids into a monster infested forest.
She remembered her Trial as well. Gust falcons chased her for hours on end. She had to escape with paralytic poison in her system from those Stinging Bolt Snakes. She had to survive for a month and get the heads of 5 monsters including the falcon and snakes.
Ebony didn¡¯t share the feeling of fighting magic wielding monsters but the similarities in their experiences were striking. He even heard Scarlet say her ¡®Trial¡¯. His suspicions grew.
¡°You didn¡¯t have any weapons? And you can¡¯t use magic?¡± Scarlet was stunned by the high difficulty of Ebony¡¯s Trial. Having no weapons or magic, unclassed meant they had normal human stats and because they were sent to their Trial right as they turned 15, any skill or skill levels were pushed and gained during the Trial itself.
Of course, they trained before they turned 15 but that would be jumping into Trial with literally nothing. Scarlet at least had 2 training blades and she was long proficient with fire magic despite the little use it had with the tiny bit of mana she had. It had kept her warm on cold nights.
¡°Mmm. My mother kicked me off the cliff to start it off. I had to escape from a bear with a broken leg, arm and a few fractured ribs.¡±
???
¡®Come here, Ebony. I watched a movie about lions some time back.¡¯
¡®Why are you talking about lions now? Why did we come here on my birthday anyway?¡¯
¡®It''s said that lions throw their cubs off the cliff due to their love for their cubs and desire for them to grow up strong.¡¯
¡®...were you watching lion k.¡¯
¡®Don¡¯t interrupt me. You turn 15 today. I love you more than some dumb lion over their cub, but I find their tradition rational. 2 weeks. You need to get the head of a bear, tiger, wolf, fox and vulture.¡¯
¡®Lions don¡¯t have such traditions. It was just a mov..¡¯
Ebony remembered getting kicked down like that, he didn¡¯t scream but he sure got terrified out of his wits. At least she wasn¡¯t so cruel and there was thick foliage under, Ebony had remained as calm as possible and slowed his fall by hanging onto dear life.
He landed on a thick branch after getting swatted here and there with cuts, bruises and broken bones all over his body. Coincidentally or not, there was a bear on the ground who happened to look up to the commotion Ebony made while falling. He didn¡¯t scream but the leaves and twigs sure did make noise. Fortunately, the bear was busy tearing its meal apart.
Ebony had managed to get away. Field first aid with his clothes and whatever sticks he could find. The fox was the easiest. He didn¡¯t need a weapon for that. The vulture was just impossible to find, he didn¡¯t even think they were vultures there.
The weird fact was how there were so many bears. Just where did his mother bring him? Ebony didn¡¯t know till this day since he woke up on the cliff, having been moved in his sleep somehow, without him noticing.
He made a makeshift stone axe to hunt the wolf. Fighting wolves weren¡¯t all that difficult if he could single them out. Shameful or not, Ebony took one out in their sleep. He was pretty heavily yet not fatally injured after all. Hacking its head off and using its body as bait.
Waiting 4 whole days before a vulture even showed itself. It was not easy to hide from them, if they sensed him there and alive they wouldn¡¯t even bother flying down. A prepared trap and a long sharpened wooden stick was all that was needed to take it down once it got baited.
The tiger hunt went almost as smooth as the fox hunt. The tiger was alone and using the same bait strategy, he got a group of wolves and incited their battle without showing himself. He wouldn¡¯t have been able to outrun wolves in his state. Even if he was trained to fight with a broken body.
The bears were the worst. Every single one was violent like they were starving for weeks. For odd reasons, after Ebony took the other 4 down and just needed the bear last. The other animals seemed to disappear from the jungle and he couldn¡¯t find any to incite a fight between the animals to reap the benefits.
It was probably his parents'' work. He knew it deep down. They wanted him to fight the bear in a head on fight.
His memories here, which were foggy even now, showed how badly the fight went. Ebony fought the bear with his bare hands when the stone axe he used broke and somehow pulled apart the bear¡¯s head from its body. He didn¡¯t remember how he did it but it should¡¯ve been similar to how he pulled the marmots¡¯ body apart.
That was all he remembered before fainting and waking up in his bed, all healed up. A letter from his parents and never seeing them till this day. There was originally some contact from them but it died down.
The similarities with Scarlet¡¯s Trial were striking.
No point thinking about when he couldn¡¯t find out anything more about his parents so Ebony chunked the thought away.
???
Ebony pushed his flashback away as fast as it came.
He actually loved bears, especially the cubs. They were just too cute.
Ebony and Scarlet kept chatting about their experiences. They talked slowly and softly, using very few words to describe it. Their party kept inching away from them.
¡®...Crazy bastards. What kind of childhood is that? It doesn¡¯t make sense though. If his mother did that to him when he was 15 then did he get kidnapped to be a mana slave after that? Or was he caught when he was much younger than trained to be a mana slave then, got saved and went back to his family? But mana slavers today would guarantee that they managed to erase their slaves memories, then either explanation wouldn¡¯t make sense¡¡¯ Hector couldn¡¯t get his head around it, he did have a speculation but didn¡¯t bet on it.
Their party descended the mountain and moved towards the shadow slowly. Ryley scouted ahead but remained close enough to reach in a minute or two.
They delayed themselves by stopping and actively looking for battles.
Ryley gave orders. They tried to follow. They really tried.
It failed horribly. Ryley wanted to be the party leader but evidently didn¡¯t have any prior experience. Hector even got a deep cut on his belly from the [High Scythe Kobold] because of a call that got him in a tough spot. Every kobold here carried scythes reminiscent of Obsius or the Cysarus¡¯ scythe arms. They wielded it decently. Better than the archer or axe wielding kobolds.
Most of the monsters were mid 90s to a hundred. The gale leopards were no different from the second floor¡¯s.
The bears were [Earthen-Hide Bears Lvl 100], unevolved. They didn¡¯t use magic but were so tough that Scarlet couldn¡¯t even cause it to bleed until a good amount of time passed. The bears smacked Ryley¡¯s arrows away like a toy.
It wasn¡¯t as if they were uncooperative and didn¡¯t listen to Ryley¡¯s words but Ryley didn¡¯t even give orders when Hector asked. Both were put in a tight spot at that time.
Surprisingly, Tuffock 2 appeared to save the day.
¡°You useless shits! You call that working together?! Ice boy! Support that dumbass of a noble with your shields till he backs up. HEY! Stinking archer! Is your aim so bad you have to stay so close to us? Go up that slope or tree, get cover or height advantage. Isn¡¯t that common sense for archers?! Miss. Almighty take both of the gale leopards, only you¡¯re fast enough for them while the noisy one is down. I¡¯ll back the noisy one up till Ebony gets back and freeze these ellers.¡± Tuffock 2 screamed.
The party moved but faced obstruction. Ryley arguing back.
Words like ¡®who are you to give orders?¡¯ or ¡®what the ell did you call me?¡¯ went over Ebony¡¯s head but he didn¡¯t register any of them. Ebony didn¡¯t wait anymore when he got to Ryley. He tried to pull him away but Ryley was like an unmoving statue, too strong to pull away.
Ebony just smashed the inner side of his shield into Ryley and got another shield to encase him in between both of them. Lifting and sending him all the way up onto the peak of a shorter mountain nearest to them. It didn¡¯t take long with Treading Steps pushed to its limits. He ignored the complaints and yelling as he let Ryley go and disappeared back into battle.
The battle didn¡¯t take much effort and they would have taken them down if they split them up like they did previously. The saying that a god-like opponent was not anywhere close to how bad it was to have a pig-like team mate really couldn¡¯t be any more true.
¡°I see I was shitting right about your trashy aim.¡± Tuffock 2 said as he got Hector to remove his shirt and shift his armour for him to patch up. The armour took the brunt of the cut but the area he got hit was one of the thinnest parts of his armour.
Ryley blamed the increase in gravity for his bad aim.
What¡¯s next was an exchange of insults and shouting that Ebony didn¡¯t bother listening to.
Ebony was ruminating over the applications of his Layered Ice Carapace. Ice was commonly used to freeze, slow down people or monsters. Common ice elemental spells in novels were those cage, prison or sealing kind of spells.
Even whatever spell Gen used on him was a kind of seal. That spell was more incomprehensible to Ebony though. How he kept his senses or his half-frozen state was achieved was not something Ebony could copy for now.
His Layered Ice Carapace was a spell made by forming individually formed scales or shells that copies Gen¡¯s or the progeniturtle¡¯s shell. That was to say he could easily resize it or reshape it at will by arranging the scales differently. For example, an orb trapping someone or something inside. Like how he trapped Ryley earlier.
Ebony decided to try it after dinner.
It was already dark. They looked for a good vantage point, a mountain peak and made camp. It was nice and cool at night.
Chapter 54: Proceeding Halt
In a large room was a square table with 7 seats, two on each side with the exception of one.
The room was luxuriously decorated with paintings, crystals and what not. Nothing in the room was made of any mundane materials if not treated or enchanted.
¡°The plan is going well.¡± The tallest figure in the room commented.
¡°Ay, too damn well, Evans. They¡¯re gathering in numbers unheard off. The border cities are gonna go crazy if they know what¡¯s abou¡¯ta come.¡± The ball of muscle sitting alone wiped his grimy fingers on his beard.
¡°Gero, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Chlothar.¡± Chlothar frowned.
¡°Back atcha, it¡¯s Gerot. Too damn hard to pranunce.¡± Gerot slurred his words on purpose this time.
¡°...Haa.¡± The Elf really didn¡¯t like his attitude but was already used to it.
¡°Don¡¯t sigh, dear.¡± The second tallest figure sitting beside him comforted.
¡°I know, I know, Lu. It''s pointless talking to this muscle head.¡± Chlothar took her hand that she put on his lap.
¡°Aaanyway. Our seers and divination mages have already reported the unprecedented numbers of trolls preparing and building colossal class-ships.¡± A couple of furry tails waved.
¡°How long do you say we have, Medina, Kye.¡± The serious voice echoed from the corner that faced the door.
¡°Aaah, dear Nav. I say we have a couple of years at best. 8 to 10 if we¡¯re lucky. 3 to 4 if the plan¡¯s working better than we expected or if those trolls are weaker than we thought.¡± The tailed one shifted herself and put her hands on his shoulder.
¡°Stay seated and stop seducing my husband, Medy.¡± A soft voice beside the serious-sounding man glared.
¡°You don¡¯t have to be so guarded, Yve. I was just lightening the mood up.¡± Medy or rather, Medina, was back at her seat before she really angered the sweet woman.
¡°Makes ya won¡¯er if sending those over to Tova was a bright idea. At this rate, them trolls are going to swarm over like migratory birds arh?¡± Despite the many years of using the same language, it was hard to change habits.
¡°On the bright side, we can remove the threat of trolls once and for all thanks to Oplot finding those things from Lacuna Expanse.¡± Chlothar¡¯s wife reasoned.
¡°You mean if they don¡¯t manage to exterminate us.¡± The other tailed one beside Medina scoffed.
¡°Why so glum, Kye? I know you only rose up to the ranks of kings recently but no need ta worry. Ya wife will protect ya.¡± Gerot remarked snidely. He never looked well upon this fox.
¡°...It¡¯s been over 70 years already.¡± The foxman called Kye turned red.
¡°Aye and ya levelled what? 3 times? HAA! Stop coddling him Medina!¡± Gerot didn¡¯t fear showing his contempt, neither did he fear the stronger of the two.
¡°Enough. We¡¯ll increase the imperial army¡¯s training intensity twice over. Hand down the order to draft your nobles for the upcoming war. I¡¯ll be going over to the border to strengthen the barriers. Chlothar, Lucretius I might have to station the two of you at one of the border cities. Medina, keep us updated on any movements. Gerot, get your people to double down on their craft.¡± The serious man shut them up.
¡°Ya know ah can¡¯t ask my craftsmen to double down on their craft. We don¡¯t mass produce¡ never mind I know whatcha meant. Work them like slaves right? Aye, that¡¯s the best way to make the best craft.¡± Gerot wasn¡¯t happy for the demand of ¡®doubling down¡¯ on crafts.
¡°No need to get so bitter, you know that¡¯s not what Navin meant.¡± Kye defended the serious man, probably only because he didn¡¯t like the short ball of muscle either.
¡°Shut up, newbie!¡± Gerot barked back with power, crushing the foxman with his overflowing Vitality.
¡°...¡± Kye''s face went redder because he couldn¡¯t fight back. The pressure crushing him was waved away by his wife.
¡°How about the Guardian Knights?¡± Lucretius the Elven lady asked to get the discussion going.
¡°...We haven¡¯t been able to get into contact with Oplot but the Guardian Knights are always ready.¡± Navin replied.
¡°He¡¯s probably still in the Lacuna Expanse tending to the two seeds that he finally found. He¡¯s been waiting to get out of Elcra for a long time now. The looming threat over his homeworld tied him down but with the two seeds he found he may finally be free from this prison.¡± Chlothar recalled the last whereabouts of Oplot.
¡°Bah, if he comes back and removes the trolls then he doesn¡¯t have to worry and can leave any time he wants. Just send someone there and get in contact with him. He¡¯ll come flying at the chance.¡± Gerot didn¡¯t have much against Chlothar but something about Elves just never sat well with him.
¡°Send someone to the Lacuna Expanse? Who? You¡¯re volunteering?¡± Chlothar raised an eye in reply to him.
¡°...¡± Gerot knew why they never sat well with him better and better.
¡°Ooo. How about my husband and I go?¡± Medina¡¯s tails wiped against her seat.
¡°Medina? You sure?¡± The sweet lady who stopped her from touching Navin asked in surprise.
¡°It¡¯s a good chance for Kye too.¡± She replied coquettishly.
¡°...Alright. If there¡¯s nothing else, assembly adjourned.¡± Navin spoke out after a moment of silence.
The room creepily emptied without a sound as soon as the sentence ended.
???
¡°Should I go in? Should I not? Should I go in? Should I not? Should I go in? Should I not? Should I go in? Should I not? Should I go in? Should I not?¡±
¡®Stupid crossroad. It¡¯s all a mess and I can¡¯t tell who¡¯s gonna die. Well, half of it was done when they met up¡
That little girl of mine is so strong yet so weak. That blue haired boy too. So similar. Both so strong for their age yet so fragile at heart.
Just what background does that blue haired boy have? There was someone who could hide someone¡¯s past so well I couldn''t even get a glimpse of it¡I must be getting old. Was he birthed into existence recently or something? Can¡¯t be. The only thing I could see in his future¡heh hehe. One of us must be dreaming¡well, I can¡¯t make it too easy for him can I? Maybe I should go in after all.
That pink haired child though¡ he must be the little boy¡¯s and girl¡¯s descendant. Lucky rascals. Almost blinded myself from divining him. No wait. I did get blinded. How many times does that make?
Just going in would interfere and possibly make it worse though¡
It¡¯s only a possibility¡ I could just watch till something happens. Nah. I shouldn¡¯t fool around, it¡¯s her little adventure, she¡¯ll face danger sooner or later.
...Or should I?¡¯
???
¡°Thanks for dinner, Scarlet. It was as delicious as always.¡± Ebony said as Scarlet came out from her tent and piled the dishes to wash.
Ryley already went to fire arrows into the distance, no idea if he was hitting anything. Ebony didn¡¯t have enough mana to make ice arrows for him so he was running off to collect them every once in a while. Good for him that the dungeon didn¡¯t swallow them up anymore.
Ebony had to use up to a thousand mana in Ice Injection on a single monster if he were to fight them himself. He had to stop using Chaotic Repulsive Membrane whenever he wasn¡¯t in battle as well as his Icebody Enhancement so that he could recover mana.
Hector¡¯s injuries were not too serious, but he wouldn¡¯t heal immediately. According to Tuffock, it will take 3 days before a full recovery, not sure if he could estimate Hector¡¯s Vitality or the medicine¡¯s effectiveness. A diagnosis skill perhaps?
They made little progress on this floor, they didn''t seem to have gotten close to the humongous shadow in the distance. Ebony didn¡¯t mind. He was in no rush. His levels were rising considerably fast but not his skill levels.
After doing the dishes, he had a short spar with Hector and Scarlet in a three way battle. Hector¡¯s injury not inhibiting his movements much. They didn¡¯t train together for long.
Hector went to clean his armour again. Scarlet also sat around and took out what Ebony thought was a whetstone. She then went on to maintain her twin swords.
Interested, Ebony watched and learned. Even though her longswords were clean and sharp, she didn¡¯t lax on their maintenance. Not sure if he was imagining things but her swords look even deeper red. It must have been the darkness of the night.
Ebony wasn¡¯t hiding his observation so Scarlet offered to teach him. His upgraded greatsword was not too damaged. His membrane helped to keep it both clean and reduce damage to it. It just wasn¡¯t an excuse not to take good care of it. It had a nice polish again after Scarlet helped him.
They were meditating under Scarlet¡¯s calming pearl¡¯s effect again while he played with Mana Moulding.
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It was going horribly.
Firstly, depending on the material. Hard materials like iron ore, wood planks turn fragile after he forcefully breaks or ¡®moulds¡¯ their original structure. Sure, he can change their shape but they turn so fragile he could pinch it into dusty fragments.
Secondly, it was not easy. He had to fine tune mana into extremely fine particles before they could even squeeze themselves into wood, much less iron. It took minutes just altering a small section of them. Thanks to his Intelligence stat, he was at least capable of altering iron but it took even longer.
The best he did was on fabric since he had prior experience with them. Fibrous materials just have to be untangled, strengthened by turning them into threads or ropes then weaved together. Leather was actually very similar when he made his mana fine enough.
Filling his robes with his mana, he could feel numerous tiny scratches and cuts. He didn¡¯t really get hit though. It was likely just wear and tear from his movements and perhaps dust and wind pressure from close hits. Ebony didn¡¯t have any of the materials that Roya used to make it but the robe itself didn¡¯t lose much material so it was just a matter of weaving the tiny cuts back together.
He got his Layered Ice Carapaces and repaired them too. Being relatively undamaged, he didn¡¯t need much mana for it. He got all three of them to separate into individual scales. There was a lot more than he thought. Seeing how large his shields were and how they are made up of 5 layers it wasn¡¯t all that surprising.
Casting them with his spell glove made it really fast and he never really thought much about it while he casted them now. He cast the shield as a whole and not scale by scale, unlike when he created the spell.
He shifted the individual scales to form an orb. There were so many scales he could form a wall with them. Still he had to move 5 of them and hold them together before mentally ¡®picking¡¯ up more scales.
It was not what Ebony imagined.
The scales he made did indeed have some curvature but to make a spherical orb with them? The end product was freaking huge. He didn¡¯t even have enough scales with a total of 15 layers of them. Furthermore, some scales were different sizes and curvature since they were designed as parts of a shield.
A little ice mana manipulation was all it would take but it¡¯s currently not a realistic skill or spell to use.
Casting speed was one thing.
With practice, he could make a smaller orb-like spell that traps a monster. Even with his spell glove, the shield takes seconds that he doesn¡¯t have mid battle. No monster would get trapped by it. His spell glove also only worked with Layered Ice Carapace, though it might work if the spell was similar enough using the same ice scales.
It will also be a mana-intensive spell but that was not a big issue to Ebony.
Ebony made one his size with what he had after changing its shape, trapping himself in it. He tried to break himself out after locking in the last scale.
Clearly, fully compressed ice scales were not something Ebony could break with his pathetic physical strength. He used Icebody Enhancement and managed to break free pretty easily though. The ice scales didn¡¯t shatter, they just unlatched from each other. Making it look like he hatched from a large egg.
Ebony walked out and manipulated the orb back into shape. He tried to break it from outside this time. He couldn¡¯t with his kicking or punching. He drew his greatsword and smashed at it without hesitation. It didn¡¯t even budge, only a thin mark remained. Ebony then used Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and Sonic Overlay and power stabbed the heck out of it.
He forgot to mentally hold it in place and sent the ball flying off the mountain peak and onto another mountain in the distance. Ebony quickly raced off to get the compressed ice mana back. With Treading Steps, it didn¡¯t take long.
Ebony was impressed with the toughness of his Layered Ice Carapace even if it was in another form. He only managed to make a small indentation. And the orb was only a single layer, not 5 like his Layered Ice Carapace.
¡®If only I had done this before I could¡¯ve prevented the rogue from running off.¡¯ was not something Ebony would ever think. He did what he could, the rogue¡¯s death was his own responsibility. It wasn¡¯t as if his actions were Ebony¡¯s fault.
¡®So it¡¯s easy to break from within but hard to break from outside?¡¯
Probably due to its structure but it was not so much a restrictive spell as it was a defensive one. Of course, Ebony could freeze all the scales together to form a more perfect orb or make it thicker so that it was harder to break out of.
¡®Well. It has its applications but it¡¯ll need some work and practice to be of use.¡¯
He returned to their camp''s mountain peak and continued with his experiments. Training with Scarlet again when she was done meditating. Or attempting to do so.
Her attitude towards Ebony was confusing him.
Last night she was talking and training fine, even in the day when they chatted about their shared experiences. He thought they managed to get a little closer but now she seemed to be avoiding him again. Ebony chucked the thought aside, thinking it was maybe just a woman thing.
Because of the nature of her enhancement skill, Ebony got her to try out different breathing techniques. Like short but intense breaths to accelerate the speed at which her heart rate increases at the start so that her start up time for higher enhancement was shortened. Then a mix of short and long breaths or holding her breath for a second or two to fit her battle rhythm.
She was more annoyed or angry than usual and burned one of Ebony¡¯s shields away together with Ebony getting second-degree burns. Ebony felt bad about his robes, wearing it down so fast.
¡®Is it that time of the month?¡¯
Ebony knew he had to do something about his weakness to heat and fire. He basically always fought in his ice enhanced state. He would die sooner or later due to this weakness. No kidding. It was even worse when his physique was taken into account.
But what can he do? The only thing he can think of now was increasing Heat Resistance.
Scarlet acted more than happy to help with Ebony¡¯s request, making Ebony firmly believe it really was that time of the month. Did increasing Constitution help or worsen the effect of that time of the month? Ebony wondered if he¡¯ll ever find out. Even he was not dense enough to ask such a question.
Ebony made a bathtub out of ice and filled it with hot water with his water skin cap. He had the mana ores for it. Even the hottest temperature was barely close to boiling, but Scarlet further increased it. Ebony only took his boots, socks and robes off but kept them close enough for an emergency. He had a change of clothes anyway. It was a nice chance to wash the grime of sweat off of him.
He dived in without hesitation but not with Icebody Enhancement on for now. He didn¡¯t want to kill himself.
Ebony didn¡¯t utter a single complaint or cry of the pain from burning. Just silently soaking himself within. Meditating while keeping the ice bathtub from melting. He kept his head under the water, only surfacing for air every dozen minutes when necessary.
At first, he came out when his health reached 150. Healing from light burns or scalding didn¡¯t take too long but the peeling skin and all that was pretty annoying. He then dived back and climbed out when his health reached 100. He had blisters and swelling over his entire body. It took hours just to get back to reddish skin.
Fortunately, no one was looking. He stripped off his clothes since they kinda got stuck to his peeled skin. He had to change a set of clothes after this. His Layered Ice Carapaces acted as a screen to block him out of sight.
The lower he lets his health get the faster his Heat Resistance rises. Scarlet was asleep already and he didn¡¯t want to disturb her even though the water had cooled. Ebony wanted to fully recover so that they don¡¯t get suspicious as well.
When it was Tuffock¡¯s duty, he hid in his tent and practised Mana Moulding. At the same time casting and making another Layered Ice Carapace since Scarlet destroyed one. Coming out and training during his hours. Staying awake and another round of sparring with Scarlet.
She had a fruity scent when she came out today. Ebony liked it more than the floral scent but both were nice. Much better than Hector¡¯s sweaty body.
When it was Hector¡¯s turn to stand watch, Scarlet and Ebony went around the area to hunt.
The earthen-hide bears don¡¯t move in large groups. They found a couple of them not long later, moving at their speed. Two of them, both level 100.
The two of them were not subtle, the bears noticing them from the get go. The bears charged on fours. They were half a gir tall or 2.5m tall and about half as wide.
Scarlet formed a spear of fire just as they started the charge and propelled it into one of their opened mouths. Her cast seemed almost instantaneous to Ebony. His own Ice Sword took twice to thrice as long to form, attacking the other one.
The bear he attacked chewed on his Ice Sword like candy. They split off into their own battles.
The ice candy chewing bear didn¡¯t even slow down facing the Ice Sword towards its face. It came crashing with a claw swing across Ebony¡¯s body. Ebony didn¡¯t dare take the hit, his Layered Ice Carapace already by his side. The bear wasn¡¯t slow at all.
It was fierce. It kept clawing and biting, trying to knock the shield away. It had thick but sharp claws that dug a cm or two into his shield every hit but Ebony used all three of them in tandem, trying to push the bear around. The bear was strong, it sent his shield flying out of Ebony¡¯s range of control with a good knock.
Ebony moved around and got his shield back in action as he delayed for an opportunity to get a strike in every now and then. He didn¡¯t save mana and casted Frost Mist Perception Sphere. Annoying the crap out of the bear. Stabbing it felt like stabbing a rubbery steel wall.
Ebony felt the resistance but only with a power stab did he draw a bit of blood. Ebony¡¯s Ice Injection stopped it from bleeding too. The ice mana was repelled and pushed into its body as much as it could but the thick hide of the bear protected it from any hindering of its movements. The ice mana didn¡¯t manage to penetrate through its hide, the bear being unaffected by the light poke from him.
Ebony didn¡¯t let up. The bear was likely pretty resistant to ice as well due to its thick fur. It was not affected much by just a bit of frosty mist in the air. It was many times stronger or more difficult an opponent than the lvl 140ish mud golem. It was smarter, less repetitive, and more aggressive. His ice magic was not working well to slow it down and weaken it.
Yet, it was only a matter of time before it was slain by his blade. It was tough, he couldn¡¯t deal much damage to it. But so was he. They were similar, the bear also couldn¡¯t harm him. His shields do a good job at keeping the bear off him. He was also pretty fast with his movement speed fortification.
He shut Chaotic Repulsive Membrane off for the moment. Channelling the mana to Frost Mist Perception Sphere and keeping as close to the bear as he could.
In time, he could hear and feel the bear huffing chilled breaths. A normal animal wouldn¡¯t get tired so fast much less a level 100 monster. But the increasingly dense chill kept wearing it down as it breathed in the frosty mist.
Scarlet was finishing up her battle, the toughness of the bear a challenge even for her. She was less aggressive at the start of the battle as she couldn¡¯t even cut its fur without spending a large amount of mana. So she was ¡®slowly¡¯ getting her enhancement and tempo of her sword style to increase in strength.
The fur of the bear didn''t catch on fire for a long time as well. Its fire resistant fur is evident, its hide, fur and body were likely pretty good materials.
Ebony piled on attack after attack on the weakened and exhausted bear. Sonic Overlay was like a transformation of his greatsword into a chainsaw. Though that¡¯s a little of an exaggeration it really made him able to cut the bear''s thick and tough hide when he experimented with turning it on and off.
Surprisingly he took it down roughly the same time Scarlet did.
They returned to camp as Scarlet needed to recover her mana.
Staying on this floor for some time appears to be a good idea.
Chapter 55: Blockade
3 days.
For 3 days, they moved towards the shadow in the distance at a more leisure pace. Actively looking for fights, stopping and resting after a fight because all of them were hitting above their weight class. They used a lot of mana and stamina in every battle. Even Ebony uses most of his mana pool.
Especially when they were attacked by a mixed group of monsters while they were resting.
Ryley adjusted his aim according to the gravity levels in the meantime and gave better fire support without being a burden to guard. Hector recovered faster than Tuffock said it would take and was back at punching the daylights out of monsters. Tuffock 2 didn¡¯t come and give orders any more.
Now, they had a semblance of teamwork. Or not getting in each other¡¯s way. Every battle was an improvement where they took less effort if the numbers of monsters were constant.
The three vanguards¡¯ constant training together let them understand each other¡¯s attack patterns, timing and mid battle decision making.
Ebony and Scarlet were especially in tandem. They could now fight the same target without getting in each other¡¯s way. Despite both being swordsmen. Well, it was actually him doing the work of predicting who would move where and how they would move but now it doesn¡¯t take any brain effort.
There was also the fact that the two of them ran out to hunt by themselves as well.
He hasn¡¯t slept a wink for the 5 days they had been in Ordina.
He only felt that he was slightly pushing it.
His stamina was no longer unmoving. Not just battles and training but, even just travelling and traversing the mountain range was enough for it to cause a slight drop in his stamina. There was the fact that he was getting more and more tired without actual sleep and rest. There was also the fact that his Agility was rising.
Ebony was not unsatisfied with it. Not feeling tired was not always a good thing. It was harder for him to feel the effects of training if he never got tired. He had been testing how much it took to get him tired and feel alive. Feel like he was actually working his body and mind out.
Another method he thought of to gain resistance to heat was his ice magic itself.
After constantly trying to keep his ice bathtub from melting he realised it was possible to make his ice mana more resistant to heat too. There were so many possibilities with magic.
So, he picked up fallen branches and started a fire then roasted his Ice Sword over fire whenever Scarlet was asleep so that he didn¡¯t have to disturb her sleep.
During these 3 days, he talked less and less even though he never talked much to begin with. Perhaps, due to his growing exhaustion.
He was looking at the fire his Ice Sword was placed over but he was absent-minded. Just feeling the mana within the fire. Observing how fire melted his conjured ice mana. He constantly changed the structure of his ice mana and observed how it reacted to the heat of the fire.
Constantly reminded of how ice mana was like when it combusted. Ebony should have enough mana to use them reasonably often now. It was a different concept than how to make ice mana more resistant to heat.
From ice melting into a constant flow of water onto the firewood, to dripping on it was amazing progress for Ebony. He couldn¡¯t transfer that over to Icebody Enhancement yet but progress was progress.
¡°-ony..-bony. I said hey! Ebony! Can you hear me!?¡± Hector waved and called out beside him.
¡°Hmm? Mmm.¡±
¡°Are you okay? You¡¯ve been getting more distracted or rather, less aware. You look tired, you have been getting enough sleep right?¡±
¡°I¡¯m fine. Thanks for asking.¡±
¡°...are you cooking ice? How is that fine?¡±
¡°...just experimenting with something.¡±
Hector then whispered something too soft for him to hear even with their higher Perception.
¡°Guys. I think it¡¯s time we continue on to the next floor. Apologies for the crankiness, the mana got to me. I believe we have all gotten accustomed to the environment in the dungeon already. You guys have also gotten the levels you sorely needed. I say we get to the towering mammoth of a mountain by tomorrow instead of a dedicated hunt. Agreed?¡±
¡°...I guess we¡¯re good to go.¡± Hector pondered.
¡°O..okay.¡± Tuffock didn¡¯t argue.
¡°Mmm.¡± Both Ebony and Scarlet replied succinctly.
They didn¡¯t need many battles to get used to the monsters fighting patterns so both had gotten a little bored of repetitive fights.
The ¡®shadow¡¯ was just a sky high mountain that had fewer mountains near it as it spans across gors and gors both vertically and horizontally.
Morning came.
They sped up and got to the foot of the towering mountain that they couldn¡¯t see the end of whether left, right or up within 6 hours. Only interrupted by monsters once.
They did encounter a party that had the average level of 95 once, 2 days ago but with how large the dungeon was, even with many parties here it wouldn''t be weird if they never saw anyone for a day or two. Both parties ignored each other.
¡°Oh..oh man. Looks. Tiring.¡± Tuffock stared upwards.
They started the climb.
All of them were pretty acclimatised to heights already so they had no issue climbing high at a decent speed.
They took a break every 3 hours. Ebony was eating snacks as usual. The more stamina he consumed, the more food as well. Scarlet even made buns again for his snack time. Hector called it a Xeng delicacy and wanted to take one but Ebony slapped his attempts away. These meaty buns were his.
The mountain was not the steepest one around but one thing that was different was that there were more monsters. High kobolds hiding behind rocks, trees or mounds of earth were one thing. Bears coming out of small holes and caves were another.
Ebony¡¯s shield moved much faster now. He protected Tuffock from a sneak attack from a gale leopard before a flaming hot spear pierced it, half dispersing on impact. The noise of battle siphoned out of his ears. He didn¡¯t hear anything, see anything, feel anything. He actually did. But nothing registered in his mind as he slew everything in their path with utmost efficiency.
His breath was a chilling mist as Icebody Enhancement was fully active. The pressure on his body and mind kept getting heavier. It felt so good.
The party watched as Ebony disappeared in their midst every time a monster was close by. The silent and gentle way he moved was just like how he mowed down any approaching monster. The monsters always died unable to cry out as they froze.
Ebony kept pushing Treading Step in a similar fashion to Hector¡¯s burst of speed but it retained its lightness. Allowing him to instantly take the very first step to max speed. Ebony¡¯s ability to lightly change directions at any point in time also didn¡¯t die out from the intense acceleration. As graceful as ever, flat ground or not it didn¡¯t change his speed or agility at all. The mountains were no different from flat ground to him.
It was actually him applying the Chaotic Repulsive Membrane under his foot at the instant he wanted his feet to push off the ground. He had managed to time it so that he manipulated it to push him off instantly after he got enough friction and grip.
Scarlet thought it was a challenge or made it into a challenge herself. She was still faster but he was no slouch either.
The two of them cleared the way for the party.
They stopped when night came and cleared a cave used by the bears to use as shelter and camp. It was much easier to guard.
Ebony didn¡¯t see the need to stay. He traversed the mountain to continue his hunt. With the 3D Mental Map he has, he didn''t think he would get lost.
He didn¡¯t think of anything but he knew in his heart.
Almost there.
He was back to the cave in time for dinner.
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Once again, he fell back into routine.
Practice magic, conditioning and spar, hide in his tent and practice magic, meditate, spar, bathe and soak in hot water, cook a stick of ice over fire, spar and hunt. Breakfast. Move out.
The mountain didn¡¯t seem to have a peak or end. They climbed and climbed, their progress slower and slower. The dungeon either didn¡¯t want them up there or there were multiple spawning nodes here. The progress halted. Too many monsters were in the way.
They took a break. They were really high up now, at least 4 or 5 gors which was 20-25 kilometres high up. Still no end in sight.
Scarlet automatically took fresh, steaming hot buns out of a container from her bag.
Unlike his other party members who started asking if he was alright, Scarlet never said a word. She didn¡¯t actively avoid Ebony again which made him think she really was at that time of the month a few days back. Her quiet support and constant challenge was encouraging.
Even in his mind numbing weariness and fatigue, Ebony did not forget to praise her food. He even imagined her smiling under her mask but he knew it was just his fatigue talking. His Vibrational Gravity Sense wasn¡¯t able to sense facial expression or sense past her mask anyway. It would be the same even if she wasn''t wearing the mask since his Vibrational Gravity Sense was not so precise.
Another interesting point to note was when Scarlet was cleaning and maintaining her swords 2 days back she unscrewed or uncapped where the pommel should be if it had a pommel and pulled a black stick out before filling it with a grey one that was the same size and shape. Ebony sensed it. Her twin swords were now not reflecting as much gravity mana.
She made her swords heavier by a good margin. Her attacks got heavier and stronger.
He did think his own greatsword was unworthy of the ¡®great¡¯ now with it being as light as a piece of paper in his enhanced state. Having said that, he hasn¡¯t figured out nor has he tried to figure out how to copy what her mask and swords do.
¡°There should have been other parties who¡¯ve already passed through here right?¡± Hector asked. The party halted where they were.
¡°Yeah. The parties over a hundred should have long passed through already. Still, it shouldn''t have been long enough for those numbers to get that high. There¡¯s like¡ close to 300 of them and only counting those just right ahead of us, they¡¯re surrounding the area on both sides too. No party, even those who have fully evolved can get past that tight line.¡±
¡°300!? It''s gotta be the dungeon actively preventing us from continuing then.¡± Hector yelled in shock.
¡°Ca..can¡¯t we lure small gr..groups away and thin them out.¡± Tuffock suggested.
¡°Impossible. They''re too close together, if it really is the dungeon actively working against us then all of them will likely attack once one of them is alerted.¡± Ryley said realistically. He was not as unbearable since he wasn¡¯t all cranky anymore.
¡°Can¡¯t we get around them?¡± Hector asked. The mountain was so large there had to be areas without monsters.
¡°There¡¯s nowhere to get around. They¡¯re actually patrolling the area. We can still try to pick a direction but I believe they got it covered all round." The scout shot down the plan.
¡°Ma..maybe we just need to break through the defensive line. Dun..dungeon monsters can¡¯t move out of the area designated for them under normal cir..circumstances.¡± Tuffock positively put forward.
¡°Yeah! As long as the dungeon isn¡¯t overloaded, it shouldn¡¯t be possible for a new dungeon. Dungeon monsters can¡¯t get too far from their spawning nodes.¡± Hector smashed his fist together.
¡°Ebony was lucky enough to spot a spawning node previously but that was because the dungeon didn¡¯t hide them. Now we don¡¯t know where the nodes are or how far they can move away from their nodes.¡± Ryley wasn¡¯t looking well at their chances.
They went back and forth but didn¡¯t come up with any solution.
To start things off they picked the direction which Ryley said had less of them. Towards the right. They continued on and on. Only a few monsters strayed downhill. At first.
The party started running back downhill instead of going up. More than 10 earthen-hide bears are on their chase with 30 gale leopards, half of them with scythe wielding high kobolds riding them.
¡°Crap! The few that strayed down were only to find where we are.¡± Hector exclaimed.
¡°I don¡¯t think there are any more than the ones we can see, move over there! We don¡¯t have anywhere to hide going down hill anyway. We¡¯ll take em on there.¡± Ryley pointed them towards a relatively flatter spot that isn¡¯t easily seen from above.
Tuffock slipped and slid but Hector, who was close, managed to catch his fall. Going downhill was always harder than going up.
Staying behind the party, Ebony ran sideways with Frost Mist Perception Sphere on, freezing the grass and ground hoping it would slow them down or even cause them to slip.
Being carried on Hector¡¯s back for the umpteenth time, Tuffock held his staff high and chanted. Casting walls and stone shards to delay the gale leopards who were their greatest chasers. Luckily for them, they didn¡¯t have to worry about projectiles seeing none of the high kobolds being archers or carrying bows.
Buying enough time, they reached the area Ryley got them to be. He left to get a vantage spot.
It was not that intense of a battle at this point. Hector reached level 81, Scarlet had gotten to level 78 while Ebony had reached 74. It was not extremely fast but it was practically breakneck speed already. Even Tuffock had levelled thrice, reaching 88. Ryley levelled once to reach 95.
Scarlet no longer had trouble hurting and even cooking bear paws, along with its entire body. She didn¡¯t though, saving her mana.
Hector was sending the tough and heavy bear flying backwards, causing the bear to knock into another bear and 3 of the high kobolds along with their mount. Ebony now had 4 shields working in tandem and 2 Ice Swords floating around as well. One of them wobbly. He forcefully pushed 3 bears towards the same area where they fell.
Just in time for Tuffock¡¯s stone barrage to come raining down, as if it wasn¡¯t enough, Scarlet bombarded the area with an extra large spear of fire coming straight down from the sky. The wave of heat exploding outwards.
In the background was the noise of shockwaves while a strong gust of wind fanned the flames. Ryley had his charged shots coming down on the more annoying and tough earthen-hide bears. He was using his metal arrows charged with mana. The monsters here are good enough for him to use them.
Scarlet went to take care of the leopards like she usually does because of their speed while Hector and Ebony faced and held the bears back. Not so much hold back as pummel and decapitate them with stone and arrow support. The ranged support was more to keep the remaining gale leopards back since Scarlet was only one person and the number of leopards was the highest in their group.
They safely finished off every last one of them who chased them.
¡°Let¡¯s move. If they were actually sent to chase us then, the dungeon likely knows where we are now and will send more of them after us.¡± Hector quickly chastised.
¡°...We¡¯ve got no choice I guess. We¡¯ll go further down then round back to the cave we camped last night. We¡¯ll not engage in any fights if possible since the dungeon will find our location.¡±
¡°Ca..can we really hide from the dungeon? No..none of us are really much for stealth¡¡±
¡°¡¡±
No one replied. Trying to hide from the dungeon while they were in the dungeon and they were actively looking for them was as difficult as trying to hide an elephant in an open stadium.
As long as they were spotted by monsters, the dungeon would know their location anyway.
Not contemplating long, they quickly moved first. It would not be ideal to stay where they were regardless.
Going down faster than they did going up, they returned to the cave they were in the night before. Tuffock closed the entrance off with stone after Hector loosely manipulated some earth as some form of camouflage.
They still had their phoslamps for a lightsource.
They rested while no one spoke for a short while.
¡°Can we be really sure the dungeon is aiming for us? Even if this was an aggressive dungeon when it just opened it wasn¡¯t the case the past few days.¡± Hector asked.
¡°I can¡¯t think of a reason it¡¯s specifically aiming for us. I think there¡¯s a higher chance it¡¯s just sealing the mountain peak or entrance to the next floor and sending off any party who tries to climb higher. Why do you assume it¡¯s singling us out.¡± Ryley questioned Hector¡¯s deduction.
¡°Ah. I forgot about that possibility. That makes sense. We are pretty strong but definitely not the strongest party down here. Dungeons aim to remove whatever is not beneficial to them. There should be many other parties that have taken away from it more than it thinks it can gain from killing them.¡± Hector second guessed himself.
¡°We..we haven¡¯t even taken any monster materials or.. ea..eat any of them so the dungeon shouldn¡¯t be at a net loss no matter how ma..many we kill. The¡ the mana and stamina we used should¡¯ve been partially absorbed by the du..dungeon too. It should welcome us instead. Heh, I agree with the dumb archer for once. It just doesn¡¯t want any party to advance further.¡± Tuffock and Tuffock 2 who came out in the second half said.
They didn¡¯t take any materials since it would only add weight and bulk to them. If they really wanted anything they could collect it on their way back and not on their way deeper into the dungeon. Unless there were rare materials.
¡°Then what do you suggest we do? Even if there might be more than one entrance to the next floor, this is the most obvious way and wouldn¡¯t other entrances also be defended?¡± Ryley finally learned not to shout back at the ¡®dumb archer¡¯ comment. It was a waste of energy. The only person Tuffock 2 seemed to talk respectfully to was Scarlet, who he added a ¡®miss¡¯ but even that was said with ridicule.
¡°Is there even anything we can do but wait it out? The dungeon wouldn¡¯t waste its limited resources forever, it needs to let its monsters spread out and roam rather than concentrated in the same spot if it wants to get anything from us and the other parties.¡±
¡°There¡¯s a flood of parties coming in, the dungeon probably got quite a fill from those wannabes. Do we have enough food to last?¡±
¡°2 months of food. Not including whatever you¡¯ve brought.¡± Scarlet said. It was surprising her bag had held 2 more months of food. The party realised she had more than one or two chilled preserve boxes. Ebony just had to get a bag like that.
The food they had could be stretched into 3 months, maybe more if they didn¡¯t feast all the time and spend less energy and stamina fighting. Ebony was starting to feel a little bad for eating so much.
The caves they were in were originally used by bears so it was not small or constrictive but it was inadequate for any training or sparring.
After a short meditative period, Ebony asked to be let out of the cave for a breather. They knew he was a training maniac by this point. Warning him not to get spotted they still let him out. The cave needed some fresh air anyway.
Ebony stretched out his arms. Then his whole body. They haven¡¯t closed the entrance to the cave yet. Ebony got them to cover it just in case. Daylight was still up, they could be seen if they were not careful.
¡°Mmm. Thanks for gathering. I was just looking for you guys.¡± Ebony had already sprung up to where they were previously. Looking at hundreds upon hundreds of monsters sitting around. Taking into account where he couldn¡¯t see, it was probably thousands.
Just the final push he needed to tip him over exhaustion.
Chapter 56: Clearing A Path
Mana conservation was the name of the game?
No.
Of course not.
Mana was there to be used.
And so Ebony did.
Frost Mist Perception Sphere was at maximum output. Its ability to slow, hinder and freeze his opponent¡¯s movement and sight is stronger than ever. It was a thick bluish mist instead of white now, normal humans could hardly see their hands put in front of their eyes.
The beginning was the toughest. The first step, always the hardest to take.
All the monsters were in tip top shape while Ebony was the direct opposite.
The number of monsters didn¡¯t really matter to him. He was small compared to the bears and even leopards. How many could attack him at the same time? They couldn¡¯t even put a dent in his shields anymore. Nay, they barely even scrape a layer to lick off. The bears could knock them around with their strength but not cause much damage to them.
Ebony danced.
Like how he travelled from Plainston to the woods with Rhoats. His greatsword never stopped as he moved. Slicing multiple heads off as he jumped around. His entire body groaned in pain to his ignorance. The executor moved across the mountain, a head drops wherever his sword passes through. Unstoppable.
His shields were useless. He didn¡¯t need to use them.
The gale leopards who got close slowed down, their entire body covered in a thick layer of ice. They shook it off. Again and again. The chill drove further into their bodies every time they managed to shake it off.
Only the earthen-hide bears could withstand the chill. As long as they were unharmed, the cold and frost stopped digging into their body where their thick hide and fur was.
They couldn¡¯t stay unharmed for long. His greatsword rang. It sliced into their hide like a hot knife through butter. Except it wasn¡¯t hot. Their bones reverberated but they didn¡¯t feel pain for long. Only the chilling pain persisted but even that didn¡¯t last long before their view rotated as they saw their own body while their eyes were on the ground.
Ebony didn¡¯t know how many hours had passed.
One would think he would weaken and tire over such a long period of time in his taut and exhausted state. Yet, there has been no noticeable change in his demeanour. Physical or otherwise. Machine. Could easily be used to describe him.
Ebony barely felt a thing. Not his numb arms. Not his shaking feet. Not his aching and screaming lungs or body. Not the extreme pulsing in his head. Not his sword. Not his magic. Not his killings. Not the notifications.
He felt the need to keep moving. The need to break himself down so that he could build himself up again. He felt himself squeezing every drop of mana and stamina in his body.
Then finally, he felt the intense heat in his body and mind he had been looking for.
How far had he gone on the mountain? He wasn¡¯t sure. At first he went up, up and up. Till the point where there were no monsters up but the mountain peak still extended. Then he moved to the right and down, down and down. Then back up and around. There was a seemingly endless stream of monsters for him to hack down. And this was when the monsters were actively charging at him.
Ebony misunderstood when the heat rose much higher and faster. Coming from the side was Scarlet. Severing multiple large bodies left and right. Twin longswords ablaze. Electricity coursing through her body. Fluttering hair and mantle.
They saw and gazed at each other. Neither said a word as they culled the monster population.
On and on did they go. Scarlet¡¯s breathing quickly got rough but under control as she pushed even harder and more fiercely. She was the greater menace of the two.
Ebony had long reached his breaking point. His broken body moved without input. There was no input possible when his mind was not working well either. His spells phasing out. Enhancements turning on and off. Stumbled steps. Missed blows. Trips. Knocked back. Slightly fractured left arm again. Nothing registered much.
The both of them continued their slaughter for hours on end into the night. Neither standing straight. Up against each other¡¯s back.
Scarlet was no longer flawless and untouched. Blood all over her yet none remained on her swords. Ebony didn¡¯t know how she was still standing with her heart pounding like that and how ragged she was but he was not one to say.
They were on their last legs. Yet still surrounded by a bear, 2 high kobolds and a limping gale leopard. Ebony knew the monsters were being spawned as they killed them. It wouldn¡¯t make sense where they were coming from otherwise. Dungeons were pretty ridiculous after all.
He couldn¡¯t even see the slashing claw going towards his face. He had neither the strength to lift his arm nor the mana to even form a spell. His shields were tied down by numerous bears a couple hours back, just lying down and keeping it away from him. They were slain but they were too far away now and it wasn¡¯t like he had the mental strength to pull it away from them. He could hardly raise his shield up by itself.
Somehow, Scarlet still had strength and got right in front of Ebony. The frost-covered bear''s paw dropped on the ground before it could reach either of them.
Ebony¡¯s Vibrational Gravity Sense sensed every movement around them. He thought he couldn¡¯t move anymore. He was calmer than ever. He still didn¡¯t think he was going to die here. They were sluggish but so were the monsters around him.
Two high kobolds were preparing to slash down at his neck, aiming to decapitate him like he did to all their breathens. A gale leopard in mid-leap towards Scarlet who fell to the ground together with her downward slash to remove the bear¡¯s paw. The bear lifted its other paw with a rage filled expression. All the roars and screaming started to register in Ebony¡¯s ears and head.
Everything was moving in slow motion. Ebony was only staring at the bear¡¯s smashing paw and gale leopard about to take Scarlet¡¯s head off with a bite.
He was renewed with energy from who knows where. Did he think he could reach them in time even with renewed energy? His body was still broken and over exhausted either way. No, he didn¡¯t think that. His body moved before he could think. Not that he was thinking.
He ducked the scythes that closed in on his neck. His broken left arm pulled Scarlet closer. His right arm still tightly gripping on his greatsword swung out. All at the same time. It happened almost instantly.
The gale leopard¡¯s separated into two front legs, a head and the rest of its body. Ebony, who ducked and pulled Scarlet, hugged her and rolled away, Chaotic Repulsive Membrane flipping back on, he had enough skill to prevent any harm to land on Scarlet with his gravity manipulation.
Gently placing her down. He pushed himself back and took care of the bear and kobold like the thousand before them.
Then he fell forward. Laying on the chilly but burnt ground in peace. Manipulating mana to play a famous piece by Yiruma.
At least he wanted to. Scarlet wasn¡¯t actually unconscious or anything. She wobbly stood up, using her sheathed sword as a walking cane. Poking Ebony on his face, which was flat on the ground.
¡°...Why did you come?¡±
¡°It was time for dinner. You were late.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry. I don¡¯t actually want to miss your food over anything.¡±
¡°Yet here you are.¡±
¡°...How did you find me?¡±
¡°Just by following the frozen corpses. You were not exactly subtle.¡±
¡°Hahaha... You¡¯re right¡± Ebony laughed.
Scarlet never thought she would ever hear the man laugh. But the smile on his face was what she would not be able to erase from her mind. What she would do to see this look on his face more often. He probably didn¡¯t even know the lightest smile he had on his face. Nor did Scarlet realise her own.
¡°Come on. Dinner¡¯s getting cold.¡±
¡°...Could you help me up? I can¡¯t move.¡±
¡°No. You liar, you were moving just fine.¡±
¡°I would never lie to you. Then, could I just lie here for a few minutes?¡±
¡°...Okay.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t know why she paused for so long.
Scarlet sat beside him amidst the numerous bloody dead bodies. Both of them soaked in blood.
Ebony¡¯s robes were murky dark red. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane has been turned off multiple times. Turning it back on didn¡¯t push the blood out from his robes, obviously but it did remove whatever was on his skin. His robes had bite marks around the right shoulder and claw marks on his back. It didn¡¯t pierce through but that was a close one. His robe¡¯s mana dried up as well. The bite took the bulk of it, even leaving marks on them. The back was a little worse with bear claws that dug partially into the second layer of his robes.
Scarlet was already decked out in red and now it was even deeper red. Her pure white mask with a red feather was not unblemished with blood either. Her mantle had small cuts, her sleeves had 3 rips as claw marks showing her impossibly milky white and fair skin. The streaks of blood already dried up ages ago. She got rammed pretty hard by one of the bear¡¯s charges as well. It would be no surprise if she had a few broken ribs or a crushed organ, though it didn¡¯t look like it.
Ebony marvelled at how she could fight so aggressively with such intense stamina and energy wasteful combat style for so long. Even if the breathing technique she altered after he gave her some comment reduced her stamina consumption by 10 to 15% or so.
It was impressive, he knew that since his stamina had reached rock bottom. He had gotten the over exhaustion debuff with decreased Agility, Perception and Stamina recovery rate near the end, trusting that Scarlet had fought with as well.
The real surprising thing was that there was a mental over exhaustion that decreased ability to form coherent thought which made it harder to cast spells, reduce casting speed, Intelligence and also mana regeneration.
There were a ton of notifications.
Ebony dismissed all the level-ups since he could just see his status for them. He sieved out the important ones.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Core Skill Deep Persistent Meditation evolved into Everlasting Tranquillity¡¯
Everlasting Tranquillity - Achieving a state of everlasting tranquillity, breaking your state of mind is extremely difficult regardless of consciousness, increasing Mana and Stamina regeneration rate by 5.0% per level, Perception by 1.0% per level. Greatly increased pain resistance.
¡®What nonsense¡doesn¡¯t seem difficult at all.¡¯ Ebony thought as he glanced at Scarlet from the corner of his eye. The skill description was all a lie.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Ice Mana Manipulation evolved into Ice Mana Control.¡¯
Ice Mana Control - Ability to move and shape Ice Elemental Mana at will using mana. Ability to control Ice Mana increases by 1.0% per level.
Classification: Ice magic
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Simple but useful. Manipulation skills were considered tier 1 for some reason even though ¡®Control¡¯ increased ability by 1% per level and Manipulation did not. He didn¡¯t know why the mages decided to consider ¡®control¡¯ tier 2.
Ebony didn¡¯t really need to use any mental effort to move some ice mana anymore. He didn¡¯t think he could ¡®ask¡¯ or ¡®order¡¯ ice mana to do anything like Scarlet saying ¡®extinguish¡¯ though. He hasn¡¯t asked her about that yet.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Two-handed Power Stab mutated and merged into Ceaseless Onslaught¡¯
Ceaseless Onslaught - Sword dance birthed from Flowing Greatsword Mastery. Slashing, stabbing, charging pierce, decapitation. It matters not to the ceaseless onslaught. Every attack is a precursor for the next using momentum. Speed and power of ceaseless onslaught rises with momentum. Ability to build up and retain momentum increases by 2.5% per level.
¡®Merged with what? I lost some skill levels there and power stab lost its strength buff from the levels but it''s a tier 2 skill so it should be stronger right? It should be a similar skill like Scarlet¡¯s increasingly stronger attacks.¡¯
The great thing was that power and speed increase would be for any type of attack with his greatsword as long as momentum was built up and not just stabs. Ebony felt that the ¡®decapitation¡¯ part was unnecessary. Only about 80% of his kills were by decapitation.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Peak Performance evolved into Sustained Optimum Condition.¡¯
Sustained Optimum Condition - Ability to perform at your peak regardless of stamina levels, body or mental conditions at all times improves by 2.5% per level.
¡®...Peak Performance was a better name. That¡¯s all? I really thought that Treading Step would evolve.¡¯
Ebony sincerely thought Peak Performance to be a better fitting name for the skill and for what the skill does. He¡¯s not complaining though.
Even without the mix of Chaotic Repulsive Membrane in his movements, he thought that he reached a breakthrough in his movement speed and footwork.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 152
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 88
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 97
Ice Mana Control Lvl 102
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 113
Flowing Greatsword Mastery Lvl 107
Frost Injection Lvl 111
Ice Sword Lvl 99
Ceaseless Onslaught Lvl 75
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 92
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 96
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Orchestral Gravity Conductor Lvl 81
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 81
Mana Vibration Lvl 78
Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 87
Magnified Gravity Field Lvl 7
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 95
Vibrational Gravity Sense Lvl 77
Sonic Overlay - Lvl 51
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 85
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 62
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 109
Mana Perception Lvl 80
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 159/300
Stamina: 22/500
Mana: 8/4700
Unallocated stat points: 240
Strength: 30
Vitality: 30
Constitution: 100
Endurance: 50
Agility: 150
Intelligence: 276
Wisdom: 470
Perception: 80
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 14
Identify Lvl 12
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 35
Running Lvl 29
Mental Mapping Lvl 12
Kicking Mastery Lvl 36
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 6
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 13
Dish Washing Lvl 10
Physical Conditioning Lvl 9
Magical Conditioning Lvl 9
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 41
Tracking Lvl 10
Game Processing Lvl 10
Heat Resistance Lvl 28
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
Before he started, he was at level 74, 61 and 68 for his Class, Sub-Class and Profession.
The previous 11 levels in his Class, 14 in his Sub-Class and 12 in his Profession were 180 stat points plus 12 Wisdom stats. He had allocated 50 to Agility, 80 to Intelligence, 30 more to Wisdom and 20 to Perception.
Now, he gained a total of 14 Class levels, 20 Sub-Class levels and 17 Profession levels. 17 levels in Profession brought up his Wisdom to 470. Hence, his current stats and 240 unallocated stat points.
Two-Handed Power Stab or Ceaseless Onslaught was actually already over level 90 but dropped after the mutation and questionable merger. Did it merge with a skill that hasn¡¯t become a skill? Maybe.
His skill slowed in levelling for quite a while, Ebony gained most of the levels within the past few hours..
It was nice that his Sub-Class and Profession were chasing up to his Class level. It really wasn¡¯t easy to level. Towards the end, the level difference between him and the monsters were just about 10 or so.
He didn¡¯t train Magnified Gravity Field much due to its high mana cost but that would change soon.
His current reduced regeneration rate for stamina and mana was only temporary.
Generic Skills were really tough to level. Heat and Cold Resistance barely increased even with the kind of exposure training he did for them. Sustained Optimum Condition gained a measly 1 level.
Ebony pushed himself off the floor.
¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± He stood up and patted himself off. Tier 2 skills were really awesome, he could move his body as if his muscles weren¡¯t pulled or worn out.
¡°Do you know where we came from?¡± Scarlet looked up at him.
¡°Yeah, Mental Map. It¡¯s a little blurry in the middle but I remember.¡± Mental Mapping worked in the background. He never really consciously thought about mapping the area. His memories when he was at his mental tipping point were a little foggy but his head was clear.
¡°...Help me up.¡± Scarlet remained seated.
¡°Weren¡¯t you walking just fine earlier?¡± Ebony responded in a similar fashion.
¡°My..my legs fell asleep after I sat down. It¡¯s all your fault okay.¡± Scarlet raised her arm towards Ebony.
¡°Yes. Yes. It was my fault.¡±
Ultimate technique number 1: Agree with any unreasonable logic.
Ebony grabbed her hand and pulled her up.
If he had spider senses it would be tingling right now. Something wasn¡¯t right but he didn¡¯t know what.
Ebony didn¡¯t expect to receive a heavy jab that could rival the earthen-hide bear¡¯s strength to his stomach. He sensed and saw it coming but didn¡¯t react in time. Tumbling away and shattering brittle, frosted grass.
¡®What was that for? Women are really hard to figure out. I thought I was pretty good at reading people and their thoughts too¡¡¯
¡°Hmph!¡± she harrumphed loudly and stormed off.
¡°Wait. That¡¯s the wrong way.¡± Ebony softly said, with their stats in Perception, she could easily hear him.
Scarlet harrumphed again, stomped the ground and glared at him before quickly looking away again. Ebony led the way as they slowly made their way back.
¡®Incomprehensible.¡¯
By the time they returned to the cave, daylight was about to come back out again. Seeing how he went before night came, it had been more than half a day, around 18 hours or so.
Coincidently, the fake cave entrance opened up when they were almost there.
???
¡°Hey! We were just going to look¡What the heck happened? Deranged bastards¡You didn¡¯t bother inviting me?¡±
Hector put his hands down from manipulating earth, saw the 2 of them with a constant change of expressions on his face. From surprise to confusion to bewildered to arms crossed pissed.
Hector had wanted to go and look for them throughout the night. At first, Scarlet left and he thought there would be no problem with her going. With both of their speed, they could run from any group of monsters here and being the training maniacs they were, he thought they were out training down the mountain.
Deep into the night, he assumed the two of them went to fool around together in secret but that felt unlikely. He was ready to leave and look for them but was stopped by Ryley saying they couldn¡¯t afford to split up anymore and the two of them needed a vanguard. While Ryley had a chance to escape in case of an attack, Tuffock didn¡¯t and Hector couldn¡¯t just leave him.
Only the insane strength of the 2 missing could alleviate his worries. He had grown to like this party more than he thought. Never a boring day with them. Though he could make do without Ryley, he was still somewhat bearable. Hector knew it was only because the noble was acting minimally ¡®submissive¡¯ because of Scarlet¡¯s presence in the team he could deal with it as long as Ryley didn¡¯t actively rub him the wrong way.
When they didn¡¯t return even when morning was about to come, he rushed out. Tuffock on his side removed the stone wall without much argument. Ryley complained in the back but he couldn¡¯t stop the 2 mages. Coward.
Hector didn¡¯t expect to see the 2 of them basically right outside the cave. It couldn¡¯t be that he didn¡¯t hear them calling them to open up, could it?
Then he saw some fresh, some dried, some frozen blood on both of them. Not all of them were theirs but they were in horrible shape compared to their usual spotlessness. He never saw either of them get hit a single time, discounting their training exercises.
Then he appraised their levels, both of them surpassing his own. Not by one or two levels either. Ebony rose to 88 while Scarlet rose to 89¡ absurd couldn¡¯t begin to describe it. He would even believe it if they went up 10 floors in the dungeon and fought those a hundred levels higher than them or something.
It was weird that Scarlet was standing so far away from Ebony but Hector thought nothing of it.
¡°Just went to clear a path.¡± Ebony replied in his usual couldn¡¯t sound more dead tone.
¡°Really?! Then what¡¯re we waiting for? Let''s go before the dungeon shuts us out or spawns more monsters again.¡± Ryley pushed Hector and Tuffock, who were blocking the cave entrance aside before looking up to the mountain summit. ¡°There¡¯s really a path open!¡±
¡°Sh..show me your wo..wounds,¡± Tuffock asked the two of them. Ebony said he didn¡¯t have any open wounds, saying his robes protected him from sharp strikes. Tuffock still got him to eat a general healing pill, which sped up blood and muscle tissue regrowth.
Scarlet stretched out her arm and rolled up her sleeves. She washed it with water before Tuffock poured a colourless but viscous liquid on it. Then washed it away and applied the same paste he used before and bandaged it up. Tuffock couldn¡¯t remove the feeling that someone was watching him very closely as he bandaged Scarlet¡¯s wound.
Hector was asking them how the battle went and complaining about not inviting him, trying to one up him. He wouldn¡¯t shut up until Ebony said he would invite him the next time.
¡°Come on, let¡¯s go already! We shouldn¡¯t let the opportunity that you¡¯ve fought for, go.¡± The party had ignored Ryley earlier but he didn¡¯t say shit because he couldn¡¯t exactly cut in when the Xeng was getting treatment.
¡°I¡¯m gonna take a nap.¡± Ebony said. He walked into the cave, getting to the end which wasn¡¯t far. Casting Layered Ice Carapace with his recovered mana together with forming a bathtub and filling it with water. He stripped down, scrubbed the caked on dirt off and just slept in the tub with his shield as a partition after draining out and refilling the tub with clean water.
Chapter 57: Foggy Peak
Ebony didn¡¯t know how long he was asleep for but he woke up as if he had starved for a week. He felt weak. His resources were full so he was out for quite some time. Or not.
He knew that his full health came with this weakness of his since his vitality hadn''t filled up. He was probably going to add some Vitality. The health regenerated from mana doesn¡¯t fully heal Ebony. Something just feels missing in his body as if energy was drained out of him.
Ryley¡¯s concern was misplaced. The dungeon stopped spawning monsters to go after them. It either didn¡¯t want to stop them anymore because it wasn¡¯t worth it, didn¡¯t have the resources which was unlikely or just didn¡¯t have to block the way anymore.
It would have continued sending them after Ebony and Scarlet if that was not the case. It knew where they last were and all.
Even if they didn¡¯t take the chance to move onward, they can always clear them out again. Having come out stronger, it would be a piece of cake to mow them down again. If all they wanted was to climb the mountain it wasn¡¯t necessary to kill every single monster either.
He dried himself off and got dressed up. His skin did not wrinkle even after soaking in there for hours. At least it felt like hours.
Ebony walked out to find Hector just doing his handstand push ups with stone weighted feet. Tuffock had stones floating around him, eyes closed. Ryley wasn¡¯t around.
Scarlet¡¯s tent was by the side of the cave.
He could feel her gravitational waves, her not so steady breathing that caused the mana to vibrate. She hasn¡¯t recovered from the intense battle. Ebony was quite concerned as her breathing was quite erratic. He felt weird, touched might be the word but he wasn¡¯t sure. It was a feeling he was unfamiliar with but he couldn¡¯t get the warm feeling and image of Scarlet joining him in his slaughter out of his mind. Gorgeous.
She was tossing around in her tent before waking up when she felt Ebony¡¯s heat signature get close.
He sat around on his makeshift ice stool and had his robe in hand. Scarlet was clambering around to get her mask in her tent. He took the time to try to mend the claw and bite marks. The bite marks weren¡¯t obvious but the claw marks couldn¡¯t be hidden.
Ebony only followed Roya¡¯s advice and weaved the outer layer thread ends into the middle layer so that there weren''t any loose threads. The second layer was supposedly snakeskin or hide, it was lighter blue in colour than the dark blue of the outermost layer.
The first thing Scarlet did after emerging from her tent was cook. Perfect.
She looked as immaculate as always. Her mask, mantle and boots no longer had blood on them. Her hair was tied up in her usual ponytail.
The others ran over when they noticed food was ready. Ryley popped up from somewhere too.
¡°Chow time! I''ve been waiting so long.¡±
¡°Ca..can¡¯t go back to the flavourless soup the parties I''d been..been in before. Err¡Sc..Scarlet. ¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Is..isn¡¯t this a lot less than usual?¡±
¡°Yes. I didn¡¯t cook any for Ebony.¡±
¡°What?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help but exclaim, stunned.
¡®I knew my core skill description was a lie.¡¯ Was what Ebony was thinking but his skill was still working fine of course.
¡°May I know what I¡¯ve done to anger you?¡± Ebony reached out to grab a plate as he asked. He only saw a shadow flash before he felt a stinging burn on the back of his palm. It felt like a slap with a burning piece of metal, he didn¡¯t even see her move or carry any weapon though?
¡°Go ahead. Eat up.¡± Scarlet had ignored Ebony since she punched him. She went back to her tent with a huge tray of food, as if tempting Ebony. The smell of food kept tickling his nose.
The other 3 didn¡¯t know what¡¯s up but started chowing down on the late breakfast.
¡°Psh. Here. You can have this. Just what happened between the two of you?¡± Hector slid a bowl of salad to Ebony as he whispered. Ebony knew that Hector just didn¡¯t like vegetables or even fruits.
Ebony¡¯s fork was about to stab into the bowl when Scarlet¡¯s deep but cold voice rang.
¡°I won¡¯t cook for those that give him any of my food anymore.¡±
Hector betrayed Ebony without hesitation, pulling his salad back into his arms. Ebony¡¯s fork stabbed onto his ice table.
Ebony took his own dried jerky, souper bread and biscuits out. He drank lots of water to appease his stomach but his tongue wasn¡¯t appeased.
He wasn¡¯t going to ask Scarlet anything anymore. If she didn¡¯t want to say what he did to anger her, he wouldn¡¯t apologise. It was one thing if he knew what he did wrong, another if he didn¡¯t do anything.
They packed up and set off.
There were still many frozen heads around, their bodies mostly gone for some reason. Maybe those parts affected by his mana took longer for the dungeon to digest.
¡°What the heck happened here?¡± Silence replied Hector.
Ebony was looking up towards the sky or where they were moving towards. He blinked. Then he rubbed his eyes.
Ebony couldn¡¯t see past a certain area but the sky anymore. It was as if half the mountain disappeared in his eyes. Before he cleared the path there was clearly a further path up the mountain. No point pondering since he was already going upwards.
The journey was eerily quiet compared to any other time.
Nothing stood in their way as they went higher and higher up the mountain.
¡°There¡¯s a thick fog up ahead.¡±
¡°Thick fog? Ah, I see it. Can you see anything inside?¡±
¡°Not from here. It¡¯s too thick.¡±
Ebony could see the white fog too. It was past that that he couldn¡¯t see. There was a shadow as if the mountain continued but not anymore. He didn¡¯t find it necessary to bring it up. The others weren¡¯t blind and Ryley had a better eyesight.
They continued without a single monster or other parties in sight.
Reaching where the fog was steps away from them.
¡°That¡¯s one thick ass fog. I can¡¯t see shit. It¡¯s all white.¡±
¡°Get ready. Turtle up. I can¡¯t see much either.¡±
Turtling up was just the 3 vanguards taking a triangular position with Ryley and Tuffock in the middle. Moving relatively close to each other. Ebony¡¯s new shield was protecting Tuffock¡¯s back as he walked at the very front. He was the toughest if you didn¡¯t count Hector being in a double elemental enhanced state or more.
Ebony just remembered he had stats to allocate.
First of all, Vitality. The feeling of weakness hasn''t fully left him. Now he knew not to depend on purely regeneration from his mana.
There was always the small chance that he was in the state where he can¡¯t use enhancement magic again as well so he didn¡¯t want to fully ignore Strength either.
He was mixed on Constitution. He wanted to focus more on it but it would increase a whole lot more if he were to place his focus on Intelligence. The problem was that he could hear his joints creak when compressed ice mana was being sent through. The power of his Intelligence was put against the toughness of his body.
Ebony wasn¡¯t going to touch Endurance. His stamina regeneration practically doubled. He also didn¡¯t want to go through the inability to feel growth without exhaustion again. Still, Ebony would monitor his stamina levels. A single one-on-one with a monster 10 or more levels above him should at least take up 1 or 2 stamina, was the benchmark Ebony put on himself.
Ebony¡¯s movement speed was pretty fast, especially with his fortification but with no buff from enhancement for it, he''ll likely put some in Agility again.
Intelligence was obviously getting a large portion.
Wisdom doesn¡¯t have to be said.
Perception was always (not) helpful.
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 50
Vitality: 50
Constitution: 150
Endurance: 50
Agility: 200
Intelligence: 376
Wisdom: 470
Perception: 80 [201]
The final verdict was as such. Strength and Vitality 20. Constitution 50. Agility 50. Intelligence 100. The others untouched. He¡¯ll get more Wisdom from his Profession levels and his current amount is already nothing to laugh at.
His Perception kept rising with skill levels as well so it was staying there for now.
The nonsensical Core Skill of his raises Perception as well. That may be why he saw the fogginess so early on. It was increased by 152%. Did Ebony even need to add Perception anymore if his Core Skill can continue levelling?
Looking at Hector, who needed Constitution for his body to handle multiple enhancement spells, was enough to tell that Ebony needed it too. It would be a shame if he constantly increased his enhancement magic for his body to be unable to withstand casting it.
Ebony was currently casting Chaotic Repulsive Membrane, Battle Song, 2 Layered Ice Carapace that hasn¡¯t been fully compressed and Magnified Gravity Field. He had lost his previous fully compressed Layered Ice Carapaces in the slaughter.
Magnified Gravity Field consumes 250 MP/Min. Half that with his mana efficiency to 125. So far all the spells'' mana consumption for area of effect skills were using 1 gir or 5 metres to calculate. Using it within a metre radius reduced the cost by a significant amount.
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Furthermore, mana consumption numbers were never accurate since he could still manually get more mana efficient through manipulation. It wouldn¡¯t train the skill much without an opponent for the effect to work on but it was low level so no issues there for now.
At 470 Wisdom, 4700 Mana pool. A natural regeneration of 1645 mana per hour. Level 152 Everlasting Tranquillity x 5.0% = 760%. (760% + 100%) / 100 = 8.6 times. 1645 x 8.6 = 14,1475 MP/Hr or 235.783 MP/Min or 3.93 MP/Sec.
Using the same multiplier for stamina, his stamina regeneration rate was 1505/min or 25.08/s.
The party walked but kept closing in and getting closer together.
¡°I can¡¯t even see the ground under my feet anymore. Or even my feet.¡± Hector commented.
The fog wasn¡¯t made of ice mana like his frost mist so Ebony was relying on his Vibrational Gravity Sense to ¡®see¡¯ around him.
The fog was very dense. Even Ryley couldn¡¯t see much further than the others.
¡°Hey where did you guys go? Hellooo! Guys?!¡± Hector started shouting beside Ebony.
Ebony thought he was fooling around as usual however, he started hearing Tuffock whimper and call their names behind him.
¡°Where did they go? How did they disappear?¡± Ryley was mumbling to himself as well, Tuffock was right beside him.
Scarlet just kept walking forward.
¡°Stop.¡±
Ebony tapped Hector¡¯s shoulder.
¡°Who¡¯s there!¡± Hector punched Ebony¡¯s face. Ebony shifted his head, dodging the quick jab.
¡°It¡¯s Ebony.¡±
¡°Wel? What are you doing in Ordina? Aren¡¯t you too old for this? Or are ya here to fetch me?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡®Who¡¯s Wel?¡¯
¡°Eh, you¡¯re really here to fetch me? Is it anything urgent? My party¡¯s pretty interesting. I''m not going back yet. Oh yeah, help me look for them as well. They were right beside me earlier, I didn¡¯t see how they disappeared all of a sudden.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Fa..father? No no no. I wasn¡¯t fooling around. I¡¯m now in a party with a Xeng woman. Nonono. I was polite, I.I didn¡¯t offend them. She was travelling around with an ex-mana slave. Yes. Yes. I will use the best of this chance.¡± the stuttering voice was Ryley¡¯s instead of Tuffock.
¡®Father? Xeng woman? Still calling Scarlet that? Ex-mana slave? There was such a thing? He¡¯s referring to me right? She didn¡¯t travel with Hector or Tuffock for all I know. Well, she wasn¡¯t ¡®travelling¡¯ with me either.¡¯
Hector and Ryley were talking to themselves. Tuffock had his hands up to his head, he was kneeling down. Face scrunched up in pain. Scarlet stood still, looking upwards, staring into space.
From the looks of it, they were all seeing different things or people. An illusion, hallucination or some kind of mental magic was what Ebony could come up with. Was he under the effects now? It didn¡¯t seem like it.
Hector started doubting the situation or the man he called Wel and started punching around. It was dangerous when he started using skills and enhancing his body with magic.
Ryley still saying yes and no while bowing or looking down on the ground.
Tuffock was slamming his head into the ground repeatedly.
Scarlet stopped staring into space as she looked towards Tuffock. Then she slowly, almost dramatically started drawing her twin longswords.
Ebony bent and dashed. He grabbed Tuffock and ran off with the propulsion from Chaotic Repulsive Membrane under his feet, pushing him to his maximum speed. He felt the sharp wind pressure pass his back as he didn¡¯t stop running off down the mountain away from where the fog filled.
Ebony could easily tell that Scarlet was really about to kill Tuffock. He also grabbed Tuffock since it looked like he was the only one that was fighting against the mental intrusion of some kind.
¡°Put him down, Ebony. He needs to die or you¡¯ll be the one to die.¡±
¡®She can recognise me¡ she wants to kill Tuffock so bad she¡¯ll kill me too? Maybe, because the two of us are capable of withstanding the mental attack. If that¡¯s the case she shouldn¡¯t kill the other 2 as long as they don¡¯t go against the illusion. There¡¯s Hector but¡forget it. Retreat first.¡¯
Ebony thought that Hector was beginning to break free from the illusion but it didn¡¯t seem like Scarlet¡¯s target was Hector anyway. Ebony didn¡¯t stop running, he had a head start but he didn¡¯t think it was enough. Scarlet quickly closed in on them. The increase in Agility or insane burst of speed that his repulsion gives him didn¡¯t seem to matter.
¡°You can¡¯t outrun me.¡±
¡°I know.¡±
Scarlet had pure speed but the sloped and rugged terrain was in Ebony¡¯s favour. Ebony knocked the back of Tuffock¡¯s head hard, he was struggling around too much.
For whatever it was worth, Ebony had Frost Mist Perception Sphere leaking with him at the centre. He ran in zig zags filling the area with his ice mana. The area was already filled with thick fog but Scarlet moved directly towards Ebony. Neither the fog or mist did anything to prevent her view of Ebony, who was carrying Tuffock.
He stopped wasting mana and casted Ice Swords aiming to slow her down, one after the other. It didn¡¯t. Not even a fraction of a second. Scarlet lightly swung to knock them aside or slice them in half.
He had 2 shields but they weren¡¯t fully compressed and even if they were Scarlet could still melt them with some effort. Better than nothing he supposed. He used 1 of them, hoping that she wouldn¡¯t chase him after they left the fog. The fog was the only thing that Ebony guessed was causing this to happen.
¡°Stop running or I will use force to stop you.¡±
¡°Scarlet. You¡¯re under an illusion or a mental attack of some kind.¡±
¡°...I am not.¡±
¡°...¡±
Words weren¡¯t getting through to either of them, was what both of them were thinking. Ebony could feel the heat rising from her direction. Scarlet sped up. No longer fooling around, her heart thumped harder and harder.
Unknowingly, Ebony stepped out of the fog like a speeding train. He didn¡¯t look back and continued creating distance. Quickly looking around for somewhere to put Tuffock down.
It was not much but there was a large mound and rock which Ebony placed Tuffock down. Dissembling his shield into scales and casting and forming more ice scales to lock Tuffock in the orb that he made before. Lightly freezing it onto the ground so that he didn¡¯t roll away.
Distancing himself from it into another direction. Just in time for Scarlet to appear too.
¡®She is still under the illusion even outside the fog?¡¯
¡°Where is he?¡± Scarlet coldly asked.
¡°He, who? I¡¯m the only guy that you should be looking for¡± Ebony retorted, Scarlet flinched. The response was a good sign to Ebony. The effect may be weakened after they leave the fog. He could get Hector and Ryley out after Scarlet awakens.
¡°Get. Lost. Or I¡¯ll make you.¡± Scarlet demanded.
¡®Didn¡¯t work huh?¡¯
¡°I don¡¯t want to hurt you.¡± Ebony replied.
¡®She¡¯s getting even more agitated, maybe talking is working after all.¡¯
¡°Don¡¯t want to? You¡¯re unable to.¡± Scarlet pointed out.
¡°...As expected. Fighting is our language.¡± Ebony was never one for many words.
Compressed Icebody Enhancement ran, Ebony turned into a translucent ice sculpture. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane haven¡¯t been decasted. Mist flowed down from Ebony, surrounding him in less than a second. His upgraded sword that was made to take in more ice mana frosted over. Ebony¡¯s superhuman Perception lets him hear the buzzing of his greatsword from Sonic Overlay.
Violent pounding reverberated from Scarlet. Blood boiling, her hidden skin turned bright red. The wind around her settled, avoiding her, ready to boost her whenever she wanted. The very air and ground burned, it was her counter against Ebony¡¯s bothersome mist that would freeze her clothing and skin. A ball of lightning mana inside her body near her navel is ready to pulsate, giving her a literal lightning burst of speed. Both her longswords were burning aflame, smothered by razorsharp, revolving wind, lightning crackled from them
As lengthy as that sounded, both of them could concurrently cast all of that at the same time. The ground cracked at their forceful charge. Their blades crossed. Over and over and over again.
It was not their first battle against each other. They¡¯ve spar hundreds of times by now. As seriously as now though, it was the first.
Ebony was stronger, tougher and could definitely outlast her. Was what he previously thought.
As long as he didn''t get instantly killed, Ebony believed he had enough defensive and evasive measures to outlast anyone. He was a bad match against Scarlet. Shields melt. Ice attacks and slowing her didn¡¯t work. She was faster. Her swordsmanship is many times superior. Nonetheless, Ebony was steps ahead of her and continued to do so.
The problem was that she got stronger and faster every passing second while Ebony only maintained his peak performance. Another point was that she actually managed to keep up with Ebony when they slaughtered the whole mountain¡¯s worth of monsters. Sure, Ebony had days of piled up exhaustion and hours more of fighting before she came but her endurance could barely be considered her weak point.
A rare occurrence as it may be, Ebony had to use the period of time where he still had the strength advantage to defeat or make her come to her senses.
Even with her superior speed, Ebony needed one move to block 2 of hers. As if a light of hope, Ebony''s Ceaseless Onslaught assisted him in building momentum. His rise in speed and power slightly surprised Scarlet.
They moved around the terrain a lot as Ebony¡¯s usual tactic. He had to use movement and create distance as he could never duke it out with her in a straight on exchange. His fortification only increased his movement speed and not his general speed and Agility.
They were hidden in steam every time they closed in as Scarlet¡¯s Immolation met Ebony¡¯s mist. Ebony¡¯s sword crying out every time they cross blades. The numbing of Ebony¡¯s hands didn¡¯t seem to affect him. Ebony was once again impressed with whatever her swords were made of.
The hide and bone of the tough bears could barely withstand Ebony¡¯s current level of Sonic Overlay together with his membrane. Ice was not doing much to it either, just melting off.
Just when things were not looking good for Ebony, Scarlet¡¯s rate of power and speed increase was much higher than Ebony¡¯s. With Ebony trying to get away from her, his momentum was constantly disrupted anyway.
¡°Where is he? If you don¡¯t take me seriously you¡¯ll never be able to hurt me.¡± They never spoke while sparring. Even the recent advising on each other¡¯s training was done after sparring. Scarlet stopped, and so did Ebony. They were not far from each other.
Her build up in speed and power from her technique will be reset but the build up in her rise in stats wouldn¡¯t be affected.
¡°...I take every one of our spars seriously.¡±
¡°Seriously? In none of them have your blade or kicks ever mean to touch or land on me. How much longer do you want to mock me?¡±
¡®Did I pull back my blows? I did? Never. I didn¡¯t even pull back when fighting Tiha. Furthermore, Scarlet had always been the more powerful one. But¡did I? I did. I never realised, no wonder she was always so angry or annoyed when we spar. I didn¡¯t think I would disrespect her like that, unknowingly or not. I really take all of them seriously though. I would get beaten if dad or mum were here.¡¯
¡°...I never noticed. I apologise if it felt like I was mocking you but I really took every spar seriously.¡±
¡°Ah! Enough of this talk. There¡¯s no time. Tell me where Tuffock is now!¡± Scarlet burst directly in front of Ebony. With lightning pulsing through her body, mostly her lower body.
¡®And I thought chatting was going well¡¡¯
???
With no leeway to continue chatting, Scarlet increased the pressure on Ebony. She didn¡¯t use lightning magic anymore, having enough speed. She had limited mana and fire magic was her preferred magic. Even more effective against Ebony.
She was trying to force Ebony to tell her where Tuffock was but Ebony had been leading them away from him for a while now. Besides, she knew it was difficult to force Ebony to say or do anything against his wishes. But she didn¡¯t have time to think of any other method but force.
She stabbed out, only to have their blades screech as Ebony shifted his body slightly with his greatsword slant and deflecting the perforation. Her eyes widened, she didn¡¯t follow up with another attack but backed off. She was certain Ebony wouldn¡¯t attack her. He never did. Always on the defensive.
Scarlet glanced at her sword, Ignite, for a split second. She knew Ebony wouldn¡¯t take the chance to attack her. He was either too soft or always looking down on her. Never taking the initiative to actually land a blow, only stopping his blows to show her where her openings were.
Honestly, deep down she knew he wasn¡¯t looking down on her. That made her annoyance worse since she didn¡¯t know how to feel about it.
He didn¡¯t have to, but sometimes his gaze would move and show her where her opening was. As if teaching her, no it was exactly like teaching her. She was angry and irritated but perhaps she shouldn¡¯t have said that he was mocking her. Both of them were always teaching and helping each other improve.
The temperature in Scarlet¡¯s Immolation dropped. It continued dropping but that didn¡¯t even catch her attention despite sensing the change in temperature. She couldn¡¯t pull her eyes away from his greatsword or rather, the blue flames it was spitting out.
The flames slowly died down to only a thin layer, under that ridiculous gravitation spell of his. He could control the flames under his gravitational spell but he couldn¡¯t stop the chill it emitted.
¡°Challenging me with flames?¡±
Scarlet was enlivened, to think someone in her generation would challenge her with fire. Her spirit was stirred. She no longer diluted her fire mana with Mana Expansion. No longer using the pathetically thin fire mana in the dungeon¡¯s atmosphere. Ebony wanted to play with fire? She would gladly play along. Conjuring her own fire mana. There was no need to keep things ¡®safe¡¯ anymore.
Chapter 58: Walkway
Ebony no longer had an advantage over Scarlet. He needed to change the flow of battle. She was going to be really dangerous soon enough. Having no idea how, he had his last resort of using what his Class was supposed to actually do.
He did secretly practise it once in a while but never had enough mana to stably use it in battle. There was also the fact that he didn¡¯t really want to be seen using it. He didn¡¯t find it completely necessary to keep it a secret but that didn¡¯t mean he should go around showing everybody. Scarlet wasn¡¯t a talkative person, it should be fine.
Ebony had 2 choices. To combust the ice mana flowing in his body or the ice mana in his blade. Thinking it was overkill to do that to his body when he was not sure what would happen, he decided to test it on his sword first.
There was over 500 mana in it. It wouldn¡¯t last long. It required constant input of mana. Normal ice mana ¡®burned¡¯ away practically instantly, he had to use compressed mana.
At first, he accidentally just let it burst out and it was sent wafting off his membrane. Ebony pulled it back in to conserve mana. With Icebody Enhancement, Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and Sonic Overlay, Ebony still had over 80 mana per minute to let him burn a low, thin flame.
¡°Challenging me with flames?¡±
¡®Not really?¡¯
Ebony was melting.
In a physical sense.
Frost Mist is just a waste of mana now. He controlled burning flames of frost from his greatsword to flow down to his hand and body. It thinned his flames but kept him from melting. Ebony just increased his output to eat into his mana pool. He lit himself on fire, the chill combating Scarlet¡¯s heat. If another person was here, they would be questioning how the two of them were breathing relatively normally in the oxygen deprived area around them.
As usual, Scarlet was the first to initiate an attack. Ebony was as chillax as usual on both the outside and inside. Forcing ice mana to compress instantly was easier with his skill evolution from Ice Mana Manipulation to Ice Mana Control.
Shows that he had watched were lying about how a fire breath can be cancelled out by another breath of fire. Sure his flames weren¡¯t exactly fire. Without a supply of ice mana his flames burn out like how fire burns out without oxygen. Getting close to Scarlet¡¯s sword had his flames disappear or well, melt or disperse.
Scarlet¡¯s swords were glowing brighter by the second. Ebony didn¡¯t back down. It would be dangerous for him if he didn¡¯t increase his output.
The loud screeches were not something one would expect to hear from two blades colliding.
Scarlet kept raising the temperature of her blades. Ebony kept increasing the ice mana he pushed forth over both his body and his greatsword.
¡®Challenging me at mana output?¡¯ He couldn¡¯t help but mentally retort. Like how Scarlet didn¡¯t believe to lose in a battle of flames, he didn¡¯t think anyone could even think of outlasting him in a contest of mana expenditure.
The act of blocking, parrying or evading was not enough to completely break his momentum. Their exchange got fiercer by the second. Ebony couldn¡¯t get burned. Scarlet didn¡¯t freeze.
Ebony had numerous cuts on the sleeves of his robes. Her swords sizzled loudly when it was almost coming into contact with his frozen flesh. No matter what, he was just too slow to match up to the increasingly faster and stronger Scarlet.
In slow motion, he could sense that his flames would mix into Scarlet¡¯s flames but they melted almost immediately after. Like 2 gases meeting each other as a flow or stream.
Unfortunately for Scarlet, her all time high of flames slowly died down. Ebony couldn¡¯t keep his up as well, only enough from his constant regeneration to have the little to keep himself from melting. Both of their flames flickered out.
¡®How can his flames rival mine¡¡¯
They slowed to a stop. Scarlet was breathing heavily as the violent pounding of her heart eased off. She was worn out from some time back. She didn¡¯t have Ebony¡¯s crazy recovery speed. The body blow she received left her with heavy bruising and extremely sore muscles even after eating a rare healing pill that she didn¡¯t tell anyone about. Every move hurt so badly that she wanted to cry a little. What hurt worse was that her pride had been completely crushed this time. She lost in a battle of flames, fire even had a large advantage over ice.
¡®How much mana does she have¡¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t think she could have such an intense output of fire and still last as long as she did. Just how was she so much stronger than him in every way.
¡°¡°You won again.¡±¡± They both claimed at the same time.
Before they manage to say anything further a familiar noisy voice yelled.
¡°Heeey! There you are! I¡¯ve been looking everywhere for you guys¡What the heck were you two fighting here? Didn¡¯t you say you¡¯ll invite me?! ELL! Wait never mind that, hurry up! We gotta go. The monster horde is coming back again. I already slapped Ryley awake, he found Tuffock and they¡¯re up ahead.¡± Hector was running towards them, waving.
Scarlet¡¯s killing intent shot up when Hector said Tuffock¡¯s name.
Killing intent was an actual thing that Ebony had learnt to perceive. Perception only heightens the ability to sense it. It was pretty useless. Ebony had heard Hector talking about high level or those that killed lots could scare people shitless with it.
Hector can feel it too. He was trained to recognise killing intent, even though the type he was trained to defend or stay away from was the subtle type. Those that secretly plotted to kill him. He didn¡¯t like politics but his position made it necessary to learn minimal knowledge. Hector thought he intruded on their secret tryst and was fearing for his life for a second before noticing the killing intent wasn¡¯t directed at him. ¡®Phew¡¡¯
Ebony had realised Scarlet wasn¡¯t under an illusion. It brought about the question of why she suddenly wanted to kill Tuffock so badly all of a sudden.
They started running when Hector urged them to move. Tuffock likely woke up and broke himself out of the ice orb. It wasn¡¯t difficult to escape from the inside so no surprise there.
The fog induced mental hallucinations according to Hector. It was non-intrusive and non-aggressive, making one see either the things or people they have strong feelings towards. The effect of the fog was pretty strong.
They were actually really close to the entrance to the next floor. There was really no mountain peak higher. Perhaps part of the hallucination or some kind of illusion magic making people think the mountain never ended or didn¡¯t have a summit.
Hector stumbled and fell on a step hidden in the fog during his punching of the air fighting his imaginary battle. He woke up when he fell forward and hit the stairs on his head but he didn¡¯t tell either of them that. He then quickly used force and knocked Ryley up. It was pretty fun and stress relieving.
They couldn¡¯t find the other 3 so they came back but they saw monsters appearing here and there. Tuffock was in the middle of holding a gale leopard down with stone mass surrounding its legs and slamming his stone mace into the head of a bear when they found him. He was evidently Tuffock 2, complaining about Ebony trapping him. Escaping to find a bear licking the ice ball. Hector said he was so pissed that Tuffock was still in Tuffock 2 mode.
The fog was still present but it no longer affected Hector for whatever reason. Why didn¡¯t it work on Ebony anyway?
Probably because its nature was mental hallucinations, Ebony¡¯s Core Skill countered that with ease. He didn¡¯t even feel anything off. Like how the calming pearl had little to no effect on him.
Hector brought them to where the stairs were, an angry-faced Tuffock crossed arm and Ryley sitting on one of the steps. His head facing the floor, feet shaking, nervous. There was no fog here.
Ebony grabbed Scarlet¡¯s wrist, which was about to draw her sword. The staring contest went on a short while before she gave up. For now at least.
They started climbing up again. Ebony ate his snacks since he was hungry. Disappointed that he didn''t get to eat an actual meal.
The two of them fell back.
¡°I lost.¡± Scarlet softly said.
¡°No. I lost.¡±
¡°No. I was the one who lost.¡±
¡°I lost.¡±
It went back and forth. Ebony liked the childish conversation but he changed the topic to what he was curious about. He didn¡¯t forget to soundproof their conversation between the two of them.
¡°You hypocrite.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°None of your attacks ever mean to harm me either. Even when we first met. Always aiming to disarm me by going for my joints. Wrists, elbows or shoulders.¡±
¡°That¡¡±
¡
¡°Why do you want to kill Tuffock?¡± Ebony changed the subject again.
¡°...It¡¯s his death or ours.¡±
¡°Why?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±
¡°You want to kill him for reasons you don¡¯t know?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Where is this coming from? How does his life and death affect ours?¡±
¡°...I am sure.¡±
¡°Okay. So what you¡¯re saying is, if Tuffock is left alive, we¡¯ll die somehow or the other. But if you kill him now, we won¡¯t?¡±
¡°We might still die¡¡±
¡°So killing him won¡¯t do a thing? I thought you were more than that, Scarlet. I fear helplessness. I fear death. Sure. It¡¯s precisely because I fear helplessness that I will never leave my life and death to chance. You don¡¯t have the confidence to survive something Tuffock can?¡±
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¡°...¡±
There was a long silence before an almost inaudible whisper came from Scarlet.
Ebony had no reply to her words.
???
¡°Where the heck is the next level?¡±
¡°I..I think this is the 4th floor.¡±
¡°Really? A one way walkway is the 4th floor?¡±
The party reached the end of the stairs and reached what could be briefly described as a walkway. It was not lit like the stairway. They had their phoslamps for lightsource.
It was uneven dirt ground, walls and ceiling. Roughly 5 metres wide and tall. Ebony had started casting and compressing his Layered Ice Carapace again, there was more than enough space to bring them in their original shape and size. His ears hurt figuratively from Tuffock 2¡¯s screaming and cursing.
They had already been moving at a reasonable pace for an hour. It had been uneventful as of yet.
They then faced the first trap when he who got around to leading the way again, Hector beside him. Tuffock and Ryley in the middle and Scarlet at the back. A reasonable formation by Ryley. Ebony didn¡¯t know much about formations so he had no comment either way.
Unknown as to who or what triggered it. The cave-ish walkway glowed, brightening a little. Coming from both in front and behind Ebony, he turned to see that the wall was closing in from both the ceiling and the floor with Scarlet¡¯s hand reaching out towards them. She didn¡¯t make it.
About 10 girs or 50m ahead was sealed too. Hector, Tuffock and Ebony were here. Ryley and Scarlet were cut off behind them.
Bang
The walls around them burst open, the floor and even the ceiling too. Hands? It had 3 thick fingers.
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Foot Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Foot Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Foot Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Head Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Head Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Core Golem Lvl 100]
Just like how people had level 100 evolution, so do monsters. The difficulty in evolving should be just as difficult for them. Dungeons could just spawn them of course, with much higher costs.
They were much smaller than the mud golems. Ebony would say they looked like buff bodybuilders, humanoid in shape. The fist golems had clenched, yellow crystal-like hands. Their upper bodies were thick and were made of hardened earth unlike the mud golems. As their names suggest, its fists should be made of topaz. It ran up to their forearms.
The feet golems had thinner upper bodies, still a little buffer than Hector who was pretty lean for a self-proclaimed bodybuilder himself. They had thick lower bodies instead, the yellowish glow almost reaching their knees. Their arms were normal hardened earth like it was the other way round for the fist golems.
The head golem was simply a topaz-headed golem with a normal body.
The core golem? Ebony couldn¡¯t see the topaz part of it, likely in its body. Yet, the core golem stood out like a sore thumb. Ebony liked its style. Really really like his style. It was so chill.
The core golem has a much darker coloured body, very dark brown compared to its fellow golems. It was much leaner too. Practically human in size and shape. What made it stand out or rather, sit down was that it was literally sitting down. It had manipulated or conjured a throne for itself, sitting there. A hand, five fingered like humans, supported its ovalish and featureless face or head as it rested against a loosely closed fist. Watching 11 of the unevolved golems surround Ebony and his fellow party members. Bored.
¡®Hot. Damn. That golem has style.¡¯ Ebony felt like Hector had infected his mind. At the same time, he had felt himself being more relaxed after his Core Skill evolved. Something about him changed slightly. Ebony didn¡¯t feel anything wrong with himself though. If he had to point out, it was that he was a little more open.
¡°Now that¡¯s rare shit! Topaz golems, especially that smug core golem. Too bad they''re not pure topaz golems. Their topaz are filled with earthen impurities. The core golem¡¯s topaz should be decent enough to sell. We should get it. Be careful, the head ones can likely cast magic. Heheh, leave the fist golems to me. You guys can take the rest.¡± Hector smashed his fist together.
Hector got into a punching flurry with the other fist golems. Even though he said to leave them to him, there were 6 of them. 2 of them ignored his taunts and targeted Tuffock and Ebony instead. Seeing nothing special with them, Ebony didn¡¯t bother copying Hector to have a kick-off with the feet golem.
Their topaz parts were even tougher than the bears'' hide from the previous floor. Like pushing a knife against a block of steel. Other parts of their bodies were considerably softer.
¡°SUUPER PAAANCH!! You call yourselves¡¯ fist golems!?¡± Hector exchanged punches with a fist golem. The golem¡¯s topaz fist shattered into thousands of pieces. Hector continued to challenge them fist on fist. All the topaz shattering was a little noisy.
The head golems adjusted their target from the lone Hector after he constantly dodged the topaz they spit out of their topaz heads to Tuffock, who splattered 2 of their allies into the ground with a huge hammer of stone.
Their ¡®magic¡¯ was really disappointing. Just small shards of topaz being shot out of their topaz heads. The only interesting point to note was that the topaz projectiles expanded into spiky mass when it hit the ground. Ebony was guessing it would expand and dig into flesh if it hit or landed. That was if it hit.
¡°Do..don¡¯t get hit by the head golem!¡± Tuffock called out. Tuffock¡¯s hammer had a small topaz shard embedded in it. It fell onto the ground as the topaz grew in size. In a short second, the stone hammer burst open from within. A ball of topaz mass taking its place.
Maybe topaz magic was more interesting than Ebony thought. Hector seemed to know about the nature of the magic so he dodged instead of punching them like he would usually do.
The fist and feet golem were protecting the head golem but didn¡¯t manage to stop Ebony, who just stepped past them and decapitated the 2 golems. A single step reaching from one to the other, their earthen necks didn¡¯t stand a chance.
The falling heads didn¡¯t just watch, Ebony also never let his guard down. He knew golems didn¡¯t die from decapitation. Like a tongue or whip, it tried to get a hold of him by having a tentacle shoot out. They faced an Ice Sword that Ebony prepared a second ago.
One Ice Sword each wasn¡¯t enough, Ebony cast another and sent them flying into their heads. Topaz heads or orbs at this point struggled against the freezing, which didn¡¯t seem to do much. His ice swords shattered after Topaz managed to dig into their internal structure.
Ebony had Magnified Gravity Field extended to include them in his range of effect. While the high stats of the monsters and low levels of his skill made it a redundant waste of mana, he had to start somewhere. He had the mana to spare to train them now. The gravitational waves in the dungeon were also higher and strengthened the effect of the spell directly.
The heads constantly struggled at the relentless ice barrage while he was fighting off the feet golems that came to help their ¡®mages¡¯. It wasn¡¯t hard to aim for their softer parts. They had no fighting technique and even Tiha, the young Frost Elf, could handle them if she had the stats to take them on.
Ebony was secretly impressed by Tuffock. He said he didn¡¯t have a Sub-Class despite being at the level he was at. If his Sub-Class reaches level 80, close to his main Class. That would be an extra 400 stat points, that was to say his magic could damage these level 100 golems even with such a big stat difference. His Intelligence or likely his skill levels and tiers should be relatively high.
Tuffock was not completely helpless in close range either. He had those stone hands that he preferred to use in close combat. In close combat, he would be in his stone suit completely covering him except maybe his eyes. The hands of the suit will be expanded and he will fight like a martial artist. He had been taking lessons from Hector, the twist was that he was using stone manipulation and not moving his body physically.
Ebony once saw that his stone staff would meld into his suit. Since it was under his robe, Ebony didn¡¯t see where the stone mana core thing went but it was probably melded into his stone armour too. He was practically a hybrid class too.
Even when every other golem was taken down, all the evolved core golem did was sit there. Unimpressed. It didn¡¯t move an inch. Head resting on his arm as it watched the battle on its throne like a statue.
It faced the three of them who were standing together. Looking back at the core golem, Ebony wondered if it was alive. It hasn¡¯t moved at all since it appeared. Watching as its fellow golems got destroyed.
It remained in its lazy position as its free hand on the armrest turned over and beckoned them over with a finger.
Hector laughed as he burst into action after activating his enhancement spell. Tuffock was mumbling with his staff raised and ready. His stone lance started spinning.
Ebony moved as he watched Hector punch the smug golem in its face. The golem glowed bright yellow. Lines across its body glowed, like veins. The golem¡¯s beckoning hand smacked Hector¡¯s wrist to the side, his legs struck out like a whip.
¡°GAAH!¡± Hector screamed. Kicked in his abdomen, sent crashing into the wall. The wall dented in, Hector didn¡¯t move. His condition unknown.
Ebony already moved right in front of the core golem with his greatsword slashing overhead, diagonally across. The golem straightened up and used the hand that was a headrest to grab onto his blade. Ebony thought he was imagining things when the veins on the golem¡¯s face formed a devilish grin.
Sonic Overlay or his gravity membrane didn¡¯t bother it. Ebony couldn¡¯t remove his greatsword from its vice grip. Ebony¡¯s ice mana was working to freeze its hand. The golem waited for the layer of frost to reach its elbow before its ¡®veins¡¯ pulsed with warm yellow light.
The layer of ice crumbled, Ebony felt his greatsword which was imbued with ice mana get intruded by a foreign mana.
¡°Move aside!¡±
Ebony shifted his body just in time for the spinning lance of stone to drill into the golem. It released his greatsword. He didn¡¯t miss the fact that the golem accurately grabbed onto the shaft of the stone lance but it wasn¡¯t enough. The lance pierced into its chest and the backrest of his throne was shattered, the golem struck flying back.
It didn¡¯t crash into the wall like Hector. Two legs slid and carved into the ground, stopping itself. Lance in hand. It got into stance.
Easily recognised as a javelin throw stance. Aimed at Tuffock, Ebony didn¡¯t have time to push Tuffock away in that fraction of a second. With only a single shield cast as of yet, he thought it was lucky he practised moving them as fast as possible. It should be strong enough despite not being fully compressed.
It stood in the path of the returned throw. The strong impact blew whatever air, dust and dead earthen-topaz golem parts there were in the straight walkway that peppered the walls,floor and ceiling. Ebony felt his shield break down the centre. The dust settled, Tuffock¡¯s stone lance was left in uneven pieces and fragments with Ebony¡¯s shield having large cracks and a huge dent.
Ebony imagined that his shield would likely be fully pierced if the stone lance was any tougher than it was.
The sound of Hector coughing echoed. The golem didn¡¯t attack them further, just standing there with the crooked glowing smile on its face.
Tuffock rushed to Hector but was pushed aside saying he was fine. His armour had a large chunk gone from the belly area.
¡°Guys. Leave this smug bastard to me.¡± Hector wiped the blood off his lips. None of them looked away from the golem as he spoke.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony sheathed his greatsword. Luckily, due to the layer of ice mana, it appeared relatively undamaged and there was no invasion of topaz.
¡°Wh..what? No..no. It¡¯s too strong¡ You got knocked unconscious before I could even blink.¡± Tuffock¡¯s tone deepened towards the end.
¡°Hey hey hey. I just didn¡¯t expect it to be so strong with the fist golems being so weak. I will show you my true power.¡± Hector looked offended but remained confident.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony agreed again.
¡°...Can¡¯t you sound or look more excited, interested or impressed? I¡¯m stronger than I look.¡±
¡°I know. I am very interested to see your true power.¡±
¡°...I can¡¯t take you seriously when it sounds like you¡¯re mocking me. I¡¯ve never heard such a dead tone when someone said ¡®very interested¡¯. Forget it. Just watch me destroy that golem.¡± Hector smashed his fist with power. Hair standing, skin colour darkening, a layer of earth on him while it reddens. His hair and skin sparked.
¡®So he can use lightning magic too?¡¯
Ebony was so used to being misunderstood. For some reason, people always thought he was ridiculing them when he was pretty serious. He has confirmed most of the elemental mana he sensed when he used the mana sensitivity potion. It was water, lightning and earth.
Still having no idea what the invisible, colourless elemental mana was. He couldn¡¯t sense that again without the effects of the potion so he can¡¯t confirm it. The other 3 elements were also pretty much too hard to grasp or even feel as of yet but he didn''t try too hard to manipulate them either. He had enough on his plate.
Chapter 59: Spiral Slope
¡®...Woah.¡¯
¡°I¡¯m impressed.¡± Ebony said.
The wall that trapped them was broken wide open. On the ground far up ahead was a mix of the earth that the wall was made of and pieces of the core golem. The only parts that could be differentiated were the parts with no longer glowing yellow veins.
¡
There was no reply from Hector. He fell forward. Fainted. Ebony caught him before he hit the ground.
The ¡®battle¡¯ ended extremely quickly. To describe it simply, Hector ora¡¯d the crap out of the core golem. Smashing it against the wall, crushing them into crumbs. Ebony personally felt that Hector was even faster than Scarlet, perhaps roughly equal to the fastest that he¡¯d seen Scarlet go.
His final punch and scream ¡®megaa paaaanch¡¯ was especially impressive. Ebony couldn¡¯t even tell what was going on in that attack. It was not his normal super panch that was ¡®just¡¯ a merging of physical forces to land at the same time.
The core golem tried to block and punch back when facing thousands and thousands of punches. Then Hector hit it with a super panch, sending it crashing into the back wall like how it kicked Hector. Hector continued with his barrage to push it further into the wall. The unresponsive golem gave Hector the chance for his mega panch. Blowing the entire golem and wall along with it, the debris flew on a long, long way forward.
It was like a tunnel boring machine went through this walkway. The entire 1 gir wide and tall walkway was widened a good margin for at least 3 girs or 15 metres long. Just the shockwave of the punch tore the earthen walkway apart.
Only then did Ebony realise that Scarlet and Ryley hadn''t broken the wall behind them, where they came from. What took them so long? With Scarlet there, even with double the number of golems attacking, she would have been here already.
¡®No¡did she have any mana left? Or even any stamina to fight? She, she was still injured, wasn''t she?¡¯
He handed Hector over to Tuffock and went back to the wall.
¡®Can I cut a wall apart? That¡¯s just so anime like.¡¯ Ebony thought. His sonic and gravity magic let his sword slash into the earth with more ease but the wall was incredibly tough. Ebony had to push through with Icebody Enhancement at full power and still had difficulty. That made Hector¡¯s feat even more incredible. He was looking forward to when he got as destructive of an attack as Hector and Scarlet. Although it might not really fit him.
It was a little weird that he didn¡¯t feel the heat he was expecting or maybe even an arrow flying towards him when he broke the wall.
Going through the hole big enough for a person to go through to see no signs of Scarlet or Ryley. There weren¡¯t even signs of battle. It was just like when they walked past this area.
¡®Did they turn back and return to the previous floor.¡¯
¡°This is pretty bad.¡± Tuffock said without a stutter. Ebony couldn¡¯t tell which Tuffock was talking, likely Tuffock 2 as he sounded so serious without a stutter.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°Noisy one got mana poisoning. And it¡¯s pretty severe. He has dislocated shoulders and elbows too. A few pulled muscles.¡±
Ebony had heard of mana poisoning from Fergus. It was one of the reasons he never just had Icebody Enhancement run all day long. The thing was that he had not gotten affected by it yet, at least not that he was aware of.
Basically, more mana than your body can handle. Elemental or not, it only changed the symptoms. The most common example was when mages used enhancement magic with normal, pure mana. Because mages had weak or low Constitution and high Intelligence, their body couldn¡¯t handle their own mana. The symptoms varied widely from person to person.
Hector¡¯s countenance was turning purple. His arms, feet and even his whole body jerked awkwardly from time to time.
¡°Is there nothing you can do about it?¡±
¡°Even if a healer was here, they probably can¡¯t do anything about it.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Mana poisoning isn¡¯t usually so severe. Warriors who use enhancement magic have low intelligence and strong bodies, they don¡¯t even have enough mana to use enhancement magic for long. Mages also don¡¯t fight with enhancement magic like the three of you crazies. I don¡¯t know how many elements he infused his own body with. And I thought he was the least crazy between the three of you. Fortunately, his body seems like it is capable of releasing his own mana. Perhaps it¡¯s the nature of his class, he probably won¡¯t die with the potion I fed him.¡±
¡°How long do you think he¡¯ll be out for?¡± Ebony was glad he didn¡¯t just let Hector kill himself by letting him show off.
¡°...I don¡¯t know. It could be anywhere from hours to a week. It really depends on his own body.¡±
¡°I see. I¡¯ll carry him on my shield, one second.¡± Ebony casted Layered Ice Carapace and got Tuffock to place Hector on it after he laid it horizontally. Hector¡¯s complexion was slowly turning less purple, the potion at work. It only healed his physical body and didn¡¯t help it handle mana at all so it wasn¡¯t all that effective. It was still better than nothing.
Ebony went ahead and popped Hector¡¯s joints in place. He was quite the expert at bone setting dislocations, setting his own many times till date. Hector¡¯s muscles would heal pretty quickly with the potions Tuffock managed to force feed.
¡°Scarlet and Ryley are gone as well.¡±
¡°What? Did they go back down?¡±
¡°Let¡¯s backtrack a little, do you have any tracking skills?¡±
¡°No. I¡¯m a damn stone mage, not a scout.¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll try looking. Stand back a bit.¡±
At least Ebony didn¡¯t have to deal with a nervous Tuffock that may or may not be panicking. Ebony himself was aware that he was telling himself to calm down. There were no signs of battle. That was the first good sign.
If they were ambushed by the same group of golems like the 3 of them had, he wasn¡¯t sure if Scarlet could take them down in her current mana, stamina and body state. He was worried.
Rather than using his eyes, he cast Frost Mist Perception Sphere. With his Perception skills, they were better than sight at close range. He sensed every nook and cranny of the walkway. It was hard to say if there was anything different since he didn¡¯t scrutinise everywhere he went.
It took some time since he never really trained his Tracking skill but he finally noticed something out of place.
There was a pretty deep, straight groove on the wall near the ground. Easily missed in the dim walkway. It ended abruptly where the wall met the floor.
¡°Tuffock, slam the wall hard. With a hammer or your stone hands, doesn¡¯t matter.¡± Ebony put his ears against the walls.
Tuffock didn¡¯t complain and did as Ebony asked.
Thank the wonderful power of stats that he wouldn¡¯t go deaf from this. He always had sensitive ears, they were his weak spot.
They repeated this a few times on both sides, near the groove. Then Ebony got Tuffock to pound the ground with his hammer. He had his ear against the floor, fully concentrated.
¡°Again. As hard as you can.¡±
The stone hammer slammed into the ground. Ebony had his senses focused on where the hammer landed.
¡°It¡¯s hollow. I think they fell. Start digging.¡± Ebony concluded.
It was thick but he was sure that there was space beneath the floor or fake floor. It was too bad his gravitational sense couldn¡¯t sense through thick walls. Ebony had wondered what the dungeon shovel he brought was for other than digging waste holes but it seemed to come in handy now.
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Surprised at how easily the shovel he bought dug into the ground. Obviously, he used Icebody Enhancement to speed things along. Tuffock had manipulated a giant shovel to do the same and even brought out a similar shovel that hung at the side of his bag. Ebony copied his idea, he cast another Layered Ice Carapace and got it to shovel as well.
Ebony suddenly remembered that they have callstones here and tried to contact Scarlet. He felt mana from the connected mana ores activate the callstone. He mentally picked Scarlet''s ¡®line¡¯ which could be felt with his mana and the mental connection started once mana poured into the ¡®line¡¯.
He couldn¡¯t sense mental mana so he didn¡¯t know where it went but he heard that people hired mental mages to trace and track lost people through this connection to the other party¡¯s callstone. However, once the connection started and they started speaking into it, he could feel the mana surrounding the mental ¡®thread¡¯ or ¡®line¡¯ of mana vibrate. He thought it would be possible to follow that thread through the surrounding mana vibrations.
Ebony clearly felt the connection when the callstone gave a soft ¡®pinging¡¯ sound. Scarlet didn¡¯t pick up. Neither did Ryley. They either ignored it, were too busy fighting to answer, were sleeping or unconscious. Or dead. Ebony didn¡¯t like any of the possibilities.
He sped up his digging. It was pretty weird. The shovel actually had an easier time stabbing into the ground than his Intelligence-powered shield.
They got deep enough to bury half of their body when the earth trembled a little, it was trying to fix itself.
Ebony didn¡¯t let it, he quickly conjured ice mana to freeze the ground where they already dug. It slowed the earth trying to get back together. They increased their rate of digging. The earth recovered and closed in on them quicker as well.
When the ground floor was above his head level, the ground broke. By the time they had a hole big enough for them on the ground, now the ceiling closed up.
Both of them immediately felt the difference between where they were previously and where they were now. The molten ground and walls and scorching heat told them who had been here. Ebony had gotten more used to intense heat but that didn¡¯t mean he liked it.
They were now in a¡walkway again. The only difference was that they were below the walkway they were in earlier and that the area was hot. There was a wall on one side but one didn¡¯t need tracking skills to know where Scarlet travelled.
It had been about an hour or less since their fight. She probably hasn''t recovered much mana yet. Let¡¯s say she had 300 points in Wisdom, her mana regeneration would be 300 mana per hour¡ having thought this made Ebony think how sad the normal mana regeneration rate was.
He got Tuffock to hop on the shield he casted for shovelling and sped down the walkway. Heat and molten earth didn¡¯t go on far. Ebony knew Scarlet was practically out of mana after their fight.
No dilemma there. There was only one direction to go. There were signs of battle that were slowly repaired.
Ebony didn¡¯t slow down but never appeared to have gotten closer. Sometimes, golems will stand in the way but there was no wall-closing trap. If there were a small number of golems he would just run past them, his shields carrying Tuffock and Hector flying above them.
They chased but always stop after some time, returning to where they came from. Tuffock provided fire support when he had to fight. Ebony¡¯s membrane kept topaz off him. There was no core golem showing up again. Normal golems couldn¡¯t even touch him.
He realised that the walkway was not really straight. If only slightly, it curved. It was also elevated by an almost unnoticeable amount. After travelling for almost an hour, Ebony estimated that he ran 6 to 7 full circles or laps. His Mental Map envisions it to be like a spiral coil walkway. One that was freaking enormous.
They tried calling Scarlet and Ryley multiple times to no avail. They were definitely within range as he could feel it connect but neither were picking up.
In Ebony¡¯s imagination, if the dungeon was a tower then this 4th floor was a spiral along the outer walls of the dungeon tower. With too much free time on his mind, he mental calculated some stuff. Like their speed of climbing up stairs from one floor to another, the time taken to do so. Estimating the distance or height of one floor and also the distance or height of the stairs from one floor to another.
It was inconclusive. The height of each floor was hard to estimate, only the mountain range was one where they climbed up. The 1st to the 2nd floor and 2nd to 3rd floor had a longer flight of stairs than when they went through from the 3rd floor to the 4th floor. So there was a chance each floor was about the same height.
Ebony then guessed that this walkway floor would have another 40 to 50 full laps before he reached the top. It was a much wider distance because, if he was right about running on the outer walls of a tower, then he was running along the circumference and not just straight up like climbing the mountain.
One thing that didn¡¯t make sense to him was that if that was true then the floor he broke through to get down here was just bringing them back to step one or wherever they came from. After running so many laps, he didn¡¯t encounter the area that Hector destroyed. There was also a chance that all of that had been repaired before he made it back there.
Another point was that after they came down the hole they dug, the back was just a wall and no stairs to the 3rd floor to be found.
¡®Wait. Was that wall one of the trap walls that the dungeon used to trap us¡¡¯ It was possible. Ebony wasn¡¯t going to run all the way back to confirm that.
If his deduction was right, he could just destroy the ceiling and he would be using a shortcut that can save many hours of running. Too bad it wasn¡¯t possible for him. The floor they dug was almost 2 metres thick. If it was normal earth, sure no problem. Dungeon magic nonsense? Ebony¡¯s running was probably a faster method, digging upwards was probably more difficult as well.
Ebony ran into a party once. He didn¡¯t recognise them, all 5 of them being level 100. Unevolved. They scowled and asked Ebony to stay back when he first saw them. They were harvesting the topaz limbs and fragments. They were not the most polite humans, dwarf and wolfman he had seen. Still, he asked if a masked lady swordswoman and an archer came through.
They were all sorts of rude. Shouting at him, telling him stuff like ¡®know your place¡¯ and ¡®why should we tell you?¡¯ like they owned the place. Even going so far as to stop them when he wanted to overtake them. Calling ¡®dibs¡¯ on the topaz golems.
Ebony couldn¡¯t be bothered with them. He easily stepped past them like they weren¡¯t there. They chased, only the archer and rogue even managed to see his back. He did not expect them to shoot at him, the walkway wasn¡¯t so narrow that he couldn¡¯t dodge.
The archer was even persistent enough to shoot at Tuffock and Hector. He didn¡¯t have time to show them who¡¯s boss, nor did he care enough to go back and bully them. Tuffock casted a stone wall that was pretty thin but covered almost the entire 5 by 5 walkway, to Tuffock and Elcra¡¯s measurement it would be 1 by 1. That wasn¡¯t the point though.
The two of them believed that that was the end of the drama but the archer¡¯s and rogue¡¯s persistence was commendable. The stone wall was destroyed and the acher sent multiple arrows at them.
¡°Tch! Trash must be removed after all.¡± Tuffock 2 started chanting. Ebony didn¡¯t find it necessary to stop him. It was only natural to attack back if they were attacked. He took care of helping Tuffock evade by shifting his shield around. It was easy to see the trajectory of their shots. They didn¡¯t have a mage either.
If it was Fergus, even the current Ebony didn¡¯t know if he could avoid the invisible arrows that could change directions. Well, maybe with a thick Frost Mist around he could easily feel where the arrows were. Being able to dodge them right after sensing them enter his mist was a different issue.
Could Ebony feel the gravitational waves of wind arrows? Probably not¡ he might be able to feel the vibrations they caused in the atmospheric mana though.
Ebony was wondering what took Tuffock so long as it had been almost a full 10 seconds.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Partial experience gained for assistance in killing [Stubborn Archer Lvl 100].¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Partial experience gained for assistance in killing [Swift Rogue Lvl 100].¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Partial experience gained for assistance in killing [Warrior Lvl 100].¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Partial experience gained for assistance in killing [Heavy Warrior Lvl 100].¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Partial experience gained for assistance in killing [Apprentice Shield Knight Lvl 100].¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Partial experience gained for assistance in killing [Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 100], enemy 10 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Partial experience gained for assistance in killing [Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 100], enemy 10 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level up 88 - 89, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Mana Meister level up 85 - 86, 1 Wisdom stat gained.¡¯
¡®...¡¯ Right after he thought that he was answered with a couple of notifications.
A huge burst of wind blew against Ebony as his control of the Layered Ice Carapace that Tuffock and Hector were on was tested. The shockwave from whatever spell Tuffock cast was strong enough to knock his shields forward, opposite of where Tuffock was aiming.
A glance back was enough to show Ebony that Tuffock unleashed a large barrage of not spikes but stone lances that polka-dotted the entire walkway with blood and debris. None of their bodies in one piece. The [Apprentice Shield Knight] which Ebony hasn¡¯t seen the ¡®knight¡¯ Class before had his entire body skewered into the ground with a thick stone lance through his chest and head. Well. Whatever was left of the mush his head had been pulverised into.
The other bodies were in a similar or worse state where none were in one piece. Dozens if not over a hundred of lances littered the walkway.
¡®How much mana would that take?¡¯ Was the first thought Ebony had. His second thought being, what to add his 10 additional stat points to. Only his third thought was about asking Tuffock why he had to go as far as to kill them all. The fourth was how he didn¡¯t feel a single bit guilty or sad over their deaths, his ¡®assistance¡¯ was merely dodging or helping Tuffock and Hector dodge a few arrows.
But if it was Ebony, he would only sentence the archer to death based on how he aimed to kill. The others¡ he would likely hold off killing them if they didn¡¯t have such intentions of harming or killing him.
All these were just tough words Ebony thought to himself. He had never killed anyone till date. Could he kill a person if it really came down to it? Ebony didn¡¯t doubt for a second that he would be able to. What was the difference between a monster trying to kill him and a person trying to do the same? Ebony couldn¡¯t see a difference.
Would he feel guilty after that? Who knows? Could he stay as calm as usual? Who knows? Even Ebony himself would not be sure till he actually kills a person. Somehow, he thought the day when he had to would come sooner or later.
Chapter 60: Rabble?
¡°Ebony! Stone mage! Hel¡¡±
¡°Get down!¡±
Ryley''s urgent call broke Ebony¡¯s line of thought on whether he would stay eerily calm if he killed a person.
Ebony heard Scarlet raising her voice for the first time over Ryley¡¯s call, cutting him off. Not willing or perhaps not bothered to ask Tuffock about his rash killings, he quickly sped up. The sound came from both their myriad bracelets. Hector¡¯s was pinging too but he didn¡¯t pick it up, unconscious and all.
Ebony has only gotten better and better at timing and manipulating Chaotic Repulsive Membrane to repel his entire body forward without losing balance or grip.
Both Scarlet and Ryley were faster than him, sure. However, he highly suspected Scarlet couldn¡¯t fight or even move at such high speeds for long. She didn¡¯t even have time to rest and recover. Her body enhancement skill heavily burdens her body. She couldn¡¯t hold up for many more fights. He also doubted he was any slower than Ryley with his increase in level and Agility.
Zooming down the walkway faster than the earthen-topaz golems could appear and stop them. Even if they were already standing in the way, he could either get Tuffock to prepare a spell or just run past them.
Ebony¡¯s grip on his greatsword tightened, he himself not realising the rising anxiety within him.
¡°Hey ice boy, slow down.¡±
¡°...no time.¡±
¡°You¡¯re panting.¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony slowed down.
Health: 389/500
Stamina: 83/500
Mana: 554/4710
¡®...ha. How pathetic of me. My Core Skill was a scam after all. Difficult to break mental state my ass.¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t even realise his Core Skill was no longer running. Always having a false sense of calmness. Just because he never really cared about anything. Including getting heavily injured or potentially killed. All those times he never felt like he would¡¯ve died was probably him not giving a shit whether he died there or not. Deep down, he probably thought that if he died then and there, then that was all he was worth or as long as he had deserved to live.
During his ¡®Trial¡¯ he probably didn¡¯t kill the bear. His parents left him, either disappointed with him or having given up on him. It was a thought Ebony had been dwelling on. He buried the thought long ago. Hiding it. Running away from it. The fact that, in the end, he was still a weak, weak child. Giving up on himself after his only family had done the same.
Stamina: 85/500
Stamina: 100/500
Stamina: 135/500
Stamina: 280/500
Stamina: 467/500
Stamina 500/500
That wasn¡¯t true anymore. At least, he had been striving to stay alive every moment since he got here. Hardly a moment has passed where he hasn¡¯t been trying to get stronger. Besides, whether his parents gave up on him or not or whether he failed their ¡®Trial¡¯ was all his guesswork. Paranoia.
With the suspicions of his arrival here, he could always ask them if he ever saw them again. As for looking for them? Nah. Too much effort, Ebony thought. They could find him if they were the reason he was brought, teleported or summoned here. If it was sheer coincidence and it was his mind playing games on him then looking for them would be a fool¡¯s errand anyway. It wasn¡¯t like he had any clues either so why bother?
Ebony had more important things to do.
¡®No need to panic. They¡¯re close by.¡¯ Ebony told himself.
The call came through, they were within range. Their battle where Hector smashed the evolved core golem didn¡¯t take long. Scarlet and Ryley were separated from them by a single wall, then fell into the hole in the ground that opened up. They were slowed down by digging the hole down, few attacks and the party that Tuffock massacred.
On the other hand, Scarlet was exhausted. They would similarly be slowed down by attacks, even if they were lucky and didn''t, they should not be much further unless there was some dungeon nonsense going on.
The call for help, Scarlet¡¯s shout and them not being able to pick up the call was concerning but that was all. Scarlet was stronger than Ebony, he didn¡¯t have the right to be worried about her in a fight with golems he could beat.
Despite the logical thinking, Ebony only sped up after he managed to calm down and regulate his breathing, heart rate and mental state. Reality was that they called for help and Scarlet had raised her voice.
Ebony didn¡¯t know whether to be happy or angry to be stopped by a wall in less than a minute. The familiar sounds of battle that penetrated the earthen wall was reassuring. The silence right after was not.
They walloped on the wall. Unsure if it was on purpose but Tuffock claimed to be low on mana. Ebony¡¯s greatsword with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and Sonic Overlay at full blast was slicing through the wall that his paranoia was telling him was thicker than the walls that separated them previously with some difficulty. Ebony¡¯s lack of explosive offensive skills irked him yet again.
Bang
Standing too close to the wall, he was knocked flying back by whatever impact destroyed the wall from the other side. He did manage to move the shields Tuffock and Hector were on so they avoided the crumbling debris. Ebony reacted quickly after noticing what flew through. He caught the thing that caused the wall that he was half-way through breaking.
The temperature rose slightly. Lukewarm.
¡°erghh.¡±
In his arms was Scarlet, she let out a soft cry. In one of her hands that held her longsword were her fingers barely grabbing onto Ryley¡¯s collar, who was sent crashing into the wall along with her. Scarlet probably took the hit for him.
Her soft cry of pain was registered resoundingly loud in Ebony¡¯s ears. The lukewarm temperature from where Scarlet fought due to her low mana pool blew at Ebony¡¯s face.
¡°You..you¡¯re here.¡± Scarlet wasn¡¯t knocked out cold.
¡°Mmm, I¡¯m here. Rest. I¡¯ll take care of the rabble.¡± Ebony rested Scarlet¡¯s back against the walkway but not before pulling the unconscious Ryley out of her grip and dropping him aside.
Tuffock had already started engaging the threat since Ebony was pushed back by the exploding wall that Scarlet crashed out from. Ebony didn¡¯t even notice him helping Hector down his shield already.
[Earthen-Topaz Core Golem Lvl 100]
[Earthen-Topaz Core Golem Lvl 100]
This was going to be tricky.
They were side by side. The one on the left had its right shoulder sliced all the way down to its chest, molten. It didn¡¯t seem to be repairing or recovering. The other one looked relatively unharmed. They may have a dent or scratch here and there but nothing major. Ebony was guessing those were where Ryley¡¯s arrow¡¯s ricocheted or bounced off.
There were perhaps a dozen or so broken golems with their topaz limbs around. A few were freshly destroyed or killed by Tuffock who decided that they were in the way. They did see the core golems outright catching Tuffock¡¯s spell, so he didn''t aim for the core golems.
The core golems weren¡¯t as relaxed as the ones that Hector pulverised. Barely giving Ebony time to move the 3 combatants who were down for the count.
Ebony had both his shields which were acting as hoverboards for his two party members to smash into the injured golem. The pointy end at the bottom aimed at its neck and hip, slicing through the air. The large cut in its shoulder didn¡¯t affect its movements much even though it didn''t recover itself like the mud golems. It timely grabbed both shields before they landed on its body.
Tuffock didn¡¯t let the opportunity go as he let his charging and spinning lance fire off while both the golem¡¯s hands were busy. It was Tuffock¡¯s Piercing Needle Lance.
The other golem glowed a warm dim light as it moved to punch the incoming lance. It backhanded, slapping Ebony¡¯s hastily casted Ice Sword to the side. Not expecting the shadow to spit out a shot right out of the centre of the stone lance, accelerating towards the injured golem.
The injured golem wasn¡¯t stunned just by catching the shields and used the upper one near its neck and slammed the metre-long needle down. Ebony didn¡¯t just let that happen, he resisted with his control over ice mana. The golem overpowered his control.
Perhaps a stroke of genius or perhaps, another one of Ebony¡¯s dumb thoughtless on the spot decision-making. Both his shields disassembled into individual scales. 2 five layered shields had more than enough scales to encase a human sized target. It defended the golem from the needle but kept the golem imprisoned.
Ebony, already fully enhanced with his usual enhancements and spells, had long taken a step, getting right by the golem who was punching the stone lance while his shields disassembled into an orb to trap the injured core golem.
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His bulky greatsword didn¡¯t hinder his movements despite the 5 by 5 metre walkway. Slashing down diagonally on the distracted golem. It had ridiculous reaction speed despite being in the midst of ridding the stone lance, seeing the needle shoot out from the lance and Ebony coming for it. It immediately gave up on helping its ally, seeing it quickly being encased and snapped its leg towards Ebony¡¯s slash.
The dull impact numbed Ebony¡¯s arms. He was knocked back along with his greatsword. Tuffock¡¯s Piercing Needle Lance¡¯s shell skidded against Ebony¡¯s scale orb. The small space in the walkway meant that Tuffock was not all that far away from the golems. The stone lance floated up and spun around, ¡®splattering¡¯ onto the golem¡¯s arms while it kicked Ebony away.
His reaction, casting and manipulation speed were inconceivable for a mage his level, and he didn¡¯t even have a Sub-Class.
Tuffock almost signature stone locks or weights around the golem¡¯s hand. It was redundant as the little bit of weight was nothing to the golem. It sort of clapped and shattered the locks. Ebony used this time to stabilise and ground his feet. Not a tiny bit embarrassed that he called them rabble.
A few earthen arms and legs broke out from the walls surrounding them. Reinforcements.
???
Meanwhile, Tuffock, who kept an eye on the frozen scale orb was secretly confused. The imprisoned golem was too silent. The first couple of seconds the orb was shaking and the scales pushed outwards, a couple of them unlatched from each other where the golem struggling to break free can be spotted before the scales forcefully pushed themselves back into place. The gaps opened up by the golem slowly decreased, and then the shaking and wobbling got less violent.
Tuffock watched as Ebony engaged the healthy golem. The core golem was level 100 but it already evolved. A single evolution it may be but the difference in strength between one that hasn¡¯t evolved and one that has was huge. A weak creature like the mud golem was hardly a good comparison.
Ebony¡¯s ice wasn¡¯t working well, the main reason being the toughness of this earthen-topaz golem. He couldn¡¯t drive ice mana into it. His gravity spell and vibration spell were insufficient to really break through its defences. The real reason is not just its toughness but its ability and trait of topaz magic. It was essentially enhancement magic. A humanoid monster that can use enhancement magic and fight like a human was rare. Very rare.
While Ebony¡¯s ice-imbued greatsword somewhat counters the topaz trying to destroy his weapon, it would be dangerous to get hit. Well, rather than counter, the ice mana merely took the place of his weapon to be taken apart. It would constantly eat into his mana but Tuffock had already gotten used to the fact that that would hardly be a problem for the madman.
Ebony was still badly disadvantaged. Being slower and weaker and his always working strategy of slowing his opponent down with ice mana. The layer of ice that forms on the core golem never stays for more than half a second before yellow topaz bursts out from it, removing it.
Tuffock watched as Ebony got punched and kicked around.
¡®He¡¯s really tough¡¡¯
Ebony¡¯s ability to multitask and cast was impressive. A single scale formed in between the fighters right before some attacks landed, protecting him from taking the full brunt of the damage. This was new, he must have just thought of it recently. The scales were just like his shields, just smaller but its cast speed was a lot faster. It seemed to form with a thought. It was obviously much weaker.
Tuffock didn¡¯t hear a single scream or shout from Ebony, he didn¡¯t even see Ebony flinch or even have a single facial muscle twitch. He did hear bones crack. It wasn¡¯t a very familiar sound of bones breaking, must have been because of his ice elemental enhancement that was compressed enough to have physical changes show up.
Tuffock was handling the 2 fist golems that appeared. They were relentlessly pushing him away from Ebony. As a mage without a vanguard, he had little choice but to get pushed back. Of course, he tried his best not to let them push him back to where Scarlet and the other¡¯s were resting. He cast a thin stone wall, separating the battle from his 3 party members. His usual anxiousness was absent.
He retrieved the stone that the core golem shattered and formed hundreds of tiny needles from behind the two fist golems. Piercing the air with a whistle and stabbing deep into the much softer golems. The golems didn¡¯t seem to notice as they jabbed and swung at Tuffock.
Tuffock lightly tapped the bottom of his staff on the ground. Two arm thick stone pillars rose from the ground, one of them straight and right beside Tuffock, blocking the wide swing from one of the fist golems. The other rose from in front of Tuffock at an angle and the fist golem coming for a punch from the front rammed its belly into the stone pillar that appeared. It was repelled back by both its own charging force and the sudden stabbing of a stone pillar from the ground.
The fist golem that swung at Tuffock had its attacking arm struggling to break free from the pillar that suddenly became flexible and wrapped around its arm like a snake. The stone pillar thinned and lengthened as thorns grew on it, stabbing into the golem that didn¡¯t feel pain. It jerked the golem forward and whipped it around, slamming it into the ground and wall over and over and over again.
Both golems also didn¡¯t notice their gradually stiffening body. Grey spots appeared throughout their body. The golem that was unable to resist being swung around and slammed like a rag doll crumbled into pieces after a short while. The other golem which was stiffening up was similarly smashed into pieces with a large stone mace.
¡°E..Ebony! I only ha..have enough mana for one last full powered spell.¡±
¡°...Just protect the others.¡±
¡®He¡¯s just enjoying the fight isn¡¯t he?¡¯
???
Droplets of icy cold sweat moistened the ground.
Ebony didn¡¯t have enough mana.
He was low on mana to begin with. Casting compressed Icebody Enhancement with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane, Sonic Overlay and Battle Song basically took up almost all of his regeneration. Not to mention the Ice Sword he casted together with Frost Injection.
The core golem was good. It wasn¡¯t just its strength and speed. It knew how to fight as well.
Without enough mana to cast Layered Ice Carapace Ebony, he could only cast small individual scales as he released his left hand from his greatsword. Running ice mana through his casting glove in a manner he had long familiarised himself with.
The walkway wasn¡¯t considered tight but his greatsword was both long and wide. Ebony showed admirable ease in swinging it around by moving his body and feet around but there was a limit to that too.
An earthen fist harder than steel rammed into his hastily conjured scale of ice. It shattered almost instantly, having no skill buff and uncompressed. The fist smashed into his gravity membrane, gravity mana pushing outwards enveloped the fist, unsuccessful at repelling it. It caved in and pushed into Ebony, sending him crashing into the side wall.
Ebony ¡®rebounded¡¯ with even more speed and momentum, not unlike slingshotting from a wrestling ring¡¯s ropes. Going back towards the earthen-topaz core golem as he continued his onslaught. His Chaotic Repulsive Membrane didn¡¯t let him touch the walls before repelling him away. The first few times it happened shocked Ebony as he bounced between the 2 walls like an idiot. Fortunately, even the core golem didn¡¯t expect him to move like that and it didn¡¯t manage to take advantage of that.
Ebony had been careful not to place himself in a position that would get him blasted backwards towards where Scarlet was. It limited his attacks a little but it was not much of a concern.
He had no choice but to keep the mana expended on Frost Injection low. It was just enough to counter the topaz that seems to eat and grow into whatever it touches. It didn¡¯t eat into anything limitlessly so that was a relief. But that meant that he hadn¡¯t gotten the core golem to weaken at all. The mana in his robe defended him from the topaz.
Ebony''s slashes and thrusts got faster and stronger, he was able to cut an inch or 2 deep into the respectable opponent that didn¡¯t go after his wounded allies.
Ebony would¡¯ve liked to have more mana for a compressed Frost Mist Perception Sphere as the area of effect was pretty nice but he didn¡¯t have leeway for that now. Anyway, he was pretty confident about his victory from the moment he started inflicting damage to the core golem.
Tuffock was done with the 2 fist golems that appeared but with only a little mana left it was better he conserved it to protect the others. There may be more monsters popping up anytime.
As for the core golem that Scarlet injured, that one wouldn¡¯t be a problem since its first couple of attempts to escape failed. Imprisoning it in an ¡®easy to escape from the inside¡¯ orb might not have been a stroke of genius but what came after was something Ebony was a little proud of coming up with. He could even consider this like one of the normal mages'' pre-prepared spells.
After forcing the individual scales shut, Ebony had the innermost layers to sort of dissolve into icy mist. With how damn much mana in every compressed scale it easily started to freeze the poor golem. But the golem was already pretty damn resilient to cold so it didn¡¯t do much. Once the golem didn¡¯t manage to break an opening in the orb, Ebony had another bright idea. It wasn¡¯t much of a secret but he didn¡¯t really want to go around showing his frostflames. It was mostly Gen¡¯s intentions and Ebony obliged.
With the orb completely encasing the golem, and the entire spell being made out of compressed ice mana, it was not too difficult to combust the ice mana inside it. Ebony was able to tell when the golem was completely frozen and unable to move, it was essentially a Frost Mist Perception Sphere inside the orb. It wasn¡¯t dead but he didn¡¯t want to waste the mana in the Layered Ice Carapace¡¯s scales.
From time to time the golem would break a limb or two free where Ebony would just combust some more ice mana. Ebony was guessing it was doing the glow from its body thing. Magic of some sort.
Seconds turned to minutes. Minutes turned to hours.
The glowing from the core golem gradually extinguished. Ebony was unable to completely cut down the monster. Momentum only brought him so far, the small space didn¡¯t help. Without excess mana, he could only break even and not lose to the core golem with his ability to evade. Ebony also slowly got down its attack pattern. The number of attacks he received decreased quickly over the course of the fight and he started to be able to block them, then deflect them and finally counter.
Scarlet and Ryley had already woken up long ago. They didn¡¯t join in to help, either because Ebony wanted to take it down or they weren¡¯t in the condition to help. All of them watched the repetitive battle. Tuffock and Ryley got bored watching after a good amount of time passed but Scarlet never looked away.
Ebony couldn¡¯t survive many hits. She noticed a scratch of yellow topaz on the edge of Ebony¡¯s robes partway through the long exchange. He never got hit after that. But he also landed fewer attacks, getting more cautious.
The battle consisted of Ebony dodging most of the time but it was an intense exchange in Scarlet¡¯s eyes. She didn¡¯t know why, they were moving so slowly. Why did she think it was intense? Why did every narrow dodge cause her hands to move towards her swords? Why did a ball of lightning mana condense in her body, ready to pulsate anytime? Scarlet didn¡¯t know but she could feel how calm Ebony was and it wasn¡¯t just his facial expression or undisrupted heartbeat. It was infectious.
So she did what she wanted to. She took her cooking tools and ingredients out. Hungry.
Of course, Ebony wasn¡¯t getting any of her food. She would have slain the disgusting golems in minutes if she wasn¡¯t so tired from fighting him that raising her arms hurt. She didn¡¯t even have enough mana.
As luck would have it, Scarlet was glad she didn¡¯t have to fight the golems. They were inedible. Not even considered an ingredient to her Combat Chef Profession or more accurately, her skill. Nothing in the dungeon should be eaten anyway, those uneducated Imperials didn¡¯t even know such common sense. Sadly.
Scarlet softly hummed along with Ebony¡¯s soft tune. It was originally pretty noisy, his music reverberating through the very ground yet, silent enough that it wouldn¡¯t attract anything from far away. It slowly mellowed out to a soft tune when he got the hang of the dirty monster¡¯s attack pattern. Fighting Ebony was infuriating but watching him fight was kinda relaxing. It was so¡rhythmic. Soothing.
Was what Scarlet thought as she cleaved off the head of an unknown creature in a single chop. Scarlet is extremely irritable now, she kept blaming her Core Skill. It started many hours back, after they slaughtered thousands of bears, kobolds and leopards. She originally forced her Core Skill to lower in intensity with her newer Blood Mana Manipulation after she felt her veins rupturing. It hurt so much she almost cried out.
Then they survived the fight and she wondered if the thousands upon thousands of monsters were what her grandma was talking about. Doubtful. They didn¡¯t have to fight all of them, they could likely just run past them. At least she could.
Then Scarlet remembered what Ebony did. Her face under her mask flushed. Her heart raced. She couldn¡¯t even hum or hear the music in the background anymore but her hands and kitchen knife didn¡¯t stop.
¡®Useless Core Skill! Why can¡¯t I control it?¡¯
Chapter 61: Rest
Turning the clock back, hours ago. It was pitch black, dark and cold. Silent till a pinging sound echoed in the enclosed darkness.
¡°Tewa. Report.¡±
¡°Boss Hard! You¡¯re in Ordina?¡± Tewa spoke into his myriad bracelet.
¡°...¡±
¡°Ye..yes boss Hard. Ordina is a lot stronger than we originally thought it was. Of 26 parties, 9 of them are uncontactable, 8 confirmed wiped out, the last is presumed dead. All 45 of them were under level 100. Throughout the other parties, we have another 8 deaths for a total of 53 dead. 16 full parties remain¡¡± Tewa gave the latest count of their members.
¡°The dungeon layout.¡±
Tewa went on to give a detailed rundown of the areas they have explored.
Ordina should take a short 10 or 20 years before it grows into a complete Uncommon-ranked dungeon. Already beyond the majority¡¯s expectations.
The first floor is just a wide open grassland. Monsters in the 80s range. Tewa already has multiple confirmed routes to the second floor.
All those low level parties in the 60s and above level range would have little chance of exploring deep into the dungeon but the first floor was an excellent place to start for them. As long as their party composition, teamwork and whatnot was decent it was possible to hunt sustainably.
Natural, wild monsters weren¡¯t unlimited. It also took more time to find a monster outside compared to in a dungeon. The dungeon practically confirms the level range of the monster one expects to fight, unlike the wild as well.
Dungeons didn¡¯t just spawn monsters. They spawned experience for people. People wouldn¡¯t have been so crazy about it otherwise.
The second is a plain old forest. High 80s to low 90s. So far, the pillar in the centre is the only known route to the third floor.
The third floor is a considerably rough and steep range of mountains. The first death was reported on this floor. 90s to 100. Unevolved. Multiple mountains have caves in which have stairs that lead to the fourth floor.
The fourth floor is a cavernous river¡ the dungeon¡¯s wacky floors started here according to Tewa¡¯s report. The river had a rapid and violent flow. It flows down a slight slope. In the river were numerous square white platforms that moved against the river flow, upstream. It would sink after a certain amount of weight, 2 moderately armoured humans could fit without causing it to sink.
Riding the platforms would bring them to the end of the river. The end or perhaps, start of the river was water flowing from a hole in the wall. The platforms would start floating into the sky, all the way to the fifth floor. The white platforms were actually perfect cubes.
Anyone who fell into the river got flushed down. Quite a few of their members died falling in. There were monsters in the river as well but getting flushed down to what Tewa said to be empty space gave those that survived the monsters little chance of survival.
Level 100. Unevolved.
The fifth floor was weirder. They floated on the white cubes into a pure white space, the only other colour being the river below them. And, when they got close enough to the top they could see the next floor. In this space, there were hundreds of thousands of the exact same white cubes. Many continued floating upwards, some stayed so still it could carry 5 people without even shaking. On the sides were those cubes that floated down. Perhaps to go back to the fourth floor¡¯s river to float upwards.
Some white cubes had monsters popping out after stepping on them. Some were monsters themselves. Some had weapons, armour or obviously other parties¡¯ bags and belongings. 2 of their parties got some pretty valuable materials by luck.
It was easy to fall off. All the way down to the gushing, turbulent river below. The cubes were only ? of a gir by ? of a gir after all, so no one was silly enough to really try fitting 5 people in one. One of their few mages slipped and fell and no one could catch him in time. Pity.
The Cube Mimics were the first evolved level 100 monsters spotted.
Jumping off the cubes when they reached near the top brought them to the sixth floor. It was walled around them so there was only one way forward after hopping onto the sixth floor.
Moving a short distance allowed them to see a waterfall that fell into the ground without making a puddle or splash, much less a lake. They guessed it somehow connected to the river on the fourth fall. Perhaps flowing behind the white space which was the fifth floor.
The waterfall was in the centre of a rocky cliff. The rocky cliff was impossible to climb for any of them. Even Tewa and his party. Rockscale Ogres didn''t just have scales of rocks but they scaled the cliff on all fours like flatland. They even camouflaged on the cliff by staying still and keeping their body close to the cliff.
All of them were stumped here for a few days. Unlike their early rush up the previous few levels to get to the point where monsters were 30 levels above their own. Which in all honesty, Tewa thought to be an impossible mark to start hunting. But he didn¡¯t dare say that. Still, he didn¡¯t push his men to their deaths just because his bosses made an unreasonable request. He kept that a little secret from his bosses, not expecting his bosses to actually come into Ordina. There was no other way they could have contacted him otherwise.
The Rockscale Ogres went up to level 115 while the Climber Glaivefin Anabas went up to 110. Tewa ordered most of the remaining parties to remain and hunt on this floor.
The elite teams, basically all those who evolved to Master class. His party which was the strongest, the 5 people in the 110s, and another 2 parties with the freshly evolved, the remaining one being the unevolved level 100.
The seventh floor was a canyon. The monsters¡¯ level range widened up here, from 105 to 135. Tewa left the 3 weaker parties to explore here while his own party moved on to the eighth floor. There was nothing too special on this floor from what he could tell. It was just a load of dangerous monsters.
Tewa¡¯s party had only just arrived on the eighth floor, which was a desert, when his bosses contacted him.
¡°Eighth floor and the monsters have reached 140 or so. 53 dead, 80 remain. Tewa, you went easy on them. Forget it, I expected too much from a bunch without much proper training. How goes the behaviour of Ordina?¡±
¡°I say we¡¯re about 70 to 80% confident of bending it to our usual plans.¡±
¡°Did you not clean up your tracks on the third floor?¡±
¡°No! Of course we did. What are you talking about boss Hard?¡±
¡°The immense number of monsters on the largest mountain.¡±
¡°?? Wasn¡¯t that just an illusion? Some of us went there but aren¡¯t there multiple caves on that mountain that lead to the fourth floor?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°We didn¡¯t do anything that would attract such attention from the dungeon on the third floor. Or any floor as of yet. When we arrived on the third floor on the first few days we didn¡¯t encounter a large group of monsters.¡±
¡°How many others are there where you are?¡±
¡°Our party should be the only few if not only party on the eighth floor. We rushed all the way here in a few days. I don¡¯t think there are any other parties in our level range here anyway. The previous few floors had a couple more active parties in the region, I even saw Panic Attack on the seventh floor but we stayed hidden. Oh, one of our men also saw one of Plainston¡¯s escort teams. There was one party ahead of us in the beginning. They had a really strong water mage but I have never seen or heard of him or their party. They disappeared as well.¡±
¡°...alright. Don¡¯t touch anyone else, we need to lay low. Stay on the eighth floor, get the men to slowly convene on that floor but spread out. A week, maybe 2. I¡¯ll contact you when they get close.¡±
¡°Boss Hard, we¡¯re doing that on this floor?¡±
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¡°Yes, those monster levels should be enough. Prepare a thr¡no, at least five hundred.¡±
¡°FIVE HUNDRED!?¡±
¡°...no less than five hundred.¡±
¡°ELL! He hung up! Ged, Lalt, contact the guys! Get them to come up, we got work to do. Boss''s orders.¡±
???
¡°Th..Thanks for the food.¡± Tuffock looked towards his feet as he gave a light bow to Scarlet.
¡°Appreciated.¡± Ryley didn¡¯t mention it but he meant both saving his ass as well as preparing their meals.
¡°Let¡¯s rest for the day. I¡¯m tired. He¡¯s still out cold too.¡± Scarlet pointed to Hector.
Ebony was still fighting it out with the core golem. He was having fun. Sadly, the golem began to slow down and frost covered its body. His greatsword digging deep. The golem¡¯s yellow glow non-existent. He snapped out a front thrust with his feet. The core golem smashed into the corridor wall, its frost covered chest shattered. The ice didn¡¯t manage to sink deep into it.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Earthen-Topaz Core Golem Lvl 100], enemy 10 levels or more above your own. Partial experience is gained. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
The moment of truth. He walked over the broken debris towards his scale orb. It slowly unravelled and reformed into his Layered Ice Carapace albeit smaller, revealing the ice sculpture within. It still had its dim yellow glow.
This orb imprison could work. His shields had more than enough mana in them. It could hide his flames of frost. Something like a golem may not die so easily from cold but it wasn¡¯t true for all monsters. Besides, there were many other things he could do to the trapped target.
The few problems include; cast speed. He had to control his shields to separate and even change their shape to fit into an orb, which was the simplest to do from the already curved scales. The monsters wouldn¡¯t stay still unless he interrupted them either. Then there was the size of the target to take into account. It didn¡¯t seem like a big problem from most of what he had encountered but it was a reasonable concern.
Trying to familiarise himself till it became a skill might be worth it.
Ebony stared at the deep and clean cut it had on its shoulders. Incredible. He lightly swung to remove its head. Crushing it part by part till he received the kill notification. He didn¡¯t gain a single level but his skill levels did rise a bit.
The one completely frozen deep throughout its body didn¡¯t have anything left to salvage but the first one he killed still had a pretty intact yellow gem the size of a baby¡¯s fist. It was just Identified as [Earthen Topaz] and nothing more.
The scent of deliciousness had wafted towards him a short while back. It might have something to do with how he sped up his fight. Scarlet sure was relaxed to cook right where she was.
He returned to see Tuffock and Ryley eating. Scarlet in her tent that she bothered setting up. Hector was still lying unconscious. His complexion much better and his breathing controlled. He looked fine already.
The biggest problem was that there was no food for Ebony. Tuffock and Ryley shifted their bodies to hide their food as they gobbled them up faster. Neither was willing to let him have any food after Scarlet¡¯s threat.
Having no choice, he chewed on dried jerky and biscuits. Bread was only there to stuff himself full. At least the biscuits had more flavour from the dried fruits. The jerky was not that bad either. But comparatively¡
Ebony and Scarlet ended their previous conversation awkwardly. He didn¡¯t know how to break the ice either but he didn¡¯t bother with that much. She acted weirdly and didn¡¯t let him eat her food even before they fought so seriously. Right after they had each other¡¯s back against the horde of monsters. Just what went wrong?
They discussed their hours for taking watch. In groups of 2s due to their location, golems could just pop up from anywhere. Taking 6 hour shifts instead of 2. Scarlet was within listening distance in her tent. The others couldn¡¯t see but Ebony could feel that she was eating throughout their talk. She was rubbing salt on his wounds without her knowledge.
Ryley would be with Ebony while Scarlet with Tuffock.
Ebony and Ryley stayed up first. They set up camp right in the centre of the dark cave-like corridor. Each took one side with the camp behind them. Having to stay alert if anything pops ahead, behind or beside them. They had to stay close since it would be pretty bad if anything came out from the walls.
For some reason, Ebony felt sleepy. He didn¡¯t mind. It felt more natural, he didn¡¯t want to go days on end without sleeping just to try and tire himself out. Maybe it had to do with his mindset. He felt the changes to himself from the latest evolution of his Core Skill.
He went and took a short walk till Scarlet¡¯s tent was out of his sense¡¯s range after his pathetic meal. Ebony couldn¡¯t really turn down his Vibrational Gravity Sense as well anymore. He probably still could if he really tried. Scarlet was once again stripping down, to wipe herself down. He couldn¡¯t help but feel like he would be peeking if he stayed. She did look at his bathtub with weird eyes whenever she helped with his Heat Resistance training. Jealous, there was absolutely no way she could take a bath here in the dungeon.
Ebony returned to sense her lying down, unmoving except for the rise and fall of her chest. Since the first day, he had noticed that she had a lump of ice mana inside her tent. She hugged it to sleep, likely a bolster or something. Whatever or wherever that came from, he didn¡¯t know but she sure was living comfortably in a dungeon.
Ebony sat crossed legged with his eyes closed and meditated. Still incredibly perceptive of his surroundings but in a state of rest. His mana takes less than half an hour to fully regenerate. Channelling mana to his robe till it couldn¡¯t take in anymore. Repairing and refilling his Layered Ice Carapace, even casting another. More backup ice mana to use at any time was getting more essential as the monster¡¯s level rose. It didn¡¯t take nearly as much mana to manipulate or control them than to actually conjure it. No wonder the environmental mana affects the strength or output of a mage.
Each 5 layered shields which could be compressed by 275% with his Mana Compression or 550% with his Mana Compressibility contained 12187.5 mana. Every scale it was made of had hundreds of mana in them. He wasn¡¯t sure how Ice Mana Efficiency played a part in the calculations here. Was it actually over 24000 ice mana if he really took it into account? Ebony needed to study more to be sure.
With a 10126.5 MP/hour regeneration rate, Ebony repaired the 2 half broken or used shields. Filled his 5000 mana robe. Casted 3 more fully compressed 5 Layered Ice Carapace and still had some mana to spare with his full mana pool in the six hours.
Ebony didn¡¯t want to do anything too tiring so he only played around with his excess mana to try to form a bicycle made of ice. It was fun enough for a pastime. He tried to remember all the parts but he was no expert on bicycles.
Ice also stuck to ice. The wheels and chain would stick and couldn¡¯t turn either. Some parts like the pedal made too thin would easily break if uncompressed as well. Unfeasible for others to use, but with Ice Mana Control he could still play around with it to move it. Just much slower than his own speed.
As a ¡®relaxing¡¯ pastime he made his human ice sculpture to ¡®ride¡¯ the bicycle. It was mind-crunching, like programming an AI with too many parts to move at the same time. Great training for Ice Mana Control.
Even though they didn¡¯t move far away from where they killed the 2 core golems, there was no attack in his entire six hour shift. Surprisingly.
But more surprising was that he fell asleep for the full six hours he was supposed to rest. He massaged his sore muscles before he went to sleep and it did its magic. It was like he was so at ease now. Uncaring for the dangers of the dungeon.
Fortunately, he remembered to fit his Blue and Greens in his myriad bracelet. He didn¡¯t fill up any of them till now since he kept emptying out his mana and didn¡¯t sleep.
His shields didn¡¯t melt much but he patched them up anyhow. Ebony decided to continue Magnified Gravity Field practice with his mana. The slightly increasing levels of gravity as they climbed the dungeon tower had been bearing down on their bodies. Another reason why it was more tiring fighting and moving around so why not increase that further and make his party think it was all the dungeon¡¯s doing? Ebony¡¯s current skill level was low and it should not be easily noticeable.
Ebony watched Scarlet cook and the others eat while he munched on his dry rations. They chatted on what happened the day before.
After the wall separated them, on Scarlet¡¯s side. The floor also opened up immediately, Scarlet stabbed the wall too late to stop her fall. They didn¡¯t panic seeing the ground below them so close but the floor or now ceiling closed up. A few golems attacked them but nothing unmanageable for them.
Similarly, they also thought there was only one way to move and that they did. They didn¡¯t face any attacks other than the one with 2 core golems with multiple of the other types.
Scarlet knew she didn¡¯t have much energy or mana left so she did it her usual way and wanted to take them down as fast as possible. She blasted off to meet both of them, only catching one of them off guard and slicing it shoulder. They didn¡¯t say much about how the fight went so he could only guess.
The other riff-raff was likely handled by Ryley and he got attacked by one of the core golems which Scarlet protected him from.
All of them packed up and were ready to get on the move when Hector stirred awake.
¡°HAAAHH!¡± Hector shot right up and shouted at the top of his lungs. Looking around confused when his party looked at him annoyed.
¡°Keep quiet.¡± Ebony said.
¡°Ar..are you feeling al..alright?¡± Tuffock asked as he checked Hector¡¯s body. His diagnostic measures weird. Tapping two fingers across Hector¡¯s body, muscles and bones. Testing for his reactions while asking him how much he felt.
¡°Hahahahaha! So how was my punch? Strong right? Now you believe I can shatter that disgusting shield of yours don¡¯t you, Ebony?¡± Hector seemed to ignore the fact that he was out cold. As hearty and energetic as usual.
Ebony replied by shifting all 5 of his shields into Hector¡¯s sight. His expression made Ebony¡¯s day already. It was hard to move so many of them around in this walkway. Ebony took the front as they set off again.
¡®Wait. They didn¡¯t mention passing by that party that chased us.¡¯ Ebony thought. But he didn¡¯t care enough to bring up dead men.
Neither Scarlet nor Ryley seem like the type to be concerned enough to say that they passed by some random party they didn¡¯t know. And so, just like many bothersome things, Ebony chucked the thought aside. He was too lazy to ask why Tuffock did what he did. It wasn¡¯t like they would revive because he found out his reason. There wasn¡¯t even a need for Tuffock to have a reason. Dead means dead.
Chapter 62: Trap or Treasure
¡°The Earthen-Topaz Core Golems are likely elite monsters. There shouldn¡¯t be too many of them in this baby dungeon.¡± Hector commented.
¡°We..we already en...encountered three of them.¡± Tuffock rebuked.
¡°...Crap. How long was I out for?¡± Hector was always so easily surprised or shocked when his expectations were wrong.
¡°Less than a day.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Ar..are you really feeling okay to move around? Ma..mana poisoning is pretty serious, yo..your symptoms were even worse than what I¡¯ve heard.¡± Tuffock asked with concern. Mana poisoning was not exactly rare but it wasn¡¯t common so Tuffock hasn¡¯t really seen anyone affected by it. Hector even showed symptoms that were beyond the common ones.
¡°Don¡¯t worry Tuff. I¡¯m used to it, I¡¯ve got pretty high resistance. Being an enhancement mage and all. I overdid it a little but I¡¯m just sore all over now. Nothing that can stop me from continuing.¡± Hector reassured as he patted Tuffock¡¯s back. The loud smacks are due to Tuffock knowing Hector well enough to thicken his stone armour near his back.
The party had a boring journey forward. They were more cautious now and also lazier to rush forward. It was a painfully slow speed but even Scarlet didn¡¯t complain. It was just at about a normal human¡¯s running speed. Excruciatingly slow.
They could go on for hours without spotting a single golem. Unusual.
The long corridor didn¡¯t even have any traps. If you didn¡¯t count the first one.
¡°What kinda crap dungeon floor is this? It¡¯s so boring!¡±
An entire day passed with them going on the seemingly endless walkway. Only meeting two groups of ten or so golems, none were the core golems that Scarlet wanted to slice apart so badly.
¡°Let¡¯s go faster tomorrow.¡± Scarlet affirmed. Throwing caution to the wind. It had been a really boring day for them.
Another 5 days later.
¡°Where is this even leading? Are we stuck in a loop?¡± Hector complained for the umpteenth time.
All of them fully recovered from any injuries sustained. Tuffock did complain about feeling heavier and heavier and he had been having difficulties with raising his staff fast enough. Even Ebony¡¯s shields have been getting hard to mentally move around. At least he was getting very familiar with moving around so many spells at the same time.
Ebony had been keeping quiet about the fact that he was actually the one making things more difficult for them. It was training for them too, he told himself. Magnified Gravity Field being the skill that has improved the most the past 6 days. His Sub-Class levelled once to level 82.
They increased their travel pace every day but the only thing that changed was the monster encounter rate which was actually also because they travelled faster. It just went on and on. They travelled 16 to 18 hours a day. It was not easy on any of them. Reaching their highest pace which was half of Ebony¡¯s top speed. It was a reasonable speed for Hector and also Ebony''s maximum speed that he could move his massive shields with Tuffock on one of them. A good pace for Scarlet and Ryley to not run for speed but distance for stamina conservation.
Ebony slept like he should. Only for 3 hours a day, it was more than enough but necessary. He made sure he had enough mana ores to charge. His own wasn¡¯t enough. He tried to empty them out as fast as possible by using a lot of water for all their cleaning, washing and drinking. He resorted to borrowing empty Greens from Hector and returning him filled ones in the morning.
Hector only stood to gain from this but he didn¡¯t ask because Greens were hardly worth anything to him. His pair of gauntlets alone cost dozens of Blues and his entire armour cost about another dozen or so Blues. He might have asked for his gauntlets to be extra durable but it was only expected considering how he fought.
Hector found it a miracle that Ebony was using such a low quality greatsword. What could he do if he had something of a quality more aligned with his equipment? Or even better, Scarlet¡¯s. Well, she also wasn¡¯t carrying anything better than what he¡¯d seen or had but didn¡¯t want to bring out.
Ebony had gotten pretty good at controlling an ice sculpture of himself. He could make it walk, jog, run, jump and swing his Ice Sword which was actually a copy of his greatsword in dimensions. He controlled it to practise his very own swordsmanship. It gave him a lot of inspiration. Both watch it from another perspective and mentally control every single micro action of the sculpture. All at an average human¡¯s speed so it couldn¡¯t be used to assist in battle. One step at a time.
All of that was not important to him now. Ebony was facing his greatest crisis since they entered Ordina.
He only had enough dry rations for 2 meals. More if he stretched them thin. He didn¡¯t exert a lot of energy or stamina the past few days and he had been trying to ration it but he had underestimated how much he ate.
There was not much space here but they had tried to continue their short spars. After the serious fight between Ebony and Scarlet, they had not spared against each other again.
Spars with Hector and Tuffock went as usual. Hector kicked things up a notch. Tuffock seemed to do the same, slightly surprising Ebony with the smoothness of his manipulation over stone. Ryley sparred with Ebony in close combat.
Ryley used a single curved dagger on the larger side. He wasn¡¯t exactly bad with it. Ebony could tell Ryley had trained with it. He had the stances, the strikes and even the timing of when to attack and when not to. Obviously having learnt some techniques with it. He was just a little stiff with it, using techniques that he trained hard at copying but was inflexible at abrupt changes mid-battle. His footwork and ability to read the flow of combat was also a little stiff.
Ebony had tried giving comments and advice but he wasn¡¯t sure if Ryley was actually listening to him. Ryley didn¡¯t improve all that much in close combat. Even losing to Tuffock. Tuffock had way more flexibility in spell manipulation than a mage his age suggested or so Hector told Ebony. Even better than Ebony but that was no surprise seeing how he was relatively new to magic.
The party had noticed the awkwardness between him and Scarlet for some time now. It didn¡¯t take a genius when she didn¡¯t cook for him for so long. Scarlet never spoke much to them but it was getting too obvious that she wasn¡¯t talking to Ebony anymore either.
This was a matter of life and death if he didn¡¯t have any food. Delicious food.
Being the man of action he was, Ebony had asked Scarlet to spar every day. She didn¡¯t reply but the surroundings always got hotter. Baking them up. He didn¡¯t complain or cool the area with ice magic. But Hector complained and complained. The dungeon was hot enough that they were slick with sweat and covered in grime every day.
Hector came forward and nudged Ebony as they moved along the endless walkway.
¡°Come on, this is really getting annoying and awkward. Just what happened between the two of you? I¡¯ll help you with what I can.¡± Hector whispered almost inaudibly.
¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Ebony spoke in his regular voice. Silencing the conversation between the two so that he didn¡¯t have to whisper. Hector was quick on the uptake since it wasn¡¯t the first time he had done it. Hector always thought it was a pretty nifty trick. Useful in many ways.
¡°What do you mean you don¡¯t know? Just tell me when it started getting awkward and what happened right before.¡±
¡°...We slaughtered a mountain choke full of monsters together. I thought it was going pretty well. I had her back. She had mine. We couldn¡¯t move so we rested for a short while. Then she punched me really, really hard. Harder than your mega punch or whatever lousy punch you call it. We went back to the cave and she didn¡¯t want to cook for me anymore.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t see a reason not to share. Perhaps another perspective on things would be good. He was never familiar with the specimen known as women anyway. He just couldn¡¯t help but throw a jab at Hector since it was always funny to see his expressions.
¡°What. Did. You. Say.¡± Truly he didn¡¯t disappoint and gave a couple dozen punches straight to Ebony who dodged. Both knew it was just a joke. The strong wind pressure said otherwise.
¡°That can¡¯t be all. There must be more.¡± Hector continued after his outrage, emphasising it was his ¡®Mega Panch¡¯.
¡°We got to the foggy part of the mountain where you hilariously punched at nothing. She stayed still for a while before trying to kill Tuffock so I brought Tuffock down hoping she would snap awake or not follow once we were out of the fog.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think to tell the others but since Hector asked and he didn¡¯t really think there was a need to hide it he just told Hector.
¡°Wait what? Okay okay, go on.¡± Hector interrupted, shocked by the second part of the sentence but remembered that it was not impossible due to the nature of the fog. He didn¡¯t even pick on the first sentence.
¡°Scarlet being Scarlet, she was too fast so I left Tuffock in that ice orb while I distracted her. She wasn¡¯t under the fog¡¯s effect like I assumed??. Then we fought a little seriously. I lost as expected. Then you came. She said something about it either being Tuffock¡¯s death or ours. I said I thought she was more than that.¡± Ebony summarised as best as he could.
¡°...¡± Perhaps he was computing what Ebony said but Hector was silent for a long time. He then said "I see.¡± before backing off to where he was walking. In their formation.
¡®What now?¡¯ Ebony thought.
Hector just left him hanging like that. Did Ebony say too much? No, he didn¡¯t think so and he didn¡¯t regret saying what he said either.
Scarlet never tried to kill Tuffock or give off any intention to kill him anymore. She was acting like normal again except towards him. Ebony thought what he said had changed her mind. It wasn¡¯t meant to diss her or anything like that. He didn¡¯t think it was enough to harm their relationship.
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Being honest to each other, saying both the good and the bad things but still being able to maintain friendly relationships was important to Ebony. It would strengthen trust if they were over it, if not then that¡¯s all their relationship amounted to anyway.
So Ebony never apologised. He didn¡¯t think there was anything to apologise for. But she acted funny and didn¡¯t cook for him even before she tried to kill Tuffock so he was thinking that she was avoiding him for something else he did. As for what? She didn¡¯t say and neither did she reply to Ebony when he tried to start a conversation or ask what he did.
Their almost uneventful journey continued.
It didn¡¯t take long before something new finally happened. Ebony, who was up front, stopped abruptly.
¡°Golems?¡± Ryley asked. He was confused since he didn¡¯t sense any ahead of them and he was always the first to spot them unless the golems climbed out of the floor, walls or ceiling.
Ebony brought them and backed up a couple of dozen steps. Touching the wall on their left.
¡°Hector, does this part of the wall feel thinner?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Damn, I¡¯m not all that great at elemental sensing. I¡¯ll try.¡± Hector shut his eyes with both palms on the wall. He was never too great with elemental mana perception. It was partly why he went for an enhancement route rather than a pure spell slinging mage. That, and he liked to punch things.
The true problem being his extreme sensitivity to the elements. He took years to learn to shut off senses that would¡¯ve been another person¡¯s greatest blessing. He would be blind and deaf to everything else if he let his senses run free.
Ebony on the other hand felt that the gravitational waves coming from this particular section of the wall were a lot weaker. He had wondered why he asked Hector to sense it since Hector didn¡¯t even try for 3 seconds before getting fed up and giving the wall a quick but furious jab.
The wall collapsed pretty easily, revealing another path forward. It was apparent to all of them that it was brighter up ahead. Ebony could hear what he assumed to be flowing water as well. They were all alert, getting back into formation. Tuffock hopped off and readied his staff, Ryley readied a metal arrow near his bowstring and Ebony got his shields in position. Hector grinned, excited to finally see a change after the repetitive walkway. Scarlet was always ready.
The path was even narrower. Ebony would likely be unable to swing his greatsword in there. They took their time and walked towards the light. It was a straight path. The deafening sound of water ramming into something resounded louder as they got closer.
Their sight widened up for the first time in days.
Ebony saw a round lake, it was only about 5 girs or 25 metres in diameter. Looking up there was a perfectly cylindrical fall of water constantly ¡®ramming¡¯ into the lake. Not a single splash or ripple in the lake. He also couldn¡¯t see where the water was coming from.
In the centre of the lake where the water was falling onto was a spot of land with grass. Within the cylindrical waterfall, on the small patch of land was a spotless bright white cube.
The lake was just a few steps away from the path they exited. Ebony marvelled at the sight, making sure that his Mental Map was doing its job.
They looked around. There was no other exit or entrance. There was nothing else in here but the lake, waterfall and white cube. Above them were just the walls around them and further up was the ceiling, the waterfall coming through a hole in the ceiling.
There were no monsters. The water was clear. Ebony couldn¡¯t tell how deep it was but none of them saw any aquatic monsters either.
¡°A hidden trap room?¡± Tuffock asked. Standing straighter than usual, he looked back to see that their path back wasn¡¯t closed up. Ebony placed one of his shields at where the wall broke.
¡°I don¡¯t spot any traps, the way back isn¡¯t blocked either.¡± Ryley reported. The situation being weird, none of them let their guard down.
¡°I bet it¡¯s a hidden treasure room instead.¡±
¡°Naive. Maybe the trap only triggers when we go closer or touch that white box.¡± Tuffock scoffed at Hector¡¯s hopeful daydream. Trap rooms were obviously more believable than a treasure room. There may not even be a single hidden treasure room in most dungeons.
Hector wasn¡¯t discouraged, he knew better anyway.
¡°So what? Turn back? Go for it?¡± Hector asked.
The party was silent. The dungeon was more dangerous than any of them expected due to the abnormally high levels of the monsters for a fresh dungeon. A hidden trap room was usually a one way death trip. There was a chance that there would be a treasure that was worth the risk. Stories of people getting rich in a single dungeon run were always present.
It was all the dungeon¡¯s ploy to attract greedy people to risk their lives and essence to come in and try their luck. That was what most people believed. Yet, people have been taking the risk and 99 out of 100 times have died. Death had long proven to be insufficient to dissuade people from being tempted by their desires until death was right in front of them.
Ebony didn¡¯t have an opinion. If they wanted to go for it then sure. He had the confidence to survive. Dungeons have limits too.
Hector was all for it.
Tuffock''s facial expression changed a few times. An internal debate perhaps?
Scarlet was silent like Ebony. She probably didn¡¯t care either way.
Everyone looked at Ryley. The supposed leader of the party.
They ultimately decided to go for it. Getting everyone to prepare for any sudden changes and using their old formation before they were squeezed into a corridor. Ebony ahead, Hector and Scarlet to the sides, Tuffock within and behind them while Ryley stood furthest towards the exit. An arrow shape formation.
Unsure what exactly he was supposed to do after everyone took their time to get ready. Ebony walked towards the lake. Greatsword drawn. Nothing happened so far.
Ebony bent down to touch the water. It wasn¡¯t corrosive water or acid that melted his fingers off. Normal water as far as he could tell. Still nothing happened and Ryley gave a signal to continue, the exit still open.
¡®Swim there? Nah.¡¯ Ebony stepped on one of his shields and hovered on it. He didn¡¯t understand why it was so much harder to keep yourself afloat than others. Hector¡¯s explanation about how the centre of spellforce moved together with the caster eluded him. It was possible for him to hover steadily on his shield like when he carried Tuffock along. All in all, it should be possible to fly when he got fluent enough. Though Hector didn¡¯t think it was as easy as that.
Nothing stopped Ebony from getting to the waterfall. No monster jumping out of the water.
¡°Wa..wait.¡± Tuffock said. Ebony returned to where he stood.
A shard of stone fired off from Tuffock¡¯s staff. It didn¡¯t go through the water, it didn''t get pushed down by the flow of water. It burst on impact.
A sliver grey flash went past them. Ryley¡¯s arrow was in the lake, bent and crumpled before they blinked. It sank till none of them could see it anymore.
A thick heavy stone lance formed as Tuffock tried again. He chanted some incomprehensible nonsense. The lance spun faster and faster. Ebony could feel it vibrating violently as well. Like some violent energy is being pushed into it to shoot forward but Tuffock holding it back to charge its propulsion forward. Faster than a bullet, it pierced through the barrier of water before getting washed down the lake. Some fragments made it to land but the rest were broken apart and washed down.
Ebony similarly had an Ice Sword try but he wasn¡¯t hoping much for it since his spell slinging was way weaker than Tuffock¡¯s. It was just as expected. Putting his Layered Ice Carapace into it was like putting something against a grinding belt machine at full power. He didn¡¯t want to waste his mana by forcefully stabbing it in to stop the flow of water since it didn¡¯t seem like it could withstand the pressure for long.
The good thing was that their exit didn¡¯t close up but there was still the chance that it might be triggered by something else like touching the white cube.
Hector was too far away to attempt his super punch and what was the point of punching water away when the waterfall was so turbulent? Scarlet didn¡¯t even bother trying since it was probably futile. They may possibly open a small gap for the cube to be exposed though.
From what he could see and when he went close up to feel. The cube was getting pounded by the water as well so it wasn¡¯t like dry land behind a water barrier.
The intense water pressure also stopped Tuffock¡¯s attempts at trying to fish out the cube since his stone just broke on impact.
They were out of ideas.
It was getting late so they just made camp. Ebony lightly froze the tunnel path they got here after Hector tried to compact it a little and Tuffock made a faux door edge at the exit. They made camp right outside the tunnel to the hidden room.
Ebony stayed inside. Sitting down at the edges of the lake and touching the surface of the lake. Frost Injection. The lake water near his palm started freezing. He took it slow but it wasn¡¯t too hard to freeze water. Ice spread across the lake¡¯s surface. He wasn¡¯t able to freeze the whole lake instantly, copying a certain character. To do so would require him to force all his mana out of his body really quickly. He might freeze himself off before the lake does.
Ebony was a little surprised. Freezing the entire lake¡¯s surface roughly 10 cm deep only took about 3000 MP. The water barrier actually did touch the lake but by some magic didn¡¯t cause any ripples or splashes. He wasn¡¯t able to freeze the water near the barrier. Ice constantly broke from the water pressure and melted into the lake.
Ebony spent more time and mana just sitting at the edge of the lake to freeze deeper into the lake. Meditating. Two of his shields had slowly transformed into ice sculptures and were exchanging blows with Ice Swords. The huge lump of ice mana was more than enough and even has leftover ice scales lying around.
He tried to slowly touch the waterfall with his gravity membrane on. It managed to dip in and push the water aside a tiny bit before blasting the flesh of his fingertips. Ebony¡¯s Chaotic Repulsive Membrane was pretty strong now. So that was saying something.
¡°Holy crap.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think that ¡®holy crap¡¯ was a thing here but Hector had been saying it. Ebony stopped and tried giving light stomps on the frozen lake. It was strong enough to carry them now. Obviously, he couldn¡¯t freeze the water barrier but they could try more stuff now that they can stand closer to it.
¡°Just in time,¡± Ebony told Hector who walked over.
Hector didn¡¯t need Ebony to explain what he meant. Smashing his fist together with power. Water lubricated his blood, wind filled his lungs, fire pumped from his heart, earth cemented in his muscles. Brimming with multiple elemental mana, Hector felt so¡alive.
His muscles relaxed before tightening up instantly. Punching out once, locking his muscles before water smoothens his blood flow to allow him to relax his muscles to bring his arm backwards. His blood boiled as wind rushed to supplement it. Repeating the same punch again and again. Each pushing to meet the force of the previous punch. The fifth punch, his current limit in his quadra enhanced state, fully extended. The forces fused, blended and exploded forth.
¡°SUUUPEEERR PAAAANCHH!!!¡± Hector screamed his new and strengthened super punch. It was no longer superrr paaanch, but suuupeeerr paaaanchh! The might of Hector¡¯s fist shall be known throughout Elcra and more.
The mass of water burst apart. The shockwave or air pressure from Hector¡¯s punch managed to push and shift the cube before the unrelenting rush of water filled the gap that was punched open and forced the cube down in place. The punch didn¡¯t completely go through the waterfall.
¡°Super? It hardly moved half a ger.¡±
¡°Haa..haa.ha. Why don¡¯t you give it a go huh?¡± Hector steamed down, tired from the painful punch that wore his body down. Ebony¡¯s taunt and jibe were really infuriating when he couldn¡¯t argue back. He will definitely smack Ebony¡¯s wits out one day.
Chapter 63: Drops
¡®Trap? Treasure? This is obviously a challenge.¡¯
Ebony was unbothered whether it was a trap or a treasure. To him the dungeon was challenging them. Take it if you can.
Placing an oddly suspicious bright white box in the centre of a room that had pathetically thin walls. It was hardly hidden. Not even preventing them from taking or touching it with a group of monsters. Not even bothering to stop them from leaving by sealing the entrance.
Ordina was mocking them and it succeeded.
As intrigued as to what was that cube, none of them could get through the turbulent barrier of water.
Scarlet didn¡¯t even try though. ¡°A waste of mana.¡± was what she said. She wasn¡¯t wrong. Even if she could evaporate a large body of water it would be pointless if it could keep refilling itself. She couldn¡¯t exactly cut apart the water either. They still have to be able to get the cube out in the short time frame that either Scarlet or Hector could open up.
They were planning to leave after they rested for the night.
¡°Do you have confidence to get that box out if the flow of water was cut off for a second?¡± Ryley asked before they walked off to rest for the night. He was getting interesting looks from the party except Ebony. They all saw Hector trying to super punch the thing another time but even he wasn¡¯t able to fully open a gap through to the other side.
¡°A second is more than enough.¡± Scarlet replied flatly. One second was a long time for her when the distance was so short. The cube shouldn¡¯t be unmovable since Hector was able to shift it with his punch.
¡°Let¡¯s try. Stand back.¡± Ryley said before taking an arrow out from his bottom quiver. Ebony hasn¡¯t seen him use the metal arrows in this particular quiver. Ryley brought 3 quivers of arrows, one filled with wooden arrows while the other 2 were metal. The bottommost quiver had the least arrows, only 7. Most of his wooden ones already broke or were lost or unserviceable. The metal arrow he nocked on his bowstring didn¡¯t look any different from his usual.
They backed off but Ryley got them to go further and further. Scarlet was beside him, the sound of her heart beating resounded. Lightning sparked from her skin and clothes. Once again mystified by Ebony¡¯s tips on increasing heart rate. Taking a deep breath and tightened the muscles on her chest as if trying to compress and squeeze her lungs and released that breath slowly. It shortened the time needed for her Core Skill to kick in by a significant amount.
The metal arrow Ebony thought was no different glowed light blue as the ambient mana dipped horrendously fast. The wavy lines on the arrow glowed brighter and brighter. The ambient mana dried out without a single drop remaining that he could sense. The arrow was discontent. It drained on Ryley¡¯s mana till his complexion was almost purple.
Ryley had held the arrow fully drawn for what felt like days to him but it was merely about half a minute. His mana pool pathetically low if not for the fact he appointed some stats to Wisdom for this skill and enchanted arrow. His arrow wasn¡¯t the only thing that drained his mana, his bow did too. Mana can be used to temporarily strengthen the tension of his bowstring and bowframe itself. It was not easy to hold such a heavyweight bow at full draw for half a minute.
Sweat dripped down his brows as he shouted uncharacteristically. The arrow was aimed above the cube before it was released.
The arrow flew at such speed it practically reached the water barrier as soon as Ryley released the arrow. The arrow poked through the waterfall and exploded with enough force to cause the air and ground to vibrate till where they were. Ebony did prepare to defend with his shields but there was no need. There weren¡¯t any broken fragments flying around for some reason. Maybe the waterfall, maybe the arrow disintegrated. Many maybes but he wouldn¡¯t know for sure.
The moment the arrow exploded was when Scarlet disappeared from their midst and appeared across the lake. The ground where she had moved off from, cracked. She was drenched and slipped onto the frozen lake. Coughing a few times as she awkwardly hugged the large cube. It was about a metre by a metre.
Mentally cursing at herself, thinking the cube was light. She bulldozed into it at such speed that her shoulders and chest were in pain. Some bruises are likely forming. The cube was obviously much heavier than she thought it was, she was lucky she took some time to build up her physical strengthening.
¡°Are you okay?¡± Scarlet found Ebony already kneeling by her side. She could feel the deep concern behind the simple words. She pushed him away when he tried to help her up and got up herself. Flushed. Obviously from her Violent Heart Acceleration and coughing. He didn¡¯t have his gravity spell on.
Scarlet had never actually moved so fast that she couldn¡¯t be seen but she was pretty damn good at timing her movements to when one blinks or during a lapse in their attention. Almost as good as Ebony.
Water rained down on them. Ebony came out dry, water sliding off his membrane.
It was quite a sight to behold, Ryley''s shot. The deafening sound of water smashing into a hard surface re-emerged shortly.
Perhaps Ebony could only survive that shot if he had all his Layered Ice Carapaces working to protect him. That was only if he tried taking it head on. With how long it took Ryley to prepare a shot, Ebony didn¡¯t even need to open his eyes to dodge it. There was distance and whether he let Ryley have the chance to charge such a shot to take into account as well.
Hector whistled in amazement. Tuffock, who was originally sceptical, was also surprised by the power of the exploding arrow.
¡°Th..the entrance is still there.¡± Tuffock pointed out. Just in case, they left the hidden room back to the walkway before they checked their bounty. Hector tried to lift the cube up but his face went red, punching his fist together before lifting the cube out with one hand.
Ebony helped to widen the tunnel for ease of taking it out. Intrigued that once all of them were out with the cube the wall started closing up.
¡°HA! I knew it! It was a treasure room after all. We¡¯re rich!¡±
¡°Mo...more like a challenge or puzzle room.¡±
¡°Whatever! The point is that we got the loot.¡±
Hector placed down the cube and they stared at it. Ryley was drained, not so much physical exhaustion but his head was pounding from how fast he emptied out his mana. He gained a modicum of respect for mages who have to deal with it. And absolute deference to Ebony who spends mana, casts multiple spells and manipulates multiple elements throughout the day like breathing. No wonder his fellow party members who were also magic users hold him in such high regard for his future potential.
Ebony cocked his head to the left. He assumed they knew what to do with it but it was just a damn cube not a treasure chest.
¡°Want me to punch it open?¡± Hector asked as if that was the obvious solution.
¡°Do..don¡¯t be so hasty¡¡± Tuffock inspected the cube from every angle. None of them found any button, latch or sign of traps.
[White Cube]
Identify was pretty useless. Now that Ebony thought about it, how did he identify the Frostblaze Amur Maple Trees? Was it his preconceived notion of what the tree was? ¡®Hmm¡ more food for thought. Food? Hungry.¡¯ Ebony mentally complained.
Hector gave it a few jabs and pokes but it was undamaged. He was getting ready for a good punch when the white cube started dissolving to the ground. Seems like they just had to wait for a while after it was taken out of the hidden room.
It was more of a bang than a thud when something fell to the ground. Hector yelped and pulled his feet up as something orange in colour smashed into his toes. He was lucky he had a good pair of boots on.
There were multiple objects that appeared. Some small and some larger than the white cube itself.
A silver needle as long as Ebony¡¯s forearm and just a bit thicker than hair.
A white bundle of¡something. It looked wet and sticky and was at least 3 metres long. It was twitching.
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An orange rectangular block, bigger and thicker than his hands. He could feel lightning mana in it but his senses for that were blurry at best..
A round bottom flask that he felt like he shouldn¡¯t touch. It contained a liquid that continuously changed colour. His mana perception or the elemental part was confused. It didn¡¯t stay put or he couldn¡¯t quite catch or feel what type of mana it was before it changed.
A pitch black rectangular cuboid. If it was placed beside him, standing up it would be taller by a bit, it was practically a plank-shaped cuboid. As wide as both palms put side by side and perhaps a quarter as thick.
Five items. Seems about right. But how were they going to split it?
They looked at each other before bending down to pick what they wanted at the same time. No one touched the same object or item.
Tuffock took the needle. Ryley the white bundle. Scarlet took the orange block. Hector the flask of suspicious liquid. Ebony the thick plank.
It was no surprise.
He was guessing that the dungeon was observing them in some fashion or perhaps only their actions in the hidden room were taken into account. The items were practically designed for each of them.
He didn¡¯t know what was special about the needle but Tuffock said it was chock full of stone mana.
Ryley recognised the white bundle as a material for bowstrings. Scarlet took the bundle and confirmed that it was some kind of monster¡¯s tendons. As expected of a chef that took apart monsters while fighting.
Ebony could only guess that Scarlet took the orange block for the lightning mana in it. Perhaps fire too but he couldn¡¯t sense that. Remembering Hector using the same two elements, he thought that Hector may have gone for it too.
Reasonably, the suspicious liquid was way more intriguing to the quadra elemental enhancement mage that has shown to use five elements so far.
Finally, the cuboid plank which Ebony was set on checking out. ¡®Intrigued¡¯ couldn¡¯t even begin to describe his feeling of doing something with it.
Any object or body of mass whether it was a pair of socks, a shirt, a person, a heavy-ass shield, a building or just a plain old rock had extremely, exceedingly, exceptionally weak gravitational waves. Mostly invisible in his Vibrational Gravity Sense. When his Vibrational Gravity Sense was really low level, he could hardly even feel most objects'' gravity mana. The planet¡¯s encompassing all others¡¯. Ebony slowly got more sensitive and was able to perceive weaker gravitational waves.
How heavy was his full powered Layered Ice Carapace? He is unable to lift it off the ground without Icebody Enhancement. He could prop it up to an upright position and possibly lift it off the ground for a second or two but that was the limit without enhancement. His Layered Ice Carapace is taller, wider and when 5 layered, thicker than his body. Without a scale or reference, he had estimated it to weigh around 120kg before he started compressing the ice mana.
Ice was light and less dense than water and he just took a rough guess, it was getting more accurate with his ability to sense and perceive gravitational waves. With a little magical touch, poof and ice was denser after he compressed it. 6.5 times denser. Exactly how much he compressed mana by. Simple maths told him 780kg, it was mind-boggling to think he was carrying literal tons when he controlled multiple shields at speeds faster than a car. With his mind.
And then there was this lump of material. Giving off even stronger gravitational waves than his Layered Ice Carapace despite being quite a bit smaller and lesser in volume. It wasn¡¯t saying much since it was still an extremely weak ¡®output¡¯ of gravitational waves.
Ebony couldn¡¯t pick it off the ground when it lay flat, so he got an ice sculpture to try so that he wouldn¡¯t accidentally drop it on his fingers. And his suspicions and the actual reason he wanted this item held true.
His sculpture¡¯s hands disappeared. It got smaller and smaller when it attempted to apply force to pick the lug up.
¡®Hot damn. It really absorbed ice mana.¡¯ Ebony knew that it absorbed ice mana the moment it fell out or popped up from the white cube. He felt something tugging at his Layered Ice Carapace close by or rather tugging at the ice mana in the spell. If that wasn¡¯t interesting enough then the fact that he couldn¡¯t sense a lick of ice mana inside the cuboid block was even more interesting. It wasn¡¯t as if the gravitational waves interrupted his senses since he had long been able to differentiate them.
It was pretty awkward just standing there so he got Icebody Enhancement running and picked the thing up with more ease. He couldn¡¯t exactly put it in his bag though so he would have to carry it by resting it on his shoulder.
[?]
Was all he got from identifying it. They checked out each other¡¯s loot but it was all the same to him. Hector informed him that the pitch black block he got was some kind of wood. Ebony wood? Was all he could think seeing the colour of the wooden block. Hector even offered to put it in his expanded spatial bag of his before they moved off the next day. How nice of him.
They went to rest for the night in turns as usual.
???
Scarlet was preparing to cook like any other day when Hector came up to her to pester her again.
¡°Hey hey. Why are you ignoring the poor guy?¡± Hector spoke softly.
¡°...¡± Scarlet looked at Hector for a half a second before continuing to bring out the ingredients.
¡°Come on, don¡¯t ignore me too.¡± Hector tried to help Ebony once more.
¡°...¡± Met with silence other than the sound of the disagreeable vegetables getting washed. Her cooking only good enough for Hector to swallow the leafy greens.
¡°Fine fine.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Why don¡¯t we talk about something else. Tuffock¡¯s death or ours. What did you mean?¡± Hector whispered uncharacteristically. Finally managing to catch her attention, Scarlet stopped what she was doing. Staring at Hector the same way she always did to anyone in the party other than Ebony. Her eyes seemed to want to burn through whatever she looked at. Her gaze powerful enough to deter the masses.
¡°He told you.¡±
Hector acknowledged with silence. The words may be a load of bull from anyone else. From Scarlet who had some all seeing all powerful divination mage of some kind watching her? He couldn¡¯t get it out of his mind.
¡°You know what I mean.¡± Scarlet¡¯s words and tone, confident and sure of herself. She continued preparing dinner. Loudly chopping, drowning out their whispers.
¡°...I do. It¡¯s true then?¡±
¡°Maybe. Maybe not. No.¡±
Hector was a little confused and also not confused. Divination was just a prediction after all. But he didn¡¯t know what the ¡®no¡¯ at the end meant.
¡°...He was right.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°I am weaker than I thought I was.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°But I¡¯m not wrong either¡he is¡¡±
¡°...he is?¡±
¡°...Nothing.¡±
¡°He is nothing?¡±
¡°NO!¡±
Scarlet¡¯s durable chopping board split in two.
Hector¡¯s heart skipped at her sudden outburst. So did Scarlet¡¯s. She panicked when she grabbed the flying piece of meat and almost caused it to drop. Fortunately Ebony and Ryley were further off the 2 paths scouting and clearing whatever stray golems and also keeping watch. Tuffock should be deep in meditation. Scarlet was embarrassed that she messed up while cooking due to an emotional outburst. She was a chef! How could she let that happen?
¡°Calm down lady. Then why are you ignoring him?¡± Hector pacified.
She ignored Hector again as she took a spare chopping board out and continued chopping.
¡°Something to do with him going off and killing all the monsters without us?¡±
Hector was met with silence again.
¡°He had your back and you had his right? So something that happened afterwards.¡±
¡®Spot on.¡¯ Hector thought when he felt Scarlet increasing her chopping speed. Hector tried to recall what Ebony told him but all he knew was that they rested for a short while and then she punched him. So something happened during that short period of time.
¡°Something happened while you rested after the clearing of monsters?¡±
Hector backed off. He could literally hear her heartbeat drumming. Instinct told him to stop with his line of questioning.
¡°How about you help me play a prank on Ebony? It¡¯s time for a little sweet or should I say sour revenge. Hehehe¡± Hector quickly changed the subject. He had a classic evil laugh as he rubbed his palms together and rummaged his belongings for a pouch.
¡°Don¡¯t you wanna see his expression change?¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t play with food.¡±
¡®She¡¯s hooked on!¡¯
¡°You can¡¯t make it taste good?¡± Hector acted bewildered by his own question. Scarlet snapped and grabbed the pouch in his hands before he could get it back. Not that he didn¡¯t want to give it to her.
¡®This is as far as I can help you brother. Heh heh some payback isn¡¯t too much to ask isn¡¯t it.¡¯ Hector laughed out loud as he imagined the look on Ebony''s face. It was a little irritating that it was so hard to imagine but it mattered not, he would be seeing it soon.
Chapter 64: Desert
¡°Ebony! Time for dinnerr~¡± Hector hollered to the practically sulking Ebony who was chewing on dried meat when he was walking back towards camp after scouting the path behind. Cheap jerky. Most of his expandable bread had been eaten to stuff himself full. Ebony really ate tons.
He looked back but was not in the mood to answer Hector, who was rubbing salt on wounds. He had still prepared chairs and tables for them. From stools to more intricate chairs with backrests. It was quite fun to play around with the design. He even put some time into ¡®engraving¡¯ designs on the table. It was just delicate control training for Ice Mana Control and a pastime.
He stepped past Hector and got seated in less than a second when he saw 4 sets of utensils.
Hector laughed.
¡°Not even a word of thanks for the almighty Hector!?¡±
¡°What form of magic did you use?¡± Ebony asked.
Mildly impressed that Hector managed to get Scarlet to cook for him again in such a short time. He had just told Hector the things that happened a few hours ago, right before they found the challenge room with pretty awesome loot. And, he already managed to get Scarlet to be okay with making food for him again in the time he was gone?
¡°Behold! My true power, an elemental mana called the communicative mana¡¡± blah blah blah. Ebony didn¡¯t listen to his nonsense any further than communicative mana. He would ask in detail again but food was more important.
Scarlet walked over with her large pot and placed it in the centre of the round decorated ice table. She lifted the lid and started scooping the red soup onto their bowls with a ladle. Ryley and Tuffock were making themselves comfortable with a thick cloth and stone cover so their asses don¡¯t freeze.
It was tomato soup. Thick and heavy. Scarlet¡¯s light stirring revealed cubes of meat, probably turkey again. Ebony was amazed at how many turkeys she brought. Would turkey even go well in tomato soup? Chicken would be nice, it would mean eggs as well. He honestly preferred to eat tomatoes raw, like munching on an apple rather than a tomato soup but he wasn¡¯t complaining.
Holding up the bowl for Scarlet to snatch it out of his hand. She then took out a very familiar pack. Souper bread. Taking a few and dropping them in the soup. Surprisingly, it didn¡¯t absorb much soup. Maybe due to the thickness of the soup. Now they were like croutons.
The main course was pot roast beef with whole carrots, an unknown green vegetable and a heck ton of onions and garlic. Ebony had long realised that Scarlet used a lot of garlic and onions in her cooking. Perfect.
The others couldn¡¯t appreciate it but he sure did. They didn¡¯t seem to like the smell of garlic or the strong taste of onions. The foolish and ignorant.
Lastly was a simple noodle dish. Looked like pasta with strips of bacon. It seems to be simple pasta in oil stir fry or was it saute? Ebony wasn¡¯t really a chef. It was just missing some cheese. Although he was not a big fan of cheese, it seems out of place for pasta to not have cheese.
The beef and pasta are on huge serving plates. Scarlet portioned for all and a tray for herself.
¡°Eat up.¡±
For some reason, Scarlet was still at the table instead of going back into her tent to eat by herself. Ebony was hardly concerned about that now and started digging in with the soup coming first.
¡®Oh yeah. This is what I¡¯m missing in life.¡¯ Ebony almost moaned mentally. The tomato soup was incredibly sour yet still tasted incredible. A work of a culinary god. Sour and spicy foods were his favourite after all. He didn¡¯t really like sweet foods but he was still okay with them as he wasn¡¯t so picky. Sweetness of fruits wasn¡¯t counted.
Spoonful after spoonful, he cleaned up his bowl and got himself another. Then he twisted some pasta with his wooden fork on his spoon. Ebony didn¡¯t stop as even his eating seemed to flow from a bite or two of pasta to beef or bowl of soup.
He didn¡¯t realise that all the others were in a coughing fit gulping down water from their waterskins and even spitting out after gargling.
Ebony only stopped when the ladle hit the bottom of the pot, the sauce from the beef practically licked clean and every crumb of bacon, garlic and onion consumed. His party members¡¯ faces were red from coughing and didn¡¯t realise their dinner was gone before they knew it.
Only Scarlet was smart or alert enough to get another portion for herself. She was watching him the entire time before retreating to her tent with a soft ¡°Hmpm!¡± so soft Ebony didn¡¯t hear it in his busy meal.
¡°It was delicious. Thank you.¡± Ebony gave his honest opinion and appreciation to Scarlet whose expression he couldn¡¯t see. Maybe when Vibrational Gravity Sense got even stronger and his senses became even more sensitive. A large bag was thrown out of her tent and he caught it.
"In case we separate." were the first words she had spoken to him in a while. The bag had more rations of different type than he previously had. He knew she was keeping track of his remaining supplies.
¡°Holy Ell. Damn. Wait. Dammit, where¡¯s the meat!? The pasta!? Gone? It¡¯s you! Cough our dinner back out.¡± Hector looked at Ebony in amazement before noticing that their dinner except the ones already on their plates and bowls was cleaned up as if they were already washed. They quickly pulled their plates closer and started gobbling up.
Ryley ate slowly, Tuffock a little disappointed, Hector desperately protecting his meal from him. The only thing was that they all pushed their soups aside.
Ebony took them and drank it with internal glee. Pasta slipped out of Hector¡¯s mouth When he saw Ebony drinking that¡concoction like water.
¡°A..amazing¡¡± Tuffock was truly impressed, his eyes almost sparkled as he looked at Ebony.
¡°Urgh. It was your doing wasn¡¯t it?¡± Ryley looked at Hector unhappily.
¡°Err. I didn¡¯t think she would make the entire pot with it¡¡± Hector was dismayed by his negligence. Who knew she would cook the same thing for all of them? He wanted to see Ebony¡¯s scrunched up facial expression as small revenge for the pranks Ebony pulled on him. Like waking up freezing.
He gave Scarlet a pouch of pickled envy gooseberries. Envy gooseberries being the sourest known fruit and someone even thought to pickle it to make it worse. Placing one-fifth of a single berry into the large pot Scarlet used would be more than enough to make Hector¡¯s tongue wriggle like a snake and wrinkles concentrated on his nose as his facial muscles squeezed.
Scarlet tossed out something to Hector from her tent. Hector found it to be the pouch he gave her. It was empty. He gulped loudly. ¡®This devil¡she used all 3.¡± Hector swore to never anger the devil in human¡¯s skin.
Having his ploy fail miserably and even backfiring to have an unfilling dinner was discouraging enough. He chased Ebony during their spar as if to vent his anger. Tuffock and Ryley ganged up on him afterwards. They were silently pissed to get dragged into the charade.
Hector chuckled. ¡®I¡¯m such a nice guy.¡¯
Ebony had used some of his time to somewhat mend the party¡¯s clothes and stuff. Even just moving and travelling was causing their stuff to wear pretty quickly. His bag was not exactly treated gently with it getting tossed around when he didn¡¯t want it to hinder his movements or when he was not sure his shields could take a hit.
He was so going to get a compact spatial bag or even better, a space ring or dimensional ring or whatever the people here call it. Hopefully, there was such a thing.
Wear and tear wasn¡¯t so hard to fix. Ebony just had to dip his mana in and mend the scratches. They may look like scratches on the outside but they were cut and torn when zoomed in. He could only do so much without more material to fix stuff. Holes in Tuffock¡¯s robes couldn¡¯t be covered and his own robe had been looking worse and worse.
Hector¡¯s scale armour was interesting to push his mana into. Its internal structure is so different from woven threads. Much closer to his very own Layered Ice Carapace but still fundamentally different. Possibly due to the different monster or animal its scales came from and the fact that Ebony¡¯s Layered Ice Carapace was merely an imaginary and completely original made up structure. He didn¡¯t have a chance to experiment or learn about the internal structure of Gen¡¯s scale shell.
Clothes and equipment wasn¡¯t the only thing that was mended that night.
Night passed.
Ebony woke up energised like never before. Though he might have over ate a little the previous night.
The journey was really dry on this endless walkway of a dungeon floor.
Finally noticing a change after a couple of hours.
¡°Light.¡± Ryley sped up. It wasn¡¯t all that dark in the walkway but it wasn¡¯t bright either. They were all glad something was changing.
Ebony liked where this was going less and less. It was still getting hotter and hotter.
They quickly reached where Ryley saw light. Hopefully, it was the next floor.
Ebony was right, he didn¡¯t like it.
A desert. Lots of sunlight from the sun, probably fake. Lots and lots of sand, large sand dunes. Oh and what do you know? There¡¯s a single cactus in sight. A wide-open desert, they came out from a hole at the bottom of a massive sand dune.
Ebony could spot a few small shadows in the distance. Either monsters or other people, he couldn¡¯t tell from this distance.
The unanimous decision was made to move forward from where they came out from.
¡°What in the dungeons?¡± Ryley was stunned.
¡°What did you see?¡± Hector asked.
¡°Teen Giant Sandworms. Arrowtail Scorpions.¡±
¡°So?¡± Scarlet asked, unimpressed. She was itching to fight something else other than golems.
¡°...Their levels¡¯ over 130.¡±
During their 6, almost 7 days in the walkway they encountered mostly fist, foot and head Earthen-Topaz golems. Near the fourth day, all of them were evolved but their levels were always exactly 100. The core golems didn¡¯t show up much, only a total of 3 more showed up. All individually. The strongest being level 110. There was not much trouble with the whole party fighting together.
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The walkway wasn¡¯t all that squeezy. With one person fighting. With all of them? Their teamwork and trying not to hit each other were getting better and better by the day. Tuffock 2 and Ryley throwing insults here and there. Yet, it took their combined effort to get through a group of a single core golem and many other golems.
¡°Such a large level gap in one floor?¡± Hector didn¡¯t believe what he heard. The strength difference between a level 110 and 130 was so much more than level 10 and level 30. The norm was a 5 to 10 level difference between floors. Of course, not every dungeon was the same so it was hard to say.
¡°Th..this is beyond us¡ we should not go any further.¡± Tuffock was getting more nervous. His spells didn¡¯t do much against the level 110 core golem, much less a Teen Giant Sandworm 20 levels higher.
Tuffock voted to turn back. So did Hector, after a brief moment of hesitation, Scarlet¡¯s words rang in his head. He decided not to gamble with a divination mage¡¯s predictions. As long as they got out of the dungeon all should be fine.
Ebony and Scarlet were all for it. He doubted they could reach the top of the dungeon much less clear the dungeon. The dungeon was far more dangerous than anyone expected. Plainston¡¯s popularity probably dropped quite a bit already. They were lucky the first floor still had level 80 monsters and not higher. It would still be a prime location for many people so the city wouldn¡¯t be affected too much. Plainston''s population may drop but the average strength of the people and quality of goods will rise. It isn¡¯t all that bad of an exchange.
The most popular dungeons were Common ranked dungeons. Weak dungeons. The irony was that Common ranked dungeons were less common than Uncommon ranked ones. Like people and monsters, dungeons also grow stronger. That was Elcra¡¯s current situation and many young humans, dwarfs and beastmen alike are growing slower than in the past when Common ranked dungeons were plentiful. Elves were largely unaffected, they never even depended on purely hunting to teach their young. The difference was that they had the advantage of time and lifespan on their side.
Humans and Beastmen were affected the most. They had the shortest lifespans and much fewer chose to be craftsmen like Dwarfs.
Ryley was silent. He was inwardly aware. He was the weakest of the lot with the exception of being roughly equal to the stone mage. A few special arrows weren¡¯t enough to change the fact. Their frequent spars were enough to show him that.
Even so, Ryley didn¡¯t want to give up on his hopes of being a dungeon clearer. There wouldn¡¯t be another chance to be in a party with a Xeng. Furthermore, the other 2 hybrid warrior mages were both immensely powerful for their level as well. The Xeng and mana slave are still ever so confident.
Ryley ultimately went for it. There was still time to retreat if they couldn¡¯t handle it anymore. He could still fight more aggressively by empowering both his bow and arrow with more mana. He would be able to fight fewer fights but they should still be able to go further.
Their levels can still rise and get stronger. Becoming first to clear the dungeon was obviously impossible but that hardly matters to Ryley now. Just clearing it was enough. He was at least that self-aware.
Ryley tried to be decently careful. He tried to remember every little thing he was taught. His Farsight was put to the test. He loosened their formation, taking advantage of the terrain. He was an Archer, with enough distance he could shoot anything down. A Power Archer no less.
Tuffock¡¯s charged spells should be good enough to inflict damage as well.
Ryley discussed the general strategy they would take on this floor. The vanguards will be close together, buying time for Tuffock and Ryley was the gist of it really. Ryley will lead them to as small a group as he could find. They would try to get to level 100 on this floor.
The 40 level gap for Ebony and 30+ to 40 for the others would be perfect to speed through the levels with just a few successful hunts. Furthermore, the current dungeon monsters are greatly weakened by the seal. It was their best chance to get the most of this dungeon now.
That was what they did. It took some time. Moving away from monsters that were in groups of 5 or more. Traversing the sandy area proved difficult and unfamiliar even for Scarlet. Ebony didn¡¯t feel much of a difference, lightly tapping off the ground if he wanted to. Hiding from monsters was even harder, the monsters would likely spot the party of humans before Ryley spotted them. Fortunately not every group was hell-bent on chasing.
Going on top of dunes gives them an advantage of sight but also puts them into perception too. Dilemma.
They did find out that the level range of monsters was actually 125 to 130 for the Giant Sandworms and that they mostly moved underground so it was hard to tell how many of them were in a group in general. The Arrowtail Scorpions on the other hand were at least level 130 to 140. They were usually a couple, always seen in groups of 2s. Ryley was further discouraged to continue when he spotted a Desert Wolf at level 117.
When there was one there was at least one pack. That was common sense when spotting wolves. Sure, such common sense may or may not apply to this specific dungeon but that was a gamble Ryley would not bet on.
It was a no brainer to pick the Arrowtail Scorpions to hunt.
Ebony thought otherwise. He would pick the wolves any day if it was merely a choice to choose the safest, fastest method to level.
[Arrowtail Scorpion Lvl 132]
[Arrowtail Scorpion Lvl 132]
They finally found a suitable pair of targets after almost half the day of hiding, scouting and exploring.
The scorpions were flat, only around Ebony¡¯s calf when it was standing on its six legs and two pincers. They were longer than he was tall, their tails 2 thirds their body length. The arrowhead of the tail was their namesake and they look sharp and shiny, their tail itself slender.
Ebony had been spending a tiny but noticeable amount of mana to keep his Layered Ice Carapace in tip top shape. He fully enhanced himself, Battle Song more often used for classicals or the sound of river water flowing and such for a relaxing time now rather than the useless physical buff.
He sweated like he was literally melting. Because he was melting with Icebody Enhancement.
Following their plan, he focused on trying to trap one of them in his scale orb. He was probably the best at surviving and buying time so he was left to take care of the one of the left by himself.
Ebony had two of his shields stuck close to him. He should really not take a single hit if he doesn¡¯t want to die. The Arrowtail Scorpions had the same idea as them when they saw each other. Prey.
''Skittering'' down the sand dune might not have been right when they found the Arrowtail Scorpions less than a km away in a sec. It wasn¡¯t the start that Ryley had hoped for but he took aim and Tuffock got right into chanting with his staff raised in front of him. They were actually only tasked to standby and attack for this fight unless things went south. The vanguards needed to test if they could cope.
Ebony took a step to meet the scorpion who covered most of the remaining distance in the meantime. He was the most undisrupted by the sandy desert out of all of them. He had both shields right in front of him just in time to block an incoming spear of a tail. It sharply pierced through the air and skidded along his shield. The sheer impact of the blow shook his head hard from the mental feedback.
His shields stayed strong and mostly undamaged. It was defendable.
Ebony started to disassemble his remaining shields, never losing focus from the scorpion who was repeatedly thrusting and stabbing with its tail over its head. The other scorpion was already forcefully distracted by Hector and Scarlet.
Ebony tried his best to angle his shields to let the Arrowtail Scorpion¡¯s tail stabs to glide to the side to reduce damage on them but it was too fast. Even faster than Scarlet¡¯s sword thrusts when she hasn¡¯t gotten her buff kicked in. Every impact rattled his mind but it was only to the point of tossing a pebble into the lake. Barely even close to disrupting his mental state.
While he had been practising, it was a different beast altogether to defend against fatal attacks and control a few scales at the time to change in shape and surround the scorpion. Its tail was not its sole weapon, it stretched out its claws and tried to pincer the shields but the shields were too large compared to it. The fact didn¡¯t stop it from trying to knock the annoying ice shields away. Though the power behind their pincers was pathetic compared to its tail strikes.
The Arrowtail Scorpion noticed the scales going over and above him for a while but didn¡¯t bother with it until it shadowed over it. It quickly started to pince the scales that continually added on to cover itself. Making deep cuts on individual scales when it snaps onto them but is not able to remove them from their path.
The Arrowtail didn¡¯t feel danger from the chilly pieces that it tried to destroy but it didn¡¯t like that it was getting shadowed by them. It skittered back, stopping its futile aggression for a moment. It had already tried going at its weak but absolutely delicious looking prey from multiple angles but its prey was surprisingly capable of dodging and reacting to where it wanted to go to attack it from. It just needed a bit more time to wear down the prey¡¯s scales.
Ebony followed the Arrowtail that retreated, its movement speed not as swift as its tail stabs. He had quite some fun moving across the desert with Treading Steps, hardly kicking up much sand every step he took unless he let Chaotic Repulsive Membrane push him off. That was a little too risky to do here, he would likely slip and fall horribly with the unstable footing. This was when the gravity in here was stronger than outside of the dungeon.
He was not able to catch up to the Arrowtail but the Arrowtail didn¡¯t run for long either. Its objective is to devour Ebony. He just slammed the excess Layered Ice Carapace underside on its back when it turned back to arrow through Ebony with its tail.
It didn¡¯t do much to the Arrowtail, its legs not even buckling down to the ground. But the shield split apart into scales and its ¡®umbrella¡¯ that kept chasing it clasp down and joined together. The Arrowtail found itself encased in a scale prison. It didn¡¯t think much of it as its tail pierced a sizable hole through the ice orb easily enough. It poked another hole after the first, and again and again.
However, light from the holes kept getting covered as it made new holes to break itself free. Finally, a single strike only cracked bits of ice into its new home. It got darker and darker as the orb got thicker and thicker.
Ebony was impressed at the strength and power of the Arrowtail Scorpion. He used all 4 complete Layered Ice Carapace plus a few more scales from his last spare. His preparation as a mage was still insufficient. There were more problems like the fact that the structure of his orb wasn¡¯t the best. The thicker it got the more scales were required and stuff like that. He still thought that it was more to protect something inside from the outside than to trap something inside it.
The scales broke a lot easier from within it. It was also easier to push it apart from its attachment to other scales without his mental input to force it in place. Well, more experiments were needed to perfect anything.
The Arrowtail Scorpion was far from having given up. He could sense the ice mana within that his orb was breaking down. Fast. He quickly released the ice mana from solid form to mist. The reaction from the scorpion was surprisingly almost instantaneous. It shivered for a second before doubling down in its attempts to break free.
It made a loud and high pitched hissing sound from within that reached far. Its companion hissed in return and tried to come to its rescue to have Scarlet take advantage of its broken concentration to slice 3 thin legs off one side of its body.
Tuffock and Ryley, who were originally high strung and tense, had relaxed a little. The Arrowtail Scorpion was not as intimidating as their levels suggest. Though they both knew that it was just the 3 hybrid vanguards on their team who were the unnatural ones. There was still the fact that the Core golems were really something else.
Ebony sensed with his perception of ice mana that the scorpion had sprayed some liquid on his ice. It didn¡¯t do much but slide off. Perhaps poison from its tail but it was not corrosive. That was good.
It could claw nothing and the piercing with its tail kept getting stiffer, slower. It was freezing up slowly and then it did. Normal organic monsters were pretty affected by ice it seems. He just got some of the ice mana within to form a blade from the inner walls to cut its head off. It wasn¡¯t frozen to the bone yet so it took some time and repeated stabbing.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Arrowtail Scorpion Lvl 132], enemy 40 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze level up 89 - 90, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Mana Meister level up 86 - 87, 1 Wisdom stat gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Ice Mana Control level up 104 - 105¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Layered Ice Carapace level up 95 - 96¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Frost Mist Perception Sphere level up 96 - 97¡¯
Ebony¡¯s Class and Profession haven''t levelled despite all the golems so it was no surprise. Ice Mana Control and Layered Ice Carapace were heavily used and practised, so that already gained a level or two but Frost Mist Perception Sphere hasn¡¯t levelled up in a while.
This desert was a pretty good spot.
¡®40 levels is a nice gap, but it isn¡¯t feasible to level fast this way. Also, it¡¯s sooo hot.¡¯ Ebony could at best handle 2 of them at the same time; his orb prison can hold one while he fights the other. They seem weak to ice, an Ice Sword or Frost Injection here and there, dodge a little and he can buy enough time to take both down. He believes Scarlet was done with the other one too. So as a party, he thought a group of 5 to 6 may be a little dangerous but possible.
Yet, that seemed so¡inefficient.
Chapter 65: Twin Moons
How much energy and mana would they use every hunt?
How much time do they need to spend hiding from bigger groups or time to find smaller groups?
Ebony predicted that they would only really hunt 2 or 3 groups of monsters a day. That was just sad.
He reformed his Layered Ice Carapaces. He had 3 and a half left. That was more mana used than he expected. The Arrowtail Scorpion could break layers of scales at a time, but they were not too dangerous an opponent. More dangerous than the Mud Golems due to their speed and piercing ability but less than the Earthen-Topaz Core Golem due to their ability to fight.
They didn¡¯t seem to have magic as well so he was more convinced that there really was a big difference between monsters and of course people as well despite level gaps.
Scarlet¡¯s target was once again butchered and served by the time he was done. It had been a while since she didn¡¯t dismember golems. She always seems to find a different way to cook the same type of monsters. Likely tested different cooking or cutting methods while she slew them. Even when she couldn¡¯t eat them it didn¡¯t stop Ebony from catching her looking at her cooked targets. She probably wanted to eat them so badly.
Tuffock seemed a little disappointed that they couldn¡¯t collect any monster parts from their hunt. Ebony¡¯s frozen and shattered while Scarlet¡¯s completely cooked. Ebony could defrost it but it didn¡¯t feel like it was worth the effort. They could get the non bulky tails that looked the shiniest and hardiest next time onwards.
¡°We should hunt the desert wolves instead.¡± He stated his honest opinion if they wanted a faster and also easier hunting strategy.
¡°...Why?¡± Ryley asked. There was a ¡°what?¡± from Hector and a ¡°hu..huh?¡± from Tuffock while Scarlet only looked at him without so much as a raised brow. At least that¡¯s what he thought by seeing her unamused eyes. They were fiery as always.
¡°More efficient.¡± Ebony summarised.
¡°Wolves are generally always in packs. There could be dozens, hundreds, thousands or more.¡± Ryley argued with common sense.
¡°My point.¡±
¡°...My arrows will run out quickly. How many spells can Tuffock cast? Can Hector last with multiple enhancements on for long enough for a hundred wolves at at least level 115¡I guess you might last but we wouldn¡¯t even be able to run when we need to.¡± Ryley used their names properly for once.
Ryley was hesitant to say but he didn¡¯t believe Scarlet had Ebony''s limitless stamina and mana. She was so exhausted when the two of them were trapped with the 2 Eathern-Topaz Core Golems, she couldn¡¯t swing her swords straight or have enough mana to blast them away. Ryley didn¡¯t think he would see the mighty Xeng in such a pathetic state. The more pathetic thing was that she still managed to protect him in that pathetic state.
¡°...Okay. Let¡¯s move on.¡± Ebony was a little embarrassed about his oversight. He was in no rush anyway. Relax, he told himself.
They explore the sandy dunes. Some minor discovery was that this floor was smaller than they assumed. A lot smaller. Before even reaching the edge of the desert they saw the slope up high. All of them are able to see beyond that, leading to another desert at a higher elevation. They stalled on scaling up. Understanding their weakness and not being hasty.
They explored along the slope as they hunted specific groups of monsters. Ambushed by a Teen Giant Sandworm once. It was on its own. And fortunately for the party, aimed for Ebony first. It was the largest creature less the progeniturtle that Ebony had seen thus far. At least a dozen metres long, 2 metres tall, and wide. It had sand coloured leathery-looking skin.
Ebony managed to sense the not really subtle vibrations from the ground and got the party to scatter just before it popped up from the ground, mouth open wide enough to swallow 2 or 3 of them.
They fought it together. A punch landed on its left, causing it to scream in annoyance rather than rage. Dozens upon dozens of cuts drawing blood found their way across its right when a thick grey stick took the chance to enter its mouth and a few smaller sticks stabbed into its back. Its large size only gave them a bigger target and its leathery skin was surprisingly soft and easy to cut into.
Ebony didn¡¯t expect the Giant Sandworm to ignore all the other attacks. It contracted its long body like a spring and then let go. He had another one of his silly moments to encase himself in his own orb with the 2 closest shields instead of dodging. He suddenly had a thought, ¡®what would my Vibrational Gravity Sense feel if I was inside another body?¡¯. This was exactly why he should stay thoughtless in battle.
Ebony¡¯s orb was bigger than the worm¡¯s girth. It managed to swallow the ice ball in but its belly was protruding out.
¡®How silly of me. I can hardly even sense gravitational waves outside of my orb.¡¯ There was a rough sense that gravitational waves were being drawn inwards but that was the same for every body of mass. He focused and got Ice Swords to form from the outside of his ice orb. He could sense his ice pierce and slice through the Giant Sandworm¡¯s internal organs pretty easily. Too easily in fact. Nothing stunning as most if not all creatures would have much weaker internals than externals and the worm wasn¡¯t even very tough despite being level 128.
Ebony got the swords to start rotating and cut himself free by slicing the worm in half. He didn¡¯t expect a hole to open up in his Layered Ice Carapace and the temperature to rise so sharply just when his orb was free. Quickly parrying the incoming burning blade.
Scarlet was panting pretty hard, she likely exerted a lot of force and energy. But why? The worm was so weak even a normal her could injure it. The large size and its strong vitality could easily be worn down. The worm¡¯s vitality was really something as it wasn¡¯t immediately dead after being sawed into halves.
¡°Ha..ha.. You¡Hmph!¡± Scarlet panted, she quickly pulled away when she realised it was him.
Ebony really didn¡¯t get the woman. She wanted him dead so badly she was grumpy to find out he was still alive and kicking? Just why was she so mad with him? Maybe she would tell him now that she was cooking for him again.
Travelling along the slope that likely led to the next floor, they didn¡¯t find much. Following the curve, Ebony¡¯s Mental Map told him that if the slope was in a circle, which it likely was since his map currently showed that they almost travelled along a full semicircle already.
It was nightfall and they found the tallest dune to camp upon. It would make them easy to sight but also easier to sight monsters. A sneak attack or ambush, while they were asleep, would be deadly.
There was a bright moon with a couple of stars as well. Perhaps they were not actually fake. The temperature dropped quite a lot. It was his lucky day. The first time that he wasn''t baking or roasting under the heat in Ordina.
Ebony was pretty happy. Scarlet sparred with him again. She was extra fierce, extra aggressive and extra angry but he took it as her venting anger. He didn¡¯t think getting ignored would hurt more than getting stabbed or having one''s bones broken.
It was time for dinner again and he was looking forward to it.
¡°What is this¡concoction?¡± Ryley looked at the black liquid in his bowl. Tuffock was just staring at the spoonful he scooped up, then gulping saliva down. Hector started eating the other dishes, carefully watching Ebony. He was protecting his food but didn¡¯t touch his soup yet.
It wasn¡¯t really a soup. It was somewhat familiar, a black or really dark coloured soup base with a bird. Tasted like soy sauce. The more surprising food on the table was rice. Ebony knew there was rice here since he learnt the word from Clovis. Roya and Halvis have had some in their time when they travelled as well. It was not so popular in the Empire so he thought it would be a long time before he found any. A pleasant surprise.
Ebony put the sauce over the rice before eating. Chicken was another surprise. His tongue definitely tasted chicken.
¡®This girl had rice and chicken and she never took it out till now. I don¡¯t believe she doesn¡¯t have eggs.¡¯ Eggs were just so staple for breakfast that Ebony missed having them. Like rice was his staple choice of grains.
Today was his best day in a long while.
Seeing that Ebony wasn¡¯t stealing food, Hector relaxed and started talking again. Most meal times, he was sharing stories. He had all sorts of stories, from the nine tail foxes to his young exploits of pranks to rumours of notable strong people making a name for themselves.
¡°I heard that Xeng women don a mask not unlike Scarlet¡¯s when they turn 15. They have a long standing tradition, I wonder if what I¡¯ve heard is true?¡± Hector poked. Ebony didn¡¯t like the look on his face. He was planning something again.
Hector continued when Scarlet didn¡¯t reply from her tent.
¡°If I¡¯m not wrong they call it the Bridal Battle. A couple hundred to thousand years after the Empire formed, the Xeng started to open up, and more of them could be seen around the continent although not anymore. They informed the Royals to spread the word about the Bridal Battles. Roughly put, the Xeng had a decreasing population and decided to allow new blood.¡± Hector paused but Scarlet never interrupted.
He took it as an okay sign to continue and that he was right in his history lessons. Hector checked his party members¡¯ reactions, it seemed like none of them knew the story. Even the noble, Ryley. Well, it wasn¡¯t an essential part of history and was easily dismissed.
¡°But they obviously didn¡¯t want just anyone. Always the prideful bunch, and not without reason. They said that any man could challenge a Xeng with a mask at the same level and the lady would marry the challenger if they were victorious without doubt. Age and even race didn¡¯t matter. Men flocked to challenge them, Xeng women having always been known for their strength and beauty. Regardless, not a single challenger succeeded for decades.¡± Hector stopped to drink some water.
The strength of Xengs really didn¡¯t wane throughout Elcra¡¯s history based on what Ebony had heard.
¡°The Xeng Empress at that time then told the Empire¡¯s Royals to spread that the Bridal Battle¡¯s agreement stretched to allow men not more than 5 levels above them to challenge a lady to a Bridal Battle. Not much had changed. Years past, they increased it to no more than 10 levels over the years. Yet, Xeng population still dropped. At this point, there were indeed a couple of men who wedded them but it didn¡¯t change their overall situation. The Bridal Battle has practically been forgotten by the Imperials due to their abysmal success rate but it never faded and is still in effect am I right, Scarlet?¡± Hector questioned.
¡°...yes. It¡¯s no more than 22 levels now, not including an evolution over. They do have other clauses I didn''t really care to remember since no one really cared to tell me anyway.¡±
¡°So what? If any guy less than 22 levels higher than you challenges you to a Bridal Battle and wins, you have to marry them?¡± Ryley asked, he had never learned or even heard about this. It was such a ridiculous thing for the Xeng Empress to even suggest.
¡°Less than 10 have succeeded over thousands of years, non-combatants don''t have to follow that as well.¡± Scarlet replied. It really defeated the purpose when so few people succeeded, no wonder it was forgotten. Scarlet was pretty surprised Hector knew so much about it.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°Wh..why the masks though?¡± Tuffock curiously asked before stabbing a piece of meat into his mouth. He asked a question many were interested to know the answer to.
¡°I was told that the Empress didn¡¯t want their people to be seen as products for lessers to choose from. Their masks were to hide their faces so that men would think twice before randomly challenging young women. The Xengs practised monogamy and they would have to be careful of losing their heads if they cheated so there were many who weren¡¯t inclined to challenge them anyway.¡± Hector answered.
¡°...Tradition, from the First. The First wore one, the rest followed. All unmarried women who came of age wear one. She believed that women shouldn¡¯t be judged by their looks but as a person like any other. If a man can fall in love without even seeing the face of his wife once before marriage then it would be a marriage that would last. The man had never loved his ¡®wife¡¯ if seeing her face was enough to divorce her, though I¡¯ve never heard of that happening, that was the rationale behind the masks from what I was told. The masks were a thing way before the Bridal Battles were introduced...It''s forgotten because our population actually dropped after it was implimented.¡± Scarlet inwardly scowled as she frowned a little at Hector¡¯s interpretation.
Their masks were all specially made and given by their closest family member. Her parents have chosen the feather design for her or so her grandma told her. Scarlet didn¡¯t know what type of feather but every design was carefully thought out and had meaning.
She really hopes to get stronger soon. She wanted to find them soon¡ she really missed them. She had so much to tell them. So much to ask them. She wanted to have a nice meal with them again. She practised cooking all their favourite dishes so many times she could do it with her eyes closed.
Ebony thought that that was a great idea. Personality mattered more if you were going to live with them for the rest of your life right? It sounded pretty romantic for a man to want to marry a woman when he didn¡¯t even know what she looked like. Well¡ maybe not. He didn¡¯t know much about romance but at least he felt that it was romantic.
But 22 levels and so few succeeded. They were really confident of their strength. The gap between levels only rose at higher levels yet they didn¡¯t care about it at all. It was no surprise after fighting with Scarlet. Wait a minute¡ never mind he never really issued a challenge like that, right? He never defeated her anyway.
Of course, he didn''t know the true reason for the low success rate. Neither did Scarlet.
Hector wrote down what Scarlet said. He was quite the studious note taker, his wide knowledge not unfounded. He apologised for the mix up but it wasn¡¯t his fault for what he thought. It wasn¡¯t exactly common knowledge why they wore a mask. He suddenly grinned when he finished writing his notes. Ebony didn¡¯t like that grin, so he quickly took Hector''s food away before he opened his mouth to speak.
It was the right move to play to distract him.
Their dinner was only interrupted once by monsters, easily spotting them from afar. Tuffock and Ryley went to work while they continued eating. Honestly, the monster density on this floor wasn¡¯t as high as they thought.
After dinner was their own time for training and some spars if they were up for it as usual. Night watches were in twos, Ebony taking up more hours since he was perfectly fine with 3 hours of sleep.
Ebony hadn¡¯t taken a ¡®heated¡¯ bath for a while now, he didn¡¯t have the chance. He preferred to do that when he was alone or had cover. Its effectiveness in training Heat Resistance was pretty low anyway. It was nice to wash off sweat and grime though. He dusted the sand off himself. Thankfully there didn¡¯t seem to be any wind here so it was not so bad, fighting here was pretty challenging for the other vanguards of the party.
The loose ground was not easy to get accustomed to, even he only got dragged to a desert once during his younger years. His current Treading Steps really helped. Hector¡¯s burst of speed actually failed and he almost slipped, he was practising movement at this moment.
Ebony and Hector took different sides of the sand dune. Playing things safe, Ebony pushed all his mana into making Layered Ice Carapace. The ice sculptures were made from the same mana and he was getting better and changing forms of ice from one to the other. It still takes quite a lot of time if it was a complicated or unfamiliar pattern like the sculpture. It only took a few minutes to transform a shield into a sculpture to play around with.
The other shields turned into orb prisons of different sizes and turned back into shields, this was done much faster since he didn¡¯t need to change the structure of the ice. Ebony wanted to get as familiar with the mental muscles used as he could.
Hector switched out with Scarlet when it was time.
She so kindly graced Ebony with another round of sparring. Perhaps tired, they didn¡¯t continue for long. Sitting far from each other on the two sides of their camp, at the edge of Ebony¡¯s Vibrational Gravity Sense¡¯s perception.
Ebony has never stopped training his secondary abilities, such as the range of his mental and mana control. It was also the range of his perception-type skills. The speed at which he could fully push his mana into this sphere of control. The speed at which he could bring it all back into a small ball of compressed mana. How much mana he could compress almost instantly to cast.
Ebony¡¯s range of control reached a solid 15 metres and it was still growing. He knew that Wisdom stat had a hard cap on this but the hard cap was pretty damn high. Rowent had already taught him that when he told Ebony some of the mana exercises. An average Master classed second order mage could still exert control of their spells within 30 metres while the really awesome, particularly talented in this area or oldies could easily change the direction of their spells within 150 metres. That was a huge difference.
Ebony couldn¡¯t imagine how much information one would be overloaded with if their senses and perception can notice everything in a 150 metre radius from them. Absurd.
Icebody Enhancement was by far the easiest spell to cast. It was hard to improve any further than 35% of instant compression of ice mana in his body. The spell did not let him continuously compress the ice mana while it was circulating or he just wasn¡¯t good enough at it yet.
For other spells like Layered Ice Carapace and Ice Sword, Ebony could cast a 40% compressed one in the same time he could cast a standard one as long as he had the mana for it. When you took into account how compressible his mana was, 35% or 40% was not little. Sheer Mana Compression had been stuck at level 110 for a pretty long time.
Ebony¡¯s spell glove was a little redundant but found a new purpose. He usually cast his Layered Ice Carapace beforehand so its increase in speed was not all that useful. Using it to cast a single scale or swiping his left hand in a motion made it easier to control some of the shields/scales. It wasn¡¯t so much trouble to let go of one hand when the greatsword in his hands was lighter than a toy in his enhanced state. It was like how Rowent or Tuffock had to swing their staff, kinda aiding the movement and manipulation of the spell¡¯s mana.
Ebony felt Scarlet standing up and walking before speeding off into the distance. She probably spotted something nearby to hunt. Since she didn¡¯t ask for help, he just remained and continued his magic practice.
¡®Should I invite her to hunt a pack of wolves or two? I should probably ask Hector as well¡maybe.¡¯ Ebony was pretty sure Scarlet would be interested. He extended it to Hector because of his constant pestering and complaining when Ebony didn¡¯t ask him the previous time. They already noted down some areas that had a wolf or two and he mentally marked it on his Mental Map so it would not be hard to find.
¡®Weird. It''s been almost 5 minutes but I don¡¯t hear the sound of battle or smell anything cooking. Did she go further off than I thought?¡¯ Ebony felt that something wasn¡¯t right, 5 minutes was a long time for Scarlet. Worried, he took off in her direction. Perhaps there were more than she could handle alone. This floor had monsters faster or almost as fast as Scarlet so that was worrisome.
Looking down the dune from her direction, Ebony dashed off at full speed. He didn¡¯t forget to go into Hector¡¯s tent and step on his face before moving off. He remained calm but there was nothing in sight, no monsters or Scarlet. Just a couple other sand dunes big and small alike, the one they were on might have been the tallest but they were a few that were not much shorter either so he couldn¡¯t see around or behind many of them.
Luckily it hadn¡¯t been long and there was no wind, Scarlet¡¯s tracks were still present. Every footstep was pretty far apart but not nearly as wide as Ebony¡¯s. He wasn¡¯t an expert but the tracks were pretty deep so she was in a rush or at least was going pretty fast.
Scarlet went pretty far for such a short time. Ebony turned a few corners and passed a few dunes, deeper into the centre instead of staying near the slope where they travelled along. Her footsteps gradually got closer and less forceful, likely slowing down. Still no signs of battle, no sound or smell of blood. There was a different smell in the air though, Ebony was wondering what it could be as he was looking down on the ground for footsteps.
He was close, just round this smaller dune. He heard a soft sound, Ebony thought it was the sound of water. Was there a river or other bodies of water in this desert? There shouldn¡¯t be, the sound was too soft.
¡®Oh my.¡¯ was all he could think of at this moment. Too many things to take in in that split second where he rounded the corner. The most important thing was the vibrations he was feeling from behind and under Scarlet, Ebony knew it was the Teen Giant Sandworms. It would take less than a second to pop up since he felt it extremely close to the edge of his Vibrational Gravity Sense. The gigantic worms were pretty good at not making the ground shake until they were really close, which was what their party found out.
Ebony¡¯s senses were just in the range to sense them before their feet and body could feel the vibrations in the ground.
Yet, worry was the last thing in his head. He only felt one of them and he was confident that he could reach Scarlet who was so close before the worm emerged from the ground. The worm was soft and easy to kill with its size and little evasive or defensive measures.
Ebony only had the extremely fair, twin¡ full moons¡ that were getting covered up when he turned the corner, which he probably cannot erase from his mind right now. He wasn¡¯t that easily distracted and the moment he felt the worm incoming, he sent his shields to trap Scarlet in an orb. The sudden shadow and incoming scales caught her off guard as she was doing her business.
Scarlet¡¯s mind was in scrambles and didn¡¯t manage to dodge or even draw her blades in time as she got imprisoned. Eaten whole right after being trapped. Ebony raised his left hand with his spell glove palms lazily and 2 Ice Swords pierced right out of the worm. It screeched in pain and agony and wanted to vomit what it ate out only to have the 2 Ice Swords holding the orb in place.
Ebony originally felt some of his ice mana inside the orb melt but settled quickly, Scarlet probably understood what happened after her initial surprise and shock so she stopped trying to break out. Ebony brought his hand down, like a lazy knife hand cutting motion.
He felt his ice mana groan and crack where the swords were the thinnest and threatened to shatter, quickly getting more ice mana from the scale orb itself to reinforce the area. Then, the large swords spun. Sawing off the worm¡¯s body in half again. It had a really fragile body compared to the core golems and Arrowtail Scorpions.
Ebony sliced its head off in a few swings with Sonic Overlay and Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. It was huge but so was his greatsword. It had many sets of teeth that it couldn¡¯t use properly as it struggled to wriggle around to defend itself against him. Ebony had second thoughts on what the best thing to hunt here was but the number of worms was not high so it was not feasible.
The thing was persistently clinging to life. Decapitating it was not enough to kill it. Nothing a few more slashes couldn¡¯t change. A notification for its death arrived. Ebony gave a light sweep and the blood on his greatsword slid to the tip, coming into contact with the repulsive membrane and splashing into the ground with much greater force than he swept his blade.
Ebony had already considered the possibility of coming up with some kind of ranged swing attack with this. Flying blade attacks¡ he needed it sooner or later. It was too cool not to have. When slicing monsters of a certain toughness, his not-exactly sharp and less complete Chaotic Repulsive Membrane on his Greatsword would get pushed back inwards and then the greatsword would touch the target¡¯s body. Sonic Overlay would grind into it and blood splatter everywhere due to the membrane if Frost Injection of ice mana wasn¡¯t used to freeze the blood or if the ice mana used was ineffective or insufficient to freeze the monster¡¯s blood.
At least the blood splatters were way too weak to get through the membrane on his body and he was out clean, free of all the mess and smell.
Knock knock
Ebony knocked on his ice orb like knocking on a door. A little unsure of what to say or how to say it. He vibrated some ice mana inside it to stimulate his own voice.
¡°Um¡ is it convenient to let you out now?¡± The white, milky fair moons resurfaced in his mind.
Ebony wasn¡¯t good enough to perfectly ¡®hear¡¯ what she said through the vibrations alone. It was another point to note that he could try practising. It might overload him with more information if the vibrations in the air were good enough for him to know what one was saying from afar. It should not be an issue though, his ears were more than good enough to hear what one was saying from way further than 15 metres. Still, he would never know when a skill would be useful so he would remember to put some time and effort into training it.
It wasn¡¯t too hard to tell that she was saying yes as she nodded despite not being able to see Ebony and vice versa. Did she know he could sense her nod her head? ¡®I guess that¡¯s not too ridiculous a motion since every mage probably has a similar perception skill either for pure mana or the elements they use.
Ebony couldn¡¯t be more wrong about the last statement.
He let her out and slowly transformed the orb back into shields.
Scarlet stood there. For some reason, he thought she looked meek at this moment. Her feets close together, one hand holding the other infront of her, looking down to the ground like Tuffock.
¡°Err.. Thank you for ehm.. saving me.¡± Ebony never heard her tone so soft and nervous before.
¡°Di..did you see?¡± Scarlet hasn¡¯t looked at him since she was out of his ice orb. She dropped a bomb of a question onto Ebony.
¡®Hot. Damn.¡¯
Chapter 66: Desert Wolves
¡°Where are you Tewa?¡±
¡°Bo..bosses. Ordina doesn¡¯t seem to want to mass produce on the 8th floor for some reason. My party scouted ahead first, the 8th to 11th floor is just like a smaller arena inside a larger one. The elevation from the 8th floor leads to the 9th which is also a desert with the same monsters, slightly higher in level. The 9th floor is the same, the edges lead to a slope that you could climb onto the 10th floor and the same to the 11th.¡±
¡°So you¡¯re on the 11th floor already?¡±
¡°No. All of us are on the 12th. I made sure there were no more deaths after we gathered, obviously spreading out so that the large group doesn''t catch the dungeon¡¯s attention. The 11th floor to the 12th floor is through the triangular looking sand dune found against the dungeon walls. There were many rooms inside, some trap rooms, some monster filled but we didn¡¯t explore many rooms.
The 12th floor is also the same desert environment with the same monsters. There was no hole in the middle of the 12th floor to the 11th, 10th, 9th and 8th floor. It was just one big desert that was as big as the 11th if all the middle floors from the 8th to 11th were at the same elevation. Since they focused on rushing up, not much exploration was done.
Teen Giant Sandworms are 125 to 140, mostly solo on the 8th floor, dozens on the 12th. Desert Wolves spotted to be from 115 to 140, completely avoided. Arrowtail Scorpions 130 to 150, the most dangerous of the lot. Always in even numbers. Alone, nothing special. When paired up together, caution is required. In fours, they were pretty deadly. In a group of 8 they were a force to be reckoned with. Teamwork between them is impeccable.¡±
¡°...Okay. Good job.¡±
Tewa was stunned. Their bosses praised him?
¡°Ha! To think my previous estimations were way off. Prepare to gather every single living thing you can on the 12th floor.¡± Tewa¡¯s boss ordered.
¡°Fi..five hundred? We must have been joking.¡± Tewa¡¯s boss commented.
¡°Hmm.. would five thousand be enough for those beasts I wonder.¡± Tewa¡¯s boss pondered aloud and then he went on chuckling like he always did when he found something amusing.
Boss was happy but the number he said scared Tewa shitless. That was not far to be considered a monster horde. They wanted to send half a monster horde onto a single party? No, they didn¡¯t want five thousand. They wanted every single monster.
¡°Bosses. Won¡¯t the dungeon interfere when it realises the large-scale movement?¡±
¡°Silly¡ Just get our men ready at the nodes and wait for our signal. Hit and run strategy.¡±
¡°On second thoughts. The rest can die. Just the mana slave is enough.¡± There was an awkward pause from his bosses after one of them said that. They were probably contemplating something from Tewa¡¯s understanding of them.
¡°What? I thought there was a Xeng woman we were not to touch.¡±
¡°She¡¯s too damn dangerous to keep alive. And killing her may now bring some good benefits at bringing the mana slave over. Your party would act as the perpetrator, the others would work with me.¡±
¡°So you¡¯ll swoop in to save him right after the rest die. Use my party as the common enemy that you and him want revenge against to get him to work with us. Our party just has to have our faces covered. We have Class concealment crystals for all of us and a spare set of equipment we can use.¡±
¡°At least you¡¯re not so dumb. Do you still have the present I gave you?¡±
¡°Yes Boss! There really isn¡¯t anything or one that is worth using that shot on.¡±
¡°Go ahead and use it. I can always make more.¡±
¡°Alright Boss! I really want to break those masks of theirs and see just what they are hiding.¡±
¡°Whatever, you guys can piss off Ordina as much as you want and power level the guys by taking its node for the time being. It should take them a while before they reach the 12th floor.¡±
¡°Where are you, boss? Are you following them in secret?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Never mind. I understand.¡±
¡°Put some men on the 11th floor.¡±
The call ended.
¡°Rejoice! For we can piss the Ordina off as much as we want. First, scout out every single spawning node. Assess and report each node¡¯s capabilities and we¡¯ll go at them safely. When we get the signal from our bosses we¡¯ll start the lure!¡± Tewa opened a connection to the other party leaders.
The cheering echoed over the connection. He ordered the 2 more elite parties, the Master Classed to go back down. They needed to be Master Class if he wasn¡¯t there to watch after them. Their levelling had been extremely fruitful, the 5 110s have reached mid 120s while the low 100s reached high 110s. The deaths and rush up to higher floors have been a little hard for their men. The environment was difficult for many, it was hard keeping them alive really. What better encouragement than the bosses'' permission to play around with fire?
???
¡°Young Sire.¡±
¡°Wel? What¡¯re you doing in Ordina? Aren¡¯t you a little too old for dungeoning.¡±
¡°Thank you for your concern, Sire. But these old bones are still more than enough for an infant dungeon like Ordina.¡±
¡°Yeahh yeah. What¡¯s up?¡±
¡°Sire, you are required at the main family branch in Tidal.¡±
¡°WHAT!? Why now!? Didn¡¯t they let me explore free till I¡¯m Master Classed at least?¡±
¡°The Patriarch calls. As with every noble.¡±
¡°...I see. Something big huh¡How long do I have left to get to Tidal?¡±
¡°3 months.¡±
¡°Prepare the Tempestwing and its rider for me. Any idea what this call is about?¡±
¡°Already done, Sire. I¡¯ll look for you in 2 and half months. Trolls. Enjoy your time, Sire. I look forward to training with you again.¡±
¡°As expected I guess¡ You mean beating me up don¡¯t you?¡±
¡°I dare not beat you up, merely a side effect of training.¡±
¡°At least try saying that without a chuckle. Ha, Wel. I¡¯m having fun, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll like this guy as well. He fights a little like how you tried teaching me but I couldn¡¯t get it.¡±
¡°Ho ho. For Sire to say that is indeed interesting. Perhaps a meeting could be arranged in future.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sure there¡¯ll be a chance for that. See ya.¡±
???
¡°Yes.¡±
It might have been a difficult question to answer for anyone else but it couldn¡¯t have been more simple to Ebony. He was no liar and even more towards Scarlet. He didn¡¯t want to lie to her. For any reason. He might hesitate to answer if someone else''s life and death was on the line but if it was his own then it was not enough to lie to her.
Ebony was fully ready to protect himself if Scarlet was about to slay and cook a meal out of him. Ice mana raring to go, prepare to sacrifice themselves in a blaze if necessary. He just needed to wear out her rage, he should be able to survive right?
In spite of Ebony¡¯s readiness to fight for his life, no sword came flying after his neck. No rise in temperature. Not even a slap or scream. Just the loud beating of her heart. Ebony couldn¡¯t tell what Scarlet was thinking or see what expression she had with her mask on. There was only awkward silence before Scarlet turned around and made her way back to their camp.
Ebony could only hear thumping getting louder and louder as Scarlet ran faster and faster. Leaving him in the dust.
By the time he was back he could only see a visibly angry Hector together with an eye rubbing Tuffock. Scarlet was nowhere in sight but he could sense her back in her tent. Though it was not easy to sense with the tent and everything, he was pretty sure she was hugging her bolster and tossing around. Cute.
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He was so going to improve his senses and Perception. It was cute for sure, but he had to start worrying for his life. There was the story about them cutting people''s heads off in their sleep after all.
Still, he fell asleep a lot easier than he thought he would. Waking up more refreshed than ever.
Ebony was even prepared to not have breakfast anymore but Scarlet still made his portion. It looked quite a bit more than usual too. It was just that instead of ignoring him she was avoiding him. That worked fine for Ebony.
The party continued along the slope and it really was a circle. They knew they were not ready to continue upwards so they went into the centre to start a more dedicated hunt. There were still more unexplored areas which may contain treasure like the hidden room and they needed the levels.
The monsters were less dangerous than Ryley expected. He only just remembered the few monsters he had in his party that went to hunt Mud Golems at level 50s and 60s. The monster density was also lower than the previous floors and he was surprised at how well the hunts had been going.
Ryley avoided lesser and lesser groups of monsters. Letting the party go for bigger and bigger groups. Things got a little spicy for him when they went up to pick a fight with 6 Arrowtails with 2 Giant Sandworms hiding out and waiting underneath them. Thankfully, he had some kind of skill that helped sense them before they ambushed him and Tuffock.
Each of their vanguards took on 2 Arrowtails beyond their levels. Their rear support gave accurate fire support, both of them using more mana than they would like for each attack. Ryley had added most of his recent stat points into Wisdom so that he could last longer and use his special arrows to the best of their abilities. Even though his Class didn¡¯t level, his Sub-Class was actually just level 62 before he came into Ordina. Still, since he hardly engages monsters at such high levels in close range with his dagger it was getting less experience.
Scarlet has been increasing her use of magic as well. Her battles kept ending faster and faster but she seems a little absent-minded for some reason. There should be no problem since it didn¡¯t seem to affect her battle capabilities.
Ryley made it a point to let the party rest and catch their breath after every battle. No matter how many times he saw it he was just going from impressed to terrified that Ebony was never out of breath. No amount of magic used drained his mental stamina, no length of battle made his body falter in strength and energy. They all saw it, he exhausted a golem¡¯s mana reserve¡ Ryley would never believe it if someone told him that. He got migraines just from charging too much mana into his arrows.
They hunted pretty safely until they caught the attention of a pack of over 60 wolves. The numbers were very small for a pack but fatal to them. Mostly level 115 to 118 with the pack leader being 120.
Ryley panicked a little and ordered for them to retreat. That was silly, already within the pack¡¯s prey radar. Even if they could outrun them, they couldn¡¯t outlast a group like them when the dungeon has eyes on them. Furthermore, probably only Scarlet could outrun them.
The outcome put them in the worst situation their party has gotten into since coming into the dungeon.
A desert wolf bit into Ryley¡¯s right shoulder, right into the bone. Ryley has never been subjected to such pain, always training in safety. Hunting similarly levelled monsters at a good vantage spot. He cried out and fell to the ground along with the body weight and strength of the wolf. Tuffock¡¯s stone mace only came in time to knock it away from Ryley. The persistent thing bit hard and that violent force that pulled it away caused even more pain for Ryley.
He screamed at Tuffock but knew that it wasn¡¯t the time for that. Tuffock did save him in the end.
Oddly, over half of the wolves were throwing themselves at Ebony. Literally. It stopped Ebony from trying to help their rear support. The leader of the pack was looking from atop a nearby sand dune and howled orders. 3 wolves jumped and bit onto each of his shields, it ripped control of it from Ebony. All the others were fiercely attempting to take him down. Ryley still didn¡¯t see a shred of fear or any sort of panic on his face.
Scarlet was already low on mana at this point so she was mostly fighting with her twin swords. Hector was in a similar condition. They were trying their best to keep the wolves off Ryley and Tuffock but they were surrounded and could only face so many wolves at once.
Scarlet didn¡¯t have the leeway to ¡®process¡¯ the wolves. Power filled her body as a single swing sliced the stronger beast in half and half again. Taking the front legs of another wolf and the head of another, her gaze not on any wolf attacking her but elsewhere. Hector noticed that and a punch extended into the belly of a jumping wolf going for her neck. Those that were near her were blocking her feet so that the further wolves had to leap for any openings. The 3 wolves going for him shot through the head with a stone projectile.
Ryley couldn¡¯t shoot any arrows with his arm the way it was, but Tuffock had no free time to attend to him either.
¡°Damn! If only I had more mana to cast triple enhancements¡Grh!¡± Hector got a clawed on his belly just when he complained about his lack of mana.
Two enhancements were only enough for him to somewhat break even with the desert wolf''s speed and power. That was only the beginning as he barely dodged the claws going for his neck and back at almost the same time. It landed across his back and knocked him forwards, cutting into his armour but not through it.
His belly was bleeding badly. It would be hard to punch well in his state. Fortunately, they only had around 20 wolves attacking them and there were 4 left that Scarlet was dealing with.
Tuffock quickly attended to both Hector and Ryley after giving a swift assessment at who was in more danger. It was obviously Hector who would bleed out first.
Scarlet didn¡¯t dash off into where the desert had turned into a frozen land. They could see inside the mist somewhat. Ebony was not in a big crisis. He thrived against flesh monsters affected by his ice magic.
???
The wolves were still just slightly faster than Ebony, even with his movement skill and fortification. It was no wonder people avoided wolf packs. Even so, the slight disadvantage in speed was not enough to trip him. Besides, a concentrated Frost Mist Perception Sphere over some time was enough to bring the advantage down.
Ebony has gotten more used to casting a single scale or two to timely block a claw here or a bite there. Injecting dozens of ice mana into a slash was enough to cause a little ice to dig into their joints, affecting their jump, attack and evasion. Hundreds into a good stab that pierces into their bodies with some ease was enough to give a blast of freezing through their heart or brain.
He wanted to move closer to help his party but was held down in place. Since that was the case he didn¡¯t really need his shields so he didn¡¯t bother attempting to struggle with wolves over control. Ganging up on him was not that useful unless they had interesting team play like the Arrowtail Scorpions. To think they can join their tails and show such an increase in power yet still move in sync and dodge attacks.
One last swing in his dance cut the head of the leader of the pack who joined in some time during the battle. Ebony got his shields back and tried to absorb all the ice mana in the air back into his shields to mend the bite and claw marks. It was better than nothing.
The pack leader was not useless and took the chance when its pack was keeping busy to land a bone crushing bite on his right calf before he decapitated it.
He rejoined his party but didn¡¯t expect them to be so grievously wounded. Hector was taking short but heavy breaths, Ryley was bitching about pain.
¡°Your¡ your leg!¡± Tuffock, who was busy attending to the screaming archer, shouted in surprise. Ebony looked down to see the wolf¡¯s head was still attached and teeth dug deep in. He tried to kick it off but the stiff corpse didn¡¯t let go so he had no choice but to pluck it off himself.
¡°Do..does that not hurt at all?¡± Hector asked. Seems like he would live, Ebony thought.
¡°Of course it does.¡± Ebony tilted his head at the stupid question.
¡°...doesn¡¯t look that way. You don¡¯t even look like you¡¯re in pain, much less arghh! Can¡¯t you be gentler!...much less screaming in pain.¡± said the pampered archer.
¡°Sto¡stop moving around so much. The bandages have to be tight to prevent the wound from reopening so easily. You¡¡± Tuffock paused.
¡°Does changing my facial expression make it hurt less? Will yelling out in pain make it hurt less? Both of those are just a waste of energy and effort, I would rather use that energy to remove the cause of pain than to react to it.¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony¡¯s reply was met with silence. They have never heard of such nonsense. Wasn¡¯t screaming out in pain and the twitch or contortion of facial expression a natural reaction? It was more of a reflex really. They had to give it to him when he said it saves energy not to scream.
¡°You shouldn¡¯t use a bow for some time.¡± Tuffock cut in.
Ryley knew. He knew but it was devastating news when heard it spoken aloud. His injuries were bone deep, without a healer it was questionable if he could ever fully recover. He could get a hang of a healer outside but he was useless in the dungeon already.
Hector was pretty lucky, only a flesh wound. His organs were protected with his earth elemental enhancement.
Seeing Ebony¡¯s injury, it might be time to call for them to just climb back down. The hidden room alone gave them enough benefits. The Earthen-Topaz from the core golem was a small prize to top it off, useless to Ryley as it wasn¡¯t worth much. Ryley didn¡¯t want to delay his own treatment and be a crippled archer.
¡°Take this. Bone mending. You should be fine in less than a week. Just get checked by a specialist healer for bones, best one with bone regeneration too since this pill doesn¡¯t help in that regard.¡± Hector dug something out of his bag. It was a smaller bag, Ebony saw many glass vials. Hector took one filled with white pills half the size of a grape. He offered it to both Ryley and Ebony.
Ebony didn¡¯t know what it was but ¡®bone mending¡¯ told him enough. He never saw or heard of that pill in the Zees so perhaps an alchemic speciality. The fact that Hector had so many vials of potions and pills was one thing. Seems like even Scarlet never heard of a pill that could mend bones.
Tuffock was interested in it but not an expert that can tell what the pill could do by looking at it. Ryley stared at the pill for a long time before swallowing it and thanking Hector. Tuffock was tending to Ebony in that period of time.
¡°Could you stop casting your ice enhancement?¡±
¡°It¡¯s alright Tuffock. It didn¡¯t break my bones, I don¡¯t need the pill either Hector.¡± Ebony didn''t say that his bones were starting to heal, it was true that his enhancement helped to stop the wolf from biting off his entire leg but the bones in his calf were more than just broken. Ebony started to manipulate his bone fragments right after he plucked the head off. He would probably be fine by the next morning, it would impede him a little due to the loss of strength in one leg but nothing he hasn¡¯t dealt with.
Ebony likes to think of it as the regaining of vitality. The repaired or mana-regenerated body parts needed to be regenerated physically too. This took much longer from his experience, adding stat points to Vitality would likely help.
Food and nutrients seem to help speed up healing as well. Obviously, proper sleep and rest helps as well.
It took some convincing but he managed to not let them force feed him drugs.
Ebony was just sad that his clothes were getting so ripped up. He had limited sets of clothing and large holes like bite marks couldn¡¯t be mended without extra fabric on hand.
They decided to rest for the day even though it was not late yet.
Scarlet kept avoiding Ebony¡¯s gaze. Always turning the other way and showing her back to him.
He just sat on the sandy ground after he set his tent up to meditate and focus on manually fixing his legs when Scarlet suddenly walked towards him and shoved a paper bag full of steaming hot buns.
¡°I made too much,¡± Scarlet said before running off into her tent.
¡®To think such a famous line would be used on me.¡¯ The corners of Ebony¡¯s lips rose at the thought about the worst excuse of ¡®making too much¡¯.
Chapter 67: Evolution Requirements
A quiet, uneventful night passed.
Scarlet once again let Ebony help with the dishes. She didn¡¯t let him do anything to help with the cooking. She didn¡¯t say a single word to him, even during their spar. Ebony was certain she was not herself as she missed a few opportunities to attack. Absent-minded, she still didn¡¯t look at his face even once throughout the battle. Ebony somewhat understood it was a little too embarrassing so he was okay with that too. It didn¡¯t look likely that she¡¯ll kill him in his sleep at least.
The next day.
Ryley was amazed that he could raise his arm over his shoulder. He tried drawing his bow¡¯s bowstring. He couldn¡¯t pull off multiple shots in a row without feeling pain but it was possible for them to continue. The miraculous pill was something even a noble like him never heard of.
He was even more confused about Hector¡¯s identity, a quadra elemental mage was concerning enough. But having pills that could heal damage that could put a fighter out of their career? This party was only getting weirder. He really was in luck, he had to get as far as he could with them. Build a connection. He gave a deep bow to thank Hector who laughed it off.
Hector¡¯s wound also mostly closed up. Ryley was more and more sure, Hector was someone big. The wound may not have been too deep but it was not something humans could just heal naturally. Not at that speed. Even with medicine and potions. Vitality stat was no magic, it hardly increases a human¡¯s regenerative properties.
Ryley couldn¡¯t tell the state of Ebony¡¯s injuries. No one could. The man himself assured them he could fight like he was in tip top shape.
So Ryley pushed on. Taking the first day slightly easier to heal up. The levelling speed was faster than anyone he knew. The level difference between his party and the monsters was greater than he thought possible to hunt with.
The next day they pushed even harder.
The third day they took Ebony¡¯s suggestion and actively hunted anything they found, taking initiative against the desert wolves instead of getting ambushed.
By the fourth night. Everyone was at level 100. Stronger than ever.
They were having a small feast by their camp. The dire situation and outlook Ryley had when he reached this floor changed. The monsters were less of a threat if they were careful and planned properly. Fights only got easier with time. They improved while the monsters didn¡¯t. At least not as fast as they did.
The whole floor wasn¡¯t that large and was fully explored by the third day. They were planning to continue to the next floor the next day.
¡°Congrats on hitting a hundred!¡± Hector rammed his mug into theirs, even Scarlet joined. Though she hid in her tent to drink her juice.
¡°What are your plans after this? I know we came in to clear it but I highly doubt we could clear Ordina if we¡¯re on the 5th floor and there are at least 15 to go. To think that Ordina was formed on the cusps of an Uncommon ranked dungeon.¡± Ryley asked. He was long aware of the impossibility of clearing Ordina and just wanted some information about their movement in case the contact ever turned out to be useful.
¡°We.. we can see the next floor looks just like this floor. Go..going as far as we can is..is good right. The 30 level gap is..is amazing for our natural potential. I ne..never thought I would get the chance to have my natural potential raised 3 times. Even a level 140 sounds possible, right?¡± Tuffock sounded really happy. No average joe could kill something 30 levels above them and have the experience converted to natural potential.
¡°Yes! I have had many skills stop in levelling for a year or two now. It was great to see them finally level.¡± Ryley said. Sure, the 2 of them were rear support and most likely got less natural potential out of the kill than the other 3 who could take on a level 130 or higher monster by themselves but Ryley would have gotten nothing if he didn¡¯t have their help.
¡°I..I¡¯ll study and broaden my knowledge. I still have a Sub-Class to take before I want to evolve so it might be many years before I become Master class. Maybe find a stone mage academy somewhere.¡± Tuffock shared his plans. His levelling had been even faster than Ebony''s because he didn¡¯t have a Sub-Class. It wouldn¡¯t even be hard to level his Sub-Class since he could take on stronger targets now.
¡°I¡¯ll go back and train up all my skills with my master I guess. I have most of the skills I want already and just have to polish all of them including some new ones. I want to see if they can be added into my Class after evolution.¡± Hector took a bite out of a large drumlet. Ebony didn¡¯t know what meat it was, it was savoury and roasted well with simple seasoning.
¡°I guess that¡¯ll be the same for me. Polishing my lineage skill should be the bulk of what my family would enforce.¡± Ryley shrugged. Ebony heard that some noble families made it a point that their descendants must learn certain skills and even forced them not to learn certain skills that would affect the chances of them taking a Class or skill and whatnot.
¡°Going back home in Xienor.¡± Needless to say, Scarlet was going back for training.
¡°What about you Ebony?¡± Hector asked since Ebony didn¡¯t share even after Scarlet did.
¡°Probably travel a bit to broaden my horizons. Polish my skills for a year or two then evolve. Come back here and finish what we¡¯ve started.¡± Ebony thought for a bit before replying.
¡°A year or two? What are you in a rush for?¡± Ryley was visibly surprised. Evolutions weren¡¯t reversible. There was so much they could do to increase the chances for a better, stronger evolution. Furthermore, none of them were old or that they didn¡¯t have the talent to meet the base requirement for the weakest evolution. Who would rush and turn out less than they could be?
¡°That¡¯s too short?¡± Ebony asked. He did think there was a lot he could improve on but was unsure of the standards of Elcra.
¡°Well, I was planning to train really really hard but I never thought to rush my evolution. If all goes well I will evolve in 7 to 8 years?¡± Ryley said.
¡°I¡I was thinking about a decade or two.¡± Tuffock added. It was no surprise that mages took a damn long time. He also had another class to pick and train all the way up to level 100.
¡°Don¡¯t rush.¡± Hector commented. Receiving affirmative nods from the party.
¡°Alright. Thanks.¡±
¡°I¡¯m all up for coming back to clear Ordina though.¡±
¡°Same here!¡±
¡°Me¡me too.¡±
Ebony was pretty happy with his party. Ryley was not so hard to get along with once Ebony got to know him. His arrogant tone died down over time.
Tuffock might have murdered but who was Ebony to complain? He was no different.
Hector was hard not to get along with. His upbeat, energetic and cheerful nature might be tiresome at times but a fun guy to be with and play pranks on of course. Tuffock even told Ebony that Hector¡¯s belly injury was gotten when he attempted to protect Scarlet. A plus point to him.
Ebony was going to miss eating Scarlet¡¯s food.
They ended their small feast when it attracted some Arrowtails. Ryley shot them down and went for an after dinner jog to get his arrows back. They were a few gors away. Meaning to say many km away.
Ebony called up his status. It hasn¡¯t been long but he has come a pretty long way.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 162
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 100
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 104
Ice Mana Control Lvl 112
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 122
Flowing Greatsword Mastery Lvl 111
Frost Injection Lvl 120
Ice Sword Lvl 102
Ceaseless Onslaught Lvl 97
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 106
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 102
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Orchestral Gravity Conductor Lvl 100
This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 99
Mana Vibration Lvl 91
Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 107
Magnified Gravity Field Lvl 49
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 113
Vibrational Gravity Sense Lvl 93
Sonic Overlay - Lvl 79
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 100
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 65
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 110
Mana Perception Lvl 85
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 500/500
Stamina: 500/500
Mana: 2341/5300
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 50
Vitality: 50
Constitution: 250
Endurance: 50
Agility: 250
Intelligence: 376
Wisdom: 530
Perception: 100 [262]
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 14
Identify Lvl 13
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 37
Running Lvl 29
Mental Mapping Lvl 15
Kicking Mastery Lvl 36
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 7
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 15
Dish Washing Lvl 13
Physical Conditioning Lvl 11
Magical Conditioning Lvl 11
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 41
Tracking Lvl 12
Game Processing Lvl 10
Heat Resistance Lvl 30
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
Some of Ebony¡¯s skills, for example, Sheer Mana Compression, completely stopped in levelling even before he hit level 100. After he hit level 100, he was considered ¡®max level¡¯ again and sufficient potential experience was accumulated when he killed the first level 132 Arrowtail again and was converted to Natural Potential. They should be able to continue levelling again.
Skills that were used more levelled more while those used less levelled less. There was not much to say about his Class and Sub-Class skills. Mana Moulding had no real chance to be practised.
Generic skills did see some slight change. Identify finally levelling once more. Cold and Heat Resistance gained about 2 levels. Scarlet has been directly throwing fire spells at him, maybe she thought that he could take it after their most serious fight. The burns were painful but more so his robe getting damaged. Mental Mapping obviously worked hard due to the size and multi-floor dungeon. Conditioning was a slow grind, it didn¡¯t do much either.
Scarlet still didn¡¯t say much to Ebony. She made food for him, a snack for the middle of the day was prepared for him daily too. They sparred as per normal too. Neither mentioned what happened again.
As for his stats¡
Ebony didn¡¯t exactly know what to think about it. Was it good? Was it bad? Hard to say.
So many theories, so many builds, so many possibilities. He went with instinct and some planning for himself.
It was really dependent on skill set, honestly.
There were many things he wanted to change to his main Class¡¯s skills but even before he changed them his body could hardly handle his Icebody Enhancement when compressed. He also had to take into account him wanting to increase his Agility.
The increase in speed would burden his body even more. Then, his Treading Steps would still level, increasing his speed even more. Icebody Enhancement would get stronger too, he could compress even more mana with training.
100 points went to Constitution. 50 to Agility. 45 outside of his Profession points went to Wisdom and 20 more for Perception.
His body already unable to withstand his magic, Ebony made a slightly painful decision not to increase Intelligence further. He was originally contemplating between Wisdom and Intelligence but decided on Wisdom just because he still felt lacking in mana.
Ebony did have more detailed plans than to just travel and broaden his horizons then evolve. One of them is to return to look for Gen. The other was to return to visit the Thoya family, just to show his face and whatnot. If possible, learn a little more about mana and perhaps tailoring from Roya but that was not the main point.
He wanted to see if he could visit a mage tower or two to read the books he was allowed to read. Ebony thought that it would be fine even if he had to pay since he could regenerate income. Ice, sound and especially gravity. Ebony didn¡¯t think he wanted to pick up another type of magic even if he could for now. He had many things on his plate for now.
Well, when put that way, 1 or 2 years really was insufficient.
Evolution to Master Class.
There were many differences to Classing. Classing could have been said to be handicapped. Generous.
The handicapped part was Apprentice Classes. The level 10 requirement would come back and bite them in the ass when they reached level 100. No such thing as an Apprentice Warrior evolving into a Master Warrior.
Breaking things down for Classing.
Apprentice, level 10 skill requirement. 50% buff for Fortification
Normal Classes, generally known as Journeymen which everyone in Ebony¡¯s party falls into.
Level 25 skill requirement which practically everyone got gave 100% buff for Fortification.
Ebony knew for a fact that there was a level 50 one which gave a 250% buff.
Evolution to Master Class and higher was known to be the same and unlike the generous Classing. The general rule of thumb for the skill level requirement was 1.1 times, 1.25 times and 1.5 times their max level. The buff to Fortification is 25%, 50% and 100% for each mark reached.
So every skill that Ebony got to get his Class would need to be level 110 to meet the minimum requirement to evolve and the current Fortifications he has would increase by 25%. Hitting the level 125 mark would increase the buffs by 50% and reaching level 150 would get him the ¡®normal¡¯ 100% buff like when he Classed.
So why was Apprentice Class handicapped? They do not meet the requirements to evolve until their required skills reach level 125 and get the 50% buff. They didn¡¯t have a level 110 option. Even so, after Evolution their total Fortification buff would only equal another Journeyman that hasn¡¯t evolved. Those who even picked Apprentice Class were likely not so talented in whatever skill or Class they picked which made it even harder to reach the higher requirements.
Then the fact that their Fortification buff was only 50% obviously made them weaker if they were combat classers. This would make it even harder for them to hunt a monster 10 or 20 levels above them to raise their natural potential. A vicious cycle. The weak would stay weak while the strong get stronger.
Noticing how Hector was really knowledgeable and how Ebony wanted to know the general strength and levels of the people on Elcra, Ebony just asked Hector once after they sparred. Hector answered all of Ebony¡¯s questions. How did he know some of these things? Ebony didn¡¯t know and didn¡¯t ask, it might be general knowledge for all he knows.
About 10% of the entire continent¡¯s population were Apprentices, practically all humans. Give or take. Plainston and other edges of the Empire were more undeveloped and hence, more of them were concentrated here. Many Apprentices die of old age without reaching the level 125 requirement. If they even survive till old age which is 150 to 200 years old for humans.
Of all Journeymen, only those who were so untalented and about to die of old age took the level 110 evolution. Sometimes, a person¡¯s general ability can be seen by comparing their age to their levels. This was less than 10% of all the Journeymen. The cause of death was rarely old age for combat classes and a large majority were combatants. The chances of these people becoming Grandmaster Class was next to 0.
More than 50 to 60% of the Journeyman took the level 125 requirement evolution. They have less than a 15% chance of meeting the lowest requirement for becoming a Grandmaster. If they ever reach level 300 of course. From what is known, the general rule of 1.1, 1.25 and 1.5 times the level for skill level requirement was the same for the further evolutions as well. This meant the skill level requirement for Grandmaster was level 330, 375 and 450 for the same Fortification buff of 25%, 50% and 100%.
Power difference between people of the same type of Class only widened as they levelled and evolved.
The rest of the Journeymen meet the level 150 requirement. As long as they didn¡¯t die young or have any injuries that prevent them from improving, they had the highest chance of evolving into Grandmaster.
Currently, 3-7% of the Empire¡¯s population was unclassed and under 15 years old. 25% or so of the Empire¡¯s population was Apprentices and Journeymen between level 0 and 100, unevolved. Over 60% was evolved and between level 100 and 300, Master Classes were the majority. Remaining percentages were Grandmasters. King Classed were few.
Ebony really wonders where Hector came up with these numbers and percentages and how accurate they were.
The trends were painfully obvious to Ebony. 1.1 times, 1.25 times, 1.5 times. 25%, 50% and 100%.
Skills had the same trend. 1.0%. 2.5%. 5.0%. Finally, tier 4 skills were 10.0% per level.
Ebony was willing to bet everything he had that there was a 2.0 times skill level requirement for a 250% Fortification buff. He would definitely not evolve before he at least tried hitting that level for his Core Skill. He was even willing to bet that tier 5 skills, which Hector said definitely existed, gave 25.0% per level for whatever the skill does.
The numbers were outrageously nonsensical as power rose exponentially.
Numbers were nice and all but there were more than just skill levels for requirements. There were still special requirements like Ebony¡¯s. New Generic skills can be learned and brought up to suitable levels and if compatible, a new Class could be branched into. The higher they go the harder for this to be done, so if he wanted to continue to diversify his skill set it was better to do so now.
Ebony hadn''t heard anyone else bring up Physique into the conversation and he didn¡¯t exactly want to bring attention to himself so he was planning to ask Gen more and if not then just browse through libraries and check if Physique was decent for a conversation topic.
Well. That was that. It would still be a long time before he evolves so what better to do than come back to the present and continue their climb of the dungeon? Ebony wanted to see just how high level a monster he could slay to get as much Natural Potential as he could.
There was no better and more convenient place than up, up and above.
Chapter 68: Panic Attack
Ebony had expected too much from the dungeon. It was the same old desert when they took the difficult climb up the slope that was not so elevated but a pretty long way. The party had some trouble, the sand was looser than the rest of the 5th floor.
Hector asked for one of his shields and then slid down the slope like a slide. He was having fun on his own until he realised he had to carry the shield back up. He was not happy. It was too heavy to climb up loose ground, he slipped onto his face too many times and it got less funny so Ebony went to help after he had enough fun watching.
Hector gargled water only to spit it out and take another sip over and over again. Tasting the sand in his mouth.
In just an hour of travelling straight right from where they climbed up, they knew what shit they were in. It was the stupidly long walkway all over again. Ryley was the first to see the next, bigger, wider and steeper slope up. It was far away but within sight.
Ebony only spotted that after they travelled for another half an hour or so. Ryley¡¯s eyesight was really incredible. At the speed they were going, half an hour was a huge distance. Another point they noted was that even the monsters were the same. Their average levels are a tiny bit higher but not hitting 140 yet. The Arrowtails are the highest level in comparison.
They didn¡¯t have the energy or any desire to look for any caves or rooms that may be in the sand dunes. Besides the black plank Ebony got, he also had one of the Earthen-Topaz they split amongst themselves. He also got some of the Arrowtails¡¯ tails. The wolves and worms didn¡¯t look like they had any useful parts. So soft and sliceable that they doubted any armour of good quality could be made from it.
Ebony brought along 3 bags but only one was half-filled with tails. The plank was with Hector for the moment and the topaz was only smaller than a fist.
¡°There¡¯s much fewer monsters here for whatever reason,¡± Ryley commented.
¡°No..no new monsters either.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s just make our way up.¡± Hector was also bored of this floor.
They arrived at the bottom of the slope by nightfall. The rest was covered in towels or blankets from the invading chill. Tuffock didn¡¯t bring any and was holding his tattered robes closer and rubbing himself warm underneath it. There were no trees or wood to burn and build a fire and Scarlet couldn¡¯t possibly keep a flame up with her mana for the whole night.
Enough of the 6th floor, they carried onto the 7th before the dungeon¡¯s imitation of a sun rose.
¡°Not this shit again.¡± Hector groaned. Once again, they were met with the same scenery. The time and distance before they spotted the next slope was roughly the same too.
They had no choice but to scale the place when they got there. They didn¡¯t gain experience from killing any monsters and really didn¡¯t see a need to get more monster materials. Only when they saw some level 140 did they move to hunt them.
Hector went and ''mega panched'' all 8 Arrowtails at the same time. A gory mess was left as the aftermath. Ebony had realised that every one of his party members copied him. They probably had a large portion of their stats put into Constitution and Wisdom. He was wrong about them copying him.
Hector could become all sparky for 2 seconds and not end up unconscious. He could use 3 enhancements stably and for an extended period of time as well. Ryley¡¯s shots very obviously charged up with more mana than before, less time used to charge them and didn¡¯t get dizzy after 4 or 5 mana-charged shots.
Scarlet showed a change in fighting style. Bombarding a Teen Giant Sandworm with enough fire it turned to ashes. Only fighting close range when she didn¡¯t have any more mana or was just bored of roasting and frying her targets.
Tuffock¡¯s battle style never changed. His spell¡¯s effectiveness was starting to show that he was the weakest of the lot. Not being able to push off wolves with a mace smash or pierce an Arrowtail¡¯s carapace with his lance unless he charged his rotation of lance for long enough. No surprise with a full 500 stat point difference.
It was in the middle of the day but not any hotter than any other time in the day of the desert when Hector was complaining about the heat for the thousandth time even though Ebony was sweating more. It was really uncomfortable when his undergarment and clothes got sticky with sweat so he had been forced to use ice mana to chill himself where it mattered. Icebody Enhancement only made it worse so he didn¡¯t cast it when unnecessary.
¡°GO GO GO! TO THE LEFT!¡±
¡°OH NO!¡±
¡°WHAT¡¯S WRONG!¡±
¡°3 GIANT WORMS ARE COMING!¡±
¡°NO PROBLEM, LEAVE THESE SCORPIONS TO ME. TWO OF YOU GO AND BACK HIM UP!¡±
¡°¡°ALRIGHT!¡±¡±
¡°WE¡¯VE GOT THIS!¡±
¡°OH ELLING SHIT! WE DON¡¯T GOT THIS!¡±
¡°WHY WHAT NOW!¡±
¡°2 PACKS OF DESERT WOLVES FROM BOTH DUNES ON OUR LEFT AND RIGHT!¡±
¡°OH SHIT!¡±
¡°NOW WHAT?!¡±
¡°I DON¡¯T KNOW!¡±
¡°ME NEITHER!¡±
¡°WHO CARES!?¡±
¡°THAT¡¯S RIGHT! ATTAAACK!!¡±
All the screaming was answered with more shouting. It wasn¡¯t too far off so they picked a tall sand dune so they could see what was going on.
[Master Warrior Lvl 138]
[Master Warrior Lvl 132]
[Master Warrior Lvl 132]
[Master Warrior Lvl 133]
[Master Warrior Lvl 135]
It was the first party they had seen in a while. Ebony thought there were requirements in place and didn¡¯t expect to see a party of 5 warriors; they were pretty high level too. For one of the parties that came into the Ordina anyway.
¡°Oh, aren¡¯t they Panic Attack or something? They are building up quite a reputation in these parts for being a party of 5 warriors that constantly pester and even succeeding to get permission from the Quest Hall to go into a dungeon in a party of 5 warriors.¡± Ryley seemed to recognise these people.
The party of 5 was all human, all at least 1.8 m tall and full of muscle. Their equipment had lots of metal, leggings, greaves, chest plates, shoulder plates, vambraces and helmets that covered everything but their eyes and a bit of their face. All of them spotted the same set of equipment, even their weapons. A round shield and a one-handed sword.
They were a mess. No teamwork, no cooperation. Yet none of them got hit by any attacks. There were 3 dead sandworms, cut into many pieces. A dozen or so Arrowtail corpses with 2 still alive and ganging up on one of the warriors. He kept shouting as he backhanded a tail with his shield and swung his sword to cut the attacking tail before sweeping his sword and cutting the other incoming tail. Then pulling his shield back close and ramming into the first scorpion, jumping on it and stabbing down into its back.
2 groups of roughly 50 desert wolves from both the left and right dune when they were in the small ¡®valley¡¯ were in a brawl with the other 4 warriors. They were really spontaneous and noisy with a lot of screaming but none was in any danger.
¡°Pretty good.¡± Ebony commented.
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¡°Yeah, wanna just leave?¡± Hector asked.
¡°Sure.¡±
None felt the need to stay and watch or cut in on their hunt.
The party was all pretty high level and none really looked like they were in trouble anyway.
¡°HEEEY!!!¡± one of the large men called towards them and waved his sword arm. He was the highest level one and the most relaxed one.
¡°OH HELLO! A GOOD DAY TO YOU PEOPLE!¡± Another one of the warriors looked over as he slashed 2 wolves at the same time while blocking himself from an incoming bite.
¡°YEAH! HAVEN¡¯T SEEN A SINGLE PERSON FOR A WEEK NOW!¡± The third guy commented.
¡°HAPPY HUNTING!¡± The fourth guy laughed and called out but was busier with more wolves on his tail.
¡°WOAH! LEVEL 100 JOURNEYMEN?! BE CAREFUL NOW!¡± The last and looking the most free from attacks was surprised before asking them to be careful.
¡°JOURNEYMEN ON THE 10TH FLOOR?! IMPRESSIVE BUT TAKE CARE NOT TO BITE OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW!¡± The first guy gave his sincere opinion. The over hundred wolves didn¡¯t bother them one bit.
¡°THIS IS THE 10TH FLOOR!?¡± Hector seemed to be infected by all their intense shouting. The party known as Panic Attack were acting a lot more friendly than Ebony expected. Hector would probably get along with them great.
¡°HAH?! OF COURSE IT IS! HOW DID YOU GET ALL THE WAY HERE WITHOUT KNOWING THAT?!¡± The third guy answered in confusion and asked with as much confusion.
¡°WE THOUGHT THIS WAS THE 7TH FLOOR!¡± Hector replied even louder.
¡°I DON¡¯T KNOW HOW YOU GOT UP HERE BUT I¡¯M PRETTY ELLING SURE WE CLIMBED UP 10 DIFFERENT FLOORS! WELL, NOT ALL ARE SO DIFFERENT WITH THE DESERTS!¡± The first man answered, he seemed to have taken it as a challenge of who was louder and put in even more effort into shouting as loud as they can.
¡°ALRIGHT THANK YOU SO MUCH! HAPPY HUNTING TO YOU TOO!¡± Hector thanked and returned the well wishes.
¡°10th? Grassland, forests, mountains, walkway, desert, desert and desert right?¡± Hector turned back to them.
¡°Maybe the walkway was just a shortcut.¡± Ebony then went on to tell them his hypothesis about the walkway being the way up along the ¡®outer walls¡¯ of a tower. His own Mental Map roughly confirms it but it was hard to map the entirety of the structure from the internals so he was not 100% sure.
¡°That makes sense. The monster''s rise in level was too much for a one floor difference. The core golems were also practically elite monsters, which should have been pretty rare. Not to mention Ordina wouldn¡¯t have the resources to expend on so many elite monsters. Whew! We really hit the jackpot with the hidden treasure room. That was probably the best things that the dungeon could make at this point.¡± Hector considered as he looked at his notebook and edited some parts.
¡°It¡it seems catered to us too,¡± Tuffock added.
¡°I doubt they are of Rare quality though,¡± Ryley said. He wasn¡¯t disappointed either way. Coming from a house of archers he was taught quite a bit about all things bows. His grandfather was only at the peak of Master Power Archer from what Ryley knew. A step away from the ranks of a Grandmaster and also the noble rank of an Earl. And even his bow was made from just Rare materials. Costing millions of mana, dozens of Blues, practically half of their liquid funds and a family heirloom at this point.
That single step separating him from a Grandmaster was a gulf that the majority couldn¡¯t cross. It may take dozens to hundreds of years of effort if they didn¡¯t have the talent or didn¡¯t take the risk to push for more Natural Potential.
An Uncommon ranked material could already make him one of the better bows in his family. Though he¡¯ll have to match it with other similarly strong materials which would be damn hard to find on the market since nobody really sells it just like that. Some large companies do have their own contracted parties to collect materials and sell them but in the end everyone needs to use materials for themselves. This corner of the continent just didn¡¯t have a large supply of anything really.
Ryley¡¯s allowance and savings would hardly be enough to get good, suitable materials from other cities. Putting on orders from the Zees would only allow them to upsell depending on how far they would have to deliver the items. Reality was such a bitch, these low-quality items wouldn¡¯t even be worth much closer to the Empire¡¯s Capital. Ryley might be able to find a rock on the ground that was better than what he had if he travelled out of his home city. At least that was what he was told many times.
The fact that they were on the 10th floor did not make it any more likely for them to reach the top of the dungeon. They were reaching their limit and ability to cope with the current monsters; a few levels difference for an evolved monster had a bigger strength difference than the same level gap for a monster under level 100.
Not including Hector in his most ridiculously powered up mode, none of them were faster, stronger or even better at killing than the desert¡¯s wolves, worms and scorpions. Even Scarlet. Ebony also knew that throughout the past 10 levels, Scarlet didn¡¯t get one bit faster except maybe her skill level rising and heart rate buff kicking up a notch.
Surmising that she didn¡¯t add a single point to Agility. A surprise to him. Her spell power and amount of spell casting did increase but not all that much so he wondered what she added her stats to.
The party was delayed by a large group of Arrowtail Scorpion so they made camp a little later when they arrived at the edge of the slope to the next floor. Ebony was seeing a slow rise in skill levels. Magnified Gravity Field was getting pretty useful.
A 49% increase in gravitational strength was enough to affect others'' movement by quite a bit, the gravitational pull in Ordina being higher helped a great deal. Ebony estimated it to currently be 3 times stronger than when he was outside, 49% of that made it almost 4.5 times stronger than what he was used to.
The spell wouldn¡¯t even affect him if he doesn¡¯t allow it too. Ebony¡¯s Chaotic Repulsive Membrane passively made it harder for the pull to latch on to him. A little thanks to observing Scarlet¡¯s antigravity items. Besides, even without that, a little manipulation was all that was required so that the spell didn¡¯t work on him.
It was not strong enough to add any significant weight to monsters and people with superhuman stats, power, and speed. But the sudden change in gravitational strength can play a large part to surprise and when used well, help to evade or make the target miss some attacks.
The trick was that Ebony always put his own party members under the spell effect whenever he could. He wasn¡¯t good enough to let all of them be unaffected by the spell so why not just let them get used to fighting under even stronger gravitational pull? Of course, they weren''t dumb and tried to stay a distance away from him whenever they were fighting. If not, they took it as training.
¡°So yesterday¡¯s or today¡¯s is better?¡± Scarlet had been acting a little weird but Ebony was starting to get used to her constantly changing moods and attitude. She started asking him to compare her food, whether he liked one over the other, if it¡¯s too salty, sweet, spicy, bitter or sour.
She made sweet and sour pork once more when he told her it was one of his favourite dishes. Then she ran out of pork and or boar meat.
One of the nights, Ebony woke up to sense her right outside his tent. He thought she was just about to open the flap to peek at him but then she dashed off right after he woke up. He wondered if she knew he woke up or if she knew that he knew that she was outside.
Another time, he saw her pour out a pail of water out of her tent.
Other than that, she was mostly back to normal. As if whatever happened didn¡¯t happen. Less the fact that she still looked away when he looked at her, unless they were sparring and hunting. They were serious as always when and where it mattered. Maybe she did stare at his every move harder than usual but that may be due to his advice of taking in every little action of their opponent to predict movements and attacks.
Ebony didn¡¯t think she would be able to copy him so easily though. He never put much thought, if any at all, about every single micro action of his opponent. It was more reflexive and just knowing what they¡¯ll do or what to do, where to move how to place himself in the most advantageous spot in the instant his opponent had a twitch of a muscle, change in their line of sight, rotating their wrists, ankle or other joints by an almost unnoticeable amount and more.
Ebony didn¡¯t stop her from trying, everyone needed to start from somewhere.
¡°Oh hey! Journeymen party!¡± someone called out. It was one of Panic Attack¡¯s members but they didn¡¯t recognise who was who with their similar equipment and body build. All were covered from head to toe after all. Panic Attack came by a little later in the night when they were training their own skills.
The 5 Master Warriors were dragging along a desert wolf or scorpion, each with huge bags on their backs. Seeing that made Ebony appreciate Scarlet and Hector, who had spatially expanded bags.
¡°Mind if we made camp over here?¡± The supposed leader and level 138 Master Warrior asked. They didn¡¯t stick that close, with about a hundred metres between the two camps. No longer screaming their lungs out.
It might have been dangerous with a stronger party so close to them but they seemed pretty nice so far and dangerous also meant safer if there were any monster attacks. Once again mentally appreciating Scarlet, when they saw them set a fire with firewood they actually brought along themselves. They roasted scorpions over the fire and made a bloody wolf soup.
It didn¡¯t even smell appetising. Scarlet was obviously frowning under that thick mask of hers but didn¡¯t say anything as they minded their own business. She didn¡¯t let any of them eat monster meat here in Ordina if it wasn''t necessary. It was only natural for other parties, not everyone could bring so much food with them to last a long expedition.
They had set 2 tents up, bigger than Ebony¡¯s or any of their own. Each could fit 2 people of their size. It was probably better to reduce the load they had to carry. They had their own version of training, everyone just attacked everyone else. Sometimes teaming up to attack one guy then sneak attack the ones they worked with. It was just a battle royale where anything goes. It really suited them.
Their sparring sessions were much shorter before they took turns stripping their equipment off to maintain them. Ebony had learnt a thing or two about that from Hector but didn¡¯t need to since he didn¡¯t wear armour. Cleaning and polishing were the general things if there was no damage on them.
While their party had 2 people up for watch, Panic Attack only had one guy doing the job. He was even napping on his watch. How relaxed they were was proof that they didn¡¯t really feel any danger here.
When Ebony was woken up for his duty and he was doing his magic training, with Hector doing his movement exercise, the guy from Panic Attack taking watch was their leader. Without the helmet he had a thin scar on the lower right of his jaw, the others on his party had spotted beards but he didn¡¯t. They didn¡¯t look middle-aged but were not far from looking around that age. He was warming his hands over the fire they were keeping up in turns. The cold nights were not kind to all but Ebony.
Ebony didn¡¯t notice the looks the man was giving toward their party.
Chapter 69: Michael
¡°Ice hybrid swordsman. Quadra freaking elemental mage. Heavy archer. Stone mage. And of course, a Xeng who¡¯s also a hybrid swordswoman. All of them are kids less than half my age. What a party. Interesting.¡± Panic Attack¡¯s leader spoke to himself.
¡°Hey boys!¡± He stood up and put his helmet on. Not shouting too loud to attract any unwanted attention or wake up the remaining people who were resting.
¡°Hmm? What¡¯s up?¡± Hector stopped sidestepping. He was practising his movement on sand.
¡°You¡¯re an interesting party. This floor is dangerous enough, the next would be worse. How about a small duel? Let me see what a party of journeymen on a floor with monsters that reach level 140 can do, how ¡®bout it?¡±
¡°Heh. Sure. I¡¯ll go first.¡± Hector smashed his fist together, but without any magic. It was just a habit.
¡°Haahahahaha! I¡¯m sure none of you kids are normal but aren¡¯t you underestimating me too much? Whatever, I¡¯ll humour you. Don¡¯t disappoint me, okay!¡± The man guffawed but still sensible enough to keep his volume down. It still woke some people up who went right back to sleep. He meant to ask both of them to come at him but the young kids actually thought he was duelling them one at a time.
Hector didn¡¯t underestimate a Master Warrior. He understood the staggering difference in power between him and a Master Warrior or any Master Classed. The stat difference was hard enough to cover, not to mention the Fortification buff difference.
Hector hammered his fist and got all four of his usual enhancements on. With his recent stat distribution that caused him to not build for power but for endurance, he could last much longer in this state without too much pain. His sudden burst of speed to rush into the Master Warrior surprised the man.
It was not enough to catch him off guard. The man kept his round metal shield close to his body and tilted himself a little. Hector''s opening punch landed on the edge of the man¡¯s shield and slid to the side. The man took the chance to bring a knee to Hector¡¯s open torso. Not expecting the boy to fall flat onto the ground and roll away to dodge his strike.
¡®Quadra elemental mage who fights in close combat? Another hybrid. Interesting! His Strength is not much lower than mine and his speed is about the same as mine. INSANE!¡¯ The man grinned, he had over 900 stat points over a fully level 100 journeyman of all three of their classes. Not to mention his mastery and Fortifications. He followed up with an overhead strike with his sheathed one-handed sword. The rolling boy pushed himself off the ground just in time to dodge his sword strike but not his backspin and shield smash.
Or so he thought but it didn¡¯t feel like he rammed the boy away. The impact on his shield arm sends numb shocks through it, the Master Warrior steadfast enough to keep his shield in place.
Hector had jabbed out at the incoming shield bash with a twin Coalesce Punch just before it managed to land on him. He was still knocked back but stayed on his feet without getting hit. The Master Warrior was good.
Hector increased his pace, he didn¡¯t like the pain of so many elements running in his body. The Master Warrior dodged his powered punches, deflected his quick punches and blocked and hunkered down against his numerous punches with precise judgement. Hector realised that he also adjusted the angle of his sword after Hector punched a few strikes away.
It ended with Hector¡¯s natural defeat after a few minutes. Hector couldn¡¯t get the upper hand throughout the exchange. He wasn¡¯t trying to kill the guy so a super or mega punch would be overkill. The Master Warrior may not give him the chance to do that even if Hector tried. Hector was out of breath and exhausted from the duel but the Master Warrior didn¡¯t look any different from when they started the duel. It just wasn¡¯t a matter of power and speed.
¡°Enhancement mage? You obviously trained very hard in close combat too! You¡¯ll be a rising star after you evolve and have a dozen or so more years of experience.¡± The man could easily tell from the impressive display of strength and speed, a quadra elemental enhancement mage was completely unheard of but it was right in front of him. He believed it wouldn¡¯t be unheard off for long either. He attributed Hector¡¯s loss to his young age and inexperience in fighting and he wasn¡¯t wrong.
¡°Thanks! You¡¯re pretty damn good yourself!¡± Hector replied while lying on the floor, huffing.
¡°I have to ask. With your ridiculous strength, is the Xeng Miss in your party still stronger than you? Or are you the party¡¯s leader?¡± The man asked with honest curiosity. The strengths of those people are a known legend, the individual didn¡¯t matter. Every story had been told that not a single Xeng was weak. Yet, the man couldn¡¯t believe that the quadra elemental mage boy could lose to anyone with buffed stats that could rival his.
He had no doubt about their ability to cross this floor of the dungeon already.
¡°She is far stronger, but I can still beat her if I really need to. Besides, in a normal setup. I¡¯m only number 3 in this party. The leader is the archer.¡±
¡®Far stronger? Only the third strongest? Well, he can¡¯t hold up so many enhancements for long so that should be the reason. So the archer and the Xeng are that strong?¡¯
¡°Normal setup?¡± He asked for clarification. Hector replied with a large grin that the man liked to see together with a laugh. Looks like he could only guess what that meant.
¡°My turn?¡± Ebony asked. Ebony was pretty impressed with Panic Attack¡¯s leader. It wasn¡¯t just the skill with the blade and shield. The man had loads of battle experience, it was easy to tell from how he handled Hector without getting touched. The kind of person Ebony would be itching to duel with.
On the other hand,
¡®The ex-mana slave and another hybrid.¡¯ The Master Warrior already felt that it was odd enough to see such a young mana slave as much as he knew how odd it was he didn¡¯t ask and wasn¡¯t interested. Human hybrids were mostly a mish-mash, with no real strong points, at least as a Journeyman. He wondered if the meditative part would bridge the gap.
The Master Warrior readied himself. Never underestimating anyone was common sense after living and fighting on the field for long enough. He had seen enough deaths of arrogant and prideful people who never respected their opponents.
The impassive look of his opponent¡¯s face was exactly what he heard most if not all ex-mana slaves had. What a pity. Children or really anyone of all ages should know the joy of smiling.
Ebony looked at the Master Warrior who was in stance and perhaps giving him the first move. Icebody Enhancement crept up to max as his uncovered face and right hands turned a little translucent blue. His facial muscles locked even further, looking colder than ever.
Ebony wanted to see how far just his swordsmanship could bring him so he met the bigger man with an exchange of sword strikes.
Panic Attack¡¯s leader was not very impressed, he stayed on the defensive. While the ice enhancement used to that degree was a little surprising, it was nothing much. The boy¡¯s strikes were a lot lighter than the first one, not to mention his slow speed. Though he did get faster and faster and his strikes were slightly heavier each time it just wasn¡¯t enough.
Deciding that he had seen enough, he switched to attacking the boy. It didn¡¯t take a minute for him to change his impressions of the boy. He couldn¡¯t land a good blow. His lips rose a little as he raised the pressure on the ex-mana slave.
¡®It¡¯s not even his pretty random sword style. This little guy knows how to fight¡¡¯
His smile stiffened when he realised that the amount of power or speed he put didn¡¯t cause his opponent to falter much. He knew he was still hurting the boy from the shocks of their exchange so he had to take care not to go too far. He already put the boy in a couple of dangerous situations that he narrowly avoided. The boy was as impassive and calm as before.
Panic Attack¡¯s leader was put on the spot and wanted to end the battle. It was not easy to control and he couldn¡¯t tell whether the boy could take any more hits before he had irreparable damage to his arms. They didn¡¯t have a healer and he didn¡¯t think their party had one either. Yet, he couldn¡¯t decisively end the battle without severely injuring the boy and the boy couldn¡¯t do anything to him either.
The boy was obviously very good at seeing opportunities to attack and taking them at full force. Nothing the Master Warrior couldn¡¯t handle but it was stressful when dragged out, mistakes could be made easily in an extended exchange of such intensity.
¡®I¡¯ll just wear his enhancement out I guess.¡¯ The man thought.
Ebony hit the peak of his ability to gain and maintain momentum but he couldn¡¯t even tilt the Master Warrior¡¯s sword away. All his attempts to get into his blind spots were seen and countered. It was quite fun, a different kind of fun none of his party members could give him. Speed and power even built up to his limit were insufficient too. He wanted to learn more about how the man was fighting against his self made style of sword fighting. So he kept going and going.
Sadly for him, the man called for a stop when he got tired.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Panic Attack¡¯s leader did hear that those older ex-mana slave were all pretty creepy to be around. He always thought the rumours and stories were just exaggerations, it was just their class and skill. They were people all the same. But now he knew that the stories were cute in comparison. Relentless.
No better words described the boy. The endless ball of energy and mana stopped at nothing. Focus never running out, not missing a single opportunity to push him further. The cold look he had looked colder and colder as he stared at it during their duel.
¡°Impressive. The name¡¯s Michael, you can call me Mike. I would¡¯ve liked to spar with the others but this young man here tired me out and there¡¯s still a whole day left for my party and I to explore and hunt.¡± Mike introduced himself before excusing himself. Hector and Ebony gave their introductions as well.
Hector was going to go to rest after wiping his body down and getting Scarlet to take over but he found her awake already. He quickly hopped off to Panic Attack¡¯s camp.
¡°Hey hey Mike, you don¡¯t want to miss this. The number 1 and 2.¡± Hector whispered.
¡°Oh? So Ebony is number 2? You can¡¯t beat him?¡± Mike thought that Xeng and the leader would be number 1 and 2. While Ebony was a relentless fighter and a genius at fighting, Mike was still holding back a lot. He was one who evolved with level 150 skills, they were currently close to hitting 200 and he didn¡¯t have a lack of tier 2 skills either. He couldn¡¯t show some stranger all of his abilities from the get-go. Not that he wanted to kill the boy either.
¡°Do you think I can after fighting both of us? He didn¡¯t even use magic other than ice enhancement against you.¡± Hector seriously asked. Ebony had been using Mike to train his swordsmanship, Hector was not unfamiliar with him. The sad and infuriating part for Scarlet was that Ebony was not trying to mock them. Hector could only sympathise with Scarlet, glad he didn¡¯t use a sword.
¡°Perhaps¡ You¡¯re saying he didn¡¯t show me everything in our duel.¡± Mike pondered on Hector¡¯s reply. It was true that in terms of stats and absolute power Hector was leagues above Ebony. However, with the genius¡¯s ability, he could probably keep himself alive until Hector was weakened. But Hector was no slouch either, Mike could see that he was trained from a young age, definitely a noble no doubt. A nice hearty and energetic boy despite being a noble, he must have come from a more decent noble family.
¡°Of course not. He¡¯s a gravity and sound mage as well, though the most annoying part has got to be his ice magic. Or rather his practically limitless mana pool.¡±
¡°Just who got him brainwashed and become a mana slave. What a pity. Imagine if he had proper training and what he could become in future.¡±
¡°Dunno. Never asked. I used to think he was one too, but now I doubt he was ever a mana slave.¡±
¡°What do you mean? Are you saying he¡¯s purely got a Meditative Class as a young human, not even an elf? He looks no older than 30 or 40 years old.¡± With a lifespan of 150 to 200 years, humans don¡¯t usually show signs of ageing from the age they Classed till they turn 40. It really depends on person to person, some don¡¯t show any signs of ageing till they are over 100 years old.
¡°Yeah. I also assumed he was a mana slave like everyone but he has memories of his childhood and all that. Never talked about his time as a mana slave. Haha, I get the feeling that with his surprising lack of common sense he might not even know what a mana slave is. And he¡¯s only 16 years old. As for whether he¡¯s really human? I don¡¯t know either but he¡¯s human to me.¡± Hector had long had his suspicions about Ebony''s background. He just didn¡¯t really care. Ebony was a chill guy, fun to be with. No one really played pranks with him before. Or on him.
¡°...I can¡¯t really believe what I¡¯m hearing, 16 year old Meditator, Ice hybrid swordsman, gravity and sound mage that lacks common sense. What else are you going to tell me? He came from another world?!¡± Mike was dumbfounded by the many unbelievable revelations.
¡°Heheh I think so.¡± Hector chuckled.
¡°...¡±
¡°Okay okay, enough of unimportant things. They¡¯re starting.¡±
¡°Why are they going so far away?¡±
¡°No shit.¡± Hector heard the stupidest question of the day. They were 2 mages that none of them could tell who was stronger. Hector placed his bets on Scarlet being the strongest but Ebony being the toughest. The problem about being near or fighting Scarlet was the lack of oxygen, which he had been wondering how Ebony handled.
Ebony had 2 of his Layered Ice Carapace with him, not wanting to waste so much of his ice mana.
His mana pool is mostly full since he didn¡¯t dip into it from his battle against Mike. Compressed Icebody Enhancement, Chaotic Repulsive Membrane, mana regenerative meditative Battle Song that gave him a buff of roughly 3.72 wisdom now only the regeneration and not the increased mana pool though.
A short 1-second burst of Frost Mist to distract her was cast before diving into his Onslaught. Scarlet already expected that and had Sphere of Immolation on a low burn to melt the mist in the air.
She had Heated Blade on at about 5 mana per minute. Lightning Inoculation sparked and Revolving Razorwind Film enveloped her twin blades, Ignite and Flare. Violent Heart Acceleration was flipped the moment she saw him anyway. Her body pulsed with electricity as Pulsating Lightning Enhancement was controlled to stay in her lower belly until she was ready to burst with speed. Streamline Wind Enhancement helped lower any wind resistance on her body from her intense speed. It was practically always on when she fought. Keeping her hair from getting damaged even though it was so long and tied in a ponytail was just a minor control training and an awe factor or so her grandmother called it.
Scarlet just kept doing it till it was effortless and instinctual. She didn¡¯t like the desert, it made her sweat more than she already did with her Core Skill. Then there was the fact that she couldn¡¯t copy Ebony and have her wind enhancement all the time. Washing sand out of her long and voluminous hair was not easy and took time.
Being the only woman in the party was inconvenient in many senses. She couldn¡¯t bathe like the enviable Ebony who just used his shields to cover himself and had to make do with wiping her body down. She even had to go pee in secret. ¡®Ahhhh!¡¯ Scarlet screamed at the memory of how embarrassing that was. It was shame that she could never erase, she couldn¡¯t even get angry because he came and protected her¡
She really didn¡¯t sense the Giant Sandworm, Heat Perception was iffy with them under the hot sand. Their scent was also covered by the sand. Scarlet couldn¡¯t bring herself to blame Ebony for¡seeing.
Even unable to see well in the steam from the melting ice mist, Scarlet easily perceived where he was with her Heat Perception and his low body temperature. She also long recognised his smell with Scent Tracing.
Several Spear of Flame formed in the air above the both of them and Scarlet released them onto the ground with as much mental force as she could. All while rushing in with Pinpoint Perforation which got stuck halfway into his huge shields of ice that steamed and melted.
Ebony was forced to use one of his shields to scatter into a few bigger lumps to block the incoming spears. Kicking up Frost Mist Perception Sphere many times to cool and keep himself alive. This was Scarlet¡¯s latest method of wasting his mana. She already found out that he didn¡¯t have limitless mana long ago.
The spears exploded on impact and the intense heat spread across the cold desert night. It was quickly combated with steam and then mist formed again and he let Frost Mist Perception Sphere go. He was dodging Scarlet¡¯s quickly increasing speed and Cascading Lacerations.
Ebony took a step forward and Magnified Gravity Field kicked in at full force. Disrupting and resetting her build-up in combos, yet her increasing power and speed from Violent Heart Acceleration didn¡¯t stop. Her recent rise in Constitution let her handle an even higher increase in heart rate and physical buff.
His Ceaseless Onslaught was hardly sufficient to combat her rise in speed and power. The amount of mana he was putting into Frost Injection was way more than Scarlet was putting into Heated Blade yet it was only enough to not let his own greatsword melt. Because once again, his greatsword was in bad condition. Like the blacksmith, Balke said. It was better to just get a change of weapon. The price of upgrading his current one wasn¡¯t really worth it.
He had realised when he put his greatsword under combusting ice mana. It couldn¡¯t handle it, it almost froze and shattered during that battle itself.
He focused on dodging for a fair bit and had Ice Swords forming from his increasingly cut apart Layered Ice Carapace to save mana and fired them at Scarlet¡¯s feet to keep her off him for a short while. It quickly decreased the size of his shield but the ice swords were tough enough to withstand 2 swings from her as they were made from the already compressed Layered Ice Carapace.
Ebony had icy mist gather right over his greatsword and under his membrane before giving a good swing and a light blue crescent wave shot right out and across the sands. It was a random use of what he was thinking about the other day, letting ice mana shoot right out with his swing force and the force of Chaotic Repulsive Membrane speeding it up massively. Some of the ice mana just flew out from the flat part of his blade so the attempt wasn¡¯t perfect.
The flying slash was epic to see through, it was a whole lot faster than he expected it to be. However, Scarlet was still faster. Despite the short distance between them and the speed of the slash of ice mana flying over, she managed to get a Spear of Flame formed. It was 2m long as usual and it spun and rotated like a fan blade. The ice wave just faded into nothing upon contact.
Ebony used the blocking of her own sight to charge right in with what he used to call a power stab. Scarlet wasn¡¯t going to get caught off guard with such a lousy attempt. She was used to some of his tricks already. Bringing Ignite down to deflect the blow and Flare to stab out in exchange. A light swing was enough for her as she was at the limit of how much enhancement her body could handle. Using Blood Mana Manipulation to suppress herself from getting any stronger or faster. Her body was already steaming long ago, she was always thirsty after a fight this intense. The water ore under her mask was really useful but drinking while fighting was not advisable.
His balance was knocked aside along with his body. He let go of his left hand and let his right glide along with his greatsword and pushed as much mana as he had into his spell glove to cast Layered Ice Carapace. He didn¡¯t have much mana left so only a 3 plus layer shield was cast.
It was cleanly pierced through as the pointy end aimed at his neck. Ebony shifted his shield to the side as fast as he could the moment Scarlet¡¯s sword pierced into it. It pulled her sword to the side along with her body that was charging towards him. He ended up catching her literally burning body in his arms, hugging her. It was only for a second before they pushed each other away. Another draw, but he was inwardly happy at tonight¡¯s spars outcome.
Scarlet also didn¡¯t have any more mana and she was more than exhausted. She quickly ran off to the other side of their camp and tried to rest and calm her Violent Heart Acceleration down so that she could rest properly. It took her a long while before she could calm her heart and relax.
Ebony was also out of mana but he was not tired. Meditating in silence.
¡°So? What do you think?¡± Hector asked Mike as he smirked to himself. It was a ridiculous exchange no matter how many times he saw it.
¡°...Magical abilities that rival a young adult Elf or a human one with about 50 to 80 years of experience. Genius¡doesn¡¯t even begin to describe what I just saw¡Who are you people?¡± Mike gave a random estimate, he had actually never seen many mages fight so it was largely based on what he felt. These two flirtatious kids weren¡¯t even purely mages and had just as much talent in close combat. How old were they? How old was he? Comparison really was the devil of depression.
¡°Just a random group of young men and women the Quest Hall put together~ Alright, I¡¯m gonna go sleep. See ya around!¡± Hector waved but didn¡¯t look back.
Chapter 70: Escape
In the morning.
Scarlet couldn¡¯t stand seeing Panic Attack mutilate and waste food anymore. Using their ingredients, she made breakfast for them too and they all ate together on a larger table Ebony made. They never had such luxury when they were out on the field. One of them actually cried as he ate. They thanked and even wanted to pay Scarlet for the meal but she rejected it.
Packing up and ready to climb to the supposed 11th floor. During breakfast, they learned about the floors they missed. Ebony wasn¡¯t disappointed at missing some of the more interesting floors. They could explore it when they went back out anyway.
They didn¡¯t have too much trouble scaling the sandy slope and arriving on the 11th floor in about an hour or so.
¡°...Another desert floor? WHEN WILL THIS END!¡± The one who cried at breakfast screamed. The 2 parties separated as they didn¡¯t want to gain unwanted attention from the dungeon or share prey.
¡°Hmm? This floor is small. Look up and far.¡± Ryley said.
¡°Walls. Finally.¡± Hector saw what Ryley was referring to.
¡°Le..let¡¯s go.¡±
They sped up forward towards the walls. The walls were the same colour as the sand and most of the desert. They got closer and closer before Ryley saw that they should turn more than 90 degrees right. Something on the walls was different from where they were headed.
Half a day passed with the dungeon sun high up in the ¡®sky¡¯.
¡°No monsters.¡± Ebony commented. Half a day was a long time for them to not encounter any monsters. He could see the half pyramid that stretched into the sky sticking out of the wall. There was an entrance right at the bottom.
¡°Hmm, this isn¡¯t a trap floor or maze floor or anything weird either.¡± Hector guessed. Not all dungeons or dungeon floors were about monsters. Dungeons have many more methods that they could use to attract, then kill and absorb a person¡¯s essence.
¡°Th¡then let¡¯s keep going. No..no traps. No monsters.¡± Tuffock said.
¡°This is mighty suspicious to me. Who knows if there were traps in the triangular sand dune.¡± Hector gave his opinions. They didn¡¯t seem to know what a pyramid was.
¡°Mike did say that there were a few parties he saw that were ahead of them. Maybe they just passed by and cleared this area.¡± Ryley hypothesised.
¡°I guess that''s possible¡but I¡¯m worried. We were having trouble with level 140s already, no reason to go any further since we¡¯re not planning to explore for treasure. We don¡¯t even gain experience anymore. I say we just end our dungeon expedition here.¡± Hector spoke softly before glancing at Scarlet. Scarlet shrugged her shoulders.
Ebony noticed that the 2 of them were talking to each other more often. After Hector showed his ability to mega punch and use lightning enhancement. Scarlet has been talking to Hector about fire and lightning enhancement magic. Hector, being open with his knowledge, shared his experiences and whatever he knew. Every time he came closer to listen to their talk since it was always good to learn more about magic, they would stop their conversation and split up. Ebony didn¡¯t like that.
¡°...I guess we really don¡¯t have much to gain by endangering ourselves.¡± Ryley said. As much as he liked to clear the dungeon it just seemed unlikely even though they were higher up in the dungeon than he originally thought.
¡°Do..don¡¯t you think we can take down a level 150 together? Th...that¡¯s another natural potential increase.¡± Tuffock asked.
¡°I know you want to take this chance to get more natural potential to increase your generic skills even more for a better Sub-Class but we¡¯re already at risk where we are, Tuff. We don¡¯t know if we could kill a monster at level 150 and even if we can, your stone magic already couldn¡¯t harm a level 140 much. The natural potential split to you would be irrelevant even if we could kill a level 150 monster.¡± Hector discouraged Tuffock. He was hoping Tuffock would back down.
¡°...Al¡alright. You¡¯re right. I¡¯m okay with stopping here. Let¡¯s go.¡± Tuffock¡¯s head looked further to the ground, evidently disappointed as he gripped his fist tight. He was also a little hurt but he knew he didn¡¯t do much unless he expended a lot of time and mana to strengthen a single spell.
Hector was ecstatic at Tuffock giving up. He was already feeling really bad about doubting one of his new friends that he liked quite a bit.
¡°Ebony? Scarlet? Are the two of you okay with stopping here? You¡¯re the strongest here, you might even have a chance at taking down a level 150 alone. Your gains would do your future good.¡± Ryley redirected the question to them. The only known way of getting Natural Potential to rise was when one reached ¡®max level¡¯ and killed a monster 10 levels above them and every 10 levels above that gave another sum of Natural Potential. While crafters had more unknown ways, the commonly known ones are to either use higher rarity materials or craft a higher rarity item with lower rarity materials and/or ingredients.
A loud swish sound that Ebony had gotten familiar with resounded through the air before the 2 of them could reply. Scarlet reacted first, kicking Ryley out of the way. It was an arrow. Then more arrows followed. Tuffock got a deep cut on his upper arm as his flimsy robes tore, it was merely from the sharp wind pressure of a glancing arrow.
Ebony already got all of them behind his shields. He had 5 Layered Ice Carapace as usual. He saw a total of 7 people, some may be hiding but he didn¡¯t see more. Too far for him to Identify, they were multiple sand dunes away.
¡°Move back. My shield is shattering.¡± He had received the brunt of mental feedback from the constant arrow barrage. At least 3 of them were powerful archers. They were definitely Master Archers, none of their spells would reach and Ryley probably couldn¡¯t match them himself. Each shot wasn¡¯t that strong but they had quite a rapid firing rate going on. They didn¡¯t even try to conserve arrows as hundreds already shot towards them
Layer by layer, scale by scale, his Layered Ice Carapace came apart. He wondered how they carried around so many arrows. It didn¡¯t take them long to back up but behind them was the pyramid¡¯s entrance. They entered.
¡°They''re coming after us!¡± Ryley called out.
Hector and Scarlet shared a glance. Tuffock, who started chanting as soon as they backed up, slammed the butt of his staff down. 2 stone walls rose and blocked the entrance.
¡°Co..come on. This won¡¯t last for long.¡±
¡°No need.¡± Scarlet said.
¡°Just a few of them, we can handle them. They couldn¡¯t break Ebony¡¯s shield immediately, even the Arrowtails did more damage.¡± Hector added.
¡°Alright then! We¡¯ll give them a good one when they smash through the walls.¡± Tuffock smiled. It was likely Tuffock 2 talking.
Just as he said that his stone walls broke apart.
¡°Come on down! All of you! We¡¯ll tear apart everything you throw at us!¡± Tuffock 2 screamed as he tightened his fist and punched into the air. The stone fist that formed from the broken walls punched out together with his motion. It knocked away whoever was standing behind his walls. Ebony saw them using the flat side of their axe to block.
¡°Get them out of there! We can¡¯t get a good shot with them in the entrance!¡± A voice echoed through the tunnel of the pyramid entrance.
Ryley reported a total of 10 people or 2 parties. 3 Master Warriors, 4 Master Archers, 2 Master Rogues and 1 Master Swordsman. Their swordsman was the highest level at 126. An assortment of level 120s and 110s for the rest.
Scarlet was already in battle with a rogue and the excited swordsman who rushed to her. That dumb idiot.
The axe-wielding warrior with a spear-wielding one fought Ebony while the remaining rogue and warrior engaged Hector. Ebony was excellent at seeing the weak points in the spear-wielding one since it was like his mother using the long rod or wooden staff of hers. He was not so familiar with the axe though.
He noted they were nothing special. Mike was more than ten times more experienced and better at fighting. He just pushed more mana into Frost Injection and they couldn¡¯t deal with the increasing chill in their arms after their weapons were completely frozen and their hands frozen to it.
Seems like Ebony was still soft and only trapped both of them in an ice orb made from 2 Layered Ice Carapace. When a body flew towards him from behind, burned, he took the head and slammed it into his ice orb before the man¡¯s body slowly sank into his orb that could probably fit more people.
There was a lack of fanfare. They handled the melee warriors and rogues without much effort or harm and he locked all of them in his orb. They were squeezed into uncomfortable positions and stuck close together but he didn¡¯t care. Of the 6 warriors, rogues and swordsmen, 5 were inside his orb already. The warrior Hector fought died when Hector accidentally broke his neck with a jab too swift and sharp for the man.
There was a lot of shouting from inside his orb but they fell on deaf ears. The archers didn¡¯t do shit, they ran when they saw that things went south.
¡°What to do with them?¡± Ebony asked. He did want to know why they attacked them out of the blue but honestly, he was too lazy to do that. After Hector killed the warrior, Ebony realised that he genuinely didn¡¯t care why they wanted to attack them. They attacked with the intention to kill, that¡¯s all he needed.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
¡°Just kill them. They probably just want to take whatever loot they can from us, seeing that we¡¯re just Journeymen.¡± Tuffock said as if it was the obvious and simplest method.
¡°Why not just ask one of them what they want from us?¡± Hector suggested.
Ebony got an ice hand inside to push the swordsman¡¯s face against the ice orb and slowly pushed only his head to stick out of the ice orb.
¡°Who are you and why have you people attacked us?¡± Ryley took the lead in the questioning. He was almost killed by the first arrow shot and was not happy at all. The archers have escaped but it barely mattered now.
¡°Who we are is none of your goddamn business! Now let us out and fight us like warriors!¡± The swordsman shouted.
¡°Do any of us look like warriors to you?¡± Ebony asked. Even his own party was stunned silent at the comeback. They were technically warriors but also not really warriors.
¡°...hahaha! You¡¯re in trouble now. Our boss is on the w...¡± The swordsman¡¯s head was smashed into bits onto the ground with a floating stone mace.
¡°A load of bull. They never intended to tell us anything. Just kill them already, they are all attacking to kill us anyway.¡± Tuffock scoffed and crossed his arm. Looking unkindly towards any who tried to kill him or them.
Ebony looked around but there really was no disagreement from anyone. Human lives sure mattered little to the people here. No. It was just that their own lives mattered more. Who knew if they would return to kill them if he let them go.
He waited not a second more and lightly squeezed his left hand''s fingers into a grip. The death or kill notifications rung in their heads for the partial experience that they didn¡¯t gain due to max levels.
¡®Hmm. Not any different.¡¯ Ebony thought. His first 4 kills of living breathing people didn¡¯t feel any different from when he killed monsters or the animals he hunted. He heard that people¡¯s hearts would race and adrenaline would kick in but apparently not.
The orb unravelled back into Layered Ice Carapaces. Body pieces fell but their blood was already frozen. Ryley felt the urge to puke when he saw that. The others didn¡¯t look or stare too much. Ebony took his shovel and buried them. It was the least he could do, though it likely didn¡¯t mean anything. He didn¡¯t bury any monsters in the dungeon since the dungeon just absorbs the monsters back. It was just sand so it didn¡¯t take much time.
Then, he felt the vibrations in the ground, being extra sensitive to vibration was getting more useful. Yet, none needed his extra sensitive senses to vibrations when the entire ground and pyramid was shaking and sand was coming down on them.
They escaped out through the entrance again since it was so close to them anyway.
¡°Don¡¯t stop running!¡± Ryley screamed. He saw what they didn¡¯t, deeper into the triangular sand dune¡¯s tunnel.
The tunnel was jammed packed.
Ebony grabbed the scruff of Tuffock¡¯s robes as he made his dash. Trusting Ryley¡¯s orders. He didn¡¯t like the large and strong vibrations either.
It didn¡¯t take long before the pyramid ¡®exploded¡¯ outwards near the entrance. In front were hundreds upon hundreds of Teen Giant Sandworms, they dug out from the pyramid and were the main culprits of the pyramid exploding. Thousands of Arrowtail Scorpions burst out along with the sandworms. Many clung onto the large and long bodies of the Sandworms and many more scattered in between the worms.
¡°HOLY CRAP!! WHAT THE ELL!?¡± Hector pushed his feet even faster along with all of them.
They didn¡¯t stop coming out of the destroyed pyramid but the vibrations from the ground only got worse.
The horde was missing something. The most numerous of the desert¡¯s monsters.
Desert Wolves.
They didn¡¯t disappoint their reputation of being pack animals. Almost pouring out like a tidal sea wave.
A random scan gave him a wide range of numbers all the way from 125 to 150. The sandworms only reached about 140 or a little higher, just like the wolves. The scorpions were generally higher from 135 to 150.
Ryley didn¡¯t even bother looking back and taking aim. With countless monsters there¡¯s really no point taking a few down. He couldn¡¯t even take one down with a single shot unless he used that shot of his. He would just lose the distance that he bought by escaping in advance.
Ebony was now faster than Ryley was in terms of movement speed. Scarlet far ahead, she could escape without much problem as long as she doesn¡¯t slow down and tire out. It was difficult since monsters had a large advantage in terms of physical stats.
Hector enhanced himself with wind and water enhancement to speed ahead of Ebony.
¡°What do we do now?! They are catching up!¡± He called from not far ahead.
¡°What can we do but run.¡± Ebony plainly said. If he was alone, he would just stay there really. He just needed to optimise a slow burn of mana and stamina most efficiently and he¡¯ll slaughter them all in time. The higher level ones were more troublesome because he would have difficulty even dealing damage to them. Their weakness to ice mana was a fantastic add-on.
He better not try. His output will most definitely be higher than his regeneration to take even a single one of them. Even if he turned the whole area into a frozen wasteland and weakened the large group of them over time, they could steamroll him down with their numbers. They could crush him by stepping on him.
¡°Helpless once again?¡±
¡°What did you say!?¡±
¡°I said catch. Don¡¯t stop. Tuffock chant.¡± Ebony pulled back and threw Tuffock to Hector. Hector caught the stone mage but almost tripped, turning back to complain to see Ebony stop in his tracks. The crazy fool.
A freezing blast of air hit Hector¡¯s back. Tuffock was already mumbling. The screams of rage and pain could be heard from within the mist. The area that Ebony had under control was only directly behind them. Hardly a dent from those that went from the side?
None of them skipped across Ebony and some wolves even made a sliding stop to turn back to him.
Hector, no, actually all of them already observed this happening many times throughout their time in Ordina. The monsters loved Ebony, it wasn¡¯t a coincidence or something that happened once or twice. They seemed to be unable to control their urge to go after him.
Hector didn¡¯t stop running alongside Ryley while he tried to carry Tuffock steadily. He saw Scarlet similarly stopping a few gors (5km) ahead of him and he almost wet his pants when he saw what was above her. Hector¡¯s gonna guess it was her spherical heating spell. But having bright red flames manifest and not just a gust of hot air. 3 to 4 girs in diameter, it was getting a little smaller but not much.
Checking back on Ebony when the screaming of monsters lowered in volume. A shadow shot out of his mist at an accelerated speed. Spotting Ebony flashing past him. A drop of ice cold blood landed on his face.
Ebony had a hole in his upper left arm and shoulder all the way through. It was a small hole from the thin tails of the Arrowtail and was already freezing up to stop the bleeding. He had blasted himself out of the monster literally piling themselves on him with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane repelling him on the frozen sand which helped him to not trip.
¡°Ryley, hop on. Get charging.¡± Not a change in tone from Ebony. Hector now gave up on getting this man to have a change in tone or expression. Even the sky falling down won¡¯t affect him will it?
Ebony started running backwards with the same steadiness and speed as if he was running forward. One of his 2 remaining shields out of his original 5 flipped horizontally for Ryley. It was thinner than his usual so that it could be faster. He used the excess mana to repair the other half-broken shield.
¡°Get behind!¡± Scarlet yelled.
She brought both her raised hands down like dropping a heavy load down from her shoulders. The 4 of them already arrived at her side and passed her as their clothes burned despite how high up she cast the ball of doom and how far they stood away from her.
Ebony received literally hundreds of partial experience notifications before the ball of flames even touched the ground. The blast of heat and burning air hit their backs with enough force to push them forward even more.
¡°Hector take him too.¡± Ebony slightly raised his voice just when Hector thought it would be impossible for him to do so. Ryley and his shield were ¡®thrown¡¯ to Hector who caught them and ran with the shield over his head. Damn it was heavy.
Ebony already turned back to grab the fallen Scarlet. She grabbed onto him tightly as they burst back beside Hector. Fortunately, a hole in their numbers was dented and he managed to get her without much trouble.
The large spell drained almost everything out of Scarlet, not her mana since she wasn''t so dumb as to use everything at once. But the mental drain was heavier than any spell she had cast. The momentary mental spike of pain knocked her out for a split second. She caught on to the strong arms pulling her up and let herself get pulled along as he repelled from the ground.
He let go after she said she could run by herself. The charred and crisp remains of the group were quickly run over by the mostly burnt Giant Sandworms that were at the corner of the blast. There were survivors of the blast as well, mostly the Sandworms which had really high vitality while the Arrowtail and wolves that got the brunt of the hit died. Ebony was pretty sure he saw light reflect weirdly on the ground. Glass perhaps.
¡°We bought some time but hardly enough! The previous floor is hours away!¡± Hector complained. Even though he was only using 2 enhancements he would not be able to keep them on for half a day. He was also still slower than the monsters with only 2 enhancements.
¡°Look further behind. There are people who came out after the monsters. A lot of them.¡± Ebony, who stayed to slow the first batch down, said.
Like he had claimed, there were about 60 people in the fray with the monsters near the back of the horde.
They worked together in a tight formation. Warriors at the front, in a circle. Only a mage or 2 was spotted in the centre along with a circle of archers covering them and the rogues moved around to protect the ranged attackers from any that broke through the line of warriors.
Ebony didn¡¯t have the time or attention to observe earlier but this group were slowly making their way to take down the tail end of the monster horde. They were not doing much, pretty weak from what he could see. Likely not anywhere as good as Panic Attack or even the people who he just killed.
¡°AHHRGGH!¡± Ryley screamed in pain before letting his bowstring go as the arrow flew. The large area of burning sand and burnt corpses was already run over and the quickly chasing wolves and worm-clinging scorpions saw a sliver flash before 2 glowing arrows stabbed into a Teen Giant Sandworm each.
The resulting explosion from Ryley¡¯s shot blasted the entire worm¡¯s huge body apart, along with every Arrowtail Scorpion that clung on. The desert wolves dashing ahead were affected but not much, the ones running along with the worms were blown into bloody bits just like the hunk of flesh. It took about a hundred or two of them who were tightly packed.
Ryley, who fainted on his shield from the over exhaustion of mana usage, woke up screaming and grabbing his shoulder. It seems his arm never completely healed from the bite, even with potions and the mending of his bones he needed more time to fully heal everything. It was fine when they fought like usual but he infused mana in his bow as well as the arrow to strengthen the shot. The strain was too heavy and his tendons tore, the mending of his bones was not perfect either and cracked along where the old injury was.
The monsters who were in a fevor didn¡¯t seem to care to split up either. The only thing on their mind to chase them. It did help that Scarlet and Ryley took a large number down but it was hardly enough.
Ebony grossly overestimated himself.
Chapter 71: Few Thousand or Thousand Few?
When Ebony charged into the mass of monsters earlier, he was assaulted from every direction. That was fine and all but his Layered Ice Carapace that was usually used to limit the number of attacks and the direction they came from broke in seconds.
He burst out a thousand or so mana into Frost Mist Perception Sphere, the thin layer of ice on their bodies didn¡¯t do much but it was sufficient. It wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t know, but his attacks are too light. Other than a good stab or 2 into the worms which were softer, Ebony did little harm to the wolves and scorpions.
The higher level wolf¡¯s hide was tough enough that a glancing slash only gave them a light cut and fur trim. There was no chance to give a good stab. In less than a minute his ¡®indestructible¡¯ shield shattered, Ebony used whatever ice mana remained for more Frost Mist. Hoping that it would slow their chase on his party members. Numerous tails, claws, fangs and pincers were coming after him.
Two tails pierce through the front and half of his shield, right through his robes and out through the back. He took it as the signal to get the heck out. The hardened ground was unplanned and made it possible to repel himself out of his mist and rejoin with Hector.
???
Back to the present with Ryley crying in pain.
There was a barrage of drilling stone lances following above them as they ran. The monsters were hot on their tails, they were faster and even Scarlet may not outrun them.
Tuffock was not a conjurer. All the stone he used was reused whenever possible, if not it was drawn from his staff. Now, his staff was colourless instead of grey. Tuffock knew his stone shards would hardly be enough and went beyond his capacity as his face was pale.
Ebony was about to ask if he could control their fall to make a fence or wall with the lances but then with just the monster''s body masses and speed of charge they would likely break through without slowing down. Ebony¡¯s compressed ice was still tougher than Tuffock¡¯s stone.
¡°Wh¡when should I release this?¡± Tuffock broke out of chant and asked.
¡°Just fire! They¡¯re right behind us!¡± Hector screamed.
The shadow over them disappeared at Hector¡¯s call. Tuffock¡¯s spell is more brutal in the sense that it doesn¡¯t instantly kill them like Ryley¡¯s and Scarlet¡¯s attacks. Tens of lances stabbed down into a single Teen Giant Sandworm. A few scorpion legs crushed, desert wolves¡¯ eyes scrapped out. Wolves tripping and falling over each other, worms who cried in pain straightened and slammed back down smashing scorpions to a bloody mess.
It was chaotic and managed to affect even more monsters behind them; the chain effect was desirable. It bought them even more time but Ryley and Tuffock seemed down for the count. Scarlet was obviously drained too, Hector could still run for a bit more. Ebony knew he had the mana for it, he usually just can¡¯t keep many enhancements on for long because of his body and not his mana.
In a couple of minutes, they got over falling over and attacking each other and were gradually closing the distance.
Ebony gave one of his flying ice mana swings to a stray that was getting closer. It missed horribly.
¡°What are you doing!?¡± Hector was already stressed out. Ebony¡¯s ice mana came out at the tip of his blade after he completed his swing instead of flying out as a slash. He wanted to cry and couldn¡¯t help but ask what Ebony¡¯s plan was.
¡°Oops? This is a new trick I just recently tried.¡± Ebony replied. That was embarrassing, he didn¡¯t release the ice mana out in time together with his swing. He would have to practice if he really intended for this to be used regularly.
Hector really wanted to cry. Was this really the time to try something new?
¡°HOOO SHHIIIIT!¡±
¡°YAAAASS! LET¡¯SS ELLING GOOO!¡±
¡°CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAPPP!¡±
¡°NO FRICKIN WAY!¡±
¡°HECTOR! EBONY! WHAT ON ELVA¡¯S ASS DID YOU DO!¡±
¡°YOO! MIKE! WHAT¡¯CHA DOING STANDING THERE, START RUNNING!¡±
¡°BOYS!¡±
¡°WHAT¡¯S UP!?¡±
¡°A LUMP OF EXPERIENCE, THAT¡¯S WHAT! ATTAAACCKK!¡±
¡°Damn! Didn¡¯t think Mike was such a crazy guy.¡± Hector said. Panic Attack was coming in from the side, they were on a tall sand dune when they felt the ground shake and it didn¡¯t take much to find the thousands of monsters coming. They were more excited at the sight than scared, none of them lagged or hesitated when their leader called for the charge. It was what they did best.
Ryley gave an approximate estimate of 7.5 to 8 thousand of them after they stopped popping out from the pyramid earlier. Scarlet and Ryley took a few hundred each, Tuffock got less but injured way more of them. In that sense, there were still more than 7000 monsters after them. Yet, Panic Attack charged right into them. They went in from the side and were already engaged in battle.
The people at the back could no longer be seen and they didn¡¯t chase after either. Whether they were in battle with a group of monsters of their own or just left after none of the monsters went after them was unknown to Ebony.
Quite a large portion of the horde was attracted by the attacking party and stopped to eat prey that served themselves.
He shared a look with everyone except Tuffock who was unconscious after casting his spell. Ryley¡¯s condition stabilised and he drank one of his own potions. His injured arm was still shaking but he claimed to be able to shoot one more shot if they really needed it. Ebony was impressed that he was okay with that even though he obviously couldn¡¯t handle much pain. He would likely sustain injuries that were hard to heal from as a human as well.
All of them slowed to a stop. This could be said to be a chance. There was no guarantee that the horde wouldn¡¯t follow them down to the previous floor. It was all desert floors with the same monster types and even though monsters usually don¡¯t move out of range from their spawning nodes and whatnot, the fact that there were dungeon breaks meant that they could go anywhere as long as the dungeon let them. Even out of the dungeon.
Panic Attack was strong, they were all Master Class and could easily take hundreds of these monsters not much stronger than themselves. Individually.
Ebony didn¡¯t doubt their strength after sparring with Mike. It was painfully obvious how much Mike held back against him. A nice training partner.
Nonetheless, they would tire.
Their party could see flying blades flying out from the cluster where it was hard to spot a single Master Warrior. Even with all their screaming and shouting. The real flying slashes. Slicing 2 or 3 bodies apart in their path. They were using skills unlike the first battle Ebony saw them in.
???
Michael and his party used their measly ability in controlling mana to seep into their weapon and shield. A simple trick of keeping damage off their equipment Michael had learnt in his Academy when he was younger. Equipment maintenance fees have been kept much lower thanks to this little trick.
After evolving to Master, perhaps only the completely retarded in all things magic and mana could not attempt to move and manipulate their own mana. The evolution made one more complete after all, so Michael had not seen even the dumbest Master Warrior not be able to utilise mana at least a bit.
Michael kept in mind his party¡¯s conditions. They were graduates from the same Academy and as their party leader he was very aware of all their skill sets. All being the dumbos he knew, they only managed to learn the simplest mana reinforcement. It made them a little tougher, stronger and faster. Their Intelligence was questionable. Their small mana pool meant he should only get them to use the sole enhancement magic they knew at the right time.
Michael thought they were extremely lucky. They were not young nor were they old. Working as a freelancer party with a decently growing reputation in the surrounding couple of cities for many years. The escorts, slaying and collection quests were just a slow grind. There were few dungeons around their region and those were too dangerous for them. They went to one before and were lucky to make it out of the first floor alive. A few monsters a day brought them a long way, they didn¡¯t give up but the ranks of a Grandmaster was no longer in sight.
Leaving the region was a difficult choice to make. It was a long journey to the closest feasible dungeon. A long and dangerous journey was one thing. Their families here were another, Michael couldn¡¯t make the decision to pull his fellow men away from their families.
Cori was married and even had a son. Henrick also got himself a wife not too long ago. Bilton had ageing parents who gave birth to him a bit late to take care of. The last, Rodrig, was an orphan like him but he was too attached to the kids in the orphanage he came from and even fell in love with the current caretaker''s daughter. The fool.
He knew they would follow with a single word from them. That¡¯s why he couldn¡¯t betray their trust, he had no confidence he could bring all of them back home safe and sound. Ordina was a blessing to them. Their hope that they can reach Grandmaster within their lifetime.
Every single spawned monster was a lump of experience to speed their growth. Michael was not willing to give up now that that hope of his was right in front of him. Every one of his party members knew that Michael dreamt of reaching Grandmaster. They knew he stayed here because of them as well. They wouldn¡¯t disobey a single order, not to mention a simple one called ¡®attack¡¯.
Panic Attack yelled their lungs out. The monsters here were only slightly stronger than them, but every one of them already familiarised themselves with their attack patterns over the last few floors. They never worked together but it worked. They just have to watch each other¡¯s backs and react accordingly. Their minds didn¡¯t work well but their bodies will carry them forward. Adequate.
???
¡°We¡¯re not really going to fight all that are we?¡± Hector asked.
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¡°The 3 of them took hundreds already. It¡¯s our turn.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°That¡¯s hardly enough. I mean, Mike and his party should be able to take the thousand or so that diverged and went after them. Every strike of theirs could lop the head of 2 or 3 of these suckers. But¡¡±
¡°I bet your mega punch would take down less than any of their spells and attacks.¡± Ebony poked.
¡°It''s Mega Panch! Why don¡¯t you line them up in a straight line and I¡¯ll show you I can take just as many of them in a single punch.¡±
¡°Alright. Take care of Tuffock. Scarlet, do you want the left or right?¡± Ebony left Tuffock on the ground.
¡°Right.¡± Scarlet randomly picked.
The two of them moved while Hector stayed there with Tuffock and Ryley. Ryley moved to the left a little and got arrows ready to help Ebony. He hoped he didn¡¯t have to strain his arm but a few normal arrows should be fine. It¡¯s not like he has much mana left to shoot another of his enchanted arrows.
Ebony cast as many Layered Ice Carapaces as he could, 3 layered ones and uncompressed. He just wanted a wall or such to push the monsters into the centre. He could feel an intense increase in heat from where Scarlet went towards.
Unlike Ebony who had trouble hurting these wolves and scorpions, Scarlet had none of that. She blasted them into the centre with fire magic and sliced off those that got close to her. Luckily her Violent Heart Acceleration kicked in quickly.
What they didn¡¯t expect is for the large majority of the horde to change directions and go after Ebony.
¡°Give me a heads up when you¡¯re ready.¡± Ebony used Mana Vibrations to send his words over. He could have used his callstone but it would take more time to connect than what he did. He changed his plans and just hunkered down again. Drowned in monsters. Ebony quickly stuck the Layered Ice Carapaces he cast, merging and strengthening them.
Ebony orbed himself up as he constantly compressed his orb as fast as possible. He connected his myriad bracelet¡¯s callstone to Hector. Then he cast Magnified Gravity Field, maximising the spell range to his limit of 15 metres. It was a huge drain on his reserves but it was necessary to slow as many of them as possible.
¡°Can you jump out of my punch¡¯s range in half a second?¡±
¡°Yes. Time it well, I¡¯ll shoot right out from the top when you say so.¡±
¡°Alright.¡±
Hardly a second passed after Hector said alright did he yell ¡°NOW!¡± over the call. Hector needed no such thing as casting time or charge up time. Minus the time to punch multiple times, his enhancements switch on practically instantly like Ebony¡¯s.
Ebony repelled himself out of his breaking prison, shooting right up into the sky. He never tested how high he could jump with his superhuman body. It was really high, he even took the chance to look far back where they ran from. He took mental note of the unharmed people, just watching from a high vantage point.
Ebony trusted Scarlet to a certain degree, despite only knowing her for months. He never forgot her words either, keeping his guard up and watching Tuffock more closely. Him killing the 5 people in the walkway tunnel made Ebony more suspicious. The latest group that attacked them let Ebony see that the reaction was not unwarranted. None of them really cared about the lives of their attackers. It might have been a cultural thing or so he thought.
Coming to this floor, he was insistent on them climbing higher even though he was the least capable of dealing damage. But then, he backed down and said he was okay with stopping their expedition here. Coincidentally getting attacked then pushed into the pyramid. Tuffock wanted them to go deeper into the pyramid to escape but none of them felt the need to.
Then, Tuffock changed to Tuffock 2 all of a sudden and changed tune. He fought seriously and attacked with the intent to kill. And he really did kill one of them himself, voting to kill all the others as well.
No. Did he shut the man up?
Ebony remembered something else Tuffock said but he wanted to confirm some things with Scarlet.
He looked down to see the sandy ground split apart and filled with all the gore, crushed internal organs, separated limbs and pulpy flesh. Nothing any of them were unfamiliar with. The smell was pretty disgusting but he could handle it.
The long stretch of destruction reached far and into a random sand dune that got blown apart and scattered onto the desert floor.
Ebony landed and then they started retreating again. They couldn¡¯t copy Panic Attack and take the horde head-on, they would be dead before they knew it.
Ebony quickly put Hector¡¯s arm around his shoulder and got moving with Ryley and Scarlet. Tuffock was still laying there on his last shield that he didn¡¯t bring into the mess. Hector had grown a lot stronger as well and a single mega panch did not knock him out.
¡°Let¡¯s join their party¡¯s battle,¡± Scarlet said.
¡°They are strong enough to survive the horde but won¡¯t last. They can take the main force and we can keep the pressure off them.¡± she continued.
Ebony didn¡¯t have any complaints. The others knew they didn¡¯t have anywhere to run or hide either. They made their way around.
¡°...Won¡¯t we be bringing the bigger horde to them?¡± Hector, who slowly stabilised but not enough to run by himself, rose and said. He only had 5 enhancements cast for a very short time but the pain never got old. No one had a reply to his question.
Ebony muted the vibrations in the air between him and Hector.
¡°Hector, do you remember if Tuffock¡¯s callstone was in use when he said, ¡®Come on down. All of you. We¡¯ll tear apart everything you throw at us.¡¯?¡±
¡°What? How would I know? I wasn¡¯t looking closely. Why are you as¡king. Oh.¡±
¡°The 60 or so people who came down along with this horde are just watching us from afar. Though I bet not all can see us, their archers and maybe rogues with the right skills could.¡±
¡°The swordsman said their boss was on their way. None of them acted like they knew Tuffock either.¡±
¡°Does he need to be the boss? Or maybe they have never seen him? Tuffock killed him immediately when he tried to say more.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Alright watch yourself, I can see Michael already.¡± Ebony ended the conversation.
¡°OHH NOOOO! WE¡¯RE DOOOOMED!¡± Cori cried with over exaggeration.
¡°GAHHH! WHY HAVE YOU BROUGHT MORE!?¡± Henrick complained.
¡°GREAT! GREAT JOB KIDS! WE SO NEEDED MORE ON OUR ASSES!¡± Bilton said with bleeding sarcasm.
They complained but none sounded angry at them, then they laughed. Their arms and feet didn¡¯t stop or pause. The numbers here had more than halved in the time they were gone and got Hector to mega punch.
¡°HAHAHAHA! CAN¡¯T EXACTLY LET A FEW KIDS DIE IN FRONT OF US CAN WE!? BOYS! MEDIUM MANA GARB! Journeymen. Don¡¯t hold us back.¡± Mike ordered before looking towards the crazy group of kids.
Panic Attack heard and roared with strength at the command. Being warriors with a small mana pool, they never used mana enhancement at full power if it was unnecessary. They had made an easy way to control their mana usage and power output. It should be no problem for them to keep a medium output for 8 to 10 minutes.
¡°Mike! This area is too open, is there any way we can limit the number of them attacking us!¡± Hector asked.
¡°You¡¯re the mages, you tell me!¡± Mike retorted. Thinking and coming up with plans were not their specialty.
Without a solution for that, Mike took charge of giving orders. Ryley didn¡¯t try to challenge his authority. Panic Attack surrounded them in a circle. It wasn¡¯t possible to make it an extremely tight circle with the 5 journeymen in the centre.
Ebony and his fellow vanguards would deal with whatever went through the gaps. Supporting them with their magic and fire support was the main duties Mike gave them. Hector was left to be the actual second line of defence with Ebony and Scarlet providing the magical support.
Mike couldn¡¯t forget their magical abilities, it would honestly be a great boon and addition. He was worried that the journeyman couldn¡¯t last because of their small mana pool and the big problem of all journeymen mages. But then one of them was a Meditative Class and the other was the legendary Xeng. He could only hope they can take as many down as they can.
Panic Attack lashed out with power but found themselves hindered and not able to push further because they had some children in their midst.
¡°FOOLISH! DON¡¯T TURN BACK, RUSH OUT WHEN YOU CAN OR WANT!¡± Panic Attack was stunned by their leader¡¯s words. Then they realised that the few wolves and scorpions they let through were already taken care of. They only realised that their leader wanted them to thin the horde as much as possible while they were still able too, in their enhanced state.
¡°I¡¯ll go do my thing,¡± Ebony said.
He was not used to just standing there and being protected. He was more useful if he went dashing around, freezing and slowing down as many of them as he could. Ice was more of a crowd control element and he was going to have to make use of it. Magnified Gravity Field would be pointless if his own allies were affected by it. Ebony wasn¡¯t proficient enough to keep so many people out of the effects of his spell.
How much mana did Ebony have left? Not much. Perhaps only enough for an Ice Sword or 2. His mana regeneration on the other hand had reached 236.285 MP/Min. It might be a little risky but he didn¡¯t cast Icebody Enhancement, which took 20% of his Agility away. It did take quite a portion of his mana when compressed, so that was another reason.
Magnified Gravity Field consumed roughly 125MP/Min when used in a radius of 5 metres. A whole lot more if he increased the range and he couldn¡¯t afford to do that now. It was levelling at record speed in this period of time.
The other 75MP/Min was just enough for his Chaotic Repulsive Membrane for a little insurance, together with the almost costless Battle Song that increased his mana regeneration by a now noticeable amount. A 3.72 Wisdom mana regeneration buff was miniscule to anyone but to him, it was pretty good. Even just taking the number 3 to calculate it would mean an additional 30 to his mana pool or, in terms of his Fortified base mana regeneration, 10.5 MP/Hr instead of 3 MP/Hr. With his Core Skill at its current level of 162 or 810% increased regeneration, that would be 10.5 x 9.1 = 95.55MP/Hr or a little under 1.6 MP/Min. Better than nothing.
One of Panic Attack¡¯s members that saw Ebony jump over them yelled for him but Ebony ignored him. Mike also didn¡¯t interfere; none of Ebony¡¯s members seem to care, and he has seen some of the boy¡¯s power.
Ebony figured he shouldn¡¯t use Magnified Gravity Field so much and only limit it to surprise the monsters that got close to him. His main objective was still to use ice magic either through Frost Mist Perception Sphere or Frost Injection. He decided to reduce the range of the increased gravity to 2 metres while casting Frost Mist Perception Sphere with most of what mana he freed up. Ebony told himself to just run around to weaken and slow as many of them and as much as he could slow them down. So Frost Injection was put aside. He held his blade but didn¡¯t intend to use it.
Scarlet followed Ebony¡¯s example but left on a killing spree instead of a crowd control spree. Violent Heart Acceleration kept on the level that let her roughly equal Hector¡¯s quadra enhanced strength but a little faster. Only a little faster, that was how strong Hector was. Then he revealed that that wasn¡¯t even his strongest state.
Hector was the only other person on the party that Scarlet acknowledged the strength of, besides Ebony. Since he was so open with his knowledge, she had started conversations about his fire enhancement skill, clearly sensing fire mana flowing through his veins. She could attempt a similar skill when her body got tougher, hence all the Constitution she had been adding.
Mike caught on to what Ebony was trying to do and had to admit that it would ease up the pressure on his party a lot depending on how much the wolves and scorpions were affected by the cold mist. The worms were mostly dead. They were the foremost group that charged after Ebony and his party, repeatedly getting hammered by large spells, explosive shots and a burst of physical force just as explosive if not more. They were the least numerous of the horde as well.
Ebony circled around once, close enough to affect the monsters near their 2 parties¡¯ formation but not near enough for friendly fire. The Arrowtail Scorpions did try to pinch or stab him with their tails and too many wolves tried to come in for a bite but he could see it coming a mile away.
Seeing and predicting was completely different from dodging it and Ebony still wasn¡¯t fast enough if he didn¡¯t utilise the intense burst of speed he got from his repulsion of the ground. That brought him further away than he liked but it actually worked out as he zigzagged in and out, closer and further.
¡®A few thousand actually doesn¡¯t take that much space huh?¡¯ Ebony thought. He could easily see the end of all the wolves and scorpions. A couple worms a little further back. With Panic Attack¡¯s help it was probably all too possible for them to take them all on.
Chapter 72: Sitting Ducks
¡°Damn monster of a kid. Good job. LOW GARB!¡± Mike looked upon the sandy desert that turned to an icy one instead in just minutes. The wolves were not too affected thanks to their fur and thick hide, desert wolves they may be but they had some pretty good resistance to cold. Their cold breaths and frosty fur said otherwise. The really good thing was the Arrowtail Scorpions that had their bodies stiffen up and couldn¡¯t even attack or even walk properly.
Ebony made sure to back off a little more from their formation so that the mist didn¡¯t block their sight of the incoming monsters. He couldn¡¯t stay still because of all the attacks but he still got his robes tattered, it was hardly holding itself together.
Ebony spotted a couple more frozen holes in his body, his right sleeves half torn around the elbows. Thankfully, getting Icebody Enhancement on before the wolf¡¯s sharp claws tore his arm off. There was no mana left in his robes or the mana ores attached to his myriad bracelet. He didn¡¯t have any leeway to charge it up either.
Blocking one of the Arrowtail¡¯s piercing tails with the flat side of his greatsword also made it shatter into pieces with just a little metal left on the handle.
He was constantly on the move but his unprotected legs inevitably got caught by one of the numerous, hungry monsters. He was bitten again, the final step pushing back into the circle that Panic Attack held strong. Hector noticed his return and punched the wolf that got dragged along. Ebony fell forward and face flat. He was so gonna get or make one that protected his legs too. With his skills, the little inconvenience shouldn¡¯t affect his movements much.
Hector suggested having 2 or 3 of the Master Warriors to rest while Hector and Scarlet held the line for them temporarily so that they could rotate to rest. Michael could see the benefit but his party didn¡¯t exactly feel safe leaving it to a bunch of journeymen. The situation had mostly stabilised, the attacking wolves and scorpions were sluggish enough that Hector just needed to keep¡¯em off themselves with a double enhancement before the Master Warriors or Scarlet came to take their life.
Ryley, who originally tried to help by giving minimal fire support, gave up soon enough when it got hard to raise his injured arm. He didn¡¯t just watch, with his one good arm he tried to remove the corpses and threw them further away so that the warriors and hybrids wouldn¡¯t trip over one. Hector noticed his efforts and got him to pile their bodies in the same spot, making a makeshift wall of flesh.
It was more useful than any of them expected as a hastily put together plan of action. Possibly due to the increasingly dull movements of the monsters, they didn¡¯t just jump over or even knock the wall of flesh down which was a little odd. Going around instead.
Quite the game changer. Hector personally had many other theories on the irregular actions of the monsters. Even the comparatively dumber monsters of spawned variants shouldn¡¯t be that dumb. New dungeon or not. His best bet was that Ebony¡¯s icy chill affected their brains a little as well.
That got Michael to order 2 of his men to take a break. They needed it, despite their higher endurance the intense exchange where a single mistake could cost their lives never got easy. Michael had been worried about that the most from the beginning but the impressive journeymen who brought them more trouble could carry their own weight and more. His impression of their slightly haughty looking leader improved as well. Respectable.
Ebony just sat up and rested while the others fought. His party members couldn¡¯t hide their bewilderment and concern. Too many holes in that tough robe of his, though the amount of blood on him was little.
He searched around his bag that he left with them for his potion. It was honestly better than nothing so he drank one. While the taste was bitter and sour at the same time, he didn¡¯t feel any different. Thinking that it was just normal off the shelf stuff it probably wasn¡¯t some kind of miracle drug.
The bite snapped the bones in his calf. It hurt like hell, though one would not think that by looking at him. Ebony stopped overestimating himself. He had too many holes in his body. Sustained Optimum Condition or not didn¡¯t let him move like he didn¡¯t have broken bones in his leg. The main reason he survived so long was his legs and movement skill.
The Master Warriors didn¡¯t take long breaks, Michael ordered Hector and Scarlet to stop. Especially Scarlet, Michael could sense that she was going to break sooner or later with whatever the hell was causing steam to rise from her body. Unlike Hector who stayed somewhat safe in their midst, the horrifically fast little girl went and sliced and diced anything in her path. Every one of Panic Attacks¡¯ members told themselves not to get close to the young lady. The fact they got to eat her cooking was a tall tale they could tell for years.
¡°Hey hey hey, you didn¡¯t get any vital parts pierced did you? You should really get a healer to check you when we get out.¡± Hector plopped his ass down and asked with worry. The fact that Ebony stopped fighting before them was shocking enough. It was incredibly worrisome for a physical fighter to receive bodily injuries. It didn¡¯t matter if they were a Master Warrior with over a thousand points in Vitality.
Healing and regeneration didn¡¯t improve in quality with Vitality. Sure one would heal and recover faster with an increase in Vitality. But that didn¡¯t change what they can and cannot inherently heal from. The lizardmen were capable of regrowing limbs by the time they evolved to Master over a span of years or less depending on their level, Vitality and Constitution stats. Humans were not able to regrow limbs, even those Grandmasters.
Hector knew for a fact that it was the same even after they evolved into King Class unless they had Class Fortifications building them for that or perhaps a more unique Class. Though, many other serious injuries would be less serious and were recoverable with a healer or just a decent potion or pill. Surviving long periods of time with a hole in their heart or having half their head or brains chopped off was somewhat possible too, due to high Vitality. It was more of a racial limitation than a stat problem, the Vitality stat didn¡¯t fundamentally change the body.
A Journeyman who got cracked bones was able to recover fully over a long time by themselves, speeding it up with normal medicine and potions. Fractured or completely broken needed to have a healer to check up on them and quickly, or the injury would last and never really completely heal. Greatly affecting the future prospects of the warrior or other physically inclined Classes. Ryley¡¯s arm for example, would¡¯ve been a goner without Hector¡¯s medicine. Improving his skill or raising his archery level might have gotten many times more difficult.
Healers weren¡¯t miracle workers either. A fresh injury was always easier to heal than an old one. Too bad there were so few healers that towns and cities don¡¯t even have enough of them, much fewer parties that have a healer. It wasn¡¯t like there was none, just few.
Ebony ignored Hector, quickly dragging himself over to Scarlet who fell over onto her side. An acrid and sour smell hit Ebony¡¯s nose. He watched as yellowish green liquid dripped right out from under Scarlet¡¯s mask, she was vomiting. And hyperventilating.
¡°Can you breathe? Is your mask in the way?¡± Ebony knelt by her side. Worried all her vomit was blocking air out. He didn¡¯t move to remove it straight away, rudeness was one thing but he obviously wasn¡¯t thinking properly since she was breathing so hard. Scarlet was too busy coughing to reply and that worried both of them. Ryley was still busy moving corpses as they rested and Tuffock was still out cold.
Ebony didn¡¯t need to grab her wrist to know her heart rate was unnaturally high now. He saw water washing out from her mask and remembered she had a water mana ore in her mask. He flipped her over on her back and unbuckled her belt and the button on her pants. ¡°Loosen your top too.¡±. Ebony took her mantle off her shoulders, over her head and placed it over her body, putting one of his rolled up bags he never used under her neck as a pillow.
Hector yelled something earlier when Ebony started unbuckling the weak and defenceless Scarlet who didn¡¯t resist even when he put his hands on her. Something like ¡°What are you doing!? I didn¡¯t think you were such a horny bastard!¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t listening but it was probably along those lines. Hector also wasn¡¯t so dumb and could see Ebony covered her up and didn¡¯t have such intentions so he was probably just stunned or joking around.
¡°I¡¯ll help you get your tent up so you can clean your mask.¡± Ebony realised how hard it was for Scarlet being the only woman in the party after accidentally stalking and peeking at her. He considered that she needed her privacy.
Scarlet faintly nodded and slid her flat, small bag off her back but continued laying there. Clearly Ebony had to search her bag himself since she didn¡¯t have her tent tied to the bottom of her bag like Ebony¡¯s. He would be lying if he said he wasn¡¯t interested to know how a bag with expanded space worked.
¡°Don¡¯t stare for too long, idiot. Just reach in and grab her tent.¡± Hector said when Ebony was looking into her bag through the opening. It was weird to say the least. Looking into her bag, Ebony saw all her stuff like the version of refrigerator they had, her stove plus tabletop, a few other chests and boxes. The items looked really small and far away.
Ebony thought that Hector was right that he shouldn¡¯t be looking around her stuff even though he was just interested in the workings of her bag. He put his hand in to feel the weirdness again, her stuff which looked so far away was within touching distance and Ebony didn¡¯t know whether Scarlet was just really messy and didn¡¯t organise her stuff or it was just the weird bag at work. That or he wasn¡¯t using it right and that there was some way to get what he wants easier.
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Ebony was at a loss since he didn¡¯t know how or where her tent was in the weird back. So, he just touched around for cloth materials since he was looking for a tent. Pulling out whatever felt right. The first thing he brought out was the dishwashing or drying cloth they used. Then it was a large cloth, likely a towel or blanket. Then he pulled out a silky smooth red lacy top. Ebony would say it was a large camisole or something like that, it was short but wide and he imagined it would only cover her upper chest and not her belly if she wore it. He quickly stopped his imagination from going any further, he needed to regenerate as much mana as he could right now.
Scarlet quickly snatched it away when she saw him pulling her clothing out. Ebony apologised, he also didn¡¯t like it when people touched his belongings so he could understand if she didn¡¯t like it when she touched her clothes.
Hector, on the other hand, was getting speechless at Ebony. He was starting to admire the heck out of Ebony. He watched as Ebony stripped the legendary Xeng without getting himself killed or even meeting any resistance from the woman herself. Even taking orders from him to loosen her own top! As if that wasn¡¯t enough, the mad lad even pulled out a pair of women¡¯s lingerie right in front of her! Ebony had gained his full respect as of today.
???
Scarlet had an easier time breathing but it wasn¡¯t much less painful for her. Her physical enhancement was not meant to be used for so long. Her heart muscles cramped for a couple of seconds when she returned and fell over and she did not like it one bit. She could still smell her vomit right over her nose. Humiliation.
She couldn¡¯t even gauge her own state of health and needed Ebony to help her. Just his voice and the disgusting amount of concern she felt with her Sublime Instinct was calming her down. Infuriating.
Scarlet hated how Ebony constantly shoved her own weakness in her face. Yet, it was so much easier to breathe now.
He was even considerate enough to offer to set up her tent for her so that she could have her privacy and clean her mask so that she didn¡¯t have to smell her own vomit. She can¡¯t believe she only remembered that she usually just tossed all her stuff inside without care since there was still plenty of space inside after Ebony took her underwear out. Scarlet can¡¯t believe he was so bold! She couldn¡¯t help but feel her already burning face get hotter. It furthered her embarrassment of not tidying her belongings in her bag.
She finally recovered enough to move her upper body when she shot right up to grab her undergarment. Pushing it might be more accurate than recovering. She got her tent out and then watched as Ebony fumbled around with the obviously unfamiliar type of tent. It was quite funny to see him fumbling around like that. So there were things seemingly capable of anything Ebony couldn¡¯t do perfectly either. Well, he figured it out soon since it wasn¡¯t anything complicated.
She was surprised again when he carried her into her tent to place her down. Too weak and stunned to resist his firm arms and the embarrassment that came with it. How will she tell her grandmother that she let their name and reputation be disgraced over and over again like that? She must be the greatest failure and most shameful Xeng throughout their history. It was even worse when she found out that she was feeling oddly happy about being carried and cared for.
???
Panic Attack rotated amongst themselves and took turns to rest with Ebony getting back into the fight with a fully compressed Ice Sword and staying within their enclosement. The pressure of attack decreased a lot, with at most 3 to 5 wolf and scorpion mixtures attacking a single one of them. Ebony and Hector worked together, having each other''s backs. They could at most handle 2 to 3 at the same time even after they were weakened and slowed so they played it safe as Ebony was also still not really in his best condition.
Ebony¡¯s fully compressed Ice Sword was actually no less hard or tough as his broken greatsword. It was just more fragile and less sharp. Even with all the compression, ice was ice. Getting it hit or hitting it at the wrong angle shattered it if he was at maximum strength with Icebody Enhancement. Once again, there was a problem with the internal structure of the ice sword that was unlike the toughness of his Layered Ice Carapace.
The pressure increased again when Panic Attack ran out of mana to have their enhancement skill on. This lasted for about an hour or two till Scarlet could move around and she rejoined the battle. Hector was down for the count for some time too, Ryley also collapsed, drenched in sweat from the pain he was under. Tuffock woke up in the meantime, he didn¡¯t have much stone on him and his staff¡¯s supply of stone mana was emptied too. He didn¡¯t even have much physical strength to move the corpses but still did his best to copy what Ryley did.
The wall of flesh was already too tall for Tuffock to place anymore so he just dragged them a little further and widened the wall. Some time ago one of the remaining Giant Sandworms shot up from underneath the wall of flesh and consumed a huge portion of the ¡®wall¡¯. That played out really badly for them. The monsters now were not really weakened or slowed since Ebony didn¡¯t get every single monster and his mist didn¡¯t really last in this desert and horde.
Two of Panic Attack¡¯s members were lightly wounded before Scarlet joined and they were able to push the horde back with Ebony¡¯s second attempt and effort to freeze them with his regenerated mana. One of the injured ones had his vambraces clawed off and the other a thin slash on his lower ribs. Their armour had done its job well and kept them safe enough to continue fighting.
Panic Attack was under great pressure now that Hector, Scarlet and even Ebony took more breaks. Scarlet because her body really couldn¡¯t take more and she knew that she was already pushing it too much after she collapsed earlier. Ebony had the same reason. Overestimating themselves. Hector just didn¡¯t have any mana left to sustain battle, without mana his own physical prowess wasn¡¯t anything to go crazy about. Weak even. Similar to Ebony.
Ebony helped to get the wall of flesh back up with Hector during his break. Every little bit there did help and it wasn¡¯t like Ebony was so tired he couldn¡¯t move, his stamina almost completely full. Mike got all of the journeymen children to rest easy now.
Even with all the pressure on the Master Warriors they didn¡¯t despair. The horde of 7 to 8 thousand was almost completely taken care of by this point. Each had gained 2 or 3 levels because there were still monsters at least 10 levels above them, a crazy speed for them. There were dozens of scorpions and hundreds of desert wolves left right now. The end was in sight and the Master Warrior stuck on to the little pride they had to handle the rest.
Then one of them fell over, Ebony only heard the sharp swish of air being pierced after the second Master Warrior of Panic Attack fell down as well. Unmoving. The sound repeated, then Ebony heard 2 following bangs that echoed along. A familiar sound he hasn¡¯t heard since coming to Elcra. It sounded a lot like a gunshot, one that Ebony heard in a movie and when his mother somehow got a hang of one and tried shooting him with it. Though that was only a small handgun and she didn¡¯t mean to hit him with it. Well, hopefully, she didn¡¯t mean to actually shoot him with it.
¡°CORI! BILTON! WHAT HAPPENED! WHO¡¯S THERE!¡± Mike screamed and scanned the area. He obviously heard the sound, he managed to catch where the sound came from and noticed the direction of Bilton¡¯s fall was the same as Cori¡¯s. While Ebony couldn¡¯t catch that because he wasn¡¯t looking and they weren¡¯t close to him, Michael saw the small shadow flash past. It hammered into Bilton¡¯s shoulder pads and flung him off his feet for girs, he was caught by Rodrig.
Cori on the other hand flew sideways with two new holes in his body.
Everyone had their guard up and closed their formation tighter, shields high up. Ebony had time and mana to cast 2 spares, though not fully compressed, they were better than nothing at 5 layers each. No one but Tuffock rushed to check up on them. Ebony would guess that either Cori or Bilton, which he just learned the names of when Michael shouted their names, was the first aider. If they had one anyway, that or the other three were busier looking out for who attacked them.
They were all very clear on the monster types here, nothing on this floor could have done that. It must be someone. Yet, no more attacks came. It was silent again. Not a shadow in sight. At least not in Ebony¡¯s sight.
¡°A projectile went straight through his body. Lucky bastard, his intestines weren¡¯t hit. Just a flesh wound. The other one is a little worse, tendons torn and upper shoulder blade pierced, with fragments stabbing his flesh. Holding a blade or shield might be tough.¡± Tuffock or perhaps Tuffock 2 didn¡¯t take long to diagnose. It was truly lucky that the guy called Cori didn¡¯t have any holes in his internal organs, bleeding was easily stopped and a potion was drunk. He could move and help with the remaining monsters.
Ryley was actively looking out for anything suspicious or anything that moved. The Master Warriors may or may not have higher Perception than him but he still has the best eyesight with his skill. Fortunately, he had regained some mana from not shooting any arrows and his sight skill didn¡¯t take much mana.
He recognised the sound. It was a burstbow, a lousy weapon of choice that has gotten more popular over the past few centuries or so his family had taught. The main three types of ranged archers nowadays were the traditional archers like him with bow and arrows which almost every Elven archer used.
The crossbow which some warriors or rogues carried as a sidearm and ranged option rather than a dedicated Classer with it. The ones who¡¯d Class with crossbows as their main weapons must have a really good smith that made really good crossbows or they just made a dumb choice.
The last was the burstbow. Burstbowmen was a Class that was made widely known over the past few centuries. Some craftsmen, probably Dwarven. Ryley thought, invented the weapon. It propelled smaller projectiles at a much higher speed than a crossbow.
The traditional bow and arrow required the most skill and talent to learn to use. It was the most flexible of the three in terms of control of power and trajectory. The crossbow needed some training to aim well, power dependent on the crossbow itself rather than the user. There was still rate of fire and reloading to take into account. The most delicate and expensive one¡¯s could fire multiple rounds before needing to reload but traditional archers didn¡¯t look well upon the use of crossbows unless used as a sidearm. Weirdly enough.
Burstbows were almost looked down upon at the time it was first used. Hardly any training or skill was required to use it. One didn¡¯t even need strength to shoot just like the crossbow. The much higher speed and power of the burstbow ridden over the crossbow many times over. The imperial army loved the thing, it was much easier to outfit an army with it when it didn¡¯t require much training to use.
Burstbows were mostly noisy and explosive. Stealth was completely out of the question for them, they said. Ryley almost chuckled, here he was, having no idea who shot it. Not even the shadow of the culprit in sight. Who was the incompetent teacher who told him that? He was so getting fired when Ryley got home. Supposition.
Chapter 73: Separate
¡°Dammit. Why the hells is Panic Attack here?¡± Tewa complained. The relatively strong party¡¯s presence had completely turned the tables and their plan was ruined. Tewa couldn¡¯t get the timing to swoop in to save them as they were hardly in trouble with Panic Attack there.
Tewa had tried to contact his bosses but they wouldn¡¯t pick up. They were ordered to start the plan and the impromptu decision to lure the monsters to the previous floor was not so hard to follow. Tewa was a man who tried to predict and plan in advance for any changes after all. Personally, he never thought so highly of the low level party, even with the Xeng¡¯s presence they were not even Master Class. How could it be possible that they climbed all the way up to the 12th floor where they were level 150 monsters roaming around?
Then he saw the little monsters in action with his own eyes. Lunatics.
Tewa hesitated on the next course of action. At first, he thought that it didn¡¯t matter. Panic Attack could only last so long, but the mana slave screwed him up by single handedly weakening and slowing more than half of the horde. The weakened scorpions were just targets for them to pick off. The wolves did most of the damage that the people received.
While none of the mana slave¡¯s party and Panic Attack¡¯s members saw, Tewa did. The chilly mist didn¡¯t really affect his sight too much and he could make out most things. The mana slave was repeatedly pierced and didn¡¯t even look worse for wear. Tewa didn¡¯t care that the mana slave had dead facial expressions since that was what he heard most ex-mana slaves had. But to move like he did after all those injuries? Holes in his elling body, and he still swung his sword, still streaked like a ghost across the desert, dodging with nimbleness. Impossible.
Tewa didn¡¯t notice that Ebony froze his injuries and somewhat hid them from his party. It wouldn¡¯t change Tewa¡¯s impression since that only meant Ebony wouldn¡¯t bleed out.
By the time Tewa was about to give up trying to have the monster horde they so sorely prepare and be careful enough so that it didn¡¯t backfire, to kill everyone except the mana slave, there was only hundreds of wolves and a handful of scorpions left.
Tewa received the singal ¡®Let¡¯s go¡¯ from his boss, then informed the 2 strongest parties he got to stay on the 11th floor who was already watching the mana slave¡¯s party when they arrived on the 11th floor. They couldn¡¯t be contacted right soon after. The archers who escaped later rejoined them and reported what happened. He didn¡¯t believe it at first but his bosses didn¡¯t say shit about their strength for nothing.
The original plan was to have him and his party pick a suitable time to kill off the rest of the mana slave¡¯s party. Somehow revealing that they were the ones who sent the horde on the boy¡¯s party and taking the advantage of their panic to kill his party members. Then, wait for his bosses¡¯s orders to have the other 75 or, since 6 were killed, 69, help him to remove the horde and act like the good guys here to back the mana slave up. Saving him and getting him on our side, putting Tewa¡¯s party as a common target they want to remove.
Regardless, Tewa was stupid to only realise that the horde was completely unnecessary. All they needed was his party to step up and kill all of them. Was his bosses actually testing his intelligence? And he failed big time.
His bosses were misleading him from the get-go. He could just up and kill the rest of his party members and his bosses can still come in and save him. Okay, maybe it was for dramatic effect and to make the situation more hopeless and that the mana slave needed his bosses power and assisstance with numbers on his side to get revenge so maybe it wasn¡¯t a test and that Tewa was getting desperate and wasn¡¯t thinking straight.
So Tewa attacked the ones who really messed their plans up, Panic Attack¡¯s members. He would wait out a short while. His bosses should be watching them somewhere now, if he didn¡¯t want them to continue attacking they¡¯ll call if not then Tewa planned to do things by force.
Panic Attack was just a little troublesome but nothing he couldn¡¯t handle with a little distance. He could¡¯ve shot them all dead before they could find him. Without their body enhancement, a shot or two with his burstbow could finish the job.
¡°Alright, no contact from the bosses. Let¡¯s just kill all of them except the mana slave.¡± Tewa said to his party.
¡°Boss Tewa, didn¡¯t they just use Panic Attack?¡±
¡°What do you mean, Delia?¡± Tewa looked at the only mage in their whole group under his bosses. A level 128 Great Fire Mage, a pity she was only almost as hot as her magic. At least she had the brains and helped his party make informed decisions. She was nice enough to call him boss even when they were one of the few that knew he wasn¡¯t the big boss here so Tewa favoured her. That and she was the only woman in his dry party.
¡°They saw Panic Attack charging into the horde, whether they wanted the experience or wanted to help them doesn¡¯t matter. The point is, the target¡¯s party used the fact and brought the rest of the horde to them. Sure, things are working out well for them, but Panic Attack couldn¡¯t possibly be happy about them almost bringing them down with them, would they?¡± Delia
¡°So what? Based on their reputation I really doubt they would kill the mana slave¡¯s party.¡± Tewa didn¡¯t catch Delia¡¯s point.
¡°So there¡¯s no way they would travel together after they''re done with the horde. No point finding extra trouble the big bosses didn¡¯t tell us to find. Their presence was unexpected enough, the bosses can¡¯t be contacted now and I doubt he appreciates us just killing others uninvolved. Didn¡¯t he say we need to lay low and not touch others?¡± Delia explained before asking. She remembered what Tewa told them about their instructions.
¡®Phew¡thank my ass I didn¡¯t just go for the head or heart. How did I forget that? Mages really do have better brains.¡¯ Tewa almost messed up because of his own annoyance at Panic Attack¡¯s presence. He was glad he didn¡¯t choose to show himself and hid himself after taking the first 2 shots.
¡°You¡¯re right. We¡¯ll watch closely for now. We¡¯ll attack them regardless if they don¡¯t split up before they move off. We¡¯re laying low if there¡¯s no one alive to rat us out anyway.¡± Tewa decided to play things safe. He still thought just killing them all would work either way. Sadly, he feared his bosses just a little. Only a little.
¡®Wait.¡¯
¡°Ell! Couldn¡¯t you tell me that before I attacked them?! Now they''re on their guard!¡± Tewa was frustrated, was the world just constantly testing his patience and intelligence?
???
They cleared the monster horde but none could rest at ease. The sneak attack didn¡¯t continue, no one showed up either. They were exhausted and as if that wasn¡¯t enough, Panic Attack was scolding them. All while keeping an eye out for an ambush.
Michael didn¡¯t speak at all throughout the scolding. He knew his party wasn¡¯t really ecstatic at him bringing them into a battle of such a scale. Especially when Hector and his friends brought the entire horde with them. He gave his party the chance to let everything out. Besides, the kids deserve a scolding as much as praise for keeping them all alive. He himself took it upon himself to watch every sand dune carefully, praise can wait.
Panic Attack believed they should move, they wanted to get out as soon as possible. They wanted to get Cori and Bilton to a healer as soon as possible, a warrior¡¯s body was their asset. Ryley was worried about the ambusher or ambushers. Hector had his arms crossed, pondering and pondering before looking around and finally landing his gaze on Michael.
¡°Mike, any idea who¡¯s after your party?¡± Hector spoke up. Michael was thinking the same thing, only his members were shot.
¡°Not any on the tip of my tongue. How about your side?¡± Michael asked. They didn¡¯t make many enemies, sure there were people that didn¡¯t like them but that couldn¡¯t be more normal. Michael was leaning towards the fact that they were Master Class and the Journeymen weren¡¯t perceived as a threat. Hence, whoever attacked them wanted to get rid of them first.
Michael just didn¡¯t understand with his muscle head, they were strong and stealthy enough to stay hidden even after hitting 2 of his guys. So why didn¡¯t they continue their attacks? What was the point of the 2 attacks? The timing was horrible, if they wanted them dead. They could have done that while the monster horde was still at its peak.
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That was exactly what left Hector stumped, the attacker''s motive. They discussed with everyone giving their opinions when they had anything to say. Ebony assured them that he silenced their conversation within a certain radius with him at the centre. None of them could think that anyone was after them, Ryley didn¡¯t think the few people he pissed off were angry enough to send people after him.
It was also weird there were no more attacks, even after an hour where they were rested enough to move around.
It was obvious to them that their plan now was to split. If the attackers, whether they were still around or not, were after Panic Attack Michael said they were a burden but it was just him who didn¡¯t want to drag a few kids down and they all knew that. If they were after Ebony¡¯s party then their presence might just be what was stopping the attackers from continuing.
Most of all, all of them just wanted out of the dungeon. A nice bed to lay on, steaming hot food. Food that wasn¡¯t mostly blood for Panic Attack, alcohol and just not worrying about any monster attacks in the middle of the night. The dungeon wasn¡¯t running anywhere, they could come back anytime. Now that they knew the routes, they could reach the same floor in a much shorter time.
Ebony and his party just wanted to get ready and prepare for their evolution. In the midst of the mess, Ebony has already slain a level 150 Arrowtail Scorpion and got another round of Natural Potential.
Ebony could genuinely understand what the fuss was about now. The generic skills that never levelled for a long time despite his occasional or frequent training depending on how useful they were were levelling again. For example, Running, Kicking Mastery and Sustained Optimum Condition. With how Classing and Class evolution requirements were skill level related it was no wonder many people would get themselves killed to improve themselves.
Hector suggested that Panic Attack leave first. Panic Attack was somewhat worried about them but there were acquainted strangers at most and their own party¡¯s well-being was prioritised. Michael couldn¡¯t force his party to accept the continued ¡®protection¡¯ of the children. Hector shared with them the shortcut that they had used to get up here with the Earthen Topaz Golems in the walkway. It was sort of a payment for almost killing them with the trouble they attracted them to. During their shared breakfast, Ebony had also learned of the other floors that they skipped so they roughly knew their way around.
Ebony and his party stayed where they were and waved Panic Attack away. They kept an eye out and Ebony didn¡¯t stop casting and compressing Layered Ice Carapace. An hour was long enough for a decent amount of mana.
While none of them got any experience at all, their skill levels were shooting up high. Treading Step, Ice Sword and Sustained Optimum Condition gained 4 levels.
Layered Ice Carapace, Battle Song, Gravity Mana Manipulation, Mana Perception and Kicking Mastery gained 3 levels.
Ice Mana Control, Icebody Enhancement, Flowing Greatsword Mastery, Chaotic Repulsive Membrane, Vibrational Gravity Sense, Sheer Mana Compression and Running gained 2 levels each.
Frost Injection and Mana Vibration levelled once.
Sonic Overlay levelled 7 times. Ceaseless Onslaught levelled 8 times. Frost Mist Perception Sphere levelled 13 times. Magnified Gravity Field levelled 24 times.
Seems like, when you use a level 49 skill to cause thousands and thousands of level 130 to level 150 monsters trouble that landed them dead, its level will skyrocket. Good to know.
Panic Attack moved with haste and was out of sight in time. No attack came to them either and they didn¡¯t hear the same gunshot that they had earlier. Ebony appreciated the break to recover from his wounds, so did Scarlet as she could hardly raise her arms or feet off the ground. Well, all of them really. Ryley and Tuffock were exhausted from carrying corpses. Hector similarly pushed himself even more than usual, his muscles¡¯ stiff, blood thin, breath tired and heart burned.
¡°Aack!¡± A much louder blast echoed as Tuffock fell limp, face flat. Unmoving. They were much closer.
¡°I had thought I was dumb enough to shoot hastily but I¡¯m glad you¡¯re even dumber to separate from your caretakers.¡± A voice that they didn¡¯t recognise softly brought all of them to attention. It had been another 3 to 4 hours since Panic Attack left. Only a couple hundred metres away, coming out from who knows where. They closed the distance to practically nil with one of them stepping on Tuffock. Tuffock coughed out blood and screamed before fainting.
¡®Seems like we were the target after all.¡¯
It wasn¡¯t like they didn¡¯t know, they were attacked by people even before the horde and even the horde was after them. Hector had long put that into consideration and why they decided to ask Panic Attack to leave. Ebony didn¡¯t like the idea of someone else that was nice to them to die or get any further injuries because of their own party being the target. Ryley was against splitting up, it was obviously safer with Panic Attack together with them. Scarlet and Tuffock didn¡¯t say anything.
Ebony didn¡¯t know if the ambushers were nice enough to wait for them to recover enough strength to fight or was just waiting for Panic Attack to go far away enough that they couldn¡¯t come and help them. A group of 5 showed themselves.
[Master Archer Lvl 158]
[Master Warrior Lvl 126]
[Master Rogue Lvl 153]
[Master Martial Artist Lvl 153]
[Great Fire Mage Lvl 128]
Two of them seemed like an odd addition but it wasn¡¯t like Ebony was anywhere close to Ryley¡¯s level in the beginning either. At least Ebony could Identify their levels, with Identify at level 13 and him at 100 he could Identify up till level 165.
¡°Master Burstbowmen, Houndlimb and Toxic Blade.¡± Ebony heard Hector whisper. Hector was seeing different things from Ebony. It was not hard for Ebony to guess who was who based on the Class names. Hector didn¡¯t mention the 120s, perhaps not seeing anything different or just didn¡¯t think they were a threat.
¡°This kid has Appraise?¡± The tall, skinny rogue said. He was cloaked up and had his face covered with cloth or masks. All of them were covering their faces and the cloak hid their body shape and whatever weapon they had too, their height probably couldn¡¯t be hidden but it would be impossible to recognise them on the streets if they ever saw them again. With the exception of the archer who held a long and thin metal barrel that looked somewhat like a sniper rifle but bulkier and the mage who carried a wooden staff and small red fragmented crystal attached.
Ebony could see the men eyeing Scarlet up and down except the archer who first spoke and was looking at Ebony instead.
¡°Haaha! Let me guess, sending 2 parties after us then a tiny horde of monsters. Gathering monsters, Lure¡¯s work. So why are lackeys of Lure after us? I don¡¯t think we have anything you want on us.¡± Hector laughed. People showing up after gathering lots of monsters to do their work for them could only be people from Lure.
Hector¡¯s heart was pounding when he saw Tuffock on the ground getting stepped on by the warrior. Too much blood was spilling out from Tuffock¡¯s chest area. The sandy ground he was on got murky and damp. His stone armour likely didn¡¯t do shit. Hector kept up his strong facade, not daring to bend down and reach forward to check on Tuffock in case he was the next one on the ground. The people showed themselves, if there was another attack he should at least be able to see where it was coming from.
Lure only popped up after the last minor war with the Trolls a little less than a hundred years ago. A little before mana slaves were outright banned by Emperor Oplot around 80 years ago. They could somehow attract and play around with monster behaviours and cause many problems over the years. Well known enough that the Royals were aware yet hidden enough that they couldn¡¯t be wiped out. Their structure and hierarchy was hidden enough that most of their lackeys didn¡¯t know who their boss was. That made it difficult for the nobles to wipe them out, it was even harder to trace if monster attacks on cities were natural or not.
They rose into one of the Empire¡¯s biggest problems in less than a century. Fortunately, they rarely pulled off any big stunts and always laid low other than the first time they destroyed a small town which made themselves known to the public. It was always a headache trying to predict what they would do, anyone with a head knew that they were building up power while laying low. Anyone related to Lure was thus given higher bounties as the Empire wanted them rooted out sooner rather than later.
¡°I guess there was no hiding that. So why split up when you¡¯re not that dumb?¡± Tewa the burstbowmen asked. It really wasn¡¯t all that hard to guess they were from Lure, that¡¯s why the plan was to have them take advantage of the monster horde but at least this way the ¡®grudge¡¯ that the mana slave would have would not be decreased so much. Knowing that they were the ones who sent the monsters and not just a coincidence. Tewa sighed, the plan really was messed up bad.
¡°Just checking if whoever it was had the guts to attack if a group of Master Warriors was here. Since no one showed up when they were here, whoever it was was too weak to really bother with.¡± Ebony said.
¡°Group of cowards, smaller threat.¡± Scarlet added on.
Despite what she said, she had Violent Heart Acceleration already kicking in. Everyone else was getting into higher gear too but only she needed time to build up her power. Ryley and Tuffock didn¡¯t really have a buffing spell or skill to build up. Tuffock didn¡¯t have much stone to work with and Ryley couldn¡¯t shoot that enchanted arrow of his.
That was enough to piss the ambushers to attack.
Chapter 74: Collective
Scarlet rarely lost in initiative. Lightning pulsed over her skin, she burst to slice the head of the fire mage who kept staring at Ebony. She couldn¡¯t stand the look in her eyes but justified that taking the mage down was only logical.
The Great Fire Mage couldn¡¯t even react before she was pushed back and onto her butt by Lalt, Toxic Blade the Master Rogue. His dagger stopped Scarlet¡¯s long sword but he stumbled back a step, not expecting so much force from a journeyman. He had held his dagger loosely and almost got it knocked out of his hands. Embarrassing.
Lalt didn¡¯t underestimate the legendary creatures known as Xeng any longer. Absolutely stunned that the woman could see and stop his swift attacks. The Great Fire Mage didn¡¯t stay stunned and started chanting with a small fireball forming and growing from fire mana in her staff.
Scarlet didn¡¯t even look in her direction as Ignite and Flare heated up, the ¡®Great¡¯ Fire Mage had her fireball decrease in size. The fire mana in her fireball was deconstructed and absorbed by Scarlet. Scarlet only managed to do that since the spell was still just a lump of fire mana rather than an actual spell. It was kinda pathetic. Scarlet couldn¡¯t even feel the Great Fire Mage¡¯s attempt of control over the fire mana she took away. Otherwise, with Scarlet¡¯s Intelligence stat against hers, it would be impossible to wrestle control away with Scarlet¡¯s current ability.
Scarlet was willing to bet that the lousy fire mage only evolved with level 125 requirement for 50% Fortification, whatever Fortification she had.
The Toxic Blade she was fighting was still faster and stronger than herself by a large margin. She covered the gap with Cascade Dual Longsword Mastery that increased Strength and Agility by a static 0.01% every strike, swing, slash or stab as long as she could connect the path and flow of both her swords. Though it decreased her Strength by 15% while she wielded dual longswords, it increased her attacking speed with the weapons by 25%.
Cascading Lacerations further increase the speed of her strikes by 0.001% after every connected blow, per level. Cascading Lacerations at level 133, meant that every strike was 0.133% faster than the previous and that wasn¡¯t even considering the 0.01% static increase from her Mastery itself.
What''s more, the swordsmanship her mother handed down to her didn¡¯t have a supposed limit to the increase. She could endlessly go faster and every attack getting stronger. As long as her body held. It was also possible to be like Ebony, constantly disrupting the flow of her strikes, not allowing her to build up power. That¡¯s why he was such a great sparring partner, Scarlet improved so much over the short period of time with him.
This rogue didn¡¯t have even a tenth of his capabilities, letting Scarlet grow in speed and power. He wanted to go on the offensive, a single nick on her would let his poison do the work. But he couldn¡¯t get the chance. Every action was moving to defend himself against a blow that seemed to have come faster and more ferocious than the last. He also felt his fingers and palms heat up and burn. The poison on his blades evaporated and even blew in his direction even though there was no wind.
His head lopped off with a char as his sight spun before he even knew it. Last thought being how was it possible that Scarlet was so fast. Master Class gained 15 stat points per level in their main Class, 10 stat points for a level in their Sub-Class and 3 Profession-focused stat points that were allocated when Profession levelled. His Class at level 153 alone gave him 795 more stat points, not to mention his Sub-Class and Profession.
That was a pointless number to Scarlet. The rogue just didn¡¯t have any good skills; perhaps he didn¡¯t even have many Fortifications or even any useful and high percentage Fortifications.
Strength: 122
Vitality: 150
Constitution: 330
Endurance: 250
Agility: 180 [360]
Intelligence: 215
Wisdom: 300
Perception: 110
Her stat points had skewed a lot from what she planned. She didn¡¯t regret changing how she planned to allocate her stats even though it was largely affected by Ebony. She didn¡¯t even feel irritated at him for affecting her choices.
Scarlet didn¡¯t add a single point of Strength, less the Strength that came from her Profession Combat Chef. It¡¯ll increase even more after she evolves. She needed Vitality for her Core Skill to be more sustainable or her blood would run too thin too quickly. Even when she found that her Core Skill increased her health regeneration rate proportionally as well, her maximum health stayed constant.
Constitution really was a drainer for her. The stronger her body the more she could handle higher levels of buff from her Core Skill and sword mastery skill set. Endurance was the same, she needed to have the energy and stamina to sustain her increased physical stats for as long as possible after all.
Her Agility might look really low at 180 but her unheard of Fortification made it have the effect of 360. With her Fortification, her sword attacks had the speed of over 1200 Agility. Scarlet only felt a little pain, she shouldn¡¯t have added any more points into Agility when she was still around level 40ish to 50. She had no doubt at all that her Fortifications would only rise further and her Constitution may not be enough anymore.
Her Core Skill can raise all her physical stats by a little over 350% except Endurance. While her Strength wouldn¡¯t be much higher than Ebony''s, her Agility was nothing to laugh at. Nothing here could stop her really, for the second or so that her stamina could sustain her at a fully enhanced speed of 1600 or attack speed equivalent to 5600 Agility. Not even Ebony if she wanted to kill him and only attacked him when she was at the peak of her power. She had to refresh her arrogance she didn¡¯t know she had a few times after seeing Hector¡¯s punch and Ebony¡¯s blue flames.
Hector¡¯s speed and power was also mind-bending for a Journeyman, for an Imperial anyway. Something Scarlet couldn¡¯t wrap her head around. Just what were his Fortifications? He had the same problem as her, only held back by their body and endurance. The exact opposite of Ebony, it could be seen that both of them were influenced by training with Ebony. And so was he influenced by them.
She was originally supposed to have twice as much Intelligence than Wisdom, but she couldn¡¯t find an argument against having faster mana regeneration that increased her magic training progress. She could always split more into Intelligence after she evolved and had more leeway with stats. Unfortunately, even with her overpowered Core Skill and Class Fortifications, she couldn¡¯t use all her speed and power properly. Her Intelligence stat was holding her speed down since her body was too fast for her mind even with Mental Acceleration and Combat Tenacity helping her with that.
Flare didn¡¯t stop after slicing the head of the Master Rogue off, the fire mana used for Heated Blade sent flying out. Copying what Ebony did with ice mana, the fiery slash flew and met the ¡®Great¡¯ fire mage''s second attempt at a fireball. It didn¡¯t stop and flew through and past the mage and her fireball. High pitched screams filled the area before it stopped abruptly.
The fire mage stopped moving, there were no screams despite being on fire. She was too still, even her clothes and hair stuck in place. Motionless.
Scarlet¡¯s fire was then extinguished somehow. She didn¡¯t manage to see what did it. She glanced back, but she wasn¡¯t ready for what she saw. Ebony didn¡¯t look worse for wear excluding the fact his robes were torn up and he was using a greatsword made of ice. That was a relief. But what he had in his hands wasn¡¯t a weapon, it was another hand.
An upper body was more accurate. Ebony was holding onto a hand, an arm connected to Ryley¡¯s upper body and upper body alone. Half of his heart was still beating, hanging out of his body along with torn lungs and another stump of an arm. Life faded from his eyes as Ebony nodded and listened while he kept Ryley¡¯s upper body close, hugging it tight.
¡®Ah¡¡¯ Scarlet could sense what Ebony told her about. The silent yet deep, deep sense of helplessness he felt now. She didn¡¯t even have a split second to consider his fears and pain any longer as her eyes shot to where she thought Tuffock was.
She didn¡¯t find Tuffock where she looked but only Hector who had his helmet flung off at some point and she was pretty sure his head was more sunken in then it should be. He didn¡¯t look conscious and was bleeding from his head but he wasn¡¯t dead. One loss less, she thought.
Yet, Scarlet didn¡¯t realise she made such a simple mistake until her neck forcefully snapped back and she was flung spinning backwards like a ragdoll. Looking away when her opponent wasn¡¯t finished and that there wasn¡¯t only one of them. Folly.
¡°...You dummy¡what did I tell you¡?¡± Scarlet couldn¡¯t see clearly but she felt the cold arms wrapped around her. Cold arms that felt so warm.
???
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Scarlet jumped started the battle by shooting off for the mage and engaging with the rogue instead. The others didn¡¯t sit still. Hector did his trademark fist smashing and leapt after the warrior stepping on Tuffock.
Ebony quickly defended Ryley from the martial artist¡¯s incoming punch. The other 2 could handle themselves, he thought. All his buffing and enhancement skills kicked in, he¡¯ll have to make do with an Ice Sword. Any type of enhancement skill, even tier ones just seem overpowered when one¡¯s Intelligence is high enough.
139% of 376 was 522.64. The number jumps even more with skill level and skill tier, that, and mana compression. Why isn¡¯t everyone a hybrid at this point? Well, Ebony knew that it was because it just wasn¡¯t sustainable for others and they would have to survive with subpar physical and magical stats at least until they evolve to Master or beyond.
The martial artist kept whacking at his Layered Ice Carapace that they gave him time to cast and compress. Punching and kicking, then pulling his arms back and raising them into the air while yelling ¡°WARGHH!¡± it sounded like a fake roar instead. While he didn¡¯t sound impressive, what Ebony saw was impressive enough.
The man¡¯s right arm had a translucent upper head or face of a wolf, while his left was the lower jaw. He opened his arms but kept his fist gripped tight, taking a step forward and having his arms coming in for a bear hug. The ¡®jaws¡¯ overshadowing his arms closed in together with his snapping motion, like that of a crocodile. Ebony quickly hopped back with Ryley but his shield didn¡¯t move in time. He received a mental spike of pain, feedback from his Layered Ice Carapace being crushed from side to side.
The martial artist laughed and the translucent wolf head disappeared. It didn¡¯t look like he could use that continuously as his breath hastened already. Likely mana constraints of a martial artist. Ebony could sense the foreign mana signature earlier and it wasn¡¯t hard to tell it was magic at work.
Ebony calmly orbed Ryley up before 2 gunshots rang again. The ¡®archer¡¯ wasn¡¯t staying in hiding anymore and was in plain sight. With Scarlet keeping the fire mage and rogue busy, Hector taking the warrior on, there was only the martial artist and gunman with the odd sniper rifle looking gun. Ebony kept an eye out for his movements but found that he was busy with his bracelet in the beginning before taking a shot at Ryley.
Ebony also understood why he only shot twice before stopping. The man was reloading his gun after only two shots. His shots didn¡¯t ricochet or slide off his orb but dug deep in. Metal bullets as far as Ebony could tell at a glance.
Ebony dodged the incoming kick from the right. It was a lot faster than he could react to, he had no choice but to predict the man¡¯s move like usual. He didn¡¯t expect the next kick to have a translucent wolf claw 3 to 4 times larger than the normal desert wolves to materialise mid kick. He misjudged the dodging distance and the materialised claws shattered his Ice Sword and dug into whatever was left of his tattered sleeves before flinging him to the side.
It was not as strong as it looked and didn¡¯t cut into his icy skin. He didn¡¯t stay on the defensive any longer, it didn¡¯t take too much time to form and repair what broke off his Ice Sword. Ebony stomped, Magnified Gravity Field cast and gradually increased in strength to buy time together with Frost Mist Perception Sphere. It was good enough to cause the martial artist to panic a little.
???
Ged didn¡¯t expect to get heavier all of a sudden, almost tripping. He obviously knew about the cold mist since he was watching this guy battle but the increase in weight of his body was unexpected. A panicked defence against the incoming stab worked, again and again. He was getting worried, the mana slave was too slow to really land a hit on him but he was sufficiently strong with his enhancement. Ged was gradually freezing and a thin layer of ice formed on his fist and legs when he blocked or even when he attacked.
His boss, Tewa, who was busy shooting the ice orb and supporting the warrior also noticed his situation. They exchanged a glance and he knew that he was forgetting something. The ones they had to kill was everyone else, not the mana slave.
He noticed his boss starting his mana charge bullet and got himself ready too. The loud and noisy burstbow echoed and he burst into action. His Hound Crunch ready to snap. His opponent also realised his orb defence broke and that he took the opportunity to dash to the party¡¯s archer. He smiled, the mana slave was still too slow.
His arms and the mana wolf¡¯s jaws were about to meet but the mana slave¡¯s movement speed was faster than he thought, or he was more affected by the freezing than he thought. The archer¡¯s arm was grabbed and pulled aside violently. Yet not violently enough.
Hound Crunch!
The archer¡¯s lower body didn¡¯t get pulled away in time and was completely separated by his wolf¡¯s jaws. Ged even made the inside of the mana wolf''s mouth to be jagged like countless teeth and whatever trapped in between was crushed to a bloody pulp that he relished looking at. The smell of internal organs, bones, blood and fat crushed and mashed together just gets him so excited. The look on the mana slaves face must be even more delicious.
Ged couldn¡¯t help but grin and look towards their target. His grin froze, as did his body. He looked down to his chest to see a huge blade stabbing through him all the way out through his back. He didn¡¯t bleed or vomit blood, the blood in his body froze too quickly.
¡®He.. he stabbed out at the same time he pulled him¡no way I¡¯ll end like this!¡¯
¡°He¡heehhh¡ and you still¡ didn¡¯t make it in time.. Haaa¡haa.¡± Ged was going to have the last laugh. It was just too bad his last laugh was one so cold.
???
¡°Take your stinkin feet off!¡±
Hector recovered quite some mana, the warrior looked to be the weakest but he was a Master Warrior after all. Hector casted water, wind and earth enhancements. It should be more than sufficient to have higher stats than the average Master Warrior at level 126 by a large margin.
¡°Tch!¡±
The burstbowman and likely leader of the party knew that too and focussed his fire on him. It wasn¡¯t so bad since the trajectory of his shots was so easy to read but it was annoying that he had to keep a constant eye to watch when he pulled the trigger.
Hector got into a short stalemate trying to get the warrior and dodge the burstbowman¡¯s attempts at shooting him. The warrior used a medium-sized war axe with a kite shield, probably the vanguard who played Ebony¡¯s role on their party. Hector was about to kick things up a notch since Tuffock¡¯s condition was unknown and smash his fist together before he stopped himself.
A grey spike rose from the ground under the warrior and pierced him from his feet to the top of his head. No way for him to survive that, Hector thought. He wanted to call out to Tuffock and was glad he was still alive but then Tuffock spoke first.
¡°Well well well. Tewa. Tewa. Tewa.¡±
The burstbowman was stunned. Hector didn¡¯t understand, what the hell was Tewa? Tuffock sounded a little different too.
¡°Destroy that ice prison first.¡±
¡®What? Oh¡shit!¡¯ Hector remembered too late. He turned towards the burstbowman and was about to ran over and stop him but he was too far away. It didn¡¯t even matter that he was too far away, the moment his body turned away a hard impact smashed right into his head. His helmet was knocked right out, his skull probably broke. Was his brain smashed too? Hector saw Tuffock¡¯s lazy back fist as he fell unconscious.
¡®Lousy punch, mine¡¯s bet¡ter...¡¯
???
¡°The parties sent to this floor were too weak. No problem. I knew their standards. The horde was cleaned up. No problem. Panic Attack was a variable I didn¡¯t see coming. You attacking all of a sudden¡well, they split in the end. Results of that were acceptable.¡±
¡°...yes boss Pet.¡± Tewa was mentally yelling. ¡®Why does it have to be boss Pet of all people?¡¯ Tewa was most afraid of boss Pet.
¡°Why the ambush even after you saw them clearing the small horde. Stupid? Dumb? Retarded? Attacking me first out of everyone, good. If you knew it was me it would¡¯ve helped lower their guard around me. This guy who stepped on me? Dramatic. I like it, that would hurt their pride and their hate would grow. Too bad you didn¡¯t teach him well and the one he stepped on was me.¡±
¡°...¡± Tewa had no reply. He actually didn¡¯t know he just shot his own boss in the chest. The skin his boss was wearing on his face was unfamiliar to Tewa. He was confused about how to feel about getting praised for that.
¡°If force was the choice I could have gotten them myself or have you get them before they grew. Now, Lalt¡¯s dead. I managed to stop probably the only mage you¡¯ve managed to recruit from being incinerated. Ged¡¯s dead too, a pity. At least he was competent enough to take one down, with my reminder. Don¡¯t just stand there, you still have my needle right? Shoot already, will you?¡±
Tewa quickly loaded the almost hair-thin needle his bosses gave him. He took aim at the most dangerous of their targets. Well, only target left, with his bosses actually going undercover in disguise, the archer dead and his boss taking down the quadra elemental mage. The Xeng was the only one left and what luck, she was looking around after boss Pet saved Delia. Noticing the dying archer then the fallen quadra mage and finally looking over at him in the middle of pumping as much mana into his burstbow as possible.
Just before Tewa pulled the trigger of his burstbow, he saw a shadow move into the path of his shot. 2 Massive ice shields moved with him and were in front of him. Naive. That didn¡¯t stop his normal charged shot, much less a fully charged one with the needle from his bosses. It was a wonder how he suddenly moved with such intense speed but it wouldn¡¯t help.
Like he thought, the needle went through both shields as if it wasn¡¯t there. Tewa didn¡¯t expect that the mana slave predicted that and got his hands up to block it. It wasn¡¯t enough, the sharp needle flew through his palms and dug all the way through it and out of his shoulder. Landing right in the centre of the Xeng¡¯s mask. Her neck snapped back forcefully as she was sent spinning backwards like a rotating axe throw.
The mana slave was unfazed by the tiny hole through his arm and moved fast enough to catch the flying Xeng but with enough grace, it was like a butterfly landing on a leaf without causing it to dip down even a little.
¡°Woohp!¡± Tewa coughed as air was knocked out of him from the back.
When did these shields get behind him? It pushed him forward along with the mana slave. The suddenness caught him off guard and he was about to move aside when the shield split apart and trapped him in. He wanted to take a shot and break himself out but needed to reload his burstbow.
He pulled. His burstbow wouldn¡¯t move and neither could he. The orb was shrinking on him and his burstbow was stuck. Tewa panicked, he started punching and kicking but the walls were harder than a rock. Whitish blue mist started filling the orb. Tewa struggled even harder. Then the mist gathered on his skin, it didn¡¯t stick. It exploded in his face. The chilly blue flames were the last thing he saw.
Chapter 75: Storm
¡°Still can¡¯t get rid of my bad habit huh¡I came in after all.¡±
¡°Greetings madam.¡±
¡°Ohh¡«What a surprise¡ or not. I see even your hair is starting to grey. Here for little Nav¡¯s descendants, I suppose. The Trolls huh. One second.¡±
¡°...It¡¯s the Empire¡¯s honour and fortune to receive even a single word of advice from you madam. I too am getting old.¡±
¡°Fortunate? Tell them there¡¯s no rush. The Trolls¡¯ got a new king, a Shaman¡ They have started fighting back against the little things he sent over. Migration over here probably won¡¯t happen anytime soon. A single King Classed Shaman shouldn¡¯t be able to change the overall situation on Tova but it bought both Continent¡¯s time. Two or three decades perhaps. Can''t get a good read in here.¡±
¡°!! I will pass the message. The Empire is indebted.¡±
A resounding laugh echoed.
¡°No need to be. A dozen Reds should suffice. I¡¯ll make the visit.¡±
¡°...understood. I shan¡¯t interrupt you any further.¡±
¡°Tch. How impatient. We could¡¯ve had some tea first. Never mind, let¡¯s see let¡¯s see¡ so many stars here. One so bright and hot. One so bright but cold. One so blindingly dazzling. One big lightless cluster of stars but alive? Odd..inconsequential but useful for them. A few lights went off. What¡¯s this now? Where did this star come from? Weird, dark and shiny. Not one I recognise. Interesting! The boy lit the star up. I see I see, what should I do now? I really shouldn¡¯t make things worse.¡±
???
Ryley, who was nervously waiting for Ebony to let him out, saw the orb break with force and felt that the situation obviously didn¡¯t look good. He jumped for Ebony who was coming towards him already, reaching out to grab Ebony¡¯s hand. He had a momentary flash of happiness when he managed to grab ahold of his lifeline. Then the sharp and intense pain, then dullness. Ryley slowly understood the reality of the situation. Unacceptable.
Ryley cried but not even a second later he felt Ebony¡¯s tight hug on the remaining body of his. He didn¡¯t say anything but Ryley calmed down a little. His calmness was contagious, it gave him the last moment of clarity.
¡°Ryley¡Vigoureed¡ From the¡House of¡Vigour¡reed¡¡± A nod from Ebony reassured Ryley for reasons he¡¯ll never live to find out.
???
Ebony was in the middle of wearing the martial artist down when he felt his orb break. There were no attacks on it for a while so he thought the archer gave up. He saw the martial artist taking the chance to dash for a wolf bite thing again and a single step with Treading Step pushed him to reach for Ryley.
Ebony, who rushed to grab Ryley out of the way, stabbed his greatsword at the attacking martial artist, hoping that even if he couldn¡¯t reach Ryley in time he could stop the attack. He didn¡¯t expect the martial artist to just follow through with his attack, it looked to Ebony like he didn¡¯t even notice Ebony¡¯s weapon in the path of his movement. That or it was a skill he couldn¡¯t stop halfway through. The martial artist¡¯s last words were not deaf on Ebony. He wasn¡¯t wrong, Ebony indeed didn¡¯t make it in time.
He pulled onto Ryley¡¯s arm and almost fell and lost balance when the strength he put in was too much. At least, it wasn¡¯t until Ryley lost more than half his body¡¯s weight. Ebony held him tight, thinking it was unfortunate he couldn¡¯t even keep the man¡¯s last moments warm with his ice cold body. He nodded as Ryley reminded him of who he was, perhaps to inform his family of his passing. It was the least Ebony could do.
Helpless again, he was no healer. Reviving the dead was even more impossible. But that wasn¡¯t enough to stop Ebony from analysing the situation in that moment of time that seemed ridiculously slow to him. It was nothing new, his moving meditation or Everlasting Tranquillity was basically him in intense concentration yet not really. It wasn¡¯t as if he was living his life in slow motion view but he could somewhat will it to happen. It had been less apparent when he was on Earth or when moving meditation hasn¡¯t turned into a skill, Persistent Meditation and now Everlasting Tranquillity. Not to mention mental stats like Intelligence speeding up his mental processing speed.
First of all, Scarlet unsurprisingly lopped the head of the Master Rogue. Then there was the mage at her side, unmoving, steaming hot. Her expression was one of pain and anguish, paused in time. Grey covered her skin, body, clothes, weapons and whatnot. A stone statue of the fire mage they had seen in the ambusher''s party.
Ebony saw from the corner of his eye that Scarlet¡¯s line of sight shifted away from him. He knew what she was looking at as well. Hector laying on the ground, his helmet completely knocked off. Head bleeding and maybe a broken skull, Ebony could still see his chest rise and fall. Breathing.
A familiar face. Unfamiliar person. Looking at Ebony with what seemed like a hint of a smile. Tuffock stood straighter than he ever did, eyes looking forward instead of the ground. A single exchange of glances was enough to tell Ebony that this wasn¡¯t the Tuffock he knew. But more importantly, every cell in his body was telling him defeat was inevitable if Ebony were to attack him and get Hector away. Fascinating.
Ebony didn¡¯t understand why or how he felt or sensed that. It was the instinctual ¡®there¡¯s absolutely no way anything I could do could let him get Hector out of there.¡¯ that his body and subconscious were telling him. Tuffock was still Identified as [Stone Mage Lvl 100] but Ebony didn¡¯t believe Identify anymore.
Tuffock¡¯s hint of a smile was unsettling and Ebony had long noticed that the gunman hadn''t shot his second shot in a row. They were standing pretty close and while Tuffock was looking at him, he was also talking to the gunman. Ebony was too far to hear their conversation.
Ebony moved like a weightless phantom, the hours that they let him rest allowed him to cast more Layered Ice Carapaces than he thought he would need. They came in handy. There were also remnant scales of ice mana from the broken orb. Ebony sent all the remnants digging into the sand towards the gunman who suddenly came close enough, not too far away from Tuffock.
It didn¡¯t even take two steps for Ebony to pop right in front of Scarlet with both his intact Layered Ice Carapaces lumbering along slightly slower. The gunman had already taken aim but hadn''t fired off. Ebony guessed it was probably a common tactic of any ranged fighter that mana could be charged into weapons or ammunition like arrows and bullets for more power.
Ebony raised his hand both as insurance because his instincts told him to be wary and that Tuffock¡¯s faint hint of a smile never dropped and to ease the command of his Layered Ice Carapace and spare ice scales to float up from behind and under the gunman. Hopefully getting Tuffock too but he was not the priority as the gunman pulled the trigger.
An explosive force broke out from the gunmen¡¯s sniper rifle looking weapon. It pierced through both Ebony¡¯s Layered Ice Carapace as if it wasn¡¯t there. Then, through his palm and arms and out through his shoulders. Ebony¡¯s lower body was already pushing himself backwards but he was only quick enough to catch Scarlet after she was sent wheeling through the air with her neck snapped back. Ebony mentally made the Layered Ice Carapace and scales to rise out of the sand and pulled the gunman along with him when he dashed for Scarlet.
It was too bad he wasn''t fast enough to trap the gunman before he fired.
As fast as possible, Ebony made both shield clasps onto the front and back of his gun so that he couldn¡¯t reload or adjust his aim before starting to imprison him. The feedback from within was weak, the person likely didn¡¯t have a high Strength stat. When tightly locked, Ebony controlled the ice mana to mistify and, when thick enough, combust.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Master Burstbowman Lvl 158]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. No Natural Potential is gained due to insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
Ebony ignored the familiar notification, the man was as much a monster as any other in the dungeon. There were no movements from Tuffock and Ebony couldn¡¯t be bothered right now. He quickly touched and felt around Scarlet¡¯s neck. Even though he had set his own bones many times he had never had his neck snapped backwards so much that the back of his head could touch his back. Her neck was turning scarlet red and Ebony didn¡¯t hesitate and quickly flipped her head and set her neck back.
The redness in her neck subsided almost immediately. Thank Vitality that humans are no longer so fragile. A whistle came from the stone mage''s direction when he saw what Ebony did. His calmness, swiftness and lack of hesitation was truly an intimidating trait. That would''ve killed Scarlet if anything went wrong.
¡°...You dummy¡what did I tell you¡?¡± Scarlet caught her breath really quickly too.
¡°Yes, you were right. I didn¡¯t know anything. I¡¯m a dummy.¡± Ebony replied but he knew she wasn¡¯t listening already. She was unconscious. Ebony was worried, her neck was still broken. Setting it back in place only let her breathe properly, the immense swelling around her neck was very worrisome.
Ebony quickly tried to take her mask off to feed her his remaining potion no matter how cheap or weak his potion was. The leather clasps looked simple but he couldn¡¯t take them out, when he tried to take them out by force his fingers burned. He had Icebody Enhancement going strong for whatever Strength buff he could get but it didn¡¯t change a thing as he needed to be gentle so that he doesn¡¯t accidentally injure Scarlet any further.
Scarlet¡¯s mask had no additional hole in it, only a grey dust mark on the forehead area.
¡°Really. That mask is amazing stuff.¡±
Ebony jumped off with Scarlet in his arms dozens of metres away when Tuffock invaded his senses¡¯ range before he knew it.
¡°Relax. My unpolished plan failed miserably but no matter. I am not trying to kill you. I¡¯m here to recruit you so to speak.¡±
¡°...Recruit into?¡± Ebony positioned himself where Hector was right behind him. Tuffock just stood where they previously were and didn¡¯t chase.
¡°Introductions. How could I forget? I am Pettock from Lure.¡± Tuffock or rather, Pettock had the same hint of confident smile.
¡°Ice boy! Name¡¯s Hardock. You have potential, we won¡¯t treat you poorly.¡± The smile Pettock had turned to a toothy grin not unlike Hector¡¯s.
¡°He¡hey Ebony. I...Tuffock.¡± A tone Ebony was more familiar with. He was slouching and looking down again, the only difference was that Ebony noticed the short glance he spared Hector on the ground.
¡°Alright. Let¡¯s not waste anymore time, I can feel Ordina¡¯s anger and confusion already. Neither of us has time on our side. Join us. The 4, no, the 6 of us only stand to gain.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t understand what he meant at first but remembered that Tuffock was a doctor and he had 2 probably in horrible condition without treatment personnel with him. If you can¡¯t beat¡¯em, join¡¯em right? Ebony just needed an opportunity. The fact that Tuffock or Pettock from the looks of it said that they didn¡¯t have time either.
¡°What do you do in this¡Lure?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t stop trying to rip the mask off of Scarlet. Resorting to trying to freeze the leather straps off. The ice mana melted off without effort no matter how much he tried to freeze it off.
¡°Don¡¯t bother. My stone needle didn¡¯t even scratch it. Still, her head would¡¯ve been blasted off if you didn¡¯t make it in time. Lure, an organisation that hides themselves pretty deeply. We¡¯ve never even seen or heard from the true big boss. As much as it hurts to say, we aren¡¯t that high up on the rung. You just killed 3 of my good men. I know, pathetic. Join me. The other 2 don¡¯t have to die.¡±
¡°They¡¯re strong too, you¡¯re not recruiting them?¡± Ebony asked with honest curiosity.
¡°HA! The noisy one stinks of a noble. We would need to take care of our heads with the almighty around.¡± Hardock explained. It was not difficult to tell them apart.
¡°There wouldn¡¯t be much difference in your daily life if you join us. Your priority would still be to strengthen yourself and level up. A journeyman, no matter how strong, is less than useful. I guess I''m not really one to say. We don¡¯t even require you to do any jobs or take on any missions that Lure hands to me. You just need to back me up when I pull others down from the rung. It¡¯s simple right? I would even try my best to get you whatever equipment, books or other stuff you need.¡± Pettock continued.
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¡°...Mmm. Sounds good.¡±
¡°Great!¡± Hardock took Ebony¡¯s acknowledgement as an agreement.
¡°I..I¡¯ll check on them now.¡± Tuffock took over and started checking on Hector. Ebony didn¡¯t relax, they were not far away and Tuffock walked up normally instead of just appearing beside them. Tuffock breathed a sigh of relief and did his thing, getting Hector all bandaged up after spraying something on his head injury and feeding him a pill. From what Ebony remembered, pills were stronger stuff but slower acting so Hector was probably not in any real danger if Tuffock fed him a pill.
¡°I¡¯ll take over.¡± Pettock said, whether he was talking to Tuffock or Ebony, Ebony didn¡¯t know. He didn¡¯t like it one bit, holding tightly onto Scarlet. He didn¡¯t worry one bit about leaving Hector in Tuffock¡¯s care but he couldn¡¯t feel at ease with leaving Scarlet to Pettock.
¡°Don¡¯t misunderstand. I really couldn¡¯t be bothered to help her, for me it would be better if she died now that she knew I ¡®betrayed¡¯ her but I¡¯m probably the only one who can remove her mask.¡± Pettock said when Ebony didn¡¯t hand Scarlet over. The fact that he didn¡¯t just snatch her away was alleviating Ebony¡¯s worries by an insignificant amount.
¡®Does the same person have 3 different sets of skills?¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t help but think that when Pettock said he was the only one who could do something despite the three of them being the same person.
Ebony was about to say something when the sound of screams were carried over.
¡°Bo..boss Tewa! Ged! Lalt! Save arh!¡± A man in standard leather armour with a metal chest plate and helmet climbed over a sand dune and called for help before something stabbed him right through the chest and pulled him back. His chest plate couldn¡¯t protect him at all. Ebony couldn¡¯t see what stabbed him or pulled him back behind the sand dune. But that wasn¡¯t the end of the commotion. It suddenly got dark, real fast. Clouds.
¡°Wait here.¡± Pettock disappeared with a strong gust of wind. Leaving Ebony alone, confident Ebony wouldn¡¯t run. Or couldn¡¯t.
¡®Clouds?¡¯ Ebony hasn¡¯t seen a single cloud much less the entire dungeon sky getting covered in dark thunderclouds.
The screams continued but one thing in common that Ebony could catch. His Mana Perception was also going haywire with the intense mana that was growing and leaving the surroundings, into the sky.
¡°MANA STORM!¡±
¡°DIIIG!!¡±
Ebony obviously didn¡¯t let the chance go. He quickly got Hector under one arm and Scarlet under the other. Carrying Hector on his Layered Ice Carapace would be too damn slow. He had Chaotic Repulsive Membrane to activate to repel his every step, as far as he could. Battle Song of a certain driving anime¡¯s theme song for every drop of speed he could get. ¡®Faster, further.¡¯ was all he wanted Treading Step to do. The increase in level for Running also helped.
Ebony was running towards the previous floor. No shit. There was nowhere to hide but Ebony did his best to stay behind taller sand dunes.
¡°Urgh! Wha?! Mana storm?!¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t expect Hector to wake up so quickly. Hector quickly smashed his fist together and then got himself out of Ebony¡¯s hold. It was no surprise that Hector could easily keep up, with 4 enhancements he was way stronger than Ebony and Scarlet and just as fast as Scarlet who buffed up considerably if he used lightning instead of earth.
¡°What¡¯s going on Ebony! Tuffock?¡±
¡°On the run. Distracted.¡±
¡°I can see that!¡±
¡°Then why are you asking?¡±
¡°Gah! Damn you. We don¡¯t have time to freaking run, we need to start digging!¡± Hector didn¡¯t stop running alongside him as he said that and busied himself, throwing his bag to his front and started looking through it before pulling a shovel out.
¡°Why dig? What¡¯s a mana storm?¡±
¡°Can¡¯t say I wasn¡¯t sceptical about you wanting to join.¡± Pettock¡¯s stead tone of voice followed them. He was flying in the air behind them, he wasn¡¯t much faster than them but he was catching up. He didn¡¯t have wings or anything of the sort, Ebony was gonna guess it was him manipulating his stone suit underneath his robes. A feat Ebony wasn¡¯t capable of.
¡°El! Why are you doing this Tuffock!¡± Hector, who wanted to stop to dig continued to dash. The throbbing pain in his head reminded him of Tuffock¡¯s attack.
Thundering could be heard and bright blue lightning crackled in the dark thunderclouds.
¡°We¡¯re close to the slope.¡± Ebony transmitted to Hector with Mana Vibration so only Hector could hear him. His Mental Map was really handy. They were fortunate that the dungeon was shrunk down many times or hasn¡¯t expanded much at all.
Ebony didn¡¯t have to announce. It was clear for Pettock who was in the air to see and Hector could also see the massive hole in the floor in a few seconds.
¡°Ebony¡A mana storm is basically a dungeon¡¯s last resort of ridding itself of what they don¡¯t want in them. I don¡¯t know who the target is but it doesn''t matter since it will remove every living thing. Digging underground is the only known solution to survive. No time for a lecture on the whys and hows. When we get near the slope just jump down and stay hidden when you move.¡±
¡°...Mmm. You¡¯re planning to stop and fight? He¡¯s strong. Tuffock and Hardock, which is likely Tuffock 2 is in there but the current one is Pettock. He¡feels different.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think Tuffock/Hardock/Pettock was all that high of a level.
The fact that he was still chasing them meant he wasn¡¯t as powerful as Ebony originally felt. In terms of stats. Of course, there was the chance that Tuffock was taking it easy and slow because he didn¡¯t think Ebony could run but he didn¡¯t bet on that. He could believe that they weren¡¯t trying to kill him or them since no attack came so that was one thing.
''A journeyman, no matter how strong, is less than useful. I guess I''m not really one to say.'' was what Pettock said. If that was true then it meant that they were likely not past level 100 either. But how was it that Ebony didn''t think he could beat him. How did Pettock get into his range so fast and silently?
¡°No idea what you just said but I think I get it. I need to show him what a real punch is. And maybe just knock Tuffock out of it. He alone. Isn¡¯t all that bad.¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t think Tuffock can stop themselves from killing you.¡± Ebony was pretty certain that Pettock and maybe Hardock would have no issue taking Hector¡¯s life. He had no doubt they would be more than capable of doing so too.
Hector laughed, it was a hearty and cheerful one as usual.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, Ebony! I have my ways of escaping. Heheh. Having someone care for you sure feels good.¡± Hector confidently claimed then rubbed his nose with slight embarrassment.
¡°You misunderstand. You still have my portion of the treasure drops. Henry¡¯s Bar. In exactly one week. Don¡¯t forget or I¡¯ll come hunt you for it.¡± Ebony replied in his flat tone.
¡°...Ya punk! Sure! I¡¯ll drink your pouch dry.¡±
¡°You think you can drink more than I can regenerate mana?¡±
¡°We''ll see!¡±
It was only a dozen or so km away from the slope to the 10th floor. A really short distance that would take a few steps at best. The stone mage didn¡¯t keep things the way it was and 3 huge, long lances flew over Ebony¡¯s head and stabbed across the sandy ground ahead of him. The lances rooted themselves and turned to whips, shooting for his arms and feet.
Ebony weaved between them by a hair¡¯s breadth, the stone appendages were fast but not flexible. They changed directions slowly and couldn¡¯t bend corners so smoothly. Sei¡¯s and Ton¡¯s snow and ice whips were much more dangerous, flexible, swift, accurate and numerous.
Ebony annoyed the stone mage further as their aim shifted, focusing on Scarlet in his arms. Ebony was originally terribly worried about making her injury worse by moving so fast and it wasn¡¯t exactly a comfortable position for her. However, her increasingly swollen neck and the area around her neck suddenly subsided a little while back.
???
Right on their heels, Hector stood in Tuffock¡¯s path.
¡°Get lost, you¡¯re unnecessary.¡± The stone mage landed as flying and carrying one¡¯s own weight alone took a lot of mana. He was always amazed that Ebony could carry him along without stopping at all. Of course, being about to fly himself was a harder task than carrying anyone or anything else of the same weight.
¡°This one¡¯s to return the earlier sneak attack! MEGAA PAAANCH!¡± Hector didn¡¯t hold back one bit and the stone mage knew the power and danger of this one attack. A thickened stone half dome was hastily conjured as Hector used his movement skill to place himself less than 3 metres away and instantly merged as many punches as he could before the mage could dodge. Mega panch also wasn''t just a simple merger of his physical force.
The half dome made of stone crumbled before rejoining back into a complete wall and caving in again as the sand on the ground split where Tuffock defended himself. Hector was much stronger now at level 100 and higher skill levels, the sand was nowhere close to how tough the walkway¡¯s walls were either. The path of destruction he left was massive but Tuffock¡¯s stone defence held.
¡°AND THIS ONE¡¯S FROM ME! MEEGAA ELLING PAAANCH!¡± Hector yelled. The stone mage didn¡¯t dare let up his defence or risk popping out now to dodge as the attack may be coming anytime now. The ground shook but Tuffock didn¡¯t feel any feedback from his conjured stone. He flew up again, a huge and deep hole in the sand where Hector previously was. He escaped underground.
Pettock didn¡¯t care. He continued the chase for the mana slave. He stopped being able to attack or slow him down with his stone whips when he cast his stone defence. The stone mage was just about to jump down to the previous floor and raise a different staff that came out of nowhere for the first time in the chase. A thin needle formed instantly and was released after Scarlet.
Since he couldn¡¯t get Ebony to join him willingly he just needed a good card. They had changed their mind about killing and not killing Scarlet and Hector a couple of times.
The fact that Ebony didn¡¯t concern himself with the people Hardock killed made him think that Ebony was as cold as his demeanour suggested. They thought he couldn¡¯t care less but he constantly protected his party members. With all the flirting they witnessed, Scarlet was a great card.
Unlike what his underlings thought, Pettock never hid his level, only his Sub-Class. He just had to tone down his spell power to act weak.
???
Ebony was glad he didn¡¯t neglect Perception and his perception skills. He didn¡¯t feel the insignificant gravitational waves at all but the mana parted and froze where whatever projectile was flying towards them with great force. It was a weird projectile that didn¡¯t just cause the surrounding mana to vibrate and move aside but caused them to stay still instead.
The moment it entered his senses, he reacted. But he wasn¡¯t nearly fast enough to cast a single scale much less a Layered Ice Carapace. Only able to raise his hand, twist his body and cast Icebody Enhancement. It was enough.
Scarlet was brought out of harm''s way, compressed Icebody Enhancement stopped the stone needle from stabbing through him and only poking through his spell glove and into the back of his hand. Stopped by his bones, it was surprisingly weak but the size of the needle told Ebony that it probably didn¡¯t require much mana at all.
Ebony jumped right down to the tenth floor. He could hear Hardock screaming in confusion and frustration that Ebony was an idiot or something.
The stone mage was on the chase at full speed, mana conservation be damned he thought. Ebony wasn¡¯t supposed to be hit by that. Then lightning fell. The stone mage quickly fell and scrambled for the hole Hector punched open. The lightning strike didn¡¯t go for him but likely one of his men that he had to save. He didn¡¯t have many of them and it wasn¡¯t easy recruiting people nowadays. No matter how useless they were now, he needed people. When he got there, half of his remaining men had already died and whatever did that was already gone.
Tuffock thought that there would be a path once he fell into the hole but the deep hole ended with no path or Hector. A flash of blue spark above Tuffock alarmed him to blast another hole through girs and girs of hardened sand. As if it had eyes, a thick streak of lightning accurately landed into the hole.
Ebony tried his best to land well and continued to slide down from wherever he landed. He decast Icebody Enhancement for all the speed he could use for his escape. Running with Treading Steps was much faster than sliding down.
He was going to pluck the needle out of his hand but realised it was nowhere to be found. Perhaps, it was knocked out from his speed. Then he felt the loss of feeling from his left hand, it was unlike when he cast Icebody Enhancement. He couldn¡¯t move his fingers all of a sudden, pulling his glove aside to see his hand greying gradually. Petrification.
Ebony recalled the statue of the fire mage. Seeing the grey portions climbing up to his wrists and the complete loss of his sense of feeling and touch in his left arm, he didn¡¯t hesitate to conjure an Ice Sword and cleanly sliced his hand off wrist down. Blowing on the clean cut with a mist of ice mana to freeze it. He caught his cut left hand that seemed to anger the gods seeing how it was the most injured part of his body since he came to Elcra with an ice scale.
Ebony didn¡¯t dare touch it in case the petrification could spread from touch. It didn¡¯t feel right to leave it either, who knows if he could unpetrify it and stick it back on or not. After his hand was fully petrified, his ice scale didn''t change or turn grey. Ebony made a mini ice orb for it and threw it into his bag just in case.
Humans couldn¡¯t regenerate limbs even when they reached Master or Grandmaster unless they had some special Class or Fortifications. Or just like Ebony had some special Physique. He was sure that he should be able to regenerate his hand sooner or later. It might take a long time, it might be greatly weakened but it¡¯ll heal. There shouldn¡¯t even be any lasting injury from all the injuries he had already healed from, that hinted to him.
Ebony didn¡¯t stop running in a straight line for stealth wasn''t in his considerations. Ignoring the few monsters he came across saved a massive amount of time. He didn¡¯t need to travel in a way that conserved stamina without his party members. Didn¡¯t have heavy shields to slow him down. Scarlet was as light as a feather and her condition seemed to have stabilised even though Ebony didn¡¯t do shit to treat her. Only now did Ebony realise that her heart rate was getting really high. He was worried at first but then realised it was her skill at work.
Ebony didn¡¯t turn back, he ran through day and night. It was dark from the ¡®sky¡¯ that was the thunderclouds from the 11th floor.
Chapter 76: Downwards
A single day and night of 28 hours was enough for Ebony to dive all the way down back to the 8th floor. Scarlet was out cold throughout which made things even more worrisome. He remained as calm as always since her condition only seemed to improve over time. He kept her body temperature down with a little Frost Mist when she got hot enough to cook an egg. Fortunately, her heart rate returned to normal levels hours ago.
From here on out he had to travel based on the rough directions and information that Panic Attack told him. Using the walkway again might be much faster but there was really no place to hide there and Tuffock was still much faster than him if he really tried to come after him.
According to Michael, they came out of one of the largest sand dune on the 8th floor which was a terrible direction to follow. There were stairs in them that led to the 7th floor. Ebony hardly encountered any monsters at all, perhaps the dungeon was at an all time low after the thousands they lost. A large duration was spent on the 8th floor itself looking for the entrance or exit to the lower floors.
There were not many sand dunes that can be considered ¡®largest¡¯ but they were all quite a distance apart. Ebony only found it after another hour or so. Fortunately, they practically fully explored this floor when they were pushing to level 100.
He had tried to focus on regenerating his hand but progress was so slow he was beginning to think that maybe he couldn¡¯t regenerate a whole hand after all.
He didn¡¯t know what Scarlet would think if she saw his missing hand so he checked his left hand again. His glove was intact, only the area where it was pierced was a little grey and petrified. Ebony felt that that meant touching it would be no problem and he was right, the petrification didn¡¯t spread when he removed his glove.
Ebony then conjured a hollow left hand and fit his gloves in before freezing it in place. He had hoped that he could still regenerate a hand and didn¡¯t want to make a fully solid ice hand. Since his ice sculpture''s model had always been himself it wasn¡¯t too difficult to conjure and shape.
He practised his control and found it a little confusing when he attempted to physically grip something but it was his mind that was controlling the movements of his ice prosthetic. It was fantastic Ice Mana Control training.
It didn¡¯t take too long to climb down the stairs to the seventh floor, significantly cooler than the desert. A canyon.
Canyon valley was more appropriate as that was where he climbed down to, the walls go up taller than a skyscraper. It was wide in some areas and bottlenecked ahead. Already spotting the Cutgorge Coyote that Michael mentioned.
There was supposed to be Giant Dustwing, and Sonorous Canyon Lion as well. Their levels were 115 to 120 for the coyotes, 105 to 115 for the dustwing which from their description was similar to a vulture and the lions were the highest at 130 to 135 despite being on a lower floor than the desert which has lower levelled monsters.
Ebony was interested in fighting them at least once but now really wasn¡¯t the time for it. He couldn¡¯t eat or cook them and didn¡¯t stand to gain anything from hunting them either so he merely stepped past them. The Giant Dustwing was indeed a large vulture with a wingspan more than 10 metres long. They didn¡¯t dive down to attack him and stayed high up on the walls and ledges on them, watching was all they did.
He did see multiple holes in the valley walls from time to time that Michael said was the lion¡¯s den or spawn nodes.
The canyon valley was only a one way route, simple. Likely also because the dungeon hasn¡¯t had time to expand and reach its full size. That would take years and was one reason why he wasn¡¯t dead set on completing his Mental Map of the dungeon.
It was kind of weird. He spotted a [Sonorous Canyon Lion Lvl 132] that strutted out of one of the caves not too high up. It saw Ebony since there was no cover but then quickly turned around and dashed off back into the cave. He wasn¡¯t about to complain since he wanted out as soon as possible.
He did hear a few roars and screams from the canyon holes and even dashed past 2 parties already so this floor seemed to be really populated compared to the desert floors. Ebony didn¡¯t bother with them and they didn¡¯t bother with him either.
Unlike the 8th to 11th floor which was all deserts, the 7th floor was comparatively larger like the floors below that. Ebony didn¡¯t realise that Scarlet woke up after another half a day of speeding through the valley.
Scarlet had woken up due to a hunger pang but she quickly shut her eyes when she realised she was getting carried. Why? She didn¡¯t know herself. She noticed the 2 levels she gained in Violent Heart Acceleration and the fact that the skill was running again. Immediately using Blood Mana Manipulation to slow it down.
Another half a day passed as she remained perfectly still in Ebony¡¯s arms. It was not uncomfortable but she could no longer take it as she was getting hungrier and hungrier. Ebony was probably starving too, she thought. She acted like she was gradually rousing and patted him which caught his attention and he stopped running. The way he braked was gentle and light unlike her intense bursts of speed.
¡°You¡¯re awake. Are you okay? Do you feel pain anywhere?¡± Ebony asked. He didn¡¯t see hide or hair of Tuffock behind him though he didn¡¯t look back, no attacks came anyway. Stopping for a moment should be of no concern.
¡°I..I¡¯m fine. How long has it been?¡± Scarlet tried to speak but noticed it was painful to speak, she tried her best to hide the fact but it was too obvious.
Ebony told her that it had been 2 days and gave a rough explanation of what had happened after they found a random cave not too high up in the valley walls to hide. It was a small cave and there were only 3 coyotes in them that Ebony literally kicked out. They didn¡¯t come back. Odd.
It was still dark but not from thunderclouds, just that it was night. Scarlet made dinner. She still ate in her tent, Ebony sat on the floor right outside her tent and they ate in silence. He needed the break and food too since his stamina started to drop by a few points every hour. Sustenance was still necessary or his stamina would start dropping faster and faster. His increase in Constitution did appear to help but only slightly.
Now that he thought about it, whenever he added Constitution his body weight increases a little. Scarlet felt a little too light for that to hold true for her. He estimated she weighed around 60 to 70 kg only. He didn¡¯t believe her Constitution stat was all that low either; it might be even higher than his own.
Another thing he noted for a long time was that his body got tougher and muscles denser. Yet when he tetted with Scarlet, her fingers felt so soft he wondered if she had bones, the same for when he carried her. Did Constitution or rather all stats work differently for everyone or was it just the racial and gender differences that affected the way the stats affect the individual?
All Ebony could do was ponder but there was little point since he had no way to confirm so he pushed the thought aside like many other thoughts that pop up. He didn¡¯t need so much clutter in his mind.
They rested for the night and staying up to guard each other didn¡¯t come to mind as he fell asleep. He woke up refreshed and they didn¡¯t get disturbed by any monsters, parties or stone mage. They quickly packed up and left after a quick meal.
Scarlet recovered enough to talk normally with a little discomfort. Apparently, her extraordinary mask had some healing spells embedded that would activate if her health dropped dangerously fast or low enough and didn¡¯t rise back up after a certain period of time. All the swelling and internal bleeding without treatment activated them and she slowly recovered.
At this point, he would believe anything she says about what her mask can do. It was just too multipurpose and amazing. The needle that pierced through 2 of his shields and his arm didn¡¯t even make a mark on it other than turning to stone dust after impact.
Ebony was gonna bet that the result would be the same even if he didn¡¯t slow the needle down, though Scarlet¡¯s entire neck and head would¡¯ve snapped right off.
It didn¡¯t even take an hour before they saw the canyon slowly turn rocky. There was the familiar sound of gushing water. That was the way to the 6th floor. A steep rocky cliff with Rockscale Ogres around level 105 to 115 that Panic Attack said was as tough as a level 140ish Arrowtail Scorpion. It also traverses the cliffs on all fours with ease, the most dangerous monster that Panic Attack has faced in the entire dungeon so far.
That was because the entire 6th floor was a rocky cliff with a raging waterfall in the centre. The waters had Climber Glaivefin Anabas that could swim up the waterfall and jump up to cut down those that got close or tried to pass through the waters. These 2 seemed to be the only monsters.
Michael called the 6th floor the killer floor that stopped over 95% of all parties from climbing up. Who could fight while climbing up a steep cliff that had large humanoid ogres that could camouflage as the rocky cliff itself and show themselves to eat the climbers, push them down or grab and throw them into the raging waterfall for the anabas to feed on?
They said the 6th floor was only 2 fifths of a gor long or tall which was about 2km so it was a really short distance.
Ebony cast a Layered Ice Carapace for the both of them to float down. They fell down faster than he could control it. He didn¡¯t understand why it was so much harder to make himself float compared to just carrying around others.
The Ogres didn¡¯t have the same tendency to hide as the monsters on the 7th floor. When they fell past one of them, it leapt off the cliff with ferocity and a deep roar looking to pull them down only to be smashed right back into the walls by a burning bundle of flames and falling off the cliff itself as it couldn¡¯t get a grip onto the cliff.
The two of them landed not too long later to find the angry Ogre alive but cracked. The unlucky thing felt like it was a good idea to continue attacking them.
Ebony looked around, there was not much to see. Dirt ground with a river that connects from the waterfall, both sides walled. A route ahead and a waterfall and rocky cliff behind. It didn¡¯t even take minutes to finish climbing or floating down the 6th floor. The entrance to the 5th floor was also only minutes away with their travelling speed.
A hole hundreds of metres in diameter was there in the ground. Looking down was seeing a sea of white. There were the familiar white cubes floating below. Just like the white cube they got their drops from that was also ¡®hidden¡¯ under a waterfall.
The river from the 6th floor also fell down into the 5th floor and all the way down to the 4th floor.
The 5th floor was an open cylindrical space with hundreds of thousands of identical white cubes. Many floated upwards towards the 6th floor.
The ones closer to the walls floated downwards to the 4th floor too. For the ones moving up, the longer one stood on them the faster the white cubes fell down too.
Some of these white cubes held treasure just like how Ebony and his party got theirs. Some were Cube Mimics at level 100, evolved. Only showing themselves and trying to swallow those that stepped on them whole. Others had monsters from other floors just climbing right out and attacking those that stood on them. Most were duds and just solid white cubes of unknown material.
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The 5th floor also connected the 4th and 6th floors without anything blocking the path. Falling from the 5th floor would let one land into the cavernous river that flows downwards from the same waterfall that was falling from nowhere on the canyon floor. The river on the 4th floor was also said to fall into empty space that Panic Attack had warned them about. There was no surviving that.
Ebony and Scarlet didn¡¯t hesitate to hop right down onto a random cube. They hopped down lower and lower, not standing on a cube for long unless they didn''t see another cube to jump down to in their immediate vicinity. There was the largest number of people he had seen in the dungeon at one time on this floor.
Probably the fact that there was more treasure found here than on any other floor below. The monsters here didn¡¯t exceed level 100 either, some were unevolved as well.
However, this floor was dangerous as they could fall at any time and they couldn¡¯t stay still since the white cubes would start falling down to the river below if they stood on the same one for long enough.
Since none could camp here or even take breaks there were still not all that many people and the whole area was huge with so many white cubes everywhere. Mages with low physical stats probably had a terrible time here as well. Those that had the fear of heights would not love the place either.
The floor was a lot taller or longer than the 6th floor but going down was a lot faster than going up and only took them about 3 to 4 hours before it started to get dim where the cavernous river of a 4th floor was.
They tried not to bother with trying to open every single cube or fight every monster but it took time and effort to be careful of slipping.
The white cubes floating down would suddenly float up when they stepped on them and it was counterproductive to step on the ones floating up and wait for them to sink so they had no choice but to jump from one cube to another.
The 2 of them had to be careful near the last few cubes before the 4th floor was in sight. According to Michael there was no land near the entrance or exit and only the floating cubes which were floating platforms that travelled upwards along the downstream river. This was much more interesting than all the other floors they had been to.
Ebony noticed Scarlet¡¯s hesitation to jump onto one of the cubes or platforms that was floating up along the river below. She took off and hopped onto one of them before he could say or ask anything.
The cavernous river was also considerably wide. The river was flowing downwards as the 4th floor was sloped. The white cubes are mostly submerged and only a platform can be seen. Ebony could spot some of the [Flesh Piranhas Lvl 100] already. Upside down, on the rocky ceiling were also [Squallgust Bats Lvl 100].
They used magic, likely wind and shot gusts of wind at them to push them into the raging river. The Flesh Piranhas also attempted to knock them down by leaping right out of the river. It wasn¡¯t too much trouble to dodge the slow attacks. Ebony noticed that Scarlet had trouble seeing the attacks from the Piranhas underwater so he got her to move together and jump onto the same platforms.
The cubes acted in a similar fashion. They floated upstream but when stepped on too long will start to follow the flow of the river bringing along whoever was stepping on it down.
The cubes were a metre by a metre, not small but not large. Scarlet followed him and only stepped on the ones that he had stepped on with no problem. It was very clear to him that she seemed to take real care on how she moved and landed. Almost like she was afraid of something. Maybe she was still not feeling well so he decided to find somewhere to rest as soon as possible.
It was about 2 to 3 hours of hopping around from platform to platform before something like a small riverbank appeared. Ebony didn¡¯t let his guard down as he jumped onto solid land instead of the bobbing platforms. Nothing attacked and there were no traps activated either. Scarlet quickly hopped along before she got carried away too far.
¡°Let¡¯s take a break. I don¡¯t think he¡¯s following that closely behind anyway.¡± Ebony said. He actually doubted she was even concerned about getting followed by Tuffock. Tuffock didn¡¯t appear all that much stronger than them but that may be because he didn¡¯t want to kill Ebony.
The petrification magic was troublesome though. A tiny ass needle might have petrified his entire body. If that didn¡¯t hit his hand but his head or chest Ebony would have been a goner already. The petrification mage didn¡¯t even seem to put any effort into the spell so it could only mean he hasn¡¯t been serious at all.
There was also the fact that the spell was aimed at Scarlet, not Ebony. No wonder they called him an idiot and panicked. They might have thought Ebony was dead or was dying with that single spell of theirs but not for long. Without the notification of his death, they would likely follow or chase him when they found out he hasn¡¯t died yet.
Maybe petrifying wouldn¡¯t kill him like the fire mage that was completely petrified and they had a way to depetrify him. That would actually buy Ebony more time as they would look for his statue instead of imagining he was already moving about and out of the dungeon.
Ebony didn¡¯t know that that was exactly what Tuffock was doing, the petrification mage was searching around the 7th floor canyon for where Ebony had hidden before completely petrifying into a stone statue. It was not hard to hide from the sure death of the mana storm when one knew what to do. He was busy checking every wall in the caves, getting his men to believe he was their boss was all too simple with the way their organisation worked. He got them to spread out and check every single cave as well. With Ebony petrified and Scarlet dying, there was no real danger in getting his men to search for them.
Meanwhile Ebony was eating meat buns on the 4th floor with his hollow ice hand which he was training his control with. Scarlet hasn¡¯t found out or didn¡¯t bother saying anything. It was convenient that he always wore a left glove and it was mostly undamaged.
Based on his increasingly accurate internal clock it was still daytime and they should be able to travel a little further before stopping for the night.
She didn¡¯t say what was wrong and he didn¡¯t ask either. He believed that she would speak up if there was a problem.
¡®Maybe she¡¯s just hungry. I get really hungry when I regenerate broken and torn parts too.¡¯ Ebony thought he got what was troubling her. Healing from an injury causes the body to be in real need of nutrients. Even though he wasn¡¯t sure if healing through healing magic was any different, the long hours of moving did make him hungry.
¡°Do you have any tea?¡± Ebony had a craving for tea but Plainston didn¡¯t have any. He had hoped it would change or improve her poor mood.
Well, the sudden question certainly confused her.
¡°Only a little left.¡± Scarlet answered.
She didn¡¯t like tea, only having some left that her grandmother liked. Tea was bitter, she didn¡¯t understand why some people liked it. She took out a large wooden tray with one of her grandma¡¯s tea sets.
Ebony didn¡¯t think he would see the brown clay teapot here, there were really so many similarities. It was plain and undecorated, wide and round body and thin neck. Only 2 small clay tea cups were on the tray with a jar.
His enhanced sense of smell had him sniffing the tea leaves inside. A type of black tea as far as he could tell it he didn¡¯t recognize from scent alone.
¡°May I?¡± Ebony asked. He believed he was more than proficient enough. Scarlet let him do as he pleased, taking out a pot and filling it with water from a water mana ore before starting to boil it.
It didn¡¯t take long to boil. Ebony took it and scalded the tea set twice over before opening the jar of dried leaves. Rather than black it had an extremely dark hue of red, the leaves were dried and balled up. There was really only enough for maybe 2 or 3 pots though he wouldn¡¯t know how many times he could make tea from a single session until he tried.
It was not a leaf he recognized and the water needed to cool a little before pouring it in and letting the leaves expand.
¡°What tea is this?¡±
¡°Rooha tea. Astringent and bitter.¡±
¡®Never heard of it but she clearly isn¡¯t a fan.¡¯ It was likely just a tea that was native to this world or continent. Ebony went ahead and asked about the brewing method for it. She just pulled the tray over and showed him instead.
It was just so pleasant to see. Despite her aggression and brutal violence, she was more graceful and elegant than anyone he had set his eyes on. Every little action of hers seems to draw his undivided attention.
It was black tea after all. Not really bitter in his opinion but it was very astringent. It was the wrong type of pot for this Rooha tea, he didn¡¯t really test the qualities of water on Elcra either.
¡°You don¡¯t like tea?¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°I don¡¯t. It¡¯s so bitter.¡±
¡°I think this Rooha tea will go well as milk tea. You could try adding milk if you have some.¡± Ebony was sure Scarlet kept milk around in one or more of her preservation magic enchanted boxes. Cream stew was so common as a dish here and he was pretty sure she used milk.
¡°Milk tea?¡± Confused, Scarlet had never heard of adding milk to tea. It sounded like a horrible idea that she¡¯ll get scolded for wasting tea and yet she couldn¡¯t help but want to try.
Ebony stopped her from adding too much after seeing the colour change to a lighter brown. He thought it would be so much trouble to set her tent up just to try the drink even with how the tents here were so damn easy and convenient to set up.
Scarlet kept her eye on the changes of the tea and not just its colour but also its scent. She was thirsty and was dying to try something new, being right in front of her was a temptation she¡¯s not sure she could deny.
¡°¡Lo..look away.¡± She unclasped the lower belt of her mask. Pulled her mantle up to cover her face and shift the bottom of her mask and took a sip while she filled her lungs with the light milky scent the tea has.
Ebony didn¡¯t look away, she didn¡¯t check either. Too excited to drink that he didn¡¯t have time to look away even if he wanted to. Well, he didn¡¯t want to. But he couldn¡¯t see after she covered herself with her hands anyway and finished the tiny cup of tea quickly.
¡°It lost most of its astringency! And it¡¯s sweeter now and not just from the milk I can taste the slight sweetness of Rooha leaves themselves! A little more milk should make it better or only the 2nd boil of the tea so that the tea is weaker.¡± Scarlet never sounded more excited, maybe even more excited than when they were discussing combat. She went on and on, from mumbling to outright telling Ebony all the possibilities she thought of that could make it taste better.
It was clear she liked sweet things so he introduced the idea of fruit tea and also what sweets and snacks that could go well with tea. He didn¡¯t know much about tea culture here but it didn¡¯t seem like she heard of milk tea, fruit tea wasn''t new to her though.
So excitable and cute all of a sudden. They didn¡¯t realise they were sitting closer and closer until Scarlet¡¯s mask slipped. She didn¡¯t latch the bottom belt back on after drinking.
Ebony reacted instantly and caught her mask with both hands, holding it onto her face. She didn¡¯t want her face to be seen and Ebony did his best so that that held true.
Scarlet who was having so much fun talking about food only reacted after him and brought her hands up hurriedly to catch her mask from slipping off bringing her head down along so that her mask didn¡¯t veer off. ¡®Catching¡¯ Ebony¡¯s hands instead, her eyes shot up, finding the dark gaze looking right into her.
Stunned, time seemed to have stopped for the two of them when she looked up into his pitch black eyes.
Ebony couldn¡¯t tell if he didn¡¯t have the strength to pull his hands away due to her higher base strength or he was too busy admiring the flustered look in her blazing eyes. His heart skipped a beat when she looked right at him. If eyes could blush.
Scarlet on the other hand, couldn¡¯t believe that she was holding onto Ebony¡¯s hands. The back of his hands it may be but her brain was overloading with confusion, embarrassment and mostly blanking out. She wanted to hide already but he was holding onto her mask and wouldn¡¯t let go.
One tried to calm his heart, the other her mind. And both useless Core Skills that they can¡¯t control.
¡°Heeey! It really is both of you! I tho¡ should I just leave?¡±
They jerked and hurriedly separated. ¡®Why did it feel like I was doing something I shouldn¡¯t be doing?¡¯ Ebony quickly calmed his heart which accelerated thrice over once they broke contact.
He randomly cast a shard of ice over at the man who acted like a shy maiden who saw something she shouldn¡¯t that was slowly floating further back up to the 5th floor after he stopped hopping around. Obviously peeking through his fingers as he looked to the side.
¡°Woah! What are you doing!? I almost fell!¡± Hector, who was peeking through his fingers, swiftly ducked the incoming projectile. Then hopped onto another platform up ahead to dodge the burning spear that felt hotter than ever and was evaporating the surface of the river where it passed. It landed on the platform that Hector was previously standing on and spread in a circular wave big enough that the flames still reached Hector. He quickly put it out with his manipulation which he usually wasn¡¯t able to in their spars. Her spell felt different from usual, a lot more unstable.
¡°Are you trying to kill me?!¡±
They answered with more projectiles.
They packed up really quickly and the three of them continued their way out. One of them desperately evading while finding a good platform to hop to. The other two blankly fired chilly and burning magical projectiles.
Chapter 77: Long Way To Go
The 4th floor wasn¡¯t just a river. After half an hour of slinging small shards and balls of ice and fire, they arrived at a larger piece of land. The riverbank opened up and extended to many tunnels and caves, some of which would lead them around to the other side of the river. Mostly connected.
A couple of them should lead all the way back to the caves in the mountains on the 3rd floor. The directions they got here were hardly useful since the cave and tunnels looked roughly the same. The monsters here weren¡¯t an issue and few attempted to push them down into the river.
Scarlet didn¡¯t seem to have the same hesitation anymore when she hopped around as she was busy aiming mini fireballs at Hector so that was one worry less for Ebony.
They didn¡¯t split up and took a stroll, picking the biggest tunnel they sighted. Hector was uncomfortable from the dagger-like stare from Scarlet but they didn¡¯t waste any more mana playing around.
¡°How did you get here so fast?¡± Ebony asked. He ran for 2 days straight unlike when he travelled with others. Hector didn¡¯t even go that fast without 3 enhancements and that wasn¡¯t sustainable for him.
¡°Heh! That¡¯s a secret. I wanted to ask you how you were ahead of me too.¡± Hector grinned.
¡°I just ran normally,¡± Ebony answered truthfully. After leaving the desert his speed increased since he could repel himself forward with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane more stably due to the better footing of solid ground.
¡°So what¡¯s a mana storm?¡±
¡°Exactly what it says. A storm of mana. I mean, that¡¯s a little inaccurate since it¡¯s not exactly just mana. Dungeons just think that it has got enough of whoever or whatever was harming it more than letting it benefit and plans to remove it. Mana or dungeon mana is flooded into the target¡¯s body with what looks like a lightning strike but isn¡¯t lightning elemental.¡±
¡°And that¡¯s lethal?¡±
¡°Extremely. Hmm.. I heard it¡¯s kinda like drowning every single cell of your body with concentrated acid. Injects and overload. Mana Poisoning Resistance has been said to help but only to a small extent hence, the theories that the storm isn¡¯t just pure mana.¡±
It was common sense here. Even a location with a higher mana concentration than what one was used to could make one unconscious. A dungeon¡¯s might concentrated and then injected? Death.
¡°Why does digging help?¡±
¡°This was discovered long ago. The ¡®lightning¡¯ strike has difficulty passing through dungeon material. Like pouring water into a bucket of water. The development of the dungeon shovel was greatly focused on and made such that it digs through most terrains in dungeons with more ease. Outside, it¡¯s just a regular old shovel. Did you really think it was just to dig holes to cover your excrement?¡± Even Hector didn¡¯t know the working of the magical shovel so there was not much he could tell Ebony about it.
¡°Can¡¯t the dungeon just lock us out from digging or bury us?¡±
¡°They could. If they knew where we were. They would need monsters in the area and it depends on the dungeon itself. All have different capabilities after all. Dungeons are the world¡¯s ficklest organisms. After women.¡± Hector whispered almost inaudibly at the end. Scarlet obviously heard it as his hair singed and the surrounding temperature rose. He didn''t have a helmet on anymore.
Ebony naturally put his ice hand behind his back. Pushing more mana to compress and keep it from melting anymore. His glove was already moist and darkened from the water.
He didn¡¯t expect to get grabbed and his glove removed. Too fast for him to react with how close they were walking together due to the tunnel width. Cat¡¯s out of the bag. She probably realised when she grabbed his hands earlier but it only caught her attention now.
¡°¡What happened?¡± Scarlet appeared lost as the ice hand in her hands melted faster and faster as both the surrounding temperature and her body temperature rose. She wouldn¡¯t let go of Ebony¡¯s sleeves.
¡°¡I cut it off myself.¡± Ebony paused for a long time. For some reason he felt like it was hard to tell her the truth when she looked so¡worried. Ebony wondered if he was imagining things since all he saw on her face were her eyes.
Before they could ask the whys and hows, Ebony explained that the stone mage was some kind of petrification mage. Taking the chance to ask about what type of magic that was. It was lesser known and likely only the caster or another petrification mage that¡¯s just as skilled could remove petrification.
¡°It¡¯s okay. It¡¯ll regrow.¡±
¡°What the hell do you mean regrow!? We need to get you to a healer now. We can still make it in time, I know many great healers!¡± Hector only stayed out of the conversation due to the flirtatious couple but he couldn¡¯t stand the loss of such a great talent. A rival was hard to find but harder to keep. However, he wasn¡¯t all that worried. He just needed Ebony to be alive, anything else could be healed. Although he may need to pay in some way for it, it was a small price for him.
¡°Can¡¯t you see? It¡¯s no longer a clean cut.¡± It was going to take a pretty long time to regrow. It might have been just the limitations of his body or that he wasn¡¯t familiar with the internal makeup of a human hand. It may even be some other reason he was unaware of but regrowth appears likely.
¡°Physique?¡± Hector signalled to soundproof their conversation, he had decided to make use of Ebony¡¯s ability quite often. It was a simple twitch of his right ear. Ebony held the dome area around the 3 of them still so vibrations don¡¯t travel through.
¡°Mmm. I¡¯m partially made of mana.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t mind sharing this since Hector knew about physiques. He actually wanted to use this chance to dip into Hector¡¯s knowledge about the subject. Both of them were visibly surprised, though it wasn¡¯t because he had a physique.
They stopped where they were, looked for a more open area in the caves and made camp early. Scarlet insisted on camping early, she was planning to make a nutritious feast. They were leaving the dungeon and she still had plenty of food and ingredients. She set up her mobile kitchen and started her preparations. She never rushed when cooking. Food was one of the few things she could stay patient for.
¡°There are a few types of physiques or rather methods of getting them. Naturally born with it like me and I believe practically every Xeng since they have such ridiculous strengths and capabilities. Inherited Physique. Class, Fortification & skill influenced physiques. Attained Physique. External influences like consuming some magical fruits or ingredients of nature, going through some kind of baptism or going through some kind of magical or engineered change to the body. Acquired Physique.¡±
¡°Inherit? From parents?¡±
¡°With all the changes the body, mind and soul undergo as one evolves it is obvious that one¡¯s children would be affected. Sad to say that¡¯s a big reason for nobles to arrange marriages and favour the strong. Though they only get new blood when they are desperate to control the possibilities of their offspring''s physique.¡±
¡°Possibilities of what?¡±
¡°The most compatibility with their lineage skill. Still, having special physiques is rarer than rare. Children of Master Classed have practically zero chance of inheriting any physique. If they even had one. Chances are that a water mage¡¯s child is likely able to use water magic. Mages are hot stock for most common people as partners. Status and mana come along with them after all. But that¡¯s just elemental affinity and nothing as prominent as a Physique.¡±
¡°So there¡¯s only a chance for Grandmaster ranked and above to have children with physiques?¡±
¡°¡yeah, a small chance. Maybe 3-5%? Of course, this is only when the parents themselves have physiques. It doesn¡¯t give one a big head start since it¡¯ll usually be a weaker version. Inherited Physiques only get weaker every generation if it is passed down if they didn¡¯t carry on the same Class and Skillset. Since the first generation would either be an Attained or Acquired Physique.
Attained Physique or the first generation of Physique before it becomes an Inherited Physique really depends on luck and the strength of the first generation holder of the Physique. If it does pass down, it would usually be a whole lot weaker. The good thing is that if the child follows the Classes and skills of their parents they have a pretty good chance of refining their Physique to the same levels of their parents and even surpassing them.
The best example for Acquired physique would be Zenin. I doubt his child would be a half-golem if he could even sire a child. Pretty sure many are interested in seeing their child. There actually aren¡¯t many known Inherited Acquired Physiques but it really depends on the type and workings of the physique.¡±
¡°How would the ones who get Inherited Physiques know that they have it?¡± Ebony accidentally tipped Hector off that he didn¡¯t inherit a Physique. Hector noticed, it only made him more interested.
The type of Physique Gen was referring to, was likely the Acquired type that was harder to gain the stronger he got. It wasn¡¯t that Physiques were not possible for people to Attain as they strengthened themselves in some unique fashion.
¡°It¡¯s one of the first few things they find out when they turn 15. It¡¯s also pretty obvious for long time complete lineages to just know these things. After all, a kid much stronger than normal kids their age or has a high ability to use certain elements isn¡¯t that hard to tell apart.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
¡®So it¡¯s just plain obvious or a notification when they turn of age.¡¯
¡°Can you have more than 1 type of Physiques?¡±
¡°Heck no. It doesn¡¯t work that way. It is very possible to refine, mutate and though I never heard of any, evolving your own should be within the realms of possibility. It is attainable after all, just like learning and improving skills. If what you meant was for someone with Inherited Physique to mutate their bodies with some ingredient then yes but, ultimately it is considered 1 Physique.¡±
Hector went on telling Ebony about some kinds of Physiques, the most famous ones that some nobles didn¡¯t keep secret. Rare. Almost everyone kept such things secret after all. Most if not all Physiques have some kind of drawback or weakness like Ebony¡¯s weakness to heat and fire. Of course, they didn¡¯t share their weaknesses with the public.
There were even known ways to obtain some Physiques though none was easy or safe.
¡°Dinner.¡± Scarlet cut into his lecture. Ebony didn¡¯t forget to thank her and tell her that it was delicious after dinner. Hector went ahead to clean and maintain what¡¯s left of his armour after taking down 2 [Mollerar Lvl 100], a mole-like cat that dug from the ground and attacked them.
Scarlet directly asked the question Hector has been meaning to but was busy explaining things and the conversation never steered back. Oddly for Ebony, he had found himself silencing their conversation more and more often. This was another one of those times.
¡°You¡¯re a partial mana being?¡±
¡°A quarter. Mana being?¡±
¡°A being of mana. Mana is your lifeblood, entwined into your vitality. No wonder there¡¯s traces of vitality in your mana. A mana being¡¯s lifespan is much longer than even an Elf¡¯s. Your lifespan should be extended quite a bit even though you¡¯re only partially one.¡±
¡°Extended lifespan?¡±
¡°Time doesn¡¯t wear down mana as well as it wears down the body, mind and soul. Races more attuned to mana like the Elves have longer lifespans due to this reason.¡±
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¡°I see¡do you have a physique?¡±
¡°No. Not yet¡ I¡¯ll be getting one before I undergo evolution. I will¡likely take some time. What are your plans from now?¡±
¡°Probably going to Arcta in Hoarfrost Glades for a visit and look for someone. Learn crafts and train if possible. If not then I¡¯ll travel, finding somewhere to study my magics. I believe you¡¯re going somewhere to train?¡±
¡°Mhmm. I¡¯ll only get my Physique when my grandma thinks I¡¯m ready. I might be going here and there too, then back to Xienor. How long do you think you¡¯ll take?¡±
¡°¡When I feel like I already reached or went over my limits. I¡¯m not sure how long that would be. How about you?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure either. It may take 3 years, it may take 5 but definitely not over 10.¡±
¡°I see¡¡±
¡°¡¡±
¡°¡Let¡¯s stay in contact. I want to see you again.¡±
¡°¡¡±
¡°What happened? Does your neck hurt? You¡¯re steaming again.¡±
¡°I¡¯m fine! Go..good night!¡±
¡°Oh¡alright. Rest up, good night. See you tomorrow.¡±
¡°¡see you too.¡±
???
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Ebony asked Scarlet who walked out of her tent after a short hour. He had been studying his own left hand and checking if he could speed up his regrowth.
¡°I can¡¯t relax, let¡¯s spar.¡± Scarlet asked for the most natural thing for her.
¡°Mmm.¡±
Ebony¡¯s transitions, accuracy, dexterity and strength were clearly greatly affected. Scarlet didn¡¯t let it go. He also took advantage of her stiff neck motions and line of sight. Just because they were both injured didn¡¯t mean they would go easy on each other. In fact, it was training like this that pushed them further.
Ebony made a bold guess, Scarlet was afraid of the river or water. She avoided the river and just the sight of the gushing river behind made her slip up. They went far but not that far, he had Mana Vibration training to silence their battle. It was not easy if he wanted to be specific but if it was just keeping noise to a certain area it was simple enough to do in battle.
The spar panned out poorly for both of them. Ebony¡¯s last remaining set of clothes that was in ¡®okay¡¯ condition was burned in some areas. The state of his robe was getting worse and worse and he received a couple of burns himself. Roughly the same thing happened for Scarlet but it was just frosted over and not really damaged. Her equipment was really good stuff.
They just stayed around at the outskirts of their camp with Hector not inside his tent. Likely ran off for his own training or perhaps did not want to bother the two of them anymore. They rested and Ebony took the chance to guide Scarlet¡¯s breathing again, he could tell it wasn¡¯t easy for her. Haggardness in her breath after a rapidly beating heart slows down too much too fast was as painful for him to watch as it was for her.
It was too hard to change. She was attempting not to vomit as much as possible. Mostly taking very quick and short breaths. Ebony hoped there was a skill that could help with that, he¡¯ll have to find out someday.
¡°You don¡¯t know how to take attacks. I know you heavily focus on evading but you should at least learn how to mitigate damage just in case.¡± Ebony said in their post review. It was actually about her taking the needle on without any defensive measures. She clearly had enough time to react to it.
Scarlet was a little confused by the ¡®mitigate damage¡¯ term. She admitted that not having many or even a single defensive skill might have been her overconfidence in speed and reaction but she just never had the time to train that when she never got hit much in any spars or actual fights.
Ebony had never been praised for his ability to fight by his mother while his father only said he was better than most for his age. But his ability to reduce the damage or injury on himself with split-second decisions was uncanny. Abnormal. He had heard his parents quarrel about whether it was due to his mother¡¯s physical ¡®training¡¯ or his father¡¯s mental ones more than once. In any case, it was something they said they were proud of and Ebony took pride in that too.
Sadly, Ebony was a bad teacher. Just like teaching how he fought he couldn¡¯t explain well about how to adjust one¡¯s body''s toughest part to a position that would let one receive the least damage. How or when to move slightly back or forth or anywhere else when an inevitable attack was about to land. When to tighten the body¡¯s muscles, when to relax them and then tighten them again. It was really a reflexive kinda thing and he was a little worried it¡¯ll mess up her own style if she forcefully learned it. He made sure to tell her it worked for him but it may make things worse for her if she was not suited for it.
It didn¡¯t deter her from learning, she also noticed these things when Ebony fought monsters stronger and faster than him. It was really minor but a survival skill and knowledge nonetheless.
¡°Just how large is your manapool?¡±
¡°I have 530 Wisdom so 5300 mana.¡±
¡°Only 5300?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°I thought it would be closer to 20000.¡±
¡°My Fortification is for mana and stamina regeneration. That¡¯s why I¡¯m healing so fast.¡±
¡°¡Mana being. You. You¡¯re really able to heal completely right?¡±
¡°I believe so. Don¡¯t worry.¡±
¡°I.I¡¯m not worried! ¡Don¡¯t you have skills like Mental Supersaturation or Mental Expansion. Mana pool expanding skills.¡± Scarlet looked away before changing the subject.
¡®Hot damn. There are skills to expand mana pool?¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡°Never heard of them.¡± Ebony answered honestly.
Scarlet was nice enough to share and teach him about her skill and experience with Mental Supersaturation. Ebony sadly just realised how few skills he has and that there was nothing he could share with her that she didn¡¯t already know or can do. Magic excluded.
¡°I¡¯ll find or learn a stamina related skill or a body strengthening one and teach you in exchange.¡± Ebony offered.
¡°I¡¯ve never heard of stamina pool expansion skills.¡± Scarlet commented. She was taught swordsmanship by her mother and her father was an infernal blood mage. Sadly she only managed to learn fire magic from him before they left, she only recently learnt Blood Mana Manipulation. Her affinity for it only strengthened a little after Classing.
¡°I¡¯m sure there are some out there, if not I¡¯ll create one myself.¡± Ebony had no doubt. From what he knew and learnt, the phrase ''nothing is impossible'' is even more likely to be true with infinite numbers of skills.
¡°¡Thank you.¡±
Hector most probably had body strengthening skills. It was just questionable whether they were Conditioning skills or something more direct or stronger. He did say his Profession was a Body Builder.
There may not be a skill to increase stamina pool but reducing stamina consumption could bring the same effect. Like mana efficiency, maybe a stamina efficiency Skill or Fortification?
The concept behind Mental Supersaturation was more simple than Ebony expected. The mind or mana pool¡¯s default state was saturated, meaning it held as much mana as it could. Basically, supersaturation was forcing freshly regenerated mana to stay within his mana pool and holding it there as long as possible. When he was able to do it for a long duration and he wasn¡¯t talentless with the action it would form the Mental Supersaturation skill.
It was not a secret skill, almost like Mana Compression. Simple in theory but difficult in practice. Mana Supersaturation was supposedly dozens times more difficult. It was like trying to stuff food in when you¡¯re already so full you could feel food at the back of your throat and then keeping it in. According to Scarlet she almost gave up on getting the skill since it hurt her head too much but the benefits of the skill were obvious. Too bad only the size of mana pool is affected and not regeneration.
¡°So you have Combat Meditation and can regenerate mana while you fight?¡±
¡°Everlasting Tranquillity. Tier 3 Core Skill, it evolved when we were on the mountain top on the 3rd floor. It¡¯s almost like a passive skill, I can regenerate more stamina and mana at any time and not just while I¡¯m fighting.¡±
¡°You¡ Shouldn¡¯t go around telling just anyone things like your Core Skill¡¡± Scarlet almost sounded exasperated at Ebony¡¯s weird openness with all his skills and abilities.
¡°You¡¯re not just anyone to me.¡± Ebony constantly irritated Scarlet with his serious tone when he said such things. So many times in their conversation did she have to pause and keep herself calm.
¡°Violent Heart Acceleration. Tier 2 Core Skill. Every percent increase in average heart rate increases my Strength, Agility, Constitution and Vitality, only health regeneration and not max health directly proportionally. It¡¯s¡embarrassing but it isn¡¯t all that impressive since I can¡¯t use it at full power. I noticed my Perception is narrowed when I¡¯m in a focused state and my heart pumps too fast. Intelligence can¡¯t keep up with my Agility either.¡± Scarlet whispered, finding it fair to share her own as well. She didn¡¯t sense a hint of a lie from Ebony and wasn¡¯t so shameless to lie about her own.
¡®Hot damn. What a ridiculous skill. If it¡¯s level 100 that would mean a 250% increase in base stats, adding that to her base that itself like normal would mean a 3.5 times multiplier. It even increases her Constitution so her body can actually handle all that power¡ she¡¯s definitely going easy on me by a longshot.¡¯ Ebony also recalled that even without that Core Skill of hers, her swordsmanship mastery or skill also increases in speed and power as time goes. Fortunately, he tried not to allow her to build up power using that and managed to force her to use her Core Skill.
Hector walked back a little bloodied, complaining a little about needing to clean himself up again. Ebony didn¡¯t feel the need to soundproof their conversation anymore.
¡°How strong are we compared to other level 100 Journeymen?¡± Ebony was curious, Hector appeared to know a lot and Scarlet was strong and since she was one of the legendarily strong people she should have seen many strong people. Ebony wanted to have a comparison to know how strong was strong. Levels were a horrible way to gauge strength, a level 90 Cysaru could beat a level 130 Mud Golem with enough ease. The level 150 monsters here were supposedly weakened quite a bit since the dungeon was just sealed and everything. Making new dungeons the perfect target to increase Natural Potential.
Panic Attack who was lower levelled than the gunmen seemed stronger than them too. They were just disadvantaged with all of them being close-ranged combatants.
¡°Hmm. Definitely over the 70th percentile or so.¡± Hector thought for a second before answering. Stripping armour pieces off and taking out cleaning equipment as he answered.
Ebony was more than a little surprised internally. Seems like he somewhat overestimated himself by more than just a bit. He had thought that Scarlet, Hector and himself were already near the peak of power of what a Journeyman could achieve. Sure, all their skills had room for levels and improvement but their stats would stay constant as long as they remained at their level.
70th percentile. The population was probably as large as Elcra or rather, Elva continent¡¯s landmass. Although population density was unlikely to be anywhere as close as Earth¡¯s, that was still a lot of people.
¡°Only if you count Elcra alone.¡± Scarlet added.
¡°Ah, that too. Well, every Elf would take the upper percentile. Then there are the gifted noble children. The Xengs. The small group of Dryadic Humans hidden somewhere are said to be really strong too, never seen them though. The perfectionist group of people who kept building their skillset and power to get the most out of their evolution. Generally, the people who still had a heck of a lot of time due to how young or how long their lifespans were were the largest group.¡± Hector listed out.
¡°Yes. Every combat Class Elf is strong as long as they are already an adult. I am interested in encountering the Dryadic Humans as well. According to what I was told they are the only group outside of the Elves that my elders hold any regard to. Based on power alone, youths travelling out of Xienor were told not to provoke them unless provoked.¡± Scarlet didn''t tell them that there were barely any other ''youth'' travelling out of Xienor.
¡°Hooo? They¡¯re that strong? I¡¯ve never even seen many records of them so I¡¯d never known but to think they could make your people guard against them.¡± Hector was intrigued and so was Ebony.
Ebony didn¡¯t see many Elves after he left Arcta, Fergus was one of the very few he saw. Fergus was too young to be moving out of their reclusive villages actually. Based on his age of 57 he was still a very young child, they weren¡¯t close enough and none of his party shared why Fergus was already active as a Freelancer. Though the 4 main Races lived mostly harmoniously together, there were few Elves to begin with and the majority didn¡¯t want to leave their forests and villages. Many still travel around now so it was not rare to spot an Elf these days.
With their long lifespan, Elves had a lot of time to train and adjust to their power. Ebony levelled a little too fast for him to fully adjust to his speed and strength. Every single one of them was skilled beyond their levels. 250% Fortification was probably not a secret to them, perhaps Clovis just hadn''t learned about it when Ebony asked about it.
¡°Good. So we still have a long way to go.¡± Ebony voiced out. He was glad, so there were so many stronger than himself even at the same level. He was far from the strongest, which meant he still had a lot of room for improvement. Wonderful.
¡°HAAHA! That¡¯s right!¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°After I evolve to Master Class, neither of you would be my match! I¡¯ll be the most powerful Master to have lived!¡± Hector proclaimed.
¡°Mmm. Can¡¯t wait for that to happen but I won¡¯t lose.¡± Ebony was internally happy about the challenge.
¡°I¡¯ll be victorious next time we meet.¡± Scarlet said to no one in particular.
¡°Let¡¯s clear Ordina together, one day.¡± Ebony proposed.
¡°Sure!¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
Chapter 78: Return
It took them more than 2 days of exploring to find the way down to the 3rd floor which was familiar mountainous terrain. They reached places that were wide, places that were narrow, dead ends and loops in the cavernous 4th floor.
From there it didn¡¯t even take till nightfall when they reached the black screen which was the entrance and exit of Ordina with their newfound speed compared to when they entered.
There were 3 guards stationed at the black screen at all times. 2 beside where they entered and exited, one on each side. While the last one was on the other side which they didn¡¯t let anyone enter from. Apparently, that was the other exit that is commonly accessed through the last floor of a dungeon. They didn¡¯t really need to guard it since entry was only possible from one side but anyone who exited through the other side is easily confirmed to have completed the dungeon run.
Ebony didn¡¯t take very long to find where they appeared from on the 3rd floor with his Mental Map since they explored the floor pretty thoroughly. Making their way to the 1st floor was simply a matter of how fast they traversed.
He didn¡¯t encounter Top and his party but it was not surprising with the size of the dungeon.
Counting back, he had spent about 25 days inside Ordina. Almost a month. They walked out to feel the night breeze, it was cooling. The area changed quite a bit. It was brightened by tall lamps like the ones in the city, filled with bright phos. It was like a small camp here with quite some tents around. There were even a few buildings both in progress and completed.
The current buildings were mostly the workforce dormitories and also offices of the people working 28/7 to watch the dungeon entrance. The tents were likely parties who were going to go in but found it late and were resting before they went in. Hector asked one of the guards for the exact time and it was only around the 20th hour. They could easily make it back in time before Plainston closed their gates at the 26th hour. All of them wanted an actual bed to sleep on and a relaxing bath to wash themselves with so they hurried back.
Ebony watched as Scarlet and Hector¡¯s breath misted up. The surrounding temperature dropped quite a bit. He also noticed the warmer and thicker clothes that people right outside the dungeon were wearing.
¡°It¡¯s so damn cold!¡± Hector shivered.
Seeing them move so fast, the guards who were all Master Warriors now reminded them of the city¡¯s main and side road speed limits. It was the same for most cities of the Empire and towns had them too but lower. Main roads were wide, there were lanes for both directions and a distance away from any buildings or roadside stalls. Different lanes had different speed limits. The closer to the centre of the lane the higher the speed limit.
The fastest they could go was movement equivalent to 200 Agility or the wind pressure and shockwaves would destroy or damage public property. Those who had skills to decrease the effect of that could move faster as long as the destruction caused was no higher than what a normal person with 200 Agility can do. Side roads were half of that. It was dangerous for anyone slow or low level to be on the roads so traffic laws have been put in place and getting more and more strict over the years.
Plainston changed quite a bit. Many new buildings were present. The inn he stayed in probably expanded once more in the time he was gone. Still, most rooms were taken only leaving the best ones which were more expensive. It was not much for any of them. Ebony took a pretty long bath, entering his new room which was larger and the bed seemed better. He had already retrieved his loot from Hector and left it on the ground. The wooden floor sure was resilient.
Scarlet had brought him dinner in another half an hour even though he never asked for it. She smelled like a sweet fruit as usual. Her mood was a good one. Ebony should¡¯ve been happy about getting her food but he wasn¡¯t. Weird.
He didn¡¯t forget to borrow Blues from Hector. He had more empty ones than Ebony expected, Hector started to feel bad and just gave Ebony 8 of his last empty ones. Ebony did fill up a few for him, he insisted Ebony take them saying it was worthless empty anyway. Even forcing him to take 3 filled ones.
A good night¡¯s sleep and some magic experimentation later. He just drank with Hector in the inn itself, Scarlet was present but didn¡¯t drink. They were too lazy to go to a bar.
Instead of talking about the usual skill, magic, fighting and general stories and knowledge they just drank and talked about their future, aspirations and whatnot. Ebony already learnt alot from them, too bad little was known about mana beings.
Hector wanted to be the strongest. As simple as that.
Scarlet wanted to get stronger quickly and look for her parents that sent her something right before they couldn¡¯t be contacted anymore. She didn¡¯t say much about that. Maybe she would share more when they got closer.
Ebony did love fighting and he also wanted to get stronger so that he wasn¡¯t helpless in any situation but people had a long life here. He didn¡¯t want to live a life that was just fighting, it wasn¡¯t so much a life. He enjoyed many things. Travelling, exploring and seeing the sights was one, eating good food was another.
That was why he wanted to pick up hobbies like crafting for example. Going to Arcta for a visit was also seeing if Roya was willing to teach him her craft. Well, he actually really wanted to find Gen again but that was for combat and magic training.
Hector happily gulped 2 or 3 drinks down before saying his energetic farewells and running off.
¡°Prepare your asses to be whooped, see ya!¡±
The table didn¡¯t exactly turn silent due to some of the diners chatting as well.
¡°What do you want to do after you find your parents? I mean what is it that you really want?¡±
¡°...Search for the most delicious ingredients the world has. Eat every delicacy there is and make them better. I also want to slay a ******* and of course, taste it and make dishes out of it.¡± Scarlet exposed her desires for the first time.
¡°What¡¯s a *******?¡± Ebony asked about the word he had never heard of.
¡°It¡¯s like a giant flying lizard. A myth. Creatures of absolute power that are said to be able to swallow gods whole or play around with them to death but Elcra doesn¡¯t have any. It¡¯s too weak to withstand their existence or stay complete in their presence.
¡®Giant flying lizard. Creatures of absolute power. Dragon, no doubt.¡¯ Ebony almost thought there were no dragons. How could that be? Hunting and eating one sounded phenomenal. He wanted to make that happen too.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Elcrian level up 7 - 8¡¯
¡®Coincidence or another damn flex of the mighty?¡¯
¡°I would like to taste them too¡ our goals don¡¯t conflict, do you want to¡ Maybe travel across the oceans, lands and skies together in future. We can fight dragons together too.¡± Ebony liked Scarlet. He knew that for some time already, he just didn¡¯t know how to get about these feelings. He wasn¡¯t being overconfident or egotistical but he felt that she liked him too. At least he was sure she treated him differently and that she didn¡¯t hate him. Ebony hoped that was the case.
¡°...Mhmm.¡± She nodded and kept her eyes looking onto the table.
¡°Let¡¯s ascend together. See you.¡± Scarlet pushed off too fast for him to reply, nearby tables were flipped over from the wind pressure. One unlucky diner screamed and made complaints, Ebony paid for his meal as an apology.
Ebony thought Scarlet was referring to ascending the dungeon or maybe she was referring to the ¡®skies¡¯ that Ebony was talking about. Whatever it was he couldn¡¯t hide the hint of a smile he had. It was stiffer than a board.
???
¡°Boo!¡±
¡°...Grandma.¡±
¡°You¡¯re no fun. How was it, did you have fun? Are you alright?¡±
¡°Yes, I had fun. I¡¯m okay, only a small injury.¡±
¡°Oh, willing to admit you had fun? Maybe you grew a little in such a short time. You were saved by the blue haired boy, twice over. Well, getting hit by the petrification mage was minor but the mana storm would likely not have occurred if it wasn¡¯t for that connection he built.¡±
¡°...Yes. What connection?¡±
¡°Bah, he probably doesn¡¯t know either. It was unrelated and neither saw the other. It was pretty interesting, both the petrification mage and dungeon failed to get it. You admit that he saved you? Answer me my cute girl, do you like that boy?¡±
¡°...He took advantage of me.¡±
¡°???¡±
¡°He proposed to me. Took my hand.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Then he saw my¡behind.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°And he held my underwear out in front of me.¡±
¡°Hoh? This boy sure has some guts, seems like this old lady needs to teach the young some manners.¡±
¡°I¡uh..uhmm. Proposed to ascend to Godhood together.¡±
¡°My little girl¡¡±
¡°Ye..yes?¡±
¡°You like that boy.¡±
¡°...Yes.¡±
¡°...To think you grew up so fast. But no. This old lady will not allow it.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t ask for your permission.¡±
¡°Waah, your granny¡¯s heart is hurt from your words. You really grew up fast didn¡¯t you. Alright, come with me! I think you¡¯re ready for what your parents took the risk to get for you.¡±
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
¡°I am ready. I can¡¯t fall back, I will beat him up next time.¡±
¡°Beat him up? That¡¯s my girl!¡±
???
Left alone, Ebony left for the Quest Hall. Traded in most of his mana ores as he needed some to get stuff. While there was a limit to how much Greens could be traded in for Blues, trading Blue for Blue was possible. Honestly, the tax system and rate was ridiculous. 2 filled Blues are traded in for 3 empty ones currently. It was no wonder freelancers work and complete requests instead of just living on their own mana regeneration.
Ebony had 2 filled blues with dozens of Greens. 11 empty Blues and hundreds of Greens. He went to Z&Z to sell off whatever material he picked up like the earthen-topaz. There was no request or posts for earthen-topaz, maybe no one knew the dungeon produced it. He wanted out of the dungeon so badly he didn¡¯t collect the spiderwebs that he wanted to check out.
He bought the best callstone they had in stock, it was still Uncommon rarity but can reach 90,000 to 95,000km. Mana consumption was the same at 5MP/km/s. There were some that were more mana efficient, some that had more range, and he obviously went for range. He wanted to be able to contact Scarlet, or even Hector to ask him stuff. With how large the continent of Elva was, 90,000km was a reasonable distance. It might have been excessive on Earth with Earth¡¯s diameter being only about 12,700km or a circumference of about 40,000km.
Well, he had to stock up on Blues or higher rarity mana ores if he really wanted to make a call or connection from 90,000km it would take 450,000 mana for a single second. Too damn expensive. If he thought about it this way, the mana consumption of Quest Halls that had to connect to many other cities use up a heck ton of mana. It would be costly even if they had more mana-efficient technology. Ebony was definitely getting better stuff once he got away from this undeveloped place.
He never thought about it the other way. Other people would only be able to live frugally if they only depended on their base mana regeneration. Working, completing requests, making and selling stuff still earned more mana.
They had services to move contacts from one callstone to another. Simply put both callstones onto one of the slates they have that could transfer or copy the connection over. It was a cheap service, he had it copied over. They could also cut or remove a connection, to which Tuffock''s was removed. Hector had told him how it could lead to him. He didn''t notice how Ryley''s connection was gone without him removing it.
Ebony found a random but similar long sleeve shirt, pants and a new pair of boots to buy. He was walking around in worn and torn clothes. His underwear and socks were still serving well. Z&Z really was a department store that sold everything. He found that they even have a book section. Nothing awesome but a collection of simple books from fictional stories to general history to cookbooks.
He bought a cookbook labelled ¡®Icy Treats¡¯ and a relatively newer book dated a few years back that was labelled ¡®Torox against Martial Salamander.¡¯. Torox was apparently a level 300 Master fighter that used poison in close combat. It was a series and there were quite a number of them, small thin books that described his battle and the different monsters¡¯ unique abilities, habits, fighting styles, even what they ate and other stuff like whether their natural disposition was aggressive or not. He was actually buying it as a gift for Clovis but found himself interested in the book himself.
¡®This Torox guy is pretty insightful.¡¯ He was pretty impressed with the amount of detail and effort Torox had put into researching monsters that Ebony had not heard of. These books weren¡¯t all that expensive but it still cost Greens and he would come back for more when he had time and mana ores.
There were still no spatially expanded bags or anything like that. Even if he ordered it it may take many months to arrive and would only be those that were like half as large as it looks or twice. Ebony couldn¡¯t afford it anyway as the cheapest they could get delivered to this countryside wasn''t even calculated in Blues. They would also be very low quality.
He also restocked a few types of dried meat, fruit flavoured biscuits and souper bread. Enough for 2 weeks even if he ate like a starving man. He left Z&Z with no one familiar present anyway and walked the streets. He didn¡¯t know what to get Roya and Halvis but recalled the food shortage there so he bought fresh vegetables, fruits and some cuts of meat not found in Hoarfrost Glade. It had been months and he didn¡¯t think Z&Z went to make another trip to trade.
It was weird, they would definitely profit even if they increased their trading frequency more. Perhaps they did, with Plainston growing the people here were stronger and making the trip will be much easier as long as Z&Z also dispatched higher level parties here. Still, it was the thought that counted and more food wouldn¡¯t hurt.
Ebony had already thrown the tattered bag he used during the dungeon and swapped it for another one of his 2 spares. He also bought a coil of thick steel wires. Returning to the inn to get his stuff before leaving for Acrta. Tying up the bottom and top of the black block which was his loot with the thick steel wire. He adjusted it till he could sling it somewhat comfortably and wouldn¡¯t shift around too much.
He was very intrigued with the material. It absorbed the ice mana out of his spells and even a little when he touched it with Icebody Enhancement on to carry it due to its crazy weight. He was pretty sure it got a little heavier than when he first picked it up.
Less than 2 gurs or 10,000km which took an escort party 7 to 8 days to travel was just a short distance to the current Ebony. It might take just 2 to 3 hours if he moved in a straight line and wasn¡¯t slowed down by anything. Like the heavy material he was carrying or any monsters stopping him.
Ebony noticed that even in the day it was noticeably colder. He had checked the date to be the last few days of summer. It was truly the best that he didn¡¯t have to sweat in the heat. His Heat Resistance also helped so that wasn¡¯t a huge issue anymore.
He made his way onto the main road and sped to the main gate, making sure he had everything which wasn¡¯t much. Crossing the plains leisurely with Icebody Enhancement on and the black block lumbering along. Carrying something so heavy made it difficult for Treading Steps and was excellent training. His shoulders were sore before he even reached Bubble Hills.
The weather change was more drastic than he expected. Even the outskirts of Bubble Hills had light mist around the ground level. It slowly rose and thickened as he moved like a phantom, not cutting apart the mist with his movement speed. The entire sky was covered in thick clouds that covered the sun.
Everything was just tougher on Elcra, the ground could take all of his weight without much trouble. It wasn¡¯t even compacted dirt ground or proper roads. Ebony easily moved more than 4 times the speed of sound now, almost 5 but the effects didn¡¯t seem as exaggerated. The speed of sound was hard to say too, with his manipulation he could slow or speed it up. That was just with his Agility, Running, Treading Steps and his Fortification taken into account. He didn¡¯t even attempt to use Chaotic Repulsive Membrane to speed himself up.
Monster population was still very low but it should be increasing slowly since he didn¡¯t even encounter a single person or party. Ordina attracted them like flies.
Ebony had kept a lookout for Obsius, maybe for a chat or something but he didn¡¯t spot her and wasn¡¯t going to go through the trouble of searching the entire hills which would take too long even if he had the speed and stamina. He actually didn''t. Bubble Hills stretched across the entire Plains and Hoarfrost Glade, completely separating the two.
Snow. There was a thin layer of snow on some of the last few hills before he reached Hoarfrost Glade. It already took him 5 hours to get here due to the weight he was dragging around and Icebody Enhancement slowing him down significantly. He wasn''t moving anywhere close to his top speed.
Looking up at the heavy dim clouds in the sky, bearing over the entirety of his range of vision. It was snowing a little in Hoarfrost Glade. Cold enough for him to notice that it was chilly. Others would start to freeze up already, Ebony had 50% higher base cold resistance compared to other humans from his Frostblaze Physique. Stacking together with Sheer Cold Resistance at Lvl 37 for 92.5% more resistance to cold.
The thickness of snow increased since he was last here but with his 3D Mental Map, it was not impossible for him to find where he was and the general direction of Arcta. The further he went into Hoarfrost Glade the more he understood why Z&Z didn¡¯t come here so often with Journeymen escorts. It was too cold for most races. Constitution did improve elemental resistance but it was only to a very small extent and may even be hard to notice a difference when you had over 100 Constitution stat differences.
The surrounding concentration of ice mana only increased a little, he was sure it was mostly snow mana but he couldn¡¯t confirm. The thing he was lugging on his back was slowly absorbing whatever ice mana landed on it.
Ebony¡¯s feet dug deep into the snow even with his Treading Steps and it took much longer to navigate through the snowing and hazy air.
¡®I really would¡¯ve been dead already if it wasn¡¯t summer huh?¡¯ he sure was lucky to have not encountered much difficulties during his time here.
He was currently pondering on other methods of transport. Even with practically unlimited stamina, just running around was honestly bothersome and tiring. One of Ebony¡¯s ¡®small¡¯ reasons for wanting to become better harder faster stronger was so that things got easier and more convenient for him. Deep down he wanted to laze around as well, now just wasn¡¯t the time for it. Maybe a mobile car moved by magic, he could make use of the ice bicycle idea he played around with as well. If physically riding wasn¡¯t so good of an idea all he had to do was use Ice Mana Control to move the vehicle.
He was stopped by the really ¡®young¡¯ and low level guards of Arcta. Ebony didn¡¯t recognise them but they easily let him in when he said he was visiting the Thoya family. Nothing changed in Arcta. The Frost Elves wore the same clothes and everything completely unbothered by the cold. Maybe even glad that it was no longer so hot. Just like outside the village, it was quiet with a few soft clashes of wood from the playground.
Based on the time, the Thoya family should all be at home.
It seems like he was wrong. There were other people here, they had the typical adventurer or freelancer look with thick furred coats and jackets. Not many of them but some of the previously empty houses were occupied by them.
They were all Master Classed but most of their levels were within the Identifiably range for Ebony. He only saw about 6 people but they were obviously different groups, maybe they were 2 parties with the others elsewhere. One group of 4 walking around the street stalls and the other 2 just looking around.
The most noticeable was the pair. One was the huge wolfman who had much of their wolf features. Standing at at least 2 metres tall, still shorter than quite a number of the adult Frost Elves but much wider. Huge chest with bulging arm muscles and thick thighs full of power. Light grey furry upper body but human faced with wolf ears and thick full beard.
Whoever this man was, he was powerful. Ebony was feeling like the weight on his shoulders increased even more than what he was already carrying. Unlike mana which is absorbed by the myriad bracelet and mana ores, overflowing Vitality doesn¡¯t get syphoned away. He thought it was also due to the Wolf Beastmen''s higher base health regeneration. It would be interesting to train under such pressure.
[Master Warrior Lvl ???]
Then there was another one who Ebony couldn¡¯t Identify the level of.
[Great Water Mage Lvl ???]
A relatively young human, surprising for a mage much less one who already evolved. Obviously wearing thick clothing under his blue robes, carrying a resplendent blue staff. It looked way more impressive than whatever Ebony had seen before.
Both parties ignored each other as Ebony walked past them. The water mage was the only one who gave a second glance at him.
¡°Ebony!¡± Halvis called out from his croft, it looked like there was more going on and not just snowy ground. The frostsilk was likely growing well. Halvis walked over and gave Ebony a crushing hug.
¡°Halvis. I¡¯m back.¡± Ebony returned the hug but with little strength compared to Halvis.
¡°Good good. Oh my, I see you haven¡¯t been sitting around. Roya is going to be mad.¡± Halvis released him and checked out the tattered robe he was still wearing.
¡°It¡¯s okay. The robe the two of you grew and made protected me well.¡±
Halvis laughed. ¡°You sure know how to talk. Come on in, it must be warm, no, cold out here. Clovis is currently out on an errand so you can surprise him later.¡±
Nothing changed inside the house either. Halvis led Ebony to the room he had stayed in while he was here to put his things down. He then went to Roya¡¯s workspace to be met with the same hug but less crushing. She was visibly mad at the state of his robe but her anger subsided with Ebony¡¯s sincere words of gratitude.
He silently placed all the fresh food he bought in their appropriate storage. Ebony would hand the books over to Clovis personally. Clovis returned and was a riot of exclamations and questions. It was time for dinner and he talked about his short journey and adventure.
Glorious plums didn¡¯t disappoint and it was worth the trip just for them.
Ebony still couldn¡¯t Identify either Halvis¡¯s or Roya¡¯s levels. From what he understood both of them were extremely young for Frost Elves. Roya was around 176 while Halvis was 181 years old, they were hardly even adults and were the youngest parents in the entire village. In the villagers¡¯ eyes, they were akin to teen parents or even younger.
If he wasn¡¯t wrong, at Master Classed their lifespan was around 875 to 1000 years. They were probably at higher levels than their counterparts in the village due to them having explored out of the small village and all the way to the Capital City, Tidal.
Clovis reached a respectable Lvl 28. Very fast with their standards of measurement, he wasn¡¯t a combat class and didn¡¯t need to hunt to gain experience faster so it was still reasonable. He was still considering whether to get a combat Sub-Class or Profession. Ebony had hoped he chose a Sub-Class for it, it wasn¡¯t exactly very safe and Clovis could at least protect himself better but he didn¡¯t say anything since it was ultimately Clovis¡¯s choice.
Ebony had no problem giving him some tips on self-defence.
Interlude(78.5): Birth Of The Two Limbed Shadow Hound
¡°It¡¯s getting hot. And the gravity is annoying, tiring.¡± Dina complained.
¡°Should¡¯ve taken my Heat Resistance bath like I always said right?¡± Rowent smugly showed off that he wasn¡¯t even sweating in the hot dungeon forest.
¡°Enough. This forest shall do, level 80 to slightly over 90 is just about perfect for us.¡± Top said.
¡°I don¡¯t really want to eat the weavers or the kobolds,¡± Fergus said as he scouted around.
¡°Saaame. So leopards? Will have to depend on you and Dina for them.¡± Rowent agreed with the sentiment.
They were an escort party with a caravan carrying all their stuff all the time. This was where they were not as prepared. Carrying all the cargo like food, camp gear and equipment was not easy. More importantly, they were not used to it with the exception of Top and Fergus.
Fergus scanned the entire first floor pretty easily and found them the way up as one of the first ones even though they entered half a day later compared to the opening time to let the dungeon stabilise a bit more. A little bit of Elf wisdom here. They were prepared for higher mana density but not the strong gravity like most parties.
The 2nd floor was perfect for their party to get used to the environment. With the weakened monsters even the level 90+ monsters were not much of an issue to their organised party.
Rowent always appreciated Fergus¡¯s presence in the party. Something the young Dina and Chris wouldn¡¯t fully understand due to their inexperience out in the field. It was a pity he was an orphan but Fergus wasn¡¯t bothered by it, he was currently on the run from his aunt¡¯s home. ¡®No one is chasing me so I¡¯m not on the run.¡¯ is what he would say but that might be his remaining pride.
Elves were magical powerhouses. A 57 year old baby like Fergus was leagues above average 2nd order Great Mages in terms of their usage and flexibility with magic. Even excluding that, just their base mana density and other properties were higher and better than the other races. That meant that even if an Elf had the same Intelligence as anyone else, their spells still packed a bigger, heavier punch.
With Mana Compression and other similar skills that build on mana density, they would have harder hitting spells even with a lower skill level or in extreme cases, tier. Fergus had been controlling his levelling rate as much as possible to stay ¡®Elf-powered¡¯ but a new dungeon was too good an opportunity to gain Natural Potential to let go.
They hunted 2 or 3 groups of weavers and kobolds before getting too exhausted to continue and Fergus decided on a camp spot together with Top. The increase in gravity was horrendous and caused them to make calculation mistakes. Dina missed her throwing knives multiple times, Chris brought his sword up to guard half a second slow. All the minor mistakes in body control added up to the light cuts and bruises they received.
Rowent was all sore from moving so fast for the entire day. Mentally tired from the mana consumption too. Fergus and Top were in pretty good condition. Top recovered quite a lot which was really a blessing. They needed him to take the brunt of monster attacks.
The next day, they slowed down to adapt and saw Ebony¡¯s group. To think he was in a party with the Xeng and an unheard of Quadra Elemental Mage. The overall levels of his party were higher than theirs too, except for himself and the Xeng woman. Not surprising with his power.
Chris changed. His berserker Sub-Class was violent and aggressive in battle, getting a large Strength increase as he got more agitated and more injured. He was usually silent now, keeping his emotions under and exploding out in anger and frustration when fighting.
The party didn¡¯t look well to the choice but they were respectful enough not to push their opinions on him. Berserkers were not easy to work with in a party if they didn¡¯t listen to the leader¡¯s orders. The good thing was he was still Chris and took orders and comments without an issue.
They trained and hunted here for 10 days before leaving and returning back to Plainston to rest up. Reorganise themselves and plan accordingly. Resupply and maintenance of equipment was important. All of them safely reached over level 80. They needed to travel light but still have enough supplies, the gravity problems had roughly been adapted already but supplies were always problematic.
They were going to move up further after a good break for 2 days. Dina and Chris were not used to long periods of hunting, exploring and camping only to wake up sweating and hunting again. The night watches were fine since they did the same thing for their escorting.
Now it wasn¡¯t just Chris but Fergus who was pushing for them to go onto the next level. Truthfully, the 2nd floor¡¯s monsters were all easy hunts for them but Top stayed his ground to remain cautious. Rowent was all in favour of being cautious, they still had time. Ordina¡¯s monsters wouldn¡¯t just explode in strength suddenly or anything. Just like its expansion, it would take a few years before the monsters inside grow to normal strength of monsters at the same level.
Rowent admits that Natural Potential was really attractive but it was nothing worth more than his own life. Unlike the others, he had mana limitations since he was hardly a physical combatant.
They took another 2 days after their break to make it to the mountain range.
None of them expected them to see what they did.
¡°It¡¯sss youu.¡± Obsius hissed. Then made a questioning growl.
¡°Wheere¡¯s Ebonie?¡± The aberrant Cysaru questioned the stiffened escort party. Fergus was the most relaxed, he knew his life was not in danger but he was still locked in place as his party members were still present.
¡°What do you want with Ebony?¡± Top answered, and his chest started to sting. It was an imaginary pain that came up as soon as the aberrant showed itself. Top glanced at its scythe arms only to see one of them was no longer shiny black but whitened or greyed up till its elbow or where the sharp part ended.
¡°Ebony¡¯s not here. He was only travelling with us temporarily at that time.¡± Fergus added, the aberrant was obviously intelligent. He was telling the truth and didn¡¯t want to push trouble to Ebony by telling the monster anything. It might have a grudge with Ebony if it was true that he injured the beast.
Rowent didn¡¯t like being anywhere close to the monster one bit. It already reached level 100. They were no match for it previously, perhaps because their full party wasn¡¯t present but he doubted it. It played them and could most likely do the same again. Ebony might have injured it but that was because this thing never attacked them or took them seriously.
¡°Ohh¡hoow disappoointtingg.¡¯ Rowent thought that its speech improved a little. They slowly relaxed when the aberrant hopped off without a care in the world.
Rowent''s most concerning thought was how the monster entered the dungeon.
¡°Rwarrhhhh!¡± Chris yelled in rage at being slighted and compared to Ebony again. He attracted a few Gale Leopards and Earthen Hide Bears. They fought and fought.
¡°There¡¯s a spawning node somewhere close! It¡¯s not letting up!¡± Fergus reported after he realised that the backup was sent from the same direction. They were being targeted by Ordina now. Unlucky considering the many parties there were.
¡°Stick closer! Rowent, how¡¯s your mana looking!?¡± Top ordered as he slid the bear¡¯s claws to the side and slashed at its open belly. It didn¡¯t dig deep.
¡°15!¡± Rowent reported.
Fergus moved around to mountain peaks for height advantage, he didn¡¯t need a vanguard to protect him with his quick feet. Chris managed to hold his ground and rivalled Top¡¯s abilities with his increased strength. He took the opportunity to slash his way through the tougher bears. The High Kobold was taken care of by Dina and Rowent with overall support from Fergus.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Rowent tried to conserve mana as best he could but even his staff¡¯s backup was running out. Fergus was just shooting weaker conjured wooden arrows as he ran out of his normal arrows. Dina was getting very exhausted too.
Chris yelled and pushed as his strength and speed got greater and greater in their crisis. He kept going, breaking out of formation.
¡°Chris! Come back!¡± Top called. He was defending Rowent from the High Kobold¡¯s attacks. His moment of distraction caused an arrow to land on the weak and mentally exhausted fire mage¡¯s right thigh and left shoulder. Followed by the mage¡¯s screams.
Chris wasn¡¯t listening, or rather, he couldn¡¯t hear anything. He just kept going and going, killing and killing.
Rowent¡¯s scream which also pulled Top¡¯s attention caused him to turn around. Dina yelled for him to watch his back, but it was too late. Top turned to see the High Kobold¡¯s oddly familiar scythe, Top froze. The scythe sliced at his chest, it didn¡¯t stop as it lopped off Top¡¯s sword arm along with cutting open half his chest. Fergus¡¯s desperate wind arrows were stopped by the Earthen-Hide Bear¡¯s tough and heavy body. It was too far a distance for Fergus to manipulate either.
There was no one to protect Top from the attacking High Kobold and his head was lopped off in a similar fashion before his body was taken by the Earthen-Hide Bear and directly bitten into. Devour.
Dina screamed as she didn¡¯t make it in time to save her leader. Only stepping in within the small space they were surrounded by after Top¡¯s head was sliced off.
¡°WIRE STORM!¡± Dina screamed. She had throwing knives between all her fingers, throwing them out. Mana raged forth, filling all the knives and wires before she wildly swung her hands around with seemingly nothing in them. The surrounding High Kobolds, Gale Leopards and even Earth-Hide Bears turned into a bloody mess. All sliced into pieces all the way through.
Dina fainted right after. The bleeding from her nose, eyes and ears didn¡¯t stop yet. It was a skill she was playing around with and hadn''t really gotten the hang of. Her anxiousness caused her to over dipped into her small mana pool and knocked herself out with the exertion.
Fergus, who started running down the mountain he was on once his arrow failed to knock the attacking High Kobold only just arrived to catch Dina and Rowent. Monsters over a gir radius were completely wiped out by Dina¡¯s last ditch attempt. He took the chance to escape as he was light on his feet compared to any of them.
¡°Kek! Wh..what about Chris¡¡± Fergus didn¡¯t expect Dina to regain consciousness so quickly. He didn¡¯t stop or even slow down to look back.
¡°...You¡¯re too nice and naive.¡± Fergus said.
¡°Put. Me. Down.¡± Dina wiped the blood getting into her eye. She was wide awake again.
¡°You¡¯re in no condition to help yourself much less someone else.¡±
¡°Why aren¡¯t you helping him too?¡± Dina wanted to struggle but she had no strength left.
¡°Both of you are already full in my hands. I¡¯m also not in the condition to help him, can¡¯t exactly fight carrying the both of you.¡±
¡°You can put us down.¡±
¡°Compared to helping someone who didn¡¯t listen to orders and caused Top¡¯s death? I won¡¯t risk either one of you for him.¡± Fergus was angry, sad and hurt. He had been with Top the longest, someone he considered a true friend and leader. The first real friend he made. He was still a child, he understood that Chris was like that because of his skills and Sub-Class but Fergus''s body and mind didn¡¯t listen to logic. Top wouldn¡¯t have died if it wasn¡¯t for Chris, is what his mind kept telling him. It might or might not have been true but Fergus didn¡¯t care.
There were not too many monsters left, a few dozen at best. Chris had the chance of survival with his enhanced stats. Not killing Chris himself was the best he could do currently.
Fergus knocked out the struggling Dina and took both of them out of Ordina.
???
Chris woke up groaning in pain. He couldn¡¯t move at all, opening his eyes to a bright glare before his eyes adjusted. All he saw was red. He tried getting himself to a sitting position but failed multiple times. Why? His right arm from elbow down was missing, as was his left leg from the upper thigh down. Perhaps it was the remaining adrenaline, it didn¡¯t feel as painful as he thought it would. He found himself surprisingly calm in the situation.
Chris didn¡¯t know where he was but none of his party members replied when his broken, hollowed voice called out for them. He cut a suitable branch to use as a walking stick with his half arm, the other still tightly gripping his sword.
It was lucky he practised and trained but he was not good with one-handed sword styles. He walked for what felt like days due to how slow he hobbled. Following the trail of probably his own blood. He didn¡¯t find his missing arm or leg He saw that his leg and arm stump was randomly bandaged, maybe and probably by himself but he had no memory of himself in his berserk state.
He fell and collapsed onto his knees. His leader¡¯s armour piece. His heartbeat accelerated, quickly struggling to stand and follow whatever trail he could. Finding more and more of his leader¡¯s armour but not a sign of him. Chris sat at a large blood spot where he believed Top was standing at and protecting Rowent. He sat there for hours, not moving at all. Till he heard some movements and leaves rustle. He instinctually ducked and dived for cover.
A pair of High Kobolds.
Chris'' emotions stilled but his body didn¡¯t. He hid and hobbled. Starving. He had nothing on him when he woke up and only found his bag after a long time. There were some rations left.
Chris hid and ran, hobbled and crawled. It was hell for him on the 3rd and then the 2nd floor. It took him 2 months of hiding and ¡®running¡¯ away to get himself back to the 1st floor.
Getting Greater Stealth was inevitable. He was constantly in a state of hunger, his rations ran dry long ago but thank goodness he had water. His injuries were already rotting. He even got the rare Rot Resistance and Hunger Resistance. There was likely no saving his arm and foot, he even wondered and imagined if the Life Queen could heal him.
Chris knew that help was not coming. Even though somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that only Top had proven dead. He didn¡¯t see any signs of his other party members despite risking himself to look around for days. He didn¡¯t trust the other parties and hid from them too. To freelancers or dungeon clearers, someone injured like him was just baggage.
The first floor was paradise for the first time in 2 months. As weakened as he was he could take down either Kobolds or Geoats with a little ambush. For one, there was not much cover. His Greater Stealth was impressive at level 46 for a General Skill, even without cover he was good enough to stay in a monster¡¯s blind spot as long as they were not actively looking for him. He ate the raw Geoat with tears for the first taste of meat for a long time.
Chris moved much faster after some time as he was used to the missing foot and arm and balanced himself well. Even got himself a movement skill for his Class. He moved on all 2s, keeping his body close to the ground to centre his balance, it also helped him stay out of sight. His left hand on the ground together with his right foot, moving like a 2 footed dog.
His sword between his jaws when he moved, he would grab it when he had to fight. Chris learned to hunt like an animal, a predator. His injuries and pain kept him constantly powered up.
In another 3 days, Chris was back out. It was already autumn, the moonlight was orange. Not completely hidden by the light rain clouds.
His ragged appearance caught the guards'' attention since they saw a shadow coming from near the ground. Only putting their weapons down when they realised it was a person.
Chris quickly pushed his working feet and arm to the side and hid within the shadows of the night. Dashing on 2s back to Plainston. Standing straight up without much trouble or loss of balance on one leg before entering Plainston. His bag still had the ores to pay for the entrance fee. Chris slowly hopped on one feet all the way back to Z&Z, his home here. He didn¡¯t run or use any speed, just hopping slowly. Taking 3 hours to reach the doorsteps of Z&Z.
Chris paused for a long time before taking a deep breath and entering.
No one recognised him. He was a lot skinnier. Very, very dirty with caked mud and blood that didn¡¯t get washed off in the rain. The stench on him was slightly washed away so it wasn¡¯t all that bad. Comparatively. He had longer hair and all that.
He coughed and gathered his courage before asking for Fergus and the others. His voice was a lot hoarser than it used to be.
¡°Oh, them? They were transferred to another branch since 2 of their party members died. One of them was their leader. Poor guys, transferred after they got the chance to get into a new dungeon.¡± Lacy, the receptionist he used to talk and have meals with from time to time said. She didn¡¯t appear disgusted with his appearance, perhaps already seeing people like that coming in from time to time.
¡°2¡? I see. Do you know where they are transferred too?¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯m unable to divulge such information to non-employees.¡±
¡°...¡± Chris looked down. Lacy really didn¡¯t recognise him. That was fine, he was dead as far as they know.
¡°Okay okay. I can only say that they have been split up and are sent quite a distance away. They are all talents that the company treasure so they likely went to a bigger city closer to the Capital.¡±
¡°...Thank you Lacy. Goodbye.¡± Chris said before hopping out. Lacy returned to her work with other clients before looking out the door where Chris left. ¡°Hmm? Did I tell him my name? He looks familiar.¡±
The moment Chris stepped out of the company he fell to the ground again. Onto his good arm and leg. It felt more natural to him now. He went back into the shadows and quietly left Plainston without anyone¡¯s notice.
Chapter 79: Mana Chassis
¡°Don¡¯t wear your myriad bracelet, it¡¯ll interfere with our work. Don¡¯t worry you won¡¯t have any spare mana and none of us is afraid of a little overflowing mana.¡± Roya tried to act strict.
Ebony had asked if she was willing to teach him more about her craft and she was delighted to hear that. Roya wanted to pass down her family¡¯s craft in some manner. Clovis clearly wasn¡¯t interested.
Also, Roya was apparently really pregnant. Her belly had the tiniest bump. Ebony just found out that Frost Elves'' pregnancy lasted for around 4 years. That was a really long time. That was equivalent to 1568 days or 4.3 Earth years.
They knew a lot about him that he didn¡¯t know they knew.
Firstly, Ebony finally learned why he had all the weird looks. Mana slaves, it was a reasonable thing for a world that ran on mana. He cleared up the fact that he wasn¡¯t a mana slave and that he didn¡¯t actually lose his memories. A load of his shoulders.
Next, Halvis asked if he was from another world. It was a simple yes and no question to which he answered truthfully and explained his circumstances. On second thought, it wasn¡¯t really all that hard to deduce.
They couldn¡¯t tell when Ebony hadn¡¯t Classed yet but once he gained a few levels they knew he was partially made of mana. They were too sensitive to mana not to tell. While they knew about mana beings they weren¡¯t made of mana themselves and couldn¡¯t tell Ebony much. On the other hand, learning about mana manipulation and tailoring work would help him understand a lot more about mana than he already knows.
Roya still had her own work to do and she could tell Ebony was more interested in learning how to control mana and about the properties of mana than learning how to tailor or Mana Tailor. He obviously had his own plans and training to do as well so they scheduled their time.
He made it a point to actually sleep and rest for at least 3 hours. He set the 28th hour to the 3rd hour as his sleeping time. The 3rd to 7th as his conditioning, melding both physical and magical together as much as he could. Merging them would make it more¡complete or so Scarlet and Hector insisted. As with Evolution. Hector apparently Classed, Sub-Classed and Professioned all in one. Something about melding them into a more complete evolution process and that it has some benefits.
Ebony was aiming for that, he somewhat trusted that piece of information especially with Scarlet confirming it. She didn¡¯t undergo the complete first Classing but she was going to do so this time. The benefits that Hector knows about were limited. It would apparently be easier to merge different skills into one, freeing up skill slots or even maximising Fortification benefits by locking in merged skills as a Core Skill. The first choice for Core Skills were generally those skills that benefit from the most number of Fortifications.
Ebony definitely wasn¡¯t fit to go to the playground now and he wasn¡¯t that interested either. There were slightly older Frost Elves to spar against too but he had something else in mind. From the 7th to 20th hour, he was out of the village. He went to search for blazing flames of frost. He put searching and exploration as the priority, hunting didn¡¯t matter much unless it was a level 160 and above monster where he could gain Natural Potential. The combusting forest obviously wasn¡¯t where he first found it which seemed ridiculously close to Arcta now that he thought about it. There was no way the Frost Elves didn¡¯t know when it popped up.
The 20th hour was break time, washing up, cleaning and helping with dinner preparations again. After dinner around half past the 21st hour up till the 24th hour when Roya would teach Ebony all things mana.
The 24th to the 28th hour was when Ebony would shore up on his lesser used magics. His skills that were over a level 100 took a long time to level if he didn¡¯t fight monsters many levels higher than him. That didn¡¯t mean he didn¡¯t practise those skills.
Back to routine.
???
A week.
Ebony went far out in every direction except back toward Bubble Hills and Plainston. It was not surprising but there were still many places he couldn¡¯t go as it was too dangerous. Even more so with his speed having increased so much it took a shorter time before he reached such areas. He thought that the monsters were more active compared to the time he was here and he asked about it.
Hoarfrost Glade was humongous. In terms of land mass, it was said to encompass more than 15% landmass of the entire continent. Arcta was only one of the 2 Frost Elf villages. It cleared a few of his doubts and confusion, Elves might age slowly but they still aged yet there wasn¡¯t any old Frost Elf in the entire village that he had seen either. The village chief, Orren, was apparently only around 480 years old with his wife being about 3 decades younger.
They classified the glades into a few sections namely, Chilly, Icy and Glacial. When Ebony visited Plainston he realised that the people there didn¡¯t know much about Hoarfrost Glade. It might have been that it was a small town with a small population but they generally avoided Hoarfrost Glade.
Arcta was in the region they called Chilly. It was the safest place and the older Frost Elves only came here if they had kids as any deeper into Hoarfrost Glade was too cold for their young, even so, not all of them moved over. Arcta also consisted of most of the non-combatant families, which was why it was so easy for 2 elks to destroy and kill many of them. Halvis and Roya¡¯s families included.
Ebony had heard that most Elves were proud, arrogant people but more importantly, heard about their strength and power. It had been weird that he hadn¡¯t seen any truly high level Frost Elf, having another village with the true powerhouses of their race made sense.
Another thing was that when he mentioned he was in a party with Fergus was that the Frost Elves weren¡¯t really on good terms with Elves. Even though Fergus had come to this village he didn¡¯t realise that Fergus was only tolerated and not welcomed at that time.
Ebony didn¡¯t know that it was unspoken common sense in the Empire that Hoarfrost Glades was one of the most infamous regions as an extremely dangerous area. There wouldn¡¯t be another reason why not many people came here.
The monsters were actually hibernating in summer and many hid or stayed deeper. Now that it got cooler they started coming back out. The Frost Elves guards also switched out and the young were free from their ¡®internship¡¯ and back to holing up in their homes for training.
He was a little shocked that a level 81 Snow Gale Strix caught up to him as he passed its tree with a few flaps and shrieked dozens of hardened and sharpened snow needles sped up by coiling gusts of wind out of its mouth at him. It even curved along with his agile and gentle change of direction. Ebony only managed to cast an uncompressed Layered Ice Carapace that the snow managed to embed into.
Ebony wanted to ignore it at first but it was persistent and faster than him with its probably magic enhanced flight. His ice projectiles were easily evaded. Neither could harm the other and the owl eventually gave up. He didn¡¯t remember the monsters here to be that powerful.
He had forgotten or perhaps didn¡¯t notice one thing about monsters that can use magic. And that is that their environment matters. The owl only had to use a minuscule amount of its own mana to use the environment¡¯s abundant snow mana.
Ebony didn¡¯t even spot a single maple leaf in the entire week. The snowing made it harder to find as his sight was limited. He also remembered the Frostblaze Amur Maple forest would be surrounded by a blizzard or something. He didn¡¯t see any signs of blizzards and the snow got heavier the deeper he went into Hoarfrost Glades. Was he supposed to find a blizzard within a blizzard that had trees covered in thick snow?
He had no breakthrough in regard to his Conditioning, any new skills or stuff like that. Skills like Sonic Overlay, Mana Vibration and Magnified Gravity Field improved considerably.
In the entire week, Roya didn¡¯t teach him how to better control mana. She also didn¡¯t teach him how to manipulate mana into materials to change their form or use them to make something. Ebony didn¡¯t even mana weave anything.
She taught him about what mana is and how he had to improve his Mana Perception before he even started on anything. He first had to learn more about his own mana and what his mana can do. She was also in a slight dilemma since he was slightly different in the sense that he was partially made of mana. That was even more reason for him to first learn about his own mana and body.
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Roya had Ebony only sense his own mana and figure out its properties. Everyone¡¯s mana was unique.
It might have started out close to pure mana in the surroundings but changes ever so slightly with the use of magic. It was what made the mana signature of a person unique as there was no identical mana signature between 2 people no matter how similar. Race also have a small part in differences between mana.
The thing was that he had already been attempting this long ago. It was all foggy and blurry when he had just Classed but it improved a lot after getting and levelling Mana Perception. That was how he figured out his entire body was his mana pool and not just his mind. That was how he directly mana manipulated his own body to recover.
Speaking of, he was easily exposed that he lost a hand but they knew he could probably recover so they were not all that worried. He still got a scolding from Roya about it. Saying that he needed to take better care of himself.
Mana was almighty, according to Roya there was nothing mana couldn¡¯t do. Because everyone has unique mana, the properties of everyone¡¯s mana are ever slightly different. This uniqueness only grows with one¡¯s age or rather use of magic and their mana.
For example, Roya¡¯s and all the Frost Elves mana was naturally colder despite not being conjured into ice mana yet. In this sense, Ebony¡¯s mana was more resilient based on his Fortification but Fortification wasn¡¯t the only thing that caused his mana to be any different from another¡¯s.
Still, this dedicated time to solely learn about his own mana and body was something he really liked and he even put aside more time for this from his magic practice time. It was Mana Perception and meditation at the same time.
Diving his senses into his body, scouring every inch. Emptied his mana, sensing his mana regenerate back to full capacity. He had found out some stuff and clarified some of his previous misconceptions about his body.
His whole body was his mana pool, yes. But it didn¡¯t mean that when his mana was used up, there was nothing left in his body but his physical portion. He lost a hand, but his mana could still reach 5300/5300. His health on the other hand, didn¡¯t fill up.
Mana Perception was high level enough that Ebony only needed to put some focus to get a 480pixel quality mental image of his whole body. Not a very high resolution but much better than a foggy mess. The main base for mana is still his mind but mana regenerated not just from his mind but every part of his body.
Roya confirmed with her senses after he allowed her to ¡®scan¡¯ him with her mana that every single cell of his contained mana.
There was like a new organ in his cells that was a mini container of mana, just like the main one in a normal people¡¯s mind. A whole lot smaller though. It made sense for his Icebody Enhancement to cast so fast since there was hardly any need for them to circulate as he could just conjure ice mana in his body directly. He was already doing that instinctually but finding out these things were going to be useful in some way or another.
It was weird, the so called mana organ was not actually physically there. For normal people, in their minds and for Ebony his entire body. In a sense, a metaphysical organ was the best he could describe it as. A reason why his mana could still recover till maximum maybe. It was there but not exactly there. Supposedly becoming more and more physical as one evolved, becoming more complete.
Ebony had observed the phenomenon of overflowing Wisdom in a much closer viewpoint with his Mana Perception alone. The ¡®mana organ¡¯ which simply sits there would slowly fill up from who knows where, his mental power maybe. When it was full it would simply flow over. It was really simple and exactly what it was called.
Scarlet had called her skill Mental Supersaturation but he couldn¡¯t help but visualise it as Mana Compression when he perceived things as he did now. He tried compressing his mana which was regenerated. It was exactly what he had wanted, if his mana pool¡¯s mana was compressed beforehand, all his spells would be cast in their compressed state.
It didn¡¯t budge even after a week full of attempts. The mana pool couldn¡¯t be forcefully expanded and he failed every attempt to compress and push the overflowing mana back into his body. Scarlet said her mind hurt when she had first tried it. Ebony felt like he was trying to pump water into himself and bloat himself.
Roya wouldn¡¯t tell Ebony everything. She wanted him to figure things out himself. He would understand things better in future or so she says. Telling him everything might limit his scope or perception of what¡¯s what.
He tried whatever came to mind. Changing his methods along the way.
Trying to mentally hold mana where they were as soon as they started to overflow was unsuccessful so far. He thought it would have been many times easier if he only had one place to focus on but when it was throughout his body it had proven too difficult a task for him.
Taking Scarlet¡¯s words and advice to imagine a lid on his ¡®container¡¯ and just hold it there to prevent mana from overflowing. Her experience was that the mana inside would change and a portion of it would fall to the bottom. This had kinda somewhat worked but it didn¡¯t feel right to him. He needed to make slight adjustments to whatever he was doing.
Tonight, Ebony didn¡¯t walk out of his room. It didn¡¯t garner any attention since he was usually out in the morning. Roya and Halvis thought he was sleeping in since they clearly sensed his mana. Then he didn¡¯t show up at dinner and Roya stopped Clovis from calling him down for dinner.
Another 5 days passed with Ebony not moving a single muscle.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Reinforced Mana Chassis (Passive) learned¡¯
¡®Reinforced Mana chassis (Passive) - Chassis and framework of mana pool is forcefully held and toughened to hold compressed mana without leakage. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 1.0% before leaking out. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.''
There were many questions he had about his new skill since the description didn¡¯t help much. Some of which he could answer himself with a little testing. Even so, passive skills were the best. If he didn¡¯t understand this wrongly, for every single percent that mana in his body was compressed his Constitution stat would increase by a percent of his Intelligence
Ebony never broke out of meditation and continued his mind-numbing and body-bloating exercises. He forgot to feel his own hunger and only opened his eyes when Roya came and got him for dinner on his seventh day of shutting himself in. The additional 2 days of introspection answered multiple questions together with many skill levels.
¡°We can talk over dinner,¡± Roya said. She only interrupted since she could sense that Ebony¡¯s mana had settled down for some time already. Not eating for 7 days was still reasonable with mana beings not needing as much physical sustenance. Still, even without any physical exertion, Ebony was hungry. He ate and ate but not as much as he used to. Eating a little less than a single meal of Scarlet¡¯s cooking. It tasted good as well but it just felt like it was lacking a certain taste.
¡°Better?¡±
¡°Yes, I understand more but only have even more queries.¡±
¡°Good. Do you know why I didn¡¯t tell you too much?¡±
¡°Everyone¡¯s mana is different, finding things out myself makes things clearer and also more natural for me.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s get tailoring.¡±
???
Roya taught Ebony all the basics of tailoring with mana. A diligent student was really encouraging to teach knowing that they are really keen on learning. She could somewhat understand Clovis¡¯s love for not just reading and studying but teaching.
Ebony absorbed whatever knowledge she was willing to impart like a sponge. There were many things he couldn¡¯t do even after Roya taught him. The difference in their Class, Fortification and Skills added many limitations to what Roya could really teach him.
From gloves to socks to shirts to pants and even underwear. Ebony learnt the basics of mana weaving from the start. Renewing his ability and control of mana and invading fibrous materials with mana. Mostly worked with frostsilk cotton until he knew how to make most clothing before moving on to other common materials.
He made quick trips to Plainston to either buy such common and cheap materials for practice or exchange his filled mana ores. Since he slept every day he had chances to refill mana ores. The trips were like a trip to the market and didn¡¯t even take hours without the extra weight on him. He found out a few more things due to his constant exchange of Blues.
He had some privileges that he had already been receiving that he didn¡¯t know as an ¡®ex-mana slave¡¯. All Meditative Classes could receive better rates, If he reached a really high number and became a considerably ¡®tax payer¡¯ he could actually receive more empty Blues for a filled one. Mana was a resource that was never enough and the Empire needed more and more.
Ebony never found a nice greatsword he liked, never found the need to trouble himself to go further to get it since he could still cast Ice Sword for now. It was in the middling area of his priority list since he was not planning on hunting stronger monsters right now.
He could also finally see the great damn difference between the monsters outside Hoarfrost Glade and inside it. The biggest difference was between the monsters that could use magic. Those that can use it well and those that couldn¡¯t have a world of difference. Ebony also wasn¡¯t completely sure but the monsters in Hoarfrost Glade seem to have higher stats in general even when he found monsters at the same level. It was to the degree that he could notice.
Ebony also learnt that monsters aren''t just bloodthirsty creatures out for blood for no rhyme or reason. Not considering dungeon monsters whose actions and behaviour depended on the dungeon. Those that grew up a little, unlike the low level ones he fought before he Classed acted more like normal animals. Knowing when or what to prey on and who their predator was.
Chapter 80: Winter
Empirical Calendar. Date 06.10.5532. 6th day of winter.
Based on days, today was Ebony¡¯s 17th birthday based on Elcra¡¯s calendar. His 21st Earthen birthday that he wasn¡¯t planning to keep count of anymore passed some time back already. He backdated and calculated based on days and not the hours so he might be days off back he had decided that the 6th day of winter was his birthday.
Ebony reached Arcta on the last few days of summer. It had been 3 months since then. His Class and Sub-Class skills weren''t stagnant but they didn¡¯t level very quickly either.
Ebony didn¡¯t want to freeload. He really didn¡¯t think they needed mana ores from him either so he asked for a job or some work. He didn¡¯t bring it up to Roya since she would likely insist that he didn¡¯t need to do anything.
Halvis also said that he could stay as long as he liked but with enough insistence he was referred back to Orren, the village chief. There were plenty of things they could have him do but the main things they needed was hunting for food and collecting ingredients or materials.
There was the usual dungeon clearing to do to lower the dungeons'' population but he wasn¡¯t needed for that. The low level one was small and practically a training ground for their young. The stronger one was beyond his capabilities apparently. One of the parties in Arcta was here for those dungeons. The other party which consisted of the great water mage wasn¡¯t seen again, they probably only made a stop in Arcta to rest.
There were few Frost Elves at his level. The majority were adults whose levels he could not Identify. The others were the young children in the playground. The number of Frost Elves who were Journeymen could be counted was basically all the children. A sore spot for the Frost Elves due to Arcta losing so many of their people.
Ebony had his strength tested by Enya, the lady [Great Snow Rogue] that escorted him previously. She beat him black and blue without even using any more speed or power than necessary. She didn¡¯t use any special skills but a single dagger.
He used everything at his disposal, he didn¡¯t have a greatsword but an ice one worked fine in a spar. His Gravity Repulsive Membrane didn¡¯t do jack and she seemed to completely ignore it. Though she did blink once or twice the first time she tried to land a blow on him.
It was refreshing to be beaten purely by skill and technique once again. He had easily over 10 Earth years of combat experience and together with the nonsense he had been put through it was what gave him his strength and advantage over those he had fought against so far. A truly pitifully short time compared to these Frost Elves and also many other people, even humans. For example, Michael from Panic Attack who can easily read and counter minor changes on the spot.
The Frost Elves gave him the good-to-go sign pretty easily despite how he lost so badly. He was tasked with protecting those level 30-60 guard-cum-hunting teams of young children, some were up to 10 to 30 years older than Clovis. Meaning they were all shorter than Ebony by a fair margin since they were only considered fully grown at an age of 100 to 150 depending on the individual.
They were a close-knit village, with an adult or two following the kids. In secret or openly, likely a relative of one of the children.
Ebony first followed a young-looking Frost Elf, Koawe. His first escorting mentor was definitely not young and one of the children called him grandfather.
Ebony got a creepy and eerie feeling from him. After Classing, he could better feel and sense someone¡¯s general strength or at least danger levels. The village chief was the strongest individual he met so far at that time not including Gen, until he saw an older Frost Elf than Orren. He would choose to fight the village chief 10 out of 10 times if he were to choose between him and Koawe. Identifying him only gave question marks with nothing else coming up.
All said, he didn¡¯t witness Koawe in action and he was a gentle and open man. He didn¡¯t watch Ebony very closely but after the uneventful hunt Ebony was trusted with the village¡¯s children. Since they put so much trust in him, he took great care to make sure everyone in his care came back safe and sound. He knew that they were extremely protective towards their young after the previous accident.
Only, it was harder that he was not supposed to interfere when one of them was not in any real life threatening danger.
There were a couple of times when Tiha and Qane were in his care too, not to hunt but to track and camp out overnight. They were not jealous that he levelled so fast, even Qane. They were being taught many things and had a long life to go. Levels weren¡¯t everything. Just like how the monsters here were stronger than those outside they too were stronger than their levels suggest.
???
The most dangerous time was a month back when he was escorting an extremely beautiful 16 year old looking girl, Palom, on a supposed 5 day trip.
It was towards the edge of the Chilly region which was also the smallest in terms of area. Yet, even in just the Chilly region, there were 30 to 40% of it where he couldn¡¯t go unless he had a death wish.
The girl was also a level 100 Journeyman. [Herbalist Level 100] from the village¡¯s Lasil family to collect ingredients. The vital crabapples are one of them.
Roya and Halvis introduced her as the youngest level 100 journeyman they had at only 25 years old. They seem to push him to be her escort a few times.
Enya and the oldest Frost Elf that Ebony had seen were present too at that time, he was Grandmaster Class. [Grand Ice Mage Lvl ???], oldest but still looked middle-aged at best.
Orren introduced him as the village guardian, Korben Ind, who recently volunteered to come here after he had a nephew who moved here due to having a child, his grand nephew. Standing near Korben, Ebony burped and felt the intrusion of chill not just on his skin but more on his mind. Though that was enough to mildly impress the high level ice mage.
They reached the main collection area but were attacked from under the snow. Ebony and even Enya were only there as the fast-footed one to carry Palom away while the powerhouses dealt with the trouble.
Ebony didn¡¯t even get to see what it was that attacked them before he was thrown through the skies by the neck. If it wasn¡¯t his newfound toughness he would¡¯ve had his neck broken already. Palom had gentler care and was protected by a snow spell and carried away by him with Enya protecting his back.
A day of running later and both the middle aged man, Korben and Enya were no longer anywhere he could see since a long while back. Palom was half a fighter and she was no slower than Ebony in terms of movement but she got tired quickly. Her stamina was more of a concern than her mana.
Treading Steps may have helped but it doesn¡¯t change his ever-increasing weight. The snow depth kept rising over autumn and also as he moved deeper into the glades than he ever did. Ebony sank all the way down to his butt when he stood still. Palom and the other Frost Elves had no such trouble, the snow didn¡¯t hinder them like it hindered him.
Palom was a quiet but strong girl, she wasn¡¯t scared of a few monsters. According to her it was likely a 5-Headed Snow Serpent. A distant relative of the legendary Leviathan.
She had really interesting magic. Under her long and wide sleeves were many different types of seed, plants and even pouches and satchels of herbs. She could use some kind of magic he didn¡¯t recognise but guessed to be nature or herbal element if there was a herbal element.
She only confirmed that it was a 5-Headed Snow Serpent when 2 stray 3-Headed ones managed to slip away from Enya. They were only level 121 but Ebony struggled with them the most so far. Having trouble moving around was one thing, not having a weapon was another.
Palom was the first to sense the incoming serpent from under the snow. A handful of seeds thrown into the ground was all it took to alert him. The warning was exactly what he needed as the serpent needed time to break through his tough shields.
The problem was that a single serpent could keep him busy enough and it had back up. Ebony already knew that Palom needed time for her magic. The first seeds she threw erupted into vines and locked the first serpent down just in time for him to deal with the reinforcement.
Ice magic was wholly ineffective against the monsters in Hoarfrost Glades. And the Frost Elves still managed to hunt the monsters here with ice magic. His main methods of attack these days were kicking or punching with Sonic Overlay. Lightly touching a normal tree was enough to make a circular dent or two in it. While pumping ice mana into most monsters here didn¡¯t really empower them it didn¡¯t do much either until a whole lot was injected. They had really high resistance to ice and cold.
The serpents didn¡¯t have very hard scales, their scales or outer skin was similar to that of the Snowskin Monkeys. Ice Swords used as projectiles were bitten right out of the air and so were close-ranged ones. The three heads worked together with its 6 eyes to manage.
The serpent was breaking Layered Ice Carapaces bite by bite. It didn¡¯t take long considering it had a combined girth equivalent to his thighs when three heads joined and 4 to 5 times his height in length. The power and strength behind their attacks were really impressive, even beyond Ordina¡¯s Arrowtails at level 150.
Palom was impressively holding her own ground better than he was. Her advantage was in the familiarity and ease of manoeuvring in this terrain and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the serpent.
Ebony decided to imprison the one he was fighting to quickly help Palom end her battle so that they could take down the one he was fighting with her help. Combusting ice mana inside for any effect ice would have on it.
Flowers and herbs bloomed on the body of the serpent while Ebony held it down, letting Palom prepare her spell.
It was beautiful magic, the blood of the serpent was white like snow so the flowers and herbs took its colour. Some ice sculptures of flowers slowly bloomed and thornily poked into the serpent¡¯s body.
The serpent that he was putting on flames surprisingly broke out with a combined drilling motion with its heads. Unravelling right as they broke out to attack both of them in close proximity. The one aiming for him hit the air as he was long alerted by his senses to defend Palom.
2 of the serpent¡¯s heads with something like a snow drill on them, drilled through his hastily cast scales since his shields couldn¡¯t move nearly as fast as him and tore into his lower chest and abdomen. He quickly grabbed them where they were, stopping it from reaching Palom.
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She panicked a little from all the blood splattering onto her, not expecting Ebony to shield her with his own body. Then she realised he was still struggling to pump ice mana into the serpent while the other head was blocked off by his ice shields. Attempting to crush its head and neck with his odd repulsion magic and another one which she recognized as sound magic utilised as a physical offence spell.
She quickly pulled herself together, along with pulling a satchel of powder she threw over the serpent¡¯s interconnected neck exposed by the three way split. It was poison, as fast-acting as it was, Ebony didn¡¯t have time so she hastened and strengthened its effects with her magic.
It was Ebony¡¯s closest shave with death as a part of his heart was drilled out too. He felt like he lost all the strength in his body but Optimum Condition kept him moving. Palom used whatever healing pills or herbs she had but she was obviously looking terribly worried, almost breaking into tears because nothing seemed to be working other than the fact that he stopped bleeding really quickly. She didn¡¯t know about a human¡¯s anatomy but many humanoids have pretty similar make-up so her craft and fresh herbs used should be more than effective enough. At least they have never failed on any of her fellow villagers.
She only realised that Ebony¡¯s body was so¡dense with mana. He was leaking enough mana to scare the living daylights out of her if it was from a hostile predator. Yet his mana was so relaxing to be exposed to, it calmed her down enough not to panic. She was young and didn¡¯t know about mana beings but she managed to preserve his life till Enya came not long later and carried the ice sculpture that was Ebony preserving himself as well.
The snow serpent also used a pretty common cold poison that many poisonous creatures in Hoarfrost Glade have. Ebony had decent enough cold resistance to slow its effects and this poison was hardly anything significant to Palom. She wasn¡¯t a healer but her family¡¯s elders were more than capable of healing him despite being more of a herbalist family than a healing one. Their role in the village was the same as a healer¡¯s.
That was when he was truly welcomed in their village as one of theirs. It had been a month since then and he had long recovered after 2 weeks of ice in his bones and the chilling pain pumping from his heart throughout him. Pain that he could live without, he could feel it but chose not to let the pain register in his mind. His Core Skill sure was useful at times like this.
Ebony was wondering why he didn''t get any sort of poison resistance but it was due to the fact that he was receiving treatment and his body didn''t get the chance to heal from and adapt to the poison.
Palom had kept visiting him and nursing him back to health for the entire 2 weeks and her visits to the Thoya household became more frequent.
Even after he was already completely healed and kept insisting that he was already fully healed. The concern was flattering but Ebony only moved without thinking, he was bound by the trust the Frost Elves put in him. The thought of not letting any harm befall on the people they entrusted him to protect haunted him. Interacting with people was more troubling than he remembered.
In the 2 and a half months after he got the Reinforced Mana Chassis skill he had been learning the abcs of various types of clothing including robes. Roya had taught him multiple internal structures every type of clothing can have to serve different purposes.
Some were better against sharp attacks, some were better against piercing, some were more comfortable on the skin. How to incorporate his mana into his work. What myriad of materials there were and how each type was suitable and not suitable for what sort of clothing or defensive equipment.
Seeing that Palom kept visiting and he remembered she was from a herbalist family, he didn''t want to waste the chance. He checked if they were fine with telling things about herbalism. He was interested in it anyway.
In the end, Ebony even gained the Gardening Skill. There were many things Palom held back and Halvis didn''t let Ebony mess with his croft so he received a pot with frozen soil that he had grown frostsilk cotton in. Ebony really liked seeing it grow. It was only in the vegetative development stage after one and a half months but it was something. Bringing life was fresh compared to the constant killings.
Once again, the description for skills was really vague.
Gardening - Ability to tend to plants according to their needs increase by 1.0% per level.
Ebony wondered if the description was only vague because he doesn''t understand the skill well enough.
He mostly gave up on looking for Gen. He had no doubt wherever he was was probably beyond Ebony after searching far and wide, seeing no signs of the maple trees in the entire time he was here. The increasingly heavy snowing made it even harder and his normal Perception wasn¡¯t much help. Though his ice magic especially in terms of perceiving ice mana and controlling them improved by leaps and bounds by living here in the midst of masters of the ice element.
And of course, Ebony¡¯s greatest gain in terms of his personal strength. Reinforced Mana Chassis. He was calling the so called mana organ, mana chassis because of the skill. The mana chassis encompasses his entire body due to what he is, his Physique. Ebony forcefully strengthened it to hold compressed mana thereby strengthening his body as a whole. Yes, every single percent of mana compressed in his mana chassis increased his Constitution by a single percent of his Intelligence.
His previous questions were how it would work with his other Mana Compression skill and his Profession Fortification. Roya had some possible answers for him. This ¡®Passive¡¯ that he needed to train actively by trying to keep his body from bursting after forcing stuff inside probably had some restrictions or limitations.
Chances are, it would depend on his Sheer Mana Compression Skill. It likely wouldn¡¯t level beyond how much he could compress his mana by. But then there was his 100% Mana Compressibility Fortification to take into account.
The skill also levelled horribly slowly, the process of training the skill hurts multitudes more than getting a portion of his heart torn off and poisoned. He was not sure about teaching Scarlet a skill that was so painful even for him to learn. There was also the fact that he could only learn this skill because he was partially made of mana. He could only hope she would get to change her Physique to one of a mana being as well.
Ebony found that he didn¡¯t regenerate compressed mana per se. He had to fully regenerate his mana and let mana continue accumulating before they would accept being compressed inside his mana chassis. He had to have a full mana pool to train the skill which was honestly a waste of mana and time but it was too good a skill not to train. While it could be said that his mana pool has increased in a sense he didn¡¯t think that way since he didn¡¯t see a single reason to dilute his already compressed mana to cast spells with.
Another restriction would likely be his Constitution stat itself. It was like an enhancement spell or skill. Many people already researched how Strength and Agility correlated with Constitution but there were considerably fewer mages, much fewer enhancement mages of specific types for any real published result of the correlation between Intelligence and Constitution.
Ebony didn¡¯t wear his myriad bracelet at all so that his overflowing mana wasn¡¯t absorbed. He didn¡¯t call Scarlet or Hector even once and they didn¡¯t call him either.
???
In the 3 months he had been living here it had only gotten colder and colder. Ebony had picked up a new habit. It started from looking out the window to see the change in hue in the moon''s colour or moonlight when he was playing with magic in his room. Then he practised on the roof from then on or even just watched the moon as time passed and he meditated.
The autumn moon turned from light orange to red by the end of autumn and when winter came the red got darker in shade every night till light was turned off on Elcra. Ebony¡¯s improved Perception didn¡¯t mean shit, looking around the not small but not large village only to see some dim warm light of phos and looking up to see complete darkness.
He had no trouble moving around the house due to his improving Frost Mist Perception Sphere, Vibrational Gravity Sense and Mana Perception. Ebony had kept to his newfound hobby of just sitting and chilling while watching the moon, he didn''t even stop when he could no longer see the moon in the middle of winter as it turned black.
Winter was a completely different beast altogether. It was the time for the adults of the village to come out to play. The children were all grounded into their homes for their own training. The village guards were all adults. The blizzard outside the village buried the entire village walls under snow. The village itself was unaffected, the work of magic.
The nights weren¡¯t silent at all. It was more active than any forest he had been in. The roars, the screams, the laughter. All of it was just the beginning as winter only just started. He was also forbidden to go out of the village at night. Watching the attacks from the village walls one night was enough to make him sit still and stay grounded.
Ebony now really understood why so few even bothered coming to Hoarfrost Glade. Winter was when it truly woke up and came alive. Yet, the average majority would likely have enough trouble with the environment in summer. And Arcta was situated at the edge of Hoarfrost Glade where it was the safest. As the nights passed it became cold enough that he was shivering and ice formed on his skin every few minutes if he didn¡¯t manipulate it away. His skin would probably crack from the dry chill over and over again if not for his Physique and Sheer Cold resistance.
Ebony felt a little weird as his stay in Arcta continued. It kept getting colder but only his heart felt colder while he just treated his body as getting Sheer Cold Resistance training. He didn¡¯t like the feeling one bit, he couldn¡¯t drive it away with Everlasting Tranquillity only slowing the creeping chill. There was no ice mana involved as he had to leave his mana full so that he could reinforce his mana chassis as long as he wasn¡¯t fighting or tailoring.
He even asked the Lasil family elder to check him one more time for any poison left in his heart. He also doubted it since his health was back to full with even his hand having fully recovered but it was better safe than sorry. It might just be a dormant poison for all he knew.
There was nothing found and he was as healthy as he could be. They didn¡¯t find the cause of the symptoms that he described but it only made Palom who overheard the conversation even more worried and checked on him frequently.
As nice as that sounded, it gained attention from some of the older Frost Elves that clearly liked Palom and didn¡¯t like the attention she was giving Ebony. They were all Master Class and only didn¡¯t attack him as he had saved her and some even had their siblings protected by him. All in all, they also had really nice personalities and no grudges were sown.
Ebony even made chit chat with them. Since it was so obvious they liked her, he gave some random tips for them to try to appeal to Palom. He might have never been in a relationship with a girl or wooed anyone; he was probably still better with all the movies and stories he had watched and read compared to these Frost Elves who didn¡¯t know much of the outside world.
It was a win-win for him, he could get the overly worried Palom away and the young males not to build up a grudge with him either. Palom had been getting closer to him than he liked, it was weird he felt that way.
Today, Mrs.Calhy the frost plum lady had extended the invitation to visit her husband¡¯s farm as they were right about to bloom. It would be an overnight stay since frost plums apparently bloomed at night. Mrs.Calhy even visited and asked for permission from who she thought was Ebony¡¯s guardian which was the Thoya couple. He was completely a child in their eyes.
Ebony found it weird that he didn¡¯t see any farm despite searching quite a large area in the Chilly region and he didn¡¯t believe the farm would be so deep and far away from the village. He was right when he was brought not far away from the village and saw the snow on the ground part. The farm wasn¡¯t exactly underground, it was just half an illusion spell they got someone to make according to Mrs.Calhy. There had never been a monster attack on it so that said it was more than safe enough for him to stay overnight without any problems
It suddenly became an outing trip for the young Frost Elves because Clovis heard it and wanted to go too. Then Tiha and the young ones heard it from Clovis and insisted on going too. Somehow getting into Palom¡¯s ears and then her suitors. With so many of their children insisting they had to send some adults to watch over them just in case. Enya was also there since her sister Tiha was going. The easygoing and always smiling Koawe was going too.
They went a little earlier in the day to avoid any monsters. It turned into a mini festival for the village.
The farm wasn¡¯t huge but there was more than enough space for all of them. The plum trees were only about 6-7 metres tall. The dark blue buds were already on them and already about to bloom.
Ebony created a chair that was slowly turning out to look more like a throne like the one on which Earthen-Topaz Core Golem sat. Adjusting the backrest to lay back a little and making himself comfortable eating a frost plum. What better to eat when waiting for their flowers to bloom?
Night came quickly. Some of the youngest children like Clovis already fell asleep as they were not used to staying up late and needed quite a bit of sleep.
The flowers bloomed a little late but it was the greatest birthday present he could hope for as he engraved the most beautiful flowers he had seen in his mind. They didn¡¯t look too much different from the plum flowers on Earth, 5 wide round-tipped petals with multiple filaments inside and no stem. In the middle was dark blue and it lightened in shade till the tips of the petals to a light cyan. He didn¡¯t really have to ¡®engrave¡¯ it in his head since he could never forget this scene.
Ebony only felt that it was too bad that something felt missing here.
Chapter 81: Clatter Rattle
Winter calmly passed by just like any other season in 4 months.
Arcta received many visitors. Many a [Grand Ice Mage Lvl ???] popped up in Ebony¡¯s Identify. They returned to spend the winter here as it was tiresome for some to continue staying in the other village since it got really damn dangerous. They stayed hidden in some random empty houses and were shut-ins so he didn''t see them much.
It was a very peaceful 4 months for Ebony. He didn¡¯t have to do any more escorting or protecting since no children went out. He himself stayed in the village to learn about the endless things he could, about making clothes with the thousands and thousands of types of materials there were.
Ebony¡¯s level didn¡¯t change but his skill levels did.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 179
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 100
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 129
Ice Mana Control Lvl 131
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 132
Flowing Greatsword Mastery Lvl 116
Frost Injection Lvl 130
Ice Sword Lvl 114
Ceaseless Onslaught Lvl 109
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 124
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 137
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Orchestral Gravity Conductor Lvl 100
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 112
Mana Vibration Lvl 106
Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 122
Magnified Gravity Field Lvl 105
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 129
Vibrational Gravity Sense Lvl 122
Sonic Overlay - Lvl 117
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 100
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 119
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 133
Mana Perception Lvl 136
Reinforced Mana Chassis Lvl 68
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 500/500
Stamina: 500/500
Mana: 5300/5300
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 50
Vitality: 50
Constitution: 250 [505]
Endurance: 50
Agility: 250
Intelligence: 376
Wisdom: 530
Perception: 100 [279]
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 14
Identify Lvl 14
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 51
Running Lvl 34
Mental Mapping Lvl 19
Kicking Mastery Lvl 45
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 8
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 18
Dish Washing Lvl 20
Physical Conditioning Lvl 16
Magical Conditioning Lvl 16
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 52
Tracking Lvl 12
Game Processing Lvl 10
Heat Resistance Lvl 30
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
Gardening Lvl 16
He had mostly focused on his lagging Profession so his Class and Sub-Class didn¡¯t get all that much training in despite it having been a whole 7 months, excluding his perception-type skills. With his Natural Potential having been increased by 5 times, his generic skills also saw some improvement here and there. It may or may not affect his evolution since there was a pretty good chance he would be able to kick it into one of his classes as a slight change to them.
When all the skills that he had got to obtain his Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze Class reached level 110 he had received a prompt for evolution. Saying that he had reached the requirement for a Class Evolution. Ebony obviously chucked that aside.
Now only his greatsword mastery was pulling him back more. When some of his other skills reached the 110 or 125 mark they were added to the skill requirement list together with an additional prompt for evolution. When many skills reached that mark, he got multiple similar prompts with only some skills being included and some not.
From Scarlet¡¯s and Hector¡¯s combined knowledge. It was known to both that the most amount of additional Fortification from evolution a person is recorded to have is 3 more for one¡¯s Class, 2 more for their Sub-Class and 1 more for their Profession.
The original ones that one had would strengthen according to the skill levels reached. The Fortification would likely depend on which skills are included in the skill requirement of the evolution choice. The 2 very well informed people were insistent that it was more important that one trained, practised or took action more in accordance to what they wanted their Fortification to be.
Ebony threw caution to the wind because he was sure 250% Fortification buff was no secret and asked them about it too. Scarlet definitely had them.
Hector was as open as ever and was proud to inform that he had one. He even shared, it was 250% more resistant to mana poisoning and its effects. It fit him to a tee as he really needed it for the type of enhancement mage he was.
They already knew or guessed Ebony''s but sadly, Scarlet didn''t say what hers was.
She was more knowledgeable about this topic than Hector.
250% Fortification buff was obviously broken but there was a limit to how much Fortification one can handle or so she says.
A person can withstand a limit of 3 and only a Class can withstand it.
Neither Scarlet or Ebony noticed Hector''s tiny frown when he heard her explain this part. The constant smile hid it.
Meaning even if he got his Sub-Class and Profession skills to the required level he would not get a 250% Fortification buff for them.
Ebony was willing to bet that if the Xengs knew so much then Scarlet definitely had all 3 already. She later confirmed the 2.0 times required level so he would need to reach level 200 for the skills he wanted.
It was a pretty good find that he could add information that he wanted to see on his status page like the amount of Constitution he got from his passive skill.
He couldn¡¯t do the same for other stuff on his status so Ebony thought it was only possible due to Reinforced Mana Chassis being a passive skill and maybe also because he had the Mental Arithmetic skill. Just like his Perception.
Ebony had learned all that he could about tailoring within a mere 5 months. It wasn¡¯t that Roya had nothing left to teach, it was just that there was little left that she could teach that he could do with just mana and the knowledge on structure and properties of materials and clothing.
[Robe of the Ice Swordsman (Rare) - Tailored for both an ice mage and a swordsman]
It was similar to his old robe but now it was full length to his ankles. It was really more of a coat but he''s just gonna call it a robe because that''s what Roya called it. She didn¡¯t forget to make it more form-fitting around his waist and hips so that the extension to his legs wouldn¡¯t flutter and cause difficulty moving about. He asked her to forget about the hoodie function since he never used it so she just made the collar a little higher to cover the back of his neck.
The design was a little different but the biggest difference was the capabilities of the robe. Minus the addition of frost plum blossom on his cuffs and lining at the bottom of his robes. It didn¡¯t take up a lot of space and was made as a small, inconspicuous decoration.
Similarly 3 layers of materials that are not too different from his old one but are able to do everything better. Once again frostsilk cotton but the best of the best that Halvis had kept.
The older Frost Elves that heard about Ebony¡¯s act of protecting Palom with his body also randomly took some stuff out but Roya admittedly wasn¡¯t able to work with those materials. The snow serpent¡¯s skin was also a Rare material but it wasn¡¯t suitable as the toughness and durability that he liked weren¡¯t its forte. It was also more of a snow elemental material than an ice one.
Another plant-based material was used in place of a snake¡¯s skin. Hoarfrost Jutial, he didn''t know what that was but it was supposed to be a plant that was just one large leaf that regrows every 3 years. Sponsored by the Lasil family, they wouldn¡¯t accept any use of poor materials. They were immensely grateful to Ebony who saved their child and they wouldn¡¯t accept him just taking some pills that they could dish out with the materials at hand. They gave a lot of these so that it could be incorporated into his robe.
Lastly was once again the web of a spider, spider webs were wondrous materials. Simply a stronger and Rare version of the metal magic using one. Koawe volunteered to go get it from some city or perhaps hunt the spider himself. He was gone for a week before coming back with a ton of it in his spatial storage which even Palom had.
Ebony felt bad making the village move for him but they kept saying there was no need to feel bad. That it was just grass that kept growing in their garden or Koawe already planning to take a walk outside Hoarfrost Glade since it was winter it wouldn¡¯t be that bad outside either to visit a friend or two.
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He didn¡¯t need anyone to tell him that all the ¡®Rare¡¯ rated materials would cost a bomb and a half not to mention putting it together. Roya didn¡¯t let him pay for it either, saying it was a test of her own skills as well or that she gained many levels just from making it.
Roya overdid herself with the masterpiece that she made. She also used liquefied tungsten rime to soak both the frostilk cotton and hoarfrost jutial in it. There was so much used that he could bathe in it. It was the ¡®easiest¡¯ to obtain material for them. It could easily take millions of his mana, ice mana to be specific.
She even made it such that it could store it as excess mana he could use to cast with. It was like a staff or wand that contained the elemental mana of the mage that they could use instead of conjuring. As long as he precharged it, running out of ice mana in the middle of the battle was getting more and more unlikely. It didn''t mean he would have millions of ice mana to cast in battle since he would still need to use his own mana to control it, like any other mage who uses elemental mana in their weapons. It would definitely conserve a lot of mana if he were to use the stored ice mana though.
Roya dissected his Layered Ice Carapace skill, he had cast the spell for her many times. Mostly in their singular scale form. He was involved with the robe''s creation this time round. The robe had one ability, expending the stored ice mana to form similar scales across itself. It was a very cool scale robe that would defend him from blunt attacks too. He was advised against using it for the time being as it would be way weaker than the base durability or toughness of the robe itself now due to the defence of this ability being dependent on his ice mana, spell power, Intelligence stat and all that.
Ebony didn¡¯t want too many miscellaneous abilities on the robe, he had enough skills to worry about. He didn¡¯t want to worry or forget about anything that the robe can do that he didn¡¯t use. So, Roya made her either rune or enchantment to do one thing and that was the toughness and durability of the robe using charged mana. She could have made it do many things, like with the spell glove she could make it ¡®save¡¯ more precast spells or have mana move smoother in it and all the magical stuff like weakening a certain type of elemental attack on it.
The problem and why he thought they overdid it with the materials and making it was because he couldn¡¯t wear it without falling to the ground and just flaying his limbs around on the ground. It was heavy even with Icebody Enhancement on but at least it wasn¡¯t impossible to move in it.
While he wouldn¡¯t say he was impossible to kill since his head was an obvious opening and a good hard blunt hit could still smash him to death, at least nothing that could destroy his Layered Ice Carapace could even scratch his robes. Magic could harm him without much issue though, those wide-area types.
Ebony planned to leave before he became too comfortable but he didn¡¯t have that issue since he never got too comfortable with the weird chill that slowly intensified over time. That odd imaginary pain he had never felt before was more on his mind than the pain his body undergoes when his mana chassis was being reinforced.
He had stayed for a bit longer than he thought as he didn¡¯t want to miss the frost plum flowers. He had become a frequent visitor. Also, he was waiting for winter to pass and the Lasil family wanted to observe his health a little longer.
Ebony had become more and more distant with the Frost Elves, even Clovis and it was worrisome. They then said it was because he was still human and perhaps staying in Hoarfrost Glade for an extended period of time wasn¡¯t doing him good. It was the perfect chance for him to say his farewells.
Ebony didn¡¯t make many or any promises at all, he firmly believed promises were made to be kept so he never promised Clovis that he would bring any books or stories of his travels the next time he comes back. Because he knew that there was a chance that he wouldn¡¯t be able to come back.
Unlike the promise he made to Gen about keeping the location or the full details of his Physique secret or the time he promised that he wouldn¡¯t hunt until he was level 10. Those were within his control, he thought. His life and death? Currently, he had no confidence in saying it was under his control. Especially seeing all the incredibly powerful Frost Elves and the monsters of Hoarfrost Glade. Heck, even the weather was enough to kill him if he went deep enough.
He thought he wouldn¡¯t receive any more and be able to give back but he was too naive. Why did he even come back to take more?
The Frost Elves weren¡¯t dissatisfied with Ebony but he was dissatisfied with himself. Yet, he didn¡¯t blame himself. He was weak, sure, but everyone had a starting point. Like they had told him multiple times, he was just a young child.
With the supposed extension of his lifespan, he had even more time. He wasn¡¯t rushing for anything so why not take it slow.
Ebony stayed longer because of that, taking things slow. See the sights and enjoy living. Sadly, he found himself tasting things less and less.
Perception also increased the sensitivity of his taste buds but he knew he tasted things a little lesser ever since he turned into a mana being and that it wasn¡¯t the ingredients of Elcra tasting different from Earth¡¯s. Even so, Ebony gradually lost the sense of taste with the increasing chill in his heart. He believed it was time to leave as it was doing him no good to stay here any longer.
Spring was here and he restarted or rather, started his travels for real this time. At least, that had been the plan.
Ebony said his goodbyes to all the friends he had made here, Thoya family, Lasil family, Palom and her suitors who became pretty close with him, Mr and Mrs.Calhy, the village chief and his wife, Korben the village guardian, Koawe, Tiha and Enya.
Roya was worried Ebony didn¡¯t want to come back anymore for some reason, maybe the fact that she had nothing much left to teach him was what led him to want to leave so quickly.
Ebony had to say that he would definitely come back here, he could come back here to complete his evolution when he was ready. That was more than enough to reassure her. It showed the trust he had in them as one was completely defenceless when they were evolving and everyone needed to be protected or at least in a place that was safe when they were evolving.
He got his belongings and didn¡¯t hesitate to leave. Still carrying along the heavy ass block of wood. A wood mage helped confirm that it was a type of wood but he didn¡¯t know what type. Since it was dungeon material it was probably some new variant he had never seen or heard of.
There were wood mages/workers here but he didn¡¯t want them to make anything with it when they were not confident of even deducing the properties and whatnot of the material. It''s not as if he wanted a bow which they were the experts to ask.
Over the duration he was here, the block of wood didn¡¯t stop absorbing the small amount of ice mana in the surrounding that managed to land on it. Now he was certain it was heavier than it had been at the start. It didn¡¯t change in look or colour or even feel cold so that was surprising. However, Ebony was now able to sense the ice mana inside it.
In his bag were a dozen sets of clothing for himself and made by himself. Wear and tear was quite a problem when one moves so fast and has a lot of strength. Quite an impressive number of Blues that was filled up in his sleep over the 7 months. Buying a good greatsword should not be a problem with the sum he had.
Wearing the impressively heavy robe and the block of wood made him slow down a lot before he was able to reach Plainston. He had to have Icebody Enhancement on constantly to even carry all that weight.
Plainston was mostly filled up with new buildings already and was fully functional as a city now.
The Quest Hall was the second largest building now. The arena or coliseum took over it, though that was only above ground. The underground of the Quest Hall was probably larger by a big margin. The mage tower was also open already.
Ebony easily qualified as a second order mage to the desk receptionist that easily recorded that down into his quester crystal which served somewhat like an identification at this point. The mage tower was a little disappointing. There were hardly any books on gravity or even sound magic that was available for a second order ice mage like him. He also wasn''t allowed to read many books because he never contributed as a real member in terms of either knowledge or work like research or defence.
He had found out that Top and Chris died in Ordina when he made a previous visit. The other 3 had split up to different places too and they wouldn¡¯t tell him where. There was nothing he could do besides mourning for the friendly acquaintances he had made. It also reminded him that he wasn¡¯t even able to carry Ryley¡¯s remaining body out to bury and had to leave him for Ordina to devour.
He made one final check at Z&Z for spatial storage but there weren¡¯t any. He also wasn¡¯t able to order any, they didn¡¯t say why but they were a business. It was clear that it just wasn¡¯t profitable for them to send one all the way out here unless he paid ridiculous transportation fees.
Propping the block of wood up his shoulder, he was ready to leave Plainston and move further east. Just the general direction of the Capital, Tidal. Ebony was just planning to go where his feet took him. Making stops at any town or city and checking them out or staying a night or two. If he found something worth his time he would check it out too.
He took a step outside after the city guards let him through without stopping him.
¡°Ahh¡«that hurts you little rascal!¡±
Ebony felt himself bumping into something, someone in this case. His alertness rose. He didn¡¯t even sense her getting close to him with his Vibrational Gravity Sense.
¡®She silently got close enough to me that I couldn¡¯t react to until after she bumped into me without making any violent waves in the surrounding mana?¡¯ whoever the hell bumped into him was keeping his danger alert at all time high. His current range with his mana control and senses was 28 metres. A pretty impressive improvement in 7 months.
Ebony looked at where he was bumped into to see a short old lady rubbing her shoulder as if he really hurt her by bumping into her. She had a full head of grey hair mostly tied into a bun with some bangs and loose hair hanging on both sides of her face filled with light wrinkles. She was only about 145cm tall with a hunched back, a small old lady but she should be a human as far as Ebony could tell. He had to Identify her even if he didn¡¯t think he could beat the old lady if she wanted to beat him or even if he didn¡¯t feel any danger from her.
[Gnarly Old Lady Lvl 6969]
¡®The hell?¡¯ Ebony knew it was just some scam, he wouldn¡¯t be able to Identify something or someone that high level. Neither did he think anyone or thing would identify as ¡®Gnarly Old Lady¡¯ the colour of the result was black too.
¡°Little rascal. How are you going to pay me for making me wait so long? Aii¡«never mind. Hold out that naughty hand of yours that you used.¡± the gnarly old lady complained before asking something he couldn¡¯t comprehend. Seeing Ebony hesitate to do anything at all, she shook her head in disapproval before looking up to the sky then sighing.
¡°It must be this one. Come on, you made me wait long enough.¡± The old lady randomly grabbed Ebony¡¯s left wrist before walking out of Plainston. Dragging him along with her vice-like grip, disregarding him who cast Chaotic Repulsive Membrane the moment he realised she bumped into him. Her eyelid raised before she crushed into his wrist causing it to creak under pressure.
He had no idea who she was but she wasn¡¯t letting go. She said she was waiting for him but he had never met her.
He eased up on Chaotic Repulsive Membrane, it wasn¡¯t doing crap and the old lady didn¡¯t seem to mean any harm.
¡®Just what did my left hand do to deserve all the nonsense it''s going through? She called it naughty, is that what it looks like?¡¯
They got quite a distance away from the city before the old lady bent her knees a little and jumped. His arm threatened to rip off from his shoulders as they broke the magical sound barrier many times in a second. He would¡¯ve been knocked out if it wasn¡¯t for Everlasting Tranquillity but Ebony was as calm as ever. The old lady was too strong to resist and she clearly wanted to bring him somewhere.
Ebony took note of which direction they went in. She didn¡¯t fly, only jumped hard enough that the extremely compact and tough dirt ground had a crater almost 3 metres in diameter and half as deep. Of course, he was too far to see that by the time he noticed he was getting dragged. They went up high and he could see Plainston turning into a small dot before disappearing from sight as they landed on a random mound of earth.
He compressed Icebody Enhancement even further so that his arms wouldn¡¯t hurt that much.
¡°Oh, smart boy! I can go faster this way. It would be a waste of time otherwise.¡± the old lady exclaimed. Her next jump was one filled with more power and dizzying speed. He wasn¡¯t dizzy, calmly taking note of whatever features or landmarks he passed by. Everything was a blur at the height and speed the old lady was carrying him.
One thing he was sure of was that he passed by a town or 2 with every single one of the old lady¡¯s jumps. The scenery changed a little as dirt roads became grey paved roads. They were even road signs that Ebony spotted when the old lady landed and complained about him being heavier than he looks and how jumping was bad for her knees. Then she asked if he could strengthen his body any further because she had to slow down too much so that she wouldn''t break him.
Population density also increased quite a bit. Ebony saw some caravans travelling with the freelancers or contracted escort parties protecting the cargo and requester or contractor.
The old lady didn¡¯t stop at any town or city, even travelling through the night without sleep or rest. Ebony realised even the road and cities were more brightly lit up at night. One good thing was that they were travelling east where he originally wanted to go. The ¡®screens¡¯ in towns were larger.
Ebony hoped he would be able to get some of those memory light ores he had heard about from Roya and Halvis, they even showed him some of their collection.
Memory light ores were basically ores that contained ¡®videos¡¯. There was even a profession called Memory Lighter. Practically an actor and memory lights mainly contained movies, series, educational and documentaries. Well, they used to mainly contain educational, spell and skill content before entertainment was even a priority but the idea came up quite a while back after the current King, Queen and Emperor rose to power and Elva got immensely safer. Population shot through the roof and whatnot.
Many people such as Rowent and his party, Ebony¡¯s own party, asked him why he had focused so much on defensive skills.
It seemed like such a stupid question, whether it was the King, Queen, Emperor, many other previous Emperors and Empress recorded in the Sovereign Temple of Heroes. Those that were known to be alive for a long time had a strong defensive lineup.
The Barrier King, Life Queen and Oplot the Indestructible and the many different titles he had for being untouched or undamaged. Ebony didn¡¯t see the need to explain himself that however powerful he got he needed to first survive to get the last laugh.
Watching movies and tv series was such a nice way to pass time that he would one day be able to indulge in once again. It was a hobby for the nobles and rich merchants but Ebony didn¡¯t think he was that poor. The countryside that was Plainston just didn¡¯t have such stuff. ¡®Let¡¯s just hope the lady is not going to throw me into some dungeon or somewhere without civilization.¡¯
The night passed together with another day and night about to come again before the old lady slowed down. Fake huffing and puffing with both her hands on her knees. The moonlight was turning from a dark purple from after the middle of winter to a lighter shade. It would be a purple to almost pink shade before turning back to white in summer apparently.
¡°Gah finally here. At least it was a few hours earlier than expected. Little rascal, follow me.¡± The old lady said.
¡°Mmm. Where is this?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t bother asking who she was or why she brought him here since he thought she would explain sooner or later.
They had crossed an unimaginable distance according to his rough estimate and calculation. Walking towards a city gate, the walls were at least 200 metres tall, over a tenth as thick and the materials of the walls were sandy in colour but the texture looked like rock or stone. From the sky, the city was at least 3 to 4 times bigger than Plainston and may even house tens of millions of people.
¡°We are in Clatter Rattle City. Almost anything that can be found on Elva can be found here. A city of collection, craft and thievery.¡± The old lady introduced as they walked past the [Master Warrior Lvl ???] after paying the city entry fee of 3 Greens each.
¡°What are you looking for?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Someone.¡±
¡°Who?¡±
¡°Come on dust yourself and be presentable. Let¡¯s hope her mood is good or you won¡¯t be able to snag a good teacher.¡±
¡°A teacher? For me? What will she be teaching?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t even ask who this old lady was but if she was finding a teacher for him, he had to know what he was there to learn.
The old lady hailed what looked like a carriage pulled by horses the size of warhorses. [Dart Horse Lvl 150]. The ride was comfortable and even faster than him. There were no bumps due to uneven roads or suspension issues. The city probably had higher speed limits. The horse sped and slowed down as the [Master Coachman Lvl 161] turned corners and switched onto another road.
The ride took over an hour. There was traffic and safety to take into account when it was a city packed with people and structures so they could only move so fast. Stopping in a street that was a lot quieter and had much fewer buildings around. The old lady alighted and tossed some ores to the driver.
They walked at normal speeds and stopped at a large cottage looking building. From the outside, it looked about 200 to 300 square metres and was 3 floors tall. Ebony knew the buildings here were made taller on average so it might not have 3 floors.
The wooden walls were dark brown in colour with the roof tiles being black. There was a fence but the old lady just pushed the unlocked fence gate open. The yard was full of weeds and untended grass, the porch had dry mud footprints. Overall, a slightly dirty outlook on the building. The interesting thing was that after he followed the old lady and walked past the fence gate he began to hear the many noises mixing at the same time.
The ground was vibrating softly, the cottage had ringing and then banging noises, the air was thick and smoky. Illusion, mirage and sound magic were what he was guessing. He didn¡¯t manage to sense the sound magic that was at play probably due to the illusion or whatever magic was going on.
¡°Little Jing, come out! This old lady is here to visit!¡±
¡®Little Jing?¡¯ That was an odd name out of all the names he had heard here on Elva. Ebony wondered what race the person would be from since different races tend to name their child slightly differently from one another. It was a familiar naming sense to what he was used to hearing.
Chapter 82: New Residence
A minute or two passed.
The loud noise from the cottage stopped but the soft vibrations from the ground didn¡¯t. The squeaky door hinges opened to reveal who was behind it.
A woman, about as tall as Ebony, perhaps a tiny bit taller. That was pretty tall if she was human.
Ebony blinked twice seeing a thick white mask that covered the upper portion of her face. The bottom showed her thin, pink lips with a black smudge of soot or something similar on her jaws reaching her lip. Rather than a red feather on the mask like Scarlet¡¯s, her mask had a black line horizontally across with a small circle in the middle, the horizontal line not cutting through it. She had asphalt grey hair that was loosened from a similar bun to that of the old lady before whipping her head side to side to let her shoulder-blade length hair fall.
She put on a pair of boots that were on her porch by sliding her feet in. Wearing a thick brown leather apron over her shirt that she rolled the sleeves up. She had long legs and a figure good enough that the leather apron or dirty sooty clothing wasn¡¯t enough to cover her completely.
[Grand Craftswoman Lvl ???]
¡®Craftswoman?¡¯ That was new. Ebony usually Identifies, blacksmith, tailor and whatnot. Blacksmith¡¯s actual Class may be a weapon or armour smith, a tailor may be a dress tailor or an under armour tailor for all he knew since Identify doesn¡¯t tell much. It was the first time he had Identified a ¡®craftswoman¡¯ and he had never even heard of it.
Her level or rather, Grandmaster status didn¡¯t really scare him anymore after seeing quite a few older Frost Elves.
The overflowing Vitality from her on the other hand far surpassed any magically inclined Frost Elves. As if his robes were not heavy enough, he felt a phantom pressure pushing him down into the ground just standing in her presence. Unlike the old lady who he couldn¡¯t feel or even sense her presence with his Perception or magic.
The craftswomen first ruffled her hair before looking towards the old lady and was about to call out after her hands raised up for a wave before she stopped and Ebony felt himself getting pulled forward. She had grabbed the collar of his robes and was really close, her face got close enough to touch. She smelled burnt.
The craftswoman didn¡¯t bother with him but just appraised the robe he was wearing and before he knew it he was flung out of his own robe like a ragdoll. Fortunately, she didn¡¯t use much strength and it wasn¡¯t that hard for him to land safely. Ebony couldn¡¯t even stop her from stripping him out of his robe. The old lady only chuckled at his plight.
The pure physical stats were enough to overpower any skill or spell he had even though the craftswoman wasn''t a combat-focused class.
¡°...Interesting. Oh, so that¡¯s how. Impressive. Hmm, it¡¯s a little familiar¡ ohh, Thoya. Mana Tailor. I see.¡± The craftswoman whispered to herself.
It was loud enough that he could hear. He didn¡¯t expect the lady to know about Roya or mana tailoring. But he wasn¡¯t all that surprised, based on common sense a Grandmaster Class like her may be hundreds of years old as a human. Roya was a very young Frost Elf not even 200 years old. She worked in the Capital before so it might not be weird for craftsmen to recognise other craftsmen.
She then picked up the block of wood he brought like a twig and swung it all the way up to eye level before giving it the same inspection. She was silent this time so he couldn¡¯t tell if she knew what it was.
¡°Aii¡«little Jing can¡¯t even serve some tea to this old lady that came all the way here.¡± The old lady complained.
¡°Hey grand aunt, take a seat. I¡¯ll bring out whatever I have, I should have some tea somewhere around.¡± The craftswoman snapped out of it and tossed the block onto the ground.
¡°So? What brought grand aunt here? I didn¡¯t tell anyone where I went. I guess if anyone knew where I was it would be you.¡± she continued.
Taking a table and 3 chairs out of nowhere, inviting her own ¡®grand aunt¡¯ into her house was not within her considerations it seems. Ebony couldn''t help but be a little envious of taking things out of nowhere. There was no bag in sight and he didn¡¯t see a ring or necklace so he suspected it was the myriad bracelet again. The myriad bracelet was like an all-purpose tool where you could add all sorts of different functions in, similar to a phone. Convenient.
¡°Of course, I¡¯m just here to see my cute little niece. Pass that over, your tea tastes horrible.¡± The old lady snatched the teapot and started making tea herself.
¡°I won¡¯t be fooled anymore. You must be here for some scheme or prank of yours. Spit it out.¡± The craftswoman plopped down on her seat with her arms crossed.
¡°How rude! I brought you a student here. Sit down and introduce yourself, boy.¡± Ebony was finally brought into the conversation. His robe was already nicely placed onto the backrest of the remaining seat so at least she didn¡¯t treat him as invisible or anything like that.
Ebony sat down thinking about how impressive the chair was to withstand the weight of his robe. Ebony himself had gained a noticeable amount of mass. He had noticed when he sank deeper and deeper into the snow after Reinforced Mana Chassis levelled up a couple dozen times. It wasn¡¯t a big issue really, mass helped one hit harder anyway.
¡°I don¡¯t know who this lady is, I was just dragged here. Oh, I am Ebony.¡± Ebony answered after giving the old lady a glance when he was referring to her.
¡°You kidnapped someone again? Little Xin¡¯s going to get mad again.¡± He was somewhat ignored.
¡°OH! That¡¯s the thing!¡± The old lady placed a palm on his chest and pushed him all the way out the fence gate, rolling onto the street.
They were chatting and he could see the excited grin on the old lady¡¯s face while the other lady went from confused to stunned to smashing the table. Then she spread her arms wide open and was probably shouting before sitting back down in anger.
The old lady who caught the teapot still had the same grin and it appeared to him that she was attempting to convince or persuade the craftswoman in some fashion since the woman didn¡¯t look as angry as time passed.
Ebony couldn¡¯t hear what they were saying but he was dragged by the collar back past the fence line before he knew it. He was alarmed again when he felt a hand pop out right in front of him, he couldn¡¯t tell if it was some illusion, materialisation of mana in the form of a hand or just space magic. The next thing he knew was that the old lady was no longer in the corner of his vision. Obviously nowhere in his range of senses either.
The craftswoman brought her face really close to his, they stared at each other silently for what felt like hours before she let him go. She pulled a thin stick to her lips before it lit up. She was smoking. They called it a strain reliever but he just called it a cigarette.
¡°What can you do?¡±
¡°...Not much. A little ice, gravity and sound magic. Oh, I can clean too.¡± Ebony added the end after looking around at the state of the house. He didn¡¯t need to have a good imagination to know that it would be worse inside.
Ebony was taking the situation pretty lightly. He wanted to travel far anyway, this was probably further than anywhere he could reach in months. The old lady who kidnapped him was already nowhere to be found and she probably wouldn¡¯t tell him much.
From what she said, she brought him to this craftswomen to be her student. Honestly, Ebony wasn¡¯t looking to further his research or studies into crafts any time in the near future since he was made aware of his weakness once again in Hoarfrost Glade. But this was a craftswoman above level 300, a Grandmaster. Furthermore, that mask of hers told him that she was a Xeng or highly likely to be one.
This was an opportunity that fell right onto his laps for all he knew.
Who knows? Just because she was a craftswoman didn¡¯t mean she didn¡¯t know how to fight. Like they all told him, he had time. There was no real rush other than the constant sense of weakness and helplessness building up in his mind.
What if while he was dilly-dallying with playing around without training something happened that would require his power and he wasn¡¯t strong enough because he didn¡¯t focus on his combat ability. He just got kidnapped for no reason and didn¡¯t have an ounce of resistance worth mentioning. Paranoia.
Ebony crushed the paranoia with his usual calm and clarity.
Not everything was out trying to kill or harm him. Sure, he spent 7 months learning how to make all sorts of clothes but did he not get stronger and tougher to kill too? His Class and Sub-Class skills have slowed down in levelling but that was only natural as their levels grew and he wasn¡¯t exactly risking his life on a daily basis to fight much stronger enemies to force their growth.
¡°Calling my house dirty!?¡± Ebony thought he saw her almost smile, though her words don¡¯t match her expression.
¡°And messy.¡± He added.
¡°A punk huh¡I don¡¯t believe it¡¡±
She raised the leg she crossed but he sensed a leg slowly materialising above his head, this time he saw that part of her leg was no longer connected to her. Definitely space magic or something similar. Ebony slightly moved aside in time since he noticed in advance and she didn¡¯t use some nonsensical speed.
He didn¡¯t overestimate himself but his dodging irritated the craftswoman who changed the axe kick from above to a turning kick that ¡®teleported¡¯ and appeared too close for him to dodge. Luckily, compressed Icebody Enhancement was already running so it didn¡¯t really hurt him.
Reinforced Mana Chassis¡¯s passive increase of Constitution only applied when he was full on mana and the mana in his body was compressed. Ebony always left it that way to train the skill nowadays. Compressed Icebody Enhancement only took whatever still leaked out because his mana chassis still wasn¡¯t able to hold so much.
Besides, once it was fully compressed to 68% everything still leaks out as excess. Ebony''s current mana regeneration of almost 307.6MP/min or 5.13MP/s easily supported a single spell or two. Though, this way of casting didn¡¯t use mana that was as compressed as it could be and Icebody Enhancement was only at about 40% of his maximum compression limit. He couldn¡¯t increase it anymore despite all the time he had spent trying to increase it.
12.5MP/min was how much Icebody Enhancement consumed. Sheer Mana Compression and 100% Compressibility made Ebony¡¯s current limit 665%, 40% of that was 266%. 12.5 + 33.25 = 45.75MP/min.
The original 147% increase in Constitution based on Intelligence is increased to 538.02%.
2022.95 increase in Constitution on top of his 250 base and 255 from Reinforced Mana Chassis gave Ebony a Constitution equivalent to 2527. Strength and Endurance of 1967.
He was still a little surprised he was pierced through by a level 122 snake. Of course, his Reinforced Mana Chassis and other skill levels weren¡¯t as high at that time but that was not a big difference.
Ebony had to remember when fighting other people that he wasn¡¯t the only one with stat and skill levels buffing him. Not to mention Fortification and skill tiers make a big difference. He couldn¡¯t underestimate anyone no matter the level. He never did.
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He had gotten more and more familiar with leaving his mana pool alone and just manipulating whatever overflowed before it dissolved into the surroundings. The Frost Elves also taught him some basic mage tactics with manipulating or keeping overflowing mana as a makeshift mana pool. Warriors had overflowing Vitality which, while few people could, was possible to control and force it to weigh down on their target.
The same could be done with mana. Instead of unintentionally letting it leak out and affect other people who have much lower Wisdom or Vitality. It was not easy and he had only really learned the concept and not how to do it. If he previously thought that overflowing Wisdom was some kind of aura of power then he wasn¡¯t wrong. He just needed to learn how to control it.
Of course, he didn¡¯t have to control anything yet since his mana was still so weak. At least, that was what the adult Frost Elves had hammered into his mindset.
Ebony didn¡¯t put any mana ores in his myriad bracelet, conjuring ice mana with all the excess and filling his robe up before it got stripped off him and disconnected.
¡°...another baby monster. Ebony, was it?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Start cleaning up. There¡¯s an empty room on the second floor you can use. I¡¯m Kong Jing.¡±
¡®That¡¯s a Chinese name alright. And with the types of food Scarlet cooks¡ Is Xeng¡¯s culture like that of the Chinese? But Scarlet¡¯s name is Scarlet Rhael.¡¯ he remembered the day they met and her introduction.
¡°Sure, Kong Jing.¡± Ebony¡¯s head was smashed into the ground without fail this time.
¡°Who said you could call me that!¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t make much sense after introducing herself. Ebony kinda got used to Scarlet¡¯s mood swings too so he wasn¡¯t all that dumbfounded
¡°Then what should I call you?¡± Unfazed by getting his head kicked in.
¡°You tell me.¡± This time he was sure she was just having fun as her smile was unhidden.
¡°Landlady Kong?¡± Ebony got kicked again.
¡°That makes me sound old! And don¡¯t call me Kong. I don''t like the sound of it.¡±
¡°Mistress Jing?¡± the ground cracked and the weight on his shoulder increased.
¡®Hot damn. Overflowing Vitality is not too different from gravity magic, the ¡®phantom¡¯ weight isn¡¯t phantom at all and is even stronger than what I could dish out with gravity magic.¡¯ Ebony obviously angered Kong Jing this time but it wasn¡¯t even part of his mental concerns.
¡°Who the hell are you calling mistress!?¡±
¡°Boss Jing?¡± This one made her pause.
¡°Hmm¡ that¡¯s more like it.¡±
¡°So, what am I here for? And who was that old lady?¡±
¡°...Tsk. Why are you asking so much? Start cleaning up.¡±
Even though boss Jing said that, she started to give him a small tour.
She opened the front door to reveal a heap of mess and clutter. There were swords, hammers, armors, clothes, pots, knives, golem bodies, guns, windows, spilt coloured liquid. It was pretty warm inside the house, the shaking or vibrating from the ground was even more obvious from here.
The cottage was huge but there weren¡¯t many rooms. Walls were clearly destroyed to join them.
The entire first floor was her workspace with many tools and equipment. The second floor which he had to jump up to since she apparently removed the stairs for more space. It was a little weird to him that the kitchen was on the second floor and the dining table was also in the kitchen. Then, there was her room which she likely broke a few walls down to expand as well, a bathroom and a couple of empty rooms.
She wasn''t kidding when she said empty as there was nothing at all inside. He would have to get some stuff if he was really going to stay here. A bed, mattress and some furniture.
Boss Jing didn¡¯t bother with him anymore and he just started cleaning. At least the second floor was pretty much free of all the mess.
He first took everything out to arrange them separately. Glad that there was at least a broom around. It took him hours just to put everything outside, some things he couldn¡¯t even shift with enhanced strength.
Sweeping up all the dirt, mud, pieces of wood, shavings, soot and dust took the whole night. Boss Jing never returned to her room to rest. The constant noise of work didn¡¯t stop. He took a clean cloth to wet before using it to mop the whole house. It was really easy when the first floor was pretty much a wide open space except the area with the tools, equipment and the general workspace of boss Jing. She never turned back to look at him even once and her concentration was pretty admirable.
Morning came.
Ebony had thoroughly cleaned the interior, even giving the second floor a wipe-down. All her items were organised neatly according to what kind of object they were to their size and sometimes colour.
It was roughly time for breakfast so he went to the kitchen. A little self-exploration throughout the night was enough to familiarise himself. There was nothing much in her storage chests or cabinets, her ¡®refrigerator¡¯ only contained empty paper bags.
Ebony just slapped a few sandwiches together with the not-so-fresh bread and considerably fresh vegetables due to preservation magic with his dried meat jerky before¡washing a few dishes so that he could plate it. He left it on the closest empty space beside boss Jing, who he had no idea what she was doing with a metal-like ball in her hands.
¡°I¡¯m gonna go for a walk and buy some stuff.¡± Ebony took the silence as an okay sign. He went out to explore the city and buy a few essential items and groceries. The city was huge and it took some time to get off the quiet street they were on.
Ebony visited any blacksmith, weapon store, armour store, alchemic store, tailor store and many more that he walked past.
The average level of people here was all above lvl 170 which meant he couldn¡¯t Identify anyone¡¯s level except maybe [Human] which were children and the few young teens he saw.
The quality of even the roads, buildings and of course products was much higher. As with the price tags on them. A few hundred Blues made him a pretty poor man, unable to afford much. He could still afford a decent weapon and living off it was no issue either.
Unfortunately, he was busy filling his robe¡¯s mana capacity recently and wouldn¡¯t be having much spare mana. Unless he really needed to.
Rather than asking for directions, he took his own sweet time exploring the bustling city¡¯s sights. Ebony would say that boss Jing¡¯s house and workspace was around the outskirts of the inner area.
Before long, he found himself in front of the Z&Z company store. Checking in and asking if Rowent, Fergus or Dina was here. They weren¡¯t.
The good news was that there were spatially expanded bags for sale. The bad news was they only accepted Purples for it. As for how to get a currency the Quest Hall doesn¡¯t trade in for? That was his business. There should be quests that offer Purples as rewards so that was one way but none of the quests that he was capable of completing paid a literal million mana of apparently much higher quality than a Blue.
Most quests for journeymen or those under level 100 barely paid a few Greens. At least in the old town of Plainston and not the City. Maybe if he paid a really outrageous exchange rate he could give away many Blues for a Purple.
Ebony splurged half his savings.
He bought a Rare rarity myriad bracelet that had 12 slots, 2 rows of 6 that went around the bracelet. It had 90% mana efficiency or conversion rate which was 15% better than his current one. It was way more tough and durable than his one that had cracks from freezing. He didn¡¯t even feel it on his wrist after he put it on, it was form-fitting, comfortable and practically defensive equipment with its toughness. There were even some that had spells embedded in them but he didn¡¯t bother with those.
The one he got already cost over a hundred Blues. It was a worthwhile investment. The myriad bracelet was essential to daily life and the mana conversion rate was too attractive not to get. 90% should be the best that they could make with the current technology. The loss in efficiency was said to be from converting and removing mana qualities till it was completely pure and absorbable by the natural ores.
Another common sense that the employees didn''t tell him was that higher rated mana ores had lower conversion efficiency due to the increase in the required purity of mana. Now it made a little more sense to him why he needed three days to charge the Blues needed to get the tungsten rime back in Teld. He had thought his Mental Arithmetic failed him multiple times. The general consensus is that the conversion efficiency they were referring to was for a Green. Usually, only Grandmaster mages bothered to fit a Blue or higher in.
He also bought cleaning equipment, soap and his other daily necessities. Ebony had been using a new venture of his, frost plum-scented soap. He had given the idea to Mrs Calhy and she made it come true with a little help from Palom.
Ebony kept them in a small box made of ice so that it didn¡¯t melt, he just had to refreeze the container from time to time. They were also a gift he planned to give Scarlet. She did use fruit and/or flower scented towels to wipe herself.
He wanted to get an even better callstone that had both higher mana efficiency and much wider range but he decided to hold off on it since it didn¡¯t matter for now. He should exchange all his Blues for empty ones to stock up and build his wealth further first.
He did just that and found the even more massive Quest Hall to make an exchange. The exchange rate was pretty favourable to him. Blues have so much less value to higher level people. 1 full Blue gave him 3 empty ones. Ebony traded in 100, leaving him with 50 filled ones and 300 empty ones.
Plainston was really poor.
His translucent icy face only attracted a few second glances the whole time. It didn¡¯t catch all that much attention. Perhaps, to the high level people he was just a kid practising his skill or maybe they didn¡¯t think he was human at all. Truthfully, he wasn¡¯t anywhere as attention-grabbing as what the city had to offer.
There was all the generic stuff and then the more eccentric stuff. Selling monsters or butler golems was one. Spirit monsters in a glass bottle. A supposedly invisible whip that was placed within a glass container.
His Vibrational Gravity Sense has gotten much stronger but is still not completely sensitive enough to differentiate or pick out different gravitational waves from an item inside a box or pass through walls. Still, the small disturbance in gravitational waves told him that there really was something inside that he couldn¡¯t see.
A potion that can keep a person in complete stasis for a day. Spell scrolls. Enchanted equipment. Grimoires containing ¡®forbidden¡¯ knowledge are sold right in the open by a street stall. Clatter Rattle city was so much more interesting than the boring Plainston but Ebony only browsed and never got anything else.
He finally found a furniture store after half a day of aimless walking. Buying one of the tougher bed frames along with a mattress. A table, chair and chest that was pretty much a set. He didn¡¯t have many belongings so he found a wardrobe redundant. The chest was large enough to fit himself inside with space to spare, it could double as a wardrobe.
They would deliver it to where he stipulated. It was a problem that he didn¡¯t know the address but Mental Mapping helped him describe and an ice sculpture of the portion of the city that he had already visited made it clear enough. It was nice to surprise the clerk with his adeptness with ice manipulation.
Ebony had enough of exploring for the day so he just bought all the groceries he thought were needed for a week before making his way back. Food here was a bit more expensive than in Plainston even after the food prices rose there.
Boss Jing was still in the same position she was staring at the metal ball. The sandwich untouched.
Since she didn¡¯t bother with him, he didn¡¯t find the need to bother her.
He practised his own magic and trained in the spacious front yard. Flowing Greatsword Mastery and Ceaseless Onslaught lagged behind the most. Ice Sword didn¡¯t progress much despite him using it as his greatsword. His sound magic also needed more attention as he had always put more effort into gravity.
Ebony did find something new that he could do. When Sonic Overlay was cast over his hands and he clapped, the conflicting frequencies screeched really annoyingly and when he clapped right at a monster¡¯s ears it had been a mental attack good enough to distract them. He just didn¡¯t know if he wanted to repeat that so many times that it actually became a skill.
He felt that he had more than enough skills for his Sub-Class and Profession. He was spread thin enough now he just needed to refine whatever his Sub-Class and Profession did to do better. They were basically doing what he had envisioned them to do at this point.
As for his Class. Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze. Ebony was far from satisfied.
At the very least, Ebony had plans to do something about Icebody Enhancement, Frost Injection and Ice Sword. None of his skills were ¡®Frostblaze¡¯. He had wanted to look for Gen for that very reason. His second choice was to look for somewhere private where he could train in secret. The duelling or training grounds in the Quest Hall? Frankly, he didn¡¯t really trust that they were private at all. Not one bit.
Ebony was only told to keep the existence or location of Gen and their forest together with the details of his physique secret. He could still tell that Gen didn¡¯t want him to go around promoting his progenitor''s magic. Him being a mana being was too hard to hide and good mages could usually tell easily.
Ebony also trusted Scarlet wasn¡¯t the type to say anything about his skillset.
Another thing he missed out was that people with Appraise or higher tier versions could easily see his full Class name either. Completely hiding the fact was impossible for him from the get-go.
Chapter 83: Ah! This is the ‘Teaching’ that I remember
¡°What is this disgusting thing!?¡± Boss Jing yelled when it was about to turn night again. She just broke out of concentration and ate the randomly put together sandwich with jerky that was probably soggy from sitting there the whole day.
Boss Jing threw the sandwich into the air and Ebony who was outside just caught it before it slapped his face. He never wasted food so he just ate it. It was snatched by a hand that appeared, stopping him from eating the sandwich.
¡°I was wrong. You¡¯re the disgusting one! Why would she¡you punk!¡± Boss Jing¡¯s voice echoed.
Ebony went on to get beaten by fists and feet that crossed the walls that the cottage separated them. They popped up a little too near for him to react even with his Vibrational Gravity Sense sensing them right when they appeared. He tried to evade and defend but she was too flexible with it as the attacks could come from anywhere. It was good training that tested his reflexes.
His bruises faded as he was making real food with an ingredient he had been waiting for. Eggs. Although he preferred it for breakfast, it had been too long since he had them so he made dinner with them. Hopefully, his sense of taste hasn''t completely died.
Ebony had lived by himself for years, whether it was survival field cooking or home cooking he considered himself decent or at least average. He cubed up a few potatoes to bake them with sausage and eggs. Other than some street food he didn¡¯t recognise, he also saw many other ingredients that he recognised so there was no problem. A simple onion frittata with a little cheese and chicken soup. He used a whole chicken, they were a little larger than what he was used to.
Boss Jing should be hungry as she hasn''t eaten all day. He also spent some energy going around the city together with a couple of hours of exercise anyway.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Cooking learned¡¯
Cooking - Ability to prepare food through preparing, combining, mixing and heating ingredients to cook food and make meals. Ability to prepare ingredients and cook food increases by 1.0% per level.
¡®How vague. What part of my ability increases?¡¯ Ebony thought the description was too vague for a skill but it was nothing new.
¡°Boss Jing. I made dinner. Do you want me to bring it to your room?¡± Ebony remembered that Xeng women didn¡¯t show their faces and Scarlet always ate in private. He actually just spoke from where he was, trusting that she could hear or sense him from wherever she was in the house. He didn¡¯t doubt boss Jing was Xeng as well.
¡°Huh? Why? Let¡¯s eat together. Thanks for the food.¡± Boss Jing walked through the walls of the kitchen and made herself comfortable at the dining table already.
¡°Oh. So that¡¯s why the lower portion of your mask isn¡¯t there. You¡¯re too lazy to take it off all the time just to eat.¡± Ebony realised the genius behind the clean cut where her mouth was. Only to have his head grabbed and smashed into the durable floor. Luckily he cleaned the place thoroughly.
¡°Just shut up and eat.¡± Boss Jing said.
¡°It tastes bad, but edible.¡± Boss Jing was a pretty messy or sloppy eater, the smudge of oil on her lips and her emptying the plates were not very convincing but he stopped himself from saying that.
¡°So. Can you tell me why the old lady brought me here?¡± Ebony asked. He was inwardly happy his sense of taste wasn¡¯t completely dead.
¡°...My grand aunt. She wants me to take you as my student.¡±
¡°To learn how to craft? Why?¡±
¡°I dunno know¡ She¡¯s spontaneous. I told her I was too young to take a student and I¡¯m busy enough with my own research and craft.¡± Ebony felt that boss Jing was lying or at least hiding something. She was a pretty poor liar with her body language but the part about her being too young or busy seems true.
¡°What do you craft?¡±
¡°I¡¯m a Craftswoman. I make anything and everything.¡±
¡°Anything?¡±
¡°Anything. This building. Table. Chair. Pot. Armour. Weapon. Clothes. Potions. Golems. Accessories. Scrolls.¡±
¡°Food?¡± Ebony got sucker punched for that one.
¡°That¡¯s called cooking.¡±
¡°What were you working on earlier? The metal ball.¡±
¡°Just trying to create a mini dimension inside that can hold life. I failed. Seems to be too much for plain iron.¡±
¡°You¡¯re a space mage, right? Can you make one of those spatially expanded bags too?¡±
¡°Of course I can. That¡¯s what every space mage starts out to do to practise. Besides, I don¡¯t even need space magic to make something so simple. Just have to learn the right runes for it, engrave it and charge it with mana. Anyone who can read and have the right knowledge can do it. Forget what I can make, what can you make?¡±
¡°Clothes? I learned a little tailoring from Roya. The Frost Elf that made my robe.¡±
¡°I know. I¡¯ve seen her works. I thought she wasn¡¯t staying in Tidal anymore, could never find her.¡±
¡°Yeah, she went back to her village in Hoarfrost Glade.¡±
¡°Hoarfrost Glade? You went there to learn how to tailor from her?¡±
¡°No. That¡¯s close to where your grand aunt kidnapped me from.¡±
¡°...tsk. Show me.¡±
There weren''t any materials to work with so he took a random cleaning cloth that he bought and mana tailored it to disassemble a portion of its threads before reworking it. Tighter and firmer than before.
If everything including the table cloth in the house was made by her, he doubted she would like it when he messed around with it so he used his own. Well, there was the chance he didn¡¯t have the ability to mana tailor something she made either.
¡°...As I thought. Simple but unique, every craft would take on the crafter¡¯s mana¡¯s properties a little. But something¡¯s weird about your mana¡wait. You¡¯re a Meditative Class? Is that why your mana is so weird? No, that shouldn¡¯t be. Meditative shouldn¡¯t make your mana so..urrgh. I can¡¯t explain.¡±
¡°I¡¯m also a Mana Meister.¡±
¡°Wonderful! You¡¯re a treasure! You can call me Master Jing from now on!¡±
Boss¡Master Jing pulled him into a hatch on the ground near her workspace. Looks like she didn¡¯t use space magic to move around all the time. She brought him underground. He could feel the intense heat right when she opened the hatch, the loud vibrations also coming from underground. It was a full factory under her house. The space underground was many times larger than her house itself too.
Master Jing didn¡¯t stop where her huge anvil or forge was at and just brought him deeper underground. There was even another floor that was deeper. It was much cooler.
A library. Impressive full height, twice as tall as him bookshelves and half as wide. The library wasn¡¯t that large, other than about 30 or so fully filled bookshelves, a comfortable-looking resting chair and a small table there was not much. Minus the white lighting and ventilation from who knows where.
¡°My grand aunt told me to teach you how to make whatever you want to learn to make and when you¡¯re satisfied you can leave whenever you want. You could actually just leave now if you want. It might be a little troublesome but I can even send you back to Hoarfrost Glade right now. This is the repository of all the knowledge I have on crafting that is written in Elcrian, if there¡¯s anything that you want to know how to make but isn¡¯t here you can tell me. It would mean I don¡¯t know how to make it yet but that won¡¯t stay the case. Oh yes, see that door there? If you can open the door you can read whatever is inside too.¡± Master Jing explained and pointed to a brown wooden door at the end of the library.
¡°...¡±
¡°I did have thoughts of taking a student. Many of my elders told me that teaching how to craft also teaches me a whole lot so this can be considered an opportunity for both of us. You don¡¯t just have one of the greatest tools to make things with. You also have amazing material to work with.¡±
¡°That block of wood?¡±
¡°No, you¡¯re the block of wood. I meant your mana.¡±
¡°The Thoya brand or style of mana tailoring isn¡¯t just made for tailoring. With your skill, the same should be able to be done for any craft. But my point is that your mana can be used as the material itself.¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°I can tell you what I mean but you have to tell me what you want to learn from me. Ah..maybe I told you to call me master a little too early.¡±
¡°...You¡¯ll have to wait a long while.¡± Ebony replied as he turned to look at the thousands upon thousands of books she had.
¡°Greedy punk. You¡¯ll do all the chores and cooking. Don¡¯t worry. I already know a way you can pay me for the books and student fees.¡±
¡°Couldn¡¯t hope for more.¡± Ebony was truly glad she brought up payment. He really didn¡¯t want to owe people anymore.
???
Ebony would be lying if he said he wasn¡¯t interested in how to make a greatsword. Pretty shallow that a weapon was the first thing that came to mind. He had been pondering on the internal structure of an actual sword for a long time now. He could take the chance to learn about how shields were structured as well.
Master Jing also mentioned how having the right knowledge let him be able to make the spatially expanded bags too. Runes. He was interested to learn about that too. That sounded so much more magical than the spell-flinging he had been doing for some reason.
Well, he loved reading. And with the apparent extension of his lifespan, he was all for reading everything in this library.
Master Jing¡¯s house was messy but her books were organised. According to the genre and how advanced they were. It made things easy for him. He picked the first book on the basics of blacksmithing. He had underestimated the books. They were twice as thick as they looked with the pages being extremely thin but strong. There was a magic circle on the bookshelf wall from where he just pulled the book out. Fortunately, there was no trap or anything.
As for the inconspicuous wooden door at the back, Ebony didn''t bother.
???
¡°Hey! So you¡¯re still here. I thought you were dead already. Hurry up and make me food. You didn¡¯t even clean. It¡¯s been a week already!¡± Master Jing knuckles knocked on Ebony¡¯s head hard.
¡°A week? Didn¡¯t I just sit down a while ago?¡± Ebony thought she was pulling his legs, figuratively. He had only just sat down some time back didn¡¯t he? He glanced at the table. He didn¡¯t see a table. It had been buried in books taller than himself with the floor around him littered with books too.
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¡°...Were you meditating?¡± Master Jing figured. It was common sense that the passage of time was harder to feel when meditating.
¡°...Oops. Breakfast or dinner?¡± Ebony was used to not knowing how much time passed from time to time but a whole week was record-breaking. It must have been his higher Constitution and Wisdom and clearly Everlasting Tranquillity at play. He didn¡¯t even feel mentally or physically exhausted at all, the hunger was starting to kick in though.
¡°I don¡¯t care! I haven¡¯t eaten for a week either!¡± Master Jing threw him sprawling into the kitchen.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Speed Reading learned.¡¯
Speed Reading - Ability to read faster than stats suggest. Read 1.0% faster per level.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Speed Reading level up 1 ¡ú 5¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Speed Reading mutated into Trance Speed Reading.¡¯
Trance Speed Reading - Ability to speed read while in a trance. 1.0% ease of falling into a trance when extremely absorbed by the contents. Read 1.0% faster while in a trance.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Trance Speed Reading level up 5 ¡ú 17¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Trance Speed Reading evolved into Integrated Trance Speed Reading.¡¯
Integrated Trance Speed Reading - Ability to integrate and retain knowledge read in a focused trance state increase by 2.5% per level. 1.0% ease of falling into a trance when extremely absorbed by the contents. Read 1.0% faster while in a trance.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Integrated Trance Speed Reading level up 17 ¡ú 19¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Integrated Trance Speed Reading refined.¡¯
Integrated Trance Speed Reading - Ability to integrate and retain knowledge read in a focused trance state increase by 2.5% per level. 2.5% ease of falling into a trance when extremely absorbed by the contents. Read 2.5% faster while in a trance.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Integrated Trance Speed Reading level up 19 ¡ú 20¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Identify refined.¡¯
Identify - Identify the world around you, glimpse basic information of the target. Slightly more information about natural materials and ingredients can be glimpsed.
¡®Maybe I should fall into more of these trances.¡¯ Ebony thought. His trance has brought good results again, it was questionable whether it was worth it but he thought why not?
It was no wonder he managed to read so many books and clearly remember every word and even understand the contents. Identify probably refined due to some of the encyclopaedia-type books about metal ores, plants and monsters and their parts.
Cooking levelled up again after he made another meal. It was dinner time.
¡°Master Jing, can I watch you craft?¡±
¡°As long as you don¡¯t disturb me.¡±
¡°I want ****** for breakfast tomorrow?¡±
¡°What¡¯s that?¡±
¡°...Boiled rice. I like it with more water. Deep fried dough sticks and peanuts will do.¡±
¡®Oh porridge or congee with peanuts. So that was a thing here as well.''
¡°Sure. I saw that you have some rice left.¡±
Master Jing just sat there and watched him start washing up instead of going off to do her work. Ebony had started to get used to the overflowing Vitality from her as long as she doesn¡¯t control it to concentrate on him.
¡°How do you want me to pay you?¡±
¡°Mana. Making things is expensive but I want your mana for something else, not the ones purified by the bracelet. That would defeat the purpose.¡±
¡°Mmm. Mana is what I have most.¡±
¡°Hahahahaha! You must be the type that infuriates people till they go speechless.¡±
¡°...Mmm. I¡¯ve been told.¡±
¡°Go to sleep. A journeyman¡¯s body is weak. You can watch me craft tomorrow.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sleepy.¡±
¡°Well, I¡¯m going to sleep now so do what you will. Don¡¯t forget your stuff outside.¡±
Master Jing didn¡¯t appear bothered that he got furniture to be delivered here. Ebony placed the things he got neatly and just went to sleep. The new mattress was soft and uncomfortable. He preferred the really firm ones for back support but there weren¡¯t any at the store. Rather, the people here all preferred softer beds.
Nonetheless, he was knocked out for the entire night. Master Jing was already at her workspace and not underground. Ebony made congee and very subpar dough sticks. He was not familiar with making them even though he had the know how for them. He was given a figurative and literal beat down for the horrible food. He no longer used Icebody Enhancement for protection so she also pulled her punches accordingly.
Ebony then watched her make what looked like jewellery. A necklace. In this world, jewellery wasn¡¯t just made for decoration. Most of them had magical applications. The most sought-after were the ones that had saved healing spells in them since those were life saving. Like Scarlet¡¯s mask, even though her mask isn¡¯t jewellery.
Since he didn¡¯t want to disturb her he only asked whatever he didn¡¯t understand after she was done. Every time he didn¡¯t understand what she was explaining he would receive a beating and scolding. Getting beaten out of nowhere was really familiar. Ebony didn¡¯t think he liked getting beaten up but it was just so nostalgic. Master Jing¡¯s arms were not just slender, they were toned and her muscles under those sooty arms were well defined. Her fists and feet were harder than steel. Getting kicked by her brought up memories of getting whacked by his mother¡¯s cloth spear.
This was what a teacher was! If a student didn¡¯t understand it well just beat it into their very bones and fibres of being.
Ebony thought he felt the incessant chill in his heart slow down.
Master Jing didn¡¯t have any working golems, just their frames and bodies. He trained with his own ice Ebony sculptures in the morning. Master Jing only ate once every 2 or 3 days. He would watch Master Jing make whatever she was making after a 2 or 3 hour reading session. She never took breaks unless she had to sleep or eat.
Ebony was also infected by her diligent attitude. After 2 days, he stopped observing Master Jing as much. She was too advanced in a sense. He didn¡¯t understand anything. He was back to the books. Half the day on training and half on reading while magic training.
She later brought him down to another basement floor, similar to the Quest Hall''s duelling grounds. It had an area of 500 metre square with hundreds of what she called armour dolls. She had about 30 of them that were fit for him to fight against, the rest were too much for him in her words. The different sized armour dolls wielded all sorts of weapons and some could even cast spells of various elements.
It was obvious that each armour doll had a certain set of skill or spells so it wasn''t that hard to find out each of their limits. It was immensely helpful to train against different groups and tactics as he was not very familiar with mage tactics. Unfortunately, the magic-casting ones had a small spell list. When he accidentally destroyed some of the warrior armour dolls she sent another dozen armour dolls that were stronger and had a wider range of abilities to beat him up. They weren''t able to ''beat'' him up but he couldn''t do the same to them either. They were hard to scratch and become his daily sparring partners.
Sometimes, he would unintentionally ask questions when he was in the library and a fist would come smashing into his belly. He would still observe if he noticed Master Jing beginning to use her forge for weapons, shields and armour, even jewellery. He was less interested with her potion making or staring at gems where she was using magic more than physical techniques. The most intriguing was when she engraved symbols, runic in nature.
Ebony had been trying to read books on that after he had mostly gone through basic weapons, shield and armour structure, material makeup and properties. He would ask permission to send his mana into her weapons to scan the internal structure sooner or later.
The books on runes didn¡¯t even have many words. It was like learning a language from the start and there was no translation. Worse still was that it was like many languages stuffed into one. The variations on runes were too numerous to count.
To begin with, he had to learn the rune language.
Master Jing said there were more than 30 known rune languages but she had filtered out all of them and made her own. Ebony didn¡¯t have to read more than a single page to know that whatever she said she did was more amazing than any feat he had managed. The books on runes were way messier because she added her own input and changes. Many books linked to other books and it was a mess he had to cipher through to understand something simple.
He had found out that the magic circles on the sides of the bookshelves were for preservation. It made books last longer. Ebony mentally ¡®oops¡¯ and made sure he kept all the books he was done with.
Ebony took a whole month and a half just to learn her rune language and that was thanks to his new reading skill that was really carrying its weight. Master Jing¡¯s rune language was more conclusive, efficient, simple and straightforward than any other he had seen. There were so many lines, curves and symbols that could mean different things when written, angled a little off or even written with thinner or thicker strokes and all that.
There was how different symbols were meant for different elements.
How connecting them into a magic circle was sometimes necessary to naturally allow the symbol to convert mana into that specific elemental mana.
How a standard ambient mana absorbing rune was supposed to be drawn and connected to the overall rune without disrupting the inscription so that the inscription wouldn¡¯t need to be powered by an external source.
Then they were symbols that directed that mana, elemental or not to do different things. He also had to study how runes work or act differently when inscribed or engraved into different materials.
Runes were fascinating. It was limitless. Ebony had a new found hobby and didn¡¯t stop at just learning Master Jing¡¯s rune language. He had started on learning the other rune languages and their version of rune inscriptions and symbols. Of everything he had read in her library, runes were the area of research he was most interested in and intrigued by.
The next most interesting thing was the humanoid golems'' and armour dolls'' internal structure. Ebony wondered if they were tougher than a human''s body, not considering what their material was. He had an idea to manipulate the structure of his mana chassis. Changing the very base of his own internal frame wouldn¡¯t change his looks based on his logic since he would only be moving the mana producing and containing parts inside his body.
It would be like him replicating and copying Gen¡¯s shell for Layered Ice Carapace and wanting to copy another sword¡¯s internal structure. Couldn¡¯t he mimic other creatures¡¯ internal structures if they were much tougher? The same could be said for his own skills. Imitating the strong was the first step to being strong. He had read about the many types of monsters and quite a few caught his attention.
The Fleet-Footed Kappa, said to be able to run on land, sea and air as if on flat ground. There was no terrain they couldn''t traverse. They were not aggressive monsters and just loved to run around. Ebony wanted to see it in action to see if there was anything similar to his Treading Steps.
There were too few creatures that used gravity magic recorded. Even Master Jing didn¡¯t know where he could find any of the creatures mentioned. Even creatures and materials in her books clearly state where they could be found or if they were even on Elcra.
Ebony had learned that Master Jing was quite the nomad. Only having just reached this city not long before he got tossed to her. She travelled far and wide, researching anything of interest. Searching for new materials and ingredients. New, unknown methods of crafting. Rarely stopping at one place for an extended period of time. He also found out she had quite a money problem. She didn¡¯t know how to spend at all. He would believe it if she had been scammed multiple times.
She had shown him what she called her greatest treasure and treated it like a baby. She didn¡¯t want Ebony to get close. She called it an industrial mana compressor. It literally ate mana and coughed out mana ores up till Purples.
It was a money producing machine and what made all the vibrations and noise above ground. She bragged about how she grabbed Zenin the genius inventor to secretly sell it to her behind the Empire¡¯s back. She called Zenin an inventive person and not a craftsman like her.
The thing was apparently valuable enough to cause nobles to revolt. Ebony warmed up a little at how much trust she gave him but he also knew it might be because of how futile his attempts would be if he wanted to take it away from a space mage over level 300, with 2 more Class evolutions than himself.
This was how she wanted him to pay her. She already knew about the general properties of his mana. That it was more resilient and compressible. The compressor wouldn¡¯t make anything pure like natural mana ores from the mine and ore deposits or the recharged ores fitted into the myriad bracelet. It would take whatever mana was charged into it and the resulting mana ore would obviously take up the properties.
Ebony¡¯s mana would make it produce mana ores that were tougher and the production speed would be faster too. The industrial mana compressor absorbed mana from a 50 gir diameter, which equates to 250m. Ebony just had to let his mana overflow instead of filling his robe or mana ores up when he was in the building and that was all Master Jing asked for. He was worried that that was too little but she assured him that it was more than enough for her since a material like that was hard to come by.
She confirmed with him that magic cast with his mana would be tougher and more resilient. Perfect for many spells both defensive and offensive. When used to power runes, the spells would obviously take the same properties as the mana used to cast it. Natural, pure mana was more versatile but his mana¡¯s properties were more useful for many things.
The reason Master Jing called his mana a good material was that once he was able to solidify his own mana he could literally make objects made of mana ores. Mana ores that were affected by all his mana influenced skills and Fortifications.
Ebony¡¯s days were quiet but busy.
Chapter 84: Moving
With Master Jing¡¯s permission, Ebony took some books out to read either on the front yard or porch at night so that he was bathed under the ever-changing hue of moonlight even if he was too absorbed by the contents of the books to moon gaze. The city also sold tea and he never relaxed so much ever since he came to Elcra. He was enjoying his time here.
Master Jing was the reliable type when it came to what she does best but she was hopeless at self-care. She didn¡¯t know when to stop to eat. When to clean herself up. She hardly even changed her clothes even after they were caked up with dirt and soot. When to rest and sleep. Well, Ebony wasn¡¯t really one to say since the first incident but he took care of her like a mother would her child. She never laxed on her beatings on him though.
He thought the house was too bland and the front yard was empty so he asked what flowers Master Jing liked. It stunned her silent for a bit before she beat him up a little. Until he explained that he wanted to plant some flowers.
She hesitated to say ''grey dahlia'', giving him permission to only plant along the sides of the cottage itself and not make a full garden.
It took a few weeks before he managed to get his hands on some of the seeds of grey dahlias. He had to look around the city for florists, herbalists and more.
Ebony wondered if Master Jing liked them because of the colour so he made sure to ask them to procure seeds that were as similar to her hair colour as possible. They were pretty cheap because they didn''t have any magical properties.
???
Another half a year which was 7 months had passed after the 1 and a half month Ebony had taken to learn Master Jing¡¯s version of rune language, Korun or so it was called and shown on his status and many other things he learned.
The other rune languages were picked up very quickly since Master Jing¡¯s Korun was based on them, his Korun language levelled up instead of getting many other rune languages as skills. He wondered if the language was named after Master Jing.
Ebony then tried his hand on drawing them till he got the Doodling skill. He didn¡¯t have good artistic skills. It had taken till a month back that it finally mutated and refined into Inscription.
Yet that was not the end product he wanted it to be. He wanted it to be a type of engraving skill rather than plain old inscription. Ebony finally found out that Roya¡¯s robe was actually threaded in rune formations and it didn¡¯t even sacrifice the integrity of the robe.
The difference was that it was a little different from all the rune languages he picked up. Likely a rendition of her own like Master Jing''s but it was still somewhat readable after he learnt so many languages. Master Jing was confident enough to say that it was difficult to find another rune language that she didn¡¯t already have here unless someone was genius enough to make a completely different one.
There were multiple runes inside each layer of his robe. It basically did what he wanted it too, purely for durability and toughness. That made things slightly simpler for Roya since there was only so much space on it and she even had to use threads as the medium.
Inscribing was done with a pen that liquified mana ores into liquid mana. Using 100 mana to inscribe with an Inferior or ¡®Black¡¯ mana ore would produce an effect weaker than using 100 mana of a Common or ¡®Grey¡¯ mana ore. It was more about the purity than the density of mana but that affects the power behind the inscription as well.
Master Jing had special inscription pens that could let him input his own mana to inscribe. There were some fun experiments he did to test the strength of 2 identical runic scrolls, one with mana ore and one with his own mana. As an attack spell, there was a tiny difference, as a defence spell his was easily triumphant against a Grey but still less durable than one drawn with a Green.
Ebony learned how to make a spell scroll of all the 4 basic elements, earth, water, air, fire plus ice, stone, wood and light.
The few things he was able to make were making them all into a ball like a fireball and even controlling the speed, the trajectory, the range and how small or big the spell was. He also learned how to make them form some other simple shapes though not every element is suitable for everything.
Ebony was so intrigued with runes because one didn¡¯t need any sort of magical affinity or talent to cast magic of any kind. Knowledge really was power.
Most commonly used in daily life were the support runes like cooling, heating, anti-dust, or the line of preservation runes.
Preservation was surprisingly well studied based on how many basic rune books started with it. There were many types of preservation runes. They had to be really specific about all the minor symbols and how the entire end product meshed together. Preservation for food was completely different from a preservation rune for books or maybe weapons and armour or even antiques.
Unsure if it was because he was an ice mage the ice runes felt most natural. When he sent a ball of ice flying out of a special paper which was the scroll he could sense that the process was not too different from when he converted mana to ice mana, conjuring it. If he could sense other types of magic like that could he break down the spell and convert them back into rune language?
That was probably how Roya broke down his Layered Ice Carapace and converted them into a similar spell that fit more to the shape of his robe.
The truly magical part about Master Jing''s Korun was that it was simplified a lot.
The standard, cheapest spell scroll or runic circle to be specific can be split into a few portions.
One, power source.
Common power sources are the ambient mana absorption rune or if it is a weapon or armour then an embedded mana ore is commonly used.
Two, conversion runic symbols.
This step might be skipped if whatever spell they inscribed was arcane and pure mana or if the power source itself was already an elemental source. But, in terms of spell scrolls, they are usually converted into other elements to perform some spell.
Three, function.
The power source will be converted and then powered into the function to do whatever is inscribed.
Sounds simple enough. It was anything but.
All those had to be seamlessly connected or the inscription wouldn''t work or even backfire. Depending on what power source was used it may be dangerous too.
Master Jing''s Korun had segregated the power source and function into the different elements and a single complete rune was enough for all 3 steps. It meant that there were a lot more symbols to learn and remember but that wasn''t all that troublesome. It was just that instead of learning one thing for one spell, he had to learn all the categories for all the elements.
He didn''t have to worry about connecting multiple runic symbols until he was going to do the more complicated stuff which was the multifunctional types or the type that connects many different runes.
Ebony had felt that it was such a pity that Clovis had to stay in Arcta. The Thoyas had many books and they had the money or mana ores to obtain whatever he needed but he couldn¡¯t help but feel that Clovis¡¯s talent was buried. Even if it was temporary. With all the right skills, Clovis could probably learn whatever Ebony did in 8 and a half months in 3 or less.
Master Jing¡¯s house was likely completely covered in some kind of illusion, mirage or light and sound rune. It was on a completely different scale from what he can do or even comprehend. At least, she had just certified that he had reached beginner standards in terms of the study of runes. As for application, he wasn''t even worth mentioning.
While she had books on runes about space, gravity and many more it was too difficult for him at the moment. Because those were three-dimensional and although she said it was possible to make some simple two-dimensional ones, she hasn''t found the motivation to make lower-quality stuff.
In these 7 months, Master Jing only went out twice. Or that¡¯s the number of times he noticed or that she bothered to tell him. She went out to get new materials. For the smaller, less important stuff, she trusted him enough to send him to get it. Also for Ebony to get a change of pace and walk around the city. A week back, Master Jing left for the 3rd time. Coming back today, bloody.
¡°Master Jing. Are you okay? Any injuries? You should visit the healer if you have any injuries.¡± Ebony was worried since he had never seen Master Jing in this state. She was a high level space mage that could waltz almost anywhere she wanted after all. Master Jing fell onto fours and kept coughing when she teleported in.
¡°Aaarh! That smells!¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Hahaha! I can¡¯t tell from your face but I can feel your concern, little punk. Don¡¯t worry, this isn¡¯t my blood. It''s not even blood.¡± Master Jing pinched Ebony¡¯s cheeks with her bloody or thick red pungent liquid fingers. The contact of red liquid burned and stung his cheeks, Master Jing quickly stopped and wiped it off for him. A little panicky because she forgot what she had gotten on her.
¡°I¡¯ll go prepare the bath for you.¡± Ebony said considerately. Unfazed by his burning face. He knew that Master Jing had been getting concerned about his ¡®deadness¡¯ or expressionless state and had tried to address that more than a few times. Though her methods might have been more violent than not. She didn¡¯t realise that her violent methods were actually the right way as it was the way he was the most familiar with.
¡°I¡¯ll do it myself, it''s faster that way.¡± Master Jing disappeared along with all the red fluid. The heat in the air didn¡¯t dissipate so he chilled it back down with some ice magic.
Runes weren¡¯t the only thing he had been learning about.
Ebony was mostly done with all the basic and slightly more advanced stuff and watched as Master Jing forged weapons and accessories being his main focus. He didn¡¯t like bulky armour and his ¡®robe¡¯ which was a coat and mana tailor was what he was happy with already.
The weapons Master Jing made were also varied, they were never exactly what was written in books. Ebony had already gotten the chance to see her swords and they really were more similar to his old ones than what the books taught.
Just like Ebony who wanted to imitate monsters or nature''s natural evolutionary path. Master Jing said their craft was also based on natural materials, live or not.
There was no skill evolution but his Ice Sword was refined.
Ice Sword - Conjure a sword of Ice, dealing 100% + 1.0% Intelligence. Ice Sword designed to be 1.0% more resistant to shattering by slashing or piercing motions.
Consumes 250MP/Sword
Classification: Ice Magic
Hitting it on the flat end still causes it to break pretty easily. There was little way around it, ice wasn¡¯t really suited for sharp, thin weapons or so Master Jing had commented.
Master Jing had been studying his gravity magic too. The rareness of gravity mages or monsters made the study of it a hard opportunity to get. It has been helpful for both of them. She was obviously a lot more knowledgeable about all things magic but she wasn''t a fighter.
Ebony had visited the much bigger mage tower in Clatter Rattle a few times. There were hardly any books on gravity magic. Even if there were, it would only be mere mentions here and there. Sound magic was also rare but not nearly as rare as gravity. It was weird to him that the applications other than transmitting sound like the callstone does were mostly for mental type attacks. More like, he didn¡¯t see a single mention about using sound magic as a physical attack option.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Nothing much was found on the uncommon ice magic since ice mana doesn¡¯t exist naturally in many places until maybe winter. Nothing that was in the books was anything better than what the Frost Elves had taught him anyway. And that was when the Frost Elves only gave him small tips, making him learn about it himself. Overall, the trips to the mage tower had been practically unfulfilling.
Master Jing wanted to facepalm. Saying it was only natural.
All schools of magic hid things to themselves except the most common of knowledge. If he really wanted a teacher for magic an academy or master-disciple relation was the way to go. It was for an equally beneficial relationship.
Academies for the benefit of social renown and money.
Master-disciple to hand down the legacy of their life¡¯s work and research on magic in case it was lost to history.
Master Jing walked out in skimpy clothes like usual while drying her hair. She had slowly not bothered since Ebony also never bothered or gave her the luscious eye. She might have been wrong due to his constant deadpan face but she really didn¡¯t care after a while.
¡°We¡¯re moving.¡± Master Jing said.
¡°Where to?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°4 towns down. Crust Deposit City. Some Dwarven miner found a new metal deposit.¡± Master Jing explained.
¡°Okay.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll need your help. The Empire already called dibs on it and the location had been hidden, I don¡¯t have the time to spend months searching underground which is the Dwarf''s home ground. I couldn¡¯t even find where they kept the stock they already dug up. Probably in the hands of someone.¡±
¡°You want me to search for it in your place?¡±
¡°No you punk. That would take ages, it¡¯s probably so deep underground I would take some time to get there with space magic. Usually, when something new comes out and the news is spread to people the Empire would dish out some samples to quench the public¡¯s thirst or anger really. They don¡¯t want the public against them monopolising all the resources. You¡¯re a pretty smart one, why don¡¯t you guess how they decide who to give it to?¡±
¡°If it¡¯s not on sale yet and not a competition of mana ores then, a competition of power. A tournament of sorts?¡±
¡°I guess that was too easy. The tournament is in 5 days.¡±
¡°I¡¯m only a journeyman.¡± Ebony asked since the standards in these parts were much higher.
¡°Of course, there are different categories. The winner of yours would get a tiv of the Rare rarity of that metal. The standard tournament rules for a huge number of people would allow you to fight Master ranked too so just beat as many as you can and we¡¯ll get more of that metal. I want at least a tiv of the Epic rarity one so any more than that we can split 50/50.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony easily agreed.
Master Jing already gave him so much. 5 kg or a newly found metal was the least he could give her. He could even give her everything else, it probably didn¡¯t have much use to him.
Master Jing further explained that he would at least have to win 3 matches against Master Class people to get half a tiv of the Epic rarity ore. Ebony was a little doubtful if he could win but Master Jing assured him it was probably no trouble to him unless he was unlucky enough.
Apparently, the reason she didn¡¯t join the tournament herself was that there was no category for Grandmaster ranked people. She also downplayed her own strength saying she was a craftswoman and any decent combatant Grandmaster could beat her in a straightforward fight. Almost all the contestants would be those that were in a contract with a blacksmith or company.
Ebony already asked Master Jing about the wooden block he had. She easily recognised it as dungeon material since she had never seen it before. They had studied it together for some time and she said it was a pretty good material in the Rare rarity range. Its hefty weight made it perfect for heavy weapons and with its dimensions, it was screaming to made into a greatsword.
It could absorb ice mana amazingly well and with effort, he could make use of it.
Ebony didn¡¯t know how Master Jing calculated but it could easily contain 1.5 million or so ice mana. The natural pure type. Less than the 5 million his robes could handle. It was impressive for Rare materials but nothing less expected from a mana tailor of Roya¡¯s standard. There were some other properties that the block of wood may take up depending on how it was made, what was mixed with it or even what shape it would take form.
Master Jing promised to craft him a greatsword if he managed to get equivalent payment for it. As for what was an equivalent payment that was up to her to decide.
Ebony had been working with wooden materials to Mana Mould recently. He didn¡¯t think he was a crafter for even a second just because he could make clothes or had the knowledge about crafting didn¡¯t mean he had the skills for them. Actually making a weapon was a waste of materials with his skills.
¡°Alright, here are some Purples and Blues. I¡¯ll send you there first, just buy an empty plot of land about the same size as this and give me a call when you¡¯re ready. Preferably somewhere quieter nearer the centre but not too close to buildings like the Quest Hall or the Sovereign Temple.¡±
¡°What about the underground?¡± Ebony was not too surprised that the space mage was probably planning to move her entire house. It felt really impressive to so casually ¡®move house¡¯.
¡°Don¡¯t worry about that. If there¡¯s no space I¡¯ll make space for it.¡±
¡°Ready anytime.¡±
¡°Alright, wrap yourself in mana. I¡¯m not all that proficient with moving someone else.¡±
¡®This nonsense again? Maybe I wasn¡¯t affected since I am mana. There wasn¡¯t a need to wrap myself in it if I was made of it right?¡¯ Ebony was right, he didn¡¯t get the nauseous feeling that people said they would.
Master Jing held Ebony¡¯s upper arm and walked forward, he saw the sky and buildings underneath in front of him like a hole in space appeared where it looked different inside than it did left and right. She couldn¡¯t just cross the distance of a few towns in a single cast of her skill or spell. Unless she didn¡¯t even have a skill for it was just using pure manipulation.
They travelled in the air, likely so that they didn¡¯t appear inside a tree or something. Well, he didn¡¯t know the workings of space magic. It was probably very dangerous magic if they didn¡¯t know where they popped out from.
Ebony was right and the trip wasn¡¯t instantaneous. Master Jing had to bring Ebony through dozens of ¡®jumps¡¯ or teleports. She teleported them right into the city, skipping through the guards that didn¡¯t know any better.
She brought him all the way to the Quest Hall which doubled as many things, including a town hall and also where real estate was handled. Ebony wondered how they took care of the administrative business of all the mess stuck in one place. They probably had people with the right skills for it.
At first, Ebony wondered why she stayed for so long but he later realised it was probably to show others that he wasn¡¯t just a kid under Master Class fooling around and buying land but a Journeyman with the backings of a Grandmaster Craftswoman who practically anyone would want to sucker up to.
It was plain for him to see because Master Jing let her overflowing Vitality and Wisdom flow out without restraint and the people parted for her. The few young Journeymen very exaggeratedly fell and didn¡¯t move, they fainted.
Ebony didn¡¯t believe their reactions were real. It wasn¡¯t so bad that someone could faint could they? He clearly didn¡¯t understand what Everlasting Tranquillity and him being a mana being did for him. Still, not everyone was as affected since there were many high level Master Class and maybe a Grandmaster hidden somewhere in the building but they all cowered when they saw her mask.
¡°Don¡¯t forget, somewhere quiet and away from the hustle and bustle.¡± Master Jing repeated herself, it was all that was heard in the suddenly silent Quest Hall.
¡°Let your mana loose to scare them a little too. It¡¯ll speed things up.¡± Master Jing whispered into his ears before winking. Backing off and disappearing into thin air a moment later.
¡®And she complained about her grand aunt being too mischievous.¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t say he wasn¡¯t interested to see their reactions.
Everlasting Tranquillity charged passed level 200 without stopping unlike many of his other skills that clearly slowed down and even stopped in their progress.
At level 202, Everlasting Tranquillity gave him a 1010% increase in his mana and stamina regeneration rate. His base regeneration rate for mana was still (5300/100)x35 = 1855 MP/hr. Multiplied by 11.1 equates to 20,590.5MP/hr. That was the base regeneration of a human who had 20,590 stat points in Wisdom. That amount of stat points would reach Grandmaster levels but probably none of them, even mages would toss that many of their stats into Wisdom.
Obviously, mages of that magnitude have a very high chance of having meditation type skills which would put their regeneration far above his.
Anyone who didn¡¯t train or were exposed to such mana often would easily faint or lag up so much that they would act dumber than a poorly programmed robot. At least that was what Master Jing told him, the first few times it even managed to break her out of focus when she was busy. He was beaten awake that night.
The veterans who had been into dungeons with higher mana density would have no problem with it since they already adapted but Ebony¡¯s mana was mixed with Vitality too which made it weird for them too.
The people who were shocked at the arrogant Xeng suddenly disappearing in their midst relaxed for a second before they got mentally slammed with weight instead of physically. Ebony started feeling bad when he actually smelled pee so he stopped fooling around. The poor dark green-haired lady receptionist looked like she was about to cry but her professionalism didn¡¯t let her.
[Administrator Lvl 145]
¡°Wh..what can I do for you sir?¡± The receptionist gathered her courage and asked as professionally as she could.
¡°Land. Somewhere quiet like my Master said.¡± Ebony replied. It was his usual tone but it chilled the receptionist¡¯s spine even further.
He shouldn¡¯t have listened to Master Jing and fooled around like that. What''s more that she was right and their efficiency was through the roof. They showed him all the free plots of land which he had to reject those that were too big or small. Shortlisted to 2 places where he had to check the place out himself to decide if it was suitable.
???
The dark green-haired lady was internally crying, her seniors pushed the job of bringing the scary man to see check the plots of land. No doubt, he was a little handsome but his pitch black eyes and expression was scaring her too much to care.
Fortunately, she was used to strong people showing off in the Quest Hall so she didn¡¯t pee herself but she had never felt such a heavy overflowing Wisdom before. The young man was definitely hiding his level but posing as a Journeyman felt like he was going too far. No one would believe it.
¡°Sir, my name is Carine Nava. You can call me Carine or Carie is fine too! I¡¯ll be guiding you to these places.¡± Carine stood straighter as if to motivate herself.
¡°Mmm. Thanks, I¡¯ll be depending on you Carine.¡± The pretty handsome man that had a scary expression said.
¡®Way to make things less stressful on me. I hope he''s not the type who kills anyone who makes him unhappy like his face suggests¡¡¯ Carine wasn¡¯t looking forward to bringing the man around but it was all part of the job.
Carine hailed a carriage since it was quite a distance away. Mentally complaining about how troublesome it would be to claim the fare. Luckily, the 2 plots of land were in the same area and she was planning to go to the further one before walking to the other one.
Carine started by promoting the area with memorised lines. Unfortunately, there was only so much she could say about an empty plot of land and the man only replied with ¡®mmms'' and ¡®I sees¡¯. The trip took more than half an hour and Carine, who had nothing left to say after half that time, was panicking because the awkward silence was killing her. She couldn¡¯t tell if the man was satisfied or unhappy.
She was so glad they finally reached their destination and alighted the cramped space with him.
¡°How much is it sir?¡± The light blue hair man said, stunning Carine.
¡°Just 2 Greys and 3 Blacks, dear client!¡± The coachman was holding both his hands together with a grin. He wasn¡¯t dumb enough to overcharge a person wearing the Quest Halls uniformed dress.
¡°Here you go, thanks.¡±
¡®He paid for the ride? Why? Oh, a rich man doesn¡¯t care for such a small sum huh.¡¯ Carine thought. It was common sense that Quest Hall businesses like these were accommodated by themselves.
Carine went on to let the client survey the 2 plots of land. He swiftly decided on the first one which had an old couple that was retired as their neighbour instead of the one with one of the more posh inns about 10 minutes away.
The man just paid the full amount upfront and signed the necessary documents back at the Quest Hall. It was the quickest and smoothest transaction with no hassle or complaints from the client that Carine had handled.
She even levelled up!
Carine had a tiny smile. The man was just quieter but didn¡¯t seem so bad now.
???
Ebony called Master Jing with his callstone which had Roya, Halvis, Hector, Scarlet and Master Jing¡¯s contact. Ryley¡¯s contact was lost after a while. His callstone probably broke or was eaten up by Ordina. He obviously removed the connection to Tuffock¡¯s so that it didn¡¯t lead him to Ebony with the mental link.
Master Jing was also just done with selling the plot of land back in Clatter Rattle City. She stopped by the plot of land he bought before being satisfied and waved her hands around in concentration. Ebony watched as her cottage slowly appeared from the roof down. When Master Jing was done, even the underground was fully transported here.
The grey dahlia plantation project Ebony took up failed 4 times. He had to study and find out what was wrong many times.
He was sure he had followed all the required care they needed, apparently, the environment was not suited for it. Grey dahlias apparently needed less sun which wasn''t hard to deal with. He just made some shade for them, now they were about to bloom.
Ebony wanted a mobile home one day too. Personal comfort and familiar belongings wherever he went.
Chapter 85: Rimestone
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 202
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 100
Class Skills:
Treading Step Lvl 132
Ice Mana Control Lvl 146
Icebody Enhancement Lvl 135
Flowing Greatsword Mastery Lvl 127
Frost Injection Lvl 130
Ice Sword Lvl 129
Ceaseless Onslaught Lvl 117
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 137
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 137
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Orchestral Gravity Conductor Lvl 100
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 129
Mana Vibration Lvl 126
Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 143
Magnified Gravity Field Lvl 131
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 136
Vibrational Gravity Sense Lvl 134
Sonic Overlay - Lvl 132
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 100
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 141
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 150
Mana Perception Lvl 145
Reinforced Mana Chassis Lvl 101
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 500/500
Stamina: 500/500
Mana: 5300/5300
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 50
Vitality: 50
Constitution: 250 [629]
Endurance: 50
Agility: 250
Intelligence: 376
Wisdom: 530
Perception: 100 [302]
Generic Skills:
Stealth Lvl 14
Identify Lvl 15
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 54
Running Lvl 34
Mental Mapping Lvl 19
Kicking Mastery Lvl 48
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 10
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 19
Dish Washing Lvl 28
Physical Conditioning Lvl 19
Magical Conditioning Lvl 19
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 52
Tracking Lvl 12
Game Processing Lvl 10
Heat Resistance Lvl 38
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
Gardening Lvl 35
Cooking Lvl 14
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 47
Korun Lvl 7
Inscription Lvl 14
Ebony already received evolution prompts for his Class, Sub-Class and Profession. Even the prompt to undergo all 3 evolution at once which according to Hector and Scarlet has benefits. Based on the skill requirements and their levels, he would mostly get the 50% Fortification except for the one skill that exceeds all, Everlasting Tranquillity.
Treading Steps didn¡¯t level much since he didn¡¯t move around much.
Ice Mana Control levelled normally. He didn¡¯t feel it stop yet so he should be able to reach level 150 with it shortly.
Icebody Enhancement levelled very slowly because he was putting his mana to use elsewhere.
Flowing Greatsword Mastery gained 11 levels since his own practice with his ice sculptures was pretty useful. He had gained some pretty good insights by making puppets move like himself and watching it. Even light sparring with it. He thought he could even tell the ice sculpture what to do. Like saying ¡®raise your right hand¡¯ and the ice sculpture would twitch. That was the sign of getting closer to being a 3rd order mage. Scarlet was already at this stage with fire magic more than a year ago when he was still partying with her.
With him not fighting anything at all, Frost Injection stagnated. Master Jing didn''t want him to break her armour dolls from the constant injection of ice mana. She couldn''t be bothered to make dolls that could resist ice mana either.
Ice Sword had some good gains due to all the research Ebony put in. Layered Ice Carapace was the same but he didn¡¯t change the internal structure much since it was pretty much solid already.
Ceaseless Onslaught only levelled 8 times as he didn¡¯t spend all that much time and effort to push the skill.
Frost Mist Perception Sphere was the same with no mana to spare to train it.
Battle Song was useful since it was like bgm to help him relax even more. Ebony could fall into a trance pretty damn easily and this made it even easier. The mana regeneration buff from it was also better than nothing.
Mana Vibration was practised in the back of his mind. He silenced out whatever vibrations were coming from the industrial mana compressor from underground as practice and it also helped him focus.
He never stopped training his control with Gravity Mana Manipulation either, Magnified Gravity Field as the main spell he trained.
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane had no chance to shine but it gained some levels by protecting him a little from a high level craftswoman and space mage. She was very intrigued by the spell, same with Sonic Overlay. It wasn¡¯t like Ebony ever turned Vibration Gravity Sense off anymore. He was more and more sensitive with it.
His Profession skills obviously grew quite a bit with his current focus on Reinforced Mana Chassis and crafting lessons.
Identify was always known to be hard to level up. Kicking Mastery was from his defence against the beatings he received. Elcrian obviously levelled up from all the reading he had done. Dish Washing and Cooking were from his chores. Physical and Magical Conditioning still hasn¡¯t merged, their slow levelling was only natural as well.
He was either more talented at Gardening than he thought or had all the Natural Potential he got that let Gardening level to 35.
Heat Resistance was gained by watching and learning how Master Jing forged. Ebony didn¡¯t forget that he wanted to shore up all his weaknesses including and especially his weakness to heat. He always put an Ice Sword, an ice sculpture and even himself into the fire and continued his practice of making his ice mana in a form that was more heat resistant.
Integrated Trance Speed Reading stopped at level 47 for more than a month already. It might gain a level or 2 more with time but it probably reached its natural limit already. Even if it reached level 50 Ebony doubted it would merge with any of his classes.
Korun was the rune language. Inscription was only gained not too long back so there was still room for improvement.
5 or rather 4 days now, was not enough to gain a decent amount of strength. Unless he went hunting monsters much higher level than him.
Ebony didn¡¯t bother with all that. He continued his studies and learned from Master Jing while doing his daily exercises.
Time flowed like water and the day of the tournament came quickly.
¡°Master Jing, I¡¯ll be going now.¡± Ebony reported before he left for the city¡¯s coliseum. He had gone to register and scout where it was already so that he wouldn¡¯t be late. It would start at the 10th hour and today was just the journeymen portion.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll watch the matches tomorrow just get today done quickly and come back and make me dinner.¡± Master Jing waved Ebony off.
The so called tournament will be in a 1 on 1 format. There were about two thousand participants for Journeymen. The coliseum was massive and many battles would be carried out at the same time. He was a little excited to see a large number of figther Journeymen.
Although Master Jing said there wouldn¡¯t really be many people watching a low level tournament there should still be a sizable audience as the prize was pretty good. For example, the low level blacksmiths or crafters that contracted with the participants. Companies that did the same with their employees. Family members or friends of the participants. The numbers would easily go over 10,000. A small number considering the arena could fit about half a million viewers.
They would screen the multiple battles on the live version of a memory light so that people with lower Perception could watch the fight they were more interested in.
Ebony needed to win about 11 - 15 fights depending on how many last minute participants there were. The top 3 would be given the chance to fight in the main tournament the next day. One reason was that levels weren¡¯t a good gauge for strength. Another reason was that it was always good entertainment for the viewers to watch an underdog or dark horse win against the odds.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Precast spells like Layered Ice Carapace weren''t allowed so he didn¡¯t bring any.
Like the duelling grounds, the coliseum had barriers so that spectators wouldn¡¯t be harmed and other matches wouldn¡¯t be interrupted. That meant there were no out-of-bounds or out-of-the-ring rules. It was just battling till one side was incapacitated or admitted defeat. Making them faint was good enough if they didn¡¯t admit defeat.
Ebony reached the coliseum early, avoiding any crowd or line but he wasn¡¯t the only one who thought that way so there were quite a few people already. The people in charge brought him to the waiting area for contestants based on his group number 6. Now he just needed to wait for his group¡¯s turn and for his registered name to be called out.
There was someone earlier than him in his group¡¯s waiting area.
[Swordsman Lvl 100]
It was pretty rare to see another swordsman when the majority were warriors instead. He was sitting down on the stone bench wiping his unsheathed long sword. He had pretty long hair for a man, untied, it touched his shoulders. Ebony wouldn¡¯t say he was a large man but he was about as tall as Ebony but more buff around the chest and arms. His face is more on the squarish side with a chiselled jawline and a small scar from his lower left cheek to the neck.
The man only glanced up when Ebony walked in and sat on the bench beside him.
The waiting area was silent for about 5 minutes without anyone else arriving yet before the man spoke up.
¡°Swordsman. The name¡¯s Zach Hartmon. Singular Cut Style of the Domination Blade Academy.¡± Zach Hartmon addressed Ebony as a swordsman. He had a rough voice and presented himself with pride, he probably only spoke up because it was not every day one met another swordsman.
¡°Ebony Rime. I¡¯m not part of any academy or style.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t familiar with this type of introduction.
¡°Self-taught?¡± Zach stopped cleaning his long sword in surprise. Swordsmen were uncommon enough because it was hard to advance without a good lineage of sword style. He didn¡¯t think anyone had the guts to travel an untrodden path in this day and age. Sword Mastery like that may remain as an untier or tier one skill their entire life if they didn¡¯t know what they were doing.
¡°...Something like that.¡± While Ebony picked up the Mastery himself it was honed by all his battles and spars with Scarlet.
¡°Where¡¯s your blade?¡± Zach asked after noticing what was missing. He had no real hopes that Ebony would be a strong contestant but he had unending respect for the man to walk the hard path.
¡°It broke.¡± Ebony replied. He hadn¡¯t gotten a replacement, nor did he think it was all that important currently.
¡°...I see.¡± Zach ended the conversation there. A swordsman without his sword? The man¡¯s impression of Ebony dropped a little.
Who was he kidding, a swordsman came to fight without his weapon. He was a hybrid so perhaps he made do with an elemental one but Zach could no longer find any words to speak. Zach had been going around cities and towns, joining every tournament to build his reputation together with his academy¡¯s. Pushing his own technique and skill to the next tier and level with a strong opponent.
They waited as more and more people entered. There wasn¡¯t a single Elf but there were more Dwarves than usual. Warrior was the most common, archers and rogues next. There wasn¡¯t any other swordsman and he only saw 2 mages. Both fire mages.
Shortly, they could hear the loud echoing of the announcer or MC. He was kicking start the tournament, introducing some of the more noteworthy participants followed by the rewards and ¡®without further ado¡¯ before they started calling the participants out. Apparently, there were closer to 3000 participants so he would likely have to fight a couple more times than he thought.
Ebony heard it ¡®Singular Cut Zach.¡¯ being mentioned. He was the hottest betting target said to have won the championship of 12 official large scale tournaments like this one and many smaller scaled ones. That sounded impressive enough and Ebony did want to spar with him. He was in the same group so it would likely take till they were near the end.
Half an hour passed as Ebony sat still and meditated.
¡°Contestant Rimestone! Contestant Rimestone! You¡¯re up next!¡± Ebony stood up at the call.
He used the opportunity to register his name as Rimestone. Just putting both his parents¡¯ surnames together. He still suspected they had something to do with him coming here. This was a way of putting himself forward to let them find out he was here and was doing fine. He was too lazy to find them when they may not even be here, this way they could find him if they really were here on Elcra.
The clerk told him which ring or box he was supposed to go to once the previous fighter cleared the place. The MC just introduced both him and his opponent as first timers in these events. With so little information, he was a little impressed at how the MC was trying to increase the hype. Spouting information like how Ebony was only a 17 year old hybrid that already reached level 100. Or how his opponent was part of an established freelancer party wearing so and so¡¯s equipment. Sponsors.
It was supposedly a randomised order but Ebony¡¯s opponent was a warrior. Nothing surprising with their overall numbers. He was only level 97. It was a disappointing match. Ebony just straight up Treading Step right to his face and slamming kicked it all the way to the barrier behind without so much as using Icebody Enhancement and the man was knocked out already.
Ebony only had 50 stat in Strength but speed and mass was power too. The guy couldn¡¯t even react and draw his blade fast enough.
It didn¡¯t really draw attention as there were many fights going on at the same time and both of them were not noteworthy people. The MC obviously noticed with his skills to multitask and observe many fights at the same time. He announced the instant knockout loudly and got his men to show a replay on the large screen. It was a face slap to his party members as they were just introduced as an ¡®established¡¯ party.
Ebony just returned to wait in the waiting area that had more space now. The next rounds came faster and faster as the number of participants halved and halved quickly enough.
His second match was against a normal archer. The archer was the cautious type and managed to barely dodge the feet to his face but the feet changed directions from pushing to a literal slap that sent him flying across the arena without any resistance. He managed to roll himself back into a standing position with his arrows nocked and aimed but Ebony wasn¡¯t there where he kicked him anymore.
The archer¡¯s head slammed forward, down onto the ground as Ebony was already at his side with a turning back hook that came down on his neck hard. It was another easy victory for Ebony.
His third and fourth opponent was even worse than the archer and couldn¡¯t even dodge the first blow, exactly like the first guy. Everyone was level 100 at this point. That was odd.
Ebony with mixed stats, 250 Agility shouldn¡¯t be the fastest person around. His movement speed was 500 Agility worth but surely they could at least react to his slow kick like the archer. Of course, he, who didn¡¯t have much common sense, didn¡¯t know that most people only had Running, Dashing, Sprinting or similar skills as a generic skill and not a Class skill.
By the 10th match, Ebony realised that his paranoia was real.
Every match other than the archer ended the same way. A single pushing kick to the face was enough to knock them out cold. The Dwarven warrior was tougher and managed to bring his bulky shield up to cover his face but a few more kicks were all it took.
The 11th match was against someone more special so Ebony had his hopes up. [Darkness Rogue Lvl 100]. The moment the start signal went off, his vision went completely dark. Ebony calmly bent back like a bridge and his feet kicked up at the charging rogue that for some reason decided to go for a stab right from the front.
Ebony¡¯s Vibrational Gravity Sense could sense him as if it was bright out. He was about as speedy as Ebony but nothing his senses couldn¡¯t keep up with. He wasn¡¯t as inexperienced as the previous fighters and could trade blows with Ebony. Ebony deflected both his daggers by deftly aiming for the wrists or pushing the rogue''s shoulder or joints a little. Enough for him to miss by a good margin.
It was the first time the man faced someone that could fight so well without vision but the man got more alert after his first strike failed. The rogue didn¡¯t act overconfident anymore and took it seriously. The hybrid clearly didn¡¯t have as much Agility as he did, he used his mana reinforcement for the short burst of speed and power.
The rogue smiled when he saw his opponent¡¯s shin in the path of his dagger. His burst of speed worked! The timing of the hybrid¡¯s kick messed up. He was going to slice a deep one into him.
Clang!
¡®Clang?¡¯ The rogue thought the sound was weird. He had been expecting a spray of blood and maybe the hitting and scraping of bone. His arm numbed the next moment before it flung all the way back, his body following along and smashing right into the barrier.
Out of his darkness dome spell that was only about 5 metres in diameter, he exploded darkness mana from his cloak for an instant before bringing it down to 5 metres to save mana but Ebony never planned on walking out anyway. Well, he also didn¡¯t know that it was only such a small area that was dark since Vibrational Gravity Sense didn¡¯t perceive light.
Ebony had activated Compressed Icebody Enhancement the instant the rogue sped up. His activation speed was much faster, his leg already kicked out and didn¡¯t have time to get out of the way. He also didn¡¯t expect the rogue¡¯s dagger to chip off when it contacted his leg. Only his pants got a small cut, Ebony mended it with Mana Moulding on the spot.
Compressing Icebody Enhancement might have been overkill since he didn¡¯t even take a single point of damage.
The spectators couldn¡¯t see what happened as it turned dark immediately before the rogue flew right out and fainted with a damaged weapon, dislocated wrist, shoulder and cracked ribs from slamming into the barrier too hard it knocked his breath out.
¡°Contestant Rimestone does it again!¡±
¡°Instantaneous knockouts!¡±
¡°We might be watching the rise of an upcoming talent or perhaps a noble from the countryside! 11 flawless victories!¡±
¡°The Meditative Ice Swordsman that doesn¡¯t use ice magic or a sword! Is there nobody who can make him use a single spell or draw his sword?!¡±
There were hardly any participants left and the remaining spectators who stayed to watch were all watching his match. The MC riled the audience up a bit but it only pissed the participants who lost and those that hadn¡¯t fought Ebony.
Zach also won every round with ease. Whenever Ebony was not in a match and Zach was, he would watch it. Zach¡¯s matches were just as instantaneous if not even more instantaneous than Ebony¡¯s.
Like his sword style and title or nickname. Zach only had to draw his sword and slash it once to end every battle. Ebony didn¡¯t see any flying blade or anything like that but the distance didn¡¯t seem to matter as his opponents would receive a vertical slash on their chest before they realised and all was fatal if not tended to immediately so many of his opponents admitted defeat.
3 competitors didn¡¯t even fight before conceding defeat. Ebony couldn¡¯t see what happened just through a screen so he would have to take their battle more seriously.
Zach would be Ebony¡¯s opponent after 2 more matches.
Ebony''s next opponent was a fire mage but not the ones from his group. It was obviously a disappointing match when she couldn''t react to him. They even put more distance between them to give the mage a fighting chance. The ''ring'' expanded when there were less matches going on at the same time after all.
Ebony also wanted to see what other mages could do so he let the fire mage cast in peace. Getting Chaotic Repulsive Membrane on when he saw the orange hair lady gathering fire on her staff. It was a fire arrow. Her casting speed had much to be desired but the projectile speed seemed decent. It was too bad it just skewed to the side when it landed on him. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane could push air away as well, just not as efficiently. It didn¡¯t even singe his robe.
The fire mage thought Ebony deflected it somehow and kept going.
¡®Seriously? Not going to change things up?¡¯ Ebony thought he saw enough and took a single step standing right in front of her past where she raised her staff.
¡°Admit defeat.¡± Ebony hoped she would understand the difference in their skills. In the end, he was not willing to hit a woman to the point they fainted. He had hoped that it didn''t seem chauvinistic, hypocritical or arrogant. It did.
¡°I¡I admit defeat.¡± Luckily she understood. Ebony thought her legs were shaking a bit too much. Was he that scary?
A short moment¡¯s wait later was Ebony¡¯s second last match before the championship match. It was a Dwarven [Axe Guardian Lvl 100], equipped in full plate armour, a huge war axe with a tower shield.
He was a much better opponent but all he could do was hunker down and take Ebony¡¯s attacks while waiting for opportunities to bring that heavy weapon down on Ebony. He didn¡¯t want to admit defeat after how far he had come and was confident he could take Zach down as long as he defended himself from his single slash.
Ebony met persistence with persistence. He Sonic Overlayed his legs and rained kicks onto the Dwarf¡¯s shield. He could tell it was a pretty well made shield. A pity it would be broken if the wielder didn¡¯t want to give up.
The Dwarf didn¡¯t even have a chance to attack and just blocked himself as best he could. Hoping Ebony would tire from his fierce barrage and let an opening show. It worked every time. Just not this time.
The kicks from Ebony felt extremely light at first but it kept getting faster and stronger.
It was Ebony¡¯s Ceaseless Onslaught, even though the skill description mentioned that it was a sword dance he was pretty glad to find out he could apply it to kicking too, it was not so different as momentum was key. Kicking and pushing were similar to slashing and stabbing. He was pretty surprised that he felt the activation of Ceaseless Onslaught. It was a weak feeling but, for some reason, he felt that the skill effects were actually working. It might have weakened effects though.
The numbing shocks from his kicks didn¡¯t feel right compared to the physical force the Dwarf was defending himself from.
2 to 3 minutes passed in this fashion but Ebony only got faster and fiercer with his kicks.
The Dwarf held on, he just felt his shield crack but he didn¡¯t believe the young human could go on for much longer. The fool ended with a dented helmet and a shattered shield.
It was no wonder Master Jing was so cocksure that Ebony would have no issue with this ¡®tournament¡¯. Most of the participants probably only Classed with 2 or 3 Fortifications at best. Even though the majority would have 100% Fortification due to what people believe was a handicap or bonus for the first Classing.
The real problem was that few actually knew how to fight. That also didn¡¯t sound right to Ebony. To reach level 100 required many years of hunting or even more years of training. Most of his opponents should be roughly around the age of 30 to 60. And that was because the standards here were much higher than Plainston. At this moment, Ebony cursed mentally ''where the hell are the 20 to 30% of Journeymen stronger than me? Did the two of them try to trick me to get me to take my evolution more seriously?''.
¡°I didn¡¯t expect you to be this strong. I apologise for my disregard.¡± Zach said when they stood before each other. One of his hands was already on his weapon.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know what disregard he was talking about but acknowledging was easier and faster. He was now pondering if he should try avoiding his strike or taking it head on.
¡°I follow the same rules every match. If you can take a single cut of mine it¡¯s my loss.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony nodded. ¡®Taking it head on it is.¡¯
The small crowd was silent. Other than Ebony''s previous match, every one of the 2 finalist¡¯s matches ended in an instant. They were watching intently, hoping not to miss anything.
The mana in Ebony¡¯s body got themselves ready already, going into the worn casting glove that he declined to have remade.
Taking the attack with his own body was just reckless. If it was a normal slash it would definitely not even harm his robe but his body itself would probably be injured if Zach had more behind his attack than meets the eye. Ebony threw every bit of mana to compress into the almost instantaneous cast of a 5 Layered Ice Carapace.
Using mana that was already condensed in his Reinforced Mana Chassis made it pretty buffed with compressed mana already. Ebony didn¡¯t have time to compress any more mana into the spell before he felt the mental feedback of the powerful impact on his shield. He felt the clean cut of ambient mana in front of him separate in his senses.
It was physical force with Zach''s mana. The mana did one thing and one thing only. Cut!
It sliced through Ebony¡¯s hasty shield with a delay of a fraction of a second. Ebony crossed blocked with his arms and reinforced himself with compressed Icebody Enhancement. Casting didn¡¯t take any time at all but it was not as compressed as it could be since he had spent his condensed mana for his Layered Ice Carapace.
Ebony stood strong, not even pushed back a single step, his arms held and he flung it upwards. As if it was an actual physical object, the physical and mana imbued slash got redirected upwards toward the ceiling of the barrier. His arms were probably badly bruised but his robes were undamaged. He mentally estimated that the attack would probably not fully cut through his fully compressed Layered Ice Carapace but it would almost completely slice through. He saw it in Zach''s eyes, the man was holding back and not just by a little. If it wasn''t for his robe''s sleeves, he would''ve suffered more than just bruises.
Zach stared at Ebony for another second.
¡°I admit defeat. I hope for an actual duel in future when you get your blade.¡±
¡°Mmm. Same here.¡±
The MC talked about all the usual nonsense. Calling Ebony names like dark horse or the upsetting victory. They sure loved naming people. Rimestone the swordless swordsman or face-kicking swordsman, something like that. Ebony hoped that didn¡¯t stick. He got his 5kg of an unknown metal and went home.
The top 3 would be him, Zach and the Dwarven Axe Guardian that he defeated. The opponent Zach defeated that was supposed to contend with the Dwarf was out for the count and was receiving treatment.
The 5kg of unknown metal ore was only the size of a marble. Truly too little to do anything with it. Ebony checked that his next 2 battles against Master Classed people tomorrow would only get him more of the Rare version of this unknown metal ore. He had to win the 3rd one to get half a tiv or 2.5kg of the Epic rarity version. Winning the 4th match would get him another 5kg which was how much Master Jing wanted.
Chapter 86: General Strength
¡°How was it?¡± Master Jing asked as Ebony entered the house by bypassing her inscriptions.
¡°...Why are they so weak?¡± Ebony thought for a moment before asking.
Master Jing just laughed heartily.
¡°Were there any notable opponents at all?¡± She returned his question with another.
¡°One. A swordsman from the Singular Cut Style of the Domination Blade Academy.¡±
¡°Ah. Hmm¡how do I explain this to a clueless little monster?¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t say he liked getting called a monster but it was flattering coming from someone of Master Jing¡¯s level.
¡°Let¡¯s see. Excluding the Apprentice rank, the lowest rung of combat Classers are those whose parents are not fighters. They turn 15 then start training their skills up, maybe classing at 18 to 20. If they survive 20 to 30 years of safe hunting every day on something their level they hit level 100. What would their skill set look like?¡±
¡°...2 or 3 Fortifications for their Class, 3 for Sub-Class and 2 for Profession. Tier 2 Core Skill, 1 or 2 tier 2 Class skill. Same for their Sub-Class and Profession. Untiered and tier 1 generic skills.¡±
¡°That¡¯s about right for Fortifications since Sub-Class and Profession doesn¡¯t have to be rushed. You¡¯re sorely mistaken about their skills though. All of these people teach themselves random skills that are mostly untiered. Majority would Class with untiered skills for their main Class and regret after a few years. Their Core skill would be tier 1 and most of their other skills would be untiered with 1 or 2 tier 1 skill.¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony didn¡¯t believe what he was hearing but it made sense if they never learned anything until they turned 15.
¡°Next would be those whose parents already tread the path for them. Training them with their own experiences and skills when the kids are still young. These people form the majority of freelancers that stay alive on the field without dying within the week. Still, tier 1 Core Skill but the majority of their Class skills should at least be tier 1. They would definitely Class with tier 1 skills and not untiered skills either. By the way, most warriors would have at best 4 Class Skill after one of their skills is chosen as their Core Skill. Most would have 3 skills, mastery type, action-attack type and possibly one defensive or evasive skill.¡±
¡°Wouldn¡¯t their parents at least have tier 2 skills by the time they have kids if they are Master Class.¡±
¡°Sure, likely their Core Skill at the very least but that doesn¡¯t mean their child could learn it. Or the child would need to get to Master Class too to reach the same point unless they were actually talented and used their brain when they practise and train. Like you.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t movement skills pretty much a must to have?¡±
¡°Ha! Other than the generic skills like Running, how common do you think movement skills are? I know what you want to say next, perception skills. Those are so rare many academies don¡¯t even teach them, why? Because they don¡¯t have any perception skills either. Those are rarer than even gravity magic books. You think people can see all around them at all times like you?¡±
¡°...Pretty much. It¡¯s merely sensing mana around you and how they move apart when someone or something moves that displaces the mana and focusing on them to know that person or object¡¯s placement.¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t even know what to say¡okay, not everyone can sense mana as well as you. If not, everyone would be a mage already. Normal physical Classers can¡¯t even properly use mana until at least Master Class. That¡¯s when most academies even teach any skills that use mana. The even less talented with mana might not even be able to use mana even when they reach Master Class.¡±
¡®Oh. I thought it was a natural thing to be able to feel and manipulate mana. No wonder mana was literally the currency here and mages are so highly looked upon.¡¯ Ebony thought it was weird there were so few mages despite the ease of using magic and manipulating mana.
¡°So most of my opponents today are from this group and the swordsman is from another?¡±
¡°Yup. The next group would be the group who is rich enough to afford to send their child to academies from a young age together with those that Classed poorly but earned enough to send themselves to an academy and perfect their Sub-Class or Profession. If they followed exactly what the academy taught them, the lowest limit would be having at least the Core skill to be tier 2. That¡¯s the lowest one would even bother opening an academy with. The good ones would have tier 3 skills and the best one¡¯s would have a full set of skills together with a main one which made the founding person famous. The Tidal academy would be by far the most prestigious and not without reason.¡±
¡°The Domination Blade Academy?¡±
¡°I heard of them at least. The main branch is also in Tidal which says enough but they branched out quite a bit into other parts of the Empire. I don¡¯t recall anyone notable who uses what you say? Singular Cut Style?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°The lower nobles are actually not too different from the better academies'' teachings. The next group would be the duke¡¯s and archduke¡¯s lineage. You know about Physiques? Well even without that their lineage is not too shabby, fighting, crafting or supportive, they are pretty much why they are the true nobles and backbone of the Empire. The king and queen used to be roughly equal to the other archdukes but the current king and queen¡¯s royal family surpasses them noticeably enough. It is said that having any of the royal family¡¯s descendants in your party makes your survival rate either 100%, 80% or 0%.¡±
¡°...Assuming it¡¯s a party of 5 they either all survive, the royal family member dies or everyone dies.¡±
¡°Yup! The Lord''s family lineage. The greatest barrier mages and healers throughout the Empire¡¯s and Elcra¡¯s history. Practically all their children are able to use either one or even both barriers of different elements or healing of some kind. They have as much pride as their power. You would only die on their party after they did or so the rumours spread.¡±
¡°The Elves? Xeng? Dryadic Humans?¡±
¡°Majority of the older, adult Elves would be around the levels of the duke and archduke lineage level. The real genius amongst them would beat the royal descendant''s backside till they go home crying to their parents but you won''t be seeing any of them. Well, most Elves just stay here for long enough before leaving Elcra for their homeworld where something they call ********** resides. They call it the origin or supporter of all nature¡¯s life or something. Well, it¡¯s just described as an impossibly huge tree. I might be wrong since I don¡¯t know much about that.¡±
¡®Hot damn. That¡¯s gotta be Yggdrasil the world tree. I bet it is.¡¯
The Elves, even those born here, didn''t really treat it as their real home.
¡°As for us? We are second to none in terms of whatever we do, except maybe healing. It¡¯s too bad the royal family are mostly supportive Classes except for the King himself. Weellll, I was never told much about Dryadic Humans. All I know is that they are not native to Elcra and our elders called them the most perfect race. Bah, this space mage never saw a single trace of them.¡±
¡°So the tournament tomorrow would have similar standards?¡±
¡°Pretty much. The only ones worth taking seriously would be those that introduced themselves and their academy. They would likely have evolved with mostly level 125 skills for the 50% buff for 2 of their Fortification and maybe level 150 for 100% buff for their Core Skill. Once again, only for this tournament. The hired hands or employees of the companies that want the new metal wouldn''t be able to hire better Masters. Of course, the scale of tomorrow''s tournament is more than 10 times larger and it will last for days. Most Imperials are Master Classed after all and many people want a freshly discovered metal so the standard of people tomorrow should be somewhat higher.¡±
That was pretty disappointing but at least getting what Master Jing wanted shouldn¡¯t be too difficult. The later battles would be too hard for him due to the sheer level difference but winning 4 battles should be achievable.
Unsure of how Master Jing knew but she even gave a general gauge other¡¯s stat distribution. I guess with enough life experience it isn¡¯t that hard to gauge. Or perhaps, a study was done on it before. Just based on the 1600 stat points of a triple level 100 and not a person¡¯s base stat since that was dependent on the race and individual.
Strength: 400 - 500
Vitality: 250 - 350
Constitution: 150 - 250
Endurance: 150 - 200
Agility: 200 - 300
Intelligence: 50 - 80
Wisdom: 10 - 20
Perception: 50 - 100
The physical fighters would have a stat distribution of something similar. Warriors would have closer to 500 Strength and about half the speed. Rogues may flip the two stats around. Archers may balance it. Warriors would place more focus on Vitality than archers or rogues as well. Basically, everyone only added enough Constitution so that they wouldn¡¯t injure themself from their own speed and power. Not many had problems like the strong whose skills surpass their body¡¯s ability.
Endurance is usually only enough for a person to fight for 2 to 3 hours with most of their power before tiring out and weakening. Intelligence was only added because people started finding out that they needed their brains to be able to keep up with increasing combat speeds. The mental processing necessary for a life endangering battle at high intensity requires at least some stats here.
Those without any sense of magic and mana only added Wisdom so that they could recharge Blacks or Greys for daily life use. They would only really distribute more to Wisdom after they evolve. Those that found the use of the most basic enhancement magic would regret not having enough mana to reliably use it. Archers might have a much higher Perception, taking some out from Endurance or Strength.
It really depended on the individual¡¯s skill set too. Not to mention their mindset. Everyone thinks differently after all, sacrificing one stat for another. Mages might have less than 100 of every physical stat and almost 1000 Intelligence or balanced between Intelligence and Wisdom. There was no sure way to find out unless one had a really, really high tier Identify.
"Someone told me I''m only about as strong as the 70th percentile of all Journeymen."
"Is that so? I wouldn''t know, I''m not a damn combatant. Regardless, no need to think about that. From the damage you did to my armour dolls, it is indeed true that your skill doesn''t pack enough punch. Your spell power is especially weak, must have less than 400 Intelligence. Their toughness and durability is true sheer mana density but don''t help to hit harder. No way you compress your mana that much without having a class heavily dependent on mana. Sheer Mana Compression or something."
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"...That''s right." She was spot on about his general skills.
"I wouldn''t say you''re at the 70th percentile since I don''t know many Journeymen to compare you with. But I can say your potential for strength is definitely near the peak of any human although your current skills don''t match that. I mean, with enhancement magic you can compress and even use it for practically as long as you like I can''t see how even Masters can match your power unless they have something similar. Relax, those who evolve at the absolute limit of any rank would instantly be far above those their rank." She shrugged, she didn''t care much for combative skills or even learning too much about it so her words are not credible or so she admitted.
"Could you elaborate?" He asked
"How dumb are you? Imagine a journeyman who has a 100% fortification that evolved, let''s take the average to be the 1.25 times requirement, to become a master with a 150% fortification. Let''s say this person has some luck and got to level 300 and is capable of getting the same 1.25 or 50% fortification. That grandmaster would have their first fortifications buffing him at 200% while a talented Master who evolved with a 1.5 times requirement would have the same. Not to mention those at the real peak that most Imperials aren''t at with 250%. Once you really evolve as a strong Journeyman, you would instantly be far beyond most Imperial Masters, even some weak Grandmasters maybe. Although, the stat difference would be staggering." She hit his hard skull with her harder fist.
Ebony didn¡¯t do anything special after his common sense levelled up. He continued his daily reading, learning, training and chores.
¡°Give me all your ores before you go.¡± Master Jing stopped him.
¡°Hang on.¡± Ebony went back to his guest room to get all his Blues and Greens without hesitation. It was just money, no, it was just mana. He could charge more with time. He actually didn¡¯t charge many up since he let his excess mana be absorbed by Master Jing¡¯s machine. So it was only 60 filled Blues and a couple of dozen Greens as change.
Ebony left for the coliseum extra early, 2 hours earlier but the crowd was already wild enough, more than a quarter of the coliseum was already filled up.
Ebony and the 2 other Journeymen in the crowd of Masters were split up into different groups. The levels of contestants ranged from 100 to 250 from what he was told. They shouldn''t be too stupid to let a level 100 fight a level 250 but he didn¡¯t know how they planned the tourney.
It would not even be interesting to watch which the conducting body probably won¡¯t like as it served them no purpose if their spectators were uninterested. They took bets and collected seat fees after all. Skewed bets wouldn''t really work out well, no one would bet that a level hundred would beat a level 250. They wouldn¡¯t believe the result even if the level 250 really lost.
The waiting time was much longer and not just because he came earlier. The people working there were very busy doing all the necessary paperwork and accounting. The MC was the same guy who was trying to keep spectators interested by introducing the contestants again. He began with the top 3 Journeymen who people knew were just here to make things a little more interesting.
Each of them would be fighting at most 5 other people today. There was no time to finish the whole tournament of more than 35,000 participants. Of course, those that lost even once were out immediately and he was not interested in finding out how they would go about sorting through so many people¡¯s profiles.
Apparently, their opponents would not be more than 5 levels higher or lower than themselves. At least for today, unless no one fits the bill. For the 3 Journeymen that meant unlucky since no one was lower levelled than them. Not many bothered signing up at the low 100s either. The rule didn¡¯t really apply to them.
The tiv of Rare rarity metal they gave the Journeyman''s only champion was only a drop in the bucket. Though the terms for the Master Class to even get anything at all were different. They needed to win at least 5 battles, which was all of them for the first day before they got even a single gram of the stuff. The fifth battle won today would get them 10 tiv or 50kg of Rare rarity metal. Much more than what Ebony got. It was not like the higher level ones would get everything since they would group people around the same level to fight each other.
Probably a plot to somewhat equally distribute the unknown metal to people of different social class or levels to slowly push into the market. It sure did its job most of the time. It appeased people of different level groups and gave low level people a chance to touch the latest discovery.
5kg of that stuff was only the size of a marble. If they could give so many people so much of the stuff the mine deposit they found must be pretty large and deep. They would probably keep the bulk of it including the best parts.
The 3 Journeymen would be getting 3 and 5 tivs or the same stuff he got respectively for the first 2 wins. Half a tiv of Epic rarity for the 3rd win, 1 tiv for the 4th victory, 2 tiv for the second. Their rewards were higher due to the difficulty of actually winning.
After the long, noisy wait which he didn¡¯t silence so he could listen out for important information the tournament started. As if to kick the 3 of them out first, all of the top 3 were the firsts to battle.
The axe guardian had spare equipment. He was the luckiest of the 3 with his level 107 opponent being too gleeful at an easy win and messed up as the Dwarf was patient and resilient. Winning his battle without too much injury.
Zach was the unluckiest as his opponent was level 115. He announced his one attack deal again and stuck with it. He won as well.
Ebony got the level 111 opponent as there was no one lower than the level 107 guy other than them. He wasn¡¯t all that excited for a good opponent after Master Jing told him about the general strength of most people.
He also needed to get what Master Jing wanted and wasn¡¯t in the clear yet so he made sure to take care of it as fast as possible. He would never know if his opponent actually had some special skill or Fortification or not. He had to always assume he was weaker, that way he would never let his guard down.
Every level for a Master Class, Sub-Class and Profession gave them 15, 10 and 3 stat points respectively. 11 levels above him was plenty but using compressed Icebody Enhancement for almost 2000 Strength was really overkill.
To make things as quick as possible but not deadly for them, he pushed off Treading Steps to the max and had the sole of his feet smashing into the level 111 Master Rogue. His opponent called ¡®Blind Side¡¯ managed to see it coming but didn¡¯t manage to avoid it.
Blind Side flew back and his head cracked against the hard barrier a distance behind him.
¡°YET ANOTHER INSTANT KNOCKOUT FROM CONTESTANT RIMESTONE! Are we going to see a repeat of yesterday!?¡± The MC and a large number of people were watching their matches as the only 3 Journeymen. They were watching when both Ebony and Zach took their opponent down with a single attack. A smaller portion of the spectators were booing the axe guardian¡¯s opponent rather than cheering him on.
He looked around the seats as he returned to his waiting area after the barrier was deactivated. The coliseum seats were fully occupied but he somehow didn¡¯t take too long to spot Master Jing nearer to the front.
It might have been because she was right above where his waiting area entrance/exit was.
It might be because the seats around her were empty.
It might be because he was used to her presence and aura with his senses.
It might be because of her standing out with that mask of hers.
Whatever the case, Ebony felt his heart warm a little to see her cheering for him. That hasn''t happened for a pretty long time. Comforting.
Her mask covered her mouth this time, she still wears it fully in public. There was no seams or visible line or division that indicated that the lower portion of the mask was a separate part.
He meditated as he siphoned out the loud reverberating cheers. Jeers for the participants who they betted on and lost. Cheers for those who won them some Greens.
The first wait would be the longest just like yesterday. Today the top 35,000 needed to dwindle to the top 17,500 for the first round alone. But that was just a blink of an eye for him in meditation. The Dwarven axe guardian was called out first of the 3 of them. He really struggled, his first win had gotten him a more fortuitous reward than the champion of yesterday and he was going to snatch up even more. Needing to replace his shield and helmet was what pushed him further. He had won the second match but was too grievously wounded to continue.
Unsure if it was lucky or unlucky but Zach got another tough opponent. A [Master Shield Warrior Lvl 119].
Ebony¡¯s paranoia was telling him some strings were pulled to either see how far Zach¡¯s one slash can go or someone wanted to stop his advance. Zach had a light smile on his face. What it meant, he didn¡¯t know but Zach didn¡¯t seem angry so maybe he was glad about the challenge.
Zach sliced through the Shield Warrior¡¯s thick shield that glowed with power. Either a skill that used mana, the shield¡¯s ability or both. The shield warrior didn¡¯t just stand there to take the hit though, he had charged forward and clearly shifted his body aside. Zach¡¯s attack still managed to land exactly in the centre of his shield, cutting into his reinforced leather bracers and shifting past and up to cut into the eye. It was another deep injury for Zach¡¯s opponent who quickly admitted defeat.
This time he saw that the wound wasn¡¯t as simple as a normal cut. He was pretty sure the wound continued to tear open even after Zach was done with his attack already. He looked at his robe¡¯s sleeves but there was not even a mark of any attack.
Ebony was more and more sure someone was fooling around when he heard his opponent¡¯s stage name. ¡®Kicking Lion¡¯
[Master Martial Artist Lvl 113]
He was going to guess Zach¡¯s name and the prestige that he built up was what got him higher level opponents.
???
Kicking Lion tiptoed a few times as a warm-up.
He had been one of the contestants watching Ebony¡¯s duel. He had never seen such a beautifully executed kick. He predicted that Ebony was the type that just moved the instant the battle started so he was getting ready to get the headstart on the young boy. He was pretty heavily focused on speed and believed he could easily match the young Journeyman. It wasn¡¯t lost on him that Ebony¡¯s burst start was extremely fast but his kick wasn¡¯t nearly as sharp in terms of acceleration.
¡°Rimestone? I saw your previous match. That was an amazing kick but you won¡¯t catch me off guard with your burst of speed.¡± Kicking Lion said before the guy in charge of refereeing started the match.
¡°Okay.¡± Kicking Lion was a little annoyed by Ebony¡¯s tone of indifference.
Kicking Lion had pretty shiny greaves, leggings and boots. He was on the lean side but not skinny.
Ebony wanted to go full speed from what he said but if he was so confident of his speed Ebony was afraid of kicking his head off if he used Chaotic Repulsive Membrane to burst off. To take things more seriously because the man was an evolution ahead of him after all, he compressed his Icebody Enhancement. Using only his excess mana and not the already condensed stock he had in his chassis.
¡°Begin!¡± The referee called after activating the barrier.
He still acted first even though Kicking Lion was so confident.
In no time at all, his sole was about to arrive at Kicking Lion¡¯s face.
Kicking Lion¡¯s right leg came up to counter Ebony''s feet before his mind could think whether to evade or counter. His body must have decided that there was no harm or contest pushing the Journeyman¡¯s leg away with his 150% leg Strength and Agility Fortifications.
All his power was from his legs and he was proud of it. Not to mention his 600 Agility which was definitely beyond a Journeyman like Rimestone. He dialled down on Strength of 420 but his kicks would have the Strength of 1050. His tier 1 Core Skill, Snapping Feet gave him an additional 139% kicking Strength and Agility.
¡°A direct exchange of kicking with me is impossible!¡± Kicking Lion somehow found the time to shout a lengthy line as his instep connected with Ebony¡¯s ankles.
¡°AARRHH!¡± Kicking Lion screamed in pain. His lower armour held but the collision of forces was much stronger than he thought. He had managed to barely push Ebony¡¯s incoming feet to his face but he had never kicked anything as hard before.
The impact sent numbing shocks through his feet, his ankle was probably dislocated and swelling as he hopped on one foot and fell due to his initial shock. Laying on his side with his feet brought up for him to hold as a reflexive action.
Ebony didn¡¯t attack any further, he was not completely unharmed. He was pretty impressed that Kicking Lion could actually push his kick away with a kick of his own. He was probably only down because Ebony had an even greater buff in Constitution that backed him up while Kicking Lion didn¡¯t appear to have. The dull numbness in his ankle was already fading though.
He was right, he shouldn¡¯t go easy on any opponent. That might have gone differently if he continued to use uncompressed Icebody Enhancement.
He extended a hand to Kicking Lion to pull him up but Kicking Lion didn¡¯t take it. He only took a few breaths to calm himself down and directed an ¡®I admit defeat.¡¯ to the referee before hopping away once the barrier was deactivated.
Unabashed, he returned to the waiting area as if what happened earlier didn¡¯t happen. ¡®Where¡¯s the sportsmanship?¡¯ Ebony had a redundant thought.
For some reason, he thought Master Jing was cheering a little too excitedly. He even thought she was about to cry from the vibrations he picked up when he walked past under her. He must be imagining things.
He hasn¡¯t spent a single drop of mana from his mana pool but he meditated to get or to keep his mental and physical state in tip top shape.
Chapter 87: Mark Rost
The MC, Iroy must have some skill that produces more saliva for himself as he was talking so much.
Introducing so many participants that any normal person would''ve talked themselves dry by now. The loudness didn¡¯t really need a skill for it since they were tools like megaphones or microphones and speakers here. It may be something magical or something mechanically engineered for all he knew.
¡°It¡¯s time for the young icy kicking swordsman¡¯s 3rd match that I know many of you, including our honoured Grandmaster Craftswoman from Xeng, are waiting for!¡± Iroy had long noticed the weirdly empty spot around the front. He had been a little stunned to see not just any Grandmaster, not just any crafter, but a Xeng one. His mind blanked out but his mouth and throat never did.
Iroy was a very well-informed person, he had to be. He didn¡¯t have to think too long before he shut the amplifying orb and coughed. The solid black line with a small circle in the middle sent unbelievably numb shocks to his mind.
For a couple of years, multiple divine-like items have been showing up in auctions that the Z&Z company had run.
Whether it was an empty glass bottle that could hold an unending amount of liquid. A tiny fruit knife so sharp and light the buyer who accidentally dropped it on the blade end couldn¡¯t find it to this day as it sunk till god knows how deep. A hammer even the strongest Dwarf or Beastman couldn¡¯t lift up. A single vambrace said to stay undamaged even after the user turned to ashes under an infernal salamander''s breath.
No one knew who or what made those items but they all had a symbol on them. The exact same one on this Grandmaster that popped out of nowhere and is sitting in the coliseum he was in charge of. The straight line and circle.
The maker had always been unnamed but people already gave him, her or what a name to go by. The Null Horizon.
Partly because of her symbol. Partly because no one could ever find her. No one knew where this maker popped out from. No one knew of her origins. They knew nothing of the unknown crafter.
Now he did. Iroy couldn¡¯t be more excited to host such a person. Everything made sense now that he found out she was a Xeng. Yet, no one in the audience seemed to recognise her. Nothing surprising as it wasn¡¯t like just anyone would know or have seen her works or her symbol.
Iroy didn¡¯t realise that he made the greatest mistake of his life yet by calling Null Horizon out like that until she glared in his direction. Ebony who was walking out and could feel her excited smile turn glum and then into what he recognised as a pout. He could almost see her pout from just her eyes.
Iroy wanted to kill himself from a few seconds back. This Grandmaster was obviously one that preferred anonymity. And he just brought the attention of more than half a million people to her? Did he hit his head this morning?
No one but Null Horizon knew what she was thinking at this moment.
Iroy also quickly tried to save himself by changing the subject and dragging the audience¡¯s attention back to the matches. He was too late as most people were already either whispering or loudly talking about the Xeng Grandmaster¡¯s presence and apparent support for Rimestone.
Iroy had a mental double take when he skimmed through the information about Rimestone¡¯s opponent. Those fools! A fire mage? As high status as mages had, they were mostly known to be useless in battle until at least Master Class or an especially old and experienced mage.
Even so, a speed focused martial artist that got the rug pulled from under him in terms of initiative lost and they put a fire mage that probably couldn¡¯t even say the second word of his chant against him? This particular one didn¡¯t even study in or graduate from any academy! A vagrant, self-taught mage.
On second thoughts, his profile stated his affiliation with a pretty well-known company. That was the only ray of hope that talks about this guy¡¯s capabilities.
Iroy had to leave the scoldings for later as both contestants were facing each other already. He was sweating from the imagined scolding that he would receive. This 3rd match either would make him lose his job from the loss of trust due to the Epic rank reward or gain popularity, trust and much more. He just needed to get on Null Horizon¡¯s good side. Even the most minor connection with her will turn his life around. He cannot mess this up anymore.
Iroy was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Should he place his job as a priority or reduce the Grandmaster¡¯s ire at any cost?
???
Mark Rost was an untalented man. The day he found out the little orange and red particles he could feel were actually fire mana was the day he decided he would not stand for a mediocre life. Mark was only 10.
He understood, it may be one of the most common of elements and it was not going to be easy but that was fine. Mark understood from the young age of 7, that life was never going to be easy.
Alas, he found his talent as a fire mage to be¡below average. He wasn¡¯t discouraged or even surprised by the fact. He even expected it. His mother being a normal level 142 Master Shoemaker, his father a normal Master Warrior as a small town¡¯s guard.
Mark¡¯s hometown didn¡¯t have any academy for mages, he didn¡¯t have the mana ore for it either and he was not telling his family to burden them with his problems.
His father personally taught him. A man¡¯s problems are his to deal with.
His mother personally taught him. A talented man will have to worry about being pulled down. An untalented and poor man like himself will only have to look up ahead and drag someone else down.
Mark fumbled around with the bits of orangy red particles as best he could on his own till he turned 12. A tiny flame dimmer than the lowest quality phos flickered above his palms. He practised every night till he passed out. It wasn¡¯t a long time as his mana pool was probably too pathetic as a young human child.
The spark and ignition of a flame flickered out in less than a second but his determination soared. He was going to be a mage. He was going to give his pa and ma a better life.
His mana pool grew along with his body as he aged. The amount of time he could practise lighting a flame kept growing. Use less to do more. It was a common saying. Mark stuck with it. Optimising his mana expenditure as best he could.
By the age of 13, the less than a second flame turned to a small fireball he could keep alight for half a minute. Resting a little more than 10 hours before he could do it again. He had learned that humans had a 10% per hour mana regeneration rate based on their base maximum mana. Mark believed that maybe that only held true once they fully mature at the age of 15.
By the age of 14, he kept his body a little warmer throughout the night during winter with as little fire mana as he could.
He kept hiding it from his family. His pa kept checking if the physical training and spear poking got him any skills after he turned 15. Wanting to know how fast his skills level up to check his talent and potential. Mark didn¡¯t neglect his father¡¯s teachings. Working as hard physically as he did mentally.
His ma had limitless patience for him. She always reminded him that their family was more than capable of making a living and he had all the time he needed. May she live a long ripe life. He was gonna make sure it was a comfortable life. Warm clothing, soft beds, filled stomachs.
At the age of 16, his fire magic practice was exposed by a freelancer fire mage who passed by him. A beautiful young lady who didn¡¯t look past 30. He obviously already learned Identify. It only got him question marks and he wasn''t able to check her class. She said she wanted to see him cast something, anything with fire mana.
Mark had only 2 fire spells that were considered skills at that time. Body Warmth and Kindle. She already sensed him using Body Warmth so he lit a small flame above his palms and said ¡°That¡¯s about all I can do.¡±.
¡°How do you feel about being a mediocre, untalented fire mage that¡¯ll burn some trash, warm some baths or die to a random rabbit outside these walls?¡± she had asked but oddly enough Mark didn¡¯t sense any mockery behind her words.
¡°Not much. Talent is just a head start. Useless if one stops using it. If I don¡¯t stop, I¡¯ll be ahead sooner or later.¡± He found himself replying to the stranger. She smirked.
¡°Perfect. I had some trash I wanted to dispose of already.¡± The lady threw a pouch at his chest and walked away before he could say anything. It was a small pouch not unlike the one he used to carry his allowance, a couple of Greys. It was light, almost weightless so he wondered what trash she meant and found books inside. More books than should have been able to fit inside the small pouch. It was filled with gibberish symbols.
Mark was immensely happy and confused. Though not by much, the pouch was obviously one of those extremely expensive and hard to get spatial pouches. It definitely wasn¡¯t the trash she said it was.
Books, depending on their contents, weren''t all that cheap. He brought it to the town¡¯s bookstore, run by an old man Pix, who couldn¡¯t even stand straight anymore. He had read folktales and whatnot to the town¡¯s children many times. Mark was somewhat familiar with him as with many children, teenagers and young adults from this small town.
He had told him that these books were all about runes. Old man Pix told him many things that day. He had felt like he returned to his childhood, eyes widening at Pix¡¯s storytelling. But this was no story, merely what Pix thought was the truth and Mark believed him.
One didn¡¯t need any kind of shit talent to learn the runic language. With runes, there was nothing one couldn¡¯t do that a mage of another element could. Theoretically.
That was enough for him. Mark stepped onto the path of runes all by himself. Pix only knew about runes but not the runic language itself.
There were no other books on runes in the entire town. Mark studied the ones in the lady¡¯s ¡®trash¡¯ for 2 years. A mere 9 books but he completely deciphered whatever there was to decipher. Thankfully, there were some notes and Elcrian words in there. In another 3 years, he succeeded in getting the Generic Skills for his runic endeavour. He had been making some decent income from his scroll selling. Using all his life¡¯s savings till date as his capital. He was lucky he had succeeded.
At the age of 21, his family Identified him to be a [Fire Mage Lvl 0] after he ¡®fell asleep¡¯ for much too long.
Though his real class was Fire Poker. Ironically, his spear practice with a wooden rod was taken as Staff Mastery. Perhaps he was Identified as a fire mage rather than a fire warrior or spearman due to his focus on fire magic. His family was still unaware that he already got his Sub-Class Runic Scholar at the same time.
His ma cried. His pa¡¯s frown deepened. They had been really upset. Upset that they didn¡¯t have the financial capability to send him to an Academy. Any old unheard of academy would have made his path a lot smoother and easier.
Few would want to party with a low level vagrant mage like him. Mark didn¡¯t care for that, and he made sure his parents understood.
¡°Ma, Pa. I¡¯ll be dragging those up there down before you know it.¡± Mark smiled to reassure them of his determination and confidence.
¡°I know you will, son. I know you will.¡±
Today. At the age of 55, he was within the young group of Master ranked fire mages. Stepping over, defeating many other greater, more talented fire mages than himself. Catching the eye of a large alchemic company when he was only level 63 sped up his advance many times over. He got the promised access to more runic knowledge together with some of the senior fire mages also contracted to the company to tutor him for some time.
They caught wind of the newly found unresearched metal. The old fools higher up obviously wanted it. Just because it was a metal didn¡¯t mean it didn¡¯t have alchemical use after all. Mark was going to get it for them. Even greater, more profound runic knowledge was waiting for him.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Now stood a nonsensically young man in front of him. Another one of those talents. This one even seems greater than any that he had surpassed.
He didn¡¯t look down on them. Why would he? Not every talent was lazy. Many talents were still ahead of him. He could only stare and keep climbing. But he wasn¡¯t going to give up, not in the slightest. He needed to win at least 5 battles or the previous matches would just have been a waste of time.
Mark fought against many people. Since most were more talented than him it was not an exaggeration to say he was used to fighting people who were better and stronger than himself. He believed that Rimestone was the type to use only just enough effort to defeat his opponent with the same opening move. He was betting that Rimestone would start off with the exact same move he had done since his Journeyman match the previous day. He was a man of research and wasn¡¯t going to let arrogance get to his head. Every little detail might help.
???
Ebony slowly walked to his match grounds at his usual pace. Uncaring about the roaring crowd that turned silent and looked towards Master Jing. He saw that his opponent was also making his way there. His opponent was called Rost.
[Master Fire Mage Lvl 130]
The level spiked a little. Either there wasn¡¯t anyone low level anymore or there really was a ploy to get rid of Ebony¡¯s chances of winning the prize.
¡°I¡¯m Mark Rost. I know you haven''t shown any of your real power yet but, I¡¯m not going to make it easy for you.¡± The man with dark eye circles said. His facial features appeared young like someone in their mid 20s but his dark orange hair had streaks of grey hair.
He was wearing leather armour, not much different from a martial artist¡¯s garb. Holding a rod about 1.5m long, at the centre was a small bulge. The rod was carved, dimly red in colour where the lines were. His hands were covered in old burn wounds.
Ebony didn¡¯t sense any strong sense of danger or strength from him but the look in his eyes was familiar. He found himself reminded of Scarlet¡¯s eyes. Similar.
¡°Ebony. I look forward to duelling a diligent man like you, Mark.¡± Mark raised a brow with his words. Mark¡¯s right leg stomped firmly forward as he got into the stance his father hammered into him. He took a deep breath.
Ebony wasn¡¯t gonna fool around. He had a feeling his ass would be bitten if he wasn¡¯t on high alert.
At first glance, Mark appeared to be a hybrid like him but it just didn¡¯t feel like the man would charge up close and attack him. At 30 levels above, he would have over 800 base stat points over Ebony if he had roughly the same levels for all 3 Classes.
Still, he didn¡¯t for one second think that the fire mage would have a high enough Constitution to survive a repelled kick to the face. So he¡¯ll just test his reactions with the same kick he had. Mark was spot on.
¡°Begin!¡± The same words were called by a different referee.
Ebony burst off with Treading Step again, his feet flying forth. His right feet slammed into something hard before he felt it collapse inward, further, then into something hard again. His left hand moved downwards to deflect an incoming strike without thought. He kicked off whatever hard surface his right foot was on and pushed himself back along with pushing Mark¡¯s staff-like rod aside. They disengaged right after the first exchange.
¡°WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE! Contestant Rost has countered Contestant Rimestone¡¯s signature disrespectful face kicking! What just happened?! Did Contestant Rimestone stop his kick to defend himself or was it what some of the more perceptive audience saw!? Feel free to watch a replay after the match!¡± The noisy MC continued to promote some product or replay in a memory light if there was demand.
Ebony saw what happened in the split second. The moment he moved, Mark breathed out 2 short breaths very forcefully. He breathed 2 puffs of flames but what was weird was that they were solid by the time his kick reached the 2 puffs of flames. Only ¡®breaking¡¯ one and stopped by the second. At the same time, Mark stabbed out with his wooden staff that slowly glowed red along its carved lines.
Mark took the chance of his momentary pause to attack. Activating the fire mana ore in his version of a staff. Mark spun his glowing staff once and a full sized rune circle deployed itself as he stabbed right into the centre of the stabilised runic flame circle.
The staff clearly wasn¡¯t going to hit Ebony from so far away but he already figured out what Mark just did, his feet were still faster than his magic so he attempted to dodge instead of depending on a shield. The runic circle had the diameter of Mark¡¯s staff''s length, from this runic circle, an entire pillar of flames threatened to swallow him up. He didn¡¯t completely dodge in time as one his ears burned along with his hair catching fire. He quickly put the fire out with a few pats.
¡®I got it. That staff of his is like a giant pen that I use for Inscription. Instead of liquefying normal mana ores it liquefies a fire mana ore or something like that. The carved or rather, engraved lines are probably preset or predrawn runes where a single spin can set up an entire runic spell¡hot damn. That¡¯s impressive.¡¯ Ebony still had the time to calmly deduce.
The biggest question he had was how fire mana was used as both the power source and ¡®ink¡¯. The flames had to be so still and stable that the runic symbols wouldn¡¯t be affected, as if solidified.
Unlike the fire breath blocked by his own feet, the huge runic spell circle was completely shown to Ebony. He had noticed that Mark¡¯s staff or giant pen wasn¡¯t completely lit up. Giving him the idea that it had multiple preset runic spells. The giant rune circle was screaming ¡®huge pillar of flames¡¯ to him who recognised the symbols but not having enough time to dissect it.
His folly was to assume that the runic spell ended as a simple huge pillar of flames. Mark, who stabbed his staff inside the floating runic circle swept his staff, following his dodge. He was truly befuddled that the runic spell¡¯s effect hadn''t ended and got bathed in flames from a wide sweep of the huge pillar of flames only stopped by the barrier. The pillar of flames whipped along with Mark¡¯s staff movements.
The temperature within the barrier rose high up. Mark probably didn¡¯t spend too much of his mana reserve on this attack as the pillar of flames died down. Ebony who was amidst the flames didn¡¯t just stand there. Magnified Gravity Field expanded to stun Mark for a split second, he took another step towards Mark with Sonic Overlay enveloping his legs.
Mark was clearly well versed in spinning his staff at the drop of his hat. The same sized flame runic circle burned into existence. His kick landed on the solid but see-through circle behind the symbols in the air.
Mark was shocked that his flames destabilised so quickly and erratically all of a sudden and Ebony¡¯s kick destroyed his defensive rune circle so easily. He needed to research that! His kick didn¡¯t seem any different but it clearly wasn¡¯t so simple.
Mark¡¯s mind wandered but his body didn¡¯t. His staff didn¡¯t stop spinning and flowed along to come from the bottom to slap or uppercut Ebony¡¯s chin. Trying to get an upper hand against Ebony in close range was just foolish. Mark also knew he was not much a match for most decent warriors with years under their belt. When his staff missed and the bottom of his staff faced his opponent, the tiny runic circle at the bottom glowed and burst into a spike of wind propelled flames that served to either push monsters that got too close or push himself back. In this case, Mark wind blasted himself back to gain the distance he so sorely needed.
He had rune-afied all his equipment. Where he marked as the top of his staff could activate a makeshift spear tip of steel. Other than the defensive solid wall of flames and pillar of flames there were still 1 more runic spell circle he could almost instantly cast. It wasn¡¯t like he could only cast one at a time or that he couldn¡¯t use multiple of them at once either. It was just too mana consuming if he did that.
He was an untalented fire mage. He was no conjuror and was only a first order mage that cheated his way into multicasting and speed casting. All his fire mana for spells was drawn from the Rare fire mana ore in his staff. He was only paid one Rare mana ore in half a year and much was usually saved for all his research. The rest of his defensive equipment was powered by Common or Uncommon mana ores.
Mark couldn¡¯t give up here! He mentally flipped the switch to power all his equipments¡¯ runes with mana.
Ebony chased after Mark who suddenly glowed all over. He had greatly sped up. Ebony quickly caught up and cast Magnified Gravity Field, he had to stay close to reduce mana consumption since mana consumed sharply rose with range just like it sharply decreased with range.
An Ice Sword found its way into his hand who swung it without hesitation. The blow was blocked by Mark whose staff steamed from melting his Ice Injection. His Ice Sword didn¡¯t melt that much, just from the sheer amount of mana he had, the short time of contact and his improvement in getting ice not to melt that easily.
He watched Mark speed up with a dim glow from under his boots. Mark had more Agility than him but not more movement speed.
Mark was actually able to defend himself as he was getting pushed back. A random spin from Ebony¡¯s lull in attack gave him the chance to push him back with another pillar of flames.
Although Ebony can cover the weakness of his swordsmanship with his Layered Ice Carapace and Vibrational Gravity Sense to watch his back it never did remove the inherent weakness of his offence.
Mark raised his staff overhead and spun his staff thrice as he stepped back. From all three of them was a continuous stream of dozens and dozens of fire arrows that homed in on Ebony. They seemed to know where he was and could chase him.
Ebony was getting scorched alive but not fatally. The arrows were nothing much and easily slapped away and dissipated. What concerned him was Mark taking his rod and drawing on the dirt ground in the meantime. With stabilised fire mana as his power source and air as the medium, his runic spells already had quite the kick behind them. Letting him complete one that used dirt and earth as the medium was not going to look so well.
He increased his pace. The air was getting thin within the enclosed barrier arena. Conjuring Frost Mist Perception Sphere to envelope the battlefield. Closing the distance was extremely easy for him, not to mention an enclosed space like this. It would be similar even in a wide open area.
Mark¡¯s armour didn¡¯t look impressive but the runes on them were annoyingly all for some purpose. The moment his greatsword touched his shoulder pad he was blasted by a strong gust of wind. A kick to the belly was met with a stone spike popping out. He reacted quickly enough to avoid his boots getting a hole in it. He was lucky the activation speed of the stone spike wasn''t all that quick.
Only a bit of ice mana actually found its way onto Mark¡¯s body or equipment. They also melted off soon enough. Mark¡¯s floor drawing was obviously disrupted. The icy mist didn¡¯t affect Mark at all as ice melted the moment they landed on his body.
¡®How much longer can my mana supply last? I need to finish that rune fast! I didn¡¯t expect him to be a gravity mage too! The increase in weight isn¡¯t much but it¡¯s pulling my speed down and increasing mana and stamina consumption.¡¯ Mark thought. The cold never bothered him anymore when his Body Warmth, an untiered skill evolved to Internal Heating. Its consumption of fire mana was extremely low but his mana was limited.
¡®Should I just use mana from my mana pool already? He¡¯s a really good opponent but the next 2 will be even tougher.¡¯ Ebony pondered. He didn¡¯t charge his robe with much ice mana yet but that would only allow him to cast ice magic which was where he took the mana to cast Ice Sword from.
He didn¡¯t ponder for long. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane sprung on. Smashing his feet right into a half-spun defensive rune. He didn¡¯t expect to have a boot reach his belly just when his own was about to land on Mark¡¯s. Both pushed out.
Ebony flew back. There was a strong gust that pushed him back but his Chaotic Repulsive Membrane repelled most of the forces behind the pushing kick.
Mark shot back as well but his flight towards the barrier behind suddenly slowed greatly, his feet grounding him and dragging dirt tracks along. The dust kicking up behind him told him that Mark¡¯s armour likely had the same kind of wind propulsion rune that he activated to slow or weaken his repulsion kick. It was probably actually used to speed his own movement up but Mark was flexible with its usage.
Colour him impressed.
They remained still, looking at each other who was still well and dandy after the previous exchange for a split second. It felt like minutes passed instead.
Mark ran to the side and didn¡¯t let his staff stop spinning. Circling the field¡¯s perimeter with runic circles of flames shooting out arrows of flames. The field heated up greatly as Ebony¡¯s Frost Mist evaporated due to the huge amount of fire he was spewing out. He couldn¡¯t block everything and even ¡®cutting¡¯ the arrow apart only heated the area up. He was getting light burns from the steaming heat already.
Mark, who completely surrounded the area in arrow barraging runic spells burst off for a charge into the midst of his own arrows and a metal spear tip appeared on his staff.
Ebony noticed the metal tip getting red, the spear tip inching closer to his shoulder. He grabbed the shaft or the main body of the staff since blocking with a sword made of ice was not ideal. He was pushed back a couple of steps but he managed to hold the spear in place and stop it from touching his robe. Another sudden burst of force from Mark¡¯s ¡®spear¡¯ came as he twisted it and added his whole body weight into.
It was the rune at the bottom of his staff. Then Mark took a single step forward as the runes on the back of his armour propelled him forward. A single step turned into an unstoppable charge. Ebony was pushed back step by step all the way till his back was against the barrier wall. But the spear tip never got further other than the initial surprise, his grip tightened and they were in a stalemate before all the force from Mark¡¯s charge died down.
Mark pulled his staff back as the red hot metal tip disappeared. He and his equipment ran out of mana. Mark raised the figurative white flag and it ended in Ebony¡¯s victory.
Ebony didn¡¯t even feel like he won.
He wanted to talk runes with Mark. Hopefully, he wasn¡¯t the type that held grudges after losing a match. There was too much going on at too fast a pace for Ebony to take a good look at all his runes.
This time the crowd stayed silent for a minute before going wild. It wasn¡¯t just because Ebony won but Mark clearly showed his skills too. As for Master Jing, she was probably still pouting but she seemed even grumpier than usual.
Ebony later found out Zach had lost his 3rd match against an [Master Earth Warrior Lvl 134]. Another Dwarf.
They were hell bent on kicking Zach out of the competition. The Dwarf was very pissed at Zach¡¯s arrogant attitude and wanted to beat him up but was stopped by the referee since Zach already admitted defeat. That got him even more pissed and a fight broke out behind the stage as the Dwarf went after Zach who was leaving the coliseum.
All he heard from the chit chatting in his waiting area was that the Dwarf''s shoulder was almost lopped off, he was kicked out of the tournament and that Zach had been unharmed.
One more battle to get the amount of prize Master Jing demanded.
Chapter 88: Concede
¡°It is sad to say but I believe we won¡¯t be seeing another victory from the journeyman''s champion.¡± Iroy commented. A small portion of the audience that started to like seeing Ebony¡¯s expressionless and arrogant face kicking didn¡¯t like what they just heard.
¡°Reaching the top 4,500, the lowest level contestant remaining proclaimed to have graduated from Bludgeon Academy. Let¡¯s welcome...Mura! A level 162 Master Warrior that specialises in wielding a massive heavy club! Against, Rimestone! Defying the odds, will we see another miracle?! Or will it end as expected?¡± Iroy constantly checked Null Horizon¡¯s expression. All he could see through her mask were her eyes but that was enough.
This sentence of his improved her mood?
He had also been lying through his teeth. Instead of getting Rimestone to fight the first matches of the 4th round the lower level contestants who won 3 rounds were also called for their fourth battle already. Leaving Mura to be the ¡®remaining¡¯ lowest level at the moment for those that haven¡¯t fought in their fourth battle
Iroy could tell from the audience¡¯s general reaction. Hardly anyone was really looking forward to the match. Iroy and his men didn¡¯t even have to fix a match. The level difference was so vast there was little suspense to be had in the battle.
The fire mage was surprising enough to have forced Rimestone to use more of his skills. Iroy had his impression of Rost change quite a bit. That was a good showing from him. It was eye-catching and the audience loved it. Surprisingly, the fire mage, Rost, was pretty popular from the reactions he noticed.
Rimestone looked no worse for wear after the previous match which engulfed him in flames. It had been a very short duration but his equipment had to be pretty high quality stuff. Iroy glanced at Null Horizon again.
¡®She¡¯s grinning?¡¯ Iroy was immensely confused. The cogs in his head moved quicker. Gaze Reading was a secret skill of his that he never told anyone about, it pretty much allowed him to gauge a person''s mood, expressions and to a lesser extent, their general thoughts just through a person''s eyes.
Oh shit!
Iroy was too late. The referee called for the start of the battle.
???
Ebony bombarded everything he had at his opponent Mura. Icebody Enhancement as compressed as possible, Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and Sonic Overlay couldn¡¯t be missing either.
Mura had charged head first with his metal spike club even longer than Ebony was tall.
Ebony exploded Frost Mist Perception Sphere covering the entire barrier¡¯s worth of fighting space with a thick icy mist. Multiple compressed Ice Swords formed around him and were released like an arrow from its bow. One in his hand as he charged forth. The projectiles were merely a distraction that Mura had no choice but to fall for as a single swing shattered them. He timed them to attack a little delayed from each other, Mura was cut by a glancing slash as a thin line of ice formed on his metal armour.
He was a larger man than most. It was too hard to avoid multiple swords coming at him so he depended on his advantage in speed and power to completely crush the fragile things. The icy mist started to chill him and go under his armour.
¡°Just a journeyman! You¡¯ll never take me down with these weak attacks!¡± Mura yelled as his club smashed down onto the irksome arrogant expression. Rimestone was clearly looking down on him!
The impact in his hands was unexpected as he thought that a single attack could smash Rimestone to paste. Although killing wasn¡¯t well looked upon in a match it was not against the law. Accidents happen all the time! The level difference had to be taken into account too. Rimestone was the one who agreed to the fight.
A large shield of ice was in the way. He had mostly crushed it but didn¡¯t break through. Mura just had to slam his club down once or twice more! The massive expenditure of mana of the large shield was going to be a Journeyman mage¡¯s downfall.
Mura walloped and walloped his club down, the audience¡¯s cheers motivated him. People were just savages that loved seeing the blood of strangers. After a series of overhead slams, he sensed the oddness. The crushing of ice slowly turned into knocking into something hard.
Mura stopped to see the shield now in pristine condition. His instinct got him to envelop himself in the most basic mana reinforcement Bludgeon Academy had made compulsory to reach a certain level of proficiency before being certified to graduate. The irksome boy wasn¡¯t even under the ice shield!
Mura only barely dodged as something scraped against his Compressed Steel Chestplate around the ribs. The attack actually cut into his armour! What kind of Journeyman was he?! He tried to recall what noble family used ice magic and a greatsword but nothing came to mind. The chilly frost got to him faster and faster as he breathed in frost. His lungs warmed by the small amount of mana he reinforced himself with.
The boy was too fast on his feet. Disappearing from the spot after Mura gave a wide horizontal swing that blew the mist aside before more mist took its place again.
¡®He¡¯s gonna freeze me over before I get him!¡¯ Mura yelled in rage. ¡°Stop hiding!¡±
¡°I¡¯m right here.¡±
Mura quickly let one of his hands go as he backhanded to smash Ebony who was behind him.
¡®It connected!¡¯ Mura was delighted as he felt something push back against his gauntlets.
Ebony¡¯s Chaotic Repulsive Membrane from his hands pushed himself back as he flipped himself over without losing balance. Mura''s reaction speed had been beyond his expectations, but he still didn¡¯t realise that Ebony had already destroyed the back of his chest plate with Sonic Overlay. Mura''s gauntlet was frosted over from the short contact as well.
His power was also really high, Layered Ice Carapace was much better at taking blunt hits but was still mostly crushed in a single hit until he drew more mana to compress it. Now that the man suddenly had a little more speed and power, getting hit wouldn¡¯t look pretty. Even more so now that he didn¡¯t have the Constitution buff from Reinforced Mana Chassis after dipping into his mana pool.
Still, he was pretty unimpressed by Mura¡¯s enhancement, probably having spent most of his stats in Strength. He wouldn¡¯t be able to keep it up for long and the enhancement buff from his likely about 100 or so Intelligence was almost negligible.
He used his usual tactic of hunting. Freezing Mura till he weakened and slowed enough that Ebony can slowly switch from defence to offence. Trying to orb and imprison Mura would likely be a waste of mana as he could easily free himself from Ebony''s low Intelligence and non-skill backed orb.
Mura fell over, stiff as a rock. Ebony drew all the ice mana back into his shield and attempted to push it back into his robes.
The previous match with the fire and rune mage had been a much better battle. He wanted a rematch or more sparring with Mark.
It was a really unexpected result. Quite a large portion of the audience was cheering for Rimestone now.
The battles were taking longer even though fewer battles were being conducted. If the previous few waits took hours, now he only waited a little more than an hour before his fifth match. More than enough time for him to fully recharge. The contestants were probably taking every match more seriously as they are so close to getting at least something out of this competition.
The percentage of participants over level 200 was 5% of all the participants of roughly 35,000 people. Since they were fighting people close to their own level it meant that number was also cut down by a lot. Maybe only a hundred or so of them were left after eliminating each other. There should be only a small chance of him facing them in the fifth round unless they really wanted him to lose already.
With such a large level range though, it¡¯s not surprising they purposely put the level 200s to face lower level people so that they could remove the lesser competition or make the final fights more exciting between stronger people. This was more accurate really because more than a quarter of the remaining people who won all 4 matches were above level 200.
Ebony¡¯s fifth opponent was called along with him. Swift De-armed.
His opponent was a beastwoman. Cat-like ears but no further difference from a human otherwise. Short and small in stature. A level 176 Master Rogue.
He had noticed her name yelled for many times. Her opponents that didn¡¯t forfeit in time always lost an arm. She was the ruthless type but he thought she was pretty considerate to leave the arm in good condition. Even a really good doctor can reattach it if they acted quickly, with a healer present the patient would need a much shorter time to fully recover.
¡°Forfeit now and you won¡¯t have to feel the pain of getting your arm sliced off. I just can¡¯t resist the urge.¡± Swift De-armed sniffed her blades before wiping her nose with her sleeves.
¡°It¡¯s alright. It can be reattached if you cut it off cleanly like your previous opponents.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think she could cut through his defences, much less the robe Roya made but he couldn¡¯t be so sure he was winning this match. Buying time till she KOs would likely be the same thing he¡¯ll be doing.
The feline eared lady obviously didn¡¯t expect to see Ebony¡¯s serious expression when he said what he did. This opponent of hers this time was¡not normal. Putting aside the fact a Journeyman got so far which wasn¡¯t actually unheard of, just rare. ¡®A rich kid that was sent here to gain experience¡¯ was what many would think. Perhaps a noble, perhaps some random genius with too much time on their hands.
¡°Just give up. There¡¯s no need to take the risk, you¡¯ve already gained enough haven¡¯t you? This is the last match before I can even gain anything.¡±
¡°Would you give up if it was you?¡±
¡°...No.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
The feline woman grinned. The match began.
She was much faster than even Scarlet was in her base form. No surprise with possibly 2000 stats she had above him. His evasive measures were insufficient and she never gave him time to build up his Layered Ice Carapace tough enough before she shattered them into thousands of shards.
Swift De-arm could do nothing about the freezing cold air. She wanted to take Rimestone down as soon as possible, already taking note of his previous tactic of wearing Mura down. Rimestone might have used a lot of mana but it was obvious to anyone that the meditative class had more mana to spare and likely used the downtime to recover.
Rimestone was fast for a Journeyman, but Swift De-arm also had Dash at level 190. He was too slow for her, but he seemed to know where she was going to come from and have a ridiculous burst of speed to dodge. How many skills did this boy have?
Swift De-arm charged her daggers with mana and burst into motion. Sending physical shock waves slicing through the air all around herself in every direction. He shouldn¡¯t be able to read that right?
She was right but he managed to hunker down and defend himself as the long-range blades were a lot weaker than actually coming into contact with her daggers. He couldn¡¯t meet her in a head on battle unless he truly relied on the toughness of his robe. He just didn¡¯t want to do that.
He could only get Ceaseless Onslaught to build up an insignificant amount of momentum as his opponent was too aggressive. He estimated that her Strength was lower than his compressed Icebody Enhancement but her skills made up for it with skill levels. Hence, her attacks were able to push him back. Her speed on the other hand was only so troublesome. A snail compared to how fast Scarlet could get, not to mention her ability with daggers was subpar compared to Scarlet¡¯s swordsmanship.
Swift De-arm clearly had the advantage. She was clearly pushing him back, breaking his ice weapon and shields. Why was she lying down now? Did defeat ever feel this cold?
¡®How strong is the level 121 serpent from Hoarfrost Glade?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t think the people here stood a chance against the monsters in Hoarfrost Glade at the same level. During summer maybe. There was also the fact that he was weaker at that time and was protecting Palom. Palom or the entire village of Frost Elves that weren''t considered combatants by their standards and even Class could probably beat most of the opponents in this tournament he had faced so far.
The tournament for the day slowly came to an end. He stayed to watch as an audience since one of the winners would be his next opponent. Master Jing was nowhere to be found so she likely went home after she saw his latest victory.
He actually managed to find Mark where the injured were and exchanged contacts with him. Making it known that he just started learning about runes.
Mark didn¡¯t hold a grudge but he didn¡¯t look happy. Unsurprising as he took a painful hit from Ebony. He also didn¡¯t believe Ebony had any knowledge on runes until he talked a bit longer.
Mark had obviously come to love runic studies and was glad to have someone to share viewpoints with. He was the type that got really talkative and invested when talking about his interests. Not that uncommon a trait amongst interesting, successful people.
???
It was dark by the time the competition ended and Ebony made his way back.
¡°Master Jing. I¡¯m back.¡± Ebony reported.
Master Jing had a really wide smile as she put one hand over his shoulder and the other to ruffle his hair. She smelled like iron and plants at the same time. He wouldn¡¯t say he hated the act of affection, it was pretty nice.
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¡°Well done!¡±
¡°Here¡¯s the Epic rarity metal. You can have it all.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t really need a metal when he didn¡¯t even know its properties. They would be in much better hands with Master Jing.
¡°I said 50/50 other than a tiv of Epic. It¡¯s a denser metal than I thought, there¡¯s not much that can be made with them but I¡¯ll see what I can whip up for you.¡±
¡°...Mmm.¡±
Master Jing giggled. ¡°No need to be so shy with me!¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Those in charge of the tournament are really annoying. They haven¡¯t even calculated what prize you¡¯ll be getting if you win tomorrow. Luckily I ¡®asked¡¯ them to hurry up and tell me. How far do you think you can go?¡±
¡°The weakest winners today are around level 175 - 185. I doubt they would place me against them if they want me to stop winning. How much is the prize?¡±
¡°10 tiv of Epic for the first win. 100 for the second. 1000 for the third.¡±
¡°It¡¯s around the top 1000 people now, maybe about 50% chance I would win the first. Hearing the prize, I¡¯m probably not gonna get the second win.¡±
¡°...You can. You haven¡¯t used your strongest weapon today?¡±
¡°What weapon?¡±
¡°Your mana, silly. Just scare them by directing all your overflowing mana from the start and crush them before they get used to it. Even if quite some of them had gone into dungeons with higher concentrations of mana before, yours would definitely trip them up for long enough for you to give them a good freeze.¡± Master Jing suggested.
It wasn¡¯t like he never thought about using overflowing mana like that. More common than not, that¡¯s exactly how higher level people suppressed the weaker party without lifting a finger. It just wouldn¡¯t feel like a head on duel with power against power.
¡°3 wins will be impossible but 2 should be achievable. The top 100 to 250 are filled with actual talented and experienced people. Not as talented as you but the gap in stats and skill level is too much to cross with your current weak skills. You just made the both of us rich so you can¡¯t stop here.¡±
¡°??¡±
¡°I betted on your victory every round. The odds for the first match were only 1 to 3. The second was 1 to 3.5. The third was originally 1 to 6.8 due to the level difference but the damn guy drew everyone¡¯s attention and they saw that I rooted for you so it dropped all the way to 1 to 1.1. Gah! At least almost nobody thought you would win the 4th match against a 60 level difference and the odds were 1 to 9.5! The beastwoman was even better as a hot favourite and was 1 to 11.2!¡±
Ebony¡¯s Mental Arithmetic was ticking.
¡°You bet everything on every round?¡± The random numbers Ebony came up with were huge already. That was just calculating with the 60 Blues he gave her. Wouldn¡¯t he have made 73,735 Blues if she bet everything on every round? The Greens were a spare change in comparison. Master Jing would¡¯ve made even more, wouldn¡¯t she?
¡°You bet I did.¡± Master Jing could no longer hold back and almost crushed him with her ridiculous bear hug and inane laughter. She only really let go when she heard a loud crack and was so anxious that she legitimately hurt him when she didn¡¯t mean to. Punching and kicking him didn¡¯t count.
¡°I¡¯m alright. Did they even accept such large bets?¡± Ebony was curious. Master Jing was probably unbelievably rich with her talents. She could even buy a money printing machine.
¡°This is a brand new natural material and not a dungeon material. How many companies and rich merchants have sent or looked well upon certain people? Many of them have deep pockets. There may only be half a million live viewers but a large majority isn¡¯t just the locals. Too many Greens, Blues and Purples are traded, gambled under the table to count.¡±
¡°...I can¡¯t guarantee a win.¡±
¡°I get it. I get it. I¡¯ll be careful and check out who your opponent is before betting. Go wash up and make something nice for dinner.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
Ebony had even studied cookbooks to learn more dishes that fit Master Jing¡¯s palate more. His sense of taste didn¡¯t improve but at least it no longer got any worse. Same with the weird chill he felt. No, the chill abated a little when she cheered for him earlier.
The night was spent charging as much ice mana into his robes as he would need as much as he could. Ebony knew he was not actually rich despite how much mana he could regenerate. He needed to use it for many things and money wasn¡¯t his immediate priority. He wouldn¡¯t say no to more money though. At least he had more than enough to buy houses now.
He slept and was well-rested before the third day of the tournament.
Another rowdy crowd. More waiting. More loud MC talk later.
Not many matches will be held concurrently today. There were only a small number of them left in comparison to the start of the competition. Ebony had the first match and no other matches took place at the same time, it was obvious they were hell-bent on removing him from the competition.
[Great Lightning Archer Lvl ???]
Level 188 according to the MC. He wasn¡¯t anywhere near the highest-level opponent that could be matched up with Ebony but he was no archer. With something closer to pistols attached to his thighs, a rifle looking gun on his back, he was probably what this world called a burstbowman.
The man was either prepared to fight Ebony with his red toned leather armour that was clearly enchanted but not with runes or it was just a coincidence that he could feel a bit of warmth coming from the man.
Enchantments are added on by casting spells on the piece of equipment or item and retaining them somehow. They tend to be more powerful but less sustainable. Once the spell effect or mana in the enchantment runs out it has to be re-enchanted with the spell again. There are only so many times materials can withstand enchantments so he didn''t really look well upon them.
Enchanted items were cheaper and more powerful though, making them more popular than runic items. Even though most with a good eye and deep pockets would know it was better to get runic stuff.
Whoever fixed the match probably thought that the best way to knock him out was to do it as fast as possible and not give him the chance to break his opponents down by freezing. From what he knew, this guy was one of the hot stocks believed to at least reach top 50s despite his ''lower'' level.
Ebony on the other hand believed he still had a pretty good chance. As long as the man didn¡¯t have enhancement magic and the like. Not many humans could succeed well as a hybrid, their stats even at that level had a high chance of being all over the place. But notably strong humans tend to be able to fight both physically and magically.
If he shot out lightning from his guns like his Class suggests that meant it¡¯s power was dependent on his Intelligence and weapon. Same with ammo, either physical or mana he would have a limited amount. If the man was so heavy on magical stats that meant Ebony could easily close the distance and take advantage of his weak physical stats. If the man was also an enhancement mage which would make sense then it would be hard for Ebony to win this.
Master Jing was hesitant but she ultimately gambled on Ebony¡¯s victory after seeing the horrendous 1 to 17.4 odds. Only time will tell if she made the right move.
¡°Boltshot! Vs! Rimestone! I believe we can all say that Rimestone stands no chance of victory! Will we see another miracle, the birth of a new champion? Or will the inevitable defeat happen?¡± Iroy the MC announced dramatically.
He had noticed that Null Horizon was just betting on Rimestone and he had crashed her winning odds. After a night of pondering he decided that he should make her as happy as possible. It wasn¡¯t his mana ores that the coliseum was losing and if he got fired he could always find another job in another city, people with his skills are few. Even if he didn¡¯t anger Null Horizon, helping her indirectly was better than risking himself getting killed.
He couldn¡¯t do much about the opponent Rimestone would face since his higher-up didn¡¯t want to lose too much of their prize. But the least he could do was make it sound like Rimestone was sure to lose and the odds would be in Boltshot favour more.
He was right again! Null Horizon gambled an eye opening sum that had him triple checking his eyesight. The coliseum wasn¡¯t going to earn much even with the huge traffic of bets from so many other people if Rimestone won. He even had a hand in making the odds that high, he might really lose his job today.
¡°Begin!¡±
Ebony¡¯s body shot all the way back and slammed into the barrier hard as a thin bolt of lightning shot through him the moment the referee ordered the start of the battle. He couldn¡¯t even see the shot but Icebody Enhancement was still activated faster. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane didn¡¯t do shit to defend or repel lightning, though it might have swerved just a tiny bit.
He was shot through the stomach as he coughed out a mist chilled smoke with blood. He could feel his muscle lock up but nothing he couldn¡¯t move around with, thanks to Sustained Optimum Condition.
That was what Boltshot didn¡¯t expect as he was shooting at the same spot after Ebony instantly filled the area with a thick Frost Mist Perception Sphere. He made two ice sculptures of himself with ice mana from his robe to move around as his own shadow and Boltshot fell for it. He didn¡¯t have a very high Perception for an archer.
As he had expected, the man was not affected by his mist as it melted upon contact and the area around him was getting warmed and heated by his armour. The burstbowman was confident but the thick icy mist didn¡¯t die down and there was still movement.
Ebony attacked with an Ice Sword in hand. Boltshot had amazing reaction speed to draw his second pistol to cross block his overhead strike. He had the upper hand in Strength and pushed all the way down.
Boltshot let the massive sword skid down against his pistol and freed one of them to fire at Ebony. A foot found its way onto his shoulder before he even finished raising his pistol back up, it pushed lightly but Boltshot flung back hard and his shot missed.
Boltshot stayed calm since it didn¡¯t hurt, switching out for the burstbow on his back. Taking a shot as he propelled backwards. Ebony¡¯s Layered Ice Carapace didn¡¯t stop the lightning strike completely and he felt another numbing sting on his shoulder.
He could no longer catch up to Boltshot who was on alert and sprinted and circled around the field and made too many shots to count. His feet sparked with electricity, a lightning element movement skill. Some of his rifle shots are balls that landed and exploded in a dome shape of electricity that Ebony couldn¡¯t evade.
¡°Why aren¡¯t you dead yet!?¡±
He heard panic in Boltshot¡¯s voice. He was shooting more than 10 shots of lightning charged strikes at Ebony every second, moving around with a lightning elemental skill and finally starting to feel the chill. The melting of his Frost Mist had reduced over time. Either he was providing it less mana or the armour had its own mana reserve and was running out. The second was more likely for enchantment-based equipment.
Ebony¡¯s ice sculpture managed to scare the man from where they stood from time to time as he was darting around. The area was under his close supervision with his Frost Mist Perception Sphere and Vibrational Gravity Sense. In the past 7 months, it didn¡¯t increase in range by that much from 28 metres. Only reaching 31 metres, a small improvement but still decent.
The barrier was a transparent solid type, he froze his Layered Ice Carapace up somewhere and was watching blue strikes of lightning flying all over the place. He sent Ice Swords flying down from time to time to show Boltshot that he was not down yet. Too far to move his sculptures all the time he only formed one from the free Frost Mist and let them be targets.
He condensed the Frost Mist down even further to what was necessary when Boltshot stopped bolting around. His fire rate slowed. His breathing chilled too. His mind was less alert too and Ebony gave a good knock at the back of his head.
The audience saw Ebony getting shot and they cheered. Then the area misted over again and they knew it wasn¡¯t a one hit KO. The clash of ice against metal also rang and then lightning sparked the area over and over again. They saw the light flashing and it showed the silhouette of the battle. The glowing Boltshot slowly dimmed in glow. One side of the audience saw something floating against the barrier. It got quiet, then the icy mist cleared up.
Rimestone was standing there with his chest scorched and a small black spot on his shoulder but that was it. Boltshot was on the ground.
Master Jing appeared beside Ebony without care for the barrier separating them, checking him out. The first shot worried her till no end. It was a clear strike through his body. That had been a dangerous shot since it took more than half of his health. Lightning appeared to have worked better on him as well and not just fire. Maybe that was only when he used Icebody Enhancement. He¡¯ll have to experiment to find out clearly.
''I should''ve stayed to get hit to get extended exposure for lightning resistance... never mind. A single shot took half my health, I wouldn''t survive extended exposure for my body to gain resistance anyway.'' he thought in hindsight.
¡°Yes. Yes. I¡¯m really okay. Don¡¯t worry.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t lie to me okay? I¡¯m not gonna wake up to find you dead in my house alright.¡±
¡°Just burned black, I¡¯ll wash it off later.¡± Ebony needed to check if the robe¡¯s internal was fine as well but he didn¡¯t worry too much.
He returned to the waiting area after telling Master Jing that he¡¯ll probably not win the next match after all. She got him to promise he will forfeit after he insisted he still wanted to continue.
It was like he had assumed. A Level 210 Swordmaster was too much. Practically all swordsmen had a full set of skills, unlike their warrior counterparts. 99/100 of them learned from some other swordmaster that¡¯s pretty accomplished.
Ebony listened to Master Jing and just forfeited without even trying. There was no point, he''d just be killed if the Swordmaster felt like it.
Going home with all their winnings. The 50kg of Epic rarity metal and millions upon millions of mana.
Master Jing brought Ebony to buy wine and liquor of every type. By the barrel.
¡°We¡¯ll be moving before we celebrate. Too many eyes on us now.¡±
¡°Aren¡¯t they afraid of you and Xengs in general?¡±
¡°I practically have all their ores in my hands. There are crazy people everywhere, blind, fearless and most importantly those that don''t believe in stories of us. I¡¯m also just a craftswoman with a puny journeyman by her side. Can¡¯t be bothered fighting them either.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s go then.¡±
Master Jing removed her entire house from sight within minutes and they left the city faster than they came. Not even bothering to sell the land she just bought.
Ebony didn¡¯t think those people worked so fast. He spotted and sensed some really strong people who popped up from outside the city. Master Jing just transported them further the instant she appeared where they were. The distance a single one of her teleport brought them was a little less than a single jump of Master Jing¡¯s grand aunt.
Master Jing wasn¡¯t adept at bringing people along and each one of her teleports was practically an instantaneous covering of distance unlike the old lady¡¯s. They went far and fast, but more shocking was that attacks were zapping after them. Lightning strikes.
¡°Tch. The lightning guy has a Grandmaster backer eh. Most of my winnings probably came from them who thought they would make a quick buck from your match.¡± Master Jing clicked her tongue. A bad habit of hers that he noticed from time to time. Needless to say, they needed some sort of confidence in their strength if they didn¡¯t fear Master Jing.
Ebony on the other hand didn¡¯t even see anyone in the surrounding area. Master Jing dragged him into some forest but the cover was light and the trees were sparse here. The lightning strikes that missed by quite a margin were thicker than Ebony was but that was all he managed to see other than the very ground dug up and burnt along with the vegetation for literal kilometres. Thankfully they were already out of sight of civilization.
Master Jing stopped teleporting them after the maybe random lucky shots that appeared not far off from wherever they teleported too.
¡°Go north. You¡¯ll reach the Fissure Sea, go to the closest city you can find. No one would dare pick a fight there.¡± Master Jing pointed where she decided north was. Unless she was misleading him for whatever reason.
¡°Master Jing. You said you¡¯re not a fighter.¡± Ebony knew he was just the burden here as a ¡®puny¡¯ journeyman. He should just get going already but he was worried for the craftswoman who said she didn¡¯t have any fighting capabilities.
¡°Hmph.¡± Master Jing snorted but she was smiling.
¡°I don¡¯t need any measurable fighting capability for some random archer that can¡¯t even hit me when I¡¯m standing still.¡± Master Jing ruffled Ebony¡¯s hair again.
¡°Then I don¡¯t need to run away do I?¡±
Master Jing chuckled before a palm pushed Ebony. ¡°Think about what you want to learn from me already. I¡¯ll look for you, stay safe.¡±
He found himself in the middle of nowhere, listening, seeing and feeling the lightning strikes from afar. Perhaps, staying with her might have been safer. Safer for him but not for her.
Ebony orientated himself and left northwards at full speed ahead, no longer turning back to watch the flashes of light.
Chapter 89: Fourth Tide
All of Ebony¡¯s stuff except the clothes and robe he was wearing was with Master Jing. Including all his food ration and waterskin. He was fine to go without food or water for a few days and he was not even putting those as a priority. It was far from the first time he went without food or water in the open wild. Procuring them wouldn¡¯t be that hard as far as he could tell from looking around.
The sea was surprisingly close. It only took a little more than 2 days of constant movement before he could smell the salty scent of the sea. Ebony didn¡¯t even feel thirsty yet, he didn¡¯t really overexert himself. The forest he was in was even safer than Plainston¡¯s which felt a little weird to him. There really only were low level and even wild unleveled animals and such.
The forest was still active and insects noisy but nothing approached him as long as he let his overflowing mana eke out a little.
The Frost Elves had somewhat indirectly cleared one of his questions. Ordina¡¯s monsters really were chasing after him because he was a partial mana being whose mana was filled with vitality. It made him a delicious, easy to digest target for any dungeon. Indirectly because he never asked the question, it just came up in their explanations of what they knew about mana beings. Partial mana beings.
It had made his journey smooth sailing.
Ebony still couldn¡¯t fly or float on his conjured and controlled ice. It was a flat terrain so the best he could do was jump as high as he could to survey the area. An ocean of blue where the horizon was the meeting of the sea and sky. Panoramic.
Something invaded his Vibrational Gravity Sense when he was dozens of metres in the air. Ebony already had a fully compressed Ice Sword in his hands and swung back reflexively. Only after swinging did he realise the familiarity of the figure. Repulsive forces ignored, Sonic Overlay held completely to a standstill between fingers.
¡°Is that how you greet me?¡± Master Jing asked, looking no worse for wear. She grabbed his shoulder and brought him along as she continued teleporting them. Random punches and kicks flew at him at the same time with her free arm and legs.
¡°...That¡¯s how you conditioned me to greet you.¡± Ebony took a short beating but there was no malice.
¡°You covered quite a distance.¡± Master Jing commented. She probably didn¡¯t take more than a few minutes to get where Ebony was in 2 days.
¡°You took a long time considering you didn¡¯t need any measurable strength for some random archer.¡± 2 days was a long time. He didn¡¯t know what battles at Master Jing¡¯s level would be like, maybe 2 days was a really short time for them. Endurance stat and all being so much higher.
¡°Cheeky punk. He was hardly the only one on the payroll. I went to remove two or three of their company''s stores as a small lesson. They were weaker than I expected for people that are close to the Fissure borders. We¡¯re here, this should be the Fourth Tide if I¡¯m not wrong.¡± Master Jing teleported onto land this time.
The salty breeze is even stronger here. The city, Fourth Tide, was a massive city. There were many towers built tall enough that they dwarfed any other building he had seen during his time here on Elcra. Built atop a cliffside, the edge of the city was a rocky drop to the sea.
The city walls were black in colour and patrolling guards atop the walls weren¡¯t even more than 5 metres apart. Just standing where they were brought down a heavy pressure on his shoulders in terms of the actual phantom weight of overflowing Vitality from the entire city as a whole.
6 stalwart, unmoving and unflinching [Great Knights Lvl ???] stood along the gate entrance with 4 [Master Warriors] also of unknown levels. Any single one of them gave him a strong sense of danger. The 6 great knights especially, covered in full plate armour. They were almost exactly how he envisioned knights to look like. Dauntless.
¡°Halt! State your purpose of visit and affiliation if any!¡± one of the warriors ordered. 4 of them crossed their spears to block Master Jing. They clearly weren''t fooling around, the security here is the highest he had seen. The fact that Master Jing didn¡¯t just enter the city was also saying some things. At least, this was the first he had seen anyone, guards including not awed or scared of the mask¡¯s significance.
¡°Craftswoman. Xienor.¡± Master Jing only said the obvious but the warriors swallowing their saliva was not lost on him. Looks like they weren¡¯t nearly as dauntless as the knights but he also knew that Master Jing was doing what she told him and was using her aura on them.
¡°Esteemed Grandmaster, you¡¯re welcome to enter for free but your servant will have to pay the fee without exception.¡± The warrior spoke politely but forced himself to stand straight and look strong. Crafters had privileges everywhere they went, a Grandmaster ranked one was even more desired to have in any city or town.
Being called a servant just fell on deaf ears to Ebony, in actuality it wasn¡¯t so far from the truth. He did do all her chores and was leaching off her. Despite Master Jing expecting payment, he wasn¡¯t so dumb he didn¡¯t know the value of even a single word and book of her repository of knowledge.
Ebony didn¡¯t know what happened but the warriors all knelt down after the man finished his sentence. ¡®Knelt¡¯ was an understatement, their knees crashed and dug deep into the ground. Blood dripped onto the ground, they were bleeding from their eyes, ears, nose and mouth. He didn¡¯t even see the knights move when there were 6 swords drawn and pointed not even an inch away from Master Jing.
They apparently didn¡¯t even appear to exist in Master Jing¡¯s sights. She only moved to grab the speaking man¡¯s head and carried him up single-handedly and seemed to speak into his ears. The knights yelled for her to stop moving but their blades didn¡¯t move. Ebony couldn¡¯t hear a single word the knights were yelling. The only thing reverberating in his ears and mind was Master Jing¡¯s whispers. So soft, he thought he imagined it.
¡°Call my little brother a servant again and the Empire will no longer have a First Tide, not to mention Fourth. Understand?¡± Ebony saw the rage in her eyes and words.
Master Jing let the poor man go and threw dozens of mana ores on the ground before walking through the gate. That was a ridiculous entrance fee but he couldn¡¯t tell if she was just tossing a random amount or it was actually that expensive.
As for the knights, they found themselves standing back in their original position the moment Master Jing let the warrior go. Pointing their blades forward at each other. They were greatly alarmed but stayed stunned as Master Jing brought him along to enter. Motionless. None dared to move a muscle.
Master Jing¡¯s rage filled words warmed his chilled heart. The fact that she threatened the Empire like it was nothing didn¡¯t even feel out of place. Nor the fact that she said she didn¡¯t have any measurable combat power.
She hailed a bird-like raptor monster drawn carriage and headed for the Quest Hall.
The Quest Hall in Fourth Tide was really silent and spacious in comparison to even Plainston when it was a town. There weren¡¯t even many employees and not a single freelancer party in sight. She did the same thing and bought a plot of land. The city was clearly different from any other Ebony had visited so far. It was military.
Master Jing didn¡¯t survey the area of anything and just paid the full sum, signed and took the deed and left.
The residents were mostly families of the army, craftsmen, blacksmiths, traders and all the people necessary to keep the city running. Perhaps, because they were the fourth or something there was still a noisy market here and there. [Master Fisher]s¡¯ also beyond Ebony¡¯s Identify range cheerfully promoting their fresh catch. The laughter of children was the life of any city. The mood in the city was not as tense as the security made it seem.
The difference is that even a random civilian has enough overflowing Vitality that Ebony could vaguely sense. No wonder the entire city seemed to put pressure on him before he even entered.
They arrived at where Master Jing¡¯s plot of land was, in the same carriage that waited outside the Quest Hall. There were hundreds of knights that looked exactly the same as the one¡¯s at the gate lined up in two rows as if they were welcoming their entourage.
One man that was garbed in extravagantly shiny armour, clearly enchanted in some fashion stood before their carriage. The only one that didn¡¯t have his helmet on, showing his tanned skin and squarish face.
Ebony alighted along with Master Jing as she paid the nervous driver and let him go. Master Jing didn¡¯t even look at the man blocking their way and walked past him. Obviously, he expressionlessly followed along.
¡°This spot¡¯s not that bad don¡¯t you think? There¡¯s a nice breeze and all. It¡¯s too bad that it¡¯s more crowded than described.¡± Master Jing said.
¡°Yes Master Jing.¡± Ebony replied without much thought.
Master Jing frowned and was about to say something but the armoured man who got slighted fake coughed and interrupted her.
¡°Greetings. I am Marquis Kenley Rey Briggs, City lord of Fourth Tide.¡± Kenley the City lord self-introduced.
Master Jing openly ignored him and purposely asked Ebony for his opinion on how she should place her cottage.
¡°...I have been made aware of my men¡¯s earlier disregard and discourtesy. I am here to offer, in the Empire¡¯s stead, our most sincere apologies. We¡¯ve brought some of the new ore that you¡¯ve shown interest in as a show of our sincerity.¡± Kenley, who was a [Grand Knight] of unknown levels waved his hands and tens of chests dropped with a loud thump on the ground.
They sure had incredibly fast information sources. Their sincerity was also pretty awesome if all the chests were filled with the exact same ore. The amount present is definitely more than the total sum even offered as a reward in Crust Deposit City¡¯s tournament. Quality aside.
¡°Your sincerity can be shown by staying out of my sight.¡± Master Jing waved her right hand back without even turning to face the marquis. She didn¡¯t do much, only moving hundreds of knights along with the city lord and the chests by dozens of metres. The chests were even stacked up high in front of them so that they were ¡®out of sight''.
¡®Not good at teleporting people and no fighting capabilities my ass.¡¯
She proceeded to place her house facing the sea and went about doing her own things. Ebony took a nice bath to wash up. Returning to the guest room that he made home for the past half a year. There was a literal hill of Blues overflowing from his bed to the ground. He swept them all aside and just slept in his comfortable clothes. Completely at ease enough to remove his robe and sleep in peace.
The city lord didn¡¯t push any further and just left, neither of them seeing his ugly expression. Kenley¡¯s men were inwardly relieved that their city lord still had a whiff of self control. They knew his tendencies but the aristocrats who had been around long enough had the knowledge not to mess with the Xengs beaten into their very bones.
???
It was hours later when Ebony fell awake. One moment he was lying comfortably in dreamless dreamland, the next moment he was falling through the air and onto the warm hard ground. It wasn¡¯t a very high fall but a fall from any height was more than enough to wake him up. It didn¡¯t take him very long to orientate himself that he was underground, near the forge.
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¡°Decide.¡± Master Jing dictated. It wasn¡¯t hard for him to guess what she was referring to. Perhaps he had been dragging his feet for too long.
¡°...I want to learn how to make accessories. With mana manipulation as the base tool.¡± Ebony said after a moment of thought. Whatever he made would never be better than a dedicated craftsman or smith. At least for starters, accessories were small crafts. Watching Mark fight also showed him the utility that runic equipment has. It could be both a hobby and have practical use with runes.
¡°Accessories? Ohh, punk. Not bad. But accessories are too broad, I don¡¯t have all the time in the world just to teach you everything. Specify 1 or 2. As for using just mana, that was my plan for you all along.¡± Master Jing was a little surprised before confusing him a little, what was ¡®not bad¡¯ about the choice?
¡°Ring and necklace.¡± Ebony replied. Storage or dimensional rings were very common in novels. Rings especially were the most common accessory worn after all. Maybe bracelets for the people here since everyone wore a myriad bracelet. That only meant there was little point in bracelet making for now as nothing can really replace it as an all-purpose tool.
¡°Read and understand all the most basic forging techniques, material properties and the books on structure of rings and necklaces yet?¡± Master Jing asked.
¡°Mostly.¡± That might have been an understatement since he finished more than just the basic level ones. It was just that his understanding of more advanced stuff was iffy and he had little to no actual hands-on experience. Theoretical knowledge alone is never enough when it comes to any type of craft.
¡°Go ahead.¡± Master Jing tossed what Ebony knew was just normal iron ore. She didn¡¯t give any instructions, only wanting to see what he had come up with. He had the theoretical knowledge but how to mesh it with Mana Moulding was the question.
It was nothing new to him that just forcing the materials to bend under his mana¡¯s force would just break the internal structure of the material itself. Even when he worked with fibrous materials.
There was a world of difference between his work and a normal tailor¡¯s work in Roya¡¯s eyes. That was to say even his mana tailored clothes had flaws, mostly about the flawed integrity of the end product due to all the forcing and bashing that his mana did to the raw materials.
Ebony tried wrapping and enveloping the ore with his mana as gently as possible, not doing anything with it other than trying to dig in as deep as possible. He took a foundry tong laying around to grab the ore, his mana ¡®imbued¡¯ poorly into it as well. Chucking it into the flames.
An ingot was usually smelted from the ores to oxidise and reduce it, get an alloy and separate impurities. There were ingots around of course but if Master Jing tossed him an ore, then that¡¯s what he would use.
As for smelting it, Ebony was thinking he could just separate what he needed with Mana Moulding alone. His Perception training in Arcta was really shining here. His fine control and sensing were really unnatural or so Roya has said but him being a partial mana being probably affected that.
Ebony could perceive the different particles that his mana was wrapping around. The heat from the flames excited them, burning his mana along with it. He would¡¯ve made a pair of tongs using ice mana to train his ability to make his ice more resistant to heat if it wasn¡¯t for the fact that the quickly evaporating ice would affect his mana consumption and the process itself. The water or steam might cause some unwanted reactions as well.
One could see the ore quickly turn red hot, some parts liquid. Nothing dripped down, the burning ball wriggled. The tong was merely the connecting arm for his mana to pass through since it was easier when he was in contact with his own mana.
A small bubble slowly grew out of the bulk and when he decided he had separated the different stuff he pulled the melting ore that was staying in shape with his Mana Moulding. The small bubble dripped onto the floor as he ¡®cut¡¯ that portion out.
Master Jing didn¡¯t say anything throughout, just silently watching. Ebony took a small hammer and started to shape the soft solid. Mana Moulding was only there to guide instead of force the molecules to move into place. Another use of it was compression force, he wouldn¡¯t be putting the integrity of the material into question with just that as it was like hammering with his mana.
Fine tuning and shaping were all done with his mana. The end product was a couple of iron rings that were cooling and mostly hardened again.
¡°...¡±
Master Jing didn¡¯t say anything but it wasn¡¯t silent as she was beating him up.
¡°You call this crafting?¡± She only stopped after Ebony got a bruised face which wasn¡¯t very long considering the strength she was putting into her punches.
¡°Well...¡± What could he say? It was improv and his rendition of ¡®forging¡¯ with mana.
¡°What was the quality of the ore I passed you?¡± She knocked his head with her knuckles.
¡°Common.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t forget.
¡°That¡ scrap metal?¡± Master Jing was hesitant to call those metal hoops rings.
¡°...Inferior.¡± He wasn¡¯t embarrassed since it was his first try but it was surely a tiny bit disappointing.
¡°This might take longer than I thought¡¡± Master Jing commented as she shook her head.
???
Master Jing really could make whatever she put her mind to. She copied Ebony¡¯s method but purely with mana as her tool. Clearly far surpassing him with sheer control and precision. There were steps she added.
She made Ebony a small forge of his own, there was more than enough space beside her own forge. Together with a workspace.
She had been exaggerating a little as he wasn¡¯t that far off with his process. It wasn¡¯t conventional at all but it fundamentally worked. She refined every step of his and just told him to figure things out himself. How to refine his craft even further was up to him.
Literal tens of thousands of iron rings later. Master Jing approved his latest work. At this point, she already told him to give up on necklaces for now. Ebony moved on to different metals and alloys, steel, bronze, copper, nickel etc.. Some were easier, some were tougher. Then to different designs and all.
When he was allowed to work with Uncommon ranked materials, it was kind of another roadblock. The same iron of different quality was almost like working with a different material altogether.
Ebony¡¯s research in runes didn¡¯t lag behind. It actually improved by leaps and bounds. He had stayed in contact with Mark. Even getting the best callstone he could get his hands on, making calls cheaper. He might be somewhat rich with over a million Blues but that doesn''t mean he should waste mana.
It took a month before it was delivered from Tidal.
The Rare Callstone could reach almost 200 Gur, a million km or so it was advertised since he couldn¡¯t get all the details with his Identify. 1MP/10km/s or 0.1MP/km/s was the best mana efficiency current technology can give or so even Master Jing believed. At least for something small enough to fit in the myriad bracelets, the entire Empire was connected through the Quest Halls with the larger versions of callstones.
Callstone quality depended more on the mage making it than the material. This mana efficiency was considering that the power source was a Blue or Rare mana ore, a lower rarity one would be less mana efficient but it was a small difference. A higher rarity ore would be a little wasteful as some of its ''energy'' would be lost for no reason.
Why didn''t she make this stuff for Ebony? She had better things to do with her time or so she claims. The simplest runes like dust resistance for the house weren''t even made because she couldn¡¯t be bothered. Even giving excuses that the rune would interfere with other more useful runes.
His myriad bracelet was already one of the best that money can buy him as the really good stuff had really low demand and supply. He didn¡¯t have the connection or status to even find a better one to buy.
As for getting Purples, it was actually possible to trade in for them but only in Tidal the Capital City and maybe some other cities. Including First and Second Tide or the 3 great farm cities. It was not worth the trade and he was persuaded against doing so by Master Jing. She also called a Purple "too powerful for your needs".
He wanted the spatial storage pretty badly but there was a literal space mage craftswoman beside him.
Ebony didn¡¯t need to engrave anything. He just moulded runes on, when he was in the middle of shaping the molten materials.
He managed to make simple things like the Ring of Water. It was just a ring that could convert surrounding mana into water. A useless ring that was constantly wet could describe it.
Ebony then learned to make the simple connection rune to an external power source, the mana ore. How to make it activatable and whatnot. This was where the rune would affect things like mana conversion efficiency.
He even asked why myriad bracelets were not made with some of the simplest mana absorbing runes to charge mana ores. It was because even the simplest ones were huge and complicated and most cities actually have them. The mana in the city and their surrounding was the Empire¡¯s asset too, used to power the city barriers or so it was publicly announced. Hence, the mana density outside and inside a city is usually very different.
???
18 months.
Ebony was never a big fan of seafood but he had been wanting to eat some fish for some time. Now he couldn¡¯t be more bored of fish or other seafood.
Master Jing finally said ¡°Okay. You pass.¡± after his latest work finally managed to get her approval.
It was a simple ring made of simple materials.
[Durable Steel Ring of Featherweight Ice Blast(Common)]
According to Master Jing¡¯s inspection, the wearer would have 22% reduced gravity on them. All of these calculations were only up till a certain extent because there were limits to the runes themselves. Meaning if gravity was increased by 10 times for example, the ring may not even reduce gravity on the wearer, much less by 22%.
A single Black could activate the ability for a little under 5 minutes. A Grey could last 1 and a half hours, more than the quantity of mana in them suggests and even increase the effectiveness a little. That was where the quality of mana ores played a part in terms of efficiency and purity.
There was also a skill of Ebony¡¯s that he made the ring able to cast. A strong blast of ice mana can be cast from the ring itself. ¡®Programmed¡¯ with runic symbols to consume 100 mana, a Black was enough to freeze a large pot of water almost instantly and all the way through. Together with freezing the pot a little. The ¡®blast¡¯ of ice mana was mostly in mist form like Ebony¡¯s Frost Mist Perception Sphere.
It was not hard to activate and anyone else who wore it just needed the most basic ability to utilise mana. The symbol needed to face the target so either wearing it facing inward to cast with palms open unless they wanted to freeze their hand shut or facing outwards so that they could cast it with a fist closed, punching a blast of icy mist instead.
To put 2 runic abilities into one tiny ring should be amazing enough to impress Master Jing because he couldn¡¯t even find something like that in the accessory stores here.
The base of his steel even had a durability rune that he moulded the very molecules of steel to take the shape of. All of his runic symbols were inside the ring themselves and not engraved on them. There was so much more space and he could even layer them.
It was nothing new. Master Jing could do it easily. It was the more advanced stuff as it was basically a 3D rune instead of a 2D one. The possibilities increase even more. He still needed to research and read up more as he basically skipped 2 dimensional rune engraving.
Taking into account the simple materials, the runes could likely only use Greys as a power source. Using Greens might wear down the runes and ring more than 10 times faster. Rings like this might be useful but not high in demand for most people since it would break with use. Enchantments simply have to be recast.
Ebony''s fine control of mana had reached incredible levels that the him from a year or more back couldn¡¯t even imagine.
He didn¡¯t use Inscription anymore but the skill still levelled when he was moulding runes.
Fourth Tide was a border city of Elva. It felt a little weird but the rocky shore of Elva felt very¡straight. The cliff was a straight fall all the way down to the sea not far below.
This area was not the most important and even when Trolls came over from the continent of Tova this area doesn¡¯t see battle all the time. Thus, it was less tense here and there haven¡¯t been any Troll invasions for a couple of decades already.
Even without Troll invasions, there were sea monster attacks from time to time.
In the time Ebony was here, there were 2 notable attacks that required the city¡¯s attention. It was quite the sight to watch, the city¡¯s defences of artillery barrage of spells from either the walls or the tall mage towers.
Master Jing invited him to come out and watch as they drank alcohol. It was like watching this world¡¯s version of a firework show. They were actually not that far from the front line of battles but the house was unshaken and any ricochet or stray spells bounced off an invisible barrier. The monster attack only had numbers and a few Grandmaster ranked, nothing to worry about.
Master Jing was a bad drunk. Saying incomprehensible things like ¡®I¡¯ll personally send you to **** if you make little Xin sad.¡¯ or feeding him to some monster and more threats. He never got the translation.
He out-drunk her despite all the Constitution she might have. He didn¡¯t or perhaps couldn¡¯t, feel even the least bit drunk with Everlasting Tranquillity.
Ebony always felt a little disappointed that he will probably never experience being drunk. Miffed.
Chapter 90: Sister
¡°Thank you for everything, Master Jing.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t all that good at expressing his thanks. There was so much he wanted and needed to thank her for but the words that came out were simple. He bowed deeply to the woman who housed him for 25 months or 1 year and 11 months.
A single slap across his face sent him sprawling.
¡°Who are you calling Master!? Do I look that old to you!?¡± Master Jing didn¡¯t beat him up any further which was a little surprising since a couple of punches and kicks which he had gotten much better at anticipating and evading, was the usual.
¡°...¡± Speechless at her sudden change of tune. She was the one who asked him to call her Master Jing and he had already gotten accustomed to it. ¡®She seems actually pissed this time. Not unlike that ti¡ oh.¡¯
Master just continued staring at him, unhappily tapping her fingers on her crossed arms. Impatient.
¡°...Sister Jing.¡± Ebony hesitated spouting the words.
Master Jing''s expression changed so quickly, he thought that women were really fickle, volatile and inconsistent creatures. Ebony found his neck under a choke hold and his hair getting ruffled again. Her wide smile warmed his heart once more.
¡°Remember. You are Kong Jing¡¯s little brother. No one is allowed to bully or insult you.¡± Sister Jing said seriously.
¡°I will. Sister Jing¡¡± Ebony kept in mind. She had stood up for him when they just arrived at Fourth Tide, he never forgot. It might be a small matter to her but not to him. Based on that, he had been thinking that he might have been a little too passive in attitude that people weren''t taking him seriously.
Ebony didn¡¯t have any siblings. Not even anyone around his age is close enough with him to call a best friend. Today he got a sister. Maybe to Sister Jing, he was her little brother more than 18 months ago but it really hit home now that he was taken and treated as a brother. He would return the sentiment. He might not know how to treat a sister but he knew how to treat family.
¡°Yes? Sister is really starting to stick, should¡¯ve made you call me that long ago.¡± Sister Jing¡¯s smile was still there as she hummed a tiny bit. His background music must have stuck with her.
¡°In future, I won¡¯t let anyone harm or hurt you either.¡± It wasn¡¯t a promise or anything but he would do his best to keep his word. It was a minor self encouragement to hurry it up and get strong enough that he wasn¡¯t a ¡®puny¡¯ person that people didn¡¯t even chase. Though that was because Sister Jing was their main target and she didn¡¯t let a single person pass her.
She was stunned for a second before her hair ruffling got even rougher and the choke hold tighter. ¡°Cheeky punk. I won¡¯t forget what you said, okay?¡±
¡°Mmm. Sister Jing, I will leave tomorrow.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t wait to leave your sister alone? Okay okay, just get lost. I don¡¯t care.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Hahahaha! I¡¯m just kidding, don¡¯t look at me so seriously. Here, present from me. They were done long ago.¡±
A pitch-black greatsword appeared in her hand.
¡°I don¡¯t need to tell you that it¡¯s made with what you gave me. I know your preferences already. Toughness and ability to take on and utilise huge quantities of ice mana.¡±
Sister Jing let him hold the greatsword before she explained what she did and what it can do. Weak arms Ebony cannot carry it without Icebody Enhancement, like wearing his robe.
The dimensions of the block of wood he had gotten were about 185 by 20 by 5 centimetres. It had been reduced to 1.75 metres or so in terms of length. About the same as his old one. The width was pushed down to 15cm. Meaning the blade¡¯s body was huge. It was a tiny bit thicker and bulkier than he was used to. That didn¡¯t mean its edge wasn¡¯t razor sharp.
In terms of design, it was actually pretty similar to the one he used to use. Xeng design. A straight flat blade that most other weaponsmiths didn¡¯t understand. He had once asked how they made it cut so well, to his knowledge curved blades cut better.
"In the past, long before the Empire was formed, it was supposedly a handicap for our people since the people back then just weren''t much of a challenge. Our craftsmen got a lot of orders for weaker weapons so that the combatants can improve on their technique instead. To my knowledge, a lot of our ancestor''s skills such as weapon mastery actually got refined a couple of times. There was a high demand for structurally unsound equipment for a time. In time, our craftsman just got so good at making these ''inferior'' weapons that they were better than normal ones. Hence, the odd designs for many of our creations." The Xengs were so desperate for a challenge but found themselves widening the gap and improving themselves unintentionally.
He liked the long grip and handle as well, it gave him the flexibility to have both hands on it or exchange between control and power just by adjusting his grip. She was probably watching him train when she designed the blade like that.
There was no pommel, just a horizontal line with a circle in the middle on the flat surface where the pommel should have been. Her mask¡¯s design.
She didn¡¯t add or mix any other material into the weapon. So it really was just a wooden sword, minus however she polished it. It had a dull shine as if it had hardly been polished but that was due to how dark the colour of the wood was. She had condensed all the material even further instead of just sanding and shaping the greatsword. He didn¡¯t know how but she apparently shifted the grains of the wood such that the internal structure was fit to how a greatsword was supposed to be made without damaging the wood itself like Ebony would have.
¡°It''s as tough vertically as it is horizontally.¡± Sister Jing proudly said using the wide body of the blade to block an attack will not be a problem but he knew he should refrain from over-relying on blocking with his blade.
Down to the actual capabilities of the greatsword itself. Other than the huge quantity of ice mana it can not just store but withstand, and toughness, hardness and durability. It had middling fire-resistant runic enchantment that Sister Jing found crucial to incorporate into a wooden sword. She called it middling but he didn¡¯t understand a single symbol that was on the body of the blade.There were clearly many things he hadn''t read up on as there was a limit to the books he had access to. He never once tried opening the door at the back of the underground library.
He didn¡¯t even finish half of all the books she had allowed him access to, no surprise with the number she had. He had so many things to practise as well, cutting into his reading time. Reading was one thing and understanding was another. Especially with the limitless possibilities there were with runes.
She called it ¡®middling¡¯ but showed off saying it wouldn¡¯t even burn after chucking in her forge for a day. It was the best she could make on the weak material without sacrificing the material¡¯s integrity. Inside the sword was the ice mana capacity rune and the durability one slightly higher quality than the fire resistant one.
Sister Jing then introduced her favourite part and called her latest, greatest step forward in her runic research.
The deepest part of the internal structure of the sword had what she called a minor nature regrowth rune. Something about encompassing the entire wooden material in another compounded rune that can read and copy the complete state of the weapon and allow the minor nature rune to heal or regrow the greatsword back to the exact same state. Runes included. She explained but it was extremely complicated.
The effect was weak, perhaps it was only able to regrow or repair scratches and small chips. All in all, maintenance was limited to basic cleaning as it would even ¡®grow¡¯ back into the same sharpness. She apparently needed some other ingredient that maybe only Elves might have, to improve on this auto repair or regrowth function. It wouldn¡¯t be worth it to use on the material Ebony¡¯s sword was made of so it was just a passing comment of hers.
There was no internal power source. It could sustain itself at the lowest output with ambient mana itself which made it more amazing, incredibly so. Especially considering how each rune was pretty powerful. Unprecedented.
Of course, the best way was when he was gripping his weapon and supplying it with his own mana directly to power the durability and minor nature rune. The properties of his mana would affect their functions like how using a Black or a Grey would have different results. To a certain extent, the stronger his mana, the tougher the greatsword would be.
"How much mana do I have to supply it with to reach its maximum toughness?" He asked the most important question for him.
"That''s for you to find out!" She smiled cheekily.
The grip was carved along the handle with no added leather, bone or horn grip which was the common type of materials used for it. Wooden grips were just as common anyway.
As for the original properties of the material like how it naturally absorbed ice mana, she said that was his own problem. He was the ice mage, he should figure something like that himself. She clearly knew and understood the material better.
She made a sheath and finally one that made sense. It had a slit halfway through on one side so that he could draw and sheath it with ease. It was made of some other type of wood also known for toughness and durability, she painted it black as well. The straps on the back of his robes finally had some use, Ebony could carry the thing somewhat vertically with the sheath the way it was now. He would still need to practise drawing and sheathing his greatsword a lot.
¡°You said you were named after a tree known for its black colour, toughness and durability? I call this Wumu¡¯s Titan Ice Pick or Ebony Icicle.¡±
¡°...How about just Black Icicle?¡± He felt a spike of pain in his head, it came and went so fast he thought it was because of how it was a little cringe to have his name on his weapon. He didn¡¯t have a good naming sense but Sister Jing likely wasn¡¯t much better.
¡°Ebony Icicle it is!¡±
He told himself to just call it Icicle.
Sister Jing threw something at his face before saying she was going out to buy some good drinks.
It was leathery but soft. A familiar looking, thin and flat bag. It was dark blue in colour, the bottom half was circled around as a different shade of blue, a darker hue. For some reason, he thought it depicted a lake at night. As for the shape and why it felt familiar it was the same as Scarlet¡¯s.
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¡®Maybe Xeng bags all had the same design.¡¯ The bag was thin and easy to carry even under his robe or coat. He really thought it was more of a coat than a robe. Needless to say, it was huge inside compared to how small or thin the bag looks.
It was hard to say how big it was with just a small box and the forge he had been using inside. His senses didn¡¯t help either, it was like his gravity or mana sense couldn¡¯t enter, unlike his hand which had no issue.
A rough estimate purely based on guesswork was that it was 10 to 12 metre cube in volume at the very least. It was actually much smaller near the top where the opening and drawstring were as the space inside copied the dimensions of the bag itself and was expanded directly proportionally. So it wasn¡¯t like a room-like space inside the bag, just a really big version of the same shaped bag.
There seemed to be a small trick involved to stuff things that were bigger than the outlet or opening of the bag. Another magical or runic shenanigan that he didn¡¯t understand yet.
In the small rectangular wooden box inside was some of the metal that he obtained from the competition, both a little Rare and Epic. Pebble sized, he could hold both in a single hand. Together with a metal chain with 2 rings of different sizes looped through.
Under it was a note. ¡°Wear it. It¡¯s just a plain old necklace. You¡¯ll know what it¡¯s for sooner or later.¡± It was a simple silver chain that she called a necklace, the 2 rings in it definitely didn¡¯t do nothing with all the runes on them. She also put down the properties of the metal which she called Titanic Mithril.
They had hit the jackpot, it was a substrain of mithril known for its magic properties. Highly attuned to mana. High level warriors or swordsmen loved anything made with it. The weapons or armour could take both high quality and quantity of mana of most types. Its physical properties are also much better than many other metals that can be found on the market.
This substrain only had less than half of the normal mithril¡¯s strength and durability of the same rarity but its capacity for mana was almost 3 times as much as mithril. It was an amazing material for accessories like rings and necklaces which he suspected the present he received was made from. He put the necklace with 2 rings on, under his shirt and robe.
She didn¡¯t understand his slight obsession with spatial rings but he really liked the gift anyway. The bag version was already more than he could hope for. It was small and fitted closely to his body so that it wouldn''t get in the way and can be carried under his robe without discomfort.
Ebony had some boxes that had his Blues and the chest with his belongings inside. He packed them all up.
Sister Jing probably won¡¯t be back anytime soon so he went shopping for rations that can last him. Enough for a year for a single person even if he was stranded somewhere. With the shelf life of the rations properly stored in a preservation box, he didn¡¯t have to worry about them spoiling.
He also bought a couple of Rare water mana ores even though he knew how to inscribe or mould a bottle with the ambient water mana absorbing rune for survival purposes it wouldn¡¯t hurt to have more water. They were pretty cheap around these parts, near the sea.
Too bad he didn¡¯t know how or where Sister Jing¡¯s supply of raw materials came from or he would get some for his own practice, hobby or pastime. Still, normal paper was not that expensive and he bought enough to fill a wardrobe together with dozens of empty books and a small supply of their version of a pencil together with a surprisingly easy to obtain inscription pen that he could supply with his own mana. So it wasn¡¯t as unique or special as he thought it was.
He had run around the city a couple of times to complete some errands so he knew what store or shop had what he wanted. Unsurprisingly, Fourth Tide had a branch of Z&Z too but the First and Second which were further off to the east apparently didn¡¯t have a branch. That was where he got all his foodstuff and daily necessities for personal hygiene. He basically bought out the limit that they let him buy for a single person.
The city wasn¡¯t exactly abundant in foodstuff and fresh fish and a small farm or two was where most of their food came from. He found out the surrounding forests didn¡¯t have many monsters since it had long been cleared out by the army. Not forgetting to get some pots and pans, utensils and cooking tools. He had the leeway to carry such stuff now that he had a spatial bag.
After putting so much stuff inside he could not feel much difference in weight. More magical shenanigans that made life convenient.
Sister Jing got him to visit more specialised shops for most other stuff but nothing here impressed her enough to buy a second time. Mostly used for her experiments or research, she really just bought whatever interests her.
The only bookstore here called Tome¡¯s Galore was where he got his paper and stationeries. He also bought all the paper the old man in charge had in stock since the town didn¡¯t really have many people who needed such a large amount of paper.
He was planning to keep up his practice and study of runes in one way or another. The books were for him to either copy down the books or mental notes he had. He might have pretty much perfect memory that further improved with Wisdom but writing them down could give him a refresher or even a new perspective.
Ebony returned to see the whole place in a mess. Sister Jing tossed a lot of her stuff out onto her yard, there was even one of her empty armour dolls swinging around and destroying a weapon with a glass bottle. Peculiar.
¡°What are you doing Sister Jing?¡± Ebony stood expressionlessly but was a little surprised when she snapped her head towards him like she didn¡¯t realise him standing right beside her.
¡®Are¡are the corners of her eyes redder than usual? Did she think I just left because my room was emptied out already? And¡she cried?¡¯ The Ebony of the past would never make such guesses. He never understood his own feelings very well, much less others. He still left his bed there since he was gonna sleep for another night even though he was interested to see how it was going to fit into the bag she gave him.
¡°Did you think I left without telling you? Were you crying?¡± Ebony still wasn¡¯t all that sensitive as a person but he didn¡¯t mistake it this time as he heard a single sniff from her before taking the worst beating she had given him along with a little yelling of frustration of some sort.
His bruises and fractures healed as he took a sip of the slightly sweet, fruity hard liquor that Sister Jing got. They were sitting out and moon gazing like how he had been doing so for quite some time now. It was a chilly night, near the end of winter with the moon looking to be purple in colour. Maybe one day he would be able to tell the date just from the hue of moonlight reflected.
¡°Hic!¡± Sister Jing hiccuped. She wasn¡¯t really very good at holding her liquor despite her high level and stats. Well, the stuff she brought was the strongest thing he had drunk. Delicious too, it chilled the tongue and burned the throat immediately after.
She started to actually cry which he didn¡¯t know how to react to. It seemed like she really thought that he just left without saying a word and was throwing a tantrum.
Trying to find him in her own house when she could easily search for him in a large forest was a little amusing honestly. That was just how distraught she was at that moment in time when she found out. His physical pain over getting beaten couldn¡¯t even be felt because the thought that she had cared so much made him feel weird and he didn¡¯t know how to describe it.
He stopped her from drinking and got her warm water to drink instead. Carrying her and tossing her into her room before going to tidy up all the mess she just made, sweeping and mopping up. Cooking a few dishes and keeping them in one of the cabinets that could keep food warm. Then he washed up and went to sleep without any training or magic practice done. Irregular.
This very night. Ebony had a dream for the very first time. Perhaps, that was not very accurate. He saw a picture. A scene. A vision. A massive, towering tree. It burned.
Ebony shot right up, the chill down his back didn¡¯t disappear immediately.
¡®Hot damn. Did someone use magic on me?¡¯ He was beyond surprised. It had always been a blank whenever he slept, never was there a time he saw something when he was sleeping. Till last night. He didn¡¯t know if it was magic or if someone had the ability to cast that on him while sleeping inside Sister Jing¡¯s magical cottage but he was alarmed.
Ebony¡¯s sense of urgency rose for the first time in a long while. It had been clear to him what he saw. He only knew one tree that massive. One tree that burned so majestically as it was dying out.
Was it calling out to him or was it his own mind playing games with him?
Was he so upstrung about his weak strength that his mental state let him dream?
That was the last straw for him. He couldn¡¯t stay like that, the timing was perfect either way. He still didn¡¯t really think it was his own paranoia as Everlasting Tranquillity would¡¯ve stopped or been affected if that was the case. At least he didn¡¯t think he wouldn¡¯t realise that his mind was no longer clear. But he couldn¡¯t be sure, nothing was a guarantee.
He tried sticking one of the legs of the bed into his bag and it really worked. The opening of the bag could be stretched even more than he previously tried. It swallowed up the entire bed with the mattress pretty easily. Ebony stuffed his hand in to adjust the arrangement of his things.
It was morning already. The house was quiet and he didn¡¯t hear any noise except the mana ore making machine at work. Sister Jing was likely still sleeping, out cold from alcohol. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time that happened.
¡°Sister Jing.¡± he knocked on her door.
¡°I¡¯m going to go now.¡± There was no reply but he somehow felt that she was awake and could easily hear him. There was no basis for that, he just thought that she was listening from behind the door.
¡°...I tidied up. There are some of your favourite dishes in the kitchen, mostly seafood though.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t really know what to say.
¡°Try to keep the house clean.¡±
"The grey dahlias don''t need much care, the shade I made for them would absorb just enough water from the wet ring I made that would self water the dahlias just enough. Maybe just get rid of weeds from time to time."
¡°Don¡¯t forget to take a bath or shower from time to time.¡±
¡°Remember to eat at least once every 2 days.¡±
¡°I know you¡¯re actually weak to the cold, you¡¯ve sneezed more times than I could count. Winter is coming to an end but wear something thicker or at least put down your sleeves if you¡¯re not in your forge underground. Oh yes, the dahlias are weak to cold like you. You can flip up the flap once winter is over, they trap warmth for the dahlias.¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony had been spouting out whatever came to mind without much thought. He didn¡¯t know how much he sounded like a nagging mother. He ran out of things to say already and there was still no reply as he faced a door.
¡°Thanks for the sword. And the bag. And the forge. And the necklace. And taking the time and effort to teach me. Thanks for taking care of me, Sister Jing. Take care of yourself too¡¡±
¡°See you.¡± With no reply for a solid 10 minutes, he turned around after saying his farewells. Hopefully, she wouldn¡¯t throw another tantrum and flip the house around the instant he left.
Ebony didn¡¯t turn back and dragged his feet away from the place where he started to get comfortable. Again.
There was only one destination in mind. Hoarfrost Glade.
???
¡°He really left.¡± Kong Jing spoke to no one but herself.
¡°I wonder what he saw. He woke up too quickly, it should¡¯ve kept even a Grandmaster dreaming for days though.¡±
¡°Grandaunt and her mischief again. I wonder what she saw this time?¡±
¡°Hmph! Leaving the instant he woke up, how badly did he want to leave?¡±
¡°I¡¯m sick of fish already. Urghhh so spicy. His taste buds must be dead. The only edible things he makes are those spicy deep fried chicken bites or something, there¡¯s no chicken raised here¡¡± Kong Jing ate the steamed fish bite after bite. Complaining to herself after every bite.
¡°Do I stink? Must be the Infernal salamander¡¯s spit. No, the swamp¡¯s gunk and poison. Or the cerulean coal¡I guess I should wash myself.¡± Kong Jing sniffed her arms and clothes.
¡°It¡¯s chilly. The sea breeze is too strong today. I was lacking a set of self-heating clothes anyway.¡± Kong Jing made an ambient mana sufficient set of work clothes on the spot.
¡°The runes around have been getting outdated. I was planning to renovate and have a complete overhaul of this old cottage¡¯s defences anyway.¡±
¡°I guess I should do that back home so I don¡¯t have to worry about any Troll or sea monster hordes.¡±
¡°Maybe grandaunt is there for me to give a piece of my mind for tossing me such a troublesome problem.¡±
¡°Oh, little Xin might be home too! Okay, nothing interesting that I can get my hands on now anyway. It¡¯ll be troublesome looking for Zenin to get another mana compressor so that I can tear down this one to see what¡¯s inside. That can wait I guess.¡±
Kong Jing and her cottage removed themself from Fourth Tide like she was never there.
Chapter 91: Gluttonous Beast
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Pain Resistance evolved into Sheer Pain Resistance.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Pain Resistance level up 31 - 32¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Pain Resistance evolved into Immense Pain Resistance.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Immense Pain Resistance level up 32 - 46¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Heat Resistance evolved into Extreme Heat Resistance.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Extreme Heat Resistance level up 57 - 89¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Physique has been tempered into Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix Physique.¡¯
¡®Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix Physique (Passive) - Consuming a portion of the Heartblood Essence of the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix. Every drop of your blood has been boiled over together with your life essence many times over. Gluttonous desire to eat increased by 50%. Metabolism and digestive efficiency increased by 25%. Natural Resistance to heat increased by 25%. Blood¡¯s capacity for heat and energy increased by 100%. Base Health Regeneration increased by 50%.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Agility Conditioning, Strength Conditioning, Intelligence Conditioning, Endurance Conditioning and Perception Conditioning merged and assimilated into Class Skill - Burstflare Witch¡¯s Conditioning lvl 22¡¯
¡®Burstflare Witch¡¯s Conditioning (Passive) - Essence Conditioning of the Burstflare Witch. Agility increased by 0.025% per level. Strength, Intelligence, Endurance and Perception increased by 0.01% per level.¡¯
¡°Haaah..haaa¡haa.¡± Scarlet laid flat on her belly, drenched in sweat. She had survived the tempering of her physique but it hadn¡¯t been easy. Painful didn¡¯t even begin to describe undergoing baptism of getting burnt alive from within. Her blood constantly boiled and dried up, burning the rest of her body with it. It had been a very slow and gruelling process as she wouldn¡¯t have been able to survive if she was unclassed or lower levelled. Being burnt from within for 2 weeks straight without moving an inch had her extremely weak despite no wounds or burns remaining on her.
¡°GRRH!¡± There was a loud roar. It was her stomach grumbling, it was the longest she went without eating. Why did her swords or clothes nearby look so delicious? She must have gone mad from hunger.
¡°Yo¡ good. You¡¯re alive. I knew that. I knew that. Huuu.¡± Scarlet¡¯s grandmother walked into her room. She was always so mischievous and never serious. That''s why it was so obvious to her that her grandma, who probably already knew the results of her tempering before she even started, was so worried she couldn¡¯t calm down. Though her grin right after really made Scarlet exasperated.
¡°I didn¡¯t raise you to be so indecent! Still naked? Get up and put on some clothes already. Urgh! Smells like ashes of rotting corpses here, that bed has to be changed.¡± Her grandma pinched her nose and was back to her usual tone.
¡°...I¡can¡¯t¡move..¡± Scarlet didn¡¯t know what to say since it was her grandma who told her she needed to take her clothes off so they didn¡¯t melt into her skin. She only realised she had been so weak she had difficulty talking too. The protective sheet over her bed was burnt to a crisp but at least it didn¡¯t meld into her skin, her grandma probably tricked her again.
¡°Oh deary.¡± At least her grandma stopped teasing her now. She grabbed a random blanket to cover Scarlet before carrying Scarlet over to her own, uncommonly used bed.
¡°I¡¯m¡hungry,¡± Scarlet complained.
¡°I know dear. I heard the beast roar already. I already whipped something up, wait here.¡± Scarlet received a head pat.
Her grandma didn¡¯t even walk far before they heard a loud yell and knocking.
¡°Heeey! Grandaunt Ning, little Xin! Anyone home!?¡± Kong Jing hollered.
¡°Little Jing¡¯s right on time. I¡¯ll bring her in and you two can catch up with each other. You haven¡¯t seen her for a while haven¡¯t you?¡± Scarlet¡¯s grandma acted like she expected it.
¡®Sister? Did grandma call her here today knowing I will be done today? Or is it just a coincidence?¡¯ Scarlet didn¡¯t think it would be so coincidental that her cousin Kong Jing would come back from her wandering just as she completed her Physique tempering. Her grandma probably pulled some strings or played some trick to get this cousin of hers to come back to Xienor.
Kong Jing was her cousin. She was the closest in age to Scarlet in the declining population of Xengs and they were no different from sisters to each other.
If Scarlet was a genius with the sword and fire magic then Kong Jing was a genius at her craft. Anything she fiddled around with for a short while, she could recreate. Even make it better. And she was only 34 when she evolved to Grandmaster rank. As a crafter or support Class? There wasn¡¯t even a single person in their own history much less Elva¡¯s that even came close to her cousin. Scarlet was very proud of this sister of hers that always doted on her.
She waited as her stomach grumbled once more. She heard lots of screaming, yelling and complaints that she couldn¡¯t even hear clearly due to how fast Kong Jing was talking. That was confirmation that her grandma probably did something to her.
It didn¡¯t take much longer before her sister teleported in with both her hands carrying a large tray of food each. Grandma¡¯s cooking always had a place in her heart no matter how much better she got at cooking than the non-chef. In her stomach too.
¡°Little Xin! What happened!? Grandaunt Ning said you¡¯re bedridden and can¡¯t even move a gar.¡± Kong Jing quickly placed the trays down before checking her body up and down. It was a little embarrassing now that she was an adult already and only had a blanket over her.
¡°It¡¯s nothing¡I just succeeded from Physique tempering¡Can¡can you feed me Sister Jing.¡±
¡°Oh. Grandaunt tricked me again! Of course I can, say ahh.¡±
¡°...I¡¯m not a child anymore.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll always be my little Xin. Now open wide, what do you want to eat first?¡±
¡°...Soup. My stomach¡¯s empty.¡± Scarlet''s flushed face was definitely because her body was still adjusting.
As weak as she looked, she ate and ate. Faster and faster. Nothing was left after a short half an hour.
¡°...You can really eat. Are you still growing?¡± Kong Jing looked down at her chest.
¡°Sister Jing!¡± Scarlet covered herself with her arms. She hadn¡¯t realised her blanket fell when she was eating.
Laughter echoed throughout the room.
¡°Stop laughing or I won¡¯t talk to you anymore.¡± Scarlet threatened childishly.
¡°Alright alright. I¡¯ll stop.¡± Kong Jing always pampered her. Showing sides of each other they never showed to others.
Regaining enough strength surprisingly fast, Scarlet found that she could move already and quickly went and jumped into the bath. She was in there for hours, constantly scrubbing herself over and over again. Her sister told her about the different places she went or the monsters she fought. Kong Jing never focused much on food so she didn¡¯t have much to share with her about different local cuisines.
¡°I¡¯m still hungry. What do you want to eat? I¡¯ll make it now.¡± Scarlet got dressed before making her way to their kitchen and checked the ingredients they had left.
¡°Still hungry!?¡± Kong Jing blinked a few more times. Scarlet already ate more than she would in 5 meals. Even if she hasn¡¯t eaten in weeks her stomach should be packed by now, shouldn¡¯t it?
¡°...only a little bit. Come on, tell me if you have any cravings now or I¡¯ll just make whatever comes to mind.¡±
¡°...chicken. Cubed into small bites and deep fried. I want it a little spicy. But not too much, you know I can¡¯t take anything too spicy.¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t know why she would want that. Her new little brother she shared a liquor of bond with didn¡¯t even cook very well but she just felt like eating that right now.
Unbeknownst to herself, Kong Jing smiled a little more, he probably didn¡¯t even know what alcohol she had brought. But that was fine, he didn¡¯t need to know how serious she had been. How would she even bring it up? Share this liquor of bond to be sworn brother and sister with me? That was too embarrassing and she couldn¡¯t bring herself to say that.
¡°Hmm? Is that a dish from some town or city you visited? Sounds delicious, I¡¯ll try but it probably won¡¯t be anything like you had unless you have the recipe.¡±
¡°Nope. It¡¯s fine. Anything you make will be more delicious a thousand times over.¡±
Scarlet smiled and hummed as she got to cooking. Making Kong Jing think ¡®only a little bit?¡¯ with the amount of ingredients she was taking out to prepare.
¡°So what did grandma do to make you so angry?¡± Scarlet asked as she sliced some ingredients and diced others.
¡°Hmph! Talking about it makes me angry again. She introduced me to a student.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t that good? I thought you wanted one for a while already to learn from teaching? If grandma was the one who introduced a student then that person must be pretty amazing. Or at least who grandma would call fated to be your student. She¡¯s always playing pranks but the person she introduced should definitely be related to you in future in one way or another even if she hasn''t done so right?¡± Scarlet knew her grandma well enough, she was playful but still treated family with their future and benefits in mind.
¡°He¡¯s just an ungrateful punk who ran off after leaching my knowledge and skills.¡± Kong Jing said unhappily after remembering how Ebony left so quickly without any hesitation whatsoever. Decisive.
¡°What!? How can that be? Who is he?¡± Scarlet was so shocked she slammed her knife too hard. Nothing in her grandma¡¯s house was normal so nothing but the chicken thigh separated. She was actually more surprised that someone her grandma introduced was such a good for nothing scoundrel that didn¡¯t know how lucky he was to be her sister¡¯s student than how that person managed to run from her sister. No way her violent sister wouldn¡¯t catch and beat them up.
Kong Jing¡¯s unhappy expression suddenly changed to a familiar grin. It was the same grin her grandma had when she was planning to play a prank and Scarlet didn¡¯t like it. Her sister should be really pissed and annoyed right now, why is she smiling all of a sudden?
¡°Oh well, like you said. The person grandaunt introduced was amazing in a sense.¡±
¡°How so? Another Grandmaster Classed crafter with unique magic or skills to escape from you? Or a King Classed?¡±
¡°Nah. A young boy, not even Master Classed. Why would I teach some old man?¡±
¡°Then?¡±
¡°He¡¯s not even a crafter except maybe a little knowledge in tailoring.¡±
¡°??¡± Scarlet was more and more confused. Why did her grandma introduce a student that wasn¡¯t even a crafter? A space mage? That might explain how he escaped but he was only a journeyman from what her sister said.
¡°He¡¯s an ice hybrid swordsman. He can use gravity and sound magic too and is quite the monster with mana manipulation. But the most amazing thing is that he is the one my little Xin is gunning for. Your future husband!¡±
Scarlet¡¯s knife already moved faster when her sister said ice hybrid swordsman. Her sister didn¡¯t pause as she talked and Scarlet¡¯s knife only flashed faster and faster before smashing down hard when her sister finished talking. The poor chicken that was supposed to be diced into cubes already turned to minced meat at this point.
¡°Wha..what are you talking about?¡± Scarlet kept her composure as best as she could to hide her emotions.
¡°Stop acting dumb. Grandaunt already told me everything. That punk is pretty impressive indeed. To steal my little Xin¡¯s heart so easily. I just didn¡¯t see you for a few years and you went and found yourself a husband already. You¡¯re still too young but well¡ no no. Tch! Can¡¯t make it easy for that punk. Your sister here doesn¡¯t approve! You¡¯re not even old enough to marry.¡±
¡°I passed 18 last year! I¡¯m already 19!¡± Scarlet replied before she could even think. Their marriageable age was 18 instead of the Imperial where they could legally marry once they turned 15 and were considered an adult. She didn¡¯t know why but that was their tradition.
¡°Oh ho. Not even going to deny anything I said? Damn punk. What drugs did he feed you?¡± Kong Jing thought her grandaunt was exaggerating but seeing her little sister like that made her think otherwise. Her grandaunt hasn¡¯t been exaggerating at all. Little Xin was doomed, she fell in too deeply.
Scarlet coughed and her face flushed even more when she realised how she exposed herself so easily. She pushed Kong Jing out of the kitchen after claiming she wasn¡¯t gonna make anything for her. Kong Jing teased her further but let herself get pushed out and hammered on the kitchen door jokingly.
Scarlet stuffed herself with food but she didn¡¯t seem to be able to stop herself as she got herself started. Everything in the kitchen just looked so delicious.
Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix. The Heartblood Essence of the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix was just a small droplet of crystallised blood. There were clean cracks or cuts on it before, clearly broken intentionally. The blood red gem was hard enough that it basically couldn¡¯t be destroyed by her but easily dissolved in her stomach once she swallowed it.
Scarlet didn¡¯t know much about it and neither did her grandma let her in on it. For once, she thought that her grandma really didn¡¯t know much. Her parents went to the Fragadal Sea and obtained it there. She always thought it was weird that the volcanic region was called a sea.
According to her grandma, they contacted her shortly before they disappeared. She had traced them to the outskirts of Cherufe¡¯s Pit and couldn¡¯t trace them any further. That was where she found what Scarlet¡¯s parents left her but she couldn¡¯t even divine their location.
Cherufe¡¯s Pit was one of Elva¡¯s most dangerous areas along with deeper parts of Hoarfrost Glade. Scarlet was going to look for them. They definitely weren¡¯t dead, her instincts told her. She wouldn¡¯t believe they died when barely anything on Elcra could harm them. Her grandma also said their stars haven''t disappeared or faded.
Scarlet didn¡¯t know why they went to the Fragadal Sea, her parents didn¡¯t tell her anything when they left one day when she wasn¡¯t even 9 yet. Her mother passed down her swordsmanship and her father, his talent for fire magic. She didn¡¯t even master them yet before they left. Fire magic was mostly her figuring things out herself since she had been too young and didn¡¯t have much mana or magical capability. Books just weren¡¯t enough.
The first year or so after she separated from Ebony and Hector, she just travelled back to Xienor on foot. Declining her Grandma''s rough method of travel. Taking a hunting quest or two if she found any interesting monster. She trained up all her skills till their progress slowed greatly. She had long prepared to learn or create a fire-based enhancement spell.
It had been in preparation for her Physique. Hector had been a pretty valuable source of information. There were not many dedicated enhancement mages due to the fact their strength was limited by their mana pool. Untier or tier 1 enhancement skills already had pretty high mana consumption but higher tier enhancement magic just took so much mana it was more of a last resort than a first choice in battle.
Since enhancement mages also need to have a high Constitution they were practically hybrids too. That made them defenceless if their stats were just Constitution, Intelligence and Wisdom. They would be incredibly powerful but only for as long as they lasted.
That¡¯s why Ebony was such a monster. She had never seen him stop casting his enhancement spell unless he didn¡¯t need it or stop casting so that he wasn¡¯t going to take as much damage from heat and fire.
She had thought her Core Skill was ridiculous enough but a tier 3 meditation type skill that he could have on at any time without a drawback was just nonsensical. Especially the part about the drawback. Her restriction was just her stamina and her heart, since her body was also toughened by her Core Skill her stamina was usually a bigger problem than the strength of her heart. At the moment, she never forced her heart rate above what it could handle, so it wasn¡¯t like she had no limit. Base Constitution was still an issue.
Scarlet¡¯s physical control of her heart¡¯s muscle was good enough that she could stop it anytime she wanted to and start it back up at will too. Not to mention her increasing Blood Mana Manipulation. She had gotten a Class Evolution prompt to evolve into a Burning Blooded Sword Witch.
Her Sub-Class only got its general evolution without anything new. It still needed more work.
Her Profession had a new Evolution path. Gluttonous Chef of Slaughter. Maybe she killed a little too many monsters just to speed her skill levelling. It had not been a very good idea. The fast skill levelling doesn¡¯t allow her to adapt very well. Just like with fast increase in stats. The past months of conditioning and training let her assimilate her growth and her body fully adjusted to her own style of fighting.
Her Conditioning skills becoming a Class Skill was what she had been aiming for for a long time. Obtaining it directly after her Physique made her think that it was probably related.
Surviving the ordeal of getting internally burned was all due to her Core Skill. She had controlled it to give her just enough health regeneration to overcome her blood boiling her to death. Sure, it sped the blood around her body and exponentially increased the pain she underwent.
The sharp rise in the level of Pain Resistant had really helped keep her sane. It didn¡¯t even have time to level more than once before the sharp pain she went through caused her Resistance to evolve once more. That was when she immediately started Violent Heart Acceleration so that she didn¡¯t dry out instantly.
What she truly didn¡¯t expect was her Heat Resistance to get to tier 4 in a single jump. It was rare for people who got tier 4 resistance to live long enough that it was useful. They usually just get it and die right after is what the rumours say. Resistance skills were all about forcing one¡¯s physical body to grow and adapt. It only evolves when the body undergoes through someone past their natural limits.
Tier 1 was simple enough. Taking a certain amount of damage from that certain element for a short amount of time for example, is enough to get it.
Tier 2 required an instant shock that the closest believed estimate was more than a fifth of one¡¯s health and needed to survive or adapt to the element for long enough to normally kill one.
Tier 3 meant letting the body take more than half their health instantly and still stay alive long enough for the body to gain resistance against the spike in the degree of damage.
Tier 4 should kill one almost instantly or so it was believed.
Few alive to tell the tale that tier 4 resistances were real. Of course, not everything was related to how much damage to the body was taken since it was more about body adaptation. Like pain or exhaustion resistance. She didn¡¯t know what repercussions there were to divination resistance but there certainly were other forces at work since it was not her body getting more resistant.
Her grandma probably knew more about the workings of divination resistance but said that she wouldn''t understand even if she was told.
The shocking thing was that she had a tier 4 skill when as a Journeyman the highest tier skill she shoul be able to have was tier 3. The Imperials might be unaware but everyone had a limit of skills being 2 tiers higher than oneself. ''Resistances are an exception?'' was the only thing she could think. After all, even Xengs weren''t crazy enough to throw their lives away to get a resistance three tiers above their own. There might be some that have it but just didn''t share the news.
Back to her Conditioning skill.
Conditioning skill was another area of research where they were far ahead of the Imperials. They had been studying it since the First Empress decided it was a basic but crucial skill. That was long before the Cruel Empress was called as such. The Imperials didn¡¯t even have much recorded history before the birth of the Empire. Perhaps some of the longer living races like the Elves and Dwarves would remember those times. They probably didn¡¯t remember the First Empress if they dared to call the Cruel Empress by that title.
It was a weak passive. At tier 2 of 0.025%, that was only a 2.5% increase in stats when it reached level 100. But as one rises through the levels and their base stat gets higher and higher. A 2.5% or even 1% increase gave one a sizable advantage over others without the skill. Furthermore, the Conditioning skill can still level up once a person levels along.
To push a Generic Skill to become a Class skill was possible when one Classed and when one evolved. Otherwise, they would have to make it a related Class skill from the start or mutate a generic skill such that it conforms to one¡¯s Class¡¯s workings and limitations. To make a conditioning skill a Class Skill would require one to really understand what their Class was meant to do and bend their style of training to one that truly fits their Class.
It was hard to understand even for them. Conditioning skills also had level limits but it had nothing to do with Natural Potential. One of the skills where they found out that talent or Natural Potential had no relation to. Condition skills¡¯ level limit was the Class level of the person itself. The only other limit was time and effort. So her Burstflare Witch¡¯s Conditioning will never level past 100 until she evolves and reaches a higher level.
The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
There was no known Fortification related to Conditioning Skills. Multiple reasons such as the incredibly slow levelling speed, no Class evolution requirements for the skill and no one bothering to spend years and years maxing it out before they evolve except every Empress. After a couple of them actually managed to wait out one of their evolutions to max it out and still have no known Fortifications, it could be said that they ended their research and experiment long ago.
There was no known benefit to maxing the skill level before evolution so Scarlet didn¡¯t have to worry about that.
Obviously, none of them knew that all their research was not complete or accurate.
Scarlet put on her training clothes and got Ignite and Flare. Wearing her mask again before going out to their training square right beside. She was so grateful she was born after they improved the mask so much that wearing it didn¡¯t feel like there was anything on her face until she touched it. It would be so uncomfortable to wear it all day otherwise.
She warmed up and started her routine training. It didn¡¯t even take a second before she noticed something odd already.
¡®It¡¯s harder to start Violent Heart Acceleration up.¡¯ Scarlet took a deep breath, relaxing and calming her nerves.
It was not a big change but clearly noticeable. She relaxed further when she found that there were no issues to her skill and physical control. The skill got harder to start up again, the breathing techniques Ebony taught her really helped.
She recalled her new Physique¡¯s information.
Gluttonous desire to eat increased by 50%. Should be what made everything in her kitchen storage look so delicious.
Metabolism and digestive efficiency increased by 25%. She assumed that meant her body was even more energy efficient than her base Constitution and Journeyman body would suggest. So less bodily waste would be produced and she would digest food faster. That might mean she needed to eat more or her increased energy efficiency would balance it out.
Natural Resistance to heat increased by 25%. Much less than she expected after she almost died burning herself. It was possibly because the portion of the Heartblood Essence she ate was small or maybe her Physique was not much on resistance to heat for her entire body.
Blood¡¯s capacity for heat and energy increased by 100%. This was what likely affected her the most. Capacity should be referring to a storage limit of some kind. If she took it literally, does it mean her blood can hold or withstand twice as much heat and energy?
That would be amazing for her newer fire enhancement skill. The part about the capacity for energy gave more questions. Heat was also a type of energy after all. What would her blood being able to hold more energy really entail?
Base Health Regeneration increased by 50%. This was pretty good, her base regeneration of 1% max health per hour would be 1.5% per hour instead. With her Core Skill running high, her regeneration should rise quite a lot. It probably wouldn¡¯t be anywhere near enough to regenerate more important parts so easily like organs, nerves, tendons or bones but flesh wounds would not be as deadly. Ebony¡¯s partial mana being Physique was very enviable in that sense.
No amount of health regeneration will heal parts that their race itself isn¡¯t able to heal from. The Lizardmen for one could regenerate limbs and organs with time and if they evolve to Grandmaster ranked it may even be possible to regenerate half a body or even part of their heart as long as they were given a safe place to rest and nothing was further injuring them.
It may take months to years but it was much better than humans whose injuries if not healed in time properly would lead to lifelong ailments. The wear and tear of the body was something Vitality couldn¡¯t help no matter how high it got. Only the evolution of one¡¯s very life would affect that.
Scarlet continued her training and discovered as many changes to her body as she could. The rise in difficulty to pump her heart faster might be due to the fact that her blood could hold more energy. Perhaps that had meant it was more difficult or required more energy to move her blood faster.
After an hour or so of training, she found out that It had not been as bad as she thought. She improved at controlling her heart again pretty quickly. Maybe her new body just wasn¡¯t used to it yet and it hasn¡¯t ¡®woken up¡¯ in a sense. That made more sense, it was the weakness of her body after just waking up from a 2 week torture. She had estimated that she¡¯ll be back in tip top shape in 3 to 4 weeks of rehabilitation.
That was pretty long but reasonable and a good chance to let her get used to her Physique.
Her skills were mostly where she wanted them to be minus a few more levels here and there. After some more focus on merging her 3 Classes to meld together and improving her Sub-Class skills where she could, Scarlet was going to restart her travels again.
Ordina.
She would return perfected. Pilfer all the Natural Potential she could. Reach her limits and break past them once more. Then she would open the doors to the next stretch of her path. Ascension.
It had been almost 2 years but Ordina¡¯s monsters shouldn¡¯t have gotten to normal strength yet. Scarlet might be prideful and might not want to resort to fighting weakened opponents to get what she wanted but pride was useless when she needed to get as strong as she could as fast as possible. Natural Potential was too juicy a fruit to neglect because of worthless pride.
Nobles had a tradition of keeping death row inmates for their descendants to execute as long as their descendents were strong enough to kill them without any other outside help other than chaining and maybe sealing the person being executed.
The Royals couldn¡¯t come up with a good reason to ban the practice. It wasn¡¯t even worth discussing. The people getting executed would have to die one way or another. Why not make use of that and let anyone at max level kill them to gain Natural Potential? Another reason for high bounties for those criminals that were wanted alive. It had further cemented the noble¡¯s power after all.
The public didn¡¯t even have any complaints since a criminal less was better for them too. It really didn¡¯t matter who was the executioner.
Her training and skill levelling frenzy had kept her mind busy but she couldn¡¯t stop thinking of Ebony since returning to Xienor.
¡®Wait. Ebony was Sister¡¯s student?¡¯ Scarlet only just realised that meant her sister spent time with Ebony.
¡°Sister Jing!¡± Scarlet ran back into the house.
¡°She already left after you kicked her out.¡± Scarlet¡¯s grandma said after sipping her tea.
¡°Where is she now?¡±
¡°No one took her spot so she should be there. Where are you going in such a rush? It¡¯s late, you can go see her tomorrow.¡±
¡°...oh wait. It was you grandma!¡±
¡°What was me?¡±
¡°Why did you get Ebony to be Sister Jing¡¯s student? And how? Did you kidnap him?¡±
¡°What do you mean why? Do you not like that? There¡¯s no better teacher for him right? How can you say that about your grandmother, is grandma the type of person that goes around kidnapping people? Couldn¡¯t I have invited him to come with me politely?¡±
¡°Yes and no!¡±
¡°Oww. This old lady¡¯s heart cannot take this anymore.¡±
¡°Stop acting¡I guess there¡¯s no one better than Sister Jing when it comes to crafting but why crafting? I thought he would focus on getting stronger¡¡±
¡°That¡¯s where he was lacking. Life isn¡¯t just about fighting, you should know that. I hope you do. You have your love for cooking and eating. He needed something similar. I stopped you from becoming a killing machine only wanting to get stronger. I did the same for him. Does that make you unhappy?¡±
¡°...No.¡±
¡°You practically emptied the kitchen, stock up tomorrow. This old lady¡¯s going to sleep.¡± Her grandma yawned for real. She probably hasn¡¯t slept for a long time, she had been standing outside of her room the whole time when Scarlet was digesting the Heartblood Essence.
¡°Okay, good night.¡±
¡°Night. Get some rest yourself, your body needs it.¡±
¡°Yes grandma.¡±
Scarlet washed herself up again before joining her grandma because her room still stunk. She slept like a baby.
She was never very close to the people in Xienor with the exception of her cousin and grandmother. She was not completely Xeng after all. Her father is apparently one of the men who married in after defeating her mother. Though she wasn¡¯t exactly an outcast or ostracised in Xienor, she didn¡¯t know how to interact with other people. There were no other kids her age as well, Kong Jing was already the closest to her in age.
The people were still amiable with her as she walked the sparse market. Buying some deep sea fish from the [Fisher King Lvl ???] and chests full of cuts of monster meat from the [Grand Butcher Lvl ???]. She wondered when the fisherman who reached King Classed would decide to leave Elcra. He would progress faster on some other worlds or realms.
Scarlet continued her shopping for vegetables, seasonings and spices. Cooking up breakfast for 6 but only she, her grandma and Kong Jing were eating.
¡°He¡he didn¡¯t just run off did he?¡± Scarlet asked Kong Jing, she didn¡¯t believe Ebony would just learn her teachings and run off.
¡°Who are you talking about?¡± Kong Jing acted dumb and poked bacon into her mouth.
¡°...Maybe you don¡¯t want breakfast.¡± Scarlet said as she dragged Kong Jing¡¯s plate away
¡°Okay okay, leave my plate alone. My cute little sister made this for me.¡± Kong Jing hugged her plate back.
¡°Where is he now?¡± Scarlet already finished her 4 servings of breakfast. She told herself it was because her body was still recovering and needed the nutrients.
¡°I don¡¯t know. He didn¡¯t run off but he didn¡¯t tell me where he was going either. Why don¡¯t you call him and find out?¡± Kong Jing ate a little faster when she saw Scarlet eyeing her breakfast.
¡°No. It¡¯s okay. It¡¯s not time yet. I can¡¯t be weaker than him the next time we meet.¡± Scarlet said resolutely.
¡°Don¡¯t you want him to be stronger so you can marry him?¡± Kong Jing couldn¡¯t help but tease. She had never seen her little sister act this cute before.
¡°Sister!¡± Scarlet blushed and stabbed her fork onto the closest sausage.
¡°Hey! I was saving that for the last bite!¡±
A small food fight later.
¡°Sister Jing, I broke the armour dolls already. Could you make me new ones? At least 5 times stronger and faster.¡±
¡°All of them?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°...fine. How many do you need? Oh, I analysed your husband-to-be''s magic. Just whatever he has shown me so far. Want me to replicate one of him into an armour doll?¡±
¡°30 to 50 should be enough. As long as they don¡¯t break. No need to replicate his skills, I¡¯d rather fight with him again than a replication.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll bring them in a few days.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll get back to training now.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t push yourself too much, you¡¯re still recovering right?¡±
¡°I know, I will take it slow for now.¡±
Scarlet resumed her training. She had to use all her Class Skills with Sub-Class and Profession skills together as seamlessly as possible but it was hard to use her Profession skills without targets. That was okay for now since she would have targets soon.
Scarlet spent the next month rehabilitating and understanding what she could about the changes her Physique brought her. She had fully recovered faster than expected but at the cost of her admittedly excessive eating.
Her Blood Simmer evolved to Blood Boil. A tier 2 fire enhancement spell that increases her Strength and Agility by (50 + 2.5%) of Intelligence but decreases her Endurance by a static 15%. Blood Simmer couldn¡¯t even heat her blood up much and the skill became redundant as it didn¡¯t increase her stats much. She always had to weaken and dilute her fire mana so that her blood didn¡¯t dry up but she no longer had to do that with her new Physique.
Blood Boil consumed 600 mana per minute, with her mana efficiency for fire magic that was about 170 mana per minute. If she didn¡¯t use her mana for anything else she could only keep it up for about 20 minutes. 600 mana was a lot more than the usual tier 2 enhancement spells from what she knew.
It was definitely a side effect of her blood requiring more energy and heat to heat up. It wasn¡¯t all cons, the base of 50% was higher than the usual 20 to 30% of other elemental tier 2 enhancements. The skill itself is still considered a little unpolished by their standards. She should try to refine it further to increase the base 50% while keeping the mana cost constant or lower. It would be impressive if she could bring it up to 80% or higher.
The skill made her uncomfortable, always making her sweat. It worked concurrently with her Core Skill, the synergy between the 2 skills was amazing. She could probably merge the skill if she wanted and tried to train them concurrently but she didn¡¯t want that yet. Her Core Skill didn¡¯t require mana, she wouldn¡¯t want to run out of the choice of getting a manaless buff. Although if it merged, it wouldn''t be like she couldn''t use her Core skill without mana, there was a high chance she would not get skill effect.
She didn¡¯t see herself getting Combat Meditation anytime soon. She didn¡¯t even have Meditation, with no patience to sit and clear her mind or whatever. Perhaps she was just lacking in talent when it came to Meditation. It was thanks to Kong Jing that made the Calming Pearl to increase her speed of mana regeneration. Together with the rune that encompassed their entire house. If not, training her magics would take much longer.
As for the part about her blood¡¯s capacity for energy doubling, it was pretty awesome. She found her stamina to have increased by a lot. It was hard to say if it had doubled since stamina consumption had always been hard to gauge. She needed food. Food was her energy source. Her increase in digestive speed was good and all and her increase in metabolism really helped balance it out so that she didn¡¯t need more food.
She had tried to force herself to eat as ''much'' as she used to. After a short work out, she could already tell her stamina was dropping faster than when she ate till she was full. She wouldn¡¯t feel hungry if she ate like she used to but she wouldn¡¯t feel anywhere near full either. The food in her body seems to be converted to energy in her blood faster, it was weird that she could somewhat feel that. A vague feeling, she would probably be able to heighten her sense for that after she evolved.
Her blood could hold more energy, meaning that eating more let her stockpile more energy in her. Essentially doubling her stamina pool if she ate till she was full. It had curbed her need for stamina but only for a short term and the cost was her needing to eat twice as much.
The increase of her desire to eat wasn¡¯t necessary when she loved food and it didn¡¯t matter much when she was here but it might be troublesome when she was on the road. Still, it was just desire and she could curb it with a little willpower.
One problem was somewhat solved but it made her lacking base Constitution an even bigger problem. She had 3 types of enhancement skills right now. Streamline Wind Enhancement only affected her movement speed based on Intelligence. Pulsating Lightning Enhancement only gives her a rhythmic burst of speed based on Intelligence with a high base of 80% + 1.0%. She controlled the lightning pulse at will and didn¡¯t use it too many times in a battle due to its 150 mana per pulse cost.
All of her enhancement increases her Agility. Using 2 with her Core Skill at almost half its capacity was fine but any higher and it was problematic. Furthermore, the tier 2 fire enhancement one affected her more due to the larger buff. It wasn¡¯t the biggest problem now with its lower level but it would be soon.
She would never be able to use her full power as long as she couldn¡¯t solve the problem of her comparatively weaker body. She would rather not evolve rashly and let the problem of a weaker body fester and trouble her even more in future. Just adding more stat to Constitution will never solve the issue, only curb the symptoms.
She could perhaps do something with blood magic. She didn¡¯t know if she would get a skill that increases her Constitution.
Xengs were strong and mighty but they had a family based heritage, not unlike the Imperial noble¡¯s lineage. They wouldn¡¯t pass or teach any skills to others. Kong Jing didn¡¯t have any family remaining on Elcra and all the craftsmen had been wacky. The craftsman didn¡¯t care much about family heritage, the person they taught just had to fit their personal criteria.
Since blood magic was one of the magics her grandmother really didn¡¯t know much about, she would have to figure things out herself.
Blood Boil was a fire magic and enhancement magic despite the ¡®blood¡¯ in its name.
Name: Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin
Core Skill: Violent Heart Acceleration Lvl 173
Class: Genius Sword Witch of Flames Lvl 100
Class Skills:
Streaking Sprint Lvl 143
Fire Mana Control Lvl 188
Cascade Dual Longsword Mastery Lvl 201
Cascading Laceration Lvl 141
Heated Blade Lvl 142
Spear of Flame Lvl 132
Pinpoint Perforation Lvl 157
Sphere of Immolation Lvl 139
Blood Boil Lvl 52
Burstflare Witch¡¯s Conditioning Lvl 25
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Wind Lightning Butcher Lvl 100
Sub-Class Skills:
Wind Mana Manipulation Lvl 136
Streamline Wind Enhancement Lvl 140
Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 143
Pulsating Lightning Enhancement Lvl 143
Lightning Inoculation Lvl 136
Revolving Razorwind Film Lvl 132
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Combat Chef Lvl 100
Profession Skills:
Combat Cooking Lvl 147
Heat Perception Lvl 139
Live Ingredient Processing Lvl 145
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 1500/1500
Stamina: 2500/2500
Mana: 3000/3000 [3750]
Unallocated stat points:
Strength: 122
Vitality: 150
Constitution: 330
Endurance: 250
Agility: 180 [360]
Intelligence: 215
Wisdom: 300
Perception: 110
Generic Skills:
Xenese Lvl 10
Elcrian Lvl 10
Appraise Lvl 19
Running Lvl 54
Housekeeping Lvl 36
Silent Step Lvl 23
Immense Pain Resistance Lvl 46
Combat Tenacity Lvl 48
Sheer Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 57
Immense Divination Resistance Lvl 62
Mana Compression Lvl 28
Mana Expansion Lvl 42
Extreme Heat Resistance Lvl 89
Sheer Poison Resistance Lvl 21
Cold Resistance Lvl 28
Earth Resistance Lvl 16
Sheer Wind Resistance Lvl 39
Sheer Lightning Resistance Lvl 53
Blood Mana Manipulation Lvl 52
Mental Supersaturation Lvl 25
Scent Tracing Lvl 36
Mental Acceleration Lvl 41
Sublime Instinct Lvl 33
Regulated Breath Lvl 17
Scarlet didn¡¯t pick up many additional skills. She already had many skills keeping her busy. Getting Regulated Breath made her really happy.
Regulated Breath - Controlled breathing matching your body¡¯s muscle contractions and expansions. Increase efficiency in oxygen supply to the body by 1.0% per level.
It didn¡¯t outright decrease her stamina consumption but the originally painful skill got easier and easier on her body. The burden on her lungs dropped very slightly as the skill levelled. The consumption of her stamina also started to drop noticeably as she could sustain herself longer whether in a hunt or training. If she manages to push the skill into one of her classes, she would increase her sustainability in combat by a long shot.
Scarlet packed her bag. 2 additional sets of battle wear together with another stronger set for after she evolved. Courtesy of Sister Jing. It was packed up and she was told not to open it till she evolved, maybe just for the surprise. She would at least respect that and keep it closed till she was ready for it. 12 sets of pyjamas and underwear, together with 5 sets of casual clothing she hardly ever wore.
Preserve boxes, half chilled half not. Some new, some old, some smaller than the others. She could feed a few parties for months. From fresher fruits and vegetables to meats and seafood to herbs and spices to seasoning. She had it all. Her portable kitchen stove and sink were cleaned and tidied up with her cooking tools.
Her tent by one side, near her clothes. All the random stuff she had properly stored this time. Things like the illusion ward so that she could sleep with more ease out in the wild. She can¡¯t let Ebony catch her just tossing everything she had inside just because she had been too lazy to tidy her personal belongings again!
She had almost been as embarrassed about that as to when he pulled her underwear out.
¡°Sister Jing! I¡¯m ready to go. You can just drop me off wherever your destination is.¡± Scarlet called out to Kong Jing who was waiting for her.
¡°Alright let¡¯s go!¡± Kong Jing returned Scarlet her mask that she fiddled with. Adding more functions to it. The one she asked for was for the lower mask to be able to be hidden so that she could eat without taking her mask off like her sister''s.
¡°See you, grandma. Don¡¯t play around too much.¡± Scarlet said as she put her mask on. There were even more incomprehensible runes with embedded gems and crystals in them.
¡°...Take care, my beloved granddaughter. Don¡¯t be so rash. Ah Jing, you can just bring her there.¡± Her grandmother was acting a little weird all of a sudden. She was more serious than usual but maybe she was just worried about her like always. She definitely knew a lot more than she let Scarlet in on.
Kong Jing just ¡°yeah, yeahed¡± and said bye before disappearing from their house with Scarlet without a trace left behind.
¡°The next ordeal¡¯s gonna be much bigger than a simple rebuilding of your Physique my dear girl¡ I better be able to see you soon.¡±
Chapter 92: Jungle
Ebony didn¡¯t take long to leave Fourth Tide.
His plan was to move along the coast but only where he could still see the ocean but not near enough that a random sea creature would pop up and swallow him in one bite. Towards the west where Hoarfrost Glade was, he should reach the end of the coastline for Fissure Sea, Fifth Tide. Go south till he reaches Plainston or southwest till Bubble Hills and directly into Hoarfrost Glades.
There would be a few cities and many towns in between. He would consider stopping by for a good night''s rest or restocking of supplies. If not then he didn¡¯t want to waste too much time travelling. He couldn¡¯t help it, he had already seen the continental map because the small Quest Hall in Fourth Tide posted a huge version of the damn thing right when he entered.
He was carried almost halfway to Tidal, the Capital of the Empire which was close to the centre of Elva. It might have taken Sister Jing a day or 2 like her grandaunt but it would take a heck longer for him. Yet, even Master Runners or monster-drawn carriages over level 150 may not travel as fast as him. They were probably much faster at full speed, no doubt. But how long can they travel at full speed?
Perhaps with the right skills, Runners could travel almost half a day or more at their top speed and monsters even more. That would leave them too tired to fend off any monsters so not many would push themselves like that for a long-distance trip.
No matter what, they needed rest. Ebony needed rest too, just less.
He decided that moving along the coast was considerably safer. The area was mostly cleared by the border cities'' army.
Half a day of quiet travelling proved him right. There was only the noisy chirping of birds and mating calls of insects. Insects were one of the creepiest things that really bothered him. The worst part about wildlife.
His spatial bag didn¡¯t feel like it had much weight, making him touch his back once or twice to make sure his bag was still under his robe. He had Compressed Icebody Enhancement to the max for the strength required to move around normally with both the robe and the almost a ton Icicle. Multitasking to forcefully expand his Mana Chassis to reinforce it further. He still had excess mana regenerated.
Other than Chaotic Repulsive Membrane, he didn¡¯t train his other gravity magic. Some relaxing bgm was compressed for the tiny buff to his mana regeneration.
He was greatly slowed down by all the weight he was carrying, together with the decrease in Agility from Icebody Enhancement. Compression of Icebody Enhancement actually further decreased his Agility beyond the static 20%, an unfortunate revelation.
Once again, Ebony was being what normal people would consider weird or crazy. He was constantly sheathing and unsheathing Icicle and giving it a few swings as he ran. It was incredible how bad he was with his new greatsword.
Slightly different dimensions were one thing. The massive change in mass and weight was another. Unaccustomed.
The biggest issue was how the immense weight causes his momentum to fly off the charts. Sure, it was great for a much stronger attack but he needed to be able to use that and not have the greatsword pull him along.
It was more than a hundred times heavier than his old sword that used normal materials but his enhanced strength was way more than a hundred times his strength before he became superhuman in terms of physical strength. He just needed practice.
And practice he did. Because most of his mana regeneration was suppressed and used up, monsters didn¡¯t avoid him as actively. It made him seem like a tasty target.
[Ground Lizard Lvl 92]
It was a sole lizard about the size of a large monitor lizard, even looking alike other than a few spiky edges across his back and the earthy brown colour. It was hiding in a bush behind a tree roughly a dozen or so metres away, he sensed it flicking its tongue while staring at him when he was busy picking a fruit called ¡®Pyrula¡¯ that looked like a pear. He went through multiple encyclopaedia-like books and already knew how to recognise and Identify what wild fruits he could and could not eat.
He wasn¡¯t sure if these fruit trees were planted by the government or some other individual but a few missing fruits wouldn¡¯t hurt. It wasn¡¯t as if there was anyone guarding some fruit trees or any signs that it wasn''t a wild tree.
The Ground Lizard thought that it was its chance to attack as the ground around Ebony¡¯s feet rose and locked both his feet down. The leaping prey had thought it was the predator and opened its jaw with a surprising amount of teeth and fangs for a scrumptious bite at the real predator.
Ebony half drew Icicle and swung it like a crescent slash overhead at the lizard who tried to attack him from the side for his neck. Perfectly aligned for him to slice it down as the half slit of his sheath was facing the hostile monster. The Ground Lizard was indeed caught off guard but was too late to even dodge as he had been a lot faster than it expected. It was sliced from under its belly all the way through till his skull and brain was cleanly cut in 2.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Ground Lizard Lvl 92]. No experience is gained due to maxed level.¡¯
A couple of tree branches dropped onto him from overhead but he easily avoided it. The earthen locks didn¡¯t really affect him as they came loose easily. Even those branches and twigs higher up than his blade couldn''t reach were cut down.
The lizard was weak, slow and soft bodied. Any level 50+ monster from Hoarfrost Glade could hunt them for breakfast. Its earth magic appeared to be its weakest point. The true strength of many monsters from Hoarfrost Glades seems to lay in their ability with magic.
He dallied no further after picking up all the pyrulas that fell and burying the lizard that he didn¡¯t feel any appetite towards. The pyrula was a little bland but he could still taste the light sweetness of pear. Its texture wasn¡¯t all that good though, Crunchy on the outside but mushy on the inside. Biting too hard into it causes it to splash and spill, thankfully he had Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. Weak forces like spillage of fruit mush just couldn¡¯t penetrate through the film of repulsion unless his control over his membrane slipped.
It was uneventful for three days in the wild where he moved through the night as well. There were few monsters around and only 1 other lizard thought he was a nice target. Together with a large falcon, it had been surprisingly tough to take down due to its flight speed.
It didn¡¯t even want to let him go as it kept chasing and taking pecks that could pierce a hole in a thick trunk. He had enough after a 2 hour chase and froze it down with a directed frost mist together with trapping it into an orb. It had charged for a peck and didn¡¯t expect a blast of cold air and mist, then the shield it couldn¡¯t even make large dents in suddenly split open and trapped it.
The scenery changed because the density of trees reduced greatly and Ebony could hear a lot of noise. Metal clashing and shouting. He didn¡¯t rush since no one was getting attacked or anything, the shouts were too in sync.
¡°Halt! This is a restricted area, training camp of the Fifth Tide. I see you¡¯re a lone journeyman, separated from your party, company or expedition? Whatever the case, you shall not go further past this point.¡±
The [Spearmaster Lvl 166] called for him to stop before lowering his guard after Identifying him and quickly checking his surroundings with his partner [Master Warrior Lvl ???]. They were wearing practically the same sets of armour the guards or army of Fourth Tide wore. Not the full plate that the knights wore but still relatively decent-looking armour.
¡°Under the laws of the Empire during peacetimes, a lost straggler can request urgent medical treatment for any life threatening injuries or sickness and we will provide assistance when we have the excess manpower or medical supplies. You are entitled to request for 2 days worth of food and water should you require so. You are also allowed to join a squad or any larger group to be escorted to the closest settlement, Fifth Tide in this case, at our earliest convenience should you wish to do so.¡± The Master Warrior spouted memorised lines. No doubt he was the senior here.
Ebony had already been plenty surprised by how the Empire structured and conducted themselves. But their generosity, in a sense, was beyond what he imagined a magical but somewhat modern and somewhat mediaeval world would have. It surely did show how far they have come. There were still street thugs and bandits but crime could never be fully erased or so he believed.
¡°I travelled alone. Can I have directions towards the nearest city? That isn¡¯t Fifth Tide.¡± Ebony answered before asking a question of his own.
¡°Alone?¡± The younger sounding spear wielding man asked.
The surrounding area wasn¡¯t all that dangerous but travelling alone was always risky. No one to watch your back when resting at night was stressful when you didn¡¯t know what might come out at you. Furthermore, the young man in front of him was only a Journeyman.
¡°As you can see.¡± Ebony gestured to his left and right.
It had been rhetorical but his tone was jarring to the spearman¡¯s ears. He had felt the sarcasm behind Ebony¡¯s words and gesturing, he was mocked by a damn Journeyman. Even though Ebony didn¡¯t have an ounce of sarcasm when he answered.
Still, the spearman only tightened his grip on his spear in annoyance. Attacking civilians was a no-go, much less one that was an evolution under him. He still wanted his job, stationed at Fifth Tide where it was the safest border city but still important enough that the pay was darn good. The only problem was his parents nagging about how it was too dangerous because some ugly Trolls could attack any time. He doubted it, there hadn¡¯t been an attack since the last war and the Fifth Tide had always been safe due to its position.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
¡°There is no city further west except for Fifth Tide. If you make a detour past our camp then move down southwest you will get out of the forest and into a dense jungle then the massive plains, Trailane Plains before a long stretch of short hills. Bubble Hills, for a journeyman¡¯s feet and stats I would say the plains is 3 to 4 months away. Move down south around the Plains and you might see more people.
We¡¯re already near the edge of Elva, there are few cities. Unless you¡¯re going to the new dungeon I heard about, you might have more luck with smaller towns or perhaps even villages of minorities. I would advise against visiting any village in this backwater area if you even manage to chance upon one. A village without proper defences but can stay around usually means it is filled with unnatural things. Unnatural people. It is more dangerous the further west you go, nothing further than these forests are cleared by us.¡± The steady warrior had been more than helpful so far.
¡°I see. Thank you. Have a nice day.¡± Ebony made a small detour to show them that he wasn¡¯t going to go further towards their camp. The guards didn¡¯t even manage to reply before he dashed off. 3 to 4 months to reach the plains was using the warrior''s estimation of his speed but, that was still pretty far. It would take quite some time even if he didn¡¯t stop to rest at all.
¡°May the Life Queen Bless you.¡± The Master Warrior said. Only the spearman and himself heard it.
The way down south would take even longer too but Ebony was planning to get through Bubble Hills directly into Hoarfrost Glade anyway so there was no need to go down towards Plainston. He might find a town or something to rest and wash up if he passed by one.
He started moving a little southwest like the warrior had told him, readjusting the direction he went as he saw fit. Mental Map was great and all since it was a live, 3D version but it didn¡¯t scale to the copy of the continental map he saw.
The dense jungle would probably be the most dangerous area from what the warrior told him. The plains wasn¡¯t all that dangerous the last he had been there, even though it won¡¯t be the same area as when he was in Plainston. Same with Bubble Hills. Although, Bubble Hills was probably way more dangerous from what he heard. Only the region near Plainston was relatively safer, the only reason why Plainston was even built there.
???
Back at the training camp.
¡°He¡¯s so arrogant, charging into Solid Mist Jungle alone is just suicidal. That guy needs no blessing from the Life Queen¡± The Spearmaster couldn¡¯t hold back the tiny irritation he still had.
His senior colleague already offered him all that they were obliged to offer a lost straggler but he didn¡¯t accept it. Nice enough to tell him that only these parts were safe enough for him to move around. Yet he still went further.
¡°...Stand at attention and keep your eyes open.¡± The Master Warrior stood back at his post as still as a statue.
¡°I know, I know. You¡¯re always so serious.¡± The Spearmaster quickly got back into position.
¡°I¡¯m not serious, just doing my duty. But you¡¯re right about one thing.¡± The Master Warrior retorted seriously.
¡°Hmm?¡± The Spearmaster wondered what the older man had to say. He was a hardened veteran and the spearman looked up to him quite a bit.
The Spearmaster heard that the Master Warrior participated in the previous war against the Trolls and survived. He had always said he merely hid in one corner and fought back whatever came without killing a single enemy whenever anyone asked him about that time. Even that was pretty amazing as not many lived to tell the tale. Especially at the warriors¡¯ level at that time.
¡°He needed no blessing.¡± The Master Warrior remarked.
¡°Ah? You¡¯re agreeing with me?¡± The Spearmaster didn¡¯t expect the Master Warrior, who had been the one who spouted the blessing to take back his words now?
The Life Queen saved his life and he had always been praying to her religiously. Like many of the older soldiers have. Same with many people all around the Empire. In a short span of time, the Life Queen had risen to become a faith of the people.
¡°Yes. He would have little issue passing travelling alone. Most monsters in these parts wouldn¡¯t even make him blink twice.¡± The Master Warrior said something the Spearmaster suddenly had trouble comprehending.
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°...You need more training with mana sensing. And also keeping up with the news.¡±
¡°What has that got to do with what we¡¯re talking about?¡±
¡°It means he was standing right before you and you can¡¯t feel the mana coming from him. It means a Meditative Ice Swordsman was right before you and you can¡¯t link it up to Rimestone who was all the rage from more than a year back.¡±
¡°...He¡¯s Rimestone!? Why didn¡¯t you tell me earlier!? I wanted his autograph, I watched all his matches!¡±
The Master Warrior¡¯s expression darkened.
¡°Yet you didn¡¯t recognise the ice blue hair, his equipment or even his face. Can you even name another Meditative Ice Swordsman? Looks like mana sensing isn¡¯t the only thing you¡¯re lacking. Your eyes and brains need a good knock too. Go send yourself for half a year of perception and double your administrative load.¡± The Master Warrior articulated clearly.
¡°But Sir!¡± The Spearmaster started to panic.
¡°Triple.¡± His objection was met with force.
¡°Yes Sir!¡± His objection was utterly crushed. The Spearmaster quickly ran to get his punishment.
¡°1 year and 4 times the administrative load for leaving your post on duty!¡± The Master Warrior didn¡¯t move or even turn back but his voice could be clearly heard.
The Spearmaster sprung back without a moment¡¯s hesitation and kept his mouth shut this time.
¡®ARHH! Perception training aims for the butt, I can¡¯t even sit well and I¡¯m never gonna leave the table, that monster! More importantly, how could I not recognise Rimestone just because it has been a while since I saw his fights on the memory light.¡¯
The Spearmaster slowly and stealthily rubbed his butt in reminiscence of the period of time his ass tore apart because of the perverted thought that they would be able to sense attacks coming from behind them sooner or later if they continued getting their butts whooped. It was going to be a painful year ahead of him.
???
The jungle was further than Ebony expected or maybe he wasn¡¯t on the right track. Another 4 days of peaceful travel through the sparse forest where he only slept a few hours up a tree branch last night before he noticed the light mist around him.
It was normal mist as far as he could tell, a sign he was getting closer to a wet jungle. The ground was softer as he moved deeper. The trees were cluttered together more and more. Vines entangling each other. Roots littered the ground.
Ebony, even with his Treading Steps was slowed down by a tiny bit. The twists and turns he had to take increased as time passed. The trees were towering him and were thicker than his greatsword was long.
Fully entering the jungle when his sights don¡¯t see further than a couple metres ahead. The mist was so thick and heavy that he could wring out water from his hair if he stayed here for a bit longer.
He didn¡¯t falter and continued moving at top speed, minus the repulsive steps. Crashing right into a tree at his speed would not be funny even with his Constitution and toughness. His senses far more than just his sight. Spreading far enough for him to react to a sudden tripping hazard or roadblock in time and Treading Steps to change his direction.
Unlike the forest, the jungle had been a lot more quiet.
He ran on and on. Expecting monsters to come out any time since the soldier told him this jungle wasn¡¯t under their jurisdiction. Nothing attacked him. He was pretty sure he passed by some creatures but they didn¡¯t chase or attack either.
¡®The Master Warrior didn¡¯t mention anything about danger other than saying that they didn¡¯t clear the monsters here.¡¯
The guy had been nice enough to tell him what he could gain from them and some directions with advice. It would be weird if there were some specific dangers here and he didn¡¯t tell Ebony. Of course, perhaps the Master Warrior just didn¡¯t feel like telling him.
A week in the jungle let him confirm that there really wasn¡¯t much danger here. A likely poisonous snake or two tried to bite him but at level 62 they couldn¡¯t even pierce his enhanced skin when he let them bite him. There were a couple of monsters that he passed by that were around level 120 to 150 as well. Maybe the level 62 snake was just born for a day or two when it attacked him.
Ebony decided to relax his nerves for the second time he travelled alone and set up his tent to sleep on the first day he entered the jungle. His plan for deterrence was just to remove all the mana ores in his myriad bracelet. It had been a very peaceful night as he slept. The same peace and quiet repeated itself every night.
He never took the initiative to hunt anything. Only when he was attacked or sensed hostility did he fight back. It was a little surprising to him that the monsters here didn¡¯t always attack the moment they saw him. Unlike the dungeon monsters or Hoarfrost Glade¡¯s.
Truthfully, he was a little lost. His Mental Map and general sense of direction told him he was still roughly on the correct path but there were many places blocked off by trees wider, thicker and taller than city walls.
He thought it would be another peaceful day where both he and the residents of the jungle ignored each other. He leapt from tree branch to tree branch whenever he could, both to practice Treading Steps and also not to make too many detours.
Having gotten used to the ridiculous weight on his shoulders while he ran, his speed and movement had been optimised to the best of his abilities. Less tripping, less picking too thin and weak branches to land on. It had been considerably difficult to move as weightlessly as he used to.
Ebony gently landed on a low branch and stopped his movements completely. Caution.
He didn¡¯t dare move. There was something behind and above him. Watching him. Whatever it was, it was humanoid but seemed to have large hands and feets. Its fingers or toes might be connected by web but his Vibrational Gravity Sense wasn¡¯t that powerful or sensitive yet. It was small, about half his own height.
It hadn¡¯t been there when he just landed. It got close enough without causing any sound or vibration in the air or mana. Sensing that it had just stood above him and didn¡¯t attack for almost a minute, Ebony turned to check what was watching him so intently.
[Transient Roaming Kappa Lvl 100]
Ebony¡¯s mind was as clear as a bright mirror. However, he couldn¡¯t help but feel lucky to find one of the monsters he wanted to see himself. It looked exactly like the depicted Fleet-Footed Kappa that he had read about, perhaps with a bit of size difference. Said to have no terrain they couldn''t traverse. The great difference in what Identify told him only meant one thing.
Aberrant.
Chapter 93: Silent Teacher
Fleet-Footed Kappas are not normally aggressive. Or so Ebony had read. Aberrant usually meant they ate enough creatures like him. People with Classes. That was only the general logic and the most common opinion about what aberrant creatures were. He didn¡¯t really think so with what Gen had told him and how Obsius wasn¡¯t hell-bent on killing people. Unless Obsius was never an aberrant and it was just Z&Z''s escort party that misunderstood. Perhaps they didn''t have a classification for intelligent monsters since ''aberrants'' were referred to as extremely bloodthirsty and stronger variants.
They are basically more intelligent versions that managed to stop themselves from absorbing ambient essence to grow stronger. Perhaps the next step for them would be to become like Gen and obtain a Class.
This Kappa had a pretty impressive sounding title of Transient Roaming but it also didn¡¯t attack Ebony and merely stared creepily at him. Ebony matched its stare with his own as the 2 stood unmoving.
The Kappa was light green in colour throughout, rounder than a human face with much larger pupils and eyes, dark green beak and a bald head. It had limbs as thin as twigs and looked like a light breeze could snap them. Webbed feet thrice as large as his and its arms were webbed to its torso too.
After an unknown amount of time staring at each other, Ebony won the staring contest as the Kappa tapped its webbed feet on the branch he was standing twice before moving ahead of him.
Ebony didn¡¯t ponder. There was nothing to think about, it was obvious even without its prompt. Follow.
It didn¡¯t even take seconds before the Kappa was out of sight. It wasn¡¯t just its speed since it was a dense ass jungle where his sight was significantly affected by the mist and thick foliage. He continued moving towards where he last saw it. Ten minutes in and he faced a dead end with no Kappa anywhere.
He was about to take a random direction since he couldn¡¯t even find or see any sort of footprint or tracks left by the Kappa. But then something entered his range of perception not far away again. Still above him, it was the Kappa looking down at him.
Ebony didn¡¯t sense any mockery but he was no Kappa whisperer and this Kappa was silent, unlike Obsius. This time, the Kappa raised its arm and pointed at him before pointing at its own feet.
Ebony did what he thought was natural and gave the Kappa a thumbs up. The Kappa had some level of intelligence and even cocked its head at his gesture. It moved again and he watched its feet more closely.
Their run went on for hours. The Kappa slowed itself down so that he could always either see or sense it. It had been a little surprising to see the similarities to how they ran. It was incredibly similar to his Treading Step. The moment its feet touched the ground it was pushed off with minimal ankle or knee movement. It landed without sound and when it ran on the ground the leaves didn¡¯t even kick up much after its impressive push off speed, if at all.
¡®Did it see that the Treading Step I used was similar and thought it''d show me how it''s done or something?¡¯
Perhaps the Kappa thought he was a fellow Kappa, just bigger and slower. That or it was just having fun or doing whatever it felt like doing.
He could somewhat catch up if he used Chaotic Repulsive Membrane but he didn¡¯t and focused fully on what difference the Kappa wanted to show him. The difference was repulsive steps were hard to control. The Kappa even stepped or kicked between two trees back and forth to show off to him.
They were running straight for a rocky cliff, another dead end. It was angled, falling towards them a little and looked possible to climb. The Kappa didn¡¯t even slow down and its step brought it right to the cliff where its free feet landed on the cliff and the Kappa used the momentum of its dash to bring its body to stick to the face of the cliff and continued running up.
It was running as fast vertically as it was horizontally. It stopped abruptly a dozen or so metres up and its webbed feet seemed to grip onto the cliff as it turned to look at Ebony who was about to use his hands to climb. Disapproval.
¡®Does it look like I can grip with my feet?¡¯
Ebony ran up as many steps as he could before he had no choice but to grab onto a protruding rock but then a moist webbed foot kicked his hand off and he fell. One of his Layered Ice Carapaces he had been carrying around slowed his fall.
He didn¡¯t know how tall the cliff was as he couldn¡¯t see far past the mist nor was the end of the cliff within the range of his senses. The Kappa started from the ground again before stopping and looking silently at Ebony.
¡®I¡¯ll just use ice as a frozen grip. Or maybe increase or redirect gravity from the cliff to strengthen on me.¡¯
A single step took Ebony up high and he didn¡¯t stop, copying the Kappa as much as possible. From its footing to the way it adjusts its body weight and centre of gravity.
The Kappa got rougher. Whenever he fell and had his shield catch his fall, the Kappa would leap off the cliff and kick his shield away. Its kick was strong, it instantly ripped whatever control Ebony had over his shield as the shield was sent flying out of his range of control and somewhere into the jungle before he could even mentally hold it.
He had underestimated the Kappa. He knew that the Kappa could crush his head before he could react if it wanted to kill him. The second time he tried to stop his fall with another Layered Ice Carapace was met with a more forceful attempt. The Kappa just directly jumped onto his shield, its large webbed feet expanded large enough to grab his entire shield within its sole and crushed it into ice dust.
Ebony¡¯s expression never changed as usual and Everlasting Tranquillity was still up but that was a shocking sight to him. That had been a fully compressed Layered Ice Carapace. The Kappa was level 100 and hasn¡¯t evolved like him yet, the sheer power of its grip was probably far beyond the highest level monster or opponent he had beaten. Levels really were useless for gauging strength. Appearance didn¡¯t tell him crap either with the Kappa¡¯s thin bony limbs that had incredible power within them.
With the Kappa''s speed, he had absolutely no chance of even resisting if it wanted to crush his head or entire body into a bloody mess.
That said, it never attacked Ebony. Patiently watching him run up a cliff and falling. Sometimes gesturing with its arms and legs, assuming he understood what it was trying to tell him.
Ten days later.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Treading Step evolved into Treading Stride.¡¯
Treading Stride (Passive) - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Treading Stride allows one to travel through most terrains with more ease, increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by 2.5% per level. Ability to adjust centre of mass, maintain footing and balance on most surfaces increase by 1.0% per level.
Nothing much changed about the skill description other than the additional effect and the increase of the movement speed percentage. The footwork and/or movement skill was perfect for his swordsmanship too or any close combat really. His greatsword obviously put him out of balance with its immense weight, the skill would help somewhat.
The Kappa would often show its irritation during the 4 days he took to scale the cliff without using his hands and taking great falls that he had to land on his feet. Even rolling to break his fall wasn¡¯t accepted. The worst was when he landed heavily and made large potholes in the ground.
It would take breaks and run off for a couple of minutes, bringing back something in its hands. From snakes to birds to large insects, eating it live and raw and even offering some to him. He declined the insects but processed the birds and roasted it over fire and seasoned it with simple salt and pepper because anything else seemed troublesome. Simple was good.
The Kappa was intelligent. It was entranced by the smell and Ebony obviously let it try some. It wasn¡¯t good with hot food but it didn¡¯t stop eating. The next day, the Kappa attempted to make its own fire. He taught it how to roast meat over fire or how to tell when it was ready. The Kappa never went back to raw meat again, improving its roasting skills every day. He was glad he taught something to it in exchange, he also gave it some of his rations to see if it liked them.
Ebony also slept twice in this period when the Kappa was sleeping as well. Well, the Kappa slept every night but he continued his practice. After the first night he fell asleep near it, the Kappa was no longer as hard on him when it oversaw his training. Maybe it got respectful after it sensed his leaking mana or essence.
After he scaled the 3 to 5 km tall cliff within a few steps without falling, the Kappa brought him all over the place. A swampy area, not exactly a swamp per se as the mud or water wasn¡¯t even calf deep, it was more like a still lake.
Running on water was actually possible for him since quite a while back with his speed alone but it was fun to actually run on a pond and reach the other end without getting himself wet.
There had been some monsters and animals around but they all ran off when they walked in. He didn¡¯t have empty mana ores anymore and he didn¡¯t bother restraining any excess mana he had now that he found out how convenient it was. Ebony didn¡¯t sense any monsters or creatures in the water and the lake was as still inside as it looked like on the surface.
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The mist was not as heavy near the lake which was a little weird but he could see the end of the lake so it wasn¡¯t all that large. The remaining time had been spent here. The Kappa knocked him into the lake whenever he kicked up a lot of water with the force of his steps.
The first exercise it made him do was sidestepping between a really short distance. Even the Kappa couldn¡¯t leave the lake water completely still. But, it made light ripples, unlike his big splash. He didn¡¯t use the weight of his equipment as an excuse. He also didn¡¯t use ice magic to increase or solidify his footing.
The first thing he had to improve on was how instantaneous he had to step off before his whole body weight landed. The second was that the Kappa was unhappy about how short each of his stride was. It had taken some effort to understand the Kappa¡¯s miming.
Treading Step or Treading Stride had reached level 139. 7 levels in such a short time was impressive when the skill doesn¡¯t level so easily anymore unless he was running away from a dangerous hostile or something.
Ebony didn¡¯t know how the Kappa found out before he even saw him run or move after his skill evolved but the Kappa smiled the moment his skill evolved.
It raced with him with apparent joy on its face, a large smile showing its sharp and dirty teeth.
It hadn¡¯t been much of a race because it was still far ahead of him, at least he could somewhat keep up now. The mocking Kappa was running or hopping on one feet as if a handicap for him to even keep up. They ran around for more than half a day before the Kappa was tired out.
The Kappa sat around with Ebony for a while before it raised one of its feet to him. Soles facing Ebony, he had assumed it was some gesture of Kappas and he high fived it with his own feet. Not fearing it would crush his leg. Without much of a whoosh or vibration in the air, the Kappa jumped and flew much like a flying squirrel. Gliding away.
¡°See you around, teacher Ka.¡± Ebony said to himself. The Kappa didn¡¯t introduce itself so he just shortened Kappa. The weird encounter didn¡¯t get to him, it was a lucky encounter. At least, the naivety in him thought it was luck. The unlucky fact was that he was lost.
As best as he did with mapping the area with Mental Mapping, the mist wasn¡¯t kind to him and he was more focused on observing the Kappa. He could still guess which way was west with the sun¡¯s position but it wouldn¡¯t be very accurate if the sunlight was more affected by the mist than he assumed.
He continued his journey towards where he decided was west.
Ebony¡¯s travelling speed greatly increased with the help of his now tier 2 movement skill. There had been one area with monsters that he avoided instead of picking a fight. [Feral Gators Lvl 131], he didn¡¯t need Identify to tell that they were feral. They were 3m long alligator looking monsters that ¡®summon¡¯ larger phantom jaws like the houndmaster guy Ebony killed to bite anything in its way.
They were too busy fighting another group of Gators but some noticed his aura. Charging towards him instead of running away like most other monsters. He didn¡¯t stand to gain anything by hunting it and the Kappa¡¯s ability to crush his full powered Layered Ice Carapace to bits and pieces had convinced him not to take any chances or risk that he didn¡¯t need to take.
He had left them in the dust with his newfound speed.
Despite the increase in his speed, he took another 6 days of travelling before he managed to leave the jungle. A wide open plain with just land, grass, tiny mounds of earth, sky, clouds and sun ahead.
He had probably moved quite far away from the sea or border from what he saw and the poor estimate or gauge his Mental Mapping told him.
There were no dirt roads at all. There apparently weren''t many cities or towns here so it was no surprise. The plains were not new to him and were filled with low level monsters. He had changed his mind about not looking for a town. He needed to use the toilet and a nice bath would do him good. It didn¡¯t feel comfortable with all the mist and lake water that constantly dried off and got back on him again and again.
He didn''t train Chaotic Repulsive Membrane as it got in the way of his movement training.
Moving through the Plains would be much easier since he could just go straight south without anything blocking his way. Since he was no longer in the jungle where danger could be anywhere, he connected his robe to his myriad bracelet. He didn¡¯t really need to do that to charge it with ice mana but it was more mana efficient. Without further delay, he shot off towards south.
He didn¡¯t expect to see people in less than half a day.
¡°Stop right there boy!¡± A loud shout from a low voice yelled for him to stop. Ebony could see a large group of almost 30 people dressed in a mishmash of armour. Some didn¡¯t even have full leather armour. Mostly rogues and warriors with a few archers.
Ebony stopped before them. He identified them to all be Master Classed, around level 110 to 130. The highest was one guy near the back, sitting on a wagon. It was obvious with the smell and he wasn¡¯t blind. There were dead corpses around and these people had bloodied weapons. They were fresh.
¡°What is it?¡± Ebony asked in his usual dead tone.
The group, clearly bandits of some kind, was laughing and giggling amongst themselves. Some already threw threats and told him to take all his mana ores out and leave his impressive and expensive looking equipment down.
¡°Strip everything on you and you can go.¡± One of the lady warriors was wearing armour that didn¡¯t really cover her belly. The women on Elva were more on the conservative side so her style of fashion could be considered ''open'' here. After all, hand holding was only for family and couples, mostly married. And also, useless armour.
This was an event that Ebony had read about many times. He had been on Elcra for almost 3 years now, a few more months would mark his third year. He had almost thought that stories were stories and such things didn¡¯t actually happen in real life. The law and order on Elva were pretty solidified by the sheer power known as the Empire. He was clearly wrong.
¡°Is there a town or city around?¡± he asked, ignoring the woman who asked him to strip.
¡°Stop wasting your time, no one¡¯s gonna come and save you.¡± The first warrior said.
¡°The town¡¯s days away, we already killed the escorts for the miners. No one is going to come all the way out here if there hadn¡¯t been a Grey ore mine here. It¡¯s gonna be another 2 weeks before anyone passes by so you can give up already.¡± The woman was nice enough to give him useful information. There was a town further south just a few days away, with their speed or a drawn carriage or wagon¡¯s speed. Since further up north will just bring him to Fissure Sea again.
¡°Anyone with a bounty?¡± he asked. They hadn¡¯t tried to kill him and still offered to let him go. He should at least be polite.
The bandit group only just started to feel that maybe Ebony wasn¡¯t scared and stunned. The question had been odd for someone about to get robbed.
They told him to shut up and hurry and drop his weapon and strip his stuff down. They were probably only after the weapon and robe. Ebony didn¡¯t look like he was carrying much other than those. Heavy shields would slow him down and he didn¡¯t feel the need to move around with it since he could cast one when he wanted. Dodging was an option too.
They were even polite enough to introduce themselves as the Prairie Brigands. They were shouting, pissed that they weren¡¯t recognised by asking him ¡®can¡¯t you tell we¡¯re blah blah.¡¯ but it went through deaf ears. Since they seem so proud they should be wanted.
The brigands surrounded him since he stopped when they asked. Perfectly placed for his Magnified Gravity Field and Frost Mist Perception Sphere. Except for the one guy posing and sitting on the wagon, wiping blood off his halberd.
Ebony drew Icicle and tried to imbue it with ice mana for Frost Injection so that he could just freeze them and bring them to the town¡¯s custody. Then he realised that he forgot that Icicle just absorbed ice mana endlessly. It didn¡¯t even freeze up on the surface and he couldn¡¯t utilise the ice mana after it absorbed it, he could still sense that the ice mana was inside the blade. It was kinda embarrassing for the ice mage. He sheathed his greatsword back for now.
The brigands didn¡¯t expect gravity to more than double all of a sudden and Ebony took the chance to go around freezing them. A single step took him between 2 warriors and he grabbed their arms, twisting them into a lock with his enhanced strength. Far superior to the Master Warriors that didn¡¯t know how to use any sort of enhancement magic.
Frost Injection ran through his own hands, freezing the two who were caught off guard by how fast he moved and appeared beside them. He took them seriously. They were all higher level and even a level 100 Kappa could squash him to death but he also knew the general standards of people now. It wasn''t a reason to let his guard down.
They finally reacted after the first 2 whose hands Ebony froze and screamed in panic when they couldn¡¯t shake his grip off. The freezing probably hurt a little bit as well.
The dumb circling had made the archers not dare to shoot randomly but there were only a few of them to begin with. The closest warrior sent his axe down on Ebony, it moved pretty slowly in Ebony¡¯s eyes. He reflexively moved his upper body back just enough to dodge it but he forgot his hands were still stuck to the 2 warriors'' hands as well.
It was too late.
¡°...erm. Oops?¡± Ebony truly didn¡¯t mean to have the 2 warriors¡¯ hands chopped off like that. He dodged without thinking after all. The loud screams were a little jarring on the ears so he manipulated the mana around them to not travel to him. He unfroze the arms still in his hand and tossed it back to them, maybe they could stick it back on afterwards.
Some of the brigands members were just stunned and standing still, some moved after the momentary shock and either helped pull the 2 injured warriors back or started backing up the ones that reacted better and started attacking Ebony.
They were really really badly trained. He even wondered if they had ever been in a fight. He took it as seriously and cautiously as he could but it didn¡¯t even take half a minute to put them all lying on the ground. There had been so much screaming he started to freeze their mouths shut along with their arms and feet. Including the highest level halberd guy.
It was so anticlimactic really.
They were just so slow. Hardly any could react properly when he was right in front or beside them and already grabbing their wrists.
There were 2 huge conestoga wagons, all bigger than the Z&Z wagons he rode to Plainston. He buried all 10 corpses. All garbed in fighting equipment. Not everyone was dead. He counted 4 [Miners] and 2 [Master Miners], Human and Beastmen alike. There were 2 [Coachman] as well. They were only knocked out and left on the wagons themselves. At least they didn¡¯t kill wantonly. Not that it was any of his business.
Miners were also one of the pretty socially high ranked occupations, surprisingly. Especially those that are specifically classed to mine mana ores. They were a pretty respected Class. Money makes the world go round and so many things run on mana and mana ores here so maybe it wasn¡¯t all that unbelievable that those that obtain the resource they all so desperately needed was respected.
The wagons were filled with crates and bags, mining equipment, and many phoslamps. Greys filled the crates, there were probably tens or hundreds of thousands here. The escort of 10 must have been really weak if brigands of less than 30 could take them with only a few looking slightly injured.
The brigands could even knock so many miners out without harming them. Were the Prairie Brigands actually pretty capable or these people were so incapable?
Chapter 94: Meagre Progress
It took more effort to wake the miners up than Ebony expected. There was some confusion going on, they thought he was part of those that attacked them. It was easy to convince them with almost 30 people lying down on the ground and frozen in thick locks they couldn¡¯t break. He made sure to compress them into thick balls of ice so that it was harder to break. With a round ball on their feet, it would be hard to run. Their arms were locked behind their backs so that they couldn''t use one to smash the other to break themselves free.
Some questions later.
It appeared like they threw some kind of poison or alchemic sleeping gas that made the escorts weaker and lose control over their body. At the same time, knocking the miners and non-fighters with lower Constitutions out.
It had been a struggle at first but then they slowly weakened so much that the escorts were not a match for the numbers that Prairie Brigand had. Then they just knocked out the miners who were still awake. They were probably carried into the empty wagon while the other cargo was squeezed onto the remaining wagon for whatever reason.
The miners were under the Quest Hall and there were only 2 parties that took up the quest because hardly anything happens in these safe Plains. No one expected a group of almost 30 Master Classes. The Quest Hall seemed really dumb to lose hundreds of thousands of Greys because they couldn¡¯t afford more freelancers but apparently, the town just didn¡¯t have so many freelancers that were willing to take the quest.
It made even less sense when they explained that such mining trips had a decent chance of getting attacked. Shouldn¡¯t they know to increase the security if that was the case? Furthermore, the volume of the Greys transported was very large for such low security.
Manpower was the issue. The town¡¯s standards were not unlike Plainston''s when it was still a town. Master Classes were few in numbers and Prairie Brigand were not native to the area. The area was too low level for Master Classes to want to stay for long unless they were living some kind of retired life. So to reduce the cost they just made fewer trips and transported more at once. It was known all mana ore mines were Empire property, they sort of assumed few would dare to rob them.
The older Master Miner who was human asked the halberd-wielding guy violently. He sure didn¡¯t show mercy, the miner had really high strength. He punched a few teeth out of the guy with a single whack to the face after Ebony unfroze his mouth.
The Prairie Brigand had apparently conducted such raids more than once already. They usually attacked those that transported Blacks or Greys. The mines were Empire property and so were the mana ores in them. But if a small number of Blacks or Greys go missing the Empire really couldn¡¯t be bothered to chase a small group like them. Putting a bounty on them was good enough, hoping someone would catch or kill them and bring their heads as proof.
That was generally how it goes. Their bounty wasn¡¯t so high a strong party would come after them or multiple parties to join up and carry out a search for them. It was a waste of time to chase a small movable group of bandits that didn¡¯t have a very high bounty. Their bounty is just an estimate of their total stolen amount divided by the estimated number of people in their group.
They didn¡¯t live a very comfortable life. Blacks and Greys didn¡¯t let them buy good equipment and they couldn¡¯t exactly trade a huge amount at the Quest Hall without getting their identity revealed as the large volume trade would be so obvious as all the surrounding Quest Halls communicated with each other.
The worst thing was that the mana ores wouldn''t be shaped into standard myriad bracelet usable ores. They would need the right connections to jewellers and such if they wanted to use it as currency instead of a power source.
They were in the midst of searching for a way to ¡®launder'' mana ores but didn¡¯t have the right connections or any middleman to help them. Only some small-time mages and black markets bought them to power certain equipment or experiments. Ebony was impressed by the Master Miner''s interrogation abilities. Perhaps the halberd guy was the type that spilt the beans easily.
The miners asked him to dig the corpses of the freelancers back up so that they could take any form of identification. Namely the quester crystal so that their families could be notified. Something that he didn¡¯t consider. It was a little disrespectful to the dead but he was sure they would be fine with it if their families could at least find out what happened to them. He mentally apologised before digging them back up.
He didn¡¯t expect the miners to strip all of them down to their undergarments, even the women. Claiming that the equipment was usually sold and the ores sent to their families if they had one. If not then they could claim the ores or even Ebony as the one who saved them. It was the usual protocol for them and the miners had seemed a lot calmer and used to the situation than he thought they would be.
The coachmen said that the 4 Panther Mules could easily carry all of the Prairie Brigand members. They had brought 2 to pull a single wagon for speed. The Panther Mules had quite the balance of pulling power and speed, leaning towards speed. Greys weren''t even all that heavy unlike Roya¡¯s robes that Z&Z transported.
The problem was that there wasn¡¯t enough space for them, even considering 10 people died.
The Master Miner who interrogated the halberd guy suggested killing them all and bringing their heads. Even haughtily saying he doesn¡¯t mind if they fight it out till only 10 survive. Ebony didn¡¯t agree with his methods. He merely made the wagon bigger on both the left and right sides with ice flooring and walls. Doubling as a cage.
He made sure it was roughly the same weight on both sides of the wagon so that it wasn¡¯t off balance, making it easier to pull. There was no dirt or paved roads for a distance so it was just earth and it was easy to topple the wagon if there was some kind of imbalance.
They shut up with the complaints with a little leaked mana. He started to find out why Sister Jing used it so freely. It was just so convenient. Some of the Prairie Brigand members even pissed their pants. Exaggerating much. The mules were scared as well but didn¡¯t dare move.
With no further complaints, he sat beside the coachman and kept the ice cage extension within his control. Well, they were good boys and girls who didn¡¯t even make any noise.
In less than an hour, Ebony just jogged slowly beside the wagons. The ride had been so bumpy and painful for his butt. There was hardly any suspension at all, unlike Z&Z¡¯s completely stable ride.
The good thing was the mules were so scared, especially when he ran beside them, that they sped up and pushed themselves. The bad thing was that their stamina wasn¡¯t that great and they had to rest every 6 hours.
They completed the six-day trip in four as he pushed them to move a little in the dark as well. Honestly, the distance was something he could cover in hours. He just didn¡¯t feel like leaving the non-fighters to travel by themselves.
Though the four day trip showed him that the miners were more than capable of defending themselves from a couple of level 20 to 50 monsters. They defended themselves pretty well with their pickaxes. Clearly, it wasn¡¯t their first time facing monsters. Their hunting skills for food had much to be desired but their ability to protect themselves was still decent.
He had learned a little from the other Master Miner, Bava, who mostly stayed silent. The only one who he got the name of. He had a type of pickaxe mastery that Ebony was a little fascinated with. Ebony watched him defend himself from an attacking hyena. He never swung the pickaxe in a wide swing. The pickaxe spun in his hands and stuck close to his body. He used his pickaxe like a spear and spun it to defend himself.
Slapping the hyena away the first time it charged towards him with the flat body of the pickaxe. The hyena was only level 44 and that single swing had enough force to make it bleed and have a slight concussion. It shook it off in a few seconds but Bava waited for it. The hyena didn''t give up and attacked again. It only found a sharp metal tip protruding from its neck moments later.
The other Master Miner who was more aggressive only pierced heads and crushed hearts with brute force and wide swings. Inelegant.
Bava told him that he naturally learned it with his own experience in the mines. More often than not, they would be in tight spaces and he needed to keep his swings as small as possible so that he could move his pickaxe around. Keeping the weapon as close as possible helped and any aiming adjustment was done with his body instead. It was nothing amazing, like how Ebony fought with his greatsword in the tunnel. Just much tighter spaces.
Ebony made a mental note to prepare for such cases for when his huge sword was harder to utilise. The tunnel walkway in Ordina he swung his greatsword had been pretty wide.
He had tried practising just spinning Icicle around during the time they rested. It was good training to move around his heavy ass sword. The problem with it absorbing ice mana without coughing it back out was unsolved. It made using Frost Injection with Icicle impossible for now. Still, the blade itself was very cold to the touch now so at least there were some signs of change.
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The change of pace also gave him the chance to start on his runic notes and revision. Rather than drawing up any scrolls, he just rewrote all that he remembered.
Starting from writing down the Korun language and the translation of each symbol''s meaning. Segregating an element for each book. He started with the basics that do general things like the anti-dust and preservation magic one. The elemental spells and all that can wait.
The town of Ailbury was a little bigger than the old Plainton. There were many miners around, not surprising with a mine not far away. Ebony just tossed all the Prairie Brigand members at the front gate and let Bava handle everything.
The few dozen Greens or Greys really weren¡¯t worth his effort and he decided to just leave. Finding any old inn, booking the best room and taking a nice long bath. Washing all the clothes he wore and also his robes. Wiping Icicle down despite how little it had been used so far. Feeding it all his excess mana while he was at it.
He ate at the inn itself. It didn¡¯t taste like much even though they claim to have used spices heavier in flavour as many miners liked heavy and strong flavours. Weird. The chill in his heart and the loss of taste came back.
Ebony meditated the rest of the night without any magic training. He found nothing wrong with himself so he took a nice long sleep. Connecting his robe to his myriad bracelet to prevent scaring people. He pulled out the bed he was used to sleeping on for better sleep, there was more than enough space in the room.
It took Ebony 34 or 35 days to reach here after separating from Sister Jing. It would probably take Sister Jing herself a day or less to travel the same distance. Actually, it might just take her hours as she didn¡¯t have to travel through the jungle or anything. Just teleporting through the air.
Estimating other people''s travelling speed because normal people travel either by walking or at best jogging. No matter whether they were Master or Journeyman. That, or they rode a mount or travelled by carriage or wagon. In all cases, they needed to rest every single night. There were probably few that ran at top speed for the whole day. Not even considering the poor terrain that made it a rough journey, the distance may take others at his level 3 to 4 months to cover. His movement speed even increased by more than double with the evolution of Treading Step.
It was a great break for him in Ailbury. He restocked his supplies a little with fresher food and all that. Going to the Quest Hall here for a few empty Blues just in case. Asking around for directions. He was on the right track, Plainston was pretty far but Bubble Hill stretched all the way here so there was no issue directly heading for Hoarfrost Glade which was past Bubble Hills.
Leaving the Quest Hall and back onto the streets. Ebony had everything with him already and was leaving Ailbury. Strolling around and tasting whatever street food seemed interesting but there was nothing that he could taste much off.
A small patch of red entered the corner of his vision. His head snapped towards the familiar red. Scarlet.
She was far away at the end of the street, intently looking at a kebab stall owner barbecuing sticks of meat. Completely decked out in bright red as usual. Her voluminous lustrous ponytail was longer than he remembered. It was ridiculous how it never got in the way when she fought.
Ebony¡¯s heart palpitated. His mind in a disarray for a second before settling down again together with his heartbeat stabilising. His feet turned around and he quickly left the town before she could spot him.
He was too ashamed to walk up and stand before her. Instincts told him she was a lot stronger than she had been. He wouldn¡¯t even stand a chance against her as he was right now. When she was busy improving herself what had he been doing? Tailoring? Learning craft and runes? Cooking? Relaxing while moon gazing?
The only useful abilities he picked up and strengthened were Reinforced Mana Chassis and Treading Stride. A little skill refinement and that¡¯s all. They said they would travel and fight together. How can he do that if he was lagging behind. Dragging her down was unacceptable even if she didn¡¯t think that.
Everlasting Tranquillity was no longer disturbed by the entity known as Scarlet. Ebony¡¯s feet brought him out of Ailbury without a moment''s hesitation. Bubble Hills wasn¡¯t too far west and he reached in a short time. He didn¡¯t stop or slow down, jumping from hill to hill was not impossible when they were close to each other. Even jumping past a couple was possible. The hills were pretty short, practically mounds of earth.
Since his mana was used for charging up his robe, monsters didn¡¯t avoid him. The number of monsters was not low. He heard that they moved up here when many people moved to Plainston to wipe the monster population further down south.
As long as they didn¡¯t or couldn¡¯t chase him, he would ignore them. If they were persistent enough to attack him he didn¡¯t let them go. No longer as passive with his hunts. Always using full force, for there was a chance that his predator had strength beyond what he expected.
Frost Injection didn¡¯t work but he didn¡¯t stop attempting to use it. It only didn¡¯t work through Icicle.
There were no Mud Golems in these parts. Cysarus were few in number to begin with. Under Bubble Hills was supposed to have some pretty dangerous creatures but they don¡¯t usually come up due to the lower mana densities on the surface.
White started to show up in his vision before he knew it. Nothing hindered his advance into the world of snow.
The Frost Elves had told him that Hoarfrost Glade could be generalised into Chilly, Icy and Glacial regions. If they drew circles on the map of Hoarfrost Glade, the centre would be Glacial then Icy would cover the largest portion of it while the outermost region would be Chilly.
Ebony looked around as he pushed deeper. There was a lack of trees unlike what he was used to seeing. There were large mounds of snow, rocks underneath. It was rocky terrain but still flat lands as far as he could tell.
The monster here seems to be going back deeper into the glades or was hibernating as it was silent around with no living creature in sight. Only lightly snowing.
3 weeks was spent just running around and mapping everywhere he went.
Other than a rough battle with 6 level 110 Snowskin Monkeys where they almost strangled him to death it was a very quiet and uneventful exploration. They worked well together, 4 of them locked his limbs down with their agility and speed. The other 2 used their tails to strangle him while attempting to claw his eyes out. They were hard to latch on or attack due to their skin which can soften, harden, thicken or move around at will. They could even keep up with his speed so he had taken a lot of effort to take them down.
He made sure to rest every 2 days or so while he had the chance to rest. Already having reached the point where everywhere ahead was snowing so heavily he would have a hard time looking for his own feet. Ebony couldn¡¯t be more grateful for the Transient Roaming Kappa to teach him his footwork and movement technique.
He would¡¯ve taken so much more time if it wasn¡¯t for that. Moving through snow was a heck of a lot easier as well. Still, he cheated and conjured ice under his feet whenever he wanted to stop moving. It prevented him from falling knee-deep into the snow.
It was honestly more snowy than chilly or icy. The rocky terrain was only a small area before forestation was seen again. Ebony would pick nuts or even the fruit that saved his life, the vital crabapple when he saw them. The Inferior rarity ones don¡¯t even heal a single point of health for him anymore. Ebony didn¡¯t find any that were higher in quality but at least he could still eat them to quench his thirst or sate his hunger.
He didn¡¯t know how long he would be here, his supply of food might last him more than a year if he didn¡¯t overeat. Rationing it well could last much longer but he should still get whatever he could find in the wild. Fortunately, with water mana ores, water moisture absorbing waterskin and his knowhow of water runes, water was probably not going to be a problem for a long time.
Even with all the stamina in the world, his consumption of energy due to how much he moved around required him to eat more than a normal human. The increase in movement speed didn¡¯t actually increase his stamina consumption by too much. Perhaps because the higher tier skill was all about efficiency in movement. Perhaps because he just couldn¡¯t tell since his Icebody Enhancement that was constantly cast also increased his Endurance.
Ebony felt like he lost sense of touch or feeling due to the long term casting of Icebody Enhancement and also the numbing cold. Just because he had a high resistance didn¡¯t mean he didn¡¯t feel cold. Even a Grandmaster like Kong Jing with all her Constitution felt cold in winter. Constitution didn¡¯t increase elemental resistance by much and the craftswoman and mage might not have high Constitution so it might not be too surprising.
At least he didn¡¯t get the mana poisoning that he had been hearing about. Likely due to him being a partial mana being. Or maybe the loss of sense of touch was a minor side effect. It was hard to tell what was causing what.
His robes were already fully charged with both mana and ice mana. There was no need to worry about ice mana since it was abundant here. Though he was told to not make it a habit to cast with ambient mana he could make do with it if it really came down to a lack of mana. The mana charged into his robe was for the durability and toughness runes so it had its strongest defensive capabilities now.
He had inscribed a couple of low heat producing runes on paper which he kept around. If it got too cold inside the snowstorm and if his cold resistance doesn¡¯t level in a long time till the point where he was going to die he could paste it under his robes after activating them. Since he liquefied Greys to inscribe them for the low heat effect it would run out in half a day. He would probably burn himself and maybe damage his robes if he used Greens over a long period of time. The paper would also burn out in a single use so he had to keep track of his stock.
Ebony wasn¡¯t all that proficient with lowering the output of the strength of mana used yet. Otherwise, the quality or mana ore used wouldn¡¯t affect the effect of the runic piece of paper.
He didn¡¯t use it yet since he wasn¡¯t exactly getting frostbitten or taking damage from the cold as of now. It was dark and dim where the snowstorm was. Nothing much could be seen deep inside, except for some shadows of tall trees or a growl from time to time.
All his senses and perceptions tingled. The density of mana here was much higher than Ordina, at least 5 or 6 times. It didn¡¯t bother him at all but he could see why it would bother other people so much they didn¡¯t come here. Other than the many reasons such as the cold temperatures and deadly monsters. Ebony would find more and more reasons in a very short time.
Chapter 95: Blood
Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin was squatting in the open with her cousin, Kong Jing patting her back as she vomited the contents of her stomach out. It was unpleasant. Regurgitating food she had swallowed was something she never thought she would do but she couldn¡¯t help it. Spatial travel over such a massive distance in such a short time frame when she wasn¡¯t a space mage or didn¡¯t have the right resistance or skills to protect herself was hard on the body.
She was already dizzy from the first day of spatial leaping. Her mana didn¡¯t protect her well enough, maybe she wasn¡¯t too good at encapsulating her body with mana yet. Kong Jing obviously didn¡¯t focus too much on shielding her because she practically crossed the entire continent from one end to the other in 5 days.
It was customary for them to start training a magic body skill once they were Master Classed so that they could start gaining resistance to all sorts of magic and elements. It was deemed detrimental to start too early due to a waste of time and effort into a relatively less useful skill when a Journeyman had a very limited mana pool. She had gained her magical resistances through some other temporary methods.
Cold, heat, lightning and poison were basic examples that a physical body could build resistance to but her earth and wind resistance was not gained by simply letting her physical body get hit by earth or wind magic. As for divination resistance, according to her grandma, everyone had an astral body that most people are unaware of that would get hit by her magic and naturally develop a resistance when hit by divination magic that was strong enough.
Kong Jing didn¡¯t even stop for a second and kept teleporting them as if she was in a rush to get rid of her. She only found out they reached Trailane Plains not far from Fifth Tide when she smelled the sea breeze and her cousin told her.
She emptied her stomach after almost 15 worst minutes of her life. She washed herself up with her cousin''s help in blocking her from anyone¡¯s sight, if there was anyone around. For the first time since she got her physique, she wasn¡¯t tempted to eat anything for a while despite having emptied her stomach.
¡°Sister Jing, why are you in such a hurry?¡± Scarlet asked after getting her bearings back together.
¡°Your grandmother said to bring you to a town called Ailbury as fast as possible. Don¡¯t ask me why, you know she doesn¡¯t tell people the most important things.¡± Kong Jing shrugged, it pained her to see her little sister vomit because of her.
¡°Knowing her it should be another destiny or fate talk.¡± Scarlet understood her grandmother pretty well. She might fool around all day but rarely does things without reason.
¡°Yep. Take your time little Xin, I¡¯ll look around for the town.¡± Kong Jing knew that nothing in the area could harm them so she just left to look for a small town she never heard of.
Scarlet couldn¡¯t stop Kong Jing in time and was left stranded alone. It was just grass and further in the distance was the sea. She saw a greyish field bunny pop out from the ground but was in no mood or appetite to chase it. Drinking water and opening up the lower portion which Kong Jing just modified for her to wash out the horrid smell and acidic burn near the back of her throat. The part covering her mouth just vanished with a thought.
Kong Jing didn¡¯t take long before she put her hand on her shoulder. Scarlet couldn¡¯t stop her in time before she was teleported twice more, directly entering the town. At least she managed to hold the urge to vomit, there was nothing much left to vomit. She scolded Kong Jing for the suddenness but her cousin only laughed at her expense.
¡°It¡¯s already night time so I wanted to hurry it up to get somewhere to rest. There probably isn¡¯t anywhere that I can place my house in this small town and an inn might not have any rooms if we come late.¡± Kong Jing defended herself.
¡°Still! You can let me protect myself with mana first, can''t you?¡± Scarlet complained, a side she only showed to Kong Jing and her grandmother.
¡°I forgot. He never needed to garb himself in mana.¡± Kong Jing said thoughtlessly. She was never used to moving people other than herself to begin with. Ebony also never needed any time to protect himself with mana so it slipped her mind.
Scarlet crossed her arms and turned around. Kong Jing knew that she was probably pouting because she had nothing left to say in her own defence.
They found a random inn that was the closest and just rested for the night. Bathing and sharing a room and bed for the first time in a long while. Scarlet barged into the inn¡¯s kitchen and made breakfast for them the next morning. She paid the staff to shut them up but they didn¡¯t really try to kick her out anyway. She didn¡¯t overeat but had to fill her stomach back up with something light and easier on an empty stomach.
¡°Alright, thanks for cooking. I¡¯m gonna get going now. Oh yes, one of the Purples in your mask is swapped out with ones that contain that punk¡¯s and my mana. It¡¯s not much but it is slightly tougher than pure ones. The effect of the healing rune is increased a little too, he¡¯s a partial mana being isn¡¯t he? The Vitality in his mana helps. Careful, artificial ones can¡¯t be charged back up with your mana or ambient mana so that will run out.¡± It wasn¡¯t hard for Kong Jing who analysed everything and anything to tell that Ebony was partially mana.
The Xengs had no talent in healing, so they studied other ways they could heal. Runic venture was the first research area that they found, needed no talent other than effort in studying and researching. It was still one of the hardest ¡®elements¡¯ if it can be considered an element due to how complicated healing was. It was different for everyone.
The mask that Xeng wore was not just for unmarried women. Men, women, married or not would have one made. It was the accumulation of all their history. Upgraded and improved every generation. Every single one is personalised for each individual. After all, each individual''s mask had a small part of that individual''s soul in them and would evolve with them.
Kong Jing used the same line of thought or technology for Ebony¡¯s Icicle. The runes of scanning and copying the person¡¯s entire body frame and healing runes that return every back to the status quo condition would not go wrong unless some other magic was working on the person. It was almost failproof, there hadn¡¯t been any more cases of failed healing or extra bones or body parts healing. It was the closest they got to time reversal of a body¡¯s condition which honestly was hard to improve on already.
The mask can even read when the person was injured to the point where it reached lethal levels and activated itself. It was something that Kong Jing had no confidence of improving any further in a short frame of time. Besides, the materials they were made from can¡¯t even be found on Elcra. Kong Jing really wanted to get her hands on that but it was beyond her right now.
¡°Where will you be going this time?¡± Scarlet asked, she just touched her mask but didn¡¯t say anything about Kong Jing¡¯s clarification.
¡°Wherever has interesting things or materials I guess. Wait no, I¡¯ll hunt for Zenin.¡± Kong Jing always wandered wherever she felt like.
¡°Oh, I see. Bye bye.¡± Scarlet didn¡¯t know what else to say. She didn¡¯t even know why she asked when she already mostly knew her cousin¡¯s answer.
¡°You can just call if you want to talk. It wouldn¡¯t even cost much even if I was on the other end of Elva.¡± Kong Jing understood her shy little sister who wasn¡¯t all that great with words. She imagined the young lady would have a hard time with the similarly bad with words little brother she got. Scarlet just nodded and Kong Jing left after a tight warm hug.
With no one left and no directions, Scarlet just went for a walk around town. She wanted to see what local specialities this small town had. One could learn a lot about a town from their street food. The type of produce that is common in these parts. The taste buds of the locals. Expensive food would be produce that was hard to obtain here and whatnot. The life of the people can be observed from the food they eat. At least that was what she thought.
It took her some time to sniff out the street that had more food stalls. The heavy smell of earth and metal was in the air. The mana density here felt slightly higher than Plainston''s as well, her perception of mana was not sensitive enough to confirm. With all the miners she passed by it wasn¡¯t hard to guess the town was near a mine.
There were multiple stalls selling fish. The only one that smelled decent was half a fish served on a large leaf with brownish-red sauce. She wanted to try it but it was so inconvenient to find somewhere private to eat, she had to return the plate too. She held back.
Hardly any candy selling stall meant there were few young children in the town.
Meat skewers. Those were good choices, she didn¡¯t have to eat on the spot to return any cutlery or plates. She found herself in front of a stall already.
¡®No. No. I¡¯m already full, there¡¯s no point eating more now.¡¯ Her breakfast was only light in flavour and not in quantity.
¡®But a single skewer couldn¡¯t hurt right?¡¯
Scarlet stared at the skewer being barbequed as she had an internal battle with her strengthened gluttonous desire. Another scent whiffed past her nose. It was a familiar smell but she shook her head. She can¡¯t be distracted by food all day long when her appetite was already suppressed for the moment. She closed her eyes and strengthened her resolve, turning around to walk away.
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It wasn¡¯t even half a second later when her eyes shot open again, both hands finding themselves on the hilt of her twin swords. She was shivering. Not daring to take a single step or move a single gar.
¡°You¡¡± The single word has caused Scarlet to hold her breath and stiffen even more, hoping not to gain the attention of whoever said it.
Unfortunately, whoever or whatever said it was whispering right into her ears. Scarlet couldn¡¯t see or sense all the people around her anymore. The only thing in her sight was a devastatingly beautiful face, unlike anything she had seen on a woman. She was only as tall as her Sister Jing yet it felt like she was towering over her.
¡°You smell good.¡± The woman spoke softly but the words hammered into Scarlet¡¯s head with enough force that she was barely keeping herself standing or conscious.
[Blood Mage Saintess Lvl ????]
¡®A Saintess?! Why would a Saintess be on Elcra?¡¯ Scarlet didn¡¯t register her Appraise skill level ups. She was dumbfounded why someone of this lady¡¯s power and status would be here. She already knew resistance was futile before she even used Appraise on the woman.
¡°Phoenix blood.¡± Scarlet didn¡¯t know how the lady knew but that wasn¡¯t important. The way she spoke so slowly seemed to stress Scarlet further. Did her Physique catch the woman¡¯s eye? The woman was getting uncomfortably close, literally breathing down on her neck.
¡°What luck I have. A pity. So young.¡± She made a statement instead of a question. Scarlet tried her best to calm herself and regain control over her body. She couldn¡¯t even form a grip with her fingers struggling to move. The overwhelming vitality crushed her knees and bore down on her shoulders.
¡°Unripe.¡± The woman moved back but it didn¡¯t lighten the fear Scarlet felt. With the distance, Scarlet could see the lady was dressed in red like her. Just a much darker shade of red, including her hair. Looking at Scarlet like how Scarlet was wondering whether she should eat the skewer of meat.
Scarlet could feel it, the woman was restraining her overflowing essence, Vitality and Wisdom. Yet it wasn¡¯t enough as one of the reasons why she thought the lady spoke slowly was because she was already under the effects of her essence. It was usually the other way around and the world would seem as it sped up. As well as her being unable to move with all the pressure of essence acting on her body. Most of all, Scarlet was frightened.
No! How can she be frightened?
Her body couldn¡¯t move but her mana could. Her blood still flowed. Her heart still beat.
Her heart raced as Violent Heart Acceleration got going. Fire mana conjured in her as Blood Boil kicked in. It wasn¡¯t enough. Lightning mana conjured in her as well as it bundled up and Pulsating Lightning Enhancement was encouraging her stiff muscles to move.
Scarlet used all her enhancements together with every weapon strengthening skill like Heated Blade, Lightning Inoculation and Revolving Razorwind Film. She didn¡¯t hold back at all and used every single point of mana she had. The other lady seemed blind to it and was just holding her chin while inspecting Scarlet¡¯s body up and down.
Violent Heart Acceleration and Blood Boil reached the limit she could take faster than she ever managed. Squeezing out every last drop of courage she could muster, both her blades flew out of their sheaths. She didn¡¯t know what to expect but she saw both her blades stopped by a droplet of red liquid. Not blown away by her wind, not evaporated by her heat. Ineffective.
Blood Boil and all her enhancements flickered out, even Violent Heart Acceleration seemed to give up on her. But she didn¡¯t bend and stared straight into the beauty¡¯s eyes for the first time.
¡°Impressive. A feisty one. As expected from her kin.¡± The only indication she meant it when she called Scarlet impressive was her raised brow. She stared right back and the corners of her lips slowly rose.
¡°I like your eyes. It¡¯ll be nice to age your blood a little.¡± The Saintess waved her hand and Scarlet fell into a pool of blood. Disappearing from the town. The daily life of the townspeople continued. It appeared as if no one saw Scarlet disappear into thin air or even noticed the tall lady in the middle of the street.
???
Scarlet coughed out blood. It wasn¡¯t her blood, just what she accidentally swallowed by falling into the pool of blood that appeared under her. The Saintess lady wasn¡¯t around. Scarlet had fallen onto the ground but there was no blood on her other than what she coughed out.
It was dark but there was some illumination from some plant nearby. Blood red moss that glowed a dim red light. She found herself in a tight cave, it was a small dome. Just sitting up straight will cause her to hit her head on the ceiling. Only one path was present, a hole that she would have to crawl through to fit. She didn¡¯t rush or panic. With time to think clearly and without the pressure of a Saintess bearing down on her, she could analyse her situation better.
Her grandma asked her to be sent here. She must have known this would have happened. Perhaps, attacking the Saintess had been the rashness her grandmother warned her against. Scarlet didn¡¯t know if getting sent into this dome was a good thing or not. She could obviously be killed at any time so not having been killed yet can only mean good things. Naive.
Still, her grandmother wouldn¡¯t send her here for no reason. She could only believe that she was on the right track. Scarlet tried her best to relax while lying down since sitting up would be uncomfortable if she had to bend her back or neck against the ceiling. She needed all the mana and energy she could get.
It was unknown where she was and the Blood Mage Saintess just left her there without saying anything else. She had to assume there was danger outside this small hole. Fortunately, it wasn¡¯t so squeezy she couldn¡¯t move around. Sadly there wasn¡¯t enough space to bring her kitchen out. She ate what she had to calm her nerves.
Hearing some sound through the hole did cause her nerves to tighten but she was just scaring herself. A filled stomach and mana pool later, she started crawling out. The tunnel was a little tighter than it looked, both her upper and lower body had difficulty squeezing through. Maybe she should eat a little less, she began to think.
Ten minutes of crawling and squeezing later.
Scarlet made sure to check if there was anything around with both her scent and sight together with her Heat Perception. Her Sublime Instincts which were numb from telling her to run from the Saintess were not picking anything up either.
She crawled out to find rocky stalactites and stalagmites filling the cave. She wouldn¡¯t exactly call the cave wide but it wasn¡¯t small.
There was only one way forward with the tunnel she crawled out from being the dead end. Without further ado, she started exploring the place illuminated by [Blood Ichor Moss(Rare)]. The rarity gave Scarlet bad feelings, the whole cave was filled with it. She never heard of this type of moss so Appraise didn¡¯t tell her much, a name for it was good enough.
Not even five minutes walk in and she heard a familiar sound before her Sublime Instincts warned her to move away. She jumped back to see a red rope, no, it was a web that was shooting out at her from the side.
[Bloodweb Spider Lvl 94]
Scarlet exploded with pure speed like she always does. She didn¡¯t like insect or spider type monsters. She didn¡¯t want to try eating them either. Not even with her current increase in desire to eat. But spider types were the most common for spaces like caves. She was still proficient enough with Live Ingredient Processing to know where its weak points were.
The same races of different subspecies usually have the same weaknesses. Their body build would be very similar too.
She didn¡¯t expect the spider, the size of a large dog, to be able to move its leg out of the path of her blade. Having aimed for its joint, her long sword landed on the leg itself. Her arms numbed from the impact. The lower level monster surprised her with its outer skeleton¡¯s toughness.
Scarlet kicked it up a notch, using a little mana for Heated Blade. She swung hundreds of times, aiming for its weak points or stabbing at wherever looked the softest. Cascading Laceration and Pinpoint Perforation got faster and stronger as she attacked. The spider was using 4 legs to defend itself like a blademaster itself, using 2 more when it couldn¡¯t keep up anymore.
Its outer skeleton cracked and she was about to slice it down when another dark red web came shooting at her. A single level 94 spider already gave her more trouble than she thought it would. No matter.
She slayed one after the other. They kept popping up from somewhere. Scarlet continued ahead after slaying a dozen of them. There seemed to be only Bloodweb Spiders around. A lot of them. Their numbers and relative strength kept increasing as she moved further ahead the one way tunnel cave. The cave also got wider and wider, attacks came from more directions.
The moment the spiders appeared was level 100, she needed to use her Core Skill already. The moment they were evolved level 100, she had used magic without limiting herself. The difference in strength and power shown by those who evolved was very high. Her mana ran out in 2 fights against less than 10 of these spiders.
She was forced back, but the spiders were only excited by her escape. They saw it as a chance to push their attack. Their bodies were chopped up and cooked well done but Scarlet didn¡¯t feel good about it. The rush of spiders only increased as she ran back. Crawling back through the tight tunnel a little too slowly, her boots and pants were clawed at but they held. Her feet still hurt from the impact. At least they didn¡¯t manage to land their web shot at her.
She crawled and crawled, ignoring the dirt she was getting onto herself. Manipulating blood to remove themselves from her body. She realised the exoskeleton on the spider was just solidified blood.
Panting. She knew she wasn¡¯t getting out any time soon.
¡®I should expand this place.¡¯ The walls were too tough to dig and widen by hand. There was just enough space for her to scrape the wall and ceiling with a shovel. The wall was much harder than she thought but it was still possible with the shovel Kong Jing gave her.
Scarlet was inwardly worried.
What if she ran out of food?
Chapter 96: Back to Square One
Hiding.
Ebony hid and hid. Burying himself in snow or burying his scale orb in snow. He fought when he had to. His defences didn¡¯t mean much to the monsters here. His tough body, his enhancement, his Layered Ice Carapace and his Chaotic Repulsive Membrane merely served to keep him barely alive. He had to thank his evasive capabilities, perception skills and prediction of attacks. Most importantly, regenerative capabilities that let him heal from most injuries.
There were not many monsters but once he fought one, more would get attracted by the fight. It didn¡¯t matter if they were level 120 or beyond his Identify range. He couldn¡¯t beat them with ease. Every battle put his neck around a noose. He gave up trying to fight anything higher than 130. Meaning he hid from anything he saw since hardly anything was lower than 150 for a few days already.
At least the rise in strength of monsters was pretty consistent and there were likely clear distinctions in their territories. Ebony avoided where the wolves were like he was often advised to. There were the most numerous and least hidden.
He almost got bit by a [Toxic Frost Toad Lvl 162] that was hiding under the snow. Deep enough that he couldn¡¯t sense it as its tiny gravitational wave pull was covered by the snow and the planet¡¯s gravitational waves. It was what Clovis used to make his poison from. Although, Clovis likely used a weaker version.
Ebony didn¡¯t have poison resistance from the 3 headed snake since Palom gave him such quick treatment that his body couldn¡¯t develop resistance. He didn¡¯t want to risk dying just to get resistance if his regeneration couldn¡¯t overcome the poison.
He was fast, but the creatures here were faster. He fought when he could and hid when he needed to.
Most of his skills reached his limit already as none levelled any further.
The snowing didn¡¯t persist every day. He took those opportunities to look for areas that had snow storms or blizzards. Monsters don¡¯t come out as often during these times as well. Luck was on his side as these days of clear sky happened more and more frequently.
It had been a month and a half. Based on the moon he had a clear view of, he was already a full month into summer. The Glades was massive. It didn¡¯t seem to have an end in any direction. There were many places he didn¡¯t dare go even when the creatures didn''t seem active. Both gut feeling and the Frost Elves'' warnings prevented him from delving into many areas.
He mapped out a huge portion of the Glades already yet the Frostblaze Amur Maple forest still eludes him.
His generic skill, Stealth has mutated into Camouflage.
Camouflage - Blending yourself into your surroundings to stay out of sight. Perceive and utilise the target''s blindspot to hide in the shadows. Presence reduced by 1.0% per level. Ability to stay out of plain sight while stationary increases by 1.0% per level.
His robe and hair are already white and covered with snow. His robe was deliberately whitened by deactivating Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and then getting it back on to include his makeshift camouflage. The sheer amount of rolling or burying himself in the snow got his hair covered in it. With his skin and flesh looking somewhat like ice, he was as camouflaged as any other creature here. Even his black Icicle blended in with the trees.
Ebony''s reduced sound of footsteps was gone but his footsteps had always been light so it didn¡¯t mean much. The ability to stay out of plain sight was weird but he somewhat understood it. He could predict attacks well because of all the micromovements of anyone or any monster that he registers in his subconscious. Allowing him to dodge or move according to his instincts without much thought. One of the numerous things he observes in real time are the eyes of his opponent and where their blindspots would be.
He could just stand there and they wouldn¡¯t be able to see him unless he moved. Though that¡¯s thanks to his camouflaging as well, the skill helped to improve this ability of his. No idea how presence is reduced. Is that even something he was actually doing or purely the skill helping him? It couldn¡¯t just be the skill since he had to be able to do that for the skill to have such an effect.
The gradual rise of heat due to the season was combated by his dive further into Hoarfrost Glade. There was less and less snow, more and more ice. The ground, trees and leaves were beginning to have a thick layer of ice instead of snow. The concentration of ice mana in the ambient air was rising as he delved deeper.
Sheer Cold Resistance hasn''t levelled from 57 for a month. He decided he had enough of freezing his ass off and pasted the heating papers under his robe. Just freezing the corners on, placing one around each knee and elbow.
Renewed with energy, he carried on his slower march through the icy forest with less and less snow for him to hide under. The trees had sleeping owls and unknown birds or monkeys and apes. He didn¡¯t want to jump around, make noise and wake them up.
There were huge deers 3 times larger than those he hunted in his early days that he didn¡¯t want to disturb either. They actually ignored him when they peaked from under their curled-up rest. Maybe it was his low level or small size that was unsatisfying for the beast. Convenient.
They were beyond his range of Identify anyway. Most were still Master ranked so they had to be below 300.
The forest got quieter than it already was. Most creatures ignored him and acted like they were all asleep during the day. It was his greatest chance and opportunity to explore. He was greatly slowed down by all the hiding. His target was using his senses to search for the combusting ice mana and searching for a snowstorm when there wasn¡¯t one in the area.
He would be at wit¡¯s end if Gen¡¯s spell had illusion magic or something similar as well.
Ebony had Treading Stride pushing him further and further. Looking for high ground whenever he could. He had little rest over this period of time. Usually sleeping only when he had to, inside the thickest orb he could make. There was so much ice mana around but he only used his own mana so far. Because he wasn¡¯t as worried about his speed as he was his survivability he didn¡¯t worry about making too much Layered Ice Carapace that it slowed him down.
He thought he was lucky when another 2 days of travel let him spot a tall mountain. Or an iceberg. It was just a mountain of ice in his perception.
Scaling it was no issue for him who could run up a tilted cliff without climbing using his hands. It was even colder up the mountain and the piercing cold was giving him frostbites despite his body warmer rune pieces of paper. The mountain of ice couldn¡¯t be considered tall using their standards but it was taller than the tallest mountain on Earth.
Ebony¡¯s Perception stat of 100 enhanced by his Core Skill to over 300 let him see far. The relatively clear day was a blessing as he blinked. He saw it. The blizzard. It was awkward to have such a strong blizzard when it was clear around it but letting the spell down would show the forest either way. It was far but anywhere within sight could easily be reached in a short time with his current movement speed.
He dashed, flipping himself off to the side when a rain of icicles came showering on him. He didn¡¯t see what attacked him and he didn¡¯t bother finding out. Just continuing to propel himself away. The icicle rain caused a disturbance that woke some angry apes and something else under the ground of ice. He had hoped it was none of his business anymore.
The roars and yells were getting softer so that was a good sign he wasn¡¯t being chased. The bad sign was the screech from the sky ahead of him. Another good sign was a huge deer with ice antlers jumped right into the air and bit the eagle right out of the air. Only to land where a couple of apes were sleeping.
A stroke of bad luck for the Glades to wake up at this time. Ebony might look similar to any creatures here of white and blue here but he still stood out. To many monsters, he was just a small snack and they were more busy fighting each other than caring about him. He just needed to hide his mana so that he didn¡¯t seem strong enough to be a threat, not many monsters were afraid of his mana, they were attracted by it instead. He used the chaos to stay out of the battle and kept running.
The very ground trembled and he heard the loud sound of something breaking behind him before a shattering roar forced him to cover his ears reflexively. He wasn¡¯t far away from the dark veil of the blizzard and didn¡¯t look back. The added pressure of overflowing Vitality was not helping but Sustained Optimum Condition and Everlasting Tranquillity helped him push through.
Something entered his Vibrational Gravity Sense so fast he couldn''t even react to it as it smashed right in his shoulder and back. It catapulted him forward, his back and shoulder fractured on impact. He rolled and picked himself up before continuing without care for the pain. It had been a stray blob of snow that hadn¡¯t been aimed at him. Maybe it was a side effect of a spell or maybe it was just the monsters swinging around with so much physical strength the snow that flew around hit him.
In any case, he wouldn¡¯t survive a direct hit from any monster here. Even with how far he ran he could still feel the ground shake, the thinning of ice mana in the air and the sharp decrease in temperature.
He couldn¡¯t tell from afar but standing right before the blizzard spell let him notice how strong the blizzard was. It wasn¡¯t just strong winds with heavy snow, shards of ice were raging and flying around everywhere beyond a certain point. Shards were inaccurate as there were some bigger than he was. At the speeds they were zooming around, he didn¡¯t think well of his chances.
The winds were too erratic, there was nothing for him to predict. The trajectory of the flight path of the snow and pieces of ice were changing constantly. He quickly disassembled his shields and covered himself up. Once done, he rolled himself into the blizzard. He couldn¡¯t fly but he could still move his orb. Maybe lifting himself up for a few seconds if needed.
To speed up his movement he had tried running inside his orb like a hamster on a wheel. It actually worked with a little leg mind coordination but not since the moment his scale orb entered the dark veil of a blizzard. Not even 2 minutes in and he felt pushed against his own orb. His vibrational sense told him he was lifted off the ground already but that was a no brainer with all the inertia he was under and getting flipped around inside his self made prison.
The peppering on the outside of his orb could be felt but he had more than enough mana and ice mana to spare to continuously repair and thicken his prison. That was what he imagined. Something invaded his orb, all around. They were fiercely digging into his ice orb and tearing it apart from within. Ejecting the layer that was ''infected'' only bought him some time. Fortunately, he had tons of mana in his robe that he utilised to refresh the ice orb as much as possible.
Once in a while, he would be smashed by something so hard half of his prison broke open to let the blizzard and extreme cold enter. He steadied himself by making it more squeezy for himself so he wouldn''t knock around the orb. He would kick the ice ''shard'' out as soon as possible and fix his prison.
He would soon know how lucky he was that he didn''t touch the snow as they were repelled away from his skin.
Even he started to feel a little unwell in the stomach after what felt like hours of flipping and knocking around. He wasn¡¯t dizzy thanks to Everlasting Tranquillity but it didn¡¯t feel good to be flung around so violently. This continued for a long time but he couldn¡¯t tell how long. He didn¡¯t even move when he felt himself land and stop moving. The constant ejecting of ''infected'' ice scales were the biggest drain on his reserve of ice mana which was slowly but surely running out.
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Sensing no movement for long enough, he controlled a small opening to peek outside but it was dark and he couldn¡¯t see anything. Poking it to find snow dropping inside, he was probably completely buried. It was a good chance. He slowly let his orb rotate and dig through the snow. His perception of ice mana let him sense the violent ice mana flying around above so he should still be inside the blizzard instead of getting sent out.
He left the peeping hole there for his senses to seep through. It felt a lot calmer out there but he didn¡¯t let his guard down. Conjuring a sculpture of himself outside to test the waters. It didn¡¯t get ripped out of his range of control or get blown away by ridiculously strong winds. The sculpture walked around but nothing happened. Ebony rolled himself out of his snowy grave.
Boldly taking a look out his coffin, it wasn¡¯t even snowing and there was no wind either. He unravelled his scales to form 4 shields, 2 on each side staying within touching distance so that he could protect himself at any time. His robe was practically emptied on ice mana now. The burning maple trees were already not far from him. He looked around and behind him was the dark veil of the blizzard. It was probably like a barrier but he flew around long enough that he was accidentally flung inside instead of out.
He just leisurely walked ahead while he focused on mending his bones with a little manipulation before letting his body heal itself. His control over self-mending improved a lot because he knew about his mana chassis or where they are. Thereby increasing his accuracy and fine control over every single part of his body. His broken parts would regenerate starting from his mana chassis which would stay where they are even if his hand gets sliced off. The other parts would require him time for his actual Vitality to recover which would take a lot longer.
10 minutes of just watching the trees and frostblaze while he took a leisure walk later. He could see something coming towards him, it was a huge turtle shell. Ebony recognised it as Ton or papa turtle. Ton stopped before him and nodded as if acknowledging his arrival before glancing at his sculpture for a short while.
It ¡®sat¡¯ down and looked at him for a long time with him staring back.
¡®Oh.¡¯ Ebony realised it was planning to give him a ride. He patted Ton¡¯s shell before dashing off at full speed towards where Ton came from. He also tried controlling his sculpture to do the same, he wasn¡¯t completely fluent with it so it still can¡¯t copy him completely. Maybe his Intelligence needed to be higher.
Ton was only stunned for a second before he kept his head and limbs back into his shell and burst after Ebony. Its snow skiing skills were fully shown off to him.
¡®...¡¯ Ebony noticed that Ton actually wasn¡¯t much slower than him. The turtle was even slowly starting to close the distance. Impressed at the speed of turtles but it wasn¡¯t for long before they reached an empty open area. With his current speed, the maple forest could really be considered tiny. No wonder it was so hard to find.
Ebony looked at Ton who was beside him for another long stare.
¡®Should¡¯ve looked for one of those mental thought translator transceiver gems.¡¯ He forgot about the language barrier.
It took a while before he thought he saw Ton smirk. He could even imagine hearing Ton say ¡®Heh so you still need help going underground.¡¯.
Ton still brought him underground just like the first time he had came here. Perhaps because Ton didn¡¯t have to concern himself with protecting him as much, they reached where the underground dome was much faster than he remembered.
Unchanged.
Nothing has changed here. The massive progeniturtle and burning white flames on the magnificent tree were still there just like he remembered. The most significant change to him was how he was freezing down here. The ice mana here was so thick he was breathing in enough that his lungs were almost half filled with ice already. It hurt to even breathe here. How much did they protect him when he was still unclassed?
Ebony controlled the ice mana out of himself and made them stay away from his body but the temperature down here was still the same. He wondered how they controlled the temperature to not affect him that much. Was it because they were deeper into Hoarfrost Glade or because the spell barrier magic was back up?
He saw Sei tossing ice and snowballs at the hatchlings. They looked the same as ever, just a little higher level at 13. Sei and Ton were both 100 like him and haven''t evolved yet.
Gen was right ahead, awake instead of sleeping or meditating in his snow dome. Getting closer let Ebony feel the abundant mana that was leaking from him. No, not leaking, it was pouring down to the ground. Something tells him there was some kind of magic at work that was either absorbing his mana or Gen was personally pouring his mana out.
To his naked eye, he saw clumps of snow and ice that Gen was ¡®sweating¡¯ out. To his mana perception, Gen was pouring out liquified mana. It was so thick and viscous that standing near enough was lagging his thought process or everything else was moving much faster than usual. He couldn¡¯t feel it when he was unclassed but Gen¡¯s mana was far beyond what even most Frost Elves he had seen exude. Furthermore, it kinda felt like he was getting a brain freeze from getting close to Gen''s mana but all over his body. Specifically his mana chassis.
¡°...Reckless. You¡¯re lucky I was awake from moving our forest and found you inside the barrier.¡± Greetings were not the first thing Gen said.
¡®He could talk after all. I guess I just didn¡¯t know the language before. I assume Ton and Sei aren¡¯t able to talk yet.¡¯ The voice he heard was the same as if Gen were speaking into his mind.
¡°...Hello, Gen. Thanks for picking me up.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t need to think to know what Gen meant. He had probably somehow noticed Ebony¡¯s little sphere and maybe even knew it was Ebony inside. Then the reason he landed inside was not by accident but by Gen¡¯s direct involvement. Perhaps the reason he was even alive under the barrier spell was due to Gen''s involvement.
Both parties talked with a slight pause as if they had many things on their mind, clearly, it was the opposite as neither was really thinking about anything in particular.
¡°How have you been doing?¡± Ebony broke the silence.
¡°...This time of the year is rough with the decrease in ambient ice mana. I was going to move deeper when you barged in.¡± Gen seems to hold back a sigh. He sounded less tired than he did previously. If it was because of ambient ice mana then it made sense. Right beside Arcta had considerably thinner ice mana concentrations than where they were now.
¡°...I see, I guess I made it just on time.¡±
¡°It hasn¡¯t been long I suppose, you¡¯ve reached level 100 but are your foundations stable?¡±
¡°Almost 3 years. That¡¯s why I came, I am still weak.¡±
Gen nodded and hissed at Ton who acted annoyed for interrupting his father - son/daughter time. He had kicked one of them over onto their back and was watching it flip itself over. Adorable.
Ton¡¯s mood improved again after another bout of hisses from Gen.
Ebony sensed the vibration coming from the ground below him, he dodged an extended tendril of snow that aimed for his belly. Ton obviously knew how fast he was already but it didn¡¯t expect the fast reaction from such a close ranged attack.
He was already used to attacks popping out right in front of his face at any time during his time with Sister Jing and in terms of movement, he was much faster than before. His reaction speed didn¡¯t increase much, but his body moved reflexively from Vibrational Gravity Sense''s input.
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane, Battle Song, Sonic Overlay was fully up. Compressed Icebody Enhancement has been running all along. Ebony closed the distance in a single step and Icicle was right over Ton¡¯s head, slashing down in full force.
2 more snow tendrils formed from the snowy ground and cross-blocked Icicle but it was sliced through without effort from Repulsive Membrane, Sonic Overlay and sheer physical force behind his attack. Ton didn¡¯t panic and instead of defending, it attacked by stretching its neck forwards and ramming its head into Ebony.
Icicle landed on Ton¡¯s shell with a dull impact while Ton¡¯s head drove into his torso and he was pushed back. He didn¡¯t get injured due to his repulsion and tough body. A thin line could be seen on Ton¡¯s shell. No, Ton cast a layer of hardened snow onto his shell and he didn¡¯t manage to cut deep as he was knocked away.
He was the first to recover, a small range Magnified Gravity Field was slowly forming and hopefully doing whatever little it could to weigh the big guy down. Ton used up to 4 tendrils of snow that whipped, stabbed and hammered into Ebony. He was not beaten and played around like a rag doll anymore. He didn¡¯t even have to dodge anymore as he cut any tendril that came from all over with Icicle. 2 Layered Ice Carapace floated close behind him, perhaps he looked like a standing turtle from behind. At least just the shell.
Ton didn¡¯t have unnaturally hard snow tendrils but they easily reform after being sliced down. He noticed that this method didn¡¯t work on Ebony much anymore as Ebony was getting faster and faster. He was even pushing toward Ton already. Ton didn¡¯t only have a single trick.
A clone was forming as he distracted Ebony with actual projectiles of snow instead of playing around with him like they did their hatchlings. Ebony wasn¡¯t going to match Ton¡¯s clone with his own standing by the side since he doubted he was any bit as proficient with controlling it as Ton. Ton used snow clones while Sei used ice, they could use both but each had an element they preferred or was more proficient with.
Ton didn¡¯t take long to conjure his life sized clone. He used his clone to charge at Ebony while going back into its shell. Ebony didn¡¯t know why he hid back in its shell but he didn¡¯t ponder as Ceaseless Onslaught kept going. The snow clone could only get sliced apart, smaller and smaller. The snow struggled to reform as he split them apart too fast.
Then it gave up trying to reform as Ebony realised the ground or rather the snow around him trembled. Ton¡¯s main body was likely casting, making hiding in its shell both a method of focusing and a defensive manoeuvre. Ebony attempted to leap towards Ton but he didn¡¯t even manage to take a single step as he felt a pull back from his greatsword.
Ton¡¯s snow clone actually slithered onto his blade, breaking past his repulsive membrane and forcefully fighting against being shaken off by Sonic Overlay. He also realised how hard it was for his snow magic to cling onto Ebony¡¯s blade so Ebony¡¯s arms and feet were getting bound as well.
Sonic Overlay ran up his arms and legs as well. Ebony used the momentary dislodging to give a wide swing to break free. He actually had more than enough strength to break free even without his gravity or sound magic. But every second counted, sadly he still broke free a tad late. The split second was enough for Ton¡¯s spell to be ready.
A squarish area of snow tens of metres long and wide suddenly sunk and flattened. With Ebony in the centre, the snow split into two and rose up and snapped shut like a bear trap clamping down on him. He had his shield right behind him orb him up in time. He could mentally feel the pressure pushing his sphere inwards from every direction. His orb version was not nearly as strong as when his spell was in a shield shape, the structure of the scales was not created for this.
Ton didn¡¯t stop trying to break into Ebony¡¯s defensive prison as he knew Ebony managed to protect himself. Ebony formed 3 giant Ice Swords on the outer surface of his prison and started controlling them to rotate as fast as possible. It was a battle between magical prowess as Ton noticed the resistance and hardened and compressed the snow encapsulating him.
He felt his orb creak and cracks started appearing but he managed to break free as he felt his swords cutting out into resistance-less air. He quickly made an opening and ran out, his orientation was pretty good and he escaped close to where Ton was.
Ceaseless Onslaught had reset since all his previous momentum was gone but no matter, he reached Ton¡¯s shell with no time to spare. The opening where Ton¡¯s head and limbs should be were sealed up. Ebony didn¡¯t see a weak point so he just stabbed the closest spot.
Ton clearly didn¡¯t rely on his sight to perceive, the outer armour of snow he was clad in fought back like his previous clone but with much more resistance. His control over this armour is obviously much better than controlling a clone from a distance.
His ¡®head¡¯ suddenly extended while his snow tendril and armour were defending itself from Ebony¡¯s consistent attacks. Ebony seemed to see it coming and moved his upper body just enough for the bite from the fake snow head to miss. He turned on the spot and as if a golf swing, separating the head from Ton¡¯s body.
Ebony already sensed that Ton¡¯s snow armour was slowly thinning and weakening. His attacks dug deeper and deeper as his momentum, speed and power slowly rose. Ton also knew that it was not going to win the way their battle was going.
¡®...This copycat.¡¯ Ton¡¯s next move was an obvious attempt to copy Ebony¡¯s earlier rotating sword orb. The 4 tendrils trying to slap Ebony away stiffened instantly and thickened where Ebony assumed Ton''s legs were and then they formed familiar looking greatswords.
Ebony didn¡¯t know if Ton himself was spinning or just his outer armour but it didn¡¯t matter as Ton¡¯s 4 rotating blades of doom sped up its rotation as if he was getting used to the mental motion of the effect.
Instead of getting pushed back, Ton used the chance to slide over the snow toward Ebony. Too bad he wasn¡¯t intimidated by the spinning blades toward him. Snow wasn¡¯t even an element known for being solid and he already knew it took Ton more effort to harden his snow than to use it flexibly like a whip.
Ebony just continued his dance and timed the next swing to meet the rotating turtle. There was surprising resistance but Ton¡¯s blade just split and scattered around. He kicked the main body of Ton as the snow blades were sliced off. Ton was massive and obviously heavy but he only slid back a little before Ton was sent repelled back. He took a step forward to close the distance he just made and Icicle stabbed out at almost full momentum.
A screen of white flashed past Ebony''s eyes faster than he could blink, separating his greatsword from Ton just before it landed. He was stunned that the whole dome was split in half and covered by a snow wall from the ground to the ceiling, all the way left to right. His Vibrational Gravity Sense easily sensed through the snow wall as if it wasn¡¯t there. The wall was hair thin yet, it brought his full speed of repelled Treading Stride to a complete stop.
¡°That¡¯s enough.¡± Gen¡¯s voice transmitted over together with a hiss. The thin wall fell apart as if it was never there. Ebony took that as his victory.
Chapter 97: Origin
¡°Your skills are decent¡your fighting capabilities are impressive. Interesting way of using sound magic. There¡¯s something else weird around you as well, even mana is avoiding you for some reason. Gravity magic of your Sub-Class I suppose. That shell spell is tough but only from how compressed it is and your control over it is not bad. If it''s a tier 1 skill then it''s quite refined but if it''s tier 2 it''s very unrefined. I can see how it will be troublesome to kill you...¡± Gen would have to have Appraise or higher tiered skills if he knew Ebony had a gravity Sub-Class. He wondered why Gen¡¯s mostly closed eyes suddenly opened wider at the end of his appraisal of his capabilities.
¡°...Thanks. It''s a layer of repulsion. Layered Ice Carapace is inspired by you guys, the toughness is from mana compression. I guess you can easily sense that. I actually came here because I wanted to know if you can teach me about that.¡± Ebony pointed to the majestic maple tree. His own research into shields and their structure didn''t help much, unlike the refinement to his Ice Swords. Probably since his shield wasn''t made like a normal one.
Gen also got close enough to touch Ebony as his head bent down to stare at Ebony before he noticed. The staredown would¡¯ve intimidated anyone else, Gen wasn¡¯t doing it on purpose but Ebony was forcing his knees not to go soft under the immense aura of overflowing Vitality.
¡°...Your Class¡I¡¯m not seeing things am I?¡± Gen continued the staredown for a long time before asking. Ebony was told that Appraise was rare to have so he didn¡¯t recall that Appraise let them read people full Class. At least, it slipped his mind.
Ebony just raised his palms and lit a flame up to answer Gen¡¯s question. Then he seemed to feel a freezing breeze brew up in the underground dome.
¡°Probably partly due to my physique¡I¡¯m sorry, actually, I showed one person that I can actually use this. No, 2. Only to scare off the first but I trust they won¡¯t spread it. If Appraise or higher tiered Idenfication skills can see my Class then maybe more people know¡¡± Ebony apologised.
From Gen¡¯s reaction, he probably didn¡¯t think Ebony can even use combusting ice mana. It wasn¡¯t as simple as making ice mana explode. Ebony also didn¡¯t see Ton, Sei or Gen use it before. As for people with higher tier Identify, he just didn¡¯t consider it before. On second thoughts, if he had been sincere about keeping it secret maybe he shouldn¡¯t have ever used it in battle and find some way to hide his Class as a first priority. Roya not being able to Identify his Class made him think that it was the same for everyone.
Gen didn¡¯t say anything for a long time, looking up towards the ceiling instead of staring him down. Ebony thought he heard a sigh.
¡°Continuing on this path of magic or not is your choice. Listen closely to a little history to understand what it would entail.¡± Ebony blinked twice at the unfamiliar voice in his head. It wasn¡¯t Gen. He didn''t know who it was but that didn¡¯t matter for now. The sudden talk about a history lesson didn¡¯t really bother him. He took out his throne-like seat made of ice and made himself a drink as he listened to the new voice.
???
There was a saint known as the Life Grafter. He had other titles like the Breeder or Race Creator but he was mostly known as the Life Grafter.
From plants to animals to monsters, the Life Grafter was interested in all forms of natural life. Researching, observing and understanding all lifeforms he came into contact with.
One day, he decided ¡®why not create a new species or breed?¡¯ Perhaps he had gotten bored or maybe he was already done with every lifeform. He was just a gardener when he was young or so the story was told.
So he started with grafting plants. He was a genius. But even geniuses fail, especially for the Life Grafter who failed more often than not. Plants were easy to graft, he made breakthroughs for all alchemists and similar Classes. New plants with greater healing properties and many different combinations of elemental ingredients were made.
His rise had been unstoppable, he was respected worldwide. Fast growing plants with far better healing properties and even cheaper and easier to grow were groundbreaking.
Then he moved on to animal cross-breeding. He had been unfamiliar with caring for animals and seemed to lie low as his fame stopped growing for years. A century or 2 later, the world he was in had a severe food crisis. His name was spread again as he distributed food, meat. The new species of farm animal was also distributed to farmers. They were large and didn¡¯t eat much, yet they had a lot of meat and flesh and didn¡¯t even take a few months to mature.
As if unsatisfied, he moved on to monsters. Then he mixed different life forms. Mixed different elemental lifeforms. Intelligent life then, sapient creatures like humans. Gen¡¯s very race was created by the Life Grafter. No doubt, all the creatures created by the Life Grafter that had intelligence treated the Life Grafter as their parent, their creator.
Before he knew it, the Life Grafter made an army of intelligent creatures. He already moved out of his world long before as his homeworld alone wasn¡¯t enough for him. He needed as much research materials as possible so he travelled far and wide. There were strong monsters, there were weak monsters, there were smart ones and there were less intelligent ones.
He couldn¡¯t possibly fit every one of them in his backyard. He also never gave his creations any orders, letting them go free to do whatever they pleased. As nature decree. All of them followed his wishes and did whatever their instincts told them, meaning some still stuck with their creator. He was a kind man and didn¡¯t kick any of his creations out, treating and caring for them like his own children.
However, he was no longer seen as a saviour that made stronger, cheaper and easier to grow healing ingredients or animals that were fast growing, had a lot of flesh and needed very little to eat. His reputation grew to one that was an evil madman that made creatures of mass destruction wherever they go. A cult.
All his creatures worship him as their father, going around praising him. The Life Grafter didn¡¯t remove monsters'' natural behaviour, including their normal hunting and killing instinct. Perhaps he had decreased some and there were some he didn¡¯t, but it didn¡¯t change the big picture. Many of his creatures went around eating and killing whoever and whatever they pleased. It was natural to them, they needed to eat. They saw a moving piece of flesh that was weak and they ate it.
He was already a saint by this time and the Life Grafter himself didn¡¯t know that some of his creations had been going around and causing havoc wherever they went. Even pronouncing him as their all mighty creator. No problem or trouble found their way to the ears of the Life Grafter until another saint came to his doorstep and destroyed their home and went after their creator¡¯s life.
The Spear Saint.
The voice in Ebony¡¯s head said it had no idea why the Spear Saint wanted to kill the Life Grafter but the absolute wrath of a purely combatant saint was not something the Life Grafter can withstand.
The Life Grafter had 4 creations that he was most proud of. The strongest, most Intelligent and also loyal bunch that just peacefully stayed and enjoyed a leisurely life with the Life Grafter.
The Frostblaze Amur Diatium Turtle. The race of Gen¡¯s progenitor. The Life Grafter always tries to make at least a pair of the same race so that they have a partner and also allow their race to flourish but it is not always possible. So Gen wasn¡¯t exactly the same species as the proeniturtle whose corpse lay there.
Easy to guess, it was a mix of the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree that the Life Grafter found by luck and the Diatium Turtle. Even he hasn¡¯t made a creature based on another creation of his. There were too many variables and the creatures he made were usually from 2 or more natural life forms.
The progeniturtle was said to have a seed planted when it was still an egg, he was the only one who survived and the Life Grafter didn¡¯t manage to find any more of both the extinct turtle and tree seed. The batch of eggs was dying when he got them and the Life Grafter thought to use the self strengthening and growth of a plant type. The Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree seeds he had were the perfect choice as they were of the ice element. Though the tree isn¡¯t extinct anymore with the turtle''s effort, the Saint was no longer here where they were.
The Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix. Unlike his other creations, the phoenix wasn''t messed around with. The Life Grafter merely hatched it to observe a real life phoenix. Even the saint himself didn¡¯t have the ability to change or add any ¡®inferior¡¯ bloodline or genes to the phoenix egg that he somehow got. So he just treated the phoenix egg like other bird type eggs that he had handled. He incubated it with numerous techniques and methods he had and found out which one the egg was most responsive to.
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Phoenixes were one of the strongest known creatures along with dragons. Even their eggs weren¡¯t simple and hatching them was no easy feat. The egg absorbed all the mana and essence in the surroundings hungrily. The Life Grafter took decades before he found something that had enough energy to hatch the creature. The phoenix hatched and even treated the saint as its parent, imprinting perhaps.
It was a blood phoenix apparently. The Life Grafter doted on the creature like any other but found it to have an insatiable appetite. It never stopped eating and the Life Grafter had a headache over finding things to feed it with before his other creatures got eaten by it. The phoenix ate anything it was given, loving hot food the best. It ate, ate and ate before the Life Grafter bought a mini sun for it and became the phoenix''s favourite. It grew up in time and went to find actual suns to consume before being the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix.
Of course, the ridiculous notion of buying a sun went over Ebony¡¯s head. Same as whatever the existence of a Saint was.
The absolute strongest of his creations, Lightquartz Twitch Tiger. A Quartz Bolt Twitch Tiger was mixed with a light elemental. The voice in Ebony¡¯s head didn¡¯t say much about it other than it having absolute power. It had the explosive speed and durability of the tiger itself and exceptional control over the light element. The Life Grafter even managed to make a pair of them and successfully become a race that had hundreds of them.
Lastly, a race the Life Grafter had been working on before the Spear Saint attacked. The voice commented that it has the closest similarity to Ebony¡¯s strength. Mana. Unsure how crazy the Life Grafter was but it tried to make a dragon. Once again, for a creature that was said to tear gods apart, Ebony had no idea how but the voice said that the Life Grafter got a hold of a dragon egg.
Even changing the dragon¡¯s genetic material. He changed the scale of the dragon to be made of pure mana. A mana being like Ebony. Basically, a dragon whose scales and perhaps even more than just its scales were made of high quality mana ores. It was just a baby the last the voice in Ebony¡¯s head saw it.
After introducing this awesome sounding saint, the voice went on to talk about Elcra. Asking Ebony if he knew about Elcra¡¯s history. Ebony only knew a little from what he read about the creation of the Empire of Ebbing Waves and the time before that. Whatever Clovis taught him as well.
According to the year, the Empire was 5535 years old as of today. The voice pauses for a time as if calculating based on what he said. They might have different ways of calculating time for all he knew.
Apparently, Elcra didn¡¯t have 2 continents Elva and Tova. It used to be a single larger landmass.
It had been like any other day where they just ate and slept when the Spear Saint came barging in. Their world was destroyed with ease and all the weaker creatures were slain. Many couldn¡¯t even withstand the saint¡¯s aura.
The Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix was already mature and massive by this point. All the surviving creatures including the progeniturtle and Gen who had merely hatched days before the attack and the Life Grafter himself rode the phoenix. The 2 strongest Lightquartz Twitch Tigers remained to hold the Spear Saint back.
The voice in Ebony¡¯s head was clearly depressed when it said the progeniturtle¡¯s partner, a Glacial Snow Turtle also perished before they could take flight.
The Life Grafter was no fighter, but he had travelled far and wide and was an old and experienced man. He didn¡¯t want his dear children to die with him. The power of the Spear Saint was clear to him. He led the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix to bring them to different worlds and let his children go where they were most suitable to live.
The descendants of Lightquartz Twitch Tiger were told to hide in the light, there was a high chance they were still around. After a few stops, the only ones left were the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix, a family of turtles of slightly different breeds each, the Life Grafter himself and the baby dragon in his arms.
The Spear Saint caught up and the closest world they were at was Elcra. The wrathful Spear Saint roared the moment he saw them from afar. He swung his spear, the blinding flash was unforgettable to the hatchling Gen. The Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix dived down to Elcra the moment it sensed the incoming Spear Saint. It was split right down in the middle along with the entire Continent Elcra.
No wonder the Fissure Sea or the border had such a straight coastline. It was sliced into two. Ebony was awed by the story. How big was the whole continent? How tough was the earth in this magical world? Yet, according to the voice in Ebony¡¯s head, the entire thing was cleanly sliced in 2?
The Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix only just reached Saint Class at that time. It barely managed to let the family of turtles down where it was the most comfortable for them and the most uncomfortable for it together with the Life Grafter and the dragon in his arms. The blood dripping down from both sides of the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix burned the lands before rising up and reconnecting both halves of herself. It was hardly injured by getting cut in half.
It flew up to meet the Spear Saint in battle. The 2 Lightquartz Twitch Tiger also wasn¡¯t dead yet, the Spear Saint probably shook them off somehow. The Lightquartz Twitch Tigers caught up to them at the same time that the Phoenix flew up. The 3 of them fought high up in the sky.
Protection of their father and creator was left to the oldest of their family. The Progeniturtle. He wasn¡¯t the strongest and was only at the peak of Emperor Class but he was no weakling and was definitely the toughest, the most intelligent and of course, the eldest.
He started his plans to trick the Spear Saint somehow. Building this underground dome and creating defensive barriers while the Spear Saint was busy with his brother and sisters. He actually read and studied in his free time. Making a clone of their father and getting him to imbue his essence and lifeforce inside then, hissing loudly before attacking the Spear Saint from where he was on the ground since he couldn¡¯t fly.
The freezing flames shot right up to catch the Spear Saint¡¯s attention. He glanced down at the pest to see it freeze the Life Grafter and send him underground. The Spear Saint¡¯s target was the Life Grafter, not wanting to lose sight of the man, he chased. But the hiss had been them communicating. The Lightquartz Twitch Tigers understood, they were incomparably fast anyway. Using light illusions and getting the real Life Grafter out while the Spear Saint was distracted and then escaping into the distance with the Life Grafter and baby dragon.
The Spear Saint broke through the hard earth like jelly and swept away all the disturbance the progeniturtle caused. Slowing him down a massive deal with the flames of frost. The Spear Saint was enraged and only realised the weak presence of the Life Grafter underground minutes later. Minutes were a long time for them. He also only realised because the stronger Lightquartz Twitch Tigers weren¡¯t in battle with him. The turtle was also so damn annoying at trying to slow him down. He had ignored the progeniturtle due to how weak its attacks were but it realised the turtle was pretty tough too, not to mention the insane chill and how good it was at slowing him down.
It didn¡¯t care about a weak turtle, leaping back off into the skies to chase the tigers.
The gluttonous sister bird of his was always troubling their father and the turtle didn¡¯t have a very good relationship with it but it was family too and it hurt to see it struggle. The Spear Saint was further pissed by the relentless Phoenix trying to tie it down to Elcra and put effort into killing it.
Turning back and giving a thrust of his spear tore a huge hole into Elva. The Phoenix didn¡¯t want the continent that she put her naggy older brother on to be destroyed and dragged its even more massive body with a hole in it to the other continent. With it out of sight the weak older brother of theirs couldn¡¯t interfere but he could sense the strong shockwaves and quakes since the continent of Tova hasn''t drifted far yet.
The Spear Saint riddled Tova with holes as well. But the Phoenix was known for being undying, persistence kept it going and going. The Spear Saint couldn¡¯t get rid of it easily.
Its final moments were days later. It rose up to the sky in a single flap with less than half his body remaining while the Spear Saint slapped it away with his spear. Dispersing most of the Phoenix¡¯s body. The progeniturtle cried as the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix sent part of her Heartblood Essence to him. He stepped over villages and crushed towns without care, catching his sister. The silly grin on his sister wasn¡¯t wiped off. ¡°It¡¯s cold.¡± The voice in Ebony¡¯s head repeated.
He buried his sister under a volcano, picking whatever was left of her and preserving it. The progeniturtle was stuck here, unable to leave as it didn¡¯t have any methods to fly or travel through space. The Spear Saint might come back if he couldn¡¯t find their creator so he hid with his remaining kin.
Scatter seeds of the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree to fulfil the wishes of their creator and father then conceal it because they were worried the Spear Saint would come back. They were just seeds anyway and the whole family was deep underground.
That was over twelve thousand years ago.
The Progeniturtle took care of his remaining kin in suffering. With no clue whether his father and creator was alive, his brother and sister tiger¡¯s well-being. The memory of his partner dying right beside him and his foolish sister bird that smiled even when it was dying as he carried her on his shell to where it was the warmest and most comfortable for her. It haunted him but he still had his son no, his son was dead too. He still had his daughter, grandchild and great-grandchild Gen to care for.
The Spear Saint came back once, fortunately, the seeds hadn¡¯t grown at that time. That was good news to him, that meant his father wasn¡¯t dead and the Spear Saint was still looking. Waiting for him to leave was stressful. Then he never came back no matter how much time passed.
Thousands of years passed. His kin all grew up. He was old, he was tired. Their race was always hidden but even when they went out they were rarely challenged. He was the only one with the powers of Frostblaze together with his daughter. Perhaps his blood thinned out too much to pass it down any further.
He had enough. He stopped hiding and returned to the surface. Many years later, the eastern barbarian showed up to challenge him. The barbarian was strong, very strong for a fellow Emperor of such a young world. He was happy. He could finally leave this world. He could finally rest. Visit his partner. His children. His brothers and sisters.
He didn¡¯t bother removing the blade in his body. His kin saw it as a curse. He saw it as a blessing.
Release.
Chapter 98: Freeze Ice
¡°I see.¡± Ebony was intrigued by the story. He learnt quite a bit about many interesting existences. The 4 creatures really reminded him of the 4 auspicious beasts but it might just be a coincidence.
Unclassed, Journeyman, Master, Grandmaster, King, Emperor and then Saint.
Apprentice wasn¡¯t even considered part of the growth path.
Ebony was still so far away from true nonchalance and the feeling of helplessness won¡¯t be going away anytime soon.
At the same time he also somewhat realised why they wanted to hide their location or magic. He felt that 12000 plus years was more than enough hiding. Would they even be alive? Or is the Spear Saint¡¯s wrath undying even after so much time has passed? If he really didn¡¯t care about the progenturtle¡¯s life and death did they really need to hide?
¡°Would the Spear Saint even continue looking for the Life Grafter after so long? Even if the Life Grafter is still alive.¡±
¡°...I believe so. When he had been engaging with our sister, he had been grieving¡we have concluded after thousands of years of pondering from his mumblings and screams that one of father¡¯s children had eaten the Spear Saint¡¯s child and wife.¡±
¡°You are?¡±
¡°Remnant spirit. Ful, I am. No, I was one with Rue. He didn¡¯t want to stop his bleeding and our descendants couldn¡¯t stop him. They managed to stop me instead. Those little devils had to separate me from Rue. Thinking about it just makes me angry again.¡± Ful explained.
Ebony could guess if there was anything here that was two in one with the progeniturtle it would be the tree itself. He hadn¡¯t come into contact with a spirit before but it was not as impressive sounding compared to the story of buying a mini sun, a phoenix egg, a dragon egg or splitting an entire continent in half and then poking gigantic lakes in them.
¡®Rue and Ful? Rueful? That¡¯s a sad name. The Life Grafter is probably a horrible namer.¡¯ He believed that names had meaning. Naming someone Rueful was just horrible. Or rather, naming the progeniturtle Rue was just awful.
¡°Ful, you¡¯re saying I can use Frostblaze as I like but there is a chance the Spear Saint might come after me if the Life Grafter is still alive and he somehow found out I use this particular magic. Isn¡¯t there any other race or person who uses it?¡±
¡°Yes. As far as we know Frostblaze is unique to the Frostblaze Amur Maple. You can use it, but it¡¯s not as simple as bursting ice mana apart. If not, our descendants or any other decent ice mage could replicate the effect. That¡¯s what I don¡¯t understand. Even Rue himself cannot use it without my help. Before I awoke when he reached Grandmaster, he had merely used it subconsciously. The only reason I can think of is your Physique, no one has gotten the Frostblaze Physique that you say you have.¡± Ful answered.
¡®It''s not as simple as combusting ice mana? It is though? I guess it should be my Physique. Even Gen can¡¯t use it and the Progeniturtle himself can¡¯t control it. The progeniturtle''s daughter can use it too so it was likely some kind of bloodline ability. The trees can do it naturally, maybe it¡¯s a plant thing and animals or monsters can¡¯t use it. Or is it me being a race made of mana, I can sense the amur maples having a high density of mana. Maybe the trees are mana beings and it isn¡¯t just the ice mana they absorb that I sensed.¡¯ Ebony had some hypotheses of his own.
Then he thought about what Ful said. He wasn¡¯t against Ebony using flames of frost.
There was even only a minuscule chance that;
One, Life Grafter was alive.
Two, whether the Spear Saint was still looking for him actively or not.
Three, he cared and remembered about a creature he considered weak and even its unique magic.
Four, he had to find out one person in the midst of literal worlds unless he had been observing this world somehow and then bother to chase and look for him.
Five, would the Spear Saint link a person using the same type of magic to one of the weak monsters that hindered him?
Of course, the Spear Saint may be the cautious type. He may be crazy enough with revenge that he didn¡¯t care and wanted to annihilate the entire legacy of the Life Grafter.
Honestly, Ebony felt that the chances of all those reasons and more to coincide to be extremely slim. That was also likely why Ful sounded like it didn¡¯t really care if he used it. Unlike Gen who was more serious in wanting to preserve their lineage and hide their location according to his predecessors.
Ebony understood from Ful¡¯s tone that it had wanted to die with Rue. Though, after thousands of years, it probably gave up persuading Gen or maybe Gen¡¯s parents and grandparents to let it die.
Being one and the same as Rue the progeniturtle, it definitely had some kind of feelings or if spirits didn¡¯t have feelings then maybe duty or obligation to preserve and spread their race according to their creator¡¯s wishes.
¡°So? What is your decision? I can¡¯t say I¡¯m not interested in finally conversing with another kind that can use the same magic as me. You can be considered my descendant and thereby Rue¡¯s descendant in a sense. Hmm¡I guess you¡¯ll be my, Ful¡¯s lineage rather than Rue¡¯s. Haaa. hahahaahaha. Ha. I guess I can¡¯t share that with you anymore.¡± Ful asked and then laughed and whispered.
The leaves on the majestic trees that were slacking down shook and ¡®stood up¡¯ before falling back down, a few leaves dropped down with a soft thud in the distance. Every one of those leaves weighed kilograms.
Ouch. Listening to Ful¡¯s sorrow was just painful in a way he didn¡¯t know how to comfort. He was never very good with feelings anyway. Too few friends to bother counting.
Gen and the other turtles hissed softly. Placating Ful perhaps.
¡°I don¡¯t see a reason not to learn.¡± Ebony replied. It wasn¡¯t like he wouldn¡¯t be able to use ice, gravity and sound magic normally after learning. He could also limit his usage to if he needed to. He just thought the explosive power he needed could be provided with frostblaze. Just the massive increase in physical power from the weight of his blades and the doubling of his maximum momentum from his increase in movement speed wasn¡¯t enough.
If he travelled alone and only used it when few eyes were around he didn¡¯t see the harm in it. The low chances that over 12000 years with only a single sighting of the Saint and no more follow-up was also enough to persuade him.
¡°Good! Let¡¯s see your flame again.¡± Ful sounded excited. It was excited, this was the very first time another creature other than itself, Rue and his daughter, was using their magic.
Ebony did as asked and he started another flame atop his palms. Silence fell as he watched the majestic tree burn white in comparison to his practically dark blue flame. Gen was also silently watching.
¡°...What in abomination is that?¡± Ful¡¯s leaves rustled once more. Ton came over and made a snow clone after a short while.
¡°Toss it over,¡± Ful said.
Ebony knew Ful was asking him to ¡®throw¡¯ his flame onto the snow clone so he just did it. Still, he just underhand tossed the thing like a ball instead of shooting it out like a fast projectile. He doubted Ful wanted to know how much mental force he can throw a flaming bundle of ice mana.
The fireball landed on the clone, sticking on and burning for half a second before going out as all the mana he used was combusted or burned out.
Ful¡¯s leaves rustled again and this time Gen opened his mouth and spit at his Layered Ice Carapace. Completely destroying it into crumbs with his spit alone.
¡°What have you been doing with your mana? Ice mana. You made it hard and tough. Sure it can do that but that is not what the ice element does. What do you think the ice element is supposed to do?¡± Ful questioned.
¡°...Freeze.¡± Ebony¡¯s usage of freezing was only with Frost Injection and Frost Mist Perception Sphere. His greater focus had always been on the defensive Layered Ice Carapace.
¡°Exactly. Other than durability and something a little weird about your ice mana, it doesn¡¯t do what ice does best. Your ice mana is lukewarm.¡± He was guessing what Ful was referring to was how he made his ice mana to be more resistant to heat.
¡°How do you make it colder?¡± If you don¡¯t know, ask.
¡°Dumb question, my foolish descendant. How did you make it harder or whatever else you did with it?¡± Ful didn¡¯t answer anything. It seems like all things magic was really better for one to figure out themselves.
¡°...¡±
¡°Gen will move us deeper and isolate a space for you. He¡¯ll send clones that have orders to kill you. If you¡¯re going down this path then I won¡¯t pamper you like how Rue pampered his descendants. Watch closely, Gen doesn¡¯t have much mana to spare for me to show you.¡± Ful said.
¡®Orders?¡¯
Ebony walked atop Rue¡¯s shell and was under Ful. It was only a few steps away. Once again, without anyone¡¯s protection he was exposed to the intense chill digging into his body. He sat down where he could see a grip sticking out of Ful¡¯s trunk high up, his eyesight improved a lot.
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He could see a drop of sap in the ice bowl under the tree. How long did it take to accumulate the amount he used up?
One of the fallen leaves near him lit up in white flames. He didn¡¯t just observe with his eyes, he used his mana perception more. The flames danced as Ful probably controlled it to form different shapes after the fallen leaf just turned to dust. It was just completely frozen before breaking apart from its own weight.
The flame shot to Ton¡¯s clone, Ebony watched as the flame spread all over the clone in under less than a second. He followed so that the flames were still in his mana perception range. The snow crumbled apart in a thick layer of ice but the flame didn¡¯t die out. It spread onto the snowy ground and was about to continue spreading to where he was before it rose off the ground and condensed back to a small flame flickering out of existence.
Then the snow under Ebony rose and locked his feet down. He flew all the way up into the ceiling and smashed right into it. He didn¡¯t stop and continued to be sent above ground.
The moment he saw dim light again he also sensed a Gen-sized turtle by the side who whipped him with snow onto its back before dashing off. It was made of ice, although Gen was a Glacial Snow Crystal Turtle he could use ice magic as well. The ice clone ran all the way to the blizzard barrier and charged right into it. The blizzard parted for them and Ebony was unharmed other than the strong cold winds he was facing. He already took quite a lot of damage from the cold but there was no sign of his resistance levelling.
Gen was actually outside when Ebony and the clone sped out of the blizzard barrier. They were already in a place he didn¡¯t recognise. The first sight he saw was Gen shooting a thick beam of white up into the sky. Then it was the clouds the beam was forming. In about 5 minutes, the clouds were thick and covered a space not too dissimilar to the underground dome¡¯s size. Then it snowed. The snow was light and slow.
Ebony was watching the area where the snow fell. It was quiet as usual in Hoarfrost Glade but not for much longer. Creatures under the snow burst out with loud roars, shrieking birds and all those that slept on trees were roused the moment snow landed on them.
Then he watched as the monsters, from birds to apes and monkeys to deers, to snow crawlers and toads to arctic bears he hadn''t seen before spasm exaggeratedly. Those on trees flew down, those on the ground didn¡¯t get up and even those that usually hid underground surfaced and couldn¡¯t even dig back down.
They even dug with their physical body instead of using manipulation but Ebony could see that the surface of the snowy ground hardened and they couldn¡¯t dig back down whether magically or physically. They were probably forced onto the surface by Gen too.
Gen¡¯s control over snow was so far above these monsters?
Practically all the monsters here were higher level than Ebony could Identify. Like how he used to be unable and probably still unable to rip control of ice mana away from Gen, Ton and Sei, Gen was doing the same thing to the monsters here.
When the monsters realised they couldn¡¯t escape, they turned their digging efforts to scraping their own flesh off.
It was a chilling sight in every manner of the word.
Ebony wouldn¡¯t have said he was not new to the sight of blood but there wasn¡¯t even much blood spilled. They were just frozen chunks of flesh.
It didn¡¯t even take a minute before it quietened down again. All the monsters already stopped moving. They were dead. The clouds opened up a hole like a donut in the sky and Ebony was brought inside. Luckily no snow touched him. He didn¡¯t even want to test touching the snow.
¡°Ebony. One of my ice clones contains 500 points of my mana. Each one would be slightly stronger and faster than you. They cannot think. I have given them commands to kill, that will be all they can and will do until they are destroyed or run out of mana.
More and more will be coming after you. Depending on her mood, they¡¯ll likely get stronger and maybe have more mana as time passes.
From time to time my spell will move, you¡¯ll move along with it as our forest will be moving. Don¡¯t touch my snow, I won¡¯t be able to save you.
You are not ready to evolve until your ice skills convert to frostblaze. I will keep my clones coming until you are able to completely freeze and stop them from moving while it still has the mana and power to resist. Good luck.¡± Gen said before turning around. He was about to sink back into the snow but not before Ful''s voice suddenly whispered into Ebony''s mind.
"I can tell your senses are pretty good. So one less should not be an issue. What luck. You''re partially mana, you can heal from most physical wounds."
Unsure where it came from but something smashed into his face and he flew back like a rag doll, somersaulting threw the air a few rounds with the very first "Ah." of pain that he had voiced out in many years. His reaction wasn''t to defend against another attack but to claw at his eyes.
Whatever landed across his eyes was stuck there for good and all of Ebony''s attempts to get rid of it both physical and magical failed. It was pain that he had never experienced. Cold but not numbingly so. It was piercingly cold.
Ebony felt the cold stabbing and piercing into his skin, flesh and skull. Obviously, his eyes were blinded and they hurt the most.
If he could see his face he would realise that the ''piercing'' part of the snow across his eyes was not figurative. Like water starting to frost over, white marks were digging into his flesh and tearing it apart. They were exactly what happened to his shell when he entered the blizzard.
"My apologies. That''s the weakest and gentlest I could make my snow, natural snow wouldn''t really blind you." Gen''s voice floated over instead of Ful.
Gen''s snow mana had the properties to seep into and pierce anything it touches. It was his Fortification and he could only make it so weak. Gen was a little amazed that all he got was a "Ah." that had little strength in it. Even creatures of ice and snow screamed and roared like little babies when even grazed by his conjured snow.
Since Gen and Full intended to blind him and he couldn''t do anything about it, he chillaxed. The piercing pain was subsiding fast and his mind was slowly unable to recognise or perceive pain to his body already.
There were quite a few things to digest after they threw him out here so suddenly but he would have to take care of the giant ice turtle that immediately turned to him and attacked the moment Gen left.
There was nothing new. The creature moved very naturally unlike the ones Ton and Sei controlled to fight Ebony in the past but their movements were exactly like Ton¡¯s. It only used ice magic for now but the slight advantage it had in speed and power was nothing much to him. Well, Ton definitely learned how to fight from Gen.
Ebony was already familiar with their fighting style and the magical spells and techniques they used. The battle went pretty much the same way it went with Ton.
Although, he had to say that this clone was stronger. It could use more tendrils or tentacles, it was more flexible not just with magic but also physically. Shifting the snow under its feet to move such that its thick shell took his attack.
Using its head as both a hammer and just taking his attack if it ¡®felt¡¯ like it was just a glancing blow or slash.
Ebony didn''t have too much trouble even without sight. It used to be harder to sense stationary bodies since everything was overshadowed by the planet''s gravitational waves but his sensitivity to weaker waves improved a lot. The easier way to notice is usually from movement, the displacement of mana in the air. Furthermore, the clone was made of ice. It was clear as day to Ebony wherever it was.
One issue would be that he would have to stay close to his enemies. 31 metres was not a lot nowadays. The good thing was that it didn''t really matter since he fought close range but he would have far less time to react to long-ranged attacks outside this range.
Ebony didn¡¯t feel like he won because the clone just got smaller and smaller as it used magic. It just disappeared when it ran out of mana. Still, he was surprised it took around half an hour before that happened. He was only able to put a deep crack in its shell and almost completely shatter one of its legs before it didn¡¯t attack him so aggressively anymore.
With time to think about the quick happenings, he conjured another chair and table to draw some more joint warmers while he still had the chance. The paper burned up in his hands as he drew blind. He wasn¡¯t discouraged.
It was ridiculous if Gen wasn¡¯t lying and a single one of his clones only contained 500 points of mana. The ice clone was huge, Ebony¡¯s shield alone took thousands of mana and it wasn¡¯t nearly as large as the clone. The ice also likely wasn¡¯t compressed from what he sensed.
Meaning Gen¡¯s ice mana was just naturally that strong and tough and he was hyper efficient with ice mana compared to Ebony if 500 points of his mana could last so long.
The stronger and faster than him part, he could easily understand. With their level difference comes a huge stat difference. It just emphasised Gen¡¯s control even further.
The part where the ice clones were not actively controlled or manipulated?
That was pretty damn awesome.
Gen said he gave his clones commands, but the clones couldn¡¯t think or do anything other than what was commanded.
That still puts Gen at what the mages call third order mages, likely higher. Because if all he said was ¡®kill Ebony¡¯ and the clone could actually fight, attack, defend and evade then Gen was a very impressive mage. It gave a set amount of conjured ice mana enough artificial intelligence to fight as well as any other creature.
As for how the clones coming for him will get stronger and stronger, they probably will because Ebony hasn¡¯t felt pushed yet. He hasn¡¯t started burning up and mutating or converting his skills. He also needed to make his ice mana colder to be able to freeze ice itself. Nonsensical.
Ful demonstrated once. His or her ice wasn¡¯t just immensely cold. It had properties of fire too. It spreads really easily.
Ebony drew more and more heated paper as he failed just as many times while he prepared himself to start changing his tactics. He would have to start combusting ice mana more freely. Perhaps he could directly conjure frost fires.
He leisurely packed up his things and reformed his seat and table into Ice Swords as a towering bear made of ice was dashing on all fours and knocking trees down without slowing down. He might not have sight but the lumbering bear was so noisy. Ebony only assumed it was a bear from its shape that his perception of ice told him once he got close enough.
¡®It isn¡¯t just turtles he can make?¡¯ Gen could probably make an army with his skills. He didn¡¯t even need to actively control them.
The 2 floating Ice Swords sprung alive and shot toward the bear. The bear clearly saw it coming and was more than fast enough to react. It swiped its sharp claws at the incoming projectiles. Ebony covered the distance with 2 Treading Strides and combusted his swords at the moment of contact. Letting the bursting flames move naturally instead of directly manipulating them first.
He wasn¡¯t even very familiar with its natural state and properties, how can he change it without fully knowing what it can do?
Cladding himself with ice mana before completely bursting off and meeting the 6 to 7m tall bear in battle. His greatsword, Icicle tried to absorb his ice mana but it didn¡¯t absorb ice mana very fast. His ice mana also fragmented as it combust the instant he clad Icicle with it so there was still a thin layer of dark blue flames over Icicle.
Ebony tried to drive his blade deeper. The bear-shaped one wasn¡¯t as thick or tough as the Gen shaped one for some reason. Kicking an incoming paw aside, a spinning slash and a stab flowed like water. Although the only reason his body decided to do that was that the bear was slightly more stiff with its movements. Completely stabbing the bear through its chest, Ebony forced even more mana in as Icicle exploded in flames, trying to freeze the bear.
Clearly unsuccessful as the moving ice statue ignored the extra layer of armour it was slowly gaining.
He quickly gave a pushing kick to both create distance and pluck Icicle out.
As long as he uses considerably compressed mana to conjure ice mana to combust, his flames will stay lit for some time. They don¡¯t spread much, staying wherever they touch or land.
He continued testing and attempted to burn the whole bear and observe its effects until it shrunk and broke into bits of crushed ice.
Chapter 99: Numbness
Ebony used up every drop of mana in that single fight. He didn¡¯t just use ice magic, he fought with everything in his disposal. He was following the advice to try to merge and utilise everything he had at the same time. It was apparently beneficial and he believed both Hector and Scarlet. Gen and Ful didn¡¯t say anything about not using other magic either.
Perhaps Gen understood that or because he needed time to make those ice monsters, there wasn¡¯t another one sent. Ebony knew it was likely the first reason. They could gauge his recovery or mana regeneration speed and would send another whenever he was full again.
Now he knew it wasn¡¯t all that hard to gauge, if he didn¡¯t put on mana ores in his myriad bracelet his mana would escape from his body once it was full and it was very easy to sense if one was as sensitive to mana as he was.
Gen should probably be able to directly sense how much mana he had left in him as well. The overflowing portion was just making it obvious for everyone but mages or anyone with the right mana perception skills at a high level should be able to tell.
Ebony himself wasn¡¯t so proficient with that yet. He fought with few mages to begin with and sensing how much mana they have left was really not on top of his priority list in most battles.
2 days later.
Ebony was troubled.
He had tried using frostflames to substitute normal ice mana in Icebody Enhancement. It didn¡¯t work when he tried to completely combust all the ice mana he circulated. Causing him to lose the enhancement buff and got him injured but he was fast enough to make the injury light. He was already fully healed.
It was getting easier and easier to use Frost Injection after he played around with Icicle. Well, he was also bursting his ice mana apart so it wasn¡¯t exactly Frost Injection anymore. His repulsive membrane made spreading and blowing flames around a lot more effortless.
Ice Sword and Layered Ice Carapace was mostly left alone other than adding a layer of flames to them. He still wanted the solid properties of these skills.
So it was actually mainly boiled down to his ability to use and manipulate flames of frost, Icebody Enhancement and Frost Injection.
There was no progress in his scale orb prison and burning Frost Mist Perception Sphere inside a trapped target. To begin with, no amount of mana he tried expending was enough to ¡®freeze¡¯ ice. His task was essentially to overcome the strength of ''Intelligence'' with technique or the fundamental change of the properties of his conjured ice, just like how he made his ice more resistant to melting from the heat.
As for making his ice mana colder, he had no real progress there either.
Unlike making it more heat resistant where he could just stuff ice into fire and attempt to change its structure such that it didn¡¯t melt that easily, he just didn¡¯t know how to adapt or change it to make it colder.
He tried sensing and observing both Gen¡¯s ice and the ambient ones as reference but something so fundamental in mana was hard to even perceive with his current abilities and senses. Gen¡¯s clone was constantly trying to kill him and would run out of mana in time so he couldn¡¯t even observe that for long enough.
Losing his sight was not that bad of a deal. He was forced to depend on his hearing and magical senses. They were improving noticeably fast.
The frequency of different-shaped animals made of ice was about 1 every hour or so on the first day. Then 1 every half an hour the next day. Today, 3 were sent after him every hour.
The turtle shaped ones were the hardest to handle, clearly, the one Gen was most familiar with.
The bear had the most strength.
The tiger was balanced and quite a strong opponent but seemed a little awkward with some motions.
Avian types had many variations of both size and shape. Some were weirdly shaped and the more time passed the more monster shape Ebony had never seen showed up.
They were copies of monsters in Hoarfrost Glade so those he had never seen were probably monsters from deeper in. Even though he didn¡¯t know how deep they were now since they apparently moved deeper than where he had been.
The first week passed like that.
With just the frequency and number constantly increasing but their power levels are roughly the same. The gradual increase in pressure and constant battle both day and night with no long breaks or rest pushed him. All of his combat related skills have already reached their limit and haven''t levelled. It was still hard to say since they could probably level once or twice in the months to come. Then maybe a third and fourth time in years. Even Everlasting Tranquillity stopped at 210 before this week even started.
Even so, he was getting stronger with every passing day. Taking 4 or 5 ice robots at the same time was all too easy, regardless of the type of monster it was copied after.
Icebody Enhancement was circulating ice mana inside him. Changing it to a more gaseous state of mana to circulate brought up problems.
Ebony hasn¡¯t mutated or refined the skill in any fashion but he could feel progress. Feeling the enhancement working while he converted more and more of the solid ice mana used to the smaller and gaseous-like combusted ice mana.
He also somewhat figured out his greatsword, Icicle. It didn¡¯t just absorb and contain ice mana. He couldn¡¯t draw out ice mana because a large portion of it actually disappears. If his Mana Perception and Mana Moulding hadn¡¯t been trained to be sensitive and fine enough he might never have found out. The ice mana actually dissolved into a foreign mana he could only sense because it was in the way. No doubt it was the wood mana and the material of Icicle itself.
Without charging any ice mana into it, Icicle had been getting colder and colder to the touch. Frost Injection was disrupted but the cladding of flames wasn¡¯t really affected much since ice mana spreads quickly and when he wanted it to, it would be propelled away with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. Both ice control and gravity mana manipulation at work.
The absorption of ice mana didn¡¯t seem to harm or break Icicle in any way and it was the natural doing of his greatsword itself so he didn¡¯t try to stop it from absorbing ice mana by force. It was as sharp as ever and in tip-top shape even after hacking at solid ice tens and hundreds of thousands of times.
Just as he was getting bored of the ice robots. They got more powerful. He was guessing they had the stats of a level 140ish monster from Hoarfrost Glade now. Previously they were about 130 but they were weaker due to the lower variety in spells and attacks.
Ebony didn¡¯t back down.
Their mana pool was likely increased too from how they could fight longer if he couldn¡¯t break them into pieces before they dry themselves out. They were as aggressive as usual and always just used whatever mana they had to kill him as fast as possible.
It got a little dangerous because their frequency didn¡¯t slow down. He has gotten better at taking them down as fast and efficiently as possible but it had already gone past the point where he could regenerate mana till his mana pool was full before the next batch.
???
A month passed.
The ring cloud moved twice, and it moved fast.
Ebony was in the middle of multiple large ice beasts when Gen gave him a warning before it started moving and he had to break himself free as he ran.
Gen probably considered his speed and endurance because it was moving at his fastest pace and didn¡¯t stop for days.
Gen clearly didn¡¯t care what other creatures it passed by, Ebony would step past spasming corpses. He would actually drag what he could get and picked any nuts or fruits he could get his hand on as he ran.
He didn¡¯t really look well upon his chances of freezing one of these conjured ice robots with only instincts moving them any time soon. So he considered obtaining any sort of sustenance he could get his hands on.
Ebony was tired.
After 3 weeks, all he had was power naps that were minutes long at best. He had dark bags under his eyes now and his body was burning up even without his heating runic papers.
It wasn¡¯t as intense as it had been in Ordina since he had breaks and he was stronger now than he was before. With Everlasting Tranquillity, he was holding up pretty well mentally but his body was not. Constantly moving and breaking himself down together with the experimentation of frostblaze enhancement.
As for burning up, it wasn¡¯t a figure of speech or anything. He was having a pretty high fever. He was not surprised but it was pretty interesting that even with increasing Constitution and physical stats, normal sickness like fevers was still applicable. Well, there were plenty of doctors here as well so no surprise.
The fever did nothing to reduce his fighting capabilities. Everlasting Tranquillity alone prevents or lowers the chance of missteps. He didn¡¯t really use too much of his brain other than magic when fighting. Sustained Optimum Condition really kept his body going even in its tattered state.
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He had this fever for days already. It only got worse.
That was great for his skills so he just ignored it since both his mind and body could still handle it.
Yet, no skill mutations have been made.
Ebony has gotten a hang of making ice mana colder or so he assumed since he had started to get numb to the feeling long ago. He couldn¡¯t really tell but he saw a greater slowing effect.
His sense of taste was completely gone this time. Food was only eaten to fill his nutritional and energy needs. The increasing chill in his heart was another indicator that he thought was his ice mana getting the lower temperature property.
The amount of stamina and energy he consumed was great, he was going through his supplies faster than he liked but it was not a choice he liked to make either.
He tried to ration himself and go hungry for a few days but his base stamina regeneration actually dropped drastically due to hunger and the lack of sustenance in his body. He still had a lot of food but was also looking to pick up more monster carcasses whenever they moved.
He would process it as fast as possible in his breaks and he even made a makeshift oven. It was an empty chest that he inscribed stronger heating runes that used mana ores as a power source.
Perhaps a stroke of good luck that he didn¡¯t need much trial and error before getting a workable one. He would toss meat that he cleaned and processed in and then hurry up with his fight.
With the thick cuts of meat, he just needed to poke some holes in them and they were usually well done after a 3 to 4 hour fight. Their flesh was all torn apart from Gen''s snow magic, but for some reason, there wasn''t any snow in their body when he processed them. All he used were simple salt and pepper since he really didn¡¯t have the time to marinate or the ingredients to do so. He also started not to care about seasoning since he couldn¡¯t taste anything.
In terms of his ability to inscribe stuff, he managed to draw the heating runic papers blind but that was before the attacks got so fierce. Though he didn''t use them as much now, he was practising ''inscribing'' directly into the paper with Mana Moulding. Like how he did with the rings he made.
He just had to get familiar with working on paper and then the wooden chest to have made the makeshift oven.
He had reached the point where he had no problem falling asleep at any time, regardless of whether anything was going to attack him. He reacted in time anyway. Even before they entered his range of senses he would wake up from the sound or vibrations on the ground they made.
Something was clearly up on this day as Ebony woke up refreshed. His body was not fully healed but it was far better rested. He must have slept at least an entire day without disturbance, he had gotten pretty good at estimating time based on the sun¡¯s position.
Nothing felt broken in his body but he was still feeling a little weak. His Vitality was not catching up but at least his fever was mostly gone.
¡®Gen let me rest?¡¯ Ebony was doubtful. Perhaps Gen would let him rest but gut feeling told him Ful would not.
Ebony could set entire groups of ice beasts on fire with all his mana utilised but it never worked well. The only good signs were that the ice creatures Gen made were starting to go from ignoring it to patting or swiping the flames off with no urgency.
Their main goal was still to tear him apart and they haven¡¯t succeeded even once. All the damage he got was self-inflicted.
He didn¡¯t want to waste his time and tried to see if the area they stopped at had any more monster carcasses or any other edible plants, fruits and nuts included.
Another stroke of good luck that his makeshift oven actually ran out of mana before burning his food black inside his bag. He wasn''t so free to figure out how to include a timer function.
Then he remembered that Gen was actually in great need of mana to keep Ful alive. Gen spent more and more mana on him, even he needed rest. The break was for both of them. It was quiet for the next 5 days with nothing disturbing his continued research and experimentation with the combustion of ice mana. Almost completely energised, his body was practically in tip top shape already.
His control over it improved greatly. With a thought, he could conjure a burning flame that could move around him and even within him. Compared to the solid and unmoving shapes he was used to, controlling flames was harder but doable. He could even write with flames even though they aren¡¯t completely stable and nowhere close to Mark¡¯s almost unmoving flames.
If he had his eyesight he would be able to see the outer layer of Icicle which used to be completely black now had its runic symbols very faintly glowing dark purple or blue. It was hard to tell as it was extremely faint but it was glowing dimly at all times.
He could study the runes that used to be hidden in plain sight when he had the time. Honestly, both the internal and external portion was just too complicated for him as of now. So not being able to see and read it was no loss.
To signal the end of his break time, the snow cloud above started moving instead of having some of Gen¡¯s conjured army coming after him. Ebony quickly packed his bed that he took out to relax on in the middle of nowhere. Lightly stepping over snow, trees and rocks only left shallow prints in the snow.
Then they reached where there was no snow on the ground except what rained down from Gen¡¯s snow cloud spell. The floor was just solid blue ice and even the trees looked like they were made of ice. No monsters, no edible plants in sight.
A round shell phased right out of the ground to reveal another Gen shaped clone. Only 3 of them. That was a bad sign. A smaller number usually always meant stronger opponents.
¡®I guess this is the next stage.¡¯
???
Ebony''s entire stockpile of food was consumed. It was a daily occurrence to fight hunger.
The skills he thought reached the limit had levelled around 1 to 3 more times. They really capped out hard considering how he used everything he had repeatedly in a highly stressful environment.
He could see why it takes years before people are satisfied or confident in undergoing their Evolution. Imagining a level 149 skill that stopped levelling for years and a step away from a substantial increase in Fortification was just painful.
No wonder people were so desperate for a new dungeon. With weaker than normal monsters, it was free Natural Potential sitting there. The allure could be said to be irresistible for anyone who reached their max level.
Ebony took a sip of water as he was touching his own notes with his fingertips before placing the cup back onto the table. Picking a small black nut from a plate of 4 remaining nuts and chewing it slowly.
2 of his sculptures were dancing around an elephant sized mammoth with awesome tusks almost half as long as the mammoth itself.
The sculptures'' movements were smooth and only a little worse than how he was moved he just learned sword mastery. Their features are a complete copy of him, down to his clothes and weapon.
The biggest difference should be their hair as Ebony¡¯s hair had gotten so long he just grabbed a bundle and sliced it off when it got in the way. His own hair was really messily cut now while the clones had his old hairstyle.
When he Classed to Journeyman, his hair and nails grew noticeably slower. He found out that they actually grow even slower as one evolves. At a certain stage, it was not impossible to physically will them to stop growing or grow faster. That was both interesting and useless but good to know nonetheless.
The 2 clones¡¯ greatswords were burning blue, riddling the mammoth with strikes that could only scratch some shavings off. The flames that came into contact with the mammoth latched on and slowly climbed up and spread a little over the mammoth.
Gen was damn impressive at being able to make the mammoth have empty internals and the contraction and expansion of ice let the ice mammoth ¡®blow¡¯ a gust of air from its trunk to attempt to extinguish his flames.
Unlike Gen, Ebony¡¯s sculptures were actively controlled. He also only dared to relax since the mammoth was the last of the group. The frequency of attacks was reduced but each one sent was stronger and could last way longer.
He needed all the free time he could get to fully regenerate his mana. The compressed mana in his mana pool was incredibly useful. Reinforced Mana Chassis for the win.
The ice mammoth failed as frost fire enveloped it completely. A thin layer of ice formed over it, every movement of the mammoth shook off the ice that formed on it. The flames didn''t die out or get blown out. It seeped into the slashes and gashes and dug as deep as it could.
Ebony couldn''t forget the sight of Gen''s snow touching the monsters. The way his snow crept into fur, skin, flesh and more to pierce and tear apart one from inside out was gruesome and very effective. He preferred this to Ful''s spreading effect.
Although his flames were merely an attempt at replicating the effect, copying was step one. It didn''t matter that it wasn''t working so well for now.
Perhaps to make the training actually possible to complete, Gen¡¯s creatures couldn¡¯t or didn¡¯t use ambient or even take over control of his ice magic.
If it was Gen himself, he could probably rip control over ice mana from him. Even if Gen couldn¡¯t control combusting ice for whatever reason, he could still control the ice that it forms or when it sticks onto the target.
Ebony wouldn¡¯t say he managed to ¡®freeze¡¯ ice but the mammoth was slowly completely encased in ice as it ran out of mana to keep struggling.
His massive gains in power and control over ice were the furthest thing he had in mind now. He stared at an empty page, unmoving. No idea when exactly this habit started. Usually, nothing came to mind as he daydreamed and meditated at the same time.
In a trance today, he didn¡¯t realise his body moving. Putting the book in his hands down on the table. Picking up his inscription pen and doodling across the page.
Ebony could sense what he wrote if he wrote with mana so he couldn''t really be considered blind anymore.
Only snapping out of his trance when the sound of ice meeting ice, signifying Gen¡¯s lackeys walking towards him. The ground wasn''t covered in snow here.
He looked at where his book should have been empty and he paused, stunned. There was a drawing of a feather. It was badly drawn but he was struck with realisation.
¡®Oh.¡¯
Ebony had plenty more memories of being alone. Not once did he feel lonely. He never knew what the growing chill and numbness was till the moment he saw or rather, sensed his own doodling.
¡®So this is what loneliness feels like.¡¯
He didn¡¯t know what being lonely felt like because he had no one he wanted to be at his side.
The numbness, the empty hole can only be felt when it had been filled up once.
¡®It really hurts.¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t like the feeling.
It was okay when he didn¡¯t know what it was but the sense of discomfort only grew when he found out. No amount of physical pain he had ever been under felt even close to a fraction of this pain.
¡®I miss her.¡¯
The ground shook again. Ebony stood up. Another giant turtle faced him. Different this time. A branch stuck out of the top of its shell. Twig might be more accurate with the massive size of the maple tree underground considered. There were 2 huge leaves burning in white flames on it.
It was no final test to Ebony.
It was an eyesore.
An obstacle in his path to get out of here, to rid of the pain. A wall preventing him from seeing her again.
He had to tear it down.
Burn it down.
Freeze it down.
Chapter 100: Power
Ebony¡¯s mana consumption was astronomical if he fought at his current full power.
He wouldn¡¯t even have enough mana to last 3 minutes. Probably way less than 3 minutes actually.
He rarely ever dilutes the mana that was naturally compressed and left in his Reinforced Mana Chassis. More like never.
To him, his maximum mana was still 5300 points just that it was already highly compressed and much stronger.
¡°Ebony.¡± Ful¡¯s voice which he hasn¡¯t heard for a long time sounded in his head.
¡°...¡± Ebony just drew Icicle out. The runes that looked a little similar to electrical circuit lines on Icicle¡¯s surface were a little brighter now, luminescent between dark blue and purple. Oddly, it was also noticeably heavier than it used to be but not by much.
¡°Forget it, one drop of my sap can only last so long. We¡¯ll talk after.¡± Ful¡¯s senses could go really far or perhaps his spirit is actually here, in front of Ebony.
Ebony¡¯s entire body, coat, skin, hair and greatsword lit as cobalt blue flames covered his entire body as compared to the previous indigoish-navy blue.
He burst off far faster than before but still keeping his explosiveness down, the icy ground only cracked. Treading Stride hardly levelled in the time he had been undergoing this training.
The sound of grating and sawing echoed as Icicle was trying to saw through the thick twig harder than diamonds.
Sonic Overlay was hard at work with little results to show. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane pushing apart parts that already got sawed off.
Ebony had aimed for in between the v-shape twig with leaves on both sides and the ice turtle didn¡¯t attempt to dodge.
Magnified Gravity field condensed to the small area surrounding them. It didn¡¯t do much either.
The densest Battle Song he could bring up was supplying him with as much mana regeneration as it could.
The moment Icicle came in contact with the twig on the giant ice turtle, his flames burst out as Chaotic Repulsive Membrane actively helped to spread the flames that he let escape. Devouring the entire beast instantly.
His flames that came anywhere close to the burning leaves were extinguished before they even touched.
This challenge was clearly not about how well Ebony fought since that has been established too many times to count. Still, using all his other magic at the same time was already a habit that he felt was good to have.
He shouldn¡¯t go easy on any hostile, Identifying levels just doesn¡¯t tell him shit about one¡¯s strength.
The current Ebony could beat a thousand Ebonys before this training started without injuries. Maybe not all at the same time due to his previous durability and unending stamina but he could easily take his old self by the hundreds.
The main issue should be that he was no longer as sustainable in terms of mana due to the massive increase that frostblaze consumes. That was an exchange he was willing to make for the moment. His regeneration would skyrocket soon enough, this explosive power was what he needed now.
Ebony mentally flexed, directing every remaining drop of mana into Icicle.
His flames combat Ful¡¯s small white flame.
Unlike when his flames came into contact with normal fire like Scarlet¡¯s where it was like 2 gases meeting each other and mixing together. Ebony¡¯s flame was forcefully pushed away and they were fighting for territory as both flames pushed and pulled.
Ebony had the upper hand due to the constant input of mana he was dishing out but the white flame could override his like a larger hand was pushing his hand down. Both were enveloped in each other''s flames and also used their own flames to protect themselves.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Sheer Cold Resistance evolved into Immense Cold Resistance.¡¯
The whole ice turtle was already frozen in another layer of ice, Ebony¡¯s flames slowly sticking onto the twig for good. It felt like a long time before the white flame flickered out but less than a minute had passed.
The beast was frozen for good, he gave it a kick that shattered the large block.
With that, the snow ring cloud dispersed. There was no earth, no rocks, no trees.
The floor was ice, the trees were made of ice too. Hardly a difference in colour between land and sky. It wasn¡¯t hard to find the maple forest not far from him. There was a blizzard so close to him yet not reaching him.
Funny spell. Was this called hiding in plain sight?
The ice beast he destroyed slowly reformed as it nudged him. He climbed onto its back and they made their way in without the blizzard harming them.
Brought down to the underground dome again. It had been so long, he just wasn¡¯t sure how long.
Gen was hiding inside his igloo. He must be as exhausted as, if not more exhausted than Ebony.
He understood that Gen had trouble supporting Ful already, with that additional snow cloud spell and constant creation of challengers for Ebony, his mana and mental consumption must have risen a lot.
Of course, the reason why they went deeper into Hoarfrost Glade was that ambient ice mana was higher and Ebony believed that most of the creations sent after him were using ambient mana.
¡°Gen, Ful. Thank you.¡± Once again. It was a simple word of thanks and gratitude.
Ebony has got to say he underestimated the task of pulling Excalibur out greatly. The sheer power Gen displayed was enough to show Ebony how far he was from being able to help them.
Ful¡¯s leaves rustled loudly in response.
¡°As expected of my descendant. You show much more potential than any others before you. You are ready, just get whatever natural potential you can, reach your limits again and quickly evolve.¡± Ful had a feminine voice, she sounded proud.
''Were there any before me? Oh, he or she meant those that tried to get a physique.''
¡°Yes. I will be back. Stronger.¡± Ebony replied. He was not very proud but he was confident.
¡°Come back when you reach 300. We need your help.¡± Ful asked.
¡°With?¡± Ebony remembered they said the ice mage with the other Physique, Ice Crystal Physique failed to pull the sword out at that level range.
¡°Meditative. It is easy to tell you have very high mana regeneration. I need you to supply me with mana while Gen evolves. He¡¯s been delaying for far too long. With his evolution, I would no longer be in a state where I¡¯m slowly dying. Even with the leaking of my essence. With his persistence and you showing up, I¡ feel that perhaps, I should stay and care for his and I guess my descendant too. That selfish jerk¡leaving me like that.¡±
¡°...Gen¡¯s over 12,000 years old, right? If you¡¯re so invincible in Hoarfrost Glade what happened to his parents and grandparents?¡± Ebony changed the subject before Ful¡¯s mood dropped any further. Listen to him, no, her talk was just painful. Especially with Ebony¡¯s current feelings and realisation of his loneliness.
He had been curious about what happened to the older turtles.
Their lifespan was obviously very long if Gen was a hatchling when they came here and was still alive.
The others had to be stronger and with each evolution, their lifespan would increase quite a bit. The storytelling portrayed them to be invincible and untouchable here so Ebony doubted they died in battle.
¡°They died of old age. We were the strongest in the past no doubt. Gen¡¯s grandmother was already pretty old when we arrived. His parents were much younger, not even past level 100.
More than 12,000 years. This world¡¯s growth is very fast, but it wasn¡¯t enough.
The strongest monsters here in the past were at most a little over 300. His grandmother¡¯s path was cut, growth for her was impossible back then. She passed away decades after Rue.
Those couple thousand years were enough for the world¡¯s essence to increase and monsters to be at a higher level but Gen¡¯s parents were even weaker than Gen, their path was similarly slowed with the weak monsters in the area. They also died of old age.
But the further generations apart from Rue, the weaker they are. Ton and Sei don¡¯t even have Classes now.
Gen himself was born with the ability to get a Class once he was of age. The growth of this world was too fast and all the other descendants of Gen¡¯s generation and above slowly died out as their strength was insufficient. Gen''s sister and her partner left with Allumi deeper into the forest. We''ve not heard from them for many years...¡± Ful explained.
Ebony seemed to have messed up as Ful was clearly dejected as she explained.
So it was some kind of bloodline or Physique that was passed down and since their bloodline was never pure to begin with it only got thinner and thinner. With no appropriate prey, it was hard to get stronger.
By the time there was prey strong enough, the older generation already died out and then the younger ones were too weak in comparison.
Gen was also quickly surpassed by Hoarfrost Glade''s monsters as he stagnated while keeping Ful alive.
¡°No problem.¡± Mana was probably going to be the least of his problems. It would even help Ful and let Gen complete his evolution.
¡°Just rest. Gen¡¯s going to move back to where you found us when he wakes up.¡± Ful said.
Ebony didn¡¯t even finish hearing her sentence before taking his bed out to sleep. Falling asleep before his body fully laid down.
???
Ebony was certain he was unconscious for days and he only woke up from his growling stomach.
He was severely starved.
The plate of nuts he previously had was actually his only meal in days. He drank water till he felt bloated to curb the hunger for now.
The underground dome was dead silent with all of them in their igloos. He took the chance to give his status a look through.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 212
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 100
Class Skills:
Treading Stride Lvl 152
Ice Mana Control Lvl 188
Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 155
Flowing Greatsword Mastery Lvl 151
Frostblaze Cladding Lvl 146
Ice Sword Lvl 146
Ceaseless Onslaught Lvl 147
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 157
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 160
Calm Swordsman of Frost Conditioning Lvl 38
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Orchestral Gravity Conductor Lvl 100
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 146
Mana Vibration Lvl 154
Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 159
Magnified Gravity Field Lvl 155
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 152
Vibrational Gravity Awareness Lvl 159
Sonic Overlay - Lvl 142
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 100
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 165
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 156
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Mana Perception Lvl 162
Reinforced Mana Chassis Lvl 147
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 500/500
Stamina: 500/500
Mana: 5300/5300
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 50
Vitality: 50
Constitution: 250 [802]
Endurance: 50
Agility: 250
Intelligence: 376
Wisdom: 530
Perception: 100 [312]
Generic Skills:
Camouflage Lvl 36
Identify Lvl 15
Immense Cold Resistance Lvl 61
Running Lvl 35
Mental Mapping Lvl 25
Kicking Mastery Lvl 51
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 10
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 22
Dish Washing Lvl 29
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 58
Tracking Lvl 14
Game Processing Lvl 27
Heat Resistance Lvl 46
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
Gardening Lvl 42
Cooking Lvl 24
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 53
Korun Lvl 9
Inscription Lvl 58
Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 13
Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 41
Sheer Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 22
His stats didn¡¯t change one bit excluding the Constitution he gets from a 147% compressed mana pool and the little bit of Perception buff from his Core Skill but his overall strength had increased greatly.
Treading Step that evolved into Treading Stride didn¡¯t level much after the teachings from the Transient Roaming Kappa. Limits be damned.
Ice Mana Control had massive gains in this period of time with Gen and Ful. There was hope of getting it to 200 with a little more natural potential.
Icebody Enhancement mutated and evolved into Frostblaze Augmentation.
A little odd that he was given the choice again whether he wanted to override Icebody Enhancement with the evolved skill.
He couldn¡¯t run both at the same time due to the nature of the skills so he didn¡¯t see a reason to keep Icebody Enhancement. Other than the crazy mana consumption.
Frostblaze Augmentation - Combusting mana in your mana chassis that had been directly conjured into Ice mana increases your Constitution by (125% + 2.5%) of Intelligence, Strength and Endurance by (100% + 2.5%) of Intelligence. Agility is increased by (20% + 2.5%) of Intelligence. Damage from heat based attacks are increased by 20%.
Consumes 4500 MP/Min.
Classification: Ice Magic - Body Enhancement Magic
He didn¡¯t have to circulate the ice mana anymore. Just directly conjuring or converting the mana in mana chassis which was all over his body into ice mana.
Unlike the reinforcement from circulating ice mana, every single cell of his was directly drawing power from within themselves through the mana chassis.
As for why doing so strengthens his body, his closest guess was that elemental body enhancement was not so different from imbuing one¡¯s body with one¡¯s mana. Borrowing the inherent properties of mana or in this case ice mana, to strengthen one''s body.
The high base percentage buff was likely due to the unreasonable high mana cost that sustaining a constantly drying up pool of ice mana requires.
Ebony thought it was worth it.
The 4500 mana per minute was actually just 1125 mana per minute for him. Fortifications aren¡¯t taken into account when the skill description pops up for reasons that probably no one could answer.
From what he understood, the skill could be further refined like how he refined his Chaotic Repulsive Membrane so many times. He just currently didn''t know how or didn''t have any ideas to make it better.
Gen did mention that his Layered Ice Carapace was a really good tier 1 skill or a really bad tier 2 one.
Throughout the whole training montage he had, he had no idea how to further improve the shield.
Ebony was going to see if he could check out their shell¡¯s internal make up if possible.
Of course, the best part of the new skill, Frostblaze Augmentation was that it actually buffs his Agility.
His muscles, bones, tendons and more would no longer stiffen up which does wonders for him.
With a little Ice Mana Control at work, the flames on his body could act as a booster too, it was a little unrealistic with his output for now. Though the base 20% was low compared to the other physical enhancement it was nothing to complain about. In the end, all these buffs were dependent on his Intelligence stat.
The damage increase from heat was also reduced from 30% to 20%.
Ebony¡¯s skin and muscles would no longer turn transparent or take an icy look.
He would just have flames all over him and be put under intense chill through his body, bones and all. It actually does damage to himself until his recent evolution of cold resistance.
The damage he would take wasn¡¯t high and damage from cold was healed from much faster than actual physical injuries possibly due to the nature of his physique but it was concerning anyway.
It didn¡¯t matter previously since with 5300 mana he could only cast it for about 4 minutes, a little longer with his regeneration accounted for. He still had all his other magic and spells that require mana too though.
One thing to note was that he was actually weaker with Frostblaze Augmentation than with a fully compressed Icebody Enhancement.
When his mana pool filled up enough to overflow and his mana was compressed till the limit, then Frostblaze Augmentation would be far stronger.
The problem was his tiny mana pool that doesn¡¯t allow him to hold mana that''s compressed anymore than 147% currently.
Unlike Icebody Enhancement where he had time to compress and then circulate, Frostblaze Augmentation directly used the compressed mana in his mana chassis.
So his sustainability of power has dropped drastically but his maximum output is higher. He didn¡¯t think it was a big issue as it was only temporary.
Once he evolved, this problem would be solved and he would get the best of both worlds in terms of sustainability and power output.
He was truly not very talented with the sword if after 5 times his natural potential was increased and he only barely reached level 151 for Flowing Greatsword Mastery.
He could easily see why there were so many weak Master Warriors and all the other Classes. He bet most would evolve with 125 and get a 50% Fortification.
If not then, it was no wonder Master Classers for humans tend to look middle aged already. They must have spent decades pushing their limits.
Elves really have a cheat here just by having a longer lifespan. No wonder only older Elves were considered strong.
In that sense, Elves as a race weren''t all that different from others. They just had the time to grow stronger before they were forced to make a decision whether to evolve or not because their lifespan was running out. Ebony clearly doesn''t have his head on right when he thought that was the reason.
Their power, as with noble lineages, was in their skill refinements, knowledge and higher base natural mana density.
Frost Injection also mutated and evolved.
Frozeblaze Cladding - Clad objects in freezing flames giving it its elemental property. Deals 150% + 2.5% of Intelligence when the target comes into contact with flames.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
The mana cost was roughly 8 or more times that of Frost Injection if he used it for the same period of time and tried to freeze an object of the same size.
It was really hard to gauge how much more mana it consumed since the power output was different. All these high base percentages were likely due to the high consumption of mana.
Tier 2 or not, the base percentage buff was not usually as high as 150% or so he had learned.
Ebony was training more on his control over flames to make it colder and dig deeper and also Frostblaze Augmentation.
He believes he should be able to tip Frostblaze Cladding level over to 150 if he spends more time and mana on training the skill. Unlike skills like Treading Stride which he could somehow feel that it really reached its limits.
It was a weird feeling, apparently, the feeling gets more obvious after evolving. A subconscious knowledge of knowing when one¡¯s skill reached its limits.
He was not very good with Ice Sword even after refining it in his time with Sister Jing. It wasn¡¯t an ultra useful skill in battle anyway.
Ebony still aimed to at least get all his Class, Sub-Class and Profession skills to level 150. With his new Conditioning skill as an exception.
His other Class Skills Ceaseless Onslaught, Layered Ice Carapace and Frost Mist Perception Sphere didn¡¯t look like they have hope of reaching level 200.
His previous Generic Physical and Magical Conditioning also merged into his Class Skill, Calm Swordsman of Frost Conditioning. It felt like a stupid name.
Calm Swordsman of Frost Conditioning (Passive) - Developing your body and mind through combat as a Calm Swordsman of Frost increasing Constitution, Endurance, Agility, Intelligence and Wisdom by 0.01% per level.
The magical part changed from increasing multicast and casting speed to Intelligence and Wisdom, he had no complaints.
The increase was too minuscule to really affect him anyway.
Ebony only learnt from Scarlet that he should find out how to make it a Class Skill. He could understand the logic that it would be an asset in the long run.
Generic Skills were very limited compared to Class Skills.
For his Sub-Class, Ebony had always been better with gravity magic than sound magic.
He was much better at utilising all his Sub-Class skills in combat.
Especially Magnified Gravity Field and Sonic Overlay, he felt like he could control, strengthen, weaken and even direct them very smoothly. Like compressing down increased gravity to a small area or even focusing on a single limb or part of his target to make them off balance even if it was only by a little.
Magnified Gravity Field should change and improve soon, he was no longer just using the natural gravitation wave¡¯s pulling strength to slow his target. His Intelligence was likely finally working in attempts to strengthen the pull strength.
Sonic Overlay wasn¡¯t just increasing the frequency of vibration anymore. He used Mana Vibration, manipulation in a sense to move them in a sawing motion. Sort of organising the movement of vibration to move in one direction as an increased cutting edge.
Ebony only used Battle Song for relaxing jazz, piano pieces or other relaxing meditation music. There was nothing he hadn''t heard that he couldn¡¯t replicate with compressed mana just working on himself, seeping out and in of his body.
Vibrational Gravity Awareness (Passive) - Perceive the movement of mana and gravitational waves in your surroundings. Has the effect of 80% + 2.5% Perception and 130% of Mana Perception.
It had refined once to 20% base Perception and 110% Mana Perception before another round of refinement to reach 30% and 120%. Finally, it recently evolved to Vibrational Gravity Awareness. Within his mental range, he had way better senses than just sight or hearing.
Mana Moulding was pushed to that level from his time with Sister Jing and didn¡¯t budge much.
Ebony tried and tried but he could not compress mana any further and Sheer Mana Compression had been stagnant as well.
As for Mana Perception, he felt like all the perception training for all 3 of his perception skills were helping out a lot. He also thought he was somewhat talented in this area just not as ridiculous as his Core skill meditation.
Reinforced Mana Chassis was easily his favourite Profession skill.
The good thing was that he felt that he could still push the skill for levels. And not few.
He didn¡¯t have much chance to train the skill since he constantly used his mana up before they had the chance to fully compress to the limit. So he had no chance to use the mana bloating method to strengthen his mana chassis.
Another problem was the originally slow levelling speed for the skill but that¡¯s not a very big issue. Even so, he doubted he would get the skill to 200. It didn¡¯t even feel possible.
Profession couldn''t withstand a 250% Fortification anyway.
Camouflage got to its current level from his time of hiding to get here.
Identify was already known to be hard to level. Ebony wasn¡¯t even very good with it. Though there were many other things he could Identify now.
Ebony always thought back to the first time he Identified the Frostblaze Amur Maple Trees.
Why could he glance so much information about it?
He didn¡¯t know anything about it beforehand. Another thing was that somehow he felt like Ful¡¯s story was something he heard before. But then, he read a lot in his pastime and fiction like that was not rare.
It was natural his Cold Resistance, Mental Mapping and Sustained Optimum Conditioning levelled so much. Game Processing as well but there weren''t always bodies of frozen dead monsters for him to eat.
It was kinda weird Inscription was the one levelling instead of Mana Moulding. Ebony ''moulded'' runes on after all.
Slumber Survival Instinct - The subconscious ability of fight or flight is deeply ingrained into every fibre of your body. Your body is 30% + 2.5% better at sensing hostility and danger levels and reacting accordingly for self-preservation without any input from your mind.
Ebony was not sure how exactly this skill came about.
The moment he found out about this skill was when he was busy eating. He had ''suddenly'' realised that he was eating. Then he realised he had this skill.
He was guessing he was fighting whilst asleep. Since he never needed much mental input unless he was casting magic, perhaps he subconsciously fought or ran when he was asleep instead of waking up to fight since he was just too tired.
It was a damn good skill to have that he was afraid of having.
He didn''t want to subconsciously depend on the skill and feel at ease sleeping anywhere. That was dangerous. Ebony made it a note not to feel at ease during his training, lest it bites him in the ass. He wouldn''t want to wake up missing an arm or leg. Or worse, both.
Hunger Resistance was what kept him going for so long with no food supplies left.
Immense Hunger Resistance(Passive) - Extended periods of pushing your body through very heavy exertion in a state of hunger allowed your body to develop a very strong resistance to hunger. 5.0% more resistant to stamina regeneration exhaustion when the body is deprived of sustenance.
It both reduces the feeling of the pangs of hunger and also makes it such that the stamina regeneration reduction he was under was much lower when he no longer had any energy or food in him.
Ebony was already a lot skinnier now. He was heavier though. Mana had mass, with it being compressed in his Reinforced Mana Chassis he would be heavier so his weight tends to be in a wide range.
Sheer Exhaustion Resistance - Extended periods of sheer exhaustion allowed your body to develop a strong resistance to exhaustion and its effects. 2.5% more resistant to exhaustion per level.
Ebony didn''t expect he would be able to gain this. Needless to say, it was a fantastic resistance.
Similar to Hunger Resistance but more useful in general. The exhaustion debuff when active after stamina hits 0 is reduced accordingly. The best part was that it works for both physical and mental exhaustion.
All in all, he was satisfied with his current skills.
Seeing Gen still resting, Ebony meditated to forget his hunger and actively squeezed his overflowing mana into his mana chassis to reinforce it and make it more accustomed to higher compression of mana. Together with all his other magic training routines all at the same time. Including mental range expansion, number of casts, mana compression and all his Perception skills.
It was so hard to meditate and keep his mind calm.
¡®Troublesome indeed. I¡¯m affected when she¡¯s around. I¡¯m affected when she¡¯s not around. Dad was right. Should¡¯ve run while I still could.¡¯
Ebony thought as Everlasting Tranquillity was broken, fixed, broken.
It was good training for him but this time, he didn¡¯t want to train his mental state like that.
His heart couldn¡¯t calm down. He had thought his father had been exaggerating but he clearly wasn''t. Ebony severely underestimated the symptoms of lovesickness.
Chapter 101: Call
Ebony meditated as best he could until he heard movement. He clearly wasn¡¯t very deep in meditation.
He would have opened his eyes, but they were frozen shut with a patch of snow across them for so long that he might have forgotten how to blink.
At the same time, he wasn¡¯t in any rush to rid of his blindfold.
The amount of information sight gives him would really flood his senses at this point.
After all, his mental range of control and perception had more than doubled to almost 70 metres.
The gravitational waves weren¡¯t much of an issue. It was the vibrations. If there were many things going on at the same time within a radius of 70 metres, let¡¯s say hundreds of spells clashing, he would have trouble even keeping track of what was happening.
With the gravitational waves working together it was still possible for him to understand the situation around him so it wasn¡¯t that bad. It only meant his senses and perception weren¡¯t perfected yet.
¡°Morning Gen.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t just greet randomly. He was pretty sure it was morning.
His internal clock has improved enough to tell. He didn¡¯t know the date since he didn¡¯t check the hue of the moon but he could tell when the moon was up or not even underground. It would be embarrassing if he was wrong after his long sleep.
¡°...Mo¡Morning. Ebony. Oh yes¡¡± Gen forced his eyelids apart. The snow across his eyes just slipped off after Gen greeted.
¡°Thanks. For training me as well. It was fruitful.¡±
No light entered Ebony¡¯s eye even when his blindfold was removed. No surprise. Even if you didn¡¯t consider how long his eyes haven¡¯t been exposed to light, his eyes were completely pierced through and filled with holes by Gen¡¯s snow anyway.
Ebony placed two fingers above his eyelid and quickly pushed in and plucked his eyeballs out. Surprisingly less pain than he thought. There was hardly any feeling really, they were completely frozen through together with his nerves for who knows how long already.
It would be faster to regenerate two new ones than to attempt to repair something he had no idea how to.
¡°...Merely helping ourselves¡I will be going into deep meditation soon. It would do you good to ask your whatever you want now.¡± Gen seemed to have had enough of dealing with Ebony.
¡°Sorry for disturbing your rest. I¡¯ll come back at level 300 like Ful suggested. Anyway, I only have a few questions.¡±
¡°...She said that¡¡±
¡°...Can I check out your progeniturtle¡¯s shell¡¯s internal structure? I know that¡¯s a little too rude, if not, can I check yours out?¡±
Gen didn¡¯t even reply in time before a huge shadow came flying at Ebony. It was flying slowly so it wasn¡¯t hard to dodge.
Whatever it was, it was larger than Gen himself.
¡°Go ahead. It might not help as much as you think. That fell off but it already decayed over time.¡± Ful was the one that sent the massive scale over.
How?
Ebony didn¡¯t know or care.
He didn¡¯t want to waste Gen¡¯s time so he quickly touched the scale. It was freezing cold but smooth to the touch.
Ebony gently pushed his mana in but it just slid over the surface. A more forceful approach was necessary. He tried his best but it was useless. The scale¡¯s surface structure was so tight that his mana couldn¡¯t even enter.
That was a first, even metals couldn¡¯t stop Ebony¡¯s mana.
¡°Trying to copy the structure? Well, you can try again when you come back¡That reminds me. You¡¯re a partial mana being, can you control your own structure?¡±
¡°Mmm. In a sense. I can manually regenerate parts of myself so maybe.¡±
¡°Any related skill? About your body and mana.¡±
¡°I guess.¡±
¡°Once. Rue and I were taking a swim, searching for our partner¡¯s favourite underwater glacial caves. We encounter a strong creature. No, a race. Charbie or Charbbu, something like that. They were tough. Sea creatures are generally the toughest but they were on another spectrum all together. They look and shape the same as you so you might want to check them out if you ever go to sea.¡±
¡°Mmm. I¡¯ll remember. Sorry for troubling you with the scale. My other question is just how can I find you guys again?¡±
¡°Exactly how you found us this time. We are hidden for a reason. Haha. A tip, we are in the icy regions when it¡¯s hotter. Anyway, the stronger you get the easier it is to find us. We¡¯ll be able to sense you and let you in when you¡¯re near.¡±
"Alright. One last thing, I was really curious for a long time now. How did I become a partial mana being?"
"..." Silence filled the underground dome.
"You''re asking us?" Gen replied for both of them.
"Mmm. When I just got my physique I just trusted what it said about me melding my mana into my body but if that was all it took to become a mana being every enhancement magic user would become one and that didn''t make much sense to me when I found out." He had been thinking about this for a long time but only wanted to bring forth the question to Gen since he would be the clearest on his physique. Now that he found out that the progeniturtle''s tree spirit wasn''t dead either, he just had to bring the question up.
"Rue was well read, it''s a vague...''instinct'' but if I''m not wrong no amount of usage of enhancement magic of any type would turn one into a mana being, partial or not. More often than not, a good enhancement mage would attain a physique sooner or later. It should be the same for warriors after a certain stage. But a mana being is fundamentally different, enhancement magic strengthens the body with mana and your body on the other hand is made of mana. I can tell you that my sap has no such properties or effect, I would''ve been cut down from Rue by some random guy that our father cannot stand up against long ago if my sap could turn people into mana beings." Ful explained.
Gen was listening in as well, he was not aware of this and just randomly accepted what Ebony said previously. As for Ful, she didn''t bother bringing it up since she thought it was Ebony''s inherent racial trait.
"So what are mana beings? How do they come about? Any idea what would turn someone into something made of mana?" He remembered Ful saying that the Life Grafter modified a dragon to have part of its body to be made of mana.
"That''s a question even our father would not be able to answer properly, except maybe the last question. I''m not too clear on this but I''m pretty sure that the only reason he was able to change our youngest sibling at that time was due to it already having the inherent properties of a mana being. I had imagined that was the case for you when you explained your physique to Gen."
¡°Alright. Thanks. That¡¯s really all for now. I¡¯ll be back.¡± Ebony had the same stone-faced expression as usual despite what he just heard.
Ebony could feel Gen¡¯s lazy gaze but it was full of pressure. Gen can¡¯t wait till Ebony get the hell out so that it could rest well.
Gen had to personally let him out of the blizzard as he was the only one who could control it. He literally tossed Ebony out with a single ¡°Take care.¡± before quickly disappearing underground again.
Ebony could feel the snow on his feet. Courtesy of Gen to bring him back out to this region. Probably the Chilly region and not the Icy one.
¡®...Which way''s which?¡¯
He hadn''t recovered his sight and had no idea which direction was eastwards, away from Hoarfrost Glade and back through Bubble Hills.
He didn¡¯t expect to feel his myriad bracelet or rather, his callstone to ¡®ping¡¯ right after he exited the blizzard that was quickly disappearing into the distance.
Getting a call was completely out of his expectations and the timing was a little perfect too. There were only so many people that could contact him so he just used his mana to accept the connection.
¡°OHH YESSS! Y..you fi¡fibally bi..bi..bi..bicked up! Youu¡¯ree aaabbriivvvee!¡±
Hector¡¯s annoying voice came over. Ebony would¡¯ve preferred anyone else with his contact but it was better than no call.
¡°Mmm. Alive alive.¡± Ebony answered into his wrist noncommittally.
¡°Then hubbrry the ell up and SAABBUU MEEEE!¡± Hector was as energetic as ever even when he couldn¡¯t speak properly.
¡°What¡¯s wrong? Keep talking, I¡¯ll try to follow the mana vibrations to you.¡± Ebony already started moving towards where mana vibrations of sounds were coming from.
He wasn¡¯t able to sense the mental link but the vibrations were obvious to his Vibrational Gravity Sense.
¡°I¡th..the Green habentt rran out. No..mott farr.¡± It was not hard to gauge distance based on the mana consumption of one¡¯s callstone, the amount they have linked up and then calculating how long the call could last.
A Green or Uncommon ranked mana ore has up to 10,000 mana. Using 0.1MP/km/s, they would be able to connect for 1 second if the distance was 100,000km or using their measurement was 20 Gurs.
Ebony didn¡¯t know how mana efficient Hector¡¯s callstone was but, it shouldn¡¯t be any better. They had been connected for a couple of seconds and Hector was still mumbling about how hard the past years had been on him.
His shivering voice told Ebony enough. Hector was in Hoarfrost Glade as well.
Ebony was only bubbling away all his mana regeneration into Frostblaze Augmentation. It was a weak enhancement but he needed it to even move and carry his burdensome equipment.
358MP/min divided by the 1125 MP/min times 100% would mean that Ebony was running the skill at roughly 31.8% of its maximum effectiveness or output.
He still regenerated normal density mana. A completely uncompressed Frostblaze Augmentation was weaker than his fully compressed Icebody Enhancement. Even considering the tier 2 and much higher base increase in buff.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
No wonder he could easily overpower some Master ranked people. Even Hector, the enhancement mage likely doesn¡¯t do something like compressing enhancement magic. At least definitely not to the extent that Ebony does.
Due to the nature of Frostblaze Augmentation and how instantaneous it consumes his mana, he hasn¡¯t found out how to compress it. The only way was to have a full mana pool. Compressed. Meaning his limit was 147% compressed Frostblaze Augmentation.
Previously, his limit of 40% of his maximum was way more than 147%. Since that was according to his Sheer Mana Compression level together with his Fortification. Now it depended on his Reinforced Mana Chassis.
Altogether, for a short period of time, while his mana pool lasts, he was stronger with a lesser compressed Frostblaze Augmentation than his very compressed Icebody Enhancement. Not to mention the Agility buff.
???
Hector was freezing his ass off here in search of Ebony.
He was no mana being and he wasn¡¯t Ebony. He couldn¡¯t spare so much mana to warm himself up with his fire body enhancement. There were too many dangers around where he needed all the mana he had.
Hector ran away from home. The call back home was suddenly cancelled the moment he reached Tidal. Since he was already there he trained and refined his skills.
Having got bored of that after a few years and also reaching what he thought was his best, he ran off. The Troll threat was no longer breathing down on Elva.
¡®Running off¡¯ might not be very accurate since he had the excuse that he was off to get Natural Potential from Ordina.
No one chased him except Wel who followed in secret. Hector knew it was only a secret to others.
Ordina should have strengthened or rather, recovered a bit but there should still be some years before it is of average strength or fully recovered. It usually takes a decade or two but with overcrowding and many deaths perhaps it was recovering faster than expected.
From there, the dungeon starts growing.
Hector had the adventure of a lifetime just hopping from one expedition to an escort party to solo travel. Or so he hoped for.
The overbearing older cousin of his just had to catch him in the middle of his nighttime escape and follow him.
The only good thing about that was that she was the best goddamn support any party could have. Her personality to anyone else was okay. More than okay, most people liked being around her. To Hector, she was the devil in human skin.
Even in this forsaken snowy forest, she was just complaining and blaming Hector for bringing her here when she was the one who forced herself onto him.
Hector tried to contact Ebony and Scarlet every once in a while as he travelled somewhat leisurely. Ryley was dead. It was too bad. He was beginning to be less unbearable before he died.
Tuffock¡
Hector actually didn¡¯t remove his contact. There was no word from him though.
As for getting traced, that was the last thing on Hector¡¯s mind.
The results were not positive.
Hector¡¯s callstone doesn¡¯t even react when he tried to link to Scarlet. She was out of range or in a dungeon.
Out of range? For Hector that was pretty much ruled out after he travelled around a little. He assumed she was in a dungeon.
Once he got to Trailane Plains, he felt his callstone working as it tried to connect to Ebony. It was weird, he felt his callstone start the linkage but it snaps off after some time.
Hector tried again and again.
Mental magic was one of his lesser talents but sensing the direction his callstone was attempting to go was simple enough.
Besides, so close to Hoarfrost Glade, Hector would be dumb not to guess where the cold man was.
He was intrigued about diving into Hoarfrost Glade too but even he wasn¡¯t going to go in unprepared.
His overbearing cousin just scoffed, completely unbothered that 2 Journeymen with maybe some hidden bodyguards were going into one of the most dangerous places on Elva.
The only real preparation was extremely warm clothing as they have everything one would need in most environments. Fortunately, Plainston was pretty advanced in terms of warm clothing even before they expanded. They were the closest to Hoarfrost Glade and sometimes, low-level crafts were better because they were more specialised.
The cousin of his had her own winter wear and only window shopped but nothing caught her eye. So he was the only one getting many sets of warm clothing. He had to admit the clothes here were nothing fancy.
Hector brought his cousin along into Hoarfrost Glade. He kept trying to contact Ebony but the link kept getting cut off somehow.
If Ebony was in a dungeon the mental link wouldn¡¯t even start-up or it would go all over the place only to fail so where the heck was he?
Was the mana density so high wherever he was that the mental link was disrupted and broken off? That shouldn¡¯t be with his callstone. There should be some kind of interference.
Months and months they went deeper and deeper.
Hector thought that he was lucky that it was around the end of spring when they entered. It was summer in the bulk of their early exploration.
It was very cold but with their skin-tight innerwear that traps body warmth, his armour and then all the thick furry clothing he got kept him warm.
Hector wasn¡¯t with the crazies. At best, he was walking fast to cover the distance, his cousin wasn¡¯t much of a physical classer either. Even if he wasn¡¯t with his cousin he needed his stamina to fight off any dangers. Ebony was just a madman and Scarlet probably thought that Ebony¡¯s speed was just a slow jog.
Hoarfrost Glade was weird. It was always said to be extremely dangerous but the forest was dastardly quiet most of the time. It succeeded in creeping Hector out but, more importantly, it bored him out.
It was true that any random monster here was roughly the same as an elite monster out of Hoarfrost Glade but they were nothing too special.
The only noteworthy point was that most of them had pretty impressive magical prowess.
Then summer ended.
The Glades awoke.
Hector couldn¡¯t beat the daylights out of any monster his level with a single punch. That had been interesting.
More monsters and friendly-looking animals showed themselves. They were smart. Not all attacked Hector and his cousin. Those that did were all tough fights. Some were just lazying about as if still in hibernation and had no intent to hunt.
They didn¡¯t act like the monsters he knew.
Hector had fun.
Till winter came.
Their supplies and mana ores used to keep them warm and alive were starting to run out a few days into winter. They went a lot deeper than even an average level 200 or 250 Master may not dare come. Even if the level 200 had their equipment and supplies. They probably wouldn¡¯t unless they were so rich they didn¡¯t have to work for a century.
Getting constant complaints about being brought on a wild goose chase to this forsaken place wasn¡¯t helping but he couldn¡¯t complain after the numerous times he was saved.
Fighting with half his body under the snow was not for humans.
They had to turn back immediately. Even his cousin couldn¡¯t keep him unharmed any longer. The same monster at the same level had an immense increase in stats all round.
Hard to spot. Hard to kill. Hard to evade. Hard to escape.
The Glades have truly woken up. Dangers too numerous to count.
The perfect image that his cousin had managed to keep up was starting to fall as well. They could rest well at night thanks to her but not anymore.
The weather and environment were enough to kill them off with time. The mana density is high enough to cause dizziness and headaches to a strong level 200 mage with high Wisdom if they had never been exposed to high-density mana.
To Hector and his cousin, those were the least of their problems. High-density mana could easily be trained to be accustomed to. They had the proper training too but those were hardly enough here.
¡°Hect! No way a Journeyman is any deeper. Even if he was as amazing as you say. He might have an advantage as an ice mage but that¡¯s all.¡±
¡°He¡¯s in there.¡± The shivering Hector was so sure that he managed to speak without a stutter.
¡°Alive? What if his bracelet and callstone are inside some random beast?¡±
¡°...He¡¯ll break out if that happens.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s assume he is. We can¡¯t stay here anymore. Let¡¯s go.¡± Hector¡¯s cousin turned around and left.
Hector followed after a moment of hesitation. He was not desperate to look for Ebony but he would be lying if he said he wasn¡¯t worried.
He continued trying to contact Ebony as they doubled back out before they ran out of supplies. It didn¡¯t take that much mana if he didn¡¯t actually connect the call.
It didn¡¯t even take long before they were surrounded.
Everything here required Hector to have at least 4 of his elemental enhancements on. With his cousin watching his back, they were doing well against a few level 140+ creatures. In the past.
Now, Hector was scared of any random movement or sound.
Every battle seemed to attract other creatures and it was always a mess with all sorts of monsters, big and small tearing each other apart.
They ran.
They were chased.
They couldn¡¯t keep it up for long and the hungry and active Glade were unrelenting. They would usually fight back but Hector couldn¡¯t copy Ebony and charge into an endless horde. With large numbers, all they could do was run while they still had the strength to do so.
Pathetically hiding in his cousin¡¯s last resort. A small barrier they had to snuggle uncomfortably close to each other to conserve its mana and not weaken it by expanding its size.
Honestly, neither of them was that worried for their lives.
His cousin coldly glared at him because it was all his fault that they were in this situation but she was the one who followed so there was little she could say.
Hector himself was freezing up as he didn¡¯t have clothes as warm as hers. His mana already ran out and he couldn¡¯t even warm himself up.
It was a habit to constantly try to contact Ebony. He didn¡¯t expect Ebony to actually pick up after so long.
Ebony¡¯s irritatingly calm voice that probably wouldn¡¯t change even if the world exploded irked him a little. It sounded dismissive and Hector almost regretted worrying about him and coming all the way out here.
Hector cried out all the frustrations that built up over the months.
His cousin rolled her eyes before she concentrated on sustaining the barrier that was slowly being broken by a few persistent [Frost Mane Lvl 164]s. It was low level in these parts, precisely why they were preying on them.
Their surroundings had other territorial wars, fortunately ignoring the horses that were trying to kick the barrier down.
The barrier cracked a few times and she was doing her best to repair it with her diminishing mana pool.
Then Hector saw a speeding figure.
The figure was glowing light blue. He had a cloth wrapped around his eyes, it looked more like a torn sleeve. The signature massive greatsword, massive for a human, and coat that had the same colour scheme of dark blue.
The glowing light seemed to bubble. Then he burst into blue flames.
They watched as a few creatures scattered and ran off. The rest clambered to get a bite of the figure. Once again, ever the monster magnet. Hector made some sense of it after finding out that Ebony was partially a mana being.
His mana with vitality and body with mana made him a really delicious target and easy to digest his essence. High-quality food.
The man who was burning alive danced.
A single swing of his massive sword separated heads from bodies. Numbers never meant anything to the man.
His greatsword glowed under the flames too. It was hard to see what was under the flames.
Nothing was spared.
The two of them watched the creatures of snow and ice freeze up into headless statues after the fires went out.
Hector¡¯s cousin poked his unarmoured side hard.
¡°Ouch! Wa..what was th..that bor?¡± Hector¡¯s heated complaining session made him shiver less.
¡°You never said he was a dashing man.¡± His cousin started straightening her dress and dusted snow and frost out of her hair. She was actually still pretty spotless from the mess, always taking care of her appearance.
¡°?? I¡¯m pretty sure I did.¡± Hector went on and on about Ebony.
There was no way he didn¡¯t mention it. Ebony wasn¡¯t exactly handsome but he had a good face and was really cool. Especially his nonchalance. Hector didn¡¯t think or want to copy but there were some things he could learn from to look cool other than noting down impressive-sounding lines and phrases.
Ebony walked over as the flames on his body died down and he sheathed his greatsword. He was still glowing under his skin. No longer the icy body, his skill probably changed or it was a different enhancement skill.
¡°Eboonnyy!¡± Hector rushed to hug the blindfolded man right after the barrier was down.
A freezing cold palm met his face as he was stopped from getting any closer. Hector gripped his face and quickly warmed himself up with the little mana he recovered.
¡°Nice to see you too, Hector.¡± Ebony high fived Hector as a tet and greeting instead.
Chapter 102: Surgery & Summoning Sandwich
¡°What happened? Why have you come into Hoarfrost Glade?¡± Ebony asked.
There was another person beside Hector, it should be a woman but Ebony could tell it was not Scarlet. He tetted with his right hand without much thought. She also received it as if it was natural.
¡°First off, do you have anything that can warm us up?¡± Hector was hopping on his feet and rubbing his arms with his hands.
Ebony slid his bag under his robe and took some paper out without taking off his robe. He practised a lot to be able to do it without fumbling around.
Taking them between his thumb and index finger, he mana moulded the same rune he had made many times one by one. Passing them to Hector and the other person.
They were a little surprised but didn¡¯t ask. Hector just took it and stuffed them under his furred clothing that had some cuts here and there.
¡°Do you have any food?¡± Ebony asked in exchange.
¡°Not much but yeah, we can spare some food,¡± Hector said that but he was generous with the rations he took out.
Ebony gobbled them up and stuffed his face full. Finishing what he was given in no time. He didn¡¯t even know what he was eating as he couldn¡¯t taste them.
Only then did Hector realise the sunken face of Ebony. He couldn¡¯t tell with the robe on but Ebony got a lot skinner.
¡°Where were you? How long have you been here?¡± Hector asked. He was immensely curious about where Ebony was that interfered with his callstone¡¯s connection.
¡°A little deeper in. What date is it today?¡± Ebony answered before putting a water ore into his mouth to drink. If he had poured it out, the water would freeze before he could drink it. He had to be careful not to swallow it though.
¡°Date? Err¡¡± Hector didn¡¯t really keep track.
¡°Third day of the tenth month.¡± An unfamiliar voice entered Ebony¡¯s ears. It was a soft voice, not very high pitched but it had a cutesy tone in it. Should be a woman after all.
¡°Year?¡±
¡°...5536.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve been here for about 21 and a half months or so.¡± Mental Arithmetic worked pretty fast. It wasn¡¯t a complicated calculation anyway.
It took him more than 2 months to even find Gen so roughly 19 months was spent in intense training.
That was longer than he thought. A lot longer. His gains didn''t seem less impressive though.
¡°What happened to your eyes?¡± Hector asked. They were walking back, away from Hoarfrost Glade.
¡°Frozen. I dug them out.¡±
¡°What!¡± The lady voiced out. Hector was just as stunned.
¡°Stop! I¡¯ll see what I can do.¡±
¡°You are?¡± Ebony stopped walking as she asked.
¡°Mallory. You can just call me Mally or even just Mal. Sit down and remove your blindfold.¡± Mallory introduced and commanded. The soft voice didn¡¯t share the same soft tone.
Ebony conjured his seat with finesse.
¡°Mal is my cousin. She¡¯s a very good healer.¡±
¡°I see.¡± Ebony somewhat expected as much after she said she¡¯ll see what she can do. Weird, he didn¡¯t think healers can regenerate a whole body part.
Ebony removed his blindfold which he used one of his torn sleeves for. He recalled the state his eyes were in and didn¡¯t want to scare Hector so he put it on before he arrived. Hector was only less than half an hour away.
He stopped casting his enhancement just in case it was hindering the healer¡¯s work.
Mallory had seen many injuries. Frozen flesh was nothing new.
She was a little stunned at the state of Ebony¡¯s eyes. The fact that he dug his own eyes out was shocking enough. Ebony¡¯s flesh wasn¡¯t frozen, the white marks across his face was like something pierced into it. It had to be removed if he wanted to heal.
They were too deep. She would have to cut his face off and his skull may be affected too and she didn¡¯t know how to go about healing all that.
Mallory was silent for a long while as she considered how she was going to go about treating Ebony. She couldn¡¯t do anything about his eyes as he said he tossed them away.
¡°It¡¯s okay. Go ahead and cut out all the affected areas.¡± Ebony responded in his usual flat tone. He was wondering why his healing was so slow. He couldn¡¯t remove Gen¡¯s snow with his manipulation. Cutting his own face off wasn¡¯t easy.
¡°...What?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry. I can heal as long as you cut it off.¡±
¡°I can heal and regenerate your flesh but not your bone.¡±
¡°I¡¯m partly mana, I can regenerate myself. My eyes too.¡±
¡°...Interesting. I¡¯ve never even met a mana being, much less heal one.¡± Shivers went down Hector¡¯s back when he saw the smile on Mallory¡¯s face.
Mallory gave a potion to Ebony. It was a pain reliever of sorts. Ebony drank it without asking questions.
Then he felt something touch the bridge of his nose.
He couldn¡¯t sense the gravitational waves of whatever it was but, he could feel the foreign mana. It was weird that he didn¡¯t feel much when the thin sharp thing cut into his nose and deep into his face then zigzagged around. Coming out around his forehead. He felt a portion of his face get removed. Like a triangular slice of cake.
¡®This lady is an experienced surgeon.¡¯
Mallory only had such ease because Ebony already used up most of his mana in his mana pool and he didn¡¯t have any enhancement cast.
There was a warm feeling around his face, Mallory was probably keeping him alive with some magic. No blood was dripping even though he didn¡¯t freeze it.
¡°You¡¯re lucky it didn¡¯t touch your brain.¡± Mallory wasn¡¯t disgusted by what she saw and did.
¡°I was in good hands.¡± Ebony was sure Gen was skilful enough.
???
¡°I was in good hands.¡± Hect¡¯s friend flatly said.
Mallory was stunned but her healing magic didn¡¯t stop.
¡®He..he has so much faith in a stranger? What a weird man. Is it his trust in Hect?¡¯ Mallory didn¡¯t expect a person she just met to have so much trust in her skills after Hect said she was ¡®a very good healer¡¯. She could kill him at any time right now, having come so close to his brain.
She already set up a barrier before they started so that she could heal in peace.
It was odd, his Constitution as a mana being made her healing magic very ineffective. His skull, flesh, fat and skin were all healing visibly fast but she knew it was not completely her efforts.
¡°Are you consciously regenerating yourself?¡± Mallory had to ask.
¡°I can¡¯t speed it up, I can only guide the healing process or affect which to heal first. I felt a warmth and assumed it was your healing magic so I used that as a guide to know what to heal first.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°...I see.¡±
It was just hours where Hector the little wuss didn¡¯t even dare see her cutting his friend¡¯s face apart. Mallory was low on mana to begin with and she was unfamiliar with the make up of his body so it took some time. His own healing and regenerative properties helped a lot.
His face was back on without so much as a scratch.
A miraculous sight even for her, the healer. The man¡¯s eye was slowly forming. He admitted not knowing how to reconstruct it perfectly but he was oddly familiar with creating a copy made of ice.
Mallory¡¯s knowledge of the human body was greater than any other her age. She was a little surprised that Hector¡¯s friend knew what she was talking about when she guided him into what he should focus on reconstructing first. Although it was clear he wasn¡¯t an expert, he got the gist of what she was saying.
Lo and behold.
In just a few hours, a good looking but cold face was staring at her with a pair of dark pupils and irises.
Mallory wouldn¡¯t exactly say he was very handsome but he had good features. His eyes and expression were so cold. Colder than his low body temperature. He had long and messy hair that was white with snow but it made him look a little wild.
He was strong too. Very strong.
He fought blind, he must have good perception skills.
He moved fast, with a minimum of tier 2 movement skill. One that¡¯s unfamiliar.
Clearly a journeyman like her but taking the Glades as his own backyard.
Unlike many patients she handled, this was a real man.
Hect, the wuss couldn¡¯t even look while this man just made a throne, sat there and got her to cut his face out without a change in expression.
¡®He was only a bit younger than Hect right? There¡¯s merit to being in his good books.¡¯
???
Ebony didn¡¯t think he would recover his eyes so soon. His sight wasn¡¯t completely back yet. He was adjusting to light again.
¡°Thanks, Mallory.¡± Ebony could still make out Mallory¡¯s figure.
She was around 1.66m tall, shorter than him by quite a bit. Her slightly longer than shoulder-length hair was the same pink as Hector¡¯s and left untied. She wore a pure white dress that reached her ankles, showing the boots under. Their clothing was lined with fur while Hector was shivering, she looked unbothered by the cold.
Ebony might have gentle and light movements but the sole of his boots were thinned out so much he could feel the ground already. His robe wasn''t damaged but many sets of his clothes that he wore under the robe were.
Like Hector, she didn¡¯t carry any weapon. Ebony could only see a small bag similar to Hector¡¯s. Maybe they really didn¡¯t have spatial rings here.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Neither look like they were stuck in a dangerous forest for months but Ebony wasn¡¯t one to say.
His eyesight was still slowly coming back but he could Identify her now.
[Healer Lvl 100]
¡°It was nothing. I would like to observe and investigate your body if you get any injuries in exchange.¡± She had already studied the part of his face that she cut out but whatever he was hit by completely destroyed its worth for her to study.
¡°Any time.¡±
¡°So why are you here Hector?¡±
¡°What do you mean why? To look for you. We said we were gonna clear Ordina.¡±
¡°Mmm. Have you contacted her?¡±
¡°Scarlet? I couldn¡¯t reach her. I have no idea where she is.¡±
¡°...I saw her in Ailbury before I came here.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t that one of the towns in Trailane Plains? It''s been what? 21 months? She¡¯s probably not there anymore.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± Ebony stood up and got ready to leave. He noticed his skin glowing when he cast Frostblaze Augmentation. It was just a light glow as if he reflected blue light.
So burning a small portion of mana underneath his skin doesn¡¯t put him aflame. That was good. Glowing was still a little eye-catching but not as bad as being on fire.
¡°Wait, it¡¯s getting dark already. Let¡¯s rest for the night. You look¡exhausted.¡±
¡°No time like the present. You can sleep, I¡¯ll carry you. Mallo..¡± Ebony wanted to get out of here already. He was cut off before he could finish talking.
¡°I can handle myself,¡± Mallory said with confidence. She took a step onto where Ebony sensed the same mana that was used to cut his face. Then she floated. Standing on her own mana. Flying.
Ebony just grabbed Hector¡¯s collar and started running.
The cold winds didn¡¯t bother him and Mallory but Hector was sneezing.
¡®She still had mana?¡¯ Ebony thought she was taking the healing slowly with a gentle flow of mana because she had little mana.
Whatever invisible magic she was using to fly should require mana too. This cousin of Hector was pretty impressive indeed.
Healers are highly likely to have been taught by the Life Queen, especially one so skilled.
Ebony was interested enough to ask. Her speed was roughly the same as Ebony if Frostblaze Augmentation didn¡¯t increase his Agility.
She had a pretty good perception to move at such speeds in the dark winter night.
Too bad she stopped after just half an hour. She was acting tough after all.
He cast an uncompressed Layered Ice Carapace and made them share one so that he wasn¡¯t slowed down. Locking Hector who was already asleep onto it.
Mallory didn¡¯t complain or even ask before sitting down. Moving to the edge at the tip of the shield where she let her legs hang before crossing them. Her sitting posture was straight as she looked down upon the frozen forest and tucked her hair behind her ears.
¡®Does she have something for posing?¡¯ Ebony thought that this Mallory girl tried too hard to be all prim, proper and intimidating at all times.
Well¡she certainly was succeeding at doing so. She seems so natural with it that she probably did it without thought. It was, what¡¯s the word¡swagger.
Of course, he didn¡¯t know that she was influenced by the swagger he showed her by bringing a throne out.
Creatures of Hoarfrost Glade were more active on winter nights than they were in the day but it wasn¡¯t as if the place was infested with monsters.
Ebony got away without anything blocking his path. He already mapped most of these parts and recognised the area after a few more noticeably different landmarks showed up. Trees and rocks, those that were damaged in certain ways.
Halfway into the night, Mallory had kept the same posture but had her eyes closed and was probably asleep when something large burst out from the snow to their right.
It had timed itself really well as Ebony was moving at such high speeds but it still managed to leap to him. It was pretty awkward of it to start its attack from so far away but any closer and he had a high chance of sensing it anyway.
It was a large lizard that should be able to swallow Ebony whole.
[Snow Crawler Lvl ???]
¡®They get that big?¡¯ Ebony remembered the lizard-like snake that burst out from under the snow and tried to strangle his arm.
As with most creatures here, it was faster and stronger than him but he didn¡¯t even draw Icicle out to fend the threat off.
Because it was stopped in mid-air as it slammed into something hard and got tossed away. Ebony just ignored it and carried on running. The crawler didn¡¯t seem to be chasing.
¡°Should I be saying thank you, princess?¡± Ebony said without looking but at the lady who swiped her gloved fingers at where the solidified mana popped up to block the crawler. Healing magic and probably barrier magic.
¡°Superfluous. Merely an exchange of services. Can¡¯t let my ride be interrupted can I?¡± Mallory Lord, princess of the Empire, didn''t deny Ebony¡¯s accusations.
¡°...That guy.¡± Ebony glanced at the sleeping Hector who seemed too comfortable.
¡°He¡¯s a prince?¡± Ebony continued.
¡°I¡¯m ashamed to say so,¡± Mallory replied, she still had her eyes closed.
¡°I¡¯m ashamed to hear that.¡± Ebony commented.
Hector snored loudly.
Their conversation was cut as Mallory probably fell asleep.
Ebony spent a lot of time exploring. If he were to just take a straight path out it would take a fraction of the time it took to get here. His explosive increase in Agility from enhancement magic was just icing on the cake.
By daylight, he estimated that he already covered a quarter of the distance. Elva was now smaller than he imagined.
Mallory fluttered her eyes open. Standing on the moving shield, tossing Hector¡¯s feet aside to make space to put her bag down. She busied herself before something flew to Ebony ahead of her.
It was a cup, enclosed in a cuboid barrier so that nothing spilt.
Hot black tea.
¡°Thanks.¡± Ebony took it as the barrier disappeared and drank it as slowly as he could to savour it. It was not easy while running, even if his Treading Stride was gentle.
Then some dry rations were similarly sent to him in silence.
???
¡®He ran like that for the entire night? His enhancement skill is still on and he hasn¡¯t even gotten out of breath.
Meditative or not, that''s¡
In any case, at such speeds, he already crossed a distance that took us weeks. We¡¯ll be out in a day or two if he can really keep this up.
Hect wasn¡¯t lying about his limitless stamina and mana.
Looks like I¡¯ll have to give the Eclipse guards a bonus for the extra work. We haven¡¯t reached anywhere really dangerous and they haven¡¯t done any work so perhaps not. Yeah, a workout for them.¡¯
One of the Eclipse members sneezed as they followed their princess and prince while staying hidden. They didn¡¯t have the resources and equipment their lieges had. Relying on their own body and strength to keep warm as they chased the unknown man through the night.
The most stressful months of their life.
Two of the young royal members decided to go into one of the most dangerous areas of the continent and they even had a superior who was guarding the prince follow them.
They couldn¡¯t be more glad that their lieges decided to leave before winter hits because they would have trouble keeping themselves alive in the cold without supplies. Freezing to death hungry didn¡¯t sound nice.
Only their high pay encouraged them to push on.
???
Ebony was having an easy time despite still starving and his body aching badly.
Mallory just slapped anything that came close aside with her barriers. Whatever was persistent enough to chase was encased and holes would appear all over their body. Anyone without decent perception would only see the monster knocking on air and their blood spewing out yet not falling on the ground and huge perforations throughout their body.
Bubble Hills was right in front of them 2 full days later.
Ebony brought them to Ailbury just as the town¡¯s gate opened as it was the 6th hour.
Mallory dragged Hector to find an inn to get some real rest and also wash up.
He didn¡¯t follow, just asking if they could get a room for him too.
He was hungry, dirty and weary.
That can wait.
He walked slowly to where he last saw Scarlet.
A street stall that sold fish.
It wasn¡¯t open yet, but the stall owner was already preparing for the early risers and miners who were going to work or coming back.
Ebony stood there and waited.
The stall owner was surprised someone waiting for his food so early.
¡°Young man, you¡¯re early! Here for some of my fish?¡±
¡°...Sure.¡± Ebony was very hungry anyway. He just wanted to stand here for a short while before going to the inn to sleep but food first also worked.
¡°Give me 10 minutes. What would you like? I have roasted spiced fish, fish soup to give you energy for the day and a fried fish patty sandwich which you can take to go. The sandwich is only good for a few hours so I would recommend eating it while it¡¯s hot.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll have one of each. Extra spicy for the roasted one.¡± Ebony wanted to see if he could still taste strong flavours.
¡°Coming right up! You can sit on that chair while you wait. It¡¯s where I sit when I take breaks.¡± The stall owner was pretty cheery that his business started so early.
People usually stand and eat but he wasn¡¯t using his chair now so there was no issue letting the blue skin man who was releasing a chilly air sit on his chair.
He quickly scooped a bowl of soup once it bubbled and handed it to his first customer of the day together with a wooden spoon.
Ebony didn¡¯t care for the heat and got right into drinking and eating.
¡°Have you always been running this stall?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know why he started a conversation.
¡°For decades now. I didn¡¯t want to rent and am saving to open my very own restaurant.¡± The stall owner was mostly focusing on the roasted fish but having a conversation while cooking was what a street stall owner picks up sooner or later.
Opening their very own restaurant was a common goal of most if not all stall owners.
¡°Do you remember seeing a masked lady more than a year ago?¡± Ebony asked without hoping for much. Any clue was better than nothing.
¡°OH! How can I forget!? I bragged about the Xeng standing in front of my stall to all my friends and family. Just standing before her made me sweat buckets from her burning presence and overflowing essence. I didn¡¯t believe she was just a journeyman when I never felt such a strong presence even from the Master fighters.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t like it when they called her a Xeng but then that was what all of them referred to her as.
¡°Do you remember if she said anything? Or if she¡¯s still around town.¡± Ebony asked even when he doubted Scarlet would tell a stall owner anything. It also didn¡¯t sound like she was still in town from what he said about the bragging.
¡°She didn¡¯t say anything to me but I can¡¯t forget how she just disappeared into thin air!¡± The stall owner passed the piping hot fish with red sauce on a large leaf as he took the empty bowl from Ebony. There was still a plate under the leaf so Ebony wouldn¡¯t burn himself from holding it.
¡°...can you be more specific?¡± ¡®Disappear into thin air¡¯ was very concerning.
¡°One moment she was standing right there and the next moment she sank into the ground. Haha, I was actually busy tending to my fish so I didn¡¯t see clearly. I might just be imagining things.¡±
Scarlet was fast, the stall owner was distracted or rather, focused on his own cooking. It wouldn¡¯t be weird if she just walked away while he wasn¡¯t looking.
It was just a little specific that he said she sank into the ground. Scarlet had no such skill as far as he knew.
Ebony gobbled the fish up quickly and stood up to return the plate as he took the paper-warped sandwich.
Walking over a few steps to where the stall owner pointed.
¡°She sank into the ground here?¡± Ebony pointed at the unassuming stone street, no different from anywhere else. Taking large bites into the still tasteless sandwich.
¡°Yeah, I didn¡¯t really see what happened though so I could be wrong.¡± The stall owner was starting to second guess himself.
Ebony wasn¡¯t so intimidating when all his regenerated mana was used up. The stall owner honestly didn¡¯t care to Identify every single one of his customers. All he needed to know was that they were customers that could pay for the food and hopefully enjoy it enough to come again.
Ebony squatted down and touched the floor for absolutely no reason. It was cold hard ground. Nothing suspicious.
¡°Get outta the way!¡± He realised the street was getting crowded with pickaxe carrying Dwarves, Humans and Beastman alike.
He was kinda in the way of the stall owner¡¯s business by squatting right in front of the small stall front. But he didn¡¯t expect them to just push him aside. He was caught off guard and it pushed the half-eaten sandwich out of his hands, dropping it onto the ground.
¡®Hmm?¡¯ Ebony was already really close to the ground and didn¡¯t catch the sandwich before it landed but then the sandwich dipped into the ground. Where it landed was a red puddle.
He started to step back as the red puddle grew larger. The miners around were obviously alarmed as well and backed off quite a bit.
The stall owner didn¡¯t react much except warily stare at the red puddle. Hoping it was nothing that would harm his little stall.
The red puddle didn¡¯t expand much before something was coming out from it. A hand. Grabbing onto his half-eaten sandwich that was covered in the red liquid. Ebony was very familiar with the metallic smell of blood.
Another hand held the floor at the edge of the puddle and the bloody figure slowly rose.
¡®This fish sandwich is a summoning material?¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t rule out the possibility that the stall owner was not what he appeared to be.
The blood didn¡¯t stick onto whatever is climbing out. It slid off the figure to reveal red again but brighter. Then a familiar white mask showed itself. The white continued showing as the blood slid off slowly.
When he saw white continue past her neck he quickly unlatched Icicle and took his robe off. Smoothly putting it over the figure and wrapping her up.
Staring the miners off and scaring them by decasting Frostblaze Augmentation and letting his mana overflow.
¡°Get me all of your fish sandwiches.¡± Ebony made an order for the legendary summoning sandwich.
Chapter 103: Change of pace
Ebony failed to buy all the sandwiches as the stall owner has quite a few regulars that he wanted to sell to. If kept dry in a container, they were a good snack to many miners.
The stall owner¡¯s business was not very consistent as miners don¡¯t come in and out of town daily. Depending on the individual miner¡¯s personal schedule, they could stay there anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks. Maybe more if they go deep.
It had taken a long time to build up the number of regulars he had so that he had a constant flow of customers. He would not exchange the little bit of dissatisfaction from his regulars just for a little bit of Blacks and Greys.
Ebony also wasn¡¯t so patient to wait for after he prepared the portion for his regulars. He made do with ten sandwiches. Five spicy and five salty.
As he waited for the sandwiches, the blood that was falling off dramatically slowly already reached the puddle that was starting to close up and disappear.
Scarlet was clearly awake earlier and saw him but she closed her eyes right after he wrapped her up. She was asleep.
Her clothes were in tatters and she was barefooted. Her already waterfall-like hair was even longer and was touching the ground already. There was muck, grime and mostly dried blood all over her body.
No one stopped Ebony from carrying her away with a bag of sandwiches. He was hardly bothered by the dirt when he was covered in dirt too. Though the smell was much stronger, for some reason, it smelt almost sweet.
She was lighter than he remembered.
Ebony asked the stall owner for the location of the largest or most luxurious inn. They were a prince and princess, the most luxurious inn of a small town should be barely acceptable right?
Paying a Green was already overpaying by a lot but he had too few Blacks or Greys. Mostly Blues. It was also thanks to the stall owner he summoned Scarlet so he had no problem overpaying.
There were not many inns around.
He was lucky enough that they really were in the largest inn. The receptionist somehow recognised him and passed him the key to a room that was already paid for.
He asked the brown-haired human lady for another room to place Scarlet in.
Her breathing, heart rate and body temperature seemed pretty normal and Ebony didn¡¯t think she was harmed in any way.
¡°Your room is the last one available.¡±
¡°...Which is the room of the lady that booked my room?¡±
¡°Beside yours or two rooms away depending on how the two of them picked.¡±
¡°Thanks.¡±
It was too coincidental that there were no rooms available left.
Ebony went to knock on the room beside his own on the third and highest floor. His room was at the very corner so there was no getting the wrong door.
No one answered.
The door was locked.
He tried the next door on the right.
Same results.
Ebony gave up very easily.
Unlocking his room¡¯s door and gently placing Scarlet down on the bed. Covering her with their blanket before sliding his heavy and suffocating robe out.
The third floor had the best rooms, it was spacious enough for his own bed. He took it out before getting all the stuff, mostly ragged clothes, he needed to wash and went to find the bath.
Thoroughly scrubbing all those still in good condition together with his coat as well. Letting them soak in soapy water while he went to wash himself.
The bath was partitioned so it was somewhat private. It was pretty spacious. It was luxury for most people in these parts, fortunately, the inn here was pretty good. At least it was clean and spacious.
Scrubbing himself down was almost as hard. Especially his messy hair. Snow easily melted off but the gunk and oil hardened. It took hours of personal hygiene and a lot of water to get spotlessly clean again.
He really lost quite a bit of weight. He¡¯ll have to get his muscle mass back.
Ebony was severely constipated. Almost spending just as much time on their, pretty similar toilet bowl. Their drainage system had to be pretty good.
There were just so many similarities that it was almost hard for him to believe he was not on Earth. Just the design of the architect seemed a little old.
He rinsed off all his clothes and brought them all back to his room. They usually had a rope tied from one corner to the other where one could hang their laundry.
He hung what he could in the limited space, minus his heavy robe.
Taking out a few pieces of paper and moulding runes on. With just a bit of his mana. He made wind blow out of paper until the mana ran dry. It was an uncomplicated one that doesn¡¯t have any on/off function or adjustment of the strength of the wind and all that.
The simplicity made it very easy for him. Placing them on the floor and blowing upwards to dry his clothes. He made a stand out of compressed ice that can hold his robe and Icicle. The weapon was dangerous if it fell on anyone''s foot so he made sure to place it properly.
Leaving the stand close to his bed so that it could still attach the link to his myriad bracelet. He didn¡¯t really have any empty mana ores left.
Scarlet was sound asleep and he couldn¡¯t wait to just fall asleep as well.
He was dazed for 1 full second before pushing his bed beside Scarlet¡¯s, getting under the covers and falling asleep the instant he shut his eyelid.
A wonderful birthday present.
???
¡®Nngh¡ soft. Bed? Where¡¡¯ Scarlet blinked furiously to adjust to the warm sunlight shining in.
She hasn¡¯t been exposed to sunlight for a very long time.
Her adventure had been¡fruitful to say the least.
Honestly, she didn¡¯t want to go back there despite what she gained.
Scarlet had sorely underestimated the creatures of blood. She understood she wasn¡¯t nearly the strongest at her level at that time but she didn¡¯t think she was that far.
Yet, to think her Physique would mutate and change so quickly.
The scent of fish wafting into her nostrils woke her up. She had gotten really bored of eating bloody spiders and moss. Magical moss.
Her grumbling stomach woke her up.
The shining sunlight woke her up.
The sound of footsteps woke her up.
The sweaty smell of humans, beastmen and dwarfs alike woke her up.
Something cooling in her arms woke her up.
It wasn¡¯t her chilled bolster that kept her body temperature low and made it easier for her to sleep. It was too stiff to be her bolster. Her bolster was a little cooler too.
Gripping around to feel what it was as her foggy sight slowly returned.
Her face heated up along with her body.
Pushing herself away and touching her face to feel her mask before checking herself.
Realising the state of her clothes, the awful stench like she bathed in the trash pile at a city¡¯s incineration works for months, the dirt, mud, blood and guts. And her hand had a fresher fishy smell that was still a little oily.
Scarlet was at a loss at how to react or what she should do first. Shyly looking back at her ¡®bolster¡¯, confirming that he was really asleep and not acting.
The room was a little familiar. It was the inn she stayed at before. She silently charged to the bath.
She was barely satisfied after spending half the day, enough water for hundreds of thirsting children for weeks, a lot of scented soap. Her hair took a large part of her efforts. Constantly rechecking them for any gunk.
It wasn¡¯t enough and she wasn¡¯t done. She checked herself over and over again. Making sure her nails were short and neat. Her impossibly, even more fair skin was spotless. And smelling herself to make sure she really washed off well.
She was drying herself with a ¡®clean¡¯ towel the inn provided. Only because she didn¡¯t have any clean ones left. She wouldn¡¯t trust some random inn that ¡®clean¡¯ was ¡®clean¡¯ if she wasn¡¯t forced to.
¡®...¡¯ Scarlet stopped and paced around the small and squeezy bath.
She didn¡¯t have any clean clothes to wear. All her casual wear and pyjamas were already mostly ruined. Except for the new battle wear that she was supposed to change to after her evolution. To begin with, she left her bag in the room!
Walking back to the room with a towel wrapped around her was not going to cut it.
She might be fast. The inn might be small but she could only move so fast in this small inn. The chances of bumping into people were much higher than not.
Scarlet didn¡¯t ponder for long before someone knocked on the door.
¡°Miss, you have been in there the whole day. There are only so many in this musty inn. Care to vacate it soon?¡± A woman¡¯s voice muffled through the walls and door.
Scarlet was a little embarrassed about her silly predicament but she had no choice but to rely on another person now. She explained her circumstances to the stranger who stayed silent while she talked.
¡°I see. It¡¯s not much but why don¡¯t you take this set for now. A lady should not be that careless.¡± The woman offered her own set of clothes. Already aware that Scarlet didn¡¯t have any clean clothes even if she were to go to Scarlet¡¯s room to get it for her.
Scarlet felt like the woman beyond the doors talked a little weird.
¡°...Thank you. I will wash it clean and return it to you as soon as possible.¡± Scarlet extended her hand through a small gap she opened and received the lady¡¯s kindness.
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¡°Unnecessary. Keep it.¡±
¡®This¡¡¯ Scarlet was too busy looking at the dress she was handed to care about the remark.
It was short, probably only reaching her knees if she wore it. Frills decorated the end of the sleeves and dress itself. Limish green in colour.
Scarlet doesn¡¯t wear dresses. It was impractical.
¡°What¡¯s wrong with the dress?¡± The lady was at the limit of her patience. It was too quiet past the doors.
It was clear to her that Scarlet didn¡¯t even attempt to put on her dress. After another moment of short silence, she barged her way into the bath.
Scarlet had been figuring out how to wear the dress and didn¡¯t think to hold the lousy door. Fortunately, she had her mask back on as a habit.
The lady with bright pink hair stared at her towel-wrapped body for a long second.
¡°I never wore a dress before,¡± Scarlet stated. She didn¡¯t think someone would barge in. The lady wasn¡¯t even surprised or shocked at her mask so that was one good thing.
The pink haired lady grabbed the dress and helped her put it on.
¡°You can burn the dress after you¡¯re done with it. This bath smells like death. I¡¯m going to another one.¡± The lady seemed a little angry and stomped out after helping Scarlet.
It was one of Scarlet¡¯s weirdest and most embarrassing moments. She gathered all the crap that she washed off herself and got rid of it.
It was hard to move and breathe. The lady was shorter than her by a fair bit and smaller in frame too. The dress was too tight on her chest and hip area.
¡®I¡Should I lose some weight?¡¯
The dress was too showy and the lime green just doesn¡¯t fit well.
Back outside the room, her Heat Perception told her that Ebony didn¡¯t move at all. It was weird since many hours had passed.
She silently got her bag and ran out. She held the dress down and was forced to slow down. It was too breezy. The pink haired lady was crazy to wear such a dress in winter. Then again, the dress would reach the lady¡¯s calves at least while it barely covered Scarlet¡¯s knees.
¡®Shameless.¡¯
Her speed was greatly limited by shame and she had a gruesome journey to a tailor.
Getting some pants adjusted to her size. There were no red clothes she liked but they would have to do. She paid more to get the old lady tailor to do an urgent resizing for her.
Asking for anywhere that sold shoes and boots. It wasn¡¯t far and she got a random pair that fit for now.
She felt so much more at ease after outfitting herself somewhat decently.
Nervously walking back to the inn and standing outside the door of Ebony¡¯s room again.
She gathered her courage and entered.
Unsure what to do. She first wiped the dirt and oil she smudged onto him. Brought the dirty sheets for a change. Folded the dry clothes he hung. Cleaned the room. Ate all the sandwiches.
Ebony slept through all of it.
Sitting on the bed in what he would recognise as the seiza position for hours. Just silently staring at Ebony.
She saw one of his hands facing up. Slowly moving her own towards it. Touching fingertips before she pushed more and more and their palms touched. She quickly pulled back, afraid she got caught. Hiding under the blanket before peeking out again to see that he was still asleep.
Day was turning into night.
One thought was in Scarlet¡¯s head throughout the night. Why does he smell so delicious? At first, she thought that she was imagining things due to hunger and it was the smell of the sandwiches but now she was sure it was Ebony.
Her body was still aching all over and she was still very tired.
She lay on the bed facing Ebony.
Exhausted.
Scarlet didn¡¯t sleep a wink that night.
???
Ebony roused from his deep sleep.
Having never felt so refreshed before.
The room smelled nice. His fish sandwiches were gone. His summon must have eaten it all and ran away. Scarlet was no longer in the room.
The bed beside his was left neat. He could still feel some warmth on it. His head was still attached. That was a good sign.
His clothes were taken down and placed in the chest in the room.
It was morning. Perhaps late morning.
¡°Heeey! Ebony, are you up?¡± Hector hammered on the door.
¡°Anyone would be woken up when you¡¯re so noisy.¡± Ebony opened the door to let Hector enter.
¡°Not true, you were out cold yesterday. I thought you were evolving with how long you were out.¡±
¡°I was asleep 2 nights straight?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think he would sleep for so long.
It was reasonable with how tired he was.
¡°I guess I also only woke up in the middle of the day yesterday. I came to check on you but you were asleep. You bring a bed along with you?¡± Hector explained.
¡°...yeah.¡± Ebony was wondering if Scarlet was gone by that time or if Hector just didn¡¯t mention.
¡°Wanna get a bite downstairs?¡± Hector proposed.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony got his ores and wore his worn-out boots.
They were about to leave the room when Hector stopped all of a sudden.
With the door open, Ebony already knew what was up.
Scarlet was there with a covered tray.
¡°You.¡± Hector was excited to see them all gathered but the gears in his head were turning slowly.
¡°I didn¡¯t make anything for you.¡± Scarlet pushed past Hector, put the tray on the table and then pushed Hector out before politely closing the door on him.
There was silence in the room before Scarlet asked him to ¡®hang on¡¯ and then ran out of the room for another 15 minutes of silence with Ebony alone.
She came back with another tray of food.
¡°Ehm¡let¡¯s eat before it gets cold.¡± Scarlet broke the silence, uncovering both trays to reveal the steaming hot food.
They sat facing each other. As hungry as both of them were, Ebony was staring at her while she was staring at the table.
Her eyes changed.
They were of a slightly darker shade of red now.
Her stomach grumbling broke the silence.
¡°Do..don¡¯t stare so much,¡± Scarlet whispered as the lower portion of her mask disappeared.
Like Sister Jing¡¯s.
¡®So that was a function all along.¡¯ Ebony was just ignoring what she said and was busy staring at her lips, jaws and skin. Blush-coloured or light pinkish lips. Reddish flush instead of her milky white skin.
She pursed her already thin lips not unlike Sister Jing¡¯s, inwards. Nervous. Anxious. Shy.
¡°Stop staring¡I¡¯ll take the food away and eat alone if you continue staring.¡± Scarlet threatened with a glare but then her glare faltered and fell back to the food after meeting his eyes.
¡°Thanks for the food, let¡¯s eat.¡± Ebony replied.
He picked up cubed meat with the chopsticks he was given onto her bowl of rice. She then did the same.
They started eating in silence.
Loud silence.
Both of them seemed deaf to Scarlet¡¯s loud beating heart.
Ebony was too busy calming himself down to notice.
Scarlet ate slowly, in small bites. Looking up every few seconds.
Ebony ate as per usual. Outwardly unperturbed.
¡®It¡¯s just a meal. Why does it feel so¡fresh.¡¯ Ebony thought that the meal was a fresh experience to him. Odd.
¡®Hmm? It tastes good.¡¯ Ebony started to realise that he could taste the food in his mouth. Just a little. Yet, that was a big improvement.
He also noticed Scarlet eating faster and faster. She didn¡¯t forget to attempt not to get any sauce on her. But the allure of food won over her non-existent habit of eating all girly and lady-like.
He liked to see her have fun eating more than when she was all reserved and nervous.
The two sticks in their hand landed on empty plates within minutes.
It was easy to tell from Scarlet¡¯s fidgeting. She didn¡¯t have enough. Because Ebony himself was hungry for more.
¡®Is she too shy to say she wants more?¡¯ He wasn¡¯t dumb enough not to know that women were embarrassed or maybe didn¡¯t think it looked nice for them to be big eaters.
¡°I¡¯m still hungry. Can I have more?¡±
¡°Yes!¡±
Ebony helped to place the dishes back on the tray and they brought it down together.
The staff was nice enough to strongly insist they would do the dishes.
The kitchen was well ventilated but he could spot a fly or two. It wasn¡¯t the cleanest kitchen he had seen but it wasn¡¯t that bad.
He wanted to stay and watch, maybe help with what he could but was pushed out of the kitchen by Scarlet. She was much stronger than he was when he didn¡¯t use any enhancement.
He didn¡¯t wear his robe or carry Icicle and didn¡¯t need enhancement. If it was just a short period of time, his mana was spent through decreasing gravity in a very wide area.
Within almost 70 metres, he didn¡¯t even have enough mana regeneration to cast one that wide of an area at full strength. His manipulation was good enough that he could lower the output such that it equaled his mana regeneration.
It was a nifty trick to waste mana without most people noticing. A tiny decrease in gravity wasn¡¯t so easy to notice.
Then someone in the kitchen shouted. Complaints.
He was the chef in charge and wasn¡¯t one bit happy that customers barged in again and again.
Surprisingly, he didn¡¯t react much in fear of Scarlet¡¯s mask. Perhaps, it was a chef¡¯s pride.
Scarlet was challenged to a cooking show down. She couldn¡¯t and wouldn¡¯t back down.
She finished all her rice and ingredients and to make it fair, they used the same ingredients.
The helpers and kitchen assistants together with Ebony would be the judges.
He didn¡¯t know what kind of ears or senses Hector had but he barged in at that moment and forcefully added himself to the judging table.
It was a nice change of pace.
The results were surprising too because it ended in a draw and Scarlet also seemed to recognise the man as a real chef.
"This kitchen is too small for you." was what she said to the chef and that was high praise coming from her.
Ebony obviously voted for Scarlet. He couldn¡¯t even taste anything that the inn¡¯s chef cooked.
Hector was a traitorous bastard.
The chef knew the palette of his assistants well but Scarlet won over some of them.
Ebony and Scarlet had a continuation of their meal before bothering to answer the traitorous one that kept asking for a spar.
That nuisance.
They had a massive amount of pan-fried dumplings of various flavours.
Ebony¡¯s new favourite was the ones filled with minced meat, something like chives, a type of juicy nut and plenty of pepper.
Scarlet was clearly observing his reaction to every single dumpling he ate.
¡°Let¡¯s go spar with Hector,¡± Ebony said after they finished their meal.
He felt like he plumped up pretty well in a single meal.
¡°...I¡¯ll just watch.¡± Scarlet replied. Ebony was a little surprised.
¡°Why?¡±
¡°I¡¯m just¡tired. My body is still aching all over. I don¡¯t have any proper battle or training wear left either. My swords, Ignite and Flare are on the verge of breaking as well.¡± Scarlet didn¡¯t sleep a wink last night but the other reasons she stated were the better reason.
¡°I see. You can just rest for the day instead of coming to watch. Do you want a massage? I think I¡¯m pretty good at relieving muscle and body aches.¡± Ebony had relied on massaging himself whenever he could. He was wondering when it would become a skill.
¡°Wha!? Ngh, no. no. That¡¯s too fast. It¡it''s inappropriate. I¡I think one of the rooms has been cleared. I¡¯ll move now!¡± Scarlet dashed out and down the stairs.
¡®...Is this called blowing it?¡¯ Ebony was a little hurt by the quick rejection. In hindsight, perhaps asking to massage her was really too much.
???
Ebony didn¡¯t know due to Everlasting Tranquillity but, normal people don¡¯t remain¡normal if they were stuck in dim, squeezy places fighting for their lives every second of the day for months on end.
If he wasn¡¯t the first person Scarlet saw after she climbed out, she might not have fainted as if all the stress left her body.
Although not having any battle or training wear was a very real reason.
What she was currently wearing would just burn to ashes if she really fought.
Ignite and Flare were really on the verge of breaking. All the blood they drank did improve them qualitatively but Scarlet had used them to guard against more than a few hard hits.
The metal she got from Ordina was left with her cousin who was too busy to check it out.
Scarlet already contacted Kong Jing who would be coming to Ailbury. She would get new clothes and get her equipment repaired at that time.
Her physical exhaustion and equipment weren¡¯t really the biggest reason she didn¡¯t want to spar.
She was honestly tired of fighting and the constant killings have gotten to her despite a Journeyman''s mental state together with Wisdom stat strengthening her mind.
Most importantly, she was confident.
She was scared of beating Ebony too badly.
She still wanted to be with him.
Has he kept up?
He had to. Right?
Scarlet was aware of Ebony¡¯s potential and strength. But, somewhere deep down, she didn¡¯t think he had kept up. Pride.
She had gotten so much more powerful in a relatively short time.
Chapter 104: Plans
The public square just wouldn¡¯t work for a real spar now.
Hector and Ebony went to the duelling grounds. Mallory followed along.
She was wearing quite the fancy dress, it was more exquisite than fancy so he could at least tell that the princess was attempting not to stand out.
She was slender but not petite. Her hair braided up instead of letting free. A white furred muff hid both her hands.
Hector was in a different set of armour. It was still scale amour but the overall theme was a dull black instead of the previous blue.
Ebony was glowing blue again since he was equipped. As embarrassing as it was, he couldn¡¯t carry his own equipment without enhancement.
The three gained quite some attention despite being low profile.
The Quest Hall didn¡¯t expect such visitors. A small town in a backwater place like the Trailane Plains that was considered safe hardly had any active level 100 Journeymen.
All of those youngins would have moved to greener pastures already.
They did have Master Classed but mostly older humans or beastmen. Probably too untalented as fighters or were here for retired life.
The others were Master Miners who don¡¯t always have business in the Quest Hall.
Their duelling grounds were not very frequently used.
Hector stood in front of Ebony with his usual cheeky grin. Slamming his fists together, Ebony didn¡¯t feel any changes in his body.
No elemental enhancement that Ebony could sense was cast. Hector was merely doing it as a habit.
Mallory watched the workers slowly figure out the controls and activate the barrier. She frowned.
The barrier system was old. At best, it was one of the creations of a Master rank of her royal family. One that was made long ago.
She didn¡¯t hesitate to walk to the older lady and take over. Silencing any protest with a glance.
The old lady fell onto the seat behind her and didn¡¯t argue. She ran off. Probably to get her superiors.
Mallory directly overrode the barrier, adjusted and strengthened it with her own magic.
She must take some actions and redistribute newer and stronger barriers to these towns at the edge of the Empire once she returns.
Who knew if the town barrier itself was in such poor conditions?
It might not be dangerous in this backwater region but it was an oversight of the Empire.
With every generation supposedly surpassing the previous generation, they should aim to raise the overall standards of safety.
¡®A good chance to increase my natural potential.¡¯ The Princess thought.
There were not many towns in Trailane Plains and if she¡¯s not wrong only a city called Teld.
She¡¯ll make her rounds and consider it doing her job.
???
¡°Don¡¯t bother holding back, Ebony!¡± Hector smashed his fist as the mana that he started up moving around the different parts of his body was conjured into the different elements.
Hector didn¡¯t hate his family but he didn¡¯t like staying home or seeing any of his royal siblings.
He was an oddball.
Their lineage or bloodline was pretty strong. Every descendant had either affinity with barriers or healing magic in some form.
Hector was found to have absolutely no affinity with either.
His parents did find it weird but it was not exactly uncommon.
He was shunned as a child by his royal brothers and sisters. Because he was born blinded by the elements, he didn¡¯t have a normal childhood.
Hector¡¯s great-grandfather and mother, the King and Queen of the Empire gave equal amounts of love and attention to their descendants. Hector wasn¡¯t excluded.
It took the Life Queen time and effort to find out what was wrong with baby Hector.
Resources and education. He didn¡¯t lack any of them. They found some method to seal his senses for most elements. A potion that dulled the perception for elements.
Then, Hector had some sort of normalcy in his childhood. He was filled with joy, seeing, touching, hearing and smelling things that he never could with the elemental mana teasing him.
The potion lost effectiveness over time but that was just right as Hector grew and learned to sieve out and use the elements.
Hector hated having a weak body.
He got the best trainers teaching him to build his body up.
The best teachers for magic of the 4 basic elements.
There were few who specialised in body enhancement magic. Hector paved his own road here. Creating his own spells meant that they were not very refined and weaker than most skills that nobles have.
That was great. He had a great headstart known as background already. He would pave his own path some way or another.
He was also found to have a physique that none of his family had. Why did it show in him, they didn¡¯t know. It was likely thinned out so much from one of his ancestors and suddenly reappeared in him.
When Hector turned 15, he found out it was called ¡®Blessings of the Elementals¡¯.
It had weak effects.
His body was 10% more resistant to most natural elements.
The effects of mana poisoning of these elements are also 10% weaker.
Harmful concentration or just anything beyond what his body decides it could withstand was naturally expelled from his body 50% faster as well.
What cursed his childhood was also a blessing if he was able to use it, his affinity for almost any element was also 50% stronger.
The potions he misused permanently dulled his elemental perception, hence he only classed with 4. It was perfect as there were only so many things he could do.
As he got stronger, his senses slowly returned as well. Must have been the Classing, Fortification, increase in Constitution, Vitality and probably Perception. It was still in debate whether Perception had anything to do with elemental perception.
Hector personally thinks that Perception stat was completely unrelated to affinity with elements. As with any other stat. Personally thinking that the only thing that affects it might be Class or just evolution itself.
It can be said that many warriors suddenly pick up an element or two after they evolve to Grandmaster or higher. They were fewer pure warriors the further up the chain they went.
The mysterious potion he got in Ordina was still being researched by the mage association.
He focused back on the opponent ahead.
Waterblood Lubrication, Windlung Breath, Fireheart Pump and Earthmuscle Ingrain.
All only tier one because that was all he could handle. Both body and mind.
He could easily withstand 4 enhancements for a decent amount of time now.
Using Lightningnerve Discharge and Metalbone Root might be a little overkill for a spar.
Hector believed that while Scarlet and Ebony were stronger than him currently, it wouldn¡¯t be the same after he evolved.
He would be invincible.
Even now, neither Ebony¡¯s toughness or Scarlet''s speed should be enough to stop him if they were in a life and death battle.
Not with Hector¡¯s Fortifications.
Fortifications:
Class: Quadra Elemental Enhancement Mage
Mana Efficiency with Water Magic increased by 100%
Mana Efficiency with Wind Magic increased by 100%
Mana Efficiency with Earth Magic increased by 100%
Mana Efficiency with Fire Magic increased by 100%
Body Enhancement Magic effects increase by 100% for each concurrent enhancement running through your body.
Sub-Class: Regimental Fist
Stamina Efficiency with any type of punching increased by 100%
Control and accuracy of punches increased by 100%
Constitution effect of durability on fists is increased by 100%
Profession: Elemental Body Builder
Physical body is 250% more resistant to your own mana.
Elemental resistance of Constitution stat is increased by 100%
The main point and where all of Hector¡¯s power comes from would be his Class.
If he were to run 4 elemental enhancement spells, all 4 of their effects are increased by 400%.
Hector didn¡¯t think anybody could match him in terms of pure power and speed or just stats in general.
Of course it wasn¡¯t all that amazing.
Each elemental enhancement had some kind of drawback or decrease in a certain stat. This decrease was also increased by the same percentage. With all the elements Hector uses, it kinda balances out.
To Hector, it was merely a matter of refinement of his skills to remove the decrease in each stat.
Once he evolves and further strengthens his body he would be ready to push his enhancements for tier 2. It was likely they would evolve to tier 2 along with his evolution to the ranks of Masters though.
Hector remembered how Scarlet said that only a Class was able to withstand the 250% Fortification. Perhaps he was different because of his Physique. Perhaps the Xengs'' knowledge wasn¡¯t perfect either.
The biggest problem he had was just not being able to keep up his strongest state for long. His opponent was the opposite.
The blue man burst into flames again.
It was rare but his opponent took the initiative to attack.
Hector anticipated the explosive increase of speed that the swordsman had, having already seen him fight off the animals of Hoarfrost Glade.
Hoarfrost Glade was really pretty scary. Hector was pretty sure most of what showed up were just evolved animals turned monsters that could use magic to a certain extent.
Fearlessly, Hector met the sharp edge with his gauntleted fist.
Feeling the indentation in between his knuckles before the force of Ebony¡¯s swing clicked. Hector was flung aside.
¡®How the hell did his attack get so heavy?¡¯ Hector was shocked at Ebony¡¯s strength.
Ebony had always been at a disadvantage in terms of speed and power against him. Winning due to his technique and fighting capability together with his toughness and sustainability.
Hector had his gauntlet and enhancements to thank for keeping his hand in one piece. His bones were numb from shock and were still reverberating from the disgusting vibrations.
Ebony was well aware of Hector¡¯s usual tactics and didn¡¯t let him have the opportunity to super panch. Charging to Hector and dancing around with whip-like attacks of a massive sword.
The gravity around Hector increased as he was slowed even more. The flames attempted to climb up but he patted it off with his own fire, wind and water. He wasn¡¯t perfect with external conjuration of elements but it was good enough.
His own high resistance and the short duration of contact was the only thing that allowed him to stay warm.
Hector had no choice but to cast Lightningnerve Discharge.
Bursting out with speed and thousands of punches in seconds. Pushing Ebony back long enough for a triple Coalescence Punch.
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It was annoying that some of the flames stuck to his fists but Hector punched out too fast to care.
It landed on one of his turtle shells that was conjured faster than Ebony could do so years ago. Shattering the shield with ease as the physical shockwaves carried on to smash right into Ebony.
Blocking with the body of his blade, Ebony was sent knocking into the barrier. His Layered Ice Carapace took the bulk of the force.
The air time was sufficient for Hector to Super Panch.
Ebony gave a random swing that repelled a crescent blue flame from the surface of Icicle before taking a Treading Stride to leave the area where the hardened ground was being torn apart.
His flames scattered on impact and didn¡¯t do shit other than decrease the surrounding temperature and continued burning on the ground since he used compressed mana.
That was the point.
¡°Give up! I give up¡± Hector couldn¡¯t stand the cold any longer.
Fireheart Pump could only warm him up so much. He didn¡¯t have nearly as much mana as Ebony.
He was humbled yet again.
He wasn¡¯t invincible yet. Maybe Invincibility was just a dream.
???
The spar had been close.
Ebony used up more mana than he was comfortable with.
Hector didn¡¯t Mega Panch.
Ebony¡¯s mastery with his greatsword improved by leaps and bounds although only comparatively to when he just started. The bulky and heavy thing didn¡¯t impede his ability to defend against the numerous and speedy jabs and punches.
Hector¡¯s insane stats were still one of his strongest advantages.
Even with Ebony''s increasing momentum, his explosive increase in speed part-way through was hard to cope with.
The random super panch had made spiderweb cracks on the almost invisible barrier that contained their spar but it was quickly repaired.
Mallory came over after passing control back to the old lady who brought a younger man. She ignored the man¡¯s words.
¡°Care for a match with me?¡± Mallory asked.
¡°Sure,¡± Ebony was about to say ¡®sure, princess¡¯ but he didn¡¯t want Hector to know that he knew for the moment.
A healer just asked for a spar. He wanted to know what this princess could do anyway.
¡°Go easy on me.¡± Mallory¡¯s lips rose.
Hector already got the man who chased after Mallory to get the barriers up in place.
Mallory still had both her hands in her muff.
The moment the barriers were back up, Ebony took a step back with his right leg as he shifted his body.
The ground where he dodged had a thin line that was dugged up. His messy long hair fluttered a little.
¡°You can really sense them. Wonderful.¡± Mallory commented.
Hector watched as Ebony ran, duck and bend awkwardly yet moved with ease.
Ebony kept Icicle close to his body and the sound of scraping could be heard.
He closed his eyes. It has become a habit and it helps with his Mana Perception and other perception skills.
The attacks from the sharp and thin barriers got fiercer but so did Ebony. He only used a little more than his regeneration to sustain his enhancement.
He picked up the pace with Ceaseless Onslaught but Mallory could clearly hold her own. Breaking free from 2 thin ¡®walls¡¯ with a step for a stab. Completely stopped by another barrier. Ebony could feel his Sonic Overlay gaining traction but Mallory¡¯s barrier was repairing at the same pace.
Mallory had the same smile that wasn¡¯t a smile. It was likely just her resting expression that seemed easy on the eyes. She was pretty but more on the cute side than the beautiful side.
Quickly jumping when he realised that she was trying to box him in with her barriers.
Mallory seemed to have expected it as Ebony was jumping right into another well-placed barrier that he just noticed. She reacted fast and conjured it after he had moved.
She just didn¡¯t expect him to flip himself in mid-air to kick off her barrier as a platform. Narrowly escaping the other 2 of her barriers that were closing in on him.
Mallory felt a shivering chill touch her cheek.
Ebony felt touch on the exact same spot.
He had managed to get behind her in that single ¡®step¡¯ but Mallory was no slouch. The small disturbance in his perception was Mallory''s card-like barrier.
It had landed on his cheek but what she didn¡¯t expect was that it didn¡¯t cut. She fully intended to cut him. She was a healer and the man was partially a mana being.
A cut was too minor to be considered an injury in their spar.
¡°Thanks for going easy.¡±
¡°You too.¡±
This princess was no pampered lady that just learnt healing and barrier magic to hide in the rear.
It was clear to Ebony that she had seen battle and was not an easy target.
They returned to the inn after another round or two.
They caught Scarlet walking from Ebony¡¯s room to the room across the hall.
¡®Coincidence?¡¯ Ebony honestly didn¡¯t care if it was coincidental or if some strings were pulled.
¡°Scarlet! Let¡¯s have a drink together. We can just catch up if you don¡¯t want to drink.¡± Hector called before she could hole up.
¡®She¡¯s Scarlet after all. Did she come out of his room?¡¯ Mallory already heard about Scarlet from Hector.
She also guessed the lady who forgot her clothes was the Xeng that Hector was talking about. What she didn¡¯t expect was her just waltzing in and out of Ebony¡¯s room. Their relationship must be closer than she thought.
Scarlet gave a light nod towards Mallory. It was thanks for saving her from falling into a more embarrassing situation.
She had no reason to decline and agreed to join after putting her stuff down.
???
Hector introduced Mallory again to Scarlet but they seemed to know each other already.
Both Hector and Ebony had a pretty boring start after they separated.
It was easy going live as usual as they both trained, learned and studied.
Hector didn¡¯t say much but other than having a tough training and researching enhancement magic. Then he travelled all the way back here and to Hoarfrost Glade to look for them.
It had been an interesting story where he met many different people and encountered just as many monsters. He exaggerated some stuff which can be seen from Mallory¡¯s expression from time to time.
Ebony talked about his time in Arcta and then about finding a master that taught him craft. He didn¡¯t mention the getting kidnapped part.
Scarlet¡¯s stare was¡piercing.
He didn¡¯t say much other than going into Hoarfrost Glade to train. They also didn¡¯t ask about his new blue flame.
Scarlet already knew about it.
Hector guessed it was some kind of obscure ice and fire magic combination. He was thinking more about how to counter cold rather than asking about the details.
Mallory purely didn¡¯t care. There were so many types of magic, how can she be surprised at finding out there was one more that she was unaware of.
Scarlet had a similar journey back home. Then got her Physique that she talked about. Similarly returning here but then getting teleported to somewhere she guessed was another realm.
What was the difference?
Apparently a realm was created either naturally or by someone.
One of the most well known examples Hector gave was the spirit realm. Summoners depended on other realms for summoning magic.
He used one of the most famous couples as an example. Even Ebony had heard of them. A Grandmaster couple that was a [Tamer] and [Summoner].
Jokingly saying they were part of the few that were ¡®legally¡¯ allowed to have an army.
Realms weren''t fixed in space like worlds were. It could be connected to multiple worlds as if there were no distance between worlds.
Well, all they had was vague information. Clearly second, third or fourth hand knowledge.
Anyway, Scarlet only said she was suddenly teleported from that spot in front of the stall owner selling fish sandwiches.
It was news to them that she had blood magic that she trained in that realm.
She got to the part Ebony was curious about which was how she came back.
Scarlet found a pool of clear blood that seemed to reflect the image of the stall where she fell. She wasn¡¯t able to pass through no matter what she did.
Fearing it would disappear she stayed and protected the pool. For weeks.
Ebony came and dropped a sandwich. She reached out but didn¡¯t expect her hand to be able to touch it then she climbed out with some help from blood manipulation.
They hypothesised that she needed some sort of link back to Elcra and Ebony was actually right. Fish sandwich was the ¡®summoning¡¯ material.
¡°So¡back to Ordina. I want to complete my evolution already. I assume you¡¯re going to join us.¡± Hector proposed before turning to Mallory.
¡°Naturally,¡± Mallory replied.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t disagree.
¡°...We¡¯re missing one.¡± Scarlet on the other hand, didn¡¯t seem excited.
None of them thought it was really necessary to have a full party of five.
2 of them were royals. Breaking the law themselves was a little inappropriate even for Hector. They could have gotten authorisation beforehand but it would take time.
They didn¡¯t want to rely on the Quest Hall for anyone though. Not again.
The prince and princess didn¡¯t have anyone to recommend. The people they know aren¡¯t suitable as they wouldn¡¯t gain natural potential.
Scarlet didn¡¯t have any friends either.
For the first time in his life. Ebony was the one who could think of someone to introduce.
¡°I¡¯m not sure if he¡¯s interested because he¡¯s already Master rank but there is someone I know.¡±
¡°If he¡¯s someone you know, sure!¡± Hector replied quickly.
Scarlet followed up with a nod.
¡°Actually, I don¡¯t know him well. Just fought him in a tournament and had a pretty good impression of him. We chatted a bit but only discussed runes.¡± Ebony was talking about Mark.
The fact that he was in a tournament and that he wasn¡¯t able to confidently beat Mark seemed good enough for the party.
They trusted Ebony¡¯s judgement that Mark was trustworthy enough. His skills had to be judged by themselves when they saw him.
To begin with, Ebony was pretty sure Mark might not be interested in a dungeon dive.
They separated to do their own things.
Ebony made a call to Mark. It took about a minute or so before he picked up. Reasonably fast.
¡°Ebony? Perfect, there¡¯s this question I have been pondering on for weeks. A fresh perspective might be good.¡± Mark¡¯s mind was filled with runes. They haven''t talked for such a long time but he spoke as if it hadn''t been long.
Surprisingly, the man still got what he wanted even though he didn¡¯t win anything from the tournament.
That was not completely true. He won a little bit of fame. His company decided it was a good promotion as their business improved noticeably in a short time. They ultimately rewarded Mark.
They were an alchemic company but most of their inquiries were about Mark¡¯s runic equipment.
Mark¡¯s equipment was all upgraded himself and the company couldn¡¯t force him to work as an equipment runic enchanter based on their contract.
They got him to develop a potion that can imbue some equipment with runic spells. After all, Mark¡¯s Profession was given or taught by the company.
In a short year or two, Mark actually succeeded.
It was a fire based potion. Pouring it on a weapon, the potion would self-inscribe a simple heating rune.
Having a magic-based attack was useful for many warriors. They couldn¡¯t use magic and one may never know what they would encounter on the roads.
The decrease in the durability of their equipment was a worthwhile exchange if they could survive whatever encounter they had.
Mark exchanged the recipe with the company for access to more books.
The company made a lot and Mark was even more highly valued. His contract improved and benefited him more.
The perfect thing for the company was that the potion was a consumable. The skills required to make it were all the simplest techniques that they taught. The ingredients are nothing too fancy either. The advantages of recruiting an untalented but diligent person.
The only problem was that those that other workers made didn¡¯t have such a strong effect due to Mark¡¯s personal runic skills. Such as the self-inscription speed of the rune, how long the rune would last, and how hot the weapon can get.
Their company didn¡¯t specialise in runes and what they got for Mark was either outsourced or just things that they picked up.
It was a good thing too as Mark personally branded the potions he made as a premium product low in supply.
He just had to make a few dozen every month and he can even get a portion of the profit. In exchange, his runic findings were shared with the company to teach a few of their workers the craft as well.
To summarise, Mark was currently in his prime time. Rising up fast.
The increase in his funding only further sped up his research.
¡°Actually, I called to ask if you were interested in dungeon diving. Ordina.¡± Ebony stopped Mark before he got more heated in his talk.
¡°The new one in Trailane Plains? Hmm¡¡± Mark would have to be living in a cave if he didn¡¯t know about Ordina when the city he lived in was considered close to Trailane Plains.
Mark had been forced to move to this city for work but he never forgot to send mana ores to his family. Besides, his hometown wasn¡¯t all that far away and making a trip from time to time to visit was possible.
¡°Do you have a party already?¡± Mark asked.
Ebony took it as a good sign that Mark didn¡¯t decline immediately.
¡°Yes. All level 100 Journeymen. All stronger or as strong as me. We have a healer.¡± Ebony promoted the strength of his party.
Mark was already beyond level hundred and Ebony had to make their party look good. Having a healer was pretty much the best thing he said that would move most people.
¡°I¡¯m in no rush to level. More like, I¡¯m levelling just through my research¡ I do need to do some field tests but nothing I can¡¯t do safely.¡± Mark rejectly weakly.
¡°I¡¯ll fund your research during the duration of the dive. We can discuss the languages you wanted to know more about as well. I have some questions of my own.¡± Ebony knew what Mark was playing at.
He wanted some kind of additional benefit to joining the party. There were many holes in Mark¡¯s knowledge of the runic languages he knew. At least, according to what Ebony had studied.
Sister Jing already confirmed that she didn¡¯t really care as knowledge was meant to be spread. She also took note of Mark¡¯s runic spells and his fighting method. Commenting that it was ¡®fairly interesting.''
Ebony himself wanted to learn from Mark and didn¡¯t see it as a loss. As for funding Mark¡¯s research it was just mana.
¡°I have months of potions stocked up and I have up to half a year of leave for personal improvement. I can leave any time. Where are we meeting up?¡± Mark readily accepted.
He had looser contract terms and wasn¡¯t an escort like Rowent and the others. He was actually already getting ready for his next field test.
His father was a warrior that ingrained into him that he needed to move his body regularly. All the research and study weren¡¯t an excuse. He ran out of research materials anyway.
Having trouble finding the right people to go along with. He was a cautious person and didn¡¯t really like travelling with strangers.
Dungeon diving was dangerous but Ordina was a good target. The level range should be perfect.
Ebony was someone he knew and could even talk runes with him.
Mark had gotten pretty rich very quickly. He wasn¡¯t looking for more funding but more research material. Ebony had said the main point.
Most of the books he had gotten were incomplete and didn''t explain the runic language itself. Ebony seemed to be very knowledgeable in this area.
Not to be arrogant but Mark had deciphered many things himself. He was still far ahead of Ebony in terms of practical usage.
It was an exchange. Mark didn¡¯t think he was too greedy but he couldn¡¯t just make it that he was at anyone¡¯s beck and call.
Ebony ended the call saying that he would have to confirm.
Mark had to pack up and get ready for the long journey so he was in no rush either.
They discussed over dinner.
Meeting in Teld city seemed like a good idea.
As the only city in Trailane Plains, it had anything they needed to get and the facilities should be better.
It also wasn¡¯t too far away from Ordina with their current speed.
They were too lazy to move to Teld city immediately so they would make the trip when they felt like it.
Mark confirmed that it would take him 3 to 5 weeks to get to Teld depending on the conditions of the roads. Possibly faster.
Ebony wanted to relax too and the same could be said for the other 3.
He could use the chance to write down all the books regarding runes that he read. It was still fresh in his memory but he couldn¡¯t be sure it would stay that way.
Resupplying his paper and book and getting new stationery was a good idea too.
Next time, he would stock up as much food as he could. Starving didn¡¯t feel good. With the right preservation, food could last a long time so he didn¡¯t have to worry too much about wastage.
Right now, it was time for a well-deserved break.
Chapter 105: Humbled
As per usual.
Ebony fell back into the routine called daily life.
Morning physical training. A little spar with Hector as well.
Back for magic training. Multitasking as he restarted on a new notebook. Leaving space for personal notes if any.
Breakfast made by Scarlet. They ate both their meals together so he never joined Hector or Mallory for meals.
The whole day was just writing and magic training till dinner.
Then another round of training and a bath.
That was it. Rinse and repeat.
Scarlet could usually be found in the inn¡¯s kitchen. She was basically one of the inn¡¯s chefs. Spending the entire day with the head chef.
He didn¡¯t say anything about it. She had her own hobbies.
She really never sparred with him once. Not even picking up her swords. That was worrisome but she could really just be tired of fighting.
???
In just two days, Kong Jing arrived silently.
Well, it was her hand that teleported in front of Ebony¡¯s face. The punch was about to reach him as he glowed blue and slapped the hand aside.
The punch landed on the pillow instead.
Clearly surprised, Kong Jing continued but Ebony defended himself. Still asleep.
Annoyed, she sped up and gave a hard knock on his head.
Ebony sat up and looked around but didn¡¯t see anything or anyone. His head throbbed with pain.
Having been alarmed, he meditated and stayed awake but nothing showed up even when the sun rose.
Already familiar with Scarlet¡¯s usual routine, he waited till she exited the room before exiting at the same time. Wanting to bump into her more often.
He opened the door to see her door being opened at the same time.
A different mask entered his sight. It was a grey haired lady standing slightly taller than him with Scarlet behind her.
¡°What do we have here? Ungrateful punk.¡± The lady tried to hold back the smile that was forming.
Unlike Scarlet, Kong Jing didn¡¯t always hide her mouth. He knew that the truth was that she didn¡¯t bother because it was troublesome when she had to eat.
¡°Sister Jing. Nice to see you again too.¡± Ebony figured out what hit him when he saw her.
¡°Sister?¡± Scarlet blanked out.
¡°Oh yes. Hold on.¡± Ebony just remembered he had a small gift for Scarlet.
He had imagined giving soap might seem a little weird. What if she thought that he was saying she smelled bad?
Giving them both should make it seem more casual wouldn¡¯t it? Ebony didn¡¯t know.
The lousy gravity ring he made seemed too weak for her if all her stuff was made by Sister Jing.
When he gets to Teld city he should make some time to practise his craft. The forge in his bag was still around and had been unused since he left Sister Jing.
Passing the ice cold boxes to them as casually as he could.
¡°I¡¯ll leave you two lovers alone. I¡¯ll bring your clothes and swords back in a few days.¡± Sister Jing disappeared from the inn after she looked at Scarlet¡¯s stunned look. Well aware of what this little sister of hers was thinking.
¡°...Sister? Isn¡¯t she your master¡? Calling her sister is erm¡inappropriate.¡± Scarlet spoke up the moment Sister Jing disappeared.
¡°Mmm. She treats me as her brother so I treat her as my sister.¡± Ebony replied.
He couldn¡¯t see what kind of expression Scarlet was making but nowadays, she rarely looked him in the eyes.
¡°Do you want to walk the streets and try the food around town?¡± Ebony invited. He did not think things through, that must have been random.
¡°...Okay.¡± Scarlet agreed to the allure of food.
They started by visiting the fish sandwich stall. From there, Ebony just bought whatever Scarlet had her eyes on.
Basically everything from every street stall they passed by. He had to suggest going back to consume it as they might go bad before they bought too much for just breakfast.
It was a lousy excuse as they don¡¯t go bad so quickly in his bag. One that she fell for because she knew food was best eaten as quickly as possible.
They ate in his room again.
It was clear to him that her appetite was huge. And that she was eating more and more.
¡°You need to eat more. You got so skinny.¡± was one of the excuses she gave. Ebony didn¡¯t think so much at that time but she still ate more than he did.
For the next few days, he brought her out for both breakfast and dinner.
Getting an individual room for meals at restaurants. Or just getting take away.
Ebony was going to find a barber or someone who had a beautician Profession to cut his hair but Scarlet stopped him and cut his hair for him. She also cut her own till they only reached her thighs or around her knees.
Sister Jing came again with all of Scarlet¡¯s stuff.
Outfitted in red from head to toe again. She looked more natural this way.
When Ebony asked for a spar again, he was rejected. This time he sensed it. The look in her eyes.
It was in between pity and fear.
¡°Scarlet. You¡¯re afraid you would beat me too badly aren¡¯t you?¡±
Sister Jing laughed so loud the whole inn could hear her. Her laugh had her Vitality and Wisdom mixed in and no one dared to come out of their rooms to scold her. That was pretty good technique. Ebony should try learning it with his sound magic.
Of course, he didn¡¯t know that was just Sister Jing¡¯s normal laugh.
¡°Yes.¡± Scarlet affirmed. Confidently looking at Ebony this time round.
¡°Why don¡¯t we have a spar after all?¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t realise the slight smile on his face when he proposed to fight one more time.
Scarlet¡¯s heartbeat could be heard accelerating.
He took that as a yes to the spar.
The three of them disappeared from the hallway of the inn as Kong Jing teleported them outside the town. In the middle of the Plains with nothing else in sight but the grass, sky and each other.
Hector who returned from who knows where was peeking at the grandmaster craftsman quickly ran out when he saw the exchange and then them disappearing. They shouldn¡¯t be too far from the town.
Mallory, who heard the whole thing while she was in her room, also followed. Seeing a Xeng in action? That was rare.
Sister Jing floated in the sky. She was ¡®lying¡¯ down in the air, pouring herself some colourless wine.
Ebony understood that Scarlet got stronger as time passed. He needed to go full power as fast as possible.
His explosive increase in speed since the last time they sparred was going to be one of the few things that should catch her off guard.
With Frostblaze Augmentation, his tactics changed completely anyway. No longer anywhere as sustainable in battle in exchange for higher maximum output.
In terms of movement speed alone. Ebony didn¡¯t even think she was as fast as him if she didn''t build up her Core Skill for long enough. Unless she had also gotten her movement skill to tier 2 which was honestly pretty damn likely.
With Agility at 250 and movement speed equivalent to 500 Agility. Treading Stride at lvl 152 to increase his movement speed by 380%, he would be as fast as someone with 2400 Agility.
Even with the gentle nature of his movement skill, his base Constitution may not be enough to withstand his speed.
Frostblaze Augmentation increases his Agility by 20% + (2.5% x 155) of his Intelligence of 376. Around 1908.
Without any burst of speed from Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and also excluding his mana compression of 147%.
For as long as his tiny mana pool that contains compressed mana lasts, Frostblaze Augmentation at maximum output would give Ebony 5688 Constitution, 5456 Strength and Endurance and 4713 Agility.
Ebony didn¡¯t believe the numbers he calculated. It was no wonder why there were such large differences in power between people of the same level. Power rises exponentially with skill tiers and he could see why lineages were important.
Treading Stride or movement skills in general increased based on Agility. With an enhanced Agility of 4713 + 250 or movement speed equivalent to 9926 Agility, did it mean he could move at speeds at 47,644 Agility?
The thing about compressing enhancement magic was that his weakness was also strengthened. In the past, his Agility suffered more than a static of 20%. He suspects that damage taken from heat was increased even more than the skill description suggested but he should barely even feel heat once he started putting himself aflame. The only problem he imagined having was her burning through his mana even faster.
He was depending on the chill of his ice mana and the improvement in their ability to resist melting.
¡®She¡¯s either extremely confident she has gotten a lot more powerful than me or she¡¯s getting arrogant.¡¯ Ebony hoped her confidence wasn¡¯t unfounded.
¡°Scarlet. I¡¯m not going to go easy.¡± Ebony gave her time to build her enhancement up. He didn¡¯t want to accidentally kill her.
She never thought Ebony was weak, was she really getting overconfident?
Scarlet drew her blades in reply.
Her opponent and hidden spectators watched as she slit herself on one of her wrists. Her blood not absorbed by her sword or falling to the ground.
Instead, the slow trickle of blood rose up above her head, drop by drop.
A halo formed above her head before her cut stopped bleeding. A blood halo.
Ebony wasn¡¯t just watching but casting a Layered Ice Carapace using the mana in his robe. His robe and Icicle appeared beside him when they were teleported.
It felt a little bit like cheating so he didn¡¯t use much mana from his robe.
Besides, ice mana in his robe can¡¯t be used for his enhancement magic. It could still be used to combust so FrostBlaze Cladding was possible to use but he hoped he didn¡¯t have to use it.
While the surrounding temperature around Scarlet rose and her blood halo started to glow brighter red, his shield was already compressed to the max as he moulded durability runes into the middle layers and heat resistance runes on the outer layers.
Taking one layer as a whole instead of moulding each individual scale as he wasn¡¯t that good yet.
It was mental muscles that he moved before.
Although he moulded runes internally, he only used it as a flat surface. Those were the only runes he could mould consistently.
Sister Jing also taught him that the complexity of runes like the ones in Icicle that was 3 dimensional was not something he could just cast on the spot and hope it would work. He needed more study, research and tests before he could do that.
Using Sister Jing¡¯s knowledge, the runes that he moulded on were the simplest and weakest of them all. She wouldn¡¯t even classify them to have much effect.
Ebony had compared the effect of her rune language with the equivalent runes of other languages but they couldn¡¯t even be compared. Others are at least twice as complicated and half as effective.
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If what he moulded was considered untiered which can increase a material''s natural durability by a little over 20%, what Sister Jing classified as ¡®low¡¯ or ¡®basic¡¯ had the minimum effect of 100% and higher.
Ebony personally preferred to classify them according to tiers like skills. The rewriting of the language also included his input.
No matter the runes, they had a limitation. Many limitations actually.
The main one being, the effect of the rune itself depended on the material it''s inscribed, or engraved onto. Of course, the power source which is usually mana plays a big part too. Highly dependent on the type of rune as well.
So moulding durability runes in his Layered Ice Carapace increased each layer¡¯s total toughness or hardness by 20% while the increase in heat resistance was really not much.
Ebony also found the heat resistance runes to fade or corrode after a short time. Probably the ice element that isn¡¯t compatible or accepting of the magical powers of the rune.
The damage done to the Layered Ice Carapace itself with the runes was not much and nothing he couldn¡¯t solve with a little more mana.
While sparing with Hector or fighting most other creatures, Ebony might let his Chaotic Repulsive Membrane to push his flames out to spread the chill to the area but against Scarlet that would just be a waste of mana.
He would have to be careful not to let his flames burn too strong since he didn¡¯t have the mana to sustain them.
Keeping it just over his skin was also a protective layer from her fire and heat.
Sister Jing was bored from waiting.
Already having finished one of her strain relievers, she threw the butt down.
Ebony sensed the tiny vibrations from that movement.
Scarlet sensed the residual heat from the strain reliever butt.
The strain reliever or cigarette touched the ground.
???
Scarlet only reacted through reflex, both her arms barely brought Ignite and Flare up enough to defend her from the incoming greatsword.
Not expecting so much power in that attack, her swords were almost knocked out of her hands. Ebony took the initiative to attack her in their duel and he actually put force behind his attack! A pleasant surprise.
Sent somersaulting dozens of times as she attempted to get her bearings and land on her feet. She wasn¡¯t given the chance.
Her dizzying view spotted blue chasing after her, leaping and stabbing at her without pause as she was still spinning.
The blood halo was actually already rotating like a chainsaw, it flattened out into a large thin disc and flew to meet the attack but missed miserably since she didn¡¯t even know where was up and where was down.
Instinctually moving her longswords to the obvious difference in her Heat Perception.
The greatsword slid against her repaired and strengthened Ignite and Flare. The force behind the stab was far greater than she expected. Pushing her to roll against the grassy ground.
Ebony so smoothly twisted his body weight to spin and pluck the sword that was deeply embedded into the ground. As fast and smooth as he did, she had gained the opportunity to regain her bearings.
It might only have been a few years since their last spar but Scarlet had forgotten. Forgotten that her opponent was one that she hasn¡¯t comfortably defeated before.
She sparked with both joy and lightning mana running through her. Ebony was too naive if he thought he could ever have the upper hand against her in terms of speed.
Other than the sheer force behind his movement speed, his attacks were still as slow as a turtle in her eyes.
Clearly, his massive increase in speed and power only meant his mana consumption was increased just as explosively.
He had always known that she gets stronger as the battle goes and would want to finish the battle as soon as possible.
Although the possibly smarter method would be to buy time and run him dry that was not Scarlet¡¯s way. This wasn¡¯t the purpose of the duel.
Ebony still covered the tiny distance in an instant as he continued his charge when Scarlet was busy getting back onto her feet.
Unfortunately for him, the initial surprise was over.
His Onslaught was met with numerous Pinpoint Perforations. Both of them empowered by many skills.
Their flames perfectly counter each other. Ebony¡¯s cold flames couldn¡¯t even latch on but the same was for Scarlet¡¯s. However, Scarlet could tell that the surrounding temperature was slowly rising.
Her disc of heated blood came boomeranging back, the loud grinding reverberated through the plains. Cutting halfway into his thick ice shield, she didn¡¯t stop trying to saw through it while she was equalled in the efforts to stop the shield from being sliced.
Clearly back on the offensive, her arms were getting numb from the impacts against the defensive swordsman. The vibrations tickled her muscles and bones every time their swords touched.
The biggest difference she noticed was the sheer strength behind his swings. The knockback was too strong and constantly disrupted her Mastery and rush of attacks.
Ebony was gaining momentum fast but she was already at the limit of the buffs and enhancement she could get from Blood Boil. Violent Heart Acceleration could push her further but she was already at where the safe limits were due to her increase in speed in getting it to full power.
The pull of gravity increased on her in pulses to further irritate and disrupt her Cascade Dual Longsword Mastery and Cascading Laceration which both were further refined since they last fought.
She had constantly eaten till she was reasonably full and still had the reserves to keep going but one thing that she thinks hasn¡¯t changed was that she was not going to outlast him in terms of mana. At the rate she was consuming mana, she wouldn¡¯t last long.
The fire mana in her blood disc bubbled as she conjured more into it. The disc exploded into flames and splattered all over the destroyed shield. Burning the ground where it landed.
The blood and flames gathered, putting the fires out and reforming into a blood halo. Returning back above her head.
She would usually have the ring of burning blood expand and rotate around her with Revolving Razorwind Film cast as well so nothing large can come close but she didn¡¯t like the chances of her blood meeting Ebony¡¯s greatsword. It would vibrate and also get scattered by his repulsion spell. She already knew her film of wind isn¡¯t enough against his sound and gravity spell.
Instead, she pulsed out all the fire mana in her blood halo as a substitute for Sphere of Immolation. He was clearly very affected by the rise in temperature.
The blood halo acted as her defensive spell. Mainly used to distract him at first. Then, to fight off the ice sculpture that was fighting just like how he did.
Both understood that she couldn¡¯t cast or control as many spells as Ebony and he didn¡¯t take advantage of the fact. He was more beast-like in terms of magical prowess than any other beast she had seen. She wasn¡¯t even sure if the talented Elves could do the same. Was it the perks of being a mana being?
They started to burn the plains as it would scorch over before being frozen as Ebony passed by and then turned to ashes again.
Scarlet was very happy. She was getting arrogant indeed. Although she didn¡¯t drink any blood recently, the strength Ebony showed already humbled her by a notch.
She already let her control over the blood in her heart go as her heart rate constantly rose to meet Ebony¡¯s fervour. The weight behind his attacks only increased along with her getting used to the force of his strikes. Letting her build up even more power and speed as she was no longer disrupted.
Ebony¡¯s swordsmanship improved noticeably but she could still tell he was not very used to fighting another swordsman or swordswoman in this case. Just like her, they haven¡¯t been fighting against another user of the sword for a long time.
Both of them were slowly changing their tactics from monster slaying to duelling.
Scarlet was at a disadvantage because she couldn¡¯t imagine cutting Ebony up into parts and cooking them into dishes.
Ebony was at a disadvantage because he didn¡¯t want to hurt Scarlet accidentally as they both kept adding onto the pressure and were seriously going at it.
???
Ebony understood that he had lost the moment he gave Scarlet the chance to recover and fight back. His explosive start still wasn¡¯t strong enough to instantly defeat her. But something felt weird, it definitely wasn''t his imagination but it felt like she wasn''t fighting at her fullest.
The blood disc and halo was surprisingly strong. It sliced his compressed Layered Ice Carapace like with considerable ease.
He had the upper hand in the beginning as the heavy Icicle was great for Ceaseless Onslaught as the build-up of momentum was both faster and stronger. Constantly breaking her stance and not giving her the chance to get faster.
She definitely got the enhancement spell that she asked Hector about and it was likely also tier 2.
It still wasn¡¯t enough to challenge his compressed enhancement but she had that unreasonable Core Skill of hers that didn¡¯t have reasonable limits to keep up.
When she was no longer pushed back by his strikes, he already knew it was his loss.
She wasn¡¯t even out of breath when he was more than halfway into his mana pool. Although that changed pretty quickly as her usage of stamina increased along with her increase in physical stats. Ebony didn¡¯t know that her Blood Boil also consumes stamina as the energy in her blood is burned along with mana.
He was most affected by the surrounding temperature that constantly rose. As if his mana consumption wasn¡¯t high enough, the rise in temperature ate even more into his mana. He momentarily forgot that although his mana was consumed when ice melts and he conjures more, she was also consuming mana to ward off the chill.
His mana peppered off together with his flames as Scarlet who was at the limits of her speed and power landed a slash on the back of his hand. She didn¡¯t expect Ebony to slow down all of a sudden.
Fortunately, the timing must have been so perfect that part of his enhancement hasn''t died off yet. Only cutting him a little but Scarlet was also at the limits of her endurance. She was already pushing it after all.
The tension left her body the moment she landed that attack and the little mana she had left quickly slowed her heart down with her heart muscles working in tandem.
Ebony saw her falling over and was reaching to catch her but Scarlet was not falling over. She reached out for him, letting her swords go uncharacteristically.
Thinking that the duel was over, he had let his guard down against her. She grabbed the hand she cut with enough force to snap his unenhanced bones like twigs and pulled him towards her.
Ebony felt the burning sensation on the back of his hand again.
It was soft.
Scarlet lost the energy to stand and just pulled him to sit as she couldn¡¯t control her urge to drink his blood.
¡®...¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know how to react. Only thinking about the soft but dry and burning lips trying to suck his blood out.
She already retracted the lower part of her mouth before he could react. As a reflex, he started freezing his wound but it melted the moment her burning lips touched it.
He just watched in stunned silence before Sister Jing came and strangled Scarlet out with a chokehold.
They didn¡¯t know what came over Scarlet but she screamed and elbowed Sister Jing off. Sister Jing wasn¡¯t even phased by it but she truly didn¡¯t expect resistance and let go so that she didn¡¯t accidentally snap her head off.
Scarlet once again burst with speed with her swords that somehow got back into her hands. The ground buckled under the force they were put under as she raced for Ebony again.
Swiftly planted into the ground by Sister Jing before getting him to retreat. Her full mask was back on which protected her jaws.
Scarlet who should¡¯ve been out of both stamina and mana had another blood halo formed above her head and Sister Jing¡¯s hand which was faceplanting her into the ground.
Brimming with mana, it spun and expanded outwards.
Ebony sensed the approaching blade of blood and dived into the ground. The thin wave of blood flew over his fallen body and sliced deep into the earth ahead of him. Smoke was coming out of the ground moments later.
Sister Jing merely frowned as the blood halo which was sent exploding outwards landed on her belly like a splash of water. It then evaporated quickly but it didn¡¯t even leave a mark on her clothes or skin.
¡°This is troublesome.¡± Sister Jing raised Scarlet''s head up only to flip it around to smash her down again. With just enough force to knock her out without the mask in the way.
¡°...what happened to her?¡± Sister Jing murmured to herself.
Ebony made his way back to them only to see Scarlet¡¯s body convulse as foam escaped from under her mask.
¡°Did you have to hit her so hard?¡± Ebony asked as he already squatted down to check on her.
¡°Healer girl, quick!¡± Sister Jing teleported Mallory right beside Scarlet before Ebony even asked the redundant question.
She already knew there were some people watching, and recognised the healer that Scarlet had told her about.
Mallory wasn¡¯t anxious. She already knew what was happening to Scarlet.
Her heart was cramping.
It was of little difficulty for Mallory to relax one¡¯s heart muscles. At least that was what she thought.
Scarlet¡¯s heart wasn¡¯t like any other humans she had treated or diagnosed. Her heart was larger and the muscles were thick. It was also cramping more than she imagined was possible.
Still, it didn¡¯t complicate things for the healer. Only making it more difficult. The healer welcomed it.
She had to soothe the heart muscles first. Gentle was unlikely going to shock her heart back to relax but she didn¡¯t have the physical strength to tackle the convulsing beast.
Mallory¡¯s invisible barriers held Scarlet¡¯s limbs down and Ebony could see her attempting something similar to cpr. She was doing chest compressions.
Scarlet¡¯s chest wouldn¡¯t even depress from the skinny princess noodle arms.
Ebony took over. First aid for heart problems was not a very rare skill to have on earth.
¡°Just once, hard enough to completely shock her heart muscles then get lost.¡± Mallory, who got pushed aside, didn''t complain. Ebony seemed confident enough. Was chest compressions really the right thing to do first? Ebony trusted the healer.
Mindlessly but with intense focus, he enhanced himself a little and used just enough force to crack her ribs in one go before Mallory pushed him away.
After that, it was just watching Scarlet slowly stop convulsing. She probably fell asleep at some point or was just unconscious from the start which was more likely.
He didn¡¯t know what kind of healing magic she used and wasn¡¯t really interested as long as it was working.
???
Scarlet opened her eyes soon enough as it wasn¡¯t the first time her heart cramped up.
The first thing she did was wash the foam and vomit away.
The faint but delicious smell entered her nose again but it was covered by her stinky bodily fluids. She noticed the amount of energy and mana she had was pretty high. That was a potent tonic.
¡®No wonder the dungeon creatures are so attracted to him.¡¯ Scarlet was enlightened. The partial mana being was easy to digest, filled with mana and vitality. His blood was also cooling and didn¡¯t have such a strong taste of iron. She could even taste the faint sweetness as she licked her lips only to wash it off again due to the sourness of whatever she expelled.
It was weird that she had memories of what happened after drinking his blood. After her Physique changed a little, drinking the blood of whatever she found lets her recover both stamina and mana. Although it wasn¡¯t much, it had helped her survive.
The problem was mostly her getting very aggressive and losing both control of herself, and the memories of that short period of time. It was always her finding herself in the middle of bloody puddles and corpses.
She had guessed that she also absorbed the creatures'' instincts or at least the ¡®slaughter everything in sight¡¯ portion of their instincts. She had no choice but to rely on this ability to regain energy and the fact that nothing but her survived let her continue depending on it.
She got varying strengthenings from different creatures too.
Ebony¡¯s was just incredibly dense energy, both stamina and mana. But, most importantly she didn¡¯t lose complete control of herself. She was pretty sure she only went after him again just to drink more of his blood and not to injure or kill him.
Drinking the chilled blood made her¡relaxed.
Her mental state was probably more messed up than she thought. Must have been the constant drinking of the blood of those filthy creatures.
She shouldn¡¯t fully trust her weak Physique¡¯s ability to cleanse and digest essence, she might consume too much and have irreversible consequences. It would be pathetic if she had turned herself into a fiend or demon.
Then she noticed the concerned looks she was getting.
Remembering what happened, her heart rate rose again as blood rushed to her face and head. She turned and sprinted away but was teleported back to the same spot over and over again.
How was she going to face him again?
One, she grabbed his hand like a slutty rabbit beastman.
Two, she basically kissed him and then sucked his blood out.
Three, she somewhat remembered his hands on her chest. Although it was to help her and it did crack her ribs a little she just couldn¡¯t get the images out of her head now.
Four, she could still feel the cooling and calming force inside her belly and also quickly circulating through her body. There was so much energy in that bit of blood¡how much did she suck out? Ebony didn¡¯t stop her at all and she probably drank quite a bit.
The partial mana being was probably regenerating and producing blood as fast if not faster than she drank.
She secretly licked her lips again, thinking about her new blood source. An unending source of blood that¡¯s full of energy that tastes a little sweet and is even chilled¡
¡®Nononono.¡¯ Scarlet shook her head and tried to erase her evil thoughts.
¡®Yesyesyes.¡¯ Her belly and appetite argued.
Chapter 106: Inappropriate
2 women and a round man sat on opposing ends of a square table.
¡°Humans and Beastmen sure are lazy and undisciplined.¡± The man said.
¡°Care to specify, Gerot?¡±
¡°Ay, your highness the Queen. Don¡¯t think any of us doesn¡¯t know what I¡¯m talking about. The moment we found out we have even more time on our hands, your little nobles and the beastmen just didn¡¯t bother with training anymore. My hardworking dwarfs never stopped with their crafts with the extra time while my front liners and dungeon clearers aren¡¯t seeing much of your nobles.¡± Gerot snorted.
¡°Good point I guess. Alright, 10% of a decade¡¯s worth of the Royal funding from both the Humans and Beastmen¡¯s share would go to the Dwarves starting this year. I doubt you have any complaints, Lucretius.¡± The pink-haired lady, Yvette, said decisively.
¡°Ay! That¡¯s what I¡¯m talking about! You know me best, Yve.¡± The bearded Dwarf grinned.
¡°It''s the best period of time to build up the skills and treasury. You¡¯re right that many of our young nobles are just squandering the resources they have. Any news on Medy and Kye?¡± The other woman, tallest in the room, shook her head. She appeared to have no issue with the decree.
¡°¡°...¡±¡±
¡°None huh¡ has Chlothar cleared the groups of scouting Trolls already?¡± Yvette took the news of no contact from the archdukes lightly.
¡°Yes¡ they were pretty large numbers to be considered groups. Mostly around the seas of the Second and Third Tide. There are a particular few that were oddly adaptive to sea and water battles. They may have adapted and built skills around that.¡± The Elven lady, Lucretius reported.
¡°Where¡¯s Navin anyway?¡± Gerot managed to speak without his short tongue messing with him.
¡°Same old. Strengthening the Tides¡¯ barriers and going around doing the same for cities. The roads prote...¡±
The three of them got off their seats at the same time.
A staff appeared in both the ladies¡¯ hands while Gerot held a massive shield big enough to cover all of them. Their mana surged through their weapons and body.
Facing the door that was suddenly creaking open dramatically slowly.
The door was supposed to be locked both physically and magically.
They watched and identified the short intruder.
[Sexy Old Lady Lvl 5]
They saw the striped rainbow coloured mask tied to the intruder''s hip and relaxed a little but not unequipping themselves.
¡°Madam. We have prepared the Reds if that¡¯s what you¡¯re here for.¡± Yvette spoke up.
¡°...keep it. Get little Nav to go to Xienor.¡±
¡®¡®¡®???¡¯¡¯¡¯ Confusion spread.
¡°Build a barrier for Xienor.¡± The old lady turned around and walked away.
The minds of the three were in a disarray.
Why on Elva would Xienor want or need a barrier?
They chased after the walking old lady that was clearly teasing them by waltzing in and out of one of the most secure rooms you could find on the entire continent.
¡°Gyahahaha! You should¡¯ve seen the look on your faces!¡± The old lady held her stomach from her uncontrollable laughter.
Gerot had to hold himself back from hitting the old lady that was clearly teasing them.
???
Scarlet was so persistent in trying to run away that Sister Jing just let her do so after teleporting her into the direction where Ailbury was.
Following her, they found themselves against archers and one or two mages spotted that were atop the town walls. Clearly ready for whatever was coming.
Ebony was dumb enough to look back but there was nothing there.
¡®Oh wait¡ is accidental mass destruction a crime? At least there¡¯s no wildfire right?¡¯ Ebony defended.
Were they so close to the town? No.
The waves of heat were enough to alert some sensitive people as it was winter currently and not all the archers were slacking off. With the vantage point of height and Perception stat, it was not hard for them to notice the bright lights, loud clashes and the very ground vibrating from time to time.
Alarmed. The guard in charge deemed the unknown beasts in battle were enough to warrant the town barriers to be halfway up.
Ebony could sense the thick layer of mana right over the walls. The top was uncovered, perhaps for the archers and mages to attack back. At the same time, it could probably cover the whole town if needed.
Some of the archers didn¡¯t just drop their arrows, they even dropped their bows and fell on their asses when they saw Sister Jing. Maybe also Scarlet.
It wasn¡¯t much trouble to get back into town. There was some shouting and delay but their entry wasn¡¯t blocked. There was some bearded middle-aged man bowing and saying a bunch of words that flew over Ebony¡¯s head.
It was the generic apology that he heard multiple times. Honestly, just about the same thing that happened in Fourth Tide.
They really just wasted so much mana just for the 2 of them sparring. The guy in charge¡¯s probably getting demoted or maybe the ones who decided it was a good idea to be hostile to non-hostiles.
Scarlet who had no choice but to be stopped already sprinted into the distance once they were let through.
Ebony ignored her, no, he let the woman have her privacy and went back to his own studies.
Dinner that night was with Hector and Mallory at another restaurant that served fish in wine, lamb chops, small roasted birds and a dish of grass. Tasteless.
The princess probably booked this fake classy restaurant. It was not a satisfying dinner for any of them. Despite the unsatisfactory meal, the three of them left nothing untouched. The prince and princess were brought up well to not waste any food.
They decided to leave for Teld city over the next few days.
Ebony wanted to just run there and reach in a day or two. The rest wanted to take it easy. Travel by carriage and do things the normal way.
His persuasion method was pointing out facts.
They would have to suffer days of butt pain because not many carriages or wagons here have good suspensions.
If they rush, they can reach a nice inn with warm baths every day.
They don¡¯t have to worry about the cold nights of the winter.
He didn¡¯t even need to say more before it was agreed they would just speed through. With him to carry the lazy prince around, it wasn¡¯t an issue.
The job of informing Scarlet fell to Ebony.
Returning to the inn, he stood outside her room and heard her pacing around. He knocked on her door and said his piece before going back into his room.
¡°We¡¯ll be leaving for Teld over the next few days. I lost again but I don¡¯t think I was as weak as you imagine. Let¡¯s spar again soon. Good night.¡±
Since she didn¡¯t want to see him then he wasn¡¯t going to force anything. He didn¡¯t know what was in her head but that applied to everyone else.
He wanted to understand her more but, if she doesn¡¯t give him the chance. Whelp, he can only try again another time.
???
Ebony was in the middle of his morning writing when he was starting to get hungry. He was gonna wander around and take a stroll but the scent of food came knocking on his door already.
Scarlet was found on the other side of the door, holding a filled tray in each hand. She had her head down while she took small steps in without any eye contact.
The faint scent of plums wafted into his nostrils as she walked past him.
Ebony quickly cleared his messy table to allow her to place breakfast down.
They ate in silence.
He already knew that she always took notice of how much he ate and only ate just as much if not a tiny bit more. She clearly wanted more so he made sure to put more food on her plate and bowl.
It was cute to see her in a dilemma when she wanted to reject food but could not pull her gaze away.
It was awkward but pleasant. Full of new experiences and emotions.
Ebony wondered if that was what a first date or love felt like.
¡°Do you want to drink some of my blood?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know why he broke the silence. He didn¡¯t think the question was too weird at first since she seemed to like it a lot but it sounded weird after he said it out loud.
Scarlet was so surprised by the question she choked and coughed out the piece of bread in her mouth.
¡°...¡±
¡°I mean¡ if it¡¯s just a little. And if you don¡¯t go burning the town down.¡± He wasn¡¯t really interested in asking if she got power ups from drinking blood because that was obvious enough already. He just thought that if the lady wants his blood she can have it.
¡®So she can already beat me without even being at the limits of her power.¡¯ There really didn¡¯t seem to be an upper limit at how strong one can get when he was constantly challenged by her imposing power.
¡°...I..I want it. I mean not now!¡± Scarlet stopped him from cutting himself right after she replied to his openness with honesty.
Ebony cocked his head.
Letting his wrist go, Scarlet started talking.
She was recounting her experiences in the other realm that seems to be a realm of blood. From creatures to plants to their magic.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Trapped in a small burrow, she relied on her own food as long as she could but admittedly consumed a lot.
Like Ebony, she didn¡¯t train. Only constant fighting.
The creatures she killed never seem to have an end. After clearing the monsters near the entrance their numbers would rise back in a couple of hours.
Exploration was difficult because it took a lot of effort even for her to slay a single one of them. She got the hang of hunting them after some time and her blood magic had improved heaps.
It was simply an underground tunnel.
Not even that large. At the end of the roughly straight tunnel was a puddle of blood which shot for her when she was less than 10 steps away.
Unable to resist, she was dragged in.
She was unconscious for an unknown amount of time but found herself in the same burrow she called home for months.
At least, she originally thought it was the same burrow.
Not noticing that her body felt different at that time due to her exhaustion and weakness.
It was the same thing.
She climbed out of the narrow tunnel of the burrow only to find different variants of spiders staring at her. Stronger than ever.
Ebony found out that she was quite the excited talker. Maybe all women were talkative after all. Instead of finding it noisy or annoying, he found himself intrigued by anything and everything she was saying and just looking at all her little body language was enough to entrance him.
Skipping through all her cute actions and depictions of slaying and cooking monsters.
She ran out of food and had no choice but to sustain her immense stamina consumption through their flesh and the moss called blood ichor.
When the creatures started turning into blood puddles after they were slain, the only thing left for her was the moss.
She would¡¯ve had a mini trauma seeing red coloured moss if it wasn¡¯t for the fact that it actually didn¡¯t taste all that bad.
The end of the second tunnel was just another blood puddle but brighter. She just let herself be absorbed this time. Not seeing another way out.
The same thing happened but this time, her Physique changed.
She summarised that she gained the ability to absorb energy from blood. Mostly stamina, from the creatures she drank from.
Depending on the creature, she would also get a minuscule percentage of their stats. While the energy in the amount of blood she drank lasted.
All the moss she ate also helped in refining it apparently. In Scarlet¡¯s words, there was less than a trillionth percent chance that a billionth of the creature''s stats would be permanently gained by her. The amount of blood she drank mattered as well.
He didn¡¯t know how she came out with the numbers and percentages but both of them were clearly awed by her Physique¡¯s ability. It was a stat gaining ability at no apparent cost. Although absolutely useless with those percentages for now, he believes in the future potential of Scarlet. Both of them did.
Trial and error let her conclude that she could absorb essence from blood. She began to be worried about becoming a demon or fiend.
Asking about that, he gained new knowledge again.
According to Gen, any creature that was unknowingly absorbing ambient essence was a monster or turning into one. Knowingly doing so only empowers the creature even faster.
The ¡®monster¡¯ who denies ambient essence and manages to completely remove, purify or cleanse the ambient or world¡¯s essence would be able to gain a Class. Sapience.
With that logic, already sapient creatures like Humans who absorb other essences slowly lose their sapience in exchange for stats and raw power.
Fiends are absolute powerhouses whose monster equivalent were the aberrant. The sapient creature loses all sense of reason and logic and is just a shell of the person they were before. They would have lost all their skills and Classes.
There were multiple types of demons but generally, the person would still have some of their personality and ability to think and reason. They would also gain quite some stats. Depending on how much essence they acclimate to, they would start to lose skill levels. Then Profession and maybe even Sub-Class.
Some people willingly chose to demonise themselves but Elcra didn¡¯t have any on the surface. They were not outright banned but the entire continent didn¡¯t have many who practised it to begin with so no one saw any future in demonising themselves.
Same logic with lineages, if demons didn¡¯t have a predecessor it was not easy to carve a path for oneself.
A little mistake was all it took for the demon to lose control of themselves and get closer and closer to becoming a fiend.
Those that lose control of themselves and attack other people get put down sooner or later which makes becoming a demon even less appealing.
¡®So demons aren¡¯t the rage because there were no strong demons alive long enough to build a lineage.¡¯
All the blood drinking had let Scarlet absorb more than just the energy of the creatures but also their instincts and personality. They didn¡¯t have a personality per se and that was exactly the problem.
That was why she had been a tiny bit weird since she returned.
Her underground adventures finally came to an end at her third tunnel. There was actually another wider room or cave in her case. With a reflective blood puddle where she could see the stall owner sell fish but not eat it.
She had to wait weeks before Ebony came and drop the sandwich that somehow created the link to let her escape.
So Scarlet really wanted to drink his blood because of other monsters¡¯ instinctive reaction to his energy filled body.
Her Physique definitely wasn¡¯t perfect.
The stat gains both temporary or permanent didn¡¯t come at no cost. Figures.
Scarlet had been focusing on removing the remnant essence or instincts from her body but she didn¡¯t know how to. Mostly fumbling around with her senses and using her mana to try to find foreign matter in her body to expel it.
She even doubted the Xengs had any information on this since they looked down on demons as well, although she did mention their strength was widely respected it was their choice of demonising that was looked down upon. They should have some knowledge on expelling essence since essence was also greatly studied by many.
She didn¡¯t even know if her Physique was right, that it removes the majority of vitality and only purifies and absorbs stamina and mana. ''Digest'' was more accurate since it took time and it really required her to digest the purified energy.
Right after drinking blood, all the memories of killing and killing kicked in again and she lost control of herself.
Another bad sign.
But, Ebony¡¯s blood apparently countered the effects and her constant desire to kill and eat.
¡°So you want to see if my blood can help with your¡sickness?¡±
¡°...something like that.¡±
¡°You can have as much as you want.¡±
Scarlet made a sound of acknowledgement like an ¡®uh-huh¡¯ or ¡®mmhmm¡¯ that he couldn¡¯t hear clearly.
She went back to the kitchen to work with the chef while he continued his own studies.
He would¡¯ve wanted to plant something but carrying around a potted plant wasn¡¯t that nice. Neither was keeping a living plant inside his bag nice to the plant.
A portable home was definitely on his list of things to get. Probably one that can move so that it made travelling easier for the others around him. Yes, like one of those trailer houses.
Ebony could come up with some ideas already and he really wanted to dive back into Sister Jing¡¯s library to swim in knowledge.
As for going back to the dungeon. Like Scarlet was secretly feeling, he was not all that excited about it.
It was the survival of the fittest in that killing lets one grow faster but while fighting was fun and killing wasn¡¯t an issue, he didn¡¯t really revel in killing.
Dungeon monsters were still fine. He truly didn¡¯t sense any sort of capability of thought from those flesh bodies.
Wild creatures who decided he was prey were also fine. He could still eat them and not kill wantonly. If they were inedible or he just couldn¡¯t stomach it then taking their useful parts and selling them to others who can make use of their parts in crafts also gave value to their deaths.
More and more often, Ebony was less seen as prey and was avoided which helped.
But, the previous dungeon run already made him kill a person. More than one.
He didn¡¯t like that he didn¡¯t feel much guilt or any guilt at all. He knew why.
He simply didn¡¯t care or tell the difference between them and monsters after his life.
He didn¡¯t like that. He should understand the value of life. At least he thought he did but, he didn''t even have a single thought for a party member that died in his very arms. None till date.
Yet, he wasn¡¯t against killing people and he would¡¯ve done the same was the clock to turn back.
Hopefully, there wouldn¡¯t come a time when he turned mindless murder of mindless monsters and predators alike to mindless murders of people.
¡®Mmm. Planting something and birthing life seems more agreeable.¡¯ Ebony dismissed the random thought and went back into his trance.
???
The next day.
Sister Jing already left after spending time with Scarlet and sending kicks and punches as a farewell to Ebony.
It was also the day they were setting off.
Packing up was both easy and quick.
Trailane Plains stretched across Elva just like Bubble Hills
Teld and Plainston were quite a distance from Ailbury.
Even so, Ebony who was still just a puny Journeyman had found Elcra to have become so small.
The incredibly massive continent of Elva in his mind just kept getting smaller as he grew stronger. Mostly with the increase in his movement or more accurately, travelling speed.
Scarlet had hidden in her own room to stuff herself full. She also brought a jar of a type of bull¡¯s blood.
She kept up with him while Hector and Mallory were just chilling around on his thinner and lighter shield.
Still, she got tired partway through and climbed aboard another one of his shields.
Only using regenerated mana, uncompressed and all. It was a leisure trip.
Faster than many mounts in the low hundreds, he didn¡¯t take breaks either.
Sometimes there were dirt tracks but it was mostly just grass.
With just a general direction, Teld was within sight in a couple of days. Admittedly, some detours had been taken.
Pauses to cook wild turkey, bunnies, sheep and consume them. Or even just for the passengers to stretch and get rid of the cold chill on their butts and backs.
Ebony even made sure to shield them from the chilling winds at night so that they could sleep better.
Hector was pretty weak with all the clothing he had put on.
Scarlet seemed to sleep very comfortably with the cold. She even slept the longest.
Mallory consistently kept her bearings. Elegant and proud.
Gaining entry with ease after paying up.
They had already confirmed that Mark would take some time to get here.
Ebony was bored of staying at inns, it wasn¡¯t exactly the most comfortable of places to live.
He recalled that there were properties out for rent when he bought the land deed for Sister Jing. With more Blues than he could count, leasing a small cottage big enough for 4 wouldn¡¯t even make a noticeable dent in his wallet.
When he brought the idea up, Mallory had declined, saying that she wouldn¡¯t be staying in Teld for long.
Hector was all up for it but was dragged along with Mallory with a single ¡®you¡¯re coming with me.¡¯ an ear pinch and a glare.
They were going to be back before Mark was here. If not, they would just be in the area and could still be contacted with the callstone.
As for what she was going to do, Ebony didn¡¯t ask. She would¡¯ve shared if she wanted to.
Mallory pulled Hector¡¯s ears down the street without care for the prince¡¯s dignity.
Left with Scarlet who quickly declined without hesitation.
Ebony had thought it was a good chance to grow closer as something like roommates or flatmates. The quick rejection had been a tiny bit hurtful.
Rejection in mind, he left for the Quest Hall which also worked as a town hall.
The red figure followed him unexpectedly.
She followed him all the way till he decided on a small cottage that seemed pretty clean and new. Nothing was worn out or falling apart and that was good enough.
It had 2 rooms, a living room, a kitchen doubling as a dining room and an indoor toilet. Already furnished, one of the terms of rent was that he was to pay for any damages or loss of furniture. It wouldn¡¯t even cost a Blue to rent for half a year or more.
It was fenced up like every house around and the yard was large enough for him to do his stretches, exercises and sword dance but not enough for any real physical training. He would still have to use the Quest Hall¡¯s underground private training grounds.
He doesn¡¯t practise frostblaze in town or city. Only during the spar with Hector and Scarlet did he use it.
Also a quiet street that was not really populated since it was pretty close to one of the city¡¯s trash facilities. Far enough that no smell, smoke or smog would reach.
He felt a tug on his sleeve.
¡°I want that one.¡± Scarlet pointed to another empty house 2 cottages down.
¡°Why don¡¯t you stay with me? There''s another room.¡± Ebony would have used the other room as a mini workshop if there was no one but he didn¡¯t necessarily need it.
He preferred to have her company so he tried asking again.
¡°Th¡that¡¯s inappropriate!¡± Scarlet stormed off to the house she pointed at.
¡®Hot damn¡inappropriate this inappropriate that. What does she think I¡¯ll do to her?¡¯ Ebony paid for both houses and signed the documents required. Almost dejected as he entered his new house.
¡®Everlasting Tranquillity never seems to work fully when it comes to her.¡¯ That was just a thought as the skill was working perfectly fine.
Interlude(106.5): Short Adventures of the Untalented.
Note 1: No such thing as over prepared.
Inner wear. Check.
Heat-resistant steel chainmail. Check.
New double-layered leather armour that he was heavily involved in its craft with his contracted smith. Check.
2 small wind blast runes and a large one on the back. Check
One reactive antishock wind blast rune at the front to repel forces landed on his torso with another 2 small wind blast rune for emergency evasions. Check
Stone spike runes for each shoulder pad. Check.
The one on the belly was removed for the wind runes. Both layers had all the same runes in case a layer of his armour was torn off or the runes were too damaged. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time that happened.
3 resplendent crystals were placed within his upper armour. It was a Blue and 2 Greens.
The Blue wouldn¡¯t really be used much since his armour would probably fall apart if he used it but it was a measure that could save his life.
Cost efficiency had always been a bulk of his research limiting factor but it also made him improve his runes to be very easy on the armour itself. It wouldn¡¯t lose any durability if he were just to use Greens on an Uncommon set of armour.
Metal greaves with one fire blast and one wind blast rune on the back of both greaves and one water blade rune on the front. A Green firmly place in both. Check
A similar wind burst rune on the sole of each boot. With an additional stone spike rune that can shoot out along with the propulsion of wind. Check. Mana conductive straps connected to greaves. Check.
Stone wall rune on each vambrace. Check.
Steel helmet that covered most of his head with his cheeks covered too with his very own creation. Impact-resistant rune. Check.
Calling it his own rune was a little overdoing it. They were all wind elemental runes he had been playing around with. Compounding a few mini wind runes with the reactive runes has let him create a helmet that can reduce hard impacts that land on his head by automatically activating the right runes around the entire helmet.
It had been complicated work to make it work as imagined. The correct runes had to be activated depending on where his head had been hit.
Note 2: Always keep a water mana ore on you.
Within a self-sewn inner pocket of his shirt under the chainmail was an Uncommon water mana ore. Pretty expensive even though the sea wasn¡¯t so far. They were not easy to obtain.
Note 3: Triple check everything.
Mark touched himself all over. Feeling the pieces of his armour in place. Checking his water mana ore didn¡¯t drop out.
The bag larger than himself was more than half filled with rations. Writing materials, inscription materials and books. Shovel. Tent. Cloth. Rope. One set of spare clothes.
Multiple pouches firmly strapped to his thighs had his mana ores, potions, his personal inscription and engraving tools, notebook, map and snacks.
A belt with pouches also filled with similar things and a knife as a secondary arm, used to prepare game and cooking or just as a sharp tool.
Finally, his brand new spear.
It was not wooden or metal. It was made of bone.
Specifically, the spine of a Blazing Bull.
Much thicker than he was used to, but he was just able to fully grip it with his thumb able to touch his fingertips. Exactly 2 fifths of a gir long. It still had the runic wind blast rune. He didn¡¯t see the need for it to be a rod with a runic metal spear tip
It was already ground down and smoothened out by his blacksmith, together with all the strengthening and shaping that his contracted smith¡¯s skills allow.
The spine, now spear, had its natural orange colour and was carved on throughout its body.
The body parts of a monster that uses magic are much more resistant or rather, acceptant of mana of the same element. The Uncommon spear can easily withstand the Rare fire mana ore that Mark had fitted in in the centre.
With help from his smith, the centre of the spine had slots for 3 balls. There was some trick to putting them in place so it wouldn¡¯t drop off in the middle of battle. Probably only dropping out if the spear was broken into two or something.
Each section of the spine had been loosened while Mark engraved on them and then put together again to become both of their greatest work.
The power sources of weapons like a mage¡¯s staff were usually orb form unless it was an incomplete fragment of a golem¡¯s core or something.
The fire mana ore Mark sources from with the help of his company also made it into similar balls of different sizes. He used to use one that was half the size.
One of this size had 3 million mana in it. Unlike a Blue that¡¯s fitted into the myriad bracelet is controlled and checked to only contains up to 100,000 mana. This was the one that was fitted into his armour pieces too.
Mark had been offered the choice to get the better cores of some other natural creatures like golems that can absorb ambient fire mana or the even better ones that absorb ambient mana and convert them to fire mana.
He chose to get multiple fire mana ores of this size since he could engrave a fire mana absorption rune or fire mana conversion rune to charge it up.
This allowed his research to further along faster as well instead of getting the core which may increase his fighting capabilities but what use would it be if he were stuck in a room filled with books?
Besides, with how expensive those cores were, Mark had no doubt he would get some lousy fragmented one of a low quality.
Mark headed out.
¡°Ergh.¡± It had been a while since he had been exposed to sunlight.
The winter cold didn¡¯t even bother him.
Classing with Body Warmth gave him a 100% increase in body temperature regulation speed and his average body temperature. After evolving to Master, it raised to 200% since he was not dumb enough to evolve immaturely.
When it was cold, his body temperature would naturally rise to comfortable levels without any mana or magic in place. When it was warm, his body temperature would decrease accordingly as well. It couldn¡¯t decrease well at first but the evolution with Internal Heating which was tier 1 had let him gain the ability to do so.
That¡¯s the reason why he needed to have most of his equipment heat-resistant. Even his clothes are custom ordered by a pretty famous tailor in the city, made from heat-resistant fabric. Further inscribed with the simplest heat-resistant rune but mainly a cooling rune.
It was just fabric so he could only inscribe using mana inscription pens. They didn¡¯t even take much mana so he didn¡¯t need to have a power source for it. He could just run the pen over the same rune once it ran out of mana.
Internal Heating had stayed true to Mark and even evolved along with him. His first Core Skill.
Life¡¯s Warmth. A tier 2 skill.
As long as his heart still beats and his body still has warmth, Mark can still fight, move and his health wouldn¡¯t run dry till his warmth runs out.
It was an all-in-one skill.
With fire mana, it was a weak enhancement skill. Probably equivalent to an untiered enhancement skill if there was such a spell.
At the same time, when it was cold his body would consume a little more stamina to raise his body temperature further. Letting him increase his stamina consumption of any kind of movement or even no movement at all. But, he still gets a tiny physical enhancement all round.
The cooling rune on his shirt serves to make his body cold hence, warming up to get an enhancement.
It actually didn¡¯t matter whether it was summer or winter. When it was cold out his body just required more stamina. When it was warm in summer, he actually gets stronger from the rise in temperature.
Now the heat was already strong enough that it exuded from him and raises the temperature of the surroundings if he uses the skill with mana instead of letting it be a passive of his Fortification and skill. With his Heat Perception, Mark had a pseudo-perception spell.
An area of effect skill was the first step.
A perception spell is the second step.
With both of that, Mark was on the way to a Domain spell. Only the best of the best mages had them. One would be invincible in their own domain. Well, relatively.
Still, he is far away from achieving such a spell compared to Rimestone. No, Ebony.
That¡¯s what one might think.
Mark was certain that sooner or later, this skill would cause his Physique to change. Attaining his very own Physique.
He had already introduced and been introduced to the expedition party he hoped on to. Travelling alone was suicidal as one may never know what may appear.
An expedition party is only considered as such once there were at least 30 people in the party and runs differently from a normal party of 5.
Mark paid to hop on as a traveller. He didn¡¯t have to fight on the front lines or carry out any duties this way.
The expedition was to somewhere underground of Bubble Hills.
Led by a level 188 Master Warrior who is said to be somewhat fluent in water magic.
All expeditions last pretty long and cost quite a lot. There were the caravans, the supplies, the pay for the party members.
Add-ons like Mark were welcomed as long as they paid since they really needed whatever funds they could get their hands on. More often than not, the expedition doesn¡¯t earn much if they don¡¯t have accurate information.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Apparently, they were going after a lair of mud golems for their cores. Hence the barrels of phos and also other supplies and equipment for underground expeditions.
Mark didn¡¯t interact much with the expedition party since he was just tagging along. It didn¡¯t stop him from chatting and making good impressions on the notable members like the leader. Connections were important.
Who knows if the good impression was what saved him if others had to choose to save a random stranger and a stranger that they have a good impression of?
Introducing himself and making known what company he was from was good enough for an impression. He was a small-time potion maker which should increase his value in the eyes of the expedition party.
There was another traveller who¡¯ll be sitting in the same caravan as him. It was someone fully covered in a robe that had body language clearly saying ¡°Don¡¯t talk to me.¡± so Mark only introduced himself before taking a random corner.
With the person¡¯s size and figure, it should be a man. Or maybe a Beastwoman or a young beastman. The person¡¯s heat signature didn¡¯t match its figure. Mark probably sensed wrongly with them just curly up against the caravan wall.
¡°...Mongrel.¡± The response had been unexpected.
Mark nodded in reply but no conversation started. He doubted the person was calling him mongrel, it sounded more like an introduction.
After some bustling around and waiting for people to gather, the expedition party continued on their way.
They shouldn¡¯t be making any more stops until Teld, which would be their final stop before actually starting their expedition.
After the tourney in Crust Deposit City, Mark returned to Cielfast City which was just neighbouring it. It was 2 weeks by the standard caravan and that brought him closer to Bubble Hills.
The expedition convoy probably wouldn¡¯t move as fast due to how much stuff they were carrying but these roads are safe and they planned to travel a little at night since they had so much phos for lighting anyway.
This region snowed from time to time during winter due to the proximity with Hoarfrost Glade but the current conditions seemed decent enough.
The average level of the expedition was over 150 and with a total of 88 people there was nothing Mark should be afraid of as they got closer to Trailane Plains.
3 hours in and one of the carriages got stuck in a pothole due to the heavy weight being carried and also the poorer conditions of the roads here.
They needed more warriors to push it out than they thought. Delaying them some.
Mark didn¡¯t relax.
Constantly checking his bearings, the direction they were going, the surroundings, the weather.
Note 4: Expect the unexpected.
Experience on the field had taught him that things only happen when you start to relax and hope for things not to happen.
It was high noon.
They stopped for the Brawn Rams to rest. They were one of the best choices that were easily domesticated for heavy loads. Although they only managed to get those around level 90 it was already pretty good.
Those rams had way more pulling strength and stamina than any level 150 Master Warrior.
Mark stretched and joined the afternoon hunt for dinner tonight.
A personal note that didn¡¯t make it into his travel notes was to always bring a thick cushion for carriage rides.
Note 5: Obtain and consume anything from the wilds before touching rations.
He didn¡¯t find anything but wild vegetables. They followed the roads and didn¡¯t go into the woods so it wasn¡¯t unexpected that there was nothing to hunt.
About to move out when he was alarmed by a speeding shadow entering his carriage. He got the less bulky knife out from his belt swiftly and squatted in a defensive position.
The robed figure landed and had his arm out to show Mark the bird he hunted.
¡°Share.¡± The thick arm of the person told Mark it was a human man as far as he could tell.
With no more disruptions, it was a quiet but bumpy journey.
Dinner was poultry stew with the vegetables he found and some souper bread.
The man showed his face. Dirt-coloured hair. A relatively young man, his expression was constantly taut.
He was missing an arm and a leg. No wonder his heat signature was weird.
¡°Thanks for sharing your hunt.¡±
¡°And your vegetables.¡±
Mark slept sitting upright. Weapon never too far away.
It was a peaceful journey. For 2 days.
It was late afternoon of the third day when he leapt out of the carriage along with Mongrel who was a Warrior. One of his bag straps is always hooked on his arm and gripping his spear laying between his legs was all he had to do to get everything along with him.
Mongrel¡¯s quiet nature was understandable if he was the type to hold it in rather than in a constant state or anger.
The carriages toppled on their side just after the both of them leapt out.
Before Mark could think ¡®what are the lookouts doing?¡¯ he had to dodge a fast and sharp projectile to his head.
Mongrel just swiped it away with a sword.
They were surrounded.
Mark focused on scanning the area and understanding what just happened.
Their attackers were people.
Earth mage or at least, earth magic was used.
The left side of the road was raised all of a sudden which, at the speeds the rams were going, was enough to send the entire convoy flipping onto its side.
Some physically weaker members were crushed or had trouble getting themselves out of the heavy cargo. Injuries were sustained by most that were riding or resting inside the carriages but their injuries shouldn¡¯t be too heavy unless they were unlucky.
The woods were right by the roads here, the attackers were hidden. Well, not anymore.
Listening to the conversation between the expedition leader and the man who showed himself let Mark put together a story.
A similar expedition party got wind of the location of one of the mud golems¡¯ lair. Not surprising.
The two expedition parties already had deep conflicts with each other. It wasn¡¯t the first time they were attacked or even defended from sneak attacks from each other.
A woman was involved in the two leaders'' talk. Not uncommon.
Mark quickly sieved the information he had.
They were busy talking but it¡¯s likely they were getting surrounded as the leaders spoke or have already done so and are waiting for a signal.
If it wasn¡¯t the first time, chances are, they aren¡¯t going for the kill. Just to mess with profits and or delay the expedition party so that they could get to the lair first. The toppled carriages alone would push them back by a day. The wounded legs of the rams would push them back even further.
Mark never put complete trust in the thing known as ¡®chance¡¯, it was note 4. The dumb fools were making too much of a racket. Carriages full of food were toppled over and spilt out.
Rhoats were very common here but they were not active in this season. The bigger predators are out at this time of the year.
A loud screech resounded through the forest as if to answer his doubts. Those that aren¡¯t busy getting out from under cargo all looked up.
It was already dim from the foliage but whatever made its presence known completely covered a portion of the sky.
Wings that shadowed the sky together with a fat round body and thin tail. It was a flying fish.
It was raining blood droplets that are larger than an entire carriage.
Whatever it was, it managed to fly past Fifth or Fourth Tide.
What bad luck.
Mark didn¡¯t hesitate anymore, he grabbed the level 100 warrior who called himself Mongrel and they dashed away undercover.
A few things made him decide to run away from the group.
If it was a large number of monsters, he would definitely stay and depend on the numbers that the two expedition parties had.
A singular beast of the sea that could cover the sky and fly past the Tides? Not even worth consideration.
The large group would just be a bigger target, it was time to disperse. Those people wouldn¡¯t even be able to protect themselves.
The shadow from afar just kept getting closer. Mark was afraid. The mana overflow of Vitality only slowed him down. His shoulder¡¯s felt heavy, every step felt heavy.
All his wind blast and burst runes on his armour had been activated already, leaving the fire ones on his greaves alone since it was a forest and he didn¡¯t want to gain attention.
Almost tripping himself from the unfamiliar speed.
¡°Go there.¡± Mongrel pointed to the right.
There were fewer trees there but Mark¡¯s body already moved instinctively.
¡°Get down!¡±
Mark¡¯s body followed the call again, his instincts compelled him to follow. They lay flat against the floor, Mongrel stabbed his sword deep into a tree and Mark copied by stabbing his spear into the floor.
Not a moment later, the world shook.
The shadow dived bombed from right where the carriages were, the earthen floor couldn¡¯t take it and fell apart.
If the expedition party was smart, they would¡¯ve scattered and left their cargo alone for their lives.
Despite putting so much distance, Mark and Mongrel fell as the ground beneath them was not spared.
Fortunately, it seemed like it wasn¡¯t hollow underneath the forest. The flying fish only created a very wide and deep crater.
As always, the Empire¡¯s knights only just arrived.
His body didn¡¯t feel good from the vibrations of that fall. They were slanted as his spear held him from falling down the steep crater.
¡°Grab tight.¡± Surprised that Mongrel could move already, he was laying close to the steep ground. Throwing Mark onto his back after he pulled his spear out from the tilted ground.
Mongrel climbed up the slope with ease, only a hand and leg gripping the floor with his drawn blade in his mouth.
By going to the right like Mongrel had said, they were currently in the fish¡¯s blind spot. None of them would survive the battle between the knights and the fish. The shockwaves or side effects of their battle would be enough to kill them.
A single flap would be enough for the fish to catch up but it was injured and the knights were here to hold it down already. Mark didn''t get a good look but there didn''t appear to be many knights, so the giant fish should be a single stray that managed to get past them.
Too bad even the knights¡¯ attacks were causing the ground to shake and Mongrel had trouble moving like that.
Another lucky thing was all the creatures around were probably scared off already.
A blast of water shot into the sky behind them.
It started raining water blades.
Already where the ground was relatively flat, Mark was running on his own feet. Slowing himself down for Mongrel to keep up. He had to conserve his own stamina as well.
The area of effect was too huge.
Mark stood his ground, now wasn¡¯t the time to stay hidden. There was no purpose already and they were probably not even hidden to the fish and knights.
Spinning his spear above head over and over. The new runic circle wasn¡¯t cast over and over again but a singular one expanding. The seemingly solidified flames from his Fortification where his fire magic or fire mana to be accurate was 200% more stable.
His skill, Kindle which was used to Class was trained in his wooden house under the sheets. Control had always been his focus, along with mana efficiency that noble mages might not have.
Swiping down just in time for his completed rune to spew out spears of fire to crash into the falling water crescent blades. It took tens of his flame attacks to disperse a single water blade.
Mongrel could only watch as Mark busied himself with burning a tree or two down. Drawing a circle on the floor and getting Mongrel not to move from it while he continued running around and drawing on the dirt ground with his orange spear.
His final stroke was done right after he entered the circle he drew for Mongrel.
The ground glowed orange as the temperature rose. Mongrel couldn¡¯t feel the shockwaves reverberating through his body anymore.
Both of them were drenched in sweat with cuts and bruises across their body, though mud covered those too. Armour didn¡¯t cover everywhere. They didn¡¯t even take any direct hits.
¡°Yo-your spell ran out! It''s still raining blades!¡± Mongrel got into his low stance. Mark noticed an axe fell from under Mongrel¡¯s robe, it was connected to Mongrel by a rope.
Mongrel had seen the blades of water cut through trees and earth like bread, it wasn¡¯t anything he could handle.
¡°It¡¯s okay.¡± Mark rested his spear against his shoulder as he sat.
Grabbing dried jerky from his belt pouch and handing one to Mongrel.
¡°We¡¯re pretty far out and the knights seem to be handling themselves well.¡± The huge water blade about to reach them suddenly served to the side and dug into the ground right outside the larger circle Mark had drawn. Then it evaporated as steam rose from the deep cut in the ground.
¡°We¡¯ll be fine if it¡¯s just some random, non-commital attack from the fish.¡±
Flames rose around them, it was like a fence as the fires don¡¯t dance or move as Mongrel knows it to. Then it covered them in a dome like a birdcage.
¡°This is my domain.¡± Mark relaxed while he ate and watched it rain blades of doom.
Chapter 107: Restart
"You really got a stamina-related skill?" Ebony asked as they returned from the training rooms under the Quest Hall, he made reservations for their routine training for both the morning and the evening since it didn''t really cost much even for the most durable ones.
"All thanks to you, it''s called ''regulated breath'', it actually increases efficiency in oxygen supply which goes perfectly with my core skill. The effects on my stamina consumption aren''t so obvious for now."
"Have you gotten it to be able to move to your class?"
"I doubt it, I''ll probably have to choose it during my evolution."
"During? Choose?"
"You don''t know?" Scarlet was visibly confused at his lack of knowledge.
"Mmm."
"I''m not sure if I can explain it well. You can already see the evolution prompts with multiple combinations of some of your generic skills that would merge and change your class, sub-class or profession right?"
"Mmm." He replied. There were indeed a few different routes he could go with, he just never bothered with them much since he wasn''t planning on evolving yet. Usually pushing the prompts aside once they popped up since they were disturbing his mind.
"Hector should know it too since he''s aware of the benefits of a combined or complete evolution. It''s mostly subconscious for most Imperials who evolve their class, sub-class and profession separately but everyone is known to ''decide'' or ''guide'' their evolution towards a certain direction. We tend to have more control over that if we undergo the ''complete'' evolution, the degree of freedom isn''t much but its much better than having little to no control."
"So...we will be able to ''push'' skills that we want into one of our classes?" He made an educated guess.
"Only if it''s compatible in some way, if it is only slightly compatible there''s a high chance of mutation if you force it to be taken in. You would have a much harder time squeezing more generic skills in if you do that. We believe that increasing our natural potential increases this ''quota'' or degree of freedom. After a couple of generations, it''s mostly proven true but since we don''t evolve without increasing our natural potential more than a few times it''s hard to compare with those that never got much natural potential." It was clear to him that she was referring to the Xengs when she said ''we''.
"Is that all? You should just assume I''m clueless about all this."
"I heard there''s some degree of control over the mutation and evolution of your skills but I''m not too sure about that."
"I see. On another note, why do your movements seem suppressed? Hmm...it feels more like you left the openings I''ve shown alone more than a few times. No, more like a little sluggishness in your movements."
"Ugh. My mind can''t keep up, no way 215 Intelligence can keep up with tens of thousands of Agility. Although I have Sheer mental acceleration, it''s not nearly enough as it''s just a tier 2 generic skill. I can still barely keep up with my body in battles like how you do, instinct." She casually brushed off a useful-sounding skill even though it was tier 2.
"Sheer mental acceleration?" He just had to ask.
"I picked the skill up myself, similar to my core skill where I can move my heart muscles at will. I thought I could do the same with my brain. I''m not sure how I even managed to do it actually, perhaps I sort of brainwashed myself thinking it was possible I imagined my brain to ''pump''. I''m not good at explaining... It''s passive but I haven''t refined it to be able to increase my speed of thought or mental processing and casting based on my Intelligence so it''s still a base percentage. I also ''excite'' the tiny bit of lightning mana in my head which helps a little but I don''t have a skill for that yet. Don''t you have a similar skill to be able to mentally process the speed of our battles?" Scarlet had so much control over her body that was beyond human.
"I don''t. It''s okay I roughly understand what you''re trying to say. You really need to be careful when you play with lightning mana in your head."
Scarlet tried to elaborate on how she manually accelerates her mental processing.
"...It''s okay. I don''t think it''ll work for me like how I don''t have regulated breath." Ebony doesn''t even think in battle.
Although magic was done using his mind, he was starting to not require conscious thought and it was more accurate to call it his magical muscles at work rather than ''thinking''. More often than not, he would mess up in battle when he started to have random thoughts and get into a tough spot.
As for regulated breath, she explained that it was ''controlled'' breathing to match her body''s movements but he doesn''t even actively control his breathing.
Scarlet was mostly manual control while he ran on autopilot.
"You have all your bases covered...endurance, intelligence and you don''t seem to have issues with constitution either..." She was quite jealous of Ebony. Power wasn''t much of a problem since many skills work to increase that, she was slowly covering the usual problems that stats cannot overcome.
"About constitution, I''m not sure if you can learn it but I made a skill called Reinforced Mana Chassis." Ebony then went on to explain how it was due to his physique that he managed to create the skill.
"Yeah, I don''t think I can even attempt to learn that. But, it''s a good idea..." She thought about how the basis of Ebony''s power, strength, speed and toughness can mostly be summed up by one word ''compression''.
"So how have you been able to cope with your new strength and speed."
"Moss...I mean my mutated physique. You can tell right?"
"Your heart." Ebony''s senses weren''t so dull he couldn''t hear the difference when her heart gets worrisomely loud as she uses her core skill. One could feel the vibrations coming from her when standing within 5 to 10 metres of her when her core skill was turned up high. She was practically a human bass. That wasn''t the biggest difference, it was that her heart wasn''t beating as fast anymore, it was beating slower but way harder.
"Mm. Other than the ability to draw energy from drinking blood, the main mutation was my heart. It only enlarged a little but it is supposedly 50% stronger than my base constitution suggests! Even my veins and arteries are strengthened along with it. Too bad I''m left with more issues like insufficient blood and oxygen in my body."
Scarlet seemed to face more and more issues with further strengthening herself instead of removing weaknesses fast enough. She constantly faced physical limits pulling her down.
"Oh, I get it. You''re going to attempt to refine or mutate your physique even further with blood manipulation. Only being able to manipulate your own blood is more than enough to do so. You''re going to try to compress your blood right?" It was possible to compress water mana, ice mana and whatnot, there wasn''t any reason why it wasn''t possible for blood mana.
"I''m not sure if my body would produce enough blood but I have higher base health regeneration than normal and I have to start somewhere. Must be nice to get started on your magic body so early."
"What magic body? Reinforced mana chassis?"
"You don''t know what magic body is either?" Scarlet rubbed her temples. ''Is he acting dumb?''
???
Having a semblance of normal life again, Ebony was watering the flowers he planted outside.
There shouldn¡¯t be any issue with planting flowers on rented land.
All training or sparring had to be done underground with barriers up so he decided to just use the yard as a garden.
Other than just reading, writing and training. He also cooked for himself, walked around the city, took care of his small garden and of course, moon gazing. Too bad he didn¡¯t find any tea being sold here. The closest coffee equivalent was called hata, it was naturally sweeter than he liked.
He found the most lacking part of his skill set to be his gravity and sound magic at the moment. He found out which taverns had bards performing at which time and invited Scarlet out on a date to go listen.
She actually agreed and also drank a little. Not hiding her lips from the world. Although, no one but Ebony dared to look anyway. He might have stared them down with his mana leaking out.
Ebony never let her drink or touch any alcohol after the first time. She was even weaker of a drinker than Sister Jing. Being weak to alcohol was one thing. Drawing her swords or smashing her mug into some stranger¡¯s head was another.
Well, she was really cute when drunk so maybe he¡¯ll like to see her drunk again.
Other than pubs and taverns, there were performances throughout the city too. There were quite an obvious cultural differences in the music they played. The string instruments were similar but the type of music they had was not quite what he had heard before.
Like folk music meets classical meet jazz. It was pleasant too.
Ebony¡¯s repertoire increased.
Other than just touring and listening to their music, he also played around with other sound magic ideas that he had but didn¡¯t have a chance to try out.
Clapping both his hands together while Sonic Overlay was cast caused quite an intense shockwave that might stun one. Although not exactly a mental attack, the sound can scare or even pop an eardrum or two. He¡¯ll have to run actual tests to know the effects it had on others or on monsters.
Ebony placed his forge in the unused room and restarted his practice of forging rings. The previous Durable Steel Ring of Featherweight Ice Blast was given to Hector before he left the city with Mallory. The ring seemed a little lacklustre to give to Scarlet.
The reduction in gravity was useless for him because he could do better with just gravity manipulation alone. As for the ice blast spell, it was even more useless.
Hector then gave it to Mallory since he couldn¡¯t use the ice blast spell if he wore the ring under his gauntlets.
It was quite a lousy piece of equipment to them honestly.
Other than rings and runes, Ebony had his side project.
Moulding durability runes onto wooden planks and stone bricks. The materials were not hard to obtain, there was a surplus from merchants that brought in huge quantities for the city''s expansion.
After enough practice till he was satisfied with the quality, he mass produced them in his free time. He was really interested in his mobile home idea.
Scarlet always brought food and they ate all their meals together.
They only had light spars without too much magic going on when they went to the duelling grounds. The barriers here couldn¡¯t withstand their battles. Even though it should be able to withstand some Master ranked battles.
Ebony had gotten the hang of Scarlet¡¯s likes and dislikes in food. There was not much she disliked but she preferred sweet and savoury compared to bitter. She also had quite the appetite for what he would call guilt foods.
He didn¡¯t always want to be on the receiving side so he made some snacks for her from time to time. She fell in love with potato chips. He just had to slice some potatoes thinly, deep fry and salt them a little.
Finally, she had let him stay in the kitchen. Ebony¡¯s special bowl of potato chips, fries, spicy chicken cubes and a side of popcorn drizzled with caramel became Scarlet¡¯s weak point. She was crazy about them.
Ebony on the other hand loved her pan fried dumplings.
Both of them were fattened up back to normal in a few days. Scarlet also lost quite some weight after all.
He put some of his blood into a glass bottle and left it on Scarlet¡¯s door but she ultimately found him to have her drink it under his supervision in one of the training rooms under the Quest Hall so that she didn¡¯t destroy anything.
She really didn¡¯t lose control other than constantly wanting to attack him for more blood. Her condition got better and better after some time.
After a week, he realised there was a small problem. He had always been wearing the same few sets of clothes when he went out. That might not look good. He also noticed Scarlet wearing the same few sets of casual clothes.
He bought all the types of fabric he could find and conjured a sculpture of himself as a mannequin.
One of his ice sculptures was busy writing the knowledge he wanted to pen down, so he could free some time to do other stuff.
His days were always busy.
???
Before he knew it, a full month passed.
It was already longer than the estimated 5 weeks Mark gave but Ebony received a call from a haggard voice.
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Mark just reached Teld.
Ebony went to fetch him near the city gates.
Mark had opted to sleep in his forge room rather than stay at an inn after he mentioned that he had a rented house.
The dirty and smelly man was not let into his house, Ebony sent him to some random public bathhouse. The moment Mark was done and they reached the forge, he fell asleep on the floor.
His journey must have been tiring.
Hector and Mallory weren''t back yet but Mark needed rest anyway. Ebony still gave them a call and informed them of Mark¡¯s arrival.
His front yard could now be called a bonafide garden. Flowers were starting to bloom even though it was winter. He had adjusted all the necessary conditions with the help of runes.
Mark has levelled quite a lot.
Ebony heard the rough average for levelling speed for an active freelancer was a level every month or so to once a year from the 100s to 150s. Only getting slower as one level.
Those that go dungeon diving level much faster, a year or 2 was enough to go from 100 to 150 if they were appropriately levelled and one had the strength to go against anything slightly higher than themselves.
That was a huge difference in speed and why dungeons were popular.
After that, levelling by fighting anything at one¡¯s own level was just very slow. Even active dungeon clearers don¡¯t level often.
Scarlet explained that people like them usually didn¡¯t have trouble levelling.
¡®People like them¡¯ didn¡¯t sound nice but it was a compliment. All they needed was to find a good dungeon and they would soar through the levels.
It was more important for them to focus on their skills and technique.
Undisturbed as usual. Ebony returned to watching his sculptures attempt Treading Stride and decapitate each other. They moved more smoothly but considering they were powered by his Intelligence, they were too slow and weak to be of any help against anything that he would have trouble against.
He had a lot of chances to let his mana pool fill up and force his Mana Chassis to strengthen. His gravity and sound magic had stood to gain as well.
Ebony felt ready.
Ready to take the next step.
???
¡°Heyo! How¡¯re you doing, my cute little girl?¡±
¡°Grandma!¡± Scarlet ran and hugged the shorter lady.
It had been long and her grandma never came even after she knowingly sent her to the blood realm. She didn¡¯t blame her grandma, it was merely to allow her to grow stronger.
Scarlet wouldn¡¯t let her tight hug go. Softening the teasing old lady¡¯s heart who hugged back. She decided not to tease her about her and Ebony for today.
¡°Aii! My legs are getting sore, young lady.¡±
Scarlet reluctantly let go after a five minute hug.
¡°I missed you too.¡± her grandma said.
¡°Is his blood working?¡±
Scarlet wasn¡¯t so surprised that her grandma knew so much. Now that her grandma mentioned, perhaps Ebony¡¯s very presence was why she let her go into such a dangerous place.
Her grandma seemed to have the future all within her grasp but Scarlet knew that wasn¡¯t true.
¡°...Yes. I don¡¯t have the urge to slaughter anymore.¡± Scarlet answered as naturally as possible.
Getting a head pat from the shorter lady warmed her up.
¡°Alright, listen up. I won¡¯t stay for long.¡±
Scarlet rarely heard her grandma¡¯s serious tone.
¡°Don¡¯t dally after your evolution. Something big¡¯s gonna happen soon and you need to quickly get stronger to reap the benefits. It¡¯ll be so big there¡¯s no way you wouldn¡¯t know what¡¯s happening. You can tell that to the boy too. I¡¯ll be leaving Elcra shortly so you won¡¯t be able to contact me for some time. And no, I can¡¯t tell you why¡take care, my cute little girl.¡±
The old lady left as quickly as she came after saying her piece.
2 houses down.
Ebony who was manipulating the planet¡¯s gravity mana into Icicle to attract a piece of rock towards the greatsword to sort of ¡®fish¡¯ the rock and then slash it down heard a whisper in his ears.
¡°Better protect her well little rascal.¡±
He looked up and around but no one was within his range of senses.
Yet he didn¡¯t forget whose voice it belonged to.
Finding out that Kong Jing was Scarlet¡¯s cousin and the old lady was her grandaunt let him conclude that she was Scarlet¡¯s grandmother.
¡°I will.¡± Ebony replied to no one in particular. Bowing where he thought he heard the voice from.
???
Hector and Mallory should¡¯ve been really close to Teld as they arrived in two days.
Unknown as to what they were doing in this period of time but they were not travel-weary and everyone was ready on the third day after Mark arrived.
The level 172 Master Fire Mage seemed a little out of place in their party of level 100 Journeyman.
Ebony and Scarlet both made sure they had a ton of rations because going hungry was not pleasant.
Mark had thought he was rich but seeing all 4 of the journeymen have spatial storages made him think twice. His bag was indeed expanded but only by some new space mage. It could hold about 30% more than its size suggests and not look flat like the journeymen on his new party.
The Xeng¡¯s presence shocked him. Hector¡¯s class gave him another shock and there really was a healer.
Mark had a bad impression of the healer that was wearing a dress and going out into the field. Worse, a dungeon. Then again, she was a healer that wasn¡¯t going to fight and she was the most valuable member in the party. She had better be as good a healer as she was a pretty face.
Back to the Xeng that Ebony introduced as Scarlet.
Mark was a little scared of the woman. The scarce fire mana in the air seemed to tremble before her and the fire mana in his spear seemed to be trying to hide deeper into its body.
Scarlet on the other hand noticed Mark¡¯s unusually high body temperature and for Ebony to say good things about his capabilities had a positive impression of Mark. He must be a pretty talented fire... A hint of surprise appeared in her eyes when she first met and Appraised the man, she didn''t think that she would get the chance to see a fire wizard on Elcra. Elcra was extremely mage dominant and wizards are practically non-existent here to her knowledge. Not to mention, a wizard carrying a spear as a weapon. She would be lying if she wasn''t interested in his capabilities.
Tets and greetings exchanged, they left for Ordina.
Ebony already took all his stuff out of the rented house. He had hoped the flowers would survive with his runes that would care for them but it really depended on the next owner.
Ordina wasn¡¯t that far for them. Much further from Teld to Ordina than Plainston to Ordina but still within a day¡¯s reach even with his previous speed.
Back into the first floor of Ordina.
It was to be noted that Ordina was anything but ordinary. Usually, dungeons had a single tone. Meaning to say, the environment or type of dungeon usually stays constant throughout the floors like the desert floors.
Ordina was more diverse in this sense but no two dungeons are the same so it was not that surprising either.
It had been roughly 4 years since they had last been here. The current date being 22.11.5536 on the Empiric calendar.
Time passed so fast. It hadn¡¯t even felt that long.
The grassland plains of the first floor had expanded by more than 30% since the day it officially opened in terms of area according to the records. The Quest Hall really worked hard to keep such information up.
That was pretty fast of an expansion, it is expected to be fully recovered in less than 2 decades and is estimated to be twice as large.
The Kobolds and Geoats are all in the high 80s now.
Ebony led them to the same entrance they took to the second floor. While it expanded, the layout was the same.
On the second floor which was the forest, they took their first break after the rushed travel.
Ebony went to find or rather, let himself be found by the Forest Weavers and collected their webs keeping them in a bottle made of ice because he forgot to get some glass or crystal bottles.
He tried not to kill them, just freezing them where they were and walking away. This dungeon shouldn¡¯t have any risk of a dungeon break anytime soon with how many people are constantly killing its monsters.
It was hard to tell if the spiders, kobolds or leopards were any stronger than they were from years back. They should be and they were but the difference was small enough to Ebony that he couldn¡¯t tell.
Although it was winter outside the dungeon, the dungeon¡¯s temperature was as high as it always had been. The increase in gravity was the same while the sensitive Ebony could tell the mana density was a little higher than it had been.
Mark needed some time to get used to the increase in gravity.
Mallory seemed fine on her floating barrier. Her ability to fly stunned Mark, even Scarlet was visibly impressed by that so it was no surprise most people would be shocked.
Ebony¡¯s glowing from his weakened enhancement kept him sufficiently cool.
None of them wanted to waste any more time on the lower floors and continued the charge upwards.
It was night time when they were on the huge mountain range that got even wider and taller.
Scarlet cooked for the party but still ate within her tent.
Mallory¡¯s tent was larger than most, at least it wasn¡¯t extravagantly decorated.
???
Ebony discussed runes with Mark and Hector, who didn¡¯t know much about it and got bored after listening in for an hour. He was clearly trying to listen but he didn¡¯t know enough to stay interested. It was mostly Mark talking, asking questions or bringing up issues that had been noted down from his experiments. There wasn''t much Ebony could help with practical rune work because Mark was far beyond him on that point.
They didn¡¯t have to worry about mass destruction in the dungeon but Mark was not up for a spar. Mark had vastly accelerated levelling through his new research and creations together with the increase in funding.
The recent trip to Teld was his first field experience in years. It had been rough.
Watching his new party members spar was enough to persuade him not to spar with the young geniuses. So full of talent. He guessed that he wouldn¡¯t have much of an advantage even with his 70 levels and one evolution above them.
He could see himself handling Scarlet and Ebony well enough as long as he had mana left in his equipment. The fire from Scarlet could empower him and the cold ice and mist from Ebony could similarly empower him. At the cost of higher stamina consumption against Ebony.
Mark saw little chance he had against the quadra elemental mage who could use more than 4 elements as enhancement magic. The sheer amount of power he had was too much for Mark to overcome.
He wouldn¡¯t even have the chance to fight back. As long as he didn''t have the chance to prepare himself of course.
Also, the healer. The healer wasn¡¯t some helpless young lady. Wonderful.
A party could hope for no better healer. One that can protect and handle themselves.
Only sleeping for as long as was necessary and quickly moving off after meals.
No complacency among the young talents was even better. They didn¡¯t take their strength for granted. Equipment was maintained, lookouts were carried out seriously and although they didn¡¯t look like they noticed the monsters around them they were always quick to react the moment anything chose to attack.
The dungeon was smart enough to ignore them after a few attempts.
Mark made the right choice in coming along.
Ebony gave him a curious ring that reduced gravity on him. Gravity elemental runes!
He couldn¡¯t spot a single rune on the ring, only the small mana ore on it.
How did he craft it?
There was not enough time to ask for now. He was in a dungeon. Anything can happen at any time.
???
The shortcut from 4th to 8th floor was still here and no longer a secret. The largest mountaintop was similarly covered by a massive horde but they easily dived into the horde and passed them without getting hit. They were prepared for the fog and Mallory just encased them in a mobile barrier as they entered the shortcut.
Though the walkway was wider than it used to be, there were people fighting the Earthen Topaz Golems and they had to wait before they could pass them by. Those that could use this shortcut must have the ability to bypass a huge number of those bears, kobolds and leopards and also a counter for the fog so they were all of a certain strength or resourcefulness.
Trying to take another''s target was rude and they might be seen as hostile and want to steal their earthen topaz. It was crowded and not really a shortcut if they had to stop and wait every time a party was ahead of them.
Still better than climbing from the fourth to the eighth floor which would take more effort.
The walkway shortcut also had the Earthen-Topaz Core Golem that acted as the deterrent to many more parties as it was very strong compared to others of its own level.
Once again, they didn¡¯t run at full speed because Ebony had to be considerate of the others'' stamina.
Only reaching the desert 3 days later since the walkway lengthened by a lot as well.
It was either hotter than he remembered or he got weaker to the heat. The second was ruled out because he worked with a forge long enough to know it wasn¡¯t true.
It wasn¡¯t enough to harm him or make him sweat when he had Frostblaze Augmentation on low. But, it was enough for him to feel the heat through his enhancement.
Mallory didn¡¯t like it either. She complained as she used a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off her forehead.
Hector didn¡¯t look that bothered by heat like he remembered and Ebony didn¡¯t even have to look at Scarlet to know that she was doing more than fine.
Mark on the other hand seemed more energetic and¡at ease. It was clear that day that he had been upstrung since the trip began. The others might not have noticed or be able to tell but, it was very obvious in Ebony¡¯s senses.
Now, his steps were lighter. Wasn¡¯t looking left and right as much. Wasn¡¯t flinching at every little sound from their surroundings.
Like Ebony, Scarlet also noticed something different about Mark. The temperature around him was lower and his own body temperature was significantly higher than normal. She didn¡¯t sense any fire mana or even mana at work.
Getting more and more intrigued at his capabilities that managed to earn Ebony¡¯s respects.
Mark hadn¡¯t even taken part in getting rid of the pests that sent themselves here as it was not even worth any of their efforts.
The eighth floor was way larger than they remembered and even Ebony¡¯s Mental Map didn¡¯t help too much without landmarks. The sand dunes more or less changed in shape and size.
They had no choice but to explore and search for a way up again.
The Quest Hall might have mapped out the place already but they thought it would defeat the purpose of dungeon diving if they already knew everything and maps wouldn¡¯t be reliable when the dungeon could reconfigure its layout at will and Ordina wasn¡¯t complete yet. Though, that rarely happens.
Hence, it was another day of leisurely slapping wolves aside, pulverising Arrowtail scorpions to mush and roasting some large worms.
Chapter 108: Outpost
It was not as easy as one might think despite the power-ups their party had gained over the years.
Ordina¡¯s spawned monsters have gotten stronger than the average levels they gained suggest. It was merely the dungeon recovering and was still considered a weakened dungeon.
Ebony left the party behind as he scouted ahead after confirming that nothing much was a threat to the party. They didn¡¯t have a scout anymore and he believed his Perception to be the best out of the 5 of them.
It was doubtful he had better eyesight than an archer with an eyesight skill but possibly having the highest effective Perception should be good enough.
He didn¡¯t have stamina constraints either, so he was the best candidate to act as the team scout.
Same mindset as always, he just blasted Frostblaze Augmentation so that he could save time. It did catch many other parties'' attention as he was impossible to miss.
Even the eighth floor was relatively crowded now.
There had never been a real need to scout as the way up was still the same. Getting to the edge and climbing the sandy slope up. It was all just for his Mental Map to refresh, he had roughly remapped the previous floors too, except those they skipped.
He rejoined his party on the ninth floor after they finished scaling the slope and he finished Mental Mapping the eighth.
The monsters were indeed fiercer but they didn¡¯t attack their party that much. There was more profitable prey for the dungeon on this floor.
With his ''wastage'' of mana, he was a plus to the dungeon as it could absorb everything that he was expending.
Before long, they were back on the eleventh floor.
Ebony walked to a seemingly random spot and put his palms together. As if a prayer.
¡®My apologies, Ryley. We weren¡¯t able to give you a proper burial.¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t forget, it was a rather bastard move as he put zero effort into doing anything for his previous party leader. It was just a matter of priority. He did not place a dead man¡¯s last words or wishes very high on his priority list.
¡®Ryley Vigoureed.'' He recalled.
Hector and Scarlet seemed to understand his actions. Hector removed his helmet for a deep bow and Scarlet closed her eyes with a lowered head for a moment of silence.
¡°I¡¯ve sent a letter to the Vigoureed family. Not that I got a reply but, they should at least be aware.¡± Hector cleared the silence.
Ryley might not have given them the best first impression but at least Ebony would remember him as his first party leader that fought till the end.
Watching him endlessly pile up monster corpses after he was out of commission in battle said more about him than his first impression did. Neither Hector nor Scarlet would deny Ryley¡¯s contribution.
Mark and Mallory didn¡¯t interrupt and just kept a lookout.
The pyramid was too easy to spot and passed that were unknown lands.
They checked out some of the rooms inside the pyramid but were soon bored and focused on going for the stairs.
"I''ve checked, the twelfth floor apparently collapsed not long after Ordina opened and this place expanded and became the twelfth floor." Mark, ever the cautious man, clearly did his homework, unlike the irresponsible kids he was with.
Some of the rooms just close on them after they enter and have scorpions and worms crawling out from the hardened sand ground.
The dungeon spewed some rusty equipment out after the monsters were dead. When the door reopened and the rusty armour wasn¡¯t picked up, the dungeon reabsorbed it like all the monster corpses.
It already learnt some tactics to attract people in. Perhaps it didn¡¯t like their party and just wanted them to hurry up and go higher or just leave without harming it too much.
A long flight of stairs later, they were stopped.
There was a blue ceiling above them. The stairs were wide and so was the ¡®ceiling¡¯, all of them could fit with space to spare for multiple parties.
¡°It¡¯s water,¡± Hector stated.
There wasn¡¯t a need for his statement as all of them could see the swimming creatures above them. There was only one type. It was smaller than the Teen Giant Sandworms in girth but longer. Like an eel with humps. The slick and rocky grey eel had an ugly face and mouth with its long whiskers.
Ebony couldn¡¯t Identify them from where they were standing.
¡°I¡¯ll check it out first.¡± Hector took a deep breath and climbed the remaining few steps that brought him past the screen of water. Although he did ask for a stick of ice to poke into it to test the water pressure just to be on the safe side. He should''ve been able to sense that as a water mage but one could never be too cautious in a dungeon.
He didn¡¯t even wait before he started swimming upward and checking his surroundings. The armour on him didn¡¯t seem to impede his ability to swim by much but he obviously couldn¡¯t move like he was on land.
Scarlet was unnerved and Ebony sensed it more clearly this time. He remembered she had the same reaction when she was jumping from platform to platform on the fourth floor which was a cavernous river.
The closest large eel was already watching their ceiling and the creature¡¯s floor as Hector swam up. The water around Hector bubbled. He looked sluggish with his punch that directly hit the eel¡¯s face. There wasn¡¯t much of an effect.
Hector smashed his fist together again and punched out before the huge eel even reached him again.
The water screen that Ebony and the others were looking at rippled a little.
The eel had blood escaping its lips after it felt a large force crashing into his head and body.
Hector urgently swam back down and fell onto the stairs, coughing out the water he swallowed.
¡°Kah! Haa.. It¡¯s not as bad as it looks. The pressure isn¡¯t that strong and I can see pretty well, it shouldn¡¯t be that deep. But we need to avoid battles since we can only hold our breath for so long.¡± Hector reported.
None of them was built for underwater battles. Not even Ebony with all his training had much experience in fighting underwater. Only once or twice and it was to spar with people, not creatures larger than a truck.
It¡¯s not too late to practise swimming and get relevant skills but according to Hector the eel or [Issile Lvl 153] was pretty damn tough. It wasn¡¯t dead and was just circling right above where they were.
It blasted a high-pressure stream of water at them but it just bounced off the water screen before it reached Ebony¡¯s Layered Ice Carapace.
Water weakened Hector¡¯s punch considerably and it was the Issile¡¯s home ground.
Scarlet and Mark¡¯s fire magic was rendered moot.
Ebony sent an Ice Sword flying in but it was so slow that it looked cute to all of them. Ice Sword could be said to be his weakest skill. Even if it was durable when compressed, his Intelligence was low enough that his control and projectile speed were too weak to overcome the big level difference.
¡°I¡¯ll go.¡± Mallory volunteered.
Before he sensed her mana about to box her up, Mark grabbed her wrist and stopped her from completing her barrier.
¡°Can¡¯t exactly let our healer move alone,¡± Mark commented.
He didn¡¯t know that she was a barrier mage and thought that she was about to swim up by herself. Mark didn''t have the mana perception Ebony had.
It was a coincidence that his hand managed to grab her before her barrier enclosed her. Mark had pulled her and he was inside her barrier too.
Mallory stared at Mark¡¯s hand uncomfortably long before Mark let go. Mark didn¡¯t expect to start floating and entering the pool.
He had only just sensed the mana with his weak senses but only realised it was an arcane barrier. They could even breathe in her barrier.
The three of them who stayed under the water screen watched for a few seconds before Ebony and Hector bolted in.
They had silently watched as Mark and Mallory were swallowed whole by another Issile that was under them and burst out from some corner closer to walls.
Ebony, who had Frostblaze Augmentation¡¯s output kicked up, had to retreat as the water around him was freezing. He would be in Hector¡¯s way and an unenhanced Ebony was unbelievably weak compared to the monsters here.
With Mallory¡¯s barrier, they shouldn¡¯t be in grave danger for the time being. If she could do the same as him and create sharp barriers to cut themselves out that would be great too.
Instead of Hector reaching the Issile that was a distance away or Mallory¡¯s invisible slicing from within, the Issile glowed brighter and brighter orange. From the centre of the Issile came bursting out a pillar of flames that was instantly extinguished by the water.
Flooded with water, there was no point for Mallory to create a barrier to box them in when they had no air. Mark wrapped an arm around her waist and swam up with the hand that was holding his spear.
Hector only swam to that point and supported their ascent by fending off the other Issile that was alarmed by the one Mark burst out from.
It didn¡¯t take long before they were all out of sight.
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¡°Alright. Let¡¯s go as well.¡± Ebony said.
¡°...¡± Scarlet fidgeted.
¡°Scarlet?¡±
Ebony received incomprehensible mumbles in response. It was quite amazing that she could whisper so softly that his enhanced hearing couldn¡¯t catch it.
¡°I said-I said I can¡¯t swim!¡± Scarlet had to speak up after his staredown.
It was a little unexpected that the almighty Xeng couldn¡¯t swim but her reaction to the river or this pool of water was understandable now.
¡°...Do you trust me?¡± Ebony changed the topic.
¡°I trust you.¡± Scarlet didn¡¯t blink or hesitate to answer.
The chill in Ebony¡¯s heart had long disappeared. It was replaced with warmth.
He didn¡¯t really have a very good plan. It was merely Layered Ice Carapace in orb form.
There were some problems with the plan.
He was definitely going to compress ice mana as much as he could. In addition to the dense ice was their body weight. Even with lots of air encased, it was likely that they might not be floating upwards.
It should be very possible for him to manipulate and carry them up in water since he was getting better and better and standing on his own ice.
The Issiles were another problem.
Ebony didn¡¯t like to think so much. He took some time to cast and compress an ice orb around them and rolled them into the water screen. He subconsciously took advantage of the situation and made the orb smaller inside.
If it wasn¡¯t for her mask they could feel their breaths on each other¡¯s necks.
His Vibrational Gravity Sense couldn¡¯t pass through his own ice which was quite ironic. Ebony hadn¡¯t been as blind when he was blinded.
Despite that, it was not hard to tell that they were not moving or floating upwards as he expected.
Manipulated themselves upwards like Mallory but much slower. Not because he wanted to stay within close proximity with Scarlet. He was really trying to go as fast as he could.
Ebony¡¯s Intelligence wasn¡¯t able to support such a heavy load but the bigger problem was the weird reason that flight through manipulation was so difficult. Or rather, carrying himself with the strength of the mind was weird and not due to the weight.
To speed things up, he tried to creatively conjure 4 Ice Swords that¡¯s connected by a thick rod of ice at an angle. Then, like a helicopter¡¯s blade, it spun.
It was similar to how he escaped the sandworm''s belly. Also surprisingly working at speeding their ascent up.
A hard impact knocked them spinning round and round. Ebony took the chance to hug Scarlet tight, an arm around her back and another behind her head. Clearly to protect her from impact.
The spinning blades broke off with that.
With no idea which way was up, he had to wait for the orb to settle and sink before moving again.
Not a minute passed before he felt the pressure his orb was under. They were swinging where he was going to assume was left and right.
¡®Eaten huh.¡¯ Ebony predicted. The constant pressure on his orb was likely the muscles of the Issile.
Breaking out in the exact same way before continuing on their way up after sinking a little. There was actually a lot of resistance when he tried to cut through the innards of their ''consumer'' and it hadn''t been easy.
They were eaten a couple more times and he even received a notification he forgot was the entire reason they were here.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Issile Lvl 160]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 60 levels or more above your own, sufficient potential experience accumulated. Experience converted to Natural Potential.¡¯
As for his training trip into Hoarfrost Glade, he hasn¡¯t killed those that were level 160 and above. There were plenty of them but he had avoided them during the start of his journey. Those that attacked Hector weren¡¯t that strong, just numerous.
To begin with, he would say the difficulty of fighting any level 100 creature in Hoarfrost Glade was higher than any monster they faced in Ordina so far.
Before long, Ebony felt like they were being lifted up. He didn¡¯t attack as Hector already called him through the callstone and asked what was taking them so long. Ebony picked up the call only to hang up since Scarlet didn¡¯t want others to know and he didn¡¯t like lying.
Guessing that the one who lifted them was Hector. He was right.
During the entire underwater trip, Scarlet had her eyes tightly closed. Her bone-crushing hug was just as tight. She was unquestionably so scared that she might not have noticed Ebony hugging back.
Unravelling the orb slowly for light to shine in instead of water was a good sign.
Revealing Scarlet hugging him tightly may or may not have been on purpose.
Hector¡¯s exaggerated voice woke her up. Ebony got kicked. Hector had his pants on fire.
Surveying the area, they came out of a lake. It was dim and the smell of rot was pretty distinct.
It was a swamp.
The lake they came out from had pretty clear water but everywhere else on the 13th floor was a forested marsh. Muddy waters, moss-covered tree trunks and floating algae on every puddle.
The dungeon either didn¡¯t restore broken trees back or it was designed that way.
The lake where they swam up from should¡¯ve stopped the large majority of parties scaling Ordina but there wasn¡¯t a lack of people here.
They climbed out into something like an outpost or camp.
Many large tents were set up. There were even food stalls and the sound of hammering was pretty distinct.
It took a while to catch on that the ecology here interested many. Enough that they deem it worthwhile to set up an outpost.
¡°Won¡¯t Ordina try to remove the outpost?¡± Ebony dumbly asked.
If monsters were the eyes of the dungeon it was hard to believe that the outpost was hidden.
¡°Depending on the dungeon, maybe,¡± Hector answered.
¡°It¡¯ll be rare to find a dungeon that wants to remove its source of energy. They are trying to attract people in and stay as long as possible to drain our essence after all.¡± Mallory added.
That sort of slipped from Ebony¡¯s mind. Since the dungeon¡¯s constantly sending monsters after people it seemed like they were trying to get rid of them.
While dungeons would prefer dead people because there¡¯s much more essence to absorb, live ones supply them with the stamina and mana spent in the dungeon as well.
If people weren¡¯t wearing myriad bracelets, all their excess mana would¡¯ve been food for the dungeon.
Hence, as long as the individual dungeon wasn¡¯t too dumb and hostile, the relationship between them and the people was symbiotic. Ordina apparently learnt fast enough that it was not a predator. No wonder its behaviour had been very mild compared to its infancy period.
There were quite a few [Master Scholar]s and even [Master Herbalist]s around level 130 to beyond what Ebony could Identify. Those with Appraise could tell the difference between [Master Ecologist]s and pure [Master Researcher]s among the scholars.
Each of them had bodyguards sticking very closely as they collected samples from the area. Even within the outpost that had earthen walls covering them.
The moment they swam up the lake they were already assaulted with stares.
¡®I wonder how the non-combatants came up?¡¯ Ebony pondered.
The average levels of the people here were only around Mark¡¯s. He did not doubt that they were all pretty strong to be able to cross the dangerous lake.
They were extremely disadvantaged in water.
There was the flag of the Empire hung up in the centre. A round symbol of multiple waves. That mostly ruled out the possibility that they would be attacked by people for no reason.
¡°Journeymen? I praise your persistence to have gotten here. Are you their guardian?¡± A dark greenish haired man that appeared to want to blend into the surroundings walked over and addressed Mark.
There was a momentary silence as none of them answered.
Mark checked for his new party members¡¯ reactions before deciding to speak since one had a mask, one had an expression that never changes, one was averting his gaze and the other ran off to chat up some bespectacled lady.
¡°I am the oldest.¡± Neither confirming or denying.
¡°I¡¯ll take that as a yes then. Feel free to set up camp in the residential area on the south side. There is more than sufficient space.¡±
¡°In exchange?¡± Mark was pragmatic.
¡°Just the basic rules. No fighting within the walls, do that outside. Try not to interrupt the scholars, if you¡¯ll assist them in any way they require that would be wonderful but no obligations. Should there be any attack on this camp, all freelancers or clearers alike are to defend the camp. Though that¡¯ll not likely happen.¡± The man shrugged.
He was just doing his job at explaining things to newcomers.
¡°...That¡¯s all?¡± Mark couldn¡¯t say he was very familiar with the ¡®basic rules¡¯ of such camps in dungeons but it was a little too nice to be true for him.
¡°Of course not. Those that intend to stay for more than a night would have to talk and register with the guard captain here. You¡¯ll be tasked to join the guards and man hours would be split accordingly. Other possible jobs might be to clear the surrounding area for any stray monsters. Alright, that¡¯s all I¡¯m paid to explain. See ya around, I hope you don¡¯t bring these kids to their deaths.¡± It was not the first time some rich and talented noble journeyman came with a bodyguard for natural potential but it was the first time he personally saw them come up this high and with four of them.
The relatively young man who was busy at a table full of books, papers and different plants didn¡¯t even associate Scarlet¡¯s mask to the Xengs because his mind was more on what a bother the new group was that disrupted his work. Not to mention, Xengs were hardly the only people who wore full masks.
¡°Let¡¯s rest here for now. It¡¯s a good chance. While I don¡¯t trust some stranger smith with my equipment they have food, water and a semblance of shelter.¡± Mark proposed.
There really weren¡¯t any disagreements within their group. Other than Scarlet asking them not to eat dungeon meat or use any potions made from dungeon material.
To the people here, it just looked like a group of obedient kids listening to their guard. They prayed and prayed that it stayed that way. Journeymen that came up so far are usually arrogant enough to think they own the world and are more of a threat than the dungeon itself. Moreover, this group seemed like the youngest group that came so far.
Leisurely checking out the wares that included some monster meat or parts like scales, cooked food, dry rations, potions, weapons, armours and even a stall that dealt with elemental mana ores. It was a small village.
The south side was half filled with tents already. Ebony could sense that they were mostly empty. It was still daytime both inside and outside Ordina.
They still guarded against theft and not much was left inside tents.
With no real reason to rush, they set up and went about with their own agendas.
Mark went to chat, make connections and most importantly gather information about this floor and maybe those above.
Mallory actually followed Mark saying ¡°gathering information is but the basics of survival¡±. Both she and Hector changed out of their wet clothing.
Scarlet and Ebony were dry inside his orb and Mark dried off quickly enough with his body heat. Mark wouldn¡¯t remove his armour inside a dungeon for a silly reason like how wet it was.
It would be foolish to assume it was safe within elemental earthen walls. Even if it was conjured by some earth mage, the dungeon could remove the wall by absorbing it. It was merely a stop-gap measure to slow down any attacks from the dungeon.
Hector went around and easily joined a group of drinking buddies that were around a makeshift bar. No strong alcohol was being sold, just the common ale and beer. It was a spot of relaxation in the tiresome dungeon.
Scarlet was gone before Ebony could see or ask what she was going to do.
Ebony took a walk around as he let the atmosphere of the somewhat bustling camp pass by him in his usual trance.
Realising that he walked through the entire camp a few times when he found himself sitting at the edge of the surprisingly tall earthen walls. Night fell.
Time passed by faster and faster to him whenever he walked around like that.
He had never been very bothered by it but perhaps he should try not to fall into a trance so easily. He would hate to lose grasp over important matters just because he wasn¡¯t so aware.
At the same time, probably due to Everlasting Tranquillity, he felt that it might not be so bad to just let his life pass by in a trance.
But no.
Ebony now has things that he doesn¡¯t want to let pass by.
People.
Person.
Chapter 109: Swamp
¡°There you are. Been looking for you all night.¡± Hector called out after climbing up the stairs along the inner wall.
¡°Mmm. Are we moving off?¡± Ebony acknowledged.
He was ready to go any time.
¡°It¡¯s the middle of the night¡Mark¡¯s gonna go over what he found out.¡± Hector couldn¡¯t always keep up with Ebony¡¯s thought process. His body was already sore from the expedited travel plan.
¡°I see.¡± Ebony stood up and let Hector lead the way.
¡°What were you doing?¡±
¡°Just observing the scenery.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t it just a plain old stinking forest? Damper and dimmer than usual.¡±
¡°That¡¯s the scenery.¡±
¡°As boring as usual huh?¡±
¡°A little, the forest seems dead. The monsters move without purpose, lifeless as well.¡±
¡°...That wasn¡¯t what I meant.¡±
Seeing Ebony cock his head like a clueless child, Hector gave up. He¡¯ll probably never fully understand Ebony.
That was fine.
Hector couldn¡¯t help but think that Ebony was a man that was as boring as he was interesting.
It had to be the side effect of a high tier meditation type skill. Not exactly a bad one.
He couldn¡¯t help but think Scarlet¡¯s presence was helping Ebony be more¡fun to be around.
Ordina had been a little boring to him so far. None of them was really trying very hard except Mark being very alert.
The swim in the lake was a nice change but it wasn¡¯t all too difficult if you took into account the size or depth of it.
The other thing on his mind was when the huge pillar of flames just pierced the Issile from within. That had quite the ¡®firepower¡¯, Hector had 5 enhancements on for a Super Panch and only sent one of those Issiles across the lake.
That was usually enough to turn flesh to mush. There was the fact that he was underwater to take into account but the Issiles were still pretty impressive.
He was too busy looking around the camp to check what took Ebony and Scarlet so long.
To think they were taking the chance to flirt.
That was quite a smooth move. Hector decided to work on conjuration of elements to duplicate the effect if he ever found someone he fancied.
The party''s chef had set up a fire instead of bringing her portable kitchen out. Likely to stay low profile, it was also chilly so the fire was nice to warm the body.
The people of the camp already noticed Scarlet¡¯s presence and most openly avoided them.
Clearly, not everyone had the same fear.
¡°Roasting a whole pig Xeng girl? Let us in on some, the few of you can¡¯t finish that.¡± An unfamiliar voice travelled to their ears.
Hector could feel the overflowing vitality from where their party had a fire. Mildly heavy, rare to find in somewhere like this but commonplace in Tidal.
His cold and slightly glowing party member stepped past him in a flash and sat himself down beside Scarlet and in between her and the large wolfman.
They were still girs away and Ebony¡¯s footwork was like a ghost¡¯s and was as gentle as always.
Hector couldn¡¯t tell from Ebony¡¯s expression but his gaze at the wolfman was different from his usual indifference.
[Aura Beast Warrior Lvl 211]
Hector Appraised.
211 was high. There were so many more available dungeons for people of that level. He never heard of the Class but he wasn¡¯t much of an aura beast if he was scared by Ebony.
Hector did not think about whether Ebony knew the wolfman. He took one of his notebooks out and sketched Ebony¡¯s relaxed sitting pose and gaze.
¡®Ell. Why is it that every pose of his looks so cool? What¡¯s the word he called it? Swagger? Even Mallory! I should have listened to the royal etiquette lecture more attentively.¡¯
???
Ebony pushed himself in between the wolfman that asked to share and Scarlet who had been sitting on a log that was lying around.
There were many such logs throughout the camp.
She had been watching the fire as all the preparatory work was done already. The wolfmen might have relied on his stronger sense of smell to find them.
They weren¡¯t hidden so ¡®find¡¯ might not be accurate.
Ebony recognised the wolfman.
He was the one that Ebony had seen in Arcta together with a great water mage.
They were not acquainted and the wolfman didn¡¯t do anything that required him to be alert or hostile.
Ebony¡¯s body had moved before his mind could process.
The only thing about this wolfman and water mage was that they were very likely the reason that there was a 5-Headed Snow Serpent in the collection area of some herbs.
The two of them had asked about certain materials that could be found inside Hoarfrost Glade and the Frost Elves were nice enough to inform them.
They took something away that was supposedly what the serpent was protecting or claiming as its belongings. The serpent was probably not there at that point in time as there was no way they could survive the encounter.
Enraged, the serpent was sweeping through the area and brought its wrath onto Korben, Arcta¡¯s guardian. Although reality was that Korben was unharmed and the village had snake meat to feast on for weeks.
Hence, Ebony was unsure why he was getting defensive.
The wolfman and water mage didn¡¯t do any wrong.
Just picking something up in nature while misfortune befell his group instead. It was not unusual and he didn¡¯t blame them either.
Having a moment for his mind to catch up, he stopped staring. Placing Icicle down on the ground and decasting Frostblaze Augmentation.
¡°Take a seat.¡± Ebony pointed to another log.
He didn¡¯t realise that he was not completely relaxed.
The moment he spoke, all the surrounding gravity mana was pulled and compressed onto the wolfman. His voice was imbued with all his overflowing mana and reverberated right into the wolfman¡¯s ears.
The wolfman was stunned by the already considerably high gravity in Ordina to increase so many times. He sunk into the ground but his legs stood strong. The increase in weight was a mere hindrance to a warrior of his strength.
The overflowing mana that hit at the same time was the problem. It made him sick.
He already had a weaker base Wisdom as a wolfman, not to mention he didn¡¯t put much into Wisdom.
The dizzying attack got stronger as his nose started to bleed.
¡®Hmm?¡¯ Ebony wondered why the wolfman didn¡¯t move.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±
Looking up at the tall beastman¡¯s face to see his nose bleeding.
Then he realised he was using gravity and sound magic that he had been relentlessly practising the past month or so. He released it as soon as he noticed.
¡®Thank goodness I didn¡¯t subconsciously use Sonic Overlay on the sphere of compressed mana over his head. I need more training.¡¯ Ebony had a mental sigh or relief.
His usual Sheer Mana Compression training still had the old and simple spheres of mana where he compressed. One of the applications of sound magic that he tested was simply to cast Sonic Overlay on his spheres.
It was more destructive than he imagined. Physically and while he hasn¡¯t tested, probably mentally too.
He couldn¡¯t tell from the monsters'' reaction as it could just be from the physical vibrations forcing themselves into their head. Monsters'' high vitality allowed them to withstand the attack and the wolfman should also be strong enough but he wasn¡¯t sure if he would cause any mental damage that way.
As for putting all his overflowing mana together, it was just a little trick that he attempted to copy from Sister Jing. The overflowing mana quickly escapes his grasp and into the surroundings before he could use it for any magic. Odd.
¡°...I see I¡¯m not welcomed. ¡± The wolfman left and stopped the water mage from getting any closer.
While the water mage had a good memory, it wasn¡¯t easy to remember every passerby''s face. He still had an impression of the human meditative ice hybrid in a village of Frost Elves.
¡°What happened to your nose?¡± They could still hear the duo from where they were.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°That was the temporary guard captain for this camp. Do you know him?¡± Mark, who brought more firewood asked.
Although they were not planning to stay here for long, it was always better to sow good relations rather than bad ones. Mark thought that Ebony was more sensible than that and can only hope it was for good reason. He wasn¡¯t around to see what happened but the wolfman¡¯s expression as he left was enough for Mark to see that it was not a happy one.
¡°Not really. He wanted to join and I asked him to take a seat. Might have accidentally cast a few compressed magic tricks on him and he left. It wasn¡¯t on purpose. Honest.¡± Ebony told the truth.
¡°We don¡¯t have enough to share anyway.¡± Scarlet who saw what happened had been more focused on controlling the fire. Cooking was never easy and using an open flame like that to roast a pig was not something she does every day.
There was also a pot of soup that was simmering beside the whole pig. She was controlling the heat such that the surroundings wouldn¡¯t be affected too much.
As for the smoke? There was smoke coming from other similar campfires, portable forges or from the burning of some plants from where the researchers were doing their incomprehensible tests.
No one had anything to say about there not being enough to share.
They knew Ebony ate a lot due to his high stamina consumption when he scouts and maps the area. As for Scarlet, she always ate by herself unlike when they were outside where she still ate with Ebony. Hector and Mark were quite the eater too but not as much Ebony.
¡°I don¡¯t know about the guard captain but that water mage, he¡¯s from the Truewater family. A descendant of a duke¡¯s lineage. He¡¯s likely the one in charge of leading the non-combatants through the lake.¡± Mallory commented.
¡®A duke¡¯s lineage. Should be pretty impressive. Then again, there¡¯s a princess and prince in my party. Do they rename themselves after a few water mages appear?¡¯ Ebony mused. He didn¡¯t think it was so coincidental that a family name Truewater would have many talented water mages.
When the chef deemed the pig ready as they were drinking the weird mushroom soup that looked more dangerous than fighting anything else. The mushrooms were spotted red and white. Ebony who regained his sense of taste was willing to drink it even if it was poisonous. Fortunately, it was just a weird white mushroom that grew red spots when heated up. Just your typical mushroom.
¡°So, just like the eighth to twelfth floor, the thirteenth to eighteenth are swamps and forests like this. While it¡¯s still steadily expanding, the current highest floor is the twenty-second. Barely bordering as a large dungeon.¡± Mark said as he was rethinking the importance of a chef on the field.
¡°Anything interesting to note?¡± Hector tore into the portion that Scarlet passed to him with his bare hands. As did Ebony, after making sure he removed his glove and washed his hands.
¡°With so many scholars around, it¡¯s clear that the plant life here is pretty diverse and perhaps another avenue for potion materials should it be deemed safe and effective.¡± Mallory did not fall to such uncouth manners and the chef understood that and served a small plate of cuts from the ham or leg area as requested. Using her personal set of silverware.
She couldn¡¯t wrap her head around how little the healer ate. No wonder she was smaller in stature. It must also be how the smaller lady doesn¡¯t move her body much as a full support Class. All the flying on her barriers for movement practically meant the healer never exerts her body at all. Her stamina usage must be incredibly small.
While the others could understand Scarlet¡¯s explanation that consuming dungeon materials or ingredients always have minuscule essence of the dungeon itself that was hard to remove, it was impossible for the entire populace to just stop using one of the most sustainable sources of practically any natural material.
At the very least, demons do not scour the lands of Elva. The effects of consuming a little should have no observable effects on the body or mind.
Mark already gave up being surprised at how much food Scarlet was pulling out of her wonderful bag. ¡®And I thought I was beginning to be considered rich.
No one said anything about Scarlet coming out for another serving multiple times and that about three quarters of the whole thing was consumed by her and Ebony while Hector and Mark had most of the rest. Mallory ate so little Scarlet wondered if her food wasn¡¯t that good.
Mallory herself kept confirming that she was full and that she didn¡¯t expect a real meal in a dungeon anyway. Her comment of ¡°a decent meal¡± was a challenge to Scarlet and it had spurred her to explore Mallory¡¯s taste buds.
The chat continued as they helped to clean up. It was mostly Mark and Hector talking with an input or two from Mallory.
¡°The swamps and forest are quite similar to the nearby Bubble Hills while the remaining floors seem to be a cold environment like that of Hoarfrost Glades. Not surprising with their proximity to Ordina.¡±
¡°They have swamp golems that are similar to the mud golems. They are incredibly strong physically but weak to quite a few elements.
Issiles like those in the lake have variants that are hidden under some of the larger pools of water. That¡¯s one of the biggest dangers here since the pools of water are somewhat hard to differentiate from solid ground. We could be fighting as we fall into a swamp and get attacked by those Issiles.
The huge trees aren¡¯t always safe to be around as well as a serpent type called [Boomdart Fang]. Specialising in stealth and its venomous bite. Their fangs can pierce a Common ger-thick steel shield with considerable ease while their venom is lethal enough to kill a level 150 master warrior in minutes. As long as you catch sight of them, they¡¯re easy pickings. At least that¡¯s what they say.
Ordina is not really diverse as there are very few types of monsters for now so that¡¯s about it for the dangers of the next few floors.¡±
¡°Levels?¡±
¡°Oh, an average of 5 levels higher every floor with this floor having 150s to 160s. So the eighteenth floor would have 175 to 185. If you¡¯re really planning to clear Ordina, the twenty-second floor or the highest level monster here would be around level 210.¡±
None of the journeymen reacted to the number that was more than twice their own.
Mark''s assessment was fair in that they would begin to have trouble against the monsters soon. People aren¡¯t the only ones with exponential growth in power with levels of both Class and Skills. Monsters also get that much stronger.
The only reason these four never felt it was that they were the irregular ones. One piece of evidence was that the Issile could take on Hector¡¯s Super Panch without much injury.
In Mark¡¯s opinion, their advantage wasn¡¯t just in their high tier skill, full set of skills that work together or good equipment. It was their magic. Ebony¡¯s ice magic and seemingly endless mana lets him weaken and freeze most monsters. Burning worked the same.
Most parties of warriors, archers and rogues just fight monsters with physical damage which were the monsters'' greatest strength. At least for the monsters here in Ordina. Hence why mages were high in demand for any party. But mages were weak and easy to catch off guard. Mages without proper training usually just die young.
This party wasn¡¯t going to die young as long as they were not reckless.
¡°What do you say?¡± Hector looked at Ebony and Scarlet. He wasn¡¯t interested in his cousin¡¯s opinion.
¡°It¡¯s what we came back for.¡± Scarlet answered.
¡°210 is just nice for another rise in natural potential.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Ordina only has a single monster on the last floor anyway. Quite common for them to push most of their essence into one being. Those from the 19th to 21st are probably many times weaker than creatures in Hoarfrost Glade.¡± Mallory commented. It was an unfair comparison.
Mark would¡¯ve warned against anyone else who looked down on the dangers of a dungeon, even one that was still weakened. He held his tongue when it came to his new party.
¡°We won¡¯t get any natural potential for killing anything at level 210. After 10 times or getting natural potential from something a hundred levels above us, the next accumulation is 125 levels above us or 225.¡± Scarlet informed.
Once again, brand new information to Ebony. It was also new to Mark. The information was useless for most people but something to take note of for anyone that could surpass big level gaps.
None of them saw that as a reason not to try to clear the dungeon.
They rested for the night and made use of the latrine in the camp to clear their system. It had a bare semblance of hygiene but still better than pissing in the open.
At the crack of dawn.
The party already finished packing up and was ready to go. Mark was insistent on carrying all of his stuff by himself. The fire mage was not a weakling that couldn¡¯t carry his own weight. The good night¡¯s rest had been welcomed since he felt a little stuffy after the temperature went down so much.
Adjusting back to the usual state of his body, they moved off slowly.
None of them had ever explored this place and they didn¡¯t have a real scout. Ebony also didn¡¯t run off to scout and map the floor to be on the safe side. They stuck together for the time being.
A similar triangular formation with Mallory and Mark in the centre, Ebony with his Layered Ice Carapaces in front while Scarlet and Hector took the sides.
Leaving the camp¡¯s gates after being let through with a warning not to bring a group of monsters here in escape. The camp¡¯s safety was not to be compromised by some kids. The guards sighed because it had happened a few times despite the warnings. They could do nothing about it.
As if they had an agreement, Ordina didn¡¯t have many monsters or spawning nodes near the camp.
The ground was soft and moist, it was humid and the lighting was bad. Ebony could see why it was dangerous. It was easy to fall into a marsh when the water was the same colour as the soil.
He had to reduce gravity on himself to prevent him from sinking too deep into the muddy soil as he was the heaviest even when you excluded Icicle or his robe. Reinforced Mana Chassis has levelled some over the month he was in Teld City. Currently 155.
Mana had mass as well and the compressed mana that made up his body increased his mass whenever he was on a full mana pool. He did have a lot of spare lowered gravity rings which he passed out to his party, it didn''t work as advertised because of the stronger gravity in Ordina but it was better than nothing.
It was a quick walk¡¯s speed for the others but an excruciatingly slow one for Ebony. Walking without Treading Stride was the reason he was even sinking into the ground.
Two hours into the trek and Ebony stopped the rest of the party behind him. His Vibrational Gravity Sense picked up the ripple on the ground over 40 metres to their right. Clearly, there was a body of water there and not the ground.
He didn¡¯t sense anything behind or around them so he took the initiative. Leaping right over in a single step and just standing on water while he conjured ice mana beneath his feet and froze the water body in a layer of ice. The algae were sometimes thick enough to stand on which made it harder to spot bodies of water unless one could sense water mana. This was the case here as well, ice spread over dozens of metres but he was freezing it too slowly as the giant eel in the waters didn¡¯t charge up to swallow him for once.
The mana within his body slowly bubbled into a simmering flame, controlling its output to be low enough that he just glowed brighter before flames started appearing on his body. He stopped his freezing tactic since it wouldn¡¯t work with his freezing speed, stepping aside to dodge the eruption of water that came right under where he stood.
The blast of water rose high and sprinkled the trees with water. It ¡®sprinkled¡¯ hard enough to break their thick branches.
Breaking the ice, the [Swamp Issile Lvl 154] menacingly swam near the surface.
The others didn¡¯t join in since there was only one.
Pumping more of his mana into Icicle with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane still on as always, he closed the distance and swung downwards. The violently vibrating mana was released and further repelled by his membrane everyone with superhuman hearing could hear Ebony¡¯s mana tear through the air and water. Those without good hearing would be able to see the soil and water separate.
The Swamp Issile slicked its body by swimming but still had its tail come into contact. It felt the hard smack like that of a slap that couldn¡¯t even cut into its skin. Taking the weak attack as a sign to charge. Flexing its soft body left and right, jerked its tail towards Ebony, sending a wave of greenish water at him.
Leaping out of the water and into the wave it created in preparation to swallow Ebony whole.
It probably misunderstood who the predator was from his first attack.
Its face hadn''t even fully gone through its own wave of water before it was met with a piercing chill that went across its face and entire body that was straightened from its own leap. The chill spread across and into its body.
No time to think, its prey was right in front. It roared to scare the small prey but just when he was about to enter its mouth, he shifted his body to the side and followed up with a spin. The Swamp Issile wanted to wriggle and turn around but while its body stiffly shifted its sight didn¡¯t.
It only realised that its head had been disconnected from its body after it no longer registered light in its eyes. ''So he wasn''t spinning'' would''ve been what it thought were it to have the capability for thought.
¡®Hmm¡It''s actually working.¡¯ Ebony thought as he cut open the flesh of the Swamp Issile.
He had been attempting to copy Gen¡¯s snow that dug under the skin and into flesh with his frostblaze. It was how he even ¡®froze¡¯ ice. Although he attempted to make them spread more easily he focused on attacking the internals more.
Many monsters could ignore ice magic or just the cold in general if they have a good outer shell or thick hide. Ebony always had to cut deep into these types before Frost Injection or Frost Mist had any effect. Gen¡¯s method seemed pretty good to him and was what he tried over and over as he trained with Gen¡¯s ice army.
He would attempt to burrow his flames into anything it touches to freeze it inside out. The flesh and muscles of the Swamp Issile were frozen more than halfway through with just a slash of his repelled Frostblaze Cladding.
He was quite the lethal force with his current applications of Sonic Overlay, Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and Frostblaze Cladding. Just a tough exterior wasn¡¯t enough to defend themselves against him.
Chapter 110: Fight
¡°Like any other fish out of water huh?¡± Hector commented with his hands behind the back of his head.
¡°Not any other fish.¡± Mark disagreed but gave no further details.
¡°How do we get up to the higher floors anyway? Are we looking for stairs or lakes or slopes?¡± Hector asked.
They have been travelling straight after exiting the camp with no particular destination.
¡°Vines. We can actually get all the way up to the eighteenth floor directly. No shortcut though.¡± Mark answered. His information gathering was pretty successful.
¡°Climbing up vines? How far up do we have to climb that way? Half a day?¡± Hector complained about the troublesome method.
¡°If we move straight at this speed we should take almost three weeks to reach the dungeon walls. The vines hanging along the walls lead all the way up and through holes on the ceiling or ground of the next floor. The same vines connect through the dungeon across the six floors, letting us climb all the way to the eighteenth.¡±
¡°Simple enough. There aren¡¯t any aerial monsters anyway.¡±
¡°Three weeks at this speed? So about two to three days if we rush.¡± Ebony was internally flabbergasted. Scarlet could almost sense the impatience in his voice with her refined Sublime Instinct from the time she was in the realm of blood.
Rather than impatience, it was closer to pity. He did not like wasting time in covering distance. When he said ¡®rush¡¯ it was also at the speed where the others wouldn¡¯t be too exhausted to fight. If he was by himself, he would likely reach the eighteenth floor before the next day. The vine climbing might slow him down though.
Other than Mark and Scarlet almost falling into the water by stepping on a patch of algae nothing much went on. Ebony was quick to react as usual and gave them a helping hand to support them. Hector was already clear of where to step since he could sense where the water was.
The snake called Boomdart Fang had green and black scales, it was a normal sized snake about as long as an arm and as thick as Ebony¡¯s sword¡¯s grip. They were not even considered hidden to his senses but visually and audibly, they were pretty good at staying hidden.
Ebony was slightly impressed that its long fangs and explosive speed could crack and make a tiny dent in his compressed Layered Ice Carapace.
But letting it bite again didn¡¯t make a mark on his shield anymore. It was similar to a skill. It had to dart out at full speed and bite once to apply full force.
Its venom was not corrosive as nothing happened to his shield but he wasn¡¯t about to try and get bitten by what¡¯s supposed to be extremely lethal.
As for Swamp Golems, which was a green mossy rock that hides in a foetal position, they were exactly like the Mud Golems that he had fought. Unbelievably weak to ice and fire but strong enough to contest Hector¡¯s quadra enhanced punches. They were not much different from the Mud Golems in terms of size, shape and attack patterns.
Except that this environment was perfect for their regenerative properties while fighting Mud Golems on a summer afternoon without any mud around was the reason why he even managed to overcome them.
He could see why Mark thought that they would not be able to complete and clear the dungeon. The difficulty in putting a monster down for good was getting higher as their Vitality was quite high.
Once they got the hang of each type, they sped up towards the dungeon walls. Basically just moving forward.
Hector tripped a few times and was a good laugh for Mark since Hector never warned him about the puddles.
Ebony gave both the guys a ride while he ran and Scarlet sat with Mallory. The two ladies were originally pretty quiet in each other¡¯s company but have started to open up and chat. Sometimes, Mallory would box themselves up and the guys couldn¡¯t hear their conversation. Including him with his Vibrational Gravity Sense.
He was pretty sure he gained a glance or two from time to time while they were talking.
They tried not to bother with the monsters unless they were attacked since it would serve them no purpose to fight. Although Mark can gain experience, he was at a higher level and it was not really worth the energy. None of the monsters here have good parts to extract either, other than the poison from the snakes.
When night fell and the time for dinner came, they had to find some dry firewood because there was no place where Scarlet could set her kitchen up. Neither did she want to dirty her portable kitchen.
Finding dry firewood was impossible here so they relied on Mark¡¯s little magic trick.
There were broken tree branches here and there due to some fighting and the dungeon being too lazy to repair it. Adding to the atmosphere and environment. They gathered the larger branches for Mark to draw on.
Mark took out a white stick and its sharp tip ignited before he started drawing on them. After the pen burned into the surface of the wood and Mark completed the runic circle that was unfamiliar to Ebony, they watched as the burnt symbols started to gather water droplets.
Getting Ebony to make ice sticks to stab the edges and hang them upside down. Mark continued to do the same for the other branches they gathered. He watched the wood pour out water faster and faster, he would take some time to study the rune Mark drew up.
???
In about an hour, the water was drained out of the wood and was perfectly functional as firewood.
Scarlet was also just about done with her preparations. Surprisingly little food was being prepared but it was only natural since they didn¡¯t fight much. Even she had learnt to ration after her experience with starving.
Mark was the one who took taking watches most seriously, even when Mallory had set up a dome barrier around them. He would ask to be let out to check the surroundings. This time, Mallory followed him out for his walk before dinner.
Having learnt that Mallory could use both healing and barrier magic, he would be brain dead if he didn¡¯t suspect her background. Nobody said anything about it and Mark didn¡¯t bring it up either.
It was awkward as they walked about in silence. He wondered why she decided to follow him today.
There was another party in the distance fighting a group of Swamp Golems. Having some trouble as they didn¡¯t have any mages. They didn¡¯t seem to be dying so the two of them didn¡¯t interfere.
Mallory suddenly stopped when they reached another relatively open spot that wasn¡¯t being used as a camp spot.
Mark didn¡¯t even have time to ask what was wrong before he raised his spear to spin in defence. Feeling the impact but not seeing anything. A projectile?
¡°How about a friendly duel?¡± Mallory didn¡¯t ask that with any intention to wait for an answer. She wouldn¡¯t take no for an answer either.
¡®What crime did I commit?¡¯
???
Hector put on the armour he was cleaning after he smelled their dinner ready. Halfway through the wait, he felt the temperature rise sharply and wondered what Scarlet was cooking that required such heat. Ignoring it as he went about his own maintenance.
Mark had gone out for longer than usual but he wasn¡¯t worried about his cousin with him.
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As if they knew that dinner was ready, Hector spotted his cousin and Mark come through a taller bush.
¡°Hey! What took¡¡± Hector, who was about to complain about them taking their own sweet time, paused.
The two who went to scout the surroundings didn¡¯t reply as Mallory opened an entrance in the barrier for them to enter and she quickly went to set her tent up before diving in.
Hector thought he was imagining things because that was the first time he saw a faint blush on his cousin¡¯s face. The burnt dress up to her knees, charred skin here and there didn¡¯t even catch his attention.
¡°Yo..yooo. YOOO! What happened!?¡± Hector¡¯s delayed but shocked reaction was enough to catch Ebony and Scarlet attention.
They turned to see that Mark had some tears in his clothes while his upper armour had a thin cut right down the centre. There was dried blood where the cuts on his body were but he was no longer bleeding. Hector could only assume that Mallory healed him.
Scarlet who had been extremely absorbed in her cooking only just noticed the remnant heat in Mark¡¯s body. It was enough to melt some metals. Like her Blood Boil but Mark didn¡¯t look uncomfortable, neither did it seem like he was burning his energy or even health.
It didn¡¯t take a perceptive person to sense the intense heat coming from Mark¡¯s body. Ebony was more interested in their clothes. Like Scarlet¡¯s, they had to be incredibly resistant to heat if it hasn¡¯t burned to crisps yet. He helped cool the area with a little ice magic.
¡°Just a little bigger group of golems and issiles sneaking up to us.¡± Mark lied through his teeth.
¡°Well, just glad that you¡¯re fine I guess. Is she okay?¡± Hector believed it. He was still a little concerned about the look on his cousin¡¯s face. With her healing, a light injury like what he had seen would be fully healed and even burn marks and cuts could be fully healed before scars form permanently.
Ebony manipulated mana in the air to silence his and Mark¡¯s voices. Well, he didn¡¯t talk and just used Mana Vibration to simulate his voice. Just in case the other two knew how to read lips.
¡°You beat her up?¡± Clearly, he was not as naive as Hector. Even Ebony who wasn¡¯t from Elcra could guess that Mallory was a princess, he had no doubt a smart man like Mark could guess the same as well.
¡°...It was a duel. Don¡¯t put it that way. I didn¡¯t beat her up.¡± Mark knew he couldn¡¯t really hide it.
¡°I see.¡± Ebony always sparred as well and didn¡¯t see a reason to ask why they had a sudden duel. They could be training like he usually does with Scarlet and Hector.
¡°Dinner¡¯s ready,¡± Scarlet said. It was obvious to her what happened as well after her chat with Mallory.
She might not understand the healer well but the outcome seemed to speak for itself. No surprise with her being a healer and Mark having an evolution and over 70 levels over them.
Scarlet, who mostly recovered from the side effects of drinking the blood of creatures whose only instincts were to kill and consume after sipping a little of Ebony¡¯s blood over time was starting to get her itch to fight again. She didn¡¯t have to suppress it due to the strong desire to kill anymore.
She just doesn¡¯t think she was suited for dungeons since she couldn¡¯t eat what she slayed and cooked.
To explore Mallory¡¯s taste buds more, she prepared something more in line with the Imperial¡¯s cooking. Grilled steak that was a little more buttery than she¡¯d liked, a side of bread that was sadly not freshly baked, fresh assorted salad with her personal dressing and a soup a little more out of the ordinary since she used seafood which she wasn¡¯t very used to. Ebony called it a bisque. She thought it was a weird name but just followed.
Another thing that she found that couldn¡¯t be left out of meals for Ebony was fruit after dinner but she¡¯ll cut some for them after dinner.
She was a little disappointed that it did not satisfy the healer that was clearly in a bad mood.
Mallory didn¡¯t even want to eat at the same table as the guys and copied Scarlet, eating alone in her tent. She didn¡¯t have any visible injury and already changed into another dress that was vibrant cyan in colour. Not caring about camouflage in the least.
She just tossed and turned on the thick and soft flooring of her tent. Putting a waterproof sheet under her tent had been a smart move. The noise that the guys outside her tent only served to irritate her further. Acting asleep when they called her to open her barrier for them to go out to spar.
Soon enough they didn¡¯t bother her anymore.
???
Ebony was asking Mark about the rune he drew on the branches. He created it himself and it was very simple. The runes for absorbing mana were mixed with those absorbed water mana. It just had to be specific on where it absorbs water from, where it would go and also not to be reabsorbed by the wood. The other smaller details like its absorption speed could be adjusted.
If he didn¡¯t draw certain symbols right the rune would just absorb water from the surroundings. By slightly burning the rune on, the water wouldn¡¯t be reabsorbed into the wood and hanging it upside down lets it just drip down. It was a survival skill Mark found to be more useful than one might think.
While Ebony didn¡¯t think he would need to use a rune like that, it was still knowledge that was better to know than not to. He would have to translate the combinations of runes to Sister Jing¡¯s rune language. It would be a mix or water and generic.
He had taken the time to reclassify the types and depth or ¡®levels¡¯ of runes in the Korun language.
There were generic runes which did all kinds of stuff. From preservation to dust resistance to mana absorption. The works. Every copy of each function such as balling up mana or shaping them up was recorded too. If a spell was needed he just needed to use the appropriate elemental symbols.
Then the rest were parked under each element together with specific spells that other elements are not able to fully copy. Different elements had different properties after all.
Next was to classify the strength of the runes which was harder. Sister Jing used the low, middle, high and so on but that was too vague for him. Cross-referencing with Mark, Ebony found that each language could have their own ranking system and even using the same language, people just classify them to their liking individually or may not even classify them.
Mark himself called anything that improved or had the effect of 0 to 20% as level 0 runes. 20% to 50% as level 1. 50% to 250% as level 2 and so on. According to him, most of his equipment had level 3 runes, he had the relevant runic skills, unlike Ebony.
According to those percentages, Korun was pretty vast in the differences between each of what Sister Jing calls, low, middle and high. She never specifically explained but what she called low had the effect of 100% to 1000% while the middle was anywhere between 1000% to 10,000%.
Ebony could see why his greatsword was so resistant to heat.
Precision when inscribing or engraving was only a small part of what will affect how strong or how effective a rune is. There was a need to take into account many things such as the type of rune that was placed onto what material. Though the biggest thing would be whether the person inscribing the rune has the related skills.
Ebony thought that was too complicated and used the same tier system for skills and reclassified them.
0% to 100% was untiered.
100% to 250% was tier 1.
250% to 1000% was tier 2.
1000% to 2500% was tier 3.
Since he was stuck with moulding runes that were untiered, the rest of the tiers were just numbers he assigned. He had no idea if it would be accurate or if it would make things confusing in future. The percentages of skill levels and tiers increase exponentially and he didn¡¯t bother extrapolating on skills that he doesn¡¯t already have.
Although he had always been moulding runes onto his crafts he had merely ¡®engraved¡¯ the same two-dimensional runes but inside the material. There were more complicated ones that were three-dimensional but he wasn¡¯t going to run before he learnt how to walk. He was far from mastering even the basics. A good memory really helped a lot in his studies.
Ebony didn¡¯t just give Mark whatever knowledge he wanted. Only correcting some of the misunderstandings he had in the three languages that Mark learnt. They were incomplete but Mark worked his way around it pretty damn well and was clearly very flexible with their usage. The draining of water from wood was a good example.
The night had been mostly silent until a splatter of dirt and mud splashed onto their barrier which woke Mallory and Ebony up.
Ebony volunteered to be dispatched to take the three attacking Swamp Golems down.
Merely a short disturbance in the night.
They moved off before the fake sun rose, it had been an early night¡¯s rest the day before.
Mark had to scold Hector and Ebony who were trying to push each other into swampy puddles as they moved. Hector had started it by telling Ebony there was water deep under where he was about to step. He had replied by dropping Hector off his shield by flipping it over.
Although Hector caught on the sides at the last moment, his lower body was already drenched. It had gotten a chuckle from both ladies and the slightly less rare raising of Ebony¡¯s lip. It had been getting possible to change his expression by a tiny bit. Just that it was still too stiff and only Scarlet could tell.
Then the pushing began as Hector wanted revenge. It had been fine and all as they broke formation but Mark had enough after some Issiles and Boomdart Fangs had been alerted. The Boomdart Fangs seemed to realise they would fail as long as Ebony was there and never really attacked.
He had to take charge as the eldest here after all. He had thought that at least Ebony was mature enough to understand the dangers of a dungeon. As if a healer that charged ahead wasn¡¯t enough. He didn¡¯t want to deal with some pranks that may put them in trouble during the most crucial of times.
¡®This really makes me look like their guardian bodyguard¡¡¯ Mark was beginning to feel his stress levels increase.
Knocking them on their head with his spear a few times managed to get the message through. It was nice of them not to dodge.
Chapter 111: Worldcore
¡®A pity. The moon outside¡¯s much more pleasant to look at.¡¯ Ebony thought.
They safely reached the dungeon walls as night fell. The swamp with huge trees and muddy floor had been harder to traverse than he thought. They had to reroute a few times due to dead ends.
The thick vines were just hanging from the sky where it was hard to even spot the ¡®ceiling¡¯.
Mallory was mentally exhausted from long hours of flight, even carrying Scarlet most of the way. They prepared to climb up the next day. The plan was not to stop on the next floor for whatever reason. The only thing that could be considered treasure here might be the plants and vegetation which none of them was very interested in.
Scarlet would''ve been a little more interested were it to be considered edible by her.
¡°What¡¯s the plan? All the way up to the eighteenth? Sounds tiresome already.¡± Hector asked at the dining table provided by Mallory who still didn¡¯t want to eat at the same table as Mark.
It was a fancy table made of stone and had carvings of sea waves. Typical of a princess of the Empire of Ebbing Waves.
They didn¡¯t know how long it¡¯ll take to climb up even a single floor. There weren''t any avian monsters but Mark had been warned that Swamp Golems might wait till they climbed reasonably high before swinging the vine violently. Some reported deaths include being slammed into a bloody mush onto the dungeon walls. Issiles might just shoot a high-pressure blast of water at them as well.
With mages like Ebony, Scarlet and Mallory who didn¡¯t need to hold their hands forward or use a staff to cast magic, they were not completely defenceless against such tactics.
There was no way even the Swamp Golems were strong enough to cause much trouble once they were high enough. These vines had to be horrendously heavy with how far they stretched out.
The current plan was for Mallory to carry Ebony while he carried the other 3. The healer and barrier mage could not carry so many people while he couldn¡¯t carry himself for long. He hadn¡¯t gotten the chance to ask Mallory how flight works or why it was more difficult to lift oneself up.
Mallory actually had much higher Intelligence than him and could indeed carry the others but not for long as the mental strain would be too much. Her Wisdom was much lower compared to him and she had skills similar to Scarlet¡¯s that expanded her mana pool. She had other methods of recovering mana as well. But mental exhaustion was a completely different issue and she had no way around it.
The ¡®Meditative¡¯ Classes should all have a greater capacity for mental strain even with the same Wisdom stat or lower. Clearly, a benefit and change that the Meditation type skills themselves had done for one¡¯s mind. It was a pity Meditation was hard to teach or learn. It was just patience, patience and patience.
Ebony had an idea to hasten the trip for the party tomorrow. Before the barrier mage went to sleep he was asked to be let out saying that he already slept his fill and would just stay outside till they were awake. Confirming with Mark that he would take the night watch so that he went back to sleep.
He stood above the dome that was almost 25 metres in diameter. If it had been a perfect hemisphere that would mean he was more than 12 metres off the ground.
Pushing his mana under him and enveloping the barrier before ¡®solidifying¡¯ it so that they don¡¯t vibrate. Essentially soundproofing the barrier.
An Ice Sword formed and flew right into the wall but it bounced off almost comically.
¡®Stabbing footholds on¡¯s not gonna work.¡¯ He wanted to just carry all of them on his shields. It wouldn¡¯t be too heavy if he didn¡¯t compress his shields much.
He could just run up the walls but with the additional weight, it was better safe than sorry to have better footing.
With no better idea, he stepped off the barrier and directly touched the wall and just conjured as much ice mana as he could from his hands. Ice Injection.
He might not have the skill anymore but it wasn¡¯t like he couldn¡¯t just replicate the effects. Blasting his entire mana pool as he climbed up and continued freezing a layer of the wall with ice. He made sure to make it uneven for more friction.
When he ran out of mana he just used the ice mana in his robe. It would just be a drop in the bucket since he didn¡¯t have to freeze deep.
The repetitive work was just Ebony falling into a trance again when he hit his head on the ceiling before he knew it.
¡®Not as tall as I imagined.¡¯ He didn¡¯t know how long he had been working on the wall but morning was about to come. He pushed off the frozen wall and free fell towards the ground, taking the chance to practice carrying himself with his manipulation of ice and gravity.
If he had something to compare the difficulty with, it was like trying to carry yourself physically but without any tools like ropes or a pulley system. His mana, ice mana for him, was the rope that he used to lift himself off the ground but he needed a pulley or another supporting platform or carrying himself wouldn¡¯t be possible. Intelligence was his mental muscles doing the pulling.
Gravity manipulation alone made things many times easier but it was sort of just the properties of gravity magic that allowed him to float. No reason not to make things easier for himself by using gravity magic''s strengths.
Then again, there was the advantage of being able to become better at actually trying to fly if he didn¡¯t rely on gravity magic. Like when his teacher Kappa didn¡¯t allow him to cheat with ice magic to run up walls. In return, his physical ability and proficiency with Treading Steps rose to evolve the skill.
Ebony was let into the barrier when they started to wake up and he urged them to pack up quickly after breakfast. He didn¡¯t know if Ordina would decide to absorb his ice or if its ability to absorb people¡¯s mana so quickly had been sealed or restrained enough.
Scarlet wasn¡¯t surprised at the entire patch of blue but the others couldn¡¯t hide their shock. Even Hector who thought he had understood Ebony better was stupefied yet again.
Mark and Mallory could not comprehend how much mana a mere Journeyman had to be able to accomplish what their eyes were showing them.
¡°Hop on.¡± Ebony made two shields for the guys and girls.
Watching them standing confidently was nice and all but he was going to go fast.
¡°...Sit tight and hold on to my shield.¡± Ebony waited no longer and sprinted at the wall at max speed, unenhanced.
His shields struggled to keep up as they were pushed back by air resistance, the others were similarly pushed down to the ¡®ground,¡¯ his shield. They didn¡¯t expect him to charge at a wall and then feel the sudden change in inertia.
They went through the hole that was big enough for an Issile to squeeze through after just a dozen or so minutes. The climb would¡¯ve taken hours and made even Mark exhausted. Of course, even their original plan was to fly so they wouldn¡¯t be tired after reaching the next floor.
The other people on vines further away from them had witnessed their figures speeding up the wall.
Mallory¡¯s stomach did not agree well with the motion and she tried her hardest to keep breakfast inside for almost as long as Ebony took at scaling the wall. She was staring daggers at him for the next few hours.
Ebony attempted to run up the unfrozen wall of the fourteenth floor but it was muddy. He could still run up but with no guarantee, if he had to carry four people mentally.
They didn¡¯t even explore this massive floor as they carried on with the original plan where he would take a ride on Mallory''s barrier express. The speed was much slower and the glare from her did not improve the riding experience.
The scenery would¡¯ve been much more pleasant if he didn¡¯t see a party being washed by a wave from a tail sweep of an Issile.
Nothing even attempted to stop them from climbing up.
Half a day passed by the time they reached the fifteenth floor through a similar hole at the top of the fourteenth.
They had to let Mallory rest, Mark also suggested they tried hunting a few monsters on this floor. The average levels of 170 to 180 were enough for another 2 inducements of natural potential.
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It wouldn¡¯t be all that easy for Mark to hunt as well. Even the thirteenth floor posed enough danger for Mark to be on high alert much less a higher floor. Mark wanted his party to understand this.
???
How strong were monsters compared to people?
It was hard to say. Many factors had to be taken into account.
In this party of 5, Scarlet was the one who understood best. She could get technical but that has always been a poor choice to evaluate a monster¡¯s danger levels with. Therefore, she never found the need to explain it to the party. Hector had been pretty knowledgeable and might have known more as well.
In terms of strength or average physical stats, a level 160 Issile might have been on par with Ebony¡¯s fully enhanced state already. Scarlet knew that to slay one so easily must have been his magic and many skills compounding its effects together. That was the case for anyone who could hit above their own levels.
Scarlet had never been one for studying but there were many things she was forced to learn. At least something related to fighting hadn¡¯t been too boring to study.
She knew many things that even Hector shouldn¡¯t know unless he had contact with other worlds.
Like how Elcra¡¯s Worldcore¡¯s quality was currently only starting to near the peak of Ancient. Although that meant that it could sustain Emperor classed existences to reach that would be very difficult and time consuming. There shouldn¡¯t be too many still hiding around on Elcra. Even the current ¡®Emperor¡¯ was not Emperor classed or so she was told.
It can be seen why these ¡®Emperors¡¯ never liked being called that. They haven¡¯t really reached the ranks of one but the Empire¡¯s ruling was that there was always one person that was given the title.
The quality of the Worldcore directly affects the strength of monsters in the world itself.
Most monsters had been animals that absorbed ambient essence somehow or the other. The Xengs believed that it was the Worldcore that forcefully injects essence into its creatures or if it had a spirit, the spirit was doing the work.
Ultimately, it was a cycle of growth.
The Worldcore produces monsters with essence. People get stronger through killing them and vice versa, personal growth, training and experiences adding to the equation. When they die, the Worldcore reabsorbs the essence of all creatures alike to strengthen itself and the cycle repeats.
Dungeons were like pests to every Worldcore that forms naturally. They suck up essence and don¡¯t spit it back out, the reaction of the Worldcore is naturally to stop it from doing so further. Hence the seal. Upon success, at the very least, the world¡¯s essence would be converted to materials that its creatures can use.
The Worldcore would not react as long as its overall essence wasn¡¯t impacted by too much. Dungeons would understand that they were forced to outsource essence which was to attract people to them and then kill them inside.
They could still drain essence, just at a much slower pace than before they were sealed. Those that were undiscovered just built up so much that the dungeon had no choice but to keep spawning monsters. Reaching their max capacity without anyone coming in to serve themselves would cause them to burst and send their creatures out to search for essence.
Dungeon creatures would constantly lose their essence, essentially dying the moment they left the dungeon but with their remaining lifespan, they could cause more than just panic depending on where they were situated.
The increase in quality of the Worldcore also increases the quality of its essence. Hence, strengthening the creatures that absorb said essence. It was also why monsters on any world could only get as strong as Worldcore and never beyond. Unless they gained essence from another source. Eating people was a great boost of nutrients for them.
With that said, the average monster in the wilds of Elva was estimated to have about 4 to 5 times the amount of stats that a person would have at the same level. For those that were below level 100.
So if a Journeyman gets 10 + 5 + 1 stat points per level of each of their classes, an average monster would have about 65 to 80 stat points. Other factors to be included were the type of monster themselves, their environment¡¯s world essence concentration and whatnot.
While a dungeon¡¯s monster were generally weakened by the seal, it would gradually recover to equal the surroundings where the dungeon was formed.
The disparity only grew after every evolution with level 100 to 300 monsters gaining an average of 240 stats per level. Gaining about 7 to 10 times the stats of people. The difference between different types of monsters also grew since the lower end could have much lower stats than the stronger ones.
What the Imperials called ¡®aberrants¡¯ were simply more successful monsters who killed and consumed more than most. Scarlet wouldn¡¯t call them more intelligent since they basically fell to their basic urges and killing instincts.
The dangerous ones were those that managed to reject the essence of the world and then remove what was already in their body.
There were too few of them out there and Scarlet was pretty sure that not many Imperials even understood the difference between them and an aberrant.
Their low-level party looked at a group of 3 Swamp Issiles that had half their body sticking out of water. They surrounded them in a triangular position.
She was pretty sure they were standing on solid ground that was soft and moist but not liquid. She hated the mud on her boots and even splattering onto her mantle when she moved fast but she didn¡¯t have Ebony¡¯s repulsion spell.
All of them were level 175 and the 3 Journeyman fighters called dibs on the ones closest to them. They were exactly what they came here for anyway.
Scarlet steamed, sparked and flashed.
She was right over the head of the Swamp Issile and ready to fillet it from the head but didn¡¯t expect the eyes of the snake-like fish to follow her movements.
It prepared to blast the visible mud ball in its mouth but she was faster. Flipping around and pushing off her disk of blood, she slashed out hundreds of times before she touched the ground. These oversized fishes could clearly swim in mud.
Sister Jing had added space inside Ignite and Flare¡¯s sheath that could contain her blood and keep it fresh for a long time so she didn¡¯t have to cut herself to get some blood. She still couldn¡¯t conjure blood at the moment.
She could almost feel as if her swords wanted her blood too as they were blood drinking swords. Although they grew by drinking the blood of her slaughter they still had to be reforged after she evolved. Perhaps they might not even be able to keep up and have to be placed aside if she doesn¡¯t want to break them.
No time to feel sad about not being able to use swords that have followed her for years.
The Swamp Issile writhed around in pain with numerous wounds opening up almost at the same time. They burned and stung, paralysing the beast temporarily.
¡®It¡¯s tougher than I thought.¡¯
The cuts couldn¡¯t be considered deep for a large fish like this. She didn¡¯t let go of the short period she bought for herself by shocking the Issile. She tried to go in to continue her Live Ingredient Processing but it was writhing about too violently and she had no choice but to give it a treatment of fire instead.
Hector had the most trouble because the Swamp Issile seemed to be very resistant to blunt impacts and he didn¡¯t have a large array of active skills. His dedication to pure physical force was admirable but it comes back biting.
Of course, all of them were in awe again when he blew the thing to bits together with a large part of the forest with a single punch.
¡®That¡¯s not power that a Journeyman can have¡¡¯
¡°That¡¯s overkill,¡± Ebony said. From time to time, he used terms that she just couldn¡¯t understand. This one was simple enough.
They could feel the shockwave and power from Hector¡¯s attack even though it faced the other direction. She couldn¡¯t even spot many pieces of the Issile left. To say it disintegrated would not be accurate but it blew apart too finely and far apart.
Hector was also lying down as his face turned purple.
She was right, it was not power that a Journeyman could withstand.
Mallory sighed softly but she only felt his pulse and didn¡¯t do anything. Not because she didn¡¯t want to but because there was nothing she could do about mana poisoning. The tiny frown she had after Hector used that ridiculously strong punch eased up a little so Scarlet could only assume it was not that bad since he didn¡¯t even go into that state for more than half a second.
???
Ebony had no choice but to use the full power of Frostblaze to even keep up with the others. He couldn¡¯t help but think he was the weakest since it was a state that he could keep up for a few minutes at best.
Hector¡¯s full power was far higher but also less sustainable. Scarlet can easily match his speed and more, but has lower power. With her Physique that lets her gain energy from blood, her sustainability issue was abated.
He wouldn¡¯t have been able to keep up with them was it not for this version of ice magic. He was not fighting using one of ice¡¯s greatest advantages which was to slow and hinder one¡¯s movement since he himself was no longer able to sustain in battle for long.
The three of them got the addition of Natural Potential but they continued moving around on this floor, staying within sight of the dungeon walls.
They stayed for 2 days to get the hang of fighting together. Including Mark and Mallory in the battles. There were quite a few parties around, likely the reason for the low number of monsters.
Parties don¡¯t interact with each other as long as they don¡¯t take each other¡¯s prey. Conflict arose when benefits were at stake.
There were few instances where Ebony saw parties being nice to each other and camped together to lighten the load they had on watch duties.
The distrustful types kept to themselves.
According to Mark¡¯s information, there was another outpost or large camp on the eighteenth floor and the last one in Ordina so far. They didn¡¯t have the manpower to set up anymore.
The one upstairs was also smaller in size and the facilities were more limited. Supplies were more expensive too since they were more valuable. Some merchants specialise in this trade. High risk high return.
Mark was slower and weaker than the 3 fighters. His fire attacks were less effective than Scarlet¡¯s. He was experienced in fighting but Hector couldn¡¯t see what was so special about Mark while Scarlet just assumed Mark was only hiding his skills.
His fighting style did intrigue Hector at first but Hector lost interest soon enough as it was a boring style to him.
So far Ebony has only seen Mark use the barrage of fire arrows and pillar of flames runic circles. He was pretty sure Mark¡¯s new weapon had new pre-drawn runic spells.
Those runes or how he made the weapon were secrets he was not willing to divulge to Ebony.
He was looking forward to seeing what else the current Mark who supposedly improved leaps and bounds over the past few years can do.
Chapter 112: Paths
The Journeymen, including Mallory had managed to get the Natural Potential from level 180 Boomdart Fangs that tried to sneak attack them.
They had some scary acceleration and completely sunk their teeth into Ebony''s compressed Layered Ice Carapace before crushing it to bits. Since they were too small and their fangs too short they had no choice but to bite through or try attacking again.
It was their third day on the fifteenth floor and they unanimously decided that it was enough. Teamwork was far from perfect but their composition was good enough.
Ebony as the scout and tank. Scarlet as vanguard and firepower. Hector as the floater and protector of Mallory should anything require Ebony and Scarlet¡¯s full focus. Mark was fire support and distraction for large numbers if there were any. Mallory was the perfect support with just her barrier magic that can both attack and defend. Her healing had not been necessary so far and Ebony hoped it stayed that way.
They were supposed to carry on upwards before the time they estimated to be noon but sometimes, things just never go according to plan.
¡°Hey hey hey! Kids over there, stop!¡± the unfamiliar and gruff voice echoed over.
Ebony was polite and listened. Mallory had manners. Hector was interested in what the party of 5 that were strangers had to say. Mark was alarmed and had his guard up while Scarlet couldn¡¯t care less.
Scarlet had no choice but to wait for her ride since climbing up the vines would be so troublesome. She was a little irritated she never got any alone time with Ebony with the party here. Fighting together and sparring with him decreased her irritation.
They had opened up more and were commenting on each other''s mistakes in spars or what and how to do something better. An after action review was what Ebony called it. She could only talk about swordsmanship because that was the only thing she noticed that was glaring enough to need improvement. His ability and fighting sense were too strong and even higher than hers.
No words were spoken during their battle and that was for the best. Both of them learn better by moving their bodies and not thinking too much.
Scarlet guessed that the difference between them was that he doesn¡¯t think in battle while she still has to. No matter how fast her thought process, the gap between having to think and not to was hard to cover completely.
Ebony had taken the time to teach and watch her meditate during their time in Teld City but she wasn¡¯t able to learn the skill. She couldn¡¯t relax just sitting there and a constant stream of thoughts invade her mind the more she tried to remove them. He didn¡¯t lose patience with her and tried thinking of other more suitable methods.
The Combat Meditation skill sounds really suitable for Scarlet who was very at ease in battle. Not even she knew the specifics of the skill so she still hasn¡¯t been able to learn it. Her irritation only grew due to the nonsense that the man who stopped them was spouting.
¡°We¡¯ve been seeing your party around. Sauntering around with your bodyguard¡ burning large portions of the dungeon and taking up our prey. Enough is enough! You nobles don¡¯t own the place!¡±
¡°Heh, to think you people are still using mana slaves..oops, they can¡¯t be called that anymore right? Meditators, as your portable power source. Hypocrites.¡±
¡°We¡¯ll be going up ahead these vines so get lost!¡±
¡°We better not see you climbing below us or we¡¯ll kick you down from the next floor.¡±
The party clearly hated nobles and also wasn¡¯t happy about seeing burnt areas with no monsters left for them.
¡®I wonder if Hector and Mallory were thinking that they actually legally own all the dungeons¡¡¯ Ebony thought as he flipped his shields onto the sides to let his passengers aboard.
From start to finish it was just the other party venting with no comment or reply from theirs. The lack of response gave them the courage to talk bigger and bigger.
They were a full human party which was not uncommon with Humans having the largest population. The sharp eyed freckled lady archer kept an eye on them as they walked passed and started climbing the 3 vines that were on this side of the wall.
Ebony stepped onto Mallory¡¯s barrier and they started to ascend. Mallory was clearly moving slowly on purpose.
They reached the same height as the scolding party really quickly and he thought it was polite to wave to people that showed concern about low level parties in a dangerous place. Their initial words were about how this floor was too dangerous for Journeymen like them and how they should leave before they lose their precious lives.
He had thought that it was wonderful that there were caring people everywhere. Their tone change must have been due to their exhaustion, nerves and stress that built up over time. Not everyone was travelling in such luxury like them after all.
With a healer, a barrier mage, a chef with practically unlimited food and water, transportation by flight and more. Mark had remarked many times throughout the short time they had been together. Not to mention the quality of their equipment being visibly better probably made the other party a little envious.
The proof was that every party they had seen was covered in dirt and he could almost smell them from a mile away due to their sweat, gunk and gore. With minor injuries from cuts, bruises and abrasions to larger ones like a broken arm that made their party stressed on how to get down to the thirteenth floor with one of the member¡¯s arms like that.
¡°Thank you for the concern.¡± Ebony said, he continued waving to them as the five of them slowly floated above them. He would¡¯ve flashed a smile if he knew how to but he said it as sincerely as possible that no one but Scarlet could sense.
He did not understand his own party member¡¯s reaction to his actions. Other than Scarlet, they all looked at him weird. Since no one spoke up he didn¡¯t care enough to ask. Maybe he should¡¯ve told the prince, princess, rune nerd and food lover that it was only natural to return kindness for kindness and although they were not very polite, politeness for politeness. Reciprocate.
That must be it.
He must be the one with the most social experience here except maybe Hector. Ebony felt oddly smug about it.
¡®Are they constipated? Or injured?¡¯ He saw the other party¡¯s red complexion. There was some yelling but they already accelerated high up and none of them heard their words clearly. Ebony was guessing it was ¡®stay safe¡¯ and other similar words. What sweet people they were.
The ceiling actually feels closer this time as they took a shorter time to make it up to the sixteenth floor. Since Mallory didn¡¯t stop moving up after the long dark tunnel that was one of the many holes in the ceiling, Ebony didn¡¯t lax up on his shields either.
She must have been improving her mental stamina after carrying someone else a few times.
The ride to the next floor was not as smooth as a torrent stream was reaching out to them while the ground was already far from them. Mallory conjured a barrier fast enough but all of them were smashed into the wall despite the barrier.
Hector managed to hang on to his shield but Scarlet and Mark fell. No vines were anywhere near them.
Mark spun his spear as a habit as he stabbed hard into the wall. Surprisingly stabbing in and stopping his fall.
Ebony had split his shield into scales to speed up and chase the falling Scarlet but stopped when she had drawn her swords.
Blood flowed out as she drew her swords and formed a blood disk under her feet. The only weird thing was that she was already almost upside down and her platform was slanted too.
Like a meteor, a red flash burst her own blood disk apart as she charged downwards. She had no chill and the weakened gravity acting on them to make flight easier was getting in her way so she charged downwards herself.
Scarlet tried to fillet the fish again but her attempt didn¡¯t even cause the Swamp Issile which covered itself in mud to bleed. She sped out of the crater she created from her forceful descent and chased after the Swamp Issile. Cascading Laceration going at full force.
The Swamp Issile proved to be tricky swimming in and out of the ground and constantly shooting blasts of water. Weaving in and out, sparring with Ebony who sends projectiles from any direction had been helpful.
Her blood boiled and her blades kept heating up further. Most of the blood disk she scattered gathered and reformed as a halo above her and started their spin and heating as well.
Rotating perpendicular to the ground and slicing towards the Issile. Melting through its outer layer and scalding the poor beast.
They do not smell appetising which made things a little easier on her.
A tail swipe destroyed her blood halo but it merely broke apart liquid and sent them across the forest, they slowly regathered as her speed and power constantly rose. It was no surprise as the blood spell was merely a generic skill at the moment.
Cuts went deeper and more wounds opened across the Issile as the clock ticked. The Issile couldn¡¯t even catch up to her figure anymore and its blasts of water only hit air, trees, ground and wall.
Her tolerance for her Core Skill has improved leaps and bounds. Right now? She was not hungry and had plenty of energy reserves stored up. Only getting very thirsty as her blood boiled and thinned. That was unavoidable and had always been the case even with her Core Skill alone not to mention the addition of Blood Boil.
It was ready to be served but no one to be served unless reabsorbing the cooked monsters can be tasted by the dungeon. One of the stories that her grandma told her was about the famous world dungeon that asks for delicious dishes in exchange for creating a material it can create with the essence that it has. It was too bad that the world dungeon doesn''t have a gate on Elcra. Elcra only had two known world dungeons and only one was on Elva.
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Her body started to cool down quickly and the moment she hated the most came. It was when her body was warm but not warm enough to evaporate her sweat, making her body all sticky and uncomfortable.
There were some other types of monsters from this floor onwards but they did not find it necessary to waste time here. The large difference in levels did make their skill level very quickly but most of the important skills in each of their skill sets have mostly reached their peak.
It would be better for them to push the limit before actually reaching it.
Scarlet got back onto the cold shield where she lost control and just laid flat on the cooling surface. Unlike Mallory and Ebony who were untouched by water, the other 3 got drenched. She dried out in the fight but it was still very uncomfortable when she imagined that it was the monster¡¯s spit. She wanted to quickly hole up and wipe herself off.
With no more disruptions, they had another flight where Ebony and Mallory did all the work.
Mark was even more uptight now that he kept whispering ¡°I knew something would happen.¡± and blaming himself for letting his guard down due to how at ease he felt when travelling with them.
Hector kept reassuring him with ¡°It¡¯s alright! We¡¯re all fine aren¡¯t we?¡± being the positive guy as always. Only for all of them to listen to another one of Mark¡¯s lectures about the dangers of travelling and how they need to always be on their guard.
¡°Silence!¡± Mallory raised her voice for the first time since Ebony met her. Hector was more shocked about her outburst. Mark¡¯s constant chattering was annoying her. She was already having a very hard time carrying Ebony upwards for hours. Mark¡¯s voice was the last thing she wanted to hear at the moment.
That got Mark to shut up as he received the message. Finally noticing the beads of sweat rolling down the healer¡¯s pretty face.
¡°...Sorry about that.¡± Mark apologised. They were all to thank for his easy journey so far and he had only himself to blame for letting his guard down.
Hector wasn¡¯t wrong that at least all of them were relatively uninjured due to Mallory¡¯s barriers. Only he had smacked into the wall while Scarlet immediately counter-attacked and Hector reacted quickly enough to hang on to the shield that was being blown away by water.
Finally in the dark tunnel that was the floor of the seventeenth floor, they relied on Ebony¡¯s senses and Mark¡¯s questionable ability to detect things in the dark to confirm that nothing was out after them.
Light past the tunnel could be seen after almost half an hour.
Ebony was too lazy to estimate their speed to calculate the distance they had crossed. He did Mental Map properly but he didn¡¯t put much thought into it since he doubted he would come back. Even if he did, the dungeon would¡¯ve likely changed its layout already.
Hopping onto the mushy ground, Ebony caught Mallory¡¯s shoulder as she was falling over.
¡°Are you okay? Let¡¯s take a break here.¡± He saw the pale complexion on her face. It was the same as when they got to the fifteenth floor.
He wanted to walk but found his foot being stepped on by Scarlet. She didn¡¯t move too fast for him to react or anything but he just didn¡¯t move away from her, subconsciously or not.
He cocked his head in confusion when she glared at him before helping Mallory to sit on a dry rock not too far away. It might have been conveniently moved there by some other party that were resting here before or after they climbed the vines.
So far, he hasn¡¯t seen any clash where one party was climbing up and another was climbing down on the same vine. That would¡¯ve been awkward.
Hector snickered at him but wouldn¡¯t explain why after Ebony had asked him what was so funny.
¡°Hect¡¡± Mallory called Hector over.
He was busying himself searching for something in her bag when Scarlet came over.
¡°Let¡¯s spar!¡± Scarlet said enthusiastically.
¡°Mmm. Do you want to get a bite first?¡± Ebony thought about the previous fight that should¡¯ve taken quite a bit of effort from her. Every hunt up here required all their focus and abilities, it was very energy consuming even for him.
¡°Hmphh!¡± Scarlet grabbed his sleeves and pulled him deeper into the marshy forest.
¡®She¡¯s angry right? Why?¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t have much time to ponder when he saw her take a glass tube hidden under her mantle, uncorked it, opened up her lower mask and drank the red solution.
¡°Erm. That was my blood right?¡±
The only reply he received was a burning lance to his face.
He ended up with horrible burns and a large bump on his head when she knocked it with her sheathed sword after he was beaten. The burns were painful and were much harder for him to heal from. He usually protected himself with his own flames but he ran out of mana.
¡°Why don¡¯t you go get Mallory to heal you?¡± Scarlet stomped off after beating him up.
Ebony who can still be considered new to understanding other people''s emotions had the lightbulb in his head light up.
¡®Ohhhh. She¡¯s jealous.¡¯ He then remembered why he started being mean or playing pranks on Hector. He was jealous, didn¡¯t want and didn¡¯t like Scarlet getting so close to another man.
¡®So I¡¯ve already fallen for her since then.¡¯ Ebony realised.
He patted himself as he got up from the ground, it stung the burns under his robe that seemed undamaged. Almost hopping along back to where the others were.
¡®Why am I so happy that I got beaten. Do I have that kind of kink?¡¯ Ebony¡¯s mind went off tangent as usual. He should use his head more. But then the sudden thought brought back memories. The more memories popped up in his head the more he realised that it might really be the case. He missed his mother¡¯s beatings and was even happy when Sister Jing beat him up and now that the same has happened here it was really hard for him to deny based on the circumstantial evidence.
He quickly shook the depressing thought about what kind of person he was and went back to meditating properly.
Seems like Hector set up the barrier item that they used when he first found the prince and princess pair in Hoarfrost Glade. Mallory probably wasn¡¯t able to cast a barrier and got Hector to use it instead. That was what Hector said but Ebony didn¡¯t see any item or object around.
Ebony walked to Scarlet who was taking her bag from under her mantle and setting her tent up.
¡°Don¡¯t be angry.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not angry. Why would I be angry?¡± She didn¡¯t look at him as she was busy with her tent.
¡°I won¡¯t get her to heal me.¡± Ebony attempted to pacify her.
¡°...¡± There was no response.
¡°I¡¯ll make you a guilt bucket.¡± He attacked her weak spot.
¡°...¡± This time he was pretty sure she almost fumbled.
¡°An extra large guilt bucket and I¡¯ll try to make you some ice cream?¡± Ebony increased his offence.
¡°...What¡¯s ice cream?¡± Scarlet¡¯s attention was caught.
¡°It¡¯s a cold snack or desert. It¡¯s sweet and cooling.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t forget to use the keyword ¡®sweet¡¯.
¡°...You¡¯ll have to show me how you make it.¡± Scarlet hesitated but broke down under his relentless attacks.
¡°So you¡¯re not angry?¡±
¡°...I wasn¡¯t angry.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t know why he was satisfied with her answer this time so he stopped pestering her.
They kept to their own tents to rest and recover while the two most energetic ones, Mark and Hector left the confines of their barrier to explore or scout the area.
Mallory came and asked Ebony to show her his burns in the middle of his meditation and magic training. Apparently, Scarlet herself had gone and asked her to heal him.
Ebony opened his tent¡¯s flap, put on his boots left outside and started stripping his robe and shirt off to show Mallory the burns he had along his right arm and the right side of his body. He already changed clothes since the previous one mostly burned off. Some flames slipped under the sleeves of his robe and went up all the way till his neck.
He was confused because there was no movement from Mallory or even Scarlet who should¡¯ve been in the middle of preparing dinner. Ebony spotted her looking their direction, maybe still jealous or watching every one of his moves.
Ebony¡¯s manipulation over his own body or his mana chassis wasn¡¯t so good or accurate that he could remove a layer of skin. He had thought of a good idea and conjured some icy mist over his burns before just tapping lightly to remove the burnt layer and it worked better than he imagined.
¡°What¡¯s wrong? It¡¯s not that bad, I¡¯m starting to heal already.¡± Ebony asked the stunned pair.
¡°...Nothing. Sit, I¡¯ll speed it up. We¡¯ll do the same thing, I¡¯ll follow your mana¡¯s movement, assist and accelerate your natural healing.¡± Mallory brushed her stunned silence aside as insignificance.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think much of it either. Initially.
Scarlet hasn¡¯t stopped staring.
Hector knocked on the barrier as he stood with Mark.
¡°Is dinner ready?¡± Hector saw Scarlet in front of her countertop.
Ebony had placed a thick block of ice on the ground so that she doesn¡¯t have to worry about dirtying her portable kitchen. She returned to preparing dinner after she replied ¡°almost¡±.
They saw him getting his burns healed and didn¡¯t disrupt Mallory who was at work.
Mallory later commented that he was hard to heal. He should be careful about being heavily wounded as she didn¡¯t have the confidence to fully heal a fatal wound for him.
He put his shirt back on and they had dinner. It was quite a feast.
It was hard for Ebony not to notice that Hector was quiet throughout the meal and the table was quiet with the 3 men eating in silence. Mallory ate alone at another table with her back facing Mark.
¡°What happened?¡± Ebony thought it was a good idea to ask.
¡°...I think. I think I saw him.¡± Hector only hesitated for a second. Mark was only lending a curious ear, he had seen Hector turn silent halfway through their walk before Hector decided to come back.
¡°...I see. Where?¡± Ebony conjured his special chair and let Scarlet who suddenly walked out sit on his. She was interested in what Hector had to say. They knew who Hector was referring to.
¡°I mean. I¡¯m not sure if it was him. Just thought I saw him flying up.¡± Hector second guessed himself.
¡°Also, while I don¡¯t recognise the others I saw that fire mage woman that should¡¯ve been killed by Scarlet. They¡¯re on this floor.¡± Hector added.
¡°They don¡¯t matter. The next floor¡¡± Scarlet didn¡¯t care about his lackeys. She couldn¡¯t forget how easily she was taken out years back.
¡°What do y''all wanna do about it? Look for him?¡± Hector didn¡¯t know how he felt about their ex-party member.
¡°Why?¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°¡°...¡±¡±
¡°If we come across him, we come across him. If not, we have better things to do.¡± Ebony stated his thoughts.
He didn¡¯t think they could beat Tuffock either. The current them might be able to beat the Tuffock of the past if he wasn¡¯t hiding any more powers but they were not the only ones improving. If Tuffock at that time was already near his limit, chances were, he evolved and is just levelling now.
Whatever the case, Ebony doubted their chances of victory against him. Them.
Their original purpose here was to get as much Natural Potential. No point looking for trouble unless trouble looked for them. It wouldn¡¯t be too late to look for something as petty as revenge when they were actually free or had nothing better to do.
Hector seemed to approve of his decision but Scarlet clearly wasn¡¯t. She returned to her tent to continue eating and the conversation stopped there.
Despite what Ebony said, he didn¡¯t forget that the stone mage had snapped Scarlet¡¯s neck and almost killed her.
Their paths would one day cross again. The question was when.
Chapter 113: Fall
Ebony¡¯s maintenance or repair abilities were useless for their party.
Scarlet¡¯s clothes were made by Sister Jing. It wasn¡¯t something that he could do anything about. The other problem was that they weren¡¯t even damaged.
The prince and princess just changed out to another set so frequently that they didn¡¯t care if a few of their clothes were ripped or damaged.
Mark took care of his own equipment as there were too many runes on them that he didn¡¯t want people to mess around with.
Mallory obviously had a much better pair of casting gloves than his single glove which was worn out. His own glove may not survive long. It was already very thin as he held a greatsword with it and the constant swinging was wearing it down with friction.
He was thinking of letting his glove retire but it was actually a great help in helping with the casting of Layered Ice Carapace so he still wore it.
They were not interested in going out for another hunt so they just slept. Though he was pestered to cook and make ice cream, it was a night of snacking. Hector didn¡¯t let Scarlet hog all the food.
With milk and some cream that Scarlet provided, Ebony conjured a jar made of ice and just added sugar. They didn¡¯t have vanilla extract and he was too lazy to make other flavourings for now. Adding some small berries should do.
All he had to do was manipulate it to shake fast enough and he was done. It worked surprisingly well and the treat was well liked by even the princess. Scarlet seemed a little unhappy that her share decreased so he said he would make more for her. She was clearly in love with ice cream, more so than potato chips or fries.
They have been seeing their skills which stopped levelling level again but they quickly hit the limit again since the effect of Natural Potential was also limited.
Breakfast the next morning was some kind of pancake with bacon and sweet syrup. Considerably lighter than usual due to their heavy snacking and little exertion.
With little mood or enthusiasm to explore the same old terrain with many different varieties of plants, they just continued upwards.
Mallory was almost visibly relieved when she saw the vines end on the wall of the ground level of the eighteenth floor. Ebony wondered if anybody tried to cut it and drop a few floors worth of vines and maybe people down.
¡°Did you find out what¡¯s the way up?¡± Hector asked Mark. He was a little uncomfortable about the possibility of bumping into their ex-party member.
¡°Urhh¡ Mana density here is pretty high. All I got from them was that the way up is too obvious to miss.¡± Mark complained as he tried to get used to the slight rise of mana density. Gravity didn¡¯t increase noticeably anymore, Ebony no longer played tricks on his own party since it was dangerous to do so. His increase in magical prowess also changed things.
¡°Yeah. There¡¯s a tiny bit of ice mana around.¡± Ebony looked up to see the blue ¡®sky¡¯. Miniscule amounts of Ice mana were sinking from above.
There were no clouds, the lighting wasn¡¯t as dim and it was cooler on this floor. With no other clue other than ¡®too obvious to miss¡¯ they had no choice but to explore. The easiest choice was to move towards the centre or away from the dungeon wall.
They could already feel the difference between the current floor and the previous. There was likely a spawning node not too far away since they were attacked by a large group ready to tear them apart.
[Boomarrow Fang Lvl 182]
[Boomarrow Fang Lvl 184]
[Boomarrow Fang Lvl 180]
[Boomarrow Fang Lvl 182]
¡
The most obvious of all was the different variants of serpents that were thicker than his arms with fangs as thick as his thumb. They were the most obvious because of their overwhelming numbers. Climbing and slithering on each other as there wasn¡¯t enough space on the ground.
As for the golems, they turned into sleek forms like those in the long walkway. Not just ¡®like¡¯, they were the exact same ones but stronger.
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 185]
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 185]
[Earthen-Topaz Fist Golem Lvl 185]
[Earthen-Topaz Foot Golem Lvl 185]
[Earthen-Topaz Foot Golem Lvl 185]
[Earthen-Topaz Head Golem Lvl 185]
...
It was quite interesting that they all have the same level. There were about 18 of them in total.
As for the Issiles, they¡¯ve grown wings. They were currently the most concerning to him as a pair of them circled and chased each other¡¯s tails as they stayed afloat above them. Too far in the air for him to Identify.
¡°I¡¯ll get the snakes,¡± Ebony said before disappearing from where he was. Fully enhanced because he needed every drop of power.
The outburst of such great numbers wasn''t hidden well and was coming from quite a distance, giving them time to react.
In his opinion, he was the best one when it came to dealing with numbers. If the snakes scattered, Hector¡¯s punch might not get them all.
He released the ice mana within his robe into the surroundings as Frost Mist.
Reaching ahead of the bulk of serpents in a single step, he swung out Icicle and manipulated his flames to extend to his Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. The crescent slash of flames streaked out from his greatsword and into the bulk of serpents.
The serpents'' reactions were quick as they evaded to the side, those in the centre were stacked together and didn¡¯t manage to dodge. The flames of frost came into contact and started sinking into their scales the moment it landed on them. The dumb ones who touched their burning compatriots caught the flames too.
Ebony was surrounded right after the serpents separated in an attempt to dodge his strike. The thin chill in the air was not doing much to them at the moment and he didn¡¯t want to waste mana on Magnified Gravity Field which may not do much to slow them. He already gained all the Boomarrow Fang¡¯s attention since he was a monster magnet.
Several of them shot for him and ended up with their head pierced through his fully compressed Layered Ice Carapace. He had 4 shields constantly working, he didn¡¯t hide that he could quadra cast for a long time now.
Ebony only slashed downwards at the same time that he manipulated his shield to angle the serpent¡¯s neck right where he slashed. Fortunately, even with their high Vitality and Constitution, he was capable of beheading them and their bodies would jump around on the ground for a bit before they froze stiff and died.
Two of his shields contorted and reformed into his sculptures within a short time with Ice Swords in their hands. They didn¡¯t have the strength that Ebony got from enhancements but they were hardy enough from the sheer compression of mana they were made of.
They were unable to slay the Boomarrow Fangs but was able to hold them off his back as he dealt with those ahead of him. Ebony got the Ice Swords wielded by them to bleed ice mana onto their target and over time, as long as the ice mana was within his range, he could ignite them into frostflame to exponentially increase the freezing capabilities of his ice magic.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The Boomarrow Fang¡¯s explosive burst of speed was not enough to even graze his sleeves as he dodged them within a hair¡¯s breadth and counterattacked.
¡°Ebony!¡± Hector¡¯s shout caught his attention. Ebony jumped up high without hesitation.
The shockwave that came a second after tore apart everything in its path. Hector¡¯s punch had come all the way from his battle almost a hundred metres away from him. The Boomarrow Fang were merely blasted away but not blown apart due to the distance that Hector threw his punch from.
Ebony charged Icicle with a little bit more mana and stabbed downwards with his whole body. He didn¡¯t even hit any of the snakes but Icicle sliced into the ground with ease and the added weight that he magnified on himself cracked open the dungeon floor.
The ice mana within Icicle exploded forth and through the cracks in the earth. Then flames burst forth and latched on to all the Boomarrow Fangs that were left.
He quickly stopped casting Frostblaze Augmentation to regenerate mana. Taking a step away from the battle as the Boomarrow Fangs struggled to shake the flames off.
¡®Hmm.. that move has potential.¡¯ Ebony thought about what he just did without thinking. He didn¡¯t have the mana to use that all the time so he¡¯ll practise that more after he evolved.
More than half of his mana pool was emptied out already. It was really hard to get used to this style of combat. Too bad he had no choice at the moment as the power output was helping him heaps.
The other four were having trouble with the golems. The golems were probably the best at fighting in the whole dungeon. Used in the shortcut walkway and one that they had some trouble with at first. The evolution and levels gained compared to the ones on the lower floors powered them up even more.
Ebony saw that Hector and Mark¡¯s equipment had yellow crystals growing on them. The troublesome topaz magic likely got more troublesome.
¡®No core golem. I rather not see that at this level too.¡¯ He remembered that they called the core golem variant, Ordina¡¯s elite monster.
Scarlet was streaking all over the place and was hard to catch sight of but she should be fine. The golems were very tough and Hector couldn¡¯t destroy them easily. Mallory was supporting Hector and Mark as they slowly dealt with two fists and feet golems each.
Scarlet was too fast for Mallory to support and she also decided that Scarlet was not in need of any support. The speedy swordswoman was single handedly keeping the remaining golems busy.
Hector¡¯s previous punch on elemental steroids was likely to take out the head golems because Ebony didn¡¯t see a single one remaining.
Ebony didn¡¯t join in to lessen the pressure on his party members. The five minutes that he stood there to recover was spent watching the two gigantic flying eels that were still circling above them. During these five minutes, he already regenerated over 1200 mana.
For Scarlet not to finish a fight in five minutes said much about the golems'' strength. he remembered that she said that she was disadvantaged against golems or anything that wasn¡¯t really alive or an ingredient. That might¡¯ve been the reason why the fight was dragging out.
The topaz magic and general durability of the golems were keeping them going against his party members. Mark has been pushed to the defensive without showing much of his skills. His fire magic proved to be ineffective against the golems and he fought like a warrior instead of the runic fire mage he was. Somehow, Ebony thought he was weaker than he had been.
Ebony waited no longer and blasted compressed Frostblaze Augmentation again. Jumping and conjuring scales in the air as platforms for him to jump higher. When he was within range of the pair of Issiles with 2 pairs of wings each, he couldn¡¯t help but be aware of the dense mana that they were circling.
They were conjuring water as they circled it. He sensed that there was something else on top of the [Falls Issile Lvl 178]s. More Boomarrow Fangs, 2 on each Issile.
Wasting no time to attack them to disrupt whatever the hell they were trying to do. The Boomarrow Fangs that were supposedly hidden was probably there to protect the Issiles but they were no threat when exposed.
The Issiles didn¡¯t react to his arrival. They couldn¡¯t disrupt their cast.
The serpents had no choice but to take action and shot at the attacker. Their charge was promptly welcomed by his Layered Ice Carapace that came up along with him. Ebony sliced the heavy greatsword in his hand down but he forgot that he was in mid air and the momentum pulled him along to fall to his doom.
It was then, he felt the dense mana above him ripple.
He was out of time, reverberating the mana in the air downwards. ¡°Scarlet, dodge. Mallory, barrier.¡± Ebony projected his voice with sound magic.
Another scale was conjured at the bottom of his feet as a single Treading Stride pushed him out of the range of the circle. He spun around in the air as he slashed out another Frostblaze Clad swing at the Issiles, hoping it would do something to weaken whatever spell it was.
He knew Scarlet was at the peak of her speed and could easily dodge as long as she reacted and heard his warning but he was worried about the other 3 that were directly below the Issiles. Mallory could cast pretty damn fast since she could react to Ebony¡¯s attack but she was still tired from flying up to the current floor.
He watched the torrent of a waterfall blast down. Not for long, he already kicked off another scale and appeared atop the closer Issile and stabbed down on its head. The Issile didn¡¯t even react at this point in time. They were fully engrossed in casting their spell.
Ebony couldn¡¯t hear the sound of his greatsword colliding with the Issile that had scales instead of slick skin but he could feel and see that he didn¡¯t even draw blood with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and Sonic Overlay working overtime.
His body didn¡¯t lag and walloped ceaselessly with Frostblaze Cladding spreading all over them and he manually manipulated them to dig into the Issiles.
The Issile he was standing on slowly started falling from the sky and the spell was finally stopped, Scarlet had somehow found her way up into the air and was about to reach the other Falls Issile. Ebony leapt onto it before he fell together with the dying Issile.
He landed the same time as Scarlet who grabbed on and climbed, almost falling. Without a spell to focus on, the Falls Issile violently shook around. Ebony quickly moved to catch Scarlet who was about to fall off. Catching her forearm as she caught his.
The other hand was frozen onto the body of the Falls Issile so he wouldn¡¯t be shaken off. It did hurt being swung around as one of his hands was frozen on but even Scarlet didn¡¯t notice that from his expression. Not even her Sublime Instinct could sense it.
The Falls Issile thought that it had shaken them off after a while and stopped its violent shaking, stabilising its flight.
He pulled her up and threw her up onto the back of the Issile. Flipping himself up after unfreezing himself.
The flames on the surface of his body died down as he ran out of mana. He didn¡¯t even have time to start pondering what he could do now before he almost fell from the sudden unbalanced footing.
The neck of the Falls Issile was on fire as its head was separated. He didn¡¯t see how she sliced it off so easily but assuming she built up a lot of power over a long period of time it was not too surprising.
He took a step towards her and grabbed her but was burned by her body temperature without his Augmentation. He ignored it and relied on the ice mana in his robes to quickly cool his arms down. Leaping off the falling Issile and slowing his fall with some conjured scales. He was lucky there was plenty of ice mana left in his robe, a few scales were all he could manage to conjure with his quickly regenerated mana.
Rolling onto the muddy ground when the last scale failed him as his mana was truly emptied. He hugged Scarlet¡¯s head to prevent any rock or hard objects from hitting her. Slamming into a tree trunk with his back. He couldn¡¯t help but cough out blood as he wasn¡¯t protected by any enhancement nor did he have increased Constitution from compressed mana in his body.
He was lucky he managed to slow their fall by so much.
''Damn, I could have summoned the scales on my robe to protect myself.'' Ebony complained to himself for forgetting the functions of his robe against blunt force.
Covered in mud as he didn¡¯t have Chaotic Repulsive Membrane cast, he struggled to move his arms that were wrapping Scarlet up ¡®tightly¡¯. His Strength stat was practically non-existent compared to anyone else without his enhancement magic.
¡°Are you alright?¡± Ebony asked with concern. He was a little sad that he couldn¡¯t even feel the concern in his own dead tone.
Scarlet who was already forcing her heart to calm down was washed with another wave of warmth. Her Sublime Instincts detected the concern Ebony had for her even though he was the one that got injured. She didn¡¯t even care about the mud and dirt all over her or Ebony.
¡°Mmm, I¡¯m alright.¡± Scarlet picked up a little of his speech patterns without noticing.
Hearing that, Ebony¡¯s consciousness faded out. The impact on his back was stronger than he imagined and unenhanced Ebony just couldn¡¯t take it.
Everlasting Tranquility brought him back in and out of consciousness before Scarlet started panicking.
¡®...I can¡¯t move.¡¯ Ebony realised that he didn¡¯t have feelings in his legs. The ground shook from the weight of the Issile crashing down.
Talking as best as he could to distract Scarlet to buy himself time. Regenerating a little bit of mana, he conjured ice around his back and legs and manipulated them to help him stand. Moving a body as naturally as possible with Ice Mana Control was what he had been training for years.
He managed to hide his inability to walk.
Hector and Mark found their way over to them. Mallory was supported by Hector as she had difficulty even walking. The redness above her lips was clearly from blood that she didn¡¯t completely wipe off.
The area where the large waterfall spell landed turned into a tiny lake already. If one dived down they would see a crater or indentation that was from Mallory¡¯s barrier getting crushed into the ground.
They were definitely not in the state to fend off another attack. Changing locations immediately as the dungeon knew their current whereabouts.
Ebony said they shouldn¡¯t move too fast in case they aggravated Mallory''s pain. He silently thanked her for hiding his own pain and injury.
Chapter 114: Recuperate
Hector took out a metal board with a transparent gem in the middle and injected some of his mana into it. It activated the same domic barrier that protected them while they slept. He kept it in Mallory¡¯s bag when he was done. The board didn¡¯t have to be placed down or anything, that seemed convenient.
Ebony was a little worried because feeling never came back to his lower body. Mallory had a constant frown and was breathing heavily. The mental feedback from defending against the waterfall must have been stronger than they expected.
He hid in his tent and took out the remaining general healing potion he had that he never used. He drank it but wasn¡¯t sure if it was working. Calming down and meditating and focused on searching where or what was broken.
¡®Hot damn.¡¯
Ebony found a small crack along part of his spine. Some mana was leaking out and it was not recovering. His overall regeneration was throughout his whole body so he wasn¡¯t really affected in that sense.
When he tried to manually regenerate the broken parts by focusing on the mana chassis in that area, his mana just couldn¡¯t latch back to the mana chassis easily. He remained still and calm. He could regenerate a hand, he should be able to heal with time if it was just a normal crack in his spine.
He started to think, asking Mallory to heal him was a certainty. It was best that he was fully healed. As for keeping it from Scarlet¡she clearly wouldn¡¯t like it and he thought about how he would not like to keep secrets or for her to keep secrets from him. He decided to tell her about it anyway. He would rather tell her and have her worry than have her find out when she least liked and get angry.
It would be dangerous for his party to assume he was able to fight at full capacity anyway. Scarlet was still the first he wanted to tell. Without walking out to get her, he just manipulated a string of mana to transmit his voice to her tent.
Scarlet was in the middle of wiping the mud off her body, she screamed when she heard Ebony¡¯s voice beside her ear before shutting herself up the next moment.
¡°It¡¯s okay I already soundproof your tent so no one heard that.¡± Ebony could ¡®hear¡¯ pretty well just by feeling the vibrations in the air. It had been a very useful skill he picked up after being blind for more than a year during his training with Gen.
As for reassuring her, he just felt like she probably wouldn¡¯t like anyone to hear her scream and told her that no one heard her.
¡°I¡¯m not in your tent or looking inside either so you don¡¯t have to look around so much. Just a little sound magic.¡± He wasn¡¯t focusing on her tent earlier so he only just realised that she was covering herself for some reason.
¡®Oh.¡¯ He wasn¡¯t dense enough not to notice that she was currently half naked, hence her surprise. He slapped himself at the next thought that came to mind. He had thought that it was a pity Vibrational Gravity Sense couldn¡¯t see as his eyes could.
¡°Wh..what¡¯s wrong?¡± Scarlet, who heard that it was just sound magic, calmed down and lowered her arms. Continuing with cleaning herself.
She was glad that Mallory was here to give her more ease at mind with her barrier magic. She had very complicated thoughts at the moment but it was just blood rushing to her head and face. She wouldn¡¯t have been able to think properly if she didn¡¯t spend the last month or so building resistance to Ebony.
¡°I¡have something to tell you.¡±
¡°...Can it wait?¡±
¡°Mmm. I¡¯ll wait till you call out to me¡±
Ebony had never told anyone about the specifics of Vibrational Gravity Sense. Even Sister Jing only guessed that he had some kind of perception skill that can sense all around him. Scarlet should not even know that he had a skill like that. She thought that it was just sound magic that was transmitted to her and didn¡¯t know that there was practically an eye on her right now.
The unexpected wait of over half an hour flew by before they noticed.
¡°Ebony? Can you hear me?¡±
¡°Yes. I just wanted to say I injured my back and can¡¯t walk for a while.¡±
Ebony couldn¡¯t react to his tent¡¯s flap just opening as the intruder burst in along with a sweet scent. She just stared at him lying down. His mind short-circuited.
¡°I¡¯m fine, I¡¯m partially mana. All physical injuries can be completely healed without any remnant injury.¡±
¡°Nonsense. You¡¯re only partially mana, can you be sure there aren¡¯t any long lasting effects?¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony never thought about it since even limbs could be regenerated. He also couldn¡¯t sense the difference between his regenerated hand and other parts of his body. He could sense the mana portions of his body pretty clearly but not his physical parts.
¡°I¡¯ll get Mallory.¡± Scarlet approved of the healer¡¯s skills.
He grabbed her wrist before she could leave. This time, she didn¡¯t shake him off or hit him. Only looking back at him.
¡°Maybe you should put on more clothes first,¡± he told the lady in a red lacy camisole that was supposedly women¡¯s underwear.
He could feel her hand¡¯s temperature rise as she mentally processed his words and flashed out of his tent and back to hers.
She didn¡¯t delay despite her embarrassment and got the healer who still had a headache here in no time.
¡°Don¡¯t hide your injuries from the healer.¡±
¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m telling you. You just seem tired just now. Still do.¡±
¡°...That is for me to worry about. Where? What?¡± Mallory actually liked to heal Ebony. She can learn more about the composition of a mana being. It was a challenge which was good for her healing skills. His awareness of what the problem was and where exactly in his body made the diagnosis and directed treatment a lot easier.
¡°Lower spine. Cracks. I already realigned what was dislocated. It¡¯s not easy to stick them back together. Is there a better method?¡±
¡°Realigned¡convenient. Do I look like I¡¯m made of mana? Turn around and lie on your belly.¡± Mallory mumbled at first before asking rhetorically and ordering him.
His tent was basically opened up and he was like a patient exposed to nurses and doctors. Mark was worried about how it was going to turn out. A back injury was basically the end of a warrior¡¯s career and he didn¡¯t know about Ebony¡¯s regenerative ability.
Hector wasn¡¯t as worried about Ebony as he was about the possible presence of their ex-party member. Still scanning the area. They weren¡¯t very far away from where they were attacked, they weren¡¯t exactly hidden either. A couple of broken trees around wasn¡¯t enough coverage.
Ebony who turned around felt a warmth on his back moments later. It wasn¡¯t the first time that he wondered about Mallory¡¯s mana regeneration or capacity. Although it likely wasn¡¯t as high as his, it was probably very high. There was no way she could fly almost all day with magic or still have enough to heal him right now.
He tried to sense what her healing magic was doing in hopes of being able to replicate it in future. Unsure of the nature of her healing magic. There wasn¡¯t much that was known about healing magic. Publicly at least.
The warmth disappeared within minutes. Mallory stated that she¡¯ll have to treat him over a few days. Asking him not to move as much as possible. She also couldn¡¯t answer Scarlet if he would have lasting effects from such injuries.
On the other hand, Mark was amazed by Mallory¡¯s skill. A career-ending injury could be perfectly healed in days?
Ebony had his meal brought into his tent and ate together with Scarlet. He was a little shy to get fed by her when he could move his upper body.
Mark and Hector busied themselves with gathering branches and leaves to pile up on their barrier which they reduced in size.
Mark taught Hector the basics of camouflaging. Adding odd sticks out of place to break the shape of their barrier, colouring and whatnot.
Not even Ebony knew about runes that could hide them like an illusion or light-bending ones. He could draw a rune that creates a ball of light but that was all. Mark didn¡¯t even know the runes for any light elemental mana.
They left to explore and hunt during the day. Mark gained a level in two days. Other than more unknown plants there wasn¡¯t much treasure or good loot. Relatively.
Mark was looting as much of the earthen topaz he could get. He could only carry so much and he stopped when his bag was almost 80% full. He saw it to contain both high value and research potential. Maybe even a power source for certain runic spells. Discussing with Ebony if they could make a topaz production and manufacture topaz from the pieces he got.
The answer was simply no, there was only so much and it wasn¡¯t a core that could produce or convert mana to topaz mana. They did not encounter the core golem which was a relief. The interesting thing was that there were [Sand-Topaz Golem]s as well, using heated sand that sliced into Mark¡¯s shoulder pads.
He was already getting treatment and staying inside the barrier with Ebony.
Scarlet didn¡¯t go out at all and constantly nursed Ebony despite not needing any nursing. She didn¡¯t even let him get up unless it was to stretch which he said made him feel better.
Ebony could stand by day three and walk by nightfall on the same day. They were ready to move out on the sixth day. Mark¡¯s shallow cut was also healed already and he made do with Ebony¡¯s lousy mending. It was in one piece but he wasn¡¯t able to put the runes back on as the integrity of his shoulder pad was not fully restored.
The eighteenth floor was a little more special than Ebony imagined. It had rained a couple of times over the past five days.
The entire time that he had been on Elcra, he rarely experienced rain. The few times that rained were when he was in Fourth Tide, near the sea and another occasion or two in the Plains. It might have been just the region that he was in that didn¡¯t rain much since much of his time was spent in Hoarfrost Glade where it hailed instead of rained.
Downpours were frequent on this floor and their poor camouflage had been washed away a few times. It was the morning of the sixth day when they were packing up but the heavy rain was putting some of them in a bad mood. The ladies didn¡¯t want to get wet in the rain and Mark was concerned about the dangers of battles in a wet marshy forest.
According to Mark¡¯s hypothesis, it was the dungeon resetting all the ponds created by the Falls Issiles. The area where they were attacked had the pool of water dry up after the rain. If the same spell was being cast all over the dungeon floor, the environment may not be what the dungeon envisioned it to be. Hence, redistributing the water across the floor, likely to other floors as well.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Mark even went so far as to say the presence of a different golem like the sand and earth golems were to repair the holes around the place so that the eighteenth¡¯s floor environment was kept consistent or at least, consistently reset.
Theories aside, it was quite a downer that they were just about to leave being cooped up all day when it started raining.
Ebony had been fine despite being the most cooped up. He liked watching the rain. It was a pity the barrier blocked the rain from landing on him. Their most recent mish-mash of branches and leaves slid down in time, allowing him to watch Ordina¡¯s dark sky.
It was then, he saw the tiny shadow high within the clouds. It was just a grey dot moving at high speeds. No one else noticed, they wouldn¡¯t have been able to see it as well since it was at the edge of his sight. With the highest Perception stat here, unless the others had some kind of skill that improved their sight they wouldn''t be able to spot it.
Mark and Hector already found the way upwards. Towards the centre of the floor was another massive stairway made of ice. Cutting the eighteenth floor in half and stairs that lead both south and northwards. The stairway was also a complete wall that separates the eighteenth floor in half but the other half was exactly the same as this side.
It was quite a long way from the corner where they were on the other¡¯s feet but with their transportation Ebony and Mallory, they could reach it within the day.
Between both directions of stairs and wall was a small camp of a few dozen people. There was no wall or defensive outpost in place except a few fallen trees used as a fence. The ¡®main base¡¯ of this floor served as a resting spot where people could look out for each other as it was easier to defend against any night attacks there.
The grey dot was just flying through the downpour and towards the top. The blue ¡®sky¡¯ beyond the dark clouds was actually just a ceiling of ice. Passing through the clouds and entering the next floor by flight. Ebony guessed it was Tuffock and his other personas.
As for why he guessed it was them despite not seeing clearly, it was just instinct.
¡®Is clashing inevitable?¡¯
???
¡°Did you see?¡±
¡°Yeah. They¡¯re back. What a coincidence, we just completed our evolution not long ago and returned for quick levels.¡±
¡°What do you guys think? Try to poach them again? Huh, Tuffock?¡±
¡°...D..do you think..th..they¡¯ll agree after we tried to kill them?¡±
¡°Well, I bet the almighty is out to kill us. Hector, your friend seems to trust you but unfortunately, he¡¯s probably a high noble of the Empire. As for Ebony, it¡¯s hard to say. I can¡¯t get a read on him. If he doesn¡¯t care for the Xeng as much as we thought, perhaps he is open to the thought.¡±
¡°Damnit, just hurry up. We already increased our numbers across regions, we still need our personal strength to increase or there would be no point.¡±
¡°Yeah, we¡¯ll leave the fighting to you Hardock. Tuffock can take care of the healing, meditation and talking. As usual, you can leave the strengthening of our body and mind to me for the time being. Call me if there¡¯s anything you can¡¯t handle.¡±
¡°Course! Shut up already, Tuffock! Just Meditate as usual and Pettock start preparing your spells. Ditching and coming up here ourselves is difficult enough already. We¡¯ll swap out in another 2 hours, I¡¯m dead tired already.¡±
The man snickered at his own words.
¡°We still have a long way to go before we can finally rest.¡±
He replied himself.
???
¡°Guys over there, get away!¡±
¡°Save us!¡±
¡°Look! Isn¡¯t that a barrier?¡±
¡°Let us in! Please! We¡¯ll pay ya!¡±
A group of 4 ran towards them and warned them about what was chasing them. One of them was carrying someone with long yellow hair so there were 5 of them in total. They were drenched and covered in mud, even though the rain stopped not too long ago.
Not seconds later, Ebony saw the menace of an Issile flying low and reaching out to swallow them. Knocking aside any tree in its path. Clinging onto the winged Issile were multiple Fist Golems and Boomarrow Fangs. More than he could count from afar.
They watched another Issile appear from behind the group and fly up into the sky. It was chasing its own tail as it circled high in the sky.
¡°There¡¯s not as much. With that damn fish, there¡¯s no point for them to come over either.¡± Hector said.
¡°Then release the barrier, I need to warm back up.¡± Ebony commented. It would¡¯ve been unbearable not to move his body much if Scarlet hadn¡¯t been by his side for almost the entire time.
¡°Sure, this time I¡¯ll deal with the one above with Scarlet.¡± Mallory had a grudge against those Falls Issiles. She was much better with flight anyway.
The barrier was removed and they burst towards the group that just asked them to let them get in. It was obvious that the area where they were in was completely dry which was how they noticed the barrier.
???
The 4 strangers¡¯ first shock was to see the people they were hoping to help them disappear.
Their second shock was a man with blue hair that was burning up in similarly coloured blue flames right amidst them before some of them could blink.
Followed by a shower of flaming arrows, a shockwave that tore apart the surroundings in a straight line. The temperature was constantly changing, burning and chilling them to their very bones.
They found themselves listening to the pink-haired armoured man¡¯s ¡°Stay still.¡±. It was fortunate their bodies followed what their instincts told it. They would¡¯ve been caught in the crossfire of all the spells and either been turned to paste, burnt to ashes or frozen still like they currently were.
Within minutes, their entourage was dealt with.
¡°Tha.. Woah! What was that?¡± The other woman that wasn¡¯t unconscious thought that the sounds of combat had already died down and got scared by another ground-shaking impact and the strong winds that blew her hair into her eyes.
¡°Ahh!¡± She fell onto her butt along with one of her party members when a giant Issile¡¯s face stared at her with bloody whites, pupils rolling all the way up.
The scorching heat that came together with the Issile was quickly washed away with a blast of chill before their clothes, armour and hair caught fire.
Shocked time and time again.
The party was surrounded by their benefactors, giving them a final shock before they could recover their wits and thank them.
They Identified their saviours to be Journeymen and a masked one.
¡°Thank you for saving us! On the behalf of our party, I apologise if we have brought any trouble to you good sirs and ma¡¯am! By no means did we mean to bring danger to you!¡± The woman was a loud one and Ebony¡¯s ears did not take kindly to it. He always had sensitive ears but it just got worse after his training.
He didn¡¯t expect her to kneel in fear though. Along with the entire party, minus the one that was unconscious.
It appears that many people treat nobles differently. Some hated them as a whole. Some liked them due to their strengths and being at the forefront of any dangers the Empire faced. Many feared them for their strengths.
It was common sense for people of Elcra that hair and eye colour were usually connected to one¡¯s elemental affinity. The current king and queen were famous for their pink and purple shades of hair that Mallory and Hector didn¡¯t hide. They were rare colours that seemed to be related to arcane magic. While Hector wasn¡¯t Identified as a barrier mage or healer, the quadra elemental mage was enough to shock most.
There was nothing left to be said about Scarlet¡¯s presence in the party.
¡°It was no trouble at all!¡± Hector said and meant it. That was pretty much what all of them were thinking. Mark wouldn¡¯t have stepped in if he didn¡¯t think he could handle it but a quick read on the situation was enough to tell him that there was no harm in sowing more goodwill. The risk was too low to matter.
Hearing Hector¡¯s cheerful voice was enough to calm them down a little that they met one of the outwardly nicer nobles. They were unlucky enough to bring people of such status trouble, they weren¡¯t going to stay for long and risk the mood changes of these nobles. They quickly picked themselves up and left but not before Mallory stopped them.
¡°Stop. Put that lady down. I¡¯ll see what I can do. Tell me what happened.¡± Mallory wasn¡¯t about to let someone die or have their injury worsen when she worked so hard to become a healer to prevent that.
Ebony was pretty interested by the unconscious lady¡¯s class [Great Topaz Hunter Lvl 133]. If her combat capability was average, it was clear that she was being protected by her party members who were beyond Ebony¡¯s Identify range.
¡°Really!? Thank you! prin..¡± The woman seemed like the one in charge as she was the only one conversing with them. Mallory shut her up with a glare and she was quick enough to know what was better left unsaid. She might have been wrong about her being related to the Royals before but the glare was enough to tell her that she was right.
¡°Uh¡she, she got stabbed by one of the head golem¡¯s projectiles. The growth of topaz is stopped by her own magic and resistance but it''s not enough to stop it completely.¡± The woman said after she asked her party member to put the hunter down.
Showing Mallory the hunter¡¯s belly which was covered in yellow topaz creeping up her leather armour. The topaz has grown on the armour and stuck to her body. It couldn¡¯t be removed due to the growth of topaz.
¡°Let me guess. You brought her here to counter the golem¡¯s topaz magic but messed up and let her get hit.¡± Hector said curiously. It was hard to even see the wound if they couldn¡¯t remove the armour without hurting the lady but with his cousin here it shouldn¡¯t be a problem to cause a little pain.
¡°...yes.¡± The group of men were silent and ashamed of themselves.
¡°Couldn¡¯t you let her level some more before you came up here? At least she would have better luck protecting herself if she had the stats you people have.¡± Mark asked. It was people like them that got innocent seedlings to die young.
¡°It wouldn¡¯t have happened if we weren¡¯t¡¡± The lady raised her voiced in retaliation. She wasn¡¯t as restrained when talking to the bodyguard who clearly wasn¡¯t of noble birth when she compared the equipment they had. He was the only one that was carrying luggage as well.
¡°Shush.¡± Mallory needed to focus, she was unfamiliar with the necessary procedures required to heal a wound from topaz magic.
Although the most obvious step was to remove the foreign body that was harming the person she needed to decide on the best way around it that would be best for the patient.
Miss healer got all the men to scout the surroundings and protect them while she was at work. Needing Scarlet¡¯s help with something. Basically telling them to get lost.
Other than helping her focus it was probably for the injured lady¡¯s privacy which even Ebony was able to pick up.
They complied and gave them as much privacy as they possibly could within a short distance so that they could react to any dangers.
Hector was chatty as always and even managed to get the group of [Swordmaster], [Master Rogue] and [Master Guardian] to speak up.
The lady in charge was indeed the leader of the party and was the archer of the party.
She was the woman who watched over them as they grew up in a small orphanage but wasn¡¯t much older than themselves. The caretaker¡¯s adopted daughter who picked up archery since her weak arms couldn¡¯t carry a large, heavy weapon. Deciding on a combat class so that she could bring in more income for the hungry babies that she had to wipe the asses of.
Personally started to take freelancing quests to provide for them and even earn enough to send them to academies of their choice. She was only level 10 when she started off.
The young boys that they had been always regretted answering her about their dream classes. Pushing her to dangers that she didn¡¯t have to undertake. They graduated as fast as they could so that she didn¡¯t have to secretly pay their fees for them.
They forced her to go to the best archery academy in their city and insisted that they would pay her fees.
The moment they did, they tried to force her to stop taking quests since she already closed down the orphanage after the old caretaker died of sickness. Most of the other kids either got somewhat close to their desired jobs already. The only other kid that wanted to be a combatant was the topaz hunter girl. She had been the youngest of the latest group of kids.
They weren¡¯t able to talk the archer that grew fond of freelancing out of it but managed to force her to join their party instead. She had been hopping from party to party and gave in pretty easily. This way, she could keep an eye on them anyway.
They found out about the girl¡¯s potential for magic and couldn¡¯t let it go. Together, earning enough for her to go to some obscure magic academy when she was old enough. It was more expensive than all four of their academy fees combined. They doted on her the most and had no issue with working to the bone for her.
The three of them were practically the archer¡¯s sons and the topaz hunter girl was all of their daughter. They were not a party. They have never been one. They were family.
Word about topaz magic-wielding golems got to their ears and she begged and begged to bring her here since it was hard to find inspiration for odd magic like hers. They couldn¡¯t deny the girl they doted on the most and it was something helpful for her future. It was true that she was strong but she only just started out on the field with them and was inexperienced.
She was over-eager and a real talent, more than any of them. She could somewhat handle the monsters here but a moment of folly was all it took for everything to crash on them.
¡®How in the world did Hector dig up so much information from them? They practically told him their life story.¡¯ Ebony wondered even though he had been listening in on the whole conversation.
Chapter 115: Acquainted
The group of three anxious ¡®fathers¡¯ were pacing around nonstop and couldn¡¯t help but rush towards the barrier that was blocked from sight by five huge shields when they heard a blood-curdling scream from within it. Only stopping in their tracks when their ¡®mother¡¯ told them to stay away and keep watch.
They had to be at least over level 175 if Ebony was unable to Identify their levels. Since they actually received training of some kind they should be more than capable of taking this floor on.
Admittedly, they had never been in dungeons and only worked out in the wilds. There had been a big difference in the number of dangers they had to be aware of. The fact that monsters spawn over and over again must have gone over their heads and they bit off more than they could chew.
It was no wonder they had deep eye bags, they probably weren¡¯t able to rest well.
¡°Didn¡¯t you join up with the camp in the centre of the floor?¡± Hector asked.
¡°What camp?¡± The lanky, brown-haired swordmaster who Hector Appraised to be a [Fencing Brute Lvl 184] was confused. Rapiers were not common as a weapon of choice and Hector was only aware of one or two academies that had courses that taught fencing.
Those that used rapiers usually focused on speed and agility but the ¡®brute¡¯ in his Class told Hector that this guy might be more balanced or even leaning towards power and strength. Their equipment was decent but in this parts, it could be considered high quality. Most likely, they came from pretty far away, closer to the centre of the Empire.
¡°Don¡¯t tell me you guys didn¡¯t know there was a camp in the middle of the floor?¡± Hector would have been flabbergasted at how unprepared this party was if Mark hadn¡¯t been insistent on information gathering.
¡°...uhhh. We were just aimlessly walking around the place and resting wherever we felt was suitable.¡± The bulky, bearded [Flesh Wall Lvl 179] replied without shame. They had limited stamina and didn¡¯t just fly around or have someone fly them around. Not to mention the build up of exhaustion of their dear ¡®daughter¡¯ who was relatively newer to the trade.
¡°We came up here just 2 days ago. The mana density here is normal but the increase in gravity is really bearing down on us. We can hardly travel half the distance in a day that we travel in an environment like this outside.¡± The lanky but bright blue-eyed [Dagger Burst Lvl 182] explained.
Hector was familiar with the Class. It was pretty famous due to the Grandmaster that fought on the front lines centuries ago. He retired and opened the academy and has produced many strong rogues that have decent control over mana and specialise in multiple different ailments inducing magic.
It was said that every graduate has changed their mana¡¯s properties to inflict some kind of ailment even without any sort of effort. That was to say they changed their mana with training and got a Fortification to permanently change their mana¡¯s base properties.
Their weapon of choice, daggers, were specially made. Their blades are fragmented and they would use mana to explode the dagger after they stabbed something or someone. Other than the physical harm it would do, their mana-infused dagger fragments would be transmitted all over the target¡¯s body.
The effects of each individual¡¯s mana varies but most of those that had some reputation had nasty properties like corroding the internals of the target or the more standard poisonous ones.
Hector was wary of this one the most due to this fact. Even if the Grandmaster that fought for the Empire was loyal there was no knowing if all his students, grand students, great-grand students and more would be the same.
He didn¡¯t manage to speak before the 3 anxious men dashed off to their ¡®mother¡¯ who was calling out that the topaz girl was fine. The archer likely already evolved before she attended whatever academy she went as her [Archer of Survival Lvl 228] was unheard of. If it was any good academy she must have spent a long time changing, mutating or refining many of her skills to fit whatever style was taught.
No one noticed that Hector couldn¡¯t tear his eyes away from the archer¡¯s figure. Not even Hector himself and it wasn¡¯t just because of the scars on her chiselled jaw or the one on her neck.
???
¡°Wanna go together? We¡¯re moving towards the next floor anyway.¡± Hector proposed.
Ebony did not oppose it but it was inevitable that they would be slowed down.
They already exchanged greetings and introductions after the archer shut the noisy men up as it would disturb the younger girl¡¯s rest.
¡°There¡¯s no need to trouble you any further!¡± The lady in charge, Tracy Velas did not want any more interaction with a group of young nobles and people in high places.
There was a little quarrel between themselves, the three men, Albert, Richard and Maximus who were the swordsman, guardian and rogue respectively argued and persuaded her that they needed the help since Ally the topaz girl was still sleeping and they didn¡¯t know the way either. They shared the same last name which also used to be the name of the orphanage they came from.
Tracy glanced at the sleeping figure on Maximus¡¯s back before sighing and accepting the offer.
¡°Haha! Yes! Finally someone else to talk to. You don¡¯t know what it''s like to be around a bully, two that hardly talk and are always flirting and a boring nerd that¡¯s overly cautious.¡± Hector was in glee.
The glare from Mallory sent a shiver down his spine and his knees buckled a little when he heard Scarlet¡¯s heartbeat accelerate. He clenched his fist in preparation to protect himself but didn¡¯t expect to see Scarlet looking between the ground and Ebony who was still tilting his head and clearly wondering who Hector was referring to the two that were flirting.
¡°There¡¯s no such thing as being over-cautious in the dungeon or out in the field.¡± Mark commented.
¡°That¡¯s right! I can¡¯t stress that enough with these kids either.¡± Tracy was delighted at the mature freelancer¡¯s words that struck close to home.
Mark was already the one that she felt was the most normal of the group as the children¡¯s bodyguard. The wise words only made him seem like the only one she would get along with. They shared a knowing look with each other and understood from each other¡¯s eyes that they were of a similar breed of people. At least when it came to fighting, travelling or just freelancing work in general.
Both of them were unaware of the irritation that their interaction and exchange of glances brought the prince and princess of the Empire. Similarly, both the Royals were confused about why they felt so.
Without any prompt, Ebony had five of his shields ready. He prompted the other party to get on while his own already did without hesitation.
They were confused by Ebony¡¯s actions and only a little surprised by the many casts he was handling. Seeing his party members other than Mallory already on board, they could only copy.
Ebony was slowed down a lot by the sheer weight he was carrying, mostly from the [Master Guardian] who weighed even more than his large size suggested.
Although his speed wasn¡¯t even half his top speed, it was still much better than walking because who knew how long it would take if they were to walk.
The Velas family traversed the dungeon like they never had. Originally thinking it was such a stupid waste of energy and mana that would drain anyone. Tracy even asked Mark why he would let Ebony do something like this but Mark didn¡¯t even need to answer as she didn¡¯t see any sign of exhaustion on Ebony¡¯s face after literal hours off carrying 8 people along with his own shields while running in a way that seemed like he was floating non-stop.
Sleeping in a barrier-protected camp was another luxury that they never believed they would ever get the chance to do again. Ally woke up surrounded by her overly anxious family. Having to introduce herself and also thank Mallory and the whole party again.
She was quite the chatterbox despite her recently healed wounds. Together with Hector, their camp was a noisy one that night.
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Ebony did not take part in the conversation but the praises they had for Scarlet¡¯s food made him happy. Proud even.
Scarlet didn¡¯t let him eat with her and insisted he ate with the other¡¯s like usual. He was disappointed to get rejected like that. Liking someone was just a rollercoaster of emotions that was unfamiliar to him.
She was life¡¯s test on his calm heart and mind.
Another uneventful night passed and they started their day early.
The Velas family took care of the attackers during their ride. They were pretty efficient but that might be because of Ally¡¯s non-involvement.
Ebony watched their battles.
A singular Falls Issile was their first attacker. It charged up from under the swampy ground in the distance and was going straight for them for a frontal attack.
Richard hopped off the Layered Ice Carapace he was on and ran forward to meet the humongous flying eel. He didn¡¯t draw the axe on his back. Keeping his arms open, he rammed right into the Issile¡¯s face.
Pushed back hundreds of steps, his feet were firmly stuck in the swampy ground. The man stayed upright and managed to stop the Issile¡¯s charge with a tight hug that he turned and slammed the creature much larger than himself into the ground.
¡®Now that¡¯s a tank¡¡¯ Ebony who stopped moving forward thought.
The other Velas members excluding Ally already moved off to face the threat as well. It was kinda standard for more than a couple Boomarrow Fangs to be on the body of the Issile.
Ebony couldn¡¯t see where Tracy went, she hid herself too quickly and smoothly. Richard moved away from the fallen Issile, drew his axe and charged for the golems that were coming from behind the Issile. Maximus was right behind him. The Issile was left to Albert with his thin Rapier.
Ebony only saw Albert hold his rapier perpendicular to the ground, in front of his face before he burst forward in a single thrust that brought him through the Issile from mouth to¡ the other end. Being closer to Albert, he could sense that mana was used in that skill.
The snakes fell down to the ground with an arrow in their head each. Ebony didn¡¯t see or sense the movement of any arrows nor did he sense where Tracy was. It was like the arrows just appeared in their heads. He doubted it was space magic though.
The dozen or so golems were no match for Richard and Maximus either.
Ally didn¡¯t complain but she pouted. They did not let her join as she was not fully recovered.
The walls which doubled as stairs were in sight after a short time and by noon, they arrived at the camp in between both sides of the stairs.
They were to state their affiliations if any before they were allowed in the small camp.
Hector somehow exchanged ¡®numbers¡¯ with Tracy to his delight. He was actually about to get Ally¡¯s but was found out and got Tracy¡¯s instead because the men didn¡¯t trust him to talk to Ally. By some magic, he got Tracy''s instead. To her displeasure.
There was no emotional farewell as the Velas family stayed and made camp while Ebony and his party prepared to make their way up the stairs of ice.
¡®Ice¡ it¡¯s not just denser than anything I¡¯ve seen, it¡¯s like one large block of ice mana instead of a large number of mana particles.¡¯ Ebony tried manipulating the stairs of ice but only managed to drag a fist sized ice block before the dungeon snatched control back and reformed the stairs.
¡°Looks like it doesn¡¯t want anyone to mess around with the stairs.¡± Hector commented. The dungeon didn¡¯t stop other parts of itself like the earth and environment from being used by others. At least not so actively.
¡°A good training partner maybe.¡± Ebony replied. It was like how Enya could completely rip control out of his ice spells from him.
The Frost Elves warned him not to fully depend on his Icebody Enhancement at that time since they could completely stop his body¡¯s movement and even crush him inside out by taking over control of ice mana in his body. Although Ebony no longer used Icebody Enhancement there was no guarantee someone with greater control over ice mana couldn¡¯t manipulate his flames as well since it was essentially ice mana.
¡°Is training all you can think about?¡± Hector retorted.
¡°No. Nowadays, I think about Scarlet as well. From time to time, how to play a prank on you.¡± Ebony replied before he could think.
Ebony bent backwards, glad he recovered enough for the manoeuvre to dodge the jab going for his ribs and watch as a red flash passed where his face had been.
¡°That was dangerous.¡± He couldn¡¯t help saying.
¡°Was just checking if your back is feeling better.¡± Surprisingly, it was Scarlet who retorted. She kept looking away whenever he looked at her. He already caught her gaze on him multiple times and she evaded his own after he returned the gaze. Did she think he couldn''t tell?
¡°...As you can see, I¡¯m feeling better already. Don¡¯t be so worried.¡±
¡°Who¡¯s worried! You already slept for long enough, let¡¯s just go already!¡± Scarlet stomped off onto the stairway on their left.
It was a random choice, both would lead to the same floor anyway.
Mark shook his head at the youthful couple. The party waved goodbyes to the Velas party as they started climbing normally instead of flying. It was a mental break for both Ebony and Mallory. The climb might take hours though.
There were no railings but the stairway was wide enough for all five of them to walk side by side should they decide to.
Halfway up, the loud screeching roar of the Falls Issile was directed at them. Before it was anywhere within range for them to shoot down or repel, It screeched out in pain and fell down.
Ebony could see the tiny figure from within the camp shooting it down. They were far enough that it was just a tiny dot but he could see that it was Tracy and maybe also Maximus who was standing beside her with his current Perception.
He waved and gave a thumbs up whether they understood the gesture or not, it was him saying thanks. Seeing the jumping and waving Ally showed that the message should¡¯ve been sent across.
It was getting colder as they ascended.
Hector didn¡¯t like it. Mallory had her barriers hold her bag ahead of her as she pulled out a shawl to wrap over herself. Mark took deep breaths as if to bring the cold air into his lungs. Scarlet¡¯s clothes and battle wear had incredibly high resistance to heat, cold and many more. Ebony just felt more at ease and comfortable with the lower temperatures.
The ceiling which was also the ground for the next floor was really thick and a couple hours were spent in a cramped tunnel of icy walls where bubbles were popping in and out as Ebony was fighting over control of the ice mana with Ordina. The stairs were a spiral here and didn¡¯t continue going straight. The thin column made them go round and round so much that the Journeymen except Ebony got dizzy and had to sit to rest.
Mark appreciated the break from the intense climb as well. The colder it got, the warmer his body was getting and although he was getting tougher and stronger, it was quite tiring with the increased stamina consumption. He was practically a hot water bottle emitting heat that was easily sensed by all of them now.
Hector snuggled close to him while Mallory closed the distance between them by a little. Ebony, who didn¡¯t really like the heat, had to walk ahead with Scarlet right beside him.
¡°Are you feeling cold?¡± Scarlet shook her head in reply to Ebony¡¯s question.
¡°It isn¡¯t even half as cold as your magic yet.¡±
¡°Mmm. But you¡¯re not using fire magic or your core skill to warm yourself up.¡±
¡°I¡¯m okay, it¡¯s not cold yet.¡±
¡°You have to tell me if you can¡¯t take it.¡±
¡°What are you going to do about it if I¡¯m feeling too cold? I can warm myself up much better than you can.¡±
¡°Well¡I could hug you and share body warmth.¡±
¡°Yo..you dummy! Your body temperature¡¯s much lower than mine.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°I¡I guess it¡¯ll still be warmer than the surroundings if you don¡¯t use your enhancement magic.¡±
¡®So hugging is okay.¡¯ Ebony thought.
¡°Dammit! Stop flirting right in front of us!¡± Hector¡¯s irritated voice came over but he didn¡¯t want to get far from Mark so he didn¡¯t physically move over to stop them.
For some reason, he was oddly stiff from the atmosphere between his cousin and Mark as well. Shouting at the couple that seemed like little children when it came to their feelings was a good source of distraction and also lightened the mood.
¡°We¡¯re reaching.¡± Ebony informed as he brought his shield to cover their sides and overhead. When they were about to pop through the surface he made them wait as he acted as the scout. Even with Scarlet¡¯s cold resistance clothes or her fire magic he doubted any of them were more resilient against the cold. His all round perception made it easy for him to check for nearby threats.
Ebony wasn¡¯t sure if Mark had better perception than him but from what he could tell it shouldn¡¯t be any worse. Not including within short range or distance due to Vibrational Gravity Sense and Frost Mist Perception Sphere which was probably working even better right here.
There was no ambush the moment he surfaced. Neither was there snow which he was used to.
Just a world of blue. Clear icy ground, trees, ¡®rocks¡¯ which were just a protrusion of ice from the ground and the same icy blue sky as the previous floor.
It was not quite as cold as Arcta was in winter but still pretty chilly.
There weren''t any creatures that he could see in their considerably open surroundings. Few trees made of ice were around. Ebony would have described the place as an icy plain.
The environment was extremely harsh for most people. There was no firewood to start fires to warm oneself or cook food. Others who depend on hunting for food since they could only carry around so much food can only hope that there were creatures that were edible. The constant cold would bear down on fighters that can not relax their guards for days on end. Problematic.
Problems that didn¡¯t affect their party.
¡°There¡¯s nothing out here, you can come up now.¡±
Chapter 116: Prime Verglas Kobold
¡°So what are the dangers here?¡± Hector posed the question to their information gatherer.
¡°...The rest stayed below because that¡¯s where their climb ended. Those that attempted to explore this floor didn¡¯t want to share either. Not without some kind of payment. All I know is the cold is quite an issue for most ill-equipped parties, it¡¯s hard to get food and there is some kind of humanoid monster.¡± Mark pulled at his armour¡¯s collar to let cool air in and his body heat to escape.
They could all see the steam that was emitted from Mark but he didn¡¯t look uncomfortable. None of them were nosy enough to ask what he was doing either.
¡°It¡¯s been a couple of years, there should be many parties that have cleared Ordina already right? Wouldn¡¯t the Quest Hall¡¯s information for Ordina¡¯s floors be updated?¡± Ebony asked what he was curious about for a while.
¡°...It hasn¡¯t been cleared. Even if it has, not everyone is nice enough to share valuable information that they can benefit from.¡± Mark was almost beyond surprised at how little Ebony knew before just deciding to dive into a dungeon.
¡°Why? Isn¡¯t Ordina just a Common ranked dungeon? Albeit one that is on the cusp of being considered Uncommon ranked.¡± Ebony just couldn¡¯t understand.
Any average adult in the Empire is Master Classed, above level 100. Seeing Tracy¡¯s party it was obvious they were more than capable of taking down weakened monsters that were of a higher level.
¡°That¡¯s exactly why. Those high level parties from deeper into the central Empire couldn¡¯t be bothered coming here when they have better and more suitable dungeons to clear.¡± Mark explained.
¡°Ordina is also young and there¡¯s not much treasure to be discovered. The average combat standards of the people in this region is lower and they are not able to clear a dungeon with a horrible environmental disadvantage with so many monsters above level 200.¡± Hector commented.
¡°The Quest Hall cannot just trust some random party¡¯s information and only published information that certified parties under the Empire obtained. Even such information shouldn¡¯t be fully trusted since dungeons can be fickle.¡± Mallory added.
¡°And there¡¯s a lack of these certified parties?¡± Ebony guessed.
¡°Haha¡yup!¡± Hector awkwardly laughed.
Throughout the conversation, they were each looking around and surveying their surroundings.
None of them could spot any monster as of yet. Without snow, mist or fog there was nothing clouding their vision either.
They did not have directions from here on out and had to slowly explore the unknown themselves.
¡°We¡¯re not going to fly through, you guys need all the strength and energy you have for every single fight don¡¯t you? Me too, my stamina expenditure will increase further as the fights get tougher.¡± Mark doubted Ebony¡¯s seemingly endless stamina and he was right to do so.
The previous few battles already showed Mark their limits. Ebony¡¯s newfound power does not allow him to take on continuous or long-drawn battles. It was good enough to tell them that his stamina expenditure will be increased and not to share the details of his abilities.
¡°Seconded.¡± Mallory could deal with less mental exertion from travelling. She needed the mental strength to focus on her barriers.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony agreed. He already got heavily injured on the previous floor. There was no disagreement from Hector or Scarlet either.
They followed Mark¡¯s instinct or experience and went south. Apparently, a saying his father told him. ¡°If you keep going south, sooner or later things won''t go further south for you.¡±
That was so silly a saying that none of them could come up with a reason not to follow it. It wasn¡¯t like they had any clues to follow anyway.
Their ¡®slow¡¯ pace was faster than an unawakened human¡¯s fastest running speed. Ebony did the smarter thing and reduced the strength of gravity on all of them so that it was easier on their bodies. Hence, reducing their stamina consumption and increasing their speed.
They were feeling fine due to the heat Mark emitted and the reduced load on their shoulders helped as well but Mallory, Hector and Mark had almost slipped a few times because of the ice under their feet melting just a little when they stood close to Mark.
Mark stopped to fiddle with his boots and inscription pens while Ebony added ice studs and spikes to Hector¡¯s and Mallory¡¯s boots to increase traction for them. They shouldn¡¯t melt so easily since he had plenty of mana to fully compress it for them. Scarlet¡¯s boots were made by Kong Jing, clearly built different.
Ebony was just bringing his attention to Icicle. It wasn¡¯t absorbing the ice mana in the surroundings.
¡®Does it not like the ice mana here or is it able to tell that the ice mana is not 100% natural?¡¯ Ebony wondered. His greatsword absorbs his ice mana without issue. Maybe it could tell that there was foreign essence in the ice mana here. Then again, it was made from a material that Ordina produced it might not be ¡®foreign¡¯ to it
He had no way to draw any conclusions and didn¡¯t bother continuing to ponder on the hows and whys.
Probably because of how slow they were going but the 19th floor felt much larger.
3 hours of boring walk in before Ebony had to call for them to stop. The others didn¡¯t even have to ask because they could see something coming right for them. Whatever it was, it was fast. All of them prepared the spells and skills they needed except Mark who was already as ready as he could be.
Three small figures gradually came into sight as something familiar. They looked similar to the kobolds and high kobolds on the first few floors of Ordina. They were about as large as a muscular teenage human with bluish-white skin. Their necks were protected by a thick coat of fur.
¡°Those ellers¡¡± Hector who was slower on the uptake could not help but curse.
One of the shirtless blue-skinned kobolds wore gauntlets. Another had twin longswords. The last had a massive greatsword.
¡°Seems like we were memorable enough for Ordina to take inspiration from us.¡± Ebony was excited to see what these new kobolds had to offer.
¡°Just a copy.¡± Scarlet burst forth to meet the cocky kobold with twin blades.
Hector and Ebony didn¡¯t lag behind as they used their own enhancements to push forth. Mark and Mallory didn¡¯t just stand there. Mark had his spear ready and if Ebony or Hector was around they would be able to tell that Mallory was changing her barrier¡¯s forms.
Mallory gave up on attempting to support Scarlet. Her mind and magic were too slow to even catch sight of Scarlet¡¯s movements at times, trying to defend with awkwardly placed barriers would make things worse. Ebony had pretty tough defences and in terms of movement almost as fast as Scarlet. His attacks were much slower in comparison. Hector was the more reckless and careless one. As for Mark, he can take care of himself.
There were no tricks. Ebony and the greatsword-wielding [Prime Verglas Kobold Lvl ???] clashed. It overpowered him at maximum strength and pushed him back. His Chaotic Repulsive Membrane didn¡¯t do much as the kobold pushed right through. The metal greatsword it wielded was slowly getting sliced into by his Sonic Overlay and it didn¡¯t go unnoticed.
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It pulled back and directly spit on the area where their weapons met without looking away from Ebony¡¯s gaze. The cut on its greatsword froze and it was now spiky. The tiny amount of Ebony¡¯s flames that caught on was extinguished with its spit.
¡®That footwork¡ seems similar to Hector¡¯s short bursts of speed. How far did they manage to copy our abilities?¡¯
Icicle didn¡¯t even sustain a scratch but Ebony¡¯s arms were numb from the impact. He took the chance to take a stab when it retreated but his blade was easily slashed down towards the ground. Off balance, he had no choice but to have his Layered Ice Carapace to protect himself from the incoming follow up.
It didn¡¯t even take another few exchanges for him to find out that his improving but flawed swordsmanship didn¡¯t allow him to reach the kobold. That wasn¡¯t even very surprising to him since Ordina could have copied or improved its knowledge on swordsmanship by observing or consuming other dungeon divers.
The surprising thing was the heat coming from its body. The Prime Verglas Kobold had grabbed its sword¡¯s blade with its hand and ran it down, letting blood from its palms and fingers stain the blade. The steam rising from it and the fact that Ebony¡¯s flames had a hard time catching on due to the Kobold¡¯s wariness and the hot blood.
Was this also from copying others¡¯ fire enhancement magic or a natural trait of these kobolds?
It never stuck close to Ebony for long, reducing the chances of his flames sticking on. The intense burst of speed was used for an explosive advance before retreating immediately. If it wasn¡¯t for Ebony¡¯s Layered Ice Carapace, he might have been forced to stay put where he was since the Kobold was clearly trying to stop him from moving from where they were.
The other two were going all over the place during their exchange, splitting the party up.
Mark stayed close enough to Ebony to offer support should Ebony call upon him. Mallory followed after her cousin. They didn¡¯t bother trying to chase Scarlet.
¡®Ordina¡¯s elites¡ clearly the same monster but each has their unique set of abilities and a little intelligence. Ebony¡¯s in a pinch. I thought it was trying to tie him down so that he couldn¡¯t help Hector or Scarlet but¡it¡¯s actually trying to run him dry. No matter how weakened they currently are, the sheer difference in stats of 90 levels is too much. His enhancement magic is insane but it obviously came with insane mana costs.¡¯ Mark analysed. The grip on his spear tightened.
Ebony dished out an Ice Sword to buy him an opportunity to get a good hit in. It didn¡¯t fall for it and kicked the slower attack away due to his pathetically low Intelligence. It easily blocked the slash that came from its left but it didn¡¯t notice the disappearance of two of the Layered Ice Carapaces floating near Ebony.
Ebony, who wasn¡¯t thinking, pulled Sonic Overlay down to his arms, let his left hand go and slapped Icicle¡¯s body. It did not work as well as he would have liked but getting a loud grunt that wiped the saliva-filled grin off the Prime Verglas Kobold¡¯s face was good enough. He was pretty sure its arm was slowly getting numb from their exchange as well.
He might have to work on experimenting with whether he should manipulate the frequencies of two bodies to be the same or different for a stronger effect. In this case, his left hand and greatsword.
It was very resistant against the cold but the high-frequency impact when it crossed blow with Ebony was getting to it. Hector had complained about it many times while Scarlet said that she was no longer affected since her twin longswords could now fully absorb all the shock from Ebony¡¯s Sonic Overlay. It must have been Kong Jing¡¯s handiwork.
The bright fires and heat from a distance away already died down. Scarlet was done with her battle.
The spread out scales on the ground shot towards the target and quickly encapsulated it. A few might be a mere nuisance but it couldn¡¯t knock all the scales when there was more than enough to completely cover him. Ebony didn¡¯t bother making it a perfect orb and just stuck them onto the Kobold like adding scale armour to it.
Ebony toned Frostblaze Augmentation back down so that he didn¡¯t burn any more mana than necessary. Piling up all the scales and Layered Ice Carapaces he had since they weren¡¯t using them as transport anymore. He had to combust the inner layers quickly as the Kobold had no issue swiping the scales off its body with its strength.
It was too early for him to slacken his offence as the Kobold took a deep breath before being fully encased. It hugged itself before flexing out both its arms and legs and giving a reverberating roar. The scales which were burning one side were sent flying as they threatened to break from the outburst. It merely bought the Kobold a fraction of a second as more scales came to swallow it up.
¡®Sound magic too?¡¯ Ebony could feel the intense vibrations of mana sent out from the Kobold¡¯s roar. It was directed to shatter his shields but they were too tough for the roar to break. He protected his ears and body by stabilising the mana in his body.
Mark could only cover his ears with his hands but he wasn¡¯t the target anyway so he wasn¡¯t really affected.
In the end, its resistance to cold was only so low. The flames caught on and it wasn¡¯t able to pat or spit on them to extinguish them. The flames dug deeper under its skin with Ebony''s control. In minutes, only an ice block remained and he got his ninth increase of Natural Potential as the Prime Verglas Kobold was level 190. A nice coincidence.
¡®I¡¯ll need to optimise how to take them down. It took more than half of all my current shield¡¯s mana to take one down.¡¯
Ebony was also aware that he was down to a quarter of his mana pool from Frostblaze Augmentation. He didn¡¯t really worry about mana to cast shields because he had plenty of ice mana stocked up in his robe but the fact that he took so long was worrisome since mana in his robe couldn¡¯t go back into his body to cast Frostblaze Augmentation.
He would drag them down if there was a group of these Kobolds. How the tables have turned, numbers used to be ineffective against him.
Both Hector and Scarlet also got their share of Natural Potential since 3 were the same level.
Discussing the strengths and weaknesses of their new enemies as they continued their slow walk.
¡°They are hot blooded, I don¡¯t sense fire mana in them. Technique is barely decent.¡± Scarlet said. She finished up fast enough that she couldn¡¯t learn much about them.
¡®So she must have been looking down on my ability with the sword so much the entire time.¡¯ Ebony was just a little down heartened despite his self-awareness.
¡°Although they can¡¯t use enhancement magic their base physical stats are much higher than ours. Not mine but yeah, they¡¯re strong.¡± Hector cockily added.
¡°They have a similar footwork to yours and can use sound magic, possibly just their roar.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t bother mentioning their cold resistance since it would only affect him.
¡°Oh and their skin is elling hard. I cracked its arm almost halfway through and it recovered by spitting on the wound.¡± Hector recalled. He had difficulty injuring the Prime Verglas Kobold even in his quadra-enhanced state.
¡°You guys have been here right after Ordina was born right?¡± Mark asked.
¡°Yup. I know what you¡¯re thinking. It used us as models. Ordina had plenty of data since we killed and fought thousands of monsters here.¡±
¡°Anti-Ebony.¡± Scarlet commented.
¡°...I do have some trouble with them.¡± Ebony admitted.
The other 2 didn¡¯t mention the Kobold¡¯s usage of ice magic because they didn¡¯t think it was anything worth noting compared to his. Whether it was attempting to freeze Scarlet¡¯s swords with something similar to Ice Injection or doing the same to Hector¡¯s fists, the attempts were quite cute compared to his dumping of ice mana. Now that he used those cold flames of his, it was even worse as the cold hurt.
Night fell.
The cold got harsher and more penetrating as winds from who knows where suddenly started up. Deciding to hole up in their barrier when it got too dark. Without much foliage they just camped wherever they stopped. Mark pulled Ebony to scout the surroundings with him. They didn¡¯t find much and fortunately Ebony was together with Mark or he wouldn¡¯t have been able to find his way back to their camp.
Piping hot mushroom soup was served for dinner to warm up their bellies. The winds were blocked out but the piercing cold wasn¡¯t.
Ebony drew the heating rune that he used to keep himself alive on the icy floor. It provided Mallory and Hector they warmth that they needed to get through the night. Mark seemed completely unbothered by the cold, he was no longer steaming hot but the icy chair that Ebony conjured for them during dinner clearly melted by a little.
???
Mark was dumbfounded that the unknown rune worked and heat was produced from it.
¡°How does this work on ice? I don¡¯t recognise this language but it seems familiar at the same time.¡± It was not a complicated rune. Mark already started copying it down in his notebook after asking for Ebony¡¯s permission.
Since it was merely a heating rune, Ebony didn¡¯t see why not. Mark knew many other runic inscriptions that could do the same thing but it was the first time he saw a fire based rune work when ice was the material. He could attempt to copy the effects as long as he added a mana to fire mana conversation runic symbol in the runic circle or just have a fire mana ore as the power source but the effects would be greatly weakened and the ice would just melt off.
Mark experimented through the night. Copying the runic circle was the first step. Then he tried to use his inscription pen and draw the same runic circle up on a piece of paper like Ebony. Other than the thickness of the lines he had to control the density of mana of every stroke or portion of the stroke too.
It didn¡¯t work well at first, even with all his inscription and runic skills. He didn¡¯t panic. Failure was his old-time friend.
Chapter 117: Race
Ebony¡¯s concerns were unwarranted as the Prime Verglas Kobolds travel in small numbers. Furthermore, the whole floor seemed abandoned and they only faced 4 groups in the 3 days they slowly sped up from time to time. He only saw one other party far away but they decided not to go closer.
They never faced a group bigger than 4 of the Prime Verglas Kobolds and were able to take them down with a little teamwork. Mark surprisingly could only barely keep up with the Kobolds movements. It was clear that he was stronger and faster than before though. Weird.
Even so, his quick thinking and array of runes on his equipment allowed him to handle a kobold one-on-one.
Ebony had the easiest time against Scarlet¡¯s copy and vice versa. Hector¡¯s copy was extremely balanced and seemed to be the toughest. The fourth version was a javelin-wielding Kobold. It threw javelins made of ice at speeds and power that shook them all. Piercing through Ebony¡¯s full powered Layered Ice Carapace and Mallory¡¯s barriers, sometimes with a single toss.
At a short range, even Scarlet wouldn¡¯t have been able to dodge the javelin throw. When the javelins land they would either explode into a cloudy mist of frost or scatter as sharp fragments. They had to be really wary of those when they were unable to tell which it was. The javelin tosses were too fast for him to sense if there was a difference in the ice mana of each type of javelin.
If they were spotted, they were made to be the priority target. They were always really far away which said a lot about their range and perception.
None of them said anything but the three of them who¡¯ve been here in the past were thinking the same thing. The javelin tosser was the copy of Tuffock. Perhaps also with a little bit of Ryley with its eyesight, pure power tosses and mana-filled explosive projectiles.
¡°Stop nudging so close!¡± Mark yelled in annoyance, albeit in a soft voice. Always a cautious man.
¡°But you¡¯re so warm!¡± Hector argued.
¡°Didn¡¯t you paste the heated papers Ebony gave you?¡± Mark forcefully pushed Hector¡¯s head away as he was literally hugging Mark to feel his body warmth. Luckily, he had far higher stats compared to an unenhanced Journeyman.
Mark hadn''t even levelled once yet as there was just a small number of Prime Verglas Kobolds that were less than 20 levels above him.
¡°I did! But those only warm the joints and it¡¯s kinda wasteful to just paste it all over under my armour. You¡¯re warm all day, I¡¯m not draining anything by being close to you. Stingy.¡± Hector struggled to keep himself attached to the walking hot water bottle.
¡°...Haah. Just stop hugging me already.¡± Mark gave up and sighed.
¡°Yes sir!¡± Hector let go but stayed really close. Neither of them noticed Mallory inching closer as well.
Ebony, who was walking with one of his sculptures, had his sculpture turn around and put a finger to its lips to silence them. Threads of mana were sent towards his party members¡¯ ears.
¡°Something¡¯s ahead.¡± Ebony transmitted with Mana Vibrations.
They remain silent although he made sure not much vibrations pass through the domic layer of mana he was actively controlling around them so that the noise they make doesn¡¯t attract anything or anyone. He was pretty sure only Mallory noticed he was doing it.
¡°People. And a cool double helix spiral staircase.¡± Ebony reported as the silhouette came into view.
Mark actually got his guard up higher in response. They had to be more wary of people than some Kobolds. Those parties that could be here were not going to be weak. It was odd to Mark that parties treat their party so differently from when he was travelling with other parties. It had to be Scarlet¡¯s very presence in the party that deterred antagonistic behaviour. How convenient.
In a few moments, they saw two opposing parties just staring at each other. The tension between them was high but Hector just widened the smile on his face and ran towards one of the parties filled with armoured men.
¡°Heeey!! Mike!¡± Hector waved vigorously without care for attracting attention.
¡°Hmm? Kid! Glad to see you¡¯re doing fine!¡± Michael of Panic Attack, the party that assisted them in getting rid of the small horde of monsters, glanced at the noise and replied heartily. Rather, the party that they assisted and troubled.
The other members of Panic Attack said their ¡®heys¡¯ and ¡®yoohs¡¯ without breaking eye contact with the other party. Until the other party backed down and went around to the other side of the spiral stairs.
¡®Why the staring contest?¡¯ Ebony thought. It was a double helix spiral so each party could take one of the stairs without conflict. From what Ebony could see from a glance, both appeared exactly the same.
Greetings were exchanged but Michael kept an eye on the other party near the foot of the other flight of stairs.
Panic Attack were all above his range of Identify which meant that all of them were at least over level 175 now. If they consistently dived here and with the head start they have over many stronger parties currently, their growth wasn¡¯t too surprising.
¡°What happened to your leader and the stone mage?¡± Cori, the man who received two holes in his body from a gunshot, asked. They weren¡¯t really that angry at them anymore since they were able to get fully healed thanks to the arrival of a healer in Plainston when they left Ordina. To begin with, they almost forgot about these Journeymen.
¡°...Dead.¡± Ebony replied since neither Hector nor Scarlet was answering.
¡°I see...¡± The conversation sort of broke off there. If Hector wasn¡¯t here anyway.
He didn¡¯t ask ¡®how¡¯ve you been¡¯ anymore after what Ebony said.
¡°So what¡¯s going on here?¡± Hector asked something more useful for once.
¡°Well, we¡¯re just taking time to increase our cold resistance.¡± Bilton, the one who got his shoulder blade pierced with his shoulder pad digging into his flesh explained.
¡°That party just arrived not long before you. For some reason, they insisted on taking this flight of stairs.¡± Rodrig, the man who caught Bilton when he was shot, said.
¡°Is there a difference?¡± Mark asked. He was more practical, there had to be an advantage or benefit if it¡¯s worth fighting over.
¡°We didn¡¯t think so but their insistence was over the top and we saw no reason to let them ahead of us.¡± Michael answered.
¡°...¡± Mark didn¡¯t fully trust the man but there was no point pushing for a different answer.
¡°They stopped us twice when we tried to climb up. It¡¯s a miracle a fight hasn¡¯t broken out. They¡¯re probably worried about their resources, we¡¯re just going by with rations sold on the 13th and 18th floor as well. We already finished the Issile meat we had.¡± Michael continued staring at the other party who were watching their every move.
¡°From the looks of it, the next floor would be the same environment and we have to think about the return trip.¡± Rodrig guessed.
¡°Is there any other party ahead of you?¡± Mark asked with honest curiosity.
¡°Probably not, at most a couple that''s been up on the 20th floor. Not sure if any have gone further before being forced to retreat due to the lack of supplies.¡± Rodrig replied.
¡°Oh yes. Now that I think about it. These Kobolds sure fight like you kids.¡± Michael smirked. It was a compliment since they were taken as models by Ordina.
¡°I¡¯m sure I don¡¯t have to tell you this but don¡¯t bite more than you can chew. Well, you kids should be fine though. Can¡¯t wait to see you walk out the other side of Ordina¡¯s gate.¡± Michael looked upon the party in high regard.
Mostly the three that he knew, the healer clearly wasn¡¯t a normal girl either. He didn¡¯t think much about Mark the add on. Although there was a high chance he was pretty strong too to be able to keep up with Ebony and the others, not to mention the floor they were on.
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¡°Are you going to wait and stare each other down?¡± Ebony questioned their intentions.
¡°...We were just about to start thinking.¡± Michael scratched his head as his entire party either looked up at the sky or down on the ground. These muscle brains clearly had no plans yet.
¡°We can just go ahead and fight them if they try to stop us. Once we''re on the stairs we¡¯ll have high ground.¡± Cori suggested it to Michael.
¡°Hmm¡they are higher level than us though. Is it really worth the risk? They have a balanced party with a fire mage and archer that¡¯ll be troublesome to deal with if their vanguards are capable.¡± Michael questioned realistically. Panic Attack had little to no ranged capabilities as far as Ebony could tell.
No, Ebony could see a pistol-like gun strapped to Henrick¡¯s waist. Henrick was quite the silent man whenever they weren¡¯t fighting. Panic Attack¡¯s whole set of equipment was clearly upgraded as well. They only looked ragged since they had been in Ordina for more than a month now.
They had an internal discussion before Michael came over to chat with them.
¡°You guys can take it and decide what you want to do with it. We took about 3 months to get up here, our supplies are low and we see no reason to risk going forward so we¡¯ll be leaving here. See you around!¡± Michael and his party swiftly left with their luggage. With all the clatter, it was likely filled with loot and not food.
¡®From the other¡¯s reaction, they just don¡¯t want to associate with us.¡¯ Ebony thought. They were within his range of sense when they separated to discuss. Michael hid it well though.
To advance as fast as they did, they must have thoroughly explored Ordina. To take 3 months to get here seems too long but Ebony had to consider that they only walked and would take days or maybe weeks for each floor and also if they were looking for hidden rooms or treasure rooms. ¡®They are pretty high level though¡¡¯
Before they got far, Michael turned back and smiled. ¡°Hey! Bet¡¯cha trying to clear Ordina, we¡¯ll be watching if you come out of the other side of the entrance!¡±
¡°Race ya kids to be the first out!¡± Cori yelled before they picked up the pace and left the area.
Till this day, no one has cleared Ordina. Which was to say no one has exited through the exit portal on the top floor which is supposed to link to the other side of the entrance of Ordina.
???
¡°They¡¯re coming over.¡± Mark was certain the other party didn¡¯t have good intentions. It was obvious that it was gonna happen the moment Panic Attack left.
¡°Just let them through, it¡¯s not like we know what benefits there are to climbing this and we can just go behind them.¡± Ebony said. He didn¡¯t think there was any purpose of getting into conflict for some unknown reason. Treasure you didn¡¯t know you had was not your treasure at all.
His party was silent. None of them except maybe Mark really cares for some small benefit anyway. Mark was the cautious type and should have no issue with it.
The other party watched the journeymen part for them and was emboldened that even a Xeng made way for them. There was a higher chance that she was just a random masked lady and they didn''t associate the mask with Xengs. They never really cared about the ridiculous stories about them anyway and this action made them scoff at their fake fame.
The party didn¡¯t need Scarlet¡¯s heightened instincts to be able to sense the blatant contempt of the higher-level party of 4 humans and a dwarf. They appeared ragged and frost and tiny cracks could be seen on their equipment. None of their equipment seemed to be runic or enchanted so they were tanking the cold with their bodies, armour and clothing alone.
¡°If we see you climbing up behind us we¡¯ll kick you right down, damn nobles!¡± The warrior with a dirty spiked mace spat as he passed by.
Scarlet did not like being slighted. All of them could ¡®hear¡¯ her rage and feel the increase in temperature but she didn¡¯t move because Ebony looked at her and tilted his head almost cutely the instant her heart started accelerating and that caused her to calm down.
¡°Let¡¯s fly.¡± Ebony said.
Mallory and Ebony did the same thing they did for the previous few floors. They started from the centre of the double spiral stairs. Ebony didn¡¯t forget to wave to the party again.
It was honestly refreshing to Scarlet how Ebony doesn¡¯t fully understand when someone was trying to be rude or disrespectful but then goes on to show them who¡¯s who with actions. The others thought he was doing so on purpose but Scarlet knew that it truly didn¡¯t click to him that they were being rude and his waving or the previous ¡°Thank you for the concern.¡± was also said with sincerity.
Scarlet felt weird. If she saw someone like Ebony who backed down and let others have their way all the time, she would have thought that such a person had a weak personality and would be easily taken advantage of. Instead of looking down or disliking it, she could only think that this part of Ebony was¡cute. Of course, it was also because she knew he just couldn¡¯t be bothered by small issues or other¡¯s opinions.
She hated that his perception seemed really high. Every single time her gaze pulled towards him he would immediately gaze back and then do his confused head tilt which she couldn¡¯t stop thinking about these days. Well, he also did the same many times and it was so easy to catch with or without Sublime Instincts because he never hides or looks away like she did.
The situation was grave if it got worse as her attention was constantly being stolen. This place is currently beyond what they can handle without their guards up. She slapped both her cheeks to wake herself up but her mask was in the way.
She vigorously shook her head left and right when Ebony¡¯s body came to mind for the tenth time today alone.
¡®What is wrong with me!? Why does that come to mind all the time¡? It must be the monster¡¯s remaining instincts. It must be their bloodlust. I haven¡¯t removed them completely. I need more of his blood¡ nonono. That¡¯s not important, the twin ring necklace! It must be sister Jing¡¯s stupid idea.¡¯
A thousand other thoughts were going through Scarlet¡¯s head as Ebony was nonchalantly checking out the difference between the two sets of stairs.
There were a little fewer Prime Verglas Kobolds hiding on the stairs that the other party took. Ebony wasn¡¯t sure but something about the arrangement of ice mana of the set of stairs they didn¡¯t want to take was odd as well. Probably traps of some kind.
15 minutes of slow float later, he also spotted a few scattered pieces of equipment on the stairway the other party was on. Two Prime Verglas Kobolds were fiddling around with it and trying to put the armour on, even helping each other.
¡°I see.¡± Mark commented.
¡°See what?¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°Probably 1 or more of their party member died here and they were forced to leave without taking the body away. Now they¡¯re back to collect the equipment. They were probably in a rush to find new members and then back here in case others took it or the dungeon managed to absorb and distribute it to a treasure chest somewhere.¡± Mark speculated.
¡®That¡¯s all?¡¯ Ebony thought that the reason was pretty boring. He clearly didn¡¯t understand the value of armour or serviceable weapons and armours on these floors.
They kept going and stepped onto the staircase the moment they were nearing the ceiling. The Kobolds were pretty spaced apart and there weren¡¯t many of them so they were unhindered. Even when the Kobolds saw them fly by they only watched and didn¡¯t attempt to stop their party.
Ordina was inviting them.
Far below them, the other party was stopped with full force of whatever Ordina had prepared for the intruders. The javelin tossers from their side of the stairs were actually tossing frost-blast javelins at the unlucky party. The stairs weren¡¯t broken or even damaged by the Kobold¡¯s attacks.
The environment through the hole in the ceiling wasn¡¯t as kind.
¡®Snowstorm again?¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t impressed by the light snowing and cold winds. It was only windy enough to ruffle their hair and some of their clothes so it wasn¡¯t that bad. At least for Ebony and Mark.
¡°Ahh! Why did you kick me?¡± Hector yelled, almost pitifully as he was kicked away from Mark who was beginning to emit more heat and look more annoyed.
Ebony sounded out before Mark could give a similar reply he had been giving.
¡°We have a welcoming party around us. Just a tiny group of 20 that isn¡¯t trying to hide.¡±
¡°Obviously more that is hiding.¡± Mark hesitated no further and slammed the butt of his spear that lit the floor aflame.
Mark was not blind, the previous floor¡¯s Kobolds were already somewhat beyond the Journeymen''s capabilities for one-on-one battles. It was honestly scary how strong they were. Even with the few skill levels, they have gained after the increase in Natural Potential, it would hardly be enough.
He knew Ebony was overwhelmingly disadvantaged here. Ebony¡¯s strengths are his unending stamina to wear his opponents down with his magic and although ironic for one so young, his combat experience. Perhaps, pure battle instincts was more accurate than combat experience. His offensive ice magic is pretty much moot with the Kobolds'' innate cold resistance and gravity magic a little too weak to affect the Kobolds much.
Mark ranked Ebony at the bottom of the party in terms of current combat strength. He only managed to hold his own due to his skills being pretty optimised as they were probably quite a few of his skills that are compounded together with his Fortifications. That was not rare, especially considering he was a Mana Meister with lots of mana to spare. Ebony would be the most useful against numbers. And also when the opponents were not so resistant to cold.
Scarlet had her overwhelming speed but weakened or not, that is pretty much only helping her barely evade the Kobolds attacks with the level and stat gap. Instead of pure combat instinct like Ebony, she had technique and swordsmanship like Mark had never seen. Fire magic should¡¯ve been extremely useful here but the Kobolds had used similar ice magic to Ebony to protect themselves from the heat and flames.
Hector was¡Mark couldn¡¯t wrap his head around the absolute power he had. At his peak, Hector couldn¡¯t even last seconds but his strength was sheer physical prowess that smashes anything in his path. He doesn¡¯t even need peak enhancement to handle this floor but sadly, he could at most fight one or two at the same time.
Mallory¡¯s barriers and healing are amazing support and she can even hold her own in terms of offensive abilities, it was just overshadowed by the current party¡¯s ridiculous strength in comparison. With her help, even against their current lineup of enemies, surviving should not be a problem but there¡¯s a high risk and chance of injuries.
¡°I guess I should do my job as your ¡®bodyguards¡¯.¡±
Chapter 118: Domain
Scarlet felt the intense but dormant fire mana seep through the floor. She was alarmed. Fire mana tends to¡bow or be subservient in her presence, Hector¡¯s fire enhancement is weakened when facing her, although only Hector noticed that. The fire mana, likely from Mark¡¯s spear, seemed to ignore her. It was almost as if they didn¡¯t know she was there. That was a first.
She did not like studying and wasn¡¯t really that good at it. The runic circle and symbols were alien to her. It was weird, they looked like they were inscribed on the icy floor but the ice was undamaged as if the inscription was inside the floor. The floor didn¡¯t melt either but that might just be due to the dungeon¡¯s durability.
She tried to exert control over some of the fire mana close to her. They reacted to her mental touch, she was able to control them. It consumed more mana and mental effort to control them. She conjured fire mana in her blood to find similar effects to a lesser degree.
Her fire magic or control over fire mana was weakened, even affecting her mana efficiency with fire magic.
¡®A domain mage¡¡¯ Scarlet knew Mark was not normal to have earned Ebony¡¯s respect but a domain mage was beyond her imagination. Using fire magic against a fire domain mage was practically foolish unless you were a domain mage yourself or have far higher control over the element. That, or have far higher Intelligence stat.
¡®Master class domain mage¡he doesn¡¯t look like he¡¯s worried about the mana cost either. But his control over fire mana is so¡elementary. Runes. Runic domain. And he found out how to inscribe or engrave one instantly.¡¯ Scarlet wasn¡¯t scared that she would be at a disadvantage against Mark.
She didn¡¯t even give the Kobolds surrounding them a glance. She was itching to duel with Mark.
Just then, she sensed Ebony¡¯s gaze on her giving her mixed feelings when she felt the subtle emotions from him. The result was warmth, a flushed face and complete distraction from the battle that Mark was in.
???
Ebony could tell that the runes were not inscribed, engraved or even drawn on the ground. It was just a hunch since he couldn¡¯t sense fire mana but, from what his eyes and Mana Perception is telling him the runic circle was fixed in space. He recognised bits and pieces of it but having everything placed together made the difference. He also guessed it was so because Kong Jing showed him something similar.
The runic circle was small, less than 20 metres in diameter. The Kobolds were wary of the orange light that was glowing from the ground but seeing no movement from their prey they attacked. The first ones were the javelin throwers but they landed on Mallory¡¯s barrier.
It was surprising that her barrier held this time when it couldn¡¯t do the same so easily the previous time. Even Mark was surprised by the domic barrier just over the reach of his domain. The princess must have prepared that in advance as they flew and climbed up. The duel between Mark and Mallory must have struck a sore spot in her as she was glaring into the distance. It was clear to Hector her cousin, Scarlet, who had her skill and Mark who had defeated her that she was frustrated at the sight of his runic domain. Ebony was clueless as usual as he watched the attacks and wondered how Mark was going to handle the group of enemies.
The failure of the javelin throws only signalled their charge into close range. Hector got ready by smashing his fists together but the others only watched. Although Ebony and Mallory still prepared their defensive skills while Scarlet got her enhancements building up.
4 of the Kobolds stepped into the runic circle at the same time. Mark¡¯s response wasn¡¯t his signature spear spin, he simply raised his spear and tapped the ground with its butt once again. The orange runic circle only glowed brighter as multiple spears that looked just like the one Mark was only pierced out from under the Kobolds and right through the bodies as if those bodies didn¡¯t just take Ebony and Scarlet¡¯s sword with ease.
That was it. Ebony didn¡¯t see them struggle anymore, they were dead just like that.
Then Mark swung his spear in a wide arc in front of him and fire arrows were formed by flames that was coming out from the ground. It was similar to his arrow barrage runic circle that he could cast by spinning his spear. They homed in on all the Kobolds in the area when the runic circle suddenly expanded to bring them all within his range.
The Kobolds were not defenceless but the barrage of fire arrows didn¡¯t die down and they had to watch their feet as an orange spear would pop out with a simple tap from Mark. They were surprisingly resilient to flames and they also noticed the spears wouldn¡¯t just pop out as they touched the ground it required a movement from Mark, although a very simple movement.
Instead of spreading, they came close to each other. Some of them cast ice walls to protect themselves while the javelin tossers attempted to force Mark to defend himself. Mark understood that they were the priority target so they were never given the chance to throw another javelin as the barrage of arrows and spears from the ground were focused on them.
Mark then spun his glowing spear above his head as another familiar runic circle that formed floated over to the congregation of defensive Kobolds. A huge beam or ray of flames fell down on them for more than a minute before Mark tapped the ground with his spear butt again and the orange glow and warmth faded.
¡°Surely that consumed a heck ton of mana.¡± Ebony had to ask as he chilled himself with ice magic. It was a huge pillar of flames that poured down for more than 60 seconds, a flame of that size would dry Ebony¡¯s mana pool in less than a second. He had to consider the high consumption of mana frost blaze too but that wasn¡¯t the point.
¡°I¡¯m a poor man. My runic research was focused on mana conservation.¡± Mark¡¯s reply said plenty.
Hector was shell shocked by the display and got even noisier as they continued their exploration.
Sadly, none of the Prime Verglas Kobolds they encountered on the 20th floor was level 200. They were not all that much stronger than the ones on the 19th floor and there weren¡¯t any different or additional types of them either. Similar to the desert or swamp floors.
Scarlet suddenly called for them to rest for the night after just a single battle. There was no large group after the first ambush. She seemed sluggish in that last battle.
They were all tired from travelling and battling so it was no surprise. Ebony thought it was fatigue kicking from the poor environment. Scarlet also nursed him back to health the entire time and might not have slept well. He went to help her with dinner preparations and was allowed this time. She still did most of the cooking but he helped with ingredient preparation and also cleaning of the used dishes and containers so that there was less washing to do after dinner.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Ebony asked as he was eating together with Scarlet, hidden behind multiple Layered Ice Carapace as a screen. It was extremely concerning that she seemed to be poking at her food and taking smaller bites than usual.
Although they didn¡¯t fight much and their expenditure of energy and stamina was not much, it¡¯s just unnatural that she wasn¡¯t eating with glee.
¡°...It¡¯s a woman thing. The cramps hurt.¡± Scarlet was surprisingly honest.
Ebony blinked, ¡®so it¡¯s that time of the month now?¡¯. He wanted to ask how does Constitution or evolutions affect that but he was not so insensitive to ask that now. He was not an expert but he heard that stomach cramps could get really bad.
¡°You should put something warm on your belly,¡± Ebony said as he tried recalling what helps but he was unfamiliar with the topic. He then looked at the table with their half-consumed dinner. ¡°Is there anything you¡¯re craving?¡±, food cravings were a symptom if he recalled correctly.
Stolen novel; please report.
¡°Yes¡something cold. Can you make me more of that ice cream?¡± Scarlet looked at Ebony almost shyly.
¡°Of course, what flavour should I make? Pyrula?¡± Ebony wanted to suggest tea flavoured but she was not a fan of tea and preferred sweet things so fruit flavour should appeal to her more.
¡°Ermm¡can I have blood flavour? Yours¡¡± Scarlet¡¯s voice was extremely soft as she requested. It was no wonder she was acting so shy.
¡°Are you sure that¡¯s a good idea?¡± Ebony did not think it was weird for her to ask for blood. He just wasn¡¯t sure if that was good for the body.
¡®Wait there¡¯s another woman and doctor, healer here. I should ask for advice just in case.¡¯ Ebony remembered there was a better person to ask.
¡°I¡¯ll check with Mallory.¡± Ebony was about to leave before Scarlet stopped him in a hurry.
¡°There¡¯s no problem. Just a little won¡¯t hurt and your blood gives me energy and calms my nerves.¡± Scarlet assured him.
¡°...Alright, I¡¯ll make it after we finish dinner.¡± Ebony sat back down.
He watched as the plates were cleaned up in minutes as if her appetite returned and strengthened. He was relieved that she was really fine. He wasn¡¯t about to look down on the dangers of period cramps.
Scarlet pulled out milk and sugar as Ebony conjured a jar of ice and gave himself a small cut on the arm. She was staring at his cut or his bleeding but it was not as uncomfortable as it used to be. She used to stare really hard as she controlled herself from jumping onto him but now the look in her eyes was different. Since she didn¡¯t hide her mouth, Ebony could see her puckering in her lips as she moistened them. Her condition seemed to be improving so he was glad for that but he shouldn¡¯t indulge her so much.
He was probably lacking some ingredients since the ice cream didn¡¯t have the right texture. Scarlet savoured the pinkish ice cream bite by bite all the same. She retreated to her tent and fell asleep in a short while so clean-up duty was left to him.
¡°Oh my oh my, what were you doing behind your shields huh?¡± Hector couldn¡¯t keep a dirty grin behind his ¡®confused¡¯ face.
¡°Eating dinner?¡± Ebony cocked his head in reply and answered honestly, he wondered why Hector asked such a stupid question.
¡°...you¡¯re no fun.¡± Hector shook his head in response.
It was nice that Mark was helping out with the dishes, unlike the prince and princess.
???
Hearing the sound of knocking in the middle of the dark and cold night alerted Mark and Mallory whose barrier was knocked on. They didn¡¯t really keep the lights on to avoid attracting Kobolds and Kobolds wouldn¡¯t knock politely either. Mark was sitting outside his tent as he traced his fingers over his spear when the dark silhouette appeared in front of him.
It was presumably a person, Mark used his spear tip to draw fire mana from his weapon to inscribe a small fire in the air. He couldn¡¯t conjure fire mana and there was little fire mana in the surroundings of this floor, he had been trying his best to reduce his usage of the limited amount of fire mana he had.
It was rare but Ebony had just fallen asleep and the knock was soft enough that only Mallory sensed it and Mark who was coincidentally sitting there noticed.
The man outside the barrier was wearing a suit, it was too dark to see the details. Mallory was getting up but she was taking her own sweet time, likely getting dressed or at least putting her boots on.
¡°Greetings. My apologies for disturbing your rest. I¡¯m sure the lady noticed me but could you get si..Hector for me? No need to wake your other compatriots up, its a small matter.¡± It was only muffled a little but not enough that Mark couldn¡¯t understand.
¡®Compatriots?¡¯ Mark was sure the old man wearing a suit that he couldn¡¯t Identify was probably one of the real bodyguards that was either following Hector or Mallory, well both in this case. It wasn¡¯t that he got [???] it was that nothing came up to his mind when he tried Identifying the man. Furthermore, he was clearly standing not far from Mark but other than what his eyes were showing him, Mark couldn¡¯t sense the man¡¯s presence. He really had no talent with mana and magic, even his perception of mana was so weak.
Mark nodded in reply as he passed by Mallory who walked out of her tent covering her bare shoulders with a shawl. Mallory forgotten that there was a really paranoid or perhaps, cautious man in the party. She didn¡¯t notice her face and shoulders getting redder, she would¡¯ve imagined it was from the cold even if she did notice.
Mark on the other hand just walked past her to get Hector, dragging his snoring figure with the a ugly smile on it. It was hard to imagine that he was a prince. He tossed the sleeping prince onto the icy cold floor and walked off to give them the privacy they wanted or needed. He didn¡¯t want to get involved with them too much.
???
¡°What is it that you couldn¡¯t wait till morning to contact us through the callstone?¡± Mallory let the old man in as she asked. Her barrier obviously interrupts mental signals to the callstone so that one could stay hidden in it without pursuers following them through the mental link or lamp that is the callstone. At least, that was the purpose of adding that function it is indeed inconvenient at times.
¡°Huh where?¡± Hector, who fell hard, woke up and rubbed his eyes before a fist rammed into his head. He couldn¡¯t even yell out before he was silenced.
¡°Wel!¡± Hector shut his own mouth quick enough this time.
¡°Good evening to you too, young sire. I¡¯ll cut to the chase. Play time¡¯s over.¡±
¡°Wha..mrrhm!¡±
¡°I haven¡¯t finished. I¡¯ve checked, the guardian floor is just two floors above. Don¡¯t worry, I didn¡¯t walk in but be careful, Ordina is unlike most freshly born dungeons I¡¯ve been in. Sire, you are given the privilege of choice. To start as a common footsoldier on the scouting ship to Tova or take control of a squad of ten men for training in First Tide.¡± The old man Hector called Wel let his words sink.
¡°Crown princess. I¡¯m afraid you, along with most available healers are needed near the front lines as well. The injured are starting to pile up. It would be a good idea to work on the mass mana coating spell if you haven¡¯t already done so. Regardless, under royal discreet your natural potential takes precedence and there isn¡¯t anywhere more suitable. Both of you are scheduled to be in Tidal in a month.¡±
Mallory listened with her arms crossed.
¡°And you couldn¡¯t tell us that tomorrow?¡±
¡°...It would be difficult to gain a private audience with the two of you on the move.¡± Wel couldn¡¯t help but smile awkwardly. The crown princess asks for a lot as usual, fortunately, he wasn¡¯t in charge of protecting her and Hector is much easier to handle.
¡°It¡¯s not like it''s a secret at this point.¡± Mallory pointed out before going back to her beauty sleep.
¡°See ya soon I guess, if it''s only two floors we should be able to handle it.¡± Hector turned back and yawned. An exit opened for cold air to enter and the poor old man to get back out there.
???
¡°How bad does a woman¡¯s period get?¡± Mallory repeated the blunt and straightforward question first thing in the morning. She wouldn¡¯t have bothered with the person asking if it didn¡¯t occur to her that Scarlet might be on her period. That was the only reason why Ebony asked the supposedly random question. She sighed as this was the first time she had to explain something like that to a man.
¡°Why do you want to know anyway?¡±
¡°Why? I have to know her condition to know if it¡¯s okay for her to continue fighting or using fire enhancement magic on herself and whatnot. It would be horrible if it harms her to continue fighting in that state.¡±
¡°...¡±
Ebony wondered if she was trying to make it easier for him to understand. It was both more complicated and more simple than Ebony imagined. It just wasn¡¯t a monthly cycle anymore, every evolution changes it and Constitution stat also affects it so it is different from woman to woman. The healer went off tangent and explained how people get less fertile with every evolution and it was generally true for every race.
¡®Balance¡?¡¯ Ebony randomly thought.
They moved off immediately after breakfast since Scarlet kept insisting that she was feeling better and stronger than ever. Ebony believed her, there was more of a spring in her steps as proof.
It was a little disorientating when they moved slow because everywhere looked to be the same for hours on end. The day ended with nothing attacking them nor did they spot any Kobolds.
They were setting up camp when Ebony noticed a shadow far in the distance. He continued setting his tent before saying he would scout the area and they can put the barrier up first. He left on quick feet before Mark could attempt to follow or ask someone to accompany him since going alone was foolish. He left Hector to deal with the furious Mark.
Ebony was using Frostblaze Augmentation to chase the figure but there wasn¡¯t a need since the figure was just sitting behind a tree.
¡°Hello Tuffock, it¡¯s been awhile. Or is it Hardock? Pettock?¡±
Chapter 119: Mounted Chief
¡°He..hey, Ebony.¡± The grey-robed figure was hunched and as short as Ebony recalled.
¡°Tuffock¡so, have you been doing well?¡± Ebony asked the natural question to someone he hasn¡¯t met in years.
¡°...HAHAHA! That¡¯s what you have to say? I really can¡¯t tell what¡¯s in that head of yours.¡± The robed figure straightened his back and laughed.
¡°Hardock. You¡¯re as loud as I remember.¡± It was all too easy for Ebony to recognise Tuffock 2.
¡°You can tell huh?¡± Hardock smirked.
¡°It¡¯s no surprise. We¡¯re so different.¡± The same voice replied. The change in tone was different enough that Ebony could identify the speaker to be Tuffock 3.
¡°Pettock. I guess this might as well be our first time meeting.¡± Ebony said to the change in speaker from the same short figure.
¡°Bah! Enough with the greetings. What da ya want? We were nice enough to ignore you and you came looking for us instead.¡± Hardock cut to the point.
¡°...Well, just saying hello?¡± Ebony honestly didn¡¯t think much and thought they just didn¡¯t see them building camp.
¡°...There''s something wrong with your head isn¡¯t there?¡± Hardock really didn¡¯t know what kind of attitude to take with Ebony.
¡°I get that from time to time.¡±
¡°Perfect chance I guess. Won¡¯t you join us?¡± Pettock changed the topic.
¡°After you tried to kill Scarlet?¡± Ebony knew it was the rifleman who took the shot but it was clear Pettock was behind it. Not to mention the last stone needle that was aimed at Scarlet which he blocked with his hand.
¡°Kinda thought you didn¡¯t care with your attitude now. You¡¯re all alive and kicking aren¡¯t ya?¡± Hardock spoke his mind.
¡°I really want to ask though. How did you get rid of my petrification? I know you¡¯re not dumb, you should know that I wasn¡¯t aiming to kill her with that shot.¡± Pettock took over to ask the burning question he had.
¡°Just to threaten me to ¡®join¡¯ you before you remove the petrification on her,¡± Ebony said to no one in particular. It didn¡¯t change that the rifleman would have killed her from the get-go. Now that he thought about it, why did he walk up to them?
¡°If you¡¯re not going to say anything then get lost, we¡¯re not interested in looking for trouble with you now.¡± Pettock rested against the tree. It was probably tiring to explore the place alone with no one to watch their back.
¡°Tuffock, what¡¯s your goal?¡±
¡°...lo..long story,¡± Tuffock replied after a long time.
¡°In a word, revenge.¡± Hardock summarised.
¡°Just a little more complicated,¡± Pettock added.
¡°I see, then I¡¯m not interested. Attack them again and our next meeting wouldn¡¯t be so peaceful. Well, Hector aside, Scarlet¡¯s definitely itching to return the favour. See you soon.¡± Ebony disappeared from the spot with a single step back where he came from. There was no point hiding since Tuffock already saw where they made camp.
???
¡°Peaceful my ass! That eller!¡± Hardock spat.
¡°He..his mana is even crazier than it was before.¡± Tuffock stated.
¡°To compress and push all his overflowing mana onto us together with gravity magic along with sonic suggestions. He could¡¯ve popped our eyeballs if he vibrated the mana he surrounded us with, stone skin wouldn¡¯t help much there. To think we got threatened by a Journeyman. Seems like we should work on mana skin and our magic body to protect ourselves from magical attacks.¡± Pettock mocked with a scoff.
¡°I¡I don¡¯t think th¡that was what he was doing.¡± Tuffock gave his opinion.
¡°Don¡¯t beat around the bush!¡± Hardock preferred when people just got straight to the point.
¡°I think h..he did it subconsciously.¡± Hardock did not like this reply from the soft spoken one since it didn¡¯t tell him much but Pettock spoke up before he could yell again.
¡°Ho, you¡¯re saying he¡¯s at the stage where his mana and magic react to his emotions and will without any mental input?¡± The robed figure put his hand under his chin in contemplation.
¡°...You¡¯re joking?¡± Hardock quietened down in shock.
¡°I wouldn¡¯t put it past him. A combat classed Meditator. Sounds plausible, and really, more and more tempting to get on our little quest.¡± Pettock logically thought there was a high chance that was true.
¡°Shou¡should¡¯ve been friendly to them all along.¡± Tuffock cut in.
¡°GAH! Enough with the ¡®I told you so¡¯ attitude. Who was it that thought that the Xeng and noble were going to be a problem? Huh?!¡± Hardock screamed at them both. He was easily irritable compared to the other two.
No one replied him since they all thought so before.
???
¡°That was fast. I guess it really is an open icy plain.¡± Mark, who was on the watch, asked.
¡°Mmm.¡±
No one had any complaints about moving out earlier and going at a brisker pace, Mark was getting more involved in fights even without using his huge runic circle on the ground. Letting all of them conserve the energy and mana for travel and battle. Since there weren¡¯t even many Kobolds around they laxed on caution.
They were not as lucky this time. Climbing up to the 19th floor was through the staircase that brought them to the corners of the floor. They just chose to walk away from the walls, bringing them to the centre where Panic Attack and the twin spiral stairs were. If dungeon ¡®towers¡¯ were the same shape throughout the floors, they would¡¯ve arrived near the centre of the 20th floor as well.
That was assuming the twin spiral stairs they took were the only ones and also if that really was the centre of the floor. Since there weren¡¯t any walls when they reached the 20th floor and were surrounded instead, it was clear they just picked a random direction to move in.
As experienced as Mark was on the field, the icy plains disorientated him after long enough. They didn¡¯t have a clear clue as to where to go either.
¡°It¡¯s been 4 days already¡do you even remember the way back? There are no landmarks.¡± Hector shivered as the heated papers he stuck underneath his armour ran out of juice.
¡°Mmm. All the ice protrusions and trees we passed by are landmarks.¡± Ebony assured them. Mental Map just copied everything he sees into one large 3D map. It probably helped that his memory improved with the increase in Wisdom.
¡°How much of the floor have we explored?¡± Mallory asked.
They reached the walls of the 20th floor and travelled along it till Ebony confirmed that they had gone one full round without finding the way up. The walls were where the Kobolds built their homes or where their spawning nodes were as well. They would jump them or throw javelins from large protrusions of ice above them. Their numbers were a little higher as well.
All of them have gotten some nice skill levels that they increase the limit for. Only Scarlet got the level 200 or tenth increase in Natural Potential since most of the Kobolds were only level 190 to 199. They weren¡¯t lucky enough to encounter another 3 level 200 Kobolds.
¡°More than half.¡± Ebony estimated. Most of the time was exploring the walls before they started moving back towards the centre to look for a way up. It confirmed that practically every floor was circular so far so calling it a dungeon tower seems accurate enough. Well, not every floor.
¡°Ugh, I don¡¯t see any obvious stairs, mountains, caves, waterfalls or floating platforms. Wanna bet that it¡¯s going to be some stairs again?¡± Hector said.
¡°Okay, I bet it¡¯s going to be floating platforms.¡±
¡°Alright! The wager¡¯s half of tonight¡¯s dinner. What about you guys?¡±
No one else bothered playing along.
¡°Are you really that dumb?¡± Mark couldn¡¯t believe Hector actually made the bet.
¡°Why are you calling me dumb?!¡±
They didn¡¯t even need to travel for another 5 minutes before Hector shouted and exclaimed ¡°You cheater!¡± because there were hundreds of shaky ice platforms in his sight together with a pillar of light that was a little brighter than the surroundings. Thousands upon thousands to be accurate. They were spread out with some being larger and some smaller. Ebony already noticed and took the bet as a joke, it just proved to him that his eyesight was much better than Hector¡¯s and that Hector wasn¡¯t the brightest tool in the shed despite how knowledgeable he was.
It was still early afternoon so they started scaling it the moment they reached the place.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
¡°Oh shit!¡± Hector slipped off the first platform he hoped onto.
A few tries were enough for them to find out that the platforms were extremely unstable and would tilt to wherever weight was placed on unless they were stepping on the centre. They couldn¡¯t be bothered to jump around the unstable platforms so they flew again. It was really convenient and the practice was making Ebony better and better.
It was brighter on the 21st floor, probably because it wasn¡¯t snowing and there weren''t any clouds. The only difference in the environment was that it was an actual forest covered in ice rather than just an icy plain. They were not ambushed the moment they got up here either.
Mark¡¯s luggage has been getting bigger since he collected the neck furs of the Prime Verglass Kobolds. The fur was tough enough to defend itself from Scarlet and Ebony¡¯s attacks, they were surely valuable. It was easier and lighter to transport around than the Kobold¡¯s weapons too. Cut and cold-resistant, they are definitely hot sellers to make equipment for people travelling to the 19th floor and above.
¡°At least there¡¯s some greenery here. It¡¯s a little colder though, even without snow.¡± Hector commented.
¡°More places for the Kobolds to take cover.¡± Ebony replied realistically.
Mark nodded like a proud parent.
The few levels they got in their skills were hardly enough and they weren''t really able to safely handle a fight with the Prime Verglas Kobolds one on one.
They were in the middle of the forest when they flew up the huge hole, the trees were hundreds of metres tall and thicker than any of their heights. Mark did not like the looks of that, It was too useful for hiding behind. He stabbed a random tree to find that he could hardly stab his spear tip in, the frost on the tree bark seemed to be what made them so tough.
Mark was contemplating on the pros and cons of hardy environmental objects. The good thing is that they would provide good cover but the bad was that it would similarly provide good cover for their opponents. With his party¡¯s skills and spells taken into account he believed it was more beneficial to them than it was to the Kobolds.
They didn¡¯t fully rely on long or even mid-range spells while the Kobolds have the javelins. The trees were sparse enough that it would not hinder Ebony¡¯s greatsword but that might be in consideration for the greatsword-wielding Kobold as well.
There was a low chance the forest would burn from his or Scaret¡¯s fire magic with the thick protection of ice, the leafy parts were high above them anyway so they did not have to worry about slinging fire around. Hector¡¯s punching power would be limited to take down what was in front of him but there was no need to worry if the number of Kobolds were small.
With Mark¡¯s Identify, they singled out level 200 Prime Verglas Kobolds for Ebony and Hector to struggle against. The others would be held down by three who wouldn''t get as much out of the Natural Potential it would give them. Mallory never seemed very interested but that might be because she doesn¡¯t think she could take on a Kobold by herself.
Mark was forced to set his runic domain up once more when they had more than a few Javelin tossers on them. They were sticking to trees like monkeys even with branches with the help of ice magic.
Ebony would take on the Kobolds with frozen fists or gauntlets whereas Hector would fight with the greatsword-wielding ones. The skinniest twin longsword one was left to Scarlet since only she and Mark could safely keep up. Ebony already took a cut that screeched against his robes by a sneak attack. Although he had really fast movement speed he was unable to dodge it as he was pressured by the punching Kobold, he would have risked taking a direct hit if he dodge the attack from the fast Kobold.
The Prime Verglas Kobolds were even copying the tag team tactics that they used. It was fortunate the Kobold''s ability with magic was nowhere near as good as the real ones and they were limited in many aspects.
¡®I should really get a teacher for using the greatsword.¡¯ Was what Ebony thought time and time again the past few days. No doubt, he was worse than a Kobold at using it. It wasn¡¯t the skill level, he was just fundamentally not that great at facing another user of the greatsword. It was good enough for hunting mindless monsters and he had his footwork and magic to rely on against other warriors and swordsmen but if he were to take that away, he was barely decent with it. The Kobolds could counter both his movement speed and his magic pretty well. They were good training partners.
¡°Damn,¡± Hector had his hands on his knees as he panted hard. ¡°My quadra-enhanced punches don¡¯t do much¡they¡¯re tough.¡±
¡°There¡¯s more of the javelin ones, it could get messy if they put more of those on our tail.¡± Mark checked his equipments¡¯ runes and how much mana they have left. It was fortunate that the frost on them was melted off by his high body temperature so his runes were not affected in any way.
Ebony also noticed that ice mana entered their lungs but each of them handled them with their own methods. Ice mana in his body was easily redirected or removed while the 3 who could use fire or had high body temperature just ignored it since ice mana doesn¡¯t even enter their body. Ebony couldn¡¯t tell how Mallory removed it but he doesn¡¯t sense ice mana after she breathes them in.
It might be troublesome if they threw more of those ice mist explosion javelins. If they aimed well, the shard explosion could injure them gravely as well. Ebony¡¯s robes were really good against them and Hector was pretty damn tough as long as he was enhanced.
¡°Let¡¯s take a short break.¡± Mark decided on the tree to his left to rest against. Even Scarlet was out of breath and Mallory had beads of sweat rolling down her forehead, she had to protect the clumsy Hector from multiple long-ranged attacks. Ebony was practically out of mana as well, he wouldn¡¯t stand a chance against the monsters here without his mana pool being full and compressed.
Ebony saw dents and scratches on Hector¡¯s armour but after checking it out multiple times it was not something he could repair. Mallory indirectly confirmed that she was wearing some kind of armour as well, they just couldn¡¯t see it. It wasn¡¯t just sight either since he couldn¡¯t sense her wearing anything extra other than her clothing.
¡®Probably some kind of barrier armour, Hector should be wearing one too then.¡¯ Ebony wouldn¡¯t know that he guessed right.
Ebony was attempting to guide their meditation when he slapped Hector out of it and snapped the other out by calling out. Scarlet is too impatient and can¡¯t sit still and is always filled with distractions whenever he tries to get her to relax.
¡°Kobolds aren¡¯t the only things here.¡±
¡°Any idea what our new opponent is like?¡±
¡°Using trees as cover, a Kobold is riding it. A big one.¡±
Ebony only felt the vibrations from the ground rather than using sight. How he knew the kobolds were riding something was just gut feeling. Going without sight for more than a year was helpful in that sense. It was actually pretty easy to not just hear but feel the weight of an incoming body, their pace and even their speed just through the vibrations from the ground.
¡°Mark.¡± Ebony warned their most well-to-do member to get ready.
They could easily see the huge boar with a muscular [Chief Verglas Kobold Lvl ???] more than 2.5 metres tall. The boar itself was really similar to the Hoarfrost Boars in the Glades, just rounder and it was at least 2 metres tall and long, the big belly wrapped around by the Kobold¡¯s thick legs. The Kobold had more horns and seemed spikier than the regular lizard-like Kobolds.
It carried two swords larger than Ebony¡¯s yet they looked like normal one-handed swords in its hands. It licked its mouth and sharp teeth before roaring in glee at the sight of prey. Ebony already protected the party¡¯s ears by soundproofing a thin layer of his mana that he spread out in a dome. The roar was stronger than he thought as there was a pulse of mana directed right through the front, breaking his thin layer of mana and slapping right into the dome.
Ebony reacted fast enough and he already had Layered Ice Carapaces lying around them to react to attacks from different directions. He had 6 full-powered ones at any time nowadays. The blast of vibrating mana didn¡¯t do any damage to his shield but it annoyed the ears of his party when it burst apart after impact.
¡°Its almost the size of an ogre!¡±
The Kobold held both its swords in a cross in front of itself, the boar looked up at the blades and breathed out fire. Both blades coated in flames, the Kobold pulled them back.
[Fiery bellied Hog Lvl 170]
¡°Get the pig!¡± Mark shouted.
It was surprising that there was such a low level monster here. Ebony wondered if Ordina changed its tactics to a mix of both quality and quantity.
¡®Hot damn. That stance. Is it using Scarlet¡¯s sword style with those greatswords?¡¯
They entered Ebony¡¯s range of senses quickly and then into Mark¡¯s runic circle soon enough. The boar leapt to the side the moment it stepped into Mark¡¯s runic circle, dodging the expected spear from the ground. Mark also expected it to dodge and summoned another spear where it dodged but the giant Kobold didn¡¯t even spare a look at the spear and swung his right hand at it, snapping the spear that popped out.
Unsure if it was a secret but since they were all close together, Ebony heard a cracking sound from Mark the moment the summoned spear was broken. If his Perception was any higher he would¡¯ve been able to sense the thin scratch on Mark¡¯s actual spear.
The barrage of fire arrows met a fire breath from the Hog before the muscular Kobold swept the flames away with a single swing. It was surprising to see a red glint right after blowing the flames away with wind pressure.
Scarlet took the first charge as usual.
None of them expected the Kobold to drop one of its swords and grab both of Scarlet¡¯s wrists in that short time, it breathed in with a smile and roared again.
Scarlet couldn¡¯t break free from its crushing grip and since she leapt for an attack she was caught in mid-air. Ebony¡¯s shields wouldn¡¯t make it in time, all she could do was bring her halo down into a blood disk and conjure flames around her feet as she kicked out in retaliation. The vice grip gave her the ability to wrench her lower body up.
The Kobold¡¯s mana blast burst the blood disk apart but it reflexively tilted its head back to dodge the kick, the flames that came after burned its upper body and its neck fur was on fire. It freed Scarlet up but she knelt down, dizzy just from the ¡®glancing¡¯ sonic mana roar.
Her party members were right on time to back her up. The Kobold patted its fur with ice magic when Hector, who got behind it in that time punched out. It had some reflex to be able to bring its remaining blade to block with its flat side but the force behind the punch knocked it right off the Hog.
The Hog tried to move but its feet were frozen to the ground before it noticed and its head rammed into something invisible stopped it before 4 spears impaled it, the flames burst out from its belly but it was contained in a box, roasting itself alive. It was considerably weak without its rider.
Ebony didn¡¯t see how the Kobold managed to get the other sword back in hand. Probably when it got blasted off the Hog.
Scarlet got back up before Ebony or Mallory could check on her.
They underestimated the giant Kobold, it didn¡¯t need to rely on its mount or other tricks. Although the flames on his swords were extinguished before the greater fire mages, it easily handled both Scarlet and Ebony with its technique and physical stats. Ebony wasn¡¯t knocked back as much but Scarlet¡¯s arms were shaking from the constant heavy impacts.
It was basically spamming its roar to keep Hector and Mark busy while it seemed to know when a spear was aimed at him. The fire arrow barrage was met with an ice roar blast after the Hog couldn¡¯t help it anymore. Mark never got into closer combat because he knew he would mess up the three Journeymen that were more in sync, he was never a combat genius anyhow.
Mallory managed to shut the Kobold¡¯s mouth with her invisible barriers as it had a poor perception for mana, a sharp barrier would pierce into its mouth when it opened it. It felt its throat in pain and bit down hard to crush the first, now it was wary of opening its mouth too much.
The situation wasn¡¯t as good as it looked despite the five of them pushing the Kobold into a tight corner. Ebony was forced to become support like Mark because he was fresh out of mana for enhancement and was using the mana in his shields and robes to debilitate the Kobold''s movements and distract it from attacking Scarlet and Hector.
It was moments later before Hector had to back off too, they hadn¡¯t fully recovered their mana before they got attacked.
The time they bought allowed Scarlet to enhance herself enough to push back the Kobold and land dozens of burning cuts every second. It was fortunate that Scarlet had a huge stockpile of energy and mana, she had been eating Ebony flavoured ice cream every night.
Two of Ebony¡¯s shields managed to lock down one of its arms since it was weakened considerably, through the cuts ice mana was injected as both the shields shrank with time. Blue flames burst from all its cuts when both shields disappeared.
Scarlet finished it off, she was disappointed she didn¡¯t manage to slice it apart into different cuts of meat since its flesh was too tough.
Mark levelled and they all gained the Natural Potential they desired.
Chapter 120: Cardinal Guardian
¡°I know you guys are tired but we gotta move first.¡± Mark removed his runic circle and stopped Hector from plopping down on the ground.
The emergence of the low-level boars only meant there was a high chance the floor had higher monster density than the previous two floors. Since their location was compromised, it was better to change spots before Ordina decided to launch another attack while they were fresh out of juice.
Ebony volunteered to carry all of them so that they could recharge. It was the most logical way of conserving energy since his stamina hadn¡¯t dropped at all. Scarlet brought out her treasured pearl again while they tried to meditate, only she didn¡¯t even bother trying this time. He knew what she was thinking when she looked at him, so he boxed her up when she was no longer out of breath and she started eating the snacks she prepared.
There really were singular boars just roaming around, probably to act as eyes in the forest.
They picked a relatively enclosed spot to set up camp despite daylight still around. Another reason was that it was getting misty with ice mana. It was a lot easier to manipulate than the ice mana in the ground but he left most of it alone for the little cover they provided their barrier.
He made sure to check high up on the trees as well, casting and placing more Layered Ice Carapace. Mark also went along surveying and inscribing small runic circles on the trees. Ebony recognised them as some kind of alarm and detection rune symbol compiled into one rune.
It was a lot of work but Mark could draw one around their entire camp but that would take a lot of mana ores and time. Usually only useful or cost-effective if they were camping for a longer time period. Some richer camps in dungeons like the one on the 13th floor would have runic scholars or mages set them up.
Although with Ebony and the royals in their party, mana ores were no issue, there simply wasn¡¯t any need to expand the range where they detect monsters since they could react with just the simple alarms and his senses.
Both of them returned from the scouting and defence set up only to find that Hector¡¯s tent was torn apart and they separated with Hector bleeding heavily as he held his belly. In the place of the tents were huge brown spikes. Roots, almost like Mark¡¯s spear.
Scarlet burned them down but the damage was already done. There was no further attack after a few more root spikes emerged from the ground.
¡°Crap, did a boar see us and run off before we could see it? Or maybe one of the Kobolds was hiding on the branches and ran off.¡± Mark said.
¡°Ordina copied your spears as well, the trees are everywhere, their roots could probably reach anywhere in the forest. Hop on.¡± Ebony quickly brought all his shields back and they left.
Mallory took Hector¡¯s armour out and started healing him.
They had set up really quickly as Hector laid down and the ground beneath him suddenly shook and stabbed him. He was lucky the trees or Ordina didn¡¯t have good aim and that he punched the roots before it managed to fully pierce him.
¡°...Sorry. I should have activated the complete barrier.¡± Mallory blamed herself. Apparently, the barrier had a full spherical form as well.
They could be annihilated if that pierced their hearts or vitals while they were asleep. It was no wonder why it was so difficult for other parties to safely explore.
Then again, Ordina or its trees might have only learned that from Mark¡¯s abilities. There are obvious limits to how fast Ordina is copying their abilities but it was already more than troublesome enough.
They had no choice but to rely on a little fire for light when it got dark but they quickly extinguished it when they found a free spot so that they wouldn¡¯t be spotted. Mallory went really quiet and got them to protect her as she set her spell up.
Mark drew his alarm spells as well but not as much as before, they were more reliant on Mallory¡¯s barrier. It was bad that they had to be more defensive than reactive but they could only hope they were harder to spot in the middle of the night too.
Covering the light produced by the cooking fire and eating in the dark was a new experience for some of them.
Food has been getting tastier and tastier and it wasn¡¯t his taste buds since they were fully recovered for a while now. Ebony guessed that Scarlet was observing him when he ate and making dishes more palatable to his taste buds. Meaning there were more spicy dishes and also sour dishes, than savoury and salty. There were no complaints since spicy food to a certain degree warmed the others¡¯ bodies up in the cold night.
It had been troublesome for the two women to relieve themselves previously but now, there was an increase in the danger for doing so. Urges were urges and Scarlet who ate and drank lots needed to go at least once every two days. With Mallory around, they could watch each other¡¯s backs and have barriers to protect them so he was more at ease at letting them go by themselves.
¡°Don¡¯t go too far and just shout for us if anything happens. It¡¯s dark out and we won¡¯t peek anyway.¡± Ebony remembered how far Scarlet had to go on the desert floors to relieve herself. It brought up a different memory along and she also had the same thing come to mind.
¡°Mhmm.¡± She seemed to have picked it up from Ebony.
It was fortunate they didn¡¯t have to go for the big business due to the high Constitution. Ebony didn¡¯t know Scarlet was taking a popular powdered solution that helps with the need of doing that. He himself just poops and urinates less due to his Physique.
Mark who was Master Class relieves himself even less frequently, he shook his head in reminiscences of travelling with or as a Journeyman.
Another eerily quiet night passed and there were no more attacks from the ground. Whether it was because they weren¡¯t spotted or because of the barrier was left to be seen.
Hector has fully healed already, minus the aching in his body that Mallory left so that his body can recover properly, or so she claims. He was more energetic than usual and since they had no clue where to go, they followed his lead as he claimed that he dreamt that west was the right way to go. Mallory was clearly annoyed by his explanation.
It was even half the day in and they have engaged 3 groups of 4 to 6 mounted Prime Verglas Kobolds. Mark was getting worried about the mana expenditure of his spear. It was not as bad because the 3 vanguards could handle these Kobolds more easily but other than Ebony who would recover before the next fight, Hector and Scarlet was clearly getting more cautious with their expenditure or energy as well.
His sound magic was only useful to regenerate a tiny amount of mana outside of battle. Unlike him, the sound magic doesn¡¯t help them when they are casting magic and only in effect when they are relaxed. If their mind wasn¡¯t relaxed it wouldn¡¯t work for them even if they were not in battle or casting magic.
Mark also stood beside Mallory to protect her during battles since the other three would engage in close combat. He had a bad feeling that the encounter rate was getting higher. They were forced to take breaks more often. He was worried the Chief Kobold would bring along a group, he would be forced to spend more mana and there was a high risk the others would be wounded unless they were at full capacity.
Ebony already prepared more of his blood for Scarlet for emergency use.
The further west they travelled the more frequent monsters got in their path.
Mark got a deep gash on his elbow when he pushed Mallory away from a stabbing root in the middle of an intense battle. It was right where he wasn¡¯t armoured. Although she didn¡¯t like the rough treatment, her anger was easily suppressed when she saw that he was merely pushing her away from danger.
Night fell again.
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It was lucky Mallory treated Mark quickly since a tendon was cut, at least according to her, Mark would fully recover without any future ailments or even a scar.
They fell asleep really easily due to how tired they were with Ebony as an exception.
Hector¡¯s dream had been pretty accurate as something new was in sight during noon of the next day.
It was quite the sight.
Two absolutely massive chains were hanging from the sky. They were connected to a humongous double door almost large enough to fit the progeniturtle hanging in the sky. Leading to it were hundreds of felled trees upon each other acting as stairs.
¡°Quite the dream you had,¡± Mark muttered.
¡°Haha, yup.¡± Hector awkwardly replied.
¡°Looks like a guardian room. Last floor already. So Ordina is the guardian floor as the last floor type.¡± Mark ignored.
¡°Simple. I like.¡± Scarlet said.
Basically, the so-called guardian type last floors were last boss rooms in Ebony¡¯s understanding. The most common types were having the strongest monster the dungeon had to protect a treasure and when defeated lead to the portal back outside the other side of the entrance portal.
It was said that there were times that dungeon cores were just right in the open beside the guardian but that was so rare most people thought it was nonsense since there should be no reason the dungeon would expose their own core. It was usually hidden in some corner of the dungeon.
There were also times when there was hardly any reward for beating the guardian. This was more common for over-cleared dungeons that are constantly cleared of their monsters. They wouldn¡¯t be able to give something if few people died or if there was a lack of people inside the dungeon as well. It was not necessary for dungeons to kill to grow after all. As long as people stayed inside and spend stamina and mana, they would be able to absorb it. It would be way less effective and slower for the growth so there were not many dungeons that were not aimed to draw in and kill people with the lure of treasure that others dropped or they produced and/or changed with their magic.
¡°It¡¯s coming to an end already huh¡¡± Hector whispered but Ebony could hear him.
They placed their outdoor kitchen to fill themselves up, Mark joked about it being their last meal. It was merely for Scarlet to stock up and for the others to snack and rest.
Ebony also prepared as many Layered Ice Carapaces as he could since they were in no rush. Mark checked all his equipment together with Hector. Mallory did something to all their armour as well. There was a foreign mana over his robes but it seemed to be disappearing slowly as time passed??.
¡°Some kind of defensive buff spell?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°...Is your perception for mana so good because you¡¯re partially mana?¡± Mallory didn¡¯t expect any normal person to be able to sense what she did but it was not surprising since he could sense her barriers as well.
¡°Maybe, I don¡¯t know.¡± Ebony replied honestly. He was already a partial mana being before he got Mana Perception.
¡°Well, yes. Charging my mana into armour might damage it or just not do anything at all so I just coated them with mana instead. I had to make mana ¡®stick¡¯ but once out of range they would just dissipate like my overflowing wisdom. My mana has properties to toughen something but my skill level is low. The skill doesn¡¯t really level, probably because I never got hit before.¡±
¡°You can cast it on anything without contact right? Since it¡¯s just a coating of mana you could have just cast it over your normal barriers to strengthen them further.¡±
¡°...I¡¯m not stupid. It¡¯s a new spell I got days ago. That¡¯s pointless anyway, the mana can be used to strengthen the barriers itself for much lower consumption of mana compared to an additional layer of mana.¡±
¡®Oh, maybe one of the lineage spells that she just figured out or bothered making into a spell. Seems like a really good support spell that can increase anyone''s defences. A simple coating of mana that utilises the base properties of a barrier mage¡¯s mana, she should¡¯ve made it a spell long ago. Then again, she¡¯s a princess, I¡¯m guessing she never thought she needed to use the spell for anyone. Now that she¡¯s in a party it has its uses, the mana cost seems low enough to be useful for a huge number of people.¡¯
¡°I see.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t push the subject further. He could imagine the Royals being able to cast that for the entire army if they had the mana, time and skill levels for it. If their Fortification and mana properties were changed enough it really made one¡¯s defences skyrocket.
¡®If the skill tier is high and refined, that¡¯s an amazing skill despite its simplicity.¡¯ Ebony could see why the Royals were a great support class to have in one¡¯s party. Not to mention Mallory had pretty good offensive capabilities as well and she was even a healer.
Although a new skill gained days ago probably didn¡¯t help much it was better than nothing. She estimated it would last 15 minutes or so once they separated far away from her because she was unfamiliar with making her mana stick to something. Ebony¡¯s gut feeling was that she probably didn¡¯t know how to inject mana finely enough into armour despite what she said about damaging them.
Mallory¡¯s previous experiments gave different results from what her books stated but she realised it was likely because the dungeon reacts differently from the outside world to excess mana. Ordina might be absorbing overflowing or leaking essence much faster than she expected. It would make sense since it grew faster than most dungeons.
Preparations were complete and they went onwards and upwards.
¡°Do we just push?¡± Ebony asked when they stood before the massive doors.
He truly doubted that the metal-looking but undecorated door could be pushed open even with all their enhanced strengths combined, the door appeared too large and heavy.
¡°It should open if we touch it. I heard some dungeons won¡¯t open willingly though, the conditions differ from dungeon to dungeon.¡± Hector was uncertain.
¡°Just touch it at the same time.¡± Scarlet said. She raised her hand and waited for them. They raised the same hand and placed their palms onto the door at the same time.
A loud squeak resounded as the doors shifted ajar slightly. The ¡®slight¡¯ opening was large enough for all of them to enter side by side. Ebony had three shields on each side and Mallory played along with her own placement of barriers.
They were all getting their own battle preparations ready.
???
¡°Fingers are going numb yo!¡±
¡°Sho..should have gotten better equipment beforehand.¡±
¡°Stop complaining, its because we haven¡¯t levelled our resistances far enough yet.¡±
¡°Hey! They¡¯re ahead of us already.¡±
¡°Unlimited¡unlimited stamina and mana and flight. Travelling wi..with Ebony has always been convenient.¡±
¡°Whatever, the door isn¡¯t closing. Hmm, let¡¯s just enter with them. We were here for levels but the numbers on these floors are few. Let¡¯s leave for another dungeon.¡±
¡°...ma..making amends?¡±
¡°You think too much. Useful doesn¡¯t mean necessary.¡±
???
The door wasn¡¯t undecorated as it glowed from their touch. The white glow travelled from the palms throughout the whole door. Mark was staring at the symbols intently, Ebony tried to memorise it too since the symbols have a high chance of being magical and not an artistic choice.
¡®Definitely runic in nature.¡¯ Both Mark and Ebony could tell with ease. Too bad the light faded and it was out of sight when the door stopped moving.
¡°Hopefully there¡¯s only the guardian. I¡¯m not sure we can handle a group.¡± Mark hoped.
¡°If there¡¯s a group we¡¯ll leave it to you and Ebony while the three of us hold the guardian back. If the place is cramped I can take them out with a mega panch instead.¡±
¡°Only one presence,¡± Scarlet said.
Ebony confirmed as well, the mana density was a lot higher inside but the area through the door wasn¡¯t huge. It was within his range of senses, a circular room was past a short corridor. The door was oversized compared to the room inside.
¡°Humanoid. Heavy.¡±
They entered the earthen corridor that was a little warmer than it was on the ice-cold floor. When they entered the door, all of them could see what was awaiting them past the corridor.
It was really Ordina¡¯s style.
[Frost-Topaz Cardinal Golem Lvl ???]
¡°210.¡± Hector whispered.
It didn¡¯t look too different from the Earthen-Topaz Core Golems, it just wasn¡¯t as lean and its ¡®veins¡¯ had a glow that was almost greenish but closer to blue compared to the yellow Core Golems. It was sitting in the same position as the first one they met in the walkway shortcut that kicked Hector into the wall.
Laying against its seat or throne was a sword handle peeking through the massive shield not unlike Ebony¡¯s. The chair, sword and shield all had glowing ¡®veins¡¯ like the golem itself. It glowed a little brighter the moment they exited the corridor and stepped into the room but didn¡¯t move to attack them. The room was 100 metres in diameter at best with the ceiling around 3 times that, there wasn¡¯t much room to move about.
Ebony sensed someone behind them and he didn¡¯t even need to ponder on who it was. He just hoped Scarlet wouldn¡¯t react violently or Hector being distracted in battle. The stone and petrification mage¡¯s presence at this moment in time could change a lot depending on his actions.
The stone mage only took a step into the corridor and sat there, resting against the wall. Ebony left a Layered Ice Carapace laying against their side of the corridor wall just in case.
The Cardinal Golem moved, taking hold of its weapon and shield, standing up and then it bowed towards them.
It let its ¡®aura¡¯ loose as it got into stance.
Chapter 121: Shed
¡®That¡¯s a polite monster.¡¯ Ebony thought when he saw it bow.
The overflowing vitality and wisdom were enough to surprise them but not enough to cause their movements or even mind lag. It was stronger than his by a little bit at best, the prince, princess and Xeng faced way worse on a daily basis, Mark already set his runic circle up and he wasn¡¯t affected by it either. It wasn¡¯t even half as bad as Kong Jing¡¯s aura.
It wasn¡¯t taking the first move after getting into a wide stance with its shield in front and sword poised for a swing.
Mark and Ebony couldn¡¯t pull their gaze away when it glowed brighter. The Cardinal Golem¡¯s veins were not randomly placed across its body. They were runic symbols.
¡®Durability and capacity.¡¯ The runes weren¡¯t complicated, although it wasn¡¯t completely like any runic language he learnt, they were simple and even throughout multiple rune languages there are usually a lot of similarities. Hence his ability to learn many runic languages in a short time.
They didn¡¯t have time to ponder as Scarlet already burst into a clash with the Cardinal Golem. She never used lightning magic much but when used in that flash step of hers it was really hard to even catch sight of her if one wasn¡¯t looking really carefully at her.
The Cardinal Golem who was holding the shield in its left shifted its shield slightly to block the thin blade aimed at its face before swiping it away along with bringing its sword arm to clash with the next incoming sword. In that meantime, Scarlet already pulled her first thrust back and carried on with her machine gun-like thrusts. She couldn¡¯t build up the speed and power of her Cascading Laceration with a barrage of Pinpoint Perforation but it was excellent at putting most swordsmen or warriors slower than her into a defensive position and let her Core Skill build up even further.
This was usually the party¡¯s chance to go on the offensive but they took a different approach this time and let Hector go wild from the get-go to weaken the guardian as much as they possibly could as fast as possible since they were all disadvantaged in terms of sustainability compared to a dungeon monster many levels higher than themselves.
Hector already stood at the Cardinal Golem¡¯s side, metres away. Ebony had the luck of watching a tiny black ball form in front of Hector¡¯s chest while Hector''s punch seemed to be in slow motion in his eyes. The first punch added water mana in and flattened the black ball without moving it away, the second added another elemental mana while the ball flattened into a disk and then the third, fourth, fifth and sixth did same thing flattening and expanding the disk.
In real time, Hector¡¯s right forearm was just a shadow as he took half a step twisting his hip along with his whole body and it looked like he just threw a single punch to most people.
¡°MEEGAAA PAAAAANCH!!¡±
Scarlet flashed steppped away at the very last second so that the Cardinal Golem didn¡¯t have time to dodge or react. Although it would be hard for it to move away as well since it was surrounded by orange spears from the ground, shields and scales of ice fencing it in and invisible barriers in the air to prevent leaping aside.
It already noticed what all of them were doing but didn¡¯t really use any sort of magic the Kobolds have shown the ability to use yet. The Cardinal Golem didn¡¯t even lag in response and twisted itself to let its shield cover itself. Hector¡¯s ¡®mega panch¡¯ now had a physical visual effect that was a dark shadow beam passing through, it completely engulfed the guardian¡¯s figure, destroying some of Marks spears and Ebony¡¯s scales. They were aware of where it was going to hit so they didn¡¯t suffer much loss.
Mark who never stopped dishing out runic circles into the air above them launched the massive barrage of fire arrows together with Scarlet who started casting her compressed Sphere of Immolation the moment she disengaged. She was never very focused at slinging spells but it was better than just watching, she still didn¡¯t bet on it since she preferred to conserve her mana for enhancement magic. Mallory was also flinging her sharpened barriers.
They stopped the moment Hector¡¯s shadow disappeared and all of Ebony¡¯s scattered scales and shield slammed inwards, shutting the Cardinal Golem in. Ebony was sure most of the magical barrage hit with his senses and he definitely trapped the Cardinal Golem with all but one of his shields as well.
¡°Support me Mallory.¡±
The surface of Ebony¡¯s shields was melting fast due to the accumulation of heat from the two fire mages. Although he couldn¡¯t see well due to the fires and steam he could sense that the Cardinal Golem was fine and dandy with only its shield having deep cracks through them and burn marks throughout its body. He drew as much ice mana from his robe as he could and plastered them onto the cracking orb as the Cardinal Golem wasn¡¯t about to get itself imprisoned so easily.
Another mana wrapped around his and toughened the orb before squeezing in on the breaking ice orb. His ice scales may have melted and cracked but now that the Cardinal Golem was trapped all they are good for is the sheer capacity of ice mana. It was only worrisome if ice is ineffective on the Frost-Topaz Golem.
Surely it wouldn¡¯t heal or help it recover, would it?
Ebony didn¡¯t think so far, trying to stab it with conjured Ice Swords would be pointless with his Intelligence so he did what worked best and combusted every drop of ice mana there was inside.
Hector was busy catching his breath and Scarlet was distracted for some reason. There weren''t much the others could do at the moment so they had a tiny leeway. The Cardinal Golem was only a few levels higher than the Chief Kobold and there was no Hog or other monsters backing it up. It may be a guardian or the strongest monster of the dungeon but they already slapped all their hard-hitting skills from the start.
It took a few minutes for his shield to burn out. The Cardinal Golem didn¡¯t struggle against the freezing either. Scarlet warned them about how her swords were affected by the topaz magic and although it was a frost version she had some difficulty removing it by burning. It was dangerous if something Kong Jing made was affected and even hard to melt away with Scarlet¡¯s fire magic. It was lucky Hector didn¡¯t try to punch or touch it, Ebony wasn¡¯t sure what Hector¡¯s gauntlets were made of but there was a high chance it wouldn''t be free from the Cardinal Golem¡¯s magic.
Ebony¡¯s flames died down to reveal the unmoving figure in ice, within the invisible barriers. Its glow didn¡¯t even diminish on the contrary, it spread into the ice it was encased in.
6 flaming chains sprouted out around the barrier the Cardinal Golem from the ground, Mark haven¡¯t been standing around.
The greenish-blue light brightened, its frozen figure moved and turned the ice prison to dust. Ebony only felt the encroaching foreign mana but was unable to stop it.
Mallory manipulated her barrier to attack the moment the ice was not in the way but it didn¡¯t even hinder its movements as a single swing of its blade was enough to free itself and cut 3 of the flaming chains that was trying to tie it down.
Ebony already had his enhancement up and running as he did a full powered stab with Treading Stride pushing him, it was way more refined than when he first picked up a sword although it wasn¡¯t anything praiseworthy by a normal Master warrior¡¯s standards he minimised openings as much as he could with Scarlet¡¯s pointers.
Sonic Overlay doesn¡¯t do much even against the level 180 Earthen-topaz Golems and Chaotic Repulsive Membrane is just a film of repulsion that can easily be ¡®pierced¡¯ with enough physical force. Ebony had long confirmed that sharp things go through the membrane of repulsion more easily.
There wasn¡¯t any need to cast Frostblaze Cladding when he used Augmentation at high enough of an output, saving him some mana.
His bones and muscles shook hard landing on its damaged shield while it wasn¡¯t even looking at Ebony. It deflected Scarlet¡¯s lunge and sent her smashing into the wall. They didn¡¯t time their attacks but were naturally more accustomed with each other¡¯s fighting style over all their battles and spars but it wasn¡¯t enough to catch the Cardinal Golem off guard.
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It was completely ignoring Mark¡¯s chains wrapping its body. Stomping the ground where a spear would pop up and breaking it off before it fully extends. Mark stopped trying after his third attempt as it clearly saw through the spears and it didn¡¯t even harm the Cardinal Golem¡¯s foot anyway.
???
Scarlet had her halo of blood help to reduce the impact but she wasn¡¯t able to shift her body to protect herself well like Ebony taught her since the Golem had hit harder than she could handle. Her shoulder and ribs were hurt but not broken.
Ebony was trying his best to hold the Cardinal Golem by himself for the few seconds she was getting her bearings. She quickly drank the vial of his blood that he gave her. They needed to buy Hector more time to throw that punch of his, the only obvious damage on the Cardinal Golem was the cracked shield.
Both fire and ice magic seemed practically useless as it wasn¡¯t even bothered by all their spells till now. She never used much mana for her lightning magic but it didn¡¯t even pass through the Golem¡¯s sword so she stopped casting Lightning Inoculation.
A few seconds was more than plenty to feel better with her Core Skill helping her heal. The ball of lightning mana in her belly area pulsed and she stole the Cardinal Golem¡¯s attention from Ebony. Rather, she barely made it in time to stop it from chopping his head off. It had shield bashed Ebony into the wall hard enough to crack the room walls that were clearly not normal before she realised.
Scarlet¡¯s head never felt so clear when she used her Core Skill, Ebony¡¯s blood was a strong drug. Hundreds of her strikes landed on its shield while the Cardinal Golem went on the defensive with its sword. Not a single strike of hers went past its defence despite her advantage in speed. She wasn¡¯t even pushing it back by a step as it stood strong but it didn¡¯t get a chance to attack either.
¡®...hmm? A weak spot. It blocked again. Another weak spot?¡¯ Scarlet didn¡¯t like fighting anything inorganic or inedible but the Cardinal Golem fought like a warrior and wasn¡¯t much different from fighting one. Technique was its weakness but that wasn¡¯t something a blood rushed headed Scarlet could take advantage of most of the time. It was the only reason why her swordsmanship was countered by Ebony when she used her Core skill. Yet, she was seeing it, seeing more, her mind wasn¡¯t heavily clouded.
She held her Core Skill back as she reached the limit her heart could handle, she needed to leave leeway for the increase from her sword mastery since the Cardinal Golem wasn¡¯t able to break her cascade. Her next stab cut into its shield for the first time. The diagonal slash after her first useful stab melted the defending blade by a tiny bit.
The Cardinal Golem noticed its predicament but didn¡¯t panic, it had instinctive knowledge pumped into itself. It was modelled after this group of people and made to counter them. Its built-in instinctive knowledge was telling it that she would run out of steam soon enough.
The others wouldn¡¯t be able to do much. The barrier and fire spearman were no trouble, they couldn¡¯t put a scratch on it. The fist human had one trick that it survived with its trusty shield. The two sword wielding humans were its base models, It couldn¡¯t possibly have every one of their properties, having observed their spars with monsters that died soon after, it chose to copy the one who could stand up against a stronger opponent. It was a good tactic that worked against all the other parties that invaded its creator, they could never outlast its output. Buckle down, tire them, take them down.
The same would happen to the fiery sword wielding human in front of it. It didn¡¯t have spell-flinging capabilities, having concentrated all its magic on toughening itself up. It was weird its topaz was no longer working on her swords but no matter, the Cardinal Golem thought.
In a short time, it watched as its shield and sword got taken apart and had their volume decrease. Its skin started to melt as well. It wasn¡¯t just the human in front of it, it should have been able to take her fire. Looking towards the fire spearman it dismissed before getting its wrist slit because of its focus on the bigger danger.
???
Ebony¡¯s body groaned as he got up as if he didn¡¯t have anything broken inside him, patting himself off.
He was outmatched. Although he only got hit because he was focusing on something else during the fight, it wasn¡¯t an excuse.
Ordina was definitely bullying him. Whatever frost topaz was, it was eating his flames that came into contact with the Cardinal Golem, it even attempted to climb up to his body. Icicle didn¡¯t seem affected so that was a good sign. The bad sign was that his robe had a greenish-blue glow digging into it. It was clear to him they were going where his ice mana was so Ebony quickly expelled them into Layered Ice Carapaces.
They formed and shattered moments after but at least Ebony was able to get rid of the Cardinal Golem¡¯s magic from his robe. He continued dodging, chasing the foreign mana out after some time. He emptied out a large portion of the ice mana inside since he reacted a little late and much of it had been ¡®consumed¡¯ by the topaz magic already. He should¡¯ve asked the Topaz Hunter girl, Ally about the properties of Topaz magic. Then again, hers might be different from the Golem¡¯s, they did come here to observe its magic.
Hector was recovering, claiming to be able to pull off another one of those punches with some rest. The circular dent that hasn''t disappeared on one side of the walls was proof of his capability to demolish and crush most things in his punch¡¯s path. Even the Cardinal Golem¡¯s body slam and shield bash into Ebony merely left cracks on it that were already repaired.
It was getting really hot in the room due to whatever support Mark was giving Scarlet, Ebony had no choice but to sustain a higher than normal expenditure of mana to keep himself cool.
¡®Take away magic and I can¡¯t do anything against it¡¡¯ Feeling a little helpless again, Ebony cleared his mind again and watched Scarlet tear the Cardinal Golem apart. He couldn¡¯t step in, he couldn¡¯t keep up with her attack speed. He tried his best to increase gravity only on the Cardinal Golem, slowing it down as much as he could. It was more effective to concentrate on pulling one of its limbs away from its intended direction than to pull its entire body down as it allowed its blocks and parries to miss by a hair.
Mallory had tried to keep its feet grounded and attempted to mess up its footwork, no wonder the Cardinal Golem wasn¡¯t dodging much. It could destroy her barriers but not effortlessly. She made her way beside Ebony in the meantime but Ebony who was fully enhanced didn¡¯t even take a quarter of his health down from that body slam.
It was clear the Cardinal Golem didn¡¯t have very strong offensive capabilities for its level. Although, that was comparative due to Ebony¡¯s extreme toughness from his tier 2 enhancement and Reinforced Mana Chassis. It was true that it sacrificed offensive capabilities, there was little chance Scarlet wasn¡¯t heavily injured or killed if it had normal strength for its level.
Ebony¡¯s experience and battle instincts let him fight against stronger and faster opponents as always. Earlier, the Cardinal Golem took the chance that he was in the midst of his offensive Ceaseless Onslaught and couldn¡¯t dodge to bash into him while his body was turned to the side. He was also so dumb that he didn¡¯t cast another Layered Ice Carapace to shield himself like he usually does, it slipped his mind as many things do from time to time. His footwork, shields and prediction were the only things that protected him from Scarlet¡¯s speedy attacks.
He was unfamiliar with the shield bash tactic the Cardinal Golem was clearly waiting on the defensive for the opportunity to tackle him. Well, he was careless, the same trick wouldn¡¯t work on him again. He just might not have the chance to prove it anymore from the looks of the battle between the Cardinal Golem and Scarlet.
She was definitely expending huge amounts of stamina and mana but she didn¡¯t look like she''d run out any time soon.
The Cardinal Golem didn¡¯t seem to be attempting to break free from its predicament. It calmly used its shrinking shield to defend itself the best it could. Wet cracks were all over its body as it was melting a little.
Scarlet was running out of steam too, the next Pinpoint Perforation that stabbed deep shattered its frozen body and strength left her body.
Ebony wasn¡¯t about to let his guard down anymore, he noticed that the Cardinal Golem¡¯s body only had a layer break off and it took advantage of Scarlet¡¯s sudden stop in attacks to kick out. This time, his shields that were on standby reached in time to block it while he took a step to carry Scarlet out of the way. His shield was sent crashing into the wall since he didn¡¯t have the Intelligence to hold it in place against its kick.
He had regenerated quite a bit of mana with the time that she bought and could cast Augmentation for another period of time. Just having to be careful not to freeze Scarlet who was in his hands was difficult so he had no choice but to quickly put her down after getting her out.
The slightly smaller Cardinal Golem was as good as new, without a scratch on its body. It didn¡¯t charge to attack any of them but ran to its chair instead. Its runic veins were glowing slightly brighter than it was previously. Putting both hands on the armrest, the chair turned into a fresh set of sword and shield.
Maybe because it thought Hector and Scarlet were down for the count, it raised its sword arm up and shifted towards Mark. It must have decided that the other four were no longer a threat to it. Impatience and negligence to observe the other¡¯s condition was its folly.
Another scream of ¡®mega panch¡¯ echoed, this time, Hector even managed to anticipate where it was going and he already used his movement skill to get right beside it and hit the Cardinal Golem unguarded by its shield. He aimed for its chest since a golem losing its head may not be fatal, hoping to destroy a larger percentage of its body, he went for the torso.
¡°Urgh, night.¡± Hector managed to mumble before losing consciousness. A huge improvement on his part.
Another massive dent in the walls appeared with a human-shaped indent and a guardian embedded.
Chapter 122: Effortless
They gathered again, Mark and Ebony stood in front while Hector was sleeping peacefully and Scarlet allowed her muscles to relax. Her heart had been strengthened but her muscles hadn¡¯t, they sort of burned out from her enhancements and fierce attacks.
Mark followed up with a continuation of his fire arrow barrage for whatever it was worth. They already saw how ineffective Ebony¡¯s magic and attacks were. He didn¡¯t want to give the Cardinal Golem a chance to recover if it wasn¡¯t dead from a direct hit of Hector¡¯s insanely powerful punch.
The edge of his domain was where the walls were, flaming chains were employed to seal the Cardinal Golem again. He had already consumed way more fire mana in his spear to keep his domain up already but that wasn¡¯t an issue yet, it was his own mana pool that was halved from all manipulation that was an issue if the Cardinal Golem wasn¡¯t dead. It was no surprise with the Cardinal Golem¡¯s level being higher than theirs but it was just its resistance and durability that was troublesome.
They left the two heavy hitters to Mallory to care for. Within his domain, Mark could tell that he wasn¡¯t doing much damage to the Cardinal Golem without Scarlet being the main attacker and him being the support to strengthen her fire magic.
He looked towards Ebony for a second before dashing into close combat. Ebony¡¯s shield was rendered useless with the Cardinal Golem¡¯s topaz magic, although he believed Ebony should be able to hold the Cardinal Golem down in his enhanced state, Ebony probably couldn¡¯t harm the Cardinal Golem. He wouldn¡¯t be able to give support like he did to Scarlet since Ebony didn¡¯t use fire magic.
Mark probably had slightly higher Strength than Scarlet had earlier anyway, he was just slower and he didn¡¯t have the technical skill to keep up with her without getting in her way while she was tearing it apart.
¡®Tch.¡¯ Mark¡¯s first charge into the midst of flames he set was ramming his spear into something really hard. It hit its shield, the Cardinal Golem was trying to disperse the flaming chains at the same time, Mark¡¯s charge allowed it to free itself.
He swept aside the sword swing and slapped the butt of his spear into the Cardinal Golem¡¯s shield. Using the runes on his equipment for a burst in speed from the wind blast. Clearly noticing the state of the Cardinal Golem¡¯s body after taking Hector¡¯s punch without its shield. It looked even more broken than after Scarlet¡¯s barrage, even its new pair of sword and shield were not spared from damage.
The Cardinal Golem¡¯s speed and strength were lower than he imagined as Mark managed to force it into a defensive position as well. He was surprised since his passive enhancement was not all that strong, the raising of temperature in the room was also dialled down extremely low since he was not alone. He had to think about his allies'' state.
???
Ebony joined Mark in breaking the Cardinal Golem since he could keep up with Mark without getting in his way unlike with Scarlet.
Perhaps it was due to the ¡®injury¡¯ it had, Sonic Overlay was a lot more effective. The Cardinal Golem¡¯s body shattered into hundreds and thousands of pieces in less than a minute of their attacks.
Or so Mark assumed.
He felt his spear slip through the Cardinal Golem and didn¡¯t expect it to shed a layer of its ¡®skin¡¯ again, shifting its upper body like how warriors dodge a blow by a hair¡¯s breadth. Letting its equipment go to grab Mark¡¯s spear with one hand and pulling him into an elbow thrust that most would say it was well executed.
Mark instinctively activated his armour wind rune to blast himself back to reduce impact but he was a little too slow to reduce it by any noticeable amount.
¡°GAH!¡±
Ebony had to dodge the spear thrust that the Cardinal Golem clearly aimed to push him away. His shield was too slow and bulky to help Mark. They could physically match higher level monsters and people with multiple enhancement magic or compressed enhancement magic that only Ebony was using but with a low Intelligence, they weren¡¯t able to match them magically. It could be seen that although his shield¡¯s weren¡¯t breaking that easily, they were sent flying more often than not.
It wasn¡¯t about to let go of the spear that Mark released to escape, even when it was heating up all of a sudden but, it jerked along with the spear that was forcefully dragging itself towards Mark. The Cardinal Golem¡¯s instinct was to let go of the spear the moment Mark¡¯s own hand was back in contact with his spear and it was the right move as he wasn¡¯t able to do what he wanted.
¡°Urgg. That hurt.¡± Mark grunted in pain and complained.
Dozens of spears popped up and the Cardinal Golem twisted its body awkwardly to avoid them. A few of them scraped noisily against its body and left thin cuts as they burned hot. It didn¡¯t even wriggle before it snapped its neck up to see another huge runic circle in the air above, the spears around also moved and fenced it in while flaming chains sprouted and wrapped it up tightly.
No, they weren¡¯t chains this time. They were solid spears that twisted and wrapped its body.
Ebony sensed something off with the Cardinal Golem¡¯s body or rather, the mana in its body. After the second shedding, the Cardinal Golem was slightly smaller and brighter. He was also perceptive enough to observe and memorise its vein patterns since there was plenty of downtime. He was pretty sure the patterns changed.
The next moment, he shielded himself from the orange fragments that burst all over the place when the Cardinal Golem flexed and broke itself free. The rampant ice mana around it told Ebony that it used its magic to weaken the spears internally before breaking free.
¡°Mark, your armour!¡± Mallory called out.
They didn¡¯t notice that his armour was getting eaten into by the same glow from the Cardinal Golem, probably when he came into contact with the elbow strike.
Icicle was already over the Cardinal Golem¡¯s head as Mark swiftly tore out his armour, at least it seemed like that but Ebony¡¯s senses told him Mark only tore a layer off and he was still wearing something.
He was glad for teammates that were smart and strong. The Cardinal Golem¡¯s lower body was surrounded by Mallory¡¯s mana that Ebony already familiarised with long ago. Scarlet also got up at some point in time, recovering strength in her body faster than she herself imagined possible. She watched as Mark was hit and was already prepared to get back in battle before anything goes wrong. There wasn¡¯t much time for her to enhance herself much but she didn¡¯t care and just stabbed out at the Cardinal Golem¡¯s neck when she saw the opportunity.
It didn¡¯t break its feet free to evade or bring its arms up to defend itself. Both swordsmen¡¯s blades stopped short as if they rammed into a solid wall and impact ran through their arms once again.
Scarlet winced from unexpected pain, her Constitution wasn¡¯t buffed up high enough and her body was already in a pretty beat-up condition. Somehow, the Cardinal Golem noticed that even with her mask blocking her expression and it was questionable whether it was able to understand facial expressions either.
The locks around its lower body only slowed it down a little, it reached its palms forward attempting to touch the fiery swordswoman that caused it great harm. It knew the mask was a problem and went for the less covered neck instead.
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Ebony tried his best not to panic but whether it was his body, shield or a smaller scale, none of them was going to reach in time. He subconsciously blasted a stream of mana towards the entrance as he tried his best to protect Scarlet with every drop of mental and physical strength he had.
???
¡°They really weren¡¯t slacking off huh?¡± Hardock watched and commented to the other two that shared a body with him.
¡°Wait.¡± Pettock suddenly shushed them.
¡°...?¡± Confusion spread amongst them.
¡°Don¡¯t move, can¡¯t you feel it?¡± Pettock continued to confuse them.
¡°Feel what?¡± Hardock hated when people beat around the bush.
¡°Someone¡¯s standing right beside us!¡± Pettock warned the two who acted as if they were alone in this corridor.
¡°I¡I don¡¯t sense anyone.¡± Tuffock said.
¡°Me neither, no movement, no mana signature.¡± Hardock agreed.
Both of them knew Pettock wasn¡¯t one to joke around though and trusted his words though.
¡°...Ha. Nobles indeed. Royals¡ I guess we better not interfere foolishly for now.¡± Pettock murmured. The other two knew he was annoyed.
¡°Th..the golem seems pretty to..tough.¡± Tuffock was watching the battle more closely.
¡°They¡¯re beating it up anyway, seems like they just have to avoid touching it directly. They would have more trouble if it could cast projectiles or have other range capabillites with that weird topaz magic. I wonder where Ordina got its topaz magic from.¡± Hardock commented.
¡°Probably somewhere underground, there shouldn¡¯t be any topaz mana anywhere close. Chances are, there¡¯s a topaz deposit or even creatures in the vicinity underground.¡± Pettock answered.
They remembered the Earthen-topaz golems that were in the shortcut from the start so there was a high chance that a dungeon that was absorbing ambient mana from a huge radius with itself at the centre found a topaz deposit somewhere.
¡°El! That punch is even more ridiculous than it used to be.¡± Hardock cursed.
¡°He..hey. Tha¡that¡¯s a domain mage!¡± Tuffock was shocked.
¡°Just a clever trick. His control over and in it is limited compared to a true domain mage. Well, it is pretty impressive all the same. It would be good if he doesn¡¯t have deep ties to their party.¡±
The stone mage slowly stood up as the guardian seemed to be defeated soon as they wanted to leave already. Pettock was sweating internally when a gaze landed on them the moment they moved. Fortunately, their head didn¡¯t fly off as they didn¡¯t try taking another step forward.
The battle was taking some time, they couldn¡¯t see the battle clearly from the corridor but the guardian appeared to have gotten back into the battle time after time of being hammered into the wall hard enough for them to feel the ground shake.
They saw the domain mage get elbowed across the room and then the guardian floating over. Ebony and Scarlet attacked it at the same time only for the guardian to stand there and ignore their attacks.
¡°Help me. I¡¯ll owe you one.¡± Ebony¡¯s irritatingly dead voice travelled into their ears and reverberated softly in the corridor.
¡°HAHA!¡± Hardock laughed.
Pettock smirked at the wonderful timing and chance.
Tuffock had mixed feelings but was just a tiny bit happy that Ebony relied on them.
???
The Cardinal Golem¡¯s palms were just about to touch Scarlet¡¯s neck when it felt something pierced into its wrist. Not even moments later, the same thing rammed into its elbow, chest and head.
Ebony, who chased after the Cardinal Golem¡¯s back, saw its body violently flung to the side, spinning clockwise from its head. It was too obvious to him that a few thin needles that were definitely heavier than they looked were moving at extremely high speeds accurately hitting the Cardinal Golem. Due to how thin they were, he might not have noticed them if they were just lying around and didn¡¯t move at such speeds that tore apart the thick ambient mana in the room.
There was no follow up. Not from the Cardinal Golem or the stone mage.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Frost-Topaz Cardinal Golem Lvl 210]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 110 levels or more above your own, insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
Although there was no mention of ¡®partial¡¯ Natural Potential, there was no way to give it a numerical value to begin with. It was just believed that everyone got a different value or amount for each skill they had. It was also believed killing one with assistance would decrease it but no one knew if that was true. It was simply a theory since the experience gained was split and the experience was supposed to be converted to Natural Potential.
Ebony didn¡¯t think that was true because if it was split then they wouldn¡¯t have sufficient ¡®potential experience¡¯ accumulated. Hector explained that it was believed ¡®potential experience¡¯ worked differently as well but theories and discussions were pointless when they didn¡¯t have any reliable data to work with. No one figured out any experiments that gave good results since skill level increases after each increase in Natural Potential were different from person to person and skill to skill. There was little to no database to draw conclusions from.
???
Scarlet didn¡¯t have any techniques to relax her muscles effectively with her blood magic and her body couldn¡¯t react in time. She even resorted to chugging a little more of Ebony¡¯s blood to get back up and into the fight again.
She saw the speeding shadow stab into the Cardinal Golem after the failed attack. Familiar grey needles that once hammered into her face and sent her neck snapping back.
They weren¡¯t any wind in the room or the corridor leading to the room so his scent never reached Scarlet. Although she did gain her own mana perception type skill in her time in the blood realm, her range and sensitivity with mana wasn¡¯t as wide as Ebony¡¯s hence, she didn¡¯t notice his presence till now.
She didn¡¯t react as violently as she thought she would and it wasn¡¯t just because her body still wasn¡¯t fully in her control. Hearing slow footsteps coming over wasn''t causing her heart rate to rise in anger either.
An unfamiliar face showed up yet, she would recognise Tuffock straight away. He had the same overall look with the dirty grey robes and hair. His facial features were different, sharper nose, wider jaw and untidy stubbles. Practically a different person.
¡®Tuffock¡¯ was standing straight and not hiding or avoiding eye contact.
She realised that the stone mage standing before them was not Tuffock.
¡®...I¡¯m not angry?¡¯ Scarlet was more surprised by the fact that she felt completely unbothered by the stone mage¡¯s presence than she was surprised by the fact that he was here or that he ¡®helped¡¯ her. More than ¡®not angry¡¯, it was like she didn¡¯t even care that the person who almost killed her was standing right in front of her. That was unimaginable from her understanding of herself.
¡°Been a while.¡± The stone mage greeted. Facing Scarlet, she was probably the only one he was addressing.
¡°Mmm.¡± Scarlet replied without much thought.
¡°No thanks?¡± The haughty tone she remembered was back. Ebony called him Tuffock 2 if she was not wrong.
Her arm moved up in response. The stone mage walked close enough that Ignite was about to touch his neck. His robes caught on fire despite not conjuring any more fire mana to heat them up, it was just the residual heat that hasn¡¯t cooled down.
She wasn¡¯t able to see how he put out the flames without moving but she did sense that the fire mana just couldn¡¯t burn the robe all of a sudden before dying out. He probably conjured or covered his robe in a little bit of stone mana.
Her body moved by reflex, she had thought she couldn¡¯t move her arm yet.
¡°Feisty as always but whatever, it was a good deal and didn¡¯t even require much effort.¡± The confident stone mage smiled.
¡°Te¡tell him I..I said hi¡¡± Some familiarity was back when the stone mage glanced at the unconscious Hector.
¡°Well then, don¡¯t forget what you said.¡± The stone mage walked away from the blade at his neck and walked towards the black portal that appeared at the end of the room.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony responded.
There was no reply since the stone mage just left immediately after.
Scarlet stared at Ebony who returned her stare. She didn¡¯t know if it was his look, her skill or even her imagination but she was practically flooded with emotions of worry and anxiousness and her slowly calming heart started getting busy again.
She understood something new.
The warmth of rage couldn¡¯t be compared to the pleasure the warmth of affection gave.
Chapter 123: Research
¡°Will the guardian spawn again?¡± Ebony curiously asked.
¡°Not in a short while. How fast? Depends on the dungeon.¡± Mark checked the surroundings, entrance and portal exit before removing his runic circle. He fell onto his butt and just sat there, holding his head. Mallory similarly had beads of sweat rolling down her head.
¡°Let¡¯s split its body?¡± Ebony asked. The Cardinal Golem¡¯s body was in good condition and wasn¡¯t getting reabsorbed by Ordina.
¡°I¡¯m not interested in that, don¡¯t have to include me. Or Hect.¡± Mallory declined for herself and Hector.
¡°Inedible.¡± Scarlet shook her head. Completely disinterested in the guardian¡¯s corpse.
¡°You thinking what I¡¯m thinking?¡± Ebony asked the remaining party member.
¡°Ell yeah. I gotta have a better look.¡± The rune junkie was excited. They were thinking about the same thing.
¡°We should leave first, I want a nice bed and bath. Even if the inns are barely habitable.¡± Mallory lifted Hector¡¯s body from the ground with her barrier.
If they were right and the exit portal led to the other side of the dungeon¡¯s entrance, they should be back out into the plains with plenty of inns and taverns surrounding the dungeon. Being so close to a dungeon, they were usually pricey yet not exactly high in quality.
Ebony stuffed the corpse into his bag first. Mark didn¡¯t have any issue with that. Not because he trusted Ebony so much but because he didn¡¯t want others to see it, they would have a tough time cutting it in half and he didn¡¯t have spatial storage. Obviously, he wants to study the body whole rather than cut and destroy the precious runes.
Ebony had the same idea.
The others who were already mentally exhausted from all the magic they used felt even more uncomfortable after stepping through the portal. He was glad he sneaked up beside Scarlet and that she didn¡¯t push him away when he supported her.
He also sensed Mark catching Mallory from tripping from dizziness as they exited behind him. Good going, he had sensed something between them.
¡°Can we enter from the back?¡±
¡°Doubt so. Never heard of any dungeon that allowed that.¡± Mark turned at knocked at the ¡®solid¡¯ black portal after getting pushed away for being helpful.
It was getting extremely noisy as the guards that were standing by were alerted by their exit.
Tuffock probably just flew off the instant he exited since there wasn¡¯t any sign of him.
¡°Look there! They just exited Ordina!¡± Random dude A jabbed random dude B with his elbow. That was mean but there were both warriors wearing leather armour spotting metal pieces.
They weren¡¯t forced to reveal information about Ordina but they were expected to give their names and quester crystal. To record that they could be officially considered dungeon clearers. It was just a formality and the guards were in charge of it.
They were surprised they didn¡¯t need to disperse a gathering crowd at first but Identifying Ebony¡¯s party told them the reason why people didn¡¯t bother gathering to check out who was the first to clear Ordina. It was more interesting to see a new and rising party of dungeon clearers than a group of nobles Journeymen with a bodyguard clearing a dungeon. Some people still stayed and took mental notes. These people were either thinking a bit more or were a reasonably high level party since they knew the strength and danger level of Ordina¡¯s higher floors.
It was interesting to see the quester crystal turn from transparent to grey in colour after the guard placed them in a weird spherical box like a pokeball for a minute or so.
After confirming that they weren¡¯t going to share any information, they were let free.
Panic Attack weren¡¯t around the portal, they were probably still inside Ordina or somewhere in the small settlement.
It was getting dark and cold but still warmer than where they just exited.
After inn hopping due to unavailability for a couple of hours, they finally found a few empty rooms. 2 to be specific.
Mallory dragged Scarlet into one, leaving Hector with the guys to share the other room. There were only 2 beds but Ebony had his own so they didn¡¯t have to leave Hector on the hard ground. Ebony converted the shield he left to watch out for Tuffock into a sculpture to help strip Hector¡¯s armour off.
¡°Hurry and take it out!¡± Mark couldn¡¯t wait to analyse the golem¡¯s corpse.
¡°Mmm. I¡¯ll go take a bath.¡± Ebony let him watch over their belongings as he took his heavy coat off and made a compressed stand for Icicle so that it didn¡¯t break the floorboards. They were already creaking as he walked on them.
It was a massive relief on his body when he stopped the minor enhancement on himself. He never really took his robe off other than the time his back was injured even while he was sleeping. It was already habitual since his time with Gen, something might attack at any time.
Sadly, this inn was small and didn¡¯t have bath facilities for the public. They would provide hot water if paid for but that was it. That was good enough for most freelancers anyway. They don¡¯t even wipe themselves down every single day. The receptionist said there was only one public bathhouse of sorts but it wasn¡¯t exactly well maintained after hundreds of people used it every day. Considering the flow of people in and out of Ordina in a single day, hundreds was a small number. Maybe only used by those that exited or were about to enter.
The women had the same idea, bumping into them when he was about to leave, they went together. A fifteen minute walk was bearable. There were no roads and they couldn¡¯t just speed through the crowded alleys. Standing before the building they called a bathhouse, none of them entered.
The smell was bad enough to dissuade them from entering to check its condition.
The princess was about to burst from the accumulated stress of being in a dungeon that changes the environment every few floors. It could be seen that she was having difficulties hiding her black-faced expression. She would usually act cool and regal. It must not have been an easy experience even for a tough princess like her.
¡°Do you want to go to Plainston or any other town?¡± Ebony tried asking, he had no issue carrying them all back if they wanted. It was such a short distance he could reach in less than half an hour if he was taking his own sweet time.
¡°The city and town gates are closed at this time.¡± The law abiding princess crossed her arms in annoyance.
¡°...I can create an enclosed space with ice. We can go further out.¡± Ebony was sure she could make a bathtub with her barriers and Scarlet could heat it up so they could deal with that themselves. The plains have nothing that would be able to harm them either.
¡°...¡± The ladies contemplated hard, clearly tempted but worried about something.
¡°Oh, I can leave the area if that¡¯s what you¡¯re worried about.¡± Ebony cocked his head when that wasn¡¯t enough to convince them.
¡°Out in the open?¡± Mallory shared their concerns.
¡°Hmm? It¡¯ll be more private than a bathhouse won¡¯t it?¡± There were way more people where they were now.
¡°...I guess.¡± Mallory touched her dry hair with dirt in them.
Scarlet was all for it. She sweats many times more than the healer and barrier mage. Although her sweat dries up when she¡¯s using her Core skill or enhancement it just makes her sticky and she would continue to sweat after she cooled down and her skills were completely off. She already envied Ebony being able to take a bath whenever he wanted just by using his ice as cover and a bathtub.
They went pretty far out although it was turning dark.
They weren¡¯t comfortable until Ebony was more than 2km away. Their sign for when they were done was lighting up a bright fire. He made them thick walls and a roof, large enough that there shouldn¡¯t be any complaints.
At best, all he sensed was a wild bunny hiding in its burrow.
He was already taking his time and being thorough and only took 20 minutes but they weren¡¯t done yet. He took the chance to moon gaze and just relax rather than train. He pushed aside his paranoia but he should¡¯ve made a trip back to the inn to at least get Icicle before they left the settlement. The stronger he got the more insecure he got because he understood that he wasn¡¯t anywhere close to being strong enough to walk without worry about being helpless. The casual attacks from Tuffock already showed him that he wasn¡¯t even close to being free of worry. Not that he didn¡¯t already know that.
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Although the corpse didn¡¯t have any signs of petrification he was sure the mage just ¡®retrieved¡¯ the petrification after it died. It was doubtful it died just by getting stabbed by a couple of needles.
He was pretty sure more than an hour passed before the women gave the okay sign for him to fetch and walk them back.
One was in another dress and the other was in her pyjamas and ready to sleep. He could smell plum. His Core skill crashed and burned for half a second before he quickly gave them a ride back and returned to his room. There was a huge piece of paper on the floor with the corpse laid down. Many smaller pieces of paper were strewn across the floor as well. Mark had been busy at work but he was more energetic than before the fight with the Cardinal Golem.
Mumbling to himself about how he didn¡¯t have his tools or equipment from his workshop.
It belonged to both of them so he just openly looked at how far Mark had gotten. So far, it looked like a copy or sketch. When they had the same thought, they were thinking about doing the same to their bodies. Meaning to inscribe or engrave the runes onto their body. It wasn¡¯t simply copying the symbols, they had to be sure the mana pathways were correct. Not to mention experimenting whether it was safe to use on their bodies.
After just a look, he knocked Mark out of his mumbling trance.
¡°It¡¯s different.¡±
¡°Huh? What is? It¡¯s a quick sketch but with my skills, it should be a pretty accurate copy.¡±
¡°I managed to sense it since it was mostly ice mana. The first and second layer it shed was different from this layer.¡±
¡°What!? Are you sure? Did you memorise them? Do you have any skills that are related to memory?¡±
¡°I can remember them quite clearly since it took quite some of my attention. I don¡¯t have a direct skill related to that but I am confident I can duplicate it to a certain extent.¡±
¡°So that¡¯s why you got hit even though it was only a little faster than you. I even thought you just let your guard down or tripped up in that exchange.¡±
¡°Mark. What are your plans after this?¡± Ebony didn''t reply to his guess, he was actually distracted by the other presence behind the petrification mage. Too bad the other person didn''t make a move and allowed the petrification mage to help them instead.
¡°This definitely takes precedence over any of my current research. If we could inscribe this on our body with a good quality mana ore and it doesn¡¯t have big side effects, it¡¯s practically a pseudo physique that increases our defence or durability by many times!¡± Mark tried to keep his volume down but Ebony made it such that only the two of them should be able to hear each other.
Ebony had a better idea but it would probably only work for him. To alter his mana chassis internally and actually change his physique rather than Mark¡¯s pseudo physique of inscribing his skin. There were too many problems that might occur and he wasn¡¯t going to go in blind.
¡°Want to make a deal?¡±
¡°...I can guess but go ahead.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll provide the runic schematics of the outer layer. Lend me your expertise and share your results with me.¡±
¡°Not enough, the inner layer is clearly more valuable. It was faster and stronger after it shed twice. The outer layer is obviously centred on toughness. It¡¯s not like I can¡¯t do a little trial and error to get its outer layer schematics either, I¡¯m a runic scholar you know. It wasn¡¯t like I wasn¡¯t busy observing it either.¡±
¡°I can provide good experimental data and even fund your research a little.¡±
¡°What experimental data?¡±
Ice sculpture walked over and had its ¡®clothes¡¯ melded into its body to show a clean sculpture whose surface was starting to break and tear. In minutes, an 80 to 90% similar ice golem was standing before the two of them.
Seeing the runic scholar gulp was a good sign for him, he quickly erased the runic symbols that had no power in them. Either due to inaccuracy or not running mana through them, likely both.
¡°3 dimensional model. I have the mana to consistently dish them out. We can even test if it actually works by destroying one inscribed and one that isn¡¯t. Working together, I can probably speed up your research by more than a dozen times, won''t I?¡± Ebony was kinda assuming Mark would be tempted. Of course, he could engrave it too but the one with the runic skills is Mark, it would take too long for Mark to engrave it one by one compared to Ebony just conjuring them.
¡°...I have another condition. If there¡¯s no compatibility issue, you¡¯ll help me inscribe my body in the future when I deem it safe. That¡¯ll probably be far in the future.¡± Mark couldn¡¯t inscribe his own body at the same time, Ebony didn¡¯t appear to have many rune inscribing skills at a level he trusted.
¡°If there is an issue?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll find the best smith possible. Have you seen or heard about full-body suits that completely cover the body? Those would be seamless and it should be possible for the same runes to work since those aren¡¯t separate pieces of armour.¡± Mark didn¡¯t need Ebony to point out that his idea of a pseudo physique was too dream-like. A second thought was enough that too many problems were occurring in his mind to make it work. He heard about some Grandmaster dungeon clearers in Tidal wearing a type of armour that was similar to a second skin. Perhaps that was using similar technology.
Ebony wanted to find Kong Jing to get her roped in as well. Gut feeling told him she would be interested in this project. She was his teacher in both crafts and runic studies, there was no harm in asking her for advice if she wasn¡¯t interested. Then again, with her help, it was questionable whether he needed Mark¡¯s help. He decided not to tell Mark about her and check with her himself whether she was interested.
¡°Sounds good.¡±
???
Food was delivered to their room but the girls ate by themselves. Mark had been busy through the night even as the other two were soundly asleep.
Hector got up sometime in the night but went back to sleep after looking left and right. The three of them ate together before the two girls knocked and entered to chat.
¡°We¡¯ll be taking our leave. It was nice meeting you.¡± Mallory said to no one in particular.
Hector had a loud sigh that he dragged out.
¡°Where to?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Tidal and then probably the sea. How about you guys?¡± Hector stuffed his mouth full after speaking.
There was a little silence before Scarlet spoke up.
¡°I want to get my skills to the limit on Ordina¡¯s twenty first floor and evolve.¡± The twenty-first floor had higher numbers of Prime Verglas Kobold. The level difference was high enough that they should be able to increase their skill levels at the highest pace possible. Older dungeons that had the same level of monsters would be much tougher to deal with.
¡°Can I come along?¡± Ebony asked. He wanted to stay by her side, life had never been as dull as the time they separated.
She merely nodded without looking at him.
It wasn¡¯t like they were going back immediately. Mark made his point clear that he needed Ebony¡¯s help as long as he was free. He would rent a small house that had enough space for his research. Under Ebony¡¯s expense. Even without his personal workshop, there was plenty he could study before resorting to other measures.
Attempting to check if the runes would work had actually been one of the biggest issues since he couldn¡¯t test it on paper. It might work but just because it strengthens a flat piece of paper didn¡¯t mean it would strengthen a much more complex human body. He would have resorted to clay dolls
Hector shouted his complaints as he was dragged away by the collar. Yelling goodbyes even louder. They left the other way around as the other three made their way back to Plainston for a well-deserved break. It was a short jog, so much that they spent more time lining up to enter the city.
Spending more than half a day checking houses for rent, they had to take carriages on a crowded road since the Quest Hall personnel were bringing them around. He just got one that had enough rooms for all of them and none of them disagreed with staying together. It would mostly be used by Mark alone after some time.
Ebony was wondering how they were going to be allowed entry without five people but Scarlet didn¡¯t bring it up. Perhaps they had the right to enter with their grey colour quester crystal without what¡¯s considered a full party.
Mark had no chill and it didn¡¯t even take an hour for one of the unused rooms to be filled with notes. Ebony didn¡¯t disturb or join him for the time being. He cleaned the house while Scarlet was out for fresh ingredients mumbling to herself about what sauces she should start making to stock up on. He was thinking of joining her and maybe making some mayonnaise and ketchup since she would definitely have the required ingredients.
Imagining her smile as she tried new and tasty food was enough to improve his mood immensely. He removed every speck of dirt from every corner to make the house habitable for her.
Mark was deeply annoyed that Ebony moved his notes and the corpse when he was wiping the place down, even when he clearly placed them exactly where they were. A dozen or so palm-sized ice dolls were requested when he made a stop to clean this room. Thankfully, his control and conjuration were good enough that they were all almost exactly the same size, shape, weight and toughness. They were in star pose so that Mark wouldn¡¯t have trouble inscribing or carving in between the arms or legs.
He looked over the runic scholar¡¯s shoulders when he was carving into the ice dolls with a small but sharp handheld blade. The drawings that he had already done were very detailed. Like how deep they should be at each area or the angle. He compared it to the corpse. The inner layer was different from the two outer layers that he memorised.
Mark wouldn¡¯t succeed.
Not with what he had currently noted down. He only copied their surface layout and maybe with his rune-based skills figured out the mana flow required but the Cardinal Golem¡¯s makeup was a work of art. There were clearly overlapping runes within it that were seamlessly formed by a single route or flow. Although it was similar in that it was mostly multiple types of durability, toughness and resistance runes there was an addition of other unfamiliar runes. Most likely what increased its speed and power.
He tried his best to mentally imagine adding the two outer layers onto it. Although he couldn¡¯t be sure, he guessed that the layers would connect and the Cardinal Golem¡¯s mana or perhaps life force would flow through it. It didn¡¯t get weaker when it shed a layer and even got stronger after the next layer was stripped off.
¡®Maybe it''s due to the consumption of energy? Does it only activate one layer at the same time? Or is it not possible to activate all of them at the same time since there are multiple repeating symbols?¡¯ There are many possibilities that require some testing and experimentation to find out.
Although it was a good pastime and he doesn¡¯t mind spending his time doing research and study it really wasn¡¯t his priority at the moment. He did get stronger but the stagnation of staying a Journeyman was getting worse with time. He understood that he was already faster than most and that it was about accumulation which would pay off right after evolution but adding more objectives to his schedule would only divert his attention. This research may not even give results if it wasn¡¯t possible for the runes to affect the human body.
This short break was more for Scarlet, he was ready to get back any time. They rushed through without much hunting, he might not be interested in finding hidden rooms or treasure but if he bumped into one he¡¯ll take it. Icicle was made from something found in Ordina so it wasn¡¯t as if nothing of quality could be found.
At least, he can spend however long Scarlet wanted to stay in the city to conduct research with Mark as his assistant.
Sensing her return, he went to greet her at the door.
Chapter 124: Family Background
¡°Thanks for cleaning the kitchen!¡± Scarlet¡¯s first destination was the kitchen.
¡°You sound excited.¡± Ebony noticed the movement of his facial muscles.
¡°I have inspiration for a new dish. Will you taste it?¡± Somehow, even without being able to see under her mask, he was sure she was smiling at him.
¡°I¡¯ll eat anything you make for me.¡± Ebony imagined flowers blooming but it was just her pulling out box after box filled with foodstuffs vegetables, meats and more. The kitchen wasn¡¯t small but more than half the ground space was filled up and stacked up to his chest level. The tabletop was fully covered by smaller paper bags as well. There were huge bags of salt and smaller amounts of various spices.
¡®No wonder she had to do quests to fund her travels. It doesn¡¯t seem like she gets an allowance. Most of her mana ores are spent on food¡¡¯ He had passed her some Blues and whatever Greens he had on hand since he couldn¡¯t possibly make her pay for his portion as well. A Blue should¡¯ve been more than enough for months worth of food for two with change to spare. It shouldn''t have been possible to spend so much for two or three people.
Ebony helped to unpack new sets of wooden cutleries that were probably going to be left here even after they vacate the rented building. Placing her food storage and keeping cartons of fresh ingredients into the right type of storage.
¡°Don¡¯t keep those, those are for the sauces.¡± She didn¡¯t even point at a box but swept her finger through multiple boxes.
¡°And those for dinner.¡± She pointed at some of the smaller paper bags.
Fortunately, many of the boxes were filled with fruits that she was planning to do a whole array of stuff. From sauces to jams she could store to increase the flavours and dish variety when they were out in the field. She only got meat because dungeon monsters shouldn¡¯t be eaten otherwise she would¡¯ve preferred fresh meat from hunts and only have some as a backup. It was harder to find wild vegetables depending on the environment so she always had a huge stock.
The average preservation storage wouldn¡¯t be able to keep them good for long but it was not something she would have to worry about.
¡°I called sister Jing, she¡¯ll be coming over to deliver more preserve boxes of every type when she¡¯s free.¡± Scarlet informed him. Ebony would have to agree that there was no such thing as having too much food stocked up after almost starving to death.
It was just perfect since he could ask her what she wanted at the same time.
After sorting out all the proper storing, he helped by conjuring another table for her to fill up with bowls where she measured different amounts of the same ingredients. He was also her mixer because all he was doing for the next hour was mixing ingredients in bowls.
The next hour was questionable bliss.
¡°Ahh¡± Scarlet held a spoonful of a reddish sauce to his mouth without thought. She got so into her experiments that she wasn¡¯t as shy or bashful as usual. It was an incredible experience the first few times with her being a little awkward with feeding him but she already had experience feeding him when he was injured so she didn¡¯t mess up.
The problem was getting stuffed with the same sauce, each with slightly different amounts of different spices or ingredients and being asked which was better. There were many other sauces that were going to take days or weeks or so she said. According to her, he was going to have to test the soy sauce equivalent and another 3 to 4 types of unfamiliar sauces that she was already using in her cooking.
¡°How many variations of the same sauce are you making? Some of these taste almost the same.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe two or three hundred a day. I didn¡¯t change the amounts much so they taste very similar.¡±
She was a perfectionist when it came to taste buds.
¡®I¡¯m going to taste two to three hundred of almost the exact same sauce over the next few days¡¡¯ Ebony then remembered she was making more than one type of sauce and then looking over at the many boxes of fruits for jams. He wished for the best for his taste buds and stomach, even if tasting required a small amount eating that many variations was definitely unhealthy.
It was the first time he saw her writing, it was her personal cooking notes. Each book is labelled by the sauce or jam name. She placed them on a clean table at the side of the kitchen and didn¡¯t really touch them much, only recording some numbers down after each tasting test. She didn¡¯t want to dirty her hand so it was mostly memory work before writing everything down in one sitting.
She didn¡¯t make hundreds today since it was time for her to prepare dinner.
Ebony didn¡¯t care to spoil their alone time and just plated Mark¡¯s portion and said he would call him after they ate together. Under the premise that he was busy with his research. The man was probably too engrossed anyway. He had the body of a Master and not sleeping or eating for a day or two wouldn¡¯t harm him in any way.
¡®The portion size is the same.¡¯ Ebony still ate as if they were fighting day in and day out in the dungeon without complaints. Maybe it was just a feast to celebrate clearing Ordina.
¡°Scarlet, let¡¯s go for a walk after I get Mark down for dinner,¡± Ebony said after they finished eating.
¡°...¡± She didn¡¯t reply and looked like she was about to pout. He could see since she hadn''t hidden her mouth.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°I¡cou¡you..¡± She stuttered multiple times as if she couldn¡¯t form the right words.
Ebony waited patiently.
¡°I would like it if you called me Ning Xin¡¡± Scarlet gathered her courage and looked back into his eyes.
¡°Hmm? Is that your chi..Xeng name?¡± Although he already heard Kong Jing call her little Xin, it was the first he heard of it from her.
¡°My name is Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin. I''m a half, my father¡¯s last name is Rhael and my mother is part of the Ning family.¡±
¡°Bridal battle?¡±
¡°Uh..mmm. Grandma told me they only came to a draw many times but after about a hundred thousand draws and a thousand proposals, my mother caved since she already liked father after a few fights. She just didn¡¯t care about losing to him to marry him¡¡± Scarlet¡¯s voice turned really soft and she got fidgety.
¡°Hundred thousand, a million or ten million, I will defeat you and ask for your hand.¡± They have a long life ahead of them. He was in no rush. Their custom suited his thoughts, how can he protect her if she¡¯s stronger than him.
He thought of this proposal for a while now. ¡®Asking for your hand¡¯ adds another layer of depth to them and he was quite proud of coming up with it. Although they didn¡¯t really word out and define their relationship, he kinda felt like they were practically dating. He could be wrong but he had every intention to marry her despite the short period of time they have spent with each other. There was still much to learn about each other in this period of time where he was weaker than her.
She was clearly stunned but she didn¡¯t only feel happy about it. The silence was deafening and Ebony couldn¡¯t help but get nervous, it was pretty foreign to him that his heart was racing.
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¡°I won¡¯t lose to you.¡± Scarlet ultimately smiled and stared back defiantly. She didn¡¯t want to say these words at first since she didn¡¯t want to reject him but there was no way she was going to back down. He couldn¡¯t hope for better words. The confidence and passion in those burning eyes of hers must be what made him unable to look away from her since the day they met.
¡°So, Ning Xin?¡± ¡®Sounds distant.¡±
¡°Little Xin¡¡± ¡®We¡¯re about the same age right? She¡¯s not exactly little in any way either¡¡¯
¡°Ah Xin?¡±
¡°Xin?¡±
She was silent ever since called her out.
¡°Stop! Just Ning Xin or Xin is fine, the others are too embarrassing!¡±
¡°...Okay.¡±
¡°How about you? What¡¯s your full name? You¡¯re half too right?¡±
Ebony cocked his head. She probably drew conclusions from their similarities in childhood.
Then he felt as if a spike stabbed his head and subconsciously held his head.
¡®What was that? A headache?¡¯
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°...Nothing. I think¡I had one but, I forgot what it was. I¡¯m just Ebony Rime.¡±
¡°Hmm¡¡± Scarlet pondered hard for some reason.
¡°What are you thinking?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t think much of it before but ¡®Rime¡¯ sounds familiar. Maybe grandma would know more.¡± She wiped her oily lips off.
Ebony already knocked on Mark''s study room door with one of the ice sculptures in the house and transmitted his voice telling him dinner was in the kitchen.
They continued chatting as they washed up the numerous dishes used.
¡°How does the Xeng society differ from the imperial one?¡± Ebony was pretty curious.
¡°Weird question. We¡¯re not that much different. Like the imperial noble lineages, children tend to be more talented at what their parent¡¯s Classes were. I didn¡¯t get the chance to learn under their teachings for long, so my skills aren¡¯t as refined as the others. I do have my mother¡¯s tier 6 Conditioning training regime but other than being a Journeyman whose body isn¡¯t strong enough to do that training, my sword style is now probably slightly different from hers so I only used it as a reference for me to make my own training regime.¡± She wiped the wet dishes that he passed to her after washing.
¡°...Tier 6?¡± Ebony blinked twice at the casual show-off.
¡°Yeah, she was a Sword Empress when she gave birth to me. My father was a Grand Arch Infernal Blood Mage but I didn¡¯t show much aptitude for blood magic when I was younger as compared to fire magic so he got me to focus on fire magic since I didn¡¯t have much mana.¡± Scarlet added on.
¡°I thought there weren¡¯t any or many Emperor Class people.¡± Ebony knew for a fact that the current King and even Emperor was publicly known to be King Class and they were supposed to be the strongest few people known. They got dressed and left the house without checking whether Mark came to eat or not.
¡°Oh, my father wasn¡¯t from Elcra. My mother left Elcra after reaching Grandmaster Class, returning to the main family that the Nings are based on. Elcra is one of the fastest growing worlds but it¡¯s still young and there¡¯s just so many better options for faster growth.¡± She continued dropping bomb after bomb of information that needed time to digest. Both of them were fully equipped with their weapons.
¡°Do the Xengs have universal reach?¡± He didn¡¯t have to slow down his steps on purpose since she walked fast too.
¡°We¡¯re a small faction but pretty much all the important figures know about us.¡± They didn¡¯t set a destination but both were subconsciously heading to the Quest Hall.
¡°Is there any particular family that uses the spear?¡± Ebony tried poking around. His parents are most definitely not normal people and there was a high chance they were here and his mother had too many similarities to the Xeng.
¡°Spears are common weapons, many families use them.¡± Ning Xin walked with her hands behind her back.
They were in a private duelling ground under the Quest Hall before they knew it.
Not going about it too seriously since it was just an after-dinner exercise.
¡°I have to ask. Tier 6 Conditioning, if we follow the trend 0.01%, 0.025%, 0.05%, 0.10%, 0.25% and finally 0.5%...does it really passively increase stat by 0.5% each level?¡± Ebony swung hard to push the feather light twin blades to do a flip to counter its momentum.
¡°Mmhmm. Now you know why we need to train and condition according to our own Class. At an Emperor¡¯s level of 750 for example, they would have a 375% higher base stat passively if they maxed their Conditioning. Oh yes, Conditioning is one of the few types of skills that can drop in level if you don¡¯t train for long enough.¡± Scarlet used the relaxing tempo to acclimate her ability with blood magic, her blood halo whipped out at the same time she was pushed away to keep him busy.
Ebony already knew about Conditioning skills being able to lose levels but hearing the truth about how much of an advantage one would have with a high tier Conditioning was just cementing on why one should train hard. How the hell would anyone who didn¡¯t have a good Conditioning skill going to match someone with one?
He also experimented with his gravity magic, pulling his blade towards her or a certain part of her body to him. It was not possible for him to cast Chaotic Repulsive Membrane on her so he wasn¡¯t able to increase her defences from a distance. It was like how it was incredibly hard to control water, air, bone etc of another person. Pulling Icicle towards her was easier but the membrane on it also works to repel his gravity manipulation over it. He still hasn¡¯t been able to make the chaotic flow orderly, it might have been easier to pull his blade towards the target if he could improve the membrane.
It wasn¡¯t hard to get around since he had already gotten very good and fast at turning the spell on and off on his greatsword alone.
Her blood whip wasn¡¯t able to get past his membrane but the heat in them was easily transmitted. His shields would not get out unharmed if he used it to block the boiling blood.
¡°Why do you keep it as a halo above your head?¡± She got heated up and started putting pressure on him. He would usually use his shields, footwork and prediction to keep up but decided against it since his swordsmanship needed work.
¡°It¡¯s easier to manipulate. When I was in that blood realm I had to be on the lookout for spiders dropping down all the time so it was more convenient that I had some blood above my head.¡± Ning Xin stopped her swords short after almost touching his robe dozens of times a second.
¡°Wouldn¡¯t fire be more mana efficient for you?¡± The bulky and heavy Icicle made things difficult for him against two thin and fast swords.
¡°It was a good chance to train blood magic and the blood mana there was so dense it was not that draining on my mana pool. Since I can¡¯t conjure blood mana yet, I didn¡¯t see a reason not to use the chance to improve my manipulation.¡± She tried to fight off one of his shields turned sculpture with her blood whip.
¡°I think it¡¯s much more effective in a disk or halo form.¡± Ebony commented after his sculpture splattered the blood whip for the tenth time.
¡°I feel so too, it¡¯s easy to control. I¡¯m just trying all sorts of things out. My turn to ask questions.¡± It seems like she was just improving her manipulation.
¡°Mmm, go ahead.¡± Using the flat body of his greatsword was the easiest way to block and then find a chance to counter after a lag in offence. It was just too bad there was no such thing as a lag in her offence. One sword flowed after the other and covered the gaps in attacks and she only ever got faster and stronger instead of getting less aggressive.
¡°Why sword? You¡¯re clearly far better at hand to hand combat.¡± She asked the question she had for the longest time. He could clearly hold his own against Hector without his weapon.
¡°...When I just arrived, I didn¡¯t have any weapons and the first monster I faced was a huge boar and then being chased by a wolf pup. After that, I saw massive turtles. Coincidentally, the first weapon I got my hands on was a huge frozen leaf. I got the greatsword mastery and seeing how monsters tend to be huge I didn¡¯t exactly imagine punching them to death like Hector. Don¡¯t laugh¡I just thought it would be cool and since I had the mastery skill there was no reason not to improve on it. I didn¡¯t want to give it up after picking it up.¡± Of course, another reason was that the weapon stuck in Ful appeared to be a sword grip and he thought he could one day use it if he managed to pluck it out. Seeing that, he saw no reason not to learn to use a sword.
The final and most important reason didn''t escape his lips.
¡°Where are you from? I was born on Elcra and since my mother was not really welcomed in the Ning family after marrying my father, an outsider, without losing to him I have never been out of Elcra either.¡±
¡°I¡¯m from somewhere called Earth. I think.¡±
¡°You think? I never heard of a world called Earth. Is it somewhere with thick earth mana?¡±
¡°I¡¯m doubting it more and more, I have always thought my parents were normal people. They made me think I was normal too. By normal, I meant I didn¡¯t know about magic, skills, classes and what not. So no, I don¡¯t know whether it had thick earth mana.¡± Ebony was knocked back when he clashed with both her swords as she got enough power to push him.
She was visibly confused by his words but it wasn¡¯t enough to break the flow of their relaxing night spar to digest the dinner they had.
Chapter 125: Sealed Memories
¡°So one day you just blinked and found yourself in Hoarfrost Glade?¡±
¡°Pretty much. Do you believe me?¡±
¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I?¡±
Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin was clearly copying his habits in speech and actions as she tilted her head to the side cutely.
Ebony had essentially told her the summary of his entire life.
It was not a surprise to her when he said he had been a quiet child.
It was a mega surprise to her that he had never used magic or mana until he suddenly appeared here.
First of all, according to him he was less than 2 years old and was already made to meditate. That was downright nonsensical and almost the most unbelievable thing he said. The most unbelievable part was actually being able to meditate and even at all times after just a few years. She still couldn¡¯t do it well¡
He was made to believe that was normal hence, everything ''normal'' to him clearly wasn''t normal.
Next was that he never really learnt how to fight. Just beaten, thrown into the wild and had sparring partners found to fight him. He reiterated being beaten was a skill and why he was so good at evading despite being slower was just a pure reflex of getting beaten too much. Other than body conditioning exercises, he wasn¡¯t taught any style. Although he did try weapons since he wasn¡¯t prohibited from using them but other than the general proficiency with various weapons he never got far with them. For some reason, he was shy about talking about swinging a sword.
He then went to an academy called an elementary school?
No one talked to him and he didn¡¯t talk to anyone either. The adults kinda ignored him as much as possible. He was exempted from ¡®sports¡¯ or exercises because the adults were told he had a weak physique unsuited to play with the other kids. Always being covered in bandages brought about many concerns and people went over to his house to check on him and his parents.
He would train after school and study at night along with some kind of competition against something called a ¡®computer¡¯. He never found it weird since that was how he was brought up.
Then he went to another school after a few years. He was older, old enough to know that he was different from others. He didn¡¯t have bandages wrapping him up and was allowed to play sports or other physical activities. That¡¯s when it was obvious that his physical ability was higher than anyone his age. He was just better at controlling it after ageing a little. Some other kids still accidentally bumped into him while playing ball and they got injured, fortunately only a light fall.
The kids didn¡¯t like his attitude even when he apologised when it wasn¡¯t exactly him who bumped into them. He had the same dead expression after all though, he didn''t seem to understand the reason. The injured kids and their cliques ostracised him but that was nothing new. Apparently, his no-care attitude made them push their luck and they started playing pranks on him.
Although he said they started to ¡®bump¡¯ into him more and more often accidentally, she didn¡¯t even need to be there to know it was no accident. It was quite cute that he still really believed those were accidents. The ¡®accidents¡¯ slowly stopped because more and more casualties were appearing in his class after they bumped into him without him realising.
He was caught up in a lot of meetings with those kids'' parents with the adult in charge of physical education. He said all the parents were nice and understanding after his father came and replied to all their complaints with an ¡°mmm¡± so that must be where he got it from. When he explained that he had worded it out himself to notice how weird it was that the other kids'' parents went from anger to compliance in a blink of an eye.
Other than an occasional skipping of school to be thrown into different environmental wilds, he didn¡¯t really feel anything out of place. According to him, the number of days in a year and hours in a day was different too but that was no surprise if he was from some other world. The universal standard was different from Elcra as well.
Then he went to another school after a couple more years. There were kids bigger and stronger than him and he finally believed his parents saying he was physically average. His mother just taught him how to exert more speed and power. His parents argued about who was helping him more, whether it was his mental training or physical one that allowed him to show much more strength than his physical body suggests.
At this point, he already knew it was weird that his broken bones heal without lasting injuries. Medical technology supposedly wasn¡¯t good enough to do that and they didn¡¯t have healing magic.
There were outgoing people who tried to chat and get close to him and he was able to make a few friends. It was also the period of time most people found trouble with him. He didn¡¯t understand why there would be groups of schoolmates asking him not to be so arrogant when he didn¡¯t know them or sometimes the person they told him not to get close to. Hearing the names, Scarlet could guess they were girls and the guys didn¡¯t want Ebony to get close to them.
¡®Of course he¡¯ll attract ¡®flies¡¯,¡¯ she thought.
Apparently, fighting was a no go but self defence was okay so he made sure they were really attacking him.
¡°None of them really wanted to hurt me, they only swung their limbs around awkwardly. It would be rude to walk off so I usually played along by evading until they were tired out and left after telling me they¡¯ll come again. More and more people came to play with me, it was quite fun compared to being ignored.¡± She couldn¡¯t help but laugh when he said that.
She couldn¡¯t tell which was funnier, the fact that he believed they were trying to play with him, they were really trying to beat him up but couldn¡¯t even touch him, that he even stayed to dodge until they were too tired or that he thought they brought more people to play with him. She could sympathise since she didn¡¯t have kids to train or play with too but she had Kong Jing who was practically her sister.
He suddenly turned silent when he talked about this period of time and held his head again. She was a little worried, it appeared to her that there were problems with his memories and only certain parts. Like how he couldn¡¯t remember if he had a Xeng name.
¡°...From time to time, there would be strong martial artists visiting and I would spar with them. Some used weapons, some didn¡¯t. Usually someone around my age or older, I won most of the time.¡± They already stopped their light spar at this time and were getting ready to leave the scarred duelling grounds.
¡°There was one¡two fights I lost. A bald monk-like guy or maybe it was a nun, I couldn¡¯t tell. It was weird that his or her wooden staff seemed to strike me from another direction than its swing. His or her staff broke after hitting me enough and gave up but he or she was the only one I couldn¡¯t actually beat.¡± Ebony looked at her with slightly widened eyes. Time seemed to pause as they remained still as he stared into her eyes. Then he smiled like she¡¯d never seen before.
¡°Not only, I guess. This confirms it.¡±
¡°What confirms what?¡±
¡°My memory has gaps I didn¡¯t know. The other person I lost to wore this.¡± Ebony moved even closer than he already was and tapped her mask twice with his index finger.
¡°Xeng? What did his mask look like?¡±
¡°Can¡¯t recall. My memory is foggy about his mask.¡±
And then he turned 15 which in Elcra''s years wasn¡¯t really 15 and undertook the ¡®Trial¡¯ which they already talked about. His parents disappeared as if they left on a trip like usual but they never showed up in front of him again. He just continued his daily life as if nothing much changed but the biggest difference would be that he wasn¡¯t beaten up on a daily basis anymore.
He took care of himself but when he ¡®graduated¡¯ he was a little lost since he had no direction in life. Not knowing what to do he randomly picked another school to go to because that was the only natural thing he thought he should be doing. She wondered what he needed to study when the world was magicless, he said it was some kind of crafting or ¡®engineering¡¯ of the body.
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The days of this school went pretty much the same as his previous schools except no one really picked a fight anymore. He had a close friend or two but he didn¡¯t say much about them. Then he finished this school too and was looking for jobs when he suddenly appeared in Elcra.
???
¡®Missing parts of my memories? Interesting.¡¯ Ebony was very interested. He didn¡¯t expect to get another spike of pain in his head and remember some stuff.
¡®What cheeky parents I have, they think I¡¯m some kind of robot?¡¯ He was referring to how he didn¡¯t just have one or two pieces of memory missing. He actually remembered many more ¡®spars¡¯ he had. These opponents he didn¡¯t remember used magic. He had no memory of any of these magic wielding opponents.
That was to say his parents regularly erased, no, sealed his memory after every one of those fights where his opponents used magic. Normally, one would have many things to want to say to the people who treat them like that but Ebony wasn¡¯t the type to question what he couldn¡¯t change.
He was most curious about the Xeng he lost to. The only thing he still couldn¡¯t recall should be his mask. He remembered it was a man who wielded a single longsword, more like a katana than Sca¡Ning Xin¡¯s longsword. He needed to get used to the way of address.
The Xeng he lost to had the best control over magic compared to any other of his opponents, practically another limb to him unlike most awkward young mages. He used earth magic if Ebony remembered correctly.
Ebony was pretty sure no one had a Class though, most had similar physical and magical capabilities of regular humans. Well, maybe the mages had a Class and some levels since they were slinging more spells around than an unclassed human should be able to.
¡®Ooh, the after battle incense wasn¡¯t to ¡®relax the mind and speed up body recovery¡¯ it was making me lose my memories of at least a couple of hours during my sleep.''
The location of his spars and the wilds he was thrown into was weird too. He was always brought around in a car with pitch black windows or he would just wake up in the wild after sleeping in his bed the night before.
Ebony kinda knew why he never felt much out of place. His personality has just never changed much. He probably didn¡¯t care where he was, who he was sparring against, what they could do or even if the previous day felt shorter. He usually just thought ¡®time sure passes fast while meditating¡¯ which probably made things simple for his parents.
They returned to see untouched plates, Ning Xin was about to storm up in anger for letting her food get cold.
¡°I¡¯ll get him for you, you can use the bath first.¡± Ebony distracted her. There was only one bath in the house and they had to take turns after all.
He joined Mark in his study again since she was going to take some time. Through whatever means he had, there were more drawings splayed around. Somehow or the other, Mark was able to derive the runes under the surface layer bit by bit even though he wasn¡¯t able to see inside it and he didn¡¯t break it apart to check it either. He was sure since he could sense in real time with his perception of ice mana.
Since it was a team effort, he shouldn¡¯t withhold so much information from him to speed things up. Although he might be using some of his skills which may gain experience through trial and error Ebony was sure he wasn¡¯t going to mind. There were multiple copies of the same thing so he just took one and either drew or wrote notes according to his senses on what was different.
Mark saw the changes he made after he wrote on one and passed him more. He had split it into areas like the head, arms, legs, chest and belly. It was hard to draw in 3D and Ebony wasn¡¯t much of an artist, he gave up after the first one he passed to mark and used ice control to conjure just the ¡®veins¡¯ of the golem for them to visualise.
Mark cursed once but was too busy being entranced rather than blaming him for wasting his time. He wasn¡¯t really angry since he didn¡¯t think there was such a thing as wasted time studying runes.
Then Ebony conjured a doll with the runic veins in it and one without. Pumping a trail of his mana into it to attempt to activate the runes. He gave it a constant flow of 1 mana per second and let both of the dolls punch each other as hard as they could.
He already knew it wouldn¡¯t work even before their punches landed on each other. It wasn¡¯t because there was no glow since the glow could have been from the topaz portion, the high intensity of mana it used or just the golem¡¯s anatomy to show that it was alive. Runic symbols don¡¯t necessarily glow because they are activated and couldn¡¯t be used as an indicator that it was working.
Ebony knew it wasn''t working because he could feel his mana just flow through the pathways without being ¡®expended¡¯ or ¡®absorbed¡¯. There was no need for a constant flow since it wasn¡¯t being consumed at all.
The excess mana that didn¡¯t enter the doll slowly dissipated into the surroundings as Ebony fought over control with the surroundings. It was a standard exercise to strengthen control over one¡¯s own mana and not allow the world to absorb it. He was pretty good with it according to the Frost Elves, the types of skills he had helped. Both Frost Mist and his sound magic which required him to mentally hold onto his mana that was far away from him without it dissipating.
Even if he let mental hold over his mana go for over a minute, he would still be able to drag it back into his control as they wouldn¡¯t start dissipating immediately now. As if the world knew the mana didn¡¯t belong to it. It was different in different areas and in dungeons as well.
Since there was no consumption of his mana it was obvious nothing was activated.
¡°It didn¡¯t work. My mana isn¡¯t consumed.¡±
¡°Have you tried the outer layer runes?¡±
Instead of replying, he just converted the runes on the runic doll and tried out the same thing. It failed again and he tried it with the full runic structure combined only to fail to activate again.
¡°This centre part near its belly, I don¡¯t recognise it.¡± Ebony made the runic veins without the doll again and pointed.
¡°...Me neither.¡±
¡°Do you think it''s an element specific rune? Maybe it¡¯s specified for ¡®frost-topaz¡¯ mana.¡± Ebony made an educated guess.
¡°Highly possible. It¡¯s the core and where the runic ends converge, the power source.¡±
¡°Do you know any three dimensional elementless power source rune that can take its place?¡±
¡°...What do you think I am? This is the first I¡¯ve seen runes that work in a humanoid shape monster too. It much more complex than the inscription or engraving that I''m used to. I had the chance to see some runic works that have their very internals moulded to include runes but I haven¡¯t had the chance to break them down to study them nor are they humanoid-shaped. Although elementless is the most common, I doubt the runic internals of a weapon is all that similar to an inscription. It''s not even a language I''m familiar with.¡±
¡°Oh yes, we¡¯re dumb.¡± Ebony realised late but not later than the runic mage.
¡°What?¡±
¡°You collected the earthen-topaz golem¡¯s topaz parts. They might be able to power the runes up. I can produce ice mana if it needs it. If the earthen mana inside affects it I guess we need to find some way to extract that out.¡±
¡°That. Totally slipped my mind. I¡¯ll go get them.¡± Mark facepalmed and ran off to his room just across the hall. Beside his room was Ebony¡¯s and across his or beside the study was their resident chef''s.
¡°Eat dinner first, I¡¯ll be washing up. You should wash up too, you stink.¡± Ebony said. He was pretty sure Mark would listen this time since he needed Ebony for the experiments. He hadn¡¯t cleaned himself up even after leaving Ordina
Mark walked down just in time as the angry chef came from the bath on the first floor after he walked into the kitchen where the food was. Ebony went down for his turn but she stood in his way. She was in her one piece dress pyjamas and her hair was not dried properly. They already established the no boots policy to Mark which he really didn¡¯t care much for, he already knew it was Xeng culture, he was really casual in his own workshop as well so it was not an issue for him.
¡°Don¡¯t walk around like that.¡± Ebony said what came to mind as usual.
¡°Like what?¡± Busy blocking the door, she was confused by the statement.
¡°...Wearing so little. I made some clothes for you some time back. You can have them if you¡¯d like, they¡¯re mostly normal clothing to wear casually and not for battle though. I did make sportswear too and tried to make mould durability and heat resistant runes so maybe you would find it comfortable to exercise in.¡± They were work in progress and he hadn''t made anything he thought was perfect enough for her but the words came out before his mind could process what he just said.
¡°Oh¡okay.¡± She drove her feet into the almost polished wooden floorboards shyly.
¡°Can I go in now?¡±
¡°Wait!¡±
She ran back in and shut the door, staying in there for another 5 minutes.
¡°What were you doing?¡± He had to ask since she appeared no different with her hair still moist.
¡°Ge¡getting rid of the smell. I sweat a lot¡¡± There was a vent or opening that led outside on the wall near the ceiling.
¡°Aw. You always smell good. Your sweat included.¡± Both of them blinked twice or thrice at Ebony¡¯s words.
¡®That came out weird.¡¯
¡°Pervert!¡±
Instead of a slap or a punch, it was as if her hands were holding her sword poised for a thrust. He was not on guard against her and without any enhancement since he wasn¡¯t wearing his robe and was training Reinforced Mana Chassis he was a lot slower and weaker than her.
¡°Ow!¡± She was still the one that cried out in pain as she put pressure on her wrist in an awkward position. Despite her higher base strength, her arm thrust motion was part reflex and Ebony¡¯s Constitution was off the charts for a Journeyman. With a fully compressed mana pool that was topped off, he had way higher Constitution than even Wisdom.
¡°I¡¯m sorry! Are you okay?¡± Her hands dodged his when he moved to hold them.
Ouch.
¡°Perv.¡± She already slammed the door of her room as it echoed out softly.
¡®Inconvenient culture¡¡¯
Chapter 126: Experimental Success
¡°Do you know the corresponding runic extraction for the topaz element? Because I¡¯m certainly unaware of how the runes to extract topaz mana to power the veins look like. If you don¡¯t, we¡¯ll have to carry out extraction theory experiments.¡± Ebony asked.
Although he learned most of the basic and even some of the more uncommon elemental runic equivalents, topaz magic or mana was one of the many that were not in Kong Jing¡¯s repository. It was unknown who first created runes but one of the first steps and basics was how to extract mana from their raw forms with runes. It was revolutionary to even work with mana ores already but the runes did not manage to extract other elemental mana.
The researchers and scholars of the past have deep study in the area and some simple trial and error experiments with an ever-increasing list of symbols that probe into the raw energy source and check for their reactions.
Seeing the freshened up runic scholar shake his head, they got to work. He watched the runic scholar bring out his tools and equipment, a little surprised he was bringing around so much stuff that wasn¡¯t exactly useful for a dungeon dive. The man didn¡¯t have a lot of bag storage after all.
¡°I don¡¯t have another spare set.¡± He said.
In response, Ebony took one of the topaz shards and placed it on a rectangular block of ice that was slowly being ¡®engraved¡¯.
¡°Damn. That works?¡±
¡°We¡¯re only testing for a response, even a piece of paper would work.¡±
¡°Piece of paper?¡±
Hearing no reply, they both got to work.
Firstly, he wanted to see the runic scholar at work.
It was vastly different from his own experience with Kong Jing¡¯s occasional tips and teachings. Mark looked like a scientist at work in a lab. The box shaped object with a glass or see-through crystal cover had replaceable slabs of a stone-looking base with engraved extraction runes. He had five of them, one for pure mana ores, the other four were the basic, fire, water, earth and wind ones. Chances are, there would be some kind of reaction from the pure mana and earth mana ones. Then, they had to go into detail and change some of the hundreds of tiny symbols within it.
Then he had many other thinner slabs that appeared to Ebony that he would stack them and the runes would connect. That was handy. Everything was pre-engraved and Mark had had to place a topaz shard inside and activate the box by letting mana run through it. Through trial and error, he would be able to sift out the non-reactive ones and hence form the full topaz mana extraction rune.
At least that was what the theory he learnt told him as it was his first time conducting this experiment. What he was seeing was very different from what he knew.
The engraved runes on the replaceable slabs were too simple. Instead of the hundreds of minor lines and curves that were supposed to pull mana in all sorts of ways, there were barely dozens. One reason is obviously the multiple layers of slabs that would overlap and connect when aligned properly but even so, there was a large bulk missing. The bulk of the missing ones were the ones for safety.
He didn¡¯t bother the runic scholar and continued watching. Sure enough, dozens of slabs were put aside really quickly but the reaction got more and more violent. Three of his replaceable slabs broke, one was shattered against the glass cover while the other two got ¡®consumed¡¯. The latest one exploded but was contained within the box.
¡®Sister Jing is surprisingly concerned about safety.¡¯ Ebony saw enough and got to work too. To be fair, at her level, the material or energy sources she worked with would be way stronger and an explosive reaction would not bode well.
Using what he read from her books, even if there was supposed to have an explosive or violent reaction, there would be layers upon layers of reverse or redundant runes that would ¡®cushion¡¯ or have the energy source/elemental mana be pushed back on themselves. The simplest ones would flood out the foreign mana/energy source with loads of mana either pure or one¡¯s own mana diluting it to have no violent reactions.
Mark was probably hundreds of times more efficient than him because he was slowly getting good results. Ebony had to mould the runic ice plate which took him quite some time for each version. Although that was the case, he was definitely closing in onto the right ones faster due to how effective the version he learnt was. The annoying part was probably how the topaz mana would eat up his ice mana, effectively destroying his runes that were acting as a pathway for the topaz mana.
He shared his findings to help Mark rule out many of his tries and they managed to get a working extraction that didn¡¯t harm the engraved material with any sort of leakages after 3 hours. Ebony saw no reason not to at least teach Mark the mana flooding runes for him to be safe. It would be costly for him if he was huge on experimenting but Ebony thought it would be a pity if Mark one day got killed by his own experiments and research. One layer of safety was better than nothing.
He was about to conjure another ice sculpture that was fully moulded but came upon another problem which was to integrate the extraction rune with an already complete 3-dimensional humanoid runic body.
A sculpture formed with its chest split open for Mark¡¯s expertise.
¡°There¡¯s free space but the configuration of the extraction rune would clash in dozens of places.¡± Ebony pointed out. He was very good at mentally visualising where the runes would go if he were to mould them in. Since it was just clear transparent ice, Mark had a hard time ¡®seeing¡¯ the runic veins. The colour of ice would only be blue when he compressed his mana. Mark ran his mana through the veins, Ebony wondered if there was a skill at work.
The chest was where the core was and where the power source was supposed to be since it connected to the entire runic ¡®circle¡¯. They had to use this topaz shard as a substitute rather than purely supply it with topaz mana. The Cardinal Golem''s core was completely broken in the battle and nothing was left for them.
¡°No problem, it''s just a simple rearrangement of the extraction rune. Mine was engraved, we have quite a bit of leeway and I think I can rearrange them to work in this model. I just need time.¡±
Knocks came from the door.
¡°Breakfast.¡± Their resident chef announced.
¡°I won¡¯t interrupt, just bring me a bite after you¡¯re done. I¡¯ll probably work faster on this anyway, seeing how you¡¯re unfamiliar with rearrangement or translation as I call it.¡±
¡°Thanks.¡±
Ning Xin sat there in a casual white long sleeved shirt and beige pants with her hair still tied up in a bun as she had been cooking. It was not the first time he saw her in those clothes but it was still fresh to see her in a different colour than bright red. The contrast of red and white together with her white mask with the red feather matched perfectly.
The first set of clothing he showed her were the shorts and tee-shirt made for workouts and she didn¡¯t want to look at anything else he made after that. Unwilling to even look at the many clothes he made and she was just wearing her own. He thought it was a good choice since they trained a lot but it had been the worst choice, the shorts were so short her temper didn¡¯t seem as short anymore. ¡°How is that not revealing!?¡± She screamed as she stormed back to the kitchen when she first saw it.
¡°That¡¯s another extravagant breakfast.¡± There was a widespread with the majority of the plates covered in meats and proteins.
¡°Hmm? Oh, uh¡morning training together was more intense than usual and uh we still have another round of training later in the evening.¡±
¡°Mmm. Thank you for making breakfast, let¡¯s eat.¡± He went straight for a juicy sausage.
¡°Let¡¯s eat!¡± She didn¡¯t hesitate to dig in.
¡°So you¡¯ll be holing up in the kitchen today?¡±
¡°Yes, I save a portion of every sample for you to test.¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll savour every bite.¡±
¡®Hypertension and diabetes¡Constitution can save me right?¡¯ He recalled all the sauces and jams that he¡¯ll have to taste test.
¡°You¡¯re thinking something weird aren¡¯t you?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what you mean.¡±
¡°Hmm?¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t call out that she could somewhat tell what he was feeling. Although she didn¡¯t know what he was thinking exactly, she was too busy savouring every bite of her meal.
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It was an uneventful day. He returned to observe Mark at work, they didn¡¯t have much headway. It would likely take a few days to get a working 3 dimensional model of the topaz mana extraction runes. He had little to zero contribution as Mark was going too fast, making almost incomprehensible changes to the original rune. Mark said he was only following the standardised steps to break down and translate them.
Ebony learned a lot of practical rune applications from him. It was fundamentally different from what he read and learned from Kong Jing¡¯s library. Chances are, the base techniques that the Xengs or Kong Jing herself used were quite different from others. Although the reason he was so clueless was that all he had been doing was applying what he learnt and not research and development.
One day later, he found out he was weaker than he thought when he faced a great opponent again. The spread of food in front of him. He contemplated for a bit before deciding to act sooner rather than later.
The devourer was perceptive, he was going to have to use that against her. As they were washing the dishes, he would pull his gaze to her belly over and over again, looking away whenever she turned to him.
¡°Wh-what are you looking at?¡± The predator was alarmed and went alert with the wet soapy three-prong claws.
He wiped his hands dry and prepared to make his move.
¡°It¡¯s nothing, I just can¡¯t help but think how soft your belly is now that it¡¯s getting rounder.¡± He put his palms on her unguarded belly now that she was raising her claws up. Quickly pulling back before she slaps him away.
The feelings on his fingertips were a tinge of softness that was clearly hiding tight abdominal muscles. His attention couldn¡¯t help but go to his fingertips. He could still feel the warmth and softness.
¡°Round..er?¡± Instead of a counter, the attack seemed to have induced a stun.
¡®Was that too direct?¡¯
¡°Looks like a nice pillow¡¡± He tried to soften the blow but it seemed to have no effect as she was no longer reacting to his words.
¡°Let¡¯s go to the duelling grounds an hour early today.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°Sister Jing is delayed by something and I can¡¯t contact her. If she doesn¡¯t call back in a week shall we go back to Ordina?¡±
¡°Mmm. How far along are you with your skills?¡±
¡°...After this dive, I¡¯ll evolve.¡±
¡°We. We¡¯ll evolve.¡±
???
10 unmoving figures stood under the Quest Hall together with them.
¡°The most accurate way to dish out similar strength attacks would be spell scrolls unless one¡¯s control over their strength is highly trained. Let¡¯s just use a multitude of low-strength attacks to check them out.¡± The panda-eyed runic scholar was trying his best to hold his excitement down while looking at five of the figures that were glowing yellow.
The other five were conjured as a control.
They managed to make an external on and off switch to save on the limited topaz fragments they had. Replicating success wasn¡¯t enough as they made these five draw a different output from the fragments. They had to test its limits and effects.
He wasn¡¯t sure how the runic scholar quantified it when neither of them could ¡®Identify¡¯ how much mana was left in a shard of topaz. Yet, he was able to set it such that the sculptures would consume 150, 200, 250, 300 and 350 mana per minute. It would have little to no effect when less than 150 topaz mana was supplied. Fortunately, they had some larger fragments that could at least sustain their experiments.
Ebony could tell that Mark had already begun on his study to find out how to change it such that it didn¡¯t require topaz mana but that was a way bigger project.
Mark took a thick book out labelled ¡®earth¡¯. Standing 10 metres away and flipping to a specific page before pointing it towards one of the uncompressed ice sculptures. A shard of earth shot at its chest and made a deep indentation, halfway into where his heart would have been. The page withered off the book.
¡°Perfect, this was one of my old practice scrolls but I¡¯m glad I didn¡¯t waste it.¡± The spell scroll had decent power even considering that it was just normal ice, albeit ice that was naturally tougher due to his Fortification. If the same spell scroll was used against a level 30 monster, they would probably take some damage.
He helped to arrange them in order of their strengths. At Mark¡¯s call, he activated the weakest one and the same shard of earth was let loose.
¡°Success!¡± The excited runic scholar yelled.
For 150 topaz mana per minute, the effect wasn¡¯t all that strong but it was decent. The shard of earth bounced off instead and the ice sculpture had a dent 1 to 2 centimetres deep. It didn¡¯t change that they succeeded in activating the humanoid durability rune.
The same spell was cast on the one that consumed 200 mana.
¡°How much did that do?¡±
¡°...Not even a scratch.¡±
¡°So I was right! The start-up energy required is quite large due to the multiple layers of capacitors that store them for larger bursts. By breaking past the start-up energy, the overall rune gets more and more efficient and less mana is required to give a bigger gain in toughness.¡±
Mark flipped a few more pages and let loose a shard of earth twice as large and fast. It pierced through the normal sculpture, leaving a gaping hole in its chest. Then he let it loose on the second runified sculpture again.
¡°Thin cracks, a small area. Hardly a dent.¡±
Their experiments didn¡¯t take long. The one that consumed 300 mana per minute was roughly 3 to 4 times harder than the 150 mana per minute one despite only using twice as much mana.
¡°Looks like you¡¯ll be busy with this for a long time.¡± He said as they entered their house.
Mark laughed in response before he turned serious.
¡°Ebony, I get the feeling you¡¯re rich beyond my imagination. Do you think you could fund a workshop for me in Plainston?¡±
¡°Mmm. It would be easier for you to get topaz power sources for the first stages of your research won¡¯t it?¡±
¡°Pretty much, another reason is that I can¡¯t waste my time travelling back to my workshop but that too. There¡¯s so much to do. Converting it to an elementless mana compatible rune. Translating it back to a weaker, simpler two-dimensional one and making it work on armour or something close would take a long time.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you think that¡¯s pointless? You can just engrave the durability runes on your current armour.¡±
¡°Of course not. There¡¯s no such thing as pointless research, just what we did over the past week gave me innumerable ideas and thoughts to improve. Besides, this is an unknown runic structure that has better capabilities at higher mana consumption than what I know. Think about the possibilities! Its potential!¡±
¡°I¡¯ll provide the funding. You have enough topaz to last right? I¡¯ll bring back more than enough for your entire research duration. I just want all your findings.¡± He was just interested in the elementless compatibility so that he could power the rune with his own mana. It was probably too much to ask for a non-ice mage to try to make it compatible with ice mana too, not that that was necessary.
¡°...All huh, that¡¯s a lot to ask.¡±
Ebony took out a wooden chest and pushed it to Mark.
He didn¡¯t ask any further after looking at Ebony¡¯s face that didn¡¯t look like he was going to explain further.
¡°Workshop, research equipment, your personal compensation. Whatever you want to do with it.¡±
¡°Th-this..are they all elling Blues?¡± Mark was so shocked by the sheer wealth placed in front of him that he couldn¡¯t even raise his voice.
¡°Are they enough? I¡¯m not sure how much the research equipment you require costs.¡±
¡°Enough? I won¡¯t be able to get state of the art stuff but there¡¯s nothing on the market that would require half of this.¡±
¡°Great. Oh, you can just turn this building into your workshop if you want.¡±
¡°...with this amount, I may as well go ham and do as you say.¡±
¡°We have a deal?¡±
¡°All of this for a couple of years of my time that I wouldn¡¯t even be wasting? You¡¯re goddamn right we have a deal!¡±
They high-fived as a sign that the deal was made. Ebony didn¡¯t feel the need for a contract even after Mark brought it up.
¡°You¡¯re not afraid I¡¯ll just run off with all your Blues after you go back into Ordina?¡±
¡°...Will you?¡±
¡°Why would I waste my time running off when I can be spending it on research?¡±
¡°There¡¯s your answer.¡±
Ebony left Mark to get into contact with suppliers for his equipment and even construction companies that specialised in making custom buildings.
A week passed and Kong Jing contacted Ning Xin once that she was busy homing onto Zenin¡¯s location.
He made a call to the craftswoman right after she was done with her call with her cousin. He noticed the considerably large drain on the Blues he connected.
¡°Hey there, you could¡¯ve talked to me through little Xin¡¯s call. What is it you don¡¯t want her to know?¡±
He cut to the chase and talked about Ordina¡¯s humanoid golem guardian with a runic body and how they were researching recreating that and their progress so far.
¡°Hey hey, stop right there. A dungeon guardian has that¡¡± Sister Jing sounded a little surprised.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°...It-It¡¯s an old technique¡¡± She spoke more softly than usual.
¡°Don¡¯t do anything stupid for now, I¡¯ll look for you guys after I¡¯m done. Take care of little Xin.¡± She continued.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°Is that all you say when the two of you talk?¡±
¡°Mhmm? No¡¡±
¡°...Forget it. I¡¯ll hang up.¡±
Ebony could hear a sigh as she hung up. A couple of Blues were dried up. She must have been lying to him when she said that the mana efficiency for callstone already hit a limit because Ning Xin was on the call with her for a much longer period of time. He didn''t think she had that many mana ores inside her mask.
¡°Ready?¡± Ning Xin was fully geared up. She wasn¡¯t in the best of moods because the very night he indirectly said they were eating too much, their meals were a third of what they usually were in quantity. It was about the average amount that he would usually eat.
¡°Mmm¡ready.¡± He tried to find more words to say but it wasn''t a very good attempt.
They left for Ordina with Mark sending them off.
Chapter 127: Happenings
¡°You¡¯ve heard?¡± A scrawny acher asked.
¡°About what?¡± A big bearded man took a chug of his ale.
¡°The Journeyman party who cleared Ordina.¡±
¡°You think I was living on a rock?! Who doesn¡¯t know that?¡±
¡°You think it''s true?¡±
¡°You¡¯re taking me for an idiot aren¡¯t ya!? Many people saw them exit. What¡¯s the surprise? The problem about the top floors is the lack of supplies and the small amount of kobolds means little food. Without firewood it''s hard to cook unless one brings some specialised tools so rations are depended on. Those kiddos have as many supplies they can bring as they have ores. What¡¯s your point?!¡± The man wasn¡¯t drunk yet but he was halfway there with his reddened face.
¡°I was getting there. Two pink haired Journeyman, one of them a healer and another is an unheard of quadra elemental mage. A Master fire mage wielding a spear that¡¯s clearly a bodyguard of some kind. An elling Xeng for goodness sake!¡± The scrawny man dialled down on his volume. This was already the talk of the city in the Quest Hall.
¡°Yeah yeah, awesome rich royal with a myth clears a dungeon much wow! It''s just a masked lady, I''ve seen ton of them.¡±
¡°Nothing shocking there, but one guy stood out like a sore thumb.¡± The shorter man pulled the large guy down closer without fear. Clearly good friends.
¡°The turtle shell blue skin man?¡± The bearded man understood his friend well, he was planning something. Something beneficial.
¡°A meditator going around with royals and a Xeng. And from what I can see, a meditator that can fight.¡± The scrawny man glanced around their surroundings but the other parties were busy being rowdy in the surprisingly well-furnished pub.
The bearded man had gotten the hang of how his little friend thought and sat up straight without arousing suspicion. ¡°Heheh I see where you¡¯re getting at. There¡¯s a high chance he will evolve to master in the near future.¡±
¡°And we¡¯ve got just about the right contacts. We can do it the dirty way or trickster way. Meditators are especially ¡®slow¡¯ and I heard some of the Quest Hall personnel talk about this one being particularly dense. I propose the trickster method. I know just about the right people for that but this is someone that can take a dungeon¡¯s Guardian supposedly around level 200.¡±
¡°And I know just about the right people for that¡¡±
¡°This is a pretty big job, we¡¯ll need to make preparations.¡±
¡°Of course, cheers!¡± The bearded man laughed out as loud as he could. Just your average warrior in a pub.
???
¡°Mr. Rumble.¡± The tall well-dressed man with a moustache knocked on the door before entering.
¡°...Speak.¡± The man addressed as Mr. Rumble looked exhausted at his desk.
¡°We¡¯ve got word on Rimestone.¡±
Mr Rumble snapped his strain reliever in half and smashed his desk into pieces with that. His assistant interrupted his rage filled screams with what was the best news to his ears in years.
¡°The Xeng craftswoman is reported to be nowhere around him. It is concerning that there¡¯s a presence of another masked woman by his side but she''s merely a Journeyman.¡±
¡°Those cocky, arrogant Xengs! She thinks she can destroy 7 of my branches without consequences?!¡± Mr Rumble destroyed his own wall with a punch.
His assistant held his tongue ¡®She can and she did.¡¯ was what he thought. His employer basically bet his entire asset of Blues and even a large number of Purples in anticipation of easy winnings. He still remembered how his employer lodged complaints about the blatant ¡®cheating¡¯ where Rimestone simply froze himself stuck on the barrier walls and slowly froze their talented employee in charge of hunting and bringing back rare materials. It wasn¡¯t far off to say that a large part of the Xeng¡¯s winnings come from Mr Rumble¡¯s foolish bet.
¡°Contact those Grandmasters, no¡those three couldn¡¯t even protect the branches they were at. Rimestone, oh dear Rimestone, a meditator are you? You¡¯ll be paying back what you took from me a hundred fold. Contact them instead.¡±
The assistant gulped in understanding. ¡®Can I quit?¡¯
¡°Which package are you having in mind?¡± The assistant wasn¡¯t in the financial position to change jobs.
¡°I¡¯ll let you handle that, ores aren¡¯t an issue. You know what I mean don¡¯t you?¡±
¡°...I would see it completed, they work slowly but will get any job done.¡± He added ¡®with the right payment¡¯ in his mind.
¡°Get someone to clean this mess up before I¡¯m back. I¡¯ll go meet those useless grandmaster lightning burstbowmen myself.¡±
The assistant bowed deeply as his employer walked past him with a pat on his shoulder.
???
¡°Young master, we have arrived.¡± An old man spoke in an foreign tongue.
¡°This is the natural ancient worldcore, Elcra?¡± Replying in the same language was, like the old man addressed, a young man. Garbed in a dark suit of armour of material unlike anything even a blacksmith would be familiar with.
¡°That is indeed the case.¡±
¡°Why is the mana density so low? Aren¡¯t we here for training? Is this really ancient ranked?¡±
¡°It is only natural for the mana density to be low, the destination was picked to be low in mana density so that it doesn¡¯t interrupt the spatial transfer.¡±
¡°Father had a villa ready somewhere right? Lead the way.¡±
¡°Of course. Young master, it would do you good to start learning the language here. As a natural worldcore with limited interactions outside, the people here have not gotten around using or speaking Gia.¡±
¡°Tch, we really had to come to this backwater place for training. Spare me the lesson, I know I¡¯ll advance much faster here since there aren¡¯t any suitably ¡®weak¡¯ dungeons for us back home. There would really be a problem with my head if I didn¡¯t know such common sense.¡±
¡°I will look for a suitable Rare dungeon.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll just take a break while you do so, we just arrived and all. I¡¯m tired from the journey.¡±
The space mage sighed internally at the attitude of his lord¡¯s son.
???
¡°Veronica huh? What brings you back here? Even you left your granddaughter? Or is that bastard¡¯s child dead already?¡±
¡°Kah Khihihihi!¡± The striped rainbowed mask turned black with little stars appearing over it. The woman who dared to speak that way to her shut up immediately. The laugh was as disgusting as ever, it wasn¡¯t even a laugh.
¡°My little cousin didn¡¯t grow much even after a few years, a pity.¡±
¡°...And you¡¯ve grown old enough to find pleasure in that rag of wrinkled skin.¡±
¡°Hmph. I merely forgot to take this disguise off. I wanted to feel more ¡®grandmotherly¡¯, you know. Bah, you won¡¯t understand, you don¡¯t even have a husband much less a child or grandchild.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not the failure of the family like you are, you¡¯ve degraded the clan¡¯s name with your line. The First was right after all, with you as the dreg of the clan, even your daughter was a lesser and married off. What would your grandchild amount to?¡± The lady quickly looked up, away from the mask before she fell in.
She was surprised that her cousin¡¯s mask turned back to the striped rainbow instead.
¡°How¡¯s grandfather?¡± Veronica Ning asked.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
¡°Hmph! So you¡¯ve heard or did you divine that? That stubborn mule doesn¡¯t want to evolve without perfection but I don¡¯t blame him. He should still have a couple dozen years of lifespan, and I doubt you don¡¯t already know that.¡±
¡°I see. You want to know what I¡¯m back for?¡± Veronica beckoned her cousin over with a finger.
They were still family despite her piercing remarks and Veronica used to be like her older sister so she leaned in without much thought.
¡°You see, I came back¡to give you a slap!¡± Veronica slapped her little cousin across the room when she leaned in close enough to prevent her from reacting. Her cousin¡¯s wasn¡¯t that well off but her room was made of Epic ranked materials and wouldn¡¯t break so easily and it wasn¡¯t as if Veronica was trying to injure her anyway.
¡°Kyahhahahaha! That felt awesome.¡±
Her little cousin screamed and moved to pound her chest and arm with enough strength to flatten mountains. It was a squabble that she admittedly missed.
¡°Okay okay, I need your help.¡± She peeled the noisy ¡®girl¡¯ off.
¡°Why would I help you?¡±
¡°Oh no!¡±
¡°Wh-what?¡±
¡°Me and my loose lips sho..¡±
¡°AHH I get it I get it. Not fair¡doing that all the time. What do you want me to find out?¡± She knew where her expertise lay.
¡°Ah Min, find the Blood Realm for me or should I say with me?¡± Veronica called her cousin¡¯s name for the first time in their conversation.
¡°Blood Realm? Wait, you don¡¯t mean?¡± Ah Min, or Ning Min, was only aware of one Blood Realm
¡°Yes, I mean the one and only Blood Saintess¡¯s Realm.¡±
¡°What do you want to find the Blood Realm for?¡±
¡°To meet the Blood Saintess of course.¡±
¡°Are you crazy!¡± Ning Min raised her voice enough to deafen Veronica Ning Xing.
¡°You don¡¯t have to shout in my ear.¡± She picked her ears as if to clean it.
¡°She¡¯s one of the few existences the First even acknowledges and is said to be the strongest Saint, neither of us are fighters!¡± Ning Min didn¡¯t have to remind her, Veronica obviously knew what kind of existence the Blood Saintess was.
In the past, when the First had been a Saintess, the Blood Saintess had been her only almost equal. Although she remained a Saintess while the First evolved, that had apparently been because of some kind of racial limitations that the Blood Saintess hadn''t managed to overcome. In her words, it doesn¡¯t matter to her since she had plenty of lifespan left and not many Gods can threaten her anyway.
The Xengs were considerably new to this place in comparison to the Blood Saintess who¡¯s age was unknown. Excluding the First, they only had 3 Saints currently, the family head of the Ning, Wen and Shi clan. Certainly strong anywhere they go but they are not a peak force and the First moves and acts by herself, rarely caring about them as a whole. They might not fear anyone despite only having Saints but there were forces that didn¡¯t fear them as a force either. No one would try to destroy them as long as the First was still alive so they didn¡¯t really have to worry about picking fights should they desire so.
¡°I¡¯m just looking to speak with her, that''s all. Come on, I already got a glimpse of her astral body before it disappeared again. With your help to find it and Kong Tian assistance we can enter too.¡±
¡°Is he in on this too? Then count me out!¡±
¡°Not yet, I just need you to ask him. You know he likes you, he¡¯ll show up in this room the instant you call for him heheh.¡±
¡°WHAT! No!¡±
¡°What don¡¯t you like about him? He patiently chased after you for so long, doesn¡¯t have any other suitors, a pure space mage and-¡±
¡°Stop it, haaa.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t sigh, I can only ask you as the only other oddballs in the Ning clan.¡±
¡°I¡¯m normal, calm and silent like every Ning.¡±
Veronica choked up and couldn¡¯t stop her stomach from hurting after laughing too hard.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, I know you don¡¯t want to talk to him so I sent him a message in your stead.¡± Veronica cleared her throat, ¡°Dear Kong Tian, my shy little cousin couldn¡¯t bring herself to say this so I have contacted you instead, in her words ¡°If only the brave, handsome and strong Kong Tian was here to help me.¡± Veronica played around with a sweet tone and¡explicit body language.
That had obviously been too much as she was hit with a wave of dizziness and nausea from Ning Min¡¯s mental magic. ¡®Ooo, she improved a lot more than I thought.¡¯
¡°YOU. DID. NOT.¡±
¡°Well¡I¡¯m sure he wouldn¡¯t believe it since it was a message from me but he should be coming soon just to see if you really said that. Putting that aside, you actually managed to break no, slip through our mask¡¯s mental defences?¡±
¡°So slipping into the Blood Realm will be the perfect opportunity to challenge my new abilities is it?¡± Ning Min smiled.
¡°You cheeky little girl,¡± Veronica pinched her soft and supple ears because her silly mask was in the way of pinching her cheeks, ¡°You were excited to barge into the Blood Realm the moment I mentioned it weren¡¯t you?¡±.
Ning Min retaliated in the same way and pulled both of Veronica¡¯s ears, ¡°and you knew I was going to help you even before you arrived didn¡¯t you?¡±
Knock Knock Knock
¡°That was fast, I sent him that message just before I entered this room.¡±
Ning Min pulled even harder, trying to really rip each other¡¯s ears off.
???
First Tide
¡°Sire, it¡¯s not admirable to be so indecisive.¡± Welser, butler and bodyguard of the ¡®special need¡¯ prince. He personally asked for this position since he was interested in the young Hector.
¡°Oh come on, I haven¡¯t evolved but I kinda want to go to Tova. Being on a ship for more than a year on our fastest ships sounds boring but sea battle would be interesting. Training with a group of ten sounds good too since a Journeyman going to Tova seems stupid.¡±
¡°The scouting ship is about to leave.¡± Welser wanted to massage his temples.
¡°Alright! Tova it is. I want to punch some trolls, I bet my fists are tougher. Let¡¯s go Wel!¡± Hector punched the air in front of him.
¡°You must have mistaken something. I would not be going with you, you are a mere scout now¡ Take care, Sire.¡± Wel bowed deeply. Before Hector could process that his butler wasn¡¯t going to follow him, he was grabbed by his collar and thrown off the cliff.
He quickly snapped out of it when he hit the waters, swimming onto the medium sized ship that was preparing to depart.
Only the captain of the ship was aware of who he was but it wasn¡¯t like the others who were veteran soldiers of First Tide couldn¡¯t tell his status with his hair colour standing out.
¡°Greetings! Footsoldier Hector reporting for duty!¡± Hector saluted energetically.
He integrated into the ranks of the soldier very quickly. There were less than a hundred men on board, 11 of them were Journeymen like him and were left to do the chores of cleaning, fishing, cooking and laundry. They were sailing as a group of three ships, with the captain of his ship being a level 300 Master. Hector didn¡¯t know what class the captains and commander of the fleet had because all of them had hidden it. He was also given a gem to add to his Myriad Bracelet to hide his quadra elemental class.
The commander of the fleet, also the captain of the ship in the centre, was a Grandmaster but he likely wasn¡¯t much higher level than the other captains. A total of almost 300 men was not a small or a big number. It was up to some mechanism built into their ships to keep them hidden when they got nearer to Tova. It was experimental so there was no guarantee that it was going to help but it was better than nothing.
''This scouting team is too weak...is manpower so poor?'' Hector couldn''t believe only a single Grandmaster was sent.
After they sailed a day out into the sea, Hector sort of underestimated the sea. The waves were rough enough to make him seasick even with his Constitution. He just wasn¡¯t used to it.
One tiny problem was that there was no healer on board because they couldn¡¯t afford to ¡®lose¡¯ a healer so they only had a couple of medics or doctors that were backline soldiers, the archers. All soldiers were given a handheld burstbow, one with enough speed and power to pierce and injure a defensive focus level 150 monster or even catch a speed focussed one off guard. They had a 32 thin sharpened round ¡®round holder¡¯ meaning he could shoot 32 times before reloading.
Hector was aware of many other types of ammunition but these were the silent ones that weren¡¯t too expensive to manufacture. Even the burstbow was said to make little to no sound. He was also wearing the same armour as any soldier but he wasn¡¯t worried about wearing lousier equipment. He was already much better off with his own bag filled with rations and plenty of potions and medicine that could keep a dying man alive.
There were only about 6 to 8 mages on each ship, all of them were water mages except a single wood mage aboard the ship he was on. They were a force to be reckoned with against the more and more frequent sea monster attacks. They appeared to be more frequent the further away they got from Elva.
Most of the veterans on the ship told him their recent training consisted of taking trips out to sea and not just spar on a shaky ship deck or even under the deck, but diving into the sea and just training how they would get back up to the ship under a barrage of rock throws from the other soldiers.
Most importantly, how to sail the ship. It was a whole bag of tricks that Hector had to learn on the go without any prior training or sailing experience.
He also heard an older soldier talk about the dangers of the sea or how if he ever dives or falls too deep into the water besides the water pressure which usually isn¡¯t much of a big deal as long as their Constitution wasn¡¯t like that of a mage or non-warrior, the real issue was how many cases of sailors, soldiers in training reported the feeling of getting drunk or even failing unconscious. Some scholars had said it was due to the air in one¡¯s body dissolving in blood.
Hector always wondered how scholars could come up with obscure theories or experiments to test those theories. Regardless, the tip was to try his best not to get pulled deep into the ocean by anything because resurfacing alive would prove difficult even if he could use water or air magic. To even say he can use those magics might be overdoing it but at least he can manipulate those elements to a certain degree.
¡°Hah! What a bright and sunny day!¡± Hector climbed out of his tiny cabin squeezing with 5 other Journeymen where it was much more comfortable on the floor since there was the risk of falling off those ¡®beds¡¯ or padded boards during their rest. Sleeping on the floor does bring about a different risk that was someone falling on you but it was a calculated risk.
He stretched his aching body, he didn¡¯t think it could be so tiring to do some chores on a wobbly ship. Not being able to rest properly added to his exhaustion. ¡®Hmm, that¡¯s a big wave.¡± Hector thought. He was originally facing an empty sea horizon when his line of sight was going higher and higher. Only realising it was more than just a big wave when he was facing the sky.
Hector suddenly noticed how silent it was and that no one was taking watch, no one was even around on deck. He remembered the groggy feeling before he fell asleep and how every one of his cabin mates were sleeping like logs before he even returned to rest. Many things went through his mind in a split second, one of them being, most other soldiers don¡¯t have specialised resistance training like he does or his Physique. The other being how there were no ships in his peripheral vision which meant they were already separated from the fleet.
¡°WAKE Uh!~¡± His body hit the water as the ship capsized over him.
Chapter 128: Repeated Amnesia
¡°So you¡¯re going to stop us from entering?¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t seem like she was asking a question when she faced the guard.
¡°With all due respect, Miss Xeng, the two of you might be the only ones who cleared Ordina so far but that doesn¡¯t allow you to walk in and out as you like.¡± The guard clearly doesn¡¯t want to back down on this and his attitude hadn¡¯t exactly been the most polite. However, Ebony wasn¡¯t able to tell, merely thinking the man was doing his job and following orders.
From the way the guards were physically blocking their way, they were adamant on not letting the two Journeymen pass without a full party. Even with their quester crystal proving that they were more than capable of entering.
Scarlet was fully intending on forcing her way through should they attempt to hinder their entry. There were actually 4 to 6 guards standing by and they were only roughly level 150 and above. More than enough just for facilitating entry and exit of people.
The guard''s base of operations was a building not too far away either while their dorms supposedly surrounded the portal. The risk of a dungeon break was too low to really matter since it¡¯s getting flooded with people but they were the first defensive line were something to happen.
There was still some distance from the portal to the building since they were waiting for a royal to be dispatched here to prepare a barrier that would cover the portal. Mallory only had the know-how but not the actual skills to set up one of decent strength for a dungeon. These barriers were only to buy a tiny amount of time really, for the guards to get ready and get into position or even run, evacuate the people and inform the nearby towns and cities.
As for building a large outpost inside the dungeon to protect the portal from inside, it had been deemed counterproductive as that would just be placing hundreds to thousands of people inside just to passively feed the dungeon their overflowing essence.
Before Ning Xin¡¯s fingers tightened on her grips, Ebony spoke out.
¡°Alright, sorry for the hold up.¡± He turned back to let others go past them, pulling his fiery companion aside.
¡°We could¡¯ve just entered, they wouldn¡¯t go in after us anyway.¡±
¡°They¡¯re just doing their jobs, no need to make things difficult for them. I have a plan, wait for me at the end of the queue.¡± The queue was short and the parties were being cleared to enter without much fuss.
He silently left her in confusion before coming back in less than three minutes with three heavily robed people. She couldn¡¯t even see their faces with the large hood. One of them was almost as tall as an Elf but bulky, though not as much as a beastmen while one was obviously a woman with those ¡®protrusions¡¯, the last had roughly the same figure as him.
His red haired companion couldn¡¯t help but smile a little under her mask, amused by his resourcefulness. Their turn was up again but the guards held their words before asking the robed ones if we were in a party.
¡°You got a party in minutes huh¡¡± The master warrior wasn¡¯t all that surprised. Who wouldn¡¯t want to party with the official members that have already cleared the dungeon, not to mention the Xeng¡¯s presence.
¡°That¡¯s right! You gonna let us pass or what?!¡± Hector¡¯s loud voice reverberated in their surroundings. Scarlet couldn¡¯t help but let a stifled noise out at the voice.
¡°Your quester crystals?¡± The guard was used to loud, rude men.
Ebony could feel his companion''s gaze boring into him as mirth could be seen in them.
The figure that wasn¡¯t much different from his own put his gloved hands out as if to flash his wrist and bracelet to the guard.
¡°You just need our party composition right? I¡¯m a warrior, big guy over there¡¯s a mage and the lady¡¯s a spear master.¡± The man shifted his weapon to poke from under his robe while the large guy was holding a long wooden¡stick, the lady didn¡¯t move.
¡°If you don¡¯t show your quester crystal, we¡¯re going to have to ask you to turn around!¡± The guard was probably having a really bad day as he wasn¡¯t about to back down.
The taller man tapped the ground with his ¡®staff¡¯ as guards felt themselves getting heavier and had to cover their ears due to a loud screech boring into their ears. Ebony pulled Ning Xin past them in that short period of time.
She giggled. ¡°That¡¯s considered not making things difficult for them?¡±
¡°Of course. Now they can answer to their superiors should they require so. Quester crystal or not, they know the party composition.¡± He confidently replied.
¡°Fake composition.¡±
¡°Not true. We¡¯re both hybrids that fit the bill of warrior and mage. And, they already know that the higher levels are modelled after us.¡± Ebony replied. The people at the Quest Hall pestered them from time to time when they went to the underground rooms.
The few high level parties that travelled back and forth on the icy floors already reported the type of monsters and their abilities. The general information the quest hall currently had was ¡®elite¡¯ kobolds of a few types that are few in numbers. One that wielded a greatsword, another with twin blades, the javelin and the unarmed one.
If it wasn¡¯t for their levels, this would further demotivate parties to explore further. The poor environmental condition, few monsters and little treasure meant that there was no real reason they should risk it. Only those that wanted the fame of being a dungeon clearer continued on. There weren¡¯t all that many people who were there to test and challenge themselves, much less take it as a training ground.
¡°Sometimes, you¡¯re slower than a turtle and sometimes you¡¯re so quick witted. What if they tried to Identify or Appraise?¡± Ning Xin took off the cloth wrapped around their 3 new party members.
The fabric was from his stock that he used to practise making clothes with. They were freezing cold to touch. She revealed the ice sculptures of Ebony with a sword on his hip, an unfamiliar man with the stick and a woman¡¯s countenance that sent a shiver down her back. His sculptures were getting more and more realistic and had included all the little details hence, she thought they looked familiar.
¡°...Who is she modelled after?¡± Ning Xin wasn¡¯t even feeling jealous that he made another woman''s full body sculpture. The sculpture wasn¡¯t just one of the most beautiful faces she saw, it was the expression on the sculpture that sent a chill down her back, the look in those unmoving, icy eyes.
¡°My mother. This is what my father looks like too.¡± Ebony replied before he reformed the sculptures to look like him before she could continue observing them.
¡°You¡¯re right, you resemble her more than your father.¡±
¡°Mmm. I can¡¯t replicate them completely, I was trying to envision them in the happiest I remember.¡±
¡°...That was happy?¡±
¡°Mmm. She¡¯s more serious most of the time when she beats¡trains me.¡±
Ning Xin couldn¡¯t imagine it, that was the most stone cold facial expression she had ever seen. Now she was feeling lucky she caught the corners of Ebony¡¯s lips raising a little.
¡°So your father¡¯s the mage?¡± She already knew that his mother was a spear user.
¡°Probably. He¡¯s likely the reason for my partial mana being physique too.¡±
¡°Hmm¡¡± Ning Xin put the unconfirmed information aside as he was about to give her a ride to breeze through the first few floors.
¡°I want to train my movement skills too, try to keep up.¡± She dashed off, her speed almost blew some of the younger freelancers onto their butts.
They both had a tier two movement skill but she was much faster if he didn¡¯t enhance himself. Other than her higher base Fortified Agility, her movement skill was much more refined and built purely for explosive speed whereas his own took the ¡®gentle and quiet¡¯ approach.
She didn¡¯t use any magic other than wind to protect herself from the tiny particles in the air, be they dirt, dust or anything else. Moving at high speeds was pretty deadly not just for their opponents.
???
Ebony was chasing Ning Xin when he regurgitated his breakfast all of a sudden then, crumpled down and fell flat on the ground. His mind stalled, the feeling wasn¡¯t outright oppressive but sure as hell brought him to lay flat he couldn¡¯t lift a finger and his mana didn¡¯t move at his reflexive command. With the lack of control, his face was in a small puddle of his half-digested food and stomach acid.
He was tougher than the floor so he wasn¡¯t injured but that clearly wasn¡¯t important at the moment.
Not a moment later, his sight was aligned with a pair of legs. He didn¡¯t sense any movement before the pair of feet arrived before him.
His thought process was lagged by a ton, he didn¡¯t notice it and he didn¡¯t see how the couple of people further off weren¡¯t moving.
¡®This is what I feared¡¡¯ He was helpless, neither the body he trained nor the magic he honed was in his control. He tried to Identify the pair of legs that just stood there but nothing came up. Not question marks, nothing, then he realised he couldn¡¯t use Identify, even on the grass.
¡°Hmm?¡± From the deep vocals, Ebony could sense the absolute confusion in it. His senses which seemed blinded came back instantly after the confused voice that seemed to drag on for hours in his head. His body could move and the weight on him both physically and mentally disappeared into thin air. He tried to move the mana in his body for enhancement but they remained still as if they didn¡¯t feel his efforts to move them. That was scary, he was fragile without his enhancement but he remained as calm as usual. It probably made no difference at this point.
He stood up and brushed himself off, then he slowly took a clean cloth out of his bag and wiped his face. Whoever it was standing there didn¡¯t seem to bother him, as if he had forgotten someone was in front of him.
¡°I¡¯m still here.¡± The deep voice reverberated in his ears.
Ebony snapped his body straight and looked straight ahead where the feet had been.
His heart sped up faster than it ever did. Not due to the fact that he just forgot what situation he was in or that he forgot someone was right in front of him. Not due to the fact that he couldn¡¯t sense the man just standing within touching distance. Not due to fear of the man or that his pitch black gaze stared through his soul. His breathing accelerated more than any intense fight.
The man was more than 1.9 metres tall, slightly bulkier than Ebony, nothing shocking. A head of light cyan hair, almost white and contrasting pitch black irises and on his face was a mask. A red mask. It was cracked through the centre and on the left was a resplendent red feather.
¡°Introductions aren¡¯t necessary I suppose.¡±
A sharp deep pain stung his chest and wouldn¡¯t disappear even though he had regained his breath, calmed his heart and mind. Only realising Everlasting Tranquillity had broke when it kicked back up.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°...Good.¡± The man looked away from Ebony for the first time to look past him, looking back at him after half a second.
¡°You¡¯ll be kidnapped again¡you¡¯ll be kidnapped for the first ti¡you¡¯ll be kidnapped.¡± The man paused again and again, each time, they just stared at each other without discomfort in the silence.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony acknowledged patiently. The man in front of him was broken and he wasn¡¯t referring to the man¡¯s physical state, the withered robe or gaping holes one could see through.
¡°No rush to escape.¡± The man plainly said.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°Chassis. Yes, chassis. Two hundred.¡± He had to pause to think again before speaking.
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¡°I understand,¡± Ebony said the only words he had so far.
¡°You¡¯ll forget. You¡¯re very used to forgetting.¡± The man¡¯s voice was flat.
¡°...¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know what to say..
¡°But you¡¯ll do it.¡± He answered himself instead.
¡°Leave it to me.¡± Ebony said in an equally toneless voice.
¡°Very assuring.¡± There was no sarcasm in his voice but Ebony was aware that that was just what it sounded like.
¡°Oh¡I almost forgot what I was actually here for. This should jog some of your sealed memory in advance. Oh¡annoying.¡± The hypocritical man suddenly realised something before looking away.
Ebony felt a piercing chill on his forehead not unlike the feeling when Gen¡¯s snow blinded him.
His body, mind and more shook at a sound that seemed to pierce through space but no one else heard it. A roar was the closest thing it sound like but it was nothing like a roar that he had ever heard.
He didn''t even realise when the man disappeared nor did he realise sound entered his ears again and wind blowing across his face.
¡®What¡¯s that smell?¡¯ He sniffed the stench and then touched his sticky face, confused at why he stopped running after Ning Xin.
¡®Hot damn. I fell into another trance while I was running? What did I¡¡¯ he looked around before continuing on in the direction he last saw Ning Xin go. Before he could continue his line of thought, a distant memory came to mind.
???
Ebony Rime. 7 Earth years old.
¡®Ow.¡¯ He thought as his mother rubbed his bruises with ointment that she called ¡°come and go¡±, the young boy feared this ointment more than the training he undergoes. Applying it would cause his injuries to hurt many more times but his bruises would fade within the day. He quickly pushed the thought of pain away and continued meditating.
His father said it would help him get accustomed to pain and he was supposed to meditate as his mother rubbed his injuries with more force than he thought necessary.
He felt a head rub which marked the end of the application of ointment and the start of a tight hug. The head rub was the best part of most days.
¡°I¡¯ll be making dinner, you can go play or do your homework.¡± Amelia Stone said impassively. The young boy already began to recognise it as a smile.
¡°I finished my homework at school.¡±
¡°Good boy.¡± She rubbed his head again before heading to the kitchen.
Ebony was internally gleeful at the second head rub of the day.
Training had turned from exercises to trying to land a hit on his mother for a year or two now. She never really hit him, just placing her fist or even a finger where he was about to go and he would injure himself charging into those hard rock fists. Little Ebony thought that her family name really suited her.
He headed to the study since he preferred to read and his aching body had enough of moving for the day. There was a table taller than he was that his parents used and a smaller one beside it that was for him.
He had just completed a picture book on types of animals which was slightly different from what he read in school. There were a lot more words in the books in their house, the pictures were more realistic and they listed down the characteristics, habits, how they hunt and what they eat.
He saw an opened book on his parent¡¯s table just as he was wondering what to read next. He reached for it but it wouldn¡¯t budge when he pulled or pushed the book so he just climbed up the large chair made for his large father. It was no wonder his parents called his body weak because he couldn''t even make the chair budge. Thankfully, the chair was left pulled out and he could sit on it.
Looking at the opened page, he saw the drawing of a human body in a horse riding stance. Something very familiar to him. The weird thing was the numbers written down. There were arrows pointing at the thighs and outstretched arms and what was written was ¡®7000kg¡¯ on each limb. It was his mother¡¯s handwriting.
He flipped to the first page and started looking through it. He wondered if it was his aching body that made it so hard to flip the pages. The first few pages were very familiar, it was the physical exercises he used to do. Then, he reached the page where his current training regime was written and drawn out.
The young boy was interested, if the pattern was to be believed, the later pages would be his future regime so he flipped through the pages. He was a little confused at the many empty pages in between but he saw that it wasn¡¯t really empty, at the top of the page read, ¡®aptitude with¡¡¯ he wasn¡¯t really sure what ¡®aptitude¡¯ meant.
Then he reached the first page with something written again. The chapter title was ¡®Tier 1 - Soft Steel Body¡¯, he saw that the training consisted of the body getting whacked by hard things from clubs to bats to hammers to solid pipes of metal and then using the body to try to break said objects. Being the 7 year old that he was, he thought it was cool and wanted to start that type of training soon but his body was still growing and wasn¡¯t suited for it yet.
He continued flipping through the pages. There was ¡®Treading Steps¡¯ that he should be starting to learn. It was quite interesting to know that his parents actually named the activities he would do but this is the first time he learned of it. They usually just call it training or exercise.
¡®Tier 2 - Explosive Rock Body¡¯, he was supposed to be able to punch through rocks with a finger and come out unharmed. Also, ¡®Treading Stride¡¯ was supposed to be trained by running on water? Young Ebony wasn¡¯t as excited about poking a rock open or trying something as stupid as running on water. He was pretty sure anyone would just break their finger and fall into water. There was a drawing of a bald and skinny webbed child at the bottom of the page.
¡®Tier 3 - Unrelenting Statue¡¯ The written training on this was confusing and he didn¡¯t know what she was writing at times. He only understood that he was supposed to take some kind of projectile with different symbols beside it, guessing that the flame one was fire and the zappy one was electric. Then he saw the note ¡®try shooting with a gun¡¯, he knew what a gun was, he often watched television with his mother. But he never saw anyone on tv have a bullet bounce off or anyone grab a bullet.
The young boy clearly didn¡¯t watch many cartoons or superhero movies.
¡®Treading Flash¡¯ was the footwork training this time. This one seemed to focus on speed rather than distance or lightness. He was supposed to ¡®disappear from sight¡¯ without even moving his knees and just tapping his soles.
¡®Tier 4 - Constricted Titan¡¯ It was mostly words he had never seen and he couldn¡¯t understand but he did what his father taught him and just remembered them as pictures and images.
¡®Phantom Flash¡¯ appeared to change the focus back to ¡®unseen and unheard¡¯ but not losing the explosive speed.
¡®Tier 5 - Neutronic Frame¡¯ The book was just showing stars and arrows pointing to the body. Tier 3 onward had a common theme, the word ¡®gravity¡¯ popped up a lot.
¡®Spectre¡¯s Flicker¡¯ made the least sense in the training method written, even considering the many big words he didn¡¯t understand. He was supposed to move without moving at all, just appearing wherever he wants or needs to be.
¡®Tier 6 - Monolithic Ch¡¡¯
¡°Had fun reading what you weren¡¯t supposed to see?¡± His mother¡¯s voice was right beside his ear and her breath tickled his sensitive ears. She picked him up with ease from behind despite his growing body.
¡°It¡¯s time for dinner.¡± She put him down on the floor and led him by the hand.
¡°That book.¡±
¡°You can ask me tomorrow if you can remember the contents. Your father¡¯s waiting for us.¡± She interrupted his question.
He had slept well that night, falling asleep the second he hit the bed.
???
¡®Why did I remember that now? That was conditioning wasn¡¯t it?¡¯
Ebony caught up to Ning Xin waiting at the bottom of the flight of stairs in the wall. They had no choice but to go slow as there were people holding up the line. Yes, there was a line even though this wasn¡¯t the only path up.
Due to the size rating of Ordina, this wasn¡¯t considered overcrowding because the density of parties and people decrease quite a bit as they go higher up. So, the guards didn¡¯t have to ensure stricter control over how many people entered.
¡°I won.¡± Ning Xin smiled under her mask even though no one would be able to see it or that it wasn¡¯t a serious race without either of them using magic.
¡°Yes, you did.¡± His eyes naturally looked towards her. There was an uncomfortable feeling. ¡®Something¡¯s weird.¡¯ Ebony thought after a short silence. He couldn¡¯t tear his eyes away from her mask, the red feather on it was especially eye-catching today.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?!¡± Ning Xin was shocked to see tears streaming down Ebony¡¯s face right after he caught up to her. She also noticed the sour smell coming from him. Not to mention her Sublime Instincts caught on to the intense and sharp pain from him.
He didn¡¯t seem to notice what she was shocked about, then he felt the wet stream of tears. He wiped them aside, ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±
¡°Is..is it because you¡¯re reminded of your parents?¡± Ning Xin personally imagined that it was the case after he conjured their sculptures. She personally missed her own parents for a long time now.
¡°I really doubt that. No. It hurts here. I don¡¯t know why, looking at your mask makes it hurt here, way worse than when I had part of my heart bitten out. Also, my belly feels weird.¡± Ebony touched his chest before moving it down to his belly. Even though the short memory he just regained had a nice moment with his mother he really doubted it was because he missed his parents so badly that he suddenly felt terrible.
¡°Wh-was it breakfast? But-but the ingredients were all fine¡¡± She was about to question why on Elcra would his chest hurt but her attention couldn¡¯t help but go to the fact that his belly was feeling unwell, the scent of puke was all too familiar to her. She was certain nothing was poisonous or so unclean that it could cause harm to even an unclassed person.
He shook his head and tried to get her mind off of food and that he must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed. He just couldn¡¯t think of a reason why he would be acting or feeling so weird all of a sudden. She was even convinced that she must not have noticed poison in her ingredients but there chances of that were too low.
Fortunately, the weird feeling and pang in his heart went as fast as it came which led to Ning Xin calming down since she could tell that he was back to normal again. She occupied herself by looking through a thick book that was her stock taking. Scrutinising every ingredient she bought, especially those she used for the past few meals. She was going to have to physically check through them when she had the time.
He wanted to tell her about his sudden recovery of memory but she seemed too distracted at the moment.
Some people who kept up to date with the news were aware that the two of them were part of the members who already cleared Ordina once. The older ones were awed by the rumours of the Xeng¡¯s strength being somewhat true while the younger ones might have looked a little annoyed to most people, something that neither Ning Xin nor Ebony would notice.
¡°Is it true that you¡¯ve cleared Ordina?¡± A boy looking no older than 17 asked curiously, swatting his party members'' concerns of coming out to speak to them with a wave. Although looks were deceiving when it came to age, the boy was already a level 100 Journeyman, practically the bulk of the people here were the same and didn¡¯t really stand out. Together with his party and unruly hair and overall equipment, Ebony compared it to a group of teenagers hanging out after school.
Seeing Ebony nod in silence, he continued. ¡°I¡¯ve heard Ordina is recovering pretty fast, some of my senior freelancers compare the floor 8¡¯s level 135s to a freshly evolved level 100 creature outside. The top floor is the 22nd right? I heard your party was made up of 4 Journeymen like us, how did you beat something over a hundred levels above yourself, the dungeon¡¯s guardian shouldn¡¯t be weakened as much compared to its minions?¡±
¡°Mmm, the guardian was very tough but comparatively slower and weaker. I think many of the high level parties can easily defeat it.¡± Ebony replied, it was like he was the smart kid in class helping other kids with understanding a problem
¡°But no other party did till now?¡±
¡°Exhaustion and supplies. The 19th floor onwards is cold, you would need the right resistances or warm equipment. The monsters are few but every battle takes out a lot of energy and it is dangerous. Your lungs would freeze up, it would be painful to breathe and you have to deal with monsters that are otherwise strong in that environment. With few monsters and no vegetation, you¡¯ll be limited in how far you can go should you not have enough food and water.¡±
¡°Oh! Is there really no other way than to bring lots of supplies?¡±
¡°Not that I know of, there are some merchants on the 13th and if you are lucky, the 18th might have some supplies in stock.¡± Ebony looked around and wondered if those Master Classed with huge bags were working for the merchants higher up and were bringing up their wares. There was a pretty high chance that was the case, it was quite a viable business as long as the contracted party was strong enough to make trips without letting harm befall the supplies.
¡°I¡¯ve also heard some rumours that the monsters there fight like you and¡¡± The boy pointed to the engrossed chef that was too busy pondering while looking through her book.
¡°Don¡¯t point but yes, there is some resemblance.¡± Ebony understated how similar those Verglas Kobolds¡¯ fighting styles were.
¡°Care to give some tips?¡±
¡°No problem.¡±
The young boy grinned and immediately pulled out his short sword, leaping down from the step he was on, ignoring the fact that they were in a tight stairway with people behind Ebony.
The overhead swing was only possible for his short sword, there was insufficient space for Ebony¡¯s Icicle. He reflexively brought up his arm and took half a step forward, or rather, one step up, and blocked the boy¡¯s wrist. He had the lowest enhancement on to carry around his equipment but the young boy had surprising strength. Perhaps a Strength focussed warrior as Ebony was almost pushed down a step.
Ebony wanted to turn his wrist to change his wrist block to a grip and pull the boy to fall since he was in the air but he surprisingly kicked out the instant he was blocked. There wasn¡¯t much power in the kick since it was hastily pulled off but it let the boy escape Ebony¡¯s clutches.
Instead of calling out how dangerous that had been, the people behind and ahead were cheering the boy on, even making way for both of them. Except that Ning Xin was still beside Ebony, deep in thought.
¡®A pity I don¡¯t have the confidence to swing Icicle in such a tight corridor.¡¯ This wasn¡¯t the shortcut that was 5 metres wide, there was barely space for 3 people to walk side by side.
He decided to go for a wide turning kick that opened him up to a ton of attack possibilities but let him cross the distances of more steps. The boy''s manoeuvrability was unexpected as well, he hopped like a bunny, pulling his knees close to his body as his back almost hit the ceiling.
The boy was internally nervous from the speed of the kick, he knew there was plenty of power behind it as well from how easily Ebony blocked his first attack. He chose to take initiative, hoping he had a better chance against a swordsman that carried such a massive sword in this tight space. He had anticipated kicks due to the range it gave on the stairs and that was how he dodged it. He already freed one of his hands to draw the handheld burst bow that his friend and party member fiddled around with. He just didn¡¯t expect the smoothest transition from a wide turning kick to a back thrust that accurately rammed into his belly.
Ebony casually shifted his shoulders slightly to dodge the bullet that seemed like an iron ball, instinctively having one of his statues shoot a hand out to block the bullet before it hit an innocent bystander behind. It had been unnecessary since no one was directly behind, even considering how the boy was shooting downwards from midair.
The boy¡¯s party member caught him but fell on the steps from the impact. Ebony didn¡¯t hold back and the kick should¡¯ve easily crushed some Common rarity rocks or dent a thick steel plate of the same rarity.
¡°Auuww!¡± That was a weird cry of pain but it was clear the boy wasn¡¯t badly injured. If he was really 17 years old and only trained for a few years, he had quite some potential, he had noteworthy fighting sense.
Ebony went to pull him up, grabbing each other¡¯s wrist because he learnt some manners.
Chapter 129: Slow Day
¡°Which floor are you planning to go up to?¡± Ebony asked curiously, they never would have guessed he ¡®sounded¡¯ curious. He also realised how the young boy had been fooling around because with his Mana Perception, he sensed a small crack in his slightly enhanced bones and then started thinking, his kick didn¡¯t really land on the boy¡¯s belly as it was blocked with his arm behind the flat side of his sword.
¡°Well, on the subject of supplies, we can go without depending on scavenging and monster meat for two weeks.¡± A scrawny girl answered for them. With her curly and messy hair, her face could hardly be seen with the addition of a hooded dark brown robe and a wooden staff, she was likely the party''s mage.
All of them looked about the same age group and to Ebony¡¯s understanding, none of them were from around the area because there was no way Trailane Plains had so many young level 100s. The fact that even the mage was at that level was supposedly impressive. The only thing that he might have gotten wrong was how young or old they are since looks are often deceiving.
¡°Try not to rely on dungeon meat.¡± Ebony advised but gave no further follow up. Even if they believed him, they still needed to eat if they didn¡¯t have any other food source. With no real cases of people demonising or turning into a fiend, there was no reason for them not to consume dungeon meat either.
The gun was actually made by one of the boys in the party, he wore gloves similar to those Kong Jing wore. Thick, cut and heat resistant, perfect for handling tools. Ebony put the idea of sharp and rotating bullets into his head and it wasn¡¯t as if those were new ideas even to the boy who had the surprising job of [Crafter Lvl 100]. Although that probably wasn¡¯t his full Class name, he was the first that had a vague crafting class other than Kong Jing that Ebony had seen.
His gun needed mana to work which made some sense, a small gun really wouldn¡¯t really be threatening to most monsters or even people that have a ton of physical stats.
He forgot to ask for their names and they split off the moment they arrived at the end of the stairs. He saw that Ning Xin was still in a similar state of trance as he tends to fall into, mumbling some ingredients of the list and what possible reason there is that they would go bad.
Seeing her state, he led her onwards by grabbing her wrist reflexively. Surprised that there was no reaction, much less getting slapped away. She was too engrossed and he didn¡¯t want to disturb her so he walked on leisurely instead.
On the second floor, his sculpture should be more than enough to handle whatever comes at them. Even without that, no monster actively went after them and he had seen monsters just turning around after glancing in their direction. He would bet that Ordina is very well aware of his or their presence and ability. Not having to kill those monsters was good for both them and Ordina.
¡®Hmm. Her mask is distracting¡Everlasting Tranquillity is going off and coming back on over and over again. Something must have happened in my trance but I don''t think I fell into a trance earlier...¡¯ Without the group of youths to distract him, he finally noticed how big of an issue he was facing.
None of his trances ever led to an issue this serious. Was it even one of his trances?
It was the only thing that could explain how he didn¡¯t realise why he stopped running or even vomited on himself. Not to mention how his heart feels like it¡¯s beating a little faster.
The soft but firm feeling in his hand was working wonders at keeping him calm though.
¡®Must just be a bad day.¡¯ Ebony chucked all his worries away since they were in the way. It didn¡¯t matter much when he was a small boy since what problems would he have as a child?
But this was counterproductive now. And he noticed.
¡®No, I should stop pushing aside any problems I face as an annoyance.¡¯ He tightened his grip on Ning Xin. He didn¡¯t know what happened in his trance but it was a sign. A sign for him to wake up.
???
¡°The three robed men are just walking ice sculptures.¡± The hooded girl said.
¡°How could you tell?¡± The youth that sparred with Ebony asked.
¡°I saw the hand made of ice shoot out to block the iron ball so I tried to stand closer to them when you were talking to him, he probably noticed me doing that though, the ice sculpture put a finger to it¡¯s lips as if to ask me to not to spread it. What do you think of his strength, leader?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t use any skills or body enhancement while he was using body enhancement, I used less than 30% of my strength but still felt his bones crack on impact. Although I¡¯ll say that the way he moved was impressively smooth and trained I doubt he was as strong as we believed. As expected from a young hybrid, from your words he might be a more impressive mage than a close combatant so we have to take note of that.¡±
¡°The reports said he doesn¡¯t speak much, even less to strangers. It also said he doesn¡¯t react much to anything but I sensed not so subtle waves of panic.¡± A leather armoured [Rogue] said.
¡°Interesting, this hasn''t happened the past week we¡¯ve watched him right?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Oh yes, what about the Xeng with that outrageous proportions beside him? I couldn¡¯t spare an eye to see how she reacted when I immediately attacked.¡±
¡°She went to squat against the wall and mumbled something like ¡®Pork storage¡¯ and then to ¡®combination of¡¯ some word that I didn¡¯t recognise, she might have been speaking in Xeng tongue. The boy who made the burstbow answered as he was watching their biggest threat very closely.
¡°Pork storage?! You¡¯re not messing around are you?¡± The youth who attacked Ebony, the apparent leader blinked exaggeratingly.
The crafter could only shake his head in reply. ¡°Too bad all the devices and even the memory lights I placed in their duelling rooms either break into tiny fragments or melt into nothing so we don¡¯t really have a very good grasp on all their abilities. It¡¯s clear that both fire and ice magic is going to be an extreme nuisance to handle.¡±
¡°They¡¯re not going to be together forever so we¡¯ll leave precautions for fire magic to a lower degree.¡± The leader replied.
The last member of their party, the Dwarven shield bearer cleared his throat.
¡°The real problem should be how half of those people in those stairs were doing the same thing as us. Observing the two. They¡¯re pretty amateurish, probably locals who have similar ideas.¡±
¡°So that won¡¯t be an issue?¡± The leader confirmed with the surprisingly observant Dwarf.
¡°A problem? No. They would be a nice cover, we won¡¯t be too suspicious even if we ¡®bump¡¯ into them a few more times since they would also occasionally ¡®bump¡¯ into the target.¡±
They continued putting a little distance but still within range for their ¡®rogue¡¯ to keep track of the couple that were walking leisurely.
¡°Gah, the gravity increase is pretty annoying. It must be true that the gravity under Bubble Hills is strong.¡± The mage girl complained. They were all Master Classed and didn¡¯t really have any issue traversing Ordina, the monsters were really weak but the environment was not as kind.
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¡°Weird.¡± Their rogue mumbled after a few hours.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°How many attacks have we received? Ordina¡¯s latest record is still that of an ¡®slightly aggressive¡¯ dungeon right?¡±
¡°About 5 groups have attacked us so far, why?¡±
¡°They haven¡¯t been attacked even once, I¡¯m pretty sure the monsters saw them and turned around.¡±
¡°Hmm. Ordina might be smarter than anyone imagined, there¡¯s a high chance it doesn¡¯t want to waste essence on those that have beaten its guardian before.¡±
¡°Urhh! That means all the monsters that will come to us instead with how close we are!¡± The crafter complained about how troublesome that would be. They even had to hold back their power and capabilities so that they wouldn''t stand out. All of them had hidden their Classes with an item that he made, which, although strong enough to block a very refined tier 2 Appraise or Identify type skills is very limited in duration and he was here to maintain it.
¡°Relax, we have those stealing our prey to take the heat for us. Did they notice the oddness?¡± The Dwarf asked the rogue to which he shook his head.
The five of them thanked the other parties who had the same goal as them.
???
Ning Xin snapped out of her mumbling when it got too dark to read. Then she realised they were walking very slowly and the whole day had passed. The hand on her wrist was gently pulling her along, she only blushed a little with a smile creeping up instead of slapping it away.
They were still on the second floor and it was because of her but that wasn¡¯t too big of an issue, they could always cover the distance the next day.
She suddenly remembered the bigger dilemma. Should she use the tactics her sister taught her to speed up their progression?
When Ebony said he¡¯ll only propose for real after millions of spar or duels, she hadn¡¯t been happy immediately because her first thought was how long or far away that was. Then she thought about it differently because they have so many spars together, millions would barely take a couple of years. When she thought about it that way, it seemed way too fast for her.
As they shared the same house for a week or so, she was going silly over whether she liked the distance he put or hated it. She pushed some of his advances away when she sensed that he was just being ¡®casual¡¯ and didn¡¯t think about advancing. She imagined that her brain, heart and Sublime Instincts were in conflict with what she wanted.
Ultimately, she knew that she liked him and she really couldn¡¯t be bothered about his origins or the silly tradition of losing to him. It wasn¡¯t as if the non-combatant Xengs followed that tradition. With no real clue on how to make advances, she asked her Sister Jing. Even though her cousin would be less than clueless about such things, she was definitely smarter and had more ideas than Ning Xin.
¡°How to make advances on him?¡± Kong Jing slapped her mask so hard that Ning Xin could hear it echo over their call.
¡°You¡¯re about to go into the dungeon together without anyone else right?¡±
¡°Why don¡¯t you pretend to forget your tent or something.¡±
Ning Xin had been blown away by that horrendous idea that she hung up. Sleeping in the same tent was too big a step for her. There were too many issues with that.
She would have to sleep with her mask on. She would have to put more clothes on but she was used to sleeping light, even in a dungeon, she had special sleepwear that was not too far off in defensive capabilities but those were extremely thin. Then she had her bolster, it was made to regulate her body temperature so that she can sleep better.
Although Ebony¡¯s natural body temperature was low, it was nowhere near freezing as long as he didn''t cast enhancement. There was also zero chance she could take the large step of hugging him to sleep. She had already lost a night of sleep the first time she tried lying down beside him after she came back from the spider and moss realm. That was the biggest issue too, there was no point if she couldn¡¯t be at ease and rest when he was in close proximity.
¡®It¡¯s okay, we can take it slowly. Let things be.¡¯ Ning Xin told herself, her grandma did say there was no rushing a relationship.
She didn¡¯t realise the effect Ebony¡¯s blood had on her was greater than any of them expected.
¡°You can let go now.¡± Ning Xin words lingered in their ears.
¡°I could,¡± Ebony replied without releasing her.
She was confused for a split second as she let herself get pulled along.
¡°It¡¯s late, let¡¯s stop here for tonight.¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
With some lighting from Ebony¡¯s cheap and old lighttube, she set her kitchen up but realised that she wasn¡¯t really hungry. They did take it extremely easy today, other than the short race on the first floor they basically took an all day stroll.
¡°Nothing attacked us?¡±
¡°Nope.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t cook if you keep holding my arm.¡± She could feel the immense reluctance he had when he slowly let her go. That was cute, too cute.
It had been the lightest dinner she had for a very long time. She had been careful and tried her best to inspect the ingredients she used but she didn¡¯t find anything wrong with the ingredients.
¡°Thank you for dinner, it was delicious.¡± Ebony repeated, he never seemed to stop saying that after every meal. She didn¡¯t think the repetition was annoying or that it grew old, it was always nice to hear positive feedback.
¡°I have an illusion ward, it¡¯s not made for dungeon use and a little useless when used in a dungeon but it¡¯s better than nothing.¡± She explained. It was helpful against most people and monsters but inside a dungeon, it tends to be ignored as a dungeon has good awareness of what was inside it. Illusions don¡¯t work well against dungeons and hence, their monsters.
¡°Mmm.¡± Although she was aware that Ebony knew simple alarm and detection runes that if carved or inscribed around them would alert them whenever something attacked, it was quite pointless to him. He would be alerted way before that from the vibrations in the ground even when he was asleep. It was hard to catch him off guard in the past but it only got harder.
He still ran around where they decided to camp, he claims to have ¡®moulded¡¯ some runes in the earth when his feet touched the ground. He ran a bit saying he just came up with the idea and the problem was he couldn¡¯t mould runes that fast. They were tiny runic circles that would burst out loud when something of a certain weight stepped on it, waking them up should anyone or thing get close.
As interesting or useful a skill or knowledge it was to have, she just couldn¡¯t go through those books with dizzying symbols before getting sleepy within minutes.
¡°Let¡¯s get some training in.¡± She naturally brought up. They need to train frequently or their Conditioning skills will lose levels.
¡°There are people watching us right now.¡±
¡°What?¡± She took deeper breaths to sniff the air. ¡°There are some people around but it''s considerably crowded down here so it''s not surprising that there are some people watching us.¡± It was dark but she could still sniff out the surroundings. She didn¡¯t find anything that would be a cause of concern.
¡°Let¡¯s tone it down to swordplay training.¡±
¡°Sure.¡±
They would destroy quite a large area if they were to fling spells. The heat and cold would kill bystanders too so there was nothing weird about enhanced swordplay training.
¡°You might as well take the chance to improve your swordplay. No evading the attacks to your obvious openings, defend with swordplay alone.¡± They had already tried this but he had to consciously force his body not to dodge which, so far, only brought bad results. Once his mind tries to take over control of his natural body reflexes, just about everything goes wrong and he makes stupid decisions and takes attacks that aren¡¯t even aimed at him.
She believed that he should still try to let his mind take over momentarily. His body doesn¡¯t understand swordplay yet and he usually evades with insane evasive manoeuvres or magic to either block or disrupt the attack. Although there was nothing wrong with it and it always worked so far, he would never improve his swordplay like that.
Their exchange consisted of him getting poked a lot. The massive blade was too slow and inflexible to block both of her swords. She could easily follow up with a slash from a different direction after he blocked the first attack, she had to place balls of fire around him that would fire off whenever he moved his body to dodge the second attack. It was good training for her multicasting as well. She could only still barely triple cast with perfect accuracy unlike him who was far beyond her in this regard.
She changed it up to blood magic since she needed more practice with that and also so that they wouldn¡¯t brighten up the place.
Having it as a halo above her head used to be because it was really flexible in the cave tunnel, it then got the most comfortable and easy to control when it was there. She found that it was just as good to have it there even against him. It might be her imagination but she could sense attacks from above exceptionally well, must have been from her time in that stupid spider cave.
She manipulated it to spin like how he does with his layer of mana over his greatsword. This ¡®spell¡¯ alone didn¡¯t take much mental effort from her, almost as close to her degree of control over fire mana.
The tiny ball of blood behind him burst into red hot steam when he took half a step back to dodge by a hair¡¯s breadth.
She went for stabs to point at all his openings. Forcing his body to learn what not to do if he couldn¡¯t dodge or block with his magic or footwork.
Chapter 130: Brother
A couple hundred metres away from Ebony¡¯s campsite.
¡°Can you see them?¡± The youthful leader bit a piece of dried jerky. He wasn¡¯t in the mood for forest weavers or leopards. None of them was desperate enough to eat kobolds either.
¡°Of course.¡± The party¡¯s rogue was almost insulted by the question. It was just a darkness. ¡°I can¡¯t hear anything which is odd since they aren¡¯t that far but they¡¯re just play-fighting. I doubt you have to be disappointed about not testing his ability with the greatsword because it¡¯s nothing spectacular.¡±
¡°Well, just keep watch.¡±
The hours passed.
¡°Ahhh! Enough, I¡¯m up I¡¯m up. Stop shaking me!¡± The youthful leader clearly wasn¡¯t an early riser. The fake sun wasn¡¯t even up yet.
¡°They were already up to train earlier, no different from last night¡¯s play-fight. They¡¯ve finished eating and are packing up right now.¡±
¡°Ell¡they¡¯re the hardworking type, looks like we¡¯ll have to work for our ores.¡± Now that light was slowly coming back up, he could see the couple. Packing up as he kept an eye on them, he could immediately see the difference. They didn¡¯t just look different, they felt different. Especially the target.
¡°Hurry up¡¡± Gut feeling urged him to rush his fellow party members, he looked further to other party¡¯s campsites to see that they were already gone and moved ahead. They probably didn¡¯t want to look suspicious.
They were halfway through their packing when they saw the masked one crouched down, he was pretty sure the target¡¯s blue skin wasn¡¯t as bright as well. All of them heard a single drumbeat echo, and the couple disappeared from their spot in the same instant.
Despite their distance, he had to cover his eyes with his arm to block the wind and dust from going in.
¡°What the ell!¡± Their half-packed tents were blown away but the trees caught them. Who the hell goes into a full speed sprint first thing in the morning?
Their crafter and mage might not be able to match the pace, he didn¡¯t have to worry for the slightly older Dwarf who had plenty of tricks up his bag or the rogue. They would look mighty suspicious to chase closely behind which made keeping an eye so much harder.
¡°Hey hey hey, that¡¯s not the speed of some Journeyman. Not even a tier 2 level 150 movement skill should let them move that fast, even an extremely refined tier 2 skill.¡± Their Dwarven member commented. Not even an Agility focussed person could move that fast. The couple wasn¡¯t even in sight anymore.
¡°That drum that shook the air and floor, and that glow. They elling enhanced their bodies just to run faster. Looks like the difficulty just increased exponentially. Great! Now we can raise our prices just as much!¡±
Instead of despairing over it, they were all in glee.
They would soon have endless complaints.
???
After a night of seated meditation, Ebony had his mind grounded back in place. Everlasting Tranquillity more stable than ever. He had been tested, only in times of panic did he find out how emotionally unstable he was. His body was tough and his mind was shielded but his heart seemed weaker than a 10 year old. He must have kept everything away from him or that there was nothing or no one ever that close to him.
He looked at Ning Xin, at her mask. She was his greatest weakness but also his greatest strength.
Increasing the output of Frostblaze Augmentation to the lower limit that fire wouldn¡¯t burst from his skin, just glowing brighter internally. This way, he should be able to keep up with her.
A single beat of her Core skill signalled the start of the race. She was actually serious as she used her ¡®flash step¡¯ to blast off. She used her body enhancement along with an active lightning spell to start off her charge while he similarly used his manipulation over gravity to repel him along. The stronger or abundance of gravity mana in Ordina was giving him a handicap. Unlike the ice mana on the higher floors, Ordina didn¡¯t try to compete with control over gravity mana with him.
With the apparent intelligence Ordina had displayed to him, he wondered if it just let him use its gravity mana or if it doesn¡¯t have complete control over every single element in itself.
He already turned his sculptures into small condense balls of ice mana to carry along since they wouldn¡¯t be able to keep up.
It didn¡¯t even take minutes before they were delayed again. Although it wasn¡¯t as crowded there was still a line at the grey pillar, despite how early they had moved off. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be moving faster.
Their race continued on the mountain range, still opting to go through the horde on the largest mountain which far fewer people were on. They leapt past mountains as if nothing, ran past the horde without interruption and into the shortcut walkway. Blasted through the Earthen-Topaz Golems in a flash. With the walkway having widened, they were able to jump past any parties that were either resting or fighting. They were considerate enough to slow down before going past them or the wind pressure would have disrupted them.
With the overall expansion of every floor of the dungeon, the walkway seemed to be the most affected. They were only just able to exit from the eighth floor by the end of the day.
Ning Xin clearly got weary halfway through, she ran out of mana for her lightning bursts pretty early on and normal people can¡¯t recover mana as they cast. That meant her fire enhancement died down sometime in the middle too. She was left with her Core skill for enhancement, so he was able to catch up and they carried on at roughly the same speed.
Although Ebony would have sore muscles and body, not even a full 28 hours or running is a piece of cake for Sustained Optimum Condition to keep him going. That wasn¡¯t the case for Ning Xin, exhaustion and pain resistance only let her feel it less but her body is still being worn down, exactly the same as him, he just ignored the pain since his physique lets him recover muscles strains and tears.
¡°Are you hungry yet?¡±
¡°Surprisingly, not really.¡±
Ebony¡¯s internal clock told him it just barely turned nighttime, the way from the eighth to eleventh floor was simply picking a direction and climbing a few slopes, it shouldn¡¯t take him more than a few hours even if Ordina increased in size a little.
He turned around to show his back ¡°Hop on.¡± signalling that he would piggyback her.
¡°My body temperature is really high now¡and I¡¯m sweaty¡and smelly.¡±
¡°Perfect, you can cool down on my back and I like your smell.¡±
¡°...you¡¯re being disgusting¡¡± Ning Xin actually climbed on as she replied.
With her clothes, she wouldn¡¯t really feel uncomfortable despite the icy temperatures of an enhanced body.
A soft moan came from his back when she climbed on, she tightened her arms around his neck. She didn¡¯t expect the cool ¡®bolster¡¯ to feel so nice and the contact on her hot skin had surprised her, her body clung on reflexively like how she hugs her bolster to sleep.
Ebony on the other hand had to rethink his choices. The softness around his neck, the fleshy thighs wrapping his torso, the soft mounds on his back. Their presence was hard to ignore when they were practically burning into him. Not to mention the moan that she didn¡¯t seem to notice was really bothering him.
¡®I didn¡¯t receive training for this¡¡¯
???
Heavy panting filled the walkway. The panting continued for a long time before the dirt filled hair mage yelled, ¡°We¡¯re so extorting the crap out of them!¡±
The youthful group was stumped. They were able to keep the couple within sight at first but the two of them were practically golems that didn''t tire out. They saw the couple exit the walkway and stood there a while so they were finally able to rest.
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The target had surprising game or perhaps the Xeng was surprisingly ¡®easy¡¯.
They were all pretty observant, they saw that at least the Xeng was exhausted but the look of nonchalance and the fact that the target was still glowing was beyond their wildest imagination. This target was unlike any others they have gone for. Seeing her climb onto his back, they were smart enough to start crying inwardly while the mage girl actually cried out loud.
¡°Please give me a break!!¡±
???
One of his greatest mental training later, Ebony stopped before the pyramid as he woke Ning Xin up. She actually fell asleep on his back.
She shyly got off his back and didn¡¯t dare look at him for a short while, there were two other parties around but other than the people on watch, the others were asleep. He nodded to them as a greeting as they did the same. They set up camp a distance away from the others.
Once again, she didn¡¯t cook so much because they were going to sleep soon and she decided to make a heavier breakfast in the morning instead.
Ebony was alert again when she started wiping herself down in her tent, he warily looked at the other parties'' nightwatchers. Hopping they didn¡¯t have some special perception skill, he still let his ice balls expand into a massive orb that covered the tent.
Then he saw the group with the guy who fought him in the stairs on the first floor.
¡®They were not normal after all.¡¯ He remembered the crack in his wrist bones that healed long ago. He raised a hand to wave at them in greetings but the rogue seemed a little shocked by the greeting, he still waved back. ¡®So only the rogue can see this far in the dark.¡¯
They made their way towards him. Fortunately, Ning Xin didn¡¯t dally on wiping herself, she actually got dressed and came back out. Evidently, she noticed the people coming towards them.
Neither of them said anything, the leader of the party, the boy who sparred with him, spoke up first.
¡°Haa! I thought we were fast but as expected from the ones who cleared Ordina before, you¡¯re hella fast. Well, we¡¯re going to be the second that clears it so we¡¯ll be going on ahead. See ya around!¡± The boy¡¯s party members looked at him in disbelief and the crafter and mage were dragged along by the Dwarf. They didn¡¯t even wait for a reply as they entered the pyramid.
¡°Who are they?¡± Ning Xin asked, she clearly didn¡¯t have any impression of them so he explained that they met briefly on the first floor.
¡°They caught up to us when we started off around the same time?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
It didn¡¯t have to be said that it was obvious that the party of 5 Journeyman wasn¡¯t your average party but neither of them really cared if they wanted to be the next who cleared Ordina so they went to sleep. Ebony stayed up to keep watch since there were other people relatively close to them.
They still trained in the morning before breakfast. When got through the pyramid, ¡°Hug me,¡± was what Ebony said as he opened his arms wide.
¡°Wh-why should I?¡± Ning Xin was fully aware that he was making advances on her now.
¡°Trip fare.¡± Ebony pointed to the ceiling of water.
There was actually a signboard placed at the top of the stairs, right before the ceiling of water. It was written that they would be water mages selling trips every two hours or so, for a small price of 3 Greens per person. So parties without a method up could just wait till a water mage came down to fetch them. 3 Greens was a horrendous price but without the capability to cross the lake, they would be stopped at the 12th floor.
She dived in for the hug after a moment of hesitation that was gone the instant they entered the small pool of water, she was giving a bone-crushing hug with how afraid of the water she was.
They weren¡¯t even shaken or eaten once. Ordina was definitely giving them face.
¡®I¡¯ll have to run up the walls but if I carry Ning Xin with ice, my ice wouldn¡¯t be able to keep up. If I slow down I might fall off¡nah I can just freeze myself onto the wall.¡¯ Ebony was contemplating ways of crossing up the 13th to 18th floor as fast as possible. Their goal was to train on the 21st floor which has both the highest level monsters and a good number of them.
They left the confines of the walls of the large camp. Ning Xin has more trouble traversing fast in this terrain so they took it slowly.
¡°Can you ca-¡± Ning Xin was cut off as both of them leapt aside when they sensed movement from the muddy group.
An Issile¡¯s back surfaced slowly, she already had her blades drawn and pierced out, not expecting a greenish hand to grab her blade directly. It steamed as her blade was extremely hot after she imbued it with fire mana. She leapt back instead of continuing her offence as she saw what it was that caught her sword.
Both her and Ebony stared at what wasn¡¯t supposed to be here.
[Frost-Topaz Cardinal Golem Lvl 133]
It was way lower level than it was supposed to be, Ebony could only guess that the dungeon''s guardian could move around more freely and this one was recently spawned.
The greenish glow dialled down and it returned to its original blue colour. Although it was so much lower level, both of them were pretty wary of Ordina¡¯s tough guardian.
The golem stood atop the Issile¡¯s head and bowed towards them again before sitting down and tapping the head of the Issile.
The three of them shared a gaze.
Ebony was the first to move, he jumped onto the Issile and sat beside the Cardinal Golem. Ning Xin followed and sat beside him instead.
Because he kept watching the Cardinal Golem, he was very intrigued when he saw its level drop and the Issile under them levelled up. Only by 5 levels though.
It pointed to Ning Xin and surprised the both of them when it made a noise, ¡°Make,¡± it pointed towards the campsite, ¡°No look.¡±.
¡®It copied my mana vibration.¡¯ Ebony could sense that the Cardinal Golem held a ball of mana in its mouth and only opened its mouth to let the vibrations out. As for the language, it must have learnt over time by listening to so many people speak or shout at its monsters.
Seeing Ning Xin confused, the guardian looked at him in plee.
¡°I think it wants you to use your illusion ward to keep us out of sight.¡± He was able to guess. Seeing the guardian nod and try to articulate ¡®illusion ward¡¯ a few times was confirmation.
Ning Xin gulped, she knew Ebony was pretty clueless so he wouldn¡¯t know how abnormal Ordina was in terms of intelligence. It grew way too fast.
She still did as it said and took out the orb to activate, not giving the guardian the chance to observe it too much by hiding it under her mantle.
The Issile took off and flew up, he held Ning Xin so that she wouldn¡¯t get swung off. Freezing his own pants and legs down and using gravity manipulation to assist her in staying on.
He was pretty sure the holes in the ceiling weren''t so big but the one they were heading for was more than big enough for them to slip through with the gigantic flying eel.
There were dozens of Boomdart Fangs on the Issile, they slithered into the Cardinal Golem¡¯s hand as it threw the snakes into the Issile¡¯s open mouth. The Issile got faster again.
???
In this manner, they were on their way to the icy ceiling of the 19th floor before they knew it. The Cardinal Golem didn¡¯t attempt to converse and neither did the two of them.
¡°Higher?¡± It asked after they arrived on the 19th floor. The Issile retreated back after it let them alight on the top of the icy stairs on the 18th floor. It probably couldn¡¯t access any other floors or perhaps it just wasn¡¯t suited for the cold.
¡°What do you want from us?¡± Ning Xin asked before they could go on any further.
¡°...Fight.¡± It pointed to both of them, ¡°me stronger,¡±.
Her expression under her mask fell, it wanted to learn from them more directly. Yet it wasn¡¯t done speaking.
¡°Exchange.¡± It bent down and used its hand to chop at its neck.
Now she was thoroughly frightened by how much this dungeon knew.
¡°Where explody?¡± It cocked its head to her disgust, she had no doubt that was copying Ebony¡¯s reaction too.
¡°Explody?¡± She sensed the amusement in his question despite there being no change in tune.
The next thing it did turned his amusement around.
The Cardinal Golem widened its stance and faced empty icy lands, it then pulled off a familiar triple punch into the air.
Ning Xin thought it was a copy of his ¡®super panch¡¯ but Ebony knew it was an attempt of copying ¡®mega panch¡¯. The floor in front of the punch was growing yellow lines which disappeared fast. He sensed the mana, ice mana and guessed the last to be topaz mana which the Cardinal Golem added into each punch and flattened it before letting it blast forward.
If it could do anything close to what Hector could do, they stood no chance should it return to the same level it had previously. They weren¡¯t even back here to fight the Cardinal Golem again, they were just planning to train and push their skill levels against the Prime Verglas Kobolds and the hog-riding Chief.
¡°Deal?¡±
¡°Wait.¡± She pulled Ebony aside and signalled him to silence their conversation.
¡°What¡¯s wrong? I don¡¯t see an issue.¡±
¡°I mean¡I guess so. It¡¯s just¡odd, dungeons rarely get this intelligent, even those that have been around for a very long time.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t see a problem, it¡¯s using us to grow stronger and so are we. Imagine this, it¡¯s saying it¡¯ll let us kill his highest level creature for natural potential. We can still fight it for real if we want to get the most out of the natural potential. Even without us, it¡¯s not like it can¡¯t get stronger either.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°With how many people inside Ordina, it doesn¡¯t even have excess essence for itself, much less enough to accumulate for a dungeon break.¡±
¡°The stronger the dungeon, the more beneficial for the strong.¡± Ning Xin wondered why she was even hesitant to begin with. There were no down sides.
Ebony walked towards the Cardinal Golem and held up a fist.
¡°Brofist.¡±
¡®What is he saying?¡¯ Ning Xin couldn¡¯t keep up with his thought process.
Chapter 131: Na
¡°What should we call you?¡± Ebony asked his new friend.
¡°Ordina. Na. Guardian Na.¡± It wasn¡¯t too surprising that the dungeon knew that people called it Ordina but apparently, the Guardian liked to be addressed as a separate entity.
¡°Are you the same guardian?¡± He didn¡¯t stop to think if that was a sensitive question, the previous guardian was killed after all.
¡°Guardian same. Part Ordina. Body different.¡±
Ning Xin was picking out new information as well. If Na wasn¡¯t lying, dungeon guardians have part of the dungeon¡¯s consciousness or soul if they had one. Unless this was unique to Ordina as a special dungeon which would make more sense of its strong ability to learn.
¡°We want to fight and kill your prime and chief kobolds, you¡¯re okay with that?¡± Ning Xin had to ask.
¡°Okay, why kill?¡± Guardian Na was still in the process of learning.
¡°The more pressure and or danger we are in, the more we push our skills.¡± She answered truthfully but not going into detail.
¡°Make room. Spawn node. Control.¡±
¡°Great idea.¡± Ebony said.
Na led them to a corner of the dungeon walls where it opened up to a small room not too different in size with the guardian¡¯s room on the last floor.
¡°How many?¡±
???
¡°This is big¡I just saw that giant flying snake bring the target up.¡± The rogue blinked as he watched the Cardinal Golem bring the target couple up.
¡°What, where? I don¡¯t see any Issiles.¡± The groggy crafter was still a little mad that they had been forced to continue their travel ahead of their target.
¡°Illusion, but nothing I can¡¯t see through.¡± Their party¡¯s tracker had confidence in his abilities.
¡°So we lost them.¡± The even angier mage of the party was only appeased by the thought of a larger paycheck.
¡°Who do you think I am? I marked the Xeng¡¯s callstone the moment we first bumped into them.¡±
¡°Why not the target?¡±
¡°His perception is crazy. I can see why meditators seem ¡®slow¡¯ all the time, I wonder how he sees the world. Ell, they¡¯re going fast.¡±
¡°Please please please, let¡¯s go slow. It¡¯s not like we have to watch them all day round. We¡¯re just here to check out their strength.¡± The mage begged, stretching out her words. She would¡¯ve used provocative actions were she to have the bodily assets to but she didn¡¯t so she didn¡¯t shame herself by doing so.
¡°Fine fine. Based on what we¡¯ve seen so far. Two point eight.¡± The leader spouted a number.
¡°Three point three.¡± Their tracker countered.
¡°Two point six.¡± The crafter was only slightly interested in some of the things the target had said about his burstbow.
¡°Two point seven.¡± The mage chided in.
¡°Three point eight.¡± Their Dwarven friend surprised all of them.
¡°You sure? That¡¯s a high assessment, this is before the precautionary plus one. What gives?¡±
¡°Very sure. We know meditators have huge endurance capabilities, you can feel it too, that enhancement is thick and he can keep it up for too darn long but the troublesome part is probably his ability as a mage. Have you seen any mage so young that can manipulate 3 lifelike sculptures to move as if they were humans?¡±
¡°Well, whatever you say. So that averages out at about 3. Plus 1, so 4. Above 3.5 would bring it up from the lowest rung to the mid rung. For now, send the report to ask for 1 mid rung specialist grandmaster, 5 high rung masters. Don¡¯t forget to list down their movement, perception, endurance, ice and possibly fire magic. Oh and add ¡®lowest estimate¡¯ at the end.¡±
It was easy to find someone who can keep up with their target, even they could do so. It was easy to find someone who can stay relatively hidden. It was easy to find someone who could outlast a Journeyman. It was easy to prepare against some elemental magic. But it wasn¡¯t so easy to find one person who could do all of them.
¡°Sounds about right if we need it to be done swiftly and quietly. The five of us will have to do the separating of the target from the risk.¡±
¡°Indeed. A high paying job sure is nice.¡±
???
¡°I have no clue on shield handling, you might want to free up your hands by manipulating your shield like me.¡± Ebony said. Ning Xin was busy fighting against two Prime Verglas Kobold.
¡°No. Strong body. Weak magic. Like big shield!¡± Na replied.
¡®So it has limits.¡¯ Ning Xin overheard.
¡°A big shield is nice indeed. Did you learn how to use it from seeing others use it?¡±
¡°Short people,¡± Na said.
¡°Dwarfs,¡± Na repeated after Ebony a couple of times whenever it learned new words.
¡°Maybe you should have your creatures corner some parties and learn from how they fight.¡±
¡°Do that. Eat less. Learn more.¡± Na implied that it was already purposely letting people go so that it could observe their abilities more.
It then sulked and said how it was always ¡®hungry¡¯ and was barely able to spawn enough creatures to satisfy the people coming in. Although it was draining all the excess vitality, people wore myriad bracelets and it could only drain some mana from the leftovers of the few spells being cast inside it while it gained a lot of stamina it was spread out amongst all its creatures. So it was very happy when Ebony came in because he was single handedly supplying it more mana than any individual. According to Na, his excess vitality tasted ¡®sweet¡¯ and gave it energy just below that of killing or ¡®eating¡¯ someone.
There was indeed a low death rate after the initial opening of Ordina.
¡°Spawn under people. Listen talk.¡± Na didn¡¯t hide much, when they asked, he answered. He even identified himself as male, as if dungeons had the concept of gender. He said that he made a small space under parties tents and spawned a creature to listen in on their conversation to learn the language and copied Ebony¡¯s mana vibration to speak.
Over the next week, Na learned how to speak as he fought both Ebony and Ning Xin. While the bigger part of the day was slowly intensifying training against more and more Prime Verglas Kobolds. Na would fall asleep or perhaps ¡®go offline¡¯ for most of the day, regaining its level. It went past Ebony¡¯s Identify range 3 days back so Na was recovering fast.
Today, it stood up in the middle of its sleep and melded into the walls of the hidden room that had dirt ground and not icy temperatures. Courtesy of Ordina to make the environment more habitable for them. It informed them that a group of five was about to enter the guardian room on the last floor and was off to deal with them.
The Kobolds continued to be spawned from time to time but Na didn¡¯t come back till another three days past. As a level 1.
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¡°You were beaten?¡± He asked.
¡°Yes. In less than 10 minutes. I was at the same strength as when I fought you but I didn¡¯t strengthen my body with topaz.¡± Na added.
¡°It¡¯s a group of 4 humans and a dwarf right?¡±
Na nodded in reply.
¡°Enough of that, just rest for now. We¡¯ll spar with you when you¡¯re back at hundred.¡± Ning Xin wasn¡¯t as held back anymore when it came to Na. She was being a little silly, the dungeon¡¯s strength didn''t matter to her, all she needed was that she could get stronger faster with his help.
It was as if the two of them forgot about each other¡¯s presence as a person, she woke up, trained, cooked and ate, kill, train, dinner, train, sleep and repeat. The two of them optimised their conditioning.
She personally had the knowledge of her mother¡¯s conditioning, since Ebony had a better sense of fighting and knowledge about the body she didn¡¯t think it was anything worth hiding either and let him read the training methods her mother passed down.
¡°Are you sure I can read this?¡± Ebony asked. The book was as thick as a dictionary, it wasn¡¯t worn out and was taken care of properly. What he was actually thinking was ¡®I actually forgot about that memory I regained again¡I got to write whatever I remember down or I feel like I¡¯ll forget it again.¡¯ Having difficulty remembering things was very new for him.
Ning Xin¡¯s book was pretty much useless to him as a sword technique guide but the exercises were pretty intense. Most of the exercises on it were physically impossible for them at the moment but that was the higher tiers. It was clear that stabbing at the exact same spot with minimal deviation 30,000 times for each arm everyday was meant for accuracy training with her twin blades. There was even a time limit calculation that she could derive from her effective Agility stat.
Her conditioning training could be summed up as extreme speed, accuracy and ferocity. Footwork training was paired with her Cascade Dual Longsword Mastery, with only evasive measures and little to no defensive measures in the entire book. Her mother took speed to its limits with this.
¡°How did your mother cope with the constitution problem?¡±
¡°...She had a stronger physique from birth, I¡¯m probably the only one born without one in our generation. Although there aren¡¯t many Xeng born in the same generation as us.¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t hate her father but if data was to be believed, his physique just wasn¡¯t all that compatible with her mother¡¯s.
¡°I see. But I doubt a physique can deal with the stress of increasing skill levels. She must have some skill that can weaken the effects or some body strengthening ones.¡±
¡°Of course. Her magic body was built to withstand extreme speeds.¡± Ning Xin explained.
Magic body relates back to mana. More specifically how mana becomes more physical as one evolves.
The physical body could gain resistance to some physical problems like exhaustion, pain, heat, cold, poison and more but it couldn¡¯t become more resistant to some elements, for example earth.
If one was hit with an earth spell, it would just be physical force and no different from getting hit by a metal hammer or blade. Same thing for wind, he could run so fast but he wasn¡¯t getting wind resistance. Neither was he gaining gravity resistance by increasing gravity on himself.
Ning Xin had both earth and wind resistance because of some special device that her family had. It allowed her to temporarily strengthen the ¡®magic¡¯ in her body while she took some runic projectiles from sister Jing¡¯s armour dolls. It was very limited in use but still immensely helpful.
It was a bit confusing but most Xengs waited till they were Master before they trained their magic body or made a skill for it. They think that it was only possible after the Master Class evolution when they imbue mana in their body. It didn¡¯t sound any different to body enhancement to him at first and they really thought that magical resistance could only be built up when some form of body enhancement was used but that didn¡¯t make sense either.
Ebony was basically always enhanced but he didn¡¯t have those resistances. It further solidified their theory that they would only gain those resistances after evolving. He wasn¡¯t sure if that meant Reinforced Mana Chassis was not a magic body kind of skill. Ning Xin argued that he just never took enough damage from gravity, wind or any other magical element for his magic body to gain resistance.
Recalling the memory of reading the conditioning book, he shared it with Ning Xin through words.
¡°My current training is pretty much 80% similar to tier 2 explosive rock body. Since two tiers higher than our current tier is the limit, I can only guess that her untidy scribblings mean having different elements shot at me while I do my physical training and I have to pretend as if nothing is hitting me.¡± Now that she brought up the magic body, he was assuming this tier 3 conditioning that he remembered out of nowhere was supposed to be training the magic body.
If Ning Xin was right and he just wasn¡¯t hit with strong enough spells for a long duration, he could test it with her wind magic. Fire would give him heat resistance while it should be possible for his physical body to gain resistance to lightning. If he can get wind resistance it would indeed mean he had what could be considered a magic body already.
¡°I won¡¯t use my enhancement, so can you start blasting me with all of your magic when we train?¡± Ebony asked sincerely, it wouldn¡¯t really waste her mana since she could take it as training too but as she had way slower regeneration she would have fewer fights against the kobolds with mana available to her.
¡°...I could accidentally kill you that way.¡±
¡°You would definitely make me stronger this way.¡±
It was actually plenty to convince her this way but to incite or perhaps motivate her he said it would train her control over magic. Other than her Class Fortified fire magic, her other magic shouldn¡¯t be able to kill him off the bat anyway. Not with Reinforced Mana Chassis on full capacity.
For footwork, he remembered the next in his training regime that he never got to on Earth was ¡®Treading Flash¡¯ from the drawing in the book; it was evidently inspired by the kappas. Although he remembered the training exercises, it was questionable whether he would be able to evolve Treading Stride any further as a Journeyman. It was technically possible so he wouldn¡¯t give up trying.
This was where he found out something new, the recurring theme of the use of gravity in the daily conditioning. He didn¡¯t manage to remember the seemingly last chapter but he did have an impression of the image on the page he flipped to. The drawing of someone piercing a black dotted tipped spear into the figure that was training.
There was reason to believe that his mother was a gravity mage and he had gotten the affinity for it from her.
There were many things to try out from his new memory outside of fighting dozens of Kobolds everyday. Na had strong capabilities to learn but these Kobolds improved at a much slower pace. Technique wise, the two of them were quickly surpassing whatever the Kobolds could throw at them. Ning Xin, broke down their fighting patterns while his body just accustomed itself to fighting them.
As for the many blanks in the conditioning that he remembered it was because the conditioning was in the middle of being edited. Just like Ning Xin, her fighting style was different from her mother¡¯s and so was Ebony¡¯s. They couldn¡¯t copy the army and let everyone follow the same regime. They had a very big advantage this way but neither of them saw the benefit in a complete copy of an unfitting regime.
They saw to it that they fought both alone and together against the variety of Kobolds.
After two days of fighting together, Ebony got an idea seeing how they needed Na to open up the room to let oxygen in periodically. In a confined space, Ning Xin''s fire magic was deadly in more than one way. To a certain extent, he could cope with less oxygen from both his physique and the fact that he takes fewer breaths than a normal person.
¡°We can make a bomb.¡±
¡°A what?¡±
¡°An explosive. You¡¯re not very adept at compression but I am. Your fire is extremely hot compared to Mark¡¯s or any other fire mage I have seen so far. You could conjure a ton of fire mana and maintain it in one of my ice orbs while I compress its size to its limits. The expansion of air would be forced in while you keep the fire from going out. I could keep my ice orb from breaking apart, then I could just throw it and let go of my control.¡±
¡°Then the large volume of air and fire would burst out? Would it be worth the effort or mana?¡±
¡°I have no idea. Maybe not. We¡¯ll have to test it out.¡±
He started with a yoga ball sized orb but she couldn¡¯t conjure fire mana inside of it like how it was almost impossible to conjure inside someone else¡¯s body. The ice mana was in the way so he had to make an opening for her fire mana to enter. She tried to squeeze as much as she could, which wasn¡¯t as hard as compressing her own mana since fire mana seemed to listen to her wishes more. She was being very controlled about it and stopped at 25 mana worth.
He crushed the ball of ice into the size of a marble almost instantly as if there was no air or resistance from inside and threw it and Na who just woke up. Na caught the tiny ball coming at it with its hand, reacting fast and catching it accurately.
Na opened his fist to see what was thrown at him to see a flash and the ice shard burst in his face. It melted his face off a little together with the quickly melting shards of ice that managed to cut into his body. He didn¡¯t react fast enough to activate his runic body.
Ebony shared a glance with Ning Xin, both thinking ¡®that was actually pretty impressive¡¯. Na was only level 60 right now but his durability was off the charts, even without it activating its runic body which Ebony forgot to ask about. It was pretty impressive for a small amount of mana to show off such effects.
¡®My ice melted too fast or the broken shards would¡¯ve done more. The heat within increased more than I thought when I compressed it almost instantly. Pressure increased, so does temperature but ice sort of defeats the purpose, it wouldn¡¯t really matter if we do it really fast though.¡¯
¡°Sorry about that Na, I actually didn¡¯t think it would do that much damage to you.¡±
¡°Just a scratch. What was that?¡±
Ebony explained the physics simply since he didn¡¯t know how the presence of mana would affect it.
¡°Is there anywhere on the floor without people?¡± Ning Xin was interested in the limits of explosive power they could reach.
¡°I don¡¯t even have many Kobolds scouring the place but these few floors never had many people for long.¡± Na¡¯s speech had improved considerably.
¡°Then there¡¯s no problem going all out.¡±
Chapter 132: Stealing Prey
¡°Do you have to make it so big?¡± Ning Xin looked at the orb taller than them.
¡°This is about five thousand worth of ice mana, I can¡¯t mould runes in for durability or heat resistance since they would break or not function if I were to compress it into a small ball. The scales are actually not very compressed since they just have to withstand pressure for a short time, we want it to break open after all.¡±
Ebony really meant all out when he said so. The remainder of his mana was put into preventing it from bursting or melting as Ning Xin charged it up with fire mana. He got her to stuff some of her wind mana inside as well, sealing the entrance he opened for her. Her mana pool exceeded 4000 due to her Mental Supersaturation getting some nice levels after multiple Natural Potential increases.
It was fortunate that he could still regenerate mana as he was maintaining the orb around 2.5 metres in diameter but it was still nice of her to coat the inner layer with wind. This was similar to her Sphere of Immolation but with actual effort and should be the same spell she threw at the horde of worms years back.
She fell on her butt the moment she was done, he immediately closed the opening and did his routine squashing of a sphere of mana as fast as he could. Perhaps due to the larger volume or maybe, the wind and fire mana inside, it was harder than usual. The ice got thicker and its size got smaller making it easier to withstand the internal pressure. He made it seem easy but even he could feel the intense resistance and feedback to his mind. It only became the size of basketball before he couldn¡¯t keep it up anymore.
Ning Xin was getting more used to emptying her mana pool but it still left her with a couple seconds of dizziness right after. She felt like she was getting the hang of meditation recently but it might have been her imagination.
Seeing the glowing ball fly into the distance of icy trees, Ebony got an excess shield out in front of them just in case. Na was hoping the damage done wouldn¡¯t be as costly as the amount of sustenance he was going to get out of that spell.
They should¡¯ve gone further away.
The wind pressure blew the three of them behind his shield back but he stood his ground. Unfortunately, the blast of wind was beyond the melting temperatures of most Common ranked metals. Layered Ice Carapace wasn¡¯t vapourised but it didn¡¯t matter since heat wasn¡¯t stopped by a mere shield. His body caught on fire and he quickly conjured a little of his own to fight back. Fortunately, there was plenty of ice mana in his robe.
Ning Xin¡¯s body and hair went ablaze but that was it, she stood there with a head of burning hair. Running her fingers through her hair, the flames clung onto her hands and she flicked it off like droplets of water. Just like him, she could control fire mana but not the heat.
Na was prepared this time and was glowing green from the topaz mana and blue icy skin it had. The ambient ice mana around had been becoming more and more similar to Ebony¡¯s conjured ice, giving it the ¡®harder to melt¡¯ property.
¡°It¡¯s not the strongest attack either of us could dish out but in terms of area of effect, this seems pretty good. I can make it such that the shards of ice that aren¡¯t completely melted to burst into a mist of ice mana wherever they end up.¡±
¡°We¡¯re not going to practice this too much, it takes a lot of my mana. Maybe once a day.¡± Ning Xin could only recover a full mana pool in 10 hours.
Although she had her magical pearl Sister Jing made, her larger mana pool didn¡¯t count in the ¡®10% per hour¡¯ so a full charge for her on a normal basis actually takes longer. It apparently isn¡¯t uncommon among higher level mages. They could take more than a day or two to fully recover their mana because of these skills that increase the size of their mana pool. At the same time, those mages usually have at least a tier 2 meditation-type skill to speed things up. Despite them being a generic skill for non-meditators, it would still help massively.
Seeing how he was planning to be with her for life, it would be impressive if they managed to have skills that work well together. Combination spells were nice.
Ebony had finally decided on the best method to try to help Ning Xin get a type of meditation. He chanted into her head with sound magic throughout the day. ¡°Breathe in, Breathe out.¡± a little hypnotic but she found it calming. She personally couldn¡¯t ¡®hear¡¯ anything while she fought and had her Core Skill kicked up high after a week of fighting with the chant in her head. She didn¡¯t need outside help anymore as her mind repeated the words itself.
The rhythmic chant that her mind was coming up with whenever blood rushed to her head even matched up with her movements.
Incensed Meditation - Maintaining rhythmic flow of slaughter and clear state of mind with an intense blood rush to the brain to increase Mana regeneration rate by 2.5% per level and Stamina regeneration rate by 1.0% per level. Reduced Perception from blood rush reduced by 2.5% per level.
She did not expect to get a semi tier 2 meditation type skill. It wasn¡¯t too useful. Unlike Ebony, she couldn¡¯t recover mana as she was casting. But it did mean that if she ran out of mana, with all her body enhancement stopped, she could still fight in her Core skill enhanced state which would slowly regain some of her mana back.
It also only worked when her Core skill was in use so it wasn¡¯t all that bad since it might save her one day. The fact that it improves her Core Skill by letting her keep her Perception and possibly ability to think properly made it even better.
The only thing she had a problem with was all the ¡®slaughter¡¯ themes in her skills.
???
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill: Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 222
Class: Meditative Swordsman of Frostblaze - Lvl 100
Class Skills:
Treading Stride Lvl 168
Ice Mana Control Lvl 205
Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 195
Blazing Flow Greatsword Mastery Lvl 176
Frostblaze Cladding Lvl 170
Ice Sword Lvl 158
Ceaseless Onslaught Lvl 171
Layered Ice Carapace Lvl 178
Frost Mist Perception Sphere Lvl 189
Serene Swordsman of Frost Conditioning Lvl 88
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Orchestral Gravity Conductor Lvl 100
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 158
Mana Vibration Lvl 168
Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 173
Magnified Gravity Field Lvl 173
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 173
Vibrational Gravity Sense Lvl 173
Sonic Overlay - Lvl 168
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Meister - Lvl 100
Profession Skills:
Mana Moulding Lvl 170
Sheer Mana Compression Lvl 172
Mana Perception Lvl 189
Reinforced Mana Chassis Lvl 188
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 500/500
Stamina: 500/500 [510/510]
Mana: 5300/5300 [5416/6416]
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 50 [51]
Vitality: 50
Constitution: 250 [961]
Endurance: 50 [51]
Agility: 250 [255]
Intelligence: 376 [384]
Wisdom: 530 [541]
Perception: 100 [322]
Generic Skills:
Camouflage Lvl 38
Identify Lvl 15
Immense Cold Resistance Lvl 69
Running Lvl 39
Mental Mapping Lvl 27
Kicking Mastery Lvl 55
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 10
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 28
Dish Washing Lvl 37
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 67
Tracking Lvl 14
Game Processing Lvl 27
Immense Heat Resistance Lvl 55
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
Gardening Lvl 45
Cooking Lvl 32
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 55
Korun Lvl 12
Inscription Lvl 65
Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 15
Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 41
Sheer Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 25
Lightning Resistance Lvl 18
Blood Resistance Lvl 18
Wind Resistance lvl 16
Every single one of his skills had reached a hard cap, and so was Ning Xin¡¯s. Except maybe some of their generic skills that had little use in this place and conditioning which was only capped at their Class level. It wasn¡¯t an imagination or gut feeling, people should be able to ¡®feel¡¯ once they reach the absolute limits that are incredibly hard to break without more Natural Potential.
The fact that he could get resistance to blood and wind magic was proof that his Reinforced Mana Chassis was indeed considered his magic body.
It had been very hard to convince her to throw her strongest fire spell at him without enhancement. So in one of their spars, he waited till they reached the peak of climax of the battle before shutting off all his enhancements. He never wore his robe against her since he didn¡¯t didn¡¯t want it to get pointlessly damaged. For some odd reason, he was forbidden from fighting her shirtless and had no choice but to make a shirt of ice that was good control training to make it move with his body.
Due to her Fortification that increases the heat of her fire magic by 250%, and the fact that he was almost melted to death, staying bedridden for three whole weeks (because she didn¡¯t allow him to continue to train even after he recovered outwardly). He could actually walk since he blocked his face with his arms, his arms and chest were the most affected.
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She got more teary than angry. It didn¡¯t help that his ribs were a little melted and his internals could be seen. The chef wasn¡¯t freaked out by the burns and the gore. She helped cut out the affected areas so that he could regenerate easier. Her level up in Live Ingredient Processing didn¡¯t calm her down.
It was 100% his fault and the lesson was learnt at her expense. She might have been a little traumatised by that and didn¡¯t spar with him for a long time. When they did, she copied him and shut down her enhancement. Fortunately, he was alert and managed to control his cold flames to separate from her instead of digging in and her Core Skill couldn¡¯t be turned off instantly like his could.
It was from his ranged swing where some of his flames were sent slashing at her, she had pulled her collar down and let the freezing flames run down her neck and shoulder. His quick reaction and her heated body made it such that his flames only grazed her. Unlike him, she wouldn¡¯t fully heal physical injury and even now, a thin red mark not even a finger¡¯s length decorated her. It stood out like a sore thumb on her extremely fair and porcelain like skin.
In his defence, he told her beforehand and he warned her right before he got hit. She had even agreed from his persuasion that it wouldn¡¯t kill but make him stronger. He didn¡¯t think she would be able to raise his resistance straight to Immense which was tier 3 though, his trust in his body might have been a little higher than he imagined. Since her lightning and wind weren¡¯t even able to push his resistance to tier 2, he didn¡¯t expect her fire magic to be stronger by such an extent. Those were just excuses, the message she sent was extremely clear.
They won¡¯t be doing anything that dangerous anymore. She herself only got tier 2 cold resistance from their normal training where she didn¡¯t warm herself up.
Since the light was controlled by Na, it was dark most of the day to help both of them acclimate to it but seeing how both of them weren¡¯t really affected by darkness, he made it bright out all day except when they went to sleep, which was a short period of 4 hours.
Ebony only slept close to 3 hours so he had a little more free time to study his old memories. He did what he remembered and ran into Ning Xin¡¯s spells without flinching already but all it did was give him resistance and tension in their relationship. The refresher was nice, it gave him additions to his regime but his conditioning did not exactly turn out the way it was written in his memory.
The same happened to Ning Xin, a large majority of their daily regime was just diving into a group of increasingly skilled Kobolds that was also increasing in variety of weapons and abilities.
His conditioning evolved to tier 2 with absolutely no change in their description other than the sweet increase in Strength. Chances were, his style already deviated a lot from what his mother had planned. At level 88, the related stats were increased by 2.2% and it was beginning to show in his status. The odd numbers were quite an eyesore for him.
Serene Swordsman of Frostblaze Conditioning (Passive) - Developing your body and mind through rigorous combat as a Serene Swordsman of Frostblaze increasing Strength, Constitution, Endurance, Agility, Intelligence and Wisdom by 0.025% per level.
His greatsword mastery didn¡¯t evolve, it mutated and was still a tier 1 skill.
Blazing Flow Greatsword Mastery - Having incorporated your magic into your greatsword style birthed this unique skill with the greatsword. Strength decreases by 15%, Agility increases by 15% while wielding a greatsword single-handedly. Strength increases by 20%, Agility decreases by 5% while wielding a greatsword with both hands. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increases by 1.0% per level. Flames attached to the Greatsword deal an additional 0.10% intelligence per level.
It must have been his greater focus on magic than on his physical technique with the greatsword but it was still more refined as well. With the strength and agility buffs and debuffs being larger and smaller respectively. He didn¡¯t know the workings of how mastery affected the Intelligence or power of magic but he would take it. He hypothesised it to be similar to conditioning, of how repetition and familiarity increased its effectiveness.
In the gentlest way possible, he was told that his talent with the greatsword was only slightly above average and nothing spectacular. Even so, that was only taking technique with the greatsword into account. He could take on any greater swordsman with his evasive, defensive, magical, predictive abilities and pure reflex.
All the spells of his Sub-Class were limited by the manipulation¡¯s level except Battle Song which just doesn¡¯t level no matter what he does.
Frostblaze Augmentation was at quite an irksome level, it just needed 5 more levels but the not so imaginary wall was telling him that he could continue training for dozens of years and it might not even level once.
He was pretty good with Perception type skills but they similarly hit a limit. Reinforced Mana Chassis was iffy, it would take some time but 1 or two more levels seems reachable.
Ning Xin¡¯s ability with blood magic showed the greatest improvement. They were all past level 60 even as a generic skill and she was going to evolve to merge blood magic into her Class. It was interesting to note that a Master that wanted to evolve to Grandmaster and bring a generic skill into his/her Class needed it to be at least level 100 while it was 50 for Journeyman to Master.
She had experimented a lot with her wind and lightning magic but just like Ebony wasn¡¯t able to change their Sub-Class skills much. They had much better control and could do more than what their skills say yet there was no change. In her words, their Sub-Class was already saturated and that it was nothing surprising that it was a lot more limited compared to their Class and that they shouldn¡¯t be too worried about it.
Ebony finally got the hang of flight with mana manipulation together with gravity manipulation. Because he never understood why flight was difficult even though Mallory said it was simple done by wrapping oneself with mana and manipulating it to lift off or move he had constantly manually put effort into doing so. Relaxing was still the way to go.
He was a little embarrassed about how long it took him because Ning Xin could levitate with her blood halo and even glide through the air slowly. There was still some sort of link between her blood halo and her body which she used to drag herself up.
Neither of them could glide faster than a normal human¡¯s jogging speed so they didn¡¯t really use it other than trying to assist themselves in dodging or moving in a way their physical body doesn¡¯t allow. But since it was moving them so slow, it couldn¡¯t be used in their spars as it couldn¡¯t keep up with their bodies. They needed more work on it to be of much use.
¡°How long has it been?¡± Ning Xin asked as they packed up their makeshift living arrangement that was purely for sleeping, studying, cooking and eating. She could¡¯ve roughly guessed by how much they ate but their serving sizes increased and they took meals whenever she got really hungry instead of following a schedule. It wouldn¡¯t be inaccurate to say that their expenditure of energy was extremely high.
Roughly two months ago, Ning Xin fought Na to the death. She couldn¡¯t even come close to destroying it for good but she managed to destroy two of its layers. She was still left with a bitter feeling about taking his head but the level 225 Na which took quite a lot of Ordina¡¯s resources gave her sweet sweet Natural Potential.
Today, Ebony stood before the fresh 225 Na. With both of them supplying it with both a ton of energy and teaching it, it was way stronger than before even if it was back to level 210.
¡°Around 8 months I think.¡± Ebony was pretty accurate.
In this period of time, Na was challenged and defeated by other parties 4 times. The other parties were certainly strong enough and now that the supply route to the 18th floor was more stable these strong parties were more than prepared enough to travel the icy plains of the 19th to 21st floor. It was worth noting that one of the parties was the same one that defeated it once already. The group of youths.
There was no climax, nothing special and no unexpected victory. Having fought numerous times, each other¡¯s tactics were nothing new. Despite all the improvement he had, Na¡¯s speed and power could overwhelm him and the real issue was how tough he was even without enhancing its runic body with topaz mana.
When asked how he knew runes, he simply said that he sort of knew it not long after it was born. Ning Xin deduced that it was likely something it absorbed when it was being formed and was absorbing everything in its surroundings. The topaz and the golem theme should be from Bubble Hills and with Bubble Hills that were apparently more than meets the eye underground, her greatest guess was that it was from there.
It wasn¡¯t even common knowledge that there was topaz under Bubble Hills so it could only mean that it was absorbed from much deeper than explored.
Gravity pulled Icicle towards Na. His shield was immovable but was hammered into, the vibrations cracked into it with ice mana repelled into the cracks. After a long time, he burst the accumulated mana into flames but how could the ice golem be afraid of ice?
The guardian wasn¡¯t trying to kill him, so it allowed him to keep dishing all his skills and mana to shatter it into pieces.
¡°Thanks Na.¡± Ebony brought the final Sonic Overlayed slash over Na¡¯s head.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Frost-Topaz Cardinal Golem Lvl 225]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 125 levels or more above your own, sufficient potential experience accumulated. Experience converted to Natural Potential.¡¯¡¯
Na smiled back like they taught him to in his last moments. At least, like Ning Xin taught him to. A hand burst out from the ground under them, bringing the two of them into a state of alertness.
¡°Come back soon.¡± Na winked, he was level 1 again.
¡°That was fast.¡± Ebony commented.
¡°You think I never learn? I made a spare body in advance, just didn¡¯t have the essence to strengthen it.¡± Na had an attitude but not a bad one. He also spoke fluently now.
¡°I guess you did get destroyed a few times now.¡± Ning Xin said to their new friend.
¡°Do you want to try leaving the dungeon? We can just disguise you with a thick blanket.¡± Ebony suggested.
¡°No thanks, not after what Scarlet told me. At least not when I¡¯m so deprived of essence.¡± Although Ebony called her Ning Xin, she wasn¡¯t comfortable with others calling her that.
She merely informed Na that the dungeon''s creatures would get their essence absorbed the moment they left the dungeon. Na also sneakily poked his hand through the exit in the guardian¡¯s room before so he already knew. With the limited essence Ordina had, it couldn¡¯t afford external exploration. A lot of its essence was already spent to train the two of them and the dungeon¡¯s overall population of monsters had decreased because of that.
Na walked them out of the exit in his ¡®office¡¯.
Ebony could vaguely feel the ¡®doors¡¯ on some of his skills loosen. It was once again, night. From the almost light orange moon he could tell it was almost the end of summer. Probably the seventh month of the year and he was right.
Ning Xin stretched and took a deep breath of Elva¡¯s air.
¡°I¡¯ll go get some fresh ingredients for dinner, I¡¯ll cook up a feast!¡± Ning Xin was excited to cook again.
¡°I¡¯ll check if the inn we used to stay in has rooms.¡± Ebony simply replied. He was still unaware that she could sense his emotions of similar glee.
He didn¡¯t control his body but it dived in for a hug which she didn¡¯t defend against.
¡°St-stop it, there are people watching.¡± Ning Xin only managed to push him off after a stunned minute, also because she enjoyed the sudden hug. They were a show for the guards, fortunately, not many people were around since it was dark out already.
She ran off to find some ingredients even though it was dark out. There might still be stalls or shops open.
He headed towards the inn they used to stay at, wondering why he suddenly hugged her.
It suddenly turned completely black when he turned into the side road. Surprise was nowhere to be found on his face. Two figures descended from the rooftops not far away. All within his range of senses which already reached over 90 metres.
He dodged the bag the two of them were trying to cover him in. Not expecting to back up into a wall that was raised from the ground. He wanted to move away from the wall but the earthen walls already wrapped around his wrists and locked his arms behind his back at the same time, his feet already sunk into the ground. His whole body was swallowed up in an instant.
He guessed he was being dragged underground and wanted to explode with Frostblaze Augmentation but found all his mana drained out, it was regenerating but he didn¡¯t have enough to break out. His head received a very strong impact, strong enough to crack his skull. Putting him to sleep.
Putting him to sleep, that¡¯s where they messed up.
???
¡°Hey! Those street rats actually took action! And they seemed to have succeeded!¡± The confident rogue that had been watching Ordina¡¯s portal already saw their target exiting and even separated with the risk without any effort from them.
¡°Ell! They act fast despite their lacking professionalism.¡± The leader cursed.
¡°We never really found out their motive despite having the same target.¡± The mage girl didn¡¯t like to work at night and wasn¡¯t in the best of mood to have work knocking.
¡°You can still track him right?¡± The crafter asked.
¡°Of course.¡± The rogue was just as confident even though he was not able to find them in Ordina.
¡°Tell them it¡¯s time to work but the job description will change from kidnapping to taking back stolen goods.¡± Their leader said to no one in particular.
¡°Alright, let¡¯s go.¡± Their Dwarven member was already geared up.
¡°Kidnapping our target? We need to show those chumps who they''re dealing with.¡±
???
Gors away from Ordina¡¯s settlement.
¡°HAHAHAHA! We got him! I told you the wait was worth it.¡± A scrawny man equipped like an archer laughed.
The group of men dressed in black that he found to help didn¡¯t join him in his joy.
¡°How much he¡¯s worth has yet to be seen. We¡¯ll be taking 80% of his regenerated mana for 2 years.¡±
¡°What! We agreed on a 60/40 split.¡±
¡°We did all the work. We will return to 60/40 after 2 years. He blew up 2 of my mana draining ampules and those aren¡¯t cheap.¡±
The large bearded man beside the archer was about to make a move on the speaking man but he stopped his good friend.
¡°We are the ones with the facilities. Half a year is the most you¡¯ll be getting. Where is he?¡±
¡°One and a half years. Relax, my men don¡¯t fail, they should be on the way. You better not mess up during transport to your secret little facility because that¡¯s not part of the contract.¡±
¡°One year. You don¡¯t have to worry about that, once you hand them to these men your job is done and you can have this deposit of 3 Blues.¡±
¡°Dea-¡± The man was interrupted with the ground shaking and a burst of chilly winds.
¡°What was that?¡± The large bearded warrior got his axe out.
The people present heard the callstone from the man who asked for a bigger paycheck.
¡°Boss! Send reinforcements!¡±
All the men dressed in black dashed away towards where the shaking came from except for the one in charge of talking.
¡°Are you going to help us or not!?¡± The man was enraged to see the other group staying still.
¡°Our job is transporting, it won¡¯t start till we get him into our hands. Don¡¯t blame us for not doing your part.¡± The group behind the archer and bearded men were all huge warriors.
He had no arguments and quickly left to help his men.
¡®I sent two level 170 rogues and a well reputed level 180 earth mage, how can they have trouble with that Journeyman?¡¯ The man was very clear of the local standards, his men could easily take on anyone 20 or even 30 levels above themselves compared to the locals.
The battle wasn¡¯t far away, just behind 4 tall mounds of earth in these Plains. He felt the chill even before he reached.
He didn¡¯t expect to see his earth mage¡¯s head unattached and held by the hair in their target¡¯s hands. It was completely frozen together with the ground around them. A scream in the background made its way into his ear, he turned to see one of his men¡¯s arms had already been cut off. This man was the reinforcement he just sent! He came not even seconds later and their reinforcement lost an arm.
¡°Wait! We can talk this out!¡± He was glad that their target was standing in place without moving.
¡°Bo-boss! He-he-he¡¯s asleep¡¡± Another one of his men who was on the floor with both his legs frozen. He recognised him as the one who called for reinforcements and one of the two rogues that was sent to capture the meditator.
¡°What on Elva are you saying?¡± He wasn¡¯t about to tear his eyes away from the meditator who dropped the head but was still standing there with a lightly glowing greatsword. The meditator was glowing in a similar colour.
¡°He. We knocked him out and brought him away from the outpost. After we surfaced here, Dan wanted to hit the meditator''s head in anger because we wasted two ampules but the meditator suddenly moved. Enzel stabbed out at the meditator to free Dan but¡¡± His men reported and pointed at another decapitated body.
Then he reported how Dan, the earth mage, wanted to avenge Enzel but ended up the same way. He himself was going to attack the meditator but when he saw how Dan wasn¡¯t even able to react to the meditator appearing before him, his knees went soft and he gave up all intentions of attacking. He only noticed his frozen legs when his knees gave in.
¡°You¡¯re saying he¡¯s only reacting to intentions of harm towards him.¡± It wasn¡¯t as if it was completely unheard off but he was in disbelief at his underling¡¯s words. Of the 3 men sent to reinforce them, the one with a cut arm nodded to his glance. Confirming that he was indeed attacked because he attacked first.
¡°I..I don¡¯t know.¡± The man with frozen legs was only able to tell him that the meditator caught the Enzel off guard and the earth mage was too slow to react which were within the possibilities of a Journeyman but how did his reinforcement lose his arm?
¡°Greetings gentlemen.¡± All their heads snapped up to the quiet voice. The overflowing Vitality and Wisdom weighed heavily on them
¡®Flight!¡¯ The man quickly Identified the flying man, he could only make out a silhouette since the bright moon was directly behind.
¡®What the ell is a grandmaster doing in this corner of Elva?!¡¯
All of them were shocked by the Grandmaster¡¯s presence while he personally noticed they were surrounded by people whose essence were all stronger than his own. He was actually more shocked that the Grandmaster was a ¡®Fire warrior¡¯, a warrior that can fly? This wasn¡¯t any old Grandmaster you can find in Tidal¡¯s street.
¡°We¡¯ll be taking him. Any objections?¡±
He gulped at the threat behind those words. One thing he knew was that it wasn¡¯t a question but a statement.
But the moment the Grandmaster finished his words, everyone present choked from a foreign presence. It was the ever-familiar overflowing Wisdom, but he never met anyone who had such oppressive mana. No, not oppressive.
Heavy.
Chapter 133: Outclassed
The Grandmaster warrior in the air smiled. They hit the elling jackpot, he was experienced enough to tell that the only possible reason their target would have such a diabolical amount of excess mana was that he was one that Classed with the strongest Fortification possible. Even better was that it was specifically for mana regeneration. He just didn¡¯t understand how the target had relatively thick Vitality too.
With his Perception, he could definitely sense that their target wasn¡¯t conscious. It made things simpler for them. The moment he finished his words, their unconscious target even managed to deem him as a threat and leapt up with a stab. He was happy that their reports deemed it necessary to call him. Well, he took the job away from the younger fools since he was bored so he wasn¡¯t exactly called for this.
But he wasn¡¯t needed. Not yet at least.
There were 10 other highly skilled Masters surrounding the target and two of them jumped to defend him.
He was surprised to see their target burst into blue flames in mid-air and kick off a conjured piece of ice in the direction of one of the Masters who moved to intercept him. Moving past the Master Warrior and into the distance. Everyone from the organisation reacted fast and chased.
The Grandmaster on the other hand landed on the ground, their competitors didn¡¯t dare move in his presence.
¡®That blue flame, it''s not fire mana. It was cold, probably some kind of ice magic. Also, I doubt he was planning to attack me but is an unconscious body really able to come up with the plan of feigning an attack and then escaping through the holes opened in our formation?¡¯
Six of his colleagues already caught up to their target and were about to engage. The other four weren¡¯t fast enough.
¡®He¡¯s slippery¡¯ He caught up without effort. They were trying to capture and not kill which made things much harder when their target was able to just so slightly dodge every single attack. The sleeping smoke bombs they brought was useless now that he was already asleep.
He was also just fast and strong enough that his colleagues were unable to catch and put the cuffs on but not fast enough to throw them off. They surrounded their target again.
¡°You could come with us nicely, you can tell we aren¡¯t trying to kill you right?¡± He somehow thought it was possible to talk sense into the unconscious boy.
He didn¡¯t expect the light glowing in their target¡¯s body to die down but it was just his men doing a good job. One of them managed to stop his feet with earth magic while two others used that chance to dive in and put on a single cuff on both his wrist, they then attached both cuffs together. Their target collapsed onto the ground, truly asleep now.
¡°We have to thank our competitors for draining most of his mana don¡¯t we?¡± He joked. His colleagues laughed with him. None of them was worried they would fail. They didn¡¯t even need their strongest card to take actions.
Although things may have played out differently were their target to have a full pool of mana. Now that they cuffed him up, all his mana would be forcefully drained away. It was the stuff prisons used, unlike the myriad bracelet which passively drains excess mana, these cuffs forcefully drain it and store it into the attached mana ores.
One of them went to take off the target¡¯s myriad bracelet which may get in the way of the mana drain.
¡°This¡his callstone is connected.¡± Their colleague stated.
¡°I can see that. Shouldn¡¯t have saved on the barrier to lock callstones down. Take him away, a feisty one is on the way.¡± The Grandmaster fire warrior took a deep breath, as if he could feel the fire mana coming their way.
Two of the Masters stayed behind. They were the precaution against the Xeng, one wielded two blades, a sharp dagger and a short sword. Only the Grandmaster himself did not bother hiding his Class, the rest wore obfuscation crystals of Uncommon quality.
If any of them had Appraise or a tier 2 Identify of sorts, they would have more information to work with but it was a pretty rare skill to learn. He only knew about 2 people who had them and those were other Grandmasters at the same or higher standing than himself.
His other subordinate was unarmed.
¡°I¡¯ll be taking this awesome beauty for now.¡± He tore the greatsword off the target''s hands, the grip was all too easy for him to peel; he just tore a little of the target¡¯s skin since it was frozen on.
¡®Heavy¡I knew it was Rare quality, a shame it¡¯s ice elemental. Wooden? He uses a stick to spar with a fire swordsman?¡¯ The grip of Icicle was freezing cold to touch but he looked at the glowing lines. He wasn¡¯t an expert but it was easy to tell its runic nature.
He gave it a good swing and felt that the balance of it was off, it was designed specifically to fit the target. Finally, he turned his attention to the Xeng that already arrived and was in combat with his subordinates
She was getting pushed back but she was only staring at him, not even giving both her opponents a moment¡¯s glance. The heat rising in the surroundings was accounted for, with fire mages being one of the most common mages, heat-resistant armour and clothing were easily obtainable.
Five figures made their way from behind the masked little girl. Looking at them go after the Xeng, they must be the scout team sent here.
He knew there was little to no problem. Everyone in this line of work knew that they needed a good earth mage, their target together with his men already gone underground. With the myriad bracelet taken out and, if his subordinates weren¡¯t dumb removing any sort of tracking, the job could already be considered done.
The loud thumping and the very air reverberating in the surroundings were making him intrigued. Very intrigued.
???
Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin was going from restaurant to restaurant looking to see if any of them was willing to sell her some ingredients since the market or stalls were already closed. She hadn¡¯t even reached the second restaurant when her gut instinct warned her that something felt wrong.
She stopped and looked around. Everything seemed in place, there didn¡¯t seem to be any danger either. She gave up on looking for fresher ingredients, heading to the inn instead. She hurried for some reason.
When she got there, her gut feeling was heightened, something was missing. She couldn¡¯t sense Ebony¡¯s body temperature or smell him. Still, she asked around and confirmed that no one as described arrived.
Dashing out and backtracking to Ordina until she finally found his remnant scent. The scent stopped not far from Ordina¡¯s portal.
¡®How did his tracks stop? Where did he go?¡¯ Ning Xin didn¡¯t stop there and let her legs take her to wherever felt right, the place with lower temperatures. She called Ebony¡¯s callstone, it connected but she only heard unfamiliar voices before a long silence.
A loud sound echoed together with a light vibration from the ground. In less than a second she burst out without care of the damage her explosive speed did to the surroundings.
3 figures leapt out in front of her the moment she left the settlement that was not unlike a tiny town.
¡°Hey there miss, can I link up with you?¡± A boy that she had a weak impression of and couldn¡¯t really remember where she had seen before said while lifting his bracelet up.
She didn¡¯t even slow down her run and went past them.
A net shot and devoured her from the side.
¡®A trap. So they are involved.¡¯ She was calmer than she thought as her Core Skill started kicking up. The net bounded her tightly, it was shot by someone hidden behind a large rock. She must not have noticed his heat signature due to her hurry and inattentiveness.
Her blood boiled and the net quickly steamed from contact. Her captors looked surprised but she was only wondering why it got silent over Ebony¡¯s end.
She already had her hands on Ignite and Flare but the binding only let her move them a little. Just enough for the blood within their sheath to escape and cut her binding apart. She didn¡¯t care about these people who just caught her, using the little bit of enhancement she got so far to sprint away while they were surprised that she managed to free herself with ease.
With her Core skill of roughly 10% in, Blood Boil, Pulsating Lightning Enhancement, Streamline Wind Enhancement at maximum output. Together with her tier 2 movement skill at level 203 and generic Running at 74, she was a little annoyed that they started to chase her and were not much slower. The ¡®flash step¡¯ that Ebony called already bought her distance.
Kidnappers were exceedingly common.
That was what her grandma once told her. They were way more popular than professional killers. Criminals were almost always wanted alive. The noble in charge of the area of capture would then have the authority to let their children or family members at max level execute them. Public or private didn¡¯t really matter.
As long as it really wasn¡¯t necessary, few would choose to assassinate and request for a kidnap instead. There is value in kidnapping.
¡®Especially a meditator.¡¯
Just like Ebony, she originally wasn¡¯t aware of mana slaves since there wasn¡¯t such a thing in Xienor and neither did her grandma bother telling her about them. It did make complete sense that they were money making. The number of professional kidnappers were supposedly pretty high.
These guys seemed well off as well, the net she was bound by absorbed half of her stamina and a quarter of her mana in the short time she was trapped. The basics of any prison were to keep its inhabitants weak. To make someone powerless, simply take away all their energy and they won¡¯t be able to fight back.
Ebony might have a lot of mana and regeneration but he was hardly beyond what could be dealt with. Although she was unaware of what kind of technology or how far technology has reached in these aspects she was aware that some prisons could drain a Grand mage in meditation dry in minutes.
She heard another unfamiliar voice find out that their call was connected but she could already see a man looking at her with a bit of mirth. Sublime Instincts told her she wouldn¡¯t stand a chance but, like her body and mind, it agreed that running wasn¡¯t even worth considering.
Pulsating Lightning Enhancement pulsed once more and pushed her to charge at the man who got distracted by Ebony¡¯s greatsword. She caught a glimpse of Ebony sinking into the ground.
She thought she was calm.
Something snapped.
Her charge was stopped by a short sword and a backhanded swing from a dagger made her lean back even amidst her forward momentum. She didn¡¯t even break her gaze from the man with Ebony¡¯s greatsword.
Incensed Meditation at level 48 let her think a little compared to before.
This dual-wielding man was perfect to let her build up her Mastery and Cascading Laceration, she wanted to aim at non-vitals but the constant combat against Kobolds or humanoids had her body accustomed to processing humans as well.
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The unarmed man was actually wearing a pair of black casting gloves, he was probably a wind or air mage. Her attempts to cast fire magic was forcefully interrupted and it would cost too much mana to conjure an equal or greater amount of fire mana to challenge the mage. She could feel his attempts to latch onto her but her Streamline Wind Enhancement was shielding her together with her rising body heat.
Trying to suffocate her would be pointless when her mask had a Rare air mana ore.
She sent her disk of blood to keep him busy.
¡°Where are you looking!¡± The opponent she was facing started to get angered that she wasn¡¯t even looking at him but staring at the larger threat.
Although she was getting overpowered and sent skidding back or dodging backwards she hasn¡¯t gotten hit once.
Body enhancement magic was the basics of close combat past Journeyman. Most locals don¡¯t have this ¡®basic¡¯ down but these people clearly had some degree of skill. He was already shocked enough that a Journeyman had so much speed and strength that he couldn¡¯t completely suppress with a level 220 tier one mana enhancement and his far higher base stats.
It was too bad for him that he only had a single enhancement.
¡°Shut up four-limbed spider.¡± Although she found it hard to think with her Core Skill continuing to build up and her rage slowly taking over, she definitely improved and had some control over her thoughts now.
The vials under her mantle opened as she manipulated Ebony¡¯s blood to escape and slip under her mask. He had sewn on these holders so that she didn¡¯t have to hold onto a vial to drink. After treating the vials with her mana numerous times, they wouldn¡¯t interfere with her ability to manipulate blood through it as much.
She breathed out loudly after drinking two vials in a go.
A shiver went down her opponents back. The sound of her breath silenced the noisy heartbeat for a moment.
They prepared for fire magic but not lightning magic. The next clash of his melting blade sent a strong numbing shock through his arms and body. The only thing he saw in that split second of numbness was the bright sun going down on his arms.
It wasn¡¯t the sun, just her swords heated up to the extremes.
¡°Ugh, low quality meat, it burned to ashes before I could butcher it.¡±
Only when the words entered his ears did he notice that he didn¡¯t sense pain when his arm got cut off, it must have been the numbing. But he only realised that his arm wasn¡¯t the only thing lost in that split second. Both his arms and legs had been sliced off, his chest opened. No, there wasn¡¯t much left of his body.
¡°It stinks.¡± Anyone who knew Scarlet would be unfamiliar with the current her.
¡°What a gruesome little girl you are.¡± The Grandmaster with Ebony¡¯s greatsword scrunched up his face. He had seen his fair share of burnt corpses as a user of fire magic and a warrior himself but seeing a human get¡separated into different cuts of meat in less than a second was definitely new. The cuts were even equally sized, with organs placed aside and the cuts arranged out. The blood didn¡¯t spray around and the meat was stopped from being burnt with wind magic.
The Grandmaster noticed the dark red eyes flicker back to a crimson red.
¡°GET YOUR ROTTEN HANDS OFF THAT SWORD!¡±
The scream seemed like it came from the depths of hell. The crimson red in her eyes darkened again.
He stabbed the greatsword into the ground and flicked his middle finger at the longsword that aimed to slice his wrist off, having time to blow his finger before flicking after the other longsword with the same hand.
How could he be scared of a little heat, even without his heat resistant gloves he would do the same. He slapped aside the next couple hundred of strikes in a similar fashion, not caring whether it was a slash or a stab.
Being passive had been the wrong move.
The heartbeat he had been hearing kept getting louder, faster, fiercer.
The scout team was a little cowardly, they didn¡¯t continue engaging her after they saw the other men get dissected. The air mage was at least helpful at first, trying to snuff out her fire. Now that the one she was attacking was him, they didn¡¯t bother stepping in anymore.
¡°Ooo. Numb. They should really get some kind of Appraisal item to check out the sub-class of our targets and the associated risks.¡± He casually said as his subordinate was having a hard time keeping track of the Xeng¡¯s attacks.
The blood disk tried to cut him from a different angle but it wasn¡¯t able to scratch his mana-enhanced skin. There was hardly any power in her blood magic in comparison. The number of types of magic she was using was a little surprising but he knew who he was dealing with.
¡°Relax little lass. It¡¯s not like attacking me will get him back, he¡¯s not even anywhere nearby anymore. Give up, he¡¯s ours now.¡± He frowned when her attacks kept getting faster and stronger.
He had to take it more seriously, drawing his halberd before he lost the chance too. He had no shame drawing a weapon against a Journeyman. He smiled, ¡°the legends weren¡¯t bollocks¡±. He parried the next strike and took a step for his first attack.
A casual, single-handed swing at her belly.
She didn¡¯t manage to dodge or see it coming, she wasn¡¯t even looking out for the attack and was only staring and aiming at his wrist yet her body reacted and had one of her longswords block the blow in time. Sent tearing through the air and digging deep gorges into the ground as she tumbled.
¡°...Insane, you¡¯ve really lost it here haven¡¯t you.¡± The grandmaster looked at the tiny cut on his wrist and pointed at his head as he spoke. She had taken the blow with a single sword while the other reached out to attack. As for melting or burning him, he didn¡¯t believe anyone could do so and the hot blades were lukewarm to him at best. He had pretty special circumstances when he evolved and he dreamt of pushing his heat resistance into his Class. While others only had it as a generic skill, his was levelling on drugs when he was under ¡®special circumstances¡¯. At tier 3, level 366 he was 1830% more resistant to heat not to mention he had Class Fortification for heat resistance and his high base Constitution.
As if to reply to him, she stopped moving after getting up. The fierce heartbeat was brought to a complete stop all of a sudden.
¡®She didn¡¯t just die did she?¡¯ The fire grandmaster was sent to deal with her, not to kill her. He made sure to hold back plenty, so much that he let himself get cut.
The next moment, an earth-shaking noise shook his ears as he felt the weight on him increase. It was something he felt less and less as he got stronger. Overflowing Vitality.
¡°Uh. What on Elva did you just do?¡± The ground beneath her crumbled when the single loud ¡®clap¡¯ reached his ears. Most importantly, he was pretty sure her chest caved in and that it was the sound of a single heartbeat.
His experience on the battlefield against the Trolls got him to kick up his body enhancement all the way up. He got into a full body swing with his halberd, quickly restraining the power that he reflexively brought up. Parrying one of the fiercest stabs to his neck that he parried in many years. He shattered her beautiful longsword, and just as her body shifted from the impact she twisted her body awkwardly to bring her other longsword for a slash which he blocked with the shaft of his halberd. All of that within the split second that she was getting blown away.
¡°ELL! You really lost it!¡±
¡®Damn! My halberd! But what the hell was that!? How can she be so fast? Her chest caved in and her heart hasn¡¯t been beating since that single pulse. Enhancement, tier 3? A journeyman with tier 3 enhancement? Wait, I don¡¯t sense any mana but her vitality is off the charts. Vitality based enhancement?! Is she a Troll? Crap, they really are mad, she¡¯s basically burning her life every time she enhances herself this way.¡¯
¡°I think you are the one who lost it. Who the hell do you think you just hit?¡±
The Grandmaster was shocked at the voice right by his ear, only just noticing that his subordinates weren¡¯t anywhere in sight.
¡®How did someone get behind me!? Where did they go?¡¯ He wanted to jump away and create distance but he was rooted to the ground with a single palm on his shoulder. The aura behind him was more vast than whatever he felt from his fellow Grandmasters, the Vitality pushing him down like that of a Troll he fought in the past. Even greater than a Troll¡¯s.
The slender but strong hands moved off his shoulder and the owner of those hands walked to his front. He didn¡¯t dare move at this point.
He was greeted with a pure white mask with a single black horizontal line halved in the centre with a small black circle.
¡®Crap.¡¯
¡°Now now. Let¡¯s talk this out, you can see that I didn¡¯t try to harm her. She was the one attacking me and I pushed her back a little.¡± The Grandmaster didn¡¯t care that he Identified ¡®Craftswoman.¡¯ He first tried situational logic, she should know that if he was really trying to kill the little Xeng, he would be able to do it easily.
¡°So? If she wants to attack you, you should open your arms wide and welcome it.¡±
He tightened his grip around his trusty halberd at the Xeng¡¯s unreasonable words, they were really as tyrannical as the olden rumours suggest. Since there were hardly any of them walking around, it was hard to verify rumours, legends.
Fortunately, they always took preparations and precautions to an unnecessary degree because there was another Grandmaster in charge of transporting their target some distance away.
¡°It smells bad here.¡± The tall woman waved her hand in front of her mask. The scent of burnt flesh actually disappeared.
¡°So tell me.¡± She continued slowly.
¡°Why is this without its owner?¡± The greatsword that he tore off their target was in her hands.
¡°Huh?¡± She looked at him for the first time.
The fiery one that he sent flying was on the way back but he saw that she wasn''t able to get closer to them despite running at terrifying speeds even for someone twice her level. As if she was running in place.
¡°That¡¯s exactly why she attacked me! I just picked it up and she started attacking me when she saw me with it.¡± The fiery little girl that was throwing fire spears because she didn¡¯t seem to be able to close the distance was clearly out of her mind. It wasn¡¯t a complete lie.
¡°Is that so?¡±
For some reason, he imagined her smiling despite her mask blocking her expression.
¡°Of course! I even put it down after she told me too!¡±
¡°So you think my little brother would just leave his sister¡¯s present lying around?¡±
¡®Li-little brother? Di¡did we just kidnap a Xeng?¡¯
¡°You must think I¡¯m stupid.¡±
A flurry of kicks and punches came at him. They were hard punches but it wasn¡¯t as scary as he thought.
He quickly put his hands in the air with his halberd still in them as he retreated.
¡°Look! I mean no harm!¡±
The punches weren''t that strong and he could take a beating, the problem was that he already put so much distance between them but her punches came at him from every angle.
She didn¡¯t even take a step towards him.
He found himself right in front of her the next second as the beatings continued. He would really be an idiot if he didn¡¯t realise what just happened to him. He just got a new skill, space resistance. He had trained his magic body but where would he find a space mage to train his resistance?
His expression fell flat, there was really no escape now.
¡°I¡¯m a Grandmaster! There was a bunch of shady people dressed in black that was surrounding the boy holding that weapon. I thought I¡¯d do a good deed and asked them to hand him over but there was an earth mage that was faster than me. He was swallowed up underground and I picked up the greatsword he left behind seeing it was of high quality. I speak the truth!¡±
He reiterated that he had no reason to lie. Internally thinking it was a good thing that there was another group of people who took action before them.
The earth shattering punches stopped momentarily.
¡°Which ones?¡±
A large group of people fell on the ground in front of him. They were all unconscious.
¡®Good! I can weave any story I want.¡¯
¡°The one with the cut arm, it¡¯s frozen and the one with the frozen legs. With how cold that greatsword is, your brother uses ice magic doesn''t he?¡±
Then he realised that his colleague was actually deep under him, he could only sense him due to a special crystal each of them placed in their bracelet.
¡°What happened? What is that darn presence in front of you?¡± The voice transmitted into his head.
¡°What a brother! It¡¯s another Xeng, I¡¯ll distract her. Get me under when I give the signal.¡±
¡°Alright, I will only try once. If you fail, I¡¯ll be getting out of here myself.¡±
¡°...Fine.¡± He knew the risk the both of them were under.
¡°Oh and this guy was the one I asked to unhand your bro-hey, uh, you might want to check her out.¡± The fire warrior pointed to the black-robed guy who seemed to be in charge before picking on the perfect opportunity. The little Xeng was bleeding out of her ears and mask. Whatever red liquid she drank and her chest caving was probably the reason, together with his full body swing that sent her sprawling. The space mage was clearly very concerned when she saw the blood and the sunken chest.
¡°NOW!¡± He mentally screamed at his colleague.
He sank extremely quickly as his colleague dragged him diagonally down and away, escaping the scene. This wasn¡¯t the first time he worked with this earth mage but they rarely needed to escape and he never knew that his colleague was so skillful. He even brought along all their subordinates so that they wouldn¡¯t be able to leak the little information they had.
¡°Another successful job, let¡¯s get a drink. My treat.¡±
¡°Heh, I drink a lot.¡±
¡°You can drink a bar down at my expense but can you out drink a warrior?¡±
¡°Let¡¯s see.¡±
The mage¡¯s attitude was likeable too.
Chapter 134: Prison
¡°Alright, we¡¯ll be handing him over and our job is done.¡± The fire warrior who managed to escape with his new buddy was covering his face.
¡°Took you long enough, it¡¯s been months! Where is he?¡±
¡°He¡¯s right here, payment up front.¡± He didn¡¯t bother telling them that their target was underground with his buddy. Their client brought 2 Lightning Burstbowmen along. As for precautions for them? They were just a joke, even the third grandmaster hiding behind the mountain was not hidden well, although to be fair with his buddy around it was hard for something on land to hide from them.
Their client tossed a pouch onto the ground.
¡°Do you think we¡¯re beggars?¡±
¡°That¡¯s way above market price already!¡±
¡°I¡¯ll break it down for you, I''m a professional after all. Journeyman with a full set of movement, perception, high tier enhancement, 120 Blues. Oh and I¡¯m not sure if you noticed but he¡¯s a meditator, so that triples the price. From our background check, he didn¡¯t have any background so to say. But oh ho~what do we have here, the only known Journeyman Xeng in our current records beside him at all times? We¡¯ll have to add 500 Blues in the bag.¡± He changed his tune from formal to sarcastic to playful.
¡°What!? You might as well extor-!¡±
The fire warrior closed the distance between them instantly and lifted their client by the collar with a single hand.
¡°Don¡¯t think I didn¡¯t do our research before I came here. You withheld crucial information from us, didn¡¯t you? The couple of branches your company has lost, those that just disappeared? An elling space mage, and not just any space mage. A grandmaster Xeng! YOU BETTER WISH WE ARE EXTORTING YOU! Oh yes, and that adds 12 Purples to the price.
Funny thing, you¡¯re not about to tell me you didn¡¯t know you requested us to¡appropriate, a Xeng are you? HE¡¯S HER ELLING BROTHER! And that means he has a massive background, the associated risk pay would be, let¡¯s see, we are definitely one of the first to kidnap one of theirs. That tallies up to a grand total of¡25 Purples and 2000 Blues. Oh we don¡¯t mind giving a 15% discount on Blues if you have more Purples, those are hard to get and we have an internal increase in demand for those.¡± The fire warrior was trying his best to keep his anger down but seeing as they were practically sent on a suicide mission without his knowledge he couldn¡¯t help raising his voice or pressure the poor client with his aura.
¡°We¡I didn¡¯t bring that much. You¡¯ll have to take that as a deposit and come again tomorrow.¡±
¡°Of course. See? I¡¯m a very reasonable man. In exchange, if I don¡¯t see you here with our pay, tell your fatty ¡®He¡¯s going to lose way more than two or three branches''. Understood?¡± Although he was a user of fire magic, his overflowing Vitality and Wisdom weren¡¯t hot like many mages'' tend to be but it didn¡¯t lessen the threat his client was under.
The man in his hands nodded enthusiastically so he put him down gently.
Their target rose to the surface and he passed him over to the Grandmaster wielding those sticks with holes.
¡°See you tomorrow!¡± He waved off happily.
One of them flashed away with the target and the client while the other backed off with them but still faced him. At the same time, he grinned and took aim with that stick of his.
A huge flash of lightning in front and behind him devoured the spot where he stood. The ground around him already softened and enveloped him before he could get hit. His buddy was truly not too bad.
¡°So you want to play it this way huh?¡± The fire warrior grinned back. He really wanted to blow off some steam anyway.
???
Ebony opened his eyes to an unfamiliar place.
Earthen floor and walls together with a metal door in front. The metal door had a thin slit at eye level and it let some air into the unventilated room. His arms locked behind his back, they were clamped within a wooden plank, those wooden shackles he had seen the guards use. The wooden plank was attached to a thick metal chain to the wall. He was sitting upright with his legs crossed. Only left in his underwear.
The ¡®room¡¯ he was in was very small, only about 3 by 2 metres and his head almost hit the ceiling when he stood up. There was a heavy stench from a hole in the ground a step away from him.
A few things he noticed.
He was woken up by getting Poison Resistance and it even levelled to 12.
Poison Resistance (Passive) - Extended periods of exposure to the poison allowed your body to develop a resistance to the poison. 1.0% more resistant to poison per level.
He learnt that resistance to poison was more widespread and useless, there were too many types of poison and the resistance would usually be a lot less effective than the said level of poison resistance if he were to be inflicted with a brand new type of poison his body is unfamiliar with.
Since he was stripped down, he didn¡¯t have his myriad bracelet or callstone to call for help.
The other thing he noticed was that his mana and stamina were being drained away but his mana pool was full while his stamina was bone dry. His muscles feel a little stiff as if they were overexerted for a few days. Nothing new.
He found himself as calm as ever.
As if getting imprisoned was none of his business.
¡°I thought you would be asleep, Rimestone. Well, it''s better that you¡¯re awake.¡± A pair of puffy eyes looked through the rectangular hole in the door.
¡®Rimestone. People who know me by that name. If I woke up faster than he thought then I might have just gotten locked up.¡¯ He did not recognise the voice or pair of eyes but tried to think of anyone that wanted to imprison him. As for how long he had been asleep or locked up, he could only guess.
¡°You won¡¯t be getting out any time soon. I¡¯ll drain you till I recuperate all my losses. How do you feel!? Powerless!? You can forget about breaking out without any strength. I won¡¯t treat you too badly, you¡¯ll be fed once every two days. You can do your business right beside you. If you¡¯re smart you¡¯ll get to meditating as soon as possible.¡± The man left in anger, stomping his feet.
¡®Recuperate losses. Someone who lost something because of me? Rimestone. Tournament. Bets. Hmm, there are many people who lost mana ores because of that but only the lightning pistol and rifle one sent grandmasters after us. Sister Jing even destroyed some of their shops.¡¯
Ebony easily pieced together the information he got, there was a high chance it was the company who sponsored the lightning gunmen or the lightning gunmen were their employees.
¡®Well. whatever.¡¯ Ebony sat down and let Mental Arithmetic work a little.
The mana drain was pretty impressive, he estimated his mana was being drained away at 350 mana per minute. But the real problem was the stamina drain, it was well over 2100 per minute as that was how much he was regenerating in a minute.
He heard from Ning Xin that some of the more crazy Xeng would wear something to drain their stamina as they jumped into a dungeon. Training their exhaustion resistance to the limit while putting their lives on the line. He thought it was a good idea to train exhaustion resistance that way but they weren¡¯t able to obtain something like that. He originally wanted to ask Sister Jing if she had something with the same effect but hadn''t met her in a long time.
Perhaps because there are way more warriors than mages so the technology for draining stamina was more pronounced or perhaps it was just easier to drain stamina.
He was wondering if he should freeze the wooden board and break himself free but an odd feeling kept nagging him. Ning Xin¡¯s mask kept appearing even after he tried to push it away and clear his mind.
¡®Well, if this is a prison there will be guards outside right? I don¡¯t even have information on the surroundings. If I get caught again they might place harsher locks on me and I¡¯ll really be stuck here for good.¡¯ He tried to think about the situation logically. A very strong gut feeling was telling him not to free himself immediately.
¡®Did I really get caught by the 2 ninja-like people and the earth mage? Hmm.¡¯ He thought it was unlikely but the truth was that he was locked up. He could sense that he had a small injury on his head, it was probably worse but healed quite a bit already. He would have noticed he killed some people if he tried to call up some notifications or that his Slumber Survival Instincts had levelled.
¡®Forget it. No point thinking about that. I just got a little more Natural Potential, Everlasting Tranquillity should be able to level once or twice. Maybe my manipulation could get some levels too. oh, and I needed time to train Reinforced Mana Chassis anyway.¡¯
His mind finally cleared up and he felt that it was a nice and quiet environment. His only complaint would be the stench. He didn¡¯t have any problems with the dim lighting and the best part should be that the earthen room was dry.
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He found himself not caring about who caught him, how they caught him and just closed his eyes.
???
¡°We really don¡¯t know! You caught all of us, how could we have succeeded?!¡± The man dressed in black had his face uncovered.
Kong Jing didn¡¯t look at the group of 5, one with a cut arm, one with legs slowly thawing out and 3 other relatively unharmed men. They weren¡¯t tied up and neither were locked in, kneeling on the front porch. She was in her own house that she placed out in the open, staring at her little sister intently. The worry in her heart kept intensifying.
She managed to put her to sleep but all she could do was let Ning Xin¡¯s mask do the work. None of them could use healing magic. Ning Xin¡¯s heart was beating normally and even Kong Jing herself was unable to remove her mask to check her complexion. People could rip their heads off and the mask wouldn¡¯t come loose unless the wearer themselves wanted it to come loose. Well, with the healing capabilities of their masks she didn¡¯t want to remove it anyway.
Her chest rose back to normal but her ribs were clearly broken but that wasn¡¯t the worst part. Her skin was purplish black. Kong Jing didn¡¯t know much about injuries but she didn¡¯t even dare bring her around with space magic because she might injure her further. Since she was a space mage herself, she never spent much time or effort making anything that helps with travelling fast.
She had no choice but to find a healer, as much as she wanted to barge into the Royal¡¯s that was too far without space magic.
¡°We were hired by an associate but he really isn¡¯t with us. We aren¡¯t capable of going against a Grandmaster.¡±
¡°I know you¡¯re not capable of doing so. Find out who caught him and where he is.¡± Kong Jing said simply.
¡°Why sho--¡± The hot headed one armed man¡¯s head disappeared and it was silent again after the kneeling body fell limp.
¡°We¡¯ll do it!¡± The rest nodded fiercely at their boss¡¯s words.
¡°Think carefully. I¡¯m not forcing you but don¡¯t think you can hide from me if you agree.¡±
¡°Of course! We¡¯ll find him as fast as we can!¡±
They found themselves sent a distance away from the house that the scary masked one pulled out.
Their leader screamed in rage. They took a job they would regret for years to come.
???
¡°THOSE USELESS FOOLS!¡± Mr Rumble smashed his new table at the news that all three of his Grandmasters had been hospitalised with broken limbs and burns bad enough to scar them for life.
He still couldn¡¯t afford to lose them and was bound by contract to pay for their healing fees. Each of their contracts was more beneficial to the employee due to their strength and status as a Grandmaster so he had to give them the best treatment he could.
Catching Rimestone had cost him a lot more than what he originally lost and he was furious but quickly calmed down when he got reports that Rimestone already filled a couple of Blue¡¯s worth of mana in less than a day he had been locked up.
As a businessman that hastily had a containment cell built in secret, he wasn¡¯t aware that the chains or locks he ordered had a draining speed limit. His supplier was¡seedy at best and didn¡¯t know the draining speed. The only way the meditator could regenerate so much mana was that he was meditating and that soothed his anger a bit.
He assumed that with so much mana drained out of him, there was no way he could break free with magic. He was surprised since he bought one that focused on draining stamina but he couldn¡¯t get his hands on storage for stamina and since those weren¡¯t really worth much for most people the current draining only releases the drained stamina into the surroundings.
Since he was going to drain him dry, he was pondering on which associate he had that was interested in stamina or where he could obtain a method to store it without getting attention from the nobles that he had a secret prison. Although he had a good relationship with the city¡¯s lord, he needed to be careful.
Mr Rumble actually agreed with the unreasonable price that was extorted out of them. He saw things differently, this was a long term investment.
¡°Damn ban on mana slaves¡it would¡¯ve been such a nice passive income. Should I expand into this business¡¡± Mr Rumble mumbled to himself at the great investment possibility. It would be diving into shady business but with how much a single person brought him, he began to ponder on the risk and the reward.
There weren¡¯t many meditators around anymore and Rimestone seem to be the only young one that could be found but he could still get some random mages.
¡®Is it necessary to go into shady business. I could contract as many mages as possible who are required to meditate and supply me with mana ores but what would make them go into a contract to give me what they can keep themselves? Not feasible¡and meditation is usually a generic skill I would require too many mages.¡±
¡°Mr Rumble, if I may be allowed to cut in on your thoughts.¡± His assistant was surprisingly faithful to him.
¡°Speak.¡±
¡°The people we hired, they are indeed highly skilled. I see no reason to believe that they are unaware of the value of keeping¡mana slaves. Much less the value of Rimestone, for them to ¡®give¡¯ him to us would mean they themselves do not dabble in this source of revenue. The risk is too high even with Rimestone alone.¡±
¡°...We¡¯ll do as you say. I¡¯ll leave Rimestone to you.¡±
The assistant clenched his teeth, if taking care of Rimestone was left to him a lot of blame or evidence would be pushed to him if anything were to happen. This crafty fatty!
¡°You did well this time, you can have 5% of whatever he produces for as long as you are in charge of him.¡± Mr Rumble knew he needed to reward such a risky job and he was pretty generous with it. He picked up the container of strain relievers that fell from the broken table and lit himself a stick.
5% was more than the assistant could hope for. He knew how much 5% was after he made the report and he had no choice but to agree.
???
Ebony didn¡¯t know how long it had been since he went full on meditating and bloating himself with mana at the same time.
At first his poison resistance levelled twice more, over time. Then it just stopped, and he had to assume he wasn¡¯t poisoned anymore. His health fully recovered when his head injury healed but his poison resistance levelled up after. He guessed it was some kind of sleeping poison and not a killing one.
Since he hadn¡¯t needed to relieve himself yet, it shouldn¡¯t have been too long. A week maximum, taking into account that he wasn¡¯t really given a lot to eat or drink.
There was actually a pretty seamless small door at the bottom for them to slid a tray in. A large bowl of water a day, a hard loaf of bread and cream meat stew. They probably cooked a pot and fed him the same thing all the time. From the third meal onwards, he could smell the sourness.
The guy who came to give him food was a different person, he could sense it through the small gap even though that person never spoke or even looked through the hole. He was taller and much skinnier than the first guy who came to talk to him. Perhaps he wasn¡¯t informed that he should be fed every two days because he brought food once a day.
Well, his sense of taste was completely gone again and he believed it was helpful this time. Maybe he could only taste her food now.
Today, something changed. Another person was here along with his caretaker who never spoke. The person¡¯s overflowing essence could be felt through the door.
¡°Please calm down! We need him in a good condition so that he can meditate well.¡± With his Vibrational Gravity Sense, he knew it was the one who fed him who spoke.
¡°I won¡¯t kill him. Just rough him up a little. Here, for your trouble.¡± The man with the stronger aura tossed over a single Blue. Ebony¡¯s senses were already good enough to differentiate the quality of mana ores just from their density.
¡°...I said you won¡¯t be getting any closer.¡± His caretaker actually didn¡¯t catch the mana ore and moved in front of the larger man with a limp to stop him. The man with a limp also had one arm in a sling.
He was casually slapped aside. The slap resounded through his small room.
Ebony had his eyes closed the whole time, even after the man took a key from his caretaker and barged into his room.
¡°Stand up.¡±
He remained crossed-legged with his eyes closed.
¡°He¡¯s deep in meditation, he can¡¯t hear you.¡± His caretaker rubbed his swollen face, powerless to stop the stronger man.
¡°Then I¡¯ll have to wake him up don¡¯t I?¡± The man used his uninjured hand to drag Ebony up by the hair.
Ebony stood up but didn''t bother opening his eyes, the two thought he was still in meditation. It was not unexpected, they knew the details of a ¡®normal¡¯ meditation skill that reduces perception, the higher tiered meditation almost completely shuts off perception.
¡°Let¡¯s see you take this!¡± A fist drove into his belly but the attacker cried out in pain instead.
¡®He doesn¡¯t know how to punch. Not a close combatant. Low strength, low constitution but his aura is strong.¡¯ Ebony preferred calling overflowing essence aura.
¡°Ell! How much Constitution does he have?¡± The man saw that Ebony didn¡¯t even flinch from slamming into the wall. His eyes laid on the sculpted body, perfect was the only word he had for it.
Ebony vaguely sensed the lightning mana infused in the next punch. He had an extremely weak affinity for lightning magic but his senses were already heightened after getting zapped by Ning Xin so much. Perhaps after his evolution, he would be able to manipulate lightning a little.
¡°This is for shaming my brother!¡± The lightning-infused punch rammed into him but the lightning mana dispersed awkwardly. He obviously never or rarely infused lightning mana into his punches.
¡®Brother, lightning, not a close combatant. High chance it''s really related to the lightning gunmen from the tournament years ago.¡¯ Once again, he was pushed against the wall but his eye remained closed and there was no change in his facial expression.
It irritated the injured man even more and he continued walloping into Ebony''s belly. Only stopping after seeing the scorched skin and thick bruises on his belly. After more than half an hour, not once did he even elicit a reaction much less a scream of pain while the attacker''s own knuckles were red with skin tears.
Ebony only listened to how his caretaker was trying to stop the man, even throwing his body and wrapping around the attacker''s good arm but he was too weak and only got flung aside.
The injured man stormed out, more pissed than before he arrived even though he was here to let off steam.
¡°I..I¡¯m sorry I couldn¡¯t stop him. I¡¯ll get some ointment for you, I have a pretty good one.¡±
¡°It¡¯s okay, no need for ointment but can I have a pair of pants and a shirt? It¡¯s a little uncomfortable being almost naked.¡± Although it might be troublesome to take off his pants should he need to relieve himself, he was wearing underwear and adding a pair of pants wouldn¡¯t really add to the difficulty. The wooden cuffs still let him have some mobility with his arms.
The caretaker also assumed that he was still deep in meditation and was surprised to hear him talk for the first time. He was already impressed how anyone could stay in meditation but more frightened than impressed by how absolutely no reaction came from him during the beatings when he wasn¡¯t deep in meditation.
The caretaker was careful and had his face covered, he couldn¡¯t help but take a step back when those pitch-black eyes stared into his.
¡°...I¡¯ll see what I can do.¡± He saw the meditator sit back down with wobbly legs. The stamina drain on him was definitely doing its work.
The caretaker, assistant Mason only had one thought as he left the tiny cell and locked the gate.
¡®This man wouldn¡¯t be locked in here for as long as Mr Rumble likes.¡¯
Mason wasn¡¯t able to place his bets on Mr Rumble with the current odds.
Chapter 135: Anticlimactically Walking Out
¡°How bad is it?¡± Kong Jing asked. She brought Ning Xin to the closest healer. The one in Plainston was clearly new on the job so she didn¡¯t count. Opting to risk bringing her to Teld instead, the old female healer was a little incentive.
¡°Her ribs seemed like they were broken recently but she received treatment so quickly I would assume this was a lighter injury instead but whatever healing she is under, she seems to be recovering just fine. Rather than just fine, she seems to be recovering to the point that I wouldn¡¯t be able to tell she got them broken before.¡± The older lady didn¡¯t fear Kong Jing¡¯s presence which made things simpler.
She wasn¡¯t relieved by her words because Ning Xin hasn¡¯t woken up since she found her.
¡°I don¡¯t know what could cause so much of her veins to rupture but just like her ribs, they are recovering very well.¡±
¡°Why isn¡¯t she waking up if she¡¯s recovering as well as you say?¡± Kong Jing was doing her best not to be impolite to the healer.
¡°...With her veins like that, I assume her blood has something to do with it. Her heart being as weak as it is now, and her ribs like that. I can imagine what she did although I¡¯m having trouble believing what I imagined. Not waking up¡this is just an educated guess, okay? The blood rush to her head ruptured the vein there too. I don¡¯t have to tell you what that means do I?¡±
¡°But you said her veins or whatever were healing just fine!¡± Kong Jing couldn¡¯t help but let some of her essence leak, scaring the surrounding doctors who were assistants to the old lady.
¡°That doesn¡¯t mean whatever damage had been done was reversed.¡± The healer wasn¡¯t fazed. It wasn¡¯t the first time she met with angry families or friends.
¡°...When will she wake up? Will she wake up?¡± There was little strength in Kong Jing¡¯s voice.
¡°I don¡¯t know. It depends on her and whatever healing she¡¯s receiving now. This is beyond my capabilities.¡±
¡°....Useless.¡± She carried her little sister up from the mattress.
Kong Jing left with Ning Xin sleeping soundly in her arms. Her outward appearance was as the old lady had said, healing pretty quickly.
Even with her body healed up, Kong Jing was extremely careful with her. The healing that the old lady referred to was just their mask¡¯s doing.
Although she had healing potions, she was very careful with them. There were many stories of how drinking a potion could cause irreparable harm if the effects were too strong and wasn¡¯t the right potion for whatever symptoms a person had. Also, her ¡®healing¡¯ potions had never been tested on a monster much less a person. With their history of being trash in healing, there was a good chance there were technical problems with her potions.
Taking a deep breath, she protected the sleeping girl in her arms with her own mana as best as she could before making a very short distance space compression. Relieved that the girl didn¡¯t seem harmed by it, Kong Jing slowly tested her limits.
The Life Queen was said to never have turned away an injured or sick person.
Even if she did, Kong Jing would dare her to turn them away.
???
¡°A very good afternoon to you. Miss Jing, I presume?¡± The pink-haired Queen smiled and greeted Kong Jing with Ning Xin in her arms.
¡°Why do you know my name?¡± Kong Jing found herself at the doorsteps of the Royal¡¯s mansion. She couldn¡¯t teleport in with Ning Xin in her arms and only resorted to space compression to cover the travel distance. Going through walls was different from compressing space but that wasn¡¯t the reason she didn¡¯t directly enter their family mansion.
She couldn¡¯t even directly enter Tidal with her space magic.
¡®The current king¡¯s barriers are really that good?¡¯ She had doubts at first, she had heard that the current king was such a great barrier mage he was beginning to gain fame even from outside Elcra.
If the unknown number of barriers around Tidal were strong then the ones around their mansion or other important areas and buildings must be practically indestructible.
The real issue right now was that this pink-haired lady whose statue was all over the continent was standing outside their gates and seemingly waiting for her.
¡°Madam Veronica had informed me of your arrival. You¡¯re her grandniece and she¡¯s her granddaughter right? Come right in. Oh, please call me Yvette or just Yve if you¡¯d like.¡± Yvette Lord was a sweet lady. Not youthful but not old, the cute and pretty middle-aged look.
¡°DAMN HER!! SHE KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN AND DIDN¡¯T STOP IT!¡± Her outrage could be heard through the surroundings, people further away were shocked by the overflowing essence despite them being used to strong presence. They waved it off as nothing, sensing it coming from this direction.
The guards in the mansion not far away didn¡¯t move and weren¡¯t affected, just giving her an eyeful. They were already informed not to make a rashful move.
¡°Now now, she had requested me to take care of her grandchild and I would treat her like my own. ¡®It¡¯s for her own good.¡¯ is what she wanted me to tell you.¡± Yvette tried to pacify her as she led the way through the surprisingly normal sized mansion.
¡°Yvette was it, Queen? Tell me what she really told you to tell me.¡± Kong Jing wouldn¡¯t buy that crap.
¡°...¡± Her silence only confirmed it.
¡°Tell me.¡±
¡°I recorded it so that I didn¡¯t have to say it.¡± Yvette was an experienced lady. She took out a crystal from under the sleeves of her dress and passed it to Kong Jing.
¡°Tell her, ¡®what¡¯cha going to do about it? Come after me if you can!¡± Her grandaunt¡¯s irritating voice came from the crystal she attached to her bracelet. The messages didn¡¯t end there as her grandma laughed and a spanking sounded reverberated. She could even imagine her pushing her butt out towards her and spanking it.
Kong Jing felt her veins pop even without whatever skill her little sister used. Yvette wasn¡¯t wrong, this was indeed her saying ¡®it''s for her own good.¡¯ so her anger dissipated quickly.
¡°So she can really be healed?¡±
¡°There is life. There is breath. She will wake up in time.¡±
¡°...Thank you.¡±
¡°She is a lucky girl to have such a caring family.¡±
¡°Right¡¡±
¡°Alright, make yourself at home. We prepared two rooms for both of you in the south wing.¡±
¡°We¡¯ll be using one room.¡±
¡°Sure you will, I actually only prepared one room.¡±
Kong Jing had a feeling that the Queen wasn¡¯t too different from her grandaunt. Does every woman become like that as they grow older? While her grandaunt was outright playful and mischievous, Yvette seems to be more on the shrewd side.
???
Together with another lightning user, Ebony was visited by two people that came to train his lightning resistance for him in rotations. They were so nice to spend time with him every single day even though he ignored them completely.
His caretaker brought him a pair of cloth pants and shirt. His shirt tore from the beating though. His trainers never really took note of how much or fast he recovered because of how dark it was and his caretaker said that his cover-up was that he used some magical ointment on him. It was inevitable that the caretaker noticed his fast recovery even when he didn¡¯t wipe away the black scorches.
Because they had to be really careful not to hurt him too much, his resistance sadly didn¡¯t evolve and only levelled.
He had the same problem for Sheer Exhaustion Resistance, due to his regeneration the drain was barely just strong enough to level it twice so far. He wasn¡¯t feeling as weak with zero stamina which most likely meant that the resistance may not level anymore with this level of drain.
He was almost about to speak up to his trainers and teach them where to punch to make it hurt more in exchange for the free resistance but remembered he wasn¡¯t there for training and they were the ones who kidnapped him or at least, part of the reason he was caught. So his mentality was ¡®hmph I¡¯m not going to talk to you.¡¯
With no moonlight and him falling into trances more often, he actually did not notice his two trainers presence or their beatings. The caretaker was worried the first few times it happened because he wasn¡¯t eating or even drinking. So the food quality had been rising but Ebony made sure to tell him that he was just deeper in meditation and wasn¡¯t really hungry.
He was a bit shocked today when his Conditioning dropped by 2 levels in a single go.
From that day on, he quietly tried to move his body and magic as much as he could without anyone finding out. He was left alone most of the time anyway. With the cuff and chains, he was limited in many ways.
???
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Camouflage mutated and evolved into Waning Presence¡¯
This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Waning Presence - Blending yourself into your surroundings to stay out of sight. Ability to withdraw and match surrounding essence to remove your presence increases by 50% + 2.5% per level. Ability to stay out of plain sight while stationary increases by 2.5% per level.
He didn¡¯t want to let anyone know he still had excess mana so he tried his best to withdraw any excess mana and push it into the ground to disperse it. Thinking that he wouldn¡¯t be found out if he had the same density of mana over his skin that was leaking with the surroundings. He had little to no control over vital energy or life force which Ning Xin was an expert at but with his mana containing vitality, it seemed to have the same effect when he balanced his leakage of mana. With no excess stamina, he wasn¡¯t sure if he doing anything with that but it was apparently extremely hard to sense anyway.
¡°How long has it been?¡± Ebony opened his eyes when the caretaker brought some food.
¡°More than 2 weeks this time.¡± He didn¡¯t withhold the information, Ebony didn¡¯t doubt the information for some reason.
¡°Not how long I¡¯ve been in a trance. How long has it been since I was locked here?¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t able to keep track of time well.
¡°...More than 3 months. Are you-¡± Mason answered honestly, he had a bad feeling about the question but he knew what was coming.
¡°No.¡± Ebony started eating with a pair of ice arms after his caretaker left.
¡®Why don¡¯t I feel like escaping? The lightning guys don¡¯t come by as much anymore. I don¡¯t gain exhaustion resistance. My perception skill maxed out again. Everlasting Tranquillity is capped again at 225 and my conditioning already dropped to level 80. The only thing that¡¯s really moving is a level or two in hunger resistance after I fall into a trance and Reinforced Mana Chassis.¡¯
He wasn¡¯t able to improve Reinforced Mana Chassis in any way other than making it more¡reinforced. Ning Xin¡¯s words about how the Sub-Class was more limited should logically apply to Professions being even more limited.
He was a little disappointed his lightning resistance trainer seemed to give up coming already.
¡®It feels like it can still level but it''s taking very long for a single level and I¡¯m losing Conditioning levels faster and faster.¡¯
Ebony ultimately followed what his gut feeling was telling him. For someone that loves to train so much, Conditioning levels could be regained over time and it wasn¡¯t as if their effects were very pronounced at the moment.
¡®It¡¯s level 196. Might as well go for 200 if I don¡¯t feel the Natural Potential block.¡¯
He really hoped he would have enough Natural Potential for the skill to reach 200. If it reached 199 and he felt the block, he didn¡¯t think Ordina would have a level 250 Na anytime soon.
The level 225 Na already took almost the entire dungeon¡¯s available essence of 2 months. Causing Na to cut down on its other floors and hurt it because they killed 2 of Na, basically taking all of its resources twice. Every additional level for its guardian took an exponential increase and it was unlikely for Na to be able to reach 250 even with all of Ordina¡¯s resources for years. More importantly, Na already made it clear he wasn¡¯t going to do that unless they were able to pay up with either essence or anything it deemed worth it.
If he had to wait that long, he might have already broken through the bottleneck through dedicated training.
???
A soft groan woke Kong Jing up from her stupor. She clambered to Ning Xin¡¯s side.
¡°Little Xin!¡± She was going to hug her but restrained herself in case she accidentally injured her. Although Yvette said she could heal Ning Xin, it still took three whole months before she woke up.
Admittedly, Yvette went for the gentle treatment. Veronica acted a little weird when she had asked to heal her granddaughter. She had always wondered why the mischievous Xeng changed her mind about wanting Yvette to go all out and heal her as fast as she could but she probably wouldn¡¯t ever find out. She also approved of this method because it allowed the body to heal more naturally.
A loud growl replied for Ning Xin.
¡°Hu¡¡±
¡°Are you okay? Feeling hurt anywhere? I¡¯ll go get Yvette!¡±
¡°Hun..gry.¡±
Kong Jing skidded to a stop, ¡°Of course you are.¡±
Kong Jing didn¡¯t want to leave her little sister alone with strangers so she only received reports from her callstone from the guys that attempted to kidnap Ebony but failed. After she was sure litte Xin was back in perfect health, it was time to find her little brother. She was pretty sure he wouldn¡¯t be killed but she was still worried day in and day out.
Those men were indeed incompetent but it had been better than nothing.
At least they found out the identity of the Grandmaster Fire Warrior. Someone who was supposedly pretty prominent in the last war with the Trolls but never really showed up after it ended. He had been a freelancer of sorts that had volunteered to fight the Trolls because of a grudge. His whole family apparently got eaten by Trolls.
He had always been an unnamed warrior even on the battlefield so they weren¡¯t able to get his name. As for his location, they clearly weren¡¯t able to find that out.
Ning Xin fell asleep again after she mumbled which got her to panic and ran to get Yvette. She actually couldn¡¯t travel with space magic in this mansion.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, she¡¯s just very weak after waking up. I¡¯ll get the chefs to make some food for when she wakes up again.¡±
¡°Some? You would have to prepare a feast for 50.¡± Kong Jing was exaggerating to get the point across but Ning Xin¡¯s belly grumbled even louder just after she said so.
Yvette giggled sweetly but it didn¡¯t seem out of place despite her age, she didn¡¯t look old and probably isn¡¯t very old either.
Ning Xin woke up again when she smelled food. She could barely force her eyelids up.
¡°I..I can¡¯t move.¡± Her hoarse voice was heard but Kong Jing who brought the trolley of food and propped her up to feed her.
¡°You¡¯ve been asleep for too long, Yvette, the healer queen said that although your body recovered you need to get used to practically new veins and you can¡¯t push your heart. The bigger problem might be up here.¡± Kong Jing pointed to her head.
She was not planning to hide that Ning Xin needed to take it slow and there may be more ramifications of whatever she did to her body. According to Yvette, she needed to slowly warm the body back up and Kong Jing was surely going to watch her carefully this time. She didn¡¯t even doubt Yvette who was the best healer on the continent, but she didn¡¯t know that this was all her grandaunt¡¯s plan too. The Life Queen didn¡¯t even need a few minutes to fully heal Ning Xin but she always believed letting the body heal naturally was better so she had no problem helping Veronica in this manner.
???
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Reinforced Mana Chassis level up 199 ¡ú 200¡¯
Ebony opened his eyes. He had been standing up the entire time so his body didn''t weaken as much. Conditioning had dropped to 52. From time to time, he would try to levitate with mana manipulation but with the constant drain of mana, it wasn¡¯t easy.
The cuffs that were long accustomed to his wrist froze and shattered. He stretched his stiff body as energy filled his muscles, his stamina recovering at extreme speeds.
He wondered if he should¡¯ve planned the timing right because he sensed his caretaker for the duration of his stay walking towards his room.
He didn¡¯t even have time to hide the fact that his cuffs were broken.
Mason looked through the peephole to check if he was awake and saw the broken cuffs.
¡°...So it¡¯s time. Give me a minute.¡± The caretaker was surprisingly calm when he saw his broken cuffs.
He squatted outside the metal door and felt around the walls beside his room, near the floor before he pushed it and the flooring opened.
Ebony¡¯s metal door creaked open, his masked caretaker stepped over his untouched food, which was two sunny side-ups, bacon, sausage, bread and water. His meals really improved.
¡°Here, I hid this and told my superiors you didn¡¯t have anything on you when you were passed to us. You didn¡¯t have a bracelet on you so I assume they took or broke it so that you couldn¡¯t be tracked.¡± The man had his face wrapped. He passed him Ebony''s robe, sheath and even his spatial bag.
¡°...My belongings. Thank you.¡± Ebony managed to learn that this group of people only contained him but not capture.
¡°I don¡¯t deserve any thanks from you.¡± The man turned around.
¡°This might be too much to ask but do you have my greatsword too?¡±
¡°This is all you came with, there was no greatsword, just this sheath.¡±
¡°I see.¡± He was a little affected that he lost Icicle.
Ebony wondered why the people who captured him did not take his robe and bag or even his sheath.
¡°We¡¯re under a shop. You¡¯ll walk past a few closed rooms, forges. You shouldn¡¯t look too suspicious if you just walk out. It''s quite common for customers to be invited into the forges for discussing custom orders. The person in charge, the Grandmaster Burstbowman, is quite lazy. Oh, he should recognise your robe. I¡¯m just going to assume that the alarm would wake him up that the mana ore is full when you broke the shackles. I don¡¯t think there¡¯s any sort of alarm for when it breaks.¡±
¡°Mmm. That really helps.¡±
¡°Can you knock me out? Maybe give me a few light injuries, I wanted to quit working for my boss for a long time now.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony knocked out his caretaker, choosing to very lightly conjure ice on his clothes and a little of his skin.
¡®Oh¡I should¡¯ve asked him where I was. Wait, under a shop?¡¯ He messed up again but their security sounds horrible. There was barely any security at all if the caretaker''s words were to be believed.
He could just ask others what town or city he was in after he escaped.
He stripped the rags he was wearing and wore a set of his own in his bag before putting his robe back on and slotting his sheath in place. It felt a little weird without Icicle but at least he didn¡¯t have to enhance himself and glow just to move around. He could still move around with his robe on without enhancement now.
Walking through the door for the first time. He saw that his cell was the only one here and this underground place was only one way. The stairs up weren¡¯t far, there were no other guards but he already knew that.
Up the flight of stairs of not more than 5 metres was a standard wooden trap door.
¡®I should focus on escape. Fighting a Grandmaster probably isn¡¯t feasible and I doubt I can stay in close range for long.¡¯
He got plenty of scales prepared as ice mana that was ready to be formed or reformed at a moment¡¯s notice.
It was quiet, there were no vibrations from the trap door.
Ebony opened it and climbed out. He certainly did not expect to see bookshelves. Looking around, it appeared to be some kind of study or office without windows. He didn¡¯t block the trap door with the bookshelf that was out of place, he wanted to let people know he escaped, just not so soon.
He silenced all his footsteps and just left through the office door. A wide corridor and many other rooms were there. With his Vibrational Gravity Sense, he could roughly get the whole layout of the building he was in. He couldn¡¯t sense through the doors outright but the gap under the doors was enough for him to ¡®see¡¯ a little.
There were people in most rooms, he quietly made his way out of the corridor. He came out from a room at the end of the corridor.
¡®This is a mall. Okay, act natural, no grandmasters around, just customers looking at guns.¡¯
This was a gun shop, some of the other rooms he walked past were the forges. But he was wrong about there not being a grandmaster around. The creaking of wood entered his ears. It came from the stairs on the other side of where he came out from. His senses were good, there was no doubt the man that was walking down was one of the ones that were training his lightning resistance.
He used the feature of his robe that he never used before and ¡®summoned¡¯ scales all over it. Taking a step out of the corridor and straight for the entrance/exit confidently.
Ebony actually succeeded as his trainer was yawning with his eyes closed as he climbed down the stairs and didn¡¯t seem to be very alert.
The moment he stepped out of the shop in the middle of the street, he disappeared from the spot. A little stiff with his Treading Stride.
¡®Now. Where the heck am I?¡¯
Chapter 136: Reunion
The gun shop he exited was called Burst Arms, their logo had been a rifle and a pistol crossing each other. Cielfast city was a small city, according to what he found out by asking the nice lady at the fruit stall this branch didn¡¯t have very good business recently. She asked for some ice in exchange for a discount after seeing his ice scale armour.
He imagined whoever was in charge probably had the makeshift prison cell built in a quiet city so that they were not easily caught. Seeing how there are forges in the shop, a little noise wouldn¡¯t be suspicious.
He bought plenty of pyrulas since her apple supply wasn¡¯t in yet. The date had been 15.14.5536, which was the last month of the year, if he remembered correctly he was locked up in the middle of the 7th month. It was actually faster than he imagined, especially when he actually felt the bottleneck at level 199. He calmly ignored the feeling and continued bloating his body with his own mana.
It was a little unfortunate that he didn¡¯t have his myriad bracelet which meant he couldn¡¯t call anyone since his callstone was gone too. It was a little surprising that all his Blues were still in his bag, did his caretaker not take it or did he not look through his bag? Maybe he thought it was a normal, thin bag.
This meant he had no idea where Ning Xin was, his first thought was to meet back up with her. He really doubted that she didn¡¯t try to look for him after he disappeared for so long. The chances that she was still at Trailane Plains weren¡¯t high.
His first course of action was still to get a new myriad bracelet and callstone but the callstone was useless without all his contacts. At least he could hide his excess mana. With the cuffs draining his mana and stamina, he had to ask the myriad bracelet maximum drain speed but the employee didn¡¯t even know because no one really needed to know as they mostly never had enough excess that exceeded the bracelet¡¯s limit. They would have to check with the records or even ask the manufacturers and he didn¡¯t have the time to wait so he just quickly left the Z&Z here.
¡®Oh yeah. This is Mark¡¯s workplace, I should find someone he knows here and see if I can get in contact with him. What was the name of his company again? A potion place right?¡¯
¡°Excuse me.¡± He stopped some random guy, feeling a little bad to stop the one-legged man mid hop. He was even one-armed.
¡°...Ebony?¡± The coarse voice said.
¡°Hmm?¡± Ebony would be lying if he wasn¡¯t surprised the person he stopped knew his name. The dirty haired and skinny man actually smiled.
¡°It¡¯s me¡ Chris.¡±
¡°...I see. I heard you were dead, glad to see you still fighting. Wanna go for a drink?¡± Ebony said so since he could sense the sword and huge axe tied to a rope on his back.
¡°...Yeah, Chris is dead. I go by Mongrel. I¡¯m actually right about to leave the city after I stock up on some potions. Do you need any? I have a friend who works at this store, thanks to him I get a 5% discount at this branch.¡±
¡°Potion store. Perfect. I needed to find someone and I was about to ask for directions to a potion store. I forgot the name but I¡¯m pretty sure they have a monopoly over his runic imprinting fire potion¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t really interested in the name change but the man changed. It was obvious even to him.
¡°Huh? Mark, Mark Rost?¡±
¡°You know him? Small world. I might not need to go to the potion store then, I lost my callstone can I call him using yours? Assuming you have his link.¡±
¡°Sure.¡± Mongrel was surprised at the coincidence too, he had become close enough with Mark to exchange contacts.
The call went through in a minute or two, Ebony passed a Blue over. The least he could do was pay for the call since Mongrel¡¯s equipment looked a little worn out.
¡°Mongrel? Make it quick, I¡¯m a little busy.¡±
¡°Mark, it¡¯s me. Is Scarlet there?¡±
¡°Ebony! You¡¯re alive, I mean, you¡¯re out and about!¡±
¡°Yes, you knew? I just got out but my callstone¡¯s gone so I couldn¡¯t contact anyone. Answer me.¡±
¡°I got a call from Scarlet a few months back, informing me of your situation. She¡¯s apparently all the way over at Tidal but that was months back. I¡¯m not sure if my callstone can reach her if I¡¯m the one calling but I¡¯ll try now, call you back.¡± Mark hung up immediately.
Ebony followed Mongrel to the potion store while he waited for the call back.
He asked about the others, finding out that Top really died and that Mongrel didn¡¯t know where the others were dispatched to.
Mark called back to ask where he was before hanging up again. Ebony randomly conjured a scale helmet to hide his face as well so Chr-Mongrel was probably recognised his voice quickly.
¡°I uh, informed them. They should be on their way to you.¡±
¡°Them?¡±
¡°Yeah¡I heard Scarlet call her sister something. I also heard some threats like wanting to knock some sense into you so yeah. Glad you¡¯re doing well, my research is doing really well too. You might want to make a stop here.¡±
Mark kept things short, he was probably having fun with his research.
¡®...I should get out of the city quickly.¡¯
¡°It was nice to see you again, Mongrel. Good luck with your evolution.¡±
¡°...To you too.¡±
Ebony quickly left for the main road and swiftly moved past carriages and beasts that pulled them.
There was one problem.
If Kong Jing was here to ¡®knock some sense¡¯ into him, it wouldn¡¯t be like the lightning ¡®punches¡¯ that were supposed to keep him undamaged. Most buildings in the area wouldn¡¯t be able to survive what was coming at him.
He was glad he managed to make it outside the city because he already saw a figure in the air.
A tiny shadow was thrown at him at breakneck speed.
It was Icicle, his greatsword. He attempted to catch its grip but he didn¡¯t manage to stop it before it stabbed into the ground right in front of him.
¡°Sorry Icicle, you¡¯ll be next in line.¡± He let go instead of picking it up and opened his arms wide for the charging flash of red.
He released the ice scales on his robe, letting himself fall back and feeling each other¡¯s warmth.
???
Kong Jing held her punches, glad to see no injuries on this little brother of hers. Cielfast city, she had been here before. She narrowed her eyes on the newer shop where it should¡¯ve been empty only to sense her little brother¡¯s gaze. Those dead eyes seemed to say ¡®I¡¯ll do it myself¡¯ and so she let it go for now.
She should¡¯ve guessed. She should have but they never came to mind as she kept focusing on who did the kidnapping and didn¡¯t even imagine that he was contained by another entity. She never did find out much about them either and with Ning Xin only having fully recovered not long ago, she only just started personally looking into it. The younger woman was surprisingly calm despite being fully aware of what had happened. Too calm.
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So calm that Kong Jing got even more worried since she didn¡¯t speak much even to her. This reunion put her mind at ease. At the same time, she had seen Yvette at work once or twice. She didn¡¯t bother calling out on her that Ning Xin was taking such a long time to ¡®fully¡¯ recover.
¡®What is grandaunt¡¯s planning? Is there some kind of grand plan she¡¯s scheming or was there benefit in letting little Xin slow down. Or is it more about Ebony?¡¯
¡®Well¡guess I¡¯ll give him a beating some other time.¡¯
???
¡°I missed you too.¡± Ebony said after a few minutes that felt like seconds. They simply hugged in silence for the entire duration.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ning Xin sniffed.
¡°Are you okay? Your heart is beating slower than usual.¡± He wanted to bring it up since the moment he noticed
¡°I¡¯m okay. My Core skill evolved with a tiny mutation and there is a small complication.¡±
He didn¡¯t like the word ¡®complication¡¯.
¡°What complication?¡± He pushed her out of their pleasant hug and looked into her bright red eyes.
¡°It¡¯s nothing to worry about. It¡¯s called Rampaging Mortal¡¯s Pulse. Basically does what my Core skill has always done, increasing all my physical stats all round but by 5% I guess by 1005% but no longer increasing supply of vital energy by a hastened blood flow.¡± She paused, perhaps pondering on how to explain her skill.
Putting ramifications or complications aside. She could basically push all her physical stats up by 10 times and the only problem would be her Intelligence and Perception being far too low to keep up.
¡°Instead, my heart would stop and condense vital energy then pump it all out at once. The small complication is, I can¡¯t really control how much I condense it and unlike my old tier two version which takes time to build up, once I try to use my core skill I can only go all out. Just like the old version, even if it strengthens my Constitution, with my base constitution my heart, brain and basically all my vitals would probably pop in no time.¡±
¡°So you¡¯re in a state where you can¡¯t use your core skill now? Does that permanently change your heart in any way?¡±
¡°That¡¯s the little problem, it can turn on by itself if I¡¯m very angry or have strong emotions. I doubt a strong positive emotion will cause it to start though. I¡¯m currently using blood manipulation to keep it at a constant calm while continuing with meditation practice.¡±
Kong Jing finally understood why she had been so silent and calm. This girl never bothered to tell her something so important in months and told her little lover the moment they reunited. She would teach her a lesson but add to Ebony¡¯s beatings instead since she never hits her little Xin.
¡°Are you ready?¡±
¡°Ready.¡±
¡°Lady¡¯s first. You said location has both symbolic and practical meanings.¡±
¡°I wanna go home. Sister Jing can help me set up a surrounding with higher fire mana concentrations. You¡¯ll want to go to Arcta right?¡±
¡°Yes. Ah, then I guess I¡¯ll have a very strong bodyguard this time.¡±
¡°Mmhmm. This bodyguard and chef will require you to get ingredients with me and never be out of sight.¡±
¡°Can I have the honour of temporarily taking up the role of your bodyguard?¡±
He already realised that she was only carrying two wooden longswords at her hips. Staying by Sister Jing¡¯s side, she didn¡¯t really need to carry lethal weapons at the same time, these wooden longswords were sharpened and still lethal in her hands. For someone who loves their swords, he could only imagine something happened to her dear swords as well.
¡°I would prefer if you can at least take care of yourself.¡±
¡®...Ouch.¡¯
¡°Yes ma¡¯am¡±
¡°Have you made me wait enough? To Xienor?¡± Sister Jing asked the both of them. During this period of time, she had fully focused on improving the control and potency of her space manipulation. She could ¡®gently¡¯ move living things even without a layer of mana protection and also go a much further distance with a single spatial leap.
¡°Can we make a stop at Plainston? It''s about the runic body engravement idea.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t forget how useful it would be if he could permanently strengthen his physique if it worked.
¡°Oh that¡well, let¡¯s go and see what you have for me first.¡± Kong Jing wasn¡¯t very hooked on the idea.
He took months travelling from Fourth Tide to Plainston, Cielfast wasn¡¯t too far away from Fourth Tide.
Plainston was in sight within two hours, tops.
The house had been turned into a complete lab and workshop. Kong Jing approved.
¡°Mark?¡± Ebony called from the front door.
He could hear some books falling deeper in the building.
¡°Weren¡¯t you in Cielfast City?¡± The dark rings around his eyes were so deep his face could keep children awake at night.
Ebony gestured to sister Jing who invited herself in and started looking through everything of interest in the house.
¡°What the!¡± Mark wanted to complain about someone flipping through his notes and touching his equipment but wasn¡¯t able to stop her. He was stunned by her quick grasp and question.
¡°You made this? Not bad, I wouldn¡¯t have thought of it.¡± The craftswoman already understood what was what even without reading through the notes and just by looking at the potions.
Mark also noticed the mask but didn¡¯t really care about that, it was the Grandmaster Craftswoman status that caught his attention. Then he realised this was the woman who taught Ebony.
¡°You can tell what that potion does?¡±
¡°Not the full effects with a single glance but generally, yes. Let me guess.¡± She flipped to a page on a book with a diagram of a human body. ¡°This is your runic formula for the increase in durability and toughness of the body, putting aside how low its effect and efficiency is, you did a decent job changing the original formula to one that fits most people¡¯s mana, I¡¯m gonna guess it''s the most suitable for you since I don¡¯t see anyone else here.¡±
Mark nodded.
¡°This bottle of yellowish orange potion, truly creative. I¡¯m not sure of its side effects and I doubt you are either but drinking this will allow the entire runic formula to be imprinted into the consumer¡¯s body. This is not the complete product and the runic formula would only be temporary and dissipate once its energy runs out.¡±
¡®That is¡different from what he said he was trying to do but make sense with him being both a potion master and runic scholar. Was the armour idea scrapped because he had no trustworthy blacksmith?¡¯
Rather than scrap, Mark would take it as a delay. He didn¡¯t see armour to be very useful for them compared to actually working on the body. He used the same principles for his self inscription runic potions after all.
¡°That¡¯s one of my bigger problems, I haven¡¯t tested it on anyone and monsters wouldn¡¯t really give me reliable data.¡±
Kong Jing directly uncovered her bottom mask and chugged the potion, not waiting for any protests.
¡°Hmm¡¡± She closed her eyes and pondered.
¡°Ho¡how is it?¡± Mark was a little nervous despite his confidence that it should at least be safe to drink even for a Journeyman.
¡°A little salty and a bitter aftertaste. A bit like dirt.¡± She didn¡¯t sound like she was joking.
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t about to try the thing anytime soon.
¡°Tastes aside, it dissipated fast due to my physique but I got the important details.¡±
Mark scoured for a fresh page on one of the many notebooks around.
He wrote down the effects she stated it to have and how long she deduced it would work on a relatively normal person.
The trial version was said to increase constitution by at least 220% for as long as the potion effects last, there was little to no control over its strength to lower output but that wasn¡¯t exactly a downside. The side effects turned his smile upside down. Supposedly not just muscle fatigue but actually tearing muscles throughout the body and cutting into the bones. None of them was seen from her body of course.
Kong Jing was never stingy with her knowledge, going all out and discussing with Mark. Her insight was an eye-opener for him.
Ebony helped Ning Xin with preparing dinner.
¡°Do you have any cravings?¡± She asked, mostly because he hadn¡¯t eaten any good food for a while.
¡°If I had to pick, I guess some good old curry.¡± He was pretty sure it was a thing here from reading.
¡°Curry¡I¡¯ve never made that. Curry leaves grow deep under the ocean, I doubt anyone¡¯s selling it. We might have to search for some ourselves one day.¡± When it comes to ingredients, she knew better.
As for this world¡¯s version of curry leaves growing under the ocean? That was news to him.
¡°Can I teach you how to swim?¡±
¡°Of..of course. Why?¡±
¡°What do you mean why? We¡¯ll have to be able to swim to search underwater.¡±
¡°I mean, why do you want to be the one who teaches me?¡±
¡°So that I can see you in a swimsuit. More importantly, so that others don¡¯t see you in one.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t really think before he spoke, just saying what came to mind.
¡°Swimsuit? Is there some kind of armour made for water?¡± Ning Xin cocked her head at the unfamiliar term.
¡°You can say so. I can make a few samples for you to check them out.¡±
¡°Okay!¡±
¡°You¡¯re willing to try on the clothes I made for you now?¡±
¡°...Only if it¡¯s not so revealing.¡±
¡°Well¡¡±
Ebony¡¯s silence caused her to flush and poke his sides only for her finger to hurt.
Chapter 137: Ladies First
¡°So the people who kidnapped me were quite the experts in kidnapping.¡± Ebony listened to the puny amount of information that they had on his captors.
¡°That party that destroyed Na twice got in my way. We couldn¡¯t find much about them either.¡± Ning Xin had informed Kong Jing a little after she woke up but the people that they coerced into helping them weren¡¯t much help. This group she coerced were the party that tried to kidnap him first and almost succeeded by draining his mana dry instantly with some ampules.
Ning Xin blamed herself for losing control of herself, if she hadn¡¯t Kong Jing wouldn¡¯t have been distracted and let not just the Grandmaster fire warrior escape but even all the men involved.
That had made Kong Jing bitter and why she started to steer her focus from her craft to shore up on magic training. Of course, she never stopped crafting and just started putting effort into improving her spatial awareness.
Ebony didn¡¯t even know what had happened but he was disappointed he didn¡¯t even put up a fight. He was so useless once he didn¡¯t have much mana?
¡®There are many methods to deprive me of my magical capabilities. I should dedicate more of my stats to my unenhanced body. I mean¡I can¡¯t even swing Icicle around without enhancement, that¡¯s fatal.¡¯
He also found out the fire warrior seemed suspiciously there to counter Ning Xin. Slapping aside her heated blade with his bare hands and even destroying her longsword while controlling his strength.
¡°That unnamed man isn¡¯t your average Imperial Grandmaster who evolved with a 25 or 50% fortification after one¡¯s about to run out of lifespan or just isn¡¯t willing to risk their life getting natural potential. He should have pretty decent skills to not just survive but fight the Trolls. Don¡¯t worry about it. You have been facing so many Masters who have poor Fortification that you¡¯re forgetting the normal. You did well to make him draw his weapon.¡±
Those words weren¡¯t comforting at all.
¡°I¡¯ll do the dishes. You have things to talk about right?¡± Ning Xin stacked the empty dishes.
¡°I can still hel¡¡± He was pushed out of the small dining area that Mark expanded his workshop into.
¡°You wanted to know why I don¡¯t advise you to carve that runic formula into your body?¡±
¡°Mmm. Actually, I wanted to know if it was feasible. Would it limit me in future when I manage to work out a stronger version? Would my body just heal anything I¡¯m forcibly carving into my very bones, muscles and tissues? After thinking about how my body would heal and how Mark¡¯s potion works temporarily, I have got a new idea which is to try to make something like that of an enhancement spell. By ¡®engraving¡¯ them in my body and activating it I would get a boost in constitution and when my body acts to regenerate, it would disappear once I let mental control of the spell go.¡±
¡°That''s¡actually not a bad idea. So you can regenerate every little physical injury¡I guess if it¡¯s a spell version I don¡¯t see any problem. You¡¯re right about the runes limiting you if a normal person were to somehow engrave it into their body. It¡¯s true that for a normal person, there¡¯s no real downside if that person is out of potential. The resulting physique would indeed give a tougher body than a human¡¯s.¡±
¡°Did you plan to tell me some old story or legend about why I shouldn¡¯t do so or how a person or group of people practised that but things didn¡¯t turn out well for them.¡±
¡°...Cocky brat. Indeed, there used to be a clan amongst the Xeng who practised that. I wouldn¡¯t say you¡¯re completely right about things not turning out well. I mean, it did turn out horribly.¡± Kong Jing pondered whether she should be telling him.
Ebony¡¯s silent stare got a little uncomfortable for her so she continued.
¡°This was obviously before young me was born. I doubt you know much about our social structure.¡± She gave a questioning glance. She was pretty sure Ning Xin wasn¡¯t 100% clear of their history either since her grandma hid quite a lot of things to keep her in the dark.
He nodded in reply.
¡°There are 3 ¡®great¡¯ clans. The Ning, Wen and Shi clan. Most of us are based elsewhere and no longer on Elcra, Xienor is a tiny place that¡¯s mostly deserted now. That¡¯s beside the point.¡± She rolled her eyes as she emphasised ¡®great¡¯ and quickly got back on track to what she wanted to say.
¡°This method was used by the Wen clan¡¯s family head. He was all sorts of crazy in terms of research of any form of unknown. Stumbling upon the study of runes. From his success on himself, making himself to have one of the strongest bodies both physical and magical he spread the knowledge with his clan. The practice was a little cruel but all¡¯s well as they were indeed ahead of the other families in terms of power. As for why it¡¯s cruel, it''s because it¡¯s done pretty ¡®mechanically¡¯. Once the next generation turned 15 and had their mask made, they would visit their clan head to be cut up and carved into. Their masks are specially made not to revert those runes back and only heal the flesh and bones but not regenerate.¡± She continued with the little story about operating on children.
¡°And it didn¡¯t turn out well?¡± Ebony cocked his head. An attempt to show others he was confused since his facial expressions weren¡¯t so pronounced.
¡°Oh. No. It turned out swell. Since they had the same amount of time for training, the next generation had the advantage of a much stronger physique. No, they got the approving nod from¡ yeah, someone revered and feared by us.¡± Sister Jing wasn¡¯t comfortable with telling him who they got an approving nod from.
¡®Someone they revere and fear? So they aren¡¯t completely fearless?¡¯
¡°You are aware of how fertility drastically drops after every evolution? Well, their clan was affected by it the most. Possibly due to their physique. With an already tiny population, they barely had a third generation. But that¡¯s not my point. The Wen clan currently consists of one man.¡±
¡°...The clan head?¡± Ebony made a random guess.
¡°As expected of a mad man absorbed in their research am I right?¡± He could tell she was grinning even though she was hiding it under her mask with Mark around.
¡°Who would''ve known? The Wen clan head used his entire clan as experimental trial and error. Perfecting himself with their souls and lifeforce so that his physique is capable of growth. Unless you¡¯re telling me you want to find a group of people whose lifeforce, soul and mind are similar to yours and sacrifice them. At least, I¡¯m personally unaware of any other method because it would be permanent. But to you¡you might really just heal it back unless the runes could constantly consume you in some manner.¡±
¡°I see. Is he the strongest Xeng?¡±
¡°Eh, those alive? Probably second or third. The other ¡®great¡¯ clans aren¡¯t too shabby but most of the potential strong young ones just disappear, either dead or in constant training in some dungeon, I¡¯d say 50/50 chance.¡±
¡°You¡¯re just proving that there is indeed potential in this path. You¡¯re already thinking of ways that would make it permanent on my regenerative body aren¡¯t you?¡±
¡°My little brother knows me so well. I¡¯m certainly very intrigued in this research but no, this thing that came from the dungeon must come from somewhere it formed. I¡¯ll need to find the source.¡± She was more on skinship and forced him under her arms in a stranglehold.
¡°About that.¡± Mark interrupted.
Kong Jing would be lying if she said she wasn¡¯t surprised to see a wizard instead of a mage around. She already noticed it the first time she saw him but didn¡¯t really care at that time.
She didn¡¯t stop messing his hair up as they waited for Mark to speak his piece.
¡°I heard of multiple expeditions being formed to go beneath Bubble Hills. Haven¡¯t really caught wind of what¡¯s there since I wasn¡¯t that interested. I¡¯ve been keeping an ear open for news. Apparently, a huge stretch of tunnels underground had been found. Supposedly unnatural.¡±
¡°Maybe the influx of people that overhunted when they were waiting for Plainston to open found it. No one found what or where it leads to yet?¡±
¡°Not that we know of, none of those that set off came back yet. Large expeditions take a long time and even if they got results they would keep it under wraps.¡±
¡°Hmm¡¡± Although it would be a time-consuming activity, the prospects seemed good to Kong Jing.
¡°We can check it out some other time. You aren¡¯t done with your research, we are still puny Journeymen.¡± With that, Ebony went to stretch his body and exercise.
They left on the ¡®Jing express¡¯ the next morning. To Xienor.
???
Xienor was on the other side of Elva in comparison to Plainston.
A round lake that one wouldn¡¯t be able to see the end from ground level that was situated behind a small village greeted their eyes. ¡®Small¡¯ village was an understatement because there were only about a couple dozen wooden buildings that were slightly oriental in design. Many even appeared worn down and dilapidated.
It took more than a week of non-stop spatial travel by their amazing ride. Kong Jing had to rest once due to the mental exhaustion of bringing along two people. They also made stops to have meals.
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Ebony saw quite a few dungeon portals that were not black or grey but green in colour, Ordina¡¯s portal also got greyer as it aged. Those Uncommon ranked dungeons wouldn¡¯t have a single creature unevolved at level 100.
The mana density and even gravity fluctuated. Mana density mostly increased as they got closer to central Elva. To a degree that he didn¡¯t expect. They passed by Tidal, and he was able to see how massive it was. It took more than a couple of teleports before it was out of sight.
It was¡intense.
He couldn¡¯t imagine anything or anyone attacking a ¡®city¡¯ that huge. It was definitely larger than Russia but compact with buildings, farms, lands and all that. The population density didn¡¯t appear low either. The reason he didn¡¯t think anything would attack wasn¡¯t its size, the impressive walls, the similarly impressive-looking guards or the numerous towers with massive spheres choke full of dense mana lining up the walls. It was from the aura the city was exuding on him.
Although he heard that city barriers made by the Royal family absorb excess Vitality and Wisdom if anyone forgets to drain their own mana and use it as a ward to persuade monsters not to attack. Tidal was the only one he sensed the outrageous pressure from.
He would¡¯ve loved to make a stop but it wasn¡¯t their priority.
Xienor on the other hand, had no walls, no guards, no magical towers and he would bet, no barriers.
One thing they didn¡¯t lack was aura.
He was sure those Grandmaster Frost Elves that he walked passed from time to time in Arcta would gulp and stay away.
Grandmasters weren¡¯t rare in Tidal but no one here appeared to be under Grandmaster. With his senses and the small size of the village, a quick walk around counted him less than a hundred people.
From what Ning Xin told him, they usually leave once or before they evolve to King Class because their progress would be faster elsewhere.
They were not greeted or addressed. People avoided the group of three as they made their way to a building that was situated further away from the cluster. The lake could be seen not far away, he was pretty sure he saw a figure relaxing on a chair with a fishing rod by the figure''s side.
They had a no shoe policy as well, something he was very familiar with. The wooden buildings looked normal but the quality of the materials were clearly not normal even to the untrained eyes.
Ning Xin gave him a tour of the small living room which would be where he was going to sleep. There was a coffee table and a flat disk with a gem embedded. She turned it on when he asked what it was.
It was a television.
She already watched all the series that she had. He didn¡¯t think he would find a kindred spirit in watching movies or just entertainment in general. None of them were educational or about skills and magic which was a little odd when they were so crazy about getting stronger.
¡°Not that odd. The Xengs don¡¯t share their ¡®legacy¡¯ or ¡®lineage¡¯ amongst the clans and well, the Nings don¡¯t consider little Xin or even grandaunt as one of their own anymore. Since many of us like to pave our own path, create and refine our own skills, it¡¯s only a minor setback.¡± Sister Jing whispered in his ears.
He was pretty sure Ning Xin could hear it.
¡®I would think she wouldn¡¯t like to be called a Ning but maybe not.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t sure about what Ning Xin herself knew about her own circumstances. He was under the impression that many things were hidden from her. Just like how he knew there should be a problem with his memories.
She stopped to take a deep breath and asked him to wait outside where he assumed was her room. Letting him in a moment later.
¡®I expected more red.¡¯
The room was nothing special. A bed, wardrobe, chest, table with a couple of books, a lamp. The colour scheme is lighter red to pink and brown furniture.
¡°Give me half a day, I have the fire, wind, lightning mana ore ready together with those Rare Blood moss you brought back. Get yourself ready and you can evolve tonight.¡± Sister Jing didn¡¯t let him watch her work but she going to raise the surrounding elemental density to match and support Ning Xin¡¯s evolution.
The surrounding mana density here was already a few times higher than Ordina which was supposedly one of the main reasons they came here. It was no wonder Hector and Ning Xin were not very affected by high mana density, they were already exposed to them since they were young.
¡®Was I also less affected because of this and not just because of my own high Wisdom?¡¯ He wasn¡¯t sure but it might have been part of it.
He helped prepare a huge feast for her to stock up for however long she was going to be undergoing her evolution. Their average for a complete one was at least a week and she would need all the nutrients and energy she could get.
¡°No, I¡¯m not going to make ice cream.¡± He didn¡¯t want ice cream to fill up her belly when she needed more nutritious dishes.
¡°Not even a little?¡± She looked at him with those burning eyes that turned gentle in his direction.
It didn¡¯t take very long for him to back down a little and make her a small serving of ice cream. They didn¡¯t have cocoa trees or beans, at least, he didn¡¯t even see them even in those books he had scoured through. For a sweet tooth, he imagined she would¡¯ve loved chocolate.
She asked for his flavour.
¡°Would there be a problem if you consumed too much of my blood?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know?¡± She cocked her head at the question.
¡°I¡¯m not turning fiendish if that¡¯s what you¡¯re asking. You can eat my mana too. Once I evolve, I¡¯m going to try imbuing mana into my ingredients. Would you eat it? With the risk of poisoning¡¡±
¡°I would eat anything you make for me.¡±
It was a delightful evening for both of them.
Cooking was a time consuming activity. She told him about how high level cooking with mana could strengthen one, similar to sound enhancement magic. He could enhance others by sending his mana into others as long as they accept his mana. Although this technique was not new, there weren¡¯t too many chefs who managed to learn it. There is a pretty good chance that other people¡¯s bodies cannot adapt to a vastly different mana signature and get poisoned in some form.
It''s even more pronounced for a chef that constantly uses magic and has mana that already differs a lot from pure mana. Not to mention her mana and his own were pretty much opposites.
Just like his sound magic, the temporary buff from those meals wouldn¡¯t have a strong effect at low levels and with the chance of poisoning considered, it wasn¡¯t very popular when one could die in battle due to a single meal.
She got the chance to try some high level chef¡¯s cooking in a restaurant in Tidal. The Imperial army had been trying to train such chefs since diet was an essential part of their strength as well. She had been joining the chef¡¯s of the imperial army during the time of her recuperation and when she had a lot of time on her hands since she couldn¡¯t overdo it.
She only ate her own tries so far and made her own tummy ache which was a terrible sign. Fortunately, she didn¡¯t feed anyone else those experiments. Her body turned numb and was burning for a bit after that.
¡°Then I have to be your first and only test subject okay?¡±
¡°And I¡¯m the only one who can have your blood?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll have to try very hard to make that possible.¡±
At the dining table, they stuffed her full before he took a short walk with her to the giant lake.
¡®This lake must have been the one the Spear Saint poked into Elva when he stabbed the phoenix.¡¯ The beautiful lake had a history that made it a little harder to appreciate for a moment before he acknowledged that its history didn¡¯t take away the beauty of the scenery.
Their quiet walk ended quickly.
She closed the door to her room on him.
He shouldn¡¯t go in and disrupt the process. Neither could he let anyone or thing disrupt her.
10 days later.
It was closer to 11 days but that didn¡¯t matter much. He had been spending his time getting his body back in shape and watching television for an admittedly unhealthy amount of time. His Conditioning levels were regained at a pretty fast speed. Like they were recovering to his original instead of gaining new levels.
The ''actors'' or ''memory lighters'' were good at their job, some stories about freelancers going to fight a strong foe were a little boring but the others were pretty good. He would admit that Earth¡¯s work was more imaginative and the works here were slightly lower in quality but they didn¡¯t need computer effects since they really used magic to replicate the special effects.
His favourite was a touching story about a shoemaker repairing her son¡¯s worn-out boots over and over again till her son never came back from the battlefield. Although the drama was a little heavy when she could somehow trace shoes or boots that she made and magically struggle her way to get his body in the middle of a battlefield. It was really worth the time to watch.
Glued to his seat on the soft sofa when both him and Kong Jing felt the sleeping beauty rouse up. The whole building¡¯s temperature rose over this period of time but spiked up for a fraction of a second, alerting them.
They climbed up to the second floor only to see that her door was broken apart on the floor, they were on fire and so was the room. He was pushed aside as the faster and stronger lady rushed in.
When he got to see the room, the fire was put out and she was wrapped up in a thick blanket. The burnt mattress was a sign that more than just her bed was burned so he wasn¡¯t able to catch an eyeful due to his slow speed.
The first thing he noticed was nothing else but her mask.
It wasn¡¯t pure white anymore, it had a light red tone with the feather turning darker in colour. He was very curious why her mask would change in colour but not for long as the colour turned back to pure white except the feather.
They didn¡¯t rush her or ask her any questions because she needed to gather her bearings herself, unaware of most of the changes that she underwent. She wasn¡¯t that embarrassed by her nakedness with the blanket on her nor the thick stench of sweat and many unknown compounds released from her body but embarrassed by the loud grumble that echoed from her belly.
She radiated.
[Master Flame Swordswoman Lvl 100]
Identify wasn¡¯t that great. He believed she managed to pull blood magic into her class but he couldn¡¯t see it.
The tiny bit of skin of her neck exposed was even paler and fairer than he remembered. Her hair and irises turned a darker shade of red.
She recovered strength in her body quickly and he was kicked out so that she could put some clothes on in private.
When they were cooking with ingredients she had prepared before she evolved, he was surprised by the sudden aura of Vitality from her. Clearly, she had lost a lot of health during her evolution and was still recovering till it started leaking.
¡®It¡¯s warm,¡¯ he felt his lungs burn up a little and the amount leaking was unnaturally high. She definitely has a strengthened Vitality in some form.
¡°Are you okay?¡± She was moving awkwardly as if her body didn¡¯t belong to her.
¡°My body¡¯s sore all over. Is-is your massage up for offer?¡± Ning Xin was feeling tired from both lying down for days and the evolution.
¡®Something different¡she¡¯s more. Confident?¡¯ He wasn¡¯t sure if confidence was the right word but she wasn¡¯t as drawback as he remembered when interacting with him.
¡°Of course.¡±
¡°N.no funny business.¡± She quickly stuffed herself with a soup dumpling.
He cocked his head in confusion.
¡°I¡¯m really good at it. At least my parents agree.¡±
Chapter 138: Kiva Thoya
¡°No.¡± Ebony firmly stated.
¡°Pleease!¡± Ning Xin objected, dragging her words out.
¡°...Not anytime soon.¡±
¡°Why?! It was amazing.¡±
¡°I¡¯m mentally weak.¡± He cleared his mind as best he could before he could remember what happened last night.
¡°That¡¯s the last thing that can describe you!¡± She felt like a newborn with no strength in her hips and legs. Her shoulders and arms aren¡¯t as tight or tense as it constantly was after training.
¡°I mean when it comes to you.¡±
He slapped himself with both hands and continued his morning exercise. He never had such difficulty clearing his mind, it was as if there was a recorder in his head constantly replaying her soft moans. He tightened his grip as if to remove the muscle memory on his fingers and palms..
They didn¡¯t spar because she was afraid she couldn¡¯t control her body or even magic well enough and accidentally kill him. She was just a blur in his vision when she moved.
She was going to try attempting new exercises that she wasn¡¯t able to do as a Journeyman to push her Conditioning up a tier as soon as possible. But he could tell she was disorientated with her brand-new body.
Kong Jing wanted to go back to Plainston to barge in on Mark¡¯s research so she had no issue sending them to Arcta which made things convenient. They would be leaving in two or three days, allowing Ning Xin to get used to her body a little and Ebony to continue regaining Conditioning levels.
He really wondered what the training square outside her house was made of because it could withstand just about anything even the evolved Ning Xin could throw. At least, the ground didn¡¯t crumble from her explosive speed.
¡°Just Epic stone compressed by one of our stone mages.¡± Was what sister Jing told him. Needless to say, it was enchanted in some form as well.
He personally never Identified a rock or stone higher than Common rarity. The platform wasn¡¯t made by Kong Jing either, nothing in Xienor was made by her except maybe her own house. She wasn¡¯t as old as he thought. No, she was much younger than he initially imagined.
Sister Jing was an anomaly amongst anomalies. Those were the words Ning Xin described her with and understandably so. He knew it took more time for support or crafting Classes to level and advance. For perfectionists like the Xeng it should take much longer yet she was only 20 to 30 years older than he was. He didn¡¯t manage to get her exact age since she popped up and shut Ning Xin up.
¡®Maybe she didn¡¯t get a complete evolution and is only a Master space mage? I doubt so.¡¯
He swung Icicle hard. His attempts to distract himself were backfiring on his usual clarity.
???
The heavenly massage that seemed as if her body had been reborn aside, she felt disorientated.
It wasn¡¯t just her body, the entire world appeared to be in slow motion. The Journeyman Ebony felt¡small. When she first woke up, it was as if her very existence was at a higher plane. It was no wonder people didn¡¯t think much of those an evolution under them. It wasn¡¯t just strength, power or race, it just didn¡¯t seem like they were the same human as they had been once.
It clearly wasn¡¯t just her imagination or the sudden increase in power that led her to think that either. The world appeared smaller to her.
¡®I didn¡¯t expect to be able to affect my Physique to benefit this much either. I should be able to stably use my Core Skill now.¡¯
Name: Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin
Core Skill:
Rampaging Mortal¡¯s Pulse Lvl 203
Empty Skill Slot
Class: Burning Blooded Sword Witch Lvl 100
Class Skills:
Compounded Sprint Lvl 201
Fire Mana Command Lvl 208
Cascade Dual Longsword Style Lvl 215
Cascading Mutilation Lvl 189
Inflamed Amplification Lvl 185
Spear of Flame Lvl 168
Precise Perforation Lvl 193
Sphere of Immolation Lvl 185
Blood Boil Lvl 154
Burstflare Witch¡¯s Conditioning Lvl 68
Blood Mana Manipulation Lvl 66
Witch¡¯s Blood Halo Lvl 62
Incensed Meditation Lvl 25
Fortified Heart Lvl 1
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Gale Storm Butcher Lvl 100
Sub-Class Skills:
Wind Mana Manipulation Lvl 178
Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 182
Pulsating Gale Enhancement Lvl 180
Lightning Inoculation Lvl 174
Revolving Razorwind Film Lvl 172
Static Palpitation Lvl 1
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Chef of Slaughter Lvl 100
Profession Skills:
Combat Cooking Lvl 177
Heat Perception Lvl 182
Live Ingredient Processing Lvl 180
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 1500/1500
Stamina: 2500/2500
Mana: 3000/3000 [4200/4200]
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 122
Vitality: 150
Constitution: 330
Endurance: 250
Agility: 180 [540]
Intelligence: 215
Wisdom: 300
Perception: 110
Generic Skills:
Xenese Lvl 10
Elcrian Lvl 10
Appraise Lvl 20
Running Lvl 75
Housekeeping Lvl 42
Silent Step Lvl 24
Immense Pain Resistance Lvl 48
Combat Tenacity Lvl 68
Sheer Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 61
Immense Divination Resistance Lvl 62
Mana Compression Lvl 35
Mana Expansion Lvl 52
Extreme Heat Resistance Lvl 89
Sheer Poison Resistance Lvl 21
Sheer Cold Resistance Lvl 53
Earth Resistance Lvl 16
Sheer Wind Resistance Lvl 42
Sheer Lightning Resistance Lvl 55
Mental Supersaturation Lvl 40
Scent Tracing Lvl 44
Sheer Mental Acceleration Lvl 53
Heightened Instinct Lvl 70
Regulated Breath Lvl 28
Fortifications:
Class: Burning Blooded Sword Witch
Mana Efficiency with Fire Magic increased by 500%
Fire Magic increased in heat by 500%
Casting Speed with Fire Magic is increased by 200%
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Attack Speed when dual-wielding longswords increased by 500%
Agility increased in effect by 200%
Blood density is increased by 100%
Resilience of heart is increased by 100% relative to Constitution
Mental processing speed is increased by 100% relative to Intelligence
Sub-Class: Gale Storm Butcher
Casting Speed with Lightning Magic is increased by 200%
Casting Speed with Wind Magic is increased by 200%
Mana Efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic is increased by 200%
Natural Reflex speed increased by 100%
Conjured Winds are naturally 100% sharper.
Profession: Chef of Slaughter
Control of heat increased by 200%
Control of precision when handling ingredients increased by 200%
Ability to understand unknown ingredients is increased by 100%
Getting all 3,2 and 1 additional Fortification for her Classes was expected. Getting her Physique refined a little was a nice surprise. But having her heart actually enlarged by a fair margin was completely unexpected. She could literally feel her heartbeat against her lungs and it will take some time to get used to it. She couldn¡¯t tell if her lungs were enlarged or not since she didn¡¯t have the kind of senses Ebony had.
By manipulating blood she could somewhat feel that her lungs shouldn''t have changed or had a very small change. She was slightly taller, her limbs slightly longer. Causing her to miss and misjudge distance, the small change required lots of practice to get used to.
Her movement skill was barely tier 3, requiring a lot of refinement before it met standards but still surprising that it evolved.
Fire Mana Command was unexpected as well. For some odd reason, Manipulation was considered tier 1, Control was considered tier 2 even though it has a 1.0% amplifier and Command was the next. Just like Mastery over weapons, Manipulation wasn¡¯t easy to improve. The fact that her sword Mastery evolved into a Style was not completely unexpected but still a very nice improvement.
Lesser used fire spears and immolation only got a tiny refinement while her physical skills got great benefits. Blood magic was indeed pulled into her Class without much potential used. The process of evolution was a little weird. She just sort of instinctively knew what she could do and what she couldn¡¯t with the ¡®resource¡¯ or ¡®energy¡¯ that they theorised to be Natural Potential in some form.
She used a large bunch to create the Fortified Heart passive skill, it was something she had been trying to do when she was recuperating but she was likely far from successful. Now, she could physically, with the help from blood manipulation, toughen her heart. Increasing its Constitution by 1.0% per level. Although insufficient at the moment, it was a start.
Her memories of the evolution process started to dissipate the moment she woke up so she couldn''t remember what she did. Another reason why all she had to go on with were vague information since the same thing happens for everyone.
She didn¡¯t like the ¡®witch¡¯ part but Blood Halo was amazing, it had a mind of its own. No greater than a toddler but can understand extremely simple commands best used as a rotating disk either around her to protect or as a ranged attack. The link between her body and her Blood Halo was also strengthened.
Her wind and lightning enhancement was merged since she always used them together. She could originally merge it with Blood Boil as well and then have it as a core skill but she put Fortified Heart as a priority. Static Palpitation was a Stemmed skill from her actions of using lightning mana to excite her heart. Now, electrical shocks could either strengthen or even imitate her heart, she could use it to beat her heart even if her heart fails to beat. It was dangerous but useful.
It was not surprising that her Sub-Class and Profession didn¡¯t change too drastically since they were more limited to begin with and she pushed most of her ¡®potential¡¯ to her Class. It was too bad she didn¡¯t have enough to shift Mental Supersaturation or any other generic skills as she would have loved to have a large mana pool.
The Butcher and Slaughter didn¡¯t sit well with her but it didn¡¯t sound so bad since Chefs were the greatest slaughters.
Her old Fortifications increased by the expected amount which pushed her fire magic to be really mana cost-effective and conjured fire to easily melt metals. Her newfound speed snapped the training blades she was using and she lost her footing with her increased Agility.
Lightning and wind magic was practically instantaneous now, although it still takes time for wind to gather. Her reflex speed increasing was good but she thought she was impulsive enough, her body might move before her mind could think things through. It was still a positive thing to have since it might save her in a crisis.
Conjured winds being naturally sharper was nice and could be controlled to a degree if she doesn¡¯t want to slice.
The ingredient one was odd but she hasn¡¯t got her hands on unknown ingredients so she didn¡¯t know how it worked at the moment. What did she do that led to that Fortification?
¡®Wait¡ maybe I can understand an unknown monster¡¯s strengths and weaknesses more easily. Edible ones anyway.¡¯ She speculated.
¡®Vampiric Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix Physique (Passive) - Consuming a portion of the Heartblood Essence of the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix. Every drop of your blood has been boiled over together with your life essence many times over. Gluttonous desire to eat increased by 50%. Metabolism and digestive efficiency increased by 50%. Natural Resistance to heat increased by 25%. Blood¡¯s capacity for heat and energy increased by 100%. Base Health Regeneration increased by 50%. Able to digest and absorb 25% of essence from blood. Body can store up to 50% excess foreign energy for a short duration. Exceedingly minuscule chance of absorbing a minuscule percentage of stats from creature¡¯s blood. Base Blood production is increased by 50%¡¯
The refinement of her Physique was only on the ¡®blood¡¯ portion and not the gluttony portion. Except for her metabolism and digestive efficiency increasing from 25% to 50%.
She used to be able to absorb 10% of the amount of stamina and mana from blood while the lifeforce or healing factor was much weaker. Now it was 25%. She could store more excess energy that isn¡¯t completely foreign since she could digest and change it enough for herself to use. She naturally produces more blood and would not have to worry about boiling out all of her blood as much.
¡®Just wait till I can conjure my own blood.¡¯
The stat gain was¡useless at the moment. All the blood of spiders she had drank didn¡¯t give her any, at least, she hasn¡¯t seen change in her stat count. The relative strength and amount of blood she had to drink most likely mattered.
The increase in her blood density wasn¡¯t a boon yet. It went immensely well with her Physique, most likely what affected her to get this Fortification to begin with. After she evolved, Ebony noted that her resting body temperature had dropped till it was about the same as his. She guessed it was because her blood required a lot more energy to heat up. Although she was compressing blood mana in her body in attempt to copy Ebony, she might have made a mistake.
Sure, her blood could store and withstand an even greater amount of energy and heat but she had been feeling short of breath whenever she got hungry. She required more oxygen! Although the energy part was satiated by her increase in metabolism and her eating habits the need for air wasn¡¯t.
Regulated Breath wasn¡¯t enough and she didn¡¯t manage to push it into any of her Classes since it didn¡¯t match and required more ¡®potential¡¯ than she had left or so she guessed as she couldn''t recall.
She needed to experiment with wind magic to help her in some manner.
She actually swapped out the original Fortification which was Blood Magic related so that she could have a stronger heart.
Her mask had changed as well, she didn''t know the extent of the change but the common changes were the increased ability to extend the mask to cover more area. Her grandma''s could form a complete helmet while sister Jing''s could cover up to the top of her head. Less common was the closing up of the eye slits but that was only useful if she had the sensory skills to cope. Physical changes were the only thing in common, the magical changes were dependent on their evolution.
Were they too hasty? Not really, they wouldn¡¯t get much even if Na somehow managed to level to 250 and let them kill him.
At least, her heart was further strengthened and she would have less trouble with her mind keeping up with her own speed now.
She was constantly held back by some problem with her body.
One step at a time.
¡°This time. I will protect you.¡± She murmured to herself as she looked at Ebony who was very distracted. His movements were without his usual clarity.
???
¡°What do you think?¡± Ning Xin asked his opinion on her next Core Skill.
It was an extremely important decision and she wanted his view. She told him about how she wouldn¡¯t hesitate if she had managed to merge all 4 of her magics into a single body enhancement spell since she would have many Fortifications working in tandem.
As wonderful as her new passive that strengthened her heart was, it wasn¡¯t all that great of a choice as a Core Skill. Barely any of her Fortifications would help it.
Kong Jing never chipped in as she transported them through the air. She wasn¡¯t as much of a fighter and it wasn¡¯t her choice to make. Their discussion wasn¡¯t going anywhere and her little cousin would take her time to decide. It may or may not be beneficial to just wait and pick up or train another skill.
¡°Damn!¡± Kong Jing yelled when she appeared beside a giant bird of some kind.
She brought them further away immediately but was already targeted by the bird. Her spatial compression wasn¡¯t good enough to get completely out of sight of a bird with good sight but she looked back to see a circular spray of blood from the giant bird¡¯s neck.
¡°Nice use of your blood disk.¡± Was what she heard from her little brother.
She was a little embarrassed that she was shocked by the bird¡¯s size and how close she brought them that she didn¡¯t feel how weak it was. It was dead so she didn¡¯t know its level.
¡°Oh, I have a neat new ability from this halo.¡±
They watched as the falling bird shrivelled as her halo enlarged. The mass of blood flew back to them before they got out of range. They were so far away but her blood still managed to find its way back to its master. Into her mouth, but only a small part of it.
She licked her bloody lips, ¡°ugh, metallic taste is stronger than I¡¯m used to.¡±
¡°You look like some witch out for blood.¡± Was Kong Jing''s only comment but it affected her little cousin more than she thought.
¡°My blood isn¡¯t enough for you?¡± Was what her cute little brother teased her with.
???
17.01.5537
Winter just ended not too long ago and it was over two weeks into spring. Arcta was still freezing cold.
They travelled here from Plainston as their express ride got tired of bringing them around.
¡°I¡¯ll introduce you to the people who cared for me when I just arrived. They are all nice people. Oh, Roya is also a chef.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± She scanned the surroundings carefully. It was her first time travelling into Hoarfrost Glades. She didn¡¯t even have a new pair of swords yet. Just another pair of training blades that cannot withstand much heat but at least strong enough not to snap from her swings.
Whoever kidnapped Ebony was obviously aware that he already escaped, who knew if they would send people to capture him again? As low as the chances were she had her guard up. He told her that his captors were very weak so she wasn''t so concerned.
¡°You don¡¯t have to be so uptight. Sister Jing isn¡¯t far off and I doubt they would come after me again so fast. Not to mention we¡¯re reaching Arcta.¡±
¡°How strong are the Frost Elves? You said they were a bunch of non-combatants.¡±
¡°The herbalist wasn¡¯t all that much weaker than before I used my flames sustainably. There should be some elders from a different village staying to protect this village. You should be able to sense the overflowing essence soon.¡±
It wasn¡¯t anywhere close to Xienor or Tidal but the overflowing wisdom from the cluster of Frost Elves was enough to persuade most of the weak monsters nearby from attacking. She had better senses for Vitality than Wisdom and nothing from the small village in front of her would persuade her from attacking.
White mist escaped from her mask. It was colder than she expected even though winter was over. She didn¡¯t want to warm her body up with fire mana, getting used to cold temperatures would be a boon sooner or later.
¡°I just remembered I have a new set of battle wear from sister Jing. I can open it up now.¡±
¡°Then I have another thing to look forward to waking up to.¡±
He waved to the guards at the gate. They were young, he recognised them. The winter threat should be over if the young were standing guard.
¡°Hey Ebony!¡± The two Frost Elves suddenly jumped back in fright when they saw Ning Xin. Fortunately, they didn¡¯t aim their bow at her.
¡°Can we enter?¡±
¡°...haha. Of course. My apologies for the overreaction¡miss. It¡¯s just¡¡± The archer on the right hemmed and hawed.
¡°Nothing! Go ahead.¡± His buddy stopped the guard from saying something that might be offensive.
But the villagers kept a distance from them even when he greeted them.
They were at the Thoya¡¯s doorstep before long.
He would¡¯ve knocked but Halvis already saw him as he was outside.
¡°You¡¯re back.¡± He smiled.
¡°Mmm. Halvis, meet Scarlet. Scarlet, Halvis.¡± He tried his best to introduce them to each other.
¡°Nice to meet you.¡± There was a tiny pause before he raised his fingers for a tet. She returned it, not caring about which hand meant what. This man took care of Ebony and she wouldn¡¯t fuss about seniority in strength.
¡°What¡¯s wrong? The others have similar reactions.¡±
¡°It¡¯s nothing¡no offence, Scarlet. Your aura is a little uncomfortable for us. As if your vitality is melting us.¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll try to restrain it.¡± She answered. She wasn¡¯t so fluent in restraining overflowing Vitality but she should be able to do something since her Core Skill was about controlling lifeforce and vitality.
¡°She¡¯s very important to me, I hope you can allow her to stay during my evolution.¡± Ebony knew he might be asking for too much when they were uncomfortable around her. He also hoped he could stay true to his words and evolve here.
Halvis only smiled wider, ¡°someone important to you is someone important to us, welcome back.¡±
Ning Xin took it upon herself to take charge of shopping for fresh ingredients. She was very serious about the pre-evolution nutritional needs and also the gifts for the Thoyas. They shopped together and he also bought more of the Torox series books.
Before they reached the door, a loud cry echoed from inside.
¡°Is that?¡± Ebony knew that Roya would¡¯ve given birth by now. It was a pity he wasn¡¯t here for emotional support but they didn¡¯t need him to be here for that with Halvis and Clovis around.
¡°Yes, it is¡uhmm. Could you wait here, I¡¯m not sure if she can take your presence.¡± Halvis was embarrassed to stop Scarlet from entering after he said there was no problem. Even he was feeling uncomfortable, his newborn might not be able to take it.
¡°Congratulations.¡±
He waited outside while the joyful father went to his daughter to appease her.
Clovis was the one who ran down the stairs to welcome them in. Staring at the tall lady that smells like frost plums but rotten from heat. He was already prepared so he wasn¡¯t taken aback.
Ebony was amused by the height difference even though they were extremely close in age. Clovis would definitely grow taller than either of them but that was much later in the future. He wondered how long their babies stayed a baby with their physical growth being so slow.
¡°It¡¯s been a while.¡± He high fived Clovis. The boy nervously reached out to Scarlet, a little scared by the hot touch. Their body temperatures were way lower than Ebony¡¯s and she was little nervous, causing her heart to speed up.
The cry got louder and Scarlet felt like it was a good idea to excuse herself. Ebony grabbed her wrist and prevented her from leaving so quickly.
He could sense 2 massive figures and 1 tiny one coming down already.
¡°Hey Roya, I¡¯m back.¡±
¡°Welcome back.¡± Her smile was radiant as usual despite the cold features. ¡°You must be Scarlet, welcome. Feel free to stay as long as you like.¡±
¡°I think it¡¯s not such a good idea. I don¡¯t want to hurt your baby¡¡± Ning Xin spoke out before he could.
Roya got closer with the tiny, human-sized baby. Her skin wasn¡¯t that far from a human¡¯s, just a very light blue. Apparently darkening a little with age.
¡°Look, she¡¯s not crying.¡± Roya carefully rocked her child.
Her next action scared everyone a little, even Ebony.
She just pushed her baby into Ning Xin¡¯s arms.
Ning Xin was more than a little shocked. She didn¡¯t know how to carry a baby! The little grub was pushed into her arms and she was so scared of burning the little baby when their body temperatures were much lower than hers.
Fortunately, the little baby was wrapped up in a very cold blanket of sorts and she didn''t hurt the child.
The baby surprisingly locked eyes with her.
¡°Za Sa!¡± The baby who she was trying her best to be gentle with reached out to touch her mask before giggling.
¡®Adorable!¡¯
¡°She likes you!¡± Roya exclaimed, not nearly as worried as the other 3 men.
¡°What¡¯s her name?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Kiva. Kiva Thoya.¡±
¡®I thought she would take parts of Roya¡¯s name. Maybe it clashes with Thoya?¡¯ He wondered
¡°She¡¯s lovely.¡± Ning Xin commented as she passed Kiva back before she really hurt her.
¡°I know it¡¯s a sudden visit but I¡¯m here to evolve like I said I would.¡±
¡°So fast? Why don¡¯t you take your time?¡± Roya objected a little.
¡°I already hit and broke through all my limits. At least, to the point where I shouldn¡¯t have any regrets.¡±
¡°Tonight?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°Then I have to get busy now.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll cook!¡± Ning Xin suddenly raised her voice before getting a little shy at her outburst which shocked Kiva.
¡°Meet my personal chef and bodyguard.¡±
Chapter 139: Evolution
Roya was tucking Kiva in before handing the job of her care to the boys.
Ning Xin was both nervous for some odd reason in front of this Frost Elven lady. She felt as if she needed to put up a good impression and also felt like every little action of her was being judged.
¡®Why am I so nervous?¡¯
¡°I¡¯m a chef too.¡± Roya had the same smile on.
¡°I understand his tongue better. He might appear to be okay with any kind of food but he¡¯s extremely particular when eating.¡± She wasn¡¯t backing down.
¡°If he is eating a dish he has eaten, he would replicate his eating steps completely from the first bite to the last. After trying something new, he would optimise the most palatable order of every bite the next time he eats it. Leaving his favourite bite last.¡± Roya was a mother cooking for 2 slightly picky eaters, a chef needed to be observant.
Ning Xin¡¯s nervousness disappeared. She understood the change in atmosphere of the smile. She was challenging her! Whose food is more palatable to Ebony?
But Ning Xin was wrong.
There was no challenge, they worked together.
Roya had an eye-opening treat at the many dishes Ning Xin was planning to make. While she herself taught her how to handle frozen ingredients.
Ning Xin had a surprisingly tough time with the ingredients the Thoyas had. Although she had cooked in cold environments in Ordina, all her ingredients were stored well but she saw Roya cut meats that were rock hard. She even fed her sliced frozen raw fish seasoned with salt. It was quite the delicacy.
¡°Where do you get fish?¡±
¡°There¡¯s a frozen lake a distance away. Sometimes, the other villagers will form a group to go fishing. There¡¯s not many since it¡¯s a small lake and we don¡¯t want to fish them all up at once. It¡¯s been a while, if you want I can ask around to see if anyone wants to make a trip.¡±
¡°Okay!¡± She heard Roya say that Ebony liked it, maybe she could make a short trip but she didn¡¯t want to be apart for even a moment. They could go after he was done.
They gained mutual respect for each other over cooking. Unfamiliar with each other¡¯s techniques.
¡®This might be a bit too much.¡¯ There wasn¡¯t any space to plate all their dishes from the dining table to the kitchen table tops. One would know how much food there was if even she admitted to having overdone it.
She was immensely happy to see Ebony gobble everything up, it was quite funny to see his bulging belly all stretched out compared to his normal¡layers of perfectly aligned tight muscles. She hadn¡¯t seen a man¡¯s body often other than some warriors who go around lightly armoured. His half naked body caught her off guard the first time she saw it. And also every time she saw it. Making it very distracting if he sparred without his clothes on. She noticed him glancing at her from her legs up a lot recently.
She didn¡¯t say anything since the gaze hadn¡¯t been unpleasant. It just made her heart race a little. He didn¡¯t cast such glances for the past three days which made her feel disappointed for some reason.
They were having an after-dinner walk which became a habit.
They bumped into Halvis who left to fetch an older-looking Frost Elf which sent shivers down her spine just being in his presence.
¡®There¡¯s something very weird about him. Very very weird. I can¡¯t appraise him?¡¯ Ning Xin got question marks just like Ebony did.
¡°Hello, Koawe.¡± Ebony greeted. He clearly knew the villagers well enough.
¡°A good evening to you too, Ebony. I heard you¡¯re evolving?¡± He was used to Koawe¡¯s unsettling smile.
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll help prepare your room. Ice and gravity right? I got just the right things.¡± Koawe left without dallying any further
There was actually no need to increase surrounding elemental densities. It was apparently for good luck to get stronger affinities to the elements one was already using. At the very least, there was no real proof that increasing ambient elemental mana density affected anything by a noticeable degree. Pure mana density would make it less burdensome on the body but that was about it.
It was noteworthy that every race would try to do so if possible. Another custom.
¡°Thank you.¡± He bowed in his direction before they continued their walk.
¡°He¡feels weird.¡± Ning Xin whispered after signalling him to silence their talk.
¡°Very. He scares me the most, even including the other Grandmaster Frost Elves that aren¡¯t here anymore. Although they might be stronger. Actually, I have no idea how strong he is but I don¡¯t think he¡¯s stronger than the village guardian.¡±
Accompanied silence continued from then till they reached his room in the Thoya household. Koawe already left after he was done.
¡°Good night.¡±
¡°I will protect your body.¡±
¡°My blood is too tasty to be apart from right?¡± Amused, he teased.
¡°Yes. You¡¯re not allowed to let anyone else have your blood.¡± She actually didn¡¯t falter for once and stared right back.
¡°Seems like I¡¯ll have to toughen myself to only bleed for you.¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t like the way you put that.¡±
¡°Mmm. It¡¯ll take a long time but I¡¯ll make it so that neither of us will have to bleed. You¡¯ll have to suck it out of me if you want.¡±
???
Ebony closed the door on her without waiting for her reply. It was rude but he was distracted enough as it was.
He spent the next two hours meditating seriously. Unsure what Koawe did or used but gravity was at least 5 times stronger. Surpassing the gravity in Ordina¡¯s highest floor. Obviously, it was freezing cold with thick ice mana in the room.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have achieved the requirements to evolve. Evolve Class, Sub-Class, Profession, Partial or Complete?¡¯
¡°Complete Evolution.¡± He spoke mentally and fell deep asleep.
???
For the past 10 days or so, Ning Xin had been undergoing one of the most excruciating trainings she had ever done. What she didn¡¯t expect was to enjoy it. Taking care and playing with Kiva the baby girl.
Frost Elf babies weren¡¯t that energetic compared to human children, that was what Roya had told her. But here she was, lying on her back with Kiva slapping her mask and making excited cries or yells. Kiva was wrapped up in the same cold blanket.
Kiva hasn¡¯t even turned 2 years old yet, but she was able to crawl and even walk a few wobbly steps before falling. The thick blanket she was wrapped with would cushion her fall but Ning Xin couldn¡¯t help but reach out to catch her each and every time.
She didn¡¯t understand why it was so exhausting, maybe not so much physically but mentally. The little ball had endless stamina. Well, until she just falls asleep without warning. The on-and-off switch on this training instrument could flip at any time.
As stressful as it had been because they didn¡¯t like heat and were even sensitive to fire mana, she unexpectedly enjoyed it. Except for Roya who was never far away, examining her old set of battle wear. She knew sister Jing wouldn¡¯t mind or even care.
Besides, she opened up her new battle wear to check it out but sister Jing was clearly joking with her. It was a dress! It might be their traditional dress but there was no chance she could fight in it, the slit on the right up went so high it would probably expose her butt if she moved a little or there was some gust of wind. Not to mention it would get in the way with her movement. The size wasn¡¯t completely right either, it was a little too tight just about throughout her entire body. She denied that it was due to her eating habits, it was definitely her evolution.
She was irritated that she couldn¡¯t even tear it or burn it and had no choice but to leave it alone. Kong Jing didn¡¯t even pick up her calls after she shouted into the first call, too busy with her research and clearly having expected what she wanted to say.
The dress was 100% within her fashion sense though, the striking red with a little decoration of flame patterns.
She picked Kiva up and gently placed her into her cot which trapped even cooler air. Not to mention human babies, even an adult might freeze to death if they were placed in this temperature for an extended period of time. But the Frost Elven baby looked as if she was in paradise when she was back in her cool and soft embrace.
¡°Thank you for playing with her. She¡¯s such a handful compared to Clovis.¡± Roya didn¡¯t expect Kiva to like Ning Xin so much. She was a little envious that her daughter almost enjoyed her time with the masked human more than with her. It was a little confusing for her to like a stranger who reeks of such hot overflowing essence. Hot was an understatement, for them who were very sensitive to heat and also mana, she was not too different from a small sun when they got close.
Roya attributed it to her little baby not being able to sense essence well which was the best explanation she could come up with.
¡°It was¡fun for me too.¡± She straightened her white casual shirt and untangled her hair.
Xengs were actually not very tall in general, it was just so coincidental that both her and her cousin were outliers. She was tall due to her father being tall while her cousin grew noticeably taller after she evolved each time. Why would a craft woman''s body grow noticeably taller with her evolution? She never found out.
In front of the Frost Elves, she was just at the height of a teenager.
It had been a surprisingly pleasant stay with a family of strangers. They were nice like Ebony had said. Just awkward that she never dined with them. She made sure they understood that it wasn¡¯t because she didn¡¯t want their hospitality but they were already aware of her traditional stupidity.
Not exactly stupid, she heard of multiple stories about backstabs when eating while she learned about her own customs. Before she first put on her mask.
There was one thing. One person bothered her.
A young herbalist girl came in the morning after they arrived. To leave a gift for Ebony.
One look and her Heightened Instincts were screaming. She already knew that this was supposedly the girl that Ebony put his life on the line to protect. She grit her teeth and politely greet her. This girl apparently cared for him while he was injured and was there to save his life during the incident. Then again, it was because of her he got gravely wounded so she had mixed feelings about her.
But coexistence was impossible, she was there to tell the young lady that Ebony wasn¡¯t awake every single day. This wasn¡¯t her house and she didn¡¯t want to put the Thoyas into a more awkward position so she couldn¡¯t kick her out. Palom was her name, she was helping Halvis check the soil outside.
This girl was quite the beauty like most Elves were, but she wasn¡¯t really that worried. Call it overconfidence, she didn¡¯t think Palom had much of a place in his heart from how he talked about her.
Roya asked some questions about the capabilities of her mantle when they looked up at the same time. The ceiling and walls shook with the sound of wood breaking alerting them.
Ning Xin almost reflexively moved but stopped herself even faster, there was a baby in the room and the house wasn¡¯t huge. ¡®That was close. I need to be careful with this reflex. Emotions. I need to stay calm.¡¯
¡°Go ahead.¡± Roya stayed to watch Kiva. She was in no rush to check on Ebony.
The door was frozen when Ning Xin got there, Palom¡¯s footsteps coming up right behind her.
They merely glanced at each other without speaking.
Seconds later, they were blasted with unfiltered overflowing Wisdom. Ning Xin remained unaffected, at least, no one could tell with her mask on but Palom took a step back as her complexion went paler than it was. Resisting the weight pushing them both down.
¡®Heavy!¡¯ Ning Xin wasn¡¯t referring to the weight pushing her down or the amount of mana that she was half expecting. His mana itself was heavier than she remembered. Even though her conjured fire mana increased in temperature, her pure mana didn¡¯t increase in temperature by nearly as much. As a Mana Meister, Ebony obviously would have more changes to his pure mana. As for getting her thoughts to slow down? This much wasn¡¯t nearly enough. She grew up in a village full of overflowing Wisdom that can knock a random monster out. When they were meditating of course.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Palom was also very strong against overflowing Wisdom but she wasn¡¯t as used to it and was momentarily stunned.
¡®Hehe I won. I think I was asleep for a few minutes longer. Oh, I should steam the dumplings I prepared. And pork, the boars here have a lot of fat but surprisingly springy flesh.¡¯ Ning Xin was thinking about something else all together.
???
Ebony was jolted awake. Finding himself closer to the floor, the bed frames collapsed while he was sleeping.
Putting the soreness in his body aside.
¡®I thought I should be able to influence the direction of my evolution a little right? That was no different from a long nap.¡¯ He was worried. More than just a little.
He thought once he started evolving he would get the short chance to quickly decide if he wanted to use ¡®potential¡¯ to push some generic skills around, merge a skill or two, or even spend potential to get a skill that he was on the cusp of getting.
¡®Wait. Relax, I remember something. It wasn¡¯t just a nap.¡¯ Ebony regained his calm quickly.
There was an extremely unsatisfying feeling that he didn¡¯t make any choices but his mind was telling him everything was in place.
He blinked, ¡®Oh I see. Seems about right. Most went into forming my new Core Skill, it felt right but what did I really get?.¡¯
Fortunately, it wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t get to do anything but there was a huge sense of dissatisfaction.
His mind and body had agreed on what to do with his evolution that seemed the most¡right.
He saw his status, the ¡®sacrifices¡¯ he made for his new core skill that he ¡®felt¡¯ like he could¡¯ve gotten was easily seen from the increase in empty skill slots.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Evolution completed.¡¯
¡®Class evolved to Serene Blade of Blistering Frost ¡¯
¡®Serene Blade of Blistering Frost Fortification:
Base Mana and Stamina regeneration increased by 500%
Mana efficiency with Ice Magic increased by 200%
Mana efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic increased by 200%
Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword increased by 200%
Movement speed increased by 200%
Ice Magic is 250% more resistant to heat
Flames of frost are 250% more fluent in seeping.
Ice Magic is 100% colder¡¯
¡®I¡¯m pretty sure I influenced this, shifting 250% from how cold to the flames and the heat resistance.¡¯ he thought frost flames were already a burst of much lower temperatures than his normal ice magic. He must have felt that, this way, he would no longer be as burdened when casting any ice elemental enhancement. Another problem that he faced when compressing ice mana was heat being produced as he compressed it.
The ¡®fluency¡¯ of seeping should probably be the penetrative capabilities of his flames. More often than not, against higher-level opponents, he has a hard time injuring them and putting ice magic to its full potential. The lethality of his flames should skyrocket.
His Fortification for balance shifted away from the single-handed version which was nice.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®1 Core Skill Slot gained
Generic Skills Converted to Class Skills:
Waning Presence¡¯
¡®That was unexpected. Did I subconsciously think that was a good idea or was it compatible and already going to become my Class Skill? I don¡¯t think I spent much ¡®points¡¯ to assign that so maybe it wasn¡¯t my doing.¡¯ He was a little confused since the process of ¡®influencing¡¯ was hard to remember, even for Ning Xin, so it was probably normal. It was no wonder they couldn¡¯t properly tell him what the benefits for complete evolution were.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Stemmed Class Skills:
Glacial Model - Create sculptures of ice of humanoid forms to do your bidding. Highly concentrated will is placed onto the conjuration of a Glacial Model to follow very simple instructions. Range of will and control over Glacial Models increases by 30% + 2.5% per level. Ability to understand simple instructions increases by 2.5% per level. Has the effective strength of 30% + 2.5% Intelligence.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic¡¯
Gen influenced him heavily with this skill. Somehow, he doubted Gen had such a skill and was doing everything thru pure manipulation. He was already getting the hang of using them but his low Intelligence had made them more of a distraction than useful. If they didn¡¯t need input from him, it would make them worth the mana even if they get destroyed easily.
¡®There¡¯s a lot of testing to do with this. But a nice addition. With this ¡®will¡¯ placed, they wouldn¡¯t count as one of my casts and have some level of autonomy right? How many would I be able to have under my will? No generic skill evolution or any stemmed generic skill? I guess I didn¡¯t really do much other than focus on my classes.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skills mutated and refined:
Layered Ice Carapace mutated and refined into Imperishable Frost Scales
Imperishable Frost Scales - Conjures highly compressed scales of ice, flexible enough to form most familiar forms. In the form of a heavy shield or spherical orb, has the effect of 150% + 2.5% Intelligence. Further change in structure reduces said effect.
Consumes 100MP/Scale
Classification: Ice Magic¡¯
¡®Uh¡an entire shield which cost 750 points of mana became 100 per scale before any sort of compression? I mean, I was changing the internals but did I spend so much mana before? At least my ice magic mana efficiency increased even more so that shouldn¡¯t be a big issue. Layering them no longer gives me additional buffs but I could probably get more out of layers with the base increase in effect. Hmm, this might work well with my robe.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class evolved to Weighted Will
Weighted Will
Mana efficiency with Sound Magic increased by 200%
Mana efficiency with Gravity Magic increased by 200%
Body¡¯s natural gravitational flow reversed and increased by 200%
Body naturally reflects physical vibrations with mana vibrations at 100% frequency.
Gravity Magic has an increased strength of 100% Intelligence
Sub-Class Skill evolved:
Sonic Overlay evolved into Sonic Intrusion
Sonic Intrusion - Induce high frequency vibrations onto an entity with physical contact. Frequency increases by 2.5% per level. Penetrated mana will continue vibrating till it runs out or expelled.
Consumes MP
Classification: Sound Magic
¡®She said class names don¡¯t really change much in future right? That¡¯s it? Two more empty skill slots. Magnified Gravity Field and Vibrational Gravity Sense is gone. Frost Mist Perception Sphere is gone from my Class as well.¡¯
Sonic Overlay wasn¡¯t actually that powerful and although Sonic Intrusion is an improvement, his mana would not be able to penetrate into people or monsters that have mana shielding themselves or at least have difficulty in doing so. He had learned that from sparring with Ning Xin and Hector.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Stemmed Sub-Class Skills:
Guided Path - Manipulate gravity to assist your movements, a link of gravity mana is created between two entities to attract or repel each other at 60% + 1.0% Intelligence.
Consumes 100MP/Min
Classificatiion: Gravity Magic
He understood that the mana consumption was for a range of 5 metres and would increase proportional with distance. This was likely from his attempts at creating a connection between his sword and his target. He should be able to create a link between two points, attracting his attack towards his target for more speed and power.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession evolved to Runic Mana Maven¡¯
Runic Mana Maven:
Mana Compressibility increased by 200%
Mana Resilience increased by 200%
Mana Density increased by 100%
Profession Skill Mana Moulding merged with Generic Skill Inscription into Inscripted Mana Moulding.¡¯
Inscripted Mana Moulding - Mould raw mana with or without any physical materials with mana manipulation. Weaving runic endeavours into or on your creations with increasing efficiency and accuracy. Increases familiarity with repeated mana pathways and their effectiveness by 20% + 1.0% per level. Increases fine control over mana by 2.5% per level.
¡®Hot damn. I like this. It would work with my spells wouldn¡¯t it? I have been repeatedly ¡®inscribing¡¯ durability runes on my Layered Ice Carapace. I wonder how they fare with each individual scale, would it clash and lose effectiveness?¡¯
Although it doesn¡¯t scale with Intelligence, it was a perfect supportive skill to further strengthen his spells.
He didn¡¯t let the fact that his natural mana density was doubled. He should easily surpass any Elf¡¯s natural mana density now, but with them also being good with mana there was a good chance they had a Physique, Fortification or even multiple skills that also increases mana density just like him.
This one Fortification had many implications, he effectively doubled the strength of all his magic. For him, the increase in mana density was the increase in mass. That was probably why he broke the bed, his steady increase in mass during his evolution must have slowly increased the pressure on the bed frame. The fact that his mana compressibility was further increased meant that his body was naturally forcing even more mana inside. They worked so well in tandem.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Sheer Mana Compression merged with Profession Skill Reinforced Mana Chassis into Stock Mana Compressive Chassis''
Stock Mana Compressive Chassis - Chassis and framework of mana pool is forcefully held and toughened to hold compressed mana without leakage. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 30% + 2.5% before leaking out. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.
¡®Did I expect too much? Was it just a waste of time to push it to 200? I mean, other than it being amazing with all three of my Fortifications. Even without levelling or stat points, my body¡¯s toughness probably increased more than I can imagine already. No wonder Ning Xin had trouble controlling herself.¡¯ It wasn¡¯t as if he got any 250% Fortifications with the grand number of 200 since a profession couldn¡¯t withstand it.
The combined skill dropped quite a bit in level, it probably meant he was unable to compress mana as much until the skill levelled up some.
There was even more potential with his Profession now and he was wasting it, he really should work on creating new skills and begin strengthening them. Although there wasn¡¯t a single Fortification that improves his runic work directly for the time being he was very satisfied with his base mana density increasing.
¡®I lost Mana Perception too. 4 skills merged just for this Core Skill which I subconsciously decided was worth it and just immediately linked it¡What was I thinking, me?¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Frost Mist Perception Sphere, Sub-Class Skill Magnified Gravity Field, Vibrational Gravity Sense and Profession Skill Mana Perception merged into Icy Weighted Quiver Domain.
¡®Icy Weighted Quiver Domain has been bound as your Core Skill.¡¯
¡®The name¡¯s a little¡silly. What the¡I can¡¯t use this.¡¯
Icy Weighted Quiver Domain - Summon, Conjure, Will your personal domain into existence. Flood condensed ice mana into the range of your domain with 350% + 2.5% Intelligence that actively protects you. Gravity is increased by 300% + 2.5% of your Intelligence. Flooded mana domain will vibrate violently around any body of motion, vibration frequency and strength increases by 250% + 2.5% per level.
Consumes 58,000MP/Min
Classification: Ice Magic, Gravity Magic & Sound Magic
¡®Wow. Is there a glitch? What¡¯s with that number?¡¯
He put aside just how nonsensical the skill and its mana cost were and stood up. He wasn¡¯t slipping, his natural repulsion had increased in strength by 2 Fortifications worth but it was as if his body knew to gravitate or ground himself. His legs and feet were incredibly sore but his entire body was aching and screaming in protest at his movement.
He didn¡¯t exactly get lightheaded when he stood but his initial panic when he woke up must have been due to mental fatigue of some kind. The throbbing in his head was intense though.
¡®Hmm. Am I around 180cm tall now? My reach increased, I hope that doesn¡¯t mess up my body balance with Icicle too much. I think I got a tiny bit bulkier too. But my head hurts, did my brain increase in size?¡¯
The change in his build wasn¡¯t obvious but noticeable, tiny changes could mess up movements a lot. Fortunately, his head didn¡¯t expand or anything, it only felt tighter in his head. Hopefully, his body could adapt to the changes soon.
His skin and muscles suddenly started tearing, some of his bones snapped, his veins ruptured. The sudden development was shocking, he quickly realised that his mana regenerated fully and was starting to compress itself in his body. His body couldn¡¯t handle the stress of his strengthened mana and his mana chassis was breaking his body down as they ruptured in his body.
Ebony quickly expelled the mana in his body by conjuring some Frost Scales and his body started healing immediately.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Remaining Natural Potential Infused to Physique.¡¯
He wasn¡¯t able to allocate any more generic skills, mutate, refine or evolve any more skills with the Natural Potential he had left or so he thought. It was inconvenient that one isn¡¯t able to remember their own choices, from what he heard it shouldn¡¯t be so bad. Was it just him that forgot so easily? Did he make these choices without much thought and was in a trance when he did so? That seemed likely.
Putting the rest into physique was clearly beneficial but he checked twice to see that nothing changed. It must have been insufficient to improve his physique noticeably.
He looked around for his myriad bracelet and a fresh set of clothes. He needed to wash off the gunk and stinkiness on him. His bag was lying against the frozen table and he accidentally knocked it over. The watch that came over to Elcra with him rolled out.
¡®Pretty sure I packed that up pretty deep in.¡¯ Picking it up, thinking that it might be time to give it a wipe down. He stopped halfway.
¡®Of course I didn¡¯t notice. There¡¯s some mana inside my watch. Forget it, not now.¡¯ There was a faint signature of mana coming from within his old watch. He could barely sense it with his current senses. Food and bath came first.
Putting his bracelet on, it didn¡¯t take long to realise that it really couldn¡¯t absorb all his leaking mana. The absorption speed was lower than his output. In the time that he was getting his bearings, his health, stamina and mana already fully filled themselves.
He thawed the ice around the room and threw the block of ice out of the window, letting it dissipate slowly instead of littering around their house.
His exit was welcomed by someone that settles his mind as much as riles it up.
His greatest weakness and greatest strength.
Chapter 140: Household
¡°Where are we going?¡± Ebony asked the group of villagers, mostly male adults with the exception of Ning Xin and Palom, who were following for some reason.
¡®Picking up some herbs? Is it somewhere dangerous? They shouldn¡¯t be sending Palom again if it¡¯s dangerous enough to require so many people. None are fighters though?¡¯ He was thinking that maybe he and Ning Xin were the guards this time. Halvis was coming along with 5 others, one of which, the man who bought game from him, Mr Herrid and another was Palom¡¯s grandfather who was pretty old compared to the others. Mr Calhy, the frost plum lady¡¯s husband was the only other one he recognised.
Needless to say, the Frost Elves weren¡¯t exactly defenceless in these parts when it wasn¡¯t winter.
¡°Fishing.¡± The glint in Ning Xin¡¯s eyes turned fiery. He just didn¡¯t expect the villagers to match her spirit, pulling out their fishing rods from a large box Mr Herrid brought along. Ning Xin couldn¡¯t help but glance over. She didn¡¯t have a fishing rod but she was familiar with the Fisher King uncle who always fished at the pond near her house. She got into a conversation with these fishing enthusiasts who quickly ignored her uncomfortable burning presence.
¡®...I need to be careful about getting anyone who baits her with food or ingredients in general. She would definitely fall for the bait.¡¯
¡°Are you feeling better?¡± Palom took the chance to shift over.
¡°Mmm. Thanks for the frost plums, they were delicious.¡±
¡°Yes. They were alright.¡± He found Ning Xin slotting herself in between them. He was glad to be able to share the awesomeness of plums with her.
Ebony woke up near dinner time last night so he hasn¡¯t found the chance to familiarise himself with his evolved body. As much as he wanted to spar with Ning Xin, there wasn¡¯t anywhere suitable in Hoarfrost Glade. Arcta was small and if she was to use fire magic, it wouldn¡¯t turn out nicely for the village. If there were to leave the village there was a good chance something dangerous would come out since winter just ended not long ago. He was still a little spooked by the mid-winter night attacks.
He remembered his after-evolution feast last night. Even he could sense the awkwardness when he reintroduced Ning Xin to Palom.
¡°I¡I forgot to water my plants. I¡¯ll be taking my leave.¡± Palom bowed and ran off. The village walls were still in sight and her grandfather watched her safe return before shaking his head with a soft sigh.
¡®Is he disappointed that she forgot to water her herbs?¡¯ That was what Ebony assumed.
¡°Let¡¯s get going, the sun¡¯s about to rise.¡± Mr Herrid was only interested in some fishing.
They were going at a low-level Master warrior jog¡¯s speed and he was surprisingly not falling onto his face with his increase in movement speed. The Frost Elves used some kind of snow magic movement skill that all of them seemed to be capable of using, gliding instead of running.
He knew where the frozen pond was since he searched nearby and even followed their young on trips. They got there in half an hour. Lasil¡¯s grandfather just swept his hand, pushing aside mounds of snow. Mr Herrid touched the floor with a single palm and raised a cylinder of ice not shorter than any of them, putting it aside. They did that so smoothly and quick, he wondered if he could pull out a block of ice that smoothly.
He didn¡¯t have to wonder for long since they all made their personal fishing hole. Spreading out so that they would cluster. Halvis joined Palom¡¯s grandfather, while the other¡¯s paired up too so they were left to themselves.
¡°Give me a moment.¡± The frozen layer was thick and he took a moment longer to disconnect a portion of the ice mana to make a hole.
¡°Here. They loaned it to us.¡± Ning Xin passed a fishing rod made by one of their wood mages/workers. It had really tough and long fishing threads. They didn¡¯t use a hook and only frozen rabbit meat as bait.
¡°They said they would thread ice mana through the fishing line and freeze their catch.¡± Ning Xin explained the gist of their fishing technique. Telling him some tips like using only just enough ice mana so that they didn¡¯t harm the flesh of the fish but too little and the fish would just eat the bait and swim away.
She made a makeshift wooden hook from the branches of trees not far away while he was waiting for fish to bite on. She lost patience after not catching anything for 3 hours, making him some hot tea while they waited. She had stocked up on plenty of tea when she returned to Xienor.
He got 2 fishes so far, both being a little skinny so they left them go after he thawed them. He heard Mr Herrid complain about how the fishes should have already fattened back up since it had been weeks since winter passed.
He huddled closer to his chef when he saw her wrap her mantle tighter.
When they finally got a nice catch, they left it out in the open, freezing it pretty quickly and she sliced it up and seasoned it.
¡°Ahh.¡± She held a slice to his mouth.
It was delicious.
This lifestyle was pretty good. He could see himself spending time like this, not the constant talks about skills, magic or fighting. Just chilling.
Perhaps the fishes were still inactive in the morning as they got a pretty good catch in the afternoon. He woke up the adorable sleepy head resting on his shoulder and they returned to the village before night fell.
???
¡°Pfft!¡± Ning Xin spit out the water she was drinking as they ate in his room.
¡°Yo..you got a domain skill as your core skill already?¡±
¡°Mmm. Is it so surprising? I lost 4 of my skills and it even dropped to level 37.¡±
¡°Can you even maintain it for long?¡±
¡°No. Wait, actually I need to test out how my 3 mana efficiencies will work. It should stack like with elemental body enhancement right?¡±
¡°It should. Can you tell me how much mana it requires?¡±
¡°Fifty-eight thousand.¡±
She blinked.
¡°Every minute for a gir¡¯s range. Probably.¡±
¡°So it¡¯s really not something a Master classed should be using. Three elements?¡±
¡°If sound counts, yes. That should mean I have 2700% efficiency if they stack, about 2148 mana per minute. Since area of effect skills¡¯ mana cost increases exponentially with radius, I can pretty much forget about using it sustainably.¡±
¡°That¡¯s actually a lower mana cost than I thought.¡± Ning Xin replied honestly.
¡°All about mana efficiency Fortifications, I guess.¡± If he were to evolve having met the 1.5 times skill level requirement again, he would have additional 100% efficiency which would mean he has 400% with a single type of magic and have 6400% total efficiency instead of 2700%. But that was for grandmasters or people who have the 250% mana efficiency Fortification like Ning Xin has with fire.
¡°It would be hard to level it without pushing it to maximum output and beyond. I had the same trouble with my core skill when my body couldn¡¯t handle the stress.¡±
¡°Then it¡¯ll be a long time before it¡¯s of much use¡I wasn¡¯t planning on pushing my Intelligence or Wisdom for the time being, at least for the first couple of levels we would gain. I don¡¯t want to be powerless without mana, there are many ways magic or mana can be sealed right?¡± To begin with, it was silly that he couldn¡¯t even move properly wearing his robe or can¡¯t even carry Icicle without enhancement.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°There are but I don¡¯t think you have to be that worried. Unless they were aiming to get you and prepared the right stuff. I¡¯m not sure there are many who have magic to seal magic.¡± She had thought he was so easily kidnapped because he was drained of his mana and she was right.
¡°There are traps. Like cities¡¯ mana absorption, Sister Jing told me that some runes can actually actively drain everything in range. If something like that was engraved or inscribed in an area as large as a city, even running might be difficult. When I was locked up, I noticed their stamina draining technologies are much stronger than mana draining ones, probably because of the larger percentage of warriors. Exhaustion resistance does help though.¡±
¡°We can take this time to get used to the changes in our bodies, without using magic. Least we disrupt the peace in the village.¡±
¡°Mmm. Sounds good.¡±
???
Back in Ebony¡¯s room.
¡®I never took apart my watch before.¡¯
He fumbled around with a tiny screwdriver that he conjured, gently opening up its casing. Laying in a spot beside a battery that somehow lasted till now was a familiar crystal-shaped object that could be placed in any myriad bracelet.
He locked it in and supplied it with mana, it wasn¡¯t a memory light since no screen popped up but there was noise. A recorded message it seemed. A voice he recognised as his father¡¯s cleared his throat.
¡°I assume it¡¯s Ebony listening to this. If you found this, and managed to get it playing, then I guess you now know. You¡¯re not so normal and neither were we. You should have appeared somewhere not too far from a familiar essence signature to my¡relatives. Stable travel requires the destination to have low mana densities so you shouldn¡¯t be dead.¡±
¡®First I¡¯ve heard of dad talking about relatives. Well, mom only mentioned I had an aunt once and that was it. They were why or how I came here after all.¡¯ He also wondered about the familiar essence signature his father mentioned.
¡°I guess, we should tell you some things. I, your father, was part of the Rime tribe. Hopefully, you managed to refine your physique into a mana being by now. Your mother was part of a clan who wears masks all day long, that¡¯s all she let me tell you. Oh, you might not want to spread word that you are also part of the Rime tribe to too many people.¡±
The recorded voice stopped for long enough that he thought it ended there but it continued.
¡°We are sorry. We weren¡¯t able to be by your side for any longer. I would¡¯ve loved to stay and train you more, sadly, we ran out of time faster than we thought. The irony, me, out of time. I don¡¯t know when you would find this, what situation you are in or where you are but I hope you¡¯re doing well. Were you able to make friends?¡±
Ebony was surprised to hear his mothers voice too, not to mention how much she was speaking. They weren¡¯t speaking like the parents he knew they were.
There was the sound of a loud scuffle, his father trying to stop his mother from saying something but he recognised the familiar sound of her mother kicking him out, breaking a door or wall in the process.
There was another long silence. He swore he could see his mother staring into this very voice recorder with her expressionless face.
¡°For your father¡¯s sake, I¡¯ll put it this way. If you¡¯re strong enough, I hope you can reunite us.¡±
His mother was usually as direct and straight to the point as one could possibly be. The tone was flatter than a board and he wasn¡¯t able to tell much.
¡°¡°Take care.¡±¡±
The short message took a long time to finish playing.
Ebony just unlatched the voice recorder after he was sure that was the end of the message and placed it back into his watch. Sealing it back up for good.
He sat in his chair, tapping his finger on his thighs all the way till morning came without noticing time pass.
¡°Ebony? Breakfast is ready.¡± Ning Xin knocked on the door.
¡°Thanks.¡± He opened the door.
¡°What¡¯s wrong? Not feeling well, you¡¯re up late and you didn¡¯t come out for morning exercise.¡± Although she didn¡¯t break a sweat due to the cold, she had just completed her morning set.
¡°I¡¯m okay, I was just thinking about something.¡± He stepped out and followed her down. She already finished breakfast by herself and was just going to join the table.
¡°Care to share?¡± She tilted her head slightly.
¡°Sure. Apparently, I am likely part Xeng. And part of some tribe by my family name. Heard of it?¡± He decided not to hide anything from her if he didn¡¯t have to.
¡°Rime? Never heard of it. I don¡¯t think there¡¯s any of the ones who married outsiders were married to a Rime? What¡¯s your mother¡¯s family name?¡± She somewhat guessed due to their similarities but out of the few Xengs that married outsiders, she didn¡¯t recall any Rime. Then again, she only heard of two or three names. It wasn¡¯t as if she took a history lesson on which Xeng married who.
¡°Stone.¡± He replied.
¡°We don¡¯t have any clan with that name.¡±
¡°I thought so too.¡±
¡°There you are, could you please help me with Kiva while I eat? Pretty please! She had been crying since midnight and only just stopped a short while ago.¡± Roya saw them walking over to the dining table with dark eyebags. Their conversation was cut off there.
¡®Taking care of a baby sure looks tough.¡¯ He didn¡¯t expect to see anyone who had much higher physical stats than a baby not older than 2 to grow dark circles in a single night.
He knew that Ning Xin was smiling under her mask when she took Kiva over. Kiva was a lot more energetic than he first saw. Kicking and flailing her little chubby limbs in protest as she struggled to get out of Roya¡¯s arms. She continued her futile struggles even in Ning Xin¡¯s arms.
¡°I don¡¯t know what has gotten to her,¡± Roya stressed out even further seeing Kiva so desperate for the first time. None of them were baby whisperers.
Halvis apparently ran out to get one of the Lasil¡¯s over.
¡°Carry her.¡± Ning Xin suddenly lifted Kiva to him.
Instead of asking why, he asked how to carry a baby so that he wouldn¡¯t injure her. It wasn¡¯t that complicated.
¡°She seemed like she was reaching out to you.¡± Ning Xin added after Kiva was passed over to him.
Kiva only flailed around a little more before pulling and grabbing his shirt as tightly as her tiny hands could. Falling asleep with ice-cold snot wiped onto his shirt after a minute or two. She was so small and fragile in his arms.
He ate with Clovis and Roya, eating with one hand as he cradled Kiva who rested against his chest. He had to be ultra careful with his strength. The elder who fished with them yesterday came and took a look at Kiva¡¯s snot and instantly knew what to do. Passing the Thoya couple some herbs that he brought along. It was a common Frost Elf sickness amongst their young.
¡°Must be the sudden rise in temperature after winter. It doesn¡¯t appear too serious so don¡¯t worry about it. Grind this into her milk. She should be fine in a day.¡± The elder tried to assure them as best as he could but their worry couldn¡¯t be erased. He brought along a box of common herbs and was glad it was nothing serious.
Ning Xin ran out. Leaving a ¡®sorry¡¯ before she disappeared.
¡°Here.¡± He stood up and let Roya take Kiva over.
¡°Sit. I¡¯ll get her.¡± Roya didn¡¯t take Kiva, opting to go after Ning Xin instead.
Even though Ning Xin was out of sight already, Roya could follow the remnant heat that was obvious to her. They were in the village and she couldn¡¯t go fast or she would destroy some houses. Maybe not destroyed, with their houses being made by their strong wood mages. Point was, she had only walked fast and they caught up quickly.
The men were left with Kiva and he wondered how Roya would bring Ning Xin back. It was pretty clear to any of them, especially Ning Xin herself, that it was due to her ¡®uncomfortable¡¯ presence.
¡°It¡¯s okay. Let the womenfolk talk it out. Just so you know, I don¡¯t blame Scarlet. We should have been more careful as parents, we must have been complacent seeing how unaffected Kiva was. It¡¯s not as if Scarlet¡¯s presence is enough to hurt us.¡±
¡°Huh? Is that what that lass thought? I just said it was the rise in temperature didn¡¯t I? The recent years have had greater temperature changes as the seasons pass, it¡¯s not as if you guys didn¡¯t know that.¡± Palom¡¯s grandfather spoke out, finally understanding why the one blessed by fire left.
¡°Elder, couldn¡¯t you have said that sooner?¡± Clovis stuffed took another bite of his breakfast as he said so. He said the exact words Ebony wanted to say.
He was a little surprised that Roya managed to convince Ning Xin to come back. She gingerly walked in, making sure Kiva wasn¡¯t disturbed by her presence.
¡®I was pretty sure she wouldn¡¯t step back in here.¡¯ During their fishing trip, she had gone on and on about how cute Kiva was and also complained a little about how she wouldn¡¯t stop crawling around her. Her ¡®complaints¡¯ sounded too happy to be complaints. It had been surprising to hear that Kiva continued to play with Clovis, Roya and also spent a little time with Halvis after tiring her out.
Then again, all that playing around might be what caused Kiva to fall sick. Who knew Clovis was the one to speak up again?
¡°Don¡¯t worry Scarlet. Kiva wanted to be carried by Ebony because he was the only one that didn¡¯t try to play and tire her out. It must have been all of us trying to get a turn with her that caused her to fall sick.¡± Clovis already caught on and deduced the real reason.
That caused the Thoya couple to get a little embarrassed after they realised the truth in his words. They had envied how Kiva was playing with Scarlet and wanted to spend as much if not more time with their baby.
It was on all of them. Palom¡¯s grandfather told all of them off except for him. Something like ¡°this is why young couples shouldn¡¯t give birth so soon¡± and the like.
He never thought he would have to babysit one day.
Chapter 141: Get out!
It hadn¡¯t been easy to get used to his slightly longer arms and legs. The change in reach and overall balance had to be perfected before he was comfortable fighting for real. His Fortification for balance helped.
Ning Xin got an injury on her forearm. One that was still in the midst of being wrapped up in a large leaf with blue paste.
They had been here for almost 3 weeks after he woke up from his evolution. The quiet village stayed that way in the meantime. They felt like it was a good chance to get some real action more than a week ago. Her being her, she asked what delicious hunts there were in the area and he led the way.
They were¡unlucky to say the least. They didn¡¯t even know what hit them at first.
They were a week away from Arcta but with their jog¡¯s speed merely took 3 days to get there; he didn''t rush the journey. On the way back from a successful hunt of a [Slap Seal Lvl 133]. Since they were pretty deep in and the snow hadn''t really melted much, it had been a pretty tough fight with the group of 6 seals. They could swim in the snow while Ning Xin melted the entire area after she got sick of stabbing into the thick snow and missing, they were a slippery bunch.
It hadn¡¯t been enough to kill them and they escaped. They were regarded as a delicacy and it took them 2 days before Ebony felt the vibrations from the snow and guessed they were seals from their rough shape he managed to sense.
Once again, he was actually ignored by the monsters and they went about doing their own things. Sometimes even walking not far from them. They didn¡¯t see any lower-level monsters where they were and these ones either avoided him or ignored him altogether. As for those that thought they were prey, they were usually turned into their dinner that night.
The seals had large hind flippers that they used to both swim and slap attacks aside. They were surprisingly agile but after their home-ground advantage was removed, they were easy pickings. The good thing was that Ning Xin managed to dissect and clean up the hunt. The bad thing was the heat had woken up something they shouldn¡¯t have disturbed.
It had come too fast, too sudden.
He knew many monsters in Hoarfrost Glade were hibernating underground after winter left but he didn¡¯t think they were unlucky enough to be right above one such monstrosity. The only thing they ¡®fought¡¯ against were tentacles thicker than most surrounding trees and long enough that he would have to fully tilt his neck back to see the top when it shot up into the sky.
The initial pop-up instantly sliced right across Ning Xin¡¯s forearms, she had already moved back reflexively but still wasn¡¯t fast enough. Ebony didn¡¯t even have the time to react and didn¡¯t manage to protect her from the sudden attack.
Whatever the tentacle was part of, it had sliced through her sleeves with ease even though it was a smooth rounded tentacle. With just that, he decided to retreat.
She hadn¡¯t exactly been happy about getting sneaked up on and burst off to slash at the tentacles that were reaching out for snow from further away to cover the ice above where its limbs were coming out from. Their attacker probably didn¡¯t even know they were there and just thought it got warm all of a sudden because it didn¡¯t try to attack them.
Ning Xin got her heated revenge by slicing a quarter way through a single tentacle in exchange for both her training blades to melt back to molten form. He barely managed to get her out of the way of the angered trashing of the tentacles.
Thanks to his increased movement speed, he got her out of its range pretty quickly but the cut on her arm was a poisonous attack. They were lucky it didn¡¯t seem to follow or even notice their presence so he quickly brought her back to Arcta within hours. She stopped her heartbeat or slowed it a lot before conjuring fire mana in herself, casting her fire enhancement magic.
It worked pretty well in response to the poison that attempted to freeze her.
She got treatment quickly and was supposed to be fully healed in time. The Lasil family prided themselves in their ability to cure most things Hoarfrost Glades could dish out. With her mask, she wasn¡¯t even worried about scarring.
They shared their hunt.
The seal meat had been pretty tasty but its fat content seemed to be really high. It might have been a trait of many monsters or animals that hibernate for a long time. Ning Xin liked the flavour of the fat and turned a large part of it into cooking oil or just used its fat to cook.
Six seals that were twice the size of large cows gave her enough fat and oil to use for a long time even after sharing quite some with the Thoyas and Lasils.
That was her pet project. While he had his own pet project.
He brewed frost plum wine.
He had twenty large jars of different recipes of wine, mostly just tweaking the amounts of yeast, sugar and plums. It was still fermenting and he wouldn¡¯t know which he would like best. He would¡¯ve made more if Mrs Calhy let him buy more but her farm didn¡¯t have a very good harvest.
Although he made it with Ning Xin and she had some knowledge of brewing wine, she hadn¡¯t made any herself so it was a combined effort.
He had gotten some of the most beautiful plum flowers with permission. Seeing her eyes light up made him happy he got her some.
¡°I¡¯ll make tea from it for you.¡± She had clearly been very happy at obtaining a new ingredient. Although it hadn¡¯t been his aim, tea from it was just as heavenly as its fruits.
Clovis usually faced his books all day long. They only met when they ate together from time to time or when they bumped into each other while he was watching Kiva sleep. Ebony could sense the stress coming from Clovis.
He was rereading the same books over and over again. There was a limit to what he could study and research. He didn¡¯t have a focus of study as of yet and was just reading to expand his knowledge.
¡°I¡feel like I¡¯m just letting time pass me by,¡± Clovis told him a few days ago. The talk had been more serious than he expected.
¡®I imagined the elves didn¡¯t have as much urgency. Was it from seeing me and how fast I levelled?¡¯ He might have affected Clovis¡¯s thinking a little.
¡°You know how Plainston has become a city? Maybe you can ask to go walk around.¡±
¡°They wouldn¡¯t let me¡I can¡¯t withstand the heat as well.¡±
¡°Then it¡¯s time to work on your magic capabilities don¡¯t you think? Once you can constantly keep yourself cool, or at least long enough for a trip to Plainston and back you can propose to them. They travelled out of Arcta and even resided outside for a long time. I¡¯m sure they wouldn¡¯t be so adamant about not letting you go.¡±
¡°...Kiva is still young and they wouldn¡¯t part from her either. I also don¡¯t want that.¡±
¡°You should think about that after you get good enough to protect yourself and keep yourself cool. She might have grown up before you manage. You haven¡¯t even got a Sub-Class or Profession. I wondered why you guys didn¡¯t get a complete or perfect classing?¡±
¡°The small benefit isn''t worth it for us. We got plenty of time to prepare for a better Sub-Class and Profession. Our evolution has to be taken more seriously though.¡±
¡°Then time isn¡¯t passing you, you¡¯re letting it pass. You are a Frost Elf. Surely you need to be able to use ice and or snow magic to a certain degree. Even if you can¡¯t protect yourself, you have to protect your sister and your parents.¡± Hopefully, he had given Clovis enough motivation or a wake-up call.
Clovis was cheerful again and went to their playground again, staying for a longer time every day.
Today, they got a call from sister Jing saying Ning Xin¡¯s swords were ready. She was too excitable and the short trip to Plainston wasn¡¯t going to let a light injury stop her from making the trip. They were pretty much used to their bodies already.
¡°Bada.¡± Kiva clung onto Ebony.
Babies were smarter than they led on. As if she knew that they were leaving, she didn¡¯t want to let him go. After she recovered in two days, he was able to see what was going on. It wasn¡¯t like Kiva had endless stamina, every time she woke up, whoever was watching her would try to catch her attention and play with her, tickling her to get her to giggle was one of the things they did.
Kiva somehow understood that staying with him had her the least tired out and started to cling to him more. Though he did pinch her cheeks once or twice himself. They were irresistible.
She even remembered and called him ¡®bada¡¯. She could already say ¡®yaya¡¯ for Roya and ¡®haha¡¯ for Halvis, Clovis had a noise only Clovis recognised while ¡®zasa¡¯ was referring to Ning Xin.
He had made a sub-par pair of boots for himself. He already had the know-how from his time reading in sister Jing¡¯s library. After over 10 pairs of ruined materials, he managed to get a pair of Common rarity boots. It would keep him grounded even with his gravity membrane and lightens him a tiny bit. The tiny speed boost was better than just a random pair of durable boots.
¡°Can you fashion me a pair of longswords? I don¡¯t feel right without them on me.¡± Ning Xin asked as they waved the Thoyas goodbye.
¡°Sure, they would melt if you heat them up though.¡±
¡°It¡¯s only till Plainston, just for the weight.¡±
As she had said, the trip was short since they rushed.
Sister Jing led them to a weapon and robe stand. Two identical sheathed longswords were resting, decorated with a simple red zigzag and not so simple electricity zapping from within.
An innerwear made of some kind of tough leather that was worn around her belly and waist. The clothing was pretty thick and she would have to tuck in her shirt or there would be a gap in her armour when she moves around. Pierce, slash, heat and just magical resistance, in general, were obviously not something sister jing would forget. She had boots that would reach just below her knees and leggings or tights of some kind. Pants that for some reason had holes around the inner thighs. Finally, a coat not too dissimilar to his own but shorter. Everything was bright red.
It emphasised on her mobility and resistance to heat so that she wouldn¡¯t burn it herself.
Ning Xin only focused on the pair of swords though.
¡°Ignite and Flare is part of them. I incorporated that dungeon metal and blood elemental rock you got me. Now, they are a true pair. I found that you have managed to bud their spirit. Rather than pair, this is the first time I saw a twin spirit so they are one and the same instead of a pair. They are called ¡®Scorching Gleam of Bloodlust¡¯.¡± Sister Jing then went on to talk about the blood elemental rock that Ning Xin mentioned to him.
In short, sister Jing almost got her blood sucked out in the forging process. She didn¡¯t tell them her disappointment that she wasn¡¯t able to push up the rarity of her twin swords from Rare to Epic.
¡°You¡¯re going to snatch blood with me?¡± Ning Xin put her hands on her hips and told off her companion. The spark of electricity came at an opportune time as if responding to her.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Ebony had confirmed that he could sense lightning mana less foggily now. They didn¡¯t listen to him yet but it seemed fully possible to get lightning mana manipulation as a generic skill. Of course, if he wanted it to get into his Class, Sub-Class or Profession he now had to get it to a minimum of level 100. After his evolution, he could sense all his generic skills that were ¡®locked down¡¯ loosened and he could level them further so 100 wasn¡¯t unachievable. Especially since he could still get Natural Potential once he reached level 300.
He sort of assumed that since he could use ice so well, water would be more intuitive to him but he actually failed to even lift water mana up with his mana. His mana just didn¡¯t latch on to water mana, much less directly manipulate it. At least, lightning mana didn¡¯t ignore his mana.
Nothing much changed with earth or wood, he didn¡¯t even sense them any better. If there was something weird it would be that the air or his surroundings seem ¡®thicker¡¯ but he could never tell why it felt that way. He didn¡¯t think it was air or wind mana that he was picking up but it eluded him so far.
The elemental sensitivity potion he drank once was much more troublesome to obtain than he thought. He assumed he could just buy it but apparently, Koawe had to ask a friend to get him one. The one he got wasn¡¯t ¡®ultra¡¯ expensive but hard to obtain. He personally thinks that the mages or the Empire was controlling the number of mages for whatever reasons or perhaps, rather than how many, they wanted control of who these mages were.
Another reason he had to thank Koawe, and he did. He seemed to be the person to go to for the happenings or connections with anything out of Arcta.
¡°Now for your real armour.¡± Kong Jing pulled their attention to a black lump.
The craftswoman picked it up and whipped it down like a towel, it unravelled into a small baby-sized body suit. The only gap was from the neck up.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, you won¡¯t even feel like you¡¯re wearing it. It¡¯ll not melt so you won¡¯t be naked even if your clothes and armour burn, it doesn¡¯t affect your mobility or flexibility and it¡¯ll hold your ample chest down!¡±
¡°Sister!¡±
¡°I bought the material from one of my uncles so there¡¯s no replacement, it self-repairs as well.¡±
Ebony understood that whatever material it was, it didn¡¯t come from Elcra or any dungeon on the planet. The numerous defensive properties only meant that the body suit didn¡¯t have any offensive abilities thrown into the mix. Kong Jing was also a ¡®beginner¡¯ with the self-repair function. It was still a great piece of equipment, with her current fire magic she would burn all her clothes and armour. The pants with the thigh area cut out were meant to give her further mobility.
¡°Let¡¯s go!¡± Ning Xin dragged him out by the wrist.
He didn¡¯t even notice that she was already fully dressed up in her new gear and looking more epic than ever.
¡°Time to power level.¡± He waved goodbye to sister Jing while Mark wasn¡¯t around. Probably buried in his experiments.
¡°First, a spar!¡±
This time. They waltz into Ordina with 3 of his Glacial Models, the guards didn¡¯t bother chatting them up this time. They were different guards.
They ran straight to the closest wall, he pushed ice mana deep into the wall. It took more than ten minutes before a level 93 Kobold climbed out of the wall. It looked around them to make sure no one was watching before the two of them walked into a small opening.
The kobold didn¡¯t follow them. This was a secret elevator that Na or Ordina made. Ebony took out all the Blues he placed in his bracelet to feed his excess mana as payment.
It took hours before they were back in a familiar ¡®room¡¯ that they made home for some time. Na was practising shield handling against some Prime Verglas Kobolds.
¡°Hey Na, ho..¡±
¡°Talk later, let us out first. We¡¯ll spar first.¡±
¡°...Sure.¡± They haven¡¯t had a no-holds-barred spar after they evolved.
Everlasting Tranquillity was back to levelling again, reaching 227 for a 12.35 multiplier on his regeneration. 500% increase in base regeneration made 10% per hour of max mana pool increase to 60% per hour. His Wisdom stat was still 530 and he was regenerating 39,273 mana per hour or 654.55 per minute.
Be that as it may, 5300 was all he had that was going to be the most useful against Ning Xin. He could still compress his regenerated mana with no problem but his power output wouldn¡¯t nearly be as high.
The sheer power of his spell theoretically doubled even without any compression with his new Fortification. He could compress mana way more now with his mana¡¯s compressibility increasing. What did that do for his mana chassis skill?
His Intelligence of 376 had an effectiveness of 752 while he had ease of compressing even more mana into his chassis even when his skill hasn¡¯t levelled yet. At least, he had another finding which was that his Sheer Mana Compression was really limiting his Reinforced Mana Chassis. It could only surpass Sheer Mana Compression in level due to it being tier one and only a 1.0% instead of 2.5%.
Previously, he got roughly 752 worth of Constitution on a fully condensed mana pool. Now he estimated to have 3008 worth of constitution, confirmed by his Status.
What did his Mana Resilience increasing do for him?
He doubted it was a direct increase like mana density that¡¯s more closely related to the Intelligence stat but one thing was for sure.
His body couldn¡¯t withstand his mana. His skin tore, bones ¡®burst¡¯, muscles constantly reconnecting only to tear again. He had to actively purge his mana into Icicle who consumed his ice mana with glee. Sister Jing said there was a limit but he knew that even if there was, Icicle consumed most of his ice mana, not containing or storing any at all.
The runes of Icicle were starting to glow a little brighter by the day but it could go completely off as well. He didn¡¯t know how to control it or if it was Icicle eating ice mana away.
Whatever the case, he probably wouldn¡¯t be able to cast his enhancement anywhere near full capability without his body breaking but he was betting the same could be said for Ning Xin.
That¡¯s why he didn¡¯t share the same excitement as her about the spar.
¡°Be careful, our Constitutions are holding us back.¡± The cold water poured didn¡¯t completely kill her momentum.
They were both left unsatisfied by the 30-second exchange.
They exchanged hundreds of blows, even more were dodged and blocked by him. His Glacial Models couldn¡¯t get close to her with her blood whip that could extend quite a lot and couldn¡¯t be frozen easily.
He didn¡¯t attempt many ranged spells since they would all be avoided without even distracting her, she was too familiar with his moves but the same could be said for him. He had to conjure a few Glacial arms with Imperishable Frost Scales on them, her attacks were too fierce and fast. No amount of twisting his body could help escape every stab so his extra hands could fend off a couple of strikes before either evaporating or needing his input of mana.
He took full advantage of her insane build up of speed and power that also skyrocketed. He let her push him back and used the momentum to build his own speed and power, he couldn¡¯t let Icicle stop and had to keep moving but it wasn¡¯t an issue against the barrage of attacks.
Electricity was running up his arms but their numbing capability didn¡¯t work well on him with Sustained Optimum Condition and the fact that his magic could move his body by manipulating the mana in his mana chassis as if he was controlling a Glacial Model.
Sister Jing treated Ning Xin too well, her twin longswords seemed to be extremely impact resistant as his Sonic Intrusion wasn¡¯t doing anything. At least, she didn¡¯t even appear affected.
Even two more arms weren¡¯t enough for him to block her attacks but both of them grew bored of the exchange after these 15 seconds that had been plenty. Their eye contact didn¡¯t break and they both understood they would have more fun if they weren¡¯t as affected by their evolution. Although she had gotten more rounded with her heart being strengthened, her Core Skill was one that almost killed her.
For the next 5 seconds, her heart stopped. She was going to try to build up a smaller amount of vital energy in her heart, it was hardly the first time she had to control her Core Skill to a lower output. Ebony was wondering how his new Core Skill was supposed to be cast. When he recalled which skills were merged, he tried to imagine casting all of them at the same time. It didn¡¯t really require imagination since he did it many times before but he instinctively knew that there was more to that.
The mana pathways of his ice mist, gravity field and overall mana placement sort of rearranged themselves as he attempted to make the skill come alive.
They both stared at each other as a figurative horn restarted their clash. The frozen ice ground beneath his feet dented a little but not before a booming flash came at him. The moment she reached his domain he felt the mana around where she charged in, in an attempt to tear and injure the moving body. His mana was drained even faster as ice mana was conjuring itself to combat the heat where steam was building up in the area.
They didn¡¯t stand very far before their clash so he couldn¡¯t tell if her explosive flash step was slowed down by his gravity but she was brimming with so much power with an equally heavy aura of Vitality that she could probably withstand the gravity even without the initial burst of speed.
She pierced through the many Imperishable Frost Scale that his domain formed for him as the tip of her longsword was right in between his eyes. This happened so fast, he only noticed her attack when it was stopped right before it touched him. All Ebony knew was, when the ¡®horn¡¯ rang, she disappeared while his new Core Skill was cast and the blade almost touched him. Although his mind was slow, his body had rarely ever failed to react as if it had now.
He wasn¡¯t discouraged.
Both knew that she didn¡¯t stop because she knew she was going to hit. She was actually stopped by the scales and six ice arms gripping each of her arms and a dozen more dragging her mantle back and her feet held by two arms each that connected to the ground even as they were steaming. The good thing was the arms were only compressed a little but they were still mostly solid instead of instant evaporation.
He didn¡¯t win either since all that extra expenditure of mana drained him dry and his domain was barely maintaining itself with his freshly regenerated mana. As for his opponent, her wrist fell limp after she was released from the hold of ice. Her forceful thrust from a stationary stance with an acceleration that shouldn¡¯t be possible with a level 100¡¯s Agility caused it to dislocate, only held in place by her blood manipulation and sheer control over the muscles in her body or any part of her body.
He had to back off even faster as his mana was getting burned off while the heat from her blade hadn''t faded. There wasn¡¯t any more ice mana in the surroundings as they all went to his Glacial arms. It was as if his domain reacted in place of his body.
Ning Xin screamed.
¡°That was more dissatisfying than if we didn¡¯t fight.¡± He said the words that she voiced out in her frustrated yell.
He felt uncomfortable not being able to use his full-powered Frostblaze Augmentation because they were too compressed and he would kill himself. She felt the same way, her Core Skill wasn¡¯t supposed to be some final attack but a constant empowerment.
They returned to the secret hideout after knocking to let Na know they were back. He should be able to hear it and didn¡¯t need Ebony to send a large pulse of mana from the first floor. He opened up the wall.
¡°I know we just returned and all but we have a favour to ask, Na.¡± Ebony initiated conversation.
¡°Thanks for the burst of mana and even vitality.¡± Na turned to him then Ning Xin.
¡°Good good.¡± They nodded in tandem.
¡°Throw everything you have at us.¡± Ebony got straight to the point.
¡°Um.¡± Na looked at the state of his floor not too far away.
They looked at Na with anticipation.
¡°How about nah?¡± Na backed up and had his wall slowly close up
They put a hand on each side and stepped in before it closed.
¡°Haha. Wow. You even learned humour.¡± Ning Xin laughed, albeit a little sarcastically she really thought it had been funny.
¡°That was very funny,¡± Ebony commented with his usual dead tone. He was serious, it had been hilarious to him.
They put their arms around Na and Ning Xin brought out some food and tea, inviting Na to have some if it could absorb whatever little essence it could from dead and cooked food.
After they were recharged, they let themselves out of the hideout and charged for any prey they saw. There were apparently quite a few parties that have ¡®cleared¡¯ Na already. All of them could or were prepared for the cold and the lack of supplies.
Currently, only 2 parties were on the top floor which had been spotted by some of Na¡¯s monsters.
They flashed through and annihilated any spawned monster they saw. Na could weaken them to save up on essence and absorb the spells and stamina they expended.
3 days later.
¡°GET OUT!¡±
A heavy mana storm bombarded them. It was quite scary when Na was consciously controlling and aiming at them. He also missed on purpose but the message was well received.
The reason was, they had killed too many too fast with too little effort. Na had lost more essence than it ever had in a single day throughout his entirety of 21 plus 1 floor with the last floor being a single room where he would defend. He learned from Scarlet that he should give parties some form of challenge and not just let them go through the exit portal for free. It would attract more people, it seems.
He needed to build a better reputation for giving rewards that appealed to people but would still profit him in essence. He ¡®invested¡¯ in increasing the rewards he left lying around or putting more topaz into his golems. He hadn¡¯t started to see effects but some of his monsters overheard conversations of parties saying how he was more and more ¡®bountiful¡¯. He hasn¡¯t even reaped the rewards of more people moving to him but Ebony and Scarlet came and raided him rudely.
They reentered to feed Na their overflowing essence for 2 days in exchange while hunting very sparingly. Two days weren¡¯t really a lot and didn¡¯t pay back what they took from him but they couldn¡¯t stand the slow hunt.
¡°What now?¡± He asked Ning Xin.
¡°Let¡¯s go to the next closest dungeon.¡±
They only gained 5 levels each even though they had a dedicated hunt of level 200s for 3 days since the monster density of the top floors was quite low. Na was already lacking in essence and concentrated most of his efforts and resources on the lower, especially middle floors. The top floor had fewer parties and the higher-level monster took more resources.
Chapter 142: Trailer
A level gained in his Class now gives 15 stats, Sub-Class would have 10 while his Profession would have 3 profession focussed stats that they wouldn¡¯t be able to allocate. Ebony had all 3 automatically placed in Wisdom while Ning Xin used to gain 1 in Strength, she now gained 2 Strength and 1 Agility per Profession level.
He was actually hoping for 1 point into Intelligence but there was no real loss since he would¡¯ve needed a ton of Wisdom as well. He assumed he would have enough mana once he evolved, even casting cost way less but his mana compressibility increasing sort of balanced it out as long as he was trying to hit harder. But even if he didn¡¯t compress it to that point, his Imperishable Frost Scales were already noticeably tougher than his old scale, almost matching an entire Layered Ice Carapace.
He opted to add stats point by point and get used to it slowly rather than dumping it all at once, which caused him to make some mistakes in battle in the past.
Before they could start making their way towards the nearest dungeon they had procedures to complete to smoothen their journey. Getting access to ¡®green¡¯ dungeons as their portal colour suggests with only the two of them. His trick of using Glacial Models may not also work so they might as well get permission from the Quest Hall somehow. They were lawful people even though neither of them considered themselves part of the Empire.
Panic Attack got permission to enter as a party of five warriors. It shouldn¡¯t be difficult for them to get similar authorisation.
They acted quickly, standing in line for a counter meant for general inquiries.
He heard a lot of people talk about a certain topic, not just in the Quest Hall but the streets or even the small town outside Ordina. Something about many other towns far from Trailane Plains having their underground sewers breaking or leaking stench all over the towns. Fortunately, that was far away but it had been getting more serious over the months where more and more towns were affected.
Although the requests didn¡¯t reach Trailane Plains, there have been many quests for an investigation into the sewers. The Quest Hall had limited manpower and their initial search came out with just broken walls with no trace of what broke them.
They didn¡¯t take it that seriously at first since most of the affected towns had old and not regularly maintained sewers but the first city had been reported to have a similar problem with their sewers and that was massive news.
Another piece of news was how a large forest at the other end of the continent, nearer to Xienor, Northeast from where they were, had parts of it suddenly removed and no one saw how, what or who. By ¡®removed¡¯ there was a picture posted on one of the ¡®electronic¡¯ news boards that showed a pitch black hole spanning hundreds of metres that appeared as if it reaches the core of the planet. They already sent some Grandmasters to check it out. It wasn¡¯t far from the Second and First Tide, so it was no wonder they acted reasonably quickly.
¡°How can I help you?¡± The lady clerk recognised the resident masked lady and their big taxpayer even though she never contacted them before.
¡°Access to Uncommon dungeons by ourselves. Even as a duo and not an individual would work.¡± He asked.
¡°That... The Imperial law states that one can enter a dungeon of the same rank in groups of three if all three have cleared that particular dungeon before. As Masters, you just have to form a party of five to clear the dungeon once before needing three for the next clear.¡± The lady clerk was young, they could see her referring to a book or note behind the counter.
¡°We know. That¡¯s why we¡¯re asking you to give us authorization.¡± Ning Xin wanted to speed the conversation up.
Luckily, the clerk had a more senior looking man watching out for her and came to the rescue seeing her confusion.
¡°Special authorisation for dungeon access would require a noble and the Quest Hall to acknowledge that an individual or party has the appropriate capability and not just feed the dungeons essence.¡±
¡°Oh, and how would they ¡®acknowledge¡¯ us?¡± Ning Xin never bothered to find out the procedures. Her grandma and sister Jing said she simply had to ask for it.
¡°Plainston currently doesn¡¯t have the personnel to conduct the test. Since there aren¡¯t any Uncommon dungeons in Trailane Plains, the cities close to Uncommon dungeons should be more than capable of giving you authorization.¡± The man answered professionally.
He thanked them for their service and returned to rest and have dinner with sister Jing since Mark was still stuck in his workshop. She wouldn¡¯t act as their transport anymore, they would leave the next day by themselves.
Ning Xin couldn¡¯t stand getting carried by him as a mode of transport, she suggested it was a good chance to practise movement by gliding/flight and they can walk fast once she reached half her mana pool. Arguing that they can take the chance to just see the sights instead of flashing past everything the way Ebony does.
He had no complaints this time. It was indeed a good chance to practise flight.
¡°Wait. Give me a day or two. I need some help from sister Jing.¡±
¡°? Sure.¡± Ning Xin instantly thought of how she can make more dumpling wraps and fillings for a longer journey. She wanted to clean herself up anyway, some personal care and hygiene was in order.
???
¡°What¡¯s this?¡± Kong Jing gave a disapproving look on the stack of wood that Ebony pulled out. It took up a lot of space in his bag.
¡°I want to make a trailer, a mobile tent so to speak. Something like this.¡± He formed a rough model of a mobile trailer home with ice.
¡°Hmm¡what will you power it with?¡± She asked, looking at the wheels.
He cocked his head in confusion.
He manipulated the wheels to spin in reply.
Kong Jing had her usual unrestrained laugh. She was imagining he had some kind of runic formula that will power or drive the vehicle house and not the power of manipulation and mind.
¡°I assume little Xin is going to stay in there too?¡±
¡°If she doesn¡¯t mind.¡±
¡°Then I can¡¯t exactly let her live in a shack.¡±
¡°The illusion cover to hide us from monsters or people to see us would be nice.¡± He thought that it would be very convenient and another layer of safety wouldn¡¯t hurt.
¡°You asked me knowing that I¡¯ll do whatever I can if it''s for little Xin didn¡¯t you?¡± She knocked him on the head, his natural reflex didn¡¯t act up.
¡°I asked you because you¡¯re also my teacher and the best person to ask.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure if she found out that he secretly enjoyed her rough head rubs.
They used his materials for the interior while she made an external layer with normal Uncommon rarity wood with an immense surge of mana flooding their ¡®garden¡¯ there was too much going on as she was multitasking too much with her mana. He still managed to make out that she was moulding on some kind of soundproofing, durability and the one he was least familiar with, illusion based. It was hard to even sense her mana so he couldn¡¯t get a good grasp of the mana pathways. He was sure it was based on what he read before in her library but it was weird he never managed to understand them well.
Kong Jing took a similar approach as the Frost Elves, they barely taught him, just giving him knowledge and wanting him to come up with something himself. Although she was at least nice enough to explain things he couldn¡¯t understand in her books, her explanations didn¡¯t always make much sense to him either.
¡°You either get it or you don¡¯t get it.¡± was what she used to tell him when he asked too many questions and still didn¡¯t understand.
¡°Sweet design.¡± She commented. He was asking for her advice since she had experience in architecture although not much. Telling him all the ideas he had.
It went from a simple rectangular trailer to some kind of foldable or expandable two-storey building.
¡°I need to be able to drive it and it¡¯s not as convenient if I can¡¯t drive on roads in towns and cities.¡± He said and they cut down on size but not function.
The design went back to a rectangular shape. Roughly 2.5 metres tall, a collapsible width of 3 to 8 metres with her confusing him with how that was supposed to be done and a length of 15 metres. There was still a second floor, with the bedrooms upstairs with a suspicious-looking door with a symbol he was not familiar with. The second floor was only about 10 metres or so in length meaning the trailer would be staggered like stairs.
Some parts of the mobile home would require them not to place any furniture on as they would get in the way of the collapse. A large part of this ¡®free space¡¯ is taken up by a fully functional kitchen, a sofa and a ¡®television¡¯ that they didn¡¯t have but he planned to get. The furniture in their rooms would have to be placed in one corner so that they wouldn''t get crushed as the house shrinks.
It wasn¡¯t as complicated as he first thought, there were probably many such foldable houses even on Earth.
There is a front seat not unlike the front seat of a carriage or train cabin where he can sit out to drive, watch the road and feel the wind. The wheels are made of a soft material that¡¯s hollowed out for him to put ice mana into it to drive it, he made sure to confirm that the material could withstand cold and harsh conditions.
¡°I know what kind of things she wants for a kitchen but what about the furniture?¡±
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
¡°I got everything I can think of. I brought her around the city a few times and took her to streets with a lot of furniture stores on our walks so I think I got everything that she likes or had her eye on.¡±
¡°...You¡¯re more attentive than a girl. With the flowers too¡Did you give her flowers?¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t really want to say it at first but she truly thought he had some uncommon traits for a man.
¡°She made tea out of it. It was delicious and she was happy with a new ingredient.¡±
Kong Jing roared with laughter.
???
They worked on it together as they took the project underground, Kong Jing personally made space underground. They only showed up for dinner and breakfast before the house above and the whole street burned down under her rage. Though only figuratively.
It was a cosy little trailer that has the same style as Ning Xin¡¯s house back at Xienor. The colour scheme of the exterior was dark brown though. It has the same illusion-type spell that Ning Xin used to keep herself hidden whenever she camped out but stronger. The trailer itself wasn¡¯t toughened up in defences since the materials used weren¡¯t anything special and the strong illusion runic formula took up half of its capacity while minor ones like dust resistance, preservation and lightness runes were present too.
They shouldn¡¯t be easily spotted, heard, felt or even divined according to Kong Jing. It was part of her study to hide herself from her grandaunt, although she did say it probably wouldn¡¯t even trouble her grandaunt and they would easily be found by her.
If some monster or people got close enough they would still be seen but there was an area of effect mental suggestion that dissuades people from walking their direction should he activate the illusion runes. The mana consumption was high so they really only needed to use it if they were in the middle of danger and needed to rest.
The kitchen was very well furnished with a common area for dining and a sofa with no television for now. There were no stairs but a few indentations were placed at the back end of the trailer that acted as footholds. The back of the trailer had a gap in the ceiling where they would climb through to the two bedrooms and a toilet that came with a bath. His room was at the front, meaning he would have to go past Ning Xin¡¯s since the only entrance to the second floor was through the tail end of the trailer.
The second floor was extended a little to accommodate the toilet and bath. Although their biological need to excrete was reduced and they wouldn¡¯t use it as much, Kong Jing even had the technology for it. The toilet bowl had runes that would break it down and remove odours. Very convenient.
The front had a carriage-style seat for two, soft comfy seats and the best suspension effect that Kong Jing could make together with cup holders and a large rectangular hole in between the seats that was for snacks and food. The backrest which is also their wall seemed suspiciously familiar.
¡°You copied my chair design¡¡± He said. It wasn¡¯t part of the initial design plans but the back rest had a tree carved on it with some frost plum flowers budding and some blossoms. Just like his conjured throne. At least she didn¡¯t adopt the turtle shell which his chair had since they were ready to be reformed into scales anytime.
¡°I like it. Not too fancy, and very domineering.¡± Kong Jing was referring to the twin swords that two branches of the tree entwined around that would be above their heads should they sit.
There was no windscreen but they wouldn¡¯t be feeling much wind unless they reached out due to a standard enchantment for any vehicle that repelled wind from certain directions. Their trailer didn¡¯t have the enchantment but some sort of orb that was wind elemental was worked on by the Grandmaster Craftswoman was embedded near the front of the trailer.
The overall power source was under the floorboards of the common area and a large uncut block of Blue was placed there. Only a Blue which was a Rare rarity as the trailer couldn¡¯t take anything stronger or purer and didn¡¯t even require a Blue if the ambient mana density outdoors was high enough. It could also take the occupants excess mana to charge itself.
There was no engine.
The wheels look not much different from large rubber tires but were far superior as a material for wheels.
The most important function that Ebony didn¡¯t even hope to have or think possible was thanks to the space mage¡¯s breakthrough in her magic.
He looked at the shiny gem fitted in his myriad bracelet in glee.
The trailer could be brought around and not just by driving it around. It still had the original collapsible design since he would drive it in the collapsed form. Make no mistake, he probably couldn¡¯t ¡®drive¡¯ it very fast and would even have trouble moving something so large with his Intelligence. For now.
Mark wasn¡¯t around as he left Plainston for something personal. Ebony went and pulled Ning Xin out of the kitchen and they showed her the little surprise.
She loved it.
More so the bath than the kitchen or at least just as much, she also noticed the somewhat familiar furnitures and kitchenware and utensils.
They were briefed on the areas where they shouldn¡¯t have permanent fixtures and learned how to activate the collapsing function together with all the other magical functions big and small. How the windows should be closed if they were moving and whatnot.
Ebony has never seen or heard Kong Jing so chatty. The two sisters were close.
He also found out what the symbol on the door to Ning Xin¡¯s room meant. The door was extra durable with locks.
¡°Now, I¡¯m not trying to be nosy but you need to set some house rules.¡± Kong Jing told both of them.
She cleared her throat, ¡°For example, no entry into little Xin¡¯s room.¡±
¡°What if she lets or invites me in?¡± Ebony asked in his usual toneless voice. It wasn¡¯t rare for her to ask him to cool down her room with ice magic from time to time.
¡°Not gonna happen you punk!¡± Kong Jing imagined something completely different, something normal people would imagine.
He got a beating that shook the ground but seeing no reaction from Ning Xin other than standing stunned was a little surprising. A pity he couldn¡¯t tell what she was thinking.
They only took a little more than 2 days for the building project since Kong Jing was in charge. Going out for a short test ride was pretty fun and wasn¡¯t as hard to move as he thought, just a little slow even with his gravity magic. Not even matching the speed of the monster-drawn carriages on the road.
They can still use it to camp rather than to traverse while he gets used to driving it.
???
Mark wasn¡¯t back yet but that was of no concern to them. Two of them left with a mobile home up his sleeves.
Their destination was a city straight towards Clatter Rattle¡¯s direction away from Trailane Plains. It was called Mogat and had two Uncommon dungeons in their vicinity. A bustling city that was pretty rich since they traded with Clatter Rattle with the abundance of materials obtained from the dungeons. Both were pretty small dungeons, with less than 5 floors each.
Ordina was a little out of the ordinary for it to have so many different environmental floors, these two dungeons were more normal in that every floor was forest themed with each floor being way more expansive. Growing sideways tends to be more common than growing more floors. Ning Xin even suggested to Na to continue expanding his diameter rather than height. They found out that Na''s twelfth floor collapsed when the horde was sent to them in the past and he made the pyramid a floor of its own. That was news.
One of the dungeons had monsters that averaged at levels 180 to 200 while the other had an average of 130 to 160. Once again, another difference with Ordina that had a large range of monster levels but that could be attributed to its size and many floors. There was also a difference in the diversity of creatures. It was more common to see a small number of creatures that a dungeon would focus on rather than a large variety.
They were planning to go to the one with a lower level average due to the information they found from the Quest Hall. ¡®Monster density: High.¡¯ and had a higher danger level according to all the parties that cleared them mostly due to the presence of a flying creature. Dungeon clearers with more than 1 dungeon clear of different dungeons can give some sort of danger rating. These dungeons were frequently cleared but not so much that they needed to book a slot to enter.
Thanks to the higher danger rating they were hoping it meant less people and more prey for them. If it wasn¡¯t satisfactory, they could always go to the other dungeon since both dungeons were not that far apart. They were both in the city after all. Enclosed in a protected dome apparently.
When he was grabbed on the jumping express in the past it took him 2 to 3 days to get to Clatter Rattle. The two of them took the same amount of time to get to a closer city. The roads were safe and they didn¡¯t come across any freak accident or anyone trying to kidnap him.
Mogat used to be like the small settlement around Ordina but grew to its current state in only 3 or so centuries. The growth of the dungeon was controlled and they over-dived in the past since two dungeons appeared within a gap of a decade. A large number of people arrived to see what was so special to have two dungeons form so close together.
Currently, Mogat¡¯s needs increased and the two dungeons were allowed to grow so people were invited to stay inside those two dungeons for it to grow. Their efforts were wasted on the dungeon Ebony and Ning Xin was planning to go to since the dungeon just produced more monsters with the essence they were ¡®given¡¯ instead of increasing in general levels or having made better materials. On the bright side, they increased the quantity of materials they farmed from it and the other dungeon was growing in terms of quality.
Both of them wasted no time and hailed a carriage to this dungeon dome called Low Thicket, the other was called High Thicket.
¡°Where¡¯s the rest of your party?¡± The guards here were either confident enough not to wear helmets since everything was under control or they just weren¡¯t required to wear them indoors since there were probably guards inside the dungeon too.
The guards didn¡¯t stand close to the green colour portal that was shorter and less wide than Ordina¡¯s gate. Nobody stood close. There were mounted crossbows, canons and huge magical balls aimed at the gate and it would probably stress out some of the weaker willed guards if there were weapons pointed at them all day long.
¡°Just the two of us.¡±
¡°Eh, go ahead. Be careful if you¡¯re leaving the camp inside, I heard the numbers are still rising and the average levels even on the first floor is near the usual limit. Younger parties are dissuaded from entering even though we need to cut their numbers since it¡¯s getting to a worrying degree. The next mass clearing expedition should be in a month.¡± The guard was a boy looking no older than 20, he was nonchalant about them being two people because they had an open policy to let the dungeon grow.
¡°So, there¡¯s no problem helping to cut numbers down right?¡± Ning Xin asked. They were actually recommended to come here by the senior clerk from Plainston to get their authorization. The man probably didn¡¯t think Mogat didn¡¯t even care about authorisation. Maybe he had dated information.
¡°In exchange, can you sign my armour?¡± He smiled nervously.
¡°What?¡±
¡°You¡¯re Rimestone right? I watched your fights years ago. I was hoping to see you in more tournaments but you never showed up again. I have the memory light of your fight with Rost! Oh, watch this!¡± The guard was manning the line with another young man that was letting another party through after checking and recording their quester crystal.
The guard who recognised Ebony faced a direction without people, disappeared from his spot, and then returned quietly in a single step.
¡®Was that Treading Steps?¡¯ Ebony was a little impressed at the resemblance.
¡°How was that? Can you give me some tips? What is this footwork called?¡± The man wasn¡¯t shy about asking the details of someone else''s skill.
¡°It was okay. It¡¯s called Treading Steps, put more focus and most of your weight onto the front of your feet, around the toes. Your ankle and knees seem a little rigid, with Treading Steps, you should be able to change directions easily but you focused too much on the burst of speed. Well, that¡¯s not a bad thing either.¡± He patted the man¡¯s shoulder and they walked past him without anyone stopping them.
¡°You have fans, Rimestone.¡± Ning Xin teased. She wasn¡¯t as impressed by someone copying his skill.
¡°There shouldn¡¯t be many, I barely fought in that tournament.¡±
¡°Who knows?¡±
They safely arrived in Low Thicket with her getting a little dizzy for a second after passing through the gate.
Chapter 143: Banished
There was a huge settlement beyond the portal into Low Thicket, no different from a bustling market.
Ebony had sensitive ears and didn¡¯t like the noise, he lowered the volume into his ears and they asked around for the way out. It wasn¡¯t really hard to find the tall wooden walls.
Someone called out to them, asking why they were leaving as a group of two and telling them how it has been getting more dangerous further out but Ebony didn¡¯t hear the voice and Ning Xin just couldn¡¯t be bothered to reply. No one stepped forward to stop them anyway.
Even so, they didn¡¯t come across any creature till they got far out. As if the creatures were avoiding the settlement of people. The dungeon¡¯s food source.
Since they were moving at high speeds, he saw the first creature that had the form of a tiger. They were smaller than an average tiger but had a shiny grey horn atop.
[Steelhorn Tig Lvl 155]
[Steelhorn Tig Lvl 155]
[Steelhorn Tig Lvl 155]
Low Thicket wasn¡¯t an infant dungeon with weakened monsters, they had bonafide creatures that shouldn¡¯t be any weaker than an average monster of the same level outside.
None of them could¡¯ve stopped the impulsive swordswoman by his side.
Ning Xin already charged forward while her blades weren¡¯t even fully drawn yet. He was surprised to see the Tig swing its head down and cross blades with its horn in time. Too bad its shiny horn turned red to white and was sliced off in moments, not even staying on long enough to slow her charge down.
Her blades cooled down quickly before she skinned the Tigs as one of her longswords went under its belly and neatly dug under their skin. The Tig tried to put distance with the other two Tigs leaping toward her as assistance but it felt weak and numb.
Ning Xin¡¯s blades were greedily consuming its blood as lightning mana coursed into its flesh body. One of the attacking Tig was met with the same fate despite being on the attack while the other found itself constrained by a blood ring around its neck. Her blood halo wasn¡¯t strong enough to instantly saw their heads off but she didn¡¯t stop trying to rotate and cut into the Tig.
When her blood halo drew blood, it dived into the open wound only to be strongly rejected so she opted to drain the leaking blood which worked. The other two Tigs she was facing already turned into dry meat, bones and organs. She was contemplating if she should try them but she already decided to feed dungeon creature blood to her swords, Scorching Gleam while she drank normal ones. And Ebony¡¯s.
Ning Xin stepped aside when something fell from above. It was a large frozen bird.
¡°It was called Caladria at level 153, I¡¯m not sure what its speciality is.¡± Ebony reported.
He noticed two types of birds, this Caladria had thick plumage of grey feathers. It was frozen through now so he couldn¡¯t tell much about them. The other bird had green feathers but flew too high and didn¡¯t attack them so he didn¡¯t bother shooting them down.
They heard some roars from deeper into the forest. The trees were pretty sparse and the ground was mostly flat with few roots sticking out, it made the forest was easy to traverse.
There were a couple of parties in the distance, the two of them joined the fun.
???
Ebony had been wrong about the difficulty of traversing the forest as the most numerous of monsters were something called [Thress], their level range a little lower, 140 to 150. The Thress were plant based monsters, they camouflaged as the trees and couldn¡¯t be identified till they moved and attacked so even he was caught off guard the first time they encountered Thress.
Each and every Thress had significant differences in their size, strength, durability and most noticeably their reach. They could fire their leaves as projectiles sharp and fast enough to attach themselves to one of his Imperishable Frost Scale. Their branches were strong but not flexible while their roots were the opposite. They had bark thick enough that he couldn¡¯t break them without building up momentum even after they were frozen through and should have become more brittle.
They almost started a forest fire but calmed each other¡¯s flames down. His own doesn¡¯t spread well but Ning Xin might have been able to start a huge wildfire. She began to cut or burn down trees when their leaves moved a little even when they were just trees. Her reflexes were hard to keep up with.
The green feather birds [Caladris] were actually spreading poison dust or particles everywhere they go. Ning Xin was free from the effects since everything burned up in her body before it became a problem but he was poisoned. It made his skin turn green after breathing in quite a bit of it, his robe prevented skin contact so he was mostly poisoned through inhalation.
The effects were pretty weak, but they strengthened when he was out of mana so he could only assume it seemed weak since his mana pool was full and Constitution strengthened. It was a type of poison that made one tire more easily and drained physical strength but there wasn¡¯t much physical pain. They backtracked to get some common antidote from the settlement. This was why they should gather information beforehand.
He didn¡¯t take the antidote, since the effects were bearable. It was the perfect chance to build poison resistance, they could cope with the monsters anyway. Ning Xin actually thought it was a good idea before their Constitution got any higher and finding strong poisons wouldn¡¯t be as easy so she didn¡¯t use her fire enhancement and let herself get poisoned. She felt the effects stronger despite having generic tier 2 Sheer Poison Resistance. It might have been his Everlasting Tranquillity, Sustained Optimum Condition and the fact that he was partially mana.
Low Thicket was wide, even in two days of moving in a single direction they have not seen an end or any walls. It supposedly only had 3 floors.
They brought out their house when no one was looking and had an extremely awkward time. Although it wasn¡¯t the first time being housemates, they were never in such close proximity. Rather than foldable, the house would stretch to the sides like a drawer being pulled open. Their dining table was flipped from the wall and they sat facing each other.
Eating was fine since it was like any other day, it was sitting on the sofa without any television and the silence was strong enough that they just retreated to their rooms after taking turns with the bathroom. It felt weird. Different for whatever reason.
¡®Must be the new house¡home?¡¯ He pondered as he meditated in the boiling bath.
???
Ebony and Ning Xin went ham for a week.
Both for breakfast and for hunting but they were no longer in Low Thicket but in the highest floor of Mogat¡¯s Quest Hall, the city lord¡¯s office.
It was a woman with a bob cut and brown hair dressed in something like a tight-fit suit with a set of equipment being hung or displayed near the door. She had a rapier tied to her belt
¡°First of all, can I assume you¡¯re from Xienor? Oh, I¡¯m Countess Petal.¡± The Countess was a Grandmaster Warrioress.
Ning Xin nodded.
¡°My apologies, there are many people wearing similar masks. Although there aren¡¯t many cases, there are some that dare to pose as a Xeng with a simple mask. I didn¡¯t think you were posing as one with the problem we have on hand but I just had to make sure.¡±
¡°What do you want?¡± Ning Xin cut to the chase, unhappy that they were forced out of the dungeon by a mana storm.
The settlement inside Low Thicket was unharmed but most of the dungeon was pretty bare at the moment.
¡°I personally couldn¡¯t care less but you put me in a tight spot. We already scheduled a large clearing festival for the younger citizens to rack up experience in a reasonably safe manner but that¡¯s gone down the sewers now.¡± Countess Petal had a light headache because she would have to deal with a large number of complaints.
She was actually glad at how it turned out since it would save her a lot of expense as she didn¡¯t need to hire so many people to reduce Low Thicket¡¯s population and Mogat had a tight budget recently. She didn¡¯t have to worry about having insufficient antidote and the administrative work would decrease. The only problem she had was that huge portions of Low Thicket were burned down and it would likely take some time before it recovers and begins to give them materials again.
¡°And?¡± The red hair swordswoman sat comfortably with her enviable long legs crossed.
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¡°Could you sell your materials to us, Caladria¡¯s feathers, Tig¡¯s steel horns and most importantly any part of Caladris?¡± Countess Petal tried her best to be polite, she didn¡¯t want any trouble in her city.
¡°We don¡¯t have them,¡± Ebony replied.
Countess Petal was confused.
¡°Everything was either burned or broken. At least, Low Thicket should¡¯ve reabsorbed them so it shouldn¡¯t take too long before they spawn a steady flow of creatures again.¡± He tried to explain.
¡°Which way is High Thicket?¡± Ning Xin stood up.
Countess Petal¡¯s brows knitted.
They got a warning not to do anything as drastic and at least obtain the valuable materials to sell to the city. She was even nice enough to give them the authorization to enter any Uncommon dungeon in the Empire and not just her city without any testing and just her words were enough.
Two days later.
¡°We got kicked out of the city,¡± Ebony said as he slowly drove away on their trailer.
¡°It¡¯s okay. High Thicket had too low a monster population. This happens to every one of the Xengs¡± She didn¡¯t speak as if she was one of them.
¡°We¡¯re only 132 and 134, most of the surrounding dungeons aren¡¯t that different in terms of average levels.¡± He was referring to their levels and he levelled slower since Ning Xin was just too efficient at killing.
¡°...We have no choice but to hit up every single dungeon we come across while we travel towards central. There are a large number of dungeons there near the peak of Uncommon which might be tough but perfect for us. They are just very far away from our current location.¡± She was kneading dough in the kitchen while he took the front.
¡°Too bad all the dungeons that I could find information on are small or medium-sized ones, Low and High Thicket dried up so quickly.¡± The size of the dungeon directly affects how many people were in there to supply them with essence and energy after all.
???
2 months later, 25.04.5537
Ebony struck off another name on one of his notebooks, the seventeenth one on the list of names.
There were a couple of people talking from behind him, inside the trailer. They have gotten their hands on a memory light player that was like a 50 inch screen. Ning Xin was watching something Mallory recommended apparently, it was some kind of skincare walkthrough or some other beauty-related topic. He wasn¡¯t all that interested and she was too embarrassed to watch with him sitting beside her.
The trailer was driving much faster than an average level 160 domesticated or tamed monster-pulled carriage at the moment.
Their next destination was one of those outposts like the one surrounding Ordina, the dungeon wasn¡¯t inside a city. The roads were more crowded here but some stray Rhoats still thought it was a good idea to attack people. They were free from that trouble since he activated the illusion that hide them.
They arrived at the dungeon that didn¡¯t have a road leading to it, it was far from the general populace of people. Situated at the bottom of a massive mountain that supposedly had a town on its summit. They were not too worried about dungeon breaks as they had an amazing defensive position and there was no town or city reasonably close to them so they could make it in time to inform other Quest Halls if they really had a dungeon break.
¡°I¡¯ll be back.¡± He leapt off the front seat after informing Ning Xin.
A giant mantis screeched as it got close enough to notice their trailer. It swiped its sharp arms so fast, it couldn''t be seen. It landed on Icicle while he was in mid-air and sent him ¡®tumbling¡¯ back but he quickly reorientated himself as the giant mantis was flying towards him against its will.
It was dragged along as a link of gravity mana connected its arm to Icicle. It decided to go with the flow of the pull on its arm and rained blows onto the small human.
Despite being guided by an unknown tug on its arms, it kept missing the human who stood on the spot and swayed left and right. The human raised its huge single claw to block but it sensed the same pain and shock through its body as the first attack it landed.
It didn¡¯t realise the large injury on its claws until it was completely removed from its arm even though the human never attacked, only blocking with the huge glowing claw.
Ebony decapitated the giant mantis that stared at its own missing arm for a second but the mantis continued attacking with its remaining arm for a whole minute after decapitation.
He chased the trailer that was moving on its own for a bit, he could let it go straight without input for a short while. That had not been the only disruption in their journey. It must have been because the woods weren¡¯t well maintained or because there were no roads around.
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t interested in eating the mantises so he dealt with the threats. They had wild game from time to time whenever they were on the move. The cupboards in the trailer were all much bigger than they appeared. Courtesy of sister Jing.
They finally reached the foot of the huge mountain that had been in sight for days. The green light that was the portal was unhidden and stretched up quite a bit, chances were, the dungeon was of decent size. There were only 5 buildings around wooden stakes pointing outwards. Not exactly fortified which was rare for a dungeon that had been around for some time.
He kept their mobile house in his bracelet a distance away from the congregation of houses.
They were gonna waltz in like always but the man who was lying down on a reclined chair with a wide hat covering the sunlight suddenly sat up, ¡°Hold up!¡± He tried to find support with his arms to push himself up but failed and slipped more than once.
The man¡¯s flailing arms were about to grab onto Ning Xin but not before Ebony put himself in the way and helped him to stand up. The man had a flushed face and the strong stench of alcohol was noticed before Ebony helped him.
¡°Tha..buugh! Thanks my man.¡± He burped loudly mid-sentence.
¡°I knew you would come to my town sooner or later, uhh, Rimestone and miss uh, I don¡¯t think I quite got your name.¡± The man got his bearings well enough to speak.
¡°Scarlet.¡± She introduced.
They have been getting noticed since they got banned from entering 17 dungeons now. Not by the Empire but by the dungeons themselves. They either had their monsters avoid them entirely or take the more drastic measure of constantly bombarding themselves with mana storms.
He had never attempted to take one of the mana storm lightning strikes because Ning Xin always dissuaded him. It was not something one would usually survive. She was especially worried since healing didn¡¯t work well on him, he didn¡¯t have her mask¡¯s healing ability and she was worried because the damage from ¡®mana¡¯ based storm was known to be unable to recover naturally and they didn¡¯t know how his not completely human body would react to the stimulation.
¡°Are you here to stop us from entering?¡± Ebony asked, the man wouldn¡¯t be the first.
¡°Huh? No no, we have a request for you but you two stopped showing up at Quest Halls or just getting information on the closest dungeons, leaving immediately after.¡±
¡°Request?¡±
¡°A job, but wow, uhh¡I last heard you were around level 160 but you¡¯re both 183. You¡¯re Rimestone right?¡±
¡°Ebony. But yes, that¡¯s me.¡± He had managed to chase up in levels due to the increase of his stats and how he protected Ning Xin during the night.
Some dungeons had simple tactics of trying to get rid of them after they killed a large population. Just constantly sending more after them. It sadly never worked and other parties were very pissed as they were either interrupted or even gravely injured. The smart dungeons were the ones that hid their creatures or just stopped spawning for a day or two because there was nothing they could do. The dungeons weren¡¯t like Ordina and they couldn¡¯t talk or make deals with them.
As for whether their actions caused any people to die? They didn¡¯t know. At the very least, he checked with the Quest Hall if they had any additional deaths reported after a stampede. Since the dungeons would directly target them, he hasn¡¯t heard of anyone blaming them for any deaths because of that.
He would personally check his proximities as much as possible so that they wouldn¡¯t implicate anyone and he also noted how the Quest Hall was already watching their movements and posting notices that they were in the area, asking other freelancers and dungeons clearers to keep their distance.
¡°Good, good.¡± He hiccuped once before continuing. ¡°I should introduce myself since this is official business. Baron Vigoureed, I got my own title so don¡¯t put me together with that old coot Viscount alright. Just call me Ric.¡± The [Master Light Archer Lvl 300] shook his finger left and right. Ebony knew the ¡®light¡¯ in Elcrian was referring to weight and not the element or brightness.
Ebony and his housemate exchanged glances.
¡°What what? Do you know that old coot?¡± Ric¡¯s eyes gleamed with mana to which Ebony noticed.
Ebony shook his head in reply. ¡°We knew Ryley Vigoureed.¡±
¡°Ryley? Ryley¡sounds familiar. Ah! Fifth uncle¡¯s fourth son! I think¡ maybe. Well¡how is he doing?¡±
¡°He¡¯s dead.¡± Ning Xin threw out flatly.
¡°...I see. At least he doesn¡¯t have to worry about anyone worrying about that. I heard my fifth uncle got killed in some expedition a few years back too. Along with his other sons. And fifth aunt was killed by the old coot since she ran off with some man, too bad that man had to be another archer noble.¡± Ric optimistically spouted.
The conversation was cut off by silence.
¡°His final words were that he was from the house of Vigoureed, he died in Ordina, his killer is dead.¡± Ebony felt it was the least he could say.
¡°...I¡¯ll send word to the main family. Anyway!¡± Ric¡¯s facial muscles twitched at his own words. He clearly wasn¡¯t close to his family and quickly changed the topic. He was fully sober by now.
¡°Our little town is faced with a tiny problem. We¡¯ve only managed to gather a few people willing to take the quest and I couldn¡¯t help but think of the famous duo, hated by dungeons, monster exterminators.¡±
¡°Speak.¡± Ning Xin hoped he understood she was asking him to get to the point.
The town atop the mountain, Crest, had noticed a recurring pattern of a larger number of monsters in the area. From deeper into their forest was a section called Vermin Paradise. There were no people or settlements in the vicinity past them because it wasn¡¯t habitable.
Vermin Paradise, as its name suggests, was filled with insect-type monsters big and small. The other reason Crest was the only town here was due to their defensive vantage point as the average monster deeper into Vermin Paradise was Grandmaster classed, above level 300.
¡®The giant mantis must have been young strays.¡¯ Ebony thought.
For reasons they have not found out, the congregation of giant insects building homes visible to their scouts were increasing exponentially. Species that they were not aware of were popping up every day and each seemingly stronger than the last.
¡°So yeah, perfect job offer right? Huge amounts of high-level monsters that we want you to kill and not the dungeon with resources that we don¡¯t want you to destroy. I¡¯ll let you raze this dungeon for as long as you like after helping us. You¡¯re happy, the Empire is happy and I will be happy.¡± He packaged the offer nicely.
¡°¡°No.¡±¡± They replied in unison without hesitation, turning around and no longer planning to enter this dungeon.
Ric acted utterly shocked.
Chapter 144: Pest Extermination
¡°But why!? Isn¡¯t this the perfect levelling opportunity!¡± Ric shouted as he caught up with the duo.
Ric was forced to stop by an outrageous blast of a mixture of burning Vitality and freezing Wisdom that felt heavier than anything he had ever carried. He was momentarily stunned before overriding the blast by shielding himself with his own mana with a smile that slowly widened. Stepping closer to the duo who no longer walked further.
¡®This guy¡¯s not your average Master archer.¡¯ Ebony thought. They have met many level 270s Masters since those were the parties that filled the dungeons they entered recently. Not just anyone could withstand Ning Xin¡¯s overflowing essence without any impediment. While he was still restraining his mana, it was still surprising to see Ric completely unaffected other than the initial surprise.
Ning Xin also thought the same thing.
¡°Why not?¡± Ric repeated himself.
The duo looked at each other before facing him.
¡°¡°Because insects are creepy.¡±¡± It was something both of them agreed with.
She didn¡¯t like insects even though they were considered ingredients. She tried not to discriminate the ingredients but after a single day of insect meals with Ebony, they never tried them again. They weren¡¯t exactly disgusting but looked unappetising however she tried to prepare them and she couldn¡¯t help but be extremely uncomfortable when she thought back to the numerous spiders she had consumed.
¡°...¡± Ric had no words for a moment. ¡°That¡¯s exactly why we have to remove them. Think about it, there are already more than a hundred thousand large ones as a bonafide small monster horde, and a conservative estimate of 3 million creepy, tiny bugs that are going to move out of Vermin Paradise sooner or later. They are weak for creatures of the same level but propagate extremely quickly. We could have an entire continent full of insects in weeks! Most importantly, insect-type monsters are generally weak to both fire and ice!¡±
Ric¡¯s wit was at play.
¡°A real monster horde, the Imperial army should be acting wouldn¡¯t they?¡±
¡°Of course, our small town has few soldiers and we are far away from other cities. The surrounding nobles already sent part of their army but the closest and fastest contingent of 2000 men would still take two weeks to get here. Freelancers rarely want to risk their lives for such a high-risk quest unless guaranteed some sort of safety, they would rather safely explore and exploit dungeons.¡±
Ric added that other towns and cities had to conserve their own army to protect themselves as well and weren¡¯t really willing to risk their soldiers dying. Only sending a token sum of soldiers since the higher nobles are aware of the situation and ordered them to reinforce their small town.
Although Crest town had the confidence that they wouldn¡¯t fall or collapse, they were at the forefront of stopping any monster horde from Vermin Paradise and the nobles understood how an insect monster outbreak would get worse with time if not completely suppressed. The royal army was on the move but they were too damn far away and would likely not make it in time from the situation that was getting more urgent by the hour.
¡°What do you want us to do about that?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think the two of them could wipe out a population of insects that were not actively hunting them down.
¡°What do we get out of this?¡± Ning Xin was more practical.
¡°Ha! Don¡¯t try to trick me, you can both wipe off your excitement before trying to trick me. I can see both of your smiles.¡± Ric said while pointing at Ebony¡¯s deadpan expression and Ning Xin¡¯s white mask that covered her face.
It was more and more common for them to look into each other¡¯s eyes and understand what they were thinking. They broke eye contact and looked at Ric at the same time.
¡°You got us. Let¡¯s go.¡± He said.
¡°Wait wait wait, we have to talk about the plan.¡±
¡°Plan?¡± They cocked their heads in unison.
¡°Monster infestation.¡± Ning Xin pointed to where Vermin Paradise was. ¡°Exterminate.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t that the plan?¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°...Come on. You¡¯re not joking?¡± Ric¡¯s mouth was wide open, letting remnant alcohol escape.
He quickly stepped in front of them to physically stop them as they really started walking towards Vermin Paradise.
¡°Relax, I¡¯ll go through it quickly. There are about a dozen grandmasters already staying in town, we were about to act but I decided to wait here a couple more days when I found out you two weren¡¯t far. 2 parties and a couple of solo freelancers together with a couple dozen level 300 Master parties.¡± Ric fumbled for his waterskin by his chair and chugged before continuing.
¡°The plan was to move in and take down as many species¡¯ leader-looking ones as possible and try to dissuade them from coming to this direction while also cutting down the population of the weaker and more numerous insects. Buying time for the reinforcements to arrive. Our scouts are keeping an eye on some targets.¡±
¡°What¡¯s the difference between that and what we said?¡±
¡°Urgh, can¡¯t you just wait a day for me to get the others for a coordinated and comprehensive strike so that we have the situation under control.¡±
¡°We can wait a day.¡± Ning Xin said.
She wanted to rest a little from the constant killing, they were slowly increasing their stats to get used to it and had quite a number of unallocated stat points. Unlike the general populace, their pace of levelling was out of the ordinary and they had an extremely short time to get used to their increasingly stronger body and mind. It was dangerous and they might get hasty with stat placement so they were being very careful.
¡°Oh and no forest fires. We wouldn¡¯t be able to stop a huge fire, Vermin Paradise is expansive and the vegetation is dense. You would probably burn down our town with smoke or the heat would kill my citizens in time.¡± Ric made calls on his myriad bracelet as they were left to their own devices.
¡°And?¡± Ning Xin could sense he wasn¡¯t telling them everything.
¡°...I founded this town. Ever heard of hata? The drink. Yeah, Hata trees are only found here.¡± Ric held a monopoly over the production and sale of hata, which was the closest thing to coffee on Elcra. She was more of a hata drinker than a tea drinker, hata was naturally sweeter than coffee.
That didn¡¯t mean she couldn¡¯t use fire magic, just in a relatively controlled manner.
They didn¡¯t plan to go up the mountain or enter the town of Crest since Ric was calling the freelancers down instead.
The sun fell.
Ric yelled orders to the guards of the dungeon, the guards abandoned their post and entered the dungeon.
Ebony and Ning Xin came over from their resting spot on a dry log where they were maintaining their equipment.
¡°We¡¯ll be going with your plan! My scouts out there and from Crest just informed me the entire Vermin Paradise are on the move in ¡®coordinated panic¡¯ or so they say! The freelancers will join directly from Crest.¡± Ric touched his armour pieces into place even though they were on properly.
The guards who went into the dungeon exited, ¡°Baron! We have informed everyone inside to either stay inside or come out to help as you ordered.¡± Ric apparently gave an urgent warning and Quest. Rewards were promised for those that wanted to back Crest up.
Monsters could enter dungeons too so if the monster infestation were to reach the dungeon portal and enter, those people inside would be caught off guard. Ric knew the people inside would rush out unless they didn¡¯t get the news as they were not in the outpost directly past the portal.
He was right as people were pouring out and rushing up the mountain to get behind proper walls.
Ebony and Ning Xin were already gone from their spot.
???
Ric barked orders, there wasn¡¯t much to say but to make sure his soldiers could make it back to Crest and form up well. He rushed back to Crest ahead of them to get his small defensive force in order and was glad to see the hired hands were all equipped and ready to rumble. He quickly left a short report to all his employees at the Quest Hall, a loud resounding alarm to wake the entire town up and a prepared speech to motivate his citizens that it wasn¡¯t the first infestation outbreak they overcame and it wouldn¡¯t be the last before he went to back the duo and the elite team of freelancers that eagerly left on a charge for the sweet sweet experience. For the level 300 Masters¡¯, even sweeter Natural Potential.
He ran with a little mana enhancement to his legs and more to his eyes. Once he reached the forest, he was in home ground despite the loss of height advantage. Propelling from tree to tree.
The majority of the horde was more than a week deep into Vermin Paradise on a level 180 Runner¡¯s feet that ran for 14 hours a day. If the elites he hired were rushing, they shouldn¡¯t take more than a day or two before they saw the bulk of the horde. At least, that was if the horde wasn¡¯t rushing towards Hata town.
He managed to catch up to the larger parties of Masters while the Grandmasters weren¡¯t in sight.
¡°Don¡¯t get too excited and die alright? Good luck! I¡¯ll be going ahead!¡± Ric hollered to them as fellow Masters pushing their skill levels and building up power and Natural Potential.
¡°Watch yourself!¡± He got some cheers from them. All of them faced the same issue but he was clearly the youngest of the lot and didn¡¯t have the same urgency or rush as the others in terms of fearing not being able to advance to the ranks of a Grandmaster.
Ric looked forward as his hand which held a bow was lifted to the right before he put his hands back down to rest.
4 giant mantises a dozen gors to his right fell with a single hole in their head after they continued their run for a few minutes.
He broke off a few twigs and branches as he ran and continued shooting them into the distance without looking. He conserved his mana as best as he could but he needed to reinforce the twigs and branches or they would disintegrate after they were fired by his bow or get sliced in two and burned up by friction without getting fired.
He saw the sky in the distance shadowing the moonlight and cursed, some flying insects were already all the way over here!
Fortunately, it didn¡¯t take long before the night sky was illuminated by heat and flames.
¡°Great. Must be the Grand Fire Mage,¡± Ric saw shadows dropping down like the flies they were.
His Ocular Farsight finally caught traces of the Grandmasters after chasing them for almost 3 hours. He only just started to wonder why he didn¡¯t pass by Rimestone and the Xeng called Scarlet but he wasn¡¯t in the position to think about that right now.
He put in a little more effort and mana into his body enhancement to join up with the Grandmasters who wanted some breath of fresh air out from dungeons and wanted this lump of experience known as high-level insects that were still weak and relatively easy to kill if they weren¡¯t out of the ordinary.
¡°Hey there little Baron! You caught up, not bad!¡± The massive warrior running in thick metal armour covering his entire body was still jogging faster than the group of Masters that were left behind.
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The lady Grand Fire Mage was sitting on her staff and propelled by flames in the air while the others were running and some were even jogging.
¡°Hey. Was Vermin Paradise mana density supposed to be this high? Especially fire mana density.¡± The Grand Fire Mage flying softly said. All of them could hear her despite the sharp winds they were tearing through with their speed.
Ric jumped up along with a rogue or two, they glided as if something slowed their descent by the pull of gravity.
¡°No, not even close. Not even the recent rise in mana density should warrant this.¡±
¡°The real question is, were there fire elemental insects among the new species that showed up?¡± The Grandmaster Rogue was standing on the Grand Fire Mage¡¯s staff without permission and she tried to shake him off to no avail.
Ric had to land, ¡°Not that I¡¯m aware of.¡±
¡°The REAL! Question is! Why is it cold around here if the fire mana density is high like you said!?¡± The heavily armoured warrior shouted awkwardly to the flying fire mage.
She frowned, having not noticed the temperature as she was flying against cold winds.
¡°Something¡¯s weird.¡± The rogue standing behind her commented as if none of them knew.
They kept going at their current pace since they needed to conserve stamina for the real fight.
About 3 hours later, Ric and the two in the sky finally saw traces of battle.
They were frowning hard.
¡°Ice?¡± The fire mage reported to the people below but was really questioning why there was ice. And it wasn¡¯t just ¡®traces¡¯, most of the forest directly ahead of them was frozen through. Not a single leaf was left without being frozen both above and under while the trees and ground didn¡¯t have any unfrozen parts either.
Ric was glad it was just a thin coating of ice and the trees were mostly unharmed. Then again, he didn¡¯t have anyone coming so deep to harvest hata fruits.
They quickly got close enough to see numerous frozen corpses left in whatever was freezing the insects in their wake. The Grandmasters running on the ground crushed the frozen grass under their feet. Some of them inspected the corpses with a glancing eye.
The rogue that was too lazy to run and was hitching a ride on the fire mage¡¯s staff stepped off and disappeared into the distance as a dark flash.
Ric started to get an inkling, although he can already guess who or what passed by he couldn¡¯t help but get doubtful. Then again, the numerous lot of giant mantises and flying beetles were only level 240.
¡®Only 240.¡¯ He already somewhat understood that Scarlet and Ebony were not bound by the generic level differences but haven¡¯t they left minutes before they did?
All Ric and the grandmasters run past and through for the next hour were frozen corpses that were split apart or broken into pieces and a completely frozen forest.
Ric finally caught sight of the ongoing fight.
¡°HEY! How could you start without us!¡± The warrior screamed at the rogue that joined the flashing figures.
The reason they were stopped or slowed down here was that they finally reached the bulk of the horde that was spreading sideways and flooding the frozen area without being completely frozen through.
No, the long red haired one was squatting down near an unfrozen tree while the greatsword-wielding one was fighting the mantises off. He was holding his ground well as their fellow Grandmaster was taking the horde down with his sharp dagger. The one with the bright red hair was¡picking mushrooms growing on the trees.
They started spreading out as thousands of beetles and mantises rushed past them. The Grandmasters already Identified the low level Master swordsman and woman but didn¡¯t think much of it. They already heard from the young Baron about the extras.
¡°Having trouble?¡± Ric laughed when he saw Ebony get rammed into a tree by a giant beetle with its U-shaped horns.
The Beetle¡¯s horn broke by the time he finished his question. ''Crumbled'' was more accurate.
¡°Damn! They¡¯re spreading out too much. Let¡¯s take down the leaders first!¡± Ric received word from his scouts further ahead.
There were too many insects just flying and running past the dozen of them even though every one of them were taking down dozens with a single attack.
¡°We¡¯re just gonna let these pests go?¡± One of the Grandmasters wielding a weird curved blade asked. He threw out his blade that sliced a couple of insect bodies before the blade returned to his hands.
¡°...The town can handle them, we need you to get rid of the stronger ones at the very least.¡± Ric weighed the pros and cons in his mind.
¡°I¡¯m done picking the mushrooms.¡± Scarlet spoke as if she wasn¡¯t amidst a bloody, corpse-filled battlefield.
¡°Go ahead Ric. If it¡¯s just these, nothing shall pass.¡± Ebony, who he hadn¡¯t seen swinging the large sword said as he continued to take the attacks of the mantises and beetles while they got injured instead.
¡°Those are some big words! I like it!¡± The fully plated warrior slapped the mantis that was trying to bite his head off.
¡°...I¡¯ll be back after I lead them to the insect queens and alphas.¡± The Grandmasters trudged down the path that their fire mage opened.
Ric looked back to see Scarlet¡¯s hair burn up while Ebony ignited into blue flames.
¡®So their extermination hasn¡¯t started?¡¯
He kept a single eye back to see the blue and red light split up, they doubled back to chase those that ran past them before a red flash cut through the forest. The earth was gouged out in a straight line. Cleaved.
Ric took arms and charged his bow and arrow with mana and took as many strays as he could to reduce the pressure on them. The Grandmasters did the same but they didn¡¯t slow their pace down.
¡°Brace!¡± Someone shouted.
Ric was probably not the last to notice the presence of Flood Totas, a type of ape-like beetle that should have been staying underground throughout their lives in huge hives. They were the biggest groups that his scouts have found building hives above ground recently. These beetles could use water magic a little but they were called Flood Tota because they stacked up on each other and crushed everything in their path as a wave of flesh bodies.
The crashing wave of flesh bodies with flexible scales that layered like serpents covered the sky with hundreds of thousands or more of them gripping onto each other and ¡®swimming¡¯ towards them. The Grandmasters dished out their fastest spells and skills before the only earth mage present swallowed all of them up in a dome.
The Grand Fire Mage clearly tore the biggest hole in their numbers but more Totas just took over the opened hole or used the remnant corpses that weren¡¯t burned to ashes as a placeholder.
The Totas may only average around 220 but even they wouldn¡¯t survive a Flood this big without support.
¡®Crap! We¡¯re too far and I didn¡¯t get their contact.¡¯ Ric cursed, he couldn¡¯t even inform Ebony and Scarlet of the incoming wave since they were too far.
¡°Not yet?¡± The massive warrior didn¡¯t like being stuffed in a tight dome of earth.
The Grand Earth Mage struggled with his eyes closed, ¡°Shut up! They¡¯re elling heavy!¡± He single-handedly held up the mass of the Flood Totas that were trampling over his earth dome.
No one disturbed him any further since their lives were in his hands. The close combatants weren¡¯t as worried but the mages and ranged fighters would have a tough time if they were washed over by the Flood Totas even with the many levels and an evolution they had over the weird serpent-humanoid-ish beetles. There were just too many of them and they were a small group.
The seconds ticked slowly.
They burst out after 3 minutes or so.
The hot-blooded warrior laughed heartily when he saw the real occupants of Vermin Paradise not far ahead. Those that rivalled or even surpassed their own levels.
¡°Now¡¯s no longer the time to conserve energy!¡±
¡°Baron, lead the way!¡±
¡°Are your scouts even alive in there?¡±
Ric had tried to connect to his scouts.
It connected.
¡°Follow me!¡± Ric burst forward knowing the freelancers could keep up.
???
¡°Xin,¡± Ebony called through his myriad bracelet.
¡°I know, I can see that huge shadow.¡± Her voice reached his ears. She could talk a little even with her enhancements now.
¡°Let¡¯s give it a good blast, there¡¯s no one in the surroundings.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± She replied.
They joined up before the earth-shaking flood came.
A few of his Glacial Models scattered into Imperishable Frost Scales and formed an orb over 30 metres in diameter with a hole open that could be covered by a single scale.
Ning Xin¡¯s white mask took on an orange glow as it spat out fire into the orb at immense speeds and heat.
Two remaining Glacial Models protected them in the meantime.
It took an entire minute before he closed up the orb, a very long minute.
Ning Xin started running back towards the town. Ebony flew up with the ice mana in his robe as fast as he could. The orb floating above him collapsed inward together with all the gravity mana he could pull away from the surroundings and into the orb. He propelled towards the shadow that he still had to look up to see the top with all his magical prowess and didn¡¯t hesitate to turn around and create as much distance as he could.
Every step of his was supported by a foothold of ice so that he could activate Treading Stride. He couldn¡¯t run on air and the boost from his movement skill was crucial so footholds were necessary.
They didn¡¯t do anything fancy like mixing his freezing flames inside since they haven¡¯t found a way to balance the two flames perfectly.
The tidal wave of flesh and scaly bodies swallowed up the explosion, protecting the forest below.
¡°Come into my domain if things get dangerous.¡±
Ebony still didn¡¯t have enough mana to keep a large domain up for an extended period of time, but he could maintain a really small one that was 1 to 2 metres in radius.
They have managed to do something the Grandmasters didn¡¯t and that was to piss the Flood Totas enough that they wanted revenge. All the creatures in Vermin Paradise appeared to be escaping from something so they ignored the minuscule casualties so far but the two of them had taken almost half of them down.
The Flood Totas reformed and coordinated a water spell, ignoring the ¡®bug¡¯ that dived into them and was burning, slicing and cooking part of their colony. They aimed at the one who killed so many of them.
¡®I can¡¯t reflect that.¡¯ Ebony naturally reflects or returns physical shock with mana vibrations through physical contact. The ranged spell would safely hit him.
The two of his Glacial Models stood in front of him and stretched out their arms and sword that reformed into a shield that looked no different from his past Layered Ice Carapace. Their legs were stabbed into the ground like utility poles. The concentrated beam of water was repelled to the sides, tearing the trees and earth apart. The film of repulsion on his congregation of Imperishable Ice Scales didn¡¯t fully stop the water from coming into contact with his shields but the attack was stopped and his Glacial Models didn¡¯t budge a step back.
His body and his Models copied Ning Xin and they propelled into the wave. Uncountable little grubbers tried to grab onto him only to have their short three-fingered hands freeze off by touching his Frostblaze Augmentation. Those that managed to touch him with mana-protected hands were repelled, chopped off or shattered a moment later.
He didn¡¯t use his domain since his natural reflection of physical force with mana vibrations ate up his mana. There wasn¡¯t a need either since the Flood Totas were considerably weak individually. He burst out the ice mana in his robes as mist but it was quickly vapourised as Ning Xin did something similar.
Their heads had been ringing with notifications but it could be silence so they were not really disrupted.
What next was not all that different from chopping vegetables as the Flood Totas were not willing to separate from each other, their attempts to tear him away were utterly futile since they couldn¡¯t touch him, just his Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. The Giant mantises could at least whack through the membrane, letting them taste the Sonic Intrusion into their claws.
Most of the Flood Totas were 40 to 50 levels above them, allowing them to gain massive amounts of experience.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t use fire elemental enhancement to prevent herself from burning too much of the forest but she wasn¡¯t any slower than him in terms of extermination. Nothing could stop her path of carnage. A single beat of her heart and she flashed through the wave multiple times, back and forth.
She didn¡¯t use her body to ram them into pulp but elegantly dissected them in the fraction of the second that she came into contact with them.
After the Flood Tota¡¯s numbers fell drastically from both of their efforts, she stood still and repeatedly pierced the air.
Ebony could hear her arms snap like a shotgun but her pierces were tearing through space and perforating one or more heads every time she performed her machine gun-like thrusts.
He continued his dance along with his Models. The rhythmic flow of Icicle¡¯s path was being guided and drawn to his targets by a link of gravity mana that was steadily strengthening.
The remaining ¡®flood¡¯ formed a large fist and punched at him from above with water protecting them and preventing them from freezing instantly. The influx of their mana constantly thawed the amount that froze.
Ebony was smashed into the ground while their ¡®fist¡¯ had a hole of dead bodies. He climbed out of the ground and didn¡¯t even need to dust himself off as he came out clean. The attack didn¡¯t appear to do anything but push him into the floor like nailing a wooden board.
The ¡®battlefield¡¯ that Ning Xin would¡¯ve called a chopping board had floating red bubbles everywhere.
He wasn¡¯t sure how long they took but they took a break as he waited for all the expanding red bubbles to fly towards her, the massive stream of blood flowed into her mask.
He could see the red feather darkening, pulsing even as if it was gulping down blood. A steady stream flowed from under her mask to her mouth, purified of its remaining essence. There was so much that she let Scorching Gleam have their fill too. She couldn¡¯t compress mana as impressively as he could and more so for blood mana. Once she had her fill, she took a glass bottle and uncorked it.
The sea of blood was sucked into the bottle without limit.
¡°We have strays to catch up to,¡± Ebony said, deeper into Vermin Paradise was a cacophony of screeches and a few roars but quite a few insects passed them while they dealt with the Flood Totas.
¡°Can¡¯t let them think it¡¯s so easy to bypass us.¡± Ning Xin licked her bloody lips under her mask as she was completely re-energised. Her bloody clothes were also drained of its blood, an advantage of not using too much fire magic was that there was more blood left over.
Chapter 145: Knight Earthfly
¡°Baron Ric!¡± A Master Rogue fully dressed in black suppressed his voice.
¡°Good job, Tom. Is this group of Earthflies not moving?¡± Ric watched the small critters no bigger than a housecat.
¡°Their queen is one of those that didn¡¯t find it necessary to move for some reason. Either unaware of the unknown threat like us or just confident that it doesn¡¯t need to move. The other species with a strong queen in charge similarly seemed to be waiting things out. They are getting jittery though, the masses of lower levelled creatures that move in smaller groups or don¡¯t have a similar entity like a queen of their own already evacuated their habitats.¡± Thomas reported.
¡°Any sign of the reason for the sudden explosion of movement?¡± A flying fire mage scared the similarly jittery Thomas when she appeared from above him.
¡°N--no. Greetings Grandmaster.¡± Thomas gave a salute of courtesy like the soldier he was.
Most of the Grandmasters showed themselves in Thomas¡¯s cramped hiding spot.
Many of them took a step back when they saw what he was keeping an eye on.
After a short moment of silence, the huge warrior spoke up. ¡°Any of you know that things¡¯ level?¡±
One of the Grandmaster Rogues that was dressed not unlike Thomas raised his hand together with the fire mage. Thomas saw that Baron Ric reacted too, the man was clearly aware. After all, Thomas had reported that he was unable to Identify the queen Earthfly¡¯s level but he was level 233 with Identify at level 11 so it wasn¡¯t weird for him to be unable to Identify many of the monsters deeper into Vermin Paradise.
Even though they raised their hands, neither of them spoke up.
¡°Come on!¡± The impatient ones hurried.
¡°F..five hundred. But unevolved. The 3 stronger-looking ones around the queen are four-fifty.¡±
Gulps could be heard from many of them.
Thomas was thanking the Baron in his mind for making him keep so much distance from his target. He didn¡¯t need to be very smart to realise that many of these Grandmasters were nowhere close to that level since they couldn¡¯t Identify the queen either. He sneakily Identified them hoping their senses weren¡¯t so good they could notice since it can often be seen as rude. Their overflowing essence was usually proof of their status as Grandmasters.
He saw an assortment from 310 to the highest of 367. His Identify skill was refined to check levels instead of a wider variety of classes or objects. The highest level was the Rogue that dressed like him and raised his hand. Fortunately, none of them said anything about him Identifying them but he didn¡¯t like the looks of the situation.
What he didn¡¯t expect were laughs of excitement.
The group of freelancers didn¡¯t even take caution and broke out of his hiding spot, launching their attacks at the stuffed Earthfly nest.
¡°Tom, I have an important mission for you.¡±
¡°Yes Sir!¡± He straightened his back.
¡°Act as their guide and lead them to the others who are watching the other species'' leaders. I will be backing up our guys back home, I¡¯m quite worried to have left them without a leader at such important times.¡± Ric put both his hands on Thomas¡¯s shoulders.
¡°Leave it to me sir Ric!¡± Thomas proudly said with a shaking fist.
Ric left immediately.
¡°Focus kiddo!¡±
¡®W..what if they die instead, Baron Ric!!¡¯ Thomas screamed internally as someone grabbed his collar and threw him out before his hiding spot was squashed into smithereens by one of the Earthflies he labelled as ¡®royal guards¡¯. They were very common amongst species with a queen.
He was regretting his bravado in front of his idol.
???
Ric was moving solo now and couldn¡¯t afford to draw the attention of anything too powerful. Luckily for him, other than the insect queens, there wasn¡¯t much in these parts that he would consider too powerful. After he put some distance with the group, he began taking down those insects that were rushing out of Vermin Paradise and left those that didn¡¯t escape alone.
His senses tingled as a shiver ran down his spine. He glanced back to where the outburst of overflowing essence was coming from.
¡°ELL!¡± He cursed, the true big guys within Vermin Paradise were moving towards him or rather, out of Vermin Paradise. As for the reason they were not going other directions it was because behind Vermin Paradise was Fragadal¡¯s Sea and they didn¡¯t like heat. There was a good chance that was where they were running from as well.
He could only hope there were no dungeon breaks from some unknown dungeon as his town was too close for comfort.
He wished the best for his scouts still out there. Afraid that Ebony and Scarlet were swallowed up by the Flood Totas and what the flood meant for his town.
Ric took a swig from one of his waterskins that he had hanging on his hip. It was his favourite alcohol.
¡°Puhah! That hits the spot.¡± The alcohol kept him calm and helped him destress.
He bit onto the mouth of his waterskin, flipped around mid jump and released 2 arrows that found its way onto his fingers and bowstring. In his spin, he readied the branches he pickled off-handedly and shot them seemingly randomly as he hadn''t landed. Two huge birds dropped and landed before his feet touched the thick branch he jumped to.
The birds had a wooden stick poking out from in between their eyes, although they didn''t look harmed their brains were mushed up. Their high Vitality let them spasm and attempt to stand or flap their wings to no avail, they died a couple minutes later. Ric didn¡¯t have the time to pull his arrows out since he already vacated his previous location.
¡°Urh, I drank more than I wanted to.¡± Ric capped his waterskin tightly.
¡°Oh?! Lucky me, natural potential!¡± Ric heard the notification that those birds were actually level 340.
He had reached level 300 pretty recently and hadn¡¯t had time to go hunting for Natural Potential.
Ric came to a gentle but sudden stop.
¡®What?¡¯
He rushed to meet the speeding figures.
???
¡°Hey! You¡¯re alright! What happened? Why did you come here?¡± Ric asked them.
¡°Mmm. We didn¡¯t find anything left. I doubt anything escaped both our senses.¡± Ebony said. There might be a few that they didn¡¯t find since the forest was so wide but he doubted those would be much of a problem. They really couldn¡¯t find any more after they backtracked.
There was a large group of Masters that took care of those they let past so it wasn¡¯t completely their efforts.
¡°What do you mean why? We¡¯re continuing the extermination. Why are you back?¡± Ning Xin asked in a confused tone not too different from what he was feeling at the moment.
Ric was stunned but made a call to one of his soldiers or assistants back at the town.
¡°No..nothing reached yet? Not a single critter?¡±
¡°No sir, don¡¯t worry, we¡¯re keeping a proper lookout.¡±
¡°Are you going back?¡± Ebony asked as Ric ended his call.
¡°Haha, of course not. Extermination right?¡± Ric took his waterskin to drink from, Ebony could smell the alcohol.
He quickly dodged the spit from Ric¡¯s mouth that came suddenly, Ning Xin shifted out of the way as well.
¡°What was that for? Did you choke?¡± Ebony questioned the wide mouthed Baron.
¡°Nothing nothing. The Flood Totas, exterminated huh?¡± Ric asked weird questions, he should¡¯ve known the answer already.
¡°Hmm? Oh.¡± Ebony realised what Ric was shocked about.
The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
¡°Oh, yay! 208!¡± Ning Xin also just noticed
Ric watched the two of them excitedly high-fived a few times like a couple of flirts.
¡°Are you feeling okay?¡± Ebony asked. The speedy level-ups made them feel uncomfortable for some time. Bloated in a weird sense.
¡°Still good.¡± She replied before facing Ric, ¡°Try to keep up.¡±.
The lightning mana near her belly pulsed, the wind got out of the way and propelled her.
Ebony enhanced himself further and chased like a constantly reappearing phantom.
¡°...You brats think you can get rid of me?¡± Ric burst after them.
Ebony looked ahead, the mana density had been growing as they dived deeper into Vermin Paradise.
¡°To the left.¡± Ric was beside him before he knew it.
¡®He¡¯s fast¡for such a thin amount of mana enhancing himself. High Agility? Tier 3 movement skill? Speed or movement-related Fortifications?¡¯ Ebony saw that Ric could keep up with him without getting out of breath.
He was currently using uncompressed Frostblaze Augmentation with regenerated mana but the Agility buff he got was extremely high now that his Intelligence increased while his base Constitution allowed him to withstand the strength of his mana. He could at least let his body fully fill with compressed mana without any pain or having his body break.
¡°Be careful, the freelancers are fighting the Earthfly Queen and her lackeys now. Apparently level 500, unevolved. With 3 royal guards at 450. Its lackeys are around 320 to 370. A lot of them. Can you two handle that?¡±
¡°The queen and royal guards, probably not.¡± Ebony did not expect to hear such numbers.
An evolution gap wasn¡¯t that easy to overcome, the power difference was probably too large. They hadn¡¯t had time to push their skill level much in the past two months or so. Their levels outgrew their skills too quickly.
¡®Vermin Paradise is more dangerous than I thought.¡¯
He shot forward when he sensed a familiar pulse.
Ning Xin used her ridiculous Core Skill.
That was a sign that there was something that required her to do so.
It didn¡¯t take long for him to see 3 bloody warriors fighting a brown fly the size of a small cabin. It had thin brown wings of earth protecting itself from every one of the warriors¡¯ attacks.
The short, probably Dwarven warrior blocked the pillar of earth sent at them.
[Knight Earthfly Lvl ???]
He was going to assume it was one of those royal guards or a high-level lackey; otherwise, the 3 Grandmasters shouldn¡¯t be having such a hard time. Ning Xin was raining thrusts at it but it didn¡¯t even react to it.
That would obviously anger her. She cranked it up with another earth-shaking pulse of her heart that caused the Grandmaster warriors'' attention to break for a moment. ¡®Earthshaking¡¯ was literal as the floor cracked when her heart beat. The heat coming from her meant she didn¡¯t hold back on her magical enhancement either.
He did the same and dipped into his compressed mana pool.
All of them didn¡¯t talk, merely exchanging glances when the Earthfly were at a standstill, as if they were waiting before making another rash move. The Grandmasters weren¡¯t the only ones injured, the house-sized fly was missing a leg, it stopped its bleeding with earth.
Its feelers twitched and all of them moved.
The Dwarf handled the fly¡¯s earth magic but he wasn¡¯t able to occupy it completely. It flapped its large wings that sent tiny particles of condensed earth at all of them.
The axe-wielding human swung hard, shouting ¡°Gust slash!¡±
It wasn¡¯t everyday that he heard people shouting skill names.
The wind managed to weaken the cloud of small earth particles that peppered onto their bodies, injuring no one. The slash of wind had a wide area of effect and blew onto the Earthfly like a splash of water but it achieved its purpose.
The sword and shield wielding human got close and personal and managed to stab into the Earthfly¡¯s eye when the Dwarf and Ebony locked its feet down with ice and earth magic. A few arrows found their way into its other eye and even under its wings which looked softer but the arrows bounced off the body. It didn¡¯t have eyelids but it knocked the warrior stabbing its eye while its feelers plucked the arrows out.
The warrior managed to block the casual strike from the Earthfly with his shield, letting his body redirect as much of the force as possible without much thought. He trusted his body to move in a way that receives the least damage. Most warriors who clocked in enough time in real battle did.
They continued to draw blood against the Earthfly, Ning Xin being able to barely keep up with them while he had to lower his enhancement output so that he doesn¡¯t affect the other warriors who didn¡¯t have that much of a resistance to cold. They complained about it even though the heat from Ning Xin was combating his cold, it made them very uncomfortable to be in between such extreme temperatures.
Since Ning Xin couldn¡¯t afford to take a single hit, she had been cautious despite her initial outburst. He was glad she had greater control over her actions in her enhanced state.
¡°He¡¯s try¡¯na go down!¡± The Dwarf warned. He slammed his war axe on the ground as it rippled violently.
Ebony stepped forward to freeze the entire Earthfly to help slow it down as the Dwarf looked as if he was unable to stop the Earthfly.
It had been a feint and they all fell for it.
All of its remaining legs were rooted as its wing fluttered very quickly but they appeared as if they barely moved.
¡°Boy!¡± Someone shouted from behind him, it should be the Dwarf.
The front of the Earthfly was peppered with uncountable tiny holes that dug hundreds of metres deep, he faced the full brunt of the tiny earth projectiles.
The Grandmasters, Ning Xin and Ric were all able to get away in time but he had been right in front of the Earthfly when it decided to attack with the earth mana it gathered under its wings. The Dwarf probably sensed it too late.
The Earthfly didn¡¯t have much intelligence for a monster at whatever level it was at. It didn¡¯t even check for the results of its attack, removing itself from the ground to fend itself from the many slashes going after it.
Ebony was covered by a thick dust cloud, he conveniently thrust into the thinnest spot he found from his angle since the Earthfly had been forced to stay where it was. It had been surprisingly easy to dig into because the Earthfly lost a thick layer of earth mana protecting it.
Another gust of wind blew the dust cloud away to show them that he was well and dandy. The Earthfly had its neck cut halfway through.
He hadn¡¯t been able to drive it all the way before the Earthfly had more earth mana reinforcing itself.
As if it was out of steam, the battle went smoothly and it was dead by the end of the minute.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Knight Earthfly Lvl 382], enemy 170 levels above your own. Partial experience gained. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience is gained.¡¯
He also gained a level to reach 209 for all three of his Classes along with a couple of skill levels. It wasn¡¯t rare but a few of his levels were gained mid-spar and once, even while he was fighting monsters. It confirmed that he didn¡¯t need to kill anything to gain experience but the bulk of it came from kills and final hits.
Ebony was assaulted by a pair of burning gloved hands touching his body and robe to check for injuries. The glowing pair of softened eyes shot up to meet his own. He patted her head.
¡°I¡¯m okay. That wasn¡¯t enough to hurt me.¡±
She pinched his side and he let out an ¡®ow¡¯ because he really felt it.
¡°You¡¯re a tough cookie!¡±
¡°As interested as I am in knowing how you survived that, we need to back the others up. We took almost 3 whole minutes for this one.¡±
¡°How many more are there?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°The queen and her guards are being held by some impressive guy together with our leader and some fire mage chick. This guy was the toughest of the group, the rest are closer to 330. We took down a couple hundred in the initial clash but there should be a couple thousand more. It''s a small nest, insect types considered.¡± The sword and shield wielder looked over his weapon to check for chips.
They didn¡¯t need any guide since they could hear the clash of steel and flesh. Together with some loud spells.
The small group didn¡¯t dally or collect any monster parts, they left to reinforce the others. Ebony finally saw the same group of people that passed them earlier. He counted the same number, minus three. He didn¡¯t see any monster that looked like it would be a queen or royal guard either. The fight was really messy but he liked what he saw.
Not all of them were acquainted with each other but they didn¡¯t complain or have any infighting, helping to block an attack for someone from a different party or a solo freelancer or giving support whenever they could.
All of them knew they needed as many hands alive on deck if they wanted to increase their chances of getting out of this alive. A moment of carelessness was enough for one of them to lose their lives and they might fall like dominoes if the balance was broken.
To be fair, there wasn¡¯t much of a balance. People were doing what they do pretty well, exterminating pests.
He didn¡¯t see many interesting skills but all of them were solid fighters.
He couldn¡¯t help but notice Ric though, he was a close-ranged archer that focused on speed and accuracy rather than range and power. Ric would get close and personal flitting in between Earthflies while giving each of those that he passed a couple of arrows in their joints or eyes. Most of their vitals were protected pretty well.
The nobleman gave support that allowed the Grandmaster to finish off the Earthflies in the next attack or two.
''The size difference of these flies is big...'' Ebony notice the cat-sized monsters and mentally compared with the previous cabin-sized one.
¡°Deserters!¡± A feminine voice yelled.
Some of the Earthflies appeared to have decided to escape rather than fight to the death.
Ebony and Ning Xin moved at the same time. Neither of them liked to fight in a group that was susceptible to heat and cold. Even if they could withstand extreme temperatures, it would ultimately hinder the others in some way. Eating into their stamina or mana was a likely outcome, depending on how they protected themselves against harsh conditions.
¡°Masters?¡±
¡°Leave them be. Xeng.¡±
¡°Oooo!¡±
¡°I¡¯ve never seen one.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve been to Xienor, there aren¡¯t many people left. Apparently, they''re only in Xienor as some sort of holiday. No one really stays there anymore.¡±
¡°No wonder we haven¡¯t heard any news about them for some time.¡±
¡°Ell! What was that?¡±
¡°Their overflowing essence.¡± Ric cut into their conversation. He was familiar with ridiculous overflow.
The feelers of the Earthflies all shook violently in reaction.
¡°They got agitated.¡±
¡°Go!¡±
Ebony and Ning Xin took the momentary lapse of attention to decapitate a few Earthflies each.
They were having an easier time with the couple dozen of Earthflies compared to one of the dungeons¡¯ level 250 guardians. It was unknown if it was due to the inherent weakness of insect types, their weak resistance to extreme temperatures or that the dungeon guardian they fought was tougher than the average beast.
Chapter 146: Queens and Kings
Ebony and Ning Xin returned to reinforce the others, but they were already finishing up.
"Anyone injured?" The Grand Water Mage draped in a dark blue robe asked.
She was a healer.
The three Grandmaster warriors that fought the stronger Earthfly had slightly deeper cuts, so she tended to them. The others only had light cuts and bruises at best.
They led the way to the silent fight in a deep crater that looked as if a meteor had hit the ground.
He could see a truck-sized Earthfly that was sliced through the centre. It was different; other than its smaller size, it had a thick brown shell that was covered in black scorch marks. The thin, flat blades near it should¡¯ve been its wings. They looked sharp.
A plated man the size of a huge beastman was taking on two of the same type of Earthfly. Ebony could barely follow their forms and figures, despite their size.
"Stay away!" A lady¡¯s voice reached the top of the crater where they were standing.
The dishevelled fire mage was supporting the warrior; he had stopped long enough for Ebony to spot a missing arm. Freshly missing, the fire mage was holding on to it. The water mage who was also a healer, noticed that before he did and was in the middle of dashing down when she heard the fire mage¡¯s warning
None of the other Grandmasters beside him moved to reinforce the duo. The ranged fighters didn¡¯t even dare to help and draw the attention of the two fierce-looking Earthfly. It wasn¡¯t a fight they could intervene in.
Ebony couldn''t Identify all the Grandmasters present, but the dual sword wielder could. The dozen people he was standing with were around 310 to 330. The single-armed warrior was 348, and the grand fire mage in the air was 345. While the oddest frame in the crater was a man dressed in black at level 367, having his hand placed on the head of a light brown Earthfly, the size of a family car.
Neither the man nor the insect queen were moving.
The rogue was sweating, trying to focus as best he could while the royal guards were gunning for him only to be held back by the warrior and fire mage.
He wasn¡¯t winning the exchange as the wings of the queen were beginning to twitch.
"We gotta support them somehow." Ric said.
"How? We¡¯re just going to distract them and break the bal-ug!" The water mage was pulled aside violently.
"They noticed us!"
All of them have already backed off a great distance
Fortunately, the healer was saved from an attack that cut deep into the crater and passed them.
The scream that followed wasn¡¯t pleasant to hear. The single-armed warrior took a deep gash that cut right into his shoulder; his armour probably saved him from being sliced completely through. He had interrupted the royal guards'' attack to save them.
"Boss!" The human warrior with the sword and shield called out.
The other royal guard didn¡¯t let the opportunity presented by the warrior who fell on his back go. It went for the swiftest charge it could, an earth-infused stab with a sharpened earth head.
Ebony wasn¡¯t sure if he could make it in time, but he had sent a stream of his mana to the warrior and fire mage before they dodged the unseen attack.
The warrior¡¯s body didn¡¯t reject his mana, and he gave him an augmentation of agility and strength for whatever it was worth. His mana came into contact right before the Earthfly smashed down; they didn¡¯t see him dodge, but Ebony could sense through the mana that he sent into the Grandmaster warrior that he managed to roll away by the skin of his teeth, saving his life.
The mage, on the other hand, looked at him when his mana touched her mana infused body. He was unsure if she could tell he was trying to help and not harm her or if she noticed the effects. She let his mana through after a moment of hesitation. He buffed her Intelligence. Wisdom would be useless for her since she was flying, and others wouldn¡¯t be able to recover mana while casting, unlike him.
It wasn¡¯t much, but she noticed a slight difference.
The effect was small, as her fire magic did little more than give the Earthfly a new paint job. Ning Xin realised that from the start.
The three warriors saw that their ¡®boss¡¯ was still alive and dove in to save him, no longer caring about their own safety. The water mage did the same, she didn¡¯t appear to be able to fly.
Ning Xin was about to charge in as well, but not before he could pull her back.
"She¡¯s breaking free." His voice was heard by every single one, including a scout hiding some distance away.
The wings of the insect queen were vibrating faster and faster.
The two of them didn¡¯t say a word to each other but burst for the queen at the same time. They weren¡¯t even a match for the royal guards, and there was little chance they could even escape from something that appeared way scarier.
The royal guards wanted to block their path, but Ric showered them with arrows that pestered them, then a gush of water made the insects'' earthen protection wet and heavy. Buying enough time for Ebony to skid to the left of the queen while Ning Xin stopped by her right.
He saw the level 367 Grand Rogue¡¯s eyes locked tightly.
They put their hands on the barely moving queen, and he unleashed his domain that only reached him and the queen. She sank deeper into the ground. His ice couldn¡¯t even dig an inch in; he controlled their burst into frost flames, hoping it wouldn¡¯t knock the Grandmaster out of focus with whatever magic he was using.
Ning Xin lashed out at whatever vitals she could poke at, but her full powered thrust didn¡¯t even scratch the queen¡¯s open eyeballs. She continued trying till she saw no difference even after three consecutive Rampaging Mortal¡¯s Pulses and a thousand thrusts that she was free to build up.
She copied him, but instead of putting her hands on the queen, she squeezed both her blades into the queen''s mouth. Her blades sparked and burned.
Ebony tried his best to attach a thread of mana to everyone to enhance them with Battle Song. He didn''t really need to play a song, but the different vibrations for different augmentations produced different sounds. Now that he had condensed it into a thread of mana, it wouldn¡¯t attract attention from people or monsters.
It wasn¡¯t much help, but better than nothing.
They heard another scream from the ongoing battle with the royal guard, but he knew it wasn¡¯t a fatal blow to whoever it was with his senses.
His flames only just managed to dig through unbelievably thick earth mana. The queen was mostly encased in ice, but he knew it wasn¡¯t even inhibited by his ice, but rather by the rogue¡¯s efforts.
He managed to stop its wings from flapping, but once his flames crawled onto the queen¡¯s actual body, the layer of ice he built shattered, and the rogue coughed up enough blood to splash onto Ning Xin. The queen Earthfly screeched. Her opened mouth let the flames and lightning mana burst out, but Ning Xin was in complete control, so it didn¡¯t harm her or the rogue.
He doubled down with the ice mana in his robe and Icicle, recreating the layer of ice that was glowing underneath with his flames eating into the struggling queen.
They kept the status quo, but the rogue¡¯s complexion wasn¡¯t looking great. Ebony thought it would be a good idea to smash violent mana vibrations into the queen¡¯s head, but his mana wasn¡¯t penetrating her skin or whatever outer shell she was made of. He only shattered the frozen earthen layer.
He stretched his arm out to Ning Xin with his sleeves rolled up, the rogue¡¯s eyes still locked tight.
Ning Xin¡¯s lower mask vanished and she took a large bite. He was softened up since he was losing mana extremely fast, even with the small range of his domain. She drank a bit of his blood and her heart stopped beating.
His Glacial Models, which were helping with the fight against the royal guards were completely shattered, but the blocks of ice flew toward and above him. Ning Xin dragged out whatever mana she had and filled the formed orb up with flames.
The rogue coughed up even more blood and opened his eyes.
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Ebony stuffed the compressed bomb into the queen¡¯s open mouth, dragged the rogue with gravity repelling him and Threading Stride to push him further.
Ning Xin managed to shatter the flimsy, frozen wings before flashing backwards. That was the only part she could damage, even after all her strengthening.
The queen broke free from her imprisonment and was clearly aware of something being stuffed into her mouth. She didn¡¯t manage to spit the ball out.
¡®Hot damn.¡¯ He couldn¡¯t help but be a little surprised.
The explosion they expected didn¡¯t come.
The queen¡¯s lower jaw came off.
That was it.
At most, some of her internals were burned. But the queen was spasming a little, and he could only guess that Ning Xin¡¯s infusion of lightning and his frost flames that were still digging into the queen were doing something.
"Run¡" The man in his grasp weakly said.
None of them needed his reminder, as everyone was on the move already.
Ebony didn¡¯t think his mana amplification for everyone would''ve played such a large part. The group of weaker Grandmasters managed to kill one of the royal guards. He attributed it to the water mage. She had drowned one of the royal guards in a large bubble of water and dove in to fight it inside her water bubble. He even thought it was similar to his domain.
The royal guard had been weighed down by its own earth armour that got wet. The water mage still couldn¡¯t match the tough bug and escaped her own bubble within seconds, but the fire mage backed her up, and they boiled the poor bug to death.
The close-range fighters had a very tough time with the other royal guard, despite so many of them ganging up on the big bug. It was a miracle that he didn¡¯t see anyone dead. Ric was missing; he ran off into the distance right after his first attack.
The insect queen broke free right after one of the two remaining royal guards got boiled to death; he had gotten partial experience. Probably from his assistance in reinforcing them with his sound magic and his Glacial Model¡¯s short exchange.
The last guard didn¡¯t take the chance to attack their backs but instead retreated to its queen¡¯s side instead.
The queen didn¡¯t attack immediately, disoriented from losing her jaw and expelling the cold that was getting deeper into her.
"Great job with the wings!" The heavily plated dying warrior with a missing arm and his other shoulder cut almost halfway down had a resoundingly hearty voice. He was getting piggybacked by his party member with the water mage healer right behind, reattaching his arm.
An earth shaking screech pulled all their attention away. It was clearly one filled with rage and not fear.
"Urg¡you jinx." The high-level rogue shook his head, it was still throbbing with pain.
"Uh oh." The voice surprisingly came from Ebony.
Ning Xin couldn¡¯t help but look back when she saw him glancing back.
"Scatter!" Someone shouted.
Behind them was the queen having her larger companion holding her up and acting as her wings.
The royal guard dive-bombed them with an even greater speed, using its queen as a payload.
They had created an immense distance but it seemed almost pointless as they would catch up in the next few seconds.
???
"Bon! Where are you!?" Ric urgently yelled into his bracelet. He had left at his top speed the instant the battle began.
"ELL!" Ric cursed when he got no reply.
"Baron, follow me! I know his last location." Thomas wasn¡¯t far away.
He was glad he sent his fastest scouts on this mission.
"What¡¯s the plan sir?" Thomas knew that the situation with the Earthflies was far from ideal.
Ric scoffed.
"We make it a battle between queens." He took another swig from his waterskin.
"...I better get a pay raise sir!" Thomas broke out of stunned silence, looking straight into Ric¡¯s eyes.
They had a good laugh.
It didn¡¯t take too long before they knew why Bon picked up but didn¡¯t speak. He was just about to get discovered by the queen he was keeping his eye on. Ric must have spoken too loud and drew the queen¡¯s attention to Bon¡¯s hidden location.
Ric pushed Thomas into the vegetation, using a skill he didn¡¯t like to use. He charged mana into his bow and an arrow that glowed so fast that some mages might not be able to keep up with it.
It definitely caught the bug''s attention when it exploded in its face.
"Heh, catch me little bugger." Ric taunted, chugging down the rest of his alcohol.
He took something out of a pouch by his hips and threw it at the queen. Rare paralysing powder.
His arrows and attacks would just bounce off.
He had the second most exciting race of his life with the inhibited queen-ranked insect that wasn¡¯t capable of flight. It didn¡¯t care about the environment and tore down everything in its path.
Another leap brought him into the open, where he saw all the freelancers. He smiled at his incredible timing and how his plan seemed to have fallen into place.
His follower leapt after him and crashed into the Earthfly queen that was in the middle of a similar chase.
"Am I too late?"
???
"So you didn¡¯t run after all!"
The man carrying the one armed warrior couldn¡¯t move away from the queen¡¯s flight path in time and was crying with joy; that had been too close for comfort.
"Time to go h-" Ric was interrupted by his ringing bracelet. He reluctantly probed it with mana to pick up the call.
"Sir!" Another one of his scouts yelled.
"What now?" Ric wanted to take another sip but he ran out.
"Gorpede is on the move! Towards Hata! Together with flood totas!" His scout didn¡¯t seem to be worried about raising his volume.
All of them cursed except for Ebony, Ning Xin, and the one-armed warrior who had his arm reattached on the move. Ric connected his callstone with all his scouts and got them to retreat.
"Who¡¯s Gorpede?" Ebony had to ask.
"Who? Just the king of Vermin paradise!"
"What kind of insect is it?"
"Huh? Don¡¯t tell me you¡¯ve never seen a gerpede?"
¡®Gerpede¡oh, centipedes. Wait¡no way right?¡¯ Ebony was initially a little dumbfounded by the name they had for centipedes, but if he were to translate a gor to length, the monster was literally called "kilometrepede"
"You¡¯re telling me it¡¯s a gigantic gerpede."
"You tell me, that wave of flood totas earlier? It would be a matter of less than five bites for the Gorpede. And, it¡¯s a bona fide king-class monster of levels unknown not these figurative ''queens''."
"And that thing is also running away from something?" Ebony curiously asked.
Apart from the battle between the giant beetle and the fly, their escape was filled with silence. The beetle seemed to be losing. It must have been considerably weaker if it couldn¡¯t win a fight against a wounded Earthfly queen.
A soft vibration came from Ric¡¯s bracelet again.
"What now!" Ric got snappy after he picked up.
"Baron Ric, uhm¡" Ric recognised the voice, it wasn¡¯t one of his scouts but one from his town.
Ric took a deep breath, calming down as he dodged stray earth projectiles from behind.
"Speak."
"Th-the king is here!" His trustworthy assistant reported
"WHAT! I just barely got the report that Gorpede is on the move, and you¡¯re telling me he reached Hata!?" Shellshocked would be an understatement; Gorpede was far deeper in Vermin Paradise. With its outrageous size, there was no way none of them realised that it bypassed them. The whole forest would quake even from a distance, and they haven¡¯t felt anything of the sort, so they should still have plenty of time.
"What? Sir, I don¡¯t underst- gorpede is on the move!?"
Ric then heard his assistant talking to someone else, but it was too soft for him to make out the words clearly.
"Who were you talking to? No, more importantly, you weren¡¯t talking about Gorpede?" Ric¡¯s stress levels were already high; he didn¡¯t need additional confusion.
Ebony, on the other hand, recoiled when something obliterated his mana perception. Obliterated, his perception of mana got wiped out by something that passed by them from the front.
"Hmm?" A deep voice that wasn¡¯t from any of those present echoed.
For some reason, all of them stopped running at the same time.
There just wasn¡¯t a need to anymore because the loud clashes between two queens disappeared.
"Madam Veronica¡¯s granddaughter?" The one who spoke had a similar build to Ebony, just slightly taller. It was a man with dark pink hair and even darker eye circles¡ªa man with a face too handsome to be human.
It was a face everyone present recognised, except maybe Ning Xin.
¡®Barrier king.¡¯ Ebony had seen the unbelievably handsome face a few times on statues. He could see some resemblance between Hector and him. That didn¡¯t really matter; his mana perception came up blank. He would¡¯ve felt more blind than when he was actually blind if it weren''t for the fact that he could still sense gravitational waves.
There was a film around the barrier king that made it such that gravitational waves didn¡¯t land on him. If Ebony still had his mana perception, he would be able to tell that it was the barrier king¡¯s magic body.
"Who are you?" Ning Xin had her hands on her blades.
Ric was already on one knee, together with the other Grandmasters, injured or not
"The Empire¡¯s King." Ebony sent a thread of mana into her ears and she tensed up even more.
"Here¡¯s a little meeting gift." The man tossed them a black ball.
Ebony caught in on her behalf when he sensed the thick gravity mana it contained. The ball weighed a couple tons even though it was the size of a walnut.
He knew what it was.
The Earthfly queen, her royal guard and the beetle queen. This compressed ball of flesh was everything that was left of them.
¡®How did he squash all of them into a¡flesh ball? Barrier magic? A simple compression?¡¯ Ebony could make some guesses, but none of them saw what happened. They were simply running; they didn¡¯t even have time to blink and this ball was all that was left.
¡®And he''s gone.¡¯
With the weight off all their shoulders¡¯, they stood up and slowly made their way back to Hata town. Their work here was done.
Chapter 147: Navin
¡°That¡that was real right? I wasn¡¯t daydreaming was I?¡±
¡°Real. I couldn¡¯t even catch his shadow, I thought he was a pure mage.¡±
¡°What say you, Baron?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t look at me. It¡¯s not like I have personally seen the king before, I doubt the existence of someone daring to pose as him.¡± Ric was currently confused at the barrier king¡¯s presence in his territory.
They took their time making their way to Hata town. There were a surprising number of monsters on their way back. They were just a few people, Ebony and Scarlet couldn¡¯t possibly cover the wide forest but the bulk of it facing Ric¡¯s town was already cleared up. The leftovers probably come from other directions, attracted by the Master warriors perhaps.
Their group found the larger group of Masters taking charge and covering as much area as possible, insects monsters weren¡¯t exactly known for their individual strength so even the average Master warrior can deal with a few at a time.
¡°Baron!¡± One of the unoccupied warriors called out. His facial expression darkened visibly at the injured group of Grandmasters.
¡°You don¡¯t have to worry so much, the insect queens nearby have been taken care of. We¡¯ll be making our way back, I¡¯ll have to trouble you to hold the line here.¡± Ric stated the areas that he wanted them to take care of.
He had few men under his command and they would be spread thin to cover the huge forest. His town was young and although he had good soldiers there was a danger of them being surrounded by swarms of insects and he couldn¡¯t afford to lose them.
He gave the freelancers the riskiest area with ranged support from his archers, personally trained by him. All of his archers were quick on their feet so he wasn¡¯t too worried about them.
¡®Gah, I forgot I ran out.¡¯ Ric licked a dry waterskin that supposedly held his alcohol.
Ric clicked his tongue, they were only half a day away from Hata town. It was too close for comfort, he would prefer to push their defensive line further but that would only thin out his soldiers even more. He wouldn¡¯t risk putting more soldiers out front and away from town either.
He warned the freelancers and his soldiers that there may be another surge of monsters due to the missing queens and told them to fall back if they really couldn¡¯t take it.
The Grandmasters may be injured but it was hardly an issue to take down the pitiful insects to relieve the pressure on the defensive line before they continued their retreat to Hata town.
Ric did get frequent reports but he was glad to see his town unharmed when they arrived 4 hours later. A leisurely pace considering their speed.
He found Ebony and Scarlet that went ahead of them, they were intently looking at food stalls when he walked past them.
¡®These stall owners¡didn¡¯t I tell them to get all citizens into their homes?¡¯ Ric pinched himself, trying to calm himself down without alcohol. The stress was piling up. His town wasn¡¯t in immediate danger and his people still needed to eat and work. He clicked his tongue when he realised it wasn¡¯t a food stall but one of the army¡¯s cooks that were serving his soldiers.
¡°Ahh!¡± He scratched his head as he climbed atop the wall to get a better look of Vermin Paradise.
With the immense height advantage of where his town was placed on and his sight skill, he had the complete situation of Vermin Paradise in real-time. There just wasn¡¯t anyone else capable of directing the Grandmasters or he would be better situated on the walls and commanding his men.
The Grandmasters already entered the walls and were getting treatment. He wished he didn¡¯t need them again but if he was unlucky and the other insect queens decided to come this direction, he had no choice but to rely on them. Now that he called all his scouts back, he needed to stay here to keep an eye on every direction. Although they were weeks deep into the forest, with the state of Vermin Paradise, he couldn¡¯t deny the possibility. The reason being, most of the monsters seem to be moving in their general direction.
He didn¡¯t even manage to catch his breath before he was called to hurry up the stairs by his assistant''s voice. He reached the top to see the cause of the rising panic in his soldiers.
His assistant threw him a bottle of spirits, he¡¯s a darn good hire!
Ric took a nice swig as the men were shouting in fear and terror. The Grandmasters were found leaping onto his walls, skipping the stairs within entirely. Ebony and Scarlet was right behind them, he could see the masked girl hurriedly wiping the corners of her mask with her sleeves.
¡°It''s over!¡± One of his archers clearly needed more training.
¡°The Go..gorpede can fly?¡± His assistant flew on his butt.
A black dot in the distance was expanding in their sights at a horrifying pace. Its shadow blots the sky from them.
¡°RELAX FOOLS! Look under the¡ball.¡± Ric yelled loud enough for all to hear. He had the best sight.
The black sun flying at an altitude higher than their town was large enough to crush their town and even the mountain and still leave a crater of a larger diameter.
It was a gorpede corpse. Getting carried by a single man who floated beside the corpse.
¡®One of Vermin Paradise¡¯s kings should¡¯ve been near the centre. 10 days into Vermin Paradise even at my top speed and it¡¯s already dealt with¡¡¯ Ric got a headache, he didn¡¯t even get the chance to ask his assistant about the reason for the presence of their very own Empire''s king.
The closer the ¡®black sun¡¯ got, the more wrong he was. The gorpede wasn¡¯t a corpse!
Everyone, even the Grandmaster mages were forced onto their knees from the beastly aura of vitality that was raining down from above them.
The discomfort welled up in Ric¡¯s throat and he was sure it wasn¡¯t due to his drinking habits.
???
[Gorpede Sovereign Lvl ???]
Ebony Identified the incoming mass of chitinous scale and crumpled mess of legs. The Barrier King appeared no different, definitely unharmed. He tried to Identify him this time but only got question marks. He thought it would be a good idea to get something that can hide his class too but Kong Jing didn¡¯t bother with them and he didn¡¯t even know what those items were called.
Apparently, no one really knew what the Barrier King¡¯s Sub-class or Profession were and Appraise or maybe even higher tier Appraise couldn¡¯t see. He was only publicly seen using barrier magic.
¡®Maybe I should ask Ning Xin, she looks cautious in front of the barrier king.¡¯ Ebony guessed that she knew more, her getting tense was rare.
He saw the people around him falling to their knees or even laying on the floor. The overflowing vitality was indeed affecting him too but he can tell the impossibly big centipede was dying and this was just whatever was left in the monster.
¡®It¡¯s on another level. Pun intended.¡¯ Ebony telling himself a joke.
He watched the man unroll the centipede, with the tail end touching the ground first. The Barrier King coiled the centipede¡¯s body around the mountain that the town was resting on. The dying centipede didn¡¯t even struggle, odd.
Ebony did not like it one bit. His mana perception was completely blinded just being in the Barrier King¡¯s presence and he still didn¡¯t know why or how.
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The handsome king beckoned Ning Xin over while he stood on the head of the centipede. She didn¡¯t hesitate too long before both of them walked over. The Gorpede wouldn¡¯t have been at the height of the walls if he didn¡¯t coil it a few more rounds at the base of the mountain. He didn¡¯t see how it was possible for a creature to get so large.
¡°You can take as much of its blood while it¡¯s still alive, it¡¯s big enough that I can supply the royal alchemist for a long time. I¡¯ll take all the other parts though.¡± The Barrier King offered generously.
¡°...Why?¡± Ning Xin was extremely tempted. A practically limitless supply of a king-classed monster¡¯s blood was being offered to her.
¡°It¡¯s too heavy to carry all the way back to Tidal, I could use your gravity magic¡¯s assistance.¡± The handsome man looked at him.
¡®I can barely cover one per cent of its body within my range¡I don¡¯t have to tell him that, he¡¯s probably aware. The blood will be immensely useful for Ning Xin.¡¯
Ebony nodded, he accepted the ¡®request¡¯ silently.
¡°Is it¡safe to consume?¡± Ning Xin asked. Ebony didn¡¯t understand why she would ask such a question.
¡°It¡¯s blood shouldn¡¯t be poisonous. Oh¡I almost forgot you¡¯re madam Veronica¡¯s granddaughter. I wanted its parts so I didn¡¯t use that. You can drink without worry.¡± The Barrier King had a look of understanding.
There was no chance she could consume that much blood, and her evolved mask took time to purify essence from blood. A new ability of her mask was to crystallise purified blood, she got busy after the Barrier King poked a hole into the Gorpede¡¯s body for her to draw its blood into her mask. She collected the crystalised blood for her consumption later. She was free to take as much as she wanted until the body was delivered back to Tidal but she wouldn¡¯t be able to drain it completely even if she had a month.
¡®What is she worried about if her mask can purify the blood?¡¯ Ebony was confused at her initial reluctance.
Ebony stood by her side to protect her as he listened in on the king¡¯s conversation with Ric. He got some good information, usefulness aside.
The Barrier King was going around the entire continent to ¡®upgrade¡¯ the town and city barriers personally. It was surprising to hear him invite the entire population and town to abandon Hata town and migrate to Tidal.
¡°What¡¯s happening inside?¡± Ric asked the King about the situation deeper in his forest.
Ebony couldn¡¯t hear anything anymore as the two of the nobles were covered in a barrier.
???
¡°Baron¡Ric was it?¡± Navin asked the young men who had a stench of alcohol.
The young noble didn¡¯t appear drunk and greeted him respectfully. He didn¡¯t like being called ¡®king¡¯ or ¡®your highness¡¯ so he made the young baron call him by his name. The young man was the first to really call his name comfortably which was nice.
¡°May I ask what brought you here?¡±
¡°Strengthening barriers across the Empire. I just so happen to be in the vicinity when I heard the reports of the troubles in Vermin Paradise.¡±
¡°Thank you¡you really saved us.¡±
He waved that issue aside.
¡°The other reason I¡¯m going around the continent is to extend my invitation for every citizen to migrate to Tidal. Housing, land and food will not be a problem.¡±
¡°What!?¡±
The young man was visibly confused.
Navin realised he was not in a private location and enclosed their conversation so that he didn¡¯t spread panic.
¡°Is..is the situation in Vermin Paradise so bad?¡±
¡°Yes and no. Actually, it might be related.¡± Navin frowned when he recalled information that his wife told him.
Madam Veronica visited his wife while he was away but he received the news too. He was immensely troubled by the news. He didn¡¯t even care about the Trolls¡¯ invasion anymore, that was hardly important compared to the news he got.
His wife was undertaking the massive role of housekeeping. She was in charge of getting the immense amount of empty land that he knew was going to be useful when he expanded Tidal in the past and built tall housing that could house hundreds instead of a single family. There was the importing of food from the 3 Great Farms too. He spent a lot of his time and effort to make sure the Great Farms were protected by barriers almost as strong as the Capital. The hardest and most time-consuming was the protection of the routes where the food supply goes through and the secret underground routes.
Navin expected the population to grow under their rule, hence, the 3 Great Farms and the excessively massive Capital with more than 50% of empty land. He didn¡¯t even have enough farmers in Tidal to turn the empty land into farms even though he estimated to have a population of billions, larger than at any point in time of their history. After all, as long as his wife was in the Capital no one died unless their lifespan ran out. He just didn¡¯t expect to have to ask his entire Empire to migrate to the Capital where he could protect all of them more efficiently.
¡°I doubt this happened in your town but are you aware that many towns and even a couple of cities have reported sewer damage?¡± Navin asked.
¡°Of course. According to the reports we get, it was ¡®structural faults¡¯ but that¡¯s too much of a stretch when dozens of towns have damaged sewers. That¡¯s why the news didn¡¯t spread to the public that other towns were facing the same problem.¡± Ric¡¯s town atop a mountain didn¡¯t have the same problem at the moment.
¡°Officially, not a single sighting of a monster was found other than the broken walls and such. Even unofficially, the best results were a small congregation of monsters underground that was easily suppressed.¡± Navin understood that knowledge was dangerous and there was plenty of information that he had that would do more harm than good if he were to share.
¡°And you brought this up because?¡±
¡°There¡¯s a small chance the same issue is plaguing Vermin Paradise and causing the forest to be in its current state. Have you checked with the outpost in Fragadal¡¯s Sea?¡±
¡°I¡¯ve sent inquiries but haven¡¯t received a reply. They are far away and we¡¯re already the closest receiver.¡±
¡°That¡¯s true¡¡± Navin would make the trip himself if he didn¡¯t have to deal with the Gorpede¡¯s body.
The king-classed insect was tougher than he assumed, a surprise even though it was a higher level than him. Leaving it here would attract even more vermins and he should get going before the Gorpede dies. The immense quantity and quality of a rare king class weren¡¯t easy to obtain for most people.
Fragal¡¯s Sea only had a relatively small group of dedicated dungeon clearers that are more than a little crazy about hunting. It was no surprise they would be hard to contact. At least, they have never gotten a dungeon break problem. Even if there was, the dungeon creatures usually die out before they managed to cross Vermin Paradise which didn¡¯t have any settlements so it was never a big problem.
There¡¯s a good chance that¡¯s currently happening and Vermin Paradise¡¯s inhabitants were fleeing from the horde of dungeon creatures. Navin had to deal with the communication issue. ¡®Or maybe the outpost is destroyed¡¡¯ he thought there was a pretty good chance of that happening too.
Navin made a private call to the Guardian Knights.
¡°I will inform my townsmen, if there are any that want to leave, they are free to go but I¡¯ll stay even if I¡¯m the only person. This is my town.¡± Ric stated.
¡°Good. I¡¯ll be leaving soon, make it quick.¡±
Navin watched the young man make a speech to his town about the possible danger and how the king was here to personally fetch them to Tidal if they wanted to. He didn¡¯t say much about what kind of danger but there wasn¡¯t a need to since there was the ongoing horde or insects. No one questioned why the king couldn¡¯t stay to protect them. As for putting up a stronger barrier, that was just a stop-gap.
He couldn¡¯t help but smile when the baron gave a talk about how he founded the town and was here to stay. He took the chance to work on the town barrier but that didn¡¯t take more than a few minutes. He had to balance its strength so that the town could support the mana expenditure.
There were surprisingly few people who wanted to leave. Less than 20, mostly old couples and a grandchild or two grasping their hands with light baggage. Those leaving all apologised to the baron and gave him a hug. Navin liked what he saw.
The small group makes it easier for him to transport as well.
¡°Ric. A squad of the Guardian Knights are on their way. Protect this place.¡±
He turned his back to see the blue-haired boy with a meditative class, he didn¡¯t bother making sure of his history. He can tell that the gravity mage cannot conjure gravity mana, his spells would be very limited.
Navin got the Gorpede into a round tight ball so that he could lighten as much as possible, he didn¡¯t really need help but it gave him an excuse to give out the creature''s blood to madam Veronica¡¯s granddaughter as an exchange instead of a gift. The skill levels would be great for the boy too.
Since he¡¯ll need every bit of help he can get, there was no reason he shouldn¡¯t ¡®sponsor¡¯ these kids.
¡®I wonder if the Trolls will invade first or the more troublesome one.¡¯
Navin wasn¡¯t that worried about Trolls. They understood them too well by now, they had countermeasures that worked and Elva strengthened faster than Tova did in recent years. They knew where Trolls came from. If the attack spanned through Elva from underground, there was little he could do when he could only be at one place at a time.
He could only hope whatever was beneath them was uncoordinated.
The decrease in weight was insignificant as expected but at least he was able to tell that the gravity mage¡¯s range was decent and he was doing a pretty good job. Navin didn¡¯t know much about gravity magic so he had no idea if the boy was considered good or bad.
He had to leave a hole in his barrier so that the red-haired one could extract blood to her mask. His wife told him about the little lass, she had been worried about the lass¡¯s mental state but Navin didn¡¯t see anything wrong. Then again, he didn¡¯t know much about the girl.
¡°Haven¡¯t quite got your names, I¡¯m Navin.¡±
Chapter 148: Tova
¡°Ebony, and she¡¯s Scarlet.¡± Ebony introduced.
Ning Xin was sitting on the centipede''s head, busy absorbing dark red liquid into her mask and packing the solid crystals that formed.
¡°Don¡¯t look down.¡± Navin informed the young and old townsmen.
Ebony''s eyes naturally looked down only to see a blur, he tried hard not to blink but the speed they were getting carried by was unimaginable. He didn¡¯t even feel like they were moving through the air at insane speeds.
From time to time, red splatters would appear around them.
He was perceptive enough to tell that birds or avian monsters were pancaked onto the invisible barrier. Although the Gorpede wasn¡¯t dead and its vitality should¡¯ve scared most creatures away, they just weren''t fast enough to avoid the large mass. It probably wouldn¡¯t have happened if it wasn¡¯t for the size of the Gorpede.
¡®Should I be asking something?¡¯ Ebony wondered if normal people should have questions if they met the King of an empire. Navin seemed like he didn¡¯t care for a conversation after the introduction. Ebony was just staring at him and vice versa.
They were both awkward and poor conversationalists but Navin broke eye contact first. He went and chatted up the old couples, asking what they were planning to do. Two were retired fighters with a grandchild, they didn¡¯t plan to work. Only living off their regeneration and training their grandchild whose parents died on the field. The rest were non-combatants that would try finding a job if there wasn¡¯t a cheap place to rent to open a shop.
¡°We¡¯re arriving.¡± It hadn¡¯t even been an hour of flight when Navin slowed down the flight. Although he said arriving, he let the riders gaze at the landscape around for some time before they actually arrived.
Tidal¡¯s walls were intimidating and the soldiers didn¡¯t just fire those ballistas or cannons at the incoming beast. Navin waved to the patrolling soldiers and did the same to the citizens that called out and welcomed him. The citizens had good eyes and no one batted an eye at the humongous monster just waltzing over their heads.
Navin placed the Gorpede¡¯s body in an empty plot of land far from the residential area.
¡°It¡¯ll probably die in a day or two, I¡¯ll bring these people to the Quest Hall to settle them in. It was nice meeting you kids.¡±
He could tell Navin was confident that even without him, the living king-classed monster couldn¡¯t cause a rampage inside his city.
Ning Xin was still silently absorbing as much blood as she could so he remained by her side, playing a little music to pass the time.
Not even ten minutes passed when a foreign wave of mana washed over his senses, overriding Battle Song and forcefully taking over the mana he vibrated by enveloping them.
¡°Gosh! Shut up! What the hell is that soulless cacophony?! I can hear it from Tova!¡± A high-pitched voice complained.
[Muse]
¡®Muse? A bard?¡¯ There was no grandmaster title or even a level profile but the colour and the leaking vitality told him enough, perhaps the class-hiding skill or item she used wasn¡¯t as good.
Ebony tried to vibrate his own mana but the Muse only strummed her string instrument once more. The particles of his conjured mana burst and got out of his control. He sensed the broken fragments sink into the ground. He knew about how Tidal could absorb mana within the walls but it was the first time he even entered the Capital city.
The Muse¡¯s string instrument was a rectangular board as tall and wide as she was, she held it like a strapped guitar.
¡°Stop that! Bardic Amplifier? I feel bad for those who had to take in that soulless music to enhance themselves.¡± The Muse covered her ears.
¡°What soul?¡± It wasn¡¯t the first time he saw a bard but the first time he talked to one.
¡°Music isn¡¯t just a tool you brute¡± The lady didn¡¯t answer him directly.
¡°Calling me a brute was uncalled for.¡± Ebony replied.
¡®Hmm? Since when did I care about such things?¡¯ He would usually never bat an eye at what some stranger called him. He chucked the thought aside since he was probably just following the flow of the conversation.
The lady sniffed and got all teary-eyed. ¡°Don¡¯t scold meee!¡± She backed off and tripped on a rock, using her instrument as a shield.
He cocked his head, befuddled.
¡°You¡¯re supposed to ask me if I¡¯m alright.¡± The Muse had the same aggrieved but somewhat pouty expression as she stood up.
¡°Oh, you¡¯re a crazy lady¡± He finally understood.
¡°Excuse me?¡±
¡°There¡¯s no one around, you ran here to stop me from casting sound magic, called me a brute, fell down on your own and dictated that I should ask if you were alright. What does that sound like to you?¡± He didn¡¯t have to look around the dirt ground to know they were the only ones here together with the Gorpede¡¯s body.
¡°Sounds like crazy to me.¡± Then the muse gasped, she looked offended.
It was as if every little noise the muse made had cadence, although he loved Ning Xin¡¯s voice the muse¡¯s voice was indeed pleasant to the ears.
She strummed her instrument again, his head throbbed and he bled through his nose while Ning Xin didn¡¯t even detect anything happening.
He moved to grab her by the collar before he could think, his nosebleed wasn¡¯t stopping.
¡°Relax! I was healing you! There¡¯s a weird tumour in your head.¡± The Muse put her hands up defensively.
¡°Nonsense¡¡± Ebony sensed the surrounding mana intruding on his body, ignoring his resistance. It wasn¡¯t the Muse, and he was indeed getting healed.
¡®Do people really not die inside Tidal?¡¯ He found it hard to believe.
¡°What¡¯s in your head? I didn¡¯t even scratch a layer off.¡±
¡°You are pretty weird¡± He let her go, sensing no hostility.
Coming from Ebony, this was serious. He just didn¡¯t understand why she was doing whatever she was doing. ¡°Why did you attack me?¡±
¡°I told you! There¡¯s a tumour in your head.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think so. And wouldn¡¯t I get healed just by staying in Tidal?¡± Ebony had a constant scan of his body, the chance that he didn¡¯t know there was something like a tumour inside him were too low.
¡°Your soul. There¡¯s a massive tumour in the head of your soul. The healing properties of Tidal should indeed heal you but It doesn¡¯t seem to be working from what I see. The healing is just bouncing off the tumour.¡±
¡°First I¡¯ve heard of that. You can see souls?¡± He tried to take her words seriously, he couldn¡¯t think of a reason for her to lie unless she really was a little mental.
¡°See? No! I encompass it as do all souls around me!¡±
¡®Crap she really is crazy.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know how to deal with crazy people at least, not this type of crazy.
¡°So um. What do you want?¡±
¡°There¡¯s a taint in your soul. I swear to remove and cleanse every filth in any soul fate has brought before me!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know how to talk to crazy.¡±
¡®Oops, I didn¡¯t mean to say that out loud.'' He reflected.
She cried.
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She was noisy.
He couldn¡¯t even silence the noise because her cries were filled with mana capable of rendering his mana vibrations useless. He sat beside the undisturbed swordswomen and brought out a table, taking out snacks and juice for the Muse.
It worked and his ears were finally released from torture.
¡°Care to tell me what having a soul in music means?¡± She never stopped chatting and he might as well ask her something productive.
¡°What kind of sound spells do you use anyway?¡±
¡°The enhancement one that you don¡¯t allow me to use and destructive infusion.¡±
¡°Brute. Do you even feel the meaning of the lyrics in your music?¡±
¡°...I understand them.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not even confident in your own words.¡±
¡°So? Does that change the effect of the vibration in mana?¡±
¡°You see. All you¡¯re thinking about is the practical use of mana. Not once did you care about what music you¡¯re playing, just the effects they give, am I right?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Music is not your tool. It¡¯s not anyone¡¯s.¡±
¡®Why do people enjoy being cryptic? Must be fun, I should try it in future.¡¯ Ebony got nothing much out of her answer.
After a couple of hours of snack eating where the Muse didn¡¯t want to leave him alone, a team of people arrived. Navin called them here and they started taking apart Gorpede from the tail. These people didn''t even have trouble cutting into the king-classed monster.
Mostly a bunch of blacksmiths and alchemists.
Ning Xin seemed to react to that and sped up her absorption, the bubble of red liquid on her mask got larger.
¡°You should just drain out as much as you can for now, the purification can wait.¡± He pat her shoulder to get her attention.
¡°Mmm.¡± She nodded.
¡°Part of her soul is in that ugly mask. So that''s what the Xengs do, bleh.¡± She stuck her tongue out.
¡®So she really can sense it¡¡¯ He didn¡¯t actually believe the Muse before but now he did.
¡°More cookies please!¡± The 1.63 m tall lady swung her feet back and forth as she picked off the crumbs on her plate.
¡°That was the last one.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t keep many cookies on him since he wasn¡¯t a big cookie consumer.
The look of shock on her face was meme worthy. Then she cried and he experienced the same discomfort along with all the blacksmiths and alchemist nearby. The blood on Ning Xin¡¯s mask rippled but she didn¡¯t even appear to be affected.
¡°Do something about her boy!¡± A gruff voice shouted.
¡°Mmm.¡± He nodded, realising the gravity of the situation. It didn¡¯t hurt them but it was extremely uncomfortable, not just on the ears.
¡°I have some candy.¡±
Thank goodness, it managed to distract her.
???
¡°Buuha!¡±
Hector took a deep breath of air after he surfaced.
¡°I got a good catch today!¡± He dragged a net over his shoulder with 3 large fish.
¡°Thanks Hector!¡± The captain of his fleet slapped his back.
26 of them were on this beach. Hector recalled the journey they had to reach where they were today.
They capsized in the middle of a storm, all three ships were put to sleep by a school of [Drowsy Tuna]. The moment the ship capsized, the human-sized fishes swarmed them. The ship¡¯s defences were rendered moot when no one was awake to operate them.
Stronger veterans woke up and those under the deck were lucky that they had some air and weren¡¯t washed away by the currents. Hector was lucky he was awake and held onto the ship tightly enough, the others who fell asleep on deck were all gone.
Hector was the first to get attacked and the first to fight off the slippery fishes. He clung to the wooden rails as if his life depended on it, a weak mega panch was unleashed to scare the fishes away and it worked. The fishes were weak, their main tactic had been putting their enemies to sleep and eating them after all.
Some of his crew mates swam out from their rooms, they signalled each other and abandoned the sinking ship with numerous holes. The ship had been the first thing the tunas started destroying. The warriors each grabbed one or two unconscious soldiers and made their way to the surface while their breath lasted.
Hector had the slight advantage of being able to stabilise the water around him. He was still pretty much a fish out of the water, just like some of the less experienced soldiers. Many didn¡¯t even manage to surface before they were entangled by a couple of tunas. Unable to fight back with their arms busy pulling their fellow soldiers up.
Hector dived back into the water to save anyone around him that was slowly being eaten underwater. The captain saved the most important person which led to their current survival. The only wood conjurer. The other two ships didn¡¯t even have a wood mage.
The wood mage didn''t have much of a chance to get his bearings before he got an ear-piercing scream in his ears to wake the hell up. The non-warriors didn¡¯t have as strong of resistance against unknown magic or perhaps a physical sleeping gas of some kind.
Hector tossed as many people up onto the conjured board of wood that was slowly being formed into a makeshift ship. Some smartass decided it was a good idea to swim up with every single rope he could find before the ship fully sank and it saved a lot of lives. He was tied to the rope and didn¡¯t have as much fear of being washed away by the fierce currents, making his diving attempts to save more soldiers less of a risk to his own life.
He didn¡¯t have the strongest bodyguard follow him out to sea. It was honestly a scary experience but one that excited his adventurous heart like never before.
The tunas gave up readily. The moment he saved everyone he could find that wasn¡¯t already eaten and the entire crew was back aboard the small makeshift ship. It was too dark underwater when a storm was going on. He was momentarily brought back to his past when he was blinded, deafened, muted and had an extremely sensitive sense of touch due to his extreme element affinities.
The other ships got swept away and they didn¡¯t know where they ended up, since his captain couldn¡¯t contact the other captains the other ships¡¯ situation was unknown.
The threat of the school of tunas was gone but they had to brace the storm on an unstable conjured ship. There was little he could do. Hector had a very poor ability for external magic despite his immense affinity. He was in the same position as any other soldier. Wait for the storm to end or their death to come.
They had water mages, brought to sea for a reason. The water mages were better at handling themselves when they were underwater too, the only ones not present were those that didn¡¯t manage to wake up to fend for themselves. It was due to the water mages'' combined effort that they didn¡¯t get capsized again.
No one could tell how long the storm lasted but they survived.
Navigating wasn¡¯t that big of an issue. Even without equipment, the captain and most of the sailors had knowledge of sea navigation.
Food was troublesome as they were in the middle of a sea, it had been difficult. The first two weeks or so, he shared his rations in his bag. He didn¡¯t have enough to feed dozens of people for an extended period. They didn¡¯t ask why he had so much on him but they must have figured something out from his hair colour.
They lost a few men who dived in to get some hunting done. That was the start when they weren¡¯t organised. The deaths stopped when they formed diving and hunting parties with the water mages, never going deep. Out at sea, they went for days, maybe weeks without spotting a single fish.
Water also wasn¡¯t a problem with the mages around and most of them who had carried their baggage around all had a water mana ore with them.
The wood mage had to repair and improve his ship over and over as they were attacked over and over again. A beam of water from under them split the ship in half once. They lost dozens.
They didn¡¯t know what hit them. Perhaps a stray attack from creatures of the deep that was facing their direction.
The wood mage survived. He was under everyone¡¯s constant protection. They had to row the ship with huge oars since they had no sail, it ate into every warrior¡¯s stamina day in and out but also made them too busy to lose hope.
The problem was that they were about a month or two into the sail before they were capsized and separated from the other fleets. On those specialised ships, the sail was estimated to take two to three years to get to Tova. On a flimsy ship with no enchantment driven by manpower?
The worst thing was that only 2 water mages remained after the beam of water destroyed their previous ship.
The captain was forced to take more risks along with everyone else with their hunting.
They finally reached Tova¡¯s beach a week ago with the wood mage and one water mage still with them.
Hector¡¯s ability to survive underwater improved leaps and bounds. He constantly volunteered to go swimming to catch some food. The others were very inclined to stay away from water as much as possible.
Obviously, he was still a Journeyman. The only one that survived till date.
There was zero chance he was going to stay knocked out for a week or more on the sea.
Although the long periods at sea built some trust with the remaining crewmates, they were on Tova and didn¡¯t even have the confidence to protect themselves, much less protect him while he evolved.
¡°How¡¯s the surveying?¡± He asked as he put on the fragments of armour that he had left. His captain and the rest of the survivors were all in better shape after they fattened themselves with fruits, wild vegetation and a few birds.
¡°Gather around!¡± The captain smiled.
The soldiers didn¡¯t dally.
¡°Rested enough? Fools! We¡¯re on enemy territory!¡± The captain yelled aggressively.
After a tense second they laughed in tandem.
¡°Alright alright. Let¡¯s get to business. We¡¯ve got some good news, some bad news, come share it.¡± The captain gestured to two half-naked men.
¡°We¡¯ve found out where we are.¡±
¡°The nearest hidden camp is only 2 weeks'' march away. For us, about half that time if we rush.¡±
¡°Bad news is. We saw lots of Trolls but they weren¡¯t large. At around level 200, they must be young Trolls. The real bad news is, there¡¯s a good chance they were looking around the area where our hidden camp is. I don¡¯t think they know where it is yet but that was before we made our way back here to inform you.¡±
¡°You heard it, people. We gotta move fast. I doubt our fellow Imperials don¡¯t realise they are about to be spotted but we sure want to join up with them before they relocate or are attacked. We move out in 20, eat up!¡±
Hector smashed his fist together. ¡°Finally. Some real action.¡±
Chapter 149: Curse
¡°Ebony?¡± A voice that he didn¡¯t expect to hear called him out.
¡°Koawe? How are you doing?¡± Ebony was surprised to see the Frost Elf in Tidal.
¡°Perfectly fine thank you.¡± Koawe smiled as he always did. The Muse who hasn¡¯t introduced herself hid behind Ebony.
¡°What are you doing in Tidal?¡± Ebony asked.
Koawe¡¯s smile widened.
¡°Well, our village¡¯s guardian beast is giving birth. She will be staying in Arcta in her younger years, I¡¯m picking up some things useful for a young¡animal.¡±
¡°Arcta has a guardian beast?¡± It was the first he heard of that.
¡°Not Arcta but we will temporarily have one since it¡¯ll be taking care of her baby. Would you like to see her? You can take the chance to visit the village kids.¡± Koawe explained. They had another village deeper in Hoarfrost Glade.
¡°Hmm¡I¡¯ll think about it. Why did you come here then?¡± Ebony wondered if Ning Xin was up for it. They could be spending their time more productively but he thought it was a good chance for them to stop and add their stats. They were lacking in that regard as they couldn¡¯t get used to it fast enough.
¡°You mean this Gorpede? I was waiting for my junior for a chat, he just arrived and told me I could take some of its materials. The flesh and blood should be a decent present for both the guardian beast and her baby.¡±
¡°Your junior?¡±
¡°Navin. Ah, we studied magic under the same master in the past.¡± Koawe dropped a fascinating piece of information.
¡°So you were a barrier mage?¡±
¡°Not at all¡«I gotta get busy before the best parts are taken. Say hello to Scarlet for me.¡± Koawe wasn¡¯t planning on saying more, he made his way to slice a piece of the king-ranked monster.
The Gorpede was impressive, more than a quarter of its body has been sliced and torn into little by little but it still had enough vitality to deter most people.
¡®The barrier king is even more impressive though. It¡¯s alive and awake but not even moving an inch. He¡¯s not even in the vicinity anymore¡¡¯ Ebony was immensely curious about the methods Navin used. Also, what kind of magic both the Empire¡¯s king and the Frost Elf had in common? Identify was too weak to see past their hidden status.
The Gorpede¡¯s vitality finally started to weaken when more than half its body from tail up was gone. Ning Xin had to take a break twice while she manipulated the blood to her mask, she ran out of mana and the Gorpede¡¯s natural body resisted her blood manipulation like any other creature¡¯s natural ability. He believed her blood mana manipulation must have levelled like no tomorrow.
¡®I should suggest to her to try to manipulate my blood just to train her manipulation. That would be interesting, I might even get resistance to blood magic. Hmm¡ maybe she can help me use her heart acceleration skill on me if she can really get full control over my blood.¡¯ Ebony started to get interesting but dangerous ideas.
¡°I¡¯ll look for my junior, if you decide to come back to Arcta look for me at his mansion. I¡¯ll likely stay for a few nights.¡± Koawe had taken 2 segments of the insect¡¯s body and his knapsack looked packed. It appeared that his bag wasn¡¯t that large compared to Ebony¡¯s.
Koawe didn¡¯t tell him the location of Navin¡¯s mansion, but he would assume it wouldn¡¯t be hard to find.
Thousands of crates and glass or crystal jars surrounded the area. The sealed jars were mostly filled with blood, maybe fat or some unknown fluid from the Gorpede. The scales, flesh, legs and organs were all segregated and there were runic preservation circles drawn on the floor and also the containers themselves.
The huge group of people didn¡¯t question the three of them sitting on the monster¡¯s head. They came and went and he saw many different faces of different races. The Muse fell asleep on the table he brought out after eating candy so that was one less bother. It wasn¡¯t until the next morning that the Gorpede died, both him and Scarlet gained partial experience but not even a single level. The Gorpede had been level 642!
¡®There were close to a thousand people who came to take a piece, the experience must have spread too thin.¡¯ There was also the fact that he didn¡¯t even hurt the Gorpede much. Ning Xin not even gaining a level must have meant that the constant draining of blood barely hurt the Gorpede too.
Less than a third of the Gorpede¡¯s body was left and Ning Xin wasn¡¯t about to stop until she got every drop she could. It was early afternoon when all that was left was the head which was completely drained.
Ning Xin fell and he was watching closely enough to catch her. She was drained, not in the same way the Gorpede was.
¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± She didn¡¯t rely on him for long.
¡°Where to?¡±
¡°Yvette¡¯s house.¡±
¡°I forgot you knew the Queen, perfect. Koawe should be there too, he invited me back to Arcta to see their guardian beast, apparently giving birth.¡±
¡°Koawe? At the Lord¡¯s mansion?¡± She was referring to their weird family name.
¡°Yeah, I was surprised to find out that the barrier king is his junior under the same master. He¡¯s not a barrier mage though.¡±
¡°...No wonder his presence is so unsettling.¡±
¡°Hmm? You seem somewhat afraid of the barrier king too, do you know what kind of magic they use?¡±
Ning Xin looked around but he gestured that he silenced their conversation. Then he remembered the sleeping Muse was a greater sound mage than him, so he brought her to walk away before they continued chatting. Hopefully, the city wasn¡¯t crawling with sound mages that could break through his film of mana to eavesdrop on their conversation without him noticing.
¡°If my grandma wasn¡¯t lying, the barrier king is a curse mage. I don¡¯t sense the same sense of creepiness from him compared to Koawe though, I suspect Koawe¡¯s Class is heavily cursed based instead of a Sub-Class or Profession.¡±
¡°Curse magic, cool. What does curse magic do?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, the range of effects is too wide and even random depending on the person who cast it. That¡¯s why we exterminate them from the face of existence if they were an enemy. The current generation of the Empire¡¯s King and Queen is special. Especially the Barrier King.¡±
¡°Why so? I heard him say no one would die inside Tidal as long as the Life Queen is here.¡± That seemed like a huge flex to him.
¡°Generally speaking, she¡¯s still just a very good healer. An important asset but nothing compared to the value that the Barrier King has shown. Or so my grandma told me. Tidal has about seven hundred thousand layers of barriers and if she didn¡¯t lie to me, the outer layers are choked full with curse magic so that if one so much as pokes the barrier, they get a curse inflicted on them.¡±
¡°What kind of curse?¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t know either but with so many layers, I don¡¯t really feel like finding out. The Barrier King¡¯s abilities are greatly sought out by even Saints and Demigods. They don¡¯t even dare to destroy the Empire anymore. The Life Queen¡¯s healing ability only heightens Tidal¡¯s worth.¡±
¡°So both of them are already famous even outside of Elcra?¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t know but I suppose so. I don¡¯t know much more than you regarding worlds outside.¡±
They finally got to somewhere with people, the royal family¡¯s mansion was so far they would have to take weeks at a car¡¯s speed. Fortunately, there was flying transport that they could take. They might hit someone with their current poor control of flight so they took a ride on a saddled bird. The ride was pretty costly compared to a land drawn carriage, about 12 times more expensive. It wasn¡¯t until sunset that they got to the humble mansion, their ride didn¡¯t dare to land directly in the mansion¡¯s garden so they had to walk from a distance away. A designated landing spot about 5 km away from the mansion was built.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Ning Xin led the way.
¡®I would assume the entire population would want to move to Tidal if they were basically guaranteed their survival as long as they made Tidal their home.¡¯ Ebony thought. There were plenty of dungeons within Tidal¡¯s landscape and plenty of empty lands for more people.
It was as if she knew what he was thinking, ¡°I think the general populace doesn¡¯t know that one doesn¡¯t die as long as they stay in Tidal. Just rumours of people saying they got killed in the city but didn¡¯t die. Most would take it as a joke or assume a healer came to the rescue quickly. As for the barriers, every town has sufficient protection at this point.¡±
¡°Clearly insufficient. Navin was going around inviting people to move to Tidal.¡±
¡°Hmm. I think it might be the ¡®big thing¡¯ that¡¯s going to happen that my grandma told me about before she left Elcra.¡±
¡°I see. Navin didn¡¯t appear to be in a rush, we should still have time to charge to 300.¡±
¡°I think we can make a stop at Arcta soon. We have too many unspent stat points and I don¡¯t know how long I need to consume and digest the blood I got.¡±
She showed him her bag that was almost spilling out with red crystals. The majority was the Gorpede¡¯s blood while 1 or 2 was from the ball that used to be the Earthfly Queen and the beetle queen, she had a difficult time draining the compressed blood but not as much as when she tried to drain Gorpede¡¯s blood as it was alive.
¡°Shouldn¡¯t you have levelled from that?¡± He expected her to play a sufficient role at killing the huge centipede.
¡°...It was regenerating blood faster than I drained it.¡±
¡°That is some potent vitality.¡±
Ning Xin had a spring in her feet when she heard that.
The stronger the blood the more beneficial for her.
¡°Actually let¡¯s just go back with Koawe. I want to see Kiva, I heard babies forget quickly. When we get used to our added stats we can go for tougher dungeons and it would be more efficient.¡±
¡°Sure.¡±
It didn¡¯t make sense for them to hold onto stats anyway. Adding all of them was only logical to fighting stronger opponents. Most importantly, he can stock up on frost plums.
Before long, they stood in front of the gates of the Royal family. Something or rather, someone stood in between them and the fenced gates and it wasn¡¯t the guards.
¡°How rude! You just left me sleeping there with hundreds of stinky blacksmiths surrounding me!¡± The Muse had both her hands on her hips as she harrumphed at him.
???
¡°Bleh! Couldn¡¯t you bring us directly onto land, Kong Tian?¡± Veronica spit the unknown blood out.
Ning Min took her time wiping the red fluid from her hair.
¡°Sorry¡I could barely lock onto the questionable coordinates of ¡®around here¡¯.¡± Kong Tian the space mage didn¡¯t have a drop of blood on his body.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Ning Min asked her cousin who was looking up at the red sky.
¡°...There are no stars. The Blood Realm is disconnected from the Astral Realm, I can¡¯t divine well.¡± Veronica wasn¡¯t wholly helpless yet but her strongest abilities were basically sealed. A poor or unstable connection might be more accurate since that was how she even managed to find the Blood Realm.
¡°The space here is more stable than any dungeon I¡¯ve been in. Although it means we won¡¯t be able to travel far in a short period of time, I can locate our bearings better.¡± Kong Tian was fascinated, he never had such difficulty manipulating space before.
It was honestly frightening that the Blood Saintess¡¯s realm had space more stable than his own realm spell. He was the pure space mage here! Although he hadn¡¯t created his own permanent realm yet, he couldn¡¯t wrap his head around how the space mana around him was so resistant to his mental touch. His spatial abilities were weakened by at least a dozen times.
¡°I don¡¯t think I can bring us out.¡± Kong Tian said honestly, it wasn''t that much of a challenge to enter but the stable space made the reverse more than a simple challenge.
¡°What!¡± Ning Min would still insist that she was a calm and collected individual.
¡°Are we at least hidden?¡± Veronica asked as she dipped into her mask¡¯s abilities to try to connect to the Astral Realm.
¡°Yes, I¡¯m certain she doesn¡¯t know we intruded. I made that our priority, at least, we shouldn¡¯t be detected through space. We can still be visibly spotted.¡±
It was a stealth mission where they intruded but didn¡¯t want to appear as intruders. None of them were fighters.
They were on a small island and Kong Tian was certain the Blood Saintess wasn¡¯t here. Everything from the ground, trees, sea and sky was red here and they wore similar colours as an extra precaution.
¡°Great. She¡¯s not away. South.¡± Veronica managed to glimpse the general direction they should go and that the Blood Saintess was present.
¡°Give me a minute.¡± Ning Min walked to the waters and raised her hand toward the sea.
In about a minute a weird fish with a large flat body swam towards them, they walked onto it as their ride arrived. Under Ning Min¡¯s control, they got themselves a grandmaster-ranked ride. It wasn¡¯t much but it would do as a ride.
With Ning Min¡¯s mind magic, they wouldn¡¯t have to worry about a couple of monsters. Veronica brought the right people. The fish brought them out onto the sea. Kong Tian and Ning Min¡¯s overflowing essence both worked together extremely well to make them undetectable so they were undisturbed by creatures.
Veronica focused on connecting to the Astral Realm, looking up at the sky as a habit while she sat on the fish. Ning Min was complaining to Kong Tian that he could¡¯ve helped keep them dry from the bloody waters too but her voice suddenly cut off.
She blinked and forced her eyes wide open the next instant, she didn¡¯t dare to look away but her other senses couldn¡¯t detect movement from Ning Min, Kong Tian and even the fish she was riding. There was no wind and the gushing waters stopped.
Her panic increased slowly as she was staring into the pair of eyes staring through her own.
¡®Why¡how, little Xin.¡¯ Veronica blanked out at the shabby red mask on the man¡¯s face.
¡°Oh..uhm hello.¡± The deep voice cracked as if he hadn¡¯t spoken for awhile.
¡°Why do you have that?¡± She steadied her voice.
¡°Yes, hello? If uh, you can hear me. Then good.¡±
Veronica frowned. The man wasn¡¯t looking at her, just staring at where her eyes originally were. She moved aside to see the man remain still and facing the air.
¡°Nice to see you? An..anyway. I just want to say I don¡¯t know what kind of deal you¡¯re planning to make but, no one liked the consequences of the deal you made. Make? Making? Uh yeah, have a good day? Night? See you¡sooner? Don¡¯t make her cry.¡±
The sound of wind and waves reentered Veronica¡¯s ears together with Ning Min¡¯s ongoing complaints with Kong Tian.
Veronica stood right up and scanned the endless blood sea to no avail.
¡°What kind of future do you see now?¡± Ning Min was familiar with Veronica¡¯s antics, she wasn¡¯t fooling around.
¡°Ah Min, slap me.¡±
Veronica skidded against the surface of the sea for a long minute.
Ning Min was incredibly happy at the chance but was only faced with a harder slap.
Kong Tian sighed at the increased efforts he had to put to hide them.
???
¡°Who is this¡sassy girl?¡± Ning Xin pointed at the Muse.
¡°I don¡¯t know. Wait, here''s some candy.¡± Ebony shook his head in reply. He quickly searched his bag for candy when he saw that she was about to make some noise again. He was too slow, unable to find any candy left.
¡°Soul magic.¡± Ning Xin wanted to draw her blades but she was in front of Yvette¡¯s mansion and the cries weren¡¯t an attack as far as she could tell. It took some time to get candies out since her bag was pretty full.
¡°So what¡¯s your name? I¡¯m Ebony, she¡¯s Scarlet.¡±
¡°Huh. Can¡¯t you Identify me? I changed it to my name. Nevermind, I¡¯m Muse¡±
¡®That¡¯s her name? Is she an npc?¡¯ Ebony wondered if she was just lazy to introduce herself.
¡°Why are you following us?¡±
¡°Just you. I told you! I will cleanse and purify the tumour in your soul!¡± She stomped the ground, she didn¡¯t like having to repeat herself.
¡°Why?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t understand her motive.
¡°What tumour?¡± Ning Xin grabbed Muse¡¯s shoulders.
¡°OWW!¡± Muse screamed.
The guards standing nearby actually didn¡¯t move even though Ebony was able to feel that the scream was both bordering a mental sound attack and a weird pang of pain that he couldn¡¯t get used to. He guessed it was his soul getting hit.
Ning Xin felt the feedback from her mask, she stuffed candies into Muse''s mouth and apologised for hurting her. She got the hang of dealing with Muse really quickly.
¡°Something weird is stuck to his soul. I don¡¯t know what, but I will cleanse it.¡± Muse happily sucked on the sweet candy in her mouth.
¡°Is that weird thing harmful?¡± The temperature around Ning Xin rose.
Muse stopped making sucking noises, ¡°Don¡¯t you feel weird?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re referring to, I didn¡¯t even know that there was something stuck to my soul.¡±
¡°Uhm but, don¡¯t you want to remove dirt stuck to your body. It''s the same thing, whatever is there is not part of your natural soul. I don¡¯t see how it''s useful and it definitely isn¡¯t making your soul stronger. I don¡¯t really know what it¡¯s doing there either. Never seen something like that.¡± Muse drew circles with her feet.
¡°Please remove it for him.¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°Hehe! I demand sweets.¡±
"Why have you been standing outside my gates for such a long time, Scarlet and Muse?"
Ebony saw a pink-haired lady past the opened gates, he was also familiarised with the Life Queen¡¯s appearance so he greeted her politely. Seems like the Queen knew who Muse was and maybe the guards were familiar with her too. The two girls received a head pat. How enviable.
Chapter 150: Prison Again?
¡°There is really something there¡I can¡¯t tell what it does either.¡± Yvette tried not to frown, she didn¡¯t want to get wrinkles. She was more excited than worried.
Ebony didn¡¯t have to guess that the Life Queen scanned his body the moment he was close by and that she knew he was made of mana. He felt like she wanted to dissect him and research the properties of his body but he was just imagining things. The Life Queen was like any old caring mother, he didn¡¯t know what grandmothers were like or he would have to reevaluate.
¡°Riiight~¡± Muse took another bite of her cake when the Queen had a similar assessment.
Navin and Koawe were out, apparently working on Tidal¡¯s barriers together. It should¡¯ve been a secret but the Queen didn¡¯t seem to care. If what Ning Xin said was true then some curses were being weaved as they ate dessert.
Dinner was good, he could taste the similarities that Ning Xin picked up in her cooking.
Yvette was like a neighbourhood mom.
This wasn¡¯t the palace, just the King and Queen¡¯s residence. Their children all lived at different mansions with their own families and Yvette complained more than once about the infrequent visits and her own busy schedule. Ebony never figured out Muse¡¯s relation with Yvette and didn¡¯t think it was his place to ask. Not that he really cared. Yvette left immediately after dinner, duty called. They were left to their own devices after they were shown their guest rooms. Muse pulled him out to the yard and played her string instrument for him.
It was very bright and energetic, like the musician herself.
¡°See! Music strikes the soul, not just the mind and definitely not the body.¡± Muse danced as she strummed her flat board guitar.
¡°I don¡¯t see.¡± Ebony said expressionlessly.
¡°Sing along with me!¡± Muse pinched his cheeks upwards but was irritated at how stiff his facial muscles were.
She regretted her words.
¡°Never have I seen a tone-deaf bard or sound mage¡your music isn¡¯t that bad though. How¡¡± Muse rolled up into a ball and covered her ears. She had been right, his voice was dead rather than tone-deaf, he didn¡¯t have any tone at all!
She ran into her room and jumped onto the soft bed, falling asleep soon enough.
¡°Was it so bad?¡± Ebony asked the two older guards standing not too far away.
¡°Like my dying horse when I fought on the front lines.¡± The man with patches of white hair scratched his beard, they didn¡¯t appear to have helmets.
¡°I rather listen to my drill instructors scream for a year than listen to your singing for another second.¡± The other man didn¡¯t look young either.
¡°...Sorry for that.¡± Ebony retreated, he hummed along to tunes and was pretty sure he wasn¡¯t tone-deaf many people hummed along with him. Singing out loud was a first.
¡°Sir! Welcome back.¡±
With his mana sense obscured again, he knew Navin was behind him even without the guard¡¯s greeting. He was too busy talking to Koawe and all he got were nods of acknowledgement from them both before they disappeared somewhere in the house. He had been feeling sleepier and sleepier after the nose bled from Muse¡¯s ¡®healing¡¯ and was knocked out when he hit the bed. The beds were soft and the frames were more than capable of handling his weight.
Ebony didn¡¯t notice Muse entering his room after he slept and his body didn¡¯t sense any hostility. He might have heard jarring words and a soft tune in his ears.
???
¡°This boy. Duller than a rock, worse than a child. Never have you faced a problem because you push them aside to some corner due to your stupid meditation. That dullness must be from your meditation. Stop using that nonsense and see the world with open eyes. Face the world, not chuck it aside. Then, you can grow up into a man. Despite your apparent age, you seem to have less life experience than a 7 year old.¡± Muse patted the sleeping boy¡¯s forehead, she didn¡¯t know if he heard her. An old woman like her wasn¡¯t shy from her own cringy words.
¡°Start asking questions.¡±
Muse played her trusty partner as she sang softly.
???
Ebony stretched his body to relieve the stiffness caused by the constant combat. He smelled blood.
¡°Muse?¡± He saw Muse lying down on the floor, her face in a small pool of her own blood. He sensed her heart beating weakly so he remained calm. It didn¡¯t appear to be some kind of prank though.
He carried her out, hoping to find help. Yvette wasn¡¯t around, the maid told him that she should be at the healer¡¯s academy at this time. He must have slept for quite a while. Ning Xin took Muse off his hands and went to clean her face up and set her on a soft bed. There was little they could do and Muse looked just like she was sleeping.
¡°Koawe will be helping for two or three days. I¡¯ll be busy dri..hem, absorbing the blood in the meantime.¡± Ning Xin returned to her room.
¡°So I¡¯m free? What should I do?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think for too long, one of the maids gave him a short tour. The mansion had a training room that was more fortified than any Quest Hall so he didn¡¯t have to look for a branch.
After 6 hours of physical conditioning. He had little to do. He could reread his books that he already completely copied down but didn¡¯t feel purpose in that. He could continue training but other than conditioning the other skill training just wasn¡¯t fruitful at all. He could train those skills at a highly accelerated rate when hunting. He tended to reinforce his mana chassis whenever he wasn¡¯t fighting since he would have no real use for his mana in a city. It was hard to train it when he fought, which slowed its levelling.
¡°Oh yeah, mage tower.¡± Ebony recalled spotting one of the tallest buildings in Tidal. It was a good chance but he knew they wouldn¡¯t let a random guy read most of their stuff. Join them officially and do work for them to gain access? He didn¡¯t see that happening any time soon.
He went to the parking spot but there wasn''t any flying transport. He took a normal carriage instead. Drawn by a level 230 six-legged horse, it didn¡¯t take more than half an hour but the driver must have misunderstood him. They brought him to the defensive magic towers which didn¡¯t let him in. It wasn¡¯t a library.
He tried to find the main street and just took a walk instead. Picking up some street food he had never seen for Ning Xin. He had no idea where he was.
In his trance of taking a walk, he didn¡¯t realise the crowd moved aside for someone walking in his direction. A man dressed in more jewels and ornaments than ever necessary. He had his own entourage of bodyguards but the crowd voluntarily stepped aside without the entourage¡¯s interference. They didn¡¯t stop or get Ebony to step aside when his path was about to collide with the man they were following around.
Ebony¡¯s body probably thought there was more than enough space for them to walk past each other and didn¡¯t react to the man walking too closely. The man with his own entourage smiled at the obvious non-local, he put strength and mana into his waist, hips and shoulders. He twisted forcefully at the very last second, aiming to smash his shoulders into Ebony¡¯s to knock him out of his path.
Ebony woke up from his trance when there were sharp pointy sticks on his neck. He saw dust and debris rising in the corner of his sight. Someone was crawling out from the debris and shouting something at him.
¡®Did I attack him? No, I think he bumped into me. My repulsion shouldn¡¯t push anything away if it was just a normal bump. Maybe someone pushed him towards me really hard and he dug into my membrane, sending him flying. He¡¯s even bleeding¡Did he bump into me so hard that he managed to touch me? Yes, some of my mana residue is on him.¡¯ Ebony felt bad, he really had to ground his mentality and not let it slip.
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Touching his membrane is not any different from touching something physical but the deeper you try to push through his membrane the more forceful the repulsion. He must have unconsciously rebounded the physical force with mana but there was no drop in his mana pool so he must not have hit hard.
¡°Catch him! He assaulted me!¡±
¡®Mmm, he shouldn¡¯t be badly injured.¡¯ Ebony felt bad for the house that had a new hole in their walls. The man seemed energetic enough.
¡°Don¡¯t resist!¡± One of the armoured knights yelled as if he saw Ebony resisting.
¡®Ooo. Even bodyguard knights are all Grandmasters. I wonder how well they fortified their classes before they evolved. Their standards should be much higher than the people I¡¯ve seen. I did somewhat commit assault.¡¯
There were witnesses and his mana residues on the man, Ebony saw no reason to resist. He was still somewhat confident that he wouldn¡¯t be harmed and that he could resist if he wanted to. Even though he no longer cared about levels much, his instincts were sleeping. He wasn¡¯t in danger.
They pulled out those wooden cuffs with yellow and blue ores, they seemed like professionals that did this hundred of times with how fluent they were. The wooden plank laid over his bracelet and he couldn¡¯t sense the connection with the ores he had on them, including his trailer. Three pointed ends stabbed into his neck when the other got him to put his arms behind his back.
After he was cuffed and he felt the drain on his stamina and mana, they waited for about half a minute awkwardly before they put their swords away and he was pushed to walk. Ebony was calculating how much of his energy was being drained but then he cocked his head. The drain suddenly stopped and his stamina and mana pools both didn¡¯t budge from their full state at all.
¡°Why did you stop?¡± The knight frowned.
¡°Oh, my apologies. The drain on my stamina and mana stopped.¡± He replied without thought.
The knight whispered to himself, something about slotting in almost full gems instead. They saw his compliance and seemed to be at ease at bringing him away. The man who bumped into him didn¡¯t follow, he had more entourage and continued going off somewhere. He seemed to be in a rush or Ebony got a feeling he wouldn¡¯t be gently escorted. The knight swapped out the ores and they continued walking for a few minutes before Ebony got a little embarrassed and told them it was probably full again.
Two of the knights didn¡¯t like his attitude but the other two sympathised with him as a victim. He was in an inconspicuous alley.
¡°Don¡¯t play games with us!¡± They assumed Ebony had a huge mana and stamina pool and was forcefully pushing them into the cuffs but couldn¡¯t tell why he bothered informing them.
One of them threw him onto their shoulders and he was carried away at high speeds. They blindfolded him but didn¡¯t shut all his other senses off. He knew they stopped by a mansion many times larger than Navin¡¯s humble abode with his gravitational sense. Then he was brought underground, his mana sense was interrupted as there was no mana in the area but he could still ¡®see¡¯.
¡®Is it common to build a prison under your house?¡¯ He was guessing the mansion was filled with people.
¡°Hey there! Another poor old louse? Welcome to your new home!¡± A scrawny, dirt-covered man greeted from his cell.
¡®Woah. This prison is almost completely filled, no wonder these guys were so familiar with handcuffing.¡¯
All the prisoners were in different states. Other than the first guy who greeted him the others were mostly in terrible condition and the prison smelled of dried blood, iron and burnt flesh.
¡°No trial?¡± He asked when he heard the metal gates creaked open.
¡°There was. You were already judged.¡± The knight who carried him called the patrolling men to take his belongings away.
Ebony sensed that they had weaker auras or overflowing essence, probably Masters.
¡®Already judged huh¡¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t going to play along anymore. He would admit his wrongs but he knew this wasn¡¯t the Empire¡¯s style. He didn¡¯t want to deal with this farce for too long.
The four Grandmasters were still following him closely and they were probably troublesome. The bigger problem was that he passed by many strong auras before he came underground. If he were to cause a fuss they would definitely come up with some kind of measures against him other than simple reinforcement.
Before they could attach him to the cuffs that connect to the walls they had to remove his stuff and he wasn¡¯t planning to make it easy for them.
Two of the knights grabbed his arm tightly when the other uncuffed his current cuffs. The new men tried to take his greatsword out first but they couldn¡¯t carry it out which annoyed the Grand Knights. Icicle was currently a little more than twice as heavy as compared to the first time he wielded it.
¡°Useless fools! Step aside.¡±
The Grand Knight grabbed Icicle and pulled it out from his robe, Icicle froze its grip to the knight but the knight¡¯s gloves or gauntlets protected him. He tossed it to the side.
¡®I have to do something quick. How do I knock them all out quietly? Even if I knock them all out, how can I leave?¡¯ This wasn¡¯t a shophouse without guards, this place was heavily fortified. Even if he wore their armour and replicate their voice he can easily be Identified which would bring his disguise useless. Ebony felt extremely stupid for playing along when power talks. He wouldn¡¯t be in this predicament if he just fought back as any other man would from the start. What a massive fool he was.
¡®I need to stop being so passive. There¡¯s no merit.¡¯ Is what he told himself but he didn¡¯t think he could change his personality so easily.
His body burst into flames and the entire cell froze. He spread his domain within the small cell itself to silence the noise but he consciously made sure no ice mist was cast. He made sure to focus on their mouths to shut them up, the Masters were fully frozen and they could feel something digging into their flesh but they couldn¡¯t even cry out.
¡®Damn their armour and reflexes. Odd. I¡¯m getting irritable so easily¡¡¯
The Grandmaster knights were protected by a thick layer of their own mana and their armour glowed in response to his flames. The good thing was that they were completely held back by dozens of ice arms.
¡®Oh¡I am so smart.¡¯ Ebony thought of a good idea. He temporarily deluded himself of what a good idea was and called himself smart. He knocked out the Masters without even taking his blindfold off.
Ice mana seeped into every corner of the knight''s armour but there was no ice on the outer layer. He tried his best to knock them out but all he got was a glare so he put their helmets back on after freezing their mouths shut. The knights noticed that when they moved, their mana decreased. Unless he consciously made it not to, his domain attacked anything that moves with vibrations other than him.
Ebony put the cuffs back onto him and controlled the ice mana in the knights armour to move. It was troublesome that they had such high physical stats. He got his flames to dig harder through their mana in response. They started to feel fear and didn¡¯t resist as much.
Ebony didn¡¯t know this. He was just glad that their resistance suddenly dropped.
The Grand Knights put their hands on him by his mental control and brought him out step by step after he removed the ice in his cell. He had one of them carry Icicle.
The prisoner who greeted him was confused when Ebony was brought in only to be brought out again. They climbed the stairs and were questioned by the door guards.
¡°We got a call to bring him out.¡± Ebony replicated one of their voices with ease. He tried to be as vague as possible so that he didn¡¯t give any wrong clues.
He was lucky the door guards had a weaker aura, the Grand Knights seemed to be their superiors and didn¡¯t question too much. The knights were weaker than he assumed which really helped. Just like that, Ebony walked out the same way he entered.
¡®Prison breaks are so simple. I bet this is an illegal prison.¡¯
To continue his ¡®good¡¯ idea. He made the knights hail a carriage after they left the mansion for a distance and used their voice to get them to Navin¡¯s mansion.
Then Ebony felt resistance again.
Their seats froze as flames under their armour burned brighter. He sat silently between the two of them while the other two were in front of him. The driver noticed nothing.
The knights were desperately resisting despite the increase in freezing and their diminishing mana pool. They had the most unpleasant ride in their lives and the roads were congested so their journey was taking longer than it should.
¡®It¡¯s almost time for dinner. The chefs are good but I wanna have her cooking instead.¡¯
When they finally arrived, the knights were faced with a stare-down by two old men.
¡°Boy?¡± One of the old men questioned as they saw the cuffed and blindfolded Ebony.
¡°I¡¯m back for dinner.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a weird hobby, is this how you like to be escorted?¡± It was the same old man that said that Ebony sang like a dying horse.
Ebony released the cuffs and blindfold and walked into the compounds with the knights. His flames were already extinguished for a while but he sensed that he could no longer dig into their flesh and they were getting healed faster than he could heal a deep cut.
He knew the old men were also Grand Knights like his ''escorts'' but their aura was so different, they were a different beast altogether.
¡°I bumped into someone. I thought I accidentally injured them and followed them when they said I assaulted him but they just brought me to some prison without even telling me my sentence. Even the towns that catch thieves had better procedures. I didn¡¯t think it was the real prison so I got them to bring me out.
¡°Oh? Interesting.¡± Navin¡¯s voice reached their ears from behind them. He was also on the way back for dinner with his wife. They tried to make time for each other as much as possible as long as they were both in the same region.
¡°Mind if I take them?¡± He asked as if that wasn¡¯t what Ebony brought them here for.
He entered with Koawe after Navin flew away with the four Grand Knights.
Chapter 151: Day Off
¡°How is she?¡± Ebony asked the Life Queen.
¡°Not looking good.¡± She didn¡¯t look like she was casting any healing magic. Muse remained unconscious.
¡°In what way? What happened?¡±
¡°She probably tried to remove the thing stuck on your soul but didn¡¯t expect a backlash.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t you heal her?¡±
¡°She¡¯s my leading instructor on soul injuries. And, I am healing her as we speak.¡± Yvette pushed him out of the room and they went to receive Navin who came back on time for dinner. Muse was going to be in that state for a few months at least. Quite concerning.
¡°Is she going to be alright?¡± Ebony was actually worried about the weird girl who was probably older than he imagined. It was obviously not his fault but she did do that with good intentions.
¡°She¡¯s probably having snacks in her own dreams right now. Don¡¯t worry, her soul is stronger than all of ours combined.¡± Yvette said lightheartedly.
He nodded, glad that there was a powerful healer present.
The dinner table had a few cold dishes, he was familiar with them as he ate Roya¡¯s cooking. Ning Xin actually didn¡¯t even want dinner and it wasn¡¯t because she didn¡¯t want to eat at the table. He hasn¡¯t seen her yet but she was apparently very full and still busy drinking blood. Hopefully, her evolved mask can really purify the essence completely.
¡°Hahaha! You knocked into someone and just followed them into their prison.¡± Koawe laughed.
¡°Is it normal to have an underground prison under one¡¯s house?¡± He had to ask.
¡°...We tried to centralise a prison but more than 95% of the nobles violently disagreed. They do not want the royal power to consolidate if we are the sole executors for Natural Potential. Solutions like rotations and contribution-based executions were also strongly rejected due to ¡®unfairness¡¯ if there was a big difference in the criminals¡¯ level. The argument that other city or town lords are still in charge of their own executions is a problem we haven¡¯t quite worked out yet.¡± Navin was slightly ashamed.
¡®I thought no one would die¡maybe they have to apply to Yvette to stop her healing or do executions have to be outside of Tidal. Ah, that¡¯s why the stench of blood is so strong down there, it¡¯s the perfect place for torture. They wouldn¡¯t die after all.¡¯ Ebony attempted to use logic.
¡°Can executions even occur in Tidal?¡± He might as well ask directly.
¡°They happen in the closest dungeon to the noble.¡± Yvette almost had a sour look on her face. It was obvious even to him that she didn¡¯t like the topic.
¡°Work is being done. Sadly, that particular Count has his bases covered. He insists on the crimes those he caught have committed and we are not in a position to trust a ¡®criminal¡¯s¡¯ words over a noble. The good thing is the bad impression the locals have for him but the bad thing is that few dares to give us evidence on him.¡± The king and queen weren¡¯t as almighty as the stories say but that was no surprise.
¡®Basically, he¡¯s strong and people are afraid. Might makes right huh¡¡¯
¡°Are those the Imperial army¡¯s knights?¡± He noted the difference in their armour. Having a personal knight squad was different from having an entire army and was allowed.
¡°All ¡®Knight¡¯ Classes receive the minimum training from the Imperial Army. The individual is usually sponsored by a noble family. The others are volunteers that work under the Empire¡¯s flag and the true Imperial Army.¡±
Ebony heard that there was competition for the training as a true knight of the Imperial Army due to their tier 3 Conditioning skill that increased Strength, Endurance, Agility and Vitality. Together with weapon and armour mastery skills, a movement skill, body enhancement magic and perception training. The minimum requirement to graduate their knight training had a full set of tier 2 skills at level 250 before their Class hit 220. Those who don¡¯t graduate are still ¡®knight class¡¯ but have a ¡®warrior¡¯ position in the army. Most ''Warrior'' Class in the army joined after they got a Class, it might take them another evolution before they could were Identified as ''Knight''.
Navin invited him to join his army. He would completely fail, his level already exceeded a few of his skill levels. Not that he was interested in their skillset.
¡°The person I bumped into, is he hurt?¡±
Ebony wondered why they laughed. He remembered the man who bumped into him was only level 152 and was an earth mage. A bump shouldn¡¯t really hurt but he was not aware how much mana he reflected.
¡°The Count¡¯s only son. He¡¯s pampered but he¡¯s still one of my General¡¯s son. How did a ¡®bump¡¯ break a wall?¡± The unnamed Count being a General somewhat explained why people fear him. Maybe. Ebony wasn¡¯t sure.
¡°I might not have been aware of myself when I was walking, I didn¡¯t actually see what happened but I¡¯m pretty sure I bumped into him at least.¡±
The conversation didn¡¯t develop from there, they must have thought he was trying to keep his skills a secret but it wasn¡¯t the case. Koawe diverted the conversation to his return to Arcta and he agreed to follow. Navin was too busy but he would make a stop to strengthen their barriers in a few weeks.
Yvette just looked at him silently throughout the meal. Just being near her was a pleasant feeling, she might be trying to heal him or it might just be her aura.
The royal couple made a formal apology to him for his bad experience in Tidal but he didn¡¯t really care for it. He thought it was a good wake up call. It wasn¡¯t the first but he hoped he doesn¡¯t push it away with Everlasting Tranquillity as he usually does.
???
¡°Ow.¡± Ebony rubbed his head that got ¡®bonked¡¯ on by Icicle first thing in the morning.
¡°One day. Just one day and you almost got yourself kidnapped again.¡± Ning Xin found out from Yvette.
¡°I wasn¡¯t kidnapped.¡±
¡°Imprisoned? I don¡¯t care which one! That¡¯s not important here.¡± Ning Xin tried her best to ignore the deeper and hoarser tone of voice that she noticed he had right after he woke up.
¡°I got you takeaway¡¡±
He took Icicle back before a second whack.
¡°You¡¯re not supposed to follow strangers back home.¡± She was almost embarrassed by her own words but the reality was that he showed her that he had no common sense.
He wasn¡¯t about to argue that she would easily be baited to a stranger''s house if good food was promised.
¡°I fell into a trance.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want to hear your excuses.¡±
¡°Go out on a walk with me.¡±
¡°...¡±
Ning Xin needed to digest and her scoldings weren''t going anywhere. Koawe was going to be busy with Navin for some time and they weren''t in a rush. She brought him to a restaurant that served something like pancakes with berries and tomatoes for breakfast.
There was a huge memory light store as well. He saw that people actually sold skills here, spells to a lesser extent. There were screens all over the walls inside the store that was the size of a shopping mall. They displayed the skills they have in stock that you have to get an employee to bring the memory light for you. There was no guarantee the ¡®video¡¯ recorded was enough to teach you but some of the popular ones have obvious results and even reviews from people who bought them.
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The individual stores inside the mall had their own themes, there were too few spells being showcased. Those showcased were also simple water ball, or blast types spells which any water mage could make themselves. The only difference might be the insights and tips on how to make it more powerful, more mana efficient or even some practical usage when out in the field. Few claimed to be able to refine the skill if you followed their training methods for a certain period of time at the correct intensity. They weren¡¯t completely useless and he could see them being useful for those who had no proper tutoring or wanted a new skill.
He found the person called Torrox again and he had an entire line of memory lights sold on him explaining how to take down many different types of monsters effectively. He decided to buy them all except common monster he had already fought.
¡°He even has dungeon-clearing guides?¡± Ebony reached the section on dungeons.
Torrox had more than 30 complete dungeon guides where the memory lights supposedly record his entire run through the dungeons with his experience and what dangers to note or even where rare materials tend to form. Although they were only Common and a few Uncommon ranked dungeons it was the highlight of the whole store. It must be a massive help for beginners.
They didn¡¯t get any of them since they already cleared a few of those dungeons but Ebony was a little curious about the level 300 Master. There were memory lights of Grandmasters that were placed beside or under his spotlight and didn¡¯t even get much attention. In Tidal alone, there were 8 or 9 dungeons. 5 of these were Rare dungeons while the Uncommon ones were heavily controlled so only lower-level people could enter without overcrowding.
The 2 Epic dungeons were extremely heavily guarded but according to the Quest Hall¡¯s assessment, they have a low risk of having a dungeon break since they have a steady flow of people entering to cull the dungeons¡¯ excess essence.
What the two of them bought the most of was entertainment. Movies. He just grabbed a copy of all production from the past few decades.
They continued their walk till they came upon a huge public square that was having some kind event. It was a game where one had to run past blunted arrows, wind, water, earth and even fire spells with a ball above their head without it popping. A race with battle royale like rules. They had to run to the end of the track to pick one of the prizes they placed while other participants could join in on popping the ball above each other''s head. They just had to be the first to touch the prize. The colour of the ball above one¡¯s head was picked based on the prize they wanted so anyone with the same colour was going after the same prize.
No magic of any type was allowed and there was a runic circle he recognised to sense mana and act as an alarm around the game area. The mages around should easily sense when mana was being used anyway.
¡®Looks fun.¡¯ Ebony honestly thought it seemed fun.
None of the prizes were attractive to him but he noticed the life sized chubby white tiger soft toy that Ning Xin had her eyes on. She did appear to want to pet stray cats that walked past them but animals usually ran away from them so she never had much of a chance. Hopefully, she wasn¡¯t looking at them with a gaze of hunger.
¡°I¡¯ll play.¡± Ebony thought he might as well just get it. Without body enhancement of any type and the considerable lack of physical stats when compared to his level he might have a tough time in the level 200 to 250 range of participants. He didn¡¯t expect so many people to be gunning for the same prize with the white balls above their head when they were waiting for the event to continue gathering participants. All of them were men. There was a suspicious amount of women standing outside the race track surrounded by archers and mages of similar levels.
Even with how dull he was, all the men present knew they had the same objective.
The Warriors had a very clear advantage but he saw multiple mages banding together and before he knew it, he was alone. Well, Ning Xin was beside him with a black coloured ball tied to her head.
¡®Did I misunderstand¡¡¯ Ebony looked at the corresponding prize for the black ball, a green box. The mystery prize that most people went for.
He couldn¡¯t band with the mages since he was identified as a swordsman but he might have lower or equal physical stat compared with the mages. Then again, there was no point in banding together other than using each other to dissuade others from popping their balls. Since no weapon, projectile or magic could be used one could only go close and personal to pop the ball with their hands but charging into a group is a risk since the other could pop the attacker¡¯s ball as well.
Ebony didn¡¯t want to join the drama when the mages reached the prize and they had to pop each other¡¯s ball.
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t the only masked participant so she didn¡¯t catch much attention. Her overflowing Vitality was quite attention-grabbing but no one here was surprised or even bothered by it.
In about 15 minutes, the game was about to start.
A fire mage started the event with a bang.
He wasn¡¯t surprised to see many people bursting with movement skills and Ning Xin was the most eager and the first to reach the halfway mark almost instantly. Together with another person not too far from her.
She was fast enough to come to a complete stop before smashing into an earthen wall that appeared but not the second guy. He smashed so hard into the wall the shock through his body popped the ball above him. The broken wall was Ning Xin¡¯s chance to carry on but most archers and mages began aiming at her and she had no choice but to take care not to break the ball.
The others were beginning to catch up. Some people immediately attacked each other near the start line but most managed to start the game without losing at the start line. The mage group didn¡¯t even require the warriors to attack as they had trouble dodging the flattened arrowheads. They could dodge spells well though, most likely sensing the mass of mana going after them or even aiming at them.
The attacking mages were sneaky, using ball-type projectiles that break and shatter into hundreds of pieces when the warriors try to knock the spells with their fists. The shards or even splatter of water popped the unsuspecting warriors'' prize balls.
Ebony weaved through projectiles and attacks from the participant who wore the same coloured ball on their head with his disappearing act. The halfway mark had three times as many obstacles and projectiles and those that rushed ahead were always sniped down quickly.
He joined the 4 people who were trying their best to protect the prize as they covered the distance step by step. Ning Xin had the thickest volley of attacks on her.
The water and earth projectiles were easy to dodge while there were few fire attacks. Wind was the hardest to guard against. Ning Xin could sense them, he could with his vibration sense, someone in their area was a wind mage and the other two warriors were dodging through sheer speed and instinct maybe.
The wind mage slipped onto the water and earth that mixed into mud on the ground and had the ball above his head popped by a perfectly timed and aimed earth shard.
More and more people reached the halfway mark which slackened the volley of attacks at them. Ebony would have been the first due to the elusiveness of his footwork but the other two warriors just had to be aiming for the same prize as him and were working together to slow him down.
The influx of participants reaching the halfway point gave him the chance to break free from the two guys. Although he was obviously slower in terms of pure speed, it didn¡¯t really matter when everyone was basically jogging at a normal human¡¯s pace due to the unrealistic volley of attacks trying to disqualify them.
The whole group of about 70 people remaining pushed towards the 3-quarter mark where the path was narrowed causing them to push each other more. The number quickly diminished to about 15 none of which were pure mages.
Ebony attempted to stay in the midst of the group with different coloured balls so that he wasn¡¯t targeted which worked pretty well but the numbers dwindled too much for it to be effective.
He broke out of the remaining group for the last spurt. Rejoining the two other competitors for the chubby white tiger that was still in the game. Ning Xin was still first and her competitors for the black prize were lagging behind.
He didn¡¯t understand why his two competitors were ganging on him when they were more of a threat to each other.
Ebony managed to deftly kick away an arrow towards one of them. The man was caught off guard by the arrow from a different direction but still managed to defend his ball by using his hand to catch it. Ebony was hoping to make him dodge since he would get hit by other spells if he dodged but tough luck, the man was skilled.
He used the arrow redirection on both of them but the arrows coming for him stopped completely. The archers noticed what he was doing and didn¡¯t support him.
¡®It¡¯s hard to suppress the reflection of vibration.¡¯ Ebony had to make sure he didn¡¯t accidentally reflect the physical vibration touching him with mana so that he wasn¡¯t disqualified.
They were near the end but all three of them were still in the game. Ning Xin was already standing by the green box with her hand on it. The other participants who were gunning for that prize were disappointed since they could see that they already lost.
Ebony couldn¡¯t directly exchange blows with them, his punches or kicks were dozens of times slower and weaker than theirs. He got hit a lot but no punch or kick reached the ball on his head. Even without any body-enhancement his body could take their attacks without injury.
He changed his focus to making them slip on their feet so that the projectiles hit them. With positioning, he put both of them into the bulk of the attacks and splashed mud on the floor around. Finally, one of them slipped and the other took the chance to step on the man¡¯s back.
Ebony didn¡¯t bother going on the offence. He took the chance to reach the white tiger. The man who went to step on the falling warrior yelled in frustration when he remembered the real objective. He had an ugly showing where he pushed everyone who came near him even when they weren¡¯t going for the same prize.
Ebony carried the smooth furred chubby plushy into Ning Xin¡¯s arms.
¡°For you.¡±
She showed him the mystery prize, it was a tea set made of clear green jade.
¡°Let¡¯s go back.¡± She hugged the white tiger before stuffing it away.
Chapter 152: Troll
They left Tidal the next day. Koawe was done with his business. Leaving through the west gate and were assured a quick ride. Koawe led them a distance away from Tidal¡¯s intimidating walls before whistling sharply, ¡°Arti!¡± he called.
It took a few minutes before they heard a loud screech. A plane-sized bird with icy blue wings flew over and landed in front of them. Rubbing its head on Koawe.
¡°You¡¯re a tamer?¡±
¡°Nope. It just followed me on its own will. Intelligent beasts do that from time to time and you can find a lot of them in the glades. Meet Arti, my companion.¡± Koawe¡¯s smile was gentler than usual. It must have been his eyes that softened up. Koawe let them pet her. It liked Ebony¡¯s touch, her feathers were only safe to touch in one direction. One''s skin might tear off if she was pet against the other direction of these seemingly soft feathers.
Arti flapped her wings violently when Ning Xin got close but calmed down with Koawe assuring her that Ning Xin was a friend and not a foe.
[Arctic Condor Lvl ???]
Ebony was level 211 for all 3 of his Classes, having levelled up twice after Navin killed the Earthfly Queen. With level 16 Identify, he could only Identify up to 291. It was still clear the condor was above 300 he just wasn¡¯t sure how much higher. It had a weaker aura than the Earthfly Queen.
The ride was indeed quick. Arti didn¡¯t have a saddle since she wasn¡¯t a ¡®ride¡¯ and it was a challenge to hang on tight without any barriers protecting them from sharp winds. They had to grab on tight but not to the point of hurting or irritating Arti. They hugged Arti¡¯s body so that they weren¡¯t blown off. Koawe just chuckled at their plight, he was very used to riding Arti with his legs comfortably wrapped around her neck and shoulder area.
Koawe didn¡¯t dare to fly too high. Arti had great stamina but was easily distracted by prey. Ebony copied Koawe and conjured a little ice mana to chill her body and regain her attention.
It hadn¡¯t exactly been a safe flight. The three of them were violently flung off when they encountered a nasty flock of [Cyclone Peckers] around level 190. These peckers didn¡¯t fear the vastly stronger opponent and swept all of them up in their tornado-like flight path. Arti got irritated by the storm of pecks and reacted too violently, sending all of them off her back.
Arti didn¡¯t bother with any tactics, she just breathed out a cloud of misty ice that swallowed the entire tornado. The small-sized peckers helped to spread the cloud with the winds they caused, essentially helping the freezing cloud reach every Cyclone Peckers. They turned flightless and fell to their deaths like a swarm of insects breathing in pesticide. Chances were, they were dead before they hit the ground.
Arti caught the three of them who were floating in the air with their own magic. Perhaps the Cyclone Peckers didn¡¯t see them compared to the giant bird. She tried her best to get Koawe to pet her. They helped to unruffle her feathers that got pecked at before they continued their high-speed journey.
Arti began to take a liking to Ning Xin after she helped to comb her feathers. She wasn¡¯t aware that the chef was an expert when it came to handling bird feathers. Poultry and avian meat was her favourite and she had plenty of experience with feathers.
They reached Arcta in four days and Arti flew away when they returned. She didn¡¯t stay with Koawe all the time and lived in the wild most of the time.
They separated and he naturally went to the Thoya¡¯s.
Ning Xin was recognised and she was better at restraining her overflowing Vitality so they were not as bothered despite the increase in her strength.
They opened the door to see Kiva walking with wobbly feet before stumbling onto the padded blanket she was placed on. She could now walk about a dozen steps before falling.
¡°Where¡¯s Roya and Clovis?¡± Ebony asked Halvis who was the only one in the house. Kiva was reaching out for him, he took it as a win that he was remembered. Ning Xin took over instead, poking Kiva¡¯s soft cheeks to get a giggle out. Kiva didn¡¯t change in size at all, the Frost Elves physically grew very slowly.
Halvis smiled and got him to make a guess.
¡°I have no idea. Is he picking up mana tailoring?¡± He replied.
¡°Hahahaha! Sadly, that boy has no interest in tailoring. No, Roya¡¯s teaching him her family¡¯s spells. He was busy training with me this morning.¡± Halvis said.
Ebony knew they had some combat skills but the Frost Elves had their secrets too, they never specifically taught him any ice spells.
He could finally Identify Halvis to be at level 215.
¡°You¡¯re back quick. Almost exceeded my level in such a short time too.¡±
¡°We met up with Koawe in Tidal, he invited us to witness your guardian beast¡¯s birth. Has she given birth?¡±
¡°She hasn¡¯t even arrived. Korben went to escort her.¡±
Halvis mentioned their village guardian who was a Grand Ice Mage.
¡°We also wanted a break since we couldn¡¯t keep up with our excessive levelling.¡±
¡°I would bet. Even crafters who got an influx of multiple levels in a short time would see a decrease in the quality of their products since they misjudged their physical and maybe mental strength. Even so, it shouldn¡¯t take a long time to get used to. You won¡¯t stay for long will you?¡±
¡°Sorry to intrude¡¡± Ning Xin said without explaining that their stay might be extended due to her needing quite a bit of time to digest all the crystalised blood she got.
¡°You misunderstand! I want you to stay longer. See how happy Kiva is to see you!¡± Halvis realised that his wording had been unwelcoming.
Ebony could tell Ning Xin was happy.
They didn¡¯t actually stay in the village, opting to hunt for Seal meat again while they added their stats slowly. They took 3 days for the hunt this time and managed to fully allocate all their stats.
From level 100 to 212, he gained 112 levels. That meant a total of 1680 stat points from his Class, 1120 from his Sub-Class and 336 Wisdom stat points from his Profession. He was initially forced to put stats away from Intelligence due to the fact that his skin and muscles tore, his veins ruptured and his bones snapped when his mana started to fill up his chassis in their compressed state. It wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t want to throw his stats to Intelligence to power up his limitless body enhancement but his physical body just couldn¡¯t withstand the strength of his mana.
Strength: 50 ? Strength: 400 [411]
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Vitality: 50 ? Vitality: 400
Constitution: 250 ? Constitution: 900 [4211]
Endurance: 50 ? Endurance: 150 [155]
Agility: 250 ? Agility: 600 [616]
Intelligence: 376 ? Intelligence: 626 [643]
Wisdom: 530 ? Wisdom: 1466 [1506]
Perception: 100 ? Perception: 250 [985]
He didn¡¯t meet his stat goals and he didn¡¯t like the current allocation but it was the only way he managed for his stats not to break his battle style. Even with 900 base Constitution his body was barely holding itself together. 4211 was a deceptive value based on Stock Mana Compressive Chassis at level 210 which provided him 525% of Intelligence to his Constitution which was 3286.5.
He got a 2.75% increase in most of his stats except Vitality and Perception from his Conditioning. It was only level 110 so there was a lot of room for growth.
He also realised after his evolution that he was previously wrong with Mental Arithmetic, he got tricked solely based on his status page¡¯s numbers. His mana was now naturally 200% more compressible while in the past it was 100%. After his evolution, his natural mana density was also increased by 100%, effectively doubling the effect of Intelligence and letting him cover the gap between him and races who have higher base mana density unless they had the same Fortification. Even if he used the 3286 buff from Intelligence to calculate, he was effectively getting a 19,719 passive stat increase to his base 900 Constitution.
His effective Constitution would drop quickly in battle due to the usage of mana but it wouldn¡¯t even matter after he cast body enhancement. He believed that if his body wasn¡¯t so receptive to his own mana, there was no way 900 points in Constitution and maybe his other physical stat included could let him withstand his mana. His other physical stat most likely had to be taken into account as well from his tests and instincts. Thus, he had no choice but to heavily invest in his physical body.
He wanted to focus on his physical stat so it wasn¡¯t a big problem. At least, he could fight even if all his mana was drained away now. His equipment wasn¡¯t a burden to his unenhanced body and he could move perfectly fine without enhancement. His Perception had to be increased so that he could keep up with the high-intensity battles and the range of his senses had increased even more, getting more sensitive and accurate as well. The increase from his Everlasting Tranquillity saved him a lot of stat points.
The increase in his Strength and Agility greatly increased his stamina consumption too so he had to give some love to Endurance. His body gets sore slower with a higher Endurance.
His magic was slow due to his low Intelligence. Projectiles basically never hit since he usually fought stronger monsters. His clones weren¡¯t viable in battle other than being used as distractions, a shield, an extra moving storage of ice mana that can attach themselves before bursting into flames or holding their positions since they were hard to break.
Everlasting Tranquillity at 294 gave him a 1470% increase in mana regeneration or a 15.7 times multiplier atop his natural regeneration. He currently regenerates 2364.91 MP/min or 39.42 MP/sec.
All his excess went to Icicle whenever he was in town and cannot repress it any further. He maintained a constant link to it, it was lucky Icicle consumed ice mana and it wouldn¡¯t just freeze and shatter. He still exceeded Icicle¡¯s consumption rate so if his robes were full he had no choice but to form a condensed Glacial Model before his mana leaked. He can do it in his sleep now so he can sleep in peace whenever he is in town. He still had his trailer home that had a huge mana ore that he kept topped up as well.
They returned and had a feast with the Thoyas.
???
¡°Captain,¡± Hector whispered.
¡°Keep your head down.¡±
¡°Captain, are we really abandoning the camp?¡± Hector followed his group and continued moving in a weird squat walk.
¡°You want to join that fool of a commander that chooses to defend a hidden base and risk getting wiped out even after we inform them they are extremely outnumbered and outpowered? We¡¯re supposed to stay low-key wherever possible.¡±
¡°But the soldiers¡¡±
¡°...I can only trust that man will not let his men die in vain, I warned them multiple times.¡±
¡°But where are we going?¡±
¡°Shh. They informed me of the closest camp. General Truewater¡¯s camp. We should be able to sleep well if a Truewater is in charge.¡±
It was surprising but it was actually the commander that allowed him the choice of action. More than a little odd.
¡°What¡¯s the catch?¡± Hector knew that his captain was holding back some information.
¡°Closest, is probably more than a month away with our current speed. The real catch, according to that maybe not-so-silly commander, is that more and more Trolls are gathering near the coast. I can understand his reason for staying, there just isn¡¯t anywhere they can set up a hidden camp with their numbers. Trying to cross the distance without getting spotted would be diffi-kh¡± Their captain leading the way moved his grip to his ribs.
The entire group acted lightning-fast after seeing the dart that pierced through the captains relatively well-held together armour.
¡°Stay down! 8 of them, they don¡¯t appear to have spotted you. Move!¡± Their captain suppressed his voice and his thick arms held Hector back. Trolls tend to move in squads of 8.
¡°Take them down fast. As quietly as possible, stand down Hector.¡± Hector knew that Trolls had terrible communication capabilities and tended not to follow commands that well. If they saw food, they hunted. They wouldn¡¯t report every single one of their hunts and that was only beneficial for the Imperials.
4 of them were left behind to watch the battle as their skills were loud, eye-catching or both. Their captain held back the poison in his system with his magic body, the Trolls haven¡¯t changed their poison much so the soldiers here all had a certain level or resistance against it. He rushed out alone while the others surrounded the group of 8 without getting spotted.
It was no shock that most Trolls were purebred warriors through and through with far weaker affinity to mana than humans. Their captain¡¯s sword burned bright, many commanders here used fire magic due to their effectiveness at slowing down the Trolls regenerative properties. All the captain had was an enchanted weapon.
He leaped to behead the one who shot the dart at him but was parried by a backhand, clashing onto the bladed metal vambrace. His blade snapped on impact, a miscalculation. It had better days and didn¡¯t have any good maintenance for the past few years they took to travel.
His leg was caught by another Troll that moved in on him before he could react but was sliced off by the water mage on their side. He freed himself from the cut hand with a swing of his leg but the Troll¡¯s arm was half regenerated already.
¡®This squad is too strong!¡¯ The captain could already tell from their regeneration speed and how they reacted to his attack.
¡°ALL HANDS ON DECK!¡± Perhaps he had been on the ship for too long.
Hector and his buddies came smashing their way into the battle, saving the water mage who almost got punched to a pulp.
Now that the water mage was free and protected, he was busy drowning 3 of the Trolls. An extremely useful tactic since the Trolls are rarely able to manipulate water and it was easy to restrain their movements. Unfortunately, the Trolls could go without breath for an unimaginable amount of time. Their flailing about was stronger than expected and the water mage couldn¡¯t hold them back for too long.
Hector super panched the least clothed Troll on the belly, looking up to see the giant¡¯s grin and his arm being enveloped by the giant¡¯s grip. He screamed as every bone in his arm got pulverised as his body was sent flying like a rag doll. The Troll didn¡¯t think he was a threat.
Drenched in sweat, Hector used the broken uprooted tree as support. He might have shared some of his potions and pills but he still kept most of them. The soldiers that died usually died instantly and he didn¡¯t have a chance to save them. He was out of painkillers and had no choice but to bear the pain, drinking and eating the appropriate healing items. He was glad the Trolls didn¡¯t seem to care about him, they probably Identified him to be the weakest since he was only a Journeyman.
Hector warned his allies with a shared glance with each of them. The Trolls were pushed close together by 25 soldiers who had impeccable teamwork. He readied his good arm, slightly afraid his body would tear apart if he overextended the usage of 6 elemental body enhancements. He put another pill into his mouth without swallowing it.
He looked at his shaking fists, took a deep breath and smashed them both into his head instead of each other. His body was flooded with conjured elements and instead of breaking bones and tearing tissues, his physical body started to disintegrate.
Hector jumped into the air for the greatest mega panch of his life till date.
Chapter 153: Halberd Grandmaster
¡°No. You¡¯re going to get kidnapped or follow some stranger into a prison again.¡± Ning Xin denied.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, there¡¯s no one to kidnap me or for me to follow here,¡± Ebony assured.
He was planning to explore Hoarfrost Glade while she remained to consume her blood treats. Plenty of places he didn¡¯t dare to go to were open to him now.
¡°Relax, I¡¯m not that easy of a target now. I know the glades relatively well too.¡± He added to the silence.
¡°...Come back for meals as often as you can.¡±
Ebony was going to go either way but her permission made it such that it wouldn¡¯t weigh on his mind. Just like that, he left Arcta after just 2 days. The seal meat had been amazing.
The snow felt crunchier than he remembered, he might have heard that the colder the snow the louder the crunch and it was indeed slightly colder than it should be at this time of the year. He attempted to fly as much as possible, training his flight ability even though it meant slower travelling speed. Multiple Glacial Models ran under him, they could use Treading Stride and he wasn¡¯t controlling them manually. He just got them to stick close to him as they scout the area.
¡°I need to be able to conjure gravity mana, just manipulating what¡¯s around is a heavy restriction and honestly, pretty weak.¡± Ebony spoke out loud. The ¡®hack¡¯ that he had was that he could conjure ice and hence, gravity mana that came with any sort of matter. The rushed levelling didn¡¯t give him any time to improve his skills on a foundational degree.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill:
Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 294
Icy Weighted Quiver Domain Lvl 52
Class: Serene Blade of Blistering Frost - Lvl 212
Class Skills:
Treading Stride Lvl 215
Ice Mana Control Lvl 244
Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 244
Blazing Flow Greatsword Mastery Lvl 208
Frostblaze Cladding Lvl 237
Ice Sword Lvl 205
Ceaseless Onslaught Lvl 208
Imperishable Frost Scales Lvl 244
Serene Swordsman of Frost Conditioning Lvl 110
Waning Presence Lvl 88
Glacial Model Lvl 92
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Weighted Will Lvl 212
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 205
Mana Vibration Lvl 210
Gravity Mana Manipulation Lvl 228
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 228
Sonic Intrusion Lvl 210
Guided Path Lvl 142
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Runic Mana Maven - Lvl 212
Profession Skills:
Inscripted Mana Moulding Lvl 208
Stock Mana Compressive Chassis Lvl 210
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 4110/4110
Stamina: 1500/1500
Mana: 15060/15060
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 400 [411]
Vitality: 400
Constitution: 900 [4211]
Endurance: 150 [155]
Agility: 600 [616]
Intelligence: 626 [643]
Wisdom: 1466 [1506]
Perception: 250 [985]
Generic Skills:
Identify Lvl 17
Immense Cold Resistance Lvl 87
Running Lvl 40
Mental Mapping Lvl 42
Kicking Mastery Lvl 68
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 10
Mental Arithmetic Lvl 35
Dish Washing Lvl 48
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 70
Tracking Lvl 18
Game Processing Lvl 30
Immense Heat Resistance Lvl 102
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12
Gardening Lvl 45
Cooking Lvl 43
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 55
Korun Lvl 14
Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 22
Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 42
Sheer Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 25
Lightning Resistance Lvl 26
Blood Resistance Lvl 22
Wind Resistance Lvl 23
Poison Resistance Lvl 14
Everlasting Tranquillity seemed to be blasting through the levels after he evolved as well. Icy Weighted Quiver Domain was originally level 37 after 4 of his skills merged he didn¡¯t use it much hence it¡¯s low level. For his Class skills, it was the same as usual. He didn¡¯t get much of a chance to utilise Waning Presence properly while he used Glacial Models and Imperishable Frost Scales interchangeably and was in use almost all day.
Guided path was added to his fighting style very heavily. Although he had been using it to increase his offensive capability he knew another usage was to repel himself from an attack. So far, he didn¡¯t see a need to since nothing much could hurt him other than his own compressed mana. Overall, he was dissatisfied with the gains in his Sub-Class.
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As for his Profession, he was even more unhappy about how he was wasting its potential. He had been attempting and practising the formation of a new spell. The reason his Glacial Models could even remotely keep up with him was that they have the runic body spell within them. The effects tend to defer from one model to another due to the fine-tuning he had to do in an instant as he cast them and when they get damaged it loses most of their effect. When he gets proficient enough that they are consistent a skill would likely be formed. The problem might have been that Inscripted Mana Moulding is not a proper tier 2 skill.
Inscripted Mana Moulding - Mould raw mana with or without any physical materials with mana manipulation. Weaving runic endeavours into or on your creations with increasing efficiency and accuracy. Increases familiarity with repeated mana pathways and their effectiveness by 20% + 1.0% per level. Increases fine control over mana by 2.5% per level.
Familiarity, rather than researching new mana pathways he should finalise and practise to be a better photocopy machine. When he pushes the familiarity increase to 2.5% and maybe increase the base percentage he should be able to be more consistent with his rune casting. Since it''s runic-based and uses non-elemental mana, he was pretty confident it would be a Profession skill.
His Generic Skills were able to level for those that he used more often. It was nice to see his skills level again despite simply being numbers. He would¡¯ve liked a bunch of resistance but he needed potent magic to damage him in any way.
He needed this chance away from dedicated hunting to improve his skills and spells.
Ebony found a clearing and had his Glacial Models surround and protect him. He could sense that he was extremely close to forming a new Profession skill.
He let his mana leak out around 5 metres from him, creating a sphere of mana with his leaking mana. He learnt the method from the Frost Elves long ago but never managed to get the skill. With his experience using a domain spell and usage of excess mana, it was a lot easier to prevent the overflowing amount from slipping through his mental grip.
After evolving, his perception of Vitality or what Ning Xin called life force was improved. She could manipulate it well while all he could do was sense and maybe nudge it a little after these few months. He tried to sense the life force in his mana, it was vague but it didn¡¯t matter for now. He forcefully attempted to nudge at the lifeforce from mana to mana, pushing them to the corners of his mana sphere surrounding him. He felt relieved that the excess mana wasn¡¯t slipping through the thicker layer of lifeforce anymore. He let loose of his desperate hold over his mana and redid the same exercise over and over again.
¡°1782 times.¡± He did not realise that he was speaking out loud instead of thinking. It took him 1782 attempts before he could prevent any excess mana that he regenerates to leak through the mana sphere that was lined with lifeforce. To a small degree, he managed to move his lifeforce better as well.
Waning Presence levelled in the meantime.
Now he had to try to maintain the bubble as he moved and that was exactly what he did. It only took slightly more than half a day to make 1782 attempts. If he bumped into Gen¡¯s and Ful¡¯s forest that would be nice but he wasn¡¯t actively looking for them at the moment.
¡°Just what is my goal?¡± A truly random moment for him but he acted as if he didn¡¯t hear his own words.
With him busy trying to control a new type of energy, he did not fall into a trance as he was having a difficult time with life force. If only it had been as easy to control as mana he would have gotten a skill from it already.
He found that moving around didn¡¯t really affect his control over the lining of life force which made it simpler for him. His excess mana continued to leak but stayed confined in the mana sphere, he allowed them to compress but they started slipping through again soon after. He tried using the mana that already escaped his control but was still within his sphere, it was less efficient but they have the same strength and properties.
Ebony continued his flight as he experimented.
Something attacked one of his Models but it was dealt with relatively easily even without his involvement. It needed help from another Model but considering how he only had 643 effective Intelligence, the monster that attacked must have been pretty weak.
¡°I will never be able to increase Intelligence if this goes on.¡± Ebony thought about how his body was unable to withstand his mana. This would not change as Stock Mana Compressive Chassis continues to level; it would only get worse. He needed some way to make his body more resilient to mana than his Constitution suggests and he needed to find a way fast so that he would have a chance to make it a Fortification in future.
Ning Xin used life force even when she was a Journeyman but he didn¡¯t have as much talent when it came to life force.
¡°Physique. I need to refine or maybe mutate it somehow. But how?¡±
Ebony knew that it was not necessary to get external stimulus to refine a physique, most warriors or mages who used enhancement magic often would form their own physique after a couple of evolutions. Some even got it through training which meant they didn¡¯t exactly need to wait for their next evolution.
His physique was likely inherited from his father but one that was weak or he barely inherited much since he needed external stimulus that was slightly different from a pure mana being. He managed to get it by ¡®melding¡¯ his mana into his body but if it was enhancement magic that was everything he depended on to fight anything stronger than him and he was constantly casting it.
There was some change in his physique after his evolution but it was not an obvious change that didn¡¯t even warrant a refinement notice.
Right now, Ebony was not calm and he didn¡¯t understand why. He felt something off since Muse tried to ¡®heal¡¯ him.
???
¡°Can you teach me how to raise children?¡± Ning Xin asked Roya.
Roya was shocked before looking at her belly. ¡°You¡already!?¡±
¡°What?! No!¡± She denied Roya''s accusation vehemently.
¡°Making plans for it already?¡±
¡°No¡playing with Kiva is fun. Just thought to get an experienced mother¡¯s opinions on how to care for children. My upbringing has been¡different and from what little I¡¯ve heard, he probably wasn¡¯t raised normally either¡¡±
¡°Experienced mother?¡± Roya seemed really happy at the comment.
Although Ning Xin hasn¡¯t been interacting with the Frost Elves for a long time, she knew that none of them would consider Roya to be an experienced mother just because of her age. To her, a mother of two was plenty experienced.
The first thing that was recommended to her were a bunch of books. She didn¡¯t like studying.
She didn¡¯t think that there were so many things to note. Even the development stage of a baby requires different types of attention. It was news to her that babies started developing their sense of self really early, they absorb their parents'' every expression, tone of voice and body language.
Roya made it sound complicated like needing to praise little things to improve their self-confidence but have just the right amount of discipline as well. How would she determine what ¡®little things¡¯ or ¡®right amount¡¯ is?
There was no answer to that and no matter how she tried to recall, she didn¡¯t have memories of her early childhood. At least, definitely not when she was a baby.
Other than staying in to play with Kiva, digesting crystalised blood and spending a short time reading she would follow the villagers to fish if they made a trip. Halvis invited her and although she didn¡¯t have the patience in the past, she found it relaxing now. It wasn¡¯t like she didn¡¯t leave the village every day to do her conditioning somewhere far away so she didn¡¯t raise the temperature around the village but she didn¡¯t spend that much time on that.
She was being careful, unsure if her mask was really completely purifying essence. The mesh of Earthfly and beetle gave her a measly 3 stat points. She was done with an eighth of all that she managed to absorb from the Gorpede after a week but already got a total of 16 stat points. Basically, a level¡¯s worth without even levelling. The sheer difference in their rank and level helped but it was likely the volume of fresh blood that she got.
¡®Who is that Blood Saintess? I should ask grandma when she returns.¡¯ Ning Xin didn¡¯t have any doubt that the Blood Saintess had the same, probably stronger version of this ability.
She shook her head thinking that she was overreaching herself as she wasn¡¯t at the point where she could start thinking about anything outside Elcra yet.
Today, Ebony was back for dinner and to sleep for a night before he left after breakfast the next morning. She wondered what he was doing but he appeared out of it. At least he wasn¡¯t kidnapped.
Now that she got used to it, she should be able to safely extract and consume the blood faster and faster.
10 days later, Ning Xin sensed fire mana from the direction of the village gates.
¡®A fire mage maybe?¡¯ She thought it was a nice change of pace to see who was entering the village but the closer she got to the source of fire mana, the more uneasy she felt. When she finally got close enough to sense the overflowing essence that she recognised she forcefully held herself back with the thought of the village around her. If she were to blow, the village would probably burn down.
Being cool-headed did not suit her but it was an amazing asset most of the time. She turned back before running into the person who was exuding his aura without restraint and went to play with Kiva to calm herself further.
¡°Clovis.¡± She had gotten slightly closer to the huge bookworm.
¡°Yeah?¡± Clovis was doing some physical exercise that his father said was their conditioning skill. His movements were a tiny bit better than when she first saw him, they didn¡¯t waste as much stamina. His breath control was pretty good in comparison, she wondered if it was a farmer thing. Anyone who worked the field was said to have good stamina control.
¡°Can you help me check out the person who arrived earlier today? When you go to the playground tomorrow.¡± She asked.
¡°Someone came to our village today? It¡¯s been getting more frequent these few years. Sure I can ask around.¡± Clovis wiped the pieces of ice that formed on his skin, the Frost Elves had different types of sweat and this was the type that formed after strenuous physical activity. It was weird.
She polished her swords in peace and night seemed to take forever to pass but also seemed to pass in an instant.
¡°One of them is someone the village has worked with a few times. I heard they¡¯re leaving for the Icy region tomorrow morning.¡± Clovis reported.
¡°Someone that the village worked with?¡± Ning Xin was a little stunned.
¡°We don¡¯t have enough combatants after all, the adults hire freelancers to clear overpopulated dungeons deeper in from time to time. They tend to be users of fire magic since fire magic is usually effective against most dungeons here so it is a little rare that only one of them seems to use fire magic. I didn¡¯t get any of their names but the fire user seemed acquainted with the village chief and uncle Koawe.¡± Clovis ate the breakfast she cooked. It reduced the workload on Roya and she wanted to cook anyway. Koawe wasn¡¯t his uncle and it was just an address that he used for almost every adult.
¡°I see.¡± She got a little conflicted especially with the mentions of Koawe but only for a second. Ultimately, she didn¡¯t care about that little detail.
¡°Oh yes, Ebony called me to pass him something. I¡¯ll probably be out for a while tomorrow.¡± She lied through her mask.
¡°Sa?¡± Kiva seemed to be trying to understand her words before she was distracted by the spoon touching her lips. Ning Xin was perfectly fluent at feeding her now.
¡°Thanks for breakfast!¡± Clovis ran to his mother¡¯s workshop, she was waiting for him to start their secret training.
Ning Xin took care of Kiva for a short while before Halvis took over after he was done with his croft. A place she didn¡¯t go so that she didn¡¯t destroy the crops with her overflowing essence.
She took her conditioning extremely seriously, hoping not to bump into the group who came. Clovis didn¡¯t say how many people there were but her best guess was 5 since most Imperials move in parties of 5. Then again, that was a bad method of guessing.
She informed Roya that she wouldn¡¯t be around to care for Kiva and left the village in the middle of the night. She waited near the village gates and the moment the gates opened, her speculation was confirmed.
A Grandmaster warrior carrying a large halberd walked out with a dark-coloured robed Grand Earth Mage. Unlike her initial guess, there were only two of them.
¡°Trust me, it''s a cushy job. We get paid and there''s plenty of experience. It''s only a 3 floor dungeon, the only difference is the stronger and more intelligent monsters.¡± The warrior walked with confidence. He didn¡¯t even wear any coat or fur clothing in this cold but it wasn¡¯t as if she was wearing anything like that either.
Ning Xin waited for them to go further, she didn¡¯t have good stealth abilities but she could easily follow their scent and heat signatures from afar.
When she deemed that she was far enough that she wouldn¡¯t alert the village, she let her presence be found by releasing all the life force she built up in her heart in a single heartbeat. Mortal¡¯s Pulse.
The crunchy compressed snow shattered in a web-like structure around her and even the earth underneath tore. Even then, she didn¡¯t move to attack. She waited for the Grandmaster warrior to turn back.
The ugly look on his face was¡satisfying to see.
The earth mage disappeared instantly but she saw that he just dived into the ground. That might be troublesome since she didn¡¯t have Ebony¡¯s perception but she truly couldn¡¯t be bothered about the earth mage.
The rage that she had been withholding all came back the moment she exploded forth with all her strength.
It wasn¡¯t exactly unexpected from a man that escaped her cousin but the warrior only smiled and swung his halberd with excitement. Accurately parrying her initial charge.
She instantly understood that he had been fooling around with her previously, even after her first use of Mortal¡¯s Pulse.
She wasn¡¯t holding back one bit but the Grandmaster warrior was truly worthy of his rank. The air melted when he started using his fire enhancement to combat her. Fortunately, she had her own supply of air.
¡°Little lass! You sure got stronger quick!¡± He wielded his halberd with unmatched efficiency and deftness. The bulky weapon was hardly at a disadvantage against her twin blades when it was wielded by him.
She laughed.
¡°I guess I have to thank you for strengthening my skill!¡± She was glad that she learned Incensed Meditation because she was mad right now. Very mad.
¡®There still such a big gap between us¡¡¯ It wasn¡¯t hard for her to tell after the very first exchange. She could beat some Grandmasters, more than just a few, that she was sure of.
That she wasn¡¯t able to chop his head off immediately made her mad. That she was still weaker made her mad. That she skipped meals just to follow them through the night made her mad.
¡°I heard the boy escaped. Is he here with you?¡± The warrior used his halberd like a spear and thrust at her belly as she pushed too far in her attack. He was right that she was still inexperienced despite her quick levelling. He might have used a bit too much strength despite his lack of killing intent as her impressive-looking mantle was torn and the amount of blood had been exaggerated. Luckily, most of the blood that splattered had been from her defensive disk of blood but she wasn''t unharmed.
Now she was really mad.
Chapter 154: Switch
A single arm made of ice grabbed Ebony¡¯s collar and threw him backwards. The [Alloy Fur Mammoth Lvl 280] was pissed as he had tested a new spell onto its sleeping body. The mammoth was so big and blended in the surroundings so well that he had been sitting atop without realising. No wonder Waning Presence had been getting some nice levels.
He tried his best to communicate that he meant no harm but the injuries he caused made it hard to justify and the Mammoth was too far into its rage. He didn¡¯t want to kill it and ran away but the Mammoth somehow tracked him through a vast distance despite his active hiding. With its size it might not have been that far since it only took the Mammoth half an hour. Since it was so persistent, Ebony attacked back but his flames could barely stick onto the fur, he wasn¡¯t able to freeze or even slow it down.
Gravity magic worked but it only seemed to anger it more and its rage fuelled its strength slightly further. His physical attacks weren¡¯t able to pierce through the mana and lifeforce-filled fur. He was fascinated to see monsters imbuing both into their body to enhance themselves.
The Mammoth chased him as he attempted a second escape, he tried to dissuade it from chasing him and by the virtue of him using his brain he thought of scaring it away. Since his overflowing wisdom wasn¡¯t scary enough, he thought along the lines of animals and imitated a roar with sound magic. From lions to monsters, it was only cute to the Mammoth who roared back even louder.
He had no choice but to wear out the Mammoth¡¯s energy. It didn¡¯t manage to hit him due to its bulky size, but even after its fur no longer gleamed with energy, Icicle only put small cuts on it.
It took 2 days of constant hacking, making him feel bad about the pain he put the giant Mammoth through. Most of the mammoth''s body was ruined from his rough methods and there wasn¡¯t anything he could salvage except a ton of fur that was longer than he was tall but only as thin as his own hair. He took it since the material seemed really suitable for making clothes. Although a lot of it was damaged there was more than enough that was in pristine condition since he attacked the same spot as much as possible. It was too bad that the creature didn''t calm down even after he tired it out. He never would''ve won if he didn''t manage to wear the mammoth''s mana and stamina out.
He continued testing his new idea for a spell, pumping condensed ice mana into Icicle beyond its consumption capacity. Drawing all the gravity mana he could to help with his compression and connecting the tip to the ground by a thread of gravity mana. He tightened his grip to keep the vibration of the outer layer at its limit but he had to be especially careful about this part as he might accidentally let the vibrations to his greatsword which would probably damage it.
He couldn¡¯t take it anymore and dropped Icicle from the air where he was floating at. It fell like a meteor but slid into the icy ground as if it was air. Unsure how far it continued sinking before the layer of Sonic Intrusion was released together with gravity mana that he freed from control and Icicle¡¯s entire storage of ice mana.
The solid icy ground cracked a little over 50 metres in diameter with Icicle in the centre. The condensed ice mana was spread well and they burst into flames. It lasted for around 8 minutes.
This was the perfect place for him to test since the cracked ice floor only got repaired by his flames and he didn¡¯t do much environmental damage.
¡®I really like this spell. I wonder why? I should call it Icicle Drop. Wait, can I even name the spell?¡¯
Ebony was unsure since it hadn¡¯t formed into a skill yet. He also decided to practise roaring with sound magic from time to time.
They didn¡¯t form a skill even after many days.
He decided to go back for a meal and bath.
He was still far away from the village when he felt the intense heat. A naked forest was in front of him before long. No snow for kilometres on end and the ground was burned black..
Then he heard Ning Xin¡¯s voice. Closer to a roar than a scream.
¡°COME OUT! COME BACK HERE AND FIGHT!¡±
He hurried only to see her pounding on the ground with her fist. After scanning the area for dangers did he make his presence known.
¡°What happened?¡± He was wise enough to call out from a distance as she drew and swung her sword reflexively.
She continued to attack him for half a minute before she slackened on her offence and her rage died down.
What was left of her mantle was scraps of cloth and there were cuts all over her battle wear. Her pale and flawless skin was bright red but there was no blood, neither did he see any injuries. Her regeneration was inhuman and although slower than his even after her Core skill is pushed to the limit her regeneration of pure vitality doesn¡¯t have the flaw of a weakened body like his regeneration had. His own regeneration was far faster but if he were to lose a limb and regenerate it, it would be weakened by quite a bit until his Vitality caught up. If he were to get an important organ smashed or stabbed many times, that would put his body in a bad state too.
He pulled out a coat to cover her up as she started to hyperventilate but only for 5 breaths, she got a hold of herself a lot quicker than before.
¡°What made you so mad? Or who?¡± He questioned again.
¡°Hi..hide your presence. Let¡¯s go back first.¡±
He took out their trailer where she had a few sets of clothes stored. She didn¡¯t even take a bath since they shouldn¡¯t take that long to arrive at Arcta.
¡°We can talk here.¡± The trailer would hide them better than he can with Waning Presence.
Her aura was so heated up that the villagers would probably be very uncomfortable, it might be bad for Kiva and that may be why she cooled herself off relatively quickly.
¡°It''s¡just the person who was in charge of kidnapping you.¡±
¡°The Fire Grandmaster Warrior?¡± Ebony was asleep and didn¡¯t even know what the man looked like but she told him before.
¡°Mm. I¡still couldn¡¯t beat him.¡±
¡°He ran right?¡± He recalled her yelling for someone to come back out to fight her.
Ebony knew he struck a nerve from her reaction.
¡°I couldn¡¯t land a hit properly but he...got tired of fighting me. Then he went underground with the help of an earth mage. Maybe the same one that sister Jing told us about.¡± Ning Xin was very salty but she didn¡¯t hide it from him.
She also didn¡¯t personally see the earth mage before in the past due to her being blinded by rage. This time was similar, she didn¡¯t care about anything else and forgot about the earth mage.
¡°Was he trying to kill you?¡± Ebony actually didn¡¯t have an impression of that unknown man but from what he was told before and even now, it was obvious he wasn¡¯t trying to kill her previously.
¡°No. I''m going to be the one who kills him.¡±
¡°Hmm. I actually think he¡¯s not so bad.¡± He was simple-minded. The fact that Ning Xin was bent on killing him but he didn¡¯t try to kill her despite the two chances he got gave Ebony a slightly better impression of him. He didn¡¯t know anything about the man for a deeper impression.
¡°He took you away.¡±
¡°He was just hired, the ones who hired him are the ones I have issues with. Actually, I might go to them soon.¡± He already knew who ordered him to be kidnapped and the person had bodyguards and employees that were many times weaker than fire warrior that Ebony imagined. It was someone Ning Xin still couldn¡¯t beat, he had to be quite something.
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¡°I think he said something about that and that he wouldn¡¯t be after you anymore. I¡I guess he was trying not to kill me as best as he could.¡± Ning Xin listened to him.
¡°So you can spare him the death sentence right?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll still need to beat him up, look!¡± She showed him her torn mantle and shirt before she got embarrassed at showing him more skin than she expected. She ran back to her room to get changed.
¡°Yeah. I have to beat him up too.¡± Ebony just got a reason to beat someone he had never seen.
Then again, he wasn¡¯t able to damage her equipment to that degree so he was indeed interested in his strength. At least, the Grandmasters they met at Vermin Paradise didn¡¯t actually appear much stronger than both of them. Maybe the ones fighting the Earthfly royal guards were stronger but he still couldn''t imagine them beating her to this point. Her clothes weren''t exactly armour except maybe her new bodysuit since her policy was that there was no need for armour if she didn''t plan on getting hit but it was still something made by Kong Jing.
¡°What do you have to say for yourself?¡± Roya greeted them at the door.
¡°Bada!¡± Kiva stood up from where she was playing Jenga blocks by herself.
¡°Hi Kiva!¡± He didn¡¯t even know he sounded excited when she saved him from the awkwardness. He wanted to catch her fall but she managed to stand up with a single Jenga block clasped in her tiny fist. He introduced the game to them and it had been trending amongst some families.
She was forming a square instead of playing Jenga and he joined her instead of ruining her set-up.
He could hear a shy voice like a child who got caught doing misdeeds apologising for destroying a part of the glades but he was surprised to hear that she was actually preventing further harm because the other guy was the one who started burning everything as a magma giant.
He also learnt that that unnamed man was someone that helped the village clear dungeons in the Icy region whenever the second village didn¡¯t have enough manpower or time to do so. The village chief¡¯s party couldn¡¯t clear dungeons that deep quickly and the guardian wouldn¡¯t leave the village without a good reason.
¡°Our guardian beast is actually reaching soon.¡± Roya appeared excited. It was also her first time seeing their guardian beast, she had only ever heard about it.
It wasn¡¯t like Ning Xin was done absorbing Gorpede¡¯s blood and he still wanted to expand his skillset. He could stay for a few days to find out what he was doing wrong that he couldn¡¯t get the new skills he envisioned.
A huge change of habit was that he tried his best to shut Everlasting Tranquillity off rather than keep it up. It wasn¡¯t easy but in the short moments he succeeded, he was confused as to how to feel. There was so much noise. So much static. Just so many things going on at the same time, shutting his mana perception proved to be more difficult so he had to take everything in.
It was too dangerous to keep that up within the wilds but since he was back, he was going to attempt living a day without meditation. Honestly, it was a scary thought to have so much static and useless information cloud himself.
¡°Come here Kiva.¡± Ning Xin sat across the floor and tried to bait the little girl away with frozen milk candy.
It was a little weird that both of them just sat through Roya¡¯s scoldings as if they were her children.
¡°What are you thinking about?¡± Ebony asked as he fought to hold Kiva¡¯s attention with the Jenga block.
She didn¡¯t reply but her gaze felt different
¡°What?¡± He waited but only silence came so he urged her to say something.
¡°Nothing. I didn¡¯t think you would ask, usually, you¡¯ll just give me space and wait till I say something. Is something on your mind?¡± She turned the question around immediately.
¡°...I ask how you are all the time. Why do you think I have something on my mind?¡±
¡°Hm. You do, but only when you worry after I get injured or something. Anything that troubles my mind or anyone else''s, you don¡¯t really care unless they speak up to you. When it comes to strangers I think you intentionally avoid anything ¡®troublesome¡¯. Wasn¡¯t that how you first saw me? Troublesome.¡± Ning Xin lost Kiva¡¯s attention as she wasn¡¯t hungry for candy so she dived to pick her up and give her tickles.
¡°...were you always so sharp?¡±
Ning Xin put Kiva on her feet and poised one hand on her tiny hip and the other to point at Ebony.
¡°Was that an insult? I just thought it was helpful that neither of us cared to involve ourselves with overly troublesome matters.¡±
¡°No. A compliment.¡±
¡°So? What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°Nothing¡¯s wrong, I¡¯m trying not to meditate. I¡¯m trying to put my mind on something but I find it so troublesome¡nevermind, all I can think about now is what you¡¯re thinking about or how you¡¯re feeling anyway.¡± Ebony coughed and felt his face getting a little warm.
He was getting confused at the sudden flush. He calmed down when his first Core skill kicked in and thought that he must have gotten embarrassed that she was right and he just dumped troublesome thoughts right away. Just like the present, he fell back into meditation so that he didn¡¯t have to face his emotions. He forcefully pushed himself out and put his mind to wondering why his heart rate increased for no apparent reason.
Since his attention came back so quickly, he managed to glimpse Ning Xin with her weird long pauses that she does from time to time talking to him.
Now he had things to think about, he could remember every single time she acted that way and reverse engineer what he said that brought the reaction. He also needed to know what the reaction meant.
Seeing how she was so distracted, he caught Kiva who was walking towards the Jenga blocks but she snapped out of it at the same time to catch her.
¡°Thank you, I think I know how to snap out of meditation and maybe even keep myself from falling into a trance. I just have to think about you. What a simple solution, I can do that as easily as meditating. I¡¯ll go get some frost plums.¡± Ebony was enlightened and the incredibly simple solution he found. Now he had a on and off switch, if he wasn¡¯t meditating he would probably not fall into a trance randomly.
¡°Bada? Sa?¡± Kiva called out, she didn¡¯t realise that she almost hit the floor and her attention quickly went back to the fascinating rectangular blocks before her.
He ran out to get some fresh fruits to celebrate, leaving Ning Xin running to get someone else to look over Kiva.
???
A new hole opened up on Tova¡¯s coastline.
¡°Attack! Don¡¯t let them recover!¡± The weaponless captain, Cain Clayson formed a blade out of mana and started lashing out after Hector¡¯s punch. As he expected, 1 of the Trolls was mostly intact while the others got flattened by half their height.
They did get a strategically good position as the Trolls recognised the danger and protected themselves with their thick muscles and condensation of life force.
One of his men ran and caught Hector¡¯s limp body, smart enough to protect himself with mana or even touching the Journeyman would hurt. They couldn¡¯t do any more for him at the moment.
¡°...Retreat in groups.¡± Cain said after 20 seconds of all their ranged attacks but he didn¡¯t stop attacking.
¡°What? They¡¯re going to survive if we retreat.¡± The water mage complaint.
¡°We took too much time and made too much noise! We won¡¯t have time to retreat if we wait any longer. So what if we manage to kill 8 of them after another hour of spending most of our stamina and mana. We don¡¯t have any magic users that can restrain or weaken them effectively. Move! Back to the cave near the beach.¡± None of his soldiers liked what they heard by going back to square one but the captain¡¯s words made sense.
The wood mage was trying his best but he was only one man, showering them with splinters gave a better result than trying to restrain them. They would break with brute force if he held them down but the numerous splinters made their regeneration problematic.
Although Cain wasn¡¯t sure what element Hector¡¯s black beam of light was made off, it was hindering the Trolls'' regeneration pretty well.
¡°Squad 4 and 5 will head the retreat, keep on the lookout and make sure our path is clear. 2 and 3 would move 15 seconds later. Squad 1 right after them.¡± They had exactly 5 parties worth and he already allocated squad leaders.
¡°What about you sir?¡±
¡°Begin retreat!¡± Cain ignored his soldiers but they followed his orders without hesitation. He personally leapt into the crater to stop the strongest Troll from relocating his own elbow. The Trolls all carried a shield but none of them had an intact shield anymore.
With 10 fewer people, he could immediately see the Trolls picking themselves up. No longer on the verge of dying. 15 seconds never felt so long for his remaining men, the trolls managed to regain a humanoid shape. Squad 2 and 3 picked themselves together and left. One of them carried Hector.
Squad 1 was waiting for their leader''s command but it never came.
¡°Fools! Go protect them!¡±
¡°...Let¡¯s go.¡±
Cain was surrounded soon after, the Trolls were effectively defenceless now that their equipment was broken and he was in a similar state.
He was surprised that the strongest Troll stopped the others from attacking him all at once even though it also gave them the chance to recover fully.
¡°What now?¡± Cain didn¡¯t really like that they gave up their big chance to gang up on him.
¡°You. warrior. Not prey.¡± The strongest Troll present pointed at him and spoke their tongue with a little discomfort but fluently.
Cain¡¯s nerves relaxed as he laughed as if trying to gain the world¡¯s attention.
¡°Those fools of mine never answered my question. It was such a simple question too.¡±
The Trolls didn¡¯t react to him as their bodies gave off disturbing sounds as their bones were pieced together and their tissues rejoined.
¡°So what if we kill 8 of you? Obviously, that means we have 8 less scum to worry about.¡± He scanned them again, none of them were higher level than him at 300.
Cain Clayson the Arcane Warrior didn¡¯t need a weapon nor the Imperial¡¯s amour.
Chapter 155: Rescue Force
Ebony was fishing with many Frost Elves, their Guardian Beast apparently loved fish. Due to its size, they were going to another fishing area in the icy region. The fishes were bigger according to them, tastier too.
Orren the village chief was here as well while his wife and party remained as Arcta¡¯s protector. Korben the guardian was doing the dangerous job of escorting a pregnant beast through a vast distance and wasn¡¯t around.
It was pretty far away but they had a safe trip and massive haul. Orren was crazier than he thought, the man stripped and went for a swim with a single rope. With no ice mana found on the fish he dragged out, Ebony could only assume that no magic was used.
They weren¡¯t bothered by the cold, sure. But the giant fishes could swallow them whole and manoeuvre the waters better than any land creature could without dedicated training.
The 4-day trip ended joyfully as everyone made it home safely.
¡°I¡¯m home.¡± Ebony said after he opened the door..
¡®Oh. I said home.¡¯ He came to a stop.
Not meditating was so fresh. Even the casual interaction with the older men, while he was fishing, was so different from usual.
Why the fish there were so much bigger despite many of them being the same species and sometimes even the same level. Why are the monsters'' habits so different? Why was there so little snow in the Icy region? Why was there so much snow in the Chilly? What¡¯s the environment like in the deepest region? What kind of monsters were they deep in Hoarfrost Glade?
Ebony pestered them.
Fortunately for them, he could only keep that state for an hour or two a day before he gave up. He couldn¡¯t withstand the strain from the statics in his mind. Although he had an impressive stat in Wisdom, it was the first time he opened his mind to take in the world as it is.
He still didn¡¯t like it and was only going to attempt going one whole day without meditation once.
Although he stopped meditating for less than 2 hours a day, he spent hours cleansing everything completely. Only when his mind was blank and white could he fall asleep.
Once, he wondered if doing so defeated the purpose of stopping his meditation but it wasn¡¯t like he was erasing his memories or his experience, just putting them aside like his daily life so he kept it up.
The chefs seemed happy at the rare fishes, many of which were new to him as well.
They returned just on time as the entire village was alerted by multiple immense auras of overflowing essence.
One that made any non Frost Elf shake in their boots.
Ning Xin almost dropped Kiva which angered her but she didn¡¯t drop the baby so he turned his attention to the ridiculous auras that disappeared soon after, leaving 2. She tried to move but the surroundings seemed to be frozen and she wasn¡¯t about to break herself free because Kiva was in her arms.
She continued feeding Kiva, when she was done the entire family left to welcome the awaited guardian.
It was still being surrounded by all the children and most adults since none of them who hadn¡¯t been to the other village had seen their Guardian Beast before.
It probably wasn¡¯t a big creature as Ebony wasn¡¯t able to put his eyes on the beast to see it¡¯s form. He could tell once he was in range. It was smaller than some wolfmen or lizardmen. A bear.
He put Clovis on his shoulders and ran to the small bear that was getting surrounded by children.
It wasn¡¯t just a bear. It was a ball of fur.
The small bear had a big tummy and appeared exhausted to which Korben had to disperse the crowds to get some fresh air for the prengnant creature.
The bear was going to stay near the Lasil family as they are the ones who would take care of her birth.
[Frigid Polardusk Ursidae Lvl ???]
He couldn¡¯t believe his eyes and it was not because of the red colour Identify came up with. ¡°She¡¯s so cute.¡± He just had to have his meditation down and he was heard by all. Everyone was thinking the same thing and didn¡¯t say anything about his statement.
The bear was likely two ranks above Gen and the second time he Identified anything red, the first and was the Frostblaze Amur Maple Tree itself. Although it wasn¡¯t a direct indicator of its strength, he had never seen anything or anyone at whatever level it was at. Excluding the fake level Ning Xin¡¯s grandma showed.
Korben was very respectful to the bear but the bear herself seemed at a loss at the tiny Frost Elves surrounding her. She didn¡¯t dare to put her paws on any of them. She would probably turn anything she touched to atomic dust.
Ebony was eyeing the necklace she wore, there was a purple gem embedded.
¡°Come on, I need your help to move Miss Guardian''s bed over to the Lasil house.¡± Roya pulled them back home.
The bed was just an empty bean bag. Roya had been spending a lot of time and the materials she had had been beyond her, causing her sleepless nights. She was complaining to him and Ning Xin about how the cloth she was provided couldn¡¯t be seeped through with her mana. The village had a senior tailor but apparently wasn''t suited for making the bed for reasons they didn''t share.
He didn¡¯t get to try to work on the cloth as they didn¡¯t have spares for him to practise on. He didn¡¯t know the material even though he had prior access to Kong Jing¡¯s library as it was the latest alchemic cloth from a royal alchemist. Koawe exchanged or bought it with his services.
She took weeks just to sew them together seamlessly, the internal filling was stored with Korben as they didn¡¯t want anyone getting close to it. It was supposedly dangerous to all of them including the adult Frost Elves so there was no chance they were bringing it to a house with a baby.
Roya dragged the empty bean bag across the floor as her face turned a darker shade of blue. Ebony grabbed it from her and lifted the cloth over his shoulder, carrying it out. Ning Xin ran out after him.
¡°What was that about some girl being cute?¡±
"The Guardian Beast¡Kiva is cute too right?¡±
¡°...Right.¡±
¡°I can bring this myself.¡± The cloth wasn¡¯t that heavy for him. For a material so tough, it was considerably light.
¡°You¡¯re not getting away from me on the streets.¡±
¡°Stop, I¡¯m not going to get kidnapped in this village.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not about a kidnapping. It¡¯s about a fox!¡±
¡°What fox? You want to eat fox for dinner?¡±
¡°Not that fox. A sly fox.¡±
¡°Are you talking about Palom?¡±
¡°So you know what I¡¯m talking about.¡± She snatched the bean bag from him and sped up before he could reply.
They returned immediately after dropping it off. The bear was asleep from exhaustion and they didn¡¯t get the chance to introduce each other.
¡°Ancient. That¡¯s the limit for natural creatures on Elcra.¡±
¡°Due to the Worldcore rank you told me about?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°But even the ¡®Emperor¡¯ is not Emperor Class.¡±
¡°That¡¯s just on the surface. There should be a couple around but this ¡®Emperor¡¯ is still supposedly the strongest. The others found a way out of Elcra so that they can advance further and faster.¡±
¡°How? What are the ways out?¡±
¡°The brute force method is through space magic. The method most commonly used is through a World Dungeon. These gates connect multiple worlds so you could just find a different exit in the dungeon. They act as a link so that¡¯s where most visitors from other worlds come from unless a large group comes directly with space magic. The last one I¡¯m aware of is through certain realms. Travel by realm is the fastest since it''s a direct spatial connection.¡±
¡°How about directly flying over?¡±
¡°...I¡¯m not sure about that. Should be possible, I think. Might take decades of travel though.¡±
Their conversation turned towards their new skill ideas, she was practising blood magic and asking for fresh ideas. It was a good stopping point, they should fill up their skill slots before going for mass levelling.
Ning Xin only had one Class skill slot left unlike him so she really wanted to get her Sub-Class moving along. She wasn¡¯t really planning to fling spells around even though she had the mana for it now but her close combat usage for wind and lightning was already doing what she envisioned it to do. Other than strengthening what she had, she was going to increase her mid to long-range capabilities with them.
These days, she has been attempting to blend her mana into food. She got a tummy ache eating her own mana which didn¡¯t make sense so she was being very careful with it.
It would be nice to have food enhancing them temporarily but they wouldn¡¯t rely on it for now.
¡°Can you manipulate your stamina yet?¡± He got curious.
She shook her head. It appeared that neither of them could manipulate stamina directly yet.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
¡°Hmm. I might be starting to grasp it. Probably because I regenerate so much of it.¡±
The higher tier conditioning utilised stamina manipulation and would be the only thing stopping both of them from advancing in their conditioning methods for the physical body in future. Ning Xin had the advantage of knowledge from her mother but she couldn¡¯t use the higher tier exercise not just because it wasn¡¯t relevant but she couldn¡¯t manipulate stamina. They were confident of getting tier 4 Conditioning though.
Then again her training was mostly life force manipulation with mana manipulation being second.
¡®That memory¡doesn¡¯t seem to include notes on stamina manipulation.¡¯
Ebony recalled his sudden memory of reading the book on conditioning when he was 7. Although he already diverted from them, he could use it as a good reference.
Tier 3 - Unrelenting Statue, it may or may not be his mother¡¯s own conditioning but that didn¡¯t matter. It was probably focused on all types of resistance.
The accompanying footwork ¡®Treading Flash¡¯ was something that he had been trying to obtain as well. He didn¡¯t have to improve the gentleness or lightness of the footwork, it was about pure speed. Since his body weight was immense he had no choice but to put even more focus on gentleness so that the skill would evolve and not simply mutate, just silencing them with sound magic wasn¡¯t decent enough.
Honestly, he skipped Treading Flash and went directly to the tier 4 Phantom Flash due to his Waning Presence and how he naturally silenced the sound of his movement with sound magic. He was confident enough to say that he wasn¡¯t able to have the stated effects. They won''t be able to do that if they couldn¡¯t manipulate stamina and as a ¡®Master¡¯ although it was possible to have tier 4 skills just getting their core skill to that tier is an achievement.
Ning Xin had been incorporating his footwork, she was faster now and was confident of mutating her movement skill. He did tell her about all his movement skills since it would be an asset to her and she understood the skill better than him. It helped him understand better too. She also had a footwork handed down to her and she was refinining her tier 3 movement skill at a fast pace. Both of them were trying to substitute the need for stamina with mana or life force but they didn''t see much result.
Although he used gravity magic to make his physical training more effective he didn¡¯t see how it would help improve the conditioning on a fundamental scale.
¡°Can you teach me life force manipulation again? I want to compress life force so that when I use the runic body spell I¡¯m creating I can incorporate vitality so that my body can withstand the strength of my mana.¡±
¡°Of course. Explain how you manipulate your flames to me again in exchange.¡± She was referring to how the small flames that flow away from his greatsword and even his body end up as plum flower petals. He was using it as control practice but it had been too eye-catching for her.
They had a good flow of conversation, Ebony advocated improving and expanding their entire skillset before the next dungeon clears. They would be able to go to stronger dungeons and level as quickly as the dungeons spawns anyway.
¡°We need somewhere to train¡¡± Ning Xin pondered. She couldn¡¯t flex her fire magic here.
¡°How far along are you with Gorpede¡¯s blood?¡±
¡°Almost 3 quarters. Heheh, I got 3 full levels¡¯ worth of stats. I¡¯m getting less and less though.¡±
¡°...That¡¯s unfair. Are you sure you are not affected by instinct or whatever¡¯s in the essence?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m being extra careful or I wouldn¡¯t take so long. I won¡¯t demonise myself.¡±
¡°Then when you finish we can just visit Na and train in secret there. We¡¯re going to donate our essence since we don¡¯t need targets that often, he wouldn¡¯t lose anything.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a good idea!¡±
They could pay their debts back for the Natural Potential and Ebony actually wanted to strengthen Na. Just for fun and for themselves. Having a dungeon friend seemed immensely helpful in his opinion. Ordina was so close that they should¡¯ve gone there daily to begin with. It would hardly take half an hour to get there and be escorted to a hidden room inside. They didn¡¯t necessarily have to travel to the top floor for training.
They left immediately to discuss it with Na.
Na was no longer mad at them for taking so much from him. He was thankful to Ning Xin for teaching him how to grow as a dungeon.
He stopped trying to expand in terms of the number of floors. Na wanted to become a world dungeon but not even Ning Xin was aware of how one was created so she could only tell it how to best extract essence.
Na made it easier for people to get to the thirteenth floor and made it more habitable in that area. The population inside him at any one point in time has increased by quite a bit. He was able to reduce the loss of essence on expanding and used the excess to strengthen all his creatures.
He listened to their advice to let people kill weak but high-level creatures while he saved the energy to strengthen a small group of ¡®elites¡¯ that he should try to let survive as long as possible. So far, he himself had been destroyed fewer times despite the stronger and stronger parties. Not many can destroy him and whenever they do, they don¡¯t earn much as he only leaves his body and equipment.
The material he and his golems were made off were already specialities of this region but haven¡¯t been fully explored based on their properties. It wasn¡¯t the most durable and the rareness of topaz made it a nice shiny rock but the demand for it wasn¡¯t so high.
¡°We¡¯re here to apologise for taking so much of your energy. We just need a tougher hidden room and we would probably spend a lot of time here.¡±
¡°I welcome you. My meals.¡± Na¡¯s smile wasn¡¯t as stiff and his Golem form was smoother now. It resembles humans the most, a bulky one.
They all laughed at that.
The first few floors had too many people so they picked the walkway to create a hidden room where they can access. After informing Na the size they wanted, they went back for dinner.
It wasn¡¯t that troublesome of a journey to and fro since they could practise their poor ability with flight.
He didn¡¯t expect to see Navin at the village gate with Koawe when they got back.
He was invited to have dinner with their family and Ning Xin¡¯s shoulder nudge got him to accept the invitation. They didn¡¯t talk business during dinner but Navin called him out for a private conversation outside.
¡°Ebony, I know this may come off as random but would you be interested to join the fleet to Tova in 2 months.¡±
¡°That is random. Why? I¡¯m guessing you¡¯re sending an attacking or scouting force there. Do you not have enough manpower?¡±
¡°Manpower is always a problem. The elite knights and soldiers have to protect our borders and I can¡¯t send anyone but elites over. It¡¯s not an attacking or scouting force, it¡¯s a rescue force. My seers have detected a huge gathering of Trolls near Tova¡¯s coast and we lost contact with multiple bases.¡±
¡°There¡¯s a high chance of death and you don¡¯t want to lose your soldiers so you¡¯re getting freelancers?¡±
¡°There aren¡¯t many freelancers who would send themselves to death even if I pay an extravagant price. There are some but freelancers care about themselves, when push comes to shove they would prioritise their lives over an Imperial command. They don¡¯t have that strong sense of loyalty to the Empire.¡±
¡°I¡¯m no different. And I don¡¯t really need mana ores.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t see how it was his business.
¡°I know. It¡¯s a¡personal request, from my wife and I. Our great-grandchild is there and we couldn¡¯t contact him for some time. We would be more than happy if we could go but Tova is far and I am unable to leave the Empire for too long. I heard you are his party member for some time, thank you for being his friend.¡±
¡°Hector?¡±
¡°Yes. He was a lonely child, due to his condition at birth he was always gloomy but he got energetic soon after he recovered.¡±
¡°Sure.¡± Ebony accepted as if it was a simple request.
¡°...He made a good friend. That¡¯s good. Of course, I was simply asking if you were interested in going. Welser.¡± Navin called.
A well dressed old man appeared beside Navin as if he popped out from nowhere. Ebony was able to tell he just moved from outside his range to right in front of him almost instantly. As expected, he wasn¡¯t able to Identify the old man. There was no information popping up.
¡°Hello, you¡¯re the one who was standing outside of the Guardian¡¯s room beside the stone mage right?¡± Ebony saw the old man and recognised the figure and aura immediately. Although the old man had been invisible at that time, he was able to sense his gravitational form. The old man didn¡¯t make a move to save them and now he owed the Tuffock trio because of that.
¡°Indeed, my apologies that I did not make a move. I had deemed it unnecessary to show myself. I am rather surprised that you knew I was there all along.¡± Welser didn¡¯t hide his slight surprise that Ebony knew about him all along.
¡°I couldn¡¯t see you but you were not hidden from gravity. I can¡¯t sense either of you through mana perception either. Very interesting.¡± Ebony had always been pretty open with his abilities to some extent.
¡°I see! I give my thanks for enlightening me.¡± Welser had the typical ¡®feel¡¯ of a professional butler but he was clearly more dangerous than a simple butler.
¡°Welser has been Hector¡¯s bodyguard and instructor since he was a young child. I understand you are an ice mage, ice magic is effective and useful against Trolls which is why I asked if you were interested to begin with. I don¡¯t want to send young talent to their deaths so Welser here will evaluate whether you can protect yourself. Though from what he told me, you are more than capable of doing so.¡±
¡°Before that. Let me say that I¡¯m interested in joining the rescue force but on my own terms. By that, we may not follow whoever¡¯s command either.¡± Ebony originally accepted just because.
No real reason, but he finally started thinking and he thought that it was a good chance to try fighting Trolls for one. Looking for Hector would be more of his priority rather than saving Imperial soldiers but that would probably be synonymous if Hector was a soldier. He didn¡¯t think he would leave people to die if he could stop it either.
Although it was none of his business there was another reason, the large number of Trolls was experience.
¡®Hmm. I wonder if they are all so savage, was I really thinking of slaughter?¡¯ Now that he practised shutting meditation off, he was beginning to think he truly wasn¡¯t ¡®human¡¯.
¡°We?¡±
¡°Ni¡Scarlet. We move together and I bet she¡¯s interested.¡± Ebony knew the stories that Trolls were strong warriors. He had no doubt that she was interested in fighting them.
¡°...Then forget I asked. It¡¯s too dangerous to move on your own, I won¡¯t allow children to be so reckless outside my reach.¡±
Ebony remained silent, trying to think of something to say but nothing came to mind. Welser dismissed himself and Navin changed the topic to his life in Arcta and how he came about being so close to the village based on what he had heard from Koawe.
The Barrier King seemed like a different person, he was chatty. No, perhaps it was Ebony¡¯s change in perspective.
¡°How bad is the Troll situation?¡± He changed the topic again.
¡°I¡¯ll be honest. I don¡¯t know. I shouldn¡¯t be telling you this but you are an asset to the Empire and Yvette told me to be nice¡Our seers are, I wouldn¡¯t say incompetent but nothing is ever determined and things don¡¯t always go according to plan. Scarlet¡¯s grandmother informed us that something changed over at Tova but we don¡¯t know what. The scout force that Hector was part of was in charge of reinforcing the units over at Tova but focused on information gathering but we can¡¯t contact any of them right now.¡±
¡°Surely if you send the strongest forces like yourself you can easily wipe out the masses.¡± Ebony understood that power difference was immense between individuals, it wouldn¡¯t be much of a war if one side overpowers the other. He didn¡¯t understand war tactics, that was certain but in his mind, they could just send the King and a small elite group to wipe out numbers as fast as possible then leave whenever the stronger Trolls come out. Essentially guerilla tactics.
Since this generation of the Royals was supposedly a lot stronger he didn¡¯t see the issue. He was too naive.
¡°The Trolls can do the same and as annoying as it is, their shamans know whenever I and many of the King Classed make a move so they would just move their generals accordingly. And as I¡¯ve said. I can¡¯t launch an attack myself, Elva is targeted by more than just Trolls.¡±
¡°...Being a king sounds horribly troublesome and restrictive.¡±
¡°Exactly.¡±
¡°What about the Emperor guy?¡±
¡°Emperor guy huh. That guy is too busy training two of his apprentices and we don¡¯t know where he is. I mean, we know which dungeon he is in but not his current location inside. He would show up if something big happens but that¡¯s it.¡±
Koawe was smiling at them from the side.
¡°Junior brother, it has been awhile since I¡¯ve seen you so relaxed. Ebony¡¯s overflowing essence must have gotten to you too.¡± Koawe commented.
¡°...That¡¯s right. It is just relaxing around you. I have to thank you for that.¡± Navin stretched and wanted to rest.
¡°You¡¯re welcome.¡± Ebony tried to put his best smile on but nothing happened as his facial muscles didn''t move so he got Everlasting Tranquillity back on.
¡®Conversation is different from usual. I really wonder if it''s a good idea to practise turning meditation off.¡¯ Ebony walked as slowly as he could back to the Thoya¡¯s.
The moon was on display and he managed to clear his mind before he returned.
Chapter 156: Exploration Calls
¡°So Hector might be in danger?¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°Well, I get a feeling he¡¯ll be fine. He¡¯s a prince, he probably has a lot of life-saving potions and barriers to protect him. He¡¯s strong too. Navin might not have been serious about inviting us.¡±
¡°I think he was. We are a force to be reckoned with. As long as we are sent on a battlefield with similar levelled opponents there really are few Trolls that can rival us and numbers don¡¯t matter against you. Fire and ice are very effective against them since it would hinder their regeneration.¡±
It wasn¡¯t as if Ebony wouldn¡¯t follow the Imperials commands and he didn¡¯t mind being a soldier but what for?
Ning Xin was of the same mind.
At most, they would save the Imperial army there but they could do that by themselves. Hence Ebony¡¯s plan.
¡°You want to follow the fleet to Tova?¡± Ning Xin asked again to confirm her hearing.
¡°Our trailer can drive on water, I can just freeze the surface of the sea too. I am worried though.¡±
¡°Yes I don¡¯t think we should go. We are not ready for the sea.¡± Ning Xin was afraid of water because she couldn¡¯t swim. The sea was the worst, it was without doubt, the scariest place to be in any world.
¡°The eldritch horrors of the deep, I am scared too.¡±
It seems like both of them were very wary of the sea and when they talked it out it was apparent both had been told scary stories about the sea as children. It was a fact that if they were to fall into the ocean, a lot of their strengths would be stripped from them.
¡°Too bad we won¡¯t be able to fly all the way there. And we would waste too much time. Travel by ship to Tova would take anywhere from 1 to 2 years and heavily depends on the weather and conditions of the sea.¡± Ning Xin was interested in fighting Trolls too.
He was glad that it didn¡¯t sound like she was interested in complete slaughter because he wasn¡¯t sure how he would feel about that. Would he even feel anything?
When he heard that it took years to reach Tova, Ebony got more questions about Navin inviting them. There was zero chance of a ¡®rescue force¡¯ that took 1 to 2 years just to arrive at the destination actually being useful. Not to mention the fleet wouldn''t be setting off any time soon.
It was the Thoya¡¯s turn to formally introduce themselves to the Guardian beast and they tagged along.
The bear appeared very friendly to the villagers, she made a bear paw out of snow to pat everyone who was queuing to greet her. They were talking to the bear through a link of mana.
Ebony sensed a mana link connecting to him and also Ning Xin to the bear.
¡°Human children. Greetings, I am Milly. I have heard you are an ally of the Frost Elves?¡± The mental voice was neither young nor old, not too soft and not too loud but it was clearly feminine.
¡°Mmm. Hello Milly, my name is Ebony.¡±
¡°I¡¯m Scarlet.¡±
¡°I can smell an old friend on you. Please continue to be allied with the Frost Elves.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
The simple response was good enough for Milly. Both of them got a paw pat on the head too. Ning Xin was a little nervous when the paw touched her head. It was expected with Milly¡¯s aura on the paw, the entire village would be flattened should it wish to do so.
Navin was here to introduce himself as well but he didn¡¯t stay for long and left after he strengthened the barrier around Arcta. He didn¡¯t even bat an eye at Milly¡¯s level.
Ebony spent time with Na himself as Ning Xin was not ready yet.
¡°Are you trying something new? You keep making that roaring noise.¡± Na questioned. His golem body was back up on the top floor and this was just a spare level 1 body.
¡°Yeah, can you let me hear one of your Sonorous Canyon Lion¡¯s roar?¡±
¡°Sure.¡±
It didn¡¯t take too long because they made the hidden room around a spawn node. The lion roared at him with everything it had, the mana it shot out from the mouth sped towards him in a cone shape that managed to tear the ground.
He was about to send back a roar of his own when he suddenly stopped and got hit by the sound wave. Although he was hit by the sound wave he didn¡¯t really feel anything from it. But he still held his head and fell to his knees with blood swelling up at the back of his throat. Another sound cut through to him that wasn¡¯t from the lion, it came from memory.
¡®What was that? That was in Ordina right? Why don¡¯t I remember hearing something like that?¡¯
The lion was dismissed by Na.
¡°Since when can something like that hurt you?¡± Na joked.
¡°Na, do you remember hearing a roar when I was here in the past. A very different roar.¡±
¡°Like humans screaming before they die kinda roar?¡±
¡°Never mind. I¡¯ll try to replicate it and you tell me.¡±
He copied the sound but when it hit his ear, it was different and he didn¡¯t understand why. Hence, his experiments with it increased.
???
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Stalwart Endowment learned.¡¯
Stalwart Endowment - Endow a specific set of mana pathways into one¡¯s very one body. Source the runic endowment with 1200 ice mana per minute to increase base Constitution by 150% + 2.5%. Impact, shear and elemental resistance is increased by 25% + 0.025%.
Consumes 500 MP/Min
¡°It doesn¡¯t classify as any elemental magic. The stat increase is not based on Intelligence because it is the power of the runes and the ice mana consumed is only used as an energy source that gets broken down. But Impact and shear resistance¡Does that mean I¡¯m harder to cut and more shock resistant? That''ll be pretty awesome.¡±
He was impressed with the effects even though he already knew what the runes do. It was a shame that the runes required ice mana to power. Even his ice mana would be broken down by the runes to convert into the only type that it required. Sister Jing was working on it whenever she had time so that it could be powered by any type of mana.
He was working on the project through calls so that the runes can fit a woman¡¯s body. It would be great if he could cast the spell on Ning Xin. It was pointless right now since she couldn¡¯t power it.
The spell took 500 mana every minute to keep the mana pathway in the body which he didn¡¯t have any Fortification for. Once the pathways were set, he needed to fill it with conjured ice mana to keep it going. He was mana efficient with ice mana so it wasn¡¯t actually that hard to keep up the spell. A total of 900 MP per minute was possible for him and he could still cast Frostblaze Augmentation with no issue either but he would run out of highly compressed mana as a battle drags.
He tried it on himself immediately and fought with his Models.
¡°Great! The mana is broken down to fuel runes which directly strengthen my body.¡± Ebony was in glee that his original problem was solved so quickly. As long as he had Stalwart Endowment cast, his physical body would strengthen against the intelligence-based Frostblaze Augmentation.
Today had been the day Ning Xin had completely digested all of Gorpede¡¯s blood and joined him on the daily training. He recalled the other skill he managed to get just yesterday, Preservation Bubble.
Preservation Bubble - Extension of your vitality a small distance outside your body to contain additional mana. Stability of vitality bubble is increased by 1.0% per level. Size of mana pool is increased by 1.0% per level.
He had been going about the skill wrong the entire time, thinking he had to contain mana in a sphere. He made it easier for himself with tips from Ning Xin. Extending his life force just over his skin like his repulsion membrane and enforcing them to not let any mana slip through. It was much easier to do compared to containing it within a distance of 5 metres.
The problem was that the skill was a generic skill and that it was not a passive. His control might slip and release all the extra mana. He focused so much on the new energy he could slightly manipulate that he forgot that he needed to make it a mana base skill to consider as his Profession Skill. It was difficult to use mana to stop mana but he was already trying to mutate the skill.
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Whatever the case, the increase in the size of his mana pool was desirable.
He faced his opponent once again pulling every bit of gravity mana to pour onto her.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill Gravity Mana Manipulation evolved into Gravity Mana Control¡¯
He didn''t need to see the description to know that there was no significant change. But he was wrong, he could feel the difference immediately. He forgot that with his skills over level 200, when they evolve, a significant change would occur since he didn¡¯t lose skill levels.
It needed noticeably less effort to bend the same amount of gravity mana to his will.
With her spare set of equipment that was completely identical, her mantle actually couldn¡¯t repel his magic completely. Kong Jing was being unfair and made it so that he couldn¡¯t ¡®bully¡¯ her when it was usually the other way around.
Her attempts to control his blood were so weak that he wasn¡¯t even able to tell she was trying to do so until she asked if she was affecting him. Seems like all the mana he was made up of protected him even further.
He acted as her live target for shooting lightning and wind blades with just a shirt made of ice so that he wouldn¡¯t wear out his robe for no reason.
¡°I can¡¯t think of a way to utilise it better than simply tossing elemental mana.¡±
¡°Hmm. How about trying to change your conjured wind and lightning fundamentally? If it is somewhat unique, then simply tossing them onto something isn¡¯t that bland.¡±
¡°Like how your ice is harder to melt or how your flames can dig through armour and scales? What do you suggest I do with wind and lightning?¡±
Ebony got to thinking, it was extremely difficult to control elements inside another person so controlling the electrical signals was out for now. If it was him, he would make part of his domain so that it¡¯s harder for others to control but that was also the same thing and fell under the capabilities of manipulation.
¡°I¡¯m just throwing out whatever comes to mind so you don¡¯t have to take it too seriously okay?¡± He probably didn¡¯t need to give a warning but he did so anyway.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°How about temporarily removing or weakening the stunning capabilities of lightning mana, make them extremely stable or sticky? Lightning mana is naturally very penetrative and practically spreads to the entire body just by touching it anyway, I don¡¯t see a need to improve how deep you stab lightning into someone. You make a ton of lightning mana stick inside a target while they assume it wasn¡¯t effective and once you build up like a thousand slashes or projectiles on them, reignite the lightning mana?¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t have as much mana to spare as you but¡that sounds fun.¡±
¡°Oh right. Ah, I should give that a try. I think I will pick up lightning magic. Better start as early as possible.¡±
¡°Hey!¡±
¡°Okay okay. How about electromagnetics?¡±
¡°Nothing complicated! Just more speed or power!¡±
¡°Uhm uhm¡make your lightning mana better at burning?¡±
¡°Wind generates lightning and lightning is already hot, I might as well mash all of them together into a ball of blood and stuff it into someone¡¯s mouth!¡±
¡°Is..is it that time of the month? Year..?¡±
¡°...mmm. I think I¡¯ll stop here for today. Sorry for losing my temper.¡±
¡°It''s alright. Ice cream?¡±
¡°Yes please!¡±
¡°Why don¡¯t you do just that? A wind blade that can¡¯t be seen turns into a lightning strike but lands as a blast of fire. Never mind, too complicated and you need to be able to be at the state where you can inflict your will onto your elemental mana. Might as well just pack fragmented fire mana into lightning and make them explode on impact at this point.¡±
Both of them were able to put their will into their main element but he was far from doing the same with gravity and not even his pure mana, so sound magic is out for now too.
¡°You¡¯re the best! Try to dodge, I want to practise aiming too!¡±
¡°Ice cream?¡± He pointed to the door of the hidden room.
¡°That can wait so don¡¯t move!¡±
¡®So do I dodge or do I stay put?¡¯ Ebony was confused and made a decision that he was better off with meditation on rather than off.
She had the habit of putting her hands forward or pointing one of her blades which made it really easy to predict. He warned her about it and instead of stopping, she made it such that her zap of lightning zig zagged more violently irregularly. It was extremely effective and once she fired it, he was rarely able to dodge it. It was practically impossible and her casting speed was fast enough that she could unleash a shot before her arm or blade was even fully raised and directed.
At this stage, her casting speed has shown an obvious difference between the two of them. If she were to cast any magic at him and he didn¡¯t have a scale or model around, it was impossible to cast it before her spell hits him. Though he can physically dodge it was a clear advantage she had. Even in his domain, his mana or perhaps ''Will'' to be more accurate, barely moves in time to protect himself.
He was so aware of her fighting style that his Glacial Model of her could imitate her techniques. Although he still didn¡¯t know how to ¡®imbue will¡¯ he was fascinated that a Model after him was very slightly slower than a Model of her even when they were both cast by him with the same amount of mana. Since neither could hurt the other, he wasn¡¯t sure if the version copying him was any tougher.
Ning Xin was doing the same kind of training with controlling fire without manipulating it.
After she managed to pick up making lightning mana explode surprisingly quickly they returned to play with Milly¡¯s baby, Willow that was born just a day after Milly arrived. That was because Kiva was hugging Willow and neither wanted to separate from each other.
Kiva could already understand speech and even talk fluently enough. It was rare that she demanded to play with Willow and Milly saw that her baby bear enjoyed the company of a similarly sized creature. Willow was much chubbier and like its mother, a pure white short-fur bear. It was the most adorable thing he had ever seen and he managed to be on its list of people to cling onto whenever he came.
Willow was a female baby bear that clung to his leg like a koala because he fed her his conjured ice before. She didn¡¯t appear to be very monster-like, there was no extreme physical growth speed and she remained a baby bear even after a week. The only difference was getting fattened up into a ball.
His callstone rang and he picked it up without excusing himself.
¡°Ebony, the exploration in Bubble Hills reached a good point. They finally managed to set a base almost 3 gors deep underground. There¡¯s a vast underground tomb-like place with an unbelievable amount of topaz golems, the exploration teams are really starting to rush down to get first pick. We got wind of the runic-filled rocks, hurry here!¡± Mark could be heard fumbling about and talking to Kong Jing in the background.
¡°Master Jing?¡± He picked up on how he address Kong Jing
¡°I¡¯m her apprentice now.¡±
¡°That was fast, alright we¡¯ll meet you in Plainston soon.¡± It wasn¡¯t a second later that he hung up.
¡°Gently now.¡± He plucked the paws off him one by one but Willow was persistent.
¡°See you, Milly.¡±
¡°Topaz golems under Bubble Hills, are they still there? Take care not to get any of their topaz to touch you. Willow likes you.¡± Milly was curled up and resting as she overheard the call.
¡°Come on Kiva, time to go home. Your brother is waiting to teach you the letters again.¡± Ning Xin was excited to explore with her cousin or at least, that was what it seemed like.
Ebony didn¡¯t have much to pack up and neither did Ning Xin. They apologised for leaving so suddenly but the Thoyas expected this to happen. He gave each of them a hug so naturally, he didn¡¯t find it odd. Kiva was so happy, she might have thought it was just a hugging session.
Ning Xin looked so awkward when she got hugged by Roya and even Clovis. Halvis was smart enough to only give a shoulder pat. Ebony found her surprisingly comfortable with the Frost Elves.
When they left for Plainston without even staying for dinner they caught Mark embarrassed as he wasn¡¯t ready yet. He was busy preparing his equipment and supplies and didn¡¯t know that they were in the area. Not to mention, he didn¡¯t know the location or route.
It was perfect as Ning Xin wasn¡¯t feeling well so none of them blamed him. She went to make dinner so that she could rest early.
¡°Tell me more about the underground tomb.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. They are hiding most information under wraps, the Quest Hall don¡¯t know much either. It was a large expedition party that sent people to resupply that leaked the information that they managed to get a foothold underground. Well, it was more of people eavesdropping on them but, same thing.¡± Mark then remarked that Kong Jing was shadowing these people.
¡°Is it that hard? How many golems are we talking about?¡±
¡°Of course it¡¯s difficult. There are mostly natural tunnels and it is difficult to descend, with many dead ends and such. In those squeezy tunnels, meeting anything that¡¯s born and built to traverse the dark, cramped space is a nightmare. They managed to keep the information tight so we have no idea how strong or if there are other types of monsters as their main enemy. All we know is that from the number of supplies the resupply group is gathering, they are going for the long-term investment.¡±
¡°I guess we should prepare the equipment for underground exploration,¡± Ebony said as if he knew what those equipment were.
¡°I got them all earlier.¡± Mark pointed to the huge box outside.
There were pickaxes, lamps, a few of those fragmented light ores, ropes, cloth bags and a bunch of other stuff. He helped Mark split them into 4, they were better off carrying their own equipment. He didn¡¯t see how any of these stuff except the lamps and light ores to be very useful for him and Kong Jing.
Mark had a bigger spatial bag now and had no trouble carrying a large stock of items.
¡°Don¡¯t go crazy and freeze or burn ourselves while we¡¯re underground okay, we need to breathe. Oh and you can¡¯t just hit so hard that you cause the tunnel to collapse on us. I¡¯ll die.¡± Mark said at the dining table. Ning Xin was sitting here despite having finished eating already.
Mark carried on to list on what not to do rather than what the dos are.
Basically, the deeper they go the more durable and condensed the earth mana is. The deeper they go the lower their chance of survival if the ceiling collapses on them. Just like the sea, if they meet something they couldn¡¯t beat, chances are, they wouldn¡¯t have anywhere to run either. At least when it comes to underground there was still a possibility of hiding.
¡®3 gors is 15 km deep right? That¡¯s¡deep.¡¯ Even Ebony was aware that going downwards in tunnels was extremely different from covering horizontal distance. There was just no method to speed up if there was no space to move.
They were not the only ones who were watching the expeditions¡¯ movement as Mark had seen other people getting the same stuff as him just today. Some parties even left for Bubble Hill already.
Most of them were moving down south, so it was probably where the initial entrance was.
Two days later, Kong Jing came to get them as the resupply party was moving off in the middle of the night. These people hid their supply outside the gate and bribed the guards to open the gates.
It was all too easy for Kong Jing to get them outside without any sneaking.
The resupply group of about 60 people exit on their carriages. It made him think that the tunnel must be wide enough that they wouldn¡¯t really have to worry much. They didn¡¯t go south or north along Bubble Hills. They went straight to the edge of Bubble Hills bordering Hoarfrost Glade and entered an unsuspecting hill whose entrance was camouflaged with earth magic. They were equally unsuspecting that they were being followed by 2 groups of people excluding Ebony¡¯s group.
Chapter 157: Light Show
¡°I¡¯ll go ahead.¡± Kong Jing told them the moment they entered the cave in the hill.
¡°It¡¯s stuffy,¡± Ebony commented after half a day.
The resupply party moved fast as the tunnel floor seemed pretty flat but that changed in half a day. The route was only lit by their phoslamps and they had to slow down or risk bad bumps.
Ebony was perfectly fine following the light while he stayed in the dark and Mark¡¯s helmet had a dim internal glow of mana. He had better night vision with the help of runes. They were only going straight and slightly downward so it wasn¡¯t hard for Ning Xin to follow either.
She was bored. There was nothing she wanted to do underground except spend some time with her Kong Jing but she left without her.
Two days of following a group of people that may or may not know they were here passed. Kong Jing returned and complained that there were too many split paths, thousands of them as she dived deeper and deeper.
The 2 other groups of people that were following this supply party weren''t anywhere close and Ebony had no idea where they were either. He wasn¡¯t surprised, those people waited as a huge congregation of people outside the city gates. There was little chance they could follow in secret so multiple strands of foreign mana he was sensing in his range must be some kind of item that let them follow the resupply party¡¯s path.
Today, the carriage-pulling beasts were unleashed and the resupply party unpacked to physically carry everything. The path was no longer wide enough for carriages. Not everyone was carrying a large pack, there was always a small group on alert so there were likely monsters here.
In the next week of quick march, nothing attacked at all. Not a single monster.
That sped them up a lot and Ebony found out the reason was Kong Jing deporting the mud golems to the rear so that these people could move faster. He joined in and gave her some tricks to attempt. He got her to teleport a large group at their rear to make the run ahead. They would fight back if it were a couple so they had to gather more than a few monsters before scaring the resupply party to move ahead.
The mud golems were scant and only earth golems showed up after a while. They were a force to be reckoned with when underground. The resupply party had their warrior smash the golems with pure strength. This depth didn¡¯t trouble them that much.
¡°Haha, you¡¯re quite the devil.¡± Kong Jing laughed when they reached a long downward slope and he suggested rolling a massive rock down.
Too bad they smashed the rock up with ease, it hadn¡¯t been easy to find that rock. The slope had been too unnatural and he overheard them thanking someone for making the slope so it must have been an earth mage. The slope covered kilometres of vertical height and saved them a lot of time.
It didn¡¯t get warmer as they dived deeper, it got cooler. If his Mental Mapping was accurate, they were actually under Hoarfrost Glade but just the edges.
¡°How deep are we now?¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°More than 2 gors.¡± He replied with confidence.¡± The rest of the way seemed like a whole team of earth mages were working to make the trip smoother but Kong Jing ran out of space to send monsters away from her range.
Topaz golems showed themselves.
They were much like the ones in Ordina but at level 260 they were only slightly weaker than Na¡¯s main body. As the dungeon ¡®boss¡¯ Na was a buffed-up monster with everything the dungeon could do to strengthen so these wild topaz golems were truly wild. A lot slimmer than the mud and earth golems due to the narrow tunnels.
The resupply party struggled but only because of the environment, they handled the topaz golems with practised efficiency and took the pure topaz instead of the impure earthen version in Ordina. Practised efficiency it may be but they were too careful, they always tried to squeeze as many people as possible without inferring with each other in the tight space so every encounter took hours. Mostly having someone with an earthwall enchanted shield to block hits and everyone else to fire arrows.
The moment the earthwall spell on the shield was hit, it would start breaking down by the topaz eating them up and even the arrows that landed on their opponents would crumble within a minute. Ebony could sense that they didn¡¯t joke around with the mana used on the arrows just so that they wouldn¡¯t crumble the instant they touched the topaz golems.
Mark¡¯s assessment was that they were going ham on the investments. They had multiple enchanted shields and were transporting enchanted weapons too. With only a few of them being runic. Enchanted stuff was usually stronger but cannot last as long. Even so, runic weapons didn¡¯t fill the streets and were not something you could obtain in bulk.
As for themselves, if they were to fight there was no chance they wouldn¡¯t be found out even though the one in charge of keeping an eye on the resupply party was Kong Jing. They were following pretty closely in retrospect. It was a wonder how the resupply party didn¡¯t really keep much of an eye behind them.
There was a limit to how much he could silence out sounds, the upper limit depended on how violently the air and ground was vibrating against the limits of his Mana Vibration skill. The good thing about the fighting style of the natural Topaz Golems he saw was that they were not able to use earth magic so they didn¡¯t have to worry about collapse.
Not even Kong Jing could break the ceiling here and that was reassuring.
¡°I¡¯m going to go blind¡¡± Ning Xin complained about travelling in the darkness.
They haven¡¯t reached the underground tomb that is supposedly so vast that they wouldn¡¯t necessarily bump into the possibly hundreds of people that were currently exploring or staying at the nearby camp.
Ebony¡¯s group wasn¡¯t planning on intruding the camp but directly to the tomb so they didn¡¯t really have to follow the resupply party all the way. They just needed a glimpse of the ¡®vast¡¯ tomb.
The journey so far had been impressively smooth and even boring because the resident space mage was sending everything away. Other than golems, there were monster moles, monster earthworms, some weird octopi thing that could survive being frozen completely through and also survive the frying pan. There were many more and the variety alone was making things difficult for the party of 60.
They didn¡¯t rest much if at all. Not much for them but Ebony was fully rested in the 3 to 4 hours that they stop in total every day. They couldn¡¯t even sleep for the full period since they needed to take watch, needed to cook for everyone if they weren¡¯t eating rations, clean and check the equipment and patch up cuts and bruises.
¡°We were lucky they already went through here twice and the narrower areas had been widened for the large procession of people.¡±
¡°Well I doubt they widened it as they explored downwards.¡±
¡°They¡¯ve been down here for years and even in this resupply party, there are 4 earth mages.¡± Mark shot down.
¡°Point taken. The earth mages must get awesome manipulation levels for manipulating some dense earth.¡±
They didn¡¯t have a reply for him as Kong Jing started teleporting them without their consent.
¡°Found it! Only a little deeper and oh it is massive.¡±
¡°Aren¡¯t we only a little more than 2 gors deep?¡±
¡°That¡¯s how vast it is. Tomb my ass, it¡¯s a city down there...¡±
¡°A city of?¡± Mark sensed his new master¡¯s pause in speech and knew there was a bright smile under her mask.
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¡°It''s a fortified city of topaz golems breeding all sorts of monsters and hundreds of factories producing more golems. Alright, we¡¯re here. Right below the floor is a vast cavern with an army of golems that can turn anything they touch to dust. Ready?¡±
¡°Tell me we¡¯re not destroying the place.¡± Mark pleaded. They wanted to gain things here, not destroy them.
¡°From what I see. The most golems down here have the same runic engraving on them as the one you found. But a lot of them glowed a different colour. And¡I don''t recognize the runes on the buildings. I¡¯m guessing everything down here was made by Dwarves or some other underground race.¡± Kong Jing¡¯s feet were tapping in irritation. She wanted to go and check it out already.
¡°It¡¯s the Dwarves, they were the first to start expedition parties down. They probably knew about this place from some old documents they found. The one leading the expedition currently camping somewhere near us is a Dwarf.¡± Mark kneaded his temples as he repeated the information that he already told them sometime during their exploration together.
They had plenty of time to chat over the week since they didn¡¯t fight anything and Ebony could soundproof them. It was mostly Mark pestering Kong Jing with questions about runes. He was too uptight to read a book while exploring, something about expecting the unexpected.
All in all, none of them were very talkative people and the journey so far had been passed by in silence. They ¡®helped¡¯ the resupply party move so much faster than they normally would and made it to their destination in one piece. Their space mage even personally redirected monsters that would wipe their guides out away but that was only known to herself. All Ebony knew were huge vibrations from around him that suddenly disappeared.
While they were making the journey down and the craftswoman couldn''t stand the boredom, she went to search for metals to mine. Even if she managed to find anything, she didn¡¯t report it to them.
The craftswoman had spatial awareness that was not stopped by thick earth, she told them they were standing on a floor less than 5 metres thick. She didn¡¯t wait for much longer and brought them along with her past the floor.
Ebony was as calm as ever but Mark was holding back his screams when he was falling all of a sudden. They were in the air now and he probably couldn''t fly.
He couldn¡¯t help but ask after half a minute of falling as he took in the sight of the city brightened by the glow of moving golems, ¡°aren¡¯t you going to bring us somewhere out of sight?¡±.
¡°Uhm¡I can¡¯t manipulate the space here.¡±
¡°What!¡± Mark yelled in shock.
Ebony helped to slow down their descent, Ning Xin was good enough to carry herself but not others.
¡°Let¡¯s land on that tall building.¡± He pointed to the flat ceiling of a tall building with fewer glowing movements around.
They descended slowly, then they were brought to a stop in the air. Where it was supposed to be air spawned a translucent sheet they stood on, it glowed and every walking humanoid under them snapped their heads up.
¡°Those don¡¯t look safe.¡± Mark looked at the tower with a massive yellow orb that was starting to brighten up below them.
Ebony grabbed Mark while the other pilot grabbed the craftswoman and they shifted to the side, ascending as much as possible. The barrier formed out of nowhere and he didn¡¯t react in time, now they alerted the entire underground ¡®tomb¡¯.
As for why they called it a tomb, he was going to guess it was the monument of a gravestone that was hundreds of metres tall with words he wasn¡¯t able to make out when he was falling through the air.
Four yellow beams phased through the translucent barrier, accurately aiming for each of them. He blocked two of them with his Imperishable Frost Scales that he was bringing along under his robe. The space mage was actually still able to use space magic, he saw the two beams returned to the city and landing on buildings. Nothing happened to those buildings but they were not about to test it on their bodies.
He searched the walls and ceiling but it was dark since they were far from the tomb and his senses only shied away from a hundred metres. They might not have wanted to teleport in.
¡°Should we break in?¡± Ning Xin wanted some action.
¡°Of course not! If we break in every single golem knows where we are and we can¡¯t even touch them. Let¡¯s get to the wall and blast open a cave ourselves. They don¡¯t seem to be exiting the barrier to chase us.¡± Mark then yelled for Ebony¡¯s attention as the yellow beams doubled in number.
His Imperishable Frost Scales took one shot and the topaz mana penetrated halfway through on impact before they started to consume or grow onto his ice mana. Thanks to how compressed they were, his scales weren¡¯t crumbling immediately and could take two more hits.
He let Mark down as they ran on top of the transparent barrier towards the closest wall. Now that they had the ability to move normally, dodging wasn¡¯t impossible but the beams doubled after every shot. When it hit 32 beams for each of them, he was thinking if he should help Mark again before the next shot dropped back to 1 beam but three times as thick. It was originally as thick as a finger.
The pattern continued as the beams doubled in quantity.
¡°Careful, we¡¯re about to reach the edge of the barrier.¡± Ebony said when he saw that the others were running at their speed.
¡°Which sick bastard designed this?!¡± Kong Jing was the second to notice that the barrier wasn¡¯t a dome that sloped down as they reached the edge, it had been a square so they had been running on a flat surface.
He caught Mark and leapt off the kilometre or so they were above the city. They needed to cross a few kilometres to reach the end of the underground space. When the beams reached 32 again, the next shot got thicker yet again but back to one.
They reached the wall and Mark charged up to stab his spear in. It took 5 seconds for him to charge mana and the walls detonated. Everyone hid behind Ebony¡¯s shield that he formed just like old times. Yellow beams the thickness of an arm smashed into his shield one after the other but he was blocking for all of them and the magic tower shooting them seemed to only need 2 seconds between each shot.
¡°You might want to dig or blow up a tunnel faster,¡± Ebony said when he felt his shield getting bombarded and crumbling from within.
Ning Xin and Mark worked on the boom boom while Kong Jing worked with him but it was very clear to him that her space magic didn''t have her usual grandeur.
Although no horde of monsters or an army of earthen humanoids were sent after them, there really wasn¡¯t a need to.
Within a minute, he needed to envelop them as part of the wall as the beams were so thick and numerous that dodging while they had to tear a tunnel open behind them was impossible. He could practically feel his scales being devoured from within and the encasement they were in continued to glow brighter due to the build-up of topaz mana inside his scales.
The earth here was extremely tough, Ning Xin didn¡¯t have many skills that helped to dig. She resorted to melting the earth which made it unbearably hot for Kong Jing. Mark seemed more energetic with the influx of heat while Ebony had already gotten used to it, just enhancing himself coated himself in a freezing cold layer. The craftswoman on the other hand, did not like being in between extreme heat and cold.
With how slow the process was going on the fire team, he could only assume the melting point of the earth here was incredibly high too. Mark was once again doing better which was really surprising. His explosive spear thrusts were really widening the cave.
¡°Uh oh,¡± Ebony said when he sensed the attacks stop.
¡°Why uh oh? Maybe we¡¯re out of range or they gave up.¡± Kong Jing already brought out a black colour mantle to wrap over herself. She couldn¡¯t have believed they were out of range since the two diggers only got through 3 metres of dirt that could fit 4 of them tightly.
¡°The surrounding mana is being drained. Faster and faster.¡± He was the most sensitive to ambient mana.
He bit into the stock of ice mana in his robe and Glacial Model formed and got to ramming large tools made of ice. It wasn¡¯t really efficient as they had to dig at the same spot so only 3 models were formed. They were all getting compressed as fast as possible as they were going to be useful as Imperishable Frost Scales too.
He let the shield down a tiny bit to see the dim light from the walled tomb that looked exactly like a city with a huge stone monument that was a gravestone. The tall beam shooting tower was far away but he had good sight, it was now blue in colour and he didn¡¯t like it. He quickly closed the opening shut and all his Glacial Models broke apart to join the shield.
Icy Weighted Quiver Domain was fully displayed, he tried his best to focus all his mana to ice and maybe the vibration side. His domain was controlled by him so he could make it such that other people were not under its effects. Unsure if a beam of mana that acts a little like light would be repelled, he still cast Chaotic Repulsive Membrane over the shield and he also cast it on all of them.
He continued to cast all of his strengthening spells and compress their lifeline while the others hurried to go deeper. Something already hit his shield but just like the yellow beam, he didn¡¯t feel any physical force from it. The lack of knockback made him think it was very similar to a beam of light. He stood behind their backs, directly behind Ning Xin. His body was a worthy shield.
The blue beam was phasing through his ice with at least ten times more ease. There was little delay in the crumbling of the strongest barrier he could form this time. In the split second the barrel-thick beam pierced his shield and was about to do the same to him and those behind him, Kong Jing joyfully laughed. ¡°We¡¯re out!¡±
The three of them found themselves in an empty tunnel right before they were blasted with that blue beam of death.
¡°That was close, we just reached where I could manipulate space normally again.¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t sound so worried for her life but Ebony was sure that the craftswoman would not survive that beam either. Maybe with her equipment but definitely not her body. Even as a Grandmaster or a Xeng.
The two fire users were resting against the tunnel wall as they sat limp. They were drenched in sweat and exhaustion despite it being a couple of minutes of exploration.
¡°Ell.¡± Mark cursed after catching his breath.
Chapter 158: Pointless Stealth
¡°What was that?¡± Mark calmed down.
¡°Automated defence system.¡± Kong Jing wiped her mask with a clean cloth.
¡°I know that, I mean what was that beam!?¡±
¡°Probably topaz magic. Feels similar to Ordina¡¯s topaz magic. Just more potent.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Then the blue one?¡± Mark didn¡¯t get the answer he wanted but he knew better than to ask them when they weren¡¯t sure either.
Ebony raised his shoulders and shrugged, he knew just as much as any of them. The genius craftswoman admittedly wasn¡¯t a fighting or magic maniac either.
¡°And crap! Was that a domain? A real domain?¡± Mark continued with his yelling.
Ebony noticed something. ¡°Are you angry?¡±
¡°No, just pissed.¡± Mark calmed down.
¡°Oh, I¡¯m wrong again.¡± Ebony sulked when he didn¡¯t get the correct answer at identifying emotions. ''Wait, is there a difference?''
He noticed Mark couldn¡¯t breathe well and his own chest felt tight too. Mark didn¡¯t know how to draw the runes that absorb ambient mana to convert to air but Ebony knew. He took out a piece of paper and moulded one but he was not very familiar with it so it wasn''t drawing ambient mana fast enough. Also, he didn¡¯t know where they were underground but the ambient mana wasn¡¯t very dense. They were probably still near the tomb as the range where the tomb had drained mana was huge.
Kong Jing got him to teach his junior apprentice. Mark needed to use a pen and draw it on but he learnt the simple rune in a few attempts and made one with much better effects than Ebony¡¯s. It must have been his Fortifications but Ebony didn¡¯t give up, once he familiarised himself Inscripted Mana Moulding should come into effect.
¡°Stay here, I¡¯ll go back. I want to see if the defence system remembers us or it resets its targets till someone touches the barrier.¡± Kong Jing rested enough.
¡°Alone!? Sister, you can¡¯t teleport out right?¡± Ning Xin grabbed onto the space mage¡¯s sleeves before she disappeared.
¡°I can if it was just myself. This fool was the biggest problem since his magic body is so thick, we were lucky he was running out of mana so I could move him.¡± Kong Jing knocked on his head.
He faintly saw her mask¡¯s black circle expand as the horizontal line shortened in response before she disappeared.
¡°The blue beam might be hard to dodge if there are 32 of them the thickness of an arm.¡± He pondered about the speed of those blue beams.
The light beams all lasted about half a second each and could follow them while it was shooting but the beams were straight and didn''t curve or home in on them which makes them easy to predict. They also came from the same direction and they had plenty of space to move around in the vast open underground space. Even though he didn¡¯t have Ning Xin¡¯s speed, he was better at dodging.
Other than the streets being filled with Topaz Golems, there were quite a few that were blue as well. Not to mention the handful of green and even purple glowing ones. He had no idea which was stronger but he had a feeling they would find out soon.
In less than ten minutes, the space mage returned as a glow stick. She stripped her mantle as if she didn¡¯t just get hit by their weird magic.
¡°Good news is, I wasn¡¯t attacked the moment I got there. The towers didn''t shoot. There¡¯s no entrance, I forced myself through the barrier and the response was violent. I managed to find places that have a weaker presence of patrols though. Probably used to be farmland, I think it¡¯s a city turned tomb.¡±
¡°So just don¡¯t touch the barrier and teleport through. And the farms are useless to the golems so there are less of them there. Found anything of value?¡± Mark pushed for more details.
¡°The different types of patrolling golems were made of different runes. The buildings were inscribed with a language I¡¯ve not seen or heard which is odd since I know what Dwarven runes are like. The resemblance is too thin to chalk it up to age, it¡¯s a completely different language.¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t find out much since she just entered and left in a few minutes. Ebony was staring at the mantle that she stripped and watched the multi-colour, mostly yellow veins that started spreading to the floor. It kept growing and he tried to stop it by freezing it as the tunnel they were in wasn¡¯t that wide and he was too lazy to move right now.
¡°People, walking above us. A lot of them.¡± Ebony sensed the vibration from the ceiling. He could make out footsteps and maybe people talking but not what they were talking about. At least not through metres of thick earth.
¡°They might be moving towards the tomb, their camp shouldn¡¯t be far either. We should see how they plan to enter.¡± Mark suggested.
¡°They must be more well informed after all. I¡¯ll go, sister Jing, can you bring me behind them? I have the best stealth.¡± He was hoping her spatial awareness was good enough.
She complained about how difficult it was to use space magic on him but she still did it.
It was instantly brighter and he was quite far away from the long line of people in front of him. Double confirming that he was silencing his every movement before he went after the people in a slow march. He could smell their stench from where he was, they must have had a difficult time here without any baths. The wildlife here consisted of many things but giant worms and moles should be the largest of their diets outside of ration.
¡®Oh and also those weird fruits that grow underground. Dirtpur is a weird name for a fruit.¡¯ Ebony remembered passing by hanging vines that carried surprisingly juicy fruits that had too many seeds. They were all over the place and led him to believe the vegetation had a large source of water somewhere underground.
Ebony only followed them for 2 minutes before he had to dodge something that shot right out of the dirt wall he was keeping close to. He failed to predict that he was baited to dodge as something grabbed him from behind and put a chilly blade on his neck.
¡°Who are you? How did you get here?¡± The slim lady was completely dressed in black and even her shoulder-length hair was black. This was the one of the few times he saw black hair on Elcra.
¡°Is that shadow magic? Or darkness? That was cool, I couldn¡¯t see how you crossed the distance at all.¡± Ebony Identified nothing again, not even question marks. He should think about getting something to hide his Class too. It was valuable information.
¡°Answer me!¡± She put more pressure with her dagger.
¡°Ebony. I walked and ran.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not laughing.¡±
¡°Me neither. You should stop pushing your dagger, I¡¯m not planning to pay for it when it breaks.¡±
Her blade had been creaking as she put more and more pressure as his body was attacking it with mana vibrations but the lady herself didn¡¯t seem to be affected. The dagger must be better than he assumed.
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Her response was to push it further and shatter her own dagger.
¡°Well, I warned you.¡± Ebony¡¯s words or perhaps her dagger shattering seemed to shock her a little too much.
He didn¡¯t even cast any enhancement or Stalwart Endowment. He was more careful about Stalwart Endowment as these people were probably very familiar with the runic glow. He would look like one of those blue glowing golems if he were to utilise that. It felt like it would bring forward a very troublesome development.
The lady shouldn¡¯t be a Grandmaster but she was pretty strong, it was her relatively low quality dagger that held her back. She tried to run by diving into the ground again but he didn¡¯t want her to inform anyone of his presence so his domain spread out in a very small space and a couple of arms pulled her out before she could fully sink.
¡°It¡¯s too late to run now.¡± He tried to get her to relax but the moment he cast his domain, he let his overflowing mana leak a little and her eyes rolled back.
¡®She fainted¡¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t expect the lady to be so faint-hearted.
He spawned a Glacial Model to carry her, using Ning Xin¡¯s model so that he didn¡¯t come off as rude. ¡°Carry her and follow me.¡± The tunnels branched off quite a few times but it was quite obvious to him where the expedition party went even without footprints, the heavy footsteps were echoing throughout the tunnel.
He had to follow them down a neat shaft that he guessed was made by their earth mages. He stuck himself to the deep shaft walls after falling through it as the group didn¡¯t continue moving off. The bottom of the shaft had been a very well-lit underground space with hundreds of tents and campfires.
¡®Are they planning to wage war or siege the tomb?¡¯ Ebony saw thousands of people from Beastmen to humans but almost half of them were Dwarves.
The group that he followed seemed to be the most recent addition, as they unloaded and prepared to rest.
Perhaps his Glacial Model wasn¡¯t that fluent in carrying someone and it jumped in after him as well. His sudden stop near the exit of the shaft was out of the Model¡¯s expectation and it fell down together with the lady on it¡¯s shoulder.
The Model landed with a loud ¡®thud¡¯ due to its immense condensed weight.
¡®Uh oh. Dissipate dissipate.¡¯ The drop from the shaft was not that tall and still within his range of control but he accidentally made the Glacial Model burst into icy mist that enveloped the entire camp.
¡°ATTACK!¡± Many people yelled at the same time.
¡°No attack no attack.¡± He said hoping they could hear him. He ran up the smooth shaft, not planning to fight when a random Identify scan gave him more than a few blue colours and he was very sure he saw one golden armoured Dwarf with purple words above his head.
Their response was a little too fast so he dropped the hiding of his mana to scare them. It worked and he could sense them hesitate enough for him to get out of their range. He quickly backtracked along the same route he used to get here. Fortunately, he had Mental Mapping as there were dozens of branching paths every so often.
¡®Crap, they¡¯re chasing.¡¯ There was a limit to how fast he could go in these tunnels, he already passed through where he started following the black hair lady¡¯s group.
Now it was unknown territory.
¡°Let¡¯s have a chat boy!¡± The furry beastman charged at him with his huge battle axe and called him out happily. A small group of 4 followed behind the beastman.
¡°Um. No thanks.¡± Ebony continued running when he saw that they only brought Grandmasters along. They weren¡¯t scared of his mana and that was pretty intimidating.
¡°How did you get here by yourself huh?!¡± Someone else wasn¡¯t that cheerful, Ebony was trying to guess whether the person was angry or not.
¡°I-¡± He almost rammed into the wall but was teleported to their hiding spot.
¡°So you got caught.¡± Kong Jing was writing in the dark when she spoke out.
¡°Thanks.¡± He told the space mage.
¡°So what did you find out?¡± Mark was surprisingly unbothered about getting found out.
¡°There¡¯s thousands of people in their camp. I¡¯m pretty sure I saw a King Class Shield Warrior Dwarf.¡±
¡°King Classed?! Are you sure?¡± Mark was shocked.
¡°Are you shocked?¡± Ebony was sure that was the look and reaction of shock.
¡°Of course I¡¯m shocked!¡±
¡°Yes!¡± Ebony made an uncharacteristic fist gesture for Identifying the correct emotion.
The three of his compatriots looked at him funny. He couldn¡¯t even identify what they were feeling this time.
¡°Anyway, there are a few King Classed Dwarves amongst the nobles but the only combat King Class is the Archduke of Dwarves himself. This operation is too secretive to be a noble¡¯s initiative but¡the funding has to come from somewhere. A King Classed non-noble. Now that¡¯s rare¡¡± Kong Jing seemed to be confident of her guess. Ebony was thinking that the large-scale mobilisation was by a noble but what did he know?
Apparently, it was common sense that the Archduke of Dwarves, Gerot Mallet, was the only noble Dwarf who was King Classed that wasn¡¯t some sort of blacksmith. Although it wasn¡¯t as if there weren¡¯t any non-nobles that high-ranked, it was indeed very rare.
He then explained how he was found out and how he felt bad for the lady that he dropped, hopefully, she didn¡¯t freeze to death by his Model''s forceful dispersion.
¡°Couldn¡¯t you react fast enough to control the ice to float?¡± Ning Xin rarely saw him not react in time.
¡°Oh¡I wasn¡¯t meditating and was thinking of all sorts of stuff.¡±
¡°I think you should stop that weird training for now.¡± She poured water on his enthusiasm.
¡°Mmm.¡± He thought the same, it was only bringing him problems. Maybe Muse¡¯s idea hadn¡¯t been very good. Well, it was his idea but he got it from Muse¡¯s words.
Now he needed to spend some time to get rid of the excess nonsense in his mind.
¡°Wow, they have skilled people. They¡¯re coming.¡± Kong Jing reported.
¡°Let¡¯s go then.¡± Ning Xin wasn¡¯t about to run.
Kong Jing teleported them right in front of the 5 that were chasing him. Spears and swords were thrust out, axes were swung and fists were flying.
He held back on reducing the amount of space his party would have and kept Icicle sheathed for the time being. The tunnel wasn¡¯t able to fit 5 people swinging weapons side by side. These people were all using some sort of mana enhancement with 2 earth mages behind. The earth mages were extremely annoying for Mark and Ning Xin. They tried to limit movements instead of shooting spells, far more effective in these tunnels.
They had the advantage in stats for a short moment with his fiery twin-bladed member quickly crushing their advantage with a few pulses of her core skill. Mark was doing his best to fend himself, he was on the losing end without his runic domain. Ebony hadn¡¯t asked him about it.
Kong Jing just stood and watched, she didn¡¯t seem to like fighting. She was helping by releasing her aura which was quite the wonder when the opponents were also Grandmasters but she was still causing their movements to feel stunted. Ebony did the same, he had the greatest advantage when it came to ¡®aura¡¯. It was so effective that he was probably going to do it all the time now.
Their expertise and experience in fighting in confined space weren¡¯t enough, the twin-bladed masked one was far too ferocious as she went from pushing one to pushing all three of the melee fighters herself. There was no place for Mark or Ebony, they would hit her instead with how she was moving so fast and taking up the whole tunnel.
¡°Hmm. The strength difference from one grandmaster to another can be amazingly big, it probably gets even bigger as they go up the ranks right?¡± Ebony asked as he manually controlled his Models to suppress the earth mages behind the warriors.
These people seemed slightly stronger than those he fought with against the level 380 plus Knight Earthfly but nowhere close to the people who suppressed the royal insect and her guards.
¡°Pretty much, then again Grandmasters are the elites already. With few Kings many of the dying grandmasters probably don¡¯t care about getting the best evolution since the increase in rank would give them a big advantage and also keep them alive. I mean, look at you guys. The gap is only going to widen.¡±
Since Ning Xin couldn¡¯t use fire magic haphazardly and the other group seemed to be using less flashy skills it had turned to a good¡¯ol close combat and she was crushing their resistance with pure technique. Slowly but surely, Ebony could tell that her sword style was changing ever so slightly.
Their opponent tried to run but it was futile with him who could cast behind them even without moving behind them here.
¡°What now?¡± He froze all of them together and their mouths shut because he didn¡¯t want to hear them speak.
¡°Make them talk?¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t exactly want to find trouble with the main camp of these people.
They were tight-lipped and not just because he froze their lips shut. They didn¡¯t even utter a word no matter what Mark tried to ask.
¡°I¡¯ll throw them down the shaft,¡± Ebony said as if he already decided what to do after ten minutes of talking to blocks of wood.
Chapter 159: Siege
Mark was trying to think.
They wanted to go into the tomb but they were in no position to barge into the camp and demand those people to take them in. Perhaps 2 Xengs present would make a difference but he really doubted the expedition filled with proud freelancers, hired hands or maybe nobles would really care for 2 masked ladies.
Using force doesn¡¯t seem plausible and although with his new runic teacher, stealth was somewhat of an option her personality didn¡¯t call for it. Ebony¡¯s stealth wasn¡¯t strong enough to hide from good rogues but he was great at hiding from mages since it was harder and harder to perceive him with mana sense.
Goal number 1, entry to the tomb to get knowledge on unknown runes.
Issue, an army of attack on sight golems where just touching them was extremely dangerous. Magic beam defence system and possibly many other defences in place.
Possible course of action, ignore the expedition camp¡¯s source of information and teleport through the barrier. Rely on hiding and destroying any resistance based on his party member¡¯s strength.
The only thing he didn¡¯t like about this method was the immense lack of information. The risk was too high and depends a lot on the space mage¡¯s ability to get them out if anything happens.
Next was to hide somewhere they could observe the expedition party and watch how they planned to enter or if they really were trying to start an all out attack. The problem was if they could remain hidden because his new master already said the tunnels above, below and all around them were getting filled up with people searching for them.
Ebony had done the honours of silencing the mana threads that were extending from their captives'' callstone so they couldn¡¯t contact the main group.
Since their stealth wasn¡¯t good enough and it was hard to infiltrate the group without raising suspicions due to how much his party members stand out. He found it hard if he wanted to blend in with some other group and join the camp as if he was always part of it too. There was just no solo freelancer around if what Ebony said was true and people were joining the expedition camps in groups.
How did they keep it so secretive with so many people here? Mark didn¡¯t know, it might be that he was just out of the loop.
As for negotiating to join the expedition party, that was his current first choice of action. They clearly wanted strong forces and with so many people, what¡¯s sharing another 4 more slices of the pie?
The problem was that he wasn¡¯t clear on what this expedition party was here for. Without knowing what they actually wanted it might be hard to get a good position in negotiating. At the same time, it was really easy because all they wanted was the runic knowledge. The bad thing was that if that was what the expedition party was after and they wanted it to be a secret, chances were they didn¡¯t want the runic knowledge to spread. Perhaps the masses of people were just here as hired hands for mana ores and had no chip in the treasures of the tomb.
Mark understood the advantage of being the only one aware of a different type of knowledge. Especially powerful knowledge. Ebony¡¯s spell and his potion version were proof that there was value in the new or perhaps old, runic language here.
The 5 people they caught wouldn¡¯t say anything at all and he couldn¡¯t find out what they were here for or if they were only hired temporarily for fighting power.
Mark shared his thoughts with his party members.
They fearlessly said to just walk into the camp and ¡®figure things out once they were there¡¯.
Two very impatient women and a man that normally doesn¡¯t care about anything that he found ¡®unimportant¡¯. At least the method of how they did things was rarely within Ebony''s considerations.
Mark hated the lack of information and with his further upgraded spear, he gave up and played along with his dumb party members. So young, naive and careless.
The favourable part for him was if the two of his party members were to go crazy with fire or ice, he was getting all the enhancement in the world only with the cost of increased stamina expenditure.
It was fun, he might not be able to keep up with Grandmaster warriors at close combat or mages at spell combat but against these two stronger kids he could keep up since they were enhancing him with their own magic. They must be confused at why he was able to fight them but not others weaker than them. Not that he would ever tell them why or how.
???
Mark¡¯s words made sense to Ebony and instead of tossing some people down the shaft and getting chased, they might as well walk in and talk it out like civilised people.
All of them were extremely happy with the straightforward method. Like the hundreds of sharp metal blades, arrow tips and staff pointing at them the moment they landed.
He heard whispers of ¡®so it really wasn¡¯t a monster.¡¯ and knew they were talking about him because he was suppressing the space here with his mana. All the Masters couldn¡¯t withstand it but the Grandmasters could to varying extents.
They didn¡¯t exactly link masks to Xengs immediately but it wasn¡¯t hard to guess either.
¡°To what do I owe the pleasure¡Null Horizon?¡± A surprisingly flat tone of voice came from the extravagantly armoured Dwarf. They tend to have a naturally deep voice so his voice was closer to a human compared to other Dwarves.
[Shield King Lvl ???]
He was very obviously addressing Kong Jing. White beard was slipping through the helmet and his facial features were mostly covered.
¡°You talking to me? Null Horizon? Is that the tacky name people are calling me? Oh that armour, I made that when I just evolved to Master and needed some mana ores.¡± Kong Jing pointed at herself before she noticed the armour the man was wearing.
Few people in the room reacted to the name so Ebony was guessing it wasn¡¯t a very well known title, Null Horizon seemed pretty cool to him though.
¡°...What do you want?¡± It seemed like the man didn¡¯t care to ask any other question.
¡°The tomb. We want in.¡± Kong Jing went straight to the point.
¡°...Welcome. We¡¯ll be moving in 6 hours. I¡¯m Democlus, chat up the others for now. I¡¯ll be going to sleep.¡±
¡°That¡¯s it?¡± Mark was dumbfounded.
Ebony took it for granted and didn¡¯t think about the reason why they were so easily taken in. Democlus also didn¡¯t bother explaining.
¡°Welcome to the team!¡±
¡°Woo! Got some strong ones joining!¡±
¡°What a craftswoman doing here!?¡±
The people who booed them were teleported away, probably to some nearby tunnel.
He saw Mark chatting people up for information already and he tried to soak up the information they didn¡¯t seem to care about hiding now. The 5 people he brought down were released and the beastman acted as if they hadn¡¯t just caught and threatened them. Happily welcoming them to the expedition party.
Now that they officially joined because of Democlus¡¯s casual welcome, the others weren¡¯t really hiding information from them anymore.
¡°See. Straightforward is best.¡± He patted Mark¡¯s back.
¡°Says the one that stealthily followed them.¡± Mark wasn¡¯t so optimistic.
¡°....I wasn¡¯t thinking straight.¡± Ebony was ashamed. ¡®Ashamed? Shame, that¡¯s new. I really am incredibly stupid.¡¯
¡°Well, who knew master Jing had clout.¡± Mark was starting to get comfortable with not caring about the tiny details.
Ning Xin drifted off to the source of the nice scent and took it upon herself to join the cooking group.
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Kong Jing disappeared saying she was going to prepare some equipment for them.
Mark was going around collecting information.
No one approached Ebony so he just sat alone.
Meditating and creating more and more Glacial Models to stand by. Recharging his robes up for their ability to summon scale armour was useful too. He didn¡¯t use it before since he wanted the mana to protect the others but he probably needed to protect himself too.
They rejoined for dinner in a couple of hours even though they didn''t plan the gathering.
¡°I tried to keep our objective quiet while I gathered information. Nobody knows about what they¡¯re here to look for. Just very highly paid for a tomb raid and need to focus on secrecy by contract. Democlus doesn¡¯t have a party or any close aides either. The man is single-handedly funding this operation which is incredulous, it has to be funded by a noble. A very rich one, maybe more than just one family. Or a large company with vested interest.¡± Mark ate the meal he got that tasted better than most restaurants he visited.
¡°No one knows anything?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t believe so many people would come down without information.
¡°Yeah, they were offered a prize they couldn¡¯t refuse apparently. I mean, they were willing to go 3 gors under the surface with little to no information about the dangers other than being informed that they were going to fight topaz golems like those in Ordina. I heard it¡¯s not a siege though, the scouts said that Democlus could allow them to pass through the barrier and the defence towers could be deactivated. The patrols are the biggest problem.¡± Mark continued.
¡°Are they planning to wreck the place?¡± Kong Jing asked.
¡°...The damage might be huge. What I¡¯m curious about is what Democlus is after. Is he planning to take something and just leave? Mine the resources by destroying the golems or is he here for the runes. Maybe something else entirely?¡± Mark pondered aloud.
¡°So the only thing that Democlus could be useful for is to enter the tomb and also shut the defence system down?¡± Ning Xin stared at Democlus¡¯s tent. Ebony could tell she was not wary but confused, he thought that it might have been the surprisingly weak aura from the high-level Dwarf.
¡°Yeah, everyone here is split into 3 teams to shut down the beam shooting towers with an item Democlus is gonna provide. No idea if it would work but, after the towers are shut down the expedition party are free to hunt down or take anything they want. They can also leave whenever but they need to inform Democlus that they are returning. He wants at least half this number to be around to reduce the number of golems for half a year and no, no one knows why.¡±
¡°Reduce numbers? The factories?¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°...I¡¯m not sure if the people know about the factories. I mean, Master Jing¡¯s the one who saw the factories. I get the feeling Democlus knows but I don¡¯t think he spread the information.¡±
¡°Whatever, this means he doesn¡¯t care what we do inside and our actions won¡¯t be getting in anyone¡¯s way. Those towers are troublesome so we could cooperate with them for the time being and then go on doing our own exploration. That¡¯s what the others would be doing too. And the factories? There¡¯s a lot of them and they are pretty obvious, I doubt anyone would destroy them though.¡± Kong Jing stuffed her face full of food.
¡°It is producing more monsters to kill. Where do they mine the materials? This isn''t a dungeon and it isn¡¯t spawning materials with essence.¡± Ebony curiously asked while tempting the chef with his plate of food.
Even if the monsters were conjurors, was that enough to conjure each other? There wouldn¡¯t be a need for so many factories if that was the case. Natural golems require a core, he didn¡¯t know enough about how they formed.
¡°Fool, I didn¡¯t see much but it''s common sense. The city tomb is resting above a mining spot.¡± Kong Jing only seemed to get violent with him. He didn¡¯t envy his junior brother for not getting any love.
???
Ning Xin watched as the three of them continued to take another serving of soup for themselves. Another scoop of the shredded pot roast. The amount of food dwindled until she couldn¡¯t take it anymore, she dived for the pot and serving bowl before retreating.
Similar food fights and chases were happening in the cave because she had her hand on cooking every pot of soup and roast here. She busied herself for hours after all. They were using precious meat because it was the last meal before they started the operation. Not from her stock of course, there was no way she was feeding thousands of hungry freelancers with her stock of ingredients.
She didn¡¯t like the tunnels. The stuffiness wasn¡¯t that bad since she had her mask for some fresh air from time to time. The dim light and confined space also weren¡¯t as bad as her time in the blood realm. Being able to be so close and sleep with her cousin was nice but she was old enough and preferred her ice-cold bolster. She needed something cold or it was hard to fall asleep even with her natural body temperature lower now. Habits were hard to change.
The fact that she had to fight non-edibles was irritating her quite a bit.
The impossibly tough earth, the non-existent seal on her fire magic, the running away from the tomb and the pointless stealth so far all served to add to her irritation.
She bottled it up for Mortal¡¯s Pulse.
Stuffing irritation down with every bite of food. She gobbled everything up quickly but not much was left for her compared to her usual diet and she used quite a bit of energy fighting and digging.
Blood.
She needed blood.
¡®Blood. I need blood. Ebony¡¯s blood.¡¯ She washed the dishes but couldn¡¯t concentrate.
Her feet brought her standing behind Ebony who was sitting on a mound of dirt. Her hands pulled his robe and shirt aside and she bent down.
She snapped out of it when she saw his eyes looking at hers.
¡°I¡¯ll give you some, you can just ask.¡±
She got embarrassed, she still had some of his blood in stock but something¡desire for fresh blood just overtook her.
¡°It¡it''s fine.¡± She ran off.
¡®Is it instinct? No, I was extra careful about absorption and I¡¯m not thirsty for anyone¡¯s blood here¡except his. I¡¯m just hungry. Let¡¯s cook something.¡¯
¡°Moving out in ten!¡± Everyone started to pack at Democlus'' call.
¡®Nooo¡¡¯ She cried. Pulling biscuits out which she dipped in a bit of Ebony¡¯s blood instead.
???
Ebony looked at the people around, Mark found the weakest contingent of the 3-way split to join. He apologised to the shadow lady when he found her having a fit of shivers. She wasn¡¯t in his group and she seemed almost too happy about it.
They were free labour but he didn¡¯t care if those towers could be shut down and they were free to move around after the operation.
The leader of their group was the one in charge of entering the tower to deactivate it while everyone else had to open a path for her and also protect her as the deactivation takes about half an hour.
With about 400 hundred people in each group, he thought it was more than enough but they might fail easily if they were careless. Getting hit by a stray projectile or even getting touched in close combat was a bad idea. He wondered how the close combatants were going to handle the fights.
He wasn¡¯t going to use Icicle if he could refrain from doing so, it wasn¡¯t like he needed it.
Why was he still using a sword when he personally doesn¡¯t see himself as a swordsman even today? It wasn¡¯t a secret but he hasn¡¯t told anyone the absolutely dumb reason for it. Perhaps if Ning Xin ever bothered to ask again he would answer. He somewhat expects her to ask sooner or later. He didn¡¯t love the sword like she did after all.
Some earth mages worked together at the front and removed a large part of the wall. They were so close to the tomb. Democlus yawned and marched out with an undecorated green flag. Ebony was unaware if there was any significance to the flag or its colour.
It was less than a hundred metres before the edge of the tomb city¡¯s barrier and Democlus simply walks in while waving his green flag. The barrier didn¡¯t even pop up to stop the army like it did to stop their fall into the tomb.
There were no walls here, possibly because they were underground and the tomb didn¡¯t require walls. All the golems in sight were bombarded by spells left and right before they even started attacking the invaders.
These guys were clearly impatient and were ready for war. The noise attracted everything in range.
They started to split out into three after getting past the barrier.
There were 4 towers that were too tall and obvious to miss and Democlus was going to take one himself. Nobody questioned it.
Seeing him at the front literally slapping anything that came close and turning anything his gauntlet touched to dust was interesting. Even the buildings in the direction of his wild swing were crumbling. The shiny shield remained on his back.
The man seemed lonely as he left for the tallest tower in the centre of the tomb. The gravestone situated at the back of the underground tomb was the tallest and biggest structure. The other 3 towers were probably equidistant away from each other and were nearer to the edges of the tomb.
He was glad the other towers didn¡¯t start attacking them but he could see them brightening up already.
¡®Previously the tower had a single beam for each one of us. Can it do the same for over 400 people? Is that why the charging time is longer?¡¯
Ebony was right.
¡°Let¡¯s speed up.¡± He told his party which consisted of Mark and Ning Xin.
The space mage wasn¡¯t joining in, she was still busy making something back at the campsite.
Once he sped up, the others tried to do the same too.
They were outnumbered 3 to 1 and they were still a few kilometres away from the tower.
¡°Kill the ones you can but keep moving, We¡¯ll hole up and defend once we get closer!¡± The leader was a buff but short lady. Ebony didn¡¯t see weapons on her.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t care, she was slaying anything that she could see and reach. So far, the Topaz golems were only level 280ish and all of them were yellow in colour.
¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Ebony¡¯s Glacial Model fought for him while he asked the closest warrior who took out a potion and poured it over his weapon.
¡°To prevent Topaz from destroying our equipment of course! Didn¡¯t you get your share?¡± He didn¡¯t bother with Ebony any longer as he narrowly dodged a shard of topaz to his head. Then he proceeded to pour the potion over his helmet.
¡®So they had preventive measures as we assumed. What kind of potion is that?¡¯
Getting within a kilometre of the tower was simple and without casualty but that quickly changed and the first unlucky mage got struck. His skin and veins brightened right up and his body fell apart within a minute.
Chapter 160: The Green One
Ebony had 3 Glacial Models running about. Only 2 of them were fully compressed, each of them took a lot of effort to compress and he tried to put his Will on them. He still wasn¡¯t sure how he was supposed to do that but he tried his best to force his desire for what he wanted them to be able to do. Meaningfully, he tried to recall all his memories of fighting while he created them. Due to the increase in his skill level, the range where they could still be within control is outside of his range of senses. Although it would be like moving them blind, he could still use his ''eyes'' so that he knew what they were up to. The physical strength of his Models were dependent on his Intelligence which, honestly, wasn''t very high when compared to any other mage of the same level. The skill level also helped plenty to increase their strength.
Glacial Model at level 92 was far weaker than any half-broken golem in the tomb. It would be the same even if he levelled the skill by a significant amount. However, his Glacial Model was walking off the topaz mana growing in them. The sheer physical advantage the topaz golems have over them was barely enough to scratch their icy countenance due to how compressed they were.
They got hit a lot, allowing topaz mana to build up but Ebony took it upon himself to discharge a layer of their skin as scales stimulating shedding or moulting.
The golems here seemed even more proficient at fighting whether it was close combat or support magic. The Core Topaz Golems were cutting people down beyond his reach. Ebony was fighting one himself at the moment and so were his 2 allies.
Some of the notable Grandmasters were ganging up on the [True Topaz Core Golem Lvl ???] which for some reason was blue like sapphire instead of yellow. Everyone was wary from the True Topaz Head versions that got the chance to cast a type of large-area rain spell. The sapphire-like magic was so potent that Grandmasters with their special potion¡¯s effect weren''t able to survive a second hit. Mages and archers shatter into chunks in seconds. Only those that had thick enough mana over their skins were alive.
Seeing dozens of different people allowed Ebony to sense very interesting things about how they protected or enhanced themselves with mana. He was possibly the only one present that had sensitivity with mana so high that he could tell how differently each of them wielded mana. Most of the warriors were simple, they gathered their mana and layered them over their skin or infused them into their bodies. The archers and rogues all had slightly denser mana in their eyes, arms and some of their legs as well.
The mages on the other hand, intricately weaved mana in the shape of armour over their body. Some are elemental but more commonly a mixture of their pure mana. It was very intriguing and showed him how one or two of them were tanking topaz hammer strikes. Since quite a few of them were earth mages and the others were water mages, they were actually doing better than warriors. They didn¡¯t have to get close to attack and their risk was lower as long as they could protect themselves against the enemy¡¯s ranged attacks.
It took over half a minute for Ebony to dispatch the yellow core golem. They were currently roughly five hundred metres away from the tower.
Things were looking bad, the tower appeared to be a sun underground. It probably charged enough power to start shooting. Having their numbers drop to 300 or so made the charge quicker and it took its first shot. Although everyone was looking out for it, they were already fighting for their lives while being outnumbered. Inevitably, a couple of them were not able to dodge the beam even though at this distance, a single beam was easy enough to dodge. Some unlucky ones dodged only to get hit by another stray spell.
It was pretty noisy, there were a few rifle users that were far away with some archers that focus on long-ranged support. Their fire rate was high but the bullets bounced off more often than not. They were not blind, the golems closer to the tower were different.
Obviously, Ebony was familiar with the difference. Every one of the golems within 500 metres of the defence tower had similar runes as Na did. There wasn¡¯t a difference in Identify¡¯s results though.
Mark freed himself by bashing down a door and entering the building, he gulped down a potion. The potion he made to copy Na, and possibly with the same effects as Ebony¡¯s Stalwart Endowment if not stronger. Na¡¯s body shape was extremely similar to his own, so there was little need to change the runes at all but he was unable to cast Stalwart Endowment on anyone else at the moment. They also needed to be able to conjure ice mana to power the endowment.
The fact that he could cast Stalwart Endowment on his Glacial Models only made them more indestructible except that it would slowly kill the Models due to the consumption of ice mana. He would also need to consume 500 mana per minute for each endowment he was keeping up so he would only use it on his Models if he was training and wasn¡¯t in danger like the present.
Ning Xin spearheaded the charge and got the bulk of the attention from the defenders of the tower. He saw the pressure increase on her and pushed his way through to get near her. Not near enough where her enraged attacks would hit him. She was more reckless than usual, he was too familiar with how she fought not to tell. Unleashing her fire magic with no care for the environment. No one but him could remain close to her. Nowadays, even he couldn¡¯t stay close to her for long because there just wasn¡¯t any air near her. She knew about it, and with his comment, she manually syphons wind to feed her flames so breathing was a huge issue.
He didn¡¯t need as much air due to his physique and his heart rate is always very low, Optimum Conditioning helped his body ignore its needs. The practice with air runes was going to be very useful soon enough. He should have done that sooner.
Mark could also ignore the heat from her but he was worse off with the air situation. He was probably going to do something about his helmet soon.
Ebony kept his blue flames to a minimum so he wasn¡¯t attracting any eyes on him.
Honestly, other than the hardy and durable trait of the golems. They couldn¡¯t touch him and his Sonic Intrusion, Guided Path and Ceaseless Onslaught were doing amazingly well and hacking them down slowly. The only difference between the ¡®True¡¯ topaz golems other than their level and stats was the fact that their magic was more potent and his Glacial Models couldn¡¯t take many hits. He had his Models retreat around him so that he could better control them and use them as Imperishable Frost Scales when he needed to.
Their group successfully destroyed every defender within range and reached the tower. The tower only managed to charge up for a second shot before they reached the tower. Ebony could sense over 240 people still alive and spot a dozen or so archers and gunners hiding further away.
¡°Crap! Where¡¯s the entrance?!¡± The short and buff leader screamed in frustration.
Ebony kept his eyes closed when the yelling of suggestions from people were really getting to him. The vibrations from the ground told him that more enemies were coming for them.
In the centre of the tomb city, the light from the tallest tower dimmed out and was completely turned off.
Finally, the leader was reminded that she was just supposed to climb up and stab the large key she was given. Maintaining contact and feeding it mana until it shut down. She took another potion out to dunk on herself before leaping up the wall as if it was a short ledge.
Democlus was prepared, Ebony couldn¡¯t help but think that he knew exactly how strong the forces had to be. The numbers had to be high enough such that the defence towers weren¡¯t shooting beams every few seconds. Thanks to the equipment-protecting potion, they were doing reasonably well. Too many died due to being careless at the start. The Masters also couldn¡¯t keep up with the runic versions.
¡°Green one coming, stay 10 girs away or pour what I gave you all over yourself if you don¡¯t want to die! I¡¯ll be helping the north first and go clockwise!¡± Democlus¡¯s voice echoed throughout the tomb city.
¡®50 metres? Why¡¡¯
It didn¡¯t take too long for him to find out. Support fire died out first, he was busy handling 2 of the blue core golem when it happened. The menace had a visible green light 50 metres in radius with itself as the centre. It just popped beside the gunners and archers and cast its domain that got every building around it to fall apart. The protection the others had didn¡¯t even last a second when they were in the green glow.
Panic rose amongst the group.
Mark decided it was a bad idea to stay at the edges of combat; the three of them stuck closer together. Ning Xin already snapped out of her rage-filled combat. She quickly took a sip of his blood that she still had on her.
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¡°Don¡¯t even try.¡± He warned her not to get close to the green menace. The glow of green was spreading outside its domain and the very air was getting broken apart. If there was a weakness to it, it was that he could see it controlling the spread not to get to the floor. Likely so that it still had a foothold.
One big weakness for the golems was that they couldn¡¯t fly and that might be why the towers prioritised aerial targets. Then again, he didn¡¯t see anyone here capable of flight.
The expedition group didn¡¯t hesitate to funnel their spells towards the new threat but both water and earth spells no matter the size fizzled out before even crossing half of its domain. Physical matter immediately falls apart as the ¡®probably topaz¡¯ mana invades and tears them apart.
Everyone scattered.
The good thing for them was that it stopped using its domain. Ebony guessed that it didn¡¯t want to damage the tower itself.
[Untarnished Topaz Homunculi Lvl ???]
¡®Its lower level than the blue ones? Also, it¡¯s not even a golem?¡¯ Ebony was even warier now. True Topaz Golems were over level 300 but these Homunculi hadn''t evolved yet. It was a different creature they were dealing with. It didn¡¯t look squarish with rough edges, it was humanoid as far as he could tell but had a head twice as big and it didn¡¯t have any facial features.
He wanted to take it as a target that was twice as big but the green domain was only contained over its own body like armour. If it was anything like a mage, it would logically compress the mana so touching it was out of the picture. A few friendly summoned earth golems went to slow it down as it was clearly aiming to remove the buff lady leader who was too engrossed with shutting the tower off. She was giving orders to keep the big-headed glowstick away from her.
As luck may have it, they would be dead last to receive support from Democlus.
¡°Here, this should protect you.¡± Kong Jing appeared out of nowhere to put a mantle over her dear cousin.
¡°Don¡¯t look at me, I didn¡¯t have time to make another for you.¡± She said to her two students.
¡°Can¡¯t you send it away?¡± Mark complained.
¡°I could but look at this cute face.¡± She cupped Ning Xin¡¯s face and turned it to face Mark. He only saw the emotionless mask.
Ebony could see the desire to fight in her eyes.
¡°We know their topaz consumes mana and physical matter but when I direct ice mana to it, it would break mana down before my sword so you should be able to protect your twin sword with fire mana too. Not sure how fast this Untarnished consumes matter though.¡± Ebony gave his tips since she seemed worried for her blades.
He didn¡¯t have to say more as she changed out her new mantle properly and clashed with the Homunculi immediately. The Homunculi blocked with its arms, its reaction speed seemed roughly equal to the Grandmaster-ranked True Topaz Golems.
¡°Hey! There¡¯s another one coming from the north, that bastard! Didn¡¯t he go north!?¡± The leader whose name Ebony hasn¡¯t learnt of, called for help.
No one listened to her pleas to get someone to hold the key while she fought off the incoming Homunculi. They probably didn¡¯t want to become defenceless and the target of every golem and homunculi.
Ebony¡¯s body moved as he was equally itchy for combat. Still, his body wasn¡¯t so dumb as to leap to it while it still had its domain up. Once it got close to the tower, it reduced the range of that deadly domain.
¡°Try to keep it whole, there¡¯s a lot of information we can study from its body.¡± Kong Jing¡¯s voice reached him before his mind was completely turned off.
He turned his robe into scale armour by activating the mana in them. With every layer of his offensive skills put together, his fist reached the Homunculi¡¯s big head.
???
¡°You idiot!¡± Kong Jing panicked when she saw the punch Ebony threw.
¡°Um, why isn¡¯t he using his greatsword? I thought he was more of a kicking guy too¡¡± Mark was actually speechless when he saw the image of Ebony charging in for a punch.
¡°What is he thinking?¡± She scratched her head in frustration. She hoped it wasn¡¯t because she told him not to destroy Homunculi''s body.
¡°Master Jing, don¡¯t you think he¡¯s acting a little weird recently?¡± Mark questioned.
¡°...A little, but he¡¯s always been weird.¡± She replied. She calmed down when she saw that he was fine and dandy with no green growing into or onto his fist.
They turned to the commotion from her little Xin¡¯s battle. Little Xin got hit with a body blow. Fortunately, she made a new defensive mantle for her after understanding the nature of Topaz magic¡¯s attack. The physical blow itself didn¡¯t seem to injure her too much.
Well, some idiots tried to budge into her battle and almost got themselves killed and it was her surprisingly kind little Xin who pushed them out of the way. She wouldn¡¯t have gotten hit so easily if it wasn¡¯t for that. Kong Jing would have to give those idiots a good beating later.
These ¡®Homunculi¡¯ were completely dark green and she couldn¡¯t visibly see any runes. Her mask also evolved in a manner that fit with her own skills. She had a pretty good eye. The main ability of the yellow and blue golems with runes didn¡¯t seem to be like Ordina¡¯s or the runic formula that her new student with an obsessive academic fervour for runes showed her.
The natural spawn didn¡¯t have any runes on them but worked to protect tomb city all the same. The ones with runes were probably created by the factories. Instead of durability or stat-enhancing functions, she believed that these runes were actually related to mind magic. Closer to memory than the mind.
She didn¡¯t know enough about this odd rune language to tell but she roughly deciphered that just from looking at all the buildings, the tower, the huge gravestone. She wanted to study the huge gravestone but she wasn¡¯t a fighter and there were more scary things protecting that.
If she had to make an educated guess, those runes copied the fighting techniques of someone. These golems seemed to have a pattern and all fought in the exact same way. She had taken a look at the other 2 groups that were shutting the towers down and the golems there fought differently.
It should be that the nearest factory was set to produce different runic golems.
It was pretty interesting but she found her motivation decreasing since her armour dolls were better in most ways. She was sticking around since there was too much value in getting her hands on this knowledge. Now that she saw these ¡®Homunculi¡¯ she wasn¡¯t planning on leaving any time soon. These things were complex, her instinct told her she needed to get her hands on them and dissect them.
Kong Jing continued keeping a close watch for her little Xin, extremely worried for her. She also feels sad that anything against her little Xin would not come out in one piece.
She got irritated by her new student constantly tugging her mantle.
¡°What?¡± Annoyed that she had to pull her eye away. Her senses were watching both battles so she didn¡¯t really need to put her sight on them. Then again, she wasn¡¯t focusing on his battle.
¡°I just wanted to ask if you have seen him smile before.¡±
¡°Nope. Little Xin insists that he smiles but I can¡¯t take her seriously when that rascal has dead facial muscles.¡±
¡°Then you might want to take a look. Or not¡¡±
She was already looking.
That deadpan rascal was actually smiling, just a little but it was clear enough for her to consider as a smile.
She didn¡¯t really care that he was mounting the Homunculi onto the floor and just smashing his fist left and right. Any magic it tried to cast onto that little rascal was either blocked with a scale of incredibly hard ice, dodged just by shifting his head slightly or just ignored as they landed on him.
The sound magic he used was getting very useful when breaking physical defence.
¡°How did he fight before he got to this¡punch down?¡±
¡°He forced the Homunculi into close combat which it actually preferred but it realised its magic wasn¡¯t eating Ebony up and wanted to create distance. Well, creating distance with him is quite hard. It feels like the Homunculi¡¯s face or head thing is moving towards Ebony¡¯s fists instead of the other way around. His grasp over gravity I assume, is getting better.¡±
Kong Jing herself noticed the close combat method of the Homunculi that fought her little Xin using its bare hands and feet like a martial artist. It was an effective way of ramming their topaz into their foes.
¡°No punch, kick, elbow, knee or headbutts worked on him. I mean, he seems to be mocking the Homunculi by meeting punch with punch, kick with kick and headbutt with headbutt. Only the Homunculi seem to be getting injured though.¡± Mark frowned.
Mark was older than her but still considered a young man so she told him not to frown that much before but habits weren¡¯t so easily broken.
¡®That mana reflection huh, what a barbaric method¡¡¯ Kong Jing didn¡¯t know much about Ebony''s domain spell but she knew he wasn¡¯t even using that at the moment.
¡°Still, why was he smiling? Looks creepy on him.¡± She was harsh with her words and she hoped Ebony hadn¡¯t heard her. He was surprisingly fragile at heart.
¡°I don¡¯t know? Maybe he actually likes beating things up. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised. Well, he¡¯s not smiling anymore. I think he got bored that Homunculi wasn¡¯t as good of a fighter as he assumed.¡±
Kong Jing forgot that like her little Xin, Ebony was one who loved battle. She could never understand the love for violence the way they do.
The fact that she loved hitting people did not register in her mind.
Chapter 161: Democlus
¡®That was oddly refreshing, at the start.¡¯ Ebony woke up when he got the notification.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Untarnished Topaz Homunculi Lvl 300], enemy 80 levels or more above your own. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Serene Blade of Blistering Frost level up 212 - 213, 15 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Weighted Will level up 212 - 213, 10 stat points gained.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Runic Mana Maven level up 212 - 213, 3 Wisdom stat gained.¡¯
A bunch of his skills gained a level or two.
For now, he allocated the 25 stat points to Intelligence.
He got slapped on the head by a familiar space-crossing hand.
¡°What made you think it was a good idea to punch that thing that you shouldn¡¯t touch?¡±
¡°Wasn¡¯t thinking. My body probably knew that their magic would have a hard time damaging me after noting the effects it has on the buildings here. If my mana can protect Icicle, it can protect my body.¡±
¡°To sum up, instinct?¡± Mark also moved to him.
Golems didn¡¯t go near the Homunculi either, that meant that they didn¡¯t have to worry about getting ganged up.
¡°Surely this doesn¡¯t require Democlus help. If the water and earth mages work together they should be able to take one down with relative ease as long as they stay clear from the domain and then just wear it down.¡± Ebony also thought that a significantly charged arrow should be able to land on the Homunculi before it breaks apart.
¡°That domain is the problem, we got the tower to thank for.¡±
¡°No, from what I sensed the domain isn¡¯t as strong as it looks. The archers who preferred to stay at the back just didn¡¯t protect themselves with mana; they should have been able to survive and create distance within that time. Or even use that potion that Democlus gave out. No matter what, this Homunculi hasn¡¯t even evolved like the True Topaz ones. Something else should be coming, watch out.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think too highly of the Homunculi.
Surely, they were a tinge bit stronger than the True Topaz Golems and a lot harder to approach but not impossible for a couple of these people to take down if they were careful and worked together to wear down the Homunculi¡¯s reserves.
Mark had no verbal complaint as to be more careful and alert but Ebony could tell that he wanted to say something.
¡°There are stronger ones. But they aren¡¯t leaving that gravestone.¡± Kong Jing patted his shoulder.
¡°...Democlus is pretty nice.¡± At least, the man appeared to care about this randomly put-together expedition party. Not. The north group had the highest average level and their group was the weakest, yet he wanted to come here last.
¡®Then again¡he might have done so because he seemed to recognise sister Jing. And he knew we were part of this group. How did he even gather so many people but still keep it somewhat secret from the public?¡¯ Ebony also wondered what the man¡¯s purpose was.
Ebony had gotten confident enough to know that they were considered strong by most standards.
He still couldn¡¯t believe that Democlus was referring to these as the ¡®green one¡¯, he stayed alert for an evolved version but it never came until Democlus himself arrived. The man apologized for being late before showing his respects to Kong Jing with a tet. It was nice to see the King ranked treat her with such respect.
¡°I didn¡¯t do anything.¡± Kong Jing brushed him off with the truth.
Democlus excused himself and helped the group¡¯s leader by shutting the tower down faster.
¡°With that, your job is done. Inform me if you¡¯re leaving, our contract states that at least 600 of you should be around at any one time. Feel free to return after you leave but do it quietly.¡± Democlus told their group. He may or may not have helped with shutting the other towers down before making his way here.
¡®So pointless. He can single-handedly do all of this, no reason to spend enough to hire so many people.¡¯ Ebony was sure that the man who shut down the central tower all by himself could just take his time and do the same for the other towers. His act of bringing so many people down for this operation was so pointless and a waste of money no matter how Ebony thought about it.
The weirdest point that could be a clue was that the man wanted 600 people to be present for half a year. Although this group had quite some deaths, the total count should still exceed 600. That was to say, Democlus was allowing people to start taking anything they wanted in this tomb city at their own risk.
Ning Xin came over, her new mantle was green but she seemed spotless otherwise. The veiny green also dissipated quickly. Ebony was too far earlier and didn¡¯t see or sense how she got hit. He was curious but he didn¡¯t get the chance to ask her for the moment.
Democlus faced Kong Jing once again.
???
¡°Thank you for the assistance. I mean no disrespect but, I hope that you and your party will leave within half a year.¡± Democlus was polite but Ning Xin could not sense any politeness in his voice.
¡°We¡¯re not planning to stay for long. You¡¯re not inhibiting us from doing anything?¡± Her sister would definitely leave the moment she no longer saw value in this place.
¡°No. Do as you see fit. Go wherever you want. I didn¡¯t hire any of you. As long as you¡¯re not here for more than half a year.¡± Democlus¡¯s words were what she wanted to hear but even she knew that the situation felt¡off.
Half a year was something he mentioned more than once already. In any case, she was not interested in staying for so long. She had even less interest in what was going to happen or what Democlus wanted.
¡°Even if we go to that gravestone? Even if we for whatever reason want to destroy it?¡± Her sister seemed to be having fun with these questions of hers. She must be curious about what this Shield King want as well.
¡°Be my guest. Though, I will be very impressed should you be able to even leave a scratch on that gravestone. I myself wouldn''t even be able to get close with all those Homunculi there. A ranged attack would be devoured almost instantly too. Perhaps Xengs like you ladies would be able to show me the greatest feat that I would witness in my lifetime.¡±
She could sense that Democlus honestly didn¡¯t care for whatever they do or take from this tomb city. The rest of his sentence was filled with derision and pride.
His nice words aside, her Heightened Instincts could tell that he was proud of himself and that if he was unable to do it there was no way that they could do it either.
It irked her so very much.
Incensed Meditation hasn¡¯t died down even though she was telling herself the fight was over. She didn¡¯t want to stop it as practice and also that they were still within the city so having its effects working for as long as possible was for the best.
¡®Urgh! Why am I feeling so irritated and hot all over?¡¯
It was mostly her Blood Boil that was causing her body to feel so uncomfortable. She staved off her hunger before the fight with Ebony¡¯s blood but the Homunculi caused her to be extra careful when protecting her companions by her side. It took up a lot of her mana.
Then a couple of dumbasses had to interrupt her fight when they couldn¡¯t keep up with her speed. She had to spend more stamina to protect them and even got a cheap shot in from the Homunculi.
A mantle was fundamentally a wrong choice of equipment for a swordsman that moved her arms so much. Simply put, it got in the way and is easy to get tugged on. A city environment wasn¡¯t that bad as compared to moving about in a forest but it still wasn¡¯t a smart choice in her opinion. This mantle was more of a robe mantle since it had arm sleeves but the new one she got from sister Jing was heavier and was harder to move along with wind magic than her usual one, eating into her energy reserves a little more.
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Now she was starving again, she could feel that her stomach was going to growl uncontrollably soon.
¡°I¡¯ll whip up a meal.¡± She told Ebony so that he could protect her but the expedition party all had good ears and cheered.
If there was anything she learnt it was that cooking for hundreds of people was not easy. She had fun, that was for sure and her cooking skill was put to the test but it would take too much time!
She wanted to whip something quick and easy so that she could scarf it down and appease her belly.
She was lucky they didn¡¯t have much fresh ingredients left after the previous meal and they weren¡¯t really hungry so their plan to have her cook for them went down the sewers. Many of them spent some time grieving for their fallen members.
Too many died in her opinion.
She overheard Democlus talking to this group¡¯s leader and their group had the highest casualty rate. The other two barely had a hundred deaths added together.
This group had the lowest average level and most people knew each other. They weren¡¯t grouped up by Democlus.
Ning Xin knew why too, it was too obvious that Democlus simply doesn¡¯t care about the deaths. Even if everyone in this group was wiped out he could easily shut this tower down and still have enough people for his quota. Since he wanted 600 people to go around the city to reduce monster population, he really only needed the stronger ones.
Shield King he may be, but she can guess that the Dwarf cannot go around the entire city all day long to reduce population. The city was massive.
There were too many golems that just couldn¡¯t reach the towers before they deactivated them.
As for the Homunculi, she didn¡¯t see many in the area. Even if she flew into the air she might not spot any in the vicinity which was also a little weird. Were they more important structures?
Once again, she didn¡¯t care.
Stir fry, it was quick and she knew of many simple recipes that didn¡¯t take too much effort.
???
Mark sat on the roof of the tallest building besides the magic ball of doom.
He gave his spear a wipe down.
It didn¡¯t make sense. Democlus didn¡¯t make sense.
He wanted the other three¡¯s ¡®no shit given¡¯ attitude but that just wasn¡¯t him.
There was so much to study here. Half a year? He could study everything from the buildings to the golems for more than half a decade!
He knew that Master Jing comprehended things differently. Her mind was fundamentally different from his and many others. He saw her working, it was not something he could comprehend. She was a genius in a completely different sense of the word. One that he was not jealous of. With but a glance, she went to create a piece of defensive equipment that countered topaz magic. The Korun language she let him read up on completely threw out everything that he had learnt by himself. He devoured the knowledge she let him in on. Unlike Ebony, the only thing he was allowed to read was runes and potion making. He was not truly her disciple.
It was everything he could ever ask for.
Even though he also worked on his equipment he knew he would never be a blacksmith or craftsman. He was already spreading himself thinner than his minuscule talents can reach. Hence, unlike the other three who clearly don¡¯t see that much value here he wanted to stay. More than just short term.
The problem was the extremely suspicious ongoings here.
His adventurer sense was telling him to listen to Democlus, just leave before half a year passed. His scholar sense was telling him that even if Master Jing shared everything that she had gotten here, he would never think and utilise that knowledge the way she could.
With her spatial sense and unique genius, she had already learned everything she wanted from these buildings inside out. He hadn¡¯t even had time to study or look at the runes properly.
No amount of Intelligence stat can cover the gap of the fundamental difference between his mind and the mind of a genius.
If Master Jing leaves, he had no doubt Ebony and Ning Xin would leave without hesitation.
Ebony didn¡¯t have the passion for academic studies, not in the way he did. Ebony would probably be satisfied as long as he could borrow Master Jing¡¯s findings to further strengthen himself.
Not Mark.
As for his obligations to his potion company, he wasn¡¯t that worried. He signed a normal paper contract, no magic involved.
He could just say he was stuck in a dungeon or lost in the wild for a really long time. When he got the chance he could make a call and say that he was in trouble. If they couldn¡¯t find him they couldn¡¯t do much to him. With his worth, he doubted they would trouble him too much if he wanted to return at any time.
Right now, he could afford to lose the funding and research materials they could give him.
He started to calculate the risk and reward but even after a delicious scent wafted into his nose, he couldn¡¯t make a decision.
¡®It¡¯s okay, I have till they want to leave to decide if I¡¯m staying.¡¯
¡°Can I have some?¡± Mark leapt down and asked the chef. He consumed quite a bit of stamina for the fight and all that pondering made him hungry.
He got a death stare in return.
???
¡°There¡¯s nothing left.¡±
¡°Mmm. I couldn¡¯t freeze it, it just destroyed all the ice I used on it. It was very durable and was still struggling after I pulverised the limbs so I had no choice but to destroy the head too.¡±
Ebony knew that it defeated the purpose of him trying to keep the Homunculi in one piece since he turned it to dust with Sonic Intrusion. He had little choice, most others cannot stay near the Homunculi if it was alive. It wasn¡¯t smart enough to hold a conversation or even drop the act of attempting to kill him.
Kong Jing wasn¡¯t able to get what she wanted and left to hunt for a Homunculi herself.
Most of the remaining hired hands were taking a break, collecting the spoils laying around them. Not much was left of their dead allies, all consumed and torn apart by the Topaz Golems. All of the myriad bracelets were intact and were collected though.
¡®These are tough.¡¯ Ebony looked at his own myriad bracelet. It could withstand flames both hot and cold and didn¡¯t appear to be damaged or worn out in any way.
He heard quite a few people talking about a festival that was supposedly happening soon.
Despite being here for years, he only saw a festival take place once or twice when he stayed with Kong Jing. The only one he really ¡®celebrated¡¯ was eating a special meal at the end of winter that Ning Xin made. Basically the winter solstice.
¡®Hmm. It¡¯ll still be a while before the rescue force goes to Tova. Should we go? Hector¡should be fine but I guess I¡¯m worried.¡¯
Ebony was still hung up on the 1 to 2 year travel time but that was considering the sea¡¯s weather conditions and how the ships seemed to be wind propelled. Sea monster attacks had to be accounted for too. They must have engines right? With how advanced Tidal was and how Navin planned for a rescue force, he should have prepared a faster mode of travel. Ebony was pretty sure that it was not necessary to spend a year or more on travelling.
He asked Mark but the distance between the two continents was not common knowledge. If it wasn¡¯t that far in terms of the distance he could run over the surface for a week or two with no real issue. He was absolutely certain his feet were dozens or hundreds of times faster than a colossal ship or even a speedboat if they had something similar.
¡°You¡¯re not playing any music? I thought you didn¡¯t play it in the tunnels to stay silent.¡± Mark asked as he poked at the small dish of stir fry he obtained.
¡°Apparently, I don¡¯t understand music.¡±
He didn¡¯t need the buff so far so it wasn¡¯t a big issue.
¡°I guess, I never understood music either. I think there¡¯s a bard or two in this expedition, none in this group though.¡±
Ebony was hoping to bump into them perhaps, they could teach him a thing or two.
With just the three of them, they followed Mark¡¯s itinerary.
There was no point in going to the unpopulated farms. The factories were a high-value target but it would be better if they had a space mage with them for that. They would need to look around to see if there were more important facilities and the buildings weren¡¯t exactly running away so Mark was in no rush to do a detailed study on them.
As for the tower itself, it appeared to be a simple concrete cylinder with a giant orb. Shutting it down completely deactivated it and nothing could be visibly seen so Mark couldn¡¯t get much from it.
It was quite creepy, most buildings were empty. They were essentially giant boxes of squares and rectangular shapes. They stopped opening up doors and checking buildings after a couple of dozen tries. The buildings that weren¡¯t empty had a golem or two ambushing them.
He jumped, not worried about any laser beams coming his way. The only real special building he saw was one of those large factories a couple dozen kilometres away. If there was something odd that he would comment on it was that another factory was not too far away from each other.
He landed and made a higher jump. ¡®The factories are close together. Are they circling something? Maybe the underground mine deeper below us.¡¯
¡°Right. I don¡¯t think they care much about these defence towers. The factories are loaded, flooding with stationary golems and probably homunculi.¡± He told the others to go right.
¡°You do know that they are not people with communication skills? The only ones that came to reinforce the defence of the towers were those close enough to sense the commotion.¡± Mark responded.
¡°Oh, no artificial intelligence or centralised information built in them.¡± Ebony overestimated them, he might have assumed they could call for help as the autonomous defence system made him think the golems were like robots that can share information with each other.
¡°What?¡±
Ebony took the time to summarise what he was trying to say. They took a break when they heard a stomach growl behind them.
Chapter 162: Top-up
It was hard to tell the time underground hence, they didn¡¯t stop trespassing into houses until midnight. Ebony was pretty sure it was midnight. Ning Xin¡¯s stomach agreed. Since none of them got tired easily, more time must have passed than they thought.
¡°Want some of my blood?¡±
¡°Yes please¡¡±
She probably ran out of his blood. He had some trouble making himself bleed so he got her help. Her twin sword was thirsty and got some too, they must have recognised him at some point as they didn¡¯t drain him as fast as they could when they were drunk from monsters.
¡°Hey! No more for you!¡± She scolded Scorchie, it was the name she gave one of them. According to her, Scorchie and Scorchy were both girls.
Ebony was very curious how Na, a dungeon self identified himself as a male while her twin sword had female spirits. Is gender something spirits just declare themselves or was Ning Xin the one that decided it?
Also, how was she communicating with them?
¡°What do you think Icicle?¡± He gave Icicle¡¯s grip a rub.
He wondered if its body getting slightly cooler was a response or just it consuming the storage of ice mana in it. It fed itself whenever it wanted, so he would find the storage of ice mana decreased. At least, Icicle doesn¡¯t consistently eat anymore and stops for most of the day. As if it was copying meal times.
Kong Jing smelled food and returned.
She told them about how the factories are so close to each other. If they really wanted to get anything from it and attack one of them, they would just gain attention from the other factories and their patrols.
¡°Most of them just stand still all the time instead of patrolling. I mean, the ones in the buildings were just staying in there like statues.¡± Mark commented. It didn¡¯t really mean much unless they could destroy them quickly and quietly.
Even by herself, the space mage was having difficulty moving around so having her teleport them was out of the question and she hadn''t figured out what was affecting her space magic. She was also completely unable to teleport into the factories or get anywhere close to the gravestone. At least, that''s what she told them.
She was sidelined to join them in their efforts instead of moving by herself.
¡°Found any important structures?¡± Mark asked
¡°The buildings within the circle of factories looked different but I got attacked even when I¡¯m in the air when I got near. That Dwarf must have run past the factories to get to the tower in the centre. Had to make my way around but the Gravestone was more heavily protected. Almost died, they might be grade 6 or something.¡± She casually reported.
¡°The building here feels like a box for the golems rather than houses.¡± He commented. No one asked about what she meant by grades because Kong Jing graded things oddly.
¡°Coffins.¡± Their chef was satisfied with dinner.
All of them disagreed because of the doors and layout. A coffin didn¡¯t need a door or windows right?
She was not happy about getting shot down three times.
¡°Are we going to sleep in one of these¡coffins?¡± Mark was getting tired. They hadn¡¯t exactly slept well when they were making their way down.
¡°The others are making camp near the tower.¡± He was able to see people making their way there.
The tomb city wasn¡¯t dark but it wasn¡¯t all that bright with the towers shut down, the runic buildings had a constant glow on their walls.
After the idea that the houses might be coffins no matter how unlikely, they didn¡¯t want to sleep inside anymore. It would be hard for them to spot any monster attacks. Democlus informed them that shutting the towers down meant that other underground monsters might show up anywhere and it wasn¡¯t just golems or homunculus any more. They haven¡¯t spotted any so far but it was a possibility that they would climb up from below or drop from the ceiling.
They set up their tent together with the others near the tower.
Ebony kept watch for them from a rooftop, he was going to meditate for rest tonight. He doesn¡¯t get sleepy so often and was a bit bothered about this place.
A city deep underground was something he could expect and accept from a magical world. It being devoid of living people was odd at best but he believed it was not as odd as the fact that Kong Jing didn¡¯t recognise the runes here.
Democlus didn¡¯t stay with this group so that was another thing to look out for. He was the most dangerous man present after all.
When Mark woke up to take over him, he decided to do some investigation of his own. The main reason was actually to train Waning Presence.
Mages with good mana sense could spot him even if he stood still and out of their sight. There weren¡¯t many of these mages but it was his flaw. Rogues tend to have good perception and archers have amazing sight most of the time.
He wanted to go to the other towers and check out what the other 2 groups were doing. As long as he stayed hidden from the high level Grandmasters, his skill level should increase quickly. He was probably going to try going to the factories without getting spotted too. It would be like hide and seek that he never got invited to play.
Waning Presence was a mix of hiding from mana sense and physical camouflage. Like Hector¡¯s bodyguard, Welser wasn¡¯t able to hide his gravitational waves Ebony couldn¡¯t either. He wasn¡¯t invisible in any sense, just harder to perceive.
How could he make himself physically harder to spot? He wasn¡¯t sure how to use cool temperatures to distort light and that wasn¡¯t a good idea here since many underground creatures are sensitive to temperature. Heat might be better than chill in that aspect but he wouldn¡¯t know without experimentation.
He can move silently with Mana Vibrations. His weight was barely a problem with gravity manipulation and even flight. Preservation Bubble made it harder to blend in since the density of mana around him changes but that only worked Waning Presence harder so it wasn¡¯t that bad.
His 2 fresh Glacial Models followed him as he manually tried to make them stealthier as well. It wasn¡¯t hard to hide from a couple of True Topaz Golems and he found the north tower with ease.
¡®They are all resting near the tower too¡¡¯ Ebony tried to shift around their watch guards. He was not spotted by all of them but he knew some were aware of his presence. He nodded to those who found him, looking around to see that the buildings here were a little different indeed.
He left for the last tower furthest from the original one he was at but it was the same situation. Just fewer people who noticed him. The shadow or darkness lady was here too, it was nice to see her still alive even though he didn''t know her well. Once again, he was spotted by her but she got so wary of him this time. He nodded to her and left.
By the time he returned, most people were awake and preparing for the day¡¯s activity.
¡°Where did you go all morning?¡± Their chef served him breakfast, she didn¡¯t seem so happy.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Ebony was pretty sure he understood her emotions better than others. She was quite easy to read even for him.
¡°I went to look at the other towers. The situation is about the same there, at a certain point the building¡¯s runes change a bit but I have no idea what functional difference they have.¡±
¡°So you didn¡¯t sleep at all?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll sleep tonight.¡±
He got 2 levels in Waning Presence already, he wasn¡¯t going to stop soon but he could make time for some rest.
Over the next 3 days, practically all of the streets and buildings were emptied out of their residents.
That was when there was movement from the factories. Large-scale movement.
Tens of thousands of them marched onto the streets, leaving their factories. The individual scouts reported it to their individual parties and each had the same plan. Hide.
Thanks to Kong Jing, their fiery party member didn¡¯t lash out to start a massacre. They kept low on the rooftops, for magical moving humanoids Ebony assumed they had good mana sense but apparently not.
They watched as the army marched on slowly. It took hours before the march ended.
The houses were filled up and the streets regained their general population density. Those parties that hid inside houses had to fight their way out but overall, everyone was familiar with fighting these creatures already so there were no casualties.
That was it.
It wasn¡¯t a movement sent out to destroy them, they were just refilling the houses and streets. The only problem for them was that it was impossible to move back to the tower without getting spotted and these Golems always attacked on sight.
Not to mention, the surroundings of the tower were refilled as well and they would have to redo the operation should they desire a relatively safe camping spot. After the initial operation, it was clear to see that not everyone knew each other and they mostly worked and moved in smaller parties.
It was questionable whether they could work together again.
The good thing was that there was no Homunculi.
They didn¡¯t see it happen but quite a few people died that night and they gathered again to wipe out the area around the tower. Once again, Ebony¡¯s party cooperated with the majority.
There were no deaths during the operation despite being outnumbered. Camp was established again but he could sense the tension amongst the others. He heard their whispers.
Many of them ran out of the potion that protected their weapons and allowed them to attack the golems without their weapons breaking.
Obviously, no one was willing to share unless it was within their own party. Even then, there were quarrels.
¡°It¡¯s a good opportunity, let¡¯s get past the factories tonight.¡± Kong Jing was practical and they all agreed on the plan.
It was already dinner time by the time the operation to clear the surroundings was complete. They didn¡¯t know how fast the production rate of the factories were or if they were even producing anything currently but the earlier they went the better.
No one else was interested but they didn¡¯t openly invite them either. It was just that quite a few people talked to them or thanked them for helping since it was clear to all that they played a massive role.
Ebony informed them about the less densely populated areas like the outer region farms but they had to go past a long stretch of heavily populated streets to get there. It was just in case they needed a different safe spot. They were oddly insistent on staying near the tower hence the combined effort to make it safe again.
Mark meditated to recover his mana and stamina, they needed to be at their peak for tonight¡¯s movement.
The three of them got 2 or 3 levels over the past few days. Mark had been lower level than two of them but he killed far less as well.
Ebony¡¯s daily focus on Waning Presence pushed it to level 100 already. He used Sonic Intrusion and Guided Path every second of any battle and they gained a fair push to their levels too. The low level Stalwart Endowment was skyrocketing through the levels too. Preservation Bubble as a Generic Skill wasn¡¯t so lucky but it got its fair share of training whenever he rested. He wasn¡¯t proficient with Vitality or life force yet and found it impossible to train as he fought.
He didn¡¯t get Topaz Resistance sadly. He was never hurt by it and his body didn¡¯t need to do any healing from it.
Mark got the tier one resistance for it, he was lucky he was only grazed by it but he didn¡¯t say how he got rid of the topaz mana. Ebony thought that he probably just flooded the topaz mana with his own mana.
Not once during his nightly scouting did he see Democlus. As if the man left the city.
Chances were, he was in the centre of the city. They had to get past the heavily fortified circle of factories to check if that was true. So far, he didn¡¯t see anyone trying to leave but he assumed some of them had Democlus¡¯s callstone link. The only other method was to scream as loud as Democlus could so that the whole city could hear them but he wondered if anyone dared to do that other than the Shield King himself.
Rested, recovered and filled up with delicious food they cleared themselves a path.
He got them to wait at a rooftop the closest they could get without getting attention. Just to test if he could get in without being found now that the numbers thinned out so much.
What he found was that it was impossible since he wasn¡¯t invisible and there was no cover for him to hide behind. What became possible was for them to run or fly past the factories without getting overwhelmed by firepower.
He had 8 Glacial Models in good condition now, they don¡¯t get destroyed as often and he was able to amass them. He would have more if it wasn¡¯t for the second tower-clearing operation. He could perfectly control up to 5 so it was nice that he didn¡¯t need to manually control them.
They could recognise friends from foes so he was not too worried that they would attack other people when they were out of his range. They also had his passiveness and so far, only attacked after being attacked unless he controlled them to do something else.
Using 8 Glacial Models worth of Imperishable Frost Scales, they easily withstood all the spells shot at them while they flew past the circle of factories. It took a little more than 4 Models worth of ice so he still had 3 complete and one less compressed one after they got past but it seemed like all of the Golems who shot at them were going after them.
Mark took root in an alleyway, he set up his domain for the first time in a long while. It was the second time Ebony had seen it but it was very different. Mark simply tapped the ground with the butt of his spear and the entire runic circle was placed.
They were coming from a wide cone but generally only one direction, the three of them covered as much ground as possible. Flying might not have been the best idea since the left and right closest factory¡¯s guards also spotted them.
¡°How do you feel about the training here?¡± He asked. Although he was actually only asking Ning Xin and he also wasn¡¯t referring to this city but just the underground in general.
¡°...Boring. The golems are all single-toned with their fighting ability, they are only good for levels but not improve our fundamental skill.¡±
Both the runic yellow and blue golems were stronger in terms of stats compared to many dungeon monsters they have encountered but the two of them were not really on the losing end with the enhancements. As for their technique, it was fresh the first time they fought them but the golems only had a few variations in terms of their patterns and they never stray from the built in techniques making them extremely predictable.
The only strong point they had was their topaz which was effective against most people. The fiery swordswoman purposely took a hit as well but it seems like the topaz mana melts away before it can damage her, even the True Topaz only resists about 3 times as well to heat. So she didn¡¯t exactly need her new robe mantle. She could get overloaded with their magic but she doesn¡¯t even get hit unless she purposely stood still. True Topaz Golems could overwhelm her with numbers because she couldn¡¯t kill them in one or two hits but the yellow ones were just experience points.
Ebony was in a similar position where he could cut the yellow ones in half with a single strike and the blue ones don¡¯t really trouble him much either.
He had the same assessment, so far, this place was only good for experience. With how many there are, there was no difference from a dungeon¡¯s spawning ability.
¡°Oh, there¡¯s a difference.¡±
¡°Hmm?¡±
¡°No storms, no kicking us out.¡±
That seemed to cheer her right up as they increased their efforts.
Mark was too busy trying to keep himself alive to care about the two¡¯s glee. He clearly didn¡¯t share their difficulties of being kicked out of dungeons.
Although Mark was given the robe mantle because the swordswoman didn¡¯t like or need it as much, he looked as if he was on the verge of death when they took care of all their pursuers and went to help him. He was just exhausted and the mantle looked like it took many hits but he was relatively unharmed.
¡°Your domain is pretty limited.¡± Ebony was referring to how Mark¡¯s domain was completely reliant on the power source that was in his spear. He managed to get a better look so he was aware that Mark had more than 1 type of domain that he could set up. Each for different effects but he wasn¡¯t sure since Mark rarely used it. The man couldn¡¯t even conjure fire mana so he couldn¡¯t charge his spears by himself. Only letting the runes he created do the work.
Mark kept panting as he rested against the closest wall, gesturing a middle finger to him.
It was not new to Ebony that the middle finger was another common similarity between cultures but it was the first time it was used on him.
Chapter 163: Factory
¡°Mr bodyguard, help us keep watch. But if you dare peek¡well, do that when I¡¯m not around.¡± Kong Jing pat Ebony''s shoulder.
¡°Sister!¡± Ning Xin protested.
Ebony was hired to protect one of the houses which had been designated as a room to take a bath. With the doors and windows closed, these runic buildings didn''t let his mana pass nor was he able to sense the gravitational or vibrational waves from within.
¡°Mmm.¡± He replied before Kong Jing closed the door and shut down her little sister¡¯s yells.
The walls were soundproof so he didn¡¯t hear anything either. They took so long that he thought they fainted inside.
¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± He stated rather than urged.
¡°Where to?¡±
Ebony relaxed at the scent of plums.
¡°Raid the factory.¡±
The two ladies did not look impressed. He at least hoped to get Ning Xin excited to get things moving along but it didn¡¯t appear that way to him.
¡°We just washed up and that¡¯s all you¡¯re thinking of doing?¡± Ebony was surprised that the craftswoman even cared about that, she was never a woman that cared so much for her cleanliness.
¡°...Mmm. I''ll empty one or two of them, you can check it out once I¡¯m done.¡± He nodded.
¡°Fine, leave things intact this time. So no vibration damage, no freeze breaking anything but the golems. Oh and leave Icicle with me.¡± The space mage demanded.
¡°Interesting¡okay, I won¡¯t use sound magic and only use ice as enhancement and defence. Stay alert Mark.¡± He didn¡¯t notice that Ning Xin acted confused for a moment.
¡°You don¡¯t have to tell me that.¡± Mark had started on copying down runes from the buildings since he had the time. Well, with Kong Jing present he wasn¡¯t too worried that they would get ambushed.
¡°Sorry Icicle, these hardy guys have put quite a few chips on you. You¡¯ll have to sit this one out without Sonic Intrusion protecting you.¡±
¡®Oh, its glow dimmed. Is it a coincidence?¡¯
His greatsword''s base material was that of wood and it was inevitable that it was worn down by his brutish hackings of these hard earth and gem-like monsters. The only amazing thing was that after so long, he was finally able to tell that Icicle was consuming ice mana and getting heavier, tougher and colder. It was taking up the properties of his mana which was great.
He gave Icicle time to recover from its damage and passed it to its mother and creator.
¡®Hmm¡ how should I go about this? Whatever, I should stop thinking so much.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t remain and turned back to the factory that sent most of the defending golems after them.
It seemed like the moment the numbers outside the factory were emptied out, there would be more sent out to replace the numbers. It was very interesting to find out that he could walk up closer to them before they noticed him compared to his allies. He got his scale armour cast and walked in, perhaps thinking that walking would catch less attention.
¡®Alright, let¡¯s try something new. I don¡¯t think it¡¯ll work well but I¡¯ve been getting better and gravity manipulation.¡¯
Gravity here was about as strong as Ordina¡¯s, some of the gravity mana around him were separated from their natural flow. It was near impossible to stop the movement of gravity mana but he could easily redirect or control the direction of their movement. He made a tiny whirlpool above him that continued to drag more of the gravitational wave into it. He had to overtake their movement and speed them up so that his Intelligence would come into effect.
He got it as compressed as he could as the pull which generated a breeze was now a violent suction that caused his scaled robes to flutter.
¡®Hmm¡weak in relative terms.¡¯ Other than dust and debris, it wasn¡¯t exactly sucking up anything else. The manufactured monsters here were too strong for his non-skill spell and the buildings weren¡¯t normal.
He dodged dozens of swings and projectiles and controlled the whirlpool onto one of them. They could resist the suction to each other pretty easily and even when it enveloped one of them, the only thing that changed was that it affected their movements slightly. A lot less effective than Guided Path or magnifying gravity on them. Attaching it to their arm causes their body movements to shift towards that arm a little.
Ebony started to have a little fun by generating a couple of these and attaching them everywhere. It wasn¡¯t destroying anything and he hasn¡¯t even entered the factory. When his control over one of them slipped, the rapid expansion of the compression actually went out with a loud bang. The floor had a tiny dent as if a sledgehammer landed on concrete.
¡®Interesting, I compressed it too much and the instant release forced them to burst out together with whatever air and debris it sucked up before they could rejoin the planet¡¯s pull.¡¯
It was usually when he had the seventh whirlpool that they started to just slip and even the sixth was unstable. It was another good source of training and he liked the exploding effect too so he just let them slip. He tried to strengthen the loosening or expansion process but he was just interrupting it. He was better at compression than the other way around. Letting it go naturally seemed to have a greater effect so he stopped interrupting it.
His ability to crush the Golems to powder is gone without Sonic Intrusion so he focussed on utilising Ceaseless Onslaught with his body alone, Guided Path and Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. He wasn¡¯t banned from Sonic Intrusion against the golems and just the facilities but he thought it was a good chance to play with gravity more.
Only embers of his flame from Augmentation latches on, he needed to be careful with Frostblaze Cladding in case it froze stuff that he didn¡¯t want to freeze.
There were only a dozen of them outside but he took about half an hour to break their ¡®cores¡¯.
The wide metal doors could probably allow two planes to fly in and out at the same time. It was shut tight. He didn¡¯t see any windows or any other openings.
Ebony walked up and knocked like any normal person. ¡°Anyone home?¡±
The metal doors creaked and the narrow gap widened slowly.
¡®It actually opened. It pays to be polite.¡¯
He was then bathed in a gentle blast of green light.
¡°I take it that I¡¯m not welcomed?¡± Ebony put more mana into Frostblaze Augmentation while also leaving the path where Stalwart Endowment lies alone. Since he didn¡¯t feel any difference using flames or normal ice mana to power Stalwart Endowment he just conjured normal ice for it.
He estimated that only about 10 to 15% of the green light that was topaz mana reached his body. The rest simply couldn¡¯t pass through Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. He could visibly see the green glow wafting away from touching the scales on his robe.
All in all, Homunculi''s domain didn¡¯t work that well on him. He was about to test what would happen if he cast his own but he would damage the interiors if he did that so he held back.
Stolen novel; please report.
¡®I need to keep this one intact.¡¯
Now that he thought of it, he should have captured one or two of the other versions in an orb. Well, there were so many of those he could do that later.
Perhaps whoever was behind the doors was still unaware of his presence because no attack came. The doors were really adding to the suspense by opening so slowly.
When the gap was wide enough, he didn¡¯t see any Homunculi past the doors.
It just appeared like the whole interior was constantly bathed in this green light.
Ebony stepped in.
The interior wasn¡¯t filled with contraptions of any sort. There were just rows and rows of tables.
¡®Strings or wires? Earthen puppets?¡¯ Ebony looked upon the rows of puppets that had their limbs connected to the walls by silver wires. A small number of them were handling yellow gem fragments while the others were carving dirt into limbs and torsos.
The green glow washed over him and remained for a couple of seconds before shutting down. There was nothing waiting to ambush him. Just a bunch of incomplete golem parts and the ¡®workers¡¯ crafting them. The puppets didn¡¯t seem to notice him.
He froze the door to the ground just in case and linked himself with a Model that stood outside with gravity, he could pull himself out faster should he wish to do so. It wouldn¡¯t really make a big difference but it didn¡¯t hurt to take more precautions.
He walked towards the puppets first since the tables were mostly empty or had a couple of golem limbs that had their carvings done. The puppets didn¡¯t react to him even when he reached their side. He even poked them but there was no reaction. This was great, he could observe the entire process like this.
Ebony continued to explore.
Instead of working on a specific part each, all the puppets seemed to be making an entire frame by themselves. Only those that worked on the topaz mana ores didn¡¯t touch the special earthen body. Deeper into the factory was a separate room, some sort of contraption that was dishing out golem parts. The parts are transferred by conveyor belt to the puppets.
Ebony didn¡¯t understand how but the topaz mana ores were simply ores, not cores. None of the puppets seemed to be completing a core either. These puppets looked quite different from those that were carving and assembling the body. They had a large amount of mana in them and were directly stuck to a raised platform on the ground. They stood in small circles with a slightly smaller puppet in the centre that was not moving.
He assumed that the smaller puppet was waiting for the surrounding puppets to finish their work on the topaz mana ores before passing it the material that it needs to work on.
The factory was pretty large and he was taking his time observing so he reached the centre of the open warehouse-like building in about ten minutes. It was free from clutter or tables for golem parts. There were two metal wires thicker than his waist that dangled from the ceiling and all the way down. Without the tables blocking his sight, the large dark hole could be seen. He was alerted when the green light washed over him from over his head again.
¡®A periodical wash with topaz mana? It¡¯s a little weaker than the Homunculi¡¯s domain.¡¯ Ebony waited for a minute before the green light was turned off again.
Even with the glow of light, he wasn¡¯t able to see the depth of the massive hole. One issue was that it was bone dry of mana inside the hole and even the interior of the factory had practically no ambient mana. It might be topaz mana wash that ¡®eats up¡¯ all the foreign objects or harmful substances. That might be the reason for the lack of defensive measures. Of course, it might be due to every golem being destroyed prior to his entry.
He opted not to jump in. There was no need to confirm at the moment but looking at the buckets and carts near the edge of the hole he guessed that the hole was linked to a mine and the two thick wires were a pulley system.
Since he had no idea what the puppets with the topaz mana ores were doing, he watched the carvers and the engraving process.
The green light will wash over the entire place every ten minutes for a minute. The doors had attempted to close but didn¡¯t have a strong push so his ice held.
It was more uneventful than he imagined but what he found should be worth a lot for the scholar and craftswoman.
He returned to tell them what he found and the two of them were excited.
Kong Jing had her methods and was not afraid of the green topaz as well but a mantle wouldn¡¯t keep Mark safe. Ebony cast Chaotic Repulsive Membrane on him, he wasn¡¯t able to utilise much of Mark¡¯s natural gravity mana so he just simulated the effect with surrounding gravity. It wasn¡¯t as strong so he had to rely on himself for whatever topaz mana passed through.
Ning Xin had zero interest in that and said she would empty out the surrounding factories and try to keep the facility undamaged. He wanted to join her but he needed to stay with Mark and he was interested to listen in on their thoughts.
¡°I see¡so that¡¯s how they did it.¡± Was roughly what Kong Jing was saying to herself throughout the duration she stood still.
Mark was just penning everything he saw down.
When the craftswoman started to move from the spot she took a couple of minutes to explore before she claimed to have shut down the washing of light every ten minutes. Stating that she could also shut the entire factory down.
¡°Shoo shoo. Go watch her, don¡¯t let her do anything silly like get bored and move deeper into the city where another ring of factories sits. We¡¯ll go there later.¡±
The three of them that didn¡¯t follow him in the initial scout went for a walk deeper into the city where they found another ring of factories that were further apart from each other and likely produced Homunculi instead of Golems
He could see the flashes of fire roughly 50 km away to their right.
Ebony hurried to join her, passing over two factories. ¡°Hey, you emptied out two of them without me?¡±
¡°One of them was already mostly empty since they were sent to us when we flew in.¡±
Together, they removed everything just as if they were back in the dungeons.
After half a day, he confirmed that every fifth factory was one that created True Topaz Golems. They tried very hard to leave the facilities unharmed so that it could continue ¡®spawning¡¯. They were getting good experience and levels.
It didn¡¯t even take 2 days before they were completely done. The other two were still busy studying, so they left this ring and returned to the outer city to hunt down the mass numbers that were released from the factories a couple of days back.
Hundreds of Masters and Grandmasters were working hard so the streets weren¡¯t exactly flooded with monsters to kill.
They went to less crowded spots, away from the towers and managed to find more. They found that one of the groups was no longer staying in large groups and didn¡¯t gather at the tower. It was the group that the shadow or darkness magic-wielding lady was in.
Some kind of large brownish dog called [Teratish Lvl ???] that had metallic fur could be found in the streets too but they usually run away from Ebony. He was gonna assume they didn¡¯t like his mana because he saw these dogs actively attacking others. Other than dogs, other monsters have entered the tomb city. They similarly avoided the Ebony and Ning Xin like a plague, unlike golems that simply don''t act out of their programmed hostility.
The barrier appeared to be down and the towers weren¡¯t working so it was only natural that this huge underground space was getting visitors.
Those that decided that they were a nice treat were usually very strong and may even require them to work together. Ebony usually took all the attention to him and his squad of Models while Ning Xin searched for weaknesses and they would attack it together if the target is massive. To reduce destruction, she had put a tiny ban on her fire magic but she still used it on her blood magic. It made fights slightly harder since she was relatively new to blood magic and its usage in battle.
Ebony had a habit of keeping a strong link of mana with Ning Xin, he could power her up with Battle Song and even cast Sonic Intrusion on her twinswords. If they manage to modify the runes of Stalwart Endowment such that it didn¡¯t require topaz or ice, he could cast it on her too. His supportive abilities were getting better even though he never thought of improving in this manner.
They tried not to depend on the callstone but his experiments told him that he could actually cast Battle Song through a call. Losing effectiveness with distance but it was possible as long as he supplied the additional mana. Through this method, he already tried to call Hector but he couldn¡¯t get through. Ning Xin tried as well but didn¡¯t get through either.
Apparently, the sea has many mysterious forces at work and it is hard to get a connection even if their callstone had that much range. The tiny gem in their bracelet and mask wasn¡¯t that strong.
His hunting partner was tired so they prepared to return to eat and sleep.
¡°Wait, let me catch one alive.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think he could contain a True Topaz Golem that easily so they had to hunt down the weaker one. Ning Xin opted to hunt something edible for once.
His Model surrounded the duo that he found after some time and threw themselves towards their targets. It worked and his Models hugged the golems before they smoothly melded themselves over. It wasn¡¯t enough so more and more Models threw themselves onto the duo before he got two coffins. It had been a waste of ice since they kept expending their magic to eat his ice away.
¡®It''s similar to Na¡¯s but I don¡¯t feel any difference in effect.¡¯ Ebony only knew that he didn¡¯t recognise the runic language but he assumed it would be a complete copy since Na¡¯s runic body probably came from this place.
Together, they returned with a gift for the scholar and craftswoman.
Chapter 164: Explosive
¡°Xin? What¡¯s troubling you?¡± Ebony saw their chef staring at the cow-sized dog that was in one piece, it died with a single stab through its head.
The intense look in her eyes and the tapping of her mask was pointing it out to him.
¡°My oven can¡¯t reach a temperature high enough to cook the meats that we are facing nowadays. My pots, pans and even my stove might melt before this meat gets lukewarm.¡± She probably only saw monsters as meat.
¡°That¡¯s quite a predicament.¡± He knew what not being able to cook meant to the chef.
¡°Mmm¡¡± She didn¡¯t really respond.
¡°The houses here are heat resistant, why don¡¯t you use them as a temporary oven or maybe you could smoke some meat.¡± He remembered the houses retaining their shape and integrity when she accidentally used more fire than necessary.
¡°That¡¯s a great idea! I don¡¯t think the wood I have for smoking is suitable, I didn¡¯t carry any wood of equal quality to this teratish.¡± She clapped and made a tiny hop before getting down to picking an oven.
He was dragged along to help with cleaning the interior because she called him a clean freak and trusted his obsessiveness with cleanliness. She also didn¡¯t want any smell of dirt on her food and he had to scrub every inch of the house while she prepared the food.
She decided to bake it whole since the ¡®oven¡¯ was large enough. He could hear her mumbling about hunting more down so that she could try various other cooking methods. She was certain they could finish the whole thing because it had very thick bones and skin which made it look beefier than it was.
He was just glad the Teratish¡¯s metallic fur and odd molar-like teeth and wide jaws made it look different enough compared to a dog. Those teeth looked like they would crush bars of steel with ease.
Once his work was done, he went to check in on the studious duo.
Kong Jing was yelling in frustration. ¡°Something¡¯s missing¡¡±
She mumbled to herself so fast that he had to get a summary from the calmer person in the factory. The production process was very easily disrupted. They just had to remove a limb or two and the golem will never reach completion after the helper puppets carry them onto one of the thousands of tables. These helper puppets don¡¯t stop them from removing any from the tables either. They are probably the assemblers as well.
Anyone inside was completely ignored as if they didn¡¯t exist to the puppets. They weren¡¯t programmed to act differently when someone was here to mess things up.
¡°Well, we tried to observe the assembly a few times but it was really just a simple assembly. She¡¯s saying there are missing¡vowels and verses in the language that we found so far. I don¡¯t understand why she calls it vowels or verses but yeah, we can¡¯t decipher a large part of the language.¡± Mark pinched the flesh between his brows.
¡°Even though you know how this works already?¡± Ebony knocked on the runic golem that was lacking its core.
¡°Yeah, we are limited to this particular runic formation and I¡¯m also able to use parts of the formula that I know the effects of. Think of it as paragraphs or sentences, we know what they mean overall in other words, their effect but we don¡¯t know the letters and many words so we cannot utilise it to do what we can already do with our current knowledge.¡±
¡°So you removed the sentence which uses topaz mana right? And the problem now is to translate another element or non-elemental mana into the entire formula.¡±
¡°...That¡¯s one way of looking at it.¡± Mark wasn¡¯t keen on going into details or correcting him.
Ultimately, it meant that they couldn¡¯t use it too much other than what the golems here could do.
¡°Did you notice anything different with these runes?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°According to Master Jing¡¯s deductions, the outward difference is that it is an addition of mental or memory-based runes. In her opinion, it is someone¡¯s fighting style.¡±
¡°I forgot, here¡¯s a gift. I caught them live. If it¡¯s fighting technique, the factories to the north and east have golems with different fighting styles. I¡¯ll catch some of them tomorrow.¡± Ebony almost forgot about the frozen chunks of ice.
The encasement of ice weaved into tight ropes. The dim glow of yellow was a sign that they were mostly out of energy.
Kong Jing was also more interested in what the puppets who worked with topaz mana ores were doing rather than continue trying to decipher the runes. Mark was the only one who continued on deciphering them.
His gift was well received, he needed to stay to keep them from moving but they were taken apart pretty quickly.
¡°Was there any use for a living one?¡± Ebony had to pause after his question as he wondered if it was right to call a golem a living thing.
¡°Bring me more.¡± Kong Jing indirectly answered his question.
Not even her little sweetheart could pull her away from studying the puppets and the topaz mana ore facilities. Mark also wasn¡¯t willing to step aside so he had dinner with Ning Xin for the first time in a while.
¡°They¡¯re not coming out to eat?¡± Ning Xin didn''t seem happy to have people skip meal time.
¡°You don¡¯t want to eat with just me?¡±
¡°I do¡ I¡¯ll bring the food to them, can you set up the table somewhere?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
He chose another random house to pull out a large round table from his bag. He brought the serving dishes over together with utensils.
Nowadays, they make it a point to keep the talk about fighting or flaws in each other''s skills away from the dining table. There were days when they had conversation topics and days when they ate in silence. Since she always ate alone when they were at Arcta and she ate with her sister these days, it had been quite a long time since they ate together.
¡°I¡¯ve gotten better at withdrawing and sending my overflowing essence straight to the ground.¡± The fire swordswoman stated.
¡°I noticed. The villagers don¡¯t keep as big of a distance away and Kiva is more comfortable around you.¡±
She was humming, it was clear to him that she liked Arcta for whatever reason.
¡°Do you like the village?¡±
¡°Mmhmm. They are nice people, they can¡¯t stand my presence but still welcome me. I can sense it, more than Xienor welcomes me.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Xienor, the fisher uncle near my house is nice but the others usually just ignore me and my grandma.¡±
Ebony already heard about how she wasn¡¯t outright shunned back in her hometown but most people don¡¯t register her presence there either. As for the fisher uncle that was a Fisher King, since he wasn¡¯t a combat class and married a non-xeng, he didn¡¯t discriminate. Or so she once told him.
Teratish meat was tough and dry which she managed to overcome with a savoury and a little watery sauce. She didn¡¯t bake it long enough but it was decent overall. She should¡¯ve tried cooking it in small amounts first but she didn¡¯t have a pot or pan that could handle enough heat to cook this heat-resistant monster meat.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The topic shifted to Kiva again and how the baby girl was starting to be mischievous. Ebony wasn¡¯t about to say that he was the one who put a piece of ice down her back because she liked it and how Kiva started doing that to everyone in the house. To the Frost Elves, it was not more than a droplet of water but Ning Xin was caught off guard when the wet chill slithered down her spine.
Kiva would always do it sneakily after someone picks her up into a hug and Ning Xin was the only one who couldn¡¯t sense the baby hiding a piece of ice in her hand or mouth. The baby girl had the talent to catch her off guard and sneak in an attack.
Ebony talked about how adorable Willlow the baby bear was, he had a soft spot for the chubby white ball of soft fluffiness. He didn¡¯t know how obvious he showed that he liked bears and their cubs.
They washed the dishes together and the plan was to go to the inner ring to empty out the factories there. The numbers there hadn¡¯t been reduced by sending them into the city so it would be a fruitful hunt.
¡°The buildings here are made of extremely compressed earth and that runic thing, let¡¯s just throw a few bombs around tomorrow. There are plenty of factories anyway.¡± She justified her plans.
¡°Are you angry or bored?¡± Ebony wanted to make sure he heard things right.
¡°A little bored but I also want to train and test out our combined spells more. We can continue testing different variations and how we can cast it better and faster.¡±
¡°Sure.¡± There was little he could say against spell experimentations.
They could do what they want, test the strength of the buildings and their spell, one or two factories less wouldn¡¯t hurt and they were reducing the population like Democlus wanted. Ebony couldn¡¯t think of a reason not to test it. He personally wanted to test the only spell which he named himself, Icicle Drop. He never did manage to get the spell into a skill yet. There were kinks that he needed to work out.
They sparred with each other after a walk to digest. It was interesting to weave between buildings to kick her tempo off. She still wasn¡¯t that good at turning sharp corners, she was using blood magic to pull her body aside but it wasn¡¯t going so well as it interrupted her Core Skill.
On that topic, she was still undecided on her second Core Skill. No wonder she was frustrated.
¡°I¡¯m thinking of picking my sword style as my core skill¡¡± She mentioned after their spar ended.
¡°But you¡¯re worried it doesn¡¯t help and it would waste your core skill slot since mastery-type skills are hard to improve.¡± There was no guarantee that she would be able to see an improvement but there wasn¡¯t really a ¡®waste¡¯ since improvement is confirmed, just that the degree of improvement is extremely questionable.
¡°Yes¡¡±
¡°I think it¡¯s not a bad idea, you¡¯re heavily reliant on sword technique and it matches with your current Core Skill. It might not get refined or an evolution immediately but it won¡¯t ever be a ¡®waste¡¯.¡±
From her magic to her active physical skills, all of them mainly powered her close combat style. It was lacklustre but a choice that fits her to a tee in his opinion. If one couldn''t break her tempo, she was unstoppable. Further improving her technique even by just a tiny bit by increasing its Natural Potential would bring her further along her path.
She would make the final decision when they got somewhere safe.
Ebony wiped his body down instead of washing up since there was a chance that something would pop up from the ground now that the tomb city¡¯s barriers weren¡¯t working.
The hours passed peacefully.
Hundreds of 80-level gap kills only gave him 3 levels for each of his classes. The past few days gave him another level to reach level 217. It was far slower than he had initially assumed. He looked forward to the hunt for those True Topaz Golems that were level 310.
He got his stock of Glacial Models back to 8 through the night, they stood still with instructions not to attack people. They would wake him up if anything came close which was nice.
Now that they cleared the factories, people had been found around their area too so he was being cautious. Mark had told him that those people were not welcoming their actions of taking every prey. There was one or two particular parties that just picked up all their hunted prey since Ebony and Ning Xin didn¡¯t need it.
The empty factories were being raided for the mana ores as well so it hasn¡¯t got to the point when the strangers were going to confront them for taking the experience. They decided it was a good choice to leave most of the loot since the yellow stuff wasn¡¯t amazing but it was exactly what the others were here for.
Pancakes for breakfast and demolition for a workout.
¡°That¡¯s more overcrowded than I thought.¡± Ebony got close enough to see that the True Topaz Golems were surrounding the factories so tightly that they might not have space to walk.
A ¡®ring¡¯ of them was pretty accurate. It was bright enough to make his eyes uncomfortable from their combined glow.
¡°Alright, let¡¯s fly high enough that they won¡¯t notice us.¡±
Beyond the inner ring of factories, the buildings also took on a different colour of glow.
They already understood their range so it wasn¡¯t hard to gauge how far away they needed to be. Taking their own sweet time to prepare a makeshift fragmentation bomb. Since they were so far up, he strengthened the pull of gravity on the orb of ice so that it would drop faster. Then he poured his mana into the surroundings so that he could prevent the bomb from causing a loud commotion. He wouldn¡¯t be able to silence it out completely but it shouldn¡¯t sound off louder than a gunshot.
¡°I¡¯m going to try something new.¡± Ebony informed his partner in explosive making.
2 of his Glacial Models sacrificed themselves to be the frame. He made the whirlpool of gravity mana within and got Ning Xin to begin throwing flames inside. Since she didn¡¯t have Mana Compression to the degree that he had, he thought gravity to be the perfect method.
It was shockingly effective as the whirlpool sucked up her flames and lightning with glee. She nudged him to inform him that her flames weren¡¯t disappearing and were within the whirlpool. It might have been too effective and she got too into jamming more flames that another Model had to join the sacrificial orb.
¡®¡I¡¯m getting a headache?¡¯ Ebony was a little surprised at how much mental effort it was taking to hold the spells in place. He was actually having difficulty with the output required.
¡°Heheh, so this is how compressing so much of your magic feels like.¡± She was more relaxed as most of the work was done by him, all she was doing was supplying the gunpowder.
They flew higher and higher, he prepared the other Models as Imperishable Frost Scales and sensed around for people. He managed to see a figure near the middle defensive tower, it was Democlus. As far away as he was, Ebony was able to determine that the man was sleeping out in the open.
¡®He was sleeping there the whole time?¡¯
He couldn¡¯t afford to get distracted anymore, they could see the ominous dark light within his orb. Ning Xin actually only stopped because she ran out of mana. The bomb was sealed as fast as possible and it tore itself away from him. The dark red light easily seeped through his blueish ice to form a dark purple that swallowed the glow from the topaz in the tomb city.
It fell like a meteor but only managed to dig a crater into the roof of the factory before Ebony released his hold on it completely.
He already had all his enhancements and defences ready but his body instinctively put him in front of Ning Xin.
Their ears rang painfully. His veil of mana was blown away so hard he couldn¡¯t contain the sound it would create. The incessant ringing due to the unbelievable numbers of True Topaz Golems and a couple of Homunculi that might have been inside the buildings was sounding off in their heads.
He couldn¡¯t even hold himself afloat stably and they were blown further away but was lucky enough that no fragments of his orb hit them.
They stared at each other when the blast ended.
¡°Fi-five for me.¡±
¡°Six.¡±
They reported how many levels each of them had gained.
¡°Let¡¯s do that again!¡± Ning Xin pumped her fists.
¡°...Look below.¡±
Tough buildings? They turned into molten soil and a lava crater, almost a pond of dark red fluids. The surrounding buildings that survived were torn down by steaming chunks of ice that were melting off quickly. They were lucky the ground here was so durable and heat resistant or the effects would go much further than a single kilometre.
¡°A masterpiece! Our masterpiece. We haven¡¯t even made it into a skill yet, let¡¯s keep going!¡±
¡°You need to recover mana don¡¯t you?¡±
¡°Yeah¡¡±
It wasn¡¯t practical since she dumped every point of her mana but they got a strong card to play should they require something with more kick. They also took about ten minutes to get it ready which in retrospect was pretty fast for such a powerful spell.
Democlus woke up and peeked at him but went back to sleep or at least acted like he did by closing his eyes.
¡®So he doesn¡¯t care if we blow up the place either.¡¯ Ebony was expecting to get more of a reaction from the Dwarf.
Kong Jing was still holding onto Icicle so he had to practise Icicle Drop without it.
Sadly, setting off a bomb was enough to get thousands of eyes on them.
They can¡¯t fly but he didn¡¯t expect them to throw each other into the air just to try to get them. Their jumping abilities weren¡¯t that strong.
¡°Cover me okay?¡± She probably didn¡¯t even recover any mana yet and was standing on two of his Imperishable Frost Scales but it didn¡¯t stop her from leaping down to meet their aggressive opponents. He didn¡¯t see her drink any blood either.
The Golems needed more cover than her but he joined her regardless.
Chapter 165: Smack
¡°Don¡¯t drag me by the collar!¡± Ning Xin complained but had no strength to resist.
¡°Don¡¯t be so reckless in future.¡±
All his Glacial Models were smashed and the broken chunks were reused till they were fully eaten away by the True Topaz Golems.
While he still had enough mana to enhance himself, he dragged the reckless fighter away after her attacks started missing due to her bone-dry stamina. Even in a mana-less state, she had taken at least another 500 more down.
Ebony himself played the role of a tank and drew as much attention as he could and took every cheap shot he could with his feet. It had been a nice chance to loosen his muscles and use the parts that he used to use more often.
The reinforcements seemed endless and every alleyway was blocked. Not so much by dead bodies since nothing much remains of the destroyed golems. They have caused a bigger commotion than expected. Especially since the sky had dozens of Homunculi simply floating there and exuding their domains to cover the sky. He would fly if he was by himself but Ning Xin might not even be able to come out safe even if she had mana. The Homunculus also covered the exits of every street and pathway.
Now that they weren¡¯t near a tower, he was able to see that their domain was beyond ¡®troublesome¡¯. The True Topaz Golems would fall apart in a minute if they accidentally entered the domains.
He shoved his wrist to the blood-drinking human but was quickly interrupted and he had to swing her around violently.
¡°I don¡¯t think I can drink anymore¡my body¡¯s not listening to me.¡± Whatever emotions were behind her words, Ebony didn¡¯t catch it. Despite what she said, she managed to sheath her swords.
¡°Grab tight and tuck your hair under your mantle.¡± He got her onto his back and gave her a piggyback.
They had been stuck here for the past 16 or so hours and she already drank his blood twice. With how hard she pushed her physical body with that life force enhancement it wasn¡¯t that shocking that her body already went beyond its limits.
¡®Less than a quarter of my mana pool remains.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t need to check his status to know how much mana had left.
It was bad that every time they killed a True Topaz Golem, the Homunculi furthest from them would reduce their domain and let reinforcements in before getting it back up. The numbers they were surrounded by actually didn''t change.
¡°Rest.¡±
Ning Xin didn¡¯t take long to fall asleep on his back.
He evaded every attack gently so that she wasn¡¯t disturbed. There was no way he was going to be able to break through their ranks alone when they attempted to do so as a duo multiple times.
His excessive mana expenditure slowly shut down. He didn¡¯t need Chaotic Repulsive Membrane if he didn¡¯t get hit nor did he use Stalwart Endowment. He just needed Frostblaze Augmentation for Agility. If he didn¡¯t attack, his usage decreased further.
He just needed to shut his mind off, believe in his body, in Treading Stride and slowly weaken Frostblaze Augmentation to conserve even more mana. To the point where it looked as if fists and projectiles were phasing through him or touching but not hurting him.
His opponents never changed tactics, they had limited patterns and made it simple. So he fell into a pseudo sleep together while carrying another person.
???
Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin woke up with an aching body.
¡°Ugh.¡±
She felt sick from the movement of her sleepy self. Then she remembered falling asleep while fully entrusting herself to the man carrying her.
Her mask was in the way of her rubbing to remove the sleep from her eyes so she squinted to look around.
¡®Nothing changed. How long did I sleep?¡¯ She checked that she fully recovered her mana and wasn¡¯t having a throbbing head or unmoving and throbbing muscles anymore.
Her attention pulled to the numbness in her legs and arms, her legs were tightly clamped while she personally clung on with her arms till they went even paler.
She took deep breaths to calm herself.
¡°You can let me down now.¡± She found her fingers to have gripped so tightly that she was having trouble waking them up. Since he was dodging with the minimum amount of movement she thought it was a good idea not to move around too much.
¡°Ebony, I¡¯m awake, you can let me down now.¡± She thought he didn¡¯t hear her the first time but even her second call was ignored.
¡®His eyes aren¡¯t open. Is¡is he asleep?¡¯
Her body was fully awake now and she regained control of her hands. She pinched his cheeks.
¡°Waake uppp!¡±
His eyes fluttered and she finally realised what she was doing. She pulled her fingers away from his face and put them back to the same position, hoping he didn¡¯t notice it.
¡°Mm¡good morning.¡±
Her heart raced at his morning voice, she didn¡¯t understand why she liked it so much.
¡°Mo-morning.¡±
¡®Why did I stutter!¡¯ She yelled internally.
A loud grumble echoed.
¡®Why are you embarrassing me!¡¯ Ning Xin mentally yelled at her stomach.
¡°Time to break out for breakfast.¡±
¡®Aw. no no no.¡¯ She shook her head at getting disappointed that she was no longer getting piggybacked despite the necessity.
¡°One more minute!¡± She gathered life force in her heart and came up with an excuse.
¡°Hmm? Ah, sure.¡± He must have sensed that her heart stopped beating.
She had to thank the Homunculus for giving her this chance to enjoy being carried. As thanks, she wouldn¡¯t cook them.
¡®The big heads just stayed in position instead of attacking? Is it because they are not even Grandmasters and the blue ones are better at fighting? They don¡¯t have the capacity to think like other natural monsters?¡¯
The Homunculi only closed in on them a little but she didn¡¯t see signs of consumption around them so they must have kept their distance the entire time. She had to correct Ebony that they weren¡¯t domains and just a spherical spell like his mist or her immolation.
Just because he could use domains he thought every single one could do it. She would feel confident if she could use it as a King Class since the mana consumption was usually unreasonable to sustain and that was if she could create such a spell. She was a little uncomfortable that he could actually use it for a minute or two. Thankfully, it was even less sustainable for him when she fought him since she could counter it a little.
Her advantage in stats mattered little if she was in his domain. The stronger he was, the more he spurred her on. Not to mention, his domain was not as strong as she imagined. He did not gain absolute control so his domain might be a deformed or degraded version which made much more sense for a Master.
Clinging onto his back, his scent tickled her sensitive nose. Incensed Meditation was beginning to kick in and she saw herself from a higher perspective. As if her perception had split from her body and she was looking at herself from above.
¡®This is¡is this how he sees the world? Wait, what¡¯s my body doi--STOP!¡¯
???
Ebony felt warmth on his cheeks and woke up.
He greeted the woman who woke him up, she must have woken up due to hunger as her belly informed him. Her heart stopped beating and he gave her the time to gather her energy so that they could burst through the blockade in one go.
It¡¯s been more than a day and they had started off with a bang, he began to feel the protest in his body. His stamina was also beginning to drop so it might be a good chance to give themselves a break to recharge with food before they continued.
The problem was how far these non-thinking creatures would chase them. Would it be better for them to put their efforts into hunting instead of breaking free?
It didn¡¯t appear to be the right choice as he was sure they would be worn down before the endless reinforcements. It would be a lot easier if they weren¡¯t the True Topaz but just the regular Topaz Golems since those wouldn¡¯t give them trouble no matter how many there were.
Ebony was taking in the situation around him since he just woke up to check for the most suitable direction to come out free but he realised they had lesser space to move around due to the Homunculus closing in. Luckily they had woken up before things got riskier. He did not expect Ning Xin to lean in further and push her face towards his.
The warm mask smacked into his lips and nose pretty hard.
He blanked out again.
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He reacted to the sudden strength in her legs and arms and reflexively held down to which she responded violently, pounding his back with her lightning-fast fists.
Ebony coughed from the heavy impact since she lashed out her Core Skill in the same moment. He didn¡¯t have all his enhancement and he was completely off guard.
¡°Let¡¯s go!¡± She managed to eke out as she sliced two of the True Topaz Golem behind where she stumbled from pushing herself off his back. She drew her swords and guided them as if they were part of her body.
He got his buffs going and chased the steam roller, she was producing more steam than usual.
¡°Sh-shut up!¡± She shouted amidst her charge.
¡°What?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t even say anything but he put that aside, ¡°I¡¯ll handle the Homunculi, take care of the others.¡±
They didn¡¯t take long to reach the fence holders.
The Homunculi got their spherical spell up and pushed her back since she didn¡¯t dare to stay within it for long. The Untarnished Topaz consumed the True Topaz Golems around them, freeing up space for his guided kicks to reach them unhindered. His kicks rammed Sonic Intrusion into its belly and they couldn¡¯t dodge since he linked his feet to his target with Guided Path.
Guided Path whipped around to his will, making his kicks hit every single time. 4 Homunculus were on him while the others held their position so that Ning Xin could escape the enclosure. Her attempts to fly past were constantly obstructed by their domain-like spell.
All he was required to do was open up a path for her to escape through and he would be able to run out without issue.
He linked himself with all 4 Homunculus, to as many of their limbs as possible. While he attracted his kicks and punches, their attacks were repelled. It hasn¡¯t worked out very well yet since it usually repels his own body away rather than the opponent if they had high strength or Intelligence if they were flying with magic. This didn¡¯t always put him in a better position so it was a work in progress.
These Homunculi seemed to have very limited spell casting as all he had to deal with was close-quarter combat. They never fell for his attempts to fall back which meant that he couldn¡¯t pull them away from the other Homunculus.
Ice and pure mana were reduced by their topaz but gravity mana appeared to be untouched in their spherical spell so there were things it couldn¡¯t consume. He could never find out why topaz mana had this property that appeared as if they could ¡®consume¡¯ everything. They asked the topaz magic hunter girl before but her topaz magic didn¡¯t have such a property so it boiled down to these unique creatures¡¯ usage.
Ebony searched for eye contact with his fellow prisoner and nodded to her.
He cast his domain that focused his efforts into gravity and dragged the four Homunculus to him as he jumped backwards. The movement caused cracks to appear all over them as the sea of mana around him violently vibrates against any body of motion except himself unless he manually removed them from the ill effects.
That short period of time allowed Ning Xin to dash out, the surrounding Homunculi didn¡¯t react in time to cover the gap he opened.
His mana consumption skyrocketed as the arms of ice that were conjured to hold onto all the Homunculus were quickly destroyed and repaired. He released his domain once Ning Xin left with a contingent of pursuers.
As long as she doesn¡¯t get trapped again, he wasn¡¯t that worried. Unfortunately, every single Homunculus gave up on keeping him enclosed and left to chase her. They knew that they couldn¡¯t keep him in place.
¡®The Homunculus are a little less robotic than the Golems.¡¯ He was still glad that they didn¡¯t gang up and surround them for whatever reason. The best reason he could think of was that they seemed to be reluctant to destroy the city that much.
They gave up the chase since they couldn¡¯t even see her anymore, turning their efforts to him.
It took over 3 hours to turn 7 Homunculus and about 60 True Topaz Golems to frozen dust before they stopped chasing him.
He didn¡¯t return to the factory where his party was at, he pulled his green body to a random house and hid inside. Meditating and waiting for his body to counter the foreign mana and heal his body. He had about half his health but all of his organs were safe and he only took a couple of minutes to look physically recovered. He inspected his robes but they were undamaged after he detached the scales he had cast.
It would¡¯ve taken much less effort and lowered the risk if he had Icicle. It told him that it wasn¡¯t a complete mistake to pick up a weapon.
The ¡®green one¡¯ was indeed dangerous to most people, the expedition group was lucky that not many were dispatched against them. He saw a slightly differently shaped ¡®green one¡¯ closer to Democlus, a bulkier upper body and had a hunched back. It would be better if he didn¡¯t have to fight that any time soon.
The streets around the inner ring of factories were repopulated but he managed to get back to the others without getting spotted. Waning Presence got impressive gains.
¡°Food¡¯s there.¡± Kong Jing pointed to the closest table.
¡°Where is she?¡±
¡°Dunno.¡±
¡°Are you still going to hold onto Icicle?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
He ate his meal in silence. It was salty chicken on overcooked rice and he ate every morsel.
It wasn¡¯t hard to figure out where she went as she was making a lot of noise. She was really energetic and was back to the hunt. Of course, he had to join her.
Ebony couldn¡¯t be sure but she seemed to put a little distance from him every time he got closer to help her block an attack.
The constant hunt went on for about ten days. They dropped the combined spell twice more but got complaints and he also understood that if they destroyed any more factories, the production rate of hunts they could get would reduce.
They encountered many other hunting groups in this time since there wasn¡¯t much else for the majority to hunt. No one picked a fight since there were plenty of prey to go around. Not many factory raids were done though, they must have left the loot and the storage of topaz mana alone so that production could continue and they could gain experience.
As for the holes inside the factories, Ning Xin persuaded him against entering as her instincts were sensing immense danger. He was also not keen on jumping into the darkness and unknown in this instance.
No more factories lay ahead of this inner ring so if Homunculi were also an artificially produced creature it was not made anywhere in the tomb city.
The sightings of Homunculi increased but everyone retreated whenever those came out. Ebony only saw about 2 parties that actively hunted Homunculi, one of them consisted of the first metal mage he saw and the other had a swordsman that had a very impressive mana reading when he cast his body enhancement. More impressive that the mana reading of Ning Xin when she cast her enhancements.
He clashed with the Sword Grandmaster when he was fighting two Homunculi and the man decapitated his prey. The Grandmaster''s horizontal sword slash went through both Homunculus and hit Ebony but he apologised with a ¡°didn¡¯t see you there.¡± Ebony just nodded since he got an apology and wasn¡¯t injured but Ning Xin was absolutely furious.
He managed to stop her from killing the man, so he walked off with a missing arm. They had a healer in their party so all¡¯s well. The swordsman had a really good body enhancement skill as his arm didn¡¯t turn to ashes so he got it reattached with his party¡¯s healer present.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t listen to him at first but turned obedient after he patted her shoulder.
As for the party with the metal mage, they always avoided the two of them whenever they saw each other. Well, after the incident with the Sword Grandmaster, he and his party avoided them too.
The decrease in Golem and Homunculi populations led to an increase in the monster population. Just over the past week, Democlus had to move five times. He sensed a huge threat before any of them and informed people in the respective area of the threat to move away.
Ebony underestimated the tomb city as large monsters weren¡¯t able to climb through from under them. Very few diggers could climb through the floor. Democlus handled the unknown threat and no one had seen what he warned them of before. At least, Ebony never saw them. The fact that a huge deposit of minerals and mana ores below them also made it unlikely that anything would attack from below other than whatever the tomb city was linked to.
Mark joined them in their hunts twice to get some levels, he can comfortably defend himself now. Ning Xin helped him charge his supply of fire mana. They moved their residence to a factory in the inner ring. The factories didn¡¯t look any different but the puppets here worked in pairs and although the production was smaller in scale the overall production speed was similar.
Currently, Ebony was chasing a Teratish for its meat.
He didn¡¯t expect to get a call but he picked it up anyway.
¡°Great! You picked up. Are the two of you okay?¡± Roya¡¯s voice came through.
¡°Mmm. Did something happen?¡±
¡°Huh? Where are you? Were you in a dungeon?¡±
¡°Underground, I think somewhere under Hoarfrost Glade.¡±
¡°No wonder, be careful okay? You might want to stay there, the Trolls are attacking now. Too many to count, the Empire is at war now.¡±
¡°Too many to count? Did the Empire not see them coming? Is the village safe?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure about what happened outside the village. We talked to some of our old friends but the Trolls appeared suddenly and many somehow bypassed the sea borders, the Tides. Don¡¯t worry about the village, there aren¡¯t any borders protecting us but the Trolls sensed our Guardian¡¯s presence and none of them came close.¡±
¡°Alright, please take care.¡±
The connection was cut off, she might not have heard him. Being underground must have messed up the connection.
¡®Bypassed the border towns and cities? If there are too many to count, there¡¯s no way the Empire didn¡¯t spot them from the seashore. Hoarfrost Glade doesn¡¯t have a port up north, is that where they sneaked in from?¡¯
Ebony was probably wrong since he didn¡¯t have much information to make conclusions. He was worried about Arcta, they didn¡¯t have many fighters there and Roya must have played things cool. Even with how dense he was, he knew the Thoyas well enough.
The situation above ground must have been pretty bad for her to call and check with him.
¡°I¡¯m worried.¡± Ning Xin caught the escaping Teratish and even overheard his conversation.
¡°Mmm.¡±
They didn¡¯t need to exchange words to know that they wanted to get out of this tomb city now. These days were more fruitful than any other dungeon they had been to but levelling slowed as their level gap with their prey closed.
¡°I¡¯ll remain here.¡± He wasn¡¯t that surprised that the craftswoman wanted to stay.
Mark was of the same mind.
¡°Catch.¡± Icicle was finally returned to him. It was ice cold and brightened up like the True Topaz Golem when they came into contact with his hands. The glow leaked out from its scabbard.
¡°I¡¯m not that worried but protect her well, rascal.¡±
¡°Take care of yourself.¡± Ebony returned the sentiment of the oddly shy older sister of his.
He put Icicle neatly through his robe, at a glance he couldn¡¯t tell if anything changed.
¡°You too Mark, I¡¯m not sure what will happen in half a year but I don¡¯t have a good feeling about it.¡± Ebony warned.
¡°...I know.¡±
¡°I tried to get as close to the gravestone as possible. They have another type of Homunculi that I am quite wary of getting close to. It has thin upper arms but huge forearms, thin thighs and massive calves along with a large head. It¡¯s transparent with purple veins. To be honest, it allowed me to live and I think it''s only because it doesn''t leave the gravestone. I¡¯m not sure if it has any ranged capabilities but please don¡¯t attempt it. Democlus was right, we wouldn¡¯t even be able to get close.¡± Ebony gave them his lengthy scouting report. He didn¡¯t tell them that he managed to Identify the creature to be only level 300 but every hair and cell he had told him that if he had taken another step forward, he wouldn¡¯t be alive now. And that was when only one of them was staring at him while he had Waning Presence working furiously. He was quite scared because the creature was only Master rank and not an evolved level 300.
For Democlus, a King Classed individual to say so much about the gravestone, he didn¡¯t need to get any closer to tell that there were more fearsome creatures. He was a little excited that there were strong opponents near his level.
With this little detail, he made a strong point for Kong Jing not to enter the mines or whatever depths the factories were linked to.
He left all his Glacial Models here with a simple ¡®protect two of them¡¯ unsure if it would work but he was pretty sure they wouldn¡¯t attack people even if they were out of his range of control. Since he used and broke them a lot there were only 3 spares remaining. It was better than nothing.
The sisters shared a hug, he got a light jab and they left the tomb city without informing Democlus.
Chapter 166: Intuition
¡°Is this really the same route we took?¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°It should be, the tunnels were probably changed by earth magic.¡± He led the way with her squeezing extremely close behind him.
He had to walk sideways with space to spare but she was having trouble. Their robe and mantle kept getting caught at their edges too. He was sure this stretch was only about 70 metres long and there was nothing moving in the walls as there was no vibrations.
They were finally through the dangerous stretch without the walls closing in on them.
¡°That was such a tight path.¡± She had to suck in her breath while passing through.
His gaze dropped a few centimetres but there was a pair of hands blocking it.
¡°I¡¯m not fat.¡± She glared. Ebony didn''t think that at all.
¡°Mmm. Don¡¯t worry, your figure is perfect from any direction.¡±
¡°Do you like it?¡±
¡°Mmm. Slow down, I¡¯ll walk in front.¡± He didn¡¯t even finish talking when she pushed him aside and continued the ascent.
It was only logical that he took the front in his opinion. He naturally pulled her back by the wrist and slipped it down to her palms. As always, he didn¡¯t really put any thought into every little thing.
Consequently, Ebony didn¡¯t realise the oddity that was happening.
¡°Don¡¯t let go¡I trust you so don¡¯t give me up.¡±
¡°I¡¯m never gonna give you up.¡±
Battle Song cast itself without his control.
¡°You¡¯re playing again. Can you translate the lyrics to me?¡±
¡°I¡¯m embarrassed so no.¡±
¡°Embarrassed? So you can be embarrassed too¡¡±
¡°Of course.¡±
She leaned forward to look at him but he looked the other way by reflex. It wasn¡¯t as if his facial expression changed so he imagined he moved pointlessly and looked back. Her eyes brightened up all of a sudden but they were interrupted when he sensed a tiny vibration to the right.
¡°Something is coming, either slowly or it¡¯s a small creature.¡±
Ebony had to get serious and collect himself and his mental state again. The past few days of his increasing Wisdom had made large changes in how effective his overflowing Wisdom was. Ning Xin also had a great change in overflowing Vitality, exceeding Kong Jing¡¯s natural amount when she used the weakest Mortal¡¯s Pulse she could pull off.
He asked Ning Xin in the past, why or how her sister¡¯s Vitality was so high but she also didn¡¯t know.
What it should mean for both of them was that if any creature dared to come after them when they were not suppressing their essence was that those creatures either had the guts to do it, stupid or simply strong. Usually, all of the above and hopefully just stupid.
¡°Stay close, there¡¯s barely enough space to walk and it¡¯ll be hard to draw our weapons.¡± Ebony was starting to question if the tunnels were changed because of monsters or the expedition¡¯s earth mages who wanted to cover their tracks. The smooth way downwards by following the expedition was no longer possible for the path back up.
???
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Heightened Instincts evolved into Fervent Intuition''
Fervent Intuition - Highly trained and honed instincts to recognise danger, hostile intentions and perceive emotions. Fervent intentions to understand subtle emotions increases your ability to pick up mental activity and enhance situational cognizance by 5.0% per level.
¡®Huh? A sudden skill evolution?¡¯ Ning Xin was still trying to calm herself from Ebony¡¯s bold act, forcing her heart to be obedient and stopping herself from pulling her hands away.
It was the most effortless evolution of a skill that she ever had. All she had been doing was trying to grasp his emotions. She didn¡¯t understand ¡®situational cognizance¡¯ well but since it was an evolution of the skill and not a mutation it shouldn¡¯t be helping her in a different way, just doing what her original skill did but better.
She didn¡¯t expect to get a tier 3 Generic Skill so easily and Heighten Instincts was already very useful for a support skill.
She was irked by the interruption of a monster but she cocked her head when she looked where Ebony pointed at.
¡°It¡¯s not going to attack us, just moving in our direction while escaping something else.¡± She blurted out.
¡°How do you know that?¡± Ebony also cocked his head in confusion.
He asked the same question she wanted to ask herself right after blurting out. She didn¡¯t even get the chance to answer before he opened his mouth, ¡°You¡¯re right, the vibrations are getting weaker.¡±
¡®Is this Intuition? It is level 116 but¡that¡¯s a stronger effect on me than I thought.¡¯ Ning Xin was a little shocked if it was really her evolved skill at work. It might have been a fluke so she would have to observe herself a little more.
¡°It just felt like that.¡± She was confused at her own vague guess.
¡°I see.¡±
She trudged on with her eyes staring at their joined hands.
???
¡°Did you increase your perception recently?¡± Ebony asked when she told him to take a different path because the path they were on was about to collapse.
He also sensed the loose soil above him so he already planned to move in another direction. She was still not as sensitive as him but she had managed to pick up signs of monsters a lot better than before.
¡°My instinct skill evolved earlier.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
They had to climb up a tight vertical shaft but he felt as if his fingers fell asleep while holding her hands.
¡°We have to climb here.¡± There was barely space to climb, flying up was not impossible but climbing would be many times more efficient.
This particular vertical climb was about 3 km when he came down and was wide and smooth like that of a perfect cylinder. Now, the walls were slightly less than a metre apart and anyone with claustrophobia or nyctophobia would stay far away from this place.
He was reluctant but she pulled away first ¡°Come on, Arcta might be in danger.¡±
She took her mantle off and tucked her hair under her clothes even though she looked uncomfortable. Her climbing ability was above his despite how cramped it was, it must have been due to her experience with cramped tunnels that she climbed through day in and out while she was in that mysterious blood realm of hers.
He conjured a thin layer of ice over his robes so that they would slide off jagged corners.
¡°Hurry up, we don¡¯t want any earth magic to crush us. The previous time that happened I had to melt the earth around me but the earth here is more heat resistant.¡± Ning Xin voiced her worries.
¡°I thought you fought blood magic-wielding spiders only?¡± He hastened his pace in response.
¡°A den of them was above me and they collapsed their floor above me to ambush me. I didn¡¯t sense them and almost got crushed to death. I hate cramped spaces.¡±
¡°I think it¡¯s not so bad when I¡¯m with you.¡±
¡°Shh! Just climb!¡±
Ebony did not expect that he would get chastised but he could feel the temperature rise.
¡°Let¡¯s race.¡± Ebony sensed vibrations from around him. She was faster than him but matched his pace, he knew the best method to make her speed up and didn¡¯t even hesitate to propose a race.
She sped up with pep as he thought, she was very competitive.
In a minute, he saw her snap her head down to look at him.
¡°I¡¯ll be there with you soon.¡± He tried to tilt his head up to look at her but the back of his head hit the wall behind him.
He was glad to see her rush up even more instead of trying to get down. The walls squished together just as he sensed her at the edges of his senses and climbed out to a large tunnel.
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¡®Opfff. Now that¡¯s a bone crushing squeeze.¡¯ Frostblaze Augmentation and Cladding burst out to freeze his surroundings. The tough earth easily crumbled when frozen and penetrated by the reflection of mana vibrations from his body.
¡®There¡¯s barely any air and I can¡¯t sense the opponent, it¡¯s beyond my range.¡¯ Ebony sent his flames upwards through the cracks and then punched out with Sonic Intrusion to shatter the frozen earth. It wasn¡¯t nearly as tough as the earth around the tomb city.
His surroundings shook hard, from the direction that he guessed that Ning Xin was in battle with whatever attempted to crush him. He quickly called her through the callstone and the short distance made the connection almost immediately. Buffing her to make her harder, better, faster, stronger. She did not like it but appreciated it.
His buffs have gotten considerable now that his Intelligence was higher and he sent highly compressed mana. It was indispensable for them when closing the gap with higher-level opponents. He fixed his neck and made his body look presentable before he reached the tunnel where she was. It was filled with the scent of blood, there was blood all over the tunnel and he didn¡¯t sense any remaining parts of their attacker.
¡°Don¡¯t do that ever again!¡±
¡°I will make the same decision, you would¡¯ve turned to paste.¡±
¡°Then you should¡¯ve protected me and not make me leave you behind!¡±
¡°I will, if it was the best choice. You¡¯re more suited to evading, please evade by yourself if we¡¯re ever in a position where both of us are under attack and you are able to dodge it while I¡¯m not. If you judge that you¡¯re also unable to dodge, I¡¯ll do everything I can to protect you.¡± There wasn¡¯t a need for a discussion, they understood each other¡¯s strengths and weaknesses too well at this point.
¡°...¡±
¡°Okay?¡± He pressured for her response.
He had to get eye contact and a soft ¡°mmm¡± before he was satisfied.
¡°So what was that monster?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t remember, it popped up right after you disappeared from my sight and my hands just moved.¡±
The short incident was put aside but it weighed heavily on both of them. With how much they love putting themselves in danger, he was sure that the day would come when they bite off more than they could chew. He was more than a hundred times harder to kill and he probably couldn''t protect her as well as he could protect himself currently.
He had conjured many Glacial Models in her form as accurately as possible but was still unable to cast Stalwart Endowment with her body frame. He also hasn¡¯t succeeded in changing the runes to consume either any type of mana or fire mana. With this thought, he obviously commissioned the job to sister Jing. It was the other purpose for leaving Glacial Models with them.
His Mental Mapping was of little use as the routes changed significantly. They were making progress upwards but it wasn¡¯t as fast as their descent.
¡°Let¡¯s take a break here.¡± The quick ascent with extremely thin air wasn¡¯t easy on his body. Two flat scales were moulded with runes to produce air for himself and floated near his face.
They finally reached a relatively open space that would fit a party of 5 sleeping side by side.
They thoroughly washed their hands and prepared their meal. He helped with washing the liver and kidneys of Teratish. Tonight was offal night since they have enough collected to make a dish.
The taste of iron was very strong but she balanced it out with other strong spices. The dish had been heavily spiced.
There was no space for a spar or an after-meal walk.
¡°The ceiling isn¡¯t tall enough, I¡¯ll watch you, you can just sleep there.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t watch me while I sleep. Come, sit here.¡±
His shoulder had a temporary job as a pillow, they rested while sitting up. She fell asleep fast and he made sure he was awake to notice changes in the surroundings.
It wasn¡¯t exactly comfortable so she didn¡¯t sleep long. She insisted he slept as well so he took a nap.
When he woke up, he got complaints.
¡°You¡¯re too heavy, my shoulder feels like it¡¯s about to snap.¡±
¡°Sorry about that, I¡¯ll give you a shoulder massage. But you have to be silent.¡±
¡°Sure, why silent?¡±
¡°...Just be quiet.¡±
He put pressure into his thumbs and fingers. Strength seemed to leave her body as her tense muscles relaxed.
¡°Please keep quiet.¡± He repeated himself when she moaned. It tickled his ears.
¡°Huh?¡± She acted as if she didn¡¯t know what she did.
Painful minutes later.
They continued their ascent but they were lost.
¡°The structure changed too much to be natural.¡± He said as they turned back from a dead end.
¡°Why don¡¯t you directly make a path up?¡± She asked, he did freeze and shatter his enclouse.
¡°I could, it might attract things and it''s not exactly safe if I broke a part that I shouldn''t and cause us to get squashed.¡± He didn''t really have a good sense of the tunnels above and around him.
¡°Fine, we¡¯ll force our way up after we get closer.¡±
If they reached about 5 km from the surface, he was pretty confident that they would be fine even if the ceiling collapsed on them. They were just playing it safe currently, they needed to climb roughly 3 to 4 more km to reach the 5 km mark.
He contemplated his status and stat points to allocate. He had a few more points that he got a day or two ago.
It was miraculous that his Class, Sub-Class and Profession were levelling at the same pace. Ning Xin¡¯s chef Profession wasn¡¯t getting its fair share of experience when fighting non-edibles.
In such a short time, he had reached level 242 while Ning Xin had reached 247 since her Profession wasn¡¯t getting much. 30 levels in all 3 gave him 750 stat points to allocate and 90 Wisdom.
Strength: 400 [411] ? Strength: 400 [411]
Vitality: 400 ? Vitality: 400
Constitution: 900 [4211] ? Constitution: 1000 [6375]
Endurance: 150 [155] ? Endurance: 200 [205]
Agility: 600 [616] ? Agility: 600 [616]
Intelligence: 626 [643] ? Intelligence: 926 [951]
Wisdom: 1466 [1506] ? Wisdom: 1856 [1907]
Perception: 250 [985] ? Perception: 250 [1055]
100 to Constitution because his body started tearing apart again when he increased Intelligence. Intelligence got 300 together with Wisdom getting an additional 300. Endurance got 50 because he felt that it would help with his muscle tolerance rather than stamina.
He was handling the stress to his body with Stalwart Endowment and he felt like his body was getting more resistant to his mana. It would be ideal if a notification told him that his physique was changing but that hasn¡¯t popped up. It was torture day in and day out the past week since he was adamant in increasing Intelligence to increase the power of his spells. His body was constantly torn by the compressing mana and rebuilding itself with the vitality in his mana.
He was especially focused on directing his life force to his skin; it was hard for others to notice his body¡¯s state. Ning Xin knew though. She was just glad that he was able to heal at a greater pace and commented that it would surely change his physique sooner or later. Physique wasn¡¯t supposed to change so quickly like hers did.
He questioned the possibility of completing the next evolution and obtaining the 250% Fortification and the ones after the next. If they needed 2 times the skill level compared to the level requirement of 300, it meant he needed his skill to reach level 600.
The lowest requirement of 1.1 times would require all class skills to reach level 330 for a 25% Fortification. The next gap was 1.25 times or 375 for 50% and 1.5 times would mean a skill level of 450 for a 100% Fortification.
When approaching the natural limit, even gaining a single skill level was a challenge not to mention the gap of 150 levels from 450 to 600.
Even if it was possible from Master to Grandmaster what about after that?
They needed a better method of gaining Natural Potential unless Ebony misunderstood the scaling of Natural Potential.
Now that Everlasting Tranquillity reached level 322 and increased his regeneration by 1610%, his base regeneration would be multiplied by 17.1. The base regeneration of 1907 Wisdom of a normal human was 1907 per hour since their mana pool would be 19070 and 10% of that was 1907. His Fortification increased his base mana regeneration by 500%, it translated that with 1907 Wisdom, he would be regenerating 11,442 per hour naturally even if he was knocked out of Everlasting Tranquillity.
With his Core Skill and a multiplier of 17.1 though, he was regenerating 3260.97 mana per minute or 54.3495 mana per second.
Being near him if he didn¡¯t control his overflowing Wisdom was not pleasant. Not only due to the sheer volume but according to Mark, his overflowing mana was chilly, landed with a sting and was heavy. The part about it being heavy was the most obvious. It was almost to the point where it was dangerous to be near his overflowing mana. Mark compared it to having his brain squeezed in every direction.
Both Ning Xin and Kong Jing appeared completely unbothered by it though. He similarly wasn¡¯t affected by their Vitality at all.
¡°Why aren¡¯t you affected by my mana?¡± He had to ask. They had time since they were lost and couldn¡¯t go fast in these cramped spaces.
¡°You¡¯re not affected by my vitality either.¡± Ning Xin pointed out.
¡°Is there a reason other than getting used to it?¡± He knew that resistance to overflowing essence can be gained relatively easily compared to resistance skills but he had never really needed to get used to them. He could feel and sense other¡¯s but most of the time, nothing that would affect his movements.
¡°An inherent trait. A child born from a pair of Masters and a pair born from a pair of King and Queen, which do you think is used to an immensely dense or high volume of vitality and wisdom?¡± She answered with an example.
¡°Oh. Sorry for the silly question.¡± The answer was more simple than he imagined.
Another advantage from birth it seems.
¡°And, I am actually affected by your mana. It has a strong calming effect, I confirmed it when I drank your blood. Also, it is not obvious but I think my natural mana regeneration increases a tiny bit when I¡¯m near you.¡±
¡°Hmm¡being near you increases my reaction speed I think. It¡¯s very minute so I can¡¯t tell if it¡¯s from you or it¡¯s my own imagination.¡±
¡°My essence isn¡¯t nearly as potent as yours at the moment so I¡¯m not surprised if it doesn¡¯t have any effect.¡±
¡°So essence doesn¡¯t only have a debilitating effect but a positive one as well?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure. Supposedly, the effect might not even be of any use if we evolved once or twice more but¡ I guess your potent essence might show useful effects a lot sooner than normal.¡±
¡°Is there a way to choose whether to inflict the debilitation or the strengthening one?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know! You¡¯re the expert here.¡± She appeared exasperated.
He was asking questions to which she didn¡¯t have answers to. She was right that he used his overflowing essence a lot more than she did. He must have assumed that she knew everything but they were roughly the same age and she was actually not welcomed by her own people.
¡®Well, more things to figure out.¡¯ He constantly tried to call Roya or Halvis so that he could follow the link using the vibrations but the link was also not getting anywhere. The earth here might have been too dense for it to pass through. The previous connection should have been luck.
¡®Is this really under Hoarfrost Glade? Where¡¯s the snow if we¡¯re under Hoarfrost Glade?¡¯
With that sudden thought, Ebony continued to lead the way to every path upwards before he realised that only Gen and Ful¡¯s underground dome was so deep and had so much snow but many parts of Hoarfrost Glade didn¡¯t have snow that went too deep.
Chapter 167: First Contact
¡°Ah Min, Kong Tian.¡± Veronica Ning¡¯s mask dimmed down as the stars on them faded.
¡°What now?¡± Ning Min, her cousin, was not very happy since they had been afloat on a bloody red sea since they arrived here.
¡°I just want to confirm something since it¡¯s been so long.¡±
¡°You¡¯re making me nervous for beating around the beat. Just speak up will you?¡±
¡°Ayyy don¡¯t be so impatient, I just have a headache from trying to connect with the astral realm.¡±
¡°Speaking like an old lady again?¡±
¡°Habit habit. Anyway, our masks. A part of our soul is inside right?¡±
¡°Come on, be serious.¡± Ning Min¡¯s shoulders slacked at the silly question.
¡°Let¡¯s say there¡¯s a crack on it, what does that mean?¡±
Her little cousin couldn¡¯t answer immediately and Kong Tian spoke up from his silence.
¡°Our masks reflect our condition. Cracked mask equals a cracked soul.¡±
¡°Does that mean dead?¡±
¡°Perhaps.¡±
¡°No straight answer huh?¡±
¡°Well, if our masks get damaged so do our souls and vice versa. To destroy it physically requires a power far beyond the mask¡¯s wielder¡¯s strength since it grows with us.¡± Ning Min stated the obvious for them.
Veronica knew destroying their mask physically was nearly impossible unless they were trying to break a fresh mask that was just made and had not been worn for long. Kong Tian¡¯s relative Kong Jing was a genius amongst crafters for being able to even mess with the mask at her low level. Too bad her own family was jealous of her talent.
¡°Any leads?¡± Veronica changed the subject.
¡°What leads can we find when you only left for a few seconds?¡± Ning Min was irritated. She must have known that Veronica asked just to tease her.
¡°Go left, keep your mind open. There should be a creature that knows where the closest piece of land is. 8 minutes 3 seconds away from us at this speed.¡±
¡°How deep?¡± Ning Min poured more mana into her mask.
¡°Bird. Emperor, speed type. Don¡¯t let it slip.¡±
Ning Min clicked her tongue at the belittlement.
¡°Kong Tian, try to bring ah Min as high as you can while still keeping us hidden.¡±
¡°Consider it done.¡± Kong Tian has always been a man of few words but he spoke more often when Veronica told him he had to take initiative to communicate or he would never gain her little cousin¡¯s favour and attention.
¡°Boy. I¡¯m getting old. Forgive little old me.¡± Veronica often talked to herself out loud but it was rare for her to get a headache.
???
¡°Can I ask you something?¡± Ebony probed now that Ning Xin wasn¡¯t avoiding him as much.
¡°N--no!¡± They finally found a tunnel wide enough to walk side by side and was elevated upwards by almost 40 degrees when she leapt away from him the moment he asked.
¡°Why?¡± The rejection for conversation was stronger than he expected.
¡°I don¡¯t want to talk about it.¡±
¡°But I haven¡¯t asked my question.¡±
¡°I said no!¡±
¡°Okay okay, no need to get agitated.¡±
He saw her sigh with relief when he decided to get off the subject that he didn¡¯t even manage to bring up. They hastened their step whenever they had an open path like they have now. At this depth, there didn¡¯t appear to be anything that dared to go near them. Some vibrations came close but they didn¡¯t get another ambusher. Those monsters that came close might have poor senses.
¡°It connected.¡± They didn¡¯t slow down.
¡°Roya, can you hear me?¡± He hoped the connection was strong enough.
¡°Yes. Are the two of you still underground?¡± Roya¡¯s voice could be heard loud and clear.
¡°Yes.¡± Ning Xin answered for them.
¡°Sasa! Haha, sorry about that, Kiva must be excited to hear your voice.¡± They were pretty sure Kiva could speak a few words now but she stuck with the names she called them. Roya should be taking care of her as the baby girl overheard the call.
They were not able to have a conversation as Kiva screamed for attention and Ebony was actually glad since he can follow the link this way. The vibrations were amplified greatly when sound travels to the callstone and the link itself is mostly silent to the normal human ear. Some monsters might be able to catch the connection but it ultimately didn¡¯t matter too much. Ebony wasn¡¯t capable of mind magic but there might be monsters that are. The callstone link would be very obvious to any user of mind magic or so he heard.
Ning Xin¡¯s mask made her practically immune or extremely resistant to mind magic. The Grandmaster back at Vermin Paradise that held the Earthfly Queen was the only mind magic user he had seen if he excluded Hector.
The call ended abruptly and it surely wasn¡¯t due to the lack of mana when he was personally supplying it.
¡°Let¡¯s hurry, faint sounds of battle.¡± Ebony picked up his pace only for them to reach a crack where the link of mana was slipping through.
¡°They might have put up their barrier and the connection cut.¡± Ning Xin replied, she didn¡¯t appear too worried.
Ebony lashed out with his flames, then stabbed Icicle through the crack. Some mana was condensed within Icicle before being released and propelled by the Chaotic Repulsive Membrane and blowing up the frozen earth when Sonic Intrusion reverberated.
He rinsed and repeated, Ning Xin would stop him when she felt that he shouldn¡¯t poke that hard. Although they didn¡¯t face any cave-ins, it was hard to confirm if it was because they followed her sixth sense.
By putting safety out of the way, they were ascending much faster. When they reached the 4 km mark, he managed to route them to the large tunnel that linked all the way to the entrance they entered through. From there, it was simply speeding through. The tunnels here were left untouched and wide enough to fit carriages.
Both of them stopped right before the earthen wall that camouflaged the entrance.
¡°Something large is outside right?¡± Ning Xin double-checked. She must be sensing through the thin earth wall with her heat perception. She took this time to put her mantle back on.
¡°Mmm. I don¡¯t know if they are trolls but it''s pretty big.¡±
¡°How big? A general gauge of a Troll is their size. They gain significant size after every evolution. I heard the notable ones have different physical traits but grandma never talked much about them other than being savage brutes.¡± The gravity signature he was getting was quite a distance away so her heat perception must have been iffy.
¡°Almost a gir tall, bulky and heavier than me by a little.¡± He was focussing on his senses to get a better grasp through the thin wall. He was imagining a 4.5 metre figure packed with muscles.
¡°Please don¡¯t compare your weight with other creatures. A gir tall, if it¡¯s a normal Troll it would only be Master.¡±
Ebony should¡¯ve studied a little more about Trolls.
¡°I¡¯ll go first, hit as hard and fast as you can. Fire should greatly weaken their regenerative capabilities. Don¡¯t give it any rest, they are hard to kill.¡±
¡°Conversing is out of the question?¡±
¡°They are soldiers who invaded this land to eat everyone. Apparently disliking Dwarves tough meat and bones. Disliking skinny and bony Elves. Humans and beastmen are their favourites. Their Intelligence is pitiful so making a conversation might be hard if they never learnt our language.¡±
¡°...mmm.¡± Ebony was going to try to strike a conversation anyway. Trolls weren¡¯t monsters, they were another race of people.
She pretended that there was no wall blocking her and rammed through it before turning a tight corner to face the Troll. His body looked as if it glided as he followed after her. She wasn¡¯t one for ambushes so she appeared in front of a massive chunk of muscles that shook the ground with every step.
¡°Human! Hungry, meaty human delivered!¡± The Troll was indeed 4.5 metres tall and easily just as wide. His arms were easily as thick as a tree trunk. This one had pale green skin tone. He had a pair of sharp fangs facing upwards with another pair in the opposite direction that were jutting out of his mouth and the rest were canine and incisors but there were a lot of missing teeth. He was shirtless, showing off its mass of ripped abdomen and chest but Ebony was intrigued by the pants that looked decent.
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¡°Uh oh¡± He muttered.
Just like her, Trolls utilised Vitality-based body enhancement and not mana based. The massive lug did a beautiful lunge forward and swept its giant rock that was fashioned as a jagged greatsword horizontally.
¡°ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT!¡± She dipped forward, under the giant swing.
¡®Trolls are monsters. And also very stupid.¡¯ Ebony already gave up talking to the Troll. The Troll didn¡¯t even take 1 second to change his mind. Everlasting Tranquillity got ticked when the Troll called Ning Xin meaty. If the Troll managed to tick him, nothing had to be said about the hot-tempered lady.
Ebony wouldn¡¯t have been able to move forward if he was in her spot as the Troll executed the sweep with a certain speed and ferocity but that was not a problem for her.
He saw two streams of blood splattering from both shoulders, since it didn¡¯t flow smoothly he could only assume that the blood mage wasn¡¯t able to manipulate the blood. It was a relatively shallow cut when taking the size of the target into consideration.
[Master ??? Warrior Lvl 277]
¡®Odd, I must know too little about trolls. I should take a walk in Xienor or Tidal and watch people, Appraise or any other tier 2 Identify would be great.¡¯ Ebony had slowly been noticing different traits of people he saw before Identifying them and the results he got were slightly changing. It was about conscious observation if he wanted to improve Identify.
The Troll¡¯s scream or whatever noise he was making was quite jarring on the ears. Ebony only got distracted for a moment but hundreds of cuts could be found over the Troll¡¯s body, each one deeper than the last.
Then the Troll started laughing in glee and apologised, ¡°Not meal, warrior! Kill eat stronger!¡±
Ebony remained where he stood and watched the battle, a single one of these soldiers was tearing the earth apart. It was hard to imagine the damage a war with a massive number of them would inflict on nature. The Troll appeared to speak the same language with a heavy accent possibly due to the fangs.
The Troll couldn¡¯t keep up with the accelerating strikes and his response was to hunker down behind the giant rock greatsword that was holding up shockingly well and not melting. He waited for a good change when Ning Xin¡¯s attack landed on his rock blade and flexed with precise timing. It broke her combo and freed the Troll up for an attack.
Ebony saw the mass of muscle jerk a little right after it knocked the swordswoman back, it was lightning mana that built up inside. She must have listened to him and was trying to utilise magic in more ways than just damage output. It hadn¡¯t been enough to stun the beefy warrior but more than enough for her to regain her footing when two blood rings were grinding and sawing the warrior¡¯s wrists while holding it back.
If Ebony had to be amazed by something, it was that the burning cuts on the giant were closing up in real-time. Essentially, the Troll was still near peak condition. He was able to protect vitals even against attacks he was not able to react to.
The 7 wind-propelled blood shots she performed with her Precise Perforation and didn''t manage to pierce the Troll¡¯s skin.
Ebony wanted to step in but he rooted his feet to the ground because it wasn¡¯t every day that they found a warrior that can trade blows with them. He would let her have her fun first so he focused on spreading his senses to check if anything else was around. The Troll was strangely alone as far as he could tell.
Like the reverberation of a bass, vibrations shook the ground and seeped through the Troll¡¯s bones but didn¡¯t reach Ebony since Chaotic Repulsive Membrane was covering him. After his Gravity Manipulation evolved to Gravity Control, he attempted to make the membrane non-chaotic. He wasn¡¯t sure if that would weaken or strengthen it so he could only try and find out.
The Troll only got more excited and roared like he was the king of the hill. No one heard it other than the 3 of them since Ebony had a film of his mana surrounding them to silence the battle as much as possible. The Troll expanded in size and his skin tone got darker.
¡®What kind of skill is that? He got like 10% bulkier.¡¯
It was too bad that the Troll didn¡¯t finish expanding before his rock greatsword was sliced in half but Ning Xin¡¯s charge was stopped by the Troll¡¯s neck. It dug through skin and flesh but was stuck half way through bone. Her blades didn¡¯t stop as they slid out easily and she continued her mutilation.
Ebony wasn¡¯t able to observe the Troll¡¯s regeneration speed since the poor warrior didn¡¯t last a second.
¡°Am¡am I meaty?¡±
¡°The way I like, yes.¡± He tried to calm her down.
¡°I wonder if that¡¯s an average Troll. Honestly, stronger than I imagined.¡± She acted as if she didn''t hear him.
¡°Mmm, I also wonder. If they are soldiers, I find it weird that he was alone.¡± Ebony dug a hole with ease and buried the separated parts of the Troll. He wasn¡¯t interested in eating them and neither was the gluttonous swordswoman.
They needed more information. Ebony wanted to know how Trolls came over and started their apparent invasion. Well, he didn¡¯t want to know since he couldn¡¯t be bothered but he did want to fight Trolls and a desire to stop the ¡®people eating¡¯ activity.
Of course, he didn¡¯t have many deep thoughts about war since he was never part of one. He was simple, if someone was attacking someone or something important to him he would protect.
The two of them were very near Arcta and it didn¡¯t take them long to arrive at the village that fortunately looked no different than usual. He didn¡¯t see any barriers or any Trolls, only the blast of overflowing essence that made an effort to freeze the very space around and outside the village. It affected both of them for a second before they were relieved from that overwhelming pressure.
¡°Welcome back. My baby girl missed you.¡± Milly the intimidating Guardian bear called out from within the village.
When the bear said that, it was hard for them not to make her their first visit. Ebony relaxed his mind even further when he saw that the village was unharmed. He fell into a semi-trance state without his knowledge.
They jumped over the closed gates even though it was the middle of the day. At least the villagers were still going about their day as per usual inside the village instead of holing up.
Being familiar with each other, the villagers greeted and welcomed them and they returned the greeting.
The Lasil family was hosting the Guardian Beast since they were in charge of the baby bear¡¯s health. Willow was a healthy bear as far as they could tell.
Palom and the younger generation of the Lasil family were all standing outside their own house. The ¡®younger¡¯ generation included her parents, aunts and uncles. They were a large family.
¡°Hello.¡± He tetted each of them individually. With respect, since he had been in their care and he still saw himself as the junior. They were also familiar with Ning Xin already and she was equally polite.
¡°Why are you all standing outside?¡± She asked.
¡°The elders are talking and we got kicked out but they want us to be nearby.¡± Palom¡¯s father was tall even amongst Frost Elves, Ebony had to tilt his head almost all the way back to meet his eyes. He rubbed his head shyly when talking about how his entire family got kicked out of the house and was forced to stand around.
¡°Are the Trolls on Elva?¡± Ebony got straight to the point.
¡°Ebony, Scarlet. Please come to the back. Palom, serve the drinks.¡± The fishing partner of Ning Xin, Palom¡¯s grandfather called from within the building.
¡°Well, you should get going.¡± Palom¡¯s father ushered them to their backyard where Milly and Willow were taking as their residence.
Palom ran into the house to prepare the drinks. Probably frost plum juice, it was their staple drink. Ning Xin also enjoyed the cool drink.
They joined the gathering of the village chief, Orren and his party, the village guardian, Korben, Koawe, Grandpa Lasil, two bears and 3 unknowns wearing Imperial armour and one wore a robe. It was the first time he saw an Imperial designed robe but it was obvious with the Empire¡¯s coat of arms embroidered on them. The [Grand Ice Mage Lvl 311] was actually a beastman, to be specific a lady with 4 fluffy white-tipped orange tails waving from under her robe.
She was the first Ice mage that wasn¡¯t a Frost Elf that Ebony met and he obviously recognised that Roya made her robe, just maybe not the embroidery of the Empire¡¯s coat of arms and the slight changes done to it.
One of the armoured men was a [Aqua Sword Grandmaster Lvl ???]. In the past, the most Identify would get him was ¡®water¡¯ instead of ¡®aqua¡¯, it wasn¡¯t a big difference. The other guy was a [Grand Knight Lvl ???] like many of the soldiers in the Imperial army.
The baby bear was asleep, curled up within her mother¡¯s embrace. Korben, Koawe and Grandpa Lasil were seated along with the Aqua Sword Grandmaster who had his helmet off. Everyone else was standing.
¡°Why did you invite these kids? We need to discuss important matters. Kid, just because you wear a mask doesn¡¯t make you a Xeng. The adults have to talk, scram.¡± The Knight confidently rejected their entry as if he didn¡¯t hear the host invite them.
Ebony¡¯s response was to conjure his throne which was now wide enough to fit two of them. She sat down with him before she even had time to get angry. The Grand Knight¡¯s legs sunk into the ground all the way to his hips and he was encased in ice.
The mouths of the people around him were moving but no sound registered in his ears. The Grand Knight shifted to break free from the thin layer of ice but coughed blood when shock penetrated through his armour. The layer of ice fixed itself soon after. It took a short while before Aqua Sword Grandmaster turned from speaking with the elders to facing Ebony. He was aware that the seated human was addressing him but he only saw the man¡¯s mouth moving and no words entered his ears.
¡®So it is possible to cast my domain remotely and not just around me. Wait, what am I doing?¡¯ He snapped out of it when he got a pat on the shoulder from the woman by his side.
He saw the Grand Knight to be out of breath for some reason so he cocked his head to the side, ¡°What happened to him?¡± The whisper was meant for Ning Xin but everyone here heard it loud and clear.
¡°Why don¡¯t we continue where we left off?¡± Koawe clapped and showed everyone his bright smile.
No one had any complaints about that.
Ebony secretly sent a trickle of mana to Ning Xin¡¯s ears, ¡°Why is that knight staring at me like that?¡± he made sure to silence their conversation this time, since she had her mask on, no one could tell if she was talking if they couldn¡¯t hear her and he didn¡¯t need to use his mouth to speak.
¡°You bullied him.¡± She giggled a little.
¡°What? Now that you mention, some of my mana is on him.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t remember? Well, it¡¯s okay. I like it when you bully people who disrespect us.¡±
¡°Disrespect¡I remember now. He looks fine, I didn¡¯t injure him too badly did I?¡±
¡°No. Just his pride, that should be why he¡¯s staring. Grandma said this kind of look usually means they will do something silly or troublesome and we should crush it so they wouldn¡¯t bother us.¡±
¡°Oh. I think I heard something similar when I was younger too. I¡¯ll do it.¡±
Ebony¡¯s overflowing essence which he was directed into the ground like how the Frost Elves taught him slowly seeped through ground below them. He was fluent enough to direct it to the ground and it was easy enough to move it towards the Grand Knight¡¯s feet and envelope him with it from beneath the armoured man. To not disrupt the ongoing conversation, Ebony didn¡¯t want the Grand Knight to panic so he let an extremely small portion leak onto him.
¡°Excuse me¡¡± Palom¡¯s quiet and nervous voice came over before she showed herself with a large tray of blue juice.
¡°Thank you, lass leave it there.¡± Grandpa Lasil comforted his nervous grandchild with his warm smile. A cup floated to each of them and if Ebony¡¯s senses were right, it was Grandpa Lasil who served it.
The Grand Knight was distracted by that and Ebony took the chance to increase the amount of essence he released onto the distracted knight. He lagged up and the cup he was offered dropped.
The Aqua Sword Grandmaster yelled at the Grand Knight who was ¡®embarrassing¡¯ themselves but he didn¡¯t react or apologise to which he was ordered to leave immediately.
Milly the Guardian Beast winked at Ebony so he stopped what he was doing. The Grand Knight took some time to get his bearings and walked out.
¡°Can you update me on what has been said?¡± Ebony nudged his seat partner.
Chapter 168: Scout Quest
He was given a brief summary of the situation.
The Empire and everyone present, are unaware of how apparently millions of Trolls arrived on Elva. Something that no one was able to comprehend or come up with a reason. Not even the few divination mages that they have.
From the sea, an all out attack was launched on every Tide from the first to the fifth. Fifth was the closest to their current position and was almost run over before the Archduke of Dwarves got there. The first was hit the hardest but Navin was there.
The fighting at the border cities was normal despite the unprecedented scale, it was the fact that a handful of towns were already destroyed around the same time the border city started fighting. All the cities were safe due to their size and population. As for why population mattered it was because Navin¡¯s barriers were also powered by everyone¡¯s overflowing mana.
There was no mention of any curse so Ning Xin was guessing that it was probably some kind of top secret to the public. As long as the barriers held, the city had enough defensive capabilities to survive, fight back and maybe obliterate the Trolls.
The biggest question on the table right now was where on Elva did enough Trolls come from to destroy towns at the same time that thousands of colossal ships and tens of thousands of some kind of sea creature that could carry a dozen Trolls across the sea popped up. They should¡¯ve been able to see such a massive army coming long before they got so close but no, they didn¡¯t. They barely got prepared quick enough to defend themselves.
The Imperial Army delegates here were questioning if the Frost Elves came across the Trolls invading from Hoarfrost Glade but even they saw that as unlikely. Ning Xin didn¡¯t know why all of them were saying that it was unlikely so Ebony was equally confused.
Perhaps they were strays but a small number of 40 Trolls attacked Arcta 4 days ago. They were eaten by Milly and she let her presence be known after that and no further attack was made.
¡®Milly is Ancient rank, is there anyone that can fight her?¡¯ Ebony was going to have to ask someone who knew more about Trolls and their general strength. He would assume the Trolls were stronger for now. Although Ning Xin beat the Troll they encountered with relative ease it was true that the Troll exceeded the average lvl 270 warrior on Elva by more than just a little.
The Aqua Sword Grandmaster deeply apologised to the Frost Elves present that the Imperial Army was unable to support the village with any soldiers because it was unlikely they would be targeted. The villagers didn¡¯t mind, but Ning Xin told him that they didn¡¯t seem to know that Milly was a strong beast. Navin knew so perhaps he was assured that Arcta would be safe. The Imperial Army was already spread too thin and many were relocating to the Tides.
The 3 delegates took their leave as they needed to hurry to the Tides, they made a stop here as they were ordered to collect something. The fox lady was holding the simple wooden box, Ebony wasn¡¯t able to peek through the box with his senses.
¡°We encountered a lone Troll in Bubble Hill, very close to the village.¡± He didn¡¯t know if it was crucial but it was better to inform them.
¡°Probably a stray that¡¯s split off to hunt for food. It happens quite often for them. It is almost traditional for them that the weakest members of a squad don''t get enough food and have to hunt for themselves and use the chance to build confidence and individual skill.¡± Korben the village guardian answered.
It seemed like the village chief¡¯s party were also unaware about Trolls¡¯ traits so everyone stayed when Korben and Koawe explained what they knew about Trolls. Certainly not a lot but both of them apparently fought alongside the Imperials during the previous invasion 80 to 90 years ago.
It was outdated knowledge but it shouldn¡¯t differ by too much. Less than a century would at best allow the Trolls to regain their numbers, if they were fast perhaps the overall strength of their army grew a little. They haven¡¯t gotten any news from the battle at the tides since callstones weren¡¯t working when there¡¯s a bombardment of essence everywhere. That might have been the reason their calls weren¡¯t connecting well.
It turned dark pretty quickly as they got lectured for a long time.
The village chief¡¯s party along with a few other higher-level Frost Elves were on scouting duties immediately so it was only Korben, Koawe and bears. Grandpa Lasil returned to chat with his family about the preparations they needed to make. Willow woke up for a while now and surprisingly started making her way to his legs and clinging onto him the moment she woke up.
¡°Why is it unlikely that Trolls came from the shores of Hoarfrost Glade?¡±
¡°It¡¯s more impossible than unlikely. You know we warn¡forbid you from going too far up north where the sea lies right?¡±
¡°Mmm. I was told I would die immediately but I thought it was because I was still a Journeyman at that time. There was a time I went from Fifth Tide and was near the sea but I didn¡¯t sense anything out of place even though I headed straight for the Glades.¡±
Mama bear chuckled. ¡°I would perish in minutes if I stood at the edge of the cliffs facing the sea.¡±
¡°According to our legends, there''s been a type of mana floating above the sea in the whole region for the past thousands of years that erases anything that it touches. There was one void mage in the past that went there but according to him it wasn¡¯t void mana. It doesn¡¯t touch the surface of the sea but it does reach into the Glades. It has been floating or rather, stuck in place for longer than any living Frost Elf can remember. ¡± Korben stated.
¡°It¡¯s been there before I was born.¡± Milly added.
¡°Have you heard anything about that?¡± Ebony asked the woman sitting beside him.
¡°I forgot, I never heard about this.¡± Ning Xin replied.
¡°About the Trolls that suddenly appeared on the mainland, couldn¡¯t it be space magic or something similar?¡±
¡°They barely have magic casters, much less space mages. Even if they did have one or two, it is hard to believe they could bring thousands across such a vast distance. Even if they teleported from the coastline, the Trolls that popped up were all over the continent and not one specific town or city.¡± Koawe explained.
¡°Flying mounts?¡± He tried again.
¡°Will be noticed pretty easily.¡±
¡°Seers didn¡¯t see it coming?¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°Nope.¡± They shook their heads.
¡°They had a helper.¡± She sounded certain.
¡°Yes, that is what Navin suspects too. Elcra is getting more and more valuable but we have weak or non-existent connections with any powers outside Elcra. He has been getting attention from outside Elcra. We just don¡¯t know who or what. The strong hold over the continent by the Empire is troublesome from some perspective.¡± Koawe had a good source of information.
¡°Grandma didn¡¯t tell me anything¡is this the big event?¡± She clicked her tongue in annoyance.
¡°You should go home, it¡¯s late and the Thoyas are worried.¡± Koawe urged.
¡°¡°Mmm.¡±¡± They stood and excused themselves in tandem before looking at each other¡¯s synchronised moves in surprise.
They made sure to inform the Lasils that they were leaving as it would¡¯ve been rude to walk out just like that.
¡°Home huh.¡± Ning Xin voiced out softly.
¡°Mmm.¡± He affirmed softly.
???
¡°Huggy!¡± Kiva dived into Ning Xin¡¯s arms, pushing herself off of Halvis. She had some air time and thoroughly shocked her father who needed to be extra careful about his strength as do all of them. Hence, the fragile baby girl leapt through the air.
Speed was her calling but control of her strength wasn''t.
Since caring for Kiva, it was the first time that she truly cared about controlling her strength. It was also since she had just evolved at that time.
The flying baby girl was caught between her arms and soft paddings, they finally had some use.
It seemed that Roya caught wind that they arrived at the village and were almost done preparing dinner. She made a decision, she would eat with them instead of hiding and eating alone. Since the Xengs didn¡¯t see her as one of them, she shouldn¡¯t have to be adamantly tied down by their traditions. Her mother hammered into her head that she should follow the tradition and she did to her best ability but she didn¡¯t see the need to hide from Roya and her family.
Ning Xin liked their surprised reactions when she sat at the table with them. They ordered a custom-made chair for Ebony since he was getting heavier and heavier. He said it wasn¡¯t necessary since he could easily reduce his own weight but they went ahead and got it made anyway.
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For a village that supposedly didn¡¯t have many fighters, Ebony respected their abilities a lot. Till this day, he could have his ice magic ripped away from him by them. Halvis couldn¡¯t take over control of his conjured ice but with some difficulty, he could stop ice from reaching him.
Their racial affinity to the element was very strong, she wanted to duel with a fighter of their race but there was no one suitable in the village. The guardian was out of her league, after her levelling underground and getting Fervent Intuition her senses have improved a lot. The gathering at the Lasil house had been the perfect opportunity to feel out her new perception for danger.
Korben, she would disgrace herself if she asked for a duel. With Appraise at level 20 and her current level of 247, she could Appraise up to 447 but Korben was above that so she got question marks.
Koawe, the same feeling but stronger. Simply: Get away from him. Just like many people he either had an item to hide from identification or a skill.
She didn¡¯t sense danger from anyone in the village chief¡¯s party. She wouldn¡¯t lose against the chief and his wife but she didn¡¯t think she could beat either of them comfortably either. The other 3 seemed like she would need to use quite a bit of strength but definitely beatable. They were all only Masters with the chief and his wife at level 300 while the other 3 were about 270-290.
The Aqua Sword Grandmaster was hard to get a good sense of. He felt strong for an Imperial compared to the many Grandmasters underground but Korben and Koawe overshadowed him by so much it was hard to say.
She didn¡¯t put the knight or fox woman in her radar, even her fishing elder from the Lasil family felt far stronger. They felt weaker than the Troll she just fought earlier in the day. It had been a real surprise to her as she never thought the herbal family¡¯s leader to be strong, before this, she only saw him as a harmless man. This village was hiding some impressive figures and she might not even know if her generic skill hadn¡¯t evolved.
At this table, she was most surprised that Roya and Halvis were definitely not your average tailor or gardener. Although not a danger to her, she can roughly gauge that these two could duke it out with the village chief¡¯s 3 younger members for a short while. Very impressive with their level of 218 and 220 and their non-combat main Class.
It made her a little curious as to what Roya and Halvis were teaching their son.
¡®I wonder if Ebony knew about their strength, probably not.¡¯
She heard that the village has a few older Frost Elves over to care for their child or grandchild that cannot withstand the environment in their other village. If those people were this strong as well, her worries about the village would abate quite a bit. She knew some of them as her fishing buddies but all her Instincts told her previously was that there was no need to worry.
It was not news to her that Elves in general focused on skill level and refinements far more than Class level. It was the right choice for their race. If she had to make a guess based on the fact that Ebony¡¯s ice magic could be disrupted, Halvis might have Ice Mana Control at level 400 or Ice Mana Command at a lower level. If he had tier 2 or 3 skills at that level it was no wonder she could sense a tiny bit of danger from them. Of course, it might also be that their affinity with ice was far higher than she imagined but that was unlikely in her mind. Ebony already had an unnaturally high affinity for it. It was unlikely that a race could have such immense affinity with any one element.
There was one thing she noted since she first arrived in this village, she couldn¡¯t appraise any adult Frost Elves¡¯ Sub-Class. They might have passed down a skill that hides it to everyone of the same race.
Oddly enough, she trusted her Intuition very heavily.
There was a great flaw in the skill and that was mostly letting her sense danger but only to herself. Sense of danger was different from strength. It might mean that a weaker person might feel more dangerous to her compared to a stronger one. Possibly due to a mismatch up of skills or something like that.
As for the emotion part of the skill, it was far from perfect. It worked best on Ebony and then the Thoyas. On strangers, it didn''t appear too different from her previous tier skill. Familiarity should be the factor here.
¡®The Troll invasion is the big thing that grandma said will happen?¡¯ Ning Xin was perplexed.
The situation was definitely an event big enough that she would definitely know was considered ¡®big¡¯ but her Intuition wasn¡¯t clicking.
She was incredibly bothered by Intuition now.
???
¡°Do babies have 300 stat points in endurance?¡± Ning Xin looked exhausted as she gently cradled Kiva who just fell asleep.
¡°Hmm¡she¡¯s only this hyperactive when you¡¯re here.¡± Roya put index finger on her chin from time to time.
¡°Is..is it my essence?¡± Ebony saw her gulp as she spoke. She had been very worried about her presence and effect on the Frost Elves.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, it''s really nice to see her being active rather than quiet and despondent. She also falls asleep faster this way and she hasn¡¯t been having crying spells in the middle of the night recently.¡± Roya had told her how happy she was to see an active baby more than once.
It seemed like Ebony didn¡¯t have to worry.
¡°I¡¯ll take a walk outside.¡± He informed the women as he put on his boots at the front porch.
¡°What is it that you¡¯re really planning on doing?¡± Ning Xin passed Kiva over and chased after him.
¡°Ask Orren if there¡¯s anything we can do.¡±
¡°Orren is the village chief, right? I¡¯ll go with you.¡±
They tend to walk fully garbed in their equipment and even more so today when there was the current situation with the Trolls. Clovis was ploughing not soil or snow but rock-hard ice outside with Halvis supervising him. He was ploughing with a conjured rake. The crunching sound was a big improvement compared to the sound of his conjured tools snapping.
They didn¡¯t disturb the young boy and left for Orren¡¯s house. Hopefully, he was home.
Unfortunately, he must not have gotten back from the scouting they left to do last night.
So they changed their destination to the Lasil family because Ebony didn¡¯t know where Korben stayed and he didn¡¯t want to look for Koawe. He was going to meet Milly and Willow instead of any of the Lasils.
He was uninvited so he made sure to leave his greetings instead of going to their open backyard without permission.
¡°Hello again, are you here to play with my baby?¡± Milly¡¯s voice travelled to his head.
¡°Mmm. I wanted to talk to you too.¡± Ebony sat on the snow and picked Willow up into an embrace.
¡°Show me your flames.¡± Milly had remained the same curled up position the entire time.
¡°...Why?¡± Ebony knew that people with tier 2 Identify could read his Class but there were few of those and none who asked.
¡°Well, never mind. I hunted with Gen a long time ago.¡±
¡°You know Gen?¡±
¡°You are related to him, I know. I just wanted a confirmation but that doesn¡¯t matter. Is he well?¡±
¡°...Not in the best state but he¡¯s alive.¡± He didn¡¯t think being forced to stay and feed a tree mana to be the best state.
¡°I see.¡±
¡°The two of you are similar in age?¡± He asked curiously.
¡°I¡¯m not sure.¡±
¡®Gen is a Grandmaster that¡¯s ready for his evolution, far from Milly¡ Is it because he¡¯s trapped underground most of his life. Probably.¡¯ Ebony contemplated the vast difference in their levels.
¡°You never looked for him?¡±
¡°I have encountered his forest a few times but he doesn¡¯t let me in. Perhaps he forgot about me.¡±
¡°Surely you can enter.¡± Willow¡¯s growth seemed slow, her paws were incredibly soft and no claws like Milly¡¯s were growing except the soft white protrusion where the claws were supposed to be at.
¡°...He doesn¡¯t let me through, I would presume he doesn¡¯t want to see me.¡±
¡°I see.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t prod too deep.
¡°You wanted to ask something?¡±
Willow struggled to push herself off of him. Korben arrived with a large deer that he meant to offer to Milly and Willow. The baby bear wasn¡¯t able to eat meat yet but started to eat fruits. The two humans greeted the middle-aged Frost Elf.
¡°Is there anything we can do for the village?¡±
¡°It is dangerous,¡± Korben warned.
¡°So is remaining passive.¡± Ning Xin countered.
¡°Indeed, there is in fact work to do.¡± Milly helped guide Willow to eat. Korben argued respectfully but the two humans added that they would fight regardless.
The fire swordswoman was a little rushed from his perspective but he knew it was apparently because of the comment her grandmother left which was to get stronger as fast as possible to reap some benefits. This situation appeared to be what she was referring to.
¡°We are confined to protect the village and only those youngins are out there, they could use some help.¡± Milly cut Korben off.
It seemed like Milly was aware of all the Trolls present or just the sense of the direction where they are. The village chief¡¯s party along with some of the few older fighters they had were all outside the village, dispatched to check and remove the threat if possible. They didn¡¯t have enough manpower to cover all the places Milly wanted to check. She, together with Korben and the rest of the few fighters was confined to the village to protect it so they couldn¡¯t leave.
There was a worrisome number of them down south which was the direct opposite direction where Tova and the Trolls were supposed to come from. It was pretty far and around Bubble Hills since they don¡¯t like the cold. The Trolls are aware of the Frost Elves due to their involvement in the previous wars.
According to them, they were recognised as great threats but there were very few of them. Since a couple of centuries ago, the Trolls appeared to have gained some resistance to cold. A portion of those currently sneaking around was wearing clothes.
That was another point that differed from what they knew of Trolls.
For weapons, Trolls usually fashioned high-quality rock or tree into heavy weapons such as axes, greatswords and clubs. None of them knew how the Trolls enhanced the weapons to a degree that they aren¡¯t any less durable than a blacksmith¡¯s craft. The best bet was that they were much better at utilising life force since they aren¡¯t really able to use mana.
As for armour or clothing, Trolls don¡¯t use them. They don¡¯t have any of such classes because they hate covering their muscles. But now, they saw enchanted clothing on some of them.
The location of the village was compromised but they appeared certain that the Trolls presence was only to prevent any more Frost Elves from joining the defence at the Tides. They couldn¡¯t contact the other village since callstones¡¯ link cannot cross many parts of Hoarfrost Glades. Now that they don¡¯t dare leave, no one was capable of reaching the other village to ask for support.
This made Ebony guess that the Trolls are either much stronger than he imagined or that Milly was much weaker than her level suggests. As rude as it sounded, he was leaning towards the fact that Milly was weaker.
¡°Alright, we¡¯ll scour Bubble Hills. Call us if anything happens, we¡¯ll come as soon as possible.¡±
They were lucky summer just ended and autumn was kicking in but these seniors were a bit uncomfortable at letting the inexperienced village chief and his party from fighting outside a familiar environment where they had overwhelming advantage.
They didn¡¯t rush and returned to their home in Arcta.
Chapter 169: Immobilise
¡°Do you really have to go?¡± Roya was filled with worry.
¡°They see this village as a threat and it wouldn¡¯t be out of the question that they send a powerful force here. Don¡¯t worry, we are not that weak. The less of them, the more at ease we will feel.¡± Ning Xin gave half the reason and the more persuasive reason.
Ebony understood that the two of them just wanted to fight a strong opponent. If he had a choice, he didn¡¯t want to kill them since he could still gain skill levels and even experience though to a far lesser extent. This mindset would probably get him killed and it was too risky for the village.
Troll soldiers move in squads of 8.
In the previous war, about 70% of them were Masters at least level 230 but out of this percentage of Masters about a fourth were capped at 300 but haven¡¯t evolved. They make camps that would have the minimum of 1 squad of Grandmasters. For whatever reasons, there are no mixed squads of Masters and Grandmasters. Probably because the weaker ones cannot keep up.
They had many more Kings than the Empire but most of their Kings weren¡¯t that strong and the Empire¡¯s noble Grandmasters could even fight more than one at the same time. The Trolls learnt to get good Journeymen, Master and Grandmaster evolution but most ignored the evolution to King. They would get a massive power up and they knew the Empire wouldn¡¯t have enough Kings and even capable Grandmasters. The squads of King classed Trolls pressured the Empire a lot and the reason why Navin and the high-ranking nobles were locked down to some places.
Of course, they had some bonafide King Class Trolls that were their peak power but few of them.
No one had a clue how many Trolls were on the mainland, there was a rough gauge due to the town being destroyed but nothing conclusive as there could be many hiding in unpopulated places. Bubble Hills was one of these unpopulated places.
¡°Sasa strong!¡± Kiva cheered and punched out her tiny fists.
¡°Mmhmm.¡± The swordswoman gave the baby tickles.
¡°Take care. Please call us as soon as there¡¯s trouble. We will be pretty nearby.¡± Ebony double-checked his equipment. He wanted to get Roya to reinforce the robe where Icicle rested as it was getting heavier and the robe seemed like it couldn¡¯t bear its weight. It would have to wait.
¡°Alright¡come back for dinner whenever you can.¡± Roya knew she couldn¡¯t stop them.
His Glacial Models were ¡®crude¡¯ but they were surprised he could imbue his will into them. None of the non-fighters here could imitate him and make fighting sculptures.
They quietly left the village. Once out of sight, their trailer was brought out.
¡°I miss you!¡± Ning Xin jumped onto the sofa with the white tiger soft toy.
Ebony drove them down south but still within Hoarfrost Glade. It would be a long journey but he was planning to go down as far as they safely could before entering Bubble Hills and start scouring their way up north and back to the village.
His increase in Intelligence greatly increased the speed at which he could drive the trailer. Obviously, he had activated the illusion function. They would travel in peace.
They would spend a few hours running to train their movement skill, Ebony tends to run alongside the vehicle too. She didn¡¯t have the stamina that he had. A large portion of the distance they covered was during the time they ran together.
It was peaceful for 2 days. He woke his housemate up by braking the vehicle and almost sent her knocking into the kitchen cabinet. Instead of complaining she got her weapons ready, put her mantle and boots on. She was so fast it really didn¡¯t matter that she was unprepared.
She was practising the imbuement of different energies into ingredients as part of her new cooking regime. So far she didn¡¯t get any positive results.
All six of his Glacial Models leapt back and hid behind the trailer, holding onto each other since there wasn¡¯t space for all of them.
¡°What do you see?¡± She came over to the front seat and asked.
¡°4 squads. They are cooking boars over a campfire.¡± They were still hidden by the illusion and the Trolls don¡¯t seem to notice them.
¡°Not attacking?¡±
¡°One of the squads is Grandmasters.¡±
¡°...We should be fine if we toss a bomb over and suppress them quickly.¡±
¡°Is that what your intuition is telling you?¡±
¡°Not exactly. It¡¯s telling me I might not come out in one piece.¡±
¡°Then why?¡±
¡°Because you¡¯re here.¡±
¡°Then I guess I have no choice but to be your accomplice.¡±
They got a little closer and started preparing their bomb as his Models were sent to surround them but far enough so that they wouldn¡¯t be caught in the explosion.
It took a minute and a third of the fire mage¡¯s manapool. He shot the bomb like a cannonball with the powers of his mind and kept the trailer immediately. Both of them repositioned themselves by splitting up left and right.
¡®Hot damn¡¡¯ Ebony saw one of the Grandmasters who was sitting against a large tree standing up and sticking his chest out to take on the glowing ball of doom straight on.
A Grandmaster Troll averaged around 7 to 8 metres tall, absolute giants. He hugged the tiny bomb right before it fractured and burst open. The Troll used his body to take every broken ice fragment but his body wasn¡¯t able to hold the explosion of flames and lightning from within. The mini gravity whirlpool was amazing at helping to compress her elemental mana. It also helped to spread the flames and the ice fragments.
The whole area of snow instantly evaporated and the trees turned to ashes almost just as quickly. All the giant lumps of muscles were relatively close together and none of them were spared. Ebony didn¡¯t want to remove the effects of her heat and he was actually a little cautious around the dark flames.
Ebony was glowing from his low output of Frostblaze Augmentation but he turned that up to the limit and got covered in his flames. They usually didn¡¯t need to speak with each other to know what move to take next. Charge!
But this time, Ebony voiced out ¡°I¡¯ll take the grandmasters¡±
There was not a single notification of a kill. The Troll took their bomb head-on and survived. As expected from a Vitality and Strength focused race.
It was a lucky situation that the squads stuck close together with their squad mates and the Grandmasters who were level 320 according to Ning Xin.
Ebony had over 3000 mana per minute to spare, he could sustain his domain within five metres for as long as he liked unless something was causing him to increase his mana consumption since it only required over 2100 mana per minute. He had spare for Stalwart Endowment while Frostblaze Augmentation, Chaotic Repusive Membrane would eat away his mana pool. The rest of his consumption would go to his active skills and powering the runes in Icicle.
He had to decompress mana for Frostblaze Augmentation as per usual since his body would be frozen solid if he didn¡¯t do so. Stalwart Endowment needed to level more before he could increase the output of Frostblaze Augmentation.
He might have moved in too early as it was scorching hot but it was precisely the time to move in. The Trolls were cutting apart their own burnt flesh!
It might have been a little counterintuitive to start freezing them but it was much better to slow their recovery. Only the one that hugged the bomb had his chest blown wide open and was dying because his hard-to-melt ice was stuck deep in his body and he burst them apart to start freezing the Troll from within.
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One less trouble.
The other four were fine and dandy other than deep burns that they were tearing away from their body. Thanks to their prioritisation of removing burnt flesh, he was able to get in the middle of the squad without retaliation and spread his domain.
They were shocked by the additional pain when they moved their bodies to scrap their flesh, they reacted violently and caused even more pain for themselves as any movements were attacked by his domain¡¯s mana vibrations. He focused the ice mana on freezing their injuries so that it couldn¡¯t heal.
All his Glacial Models took one target and stabbed at their feet, they were strengthened in his domain. Ebony took the last one himself while he continued to burn freeze the one that took the bomb. Every greatsword under his command cast Frostblaze Cladding and successfully took advantage of the panic the Trolls were under from the shocking pain throughout their bodies when they moved.
It was going almost too well when a couple of Master warrior Trolls charged into his domain. His domain was small since he didn¡¯t have that much mana and 2 of the Grandmasters were clubbed so hard they were sent out of his domain. He had to use more mana to expand his domain since these Trolls were gigantic and they filled up all that space. So he hadn¡¯t been able to react to outside help.
Ebony didn¡¯t move out and continued to suppress 6 of the Grandmasters. Although he was able to cast his domain remotely now, it was a new revelation and he probably wouldn''t be able to suppress them that way.
He trusted his partner with every other Troll and the 2 bigger Trolls that were knocked out. Nothing else barged into his domain, and those that did were easily added to the group of frozen statues.
Ebony hammered into them to break them into pieces but the only one he killed so far was the one that took the bomb. The others were not completely frozen through and didn¡¯t shatter with each strike. With Guided Path and Sonic Intrusion, it didn¡¯t take long for him to shatter a layer of frozen flesh. He knew these Troll¡¯s flesh were shockingly hard to penetrate with his ice. They were protecting themselves with their control over life force using it like mana reinforcement.
His Glacial Models melted and moulded themselves to stick the Trolls onto the ground so that they couldn¡¯t leave his domain. The Trolls were able to move but their movement caused the frozen flesh to shatter and more ice started to freeze the layer beneath. This repeated and they finally understood that they would survive longer if they remained still.
It didn¡¯t change the fact that it only bought them more time to suffer in silence. They couldn¡¯t even scream.
It got to the point where Ebony left his domain to back Ning Xin up. The two Trolls that escaped his domain were mostly healed up which was a huge problem. Within his domain, 3 Glacial Models were reformed with the mana inside to continue the smashing of the frozen Trolls.
Most of his mana was gone due to the expansion of his domain necessary to swallow up the giant Trolls.
As for the fight outside his domain. 3 weaker squads, despite being further from the blast sustained far greater injuries. The burns were bone-deep and their movements were jerky from the lightning that was infused as well. To the swordswoman, they were just unmoving targets like Ebony¡¯s.
Unlike Ebony though, she had impressive offensive capabilities with weaker opponents. She easily killed 2 squads before the 2 Grandmasters were released from his domain.
Even with the reinforcements, she managed to completely annihilate the lackeys. The fact that the 2 reinforcements were originally weakened by him helped a lot.
By the time he was ready to help her, the 2 Trolls were back at their peak state.
There was a trait of the Trolls that the Frost Elves told them to utilise. If one was a warrior, they would almost always prefer to split off and fight one on one rather than fighting in teams. The Trolls supposedly had great teamwork since they fought in groups of 8 but they were very focused on individual strength and feats of strength. In a setting with few opponents, there was a very good chance of breaking them apart into singular opponents.
This was pretty good for them. They might have gotten amazing at synchronising their fighting styles but it was true that they countered each other to some extent.
Sadly, when Ebony came to back Ning Xin up by pulling one of their enemies away they stuck together.
¡°Warrior, fight me.¡± He didn¡¯t think when he taunted but it didn¡¯t work anyway.
¡°Not warrior. Get lost!¡±
¡®They hate me huh.¡¯ They evaded his charge, not even letting him get close. One of them pushed Ning Xin away and they backed off before he could reach them.
Although they had ridiculous levels of strength, their speed was not something that allowed them to run from him forever. Not with Ning Xin on their tails.
They were indeed weak to temperatures both hot and cold. Ebony didn¡¯t get to observe their normal regeneration speed but these Grandmasters were regenerating about twice as fast as the first Troll they encountered when under fire. He could imagine them to be nightmares without fire magic.
He could practically stop their healing as long as he could freeze their wounds and stop them from tearing away the frozen parts. They did seem to have some form of enhancement that forcefully stops his ice from digging but his flames could do the job.
It seemed like even with the level and skill level gap, his compressed tier 2 enhancement and Ning Xin¡¯s fire enhancement together with a tier 3 life force based enhancement was enough to compete against them. He knew he had about half these particular Grandmaster Trolls¡¯ Strength while Ning Xin barely lost out in strength when her Mortal¡¯s Pulse kicked in. He wouldn¡¯t lose out in stats if his body could withstand a greater stress of compressed mana so he didn¡¯t need to decompress Frostblaze Augmentation.
¡°Icicle, are you hungrier than usual?¡± He twisted Icicle¡¯s body to face him. He needed to feed his greatsword more mana than usual.
The reaction was more violent than usual with the shining blue light glowing.
¡°Did your mother do something to you?¡± A layer of ice formed on the blade¡¯s flat body.
¡°You got less injured, she improved your durability runes?¡±
The layer of ice was reabsorbed. He assumed that he was right. Icicle was made or Rare quality wood but he abused it more than a normal Grandmaster warrior would with his strength.
Kong Jing probably noticed how badly damaged Icicle got after a few fights with the hardy golems. Even so, there were cuts and dents in Icicle. Hacking ice wasn¡¯t gentle on it. It was slowly regrowing and piecing itself together. Faster than he initially assumed when Kong Jing said it would be slow.
The battle could¡¯ve gone very differently. Like mana, life force is also not an unlimited resource. The first bomb consumed a lot of the Trolls life force, the amount used to protect themselves from his freezing wasn¡¯t little either. If they focused on breaking free or used that skill that increased their strength or muscles even more, it might have been better for them.
The recent opponents he had were really undermining his abilities and that was good too. His mana was supposedly so powerful, if he lightly pokes Icicle into a monster the entire creature would be rock solid almost instantly. The ice mana inside Icicle was far too condensed for a normal creature. The Topaz Golems were earthen creatures, highly resistant and even had the weird consumption topaz mana within their bodies that made freezing them impractical.
The Trolls had their life force enhancement which to be fair, was supposedly common in most higher-level physically inclined monsters.
¡°Domain. Cheat, but I think it''s not complete.¡±
¡°The consumption is still too high for me. It increases vastly when there''s any struggling inside and the number of targets also increases the effort I need to keep it stable. Difficult enough that my core skill was unstable.¡± Ebony answered truthfully.
The mental effort required against these Trolls were far greater than he thought, domains were extremely mentally straining. It was due to his first Core Skill that he could even maintain it.
This made him recall Mark¡¯s domain, it was one that required little to no mental effort to maintain. Just a ton of mana that he supplies with the help of fire mana ores. There were definitely mana efficiency runes on his spear too.
¡°Are you sure¡I didn¡¯t see you having any trouble with the spell.¡±
¡°Really, eight of them were pushing it. That was why 2 of them were knocked out so easily.¡±
¡°Still unfair.¡±
She was adamant and she was right. Within his domain, he felt stronger than ever. It felt like he could take on far stronger opponents. Now that he could cast it relatively stably, he could push its level further and faster.
¡°You have a ton of life force, why not try creating something like a life force domain that sets up whenever you use Mortal¡¯s Pulse. You pulse your heart with so much energy, I bet a lot of it just dissipates into the surroundings.¡±
¡°That¡¯s¡a great idea. I¡¯ll hold back on my second core skill slot a bit longer.¡±
The advantage of fighting stronger opponents was definitely the chance to allow their skill levels to catch up to their Class levels. Like normal people.
They cleaned the place up a little, including burying the Trolls¡¯ remains.
Just before he pulled their trailer out something black flash across the corners of his sight.
¡®That was Obsius right? Too fast to be a normal cysaru, she must have been doing well.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s perception was good enough to tell from the tiny details despite the speed that the black figure leapt through the skies.
¡°Is there something up there?¡±
¡°No, I just saw an acquaintance fly across Bubble Hills. Let¡¯s go.¡±
¡°Not gonna say hello?¡±
¡°It¡¯s okay. We¡¯re going to Bubble Hills anyway.¡±
He was happy they had the illusion over their trailer to conceal them. The area of Bubble Hill they were going towards was usually avoided. If Korben¡¯s assessment was that they should be careful there, then he was going to try to be careful.
The landscape was gentle and easy to traverse but over the next two days, the sky kept getting darker.
¡°That¡¯s cool.¡±
Ebony looked up at the sky that seemed to split in two by a straight line of black clouds. Everything ahead was bathed in darkness and they were at the edge where plenty of daylight reached.
He turned left towards Bubble Hills, staying along the edge and not driving into the shade.
Chapter 170: Reinforcement
¡°Stop waving!¡± Ning Xin grabbed Ebony¡¯s hand and tried to force it down.
¡°Why? Look, it''s waving back.¡± He pointed to the translucent glob of white that was floating off the ground.
It had something like white tentacles as legs and a pair of four-fingered hands. He couldn¡¯t see any facial features, as if it was constantly blurred off. The creature was floating above the tallest hill in the area and under the dark clouds whereas their trailer was under daylight.
¡°That¡¯s a level 500 Ghast that physical attacks don¡¯t work on. Fire, ice, gravity, wind and blood don''t really affect it either so stop fooling around!¡± She scolded without much nervousness in her voice.
¡°You wanted to hunt me, a ¡®spirit¡¯ in the past.¡±
¡°Ice type, away from their natural environment. I thought I had a good chance. And ghasts are completely different!¡± She put more strength into trying to stop his waving arm.
The ghast continued to return the wave.
¡°What about lightning magic and sound magic?¡±
¡°Lightning should work. I don¡¯t know about sound but since it¡¯s arcane, it should work to some extent. Please stop waving! I don¡¯t have a strong magic body yet, we¡¯ll¡I might perish with a single touch.¡±
Ebony put his hand down. The Ghast saw them through the concealment of their trailer, he should take it seriously. The Ghast¡¯s attacks might go right through his ice shield without even slowing down if what she said was true.
¡°Your mask doesn¡¯t do anything about that?¡±
¡°...It does. There¡¯s a function that requires mana or any other energy source from me, I can cast some sort of enchantment that allows my physical body or weapon to damage it. I didn¡¯t focus on that so my evolution didn¡¯t strengthen that ability, it¡¯s very limited and not efficient.¡±
¡°There really is nothing that your mask can¡¯t do is there.¡± He wasn¡¯t really asking the redundant question.
The Ghast slouched when he drove off. Ebony made sure to say bye.
They reached the furthest they were advised to, and started from the centre of Bubble Hills. If he flew up high enough, he was able to see both Trailane Plains on his right and Hoarfrost Glade on his left. The area behind them was called the Garden of the Deceased. It was supposedly covered in extremely thick clouds and no sunlight reaches any part of it.
The Ghast standing on that tall hill was famous, hence they knew its level. It was also King ranked. Ebony also knew a little about that region of Bubble Hill¡¯s history from Clovis¡¯s study. There had been a book on it but mostly expositions, theories, a few statements and testimonies by some random person long ago. Clovis was very interested in the place and so were many Frost Elves due to the proximity with their village and the Glades so they had quite a few books about the Garden of the Deceased.
None of them were similar in terms of its history but one thing remained consistent. The Ghast floating there never moved from that spot for as long as this place had been recorded on maps. The story goes that waving at it would get them a wave back but even touching the grass was black behind the film of darkness would cause the Ghast to charge at anyone.
No one saw a monster or animal past the darkness but the plants there seemed to be doing well other than being black in colour.
The moment one is touched by the Ghast they disappear completely, from body to equipment to belongings. The theories that they are teleported had long been debunked as some people pushed people they didn¡¯t like past it and they got kill notifications. Usually instantaneous if the books and rumours were to be believed.
All in all, nothing much is known about what¡¯s beyond the hill where the Ghast guards. The ¡®history¡¯ that they know of was from books passed down for long enough that it was hard to tell if it was true.
They started their scout for real.
The winding paths were less than ideal for driving through. There was no way to go fast and they needed to check every corner. Sometimes there were too many hills concentrated in an area they chose to walk or fly instead. Flying wasn¡¯t their forte and it was hard to check every spot if they flew, going on land made them less visible and was the more comfortable choice.
They zigzagged from the Glades to Trailane Plains over and over again.
The only point of interest was plenty of bloody craters that were relatively fresh but no bodies to be found.
Ebony shared his random thoughts.
¡°What if some high ranking troll just tossed their soldiers from the sea? They know that most of them can just regenerate so they don¡¯t have to worry about killing their own soldiers. They told us that the Empire didn¡¯t notice the army of ships before it was too late, perhaps they started to throw their units over before they started their attack.¡±
¡°And those craters are where the trolls landed? A small amount of trolls that pass by the borders can easily cause plenty of harm and unrest. That¡actually sounds possible.¡±
They decided to share their findings and guesses when they returned but they weren¡¯t done scouring Bubble Hills.
Ebony¡¯s proficiency with casting a pseudo Chaotic Repulsive Membrane on someone else using surrounding gravity mana was improving quickly thanks to the evolution of Gravity Mana Manipulation to Control. He couldn¡¯t control someone else¡¯s gravity mana like how Ning Xin couldn¡¯t manipulate the blood inside him, at least not effectively.
8 days passed.
They were very thorough about their search but only found a single squad of Master Warriors. It was actually the other way around since they were jumped on. They were out of their trailer since it was having a hard time crossing some paths but both of them sensed the attack easily.
They were not a problem, Ebony was given the chance to test his domain again but the Trolls didn¡¯t stick together and avoided him. He locked two of them down as they didn¡¯t think much of him and they were powerless inside his domain. He took care of them so fast that he was able to chase after the others before Ning Xin could process them.
About to reach the area near Arcta, they received a call from Roya informing them that Korben wanted them to return. It was perfect timing.
Ebony didn¡¯t come across Obsius.
It didn¡¯t even take an hour before they returned. Arcta was safe and sound but there were no kids running about and the playground was silent.
They made a stop at the Thoyas first but Roya and Kiva were out with only the two guys working out a new patch of frozen soil.
They didn¡¯t want to disturb the focused Clovis after Halvis eyed them away so they left for the Lasil¡¯s house.
It appeared that Kiva was in their backyard, they could hear her from the front door.
Palom escorted them in but was asked to leave by her parents. Even Ebony could tell that she was a little upset when they said that ¡°The adults have to talk.¡± because she was older than him and Ning Xin but she didn¡¯t argue.
Korben and Koawe were present together with a bunch of elders that Ebony never saw before. By old, the men mostly had long beards and the ladies were hunched back. They were really as old as one can get.
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[Arch Wood Mage Lvl ???]
[???]
[Bow Artisan King Lvl ???]
[Arrow Artisan King Lvl ???]
¡®Arcta sure hid many King Classes¡¡¯ Even the wood mage appeared to be a crafter but he hadn''t seen or sensed these presences till this day. Roya was standing behind the old lady with the question marks while eyeing Kiva who was rolling in the snow with Willow. They were playmates but it was worrisome that the similar-sized cub might accidentally injure her baby.
¡°We¡¯ll leave out the introductions for now, we have more urgent news to discuss.¡± Korben cut their greetings down but he didn¡¯t need to as the old Frost Elves excused themselves ¡°These old bones will get back since our business here is done.¡±
¡°Involving us?¡± Ebony was the one who asked while he forcefully shut Everlasting Tranquillity down. This way, he found himself actually caring about certain ¡®less troublesome¡¯ matters and wouldn¡¯t fall into random trances so easily.
Apparently, Koawe personally went to the front lines to get more information since remote communication was cut off. To summarise, things were getting bad enough that the Frost Elves'' had to act. They were on friendly terms with the Empire but Ebony didn''t realise to what degree their relation went.
¡°We don¡¯t have the leeway. Koawe and I are the only ones capable of fighting on the front lines. One of us has to stay in the village and the other would have to cross the Glades to get help from Tuctra.¡± Korben explained.
Communication through callstone wasn¡¯t possible to both the front lines and their other village, Tuctra. The mana and environment cut all of the mental links.
¡°Do you have to send someone?¡±
¡°Fifth Tide is barely holding itself together. The Dwarven Archduke is a Warsmith but he is but a single person, the scope of battle is expanding due to the Troll''s shamans. Not to mention, his no longer at Fifth Tide since they managed to stablise the situation.¡±
They heard that the Troll Shamans were experts at creating land to fight on due to the many wars they have been on. When Korben and Koawe explained about Trolls previously, they mention how after the Tides were built Trolls had trouble since they couldn¡¯t fight on the sea and the place they were attacking were all cliffs. The Tides had the overwhelming advantage of defensive towers and height, the Trolls could only take attacks without any defensive measures.
The earth wielding Shamans trained over thousands of years at conjuring land. Tova had numerous mysterious lakes and ponds that had never been covered for the past thousands of years. The Shamans trained to cover the lakes over and over but the lakes always resurfaced or the conjured land constantly disappeared.
A phenomenon that even the Empire investigated but had no clue why or how. Elva had something similar. The Great Lake that Xienor was constructed beside.
The two Frost Elves didn¡¯t know why but Ebony knew, Ful informed him.
The Spear Saint''s attacks cannot be removed, recovered or even covered up so easily. The only reason Ful¡¯s ¡®sister¡¯ survived so long was due to her race and personal strength as a Phoenix. Till this day, the after-effects of his spear thrusts onto Elcra haven''t been removed.
This only improved the Troll¡¯s Shamans'' ability as their skill levels skyrocketed easily with those lakes.
Ebony couldn¡¯t imagine but according to them, the sea can no longer be seen from any of the Tides. Wastelands stretched for months down the cliffs of the coast. ¡®Months¡¯ were at Korben¡¯s speed if he moved at his greatest speed without stopping or anything disrupting him. This made Ebony rethink how large the sea was or how fast the ships here were to only take a year or two to reach Tova.
The Trolls created their own battlefield to stand a chance at breaking through the tides and also so that they could fight on their terms. Their main camps were obviously out of reach of the Tides'' defensive towers and mages. They moved around and laid siege attempts as and when they liked while the Imperial Army had no choice but to play along and hop onto their battlefield.
¡°Once Fifth Tide is overrun, Arcta will be the very first target,¡± Koawe added.
¡°...So Navin sort of forced you to make a move?¡± Ning Xin said.
They shook their head without giving any details. The Frost Elves didn¡¯t have a choice, Milly wasn¡¯t going to leave her child here when an Impending invasion was going to come at any time and Korben or Koawe alone isn¡¯t enough to assure the village¡¯s safety. It was a subtle threat behind the call for help. Once Fifth Tide is down, Arcta is next.
There weren''t many places to run to with a village full of crafters either. Hoping to defend so many villagers on the move was far from ideal and the young children couldn¡¯t exactly run fast.
¡°I would be supporting the front lines but I remembered you two were here. This way, one of us can get actual support from Tuctra.¡± Koawe smiled.
The village chief¡¯s party was still going around the surroundings for their scouts and in Korben and Koawe¡¯s assessment, not ready to take part in a war. Not when their village was so understaffed.
The initial plan was that getting reinforcements wasn¡¯t even a choice since the Frost Elves from Tuctra usually don¡¯t care much about the war with Trolls, the most they would do was send volunteers to protect Arcta. So one of them would gladly join the front lines.
It was just so coincidental that all the other strong old fighters returned to Tuctra when they went to fetch Milly. Those people felt uncomfortable with the heat in Arcta and went back for a holiday, at ease that their guardian beast would be present anyway. None of them expected a Troll invasion.
¡°Okay.¡± Ning Xin affirmed.
¡°I haven¡¯t said what-¡± Koawe continued but got cut off by her.
¡°You want the two of us to support Fifth Tide. This helps the village and we want to fight strong opponents.¡±
¡°Surely, there are more reinforcements other than us.¡± Ebony added. He didn¡¯t overestimate themselves, their impact probably wouldn¡¯t be big enough. The individual Trolls were too strong and fighting an army of them was vastly different from removing a few squads that got caught off guard. Not to mention there would be much stronger Trolls there to command the battle.
¡°Freelancers are being hired but not many would take the job. The majority is tasked to escort and protect the supply lines from the Great Farms since there¡¯s the presence of roaming Trolls on land. Most nobles are being called back from whatever dungeons they are in but they need to protect their territory as well. Some towns are unable to let their nobles go as their nearby dungeons are constantly under-cleared and under the threat of dungeon breaks.¡±
Korben explained about some towns that are surrounded by multiple high-level dungeons and the lack of clearers or freelancers to decrease these dungeons¡¯ population. Or some nobles who purposely stops the killing of dungeon monsters. Allowing the dungeon to build up essence to create higher value materials or even controlled strengthening of a dungeon so that they can increase the rank of the dungeon as a whole.
This was dangerous but of immense value, if they could improve the materials or increase the average monster level in a controlled manner that was near their town or city so it was not uncommon for nobles to take up such policies.
The royal order was to stop such activities but it takes time for them to clear off a build-up of monster populations even with freelancers¡¯ and professional dungeon clearers help. Depending on their distance from the Tides, it just meant that reinforcements to the front lines would both take a lot of time and the reinforcements wouldn¡¯t be all that helpful. They cannot leave their own towns and cities without anyone taking charge after all, the most would be a few sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters and many a few more generations depending on the noble family¡¯s size.
The food situation was what most freelancers were in charge of now since the army couldn¡¯t afford any more manpower away from the front lines. These supply lines were of utmost importance so they were highly paid and only the best of the best were hired. That or a large number of escorts. The amount of food the army was going through every single day had to be unimaginable for him.
¡°Is the situation that bad even after the population growth and the Empire¡¯s general advancements?¡± Ebony commented.
¡°...I saw the front lines, the Trolls are more coordinated than ever and their numbers are unlike anything I''ve ever seen in the previous war. The Trolls are more aggressive this time but also more cautious. Navin¡¯s not willing to tell me more even though he knows something is up.¡± Koawe still smiled.
¡°Is it because the Trolls have a new ruler? A King Classed Shaman if I remember correctly.¡± Ning Xin pondered.
Ebony was gonna guess it was knowledge her grandma left.
¡°...That is bad news. They have so many King Classed warriors since they always retreat before things get bad. Quite a few of them survive each time but their shamans...¡± Korben frowned.
He was probably worried it was a bonafide, maxed out Fortifications King compared to the mass-produced kings. That would be a massive pain in the butt.
They informed him that unlike their warriors who evolve if they don¡¯t have talent, every shaman is groomed to have the best Fortifications they can get. So an extremely powerful Grandmaster shaman has gotten even more powerful. It would be bad if it was a particularly smart one and there was a very good chance it was smart.
Koawe was going to bring them there to introduce them into the fight but not immediately, he had some preparations to make. They needed to wait for the previous 4 elders to complete crafting some stuff that would be donated to the Imperial Army as part of the Frost Elves support. It wasn¡¯t so much of a donation as it was a trade. The Frost Elves were getting food in exchange but it wasn¡¯t exactly a fair exchange.
The village needed a source of food now that hunting was extremely difficult and they didn¡¯t really have many crops or farms. The army needed equipment to which the crafters could whip up or take from their stockpile.
They remained to play with Willow and Kiva. Roya entrusted Kiva to them before she returned to cook dinner.
Willow was not willing to part with Kiva as the only similar-sized creature around it. Milly helped to distract her daughter when it was feeding time and they snatched the sleeping baby up to carry home.
Chapter 171: SOS
Hector shot right up and unleashed a flurry of punches into the air. ¡°Wah PAA!!¡±
¡°Shut up.¡±
¡°SHH!¡±
¡°Quiet.¡±
A tattered gloved palm covered his mouth and pushed his head back down.
Hector¡¯s body groaned in protest from the violent movement and his head was throbbing so hard his brain was about to spill out of his ears and nose.
He was in awe of his own reflex for sitting up as he wasn¡¯t able to move a single muscle. Well, except those required for beating his heart and controlling his voice.
He saw all his crewmates surrounding him. They were hiding behind a massive tree and were all tensed up.
¡®One two three four five¡¡¯ Hector counted.
¡°Wh-where''s the captain?¡± He whispered as softly as possible, his lips and throat were dryer than he expected.
He only got another hush in reply as he made everyone tenser. The situation they were in was probably worse than he imagined despite everyone who was alive before he made himself unconscious still being alive with the exception of his captain¡¯s absence. It felt like an hour before all the non-moving crewmates breathed a sigh of relief as they slumped down and rested their tense bodies.
¡°Still alive?¡±
¡°He better be! We carried his sleeping ass!¡±
¡°You bastard! We were almost busted thanks to your noisy ass.¡±
Hector chuckled at their comments.
He did his best to move his body to get another healing potion out. It worked wonders but his body wasn¡¯t listening to him well.
¡®At least I¡¯m not missing any parts.¡¯ Hector didn¡¯t have any type of perception to check his internals but he could stiffly move around without coughing blood and he decided that was good enough.
¡°Can someone catch me up?¡±
He got a debrief and he didn¡¯t really like what he heard.
¡°So capta-¡±
¡°Is not dead.¡±
Hector was cut off before he could continue. His squad leader and everyone else were sure. They had eyes filled with hope. After the journey on the sea, Hector realised that those that had hope tend to struggle and live longer while those who may be stronger but didn¡¯t have a glimpse of hope in their eyes tend to give up easily.
¡°But he¡¯s injured. We were tracking his trail of blood but had to hide from that procession of Trolls.¡± The scout from a different squad and everyone else had a look of fear when he talked about the Trolls.
¡®Damn trolls are durable and that regeneration is far more than I imagined.¡¯ Hector remembered that his punch didn¡¯t actually kill those Trolls. He expected more from himself despite being a Journeyman.
Supposedly he had been unconscious for more than a month which is mindblowing to him.
His captain was also crazy, he remained to take the 8 Trolls himself and somehow found his way back to the group. Then he changed tactics and went to scout on his own even though he only had Generic Stealth and Tracking.
They were soldiers and were forced to listen to orders since the captain didn¡¯t want anyone to hold him back. With precedence of the first battle against the Trolls, the others had no say. They weren¡¯t capable enough.
Captain Cain gained confidence, reporting that the Trolls weren¡¯t that strong and the group they struggled against had been a more particular group. To which only he was guessing it was a clan that focussed on their regenerative abilities. He went on to hunt them himself if he decided that the squads were not something his men could take on but also let them go into the fights so that they could increase their skill levels.
Thanks to the hunts, all of them had gotten stronger.
During the period he was getting carried around the coast, they found out that the population on the coast only increased over time. It made staying hidden extremely difficult and they were no longer able to find singular squads to hunt. It was almost as if the Trolls were migrating.
They were close to reaching the hidden camp that one of the Truewater family is in charge of. Captain Cain had to hide from this ¡®procession¡¯ that had a King Classed Shaman in their midst and they split up. Hector got his bearings and stretched his aching body. He breathed mana into his body and told the others he would carry his own weight now.
It was a miracle all of them were alive and that they even managed to protect his unconscious limp self in this environment. To that, he had unending gratitude for them.
¡°Well¡we¡¯re lost.¡±
Hector wasn¡¯t that surprised since this place was huge and they were forced to hide all over the place. ¡°Aren¡¯t we close to Truewater¡¯s camp?¡±
Hector forgot to speak ¡®respectfully¡¯ but he didn¡¯t care at this point, they all knew he was part of the Lord family and his casual mention of the duke¡¯s family name was a habit.
¡°It¡¯s called a hidden camp for a reason. We only saw a few tracks too small to be from Trolls and there aren¡¯t any monsters here but we can¡¯t pinpoint their location.¡±
Hector clicked his tongue. ¡°Truewater¡¯s Watershade¡¡±
¡®Crap¡a group of masters with no real scouts can¡¯t find that.¡¯ Hector was sure that the one in charge of Tova¡¯s hidden camp would be a King from the Truewater family. The Truewater family was capable, the best water mages of a myriad of usage with water magic that one could find in the whole of the Empire. Even his family¡¯s young who have an affinity with water magic learns the basics of water barriers from them.
Hector had no doubt that a General of the Truewaters sent to enemy territory to make a foothold to be very capable. The Truewaters was an Archduke candidate for the humans, famed for the array of tier 3 skills they have from movement to perception to enhancement to offensive to defensive to physical skills and spells, they had them all. Those that joined the army always had them trained to tier 3 already as part of their family head¡¯s policy and if this General was who he thought it was, they had zero chance of finding a camp that this General wanted to keep hidden.
¡°Anyone knows the General¡¯s name?¡±
¡°Captain didn¡¯t say. There are only 2 General Truewaters, does it really matter who?¡± One of the older squad leaders answered.
¡°Ell, if it¡¯s the next head of the Truewaters, we might as well give up on searching and scream for help so that they find us instead.¡± Hector blurted out his thoughts. There were more than that but only two were real, Major Generals.
¡°That¡¯s actually a good idea!¡± Captain Cain¡¯s voice came from above and scared all of them into alertness.
¡°Crap! Don¡¯t scare us cap!¡±
Captain Cain jumped down the tree branch and knocked the head of the one complaining for letting him get so close without realising.
¡°Sleepyhead finally woke up huh? Time to get to work!¡±
¡°Yes sir!¡±
Hector got his directives as they lay in wait for a bit more, just for the procession to get further.
¡°Why are they all moving here though? There were barely any ships on the coast right?¡± Hector asked.
No one had a good answer for him, they had little to no information.
¡®Wait a damn minute, where are they hiding their ships? Those things are massive¡did Truewater destroy them?¡¯
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Hector shrugged, they really knew too little. They had no way of ranged communication in their current situation and that was probably the biggest problem. Since much of their equipment and tools were destroyed or lost at sea, they were pretty troubled.
His stomach grumbled and it led to a chain effect.
¡°Gah! Why did you remind me of my hunger!¡±
Hector got another round of complaints, they were all hungry and he was supposedly only stuffed with water down his throat while he was unconscious. He ate a pill that could sustain him longer without eating before he fainted but an entire month passed. The others had more and more trouble finding food and they had been going hungry for some time now.
They haven¡¯t resorted to eating Troll flesh because shamanic plagues were a common story amongst the soldiers.
Captain Cain took Hector¡¯s suggestion a bit too seriously and Hector couldn¡¯t stand the looks of pain and exhaustion on his allies'' faces so he boasted that he would take any dangerous mission they wanted him to take. They did save his life.
¡°Let¡¯s move out.¡± Captain Cain ordered.
They followed closely behind him for about an hour before he gave Hector¡¯s shoulder a pat.
Everyone else came up to give him a pat and some thanked him for his ¡®sacrifice¡¯.
Hector grit his teeth, he couldn¡¯t take his words back after his boast.
He climbed up the tallest hill and tree in the area and took a deep breath.
¡°GENERAL, WHERE ARE YOU!¡± Hector screamed at the top of his lungs for the entire forest to hear.
¡®I¡¯m not getting off with a light scolding¡¡¯
Hector continued screaming as if he wanted every single Troll to come and eat him.
???
¡°Come on Willow, let go. I have to leave now.¡± Ebony tried his best to be as gentle as possible but it was hard to pluck the hugging bear on his leg without hurting it.
Korben had been backing Fifth Tide up himself while they waited and trained their skills against Milly. Well, they didn¡¯t spar or fight. Milly had them throw every attack they could at her and it did wonders for their skill level. Due to how their skills were under levelled compared to their actual level, these 8 days gave them vastly accelerated skill levelling. The normal-sized bear that wasn¡¯t exactly normal didn¡¯t have that much control, it got a little ¡®excited¡¯ when her fur got singed by the fire wielder.
He was lucky Koawe swooped in to push both of them aside, the older man was watching out for them.
As for where they trained, it was inside the Arch Wood Mage¡¯s creation. Neither of their flames damaged the wood surrounding them. No one questioned his cold flames but even Milly wasn¡¯t able to rip control of his flames despite it being ice mana just the same.
One unexpected gain was a new Class Skill, it was unexpected since it¡¯s a byproduct of his manipulation control training that was mostly just him making things difficult for himself. After his evolution, bending his flames to his will had become much easier.
Blazing Deep Freeze Petals - Highly condensed flames of frost take upon an increasingly solid form of plum petals. Embers and residues of all your freezing flames that are packed into petals have an effect of 80% + 2.5% Intelligence. Petals of flames are 15% + 2.5% finer facilitating the penetration through physical matter.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
It was just an idea for fun when he made the wisps of flames that escaped his greatsword to form a petal shape. It was not easy and made great control training. When these petals land on his targets by luck, he thought it was a waste of mana not to use them and made a conscious effort to have them scatter. They were made finer to seep deeper. Due to his increasingly denser mana and hence, denser ice mana, his pure mana can almost be touched as ¡®condensation¡¯ forms. He was close to compressing mana so much that it was a liquid. This made his flames harder and harder to extinguish.
The new skill had been unrefined for a tier 2 skill with the base 80 and 15%. He saw a lot of potential in the skill, especially because of the ¡®physical¡¯ in the description.
Ning Xin recently got her magic body. The opponents he faced in future would definitely have something similar as he found that this magic body or even the Troll¡¯s vitality enhancement could ward off cold and most forms of attacks in some manner. Ebony focused on trying to make it such that these petals could dig through magical defences just as well or maybe better.
The utility of the skill was pretty high too, he just had to make all his flames in these petal forms and they would have the strengthened effect. His tests using it against Ning Xin showed that these petals acted quite a bit like normal petals and float with the wind. She could cut them only when she coated her blades with wind magic otherwise, they would flutter to the side as her blades passed them. The only drawback is that they have to be highly compressed mana and the mana cost isn¡¯t low even for him.
This was a pretty impressive discovery for him. Even with her speed and accuracy, the petals could actually dance away from her strikes. He made it rain blue flames of plum petals that trapped her even further. Incorporating into his domain was still a work in progress but he was planning to fill the entire domain with these petals just floating everywhere. No one was going to be able to take a step inside his domain and move properly.
He was still trying to make Preservation Bubble a Profession Skill but he didn¡¯t make much headway except a couple of levels increasing the size of his mana pool.
The masked swordswoman admittedly took inspiration from the Trolls. Magic body simply referred to one¡¯s magical defence and the most generic ones that the Imperials used were to bloat themselves with mana in some method that no one had taught him about. There should be some technique to it but Ebony didn¡¯t have to know since he already had it. He didn¡¯t understand it but according to the others Stock Mana Compressive Chassis could be considered his magic body skill. Albeit quite different from what people refer to as a magic body Ebony didn¡¯t really care as long as it had the same effect, he wasn¡¯t completely human anyway.
This only gave her the kick she needed to move within his domain. Before, they were burning off each other¡¯s mana and would usually end up with both of them out of mana since his consumption speed was much higher than hers. The only difference was that she needed her flames to keep her warm rather than him needing to keep himself cool. With her magic body, her resistance to cold was increasing by the day. It didn¡¯t even cost her mana consumption to increase much.
He took the chance to bully her ever since he could cast his domain stably. He would take the choice of increasing her defensive capabilities any day. With his Inscripted Mana Moulding, he had made all his Imperishable Frost Scales to be even more heat resistant and durable, individually.
Koawe respected them and let them know that even with Korben¡¯s backup, the Trolls were actually gaining more ground. The added stress was nice as Everlasting Tranquillity needed the push.
The older Frost Elf that Roya had stood behind was apparently a tailor, her work was ready along with hundreds of bows and tons of arrows that wafted off an aura that none of them wanted to get close to. The elders of Arcta seemed insistent on staying in the village rather than reinforcing Fifth Tide.
¡°Alright, we¡¯re leaving once Korben arrives,¡± Koawe reported with about 50 bows resting on the snow.
The old lady tailor was the only one that was going to go out of the village as well, she was due to First Tide to deliver her craft. Ebony didn¡¯t get a chance to see the end products and Roya only told him that the elder used to teach some of her ancestors tailoring but she had more traditional methods and did not use mana tailoring. Ning Xin¡¯s intuition told her that the non-combatant was equally scary as Koawe leading him to think that Koawe was King Classed too but his gut feeling told him otherwise.
¡°Do you need me to carry these?¡± Ebony asked as he got ready. There were too many crates of arrows to fit in both his and Ning Xin¡¯s bags.
¡°Arti will take care of that.¡± Koawe whistled for his companion that would also be their ride.
The considerably short Bow Artisan King walked over with the last of his bows and clapped his hands. ¡°Come on, time to wake up.¡±
Ning Xin¡¯s eyes widened when 50 bows started shaking and floating up. Some slowly, some excitedly but they all made their way to the 1.9 metre tall elder and rubbed their bodies against him.
Ebony was surprised too but it didn¡¯t show on his face.
¡°No need to be surprised, not many Imperial archers can wield a bow made by me. These kids can recognise Trolls¡¯ essence, they will do well but please watch out for them if possible. And you kids watch out for them too.¡± The elder gave his affectionate pats to the bows who made way for other bows to get a pat.
The bows avoided Ning Xin entirely but a few moved to him. It took some coaxing from the elder before the bows willingly got close to the fire mage.
¡°Give it a tug boy, they like your essence.¡± The elder said.
Ebony touched the bows near him but some recoiled away. He didn¡¯t hesitate to try pulling the bowstring but the string didn¡¯t even budge. Not even when he enhanced himself. The elder was clearly humble, no one could use these bows. Definitely not any Master archer, perhaps a few Grandmaster archers could.
They ate up his flames in glee but ignored him after he wasn¡¯t able to pull their string. There were only 2 that he could move a little and according to the elder, those two liked him more.
He wasn¡¯t an archer so he wasn¡¯t bothered by it. Picking it up as a generic skill or hobby might be fun though.
It didn¡¯t take more than a minute till he sensed the village guardian¡¯s return with a robe that was a little banged up. Ebony began to worry for his own set, it was getting cuts big and small. Even with the Rare materials they were made from and the runic tailoring, his power and the opponents he was against were just putting too much stress on it.
¡®I should allocate most of the ice mana inside just for Imperishable Frost Scales over my robe.¡¯ Ebony had a very small amount of practice with tailoring recently but he had been replicating his current robe as much as possible. One day, he might make it better or at least, more suited for him.
The battle must be far fiercer than he imagined, he should not overuse the spare mana he has for offence. He needed to keep a closer eye on his partner but that would really distract him. He hoped that wouldn¡¯t push him out of Everlasting Tranquility.
¡°Korben, how bad is it?¡± The bow craftsman asked.
¡°We pushed the vanguard back about half a gur. I¡¯ve not seen such a vast number of them at the same time, not for Fifth Tide. They are more serious than ever, almost desperate.¡± Korben reported. Half a gur or 2500km was quite a lot, although it wasn¡¯t a distance that was hard to cover for anyone at their level it was a vast distance for a battlefield at constant combat.
Arti screeched and flapped her wings, disrupting or rather, rushing them.
Korben went there to buy time for one of them to get to the other village to ask for support. That job was passed down to Ebony and Ning Xin.
¡°Well then, time to revisit the battlefield.¡± Koawe smiled yet again.
The three of them sat tight on Arti with crates of arrows they held down together and they flew off.
Chapter 172: Conjured Battlefield
¡°Can you see?¡± The masked lady squinted into the distance.
¡°No.¡±
All Ebony saw was that the sea was gone from his sight and it was filled with earthy land past the city lying on a cliff. Far into the distance was full of brownish-yellow dust clouds and the aura of the battlefield would cripple the average Master freelancer. It would take those unused to bloodlust and heavy essence a long time to get used to.
Arti flew fast even with all the weight, it didn¡¯t take another minute to get to the point where they had to alight. Pretty far away from the city. Flight was going to get them shot by the magic towers or by a mage or archer on duty.
Fortunately, the city was expecting them and there was no drama at the gates.
The highest-ranking person remaining was greeted but it wasn¡¯t who Koawe was looking for. Ebony got pinched from the side all of a sudden. He cocked his head to the side.
¡°Stay alert and listen. You almost fell asleep.¡± The fiery lady tucked her hair that was ruffled from the high-speed flight.
¡°Trance.¡± He corrected her.
¡°Same thing.¡±
Ebony tried his best to listen to what the respectful commander was telling them. It appeared that Koawe would accompany them till they jumped off the cliff onto the conjured battlefield. The Frost Elf had to speak to the actual person in charge who was taking command on the front lines.
Fifth Tide itself was having problems with its food supply. They were the furthest from any of the 3 Great Farms. From runners and a few other communication points that have been set up within their supply route, they knew that there have been more than a couple of carriages destroyed by Trolls. Average freelancers were failing the job of protection and small teams of Imperial soldiers didn¡¯t exactly help. They couldn¡¯t spare the manpower away from the frontlines at the moment and the supply routes were currently dependent on trainees of the army and freelancers.
They had no real numbers for the numbers of Trolls that somehow bypassed the borders but they got many reports of large craters around the continent. They were assuming the same or similar thing as Ebony. Some strong Troll or perhaps a machine catapulted their soldiers onto the mainland. It was recently evident because one unlucky town had 3 Trolls landing on them. The town had good and responsive guards, they got their barriers up before the Trolls killed anyone.
The relevant information that he got was that flight on the battlefield was a no-go. They were already walking towards the frontlines without any disruption and Koawe was briefing them.
The Trolls knew their weakness, other than creating a battlefield of immense proportion and durability they also made flight dangerous. Lethal.
The sky near the cliff, slightly above the city''s tallest building was blanketed in extremely corrosive gaseous poison clouds. ¡°Eats through Rare metals in an instant.¡±
The worst thing was that it ate mana too hence, flight was near impossible and Ebony wasn¡¯t about to try unless he needed to.
The next relevant information was that they weren¡¯t going to join the Imperial Army. There were too many precedents that people like them that didn¡¯t have training or experience fighting with thousands of allies by their side causing more harm on the battlefield than helping. The army worked together tightly and neither Ebony nor Ning Xin were the best people to fight alongside many allies.
Ebony would have to put mental effort to exclude people from the effects of his gravity magic. Ice wasn¡¯t too big of an issue if they had the resistance and armour and he could use sound as a buff. Ning Xin burns everything around her including and especially oxygen. If their armour wasn''t good enough and they didn''t spend mana to imbue into their equipment, they would melt onto their bodies.
They would join the freelancer group that Ebony understood as the militia, he mentally translated the unknown word for the militia to make things simple. This group still took orders from the highest-ranking military personnel but they had very simple orders. Fight here, fight there, stop them here, push here. Orders that didn¡¯t restrict how they fought or what they did to achieve results.
There was always a backup plan if they failed or were wiped out but according to Koawe, there were always warmongers in charge of the militia. People who always jumped onto the frontlines but didn¡¯t like to be restricted as soldiers. Some were fallen nobles, others just started out with the desire for expedited skill levelling but made a name for themselves for being good leaders. These people usually had a way to make rowdy freelancers listen and since the militia was practically a paid ¡®volunteer¡¯ group, they tended to listen to orders obediently.
The three of them plus a giant bird walked down the stairs at one end of the city walls that led down the cliff so that they weren¡¯t exposed to the brownish corrosive cloud.
¡°Never let your guard down. It¡¯s common sense but you can and will be attacked at any time.¡± Koawe went on to list down what to take note of. He was getting talkative for their sake but the main point of his talk was ¡®stop getting so excited when you¡¯re putting your lives in danger willingly and look out for dangers.¡¯
They exited the stairs and the two young children stepped foot on a real battlefield for the first time. Ebony took a deep breath of the dirt and leftover aura. He could feel the vibrations coming from ahead. He could tell that the fighting was going on hard right now.
Arti was uncomfortable from the air above them but she was carrying all the arrows with 50 bows bouncing and resting on her back.
They started to run unescorted, the commander remaining at Fifth Tide clearly recognised Koawe.
The loud sound of battle wasn¡¯t something only he could hear and he noticed the heart rate of the masked lady beside him speed up.
¡®Looks like I really have a poor imagination.¡¯ They arrived at the closest camp but it was only the rear camp. What Ebony was surprised about was how far the camp and army stretched out. Both left and right, he couldn''t see the end of them. Just how huge was the army or the battle?
Koawe brought them along and ran past these camps. Releasing their essence was a fantastic way to get them through uncontested. They weren¡¯t the only ones coming from Fifth Tide or Elva. The battlefield stretched throughout the entire continent¡¯s border and it was possible to come from a different Tide.
¡°They look exhausted for a rear camp.¡± There were soldiers lying on the ground.
¡°They rotate with the camps further ahead to rest. Resting up front is practically impossible. Most front liners stay for about a week before retreating to this line to rest, then these soldiers would move up a line.¡±
The heavily injured were here with the bulk of the healers too, healers rotate as well but they could choose not to move up front.
They dropped off a few crates of arrows at the second line where almost a quarter of the people seemed to be asleep. Trying to find the leader¡¯s tent would take too long since the tents were mostly identical and the place was massive. Koawe simply informed a random soldier that was running around dealing with supplies and logistics, confident that the arrows would be put to good use.
¡°Does the Imperial army¡¯s armour not include a helmet?¡± Ebony asked when he didn¡¯t spot anyone wearing a helmet.
¡°One of Navin¡¯s sons developed an arcane barrier helmet. It enhances perception and protects the head all around.¡±
¡°Sounds great not to have their sight impeded.¡±
Some had normal metal helmets so Ebony assumed that there weren''t enough magical helmets to go around. The soldiers were already numb to overflowing Vitality as the entire battlefield was drowned in it but his arrival startled more than a few people. They ignored him and went back to sleep or whatever they were doing when they saw that he was simply a Master not too far from most soldiers'' level.
It took another 3 hours of relaxed running to get to the forward base. It was pretty close but the army should have more than enough time to react if anything happens to the forward base. There were mages and warriors alike working to build up a wall.
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¡°Help me sound out loudly but softly, call Archduke Mallet-no, he should be busy, call General Hermione Impes.¡± Koawe gently pet Arti and helped to unload. The base had clear distinction and they were standing in front of the hastily but solid building. The top brass wasn¡¯t in.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony understood that he was supposed to use sound magic through a wide area but contain it such that only the base could hear him. The base was circular and not a wide stretch like the rear camps. This was the main forward base and there were multiple smaller units surrounding them but not near enough for him to spot.
His dead voice reverberated throughout the base but he made sure to thin out his mana so that they don¡¯t travel far. He sensed Koawe¡¯s essence reaching out when he called, likely to inform the General they were not nobodies.
¡°What!¡± Someone screamed from about a kilometre to their left. It was muffled and seemed to be coming from within another hastily built building. With a few stone mages that he walked past, he could tell these buildings probably didn¡¯t take long to set up.
The person stomped her feet towards them but slowed down when she got close, to the point where she seemed to be dragging her feet.
She had no helmet on but wore a full plated armour like any other soldier but more detailed and fitted better than the mass-produced set. She had dark orange hair and clean facial features that don''t talk much about her records on the battlefield but he could sense danger from her despite her pretty face. The relatively slender woman that stood about the same height as Ning Xin had a huge sword on her back. The length of a Zweihander but slightly wider, so it was longer but about half as wide as Icicle. As expected all Identify got him was question marks.
¡°Greetings.¡± She tetted with Koawe who nodded in acknowledgement.
¡°What¡¯s the situation?¡±
¡°They know that Korben retreated and are gathering those that went to back Fourth Tide¡¯s attack back here. We are expecting them to take the chance to reclaim the land they gave up.¡± General Impes got to the point. Her actual rank was a Minor General but Ebony didn¡¯t know the difference.
It appeared that once Korben appeared on the battlefield with the Archduke of Dwarfs, the Trolls abandoned some land by redirecting a good portion of their forces to the attack further east where the other Tides were. They took defensive tactics and just withstood and preserved their forces as best as they could. There were 5 King Classed warrior Trolls together with 2 Shamans of a lower level in their forward base and were there to hold both the Archduke and Korben long enough for the Troll¡¯s troops to retreat.
¡®Archduke Gerot Mallet''s a King Classed Warsmith and Korben at Grandmaster can push back all those high-rank Trolls, they must be the mass-produced Kings.¡¯ Of course, Ebony was aware that the two strong fighters on Elva¡¯s side were not normal and the Trolls were supposedly weak to ice magic or cold in general.
¡°This is Ebony and Scarlet, they will join the Militia¡¯s first assault squad,¡± Koawe stated and the General didn¡¯t contest his statement.
¡°I¡¯ve heard much about the two of you. I¡¯ll bring you to the squad leader in a bit.¡± General Impes also greeted them politely.
Koawe was going to help with the next Troll attack just to scare and show them that there was still someone here that they needed to be wary of. Since the strongest powers never go onto the battlefield first as they were a form of deterrence to both sides. If any King or similarly strong fighters were to appear or land an ambush, the other side¡¯s power would quickly react and it made the battle for the bulk of the army impossible. There tend to be heavy casualties on both sides hence, the unwillingness of the powerful to act. Koawe left the two of them after saying their farewells.
General Impes was busy but she seemed to want to be the one to bring them to their post. They didn¡¯t have any complaints and followed her around, listening to her barking orders. The medical bay was very busy and Ebony thought that he might see Mallory but she wasn¡¯t around.
According to Runners that are very highly paid to run across these wastelands and act as messengers between Tides, bases and camps since ranged communication is not reliable, the forward base of Forth Tide reported that the forces they were fighting had weakened and scouts and archers sighted them coming back here.
They listened to reports from many people. They were expecting an attack in 2 or 3 days, reinforcements were called, straining the unrested soldiers from behind them but they had little choice.
General Impes had a small team of guards following them as they left the base. The Militia¡¯s camp was only a 15-minute jog away. No walls, no structure and a bunch of drinkers. The militia was a rowdy bunch despite their exhaustion.
General Impes frowned when she heard a fight going on again but she ignored it since the Militia wasn¡¯t her soldiers. Ebony could see men turning the other way around when General Impes walked by. They were either afraid of the strong noble or something happened to make them act that way. The Militia¡¯s camp was pretty small in comparison to the forward base but they were easily thousands of people.
They arrived at a slightly bigger brown tent and she waltzed with them. All of them could hear the snores from within.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± He asked Ning Xin who gripped his arm tightly.
¡°...That halberd wielder is inside.¡± He could feel that she was restraining her urge to fight or slaughter.
¡°Ah, then I have to greet this kidnapper of mine don¡¯t I? Don¡¯t worry, you can fight him in future.¡± Ebony was intrigued by the man who kidnapped him, fought off an evolved Ning Xin, helped Arcta and was supposedly someone that fought against Trolls in the past. He had an itch that scratched at his calm state of mind, for one, this person kidnapped him and almost killed the journeyman Ning Xin. He could''ve killed both of them whenever he wanted but he didn''t. It was also thanks to him that Ning Xin''s core skill evolved but Ebony wasn''t going to thank him for that. What was his stance against the halberd user he hadn''t met, he wasn''t sure.
The Militia¡¯s leader has an honorary commander rank that¡¯s only applicable during war times and he only has control over the Militia if no higher-rank Imperial soldier is alive he can command the imperial soldiers too. There were 6 people sleeping and 3 were unpacking some crates.
Ning Xin pointed to one of the snoring men that had a halberd resting on his shoulder as he slept. He took note of the man¡¯s appearance before looking towards the noise of a breaking chair.
¡°Wake up.¡± General Impes kicked the chair of the old man sleeping in the back of the tent.
[Grand Lead Warrior Lvl ???]
¡®Lead? As in the metal? Identify is improving, I would probably get Grand Metal Warrior in the past.¡¯ Ebony looked upon the skinny old man with dull grey hair and a beard. He was scrawny to the point that he had thin excess skin on his bony arms, his shirt was on the ground and he wore sleeveless leather armour. He was shorter than most of them in the room, probably only about 1.67 metres tall if he stood up. A metal-spiked club wasn¡¯t far from him.
General Impes was annoyed but he could see that she was trying to be polite with the old man. ¡°Scare these fools up with your mana.¡±
¡°Mmm. Sure.¡± The moment he said and did so, everyone in the tent grabbed their weapons and retaliated with their own essence. Veterans indeed.
After a bit of yelling from these people called them rude for waking them like that. Ebony might not have been listening when they complained. Since he contained it within the tent, no one outside was alerted.
Ning Xin glared at the halberd user and he did the same. Except he waved and said hello before regaining his attention to General Impes who was introducing them to the scrawny old man.
¡°Joining us eh? Sure, you¡¯ll take the traditional test before I know how to dispatch you in a while. The name¡¯s Wilson, Commander Wil works too.¡± He smiled and offered his fingers to tet but he was missing his index finger.
Neither he nor his partner cared enough to react to the missing finger.
Commander Wil kicked the others out when General Impes wanted to talk in private but the two new fighters were invited to remain. She pulled out a map that Ebony had never seen since it was a map of the conjured battlefield.
¡°These 2 bases. Launch an ambush in 8 hours. Rile them up for the next 2 days.¡± General Impes ordered.
¡°Hmm¡reduce their forces as much as possible before reinforcements come, is it?¡± Commander Wil brushed his bushy beard.
¡°Just tiring them out and buying time for us will do, don¡¯t have to commit.¡±
¡°...Will do. My men had their fair share of rest.¡±
General Impes just left with the few soldiers waiting outside the tent. Commander Wil didn¡¯t wait any longer and spit on the floor clearly angry. ¡®Angry right?¡¯ Ebony guessed and hoped he was right.
¡°Are you angry?¡±
¡°Of course I am!¡±
¡°Yes!¡± Ebony got pinched by the fire swordswoman and glared at by Commander Wil.
¡°Oh? You¡¯ve got guts boy! Come!¡± Commander Wil kept his baseball bat-sized club on his back. That thing was even heavier than Icicle based on his senses.
¡°The test?¡± Ning Xin questioned.
¡°Nothing so stiff. Just fight so I know what your skills are and know where to utilise you.¡± Commander Wil was blunt, just the way they like it.
¡°We have newbies!¡± Commander Wil raised his voice.
It didn¡¯t take long for them to be dragged away from camp, retreating so that they didn¡¯t catch Trolls'' attention. A bunch of people chased along and they gathered hundreds of people in minutes.
A few water mages worked together to form a dome of water more than a kilometre in radius. The crowd surrounded them and Commander Wil ushered people forward. It was getting very noisy and Ebony turned the volume down for himself as usual.
¡®These people sure have a lot of mana to spare.¡¯
¡°Miss, you first. Are you from Xienor? Or is that a random mask you found?¡±
Ning Xin stopped her heart and pulsed out her Core Skill to silence the crowd. From what he could see, they were only stunned for a short moment before getting more excited.
The camp consisted of more than just the first assault squad. Commander Wil was very familiar with his men, he called out some random muscular guy to be first. Then the old man trashed talked some people and got them to scram.
Chapter 173: Crushing Defeat
¡°I¡¯m first!¡±
Ning Xin looked at the large wolfman who carried a halberd, the mere sight of that weapon caused something within her to pop. She could see how large weapons were more effective against their giant invaders. Many wield large war axes and similar-sized weapons.
She could hear the few Dwarfs around commenting on the ¡®poor¡¯ shape of her beloved twin longswords. They were of unwieldy length to dual wield. Excuses.
Everyone here was capable of some form of enhancement, she was pretty sure she didn¡¯t have to pull her punches by much. The crowd backed off to give her and her opponent space.
¡®Weak¡¡¯ Her intuition told her that she was wrong about the average strength of the people here. However, there were more than a couple that she couldn''t beat.
She put her hands on Scorchie and Scorchy and widened her stance a little. The wolfman who she didn¡¯t get the name of charged towards her. She speeds drew both of her blades and performed Precise Perforation aimed at his right shoulder and left thigh, sheathing both of them just as quickly but gently.
A loud burstbow shot rang in the surroundings, no one present was able to hear that it was two shots not one.
The wolfman didn¡¯t even cross a gir before he was sent flying into the water barrier.
¡®Interesting barrier.¡¯ She thought. Her opponent had half his body stuck into the water barrier while the other half remained. There was some kind of softening effect. There were 2 unlucky fellows that didn¡¯t dodge in time and were sent flying back along with the wolfman but they didn¡¯t get injured, just pissed.
¡°Ah ha, I forgot to mention. Our little miss general assigned them directly to our very own first assault squad.¡± The scrawny commander Wil laughed a little.
Ning Xin¡¯s intuition already told her that this man was inwardly surprised when the female general put them into the first assault squad. She didn¡¯t understand what it would really mean but it just showed her how much clout Koawe had. The reactions of the crowd and how taken aback some of them were told her enough.
The wolfman was angered, he popped himself free and shook his fur off on all fours before turning towards her. His body wasn¡¯t pierced through but his tough body made things more gruesome. The impact rammed into his armour and smashed two dents in them including his flesh and bones. Lightning raised his fur to stand but he wasn¡¯t that bothered by it, the burns seemed to hurt him more.
Ning Xin fired off another two shots and sent him right out of the barrier this time. It hit accurately and with even greater speed, he wasn¡¯t even able to see it coming.
¡°Who¡¯s next?¡± She continued to gather life force in her heart. A few people only got excited instead of stepping back when they heard the old man¡¯s casual remark
???
Ebony watched over the excitable girl fight challenger after challenger. There were many people unfazed by her initial display, letting him think that the first guy wasn¡¯t that strong or perhaps not many people knew him.
He was more curious about the disparity of the equipment quality when compared with the main army. In a word, they were mostly horrible. Only some of the Grandmasters had more decent equipment and even then, they were not in the best condition.
¡®I guess that shouldn¡¯t be surprising with the ongoing war.¡¯
Only two more challengers that couldn¡¯t even react to her speed came up before Commander Wil was annoyed enough to boo them and call up people from different squads. He only called those from the assault squads and vanguards though.
It took another 3 quick finishes till they started calling people from the first assault squad too. Ebony guessed that the commander was using this show as entertainment to give his men some outlet to destress otherwise it should have been clear to the man who he should be calling out if he wanted to force them to show him their skills.
¡°Ayla!¡± Commander Wil hollered.
It was someone he identified question marks again. The woman was covered in black, she popped out from the crowd and showed herself. Ebony wasn¡¯t able to see how she moved but he knew she was resting on top of a huge human¡¯s shoulder not too far from him.
The slender woman Ayla was wielding a curved dagger almost the length of her forearm together with a short sword in her other hand.
Ebony could sense Ning Xin¡¯s strong desire to fight.
¡°What¡¯cha waiting for!¡±
¡°Hurry up and fight!¡±
¡°Show some skin!¡±
He didn¡¯t have to turn but the one who shouted for skin was a woman, he was confused.
The two dual wielders moved at the same time. One was a red flash and the other was pure black.
¡®That black wisps covering her body, is it darkness or shadow magic?¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t that surprised that there were people that could keep up with his travelling partner. He was more surprised that the twin longswords were getting swallowed up by darkness.
It changed quickly, Ayla flinched when Ning Xin broke the darkness with the overwhelming power of her flames. That moment when she flinched from mental pain was not a chance that Ning Xin would let go. The black-clad woman was supposed to ram into some random guy from defending a strike too powerful to hold her ground but she ¡®poofed¡¯ into a shade of black before impact.
Ebony was very sure she was still present but even her gravitational waves were not in his senses anymore. She reappeared close to Ning Xin.
¡®She climbed up from the ground. Shadows maybe? There are too many people here, their shadows converge.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t sure since he never fought anyone with shadow magic but he thought there was a pretty good chance he was right. Ning Xin¡¯s reflexes were dastardly fast; she probably sensed the attacker¡¯s heat signature in time as well.
Ayla used her disappearing act a lot more to handle Ning Xin¡¯s fierce attacks. It didn¡¯t take half a minute for Ning Xin to find a way to chase her opponent all of a sudden.
¡®She attached some blood onto that rogue¡¯s shirt.¡¯ She was getting more and more clear-headed during fights.
Ning Xin pulled her blood halo out and the crowd started running back, forcing the water mages to expand their barrier. Ebony took note of everyone that stayed where they were, including Commander Wil, his kidnapper standing further away, the people in the commander¡¯s tent and a few dozen more.
The surroundings got a bit darker but it only urged the fire mage to turn things up a notch, dissipating the darkness with uncomfortably hot flames.
¡®Poor mages.¡¯ Ebony pitied the water mages when the barrier was bubbling and evaporating, they were forced to let the barrier down because too many people wanted to get out before they suffocated to death or got burnt alive.
He also had to spend mana to keep his robe from getting burned.
¡°Ayla!¡± The giant human stepped in to take the blow with his equally massive shield.
He might be huge for a human but he is only a tiny bit bigger than the first wolfman that Ning Xin fought. The man withstood the flaming strike.
¡°Hey! You didn¡¯t have to go so far!¡± The giant had a fitting rough voice but his words weren¡¯t antagonistic.
¡°Aren¡¯t you people supposed to make me show what I could do? Hurry up and make me.¡± Ning Xin clearly wanted to pick a fight.
She succeeded in doing so.
A few others that weren¡¯t perturbed by her outward show of power jumped into the melee.
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Ebony simply stood there and watched. The dozen or so people who didn¡¯t run back to camp, retreat far enough or attack the lone swordswoman were probably all Grandmasters with some of them he Identified as close to level 300 Masters. They were also Grandmasters attacking Ning Xin but only about 3 of them.
He sensed the pat on his shoulder from Commander Wil, he didn¡¯t repel the tap with his repulsion membrane.
¡°She¡¯s in a pickle, aren¡¯t you going to join in?¡±
¡°Let her have her fun. It¡¯s not often for us to meet people who can push her back so much.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Haha, you sure have a lot of faith in her. But we don¡¯t have much time, I gotta see what you can do as well.¡±
Commander Wil stepped aside for a Warhammer to smash right into Ebony¡¯s head.
Only Stalwart Endowment required a second or two to kick up in effect, the rest were almost instantaneous as long as he reacted or ¡®Willed¡¯ their cast reflexively. The attacker was another wolfman who coughed blood when the impact on his head rebounded mana vibrations amplified by Sonic Intrusion.
The Warhammer was obviously protected in some manner, but Ebony didn¡¯t sense much mana in it. A normal weapon even of Rare quality would shatter if someone were to hit him hard. He could break them easily with Sonic Intrusion unless it was enchanted, reinforced with mana or some other energy.
Ebony gave the attacker a casual pushing kick to the man¡¯s belly with Guided Path and Sonic Intrusion. His target¡¯s belly was pulled to his feet and vice versa but he was nice enough to let his target get repelled instead of forcing him to stay in contact with his feet.
¡®Oh crap, that¡¯s more blood than I expected. I hope he¡¯s not dead.¡¯ The wolfman¡¯s flesh bloomed open and the shock wave from his kick could practically be ¡®seen¡¯ as a pulse of air coming through his back. Sonic Intrusion at its current level was terrifying if he used it properly.
Luckily, he didn¡¯t get a kill notification.
Ebony sensed a weird feeling of uneasiness but he wasn¡¯t actually sure what it was. He took a moment to force Everlasting Tranquility to dial down but it snapped back in shortly.
¡®Ah, annoyed.¡¯ He caught on, he simply wanted to watch Ning Xin¡¯s battle and these people just had to interrupt him. Couldn¡¯t they be patient?
His perception of these people seems to disappear as he acted as if he didn¡¯t notice their attacks coming towards him. A throne was conjured and he took a seat, continuing to watch Ning Xin¡¯s growing power.
A [Swordmaster Lvl 300] and [Master Warrior Lvl 289] were planted to the ground with a few Glacial Model¡¯s arms and oppressive weight. Sonic Intrusion was sent through these arms when they attempted to move, it only caused a tiny crack in the ground. ¡®Impressive floor¡¯ was the only thing that pulled Ebony¡¯s attention for a moment.
They stopped struggling when they felt a hand pushing their heads down to the ground.
He could hear and feel the vibrations in the air, there were people talking but Ebony couldn¡¯t hear them. The vibrations and words didn¡¯t register.
Noise. Clutter. Everlasting Tranquillity removed white noise but the next intruders into his domain were more than white noise.
¡°How elling exciting!¡±
Ebony saw that most people weren¡¯t able to stay near Ning Xin as their armour and clothes were combusting just by being near her. Mr Kidnapper was forced to step in as her only opponent. He was still surprised to see the man send Ning Xin crashing into the ground with a single swing even though he heard how he beat her twice.
Something or someone smashed all his Glacial Models apart and the arms, gravity and physical shock didn¡¯t stop his invader.
Claws swept at his face but his backrest was made of Imperishable Frost Scales and slid around to protect him in time. They were further strengthened by runes and his domain.
Ebony stood up, his mana consumption skyrocketed due to the number of invaders that were actively resisting. They had some good resistances and enhancements but the strength of gravity in his domain affected them all.
¡°Stop staring at your bitch, we¡¯re your opponents.¡±
Icicle had never been drawn as quickly, it flew out of its sheath with a string of gravity mana. The one who spoke had been a beast woman, one which scales over her arm up till her neck but a human face, unlike Top. Invading his tiny domain, she was within reach of his greatsword even without taking a step.
She barely managed to raise her scimitar in time to block Icicle¡¯s overhead strike. Her eyes widened when her weapon didn¡¯t offer any resistance as her arms numbed and her palms tore open. She could only watch the heavy sword slice through her scimitar and continue on halfway into her shoulder. The piercing cold hit her but she couldn¡¯t scream.
Ebony looked at the metal club behind the lizard woman placed there to stop Icicle from slicing her arm off completely. He wasn¡¯t sawing through the metal club, nor was Guided Path that connected the edge and tip of Icicle to the floor working hard enough to push the club. He didn¡¯t use Frostblaze Cladding since these were friendlies but he heard that lizardfolk were weak to cold so Icicle¡¯s natural temperature was enough to hurt her when it was touching her flesh and bones.
¡°Now now, I can¡¯t have you taking the arm of one of your squad members even though she can regenerate an arm or two.¡± Commander Wil chuckled before pushing his greatsword out without much effort.
The lizard lady who was freed still had fight in her and drew either her spare scimitar or she actually dual wielded them. ¡°Don¡¯t barge in old man!¡±
She was also level 300 but unevolved. The other two invaders already stepped in to lay on attacks. Ranged fireballs from outside his domain were defended by Imperishable Frost Scales and arrows shatter on impact against his scales.
He would not have enough mana to conjure a relatively compressed Model so he was pushed to battle.
His main trouble was a Dwarf who used a short sword and round shield who he was unable to Identify any information. The man was a seasoned warrior that slapped Icicle aside even with Ebony focusing his attacks on him. The shocking thing was that after the third or fourth Sonic induced kick that he blocked, the man rebounded his Sonic Intrusion with a pulse of mana that washed away the vibrations. He didn¡¯t even use a lot of mana if Ebony¡¯s senses were accurate, the man timed his rebound of mana perfectly and with just enough mana in just a few tries.
Similarly, he was doing the same with his short sword and Icicle couldn¡¯t slice through it. Sonic Intrusion was washed away precisely with every exchange.
The lizard woman and the other human attacker weren''t able to keep up as soon as he dipped into his mana pool and used his Stock Mana for his maximum compression of Frostblaze Augmentation.
Even so, the Dwarf met his enhancement with his own vigour and chuckle.
¡°Leave us alone!¡± The Dwarf called out.
The ranged attacks stopped and the lizardwoman clicked her tongue before she dragged the Swordmaster and Master Warrior away.
Commander Wil received a call on his callstone, Ebony noticed even in his focus since the thread of vibration was in his range of senses. The caller was General Impes, asking if the Militia was under attack.
¡®So short-range communication is still possible but the shocks and mana fluctuations causes the link to be unstable.¡¯ Ebony had been a little worried about it, the callstone was a link that he could use to buff Ning Xin or his allies that had much further range than his natural capabilities.
The scales that were summoned over his robe were slashed open with relative ease. He had been more easily distracted than usual but that inattentiveness was gone immediately.
The Dwarf redirected his greatsword down to the ground and earth rose to lock it down before he shield bashed Ebony with an immaculately timed mana rebound to counter his mana reflection of physical impact. He held tightly so Icicle was pulled out from its earthen lock together with him.
The blue flames on the Dwarf weren''t digging into his earth-covered armour and skin much. The Dwarf chased Ebony¡¯s flying body even before he grounded himself. The piercing cold flames were completely ignored.
Ebony tried his best to pull away the Dwarf¡¯s attacks with Guided Path while leading his own attacks to increase in speed, power and accuracy with the same spell. Yet, the expert fighter put more strength to counter the redirection and also bring his shield back in to guard himself despite the pushing and pulling of gravity. His reaction speed was great and his judgement hasn¡¯t failed him.
Ebony continued with a greater variety of tricks but the Dwarf would find a counter in moments. The ice mage¡¯s greatest hand was his domain which he needed to keep up in a tiny radius to even keep up with the Dwarf. Neither was tiring out any time soon.
There was a lack of earth magic thrown at him but he wasn¡¯t thinking so he didn¡¯t notice.
¡°That¡¯s enough, two of you can finish up.¡± Commander Wil¡¯s voice registered in his mind.
His opponent stopped for a moment and hunkered down behind his round shield that covered his short but muscular body. Ebony took the chance to attack his opponent¡¯s legs but the Dwarf just took it. He only managed to cut through the earthen layer and not the metal armour beneath.
He only managed to take another swing before the Dwarf who had his short sword pointing by the shield¡¯s side rammed into him at full speed. The earth swelled beneath his opponent¡¯s feet and the head of a giant beast formed to augment his shield charge.
Ebony couldn¡¯t dodge as his feet were swallowed up. Then, the earthen snake face took a large bite that attempted to crush the right side of his body while it domineeringly drove his remaining body against the ground.
He couldn¡¯t muster enough strength to resist the immense power behind the Dwarf¡¯s continuous charge. His bones creaked but they didn¡¯t snap. No amount of Sonic Intrusion or freezing flames strengthened by the most compressed domain he could bring forth were enough to destroy his bindings.
The intense exchange substantially increased the drain of his mana and he was bone dry in the next few seconds. The giant earthen serpent''s head slowed down when his resistance weakened drastically and spit him out into the air.
Ebony landed into a gash on the tough ground, home to another body laying there.
¡°Are you hurt?¡± He asked the panting Swordswoman while lying down beside her. Their heads were beside each other with their bodies facing opposing directions.
¡°Mmm. He wasn¡¯t taking me seriously¡¡±
It was a crushing defeat for her now that Mr. Kidnapper wasn¡¯t fooling around as much.
¡°We¡¯ll beat them soon.¡±
Chapter 174: Stranded Clobbering
¡°Save us! General!¡±
26 tattered clothed soldiers ran while screaming their lungs out.
¡°Who¡¯s stupid plan was this?!¡± Captain Cain yelled.
24 fingers pointed at Hector. They split apart to avoid the hurled rock before sending a sharpened wooden stick back.
¡°Don¡¯t waste your time with a single pathetic arrow!¡±
¡°What do you expect?! We don¡¯t have any arrows left!¡±
Hector laughed and punched another rock that was thrown at them.
¡°Stop laughing Hector!¡±
They gained unwanted attention by screaming for help and the Trolls immediately started their rock toss as they closed the distance. The 26 of them could only run, they didn¡¯t even know enemy numbers but there was a whole base of them that they caught the attention.
¡°I¡¯ll haunt you if I die Hector!¡±
¡°They¡¯re closing in fast! These aren¡¯t your random bastards!¡±
¡°Come on, they have way longer legs!¡±
¡°Shut up and pick up the pace!¡± Captain Cain silenced their complaints.
Hector continued to holler for General Truewater.
¡°Inc-¡±
They were all alert and saw the shadow from the sky expand rapidly, multiple Trolls were dropping on them from an impossible height when none of these giants were capable of flight.
Captain Cain tossed the slower mage away while he remained and took the airdrop on. All of them were splattered with blood hard enough to topple a tree.
¡°¡°CAPTAIN!¡±¡±
Shellshocked.
Some of them managed to get their surrounding buddies to get a hold of themselves.
¡°Scatter!¡± Hector¡¯s squad leader commanded.
A casual glance around showed Hector that their opponents were a squad of Grandmasters. Slim Trolls.
Too slim to be considered a diet choice and the paler skin tone that barely had a hue of green indicated to him that this squad wasn¡¯t your average Trolls.
¡®I should¡¯ve studied their tribes, damn it. Captain¡¡¯ Hector blamed himself. Deaths from his idea were on him.
He readied a quadra-enhanced mega panch to distract the three that landed on his captain. It was to avenge his captain, release his frustration and distract as many of them as he could to buy time for his allies. Unfortunately, there were five more Trolls that were spread out. He could only hope that some of his buddies could escape.
¡®They were still far, how did these guys catch up so fast? Is it a speed focused tribe or one that can fly or did I underestimate their physical superiority? ¡¯ Hector clenched his teeth when he realised that even just four elements tore his body internally.
Surprisingly, even after the dust cloud was starting to settle and his friends run a distance away there was no attack. There was a lot of blood though. Hector squinted before he threw his punch.
The only thing left on the ground was a mesh of torn flesh and broken bones poking out from them.
And a grumble of pain from a human voice.
Hector threw away his preparations for a mega panch and dashed into the crater that his captain was in. He saw a familiar arm under the fleshy remains and quickly dragged his captain out, hoping that the man was in one piece.
He swallowed his spit and urge to vomit when he saw his captain¡¯s mashed-up body that was actually still in one piece. He rearranged Captain Cain¡¯s limbs as fast but carefully as possible before putting that body over his back.
Hector burst away immediately but something grasped his entire calf from ankle to knee. He wailed.
The regenerating Troll crushed his leg in its grasp like a tomato.
Hector saw himself as normal. He didn¡¯t have high tier or levels of pain resistance nor did he have any skills to toggle pain receptors off. He was lost from shock and was too stunned from pain to react or come up with a course of action. He didn¡¯t have a body that moved by itself or beastly fighting instincts.
A few wooden sticks that acted as arrows pierced into the giant arm that crushed his leg but it didn¡¯t bring any sort of reaction.
The Trolls were beginning to separate from each other as their body regained enough of their humanoid shape to be recognised as living organisms.
Perhaps it was due to how badly damaged the arm that crushed his leg was but 24 idiots came back and cut the arm off to free Hector.
¡°Get a hang of yourself!¡± Words weren¡¯t really getting through to the hoarsely wailing Hector but another bout of pain did. The sting on his face woke him up from his stupor.
Captain Cain was taken away from him and he was similarly thrown onto someone¡¯s back. 4 squads surrounded them and rained every bit of strength they had to destroy or slow down the regeneration of these Trolls.
All of them knew to go for the limbs while the squad on injury duty escorted Hector and their captain at full speed ahead. The squads were rearranged and he realised that only the fastest feets were on the squad carrying him. The remaining water and wood mage also stayed behind as they were the best choice for locking and delaying the Trolls.
¡®No¡no!¡¯ Hector didn¡¯t have the strength to voice out. His body didn¡¯t even have the time to heal before it was subjected to more torture. It shut down and his muscles didn¡¯t listen to him.
Hector could only hear more screams from his buddies and a useless function of his body continued to work. He cried but not for long.
¡°Ha¡hahaha.¡±
He forced his moist eyes up when they stopped moving and he heard suppressed laughter from his buddies.
The dim shadows they were covered by already told him enough. They were surrounded.
His world went white when the largest fist he had ever seen came propelling towards them. The fist could easily hit all of them.
And it did.
???
¡°How did you get beaten?¡± Ning Xin asked.
The two of them were still lying in defeat.
¡°Strong and skilled dwarf. He countered my sound magic with a pulse of mana to wash away the vibrations.¡± Ebony replied.
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Sonic Intrusion had been getting so useful that nothing much really stopped it before this other than sheer toughness of a material or monster. They didn¡¯t think about reflecting his mana vibration with another pulse of mana. It didn¡¯t even have to be at equal frequency since the Dwarf simply washed and stabilised his vibrations just enough so that it was ineffective.
¡°Sounds like a good technique, I should pick it up before your sound magic destroys Scorchy and Scorchie. What else?¡± Ning Xin pondered, she had been relying on high-quality equipment to deal with his sound and gravity magic.
After she got her magic body, she just started to get him to train her gravity and sound resistance without her equipment on.
¡°His earth magic, I had my domain on and was alert but I couldn¡¯t sense any movement under me before that snakehead rose from under me. I couldn¡¯t react fast enough, not even my domain or Will pulled me out in time.¡±
¡°A warrior strong enough to push you and a mage skilled enough to exceed your body and mind¡¯s reaction?¡±
¡°One person, yes.¡±
They went into detail about his fight but got interrupted.
¡°How long are you going to sleep there? Get up, meditate or whatever. We have to be in position in six hours. Introduce yourself to the first assault squad and get a briefing from me in my tent 4 hours later.¡± Commander Wil knocked his head and Ning Xin¡¯s mask with his metal club.
¡®Didn¡¯t get to see him fight.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know he was thinking the exact same thing as his battle-loving companion.
He only remembered the old man stopping him from cutting the lizard woman¡¯s arm off and casually pushing his greatsword out.
He stood up and they returned to the camp. It was surprisingly quiet.
¡°We¡¯re about to move off, they need all the rest they can get. First time on the battlefield youngins?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± They nodded.
¡°We¡¯re as out front as you can get. You¡¯ll learn to get whatever sleep you can.¡±
Ning Xin looked away and he could tell from the tiny bobbing that she was sniffing something.
¡°I¡¯ll go help.¡± She turned and walked away.
Commander Wil prodded.
¡°She¡¯s a chef, she probably went to the cooks.¡± He answered
¡°Ah. Being young sure is nice but confident as you are, make sure she gets some rest. Don¡¯t forget to show up for the briefing.¡± Commander Wil shooed him away but Ebony was planning on following her anyway.
The militia¡¯s camp had thousands of people and about a dozen men and women took on the duties of cooking for everyone. Ebony sort of assumed that they weren¡¯t so centralised and would break off into groups and only cook for themselves but he was proven wrong.
Ning Xin jumped into the scene with ease by asserting herself as a chef and using one of the empty stations. Apparently, a few chefs died in their previous mission and with permission from the person in charge of logistics, she could easily begin using their ingredients.
Ebony had no place here.
¡®Oh yeah, I could set up my forge here. The state of some of their equipment is horrible.¡¯ Ebony might be unfamiliar with repair work of any kind but he had to start somewhere and with these people¡¯s equipment, no one would be surprised if they broke.
He could simply knock some of his mana into it and when he becomes confident with those materials perhaps he could help lay on some runes. Most of them didn¡¯t look like they had any magical properties. As for those that had good equipment, he recognised them to be ones that he or Ning Xin had fought nearer the end of their little test.
But not today, he needed all the mana he could recover. He had 5 Glacial Models in his bag, the rest was usually spent in spars and training. He spent the next few hours near the eating and cooking house recreating Glacial Models. He renewed his Will upon the 5 old Models but not much changed. It was just a habit that also let him play around with ¡®Will¡¯.
It had been a surprise that none of the Frost Elves could do what he did and create clones that can fight. Even if he didn¡¯t consider the non-combatant villagers, both Koawe and Korben couldn¡¯t replicate it to the extent that he could.
That didn¡¯t make him a better ice mage than them. They were also capable of imbuing their Will into a mass of ice mana but they had to imbue Will in real-time and even then, they were not very capable of combat. Ebony just had to do it once, he didn¡¯t have to ¡®feed¡¯ Will constantly and they didn¡¯t need specific instructions to fight properly.
If there was one area he improved it was that in his domain, the Frost Elves couldn¡¯t fully tear away his control over ice mana. Even Koawe could at best redirect his ice magic to a small extent and he needed too much concentration to be worth the effort. That was a massive improvement and he had one less worry of his magic becoming useless in front of a greater ice mage.
Something he still couldn¡¯t do was to accurately gauge how much mana his opponent has left. Supposedly one of the basics when it comes to fights between two mages or higher level combat. So Ebony was a little interested in how much he wore his Dwarven opponent out, was attempting to draw it out into a battle of attrition a good idea?
A bowl of meat stew entered his line of sight while he was filling vials of his blood. He stretched his arm out to serve her a fresh meal too but she didn¡¯t want it. She sat beside him with a bowl of her own and they ate in silence.
¡°You¡¯re fine with eating out in the open?¡±
Ning Xin paused and he waited.
¡°I forgot. Never mind, it doesn¡¯t matter anymore. Sister Jing never cared anyway and they never considered me as one of them.¡±
¡°But you¡¯ll still wear that.¡±
She touched her mask.
¡°It¡¯s what my mother and grandmother wished for, although they never said that. How¡¯s the stew?¡± She changed the subject.
¡°It¡¯s pretty bad.¡± He replied honestly. His sense of taste has completely recovered for a long time now.
¡°I thought so too. I couldn¡¯t use much meat and seasonings are limited too so it''s diluted. It was my first time cooking such a large quantity, the pots were huge!¡±
It was time for the briefing so they had to cut their conversation short. Meal time was more than sufficient as rest. They were so weak that a short spar could tire them out.
They were late, commander Wil¡¯s tent was full. They were greeted by both familiar and unfamiliar faces. The ugly-faced swordmaster and master warrior that was pushed to the floor in his domain, the lizard woman who only had scaled arms but mostly human, a few of their other opponents and the Dwarf who beat him up.
His kidnapper wasn¡¯t present.
According to Ning Xin¡¯s intuition and his own senses, there were a few more that should be more than capable of beating them up. All of which were Grandmasters. Ebony might not be able to Identify them all but he was capable of gauging from their overflowing essence. It was now clear to him why Identify could differentiate between ranks, it was far too easy to sense. It wasn¡¯t simply the quantity of essence, it was the quality. Like the qualitative difference between different rarities of mana ores. Of course, there are many ways that one can hide their aura.
¡®No, those few are masters too.¡¯ Ebony glanced at the side, 5 of them had strong auras but not quite like the Grandmasters.
It was pretty nice to know that there were strong people fighting for their homeland but also showed him how dire the situation was. He wouldn¡¯t probably get a clearer picture after a fight or two on the battlefield that he was on.
¡°Hurry it up, newbies! We ain¡¯t got all day.¡± Scaled arm lady complained.
¡°Aight, everyone¡¯s here. Introduce yourselves youngins.¡± Commander Wil stepped in.
¡°Ebony.¡±
¡°Scarlet.¡±
¡°Is this colouring class or what?¡±
A bout of laughter was raised but those that got beat up didn¡¯t join in. Only middle-aged and older men and women laughed.
Commander Wil unrolled a large scroll onto the table, uninterested in introducing the others to them.
¡°Scry chart?¡± Ning Xin murmured.
¡°Ay. Good eye you have there young lady.¡±
¡°Courtesy of the Empire, it''s updated every half an hour during day time and every ten minutes at night. Those Foxmen are working hard.¡±
He noticed the ear twitch from the masked lady beside him but now wasn¡¯t the time to converse with her.
Ebony looked at the scry chart, it was a map of the battlefield. It showed where Fifth and Fourth Tide nothing further east, the map wasn¡¯t big enough for that. The cities had red colour patches here and there, concentrated on the walls. Further up front were three thick red lines, they were the Imperial bases. The front line where they were currently had the second thickest and darkest red lines.
Beyond that was an assortment of green hues dotted and splattered all over the brown map.
Commander Wil saw their confusion as to how to read the map since there wasn¡¯t a legend table but he didn¡¯t have time to explain.
¡°This is where our camp is.¡± The old man pointed his club at a light red dot. The map zoomed in and got clearer but only the colours and their separation.
¡°These two bases are our targets today.¡± One was a lime green dot 5 to 6 times larger than their militia¡¯s camp. The other was a dark green line that stretched out a few centimetres on the map.
¡°First assault squad will take on the Benumbed tribe together with first support. The others will take hit-and-run tactics with the main forward base.¡±
It appeared that there were other squad leaders in the tent and not everyone was of the same squad as they were.
¡°Missy general¡¯s orders were to mess with them for 2 days but we¡¯ll scrap that crap. We hit Benumbed tribe fast and hard, hopefully wiping them out or at least making them retreat.¡±
Commander Wil then informed the squad leaders on where they should position themselves and to coordinate their operation¡¯s timing properly. The bulk of the militia would be distracting the main forward base with ranged bombardment and to stop them from sending reinforcements to the Benumbed tribe.
The old man dismissed them but the two of them remained to get more information.
Chapter 175: Operation
¡°This is your squad leader.¡± Besides Commander Wil, the Dwarf that beat Ebony up remained in the tent.
¡°Just cap¡¯s fine, ladie. Good to have ya!¡±
¡®No names again. Is it so that we don¡¯t have any sort of attachment?¡¯ Ebony made a random guess as to why people weren¡¯t introducing themselves.
¡°Could you explain how to read this map?¡± He asked directly.
The red and green represented allies and Troll density. Small numbers don¡¯t show up, even their militia barely shows up. It was not difficult for small assaults to happen that doesn¡¯t show up on the scry chart, it wasn¡¯t updated every second after all.
Other than the leader of the first assault squad, their captain was also the militia¡¯s vice commander along with Mr kidnapper.
Commander Wil was not going to attack.
He was marked by the Troll¡¯s shamans along with all the individuals that they recognised as threats. The moment they make a move, the Trolls would send the appropriate forces to counter them. It often leads to bystanders dying so they only moved when they were certain they could benefit more than they would stand to lose. The old man would show up on the battlefield near the Troll¡¯s forward base to put pressure on them so that they couldn¡¯t move away as they wished. He would make sure little to no scouts or reinforcements can escape either.
The two older men stared at them in silence and frowned.
¡°I¡¯m not sure if we should let the two of you in on this operation.¡±
¡°...Will we be marked too? I think we¡¯re a bit too weak for that.¡± Ebony caught on to the reason for their dilemma.
¡°It¡¯s hard for us to throw you anywhere, other than a couple of us none of the others can back you up or even stay close to the two of you safely. There¡¯s a good chance they would take note of you due to the strength of your magic, especially you boy.¡±
¡°They don¡¯t do very well in extreme temperatures and prioritise such targets. I don¡¯t know why or how long you can maintain a large area of effect spell but you would definitely be targeted.¡±
¡°Tell me about this Benumbed tribe.¡± Ebony changed the topic, he needed more information to give a concrete plan or idea.
¡°Thick-skinned. Slightly smaller and leaner, so they are somewhat quick on their feet. Relatively high resistance to physical attacks. They are the Troll¡¯s vanguard, this particular camp is their assault squad. They only gathered enough to show up on the scry chart. we expect an attack from them at any time.¡±
¡°Magical or elemental resistance?¡±
¡°Average.¡±
¡°Do they have any shamans there?¡±
¡°Not likely. Those cowards hide deep within their bases protected by their strongest forces.¡±
¡°We just have to hit so fast and hard that they don¡¯t realise us right?¡±
The elders nodded.
Ebony paused. He was about to say they could simply drop a bomb or two on the camp. He may or may not be able to fly here due to the corrosive poison cloud but could Ning Xin do that? Perhaps her mask could help with inhalation but their equipment wasn¡¯t enough if the cloud was as potent as they said. They could fill his Glacial Model and he could Will them to be suicide bombers but the explosion goes off pretty quickly once out of Ning Xin¡¯s control and she only has enough mana to charge 1 very potent bomb.
Effectiveness aside, now that he stopped to think he didn¡¯t know how to feel about mass slaughter despite how many he had already killed. He was here on the battlefield for that exact reason.
¡°No, you¡¯re here to protect.¡± He felt a tug on his arm.
¡®...She can read my mind?¡¯
¡°And you?¡± He questioned.
¡°Both, eat or be eaten. They come here looking to feast on us.¡± She countered.
Ebony put it to the back of his mind and told them his plan to send a suicide bomber, he could get other fire mages to fill up more Models.
Commander Wil and his squad leader weren''t keen on helping with the plan due to the questionable effects. They couldn¡¯t afford to have their fire mages¡¯ mana to be wasted. The militia¡¯s camp didn¡¯t have any magical weapons of mass destruction, unlike the Imperial bases. If they retreat towards their own base, the Trolls wouldn¡¯t chase unless it was an all-out attack.
¡°You want me to sit out this time?¡± His fiery companion scowled at the thought.
¡°You¡¯ll be empty after charging one bomb, they said strong warriors are often made a target too.¡± While mages are targeted because the Trolls understood how they were the bigger threat, strong warriors are targeted for individual Trolls to prove their strength.
¡°That¡¯s what I want!¡±
¡°I know but I want you to sit out,¡± Ebony stated.
¡°I agree, we don¡¯t get a useful card every day. The Trolls are hiding their cards too, although it''s probably just sheer numbers. Boy, you sit out. I don¡¯t want them to be wary of another ice mage, the girl gets to fight.¡± Commander Wil massaged his shoulder with his club.
¡°Ha!¡± She bumped her shoulders into his.
¡®It backfired¡¡¯ The two of them weren¡¯t about to argue when it came to tactics. They knew nothing and he was just making suggestions since the short spar didn¡¯t feel like it was enough for them to show what they could do.
¡°We dallied for long enough, follow me.¡± The Dwarf walked out.
¡°Mmm.¡± They followed their cap.
The small camp they were going to attack had about 7 to 8 thousand Trolls. First assault and support squad tallied roughly 500 men, 200 of which were part of the support squad. They had about a dozen or so bards and augmenters. Ebony was going to join this group in disguise. With Waning Presence and his sound magic, he could go around giving others buffs without catching much attention. Since the Trolls were horrible at sensing magic, he could support the others with gravity magic as well.
The support squad was very important. Their warriors would never be able to stand up against these physical powerhouses known as Trolls without the buffs from the bards. They had a few healers too, young ones that wanted to level quickly.
The skilled healers were all back in the rear except the Lord family healers but the royals were all activated near Tidal in First and Third Tide where the battle was the fiercest.
The Trolls seemed to have a lot more leeway this time. They always wanted to target the Frost Elves but were forced elsewhere. Whatever the Imperial¡¯s plan was, it wasn¡¯t working too well.
Ebony tried his best to hide his presence but Waning Presence wasn¡¯t an invisibility spell. Everyone who could currently see him couldn¡¯t tell anything different except that he was harder for people with mana sense to spot.
The conjured battlefield was a dry wasteland. There was nowhere to hide and it was going to be very obvious if they made any sort of tall cover for themselves so they had to stay quite a distance away. The silver lining was that the Trolls didn¡¯t have very good perception or any kind of equipment and technology that could spot them with more ease.
Without any Shamans, the militia was confident that a dozen or so kilometres away was enough with the thick dust floating around. It never settled for long enough since they had constant clashes.
They waited but not in silence. These people chatted, laughed, argued and even threw skills at each other. They needed to wait for a signal from Commander Wil that it was time to start their assault. The mind mage in the support squad will be their liaise, they were in charge of communication.
A few tried to talk to them newbies but the only thing they got out of him was ¡®mmms¡¯ and Ning Xin either ignored casual conversation or glared at rude remarks. Ebony might have used gravity magic to peel some¡disturbing gazes towards her. Those gazes made both of them extremely uncomfortable.
¡°What happened to your mantle?¡± He pointed out the main reason for those gazes.
¡°It¡¯s torn, not much is left of it. Why?¡±
¡°Pass it to me.¡±
She took out her mantle without any further questions.
Ebony took out a red fabric that was as similar in tone as he had before mending the large holes. They didn¡¯t have to have any effect other than to cover her up. It took pretty long due to the mantle having very complicated weaving, he re-weaved the threads to align with his fabric. Once he was done, he put the mantle back on her and secured it firmly in place.
¡°...Thanks.¡±
He didn¡¯t fit the hood since there was no hood left but that wasn¡¯t an issue.
When it was roughly ten minutes away from their planned timing, they received a warning from the support squad.
The two of them prepared their suicide bomber. Mostly the one in charge of firepower working but he needed to keep his Model strengthened as much as possible.
¡®Wait a minute, I just have to do it in my domain.¡¯ Ebony cast a short-ranged domain.
It became a lot easier to control a tiny suction spot within his Glacial Model. The Model was so detailed that it was swallowing flames through its mouth. He made the spot of revolving gravity mana within the Model¡¯s belly. Wind, lightning and fire were sucked into his Glacial Model at a speed they were both unfamiliar with.
His Model kept glowing brighter.
¡°I can¡¯t control it, your gravity is too strong. Stabilise it a little.¡± Ning Xin concentrated as flames poured out from her mask.
It looked like a mad scientist¡¯s experiment.
Instead of slowing down his gravity mana, he cut himself and fed his blood to his Glacial Model. His blood was great at containing energy if he understood it right, especially mana. He should have used his head, the fire mage was already overloaded.
The blood mage had a nosebleed and he didn¡¯t notice until it dripped from under her mask. She was also unaware or she would¡¯ve directed the blood into her mask.
¡°Stop.¡± He patted her shoulders and pushed her arms down. She got dizzy but didn¡¯t fall, they did this many times now.
Ebony shut the Glacial Model¡¯s mouth but he could feel the intense heat from it even in his domain. He focused on the gravity mana within it and strengthened the Model¡¯s internals as much as he could. It didn¡¯t even put much of a strain on him. Not while the Model was still in his domain.
He looked around but everyone distanced themselves away except his partner in the artform of explosions and his squad leader. One could squint but still cannot look directly at the bright sculpture of ice. His ¡®captain¡¯ conjured a few walls to hide it. He forgot all about how bright it was going to be and he even strengthened it within his domain. Not by much since most of the firepower wasn¡¯t provided by him.
¡°On my count boy.¡± Cap gave his helmet a rub. Ebony couldn¡¯t tell if the man was impressed by their combined spell or not.
They were still waiting for the signal from the support squad.
Ebony could feel the vibrations and even see the silhouette of the camp, he was quite confident of his aim. His Glacial Model was smart enough to know what a Troll was. He linked up Guided Path to the limits of his range and prepared to propel this poor Model through it.
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¡°Let¡¯s see this surprise of yours.¡± The earthen walls collapsed
Ebony let it rip. The repulsion strengthened by his domain fired his missile off. It put supersonic speed to shame but even so, a Troll pulled out his jagged rock sword and roared. He slashed at the missile with enough intensity to tear buildings down with just wind pressure.
The suicide bomber swung its hand down which turned into a blade. The Troll¡¯s attack was too strong to push back but the Glacial Model only used the momentum to spin itself past the defending Troll. That took away most of its repulsion and brought it to a stop. It had to run on its feet now.
Ebony charged forward a little so that he could help control the Model if necessary. The Glacial Model skill at level 166 increased his range of control for something with his ¡®will¡¯ imbued by 445%. His mental reach was about 120 metres now, he could exert manual control over his Models over 600 metres away.
¡°Stay back for a bit more.¡± He warned. He didn¡¯t need to, no one was moving forward as Cap was raising his hand and hadn''t put it down.
The poor old suicide bomber could only use ice magic and had to avoid getting cut in the belly until it got deeper into the camp. It used its small size and quick feet to dance around the giants attacking it, they found it annoying due to how bright it was shining and that took all the camp''s attention so Ebony could stand so close yet no one noticed he was standing there.
He was a little too late to do anything useful as the Trolls surrounded the poor sculpture and jammed their weapon into it. The Model didn¡¯t hesitate to let its body rupture before the power within it got released.
Ebony already pushed himself back when he sensed that. He didn¡¯t want to stay close to the explosion even if he probably wouldn¡¯t get killed by it.
Although they said people of the Benumbed Tribe were a little smaller, the average difference could hardly be seen. They had a wide range of height and size after all. The only thing worth noting was that they were all slimmer than the Trolls he had seen so far.
Two of the Benumbed Tribe threw themselves to hug each other with his suicide bomber unable to dodge since it had giant rocks stuck in its body.
Ebony and Ning Xin got their experience. 6, that was all they got.
¡®So many survived?¡¯
Captain Dwarf and Ning Xin didn¡¯t wait any longer but most of the others remained in shock. They needed the heat to die down a little. They could feel the heat reaching their bones from kilometres away. The release of gravity and wind helped to spread the damage further.
¡°Move idiots! Their regeneration is greatly weakened now!¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t lag too far behind, a little worried for his partner. They didn¡¯t really have to worry about escapes since this tribe was filled with warriors with even more pride but a few of them including him were on lookout duty to stop any escapees from getting reinforcement.
He arrived to see his squad¡¯s captain and many strong fighters in the heat of the battle. The Trolls and humans recognised each other since they were both external assault squads that have attacked each other multiple times. The tribe didn¡¯t have any walls, tents or a roof over their head. Practically all of them were engulfed in his combined spell but only about a few hundred near the point of the explosion were greatly affected.
The support squad began their work and strings were strummed with dozens upon dozens of mana threads linking up to the militia. It was pretty cool since he could sense the mana threads and their vibrations. He couldn¡¯t link up to so many people unless he used the callstone function. It must be their instrument or their skill. Some were wide-ranging areas of effect buff. The water mages cast a water film on those that couldn¡¯t take the heat.
To say the support squad was essential was an understatement. They were outnumbered and had to take advantage of the initial surprise attack. The assault squad¡¯s mages were dishing out their spells as well, many of which were fire magic.
Ebony sent his buff to his partner while he observed to see who needed it the most.
He wasn¡¯t supposed to jump into battle, anyone who killed too many Trolls in a short period of time would be easy for their shamans to find out even if they weren¡¯t currently present. He used gravity and sound magic freely while being careful not to overuse ice magic.
Ebony only acted in self-defence and didn¡¯t go around picking a fight. Still, he couldn¡¯t stop fighting since they were surrounded and there were many ¡®free¡¯ Trolls at the edge of their camp. Other than light burns, those at the edges were relatively unharmed. They all wielded giant single-edge swords with a few carrying thick shields.
At the edge of his senses, one fire mage got caught and stuffed into the Troll¡¯s mouth. He couldn¡¯t buff the man or conjure defences for him fast enough. He also didn¡¯t expect the Trolls to focus on eating, even monsters aim to kill or at least incapacitate before feasting but these warmongers didn¡¯t wait for that. The Troll couldn¡¯t swallow the mage whole, his legs were grabbed like a drumstick before his upper half was munched on and split in half. Two bites were all it took but with all the chewing, the mage was a dead man.
¡°On me!¡± Cap Dwarf yelled.
A dozen broke free from their battle to disrupt the apparent leader of this camp. Captain Dwarf wanted to get the persistent giant off his back so that he could cause some rampage. The Trolls understood the overused tactics and the leader¡¯s squad charged back to put pressure on Cap Dwarf. Stalemate.
The situation wasn¡¯t looking good despite the average assault squad member taking on multiple Trolls. The Trolls fought a lot better together than he imagined. Definitely better than the militia in terms of teamwork. It was concerning because they had limited bards and they had limited resources. The Trolls weren¡¯t decreasing in number as they were hard to kill. Relatively uninjured Trolls would take attacks for their fellow compatriots to allow them a chance to recover. Even he wasn¡¯t able to land many killing blows before he was disrupted by another Troll. Doing so without Frostblaze Augmentation or cladding was hard.
Ning Xin already caught the attention of every strong Troll present and was embroiled in the battle with Cap Dwarf and the others that could keep up and even exceed her. She wasn¡¯t able to use her fire magic freely but it wasn¡¯t that big an issue since she never really threw around spells in close combat. All of her excess mana went to enhancements.
The Trolls surrounding him hollered and called him ¡®troublesome¡¯.
¡®I haven¡¯t got hit once, I should let them knock me around.¡¯ Ebony realised that he was dodging and weaving around hundreds of them too much. His gravity magic was strong enough to heavily hinder most warriors with tier 1 mana enhancement slightly higher level than him. If he cast his domain, even if they had a tier 2 enhancement it would be hard for them to stand. Unless they had high Intelligence, high refinement or just a high skill level.
He had a feeling Cap Dwarf had very decent gravity resistance as his gravity mana slipped from the short man¡¯s armour and skin. If he didn¡¯t waste his time learning from Kong Jing, he was pretty sure it wasn¡¯t the armour that resisted gravity.
Ebony took control over his body and forced it not to evade the rock slashing his belly. He only activated the scales on his robe in the area of impact. The Trolls didn¡¯t have very good perception as far as he could tell.
He smashed his elbow and knee on the rock sword, destroying it with Sonic Intrusion and Chaotic Repulsive Membrane while he tumbled into some other Troll. It hurt quite a bit without Augmentation so he acted like he got hit while he destroyed their weapons and shields. They couldn¡¯t avoid it with Guided Path pulling him towards their weapons and pushing himself away when they tried to attack him.
Restricting the forces wherever any of the militia was having trouble. His limp body flew around at great speeds as he was getting beaten up badly. Oddly arriving at the areas where people were about to die and oddly, they would turn things around and get the upper hand.
All he had to do was cast his domain as a thin film and his sound and gravity magic were greatly strengthened for short-ranged skills. He didn¡¯t take any damage that way. Only about a quarter of the camp were Grandmaster Trolls, large compared to them but the militia¡¯s first assault squad could beat them with the bard¡¯s buffs.
Every Grandmaster Troll was chucking themselves at the centre group so he didn¡¯t have to worry much. He noticed Cap Dwarf glancing at him quite a bit. Only after a few minutes did he know what the man wanted.
Ebony waited for a lull in his captain¡¯s battle before ripping him out of there with Guided Path. He quickly found a Troll to hit him in his captain¡¯s direction. They swapped places and he limited his domain to gravity magic, it was weaker than if he cast a full domain but it worked.
¡°Give me ten¡± They bypassed each other and he released the captain to cause some havoc. Cap didn¡¯t even reach the ground when the snakehead swam up and caught him. It moved smoothly enough to mistake for a living creature and the swag Dwarf rode it as a surfboard.
Ebony was snagged out of the air and planted into the ground.
¡°Ice!¡±
¡®Damn. I guarded that reflexively.¡¯ Ebony wouldn¡¯t be able to take a hit from these guys without Augmentation.
¡°It¡¯s just my equipment.¡± He slashed at the arm pushing his chest down. Highly pressurised water blasted the Troll atop him as well.
Fortunately, the chaos brewing meant that not many Trolls cared that he used a tiny bit of ice magic. The Troll that got blasted away was forced to defend himself from another warrior. Ebony tried his best to act as support but he was doing so well that the Trolls figured he was causing all their movements to be so heavy and how they started to miss attacks and opportunities because a phantom force pulled their arms aside.
Ebony was convinced that the Trolls had craftsmen of sorts. He couldn¡¯t destroy the Grandmasters¡¯ weapons although part of the reason should be the reinforcement that they imbue into their weapon being stronger than their weaker members. He recognised the material to be simple ironrock albeit in the Rare quality range, he should be able to crush them into dust with ease even without sound magic. It was definitely the work of a smith that strengthened the material, they don¡¯t have mages after all.
¡°Stay back boy!¡± He got surrounded by a few men protecting him. Three squads of regenerative giants worked together to get him. He buffed the militia protecting him and sustained the buff he was sending through his callstone.
They were in on the act as well but they also figured that Battle Song was giving them part of the buff that the bards could. It wasn¡¯t as gentle on their body though, the highly compressed mana wasn¡¯t comfortable as it flowed into their bodies. These veterans were able to utilise the strength buff without being disorientated by an increase in speed and power.
No bard was present since the support squad doesn¡¯t fight so deep, they were only Masters and placed themselves at the rear. Most of the men here were older men who could carry themselves well even against multiple Trolls of a slightly higher level.
That said, he was informed that the Benumbed Tribe¡¯s elite forces had an average level of 350. The militia¡¯s first assault squad only had about 50 Grandmasters, most under level 330. Compared to the attack on the main forward base, they had it good. They weren¡¯t as outnumbered and had far higher average levels.
The loss of their captain added a lot of pressure to the team taking on the Benumbed Tribe leader¡¯s squad of 8. Ning Xin was putting on a great fight and restricted their healing capabilities almost completely. She begrudgingly fought together with mr kidnapper who needed to pick up the slack from the temporary loss of their captain together with an archer who was wielding two arrows as if they were daggers.
Something about the lady archer¡¯s aura was weird, Ebony was too far to tell. Mr kidnapper was taking on the tribe¡¯s leader at almost 8 metres tall together with Ning Xin. The lady archer tied down the other 5 squad members all by herself. Ebony was going to assume 2 died and that was all from the squad leader¡¯s group of 8. The movements of the 5 Trolls that the archer was fighting were very sluggish.
¡°Stop getting distracted and keep your eyes here!¡± Someone yelled at him.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony was worried about his partner since she was poking somewhere above her abilities. Acting mostly as support but also pissing the tribe leader off enough to get targeted.
He pulled his gaze back and took over manual control over his body instead of letting it move as it desired. Frostblaze Augmentation might spike up by instinct if he wasn¡¯t careful. Only a small portion of Trolls had a weaker form of Identify, he wouldn¡¯t be found out as long as he didn¡¯t overuse ice magic and there wasn¡¯t a shaman nearby.
Ebony did his best to keep this group of people alive whilst being surrounded. They had no one to tip the situation over. Being outnumbered, every time they got one on the brink of death another Troll would drag their ally away or take a hit for them. Allowing their allies to retreat and regenerate. They were strong warriors that managed to contain his group and slowly push them. His group had less and less space to move about.
Ten minutes had passed a while back but their captain wasn¡¯t back yet.
These humans and beastmen alike had haggard breaths in less than half an hour. They could all hear screams from the weaker Trolls that had to handle or rather, suffer from Cap¡¯s onslaught. Sadly, there were enough Grandmaster squads and the old Dwarf was taking on multiple squads all by himself.
Instead of stamina, the people Ebony was surrounded by were starting to lack mana. He saw some of them consuming a potion or two already. The Trolls were mostly in the same state, they didn¡¯t need mana and had more than enough endurance to keep pushing the militia. Gravity only hindered them, it didn¡¯t drain their strength or endurance away as fast as they needed.
They already killed two squads worth of Trolls but the numbers surrounding them didn¡¯t change. The only silver lining was that there didn¡¯t seem to be any free Grandmaster squad putting pressure on the militia¡¯s weaker members. The elite group and captain alone took up most of their efforts.
Casualties on the militia¡¯s side were considerably low as of yet. If the captain, the elite party or Ebony¡¯s group cannot free themselves anytime soon the situation would turn for the worst. The support squad would be out of mana soon and they didn¡¯t have enough members to rotate amongst themselves like an army would. The Masters would start to die fast if that came to be.
Ning Xin can reach peak enhancement within a few minutes with her current Core Skill. Ebony noticed that her sword style had increased her speed and power to the limits that her enhanced body can withstand. She didn¡¯t stop herself from getting any faster as mr kidnapper forced away the leader Troll.
¡®She¡¯s getting reckless again. I can¡¯t leave these guys as they are now¡¡¯
¡°Anyone has a special skill that can hold them back a minute or two? I think it¡¯s time to tip the scales.¡± He tried asking.
Other than being strong warriors that are durable, Ebony wasn¡¯t able to see any special skill from the Trolls. Sadly, the same can be said for the people he was trapped with as far as he could tell.
From their reactions, they were practically begging him not to leave them now.
¡°We¡¯ll force our entourage towards cap!¡± The lizard woman who he beat was here with him and she had been taking charge even though there were 2 Grandmaster warriors trapped with them.
¡°Can ya flip gravity horizon-TALLY!?¡± The Axe wielder roared and rend both arms of his attacker off. The lizard woman leapt to deal the finishing blow but the Troll¡¯s buddy already kicked the injured one back. The militia already cursed many times at the failed attempts.
¡°Never tried. Sounds simple.¡± Ebony liked the idea.
It was Magnified Gravity but sideways. It shouldn¡¯t be too hard to manipulate since Guided Path was far more complicated. The volume and range he needed to cast them would be an issue since their enemies were so big.
He spread his domain out to help with the manipulation, the mana consumption dropped with the exclusion of ice mana. Noticing that, he took away the vibrations against movements as well. The range of his impromptu spell decreased from a diameter of 20 metres to 6. Only then did they see the Trolls skid on the ground. He wasn¡¯t able to strengthen it any further but this made it easy for them to slip with a single push from any of them.
¡°Get their feet off the ground!¡±
They began to aim at giants'' feet. Ebony¡¯s spell was cylinder-shaped, although invisible to the naked eye the effects were obvious. It took some time to get used to the mental movement to prevent the ones within the range of his spell to run away. With his current finesse over gravity mana, his spell could chase them around and still direct them in a general direction.
The axe wielder managed to make an almost naked Troll jump and Ebony took the chance to ram into the body afloat with Treading Stride. Without any grip, the giant was propelled towards Cap Dwarf. The elder would have no problem with that as far as they could see. There were a dozen giants wrestling his earthen snake head and twice that number tossing themselves at the tiny figure in comparison. Literally using their flesh and dead allies'' bodies to hold the Dwarf back.
¡°FEEEAAAST!¡± The roar echoed in Ning Xin¡¯s direction. The entire battlefield was momentarily silenced by the Troll leader¡¯s warcry.
Most Trolls paused long enough for the militia to land a fatal blow but not everyone was able to make use of the chance. Their giant enemies followed with a warcry of their own and started digging into their fellow soldiers'' remaining flesh.
Sobs rang throughout the battlefield as they ate their friends and perhaps, family.
Chapter 176: Robust Raider
¡°WITH THE STRENGTH OF OUR PEOPLE! THE FLESH OF OUR PEOPLE! THE SUFFERING! KILL THE TYRANNICAL! THE CRUEL FOLKS OF THE EMPIRE SHALL KNOW OUR WRATH!¡± The bonfire known as the Benumbed Tribe¡¯s leader continued to cry out even when he was on fire and a halberd was stuck in his throat. It was odd that he was speaking Elcrian when not all Trolls learned the language.
He swept the pesky humans that constantly threatened to burn him alive but they were too quick now that he was greatly weakened. The burden from the constant regrowth of cut limbs was devouring his life force and stamina very quickly.
¡°WE FEAST!¡± He continued to spur his men.
The leader¡¯s brothers were all dead, killed by the tiny one and the archer who fought like a warrior. Tears wouldn¡¯t stop flowing down as he only managed to get his hands on his youngest brother. The bastard with a small frame but a large chest burned the rest to ashes.
¡°WE FEAST! WE FEAST! WE FEA... ¡± Every one of his tribe members who were still alive echoed after him. Some hesitated more than others, those of them died with pride. He was sure.
He couldn¡¯t afford to hesitate any longer than the youth under his command. He needed to get as many of them back to the main base as possible. The tiny one who escaped his clutches killed half of the hungry youths under him in a short time before the parents¡¯ squad went to stop him in their rage.
Was there even half of them remaining?
The tribe leader didn¡¯t know, he couldn¡¯t afford to look away from the fast critters holding him down. He regretted sending out a thousand of them towards their forward base. They were mercilessly shot down by dozens of bows. Only when those bows started shooting did he notice the aura of those scrawny blue men. That disgusting aura was something he was familiar with but those new on the battlefield wouldn¡¯t be able to sense it.
There was nothing his men could do against those bows high in the sky except block and stay alive as long as they could. A small number managed to retreat only to be killed by their attackers. Most of those bows flew away, towards their forward base but 5 remained in the sky as if to overwatch the situation. The blanket of arrows also left, with about 10 remaining behind each of the 5 overseers.
He feared that these 5 would start attacking but 50 arrows wouldn¡¯t do much even if they exploded. Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t know the capabilities of these bows. The constant eye he had to give above him had put a lot of pressure on him as he fought the 2 warriors who wielded fire magic.
Now, the archer joined them and had a look of disgust as he licked every drop and morsel of his brother.
¡®I won¡¯t let you die for nothing.¡¯
He gulped and roared to the heavens with his throat fully healed and energy filling his starved body along with all his tribe members who committed the sin of cannibalism with him.
???
Ebony¡¯s battle wasn¡¯t really affected. There weren''t a lot of dead bodies and their battle already shifted pretty far. The bulk of the militia¡¯s battle on the other hand had a ton of bodies or at least, body parts.
¡®I see. They were starving all this time.¡¯ Ebony understood. The Imperial Army wasn¡¯t the only one that had food supply problems. These huge Trolls must eat a lot. They don¡¯t have a continent worth of farms backing them. Their food source was likely from their rear where they fish from the sea. As far as he was aware, this battlefield didn¡¯t reach Tova and they were really far away.
Their numbers far surpassed the Imperial Army and they clearly had a bigger diet. It was no wonder they were so desperate to eat anything they got their hands on. The Trolls that slipped into Elva were more well-fed. He understood why this tribe seemed sluggish and weakened. Sadly for the ones against his group, their moment of glee was an opening that he wouldn¡¯t let slip. In one fell swoop, they were all blasted into the air. Smashing into Cap Dwarf¡¯s entourage.
Ebony took a single step to weave past all of them and got beside his elder.
¡°Should I try to get things under control?¡± He asked calmly. The situation wasn¡¯t looking good for the others. They might get killed in moments with the renewed vigour of their enemies. Just as he posed the question, Trolls further away bulked up with another roar.
¡®They might not make it.¡¯ Ebony thought. It was evident the Troll¡¯s couldn¡¯t use this power up without enough energy so it shouldn¡¯t last for too long as not many of them got the chance to eat. But the militia generally had lower endurance and they were already running low on mana. All the mana regeneration potions required them to stop casting magic before they could recover a smidgen of mana compared to how much they required.
From how he saw things, the militia wouldn¡¯t outlast this short period of time.
¡°No. We need your power as a surprise later on.¡± Cap denied. Ebony was scheduled to attack the forward base with the bulk of the militia after this operation was completed.
¡°I¡¯ll take things over here. Don¡¯t bite your tongue.¡± Cap Dwarf grabbed his hip with an iron grip.
¡°I¡¯ll get there myself.¡± Ebony rooted himself down so that he wasn''t thrown.
His group attacked from outside the enclosure where he and Cap were with the support of a snakehead. He wasn¡¯t worried for them now that they were within the Cap¡¯s reach.
He weaved out of the enclosure without a sound, Treading Strides covered the distance beneath shadows as much as it could. The Cap prioritised taking the leader down so that they could free up 3 strong elites to annihilate the others. Ebony wouldn¡¯t be able to protect the second group of elites from so many Grandmasters without ice magic, he was barely able to protect himself.
No one was able to stop him or even catch sight of him as he made his way to the 1v3 battle. The archer lady hugged the Benumbed Tribe leader¡¯s enlarged neck with her legs and a thick wire. Her two arrows were linked by a metal wire which she coiled around the giant¡¯s neck and pulled backwards with all her strength.
The dual longsword user was zooming back and forth, laying deep lacerations on the leader¡¯s legs. Joints especially.
The giant¡¯s arms were busy parrying blows from a halberd with the same two-handed rock blade that most of his tribe members wielded. Journeymen would die just by staying near their battle as the shockwaves of every exchange of blows were enough to tear their weak bodies apart. Scorchie and Scorchy were bright red instead of white but they should be much hotter than they appear to be. She was probably trying to drain the giant dry with her blood-drinking swords but the Troll was regenerating it fast enough that it didn¡¯t appear drained.
Ebony wasted no time and made sure he only weighed the giant down with his gravity domain.
¡°GRH! It¡¯s you!¡± The leader realized that he was the one who pulled Cap Dwarf out and led to the deaths of thousands.
His increased vigour and rage did nothing as the impediment of weight cancelled it out.
Now that he was in range, he cast Battle Song for the two elite fighters. They were not receptive to his mana. Even after they let his mana into their bodies, the enhancement didn¡¯t appear to be as obvious as it was to others that received the same support from him.
The leader jumped onto its back to smash the archer but Ebony flipped gravity around faster than it could. The archer didn¡¯t float as much, she must have some gravity resistance too. She glanced at him, Ebony didn¡¯t notice but he still acted as if he understood what she wanted. She twisted her stranglehold and swung the lighter giant over her head. Once he reached the peak, she slammed him down with his gravity''s assistance. Thin blades rammed down the leader¡¯s throat without a moment''s delay while a heavy strike split the giant¡¯s skull all the way down into the ground.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Two women twitched in annoyance as they dodged the shockwave that would¡¯ve cut them down. Ebony¡¯s Will naturally assisted Ning Xin with a pull. She didn¡¯t have any effective gravity resistance with her mantle torn and battered. She didn¡¯t have her magic body for a long time so it was quite weak.
¡°Hey!¡± The archer protested, miraculously unwinding her wire from that position in time.
The body of this high-level Troll was durable and he was only split down to his chest. Mr kidnapper didn¡¯t let his guard down and evaded the arm that reached to grab him.
¡°Neck.¡± Ebony focused his Will on the giant¡¯s neck.
Mr kidnapper moved his halberd with insane dexterity, Ebony can see how he could keep up and even push back Ning Xin. The arrows in the lady¡¯s hands already found their way into the knees of their opponent, then the ground violently vibrated from numerous shockwaves. Dozens of holes formed in the giant¡¯s leg. He didn¡¯t know what form of magic it was but he couldn¡¯t see anything moving that made those attacks. It wasn¡¯t a physical attack nor were there any vibrations in the air until a hole formed on the Troll. As if a machine gun, the Troll¡¯s legs were mutilated by invisible shots.
A blood halo sawed at one arm but still required the swordswoman to pin it down with her blades. Her build-up from her sword style must have been lost but she pushed her Core Skill as another shockwave pulsed from within her.
Ebony saw no harm in joining. Icicle swept down from the opposite side of the halberd. He augmented himself just enough such that no flames burst out of his body and only made him glow a little. The halberd was the one that did most of the work.
His body moved by itself and kicked the two pieces of the head away. The free arm of the leader had been moving to push its decapitated head back. Their opponent¡¯s shock aside, the natural chill of Icicle was enough to leave a razor-thin layer of ice that melted instantly.
The sharp butt of Mr Kidnapper''s halberd pierced into the Troll¡¯s heart.
They fended off the Grandmasters that escaped Cap Dwarf and after 7 minutes of being headless, they got the notification.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Robust Raider Lvl 429], enemy 180 levels or more above your own. Partial experience gained. Experience concentration too high to dilute completely, additional experience is gained.¡¯
He must have joined the battle a little late since he didn¡¯t get a single level while Ning Xin did even though she was already at a higher level than him. His skills already gained more than one or two levels in such a short time though.
¡®Their vitality is shockingly high. They don¡¯t gain power from cannibalism like rhoats but they are starved. Is the main army losing even in this situation?¡¯ All things considered, he wasn¡¯t surprised.
The forward base against Fifth Tide had an estimated army of seven hundred thousand strong. The militia¡¯s ¡®ambush¡¯ numbered only in the thousands. Those suicidal folks. As for the Imperial¡¯s forward base, they had about hundred and fifty thousand. Relying on magic weapons and ranged attacks to cover the gap in numerical advantage.
Unbelievable.
Never had the Trolls come to Elva with everything they had. Attacking Elva had always been an effort of a couple dozen strong Tribes not the entire continent of Tova. The Trolls united, that was the only explanation for the large-scale attack.
Fifth Tide was the smallest. The Trolls were usually forced to battle from First to Third Tide due to Navin¡¯s effort and blocking a portion of the sea but it wasn¡¯t possible this time. He wasn¡¯t privy to the details since their little militia and even Koawe didn¡¯t know or at least, didn¡¯t inform him. They managed to overcome the Empire¡¯s efforts at bringing them away from Fifth Tide but the numbers here were by far the smallest.
Ebony couldn¡¯t imagine the state of such a large battlefield when this camp alone stretched so far out of his reach. The battle here was going to be very different from how an army fought but it was an introduction. Now that they freed 3 elite fighters exhausted or not, the rest of the Benumbed Tribe were fishes on a chopping board. They left Cap to deal with the other elites and went to prevent further casualties with their weaker members.
From there, it didn¡¯t even take half an hour to finish the rest off. Ning Xin was a demon of slaughter that weaker Trolls actively avoided despite their love for combat. Mr Kidnapper was simply an experienced warrior as far as Ebony could tell but without a decent opponent for him, there was not much he could see. Miss Archer¡¯s skills were something he couldn¡¯t figure out yet. Cap¡¯s and his previous group also had some noteworthy people that he might have difficulty against.
¡°Cap, were you holding back? The others as well.¡± Ebony convened with the others.
¡°Wha? Ya fool, it¡¯s the basics on the battlefield. Save as much energy as possible. This is a small operation but battles can last for days with barely enough time to recover. We could be attacked or surrounded at any time. Remember that.¡±
¡°You hear that.¡± Ebony poked the thoroughly exhausted girl¡¯s mask beside him. She was hiding it well but he could tell that she was having a hard time even walking.
Ebony himself had such high Strength and Agility now that his Endurance couldn¡¯t keep up. With his Core Skill, he regenerated stamina fast enough but his body was torn every moment he augmented himself. The high strain caused his muscles to cry out. It helped Stalwart Endowment and Sustained Optimum Condition to improve quickly so he wasn¡¯t about to add points to Endurance for some time. The drawback was that he could not ignore it as much as he used to. If he forced his body to move when it was already broken, he wouldn¡¯t be at full strength even if he regenerated his flesh as his Vitality couldn¡¯t keep up either.
To challenge stronger foes, it was a temporary measure he had to take. Power output had moved up in priority but he still had an impossible lead when it came to battles of attrition.
¡°Do you feel anything weird?¡± Cap asked him before turning to Ning Xin.
¡°...¡± She got serious all of a sudden and gazed at her right arm before touching it.
Ebony only cocked his head in confusion.
¡°Good, only girlie was marked. Stop staring at me like that, there¡¯s no way around it. It was the plan all along.¡±
¡°You didn¡¯t mention a magical mark being placed.¡± His facial expression didn¡¯t change but he was frowning within.
¡°So what? You think other Trolls will recognise us by faces? Not a single one escaped.¡± Cap swung the blood and flesh away from his weapon and shield.
¡°Stop talking, we gotta get to the old man.¡± Archer lady urged.
¡°Giddy up, drink your potions! We¡¯ll be moving in five!¡±
¡°We seem to disagree about how long five minutes is, don''t we?¡± Mr kidnapper mused. It got some laughs from the others since he spoke out loud on purpose.
They gathered the belongings of whatever remained but most casualties were eaten. The militia didn¡¯t appear bothered at their losses except for a certain few who were closer to the ones that died. They had a very low casualty rate for an operation like this or so the archer lady told him. 28 dead was apparently ¡®low¡¯.
Mr Kidnapper clearly avoided Ebony. He didn¡¯t get a chance to talk to the man at all, as the man escaped into boisterous cheers.
¡°Good job, many more might have died if it wasn¡¯t for you.¡± Archer lady patted him on the back before she got pulled aside but the other ladies of the assault and support squad.
¡®If we weren¡¯t here¡the plan would¡¯ve been different. The entire militia would come here and with Commander Wil, they wouldn¡¯t even have a single casualty.¡¯ Ebony thought. But the magical mark changed things a little. If someone knew where those marked were at all times the forward base could stop the advance.
The other squads weren¡¯t as competent as the first assault squad and more of them might just translate to more casualties rather than less. Everlasting Tranquillity consoled the mind like so and pushed the noise aside, he did not cause those deaths. The deaths he caused were far greater in quantity. Were the Trolls at fault? His Core Skill put that aside as well.
According to a report, cap got, Commander Wil was having a one-on-one battle with the Troll¡¯s commander of a different tribe. The Benumbed Tribe was big, the camp here was only a small portion of them. The other Tribe prominent in Fifth Tide¡¯s forward base are the Vigiot Tribe. The Tribeless were Trolls that Ebony and Ning Xin fought in Bubble Hills.
¡®Tribeless¡¯ was just a general term for the majority of the Trolls that didn¡¯t have a different physical trait from the norm or any sort of lineage skill. The Vigiot Tribe were known for the weirder weapons they wielded. From what he heard, he imagined chakrams that weren¡¯t crescent-shaped but had long blades that extended down their arms. Other than that, they were physically the same as most Trolls.
¡°Wh..What!¡± Ning Xin yelled from her exhaustion when she found out that they weren¡¯t about to have a meal.
Apparently, they didn¡¯t even have meat most of the time and only when they were about to move out for a fight did they have meat on the menu. She was dismayed to find out the horrid truth.
¡°If it¡¯s any consolation, you can have some of my blood.¡±
¡°No. I will put myself under the same conditions or there is no point.¡± She rejected.
Ebony nodded and pointed out that going all out as she had done so just minutes ago wasn¡¯t feasible. Not with how she burned energy and required more sustenance.
¡°Stop nagging me, I get it!¡±
Chapter 177: Assault Attempt
As weak as the gluttonous lady appeared, it wasn¡¯t the first time she had to fight hunger. She just sipped on a bit of purified blood and let her muscles recover from the strain. They started moving off but they were walking as if there was no rush. The first assault squad was the strongest in their camp but the main group had Commander Wil.
¡°Their joint attack started a few minutes ago.¡±
Ebony quietly listened to the elders discuss. It wasn¡¯t his place to interrupt when he still didn¡¯t understand the situation. The militia wasn¡¯t as suicidal as he imagined. They were receiving more and more reinforcements that weren¡¯t part of the Imperial Army. Many other ¡®militia¡¯ camps were situated not far from each other. They comprise academies, teachers and even students.
¡°Wil¡¯s men should be arriving in three weeks, we should see a change in our plans.¡±
Ebony turned to the swordmaster that he planted to the ground during his initial test. ¡°Who is Commander Wil?¡±
The old man would be pretty famous if he took command of a random group of people, and he could see they all respected the scrawny old man.
¡°You don¡¯t know and you joined us?¡± The relatively young man didn¡¯t hold any grudges. Perhaps because Ebony saved him from a tight spot in the earlier battle.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°He¡¯s the founder of Bludgeon Academy, surely you¡¯ve heard of the school, no?¡±
¡°Mmm, I heard of it. So his men are his teachers?¡± Ebony remembered fighting someone who proclaimed that he graduated from that academy when he joined the tournament for a new metal. That man didn¡¯t impress him very much so he didn¡¯t really have a strong impression of him.
¡°He handed the headmaster position to his son but most of the current teachers used to be his students. A lot of them are war veterans. I heard they were preparing older students who want to volunteer under an express training course. They should be the ones Cap¡¯s talking about.¡±
¡°How about you? What academy are you from?¡± Ebony made small talk, he recalled that swordsmen were all taught a full set of skills.
¡°Haha¡I could never afford that. My grandfather used to be part of the Imperial Army, he managed to evolve their two-handed sword mastery to tier 3. He was too old and only a Master Warrior but he passed it down to my father along with all sorts of useful skills he refined before he passed away. My father¡¯s now a knight so he tossed the style to me as it didn¡¯t mesh with the way knights fought.¡±
¡°You didn¡¯t join the army?¡±
¡°Nah, too stiff and rigged for me. I want to improve my grandfather¡¯s skills but I haven¡¯t even got to the same level of refinement that he did.¡±
¡°I see. You¡¯re the same level as he was though, I¡¯m sure you can push it further.¡±
It was a ¡®privilege¡¯ but the swordsman was taught many skills from a young age, he got better fortifications and better equipment since he wasn¡¯t that poor and could easily take on stronger monsters. He levelled much faster with those advantages.
¡°What about you? You must be even younger than I am, how did you get so strong?¡±
¡°Hmm¡I was trained hard by my parents I guess. I picked up magic by myself though.¡± Ebony replied. The mental exercises his father taught him had clearly been effective when he learnt any type of magic or just his basic control over his own mana to be as strong as it is.
The swordsman chuckled and someone beside them spit on the ground when he heard Ebony.
¡°Is that spell a wide area of effect spell or does it really strengthen your spells, a domain?¡±
¡°Domain.¡±
¡°Impossible!¡±
¡°Bullshit!¡±
Many people heard him but few believed him. Not that he could tell what their reactions meant. Some of them traded introductions with him.
The swordsman he was talking to was Banly. Channah the lizard woman. Ayla, the woman who fought Ning Xin but he didn¡¯t really see during the battle together with Hayec, the huge guy with a huge shield. It was as if they weren¡¯t at the battle but they were walking together at the moment.
Mr kidnapper was unnamed. He was known as ¡®Unnamed¡¯ but the youngins only knew that because it was what Commander Wil and Cap Dwarf called the man. He was considered Cap Dwarf¡¯s peer but younger.
Athena Stake, the archer who he guessed wrong as she wasn¡¯t an archer despite the 2 large arrows she wielded, was apparently someone young and famous. She self-proclaimed herself to be the founder of the Stake noble house but she was no noble as she flaunted her pride as an orphan.
That was the most impressive resume to Ebony, a strong young Grandmaster who can fight Trolls over a hundred levels over her albeit with some help. He could only assume that most of her skills were self-taught. With or without any help, that was mighty impressive. People here viewed their skills highly and didn¡¯t teach others good skills easily. Not to mention, the general standards weren''t so high that if she managed to find someone to teach her tier 2 skills it would be good enough for the fight against Trolls. She must be talented at what she does.
Currently, Commander Wil was heading the assault on the forward camp with 2 middle and 4 small-sized academies that didn¡¯t get scouted for tougher battles. Two small academies were magic schools, fire and earth. The other 2 were specialised scouts and archers. Banly didn¡¯t even remember their academy names when he told Ebony about them.
Each of them sent the entire school here excluding Journeymen, so there were hundreds of level 150 and above that were risking their lives for the experience. They must have volunteered thinking they would be able to benefit as ranged fighters or scouts. It certainly had some truth. The militia needed as much firepower as they could get and they knew that a war of this scale would last long from their experience. The young would easily gain levels and skill levels to further reduce their burden. A big IF they survive.
The slightly larger schools were both warrior academies. The Arcane Warrior Academy had some amazing graduates, a few of which had high posts in the Imperial Army despite not being from one of Tidal Academy¡¯s branches. They were famed for very efficient mana enhancement that had decent all round physical improvement and elemental resistance. Sadly, only those of a high level were any good. They didn''t have a good hybrid stat build enforced and not everyone from the academy was able to balance out their individual Intelligence stat together with their Fortification and whatever personal skills they had.
Even so, most sent here had decent endurance and survivability. Unlike the smaller academies, they only sent those they deemed ready and were above level 230. Their numbers were huge though, over seven thousand of them. They made good vanguards for the militia.
Banly wasn¡¯t familiar with the other warrior school. Channah chipped in, it was more of a mace mastery school rather than a warrior academy. They only taught some mace style, the founder had the style at tier 3 but getting it to a highly refined state was enough to graduate. They also had a movement skill and mana enhancement specifically increasing the lethality of their fighting style. Hard hitters but not sustainable.
Ebony could already feel the ongoing battle through the floor. Up in the air were 50 bows that were firing arrows that exploded into cold shockwaves. They were firing pretty slowly probably due to the limit in their stock of arrows floating not far from them. He knew the 5 that stayed behind to watch over their battle charged for this battlefield the moment they were done with the small camp.
The truth was that there was no real battle yet. The militia was raining spells from one direction and arrows from another. The 50 special bows that shot themselves were shooting much further away than the low-level archers.
¡®What a waste of arrows.¡¯ Ebony thought. The spells were shot from kilometres away, they didn¡¯t really have to care about accuracy but those spells obviously lost a bunch of power before they landed. As for the arrows, even if the Troll stood a metre away, he didn¡¯t think they would care about those weak shots. It might cut skin or even draw blood but if they were to use their vitality-based enhancement Ebony could imagine those arrows literally bouncing off their skin.
The Troll¡¯s forward base had proper earthen walls and structures, unlike the Benumbed Tribes¡¯ camp. The Grandmaster Shaman in charge was known as the Midnight Shepherd. All of them were level 500 for the past wars and given a title to go by. The warrior in charge was not of the Vigiot Tribe but another one of the Benumbed Tribe. Likely an elder of the small camp¡¯s leader but a King Classed of an undisclosed level.
¡®Maybe not a waste after all.¡¯ There was no retaliation, the Trolls simply took the barrage on. The arrows were choked full of mana and managed to pierce into flesh. There were raised footings for the ranged bombardment, courtesy of the earth mages.
¡°Why aren¡¯t they retaliating?¡± Ning Xin asked the question they both had.
¡°If they come out, they die.¡± Someone from the first support squad answered.
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They didn¡¯t give much of an explanation as the bombardment was dying out. They rejoined Commander Wil from the rear. To their front was the uniformed militia. Not exactly wearing the same armour but they all had similar logos painted somewhere on their armour.
Behind them were the lower levelled archers and mages. By their side were his militia¡¯s remaining members and further left and right were battle-ready mages and half-plated warriors. The [Master Arcane Warrior]s and a dozen or so Grandmasters in their group.
¡®Wait a minute. What was the plan again?¡¯
???
Ning Xin sensed the sudden internal confusion the man supporting her weight had and immediately understood that he forgot what they were supposed to do.
¡°Is there anyone with skills that can hide someone else in the air?¡± The confused man asked to her surprise. She was about to ask what the plan was again because she had a feeling he wouldn¡¯t speak up.
¡°If we aren¡¯t moving fast, I might be able to hide a person or two unless the shaman or the King Class augments their eyes. I can¡¯t fly though.¡± Ayla, the dual wielder that was both a shadow and darkness magic user, spoke up.
He told the surrounding people about his idea. Ning Xin knew that it was another one of his idea that he didn¡¯t really put much thought into. Sometimes, she wished that he thought things through properly but she did like how he usually was.
Reckless and dangerous sums up what he wanted to do. She already knew how tough it was to fight a group of evenly levelled Trolls. If the Dwarf that beat Ebony didn¡¯t help to take care of the others to isolate the leader, she might not have been able to kill any of the squad members at all. She didn¡¯t fear them individually but they were too good at watching each other¡¯s back and keeping each other alive.
The size of their opponent was a huge detriment to Ebony¡¯s current domain. He would be drained dry in an instant due to their size, numbers and strength.
He wanted to join in on the efforts of magical spell flinging. His plan was for someone to hide him till they got right below the corrosive clouds and then to leave him alone once his stealth skill kicked into effect. The timing was bad since they were planning to attack already. The small fire magic academy had hundreds that could cast a layer of mana that would repel fire mana to a decent extent on everyone but few would be capable of fighting if they were to be inflicted with extreme cold.
His idea was rejected since he would be found out the moment his petals started falling. The risk was too high to let him move alone but the reason they hid his magic was to use it exactly how he proposed. Spreading chill to as many enemies as possible.
The base was huge and the old man in charge loved the plan. He wanted to go with Ebony but his mark was too strong, the Midnight Shepherd would notice. Anyone strong enough to move alone was already marked. She didn¡¯t like the feeling of being marked but it was flattering.
Ebony didn¡¯t kill many in the earlier battle so he didn¡¯t know but she guessed that the mark appeared around the time she killed five or so hundred. If it was something like a curse based on kill count, the mark on her should be relatively weak. At least, she didn¡¯t think her location could be pinpointed at all times. Hopefully, it wasn¡¯t anything close to curse magic or she wouldn¡¯t want to kill the caster even if she had the chance to.
Due to the massive base and the old men around them who understood how useful he would be, the plan was changed to sending him further to their rear for him to run wild. The militia wouldn¡¯t reach there for a long time or at all. Ayla wouldn¡¯t be letting him be alone either. He would expend as much as he felt comfortable before signalling them with his sound magic and retreating at full speed. The commander would hop past most of the base and deal as much damage as he could before the higher powers could react. He estimated he might only be able to attack once before he was repelled.
Hit and run, the attack shouldn¡¯t last more than 15 minutes.
She also knew that the militia was positioned pretty well. If the Trolls moved out and gave chase, they would reach the range of the Imperial¡¯s temporary defence towers. There was no retaliation as the Midnight Shepherd couldn¡¯t or perhaps, didn¡¯t, conjure any projectiles for their soldiers to toss. From the craters around, it was obvious that they originally fought back but ran out of heavy items to toss.
Like Ebony, she didn¡¯t understand war tactics. This all felt a little weird and stupid to her. The Imperials had an overwhelming advantage in terms of ranged potential and lethality. She could only reason that it was due to the Shaman and stronger units that caused this not to work. The Trolls would definitely retaliate if their bombardment was causing enough harm.
As worried as she was, she didn¡¯t deny or persuade him from doing so. He let her have her fun earlier, it was only fair she did the same for him. His worry for her during the previous battle had almost been disruptive. He was also quick on his feet and much too tough to die easily.
All of them were ever ready and didn¡¯t hesitate to put their lives on the line.
Cap Dwarf led the attack with his earthen snake head ramming into the wall and tearing a portion down with ease. Similar strength skills were used by other older men and women from other squads further away from them. The stronger veterans had to lead the charge as the Trolls were already waiting for them on the other side.
She no longer glanced at the figure that disappeared and dived into battle herself.
Despite all the talk about not over-exerting herself to conserve energy, she released all the energy she gathered through her Core Skill. They weren¡¯t planning a committed assault so she didn¡¯t see a reason not to go all out.
Her speed caught the Trolls unaware and she decapitated two of them blocking the gap with their bodies. The kill for them always required a few minutes due to their absurd Vitality. At least she didn¡¯t have to worry about them reconnecting their heads since she charred the entire neck. Even the Grandmasters shouldn¡¯t have strong enough regeneration to regenerate or reconnect their heads before they died.
Sadly, this was a guarded base and not an undefended camp. A Troll wielding two sets of curved blades that went along their arm and shoulder managed to step in and stop her. Sort of like a tonfa that she had seen in Xienor but longer and bladed. It was made of a dull white material, bone.
She immediately recognised that Troll went into a stance like that of a martial artist. Otherwise, with the awkward weapons, their front was completely unguarded.
Most of her ally warriors and close-ranged fighters were half the height of the Master Trolls and might not even reach the knees of a Grandmaster. Their attacks usually hit the torso or just the legs. This member of the Vigiot bent his knees and had a very wide stance. The low-hanging arms and bone blade covered them entirely.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t have much mana after the previous battle and short rest. She fired off dozens of Precise Perforation but the [Expert Martial Dancer Lvl 300] backstepped and shifted his hips and shoulders, blocking her strikes with the large body of the bone blade.
She didn¡¯t have to watch the others to find out that jumping to reach for these giants¡¯ vitals would only get them snagged out of the air. Even if members of the Vigiot tribe didn¡¯t have free hands to do so, there were others fighting beside her.
¡°Fleshy warrioress! I haven¡¯t tasted one in a long time!¡± This particular Troll had the ugliest saliva-filled expression she had seen.
The swordswoman clenched her teeth and tested out the disgusting one¡¯s skill. Blood was rushing to her head as she was incensed by the hoots from the surrounding Trolls that asked for a bite of her. Although she was used to the fact that she could control her thoughts and actions better with Incensed Meditation she actually didn¡¯t like the feeling. As if something was restraining her, not allowing her to release pent-up emotions.
¡°Women folk of your kind rarely meet us in direct combat, I can see why. Gyaahahaha!!¡± Her nasty-looking opponent continued to defend against her thrusts. He succeeded in making his allies laugh but not enough to distract them from their own battles. Her cocky opponent fueled her rage. This was the first talkative Troll she fought.
She leaned back to evade the rock sword from another guard that talked about fatty meats being delicious. The mysterious link between her and her Blood Halo dragged her up as Scorchie in her right hand pierced right under the attacker¡¯s jaw straight through his brain. Her longsword heated itself up and melted whatever matter inside their thick skulls.
Rampaging Mortal¡¯s Pulse at about a tenth of its limit flowed in her body. The duration of her enhanced state was about 3 to 4 minutes every pulse of this degree. During this time, she continued to gather life force in her heart for another pulse once the previous effect runs out. To gather 10% of the limit she can currently gather only took about 7 seconds but to push for the limit would take close to 10 minutes.
This meant that she wouldn¡¯t be at full power from the start if she was attacked while in a state of rest. The intermittent power-up also lowered the strain on her body so it wasn¡¯t a massive issue. As her Core Skill levelled and her heart got stronger, the amount of energy it can withstand increased so her charge-up time has actually been increasing instead of dropping. Her rate of familiarisation and efficiency with gathering life force couldn¡¯t keep up with the speed of her levelling.
Ning Xin¡¯s other arm turned into a red flash in response to her enhancement. At long last, the disgusting grin was wiped off Vigiot Troll¡¯s face. She pulled Scorchie out from the front of the skull, slicing it into halves before decapitating the attacker in one smooth motion. Melting their brains stopped their movements so there wasn¡¯t any counter.
She quickly shifted her gaze onto Scorchie, relieved that her hasty move didn¡¯t scratch the longsword.
¡°You dare look aw-, she¡¯s mine!¡± Her opponent yelled, spitting everywhere. Another bone blade wielder came swinging his fist at her.
Nobody bothered with the scream as it got chaotic but even as she got pulled into the messy combat she didn¡¯t forget the cocky Troll. She only refreshed her buff from her Core Skill up to 15% of her limit every few minutes but it hadn¡¯t even been 20 minutes before they were ordered to retreat.
A strong tremor in the ground made many of the retreating members stumble and lose their balance. The vast size of the inhabitants made the base as big as a small town, and despite having no clear view of the destruction that had taken place, she inferred that the plan had been successful. She tried to look for the figure in the air but couldn¡¯t afford to stay distracted.
Ning Xin was a little disappointed with the overall strength of Trolls. She was capable of defeating enemies at her level without using her Core Skill or magic in less than 30 seconds. However, with time constraints, she decided not to waste precious seconds on a single enemy. The average level of the guards was similar to hers, but she expected there to be several level 300 Masters and higher hence the enhancement.
She was too tired to attempt to fend off the Grandmaster guards and left that to the militia¡¯s veterans. Their way back was hindered but the resistance was far weaker compared to their advancement into the base. Ning Xin noticed that the bow made by the Frost Elven elder was trailing her, but it did not attack or support her in any way. This was the only one willing to follow her, she wondered if it would understand if she tried to communicate with it. The bows were far more intelligent than her budding twin sword spirits that have difficulty understanding and responding to her.
The Trolls didn¡¯t have an effective communication chain and were unable to block off the militia¡¯s hasty retreat.
¡°Catch me.¡±
She put her hands out reflexively before she noticed the man falling out of the sky in front of her. Just as quickly, her hands pulled back and the man landed with a bang. The surrounding people couldn¡¯t help but wince when they heard bones crack. Ning Xin was the only one near and fast enough to have caught him but her enhancement was gone after they reached about a gor away from the base. She would snap her arms if she caught Ebony carrying his heavy sword.
¡°Ow.¡±
Chapter 178: Overdraft
Ebony was a little hurt when he saw Ning Xin retract her hands. He managed to protect himself at the last moment and only suffered tiny cracks in his skeletal structure that would heal up in minutes. He had been hit by an epiphany when he was hidden in the air preparing his take on barrage spells.
When the operation started, he was hidden by Ayla while she stood on a platform he made for her. Under her spell, his vision only darkened a little but the people beside them couldn¡¯t see them. He sped up till his camouflage expert told him to slow down or they would be spotted. They avoided the centre with the intimidating auras and tipped along the edges of the walls before reaching the other side of the town-sized base.
The Trolls below them didn¡¯t even know they were under attack or they didn¡¯t act as if they knew. Since they weren¡¯t flying that high, he also couldn¡¯t see the militia¡¯s supposedly ongoing assault from this distance. He recalled the first time he saw Tuffock cast a spray of rock shards. Relatively poor accuracy, low power and compared to his current desired effect, small area of effect. Thus, it wasn¡¯t a spell Journeymen mage typically spends time training.
His new petal spell isn¡¯t a barrage-type spell but nothing he couldn¡¯t repurpose. Sadly, it was far slower since they were condensed flames that stuck together and acted almost like physical petals that float with the wind. Magically. However, he didn¡¯t see how that was a problem if he wanted to hit a densely populated city of giants that have nowhere to run. That threw the issue of accuracy out of the window. The temperature will drop even if it hits the ground.
The low level of the skill meant weak power but nothing mana compression couldn¡¯t fix. The spell might not kill but if a single petal lands on a Troll, they might not have a way to stop the frost from digging into them for long. Their life force based enhancement should protect them so he didn¡¯t have any real hope to kill anything with the spell when it wasn¡¯t even level 100. It begs the next question that should be the least of his worries. Mana cost.
He couldn¡¯t recall the effective area of effect Tuffock¡¯s spell had but a couple of dozen metres wasn¡¯t going to cut it. He needed to fill his entire mental reach with tens of thousands of condensed flames that would last for as long as possible and hit as many targets as possible. A small petal didn¡¯t take much mana, compress it and multiply that by thousands and that would be a problem for his current mana pool.
There was also the issue of conjuring the entire barrage and releasing it at the same time. It needed to catch his targets off guard or a single swing of a strong Troll might blow them all away. With his current control of ¡®Will,¡¯ he didn¡¯t think it was so hard to form them all at the same time. The number of casts he can control didn¡¯t matter much in the conjuration of barrage spells.
The power could drop, no need for maximum compression. But tens of thousands of petals appeared too weak an attempt for his impromptu idiotic plan that popped into his mind when he should¡¯ve kept his move shut. Ning Xin was obviously the first person that came to mind when he was thinking of someone strong to copy but she wasn¡¯t much of a spellcaster.
She can gather life force and strengthen herself, he wondered if he can gather all his wits together to use more mana than he has. It wasn¡¯t impossible, mana potions overexert a person¡¯s mind to generate more mana within a short period of time. This ¡®will¡¯ thing that he had started gaining proficiency over was pretty interesting. Could he force himself to dip even further into an empty pool of mana?
His mind shut off there and began to do its thing.
Ayla had patience but she started to get worried when a few sets of eyes looked up.
Ebony¡¯s Will flooded his mental reach and firmly rooted themselves but he didn¡¯t cast his domain. Once his visualisation of a sky filled with burning blue petals was solidified, his head throbbed in pain. Seemingly strained by the amount of effort. Was ''Will¡¯ related to mental stamina? It was very likely. But the aching spread throughout his body from every pore, his entire Chassis. Yet, his visualisation count only reached over seven thousand of those tiny petals and Mental Arithmetic was telling him that would consume every drop of mana he had and was regenerating. If he had to cast this silly spell in an instant he wouldn¡¯t have time to wait and form more.
Not enough!
He visualised his mana chassis as a plastic bottle that had been emptied and he twisted it all at once. It actually worked, more than a thousand more petals showed up in his mind. Unfortunately, in his trance, his ¡®will¡¯ thought it was insufficient and collapsed his conception of mana chassis inwards. His body caved in in multiple areas, but only his face and head were visible. Ebony didn¡¯t notice that Ayla almost released her spell in shock.
The mental counter hit 5 digits and there wasn¡¯t a moment''s delay before the sky lit up. The petals might not have been made of compressed mana but no normal human could survive if they touched one. Ayla expected something to happen and had enough presence of mind to stay silent but she hardly felt a change in temperature. Ebony had unknowingly ¡®willed¡¯ the petals to contain all their energy to have the greatest effect since they weren¡¯t compressed.
They fell dramatically slowly but none of their enemy noticed until it was too late. Not being able to sense the drastic drop in temperature made them watch the falling blue flowers without much wariness. Multiple individuals swatted those about to touch them only to see the petals go through their thick skin.
In these parts, there seemed to be women folk and other non-combatants as well. None were spared.
The roars and screams of pain resound throughout the base. Light petals flowed under gaps in cloth or windows. Many landed on their structures and froze doors and exits shut. Those that hit the ground didn¡¯t seep under but burst and spread their chill to the surroundings.
A slightly familiar scene played out to Ebony as the Trolls tore their clothing, their armour, and stabbed themselves to tear away the flesh that came in contact with his petals only to realise they had to chop bones to prevent the freezing from spreading. Those that cut their limbs off didn¡¯t cut far enough and the flames already dug deeper but their wounds were frozen shut and weren¡¯t regenerating.
???
Ebony fell out of the sky as he lost the strength to hold his own weight. He wasn¡¯t heavy at the moment due to the empty mana chassis but it didn¡¯t matter. His eyes closed as he fell unconscious. Ayla grabbed his collar in time but she wasn¡¯t capable of flight either and Icicle was too heavy for her to shift Ebony around.
They landed with a bang but no one had the time to care. The initial surprise was over and the Trolls noticed that after sinking into their bones and spreading a few centimetres, the freezing stopped. Those quicker to react reinforced themselves in time and a tiny spot that got frozen was like a bruise to them. Unlucky ones had dozens of petals touching them at the same time.
They violently swung their weapons to blow the flower petals away. It helped to increase the range of Ebony¡¯s skill as the petals insisted to fall.
Ayla¡¯s spell was rendered ineffective the moment they landed and she hadn¡¯t been able to pull Ebony into a blindspot. She desperately looked for somewhere to hide but their location was spotted after the loud landing. The unconscious sound mage couldn¡¯t silence their fall.
Two tribeless already raised their weapons at them, she pushed Ebony¡¯s body behind her and leapt up and around one of their necks and slit them.
¡®Tch to shallow.¡¯ The Trolls already strengthened themselves and she had to jump off the neck before she got grabbed like a pet.
Ayla panicked a little when the other Troll''s giant rock blade propelled downwards on Ebony. By some miracle, the unconscious body rolled to the left, stood up and drew his blade in one motion. Internally overjoyed that the young man woke up but she watched as the man got swatted around pathetically. His awe-inspiring strength wasn¡¯t present and neither did he use any sort of magic.
She hurried against her opponent to try to save the ragdoll but her opponents only increased. The ridiculous wide-range spell was already ending and those stuck within their building broke their frozen structures and come out completely unharmed. At best, they were annoyed and had some slightly stiffer motions from the low temperatures.
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The barrage didn¡¯t hit her thanks to both the giant Trolls and the petals clearly swaying away from her if they got close.
Fighting in their sleep was not something she never heard of but it was the first time she had seen someone able to do so. Perhaps, it was his natural instinct that his body made an attempt to get back to her side but they were rudely interrupted.
Her spell was ready and she cloaked herself with her blend of darkness and shadow mana. A burst of speed was all it took for her to dismember the Trolls in between her and the ice mage.
A violent force tore through space and the ground couldn¡¯t slow down Commander Wil¡¯s forceful jump. Seawater from under the battlefield gushed upwards through the deep crater he made. It sent both her and Ebony into the air but she already caught the ice mage before using pieces of floating rubble to propel herself away from the base.
The King Classed Troll reacted the moment Commander Wil moved from the other side of their base but they couldn¡¯t move that forcefully without destroying their own territory.
Commander Wil raised his club and smashed it down with all his power. The Midnight Shepherd won¡¯t make a move, it was something they were quite sure of. A cone-shaped wreckage appeared as anything within the path of his club simply doesn¡¯t exist anymore. Sadly the biggest and baddest Troll appeared.
Ayla did her best to retreat as fast as possible. Commander Wil only remained to buy them for them to escape, but the Grandmaster old man and the King Class Troll only looked at each other without fighting. Her path was already blocked by elite squads from both the Benumbed and Vigiot Tribe.
At this time, the man who carried her here by flight opened his eyes.
¡°Bring us up!¡± She hurried.
¡°...I don¡¯t think I can.¡± He said after getting his bearings. She noticed his face had regained its shape.
Ayla wasn¡¯t surprised and could only lament her eagerness to have come here with him without any backup plans.
Dozens of arrows exploded around them scaring her out of her wits before she realised that she wasn¡¯t the target. Walls of ice formed and facilitated their escape. She did not hear about allied floating bows that can fire themselves but she didn¡¯t care about the whys or hows.
They had to circle around but the fact that a relatively powerful ice mage caused them great losses made their pursuers more persistent than they should be.
¡°We could really use some gravity magic here!¡± She was desperate for any sort of help.
¡°I¡¯m fresh out.¡±
Ayla already knew that since there wasn¡¯t any time for him to regenerate mana. She didn¡¯t know the man well enough to understand how unnatural it was that he still didn¡¯t have any mana after a full minute.
¡°Let me try something. Hey!¡±
Ebony yelled out above them and waved at the sky. Ayla got another unusual experience by hearing the sound mage yell. She protected him from a glancing strike as the weak man would be flung away if he tried to parry. Her stamina and mana consumption was far higher than usual for facing these muscle heads directly. This wasn¡¯t how she was supposed to fight.
Two bows flew down towards them and she understood the plan. Who was controlling these bows?
Ayla and the weird man leapt to grab the bow handle before they were escorted out by flight. ¡°Let go now.¡± They didn¡¯t manage to get far before the ice mage kicked her hands off the bow grip. She felt the shockwaves right above their heads as they fell.
¡°Damn it!¡± She yelled in frustration. Benumbed tribe Grandmaster squads were on their tails. Without being able to fly high enough, the airspace wasn¡¯t safe with them around. Outside the walls with no structures around, her magic couldn¡¯t display its strengths unless she was willing to leave the ice mage alone.
¡°Hide yourself and go ahead, the bows will buy me time to recover some mana.¡± She hesitated after his words.
She valued herself many times more over a fellow fighter she knew for a couple of hours but her spell wasn¡¯t setting off.
¡°I¡¯ll get killed by your woman if I go back without you.¡±
Yet another unnatural phenomenon occurred as the man laughed out loud. The awkward laugh was jarring to her ears but a Troll interrupted it by sending the man deep into the ground. Her body tensed up at the speed of the attack. Experience helped fuel her body as she already sat atop the attacking Troll. Her blade chipped even with the mana she reinforced it with.
She cursed the fight with the masked Xeng, her weapons were damaged and her spares were poor-quality wares. Two arrows landed in the Troll¡¯s chest and exploded. Ebony had climbed out looking dirty but unharmed.
¡®How? Even if he guarded in time he doesn¡¯t have any body enhancement at the moment?¡¯
She was far quicker on her feet compared to Ebony at the moment so it was up to her and a couple dozen bows supporting them to fend off their pursuers.
Minutes felt like hours but to her relief their transport was ready, ¡°my mana is coming back, hop on.¡±
???
Ebony didn¡¯t expect a single attempt of what he did to give him a skill.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Potent Mana Overdraft learned¡¯
Potent Mana Overdraft - Instantly draw out up to 25% + 0.25% of your mana pool¡¯s capacity by partially crushing your mana chassis with your Will. Mana Chassis mends from overdraft 2.5% faster every level.
He overdid it again and discovered that his mana chassis can get injured in some manner. He tried to recall the notification he got after he regained consciousness.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have inflicted severe mana overdraft upon yourself. Unable to regenerate mana temporarily.¡¯
It didn¡¯t tell him much at that time but he knew it was until his mana chassis mended almost completely before he could regenerate mana again.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Damaged mana chassis reduces regenerative abilities.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Severe mental over exhaustion reduces mana regeneration by 300%¡¯
Sheer Exhaustion resistance helped but a quick mental calculation told him that his mana regeneration dropped by at least 15 times or 1500%. The damaged mana chassis must be a bigger problem than he imagined. He ran out of mana mid-flight and crashed, his Core Skill was only partially working even though he was sure that it should be working at maximum output. Ayla already alighted further behind when she spotted her partner so she wasn¡¯t implicated.
During his fall, he regenerated just enough to enhance himself a tiny bit. Saving him from some pain from his hard landing. To think he would get to experience how other mages couldn¡¯t regenerate as they cast magic.
Even so, the unexpected new skill had been completely worth the silly plan.
¡°How long are you going to daydream?¡± Ning Xin pulled him by his ear.
They retreated till they got into the range of the Imperial base¡¯s magic towers. They were doing the same thing as the Midnight Shepherd. Recuperating.
Apparently, capable mages all had mana capacity-increasing skills somewhere in their mage-Class, Sub-class or Profession slot. Regardless if it was tier 1,2 or higher it meant that high-level mages took days and maybe weeks to regenerate to max capacity unless they had a relatively high-level meditation type skill as well.
Common knowledge suggests that only meditators had meditation-type skills as a non-generic skill. Those that have access to deeper knowledge know that one could push a generic skill into a relevant Class, Sub-Class or Profession if they had enough Natural Potential.
The Empire lacked the power sources to land an effective assault with their magical and ranged advantage. Ebony was certain that there were other meditators in the Imperial Army¡¯s employ. There had to be. Although he was interested in meeting some of them he didn¡¯t have any interest in asking about their skills. Not anymore.
¡°Rest up! We¡¯re launching the next attack in 3 hours!¡±
They were in the middle of walking back to their camp when Commander Wil showed up.
He didn¡¯t need to see Ning Xin¡¯s face to understand her building despair. ¡°We..we¡¯ll be eating before that right?¡± She whispered.
Cap Dwarf, his fellow leaders together with the academies¡¯ leaders formed the group that was too injured to join the next attack together with those that wanted to quit fighting. They escort all of them to the Imperial¡¯s base. No one quit but they had the autonomy to quit whenever they wanted.
Everyone here had the same objective. Speed levelling. If they were patriotic, they had better chances of survival by joining the army. Equipment, healers, supplies and more would be at their disposal.
If the militia was lucky, the Imperial healers had mana to spare. If not, they might spare some medical supplies. If they were in a really bad spot, the militia wouldn¡¯t get anything and it was up to them whether or not to rejoin the fight but no one was going to escort them back to the mainland.
They got back to camp and set up their tents, deciding not to take their trailer out. There were no meals being cooked and people were eating their own rations or not eating at all. Every mage got to meditate or acted as if they had the skill.
Ebony hit the sack instantly.
Chapter 179: Approach
Three hours were too short for most people but the others had been conserving their strength. Ebony¡¯s mana regeneration hasn¡¯t gotten back to normal and his mana pool could only reach up to 78% before it started leaking out from him. He didn¡¯t expect the self-inflicted harm to be that bad.
¡°Boy, can ya do that again?¡± Commander Wil asked him a short moment ago.
He wanted to rush the new skill he got but it seems it was better to take overdrafting a little slower.
¡°We can still do the same thing, I have something else.¡±
¡°No! Leave me out of this plan!¡± Ayla denied it vehemently.
¡°Your shadow binding skill is pretty awesome though, it saved me quite a few times.¡± Ebony praised. The lady could step on a Troll''s shadow and restrict their movements. It even worked when multiple shadows overlapped. The Grandmaster Trolls break free with sheer strength but it took them a few seconds.
¡°What kind of ¡®something else¡¯ are you talking about?¡± Cap Dwarf was drinking nearby.
¡°Stronger but much smaller range.¡± He replied, referring to Icicle Drop. A spell he named himself but isn¡¯t exactly a skill. ¡®But really, what¡¯s required to make an action a skill? I didn¡¯t expect mana overdraft to be a skill while fully desiring Icicle Drop to be a skill and not getting it.¡¯
¡°Maybe once or twice more¡¡± The older men whispered amongst themselves.
¡°What?¡± Ebony wanted to know what they were talking about.
¡°Sound mages are pretty annoying huh?¡±
¡®....anybody could hear you.¡¯ Ebony knew they were just joking.
¡°They have poor communication which has never changed since the previous wars. We can easily reuse plans but even that has a limit. If we push them too much they would no longer be on the defensive. They had a full-scale battle with our army just 2 days ago hence their sluggishness.¡± Ayla informed.
The same Troll that fought Commander Wil will not move unless really necessary. The weak ¡®king¡¯ would be dead if he didn¡¯t have a backup from his squad or so the older men were saying. No one was capable of supporting Commander Wil while the man self-proclaimed to be able to fight off squads of weaker King-Classed Trolls by himself. They were just too good at keeping each other alive and their physical regeneration abilities increased drastically with every evolution.
It was time to move out again before the Trolls could ready too much of their forces. Ebony didn¡¯t know where the floating bows with spirits hid but they never really showed themselves until necessary. This time, they were included in the plan. Ayla begrudgingly accepted to follow him again.
¡°You better be able to bring us out this time.¡± She repeatedly warned.
¡°Scarlet, we¡¯re moving.¡± He didn¡¯t expose her for snacking inside her tent. It already felt weird calling her Scarlet again but she insisted he changed it back for now.
The militia moved towards the Imperial''s base before heading for their enemies¡¯ base. Ebony separated from them again. They understood what to expect this time. Ayla was able to hide them again. Until Icicle became brighter than a glowstick.
¡°Not something weird again.¡±
¡°How is this weird?¡± Ebony let go of his sword when he had about 20% of his mana left. It accelerated downwards as gravity pulled it. It caught the Troll¡¯s attention and two of them jumped to smack his sword away but only shifted Icicle¡¯s path a tiny bit.
The greatsword buried itself into the ground, Ebony¡¯s mana pulsed out with the help of repulsion and shattered the earth with vibrations. There was a momentary lag before the cracks deep under ignited and flames poured out.
Now that Ebony wasn¡¯t helpless as he had been earlier, he set his domain up and had a conjured ice arm grab onto Ayla. In his domain, while his Will was working he could prevent anyone from being harmed by his magic. He didn¡¯t have to worry about her screaming her lungs out either. He had already missed out on 2 battles and he wasn¡¯t about to miss another. Icicle rose into the sky as it repelled itself from its grave and found its way back into Ebony¡¯s hands.
A dozen Glacial Models were pulled out of his bag as they went to do their thing. Commander Wil was going on a joint attack with the older veterans this time around, it gave them the freedom to attack as they pleased. They were supposed to go around throwing ice spells to disturb the Trolls not to cause any real damage but Ebony hadn¡¯t been listening.
Ayla didn¡¯t have the strength to pull him away so Ebony wreaked havoc everywhere he went. Destroying important-looking structures everywhere his feet brought him. He was unstoppable, the Trolls were mostly closed-ranged fighters and getting close to him was a death sentence. A single cut or stab was enough to allow enough flames to swallow them up, rendering their regeneration ineffective.
They were smart enough to get their fellow members to avoid Ebony but Grandmaster squads weren¡¯t anywhere nearby. Ebony obviously sought the strong out. His Glacial Models had trouble as they were ganged up on. He pulled them back to him as he didn¡¯t want to waste the mana they contain.
He retreated back into the sky when his mana pool dropped to less than 10%. Upset that no strong foe came around to stop him. ¡®The imperial mages can¡¯t remove this corrosive cloud?¡¯ A random thought hit him. They had to fly relatively low and under the range of strong physical attacks.
Ning Xin was in a good mood when he found her back at the camp. She had killed a cocky member of the Vigiot tribe that was very rude to her. The militia was scheduled to carry out another attack in 2 hours. The small academies¡¯ mages could only go for another round before drying up and the archers had to source for arrows. They would have a longer break after that.
After only half an hour, alarms rang out as people started roaring to get moving as the Troll made a detachment to attack them. It was a faster response than the commander and captains expected.
¡°First assault squad! Hold them back, the rest of you retreat!¡± Commander Wil ordered. Ebony suspected that the reason the militia¡¯s camp wasn¡¯t within the range of the Imperial¡¯s defence towers as they were bait to drag Trolls out of their base. He was absolutely right.
The support squads were already low on mana and stamina and they were vulnerable but valuable. The rag-tag bunch mostly helped them to get back safely but the people from the academies weren¡¯t very happy about that. Ebony heard arguments from quite a few directions but it was none of his business.
Commander Wil only watched the first assault squad struggle, he would gain nothing fighting this battle and they needed the overall increase in the militia¡¯s power. Their opponents seem to know this and the fighting force they sent didn¡¯t have any strong leaders that can rival the scrawny old man.
The force of ten thousand strong pushed the militia all the way back and remained to pressure them from leaving the Imperial base¡¯s range. Ning Xin was tired and Ebony alone couldn¡¯t break the impeccable teamwork of the soldiers. The Trolls were fighting completely differently. He faced a different beast altogether.
Coordination changed the situation more than he would expect. He could see how these enemies pushed the Imperials so much.
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They sustained a few casualties but the Trolls were unwilling to push too far in case of retaliation.
¡®What kind of game is this¡is this what war is like?¡¯
???
The detachment of Trolls received reinforcements and the militia couldn¡¯t get past them without being found out. The two were constantly battling each other so the militia couldn¡¯t bother their enemy''s main base any more. In just two days, Ebony and Ning Xin were marked pretty badly. They couldn¡¯t appear without a bunch of squads that could survive and keep the two of them in check.
It still helped the militia since they took on at least 2 to 3 Grandmaster squads each. The two of them fought separately so that they don¡¯t come into conflict with each other¡¯s powers. They were not able to kill the Grandmasters with ease but most of those squads couldn¡¯t really hurt them either.
¡°How are you feeling?¡± Ebony asked Ning Xin who slumped onto the crate of arrows they were using as a table.
¡°Better. I can gauge how much to hold back so that I don¡¯t have to fight on an empty stomach and still fight those pathetic Grandmasters.¡± She replied with her mask on the crate.
¡°Didn¡¯t you fight that Benumbed tribe leader?¡±
¡°I¡¯m weaker and was only support in that battle but he was a level 500 grandmaster. Pathetically weak if I could almost match his speed.¡± She dissed the stronger opponent.
She went on to predict that a month or two of this speed of skill levelling and she could beat that leader. They continued to diss their opponents before she got a bit worried.
¡°We need to hurry.¡±
¡°Is it your intuition again?¡±
¡°Mmm. Now I know why Grandma doesn¡¯t really care about the Trolls. They are so weak! This ¡®invasion¡¯ isn¡¯t the benefits that she wanted me to get, it¡¯s a catalyst for us to get stronger to reap benefits later.¡±
¡°Then we throw ourselves deeper into danger.¡±
???
Ebony had opened up a stall. They had longer breaks now and Ning Xin naturally joined the chef duties and he was a bother in that department. He offered to help with mending some equipment and it quickly gained traction. He set up his forge and got some questions about it but no one really cared enough to annoy him.
On the first 2 days of business, he only asked for items that people were alright with breaking. He didn¡¯t break anything and even strengthened their armour a little. He slowly gained confidence that he wouldn¡¯t break any Uncommon quality equipment and below and repair works with metal and scale armours weren¡¯t an issue.
He set up a board of the types of durability, sharpness or impact runes that he was confident of moulding. It was a free-of-charge business; he only got a line of customers after almost ten days. The effects of his work on equipment were beginning to set in and make a tiny difference in battle. Money wasn¡¯t a problem, he improved his craft and familiarity with repair and runic work. He didn¡¯t have the confidence to mess with good equipment though. Including anything that already had runes or enchantments.
He still had daily training with Ning Xin outside of any clashes with the Trolls. Others have started to call them crazy. They fought each other right in front of the Troll¡¯s detachment every single day. Conditioning couldn¡¯t be forgotten so that they didn¡¯t decrease in level.
That was the only time they spent with each other. He was busy with his small forge and she was busy cooking, preparing or keeping stock of their food for thousands of people. She delivered food to him but they rarely had time to eat together. He had many people queuing to get repair work done. He also started to mend weapons if the damage wasn¡¯t too big. He didn¡¯t have the materials to reforge badly damaged weapons but he did decent work.
He was scolded by dozens of people in the beginning though. They didn¡¯t know he was using mana and heat to do his repair work, washing away their imbued mana. It made equipment tougher but they were not able to utilise certain traits or it just didn¡¯t feel natural to them. A plus for armour but a negative for weapons. Hence, he was only fixing armour and robes. The academy mages had cheap, mass-produced robes that didn¡¯t have any sort of enchantment. None of them complained after he mended and improved their defensive capabilities.
Ning Xin wanted to crash into the Imperial base¡¯s outdoor kitchen to learn their skills on imbuing food with energy to give temporary strength buffs to the consumer but she didn¡¯t get the chance to.
There were rumours of a princess getting assigned to Fourth Tide¡¯s base. He listened in on people chatting while they waited for his repair work to be done so he learnt a lot. There were zero Elves present, not because they didn¡¯t want to fight the Trolls or because there were few of them that didn¡¯t want to leave their secret forest homes. Rather, they didn¡¯t want to do anything that would remotely assist or benefit the Frost Elves. They were all up where the battle was the fiercest so who could complain?
Those were some crazy rumours but Ebony heard about the bad blood between the races in the past. His curiosity didn¡¯t get him any more information since Koawe shrugged saying that he was too much of a junior in their society to know why the ¡®normal¡¯ Elves hated them with a passion. Koawe called to tell them that he was leaving way back on the first day they arrived. He couldn¡¯t wait around for the Imperials to begin their attack.
Thanks to the 50 bows, they didn¡¯t really lose an advantage with the loss of a high-level mage. These bows came to him to get him to cool them down every day. They didn¡¯t need it but they sure liked ice mana. They could survive with ambient mana but were required to fly back to their creator twice a month to be charged. They never launched a full strike and conserved both arrows and mana.
Ebony¡¯s presence on the battlefield could be felt by both allies and enemies. Obviously, it could, while he was sparring with Ning Xin not too far away they tossed a bomb at their detachment. They were banned from sparring where the Trolls could see because the two of them dived into the detachment¡¯s camp by themselves after they tossed a bomb.
The two of them hit so fast, their specific watchers didn¡¯t react in time before hundreds died. They didn¡¯t get away scot-free but he managed to get a Glacial Model to drag Ning Xin out. She went to get help while he hunkered down and made them kill themselves by attacking him. They already knew they couldn¡¯t attack him safely and it bought him some time as they got squads capable of hitting him.
The airspace wasn¡¯t safe either, the Midnight Shepherd was disturbed by their activities. Ebony could only sense the ambient mana being weird above him while Ning Xin¡¯s intuition told her something dangerous was in the air. Dozens of people disappeared simply because they jumped a little too high when they dodged an attack.
Surrounded and outnumbered, Ebony was forced to stay still. The drain on his mana was too high to maintain a domain that affected every one of his opponents. He tried his best to force the weaker ones to surround him with their huge bodies but they helped to pull each other away from the pull of his gravity. He froze a few corpses to cover himself but they shattered their allies'' bodies with no remorse, as remorseless as Ebony himself. Almost out of mana, he didn¡¯t want to expose his unenhanced body and had the remaining Glacial Models and the ice mana in his robe reform into Imperishable Frost Scales and made an igloo for himself.
Redirecting all his mana regeneration from compressed augmentation to sustaining his domain to strengthen his turtle shell. With nothing to do, he made some tea while he waited. He didn¡¯t understand his saviours¡¯ anger when he asked if they would like a cup of tea after they found him.
That was just two days ago when his mana chassis completely recovered. Their slow healing was worrisome but it only made him more interested in levelling Potent Mana Overdraft. He just wanted to let it fully recover to observe and understand his own anatomy better at least once before he attempted it again. That recklessness taught him that level 350 Trolls could do nothing to him even if they were particularly good at strengthening themselves. If Ning Xin wasn¡¯t conserving energy she would probably burn herself up before getting surrounded.
The Vigiot tribe were dancers. The specific squads containing Ning Xin were formed of Vigiot tribe members while Ebony had Benumbed tribe squads keeping him busy. The dancers couldn¡¯t fight well against Ebony once he chilled the bone weapons and their bodies but some squads of the Benumbed tribe had resistance high enough to counter the cold when they could reinforce their bodies. They never let him push them into a battle of attrition.
It wasn¡¯t easy to kill them. Their skill levels got the chance to catch up with their actual levels.
Ebony tossed the gravity reduction and ice blast ring into the box beside him. They were made from Common rarity iron and were really easy to make. He supplied at least 200 people with it so far, mostly the members of his own assault squad. He got lesser repair jobs and had the time to make everyone faster. He improved the ring and made it chargeable with the user¡¯s mana but there was still a slot for a mana ore. The ambient mana was too chaotic to be useful and if he made thousands of rings to absorb ambient mana, no one would be able to use the ring effectively.
Inscripted Mana Moulding had great gains and the rings he was making had greater and greater effects. The warriors needed to get used to drastically weakened gravity but it was beneficial in most cases. They recently had to turn the ring effects off in case of jumping too high and disappearing into dust.
Ebony put the next iron ore that he had into the flames but the dim daylight got swallowed up. Sounds disappeared. He continued his work as if nothing happened.
Bards and sound mages took half a minute before sending out alarms.
The Midnight Shepherd was attacking.
Chapter 180: Commencement
One week ago, Tova.
¡°Why¡¡± Hector repeated for the umpteenth time.
His fellow soldiers got punched so hard that not much remained of them. General Truewater saved him in the nick of time but he didn¡¯t feel grateful about it. Mentally insistent that the general did not ¡®just¡¯ arrive when he did. The water mage caught Hector, Captain Cain and the man carrying Cain into a river of water.
While Hector had been protected, Captain Cain managed to protect the man carrying him. A couple of others that were left behind got saved as well but most died before General Truewater came. Out of the 26, only 6 of them were still alive. Everyone was in a state near death when help arrived but there were healers around. Hector hated that he couldn¡¯t even react to help his squad mate who used his body to protect him while in that dire moment, Captain Cain saved another life.
The fiasco where he punched General Truewater in the face when he got a tiny bit of healing had passed, the general wasn¡¯t so kind and just punched the injured prince out of the patient¡¯s tent. His childish cries and complaints had washed away. Only denial was left at the moment.
Captain Cain walked up to Hector and slapped him.
¡°Enough! We¡¯re soldiers. They were soldiers who volunteered to come onto enemy territories. They had it coming.¡±
¡°They had it coming you say? They had it elling. coming!?¡± Hector pushed himself onto his wobbling feet.
He received a headbutt from Cain that put him back onto the bed of compiled leaves.
¡°I¡¯m the captain! Their deaths are on my shoulders, so shut up and recuperate soldier! We need fighters, not a man who gets swallowed up by despair or denial or their allies'' deaths.¡±
Cain left without looking back. Hector knew that denial wasn¡¯t going to bring his buddies back to life. Blaming General Truewater was truly foolish. He laid back down with a sting on his forehead, generating water mana from his eyes as he fell asleep.
He rested with all his strength. When he could move around without any issues, he left his uncomfortable but clean bed to get information.
Under General Truewater¡¯s command, the base had the necessary facilities and soldiers looked ready to fight a war. It was busy but the tension in the air was high. His healer had the free time to explain some things so he was roughly aware of the situation. The bases here were the first to know that the entire continent of Tova was freaking out. The healer didn¡¯t know the reason but Trolls was hit by something that was beginning to wipe their population fast. All throughout the continent.
The Trolls panicked. It took months before they realised it was a continent-wide problem since they didn¡¯t communicate much with other tribes or large settlements. At least a billion Trolls died before they cooperated with each other. Each tribe and settlement destroyed assumed that they were the only ones hit by the disaster. Since Trolls don¡¯t run or ask for help from other tribes, they are usually wiped out.
Until a powerhouse Troll Shaman King appeared and took over control of the largest tribes. Tova fell under this particular King within 2 weeks and they fought back against their killers. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful. The Shaman was titled ¡®Old Hag¡¯ by General Truewater. She gathered the entire race, spread that it was the Empire¡¯s attack and declared war. One that called for every single Troll to move.
Within a month, the Old Hag gathered giant sea creatures and set them off towards Elcra with billions of Trolls. Their colossal ships could carry plenty too but were much slower. There were plenty of tamer tribes amongst the Trolls. The Old Hag herself remained with the last group that hadn''t set off for Elcra. She continued to make transport for the population and Truewater did nothing. They couldn¡¯t contact Elcra either.
Tova was emptied out of Trolls.
There were whispers about Truewater being a coward and a traitor but only from younger people. Hector personally knew this ¡®great granduncle¡¯ as the most hardcore general the Empire had to offer. As the lowest ranking and weakest person around, he wasn¡¯t granted an audience with the general. He returned to where patients rested and received a visit from the stiff general himself.
Hector was the one who called for the man. The general had a stiff personality, he wouldn¡¯t ignore the summons of a prince. The man had an average build, he knelt before Hector but kept his back straight.
¡°Stand, what is your plan?¡±
¡°The opportunity to take Old Hag¡¯s head is getting closer. Put the Trolls into disarray when the other Shamans no longer get commands from the Old Hag. The current Imperial Army will not lose to an undivided population of Trolls.¡±
Both of them forgot about the whole face-punching incident.
¡°How close?¡±
¡°Close.¡±
Hector was reminded that this man was a little similar to Ebony in terms of speech.
¡°...Can I leave my safety to you if I undergo my evolution?¡±
¡°Naturally. I have prepared a fortified room for you. I believe you carry around mana ores of your elements.¡±
¡°Prepared? That was fast.¡±
¡°It will be fast. I have the time elemental mana ore his majesty left me with. Once I activate the room¡¯s enchantment, even if you take a week to evolve only a few hours would have passed for those of us outside.¡±
¡°What? Since when did we have time mana ores?¡± Hector was shocked, there was no such mine or dungeon throughout Elcra to his knowledge.
¡°Please ask his majesty.¡±
¡°Then, should I go in there to heal?¡±
¡°There¡¯s not much left in the time mana ore. Prioritise the period when you are defenceless.¡±
Hector imagined that it was the same but there were healers out here and the older man probably knew better.
He apologised for the childishness but got ticked off by the general¡¯s offhand comment. ¡°It barely tickled.¡±
Hector visited the urnhouse. If soldiers had a body left, they were cremated. If the army had the leeway, they would bring their allies¡¯ ashes back to Elcra. There were always a couple of people in the urnhouse, chatting with their friends in an urn.
¡°Guys¡I¡¯ll punch them back harder. I promise.¡±
Hector¡¯s body healed up much faster with the Grandmaster healer present. Two days later, he went to set up the elemental mana ores in the fortified room.
He forgot to ask why or what was killing the population of Trolls here but Truewater didn¡¯t seem to be worried about it.
¡®Whatever, I need to hurry. The Trolls have gathered and are apparently setting off for Elcra soon. Uncle¡¯s going to attack Old Hag regardless if I¡¯m asleep or not.¡¯
Hector tried to meditate before starting the evolution process.
???
Ebony kept his forge at breakneck speed before flashing towards Ning Xin. He was lucky she had been in the middle of handling ingredients. That meant he was able to get to her before she flew off into battle. Darkness took over but he was used to being blind and it made no difference to him. Ayla was leading the retreat and the Imperial base lit up like the sun. This happened before and they had some countermeasures in place.
Heat burst from Ning Xin.
¡°There¡¯s no light.¡± He sent the string of mana directly into her ears.
¡°This must be what they meant by the shaman¡¯s magic being fundamentally different from mages'' elemental magic.¡± She replied.
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The Imperial mages couldn¡¯t remove the corrosive clouds. Neither could they make a permanent hole in the ground to fish for food. The Trolls'' only sustenance at the moment was their rear-line fishing. Neither earth mages nor strong warriors could keep a hole open in the ground for long enough to fish. They were reflecting light magic all the way from Fifth Tide, up the cliff. Light magic had immense range.
The violent shakes from the ground could only be from Commander Wil. The militia was already briefed on what to do. Run.
There was absolutely nothing they could do but die. Allegedly.
Mr kidnapper grabbed Ebony and Ning Xin¡¯s collar before dragging them away. Cap Dwarf had his snakehead eat the two of them and swam away.
¡°Don¡¯t give us trouble.¡± Was the order they received.
They gauged that this attack was about to come and the militia already had a planned and protected route back towards the forward base. A side gate was prepared for them.
¡°Ambient mana is being drained above us.¡± He warned with sound magic.
Ebony weakened gravity for everyone within range, they were getting used to moving under such conditions since he fluctuated gravity around his forge. He knew how much to weaken it such that they wouldn¡¯t just float away with a little movement.
The darkness withdrew and the retreat was a success. A spell large enough to cover the sky wasn¡¯t going to be mana friendly. It was known that Midnight Shepherd was mana stingy and gave up on attack plans relatively quickly just so that it could drag out battles and tire out the Imperial Army with dozens of different ultra-wide range spells.
The current time was late evening, Midnight Shepherd''s favourite time to launch an attack. Hence his title of bringing about the night. Why evening?
According to stories shared in the militia, in the previous wars, the Midnight Shepherd noticed the army¡¯s coordinated meal time and destroyed multiple rear bases in the past. The shaman wasn¡¯t particularly strong in the night and neither was it any weaker in the day. It was good at playing tricks and making use of darkness but Benumbed and Vigiot tribes weren¡¯t able to make full use of darkness.
Despite the militia¡¯s efforts, the counter detachment from their enemy had stalled their offence. Out of seven hundred thousand strong only a little more than 14 thousand were taken down. The majority had been from Commander Wil¡¯s single attack. Ebony¡¯s level surpassed Ning Xin just from that one operation where he learned mana overdraft.
They were not that bothered about a few stat points from a couple of levels. She had the time to experiment with blood magic and was in the midst of creating a relatively scary spell. She imbued her Blood Halo with wind mana. Instead of helping it slice, the spell focuses on drawing blood and entering wounds before the wind mana is released. Tearing the target from within. She also made progress in manipulating her conjured lightning mana properties. She took the explosive burn direction.
Ebony recently attempted to manipulate lightning mana as well. It was the perfect chance to get new skills and even a new elemental magic. He had a tiny hope that he could include lightning in one of his classes. It was only going to get harder to pull Generic Skills up to Class, Sub-Class or Profession. Even gathering lightning mana wasn¡¯t easy. His natural affinity for it mustn¡¯t be very high.
They were spat out once the snakehead got within the walls. Cap Dwarf rode his earthen snake, ¡°Don¡¯t cause trouble!¡±
Only Commander Wil, mr kidnapper, Cap Dwarf and Athena had permission to fight alongside the army. Those in charge of the academies present could also fight. The militia would get in the way of how the army fought. Minor General Impes, head of this particular forward base didn¡¯t want volatile variables and militias didn¡¯t have a very good reputation for listening to orders.
General Impes and her soldiers reacted extremely fast, the opposite happened when the Trolls got attacked. Thousands of soldiers already formed up in neat rows and more were dashing in as they adjusted their armour.
Perhaps Midnight Shepherd simply wanted to catch the militia off guard and take its chance to hit them hard. It gave up fast since it didn¡¯t want to commit the moment they retreated. With the release of pure darkness, the magic towers got to work.
¡®That¡¯s a cheap tower.¡¯
Gigantic blasts of mana shot out from clear large crystals atop their wooden towers. There were 12 of these towers and crystal balls alternating their firing times as they took more than 10 seconds to charge for the next shot. Ebony gave it a plus point for destructive capability though. The current distance allowed the Trolls to defend with blocks of metal but they were completely blown apart.
Ebony sat on his throne right below the corrosive cloud with Ning Xin. He was certain the spell making people disappear in the sky was gone since the Trolls were affected by it too. The Trolls only suffered till they reached the ten-kilometre mark. The explosive mana shots were pretty boring but they did the job until translucent black films appeared to block them. There was no explosion, the mana shots seemed to dissipate after landing on those magic barriers.
The mages saw that but continued operating the crystal balls. The next few kilometres were covered within seconds but they were obviously moving slowly to coordinate their steps. Then the rows of archers started firing. The magic barriers didn¡¯t do anything to the arrows but the arrow rain was not very effective as every giant had the ability to cut down those projectiles.
The enemy continued to close the distance and the two armies finally met in battle. They were finally within the range of mages and spells were flying towards their opponent''s rear.
The Imperial Army only had a hundred or so gunmen. Despite it being a skill every soldier picked up there was an apparent lack of materials for ammunition. Guns didn¡¯t work well against Trolls unless the burstbowmen was very specialised. Specialised guns and bullets were very limited and there wasn¡¯t a good mass production method for them so First and Second Tides had larger units of these soldiers. The market and technology for these guns were still developing. He didn¡¯t see any turrets which seemed like a waste.
The burstbowman unit started attacking as well. They had cool bullets that burns and prevents their regenerative enemies from healing. Other than Hoarfrost Glade, no environment around the continent had naturally high ice mana density and ice elemental materials were all sourced from the glades. There were definitely other sources but the glades were the biggest suppliers.
¡®Oh, that¡¯s the ice mage.¡¯ Ebony spotted the fox lady that visited Arcta.
She led a team of mages that weren¡¯t situated as spell-firing machines and blended in with knights and warriors.
Coordination on both sides was a sight to behold. The Imperials worked together to steadily tear squads apart so that they couldn¡¯t save each other or rotate with squads behind them while the Trolls were just as good at countering the overused methods. The difference between the way they fought and the militia fought was immense. No reckless moves were made under the leadership of higher-ranked soldiers.
General Impes stood atop the walls to observe the battlefield but the stretch of battle was too large for a single person to manage. Commander Wil and many other armoured knights stood around her. Midnight Shepherd was all the way behind with her King Classed guards.
They watched for an hour before the woman sitting beside him fell asleep on his shoulders. It was getting boring since there was a stalemate.
Overall, the Imperial Army was slightly stronger despite having fewer people. High-level individuals simply watched and didn¡¯t take part in the battle. A mind mage stood by the leader¡¯s group and sent out her commands. Even short ranged communication was cut due to the torrent of auras and essence all over the battlefield. The melee was just a show of force on the Trolls side but the Imperial Army were used to it. He was pretty sure many of the soldiers that were about to rotate in were young men and women. They were lower level than he was.
¡®So the first wave purposely weakened the Trolls for the younger members¡¯ General Impes was taking the chance to increase the average strength of her units.
Some Trolls realised and screamed out to inform others but they didn¡¯t listen to each other. Their yells were also washed away by the Imperial Army¡¯s well-timed warcry.
Although the lower-level soldiers weren¡¯t capable of taking every single opportunity they received, the general objective was met. They received a bit of support from their seniors and were forced to hold the line until they got further orders. The Trolls took more than an hour to copy the move and by the time their younger members were out front, the Imperial Army managed to pull back their young members. It set up the weak Trolls for slaughter but that was when the Midnight Shepherd made a move. No, it was when the army got tricked.
Their ¡®young¡¯ members suddenly grew metres taller and wider. Hundreds of squads of Grandmasters had been hidden with magic.
The vanguard''s reaction was to glow like a lightbulb. They used the enchantment in their armour. It might not be the best but every soldier had the same set of enchanted armour as far as Ebony could tell. The armour sets got noticeably better for higher-ranked soldiers. He didn¡¯t know much about enchantments but he knew materials and equipment quality almost as well as the average specialised smith. The support mages took a few minutes before one could see the effect they had on the vanguards from a distance. A couple of casualties were sustained during this time.
Ebony felt a little sick simply watching as it happened. It was easy to simply see the Trolls as enemies out to kill but he felt that the Trolls weren¡¯t any different from the people of Elva. It was true that they had a kill-on-sight policy but of course they did and so did the Imperial Army.
¡®Am I seeking slaughter of a race, not all that different from us just for experience and levels?¡¯
It was unusual but Ebony hadn¡¯t been in a state of Meditation every second of the day. Muse¡¯s words rang in his mind from time to time. A few excuses such as the brutal consumption of humans, beastmen and dwarfs alike didn¡¯t really come to mind. It didn¡¯t really make a difference to Ebony, people eat when they are hungry. It just so happened that they were on the menu.
He knew the history of Trolls terrorising the population and the same thing was happening in the present with an unknown number of them strolling the mainland as they observed the battlefield.
Ebony got a headache after contemplating for half an hour. His mind was cleansed out and returned to pristine white. He would die if he stayed distracted. That much was enough of a reason for him. The mark on his upper arm was another reminder that he was on their hit list. He couldn¡¯t exactly let them pass knowing that they were bent on going for the Frost Elves either.
What could he do? Invite the Trolls to go home? If there was something Ebony noticed it was that their neighbour continent¡¯s inhabitants were desperate. Days ago, Ning Xin also shared the strong emotions she received from their opponents. Hunger, anger, fear and resentment. Extremely strong resentment.
¡°Hunger is an emotion?¡± Ebony asked cheekily when she told him.
¡°Don¡¯t be silly, we feel hunger don¡¯t we?¡±
¡°Excellent point.¡±
Now that Ebony cleared his mind again, he did his best not to fall into a trance and attempted to find something to do. He juggled a ball of ice mana when he couldn¡¯t come up with any better ideas.
Accidentally tossing the ball too high, it went into the corrosive cloud and never dropped back into his hands. It was then, his mind went off tangent with his silly ideas again.
Chapter 181: Reinforcements
Ning Xin roused up from her slumber when she felt her shoulders being nudged.
¡®Oops. That¡¯s bad, I fell asleep.¡¯ She quickly shook her exhaustion off. The militia rotated watch duties that she took part in as well. She also joined every skirmish and cooked for thousands of people every day. Having around 3 hours of sleep every day got Ebony fully rested but not her. The man didn¡¯t need that much sleep and worked his small forge through the night sometimes.
Sitting beside Ebony made her drop her guard down quite a bit. Her gut squeezed a little when she looked at the man who stared at the green cloud above them.
¡®Uh oh, he¡¯s excited.¡¯ Her Intuition warned her that the man was coming up with more reckless plans. His face might not show it but she could feel his excitement. Even for another of his silly ideas, excitement wasn¡¯t something she often felt from him.
¡°Don¡¯t you dare go up,¡± Her mind raced.
¡°Oh don¡¯t worry, I actually don¡¯t dare. It melted my fully compressed and enhanced fingertips off in less than 2 seconds. I had to detach the whole finger before it got inside me.¡± He hooked the finger which she assumed he cut off moments ago.
¡®And of course, he already tried touching it¡but, this cloud is so potent?¡¯ She was glad that he wasn¡¯t trying to dive in to get resistance or something but it was a little shocking to have his body damaged so easily.
Shamanic magic wasn¡¯t anything like a mage¡¯s elemental magic. They were closer to wizards¡¯ spells but still noticeably different was one to be familiar with both. None of them understood the difference, not even her.
This corrosive cloud wasn¡¯t something a single Shaman cast. It persisted for as long as the war had gone on so far.
She didn¡¯t think a hundred thousand mages could replicate the effect and keep it going for so long. There was no chance Tova had a hundred thousand Shamans that they could spare to cast a single spell either. There were less than five squads of a mixture of Master Shamans here. Even if their rear had more and the other Tide¡¯s fiercer battles required most of their magic casters.
The potency of the spell above her strengthens the impossibility of numerous weak magic casters at work. They could supply the quantity but not the quality.
¡°So what do you have in mind this time?¡± She wasn¡¯t fully against all his plans. They tend to give results one way or another.
¡°This spell is so strong, whatever or whoever the reason, it¡¯s only beneficial for us that it can¡¯t move to swallow us. It only restricts flight up to a certain height.¡±
¡°Mages are the undisputed number one when it comes to flexibility with spells. Wizardry, sorcery and shamans¡¯ magic can¡¯t compare.¡± She stated, there were pros and cons but in terms of flexibility, mages had the greatest control. Since Elva was mage-dominant and Mark had been the only half-wizard she knew, it didn¡¯t really matter to her at the moment. Ebony should¡¯ve known this.
¡°Mmm. It¡¯ll swallow anything we throw up there. The perfect mana trash can.¡±
¡°You mean¡¡±
¡°We might not know the workings of this spell but it requires mana or some kind of energy source, that¡¯s for sure. Since we aren¡¯t allowed to trouble the army let¡¯s train our spells here. If we¡¯re lucky we can erase part of this cloud or maybe thin it out. If not, we still get the experience of having our spells actively fighting against vastly superior magic. And, you know. It doesn¡¯t move or fight back as far as I can see.¡±
She blinked rapidly.
¡°There¡¯s no assurance the cloud can¡¯t move.¡±
¡°Sure. We just have to do this above the Troll¡¯s army. Unless they don¡¯t care for their soldiers.¡±
¡°That¡¯s¡actually smart. Coming from you.¡± They both knew that if the cloud could move it would have long fallen and consumed the entire battlefield. There was an extremely low chance it could move.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t notice the rude remark that had been partly to poke fun at him.
He informed her about the rise in his runic engraving skill that made his ice scales stronger than his body and a couple of Models standing by was enough to cover them both. A second was enough for him to have gravity pull them all the way under the ground since the altitude was relatively low.
She had gotten a rough magic body only to get the hang of utilising mana so heavily. Priority one was to be able to conjure her own blood so that she could make use of her father¡¯s spell. It was a simple blood-clad armour that she saw multiple times. All she had was the memory of him using it, her personal plan was to blend it with her magic body.
She had bled herself out but not so much that she had tubs of blood around for her to cast. Freshly spilt blood during battle, by her enemies, was getting easier to control but not enough for her to call herself fluent in blood magic. Oftentimes, she was more busy stabbing, piercing, cutting and dicing than casting magic.
They went down to the wall, she stared down at any fool who tried to stop them from getting closer. A mix of her Vitality and Ebony¡¯s Wisdom was enough for the lady General to order her guards to step down.
¡°We want to cause trouble.¡±
The straightforward man gently let her feet touch the ground before his seat reformed into one of his ice figures.
He could have worded that a lot differently but she kind of liked him this way.
???
Ebony had to let Ning Xin take over the task of talking. He was inwardly happy he managed to guess that every commanding officer was pissed off. This time, he secretly asked Ning Xin and she confirmed that he was right. Except for Commander Wil and General Impes, one was laughing while the other frowned so hard her brows could meet.
She informed him that most of the officers present were above level 400. Only Commander Wil, General Impes and two other men were worth mentioning. Other commanding officers were probably out on the battlefield. The battle stretched too far for one to be able to observe everything from the walls but the Imperial Army had some traps set up around the edges to confine the battle so that nothing could slip past them.
Seeing how the Trolls desperately pushed for ground, the unseen traps must be useful. Although he did hear from his customers that it was due to the Trolls'' pride that they didn¡¯t want to back down from a head-to-head battle he didn¡¯t expect the shaman to follow the desires of the majority. Ning Xin took over the talking but she was being shot down left and right. Seeing their attitudes towards her tickled his clear mind. Commander Wil wasn¡¯t an Imperial officer in charge hence, his silence.
¡°Shut up girl! We will not stand such foolishness with our men¡¯s life at stake!¡±
Ebony put his hands on her shoulders to calm her down, luckily she didn¡¯t reach for her swords. As for the rude bearded man, he was rooted to the spot the moment he stood up and yelled.
A messenger interrupted them by whispering into General Impes¡¯s ears. She had also been silent the entire time they proposed their actions.
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¡°Wilson, bring your men eastward. I authorise your command over my fourth rear brigade.¡±
¡°Reinforcements coming from Fourth Tide¡¯s battle?¡± The old man was the most relaxed person here except for Ebony.
It was a small problem fit for small, mobile groups like the militia. The big problem was even more reinforcements from Tova¡¯s rear. They estimated the Troll number here to triple within two weeks. The Imperial¡¯s reinforcements would take more time as they had supply issues.
There was no need for anyone to go into detail for Ebony to guess that it was due to how much equipment and items people needed. After the first attack on the Troll¡¯s forward base, he saw they had a lot fewer things that they brought along. Most of them didn¡¯t wear clothes much less armour. They had a lot of spare weapons but the physical brutes would have less trouble with carrying those things compared to the Imperials. Every single soldier required armour, food and a bunch of other luggage. The building materials for magic towers and defensive siege weapons were some that took the most effort to transport. The Tides themselves hoarded the defensive equipment and all the spares in stock were currently used.
Stronger soldiers were all eastwards protecting the other Tides and the average soldiers here could barely fight off their enemy. More weak reinforcements would only put more deaths on the General¡¯s record. Sadly, all she had coming were weak reinforcements. Or so the rumours go among the militia¡¯s members.
Fifth Tide wasn¡¯t a high priority for the Empire. Past them was Trailane Plains which doesn¡¯t really have any important resources or structures while Hoarfrost Glades wasn¡¯t even within their control. The towns and cities further away, all had strong barriers and defensive capabilities that the current King had focused on improving for many decades.
Obviously, they didn¡¯t give up on Fifth Tide since it would give the Trolls a path of entry into the mainland.
¡°Take them away.¡± General Impes didn¡¯t have to look towards them but he knew she also didn¡¯t like his idea. She tossed a pouch over to the old man before they left.
¡°Come on.¡±
The two of them left with Commander Wil.
¡°Ha, once we¡¯re out of sight you can do whatever you want.¡± The old man was all for it.
¡°Will the militia be alright?¡± Ebony asked. He understood that more than a few people would die in every clash they had if it wasn¡¯t for him. The others in the first assault squad could handle themselves even if they were surrounded but the same couldn¡¯t be said for everyone else.
¡°Those muscle heads don¡¯t move well in large numbers, I will be at the front. They are usually sluggish when their younger members panic.¡±
¡°I will still join the battle.¡± Ning Xin added.
¡°Mmm. I forgot we can do that in our free time.¡± Ebony said without thinking. He was probably the only one who could spare that much mana in his free time.
¡°Oh, she got this fast. Here, put it on.¡± Commander Wil opened the pouch and his eyes lit up. He passed them a black crystal in the standardised bracelet shape.
[???]
¡°What¡¯s this?¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t move to put it on as Ebony did.
¡°I put an order for obfuscation jewels for both of you. Most commanders have this too.¡±
¡°This is the thing that hides class and levels?¡± Ebony was a little surprised. He read so many books on materials and items but this ¡®jewel¡¯ wasn¡¯t in any of them.
¡°These two should be able to partially block off tier 3 identification such as Assessment or Evaluation. All tier 2 should give others question marks and tier one might not even be able to pick anything up.¡±
¡°Is this a natural material or someone¡¯s creation?¡± He was intrigued by the nature of the item more so than its awesome effects.
¡°It¡¯s something the royal alchemist formulated. That¡¯s all I know. With these, it would weaken the senses of the mark on you but not by much.¡±
¡®No wonder the commanders have it. In any case, this is a great gift.¡¯ He wasn¡¯t so worried about Trolls finding him but Appraise and other tier 2 identification skills can see his class name and glimpse into his Sub-Class. They helped Commander Wil spread the word to the members that ran off from their designated area. Since they already packed up whatever belongings they had, it didn¡¯t take an hour before the militia moved off.
As for the fourth rear brigade, they needed some more time to get their ration, supplies and cannons but they would catch up. Mr kidnapper was in charge while Commander Wil stayed back to move with the rear brigade pushed onto him along with the academies.
Mr Kidnapper was very good at avoiding them, Ebony hadn¡¯t bothered trying to get him because Ning Xin had a personal grudge against him. Although he also wanted to ask the man some things, he wasn¡¯t much stronger than his partner that got trashed. It was questionable if they could force any words from the man himself. Maybe if they fought together but Ebony really didn¡¯t care, he already knew who ordered his capture and those people weren¡¯t worth his time at the moment.
¡°Commander, help me put an order for some metals. Ores or ingots doesn¡¯t matter.¡± Ebony stopped the old man before he left with the militia.
¡°Ah, good idea. There aren¡¯t any gravity mages who picked up crafting.¡± Commander Wil knew about the things he had been doing. The rings might not be high in quality but every bit helped, especially when it increased people¡¯s speed. He asked for empty mana ores to fit them so the users had a ¡®battery pack¡¯ in case they didn¡¯t have the mana to operate the rune and he didn¡¯t have to fork out the ores for it.
¡®It¡¯s just runes though¡oh, most people don¡¯t know about that.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t correct the old man. He had been trying to make a new ring that adds ice elemental attacks onto weapons but he didn¡¯t know anything that would work from a ring. Developing a new rune was not prominent anywhere on the list of his abilities so it would take time.
He took off ahead of the group together with his partner. Even if some of those in the first assault squad could keep up with them, they wouldn¡¯t.
¡®Lazy¡¯ was the opinion the two of them had for them. Those people thought that they didn¡¯t need to train daily if they fought a war.
¡®Hmm, the surface of the sea should be pretty safe if these Trolls fish for their sustenance. I guess sea travel shouldn¡¯t be that dangerous if we stay near the surface.¡¯
He tried to keep up so that he could silence her explosive running style but he was slower when they were in their base form without augmentation. The wastelands were the best place for her to run around since nothing impeded her speed. He would easily catch up if this were a jungle or denser and uneven terrain.
A layer of wind protects her from dust and debris even though her mask and clothes were tough enough. He had Imperishable Frost Scales over his robes all the time to reduce the wear and tear on them and it was a great layer of defence against Troll¡¯s mostly blunt weapons and attacks. He attempted to fashion a helmet but none of the designs really stick to him. He didn¡¯t really care about the sight reduction anymore so it was more of a fashion choice.
The Xeng¡¯s mask should be able to expand more after they evolve but Ning Xin could barely cover her ears with it. Her grandmother¡¯s mask supposedly fully covers the head like a helmet. They always wore it in the mask form though.
The Trolls were marching like any regular army, with giant pillars and rocks likely for some of their buildings. If they weren¡¯t so huge, Ebony would be able to see thousands of them carrying spiky spheres. Midnight Shepherd wasn¡¯t capable of creating ammunition but there were many tribes that were expert tossers. With their immense physical capability, anything they throw tends to be destructive.
¡®Even these physically inclined races choose to walk, no wonder wars take years.¡¯ Ebony understood it was due to the load they were lugging, the rough formation they kept when travelling to protect important personnel and items and also to conserve stamina. It took half a day at their top speed to see the Troll¡¯s reinforcement, he estimated they would take three to four days to cover the same distance. Quicker if they didn¡¯t stop to rest. They were not looking good, he could tell from their faces. These giant soldiers were hungry and injured. Their injuries were healing at a visible rate but not anywhere as fast as those he fought in Bubble Hills.
A lack of food reduces regeneration, he was very aware since he starved during the training with Gen and Ful. The body simply didn¡¯t have the sustenance to repair itself. With their huge figure and mass, high physical strength output and regeneration they must require a disgusting amount of food each. Before he could continue to observe the state of the marching army, the woman ahead of him dived into battle without a care in the world. She yelled something at them but he couldn¡¯t hear it from where he was.
¡®She doesn¡¯t cook them or slice them into cuts. And she¡¯s not collecting their blood either¡ is it her respect towards her opponents? As people?¡¯ Although the dual swordswoman doesn¡¯t appear to need a strong reason to kill, he knew the woman was not completely cold-hearted. As a chef, she eats all her hunts and they make use of every life they take. A lot of bones and furs were stored in their trailer for sale. Dungeons recover every corpse so it wasn¡¯t a waste even if they didn¡¯t eat their flesh.
It had been news to him that she killed her first person a bit after his own experience, in Ordina. She mentioned it when she was drunk. She didn¡¯t fear it and killing a person didn¡¯t haunt her but she got an upset belly after the act. She detested anything that worked against her appetite.
Ebony didn¡¯t notice that he wasn¡¯t clear-headed again but he got struck with a realisation. A certain sense of unfounded confidence told him her current thoughts or perhaps conviction ¡®I¡¯ll put you out of your misery right now.¡¯
¡°What are you sensing from them?¡± Ebony spoke out to no one but himself.
Icicle drew itself out and they joined the intense massacre.
Chapter 182: Demolished Bases
¡°What¡¯s wrong!?¡± The fire swordswoman tried to catch his attention. She moved too fast for the callstone¡¯s link to catch up and they were kilometres apart. He could transmit messages faster than he received them.
¡®Her Intuition is quite scary, she can sense me even from such a distance. Anyway, I felt odd since Muse went unconscious. Did she mess with my head?¡¯ He had been staring at the reckless attacker and observing if there was any difference in her fighting style. The more he watched, the more certain he was that she was trying her best to end their lives as efficiently as she could. It strengthened the idea that she was actually putting them out of their ¡®misery¡¯. Her initial yell must have been a warning and challenge.
He didn¡¯t have her Intuition or sense for emotions and the history he learnt was all from the Empire¡¯s perspective.
Ebony wasn¡¯t casting his domain but he was left with half his mana. He might have 5 times the natural mana regeneration speed but it doesn¡¯t recover if he wasn¡¯t meditating. That was not a big problem with the current size of his mana pool but he started to pant due to his low Endurance stat. That must have been more obvious than the state of his mind. The vanguard heading the march wasn¡¯t all that large or powerful but the yell and slight lag in Ning Xin''s assault gave the Trolls a chance to react. In terms of levels, the two attackers were an even match with their average. The Troll¡¯s average level was higher than the Imperial Army¡¯s average by 30 to 40. If they weren¡¯t as defenceless against magic, they would¡¯ve broken through Fifth Tide¡¯s forward base weeks ago.
Ning Xin¡¯s Core Skill pumped out in annoyance. ¡°Don¡¯t ignore me!¡±
¡°That wasn¡¯t my intention.¡± He quickly settled his mind again.
¡°Then?!¡±
¡°Calm down.¡±
He ticked her off further, feeding her Incensed Meditation. It seems the skill wasn¡¯t able to keep up with the blood rush to her head.
Ebony followed his own advice, his domain reached out while he took the chance to take a deep breath. They never sparred to their very limits recently. The increase in his domain skill level definitely covered the gap between them. They wouldn¡¯t reach the point where they both ran out of mana, he can beat her. However, he didn¡¯t and continues to act as if his domain cannot be sustained anymore.
¡®Why?¡¯ Was his last question before his mind cleared out again.
Two hours later.
¡°HEY! Who asked you to pick a fight!¡±
¡°Couldn¡¯t you wait for us!¡±
¡°No!¡± Ning Xin screamed back in response.
¡°Boy! Teach your girl manners!¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t listening but the slightly less lazy first assault squad continued to yell at them since they were the only ones who jogged at a reasonable pace. They also had less personal luggage compared to the others.
¡°You know she''s the chef right?¡± After a couple of minutes of complaints from older men and women, he picked up their voices and replied knowing that they were praising the increase in quality when it came to taste.
¡°Good going girl!¡±
Delicious food directly impacted morale to a certain extent. Especially when compared to the previous state of their meals, cooked by men who had no choice but to pick it up as a generic skill because they needed someone to make food. A lot of them gave up and ate their own dry rations but those were usually the last resort. ¡®Fresh¡¯ produce, if they were lucky, were the first to be consumed.
First assault squad came at a good time as the Trolls managed to get the right personnel to contain the two of them while creating a relay to rotate their members. They were too good at swapping members out and they were at a standstill. They didn¡¯t even reduce numbers by two hundred, a testament to the Troll''s high Vitality and survivability. Although, the Trolls did round the two of them up so their buddies were screaming from behind a mass of muscle. They were attacked with a few rocks but without a height advantage, the rock tosser in the centre and rear didn¡¯t even know there was an attack. They were simply confused why the march slowed down to a stop for the past 2 hours.
They seriously needed an eye up there and that was for both the Trolls and the militia. Their support squad hasn¡¯t arrived and their enemy¡¯s reinforcement didn¡¯t consist of shamans.
¡°Fall back!¡±
Cap Dwarf ordered after they cut down the opponents that surrounded the two reckless youths. It took almost an hour and Ning Xin was beginning to tire. She was battling on fumes since she didn¡¯t rely on his blood and her food intake was reduced by four times. She snacked on biscuits but that was about it for sustenance outside the militia¡¯s supply.
Ebony hasn¡¯t been able to mould a successful space expansion rune on a box so he couldn¡¯t help with the logistics. Wooden boxes would explode and metal planks collapse inwards on themselves. Wooden crates with preservation runes were the standard and the Imperial preservation runes were messy, basically taking up all the space there is to engrave runes. It was unrealistic for him to solve this problem with thousands of crates being transported every few days and that was for the smallest forward base.
It took Mr kidnapper to pull him away since he wasn¡¯t listening and he had his domain up. Ning Xin retreated knowing her energy limits so Ebony was the only one causing trouble. The last thing an army wanted in battle were soldiers who didn¡¯t follow orders.
He wasn¡¯t in a trance so he had the chance to notice that the intruder had a piece of equipment to deflect his domain¡¯s gravity. Mr kidnapper copied Cap Dwarf¡¯s mana pulse technique to flush away the mana vibrations but it was applied throughout his body instead. Ebony removed the effect on allies but it required him to recognise an individual as an ally and it took time for his domain to react to the change.
He was a little surprised that a halberd could pierce into his ice scales just enough to stick on before he was whipped into the sky. With just that move, Mr kidnapper moved up on his list of powerful people right above Cap Dwarf and only below people like the King, Commander Wil or Korben. It was hard to catch him when he was on guard and his domain was still half-alert.
Once again, he scanned the first assault squad members to observe their conditions. Few were as tired as Ning Xin but a lot had injuries here and there. There were quite a few people at Master level 300, even amongst other squads in the militia. The strength difference between 2 equally levelled fighters was between a very wide range. Masters in the first assault squad could probably win a fight against any Grandmaster placed in other squads or those academy folks.
¡®He probably has multiple tier 3 skills above 600.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know what special skill the leaders of the militia had but he didn¡¯t doubt the chance that they had tier 4 Core Skills or even Class and Sub-Class skills at that tier. A skill like that would crush stat gaps with ease though it really depends on the nature of the skill. Imperishable Frost Scales easily got over 300 a while back but it was a joke despite the condensed mana if these older men polished their skills to a good degree.
Commander Wil was similarly Grandmaster but there was a high chance he maxed out at 500 with skill levels far beyond that. The theoretical limit according to sister Jing and Ning Xin was 2 tiers above their own with some exceptions like resistances, only backed up with one piece of evidence, the fire swordswoman herself. The higher up they go, the further skills hold them back. It was far harder to raise the tier of skill from 4 to 5 than from 1 to 4.
They were pretty awesome to keep up with the others. Ebony with his ridiculously compressed tier 2 Augmentation and Ning Xin with her tier 3 enhancement with another blood and fire-based tier 2 enhancement together with the wind to reduce the strain on her body.
¡®Compression for the win but who¡¯s to say the others don¡¯t have multiple enhancements.¡¯ Ebony kept his domain up until they reconvened with the militia.
¡°You¡¯re not making a big dent in their numbers.¡± He asked Cap Dwarf.
¡°We don¡¯t really get much experience from these guys.¡± The short man shrugged.
¡®So they hold back to give other squads experience?¡¯ The ¡®war¡¯ was looking out to be more and more of a farce to him. The disorder in their enemy''s reinforcement forced them to stop moving as a whole and they achieved their objective. The Trolls didn¡¯t need scouts for them to sense the militia¡¯s presence.
¡°Make camp! Earth mages, walls and watch towers. Archers take a break and get on once the walls are up. Warriors tally our supplies and guard them well. Water mages hydrate yourself or something.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t waste any time and pulled his forge out.
???
08.08.5537
The second month of fall.
It had been almost a month since they first arrived here with Koawe. Fifth Tide¡¯s forward base was demolished and the Trolls already laid a siege attempt on Fifth Tide the city. The city could see the waves of giant muscle freaks from their walls. The Troll¡¯s reinforcements from their rear were far greater than 3 times and their numbers already exceed 3 million after all the deaths during their constant clashes.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Commander Wil¡¯s Bludgeon Academy reinforcements were nowhere to be seen and neither was Koawe contactable. Ebony ran back to check on the village, it was unharmed but Koawe wasn¡¯t anywhere. The militia was doing fantastic at stopping any reinforcements from Fourth Tide¡¯s forward base but that was it. The ranged fighters from academies were called back to support Fifth Tide but it didn¡¯t change their situation much. They never did impact the battle that much at first but the increase in their skill levels was beginning to show.
¡®Demolished¡¯ was inaccurate since the army abandoned the structures, taking only the important resources away. The middle and rear bases didn¡¯t last long even after bulking their magic towers up.
Ebony didn¡¯t know the details but it was all on Midnight Sherperd. The Shaman retreated since she ran out of mana together with the reinforcement of their womenfolk. There were female Troll warriors and they were usually fiercer but the females tend to be their cooks and non-combatants. They were the weapon crafters for the men of their race.
Most of the combatant females were Shamans but there were male Shamans too. It was a shame that he didn¡¯t get a chance to meet them in battle so he hasn¡¯t faced their shamanic magic yet. He knew that most Shamans had strong healing magic that links a squad¡¯s Vitality. It made the warrior Trolls nearly impossible to kill when they share Vitality with each other.
They didn¡¯t have many Shamans, 1 of them might be tasked to support 10 or more squads and there were many without support. First Tide¡¯s great battle had the Hive Supreme, a level 500 Shaman that was easily capable of linking the Vitality of tens of thousands of soldiers. The strongest of the biggest Shaman tribe.
Those that simulate elemental spells make use of spirits according to Commander Wil. If they had a mage with greater control over the element they could remove or reduce the strength of the corrosive cloud. The Empire didn¡¯t even know what element of mana the cloud above them was, so they didn¡¯t have a mage of the same element and power.
Ebony¡¯s plan to expend all his magic into the cloud was carried out every single day if they weren¡¯t forced into a days-long battle with the militia¡¯s force being threatened of getting wiped out. His efforts were completely ignored. No Troll stopped his idiocy and if the corrosive cloud reacted in any way, it was too subtly for him to tell. That was his greatest benefit yet.
The enemy was so confident of the cloud that they don¡¯t give a damn about his actions even when he flaunted his skills near them. He tried Potent Mana Overdraft twice more, to a weaker extent. His mana chassis heals terribly slowly in his opinion and the duration that he had significantly reduced mana regeneration made the skill hard to train in the current environment.
If he sustained a physical injury at the same location as the damaged chassis, it wouldn¡¯t heal the way it usually does either. He was glad he found out another one of his weaknesses as a partial mana being before he was put in a poor position. He wasn¡¯t sure if the healing speed of his chassis would increase or if he would permanently hurt himself hence, the relatively careful tests he had done so far. It would take more than a few attempts for him to tell if the mana chassis had any similarities with a muscle that wears and repairs. The chassis sustains damage equally throughout his body and he hasn¡¯t figured out how to overdraft from only a certain part of his body.
He was called upon to rain down petals a few times and he was glad to meet their demands. The reinforcements their enemies had gotten were looking more muscular and not as starved. He imagined the giants wouldn¡¯t be as desperate but he was wrong. The savage race appeared even hungrier for Humans, Dwarf and Beastmen flesh alike. He recalled a conversation with his personal chef a few days ago.
¡°I understand¡they are going after essence.¡±
¡°Like monsters?¡±
¡°Yes, demonising or turning fiendish.¡±
¡°In the midst of doing so? Or are they considered demons already?¡±
¡°I think they have always been trying but they don¡¯t know how to utilise foreign essence. They will never turn into demons if they don¡¯t know how to use essence as monsters do.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t it as simple as consuming us? Like you drinking blood.¡±
¡°That¡¯s my physique being imperfect.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
Eating people must have turned into a deep-rooted habit for the Trolls. Coexistence appeared impossible, not that he was trying to get to that point.
The militia was pretty much stuck where they were. Going back to Fifth Tide with an army in the way didn¡¯t appear smart and breaking through the ever-increasing number of reinforcements. At least no enemy came from further north where Tova was. Yet.
They were in a bad situation since Midnight Sherperd¡¯s group realised that no one came from the east and they sent a small scout group that managed to bring word back.
¡°What do we do?¡± Ayla bit her nails.
¡°Who let those freaks escape!¡± Channah roared. Her merry band roared along with her and blame was pushed from Banly to Hayec and even to Athena who held their rear.
The top three namely Commander Wil, cap Dwarf and Mr Kidnapper were battling out with Kings from Fourth Tide and weren¡¯t back yet. Athena was the next highest in command but she didn¡¯t have leadership experience and was too busy saving some necks to care about giving commands.
¡°They have healing Shamans with them, it¡¯s not surprising they managed to run away. The entire first assault squad was up against Fourth¡¯s reinforcement.¡± Banly replied. He had gotten noticeably stronger over the past 2 weeks, as with many of those from their assault squad. The advantage of having a smaller number was that Trolls haven¡¯t got any stronger even if a particular one survived every battle so far.
¡°Shut up! That stupid Shaman is gonna wipe us out regardless of our excuses. Your weak ass academy got themselves annihilated and couldn¡¯t even stop a few squads.¡± Channah bellowed at the few survivors of the small earth magic academy. They were resting in the ¡®rear¡¯ because they were mostly out of mana.
The survivors were all low-level students, they stammered out an explanation of what happened. Their professors thought it was a small number of Trolls and didn¡¯t bother the others, desiring the extra experience for their own school. They didn¡¯t have anyone with good sight and ran out to fight the Trolls with some eager students. The Trolls were encouraged to attack because of the free meal and weak resistance but the Arcane Warrior Academy''s injured members fought back.
Most of the earth mages were dead by then as the Trolls simply swooped in and massacred the almost mana-less mages before the warriors could react. The Arcane Warriors had some competence but they were injured and the practically undying Troll squads were forced to retreat with a single shama followed. The arcane warriors weren¡¯t capable of chasing them. They relied heavily on mana and weren¡¯t in the best physical states.
A couple of insults were thrown around for putting them all in danger because they didn¡¯t want to risk their lives.
¡°Come on, you think a few injured warriors can kill squads supported by a healing shaman?¡±
Arguments aside, people began to look over at Athena and one of the Arcane Warrior teachers called Walt. Simply because they were the strongest and they were respected for it. Ebony and Ning Xin were busy keeping enemies at bay but he was listening in with a long thread of mana and transmitting important information around. The others also knew better than to look for them in making decisions that concerned safety.
Athena got pissed off because she didn¡¯t know how to take command of people or what the right course of action was. Walt proposed ideas that got shut down by different groups of people. The militia ultimately consisted of freelancers and academies here for their own objectives. No one accepted a plan that required a group or two to remain or perform some other risky act.
To begin with, they had no directions. In every direction was a bigger group of enemies.
¡°Can I suggest something?¡± Ebony asked through his threads of mana.
He got a resounding no from almost everyone.
¡°Let the man speak.¡± Walt had been one of the few who called him ¡®man¡¯ instead of ¡®boy¡¯.
¡°In my opinion, the safest way is to break through this army from Fourth Tide and get to the Imperials¡¯ forward base for the battle further east. It shouldn¡¯t take more than half a day¡I mean 4 days if we travel with the majority''s speed.¡± Ebony cut to the chase. He had been one of the few that could fly and the only one that flaunted that.
¡°So we¡¯re letting these guys through to Fifth Tide?! The battle has already gotten all the way to the mainland!¡±
¡°We¡¯re trying to run away here dumbass!¡±
¡°You think we could stop them in our state?!¡±
¡®These people love screaming¡¡¯ Ebony forgot that most of them were fighting and they could hardly hear each other. He heard clearly due to his threads of mana.
The person who said they were letting the reinforcements through must have been sleeping. They were trying to escape with their lives at the moment. The overall response was positive since it was blatantly obvious that going back towards Elva was a good idea. Going back towards Fifth Tide was suicidal regardless of the presence of Shamans. Their numbers ballooned so much that the militia, one brigade of Imperial soldiers and a couple of academies could be drowned with the Trolls'' spit.
The reinforcements from Fourth Tide were mostly tribeless compared to the clear effort that their enemy put into Fifth Tide¡¯s invasion. With the Benumbed, Vigiot and now a small number of Shamans.
The only problem with his plan was that the fire mages from the unnamed small academy and the similar strength warrior schools would probably not make it through alive. The Imperial soldiers of the rear brigade might survive with their superior equipment and good coordination. As for the militia, most of them including the support squads had good survival skills. Only the first assault squad members had a reasonably good chance of breaking through this horde coming out relatively unharmed.
¡°Why aren¡¯t you people moving!? What if the oldies come back with their butts kicked!?¡± Ning Xin the resident chef blasted her surrounding Trolls into a crisp.
That woke everyone up, if King Classed Trolls were on the hunt they were all goners. Fortunately, there were very few of them since most of their forces were busy fighting Fourth Tide¡¯s Imperial Army. 3 of them came over because the militia had forcefully stopped their march towards Fifth Tide.
It was impressive that less than 10,000 of them could stop their army of 150,000. It was thanks to the strong individuals that could single-handedly take on hundreds of them in rotation that messed up the way Troll soldiers fought in large numbers. Those that tried to slip through usually died horrifically from a huge barrage of spells and arrows.
¡°Walt, Scarlet and Ebony. Work with me, we¡¯ll open up a path. Walt, can your men hold the path open?¡± Athena ordered for the first time.
The Arcane Warriors were the only large group of melee fighters that could carry themselves well enough to hold these giants back.
¡°ARCANA! We¡¯ll do the weak a favour, protect the path we open!¡± Walt smirked.
It raised the loose militia¡¯s morale because they had silly pride.
It wasn¡¯t hard for Ebony to slip away from his fight but Ning Xin didn¡¯t have a domain keeping these freaks of nature away from her. Constant blasts of fire only ate up her energy. Then again, she didn¡¯t need it. She pierced the heads and large bodies looming over her, leaping and staying afloat. Their enemies finally got smart enough that hitting her out of the air only invited her to take their heads off. For those strong enough to succeed and survive getting her down, it invited another monster to them that would freeze them rock solid.
¡°Drink.¡± He advised the blood-drinking swordswoman.
Chapter 183: Maglev
¡°How¡¯re we gonna do this?¡± Walt rolled his shoulders.
¡°Scarlet and I will force a path open, Ebony help us repel them with gravity magic and freeze the path. The others watch our back.¡± Athena¡¯s arrow-like stakes crackled.
¡°The ice will break easily if I need to make gors-long path.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t have the mana to conjure a fully protected road with Imperishable Frost Scales that stretched for hundreds of kilometres.
No matter how they go about it, once they got past the majority of the 150,000-strong army they were going to bump into Commander Wil¡¯s battle. Their presence there would be a problem for the elites of both ally and enemy. The militia would put their commander in poor condition if the King Classed Troll took advantage of their presence.
¡°Doesn¡¯t matter, It¡¯s just a guide for the others. Oh, and you can do that horizontal pull thing to drag everyone through.¡±
¡°Like a train track? Interesting, I¡¯ll do it.¡± He was intrigued by the idea, he could propel everyone like a maglev train. His control over gravity mana had improved drastically and he was testing out all sorts of usages for it. Although he didn¡¯t make a new spell, it was because nothing felt like it would turn out extremely useful. The one he used most often now was an extension of Guided Path, instead of a thread of gravity mana connecting two points it was simply enlarging this ¡®thread¡¯ to be able to swallow up giants and repel or attract them.
The other application was simply a ball of condensed gravity mana. After a certain point, the gathering of gravity mana starts to stick together instead of struggling to return to the planet. As if they knew they could not escape his mental grasp. They would form an isolated pull towards their centre naturally and he only needed to keep them in place, pulling in more gravity mana strengthens it. It was quite easy, he experimented with conjuring gravity mana but he wasn¡¯t able to do it yet.
Ning Xin on the other hand, got irritated because she was getting closer and closer to conjuring blood. If she could conjure her own blood, she would get another jump in utility and power. She didn¡¯t share much about it with him but he could guess she was planning to further push her Core Skill or fire-based enhancement. She wouldn¡¯t have to worry about evaporating all her blood if she conjured them at the same rate. She put so much focus on conjuration that her manipulation over it didn¡¯t really improve much.
They waited for the militia, academies and Imperial soldiers to gather. It gave the four of them time to rest. They caught their breaths and regenerated as much mana and stamina as possible. Leaving the work of helping people gather and get into whatever formation they thought was the best. The soldiers were the most efficient and it got through to the militia that they were better off following the soldiers'' advice. They got a solid twenty-minute break, the soldiers had to save quite a number of students. ¡®Students¡¯ that were older than they should be but students all the same. As a rear brigade, they were mostly archers and mages but these soldiers were well trained unlike the unnamed academies rangers units that were helpless when an opponent got close to them.
The mace wielders were a little weaker than the arcane warriors but they had much better stamina and sustainability. Apparently, those present were all fourth-year students or something. They had a more comprehensive range of skills, some weren¡¯t even identified as warriors as it might be their Sub-Class. Observing so many people helped Ebony form a clearer picture of the Empire¡¯s average strength.
The archers were out of arrows and they didn¡¯t have many earth mages to conjure arrows for them. They didn¡¯t have any wood or stone mages either. None of the conjurors would waste their mana for others in the current situation so it didn¡¯t really make a difference. A few archers were luckier as they were mages themselves and had elemental mana ores to form arrows.
Many archers asked if he could make a quiver that produces arrows but that was way out of his expertise. It wasn¡¯t exactly a rare piece of equipment for them but those smiths that could make them charge a ton. The arrow quality was usual at the bottom of the barrel but it was better than nothing and richer archers carried that as a spare quiver that had wood or metal mana ores maybe both.
¡°What¡¯cha waiting for!? We¡¯re ready!¡±
¡°Piss off, you wanna go ahead?¡± Athena spat back towards the crowd.
The mace wielders had been working hard to protect the four of them as they rested.
¡°Thanks brothers, it¡¯s our turn.¡± The arcane warriors stepped up to take the mace wielders'' place.
22 Glacial Models were holding back 1 squad of Grandmasters. It wasn¡¯t easy to cast so many of them when he drains his mana dry every single day. They were getting stronger and destroyed less so he managed to accumulate them. He had a feeling that his ¡®Will¡¯ was beginning to thin out with 20 of them, a few more and they might not have their complete capabilities. At least they were tough enough to survive hits even without Stalwart Endowment.
One of the Models sacrificed itself in a bang, releasing the rest to back the arcane warriors up. The Grandmasters were frozen in a thick layer of ice but they weren¡¯t dead. They had plenty of lifeforce augmenting themselves to prevent the misty blast of ice mana from digging deep into their bodies.
¡°Useful trick.¡± Athena still believed that his domain was just multiple areas of effect spells. He never fought her so they didn¡¯t know the specifics of each other¡¯s skills.
She was only amazed about his Glacial Models, each one could fight an arcane warrior around level 200. The Models would lose due to the loss of energy if he was out of range but his range with them increased a lot with the level of the skill. The mace wielder wasn¡¯t a match because most didn¡¯t have a good resistance against the occasional ice spell. Their weapons would break or get sliced as their weapon reinforcement with mana was poor and couldn¡¯t counter the sonic vibrations.
¡°Ready?¡± Athena didn¡¯t wait for a reply and shot forward. Ning Xin reflexively burst away with a fully charged pulse of her heart.
Ebony allowed Walt to chase them with his weird mana enhancement. If his senses were right, the man was running mana in two different directions in his body. Sadly, he wasn¡¯t able to sense the internals of the arcane warrior but the other students and teachers didn¡¯t have the mana flow as weird as Walt¡¯s.
¡°We will be moving at a fast pace but you guys are running for your lives. Don¡¯t pick fights.¡± Ebony told the leaders of each group. Especially the militia under Ayla and Channah, those guys pick a fight whenever Trolls call them cowards in their slang.
He no longer spooked them out when he disappeared from the spot without much of an impact. No ground cracking, no shockwaves and complete silence. He thought up a nifty trick to reduce the air resistance and that was to suck all the air ahead of him with a ball of gravity mana, using sound magic he was able to soundproof the suction. Treading Stride already hit level 331 and his manipulation over essence has gotten far better causing Waning Presence to be partly effective even when he was moving.
Turns out when a stealth skill around 150 was to hide him from thousands of creatures a rank above him, it would skyrocket in level. Waning Presence already hit 288 in such a short time and it even refined once.
Waning Presence - Blending yourself into your surroundings to stay out of sight. Ability to withdraw and match surrounding essence to remove your presence increases by 80% + 2.5% per level. Ability to stay out of plain sight while stationary increases by 2.5% per level.
The base percentage used to be 50% but it increased to 80%. It was essentially a 12 level improvement, now he understood the importance of every refinement. The skill said nothing about hiding his presence when he was on the move but after his evolution, his senses for ¡®skill¡¯ activation heightened. This perception of a ¡®skill¡¯ should be what told a person whether they hit their natural limit for the skill or not.
He caught up to Walt who already got surrounded. Athena and Ning Xin were so far ahead that the Trolls took the chance to trap the solo arcane warrior.
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¡°To them!¡± Walt called out.
¡®He¡¯ll be fine.¡¯ Ebony knew that Walt could carry his own weight.
The two vanguards hit a wall. The surprisingly effective tactic the Trolls loved to use against strong individuals. One Troll would lie in wait for the attack and jump right into the weapon, stakes and longswords in this case, then they flexed their muscles and sealed it with their life force to prevent the user from moving. If the Trolls had a good position they could use one arm to hug the person to death but their massive size made it difficult to hug a tiny human. If not, the rest of their squad would eat or attack the person.
Ning Xin¡¯s longswords couldn¡¯t be grabbed so easily; their muscle-locking technique couldn¡¯t stop the chef either. Two Trolls would wait for her to thrust her sword in a piercing motion before catching it with their palms and grabbing onto her arms. It worked in the past but she never made the same mistakes.
This time, she was stopped because one Grandmaster balled up and hugged his squad member''s arms, turning the arm into a flesh club. The Troll was a meat shield with an immensely thick life force focused on its back. The wielder aligned its ally¡¯s spine to catch her blade and it was strong enough to take milliseconds for her to free it. With 4 duos using their buddies like that, she was caught in between them.
Athena was being beaten down by 5 squads far higher level than anyone present. She was only level 302 and a new Grandmaster, so she was actually doing amazing. Walt was a level 300 Master arcane warrior but he was dealing with an entire horde behind them.
Two of those squads were definitely over level 400, Ebony was sure since they were his designated opponents every single time he appeared. He was forced to protect himself while chilling the hell out of them every single time. He did manage to kill one of them so they didn¡¯t have full squads of 8.
The mark on him and Ning Xin had gotten stronger as they killed more Trolls. This mark didn¡¯t have a visible physical form but they could feel its presence on their upper left arm. It wasn¡¯t something that his mana could touch either so he was helpless. Fortunately, Waning Presence still made it hard for them to pinpoint him.
At the moment, it appeared like only Grandmaster Trolls can perceive the mark while other Trolls simply knew better than to pick a fight with them. The slower Glacial Models went to assist Athena while he personally went to the only person he actually cared about here. The closest enemy smacked his meat shield ally at him. It helped since Guided Path already linked Icicle¡¯s tip with his buddy¡¯s spine and his own arm. He just had to adjust his feet and arm position a little and the Trolls would stab themselves.
These guys were Ning Xin¡¯s designated opponents, she already killed the other squads a few hours ago when their operation just started. It was too bad it turned into a different operation mid-way due to Midnight Sheperd¡¯s scouting team. They did not know about Ebony¡¯s skills and he took advantage of them, freezing both of them solid.
Taking this duo off from the fire swordswoman broke their combo and she sliced the other 3 duos apart with reasonable ease. She was still saving his blood for a more opportune time instead of recharging earlier so they weren¡¯t in a bad position yet.
¡°Go back to keep the path open.¡± She didn¡¯t even look at him.
¡°Mmm.¡±
He had his domain out but weakened it so that he could raise its range. He constructed a thin sheet of ice at the edges of his domain and left the ground alone so no one slipped. Walt was almost done but more squads were rushing to him.
Ebony made it rain flaming petals without overdrafting his mana. The surface of the thin sheet of ice burst into flames, even if they broke through they would catch on fire. Walt crushed his opponents and went to support Athena. They haven¡¯t gotten much ground yet so he had all the arcane warriors move forward to solidify their hold smack dab within their enemy''s territory.
The arcane warriors weren¡¯t dumb enough to have everyone charge, they spread out to guard the rear guards. The Imperial soldiers were the perfect fit for the job so the warriors had no qualms protecting them as they supported each other.
¡°We could really use the help of those self-firing bows¡¡± Someone complained.
Sadly, those bows ran out of arrows and flew back to Arcta two days ago. Only a few hid themselves to stay with him and one with Ning Xin, they had about a dozen arrows that could instantly take down one of those currently fighting Athena left. The same arrow can also be used to cause large-scale destruction as the bows can change the effect according to the situation.
¡°You can be more useful too.¡±
¡°Ell!¡±
Well, Ebony agreed with their sentiments. The archer students were just a burden here, only some of them could protect themselves with side arms but most of them were just wielding a dagger, knife or short sword for show.
¡°We don¡¯t have to kill, just keep them at bay!¡±
¡°Their huge bodies prevent too many of them from surrounding us! Keep them angry so that they don¡¯t allow their allies to ¡®steal¡¯ their prey..¡±
The soldiers shared their knowledge and the arcane warriors listened.
¡°Stay compact!¡±
Staying compact was the last thing the militia wanted in normal situations but it was the only way the limited warriors could protect the far larger number from the fire mage, scout and archer academies together with the almost 4000-strong rear brigade.
Ebony was the only mage present insane enough to cast large spells left and right without a care in the world. He was reducing the pressure on the warriors by cutting down numbers a distance away from their route.
¡°Stop there.¡± He transmitted to his icy tunnel, the front had already closed up onto Athena¡¯s battle and the three of them weren¡¯t down yet.
He stepped on a tall frozen corpse''s face and disappeared silently, reappearing where the 3 were fighting. The Trolls used their muscle enlargement technique and turned into larger giants attempting to step on bugs.
¡®These guys are really good at fighting human-sized opponents.¡¯ He was honestly amazed that their skill with a sharpened rock could accurately combat opponents that either reached their knees or hips. Those Master Trolls ranged from 4 to 6 metres tall and Grandmasters from 7 to 8. The size gained from their special skill had a wide range, probably largely dependent on their skill level. It could be an additional ton or more of muscle mass for all he knew. Their low horizontal sweep was a deadly strike that split a lot of people. He was always on the lookout when they bent their knees and dipped their elbows and shoulders almost parallel to the ground. This strike was so polished that he was trying to copy it. Then he rethought it as any strike would be good if he were to polish it over and over again.
The ones Athena was facing could kill all three of them if they got hit with this enlarged version¡¯s strike and he would be close to being smashed to paste. Mental Arithmetic was starting to calculate how damaged his body would be whenever it saw an attack.
¡°What¡¯s taking you so long?¡± He jibed.
He noticed that it had a good effect when members of the militia insulted each other so he tried it too. It worked on both Athena and Ning Xin. With him in the mix they broke apart the squads and didn¡¯t even take ten minutes to slaughter them.
The rest of their allies did a good job of keeping the weaker enemies off their backs.
¡°Ebony, protect them.¡± Athena spat out before she ran after Ning Xin who didn¡¯t waste a second.
He was left with guard duty since Walt didn¡¯t have the skills that could reach or perception to take care of thousands.
¡°Call out if you¡¯re in trouble.¡± He tapped his bracelet to inform them that he connected a thread of mana to them. He gave Athena and Walt a weak buff because they were not used to foreign mana intruding on their body and gave Ning Xin a slightly compressed version.
He flew up and watched the arcane warriors and mace wielders start to struggle against the growing number of enemies attempting to get rid of the invading army. Dozens of ¡®Icicles¡¯ formed at the edges of his 155-metre mental reach and he flew to the rear of the combined militia while conjuring more weapons. By imbuing a simple ¡®stay¡¯ command on his ice, they wouldn¡¯t fall even if he got out of range.
This ¡®Will¡¯ wasn¡¯t something Ning Xin or most mages he knew could use so it was far from simple but it was natural to him. He continued to compress the greatswords and conjure more. Enemies that wanted to stop him were gifted a few of them. The outcome was getting frozen solid if they get stabbed or getting frozen solid if they broke the ice sword. Dodging was impossible since the swords had Guided Path linking them, knocking them aside without breaking them only bought them time before the ice weapon readjusted its tip and homed back into them. The best they could do was continuously knock them aside or dodge and buy time. If they got hit by one, more would come to break them down or finish them off while they¡¯re frozen.
It was much less mana-expensive than frost flames and he could spend some on compression. He had a lot more time and there was no need to cast them in one go so he just watched the others fight for their lives and sent help to those that needed it. He unleashed a couple hundred of them whenever he reached the limit that his ¡®Will¡¯ could hold. Accuracy wasn¡¯t its strong point with too many projectiles but they didn¡¯t go to waste even if they landed on the ground.
He rained the rest of them down into the path that Athena opened, allowed the warriors back into the thin sheet of ice wall and landed to extend their tunnel. It had been 2 hours since he stayed to protect the militia and no strong opponent showed up. A 5-kilometre-long tunnel took him close to 10 minutes to prepare and he sent thousands of people zipping through it as gravity flipped horizontally.
¡®I can do something similar to our trailer, right? Oh crap.¡¯
¡°Oops. Sorry about that.¡± He forgot to flip gravity back and a couple hundred were sent shooting forward into a debris of corpses. Those vanguards had his rings and reacted fast enough, there weren¡¯t enemies around either but he had to apologize.
Chapter 184: Encircled
Tova, 23.07.5537.
Hector woke up with an aching back. He tried to push himself off the ground but couldn¡¯t feel his arms. He sensed his surroundings but all the elemental mana ores he placed before his evolution was emptied and there weren¡¯t any remnants in the air either.
¡°Argh! Who put a rock under my back?¡± His mind spun quickly and he sprung onto his feet.
No one would interrupt his evolution, General Truewater guarded him. The room was in shambles, the ceiling had broken off parts that stayed in place. They were actually falling down extremely slowly. Dread loomed upon him, his gut wasn¡¯t feeling good and he knew it wasn¡¯t just the hunger from the after-evolution. He scrambled for his bag and put on the armour in it, falling down because he rushed his numb body. His body was energy starved at the moment. He gulped down the best mana and stamina recovery potion he had as he didn¡¯t have a ridiculous mana regeneration rate.
Hector didn¡¯t give a damn about the current state of his body, he ran up to the door after making sure his gauntlets were worn properly.
¡°Huuu! Haaa!!¡± He took a deep breath as his hand rested on the doorknob.
¡°Uncle!!¡± He pushed the door open with gusto and destroyed the knob in his grip in the process.
He didn¡¯t see the general. He saw mountains of rock where military structures surrounding him had been. Large fires around him, frosty air further in the distance, a whole lot of screaming and the heavy stench of blood drowned the atmosphere. Hector snapped his head around and images of soldiers crushed under mountains of rock flashed through his mind. A lot of soldiers were locked in combat so he shook his head and focused on figuring out what to do instead of imagining the worst.
¡®It¡it shouldn''t even have been a day since I started evolving.¡¯ Hector was unsure if his room getting damaged affected the time flow.
¡°We¡¯re done here!¡± General Truewater¡¯s voice echoed throughout their supposedly hidden base.
The ¡®sky¡¯ fell on the entire base. The base was swallowed in water and the Trolls were ripped away by a violent tornado. The soldiers here were all elites, with the numbers his glance got there shouldn¡¯t have been as many deaths as he imagined. They held onto anything grounded but General Truewater had absolute control in his domain. Entire squads of King Classed opponents weren¡¯t even able to resist.
¡°Evacuate! Someone grab that prince! I¡¯ll pull the Old Hag away!¡±
¡°Hector! Catch!¡±
His great-granduncle, General Truewater continued to bark orders. He caught the shiny blue fist-sized orb that a stream of water pushed into his hands.
¡®...This sets up his illusion right? And a barrier. I see.¡¯ Hector sort of understood the plan.
They were ambushed with mountain-sized rocks, the only one who could find them had to be Old Hag and the General went to hold the Shaman back while his soldiers fought the ambushers. The impossibly capable man must have allowed the mountain-sized rocks to land on empty buildings or delayed it for the soldiers to get out. The screaming had mostly come from their enemies with a few exceptions.
He was dragged away, placed in between many stinky men as they ran.
¡°Where are we running to?¡±
¡°Just follow us!¡±
¡°We gotta be quick! Old Hag¡¯s too strong, the general is holding her back for us but he¡¯s already injured.¡±
¡°He¡¯s injured?¡± Hector was a little shocked. The man might not be the head of his household who was currently the strongest Truewater but he was next in line with greater potential. He was a level 400 Grandmaster who used to help clear small Epic, purple gate dungeons. Alone.
Originally, he assumed a King ranked would be here but he was wrong. The man has stuck at 500 long ago and only had to get his skills up to par. It might have been one of the reasons the man came to Tova.
Hector figured out the army¡¯s backup or evacuation destination very quickly. It was a guarded and hidden dungeon portal underground. It should be the Empire¡¯s training spot on Tova, a blue portal.
The army ran into the dungeon one after the other as Hector ushered them in. He got quite a few guards but they knew why he was still standing outside. He was glad to see Captain Cain rush towards the gate with his fellow survivor that travelled with them on his back.
¡®Why does this feel planned¡¡¯ Hector borrowed a knife to cut his fingers, dripping his blood onto the blue orb likely made by one of his royal relatives. He couldn¡¯t use barrier magic but he had the Lord family¡¯s blood. The fact that this orb was made to activate with his blood only enforced the idea that the situation was planned or anticipated.
The water illusion and barrier expanded and erased the physical and magical presence of the dungeon portal. It was already hidden underground so the illusion and barrier were just an extra precaution. It was smaller but there was a fully equipped camp inside the dungeon.
¡°Recruit, we would bring you to a green gate but that¡¯s not possible now. You¡¯ll level here.¡± The old veteran that guarded him changed his tone real quick.
Hector smiled and replied, ¡°Just what I¡¯d hoped, sir!¡±
???
Elcra, 08.08.5537.
¡°Whaa..erg, why¡¯re you guys here?¡± Commander Wil yawned.
¡°Midnight Shepherd¡¯s scouts found us, they escaped. We¡¯re running towards Fourth Tide.¡± Athena summarised.
¡°Tsk, that¡¯s troublesome. My boys sure are late.¡± Commander Wil raised one side of his lips up in annoyance.
The flat tip of his club pushed down on the King-Classed Troll¡¯s chest and no amount of the physical giant¡¯s struggling could push the scrawny old man away. All four of its limbs were smashed flat into the ground while Commander Wil pushed his club harder. It slid into the giant¡¯s chest, through its ribs and heart but when he retrieved his club the heart tissues were already reconnecting and the bones mended back as if they didn¡¯t break.
Commander Wil simply pummelled and trashed the Troll over and over again for the next ten minutes just like how he done for the previous hour.
¡°Finally! This is back-breaking work as always.¡±
Unnamed was fighting the other Troll with Cap Dwarf while the third already died before Athena and her two partners got here. They weren¡¯t really ¡®fighting¡¯, just surviving while waiting for Commander Wil to save them.
Athena, Ning Xin and Walt knew better than to step in.
It was unexpected that the remaining Troll ran off before Commander Wil finished their squadmate off. They usually fought to the death but they might require elite fighters more than ever. Commander Wil was stronger than they imagined, this contingent from Fourth Tide¡¯s forward base cannot harm them if he was around.
Their plan to escape to Fourth Tide was under the assumption that these three had to hold the Troll¡¯s elites back while they ran but here they are with two dead Kings.
Why on Elcra was a man of Commander Wil¡¯s power in their tiny militia?
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
All six of them looked at the direction they came from. Walt leapt to catch the humanoid figures ragdolling through the air. Many of them began to stabilise their bodies and skid to a stop by themselves.
¡°Are we through?¡± Ebony looked bored when he came over.
He didn¡¯t need an answer since he could see that there were still tons of enemies at a safe distance away from their leader¡¯s battle, now grave.
¡°Will they back off?¡± Walt just saw their commander obliterate the enemy¡¯s strongest force.
The war at Fourth Tide had a larger scale but they shouldn¡¯t have that many spare forces to support Fifth. The Fifth also continued to balloon in numbers as their men joined them from their rear. The only good thing was that the average strength of reinforcements was dropping. Not all were professional soldiers.
¡°They will be executed for escaping battle.¡± Cap Dwarf was panting hard but he caught his breath quickly.
¡°Honour huh?¡±
¡°Want me to do it? It¡¯s quite a waste so I don¡¯t think I should.¡± Commander Wil could wipe out every living being in range with a single swing of his club but he wouldn¡¯t gain any experience or Natural Potential.
¡°Just stick around, we can move slowly since you¡¯re here.¡± Athena agreed. She evolved not long ago and was in dire need for the experience.
Walt needed skill levels and Natural Potential but didn¡¯t see himself killing a high level Troll at the moment.
¡°Old man! What now?¡± Channah the lizard woman was in her usual bad mood.
¡°Do you think going to Fourth¡¯s a good idea?¡± Ayla questioned the more informed leader.
¡°...Not really.¡±
Curses were spat all over, they all had decent to great hearing.
¡°But it is the better choice. North is Tova, no point going deeper into enemy territory with this pathetic lineup. West, where we came from is getting a lot of attention and Midnight Shepherd hates us and actively desires to hunt us down. South is the mainland, we want to get there but millions have stretched out their camp from Fifth Tide¡¯s cliff. They are constantly watching out for our presence, likely an order from our dear Shepherd. East, hohoho, an even bigger army but the Imperial¡¯s forward base stands strong based on the last report I received, 5 days ago.¡±
¡°We¡¯re dead, aren¡¯t we? The Trolls here are slightly stronger.¡± Channah seemed to have finally calmed down as she licked the bloody scar on her shoulder.
¡°Sound mages, can you contact anyone?¡±
¡°Too far. And the essences in the atmosphere are only getting thicker every day so callstone¡¯s stable range has been getting shorter too.¡± One of the sound mages from the first assault squad replied.
The militia¡¯s morale continued to plummet.
¡°Relax, although both enemies in front and behind us know our location, only little Shepherd wants us dead badly enough to hunt us down. She knows I¡¯m here so whoever she sends can keep me busy long enough to kill everyone else. Their numbers increased too so I might be in danger if she got actual elite squads but even if she had those they would be busy protecting her, putting pressure on Fifth Tide or holding their line so the little lass won¡¯t push them back.¡± The commander didn¡¯t care for the respectful titles of a higher-rank soldier.
¡°There will probably be a gap that we can squeeze through before Fourth¡¯s Troll can react. That is if they even care enough. If we¡¯re lucky, the Imperial Army is fighting them while we run back. If not, well, only the weak will die. The route shouldn¡¯t be any more dangerous than our current situation so it''s indeed a better course of ac-¡±
A loud grumble cut Commander Wil¡¯s speech.
???
¡°It¡¯s okay. Here, eat some meat jerky.¡± Ebony tried his best to pacify the hungry girl that used him as a shield. She twitched her ears vigorously and he silenced their conversation.
¡°It¡¯s not okay! That was so embarrassing!¡±
¡°You¡¯re running on fumes, with far higher physical stats but you¡¯re eating the same quantity of food. It¡¯s nothing to be ashamed of. You didn¡¯t even need to drink my blood.¡±
¡°...¡± It was obvious that she disagreed but couldn¡¯t argue.
The two of them were not nervous at all, just like the commander and the fellow elites. They can fly and although Fourth¡¯s Troll army supposedly had better aerial defences they had a good chance of simply flying back to the mainland or reaching an Empire¡¯s base if they worked together.
Only the mysterious magic Shamans wielded or perhaps a tribe they haven¡¯t seen could trouble them. There shouldn¡¯t be any Kings in the direction they were going unless it wandered from a fight against the Imperial Army. These muscle heads couldn¡¯t fly either, so they still had a good chance of escaping.
¡°Eat something, we have hours of battle ahead of us.¡± He didn¡¯t have to persuade her.
She wrapped herself under her torn mantle and started munching through a ton of snacks and jerky. He also fished out some snacks for himself. Using ¡®will¡¯ was extremely strenuous, it might be because he overused it but it wasn¡¯t like the unlimited mana manipulation he could do without getting mentally strained.
Their actions made a few warriors¡¯ stomachs grumble as well. Everyone realised that if they didn¡¯t make it to an Imperial base soon they would starve to death. They didn¡¯t receive supplies ever since the Fifth Tide¡¯s forward base got pushed back and then abandoned. Most people didn¡¯t have spatial storage and they were all very strict with their own food supply. Water hasn¡¯t been a big problem, everyone took good care of their water skins that could produce water or convert mana into water. Fortunately, it wasn¡¯t as if those with spatial storage were accused of stealing food since they took logistics for food very seriously.
The Imperial soldiers had super crackers, the same series of products as souper bread. A single cracker was chock full of nutrients that could substitute one unclassed human stomach day''s worth of food. They had bigger appetites than normal humans but individually carried enough for 2 weeks.
The product wasn¡¯t commercially sold so the militia and academies didn¡¯t have something that compact that could provide half as much sustenance. Souper bread was compact but could only fill their stomachs without giving them the necessary nutrients a combatant required.
¡°It seems like they don¡¯t want to give us a break.¡± Cap Dwarf stood up from his earthen snake head.
Ebony didn¡¯t keep his domain up, he let his mind rest from the overuse of ¡®will¡¯. As his seniors reminded him, it was important to only use the right amount of strength so that they could muster enough energy when they really needed it. They had too little information about the current state of the Trolls to be confident that no dangerous squad was nearby. Their enemies rushed over after those with a better eye saw their defeated leaders.
¡°Leave some for us. You people always kill too many.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t exaggerate, we aren¡¯t able to contain all of them by ourselves.¡±
The first assault squad got the stink eye from the general public.
¡°How rude¡or is it just mean? We protected them.¡± He still had his conversation silenced. He was beginning to question things he saw but he was never right when he guessed so he asked people.
¡°Some people are just jerks. Not rude, they just don¡¯t feel grateful.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
At least he was able to tell that those ungrateful people were not saying rude things as a joke. He can tell if two friends were saying the exact same words but have a different ¡®feel¡¯. It was their tone but he hadn¡¯t gotten good enough to say he masterfully understood the tone.
¡°I¡¯ll watch you kids, go on.¡± Commander Wil sat and massaged his knees.
Attacking a base was one thing, out in the open there wasn¡¯t anyone able to fight the old man even if they sensed him through his mark. The Trolls knew this, they knew that Commander Wil had no benefit in killing them. The old man would sit out and they had a chance to wait till their elders came. In the meantime, it was feasting time for the Trolls.
Ebony and Ning Xin didn¡¯t hold back but they didn¡¯t go the extra mile to exterminate their enemies either. Conserving their energy, they continued fighting for much longer. The Trolls used their numbers and lives to wear the militia out and it was working. They had no trouble with warriors and mages without mana.
The impromptu rotation they made was so terrible that the Imperial soldier watched with a headache. The first contact had already dried up most people''s energy and they had few people to protect them during this time. There was nowhere to run either as the path they came from still had plenty of Trolls they simply ran past earlier.
Many people used potions and pills to give them a boost in power or energy before they managed to create a defensive circle. Commander Wil did save a few people but many died as they were out of his reach. The rear couldn¡¯t defend themselves against a truck jumping onto them. The warriors were busy keeping themselves alive and the stronger few didn¡¯t want to put themselves at risk.
¡®Would I risk myself for strangers? So many people are dying but I don¡¯t seem to care. I helped those that I could but why? This is not normal is it?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know.
He could throw himself at these enemies without any significant levels or risk. He did his best to save those in his reach but the chaos was too much for him to take care of everyone. If he fails to save someone within sight he simply goes on to the next fight or to help another person. The most obvious feeling to him was helplessness, there was no pity, no remorse, no guilt, no frustration and definitely no sadness. He began to notice from others¡¯ reactions that he was the one that acted differently.
Ning Xin always reached and reacted in time but her violent motion blew the ones she wanted to save away. She still saved that person in time but she changed her focus to 100% offence. ¡°Fewer enemies, fewer deaths on our side.¡± was the reasoning she would likely give him. Even so, she had been frustrated and angered by her own half-failure. Ebony wasn¡¯t sure what she was angered about and there wasn¡¯t a chance to ask her.
¡®It¡¯s not just because of my core skill that¡¯s for sure.¡¯
Chapter 185: Savage Brute
Ebony didn¡¯t give up.
A lot of people did.
The only bright side was that the more of them died, the fewer people there were to protect. The number dropped till the commander and other strong individuals could protect them all if they stuck together according to the Imperial soldiers'' formation. Most of the soldiers survived, they had better discipline. Fire mages didn¡¯t sustain too many casualties because the arcane warriors and mace wielders did their best to keep them alive. These warriors weren¡¯t as lucky but they were not as helpless as the scouts and archers. The arcane warriors sustained greater casualties than mace wielders as the battle dragged on as they were too dependent on mana in comparison.
Things got extremely terrible when every support squad¡¯s mage ran out of mana and mana potions. The weakened front lines couldn¡¯t fight against completely refreshed Trolls as they swapped out with their allies.
The first assault squad was smart enough to leave some members to rest as well so they could swap out. Commander Wil made sure that their rear was completely empty, he made sure that no one was sent by Midnight Shepherd as well. Just his presence allowed them to have one less direction to worry about and they weren¡¯t fenced in.
Their efforts got them dozens of kilometres covered in a day. It was a short distance but they were trying their best.
On the second day of this half-encirclement, Commander Wil faced Midnight Shepherd¡¯s squads with Cap Dwarf and Unnamed. Halfway through, Ning Xin¡¯s body gave up. No amount of energy she got from his blood helped. She enhanced herself for too long. She could still move but he got her to rest and eat up.
Naturally, Ebony hasn¡¯t needed to swap out. He didn¡¯t get any weaker or any more sluggish either. The high-intensity Augmentation didn¡¯t strain his body as much as Ning Xin¡¯s. Treading Stride actually benefited immensely. His control over distance and flexibility in changing directions seemed to improve over time.
He didn¡¯t have many surviving Glacial Models left but building another took too much time and effort. Having them uncompressed would be a waste of mana so he didn¡¯t have a chance to increase their numbers. He built rectangles, like train cabins so that he could move a bunch of people. Their enemies constantly destroyed his attempts to force him to give up on the endeavour. The larger the train got the easier it had been for the Trolls to destroy it.
The invisible mark on his arm got stronger over time. It itched uncomfortably when a strong squad was in range. It made the mark slightly two-way but they could probably sense it better than he could. He caused numerous tremors and quakes but the ground repairs almost instantly. It likely worked similarly to the corrosive cloud. Icicle and petal rains also happened a few times in the meantime.
The size of his domain that he could keep up consistently slowly increased. It wasn¡¯t very useful against weak opponents since it really didn¡¯t make much of a difference, one hit was one hit. Masters couldn¡¯t stop his blade anymore, Sonic Intrusion had come a long way. Their enhanced body or weapon barely slows his attacks down. A single cut or penetrative attack and they were goners as his ice could dig through their life force enhancement. Only the Grandmasters required him to use his flames.
He set his domain up and didn¡¯t move around. Ning Xin slept soundly by his side inside a sleeping bag. He didn¡¯t have to want to waste mana so he removed the ice and gravity effects. Unintentionally, Waning Presence was in effect. The mark still wasn¡¯t something every Troll could sense.
Ning Xin¡¯s overflowing essence started to leak and hungry Trolls jumped to the delicious meal. They couldn¡¯t stop their fall and landed with injuries across their brawny bodies and were speared the moment their feets landed.
¡°Yo--!¡±
A few of them were shocked to see him sitting right beside the sleeping figure, thankfully they weren¡¯t shocked for long.
¡°Thanks Walt.¡± Ebony thanked the arcane warrior picking up his slack.
¡°No problem, just take a break.¡± Walt had a tiny breakdown after he lost a third of his students but he knew what they were volunteering for.
¡°We should aim to annihilate them at this point. We killed like what? Fifty thousand? Old man Wil killed just as many.¡± Athena transmitted through his mana link.
¡°How much longer can the others fight? Can Commander Wil stop Midnight Shepherd¡¯s hunting team? Won¡¯t Fourth simply send stronger teams?¡±
¡°Shut up big brain. Hey Ebony, if you¡¯re gonna rest go back to the centre where the rest of the injured are.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
That had been a good idea from Athena. He carried the masked sleeping lady away. In the roughly conjured structure were hundreds of injured people. He sensed Ayla, Channah and Banly were all asleep and heavily injured. Hayec watched Ayla closely but he didn¡¯t have any visible injuries. Banly had a high fever and looked as if a fall would kill him.
¡°The soldiers are sharing their medical supplies but¡we are running out of bandages.¡±
He continued to listen in on the problems these field medics were having. He admired these people stepping forward to help where they could, not all of them were soldiers.
¡®There are two healers here¡¡¯ Ebony noticed that one fire mage had healing skills and the other had an arcane warrior. The surviving scouts were all proficient in first aid.
¡®I have some fabric, I guess I can fashion some makeshift bandages.¡¯ Ebony got to work. He didn¡¯t make clothes for people and had some fabric left over. It didn¡¯t make a big difference but it was better than nothing. After he was done, he went outside since he was in the way. His senses continued to observe Ning Xin and her surroundings.
He made Glacial Models and sent them out to fight whenever one was complete. He didn¡¯t sleep but his body recovered from the Frostblaze Augmentation strain. He took out his pot and cooking utensils and made stew. He made meatballs as well. In an isolated ice igloo of course. Selfish? Definitely.
¡°You¡¯re awake. Come out, you can find me right outside.¡± She slept for almost 4 hours and he was just about done with his stew. No one else could hear him.
She knocked on his igloo and he let her in.
¡°This feels wrong.¡± She commented.
They devoured the large pot of thick and heavy stew and meatballs within minutes.
¡°And delicious, thank you.¡±
That was a win in his book.
¡°Let¡¯s try to open a path again. I¡¯m worried about Fifth Tide.¡± Ebony suggested.
He was more interested in protecting Fifth Tide so that these Trolls didn¡¯t crush Arcta with overwhelming numbers. They didn¡¯t know the state of the battle at the moment but having the Trolls already at the cliff was worrisome. They could leave by themselves right away but he wasn¡¯t about to do that. It was marginally safer with people like Athena on their side and there was zero chance he would directly turn back to fly across an army of millions. Once they reached Fourth¡¯s Imperial forward base, making their way back to the mainland would be simple and the distance between these two military cities was possible to cross in less than a day if nothing hindered him.
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She patted her belly before stretching, ¡°mmm.¡±
They failed. Athena and Walt fell short, clearly exhausted. They swapped out for the two of them to rest.
¡°Get the rest ready to move anytime.¡±
Ebony and Ning Xin tried to escape being tied down by the small number of elite squads to wreak havoc.
¡°Just set that area on fire, I¡¯ll gather their corpses as fuel.¡± Ebony mindlessly suggested.
He managed to make 6 Glacial Models, adding on to the 3 remaining, 9 of them started to pull corpses towards them. Ebony used his domain and Guided Path to dig up the fleshy part and propel them towards his Models. They got busy and stacked them so that the fire mage could burn.
He took over 3 hours to stack a literal mountain range of Troll corpses. It burned a lot easier than he imagined. Burying seemed impossible and the least he could give them was a semi-proper cremation. The flames spread and easily reached sky-high.
¡®That should burn for days.¡¯ Ebony put his hands together and bowed to the enemies¡¯ bodies. The arsonist didn¡¯t bow but she stayed to watch in silence.
Commander Wil and his two buddies returned to report that they didn¡¯t manage to kill the squads sent after the militia. In the midst of their return, they saw the fire and rushed over.
¡°I see¡be careful. They¡¯re gonna be even more desperate to kill us now.¡±
¡°Why?¡± Ebony cocked his head in confusion.
¡°Cremation is one of the biggest insults we can throw at them. It¡¯s not a bad thing, we should make full use of this time. Anyone can see this fire, they will send more scouts over.¡± The big three were back and they rushed the combined militia and soldiers to get up and run.
Cap Dwarf and Mr Kidnapper made it extremely easy. No one could stand in their way as they dashed towards presumably safer lands.
¡°Oh, they¡¯re back again.¡±
It hasn¡¯t even been 20 minutes before the old men had to dash back to protect them. They did more than enough and Athena was back in the fight. Walt really couldn¡¯t keep up, he just slept and didn¡¯t meditate and he needed mana. They got him to stay back, he needed to protect himself.
¡°Counting on you Ebony! How much longer can you maintain your strength?¡±
¡°A week? Maybe I¡¯ll weaken a little after that.¡± He replied Banly. He would probably weaken due to ¡®will¡¯ being limited and his domain and Glacial Model depended on it. He made a rough estimation from his recent experience but he hasn¡¯t gotten to the point where he wasn¡¯t able to use ¡®will¡¯ yet.
¡°SH--!¡± Banly yelped when someone grabbed his collar and threw him back. Hayec got him away from a stray part of a broken rock weapon.
¡°Wait, no. I¡¯ll be weakened a lot.¡± He corrected when he realised that he might not be able to use his domain even if he had the mana.
¡°Careful Ebony, watch where the weapons you break go!¡±
¡°Mmm. They got rocks from somewhere, they''re about to toss them.¡±
The mages and warriors prepared defensive skills. It was hard to evade the speedy throws because those on the ground couldn¡¯t see where the projectiles were coming from. There were few scouts and rogues still alive and they couldn¡¯t guide people. The shattering projectiles will hit anything in a wide range so evasion was only for those who were confident in their flight.
Athena and Walt couldn¡¯t fly either, the only ones who could were Ning Xin, the commander, Mr Kidnapper and him. No one died from the bombardment and they finally got to the point where he didn¡¯t see enemies in front of them.
¡°We¡¯re out but we have to hurry. That darn fire is too big.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll get the commander.¡± Ebony left the militia and turned back.
The elders were too far away for his sound magic and he trusted that going away for a few minutes shouldn¡¯t be a problem. He didn¡¯t have to slow down to allow people to keep up.
Cap Dwarf had been in a tough spot when he found them. The man clearly held back when he sparred with him. Ebony didn¡¯t hesitate to enter the fray, he just needed to extricate these three and not kill. His Glacial Models were slapped to dust before they could go close and the low temperatures they produced from shattering didn¡¯t seem to affect the King Troll, easily over ten metres tall with arms thicker than he was tall.
¡°Don¡¯t get any closer!¡± Ebony listened to the Dwarf¡¯s advice but he continued to cast ranged spells to slow the opponent down. The instant his gravity and ice kicked into effect, he got a grin from their opponent.
¡°Get away!¡±
Cap had his earthen snake head swallowing up the [Savage Brute King Lvl ???]¡¯s leg. Ebony dipped and ran without pause, flight was dozens of times slower than his top speed on land. The giant ignored the deep cut in his thighs and kicked off after him, the earthen snake got dragged right out of the ground. He set the ice mana that spread in the surroundings aflame but it only elicited a bigger grin from his opponent.
His opponent roared, flexed his chest and flushed his flames out by expelling Vitality. The Grandmasters had this ability too but not once were they able to erase his flames. Rather than expel, this brute could manipulate Vitality outside his body. It was even visible to the naked eye as a blackish-red colour tainting the giant¡¯s body.
Ebony crafted a thread of gravity mana towards the brute to link up a repulsive Guided Path so that he would always be repelled away from the giant. His mana was ¡®grabbed¡¯ onto by the thick aura of vitality and the brute made hands with his life force to drag him through the thread of gravity mana. He dispersed it when the repulsion didn¡¯t do anything.
Ebony kept an eye behind him only to see the shock in the brute¡¯s eye when it realised a tiny figure right above his head. A club the size of a needle to the giant rammed into his face and skull from the left. The blackish-red aura reacted but couldn¡¯t block it in time.
Those blackish-red translucent arms caught the ground and helped the giant down. He snapped his head back up, fully healed face and neck grinning like he found treasure.
¡°Move it, they¡¯re too troublesome to kill. A Shaman is linking their squad¡¯s vitality together.¡±
¡®I¡¯m too far away to sense if there¡¯s some sort of link between them, I don¡¯t see any of that black-red aura connecting them though.¡¯ Ebony trusts that the visible aura was extremely condensed or thick vitality in some form.
¡°Thankfully your body is unrealistically tough.¡± Mr Kidnapper commented as they grabbed onto him. He sped them up with gravity and they were out of sight within moments. Whiplash of this degree couldn''t really hurt him.
¡°They aren¡¯t giving up¡ah damn it¡¯s hot here.¡± Commander Wil chewed gum as he spoke.
¡°Those corpses burn really well.¡± Cap Dwarf didn¡¯t appear that uncomfortable from the heat.
¡°Is it hot?¡± Mr Kidnapper acted as if he didn¡¯t feel any heat, he wasn¡¯t even sweating.
The earthen snake head carried Cap Dwarf across the ground while the other three were in the air.
¡°Boy send those clones off yours to their rear, can you get them to look for their shaman?¡±
¡°Out of range, they would just fight what they can sense.¡± His Glacial Models would usually only defend themselves if they were out of his range of control. Something along the lines of ¡®defend yourself¡¯ had better results than getting them to chase a particular target he had never personally seen before. He managed to change the recent Models to attack Trolls and not other races, even for self-defence. These ¡®orders¡¯ could change on a whim only if they were within range.
¡°Unnamed, burn this area down.¡±
¡°Roger~¡±
They had a rather lackadaisical attitude, speed wasn¡¯t these Trolls¡¯ forte.
¡°The Trolls are quite weak. In general.¡± Ebony forgot to adjust his tone to a questioning tone, it was difficult.
¡°Most of the tribeless pretty much isn''t a match for the current Imperial soldiers. Although the soldiers up at First and Second Tides would be stronger, I imagine a few more months and you wouldn¡¯t be able to tell the difference.¡±
¡°So it¡¯s just overwhelming numbers? Doesn¡¯t seem right.¡±
¡°That¡¯s part of the reason. We were lucky we didn¡¯t see their shamans till recently but that changed. They have pretty good tamers as well, they take care of aerial defences but none are here either. If they sent any unique tribal shamans, Fifth Tide will probably go down.¡± Cap Dwarf came here for an easy fight, not this.
¡°My boys should¡¯ve arrived, it won¡¯t go down so easily.¡± Commander Wil was confident of his teachers and indirect students.
¡°Would your students and grandstudents listen to the general lass? I hear they are¡rowdy.¡±
Ebony could hear the doubt in Cap Dwarf¡¯s tone, he had no one to confirm if he was right. He would bring around a dictionary for tones and social cues if there were one but he didn¡¯t find such a book. From what he knew, Commander Wil never taught anyone personally for a long time and he had many generations of graduates. Some part-time, some full time but they should all be decent. If they were like the one he beat in the tournament, he wasn¡¯t looking forward to their strength but Commander Wil was the prime example that dragged his hopes back up.
¡°Ah¡¡± The scrawny old man rubbed his head in frustration.
Chapter 186: Kenley Rey Briggs
Escaping hadn¡¯t been that difficult but Ebony¡¯s group had to shake off their opponents before they dared to look for their allies. Mr kidnapper incinerated a large area and made many fake open paths to buy time. If things went well, Ayla and a couple of other mages and rogues from the first assault squad would have found a way to hide their tracks and location. It was tough due to having too few strong rogues and there was no environmental cover to hide behind or under. No one else other than Ayla was a user of shadow or darkness magic. But, their enemies weren¡¯t known for having good scouts or perception in general.
It took them a good hour to find tracks of the militia, they must have sped up and changed directions a couple of times. They raced forward to catch up with the vanguards.
¡°Finally back, anyone on your tails?¡± Athena was relieved, she did not like taking command.
¡°Yeah, don¡¯t stop and move further east. Midnight¡¯s camp is stretching out, you diverged too far off.¡± Commander Wil commented.
¡°Heard that!?¡± she turned back to pass the message.
Ebony found Ning Xin jogging lazily, she must be using this ¡®slow¡¯ pace as a chance to rest.
¡°Commander Wil, what will you do? We are going back to Fifth Tide, we¡¯ll separate once we reach the Imperial¡¯s territory.¡± He questioned the old man.
¡°Hmm¡I¡¯ll be convincing them to stay and join up with the militias here. We have no place back at Fifth Tide, the city¡¯s defence would not tolerate us. Except for mages who volunteer their mana or expert archers who can supply their own arrows.¡±
¡°Ya sure you wanna go back? Ah, I guess the two of you would be more than welcome.¡± Cap Dwarf then warned them that the path back may not completely be safe either. Even if it was within army bases, they might be stray Trolls if they were unlucky.
¡°Mmm, we have to go back.¡± Ebony was worried about the situation back at Fifth Tide. He sure hoped the Frost Elves were able to get their combatants out. The horrendous numbers and survivability of the Empire¡¯s enemies showed him that he wasn¡¯t capable of pushing them back. The reach of his powers wasn¡¯t nearly wide enough.
¡°Don¡¯t get yourself killed. Watch the lass too, she¡¯s too impulsive.¡± Cap Dwarf seemed to be the most caring one. He did feel like he was a grandfather, constantly watching out for the younger members of the militia.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°Take this, it¡¯ll let you into their bases without a question.¡± Old man Wil tossed a small metal badge with a club insignia on it to him. He recognised the durable metal, ulstire and it was of Epic rarity. Even his own equipment wasn¡¯t made of materials of that quality. Ulstire was a metal that the Empire used for statues in the Sovereign Temple of Heroes. It was durable but not mana receptive so they didn¡¯t use it for soldiers¡¯ weapons or armour.
The metal was very popular amongst pure warriors though, many freelancers dream to have Rare Ulstire equipment. But the metal was pretty expensive, he had seen Grandmasters fashioning Uncommon Ulstire armour.
They followed the militia till they found the forward camp for Fourth Tide a day and a half later. They only bid farewell to the first assault squad members who they interacted with more. The members grumbled about not having tasty food or equipment maintenance but cheered when they found out that the militia here were better equipped with actual Dwarven blacksmiths and cooks.
Ebony didn¡¯t provide better repair work but his runic moulding and mana imbuement made their armour tougher. The smiths should have far more specialised skills so losing him on this account didn¡¯t mean much. The taste of food was never guaranteed on the field so it was nothing new to them to have dry rations for weeks. The only real loss for them was on the battlefield. Members from the first assault squad weren¡¯t impacted fatally but the others would see a rise in death rates without him to support them.
¡°Race ya!¡± Ning Xin was just as worried about the small village of Frost Elves as he was.
They didn¡¯t use any body enhancement but he was lagging behind less. His choppy memory of the next tiers of his footwork was being experimented on and he was beginning to see noticeable improvements aside from the increase in skill level. Their regular training regime had changed immensely, their bodies and minds required far greater pressure to improve. Although training times did get a little irregular due to their current situation, they always put some time aside to condition themselves. The only problem was that it was hard to stick to one routine, they were pumping out new skill ideas whenever they could.
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t much of a spell caster and her lightning and wind magic weren¡¯t used to their full potential. She couldn¡¯t multitask that well but she was improving by the day. Warriors would transition from completely physical to ¡®hybrid¡¯ or implement mana or elements sooner or later. They had a headstart but that¡¯s all, her talents lay in her swordsmanship and fire magic.
He sort of understood why many of them didn¡¯t have good opinions of people who used both physical and magical skills. The majority of the warriors he saw in the militia didn¡¯t use any elemental magic, he found out that they had little to no elemental affinity at all.
Maybe 4 out of 10 used some sort of mana blast skill with their weapon and body enhancement with non-elemental mana. These people performed worse than other pure warriors. With reasonable skill levels, their buffs weren¡¯t that bad but they don¡¯t use it much. Their performance drops when they get a headache from a lack of mana and their low Wisdom means their mental recovery was weak as well.
They understand that they¡¯ll need it sooner or later so there are many who ask for tips for manipulating their own mana. Many first assault squad members and the arcane warriors used body enhancement consistently and excelled in battle.
Age tends to be a good indicator out here, there are very few ¡®young¡¯ people who survive multiple battles.
Ebony chased Ning Xin¡¯s shadow till they reached another Imperial base. They simply jumped over the wall and alerted a couple of archers who were too slow to react. It didn¡¯t even take 10 minutes to pass over the huge base that held hundreds of thousands of soldiers. It was a bona fide town here. Fifth Tide¡¯s numbers seemed pathetic in comparison.
¡°Were they shouting at us?¡± The lead runner had wind protect her ears and the speed they were moving usually meant that they couldn¡¯t perceive sounds accurately. He caught up as they did their best to stay above ground or they would destroy the structures. He was much better with flight compared to her but they were both more than a dozen times slower in the air.
¡°Mmm. Look.¡± He pointed back to the soldiers chasing them.
They waved the soldiers goodbye. He had to stop a few arrows when they passed over the wall again but he didn¡¯t blame them. They could have gone around but chose to go straight and invaded the base. They did the same when they came across another base. By then, night fell but he pushed the tired girl onwards. They had little time to rest after wasting much of their time with the militia. The night didn¡¯t change the scenery much, the thick corrosive cloud already made the battlefield very dim.
Fourth Tide rested above the cliff and he could see where he once stayed for an extended period of time with Kong Jing with his impressive eyesight. Where they stood had once been a beautiful sea now covered up.
¡°Ow!¡±
He hurried forward when he heard the lead runners cry of pain from their link through the callstone, all his enhancement snapped on in an instant.
Ning Xin was found on the floor, attempting to rub her forehead but her mask was in the way.
Ebony laughed at the sight, there was a small crack floating above the ground much like cracked glass. It faded away in seconds but he knew that she rammed into the barrier.
She was stunned for a moment, ¡°It¡¯s not funny.¡±
¡°Sorry. That¡¯s why you need to look where you¡¯re going.¡± It wasn¡¯t the first time he laughed but not to this degree. ¡®What did Muse really do to me?¡¯
¡°It¡¯s invisible!¡± She argued.
¡°Only to the eye.¡± It has always been weird to him that he imagines her every expression and can¡¯t even take note of others¡¯ expressions. This time, he imagined a girl pouting. Maybe the mask adds to the mystery.
The city¡¯s guards were alerted the moment the two of them were visible but they didn¡¯t expect the small figures to move at such speed. Barriers were set to deploy automatically against attacks, it probably determined her charge as an attack. They might not be right at the front lines but the guards weren¡¯t slacking, they addressed the threat as fast as they could.
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¡°Identify yourselves!¡± The guards landed with a bang from the cliff, they had steel knees. These guys carried those rifle-like guns and folded crossbows on their hips but were wielding spears.
¡°What¡¯s for breakfast?¡± He asked the house chef.
¡°Omelettes, toast and baked loaded russell?¡± She pondered, putting her finger on her chin area.
¡°Answer me!¡± One of the guards demanded.
¡°Can I have my eggs scrambled today?¡± Ebony noticed that the barrier did nothing to muffle or stop sound, it appeared to be a weak spot but they probably left it that way for bards to amplify their soldiers. Their enemies on the border don¡¯t exactly use sound magic. It allows for calls and information to pass from city to city as well.
He reached into his robe and smashed Commander Wil¡¯s badge into the barrier. Not enhanced enough for flames to cover his body but he glowed like a lightstick. With some help from vibrations, he pushed the badge till it was stuck in the invisible barrier.
¡®If I cast Sonic Overlay on our bodies I think we can just phase through it. Well, melt-through might be more accurate. Wait, is there curse magic on this? Meh¡¡¯
¡°Sure! We need meat too¡I¡¯ll just steam the dumplings I¡¯ve already wrapped.¡± She decided on something she could prepare without too much time. The potatoes might take more time, perhaps she was feeling lazy.
They continued to talk about food but the barrier hasn¡¯t been deactivated. Two of the guards ran up the stairs dug into the cliff instead of flying or jumping back when they saw the badge. The other 4 simply stood and listened when they realised that the blue and red-haired couple ignored them.
Ning Xin ignored them because she was distracted by food, all part of Ebony¡¯s plan. He didn¡¯t talk to them because they hadn''t put their weapons aside and those above were still taking aim.
¡°Let them in.¡± Ebony overheard the soft words, they came from one of the guard¡¯s callstone but his senses were too sharp to miss it.
¡°We can enter now.¡± He attempted to wave his arm into the barrier but was proven wrong. Sonic Overlay allowed him to push his hand up til his wrist but he reached something hard that felt as if vibrations weren¡¯t passing through.
He was about to put in the effort and use some other magic but the resistance disappeared.
¡°You¡¯ll pay for the damage right?¡± Marquis Kenley Rey Briggs the city lord questioned.
¡°Hi, Briggs.¡± Ebony greeted the city lord who commissioned stuff from Kong Jing in the past. The man was personally pretty rich as he had a company that had many branches throughout cities in the Empire. They didn¡¯t start off on the right foot but he had no grudge against the man. Of course, Kong Jing never made anything for him.
Ebony on the other hand found some time to spar against some knights. He was more focused on studying at that time so nothing fruitful came out of those spars. The knights overpowered him since he didn¡¯t use magic and was only a Journeyman at that time. None of them used a greatsword and even if they did, they wouldn¡¯t teach him.
The nobleman hired him for a time. It was a weird relationship that Kong Jing probably didn¡¯t know. The high-ranked nobleman bought flowers from him. The military city had no florists and one fateful day on his errand run for groceries he overheard the nobleman asking an old lady not to leave the city. His mana sense was found out from dozens of metres away and the Grand Knight locked onto him.
The old lady and the Grand Knight were acquaintances and he was buying flowers from her personal garden. The old lady wanted to move to another city as her son, a fisherman, died in an unfortunate accident. She had no reason to stay in the city with her only family member remaining having passed away and needed to look for a job elsewhere. For some odd reason, the nobleman shared his tale with Ebony. It might be due to the old lady¡¯s presence. His wife never wanted to move out to a border city but for the Marquis and his occupation, she never said a word about it. The unexpectedly faithful husband knew of her silent support and showed his love through flowers that she loved. But the big man was prideful and he wanted to keep the fact a secret from his soldiers and the public. Long story short, Ebony became his gardener for a short time.
He proposed for the nobleman to make a personal garden to give to his wife. It was a secret project and had been quite fun. Sadly the old lady didn¡¯t want to be reminded of the sea that took both her husband and only son. She was escorted to the closest city by the nobleman¡¯s personal retainers. Ebony was hired to plant the secret garden and the Grand Knight designed it with all his wife¡¯s favourites.
It was an interesting experience. He went during his grocery trips to complete the garden. The nobleman brought in a personal gardener after the secret garden was presented to his wife. It took him quite some effort to hire a gardener, fortunately, someone was available before he had to leave.
¡°It¡¯s Commander Briggs to you.¡± The Marquis was momentarily stunned by the other masked lady¡¯s presence.
¡°Some Duke is here as a General?¡± Ebony was as direct as always. It was only natural that the lower-ranked noble got his post taken away from him.
¡°...Where did you come from?¡± The man chose not to answer
¡°Fifth, we were trapped in between. The rest of the militia joined up front.¡±
¡°Why haven¡¯t I been informed!?¡± He yelled at the gate knights.
¡°They only rejoined yesterday. Your scouts or the calls might not have gone through yet.¡± Ebony also reported about the large fires they caused and the possible repercussions of it. The information was more useful for the forward camp but it still had to be reported.
The Marquis ¡®tsk¡¯ed in annoyance, updated information was very important but their technology wasn¡¯t up to standard and manual methods were slow.
¡°That badge¡never mind.¡± Kenley Rey Briggs led them up the stairs and into the city after passing many knights.
¡°This is her cousin, Scarlet. He¡¯s the city lord. Are you still?¡± He was smart enough to mute their conversation or these loyal knights would¡¯ve drawn their weapons and treated him as an enemy.
¡°How rude!? A military general has a higher status in my own city in times of war but I¡¯m still the city lord!¡±
¡°Do you have information about Fifth¡¯s situation?¡± Ning Xin couldn¡¯t care for small talk at the moment.
¡°We sent reinforcements but they haven¡¯t received another attack since they got pushed all the way back to their city. That young General isn¡¯t cut out for something of this scale when it¡¯s her first war but we¡¯re lacking good commanders and Fifth is about the best place for new officers. Ah¡you didn¡¯t hear me make that comment okay?¡±
¡°Is the Midnight Shepherd still recovering her mana?¡± Ebony made an educated guess.
¡°Likely, she probably requires around ten to fourteen days to recover her entire pool or till she¡¯s comfortable with starting a fight.¡± Kenley didn¡¯t appear to hide the information from them.
¡°There are so many free soldiers in your mid and rear bases, can¡¯t you send Fifth Tide more?¡± He asked, they passed by more soldiers resting than they could count.
¡°No. They are barely able to keep our opponents at bay. Even now, their numbers are increasing by the hour.¡± Kenley was adamant. The Imperial Army was stretched thinner than he imagined.
¡°How? Hundreds of thousands must have been killed by now.¡± Ning Xin knew how many deaths happened just in their small militia¡¯s operations.
The numbers must be greater when these people were better equipped and those offensive and defensive magic towers dealt massive damage. Fire mages were relatively common amongst mages and it wasn¡¯t as if the Imperial Army didn¡¯t have their special mage units. She gave a lower estimate since the presence of Shaman squads in this area was causing those giants to have far greater vitality than most monsters.
¡°...I would love to know as much as you do.¡± The Marquis definitely knew more. Ebony didn¡¯t even need to ask Ning Xin to see that he was hiding something. He read novels, this city lord had to know much more than he let on.
¡°Alright, thanks for telling us.¡± Whatever the reason was, it was none of his business.
¡®None of my business? Or is it? Damn it, I got knocked out of Tranquility again.¡¯ It flickered back on instantly.
¡°Wait, you''re going back to Fifth?¡±
¡°Mmm. We¡¯ll only be having our meal here.¡±
¡°Can we just fly past the roadblocks?¡± Ning Xin asked for permission.
Warm light hit their skin when they got out from the stairs carved into the cliff. The city was lit by fire lamps instead of phos.
¡°They probably wouldn¡¯t shoot you down but I¡¯ll pass the notice that two of you will be passing by.¡±
¡°Communication on the mainland is still working?¡±
¡°Short distance and across the Tides.¡±
They were settled in a recently emptied barrack to use the kitchen. The bulk of the soldiers left the city so there were plenty of empty barracks they could take residence in. He could already hear the whispers once Kenley left. The soldiers questioned his identity as it required the city lord himself to escort them.
¡°How was his strength?¡± He might have better perception but the swordswoman had far better Intuition when it came to danger and probing someone¡¯s strength
¡°Decent. It might take some effort to defeat him and he might cause some harm if we messed up.¡±
¡°5 minutes?¡±
¡°Maybe 8 to 10.¡±
¡°That¡¯s pretty good. He¡¯s only a 317 Grand Knight so I guess that¡¯s pretty good.¡± The Marquis levelled a few times since he last saw the man but not by much.
They were pretty generous with their praise. Anyone who could fight them for a few minutes was pretty powerful. The Swordwoman¡¯s Intuition had been getting sharper and sharper. The occasional spar with Cap Dwarf and Mr Kidnapper helped to sharpen it further. Athena was the only other person who could spar with them in a one-on-one fight.
Only Cap Dwarf sparred with him though. The freezing cold he emitted wasn¡¯t something Athena could handle and her weapons would break. Mr Kidnapper was so good at avoiding him that Ning Xin had to ask him to go away so that she could find the man to challenge. She hasn¡¯t even won once and commented that the man was practically fireproof.
¡°Fifth Tide should be fine at the moment, you should take a nap after we eat. I want to conjure more Glacial Models since we have the leeway.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± His chef went to clean the kitchen before she got started while he sat in the middle of the barrack¡¯s training grounds and further cleansed his slightly disturbed mind. Glacial Models were spawned into existence with care as he imbued his Will into each and every one of them.
Chapter 187: Nightmare
Ebony tried to call Roya after they had their meal but the mental link got cut off partway, it barely left the city. Their trailer was sitting at the side of the training square. They took a bath, separately. Ning Xin went to sleep in her comfy bed. He continued to birth Glacial Models right outside.
¡®23. That¡¯s my limit. Any more and I can¡¯t even maintain my domain.¡¯
The training square was large and he let the models run out of his range before casting his domain. Some of them just fell flat on the ground. In normal cases, if they were out of his manual control range they would move according to whatever ¡®instincts¡¯ his will had imbued but it clearly had a limit. From his own understanding, Will was also an energy resource like mana, stamina or even life force. It might be slightly different and it wasn¡¯t quantified but it definitely had to do with his base Wisdom stat. It was closest to stamina, it ate mental strength instead of physical strength. Instead of lowered physical output, his spell power would probably drop if he overused Will to a certain point.
Once he was done preparing dozens of extra models without Will, he placed them into his bag and went to sleep. He hasn¡¯t slept for days. He did have pockets of time to sleep but he found that he wasn¡¯t able to fall asleep. He felt relieved that Fifth Tide was still standing strong and fell asleep as he hit the sack.
???
Ebony shot up from his reinforced bed in a cold sweat.
¡°...This is the fourth time.¡±
¡®So it was a dream? A nightmare? All I hear is a roar and I wake up. Where did I hear that?¡¯ He stared at his trembling hands. They didn¡¯t stop trembling for a few minutes.
He was woken up by a roar in his dreams and the exact same thing happened since he evolved. The first time was a few nights after his evolution. The second was underground in Golem city and the third was recent. The roar was awesome to be able to induce fear in him but the memory of it fades quickly. He only recalled that this happened since it happened again but he slowly forgot about it the moment his hands stopped trembling.
¡®I slept for 4 hours? That¡¯s a lot. I guess it¡¯s time for dinner. A trip to Fifth shouldn¡¯t take more than an hour.¡¯ It was not the first time that he would have to move from Fourth to Fifth Tide so he knew the way.
¡®Why am I feeling sticky? I¡¯ll just take a shower.¡¯ Ebony got his towel and clothes before leaving his room.
¡°You¡¯re up. Give me an hour, dinner will be ready then.¡± The red-haired chef had her hair bunned up. She could sense him exiting him leaving his room from the first floor.
¡°Morning. Did you get a good sleep?¡± The trailer wasn¡¯t exactly huge and they could hear each other if the soundproof walls weren¡¯t closed. The first and second floor wasn¡¯t obstructed by a door either.
¡°It¡¯s evening and yes I did.¡± She had regained the slight perkiness in her voice now that she was rested and had somewhat filled her belly earlier.
¡°I didn¡¯t.¡± He voiced out before getting weirded out by his own words.
¡°You didn¡¯t? Were you training again?¡± She was similarly confused.
¡°No. I¡¯m not sure why I said that. I woke up sticky for some reason, going to take a quick shower.¡±
¡°Okay?¡±
???
Ning Xin got back to cooking. She rolled her sleeves and washed her hands again before she took the flour out. This woollen ¡®sweater¡¯ or something was very comfortable but not really fit for the kitchen. She was just too lazy to change out and all her clothes were fire retardant anyway. She had gotten around to wearing the clothes her housemate makes within the mobile house.
¡®He¡¯s been acting odd. I should make his favourite sweet and sour pork.¡¯
When she was almost done kneading flour-turned dough, she realised that she left her laundry in the bathroom.
¡®Ahh. Deep breaths deep breaths. We have a partition and¡it¡¯s not like he never saw it before. He wouldn¡¯t¡¯
Ebony made a large metal box that produces water and spins and all they had to do was pour some detergent in and activate it. She was too lazy to put her clothes and battle wear to wash as she needed to scrub mud and grime off before using that ¡®washing machine¡¯. The first thing she did after waking up was getting to the kitchen and laundry slipped her mind. She was also insistent on splitting their laundry and he was using it before her so she completely overlooked it.
She knew that he wouldn¡¯t look through the laundry basket but she couldn¡¯t help but feel nervous.
¡°Need any help?¡±
¡°Huh? Er, no. That was quick¡just watch memory lights or something.¡±
She peeked at him to see his reaction but her Intuition told her of his confusion and that got an internal sigh of relief.
¡°Alright.¡±
It was a chance to eat as much as she¡¯d liked, she wasn¡¯t going to let it go. Going on a near-empty stomach and eating ¡®normal¡¯ quantities of food had been a harsh exercise for her. She burned through energy and stamina so fast that she had gotten much better and used just the right amount of strength. Intuition gave her a pretty good gauge of how strong an opponent was and she had grown comfortable adjusting her power output accordingly.
¡°Let¡¯s drive there, I haven¡¯t washed my gear. Could you plate it while I put it to wash?¡± She unfolded her sleeves and dashed to check if the laundry basket had any heat residues. Seeing it untouched made her feel relieved and disappointed at the same time.
¡®What am I thinking!?¡¯
¡°Sure.¡±
They had dinner while talking about their usual training regimes. They hiked the difficulty up so much and referenced each other¡¯s methods. It wasn¡¯t that surprising to learn that he had memories of higher-tiered training methods. They gauged that their conditioning should easily be considered tier 4 but both of them still had tier 2 conditioning. At least, her Burstflare Witch¡¯s Conditioning was refined to a complete tier 2.
Burstflare Witch¡¯s Conditioning (Passive) - Essence Conditioning of the Burstflare Witch. Agility, Strength, Intelligence, Endurance and Perception increased by 0.025% per level.
The previous 0.01% for Strength and so on increased to 0.025%. They had peeked at the Imperial soldiers¡¯ supposedly tier 3 conditioning. It was nothing special but the warrior''s and knights¡¯ training probably increased Strength, Agility, Endurance and Constitution. Their methods were far more strenuous than the soldiers but they haven¡¯t been able to get any more information from the soldiers but the Dwarf that sparred with Ebony did divulge more.
The soldiers might undergo the same training but most of them had the tier 1 and 2 versions. It took the body decades to ¡®refine¡¯ to the limits that it was pushed to by the person undergoing the training. It was common knowledge that during ¡®peace¡¯ times, the army guaranteed the tier 3 version to be obtained after 50 to 60 years of repeating the same training every day.
The moment it evolved, the soldier would be ¡®full-fledged¡¯. Since the skill took so many years, most of the time the conditioning was closed to maxed out at about 280 to 300 depending on how persistent with training each individual was. So the physical stat buff of 300 x 0.025% of 7.5% will one day turn to a 300 x 0.05% of 15% buff. These full-fledged soldiers might be at the same level but they would have a very obvious advantage over others.
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During times of war, the average time it took for these skills to get to tier 3 was around 15 to 20 years. Whether the war lasted so long was another matter altogether. There was a bigger chance that some soldiers had mutated skills that they could offer back to the army for different sorts of rewards but they weren¡¯t so interested in this.
¡°I can compress the blood in my body now.¡± She decided to bring up her new discovery.
¡°That¡¯s great. How about conjuring blood mana?¡± He brought up the problem she had constantly complained about.
¡°A single drop with all my mental effort.¡±
It was where she put most of her magic training efforts recently. She finally conjured a drop but it required her to stand still and focus extremely hard. The first drop was the first step. She wasn¡¯t planning on making armour of blood but something more internal like Ebony¡¯s Stock Mana Compressive Chassis rather than external. After all, she wasn¡¯t planning on taking hits if she could dodge. The area of effect spells was more concerning since she hasn¡¯t gotten her magic body. Her current elemental resistances don¡¯t really count for much.
If anyone had a mind-bending elemental resistance, it was that extremely displeasing halberd wielder. She had fire magic supposedly 5 times hotter but the man could touch her heated blades with his bare hands and let her spells burn on his body without feeling a thing. It brought her tier 4 Extreme Heat Resistance to shame. She believed the man had heat resistance as a Class or Sub-Class skill and fortification against heat. Perhaps his body enhancement gave heat resistance as well.
Ning Xin ate the rest of dinner in silence.
¡®He can defeat me now but he doesn¡¯t¡does he not want me? No no.¡¯ She shook her head aggressively at the depressing thought.
She could catch Ebony off guard but that was it. In his domain, she wasn¡¯t able to melt the effects off, the increased gravity was working on her and her equipment wasn¡¯t deflecting everything off anymore. Without a magic body, she wasn¡¯t gaining Gravity resistance either. The vibrations couldn¡¯t catch up with her so it didn¡¯t matter that much. Every one of his attacks and elemental spells was enhanced to an unreasonable degree in there. Her tier 3 enhancement together with Blood Boil and Pulsing Gale Enhancement could only bring her speed and strength above his compressed augmentation. The degree of his mana compression was so high that he recently formed liquid mana to scare her. She did not want to be near liquid mana.
Her far superior physical stats did mean that she could still injure him but she couldn¡¯t reach him in his domain. Thanks to her sword style, she could still increase her speed and power over time even though her Core Skill doesn¡¯t supply her with an unending increase anymore. Regulated breath and the general increase in stats also increased her sustainability by a large margin. Even so, she had better chances of ending a battle as fast as possible compared to going into a battle of attrition with him.
Cascade Dual Longsword Style - Mastery of cascading dual longsword style. Strike after strike, Strength and Agility increases by a static 0.025%. Strength decreases by 10%, Attack speed increases by 25% while dual-wielding longswords. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increases by 2.5% per level.
With this, she just had to link a thousand strikes to increase her power and speed by 25% of her enhanced state. A thousand strikes were nothing, she could dish that out in less than 5 seconds depending on the situation. Sadly, his gravity magic was so strong within his domain that her swordplay was rendered moot and she wouldn¡¯t be able to get more than two to three hundred strikes before he caught her blades or shifted their path.
The only real advantage she currently had was that if he didn¡¯t have a domain cast, she could activate her spells and enhancement so fast that his Will can¡¯t even react and his domain would come much too late. Needless to say, he was far weaker without his domain but that wasn¡¯t a problem when he can maintain it as much as he wanted. The range he could maintain was slowly increasing and she could feel that she wasn¡¯t draining his mana as much as she used to. So the recent ¡®draws¡¯ were not because she depleted all of his mana like they used to. She argued that it was because she had been eating far less and stopped thinking about whether he was holding back from defeating her because she wasn¡¯t at full power.
¡°Why aren¡¯t you defeating me¡wait forget I asked!¡± Her mind moved fast enough but her vocal cords didn¡¯t. She clearly decided to stop thinking about it but her lips turned loose.
¡°Hmm? You haven¡¯t even got your second Core Skill. I have to beat you at your strongest state. Our skills are still low tier since we haven¡¯t even been Master ranked for a year.¡±
¡°Oh¡¡±
That was unexpected. She completely forgot about the fact that she hasn¡¯t chosen and assimilated a Core Skill. She encouraged herself to decide soon. Other than tiers or levels, their skills had to be refined further as well. Their evolved body or existence allowed for easier improvements to weaker skills. Only slightly more than half a year has passed since they evolved. If they continued dungeon diving perhaps they would¡¯ve reached level 300 already but their skills would probably be around 240 to 270. The current opportunity with hard-to-kill opponents changed the situation where some of their skills already hit 350 while they were around 280.
¡°What happened to your sound magic?¡± The buffs he gave never really got that much stronger.
¡°Battle Song isn¡¯t levelling up much.¡±
¡°Still? I wonder if that Muse woman has woken up. Hmph! I¡¯m gonna give her a piece of my mind when she does.¡±
¡°Well, it isn¡¯t without benefits. My disturbed mental state is doing wonders for Everlasting Tranquillity.¡±
¡°That¡¯s true¡but still.¡± She has gotten very familiar with his mana so she wouldn¡¯t be affected even if she faced the full brunt of it but his regeneration reached insane heights.
It was only thanks to his constant usage of spare mana and the training in reducing his presence that others weren¡¯t affected. In the mobile house, the leaking mana would get absorbed so it doesn¡¯t affect her even if he fell asleep and lost control.
They washed the dishes together even though he could have his ice clone do it.
She burped with satisfaction without any shame. Then she lay on the couch and took another nap with the memory light screen turned on.
???
Ebony started up the vehicle by manual control, he could test how fast he could control it now. He drove out of the barracks and onto the street, taking care not to crash into anyone. He drove leisurely so that he didn¡¯t cause any destruction. Once he reached the gate he was allowed to leave smoothly. Taking his own sweet time gave Kenley the time to pass orders down. Those patrols outside should know that he was going to pass by as well so he didn¡¯t expect any mishaps in the journey.
¡°Sir Rimestone! You can use this road, it¡¯s our supply route to Fifth Tide. Please be careful not to ram into the supplies we¡¯ve sent.¡± The soldier saluted and pointed to the road Ebony had never seen. It was probably freshly paved.
¡°Why do you call me Rimestone?¡± He always introduced himself by his name but for some odd reason, the soldiers called him Rimestone.
¡°Isn¡¯t that your name? That¡¯s what has been mentioned amongst the soldiers from this city?¡±
¡®Oh I came here after that tournament and they investigated the metal sister Jing wanted and probably that silly name. Is that why they call me that?¡¯
¡°I see. Keep up the good work.¡±
¡°Yes sir!¡±
¡°Er, you don¡¯t have to add ¡®sir¡¯ you know?¡±
He saluted instead of answering and for some reason, Ebony gave the soldier pat on his shoulder. It appeared that supplies were given as support although manpower couldn¡¯t be.
Ebony created a Guided Path large enough for his Trailer to fit into and drove into it. The vehicle shot forward and out of the reach of the spell. He extended it as fast as he could but the repulsion sent it faster than he could create a stable path. If he could conjure gravity mana, the spell would consider him as the centre and there would be no ¡®out of range¡¯ as he would be propelled along with the spell. Since he was only manipulating atmospheric gravity mana, it didn¡¯t work that way. Gravity was slightly different in that he couldn¡¯t bring along the mana like he could with atmospheric ice mana.
He revved the wheel when the trailer hit the ground and it didn¡¯t lose too much speed, even accelerating slightly. His increased Intelligence was helping. Then he cast his domain but only with the effects of ice and gravity. The ice control helped with the wheel rotation speed but not by as much as he hoped. He could cast Guided Path even on the move though, swapping out the gravity mana that gets out of his domain with fresh ones ahead of him.
The trailer¡¯s speed wasn¡¯t that bad, it was about half of his top speed if he ran. ¡®We should practise flight speed.¡¯
They weren¡¯t a race born with wings, flight wasn¡¯t a natural skill and was far harder to accomplish and train compared to running better or faster.
He didn¡¯t sense or see Teacher Ka in the jungle but that kappa wouldn¡¯t stay in one spot for long.
They didn¡¯t pave a road all the way through the jungle but it wasn¡¯t a problem. He could lift the trailer off the ground anyway. There weren''t any monsters in the air due to the border cities¡¯ defence being high on alert so it made things simple. He heard from within the vehicle when he was above the jungle.
¡°I¡¯ll get changed. Then we can hurry, I think a siege is happening now.¡± She took her clothes and body suit out and dried them with a wave of her hands. Then she closed the door and his senses were cut off. These doors had maxed-out privacy settings that neither of them could sense through.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡®Is that Intuition or foresight?¡¯ Once again, her predictions were crazy assumptions that would probably turn out to be true. Her sixth sense was so sharp that distance wasn¡¯t really affecting it. They were so far that even if there were subtle vibrations from a fight he would still have to get at least within dozens or perhaps a hundred kilometres to notice. With the heavy spells and physical powers of the Trolls perhaps the shockwaves would go further but feeling tiny vibrations in the ground didn¡¯t mean there was a battle going on. The beast¡¯s instincts were far more credible.
Chapter 188: Lull
¡°You were right but I don¡¯t think there¡¯s space for us.¡± Ebony saw the colourful rain of spells, arrows, cannons and even beams of concentrated mana.
¡°Then we make space.¡± Ning Xin said it as a matter of course.
The gate guards are visibly nervous due to the ongoing battle far behind them.
They stopped by the gate so that they weren¡¯t seen as invaders and showed Commander Wil¡¯s badge.
¡°Let¡¯s go to the western side of the wall. We can join their artillery mages.¡±
¡°Oh, I forgot to tell you I got a new mana capacity skill.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°You know my mask is part of me? Yeah, we can store excess mana and life force inside. I figured out how to do it a while back. I can sense the vague link between me and my mask a little better.¡±
¡°...That mask is really impressive.¡±
¡°It¡¯s still a few years old okay, I haven¡¯t given it that many abilities yet. It¡¯s just has a couple of convenient functions and a really durable piece of amour. Energy storage is a basic ability we can give once we feel the link with our mask.¡±
¡°What are some things sister Jing or your grandmother¡¯s mask can do?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know about grandma but I think sister Jing definitely has some ever-expanding spatial storage that is also a storage of spatial mana. We don¡¯t really share all our abilities with each other¡¡± She implied the oddness of sharing the details of many of their skills with each other.
¡°Can you materialise your life force as some of the Trolls can?¡±
¡°Not yet but I can manipulate it around and over my body already. I don¡¯t have as much Vitality as they do so materialisation will have to wait.¡±
All soldiers had to have some kind of ear protection, it was deafening near the walls and they were standing on it. The effective range of their magic defences doesn¡¯t seem to exceed 12 or so kilometres. The artillery mages probably had training for tossing spells over a long range but accuracy was definitely a problem if they didn¡¯t have a literal sea of targets.
It was a bit of a waste of mana as far as he could tell, many of the spells weakened noticeably by the time it reached the Trolls who were being held around the 9km mark. Their Shamans were dealing with the ranged bombardment and were slowing pushing their vanguard forward. It was quite the sight to behold, a sea of brawn and muscles covered the horizon.
¡®How did their numbers increase so much?¡¯ He wasn¡¯t that good at estimating numbers and most of the scenery was explosions, smoke, dirt and blood.
¡°Look. Radiance Envoy, level 385.¡± Ning Xin nudged him to look at a special piece of equipment and the man behind it.
The Light mage was conjuring a massive beam of light and directing it into a cylinder almost 10 metres in diameter. It was probably glass or some crystal that helps to concentrate or focus his magic. Dozens of fire mages were near the man and removing the effects of heat or their own men would melt just by standing near the beam cannon cylinder.
¡°Can you directly manipulate heat?¡± Ebony casually asked a question he knew the answer to.
¡°Don¡¯t be silly, fire mana is being generated there. They are just removing and storing it into fire mana ores.¡± The mana ore that she referred to was a large orb that was clearly enchanted like their trailer¡¯s battery that can store more mana than its size or rarity suggests.
¡°Can you sense how hot the light beam is?¡± He got curious, the beam of light was blinding but both of them could look at it directly. It was very uncomfortable though.
¡°Almost as hot as our liquid flames.¡± His gravity sphere can compress her flames till it was liquified. This ¡®liquid¡¯ spreads out and burns far longer even without fuel such as oxygen. Personally, her mana compression was still a little weak to make liquid fire.
¡°So no touching.¡±
¡°...You can get resistance. I¡¯ll have to be patient¡hmph!¡±
¡°Really!?¡±
¡°Not now! We have other targets now.¡±
¡°Right. Let¡¯s find somebody in charge.¡±
???
They were good boys and girls. Searching out for General Impes instead of joining the soldiers directly. Admittedly, they were dumb and naive. Many lives were on the line and Ebony did not want to challenge the Empire¡¯s authority. Ning Xin also understood that she hasn¡¯t reached a point where she could disregard the Empire like her grandma does. The power range amongst people of the same rank was extremely vast but her Intuition was informing her that few present could threaten them. This General lady was one of them and maybe a couple of Commanders.
These ¡®Commanders¡¯ had nothing on the old man Wil so their military rank may not directly translate to their strength. If old man Wil was part of the military he would definitely be a General in terms of combat strength.
¡®As expected, there aren¡¯t any King-ranked fighters.¡¯ She glanced around but the low number of King-ranked people wasn¡¯t too surprising.
Even the absolute lowest requirement for a Grandmaster to evolve was for the class skills to be 550 and the fortification buff for 1.1 times is so low that they wouldn¡¯t be that different from a slightly stronger Grandmaster. The Imperials regard those that picked a 1.5 times evolution as elites and 1.25 as average. The majority had taken 1.5 from Journeyman to Master and then 1.25 to Grandmaster if they were even capable of reaching level 300 in their lifetime. Most nobles with ¡®money¡¯, equipment and skills could easily go from unclassed to Master with 1.5 times while Marquises and above reaching Grandmaster is only natural. They also had higher standards since they had the resources and practically everyone should have taken ¡®maxed¡¯ out evolutions.
Even she wasn¡¯t sure how many more evolutions she could go with a 2.0 times requirement. Now she needed her top skills to reach level 600 but the next would require her few skills to reach 1000. Needless to say, that shouldn¡¯t be an issue since they could hit far above their levels now.
Every individual can sense their own ¡®talent¡¯ better and better as they evolve. She knew that even without any additional Natural Potential her fire manipulation and sword mastery can reach about 560 to 570. It seems like Ebony¡¯s perception of this ¡®talent¡¯ wasn¡¯t as sharp as hers so he didn¡¯t get a good estimate of his highest potential at the moment.
As for most of her Class Skills, they could reach 450 without any issues. She didn¡¯t even think she needed any additional Natural Potential to get her Class Skills to that level. Her Sub-Class and Profession might have difficulty breaking past 420 and 410 respectively.
Birthed by two peak Emperor-Classed it was natural that she had the talents to almost reach the same heights, anything more would depend on her own efforts. It was obvious to her that Ebony¡¯s parents were both Emperor-Classed as well.
One¡¯s parents might have an inhumanly powerful body but their child would at best have slightly higher base stats compared to others of the same race. Their child¡¯s stats may not even stray from the average. Most of all the powerful genetics were hidden as potential as people called it. Hence, the reason why nobles usually stayed powerful and the weak stayed weak. Those bound by their ¡®talents¡¯ needed a great deal of effort to break out of their spiralling weakening of genetics.
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Physiques were another form of endowment but in any case, all of these advantages would be weaker than both parents combined. Talent, physique and many other traits of one¡¯s parents would be diluted by a fair bit. It wasn¡¯t as if a child would inherit everything from their parents either. Lazing around was a one-way trip to wasting every advantage one had for having accomplished parents.
From the little that she was allowed to learn, the Xengs had a relatively short history. They didn¡¯t have many generations and her grandmother¡¯s grandfather was the oldest in the entire Ning clan and one of the 3 Saint Classed that they had. None of these ¡®Saints¡¯ had children after they evolved to that rank. It was basically impossible for a child to be born between two people of a vast power difference. Even the fertility rate of Grandmasters was extremely low and the Xengs as a whole had a far lower fertility rate compared to these Imperials or other races with low fertility rates.
¡®Now that I think about it, why is it so?¡¯ She had never been interested in studying and fell asleep whenever she listened to boring talks or lessons. The child of a pair of Saints and above was referred to as ¡®Higher-races¡¯ and was a group that she was repeatedly warned to beware of. According to her Grandma, there might be a couple of these children on Elcra.
¡®I wonder how long grandma would be gone for?¡¯ She started to miss her playful grandmother.
Ebony might have attempted to control and hide his overflowing essence as much as possible so that people around him wouldn¡¯t freeze up but she couldn¡¯t care less. The change in her Core Skill meant that her blood flow was more consistent till she charged up life force and her Vitality wasn¡¯t exceptionally high but her overflowing Vitality had the effect of causing other¡¯s bodies to feel hot even though the surrounding temperature doesn¡¯t change.
She took some time before she figured it out, getting closer to the Frost Elves helped her figure out what effect her overflowing essence had.
Currently, the majority of the Master warriors amongst the soldiers be they knights or any other close-ranged class below level 230 would feel their lungs burning as they breathed and enough to hinder them considerably. 250 and above wouldn¡¯t have their capabilities affected but enough for them to feel discomfort. Those that had fewer points in Vitality had it worse but they wouldn¡¯t feel the effects if they stood far enough.
The Grand Knights guarding the general¡¯s tent weren¡¯t excluded from the bestial intimidation wafting out of her but they weren¡¯t intimidated. With her around, Ebony was completely overlooked as his presence was almost non-existent.
¡°Can we enter?¡± She would¡¯ve barged right in if Ebony didn¡¯t speak up.
¡°One moment.¡±
There weren¡¯t that many individuals who had the right to protect the high-ranked military personnel and these 2 seemed to recognise both of them. She couldn¡¯t say the same for them as she had no clue who they were. She didn¡¯t sense anyone inside the tent other than the lady General as far as heat and scent signatures go. The tent could block magical senses but neither affected her.
¡°You may enter.¡± The Grand Knight doubled back out.
She was stunned by the amount of paperwork the General was facing when her soldiers were defending the wall.
¡®How boring!¡¯
¡°We will join your artillery mages.¡± She initiated the conversation before the man beside her said anything stupid.
¡°Great. As long as you don¡¯t go down the wall or cliff.¡± The woman didn¡¯t even look up from her paperwork. Her hands were gliding across so fast that she had to have some kind of scribing skill.
¡°That¡¯s it?¡± The toneless voice questioned. Fervent Intuition informed her that he was surprised that they didn¡¯t face any rejection or harsher rules.
¡°There¡¯s nothing else to do, might as well make good use of your firepower and excess mana. If you dare to jump down, that¡¯s none of my business. I won¡¯t send any soldiers to save you.¡±
¡°Fair enough. Do we need some kind of written permission?¡±
¡°Just walk up there, find an open spot and start firing. If anyone¡¯s dumb enough to stop you they would be dead, demoted or fired soon enough. If there¡¯s nothing else you can leave.¡±
¡®I guess not even I would go down there¡¡¯ Ning Xin recalled the uncountable giants not too far away, pushing a step or two forward as they dallied. The overflowing Vitality from even a single of those Trolls shadowed her own, millions of them and the entire city could feel a constant pressure on their bodies even from their current distance.
They left the General¡¯s tent and she was glad she didn¡¯t have to feel the irritation and annoyance coming from the lady anymore. Her hand jerked forward and grabbed the ¡®excited¡¯ expressionless man¡¯s wrist.
¡°Don¡¯t you dare think abo¡no, you better use your head. If you jump down I swear I¡¯ll follow you.¡± She had to take her words back because she needed him to think rather than the other way around.
¡®It worked.¡¯ Even with her inhuman control over her entire body, she couldn¡¯t stop her heart from getting excited. Fervent Intuition sensed how hard the expressionless man had been hit with her honest words. She didn¡¯t doubt that she wouldn¡¯t have the presence of mind to stay on the wall if Ebony thoughtlessly decided to meet the Trolls by himself.
She¡¯s been picking up more emotions from him but she didn¡¯t like it. He was mentally disturbed by something he couldn¡¯t vocalise and it wasn¡¯t as if she could read minds with Fervent Intuition. The only good thing was that it was helping his meditation greatly.
She just hoped it was worth the trouble. A sense of uncertainty welled up in her. She hoped that he wouldn¡¯t change but she knew they both had to change. They were both too naive.
???
¡°I forgot to ask, did Koawe contact you?¡± Ebony turned around and peeked into the tent again.
The Knights winced at the rudeness.
¡°No. Uncontactable.¡± General Impes wasn¡¯t bothered by his intrusion.
¡°Any updates on Arcta?¡± The floating and self-firing bows haven¡¯t come back to his side and he didn¡¯t see any of them around except for one sneakily following him.
¡°I sent some people to request their help yesterday. They should get back to us by today. Be a dear and go lay waste on our enemies.¡±
He retreated before a pen or paperweight flew at him.
¡°She¡¯s angry right?¡± He was pretty sure he guessed right.
¡°Almost.¡± She gave him a pat on the back.
¡°What¡¯s the update on wild Trolls on the mainland?¡± He asked the Grand Knight.
¡°Barely any was reported. Other than a couple of unlucky parties out in the field, the towns and cities should be safe.¡±
¡°Alright, thanks.¡± He stopped disturbing the guards and left for the walls.
Turning to Ning Xin, ¡°Let¡¯s go for target practice¡±.
¡°Umm, none of my skills can reach that far.¡± She replied shyly.
¡°You never sit still and train your spellcasting after all.¡±
In all honesty, to call her a lightning, wind or blood mage was a stretch. She used all of that only to strengthen her close combat capabilities. It was rare to see her ¡®waste¡¯ mana on utilising her elemental affinities to their greatest potential. General Impes had been absolutely right. They shifted past the crowded wall top, took an empty spot and no one cared. With the exception of asking them not to take up space if they weren¡¯t planning on attacking.
¡°I¡¯ll help you for now but it¡¯s time for us to refine our spells.¡± Any projectile spell can easily leave a mage¡¯s mental range of control but with a Master¡¯s Intelligence a range of over 9 km was too much unless they had skills that made spells retain their power over a long distance. Basically, any random projectile spell would improve range as it levelled but Ning Xin never cared for such massive range spells.
¡°But¡ there are so many people watching.¡±
¡°And?¡±
¡°They''re going to see my spells hit the ground¡or scoff at my weak spells.¡±
¡°Look at that, they are beginners too.¡±
He knew that the girl was proud but it never came to mind that it would be an issue. There was a line of level 130 to 170 mage soldiers that were firing spells onto the battleground or into the corrosion cloud above them. The General or some other commander might have copied his idea. Although they didn¡¯t make a mark on the cloud and any physical matter or elemental mana simply fizzled out of existence, it was fantastic for skill levels.
¡°Let¡¯s go there.¡± He dragged the slightly resistant girl over and they started with him setting up a Guided Path that would propel her spells. The ¡®path¡¯ had a diameter of 1 metre, more than enough for the lesser spell caster.
¡°This is the perfect opportunity to make our spell ideas into skills. What was that?¡± He couldn¡¯t make out the words she mumbled in protest.
She waved her arms up swiftly and cast her multi-elemental spells up into the sky. He used the Guided Path himself since she didn¡¯t want to.
His accuracy was terrible at first since he was so used to absolute control over his mana and magic but it wasn¡¯t hard to adjust Guided Path a little.
For some unknown reason, Ning Xin was obviously annoyed as she burned the corrosion cloud and riddled it with all her magical capabilities.
Chapter 189: Roar
Ning Xin was embarrassed. They were level 280s doing target practice with 130 to 170s. There were many here that could even hit the Trolls already. They might not do damage at all but with thousands of them, it added up to irritate and maybe even hinder the advancement of their giant enemies. Other than soldiers, it seemed that there were more freelancers who took the opportunity to join the ranged units. Most of them were far weaker and had tier 1 skills at best. Their duties also include donating their mana to the defensive towers. They weren¡¯t hired since all they did was get in the way but the city needed all the resources they could get.
The city had decent mana-draining capabilities, people were not allowed to wear mana ores here but not many people had excess mana due to all the spell casting. It had to be quite efficient at draining the wisps of mana and converting it to mana pure enough for their use. She would be impressed if the drain could turn 10% of the overflowing mana into useful energy. Myriad Bracelets were far more efficient but they didn¡¯t have the same technology for something on such a large scale. Not to mention the numerous different qualities of each individual¡¯s mana.
She spent 5 days getting used to constant spell-casting. It was true that it had been a huge weakness of hers. Her shame of firing into the corrosion cloud when she was at such a high level funnelled her anger but the constant reminder that she had to start somewhere calmed her down. Both of these worked together in a cycle to keep Incensed Meditation¡¯s gear running.
She knew that her level and class were hidden from most people now but it didn¡¯t decrease the shame she felt. Incensed Meditation used to be a partial tier 2 as the stamina regeneration rate only increased by 1.0% per level but she managed to refine it when she fought an extended battle in her exhausted state. It was one of her best decision to prop the skill to a Class Skill as her blood rush from her physical enhancement doesn¡¯t reduce her Perception as much as it used to.
Wind, lightning, blood or fire, it didn¡¯t matter what she threw into the corrosion cloud or how potent she made her spells, everything was consumed almost instantaneously. What pissed her off further was that she spent most of her time doing nothing. Her mana pool might have gotten far larger than it used to be but she didn¡¯t even need 2 minutes to empty it and leave her dizzy for a couple of seconds. In mage¡¯s terms, she could dish out an entire pool with each spell while the majority only used a bucket or pot to scoop out mana for use.
It was the same with her physical powers, as her stamina grew it only pushed her to hit harder. Her ¡®peak¡¯ powers were high enough to contest Ebony in his considerably strengthened domain and completely overpower him in terms of stats but no amount of stockpiled energy would sustain her for long enough.
Just standing around and wasting time when the giant Trolls were advancing had further ignited the endless impatience in her and fueled Incensed Meditation even more. At level 220, she had a 550% increase in mana regeneration. Mental Supersaturation at level 105 meant that her mana pool was slightly more than twice as big as her Wisdom stat suggested. If she just recovered normally, it would take over 20 hours without using any mana to get to full capacity. If she could fuel her anger and rush blood flow to her head for the entire duration without magic, it would only take less than 4 hours.
On the battlefield, it wasn¡¯t that difficult but on this relatively safe wall and distance, it was almost impossible. There was no cheating with blood magic since she wouldn¡¯t be able to recover mana that way. Just a blood rush wasn¡¯t enough as she needed anger or irritation as well.
Her mask didn¡¯t store her mana in ores, it was probably stored within the fragment of her soul inside. It actually stored essence and not pure mana. At her current evolutionary rank, her mask should be indestructible by most King-Classed fighters.
¡®They use life force outside their bodies. I¡¯ll try making a spell using life force.¡¯ Fighting these muscle heads had shown her the different applications they use their abundant life force for. Their life force enhancement was similar to hers but crude. It was their form of ¡®magic body¡¯ and it was a show of power to the mages that they didn¡¯t need mana to increase their elemental resistance.
Although they mostly encountered rock tossers as the Troll¡¯s ranged forces before, it was far from their only method. Ebony told her the stories that he overheard from the militia that the stronger Trolls should be able to use ¡®spells¡¯ with life force. Nothing fancy but most of these ¡®spells¡¯ acted as if they were physical matter. The warriors that applied their life force used them to increase their size and the Benumbed leader she fought with the others used it to overlap a red figure over itself. It was as if a red giant possessed them and the physical manifestation of life force had been the one wielding his weapon.
Cap Dwarf was the one that tore the red figure away so Ebony didn¡¯t see it. It definitely took a lot of energy as the leader didn¡¯t cast or summon the greater giant again.
Her ¡®magic¡¯ body was definitely going to be imbued with life force just like the Trolls. It was something that she had loads of and the effects were proven to be strong. They could avoid being completely frozen by Ebony or burned to a crisp by her even though both fire and ice worked well on them. It might only work well in the sense that it hinders their regeneration but it doesn''t change the fact that these giants show decent individual strength. If the Imperial army didn¡¯t have such good equipment, it was obvious they would lose in a one-on-one.
She remained on the cliff wall and tried her hand at manipulating life force. She could move it with ease, it was how she charged her Core Skill to enhance herself after all. As for manifestation, she hasn''t achieved that yet. The moment it leaves her body it would dissipate into the surroundings. It was like learning magic all over again. She just has to grasp onto the life force and mould it into shape as any mage would with mana.
Ning Xin was able to move it around her body after just hours of practice. Compared to her lacking magical talent when compared to Ebony, her talent for control over the life force was far greater. In one day, she could shoot a ball of life force strong enough to break a wooden plank five steps away from her.
¡®This has potential.¡¯ She left the wall only after confirming that the ice mage would not run off or she would chase him. She also asked the surrounding soldiers to scream if he got kidnapped or something. It was nice to sense embarrassment from him when she did so.
Sadly, the army¡¯s cook here didn¡¯t know the method of cooking food that gave temporary buffs. Apparently, there were very few of them and most of them were at First and maybe Second Tide. The technique also wasn¡¯t the Empire¡¯s technique. It was a personal skill of those chefs so it wasn¡¯t taught to every chef. She understood how chefs kept many of their personal recipes a secret so she gave up trying to learn from them. These people didn¡¯t even share recipes, there wasn¡¯t a chance they would share their valuable techniques.
Cooking for thousands of people was a great way to hone her skills as a chef. The lack of variety of ingredients increased the challenge of making food good enough to stand out from other chefs as well. Although 6 whole days had passed since they started target practice, the Empire¡¯s invaders didn¡¯t advance that much. The closer they got, the heavier the retaliation from the Empire.
???
Ebony rarely stepped away since he reached the site for target practice.
There wasn¡¯t a huge risk of overdrafting his mana so he did so as often as he could. Reduced regeneration rate was his meal time but he had food brought to him so he continued to do side steps on the raised ledges or merlons of the city walls to alter his footwork according to his memory that was the next tier. Of course, he had enough respect for food to stop moving about as he ate.
They didn¡¯t throw a bomb because it would explode the moment it escapes his range, even if he used Guided Path and his domain it would be extremely unstable. The explosion would harm the city more than it would the Trolls. He also didn¡¯t cast Blazing Deep Freeze Petals either as the spell couldn¡¯t exactly propel forward. It only floats down or glides along with the wind; gravity didn¡¯t really have a strong pull on them.
He continuously sent icicles that produced tremors through the ground and gravity mana inside would unravel after pushing all the ice mana apart and into the cracks in the ground. This required him to use ¡®Will¡¯ since gravity mana wouldn¡¯t be in his control and they would just return to the planet. It was an amazing opportunity to test how his spells would be affected if he ran out of ¡®Will¡¯.
Unfortunately, the ground would fix itself so fast that the ice mana wouldn¡¯t have the time to combust by ¡®Will¡¯. He didn¡¯t care about the weak effects though. The ground might recover itself like the corrosive cloud above them but he didn¡¯t believe that it erased the ice mana. After a week, it was clear to him that one area that he focussed on had mist rising from the ground. The fire mages didn¡¯t attack where he attacked since he remained in his area for 7 days straight. This led him to believe that the ice mana he sent was trapped in the earthen battlefield.
He was completely unable to control his spells to explode without ¡®Will¡¯ so all his spells did have a similar physical force to the other artillery mages. No vibrations to cause tremors, no gravity to push his ice mana into the ground and no combustion of ice mana. He could do all of that manually if it was within his mental reach.
This mental reach of his had reached over 300 metres. The massive rise in Wisdom since he was a Journeyman played the biggest part. He hasn¡¯t reached his maximum range by a long shot. That radiance guy or light magic user could control the movement of light within a radius of 2.2 kilometres with him at the centre. He was an older man but it was very impressive.
With his base Wisdom, 300 metres shouldn¡¯t be his limit.
That Radiance Envoy almost caused as much destruction as a magic tower that alternates between pure mana blasts, massive fireballs to high-pressure water. Mostly mana beams and explosive blasts. They had a limited stock of elemental mana ores that were large enough to power such a large spell.
Ebony didn¡¯t know that he was becoming the biggest subject of rumours. The archers and mages rotated dozens of times a day throughout the day but whether night fell or day rose he would be found dishing out as many spells as a couple of artillery mages. The Radiance Envoy might cause greater destruction or hinder more Shaman but he only stood there for half a day tops and he didn¡¯t even get on duty every day.
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Since he found out the effects when his ¡®will¡¯ emptied out, he took the chance to rest exactly ten days after he took his spot. He spent 3 days constantly squeezing out any ¡®will¡¯ he could. Other than the loss of control and the drop in power he also got so mentally exhausted that the drop in his mana regeneration was further increased on top of the drop from over-drafting his mana occasionally.
During these ten days, the Trolls managed to advance to the 5 km mark on the eighth day. They reached the range of many other cannons and their advance was completely stopped. Their Shamans must be exhausted by now. The warriors were using meat shield tactics with a far smaller amount of magic support. They were holding the fort and allowing their Shamans to recover. They saw some structures being built but all the towers would target structures so they successfully stopped a fort from being built for the time being.
Ning Xin was present when he decided to rest but just as he stopped side stepping within the small area that the others designated for him, he literally fell asleep only for her to catch his falling body in her arms.
¡°Hey! Get some people to cover this spot!¡± She yelled at one of the military leaders overseeing this section of the wall. She didn¡¯t care about the frown the man had but she did put Ebony aside for her to finish her own practice.
???
Ning Xin carried the considerably light body away once she was done. She could cope with going from a full to an empty mana pool much better now. She carried him to a large building where all artillery mages slept. The building was attached to a defence tower and was more efficient in absorbing mana compared to the city-wide one. The towers increased in output daily as their enemies got closer and they were starting to go in the red.
There were a few Meditators around, all below level 100. They were the ex-mana slaves hired by the Empire. Since they were all Journeymen and had a shorter lifespan, they were all dying old men. Mana slaves were abolished more than 80 years ago after all. All of them were drugged as kids to get the Meditation skill as fast as possible and it wasn¡¯t as if they had the talent for it so their evolutionary path was cut off.
Sub Classes cannot be evolved if one¡¯s main class hasn¡¯t and there wasn¡¯t a known method of meditators to get Natural Potential. Even if they were fed Natural Potential it was not easy for them to advance any further. She grew some resentment towards the people of the past when she learnt about this. What gave those people the right to cut off another¡¯s path to longevity and their calling?
The more she thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed that mana slavery was completely abolished. Perhaps on Elcra where the Empire grew powerful enough but elsewhere? Unlikely.
She didn¡¯t know these people as well as she knew Ebony so even her Intuition didn¡¯t pick up much from them. Only one strong feeling remained. Obedience.
Incensed Meditated was fired up to its limits every time she saw these ¡®old¡¯ men. The Empire might act as if they were treating them nicely but here they were, getting exploited due to the strong sense of obedience they had. She was very pissed that there was nothing she could do. She conversed with them, and they all said they were here willingly and the Empire had treated them well. Her senses were sharp and she could tell that they were telling the truth.
¡°We are happy that we got to live.¡±
That was the greatest and only lie that they told almost caused a vein to pop. Fervent Intuition wasn¡¯t always so nice to have.
It was supposedly true that they weren¡¯t forced to stay in such a dangerous city. They were free to move around and free to leave the city albeit without any escorts so she couldn¡¯t even come up with any complaints for them.
She set Ebony on a random bed near the corner and dragged a chair over. Getting his bulky greatsword had been relatively easy but she had no choice but to set it on the ground, resting it against furniture would only break them. She sat up straight and crossed her legs before staring down at each and every other person in the room. Most of them were asleep but those awake could feel their knees bending or someone pushing them down as if they had sleep paralysis. Then her eyelids fell and she took a light nap, one where she could react in time for any emergency.
With greatly reduced mana regeneration, Ebony wouldn¡¯t be bringing an impending sense of doom onto anyone even if he slept for half a day.
Her sleep schedule hasn¡¯t adjusted as her body hasn¡¯t gotten to the stage where she slept for a longer period of time but stayed awake for longer as well. Sooner or later, it would be natural to be awake for 2 or 3 days straight and sleep for 5 - 6 hours. They can¡¯t rest well by sleeping an hour or two every day and she still needed at least 4 every day.
She only took a shut-eye of over 2 hours before she was woken up by a chill down her back. Her eyes snapped wide open to stare at the sleeping figure. He was starting to glow blue. With how fast her mind was working her surroundings always appeared moving slowly if she had a spike in concentration.
¡°Get out if you don¡¯t want to die! As far as you can!¡± She roared at the other sleeping figures.
Ning Xin dashed to grab the old Journeymen as gently as she could as they were amazingly fragile. There were only 4 of them in this building. Once she put their unmoving figures into the closest magic tower which took 2 trips of 7 seconds, she no longer cared about gentleness and threw the rest of the sleepyheads that saw her words as a threat. The building wasn¡¯t so flimsy that it would break even if she moved at high speeds within, the furniture and tiles broke though.
¡®I made it in time. I should pull that away from him. Sorry about this Icicle.¡¯ She quickly took Icicle away from Ebony¡¯s side and stuffed it into her bag for now. She put it halfway in when it resisted her push. She didn¡¯t turn back and let her charged heart pulse before stuffing the greatsword and sealing it completely.
That delay allowed the only other person present to attack her with a kick so sharp and swift it put some blade users to shame. Her arm moved up to guard her head reflexively and she couldn¡¯t help but twitch in pain when her wrist bone cracked. Her body suit partially protected her against the vibrations.
¡®Damn, I forget he¡¯s less dangerous with a sword¡¡¯ Ning Xin didn¡¯t pester him for the reason he wields a sword. She smiled at first, thinking how foolish it was for an unconscious body to think it could beat her without recovering its mana regeneration capabilities or its ability to use Will. The body wasn¡¯t burning compressed mana to augment itself either. She didn¡¯t want to draw her swords and turning back only let her see that Ebony had backed off. The sight of his trembling hands made her frown.
She dipped deeper into Fervent Intuition, she had to know what was going on. She wasn¡¯t worried about the building since it was connected to the magic tower. Even at full power, they wouldn¡¯t be able to destroy it so easily. The resting quarters might not have anything remaining but the tower wouldn¡¯t fall.
Ebony¡¯s unconscious body reacted and moved according to instinct, it probably understood its own state and wasn¡¯t a match for her. Just like how he is when he¡¯s awake, he would just stand there and not make any rash moves if the world around him doesn¡¯t move. Ning Xin stood still and focused on feeling the emotions around her. It was so strong she could sense the exhaustion from the mages operating the magic tower. The construction materials may stop her magical senses but not her supernatural senses.
She didn¡¯t sense fear in the trembling body. Only helplessness.
¡®That¡¯s not it¡I want to know what he¡¯s helpless about.¡¯ Sweat beads formed under her mask as she attempted to shift the focus of her Intuition onto a single target.
Ebony stood on the bed while she remained in her neutral stance for the next few minutes. The inhabitants that were tossed out were already coming back but she didn¡¯t worry about that anymore. She probed him with her senses over and over again. Ultimately, her Intuition wasn¡¯t mind magic and she wasn¡¯t a mind reader.
Just before an angry artillery earth mage barged back in, something extended from Ebony through her constant probing attempts with her senses.
RAAAWWRR!
Ning Xin screamed internally, her voice wouldn¡¯t leave her mouth as her body couldn¡¯t move. Just like the time when she faced the Blood Saintess dread overcome her. A new sensation came from her mask, pain!
The seemingly endless roar reverberated through her mind nonstop for hours on end and she couldn¡¯t even think straight. The artillery mage wasn¡¯t aware and was still in the middle of opening the door outrageously slowly. The moment the roar ended, she regained control over her body and thoughts only to realise that not even a second had passed as the person behind the door hadn''t even fully pushed the door handle down.
¡®It still hurts! What was that roar? A soul attack? Is that what¡¯s messing with his head? no¡¡¯ Fervent Intuition seemed to believe that the unknown roar had been completely unrelated to the ¡®taint¡¯ in his soul that Muse mentioned.
She wanted to move to stop the door only to find that she was trembling just like Ebony was. Her heart had stopped and it wasn¡¯t under her control. Fortunately, it lasted for barely a fraction of a second and her mana could move. It did feel like her mana became more viscous than honey and was hard to move it but it was enough to manipulate her blood.
¡®He¡¯s not under the attack but he¡¯s stuck listening to the roar.¡¯ She noted that if he had been under such a strong attack he would long be dead. Her mask¡¯s speciality wasn¡¯t mental or physical defences but soul. The Xengs hated how vulnerable souls were and it was the hardest to protect against if one wasn¡¯t a soul magic user. That¡¯s how the mask even came about, all the other abilities were added because the craftsmen were bored. Every individual¡¯s mask was vastly different but the base defensive capabilities were roughly the same.
They didn¡¯t have any skills or resistance against such attacks to her knowledge. Ebony would long be dead if he was under the same attack as she did.
¡°Hey! Wh-¡± The earth mage finally completed the task of opening a door. His tinge of rage and hostility didn¡¯t escape Ebony¡¯s unconscious body and ice formed from within the man¡¯s mouth before he was smashed into the wall as gravity rotated. The walls groaned in resistance before they buckled and the mage tunnelled through the less durable buildings outside.
¡®Lucky guy, he didn¡¯t have any killing intent. Okay, I have to wake him up.¡¯ The trembling of her body only stopped after a whole minute.
¡°What happened? Are we under attack!?¡± The others who came back could see the large hole and the earth mage who got sent tumbling out.
They surrounded Ebony but as artillery mages, most of them recognised Ebony and only felt apprehensive and some had a tiny bit of fear. The unconscious man wouldn¡¯t attack them as long as they didn¡¯t have any hostile intentions.
She raised her feet to get closer but he was very guarded against her.
¡°He will hit you. Get out.¡±
Ning Xin was just embarrassed to show them what she was going to do. They slowly stepped back out and stopped other soldiers from checking the commotion.
She calmed down and made herself as unthreatening as possible, it wasn¡¯t that difficult since the roar had completely erased the effect of her Core Skill in an instant. She knew she had to move fast and she didn¡¯t hesitate to leap at him, pulling his head into her embrace.
¡°Relax, I¡¯m still here.¡± She didn¡¯t understand why she chose these words, it simply escaped her lips.
Instead of waking up, she put him back to sleep.
The bed was frozen along with some parts of the floor so she carried him to a lounge room with a sofa and put his head onto her lap. She ruffled his hair that hasn¡¯t been washed for days but remained clean and smooth. Ning Xin stared for a short while before she bent forward and pecked her mask against his forehead. ¡°Sweet dreams.¡±
Chapter 190: Rawr
Ebony woke up and found himself on the floor. He looked forward and saw a long pair of legs. Ning Xin was asleep on the sofa but why was he on the floor?
Although he was experiencing muscle pains, it was not unfamiliar to him. His Will and mana regeneration were still not fully restored, and he estimated that approximately 7 hours had elapsed. He trusted his internal clock enough that he didn''t feel the need to check the time. His mana pool was full and it naturally compressed by a fair bit but not to the point where it was leaking. His gravitational and mana perception already scanned the unfamiliar building he was in. He recognised the magic tower¡¯s signature and guessed his location.
He cocked his head, ¡®Why¡¯s there a constant ring in my head. Was I that exhausted?¡¯
Ning Xin grumbled as she roused.
¡°Ugnn¡Breakfast?¡±
¡°Mmm. Thank you.¡±
¡°Hey¡no more skipping of conditioning.¡±
¡°Mmm. Yes, I was just testing out my current stat limits. We are close to 300, with plenty of stat points we haven¡¯t added. It¡¯s been months but I haven¡¯t really made new skills or refined our skills much. I think we are too familiar with using our skills perfectly to their best that we don¡¯t realise that we have to mess the skill up to find what¡¯s wrong or where we can improve it.¡±
¡°Fine. But we still have to train regularly.¡±
Based on the intensity and comparison with both training methods they recalled they didn¡¯t doubt that their regime was worthy of tier 4. He was a little worried about the lack of elemental resistance training, even amongst artillery mages, there wasn¡¯t a large variety of elemental magic.
Tier 4 - Constricted Titan
That was the training method he suddenly recalled but at that time he didn¡¯t know how to read most of the words and his mother¡¯s handwriting wasn¡¯t the best. To put it simply, with all the arrows pointing to the body and his gravity mana affinity he guessed that he was supposed to crush his own body with gravity in all directions. The pictures were confusing but other than crushing from external pressure he also attempted to gather gravity mana within him and push his flesh, bones, nerves and blood vessels from within. He blew up some of his veins by accident but it just strengthened his gut feeling that it was the way to go.
He also had memories of the tier 5 Neutronic Frame but even if he could survive stars where would he find stars to pressure himself? Tier 4 was supposedly the limit of a Master but Ning Xin apparently got tier 4 heat resistance when she was just a Journeyman. So the supposed limit should not be an actual fact or there are exceptions. He gave a similar treatment to Ning Xin while she trained his footwork, arm workout and evasive technique. Her movement technique wasn¡¯t that suitable for him but he had no qualms getting tips on going faster with lesser effort.
They went to borrow a kitchen to make some grub when he noticed the stiff movements in his chef¡¯s wrist. The mages he passed by looked at them weirdly, he gave himself a pat on the back for noticing the difference in the way he was looked at.
¡°What happened?¡± He directly grabbed her wrist and stopped her knife work.
¡°You¡¯re the one who injured me. Never mind. It¡¯s almost fully healed.¡±
He pressed for the details.
¡°A roar?¡± The ringing in his head returned with a bit more oomph.
¡°So you don¡¯t remember, I expected that.¡± She yanked her hands free to continue cooking.
¡°What did the roar sound like?¡± He was curious.
¡°Rawrr!¡± She put her knife down and tried to scare him with a clawing motion. Fortunately, it was already a habit to silence their conversation even though no one else was using the kitchen.
¡°Mmm. Very cute.¡± He nodded hard.
¡°No! Raawr!¡±
¡°I understand. It was a loud, cute roar.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t understand!¡±
She gave up shortly. A random robed Great Fire Mage came to request his assistance back on the wall as the Troll noticed that he was not attacking and neither was the Radiance Envoy. The magic tower also lowered in intensity so they gathered for another territorial push. In the past two hours, the Empire already lost a good 300 metres. There was a lack of resources in terms of ammunition such as cannons, ballista or even normal arrows.
¡°We¡¯ll go after we eat.¡± Ning Xin did not look kindly to anyone who interrupted her cooking or meal time.
¡°I won¡¯t be able to attack with the previous intensity either. I¡¯m fresh out.¡±
¡°I understand¡I will inform my captain.¡± The fire mage didn¡¯t look disappointed.
¡°They didn¡¯t actually expect you to stay for long. To them, you just have an extremely large mana pool. Regenerating while casting is something they would never guess. Sit, I¡¯m almost done.¡± She began to plate up the relatively light breakfast with a couple of half-boiled eggs that he introduced. Meat wouldn¡¯t be lacking on their plate but there were far fewer sausages than usual.
¡°So they think I need to rest for a week like Midnight Shepherd to pull off the same thing huh¡¡± The Radiance Envoy didn¡¯t want to regulate the times he got on duty so he wasn¡¯t able to tell how large the man¡¯s mana pool was. At least he made progress in being able to approximate when someone was almost empty or when they were near full.
¡°Mmhmm. We will use the downtime to train. The village chief will be coming soon right?¡±
¡°That¡¯s what General Impes said. I hope Koawe¡¯s fine.¡± The one who went to communicate with Arcta had been the fox lady who was also an ice mage.
Arcta didn¡¯t receive any attacks and the situation was just as per usual except that hunting trips were only done by the adults. They didn¡¯t have any updates on Koawe, he was taking longer than expected but the General wasn¡¯t panicking. Korben would not leave the village and neither would the other old, high-level non-combatants but they are sending the village chief, Orren and his party over. It honestly wouldn¡¯t make a big difference but the army would take any reinforcements they can get.
The self-firing bows came back and were a force to reckon with, they were far more useful than him in terms of kills. Each arrow they shot basically confirmed a kill. They were always aiming at Shamans which warriors would jump to protect and there was no healing, freezing to death was the result more than 90% of the time.
The Trolls already gave up saving their unlucky fellows because supplying those frozen units with life force only drained their squad members to death. There was a very small chance of survival and that was to remove their allies head or torso before it was completely frozen but the gap of time was extremely small. Just touching the arrow tip would freeze a Master Troll in about half a second and these bows had a pretty high hit rate of getting the chest and even the head. Not to mention, not all of the Trolls are able to survive decapitation.
The two of them exceeded some of Orren¡¯s party member¡¯s levels; he guessed they didn¡¯t lose in terms of firepower. Maybe not in a fight but spell power was their expertise. He could watch and learn from the types of spells they use as well.
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¡°He should be fine. I don¡¯t think he¡¯ll die easily.¡±
He agreed that Koawe was probably strong enough to traverse most of Hoarfrost Glades but there were creatures in there that could threaten the existence of the other village. He proposed their his new schedule of 8 hours of unloading magic, 10 hours of sparring with and without magic and another personal 8 hours of experimenting and improving their Skills qualitatively. The other two hours were just rest.
¡°I guess I have more time to play around with magic.¡± Ning Xin would have around 8 minutes of unloading magic so she could use the rest of the time cooking while working on her skills. Her lack of a second Core Skill was bothering her but she wasn¡¯t going to rush and make a decision she would regret.
Despite their overwhelming numbers, the Trolls would find it challenging to make any further progress in a short period of time. They were about to reach the barrier and the city was only so big. Attempts to go further west? It would lead directly to Hoarfrost Glade¡¯s cut-off cliff but even if there were attempts the Empire would probably ignore it.
Ebony wasn¡¯t about to check out what made two entire continents avoid it completely. He already got the gist of it, some kind of mana or energy was stuck in place that erased anything and anyone who touched it. He just saw it as a stronger version of the corrosion cloud above him.
He was more and more certain that the Trolls were naturally bloodthirsty and wanted nothing more than to eat them. There was a rising call to bring them some cold snacks on a bone. They took him as one of the Frost Elves and had a special team of Shamans guarding against his attacks. Multiple teams actually.
Hence, not even 10 days of raining spell after spell gave him a single level. At his current level, he was slightly above the average level of Trolls. The Imperial Army had an average level of 170ish. It was brought down by the large number of younger soldiers. The stronger soldiers were all pulled to fight at other Tides. The pressure on all other Tides seemed to be increasing as well but their situation wasn¡¯t nearly as dire.
First and Third Tide were the closest to the Capital, Tidal and were experiencing the most heat but they had the Barrier King and the Archduke of Elves. The two Tides were in a combined battle and were seen as a single battlefront. The order of Tides east from him was Fourth, Third, First and Second. They were named by the date they were built.
The front held by the Second Tide was relatively inactive, as their enemies did not exert much pressure there and focused more on holding ground. The Empire was unable to withdraw troops from the Second Tide''s front as it could have allowed the Trolls of the First Tide to exploit the weaker defences of that area, even though other Tides needed the excess manpower they had.
The only good news was from the Imperial Seers who confidently reported that their enemy''s numbers shouldn¡¯t balloon drastically anymore unless they sent their children and women forward. The enemy''s rear had contained a couple of strong leaders, their squad, a good couple of million average warriors and the rest of the non-combatants.
Going into a stalemate near the cliff was more beneficial for the Empire since their enemies were dozens of times more desperate on the food issue. He heard that a pretty good portion of Shamans were actually fishermen. They remained near the rear and opened their incredibly tough floor to fish from the sea. They even had a tribe known for their swimming capabilities and were absolute ¡®demons¡¯ in an underwater battle.
There were many tales and rumours amongst the artillery mages and archers who stood near the edge of the wall. One of these swimmers would leap up, catch and drag them down into the sea. None of the land-dwelling races could beat them underwater. It was a tale often used to scare the younger recruits. The barrier wasn¡¯t completely raised to allow spells and projectiles to go down so it was the possibility was always there even with the distance of kilometres. Many Trolls could cross this distance in mere seconds if they were not impeded.
The fact that the Trolls had control over the ground also meant that they usually sealed the ground. The death rate was practically 100% for even most Commander-ranked Imperials. He witnessed Commander Wil breaking the several kilometres thick ground with the landing of his jump but the ground repaired itself so fast that anyone who fell would have a really hard time coming back up.
¡°Where¡¯s Icicle?¡±
¡°Here.¡± The red-haired chef released her bunned hair before she took out a glowing greatsword.
The moment Icicle¡¯s handle was peaking out it flew right out and into his arms.
¡°What¡¯s wrong? You¡¯re glowing through your sheath.¡± He was surprised that the greatsword moved by itself.
Glowing was the most it could achieve, manipulating gravity to bring itself to him was new.
Icicle unsheathed itself a tiny bit and puffed out ice mana towards Ning Xin before sheathing itself.
¡°Haha¡oh?¡± The swordswoman laughed before her hips shifted and both her swords did the same but blew out flames instead.
¡°Since when can they do that?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°Seems like we have some talking to do don¡¯t we?¡± She pulled her blades up to eye level.
Neither of them got a reply or response from their weapons so they left for target practice.
¡°Remember, Skill improvement, not level.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
???
Third Tide.
¡°Pett, this invasion feels odd.¡± A small-statured grey-haired man whispered to himself.
¡°No surprise, some strings were probably pulled. Doesn¡¯t matter, it¡¯s only beneficial for us. Tuff, how¡¯s our magic body going?¡±
¡°I can recover my old tier 4 version in two months. I¡¯m not sure if it¡¯s because they are skills we used to have but I think it might be possible for this body to get my tier 5 version even though we aren¡¯t Grandmaster yet. It might take too long and not be worthwhile though.¡± Tuffock doesn¡¯t stutter as much when talking to others sharing the same body.
¡°Hmm¡silver lining huh?¡± Pettock the petrification mage dipped his head beneath a Troll¡¯s statue.
¡°Bah! Silver lining my ass! There¡¯s nothing good about being trapped in this.¡± Hardock took back control and smashed the statue in rock dust with his fist.
¡°Tuffock take back control, people are coming,¡± Pettock ordered.
¡°Okay¡¡± The scrawny man pulled his hood down.
¡°Tch!¡± Hardock was clearly irked.
¡°Good job as always!¡± A fat Dwarf patted his back. More and more people from the Militia arrived but they ignored the stone mage.
¡°Ye..yeah.¡±
¡°Anyway, we need to get stronger opponents. Many of our skills are reaching 500 already and these suckers aren¡¯t enough.¡± Hardock whined.
¡°Let¡¯s join the army. 50% of the militias at Fourth and about 20% at Third are our men. We managed to gather quite a large number of - not trash people.¡±
¡°HAHAHA! Gather? We just killed their bosses and took over. Those above are darn good at hiding.¡± Hardock laughed and interrupted Pettock.
¡°The army monopolises the big battles, we¡¯ll take a piece. As for rising up in Lure, it¡¯s only a matter of time. They dared to toss us here and this all-out invasion is definitely related. Elcra is within their sights, the Empire is in the way because of this Barrier King and the Emperor dude who¡¯s hiding somewhere.¡±
¡°We¡we still don¡¯t know which Duke¡¯s the one wh-who¡¡± Tuffock murmured.
¡°I know, at least we know that it¡¯s a human noble. We¡¯ll be able to contact whoever is in charge of Elcra once we kill enough of their higher-ups. They like to use luring tactics, don¡¯t they? We¡¯ll lure that bitch out sooner or later.¡± Pettock silently released the petrification over all the dead Trolls so that they just look like corpses with a layer of stone.
¡°Our opponent¡¯s a Saint, we have to get back to all our peaks before we even stand a chance of surviving. Who knows how much stronger that shrew has gotten.¡±
¡°Seriously though, who¡¯s this Barrier King? I don¡¯t think I can break this Tide¡¯s barrier even if I was back at my peak.¡± Hardock looked back at Third Tide.
¡°How do you think he¡¯s stopping other worlds¡¯ invasion?¡± Pettock put on a serious look in their internal talk as well.
¡°Nonsense, it¡¯s Oplot the indestructible¡¯s backing.¡± Hardock didn¡¯t believe the Barrier King could stop greedy eyes from looking over at this planet by himself.
¡°Ev-even without backing, I-I think the three in charge of Elva is¡more talented than all of us before.¡± Tuffock meekly added on.
¡°Hmph, don¡¯t lump me with the two of you.¡± Pettock scoffed.
¡°I don¡¯t care about that shit, we were all Emperors! I don¡¯t want to join that silly army!¡±
Pettock chuckled at Hardock¡¯s outrage. ¡°Of course, we¡¯ll just be war criminals. Let¡¯s put on a mask and join whatever battle we like.¡±
¡°Wh-what about the Imperials?¡± Tuffock questioned.
¡°With our current strength only a scant few commanders can even stop us. We just have to watch out for Generals. If this was the First Tide there might be a few Captains that can fight us.¡± Pettock knew that Tuffock usually went ¡®asleep¡¯ to train his skills, meditate during battles or take over to chat with people.
¡°Great, let¡¯s get on with it!¡± Hardock was tired of staying low profile.
Chapter 191: The Indestructible
Name: Oplot Qoriq
Core Skill:
Transcendent Kinetic Damage Bank Lvl 1188 (¢ö)
Transcendent Mana Damage Bank Lvl 1153 (¢ö)
Ascended Elemental Damage Bank Lvl 997 (¢õ)
Extreme Soul Damage Bank Lvl 802 (¢ô)
Class: Indestructible Bulwark Lvl 702
Class Skills:
Mobile Fort Shield Supreme Lvl 1103 (¢ô)
Unstoppable Shield Stampede Lvl 895 (¢ô)
Ascended Physical Resistance Lvl 1092 (¢õ)
Extreme Directed Kinetic Release Lvl 1150 (¢ô)
Extreme Cluster Kinetic Release Lvl 1123 (¢ô)
Quake Shield Bash Lvl 908 (¢ô)
Bulwark''s Essence Conscript Lvl 952 (¢ô)
Ascended Magical Resistance Lvl 1085 (¢õ)
Extreme Directed Mana Release Lvl 1088 (¢ô)
Extreme Cluster Mana Release Lvl 1090 (¢ô)
Immense Elemental Directed Release Lvl 824 (¢ó)
Immense Elemental Cluster Release Lvl 883 (¢ó)
Sheer Directed Soul Release Lvl 790 (¢ò)
Sheer Cluster Soul Release 758 (¢ò)
Chaotic Energy Retention Lvl 303 (¢ó)
Sub-Class: Pious Pugilist Lvl 700
Sub-Class Skills:
Meteoric Alloy Monk¡¯s Body Lvl 821 (¢õ)
Meteoric Alloy Monk¡¯s Mind Lvl 815 (¢õ)
Meteoric Alloy Monk¡¯s Spirit Lvl 813 (¢õ)
Meteoric Alloy Monk¡¯s Soul Lvl 775 (¢õ)
Alloy Monk Snap Punch Lvl 879 (¢ô)
Prayers of the Alloy Monk Lvl 905 (¢ô)
Accelerated Brooding Lvl 888 (¢ó)
Impact Staff Style Lvl 790 (¢ó)
Spiritual Quake Eruption Lvl 855 (¢ó)
Devout Preaching Lvl 766 (¢ó)
Profession: Nature¡¯s Artist Lvl 700
Profession Skills:
Corpse Planting Lvl 780 (¢ó)
Vegetation Nurture Lvl 782 (¢ó)
Nutrient Guidance Lvl 761 (¢ó)
Knowledge Cultivation Lvl 820 (¢ó)
Fragmentary Enlightenment Bestowal Lvl 752 (¢ò)
Health: 10,714,050/10,714,050
Stamina: 20,000/20,000
Mana: 6,112,500/6,112,500
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 3300
Vitality: 5220
Constitution: 4500
Endurance: 2000
Agility: 2500
Intelligence: 2200
Wisdom: 3000
Perception: 3600
¡
Oplot dismissed the lengthy generic skills he had amassed over his lifetime that were filled with over a dozen tier 4 elemental resistance, almost 30 tier 3 and 2 resistances for rarer elements. Obviously, he had other skills like Analyse, a couple of language skills, movement, perception and many more.
His stats were far from accurate due to his Alloy passives. As tier 5 passives over level 800, he has various parts of him enhanced by a multiplier of slightly more than 205. Hence, his base Vitality of 5220, with a max Health of 52,200 shows over 10 million. Although Endurance wasn¡¯t increased, his stamina consumption doesn¡¯t befit his supposed stats either as Meteoric Alloy Monk¡¯s Body, Mind and Spirit all contributed to reducing the consumption of energy. Most of his other base stats were much higher than his levels would suggest as well.
Unlike what other races believed, being one of the ¡®higher races¡¯ or a child of two Demi-Gods didn¡¯t give him unnaturally high stats from birth. His stats when he came of age was only:
Strength: 10
Vitality: 10
Constitution: 10
Endurance: 9
Agility: 7
Intelligence: 8
Wisdom: 8
Perception: 8
It was much better than normal children of all races on Elcra but nothing groundbreaking. One of the true benefits of having both parents as existences above Saints was that Physiques are not diluted that much and are almost guaranteed to be inherited in some form. It was far easier to pick up the skills of either one of their parents and getting them to the same tier wasn¡¯t as difficult compared to those who weren¡¯t of a higher race. It even lasted for a couple more generations, even if one were to walk a different path the strongest ancestral heritage¡¯s genetics would be passed down in some fashion more often than not.
Skills were extremely hard to improve. The majority of his Skills were tier 4 and 3 even at his current level and had been that way for a long time. It would likely be that way for the decades to come, there was little that could challenge him enough to improve. Oplot was born here and entrusted to protect this place, he also saw Elva as his homeland so he didn¡¯t dare leave before the Empire could protect itself.
The most obvious reason to show a higher race¡¯s superiority from birth outside of Physiques that aren¡¯t always apparent from birth is that they were usually born with Conditioning Skills even if they couldn¡¯t see its level. A person with a high tiered Identify can check a baby¡¯s state. Oplot was born with Iron Alloy Monk¡¯s Body, Mind, Spirit and Soul, the tier 3 version of his current Sub-Class Skills. By the time he came of age, even without any training they were level 17. So most of his stats were naturally buffed by 85%. Before he came of age, his training only consisted of playing rough, a bit of exercise and prayers. He was more of an active child and needed to move around so his body developed faster.
Oplot the Indestructible scratched his bald head with one hand and plucked the weird fish-wolf monster who was biting him off. After his previous evolution, his energy retention skills combined and lost both tiers and a ton of levels. This fish-wolf didn¡¯t damage him enough and the loss of energy exceeded the rate at which it could harm him. It made his damage banks useless.
Physical resistance was extremely rare, none of his ancestors had it. Mana resistance was rare as well, it made him resistant to most forms of magic, element resistance was very common on Elcra and soul resistance just required some soul magic. Whatever the case, his uniqueness came from the fact that he could store damage. It wasn¡¯t his Spirit-based Physique, not even his parents understand why or how he could store damage.
The hulk of a man sat up from his grassy bed, watching a pair of Grandmasters fight for their lives. In this place, Elva Continent¡¯s World Dungeon Lacuna Expanse, there were an immense variety of monsters, vegetation, material and people. Since Elcra had an Ancient rank Worldcore, the highest dungeon rarity it could withstand was an Ancient-ranked dungeon. As a World Dungeon, it was connected with other Worlds but Elva¡¯s gate was still unknown by other worlds and vice versa. The Dungeon was vast and didn¡¯t have floors, it was simply a world in and of itself.
An immediate difference was that World Dungeons had stricter laws and weren¡¯t as malleable as newborn dungeons. The monsters and materials within weren¡¯t spawned and grew up from their weakest state at a relatively speedy pace but not immediately at their peak like normal spawned monsters. Hence, the power of monsters within may not necessarily kill even Masters. There were regions with strong monsters and regions with weak ones. The monsters had more autonomy and many were territorial or had preferred hunting grounds.
The pair of Grandmasters each wielded a large shield with a golden lion as its ¡®face¡¯. The human woman wields a trident in her other hand while the lizardman carries a spear.
Their opponents consist of 6 [Carcharias Canis] around level 500 to 515. Ebony would have called them wolf-sharks if he had been present.
The Empire wasn¡¯t that advanced when it came to grading monsters and had a bunch of misconceptions about them. Especially about what they called ¡®Aberrant¡¯ monsters. Most of these ¡®aberrants¡¯ they referred to were just monsters turning fiendish or even into demons. These were monsters that figured out how to draw more of the world¡¯s or any other living creature¡¯s essence into them. The smarter ones did the opposite and expelled all foreign essence that makes them a ¡®monster¡¯ and if they were able to remove every single bit, they could slowly gain the ability to gain a Class or more.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Most people don¡¯t require a better grading for monsters other than level but that was just foolishness. Even on Elva, there were plenty of monsters far stronger than an elite Imperial soldier of the same level. Navin the Barrier King and other higher nobles were already aware of the simple grading that other advanced societies used.
Grades start from 0 and were clear. Anyone with untiered attack skills of an equal level to the monster could kill it. The average monster on Elva was around Grade 1.5, it required a person to have 2 or 3 tier 2 skills at the corresponding level to comfortably take down without being on the losing end. Of course, it was just a wide generalisation so it wasn¡¯t as if it had to be made into common knowledge. Most people have skills much higher level than their personal level so even freelancers with a couple of tier 1 and untiered skills can handle themselves if their skills work well with each other.
This grading system doesn¡¯t care about how much essence a monster has taken into their bodies and just the general strength they show. Some maniacs further classify them into decimal points such as 1.6563 but that was just crazy talk that didn¡¯t mean much. Especially when there were many other factors to consider in a battle such as a particular monster¡¯s weakness be they elemental or physical.
Oplot brought his two greatest hopes into Lacuna Expanse to train but they were still a bit lacking. It hadn¡¯t been easy to find a spot with Grade 4 King-ranked monsters. The two of them were struggling against 6 Grade 4 Kings when they were already level 340. With their skill tiers, levels and equipment they shouldn¡¯t take more than 5 minutes.
¡°Haa¡If only they were on Navin, Yvette or the Xeng¡¯s calibre. Still, they are the best I found after close to a century.¡± He sighed while forcing the remaining Carcharias Canis in his lap and caressing its smooth shark head. It was pretty ferocious as it didn¡¯t stop attempting to chomp his arm off.
¡°That¡¯s bad, I sighed again.¡± Oplot patted his head as a reminder.
¡°Teacher! We¡¯re done.¡± The eager lizardman ran over with the Carcharias Canis over his shoulders. They would serve well as dinner.
¡°...I pampered you too much. Defeat this guy in 2 minutes or we¡¯ll continue onto a tougher regime.¡± Oplot released the alpha of the small pack for the lizardman to fight.
The human girl was smarter and took her time to train and learn about her new enemy so he wasn¡¯t actually that upset that she took so long. To be fair to both of them, he didn¡¯t teach them any offensive techniques. Most of his offensive techniques required unleashing damage from his damage bank. Even his Generic movement skill was fast only if he released stored kinetic energy from physical attacks.
Most might imagine he would have an outrageous Constitution stat but that was just silly. He wanted to put so much less stat point into Constitution if it wasn¡¯t for the fact that his body wouldn¡¯t be able to contain his power. He only needed more Vitality to increase his damage bank¡¯s storage even further. With his current durability and immense amount of resistance to every type of attack, how was he supposed to take damage to store?
The combination, drop in tier and drastic drop in the level of his damage retention skills also meant he was slowly losing the capability to dish out damage beyond his supposed strength. Essentially, there was a leak in his damage banks. He might have a tier 6 physical damage bank that allowed him to store 594 times more damage than his max health or a completely separate magical damage bank that is 576.5 times larger than his max health pool but they were useless if they weren¡¯t even 1% filled. That didn''t even take into the Fortifications that increased his damage banks'' sizes into account. Well¡that was enough to kill many creatures.
Lacuna Expanse leaned towards space and void elemental creatures as the dominant forces but even the highest grade, highest level creature here might not damage him. As for teleporting him away, they already lost the ability to do that years ago. Unless they got much stronger with their control over space or he shut his space resistance down.
Lucas Lucero, a lizardman that he picked up from an abandoned village in Vermin Paradise. It had surprised him that there were still such villages in the depths of Vermin Paradise. He was a rare one, having shock and cut resistance that now evolved to impact and shear resistance. His regeneration ability was higher than the average lizardman, probably due to a physique.
Demi Barlow, many of her family¡¯s strongest people died in war and fell from nobility almost a century ago. She joined his Guardian Knight by her own power. She had a physique unlike any of her predecessors, another unusual case. She kept the details a secret but Oplot could see that magic doesn¡¯t affect her. It had its limits but he hadn¡¯t seen these supposed limits too. Her skills with the shield put her at the top of all his Guardian Knights and her Trident techniques were worthy of being matched with her shield wielding. She didn¡¯t use any magic and not even he could sense her magic signature.
¡®As expected, Demi is a hidden gem. If only she was more talkative.¡¯ Oplot knew that Lucas was obedient as the child saw him as a father figure but Demi was a quiet girl ever since her family toppled. It wasn¡¯t as if her parents were dead so she shouldn¡¯t be vengeful. The previous war had been before she was even born after all. Her parents weren¡¯t even fighters so it was a bit shocking that she had such abilities. He just hoped that she would be loyal or faithful to the Empire.
¡°Teacher. Shall I process that?¡± Demi had all three of her opponents stabbed through her trident over her shoulders. She stood a distance away so that her neck wouldn¡¯t feel sore looking up his eye level.
Oplot stood up, ¡°I¡¯ll do that, you can make a fire.¡±
¡°Okay.¡± Demi didn¡¯t bother asking if she should help Lucas. It was clear to Oplot that she was happy that she didn''t have to deal with deskinning and processing their dinner. The girl surprisingly hated to get bloody or sticky despite her fierce fighting form and style.
¡°We have some cabbage leftover right?¡± Oplot skinned their dinner with utmost efficiency, producing almost no waste.
¡°...¡± Demi chopped wood and acted as if she couldn¡¯t hear him.
¡°You have to eat your veggies.¡± It wasn¡¯t the first time he reminded her.
¡°...We do.¡± The blue haired woman had no choice but to take out some greens. ¡®Even after hiding it¡¡¯ she pouted at her failure in controlling the food stocks.
¡°Demi, you¡¯re turning 35 right? It''s not good to be picky with your food.¡± Oplot chastised the young Grandmaster.
¡°Teacher, they taste bitter¡¡± Demi hadn¡¯t given up on forgoing greens on their plate.
¡°They are good for your body.¡± He didn¡¯t worry that much about the girl being disloyal. He never would¡¯ve taken the two as his disciples if he felt that they had poor natures.
¡°Yes, teacher¡¡± Demi had no choice but to push her pickiness down.
¡°Lucas, you took 2 minutes and 7 seconds. We¡¯ll be training through the night.¡± Oplot told the lizardman. Sadly, he wasn¡¯t able to get him the best spear user as a teacher. After seeing the best, every other technique would appear subpar.
¡°Huh!? Damn it!¡± Lucas yelled out his frustration and stomped his feet,
¡°What did you say?¡± Oplot had repeated many times that one should always be calm but a young man having a temper was nothing new.
¡°YES TEACHER!¡± Lucas stood ramrod straight, just like how Oplot¡¯s Guardian Knights reacted.
¡°Good. Clean yourself and help prepare dinner.¡± He nodded.
They cooked 2 whole fishy wolves, most of it for him.
¡°Oh?¡± Halfway through their delightful dinner, he looked to the side of the clearing they sat in.
Lucas and Demi got alerted and picked their weapons up immediately. They didn¡¯t drop their food doing so since they didn¡¯t know what the threat was.
¡°Keep eating. It¡¯s not an enemy.¡± He continued to bite into the fish wolf on a stick. His disciples did the same but downed their soup with haste.
They waited for half an hour before they felt someone¡¯s presence. Two presences to be specific.
¡°What brings¡Medina, what happened?¡± Oplot greeted the Archduchess of the Empire. The Foxman on her shoulders was bleeding heavily.
¡°Sir, do you have any potions!?¡± Medina showed him an unusual sense of panic for the first time.
¡°Demi, hurry.¡± He didn¡¯t have to rush since the picky eater already shoved the potion into the dishevelled fox woman''s hands.
Fortunately, he had plenty of Yvette¡¯s potions even after staying in the Lacuna expanse for years. Their training wasn¡¯t about to end any time soon according to his plans.
¡°Thankfully, it seems like a flesh wound. You know your husband isn¡¯t ready to be here.¡± Oplot knew that both of them weren¡¯t complete fighters. It was odd that they were here alone but at the same time, they were both King-ranked and half a fighter. Even so, getting to where they were wasn¡¯t an easy feat.
¡°Don¡¯t talk about him like that! He¡he protected me while I was looking for your location.¡±
¡°Oh, have you become closer than before? I see, it seems like you¡¯ve grown as a man!¡± Oplot praised the Foxman who was quickly rousing from the potent potion. He gave the Foxman such a hard pat that he almost injured him again. They were so small compared to him and he was earnestly happy for the Archduke of beastmen that he forgot about his strength.
¡°Don¡¯t talk, just sleep for now. You¡¯ve stayed awake for a week now.¡± Medina had certainly never acted so gently with her husband as far as he recalled. They must have gotten much closer after the journey in Lacuna Expanse.
¡°Alright. What happened that required you to be sent after me?¡± Oplot would¡¯ve started making his way back to the Empire¡¯s gate if it wasn¡¯t for Kye who fell right to sleep.
¡°The slimes worked too well. Trolls, all-out invasion. I think the battle started quite a while back but my divination is not accurate inside a dungeon so I¡¯ve no idea how long it has been.¡± Medina caressed her husband¡¯s head on her lap. She was stronger than him by a large margin but divinations took most of her attention and energy. The man had been very eager to improve his strength because of Gerot the Dwarven Archduke¡¯s mocking. She thought it was quite cute and let him prove himself but his seriousness the past few years and how hard he fought to protect her had made her fall in love all over again.
¡°Slimes¡ those liquidy creatures I left at Tova worked? As I expected.¡± Oplot remembered the wonderful creatures he caught from an unknown region in Lacuna Expanse and left at Tova to propagate a decade or two ago.
¡°You forgot about them.¡± Medina addressed the point he hoped she let slip.
These ¡®slimes¡¯ aren''t particularly strong so he quickly forgot about them. They were completely unaffected by physical attacks so he imagined they would be useful against the Trolls. The slimes wielded space magic and flesh was their favourite meal. Physical attacks only push their liquid body apart and they could reform themself and magical attacks are swallowed up by space magic. They were unintelligent for the most part, considering their level and they weren¡¯t even very aggressive. Their very existence seemed to be sitting in place and waiting for time to pass before they got hungry and needed to eat. They had some odd spatial mouth and stomach that made physical resistance mostly futile and since they couldn¡¯t be destroyed by physical means that easily they just had to latch onto their meal and removing them was impossible without certain means.
Anyone with mana imbuement up to standard could land a punch, if the slime wasn¡¯t that high of a level some freelancers on Elva should be able to beat one. The slimes don¡¯t have any offensive spatial magic other than their bite or latching onto their target so one just had to be careful. The bites cannot go through mana as easily either so one just had to enhance themselves with mana and getting rid of a slime was not a problem.
Then again, the slime he released on Tova had been Emperor ranked. They propagate faster than some insects if they have food. Oplot imagined that the Trolls Shamans would¡¯ve done something about it already but it appears not.
¡°Can you divine the current situation?¡± He wasn¡¯t that worried with Navin and his Guardian Knights around. Sadly, the number of his Guardian Knights wasn¡¯t that big.
¡°We¡¯re too far away and in a dungeon but I¡¯ll try.¡± Medina laid her husband''s head on torn, rolled-up sleeves before she focused and meditated.
¡°Pack up.¡± Oplot finished the last bite of dinner and stood up, Dwarfing the human and beastmen alike.
¡°Hmm¡I seem to be forgetting something. Any ideas?¡± He asked his disciples. They were similarly confused by the odd question, how were they supposed to know what he was referring to?
¡°Ah¡oh no. What¡¯s the date today?¡± Oplot didn¡¯t look shocked but he was mentally shaken. He forgot something huge!
¡°I¡¯m not sure.¡± Although Demi knew her rough age they didn¡¯t keep track of the date.
¡°Me neither.¡± Lucas was just as clueless.
¡°...It¡¯s okay, we¡¯ll get moving once Medina is done with her divination.¡±
¡°Did you have an appointment?¡± Demi asked curiously.
¡°No. But I expected an arrival, I don¡¯t recall the exact date either. It¡¯s not a big issue, it¡¯s better this way.¡±
¡°What arrival?¡± Lucas stuffed his tent and belongings into his bag without packing them neatly. Oplot reprimanded him about the importance of keeping one¡¯s belongings neat and that a ¡®neat¡¯ mental state will be built along with the habit.
¡°You two have to buck up, the Trolls'' attack was much earlier than expected but we always anticipated them.¡±
¡°Most of them aren¡¯t an issue!¡± Lucas pounded his chest with pride. He dared to fight an elite warrior of the Trolls any day.
In Oplot¡¯s opinion, this kid underestimated the Trolls too much. ¡°Your spear mastery would not even make the actual elites bat an eye. Don¡¯t misjudge Elva¡¯s enemies for the past thousands of years. Their warriors and their barbaric mastery of cold arms would still beat most of the Imperial soldiers.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not one of those weaklings!¡± Lucas was as confident as ever, even these King Classed monsters weren''t his match. What could a few Trolls do to him? Did they have as much physical prowess as monsters? He didn¡¯t believe that.
¡°Good, good. I¡¯ll see if you have the confidence to say that again. What do you think about Trolls, Demi?¡± He must have given them too much training with monsters that their ego grew bigger than their abilities.
¡°I will not fall like my forefathers. The Empire will not be stomped by them.¡±
¡°Indeed.¡± Oplot was right, Demi had a mindset that would bring her further than the way Lucas currently was.
Medina collapsed while hyperventilating.
¡°What did you see?¡± He gave the lady time to catch her breath.
¡°The entire race is migrating. They are desperate. They¡they are uncountable. I couldn¡¯t see an end.¡±
¡°The entire race, how troublesome. Hopefully, they won¡¯t be stubborn and just start the supremacy duels early. Their top tribes working together must be keeping the Empire on the edges of their seat. Let¡¯s hurry.¡±
Oplot used Space Cluster Release and dragged all of them away. He needed to find a strong space magic monster to charge his bank or they would take too much time to travel back.
Chapter 192: Baggage
¡°Master Jing, what¡¯s the date?¡± Mark put a cup of hot Hata on the side. They traded for some supplies from the others who took the underground tomb as a topaz mine. They were too engrossed in their research and studies to resupply themselves so they depended on buying food at a high price.
¡°No idea, if you have time to ask for the date you have time to study.¡± Kong Jing took him as half a student but he still addressed her with respect.
¡°That¡¯s not it. Has it been half a year?¡± They had difficulty keeping track of time as they stayed indoors throughout the day and it wouldn¡¯t make a difference if they went out as they were underground.
¡°...I can¡¯t recall.¡± She didn¡¯t put her work down but she was wary about what was to come. They never did find out the reason Democlus needed 600 people to remain after half a year had passed. They were currently inside her house that she pulled out and placed at the edges of the deepest region she could get. The giant gravestone was unreachable for Mark but she managed to slip through on multiple occasions.
Mark knew that her abilities with space magic had skyrocketed recently. She practised magic more than she researched runes. This place was very conducive for her, she was probably a relatively fresh Grandmaster in his opinion. As someone who cared more about crafts than her personal magic-wielding abilities, she had never really put much effort into training. Perhaps having put them in danger when they arrived had weighed on her mind.
¡°I¡¯ll go out and check with someone.¡± Mark had his armour on even indoors. Some habits were hard to break despite the safety of this house.
Mark didn¡¯t just stay indoors, he didn¡¯t forget to move his body as his father taught him. It wasn¡¯t as frequent but they had many golems after them every once in a while. He didn¡¯t have to avoid all the Homunculus either. He might not have gained many levels but his repertoire of magic spells had increased tremendously. He was no expert or genius when it came to mana manipulation so he wasn¡¯t able to create a spell that reverses or blocks the topaz mana onto his body but he was a man that cheated his way into a fake domain user, he could do the same for most other runic spells he developed.
He drew up many designs for his spear and armour over the past few months and had the best blacksmith he had ever seen living under the same roof. Fortunately, the lady was excited to make anything novel. He just had to pat his chest plate with some mana to activate it and flames would crawl over and under his skin. It was a more well-balanced rune formula than the old one that he taught Ebony.
Kong Jing had a mana compressor and what a wonder it was. She made mana ores with only his mana, it took him weeks to sustain and create a Purple, the purity it required made it very mana inefficient but it was worth it. The Purple was for his weapon, he had more Blues for his armour. However, he didn¡¯t have a use for the Purple yet. His weapon would just break after a few pulses of mana from that. The wonderful thing about these mana ores that were his ¡®brand¡¯ was that it wasn¡¯t harmful to his body in any way when used to cast enhancement magic from external runes.
He didn¡¯t have to worry about potion drawbacks. His mana ores contained his mana. Now, his armour could cast enhancement magic for him without any mental effort from him. It gave him power, speed, endurance, durability and resistance. He also had a counter for topaz mana built in already. The best thing yet was that he could manipulate the shape of his mana ores to some degree. It was impossibly hard to do but he would definitely force himself to create a Skill that allows him to alter it. If he could engrave runes within it, he just had to move the mana ore onto a new set of equipment and it would have all the runes without engraving them on another set of equipment. Doing so will let his runic Fortifications to further empower the effects of his runes as well.
The current runes he had engraved were made with Kong Jing¡¯s help. He developed stronger versions but his body had a limit to how much enhancement it received without hurting himself. The fact that it wasn¡¯t a spell that he consistently cast also meant that the enhancement was fixed and not backed by a Skill. It was fixed at the level of his skills when he engraved the runes, including the effects from his fortifications just like any other blacksmith''s crafts. The effects stay on their crafts, not on the user.
Even so, his Strength, speed, Endurance, durability and a couple of resistances will be increased by approximately 1300%. This was the same as someone casting a level 520 tier 2 enhancement or a level 260 tier 3 enhancement. Sadly, the increase in speed didn¡¯t come with the dexterity to control it so it required him to get used to it. Strength increased one¡¯s speed as well and so did Agility but Agility gave one the capability of controlling one¡¯s speed. As for durability, it was just the toughness of his body and didn''t increase his energy efficiency like increasing Constitution stat would.
The best thing was that his mana efficiency research was good enough to mildly impress his rune teacher. A fully charged Blue can allow him to enhance himself with 13 times his usual power for more than a week and it wouldn¡¯t take him too long to recharge. Of course, mana ores would turn to dust after discharging and recharging but the higher the rarity and hence, purity the more times it could be reused. He didn¡¯t stand on the ceremony and used Kong Jing¡¯s mana compressor as much as she allowed him to.
Who had tier 3 or even tier 2 enhancements that they can supply for so long? The only one he could think of was Ebony and he knew the ice enhancement was only a tier 2 skill, albeit, highly compressed. But Mark wasn¡¯t comparing himself with unnatural individuals like Ebony. Amongst individuals who created their own enhancement, usually tier 1 or tier 2 if it was a core skill or had gained the benefit from multiple evolutions they would usually consume a ton of mana. Even Academies that prided in the refinement of their Skills wouldn¡¯t have their student graduate being able to cast enhancement for more than half a day. Perhaps a day is the limit for the very best among them. Out of all these people, who had their skill at level 520?
Mark didn¡¯t get overconfident since that was only looking at pure stat increment. There were plenty of skill combinations that could cover a difference from body enhancement magic. He was still confident that he was capable of being known as an elite combatant even if he was in Tidal. When compared with others his level of course. He had plenty of other runic spells and the fact that this form of enhancement produced flames and heat only further strengthened his actual enhancement core skill was a cherry on top.
He was not done with his research either. These golems fought in a particular manner dictated by their runes as far as they have found out. If he could develop something to improve his close-quarter technique he could cover up his lack of talent for the spear.
¡®And I¡¯m still behind those few huh¡¡¯ Mark didn¡¯t doubt that his lack of talent wasn¡¯t so easy to bridge. He turned the corner and broke into a dash to reach the closest camp.
¡°Crud.¡± The fifteen-minute dash didn¡¯t wear him out but he was cursing the lack of people or camp equipment around where a hundred or so people had been. The next camp was too far out to reach in a short time so he doubled back. ¡°The closest camp disappeared.¡±
¡°Annoying¡¡± Kong Jing exited her house and he saw the small circle on her mask expand before the house vanished. The black circle continued to widen till an eye appeared within it. It''s been at least a few months since her mask closed up and she no longer had slits where her eyes were. Looking at her would only get the view of a pure white mask with a horizontal black line cut by a circle in the middle. Mark didn¡¯t know what she could do but he guessed that she was casting her sight somewhere else.
¡°Let¡¯s get you out of here.¡± He could hear some urgency in her voice, unlike her usually lazy tone.
Mark wasn¡¯t sure if it was because he had interacted with this Craftswoman for some time but he was quite sure that she wasn¡¯t a strong fighter in any sense. Using his old standards, she was capable of beating any Grandmaster he had seen in his lifetime but the recent adventures he had opened up his world. Sure, there still isn¡¯t anyone he knew that she couldn¡¯t beat the living daylights out of but one man present trumps that very thought. Democlus the Shield King.
He hadn''t seen many Grandmasters but he knew that two could be vastly different in power. With his poor senses, he wouldn¡¯t have known how strong or weak someone was even if they stood in front of him. The only public King Classed individuals were the Royals, the Archdukes, a few Dukes and perhaps some Generals of the Empire¡¯s army. Mark wasn¡¯t so naive to think that there weren¡¯t others, amongst freelancers, there was a handful but for some reason, those people weren¡¯t as famous as their lower-level counterparts. He suspected this Dwarf Democlus to be one of these people.
Mark prepared to run, he did the prep work of mapping out escape routes whenever they got hunted down by homunculi. There were some empty buildings that had holes that led deeper underground but poor perception or instincts be damned, he didn¡¯t dare go down. It was probably dangerous enough to prod his poor survival instincts.
¡°Where do you think you¡¯re going?¡± Mark was already teleported away when the voice reached his ears but the sound followed them through space.
¡°To show my respects, I didn¡¯t bother you even though I started the ritual a few hours ago.¡± To their shock, Democlus ¡®grabbed¡¯ her spatial tunnel and followed along. Mark had a slightly better understanding of space magic due to being exposed to her training. She read books in an unknown language but didn¡¯t hide it from him. As a self-proclaimed expert, he already deciphered common words and could probably have learnt them if it was his focus of study.
¡°Good. Continue showing respect, we¡¯ll get going now.¡± Kong Jing glanced at the Dwarf¡¯s gauntlets. Mark got pulled along through some other methods, there was no ¡®tunnel¡¯ for the Shield King to follow.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
¡°Unfortunately, the city¡¯s spatial lockdown has been running since the ritual started. I¡¯ll have you two stay. Because of you, the numbers have hit six hundred and two. They wanted to hunt you down but I can¡¯t have them dying on me so I killed two.¡± The short Dwarf jumped up and physically chased them.
¡®How far did we traverse? Is his perception and jumping power just too high or is the spatial lockdown at work? Is there even a lockdown?¡¯ Mark¡¯s mind was working overtime. They remained on the ground so he couldn¡¯t tell how far they were teleported.
¡°It¡¯s none of my business that you were too hasty. If you were so respectful you would have invited us out before your distasteful ritual.¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t stop teleporting them. It allowed Mark to see the pathetic distance they travelled as the tiny Dwarf was still within sight in the sky. Another one capable of flight? He had to develop a rune for flight once he got out.
¡°How could I leave a unique individual such as you out of my humble ritual? A pity the other two special kids left but fate kept them away and you here. Regardless, I¡¯m not interested in any further conversations with dying people.¡± Democlus equipped the shield that had stayed on his back and rammed his fist onto it. A strong suction force yanked at them. Sharp winds started to tear the surroundings including the buildings and tough ground.
Mark already got his enhancements going strong and grounded himself with his spear but he was helplessly pulled off the ground towards the afloat Dwarf. ¡®What in the world? This Dwarf is a wind mage!?¡¯
The elemental affinities of different races were common knowledge but Mark seemed to have forgotten that he was facing a King, someone who had his affinities strengthened 4 times from an Unclassed state. Kong Jing found a way to save his sorry figure and put them inside an unknown building. He left many building doors open in case of some dangers he had while fighting. It saved him time from opening doors to hide inside and also made it much easier for the space mage to teleport into.
¡°What did you see? The rest of the people? We should get closer to them. He¡¯s trying not to kill us. We can use this to our advantage.¡±
¡°A good point, I could¡¯ve threatened to kill someone so that his numbers don¡¯t match anymore.¡±
¡°Then?¡±
¡°All of them are already staked to the gravestone and crystallised into some blackish purple gem. I¡¯m not even sure if they¡¯re alive but it doesn¡¯t change that neither of us can get close to the gravestone yet. That shorty even left a spot at the top for me.¡±
A wave of distress washed over him. Despite their collective runic research and his current counter of topaz mana, they weren¡¯t able to get close enough to touch the humongous gravestone.
¡°Haha, no special spot for me huh?¡± He joked around to relieve his tension. Kong Jing¡¯s response had been to push him to the ground as the roof over their head was gone. His sight changed again as he was teleported away yet again. Mark came to a decision at once.
¡°Master Jing, just threaten to kill me. If it''s you, I doubt he can stop you that quickly so he¡¯ll believe the threat.¡±
¡°Tch¡ even you¡¯re looking down on me now huh? Do you think I haven¡¯t been disgraced enough for letting someone steal my little brother away right under my nose? You think I haven¡¯t been shamed enough as a space mage to let us be trapped when we first got here?¡± There was so much derision gushing out of her tone that Mark was left speechless.
¡°Crush this, you¡¯ll be sent to your house in Plainston.¡± Kong Jing placed a transparent pebble in his hands.
¡°I ca-¡± Mark¡¯s voice was killed by sheer force of overflowing essence, unlike any monster he¡¯d faced.
¡°Shut up.¡± He might not be able to see her face or eyes but he could tell she was seething in anger. She took a deep breath to calm down.
¡°Whatever the case, he¡¯ll not have the numbers he wants anymore. I obviously have more than one of these. You¡¯re just in the way.¡± She opened her palms to show dozens of the same transparent pebbles and clenched her fist tightly, they weren¡¯t in her grasp and neither did broken shards fall.
¡°It''s time to reeducate these fools just who the hell they''re messing with.¡± Mark couldn¡¯t help but notice that her mask didn¡¯t have a single shade of white as it transformed into a boundless black colour.
¡°...Take ca-¡± Mark barely had time to glance down to see that she used space magic to move his fist to crush the pebble. His head shot back up but he only saw his still and quiet workshop. It took a full minute before he regained control over his body and the first thing he managed to do was gulp.
¡®What should I do!? She sounds confident but Democlus doesn¡¯t appear to be someone who chose to evolve because of a limited lifespan. He has got to be strong even amongst King Classed individuals and Master Jing isn¡¯t even a fighter!¡¯ Mark paced around the workshop. Dashing back to Bubble Hills and going underground will take a long time but he would be able to make it back there within a day if the route was still open. As long as he had his current upgraded equipment and runes. But what¡¯s the point? He was truly in her way and so weak that the Dwarf couldn¡¯t be bothered to address him.
¡®That¡¯s right, I should call Ebony or Scarlet first.¡¯ Mark hurried and activated the mana ore in his Myriad Bracelet to flow to his callstone but he quickly realised that the mental link wasn¡¯t connecting.
¡®Oh right, they said that callstones weren¡¯t working well in this region due to a war and the rampant essence in the atmosphere.¡¯
¡°ELL!¡± He smashed his table with a single palm. He hadn¡¯t turned off his enhancement but he kept the most important stuff and nothing flammable was in his reach so he didn¡¯t cause a fire.
¡°Wait, war? Previously they said it was getting worse but that was news from at least 2 months ago.¡± Mark ran out and check that the city was still in one piece. Other than fewer people on the streets he didn¡¯t sense anything amiss as the city folk went about their day as usual. He dashed through the street and onto the high-speed road on the way to the Quest Hall to get more information. Only remembering to turn his armour runic enhancement off before entering one of the largest buildings in any town or city.
For this backwater city, someone of his level wasn¡¯t common to see even after its expansion and the crowd Ordina brought. Not to mention the heat and steam wafting off him as he stomped into the Quest Hall, he definitely attracted some attention.
¡°Give me the latest news on the war.¡± His impatience was unlike him and he frightened the lady clerk. She clambered for some documents and rambled on about clearly ¡®beautified¡¯ reports that were news for the public.
¡°Are there any noteworthy freelancers that volunteered, maybe Fifth and Fourth Tide?¡±
¡°Emm, the Frost Elves have sent a party of five to support Fifth Tide and played a great part.¡± She hemmed and hawed.
¡°I asked for notable freelancers!¡± The clerk ran off after apologising for not keeping up with the news on the walls. With the tears running down her cheeks, he realised he came on too strong and that he was emitting a lot of heat. The lady was just a level 35 Clerk and was probably very new on the job. He tried his best to calm down but he was on a timer.
¡°Please send my apologies to your young colleague, I didn¡¯t mean to scare her,¡± Mark told the man that took over the lady clerk.
¡°...That¡¯s alright but please restrain your overflowing essence as much as possible within the premises. Let¡¯s see, freelancers¡many of them abandoned the wall the moment the battle turned to a melee. For Fifth Tide, the most notable person still remaining goes by Rimestone or Bringer of Winter and Infernal Death who¡¯s also called Red Reaper, Troll Butcher, Fiery Slaughterer. They have a few other names and titles that the freelancers brought back but these are the most famous ones. We are unable to tell you more as they have the city on a tight lockdown. They only accept supplies and reinforcements.¡± The male clerk looked up from his documents to find that Mark was on the way out already.
¡°Thanks!¡± He stopped his charge out of the building to scribble a letter for his parents and made use of the delivery system to send some mana ores to them. He could have went to the imperial bank but that would''ve taken too much time. After which, he started dashing towards Fifth Tide. There wasn¡¯t any carriage that could go faster than him and no one would drive him to Fifth Tide anyway.
¡®My enhancement can last but not my physical endurance, I wonder if I can buy a stamina consumption reduction technique from the black market. I hope it¡¯s still on sale. Nono, I should hope that I have the talent to learn it. How would those skills work anyway? Conversion of mana to stamina? No, stamina alone doesn¡¯t re-energise the body. I need a skill that reduces the rate that the body tires. Hell, I¡¯ll just develop a potion to relieve muscle aches and mana strain, yeah that should be my priority. It would be pointless if I can¡¯t withstand my own mana¡¯s enhancement.¡¯
Mark held his spear firmly as he dashed, his guard was at an all-time high. He had read a bit on history, Fifth and Fourth Tide rarely saw battle in the past. It was due to the limited manpower the Trolls usually had as they made the past invasion sort of a challenge amongst tribes to see who did the greatest damage to the strongest parts of the Empire. Hence, they didn¡¯t really care for countryside towns and cities. The previous war over 80 years ago changed the entire way that wars had been fought due to the rise of the Barrier King, his wife and Emperor Oplot.
With every Tide having strong barriers, there were barely any Trolls that made it to the mainland to wreak havoc and destroy towns. After decades, every single town has a strong barrier that could sustain itself with the overflowing mana of its inhabitants. The Empire took tax in terms of absorbing this mana but people weren¡¯t that dumb and wore Myriad Bracelets all the time so they changed the tax method to the exchanging of filled and empty mana ores. The amount they got from people who forgot to change their fully charged ores wasn''t much but it accumulated over time.
Ordinary citizens still aren¡¯t capable of matching a Troll but the Empire wasn¡¯t nearly as helpless as it used to be. At the very least, the daily operations of a nearby city didn¡¯t appear to be affected by the ongoing war.
¡®What kind of materials are there for a potion that can energise the body¡ this mana ore is made by my own mana, what about stamina? I know, I¡¯ll get those prisoners'' cuffs and stamina ores. Maybe I can boil it down into a potion. What are those made of anyway?¡¯ Mark continued to come up with ideas as he surveyed the area.
Fifth Tide¡¯s barrier was visible but there was an entrance that allowed for a long line of carriages with supplies through. There was some clearance check but he just had to say that he was a volunteer for ranged support. The guards were level 120, young. They were probably given this duty since they had no part to play on the front lines. They were originally excited when they saw him and his weapon of choice but they got disappointed when he said he was here as ranged support.
¡®Is the situation so bad?¡¯
Chapter 193: Shield King VS Space
¡°Girly, you must be young. Did you think you foiled my plans by sending him away?¡± Democlus wasn¡¯t a single bit concerned that the fire spearman was gone. His senses were sharp enough to tell that the transparent crystals Kong Jing showed to the man weren''t the same as the one that sent him away.
¡°You must think I¡¯m blind, I know you didn¡¯t kill the extra 2. You might have hidden them inside a conjured earthen tent under the gravestone and a wind barrier but do you think that can really stop me?¡±
¡°You mean to say it can¡¯t?¡± Democlus mocked, he must have seen her constant miserable attempts the past few months.
Kong Jing chuckled, ¡°Let¡¯s see!¡±
The Shield King¡¯s reflexes were ridiculous as he already moved towards where she was about to appear. He could sense her space magic or the location where she stretches her mana to. She would put her mana ore on the second possibility as it was a common ability amongst warriors trained against mages.
Her body leaned back to dodge the grabbing motion and she compressed space upwards again. The Dwarf¡¯s shield smashed down from above the air she appeared at.
¡®He¡¯s faster than I can manipulate space¡not just your random King Classed old man then.¡¯ Kong Jing wasn¡¯t worried at all, she had no weaklings to protect this time. The distance she could move was very small due to the annoying spatial lockdown.
Democlus conjured another whirlpool of wind to suck her towards him but her clothes weren¡¯t even ruffled. The buildings on the ground morphed and turned into giant whips. ¡°Give it up, I checked that you don¡¯t even possess a combat Profession. Your space magic is greatly weakened here and I know that you don¡¯t have another one of that transparent gem that sent that spearman out.¡±
He must have had a tier 3 Identification type skill or an item that allows one to analyse a person. It must have helped the Dwarf that she never cared about hiding her Class or making any items that obscures her information.
¡°No combat classes? Spatial lockdown? Against you? Let¡¯s see¡I¡¯ll add on to your advantages. I won¡¯t move from this spot. You have ten seconds to beg for your life.¡± Kong Jing¡¯s lower mask disappeared, she put a strain reliever between her lips and lit it with a snap of her finger. Taking a puff before she started counting down.
???
¡°Ten.¡± The Xeng woman¡¯s voice enters Democlus¡¯s ears.
¡°Beg? I¡¯ve always hated Xeng¡¯s arrogance! You don¡¯t know how happy Elva was when most of your people left. Don¡¯t worry, you won¡¯t die. After the ritual you will be a part of me, I got to thank you for serving yourself to me!¡± Democlus got a little worked up all of a sudden and the huge earthen whips came alive and crushed the figure together with her last smoke.
¡°Nine.¡± Kong Jing¡¯s countdown continued to echo in the underground city.
Democlus wasn¡¯t that dull, he already felt the oddity as his earthen whips didn¡¯t have any contact feedback. He knew a Xeng would have some tricks up their sleeves whether or not they were a combatant. He was a few centuries old and recalled the time that slightly more Xengs travelled across the continent. Personally, he had only seen one or two from afar but he never liked stories of them. It was only ever filled with arrogance and contempt for the Imperials.
To see how she remained at her spot without dodging he sent a single whip and continued to suck her towards him with wind magic. He was momentarily stunned when the whip simply smashed into her figure without touching her, they slowed down a lot when it got close to her. When he pulled the whip back it took some time before it accelerated to its normal speed.
¡°Eight.¡± She puffed another breath of smoke.
¡®What magic is that? Why isn¡¯t she pulled by wind magic?¡¯ Democlus rode one of the giant whips towards her relaxed figure. He got 2 girs away from her before he realised he wasn¡¯t getting any closer and she looked just as far away from him as she previously was.
¡°Seven.¡±
¡°Just a flimsy space expansion.¡± He bent his knees and leapt off, accelerating like a falling meteor. His gut wrenched when the figure didn¡¯t get any closer to him. ¡®I can hear her normally¡¡¯
¡°Six.¡±
He didn¡¯t have to look back or down, he knew that his earthen whips were still at the same place and they weren¡¯t that far away from him even after his mountain range crossing jump. He conjured a compressed earthen shield with a sharp end mid-leap, grabbed the handle he fashioned, leaned back and tossed it with all his power.
¡°SHIELD JAVELIN!!¡± Trying to keep her alive was the least of his worries but he didn¡¯t enhance himself too much. The brown shield created cones of shockwaves but he could only watch in utter shock as the shield looked as if they were stuck in space. He could still feel the wind and shockwaves and was completely sure that his attack was still flying.
¡°Five.¡±
¡°2 girs¡?¡± Democlus put aside the pride of having 3 completely combat-focused Classes and fully enhanced himself as he dashed on compressed wind and had wind magic to propel him further. He took ten steps only to see that she remained just as far away. He glanced down to see that the ground was still near, his whips still within the range of his control and the shield he threw was still breaking sound barriers and creating shockwaves.
¡°Four.¡±
Democlus controlled all the whips to attack, he felt them moving at breakneck speeds but none of them got closer to him or his target. He conjured and tossed a far stronger and faster Shield Javelin accelerated by wind magic.
¡®It got ahead of the previous shield!¡¯ He watched the shields skip ahead of the previous floating shield by a tiny bit.
¡°Three. Your time¡¯s running out. Try harder, you can do it.¡± She puffed out grey smoke and taunted.
¡°Don¡¯t get ahead of yourself! You won¡¯t move huh? Let¡¯s see you deal with this!¡± He dipped down to the ground and realised that he wasn¡¯t any further away from the ground even after the earlier leaps.
The surrounding buildings of the underground city turned into a tower with numerous spikes on them. He ran to the gravestone within a second. To him, the city wasn¡¯t that large.
¡°Two. Should I give you another handicap?¡±
¡°Come! Homunculi! Spread your mana throughout the city!¡± Democlus called for the deadly purple topaz Homunculus. As the ritual master, they were temporarily following his orders.
¡°I want to see how you¡¯ll get me from that spot!¡± He was obviously making use of the fact that she couldn¡¯t get close to the gravestone as he could. As a Shield King, he was more of a defender than an attacker or pursuer. That was how he convinced himself as he dipped.
¡°One. You can still beg.¡±
¡°Become my fuel to power! To become eternal!¡± Democlus lifted his arm, and an unconscious Dwarven woman shot out from the earthen tent he conjured and was sent into the gravestone behind him. The other man within the tent was killed immediately as he wasn¡¯t able to send the body out of the city anymore. One of the two empty spots on the gravestone was filled as the Dwarven woman¡¯s body crystallised onto its surface. The last spot right at the top was reserved for the only other conscious person in the city.
¡°Eternal? A fresh new King hopes to be eternal? Zero. Be honoured. You¡¯ll spend your last moments with me.¡±
¡°Come get me if you can! You can¡¯t even get close!¡± He was very confident of the 5 Homunculus surrounding her. They transformed the towering spikes into deadly weapons and they already overlapped their domains onto each other, everyone empowering each other.
¡°Oh, I¡¯m a woman of my word. I won¡¯t move from this spot.¡± She flicked her strain reliever away.
Democlus watched as her pure black mask covered up again and a tiny white circle formed on the centre of her mask. It quickly expanded to the edge of her mask, turning it completely white again. He didn¡¯t have time to be confused as another black circle formed and expanded. The cycling sped up extremely quickly and his body lifted his shield in front of him by instinct.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°Are you going to keep standing there?¡±
Democlus¡¯s jaw dropped in shock when he found himself face to face with a black mask with a white circle and vertical line, not cutting the circle from the top to the bottom of her mask. His eyes shot around but there were no towering spikes, no floating shield, no homunculus, no city and definitely no gravestone to protect him. He pushed himself away by kicking off a hastily conjured mana platform. There was nothing around him, just pure white. There was neither a ground nor a sky. It would be disorientating for those that got placed here for the first time.
¡°This is the first time I invited someone in. Don¡¯t worry I kept my word, I haven¡¯t moved at all. You will do as a fun test run.¡±
¡®There¡¯s a ground.¡¯ Democlus lowered his altitude and found that he could land and get a good footing. His highly trained body had moved his shield arm up to guard his left while his hips and lower body jerked into a proper position. An invisible force rammed into his shield but he stood strong other than skidding a short distance.
¡°Some kind of spatial domain? Doesn¡¯t change that you aren¡¯t a fighter.¡± He calmed himself down, the attack didn¡¯t have much power behind it. For a Grandmaster, sure it was pretty darn amazing to be able to push him but if it was due to a domain it wasn¡¯t all that surprising. The stronger a domain, the most costly it was to maintain. He hasn''t formed his own domain spell as he evolved just a year ago and his mana efficiency had just hit his desired amount.
His war axe got to work but neither his wind slashes nor his earthen projectiles were reaching her. He tried to get close to her again and was pleasantly surprised to find that his axe could reach her. ¡®I can reach her? I was right in front of her earlier too.¡¯
His dominant arm didn¡¯t need his mind to command, it attacked as he originally intended when he charged in. His body lurched forward and he was forced off balance. His axe was sitting a fingertip¡¯s length away from her shoulder, just shy of touching it. He took his chances and forced it deeper and unleashed his wind magic together.
¡°My little brother¡¯s trick is pretty nifty. He keeps a layer of repulsion over him and it also annoys me so I copied him. There¡¯s no spatial lockdown here, I don¡¯t have to play with spatial expansion.¡±
Democlus ignored her and kept going, he could feel his axe travelling at top speed but it was barely getting a hair¡¯s thickness closer.
¡°He¡¯s a little genius but I¡¯m the bigger genius. Well, It¡¯s a little unfair since I just had to read my clan¡¯s spell book for ideas. Whipping a tier 4 spell is pretty easy but refining it would take me some more time, so I was too ashamed to show this outside.¡±
¡®Whipping up a tier 4 spell is easy? Just read some books for ideas?¡¯ Democlus was slightly disgruntled by the flex. He only had 2 tier 4 Skills, they were both his Core Skills and neither were magic spells.
¡°Thanks to where we are, your axe is gyrs away from me.¡±
Democlus felt something touching the rims of his chest plate near his neck, it slipped under his helmet as if his full plate wasn¡¯t seamless. The same invisible force molested his entire armour from his helmet to chest plate, to gauntlet to his leggings.
¡°Pathetic strength, you can¡¯t break my armour with that.¡± He shook off the invisible grasps by using mana disruption. A standard technique any respectable warrior picks up when they can manipulate their mana. It was simply diluting any magic spell with their own mana and works as a general dispel Skill for most magics. At his level, this ¡®general¡¯ dispel can wash off anything weaker than his own spells with considerable ease. Even so, the invisible forces came back immediately. ¡®Damn domain mages! Forget it, she can¡¯t keep this up for long.¡¯
Democlus started to use the enchantments on his equipment and remained right in front of the Xeng. His axe didn¡¯t stop moving, if she was simply further away than she seems he just had to keep going! Her arrogance of standing still was going to cost her. He freed one of his hands and tried to punch her but his gauntlet¡¯s space wield was pretty weak, he went back to using it to empower his axe.
Her spatial attacks were all predicted by him even when he was in her domain, his trusty shield defended him without him holding it. Thanks to his armour¡¯s spatial rebound enchantment her domain¡¯s reach cannot physically form near him. She could only manually control her magic to attack him and not strangulate him directly. Her spatial pull wasn¡¯t even strong enough to rip his shield away from him when he was using life force and mana to wield it.
¡°What happened to your big talk?¡±
¡°How much closer do you think your attack has gotten?¡±
¡°Keep acting tough, there¡¯s nothing you could do that can harm me. Your domain will collapse once you¡¯re out of mana.¡±
The space mage laughed.
¡°In terms of mana, not even a mana meister with 2 tier 4 mana capacity increasing skills at level 500 has more mana than me. I¡¯m feeling good and we have plenty of time for you to get to know me. You¡¯re a valuable source of experience for my new skills after all. I¡¯m too lazy to go hunt like my little siblings, I¡¯m gaining a few skill levels every few minutes with the hostility gushing from you.¡±
¡°You! That¡¯s-that¡¯s how you people increase your strength so fast!?¡±
¡°Nah, I¡¯m pretty sure the others just do it the normal way but I don¡¯t have the time or patience for that. I used to find monsters two to three hundred levels above me and keep them here with me while provoking them to kill me. A few weeks is enough to bring all my necessary space magic skill levels up to standard. This way I don¡¯t have to waste so much time on my Sub-Class and have more time to tinker with my craft. I can continue crafting here as well, despite all you say you haven¡¯t even reached me.¡±
¡®That¡¯s right! She¡¯s a craftswoman and she hasn¡¯t used any weapons, she must have many fortifications that increase their power. Is she really trying to milk my hostility as experience?!¡¯ Democlus had almost forgotten that he was up against a crafter and not just a space mage but not a single weapon had been summoned.
¡°Do you have any other friends who are at your level or higher? Monsters provide more levels but sapient opponents provide more experience to skills.¡±
¡°Shut up!¡±
¡°Where did your respect go?¡±
¡°I politely asked you to leave when you people arrived before but you didn¡¯t give a damn.¡±
¡°Nonsense, you could have ¡®politely¡¯ asked me to leave before you begin your silly ritual. You¡¯ve let people come and go, there was no way you wouldn¡¯t be able to invite us out. You just got greedy for me, understandable. I¡¯m a high-value wom-¡±
Democlus unclipped part of his helmet to spit at her, the spit simply floated in place.
¡°How rude. Fine, no more playing around.¡±
¡°Go ahead, bring out your weapons! I¡¯ll see what a Xeng Craftswoman can make!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t use weapons, I only craft them.¡±
Democlus¡¯s attacking arm slowed down, his armour creaked all over. He reflexively sent out another blast of dispelling mana but the invisible force wasn¡¯t pushed away. His head whipped left and right as if he was getting punched, the same punches rained down on him. He put power to drag his axe out but it was stuck in place along with part of his arm.
¡®No, it''s not stuck, I''m still moving as fast as I can! Crap.¡¯ He finally noticed the poor position he was in. It was extremely disorientating to only have a part of his body move forward while the rest of his body remained still.
¡°You tried so hard to get closer, now you have to cross the same distance to get further from me. Your speed is pretty cute. Do you not have anything else up your sleeves? The small variety of skills you have is very disappointing.¡±
Democlus imbued his mana and life force into his shield and had it circulate around him without letting it get ¡®close¡¯ to the masked lady. He kicked off mana platforms and had all his movement skills operating but while his feet and lower body continued to accelerate, he looked as if he was stuck on the spot with his arm and axe holding him in place.
He conjured small earthen shields over his armour, he had to buy time to get out. She wasn¡¯t capable of stopping him from moving thanks to his equipment so he just had to buy time to get away. Despite her bragging, he didn¡¯t think she could keep her domain up forever. Every second he bought was a second closer to her doom.
¡°You should¡¯ve tried to get closer, not further.¡±
Democlus ignored the comment and stepped up his extrication. He didn¡¯t forget to conjure hundreds of wind-coated earthen spikes to surround the cocky space mage. Since she didn¡¯t want to move from her spot he was going to make sure she couldn¡¯t move out.
¡°I¡¯m free!¡± His arm shot out from the target and he quickly regained his bearings while skidding to a stop from his high speed.
¡°Eat this! Shield Javelin!¡± He tossed shield after shield, hoping that at least one would reach her. He had enough accuracy and precision to cover her entire body without each projectile hitting each other. After a couple of seconds and he couldn¡¯t fit any more shields from any direction.
¡®Ell! There¡¯s no earth or wind mana around, I''m just wasting my stock.¡¯ Democlus was dependent on elemental mana ores and was by no means a conjurer and he was more of a defender than an attacker. He got seated to recover as much stamina and mana as possible.
She let him rest in peace but in time, his conjured shield tosses fell to the ground. If what she said was true, the distance between them wasn¡¯t something his thrown projectile could reach. Two spiked earthen walls quickly took the shields place and flattened her but they couldn¡¯t meet each other.
¡°I¡¯m bored.¡±
Democlus evaded the spatial mana from above him but he got flooded from every direction. Dispelling it to free himself took more mana than he would like and he got into a shell of earth. There was absolutely nothing he could do now.
He wasn¡¯t sure how many days he hid but his mental prowess waned and his shell was taken apart at an accelerated rate. He was exposed to the bright white space again, with barely any energy to defend himself. His gauntlets shattered first, then his helmet and the rest of his armour slowly fell apart from the constant beatings. Eeking out droplets of mana over his earthen skin didn¡¯t have any effect.
"I''m really terrible with manipulating space safely, but ooo am I good with it dangerously."
The invisible force pushed his head back and twisted his arm in both directions while ripping it out. One of his legs was struggling under immense pressure but it was ultimately pushed inward, the invisible force made a cast to prevent his flesh or bones from slipping anywhere and his leg bone was accurately directed ¡®upwards¡¯, stabbing his internal organs.
¡°Ugh¡.I really should put some effort into training, that was so inefficient and unsightly of me.¡±
Chapter 194: Dividends
10.12.5537.
Ebony sipped on his warm cup of tea. He didn¡¯t silence the explosion of noise and yells as it was detrimental if he didn¡¯t get the necessary information being tossed around. Roughly 4 tiresome but repetitive months had passed as a part-time artillery mage. Tea time wasn¡¯t included in the meals provided but he rarely skipped out. Ning Xin was practically an army chef and they mostly followed the diet with the exception of the current tea time. He called up his status as a habit.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill:
Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 463 (¢ó)
Icy Weighted Quiver Domain Lvl 344 (¢ò)
Class: Serene Blade of Blistering Frost - Lvl 300
Class Skills:
Treading Stride Lvl 398 (¢ò)
Ice Mana Command Lvl 420
Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 414 (¢ò)
Blazing Flow Greatsword Mastery Lvl 388 (¢ñ)
Frostblaze Cladding Lvl 402 (¢ò)
Frost Edge Lvl 411 (¢ò)
Ceaseless Onslaught Lvl 388 (¢ò)
Imperishable Frost Scales Lvl 420 (¢ò)
Serene Swordsman of Frost Conditioning Lvl 257 (¢ò)
Waning Presence Lvl 376 (¢ò)
Glacial Model Lvl 396 (¢ò)
Blazing Deep Freeze Petals Lvl 333 (¢ò)
Stalactite Drop Lvl 122 (¢ó)
Frigid Refraction Lvl 59 (¢ò)
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Weighted Will Lvl 300
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 285 (¢ñ)
Sheer Mana Vibration Lvl 389 (¢ò)
Gravity Mana Control Lvl 401
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 380 (¢ò)
Sonic Intrusion Lvl 389 (¢ò)
Firm Path Lvl 400 (¢ò)
Gravity Vortex Lvl 258(¢ò)
Tremor Stomp Lvl 42 (¢ò)
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Runic Mana Maven - Lvl 300
Profession Skills:
Inscripted Mana Moulding Lvl 411 (¢ò)
Stock Mana Compressive Chassis Lvl 422 (¢ò)
Stalwart Endowment Lvl 396 (¢ò)
Potent Mana Overdraft Lvl 299 (¢ò)
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 5973/7000
Stamina: 2851/4350
Mana: 23/44220
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 650 [708]
Vitality: 700
Constitution: 1000 [12580]
Endurance: 400 [435]
Agility: 800 [871]
Intelligence: 1326 [1444]
Wisdom: 2030 [2211]
Perception: 350 [4331]
Generic Skills:
Identify Lvl 17 (¢ñ)
Immense Cold Resistance Lvl 138 (¢ó)
Running Lvl 71 (¢ñ)
Mental Mapping Lvl 55 (¢ñ)
Kicking Mastery Lvl 130 (¢ñ)
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 10
Calculated Hunch Lvl 98 (¢ò)
Dish Washing Lvl 56 (¢ñ)
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 132 (¢ò)
Tracking Lvl 42 (¢ñ)
Game Processing Lvl 40 (¢ñ)
Immense Heat Resistance Lvl 177 (¢ó)
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12 (¢ò)
Gardening Lvl 45 (¢ñ)
Cooking Lvl 58 (¢ñ)
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 60 (¢ò)
Korun Lvl 47
Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 49 (¢ò)
Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 42 (¢ó)
Immense Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 93 (¢ó)
Lightning Resistance Lvl 48 (¢ñ)
Sheer Blood Resistance Lvl 71 (¢ò)
Wind Resistance Lvl 45 (¢ñ)
Poison Resistance 20 (¢ñ)
Preservation Bubble Lvl 50 (¢ñ)
Sustenance Regulation Lvl 77 (¢ò)
Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 29
Ebony mentally assigned skill tiers in his status but he didn¡¯t know if languages were tiered. As for ¡®control¡¯ or manipulation type he wasn¡¯t sure if he should take ¡®control¡¯ as tier 1 like the Imperials. He should, seeing how ¡®Control¡¯ only gave a 1.0% increase per level. During the past months, he finally understood how Gen classified his old shield spell. The gap between tier 2 and 3 was far larger than he imagined. It was quite a waste that he didn¡¯t spend more time refining his skills in the past and just trained to level.
There was so much potential for most of his skills that he never tapped into. The few skill evolutions weren¡¯t disappointing in any way and skill levels weren¡¯t all that he gained. Most of his skills got refined multiple times. First of all, his Core Skills were truly underdeveloped.
Everlasting Tranquillity - Achieving a state of everlasting tranquillity, breaking your state of mind is extremely difficult regardless of consciousness, increasing Mana and Stamina regeneration rate by 100% + 5.0% per level, Perception by 80% + 2.5% per level. Greatly increased pain resistance.
There wasn¡¯t a base increase of 100% and 80% respectively in the past and Perception¡¯s plus 1.0% had increased to 2.5%. He believed he had to push it to 5.0% per level before it could go further. It only recently got refined as he started to wake up and realised that he was indeed dreaming while he slept. It was fascinating, he never knew what it was like to dream till recent times.
The best part was that according to Ning Xin, his ¡®aura¡¯ was so calming it was as if he was exuding the effects of a calming pearl. Although the skill description didn¡¯t say anything about that, it might have a mutation in future. Staying near him and getting regarded as an ally by his Will was enough to give one an increased mana regeneration.
Icy Weighted Quiver Domain - Summon, Conjure, Will your personal domain into existence. Flood condensed ice mana into the range of your domain with 380% + 2.5% Intelligence that actively protects you. Gravity is increased by 350% + 2.5% of your Intelligence. Flooded mana domain will vibrate violently around any body of motion, vibration frequency and strength increase by 300% + 2.5% per level.
Consumes 58,000MP/Min
Classification: Ice Magic, Gravity Magic & Sound Magic
Base increase of ice magic went from 350% to 380%, gravity from 300% to 350% and sound from 250% to 300%. As expected, he didn¡¯t really do well or even bother about making his domain more mana efficient. He just had to manually dial down on effects he didn¡¯t require to conserve mana.
Treading Stride should¡¯ve evolved or mutated based on his newfound footwork and speed. His movement speed did not correlate to his stats or skill levels at all. He was very confident that it was the skill with the greatest improvement.
Treading Stride (Passive) - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Treading Stride allows one to travel through most terrains with more ease, increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by 250% + 2.5% per level.
He bet that few would have a tier 2 skill with a 250% base increase, that was 100 levels worth of a tier 2 skill! It was practically his most refined skill if one didn¡¯t count his Core Skill that had benefits.
Ice Mana Control got a 120% base increase after multiple refinements and even evolved. It simply made casting any type of ice magic easier, faster and even slightly more powerful. He could never tell when it was low tier and level but it was more clear that all ice magics would be limited in some fashion by the upper limit of the manipulation skill.
Ice Mana Command - Ability to move and shape Ice Elemental Mana at will using mana. Ability to control Ice Mana increases by 120 + 2.5% per level.
Classification: Ice magic
Frostblaze Augmentation - Combusting mana in your mana chassis that had been directly conjured into Ice mana increases your Constitution by 150% + 2.5% of Intelligence, Strength and Endurance by 120% + 2.5% of Intelligence. Agility is increased by 30% + 2.5% of Intelligence. Damage from heat based attacks are increased by 20%.
Consumes 4200 MP/Min.
Classification: Ice Magic - Body Enhancement Magic
There was a small increase of each base stat buff and a slight drop in mana consumption from 4500 MP/Min to 4200MP/Min. Nothing drastic but it was only because he had been standing atop the wall and didn¡¯t go into close combat till half a month back when the Trolls advanced to the point that the army went to meet them in close combat. It didn¡¯t actually level up that much and was already around the same level for many months. The same applied to most of his close combat skills. Hence, his close combat skills didn¡¯t receive many refinements if any at all.
The biggest flaw was that rather the Augmentation would burn his blood. If he bled with compressed Augmentation, his blood will be blue. Bleeding was never a problem since his wounds freezes but he made a mistake thinking that Constitution was the only physical stat that toughened the body. If his stats weren¡¯t balanced, something would break down no matter how high his Constitution got. The increase in Intelligence, compression and enhancement skill level had given him more data and information to work with.
Frostblaze Cladding¡¯s base Intelligence effect increased from 150% to 200% but he was more talented with defence and Imperishable Frost Scales¡¯ base Intelligence effect increased from 150% to 250%. Ice Sword finally evolved. It was now Frost Edge, more versatile as making just sword-shaped projectiles wasn¡¯t ideal. It was a simple upgrade but it worked and the mana consumption was the same as its tier 1 version which was great for barrages.
Frost Edge - Apply a sharp and durable coating of ice over an object or form any bladed projectile, dealing 180% + 2.5% Intelligence.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
Conditioning truly wasn¡¯t easy to improve as they were very sure their training methods were far harsher than the Knights but it remained as a tier 2 skill. He did get a single refinement that increased his stats by 2.5% and that was 100 levels worth of 0.025% increases.
Blazing Deep Freeze Petals - Highly condensed flames of frost take upon an increasingly solid form of plum petals. Embers and residues of all your freezing flames that are packed into petals have an effect of 200% + 2.5% Intelligence. Petals of flames are 50% + 2.5% finer, facilitating the penetration through physical matter.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
He overused the spell so much that it had better improved the way he intended. The base Intelligence effect of 80% to 200% and 15% to 50% of ¡®fineness¡¯. This spell wasn¡¯t used against the Trolls, it would interrupt the artillery mages. The petals had a glaring weakness of being easy to be blown away as well. It worked very well with wind magic and even his gravity magic helped. The spell¡¯s main target had been the corrosion cloud right above the battlefield and a small portion above the city. In close range, it was even better since all his flame wisps would naturally converge into petals. His domain also adopted these petals to pop up and remained stationary instead.
¡®Icicle Drop¡¯ finally became a skill and it wasn¡¯t what he expected.
Stalactite Drop - Conjured ice spells have 200% + 5.0% falling momentum when used in conjunction with gravity magic. Ice spell landings¡¯ ability to slow down the release of momentum on impact increases by 100% + 5.0% per level.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
There was no direct increase in spell power based on Intelligence. It was more of pure magic rather than ice magic. He didn¡¯t even understand how the skill was classified as ice magic other than the fact that it only applied to ice¡never mind. It was higher tiered than he had imagined the spell to be but it only augmented all his ice spells instead of an actual spell. When used with gravity magic it had imposing power and when stored mana vibrations were added in, the slowing down of momentum release only further increased the quakes caused when he used ¡®Icicle Drop¡¯ as the momentum gained while falling can be used to send his mana vibrations even further and more widespread. With a bit of practice, it was possible to adjust the direction of the vibrations with his Will.
His latest Class skill, Frigid Refraction had been an idea he got by accident. The Shamans summoned a water mirror that reflected Radiant Envoy¡¯s beam of light at him. The beam destroyed the water mirror with ease but the light was already reflected in Ebony¡¯s direction. The light beam had already weakened a lot so he didn¡¯t really get injured even though he couldn¡¯t dodge or even defend himself in time. He noticed that the light beam should have missed him by a margin but it curved towards him. The cold temperatures around him must have caused the light to bend.
With that in mind, he thought that he might as well try to control the angle of reflections. He could use scales or even flames when he augmented himself to manipulate the angle to which light refracted. It hadn¡¯t been easy because he could control ice directly but not cold. The thickness of ice mana in the scales over his robe can affect it. The easiest method was to conjure a helmet along with his scaled robe and adjust the ice mana density and angle respectively.
Frigid Refraction - Adjusting ice and its cold temperatures to refract light, accuracy depends on Intelligence and Perception. Precision and accuracy of refracted and reflected light increases by 25% + 2.5% of Intelligence.
Consumes 600MP/Min
Classification: Ice Magic
It didn¡¯t make him invisible but it did make it such that he would be slightly illusory. He could be standing still and his figure was about a few centimetres away from his actual spot. The problem was that it was far too difficult to control where his fake figure would be and if he was on the move all his ¡®calculations¡¯ would go awry and the skill was impossible to use properly. His other Class skills hadn¡¯t had the chance to shine even considering the frequent and routine training with Ning Xin.
Battle Song lost effect. It was as if he forgot how to cast the spell, the vibrations of music didn¡¯t give him half as much of a buff as it used to.
Mana Vibration which was the manipulation type skill for sound magic evolved into Sheer Mana Vibration as he was able to bring out far more power and frequency with sound magic. The weird thing was the ¡®Sheer¡¯ usually correlates to a tier 2 resistance but the skill only gives a ¡®+1.0%¡¯ as with other manipulation-type skills.
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Chaotic Repulsive Membrane¡¯s base Intelligence effect increased from 120% to 200%, it refined twice against Ning Xin¡¯s gradual increase in spell use frequency. This spell was refined most times since he created the spell years ago. His increase in control over gravity mana had clearly made it easier to adjust the spell but he was not sure how to make the spell any better at the moment.
Guided Path had been so useful and underdeveloped that he didn¡¯t even have to put dedicated effort to improve due to his constant heavy experimentation. It was no longer a link of gravity mana between two entities but a stream of gravity mana between points in space. It was thanks to his increased control and familiarity with gravity mana. It did come with a greater mana consumption but it wasn¡¯t a problem.
Firm Path - Manipulate gravity to assist your movements, a stream of gravity mana is created between two or more points in space to propel or repel matter at 200% + 2.5% Intelligence.
Consumes 500MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
The bomb creation with Ning Xin was the reason for the improvement of Imperishable Frost Scales¡¯ resistance to collapsing inwards due to his new spell, Gravity Vortex which was self-explanatory.
Gravity Vortex - Completely separate an entity¡¯s gravity mana away from its body of mass. Separated gravity mana is guided into a vortex and flow is increased in the strength of pull by 100% + 2.5% of Intelligence per level.
Consumes MP
Classification: Gravity Magic
A single maximum strength bomb could take all his mana so he wasn¡¯t sure how much of it was consumed by Gravity Vortex and how much by compressing the shell of the bomb or adding the other effects such as imbuing Will to make the broken pieces burn.
Tremor Stomp - Infuse mana into a stomp that can be directed to penetrate into or spread apart within the target. Mana will embed itself upon contact into a stationary position and violently vibrate against each other. Mana embedding increases in strength by 150% + 2.5% Intelligence. Strength and speed of vibrations increased by 100% + 2.5% per level.
Tremor Stomp was his latest skill which was honestly pretty horrifying for his opponents. The embedding simply meant it was far harder for his opponents to remove his mana through whatever means they had. The Trolls used Vitality to shake off a lot of his magic but this spell was showing good effects even with its low level. He didn¡¯t have to ¡®stomp¡¯ on his target, his mana could travel through the ground and even the air if he dedicated mental effort to the attack.
Ebony would admit that they underestimated the Trolls by more than just a little. They were very close to the barriers and forced the Empire to go into close combat. Together with Ning Xin, they had built enough of a reputation that nobody would be dumb enough to prevent them from joining the battle. There was a new group of militia but no one of Commander Wil¡¯s fame to take the lead.
To summarise the situation, they were losing pretty badly.
In the past months, he returned to Arcta with Ning Xin once. The village was quiet as if they were completely unaffected. Koawe was unreachable and no reinforcements came after so long but only he was surprised. General Impes and the other Frost Elves seemingly expected Koawe to take a long time.
Village chief Orren and his party joined the artillery mages as well. As expected, they might not be great fighters but as spell casters, they had a presence greater than that of the Radiance Envoy. In terms of spell variety or power, they weren¡¯t even close to the light magic user but their staying power easily rivalled Ebony. It was quite shocking to him that every single one of them could replicate his feat of constant spell-casting for days on end.
Although they may or may not be mana meisters like him, it was clear that they had mana capacity skills within their Class. Their snow magic actually showed a much better result than ice magic so he wasn¡¯t able to skim much from them. Gauging from his own improvements, he guessed that they mostly had extremely refined tier 2 skills together with a couple of tier 3 skills. He had the upper hand in terms of spell power due to his insane mana compression but they were not too far behind. With his Fortification at work, he didn¡¯t need a brain to guess that these Frost Elves had tier 3 mana compression of some kind or perhaps it was just their racial trait and naturally dense and compressible mana. They didn¡¯t have to be a mana meister to get mana-related Fortifications either. That, or their skill level and refinement was very high.
If they were to battle, the Frost Elves wouldn¡¯t stand a chance but he could see how they were considered to be the dominant mages compared to other races on Elcra.
His opinion about the higher-ranked military Nobles was that they probably had a bunch of tier 3 skills with slightly more tier 2 ones. The biggest reason he would defeat them with ease was compressed augmentation. To begin with, just his leaking mana would be enough to give most of them a reason not to fight.
Inscripted Mana Moulding refined to a complete tier 2 and it strengthened Stalwart Endowment along with all the runic moulding he put on his Glacial Models and ice scales. He still wasn¡¯t able to copy Mark and use flames to form a stable rune but he was getting closer every day.
Inscripted Mana Moulding - Mould raw mana with or without any physical materials with mana manipulation. Weaving runic endeavours into or on your creations with increasing efficiency and accuracy. Increases familiarity with repeated mana pathways and their effectiveness by 120% + 2.5% per level. Increases fine control over mana by 100% + 2.5% per level.
He didn¡¯t have as much time with Stock Mana Compressive Chassis but he still managed to increase the base limit of 30% to 100%. It gave his Constitution an 11.55 times multiplier atop the Conditioning effect but the value was not reliable due to his Fortification for mana density and compressibility. It would drop drastically as his mana pool dipped as well.
Stalwart Endowment didn¡¯t get any refinements but it got stronger when Inscripted Mana Moulding got improved.
Before he ended his shifts as a spell caster he would overdraft his mana and he focused on trying to make his chassis recover faster so, the amount that he can draw out only increased from 25% to 50% but the recovery speed increased by a base of 100%.
Potent Mana Overdraft - Instantly draw out up to 50% + 0.25% of your mana pool¡¯s capacity by partially crushing your mana chassis with your Will. Mana Chassis mends from overdraft 100% + 2.5% faster at every level.
The compact and harsh training got his resistance going up, including Exhaustion and Blood Resistances evolutions. An unexpected upgrade was Mental Arithmetic to Calculated Hunch.
Calculated Hunch - Ability to perform arithmetic operations mentally. Complexity of arithmetics, speed and accuracy increases by 50% + 2.5% with Intelligence and skill level. Ability to accurately gauge the force of a movement, impact or attack through sheer instinct increases by 80% + 2.5% per level.
It might have been that he was used to calculating how much damage an attack would cause and the observation of numerous spells of different tiers and levels. It might have evolved due to the tests with Frigid Refraction. Since he doesn¡¯t exactly ¡®calculate¡¯ but guess, it was more of an estimation that now became pretty accurate. It was similar to Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition.
Sustained Optimum Condition was refined for an additional base 80%. It would probably see more improvement as the battle with the Trolls had devolved to a close combat.
Just like how Ning Xin had trouble with mana manipulation, Ebony had trouble with life force manipulation. He only just got a vague sense of it after his evolution to Master while she had been controlling it since she was a Journeyman. Getting more and more familiar with the odd energy only made it easier to work out the kinks and improve Preservation Bubble.
Preservation Bubble - Extension of your vitality a small distance outside your body to contain additional mana. Stability of vitality bubble is increased by 120% + 1.0% per level. Size of mana pool is increased by 50% + 1.0% per level.
Now, it was stable enough that he wouldn¡¯t lose the mana contained in the extension of life force just because his control slipped. He wanted a mana capacity skill for his last Profession Skill slot pretty badly but Ning Xin¡¯s skill just didn¡¯t click to him and even though the Frost Elves gave him tips and talked about their own, nothing he tried worked yet. All their methods only got him to compress his mana even more rather than expand his capacity.
Sustenance Regulation was a skill that he learnt from Ning Xin.
Sustenance Regulation (Passive) - Physiologically regulates the distribution of sustenance to the body. Sustenance is directed to the desired region 50% + 2.5% faster and more accurately. Muscles and fat can store a static 10% more energy while retaining the same mass and density.
He had to move life force around and he wasn¡¯t as proficient with it compared to her so he wasn¡¯t able to get it as refined as she did. She also only got the skill after she evolved because it wasn¡¯t easy but she had the tier 3 version in written form as well. It would require them to manipulate life force, stamina and mana but neither of them can manipulate stamina yet.
Ebony suspected that the skill can help reduce the duration that a body part was weakened if he had to regenerate it. His bodily regeneration was due to his mana chassis regenerating and the part regenerated would be in a heavily weakened state. Something the Trolls didn¡¯t have. If he could direct energy or life force to it, he may be able to speed up his recovery.
That wasn¡¯t even the best part. Sustained Optimum Condition was far from sufficient against Ning Xin nowadays. Extended spars meant that he would have no oxygen for a long time. His main use for Sustenance Regulation was that he could expel undesired gas from his body with more ease. He would store extremely compressed icy balls of air in his lungs and release compressed gas within them whenever he needed air. He originally believed that his high Constitution can handle nitrogen narcosis and other compressed gases to some extent but he forgot how good he was at compression. His new skill actually helped him expel unnecessary gases more effectively. He made it a habit to refresh his storage of air daily.
Finally, lightning manipulation. He had no spell for it but he was just getting used to it and wasn¡¯t exactly capable of moving the sparse lightning mana in the surroundings to form a decent spell. Especially when there were a few strong users of lightning magic that pulled away most of the atmospheric lightning mana.
Lightning Mana Manipulation - Ability to move and shape Lightning Elemental Mana at will using mana. Ability to manipulate Lightning Mana increases slightly per level.
Classification: Lightning Magic
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Consumed fire infused rossal tea. Strength and Vitality increased by 0.8% for approximately 1 hour.¡¯
¡°The tea is even better today,¡± Ebony commented on Ning Xin¡¯s new tea brewing. It extended to her cooking skills too and she was the only chef present that cooked food with buffs. As a self-created skill, it had mild effects. There were rumours that some restaurants in Tidal had chefs that provided food buffs that lasted an entire day and were more potent.
¡°Mmm, any negative effects today?¡± Her first successes usually came with debuffs as well. Instead of working on methods to increase the buffs or duration she was erasing the fact that there were debuffs.
¡°No, and can you pull your vitality back?¡± The weight on his shoulders was making him uncomfortable during tea time. Some months back, Ning Xin was irritated at her slow mana recovery which made her time as an artillery mage to be very short. Then she witnessed something that blew her mind. The shamans gathered the Troll¡¯s Vitality and made a barrier of life force. They showed off more than just barriers and had various spells that use life force instead of mana. Her blood compression had been going well and she could even conjure her own blood now. She could force out and produce vitality with her Core Skill at the cost of stamina and pushing her heart but that only pushed her Heart-related passive Class Skill.
¡°If you put away your liquid mana then, sure.¡± She countered while refilling his cup.
¡°Please don¡¯t push this vitality domain idea too far, other than density I don¡¯t think you should consume all your life force in such a way. You need to get your regeneration to increase first.¡± He would be worried even if her HP regeneration multiplied by a factor of ten. Her Core Skill was dangerous enough as it was, consuming life force was not unlike consuming lifespan. He didn¡¯t know enough but even if there wasn¡¯t a direct relation between life force and lifespan she told him that it probably decreased her life span.
¡°Hehe, Fortified Heart mutated into Transmutative Heart. I can convert stamina and mana into vitality with just a beat of my heart.¡± The red haired lady cheekily replied.
¡°...Mana too?¡± He knew that she went heavy on experimentation. Fortified Heart had already been refined before her mutation and gave her a base Vitality regeneration increase of a static 10%. If she continued to find a way to increase this base and fortify her Vitality regeneration or capacity it would only do her good. So far, it proved to be a great choice as her second Core Skill.
¡°Actually, sustenance too. My digestion rate has been getting faster and faster, so turning solid food into stamina barely takes fifteen minutes. I can speed up the absorption rate with a bit of life force and blood manipulation. I can absorb a nutrient-heavy soup stock as a potion and I can turn that into life force within two to three minutes currently.¡±
¡°All natural.¡±
¡°Of course, it''s food.¡±
¡°Can you turn life force back to mana or stamina?¡±
¡°I never tried to but I don¡¯t think so..mmm, yeah, I can¡¯t.¡±
She went silent for half a second and was confident that it was a one-way conversion. He was internally glad that she couldn¡¯t sacrifice health for some energy because if she could, she would definitely squeeze out every drop of power she could. To her, life force was her main power source so it actually didn¡¯t change the situation much.
Shamanic magic was interesting and also annoying to opponents. The reason the Trolls had such great numbers and even non-fighters not too far from their front lines was that those non-fighters were providing their life force. He learned that some of these Shamans offered life force to spirits for different kinds of effects. As for sensing the existence of spirits? He could feel their presence only if they were close but nothing he did could interact with them, not magic and definitely not physical touch. They weren¡¯t able to touch spirits so getting rid of them by attacking wasn¡¯t an option.
Ning Xin could ¡®feel¡¯ their existence but it was more vague than his senses and was probably just her Intuition at work.
The good thing was that these spirits wouldn¡¯t work if they didn¡¯t get paid. If they were to launch an attack they were easy to spot and not any different from spotting a mage¡¯s spell. Navin¡¯s barrier had many layers and a good portion of them were able to be fully deployed without blocking any physical or magical attacks. These were able to stop ¡®enemy¡¯ spirits from entering and leaving as they please, a sort of spiritual barrier.
As there were reported to be very few spirits under the Troll¡¯s employ, it wasn¡¯t the main use of Shamanic magic.
¡®Too bad we haven¡¯t fought any of them yet.¡¯ Half a month ago, the Empire set up another forward base to reduce taxation on the barrier. In the end, relying on the barrier was just waiting for it to be destroyed and most of their forces consisted of Warriors and Knights.
The two of them were part of a small group of people with authority like that of a special unit. They only needed permission from a General if they wanted to do something odd. Otherwise, they were free to move around the battlefield as long as they didn¡¯t disrupt the Knights¡¯ coordinated attacks. This was quite the trust that the higher-ups put in them. However, there were now 4 Minor Generals present and not all of them agreed with General Impes¡¯s decision. The main reason had been past examples of people with good escaping abilities that bit off more than they could chew, ran back into allied lines to save themselves at the cost of Imperial soldiers or even lost more ground.
The one at the top of the command chain wasn¡¯t General Impes but an older man that came from Second Tide just 3 days ago. The ¡®special unit¡¯ had a few of the militia that they separated from but came back to Fifth Tide. Old man Wil came back and took command of his Academy¡¯s students and graduates so he was part of an actual unit of the Empire. The one leading them was once again, Cap Dwarf. It had been nice to reunite with familiar faces. With Calculated Hunch, he was quite sure that neither of them could beat Cap Dwarf one-on-one but it was possible if they tagged teamed. The only problem was that Calculated Hunch was based on what he had seen while Ning Xin could get a better gauge without even knowing anything about a new opponent. So he might be wrong if Cap Dwarf had held back some of his capabilities.
Banly the swordsman didn¡¯t come back, he had his arm chewed off in battle. Fourth Tide didn¡¯t have a healer that could regenerate limbs but he didn¡¯t lose hope and made his way to Tidal. The Life Queen could easily heal him and she should still be in the Capital city to make sure the city was running smoothly. Surprisingly, he was accompanied by Channah, the lizard woman who felt responsible for his injury. Ebony didn¡¯t know the full story but he had enough information to make a guess. Either way, those two wouldn¡¯t have made the cut into this new team.
Ayla and the big guy Hayec also recently rejoined them. Athena had been here months ago, she joined the shooting training as an archer on the walls. It was safe and effective training after all. Mr Kidnapper didn¡¯t come back, Ebony would¡¯ve wanted more than just a word with him. There were many new faces as well. The old faces all grew much more powerful than he last saw them but Athena seemed to be the only one that came close to them in terms of growth speed. The only reason that would make it hard for Athena to spar with Ning Xin was the lack of oxygen and that she had little protection against the extreme heat.
The news that Walt, the Arcane Warrior died wasn¡¯t shocking but he gave a mental silent send-off for the man. The other piece of information that he found interesting was someone called ¡®Mongrel¡¯ that was making quite the name for himself at Fourth Tide¡¯s militia. It had been quite some time since he saw Chris but he was glad that the man didn¡¯t lose the ability to fight.
Ebony didn¡¯t have any complaints but most of the unit¡¯s members had been annoyed. He hadn¡¯t personally seen this General but he essentially put aside freelancer reinforcements completely. He did admire the man though, in just 3 days that he took over command they actually pushed the Trolls back a little. Although he did command the other Generals to out and fight instead of taking command, results were produced. It gave the less experienced Generals the chance to fight and also for them to observe him at work.
He heard that those of captain military rank and above had leadership types skills, many even had leader type Professions. ¡®General¡¯ was also a kind of Profession apparently, and this old man could buff an entire army with just his orders. His words were a strong mental suggestion and his orders will usually take precedence over orders from other Commanders or Generals. However, the skills don¡¯t really work that well on people that aren''t subordinate to him in some form. It was truly wondrous how some skills worked.
Ebony learned a bit more about these leader-type skills and classes only to find them to be pretty impressive at a high level. The most useful ability to him was that they could increase morale at low levels while different skills can even make followers increase in power from just a morale boost. That was to say, this old General could power an entire army up with just his words. No mana or any energy cost from him required. He could draw more strength out of the individuals under him just by giving orders or speeches. The most notable drawback was that these soldiers would get tired more easily or have a harder time recovering after their adrenaline rush was over. But there were other lower rank soldiers that could give morale buffs that increase stamina recovery in camp.
¡®No, it should require some form of energy. Maybe mental, like Will. or something else.¡¯ Ebony was clear that there had to be some kind of limit. Even if he had the mana, his Will can deplete. Even if he had stamina, his body might collapse. He had a very clear understanding of his current limits.
¡°Open up.¡± Ning Xin got dressed up in a nearby changing room. She started wearing the sportswear he made. They were made to be durable, flexible and comfortable. They didn¡¯t put their equipment on so that they could train their resistances more effectively.
One of the training barracks was occupied by them, he paid a premium daily rent of 6 Blues. It was a great source of mana for the city¡¯s defences and they had plenty of training grounds due to the border city being a military city. He still had the fortune Kong Jing won off him and 6 Blues could be charged within hours if he couldn¡¯t pay. This was a price that could get a decent house for a family of 4 in the Capital and they were charging him a daily rent. He let the others of his squad use the place too, there were plenty of empty rooms and beds.
The open field had a similar style and type of barriers as the ones under Quest Halls but they were a bit too weak. 500 metres squared of open field was completely encased in Imperishable Frost Scales as a makeshift arena. Part of his greatest gain was that his mana and sense could reach over 600 metres and it was still improving at a quick pace. Within 600 metres, he had absolute control over his spells.
He also learned that Glacial Model¡¯s increased range was due to the nature of Will and not mana. A Model within his range of 600 metres can still be healed, supplied with mana or manually controlled. Once the Model left his range, his only influence on them was Will. If he didn¡¯t have these Model¡¯s within his line of sight, he wouldn¡¯t know their exact situation. At best, he would know if they were fighting or taking damage. His connection with them would be cut off when they ran out of mana or were completely broken.
The training field¡¯s icy walls decompressed from its Will-reinforced form and reformed into a platoon of 50 Glacial Models. The runes on them curved and danced, transforming into Stalwart Endowment¡¯s arrangement. They moved and parked themselves along with the hundreds that formed up neatly outside their contained training ground.
He washed the jade tea set that she won for him as he sensed a familiar mana signature closing in on the barracks that they rented.
¡®Mark? Has it been six months? His aura is stronger but not by much. He carries himself more confidently, he must have gotten more benefits than a simple increase in strength. Sister Jing isn¡¯t with him or I can¡¯t sense her presence.¡¯ Ebony was confident that he was able to read a person¡¯s state more accurately now. He didn¡¯t think much of it before but being able to sense and identify someone else¡¯s state of mind and emotions was useful in many ways. Interacting with many people without Everlasting Tranquility all the time really widened his perspective.
Mark ran past the open gates of the training barracks along with a young knight that was his guide. These Journeyman soldiers worked as administrative labour, messengers and even logistics depending on the needs of the city. He twitched his ears for Ebony to silence their conversation before he even got to their table.
¡°Scarlet! Ebony! We forgot the deadline, Democlus¡¯s conducting an unknown ritual and he wants to use us as a sacrifice. Master Jing teleported me out but she never came out with me. Her space magic is limited even more than back then!¡± Mark spoke so fast that the soldier beside might not have understood even if Ebony didn¡¯t silence the area.
¡®So he would¡¯ve let them leave anytime before, why?¡¯ They never did understand Democlus and his odd motive but the new him started to think a bit more in terms of understanding others¡¯ thought process.
¡°Is she going to be fine?¡± Instead of overreacting, he asked Ning Xin who didn¡¯t react after hearing the news.
¡®Sister Jing isn¡¯t a fighter and Mr. Kidnapper was capable of escaping from her. Of course, that was due to Xin¡¯s situation but she¡¯s only been a Grandmaster for a short time. I don¡¯t even know what her Profession is, is space mage her Sub-Class or maybe even Profession? Then again, she has a literal army of Armour Dolls and tons of magical items I don¡¯t have any idea about.¡¯ Ebony realised that he didn¡¯t know much about this ¡®sister¡¯ of his. He looked at his two party members and wondered just how little he knew about them.
¡°She¡¯s only poor at using space magic on people safely.¡± Ning Xin emphasised heavily on ¡®safely¡¯, something he might not have noticed in the past.
¡°I¡¯ll call her.¡± She tapped her mask twice. Still worried after what she just said. Their mask¡¯s callstone should have a far better connection.
¡°Save me a portion of dinner.¡±
Ebony¡¯s sensitivity to vibrations was high enough to ¡®eavesdrop¡¯ on calls and her Mask didn¡¯t have the ability to hide it. He even ¡®heard¡¯ the reply from underground before the voice was transmitted to Ning Xin.
¡°She¡¯s fine.¡± Ning Xin was visibly relieved.
Ebony wanted to ask about Kong Jing but from the call, he knew she would be coming soon.
¡°So what do you need from us?¡± She switched topics and asked the nervous messenger. Mark wasn¡¯t affected by the essence in the vicinity, he must have gotten used to it as the underground tomb had pretty high mana densities. As for Vitality, Kong Jing still tops her younger cousin by a ridiculous degree. It was a wonder how the ¡®non-combatant¡¯ had such high excess health regeneration but she usually suppresses it.
He dispersed the thin overflowing mana as much as he could but the vitality remained. Fortunately, they sent a stronger messenger, most Journeymen wouldn¡¯t be able to remain standing within this barrack.
¡°Th--Miss, I¡¯m here to extend the request for your services. The General wants to reward the soldiers for pushing the Trolls back, we received three thousand live sheep and lambs so err¡the chefs need help to get them ready for tonight¡¯s banquet.¡±
¡°Live sheep and lambs? Are they for that famous Imperial mutton and peas? I¡¯ve always wanted that secret recipe.¡± Ning Xin dashed out to the main outdoor kitchen that she was very familiar with.
¡°That¡¯s a lot of live animals, how did they manage to transport them?¡± Mark asked, he must not have been updated on the situation.
¡°Most of them are bred within the farms in the city, they got some willing farmers and livestock breeders to move from the 3 Great Farms.¡± The soldier was instantly relieved once the scary chef left.
¡°I see.¡± Mark nodded in understanding, he must be thinking about how much those farmers were getting paid for coming to a danger zone.
¡®Those high level farmers and breeders are impressive. They can speed up the growth of plants and animals to the degree that the city could almost sustain millions of soldiers'' food intake. I should visit the 3 Great Farms with Xin one day.¡¯ The city already didn¡¯t fully depend on supply intake for their increase in manpower. From his understanding, less than ten farmers and breeders came over. They took a lot of land but the city seemed to have planned for that in advance and about 40% of the land was put aside for them.
¡°Anything else?¡± Ebony asked the soldier who hadn''t left.
¡°The next batch of metal ingots have arrived and are placed at warehouse 3.¡± He replied and passed on the message from his superiors.
¡°Mmm. I¡¯ll get to it soon.¡± Ebony had been making rings for them as well. He had some trouble at first as Imperial armour got in the way due to the weird mana flow they had. It had some form of general magic resistance and gravity didn¡¯t work well. Perhaps the function was for some dungeons that had a stronger gravitational pull. He changed the effects to one that the Knights preferred, activating the ¡®Ring of Frost¡¯ would imbue ice mana into their weapons. It was simple but effective against their regenerative foes. The only problem was that their weapons would lose durability and maybe even shatter as they battled so they didn¡¯t dare to use it too much. They rather use the ice mana to shoot a focused blast of cold air onto the wounds they inflicted.
¡®I can¡¯t believe no one told me a crafter gets experience when items they make contributed to a kill. Even if it¡¯s to an extremely small degree.¡¯ He was unsure if it was common knowledge or not but the contracts or desire to have a good user made sense for the smiths and crafters.
¡°So, what have you discovered?¡± He hoped Mark would share his research materials. If not, he didn¡¯t doubt the man still required funding.
Chapter 195: Suicide Puppets
¡®Ugh, it''s getting warm. Resistances are weird.¡¯ The fire mage and chef complained about the weird way resistances worked.
Winter was coming to an end and the temperature was gradually rising. Ning Xin continued to compress her blood and her body temperature already dropped below Ebony¡¯s. According to him, if a normal human was 36 he was 22 and she dropped below 18 recently. She liked his measurements and adopted them for her cooking and incorporated a value for cooking temperatures in her recipes. It took some time to experiment and learn but they got it down without too much trouble. Most recipes use ¡®low, medium and high heat¡¯ without any reference so it did make experimenting easier.
Heat resistance made one capable of withstanding more heat, it didn¡¯t take away their perception of heat. If anything, they were only getting more perceptive to temperature as their Perception increased. She always had trouble sleeping because her body heats up with her old Core Skill. The change and evolution of her Core Skill removed this problem but the change in her physique which made her blood harder to heat up caused her natural body temperature to drop. She thought compressing her blood would warm her up but it only increased the amount of energy it took to heat herself up.
She put the sheep down as quickly and painlessly as possible before skinning them. Draining them didn¡¯t take long with her magic. The army collected blood for their alchemists but they wouldn¡¯t find out even if she took half of some animals¡¯ blood. They cared more about monster blood, animal blood was used more in food than potions.
¡°Wash these.¡± She told some of the assistant chefs. The older chefs took her as a peer but the younger assistants were still nervous around her. She contained her overflowing Vitality so she didn¡¯t understand why they always moved so stiffly around her. Thousands of sheep took hours even for her. It was great that most of the older chefs share her passion and high standards for quality and hygiene.
¡°Hmph! Young lady, you can¡¯t share this recipe with anyone alright?!¡± The bearded head imperial chef got less haughty with her after months of cooking challenges. She¡¯d say she got more than half his skill in terms of keeping the standard consistent for copious amounts of food but she won in terms of how delicious her dishes were. Except for this mutton and peas meal which had been compared against by every soldier who ate her meals.
She ate it once and had to admit that it was more perfect than any dish she could make with mutton. She couldn¡¯t sniff out every ingredient even with her nose. The ingredients were blended really well, the mutton was tender and the peas soaked up plenty of flavour. She could do that. The sauce had to be what she was missing.
¡®As expected from full-time chefs¡¡¯ They might not be as fluent or swift in dismantling animals and monsters but these elderly people had steady and accurate hands. Their control of heat, ingredients and especially timing was something to be admired. An area she was more lacking was the eye for ingredients¡¯ condition. The same vegetables should be treated individually and separately, careful observations were needed to bring the best out of each and every ingredient.
Ning Xin¡¯s nose twitched in annoyance when there was a foul smoky odour. The slaughtering was done outdoors but they had a massive indoor kitchen way larger than the training barracks she used with the others. They needed to feed a literal million people and there were more than a handful of military and civilian kitchens around the city. This particular kitchen was nearer to the cliff and surrounded by knights and soldiers¡¯ residences.
The cats and dogs that stayed outside and were fed by the chefs were making a lot of noise. Although safety shouldn¡¯t be that big of an issue, she couldn¡¯t be sure their giant enemies didn¡¯t find some way to get up the cliff and past the walls.
Ning Xin washed her hands, took her apron off and dashed off to where she placed her mantle. She was wearing comfortable clothes not fit for battle and had enough decency of putting her sweaty and grimy mantle outside the kitchen. She wasn¡¯t so careless as to leave her weapons apart from her and she always had her bodysuit on. What clothes she wore didn''t really matter to her now, they burned to ashes if she got serious. Her bodysuit and mantle were usually the only thing on her during battles.
The ground shook violently. Many kitchen utensils fell onto the grounds but the chefs quickly got a hold of the pots and pans. Most of them started to panic and it only intensified when a young assistant screamed during the second tremor that lasted even longer.
¡°Hold onto your pots tight! We¡¯re chefs! Shame on us for allowing a dish to be unfinished!¡± Ning Xin was about to reassure them before the head chef beat her to it. ¡®That was a bit dramatic when no one started cooking but he¡¯s a great ch¡they¡¯re really here!¡¯ The mark on her arm numbed her a little, it meant that there really was a Troll nearby.
The world slowed down as her concentration spiked, a nifty effect of her mental acceleration being brought to greater heights. ¡®Come.¡¯ All the fire in the kitchen was dragged towards her, she used it to light her mantle to warm her up. Truly, she didn¡¯t understand how her body didn¡¯t feel uncomfortably hot now. ¡®What a mystery. Anyway, it¡¯s good that they only started boiling water. The dish wouldn¡¯t be ruined.¡¯
No doubt, the fires were lukewarm but it saved her some energy. She wouldn¡¯t take in external mana to enhance herself. Since she had the leeway, she picked dropping utensils out of the air and righted the pots and pans for the whole kitchen before moving back to the entrance. Having to move slowly so that she didn¡¯t knock anything over was quite a bother.
¡®My concentration spike can last more than 11 seconds now?¡¯ She made use of this ¡®bullet time¡¯ to get a grasp of the situation outside. She already directed mana to her callstone to Ebony but that was moving slowly, it would only connect in a few seconds. Not the ¡®seconds¡¯ that she perceived but actual seconds.
The look of shock on the guards'' faces told her that it was not a friendly spar between Commanders or Generals but she already knew that. The surroundings were clear and that relieved her a fair bit. At least the Trolls weren¡¯t in such close proximity.
The world sped up again.
¡°Tell the cooks to focus on butchering the sheep for now. I¡¯ll make sure they aren¡¯t disrupted.¡± Ning Xin spooked the soldiers that were peeking into the kitchen.
¡°How did yo-!¡± He was quite good at acting cute by shutting his own mouth with his hands.
The flexible hair tie that Ebony called a ¡®scrunchie¡¯ burned and her hair unravelled. ¡®He needs to make these more resistant to heat and fire¡¡¯ she lamented the loss of a nice hair tie. She followed the nasty scent and found herself making her way towards the wall.
¡®That¡¯s¡ tribeless hunters? Where¡¯s mine?¡¯ Ning Xin recognised the Trolls that crashed onto the wall. All those who were marked had specialised squads that countered each other. The Trolls must have gotten the Slingarm Tribe who threw Trolls onto the mainland here. She heard the Slingarm Tribe were few and concentrated at Third Tide, they must have spent weeks to travel here. The link of vitality must be from the Shamans and these Hunters were regenerating at breakneck speeds to take down marked individuals.
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t sure about the sequence of events but no Troll had been successfully hurled onto the mainland for the past months. The reason had to be the corrosion cloud in the sky above the battlefield and right at the walls. It must have cost them thousands of Trolls¡¯ Vitality to keep these Hunters alive as they flew across the skies and smashed into the walls. The corrosion cloud really helped the Imperials as well as the citizens didn¡¯t have to worry about stray rocks dropping on them. It still benefited the Trolls more as the Imperials had greater long-range capabilities that were made useless with the presence of the cloud.
She realised that she shouldn¡¯t be looking for opponents that specifically countered her right now. Some soldiers were squashed to paste by these hunters and they didn¡¯t have the Trolls'' regeneration, they were dead. Her Intuition stopped her feet for a moment but she didn¡¯t change targets.
¡®450?¡¯ The stronger and sharper her Intuition, the more she understood that the Imperial Generals were not people she could face directly yet. All the more reason for her to stop these Hunters that were still in decent physical shape. They were enveloped with such thick and visible Vitality that most of them retained their skeletal forms with only their flesh melted.
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¡°I need you here, fast! Get everyone.¡± Ning Xin felt the short distance call connect but she already leapt to stab at the head of the strongest tribeless. She might be wrong about them being ¡®General¡¯ Hunters as there was only one of them that she felt was above her own strength.
She was too swift for the injured Hunter to react but her sword barely pierced through the red layer of condensed life force and was stopped by his skull. If only Ebony was here, he could cast his sonic vibrations on her swords. Staying near him also increases her mana regeneration and she could really use that right now. Her mana pool was about 20% full after her daily training, a safety precaution she was glad to have taken.
¡®Sorry about this.¡¯ She apologised to the dead guards on the walls and struck her surroundings with lightning. Her storage of blood escaped her mantle and reformed into halos but she couldn¡¯t multicast as well as Ebony and she only got to the level of using Will with fire magic relatively poorly. She needed to prioritise buying time and she grew out of her impatience a little. Rather than pick a fight with the strongest Troll, she knew she had to interrupt all 12 or so Trolls within her reach. The city didn¡¯t have many strong defenders with the current aggressive push on the frontlines. ¡®Is that why that old man kept us back here?¡¯
There was nothing she could do to those out of her reach. The remaining guards would have to do their best for a minute or two.
Ning Xin could feel and even see the link of Vitality but she couldn¡¯t cut it. The red gas-like thread would simply flow along. The Troll she attacked only spared her a glare with half-regenerated eyeballs before it slapped her blade aside. They were temporarily stunned by lightning with blood halos sawing at their bodies and keeping their half-melted bodies together. The best she could do was to bundle a few together as she physically contested one Troll.
¡®My body¡¯s still sore¡¡¯ They trained harder than usual because they weren¡¯t at the frontlines and the Imperials pushed the Trolls back further. The Hunter¡¯s limbs were healed but it didn¡¯t have a weapon or even any clothes on. They fashioned weapons and armour from materialised life force and completely ignored her attempts to kill them. Her target passively defended and tried to escape and jump down the wall, into the city.
¡®They aren¡¯t hunters, they are going for the warehouse and kitchens!¡¯ She should¡¯ve realised much earlier, further to both her left and right were Trolls that already pulled their bodies off the wall. The foul smoky odour was from a few burning bodies, probably a guard who could use fire magic and who acted fast. But these guards couldn¡¯t stop the path of the incoming Trolls. If they were lucky they might have dodged but the burning bodies were forcefully healed by an injection of Vitality. They made use of the fire on the bodies to set fire to whatever buildings they could get to.
She didn¡¯t dare to get distracted but even if the buildings were made of stone they just had to punch the buildings down. ¡®How dare they go after the food!¡¯
The echoes of screams reached her but not before the sounds of combat. The militia arrived!
Other soldiers contacted their superiors as well so they just had to minimise the damage and remove the interlopers. She couldn¡¯t use many of her skills without causing more destruction so she had really hoped Ebony would hurry and set his domain to protect the structures. A downward slash in her enhanced state would cause the stone floor to collapse from the strength she put in her feet. Flimsy.
Her body got lighter and she instinctively changed the strength she put into her movements, some magical resistance could be switched off as easily as holding one¡¯s breath. Space and gravity resistance were those that she had more control over.
The Troll didn¡¯t even notice his feet freezing as it was more bothered about the condensed life force being penetrated. His exaggerated motions to break free and jump down the wall only increased the vibrational feedback.
And she was part of his domain. Any wounds she opened would burst into a mixture of flames, icy blue flames that dug into the body and dark red flames that incinerated the flesh. Even just one of them could stop these Troll¡¯s regeneration, not to mention both together. The influx of Vitality wasn¡¯t weaved into the usual complex layer which really weakened the defences that this warrior should have been able to summon.
¡°Gar da!¡± She didn¡¯t expect the Troll to power through the vibrations and swiped his arm at her. In the midst of her barrage of attacks, she couldn¡¯t dodge the giant arm and had to block with her blades instead. Ebony already stood before her but her arms pushed forward to meet the red arm with her swords. Both of them skid back but they successfully guarded against the attack.
¡°He doesn¡¯t speak Elcrain?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°A lot of them don¡¯t speak the same language. Is that really important right now?¡±
¡°It¡¯s important, but maybe not right now.¡± They prevented the Trolls from getting past the wall. It would have been a tough fight if the Troll had a weapon or if it even tried to fight but all it did was swing at them in panic.
Seeing that, she got Ebony to go after the others that got into the city. She could handle an opponent that wasn¡¯t even trying to fight.
¡°My models are handling them. You don¡¯t have much mana left.¡±
The Troll gave up on getting into the city and started making its way towards any cannon or ballistae it saw. With Ebony around, it was extremely hard for any target to move. The Vitality-wrapped Troll was very dependent on the long-ranged protection it was receiving.
¡°None of them are keen on fighting directly. Hard to believe they are Hunters.¡±
¡°Can you focus?¡±
¡°I¡¯m trying to distract you from the fact that they disrupted your mutton and peas learning.¡±
¡°Distract? You reminded me¡I¡¯m not that angry, we haven¡¯t started cooking.¡±
They were not able to kill the Troll and she could tell Ebony only tried to contain their invader rather than kill. He probably didn¡¯t want to kill the Troll that didn¡¯t have any killing intent.
Cap Dwarf rode his earthen serpent that had a belly full of Trolls. Ning Xin noticed the link of Vitality to the others was already cut off and just moments later, their helpless opponent was abandoned as well. The source of Vitality being cut off actually made the Troll calm down and put up a better fight but the Troll was at a loss without a weapon and Cap Dwarf was here as backup.
¡°I think they are remotely controlled by their Shamans, what a waste of their warriors¡¯ talent.¡± Cap Dwarf lamented as he trapped the last Troll into his serpent.
¡°What are you going to do with them?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll pass them to the army. They won¡¯t work as prisoners but they might have valuable information. If not, they would likely be executed by some level 300 Master.¡±
¡°Hey! I haven¡¯t gotten a Natural Potential increase from a 450, give that one to me!¡± One of the militia¡¯s men yelled.
Ning Xin and Ebony actually only got up to 425 as well but she frowned at the casual talks about executing the Troll for Natural Potential. She had no qualms killing the Trolls but she wanted it to be an actual battle. Ebony would agree but the difference between them was that he still wouldn¡¯t kill unless their opponent had killing intent towards them. She would hunt animals and monsters for food whether or not they had killing intent towards her. She did see the Trolls as people like he did and she didn¡¯t take them as food.
She knew Ebony had changed a tiny bit over the past few months. For example, his attitude towards who he calls ¡®Mr kidnapper¡¯. To her, it was a positive change. If that halberd user didn¡¯t think that she was a Xeng, there was no doubt he would¡¯ve just killed her. He had just been talking to himself when he realised that and he was no longer as passive towards that man now. He was talking to himself more frequently and she didn¡¯t cut into his thoughts.
The situation changed as the Trolls within the earthen serpent''s belly were spewing killing intent now that they weren¡¯t under their Shamans¡¯ influence. In any case, they wouldn¡¯t be spared.
Some Commander she didn¡¯t recognise got here and took the Trolls away with Cap Dwarf¡¯s help. As expected, the army¡¯s reaction was slow, it took them almost 3 minutes to get here. It wasn¡¯t that surprising with the size of the city but it was quite disappointing even if most of the soldiers were out front.
They left the talks to Cap Dwarf. Ebony guarded the wall with a few soldiers that got redeployed just in case any more Trolls were sent flying towards them. Mark had helped and he also remained on the wall to chat with Ebony.
Ning Xin scanned the city. Major food warehouses and kitchens were targeted. The loss was small but damage was damage. She didn¡¯t know the location of every warehouse or army kitchen but she could sniff out the mixture of ingredients with dirt.
She stopped outside the kitchen she came from when she remembered she had blood and fat on her. The blood can be stored in her mantle but she was still unclean.
¡°There¡¯s no problem. I¡¯ll be back after I get cleaned up. You can start cooking.¡± She really wanted to see every step but she wouldn¡¯t delay them any further. She knew the feeling of hunger after a hard day of training and the soldiers aren¡¯t exactly fed a lot.
She turned a bit moody as her Intuition and gut feeling told her that the mutton and peas tonight would be the last good meal for a while.
¡®That mutton and peas better be delicious.¡¯
Chapter 196: Obvious Flaw
¡°You¡¯ve made significant improvements to the Stalwart Endowment?¡± Ebony noted the runes on Mark¡¯s body.
¡°I needed more time but I did achieve what you wanted.¡± Mark wiped his spear down.
Ebony couldn¡¯t help but feel uncomfortable at the sight of the spear in Mark¡¯s hands. ¡°You don¡¯t have the talent to hold a spear.¡± The sentence continued to repeat itself in his head. Turning Everlasting Tranquillity off and asking himself questions had caused older memories to surface. His mother¡¯s words struck deep, she had been ¡®excited¡¯ to see him hold a spear but he was only allowed to train with the spear for a week before she gave up teaching him her techniques. He knew that she would¡¯ve given up much earlier if he wasn¡¯t her son. The disappointment in her eyes bore into his youthful self because he could never really tell from her usual dead facial expressions and it highlighted her saddened look.
He shook his head to put the thought aside and listened to Mark¡¯s gains. The updated full-body rune should no longer require ice elemental mana and just pure mana that anyone could feed. Rather than defence or durability the version Mark was using buffed basically every physical aspect with a focus on durability. It was supposedly cost effective but it would still cost more mana than the current Stalwart Endowment he was using due to functions he had to power. The runic language wasn¡¯t completely deciphered but in general, it was more complicated with a lot of focus on configurations for humanoid shapes and blockish structures such as buildings.
¡°So what¡¯s up with Democlus?¡± He asked.
¡°I actually have no idea, we¡¯ll have to hear from Master Jing.¡± Mark shrugged, he had calmed down after hearing Kong Jing¡¯s voice.
¡°Only if she doesn¡¯t brush the incident away.¡± Ebony knew that Kong Jing wasn¡¯t that talkative when it came to small incidents.
¡°Can she fight?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know her capabilities in that regard but she can handle herself.¡± Ebony would¡¯ve liked to know the answer himself.
There wasn¡¯t any attack or incoming Troll for the next few hours and another group of archers had long taken post. If the Slingarm Tribe were to hurl any attacks it would hit the barrier layered over the wall. Only living beings connected to their Vitality thread could come from above the cloud of corrosion. The army up front should¡¯ve found a way to stop the hurlers as well.
The scent of spices wafted through the city. They made their way back to the camp he rented knowing that Ning Xin would deliver dinner to everyone.
According to the latest news Cap Dwarf brought. Multiple towns on the mainland had encountered monster hoard attacks just a week or two ago. It wasn¡¯t that surprising as many dungeons weren¡¯t being cleared as often. However, towns didn¡¯t have a dungeon within their walls. Dungeon creatures start dying the moment they leave their home. Most dungeons weren¡¯t intelligent, they shouldn¡¯t be aware of the landscape outside their own grounds. Two or three occasions weren¡¯t surprising since towns were usually situated relatively near a dungeon but there were far more incidents than that. The organisation Lure was the main suspect at the moment.
Cap Dwarf¡¯s personal theory was that even the Troll¡¯s aggressive and united invasion was Lure¡¯s work. It was a popular belief amongst the soldiers and the public. The high ranking nobles or military probably knew if that was true or not, but it wasn¡¯t made public.
Ebony¡¯s callstone rang.
He picked it up without another moment of delay.
¡°Ebony, this is Koawe. I¡¯ll be coming over tomorrow, are you still at Fifth Tide?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Alright see you.¡±
¡®That was a short message. Well, as long as he¡¯s fine. He should¡¯ve gotten back up from their second village. I have to watch and learn.¡¯ Ebony felt that his repertoire of ice magic was lacking. All he did was make a shield, spike/sword, spread it as mist and such. The same could be said for his freezing flames. To be fair, he liked it simple and it was easier to apply. Of course, he mixed up application with sound and gravity magic so he was only limited by imagination.
Putting his repertoire of ice magic aside, something felt amiss from his skill set in general and he couldn¡¯t figure out what it was. If it was combat, he felt like he already developed his fighting style that utilises every bit of his capabilities to the limit. As for skills unrelated to combat, be it a hobby or a general lifestyle skill he had what he wanted and needed. Hence, he could never figure out what was amiss.
If he had to point out what he was working on it was the recovery of his Battle Song, a creation of a new Sound spell to replicate the roar that he hears every time he dreams and the undirected refinement of his Physique. He was at a loss when it came to the refinement of his Physique. What was he supposed to do to make his Physique do what it did but better? Did he need more sap from Ful? Meld his physical body with his mana chassis more?
¡®I don¡¯t really want to make myself more of a mana being¡¡¯ The current effects of his Physique had served him well to date. ¡®25% of your Mana Regeneration also regenerates your Health. Natural resistance to cold is increased by 50%. Natural resistance to heat decreased by 30%. Reduced physical needs of sustenance and sleep.¡¯ In hindsight, the functions were far less than Ning Xin¡¯s current Physique. She refined it much easier than he did but there was no reference to learn from due to the lack of similarities between their Physiques.
The most dire problem on his mind was that he had 2 less 250% Fortifications because of his initial Classing to journeyman. Ning Xin did not have any knowledge regarding the method to recover or gain the disadvantage but she did hear that it was possible from the King-ranked Fisher when she was young. Kong Jing was more well-read so he had to ask her as soon as possible. Even if it wasn¡¯t directly related to crafting it seemed to be within the scope of what she would learn about.
They¡¯ve got to level 300 in a relatively short timespan and their skill level wasn¡¯t compromised that much due to having good opponents. Their skills could still use some refinements or evolutions but that wasn¡¯t that much of an issue. Those won¡¯t affect the quality of evolutions.
When it came to Natural Potential, the pattern remained the same. Every 10 levels above a ¡®max-level¡¯ induces 1 notification that marks an increase. This only repeated 10 times or 100 levels above ¡®max-level¡¯, for a Master that meant a creature at level 400. After 100 levels, the gap increased to every 25 levels for a single Natural Potential inducement. This is also repeated 10 times or 250 levels on top of the 100 levels from the first 10 inducements.
Ebony and Ning Xin had killed some Trolls above 425 but under 450. They could easily find a weaker monster at a higher level. Now that the power gap increased, it meant that it was easy to find a weak but high-level creature. Especially due to the fact that Elcra was in a state that could accommodate their growth. More advanced habitats such as Hoarfrost Glades, Fragadal¡¯s Sea or even Vermin Paradise might have stronger creatures but weak creatures were more abundant. They didn¡¯t have to worry about finding wild monsters that ranged from level 500 - 750 since there were a few dungeons with these monsters.
High-ranking nobles¡¯ main duty was to keep these dungeons in check. Not to say they had to clear these dungeons, there were no towns or cities near such dungeons. Abandoned dungeons like these were just extremely far from civilization so even if a dungeon break were to occur, there would be few casualties. Except for the fact that Tidal had these dungeons smack dab within the city. It wasn¡¯t that big of an issue either, if no one entered the dungeon it would take an extremely long time for it to gain essence much less enough to overflow. People just had to stop wild monsters from entering as dungeons could drain monsters¡¯ overflowing essence similarly. There was a good chance dungeon monsters wouldn¡¯t attack wild creatures either.
It was questionable whether he could currently take on a level 650 monster but after 20 total inducements of Natural Potential, it wasn¡¯t the end. It was common knowledge to the Xengs that next came 50-level gaps. She was unsure how many people got how far in this stage but it was easy to predict this stretched out for 10 times as well or a 500-level difference which in reality is 100 + 250 + (1 to 10 x 50). They were very unlikely going to get up to that point. Perhaps when they maxed out at Grandmaster and the power gap got even wider. If they ever got to that stage they needed to worry about finding monsters at the required level.
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Ning Xin had two of his Glacial Models pull a cart full of food for their unit. They wouldn¡¯t dare to delay running out even if they weren¡¯t hungry. When their unit was reformed, two of the additions to the unit didn¡¯t finish their food and even swung their plates to the ground. They might have been drunk but no one appreciated the wastage of precious food. They were staked onto the training ground walls for an entire night. Although the red hair chef was the first one to react it was Athena that staked them onto the walls. They were healed and sobered up the next day but they couldn¡¯t take it lying down. Ebony had been moon gazing while he meditated when these two sneaked into the ladies'' dorm in the middle of the night. He was a fool but not too stupid to recognise that they didn¡¯t have good intentions. He just didn¡¯t expect that Athena had a similar skill that allowed her to react to danger while she was asleep or unconscious.
To join their unit called for a certain level of strength and both men survived but they never showed themselves anymore. In all likelihood, they went to Fourth Tide or back to their freelancing. Of course, Ebony knew that there was a good chance they went to Tidal as one had their shoulders blasted off and the other lost his manhood. The healers here couldn¡¯t regenerate body parts and he was not sure if anyone could help them with the exception of the Life Queen.
That particular building was still untouched as the ladies changed residence to another empty block.
Their group of about 30 or so people were a prideful bunch. There was some sort of unspoken hierarchy in place that Ebony would never have noticed in the past. In the past, he wouldn¡¯t care or even notice if a person was prideful but he had to say that there were people that did not bode well with him. All the new faces were Grandmasters and amongst the old faces only Ayla, Hayec and a Dwarf called Tyrese were Masters. He never really talked to Tyrese before and it stayed that way. They weren¡¯t on the bottom of the barrel in spars though, they could beat a handful of Grandmasters and were around the middle of the group.
Spars with Ayla had let him understand some differences between shadow and darkness magic as she used both. Shadow magic was more limited but she could conjure both shadow and darkness so some limitations disappear. Non-conjurers will have to use existing shadows or the absence of light to cast their spells. Darkness was more than just the absence of light, it had the natural ability to conceal or hinder most other senses. She used darkness magic against him more because the element had the natural ability to blind sight, mana sense and even a bit of his gravitational sense. Gravitational sense was likely interrupted because darkness mana actively robs all forms of sensation including his hearing and sense of smell.
If her darkness magic were any stronger, it could probably rob his sense of touch but that was just a guess. With Everlasting Tranquillity and Slumber Survival Instincts, his body can still evade and block her attacks. At first, he was always hit by shadow magic that cut through his repulsion membrane like air but his body started to ¡®feel¡¯ her attack patterns and dodge. He was still getting hit but it was reducing in frequency as they spar. This was only when his domain was down but his domain didn¡¯t strengthen his senses by much, it increased his defence so that she couldn¡¯t harm him no matter what she used. He also didn¡¯t need to care about where she is as his entire domain was a range where his spell hits. She actually couldn¡¯t do a thing once he cast his domain so it defeated the purpose of a spar and it would take far longer to get the resistances.
That aside, they didn¡¯t wait for Kong Jing and started chowing down. A single scale of ice was formed in the shape of a mask and he cast Frigid Refraction on it, covering Ning Xin¡¯s lips as she ate at the table. She actually didn¡¯t really care much anymore but it wasn¡¯t that inconvenient for him.
They didn¡¯t really eat fast as they savoured the delectable mutton and soft flavourful peas. Kong Jing didn¡¯t appear even after dinner and the nightly duels. It was late at night when Ning Xin called her again but there was no reply. She got worried but ultimately trusted that her cousin would be fine.
There were plenty of wild cats and dogs in the city. They were all scared away by the overflowing essence but they followed Ning Xin from the kitchen around due to the heavy scent of food on her. After a few weeks of prowling outside the camp, they finally got the courage to enter and play with the inhabitants. The cats weren¡¯t as wary and cuddled up to people regardless of aura. A fat orange tabby took a liking to Ning Xin and rubbed itself on her, keeping her occupied.
Ebony listened to Mark''s lecture about the practical applications of runes and how runes are studied. He wanted to learn how to create better runes, not just depend on skill efficiency. Only after the third hour during midnight did Kong Jing show herself.
¡°What took you so long, she was worried.¡±The others were all asleep so he brought out the meal they saved her.
¡°I investigated that giant gravestone. The ritual was a worthless piece of crap but the runes on that stone are impressively confusing. It took some time to memorise everything.¡± She started eating without delay. Knowing her, this was her first meal in days.
¡°What does that ritual do?¡± The Shield King acted weird so he was curious all this while.
¡°I¡¯m not certain but it uses 600 lives to empower a single entity. I¡¯m guessing the empowerment has to do with Physique, lifespan and maybe even Natural Potential. Mostly physique and lifespan, I don¡¯t think these runes can help collate the Natural Potential of weaker creatures.¡±
¡°Why was he so nonchalant about us leaving at first?¡±
¡°Some horsecrap about fate. He got greedy. I had to toss 599 people in a bigger city.¡±
¡°I thought you¡¯re not good at moving people.¡±
¡°Why¡¯d you think I took so long?¡±
¡°I was expecting you to use the ritual for yourself.¡±
¡°Kahaha! You know me well, but who wants 600 trash to be part of themselves? Not me.¡±
There was no need for him to ask about the missing one, Democlus was probably dead by now.
¡°I¡¯m sleepy, where¡¯s Xin?¡±
Ebony pointed to the female dorm, the space mage can find the exact room by herself. He wasn¡¯t in such a rush as to disrupt her sleep to ask some questions.
About an hour or two later, people started waking up to train. Ning Xin groggily went to the kitchen again. This camp¡¯s kitchen didn¡¯t have ingredients. Their daily training would start after their meals. He watched Mark do practice thrusts and swings but he couldn''t bear to see it for long. As horrible as the technique was, he could tell that Mark¡¯s movements were polished.
Ebony hopped in and kicked the spear at the area he felt was wobbly. He meant to show Mark the openings and help adjust his position but the man thought he was here for a spar. Since he didn¡¯t say a word and he wasn¡¯t really a spear user there was nothing he could say. Ning Xin would pick it up instantly so he forgot that she was the anomaly. He continued to kick Mark¡¯s spear, hips and shoulders but the man didn¡¯t learn or show noticeable improvements after an hour.
¡°Why don¡¯t you be a fu-...so that¡¯s what I¡¯m missing. Keep going.¡± Ebony was about to ask Mark to be a full-time runic mage when he finally noticed the most obvious flaw of his. He drew Icicle out and tested his proficiency against Mark. They didn¡¯t have any enhancements cast and just exchanged blows. Consciously forcing himself not to use footwork or preemptive evasions to see the true capabilities he had with a greatsword. It was horrendous.
He beat Mark but he wasn¡¯t that proud of it. Spears beat swords in terms of range and flexibility, Icicle was longer than the average sword but it was still shorter than a spear. It¡¯s said that it takes a far more skilled swordsman to beat a relatively average spearman but that was hard to say when an array of skills were at play. If Mark¡¯s spearmanship wasn¡¯t so terrible there was no way he could¡¯ve won. He could see where the strikes were going long before it struck out and it was easy for him to place Icicle in advance.
Sheer battle instincts, footwork, prediction and position had been the methods that he used to close the gap against practically anyone. He was so good with those that he never really improved his technique. There was no reason to, he could rival the genius Swordswoman with a ¡®clumsy¡¯ greatsword technique. That wasn¡¯t true for a long time, he had just depended on his domain to fend off her endless ferocious strikes or slow her down. It might work overall but it only made him forget about working on his weakest area. These days, he went back to kicking and punching with Sonic Intrusion and petals of fire. Icicle was used as a thrown projectile and bore the weight of his mana and spells.
Icicle changed quite a bit. Physically, its weight was at least 2 tons even when empty. It was useful as it contained more gravity mana but it was a negligible difference. As a reference, Ning Xin¡¯s twin swords were around 30 kg each at best, their weight barely changing even though they consumed blood. Icicle repairs itself far faster than before, likely due to the nature of the mana it was consuming. As for the spirit, he couldn¡¯t tell if it was growing or not. For one, the sword wasn¡¯t moving by itself but it could conceal its runic glow when it was ¡®asleep¡¯. Its glow would pulse softly while resting and brighten when fighting. All without any input from Ebony.
Scorchie and Scorchy could ring, vibrate and even shake their entire body scabbard included. That was all they could do and they don¡¯t move often so it would probably take far longer than he imagined.
They had plain pancakes with sugar for breakfast. Honey wasn¡¯t available in large quantities. It was a weird combination for him. He had to introduce maple syrup at some point. It wasn¡¯t as if there weren''t any maple trees. There were also fruits but not everyone ate them so more for them. Personal stock of rations was rarely dipped into so they were usually hungry right after their conditioning.
¡°Ywahh!¡± Kong Jing came out yawning and summoned herself a portion of pancakes from the stacked boxes with pancakes in them. He sensed someone¡¯s stacked pancakes getting shorter as the space mage¡¯s plate got another pancake but no one else seemed to notice. The pancakes here were relatively thin so it wasn¡¯t that obvious.
¡°Sister Jing, do you know how one can get the two-fifty Fortifications that they missed out from earlier evolutions?¡± He quickly asked before he forgot.
Chapter 197: Blood Wings
¡°You don¡¯t know how? It¡¯s so simple¡¡± Kong Jing stared at Ning Xin before shaking her head.
¡°Sister Jing, please enlighten me.¡± They were already isolated from the others and he soundproofed their conversation. A barrier of Imperishable Frost Scales was cast with Frigid Refraction to make lip reading harder.
¡°How many times did your Natural Potential increase when you were a journeyman?¡± The craftswoman took a cigarette out of her pocket.
¡°9, from potion creation,¡± Mark answered. Ebony didn¡¯t have a dedicated crafting Class so he didn¡¯t really know how Natural Potential from crafts worked. He would likely never obtain it that way. There was a good chance 9 inducements were above average for the general citizen.
¡°12. We got a level 250.¡± They cheated a little with Na¡¯s help.
¡°Is that good? Well, whatever. None of you had any memories of your evolution process right?¡± She nudged the fire swordswoman for a fire.
Mark didn¡¯t even know there was a process to remember. He assumed one simply reached evolution requirements, chose to evolve and woke up stronger. Ebony had very vague memories but nothing concrete and everything was done subconsciously.
¡°If you get 20 or you manage to slaughter a 650 creature, there¡¯s a decent chance you will have some control over your next evolution. The more Natural Potential, the greater the degree of flexibility. It is a resource that one can spend to improve themselves. If you evolve normally like many of these silly Imperials you might not get the freedom of choice until the evolution from Grandmaster to King or even higher.¡± The lady smoker took a long puff after she got her light.
¡°Just curious but how many inducements did you get, Master?¡± Mark was aware of the gap in ¡®common sense¡¯ and he needed to know what is considered good.
¡°Uh, 7 when I was unclassed. 17 from Journeyman to Master and 27 for my previous evolution? About there.¡± Kong Jing put her knuckle on her mask as she tried to recall the ¡®insignificant information.
¡°What!? What level of creature is that equivalent to?¡± Mark didn¡¯t seem to know about the level gap increase but he knew that the 10 level gaps didn¡¯t go on forever.
¡°For a level 300 Master, 27 inducements means killing a level 1000 creature.¡± Ebony calculated instantly, inwardly surprised.
¡°I¡¯m not a savage brute, I got it from crafting this.¡± Kong Jing tapped her index finger on her temple.
¡°Your head?¡± Mark studied with the craftswoman, he must be clear on the difference between their thought process.
¡°Brain. After I evolved to Master, I got tired of how primitive the human brain was so I reforged it. I took my time to study and get the organic materials and started working on it when I was around level 220. Then I had to train my space magic a bit so that I could perform the craft. It took about 4 months of constant work but I levelled up all 80 or so times with that together with a bunch of Natural Potential and a mutation to my Physique.¡±
¡°I told you, she¡¯s an anomaly even amongst the Xengs.¡± Ning Xin whispered.
¡°Hey, I heard that!¡±
Ning Xin already signalled him for a secret message but Kong Jing still heard her after Ebony blocked off the vibrations.
Although no details were shared, for a single reforging of the brain to give 80 levels and an equivalent of 27 inducements to her Natural Potential there was no doubt that her brain and Physique had mind-bending capabilities in a figurative manner of speech. It may just have been something extremely complicated and hence the diabolical amount of experience but no one would believe the mutations were weak.
¡°Anyways, you¡¯re not exactly at a disadvantage. The Fortifications that an unclassed journeyman gets are usually quite simple. The more one evolves the weirder or more specific their Fortifications. Those that are already locked in all 3 of their maxed-out Fortifications would have to spend Natural Potential to swap 250% to 100% or vice versa. You just have to get your skill levels to the corresponding requirement and the option to buff up your Fortifications should be available. The cost should be much lower than swapping as long as you hit the requirement.¡±
¡°Does that mean if I don¡¯t hit skill level requirements I can still get a corresponding fortification just by spending more of these¡points?¡± Ebony picked out what he was confused about.
¡°Smart boy, but it¡¯s never worth it due to the ridiculous cost. Just get every skill level you can before you evolve. Points are better spent on Physique, Fortifications, skill mutations and evolutions.¡±
She gave them a bit more of her knowledge when the conversation was redirected. ¡°Why are the two of you playing here?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want them to invade Elcra. Good opponents speed up our growth as well.¡± Ebony was more worried about the small village of Arcta now that winter was over the Trolls might be more inclined to push harder.
¡°Take care, you two are still a bit unripe. Anyway, let¡¯s go back down. I want to take away that gravestone.¡± Ning Xin grabbed Mark and didn¡¯t take no for an answer.
¡°Wait, sister Jing. Can I try entering that door?¡± Ebony quickly stood up. He wanted to try entering the door within her basement¡¯s library.
¡°Good timing, take these. Little Xin as well, I can¡¯t believe you haven¡¯t learnt the standardised language.¡± The space mage teleported away with Mark. They didn¡¯t even get to say their farewells and he definitely didn¡¯t get the chance to open the door within her library. He also didn¡¯t get to ask her to look at the changes Icicle had.
Ebony looked at the books that appeared on his head, the red hair swordswoman had one on hers as well. He looked at it and flipped it open but he didn¡¯t know what was written on them.
¡°This is written in Gia, the standardised language for worlds advanced enough to travel and conduct trade with each other¡¡± Ning Xin hung her head low and explained dejectedly.
Ebony took the perfectly balanced book from her head and flipped through it as well. There were 5 books in total but none of them had any translation or notes written in them.
¡°I think she forgot we only have primitive brains.¡± Ebony joked. The written form of Gia was nothing like any other language he knew and there was no reference to use to start deciphering the language.
¡°Sister won¡¯t give us the time of her day to translate something she deems simple. Elcra already has some contact with other worlds so Navin and Yvette probably know the language.¡± She was still depressed at the thought of having to study a whole language.
¡°If you know a few words I can try to start from there.¡± He assumed that she should at least recognise some words.
Thankfully, she did and he could start breaking it down from there. The words she knew were ¡®meat, delicious, tasty, sword and faster.¡¯ He chuckled at that and received an embarrassed pat on the back. It might be strong enough to pulverise rocks but that was just a gentle pat to them. He needed to understand the framework first but now wasn¡¯t the time as Ning Xin snapped her head to the side.
¡°What did you sense?¡± He had a wider range of perception but her Intuition wasn¡¯t strictly bound by range.
¡°You¡¯ll feel it soon.¡±
¡°Wow, overflowing wisdom stronger than mine? That must be the reinforcement Koawe brought, oh he called yesterday.¡± Honestly, he had gotten very confident about his mana regeneration. Having a greater overflowing Wisdom either meant a strong group or someone that could meditate on the move as he could.
Arti, Koawe¡¯s flying companion flew into view. Ebony was disappointed to see the middle-aged Frost Elf beside Koawe. The stranger had his eyes closed as he was carried by Arti and wasn¡¯t meditating on the move as he imagined. He wanted to see what he could learn from a senior that meditates on the move. For the Elves who were also more attuned to mana, he couldn¡¯t believe that no one had a similar skill. Everlasting Tranquillity was definitely not unique. Koawe noticed him and got Arti to land on the open field.
¡°Glad to see the two of you, doing okay so far?¡± The 50 bows lazing around flew to the Frost Elves and Arti. Village chief Orren and his party returned to Arcta a few weeks ago.
Now, he knew it was rude to Identify people and those with good Perception can sense it. He didn¡¯t Identify the middle-aged-looking Frost Elf who wasn¡¯t as tall as he expected and only around 2 metres in height. The surrounding temperatures dropped below freezing temperatures in a few minutes and he was quite sure there wasn¡¯t any ice or snow mana around.
Having got this close, Ebony realised that the newcomer was actually sleeping and not meditating. What surprised him wasn¡¯t that the man could sleep sitting straight on a flying bird but that ice mana was being exhaled as he breathed. The ice mana was far from natural as well, he could only imagine the various attributes the Frost Elf cultivated into his conjured ice. He was stunned as the ice mana didn¡¯t simply dissipate. The wisps of icy mist coiled themselves and buried themselves back into the man¡¯s body. He was certain that no manipulation was at play, likely not even Will. It might be a Fortification or some racial trait that was strengthened as part of his Physique.
Ebony fell into a trance for the first time in months.
???
Koawe stood there with his usual smile but Ning Xin could feel that he was a bit embarrassed to get completely ignored so she quickly replied to him after sensing Ebony ¡®disappear¡¯ from her Intuition of emotions. ¡°We¡¯ve been doing fine. Was the trip to the other village so difficult?¡±
¡°Most elven villages are well hidden, getting there took a month but I had to wait till someone from within to get me. During that time, there were some monsters I had to run from.¡± Koawe delved a bit into the danger of Hoarfrost Glade.
The entire time, she was just feeling so comfortable because of the low temperatures. She wasn¡¯t affected by the overflowing mana much, the only difference was that even her thoughts felt cold. She knew that her casting speed was affected just by staying near the unknown Frost Elf. She sneakily gathered mana under her feet a few times to find out that her cast speed was at least 10% slower than usual.
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¡°Ah, forgive him. He regenerates mana 10 times faster only when he sleeps.¡±
¡°Is that okay to share¡¡± Ning Xin understood that that meant a 1000% Fortification. It was to be expected that the Frost Elf was King-ranked. Although the strong Fortification seemed a bit lacking it was actually quite useful for those with extremely high mana capacities. Midnight Shepherd needed roughly 2 weeks to reach full mana capacity. They didn¡¯t know if the Shaman had any meditation skills but that wasn¡¯t that important.
¡°He doesn¡¯t mind. Your aura is far more¡tamed.¡± Koawe noted.
¡°It shouldn¡¯t be as uncomfortable to be around me now right?¡± She could contain more energy within herself and it shouldn¡¯t be as hot to the Frost Elves. This way, Kiva might like her more.
¡°Right¡you humans sure rush a lot. Are your skills refined enough?¡± Long-lived people like the Elves took things slow. Even if they had all their skills around tier 2 and 3 there was no doubt every one of them refined it to a high degree. It took time and effort so it wasn¡¯t as if every single Elf was strong or skilled but when they compare with humans who spend more time levelling, they usually won even if they had lower skill levels. The differences were far more pronounced if they had compounding skills or a good set of skills that complement each other.
¡°It¡¯s not up to par yet but I think I can reach my limit in 2 to 3 years. I¡¯ve got the technique down, all that¡¯s left is practice.¡± Her skills were slightly different from her parents but at least they left her their notes. She might not have direct guidance but she wasn¡¯t poking around in the dark like Ebony was. Against most opponents she had come across, refinements didn¡¯t really matter much. All they did was give a few levels worth of percentage increase and the Imperial Grandmasters who evolved with mostly tier 2 skills around 330 or 375 didn¡¯t even come close to matching her in strength. However, these people weren¡¯t who she wanted to compare against and every bit of strength counts.
¡°2 to 3 years to reach your limits? If only we had your fervour in training.¡± Koawe mocked.
¡°Your race would be more powerful if you didn¡¯t depend on your lifespan and take things slow.¡± She had spoken without stopping to think and found herself acting a tad rude.
¡°That¡¯s true.¡± Thankfully the Frost Elf wasn¡¯t offended.
Koawe left to get a proper update on the situation from the Generals. From the looks of it, he was really quite well known amongst the high-ranking nobles or military. He brought Arti and the sleeping man along with him. Apparently, Korben, Arcta¡¯s guardian, was going to join them soon. They must have got more people back at Arcta as guards.
¡®Only one man as reinforcements, can¡¯t wait to see an actual powerhouse fight.¡¯ Fifth Tide¡¯s Generals were somewhat strong and she never saw any of them fight but they were all relatively young. As knights or warriors, their impact on a large battlefield was limited. The old man currently in charge was supposedly more of a tactician than a fighter as well.
She looked at Ebony who sat down and had his eyes closed. Kneeling down, she shifted his bangs just to see his ¡®sleeping¡¯ face. Her mana sense wasn¡¯t as strong as his but she could tell he was trying to make internal changes. Perhaps observing the unknown Frost Elf had given him inspiration. With his strong senses, he must have seen more than she ever could.
A drop of water hit her head causing her to look up to see that it was starting to rain. The rain clouds above her met the corrosion cloud and disappeared. It was quite an uncommon sight in Fifth Tide. Within minutes, the rain turned into a downpour but she sat behind Ebony with their backs against each other.
¡°Scarlet! Bring him up, time to get rid of the threat.¡± Arti flew by again. Ning Xin didn¡¯t want to disturb Ebony but it would take a lot to actually disturb him so she simply grabbed him and leapt up explosively. She overshot as she expected Ebony to be heavy but her blood halo formed and gently glided onto Arti. She can form a pair of blood wings now but it wasn¡¯t necessary at the moment. She found wings to be extremely easy to control and flight with them came to her more naturally than ever, as if she¡¯d always had wings. Being able to conjure blood turned out to be a massive transformation to her overall combat style.
Contrary to what the others might assume, she wasn¡¯t annoyed that they weren¡¯t allowed on the frontlines when the battle devolved to close combat. She really needed the free time to work on expanding her mana capacity skills and this wasn¡¯t possible if she was fighting all day. It was also the most time-consuming skill to train so she didn¡¯t really expect to evolve within 2 to 3 years.
She was a bit anxious even though her speed of growth was a bit faster than she had hoped for. Thanks to the Trolls, their skill levels weren¡¯t really lagging behind but she was worried that they wouldn''t be fast enough to get the benefits that her grandma warned her about. Being unable to contact her for years only made her more nervous.
They flew past the wall, over the wastelands with a stronghold. She just didn¡¯t expect the rainclouds to follow them. It dipped under the corrosion cloud and watered the fake lands.
¡°He¡¯s stirring awake,¡± Koawe commented when she saw her watching the dark rain clouds.
¡°That¡¯s what caused this rain?¡± She was surprised by Koawe¡¯s words. ¡®What a force of nature! Waking up causes a storm? What are his Fortifications?¡¯ Of course, there was no storm but the rain only got heavier and colder.
Arti sped up and they flew over the large stronghold in a few seconds. The heavy rainstorm started to slow down but tiny beads of ice started to hail down instead. Since the Troll had advanced quite a bit, the front lines were actually quite close even after pushing them back a bit. At least, they were still within the range of the City¡¯s defences.
¡°Aaaaooah¡± A odd yawn sounded, and the sleeping Frost Elf woke up. ¡°Finally here, who¡¯s in charge?¡±
¡°General Bernard Consil,¡± Koawe already got a name but Ning Xin never heard of it. Must be the old man who just came.
¡°Don¡¯t know him, must be some young kid. Stop here. Oh, is that the new design the Empire uses?¡± The Frost Elf seemed pretty lax. The Shamans already noticed them up here and were preparing to attack them. They were not far from the base of the Trolls after all. The soldiers below were fighting for their lives but casualty wasn¡¯t that high as the Trolls were losing ground.
¡°They¡¯ve used this armour design during the previous war 85 to 90 years ago.¡± Koawe got Arti to back up a bit.
¡°Eh, there was a war 90 years ago?¡± The hail no longer landed on them and he yawned again at the news.
¡°The new Emperor ended mana slavery after that war,¡± Koawe added on.
¡°There¡¯s a new Emperor!? Is he or she an actual Emperor class? Is it another Xen--woah! Hello there¡¡± The Frost Elf that seemed out of the loop acted as if he just sensed her presence on Arti¡¯s back.
¡°Hello, I¡¯m Scarlet.¡± They greeted each other with a tet and Koawe introduced her and Ebony as friendlies to their race.
¡°You know Korben? I¡¯m his uncle, call me Korta!¡± She felt that Korta was the most energetic Frost Elf excluding the children.
¡°OH! This is the boy you talked about. Wait, a being of mana! How cool!¡±
¡°We¡¯re getting quite the attention up here.¡± Koawe smiled wider. She can feel that he was getting a bit angry for some reason.
¡°I forgot about that. Let¡¯s quiet things down so that we can talk. Heheh, how dare that youngin stare at me. He looks older than my father!?¡± Korta exclaimed.
She looked around down at the battlefield and found the old man that was likely the General that came over from Second Tide. Bernard Consil had a head full of grey hair and even wrinkles on his face. A sign of old age that was not very common if one had got to Grandmaster when they were relatively young. Rather than look older, those that evolved fast grew physically and had a better form and looks. After a certain stage of evolution, signs of ageing were weaker. One might look young even when they were close to the end of their lifespan. Some people used this as a sign to gauge the talent or even strength of a stranger. However, that was just dumb even to her.
¡®How much lifespan do I have?¡¯ Ning Xin suddenly thought about this as Ebony¡¯s lifespan definitely exceeded hers. She wasn¡¯t worried at all since it would increase after she evolved. She knew that she had a shorter lifespan than the average human Master as her Core Skill burned lifespan to a small degree. It was actually just a gut feeling that she was burning lifespan. She just wasn¡¯t sure if her Physique granted her body any extension of life. ¡®Maybe I can ask sister if she has any item that can measure lifespan.¡¯
¡°Winter¡¯s not completely over, how lucky. Hey! Is that Midnight Shepherd? You''re still alive! Do you remember ganging up on me 350 years ago? I¡¯ll make you remember! Eat this!¡±
Ning Xin couldn¡¯t help but compare Korta to Hector, they were quite similar. She bumped Ebony, not expecting him to wake up from his trance. He must not have fallen too deep and it made her a bit shy when she recalled staring at him earlier.
¡°Winter¡¯s Breath!¡± The clouds that formed when he was rousing stopped hailing moments ago. Korta opened his arms wide and shouted his spell name like a certain pink-haired prince. The clouds spanning across gors turned white and dense extremely fast. They travelled to the rear of the Trolls unhindered and fell. No rain droplets or hail, the entire cloud simply fell as fast as one of her sword swings.
¡°Winter¡¯s Breath!¡± In about a minute, clouds of the same size formed and Arti repositioned itself for the spellcaster.
¡°Winter¡¯s Breath!¡±
¡°Winter¡¯s Breath!¡±
¡°YAHAHAHA! Have another!¡±
Korta seemed almost manic as he repeated the same wide area spell multiple times. He didn¡¯t even let the cloudy mist on the ground settle and wasn¡¯t bothered if his spell hit the same area.
Ning Xin¡¯s jaw dropped behind her mask at the humongous waste of mana, the area of effect was so huge and he was casting it like she cast a fire spear.
¡°Alright alright, I should stop fooling around. I can¡¯t see anything¡meh. Arti, higher!¡± Korta demanded the bird go deeper into Troll territory and increased their altitude.
¡°Block their attacks for ten minutes. Don¡¯t you dare move, Arti.¡± Korta went silent and closed his eyes and focused on his next spell.
Ebony waved his hands and covered Arti¡¯s belly with a large dome upside down. Random attacks from warriors wouldn¡¯t even scratch it but they were now aware that there were members of the Slingarm Tribe. She saw giant birds flying towards them. It was common knowledge that Trolls had good beast tamers as well but none of them appeared on Fifth Tide¡¯s side so far.
Ning Xin was quite excited, she stepped off Arti as a pair of wings made of dark red blood flapped open. It was attached to her back but the link between them was more than physical contact. She opened up a path with wind magic and flapped her magical wings as hard as she could.
¡®I feel so free with these wings!¡¯ The blood wings bubbled and brightened before bursting into flames and sparks. Another flap caused her acceleration to almost rival her speed on land. If she mastered this, she would surpass her movement speed on the ground.
She drew both Scorchie and Scorchy and manoeuvred her flight to slow down and spun herself. It was as if the giant bird flew and placed their exposed necks under her blades. She slashed down with spinning momentum that she took inspiration from Ebony. Sadly, the Troll riding the bird pulled the reins in time and she only lightly cut the bird¡¯s fur. There were 5 of these bird riders. She didn¡¯t Appraise them and she didn¡¯t slow down to do so. They were each slightly bigger than Arti and their top speed appeared to be slightly higher but they weren¡¯t as agile. The perfect opponents to train her manoeuvrability in the air.
Ning Xin had trouble turning and making accurate positioning. It put her in a poor situation where she barely dodged each bird¡¯s beak or a spear stab from the rider. They noticed that one of them wasn¡¯t enough to hit her and got two more riders to block her flight paths. The other two were onto Arti but she wasn¡¯t worried with Ebony and Koawe there.
She could barely evade the spear strikes¡¯ speed and power, there was a good chance these Trolls were around level 420. Her stiff motions improved so fast that she was slightly shocked herself. The pair of wings felt more and more like they¡¯d always been part of her. The riders¡¯ birds were frightened by the heat and kept their distance unless they were making an attack guided by their rider.
One of them used a skill to charge forward just as she evaded and a vitality-enveloped spear thrust at her. Her right wing closed and protected her in time and she parried the spear thrust, ripping a large tear on her own wing. She dropped down a little before the fluid wings fully reformed. Swinging her swords in the air moved her body awkwardly but she was also getting used to it at an unnatural pace.
The Troll riders kicked things up a notch and put a lot of pressure on her. Her flaming blood wings protected her and were constantly being torn apart. One of the enemies¡¯ birds caught on fire by brushing past too close to her. She didn¡¯t imbue that much lightning mana so it wasn¡¯t stunned. She was worried she didn¡¯t have enough mana to sustain an aerial battle for long.
¡°Watch out!¡± Ebony¡¯s sound magic travelled to her.
¡®A second wave?¡¯ Ning Xin smiled. She gazed at Ebony to assure him that she was doing fine.
More aerial opponents?
Exactly what she wanted!
¡®I will get as proficient with aerial combat as I can even faster this way!¡¯ Ning Xin grinned as her blood boiled.
Chapter 198: Skadi’s Salvo
Ebony watched in surprise. He knew she just formed her bloody wings not too long ago as she learnt to conjure blood but her aerial manoeuvring had skyrocketed even though she hasn¡¯t practised it much. Her hair was on fire, a physical sign that she raised her body enhancement to a high degree. With those flaming wings and the long streak of hair that whipped around he couldn¡¯t help but see her as a flaming bird with a beautiful tail. ¡®Phoenix¡¡¯ was the only word that came to mind.
¡®Woah! She dipped under the bird''s neck and the bicycle kicked the rider in that instant?¡¯ Ebony has become a bit easier to surprise nowadays but he can¡¯t be blamed. Ning Xin seemed like she was fighting completely differently but at the same time, just as she always did. She never used kicks on land so it unnerved him a bit at how fluent she was. Her kick attached some blood onto the rider¡¯s face which burst into a blast of fiery lightning and made the rider panic. The bird reins were pulled the wrong way and they plummeted till he regained control. At this point, she was surrounded by 7 of these giant birds with their riders. Koawe shot those that came for them so Ebony didn¡¯t have to do anything.
Winter¡¯s Breath had been a sight to behold but he knew that the fighter Frost Elf hadn¡¯t been very serious. It was a bit overwhelming but not very surprising for a person that was probably King-ranked. Ebony¡¯s spells could not reach the size of a cloud roughly 7 kilometres in diameter yet and that would probably take his entire mana pool but if he evolved again and had a greater ice magic mana efficiency it seemed possible. The spell seemed to be a mixture of ice and snow and did not appear to be very complicated to his senses. Noticing the increasing ease that Ning Xin had when she fought back groups of giant birds allowed him to focus more on the congregation of mana within and outside the stranger Frost Elf.
His time as an artillery mage got him the skill of gauging one¡¯s mana pool. He was quite good at it now and Calculated Hunch only helped increase his accuracy. Winter¡¯s Breath took only 3 to 5% of the man¡¯s entire mana capacity. He wasn¡¯t sure about the man¡¯s capacity but it was definitely at least half a million and that was the lowest estimate.
¡®Tier 1 mana expansion skill just isn¡¯t sufficient for large spells. But even the Knights and Imperial mages only have a tier 1 version. Where can I get a better version? Even if I continue to create my own skills they always start off unrefined and I¡¯m taking a long time to make them better.¡¯ Ebony was aware that the Frost Elves were his best bet for the moment. Ning Xin¡¯s version doesn¡¯t work for him so he couldn¡¯t copy her.
Kong Jing already gave him the good news. He didn''t want to lag behind by 2 whole Fortifications of 250% forever. She did make a good point though, he could see what new Fortifications were possible and they might be better choices than buffing his current choices further. He was a bit suspicious about what she shared or perhaps what she didn¡¯t share. It was possible to spend Natural Potential as some kind of resource on themselves. Was it possible to give themselves even more Fortifications outside of the known limit of 3? He didn¡¯t see why not.
¡®We have to find weak but high-level monsters or some other way to get Natural Potential.¡¯ Ebony made an internal declaration. The first method that came to mind was to use the power of a dungeon. Ordina. He came up with the idea to get Na to pump out the creation of a single creature to an extremely high level with weak defences. The only thing he was worried about was that doing so would decrease his gains. Natural Potential didn¡¯t have a value as an indicator and only the number of inducements could be used as a gauge. If they were something like evolutionary points, that meant that there was a numerical value for them right? Is it equal for every creature of the same level or does overcoming a greater trial give a greater reward?
Ebony was more inclined to believe that greater effort equates to greater reward. Especially with the way skill levels and tiers worked. ¡®That¡¯s right, how can I hope to be strong if I¡¯m aiming to hunt the weakest¡I¡¯ll ditch the idea that more inducements equal greater volume of Natural Potential.¡¯ He decided on quality over quantity but it didn¡¯t mean he wouldn¡¯t take opportunities when he came across them. There was no one to blame for the lack of information. Not even Kong Jing fully understood the process or the nature of Natural Potential.
¡®This won¡¯t do¡we need to evolve our skills.¡¯ A sudden sense of urgency to grow stronger welled up in him. Their skill combinations were amazing, they could hit harder than most people even if they had higher-tier skills. Many Commanders definitely had a bunch of tier 3 skills, but they could beat them all the same. According to the high-level mages amongst the soldiers, nobody even heard of a tier 2 version of a domain-type skill. It must be a degraded version and made most think that it was just an area of effect spell. He had been aiming too low!
Firstly, he was going to watch and learn.
Koawe cooled Arti down as the surrounding temperature rose. Ebony concentrated on perceiving what the spellcaster was doing. The mere sight of this man had already given him a direction and path as an ice mage. He had focused on mana compression so much that his spells got crude in comparison. He had an idea on how to improve his ice magic, now he was just wondering how he could apply that to Frostflames. He fell into a trance earlier as the Frost Elf¡¯s body was extremely fascinating to his mana perception. He had a better picture of what to do to cultivate his Physique. Kong Jing¡¯s story also helped to form his desired path.
The Shamans below started to use weirdly strong earth elemental attacks and his domic barrier under Arti cracked in a single blow. They were fully compressed and even had durability runes that more than doubled their toughness but a single ball or earth cracked it. He Willed a Chaotic Repulsive membrane on it and curved Guided Path over the surface. Assured to see the following projectiles whip along the dome and scratch it before flying past them and entering the corrosion cloud above. With that, he returned to observing the spell.
There wasn¡¯t much to see externally other than the icy air around the silent Frost Elf. On the other hand, the spell formation and mana flows were a different story. The village chief, Orren¡¯s and his party had nothing that can make his mind work so hard in trying to keep up. As the seconds passed, Ebony couldn¡¯t even keep up with the mana flow and he was beginning to be blind as to what the man was trying to do. What kind of spell took ten minutes with mana flow faster than his mind to perceive?
They were mages, most elemental spells were simply a congregation of elemental mana. There was no magic circle to form with mana like Mark¡¯s runic circle hence, their cast speed was generally pretty fast. As a comparison, the Shamans below actually needed to chant as a requirement of their magic. Their startup durations for spells took a very long time compared to mages¡¯ casting speed of seconds. The advantage they had was that many shamanic spells had a long or even unlimited duration. Linking Trolls Vitality took minutes but could be maintained for a long time. This was true for the average Shaman on the current battlefield.
¡°Ebony, can you amplify my voice towards the army?¡± Koawe asked.
He nodded and got ready to send Koawe¡¯s voice throughout the lands below. ¡°You can speak now.¡±
¡°Retreat or stay at your own risk.¡±
The calm voice came out shattering the skies and travelled to as many people as possible. He wasn¡¯t sure if the army complied but it shouldn¡¯t matter too much unless this Elf had terrible aim.
8 minutes passed. Once again, clouds formed but only a small sphere between his appeared within the stranger''s palms and not kilometre-spanning clouds. It reminded him of Gen¡¯s scary snow cloud. Ning Xin danced in the air to revel in the newfound joy of flying and landed on Arti with another spin where her wings would wrap themselves together. She already reabsorbed her flames and cooled herself off with wind magic so that they wouldn¡¯t be harmed.
He didn¡¯t need Calculated Hunch to understand that he shouldn¡¯t touch the ball that the mage formed. He would be frozen to death instantly. The Frost Elf¡¯s mana pool was close to empty and everything was jammed into his spell. His eyes shot open and he released the ball in front of him. It flew forward, deep into the Troll¡¯s territory¡¯s airspace. The deceptively thin outer layer popped open and the clouds exploded in every direction. Fortunately, his high Perception allowed him to see far away.
¡°Skadi''s Salvo!¡±
¡®Skadi?¡¯ Ebony mentally translated and found the name familiar. He didn¡¯t really study myths or history much but he was at least aware of the name to be from Norse mythology but he didn¡¯t put much thought to the coincidence. The white clouds expanded and turned blue instead. They covered dozens of kilometres and Ebony couldn¡¯t see how far it stretched from his position in the sky. He waited but nothing happened for the next 20 seconds, as if the clouds were still expanding beyond. It was controlled as the clouds never covered the Imperial Army.
Then, he saw the first blue shine revealing itself under the clouds. One. Two. Four. Eight. Shiny points appeared all over, they slid down from the clouds slowly. Numerous giant broadhead arrows at least 3 metres wide showed themselves. When the whole arrowhead slipped out, they accelerated down like a meteor. Rumbling tore at soldiers and Troll¡¯s ears but the huge arrows haven¡¯t even hit the ground. The Shamans may or may not have pulled off a hasty defence but Ebony wouldn¡¯t know. All he could see under him was the white mist of Winter¡¯s Breath covering a large area beneath them. Staying atop Arti meant that his senses couldn¡¯t reach the ground either. This meant that most warrior Trolls below who managed to survive Winter¡¯s Breath didn¡¯t even know that they were about to die.
Perhaps only the opponents'' rear noticed them and they didn¡¯t have wide region communication skills or technology.
¡°Phew. This should last two days.¡± The Frost Elf wiped the beads of ice on his forehead.
¡°Hmm?¡± Ebony saw that the arrowheads descended but the body of the arrow continued to extend and was connected to the clouds the entire way. They were a few kilometres up in the air, why create the body of the arrow? It was quite a waste of mana. It didn¡¯t actually take a single second but all of them on Arti could have many thoughts within this short period of time.
Skadi¡¯s Salvo landed and pierced through frozen bodies and the earth alike. It kept going and Ebony could see water sprouting out. The only other time he saw something destroy the tough ground was when Commander Wil jumped with extreme power but the earth fixed itself almost instantly. Just within sight were thousands of these arrows that linked the sea, fake earth and sky together. As far as his sight reached, there were uncountable spikes connecting the sky and sea.
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¡°Ooo, so I can freeze the sea to this degree now? Great. There should be no battle for at least a week unless they do something about it.
Ebony jumped down. He had to see what happened. He sensed Koawe stopping Ning Xin from following him and he appreciated it. She was low on mana after the aerial fight and might not be able to warm herself up as Winter¡¯s Breath still enveloped the ground below them.
It was cold but not freezing. The spell must focus on range and area rather than power. White mist was just like his old frost mist but there was a combination of snow. It was only slightly compressed which might be why it wasn¡¯t that strong but it was enough to freeze any Master Troll deeply and the fact that the mist hasn¡¯t dissipated after more than 10 minutes meant that the freezing effect had plenty of time to work on those within the spell''s range.
He landed and took a single step to reach the closest giant arrow with a long body. Just in case, he stayed at least a hundred metres away and used his mana perception. After noting that he could withstand the chill he got closer and was finally able to see what he wanted to see. Skadi¡¯s Salvo didn¡¯t stop at the ground and actually remained stuck in the ground. In all his time as a part-time artillery mage, no spell remained stuck. The fake earth would repair itself almost instantly without fail. This was the exact same for the corrosion cloud above the battlefield.
Ebony quickly leapt back when the vibrations under him got more violent. A moment later an iceberg exploded out of the ground where he previously stood. These icebergs popped up all across the spell¡¯s range and usually near the arrowhead. ¡®He really froze all the way to the sea¡¡¯
The point of gravity he left above dragged him back up. He made a new point above Arti as he ascended and made his way back on.
¡°Thank you for letting me watch.¡±
¡°Keep watching. This is a salvo.¡±
¡®The spell¡¯s not done?¡¯ Just like the spell caster said, the long body of the arrow shattered and shot down like gunshots. After that, more shiny tips poked out from the cloud and repeated the process.
¡°This lasts for two days?¡± Ning Xin questioned.
¡°...Maybe 1 and a half. But the ice won¡¯t melt so easily and the Trolls won¡¯t use this region to fight unless they get rid of the frozen wasteland but I¡¯m here. Anyway, let¡¯s go back and have a chat! After I take a nap, it¡¯s hibernation period.¡± Just like that, the spellcaster fell onto Arti¡¯s back and snored loudly within moments.
¡°Hibernation?¡± He cocked his head. Since when do Frost Elves hibernate?
¡°Only his family, and he just makes up his hibernation times as he wishes so you don¡¯t have to take it seriously.¡±
¡°Korben as well?¡±
¡°No, just his immediate family.¡±
¡°Just curious but how old are you? He recognised Midnight Shepherd from 350 years ago?¡±
¡°Haha, I¡¯m only 652 years old and Korta¡¯s only slightly more than 2 centuries older. We¡¯re basically from the same generation but I guess I''m middle-aged for a Grandmaster and he¡¯s a bit younger than middle age for his rank. There was another war back then and Korta was around level 370 or something and this Midnight Shepherd just made a name for herself. He will get talkative when he wakes up so you can hear it from him later.¡±
Despite living on Elcra for years, it hasn¡¯t really struck him when it comes to lifespan and the way different races view time. He recalled matters regarding lifespan.
A Grandmaster human would have 500 to 600 years and that¡¯s if they didn¡¯t die of other causes. One would struggle to find a fighter that lived their entire lifespan. In Tidal, there might be quite a few crafters, support and non-combatant Grandmasters that were 4 or 5 centuries old. Other cities would probably have more Master ranked humans that could only reach the age of 400 at best. Dwarfs had an average of 1.5 times the lifespan of a human at the same rank and Elves had roughly 2.5 times. Beastmen vary but most don¡¯t really differ much from humans when it comes to lifespan.
All of this was just a general average and may vary if one had a Physique or skill that increased lifespan or slowed ageing. Who knows, maybe there was some method to increase lifespan with magic and there were people with the relevant Fortifications.
Having learnt the name of the spellcaster, Arti flew them back. The spell range was so wide that even if the Trolls further back wanted to stop them they would have no way to cross the Salvo. Soon, there were only chunks of earth that got dug up and frozen into hills of ice. The iceberg that explodes from the ground would sink before exploding randomly anywhere under the spell. This was using the ice element as crowd control to the limits.
¡®That¡¯s right, all my spells just run out as long as I don¡¯t power them. Other than Glacial Model. How did he make the spell last even without an influx of mana, Will? I don¡¯t think so¡ Something about the spell lets them sustain themselves over time, like Gen¡¯s spell.¡¯
It didn¡¯t take long to get back. Sadly, Koawe was polite enough to stop by the General¡¯s tent and didn¡¯t just bring them back to the city. ¡°This region will be mostly sealed off for about a week but watch out for shamanic magic. We¡¯ll deal with the King warriors, work your plan around.¡± He said without even getting off Arti and didn¡¯t extend his greetings.
¡®He¡¯s usually more polite¡¡¯ Ebony murmured mentally.
Koawe seemed to notice his and Ning Xin¡¯s thoughts and said, ¡°Now that Korta¡¯s here, the only real course of action for them is to demarcate areas they shouldn¡¯t go near. The Trolls are here in unimaginable numbers so he would have his hands full with their strongest fighters. Don¡¯t underestimate them, they have a lot more King warriors. Although most are weak in comparison to others of their rank, I¡¯m sure you understand how hard they are to kill with a group of Shamans by their side. The patriarchs of the Benumbed and Vigiot Tribe are under Midnight Shepherd''s command. Korta would have his hands full with them.¡±
The Trolls had the advantage in terms of average level and many evolved to King ranked the instant they reach 1.1 or 1.25 requirements. With their racial trait of explosive regeneration and greater physical prowess, even if they were weaker than a Grandmaster General on the Empire¡¯s side it didn¡¯t really matter. The Trolls outnumbered them greatly. A full squad of 8 Kings was more than enough to push a young Minor General present into a tough spot from what Ebony could guess from the recent rumours about the battles. It might be different if the other Tides spared a stronger or more experienced General.
With the Shamans that link their rear, non-combatants¡¯ Vitality they were virtually immortal. Thankfully, they had a smaller population of Shamans. The Empire also had fewer mages but at least 5% of Fifth Tide¡¯s forces were mages while the Shamans might not even constitute 1% of the opponent¡¯s forces.
Tribe Patriarchs were the true rulers of the continent of Tova. They were usually under civil war with each other but for some reason, all the Trolls decided to attack Elva at the same time. There¡¯s a good chance they actually fully qualify as a strong King-ranked opponent. They might not be very intelligent and believed in ¡®might makes right¡¯ but all Trolls respected their Shamans. Hence, a Grandmaster like Midnight Shepherd taking command was natural. There were a couple of other titled Shamans but Midnight Shepherd was still believed to be the leader.
¡°We¡¯ve received word from Archduke Fyre¡¯s seers that the final wave of Trolls will reach the battlefield soon!¡± A Commander he didn¡¯t recognise ran out of the tent and shouted.
In the end, Arti landed and they went into the tent to get the latest information. Ebony was sure that he wasn¡¯t qualified to enter the tent or listen to military secrets for the upper ranks but no one kicked them out. Archduke Fyre was the Beastmen¡¯s highest nobility and was a family of Foxmen who had the most Imperial Seers.
Koawe actually carried Korta into the tent as well. This tent was well made and not even his mana or vibrational sense could poke into if the flap was closed.
¡®I wonder if he¡¯s going to wake up or if he is aware of his surroundings asleep.¡¯ Ebony continued to observe the great spellcaster¡¯s body. Of course, he also took note of the other Commanders and Generals in the tent. Giving a nod towards those he knew, like General Impes who treated them quite cordially. The old man at the centre was probably the one who just came over to Fifth Tide and his aura was weaker than most people in the room. As the only 2 Masters in the tent, they were not exactly welcomed. Ning Xin¡¯s aura wasn¡¯t as overbearing as it used to be as she hid it deeper while his aura was nonexistent to most people so that he didn¡¯t knock them out. Be that as it may, their overflowing Vitality didn¡¯t lose out to these Grandmasters. The Xeng had her blood compression and his health regeneration was quite absurd due to his Physique, and he was even using the life force to train Preservation Bubble so others shouldn¡¯t feel it as much.
Not to mention, they made undeniable contributions to the defence of the city before the battle devolved back to close combat. He might not have been able to tell in the past, but he could feel the fear in some of their eyes as they looked at them. Thankfully, Korta¡¯s presence took the attention away.
¡®Let¡¯s simulate a comparison.¡¯ He started to list the strengths and weaknesses of the people in the tent. Telling himself that they had better individual skills and the only reason he could beat them was the abundance of mana. Compression of body enhancement magic made it far stronger than a regular tier 2 version that most soldiers used, maybe even stronger than tier 3. But even when he had far higher enhanced physical prowess, they had strong active skills that may damage him. So he calculated that they must have reasonably refined tier 3 skills and possibly two or three of such skills that augmented each other. There was no other way they could hurt the Vitality-enhanced Trolls. It wasn¡¯t that surprising either as many people here focused on active skills while he worked more on his foundation. Few present in the room used elemental magic and were mostly knights with decent control and usage of mana.
As he took away his advantages such as the ice and gravity magic, these people could injure him if he made the wrong move. Battles were simulated in his head but he didn¡¯t know the limits of most people here so it was not very accurate. Then again, the only time he could see himself making the ¡®wrong¡¯ move was when he started experimenting. He had too little information as to what Fortifications each individual had so he scrapped the mental exercise soon enough.
The four of them stayed silent and listened in on the meeting and reports they¡¯d received. The biggest news was that the Empire¡¯s symbolic Emperor had shown himself at First Tide. However, instead of joining the war he went to Second Tide and stood guard. This allowed the soldiers stationed there to be dispatched to other Tides. He acted as deterrence and the military seemed to believe they just needed the bare minimum forces to take care of the city. Ebony assumed it was to give the Empire¡¯s army experience.
Apparently, he had two disciples and he sent one to Fifth Tide and one to Fourth. They didn¡¯t know when the person would show up but it wasn¡¯t like they would send an escort or envoy. They didn¡¯t have any special treatment towards these disciples. Because of the Emperor¡¯s presence, every other Tide was getting reinforcements. Although, they wouldn¡¯t be getting the soldiers from Second Tide but Fourth¡¯s, it was much better than nothing. A certain crown princess was mentioned so he would probably see her again.
There were some whispers when Koawe asked about Navin the Barrier King. They spilt the beans and said that Navin had never been on the battlefield ever since day 1 of the war. No one knew where he was. Not only that, the older generations of many Noble families were not present anywhere on the battlefield. It was no wonder why they weren¡¯t able to spread more forces to the other Tides.
¡°Forgive me for being rude but is¡is Sir Korta the only one¡¡± One of the commanders raised his courage and asked.
Koawe nodded, ¡°If the situation looks bad because of the final wave, they will act.¡±
Whatever the case, a single Arch Mage can affect a large-scale battle much more than a Knight Lord. Both of which were the common Identify results for a King-ranked mage and knight respectively.
Ebony didn¡¯t even hear the old man, Bernard talk from start to finish. They left after being requested to give the kill count but that would have to wait till Korta woke up.
Chapter 199: Level Seal
¡°Exactly! Those lazy bastards didn¡¯t want to come out because winter was about to end. They must be playing with Willow right about now!¡± Korta woke up not long after they arrived at the training barracks that he rented.
4 Frost Elves left their second village, Tuctra but they stayed to protect Arcta. Koawe already told Ebony and Ning Xin the truth before Korta woke up. None of the 4 wanted to come out, the other 3 were all older than Korta and he lost a game that they bet on. Korta, being the lowest level, would gain the most out of it but even if he killed a million Trolls it was hard to say if he would gain more than 2 levels. After all, at above 500 most Trolls were far below his level.
According to the centuries-old men, the battle couldn¡¯t really be called a war now that the big shots came out to play. No soldier would be able to get anywhere close and the battlefield would be split into a few fights that spanned across a region. They were disadvantaged due to how close the Trolls had gotten but there was nothing to worry about. In all likelihood, a large majority of the army would retreat back to the city and the barrier would be operated at full power. Isolating themselves from the battle that would ensue.
Just like how the Empire uses their soldiers¡¯ mana to power the barrier, normal Troll warriors would also retreat and serve as Vitality packs for their chosen warriors.
At some point in time of their history, wars just turned out this way. The initial push was for the young to expedite their levels for both sides and the deaths were seen as a price to pay to strengthen the talented. When the strong come out, casualties skyrocket. Numbers didn¡¯t really matter unless the power gap wasn¡¯t that large, in that sense, the Trolls still came out on top. Perhaps after a few wars, both sides understood how pointless it was to waste lives that way. The King-ranked wouldn¡¯t even benefit much from going on a massacre.
Ebony could see how the Trolls could annihilate the Imperial if it wasn¡¯t for the Barrier that seemed unbreakable. They can just toss a strong Troll over, cause panic and start the slaughter. It would take a strong Commander or General to hold them back and they had the numbers to drive the city down. It almost seemed like setting the corrosion cloud actually helped them more as this tactic was not overused anymore. But it was a good course of action for them as it sealed the Empire¡¯s greater aerial forces to some extent. The barriers made it harder to toss someone over and hope it caused destruction.
¡®So they never considered it to be war, but a slightly riskier training ground for both sides? What a farce¡¡¯ He was aware that there was much more to it such as the Troll¡¯s inherent desire to physically eat them but things have changed a lot since the enmity first started. At the very least, he could tell that the majority of the Trolls understood the language they used on Elva to a certain degree. They were also intelligent enough to listen to their Shamans and retreat. According to the history he knew of, the Trolls used to be more brutal and not too different from monsters in terms of bloodthirst. Their bloodthirst didn¡¯t disappear, Ebony had already seen enough people being eaten and the Trolls enjoyed it but they had better control over it compared to their predecessors.
Ebony lamented the lives lost so far. For both the Empire and the Trolls. They have used each other and he played a big part in reaping lives. He didn¡¯t regret it and would do the same even if he got the chance to redo the past few months but he was not sure if he could continue slaughtering them in the same manner. He just hoped they would back off and return to their own continent so that he didn¡¯t have to think so hard about what is right and what is wrong. Everlasting Tranquillity was destabilised because of his internal struggle. He chuckled, ¡®I should¡¯ve thought about these things long ago. This can only be the worst time to have a moral struggle. Or is it the best?¡¯ Ebony had a mental introspection of himself every night that he didn¡¯t sleep the past few months. Thankfully, he wasn¡¯t really badly affected after going through all his memories and past actions. There are always better decisions to make but even if he felt bad about some choices, he didn¡¯t feel like he wanted to change anything he ever did.
It made him think deeper about any choice he made from then on but that was beneficial in some ways. However, he wasn¡¯t always ¡®Tranquil¡¯ during such times. Ripples form and his Core Skill will not work at full capacity during these times. It even showed concrete effects based on skill refinement. It was stronger but also came at the cost of being easier to destabilise. The last thing he wanted was for the skill to destabilise during a fight but he needed it to temporarily destabilise and allow himself to grow in other aspects. Furthermore, his introspection let him realise that although he kept working on his skills in every aspect he never really thought to improve Everlasting Tranquillity further. From Meditation to Persistent Meditation to Deep Persistent Meditation and finally Everlasting Tranquillity all he did was do the same thing he had always done with a bit of extra oomph once the existence of skills was made known to him. He came to the conclusion that the only way to improve a skill that makes his state of mind hard to break was to break it down so that it can recover just like a muscle.
The opportunity to destabilise his mental state in a relatively safe position as an artillery mage had been incredible. He also had to thank Muse, he didn¡¯t know why but he felt that it was thanks to her that he realised his own stationary mental and emotional state. It made daily life a bit more interesting and he appreciated his time with Ning Xin even more. He knew that he loved her but he was at a loss as to why he did. Thankfully, his interaction with her didn¡¯t change in the meantime and he was sure she also noticed the slight change in him.
It was probably because she was also changing a bit. For her, it should be her interactions with the chefs and also the Thoyas. She was only ever close to her grandmother and cousin and until she left Xienor a bit before they met, she didn¡¯t have anyone close to her age as friends. Although most chefs here weren¡¯t close to her age, they were already friends.
She was almost 17 years old when she left Xienor. Travelling with her grandma for 3 months or so before she was left alone and asked to walk around herself. During those 3 months, she was similarly shunned by the Imperials like how the Xengs ignore her. Ebony could sense that they didn¡¯t simply ¡®ignore¡¯ her but that was how she explained it.
He was a few months younger if he calculated time like they did and he was 16 years old when he arrived. He was duller and didn¡¯t really react to events much. Both of their youth were spent training with or without their parents. Ebony had no choice but to interact with people. To gain knowledge to help him survive or simply learn about his new environment. It wasn¡¯t as if he hated interaction, it was just that barely anyone interacted with him on Earth. He was not used to it but he didn¡¯t mind, he just acted as naturally as he could after all.
He never felt like there was anything wrong with the way he acted before and he didn¡¯t know exactly when this changed.
???
Ebony wouldn¡¯t know that he was the first person who wasn¡¯t Ning Xin¡¯s grandma or cousin that looked straight into her eyes without any sort of derision, fear, surprise or any emotion at all. She had grown up to be sensitive to the looks in people¡¯s eyes. At first, she thought she could finally talk to someone that didn¡¯t care about her mask or ¡®tainted¡¯ bloodline as his eyes were so dark but clear. Then, he started to avoid her in an oblivious manner that irked her the wrong way.
She was a bit embarrassed at her strength to team up with a group of strangers but she encouraged herself. She was just a teenage Journeyman like the others, it shouldn¡¯t be surprising that she didn¡¯t have some legendary power. To be fair, she was pretty much living up to the legend because of how weak Plainston¡¯s crowd were.
She killed her first person in Ordina but was long prepared to do so. It might be thanks to her grandma teaching her about the evils of the world ever since she was a child. No one in the party noticed but she was quite shaken at that time, she only acted tough so that they didn¡¯t look down on her. Seeing Ebony crush a few people in his orb of ice without a single fluctuation of emotion steeled her heart further. Tuffock¡¯s betrayal hardened her heart further. Her grandmother had been right, one cannot be soft or they would be killed. She was infuriated at Ebony that he made a deal to owe the stone mage a favour but there was nothing she could say when their lives were saved.
She spent time away from Ebony when the party disbanded. She made her way back to Xienor on foot but she didn¡¯t interact with people much. Only doing escort jobs that were on the way for mana ores. But people ignored and stayed away from her and she did the same. Staying at Xienor meant that she was back to being alone unless her grandmother was home. Then she was teleported near Plainston but was sent to a bloody cave where she was alone again.
Being on the losing end against Ordina¡¯s Guardian even after her time in the bloody cave increased her focus on training.
An explosion of emotions washed over her when Ebony was taken away but the time she was recuperating hurt more than her Core Skill working against her. Things finally calmed down after they evolved and she met the Thoyas. She didn¡¯t think she could feel at peace with strangers and even feel a stronger sense of belonging there than in Xienor in just months or even weeks.
Then she came to Fifth Tide only because of Arcta and made friends with chefs. Besides Hector or maybe Mallory, these chefs were her first friends that didn¡¯t really care about her mask or power. They just shared a passion towards cooking. There were also Athena and Ayla that made her stay in the same building and attempted to chat with her time and time again. She thought that both women were actually not that bad to be around. ¡®If only they didn¡¯t tease me that much¡¡¯ They were a bit older than her as well but the age gap wasn¡¯t obvious from the way they acted.
With the war going on at the same time, her aura naturally sharpened but also softened. It was just hidden far better now. Hence, most people won¡¯t be as frightened unless they have a good perception.
Ning Xin poured them a cup of frost plum tea. Korta¡¯s skin colour was slightly deeper blue compared to all the Frost Elves she had seen but his face deepened in colour as he got burnt and blew on the tea to chill it. He continued to talk about losing the card game.
Internally, she was thinking about the disgruntled and even hateful emotions of some of the Commanders and Generals. They must have wanted to drag out the battle, seeing as they were in the low to mid-300s. For those with leader or tactic-type Sub-Class or Profession, the war must be causing their growth to spike. Those that looked relieved at the state of the situation were mostly pure combatants that have generic leadership skills instead of an entire class. From what she understood, these people were mostly the newer generations of their own noble house. The other Tides took the experts away but the situation changed a little because of the Emperor arriving.
In most noble¡¯s eyes, the Fifth Tide wasn¡¯t that important. Even if they lost it, what was behind was Bubble Hills, Trailane Plains and Hoarfrost Glades. It was as backwater as it can get for the Empire. The Glades were barely traversed by people and the Plains were already dropping in population as people slowly migrated to lands with more resources and larger dungeons. The Hills had some resources and mines but it wasn¡¯t a big loss even if they didn¡¯t have them. Ordina was a great new dungeon for beginners but that was it, there were other places for experience and resources.
If they really lost, they could retreat and hold up in Cities. Buying time for the Empire to come up with a countermeasure. It was just slightly inconvenient if the Trolls started making camps and worse, hiding in some mountain. That would be one of the worst situations for the public as few would dare to leave the cities to hunt, forage or trade. Those whose trade depended on moving in and out of the city would face a bit of trouble. Putting up the City barrier also meant the inhabitants were lawfully required to let their mana be syphoned if the situation called for it.
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Regardless, those unhappy Commanders couldn¡¯t do anything about the current situation. She would probably see them with a few elite teams when they were helping to fend off as many of the Troll Patriarchs'' squad members and Shamans as possible. Korta would be facing Midnight Shepherd and both Tribal Patriarchs at the same time. There was a decent chance some other Tribe¡¯s members would be taking part as well so the only difference was that the scale of battle was decreasing. She learnt enough in the past few months to guess that their unit would definitely be ¡®allowed¡¯ to fight. They wouldn¡¯t really be causing any formations to break and these freelancers are much better at relatively smaller-scale battles.
More likely than not, the military doesn¡¯t want to risk slightly more talented soldiers in an environment they had less control over.
¡®I need to fight more aerial battles!¡¯ She clenched her fist and recalled the fun and absolute freedom she had earlier. She enjoyed it far more than she imagined. These new wings fit really well but she needs to adjust their size, shape and how solid or fluid they are. Incensed Meditation kicked in even though she wasn¡¯t angry or in battle, she can play around soon! She secretly shifted closer to Ebony to get the calming effect from him and speed up her regeneration.
She had a feeling Incensed Meditation was improving faster these days. With the obvious change in the conditions to start the skill it might be a mutation. Ebony¡¯s calm during any situation might have grown on her.
¡°They¡¯re here for the death count.¡± Ebony listened to the soldier that stood near their gates.
¡°Only about two hundred thousand, that guy must have protected them in time. Those at the rear should¡¯ve been able to leap out of range too.¡± Korta took a moment before he replied. She wondered if that even gave the spellcaster a single level.
Korta¡¯s spell looked a bit slow to her, she felt like it was possible for her to escape the range in time if nothing impeded her. It probably wasn¡¯t a commonly used skill and was a bit impractical to use in a one-on-one battle as he seemed mostly defenceless while casting it. However, the spell was crafted well and she wanted a similar one with her lightning magic. She already started creating more spells but she didn¡¯t put that much focus on them. Until she evolved into a Grandmaster or even higher, she would not go too deep into a spellcasting fighting style. She could barely support all her body enhancement magic for long. Especially since she continued to increase the power output of her enhancements. Unless she can somehow increase her mana regeneration greatly, she may never be much of a spellcaster.
When it came to lightning and wind mana she wasn¡¯t capable of conjuring them yet. Everybody had lightning mana in them and she was quite good at making use of limited internal lightning mana. Actually, she can conjure lightning but it was only from time to time and she would fail most of the time. The surroundings had lightning mana as well but it was usually quite sparse so it was not easy to make use to cast any spells. There wasn¡¯t really a need to conjure wind since there was an abundance of it and she could just wave her hand. Physical movement converted pure ambient mana into wind mana. With Ebony starting to manipulate lightning mana she was motivated to teach him so she was very close to perfecting the conversion of mana to lightning mana.
She sipped on her tea as well but choked a bit. ¡®Didn¡¯t I crush the leaves completely?¡¯ She felt like some sediments of powdered petals tickled her throat. Then she got distracted and thought about other methods of preparing this tea.
???
¡°Drink slowly.¡± Ebony pat Ning Xin¡¯s back when she coughed out her tea. It wasn¡¯t that rare for her to eat or drink eagerly.
Korta only napped for about an hour but he could tell that the Elf¡¯s mana pool was almost half full again. To hear that over 200,000 deaths were caused by a single spell had been a bit shocking. Especially because the man probably controlled the spell so that it didn¡¯t accidentally kill Imperial Soldiers. He actually doubted the number due to the giant size of the Trolls and that some countermeasures should¡¯ve been taken but there was no reason to doubt it so he didn¡¯t think it was a lie.
After 2 hours of Korta¡¯s storytelling, they finally got onto the topic of how the battle with the Trolls would likely turn out. Korta would have Korben and Koawe as support while some elite units of the army and Cap Dwarf¡¯s unit would take on the squad members of the Midnight Shepherd and Tribe Patriarchs.
Even the Patriarchs and Shamans are part of a squad of 8 or less but their squad members probably aren¡¯t nearly as strong. The bird monsters that showed up meant that there were some of the Tamers present that they didn¡¯t know about before.
The Shaman¡¯s abilities were something he had the least information on. They specialised in range so much that they rarely showed up anywhere near the front. But that was only for their Vitality linking magic and a few other support spells. According to what he heard, they had many kinds of weird magic that they could use if they were sent out to fight.
They also had to watch out for the Slingarm Tribe but that would be left to the archers and mages to handle.
Altogether, Koawe¡¯s estimated they would be against at least ten thousand high 400s Grandmasters and a hundred King ranked. He gave it a higher estimate compared to the past. Ebony wondered how the Trolls had such a large population and still have a high-level average despite both Continents being roughly the same size. Daily life must be more brutal over on Tova. Their society respects strong warriors so they must be more pressured to train than a random citizen that has food, water and shelter practically guaranteed in the Empire.
¡®Midnight Shepherd and their strongest warriors will come out sooner or later or Korta and other similarly strong people can just slaughter most Trolls. Forcing them out unless they want to waste lives or buy time with it. The Trolls can also use the same tactic but they didn¡¯t¡they must see this as a training more than the Empire.¡¯ Even after General Impes was sent out on the battlefront, they only pushed the Trolls back a few kilometres in days. The King-ranked squads rarely showed up. It was quite obvious if Koawe¡¯s estimate was right, Fifth Tide might have been abandoned long ago. There was not a single King combatant in Fifth Tide till Korta came. Minus the Archduke of Dwarf who left months ago.
¡°If they get desperate they might come in a flood while we fight. If they don¡¯t care for their lives then we are in trouble.¡± Korta got a bit more serious. He might not get killed by a wave tactic but he might not be able to stop the giants from simply flooding and piling themselves on the city barrier. From how lax the past months have been, Ebony didn¡¯t think they were that desperate yet. The fact that the Trolls were getting another bout of reinforcements was worrying but it didn¡¯t take a seer to guess that the Trolls might want to take advantage of how weak Fifth Tide was. They could flank Fourth Tide if they took over so they were similarly getting good reinforcements if the meeting earlier was filled with accurate reports.
¡®Should I fight?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t find it necessary. Capped at 300, killing would only gain him Natural Potential but there were plenty of other options like dungeon or even wild monsters. Arcta was likely safer than the city if they had multiple mages as strong or even stronger than Korta so he already didn¡¯t have that much motivation to continue staying here. It wasn¡¯t necessary to kill to refine or level skills. It wasn¡¯t even necessary to kill to gain Class experience, it was just far faster.
¡°If that¡¯s the case, we should also be able to gain Natural Potential through training. Sister Jing got both a ton of experience and potential through a single craft. Combatants can gain experience simply by sparring, is there a way to ¡®accumulate¡¯ training all the way till it becomes Natural Potential?¡± Ebony was a bit convinced that it was possible. He didn¡¯t realise that he spoke out loud.
¡°Of course! Just seal all your skills from levelling. After a century or a few decades unseal it and you¡¯ll get a burst of skill levels and Natural Potential. How else are you supposed to gain Natural Potential?¡± Korta lazily slumped onto the table and yawned.
From Ning Xin¡¯s reaction, Ebony could tell that she had no idea what the Frost Elf said was possible.
¡°Is that how you gain potential?¡± The masked lady sounded a bit unsure.
¡°After our initial Classing, that¡¯s how every one of us gains Natural Potential. You can see that many of us who reached our max level wouldn¡¯t show any improvements in terms of spell power or just any sort of improvement in general. It¡¯s possible to..hmm, should I say sacrifice? Skills levels that you don¡¯t want in this ¡®pool¡¯ that¡¯s similar to experience. Ah, you didn¡¯t learn this because the Thoya¡¯s left the village when they were young, crafters and support classes don¡¯t really have to resort to such methods either.¡±
¡°What do you mean by sealing your skills? How do you do that?¡± Ebony was more curious about how rather than why.
¡°Well, how long did you stay unevolved previously? After you felt like you reached the limits of your skills.¡± Instead of answering, Koawe probed.
¡°After we felt our limits, not long.¡± Ning Xin replied. They just killed another creature and got Natural Potential to raise the conceived limits but once they hit numbers they were satisfied with, they practically evolved as soon as possible.
¡°That is the simplest ¡®seal¡¯. You hit your limit but continue repeating the same or more complex actions and hope for different results. Based on our records, in a relatively safe environment such as Arcta, daily repetition gives the first or second Natural Potential inducement equivalent to 10-20 level gaps within 2 to 3 years for Master to Grandmaster. In Tuctra, that duration can be shortened 7 to 10 times. If it''s a spell or active skill, the target also affects results.¡± Koawe explained as Korta got bored and fell asleep.
The Frost Elves ruled out ambient mana densities to be something that doesn¡¯t affect their personal growth in terms of Natural Potential. Tuctra, their second village was under constant threat of destruction as they were basically within the habitats of King and even Emperor Class monsters. Milly, their guardian beast was also Emperor Class but she wasn¡¯t really their strongest defence. Ebony thought that Milly¡¯s aura wasn¡¯t really much stronger than Korta but that may have been due to her recent pregnancy.
Ning Xin had a look of understanding and he was a bit curious about what she was thinking about.
¡°And the other method? If it¡¯s not your race¡¯s secret¡¡± It clicked to Ebony that the methods of power growth might be racial secrets.
¡°Sadly, I¡¯m not high up enough to learn a lot of our history. It¡¯s passed down for a long time but it¡¯s not a big secret. I can¡¯t really tell you how to seal your skills because I have no idea how. Every one of us would get our Matriarch to seal it for us. She would conduct a ritual to pray to our ancestors to seal our skills. Those Elves can do the same. However, Navin and my Master could even seal herself without any ritual. She didn¡¯t teach me since she said that I could just get my Matriarch to do it for me. I heard her method is extremely simple and it took Navin a week to learn.¡± Koawe reminisced about how it took him half a year to travel with his father to get to Tuctra to get an audience with their Matriarch.
It was a bit more convenient for them to ask Navin than to travel into highly dangerous lands to meet the leader of the Frost Elves that had no obligation to help them. He also didn¡¯t know if he wanted to spend decades with their method. He needed to know more to decide.
¡°Can you tell me more about sacrificing skill levels?¡± From what he could tell, the Frost Elves were aware of the ability to choose their path during evolutions.
¡°I can answer that better but, show me that both of you require this knowledge. Especially you, I want to know why the Elves hate your people with a dying passion.¡± Korta shot up without any sleep in his eyes and pointed at Ning Xin. Koawe¡¯s eyes glimmered a little, something Ebony learned to take notice of.
¡°The Elves hate the Xeng?¡± She cocked her head in confusion, it was definitely rubbed off from him.
¡°What?¡± Korta¡¯s finger dropped unenthusiastically.
¡°I don¡¯t know, I¡¯m not pure and I never studied history.¡± All she knew about history was what her grandma told her.
¡°No problem! I don¡¯t like reading either! Or the forest elves, they suck! I ran into one in the past and they hung me on a tree for no damn reason! Thankfully I escaped before they killed me on sight. Those stupid arrows of theirs are undodgeable. I¡¯m telling you, they hate everyone and have grudges with any creature that stands in front of them.¡± Korta was very energetic for someone that just woke up.
¡°He¡¯s exaggerating but I get the same feeling when I pass by one of them in Tidal,¡± Koawe added.
¡°I met an Elf but he didn¡¯t seem that bad. He went to Arcta when I first arrived there.¡± Ebony was reminded of Fergus.
¡°I know that boy. Poor kid, I¡¯m not sure if he rejected his own race or it was the other way around.¡± Koawe made a rare sigh.
¡°What kid? We allowed one of them into our village!?¡± It was news to Korta.
¡°He¡¯s barely half a century old, we weren¡¯t going to kick a child out.¡± Koawe seemed to like the tea.
¡°So young! And he¡¯s out and about¡wait! Don¡¯t distract me! Come at me!¡± The training ground darkened as ice sealed the area. Except it wasn¡¯t Ebony¡¯s doing but Korta¡¯s.
Chapter 200: Chasm
Ebony reacted by setting up his domain as fast as he could as his Weighted Will went all out on the 8 or 9-century-old mage. He was slower than the flaming swordswoman who actually put distance instead of attacking from their spot at the table. She was charging her Core Skill while Ebony bought time. It was a bit of a habit if they fought together against an opponent far stronger than them. There was a good chance she also didn¡¯t want to spill the tea or hit Koawe. Most likely the tea.
As a spar, they were also confident that Korta wanted to see what they could do instead of overpowering them instantly.
¡°Gravity? I¡¯ve never seen a gravity mage but there is a purple dungeon not too far from Tuctra that has gravity about 4 to 5 times stronger than this and it triples every floor up. You¡¯ll have to try har--ow.¡± Korta was raising his arm towards his chin but that caused his mana vibrations to attack. He might not have felt the light vibrations from opening his mouth to talk.
¡°What¡¯s this, is the mana reacting to my movements?¡± He waved his hand around, no longer getting hurt. ¡°Vibrations to attack? Cool! How did I not think of that!?¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t even need eyes to see that ice or cold was the last thing that would harm the ice mage standing there and playing in his domain. But, he had to try if his freezing flames made a difference. Blazing Deep Freeze Petals were already falling onto one of his strongest opponents so far. He made sure to conjure them very close to the man but he needed a short time to compress them as much as possible so he didn¡¯t cast it right where the target was.
He actually tried to do so but he couldn¡¯t even conjure ice anywhere a metre away from Korta. It was not new, he also couldn¡¯t conjure ice directly onto Trolls if they extend their Vitality outside their bodies. The soldiers¡¯ armour could do something similar against most types of magic which protects them better against mages that could conjure elemental projectiles but Ebony already tested that he could overpower the relatively weak enchantment.
Against Korta, even within his domain, his ice mana was barely holding onto their positions as he received the mental feedback that they were getting pushed away from the target. Ebony quickly Willed Gravity Vortex into existence as near to Korta as possible. ¡®I can usually cast it onto the target directly if my domain is up¡¡¯ Not being able to make the target attract every single object and attack towards themselves was a bit of a bummer but he never depended too much on a single spell.
¡°You--can actually do this? I knew you were the next prospective candidate but I never thought anyone could use that tree¡¯s magic.¡± Korta''s eyelid dropped as the petals landed on him, he caught one on his palms and ignored the rest. Ebony¡¯s petals weren¡¯t dispersing and were definitely not seeping into Korta¡¯s body.
Of course, he could hear the man¡¯s voice but he wasn¡¯t that surprised that the Frost Elves¡¯ knew about Gen but it might be possible that they didn¡¯t know about Ful, the remnant tree spirit from his form of address. But why is it that even they could not replicate frost flames? His flames were not spreading and were somewhat suppressed but he knew it was only the ice mana that settles and freezes that was being pulled aside and not the flames.
¡°Hang on, are you using Will? A Master using Will? Are you actually an old freak? Is it mana being¡¯s perk¡can¡¯t be, he¡¯s still more physical.¡± Korta¡¯s mental hold over his ice mana strengthened but Ebony held strong. He was able to resist to some extent but it was draining his Will thrice as fast. Icicle already parked itself over his head and was hidden behind Frigid Refraction but there was no chance the ice mage didn¡¯t sense it.
Stalactite Drop!
Ning Xin¡¯s charge matched the timing of his blade dropping and multiple Glacial Models already jumped into his domain and blocked Korta¡¯s path. She used a simple sword thrust with one arm and readied her other arm for a follow-up. Unlike Ebony¡¯s various control-type skills, many of her skills worked to power one attack. Be it enhancement, mastery or imbuement of elements.
Thankfully, they got Cap Dwarf to compress the ground here even further and it was able to withstand far more force. Not to the toughness of the earth where the underground tomb city was but it was close. They didn¡¯t get any special magical architect to further strengthen the ground as the military training ground was pretty decent, to begin with. Hence, only a small crater formed from her explosive burst of speed. She already had her tier 3 movement speed for a while and it was getting refined over time.
Ebony focused all his domain¡¯s power to push Icicle down on Korta but he felt like he hit bedrock and his spell was forcefully jammed. No amount of mental force or Will he could utilise can make his greatsword move another inch. In that instant, Icicle was ripped out and redirected near his feet. Blocking Ning Xin¡¯s blade with the flat body. There wasn¡¯t any delay from her left thrust blocked to her right slash.
He has not been able to copy her sword style. For her to put her entire body¡¯s power into a thrust and smoothly connect that to a similarly full-powered slash did not feel natural to him. He understood that it was her absolute muscular control but he couldn¡¯t do it as swiftly or naturally. As small as it was, there would definitely be a delay. This withdrawal and transfer of one attack¡¯s force to the next was the core of her sword style and also active skills like her Cascading Mutilation. During the past few months, she already identified the limits that she could reach before her muscles and tendons started to tear. Better still, her Conditioning was specifically refined to deal with the stress her technique¡¯s style put on her body. With just time and effort, they were both very sure they could get their Conditioning to evolve specifically to deal with the different stress they face.
Korta¡¯s reaction appeared to lag as her second strike closed in on his neck but Ebony already had Firm Path drag her back. He could sense the ice spike forming beneath him and his Hunch told him that the ice spike would form explosively fast before she could reach the Arch Mage.
¡°That was a bit scarier than I had expected but, just a tad slow. As for you, other than compression for durability you¡¯re not making the best use of Intelligence to power your spell.¡±
¡®Why did he have to say slow¡¡¯ Ebony¡¯s Stalactite Drop was physically stopped and that was exactly what set off the gravity and vibrations to be released. Stuck in the air, ¡®cracks¡¯ could be seen running along the air and into the ground under Korta. His presence faded away with Waning Presence and he hid with Frigid Refraction. Icicle shot back into his hands with Firm Path¡¯s help and was also hidden with him.
The Arch Mage wasn¡¯t prepared for that as ice mana flooded out and burst into flames, naturally forming into plum petals before dispersing. The spell was supposed to stab into a target or the ground. The explosive release into the surroundings had to be suppressed by him or the petals would float and fly out of bounds. Well, there was a barrier set up by Korta, he didn¡¯t really have to worry about petals floating out and getting blown around the city.
¡®That¡¯s thick¡¡¯ The violent shockwave only appeared to form cracks in the air due to the thick layer of mana within his domain but it rebounded off the far denser layer of mana over the Frost Elf¡¯s skin. The Arch Mage didn¡¯t use the dispelling tactic to wash his vibrations with pulses of mana like Cap Dwarf and the Knights, it was just a simple but incomparably stable mana skin. He likely had a high gravity resistance as well.
Ning Xin hated to be slow, calling her slow was just chipping at her pride. Everywhere she landed had a spike of ice as large as her bursting out and she was hopping around without being able to get close to Korta. There was limited space around and she burst her wings out to meet the same resistance of a spiky sphere of ice forming right in her face. She slashed at the interruption reflexively but they burst on impact. The thin shards of ice melted before they did any damage to her. The Arch Mage didn¡¯t make his ice any harder to melt and wasn¡¯t compressed at all, it might even be expanded so that he didn¡¯t accidentally kill weak Masters like them.
Ebony was able to sense them before they formed but he wasn¡¯t able to warn her, slow the formation down or even affect the conjuration of ice even though this was supposedly his domain. Ning Xin was having a tough time avoiding the land spikes and aerial spheres but she was slowly closing in. She took the attention away from him which may or may not have helped. 4 Glacial Models were trying their best to distract Korta but they weren¡¯t even worth batting an eye. Ebony wasn¡¯t able to latch any gravity spells onto Korta.
With Treading Stride that was in the midst of evolving or mutating, Ebony raised Icicle overhead and phased above and behind Korta. If Firm Path couldn¡¯t attract Icicle onto his target, he just had to place a point of gravity aligned with his blade to repel it to achieve the same effect!
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His greatsword sliced through the air, blowing Korta¡¯s body apart.
Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised that he missed but it was eye-opening that even with his perception of ice, he hadn¡¯t been able to sense that the person he attacked had just been a gust of icy wind the entire time. Not to mention, Koawe and even the table already disappeared from their original spot. Dozens of Kortas surrounded him before he knew it.
Ning Xin sent a bundle of scorching flames around him to melt any sort of icy mirage or clones. Ebony ducked as her blood halos expanded from a tiny palm-sized disk all the way till it splattered on the barrier of ice a kilometre away. It dispersed the mirages and exposed the real body but Ebony already knew which was real.
He didn¡¯t care about aim and put all his effort into magnifying gravity with his domain and formed a 10-metre diameter beam of Firm Path from the sky onto Korta, repelling him and working in tandem with the magnified pull. He amplified the shockwaves from Ning Xin¡¯s Rampaging Mortal¡¯s Pulse and directed it all onto their target. His Will also recognised her as an ally and propelled her next attack even further. He didn¡¯t waste any mana on conjuring ice in his domain or the Arch Mage might use it against him and it saves him energy from contending with the burning heat that took over.
Ebony also stepped in with Icicle overhead again. Stalactite Drop!
It was the first time he tried to use this skill with the sword in hand rather than a spell. He found the skill activating even with a swing and not letting the sword go. He already released all the ice mana within his greatsword so that Korta couldn¡¯t exert control over it.
Sadly, it was a bit naive to expect it to work. Unlike him, the Arch Mage could conjure ice directly on their bodies with just a thought. Ice formed on his blade and it was redirected to fend off Ning Xin¡¯s strike yet again.
Icicle gobbled up the ice mana and Ebony could pull it back again. He unleashed Ceaseless Onslaught onto the tall but skinny frame together with the dual-wielding swords master. Although they trained together every single day, finding a humanoid opponent for them to fight at the same time was rare. However, it only took a few swings before their attacks matched up. The huge sword wasn¡¯t affecting her sword path at all and both of them danced and circled Korta.
¡°Did your sword just absorb my ice?¡±
The Arch Mage stopped controlling Icicle to block Ning Xin¡¯s attack as Ebony simply used the momentum for his next swing. Ning Xin was building up speed and power extremely fast and it gave him even more momentum by receiving her parries.
¡°Gah, I¡¯m melting here!¡± Korta exclaimed before coughing.
They didn¡¯t hope on trying to suffocate him but perhaps it was more effective than they assumed.
Arrows descended from the skies.
Calculated Hunch made Ebony ignore it and continue his onslaught as arrows pierced his repulsion but shattered from the vibrational reflection, he got his skin cut but it healed up almost instantaneously. A bloody sweep extended from the blood mage¡¯s mantle to swipe and melt the arrows. It bubbled and boiled but quickly cooled off before returning to her mantle. Neither of them stopped to defend or even evade.
All their swings were wind and gravity-assisted but lightning and sonic imbuement were pointless since they couldn¡¯t land a hit. Korta reused the same tactic of forming a small amount of ice on his greatsword to gently skim away from his body. Ning Xin already buffed up and got used to the ice spike and spheres timing and reflexively destroyed them, they melted extremely fast and couldn¡¯t really harm her either. When something was about to form underneath her, she would stomp it out so it couldn¡¯t even push her back anymore.
Not to mention, with the current temperatures around them, it was much harder for ice to be conjured. Perhaps, the heat angered him or made him uncomfortable but he blew out a massive puff of icy breath onto her. It was basically the same spell as his past Frost Mist but far stronger as it swallowed the fiery girl up. Korta finally took them a bit more seriously. Ebony could sense the ice mana condensing. His onslaught decorated the air with flaming petals, he hadn¡¯t given up using ice magic.
Although Waning Presence and Frigid Refraction were both completely useless against Korta, Ebony didn¡¯t stop using them. With Ning Xin dealing with the cloud of ice drowning her out he pushed Treading Stride once again and disappeared and reappeared from every direction he could to slip an attack through. It looked as if there were a few of him attacking Korta at the same time.
¡°Alright alright, that¡¯s enough. I don¡¯t have to worry about letting you guys fight with this.¡± Ning Xin had just broken out of the white cloud of ice and possible snow when the Arch Mage yawned again. It was not his main point of focus but Ebony took note of his opponent¡¯s mana. It might have dropped by a percent or so but he might be wrong as he wasn¡¯t that sensitive when it came to measuring how much mana someone has yet.
¡°We¡¯re not done! Ebony, let¡¯s try that.¡± Ning Xin burst out with her flaming wings dispersing and stood beside him.
¡°That? What is that?¡± His mind was a bit confused from the sudden switch from combat to relax as usual.
¡°Turn off your blood resistance.¡±
¡°Oh, that. Let¡¯s try. Korta, do you want to take another attack? It¡¯s experimental, so I¡¯m not sure how it¡¯ll go.¡±
¡°Ohhkay! Just hit this or something.¡± Korta had another wave of sleepiness washing over him. He walked to the side and fell asleep on the table with Koawe again. Leaving a block of ice for them to hit.
It killed their enthusiasm a little but they still experimented.
¡°No, gather your life force faster.¡±
After 15 minutes, she managed to cast Rampaging Mortal¡¯s Pulse on him. It wasn¡¯t easy to control another person¡¯s body even if they shut their defences off but the two of them managed to find a way. She can manipulate his blood even if it was still in his body but he could also remove that control at any time. Although her Core Skill had long changed from a simple heart pump it was still possible for her to simulate the same skill but on his body. The difficult part was matching the blood with his life force since he wasn¡¯t adept at manipulating that.
It was far from perfect but he gained another form of enhancement. It was extremely uncomfortable but his body was tougher than hers by a large margin.
Whatever the case, he cut the ice block with relative ease and the slash smashed into the barrier behind.
¡°We need more practice with this.¡± Ebony knew that the chasm of power was too wide to close. Simple spells and abilities were more than enough to render the advantages their elements give them useless.
¡°Go work on getting your sound magic back.¡±
Koawe left Korta alone and left atop Arti to fetch Korben.
Ebony went out on an errand to fetch ingredients over. Their chef would just cook for their small unit instead of joining the other chefs today. There was a fully functional kitchen over here anyway. ¡°I want a pot pie version.¡± Was his sudden craving when she said she would try making the same mutton and pea dish.
He heard people coughing and felt more and more uneasy as he made his way towards the kitchen and warehouse Ning Xin frequents. Before long, the city noticed many people coughing and even collapsing. By the time he made it back to their rented camp, even soldiers started falling sick.
A quick scan showed that many in their unit had some symptoms as well. Ning Xin was taking a shower but he remembered the soft cough when she choked on tea. He couldn''t tell if that was a normal cough or if it was the same thing affecting the city folk and even soldiers. The coughing within the camp got louder over the next few minutes.
He didn¡¯t even care about rudeness and dashed for the closest healer. He was gonna snag one as fast as possible even if he had to do it by force. There were around a hundred Imperial healers but they were mostly busy healing soldiers day in and out. The lull in battle allowed some to come back to the city. Ebony got the healer their unit was familiar with. At least the Empire was nice enough to have 1 healer prioritise them. It was a very old man that had already been the city¡¯s healer before the influx of healers came over. Since he remained in the city instead of going beyond the walls with the army he was usually always around. The military city obviously had a couple more healers from apprentices to fully-fledged healers. This old man didn¡¯t specialise in injuries or sickness, he took care of both citizens and soldiers which was a good choice compared to others that specialise in healing injuries.
Thankfully, even the citizens here were a bit tough. Most people wouldn¡¯t see a healer for a simple cough so Ebony got there to see that the old man, Dorqe was not very busy. Dorqe didn¡¯t have high physical stats and was only a Master that¡¯s stuck and unable to evolve due to the lack of talent. He started out as a doctor and wasn¡¯t a healer that studied in Tidal. Ebony made a ride for the old man but he didn¡¯t like the cold as it would chill his bones.
¡°Don''t rush me, young man.¡±
Ebony lightened Dorqe¡¯s load with gravity and carried his bag of medical supplies. He told Dorqe the symptoms and there were some people on the streets who showed the same symptoms but to a greater degree. They couldn¡¯t leave people who fainted alone which took even more time. Ebony conjured a few more Glacial Models, imprinted Mental Map with Will and got them to carry those who were in worse condition to the hospital where Dorqe worked at. The old healer spent quite a bit of time relaying instructions to others through his callstone. Fortunately, short-range communication wasn¡¯t interrupted.
Ebony¡¯s senses pulsed out and he quickly conjured more uncompressed Models ahead of him to carry any unconscious within the range of his senses before Dorqe could see them. It still took over 2 hours to escort the old healer over when the hospital was only 3 streets away.
¡°This is the shamanic plague, help me line them up.¡± Dorqe probably already knew the cause when he diagnosed a few people. From what Ebony saw, the old healer only provided first aid and a quick fix to the symptoms but not the cause.
Chapter 201: Quarantine
¡°Must be those Trolls that got thrown over.¡± Cap Dwarf helped to get everyone to line up. He was completely fine.
Ebony noticed that other than Cap Dwarf, about 3 people were acting normal. Athena, someone new he didn¡¯t really talk to and Ayla¡¯s supposed brother, Hayec. Hayec and Ebony were about the only Masters unaffected
¡°Is it the food? Did the Trolls spread anything in the warehouses?¡± Athena shot sharp looks at the people lying down on the mattress. She might not have trusted everyone to have dealt with the Trolls with the same efficiency as she did.
They brought everyone into an unused dorm. Some were sitting up on the bed in annoyance while others were lying down in pain. Most of the warriors were still doing fine and Ning Xin was just sitting on a chair, likely thinking about pot pie from tiny vibrations he could catch from her belly.
¡°I saw some of them vomit. They might have kept something in their stomach.¡± The toughest-looking man in the room with a deep scar running down his right eyebrow to his neck spit onto a bin. He was a muscular fire mage that wielded a tiny wand with a broken red gem. There was reddish brown phlegm in his spit and Dorqe analysed it.
The Trolls were almost naked other than pieces of cloth that survived the corrosion cloud thanks to the layer of vitality they were wrapped in. There weren''t many ways they could keep or hide objects.
¡°Shamanic plague, there are a few types. This isn¡¯t as bad as I prepared myself for but it¡¯s not ideal either. There¡¯s a good chance it was in their blood as well. It probably started spreading as they bled and ran around the city before you hunted them down.¡± Dorqe kindly asked them to shut up as he diagnosed everyone one by one. He was more of a doctor than a healer and no magic was being flung around. He just asked questions and checked their throat, phlegm and eyes. It was a bit awkward for him when it was Ning Xin¡¯s turn but her condition wasn¡¯t that bad compared to some who fainted and developed a fever.
Ebony didn¡¯t study magical illnesses but he understood that the way it spread was likely through the air and mana. If they couldn¡¯t perceive it, it was going to be extremely hard to stop. They reacted fast and the Trolls didn¡¯t even get far yet people around the area are already getting sick.
Dorqe shared his results. The plague starts out by targeting one¡¯s lungs and based on his questions, he guessed that only those with an effective Constitution above 3000 were completely fine. Even Grand Knights would be affected. Those who had an effective Constitution above 2000 could somewhat resist it. However, the bad news was that it only gets worse as it stays in one body and absorbs life force to strengthen itself.
No wonder the citizens showed symptoms so fast even though they were the first to come into contact with those suicide Trolls.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t even have a thousand base Constitution but perhaps her poison resistance, concentrated blood and physique helped. Boiling herself might have done her good. Her mask also constantly healed her. However, she had plenty of life force and she frowned when she started to find out if her life force was being eaten up. If the plague could strengthen itself, then she might be in trouble if they don¡¯t remove the root cause soon.
The bad news was that Dorqe wasn¡¯t able to heal them. He only prescribed them medicine that would weaken the symptoms and slow down the growth of the plague. Ebony didn¡¯t know if it was some kind of magical bacteria or virus and he wasn¡¯t able to guess from Dorqe¡¯s explanation. According to the doctor, they had to watch out for what other symptoms came as there was a good chance it was some new disease or there are odd mutations in the plague. He believed it wouldn¡¯t kill anyone within two or three months but the symptoms might get really bad depending on how much spread through one¡¯s body.
Ebony was especially worried. It probably spread throughout Ning Xin¡¯s body unless heat and fire worked well against the plague because spreading energy throughout her body as fast as possible was something she excelled at.
Within half an hour, a large portion of the city was quarantined. They activated the scholars and healers to find out more and check their records but it might take more time before any conclusive come up.
¡°Eat your own rations for now.¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t look at him and left the noisy dorm.
¡°It might not be transmitted by food. And I¡¯m not affected at all.¡± Now that Everlasting Tranquillity changed a little, he had food cravings once in a while. Watching his chef enjoy food might have affected him. Although she wasn¡¯t that affected by the plague right now, her disappointment and sadness were very obvious to him. There were few things that would cheer her up and food was the fastest and most effective way.
¡°You won¡¯t have to worry about your ingredients if you haven¡¯t touched your bag. I¡¯m sure Sister Jing¡¯s preservation containers won¡¯t let anything in. We are only using the city¡¯s ingredients.¡± He added while thinking about the possible worries that she had.
¡°Let¡¯s have dinner together, just the two of us.¡± He managed to persuade her in the end.
Their unit was quarantined within the barrier as high-risk personnel and would have food delivered. He didn¡¯t worry about food wastage with a bunch of hungry men present. Athena was also a big foodie. However, she left the training camp with the newer member who wasn¡¯t affected by the plague. Hayec and Cap Dwarf remained as neither seemed worried about catching the plague.
Korta was still sleeping and Ebony didn¡¯t really know what to do with him so he just left the Arch Mage alone. He made an igloo for himself. Hopefully, the Frost Elf invested in his physical body a little.
He helped with making the pot pie''s pastry and his chef¡¯s mood improved. They had a delightful dinner and she was distracted by her failure in getting the mutton to taste the same. He stayed close to her the entire time. They had been somewhat separated during their time here so it had been a while since they sat in silence within the confines of a small room.
¡°I was healing as fast as the plague was working so I didn¡¯t notice. It¡¯s growing but I can¡¯t pinpoint where it is. It¡¯s too small, once it grows I should be able to find it.¡± After they finished washing the dishes, she faced him and put on a serious tone. Her mask had a constant rate of healing and was limited in many ways. The plague seemingly had the ability to get stronger. It was only a matter of time before it got stronger than her recovery.
¡°Burning it doesn¡¯t work?¡±
¡°I raised my body temperature to the limit during the spar earlier but it didn¡¯t make a difference.¡±
Another healer was going to come by once they returned from the front lines but he didn¡¯t have his hopes up. Those up front were better with physical injuries and not illnesses.
¡°You should get some sleep, don¡¯t speed up your heart rate.¡± He didn¡¯t know what to say and generic words such as drinking more water came out.
¡°Relax, I can speed up my health regeneration. It won¡¯t affect me that much.¡± She stubbornly refused the medicine that Dorqe left. Arguing that she might get some kind of new resistance or level-up poison resistance.
They cut down on night training and it was quiet throughout the camp. The archers and rogues were suffering quite terribly but the mages were in the worst state. Some had to lie on their side as vomit splattered out while they were unconscious. Ebony could sense them and his Glacial Models were in charge of making sure they didn¡¯t choke on their vomit. They also kept the temporary infirmary clean.
They might be Grandmasters but even warriors don¡¯t have 3000 stat points in Constitution. Unless they had the right skills and resistance their condition was getting worse as the night goes by. Ayla was personally nursed by Hayec. Cap Dwarf was more assured when he saw his Models taking care of the others. The Dwarf sat on a rock and drank alcohol while moon gazing. It was a pastime that Ebony shared with more than once but he did not join the Dwarf tonight.
Ebony conjured his chair by Ning Xin¡¯s bedside.
¡°Ehm. You can leave now, I promise I¡¯ll sleep.¡± The red-haired girl had her hair down after another bath.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
¡°I will wait till you fall asleep.¡± Ebony was aware of the worsening conditions of the others in real-time as they were just a building away. These dorms didn¡¯t have magically enchanted walls that hindered his senses. Nowadays, a crack under the doors and windows is enough for him to poke around with his mana so he was able to ¡®see through¡¯ common walls.
¡°...I can¡¯t sleep with you watching.¡± She wore a pink set of pyjamas that he made for her. It was made from a material similar to a mix of cotton and silk and was very soft on the skin. She held a pillow over her chest as she sat on the bed. This wasn¡¯t something she wore in front of him before so he was actually appreciating how well it fit her.
¡°You¡¯re not taking off your mask, it¡¯s healing you. So my presence shouldn¡¯t inconvenience you.¡± Ebony assumed that she slept without her mask and that was what she was worried about.
¡°I¡¯m too nervous with you watching me.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll close my eyes.¡±
¡°It¡¯s too warm for you here.¡±
Ebony cooled the room down till it resembled an industrial freezer. His body temperature might be slightly higher now but it shouldn¡¯t affect her. Thinking about her heat sensitivity, he didn¡¯t contradict her and just lowered the temperature with a little ice mist.
¡°I--I actually can¡¯t sleep without hugging my bolster!¡± She mustered her courage.
¡°Go ahead.¡± She was so easy to understand that even he could tell that wasn¡¯t what she wanted to say. It might be true but she was just making excuses.
¡°It¡¯s embarrassing¡¡±
¡°It¡¯s not. Just take it as if I¡¯m not here, I can hide my presence if you want.¡±
¡°Please get out! And don¡¯t peek in here with your mana until I say so!¡± She physically pushed him out the door.
???
¡®What do I do! He¡¯s too persistent. I wore this for him but I can¡¯t sleep with these on¡¡¯ Ning Xin knew that she was very particular about getting quality sleep. In their trailer, she trusted the rooms to maintain privacy. The most she would wear to sleep was a set of underwear¡
Of course, she could make do with anything if she was out in the wild and would just sleep in her battle gear. She wasn¡¯t willing to dirty her bolster but she was actually getting groggy because of this plague and she felt like her energy was getting drained. Her mind was muddled since the after-dinner exercise and her eyelids got heavier.
¡®Whatever, he¡¯s not like that.¡¯ She stripped down and got under her covers, mumbling ¡°Don¡¯t stare¡¡± before falling into dreamland.
???
Ebony stepped back into the room and adjusted his chair to face the window.
The white tiger he got her was poking out from under the blanket together with her head. She laid on her side with both the tiger and bolster in her embrace.
¡®You didn¡¯t even give me time to withdraw my mana from the room.¡¯ Ebony tucked her fair shoulders under the blanket. Seeing that she didn¡¯t have any difficulty breathing or sleeping, he looked out the window and just meditated. Time usually passed much faster but he was disrupted the whole night. He threw another blanket over her as she kept tossing and turning, making sure to cool the blanket down.
The white tiger¡¯s face was squished and he thought about how he rarely gave her presents. They don¡¯t really celebrate birthdays and he also didn¡¯t have that habit. But one didn¡¯t have to have a reason to gift presents or show appreciation. Accessories weren¡¯t ideal as she didn''t like trinkets on her while she fought, she barely even wears her Myriad Bracelet nowadays. Her mask had all the necessary functions. He already made clothes and hair ties that she selectively wore but they seemed insufficient to him.
He was practising making robes and mantles so that he could make some for them in future. So far, their quality was a bit lacking. They could be worn but anything sold in stores was better. Specialised tailors had a bunch of skills and Fortifications after all. His only advantage was that his mana compression made his creations extra sturdy in the right way.
¡®I got it, I''ll get her a new whetstone.¡¯ He felt her twin swords vibrate and recalled her worn-out whetstone. He continued to work on manipulating life force and expanding his mana pool. Only disturbed by a single cough and the kicking of sheets. He was guilty of staring at her long legs for a minute before hiding them again.
¡°Maybe the change in Everlasting Tranquillity isn¡¯t that good after all.¡±
He climbed out the window and sat on the roof instead, leaving a crack in the window.
The conditions of mages started to stabilise before the archers and rogues. By daybreak, the warriors were in a worse condition than the archers but not as bad as the mages.
¡®I knew it. The plague feeds on life force to grow. The symptoms are different for each of them. Other than coughing blood the most common problem is the weakness they face.¡¯ Ebony already took note that some people are having trouble getting up to go to the bathroom. Those were for those that chugged down water through the night. Perhaps they felt more thirsty than usual or wanted to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling in their throat.
Ebony underestimated the healers here a bit too much as the couple that came only took an hour to get everyone back on their feet except a few mages. The warriors were energetic again but no one was fully healed. Apparently, Shamanic plagues were something taught in the Royal Academy. Yvette the Life Queen made it part of the curriculum that every student knew how to fight against the symptoms and cause the plague to weaken.
Sadly, the plague used in every war changes ever so slightly and both healers that were supposedly the most well-studied of the group couldn¡¯t find the exact location to direct their healing efforts too. They didn¡¯t do anything to Ning Xin. Once the plague weakens, they get harder to locate and the Xeng already had constant healing from her mask so it didn¡¯t grow to the point where the healers could do anything about it.
Ning Xin was very easy to read. If she didn¡¯t have a mask, Ebony was sure that her emotions would be shown all over her face and he would have learnt about reading expressions much faster. He had knocked on the door to wake her up earlier and her face flushed when she woke up and found her pyjamas folded and placed on his chair. He could tell from the steam rising above her head. He sensed her looking down to check that she still had some cloth on but he took back his mana sense right after that. It was cute to see her coming out and acting natural but her quivering voice betrayed her false calm.
The healers were an excellent distraction even though they weren¡¯t of any help in her case.
The training grounds were already noisy from the unit''s rage but many remained in bed due to the painful night before.
¡°Poor warriors, they had to give up their lives for these shameless tactics¡¡± Cap Dwarf whispered. Ebony and Ning Xin were of the same opinion. He might not be able to sense emotions the way she could but he knew that Troll warrior held a lot of pride and would not regret fighting to the death. They were sent here to spread a plague to weaken their opponents and weren¡¯t even allowed to fight, having their bodies controlled to run around as much as possible might have been a fate worse than death for them.
Koawe must have stayed over at Arcta for a night as he only came over the following day with Korben and Orren¡¯s party coming along. Korta slept the entire duration, fortunately, his overflowing Wisdom didn¡¯t spread far and it didn¡¯t cause any problems for the sick.
¡°Wrooh! I dreamt about getting beaten by Midnight Shepherd back then. I¡¯m not gonna wait for them to come over!¡± The igloo burst open with a loud roar and Korta flew off with a bang. It was drizzling during the night as Korta¡¯s mana started leaking but there was no storm.
The Frost Elves shook their heads. Not everyone in Orren¡¯s party knew Korta personally due to the different villages and their age gap but their village wasn¡¯t that large and Korben might have told them about his uncle. Ebony already told them about the plague so Arti didn¡¯t land or descend that much. They flew off after Korta and chased the rain clouds.
¡°Is it fine to let them go off by themself?¡± Hayec asked, he looked drained after nursing Ayla for a night. The others might not have noticed the Arch Mage¡¯s strength or even presence in the igloo the entire night as they were bedridden. They might not even have noticed the light rain. With the older Frost Elves around, Ebony wasn¡¯t worried about Orren¡¯s party.
¡°Worse comes to worse, they should be able to escape.¡±
The healers reported the situation but the only update they got was that they should wait for the crown princess to come and if she also didn¡¯t know how to deal with it, then they would send for more help. Both the healers were posted with their unit to deal with any rising symptoms. Since the symptoms could be suppressed, the situation wasn¡¯t the highest priority.
It was a bit extravagant to have two healers for a group of dozens but they set up a field clinic right at the side of the camp¡¯s gate. They were going to receive civilians nearby to lighten the load on the hospitals. The militia was mostly relieved that it wasn¡¯t a lethal plague that killed instantly. But civilians were in panic. Ebony had a bunch of his Models help the healers organise the people who rushed here after they got word of the field clinic. It was pretty terrible, many were carried here by soldiers. Older folks had weaker bodies even if they had the same Constitution. Non-combatants wouldn¡¯t really invest in the stat much depending on their Class and occupation so they had it pretty bad. The only silver lining was that they weren¡¯t directly infected like the militia was but it didn¡¯t make a big difference if the plague got stronger over time.
It was midday when some Journeyman Knights who were usually Identified as [Squire]s or [Novice Knight]s came running over. Although there was a callstone stationed in one of the buildings here, none of them operated it. They were pretty close to the walls and other camps and it wouldn¡¯t even take a minute or two for a messenger to rush over.
¡°Please help!¡±
¡°No thanks, we¡¯re quarantined.¡± Cap Dwarf replied, he was day drinking right at the end of the field and pretty far away from the gate but was sober enough to hear the shout from kilometres away. He was clearly pissed about the situation.
Chapter 202: Onset
The speechless Journeymen could do nothing but stand there stunned, not knowing how to respond. Technically, they were also quarantined just like the entire northern region of the city near the wall. They have not shown any symptoms but according to the healers, practically everybody was a carrier.
They did suspect that Journeymen would be completely safe as the quality or purity of their life force was so low that the plague couldn¡¯t even survive if they consumed it. At the moment, no Journeyman showed up at the field clinic and it had been more than half a day. One of the Novice Knights ran back to get further orders.
Ebony had one of his Glacial Models turn as transparent as it could and sent it towards the city wall and another to escort the Novice Knight. With Glacial Model at its current level, the range he had manual control over them was more than 10 times the range of his mana sense. Past his Will¡¯s range and they would act according to the last instructions he Willed into them. Once they were out of his mana¡¯s range, he would no longer be able to cast any type of buffs or recharge their mana so they are more vulnerable.
He was trying to get a better grasp of what his Models sensed but that was still a work in progress. It was pointless to cast one of his old perception spheres with them at the centre if they were within his own sphere of influence and once they were out of his mana¡¯s range he had to draw the Model¡¯s mana to cast a sphere of mana to sense things but the feedback that goes back to him through the link of Will wasn¡¯t really that precise.
The remaining Novice Knight briefly explained the message he was here to send. ¡°My Commander said the new King of Trolls is making a move! The seers thought they were on the way but they were already here!¡±
The militia didn¡¯t take the news lightly. Fortunately, Ebony silenced the report from the civilian¡¯s ears. He used sound magic to warn the soldier of his mistake and he got so shocked he almost fell on his butt. Then he realised that the civilians acted as if nothing happened and continued to harp at the healers to heal them first.
Of course, the Trolls would want to attack the weakest border city. Ebony expected them to have done so long ago. Their numbers already didn¡¯t matter when a limited number could launch attacks at the barrier or city walls at the same time. Most of them were close ranged specialists after all. He kept hearing the talk about other Tides having stronger warriors and he personally saw the increase of such Trolls in Fifth Tide but there wasn¡¯t enough to make a large difference. He wasn¡¯t sure how the Empire and Trolls played war but there was a balance being kept.
The Empire¡¯s public ¡®Emperor¡¯ arrived and allowed Second Tide to have a breather but the Trolls did the opposite and also the logical option of bringing their strongest to invade through the weakest point. ¡®Finally, a move that makes sense.¡¯ Ebony had almost assumed that the Trolls were greatly lacking in intelligence and was glad to see that he understood at least one move they made. Putting aside whether the Empire allowed them to move like that.
Cap Dwarf was stronger than most Commanders present in Fifth Tide but he was only given a temporary Captain rank. Soldiers only had to listen to his commands if they were in a precocious situation with no official leader of a higher rank. Within the city, his words hold little weight to the military. He was still shown respect for his strength but that was about it.
The alcoholic Dwarf stayed silent as he stared at the sky before his mug dropped, spilling his ale. Ebony looked up along with those that noticed Cap Dwarf¡¯s reaction. After two whole minutes of scanning the skies, the rest of the unit relaxed and complained to Cap Dwarf about the prank.
Ebony continues staring into the distance and looks for anything out of place. Korta wasn¡¯t around and the skies were mostly clear above them. The corrosion cloud further past the walls was the only thing that was above them as there weren¡¯t many birds that dared to come close to Fifth Tide and fly around the area with such unstable ambient essence.
¡®Don¡¯t tell me¡¡¯ Ebony watched the green cloud closely and was alarmed after another few minutes. The corrosion cloud was moving! Ever so slightly, the green skies were dropping down onto the battlefield and even begun to reach over the city.
The corrosion cloud had been a constant environmental effect for so long that they forgot that it was cast by someone or that it was just a lump of gas that couldn¡¯t be blown by the wind. If that descended on the city, Ebony feared that he might not be able to protect Ning Xin for long enough to escape the range of the cloud. Going underground wouldn¡¯t slow down the cloud at all, it put Topaz magic¡¯s consumption to shame. Even his body wouldn¡¯t last a minute before melting away.
They might be quick on their feet but these clouds went so deep that he was sure it even covered the Troll¡¯s territory. Bubble Hills, Trailane Plains and even a large portion of the Glades would be within range
¡®It¡¯s moving extremely slowly, no cause for concern.¡¯ Was his final verdict. The clouds would take a month to touch the city¡¯s barrier if they maintained their speed. Perhaps 3 months before it reached the ground floor where he stood.
¡°We¡¯ve got no time to lose! Before I move, you have 10 minutes to decide if you want to continue fighting or stay here and wait till you¡¯re no longer quarantined or have no one to quarantine you but yourself. I¡¯m fighting!¡± Cap Dwarf roared. No one understood his sudden attitude change except Ebony. Ning Xin was sneaking snacks into her belly in her room or something along those lines.
There was a bit of talk going on but the others quickly understood that the fight was going to downscale despite reinforcements each side was getting. Actually, a lot of soldiers were already beginning to talk about packing up and going home. This wasn¡¯t their battlefield anymore. The Masters in the group didn¡¯t even consider, they might be stronger than some Grandmasters but they just didn¡¯t have to risk their lives. This included Hayec and Ayla. Ebony wasn¡¯t sure what was there to motivate the other Grandmasters from staying, if they wanted levels they could find a dungeon. Patriotism? He didn¡¯t believe that these freelancers were so patriotic.
Ebony no longer worried about Arcta that much, the village was in far better hands. He would usually just go with the flow and stay for no particular reason. But now, a strong desire to contest the Trolls¡¯ greatest warrior welled up in him. He wanted to challenge all the strongest fighters he could. Perhaps due to the growing insecurity in his heart as he met stronger people. Building confidence that he wasn¡¯t completely helpless would have to start somewhere and he felt like this was an opportunity he shouldn¡¯t miss. He had confidence when it came to staying alive.
Needless to say, Ning Xin burned with a fighting spirit.
The only reason he wasn¡¯t keen on her fighting was that she was infected with a plague that can grow.
¡°Boy! Has the battle started?¡± Cap Dwarf roared with his aura pounding on the young soldier.
¡°I--I heard they started exchanging spells bu-but I don¡¯t know the specifics.¡± He was affected quite a bit by the sheer pressure coming from their unit.
¡®I don¡¯t feel any violent vibrations, nothing should have hit the barrier or walls.¡¯ A hard impact would cause vibrations and violent shocks would travel far and wide. By entering his range of senses, he could identify where the shocks came from and even how far or heavy the impact was. He guessed that the army absorbed the attacks and met spell with spell. Or thrown rocks¡
¡®Maybe they throw entire hills or mountains with their strength.¡¯ In the end, only less than 10 of them remained. Athena would likely stay, he sent a Glacial Model to look for her. He knew that she wasn¡¯t far and would pass the message to her. From her reactions, she might be afraid of the plague. She must barely meet the Constitution mark, maybe less. 3000 Constitution was just a rough estimate after all.
The Model that escorted the messenger was noticed by the Journeyman¡¯s Captain. Many of them already learned that his Models weren¡¯t some kind of ice golem so there haven''t been any more accidental attacks. The Captain was clearly very busy and vexed about the situation but he still tidied loose ends before dashing over at full speed.
Cap Dwarf didn¡¯t play around like he did with the novice knight. The quarantine was for a large part of the city, after the report that the symptoms could be suppressed there was no problem with them walking about. Frontliners also began to show symptoms of the plague a few hours ago so the plague probably reached further than they imagined.
The Imperial Captain was dismayed to hear that so few were volunteering but it was obvious that he expected it. Getting down the list of people that would join the fight on the condition that they get diagnosed and possibly healed by the crown princess before they were posted out. Mallory had become famous not just for being the crown princess. He already heard many different rumours about how she had both the talent for arcane barrier magic and healing. She was practically a legend in Fourth Tide and stories of her feats and achievements floated all the way here.
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For soldiers, she was far more respectable than any strong mage or knight. He was aware that people talked about him and Ning Xin as well but not to the extent that a Captain was visibly glad to see that they were going to go out front.
His ice magic has got to the point where most Trolls had trouble defending against him. The only other ice mage, the fox lady was a protected individual but while her spells were far reaching and wide area, they didn¡¯t work that well against enhanced life force that shielded a Troll¡¯s skin.
Orren¡¯s party showed the true difference in ability with ice magic and they were far from the strongest Frost Elves. Ebony¡¯s ice magic seeped into his opponents and was hard to remove. The Trolls could cut affected limbs off but not all of them can survive losing a head or heart. Firm Path increased the power and speed of all physical and some magical projectiles. As an artillery mage, he was one of the best support present. He lacked Radiance Envoy¡¯s destructive capabilities and range but that was to be expected. That light mage was very specialised and pretty much built his entire skill set to be as destructive and long-ranged as possible.
As for fire mages, there were plenty amongst the army. Ning Xin had a high affinity for fire magic and her Fortifications let her cover the gap by quite a bit. After 4 months, she pretty much caught up with some of the best fire mages when it came to destruction. She lacked the sheer explosive impact but her cast speed, control and heat of flames were not matched by anyone. She didn¡¯t have a very high Intelligence stat compared to pure mages and her skill levels were low when they just arrived.
Wind and lightning magic felt slightly neglected but he knew she usually used those elements for enhancements and close range only. She didn¡¯t seem too bothered about not having many spells for them at the moment.
Ebony wasn¡¯t bored in half quarantine. Controlling tens of Models to help the civilians while they marvelled or got scared by the ice golems. The healers were thankful to have helpers calm the civilians. In small amounts, his leaked mana was relaxing to others.
Ning Xin tried to hide it but the slightly saltier breakfast and her lighter footsteps told him that she was beginning to fall sick. He let her act tough without saying a word when they had their morning bout.
¡°Sit here.¡± He stopped her after the spar and before their individual conditioning. There were stone ledges around the trees at the side of the training field. He usually sat under the tree for tea time. He would have permanently left chairs and tables if they weren¡¯t at a high risk of getting destroyed.
She took a seat at the tall ledge without complaining, ¡°I¡¯m not tired yet.¡±.
¡°You¡¯re planning to play around with your new wings right?¡± He heard her plans more than once already.
¡°Mmm, so?¡± Sweat trickled down her neck as she caught her breath after their duel.
¡°You got a few strands of hair cut when you fought those birds, let¡¯s tie up your hair.¡± He might have been focusing on Korta¡¯s spell but he didn¡¯t stop checking if she could handle their attackers.
¡°Wha--! How do you know that? Is your perception that good?¡±
¡°I counted the number of strands of hair you have¡not last night.¡± He felt like he had to clarify that he wasn¡¯t staring closely but he realised how it didn¡¯t change anything. In his defence, he was training the sensitivity mana sense and sparring with her hair whipping around just naturally gave him a number over time. He didn¡¯t exactly count them by hand.
¡°Why, that''s...nasty. My hair¡¯s no longer as bright...¡± Her voice didn¡¯t have strength or anger but she tucked the bundle of hair on her shoulder and furiously ran her fingers through them over and over again.
Ebony was a bit surprised that she wasn¡¯t really bothered by him knowing the number of hair strands she had despite what she said. Her hair colour had changed as soon as she started to play around with compressing her blood. Her bright crimson hair was now closer to the colour of blood and she had been a bit depressed over that. It was still getting darker in colour as days passed.
¡°I think it¡¯s beautiful. I used to have black hair.¡± Like her aura softening on the outside, her enhancements cause her hair to glow even brighter than her old natural hair colour. As if there is an on-and-off switch for the combat version of her and the domestic version. He liked both versions very much.
¡°You think so?¡± She swung her feet and he took it as a good sign.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°Then go ahead. How are you going to tie them?¡±
¡°I can do a simple braid.¡± He knew more than a few methods but he was going for a French braid.
¡°You know how to braid hair?¡±
¡°My father taught me how.¡± He was actually being taught how to tie rope knots when his father made tying braids a side lesson. Apparently, it was a skill he wanted to have learned earlier in life.
¡°Let¡¯s see you put it to good use then.¡±
¡°It''s my first time in a long time.¡± His mother used to let him play with her hair.
Ning Xin had extremely voluminous and thick but soft and silky hair. It took more time than he thought due to the length of it but he was more adept than he imagined. Must be the dexterity he gained from controlling threads of mana and fabric.
¡°How does it look?¡± He conjured a reflective board of ice.
¡°I like it!¡± She spun on the spot and burst out her blood wings of flames. The braid almost reached the back of her knees and she was moving laterally by flapping one wing. She felt that she lost altitude with this motion and wanted to practise it but her braid whipped at speeds that caused a terrifying sound in the air.
¡®What have I done? That¡¯s a weapon¡¡¯
Ebony felt bad for the tree as it had a lot of leaves burnt before he managed to stop the fire from spreading. He leapt in to strike at her after half an hour of watching her fly around. She braked and evaded backwards with two flaps but he frontflip and had a platform conjured to push himself off.
She wasn¡¯t able to traverse the air the same way as her mana platforms weren¡¯t solid or stable enough to carry or stop her explosive speed. Ebony¡¯s platforms were more than durable enough but they would be pushed back if his physical body was enhanced. By moving the mana enveloping him, he can assist his own flight but kicking off solid platforms gives far more speed than gliding along. His 3-dimensional manoeuvrability was better than Ning Xin but that may change as she got more familiar with her wings.
Icicle¡¯s heavy strike descended on her. Her blades were dragged towards receiving the blow and she shot down, barely stopping herself before she hit the ground. With her back facing the ground her emergency brake pushed her to the side. She flew horizontally for a few flaps before righting her body again.
She accelerated back up to him but a reversed Gravity Vortex pushed everything away from him. Nothing a bit of speed and power couldn¡¯t fix. Gravity Vortex quickly settled and turned into magnified gravity to pull her back down and disrupt her charge. Her precise thrust missed and she had to work her wings harder to stay afloat. She charged up for another burst but he flipped magnified gravity the other way and she got sent flying higher than she expected. He then used Firm Path to pull her in any random direction he thought of. This tactic wouldn¡¯t work on the ground as she had good footing, immense physical strength, complete bodily control and her godly intuition.
After 10 minutes of back and forth, ¡°You bully!¡±
¡°It¡¯s good practice, right? You should use wind manipulation more, you wouldn¡¯t have lost 7 strands of hair if you used them as often as on the ground.¡±
¡°You actually counted!? Wind manipulation is harder with greater disturbance in the surroundings due to physical movement.¡± The faster she got, the more disturbance in the air caused by her movement and the harder it got for her to manipulate the wind around her. Having large wings flapping on her back must have made it impossible for her to have full control.
The barrier over the training field made her feel constrained so they didn¡¯t continue for long. They couldn¡¯t drop the barrier or stray spells and projectiles would hit a random building in the city. There were only a few others training but now that they were ¡®quarantined¡¯ the barrier wouldn¡¯t be shut down. They were still targets with the highest risk of spreading the plague. It was surprising they let Athena out. It might be another quarantined building close by but it was still a risk. As for Korta¡Ebony did not know how he burst through without damaging the barrier.
¡°How are you feeling? Do you want to visit the healers?¡± He noticed her forcing a cough down more and more often.
¡°I don¡¯t like their mana poking around me. I¡¯m feeling fine, only a bit hungry.¡±
¡°I hope you won¡¯t fight if Mallory can¡¯t heal you.¡±
¡°What! No, I can still fight with you!¡±
¡°I¡¯ll call Sister Jing and have her bring you to Yvette.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want that! You have to be by my side or you¡¯ll get kidnapped!¡±
¡°I¡¯ll go with you. The plague seems weak and Sister Jing can bring us around fast. Who knows, we might be back here before any real battle begins.¡±
¡°It has already begun¡¡±
¡°I doubt it¡¯ll end soon. With Sister Jing having greatly improved her space travel and Yvette¡¯s skill, you¡¯ll be back before the week ends.¡±
The city-wide alarm rang. Their rented camp had a loudspeaker equivalent magic equipment ringing at max volume.
¡°We need every able-bodied fighter out the walls, NOW!¡±
¡°...¡± They stared in silence.
Cap Dwarf dropped the barrier and stomped on the ground to summon his giant snakehead and he rode out in style.
¡°Hey!¡± Ebony called out to Ning Xin who burst out the moment the barrier dropped. Shouting out loud and without sound magic was a rare occurrence but the masked one didn¡¯t turn back or stop.
The moving Glacial Models stopped what they were doing and ran to the field with giant boxes. Each of these boxes had 8 Models stored in them. Ebony already chased after the naughty girl while hoping his Models knew what ¡°Carry as many boxes to the wall¡± meant.
Chapter 203: Intimidating the Warrior King
Ebony arrived atop the wall to see that the forward camp that was slowly retreating was in shambles. He was familiar with the scent of blood and the scene of carnage so he was fine. The only additional feeling was pity.
It was weird that he felt pity out of all other feelings but Everlasting Tranquillity kicked back to high gear, just like old times. Trolls standing at 8 to 10 metres tall were grabbing soldiers by their legs and chewing their bodies out like fries. They stood there withstanding any attack thrown at them. Once they moved their arms a bit, another soldier would be helplessly grabbed. Sometimes more than a single soldier would be caught. The Trolls savoured their prey differently. Some squeezed a few together and drank their juices before tossing the dried-out lump and swallowing them and others spit out bones and armour after chewing. Two of them were even challenging each other to see how many targets the bones spit out could pierce.
¡°You guys are making it hard for me to feel bad about killing you.¡± Honestly, this was closer to what Ebony imagined a war with people-eating giants was like. Not flinging spells and rocks at each other for months or shaking hands and demarcating a spot to have their strongest warriors duel to the death to decide the winner.
The soldiers were running back to the safety of the barrier and walls but many of them were panicking. General Bernard was doing his best to get his soldiers to move orderly but not every soldier heard him or his voice wasn¡¯t able to pierce through the fear that some had. The situation wasn¡¯t at its worst yet as there was still a defensive line being held. They must have reacted and formed up really quickly.
He knew that they were buying time till reinforcements arrived but at the rate the Trolls were pushing, that was quite the dream result. The Frost Elves weren¡¯t present as far as he could see so he raced to the blazing light cutting through the army. Seems like she was still reasonable enough to follow Cap Dwarf.
His body decided that Cap Dwarf had made the best decision and went for the weakest link in the army. Unfortunately, it was the enemy''s greatest spearhead. A squad of King-ranked warriors bathed in blood and an even darker layer of Vitality was slowed down there. Their rank was obvious from their size.
General Impes could be seen fighting out there with the other high-rank soldiers but the Trolls relied on the ridiculous layer of Vitality to dismiss casual attacks and aim for weaker soldiers to eat. General Impes similarly used a large sword and wore heavy armour. She was a bit slow compared to the King-ranked Trolls. Ebony knew she was around level 390 or so, it was pretty good that she wasn¡¯t getting squished to death and could even gain the attention of two of these Trolls. The other 3 Generals dealt with one or two each and there were 2 Trolls left that were free to roam.
There were also Grand Knights that were strong but didn¡¯t have a high rank, a group of them led by a Commander were risking their lives to hold back one. The last remaining King ranked Troll was unrestrained but Cap Dwarf would reach in the next 10 seconds.
Thousands of Grandmaster Trolls 7 to 8 metres tall were devastating the rest of the army with never before seen vigour. Many of them were part of the Benumbed Tribe that worked together with the Vigiot Tribe. They were doing everything they could to destroy General Bernard''s formations but the soldiers were picking themselves up fast. Formations were effective, good teamwork goes a long way and Grandmaster Trolls wasn¡¯t able to overpower and break through tight formations.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t rush towards the remaining King, like Cap Dwarf. He knew it wasn¡¯t because she was more self-aware but that Cap Dwarf called dibs. She started unleashing her fury on the other Trolls. As for where her fury came from it might be because Cap Dwarf was one step ahead of her. Ebony did the same, staying within a kilometre of her as much as possible. It was a range he could reach extremely fast, within one or two steps, any more and he was uncomfortable.
With refined Everlasting Tranquillity at level 463, he had a 2415% increased mana and stamina regeneration rate or a 25.15 times multiplier. Base effective Wisdom of 2211 meant a regen speed of 2211 mana per hour for a human but his Fortification increased that by 500% or a base 60% mana regen instead of a base 10%. So he naturally regenerated 13266 mana per hour without his Core Skill. With it, over 330,000 per hour or around 5560 per minute.
His domain was costly, even after getting used to it and knowing where to cut down on mana it cost over 2000 mana per minute for a 5-metre radius. Mana cost only increases exponentially somewhat proportional to volume. It wasn¡¯t something a Master like him can use consistently unless he had greater elemental mana efficiency from his Fortifications. He could barely sustain a 8-metre radius domain until his Will ran out but that was very inefficient against giant opponents. He could choose to decompress the mana inside him and that would easily let him cast a bigger one for an extended period of time but he would never do that unless really necessary.
He wasn¡¯t an immobile mage, he could just cast a small domain and bring it along anywhere he goes. The size of his domain didn¡¯t truly matter. It just had to be at a comfortable size to extend the reach of his full strength. 5 metres was usually decent. Adding that with any other enhancement he had wouldn¡¯t even dip into his compressed mana pool. This left him with a full pool to cast mana-intensive freezing flames and some gravity spells. Stalactite Drop and Blazing Deep Freeze Petals took the most, his greatsword can handle as much mana as he could imbue and with the help of Will, he can conjure as many petals as he wants by overdrafting his mana.
Together, they laid waste to the tribeless Grandmaster Trolls. It wasn¡¯t really a fight. The Warriors just didn¡¯t have a good way to contest his penetrative cold. All they had was a thicker layer of Vitality than usual. Even when it came to physical strength, only some of them were stronger than Ning Xin and about 50% of them were stronger than Ebony. As for technique, the Xeng crushed them with pure skill with the blade while their swings were always disrupted by gravity pulling them aside. If they were too strong, Ebony was like a phantom they couldn¡¯t touch. They were just hitting his afterimage that remained longer with the help of Frigid Refraction.
Sadly, they weren¡¯t able to kill many before another squad of seemingly tribeless Kings leapt forward. Calculated Hunch told him these were the ¡®mass-produced¡¯ ones that evolved with either 25 or 50% buffs to their Fortifications. The pattern was that tribeless usually had Fortifications such as ¡®Muscle mass increased by¡,¡¯ ¡®Bone density increased by¡,¡¯ ¡®Natural reflex speed increased by¡,¡¯ and of course, ¡®Base Health Regeneration rate increased by¡,¡¯ or ¡®Limb regeneration rate increased by¡¡¯
Those that come from different Tribes would diverge but generally, all of them had the same Fortifications if they trained, hunted and fought the same way. Weapon-based Fortification was very common as well. There were decent tribeless, such as the Hunters but Ebony avoided them to slay the weaker ones and reduce the pressure on the army.
He surrounded himself with thousands of blue petals that weren¡¯t just a bundle of flames but had a semi-liquid body. They were kept in place with Will, charging towards those Trolls allowing the petals to come into contact with their skin. The layer of Vitality made it troublesome because it took more time but showering them with petals was their death sentence as they weren¡¯t able to touch the petals to remove them and within his domain, shockwaves from strong swings couldn¡¯t tear the petals away. If they could, more petals would take over. Once a Troll was completely frozen solid, it would vibrate and shatter the body before regathering into petals and floating along. Only if it was within his domain though.
¡®3 to 4 petals confirm their death, that¡¯s one more than usual.¡¯
He pushed Treading Stride to the limits and dodged one Hunter squad. They had a large symbol of a chipped axe tattooed over one arm all the way to their chest and shoulder blade. The tattoo regenerates with them and was a mark of valiance and strength amongst the Trolls. This particular squad wasn¡¯t his Hunter and they weren¡¯t exactly quick on their feet. Actually, he already killed half of his previous Hunter squad. He wondered if they got new specialised Hunters for him.
Athena came down the cliffs like a meteor and went for the King squad, instantly pinning one to the ground with a bang. Her mana enhancement was pretty overwhelming in a sense, it was a core of mana within her that powered different parts of her body as she liked. This made it very mana efficient and directed attacks were very powerful but it leaves the rest of her body vulnerable if she doesn¡¯t circulate the mana to protect targeted areas fast enough. That¡¯s why she could tangle and even overpower Ning Xin in terms of speed and strength if she enhanced her upper or lower body respectively but couldn¡¯t deal with heat that targets her entire body.
As a freshly evolved Grandmaster months ago, her growth speed was quite enviable.
The King warrior swatted her away from its shoulder but she already dodged to stake the next closest Troll in the neck. It pierced clean through but her supposedly large arrow-like stakes were tiny compared to their log-like necks. A dark red layer of gas enveloped the King¡¯s neck and Athena abandoned her stake without any hesitation.
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The rest of Cap Dwarf¡¯s unit who wanted to fight also joined in and fought off the King-ranked squad, saving Athena from a tough spot. Some of them were faces that said they would not fight any longer. Ayla and Hayec did the same as Ebony and Ning Xin and went to slay the Grandmasters bullying the army. However, they were staying close to the army while the dual-wielding masked girl was getting closer to Athena and the others.
The Commanders and Captains that were capable of fighting Grandmasters were locked down either commanding their soldiers or protecting them from multiple squads of them. The number of Grandmaster Trolls was just too much compared to the number of Grand Knights. Because the Imperial Army was also warrior dominant, they just couldn¡¯t match the Trolls in terms of physical prowess.
Ebony looked around but he couldn¡¯t spot a single Shaman. He knew they were just waiting for a chance to turn the situation around but he couldn¡¯t stay back and watch Ning Xin charge deeper towards Athena by herself.
¡°Together.¡± He didn¡¯t care much about how much more effective they would be if they separated.
¡®Where are the elites¡that¡¯s Arti.¡¯ A frosty blue bird flew towards them. Orren¡¯s party gave them aerial support but they leapt off onto the city walls and used that to their advantage. They were good enough to give support from up there without hitting allies. Ebony saw that they were injured. Koawe rode Arti back into enemy territory after dropping off Orren¡¯s party. Enya, the Master Snow Rogue and dagger wielder ran off and disappeared from the wall.
¡®The real battle¡¯s there.¡¯ Ebony watched Koawe and Arti weaving past giant rocks as they flew past the Imperial Army.
Ebony and Ning Xin barged into Athena¡¯s battle. They had to take one done as fast as possible and Athena wouldn¡¯t hold them back.
Needless to say, he was the support here. He knew he was in charge of weakening their opponent as much as possible while strengthening his allies. Each battle was less than half a kilometre away from each other despite each other¡¯s strength. They were doing their best to stop the Kings from moving deeper into Empire territory and their enemies were doing the opposite.
The distance made it difficult to support others but that was out of his hands and he wasn¡¯t distracted by them.
At the top of the walls, his Glacial Models finished moving all the boxes and were within the range of his Will. He gave 25 of them orders to fight Trolls. They could identify Trolls now and he wasn¡¯t giving them any attention after that. If one got destroyed another would jump off the walls.
Gravity magic was hard to affect King Trolls with seemingly unlimited strength but every little bit counts. It was still useful for his allies.
He cast Battle Song for both ladies but their effect was only 30% of his limit at best. With how compressed his mana was, Athena was uncomfortable for a short while.
It took two whole minutes of building speed and power before Ning Xin started to injure the beastly giant. They were evading strikes just a hair¡¯s breadth away even after their opponent went serious and enhanced himself with Vitality. Ebony¡¯s gravity magic didn¡¯t get in the way of their movements at all. He was already exceedingly familiar with Ning Xin¡¯s and Athena was good enough to adjust herself if necessary. His effortless prediction was empowered by Calculated Hunch.
Most of his efforts were placed on making sure that this Troll doesn¡¯t escape. He already knew how they would retreat once they were in mortal danger. But the three of them weren¡¯t enough to put the Troll in mortal danger. It was the opposite, one mistake and they would be pulverised.
Ebony went in to take the war axe¡¯s blow instead of avoiding and countering like the two women. Athena extricated herself by sliding back and pulling out her bow. Her stakes were both her arrows and her dagger. Icicle was almost knocked out of his palms and a deep cut formed on its body. Icicle pulsed in pain.
The ice mana in it burst and forced the war axe to stay within Icicle. Ebony had to find a way to allow ice to dig through the dark red layer of Vitality. For some reason, these Trolls weren¡¯t backed up by their Shamans and they had to make the best of it.
The Troll raised his war axe up and Ebony was raised along with it. He was about to smash Ebony along with his greatsword while taking the tiny cuts from Ning Xin and blocking the stakes flying at him with his other arm. The head of the war axe was already frozen and a blast of Sonic Intrusion shattered a small layer, freeing him. Firm Path dragged him away mid-air but it was too slow. He didn¡¯t conjure a platform to kick off fast enough. The staked arm punched at him with explosive speeds. This opened the Troll''s body for Athena but the Troll didn¡¯t care.
Every limb of the Troll was already linked with a point of gravity mana to assist his allies'' evasion. He Willed gravity to link with him and made it repel him. It would push him extremely far away but the damage sustained will be reduced greatly as the punch was just repelling him.
¡®...¡¯ Ebony watched as the Troll grinned, the punching arm grabbed the handle of his war axe and accelerated down onto the ground. Repulsion on the ground would only hurt him further, especially because of how durable the ground here was. But it happened in a split second and not even his Will acted fast to come up with any countermeasures.
Calculated Hunch and Everlasting Tranquillity didn¡¯t act up. With all his defences up, there was roughly a 70% chance the strike won¡¯t kill him so his Will decided on what to do next to pull himself out of the situation.
His slow mind didn¡¯t account for Ning Xin who was the epitome of speed. She flashed at lightning speed and grabbed him out right under the war axe. His Will never repelled her so she could touch him normally. It was heart racing to see the war axe cruise right by her head more so than onto him.
Calculated Hunch didn¡¯t do a good job as she had never shown such blinding speeds before. She let him go and charged for the Troll before he realised it. With her sudden burst of speed, she pressured the Troll to guard her strike with his axe unlike before. The Troll finally took his opponent seriously, by parrying strikes he sent Ning Xin flying but she had her wings exploding with power and pushed her back for the next attack. The Troll couldn¡¯t launch an attack and was on the defensive. From Ebony¡¯s understanding, the only close-ranged fighter who could be on the attack against her was Mr Kidnapper and even then, she was the fiercer aggressor.
As for Athena, she was interrupted by another group of Trolls.
Waning Presence and Frigid Refraction were fully displayed as he unleashed Ceaseless Onslaught from different directions to distract the Warrior King. When the Troll ignored him to defend against Ning Xin¡¯s strike, Ebony would jump to its face and kick it with Sonic Intrusion at full force. The Warrior King¡¯s face burst into freezing flames but he quickly forced it out with a great amount of Vitality.
Ebony dipped away, and the Warrior King only swiped at a wisp of icy mist that was thanks to Frigid Refraction. The distraught Warrior King stumbled around and took both of their unending attacks as part of its brain was mushed up. Sadly, it didn¡¯t even take 5 seconds to get a hold of itself. 5 seconds allowed them hundreds and thousands of strikes in but the steam rising from the Warrior King only showed them that it was still regenerating faster than they hurt it.
Two of them glanced at each other for an instant and broke off eye contact just as fast. Ning Xin changed her target from the vitals on the torso to the head. Ebony stayed on the ground. He froze his feet onto the giant¡¯s calf and Tremor Stomped the back of its knee with his other feet. The Warrior Troll barely shook from that.
¡®Stalactite Drop with Icicle in hand¡¡¯ A random reminder popped into his head.
The Warrior King violently shook him off before he could lop off one leg with his strongest attack. Well, with the Troll''s defensive capabilities, his leg may still be mostly attached. Even if he could chop it off, even a Grandmaster Troll could regenerate it in a minute or so. But as long as Stalactite Drop landed, he was quite sure that he would be able to force his flames deep and throughout the entire Troll¡¯s body. Once that happened, even if the Warrior King survive it would be drastically weakened.
Ning Xin knew that and was putting pressure on the Warrior King as he continued to gather all types of mana he had to cast Stalactite Drop. He had to make sure it was enough to be impossible for the Troll to get rid of quickly enough or at all. He was lucky Athena freed herself from the obstruction and joined Ning Xin. He was still very worried that she would fall sick at any moment. He never let his guard down, it was a magical plague and the Shaman¡¯s presence couldn¡¯t be felt on the battlefield. Who knew if they could strengthen or weaken the plague without a moment¡¯s notice? Logically, even he was infected. The Shamans were wielders of Vitality like the mages were wielders of mana. The plague may be a type of spell and they could manipulate it like mages manipulate mana.
Ebony sped up, he wanted to drag the infected fighters out as fast as possible.
Although there were violent vibrations from the ground, so much so that he couldn¡¯t tell exactly what was going on. An earth-shaking tremor from beyond enemy lines told him that Korta or his opponents were duking it out hard.
He might be charging Icicle up for Stalactite Drop but that didn¡¯t stop him from dishing out kicks that send shocks into his target. It was more than just a little annoying. The Warrior King wasn¡¯t blind, he could see the Icicle glowing like a blue sun and it only continued to get darker. Gravity Vortex within Icicle helped to pull and contain far more ice mana and pure mana for sonic vibrations than it usually could. After his mana liquified, gravity spells could be visible to some. If he continued to strengthen and compress it, perhaps it would be visible at all times to everybody. It was extremely dark purple like what his mana sense ¡®sees¡¯.
The cut on Icicle had regrown a bit, it wasn¡¯t extremely fast but its repair speed improved quite a lot.
The greatsword didn¡¯t even seem to be in the way as he moved around and kicked from random directions, many times the next kick came from the opposite direction.
The Warrior King blasted its red aura out and bent its knee, it was trying to get away!
Chapter 204: Flicker
Fighting fiercely or even moving within Ebony¡¯s domain as a registered ¡®foe¡¯, ate into the Warrior King¡¯s Vitality as every movement was violently reflected with mana vibrations. It also ate into his mana but it was acceptable. He could decrease the output to whatever he liked so it wouldn¡¯t exceed the amount that he was comfortable with spending. Throughout the battle, he had made sure his domain bore down on the Warrior King while assisting Ning Xin or Athena¡¯s projectiles that come from out of the range of his domain.
Athena¡¯s stakes could pierce flesh but were usually stopped by bone, the Warrior King deflected all attacks to his vitals. With stakes concentrated on one arm, his thighs and shoulder had one stake in each as well but a casual flex of its muscles snapped those stakes. The wisps of Vitality pushed and the remaining portions just popped out.
3 Glacial Models handling Grandmaster Trolls not too far away immediately used Treading Stride to get to them. He was going to stop the Warrior King from escaping even if it was a waste of mana.
¡°Athena, back off!¡± Ning Xin called out.
The Glacial Models charged for the Warrior King and exploded on impact, hugging themselves onto the giant¡¯s calves and thighs. Ebony widened his domain a little and used every bit of the almost entirely compressed mana to freeze the Warrior King down. The explosion of ice turned to an icy cloud but a lot poured out of his domain and affected the surroundings. Ning Xin shut her flames off and only boiled her blood to keep herself warmed up.
Stalactite Drop wasn¡¯t at maximum charge but he wasn¡¯t going to let this opportunity go. The fiery swordswoman thought the same and their movements were unplanned but coordinated. He disappeared from his spot and reappeared above the Warrior King¡¯s head like a phantom. It was still in the midst of shock from the sudden cold and petals that were forming all over it, attempting to drown him in flames. Yet, its trained body allowed it to react with time to spare. His trusty war axe was drawn to guard as its feet weren¡¯t free, it knew it couldn¡¯t break free before Ebony¡¯s strike came down.
Ning Xin was under Ebony, both her blades hammered into the Warrior King¡¯s log-like neck. The look of surprise in his eyes could be seen by both of the swordsmen. She just flashed in front of him at speeds that seem to increase every moment of their exchange so far. Blood gushed out as the Warrior King fell back in pain, practically every vital vein and artery were sliced. The deep burns prevented a speedy recovery and even if he wasn¡¯t burned, he wouldn¡¯t heal fast enough. The slip in his defence allowed Icicle to glide through unhindered.
Stalactite Drop!
Icicle slid through the Warrior King¡¯s skull and stopped at its sternum. Every bit of ice mana was repelled out with a tremor that tore the giant¡¯s impressive body of flesh and even the surrounding air and ground were affected. The cracks formed and burst into freezing flames. Every inch of the giant was lit ablaze. The damage from Sonic Intrusion was repairing at visible speeds as the Troll put all his efforts into healing but Ebony¡¯s flames already seeped into organs and nerves alike. Every bit of mana that the Troll removed was replaced and set ablaze over and over again.
The physical body of these giants was shockingly durable as it remained in one piece even with his earth-shattering attack. It took minutes of struggle and continued thrusts and slashes from both swordsmen before they heard the bell of relief.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Marauder of Vigor Lvl 502]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 202 levels or more above your own, sufficient potential experience accumulated. Experience converted to Natural Potential.¡¯
It was confusing that they wouldn¡¯t know if this would cover the Natural Potential for the 450 and 475 that they didn¡¯t kill but if they were to kill anything at those levels, they won¡¯t be getting another inducement so he had to assume that they didn¡¯t lose anything.
Thousands of Grandmaster Trolls were held back by the Empire¡¯s artillery mages including the Frost Elf party but more and more slipped passed the bombardment and got close enough to be the soldiers'' problem. They wouldn¡¯t want to have spells and arrows hit their own allies after all.
Cap Dwarf and the others of his unit appeared to be doing well as some of the Kings escaped back, ignoring arrow and spell bombardment. From the looks of things, only a few Warrior Kings were killed and there were 8 still fighting. At least an eighth was repelled temporarily or killed. With that, the soldiers also got a hang of themselves and maintained their defensive line to a certain extent. However, the overwhelming number of Grandmaster Trolls breaking past the spellfire was increasing. Radiance Envoy, 4 Frost Elves, a few notable fire and earth mages together with cannons and magic towers and a bunch of archers were doing their best but their best wasn¡¯t enough.
Ebony¡¯s reach was limited and even Ning Xin¡¯s speed wasn¡¯t sufficient compared to the increasing number of opponents charging in. After all, every Troll took time and effort to kill. Some of them had Fortifications that allowed them to survive decapitation and many could gigantify themselves to escape a difficult position before returning fully regenerated.
¡°I¡¯m getting a bad feeling.¡± Ning Xin transmitted over the mana link he kept with her all the time. Both to enhance her and to make conversation possible. It was a bit slow and the link could be broken but he remained reasonably close to her the entire time. There were cannons, fireballs, beams and so much more whizzing above their head that it was hard to hear another person even if they were beside each other.
¡°Retreat.¡± He wasn¡¯t in a trance and was able to come in and out of a state of intense concentration without any lag. Her Intuition was far greater when it came to sensing danger.
¡°I¡¯m feeling weak¡¡± She told him honestly and he was glad she informed him sooner rather than later. He wanted to make sure she was within arms¡¯ reach, so he hastened on getting himself away from the squads of Grandmasters surrounding him. She was in a similar position but they weren¡¯t in any danger as extreme heat and cold enveloped the area around them. It was a nice little deterrent for quite a few of their opponents.
¡°Ky-!¡±
An unfamiliar feeling rose within him, he didn¡¯t have time to question himself and discover what the emotion was. At that moment on this noisy battlefield, he could only hear her voice.
¡®No¡I have to reach her no matter what!¡¯ Every bit of energy was focused on his feet and legs before he propelled himself like never before. Ning Xin¡¯s every step causes a crack and even tiny craters on the incredibly hard ground but his current step didn¡¯t even leave a footprint nor were there any vibrations that indicated explosive movement. The bell in his head didn¡¯t register and he didn¡¯t realise how light he felt.
All he knew was he had never felt so relieved to have got Ning Xin¡¯s hand before they both got dragged underground. Into the sea. That moment of relief, when he pulled her into a hug, was also a moment of folly. Ning Xin snapped him out of it. ¡°We can¡¯t hit the water!¡±
She was dragged by one of those underwater ¡®demons¡¯ that he heard about. Ebony didn¡¯t notice but she wasn¡¯t the only target, random people were also getting dragged under as holes in the ground opened up.
He had already started to freeze the scorched hand off her leg since he grabbed her and found out what happened but it held tight and he could feel her pain. This underwater Tribe member looked very different from other Trolls, they had blue scales, gills and even flippers for legs. It actually held onto Ning Xin with one of its flippers that didn¡¯t have much crushing power but it was not letting go no matter what they did!
The entrance or hole that popped open had to be the Shamans¡¯ work and he didn¡¯t know how long they had before it closed up. The hole was tight and the Troll wasn¡¯t that large compared to others of its race, it was only slightly bigger than a wolfman.
¡°Zap him.¡± Ebony conjured his strongest flames but the Troll didn¡¯t seem to be affected much. The flipper wasn¡¯t frozen, its fish face was facing down as it dragged them at its full speed. As expected of a creature of the sea, they had naturally high cold resistance. There was no space for him to swing his sword and Ning Xin could barely keep her body straight, she also didn¡¯t have space to bend forward to attack.
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The entire way down, Ebony had his domain up so the route was frozen. It probably wouldn¡¯t stop the hole from closing up but he hoped it would at least slow it down. As for trying to use gravity to pull them back up, it wasn¡¯t working. The ¡®fish¡¯ used its other limbs to grab onto the walls and climbed down like a lizard.
¡°AHH!¡± Ning Xin screamed in pain as the grip on her feet and ankle got tighter. He could sense her bones getting crushed. He hastened Tremor Stomp but it was a low-level and weak skill, it would affect Ning Xin if he pushed Sonic Intrusion too much but she had her bodysuit on and he could Will the vibrations to travel in one direction. The next kick caused the Troll to let go but it was just as they hit the water and were surrounded by tens of similar-looking fishy Trolls.
¡°Fly!¡± He didn¡¯t hesitate to toss her up with all his strength and the frozen hole started to spawn hands to drag her till she got a hold of herself. He could only conjure those hands up to 600 metres or so away from him. He just didn¡¯t expect to sink at great speeds the moment he hit the water. Vigorously waving his arms didn¡¯t even slow down his descent. He was too dense to swim or float!
There was no way he was going to let these fishy bastards get past him. He easily froze seawater about a 50 metres radius with him at the centre and sealed the exit. He manipulated ice to bring him up to the ¡®surface¡¯ and leapt up the hole after Ning Xin who had to use her Halo to lift her as there wasn¡¯t space to use her wings. He unexpectedly caught up with a single kick-off and planted his face into her, almost injuring her feet even further. Thankfully, his domain put his speed to a stop. He got her to move aside and make way for him to hug her again before speeding off and bursting out of the hole like a rocket.
¡®Crap. How did I jump so high?¡¯ He overshot by too much and almost dived into the corrosion cloud above. Looking down, he finally saw that there were almost hundreds of similar-sized holes in the ground. The earthen hole didn¡¯t appear to be closing any time soon. Even with the lack of some similar faces, he didn¡¯t go down to save them.
He wanted to bring Ning Xin away, everything else could wait. At his current height, he was above the cliff and even the walls of Fifth Tide. ¡®Hopefully, I can get back without interruption, those two healers should still be back there.¡¯ He stood on two Imperishable Frost Scales and concentrated on his destination past the walls. Numerous spells were heading towards him, more specifically past him so he wondered if he could safely dodge them as the air was still the safest path for him at the moment.
Now that the unfamiliar feeling was gone, he was feeling at ease. He took a step forward with his body prepared to twist and turn to dodge arrows which was the safest route since Fifth Tide didn¡¯t have many notable archers. He didn¡¯t expect his feet to lunge forward so much, as if they were separate from his body. His face was planted into the shield he conjured in front of them in case a stray spell hit. Before he knew it, he was about to crash into the city wall.
¡®Too fast! Am I on crack, did I just teleport?¡¯ Thankfully, he prepared shields ahead of them against spells and arrows; it protected Ning Xin from the pressure of high-speed wind resistance. Although his spell wasn¡¯t able to move along with him fast enough so he planted his face while protecting the woman in his arms. She was also shocked by the distance covered. Her head was on his shoulder and she was facing the battlefield only to see it shrink almost instantly.
Ebony stopped his crash as his mind finally understood his body¡¯s ¡®lightness¡¯. His legs reached forward as if to stop a long jump and landed on another ice scale to flip himself. In the midst of his flip, he saw his training barrack and kicked the air before rotating and stopping himself. ¡®I reached in 3 steps¡and I could have done it in one if I aimed for this spot beforehand.¡¯ It was quite hard to believe that he was initially around 7 to 8 kilometres away from the city. Already out of range of his Will but he could reach the city and even a distance into the city with a single step.
¡°That was so cool! How did you go so fast!? Did your movement skill evolve?¡± Ning Xin¡¯s eyes lit up and hammered her slender fist into him playfully. She clearly wanted the details as soon as possible.
¡°Come on, let¡¯s get you healed up first. I have to check, I didn¡¯t notice.¡± He pulled her arms apart from his neck and felt her loud heartbeat rising. She must have started to get embarrassed for whatever reason again. He gripped tight on one arm when he felt that she was about to pull away from him. Lightly putting her feet down before supporting her.
¡°What healer?¡± She calmed herself with blood magic but Ebony wasn¡¯t deceived, her arms were shaking and so were her feet. She was forcefully wriggling her arms away but he wasn¡¯t going to let go.
¡°...¡± Ebony looked forward and saw that the tiny field hospital was already devoid of people. ¡®What a blunder¡¡¯
¡°How¡¯s your leg feeling?¡± He was relieved that her leg was still in one piece, attached and not really deformed. She didn¡¯t have regenerative abilities as far as he knew but that was because she herself didn¡¯t think she could regenerate limbs or bones and nerves. She rarely ever got physical injuries that weren''t self-inflicted. Her normal healing speed was pretty good with her Core Skill but that usually applied to muscle cuts and most strains together with maybe blood generation speed. She didn¡¯t know how her Physique affected her healing compared to other humans that had a harder time healing organs and other slightly more lethal damage.
¡°It¡¯s okay so please let me go.¡± She used her free hand to pluck at his fingers that wrapped around her waist.
¡°No, let¡¯s find that old healer Dorqe.¡± He tightened his hold on her in response. Afraid that she would run off onto the battlefield again.
¡°You should go save the others, they might not be able to free themselves and climb out. I promise I won¡¯t go out. I..I¡¯m losing strength. I¡¯m afraid the others are losing strength due to the plague as well.¡±
¡°You promise? Promises are a vow, an oath. Actually, never mind. You¡¯re getting weaker, I¡¯m not leaving your side. I ordered my Models to save them. I sent how I froze the sea and escaped. If things go well, they will copy my method. If the others sank any further, I wouldn¡¯t be able to save them even if I was there.¡±
¡°Bring me onto the wall, I will stay put. Please, I don¡¯t want anything to happen to Athena or Ayla¡¡± Her eyes appeared slightly moist.
¡°Okay.¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t stand seeing her expression. Her eyes were enough to pick up many emotions.
They remained in the training field for less than half a minute. It was already an extended period of time. Ebony carried her and placed her within hundreds of his Glacial Model. He intensified Will into them as much as possible.
¡°Be good.¡± He pat her head the way he would¡¯ve liked to be patted before disappearing.
¡®Ayla. Good. Athena¡any traces of her mana? There!¡¯ Ebony spotted Ayla fighting with Hayec and many others including a drenched Cap Dwarf. They were getting closer as the unending Trolls only increased in number. Athena was nowhere to be seen and he flickered around the battlefield to look for traces of her aura around the holes.
He reconfirmed that Ning Xin sat and rested on the wall before diving in with a rope of ice extending down with him just as an extra measure. He realised he couldn¡¯t stay afloat due to his incredibly dense body with liquid mana flowing in his body. As for making ropes of ice? He started learning magic manipulation by forming threads and ropes, he could do it perfectly at high speeds.
The hole in the ground was slightly wider than the one Ning Xin fell into, which might be an indicator that a larger fish Troll can traverse in. Ebony entered head first and slammed painfully into the water. He was greeted with the sight of bloody waters, dozens of floating corpses and the sight of a war goddess spearing fish Trolls to death while desperately trying to get back to where he was. She was strong, Ebony could barely free Ning Xin earlier and they were clearly far more suited for underwater battle.
Athena saw him and was clearly shocked but delighted. Firm Path was cast on her to drag her over, water resistance wasn¡¯t a big issue but it did slow the movement down.
Ebony sank but he simply conjured footholds and treated water as air. He thought the water would be a problem but he only caused layers of ripples to undulate around where he kicked off. Water resistance was far more substantial than air resistance but he found himself near Athena in a few test steps. The fishy Trolls were shocked by the intrusion of another human and even more shocked he simply came and pull their target away.
They chased Ebony and were clearly faster than him but he had the element of surprise and the water surface or where the earthen hole started wasn¡¯t far away.
Athena coughed out water and took deep, unmeasured breaths the instant he got back up and there was air for her. ¡°Yo-¡±
¡°The gap¡¯s closing!¡± Ebony noticed the dimming light and it was fast. Too fast for him to even kick themselves up. He quickly enveloped them in the strongest coffin he could make. There wasn¡¯t space for an orb. His mind was rammed by a truck and his coffin partially dented in. He was partially knocked out but he came back to his senses so fast, it was as if he didn¡¯t faint. Whoever''s spell the fake land was, it was not something Ebony could easily break or withstand. His nose bled and he had a massive headache that was fading away slowly.
¡°You¡¯re gonna make me fall in love.¡± Athena caught her breath and tucked her hair aside.
¡°I¡¯m taken. Clench your teeth, I¡¯ll freeze that wound.¡± Ebony let her go, he made room for both of them to stand with some gap between each other. She had a stab wound in her thigh.
¡°Maybe I should fight her for you.¡± She ripped her torn pants to allow him to freeze them neatly.
¡°She got me to look for you, I¡¯ve not seen her care for another person so much.¡± He answered truthfully. He was glad he did so, Athena was very close to dying underwater and he didn¡¯t want to let someone dear to Ning Xin die if he could help it.
¡°Ah? Then I¡¯m falling deeper in love with her.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll have to fight me then.¡±
Both of them chuckled and his voice wasn¡¯t as stiff as he imagined.
Chapter 205: Be Good
Ebony forced the outer shell of their coffin to form slanted screw heads and even around the body of the coffin. It made the coffin look like a screw tank. The hardened earth desperately resisted any sort of change in its form but he was able to drive them upwards slowly. they were at least 3 kilometres deep but even after leaving and entering more than once, he didn¡¯t measure it accurately due to the situation.
¡°It might take half an hour, can you take it?¡± He was worried she had any internal wounds.
¡°...it¡¯s getting hard to breathe.¡± The body of a Grandmaster wasn¡¯t so weak, other than the wound on her thigh she was practically uninjured. She must have used skills that Ebony was unaware of because he didn¡¯t remember her being so strong. Maybe she had underwater capabilities, something that Ebony and Ning Xin sorely lacked.
¡°Here, better?¡± Of course, he didn¡¯t pop the bubbles of air he stored in his lungs and exhaled it for her. He simply moulded the runes onto the walls of his coffin to convert his mana to air. He had long studied the most important runes and moulded them enough times to be able to do it in his sleep.
¡°What did you do?¡± Athena didn¡¯t appear to be shocked but she was pleasantly surprised.
¡°Runes, they convert mana to air. It shouldn¡¯t be any different from the air we¡¯re used to breathing.¡±
¡°You can do just about anything huh? Where can I find another man like you?¡± She put her palms under her chin.
¡°Everyone¡¯s unique. I¡¯m sure a gorgeous lady like you can get any man you like.¡±
¡°Gorgeous? Lady? Gosh darn, are you really trying to make me fall in love?¡± She had two last stakes on her back that poked into her as she stepped back in the cramped coffin. It was hard to tell if the light blush was because she held her breath for a long time.
¡°No? Why do you say so?¡± Ebony cocked his head in confusion, he just said what came to mind.
¡°...No one ever called me gorgeous or even a lady. Only brutish, tomboy or manly.¡± Athena scratched the frozen layer over her skin uncomfortably.
¡°Is that so? Is it other women?¡± Ebony thought that it might seem that way from another woman¡¯s point of view.
¡°AlI I know is that they are less manly than I am. Is this how to talk to Scarlet?¡±
¡°This is how I talk. Why?¡± It felt a bit random to him to bring Ning Xin into the conversation. He thought he had already gotten the hang of flow of conversation.
¡°I just think she¡¯s pretty lucky to have found someone that can make her feel like a woman. Women are strange creatures, they want to be stronger than men but hate when they are not treated like a woman.¡± She looked down at one of her bootless feet.
¡°...Is that so? I think I¡¯m luckier to have met her when I just arrived. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll find someone, just make sure the other party treasures you.¡± Ebony continued to drive them up. The resistance was great and the ground constantly crushed him which made it hard to concentrate.
¡°Ju--just shut up¡¡± She blurted out with her face turning a bit more flushed.
Awkward minutes passed and Ebony was able to move upwards faster and faster as he got used to the motion and had his domain freeze a layer of earth right outside before the screw on their enclosure could smoothly latch onto.
¡°Hey, you¡¯re getting colder. Are you okay?¡± He knew her face was getting more and more flushed and her breaths more uneven but he assumed it was claustrophobia.
¡°Th-the stupid plague. I was only acting tough¡Who the hell has three thousand points in Constitution? I ran my mana enhancement for defence all night or I would¡¯ve shown those fish who¡¯s tougher.¡± Athena gulped, not a single cough had come out of her.
¡°The men in the camp are indeed weaker, they didn¡¯t even have the strength to act tough.¡± He was surprised that he didn¡¯t find out she was suppressing her symptoms even with his Perception.
¡°So am I not a gorgeous lady anymore?¡± She teased.
¡°You¡¯re a strong, gorgeous lady.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t catch on to the teasing and answered honestly.
¡°Goddamn, I¡¯m gonna have to fight Scarlet.¡± She raised her voice and acted as if the plague didn¡¯t bring strong men to their knees or even on their backs.
¡°Be nice, she likes you. You can¡¯t even get close anyway.¡± Ebony knew that Athena was probably the first female friend that really clicked with her. Mallory wasn¡¯t a fighter and didn¡¯t really understand Ning Xin and vice versa, they were too different.
¡°Ouch.¡± Ebony could tell she wasn¡¯t crying out in pain because of the plague. He gave himself kudos that he was able to tell she wasn¡¯t actually in unimaginable pain.
¡°You¡¯ll need a method to breathe in low to no oxygen and increase your heat resistance.¡± He added to the reasons he thinks that Athena couldn¡¯t beat Ning Xin. At the moment, if they were both at full strength Athena had a decent chance at hitting Ning Xin harder than she could recover from but if the battle dragged he believed Ning Xin would win as Athena didn¡¯t show many methods of countering fire or the lack of air.
¡°That¡¯s what you meant!? I forgot you¡¯re a bigger battle maniac than I am.¡± Athena shook her head, her loud and energetic voice really made it hard to tell that she was sick. Perhaps, her effective Constitution and mana enhancement was just barely meeting the mark.
¡°What did you think I meant?¡± Ebony thought she had been talking about fighting.
¡°None of your busine-keh--ough.¡± She coughed and held the next one in, belching when she half succeeded.
¡°Don¡¯t lose to a silly illness, we¡¯re almost there.¡± Ebony estimated that they should be near the surface soon but he still tried his best to go faster.
His estimations were on the dot.
The pressure crushing their screw tank quickly loosened and he broke them out. Jumping out but almost overshooting yet again. He dipped into his mana pool which was not completely full, so his weight was reduced by a noticeable degree. It was easy to stop himself from touching the corrosion cloud before he took another step and found himself amidst a group of Glacial Models that circled Ning Xin. She was in the arms of another Model who was pacing around nervously.
Needless to say, if the two of them weren¡¯t able to cope with the magical plague, the army down below was trashed. Although he saw that the army was still standing and fighting back reasonably well, it might be that Athena and Ning Xin were directly hit by the plague. The army below barely showed any symptoms but he felt that it was only a matter of time.
Cap Dwarf was still going strong and causing mayhem to enemy lines but he was already cooling off. His giant earthen snake head had quite a few unconscious members of the same team and Cap Dwarf took it upon himself to carry them back to safety. However, he caught the attention of too many elite Trolls and could only stay to fight without the help of his earthen snake.
¡®The higher the vitality, the stronger the plague can get¡¡¯ Ebony speculated. Ning Xin¡¯s condition was getting worse at the fastest pace. The constant healing she got only fed the plague and her Constitution wasn¡¯t anywhere near a Grandmaster warrior¡¯s.
¡°...I¡¯ll be quick.¡± He disappeared again, alone.
Unleashing half of his compressed mana pool as a domain, he did more than surprise the Trolls. A large platform was conjured and he tossed the familiar people onto it.
¡°Take care of them, boy. I¡¯ll deal with the rest!¡± Cap Dwarf didn¡¯t appear shocked outwardly and he was able to keep up with the sudden situation and his sudden appearance. As expected of an experienced freelancer and war mercenary.
¡°Roger Cap. Don¡¯t die, I still want to drink under the moon with you.¡± Ebony had a lot of respect for the Dwarf and they were drinking buddies for a while now.
¡°You better bring out the wine you made! I¡¯m not a tea drinker!¡± Cap Dwarf had been eyeing his frost plum wine that he brought up once. He also encouraged the Dwarf to drink tea during the day but he wasn¡¯t a fan.
¡°I¡¯ll be back after I find a healer.¡± Ebony saw the Trolls'' number increase by the dozens every second. They might not all be Grandmasters now but the mountain of flesh was breaking through with sheer quantity.
¡°Grab one over there, just suppress their symptoms for now.¡± Cap Dwarf had his earthen snake point with its snout to a tent at the foot of the cliff and base of the walls.
Ebony wasn¡¯t polite and had his mana pressuring everybody in the tent. His Glacial Models leapt down with Ning Xin and Athena in their arms but Athena was still standing and only had the Model support her and control her landing.
There was too much essence all over the battlefield and most soldiers were already numb to it but his overflowing Wisdom was like a breath of fresh air that washed all those aside before bearing down on everyone¡¯s mind.
¡°Heal them first.¡± He spoke normally and didn¡¯t know that under the influence of Will and oppressive overflowing Wisdom, his words were more like orders. It was an effect that was present for a long time but he usually made sure that he didn¡¯t affect people with his mana unless it was for the positive effect. The effect also strengthened along with the increase in his regeneration and overall aura.
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The healers worked fast and Ebony quickly found the two healers that had healed their unit that morning. After bustling around for 5 minutes the conclusion was that the plague had already gotten much stronger and they were not able to suppress the symptoms as much. Most were just half conscious and either vomiting or coughing with total body weakness. The healers could wake them up but they were just in constant discomfort and pain. At least most of them could walk and wield their weapons.
¡°W--we can only expedite her leg¡¯s healing b-but the plague¡¯s not reacting to our magic¡her body is different from a human, beastmen, dwarf or even an elf¡¯s¡¡±
Ebony stood over the healer and his figure seemed to grow and loom over the healer that was in the midst of breaking down due to the gravity and overflowing essence boring down on him. Ebony bent down and the healer shrieked in terror but he only carried Ning Xin gently before stepping out of the busy tent.
¡°Can you hear me? Call Sister Jing.¡±
¡°...mmm.¡± She was still conscious but her hands barely had the strength to hold onto him
High-pitched shrieks tore through the clamour of explosions and clashes of bone and metal. A large wave of gigantic birds flew over both armies in record time and spears were thrown into the city. The army only reacted after the first wave of attacks and brought up the barrier fully a bit too late. Ebony was able to stop those around him but he wasn¡¯t able to stop tens of thousands of spears wreaking the city walls. At least the buildings behind were fine, all thanks to the corrosion cloud that the riders weren¡¯t able to fly any higher.
¡°Evacuate to the south gate, get away from the walls!¡± The soldier in charge of the city-wide speakers acted fast as well. A lot of the buildings near the walls facing the sea were military so there weren¡¯t many civilians around other than those that worked in military camps and those fishermen.
The archers and artillery mages did not expect a sudden charge of such huge numbers but their aim didn¡¯t go all over the place. Their Commanders ordered them to continue holding the ground units back so that their soldiers down the cliff weren¡¯t overwhelmed immediately. The Radiance Envoy redirected his cannon-sized magnifying lenses to the skies and fried dozens of birds instantly.
As for Ebony, Ning Xin was weighed against Fifth Tide on a metaphorical scale. Fifth Tide was lighter than a feather. He didn¡¯t have the power to contest the army of Trolls by himself. Not even close. Not even Korta can manage that. Although, the Arch Mage might be contesting the very best warriors that the Trolls had deep into their territory and was basically launching a three-man assault on the entire race. Ultimately, they weren¡¯t able to stop the advance of the Trolls. There were even King-ranked Trolls that slipped past the 3 Frost Elves but that was hardly surprising as they were just 3 mages against literal millions.
The riders seemed to recognise him but he turned around and flashed away towards Fourth Tide. Hoping to see Mallory somewhere on route. He tried to call her many times but the mental link could barely start up with the current undulations of essence all around him. They couldn¡¯t reach Sister Jing even with the callstone on Ning Xin¡¯s mask. Because he didn¡¯t go deeper into the mainland, some of the riders thought it was a good idea to go after him. He turned his head to look at them, preparing his spells as he took another step to fly through the air. They were all shocked when each of them shrank in each other¡¯s vision. Ebony could barely see them after taking a single step. He left them in the dust!
With that, he didn¡¯t manage to look at the ground to check if there was a group of soldiers moving towards Fifth Tide. He backtracked to make sure that there was no one before getting back on track. Fourth Tide was close to Fifth Tide. When he was a Journeyman he followed the coast and reached one of the external training camps near Fifth Tide within 3 to 4 days. He could easily reach in minutes at this rate but he didn¡¯t. Ebony was scanning the route and forests to make sure he didn¡¯t miss carriages or marching soldiers. Walking and marching were just so overrated. Just to save a bit of stamina, they were taking their own sweet time?
Even when he was just a Journeyman, he basically travelled at top speed for as long as he desired. Something that no freelancer or soldier would do. What would happen if they met a monster and were too exhausted from running to fight? It would be fine if they were riding horses or some tamed monster but that was hard to supply for a large army.
He found the contingent pretty quickly but his heart was beating faster than usual and Everlasting Tranquillity wasn¡¯t giving him its full capabilities.
¡°Mallory!¡± Mana Vibrations amplified his voice to the entire contingent of tens of thousands below. They were actually rushing a little but they were too slow in his opinion. It would take them at least 4 more hours to reach Fifth Tide and even more time to be deployed on the ground or walls at their speed. There were plenty of carriages with literal tons of supplies so it was really hard to blame their slow advancement.
The soldier clamoured and yelled but not a word registered.
He quickly scanned the lands and found the pink hair crown princess as regal and conscientious of her bearing as usual. She sat on the edge of her invisible barrier with her legs crossed. Still wearing a dress without regard for the occasion.
Her guards were uptight at the rude call. It was more than enough for harsh punishment for any Imperial and not just soldiers of the Empire. He was supposedly not allowed to call a Royal by their name either. Of course, Ebony was not aware of that and neither were her guards aware that he already called the Empire¡¯s King and Queen by name.
Some of the soldiers around her were graduates of Tidal Academy. The academy was only established for less than a century but they gained plenty of fame. Most graduates would engrave or embroider the crest of Tidal Academy on their armour or clothes and it was a sign of status in a sense. There were different levels and different crests for different courses but Ebony didn¡¯t study or learn which was which. It was said that all courses would have their students graduate with at least 7 tier 3 skills be it a Class, Sub-Class, Profession or maybe even a Generic Skill.
If you exclude resistances, that was way more than Ebony had. But that didn¡¯t make a difference to him. He was pretty sure the Commanders in Fifth Tide had plenty of tier 3 skills as well but none of them put Ebony or Ning Xin on the edge. Apparently, most people took roughly 30 years to graduate so there were only a few generations of graduates so far. There was a high requirement for skill refinement degree and skill level and it took years to evolve a skill even if one was training in the same way a tier 3 skill was used.
Most of his attacks were a mixture of multiple skills from all 3 of his classes working together. Compounding compatible skills of a lower tier can cover the gap between tiers. At least for relatively low tiers. There were definitely lineages with a whole list of compatible skills and Classes but he wasn¡¯t afraid of them. Mallory probably had optimised all her routes based on her Royal Lineage and her Fortifications must work really well together. She was a support class that could beat the average combatants with relative ease. Unless there were such people in the group, he didn¡¯t see how the Grandmasters could harm him.
Not that he was here for a fight.
¡°Mallory, we got hit by a Shamanic Plague. Please save her¡¡± He sent the thread of mana to vibrate for her ears only.
¡°Stay up there. Keep moving.¡± She spoke to him through the thread before commanding her unit. Seems like no one had any further complaints after she spoke.
¡°I don¡¯t know how it spreads but I isolated us in ice and used gravity to pull air around us so that nothing leaked out to the surrounding.¡± Ebony had the presence of mind to come up with some preventive measures.
¡°Most likely spores. They cultivate some kind of mushroom on the corpses of their people, feeding it their Vitality every so-called plague grows to have different capabilities. I see, this one is especially weak. Made for stealth but grows faster the stronger the host¡¯s vitality is.¡± Mallory ascended through the skies with far more ease than she used to have. She might be wearing an obfuscation jewel but he was pretty sure she had long become a level 300 healer of sorts. She seemed to have determined the information the second she saw Ning Xin.
¡°I hope I didn¡¯t spread it to the forest,¡± Ebony commented. He needed the reassurance of a knowledgeable healer.
¡°They¡¯re made for living organisms but the life force of plants and vegetation are not compatible. They¡¯ll die out in a day without a host. There aren¡¯t any animals or monsters in this area so we should be fine.¡± She had absolute confidence in her words despite it being her first time dealing with the Shamanic plague. Unless she dealt with it in Fourth Tide.
¡°Can¡¯t heat kill it? She basically boiled herself.¡± Ebony imagined spores to be relatively weak to heat. Her blood boils at a temperature where low-quality metals melt after all.
¡°It¡¯s eating her life force and growing resistance to the magic she¡¯s used to using. It¡¯s made difficult for one to remove it from themselves. She¡¯s receiving constant healing¡that fed the spores even more. This is more troublesome than I imagined.¡± Mallory¡¯s brows knitted slightly.
¡°Can¡can you not heal her either?¡± That slight change of expression caused the uncomfortable feeling to rise again. Without anywhere to push his overflowing mana, he had no choice but to compress it near him. He could just let it go but it was already a training habit.
¡°Your aura¡¯s unstable¡Is that liquid mana? Don¡¯t kill my soldiers by accident. It¡¯ll just take more time. Leave her to me.¡± The confidence in her voice was not lost on Ebony and he trusted it. At the very least, he trusted her confidence more than the healers who couldn¡¯t do a thing.
¡°She can be healed¡thank you, Mallory. Th-¡± Ebony already noticed that Ning Xin was rousing rather than getting weaker. Mallory¡¯s skill with mana manipulation was far from Ebony¡¯s, in the opposite direction. She was even better than him in this regard. Other than some of the older Frost Elves, he hadn¡¯t seen anyone¡¯s mana manipulation to be as fine and precise as his. There was no elemental change to the mana as far as he could tell, it was probably arcane magic. Perhaps the Healer Class had Fortifications to change their mana to have stronger natural healing properties. Observing her mana enter Ning Xin¡¯s body was very similar to sound magic which was supposedly also arcane magic.
¡°I¡¯m a healer and the Crown Princess of the Empire. I will heal her with whatever it takes. If you want to thank me, please save the soldiers fighting out there. Buy time for me to be able to save as many of them as I can.¡±
¡°Can I trust you with her?¡± Ebony stared into the Crown Princess¡¯s bright pink eyes.
¡°Will you?¡± Mallory wasn¡¯t affected by his mana at all, that was something that stayed constant since their last meeting.
¡°...¡± There was a moment of silence between them. Ning Xin sat up in his arms and blinked a few times.
¡°Did I hear mushrooms? Mushrooms are trying to eat me? Haha, Mally, I¡¯ll do the rest. I just have to devour them and show them who¡¯s the predator and who¡¯s the prey.¡±
¡°I trust you, please continue to heal this girl. Tell me if she¡¯s disobedient. No blood or ice cream for a year if you don¡¯t heal up within¡how long?¡± Ebony decided instantly but he didn¡¯t know how long the treatment would take. Now that Ning Xin gained enough strength to wake up and talk, he wasn¡¯t as worried. They were good enough friends to talk about what entertainment series or skincare routine to watch and follow. As long as Ning Xin can get better and stay alive longer, there is still Yvette the Life Queen.
¡°3 days. No training. I bet she moved life force around without regard, that¡¯s why her condition had a drastic change.¡± Mallory seemed to guess that he didn¡¯t really trust her skills. It was quite amazing that she knew Ning Xin¡¯s condition had suddenly changed compared to others whose symptoms slowly developed. Ebony finally realised the unfamiliar discomfort welling up had been anxiety. When it came to her, he got anxious more easily and didn¡¯t have unconditional trust like he usually does.
¡°3 days.¡± Ebony poked the shocked masked girl. Her eyes looked as if she got betrayed by him.
¡°Bu-¡±
¡°You can only cook or rest. If you exercise or fight, then forget about having any ice cream, burgers, pizzas, burritos, donuts and¡¡± He listed fast foods and desserts that he thought she would like.
¡°Wha--wha-what are those? Are you still hiding recipes from me¡how could you!?¡± A wave of confusion and desire burned in her eyes. Her belly grumbled a bit but that was something only both of them noticed.
¡°Some of them are quite unhealthy. Your meals are much tastier so I didn¡¯t think I had to introduce them.¡± Burgers were practically sandwiches and he wasn¡¯t a fan of sweet desserts.
Ning Xin was a bit pacified by that but she was clearly unhappy about not being able to add to her repertoire.
¡°Be good. We can eat those after you recover.¡± She already stood on Mallory¡¯s invisible barrier so he patted her head the way he likes it. He didn¡¯t know that he was doing that because he wanted her to notice that he wanted to get a head pat.
Chapter 206: Crowd Control
Mallory looked different. She was noticeably taller after her evolution and like both of them, got better skin. It was pretty odd that evolutions included a beautifying effect. While Hector had a resemblance with Navin, Mallory didn¡¯t have too much in common with both the King and Queen.
¡°Give me a grip.¡± Ebony wanted to check the swordswoman''s strength to see if she had recovered enough to protect herself. As effective as Mallory¡¯s healing appeared to be, he had to confirm.
¡°Heh!? Right here? Th-there¡¯s people watching¡¡± She hid behind the shorter woman. The healer might have gained some height but she was still more than half a head shorter than the swordswoman. Her smaller frame didn¡¯t help.
¡®Hot damn. I keep forgetting.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t care, he grabbed her hand and urged her to give him a good grip.
He might have been a bit aggressive about it but the crushing force within her grip was a good sign.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll keep calling you whenever the callstone link breaks so please pick up if it gets through.¡±
¡°Uh-mmm.¡± She didn¡¯t want to look at him and was momentarily confused before nodding her head.
¡°Mallory, I¡¯ll try to keep them alive. May your way there quickly. See you.¡± He turned around and blasted off from his spot without creating a large shockwave. He could hear Ning Xin shouting, asking about his speed.
¡®Oh yes, I have to check out what happened. Did I finally get Treading Flash?¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Treading Stride evolved into Phantom''s Flicker¡¯
Phantom¡¯s Flicker - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Phantom Flicker allows one to travel through any terrain with more ease, increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by (-500%) + 10.0% per level. Disturbance to the surroundings caused by physical movement is reduced by 50% + 5.0% per level. Weave between physical matter with a static 25% more ease.
¡®Phantom¡¯s Flicker? Wasn¡¯t it tier 3 Treading Flash, tier 4 Phantom Flash and tier 5 Spectre¡¯s Flicker? I know I was incorporating the other tiers'' tips to blend with my own footwork better but the skill¡¯s different¡why negative 500%? That¡¯s 50 levels worth of¡wait this is a semi-tier 4 skill?¡¯
Ebony was shocked and confused at the weird skill evolution. It was even greater in tier than his highest rank Core Skill, the first skill that surpassed his Core Skill.
¡®Did I Will the evolution of the skill? Is that possible? Is that why there¡¯s a negative percentage, my actual technique isn¡¯t quite there yet. That must mean there are more flaws or drawbacks to it. Let¡¯s try.¡¯ Ebony was in such a rush that he didn¡¯t take note of the effects and drawbacks of a skill he didn¡¯t completely earn.
It took another 5 steps back towards Fifth Tide for him to come up with the preliminary reasons that it was not a complete tier 4 skill.
The stamina consumption was immense, so much so that at full power each step basically ate 10% of his stamina pool and that was after all the stamina he was regenerating. The stamina drain was a problem since he could take more than a single step in a second but that wasn¡¯t the worst issue. His calves are cramped and his knees would lock up, they did not heal instantly. It was actually taking some time to recover. However, that was only if he used it at maximum output. Phantom¡¯s Flicker would allow him to have far better control when it came to distance, as long as he mastered it. Short-distance movement was so fast that he practically teleported in his own perception. Perhaps Ning Xin can see his movement properly.
Weave between physical matter was just an extravagant description. It just made him more ¡®streamlined¡¯ as air and water resistance does not impact him as much. He was sure that if the static percentage reached 100% it just meant fluid resistance was half as effective on him and not that he was completely unaffected by air or water. ¡®Although, it does say physical matter¡should I try running into a wall? Not that I would be able to differentiate if it worked.¡¯
Disturbance to the surroundings being reduced was something he expected. That was the whole focus of the higher-tier footwork in his memory. That must be why there was hardly any damage to the surroundings despite his speed. He didn¡¯t cause much of a ripple in the water or in the air either. Ning Xin would break sound barriers and form vapour cones around her body. There was a difference compared to Earth when it came to the speed of sound due to mana densities of surroundings but she had already exceeded that too. It was ridiculous to think that people could achieve such speeds at their level.
It was harder to cause a sonic boom but many Grandmaster Trolls could do that, the Imperial soldier¡¯s helmet and armour had ear protection that amplified each other¡¯s voice in close proximity while cutting off explosive noises or high-impact vibrations. With Phantom¡¯s Flicker, there was none of that. His Will naturally silenced his movements but even without that, he wouldn¡¯t cause a commotion with this skill.
Ebony¡¯s best guess was that he somehow Willed the evolution of the skill. Hence, the negative 500% which equates to 50 levels but didn¡¯t really affect him much. It was just a matter of optimisation to reduce the stamina cost and remove the negative effect. He should be able to refine the skill much faster now that he actually had the skill and knew what to change since he can observe and experience the effects of the skill. There was a small chance he manipulated stamina sub-consciously or there was no way he could put so much force or energy into a single step.
At level 400, his movement speed supposedly increases by 4000% - 500% or 3500%. That was a 36 times multiplier on his movement speed! Before the evolution, it was closer to 12.45 times the multiplier after the refinements. Of course, it was now an active movement skill that ate tons of stamina but the tremendous speed was worth it in his opinion. Agility did not directly correlate to movement speed, Strength played quite a big part perhaps even more than Agility but the skill never depended on a stat but just movement speed itself.
Agility tied with Strength and gave him the dexterity to control his speed. Ning Xin had both an Agility Fortification and an Attack Speed Fortification so her sword style could be pushed to inhumane skill.
No wonder he was so disorientated. His Perception couldn¡¯t catch up. As for his body, it was mostly fine except for a bit of burning nothing he wasn¡¯t able to handle other than his legs. Calculated Hunch told him that If he were to use the skill ten times in a row, even Sustained Optimum Condition might not allow his legs to work normally and they might actually take more than a few minutes to recover. It was very likely due to his neglected Endurance stat that his muscles couldn¡¯t take so much stress. Thankfully, his recovery was relatively quick.
Ebony would be forced to learn to control the output of the skill extremely quickly as he was about to go into battle. There was absolutely no need to push the skill to maximum output unless the battles were stretched over a greater distance. The battlefield above the sea was limited due to the great numbers of Trolls and their aggressive push.
¡®I can¡¯t aim¡¡¯ He was not far from Fifth Tide and wanted to Flicker onto a Troll and Tremor Stomp them as a test but he couldn¡¯t even aim his landing spot as his eyesight didn¡¯t go as far as his body could go. It was a good opportunity to tune down the output and reduce stamina consumption. He wouldn¡¯t want his legs to give up on him partway. He decided that he could just Tremor Stomp within the Troll¡¯s territory beyond the artillery mage¡¯s spellfire and around the area where barrages of arrows were raining on. There were no friendlies that he would hit by accident.
All his enhancements were beefed up to their limit just in case he broke his own leg or did damage worse than that. Calculated Hunch needed data to work with so he was actually going to do so without the knowledge of whether his leg would break or the ground would. At least, he didn¡¯t feel like he could damage himself and Calculated Hunch didn¡¯t fully disagree.
No matter what the skill was called, he wasn¡¯t teleporting. He was actually moving at extreme speeds that would strengthen his charge.
He took a deep breath and reassured himself that Ning Xin was going to be fine before Everlasting Tranquillity was back and stabler than ever. He closed his eyes as his sight was only going to disorientate him more. His mana sense was already stronger than sight in some aspects.
Tiny ripples formed where he stood and he was flying by arrows and landing before they did. Ning Xin used wind magic to reduce wind resistance while he used gravity magic. It wasn¡¯t as effective but it did the job, this meant that it used more mana the more resistance he faced but it ultimately didn¡¯t matter as he couldn¡¯t pull away or repel the wind fast enough. Either way, there wasn¡¯t a large difference in mana consumption.
There was an unlucky Troll right beneath Ebony¡¯s feet. The experienced warrior actually managed to bring his large bone blade up to block but he was too slow. The timing of Tremor Stomp and vibrational blast was not on point but he still forced the Troll to fall back as his feet landed on the Troll¡¯s shoulder. His joints ached a little when he was stopped by the earth but the acceleration he had gave Tremor Stomp far more power. The shock rattled his entire body and he wasn¡¯t able to fully redirect vibrations out of his body. A mini earthquake caught the Trolls'' attention since they were busy swiping arrows aside, there weren¡¯t any fights going on around here.
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Not that there weren¡¯t arrows and spells to prevent his sight but he could spot the flashes of light far deeper into Troll territory. He wouldn¡¯t be able to reach that area on the ground but he could if he was in the air. The Trolls didn¡¯t have the best aerial defensive measures.
Ebony could guess why they managed to kill the King-ranked warriors. None of them that breached the frontlines had any support from Shamans. As for what those Shamans were doing, it seemed like not a single squad could spare time as they were embroiled in the battle with Korta. It seemed like it would be hard for the Arch Mage to kill any important Troll unless Korben and Koawe could deal with those Shamans. Ebony couldn¡¯t be sure but Midnight Shepherd would probably be more of a support for the Benumbed and Vigiot Patriarchs. It was hard to say if Korta could fight actual elite King squads with possibly thousands or at least hundreds of Shamans making sure their warriors survived by himself.
Ebony was a tiny target that slipped within their ranks and he caused havoc with emphasis on perfecting the output of his new movement skill. He dialled it all the way down to use a similar amount of stamina as before and found that he was still around twice as fast as he used to. If the skill was a normal tier 4 he should have the same speed even if he wanted to cross a shorter distance with just a smaller energy output but it seems that he didn¡¯t fully know how the skill actually works.
His abrupt entrance caused some panic as he went blasting Blazing Deep Freeze Petals without care. There was a low chance it would be blown towards allies here. Frozen targets got shattered by the mostly ineffective arrows which slowed them down a bunch. He wasn¡¯t here to pick a fight by himself and ran around while making his way towards the spellfire and making sure he froze or added weight to the Trolls while evading artillery mages¡¯ fireballs and water jets.
Attacking the Trolls from behind, only making casual attacks on as many of them as he can to confuse the Trolls. Over time, quite a few attacking Trolls turned around and he was surrounded. Just as he intended. Few Grandmaster Trolls could really harm him. He had the feeling that those that were really powerful were all around the Shamans'' back rear and he confirmed earlier just based on hunch from the auras. A quick look didn¡¯t really give him much information.
The Trolls didn¡¯t really have the ability to ¡®surround¡¯ him. Every time one of them looked away and wanted to pursue the attack on the Imperial Army, he would be there to poke at them. He reached the range to get his Models to copy him but they were slower and could be grabbed or smashed. Well, unless they were within 600 metres he wasn¡¯t able to give them strong buffs but he could still control them to some degree.
It would take either a ton of effort or mana to kill them fast and he was trying to buy time. Although a few petals were enough, each compressed version took plenty of mana. There were already around ten thousand or so Grandmaster Trolls launching their offensive army near the edge of the barrier. They didn¡¯t really target the barrier, probably understanding the futility with their strength. Perhaps they received orders to focus on killing soldiers first. It aligned with their bloodthirsty nature and was a better idea as the barrier would be easier to take down when the number of soldiers and citizens decreased.
He was not privy to the information on the army¡¯s forces but a rough estimate was that around 10% of Fifth Tide¡¯s forces were Grandmasters. That included the mages and archers who were on the wall and other support Classes. There were some of those that were on the ground as well but not as many. They had more than ten thousand Grand Warriors along with Grand Knights combined as their current numbers were easily over a million. But the Empire¡¯s warriors honestly weren''t a good direct match against these giants. Not all of them could fit at the base of the cliff with the Trolls'' giant size.
Not to blame the Imperial Army, they were strong but the current aggressors had an average level of 400 or higher while the Grandmasters in the army were low to mid 300s. There were far fewer Grand Knights than Grand Warriors and only the Grand Knights could stand their ground one on one with the level and stat gap.
Ebony¡¯s best bet to buy time for soldiers to retreat or lighten their pressure was to disturb as many Trolls as he could while the soldiers reorganised and reformed. The giants were using their physical strength and size to break apart formations with brute force and it worked. He copied them and used his relatively small size to go into the squads and drag them apart from each other. Forcing them to chase him was an add-on. They weren¡¯t exactly friendly with each other from different squads and getting them to ram into each other was a bonus if they got angry at each other.
Their large bodies meant only a few could attack him and he would stop to redirect their attacks onto each other if possible. It was not easy to have them hit each other since they were highly experienced warriors that could easily overpower his comparatively weak gravity magic but it gave him a chance to get a light Stalactite Drop in from time to time. Against these guys, a little bit of freezing flames across their entire body would be more than sufficient. Soldiers wouldn¡¯t have a hard time against these foes even if they survived. Their flesh and bones would rupture from the internal repulsion of sonic waves and the flames would be too deep for them to remove with Vitality in a short time.
He could give these Trolls another kick to end them but that was a waste of time if he had to repeat it a few thousand times. Once again, he strayed from squads that were capable of giving Cap Dwarf and the Generals trouble. Cap Dwarf was pretty good at hiding his skills. He was the star of the show on the battlefield. Looking down on the Trolls was a 30-metre tall earthen giant with a snake¡¯s face as the head and both limbs were snakeheads. Cap Dwarf embedded himself in the chest of the earthen giant. 3 snake heads were flexible and could extend more than a hundred metres and chomped up multiple Trolls with each bite.
The Trolls were very excited about trying to hunt the giant beast. It was clearly more suited for the Troll¡¯s style of fighting but Cap Dwarf dominated in all aspects. No one could get close to him. The ground ¡®rippled¡¯ when the normal feet of the earthen giant stomped down. Sadly, Cap Dwarf had mentioned that he wasn¡¯t able to manipulate the earth that this battlefield was made of otherwise, he would be in more control. Dozens of Trolls leapt at the earthen giant but Cap Dwarf¡¯s snakeheads could extend and shorten as he wish. For some reason, no one attacked Cap Dwarf himself whose limbs were stuck into the earthen giant though.
Ebony¡¯s efforts only proved helpful after some time. He actually had control over the largest area as he didn¡¯t stay in one spot like the Generals and Cap Dwarf did.
One of the Generals not locked in combat roared at the chance and had a unit of a hundred or so Grand Knights rush out from their formation to crush all the frozen and half-dead Trolls. He then personally taunted the Trolls that his unit was handling.
¡®I hope they have the strength and stamina to run back into formation quickly.¡¯ Ebony knew that killing off these near-frozen guys would just allow those that were breaking through spell bombardment to charge forward. Hopefully, the General noticed that. His own mana pool was more than half empty by now and he only got around a thousand or so Trolls. However, the congregation and the freezing temperatures he spread slowed and even halted far more enemies.
¡°Don¡¯t go overboard, their presence stops more from charging in.¡± Ebony transmitted to the soldiers but from the way they were going all out it was obvious no one was listening.
With all the confidence the Knights displayed, he went in Cap Dwarf¡¯s direction as the Trolls were ganging up on him. It was about 10 km to his right which was closer to Hoarfrost Glade than it was to Fourth Tide.
¡°Lad! Are the others fine!?¡± Cap Dwarf panted from within the earth giant¡¯s chest.
¡°Mmm. They got to the healers. The Crown Princess is on the way and she¡¯s more reliable.¡± Ebony effortlessly linked them with a thread of mana and buffed his captain.
¡°Great! Now let¡¯s get this over with! The skirmish shouldn¡¯t last for more than a few hours!¡±
¡°How do you know that?¡±
¡°That¡¯s just how it always is. The bigshots go and test each other out for half a day or so to check if they have a chance at victory.¡± Cap Dwarf didn¡¯t need a strength buff but an Intelligence buff.
¡°I see. Maybe not this time.¡± Ebony noticed 2 flashes of light going past them. His eyes couldn¡¯t catch up or make out the figures. Enya was tossed from above and landed on the wall. She probably ran back to Arcta and got her seniors to come out.
¡°I really hope so.¡± It didn¡¯t slip Cap Dwarf¡¯s notice.
With Ebony around, ganging up didn¡¯t give them much of an advantage. Sadly, like how he couldn¡¯t target Korta with gravity magic he also had a hard time casting a repulsion layer for the earthen giant or even just the snake limbs.
¡°Hey! What happened to the line you were holding back!?¡±
Ebony got onto the shoulder of the giant to see past the wall of flesh. The Grand Knights were in a poor position as they were pincered.
¡°They seemed so confident earlier¡¡± He quickly leapt back, trusting that Cap Dwarf could handle himself. He told Mallory he would do his best to keep as many soldiers alive as he could.
Unfortunately, he arrived and noticed 7 unmoving Grand Knights within his mana sense and saw another 4 scattered around. Their armour and muscular bodies left their bodies mostly in one piece.
¡®I can¡¯t protect all of them at the same time, not even if I overdraft my mana and cast a domain large enough to cover them¡ alright, I¡¯ll have to toss them back and hope they can make a safe landing.¡¯ Calculated Hunch got his body to act with haste. If he had Ning Xin¡¯s mental speed he could decide who to take out first or how strong Firm Path had to be to safely send them back to the army¡¯s defensive line but all he had were rough estimates and it didn¡¯t even register to him. His automation simply sent the instructions to his body before he could ponder about it.
A ten-metre long tunnel of Firm Path was cast and he Flickered around to toss the soldiers to his spell. It sent them speeding back. A few of them knocked his hands away when he was about to grab onto the ridge or gap in their collar area of the metal armour. He accidentally froze their contacting hands or weapon and swung them the same way. It was just a reflex and his body was ablaze with freezing flames from his enhancement.
Their armour enchantments didn¡¯t really have a robust cold resistance effect on them. Ebony met some enchanters, practically all of them were also a mage of some kind. They didn¡¯t let him see their work as it was their trade secret. The Empire treats these enchanters very well. To be fair, he was about the only person who put a forge out in the open. He didn¡¯t worry about heat loss or people watching but he no longer did that since an indoor forge was more conducive.
A few Grand Knights resisted and dodged him in advance so he skipped them and got anyone else he was closest to. Taking care to conjure petals and deep freeze the next wave of Trolls that appeared. After the resisting Grand Knights got knocked around by a dozen or so Trolls, they were much easier to toss back.
Just as he was about to empty out on mana and began to overdraft his mana while making safety precautions to pull himself out, he saw the blue streaks speeding towards Fifth Tide. Korta was supported by both Korben and Koawe. Drips of blue blood sprinkled over both armies.
A roaring horn shook the skies, earth and sea alike.
The Trolls gave their all and pulled back but this was not a chance the army would let go and neither would he.
Chapter 207: Christy
Back behind the final defensive line, no one could keep their eyes away from the quakes and freezing gales.
¡°BACK INTO THE BARRIER!¡± Needless to say, no one was spared from the effects even though the Empire wasn¡¯t the target.
As for the retreating Trolls, few probably made it back. Ebony didn¡¯t act tough, he stood beside Orren as they watched the battlefield transform into Winterland.
¡®Snow, ice and wood. These are the three elements the Frost Elves are most proficient with. By the way, where are those floating bows? I didn¡¯t see them at all.¡¯
The soldiers clamoured and were terrified to see the entire field burst into towers of ice that stabbed and grew across the city¡¯s barriers that just sprang back up moments ago. There was only a narrow stair carved into the cliff and running back behind the walls would take hours for such a large army. Most of the soldiers remained on the ground below the cliff and walls and held their hands up in defence but the barrier stood strong. ¡®They should be able to climb up the cliff, no? Maybe they don¡¯t have a good grip to scale the walls.¡¯ He was already aware flight wasn¡¯t a common ability but surely the physically inclined Classes could scale the cliff and walls.
The barrier could stop the towers of icebergs but the temperatures continued to drop.
Earth and stone mages conjured towering stairs and ladders to facilitate the soldiers¡¯ retreat into the city. Ebony couldn¡¯t even see where the spellcasters were but he remained to oversee the situation. He overdrafted his mana a little and his mana regeneration dropped drastically but he could still help with the evacuation.
¡®Fourth Tide¡¯s reinforcement hasn¡¯t even fully entered the city, how inefficient. They have to make spatial storage more common, I¡¯ll play around to see if I can make a gravity reduction rune for carriages and bags.¡¯ Ebony chalked the inefficiency due to supplies. Spare weapons, armour and even food ration were heavy and bulky. Metals or materials of higher quality tend to be denser and heavier. Weight reduction of some form was already in use for many carriages, the military obviously had them too. It just didn¡¯t appear to be sufficient.
Ebony was about to look for Ning Xin when a Knight stomped towards him, grabbing the collar of his robe. He already withdrew the scales to lighten the load on his throbbing legs. The chest and shoulder plates of Knights usually had ranks engraved on but the armour was already dirtied and he couldn¡¯t see who the person was behind the helmet.
¡°How could you leave your post! I¡¯ve lost good men out there!¡± The unidentifiable Knight flipped his visor up. Ebony still didn¡¯t recognise the man but anyone who had an obfuscation jewel on was probably pretty high rank.
¡°What post?¡± Honestly, he didn¡¯t want to deal with the man. Ebony already knew what the man was talking about. The Knight was probably the Commander or the General that sent his unit to slaughter the frozen Trolls. The lack of his mana signature on the armour hinted that it might be a General whose face he didn¡¯t recall.
¡°Grr..this is why freelancers shouldn¡¯t meddle with war!¡± He grumbled and ¡®whispered¡¯ to the side.
¡°I think so too. I can see why there are so few freelancers here to help if that¡¯s the army¡¯s attitude towards them.¡± After learning that Navin wasn¡¯t around, he also learned that a lot of soldiers were missing from the war. He wasn¡¯t exactly calling the Imperial Army weak.
¡°How dare you insult the Empire!?¡± He picked Ebony up from the ground. Ebony only weighed over 2 tons thanks to Icicle and his robe, he was pretty light now that his body was emptied of compressed mana.
¡°Did I?¡± If anything, he internally praised them for fighting while outnumbered and out-leveled. The Knight¡¯s face and neck strained from lifting him up. ¡®What¡¯s this sense of¡satisfaction?¡¯ Ebony felt an odd sense of satisfaction from seeing how the Knight struggled to keep him up in the air. He was getting heavier by the second and it wasn¡¯t long before his collar slipped through the Knights fingers. The knight had to be strong enough to lift 2 tons with ease but he must be exhausted and out of mana to enhance himself for no reason.
¡°They agreed to the supremacy duels.¡± An unfamiliar feathery voice tickled their ears. It came from the ledge of the wall behind him. The Knight was frightened and stepped back only to gain his bearings back after his initial shock. No surprise there, Ebony didn¡¯t know how someone bypassed the city barrier and sat behind him before he could even notice.
Like Korta, the person behind him had the planet¡¯s gravity mana naturally avoid them. The only difference was that the ice mana in his robes was actually escaping, moving towards the feathery-voiced figure behind him. Thankfully, it was conjured ice and not natural ice so he was able to stop his ice mana from escaping. He turned around and naturally saw a Frost Elf.
¡®Another fighter that wears a dress to battle.¡¯ That was his first thought. Unlike Mallory though, his experience with clothes and armour told him that the dress this Frost Elf was wearing was just a normal dress without any magical effects or even made to be physically tough. She sat with her long skinny legs crossed and had her elbow resting on her thigh and chin resting on the back of her gloved hands. She might be seated but he had no doubt this was the tallest Frost Elf he had seen so far. At least 2.4 metres tall, she was also slender which made her height pretty intimidating.
"You have pretty high ice affinity for a hu..ahh ~ a fine physique you have. You¡¯re the child those kids mentioned.¡± The lady stared at him the entire time. Matching her feathery voice with a slight accent was a pair of soft cyan-blue eyes and snow-white hair. Most eye-catching was that she didn¡¯t have any footwear on but most people would be drawn to her beautiful facial features. Ebony was more focused on sensing the flow of gravity mana.
¡°I¡¯m Ebony.¡±
The woman chuckled in response, ¡°Christy. How¡¯s that old turtle doing?¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t reply. He didn¡¯t know what was good to say and what wasn¡¯t. The woman seemed to guess that he knew an ¡®old turtle¡¯ likely Gen just by seeing him. ¡®Is she able to tell more about my physique other than the fact that I¡¯m part mana?¡¯ The Elves could tell he was made of mana but not about his Frost Flames. Although, they probably knew now that he didn¡¯t hide it.
He conjured a whole frost plum flower out of frost flames to answer her. It took all her attention away.
Another unknown Frost Elf stood beside him and bent down to stare at the flames intently. The man sent tingles down his back at how he appeared, just like Christy. Ebony knew it was just dizzying speed. The new arrival would probably be a head shorter than Christy if she stood up.
¡®What¡¯s this aura¡it¡¯s coming from his robe. It¡¯s the same aura as the robe that Roya¡¯s senior made that was delivered to some other Tide.¡¯ Ebony recalled the similarity between the robes¡¯ aura, he didn¡¯t want to touch the pitch-black robe.
¡°Back off, I can¡¯t see it like that.¡±
¡°Shh, I¡¯m trying to appreciate art. Although it''s not as pure as the sap that burns in our village I didn¡¯t think someone could manipulate or even conjure it.¡±
¡®They have Ful¡¯s sap?¡¯ Although they seem like they were on friendly terms, Ebony didn¡¯t say anything about Gen or Ful. He wanted to ask about the purity but he might be better off asking Ful.
¡°What does it mean to agree to the supremacy duels?¡± He grasped his fist and scattered the flames after they were satisfied.
¡°They were testing their luck with this skirmish. If we were pushovers, they would just overrun the city plain and simple. We¡¯ve agreed to fight on their territory about seven gurs north.¡± Christy rubbed her shoulders with icy gloves to cool herself. The ledge she sat on was frozen solid for a while now.
The Trolls have already pushed till they were closing in on the barrier and steadily fought for control up within 5 to 10 km away from the city. 7 gurs equates 35000 km, it was far too drastic a change for Ebony to believe but when he thought about the compact siege and how normal duels usually were, it made a bit more sense. In any case, he doubted that the Trolls just nodded and retreated so far but he was greeted with a frozen wasteland beneath the city. That wasn¡¯t even a distance he would find hard to cover before he had his movement skill evolve. Plainston to Arcta was only about 8 or 9 thousand km away and he was able to cover that within half a month in the past. At least, when he was escorted and travelled on carriages.
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¡°If only we didn¡¯t have a contract that deems us as the protectors of Fifth Tide we''d stay cool and comfy back home. How bothersome. Fortunately, it¡¯s only for 5 centuries, we should really move Arcta deeper within the next few centuries.¡± The shorter Frost Elf didn¡¯t introduce himself.
¡®No wonder there weren''t any real powerhouses sent here, the Frost Elves are contractually in charge of the defences here?¡¯ Ebony imagined that the Empire could at least spare a single King-ranked combatant for Fifth Tide but none came to date.
¡°They should just integrate the villages into one.¡± Christy leaned back and laid down with her neck straightened so that she faced the covered sea.
¡°The newborn can¡¯t withstand the environment in Tuctra, you know that.¡±
¡°I¡¯m well aware, those damnable Grade 6 Kings or Grade 4 and higher Emperors will kill those kids with their presence.¡±
¡®Sister Jing mentioned grades back underground. Is that not a measure that she created for herself and an actual method widely used?¡¯ Ebony had manners and greeted them with a tet.
¡°I cannot tell you my name.¡± The shorter, handsome Frost Elf pat the back of his head. He appeared slightly embarrassed, Ebony was quite sure of it. That got him confused, was the man¡¯s name something embarrassing?
¡°Don¡¯t make him misunderstand.¡± Christy chided.
¡°Oh, my apologies. My family''s spirit guardian is a Supreme Mind Frost Spirit, if someone speaks our name while matching it with my face they might get attacked through the spirit realm wherever they are.¡±
¡°Matching it with your face?¡± Ebony actually wanted to pick at other points such as spirit guardian, supreme mind frost spirit and spirit realm to ask about. When it came to spirits, elementals or sometimes golems Ebony was aware of the ¡®lesser¡¯, ¡®normal¡¯, ¡®greater¡¯ and ¡®superior¡¯ variants that Ning Xin mentioned. He had to assume supreme was just something higher.
¡°When our family member¡¯s names are spoken out loud our spirit guardian can sense when our names are spoken and poke into the speaker¡¯s mind to gauge if we are the one you are thinking or talking about. Our names are made and bound by spirit magic so that our guardian can protect us wherever we go.¡±
¡°In human terms, this guy comes from a noble lineage. They tend to tell their names to enemies they can¡¯t beat.¡± Christy walked up to Ebony and pointed to the shorter Frost Elf with her thumb. Now that she stood up, she really dwarfed all of them present and her skinny figure made her look like a frozen tree in the Glades due to her blue dress.
¡°She¡¯s just trying to make it sound like she isn¡¯t from one either but she is.¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know what to say as they stared at each other fiercely. The clash of their mana senses meeting each other got a bit violent. It was interesting to see such a lively use of mana. Imperial mages didn¡¯t do anything of the sort. Few of them even pushed the mana around them to sense things, their mana sense simply depended on sensing ambient mana.
Ebony had learned mana manipulation from Roya, it was pretty much the basics to prod your mana out and fight for spatial dominance with mana. For human mages, they usually started by guiding their mana to move elemental mana then they would just start learning offensive spells. They usually didn¡¯t have a strong elemental affinity as an advantage and it was common for them to use offensive spells to level quickly. By the time they were Masters, they would have a decent amount of mana and could start with more mana intensive training. They would begin learning tactics of real mages but it wasn¡¯t easy. The more people he met, the more aware that he was just beginning his path as a mage. Even warriors had methods to dispel his magic much less these elders when it came to magic. His domain was but a flimsy attempt at grasping spatial dominance but it was a good start.
¡®I have to visit their village.¡¯ Ebony also hoped to visit the Elves'' villages if possible. Although Elcra seemed smaller and smaller as he got stronger it was undeniable that there were plenty of places he hadn''t been to. He didn¡¯t feel suffocated before he started to question Everlasting Tranquillity but his desire to travel and explore got stronger. Whatever the case, he felt a bit too weak to safely explore certain areas.
Throughout the short greetings, the Knight had been silent and Ebony only realised it was because the man had been lagging up due to the overflowing Wisdom from these Frost Elves. Their naturally regenerated mana was a few times denser than his own if he didn¡¯t compress it. A common effect of the Frost Elves¡¯ mana was that it chilled the mind as well as the body. Both of these ice mages clashed with their mana and made it worse. The only ones moving around on the walls seem to be Ebony and Orren¡¯s party members who hid behind the village chief nervously.
Christy floated towards Orren¡¯s party like a ghost and patted their heads. ¡°You kids did well. Go back to Arcta and relax.¡±
¡®How nice¡ why did I think that?¡¯
¡°It was nice to meet you but I have to find someone now.¡± Ebony wanted to find the opportunity to duck out of social interaction for a while now. Not once did his callstone link up with Ning Xin when he was out fighting but both of them should be in the city right now. Before he could leave, Cap Dwarf found him and subtly pressured him to introduce him to the Frost Elves.
It somehow escalated to Cap Dwarf duelling Korben after nightfall when both of them recovered. These old folks decided for Korben who was a younger generation from the same village. Cap Dwarf simply thanked them for saving his folks in the war 3 centuries ago and said that he was fighting for Fifth Tide to repay the favour. It was quite a surprise to Ebony, it was a small world and people were sincere in ways he didn¡¯t expect. Sadly, neither Frost Elf recognised nor remembered the event. It may have been them or even Korta since the time gap seems to match but Cap Dwarf clarified that his folks didn¡¯t personally know the Frost Elf so that was that.
Christy didn¡¯t want a ¡®youngin¡¯ who one of their people saved to fight in the supremacy duel if he wasn¡¯t strong enough so she wanted to see Cap Dwarf fight. Korben was the first person she thought of as an opponent. If Ning Xin were here she would know that these people simply wanted entertainment. Ebony hadn¡¯t gotten so good at reading cues or expressions.
Ebony finally got another chance to find Ning Xin and slipped away with Phantom¡¯s Flicker, Waning Presence and Frigid Refraction at full output.
¡°Where are you going in such a rush?¡± Christy''s feathery voice entered his ears. Both Frost Elves were flying by his sides and pincered him.
¡®Are they here just to humble me¡¡¯ Ebony wanted to feel good about his newfound speed but these guys weren¡¯t giving him the chance. Clearly, they were just flying normally with pure mana manipulation to show off to him and raise his awareness that neither Waning Presence nor Frigid Refraction was good enough to mask their senses. He imagined Frigid Refraction was giving him away and took another Flicker without it but the result was the same.
¡°I¡¯m worried about my¡¡± Ebony was stunned as he didn¡¯t know how to continue the sentence. ¡®Who is she to me? Girlfriend? More than that? Fiancee?¡¯ He was hit with a sudden urge to clarify his relationship with Ning Xin. More than ever, he didn¡¯t like that he was bothered with such questions. It only served to destabilise his mind.
¡°Your?¡± Christy floated along with wispy air and would scare adults and children alike with the ghost-like appearance.
¡°Woman,¡± Ebony replied absent-mindedly. He was still thinking of how to categorise her and just said the broadest term that came to mind.
¡°Oh, you! Acting all mature. You¡¯re still a newborn, aren¡¯t you? Let¡¯s see who this playmate of yours is.¡± These old folks truly treated anyone like children.
¡°I found someone with his mana signature stuck on her, let¡¯s go.¡± The unnamed Frost Elf burst off and Christy followed without a moment''s delay.
Ebony did his best to follow their shadow. The city was pretty massive despite how easier it was to fly by the entire stretch. Tidal the Capital was practically continent-sized and these border cities couldn¡¯t match up but that didn¡¯t mean they were small. Fifth Tide has a population in the millions but he wasn¡¯t sure of the exact number.
He curved and zipped around to follow the Christy who descended and scoured the streets. By the time he made it to Ning Xin¡¯s side, he heard them chat her up. The first thing that entered his ears was ¡°An immature masked one! Tell me when you¡¯re going to clobber those pesky Elves, I¡¯ll be right there with you!¡±
¡®Again? That¡¯s the first thing that comes to mind, what in the world? That grudge runs deep.¡¯ There were so many other things that they could¡¯ve first said but the moment they saw her they talked about a common foe.
Ebony waved to Ning Xin to show that there was nothing to worry about as her body tightened in the same way she got ready for a fight. ¡®Actually maybe not¡¡¯ Christy started to stare at Ning Xin and scrutinise her from head to toe.
¡°You¡¯re not compatible, keep her as a playmate.¡± Christy ran her gaze between the two of them.
¡°She¡¯s the only one for me.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t like what he was hearing, his Will acted out but it didn¡¯t do anything other than act rude.
¡°Christy, don¡¯t butt in.¡± The unnamed Frost Elf protected by some kind of higher power said surprisingly sternly.
Mallory had already made her way to the injured but Ning Xin had been shopping around the market. ¡°How¡¯s your leg?¡±
¡°It hurts a little but there won¡¯t be lasting effects. I¡¯ll be fine by tomorrow.¡±
¡°Once we¡¯re done here, we¡¯ll be adding an underwater regime.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t swim¡¡±
¡°I¡¯ll teach you. Besides, you can still use your blood wings underwater. Might as well train your flight ability underwater, the water resistance can let you understand fluid flow better if you can see currents.¡±
¡°You¡¯re right! So I don¡¯t have to learn how to swim.¡±
¡°You have to. What if you run out of mana?¡±
Ning Xin whispered about how the water Trolls reminded him of underwater training. ¡°I¡¯ll make sure they regret it in future.¡± Ebony obviously heard her, he wasn¡¯t about to let them go free for injuring her.
''Right...they''re not the only ones who succeeded.'' He was reminded of another person that he shouldn''t have been so passive with.
Chapter 208: Grand Spear Warden
Korta had been injured.
Mallory wouldn¡¯t be able to fully heal him before the Supremacy Duels because of his physique but it was nothing fatal.
The duel between Cap Dwarf and Korben had been conducted in secret but he heard the result was a close loss for Cap Dwarf¡ªpractically a draw, so he was fighting 2 days from now.
Koawe did Korta¡¯s job and went to get the list of people on the Empire¡¯s side.
According to Christy, their opponents were 2 Patriarchs both of which were Emperor-ranked but their squads were filled with Kings, along with a few direct tribal youngling squads from each of the Benumbed and Vigiot Tribe. It was standard to have prospective future tribe heads put their lives on the line in such a ¡®prestigious¡¯ battle.
It was as if the Empire followed their tradition. The 4 inexperienced fighter Generals will be sent as well but their ranks don¡¯t mean anything in this ¡®duel¡¯. It was assumed that Ebony wanted to join and they weren¡¯t wrong. He was plucked in with these 4 Generals to challenge the prospective tribe chiefs. There was a good chance it was a few individuals and not a whole squad as they wanted to prove their individual strengths. Athena¡¯s name was there, it seemed like she was also in his group. Other opponents in this group seemed to be a few tamers and finally, a single tribeless that stood out amongst all others.
Cap Dwarf will actually join Koawe and Korben led by Korta to handle all 14 members of both Patriarchs¡¯ squads.
Christy was going to solo both Emperor-ranked warriors and Midnight Shepherd¡¯s entire squad by herself. Actually, it would be a few squads of Shamans but there was not much of a difference to her.
Radiance Envoy together with a few Imperial mages were going to fight as well. They were matched with some Commanders who were their guards. Mallory would be with them with soldiers from Fourth Tide. They might have a team battle for all he knew. As for who their opponents were, it depends. It might be a few other elite squads or perhaps a spellcasting competition with the Shamans.
It was all just a plan. The Trolls might not necessarily get baited to fight the opponents the Frost Elves designated. However, it was highly likely possible to walk up to a Troll and challenge them. The chances a Troll would turn down a direct challenge were immensely low. The only slight problem was that they had to offer their flesh as a losing condition. It made no real difference, the loser died. But this way, the Empire was not allowed to recover a body if there was one.
It was quite a farce but Ebony learned something interesting. The Troll in charge of uniting every tribe for this invasion was present. The most interesting piece of knowledge was that a contract was signed. He didn¡¯t think much of this contract when they mentioned it but Koawe taught him some intriguing things. This contract was signed and observed by a Saint-ranked spirit. Elcra couldn¡¯t support the growth of a Saint-ranked creature but that doesn¡¯t mean they couldn¡¯t come here. Spirits come and go as they please through the spirit realm so they are not affected by how strong or weak a certain world is.
Contractual magic with spirits was done by summoning them and making an offering. With war, it was already put into place long ago that the loser of this Supremacy Duel would pay the price. Usually, it was a simple price of either mana, vitality or some other form of energy. After the Supremacy Duel, any further attacks would be against the contract and the Saint could wipe out the party that crossed any agreements made in the contract. It depends a lot on the details of the contract but apparently, they just reused the same one for over a thousand years.
The particular spirit in question was found by some Elven summoner in the past, it simply found it beneficial and oversaw the duel. No matter which side won or lost, the spirit gained. Sadly, nobody knew what kind of spirit it was or if it was even still a Saint spirit. Ebony didn¡¯t learn much about the spirit. The spirit was also bound by contract to protect the winner if the loser decided to go against the rules. They blindly trusted that the spirit would follow the contract because that was the nature of spirits. The Empire lost a few of these before Navin took the reins, this was the first war after he became King. The Trolls went against the contract and suffered the consequences more than once. Hence, the spirit had some credibility.
In Ebony¡¯s opinion, they should¡¯ve just started off with this duel. But as a beneficiary of the past few months, it was really hard to say if their methods were fundamentally wrong. Those that survived got far stronger while those that weren¡¯t up to par had perished. It was hard to say if they wanted to polish hidden talents more than to gain territory.
No one else from the militia wanted any part of it. They were just lining up to get full treatment from the famed Crown Princess before they went back to their business.
The duels would last until one side submits and no longer has any challengers. Which was to say, it might drag out until the losing side no longer has people wanting to throw their lives. It was even okay to have multiple people challenge one person as long as they agreed to it. Essentially, to force one side to accept that they are inferior in power. Of course, it usually ends once the fight between the strongest ends unless the winner is injured or there were some who thought that they were better than their representative.
Ebony had Mallory help to ban Ning Xin from fighting till 4 days later as a precaution.
The next day, he heard that the Empire¡¯s symbolic Emperor¡¯s disciple Lucas Lucero had arrived. The soldiers and civilians in the market gossiped. Not much was known about either disciple as they didn¡¯t have many public appearances or famous feats. The other disciple, Demi Barlow was a bit more famous as one of the top Guardian Knights of the current generation but they ultimately didn¡¯t know what these 2 students could do.
Lucas found his way to their camp during midday after meeting Mallory who had the most authority throughout the city.
Korta and his fellow aged companions were nowhere to be found but Lucas went straight up to Korben who ¡®felt¡¯ the strongest and wanted to join the battle against the Patriarchs¡¯ squads. Lucas was a lizard man who was more lizard than man. He was scaled, tailed and lightly armoured. He was slightly smaller in frame than Top from the Z&Z escort party.
The lizard man was weak to cold and forced to yield after an entire hour. He did protect himself with water magic pretty well according to Cap Dwarf. Ebony and Ning Xin had been shopping for ingredients for pizza when the duel happened so he wasn¡¯t personally there to see the duel. He only made it back in time for the duel between Lucas and Cap Dwarf.
Ebony was a bit disheartened to see that Lucas was a spearman. It was nowhere as painful to watch as Mark¡¯s but the style was too different and he preferred Mark¡¯s solid foundations. Mark practised basic thrusts and sweeps outside of his magical spin for runic spells but that was usually sufficient. If he didn¡¯t spend so much time researching, he would have polished those simple movements to a much greater degree. Lucas had shown two extremes of offensive and defensive stances and moves that incorporated water and pure mana.
[Grand Spear Warden Lvl 342]
He was actually able to fight Cap Dwarf who was level 441 according to the man himself who shared it during one of their drinking sessions. Cap Dwarf didn¡¯t summon his giant for the fight but Lucas had proved his ability. One interesting point he noted was that Lucas and other lizardmen he had seen using water magic tended to gather water mana in their throat or mouth. It might be similar to how mages started out by concentrating mana above their palms.
¡°You¡¯re not going to ask him for a duel?¡± Ning Xin asked by the side. She already accepted that she wasn¡¯t about to move around that much and was hugging a bag of assorted vegetables. The market had been pretty far away since the civilians had long moved away from this region of the city. She had hurried him along for the past hour but he wanted to take it slow.
¡°I don¡¯t feel like it.¡± Ebony simply thought Lucas¡¯s spearmanship was too stiff but he also knew that if he insisted on using Icicle for a direct exchange, he wouldn¡¯t be able to parry every attack. The lizardman had a very impressive body enhancement magic. There was no doubt that the lizardman had an upper hand when it came to strength or physical prowess in general but that wasn¡¯t anything that Ebony couldn¡¯t deal with. Tons of monsters had higher physical stats.
He had a feeling it was an extremely refined and high-level tier 3 skill or a tier 4 one. If this guy evolved with 250% Fortification and had his body enhancement skill as one of those that met the skill requirement that would mean it was at least over level 600. Unless he had some kind of compounded enhancement of two or more types or a direct Fortification, then it would probably be tier 4 or there was no chance Ebony lost in terms of physical stats. Mana Compression has come a long way and his Profession¡¯s Fortification of compressibility and density really shined.
From what he experienced from Athena and Cap Dwarf, it was likely two enhancement skills. They would use one with their main element and one pure mana version like his sound magic enhancement. His sound magic might hinder one¡¯s personal body enhancement so it wouldn¡¯t work for everyone.
Ning Xin compounds her life force-based enhancement with fire as an internal buff. Lightning was more of a pulsating internal buff while wind was used for external buffs. She used 4 types and now that her body was slowly changing, the amount of fire mana and vitality she was pushing through her veins made her a beast that no amount of compression could match. His domain previously gave him an upper hand but after she started compressing the blood in her body, her physical prowess could give Cap Dwarf a run for his money. Yet, even with all the speed and strength she could muster Ebony didn¡¯t outright lose to her sword technique and overall fighting ability.
It had weighed on her pride and Ebony finally realised why she used to be so pissed or annoyed when sparring with him. It was not his fault that he had superior positioning, prediction and ability to redirect force. Gravity magic was quite the blessing when it came to force redirection which he was already excellent at. It had beaten into his body that he never had the upper hand when it came to the physical prowess of his mother. Out of the 3, positioning seems to be what his mother made him focus on, the other two were just developed naturally. He had comparatively terrible sword mastery, slower and weaker but he could still dodge, parry and counterattack the dual-wielding swordswoman to some extent.
Lucas asked Cap Dwarf of all the current participants and the Dwarf pointed at Ebony. ¡°Alright! Hey there! Up for a duel to see who will take a stronger Troll as an opponent!?¡±
Ebony could hear it from afar, he had hoped Cap Dwarf would introduce that he was just a Master so that this Lizardman wasn¡¯t interested in sparring. They wore an obfuscation jewel to prevent people from making false guesses of strength based on level and class. His essence be it Vitality or Wisdom isn¡¯t what one would imagine was a Master so most assumed they were Grandmasters. Not that it mattered, he had Waning Presence working full-time to hide both. There was nothing he could do about stamina leakage no one seemed to be able to sense him through stamina. To begin with, his stamina regeneration was far more ridiculous but it doesn¡¯t seem to have any effect on people or monsters. It was like Clovis told him, it was a legend that overflowing Endurance had any effect.
Oftentimes, they could believe a mage to have greater overflowing Wisdom than their levels. Good mages can utilise and direct their mana onto someone and not just with the portion that leaked. Just like how Christy fought her fellow Frost Elf with dense mana and it affected the soldier who carried him by the collar. However, Vitality was hard to ¡®cheat¡¯. Ebony hasn¡¯t seen any humans manipulate life force much but it was apparently slightly more common for beastmen at Grandmaster rank and above.
The Supremacy Duels would take place 2 days later and it was pretty much for an internal hierarchy of power to be formed for both sides.
¡°It¡¯s okay, I can¡¯t beat Cap Dwarf in a direct conflict.¡± Ebony probably could if he counted outlasting and freezing the Dwarf to death but even that might take a full day. The old Dwarf could dispel his sonic vibrations with an equal vibrational pulse of his own mana and his earthen body was too hard for his physical and even ice magic to penetrate. Cap Dwarf couldn¡¯t beat him either but he didn¡¯t lie. Ebony didn''t take into account the earthen giant that Cap Dwarf could conjure and he wasn''t sure how much the Dwarf held back in their first exchange.
Thankfully, Ning Xin¡¯s aura was weakened and Lucas didn¡¯t force a duel to happen. Lucas barely spared them another glance before going around and asking for a duel.
At night, Athena came by and was goaded into a duel. Athena lost by an obvious degree. Ning Xin only complained about how Athena was fully healed but she wasn¡¯t. Mallory had joined them for dinner when Athena came by and explained it was Ning Xin¡¯s fault for having a strong and delicious life force. The Crown Princess was too busy to stay but she apparently finished healing half of all the injured and plagued soldiers. There wasn¡¯t anyone else in grave danger which gave her a break. Lucas and Mallory were acquaintances or friends but they didn¡¯t appear to be very close.
Lucas had already gone through the whole camp and was now pestering him and Ning Xin for a duel after asking around. He was quite sociable and already knew that the two of them were known to be two of the stronger people within the camp. Mallory had helped to push aside Ning Xin¡¯s duel but she didn¡¯t do anything to help Ebony decline.
During dinner, Ebony had more time to observe Mallory. He used to think about how she had quite a lot of mana but now he was sure. The Crown Princess had a huge reserve of mana, she definitely had mana capacity skills as a non-generic skill. Not to mention, she also regenerates mana faster than a Master¡¯s Wisdom would suggest. It was passive, so he guessed she could either regenerate on the move like him or had a Physique that made her regenerate more mana than normal humans.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Quite a few people had been too nervous to join the Crown Princess at the same dining table so it had only been Lucas, Athena, Ning Xin, Mallory and him. The Crown Princess quite obviously came for Ning Xin¡¯s food. Lucas didn¡¯t say much about the meal, he had a cat¡¯s tongue and thoroughly blew on his food which made him the slowest eater. They didn¡¯t have pizza as the chef hadn¡¯t experimented enough with it.
With Lucas¡¯s attitude and personality seen so far, Ebony guessed that the lizardman was quite young. A bit like Hector but more prideful and less playful. ¡°Come on, just a quick spar. Just for experience, winning or losing isn¡¯t the point.¡±
¡®Well, Xin¡¯s unable to spar with me today. It¡¯s a bit embarrassing to show the Emperor¡¯s student my mastery of the greatsword after everyone praised me for being only matched by Cap Dwarf and Xin.¡¯ Ebony gave in, a new sparring partner was always beneficial but he learned shame and was not comfortable with showing a good warrior his skill with the blade. He liked that Lucas didn¡¯t seem as bothered by the result so he accepted it. ¡°Okay.¡±
Lucas didn¡¯t wear his light armour so Ebony didn¡¯t put on his robe either. He just had a white t-shirt moulded with heat and cold-resistant runes on. He was still dressed in his casual wear after the shopping trip, he even recreated sneakers and Ning Xin loved wearing them for casual wear. They stood out in a way that he didn¡¯t mind, he preferred Earth¡¯s fashion sense.
¡°Give me a moment, I¡¯ll set it up.¡± Cap Dwarf smacked his knee and went over to the device that controlled the training field¡¯s barrier.
Lucas wasn¡¯t all that tall or big, even his tail only reached his ankle when straightened. But the beastman still had a bit of height and reach advantage over Ebony. Lucas¡¯s scales were dark blue and unlike any other lizardman, he had seen as it was dull instead of polished.
Ebony had a mini Frostblaze Augmentation so that he didn¡¯t have flames burning over him and only glowed. He didn¡¯t use Stalwart Endowment or Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. He was a target anyone would be able to see at night.
He kept his eye on Lucas¡¯s spear and it transformed into a familiar towel. It was the towel that his mother moistened with water and stabbed at him for evasion training. Getting a single hit would fracture his bones, he had been hit too many times. The towel transformed into a spear in his eyes. Ebony couldn¡¯t sense any danger at all from the spear in front of him.
???
13-14.12.5537
Lucas Lucero had been a bit disappointed that the war had ended but also glad that there would be no more meaningless exchange of lives. He had never learned about what a Supremacy Duel was but the Crown Princess had informed him about what it suggested. It was perfect!
It might be a battle to the death but it was far more sensible than the siege. Pitting one continent¡¯s strongest against the other. He had to earn his right to represent the Empire!
He already knew that Fifth Tide was under the Frost Elves¡¯ care and found their base with ease. Despite all the resistance training his teacher had put him under, his racial trait made him naturally weaker to the cold. Since resistance skills increase by percentages based on natural resistances, having a high resistance skill level didn¡¯t mean he was more resistant compared to a human or dwarf with the same tier and level of resistance. Of course, there was no value for natural base resistance so it was hard to tell.
There were two Frost Elves present and one of them felt extremely creepy. The Frost Elf who was full of smiles sent chills down his back in a way that made the monsters he faced feel like house pets. They were both old fossils and he was well-trained enough to sense that he wasn¡¯t a match for either of them. However, that didn¡¯t mean he could back down. Recalling his teacher¡¯s words on how to be polite, he challenged the one known as Korben.
He went into the duel with confidence that he wouldn¡¯t have a poor showing. He had experience fighting some senior Elves and was aware that their control over mana wasn¡¯t something that he had reached or would ever reach. This experience helped him against the Frost Elves'' tactics as it was similar except for the added cold that seeped through his Deepwater Plating with ease.
He wasn¡¯t able to reach a conclusive end before he got too stiff to fight properly. No matter how much he tried to dispel the cold with internal blasts of mana the cold only came back and he was quite sure it didn¡¯t cost Korben much mana to keep up the freezing. He even used the mana vibration method that he was taught to keep his body warm but even his mana was frozen.
Lucas went around the camp which was said to contain a few other members that would fight the top warriors of the Trolls. The Dwarf had been a standard Dwarven warrior, Lucas knew how to fight them. He felt like he could beat the Dwarf if he really tried. He wasn¡¯t so foolish as to think Korben or the Dwarf used all their tricks but he felt like he should be one of the strongest here if the Dwarf was said to be the strongest after the Frost Elves.
Challenge after challenge, he was more and more sure that only the older Frost Elves were capable of threatening his life. The constant reminder rang in his head that he was not up to par yet. Lucas did his best to listen to his teacher¡¯s words and pushed down any arrogance as much as possible.
He asked around and got a rough gauge of the power ranking in this small, non-army camp. By evening, there was only a woman called Athena, the blue-haired man named Ebony, that Cap Dwarf pointed to and the masked woman, Scarlet. Lucas had seen his fair share of masked people and didn¡¯t link it to the Xengs. Her aura felt weak but her gaze and gait hinted at a beast. He heard that the Xengs currently only had one younger generation, their population was truly lacking. The current generation Xeng child was a craftswoman so he didn¡¯t care much other than possibly getting a weapon made for him.
Lucas didn¡¯t have updated information as he went into the World Dungeon with his teacher and fellow student for many years.
Athena had not been around so he only managed to challenge her when she came around with the Crown Princess. It was a slight surprise to learn that everyone here got hit by a shamanic plague. He had to give them slightly more credit for accepting his challenge even in their state of health. As expected, he didn¡¯t catch it after interacting with these people.
He was well aware that the Crown Princess was quite similar to the current King and Queen when it came to her magic. Her overflowing essence likely healed anyone it came into contact with, just like how the Life Queen¡¯s presence could heal a person. He had no idea how she was dealing with a plague but that was none of his business.
Athena was lower level than he was and other than her unique fighting style and decent skills for some random freelancer he didn¡¯t have too much trouble with her. He could think about asking her to spar just to get used to her unique style of combat. He had to praise the unknown and likely self-created mana enhancement skill. He already fought against almost every famous Academy¡¯s students and got a rough understanding of all of their skills. Athena¡¯s every skill and technique seemed randomly put together but it blended pretty well.
He didn¡¯t doubt the volunteer freelancers that Scarlet was right beneath Cap Dwarf but there was plenty of debate amongst the group when it came to Ebony and Scarlet. According to their rumours, both were on par during their training but every individual had a different opinion on the true winner. Lucas stopped them when they were about to talk about Scarlet and Ebony¡¯s skills, he didn¡¯t want such information even if they had seen some of his skills.
Lucas didn¡¯t probe his senses explicitly, he only knew that Ebony hid his aura decently. The quiet man didn¡¯t have the gaze of a beast or strong warrior, it almost seemed blank but endless at the same time. But his gait was similarly intimidating, this man had impeccable balance. Lucas believed that he was a strong warrior and balance was of great importance for a warrior. How exciting!
¡°Come on, just a quick spar. Just for experience, winning or losing isn¡¯t the point.¡± He challenged the man again after a delightful dinner, his sense of taste was weak after all the poor meals for years but he could still enjoy the meal. He was a bit surprised that Scarlet was the chef, her gaze felt scarier after that. It felt like she was looking at him and pondering how to butcher his body.
Lucas frowned when he saw that Ebony didn¡¯t take the greatsword that was by his side throughout dinner but he didn¡¯t say anything. He made the challenge sound light to make Ebony more inclined to accept the challenge but he had hoped that Ebony would at least take it seriously.
He probed his senses onto the man to feel his aura as they walked over to the field. He was left shocked but physically unaffected. ¡®His mana is heavy!¡¯
Fortunately, he prepared and would not be caught off guard. He was used to King and even Emperor ranked auras from his time with his teacher but he would still be affected if he was suddenly rammed with such dense mana surrounding Ebony.
He recalled his younger self talking a lot of shit before a battle but now he was embarrassed by those memories. Combatants converse through a duel.
Ebony glowed blue and Lucas got into a wide stance with both his hands gripping his spear. He didn¡¯t wait for the barrier and sent the first probing strike without water magic.
Lucas thrust at Ebony¡¯s shoulder with all the strength he could muster. It would be a flesh wound even if he pierced through and the Crown Princess was present. He could only watch as Ebony shifted his shoulders aside ever so slowly and slightly. Having fully extended his thrust, he knew that the man evaded just enough so that not even his short-sleeved shirt got cut.
The unused building behind Ebony exploded as his spear thrust¡¯s physical force was more than it could withstand. The barrier only came up after that. The ground was sturdier than he thought, it should be the Dwarf¡¯s work.
It happened in an instant and Lucas followed up with another dozen thrusts but no matter where he aimed, Ebony would shift just enough to evade his strike. He was even stepping forward and closing the distance.
Lucas swapped to a wide sweep, he saw his spear landing on the body but it turned out to be an afterimage that faded and got blown apart by his sweep. Magic, it was not just an afterimage.
His body reflexively tensed and his spear jerked back to his side to guard. He blocked Ebony¡¯s kick to his left shoulder from behind. Shocks were sent through his spear and arms that left him numb to the bones.
¡®Mana vibrations!¡¯ Lucas noted straight away. It was just like what his teacher taught him and the Guardian Knights. He unleashed his water enhancements and coated his spear. He had to be on the offensive!
The barrier made sure that they wouldn¡¯t harm the spectators so he went blasting pressurised water shots with every thrust and sending blades of water with every slash and sweep. Propelling sweeps and thrusts with water to increase his power.
But no matter how much he increased his power or speed, the spear in his hands did not receive feedback.
Ebony was fast but it shouldn¡¯t have been enough to evade his strikes unless he saw it coming. Lucas changed his target to the body which was easier to hit but the result was more disheartening. The sight of his spear stabbing through Ebony¡¯s chest and belly repeated over and over again but the illusion faded every single time and his spear didn¡¯t receive any feedback. When he turned away from body blows, all Ebony did was lean back or to the side and countered with a kick to his shoulder or belly.
He could clearly see and block all of Ebony¡¯s kicks but his spear couldn¡¯t touch a single hair on the man.
Lucas gathered and compressed water mana in his throat, faced the ground and blasted the area. The barrier acted as a container to turn this battlefield to be more advantageous to him. The water level reached his hips despite the large enclosed area.
His movements sped up drastically and he lunged at Ebony¡¯s face. It might be a fatal blow but Ebony¡¯s aura of vitality was strong, he would survive long enough for the Crown Princess or any other healer to get to.
He lit up when it felt a response from his spear but he could only watch as his opponent simply had his right hand already up near his face. The hand slowly touched the flat body of his spearhead and a tiny bit of force shifted his thrust to fly by the target. Before he knew it a fist rammed into his belly and sent him skidding across the water he conjured. Ebony had taken a step forward as he blocked his spear to the side and punched out.
¡®How humiliating, the punch came from underwater.¡¯ Lucas was prepared to guard against mana vibrations so it didn¡¯t really hurt.
With one hand holding his spear firm, he rotated his supporting hand and allowed his spear to ¡®row¡¯ in the water. 4 water spears coiled his spear and he dashed out with water pushing him forward.
¡°Let¡¯s see you slap these aside!¡± He mentally rebuked himself for shouting out such lame words.
There was no expression to be seen on the man. Lucas had aimed for the same spot but his main spear hit the face with another water spearhead. The three other spearheads were positioned to seal evasion to both sides with the last going for the chest.
Ebony¡¯s feet flickered away from his sight and swept at the three spearheads going for the body. Lucas forced down his words ¡®These are made of water you fool!¡¯
His mind cooled as he sensed his water mana stiffen. They froze before his feet even reached but it didn¡¯t freeze till the contact point of his main spear. Those 3 water spearheads snapped and shattered but his main attack wasn¡¯t affected, the force from pushing his water spears aside didn¡¯t transmit to his physical spear.
However, Ebony¡¯s foot didn¡¯t drop back down to the floor after kicking and Lucas¡¯s eyes were drawn to the leg instead of watching his spear thrust land. His opponent had twisted his hip and body along with the sweep, he leaned back slightly to dodge the last water spearhead to his face but was still in Lucas''s lunge¡¯s path. Lucas''s physical spear would land on his opponent''s neck instead of cheeks but he couldn¡¯t stop it anymore.
In slow motion, Lucas saw the kick stop in mid-air abruptly. It changed direction and slammed into the back of his head. The back of Ebony¡¯s knee had pushed his elbow and shoulder at the same time, narrowly shifting his spear¡¯s path away.
With a giddy head, his wobbly feet couldn¡¯t stand straight. The control over his water magic was released as he could barely keep his thoughts straight. His body didn¡¯t let him down, the body of his spear shot up to block the pushing kick to his torso while he kicked himself back.
He wasn¡¯t in the mental state to manipulate water to slow him down as he smashed hard into the barrier. Neither did he dispel the mana vibrations that shocked his arms and entire body. It didn¡¯t let his mind recover. His arms skewed to the side to defend against the next pushing kick.
This time, he had no air or water to fly across. The barrier behind him forced him to take the full impact.
¡°GAH!¡± He coughed but no blood came out. He wasn¡¯t so fragile. The shock woke him up and the water around him transformed into spears to stab at Ebony. He didn¡¯t even dodge and backhanded the water spears, freezing before shattering them.
The mini lake started to freeze starting from him and none of his mental efforts to condense his water or to swift them aside so that he was frozen within it worked. It was already overtaken and frozen. Lucas didn¡¯t even know when he got heavier but he had high gravity resistance so it didn¡¯t weigh him down that much.
¡°Alright, I give up!¡± Lucas yelled out. He had way more skills and spells to show but he wasn¡¯t in the mood anymore. The display of skill had erased his motivation to continue.
This guy was supposed to be under Cap Dwarf but Lucas didn¡¯t see it that way. He was faster and more robust than Ebony but his spear wouldn¡¯t reach the man in front of him.
Chapter 209: Despair Simulation
¡®No, that won¡¯t do. If mom was in that exact same stance and made the exact same attack with the same strength and speed, would my counter work? Impossible¡impossible¡¡¯ Ebony fell into a trance as the short exchange ended. He repeated the whole exchange and had the image of his mother overlap with Lucas. With that speed and power, he evaded the right way but no matter how he thought about it, none of his counters would actually work.
He fell onto his butt and contemplated as he replayed the exchange while coming up with different counterattacks.
¡°Her spear would curve there¡it¡¯ll split into two to guard and counter¡she¡¯ll just push the spear to a sweep there. My openings¡at that speed there are 44 ways to hit me. 47? If I move half a step, I¡¯ll get stabbed. My legs would get cut. Decapitation there¡¡± Ebony fell into a trance as his memories surfaced and overlapped with his current battle experience. After 10 minutes, sweat beaded and rolled down his head and back. He hadn¡¯t simulated training in his head to this degree for a long time. He tested it out in real battle and let his body do the work but reviewing battles mentally was something his father trained him to do.
¡°...I can¡¯t counter her at that speed. I¡¯ll slow her down by 5%¡± Ebony continued the simulation and he could only see his ass getting beaten.
¡°Too fast. Slower.¡± He mentally took away the spear user''s speed. He could evade the attacks since he was just repeating the same attack pattern and then countering. He would first redo every step exactly as it happened with Lucas. As long as it didn¡¯t work, he would repeat that with other counters he could dish out in that particular position. Every position he placed himself in, every kick, every punch and any transformation he pulled off to change his counters only got countered. In fact, just observing her body placement already cancelled out most of the so-called counters that he thought of.
¡°Slower¡¡± He gave up on the previous simulation after an hour. More beads of sweat formed. He was beginning to get drenched. With the spear user in his imagination getting slower, he came up with even more possible counters to her counters. With his current Intelligence, his brain was sparking off at speeds an unclassed boy could never. He made tens, hundreds of thousands of attempts. Maybe even millions. The sensation of all his mental deaths was all real. Ebony forgot about this mental technique that his father taught him. He had no time to wonder what triggered him to start this training all over again. But this mental exercise was what gave him the combat experience far beyond his age.
¡°Slower¡¡± 3 hours passed before he gave up on the previous duel that he repeated an unknown number of times.
By daybreak, the spear user standing in front of Ebony had already dropped down to the same speed and power as him. He already repeated the duel with his opponent having the exact same physical ability as him for half a night and probably millions of times. He wasn¡¯t aware how many times he simply re-simulated the battle over and over again as fast as his mind was going.
???
Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition soured after the battle between Ebony and Lucas. Something was up and she didn¡¯t know what exactly.
Lucas was strong, she saw the battle between the Lizardman and Cap Dwarf.
The duel started and Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition continued to alarm her in an odd way that wasn¡¯t dangerous but bordered between discomfort, opportunity and pain.
Perhaps the others weren¡¯t able to see it or only Lucas who was in the midst of the duel couldn¡¯t sense it. But as Ebony¡¯s long-time sparring partner she could gauge it. Her Intuition about the battle itself was that Ebony would win without a doubt. That was odd, she thought that with the data she got from the spar between Lucas and Cap Dwarf, Ebony shouldn¡¯t have a complete, effortless victory like her Intuition told her.
But the instant Lucas moved, she understood his loss.
Ning Xin had almost complete control over every muscle in her body. She was very sensitive to the movement of muscles, even her opponents. Ebony had far greater perception when it came to observing an opponent¡¯s physical state but she learned a lot from him the past few years. Not through conversation but through combat. She picked up a few of his ways at an unbelievable pace.
Ebony¡¯s prediction of his opponent¡¯s movements would go all the way down to observing his opponent¡¯s muscle contraction, joint placement and all other micro actions down to breathing, gaze, heart rate and who knows what else. Perhaps, nowadays he was tracking the movement of mana in his domain. Rather, that was definitely what he was subconsciously doing.
Now she could see that all of Ebony¡¯s muscles, joints, placement of strength, where his toe pointed, all of them were already aligned to dodge perfectly before Lucas even raised his spear. When Lucas finished raising his spear, every step after that was predicted by Ebony and it definitely played out the way he predicted. This was what her Intuition told her as the battle progressed.
Speed? He was reacting before his opponent even moved. It wasn¡¯t anything new to her but he seemed many more steps ahead than usual against Lucas.
When Lucas used his water spears to block off his evasive movements, Ning Xin went into what Ebony called bullet time as her concentration spiked. She stared at every part of Ebony¡¯s body and his position.
Mental Acceleration revved up to new heights and she imagined Ebony flickering away behind Lucas to land a kick. Then he was back at his original spot and she imagined he simply ignored the water spears, shifted the physical spear aside and punched Lucas just like one of his previous parries. The water spears simply scattered after freezing on contact and they weren¡¯t able to pierce his body. He wasn¡¯t even using his gravity magic to redirect any force¡
She watched as the scene repeated. Ebony stood in front of 5 spears and his body was in a position that allowed him to do a front kick, he just had to shift between two water spears as Lucas didn¡¯t distance the two spearheads enough. Ebony would have his torso right in between two water spears, his neck would tilt just enough to dodge the physical spear and he would have gotten close enough for his front kick to land on either the body or the face. Whichever he felt like. To Lucas, it would probably look like Ebony got stabbed just to land a hit or it would feel like his spears phased through Ebony and he would receive an attack.
The possibilities kept popping up in her head. Ebony had placed himself in an extremely advantageous position but the problem was Lucas was too stiff. Her spike of concentration ended before she could continue seeing the possibilities. The longer the exchange went on, the more she recalled how she used to feel when facing Ebony.
Lucas¡¯s spear mastery was too stiff. When he went on the offence, every bit of his muscles were poised and tensed to give all the power he could put in. When he went on the defence, none of his muscles could react to change back to offence to give a good counter.
Ning Xin had thought the Lizardman had been the first decent spearman she had seen from the Imperials after his duel with Cap Dwarf and the more agile Athena. Now, that thought was crushed. She had learned her flaws from battling Ebony over and over again and covered those almost immediately. At most, she would make the same mistake twice or thrice. After a few years of daily spars that lasted hours and hours, she had covered a lot of her openings and flaws.
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She had seen Ebony spar with other swordsmen, axe wielders, dagger wielders, knife wielders and even other spearmen like Mark. However, he never appeared as overwhelming as he did at present.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t just learn from her own battles, she also learned from others. She never felt like she was a true genius but her confidence against Lucas had shot through the roof.
¡°I drive on auto, you drive on manual.¡± Ebony used to tell this line. She sort of understood what they meant but at the same time not really. It felt as if every single micromovement and placement was planned and calculated, it probably was but Ebony didn¡¯t have to think in his mind before telling his body. It both happened at the same time, or his body was ahead. There was no other way he could keep up with her speed. On the other hand, after learning his methods Ning Xin simply pushed her observation, thinking and acting speed to the extreme.
She also had muscle memory but she preferred absolute control over her body.
There wasn¡¯t much magic at play during the duel, as if both parties agreed to keep magic to a minimum. Hence, she knew that this wasn¡¯t all that Lucas could do. Lucas probably felt it the same way as her, if he kept going the same way he did he would only meet the same results. If he used some strong water spells, he should put up more of a fight.
She wanted to go talk to Ebony but he just sat down and fell into a trance. She knew how to tell whenever he fell into one of his trances.
Seeing him that way, she went to clear and wash the dishes from dinner. There was no need to scold him for fighting right after a meal since the battle wasn¡¯t that fierce or intense.
When she returned, she saw him drenched in sweat.
Nobody stayed to watch him as they imagined that he was just meditating in silence as usual.
Her annoyance from Intuition continued to intensify.
¡°He¡¯s gonna leave me in the dust if this continues. I can¡¯t just let that happen.¡± She was even more determined to get stronger and better. She didn¡¯t know what he was in a trance for this time but her Intuition about what was happening was too strong. It was as if it was telling her what was happening.
Despite that, she was worried that this wasn¡¯t just a normal trance or training. Ebony continued to sweat and he was practically soaking wet after a few hours.
¡°I want to know what he¡¯s thinking, what he¡¯s seeing!¡± This particular thought throbbed in her mind over and over again. His mana signature was actually unstable and it continued to destabilise through the night.
By midnight, she started to sense the helplessness that Ebony was afraid of.
Ning Xin got restless, she couldn¡¯t tear her eyes or mind away from him. Afraid that something she didn¡¯t like would happen. If his sense of helplessness continued to grow she was determined to wake him up no matter what she had to do.
¡°I want to know what is happening in his mind!¡±
She didn¡¯t realise the sheer amount of life force or mana she was pushing into her mask as she could only delve deeper into her Intuition to know what was going on.
¡°I have to know!¡±
It felt as if a second heart was racing in her head. Not even her full-powered Rampaging Mortal¡¯s Pulse hurt the veins in her body as much.
Unknowingly, Ning Xin had knelt with her mask on his forehead for the past few hours.
All of a sudden a scene flashed in her mind. Her eyes shot open and she fell back, splitting apart from Ebony. She was just as drenched in sweat from the unmoving position.
¡°Wha-¡± Ning Xin¡¯s eyes darted around as she got her bearings. What had she been doing earlier?
¡®Was that one of those trances that he falls into all the time?¡¯ She blinked when a brief instant flashed in her mind. She saw the exact same training field with Ebony and a Lizardman facing each other. However, there was no way that the Lizardman was Lucas. Her Intuition outright denied the possibility.
In that brief instance of the scene she saw. She saw the duel repeat at least five times. Down to the gazes, breath control and muscle placement, everything was the same. The stiff position and stances that Ning Xin saw from Lucas were used to move in unpredictable ways to counter all of Ebony¡¯s actual counter against Lucas.
She had assumed that Ebony had shown her the flaws in Lucas¡¯s spearmanship but what Ebony saw was that the so-called flaws he tried to make use of weren¡¯t even an opening he could exploit. When he finally found a real counter, the next position that he stimulated from the Lizardman would always be in a spot that would further counter or evade him.
¡°How many times has he repeated that duel? How many steps ahead is he? Has he found a surefire way to win?¡±
Ning Xin was mentally spent, without her bolster or cooling she fell unconscious right there on the battlefield. With the intensified helplessness she was sensing from Ebony, it was obvious that he hadn''t found a way to win for sure.
She woke up when daylight shone in her eyes.
¡®As expected¡¡¯ Ebony was sitting in the same position. He was already skinnier, his mana was bone dry. He had sunken cheeks, dark eye circles and a frozen pool of water under him.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t feel her usual morning grogginess. She didn¡¯t care anymore. She slapped Ebony but it didn¡¯t wake the man up. Pinching, poking and even punching didn¡¯t work.
She dashed to the kitchen to whip up the most random meal she had ever done and ran back out.
¡°I made breakfast, if you don¡¯t wake up and it cools down before you eat it I¡¯m gonna get angry!¡± She roared into his ears in case he silenced his surroundings.
¡®His pupils moved!¡¯ She was happy to get the slightest response.
She was going to urge more but his pupils continued to stir and his eyelashes quivered. He was easier to wake up than she imagined. His eyes finally opened and looked right into hers, there was a moment of silence between them.
¡°What do I do¡I couldn¡¯t beat her even if she¡¯s three-quarters of my speed.¡±
¡°No, the end result would be the same even if she was half my speed and power.¡±
¡°I would just last longer.¡±
¡°Unless I use magic, the end result doesn¡¯t change.¡±
¡°And, that¡¯s only the version of her that I remember. I don¡¯t have data of her using magic so there¡¯s no point bringing magic into the fight.¡±
¡°She used the limits of an unclassed human body and I used everything I¡¯ve gained with my current body but I can¡¯t dodge¡¡±
Ning Xin listened to Ebony¡¯s hoarse and weak voice without interrupting him. She wanted to say that it was all a simulation with his imagination but she knew that it was just as real as any battle. She wanted to question the part about his opponent having an unclassed human body but she doubted that Ebony couldn¡¯t tell the difference.
¡°Haha. She wasn¡¯t even using a human body that she¡¯s used to¡¡±
Ning Xin didn¡¯t have any words to say, she only pulled his head onto her shoulder and embraced him.
¡°And you¡¯ve gotten stronger out of it.¡± She muttered with confidence.
Ebony¡¯s weakest ever arms grabbed her shoulders and plucked her out of the embrace. She let him pluck her out without resistance. He gazed into her eyes and she returned it. ¡°Definitely!¡±
A bubble of warmth welled up in her. She pulled his head back onto her shoulder and rubbed his head. Resting herself against him, ¡°That¡¯s my man.¡± Unaware of what she said and unaware that Ebony had fallen asleep. Even more unaware that a few Frost Elves were sitting at the table Ebony put out for tea time and had watched them the whole night.
Chapter 210: Opening
Ebony woke up with his entire body sore. He was on a bed in the temporary infirmary that the plagued people used. He had a headache and his mana sense was down. He remained in position as he didn¡¯t feel like moving his body.
¡®No wonder I don¡¯t remember this mental exercise. I remember Dad saying that he would make me forget.¡¯ Out of his forgotten memories, he actually recalled this mental exercise was forgotten because his father didn¡¯t want him to remember. He even remembered the exact reason. After he successfully managed to simulate battles to an unnecessarily realistic degree, relatively young Ebony didn¡¯t know how to stop. He repeated the training with his mother but all he learned was despair.
He was too young for it and he remembered their panic when he didn¡¯t wake up for a week. Before, he only recalled his father apologising and saying that he made him forget but Ebony didn¡¯t know what he was made to forget.
¡®How old was I then? At least 10, I couldn¡¯t possibly simulate something so realistic before that. That¡¯s probably the only time they scared themselves into holding back. It wasn¡¯t so bad now that I think about it, the simulations I made back then didn¡¯t land killing blows since mom always stopped short if she held anything that wasn¡¯t her cloth spear. I was pretty cute back then, it was just a bit of beating and I got so scared. Wait a minute¡so all those old men and women I was brought to talk to were therapists? Hahaha, they thought I got a trauma from that?¡¯ Ebony laughed at how worried his parents got. He had always been confused at the period of time that he was brought to talk to people who asked weird questions. At that time, he thought it was some kind of mental training but to think that his parents got so worried that his quietness was a trauma.
¡®Did they forget who¡¯s child I was?¡¯
He gave what therapists think were weird answers but to him and his parents, he only answered with the truth and what he knew. He was quiet and answered with ¡°mmm¡± because that was how he was, not because he had trauma. But the therapist only referred him from one to another and his parents were worried enough to bring him around even though they thought his answers were normal. Now that Ebony thought about it, even if his parents weren¡¯t in the room they could probably hear or even see what was going on.
¡°Do you get beaten at home?¡± One of the therapists asked.
¡°Of course,¡± Ebony replied confidently.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, no one can hear us. Who beats you, mummy? Daddy?¡± He remembered the therapists talked funny, they had filler words and their tone had been different.
¡°Mummy,¡±
¡°What does mummy beat you with? You don¡¯t have to answer if it''s too painful?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t understand how answering a question was painful.
¡°Anything from knives to bats to rocks, swords, maces, axes, halberds and spears.¡± At that point, he wasn¡¯t as young as before and his training had evolved to toughen his body.
¡°How do you cope with pain?¡± Even the current him had difficulties understanding facial expressions, the younger him didn¡¯t understand others¡¯ shock.
¡°I meditate.¡± Ebony thought that it was obvious, how come these people didn¡¯t know how to deal with pain?
¡°What are your hobbies?¡±
¡°Watching my mother practice. Reading and meditating. What is the purpose of these questions, sir?¡±
¡°It¡¯s to check your mental health.¡±
¡°I¡¯m perfectly fine though. I was a bit tired but that¡¯s normal.¡± Just like his current weakness, young Ebony couldn¡¯t take the repeated realistic simulations. Back then, he couldn¡¯t possibly simulate as many battles at a fast pace and neither were they as realistic as it was now.
¡°It¡¯s not normal to be beaten or meditate at your age to cope.¡±
¡°Why is it not normal?¡±
¡°Normal is something typical and standard amongst the majority of people. Getting beaten by one''s parents isn''t.¡±
¡°What is typical and standard?¡±
The conversation cycled and cycled as the therapist wasn¡¯t able to make Ebony understand what ¡®normal¡¯ is. Young Ebony didn¡¯t trust these men and women who called themselves ¡®mind doctors¡¯. First of all, he understood doctors were people who fixed people¡¯s bodies, be it injury or something that caused sickness. He asked the ¡®mind doctor¡¯ if he or she was here to fix his mind and if so, what part of his mind needed fixing. None of them could answer him, so he asked his parents to stop bringing him to quacks.
¡®No wonder there were always police cars with sleeping policemen. They always told me that the policemen were having a nap after lunch just like how I take naps so I just thought it was natural to sleep after lunch.¡¯ Now that Ebony thought about it, it might be true that he had a tiny trauma but it was thanks to forgetting the technique that it didn¡¯t develop further.
Despite all the physical and mental training he was placed under since young, he never imagined it was a bad thing. He rarely questioned why he was different but that might have been because he didn¡¯t care to observe how other kids acted. He didn¡¯t know what ¡®normal¡¯ was for other kids but why did that matter?
Although he might have been a bit brainwashed as they told him that he was weaker than kids his age, they must not have compared him to the kids there. Not to mention as he grew into a teenager, his muscular strength really wasn¡¯t anything special; he could just use his body far more efficiently. He also knew how to exert more strength but he looked at muscle mass and just assumed that other kids could also make full use of their body. At some point, he just didn¡¯t compare himself with others.
Ebony stood up. His whole body was trembling from muscle aches, they felt dry and shrivelled up. He found his bag and equipment right beside him. He changed his clothes slid his bag on and put on his robe.
¡°Mom, I will perfect your formless spear with my body. Who knows¡maybe with the greatsword too.¡± Icicle pulsed with purple light.
¡°I¡¯ll have to get to know you better then.¡± Ebony picked Icicle up with some effort and rested it on his robe that was screaming at the weight. His robe wouldn¡¯t be able to carry Icicle if it continued to get heavier.
Even if he didn¡¯t have any mana in his body, he weighed around 230 kg by his own estimation. Heavy for his height and overall size but nothing shocking. Cap Dwarf weighed more than he did in his natural state. This was the overall addition of muscle mass from stats and a reason why adding a large number of stats immediately wasn¡¯t very viable. Although Ebony¡¯s biggest question was why stats could be left unallocated and where the muscle mass was coming from, he wasn¡¯t able to answer it so he didn¡¯t ponder on it for long.
People tend to get bigger as they add physical stats but it was a very minute amount even Ebony would find it hard to tell the difference. However, his frame hasn¡¯t changed at all thanks to the ratio of Constitution stat he was more dense from bones to muscles. Ning Xin had been happy about her arms looking slightly more toned and her overall figure tightening. However, he observed that there was always some...flab on her and it might be due to the fact that she was a woman. He already noted the same thing from many soldiers and artillery mages. It was the inherent difference between not just race but also gender, the amount of stats doesn¡¯t seem to change that.
Ebony knew what to do with his Physique after learning that Kong Jing reforged her own brain and observing Korta¡¯s natural breath. The way ice mana flowed around the Frost Elves was a good reference.
After suiting up, his body wasn¡¯t trembling anymore. The containers of steaks on the drawer were hastily scarfed down but he was still hungry so he ate his rations.
Walking out, the whole camp was quiet.
¡°The party started without me.¡± Ebony stretched and made haste to the walls. It was worrisome that the duels to the death started without him. It wasn¡¯t part of the contract to follow a challenge-style battle, the Supremacy Duels was more like a free-for-all battle royale unless two parties or individuals agreed and made it clear that no one was to interrupt.
Doubling Strength or Agility didn¡¯t double one¡¯s speed but a movement skill directly increased his movement speed and so did his Fortification. Regardless, it would take him time to get to the location of the duel.
He didn¡¯t exactly make a dramatic entrance but he calmed down and felt at peace to learn that the fighting hadn''t started.
Landing amongst the participants from the Empire¡¯s side. There was quite a large base camped out. Likely a mini-team battle to handle the Troll¡¯s number or maybe stand-ins if any fighters die. All his Models were also brought here for him. How convenient, he had to thank whoever moved it here. There were exactly 120 of them, only about half were fully condensed.
The first thing he did was grab Ning Xin¡¯s hand. ¡°If it hasn¡¯t begun it means you¡¯re not participating for another 2 days.¡±
She didn¡¯t pull her hands away, ¡°I¡¯m all healed. Ask Mallory. On the other hand, you suffered a haemorrhage or something so why don¡¯t you sit out today.¡±
¡°Healed. Mallory said 3 days, it hasn¡¯t been that long has it?¡± Ebony knew the condition of his body.
¡°Hmph! I did a secret trick and got rid of silly mushrooms so I¡¯m fully healed.¡± She pouted under her mask.
¡°Secret trick?¡± He was easily curious about anything regarding Ning Xin.
¡°Hehmm, now¡¯s not the time.¡±
But his curiosity wasn¡¯t satisfied.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He looked at Mallory who was at the front with the 3 tallest Frost Elves who gave him a confirmation nod. Ebony was pretty sure that Mallory was also a Mana Meister and probably exceeded him in terms of pure mana manipulation. He had no doubt that it was the case. Both her barrier and healing were arcane in nature and her mana was extremely distinct. If all 3 of her Classes Fortify her mana¡¯s properties it was no wonder she could be a powerful mage. He could imagine her mana having Fortifications like mana density, mana capacity, mana regeneration, healing properties maybe even resilience or durability for her barriers. He would have to watch her cast spells to discern more.
She never seemed to care about killing monsters for Natural Potential. Navin probably taught his family the sealing method or a healer just had to heal something past her supposed limit. The normal method of just maxing everything out and training for decades or centuries would take too long for a Journeyman or Master.
Mallory and Christy were the ones signing the contract. On the other side, a small Troll. It was a Troll that came out of his imagination. Shrivelled and wrinkled, long hair and nails, crooked and missing teeth. Instead of green, the small Troll had grey skin.
¡°Is that Midnight Shepherd?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°No, they call her Old Hag. Don¡¯t lose, we¡¯ll have a real duel after this.¡± Lucas stepped towards him.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡®Does the spirit not appear?¡¯ Ebony stood there in silence. Old Hag was a female Troll but Midnight Shepherd beside her was a Troll as large as any warrior. On both Shaman¡¯s side were the most intimidating giants, supposedly both were Emperor-ranked but probably not peak.
Just like the Imperials, the rest of the Trolls were about 2 km away from the centre. Mallory was the most out of place as a level 300 Master but they were wearing obfuscation jewels so not everyone would know. Midnight Shepherd was next as a level 500 Grandmaster while Old Hag was a King-ranked Shaman.
Korta looked uninjured and sleepy. Christy was afloat and still looked like a ghost, she was eyeing both Patriarchs while the one whose name shan¡¯t be called focused on Old Hag.
¡°This won¡¯t end till those 4 are dead. Be careful, for the first few hours or even days it would likely be a messy brawl. Then, they would set up challenges.¡± Koawe explained to them. Athena, Lucas, Ning Xin and Ebony were the only ones who needed to listen. The other unknown Generals and Commanders from Fourth and Fifth Tide alike probably knew what was going to happen. They still had General Bernard leading them with about a thousand soldiers. His army buffing ability was going to be a great help against the Trolls who had a higher level average.
There were around ten thousand soldiers present but a lot of them were not going to fight unless things got dire. The Trolls had more than ten times more but most of them wouldn¡¯t fight, they were just there as vitality packs.
¡°The first thing to do is to retreat once there¡¯s a bright light signalling that the spirit officially oversees the battle. We¡¯re too close. The moment it begins, they will start fighting and we will be caught up in their battle. Retreat at least a fifth of a gur and let the Trolls take the risk of getting past their patriarchs and Christy¡¯s attacks.¡± Korben mentioned. Apparently, everyone else had been briefed beforehand but Ebony didn¡¯t know.
They were supposed to retreat at least a thousand km away before they started fighting. Just so that they didn¡¯t get hit by stray effects of the Frost Elves spells or the Shaman and Troll Patriarchs'' shockwaves. Korta will facilitate their retreat and he was in charge of pulling Mallory away. She was truly in the most dangerous position that one could be.
¡°Those are your opponents?¡± Ebony asked Koawe and Korben. There was a group of giants that dressed in the same equipment as their patriarchs, they were like over level 600 Kings.
They nodded. It was quite evident from just their size, aura or even just their looks.
¡°They¡¯re trying to kill us right?¡± Ebony asked. How barbaric. However, if each other¡¯s strongest people were to die the other side wouldn¡¯t have to worry about resistance afterward.
¡°And we¡¯re trying to kill them.¡± Cap Dwarf said.
¡°We¡¯ll start with a free for all?¡± Ning Xin confirmed.
¡°What¡¯s your point?¡± Athena got ready to retreat the moment any bright light appeared.
¡°We¡¯ll make an opening attack when they charge but you¡¯ll have to back away,¡± Ebony replied.
¡°One of your wide area spells? I¡¯ve heard about them, shall we join in?¡± Korben questioned.
Orren or another of his party members must have told Korben.
¡°It¡¯s not something we¡¯ve shown that often.¡± Ebony let the others around peek into their palms. They started creating their bomb the moment he came and held her hand. Keeping it hidden to make it easier for him to hide the mana signature. The Shamans were already chanting and casting spells so he assumed there was no problem.
Not everyone saw the tiny marble between their palms but the heat and mana seeped out was shocking. Ning Xin¡¯s fire was so unbearably hot when her mana compression skill was pretty terrible. Ebony¡¯s Gravity Vortex helped to push it to the extremes. Their time as an artillery mage had been focused on personal improvement so they didn¡¯t really cast this.
This spell had been somewhat terrifying back when they used it in the underground tomb city. It was definitely far more powerful now. Ning Xin conjured blood as well, her blood was able to contain the heat energy of her flames. Most of the flames were supplied by the storage she kept in her mask so that her own mana pool wasn¡¯t affected.
The marble slowly expanded into the size of a golf ball and then a softball. He kept it at that size so that it was easier to hide. His domain spread to cover the ball and his mental grasp on it strengthened a few times. Ning Xin continued to toss all the excess she had, she wasn¡¯t going to stop until Ebony could no longer compress her flames or hold the ball in shape.
Spheres were his most familiar shape for compression, not to mention he made the durability and heat-resistant runes to fit this shape better over the past few months. Although he wasn¡¯t good with research and development or runes, he wasn¡¯t completely clueless. Stalwart Endowment was a complicated rune that spans across his whole body and he copied it off Na who copied it off the golems underground. Na did the work of converting those runes to fit his body shape which was 100% luck. The dungeon put things together without thought when it was a newborn.
Mark had to refit the runes for his frame and he made it into a potion through unknown means. Ebony used to mould runes within his ice and overlap multiple layers but he never connected multiple runes as they would just lose their functions. He was still in the midst of learning 3-dimensional runes but he needed the knowledge that wasn¡¯t fully fleshed out in the books he had read so far. He hadn¡¯t truly improved the runes vastly so it was just conjuring thin Imperishable Frost Scales and overlapping them. The thinner he could make them and successfully mould runes on them the more layers he could stack.
He hadn¡¯t had the time to implement the idea of ice manipulation he gained from watching Korta breathe. To think that he forgot the basics and he didn¡¯t apply them to his newer spells.
The misty red layer over every Troll was a lot darker than usual and they appeared more solidified too. The ones that they should be wary of were those that didn¡¯t have a thread connecting them to a Shaman. Those were the ones who were extremely confident of their own enhancement and didn¡¯t need someone to meddle with energy that didn¡¯t belong to them. From the suicide plague warriors sent to Fifth Tide, it might be that letting a Shaman buff them or protect them also gave the Shaman control over their bodies. Or, that had been a singular Shaman¡¯s ability and not something all of them could do.
Both sides watched closely as Mallory and Old Hag stood up from their seats. They turned around and started to walk back to their own armies while the other 6 continued to stare at each other and backed off slowly.
As for participants on both sides, the Empire would seem weak if they started running back now. They were only furious because some Troll pulled out corpses and started chewing loudly while laughing at the Empire¡¯s soldiers. They were really good at provoking people.
¡®These trolls are making it really hard to feel bad about killing them.¡¯ Ebony had been questioning the methods used to level but his current opponents weren¡¯t making it easy for him to feel any pity or the need to spare them. Obviously, he didn¡¯t mind this duel to the death. Everyone here was a willing participant in some sense. Maybe not the Imperial Army but they had the choice of backing down too.
¡®I volunteered to come into a battle to the death? Why? Why do I feel¡excited?¡¯ He felt the warmth from Ning Xin''s fingertips as they grasped onto a melting ball of doom.
He understood the look in her eyes.
He never understood what ¡®normal¡¯ was but he understood that neither of them could be put under that term.
The look in her eyes was even more passionate than ever.
They wanted to fight!
¡°Don¡¯t worry about me, I¡¯m good at staying alive.¡± His Perception noticed a tiny glow coming from the table that Mallory and Old Hag were using. Ning Xin wasn¡¯t able to ask anything before the light shot up and flashed as brightly as the sun.
One of his Glacial Models stood in his place while the others spread out, some retreated with the others. Two of them dragged Ning Xin. Surprisingly, she didn¡¯t resist and followed the retreat that was backed by Korta. His Model¡¯s hands were melting, a sign that she was ready to move at any time.
With Waning Presence and Frigid Refraction working full time, Ebony pushed Phantom¡¯s Flicker to the max. Was he faster than Ning Xin? Probably not, unless he fixed his skill her pure physical stat was just too high if her Rampaging Mortal¡¯s Pulse was pushing Blood Boil and Pulsing Gale Enhancement to her limit.
Tearing through the air, Frigid Refraction was completely enveloped. He wasn¡¯t sure if it was Christy or the other Frost Elf who should at least have another form of address. The foreign mana enveloping him was an extra measure of safety. He hoped that didn¡¯t distract the Frost Elves that much.
He was moving beyond his Perception but he managed to create links of gravity with his target. He was right in between the Benumbed Tribe Patriarch''s squad. 14 of them seemed too many for Korta, Korben, Koawe, Cap Dwarf, Lucas and 2 unfamiliar men from Fourth Tide. Especially when Korta was the only king-ranked fighter on their side. He also wasn¡¯t a melee combatant and if he fought with others he would have to limit some of his area of effect spells.
He managed to get right in his target¡¯s face before they noticed his appearance. In his peripheral vision, a giant great axe fashioned out of rock was raised and smashed towards his outstretched hand. Another grey flash swept at his feet.
¡®Of course, all of them could react in time¡¡¯ Ebony knew that one couldn¡¯t and it was his target who had his mouth wide open. He didn¡¯t let it slip and stuff the bomb in, he couldn¡¯t use Firm Path inside another creature¡¯s body that easily and there was a high chance it would fail. Their insane reaction speed aside, Ebony¡¯s fist rammed down his target¡¯s throat first.
His feet lunged forward and stepped onto his target¡¯s collarbone before repelling himself back with another Phantom¡¯s Flicker and he made sure those nearest to his target were repelling him further with the force of their attacks. He underestimated them as the axe was closing in on him faster than his gravity repelled the axe from his body. His target also raised its giant hand to catch him. The small ball of ice entered and it couldn¡¯t vomit it out.
Ebony watched the giant palm expand and the axe closing in, they weren¡¯t worried about hitting each other. His domain slowed them down just enough for the foreign mana around him to toss him back but other Benumbed Tribe members already leapt after him and made sure he didn¡¯t get to leave.
He dismissed the foreign mana with a wave of his hand, hoping they let him move as he liked. 3 attacks would reach him but he narrowly dodged with the help of gravity dragging him to the side. His feet touched the ground and another Flicker got him back to the original spot he was at. The floor glowed red as he landed and his entire body felt drained. ¡®
Christy and the two Patriarchs clashed and the shockwave of ice ramming into the Benumbed Patriarch''s shield sent him tumbling out of the red glow on the ground. ¡®Finally, a punch.¡¯ More warriors reached him and Ebony finally found the attack he liked. Gravity mana settled onto the giant fist quickly and so did one of his feet. The punch propelled him back to the Imperial¡¯s retreating side.
Most of his Will was holding the softball of a bomb together, it was a massive expenditure of mana due to the current range that exceeds his mana¡¯s range. He barely recovered and his mind was still exhausted from millions of battle simulations. His mental grasp of the bomb was released and he fell unconscious for a split second.
His skin scorched up as a gallant masked lady had her arms under him. She flew in and carried him away princess-style.
Chapter 211: Gao’larg
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Valiant Vigour Lvl 350]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Valiant Vigour Lvl 338]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Valiant Vigour Lvl 371]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Valiant Vigour Lvl 344]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
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¡
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¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Iron-Skinned Trooper Lvl 394]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Iron-Skinned Trooper Lvl 483]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Ulstire-Boned Brawler Lvl 655]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Enemy 355 levels or more above your own, sufficient potential experience accumulated. Experience converted to Natural Potential.¡¯
¡®Valiant Vigour are the soldiers or civilians that focus on health regeneration?¡¯ The soldiers must have died before the Shamans were able to stop draining their life force. Ulstire, that¡¯s the metal the Imperial armour is made of. Is it common on the Tova continent as well? Did it make its bones metal or is it just a name for tough bones?¡¯ Ebony was a bit impressed by the Troll¡¯s vitality. It actually died after the surrounding soldiers did despite being the target. The horizon was a sea of purple with both flames mingling. He didn¡¯t personally see what happened but even as the earth melted and so did the unlucky few who didn¡¯t stay away from his target, his target¡¯s body was still in one piece.
The unlucky target should¡¯ve had his entire internals blasted and pierced by the vibrating shards exploded by the release and reversal of Gravity Vortex. Those shards would either turn to concentrated mist or petals that freeze any surface they touched while melting from the heat. Disintegrated by intense heat. The Brawler¡¯s body must not have held or the flames wouldn¡¯t have spread. The ice portion fully melted in a short time so it was mostly dark flames that remained, her conjured blood that splattered around to act as fuel. The most important point was that one of the two Frost Elves helped to freeze his target right under both Benumbed and Vigiot¡¯s patriarchs'' noses. They should¡¯ve left that area by now. Only the target, initial unlucky Trolls and connected Vitality suppliers died.
¡°Watch where you step! Traps that drain your strength have been set!¡± It seems like they weren¡¯t sure if the traps drained vitality. This area had been under the Troll''s territory for a long time, traps were expected.
Christy and her partner sealed off the centre with their spells but it seemed like Ebony¡¯s little bomb angered the Trolls far too much. Balls of flesh rolled past the storm of hail without regard to the amount of damage they sustained.
Cap Dwarf¡¯s giant snakehead arms flung to catch two but both his earthen limbs crumbled, hardly slowing the tossed Trolls down.
Korta conjured enormous stakes where the Trolls were going to land. The expert warriors shifted themselves to allow their limbs to get skewered, cutting them off swiftly. They grinned and roared, flexing their muscles. Their limbs explosively regenerated, bones, nerves and all. They put Rhoats and Shaman buffed Trolls to shame.
¡°You can put me down now.¡± They haven¡¯t got far enough and it was quicker if he was on his feet.
Only 13 Trolls were tossed over, it was still easy enough to retreat with Korta and Cap Dwarf watching their back. Lucas fearlessly challenged one of the Vigiot Tribe¡¯s Kings but he had enough presence of mind to cast a tidal wave to separate the Trolls from going any further. Korta took the opportunity to make the best use of the water.
Having elements on their side made it very advantageous against the race dominated by pure warriors.
¡°You¡¯re not in your best condition.¡±
¡°Put a bit of your fire into these, they can¡¯t sense how much mana is in them. We can use it to scare them.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t complain and continued to be princess-carried. General Bernand had been at the far rear but he heard and saw what Ebony did. Ebony could pick out the vibrations or voices of certain people with his range and was able to tell that the old General was asking people to pass him fire mana ores that fire mages who couldn¡¯t conjure fire used to power their spells.
He didn¡¯t care if they were duds, he tossed hundreds of softball-sized ice. Some on the ground, some directly at the Trolls. Lucas got frightened after witnessing the power behind one of their bombs but the other elders and Frost Elves could sense the massive difference in mana. Fearless Trolls didn¡¯t care but some of the ice balls that they crushed in contempt burst right in their faces. It was up to those holding the rear to see if they could make use of the opportunity to land a good one. At most, it would blow up and burn a tiny bit of their skin unless they ate it. He wasn¡¯t willing to make her spend her own mana pool¡¯s worth of mana.
¡°IS ELVA MADE OF COWARDS!¡±
¡°You could challenge someone one on one if you want,¡± Ebony replied with sound magic instead of shouting.
The Trolls only roared in deviance. If they were to fight one-on-one with Korta, the Frost Elf would wipe them clean. At least, that was what Ebony felt. From the loud silence of roars, he was probably right. The mid-level strength like him, Ning Xin, Athena and Lucas were probably their target before any sort of actual duel.
The Patriarchs'' squads had the upper hand as 3 Frost Elves, 1 Dwarf, 1 lizardman disciple and 2 Generals from Fourth Tide weren¡¯t really enough. It appeared that he was extremely lucky to have taken 1 out as it didn¡¯t look like Korta could take them on even with some help. At least, not quickly.
Ebony and Ning Xin would likely be fighting the heirs or something. If they were dead, it would be harder for the rest of the Imperial Army to survive. The undying Trolls could then wait out for their tribe members as they were pretty much undying if they put their minds to it. When they went on the defensive, they were far harder to kill.
¡°How is this a duel?¡± He shook his head, he just wanted to force the Trolls to hurry up and fight like the proud warriors they were. ¡°It¡¯s their shamans¡¯ plan isn¡¯t it¡how sad.¡±
¡°Mmhmm.¡± His prince with blazing wings had already told him that the Trolls seemed to be more angry at their own people than they were at the Imperial Army. Especially the stronger or more prideful bunch.
¡°Please let me down.¡± She finally relented and let him down.
Since only the Patriarchs'' squad were on their tails, all of them annoyed when they saw what Ebony did.
It took some time before other Trolls started appearing behind. By then, they already retreated to a relatively safe distance from Christy and the others who were conducting the real battle. The battle that actually mattered.
Mallory and the other Generals were worried that Fourth Tide¡¯s Tribe Patriarchs would abandon their war front and come over but that wasn¡¯t too much of an issue. The Empire would just follow suit.
¡°You and you! Formal challenge, do you accept!¡± Lucas yelled while looking back to confirm if he did things right.
¡°Bring it little lizard!¡± The Benumbed Tribe Troll didn¡¯t think that Lucas would challenge two of them from different tribes. Although they might work together in squads, the Benumbed Tribe was familiar with hunting with other Tribes. Lucas randomly pointed to one from Benumbed and one from the Vigiot Tribe.
¡°I eat lizards a hundred times your size but you shall do it for a snack.¡±
A ray of light emitted from the ground and enveloped Lucas and the other 2 Trolls he challenged.
¡°Is that what¡¯s supposed to happen, can they not leave until their opponent is dead? Does this mean no one can interfere?¡± Ebony watched the light barrier expand into a 5 km diameter ring. It was a bit worrisome if Ning Xin challenged someone and he wasn¡¯t able to interfere.
¡°In a sense, they can¡¯t escape. The circle will just expand if the battle¡¯s range requires it. It should be possible for us to walk in and out only if you don¡¯t have the intention to interfere. Unless the records are wrong.¡±
The Trolls weren¡¯t inclined to accept challenges from the Frost Elves or people like Radiance Envoy and one of Fourth Tide¡¯s men who appeared to be a good fire mage. The other guy who fought by their side was probably a rogue with the short daggers he wielded and the throwing knives attached to him. It was hard to say if they were the best weapons for such giant opponents but he was actually doing a far better job than the fire mage. Ebony would even say he was more effective on the field than Cap Dwarf. The Frost Elves were using ice to slow their opponents but these Trolls were using their life force to create friction and heat within themselves. The rogue could inflict some sort of paralysis or stun that prevents these King warriors from chasing the bulk of the army.
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Ebony didn¡¯t have the time to recall which academy it was that dealt with status-effect rogues.
In an hour or so, the rest of the Troll already caught up. Plenty of light rays denoted challenges all around. It appeared like he succeeded in pushing this to happen faster. The rays of light could overlap but it seems like both sides try not to interfere with each other as much as possible. No Shamans accepted a challenge by themselves yet.
They seemed to be aware of most of the Imperial combatants, by title. A wide area spread out for the large group of soldiers vs. soldiers and Shamans. This kicked out Ebony and the others. Mallory seemed to be included in the group fight. If she was as good as her fame, she would probably bring the Imperials to victory without much casualty. The only problem was that this group had those Spirit Shamans. The corrosion cloud and earthen battlefield were said to be a combined effort of many of these Spirit users together with Old Hag as the main caster.
Ning Xin found the squad of Hunter that chased her before and challenged their entire squad along with the 3 Shamans.
Ebony¡¯s specific hunters seemed to be dead or split up since he didn¡¯t see any. He looked around but there weren¡¯t many Trolls left alone. Most were in the army fight. Since no one challenged him, he just fought anyone he saw but no lucky blows were landed. He wasn¡¯t silly enough to accept a 1 vs. dozens either, the rays of light weren''t a barrier that trapped them with him. If it was, he wasn¡¯t really afraid of getting ganged up unless it was the King-ranked guys.
He already tried to enter the group fight that Mallory and General Bernard were taking command of but he just rammed into the ray of light. But if he were to trespass another¡¯s battle unintentionally when he dodged an attack, he went through it without feeling a thing. It was a weird spell.
There were some Benumbed and Vigiot Tribe members who simply stood near the rear and watched the fights. They were only level 380ish but it was obvious from their aura and Ebony¡¯s gut feeling that they were similar to the King-ranked fighters who were fighting 11 to 6 since Lucas took two away for a personal battle. It was clear that these Trolls didn¡¯t trust Shamans to buff them, their own skill with life force manipulation must be far higher. They similarly wanted to trap Korta so that he couldn''t cause havoc to younger Trolls but he could keep doing that until he accepted a challenge and any invitation with Shamans could be denied as he wished.
Most Shamans appeared to have relatively weak offensive capabilities and Korta probably wanted to take down the 11 warrior Kings as fast as possible. For some reason, the centre battle wasn¡¯t demarcated by a ring of light. Perhaps Korta or anyone else had the chance to step into the Battle between Old Hag and the two Frost Elves.
Ebony taunted the Trolls and forced them to duel. He ignored those who wanted to have more than a 1 on 1. They couldn¡¯t stop him from flickering around and slapping some petals onto them or knocking their heads with a sonic-infused kick. He was actually very troubled at his new skill that made short-distance bursts basically impossible to control. It was the best part but he couldn¡¯t control it, so he was insistent on fixing this flawed skill right here and now. He actually did so in his simulation, one of his greatest benefits from the night or day before. But he had to implement it with his body as he didn¡¯t even have enough data on Phantom¡¯s Flicker before.
There were finally a few solo or duo challenges that he took up but ended pretty quickly with the help of his domain and landing a few compressed petals.
¡°Finally gain some courage?¡± Ebony saw the incoming Benumbed leader with exposed muscles that looked as if it was carved from stone.
¡°I, Gao¡¯larg, grandson of Benumbed Patriarch, challenge you, Seeping Cold Abscission to a duel.¡± Gao¡¯larg had an extremely dark green skin tone, almost black. He had two giant single-edged swords, one far larger than the other. Both were fashioned out of rock or stone. The oddest physical trait was his tiny size, for a [Resilient Champion Lvl 386] he was only roughly 5 metres tall. For a race that flexed their size and muscles, none of them scoffed at Gao¡¯larg¡¯s tiny size.
¡®Seeping Cold Abscission? They have a cooler title for me than the Empire.¡¯ Ebony thought that the Trolls had better naming sense than the Empire.
¡°I accept.¡± Ebony tried to sense the ray of light but there wasn¡¯t any mana fluctuation that he could sense.
He drew Icicle out which caused Gao¡¯larg to raise a brow. ¡°Are you also a warrior?¡±
There was quite a heavy accent that made it hard for him to make out what the Troll was saying.
¡°You have seen better, tell me where I can improve.¡± Ebony had an overhead blow charging towards Gao¡¯larg.
It seems like he had a hard time translating Ebony¡¯s words but the time for words was over.
Gao¡¯larg drew the larger greatsword swiftly, letting Ebony¡¯s swing glide down to the ground. Ebony had all his augmentations and enhancement running at an all-time high. Gao¡¯larg took a deep breath and exhaled, summoning a dense red mist of life force. The red aura reformed into a second skin covering every inch of his body. The freezing flames had a hard time digging through the layer of armour. Just like Ning Xin, the Troll raised his body temperature but he did so by flexing his muscles including pumping his heart faster.
The red demon¡¯s physical stats spiked but Ebony already went deep into a chain of Ceaseless Onslaught right after his first attack got parried. Firm Path only danced and weaved around like the path of his greatsword. If anyone could sense the absolute control over gravity mana they would be shocked by the dozens of threads of gravity flowing about him. It was only possible within his domain which he kept at about 3 to 4 metres in diameter as that was his maximum reach and the tip of Icicle¡¯s blade. His momentum only grew faster and more unstoppable.
Frigid Refraction was also cast, tricking the eyes that a few of his slashes were heading for the Troll while it was just one of his previous attacks that got delayed.
Gao¡¯larg used both hands for his sword but he resorted to using his forearm to deflect Ebony¡¯s attacks. He got pissed and pushed Icicle back with enough force to send Ebony barrelling through the air. Ebony made use of the momentum and used Phantom¡¯s Flicker on a conjured platform with Firm Path pulling his blade and body to make sure he didn¡¯t lose too much of his momentum.
It didn¡¯t work for long as Gao¡¯larg dipped forward. He created the opportunity to go on the offence. A wide swing was placed right in his charge and Ebony couldn¡¯t change directions in the midst of Phantom¡¯s Flicker, it would cost too much stamina and his pull of gravity wasn¡¯t strong or fast enough. So he had no choice but to have Icicle face the wide swing directly.
It was good that Icicle was reinforced by his mana as it was deeply sliced into as he lost the exchange when it came to power. Two red feet sprouted out from Gao¡¯larg¡¯s knees and he jumped after Ebony, an overhead swing smashed towards Ebony¡¯s body. Not ready to be split in half, his feet flew up for a bicycle kick onto the flat body of the greatsword as long as Gao¡¯larg was tall.
The tremors caused Gao¡¯larg to shiver and his palms burst into a bloody mess but it healed with a lick and some spit. The kick only shifted the aim slightly but Ebony¡¯s body shifted more than enough. A glancing blow scratched off Gao¡¯larg¡¯s red skin without drawing blood as they passed by each other.
Ebony quickly landed on the ground as his manoeuvrability was still better when his feet could touch the floor. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s battle sense when it came to timing and positioning was clearly far better than the average Troll. Ebony still managed to find his rhythm and forced Gao¡¯larg into a defensive position while Ceaseless Onslaught built up.
It went on for a long time, he already reached the maximum amount of momentum his speed and power could reach but cutting through the red aura over Gao¡¯larg¡¯s skin was difficult. He could draw blood but skin deep which were wounds that Gao¡¯larg could outright ignore. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s facial expression only got tighter and angrier.
¡°Wrong!¡± The Troll muttered the word only to repeat it louder and louder over time.
Gao¡¯larg had another burst of energy to push him back. Ebony saw the red aura fade back into the Troll and he actually stopped moving instead of going in for another attack. Frostblaze Augmentation died down a bit so that no flames burned on his body. It ate into his mana as much as it ate into his opponent¡¯s shield of life force.
¡®I was beginning to have fun¡¡¯ He was actually happy about the exchange as he was beginning to make use of more openings and he landed more and more hits over time.
Gao¡¯larg stabbed his greatsword into the ground. The Troll clenched his sharp teeth so tight it was as if a blacksmith hammered an anvil. He pulled out two ropes connected to his trousers and yanked tightly as hot gas puffed out of his mouth.
Ebony watched as the 5 metre-tall Troll shrunk down to half his previous size. It was the first time he saw a Troll shrink instead of expand. Gao¡¯larg tossed the oversized belt that held both his swords aside and wielded his smaller sword which now fit as a greatsword of the same ratio or proportion to his size.
¡°Greatsword! Not for fancy ritual dances! Greatsword only for overwhelming power and ferocity!¡± Gao¡¯larg explained while pissed at his earlier display.
Gao¡¯larg no longer had his layer of life force but Ebony knew that everything was compressed within his smaller frame. He did the same and tried to bring Frostblaze Augmentation to the limit without any flames spurting out, it was a waste of mana if his opponent wasn¡¯t affected by it.
The Troll moved into a wide stance similar to a horse riding stance, greatsword resting right above the ground and his arms behind. It was full of areas Ebony would poke at but Gao¡¯larg moved with speed like that of Ning Xin¡¯s peak. Ebony witnessed the most beautiful overhead swing ever, be it the step forward or the unshakable path of the greatsword. He couldn¡¯t imagine anything he did that would be able to push the greatsword by even a millimetre.
He had to take the hit, his body couldn¡¯t pull off anything else in time. He couldn¡¯t even pull off a proper roof guard in time and he was on guard for the attack. Getting blinded by the wonderful execution of the swing wasn¡¯t helping here. His head shifted before the attack came since he knew where it was going to hit. The skin of his ears burned as he received the swing with Icicle and his other hand supporting the blade. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s greatsword pushed his resistance down and embedded itself into Ebony¡¯s left shoulder. Breaking past his collarbone and his first rib from the top before he managed to stop it.
¡°Got you.¡± Gao¡¯larg roared as he pushed his greatsword harder.
¡°Me too.¡± The moment the greatsword injured him, it started to freeze.
The opponent¡¯s smaller frame made it far easier for him to attack. However, his kicks didn¡¯t do much. Sonic Intrusion wasn¡¯t getting through its dense frame and barely made Gao¡¯larg flinch even when his jaw or head was directly hit. The Troll decided that having Ebony stuck onto his weapon wasn¡¯t helping him so he swung Ebony off.
Ebony also didn¡¯t see how getting stuck was good for him when his opponent had the upper hand in strength so he smoothly released himself.
¡®That was an active skill¡¡¯ Ebony saw the next attack which still had pretty good form but far less power or swiftness. He did his best with his injured arm, making sure not to play around with spells as much. Gao¡¯larg was a better greatsword user than him, he had to learn what he could. Gao¡¯larg had Ning Xin¡¯s top speed but he hit far harder than her comparatively lighter thrusts and slashes.
Not even Sustained Optimum Condition could help him shake off the effects of every clash perfectly. It was like having a taste of his own medicine with vibrations running through him.
¡°You have the power of weight! Perfect for a greatsword!¡±
Gao¡¯larg might not know the term gravity but he was a warrior who was sensitive to the change in the weight behind attacks. His compressed form gave him even greater physical prowess but it was only slightly above Ning Xin¡¯s peak strength and slightly slower unless he unleashed some active physical skill for a burst of power. Ebony barely held his ground with his injury. He couldn¡¯t regain his initiative and was on the defence.
Chapter 212: Brandishing Techniques
¡°HAMMERING WAVE!¡±
Ebony¡¯s body twitched when the Gao¡¯larg¡¯s muscles bulged a little, he saw 5 sword paths. ¡®I''ll take it.¡¯ He opted not to Flicker away. He needed his body to remember, he wasn¡¯t a genius like Ning Xin.
He stomped the ground and attached himself with magnified gravity, all his Will worked to force him to stay grounded. Gao¡¯larg stuck true to his words about overwhelming power and attacked with a wide swing from the right. Icicle received the numbing blow and Ebony¡¯s muscles screamed to redirect the blow slightly. He was pushed back a great deal but it was within Gao¡¯larg¡¯s expectations.
The first blow was just the beginning as Gao¡¯larg treated his greatsword like a twig above his head but as ridiculous as it seemed, Ebony could only see it as a polished move. The next blow after one full rotation was even stronger. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s already accounted for where Ebony would be sent flying to, even if he stood his ground it would make it easier for Gao¡¯larg.
Ebony was forced to go in a rough circle as each attack he received to try and redirect or parry only had his feet painfully digging through the ground. Every attack came from the same direction and he was glad Icicle was holding up.
He couldn¡¯t feel his arms anymore but that was normal, he could shut off such sensations at will if he wanted. The injury sealed up in ice and he couldn¡¯t afford to unfreeze it to let it heal as Gao¡¯larg didn¡¯t give him the opportunity. It might take a few minutes for his physical portion to regenerate. After his flesh and bones regenerated, he needed to face a period of weakness from those injured portions to let his Vitality catch up in healing.
Maybe if he learned how to direct Vitality as well as the Trolls he could reduce this period or weakness of a hastily regenerated body part.
The skill took quite a bit of stamina as Gao¡¯larg didn¡¯t push further after he noticed that Ebony had taken every hit. Ebony wasn¡¯t going to let the chance go. He was quickly getting the hang of casting Frostblaze Augmentation without any flames seeping out. Keeping everything within him gave him the illusion that he was a tiny bit stronger and faster. Stalwart Endowment was going strong as well, the injury was fixed with ice just so that his runes could flow in his shoulders without interruption. The biggest problem with Stalwart Endowment would be that a large cut or injury would cause the runic formula to be cut off and essentially useless. However, his Glacial Models could sustain the runic enhancement. So he just had to conjure his injured body part with ice and run Stalwart Endowment through it in the exact same fashion.
Stalactite Drop!
Ebony matched Gao¡¯larg¡¯s fierce charge with his own. He didn¡¯t put any ice mana into the skill and only used gravity and sound. Unlike Gao¡¯larg, his skill mostly consumed mana and stamina wasn¡¯t that big of an issue to him. Only Phantom¡¯s Flicker greedily consumed stamina and a bit of mana.
Gao¡¯larg¡¯s eyes brightened and he grinned while doing the same as Ebony. He took the overhead slash by supporting his single-edged greatsword with his other hand. Ebony had to let Gao¡¯larg¡¯s attack dig into his shoulder or his palms would¡¯ve been sliced off by Icicle.
It wasn¡¯t as if Gao¡¯larg could dodge the attack, Ebony already timed the movement of his retreat and his attack would land right after Gao¡¯larg¡¯s feet came off the ground. These guys couldn¡¯t create platforms to jump off.
The small Troll¡¯s ankles cracked and the ground gave in as a crater formed. Gao¡¯larg couldn¡¯t control the blood welling up his throat and he coughed out copious amounts of blood as Sonic Intrusion devastated his flesh, bones and organs alike.
The proud warrior actually pulled his life force to enforce his greatsword so that it wasn¡¯t damaged instead of protecting its body.
A large grin could be seen on Gao¡¯larg¡¯s face and the Troll could see something similar in his tiny opponent¡¯s eyes.
Ebony had to jump to get an overhead strike to hit his tall opponent at the right angle and Gao¡¯larg kicked at him. Not expecting that Ebony already had his feet return the kick with one of his own.
He somersaulted and landed a hundred or so metres away. He could see a kick coming with his eyes and mana sense closed.
¡°Raging Torrent!¡± Gao¡¯larg promoted his skill names that Ebony hadn¡¯t seen any Benumbed Tribe member use. This was a tradition even amongst some Imperial citizens or freelancers who wanted to craft a reputation to open an academy or to market skill books.
¡®Uh oh,¡¯ Ebony blinked as he predicted the next set of moves.
Gao¡¯larg already switched to a single-handed grip and raised his greatsword like a blacksmith raising his hammer. The Troll dashed forward and rammed his weapon into the ground. He charged at Ebony while randomly smashing his greatsword like a club. There was nothing to predict, Gao¡¯larg mutilated the earth in a large cone ahead of him while charging at Ebony.
He didn¡¯t know if he could take the hit, Calculated Hunch was a bit too slow to keep up. But Ebony didn¡¯t care about possible damage any more. His body ignored its natural instinct and danced instead. Ceaseless Onslaught raged on along with the waterfall of slashes. They were all aimed as overhead strikes and easier to glance off to the side, the single-armed swing made it slightly less numbing as well.
Phantom¡¯s Flicker was forced to make short-distance moves which cramped up his calves a bit. The insane pressure was pushing him beyond his limits. What he didn¡¯t expect was that Gao¡¯larg wasn¡¯t stopping at all.
Blow after blow that was screeching off Icicle and shaving off a bit of its sharp edge. It almost seemed as if Gao¡¯larg wanted to shave off Icicle!
Raging Torrent was a befitting name, Gao¡¯larg roared at the top of his lungs as his greatsword was repeatedly raining down without a single bit of precision or accuracy. All it aimed for was absolute destruction.
Ebony protected Icicle with tiny Imperishable Frost Scales that layered over the sharp edge and Frost Edge to deal any amount of damage to Gao¡¯larg¡¯s weapon he could. Every one of Gao¡¯larg¡¯s blows that he deflected would cause pain or discomfort due to the vibrational reflection.
The heavy blows kept on coming and he wasn¡¯t able to break free even if he wanted to. The injury of his shoulder was torn open over and over again as he repeatedly added ice to refreeze the wound and have Stalwart Endowment working overtime. He was glad he skimped on mana expenditure.
The longer Gao¡¯larg kept it up, the worse it would be for the Troll if Ebony survived. Gao¡¯larg persisted with increasing fervour when Ebony¡¯s injury continued to worsen. Firm Path and Chaotic Repulsive Membrane had long been working overtime but the sheer strength behind every strike was barely affected.
Neither of them knew whether 5 minutes passed or 30 but Gao¡¯larg backed off, leaving himself some energy as he noticed that it wasn¡¯t going to get Ebony with glancing blows. Ebony¡¯s feet were revolting and it didn¡¯t let him push for an attack. His shoulder wound tore open at least twice as wide, but it was mostly a flesh and tendon injury. Instead of attacking, he quickly unfreeze his wound to let it regenerate. Gao¡¯larg was panting hard and didn¡¯t appear to go on the attack.
Ebony¡¯s stamina already hit rock bottom because of his inefficient use of Phantom¡¯s Flicker but a moment was all he needed to regain some stamina. Another second was enough for his trembling muscles to quieten down. He held Icicle with just his right arm and used all his strength for a flimsy Phantom¡¯s Flicker.
He had been ready to cast Stalactite Drop for a long time, ice mana took the longest to get ready after all. This time, Stalactite Drop was half overlapped with Ceaseless Onslaught as he rained down blows on Gao¡¯larg in an oddly familiar fashion. He didn¡¯t hold back with Blazing Deep Freeze Petals flowing out with every swing. It didn¡¯t matter if they stuck onto Gao¡¯larg, floated in the area due to his domain¡¯s hold or froze the ground. All of it helped.
Even Battle Song seemed to be coming back strong.
Unlike Gao¡¯larg, every one of his attacks was accurately going for vitals. The Troll used its advantage of strength to break his flow but a deep reverberation dug into his flesh and bones that weakened its exhausted body even further.
Every one of his blows had a small portion of Stalactite Drop¡¯s effect kicking in. Perhaps due to exhaustion, Gao¡¯larg made a few mistakes in blocking as he still had Frigid Refraction making his after images more solid. However, the Benumbed Tribe upheld their reputation of a durable body.
Ebony¡¯s attacks were scratching off bones already but Gao¡¯larg didn¡¯t follow in the footsteps of many Trolls. He wasn¡¯t healing light cuts and not even some deeper cuts that weren¡¯t vital. He flexed and tightened his muscles right before he was hit, protecting his vitals without much use of life force. Ebony didn¡¯t want to throw a stab in, he wouldn¡¯t dig deep and a blast of flames strong enough to cause lasting effects would leave him pretty much empty. He could just risk it like stuffing his hand down the King Troll¡¯s throat and it would likely kill Gao¡¯larg but his body and mind didn¡¯t even consider it. He was having too much fun to ruin it that way.
¡°Muscular Bolster!¡± Gao¡¯larg expended his life force as the red aura resurfaced. He regained some of his muscle mass but it wasn¡¯t noticeable for most people.
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Ebony felt like he was hitting a rock but it didn¡¯t discourage him. He kept going till he felt most of his flesh regenerate and then he added pressure after refreezing his shoulder. He would let it heal up more when he had the chance but he wasn¡¯t going to let up. If he let up, Gao¡¯larg might unleash another fierce skill so he had to prevent Gao¡¯larg from getting into a good position or stance. Gao¡¯larg had attempted to grab him multiple times but he saw the release of the greatsword and shifting of shoulders, tipping of toes far in advance.
Gao¡¯larg would only catch Petals in his fist so he quickly gave up and put his efforts into swatting other petals aside while using his forearm to block Ebony¡¯s heavy onslaught. Even so, Ebony didn¡¯t place too much mana in his flames. He was using a ton for augmentation, endowment, gravity assistance, mana vibrations and he wanted to drag out the physical exchange. Phantom¡¯s Flicker probably got refined once already but he didn¡¯t take note of any notifications.
His entire body burned as he was running dry on stamina, just moving through sheer will and Sustained Optimum Condition like old times. It was one of the reasons he pushed his physical stats beyond his endurance by so much. It pushes his skills and body far easier this way.
Hours must have passed by in such a fashion.
His body didn¡¯t listen part way through so he Willed and manipulated the ice mana in his body to move as if he was a Glacial Model. There was essentially no real difference except a drop in speed and power but Gao¡¯larg was just as drained. The Troll was riddled with injuries but any fatal injuries were healed explosively fast and protected again.
As if a light shone in Gao¡¯larg¡¯s eyes, the switch and lapse in Ebony¡¯s overhead swing was a tinge slower. No, Gao¡¯larg sped up. ¡°MOUNTAIN CLEAVE!¡±
Ebony''s wide overhead swing left his belly open. It wouldn¡¯t have been an issue if Gao¡¯larg had kept up at the same weakened pace but he suddenly exploded with power. A low horizontal sweep accelerated towards his belly as Gao¡¯larg used his half-squatting position to burst forth with all the power in his legs.
Ebony¡¯s Will reacted and so did his domain. His robe was fully scaled up and layers upon layers of Imperishable Frost Scales flew out of his robe¡¯s storage of ice mana. Multiple ice hands were shaped to pull back Gao¡¯larg¡¯s sword and arms but the blow still landed cleanly. His body folded as his consciousness came and went. It was definitely the hardest physical attack he received so cleanly.
He literally bounced off the earth and somersaulted through the air for a full minute. The circular ray of light was forced to expand and chase after his limp body. It overlapped into someone else''s duel but that didn¡¯t seem to be an issue.
His Will and domain didn¡¯t even have the strength to give him a proper landing.
¡®Ugh. My spine isn''t broken, right? My health..a quarter left.¡¯ Ebony felt that one. He tried to sense pain and touch in his legs and hands, relieved that he could cause them to twitch a tiny bit.
His body wasn¡¯t listening but his mind was still working, he hoisted his body up by controlling his scaled robe. Well, his belly area didn¡¯t have any scales remaining as a large portion of the robe itself was torn. His sleeves, back and the lower portion also had crushed ice dust with lighter tears and cuts.
¡®Roya¡¯s going to get mad.¡¯ He couldn¡¯t suppress the blood and had to cough it out. He didn¡¯t immediately seal his internal bleeding in ice. The wound was too big and simply sealing it in ice would cause healing to stop and blood flow to certain areas be affected. Gao¡¯larg didn¡¯t jump after him.
He hobbled back instead of floating, hoping to heal and regenerate as much as possible while he still could. Surprisingly, Gao¡¯larg didn¡¯t come after him.
Ebony spared a glance at the other fights. Lucas was in a pinch but he was surviving against 2 Kings. ¡®Cool water dragon spear¡¡¯ That was what he thought when he saw Lucas summon what he imagined a dragon head was like and the long water dragon roared out as he thrust his spear.
The Frost Elves, Cap Dwarf and party¡¯s fight was too far away from his current spot. They must have gotten further away before they started fighting.
Athena¡wasn¡¯t in sight.
Ning Xin already slayed her opponents and was taunting the Trolls for another one-on-one. Perhaps she already went through multiple duels.
The group battle with Mallory and General Bernand seemed to be in a stalemate from a glance but he wasn¡¯t sure. The scale of the battle was a bit too big for him to be sure.
He also saw General Impes who seemed to have the upper hand in her 1 vs 10. 6 of them were Shamans but they only used life force-based magic. Those that used elements were a sign that they employed spirits but those seemed to be concentrated in the battle with Mallory. There were a few other solo fighters from the Imperial Army and not just Commanders or Generals. At least, none that he recognised.
Ebony might have been ¡®hobbling¡¯ back but every step pushed him forward a dozen metres or so. He took a few steps before simply floating and carrying himself with mana manipulation.
3 to 4 minutes of peace brought him to Gao¡¯larg who regained his size and was using the larger greatsword as a clutch with his entire body steaming. The Troll widened his eyes in shock, ¡°I felt my mountain cleave landing¡¡±
¡°It did. I suppose I¡®m a tougher mountain than what you¡¯re used to.¡± It was clear that Gao¡¯larg¡¯s move was weakened quite a bit but he must have been confident of his attack.
Ebony¡¯s feet touched the ground and he painfully raised Icicle overhead again.
Gao¡¯larg straightened his back and picked his greatsword out, getting into a low stance again. He didn¡¯t compress his frame again, probably out of stamina or whatever energy the skill uses.
¡°Gao¡¯larg. Tiny Brute.¡±
¡°Ebony. Hopefully, a proud warrior.¡±
Both of them were barely standing straight but they mustered all their strength in silence. Ebony could have spun about to build some momentum but he couldn¡¯t really pull that off without risking getting hit. Gao¡¯larg had a tougher time aiming a small opponent now that he regained his size and both weren¡¯t able to draw out most of their strength.
Stalactite Drop!
Mountain Cleave!
Ebony moved first, Gao¡¯larg caught up with his advantage in speed.
¡°RAAAAAGGHH!!¡± Their foothold couldn¡¯t withstand the shockwave but both of them grounded themselves well. Gao¡¯larg yelled and wasn¡¯t about to let a smaller creature push his blade down. His skin burst as all his small wounds exacerbated, Sonic Intrusion tore open every cut and burst a large portion of veins and arteries on impact. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s hand was a bloody mess but he continued to roar and put every bit of strength he could muster.
Ebony didn¡¯t shout but his mind and body were screaming to resist the giant. The clash shook him up as much as it shook Gao¡¯larg.
It happened in mere moments, they were blown apart from each other when Gao¡¯larg¡¯s weapon of rock blew apart and Icicle¡¯s edge ruptured outwards.
¡°...I lost. Kil-¡± Gao¡¯larg laid on his back after bouncing off and creating tiny craters that were repaired with each bounce. Ebony skidded on his robe¡¯s scales that melted from friction but he managed to stand with magic controlling his body.
¡°Are those your tribe members? Ask them for another, we¡¯re not done.¡± He wasn¡¯t about to declare that a victory. He hadn¡¯t had enough. He released his mental hold and let his body lay limp on the ground as well.
Most if not all the Imperials were within the rays of light but there were still Trolls standing around and watching their leaders fight. All of them appeared young but Ebony couldn¡¯t tell a Troll¡¯s age from their appearance. A few of the Benumbed Tribe members who stood beside Gao¡¯larg previously were obviously worried but most others frowned and scoffed at the weakness their heir had shown.
Gao¡¯larg continued to pant, only shouting in his language after seeing that Ebony didn¡¯t have any intention to kill him.
Ebony didn¡¯t want to stay lying on the ground so he conjured his elaborately designed chair. He noticed that someone finally accepted Ning Xin¡¯s challenge.
Within 5 minutes, Gao¡¯larg sat up and faced the same direction. He didn¡¯t have any open wounds or cuts anymore.
¡°Who¡¯s that?¡± Ebony asked. The Troll Ning Xin fought against dual-wielded huge curved-bladed tonfas or something. He was actually holding his ground against her aggressive offence.
¡°Baldur. Son of Vigiot¡¯s Patriarch but of the same generation as me. Who¡¯s that warrior? Savage beast!¡±
¡°Scarlet.¡± It seems like even Trolls recognise her swordplay¡¯s ferocity.
Gao¡¯larg¡¯s stomach grumbled loudly. Ebony slipped his bag out from under his robe and brought out ready-made dishes. Although dishes can be kept warm for pretty long in their containers, they would still degrade in taste or so his chef states. So he only had a bit of hot food stored. He ate the sandwiches and offered meaty stir fry with peppers to Gao¡¯larg. Thankfully, ¡®a bit¡¯ of food was using his chef¡¯s measure. A table full of meaty dishes should at least sate the giant more than snacks.
¡°It¡¯s not poisoned,¡± Ebony added. He helped to pour out the dishes onto a large serving plate so that the giant could eat it with ease. He saved his favourite pan-fried dumplings for himself.
¡°I know. You, honourable warrior. Not shifty shaman. Many thanks!¡± The giant sat on the floor but he was still much taller.
The circular ray of light had decreased in size greatly as if to give other fighters more space.
¡°GOOD GRUB!¡± Gao¡¯larg roared in pleasure before praising. He seemed to have gained life as his vitality leaked out with a roar.
¡°Mmm. Scarlet made it.¡± Ebony was proud to hear another race praise her food. He had no personal grudge with these man-eating Trolls. The Empire had shields and equipment made of Troll''s bones. He didn¡¯t see a difference between the two. It had the same rules as the jungle and he was used to it. There might even be Troll-eating people but he hadn¡¯t done so and neither did Ning Xin.
¡°Your broad? She can fight and make good grub? Lucky man. Is she just as aggressive in bed?¡±
Ebony was stunned silent for a moment, unsure how he was supposed to reply. He was opening up jars and jars of dried jerky as he thought of a reply.
¡°We haven¡¯t gotten to that stage in our relationship.¡±
¡°Human, weird. A good catch is hard to find. Any proud warrior needs a good broad, a good broad gets taken fast you have to be quick! You just have to show your strength and rouse their instincts to procreate to make them yours!¡± Gao¡¯larg shot up and flexed his muscles in bodybuilder poses. Ebony had to say, these Trolls were experts at flexing out the best of their bodies. Most of them went for bulk but Gao¡¯larg was considered lean. The Troll had a similar build to Ebony in that it allowed for more flexibility and range of motion.
Ebony truly didn¡¯t expect to get relationship advice from an opponent that he was duelling to the death. ¡®I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s how it works for humans but¡I guess that''s the natural way?¡¯
¡°You¡¯re right. What if someone stronger comes and steals her heart¡¡±
¡°I¡¯ll show you some of the techniques passed down in my tribe in exchange for the grub!¡± Another Troll had already put their greatsword right outside the ray of light. Gao¡¯larg reached out and took the sword before showing Ebony his pose.
The mood of their duel was very out of place compared to the bloody battles taking place.
Chapter 213: Sharpener
Gao¡¯larg¡¯s men even brought barrels for him. Only a few Trolls could enter the circular ray of light. Apparently, the magic rays could detect if someone had any intention of interfering at all. If either Ebony or Gao¡¯larg had the intention to escape, they wouldn¡¯t be able to pass through the ray of light. Well, the rays would just move and expand as they moved.
The barrels were filled with alcohol.
Ebony partook. A sip was enough to surprise him. It was better than more ales and beers he had drunk in taverns or restaurants here. The main surprise was that the alcohol recovered health, it caused his life force to replenish faster. Around 10% faster.
¡°It¡¯s not much but try this.¡± Ebony took out a small jar of frost plum wine and opened it to share. He didn¡¯t want to open them so early but it was primarily experimental so the current opportunity seemed worth it.
¡°Sweet! Refreshing!¡± Gao¡¯larg looked as if he enjoyed it. The Troll¡¯s alcohol was also sweet with a bitter aftertaste and far more potent in terms of alcohol content. He wasn¡¯t worried his experimental wine would make either of them drunk. The giant Troll was already down two barrels of his own alcohol. The barrels were the size that could fit a cow or two.
Their meal ended pretty fast but Gao¡¯larg showed off his muscle flexing and posing techniques for a long time. They drank as he got Ebony to copy his movements. Ebony actually took off his robe and copied Gao¡¯larg without hesitation. He didn''t have a shirt on as they froze and shattered from the start.
He was too lean and his shredded body didn''t really pop out no matter how he flexed so he had nothing to show after the hour-long session.
Gao¡¯larg tipped the last drop in his barrel before he tossed them out at his tribe members. Ebony kept all the plates, containers and jars in his bag and put his robe on.
Icicle didn¡¯t fully repair itself but it was back in shape, only its edge wasn¡¯t sharpened. Frost Edge would do as a temporary fix.
The ray of light circling them exploded to a diameter of at least 2 km before they even faced each other.
Gao¡¯larg rotated his shoulders and swung around his new greatsword. It wasn¡¯t that hard to get a replacement for the large version but his smaller weapon was custom-made. Other swords at that size were for younger Trolls and those weren¡¯t built tough enough for his strength. It was also double-edged instead but Gao¡¯larg wasn¡¯t bothered by that. Although he asked for another smaller blade it hasn¡¯t made its way to him.
Ebony¡¯s shoulder regenerated and only ached. His back and belly injury from the first Mountain Cleave were still in a weakened state but he was almost out of that weakened state after drinking Gao¡¯larg¡¯s alcohol. His legs healed up first, they were only injured from his own movement skill. Phantom¡¯s Flicker had indeed gotten refined but he didn¡¯t bother checking out the specifics. He would know when he used it.
Gao¡¯larg probably had a tier 3, maybe tier 2 movement skill but it was very high level. Probably one of the skills that got to level 600 before he evolved. Ebony didn¡¯t believe that Gao¡¯larg or the Patriarchs didn¡¯t have at least the first few evolutions that had 250% Fortifications. If they really maxed out every evolution, it was hard to say if Christy and her fellow Frost Elf could beat the Emperor ranked Patriarchs. The Frost Elves weren¡¯t Emperor ranked as far as he could tell.
¡°Fury Rush!¡± They weren¡¯t going to wait for Gao¡¯larg¡¯s smaller weapon, he insisted that it was no issue. He roared and shrank a little but only lost a metre or so in height and width. He had no issue with balance from the change in ratio with his weapon. A couple of random swings were all he took to gauge his reach. That was pretty impressive but he could see why Gao¡¯larg doesn¡¯t really care about perfection. Gao¡¯larg just needed a rough gauge since his techniques were full of wide swings without as much precision and accuracy.
Ebony took note not to fall into a trance and remembered all of his opponent¡¯s skill names. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s skin tone darkened and he still had a wispy red aura armour. A jumping lunge and overhead slash came immediately.
He pulled off a proper deflection with his slanted roof guard but Gao¡¯larg expected it. Fury Rush was similar to his Raging Torrent but it was just a mash of wild swings left and right instead of hammering downwards. Gao¡¯larg stopped Ebony¡¯s counter with a backhand before his overhead swing even landed on the ground.
Although he predicted it, he was trying to polish his skill with the greatsword. Suppressing his natural evasion, his body lagged as it tried to think of a way to deflect that with Icicle. His mind had long realised that his skill with the greatsword wouldn¡¯t make it but he needed a way for his body to learn that fact. Dodging like usual won¡¯t let his body learn. Doing the same thing with Ning Xin wouldn¡¯t teach him as much, the gap was too big when it came to swordplay.
It was clear that Gao¡¯larg held back his power only for him to catch up and start his rage-filled swings. Ebony watched closely and could see the streams of sword paths. ¡®He copied ceaseless onslaught to this degree?¡¯
Just like how he was copying Gao¡¯larg¡¯s fierce moves, his opponent saw the value in increasing fluidity in his movements. But the Troll implemented the changes faster than he could. ¡®I really have no talent with weapons.¡¯ He didn¡¯t imbue and reflect mana vibrations when defending so that Gao¡¯larg¡¯s weapon would last longer. He was improving by the minute, the battle wouldn''t end until he was satisfied. Until Gao¡¯larg the warrior no longer had anything to offer.
The Troll was dull but he was able to tell that Ebony was using him as a whetstone. It fueled his rage and encouraged his muscles to burn hotter. ¡°We¡¯ll see who¡¯s sharpening who!?¡±
Ebony wasn¡¯t embarrassed about getting found out at all. Both of them held eye contact and a fierce grin could be seen on Gao¡¯larg¡¯s face.
He didn¡¯t impede Gao¡¯larg¡¯s power with gravity and only strengthened his own blows to close the gap in strength. Both of their styles were changing and melding with every clash.
The Troll didn¡¯t like to see them getting into the flow of exchanging blows as Ebony was better at that. He used Hammering Wave again to throw Ebony off the flow and break some of his momentum. ¡°YUEERAA!¡± A downward Mountain Cleave came at him at the end of Hammering Wave. Gao¡¯larg made use of the fact that Ebony wasn¡¯t attempting to dodge to deal as much damage as he could. It resembled Ceaseless Onslaught and Stalactite Drop.
Ebony could receive the blow with an injured shoulder, but that was when Gao¡¯larg was exhausted and had little strength. There was no time to think if he could receive the attack or not. He was going to receive it regardless. Frostblaze Augmentation was transforming bit by bit as well. He had no time to wait till he was safe to experiment. He had enveloped his body with his domain but he expanded it a little to conjure some magical hands to hold Icicle¡¯s blade to block. His Will protected him without his input. The addition of mental strength helped him pull through.
¡®Crap¡¡¯
He noticed the glint in Gao¡¯larg¡¯s eyes as the hard reception of Mountain Cleave was just to give the Troll the chance to push further as a rain of blows fell. Raging Torrent¡¯s every strike was less than half as strong as Mountain cleave since it was a single-handed technique and the randomness of the strikes but it was faster and far harder to remove himself from.
Instead of keeping in a purely defensive state, Ebony was able to deflect and counter rough blows from Raging Torrent. He subconsciously tried to flex and pull more physical strength out as a copy of hammering waves was pulled off to knock Gao¡¯larg out of position. Sadly, his physical prowess was a bit too low to achieve the same effect. Not even gravity magic helped to close the gap.
Gao¡¯larg laughed infectiously as his tribe members cheered from beyond the circular ray of light. Even those who had no intention to interfere stood far away.
He had a vague understanding of how Skills increase a person¡¯s power beyond their actual physical stat. It was so simple, it was a mere exchange. When it comes to physical skills, the most common energy used is stamina. Although it wasn¡¯t something as easy to sense or manipulate consciously compared to mana or even life force. Phantom¡¯s Flicker took a ton of stamina and these Trolls¡¯ active physical skills that pull far more power than their stats suggest also come from the expenditure of stamina.
Most people just do it without conscious control over stamina but the skills work the same way for any race. This realisation didn¡¯t really help him create a new skill or anything but he focused even more on sensing and testing Phantom¡¯s Flicker. The way his muscles contract and relax wasn¡¯t how he usually moves but he wasn''t Ning Xin, he didn¡¯t memorise or control every muscle so he needed time to test out the difference between that and his old movement skill. It would be good if he could translate that to his whole body and unleash more strength by a simple conversion of stamina to power.
It was pretty obvious, that was Ning Xin¡¯s source of strength. Life force must be more closely connected to stamina compared to mana. She might be subconsciously burning the stamina for power but it was through the manipulation of life force. He wasn¡¯t in a situation to ponder about the specifics or details. In any case, it wasn¡¯t as if he needed to consciously manipulate stamina for more power. No warrior of whichever race present seemed to be using it consciously. They might just believe it was their skill levels providing them power.
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It makes sense that people can get tired almost as easily as unclassed humans if their stamina consumption increases along with their output of power. When it came to physical output, Ebony was always in energy-saving mode. Using the least amount of energy for the most power only made sense.
He altered his mindset to bring out as much power as his body could bring out instead of using just enough energy. He had the illusion that Icicle was able to push Gao¡¯larg off slightly more.
¡°YAHAAHAHA!¡±
¡°Hahahaha!¡± Ebony infused his Will into Frostblaze Augmentation in his body and controlled it to flow just as he would control a Glacial Model. He could deflect Raging Torrent! So he started to use it to power Ceaseless Onslaught and his retreat slowed down. In an hour, he stood his ground and parried every blow of Raging Torrent.
Gao¡¯larg switched to a two-handed grip and activated Mountain Cleave as if it was just another normal strike from Raging Torrent.
¡®It flowed!¡¯ Ebony saw that Gao¡¯larg managed to maintain momentum from his rush and use it for Mountain Cleave.
He was ready for this blow for a long time and the mana in Icicle was ready to explode as Stalactite Drop any time. His smaller and shorter frame meant that he was at a disadvantage as it was more like a stalactite uprising instead of a drop. To begin with, Stalactite Drop was a spell, not a physical skill where he held the weapon. He felt the shockwave of his own skill throughout his body.
Icicle was cut halfway through before it burst and split into halves while Gao¡¯larg¡¯s weapon met the same fate as his previous weapons.
As for the wielders, they met a similar result. Fleshy injuries riddled Gao¡¯larg¡¯s body. His arms weren¡¯t attached anymore as both arms had ¡®pop¡¯ all the way up to his shoulders. Not a single spot on his body was unharmed as his flesh was mutilated till bones were showing at numerous spots.
Ebony was as tough as nails but he was in a similar state as the previous clash except he didn¡¯t have a target injury on his belly or spine, with his domain on and his control over the stability of mana. Vibrations hurt his opponent more than they hurt him since he could ¡®silence¡¯ them to a high degree. Gao¡¯larg was far too strong for him to completely stop the shock in his body even with Will and his domain.
He tried to move his body without any mana manipulation but found it unmoving. He didn¡¯t pant like Gao¡¯larg but he knew that he was just as exhausted if not more.
He dragged out bits of ice mana that were sent into Gao¡¯larg¡¯s body due to Icicle snapping and the ice mana within invaded the Troll. Neither of them moved a finger and laid down on their backs in peace.
The broken part of Icicle was within 600 metres and he knew where it landed. It took some effort to conjure ice mana on the broken piece of wood and drag it back to Icicle. He did his best to align the wood frame and splinters together.
¡°Can you fix yourself?¡± He whispered to Icicle. The weak glow was concerning but the wood started to shiver and rejoin. He fed the poor thing as much of his pure mana as he could. Icicle vibrated softly. ¡°No ice, I''ll give it to you after you recover.¡± The vibrations increased in response.
¡°I don¡¯t have any good grub either so you¡¯ll be patient with me.¡± Icicle gave up and quieted down after that.
He tried to look around but Ning Xin¡¯s duel was going all over the place and she wasn¡¯t anywhere nearby. He should be able to get a better look if he wasn¡¯t so lazy and stood up but he felt that she was fine. It was too bright and hot in one direction to miss it. She wasn¡¯t messing around like he was.
Gao¡¯larg had incredible recovery speed but Ebony wasn¡¯t as injured so they got up about the same time.
¡°Any more grub?¡±
¡°Only dry and hard stuff.¡± He had plenty of dry rations but they ate a lot of jerky and earlier. The giant ate more than 10 times a normal person would and he didn''t even enjoy the rations. Feeding themselves must be an immense hassle, their numbers seemed far too great to feed properly. There must be few tamers because it was hard to even feed themselves. ¡®Hmm. Maybe not, they might be part-time farmers or breeders. Those underwater swimmers, are the enormous fishes that fetched the Trolls over to Elva under their control? I wonder how big the fish have to be to carry so many Trolls. Did they eat these fishes or are they using those fishes to get underwater monsters as food?¡¯
He still took out dried biscuits to munch on. Gao¡¯larg sadly had to deal with it. He knew better than to complain about getting food from his opponent.
¡°Worried about your broad?¡± Gao¡¯larg took the barrel of water he gave to wash the blood and gunk off.
¡°She will win.¡± The Trolls weren¡¯t able to regenerate as well with her fire magic and she wasn¡¯t holding back her magic as much as he was. Baldur was also only in the 390s and it was already impressive that he was still alive against her.
¡°Baldur is strong.¡±
¡°She¡¯s stronger.¡±
They gobbled their dry snacks down. Icicle wasn¡¯t done repairing and Gao¡¯larg¡¯s replacement blade was taking some time to deliver. Most of them were within a ring of light and it wasn¡¯t hard to traverse but the Trolls would have to pass by Christy and Old Hag¡¯s battle. Making their way around would take time.
Gao¡¯larg challenged him to an arm wrestle. He lost even with multiple arms and his domain up and the Troll roared ecstatically. Ebony challenged the Troll in push-ups after demonstrating once. It took them literal hours but he won with ease.
The Trolls had a sport called the ¡®Skull Bash¡¯ where they would punch their opponents in the face by turn. The last one standing won. His Patriarch was apparently the Skull Bash Champ.
Gao¡¯larg fainted.
Ebony felt bad for cheating, he sent a couple of sonic-infused punches to his chin and temple. The giant was even nice enough to compress his frame so that his fist wouldn¡¯t cover more than half of Ebony¡¯s body. Gao¡¯larg never imagined it was magic, he had assumed that Ebony¡¯s attacks all felt more ¡®ringing¡¯ but didn¡¯t think it was magic so he probably thought Ebony¡¯s punches were the same.
He went on to win both a short and long-distance race, creating a deeper and larger crater on the ground. He lost both the contest of how high they could jump with and without enhancements. They also played something like shot put, he won the one without enhancement thanks to gravity magic. When they were both enhanced, even gravity magic wasn¡¯t enough to close the gap.
Ebony had been in the midst of his third throw of an extremely dense ball of ice the size of a yoga ball when he saw Ning Xin standing right outside the ring of light with her arms crossed.
Her eyes were yelling ¡°What are you doing?¡±
Her mantle was torn and even her calves were showing as her bodysuit had torn. Other than that she was unharmed.
¡°We¡¯re hungry. Our weapons broke.¡± He felt like he got caught playing without permission.
¡°Haaa. Make me a room.¡± Ning Xin sighed and stepped into the ring of light unhindered. Ebony made an igloo for her. She only took off her mantle to put on another shirt and pants before putting her mantle back on.
¡°You beat Baldur¡as expected from Ebony¡¯s broad. Be careful of Gash¡¯ah.¡± Gao¡¯larg didn¡¯t attack. People who could enter and come near were those who had no intention to cause harm and interfere with the battle. His people entered without getting attacked either.
¡°Br-broad? Ah, that guy was Baldur? You Trolls have incredible vitality.¡±
What Ebony understood from that was that Baldur didn¡¯t impress her in any way except for being hard to kill. He asked who or what Gash¡¯ah was but Gao¡¯larg shook his head and said it didn''t matter when they were at war.
¡°Keep playing but don¡¯t disturb my cooking. Anything you don¡¯t eat?¡± She eyed Gao¡¯larg¡¯s size before deciding on her menu.
¡°You-you¡¯re going to cook for me? I¡¯m going to kill your man.¡±
¡°......Food comes first. You can¡¯t fight on an empty stomach. If you kill him, I¡¯m your next opponent. Most importantly, you don¡¯t have the ability to kill him.¡± She must have taken her bodysuit off somehow as she washed her hands all the way up to her elbows and bunned up her hair. ¡®When did she change out?¡¯ Ebony always thought her bodysuit was weird, he felt like it was better if he asked Kong Jing.
Ebony was a bit shy for getting whacked so hard earlier, she must not have seen their fight.
¡°Uhm, we won¡¯t be done any time soon.¡± He transmitted his voice to her. She seemed to ignore him completely and was in her own world, cooking.
She brought out the last of their teratish meat from the underground tomb. The bones were used to make soup with some root vegetables. Gao¡¯larg couldn¡¯t focus on any competition so they just watched her cook instead.
By now, Ebony¡¯s body fully regenerated and had no temporary weakness. His back would take a while more to fully recover but there was just remnant pain, nothing that would affect his movements. Gao¡¯larg fully recovered before they even started competing at random stuff but his exhaustion was clear to see.
Icicle reconnected but was bulging outwards at the area where it reconnected. The runes on Icicle haven''t fully reconnected so there was still a durability and capacity issue.
They patiently waited for their meal. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s replacement weapon of both sizes got here in the middle of their meal, they actually brought an entire crate worth. The heir of a Tribe sure had many weapons. Ning Xin almost out-ate the giant and he was clearly in awe.
She stretched and got back into the igloo before coming out with her hair down.
¡°Hey, If you¡¯re not planning to duel, go back to your people.¡± Ning Xin glared at each Troll that wasn¡¯t in a duel one by one. They actually stepped back, these guys were so free that they saw most of the battles going on. Perhaps to challenge or directly kill an injured winner that wasn¡¯t a Troll.
¡°Go back,¡± Gao¡¯larg told his people. Three were tribeless and other Trolls didn¡¯t listen to him but his Tribe members smashed their fists on these Tribleless''s chests and left with haste.
Ning Xin nodded to Gao¡¯larg who sang praises for her food and pointed to those that remained. The proud warrior nodded.
She stepped out of the ring of light, ¡°How many? Whatever, no need for a challenge or some fancy ring. All of you can try.¡±
Chapter 214: Data
A similar exchange between Ebony and Gao¡¯larg repeated over and over again. Ebony improved but Gao¡¯larg didn¡¯t lag behind much. They knew each other¡¯s skills better and better. The Troll was surprisingly sneaky and had some weird life force imbuement that sent flying blades that he hid. The giant¡¯s sense of timing and positioning got better over time and made many moves that Ebony couldn¡¯t dodge even if he tried. He countered the spell with a spell but other than that, magic wasn''t used heavily.
Gao¡¯larg knew that he was better off saving his energy for attacks that he was more familiar with.
Ning Xin was the reaper who went around sending challenges to those who beat the Imperials. For those that didn¡¯t accept her challenge, she gave them a chance to team up. She gave them the choice of escaping or duelling her. So far, all chose to fight her and died. On the second day, Athena came out victorious against some of Baldur¡¯s squad members. She had been accompanied by some Imperial Knights but less than half came out. Athena left by herself to get healing. She said her farewells with Ning Xin when Ebony had been too busy fighting.
According to her, Cap Dwarf and Korben were in danger and Koawe had to protect both of them at the same time but she couldn¡¯t interfere and couldn¡¯t enter their ring. Ebony was more worried for them than intrigued about what spells Koawe used.
Lucas had killed one of his opponents but the other wasn¡¯t dying anytime soon. He seemed to be doing fine but he was getting more exhausted compared to his opponent. It was no surprise as his opponent was a rank higher. The stat gap only got bigger as their levels increased.
Mallory¡¯s battle was probably the worst. She wasn¡¯t able to keep all her soldiers alive which probably shook her more than it shook them.
¡°MOUNTAIN REEEND!¡± Gao¡¯larg yelled out his evolved move that almost killed Ebony when he pulled it off the first time. Ebony didn¡¯t cheat with magic and he took it head on. After all, he had his own skill evolution. Ceaseless Onslaught had evolved before Gao¡¯larg was pushed to improve his own.
Fluid Blitz - Maximise exertion of the physical body. Every attack is a precursor for the next using momentum. Speed and power of fluid blitz rise with momentum. Ability to build up momentum increases by 150% + 5.0% per level. Ability to raise power and speed of flurry up to 0.05% of Strength stat per level.
It still had Ceaseless Onslaught¡¯s usage of momentum but Ebony was able to apply this semi-active, semi-passive skill to increase his physical strength and speed. Although the skill description states that he was maximising exertion it wasn¡¯t really so. He does it subconsciously but it was just exerting more stamina to convert to strength. If he uses less stamina, he gets less power or speed. The good thing was that it was not a sword or weapon-specific skill, he could use it whenever he needed.
The bad thing was that he wasn¡¯t able to consciously control how much stamina to burn and most of the time, he wasn¡¯t able to get the maximum buff. It felt like he had to ¡®emotionally¡¯ channel strength but that doesn¡¯t make sense to him. Perhaps it was something like berserks¡¯ gain in strength and that was how they channel more strength and have low endurance. ¡®No, it¡¯s definitely a berserker¡¯s skill. I should find some books on that.¡¯
It just wasn¡¯t very energy-friendly. At above level 400 he should be able to draw out up to 20% more speed and power based on his strength stat. During the clash with Mountain Rend, he was able to draw out his maximum power but his stamina consumption at least tripled for a short duration.
Stalactite Drop also mutated into Stalactite Sunder and was refined once. It was a pretty new skill so its level was pretty much skyrocketing.
Stalactite Sunder - Ice and physical attacks have 200% + 5.0% falling momentum when used in conjunction with gravity magic. Ice spell landings¡¯ ability to slow down the release of momentum on impact increases by 150% + 5.0% per level.
He could cast the ¡®spell¡¯ with his greatsword or even his legs and it would accelerate down far faster than usual. The slowing down of the release¡¯s base originally increased by 100% but was refined to 150%. The skill effect is weakened quite a bit if he were to use it with Fluid Blitz. Momentum doesn¡¯t stack and he wasn¡¯t always able to move downward slashes against a larger opponent. The interesting thing was that the magic classification and consumption of mana information don¡¯t show up any more. As if physical skills didn¡¯t get numerical values for stamina consumption.
Phantom¡¯s Flicker was refined a few times but he didn¡¯t focus on removing the negative percentage, he worked on short-distance movement and perfecting the amount of stamina used. It reduced the physical load on his legs. However, the skill description didn¡¯t change at all and only the negative percentage changed in response. It went from -500% to -350%.
As if to counter him, Gao¡¯larg got faster as well. He didn¡¯t know if the Troll saved stat points, refined his movement skill or his enhancement. He was inclined to believe it was an improvement to his enhancement as he didn¡¯t get as injured as before after facing Stalactite Sunder at full power. Now that Gao¡¯larg had a smaller sword, he was able to fight in his condensed frame which he was much stronger so that might be the other possible reason for having fewer injuries.
Gao¡¯larg went through multiple greatswords and Icicle was getting mistreated. Icicle seemed to be getting tougher and repairing itself faster but it didn¡¯t change its fate as both of them were getting rougher with their weapons. Ebony noticed that the Troll only had 3 swords left, one of them was clearly a rarity higher so the Troll must have reservations about using that. He asked during one of their break times, apparently, Gao¡¯larg wasn¡¯t supposed to use that yet. They both knew it wasn¡¯t long before he was forced to use it.
Ning Xin took breaks with them and was their personal chef. She sensed a weak life force signature from Gao¡¯larg¡¯s greatsword. Gao¡¯larg admitted that the sword supposedly ate its user''s life force in exchange for adding power to its strikes. As for how it increases power, it was most likely through the flying physical shocks that all their swings produce. This made Ebony guess that it probably increased destructive or piercing strength.
Troll craftsmen were getting better at their job. It fits their race¡¯s advantages well. But it was probably one of the few such weapons, he hadn¡¯t seen any of these weapons in use.
With Gao¡¯larg¡¯s reduced size, Ebony was able to face Mountain Rend with his Stalactite Sunder having most of its effects. He reinforced Icicle with layers upon layers of scales and Gao¡¯larg actually copied his scales with his life force. They clashed, blowing both of them back and destroying the layer of protection they added to their weapons. Gao¡¯larg landed first and ran to the side, Ebony did the same as they searched for an opening.
Ebony Flickered in for a thrust with as much strength and momentum as he could draw. Gao¡¯larg was a good reference for how to withdraw more strength. He just had a hard time making it flow, there was no chance that he was going to sacrifice all his mobility and manoeuvrability so it wasn¡¯t easy to blend into his own style.
He was a one-trick pony that dealt with all of Gao¡¯larg¡¯s moves the same way. He was able to adapt to the giant far better and faster than the giant could adapt to him.
His control over gravity was improving heavily when it came to assisting his movements and attacks. At least, he could keep up with his enhanced speed. Overall, even in a direct exchange of power, he was closing the gap faster than Gao¡¯larg could widen it. Outside of a direct exchange, there wasn¡¯t much that was new. He could have evaded many of Gao¡¯larg¡¯s attacks even if Phantom¡¯s Flicker was still Treading Stride. It was just that he could depend on Icicle to parry and counter far more without relying on evasion.
Even with a better understanding of the placement of his weapon in guards, he didn''t think he could fend off most of Ning Xin¡¯s strikes so he was still slightly dissatisfied.
They spoke with each other less and less during breaks after both fallen and had their greatswords out of commission. It would¡¯ve been better if there was alcohol to share but Ebony doesn¡¯t carry around large volumes of alcohol. His bag contained mostly rations and materials.
Ebony dodged backwards to prevent getting knocked back by Hammering Wave and Gao¡¯larg¡¯s eyes brightened.
¡°MOUNTAIN REEND!¡± Gao¡¯larg screamed again.
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2 dark red greatswords spawned right above and below the Troll''s actual sword. Gao¡¯larg learned from him and left some strength to dash forward after an attack to catch him when he dodged back and was off the ground for a short duration. The Troll wasn¡¯t out of surprises yet, indeed a talented warrior.
¡®Did he think Frigid Refraction was an actual physical move, are these life force blades physical or illusionary?¡¯ He pondered but was already sent flying before his thought finished.
Inscripted Mana Moulding, Stalwart Endowment, Stock Mana Compressive Chassis and Frostblaze Augmentation all improved to some degree but his hands broke on impact. Icicle was tightly gripped and was still in one piece. Ebony looked up to see the dark red demon in the air. Not even letting him hit the ground before leapt with a twist, combining Hammering Wave¡¯s spin into a single-handed Raging Torrent. From the looks of it, he was only going to pull off one more strike as if it was a Stalactite Drop. The Troll didn¡¯t have amazing stamina but he learnt how to conserve some strength.
¡®He learned how to blend moves together as well¡¡¯
Gao¡¯larg forgot to yell his skill name, only roaring with vigour. In the midst of his falling sword, he regained his size and redirected his condensed life force into his greatsword. He was really going for the break to reduce his bodily toughness for his weapon to attack and weapon to break through.
Ebony initially shouted as well but he cooled off, it wasn¡¯t really his thing. It didn¡¯t energise him, hurt his throat and his yell sounded odd because he rarely ever does that. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s attack fell into the range of his domain where all sounds were silenced out.
He could actually just stand there, point Icicle up and Gao¡¯larg¡¯s attack would skid down to the ground while his greatsword stabbed into Gao¡¯larg through the chest and lungs. With the ice mana inside, a simple release of condensed mana was all it would take.
But he didn¡¯t.
He might be in the air but he didn¡¯t need to calculate to know that he could ground himself in time. The Troll was talented but he wasn¡¯t picking up timing and gauging well enough, nor was he taking into account how fast Ebony could just have gravity plant himself down.
He didn¡¯t cast Gravity Vortex above Gao¡¯larg to reduce his power. He didn¡¯t conjure numerous petals to freeze the undefended Troll who moved part of his enhancement to his weapon. He pulled back his Will to let the Troll move without facing vibrational reflections, stop his ice mana from defending him and didn¡¯t have gravity work against the attack. He only used his domain to strengthen himself.
What he needed was to polish his technique and skill with Icicle.
This strike was a bit disappointing as they were both off the ground. Even if he didn¡¯t have the strength to push Gao¡¯larg¡¯s blade away, he could easily push himself to the side. His greatsword was already placed in front so it didn¡¯t take any effort to pull it off. Using that to recenter and ground himself, he was surprised that Gao¡¯larg bounced off the ground with that strike before he twisted and continued chaining Hammering Wave. The talented warrior was switching his methods around to deal with Ebony better, likely seeing the futility of putting all his strength in a single move and breaking their weapons.
¡®Now that¡¯s more data for me.¡¯
???
Ning Xin was a little unhappy to see Ebony restart his weapon mastery training with someone else and not her. To be absolutely fair, his rate of improvement when it came to sword-wielding was just too slow compared to hers. He used his flexibility and control with magic to deal with her and his unnatural ability to know where her next couple of attacks were going to come from. His reliance and focus on magic training had hindered his growth when it came to sword fighting.
That aside, she sat outside their battle¡¯s range and observed. Unlike Ebony, she didn¡¯t need to be in the battle itself to learn from it. He needed his body to remember through pain but she had full control over her body. It was only a pity that there wasn¡¯t much to learn from either of them when it came to direct exchanges.
She crossed her arms at Gao¡¯larg¡¯s attempt to blend Ebony¡¯s style into his own. Ebony was doing better.
About 30% of the Trolls were winners of the duels. She hoped to have let the men who died achieve more¡peace after they died but she also respected that both sides willingly accepted death battles so she gave these winning Trolls the option to scram back to their land or to fight her. If they didn¡¯t accept a one-on-one challenge, it didn¡¯t make much difference except giving her a chance to escape should things turn bad. There would be no ring of light forcing them to fight to the death.
Although Mallory¡¯s fight seemed to be going really bad because the spirit user Shamans were strong and most importantly, hard to deal with, she wasn¡¯t very interested in getting close to watch their mini skirmish.
¡®Hmph! He¡¯s trying to close the gap with our physical abilities? I can¡¯t lose!¡¯ Ning Xin spawned her blood halo. It was very special for a spell. The blood halo¡¯s connection with her was strong, strong enough that it weirdly carried her with a mental pull and was her original method of flight.
From the centre of the halo, a fireball was conjured. ¡®I knew it, It didn¡¯t take much mental effort! I¡¯ll have it around from now, it¡¯ll constantly shoot fireballs at him when we clash¡no, he has too many clones. I¡¯ll have to see how many of these halos I can maintain. The more fire mana I pump into them, the easier it is to control. I''m getting closer to being able to command fire mana to move by itself but not even close to using Will to influence them¡¡¯
She couldn¡¯t use this ¡®Will¡¯ at all so she had no idea how to train that ability. In that sense, she was more on the track of how a normal mage advanced. Her control over fire mana was simply very good, having a high affinity with it only made it easy for her. Just an advantage of being the daughter of a high-level fire mage, it wasn¡¯t anything special. It seemed special to the Imperials since none of them were a pair of Emperor¡¯s kids but the only advantage was that she picked fire magic faster.
There was a limit to that advantage and both of them were reaching the limit of these advantages. These centuries-old elder knights and soldiers from Fourth Tide really seemed to have high refinements for their skills. There was nothing she could do about that other than spend more time on training.
She tested how many halos she could maintain before it started distracting her. Sadly, two was her limit. Any more and she needed to consciously move them around her. She preferred to be able to have at least 99.99% of her focus on her body. It was nice that these halos seemed to be an extension of her body. They could move a metre around her like another pair of arms that she had total control of. Any further and it would take actual effort like casting a spell and she didn¡¯t want to risk losing the attention and focus.
They could be decent defensive disks if need be but not worth counting on to protect her if she couldn¡¯t dodge whatever attack it was. Shooting out blades of blood, wind, sparks of lighting and fire spears and balls seemed to be their primary function for now. She had to be careful not to overuse it since her mana supply wasn¡¯t all that high but she couldn¡¯t wait till she evolved or her mana capacity to increase to train it. She couldn¡¯t lag behind Ebony!
Ning Xin knew that the Frost Elves didn¡¯t tell them that Fifth Tide was contractually under their protection because they either forgot about it or didn¡¯t really care much about it themselves. At least a few of those elders in Arcta should be aware but they weren¡¯t combatants. She was just glad that this fiasco was almost over. She didn¡¯t need the Trolls to level her skills fast anymore. She already settled her skill set and wanted to get some quiet time to work on them. Refinement needed time and effort and not an opponent, if she needed skill levels dungeons would work.
Yvette wasn¡¯t answering her calls. Navin was supposedly secretly missing. The Archduke of Dwarfs who should¡¯ve been in Fifth Tide didn¡¯t show up in any other Tide. Her Grandma was still uncontactable. Her Sister Jing was in a world of her own as usual. It was also news to her that Sister Jing reforged her brain. She never seemed unnaturally smart or anything but it was likely that her sister never bothered about making herself smarter in a traditional sense. It was most likely improvements only for her crafting and maybe magic rather than pure logical smarts. Because Kong Jing was a bit slow in certain aspects, like Ebony.
Ebony was only going to get stronger faster. That was what her intuition told her. His meeting with Korta accelerated this. She had a bit of an advantage with cultivating her physique but she had hit a limit already. He would probably be working on it. It would do him good to visit the Frost Elves second village if possible. She personally wanted to visit Fragadal¡¯s Sea to find both clues about her parents and also more of Heartblood Essence of the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix. However, she didn¡¯t think she was ready for that. Her grandma couldn¡¯t find anything and there was no doubt she wouldn¡¯t be any better at finding things or clues.
For some odd reason, she felt that Ebony wouldn¡¯t be visiting Tuctra even if she suggested it to him. Perhaps, they just weren¡¯t ready for it. Koawe took months to get there and back and was even a dangerous journey for him. She had confidence they would be able to make the trip but he might be convinced that the Frost Elves wouldn¡¯t teach him. They advocated self-discovery of skills after all. The ¡®fight¡¯ with Korta also showed how far away they were.
Ebony¡¯s fight was about to end and she was prepared to cook again. Their next match would probably be their last, she could sense it.
She fed them.
Then she looked over to see Koawe getting avoided like a plague. She finally managed to see a little of what he could do. It was really far away and there was snowy mist everywhere but a blackened Troll was begging for death while the others were not far behind. Sadly, the range of their ring of light was too big and she couldn¡¯t get closer to observe but that was good too she didn¡¯t want to get close. It probably took time for his magic to work on King ranked Trolls but she felt that they would finish soon.
As for the main battle, she didn¡¯t know the situation. The only notable point was that the ambient temperature was already ice cold and they weren¡¯t even near any ice spells excluding Koawe¡¯s battle. The ring of light stops such effects from escaping but the main battle wasn¡¯t enveloped. Anyone could join if they dared. It was usually the only battle that dragged on since the participants could escape. The limit was anywhere on this earthen battlefield or the Spirit in charge would consider it as an admittance of defeat.
Ebony was playing giant blocks with Gao¡¯larg. It was the same rectangular blocks Kiva played with and Ning Xin had no idea why they found it fun. The one who made the tower of blocks fall would take a barrel of beer and they continued to play till their break was over. She shook her head at that.
Chapter 215: Final Rend
¡°Enough disrespect. It''s time to end this, Ebony. No. Seeping Cold Abscission, give me your all!.¡± Gao¡¯larg reduced his size and grabbed his greatsword. He stomped and crushed two of his normal greatswords, leaving the one within his grasp as his last weapon.
¡°Unfortunate. I will show you everything I have.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t referring to the fact that their battle would end. It was that Gao¡¯larg seemed to have squeezed all of his potential out as fast as he could. Sadly, he wouldn¡¯t be able to see what Gao¡¯larg could do in future.
¡®What a loss¡¡¯ He lamented that he wouldn¡¯t be able to learn more from a good warrior, one that had the potential to go further.
Ebony drew Icicle out and set himself ablaze, just as Gao¡¯larg¡¯s aura rose and his greatsword consumed the injected life force.
His domain spawned thousands of lustrous blue petals that didn¡¯t have any flames burning on them. It was one of his takeaways from saving mana. When he compressed mana till it had a liquid form, he didn¡¯t have to have them burning at all times and it saved some mana. Against a few opponents, he could just burn them as needed instead of causing the entire area to drop in temperature.
Gravity was magnified on Gao¡¯larg dozens of times stronger but only the ground gave in and not the warrior.
Gao¡¯larg roared and gave a wide swing at all the blue petals around him. Cracking and popping sounds echoed as mana in Ebony¡¯s domain reacted and found different ways of inflicting physical shock. The black-toned and red-eyed Troll didn¡¯t even flinch as the sonic attacks weren¡¯t even cutting through his skin.
The greatsword in Gao¡¯larg¡¯s hands was stronger than he expected as all the petals were forcefully blown apart even with his domain on. The resulting wind pressure and shockwave almost blew him off the ground.
¡°One move!!¡± Gao¡¯larg yelled at the top of his lungs.
Ebony paused.
It appeared that Gao¡¯larg no longer had anything to show and had no desire to fool around with Ebony.
¡°Okay.¡± He nodded seriously.
Icicle was raised above his head with both hands on it. He made his greatsword pull in every bit of mana he could withdraw, overdrafting his mana without hesitation.
Instead of a bright glow, it was as if it got darker as Icicle pulled in the very air around them with Gravity Vortex cast on it. Imperishable Frost Scales had to be the last spell to form over it to ease the injection of all his mana. It was partially pure mana and partially ice mana. It was hard to convert condensed mana into elemental ice and would take some time. Pure mana that was sent out of his mental reach wouldn¡¯t be able to manually convert to ice and burn.
Frostblaze Augmentation was changing bit by bit at his discretion; he didn''t put those at play for now as he wouldn¡¯t be able to use it at full power if he was trying to mutate it. Waning Presence was also running as usual but he didn¡¯t need its effects. With Gravity Vortex cast, he wasn¡¯t able to layer Icicle with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane. Firm Path wouldn¡¯t really work either as the gravity mana would just get absorbed and join the vortex.
Once his mana pool emptied, and his mana started overdrafting he got lightheaded. He didn¡¯t forget to put some of that overdrafted mana to power his Augmentation, Stalwart Endowment, Inscripted Mana Moulding and of course, just leaving them in his Stock Mana Compressive Chassis. He left the mana in his robe to sustain their durability runes and his scale armour.
Gao¡¯larg kept roaring as he fed his own life force to his greatsword. He similarly retained enough to power his enhancements but it was unclear how much he was retaining. He used Muscular Bolster which expanded just his muscles instead of his entire frame.
They had been staring at each other the whole time and Ebony understood from the glint in Gao¡¯larg¡¯s eyes that he was ready. They were both ready.
Ebony¡¯s Will was at its limits as overdrafting mana placed a large mental burden and Gao¡¯larg faced a physical burden. He could sense the Troll¡¯s muscles were so tight yet under so much pressure they might give in and snap at any time.
Gao¡¯larg initiated and burst off the ground.
Phantom¡¯s Flicker pushed Ebony to a greater speed than the Troll. Fluid Blitz had never been activated to full power so easily. It was oddly obedient. It might be that he truly felt that he should use all his strength as it was hard to force the activation of Fluid Blitz¡¯s buff. It was too bad there was no momentum to gain but it was no big loss, magic was his main force.
¡°MOUNTAIN REEEND!!¡± Gao¡¯larg simply pulled off his strongest strike without embellishing it any further.
¡°Stalactite Sunder¡¡± He might as well follow Gao¡¯larg¡¯s enthusiasm. It was a bit of a bummer that he wasn¡¯t going spell-heavy but this seemed like the best way to end it.
They clashed the same way they did multiple times over the past¡week or so. He didn¡¯t really know how long it had been but all those breaks took hours and so did each clash.
The corrosion cloud above had actually started to withdraw towards the Trolls. It was possible for sunlight to pass through but he didn¡¯t take note of how many times it cycled.
Gao¡¯larg also swung his blade from overhead. Icicle was tilted ever so slightly and their greatswords clashed. The layer of mana and vitality didn¡¯t stop their blades. Gao¡¯larg pushed him down into the ground but Icicle started to freeze through the Troll¡¯s weapon. Every bit of frozen blade would burst as violent vibrations ran through them. It wasn¡¯t able to show what it was capable of. Before his feet sunk into the ground, Gao¡¯larg¡¯s blade was split in two and Icicle landed on the Troll¡¯s head. It got stuck in his skull.
¡°Ebony, I¡¯m glad you¡¯re a warrior,¡± Gao¡¯larg muttered out in a split second.
¡°Mmm. You¡¯re a great warrior.¡± His mana exploded outwards and blood splattered all over him. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s head was still in one piece. His unbelievably tough body was extending his suffering but the ice mana that spread throughout him numbed out his sense of pain.
It felt like a long time passed as they stared at each other, waiting for the moment to come.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have killed [Aesthetic Compact Brute Lvl 385]. No experience is gained due to maxed level. Insufficient potential experience accumulated.¡¯
¡°My arm hurts. How are you holding up?¡± Ebony asked Icicle. There was no response as its runes dimmed down all the way.
The ring of light around them dispersed. He took Gao¡¯larg¡¯s frozen but tattered body away, burying him here would just have his body crushed or dropped into the sea once the earth was removed. He made an ice coffin and placed Gao¡¯larg into his bag. The Trolls might not care but he would try to return it if possible. Gao¡¯larg¡¯s the Benumbed Tribe¡¯s heir so they should at least recognise him.
¡®What¡¯s this¡moody feeling? How unpleasant, I don¡¯t feel like doing anything for some time.¡¯ Ebony fell on his back and fell asleep. Overdrafting mana always made it hard to stay conscious and he didn¡¯t feel like fighting against it. He was pretty sure his head laid on something soft but he already went to sleep mode.
???
Once again, Ning Xin had the chance to caress Ebony¡¯s hair while he slept. She was pretty sure he was fully asleep this time. His head was really light since he was low on mana and his regeneration was reduced. It extended the time when she could comfortably let him rest on her lap.
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Her legs were starting to get numb when her Intuition alerted her to look towards the Trolls and the main battle. She couldn¡¯t tell what it was but there was no sense of danger so she stayed put. It took quite some time before she squinted to see something flying towards them. Something huge.
Before long, she managed to make out the figure of a manta ray completely made out of water. Within the enormous water manta ray were thousands upon thousands of Imperial Knights and soldiers. On the head of the water ray was another man who also wore the same design of armour that Imperial Knights wore but it was clearly different in colour and overall look.
The closer it got, the clearer she could see the detail.
Something, someone was swimming out of the water manta ray¡¯s belly and poked his pink hair out.
¡°MUAHAHAHAHA! I¡¯M HOME!¡± The loud Prince was dragged back into the manta ray, almost drowning him as he popped back into the air bubble within.
Ning Xin knew that Hector wasn¡¯t going to die so easily. She had initially imagined Navin¡¯s disappearance to be to get Hector out of Tova but the Barrier King wasn¡¯t anywhere in sight.
The manta ray didn¡¯t slow down and brought thousands of soldiers back towards the mainland. The disappearance of the corrosion cloud allowed them to fly high but it was surprising that the water spell could stay unaffected by the Frost Elves cold magic.
She might have had a bit too much fun as Ebony¡¯s hair had dozens of tiny braids when the giant ray made a return trip. It just wasn¡¯t giant anymore and only had the caster on it. He must have let his soldiers alight back at Fifth Tide.
¡°How does my hair look?¡± Ebony woke up and cheekily remained on her lap.
¡°Great.¡± She rolled him off before she got embarrassed by her own actions.
¡°Then I¡¯ll have to trouble you to tie my hair from now on.¡± He kept the ridiculous hairdo like he said.
¡°Hector passed by.¡± Ning Xin changed topics.
¡°I heard him. He¡¯s also dashing here and screaming something.¡± Ebony must have sensed the vibrations from afar. The ring of lights surrounding other¡¯s battle actually causes most vibrations to get trapped so there wasn¡¯t much to distract his senses.
¡®So Hector was the one who woke him up. Hmph, he disrupted my precious session!¡¯ Ning Xin was a bit upset that Ebony woke up so fast. It was already rare for him to sleep and even more rare for her to have a chance to observe without him being conscious about it.
Hector came into view, he was rather dirty. He didn¡¯t appear to see them as he was crying to be let into the ring of light where Mallory was fighting. With such obvious intentions to intervene, he was tightly locked out. Then he cried and smashed the ground repeatedly.
Ebony hid them out of view with his ice and took out a memory light.
¡°Are you¡¡± Ning Xin was more amused that Ebony was taking the scene down more so than Hector¡¯s silly reaction.
¡°Mmm.¡±
???
Ebony was glad to see that Hector was the same as he remembered. Minus the shoulder-length pink hair and that he was half-naked. It was amusing to see him act and Ebony recalled that he had a memory light lying around. He took a ¡®video¡¯ just for fun, it just came to mind all of a sudden.
Hiding themselves wasn¡¯t so difficult since he wasn¡¯t moving. He couldn¡¯t make them invisible but Hector would have to look over directly unless he had new skills that improved his sight or mana sense further. They were a few kilometres away so it wasn¡¯t really hard to spot on an empty wasteland.
¡°Let¡¯s see how close we can get.¡± Ebony patted the dirt off him. He couldn¡¯t get a good view for the memory light from so far away. He could test how good Hector¡¯s perception was as well.
¡°I¡¯ll pull wind towards us so he can¡¯t use scent to locate us.¡± She suggested.
With that, sight, scent, sound, mana and their gravitational signature were mostly hidden to some extent. Well, hiding gravitational signature was completely unnecessary but there was a good chance Hector had an affinity with gravity. Ebony always hid it anyway. Shadow mages or rogues were always found by him due to the fact that their gravity signatures were a dead giveaway.
It might not have been necessary at all. They got all the way to Hector¡¯s side and he got a perfect view to take a video. The man was too busy complaining about being late and hammering the floor with his fists to bother about them.
¡®It''s not as amusing as I imagined.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t that good at taking photos or videos so he had to play around with the memory light for a bit. It was just getting dull because Hector was pushing it with his act. He had been complaining for ten minutes straight! He probably sensed them long ago.
[Hexa Elemental Enhancement Mage Lvl 300]
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Identify evolved into Appraise.¡¯
Appraise - Appraise the world around you, grasp information of the target.
¡®As always, it''s the least descriptive skill. Anyway, I guess I should take him.¡¯ Ebony immediately tried to appraise Hector.
[Hexa Elemental Enhancement Mage Lvl 300 | ??? Lvl 300]
¡®Is that some sort of skill? I don¡¯t see an obfuscation jewel on him. Hexa¡he probably uses more than 6 elements now.¡¯ Ebony still thought it was a great improvement to be able to see Sub-Class levels. Hector could use more than 4 elements when he was a Journeyman. Ebony had a feeling Hector could use more than just 6 elements. His Class skill slots must be quite an issue.
He could imagine a pure enhancement mage to only have the elements manipulation skill and the enhancement skill. ¡®Just that alone would take up 12 skill slots, What a neat class skill list¡¡¯ From what he recalled, Hector only used 1 type of enhancement for each element. Ebony had Augmentation and Stalwart Endowment but Stalwart Endowment should be able to be converted to a skill that only requires pure mana and not ice mana.
¡°Hector.¡± He called out, shutting the memory light in his bracelet off.
¡°WOAH! Don¡¯t scare me like that!¡± Hector jerked up.
Ebony really couldn¡¯t tell if he was putting on an act.
¡°Ebony! Scarlet! wuuwoo!¡± Hector yelled and jumped in to hug him. Snot and tears were wiped onto his robe. Hector got so emotional that Ebony started to believe that he hadn¡¯t put up an act.
He repelled the snot back onto Hector and pushed him off, it was actually starting to get annoying after minutes of this. Hector kept mumbling under his tears, ¡°I¡¯m so glad to see you!¡±, ¡°I¡¯m alive!¡±, ¡°It¡¯s good to be home!¡± and much more.
¡°Sounds like you had a bad time,¡± Ebony said.
¡°The ship I got on capsized days into the journey! We had to travel by conjured ship for years and my fellow mates left me one by one. Once I got to Tova, little old me was too weak to do anything. I was the only journeyman! Poor me!¡±
He spilt out all his emotional baggage. His ¡®mates¡¯ protected him with their lives and he never fully got over it. His grudge against the Trolls wasn¡¯t all that strong. He got revenge months ago and he wasn¡¯t one to hate or blame an entire race for what happened. They were the invaders after all.
He got bullied by his uncle. His speedy levelling in a dungeon made him sick for over a week. His uncle fought the Old Hag by himself over and over again but he was never able to lock her down. Old Hag was delayed for a long time before she slipped out. His uncle returned to his unit lightly injured to gather his men and return. They took some time to gather and finish up whatever they had to do on the other continent.
¡°So this is that so-called supremacy duel? This ring of light isn¡¯t made of any elemental mana¡did you guys see the spirit? Is it really a Saint?¡±
¡°We didn¡¯t see any spirit.¡± It seemed like Ebony wasn¡¯t the only one interested in seeing a spirit.
¡°How did the battle look?¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°I couldn¡¯t tell. Are there only 2 Frost Elves fighting?¡± Hector wasn¡¯t introduced to any Frost Elf.
Ebony pointed to Korta¡¯s fight but he didn¡¯t see anyone there. ¡®Oh¡it ended.¡¯
Arti screeched and came to fetch Korben and Cap Dwarf. Cap Dwarf was on the verge of death but he was still breathing. Koawe managed to keep them alive. Korta was already gone, probably went to back Christy up.
Things were looking good for the Empire.
¡®Time to plan for a holiday. Tidal¡¯s so massive, there¡¯s tons of places I wanted to see.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s worst experience was his time as an artillery mage. The levels weren¡¯t worth it. Just killing people without even seeing their faces wasn¡¯t something he wanted to do as a job. No doubt, he did it willingly and even continued for months.
¡°Something¡¯s coming. We should run.¡± Ning Xin warned. Not even a moment later, he felt the vibrations from under his feet. His domain sprang up as soon as she finished speaking.
¡°Let me guess. The underwater Troll Tribe¡¯s Patriarch.¡± Ebony and Ning Xin took refuge in the skies without hesitation. Hector was slightly stunned at how fast they ditched him. It didn¡¯t seem like he could fly as he was running on the ground.
¡°Or some of his squad members.¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t fly ahead.
They might be underwater specialists but Ebony didn¡¯t think well of their chances against either multiple Kings or worse even if they weren''t in water.
Chapter 216: Simple Curse
¡°This doesn¡¯t look good,¡± Ebony commented.
The worst happened as 8 fishy-looking Trolls surfaced and roamed the lands. One of their overflowing Vitality was so outrageous he didn¡¯t need to Appraise to know it was one of those Patriarchs. They weren¡¯t chasing Ebony but their purpose was clear.
They remained near their pool and preyed on those that remained in their duels. Just like what Ning Xin did but there was no guarantee they were going to give the Imperials a chance to escape. Their superiority in the number of Kings really made things difficult.
¡®My mana regen is still slow and my Will hasn¡¯t fully recovered from overdrafting.¡¯ The underwater Trolls didn¡¯t have very good sight and they weren¡¯t looking up at all.
He believed there was a good chance that the Trolls weren¡¯t able to retaliate well but there was no reason to underestimate their skillset. He had been immensely lucky and had the help of the Frost Elves to pull off the previous bomb landing right.
None of the current fighters would survive getting ambushed by such a high-level squad. Although, what¡¯s left was Lucas¡¯s duel, some unknown Imperial and the group fight Mallory was in charge of.
It was pretty amazing for Lucas to fight with his opponent for so long. They probably didn¡¯t have break time like he and Gao¡¯larg did. Both fighters were in a bloody and exhausted state. Lucas¡¯s opponent was also pretty good to have survived alone for so long when his buddy was killed for some time.
¡°Let¡¯s inform Koawe and see what he has to say.¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t like these underwater Trolls. Despite her desire to fight it was still a little obvious that she was afraid of the water and her previous experience of getting dragged down.
¡°I¡¯ll be more confident if we know they can¡¯t fly for sure,¡± Ebony replied. The Trolls would just be moving targets if that was the case. With enough distance, they should be able to dodge what these Trolls could throw at them unless the strongest-looking one was beyond his imagination. He wasn¡¯t even fully aware of a King¡¯s strength much less anything or anyone stronger.
It was pretty foolish to assume that Trolls completely couldn¡¯t use magic. Especially those that evolved so many times. They would have more Core Skills and if those work together as well as Ning Xin¡¯s, it wasn¡¯t simply a matter of addition.
They were in the middle of getting away when Ebony¡¯s mana dropped drastically. All his enhancements kicked in and his domain went into overdrive. None of them were able to get to full power before his shoulder got smashed.
¡°Xin, go ahead of me.¡± He said with urgency.
His robe¡¯s left sleeve was torn off but he wasn¡¯t in the mind to pick it up, only speeding up and increasing the output of his augmentations.
¡®He spit at me¡that¡¯s some crazy pressure.¡¯ Ebony had been sent spinning uncontrollably in mid-air and he was able to see the leader puffing his lips with water in his mouth. His bone cracked with that but the main damage was his sleeves getting torn off along with plenty of his flesh getting washed away.
Thankfully, he had been the target. Hector and Ning Xin wouldn¡¯t leave with such light injuries. The swordswoman didn¡¯t even sense anything before he got hit. She chased after him to catch him but he pushed her out of her momentary lag before she burst away with her flaming wings, ascending as much as she could.
The rest of the squad started to take it as a sport and spit high-pressure water jets as well. He mostly ignored those since it was easy to dodge. The one who hit him only snickered before letting his squad have their fun.
Thankfully, they didn¡¯t seem to care about him or Ning Xin. Hector was on land and already run off further. His burst of speed must have gotten far faster now.
¡®Hmm? This water¡¯s trying to freeze me?¡¯ Ebony noticed that the ¡®spit¡¯ he was hit by wasn¡¯t just spit or any old water. He guessed that it was some skill or Fortification that changed the water¡¯s properties. The water was extremely cold and could numb him but that was all. It was about as cold as the area in the Icy region in Hoarfrost Glade that he had been to.
He could shrug the cold off pretty easily but he already noticed that his flesh wasn¡¯t regrowing at all. ¡®Must be my current overdrafted state. I should get out of here quickly.¡¯
It wasn¡¯t long before Fifth Tide was back in sight. He made a call to Koawe and managed to find him with the healers relatively quickly.
¡°Can you heal me too?¡± He asked a healer who was not that busy. Most of the healers weren¡¯t that busy anymore.
Ning Xin practically threatened them to get ready for his visit before he got there. Hector wasn¡¯t around but he must be somewhere in the city.
The healer was used to looking at injuries and wasn¡¯t shocked but nothing he tried seemed to work. Ebony felt the mana trying to seep into him and work, it tickled but didn¡¯t do much. At least, the foreign water mana was gone and he felt that he got warmed up a bit. The healer wasn¡¯t capable of regrowing limbs but a bit of muscle tissue loss wasn¡¯t an issue. His bones could be seen so it wasn¡¯t just ¡®a bit¡¯ of muscle tissue.
¡°Koawe, the underwater Troll sent a squad over. Will the city be fine?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°They can¡¯t launch any more attacks on the city as the supremacy duel continues to run. But the others won¡¯t be able to escape even if they win. How¡¯s your shoulder?¡± Koawe just noticed his injury
¡°I just need some time, it won¡¯t affect my movements.¡± He was quite sure that if the Troll¡¯s water wasn¡¯t so special he would heal faster once his slowed regeneration recovers.
¡°I¡¯ll try to contact Korta and inform him. Maybe that squad went to join their battle.¡± Instead of speaking into his callstone, a tiny ice sparrow conjured on his raised wrist. Koawe summarised the situation in a single sentence before the tiny sparrow flapped its wings and turned transparent.
¡°They¡¯ll probably leave a few around,¡± Ebony added.
¡°If they do, I believe we can handle it.¡± Koawe made sense. If it was just those King ranked, they shouldn¡¯t be a huge issue when they were out of water. It might be different if they were underwater but they just had to make sure they weren¡¯t.
¡°Alright, we should have some time. The other battles don¡¯t look like they will end any time soon.¡± Ebony wanted to introduce and also talk to Hector but the man wasn¡¯t around.
Cap Dwarf was in a really bad state. Bad enough that he may never be able to walk even if he woke up. However, they weren¡¯t really nervous as long as they could find Yvette and Koawe was familiar with the Royals. At least, he needs quick treatment for temporary measures. A Grandmaster¡¯s Vitality wasn¡¯t for show, he should be able to recover fully since it was just physical injuries and relatively easy for the Life Queen to treat.
Korben didn¡¯t really look like he was in bad shape. At least, there was nothing crushed or missing.
¡®My entire sleeves got ripped off. It was starting to wear down but I guess I need higher quality equipment.¡¯ If Icicle hadn¡¯t grown tougher and had the ability to repair itself it wouldn¡¯t have been his weapon for so long. His enhanced strength was too high for most Rare quality materials. Sister Jing¡¯s workmanship was impressive but Icicle was made from a new dungeon¡¯s material with no alloys or metal. It was just plain old wood, barely considered a Rare quality material.
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In terms of quality of materials, his robe was probably made of far better stuff.
Rare materials were already some of the best stuff on the market and even then, they were not available in abundance. There were Epic materials from those higher-level dungeons but most don¡¯t make it onto the market. Those dungeon clearers all had their contracted smiths or companies that took most of the good materials. For items and materials that do make it onto the market, it was pure luck to see if it matched what one wanted. More so for a magic user who needed element-specific materials. It took even more luck to encounter it at the time it was sold.
Ebony didn¡¯t really worry about the price but there was a good chance those things were traded with higher quality mana ores. He didn''t exactly have Purples to trade with. No matter how much mana he could produce, the ¡®containers¡¯ for them were not easy to obtain. His Myriad Bracelet should actually be able to charge Purples, at a lower efficiency but it didn¡¯t really matter because it was nearly about to break. He would have to custom order one that is resistant to extreme temperatures. The bracelet was probably one of the toughest items around. It wasn¡¯t even that expensive¡to him.
Ebony would like to explore Tidal to find some rare materials. He might have to get good materials himself if he didn¡¯t have the luck to encounter interesting materials. Mature Epic ranked dungeons were a tad too dangerous for him and there were no immature Epic dungeons.
¡®There he is.¡¯ Ebony saw the shadow in the air. Hector leapt off the cliff and landed some distance away from the camp down on the ground. Well, there wasn¡¯t much of a camp remaining. Most people were still making their way back up the cliff. If only they weren¡¯t so lazy and scaled the cliff like a rock climber they wouldn¡¯t take so long.
The ground beneath them was going to disappear at any time so the army was already rushing but there were too many people for a carved-in tiny little cliffside stairway for millions to utilise.
¡°That human boy¡Navin¡¯s descendent? I remember him, so he managed to grow up¡¡± Koawe muttered.
¡°Hector, over here.¡± Ebony used sound magic to call out.
¡°Yo! I¡¯ve had my fill. Let¡¯s go back, Mal¡¯s in danger!¡±
¡°Relax, the ring of light would supposedly stop anyone outside from interfering,¡± Ebony replied. ¡°Where did you run off to?¡±
¡°Raid some food stocks? Couldn¡¯t even fill myself up on Tova. All I ate was dungeon meat for the past few years, I can actually sense some odd energy inside me now. Thankfully, it doesn¡¯t seem so troublesome to remove.¡± Hector had never fully believed that dungeon flesh wasn¡¯t fit for consumption. People have been depending on dungeon spawns for food to stay within dungeons for an extended period of time.
¡°Not troublesome?¡± Ning Xin seemed surprised. She took some time to ¡®cleanse¡¯ herself of all the blood spiders¡¯ instincts but those probably weren¡¯t dungeon creatures.
¡®He¡¯s probably more sensitive to ambient essence compared to most and he¡¯s more efficient at expelling foreign mana?¡¯ Ebony speculated.
¡°Yeah, just gotta take a poop for the next few days.¡± Hector gulped and corrected his wording.
Now that Hector got so close and Ebony wasn¡¯t as groggy from over-taxing his mana, he was able to sense the Prince¡¯s aura. It made his mana senses and mental state churn a little. He looked at Koawe who seemed to be in deep thought and Ning Xin but they didn¡¯t seem affected. ¡®My regeneration is almost back to normal but they aren¡¯t reacting, is it just me?¡¯
He probed Hector¡¯s strength by tetting him. It wasn¡¯t to see how much power he had but to see how he moved, from his stance to how he raised his arm. It gave him the same nauseating feeling.
¡°You¡¯re a mess. Go take a nap.¡± He spoke out loud.
¡°Hah¡was it so obvious? I thought I did well to hide it. Nah, I can¡¯t sleep now. I won''t be able to wake up for a long time. How could you tell?¡± Hector didn¡¯t deny his exhaustion.
A tiny ice cube conjured a metre above Hector and dropped to land on his shoulder. Ebony was more than a little surprised, he couldn¡¯t conjure ice a whole metre from Hector¡¯s body. He could conjure a spike of ice right in front of Ning Xin¡¯s face without much of an issue. In his domain, he could directly conjure ice or flames on her skin or clothes with some additional mental effort.
The ice cube landed on Hector¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Sluggish reaction speed.¡± He answered while pondering on the nauseating feeling.
¡°...I¡¯ll just throw one punch to vent, then I¡¯ll go to sleep for a week or something.¡± Hector actually hid it really well as he didn¡¯t look or even sound tired at all.
¡®He¡¯s tensed up and his mind probably can¡¯t think straight right now.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t in any rush to catch up with Hector.
¡°We pulled the Patriarch away. Deal with the rest.¡± An ice sparrow showed itself on Koawe¡¯s shoulder and spoke with Korta¡¯s voice before dispersing.
They didn¡¯t manage to get an introduction in, a nod in each other¡¯s direction and they burst off towards the battle. Koawe leapt onto Arti despite his worries for the bird. Arti was pretty fast but only slightly faster than Ning Xin in flight. If they were on land, they could keep up with Arti¡¯s speed with relative ease. The bird wasn¡¯t built around speed despite her Grandmaster rank.
Hector hopped on too. ¡°Hey! Let me! Please take care of me afterwards!¡±
Ebony and Ning Xin had been running on the ground but they quickly skidded to a stop and took flight.
¡°He¡¯s going to mega punch isn¡¯t he?¡± Ning Xin vocalised.
¡°That or something stronger.¡±
¡°Hey, it''s Mega Panch!¡± Hector punched his hands into the air and complained, annoying Arti and causing her to shift around.
¡°.....¡± Neither of them had a reply. He saw Koawe talk to Hector but they accelerated and he wasn¡¯t able to hear them as the strong winds disrupted mana vibrations. They closed in on them when they were about to reach their previous spot.
¡°Give me a foothold!¡± Hector stepped off Arti without warning. Ebony made him a foothold and got onto Arti with Ning Xin who dispersed the heat in her blood wings before getting close.
Koawe defended them from the water spits that came their way. They were no longer just spits, but the Trolls had water in their palms. It was clear they could control water mana to some extent as they threw those water balls as if they were cannon shots.
They froze full metres away from Arti before accelerating back. Koawe was very likely to be Grandmaster rank but these water tribe King ranked Trolls weren¡¯t much of a danger out of water.
¡°One moment, I¡¯ll put a simple curse on them. Keep their attention and try to make them stay together for me.¡± Koawe float towards Hector and put his hands on the Prince¡¯s shoulder.
Ebony watched as the Frost Elf¡¯s casting glove darkened. He put out his hands to stop Ning Xin, afraid that her fire magic would scare the Trolls away and cause them to scatter.
There was a deep hole that remained, presumably their escape route and where they got water from. It helped that they gathered there. He cast a ring of flaming petals near the edge of his control to fence them in. The Trolls clearly didn¡¯t like what they saw and attacked all the petals that rained down.
He had to thank them for it. The water balls froze added bulk to the fence and started to grow. It wouldn¡¯t keep them trapped but it was a nice distraction. They stopped tossing water as they weren¡¯t full-fledged water mages and could only watch their attacks freeze. Some of them went around punching the frozen walls that grew but their attempts didn¡¯t last long as his petals continued to fall. None of these Trolls wielded weapons and could only swipe their hands to blow the petals away but he imbued his Will to force them to fall with the help of a wide area Firm Path.
Koawe only needed a minute and he bought it.
¡®That¡¯s not runic¡¡¯ Black symbols streamed out of Koawe¡¯s hands or gloves and the black stream of symbols flowed towards all 7 Trolls. The string of black symbols moved so fast that there was little chance that he could dodge it if he was anywhere close to Koawe. The Troll¡¯s reaction was to slap the black string aside but it did nothing. The symbols crawled over the Trolls'' skin.
¡°Alright, their physical defences should have dropped by about 40% and they shouldn¡¯t be able to regenerate any health for some time. Your turn.¡±
¡®Reduce physical defences and stop health regeneration? That''s a powerful curse. Curses can directly reduce defence, so it¡¯s not some elemental magic that mages use?¡¯ Ebony wondered if he could dodge it and found that it would be impossible but the casting time left a lot to be desired so he wasn¡¯t that worried about the curse. However, he was intrigued by what would be considered a not-so-simple curse.
¡°Stay back!¡± Hector smashed his fists together causing a dull but loud ring to reverberate. He didn¡¯t have any gloves or gauntlet on so it was just his bare fist.
¡®Fire, water, wind, earth, lightning and?¡¯ Ebony remembered the elements that Hector had shown before but he wasn¡¯t able to see or sense the sixth. He doubted that Hector used any less than 6 currently. The nauseating feeling from Hector¡¯s mana dialled down, he finally understood that the Prince¡¯s mana was just jumbled up because they were so erratic in their properties. The elemental enhancement mage¡¯s natural mana could be conjured into so many different elements with just a thought and that was unthinkable. The moment they segregated and settled down into a single element, Hector¡¯s mana¡¯s erraticness disappeared and Ebony couldn¡¯t feel anything out of place. Luckily, Hector¡¯s mana regeneration wasn¡¯t that high in comparison to him. He shouldn¡¯t have this nauseous feeling once his mind fully recovered from the overtaxation.
It was just as wondrous to watch how he had essentially no casting time required.
¡°TWIN MEGA PAAANCH!¡±
Chapter 217: Jetfins
Ning Xin¡¯s concentration spiked and time slowed down for her. She could see Hector¡¯s moves in the past but not how his punch worked.
¡®Fast!¡¯ Hector was still moving in her heightened alertness. The sheer physical prowess he had was concerning, she wasn¡¯t sensitive enough to the changes in mana so she wasn¡¯t sure how Hector was dealing with such intense mana enhancement. Even if he had maxed Fortifications to resist mana poisoning, it didn¡¯t seem enough to deal with such a chaotic mix of elements. Unless his Physique was more refined than she imagined and he had some skills that helped with expelling the dangers of mana poisoning.
Hector looked as if he was punching at twice the speed that an unclassed human could and this was in her vision where everything slowed. He jumped off the platform Ebony made for him so that his body was parallel to the ground. Two black spheres were conjured in front of him at chest level and he punched into it, withdrawing his fist and punching it again.
In his third punch, she sensed fire mana and in the fifth, she sensed lightning mana. Hector jammed each element into the spheres with each punch but the black spheres was already flattened into a thin disc by his third punch. It also expanded as it thinned out. By his fourth punch, the original black sphere became a round black film that could cover Hector¡¯s whole body.
By his sixth punch, the black screen could cover Arti¡¯s wing span.
She learned to read a person¡¯s body movements and could tell the seventh punch was the last one. Whether or not it was to unleash the congregation of elemental mana or to add another element, she wasn¡¯t sure.
Both of his fists punched out at the same time. She was sure Ebony was thinking that there would not be much power within both punches but he shouldn¡¯t complain if it was more of a spell than a punch.
Three Trolls remained near their entrance but there were another two that remained close to each other. These Trolls didn¡¯t know what was coming and only reacted after the black screen extended as a ray of darkness.
They reacted too late. Otherwise, they should be able to dodge it.
Melt? Disintegrate?
It was close to erasure as the ground was completely torn. She could only take note as the world moved slowly for her. As expected from King ranked Trolls but they didn¡¯t die immediately. The black ray of darkness vanished as quickly as it came, she didn¡¯t even blink but was barely able to chase the ray of darkness with her eyes.
Her spike in concentration was exhausted but she saw what she wanted.
¡°They got pushed into the sea.¡± She stated.
Compared to the past destructiveness of the move, the current version was more ¡®piercing¡¯ than ¡®destructive¡¯ but it only appeared that way because of how tough the Trolls were. The other battles were completely disrupted due to the rings of light.
¡°I got it. There¡¯s two more, can you distract them?¡± Koawe volunteered to take care of all five that got knocked back into the sea.
¡°The earth¡¯s repairing.¡± She was more than happy to stay away from the water and had no issue taking one of them on. The Troll¡¯s lagging reaction gave her the confidence to win an actual fight but their durability was off the charts considering they were cursed and had their defences reduced.
Ebony didn¡¯t stop her and they took one each. Koawe should have his methods of handling the rest that got pushed into the sea.
Arti swooped in to catch Hector¡¯s sleeping figure. The careless man must really trust Ebony, perhaps she was included. She was never particularly close with Hector but he was also one of the first few friends she made. She had some level of trust for him but not enough to fall asleep right here and trust him to protect her.
Ebony was a bit too paranoid as he stayed within a few girs away from her. She didn¡¯t mind but was he planning to draw the remaining 2 in to fight together?
¡®It¡¯s a bit reassuring...¡¯
¡°Your mana¡¯s not back right, stay closer. I¡¯ll protect you.¡± She teased.
???
¡°Sure, I¡¯ve got your back.¡± Ebony took it well. With his current state even controlling a few Glacial Models was a problem, his domain was weaker so he didn¡¯t think he could handle the Troll directly. He could try figuring out what was wrong with Battle Song as well.
Using gravity to assist her was a bit difficult because of her equipment but he could still slow down their enemies with it.
They were shaken to see their allies getting sunk but they recognised the threat coming after them and reacted in time.
However, they were powerless without water and could only use their arms to protect themselves. A small cut on them burned them so badly they cried and panicked. Both of them rushed to the closest escape route to the sea but only the one they came out of remained. The other entrances were in the midst of repair.
Ebony had no chance of breaking through to the sea even with his strongest attack. He had no time to ask or consider if he could take the punch. It actually brought into perspective how much of a physical beast Commander Wil was, the old man¡¯s landing caused shocks that reached the sea and even made sea water splashing up.
He didn¡¯t let his guard down despite how clumsy the Trolls appeared. Their giant opponents quickly figured that their higher levels didn¡¯t mean much when they weren¡¯t underwater.
Ebony quickly expended some mana to freeze the gush of water they blew out to envelope themselves. Xin ignored the ice and slashed through them. These underwater Trolls got hurt pretty badly now that their defences were reduced. Their clumsy movements were getting better over time but Xin only got faster and stronger while they got slower from weight and cold.
Her lightning seemed to work best and she dialled it up. Ice elemental enhancement at a certain strength actually made lightning hurt more but it didn¡¯t increase in effectiveness against him when he cast Frostblaze Augmentation.
Even so, he wasn¡¯t sure if his freezing made any difference to Xin¡¯s lightning. They didn¡¯t conduct enough experiments to tell.
¡®Ice¡¯s not working so well, they must have naturally high cold resistance. I¡¯ll sharpen the edge of the internal freezing.¡¯ He noticed that their movements didn¡¯t change much from the freezing but he was already aware that cold resistance didn¡¯t directly translate to ice resistance. He was able to manipulate the ice in their bodies to some extent as they didn¡¯t have a strong general magic resistance. The ice forming within their bodies started to stab at different muscles and jut out at weird angles.
The Trolls realised they weren¡¯t regenerating and they were taking more damage than they expected but neither of their opponents let them back underwater.
¡°JUMP!¡± Koawe yelled.
Ebony had been alert the entire time but his reaction speed could never beat Ning Xin. She had already burst out her wings and ascended. Phantom¡¯s Flicker actually didn¡¯t give much vertical height comparatively.
It allowed both Trolls to escape but they didn¡¯t really care about that.
¡°Get as far away as you can!¡±
They didn¡¯t hesitate to follow the order. Arti and Hector had already flown away earlier so that was one less worry.
The self-firing bows that had disappeared for a long time reappeared beside them and charged themselves up with intense mana. Some of them rapidly fired while 5 charged up for a power shot. Two of these bows were blasted with a jet of water, they couldn¡¯t resist being blown away.
Ebony snatched Ning Xin out of the air and pushed themselves off with Phantom¡¯s Flicker. Directly ascending and going past Fifth Tide. Only those magic towers were reliable but the soldiers'' reaction probably couldn¡¯t keep up. At least all the soldiers were within the city barrier.
¡°Keep going! A flock of flying fishes.¡± Ning Xin grabbed onto his collar tightly, she looked back and observed the threat. Ebony wasn¡¯t about to ask if those were considered a flock or a school.
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¡°They¡¯re catching up!¡±
¡°What? Any Troll on board? Are they chasing us?¡± Ebony was a bit shocked but not much, Koawe¡¯s reaction was enough.
¡°One, King. Tamer. But those fishes are the fastest fishes on Elcra and they King ranked as well. In the air, they are only about 15 to 20 times slower depending on how mature they are as a King rank. If they reach the Emperor rank and full maturity, their speed in the air is only half that in water. I heard Jetfin were delicious but they are all Emperor ranked when fully matured so I didn¡¯t think I was going to cook them so soon!¡±
¡°You¡¯re not going to cook them, we¡¯re about to get cooked!¡± He got a bit exasperated at the gluttonous girl. ¡®15 times slower and they are catching up? Fastest fish indeed¡the stat gap is too big.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t forget that he was two evolutions and hundreds of levels away from these handicapped fishes.
¡®I don¡¯t believe they only sent one Troll, Koawe¡¯s probably surrounded¡where should we run? The plains are a no-go, even a level 300 monster could cause some panic. Bubble Hills, we can go underground and sister Jing¡¯s there.¡¯
¡°Don¡¯t go underground! Those flying fishes are known to use earth magic and build large underwater burrows.¡± Ning Xin seemed to have read his mind.
Ebony didn¡¯t have time to think of a new destination and went towards Hoarfrost Glades. He wasn¡¯t about to bring a flock of King-ranked fishes to Arcta so he obviously rerouted. He had no idea if the Guardian Beast, Milly could handle an entire flock while protecting a village full of non-fighters. Perhaps she would be unharmed but there was no guarantee the village would be safe. All the strong Frost Elves he knew were already at the battlefront and he had no idea if there were any more powerhouses present.
No matter, his feet pushed him away before his mind could consider the possibilities.
Ning Xin shot flaming blood lances behind them. The situation must be worse than he imagined, it was clear they were really being chased. How unlucky.
¡°Keep your head close and don¡¯t bite your tongue,¡± Ebony warned calmly. He descended when he reached the snowy forest. He was in his element, the forest.
The forest was a bit naked around these parts as the trees weren¡¯t leafy and didn¡¯t provide much coverage. Ebony sensed the fluctuation in mana but he didn¡¯t evade preemptively. No attack came yet and monsters were usually better at making on-the-spot decisions through instinct.
They turned illusory as Frigid Refraction hid them. 7 copies of both of them were spawned into existence as they split up with similar transparency. The only problem was that he was obviously the fastest but he also had Waning Presence while the Models wouldn¡¯t the moment they escaped his range of mana and they wouldn¡¯t be able to be controlled once they were out of the range of his Will.
Their only command was to run around and try to attract attention for as long as they could last.
¡°Xin, stop the retaliation for now.¡±
Ning Xin told him that there were close to 800 of those flying fishes which was way more than he expected.
¡°So many high level fishes?¡± Ebony was still as calm as ever. Glacial Models popped out near him every few seconds and he zigzagged with them.
¡°That tamer is shouting something.¡± Ning Xin reported, unafraid of biting her tongue with his stable movements.
They were all moving at such high speeds that sounds weren¡¯t exactly reaching him, not even into his range of senses.
The distance between them was slowly reducing.
¡°Stop wasting your mana, she¡¯s locked onto us¡me.¡± Ning Xin seemed pretty sure of herself. His Models were quickly destroyed due to their slow speed. They didn¡¯t even slow their pursuers down.
¡°...The mark. She must be following the shaman¡¯s mark, did you kill anyone notable?¡± Ebony quickly recalled the forgettable mark that was placed on them after killing a number of Trolls.
¡°Not that I can recall. Maybe Vigiot¡¯s heir?¡± At least she recognised that Baldur was stronger than the average Troll.
¡°...Gash¡¯ah. Gao¡¯larg mentioned. It might be her. Maybe a family member or a relative.¡± The mention of Baldur reminded him of Gao¡¯larg¡¯s warning.
Pressured by the chase, his speed increased considerably but the distance between their pursuers continued to shorten. They were less than 10 km apart and water jets stormed towards them.
He only just got to denser parts of the forest but the Jetfins didn¡¯t care and ravaged the lands, slicing through the forest with ease. Snow and earth didn¡¯t stand a chance against those high-pressure water jets. The jets of water were only finger-width thick. The distance gave him time to react so none hit him. ¡®These can slice me in half¡¡¯
¡°How big are each of these jetfins?¡±
¡°Their maturity rate is said to be extremely slow for monsters that can reach their matured levels within weeks just by natural absorption of the world¡¯s essence. They can take a full decade to reach Emperor rank and still have room for growth, unlike other wild monsters who take 2 weeks to a month to reach their natural level range. Their flesh gets more tender after heating, it would melt on the tongue to produce a sweet and savoury taste that¡¡± Ning Xin went on and on.
Each fish was only about the size of a bluefin tuna from his previous world with the one the Troll was riding being almost 50% bigger. She mentioned that the tamer probably only controlled the one being ridden as these Jetfins followed the pack leader¡¯s orders.
¡°The taste analysis can wait.¡± The good thing was that they might not be chased by all Jetfins if the leader was taken down but that was hard to accomplish when the leader and Troll were surrounded by hundreds of Jetfins.
¡°Go faster! I¡¯ll try to cast my core skill on you.¡± She wasn¡¯t disappointed about getting interrupted in her ingredient knowledge sharing.
He got faster and faster but the jets of water came at an increasing pace and they were getting more accurate as the distance between them shrunk. Fluid Blitz unknowingly kicked up and boosted his physical stats at the expense of stamina. It didn¡¯t fully activate so he got about half its max effectiveness and saved him the stamina. Phantom¡¯s Flicker consumed too much stamina so he couldn¡¯t afford to use too much.
He mentally apologised to the Endurance stat that he pretty much neglected.
His life force wasn¡¯t for others to control and he didn¡¯t really gain anywhere close to a percent of Ning Xin¡¯s actual buff when she did it for herself but he was beginning to be able to keep the distance between their pursuers constant.
The forest got denser and the Jetfins¡¯ aim only got worse. Sadly, those water jets didn¡¯t kick up snow at all.
¡°I¡¯m going to jump into a snow pit.¡± He warned. There was a region that was similar to a snow sea before reaching the Icy regions but it was more like a large lake as it didn¡¯t separate the whole of the region within the Glades.
He was going to run out of foliage and had long made his way here where the earth was much deeper. As for why the Jetfins weren¡¯t descending to use earth magic, he was hoping they were just lucky.
He already mapped out the area with Mental Map; he could run under the snow as long as he knew the general direction he wanted to go. It would slow them down quite a bit but he was sure he could go deep enough that they couldn¡¯t be spotted from above. As for the water jets, he could still sense them the moment they disrupted the mana and air vibrations. A thin layer of mana was sent out to the edges of his maximum range to alert him when something entered and it gave him enough time to react.
The only problem was how accurate or sensitive the Troll was to the shamanic mark on them.
¡®The icy region is dangerous, there¡¯s no cover there and most of the monsters should be hiding now that winter¡¯s passed¡¡¯ Ebony could use the Glade¡¯s monsters to help him but the places that he had been to in the Icy region was very limited and the monsters in the places he had been to were either instantly frozen to death by Gen or weak enough that he could escape from them 200 levels ago. Unless he went to the most dangerous places, he didn¡¯t see how the environment would endanger the Jetfins and Tamer.
He dived into the snow lake without hesitation when it came into sight and drastically slowed down to make sure they weren¡¯t visible. If anything dived in with them, he was confident he had the upper hand blind unless the Jetfins could utilise snow magic or perception.
¡°It¡¯s quiet.¡± He commented after 5 whole minutes of silence. There weren¡¯t even any attacks to probe for his location.
¡°They might have spread out around the entire pit and are waiting for us. We slowed down, they must be above us right now.¡± Ning Xin guessed, she was completely blinded and clung to him tighter.
Luckily, this snow pit wasn¡¯t just a hole in the ground. There was a slope up so they weren¡¯t trapped with no exit. He wouldn¡¯t have jumped in if he didn¡¯t know that.
¡°There¡¯s only a stretch of plains once we exit, then we¡¯ll reach the icy region. That¡¯s the biggest region in the glades but I don¡¯t know the area well. We¡¯ll stay and rest here as long as we can, till they lose patience. I¡¯ll be depending on your intuition on when to start moving.¡± Ebony knew that there was no better time to rest. At the very least, he wanted his mana regeneration to be back.
¡°I¡¯ll run by myself later.¡±
¡°You¡¯re too obvious with all the fire you need to enhance yourself to keep up.¡±
Ning Xin¡¯s speed wouldn¡¯t lose to him if she had the time to gather her life force and buff herself to the limit but she couldn¡¯t maintain it for that long and neither could Ebony with the current flawed Phantom¡¯s Flicker. She would also be an extremely obvious target that he couldn¡¯t hide with his current skills.
¡®Oh, it got refined to negative 300% no wonder I got noticeably faster. The stamina cost is about half the original now so I can use it dozens of times at full output before it¡¯s limited by my stamina regeneration. My feet aren¡¯t in pain either, only sore.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know if he wanted this opportunity to push his improvements.
The fire mage asked for permission to melt some of the snow and he didn¡¯t let her even though the snow pit¡¯s snow was considerably dense. A small cave wouldn¡¯t make the snow collapse on them and nothing would happen even if it did. It might give their location away but they could always move away. Instead, he pushed the snow away with a bit of ice to compact them, giving themselves some space and breathing room.
Of course, he was depending on the stored ice capsules in his lungs and she was depending on her mask. Even for him, it was very uncomfortable to hold his breath but also have enough air. It was unnatural.
Less than 20 minutes passed, which to be honest was way more than he had hoped for before jets of water started slicing the area. He led Ning Xin further away. It was not any harder to dodge despite the randomness of hundreds of jetstreams. It also confirmed that the tamer didn¡¯t have their precise location.
With a few more Flickers, he burst out of the pit and sped towards the icy region.
Chapter 218: Numbing
Ning Xin pushed herself off of him the moment they burst out of the snow.
It knocked both of them apart and saved them from getting washed like dirt on a plate.
Hiding had never really been an option. Thanks to the wide area of the snow lake, their pursuers didn¡¯t manage to surround them well as they didn¡¯t have a clue as to how large the pit was.
It was hard to say who was faster but Ebony had the advantage as he was familiar with treading snow while Ning Xin almost tripped. She vapourised the snow in her path so that it was no longer a problem.
¡°Mount them!¡± Ning Xin yelled when they realised that they were getting caught up in less than a minute.
Ebony didn¡¯t hesitate to jump and did exactly what she advised. Those fishes had monstrous reflexes but nothing a little gravity magic couldn¡¯t fix. Ning Xin had more trouble as the Jetfins appeared to be wary of her to some extent. Annoyed, she sent flaming lances towards them. Only 2 of them were lucky enough to hit the wings of Jetfins but the flying fishes protected themselves with a dense layer of water, barely receiving any damage. The tiny bit of lightning made them shiver for a moment but nothing more.
He quickly yanked her over successfully, the Jetfin under him was trying to stop him from freezing his butt onto it. A battle of mana wasn¡¯t something he was afraid of and this film of water wasn¡¯t exactly the best element to resist freezing.
¡°Don¡¯t kill it, Jetfins will not attack their own kind. Unless that tamer¡¯s command can override their natural instincts.¡± She explained why she even bothered mounting.
With her sitting in front of him, he did his best to prevent the flying fish from slamming into the ground or shaking them off. The good thing was that the streams of water stopped momentarily.
The Jetfin slowed down a lot and allowed the others to catch up and surround them, it was only a matter of time before they were shot at. He found it hard to believe these fishes couldn¡¯t hit them without harming the Jetfin under them.
He put his arms around Ning Xin¡¯s waist and cast Phantom¡¯s Flicker onto the furthest Jetfin. He was internally shocked that dozens of Jetfins reacted and even cast their water jets at them in the middle of his flicker. His body twisted awkwardly while he pushed Ning Xin¡¯s head around. Narrowly evading them and successfully attracting himself to his target.
¡°DIE!¡± The Troll deemed it necessary to change the language she spoke.
A Tremor Stomp landed on his target¡¯s tail area and forced it to lurch forward in pain. The burst of speed didn¡¯t last as he had to leap away immediately. The tamer and her mount were the fastest and stabbed at his previous location with her stone-tipped spear.
¡®Around 800 shields¡I hope the tamer¡¯s stupid.¡¯
Ebony Flickered with a conjured platform, deeper into the Glades. The Jetfins matched him which was great. He stayed close to them and always found a way to be hidden in the direction where the least Jetfins had him in their sight. Frigid Refraction was really helping as their sight didn¡¯t appear to be very good, the slight hesitation they had in attacking their own kind was all he needed.
He could only hop from one to another for ten minutes before the tamer ordered the bulk of the fish to retreat. Although the Jetfin that the tamer was sitting on was the fastest Ebony had far better 3 dimensional manoeuvrability compared to a winged creature that usually swam. Without cover, it made things much harder for him to stay out of sight.
He was too elusive for the tamer and it clearly angered the Troll to unending degrees.
Sadly, the tamer was mostly screaming things in their own language and he wasn¡¯t able to understand anything she was saying other than die or that she was going to kill them.
¡®I got faster again, did my skill refine again? I can¡¯t keep this up, the stamina consumption is too high. I have to reduce the consumption further but I can¡¯t lose any speed...¡¯ Ebony found that his speed was almost the same as some of the slower Jetfins. He purposely changed directions sharply as the Jetfins had a hard time slowing themselves down before turning. He was fortunate they weren¡¯t familiar with air resistance instead of water but he could already tell that this advantage wouldn¡¯t last. The Jetfins were also improving as they understood the differences between swimming and flying.
Their speed wasn¡¯t changing much but they were getting noticeably better at turning and braking over such a short time. Perhaps these Jetfins were practising when they were taking a break.
Ning Xin sent her blood halos to slice at them and she was relatively accurate but the damage done was only shallow cuts on their scales or light burns.
A hundred or so Jetfins surrounded them in a cylindrical formation with the tamer and his mount right behind them. He braked as hard as he could before slipping out of their encirclement but the rest of the Jetfins who stayed a distance back would not let the chance go.
¡®Their aim is getting better and they are locking more and more possible paths of evasion through teamwork or natural hunting instincts?¡¯ Ebony was still as calm as always. It hadn¡¯t gotten to the point where he felt that he couldn¡¯t slip through their one type of linear attack method.
The tamer screamed again when he managed to evade hundreds of high-pressure beams at the same time.
¡°UP!¡± Ning Xin grabbed him tighter.
His Will flipped gravity for him and he flickered up, narrowly slipping through dozens of Jetfins that charged at him at an accelerated pace.
¡®Did she buff them or did they use some skill that gives them a burst of speed.¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t let himself fall into a trance if he wasn¡¯t sure of his opponent''s abilities.
¡°!!!¡± His Will yanked him to the side as another hundred Jetfins were already waiting for him to ascend.
His mana was currently in a deficit and he didn¡¯t like it.
???
¡°Not good. They¡¯re getting used to flying.¡± Ning Xin warned.
Ebony was on her back, letting his legs rest and his mana recover. He was forced to experiment and make slightly more drastic changes to make his body learn how to refine his flawed movement skill. Tearing his own calves was a poor move.
No matter how fast he regenerated, any amount of lag would kill them. He was glad that Ning Xin¡¯s reflexes were so ridiculously fast that she got him out of a bad spot and flung him onto her back. It wasn¡¯t exactly the best ride as she ran on the ground.
¡°What are our chances of escaping?¡± He asked, she seemed extremely familiar with the Jetfins.
¡°Zero. They are known as the rulers of the sea region around Tova. Creatures that we would have trouble against even if we were at the same level and evolution. You sped up noticeably earlier but they¡¯re also speeding up, likely flying in the air for the first time. That tamer acts angry but was allowing the Jetfins to acclimate and didn''t push us from the start, we would¡¯ve died ten times over before Koawe even warned us if they truly wanted to kill us.¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony didn¡¯t reply but he imagined that the tamer simply wanted to see them or Ning Xin suffer if they could really kill them that easily.
¡°Are they heat resistant? We¡¯re about to get into the icy region, the ground would turn to superheated steam when you run past in your enhanced state. The earth is at an unknown depth as well so we wouldn¡¯t have to worry about earth magic.¡± Ebony noticed that the Jetfins were flying through physical means, those that didn¡¯t attack them were actually regenerating mana so a battle of attrition wasn¡¯t really in his favour either.
¡°They can be found sleeping in underwater volcanoes. I think there¡¯s a variant that manipulates lava. Lightning had some effect but mine is too weak. Actually, I heard the mature Jetfins stay near the surface of the sea whenever there¡¯s a storm and fly up to get struck by lightning to train their resistance.¡±
¡°They are intelligent? Are they the type of creature the Empire calls aberrants?¡± Ebony was a bit shocked at how spartan these fishes were.
Monsters usually grow naturally by absorbing the world¡¯s essence but these Jetfins were actually capable of training. The Imperials didn¡¯t have a very good understanding of different types of monsters when it came to strength. What they called elite or aberrant monsters were those monsters that had way higher stats than normal monsters of the same level but it was a very crude way of classification.
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This was probably those monsters that learnt to absorb more ambient essence than the natural amount that entered their bodies. To do the opposite and remove the world¡¯s essence was how a monster became sapient. It was different from intelligence as there were tons of monsters that were intelligent but had no sapience. A Class seemed to be the indicator to not be considered a monster, like Gen.
The Jetfins could be tamed and didn¡¯t appear to have their own thoughts. They might just be an intelligent race.
¡°They herd creatures and have their own underwater farms. I didn¡¯t think they had a tamer capable of getting one under control.¡±
Ning Xin zipped around as the Jetfins dived at them and caused shocks and craters to appear. She drastically changed directions the moment there was no snow under them and only ice.
Ebony didn¡¯t know the region well so he didn¡¯t really know where to go either. The last time he was here, he had been physically blinded for over a year.
Ning Xin did her best to evade the increasing amount of attacks with his support and defence magic but the Jetfins began to attack with greater enthusiasm. The tamer didn¡¯t charge at them with her mount that could outmanoeuvre them. She was either too cautious or understood that her strength was controlling monsters and not fighting herself.
¡°Keep running in this direction.¡± She said softly. Ebony found her tone different from usual. She seemed really calm despite her assessment that they had no chance of escape.
¡°Is that what your Intuition is telling you?¡± He transmitted with sound magic.
She shook her head slightly.
He had gravity flipped around them but it was impossible to keep up with their running speed since he was manipulating surrounding gravity. He could only cheat and conjure ice to use the gravity mana within but it was miniscule and didn¡¯t have much power behind them. Rather than increasing gravity, decreasing and flipping it around usually worked better against opponents when his strongest pull wasn¡¯t enough.
The Jetfins were holding back less and less as his Imperishable Frost Scales with Chaotic Repulsive Membrane, durability runes at max compression simply melted away and added volume to their water jets.
Two hundred of them sprayed water over a massive area far above the other Jetfins. It cooled the invisible superheated steam and froze the surroundings even more. The Jetfins didn¡¯t even need a layer of water barrier to protect themselves from the cold. The increasing cold as they went deeper into Hoarfrost Glade did nothing to the Jetfins.
Hundreds of Jetfins gained a burst of speed and passed over them, they descended till they were meters off the ground and smoothly turned around.
¡°Don¡¯t get too absorbed into training, okay?¡± Ning Xin had put him down so that he had the freedom to move and deflect water that splashed onto the ground and shot at them. They swiftly drifted but there was no opening and they found themselves coming to a complete stop.
¡°What?¡± He didn¡¯t know why she got so random.
¡°Don¡¯t worry yourself sick. Make sure you eat on time. Get some actual sleep once in a while.¡±
¡°...You k-¡±
¡°Don¡¯t get yourself kidnapped¡please be there when I wake up.¡±
Ebony¡¯s Will reflexively built layers and layers of shields. His body moved towards her and Icicle was placed in front of him. His robe was fully scaled up and every possible defensive means of his were raised to the limits.
¡°Prey gets more tender after chasing it for a bit.¡± The Tamer¡¯s voice was right beside his ear as a spear pierced through Icicle. His domain barely slowed down the bigger Jetfin.
The spear didn¡¯t even slow down when it came into contact with his bones but his entire body was lifted and rammed back, hitting Ning Xin. It pierced his lungs and came out through his back, stabbing the swordswoman together with him like a skewer. Neither of them could follow the leader Jetfin¡¯s movements.
The swordswoman actually swung both her swords to parry but it didn¡¯t make it in time and Ebony had long been pierced. Conjured hands tried to pull her aside but dozens of Jetfins were chomping on them as they got conjured. He was well into overdrafting mana but even one Jetfin was a problem not to mention dozens and hundreds just laying back. They were even fencing them in with their water jets freezing up into a dome.
The tamer¡¯s laugh was lost on him. He could only focus on the fact that the spear hit right where her heart was. Her bodysuit¡¯s back stretched but didn¡¯t tear. In fact, the front didn¡¯t tear either, it just stretched but didn¡¯t stop the spear. The blunt spear didn''t tear her suit like Mr. Kidnapper could.
The Troll swiped her spear and let them course through the air but her arm up to her upper half was mostly frozen together with her spear. They broke the flimsy ice dome with ease and he grabbed Ning Xin¡¯s legs, she wrapped her arms around his neck right after she got stabbed. Ebony wasn¡¯t able to notice that she already expected that to happen and conveniently placed herself there.
He didn¡¯t take notice of anything else as he had fallen into another trance.
Slumber Survival Instincts wasn¡¯t making his body escape in the direction Ning Xin had pointed out. Their figures flickered and he appeared right in front of the tamer that saw him coming.
???
The tamer, Gash¡¯ah squeezed the Jetfin under her to ascend since she hadn''t gotten rid of the ice freezing her bone deep on her weapon arm and torso but both the tamer and Jetfin froze as a soul-piercing roar hammered into them. Every single Jetfin dropped like flies as their wings stopped flapping.
Most of them flinched and tried to regain control over their twitching wings and bodily control but they couldn¡¯t even think straight as the soft, piercing roar echoed within their tiny brains over and over again.
Gash¡¯ah and her ride did better as the race of warriors reflexively kicked the ground and pushed both her and her mount back the moment they landed.
She twisted her hip so hard she swung the body of her dear Jetfin to slap aside the man who carried the body of her son¡¯s killer with the fish¡¯s giant tail. Her unfrozen hand placed on her ears but the roar continued to ring in her head, her very body trembled but quickly got under control as she enveloped herself with condensed vitality. It was something else that hurt, it was extremely uncomfortable and she didn¡¯t know what was hurting.
The man who looked as thin as a stick in her opinion disappeared again, annoying her with his disappearing act again. She grit her teeth and brings her vitality to cover her frozen arm when he reappears to kick at her. She didn¡¯t want to lose her arm as her regenerative prowess wasn¡¯t that good. The warrior¡¯s instinct within raised the threat level of the kick to the limits.
Internally shocked at how much of her vitality got blasted apart but at least her frozen arm didn¡¯t shatter. She tried to communicate with her mount but nothing was getting through. The rest of the Jetfins had it worse but that didn¡¯t matter much since she was only controlling one of them that led the others.
She was a tamer and unlike her Troll compatriots, used mana to some degree. The Jetfin under her could sense the amount of mana a creature has and it was part of their hunting tactics to herd prey and chase them till they were tired and out of mana. As a cautious individual, she had no qualms about using a tried and true tactic on her son¡¯s killer. The man was an obvious obstacle and also had a strong mark on him that instinctually raised a Troll¡¯s killing intent.
Before, her mount already sensed that her targets were low on mana and she made use of the opportunity but right now she doubted her precious partner¡¯s senses.
The roar that reverberated throughout her entire being came at her with increased vigour that caused her entire body to lock up. A black sun expanded within her sight and all her vitality reacted to protect her life. All her other partners were left behind in the war to deal with the blue and skinny race that used ice magic or she would¡¯ve far more options.
Sadly, she couldn¡¯t materialise vitality to the point where it solidified so she couldn¡¯t form another arm or something to pull her aside. Her lower body started freezing to the ground but it was pointless since she couldn¡¯t move to begin with.
The glowing sword with a hole in it sliced into her skull and got stuck but she didn¡¯t have time to feel relieved or scream at the pain. The echoing throughout her existence continued to distract and hurt her more so than the tiny blade on her head.
A freezing tremor blazed into her body and large wounds burst open, especially old wounds from her younger days. That shock and freezing pain only came for an instant but she regained control over her body as the roar faded into the background. It continued to echo but she was able to ignore it for now.
Her partner also regained control and burst away, up into the skies to create distance. A few of her organs popped and a few were frozen solid with something digging into them before bursting but she wasn¡¯t that concerned. It was a large drain on her Vitality, especially the regeneration and healing of her brain but she still had about 65% of her maximum. The constant healing and regeneration needed would probably bring her down to half if the mana in her persisted at destroying her but she didn¡¯t think it was a large issue.
She didn¡¯t expect the man to float up at the same speed as if a rope was connecting him to her mount. From the tiny humans¡¯ weak vitality, she hadn¡¯t expected such strong resistance. She was hoping there was no more roar to stun her and was, fortunately, able to move her intact arm to block the slash that aimed to decapitate her.
It sliced considerably deep and her vitality skin was melting and had trouble forming to defend herself. The realisation that the blade would cut through woke her up and she swung back hard. But no matter how hard she swung and swatted, the man remained stuck.
There was no ice at first so she didn¡¯t know why he was stuck onto her. Her frozen half wasn¡¯t able to grab or punch him away either.
She was too focused on the sword and didn¡¯t see the kick going towards her head. Her partner enveloped her in water but she commanded it to stop or she would¡¯ve been frozen to death. She ordered her partner to ram themselves into the ground after twisting the man so that he was in front of her mount¡¯s face.
For some reason, her mount had difficulty flying downwards. It was weird to both of them.
Multiple ice copies kicked at her and they shook her condensed vitality pretty hard.
Gash¡¯ah grinned at the desperation. The woman was on his back, held onto him by ice arms. Neither of them would survive a nosedive, weakened or not.
However, the impact didn¡¯t come. The stupid fish under her got frozen by some flower petals that had been floating around for some time. She had not cared for those since they could barely dig into her condensed vitality skin. The Jetfish¡¯s scales and water barrier were both resistant to cold; she didn¡¯t expect a complete freeze.
She roared at the human but it wasn''t a roar of rage like the ones that she gave for the past few hours of chase. It was a roar of fear that he replied with that piercing and numbing roar that stunned her. Her arm gave in and so did her neck. Her view rotated a few times before a leg smashed into her face and burst her decapitated head.
Chapter 219: Agitation
Ebony came to his senses when he was Flickering forward. Presumably in the direction that Ning Xin pointed out. His first thought was to check on her.
He checked that he only very gently froze her wounds so that he didn¡¯t freeze her to death. Her body suit was blocking his mana sense but it was quite obvious from the moistness that she had lost plenty of blood on impact. Her heart was beating but even with his Perception, he knew her heartbeat was getting weaker.
From his memories, he remembered she got pierced where her heart was but it wasn¡¯t as if he knew the exact position of her heart.
¡°Are you awake? Please reply to me if you are?¡±
¡
¡°Is your mask healing you?¡±
¡
Met with silence twice, his anxiousness rose. He already noticed his own state, it was a miracle that he was still on the move. His left arm had absolutely no feeling in them. He wasn¡¯t even shocked that there was no mana chassis in his left arm. There was barely even a trickle of mana getting regenerated and all of it was put into his legs and gravity repulsion kicks.
¡®No¡my body and Will listened and made me go deeper. I should¡¯ve run towards Arcta, at least the Lasils should have some healing capabilities. But that would bring those Jetfins and tamer towards them.¡¯ Ebony was aware that Arcta wasn¡¯t completely defenceless but there were plenty of children and non-combatants just walking around the village he couldn¡¯t bring himself to attract so many strong creatures there. There is a very good chance they won¡¯t be able to react in time. After all, a relatively low-level creature had caused destruction in their village before. These were 800 creatures and all were probably stronger.
¡®What do I do, what do I do?!¡¯
His breath misted over and his numb nostrils and lungs reminded him that one of his lungs had gotten pierced and hadn''t fully healed. His heart rate increased as Ning Xin¡¯s body temperature continued to drop.
¡°Why did you ask me to run deeper into Hoarfrost Glade?¡± At this rate, they were both freezing to death as he wasn¡¯t recovering either.
¡°Sister Jing¡¯s armour is useless. Your mask can¡¯t even heal a weak plague. Isn¡¯t your mask amazing, why aren¡¯t you waking up?¡± He complained.
His feet were still moving but there was no response from them as they tore through the Glades.
He wasn¡¯t sure if he imagined things but he was stunned out of his complaints when her arms around his neck shook and tightened.
The tremble knocked him back on track and a stream of mana kicked in. Everlasting Tranquillity hadn¡¯t been working and it didn¡¯t come back fully.
¡°You knew that would happen and you still guided us here¡Your intuition? Is there something here that can help? There¡¯s only¡¡±
Only one thing came to mind but he never told her much about Gen or Ful. He might have mentioned a turtle or a massive tree and she might have guessed that it was related to the Glades but that shouldn''t have been enough for her to point him here. After all, not even he was aware of their current location. He didn¡¯t believe her Intuition could tell her locations. To begin with, how would they help? Were they supposed to help fend off the tamer?
It was too late for that.
¡®What am I missing¡¡¯
Ebony tried his best to stabilise Everlasting Tranquillity but the weakening beat against his back rattled him with every beat.
¡®That preservation!¡¯ He was hit with a ray of hope when he recalled the first time he met Gen.
The turtle froze him without freezing him, taking no damage he was put into a state he saw as cryopreservation.
He didn¡¯t know if it would work to stop her from dying but it was the only thing that came to mind in the current situation. They were an unknown distance away from the closest healer and he didn¡¯t know what happened to the Jetfins or tamers.
¡°GEEEEENN!¡± He shouted like never before, startling himself after the fact. He was so loud he felt as if he popped his own eardrums. It hurt more than just his ears but he cared not for the pain. The icy floor and atmosphere shook from his yell. The vibrations from behind alerted him.
The Jetfins were right behind him and the biggest one seemed angrier than before. They were all gung ho and more motivated than earlier for some reason and didn¡¯t spare a thought about conserving mana or stamina. They shortened the distance within moments but Ebony didn¡¯t have any methods to deal with them.
He didn¡¯t see the tamer anywhere and that was concerning. It was unknown if he was far slower thanks to his injury or exhaustion or if the Jetfins got much faster but they were closing in fast. They were still far enough that he couldn¡¯t Appraise but that wasn¡¯t important since he didn¡¯t spare them another glance.
¡®Faster. I have to be faster!¡¯ He learnt that the feeling he had now was the feeling of urgency and he wasn¡¯t in the mood to marvel at his own discovery. He didn¡¯t even know that Battle Song was back at full capacity and he ¡®gotta go fast¡¯.
He was losing to a bunch of fishes in speed that weren¡¯t used to flying and were around 15 to 20 times slower than their top speed underwater. ¡®Is it the sheer stat difference?¡¯
Beams of water shot from hundreds of them but they were aimed at the sky. The Jetfins'' presence in the quiet Glades started to get the attention of its inhabitants. It was fresh to see Hoarfrost Glade¡¯s monster get sliced in two with ease.
This area didn¡¯t have any King-ranked monsters or he wouldn¡¯t have survived during his training here.
They bombarded him with larger jets of pressurised water that melted the ground everywhere they passed. Their aim wasn¡¯t fantastic and the current distance was enough for him to react and dodge but the rising sense of urgency told Calculated Hunch that he wouldn¡¯t be able to dodge when they were less than 5 km away from him.
"Why aren¡¯t I regenerating any mana?!¡± He complained about the lack of mana. The stream of mana he was regenerating was so minuscule that he couldn¡¯t do much. His Will was completely drained for some reason and he couldn¡¯t cast his domain even if he wanted.
He almost slipped and fell when the icy ground tilted.
A large blue streak swiped behind him, he didn¡¯t want to know what it was as he Flickered forward.
The change in vibrations was hard to sense since it was too chaotic so he had to glance back to see the Jetfins in a fight.
Their indiscriminate attack on the floor must have hit something deep underneath the glades. The blue streak had been a tentacle and was a bit familiar. The Jetfins unleashed their fury at getting disrupted in chasing him down. A couple dozen of them attached themselves to the tentacle and got frozen onto the long limb but water whips attached them to other Jetfins and they attempted to drag the creature out.
It further tilted the ground as they got some success. Ebony already ran too far to observe any further. The creature below didn¡¯t appear to be a match against so many apex hunters of the sea.
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Sadly, more than half of the Jetfins continued to keep him as their priority target. Including the enraged leader of the Jetfins.
He didn¡¯t see a point screaming for Gen when the familiar forest and blizzard were nowhere in sight. The lack of mana made him a bit uneasy as he didn¡¯t know what he could pull off to distract or slow down their pursuers. The missing tamer kept him alert. He was worried the tamer went to tame some other monster and was not far.
He heard stories about the strongest known tamer and summoner couple in the Empire and their skillset was pretty ridiculous. Both of them together were missing from the current war on any of the tides which was also weird to the soldiers in Fifth Tide. There was a lot of gossip about the lack of forces despite supposedly having the numbers to contest the Trolls better.
Even so, Ebony didn¡¯t expect that he was shouting for Gen. It was illogical and he hadn¡¯t noticed the slight desperation in him.
Ning Xin¡¯s heart slowed to a stop.
Ebony¡¯s mind was in shambles, Everlasting Tranquillity had stopped working.
???
¡°He¡¯s going to break when he stops pushing aside problems he faces. Letting him meditate and keep a clear mind so young won¡¯t allow him to grow into a strong man.¡± The stone-cold expression on the woman¡¯s face didn¡¯t match with the worry in her words.
¡°I told him to stop meditating ever since he turned 5 so that he could talk to other kids but he¡¯s our son.¡±
¡°And? I interact with others my age unlike you.¡±
¡°Interact? Only once for every kid you meet, right? I wonder how children¡¯s bones you broke.¡±
¡°We were playing catch, it¡¯s not my fault they couldn¡¯t catch a simple ball toss. Don¡¯t change the subject.¡±
¡°...I guess we can only reinforce the mindset that he¡¯s weak and fragile so that he has more awareness and is more wary of strangers.¡±
¡°We¡¯ve been doing that forever, he doesn¡¯t even believe that he is stronger than normal humans. I¡¯m saying you¡¯re turning him into one of those ¡®robot¡¯ things that this world has. He¡¯s going to turn out emotionless like that tribe of yours.¡±
¡°Hey, our son¡¯s not emotionless and neither am I.¡±
¡°I know. I¡¯m saying that he¡¯s not growing any emotional strength if he keeps this up.¡± The toneless lady could send chills down anyone¡¯s back.
¡°Our son is stronger than you think. Maybe the constant reinforcement that he¡¯s weak made you forget that he isn¡¯t that fragile.¡±
Matthew Rime turned to his son who was exercising out in the field and called him over.
¡°Ebony. You¡¯re still meditating throughout the day, even at school?¡± He watched the boy dodge the swinging logs and jump from wooden still to still.
¡°Mmm.¡± He nodded in reply.
¡°Have you made any friends?¡±
¡°I think so.¡±
¡°What are their names?¡±
¡°...I guess not.¡±
¡°...¡± Matthew expected it but it made him think that sending his son to school wasn¡¯t working out in terms of improving his son¡¯s social skills. ¡°Are you actively starting a conversation?¡± He asked a question he knew the answer to.
¡°Is there any purpose to do so?¡±
¡°Alright, never mind. I just wanted to tell you that It won¡¯t be beneficial if you keep turning a blind eye to everything around you or push aside feelings to the depths of your hea-mind. The longer you keep this up the harder it would be for you to learn about yourself in future.¡±
¡°Dad, are you speaking from experience?¡±
¡°...Yes.¡±
¡°I like meditating. It¡¯s quiet.¡±
¡°Indeed. But it¡¯s not empty. The longer you live the more things and people you treasure. Whether it''s by your choice or not. When you do, you¡¯ll understand why I call your mind¡heart fragile. Let me ask you again, what is the main condition to keep oneself in a meditative state?¡±
¡°Calmness, collectness and clear-mindedness.¡±
¡°Is that so? Do you think you are calm? Do you think you can continue to meditate under any circumstance?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°You will be tested if that¡¯s true or not. Calmness is useless for most of your entire life. The only times you need it are the times that you cannot stay calm. You¡¯ll know if you can be considered calm when the day comes around¡Go back to your exercise.¡± Matthew pondered for another moment before stopping his son. ¡°Ebony. The more dire the situation, the calmer you have to be. How do you stay calm? Don¡¯t listen to your mother, you don¡¯t threaten yourself to stay calm or die. Unless it works for you like how it works for her. The method to stay calm is simply understanding that you can achieve more calm rather than in a panic.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony nodded as it was the most obvious advice he had ever received. His cheeky son used to ask for specifics but his mother got a bit annoyed when he asked too many questions. Now, the boy spoke less as his training intensified since both he and his wife weren¡¯t talkative and were completely comfortable with silence. The boy got less inquisitive which made him even more suited to his version of meditation.
???
¡®Understand my ass.¡¯
Ebony¡¯s mind settled either by a sudden wave of clarity, the old memory or the fact that Ning Xin¡¯s blood was still flowing despite her heart stopping. He could feel the vibrations of the flow of her blood through his tattered robe and her suit.
He was on a timer.
Firstly, those Jetfins. They might be strong and fast but they were as handicapped as they could get with no water or earth around. They had a deep reserve of mana but they weren¡¯t willing to spend it on large spells. The Glades weren¡¯t exactly his homeground but he definitely had an advantage in the current environment. The monsters were either underground or camouflaging. He needed to get their attention and pass it on to the Jetfins.
Easy enough. The Jetfins were doing most of the work for him, he added on Tremor Stomps as he ran.
Secondly, he needed to find Gen. Trusting Ning Xin¡¯s intuition that he had to go in the direction he had been running towards. There was a good chance they weren¡¯t too deep into the Glades but he did not know if the burning forest followed a pattern when they moved.
Gen might only be a Grandmaster that was ready for evolution but he was thousands of years old. Ebony wasn¡¯t sure if he could find them if they were insistent on hiding. Trying to get their attention might actually be a better idea. Gen or Ful should have better senses than he did and they might move towards him if they were aware he was here.
Unfortunately, the monsters were either hibernating or could easily sense that they weren¡¯t a match for the Jetfins as there was no response.
When it came to land mass, the Icy region was by far the largest compared to the other 2 regions of the Glades. Despite being categorised in circles, the outer Chilly region was the smallest. It was considerably easy for well-equipped Masters to traverse the Chilly region if they were strong enough to deal with the monsters but Ebony barely saw any of them in the Glades. There were some for sure but they only explored the Chilly region as far as he was aware. The distance to cross was really short if you were to consider surface area since it had the largest diameter.
In any case, even with Mental Map, he wasn¡¯t sure where the forest where he foraged nuts was or the locations of monster dens. At the moment, the place was as bare as Trailane plains only losing to how bare the conjured battlefield was. Minus the people fighting.
He tried to ward off the cold from them to prevent Ning Xin¡¯s body temperature from falling further and he did so with the tiny bit of mana that he moulded heating scales surrounding them. They were uncompressed but did the job of heating them up.
¡®It''s feeding her!¡¯ He was excited to sense that the heat was getting drained away. Unbelievably, the rise in excitement didn¡¯t knock him out of Everlasting Tranquillity as the mana he was recovering didn¡¯t drop. He was only recovering about 7 to 10 mana per second, far less than his limit but he already started channelling them to the heating runes and produced more of these scales.
Finally, he needed to run faster.
He wasn¡¯t able to use gravity magic without excess mana so he was forced to improve Phantom¡¯s Flicker. He reasoned to himself to stay on the ground and not jump. He wouldn¡¯t have the mana to create a platform strong enough to run and he might not even react fast enough if he was caught in the air. His mana was channelled to warm Ning Xin¡¯s body and also run his enhancements.
In ten minutes, the Jetfins were already less than 5 km away. His improvements weren¡¯t noticeable but Calculated Hunch pointed out that he was getting faster every step he took. For the Jetfins to close the distance meant that they were accelerating as well.
The distance between them halved again in the next few minutes. All of them had crossed a vast distance during the chase but Ebony only started to see some ice rocks and mounds. The leader Jetfin acted cautious enough to stay back with its allies instead of charging at him which was weird but Ebony took it as a sign of the tamer¡¯s orders. The Troll might be having fun ¡®tenderising¡¯ him.
Unable to run his Augmentation anywhere near his maximum output and lacking the stamina to empower his physical stats with Fluid Blitz, he was on his last legs.
Chapter 220: Pseudo-Imitation
Ebony was confused by the lack of attacks from the Jetfins. They were less than a kilometre away, a distance he found impossible to dodge hundreds of pressurised jets of water without his peak physical abilities.
Astonishingly, he had managed to run in this manner for an entire hour. The stamina drain of Phantom¡¯s Flicker was significantly reduced. It probably refined a few times over the past few hours. Unprecedented progress for him when it came to skill improvement. As a habit, notifications were generally silenced in battles so he didn¡¯t know the specifics.
His regeneration of mana continued to recover which gave him more to spare and increased his speed. He had to cover his back with heating runes so that his cold body didn¡¯t freeze Ning Xin to death. Her blood flow continued to weaken over the past hour despite absorbing heat. It wore on his mind that she didn¡¯t have the ability to convert heat to healing. He wondered if she drank his blood before falling unconscious, he had a feeling she did. It didn¡¯t have strong healing properties in comparison to how much energy and mana was in it but it was better than simple heat.
At least, he wasn¡¯t aware if she had any sort of heat conversion to vitality. Her current state confirmed the lack of such an ability but the heat was slowing down her demise.
The Jetfins got less than 700 metres away and got into his range of senses. His mind had calmed down but it was extremely numb ever since he woke up from his trance. It was a sign that he overdrafted himself but it had never gotten so bad before. Even so, he was able to tell that the Jetfins were actually very low on mana.
¡®They didn¡¯t really use much mana against us. Is it just a small mana pool or did they use a ton before starting to chase us?¡¯ Whatever the case, it was a good sign. It might be why they even survived till now. The mana that the Jetfins had was used to envelop themselves, possibly to counter the temperatures that kept dropping as they delved into the Glades.
It wasn¡¯t unthinkably cold, maybe a negative 90 degrees celsius or so but their current speeds and the sharp winds made it unbearable for most creatures. Sea creatures might be somewhat resistant to cold but it was clear that they got beyond the point where the Jetfins could comfortably traverse.
Fortunately, Ning Xin didn¡¯t breathe air from the surroundings and he didn¡¯t need to for a certain period of time either. The increase in gravity was minute and not enough to affect anything or anyone.
The Jetfins had gotten the hang of his timing when he disappeared and reappeared. They had gotten in the range of turning the two of them into fish food.
Ebony Flickered away from the tight embrace of their mouths time and time again but their dives got more and more coordinated.
He only got calmer as it happened.
Not because Gen and Ful¡¯s forest was anywhere in sight, because it wasn¡¯t.
Not because the Jetfins couldn¡¯t catch him, because they were about to.
Not because the weak response from Ning Xin got even more subtle. Definitely not thanks to his father¡¯s vague statement.
He just¡did.
The main difference was that it wasn¡¯t because he didn¡¯t care about his life or the woman on his back which might once have been his thought process in the past when he threw himself into mortal danger. Or to be more accurate, he forgot to care about it if he cleared his mind. He most definitely didn¡¯t want to die.
A Jetfin landed right by his feet, tearing his pants as he Flickered away only to get rammed by another fish that was watching out for where he aimed to move. He wasn¡¯t able to trick them with refractions or by pointing his toes towards another direction anymore. Having noticed the positions that they flanked him, he predicted their possible movements thanks to their repetitive patterns so far. His feet lightly tapped on the fish¡¯s head and Tremor Stomped off with a portion of Phantom¡¯s Flicker effect.
¡®Hmm¡¡¯ Ebony lazily pondered. The leader Jetfin had burst after his sluggish move and there was nothing he could do, the despicable fish was smart enough to aim for his back. He could only shift to take the hit, trying to channel any drops of Will he could to stabilise any vibrations so that Ning Xin wouldn¡¯t feel any impact. He prioritised warming her up and enhancing his body with the slowly increasing regeneration of mana.
He felt like he understood what getting hit by Stalactite Sunder felt like as he kept the impact within his body. He had to give it to the Trolls for taking his attack with an intact body and still moving and fighting without much issue. Calculated Hunch would have told him that his own defence wasn¡¯t able to survive Stalactite Sunder, he would explode.
His pain tolerance was turned off for some reason and he felt every bit of the attack. It hit harder than Gao¡¯larg¡¯s mountain rend but spread across his torso from belly to neck. He learnt his lesson and focussed his mana around his spine. Without mana, he could only depend on his body and boy was he glad he didn¡¯t give up on his physical stats.
Sadly, his body didn¡¯t have fully compressed mana and he was far from maximum Augmentation. He didn¡¯t spare a look at his health as he had a rough gauge; it was less than 10%. The exponential rise in stress seemed to dissolve instantly and convert into mana but that was just his imagination as his pool of mana was as empty as before.
He accelerated away from the Jetfins by unintentionally receiving the lethal hit. Blankly staring into the leader Jetfin¡¯s eyes since he turned around to take the hit with his belly. Ebony was a bit shaken when his mana moved without his manual control despite not being in a trance. All his augmentations and enhancements slipped out of him and formed a cone that faced the leader Jetfin before pulsing. His teeth clenched uncontrollably when he heard the numbing roar that his Will cast without his permission.
Ebony quickly snapped himself out of the numbing pain that hit him¡somewhere so that he could land properly without harming Ning Xin.
He gained a couple of kilometres and was suspicious of the Jetfins that stopped chasing him. The leader even bled from its unblinking eyes.
His feet touched the ground and he was brought down to a knee when the landing impact further exacerbated all his open wounds. He couldn¡¯t stop the blood from escaping his mouth and throat, allowing it to stain the icy ground and his tattered clothes.
¡®I¡¯m not healing¡oh. Yeah, overdrafting mana reduces my healing since my mana chassis is affected.¡¯ Another glob tickled his gullet and he spit out the blood before freezing his wound again. His back continued to produce heat. Perhaps to trick himself into thinking that it helped keep the woman on his back alive.
Health: 98/7000
¡°Haha¡how exciting.¡± He was convinced that he was truly in the most danger he had ever been in. He was convinced that he really might not make it.
Ebony tried to take another Flicker but fell forward weakly as he crossed less than half the distance that he could previously. Loud flapping sounds entered his ears again. The Jetfins kept a distance, wary of something.
He was flat on the frozen ground. His body creaked as he manipulated the ice in his body to carry him up but it was as if he was pushing against lead. His body remained stuck on the ground.
¡°You¡¯re a bit late¡¡± He complained at the quaking ground. The Jetfins were clearly not wary of him but the extreme frost and high mana density around his landing spot.
He was fully aware of his surroundings despite his trembling mind and unmoving body. He sunk into the icy ground before the first snowflake started falling.
Gen personally climbed out from the ground, glancing at him before looking at Ning Xin on his back. ¡°Please save her.¡± He vibrated mana around him before he sunk into the ground. He hoped that Gen didn¡¯t mind her presence and would help him. He urgently wanted to tell him to stop her life force from escaping instead of sinking them into the underground dome but they only sank faster before he felt soft snow.
¡°I¡¯ll be right there.¡± Gen¡¯s lazy voice wasn¡¯t present.
Actually, he thought the turtle would fight but Gen was swimming right by them before he knew it or so his senses told him.
His ragdoll of a body plopped onto the snowy floor when he felt something out of place.
¡®So bright. Did Ful recover?¡¯ The Frostblaze Amur Maple was burning brighter and stronger than ever before. It was even raining leaves down which was an alarming sight, knowing that Ful was in a dying state. The spirit was saying or crying out unintelligible sounds. It wasn¡¯t transmitted to him but he could sense the mana around him and that was the feeling he got.
He was completely awake despite the terrible state of his body. He couldn¡¯t help but worry about freezing to death, for both of them.
Gen clamoured for Ful to stop expending mana that was the spirit¡¯s life. ¡°I got it I got it.¡± He shook his lazy eyes awake and blew out an icy breath that encased Ning Xin. He might trust Gen to a decent degree but he couldn¡¯t help getting nervous.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
¡°What happened to your hand? Your mana vessel got injured?¡±
¡°I think so. I don¡¯t remember what happened.¡± Ebony was just as confused at why his mana chassis in his arm was in such a poor state. It was as if they exploded along with his physical arm. Although he did still have it attached it was a bloody mess. His bones were in a liquefied-like state and he was lucky there was no sensation from the arm.
Ning Xin was encased in crystal clear ice that did nothing to harm her. At least that was how it appeared to be. Now that he was a far better ice mage than years ago, he nodded at the spell. ¡®Yup, I don¡¯t see how the ice mana is any different.¡¯
He was too tired to analyse the spell in depth.
¡°Want to sleep in one? It¡¯ll speed up natural recovery.¡±
¡°It can do that?¡±
¡°How else do you think you survived a cold that would kill all of us here as an unclassed human?¡±
¡°I thought you were protecting me. Are you telling me your ice has healing properties?¡±
¡°Yes I was pulling cold away and ancestor helped. And no, I have no healing skills other than some personal passives. The seal stops everything from leaking, including life force. It freezes injuries and damage in general but enhances natural recovery by guiding the leaked life force back into the body so no one should be dying unless the damage is something I¡¯m unable to freeze.¡± Gen had never seemed so energetic, there was not much lethargy in his voice.
¡°Can it seal mana and stamina? Is that really simply ice magic?¡±
¡°...It can. It¡¯s also sealing magic.¡±
¡°Oo. Interesting, can you teach me?¡±
¡°Is now a good time? Why don¡¯t you rest up, for now, I gotta replenish my ancestor anyhow.¡±
¡°...mmm. Don¡¯t seal me.¡± Ebony did not feel comfortable getting sealed even if it would speed up his recovery. He searched for potions in his bag but he only had what he bought years ago for his Journeyman self. He chugged it and felt no difference at all. It was incredibly difficult to manipulate his body to move.
At least his health wasn¡¯t dropping. He sat against the ice coffin that Ning Xin was in, unwilling to fall unconscious he closed his eyes and meditated. His mind was filled with different thoughts but he was surprisingly clear-headed.
Gen got into his snow igloo and there was no movement any more. The other turtles weren¡¯t around as far as his senses told him.
He pulled out the ice mana around his lightest wounds and let them heal bit by bit before thawing other parts. The cut on his leg healed the fastest but there was no response from his calves when he tried to flex it. His mana chassis had never shrivelled up so much before. It made him guess that his left arm¡¯s mana chassis was squeezed so tightly they burst or ruptured. He didn¡¯t mind the physical weakness at the moment so he moved on to larger injuries on his torso. The ribs could wait, he dealt with the large hole in one of his lungs first. Thawing led to an immediate drop in his health so he could only refreeze most of the hole and thaw it bit by bit.
Ebony was unexpectedly aware of time passing despite his deep state of meditation. 20 full hours passed before his physical body was in shape again. The physical weakness was still present, he was at less than 10% capacity. This led to the discovery that time was not the factor to get rid of the regenerative weakness, it was his mana chassis. If they didn¡¯t heal up, he wouldn¡¯t get back all his physical strength. That, and the main part was his vitality. There were so many injuries that it was taking some time. Breathing no longer hurt on the second day.
By the fourth day, his mana chassis regained their shape and his mana regeneration was almost back to normal. The only missing portion that provided him regeneration were those that made up his left arm. They didn¡¯t recover at all.
At this point, he finally remembered to call up old notifications to see if there was anything informative. The ringing kept going as he sieved out the important information. There were an unbelievable number of skill level-ups and multiple refinement notices for Phantom¡¯s Flicker but he could digest that afterwards. Speaking of digesting, all he had was souper bread with water to fill his stomach. All his dried meat was consumed with Gao¡¯larg and the fruity biscuits were gone too. He had other ingredients but was too lazy to cook.
He did not expect to see a kill notification. He cocked his head at the relief and¡satisfaction he felt knowing that the tamer was dead. ¡®Satisfaction? Is that right? Yeah, that¡¯s about right but how did I kill her?¡¯
It wasn¡¯t even a moment later when he received some hints on how he managed to accomplish the fact as the previous notifications were a new skill and skill evolution.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class Skill **** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar¡¯
**** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar - Abysmal attempt at imitating the roar of the **** ********. Attack the souls of all living beings in range with the effect of 650% + 5.0% of Vitality, Endurance and Wisdom to stun them in place. Existential suppression is passively 5% more likely to cause mental trauma to anyone who stands before you. Targets affected by **** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar will have the stunning effect resurface at irregular intervals until mental trauma is resolved. Poor imitation causes soul damage to self.
Consumes Essence
Classification: Sound Magic
¡®That¡¯s a lot of information for a skill description¡soul attack but it¡¯s not classified as soul magic? The skill comes with a passive effect as well but what is with that base 650% and only a tier 3 skill? What¡¯s existential suppression? I¡¯m guessing it¡¯s either an essence difference or an evolutionary difference but who knows. It scales off resources, so the power of the skill depends on the strength of my essence?¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t feel that worried about the soul damage, he didn¡¯t feel much pain or discomfort. The base 650% sounded like a lot but it wasn¡¯t as strong as it seemed. Strength was the stat for physical prowess and Intelligence for mental attacks, the muscle for magic and mana manipulation. Resources like health or life force, stamina and mana didn¡¯t have much power behind them. Even if one had high regeneration and could suppress the others with overflowing essences of different types, they don¡¯t really hurt people. The suppression effect could be withstood and even ignored with some training.
He finally understood why the Jetfins stopped in place but they also chased after him rather quickly. However, the stunning effect was pretty amazing. It was probably the only attack he could pull off that could affect the King-ranked monsters. The Jetfins were so tough that he didn¡¯t think his strongest attacks would hurt even if they stayed still for him. They were starting to get low on mana near the end so he might have been able to do something if he had the mana or strength. Alas, that wasn¡¯t the case and all he could do was run.
It also led him to believe that the roars he had been hearing were the exact same situation. He had been placed under this irregular repetition but he didn¡¯t really face any stun effect. He wondered if this was what Muse sensed in his soul. Maybe it was thanks to her ¡®healing¡¯ that he didn¡¯t get stunned every time the roar echoed in his mind. ¡®Something feels off though¡where or when did I hear the roar anyway?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t even remember how or when he got hit by this soul attack.
Ning Xin should¡¯ve been affected by the skill too if his poor imitation wasn¡¯t controllable but that didn¡¯t appear to be the case. He cast it unknowingly earlier, he needed to test it out to understand it.
As for how he killed the tamer, it was likely his skill evolution.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession Skill Potent Mana Overdraft evolved into Mana Chassis Implosion¡¯
Mana Chassis Implosion - Desperation for mana, squeeze your mana chassis to the point of backlash to draw out 200% + 0.5% of your mana pool¡¯s capacity by crushing your mana chassis with your Will. Rupturing Chassis draws out an additional 50% proportional to the amount sacrificed. Mana Chassis mends from overdraft 100% + 5.0% faster every level. Mana regeneration is reduced by a static 95% for 12 hours, static reduction reduces over time.
¡®That¡¯s not good. It locks out mana regeneration even further. I¡¯ll have to work on the skill to remove the regeneration reduction part from the skill.¡¯ He didn¡¯t need the skill description to tell him that the mana chassis in his arm was ruptured or something. It was clearly not healing faster, so he had to assume that the skill didn¡¯t help recover the ruptured chassis faster or it just took a very long time. At his current state of evolution, he was getting quite good at sensing if a skill was in effect. His take was that the skill wasn¡¯t working when it came to his arm.
In his opinion, the skill got worse after evolution. It gave him more mana in emergencies but the drawback was not worth it. He would have to depend on squeezing even more of his mana chassis to get mana as he would practically not be able to regenerate mana once he started using this skill.
Phantom¡¯s Flicker - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Phantom Flicker allows one to travel through most terrains with more ease, increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by 100% + 10.0% per level. Disturbance to the surroundings caused by physical movement is reduced by 50% + 5.0% per level. Weave through physical matter with a static 25% more ease.
It was amazing that he gained so many refinements that the negative 500% turned into a positive 100%. The greatest part was that the stamina usage was only triple that of Treading Stride. There was still plenty of room for improvement before the skill was a proper tier 4 skill. The stamina expenditure might not be insignificant but at least he could use it dozens of times before his calves and thighs start to feel the pain. He shouldn¡¯t feel pain or discomfort no matter how many times he had to use it, that was his first goal for the skill.
There wasn¡¯t much he could do about his lacking Endurance stat until he evolved so he had no choice but to work on reducing the physical burden from the newer physically intensive skills like Fluid Blitz. He was finally on the step that most people were at. Making skills more energy efficient to cover the lack of stamina and mana. If there was something about the Imperial Knights or even warriors and mages that he was impressed about it was how they worked around their small stamina and mana pools.
For the Master ranked soldiers be they Knights or any other warrior, they probably only had 300 to 400 stat points into resource stats at level 300. Maybe less. That put their mana pools at 3 to 4 thousand if they didn¡¯t have a mana pool expansion skill. The Knights should have at least a tier 2 version or they wouldn¡¯t have been able to run their enhancements for half a day. Those Grand Knights could run their enhancements for days. Ebony noted that they simply turned up and down the enhancements on the go. Supplying a spike of mana whenever they attacked or defended but bubbling it down when things lulled.
A lot of warriors with more limited mana or control would not have full-body enhancements. The most common enhancements for warriors in the militia or freelancers, in general, were enhancements to a single body part. It tends to be strong but unbalanced. The perk was that it was far more mana efficient unless that particular individual had more explosive bursts of mana for skills they could only use once or twice before running out of mana.
All Imperial soldiers had full body enhancements and most of them were built for endurance and not power output. This made them suited for defensive battles and freelancers more suited for assault teams that hit hard and fast.
¡®No matter. I don¡¯t want to go back to the battlefield. Where¡¯s the life of travels that I desired¡¡± Ebony felt like he lost the direction of what he had hoped for in pursuit of power.
Chapter 221: Exchange
Ebony did not forget that the biggest reason he went to Fifth Tide was that Arcta was targeted. He was not exactly happy to learn that Fifth Tide was under the Frost Elves'' protection and the combatants weren¡¯t readily reachable. The other reason was his greed for hasty levels. Ning Xin¡¯s desire to fight didn¡¯t pass on to him, he personally liked battles to an unhealthy degree just not as much as she does. At least in his opinion.
The recent happenings diverted him from his travels but it couldn¡¯t be helped. He had been feeling unbearably weak. All the strength he had gained didn¡¯t alleviate the feeling as he only saw the bigger world out there. He couldn¡¯t travel at ease knowing there was something, someone, able to take away what was important to him.
¡®We should settle in Tidal or some random city for a bit. Fighting monsters won¡¯t give us any benefit. Most under level 500 won¡¯t give us a decent sense of danger so they won¡¯t put stress and expedite skill levelling. Those above¡are a bit too strong. Strong Grandmasters are more limited in number and harder to find.¡¯
¡°When are you going to wake up?¡± He asked.
Gen and Ful had been asleep the entire time. The tree spirit was in a dying state and Gen needed to go into deep meditation to keep his ancestor alive so they were both usually in a state similar to hibernation. He wasn¡¯t talking to them.
A tremor ran through the dome and he shot up. Gen woke up from his meditation a moment later.
¡°We¡¯re under attack, let me check¡Oh, what are those creatures you brought, Jetfins? Only level 550, I didn¡¯t think one would survive.¡±
Gen had swam after him when they descended into the underground dome, he didn¡¯t think that the turtle had attacked back. Now, days later, the turtle was telling him the Jetfin was back. That vengeful prick touched on Gen¡¯s sore spot by melting the entire ¡®sky¡¯ above them. The icy ground was gone and a large portion of the snow ceiling melted, allowing light to slip into the underground dome. The snow dome fixed itself almost instantly but the enraged Jetfin blasted it away. Gen saw that and shot a beam out of his own mouth.
Ebony didn¡¯t expect to see a beam battle. All he did was grab Ning Xin and run up the giant turtle with Ful on top. It might not have been the best idea as he might be a target but he was going to rely on Ful¡¯s coverage.
He thought Gen was fighting back seriously but he didn¡¯t miss the yawn that came out near the end of his snow beam. The dome fixed itself again and Gen got carried by a current of snow. The underground dome was quiet again and the ceiling stayed intact.
Ebony learned something from this Jetfin. Blood for blood. Any less, and he would be getting stepped on.
In fact, not biting back only gives others a reason to push him further off the edge.
It didn¡¯t take a minute before the turtle was back with a not-so-giant fish in his mouth. Gen was bigger in comparison. The turtle chomped on the Jetfin, swallowing the head without chewing and got to consuming it raw, bones and all.
¡°Haven¡¯t had meat in a long time, the scales are a bit crunchy but the bones are too spiky for my liking. Its flesh is really sweet.¡±
¡°Another food review?¡± Ebony was not expecting the taste of the Jetfins to be focused on so much.
¡°Sit tight, we¡¯ll be changing locations.¡± Gen walked beside him. He was right, the turtle sounded more energetic.
¡°By the way, I didn¡¯t see your forest above ground.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t expect Gen to surface and save him but he fell onto the ground and sensed Gen¡¯s presence at the last second.
¡°I left it somewhere and came to get you. Ancestor guided me to her.¡±
¡°Ful did?¡± He wasn¡¯t too surprised that the tree spirit heard his calls and not Gen. The tree spirit must have a far better perception. Poor Gen had to carry the gigantic progeniturtle and tree around wherever he went. That must be why the underground space was so flimsy, it should be a makeshift mobile base.
¡®Would I be able to move something so large with ease when I¡¯m a Grandmaster? I don¡¯t think so, not with just my mind¡¡¯ He was maybe confident of moving just the gigantic turtle with the flaming tree but not an entire forest. His range of mana control couldn¡¯t even reach the entirety of the progeniturtle.
¡®Her¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t miss that. Ning Xin¡¯s intuition was right. She just went down too easily, as if she expected to get stabbed from the start. It was unlike her not to resist with more¡gusto. Not to say that they had a chance to win a fight but running shouldn¡¯t have been their only option. He wouldn¡¯t know for sure if his new sound spell could really stun the stronger opponent and the evidence was that the tamer was dead and he was safe from the hundreds of Jetfins. Relatively safe.
When he came to his senses, his pursuers were pretty far behind him. It was likely because he squeezed out so much mana that they were stunned longer than the accidental roar he used to buy himself that extra second. If he had the skill from the start he could just stun them all and their combined efforts would be enough to damage the tamer enough. It seemed like he could cast the roar somewhat repeatedly so the Jetfins wouldn¡¯t matter as the two of them could just slaughter the fishes one by one.
Those fishes were really impressive, be it speed or defence. Even in the air without water and earth surrounding them, they were hardy. They didn¡¯t even have much mana from the get-go and he wasn¡¯t really able to injure them. Although he was also low on these resources that was no excuse. The tamer¡¯s cautious personality ruined her chances of killing them and he was thankful for that. The Jetfins'' lack of mana must be due to getting past the Frost Elves. There must have been more monsters or tamed creatures under her control that didn¡¯t make it to chase them as well.
¡®Is there a way for me to remember what I did in my trance, it would be nice to know how I managed to kill her.¡¯
He could guess through the skill level-ups but that wasn¡¯t enough info for him.
Now that he was underground, he could observe how Gen moved. It was a bit underwhelming visually. The gigantic turtle just started to slide while the underground dome would shift around them but it was dark and there was nothing to see.
There was no need to hold onto anything as the ride was stable and relatively slow, only at the speeds of a race car. He put Ning Xin against the trunk and rested there himself.
¡®Ah, I know how to wake her up. Food. Let¡¯s see what ingredients I have. Hmm, mostly tubers and grains that last longer¡¡¯ He took everything out of his bag and hoped to find some meat that he hadn''t shared with Gao¡¯larg. Although he had enough rations for a year, it was mostly foods with long shelf life. Preservation magic might go a long way but there was a limit to those too.
His bag was also filled with raw materials, books, clothes and tons of mana ores. He didn¡¯t have enough space or he would¡¯ve stuffed it with more food. Ning Xin¡¯s bag contained mostly food. Their trailer home had some cabinets that could safely store food but the space within wasn¡¯t enlarged. She used those cabinets to store pots, pans and all sorts of kitchenware together with jars of sauces and oils that she regularly uses. The trailer¡¯s interior did lack decorations but there weren''t many places for decorations since the walls would collapse and fold.
Ning Xin¡¯s bag was frozen together with her so he couldn¡¯t search it for ingredients.
¡°Gen, let a monster through. Something delicious, and with meat.¡± He thought about how there were plenty of monsters in this region that liked hibernating in the ground. With how they were moving, the only reason he hadn¡¯t come upon monsters popping through the dome was that the turtle was shifting them aside. There were some variants of monsters here with bodies partially or even completely made of ice so he clarified.
¡°...You¡¯ll have to wait. I scared them off, it¡¯ll be some time before we encounter anything.¡±
Without any choice on the matter, he continued his attempts to prod at his left arm¡¯s mana chassis. Nothing seemed to be working and he didn¡¯t get a response. They had to heal naturally.
He got bored and gave up trying to heal it quicker. Now he had the time to go back to the foundations of his ice magic. He couldn¡¯t believe it took watching Korta sleep and breathe to notice that he diverted from simplicity. Korta¡¯s misty breath that he exhales naturally flows onto his skin and condenses itself into some kind of armour. His breath didn¡¯t just collect and condense, it followed some pattern under the Frost Elf¡¯s skin. He guessed that it was Korta¡¯s physique or a passive skill.
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When the Frost Elves cast ice magic they all had their own method of strengthening their ice magic outside of compression. Korta would coil his ice mana before taking that to form his spell. Enya would constantly grind the layer of ice on her daggers with a secondary layer making a similar sharpened edge like a vibration blade. Koawe¡he wasn¡¯t able to tell.
Ebony followed Roya¡¯s method but he never applied it to all his spells. Weaving ice mana into threads. It didn¡¯t do as much as simply forcing mana to compress and he kept trying to copy turtle scales, sword and shield anatomy that he left that out. It was hard to say if he could apply it to his freezing flames but it wouldn¡¯t hurt to try and see if there was a difference.
He worked on Imperishable Frost Scales first. It was the skill that depended on the solid properties of ice the most. It was fun to rebuild the skill. He manually formed threads of ice mana and twisted them together. There were many types of coils and even braids for threads and ropes. He made a simple twisted ¡®rope¡¯ with 3 strands and kept conjuring them before trying to form a scale with them.
It didn¡¯t work. There were loose ends and most importantly knots that took up space. It weakened the integrity of the final product. His solution was simple. He treated the scale as a flat cloth and made it extra thick. Without bending the threads, there would be no knots. Loose ends could be frozen together with the rest of the scale or shaved off to become sharp. It didn¡¯t matter since the material wasn¡¯t cloth, it was ice.
¡®ah¡I don¡¯t have sister Jing¡¯s testing equipment¡¡¯ He was a bit disappointed at the lack of equipment so he could test the toughness or other properties of the new scale with high accuracy. He conjured another scale with his old method and placed it beside his new one. He went on to make a few copies of the new scale before he changed the thread thickness by coiling 4 strands together. Then 5.
After he had 10 copies of each, he went back to making 3-stranded threads but instead of twisting them, he braided them. Making 10 copies for 3-stranded to 5-stranded for a single braid and a double braid. He also made plaited versions.
He found it relaxing and then he went on and made a scale with a mixture of different types of threads. He could fit quite a few layers before they were at the thickness of a single scale. He took out a pen and notebook and drew a table and wrote down the types that he made along with empty boxes for durability, impact resistance, shear resistance, flexibility, mana loss and left a few blanks in case he thought of other important properties to take note of.
Because of how thin he could make his strands of ice mana, every scale of equal thickness took hundreds of layers of these ''cloths¡¯. He made rigid versions and soft versions but the soft versions were mostly for fun. It might fit his robe more and won¡¯t reduce his flexibility as much so it wasn¡¯t completely useless. It was just that ice would naturally stiffen so it required constant control over them.
He tested a few by punching them to check if making thin layers made them brittle. For some of them, it did. Making it as threads meant that the scales no longer had compact layers and the structure was completely different. He still packed up all his experimental scales.
Next, he experimented with Frost Edge but there were not many results he could get. Frost Edge was a very flexible skill and its applications were only limited by his experiment and imagination.
After that was his Frostblaze. Korta could coil his breath, it wasn¡¯t much of a stretch to thread his flames. It was far more difficult and he was stuck at this stage until Gen spoke out. ¡°Heads up, two should be enough right?¡±
¡°Oh. Slap seals. They are in the icy region too?¡± Ebony lit up, these seals were a pretty good choice when it came to prey that could be found in the Glades. Two objects popped in above them, he caught them but they were much bigger than the ones he hunted in the past. They should be an evolution higher.
They were already dead so he got to processing them. Bleeding them out was a bit troublesome without the blood mage. He was not that good with butchering so he left one seal alone, in case he wasted too much meat.
He had a pot and skillet but no stove.
¡®I can make a heating plate but there won¡¯t be an actual flame¡I have some planks, once they are set on fire they will produce a flame.¡¯ Ebony worked around the problem by conjuring an ice plate with heating runes that he used for his old makeshift oven. It was not easy to overheat the rune to make the planks he had catch fire. His natural mana was also slightly cold so he used a Blue ore to burn out the weak rune. The ice plate countered it a bit but he took it away after the planks caught fire.
He put some iron under so that he didn¡¯t scorch the progeniturtle, despite the impossibility of such a weak flame harming the corpse. He made a simple stir fry with some greens, steaks and deep-fried cutlets. He was well aware that she couldn¡¯t smell anything within the seal so he didn¡¯t cook too much.
He felt that he did pretty well. Gen did not like hot food but he appreciated it after they cooled. He was not completely new to cooked food, he just didn¡¯t like heavily salted dishes.
Ebony purposely ate in front of Ning Xin but there was no observable reaction from her. He couldn¡¯t sense through the frozen seal so his perception was limited.
¡®Oh¡damn, I had a kitchen with me.¡¯ He remembered their trailer that had a small but functional kitchen. He didn¡¯t feel bad about forgetting it, the illusion function wasn¡¯t all that amazing compared to the loss in speed if he were to drive it in their escape. The shamanic mark on them made hiding implausible anyway.
Ful¡¯s outburst made it fall unconscious or a similar state and needed more time before she recovered. The wasteful blast of mana was intense but only damaged the spirit. Gen stayed awake to drive them back to their original spot. He took the chance to ask him about sealing magic.
¡°So how did you learn sealing magic?¡±
¡°It was passed down to me. I seal myself to extend my lifespan, or I would¡¯ve been dead long ago.¡±
Gen was roughly 12 thousand years old if he recalled correctly. Even for a turtle or long-lived species, it was not an age a Grandmaster could reach easily.
¡°Is it some secret or racial skill?¡±
¡°No, I can teach you. It¡¯s arcane in nature, anyone should be able to learn it with decent mana manipulation and understanding of the properties of sealing magic.¡±
Ebony nodded and listened in silence. It was rare for Gen to be awake and talkative.
¡°There are countless types but I¡¯m clearly only familiar with freezing-type seals. I can freeze my metabolism so that I don¡¯t have to eat but I would lose weight over time and it weakens physical strength the longer I seal it. This here, freezes the state of the physical body. All injuries can be stopped but it is not possible for the person inside to be healed as well, it only heightens natural recovery. If a person¡¯s natural recovery isn¡¯t strong enough, it is possible to die within the seal despite my claims of sealing damage. You remember being able to manipulate mana inside but mana movement is actually sealed within the body so breaking out with magic is¡difficult.¡±
¡°You can cast this with a single breath and almost no cast time¡what are the disadvantages?¡± Ebony thought that the spell was a bit ridiculous. Couldn¡¯t Gen kill almost anyone or anything just by sealing them and destroying them?
¡°I can pretty much guess what you¡¯re thinking. It¡¯s dozens of times harder to destroy externally than to break free from within. I mutated the skill from a defence spell, we use it to seal ourselves and heal while waiting for danger to pass. You can try breaking it, I¡¯ll be impressed if you can break my Core Skill from the outside. Actually, I¡¯ll be impressed if you can break out from within.¡±
¡°I won¡¯t try that now.¡± He wasn¡¯t going to attack Ning Xin to try to break something Gen was so confident in.
¡°I¡¯ll find a weak prey for you to test on.¡± Gen stopped the drive and left the dome.
¡®He hasn¡¯t taught me how to use it¡.¡¯
It took an hour before Gen was back with a football-sized toad that was alive. It was the poisonous creature that Clovis made his cold poison with. The poor thing was barely level 50. Gen spared the effort to go far enough to find it. On his back was a transparent ice box with dozens of small critters.
¡°Freeze it without hurting it. Mix in pure mana instead of just ice mana. You¡¯ll get the hang of it and find the perfect ratio for you. For me, it¡¯s 30% snow, 20% ice and 50% pure mana. Just for reference.¡±
¡®so¡I¡¯m creating the spell myself again. These seniors don¡¯t like teaching complete spells. For good reason, our mana is vastly different in properties. I can¡¯t use snow either.¡¯
¡°So it¡¯s possible without snow mana?¡±
¡°It¡¯s arcane, it''s possible without any element. Once you manage to keep them alive, I¡¯ll teach you the formation of mana layers.¡±
¡°You¡¯re okay with teaching me your core skill?¡±
¡°This spell is compounded with other skills so you wouldn¡¯t be able to get the same effect without snow magic and my mana¡¯s properties. You tried to teach me yours. Why don¡¯t we try to exchange it?¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t feel bad about the live experiments. He had more than enough control that he wouldn¡¯t harm the poor creatures. They just wouldn¡¯t like it.
He went with more ice mana than pure mana first. The toad ate his ice and burped. As expected from the Glades¡¯ creatures not all were outright hostile towards him because he had no hostility towards them.
¡®Gen said freeze them but I¡¯m pretty sure he meant to seal them and make sure they don¡¯t move to break free. I¡¯ll slowly increase mana to ice mana ratios.¡¯
¡°Do you exert constant control over the spell?¡± He could keep them frozen with ease so he clarified the goal of this experiment.
¡°No.¡±
He received an obvious answer. Gen left and the seal was still in place. However, once he removed his control over the ice the toad would just break free. It obviously wasn¡¯t perturbed by the coating. The toad was annoyed after a hundred attempts. He fed them the seal meat he got and promised to let them go once he was done. Gen already released the other critters to hop and slither around. He got to drive the underground dome with its inhabitants again.
The little critters probably weren''t smart enough to understand him but they understood that their lives were not under their control anymore.
Chapter 222: Rebirth
Gen came to a stop and Ebony assumed they were under the Frostblaze Amur forest.
Ebony hasn¡¯t succeeded but the little critters were already familiar with him and they knew they could get meat by playing along. The Seal meat seemed to be beneficial to them and they levelled fast just by ageing and naturally absorbing ambient essence.
Gen went offline to continue getting Ful to wake up when he saw that Ebony wasn¡¯t succeeding anytime soon.
Ebony stretched his body and did his daily training. He remembered to squeeze in one meal a day despite the relatively low expenditure of energy. Most of his time was spent on attempting to ¡®seal¡¯ the little creatures that almost went over level 100 in 2 short days.
A few of them did attack him but he gave them a head rub and they were obedient soon enough. The little fox was the one that avoided him the most and didn¡¯t eat the meat he gave them. He gave it space and didn¡¯t practise on it. The fox tried to escape but the snow dome was tougher than a steel one.
Ton and family came and he greeted them before they went to sleep. The couple were level 180 while the little ones were around 40. They were normal races like humans and didn¡¯t level with time. It was considerably fast since they didn¡¯t hunt much. Ton and Sei attempted to make some weird noises, he guessed that they were learning the language. Their throats and tongues must have gotten more flexible and the fact that they evolved meant that they already fully removed the world¡¯s essence from their bodies and gained a Class.
The turtles gave each other a snow scrub to wipe off dried blood after nudging their children to sleep. The little ones didn¡¯t grow much in size but he could sense a deep mana reserve. They had an Olympic pool-size reserve, about the same as the average level 150 artillery mage who supposedly had a tier 2 mana capacity skill. Ton and Sei had pools more vast than a Grandmaster mage. Gen was empty so he couldn¡¯t tell, every bit was sent to Ful. Gen similarly fought and drove the giant with a minuscule amount of mana.
¡®I should get my mana expansion to a Profession skill¡¡¯ He had less maximum mana than Ton and Sei by a fair bit. Actually, he had less than the average artillery mage despite his high Wisdom stat. He found it odd that he couldn¡¯t make the capacity skill with just mana, it always turns into experience for mana compression rather than capacity increase. Preservation Bubble was a generic, tier 1, life force-based skill. It was quite limited. Levelling was slow, refinements didn¡¯t add much and it was difficult to evolve with his lousy control over life force.
Ful finally woke up a little after the turtle family returned but panicked in the same manner, the blast of whitish flames trembled and splattered around the place, almost killing most of them present. The old turtle put the spirit back to sleep.
Ebony got back to practice. Even with the Fortifications to his ice magic, his pure mana was a bit too strong. He found the ratio of 12.8% mana and the rest ice elemental mana to be suitable at the moment. With a small amount, the critters wouldn¡¯t be able to break free unless they used force. They could move within the mixture of mana but they were trapped for some reason. He wasn¡¯t increasing density to a ridiculous degree so he found it magical.
¡°Don¡¯t patronise me, try to break out.¡± He told the toad.
He guessed right, the toad acted as if it couldn¡¯t escape. Its head drooped down after it hopped out with relative ease. He gave it a pat and continued to play around. He was quite sure of the ratios, any more ice and he would just freeze them in ice. Any less ice and they wouldn¡¯t be stuck at all. Mana didn¡¯t give much physical resistance and they could move around without issue. It wouldn¡¯t be much of a seal if they could walk in and out of the spell.
The mixture of ice and non-elemental mana had a resin-like structure inside and the outer casing was just clear ice. The critters couldn¡¯t breathe inside, unlike Gen¡¯s when he had no trouble¡¡¯Did I need to breathe when I got sealed?¡¯
He looked over at Ning Xin, her chest wasn¡¯t rising or dropping and her mask made it impossible to tell if she was breathing or not. Just then, the feather on her mask brightened with fire mana. He felt excitement rising but she stayed still for as long as he stared.
¡®How did she survive having her heart pierced anyway, the spearhead was pretty big.¡¯ Ebony tried to get his mind off her unwaking self.
By his estimation, her heart should¡¯ve been split if it didn''t pop. He doubted her vitality was so high she could survive without a heart for those minutes, hours even. Without a heart, she must have depended on blood magic and her mask¡¯s lousy healing. She wasn¡¯t able to cast magic unconscious but he could believe her trained instincts would do whatever it could to keep herself alive. That shouldn¡¯t have been enough. She couldn¡¯t have used her core skill to enhance her healing speed without a heart or at least not anywhere near full capacity.
He propped it up to her mask being better than he blamed it for or that her physique improved her vitality more than he assumed.
Ebony continued playing with the critters. He baited them with food and was about to run out of seal meat. Checking the fridge in his trailer, he scavaged some more food.
Ful finally woke up and was calm the next morning.
¡°Morning Ful, thanks for saving us. Sorry for bringing someone else here.¡±
¡°She¡¯s more welcome here than you think.¡±
¡°Is she now?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t hear your calls, it''s thanks to her we found you. Fate is playful, for once, I¡¯m thankful I didn¡¯t die along with Rue¡See¡you shouldn¡¯t have given up on living, it¡¯s all worthwhile. She¡¯s still alive¡¡± Ful¡¯s flames flickered and splattered again.
¡°Woah woah, don¡¯t go crying and fainting on me. Everything¡¯s fine. So, how is it thanks to Xin?¡±
¡°She was called here and I was alerted.¡±
¡®She was called¡I knew her intuition wasn¡¯t so strong, it''s almost like foresight rather than intuition if she really knew where Gen and Ful were.¡¯ He had been confused about how sure she was about which direction to run in. Perhaps her intuition trusted the call.
¡°Who called her? I¡¯m pretty sure you don¡¯t know each other.¡± Ebony was less interested in the ¡®how¡¯. He sensed no vibration or calls.
¡°I don¡¯t know her? She¡¯s our dear sister.¡±
¡°...She doesn¡¯t look like a turtle, tree or spirit to me.¡± Ebony never connected the points. He didn¡¯t know Ning Xin¡¯s physique name, just the main effects.
Pin-drop silence would be present if it weren¡¯t for the playful critters biting and slamming large ice shards at each other. He gave those that were naughtier and tried to eat each other a furious head rub so they mostly gave up on eating each other at this point.
¡°Is that supposed to be a joke?¡± The remnant tree spirit broke the silence.
¡°Yes. As expected, you can tell I¡¯m joking.¡± Ebony was proud that someone other than Ning Xin understood that he was making a joke.
¡°I¡¯ve told you about our sister.¡± Ful, like Gen was wide awake. There were no signs of weakness or exhaustion they used to have.
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¡°The sun-eating phoenix.¡± He wouldn¡¯t forget the colourful story he was told.
¡°That¡¯s right.¡±
¡°She¡¯s human. As far as I¡¯m aware.¡± Ebony held back from saying that Ning Xin doesn¡¯t look like a phoenix either. The sight of her with flaming wings popped up in his mind.
¡°I know. But she¡¯s accepted by our sister¡¯s heartblood essence.¡±
¡°And¡that¡¯s enough for her to be considered your sister?¡±
¡°Of course not, I wasn''t talking about that human there. Phoenixes don¡¯t die that easily. Even if they do, they have the uncanny ability to revive as long as their heartblood essence that holds the core of their soul is still around. The portion Rue kept resonated with this human, that¡¯s how I found her.¡±
¡°Scarlet. Her name is Scarlet.¡±
¡°Is¡is that so? Fate really is mysterious¡to even have the same name¡Anyhow, keep your mana in check. I can sense your unease and it¡¯s not what you think.¡±
¡°What did you think I was thinking?¡± Ful might be the only other person who could sense his unease.
¡°You¡¯re probably thinking something along the lines of my sister¡¯s soul taking over¡Scarlet¡¯s body or something. Nothing of that sort. A proud creature like the phoenix will desire no other body than their own, using a measly human¡¯s would be degrading to her. No offence.¡±
¡°I was actually imagining that she would turn into a phoenix but yeah, that¡¯s about what I was worried about.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry, she wouldn¡¯t know how to do that even if she could. She died, and the spear saint¡¯s attacks are nearly impossible to heal from. Even if she is reborn she won¡¯t have the memories that she had. There is no sign of any revival but that¡¯s obviously the case, she consumed just a smidgen of heartblood essence. If our sister manages to be reborn, she can simply form a new body for herself with some of her heartblood essence. Scarlet over here will just lose a small portion of it. The newborn can grow the small portion back to her initial size in time.¡±
¡°As long as she¡¯s not in harm¡¯s way.¡± Ebony believed Ful for the moment, he had no reason to doubt the suicidal tree. At least he was more at ease.
¡°Surely not, she would be protected with all of the natural instincts remaining in our sister¡¯s essence so that it can be reborn safely.¡±
¡®Ah? Is that why her intuition skill was levelling so fast, she has a phoenix¡¯s natural instincts working together with her own instincts?¡¯ Ebony guessed.
Intuition wasn¡¯t something he could train with a teacher telling him what to do. He initially had no idea how she was levelling the skill on a near-daily basis before. Ful hadn¡¯t finished speaking so he continued to listen.
¡°She needs a compatible host that can nurture its heartblood essence enough to harbour the awakening of her soul. It is surprising, no matter how small a portion Scarlet consumed, it is quite impressive that she wasn¡¯t burned to death or just eaten in return. She must be very compatible, extreme fire mana affinity is rare but it¡¯s usually because of the intense gluttony that makes one consume themselves even before the essence could that makes it so hard to find someone compatible.¡±
¡°Is that why you didn¡¯t keep all of your sister¡¯s¡core?¡±
¡°She split it up herself, bursting it apart so that she could find someone compatible faster. The Spear Saint was in a rush and wouldn¡¯t waste time searching the entire planet for small fragments. I know the location of a few large fragments. Her resting spot is one. Under the sea, I think a volcano range formed thousands of years ago when Rue still went for diving trips. There are probably a few pieces there.¡±
¡°That¡¯s cool and all but neither of us is good at swimming or fighting underwater. You want us to gather her fragments?¡±
¡°Not really, just ask your Scarlet. It¡¯s beneficial for her and she probably felt the inherent desire to want to piece herself back. The heartblood essence is alive in a sense, it would naturally want to gather and as the current hmm, carrier? Host? She likely sensed the desire as well.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t point out ¡®your Scarlet,¡¯ Ful was likely finding it troublesome to address Ning Xin by the same name the phoenix had.
¡°Since you¡¯re awake and peppy, would you like to teach your descendant some flame manipulation tips or even spells?¡± Ebony got shameless, he was taking his chances at squeezing everything he could. How can he run away from a couple of hundred ultra-high-spec fishes 2 evolutions above him?
Ebony had put some time and effort into trying to go back into the realistic mental simulations but he couldn¡¯t. The fight with Lucas seemed to be the only trigger so far and he couldn¡¯t go back into the same state to see if he could replicate his escape and see what he could have done better. Should he have stood his ground instead of running as Koawe suggested?
He was already in an overdraft state at that point in time, there was no chance he could have stood his ground. Not against so many ultra-fish. That close to the sea, to the ground to water and earth magic specialists wouldn¡¯t do them any good. Getting away from water was the best move then.
After reaching Hoarfrost Glades, especially the icy region he should¡¯ve more options.
¡°Just fight with Gen and come up with your own spells. I can see how far you¡¯ve come in terms of manipulation. Oh well, maybe just a clone of his.¡± Ful replied.
¡°I think I¡¯ve matured past fighting his clones.¡±
¡°I don''t think so.¡± Gen rebutted.
The snow dome¡¯s floor, ceiling and walls bubbled. With a familiar fish shaping in moments. Hundreds of them surrounded the airspace around the progeniturtle. The only difference was that there were no wings flapping at supersonic speeds, they were swimming in the air as if they were in water.
¡°I see that you have trouble protecting someone, if a single snowflake lands on your beloved¡¯s seal trust me, it¡¯ll go through,¡± Gen added snarkily.
¡°...If you¡¯re trying to anger me, you¡¯re doing a fantastic job.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know what happened to Gen or even himself. He reacted to provocation a lot easier now.
Gen truly showed him the immense difference between them. Every single clone was controlled manually through manipulation. The turtle didn¡¯t cheat with Will to make the clones move by themselves like he did. In the past, he fought the turtle¡¯s ice clones but Gen was the Glacial Snow Crystal Turtle whose speciality lies in snow magic.
¡°I¡¯ll be nice, you look like you can barely handle one.¡±
The jetfin swam as naturally as any fish. Coming from the front it aimed at him or perhaps behind him. He wasn¡¯t about to test how serious Gen was. Repulsion was cast on Xin¡¯s seal before anything else. She was covered in a sphere of ice with another layer of repulsion. No matter what, he couldn¡¯t touch Gen¡¯s snow.
He made a greatsword out of ice and cast Frost Edge over it before flickering forward. Without cramps, he felt more weightless than ever. Clearly catching Gen off guard, his weapon swept through the fish from to the tail. Sadly, no blade exited and all he was left with was a sword handle that was breaking apart. Once again, he only had one arm working.
He had to rely on vibrations and repulsion to hit the snowfish. Without any hesitation, he kicked the white fish before it turned to face him. It caused a ten cm deep indentation, the body part that splattered didn¡¯t touch his body. He barely Flickered away from the tail swipe in time. A clone made of mana didn¡¯t fear damage, it could attack regardless of injuries.
A small ranged flood of his Will set up a radius that barely took half a second for a few icy legs to form and Tremor Stomped on the creature of snow. In that half a second, he had to force the snow sculpture to remain still. The clone¡¯s outer surface trembled like the latest bass as he made sure the turtle understood it shouldn¡¯t move. A few dozen kicks was all it took to crumble his opponent.
¡°You sure have gotten speedy. Your movements look very similar to the dimensional kappas.¡± Ful commented.
¡°Dimensional kappas?¡± He questioned.
¡°Have you seen them, I believe some offspring were left here to propagate. Similar to Ton and Sei, they are born similar to a monster so it takes them time and effort to remove the world¡¯s essence from their bodies. They are nomads so their offspring are quickly left to their own devices.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve seen one, teacher Ka. Taught me a little on footwork but I had similar footwork to begin with.¡± He didn¡¯t know the kappas were dimensional kappas but he was pretty sure they were referring to the same breed or species of kappas.
¡°We¡¯re not quite done here.¡± Gen interrupted.
The tree spirit ignored the interruption and talked about how many of the higher-level Kappas were merchants. Their creator, the Life Grafter often used the services of these Kappas who had strange things found during their travels. They only barter and don¡¯t accept normal currency so it was always smart to keep unique items on themselves. But they were cautious and only traded with people who were introduced by another one of their patrons so Ebony would have no hope of trading with them even if he had unique items on him.
He couldn¡¯t really give Ful much of his attention, as Gen was taking up most of it. ¡°It¡¯s nice that I don¡¯t have to decompress my mana now.¡± The turtle showed off, still as relaxed as always. Ebony Flickered towards the caster, the most obvious solution to stopping the other clones.
Chapter 223: Cringe
Ebony didn¡¯t have Ning Xin''s bullet time-like ability but his reflexes weren¡¯t shabby. Despite his newfound speed with Phantom¡¯s Flicker, his legs could reflexively push himself backwards in the midst of his charge.
¡®This underground dome¡is a domain. Maybe it¡¯s the progenitor turtle¡¯s but Gen¡¯s probably more of a mage than a physical combatant, he probably has a domain skill. Am I in his range¡definitely.¡¯ Ebony was facing an old turtle thousands of years old. Gen might have spent a lot of that time in a state similar to hibernation but that didn¡¯t mean his skills were lacking.
Ebony just couldn¡¯t sense that he was within a domain spell. He knew there was foreign mana in the surroundings and it was likely Gen¡¯s mana together with ambient mana. It might be Will, he couldn¡¯t sense that and it allowed him to learn that other people likely couldn¡¯t sense when he spread his Will to cast his domain without spreading his mana. It would take half a second or so for him to spread his mana but he could have the element of surprise if he didn¡¯t blast out mana from the get-go. It was a nice tidbit of information but he couldn¡¯t rule out that Will could be sensed.
¡°Is that your idea of going easy on me?¡± He asked, the reflexive action of stepping back gave him a Calculated Hunch that he should stay 50 metres or so away from Gen.
¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about. You just never noticed my passive defence in the past.¡±
¡®Passive defence, maybe something similar with my vibrational reflection.¡¯ Ebony quickly Flickered back above Ning Xin and slashed at the next moving snowclone. He let go of his conjured greatsword on impact, the magic turtle reflected the vibrations back at him like Cap Dwarf. Thankfully, the snow that crept along the blade moved slowly.
Other than toughness, the snowclones also sped up but not quite at the same speed he could dish out. Getting 5 clones on him was an indicator that he somewhat surpassed Gen¡¯s expectations. It was thanks to his new movement skill and he was going to make full use of it.
The more time passed, the more sure he was that he was under Gen¡¯s constant observation. The turtle knew his every move and he felt choked as a clone was present wherever he Flickered to. He was not proud of himself for Gen¡¯s attentiveness but at least the turtle had to stay awake.
He used every trick in his book and Fluid Blitz constantly scorned at his neglect of the Endurance stat. On the bright side, Sustained Optimum Condition was burned and taken apart at every moment. Aside from resistance skills, he suspected the skill to be his first tier 3 generic skill. Or so he wished.
The concentration of lightning mana was surprising so he did his best to manipulate them just for fun. He did not see how a being mage would be viable if they couldn¡¯t conjure the element. ¡®Well, I still can¡¯t conjure gravity mana so I guess it¡¯s not impossible.¡¯
Gen could conjure his magic less than a metre away from Ebony''s body. Some weird phenomenon or what they refer to as a ¡®magic body¡¯ was protecting him. It was the magical protection most creatures had that prevented most magic wielders from conjuring something from inside their opponents. That distance was not enough to handicap Gen as he slapped Ebony to the ground with a fishtail.
Ebony expelled the compressed scales that covered his head and upper body as quickly as he could and used the snow cloud that rose from his hard impact as cover but that was the dumbest move when snow was Gen¡¯s home ground so he just leapt from the ground and got back beside Ning Xin who was resting underneath Ful, on the progeniturtle¡¯s back.
¡®My skull cracked from that and my neck hurts. What happened to my pain resistance, I seem to be feeling the effects of these physical injuries more.¡¯ There was more than just a light head injury but those were the only concerning ones. He underestimated Gen¡¯s offensive capability with clones. His own Glacial Models were far weaker than himself and he wasn¡¯t expecting that much physical force from Gen¡¯s snow version.
He promptly showed off to the old turtle that a mere 5 clones slower than him could not keep him in check but 15 certainly could. In return, Gen was showing him that his flimsy domain did nothing to stop snow magic from flooding the area.
Ebony felt horrible when most of his body was locked under the snow with only his head popping out after 2 hours. He only lasted till the clone numbers reached 22. These snow clones weren¡¯t even as fast as him and definitely not any faster than the real Jetfins. He only managed to destroy 61 of these clones, two or three at a time. Trapped under solid snow harder than steel, he couldn¡¯t move. He already slightly over-drafted himself to break free from the same confines once. He didn¡¯t use his new roar in case it injured Ning Xin further.
¡°I admit, I didn¡¯t think you would get so strong so quickly.¡± Gen hasn¡¯t moved from his spot from start to finish.
Gen chuckled before Ebony could speak up, ¡°Did you think I was joking?¡±
¡®Hot damn, is this really Gen?¡¯ He didn¡¯t hesitate to overdraft himself further and a tremor pulsed from him. The loosening of snow let him escape back to Ning Xin to catch a single drop of snow above her icy seal. Funnily enough, it was his left hand which shouldn¡¯t have been able to move that caught the tiny bead of crystal white snow.
¡°Grr!¡±
¡®Something¡¯s really weird about this snow¡¡¯ Ebony was forced to elicit a grunt again and he wasn¡¯t even familiar with making a noise due to pain that it sounded odd. The previous time he got blinded had the same effect.
¡°Amazing pain resistance. Almost unbelievable honestly. One of my fortifications is increasing the pain inflicted by snow magic by 300% and my Lacerating Snow was mutated to inflict more pain. 5545% more painful to be exact, so about 55 times 4, roughly 220 times more painful than if you were to be cut by something sharp.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a cool property but isn¡¯t that useless against creatures that don¡¯t feel pain?¡± Ebony replied while the small bead of snow sunk into his skin and stained it permanently. Gen was either merciful and didn¡¯t make the snow dig further or it was the limits of the drop of snow.
¡°I haven¡¯t come across any. Not feeling pain doesn¡¯t take away the main effect of the spell either.¡± Gen sat on his flat belly with a loud bang. All the clones were dispersed and the snow in his hand got withdrawn, letting Ebony heal. His palms were filled with deep cuts and his left hand already had the problem of not healing at a visible pace.
¡°Fair enough.¡±
¡®5545%...A level 1009 tier 3 skill with a base percentage of 500%? Or a lower level tier 4 skill?¡¯ Ebony ruled out tier 4 as there was little reason for him to believe Gen at level 500 for such a long time still has a skill around level 500 as well. It wasn¡¯t as if Gen didn¡¯t fight at all, the turtle was used to combat.
¡®At Grandmaster, level 500, skills at level 1000 would prompt a 250% Fortification¡he probably has more skills that can reach the 2 times requirement like how my mana chassis skill didn¡¯t give me any options for 250% Fortification despite hitting the level requirement. Why did I even get it to 200 and stay in captivity?¡¯
¡°That arm¡¯s not healing?¡±
¡°I think it is, just a lot slower than usual.¡±
¡°I got it, want me to seal that arm? You can observe it for as long as it lasts. It¡¯ll funnel all your vitality¡¯s regeneration towards that arm so you would lose the ability to recover health but it¡¯ll speed up your arm''s recovery.¡±
¡°That¡¯s an amazing ability to have. Is it snow magic or completely arcane in nature?¡±
¡°Find out for yourself.¡±
¡°Wait,¡± He quickly Flickered away, ¡°Let me heal up first.¡±
¡°Fine, I¡¯ll take a nap.¡± Gen hid in his igloo and the little critters came out from the corner where they hid together. They didn¡¯t chew each other out when he was fighting with Gen. The Crawler who was a big lizard dashed and bit his arm. Its teeth broke but it continued to put pressure on him. Ebony furiously rubbed its head until it let go and stayed in place.
¡°Good.¡± He didn¡¯t know their gender.
He had to pee but didn''t feel comfortable letting Ning Xin out of sight. He left the trailer doors open and expanded his domain before doing his business. It had been over a week since he last had to go. As for number 2, perhaps thanks to his high Constitution, he had no bodily waste to expel for months.
High Constitution made him more energy efficient so all was not lost for putting so much of his stats there. The problem was that he saw the Endurance stat as simply stamina pool and stamina regeneration. It simply wasn¡¯t true as the Endurance stat also referred to muscle endurance and more. The tiredness of his body was great for Sustained Optimum Condition so he originally thought it was a good idea but it backfired more than a little.
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¡®Fluid Blitz at full output for 2 hours and I¡¯m already slightly hungry.¡¯ He understood Ning Xin a little better. She burned far more energy than him in a far shorter period of time. Supposedly, they would need less sustenance as they evolved but the prerequisite was that their physical exertion was the same as a normal human. He didn¡¯t see the situation changing no matter how many evolutions one goes through. High energy output requires high energy input.
¡°Time to chow.¡± He made a large bowl of fruit salad for himself and some of the little critters that ate fruits. They learned not to chomp on his hand or eat the utensils the hard way. He ate right beside the frozen swordswoman, hopefully tempting her to wake up.
¡°Oh well, it¡¯s just us for now. Time to play ¡®Are you sealed or frozen?¡¯¡±
???
¡°She¡¯s awake,¡± Gen called out from his igloo.
¡°Mmm,¡± Ebony already noticed, he couldn¡¯t get into a trance thanks to the unease in him.
¡°I¡¯ll let her ou-¡± A sweltering wave of heat washed over the area before Gen finished his sentence. The turtle cleared his throat and made excuses that he used an amount of mana that wouldn¡¯t harm her. To be fair, Gen probably never faced much heat before if he spent his entire life in the glades.
She was about to survey the area but stopped when Ebony Phantom¡¯s Flicker got her in his embrace. She failed to dodge and he knew it wasn¡¯t because she could react in time.
¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯re alright.¡± His voice sounded odd to himself as if it cracked. He was quite sure his vocal cords weren¡¯t injured.
¡°And I am glad you¡¯re in one piece. Your chest got pierced¡¡± Quiet minutes passed before a soft grumble echoed out.
¡°Healed, my arms the only injury left.¡± Another grumble sounded.
¡°Let¡¯s continue while I make some food.¡±
¡°Did you take the hit on purpose?¡± He would never stand in her way of food on a normal day but he was compelled to question her.
¡°Of course not, I really couldn¡¯t react on time. You saw how fast those Jetfins were, I guess the tamer enhanced his mount at that moment.¡± She brushed it off nonchalantly.
¡°Aren¡¯t you angry? How did you survive getting your heart pierced?¡± He was not letting her brush it off, she didn¡¯t seem to act like her usual self.
¡°The tamer is dead right?¡± She took off her torn boots and entered the trailer.
¡°Did you get partial? Sorry, I used some ingredients but I made sure to put everything back to their original spot.¡±
¡°Nope. I just assumed that was the case. Something made me come here and my intuition told me it was the safest direction.¡± She didn¡¯t walk to the kitchen for fear of dirtying the place.
Ebony passed her the seal meat he saved for her. ¡°Wow, it''s so fatty!¡± She exited the trailer and started washing her hands over her portable kitchen.
¡°Your Intuition again, you trust that too much. It didn¡¯t even warn you of the tamer in advance.¡± He admits that her intuition did help direct them in the correct direction.
She had less of a fighting chance against the Jetfins than he did. They had relatively fast flying speed and good manoeuvrability in the air but that was relative. They were far faster on the ground and the Jetfins outsped them still. If the tamer or Jetfins were skilled at teamwork, and they were, she couldn¡¯t safely fly and cut them down one by one. Her ranged capabilities were comparatively subpar and the Jetfins had strong defences.
¡°It¡¯s not my intuition that I trust.¡±
¡°Then what?¡±
¡°Oh, there is some prey. That snake would be perfect for soup.¡±
¡°Those guys aren¡¯t for food.¡± The little critters¡¯ senses spiked as they ran around the gigantic turtle corpse. It was only then that Ning Xin noticed where she was. He let her admire Ful¡¯s majestic burning form in silence. The tree never stops burning, it was causing it to die but Gen was sustaining the tree.
¡®Those little things kept biting me but one look from Xin sent them running. Animal instincts are impressive, they must see me as prey. Or my mana is too delectable. Hmm, dungeons are more sensitive or desperate for my mana and meat. Wild monsters use their brains slightly more¡¡¯ Ebony watched Ning Xin who seemed stunned in place. He could hear her excited heart, it had been that way since she woke up. Probably due to the solar-blooded phoenix heartblood essence that¡¯s supposedly here.
¡°It¡¯s beautiful¡¡±
She muttered words he didn¡¯t expect. It might have been the first time she described something other than food and prey as beautiful. Or swords.
¡°Don¡¯t melt this place down.¡± He attempted to calm her aura down because it was starting to warm up around her.
¡°It¡¯s not me. There¡¯s something here, I can feel it.¡±
¡°Yes, you didn¡¯t tell me your physique name. There¡¯s a piece of solar-blooded phoenix heartblood essence here.¡±
¡°What!?¡±
¡°Before that, introductions are in order, don''t you think?¡± Ful could speak into his mind but he used mana vibrations to talk as well. Speaking with mana wasn¡¯t all that unique.
¡°You¡¯re awake again,¡± Ebony spoke to the tree.
¡°It was a bit too hot in my belly to stay asleep,¡± Ful commented. Ton and Sei hid their kids under a thicker layer of snow. The temperature in this dome probably never increased before.
¡°It¡¯s in your belly? You have a belly?¡±
There might have been a belly grumble at the mention of a belly but the gluttonous woman didn¡¯t get distracted. ¡°I think I¡¯m still sleepy, can you get me up to speed?¡±
First off, Ebony introduced his turtle master so that she could believe that he learned a little from a turtle. Well ¡®learn¡¯ might not have been accurate but it was close enough. Next up was the remnant tree spirit and his/her dead partner. Ful took over storytelling, telling most of what Ebony already knew. He felt it was a bit unfair that he only heard the story on his second visit but the remnant tree spirit was just too happy to feel the meaning of its survival.
She was a little shocked but it was her turn to share with the tree spirit how she got her physique. Her parents sent a small piece of the essence and never reappeared after that. The only clue she had was that it was from the Fragadal Sea¡¯s largest volcano, Cherufe¡¯s Pit. However, she was confident that nothing could endanger her parents on Elcra at that point in time and he found little reason to doubt that.
Fragadal¡¯s Sea was a volcanic region past Vermin¡¯s Paradise. He already suspected that the sun-eating phoenix was buried there. Ful listened but he was stuck underground for too long and had no further clues to give to its sister¡¯s descendant and carrier. Ning Xin was not impressed by the history of Elcra. Twelve thousand years ago? The Xengs didn¡¯t exist back then.
The sword stuck in Ful caught her attention. She didn¡¯t know Xeng¡¯s history either so she had no idea which one of them perished against Rue roughly five thousand years ago. The tree spirit didn¡¯t have the exact date either, it might have come up with a very rough gauge of years.
Rue won the battle, but he left the sword stuck on Ful. The progeniturtle was Emperor or in monster terms, Ancient ranked and he was at the peak of that stage. Defence was the turtle¡¯s pride, no wounds could be found on the turtle itself. Not even the Spear Saint could kill Rue in a short period of time. So many years back, the Elcra¡¯s monsters and its inhabitants were all pretty low in level. It was amazing enough for the ¡®barbarian¡¯ to stab Ful who was not nearly as durable.
Ebony found it hard to believe that the turtle was dead if Ful was alive, the tree was the one that got stabbed. ¡®Maybe he sealed himself asleep? Gen¡¯s sealing magic must be from somewhere.¡¯
¡°Gen, lead them.¡±
They were led to Ful¡¯s trunk, where the ice bowl was. There were only a few drops worth of sap there. Gen brought them to the right side and the snow-covered tree and unveiled a tree hollow. ¡®Of course, there¡¯s a hollow. Is this Ful¡¯s belly?¡¯ He was actually more intrigued that the tree was part of the turtle shell.
¡°You-you¡¯re just going to give¡your sister¡¯s heart to me?¡± They had not entered the hollow but they could guess what was inside.
¡°You¡¯re not dead after taking her core. She¡¯s already accepted you and it would allow her to get reborn. Although she would no longer be the sister we know, I just want to see her gluttonous self again. Who knows, I might be willing to let her chew on some of my leaves without getting annoyed this time.¡±
¡®Ful¡¯s being depressing again¡¡¯
¡°Alright, don¡¯t dally anymore it¡¯s getting really warm inside so just get her out of there. It¡¯s about 3 droplets worth of her core.¡±
¡®That¡¯s a lot less than I imagined.¡¯ The tree hollow wasn¡¯t large, Gen couldn¡¯t fit inside. They only walked a few metres in before they saw the red sphere lying on a wooden seat.
¡°Woa-this is three droplets?¡± The girl gulped, maybe she couldn¡¯t stand the hunger anymore. The red sphere was far larger than their heads put together.
¡°Oh right, the phoenix carried Rue and many others on her back when they escaped. She must have been humongous.¡± Ebony recalled the little detail.
The Progeniturtle was hundreds of metres wide and he recalled the little tidbit of information that this sister of theirs could carry the Life Grafter¡¯s sons and daughters on her back. They flew from world to world to alight before arriving on Elcra.
¡°You don¡¯t understand, this is not just normal blood, this is blood essence!¡±
She was right, he didn¡¯t understand but he knew it was like a core of the creature in blood form.
¡°Erm, could you help me with this? I¡¯m too hungry to lift it up.¡± She acted shy about her weakness. After her evolution to Master, her arms no longer looked noodle-like. She had more toned arms but it wasn¡¯t very obvious. It was always a mystery to him how stats show differently from individual to individual.
He hefted the sphere out, it was only 4 times heavier than Icicle. It could wreck a roof if he dropped it.
¡°I¡¯m not going to be able to consume this.¡±
¡°Maybe you can lick it down over time. Wait, we changed the subject you dodged the question.¡± He gave a random idea.
¡°...Don¡¯t make me say something so obvious. It¡¯s embarrassing.¡±
They started to banter while she cooked. She never gave in and didn¡¯t answer him. It left him unsatisfied.
Chapter 224: Sashimi
It was a bit awkward.
Ebony and Ning Xin reached a stalemate and didn¡¯t talk to each other. Moments ago, he felt that she must have been fast enough to dodge and not receive a stab through her heart and probed her about it.
Her defence was, ¡°I shifted my heart aside in time but that tamer¡¯s spear was too large so half of my heart got sliced open, why would I take damage on purpose, I¡¯m not you!¡±
He argued back that he only does that to experiment or test new skills and that he had Calculated Hunch to tell if he would get really hurt or not.
¡°Calculated? You just let your body and magic run by themselves. Your ¡®calculations¡¯ are how to get yourself hurt! Like charging in to jam a bomb in a Troll''s mouth or diving into a cloud that melts everything.¡±
¡°Hey, that helped both of our skills to level.¡±
¡°What about the fight with Gao¡¯larg? You took his hits on purpose.¡±
¡°Not all of them¡¡± Ebony¡¯s arguments were starting to lose strength. He was not as much of a fighting genius as she was. Because his body and mind can fight on auto, it meant he didn¡¯t learn much from fights if his body and mind didn¡¯t get hurt. It was just the way he was brought up.
No pain, no gain.
By allowing his mind to wander, he would take hits and in time, his body would learn to react to new dangers. It wasn¡¯t as if he was weaker if he put some thought into his actions, he subconsciously wanted his body to be able to keep up with new movements without input.
¡°I could Will up some defences in time, what happened to your bullet time and fortified reflexes?¡±
¡°Hmph! Sorry, I wasn¡¯t as fast or strong as you imagined me to be!¡± She stormed off to a corner and stuffed herself with food. Facing away from him she left a little of every dish for him. She mumbled about how hard it was to cook in a heavy atmosphere and cold temperatures that prevented water from boiling. ¡®How could she! She took all the gravy¡¡¯ He stared at his plate.
¡°No wonder she was accepted by Scarlet, they are alike.¡± Ful¡¯s voice entered his mind.
Ebony exhaled hard enough to notice his unrest. A moment of thought let him understand why he was stubborn. He shook his head and found Gen for a chat to distract himself.
¡°What happened recently, you¡¯re really energetic.¡±
¡°Something nice happened. And your mana regeneration seems good. It¡¯s not enough but ancestor mentioned that your ability to conjure flames makes you more compatible and you don¡¯t need to spend as much mana as I do.¡±
¡°Ahh, that¡¯s right. How long do you think you¡¯ll take?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure, I don¡¯t even remember how long my previous evolution took.¡±
¡°At least a month and a half,¡± Ful answered for Gen.
¡°...I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m quite worried about the ongoing situation above. I don¡¯t think I can stay here that long at the moment.¡± Ebony would like to know how Koawe and the others were doing. Hector and Mallory were still out there as well. Hector had been in a terrible state despite his outward appearance, his time on Tova must have been pretty rough.
¡°I see¡I¡¯m in no hurry, I already waited for so long.¡± A slight exhaustion returned to Gen¡¯s voice. He must have been quite excited.
¡°Can you seal my arm now?¡± Ebony asked. Not much time has passed since their little spar but he recovered. Although he already eaten, he had space for what she made for him.
¡°Xin, we¡¯re leaving that blood essence here. So you know how to return later.¡± He just remembered that he wouldn¡¯t have found Gen so quickly if not for her.
¡°Mmm.¡± Her mask bobbed forward as her cheeks were full.
¡°How¡¯s your body feeling?¡± Gen blew on his left arm. He could vaguely sense his life force being redirected and contained.
¡°I can fight.¡±
Apparently, her acknowledgement meant after a long shower. She probably wanted to check her on herself. He needed to have a word with Kong Jing. What a useless body suit. ¡®Now that I think about it, the suit tore against Mr. Kidnapper¡¯s attacks but it just stretched against that tamer?¡¯ He knew the Troll was higher level but maybe she was less of a warrior and didn¡¯t put much into strength.
He froze his cuboid-sealed arm to his body so that it wouldn¡¯t move around. Trying his best to sense the movement of his life force and figure out what was so special about this arcane form of magic.
¡°E--Ebony.¡± A soft whisper reached him when he was just resting on the sofa.
¡®I thought she didn¡¯t want to talk to me,¡¯
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± He received no reply from the bathroom. ¡°Are you in there?¡±
¡°Please pass me my bag, I left it on the sofa.¡±
He got it and stood outside for a whole minute, ¡°you have to open the door to get it.¡±
¡°Yo-you have to blind yourself. If I sense any mana coming in I¡¯ll get angry!¡± She didn¡¯t sound convincing.
¡°I can still sense through gravitational and vibrational surroundings. Don¡¯t panic, these doors stop my senses.¡±
¡°Put my bag on the floor and leave the trailer¡Close the door too!¡±
He did as asked, too busy worrying to think about what he was missing out on.
Outside, he was of the mind to get Gen to keep her here and let him leave. Maybe the turtle could warm up his old bones before his evolution. With Ning Xin awake, he was more at ease with leaving her with the turtles. Of course, he was slightly worried they would be turned to turtle soup but Gen should be able to suppress her with relative ease. Her fire magic only complicated things, Gen had been caught off guard by the heat she produced. His snow and ice had no resistance to heat like Ebony¡¯s.
On second thoughts, if he died out there she might be trapped here for years. He wouldn¡¯t like it if she left him trapped and went straight into danger so he didn¡¯t have the right to do the same to her. Ful would likely support keeping her safe so he was sure Gen would agree to seal her be it in his spell or in the dome.
As long as he didn¡¯t act stupid and she didn¡¯t act reckless, it would be safer for them to have each other watch their backs.
He didn¡¯t notice her shy act, he just changed out of his set of clothes before putting on his torn-up robe again.
¡°Gen, where are we?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll send you out and point where you came from, we¡¯re pretty deep so it might take you some to get back. Well, if your top speed is consistent and you can keep that up long enough, it might take just more than half a day to get back to the Frost Elves¡¯ village.
¡®Half a day of Phantom¡¯s Flicker? My legs would be sore, I won¡¯t be able to use it much in battle if that happens¡so this is what having limited stamina is like.¡¯
They didn¡¯t have much time to waste and were released from the dome and blizzard. He didn¡¯t want Ning Xin to waste her energy so he forced her to get carried by him. Despite what he thought, he still experimented with Phantom¡¯s Flicker at full force. To begin with, he wanted to feel exhausted so that he could improve so he didn¡¯t truly regret having a low Endurance stat. ¡®Sustained Optimum Condition better evolve or at least refine.¡¯
The little critters were released along with them and he waved goodbye to them.
¡°Let me down, I finally understand what my book says after watching your footwork!¡± She could push herself off but they might get injured at such high speeds without enhancement.
Her feet touched the ground and she sank in. She got bathed in steam like a sauna.
¡°Looks like you need a countermeasure for icy environments.¡± It would be terrible if she couldn''t run at full speed because the floor was made of ice or snow.
¡°I can fly, just not at the same speed yet.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t fly here, there are some strong creatures here. Okay, we don¡¯t have time to waste. You can practise after, come on.¡± He rather she save her energy than enhance herself just to run. She begrudgingly hopped on. Ebony was stunned a little when a roar echoed in his head. ¡®Did the effect strengthen after I learned the skill? Or is my skill working on myself? Nah, at least my movements aren¡¯t affected.¡¯
Fortunately, his mind and body connection was weird. It could connect and disconnect instinctively and there was practically no lag. It did mean that one of them might get stunned for a fraction of a second but it wasn¡¯t too deadly as long as he had Will power.
¡°You haven¡¯t told me why your arm isn¡¯t healing.¡±
¡°Overdraft. Chassis rupture. This should speed up healing, I¡¯ll be depending on you to protect me.¡±
¡°...where are we going?¡±
¡°Arcta first, then we check on the tide. Hmm, I have no interest in fighting the Trolls anymore. We aren¡¯t that capable. You?¡±
¡°I know how to improve my skills already, I just need time.¡±
They didn¡¯t even need high-level opponents to level their skills. Ning Xin just needed to edit her skills, she knew the requirements for high-tier skills. Ebony also felt that a few of his Class Skills should be evolving. They needed time. Hours of daily training weren¡¯t enough, they couldn¡¯t beat the accumulation oldies have in a short duration. At least the Troll invasion taught him something.
All his health and part of his mana regeneration were sent to his arm. It was lucky his mana and vitality weren¡¯t fully linked and the seal shouldn¡¯t affect mana regeneration. Masking his presence was actually easier with the seal on his arm.
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The awkward braking of his footwork meant that a certain soft body part kept pushing against his body. Ebony believed that he hit puberty for the first time or that Everlasting Tranquillity just didn¡¯t work when it came to her. It was better after she hugged tight enough that nothing bounced. Her mantle was not even wearable anymore and his robe was worn down so it was much thinner. His Perception didn¡¯t make things easier.
He was glad he trusted his urgency when they reached Arcta. The village was defending against more of those fishes. With self-firing bows that stayed back to separate parts of the school that chased after them. There was a barrier up. Dozens or so bows were forcefully held down, Milly the guardian beast was overwhelmed by numbers.
As expected, Milly wasn¡¯t a strong ancient ranked beast. She used mostly physical means, little magic. The Jetfins crowded the barrier and the bear couldn¡¯t attack the barrier in fear of either destroying or weakening it.
All the able Frost Elves were shooting their arrows but only the King Classed crafters were hurting the Jetfins. Ebony was wondering who remained in Arcta other than Milly. There should at least be one or two combatants protecting the village.
¡®Korben? Koawe? Anyone?¡¯
The village chief and his party were doing their best under siege. They only did slightly better than the high-level crafters and their bows and arrows. The levels of these older Frost Elves gave them a nice advantage.
He got into the sky to check the situation further back. Koawe was handling some weird-looking Trolls, probably Shamans. Korben had been injured but was doing well against a few tamers with some other unknown monsters. The Trolls couldn¡¯t pass the city, not even the tamed monsters. The Jetfins weren¡¯t tamed, only the leader that Gen ate was tamed.
But the Tamer that chased them could get past so the supremacy duel nonsense didn¡¯t physically stop the Trolls.
¡°Time for some payback.¡±
Showing off aside, the Jetfins were highly temperature resistant. Shock resistant. Impact Resistant and resist change in direction from gravity with ease. They were very used to sudden changes in strong underwater currents or so the chef explained another one of their amazing capabilities.
Both of them went all out. Ebony with more emotion than usual, noticed his own rage. It was a new experience to feel such rage when these weren¡¯t the fishes that hunted him down.
He was not sure if the village barrier blocked soul attacks so he didn¡¯t use it. Blue and red flames showered the village. They unpacked all the mana they could and facilitated the Jetfins to Milly. At least, the bear was capable one hitting the Jetfins and chewing them up. Milly was trying not to destroy the ground that the village rested on and damage the barrier. It limited the bear¡¯s movements.
Ning Xin¡¯s blades screeched against their scales annoyingly. She couldn¡¯t even descale them like her usual fish. These Jetfins had access to earth and water mana but they were all personally low on mana as well. Before they arrived, he already spotted hundreds of Jetfins corpses around. It seems that the village would have been fine as long as the barrier held.
¡®That¡¯s a lot of King-ranked monsters.¡¯ He was not exactly shocked since he just witnessed monsters levelling up within days. But even monsters took more time to go from one evolution to the next. Milly had to spit out the Jetfins because of the thick earthen scales they dragged up from the ground under the snow.
Ebony searched for Willow the baby bear. The fact that the ¡®monster¡¯ was still a baby meant that Milly tried to expel the world¡¯s essence. It might not have a Class but there might be a good chance Willow wasn¡¯t just a monster but just a ¡®normal¡¯ bear that doesn¡¯t naturally absorb atmospheric essence.
Jetfins were the only type of monsters attacking Arcta. A species of eagle was weaving about Korben into the distance, right above Fifth Tide. Ning Xin probably couldn¡¯t see so far since they were the size of ants in his sight.
¡°Damn fishes, won¡¯t burn, won¡¯t freeze, won¡¯t suffocate, faster than my current state! You better be delicious!¡± The chef continued to speed up and the power behind her attacks increased almost exponentially. The aggressiveness aside, both of them were only able to be unharmed thanks to Milly¡¯s support. The bear was able to take the Jetfins down when the Jetfins got distracted by 2 more targets.
Even without a leader, the Jetfins were using their usual hunting tactics. They knew how to force Ebony to expend more mana if he had his domain up so that he couldn¡¯t effectively slow down a large number of them. It might have been one of the rare occasions that he actually felt like he was the prey, not the predator.
With Orren and his party members'' help, he conjured ice walls to pack the Jetfins tight so that Milly could deal with them. The bear couldn¡¯t fly and had trouble catching the speedy fish. Of course, when it came to strength none was a match for Milly.
On his personal list of strong creatures these Jetfins already parked themselves near the top. They wouldn¡¯t stand a chance if they were any nearer to a body of water.
A few wooden giants were protecting half of the village, the other half was left to both of them and Milly. The wooden giants were not adept at fighting, the King Classed folks must have conjured them hastily. He required Ning Xin to slap the Jetfins down after keeping them in place and Milly would take care of them once they were out of the sky. Thanks to Phantom¡¯s Flicker, he could barely catch the Jetfins off guard and envelop them in his domain.
Dozens of Jetfins pooled their water mana above the village but the villagers sent their mana out of the barrier to freeze the large combined spells. One by one, Ebony stopped the individual monsters shooting water jets at the barrier. Thankfully, the elven village had more than enough mana to sustain a small barrier.
8 hours later, the fire swordswoman rested on top of the catch of the day. She could barely move a muscle, definitely hitting a new record for how much her sword style stacked the increment of power and speed. If only her body was more durable. He couldn¡¯t tell that she had been fatally injured, her high vitality made her healing faster than his but regeneration slower. It was a bit odd but not surprising, he can regrow flesh and bones much faster but would have a temporary weakness till his vitality caught up. She did not have inhuman regrowth capabilities but she faced no weakness after healing.
Although she said she couldn¡¯t regrow bones or even heal bones, it was just proven that she could.
¡®Phantom¡¯s Flicker still places too much of a strain but it''s far more sustainable now. I need to evolve my frostblaze skills, they are still tier 2. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane is mostly redundant against those closer to level 500. Firm Path and Gravity Vortex are good but they are not enough to shake up even Cap Dwarf. I think I can gauge what a weak and a strong Grandmaster better now.¡¯
Ebony gained more skill levels in these few hours than days against some Trolls.
¡®Actually having a possibility of death increases experience gain a lot more¡there were rumours that general experience gain in Tidal has dropped for combat classes but rose for support, crafting classes and even generic skills. Maybe Yvette and Navin¡¯s healing barrier provided a high degree of safety and thus, reduced experience gain but the average level in the Capital is quite high and skill levels rise slowly to begin with so it''s not obvious. However, the congregation of literally billions of people and still have a higher level average means that it¡¯s actually more beneficial to stay in Tidal compared to smaller towns and cities.¡¯
¡°Xin, do you need help?¡± He saw the chef using all her strength to pull at a single fish scale. Her kitchen knives and cleavers would probably break. She nodded in reply, still a little hesitant after their small talk underground.
Ebony had a hard time plucking off the Jetfin¡¯s scale despite it being dead. She attempted to pan-sear a piece but the fish remained uncooked till one of her pans melted. An unbelievable waste but she swiped off the molten metal and ate the fish sashimi style. He tried a slice too.
It was sweet and shockingly tender.
He felt like a miner, mining away at the tough scales to get to the flesh. An hour-long feast took place because of how tightly the scales were stuck onto the Jetfins. At least the flesh under was not as tough after the Jetfins died.
¡®The village really let a level 200 over creature destroy them so badly? The old crafters are strong enough¡ahh, they must have moved out from the other village after the destruction. Korben must be an extra, he¡¯s a grandmaster but completely combatant. Staying at the most dangerous location would expedite their skill levels. For those high-level people, it must be a speed obvious enough for them to desire to live there. Back then, the Barrier King hasn''t come around either.¡¯
¡®These scales are great for armour, I should ask for some to experiment with.¡¯ There was no issue, they allowed him to take as much as he wanted. They kept as many bodies in crates of preservation storage as they could, the blood would do Ning Xin good. His flames were still burning around the edge of the barrier so he went around dissipating them.
He was glad to see Halvis and Roya safe from outside the barrier. Orren was going to open the barrier to go back in and the two of them declined to enter. Now¡¯s not the time to play with Willow or Kiva. The swordswoman was still radiating intense heat. There was no snow around the village which made the surroundings look naked. The villagers got to conjuring snow to camouflage themselves.
They didn¡¯t give Orren or Milly the chance to thank them and left for Fifth Tide.
Hector had woken up. Cap Dwarf was fighting despite his previous serious injuries. Korben was the main fighter. To be precise, the fight had already ended and the fighters were lying on the city walls along with many others. They were receiving medical care. Apparently, they were fighting 3 on 3 in a ¡®contained¡¯ duel but they pushed the duel all the way here with the numerous tamed monsters. The monsters took the chance to attack the city and walls and the Saint spirit didn¡¯t protect property. There were quite a number of casualties.
The situation here wasn¡¯t that dire anymore.
¡°Don¡¯t go, you¡¯ll just distract them,¡± Korben warned. He was easily convinced since he already lost the intention to fight. The figures in the distance were too small for him to watch the fight. Koawe was the closest, he was fighting a few of those spirit Shamans that used elements like mages and a full squad of warriors. Despite being the only one, he seemed to have accepted the duel and was within the ray of light. This way, others won¡¯t be able to interfere but the spirit Shamans also cannot escape or interfere with other battles too.
If he had gone closer, he would have been able to see the Trolls in agony.
¡°Where¡¯s Mallory?¡± He asked after scanning for the largest-scale battle.
¡°In one of the field hospitable downst¡¡± Hector was in a state of half-consciousness and fell asleep. The man might not even recognise Ebony at the moment.
The average soldier present was a bit too weak in comparison, he expected the Imperial Army to suffer losses but Mallory clearly kept deaths to a minimum. He wanted to ask her to check both of them up but she was too busy and he knew she was out of mana, likely using a skill similar to his overdraft to draw more mana.
¡°You¡¯re swaying, just go to sleep. Just so you know, you haven¡¯t told me how you got rid of the shamanic plague.¡± He told Ning Xin off.
¡°...¡±
Ebony passed by Lucas, the Emperor¡¯s student and the one who made him suffer the recollections of getting his butt kicked. The lizardman was asleep but without any visible injury. Ebony made a spot near the field hospital for themselves. The swordswoman slept soundly.
Ebony propped one of his legs up to rest his arm on and stared into space. He didn¡¯t know that he was intimidating every patient despite a screen of ice separating them. What he didn¡¯t expect was for two figures to fall right beside him. It just appeared within his senses without moving, something he was familiar with. ¡°You¡¯re too late¡¡± He complained to the space mage, he was angry but that anger didn¡¯t last.
He only saw Mark as a purple statue and Sister Jing had half her body in the same state. ¡°Don¡¯t touch us!¡± The space mage yelled before fainting. He thought it was a good chance to a good chance to make use of Appraise.
[Budding Craftswoman of Conception Lvl 300 | Discarded Aptitude of Spatial Brilliance Lvl 300]
¡®What in the world are these class names? The names are praising her! I can¡¯t believe she actually took a class with ¡®discarded aptitude.¡¯ Wait a minute, Appraise shouldn¡¯t be able to tell me a Sub-Class¡¯s full title¡¡¯ Ebony knew that Kong Jing really didn''t care to improve her space magic that much. At least not until recently. But he couldn¡¯t believe she really just gave the bare minimum to undergo complete evolution with Class, Sub-Class and Profession. He did wonder about what her Profession was but not even Ning Xin knew.
The purple crystal grew across the stone floor. Ebony lifted Ning Xin and evacuated the patients nearby. He didn¡¯t blame the space mage for teleporting into a hospital, she probably only sensed their presence and not the surroundings.
Without a choice, he disturbed Mallory.
¡®Oh? I see.¡¯ He noticed that Mallory was more distraught than normal after she saw Mark.
He Appraised Mark and got similar results to what he knew about the man. [Firm Flame Spear-wizard Lvl 238 | Runic Academic Lvl 288] Although he heard from Ning Xin that Mark was not a mage but a wizard which was odd, they didn¡¯t question the man. His fighting style was a mishmash of spearmanship, mage tactics and his own runic incorporation. ¡®Firm¡¯ likely referred to how his flames could stay still and was probably one of his main Fortifications. The vast difference in his Class and Sub-Class level shows where he had been putting effort on.
Mallory¡¯s frown was worrying. Minutes passed and her frozen expression only got stiffer.
She couldn¡¯t do anything but she said Mark was still alive somehow. Looking at Sister Jing, she deduced that Sister Jing cast a spell on them. The purple crystal, likely some variant of topaz, continued to spread through the ground. Ebony evacuated the patients because he sensed the tiny particles floating through the air, he just breathed using the stored air in his lungs and he wasn¡¯t worried about the masked women who breathed their own air. ¡®Wait, she utilises scent heavily, maybe her own air supply doesn¡¯t apply all the time. I¡¯ll move her away just in case.¡¯
Perhaps still pissed at her, he poked the space mage¡¯s mask again and again. If the spell protecting them was cast by her and she was the only one that could do something about the purple topaz then she had to wake up before she died.
Chapter 225: Instalment
¡°GAH! My head¡¯s gonna split if you keep poking me!¡±
¡°Your reforged brain isn¡¯t that impressive, it does nothing to enhance your intelligence.¡± Ebony gibed, it didn¡¯t take too long to wake the space mage up.
¡°Of course not, I didn¡¯t add organic materials, only reformatted it for crafting.¡± She answered. He did not expect a technical reply.
¡°So what happened?¡±
¡°I was checking out the gravestone. It was connected to a mana source from deeper underground and I went to check it out. Didn¡¯t think there would be grade 5 Grandmasters and Kings there, those are just the guards.¡±
¡°Grades again, is that one of your personal methods of classifying monster strength?¡±
¡°Personal? No? It is the most common method used. I¡¯m pretty sure the Empire already has the knowledge, I guess it doesn¡¯t matter to most people.¡±
¡°...anyway, can you fix yourself?¡± He would ask once she dealt with the ongoing problem
¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll just move the topaz out of my body.¡±
¡°How about Mark?¡±
¡°No problem, he¡¯s not hurt, only grazed after I cast my spell on him. Thanks to his non-existent magic body he doesn¡¯t have much resistance to space magic so I can remove it faster.¡±
¡°We were in danger.¡± He childishly complained.
¡°Aren¡¯t you always?¡± Sister Jing rebutted.
¡°The bodysuit you made for her can¡¯t even stop a stab and just stretched.¡±
¡°...And you let her get stabbed?¡± Sister Jing was easy to read, she was conflicted with the news she received.
¡°...¡± Ebony already knew that Sister Jing wasn¡¯t at fault but the rebuttal hurt.
¡°...is she okay?¡± She stopped herself from patting his head because of the topaz on her that cracked and fought back against her removal. Mallory was watching intently, more so with her mana sense.
¡°Mmm.¡± He didn¡¯t think there was a need to go into detail.
¡°Sorry, I couldn¡¯t be there¡¡± She breathed a sigh of relief when she looked at the sleeping figure beside him. Ebony had shifted the entire bed and made sure no vibrations reached her so she slept in peace.
¡°The callstones aren¡¯t good enough. I imagine the ones on your mask had a better connection.¡±
¡°Only Uncommon Mental Mana Ores, there aren¡¯t any high-quality ones on the whole continent. As for her bodysuit, there¡¯s nothing so flexible yet strong past Rare and I got it from someone in Xienor who got it from some other world¡¯s dungeon. In my defence, I made her something better but she doesn¡¯t want to wear it.¡±
¡°What?¡± He was befuddled.
¡°Except for that mantle, she insisted that she didn¡¯t need something new. She must be slower than I imagine if she¡¯s getting hit¡well, it¡¯s only been around a year since your evolution so it¡¯s no surprise. I made that when I just evolved so I should get it back to remake it.¡±
¡°Can you remove any traces of that topaz that spread on the floor, this is a hospital.¡± Mallory interrupted before going back to her job. She ran off before Mark was released.
It was taking more time than he assumed. Ebony already put more distance between them because the purple crystals were popping right out of their bodies while being teleported away.
According to the craftswoman, she made the best defensive and evasive armour for the swordswoman out of Epic-ranked materials. Ancient ranked materials weren¡¯t something she could work with at that time and it wouldn¡¯t matter in terms of defensive properties since the wearer would just take damage despite the armour being fine. It would be different if either of them wore metal or stiff armour but soft textile that¡¯s flexible doesn¡¯t give that kind of protective effect no matter how durable they were.
¡°That¡¯s why there should be something like this.¡± Ebony showed off his robe that had the option to summon scales that were stronger against impact and cuts.
¡°She just wants effects that make her faster or stronger.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t see her using any sort of equipment effects.¡±
¡°All passive, so that she doesn¡¯t get distracted. I¡¯m sure you noticed what they are.¡±
¡°General resistance to many types of magic for the bodysuit, probably against the area of effect type of magic that speed will find hard to counter. The mantle regulates temperature and can contain mana, it¡¯s more physically durable than the bodysuit. Oh, can you give me some tips on making temperature runes on clothes? My clothes keep freezing and shattering while the ones I make for her ignite.¡±
¡°Let me guess, the fabric is too thin and you can¡¯t mould anything too complicated or even three-dimensional. What you know should usually be more than enough for most environments but your elemental enhancements change things. You either made the fabric thicker, made your mana finer and just depended on your skill to continue increasing in level.¡±
¡°I also compounded small versions within a large rune. There¡¯s about a 12% improvement if I layer it once, and 6% if I put 2 smaller versions in one. 1% more if there are four layers.¡±
¡°What do you mean by compounding them?¡±
¡°I mould a large version of a rune, make it hollow, mould another thinner layer inside. So on and so forth.¡±
¡°Huh? I didn¡¯t teach you that yet.¡±
¡°Oh, I just experimented and imagined it was like compressing mana.¡±
¡°Let me see, I want to see how you made the rune work when it¡¯s hollow.¡±
¡°Not exactly hollow, I fill it up with the thinner versions. The innermost layer is filled with mana.¡± He passed a random shirt he made to her unharmed arm.
¡°Pretty smart. Have you picked up Gia?¡±
¡°No.¡± He didn¡¯t have the time to learn a new language.
¡°Too bad, I¡¯m not gonna translate everything for you.¡±
¡°Can you tell me about grades?¡±
¡°Eh, it¡¯s quite a useless method of classifying monsters but I guess it¡¯s the best gauge we have when referring to a creature¡¯s strength. Simply categorised by the equivalent tiers of skills needed to kill them, ah, I guess it''s a bit more than that but that¡¯s good enough.¡±
¡°No, it¡¯s not, please tell me more.¡±
She lazily explained but put more focus on removing her affliction.
Grades are a very general classification of power, it states the creature''s evolutionary stage and a number that corresponds to skill tier. It was better than nothing but he understood why it¡¯s mostly useless. The majority of the monsters around Trailane Plains were considered grade 1, be they Journeyman or Master. It meant that a level 50 would require tier 1 skills at level 50 to harm. Most people had skills higher than their personal Class level hence, even those with untiered skills in the countryside had no real issue with hunting roaming monsters. There was even a base percentage for most skills.
According to Sister Jing, the average on Elcra was rising to grade 1.5 and quite a few forests and habitats rose to grade 2. On other worlds or planets, they go more into detail. Like grade 2 speed, power or stealth listing it down on requests so people without the required speed, power or perception wouldn¡¯t take the job. For Elcra, it was a pointless classification. Almost every monster was around the same, they used ¡®elite¡¯ or ¡®noble¡¯ for stronger monsters at the same level and it was generally good enough as a gauge.
However, that was only for the average and skill tiers and power rose almost exponentially. At Ebony¡¯s level, a level 300 tier 3 skill that evolved would double the percentage on top of the rise in base percentage. Skill evolutions usually don¡¯t take away skill levels after all.
A grade 2 Grandmaster monster was similar to a Grandmaster with tier 1 skills at a relatively high refinement and average skill level. As for why the classification was useless, it was because no one else uses it here. If Ebony met an unfamiliar monster for the first time, what would this classification do for him? It¡¯s not as if Analyse will tell him a grade. It''s good for a rough mental image of how strong a monster was but that was it.
It let him imagine that the monsters that put Sister Jing in her current state were monsters around 500 with tier 5 skills at the same level or tier 4 skills at double the level. Even more useless was the fact that he couldn¡¯t tell if that meant the creature had that tier of speed, magic, physical strength or just an overall power gauge. In the end, it was still better than just having a creature''s level so he took note of it.
¡°There are some nerds that go further and list down every single detail of a monster¡¯s stats and abilities but it''s not like you won¡¯t be able to tell once you face the monster that¡¯s why I said it¡¯s a stupid generalisation. For example, you can beat a grade 4 Grandmaster with multiple tier 2 skills that work well together with no problem. Why bother classifying and going into detail? Especially with magic, different elements can counter each other.¡±
¡°I think it¡¯s good enough. No mage, no matter the elemental advantage with a tier 2 line up can beat a grade 4 creature that has the speed or power to kill them instantly. They can¡¯t even cast fast enough, as far as I¡¯m concerned there¡¯s no enhancement that speeds up casting speed. Maybe if they had multiple body enhancement spells that they can maintain at the same time.¡± Ebony appreciated the information despite its little use.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
¡°Sister Jing, you have better Perception, can you see what¡¯s going on out front?¡± Ebony brought up the topic.
¡°The tall blue ones are winning, the human water mage supports ice magic quite well. Almost impressive.¡±
¡°How about the Frost Elf fighting by himself?¡± Koawe had held back a lot when others were close by. It was probably the nature of his skills. Ebony didn¡¯t know much about curses, but a mage would have plenty of spells that didn¡¯t take into account whether one was an ally or an enemy.
¡°Ugh¡looking at those hurts my eyes. He¡¯s probably fine if looking at his battle hurts my eyes.¡±
¡°So the fight is ending?¡± Finally a good piece of news.
¡°Within the week.¡± Sister Jing reminded him of how persistent the Trolls were.
¡°...How far is your mental range?¡± He prodded curiously, Kong Jing didn¡¯t really mind sharing about some of her abilities so he didn¡¯t hold back as much.
¡°If you¡¯re talking about my spatial awareness, around 8 gurs. If you¡¯re talking about the reach of my mana control, a bit over 3 gors.¡±
¡®Over 15 kilometres in absolute mana control? Even if she¡¯s a space mage that¡¯s amazing but spatial awareness over 40000 km? There¡¯s no way she can sense every single leaf or ant within that range right? That¡¯s 2666 times more than her control, she must have Fortifications for it. On top of that, at least tier 4 perception skills that stack. Or is it her reforged brain? Her physique? Or pure stat and training to increase the range? Her mask buff?¡¯ There were too many variables for him to get a good estimate. He didn¡¯t have enough information about space magic.
For Ebony, his range of mana control was his range of mana sense. It appeared that things were different for a space mage and an inhuman craftswoman. He somewhat understood the Xengs better, using Sister Jing as a standard since Xin didn¡¯t have as strong a connection to them. All in all, other than her personal goal or desire, everything else was not a top priority. Not even her ¡®sister¡¯. Apparently, crafters cared even less about family but at least Kong Jing acted like she cared. To some degree.
He should talk to some of them the next time he visits Xienor.
¡°What does spatial awareness mean?¡±
¡°Gauge of the spatial stability, the distance that I have full confidence of connecting to safely. I can go much further in a single leap by first compressing the space, then expanding my awareness through the compressed space to grab more space to compress.¡±
¡®Yeah, I have no idea how that works.¡¯ He didn¡¯t question about space magic any further.
¡°Can you remove that?¡±
¡°I¡¯m just unfamiliar with it. It¡¯ll run out of mana soon. How about you, why¡¯s your arm in a cast? That spell¡impressive, I didn¡¯t think you could cast something I can¡¯t probe through.¡±
¡°I got someone to cast it on me, it accelerates healing.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t you regenerate flesh wounds? What did you kids fight?¡±
¡°Uhh, this was a self-inflicted rupture of my mana vessel.¡± He touched his frozen arm.
¡°Hahahaha! Your mana capacity is so small after all!¡± Kong Jing tried to kick the awkward air away.
¡°Your masks are just a cheat item.¡± There were a limited number of people who could say that to him.
¡°There¡¯s that too. I guess talking about capacity with a space mage is just unfair.¡± Kong Jing hinted that her mask wasn¡¯t everything.
They chatted about their experiences so far as both of them healed up.
¡°Do you have time?¡± When the purple crystals were gone, he relaxed a little.
¡°I won¡¯t be going back down immediately, those darn homunculi climbed up from deeper underground and took over the tomb city. They were repairing the facilities while kicking me out, should¡¯ve torn down that space restriction before I left. Why?¡±
¡°Take care of Xin for a while.¡± Ebony looked straight at Kong Jing. He was far more comfortable leaving Ning Xin with Kong Jing than with Gen and Ful.
¡°Where are you going?¡± The space mage wasn¡¯t that bothered by the request.
¡°Not far, just a small debt to repay. Only the instalments for now, if I can find him.¡± He added after recalling facts.
¡°Be back quick.¡± Kong Jing pulled out a book to read by Ning Xin¡¯s side. Mark was left on the cold hard ground but he snored soundly.
Ebony gazed at the sleeping figure for another moment before leaving the hospital. Once he was out, he Flickered out of the city and ran towards Fourth Tide.
¡®Fourth Tide should still be at war, they never initiated the supremacy duels. He should still be there but the battlefield is huge, can I find him? He should be near the frontlines, possibly with Commander Wil. I¡¯ll look for club-wielding warriors, the Bludgeon Academy should be under his command.¡¯
Ebony was able to see that the corrosion cloud had retreated noticeably. It gathered towards the Old Hag¡¯s battle. That cloud was amazing, nothing he did for months and months affected it. He had quite the lead on spell skill levels compared to Ning Xin thanks to how fast he regenerated mana and tossed it into the cloud.
Getting to Fourth Tide didn¡¯t take long, he hid his presence so no one spotted him tearing through the air. As expected, the Empire still had a rear base, second line and vanguard. Passing through each of them allowed him to see the large number and wider field compared to Fifth Tide.
In the next few hours, he scoured base to base. Some people noticed him, a few were high-level scouts and archers, a few were minor generals and even fewer mages. ¡®If only I had that scry chart¡I¡¯ll sneak into one of the generals¡nah, commander¡¯s room.¡¯
Ebony hesitated sneaking into a General¡¯s tent, sadly he couldn¡¯t find the scry chart in a Commander¡¯s meeting room. The vanguard¡¯s base had buildings, which clearly meant they had been here for a considerably long time or only tents would be set up.
He got lucky, the General¡¯s room was empty and the scry chart was just lying on the table. He looked for a small congregation of allies that stayed a distance away from the Imperial Army. It took a few seconds to list out a few militia groups¡¯ locations across multiple bases. ¡®Oh, Commander Wil¡¯s location is marked down. He¡¯s just that strong huh¡¡¯
Ebony disappeared from the room through the window. He just had to go to the neighbouring base which shouldn¡¯t take more than ten Flickers. To begin with, his movement skill was more suited to cover distance and not for battle. He had to adjust it for a short distance but that wasn¡¯t too difficult. Just output control and braking strength, inertia was troublesome.
It wasn¡¯t hard to find a large group of muscular men showing off their muscles and arm wrestling from above. Commander Wil¡¯s aura was easily spotted and the old man also spotted him. ¡®How convenient.¡¯
Mr. Kidnapper was drinking with Commander Wil. The man had good instincts, his smile faded when Ebony looked straight at him. Ebony landed and greeted them with a tet. He knew his manners.
¡°What¡¯cha here for? How¡¯s the battle over your end going?¡± The scrawny old man appeared a little tipsy.
¡°Just here to pay instalments.¡± Ebony¡¯s domain was summoned almost instantaneously since he covered the area with his mana as he landed.
He punched Mr. Kidnapper with all the strength and skills he could muster. He resorted to a surprise attack, the halberd user was a man that could outspeed Ning Xin. Ebony¡¯s punch landed squarely in the man¡¯s face, he never thought a successful punch would feel so good.
It was unbelievable that all the damage he did was to get Mr. kidnapper to have a light nosebleed. With his deformed domain, Firm Path should¡¯ve sent the man flying into the distance because humans were light but somehow, Mr. Kidnapper gripped onto the ground hard enough to skid across the training field. Even the durable and self-healing earth was dug into.
¡®He¡¯s really tough¡and fast.¡¯ Ebony looked at the bone-deep cut on his forearm. He barely saw the bulky halberd move and he was even cut where his robe was already damaged. An advantage in stats was really useful for people who knew how to capitalise them.
¡°That was for hurting Xin. Ah yes, thanks for helping her evolve her skill and not killing her. Don¡¯t forget¡I don¡¯t recall how many months, but you better learn how to hide before it¡¯s my turn to kidnap you. See you.¡± Ebony Flickered away before Mr. kidnapper looked as if he wanted to beat him up. He couldn¡¯t immediately recall how many months he got locked up.
Before he forgot, he turned back to one of the tents set up and transmitted ¡°Hi Chris, Glad to see you doing well. Let¡¯s catch up next time.¡±
???
¡°That cheeky rascal! That¡¯s why I avoided him. Ell! His punch was normal but he ran so fast. Movement speed fortification?¡± Unnamed wiped the blood off his lips, checking his nose while he was at it. ¡°Get out of there boy, your stealth can¡¯t hide from mana sense.¡±
Wilson, tipsy as he was, laughed his butt off when Unnamed got sucker punched by a kid. Unnamed was lucky he enhanced himself in time or his neck would¡¯ve been snapped off. It wouldn¡¯t kill him but eating would be painful for a few days.
¡°You kidnapped that boy!? You really did join some shady organisation didn¡¯t you?¡± Wilson poured another mug of ale for the unlucky fellow. As for the two-limbed kid who called himself Mongrel, he quite liked the kid. Poor talent, small and random assortment of skills expected of a warrior who didn¡¯t descend from other fighters but the hidden passion to grow stronger was not lost to his old eyes.
¡°Gah, I needed a lucrative job. Luckily, that craftswoman didn¡¯t seem to care to chase me down. Dungeon clearing is so boring and unrewarding since most of the dungeons are constantly cleared.¡± Unnamed pulled a rock over for the Mongrel to sit.
¡°What do you even need the mana ores for?¡± Wilson knew Unnamed as a war buddy, they never dug too deep into each other¡¯s business. He knew the young man¡¯s character, Unnamed had a bottom line so Wilson didn¡¯t care enough to step into someone else¡¯s business. However, Wilson knew that Unnamed was living for vengeance despite his outward personality. With Unnamed¡¯s strength, mana ores weren¡¯t an issue even if he lived in the Capital. Sure, there were plenty of Grandmasters there but the man was a cut above the majority. There must be more to joining some shady organisation than wealth.
¡°Better equipment? What kind of question is that? I¡¯m not a rich old man with an Academy like you.¡±
Wilson continued to drink, no longer probing deeper into the topic. ¡°What are you going to do about that kid?¡±
¡°Nothing. I might be dead before he gets strong enough to bully me.¡± Unnamed popped open another barrel of ale.
¡°...Then I guess we¡¯re going to have to bully bigger Trolls,¡± Wilson replied.
¡°What about you old man, what are you waiting for? Aren¡¯t you going to evolve to King?¡± Unnamed questioned him. Wilson sighed in response and chugged more alcohol.
¡°My wife and son already left me, how¡¯s living longer or getting harder to kill supposed to help me.¡±
The surrounding men clamoured at that statement, calling themselves his grandchildren. ¡°Shut up and go back to your training!!¡±
It turned into a drinking party but alcohol was limited out here so their stock dried up within hours.
¡®I guess it wouldn¡¯t be so bad if I could have more days like this¡seems like this bag of bones still sees a purpose in life. Opening an academy was my worst mistake if I really wanted to die.¡¯ Wilson took in the scent of stinky sweat and decided it wasn¡¯t a bad idea to evolve and extend his life. It would be nice if his skills could help his students protect their loved ones.
¡°Brat, want to be my disciple?¡± He asked the two-limbed man.
¡°Don¡¯t listen to this old fool! You are clearly building stealth skills, where better to get those than somewhere shady? Follow me after we had enough fun with the Trolls!¡± Unnamed tried to steal a potential student right in front of him. The audacity!
¡°Don¡¯t listen to him, I¡¯m stronger by a dozen magnitudes! Power rules!¡± Wilson argued.
¡°Hey! Dozens? At most ten times stronger, not any more! And how old are you to be comparing yourself with me? I¡¯m not even level 500 yet and you¡¯ve been at that level for what?! 200 years!?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not that elling old! You cheeky brats! Kids really need whooping to learn how to respect their elders!¡± Wilson might have been drunk but he had enough presence of mind to keep everyone present alive.
As for their state at the end of his ass-kicking, it only meant more work for him to toss them back to safety and hold the line himself. ¡®I guess I should stop starving myself and get some meat back on these old bones. Unnamed was a good warm-up to shake off the sluggishness from old age. Ah¡I should get some fine wine for the missus and clean her tomb after this.¡¯ Wilson took another swig and laughed like nobody¡¯s business
Chapter 226: Conversing
¡®He didn¡¯t even chase me¡should¡¯ve kicked him once or twice.¡¯ Ebony lamented.
He learned to be more spiteful from the Jetfins. The vengeful fish¡¯s lesson would¡¯ve discouraged him from hunting them down, it was too bad they tasted so good.
¡®Next is Cielfast City. That¡¯s a bit far, I¡¯ll get sister Jing to teleport me there. No. An eye for an eye, I need to learn how to seal them without hurting them. Those lightning gunmen were so weak I might kill them by accident and they only massaged me for a bit, I¡¯ll just let a Model kick them around a bit. I wonder what the boss who paid for my kidnap looks like? Alright, I''ll go after I get the hang of sealing magic. Mr Kidnapper is more troublesome, Xin could melt herself out and Mr Kidnapper appears completely unaffected by the heat she can produce. At least my ice is more heat resistant but I doubt I can kidnap him and keep him sealed for¡7 months and 4 days any time soon.¡¯ Ebony kicked off another conjured platform. He tried to mark his mana on the man but he had no such skills, any leftover mana would be found out immediately.
¡®Xin never mentioned the opportunity to gain benefits for a while, I guess we have more time before that opportunity. I don¡¯t really want to fight the Trolls anymore though¡where should we go to train afterwards? Levelling normally would take too long, we need somewhere dangerous but not so much that we have to fight monsters since we already know how to improve our skills. Ah, I¡¯ll just think about it after helping Gen and letting him evolve. Maybe he can pluck out that sword from Ful after his evolution so I¡¯m not needed for that anymore. Ful seems to have a purpose in staying alive now that Xin appeared as some sort of descendant or host for the phoenix to revive. I really hope there¡¯s no body overtaking nonsense.¡¯
Ebony decided not to worry about the Heartblood Essence of the Solar-blooded phoenix. Ning Xin had way better Intuition and she could decide for herself on her course of action.
His calves and thighs were too strained and he had to slow down on his return trip. Night fell before he made it back to the field hospital. Perhaps thanks to the sashimi feast, the gluttonous chef was still asleep. Mark and Kong Jing were also asleep.
¡®Time for some actual rest?¡¯ He was alerted by ice mana nearby, a bit surprised to find 2 of the Glacial Models that he left behind. He didn¡¯t expect to find them still working. Most of them got destroyed or were fighting outside the walls, these guys must be those he left to help gather the injured. Maybe they were out of range when he Willed the rest to go out to fight.
He went to check on his Models, there were still people being carried in and hobbling out and healers working full time. Ebony started conjuring more Glacial Models to facilitate the movement of patients.
¡°Why don¡¯t you take a break, your mana¡¯s thinned out. There aren¡¯t any in critical condition now.¡± He advised Mallory.
She actually listened and took a seat, ¡°I could really use some hata¡¡±
¡°Coffee? I have some.¡±
Ebony had some from Hata town but they were in bean form and he didn¡¯t know how to make coffee from its bean form. ¡®Roast it and then boil it?¡¯
He took it out before Mallory subtly swiped her hair. His arm moved and grabbed a black-clothed wrist. ¡®What the, I didn¡¯t sense anyone until he tried to grab the pouch of beans¡is this the Crown Princess¡¯s royal guards? They can hide disruptions of gravity? Darkness magic, much stronger than Ayla¡¯s. Remnant aura behind Mallory, so she was around the entire time.¡¯
¡°Sorry, I moved reflexively. Amazing stealth, I didn¡¯t know you were here behind Mallory the whole time.¡± He apologised for grabbing the lady¡¯s wrist, at least he knew not to grab her hand. He couldn¡¯t get any information from Appraising her.
¡°Make us both a cup.¡± Mallory was always mindful of her bearings and appearance.
¡°I don¡¯t recommend consuming caffeine in the middle of the night.¡± He preferred tea.
¡°Caffeine? In any case, I¡¯m not sleeping tonight. An occasional indulgence is permitted.¡±
¡®She¡¯s recovering mana pretty quickly¡so she has some kind of meditation-type skill that doesn¡¯t require her to stop moving or have most of her attention cut off. Does she not have side effects of overdraft or is her skill significantly different from mine?¡¯ Ebony was quite happy to improve his ability to sense another person¡¯s current mana pool. It didn¡¯t work on people who could conceal their aura and essence. Like Gen, Navin or even the lady who just appeared out of nowhere.
She was eyeing him warily the entire time as she crushed the coffee beans into powder. The coffee or hata beans here were very concentrated depending on their quality but just crushing them wasn¡¯t what he expected. No matter, he let the guard? Maid? do her thing.
¡°Can I see that?¡±
It might be occupational sickness but he manipulated his arm onto the table for her. It was interesting to see what she could sense from or through the frozen seal. The Princess seemed more intrigued by observing his arm than drinking her coffee.
Ebony sent his mana out to check for other royal guards to see if he could find them. He was not subtle and the lady who made coffee was alerted. He could see her but not sense her, it was good to know that he should not be overly dependent on his mana sense or he had to improve it further. Fortunately, once he flooded the area with his own mana he was far more sensitive to movement. He would know if anything moved.
¡®There¡¯s a few odd drafts of wind on the ceiling and 2 people right behind that door. Are they a threat to me? I don¡¯t know, they hide their auras too well so I should assume they are stronger or at least strong enough to be a problem. Xin¡¯s Intuition would be great here, seeing how she¡¯s still asleep these guys can hide their intentions just as well.¡¯
¡°So? What¡¯s the verdict?¡± He asked the healer.
¡°I can speed up your recovery. I¡¯ve always wanted to ask, can I get an in-depth inspection of your constitution? You¡¯re not exactly fully human right?¡±
¡°Sure, heal me. What would this inspection entail?¡± A chance to see how one of the most talented healers would heal an injury to his mana chassis? He would take it any day of the week.
¡°Some of your blood would be good¡better yet, your flesh and bones too.¡±
¡°Okay, would a finger suffice?¡± An ice knife formed in his palms. The reaction from those hiding exposed them even more. Another look at the lady who stood there, acting calm gave him more information. It was disappointing, it appeared like it was their clothes that had darkness enchantment and not their personal magic. ¡®Must be because I told Navin¡¯s butler about hiding their gravity signature. They came up with a solution pretty quickly.¡¯
¡°Why¡¯re you compressing your mana so much, it¡¯s almost blinding¡¡± Mallory commented.
¡°The knife would shatter.¡± He replied with the most obvious answer, even a normal steel knife would snap.
¡°If you don¡¯t mind, I¡¯ll do it. You won¡¯t feel a thing.¡±
¡°Mmm, go ahead.¡± He¡¯d liked to see how she was going to remove his finger. Only to be surprised by her skilful sharp barrier slicing through his skin, fat, muscle, nerves and bones. There was no pain as she healed the finger stump as she sliced it. Although his regeneration was pretty fast, her mana caressed the cut stump and regrew the finger just like a Troll would.
¡®That can¡¯t be arcane, even my blood was refilled.¡¯ He was confident of his own body scan and he was pretty sure he was fully healed, no weakness whatsoever.
She cast a healing spell on his frozen arm that supposedly heals over time. He couldn¡¯t feel anything so he took her word for it.
¡°How¡¯s Hector doing?¡± He was slightly worried, they hadn¡¯t had a proper conversation since meeting up again.
¡°His body¡¯s a mess. I don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on with him, I can¡¯t believe he¡¯s able to move.¡±
¡°That bad?¡±
¡°His physique is completely different. Far more drastic a difference than yours but still more similar to a human than you.¡± Mallory spouted a contradictory statement.
¡°It must be all the different elements running through his body, even though it''s only an evolution from Journeyman to Master his body must have changed drastically to handle the opposing strains of multiple elements.¡± He made a wild guess.
¡°My thoughts exactly, there aren''t any written examples and it would be great if he continued to sleep so that I can¡heal him.¡± Mallory kept his finger in an ornamental wooden box.
¡°Don¡¯t go too far with your ¡®healing¡¯, you don¡¯t want to make him sleep forever.¡± It felt odd to see his finger kept as a specimen.
¡°Unfortunately, he¡¯s too energetic, he''ll wake up soon enough.¡±
They sipped coffee quietly for a minute. The coffee brewer was so tense even he could sense it. ¡®Why¡¯s she so tense? Is it her first time as a guard?¡¯
¡°Mallory, can I ask something? Just curious,¡± He signalled that he could silence their conversation but these espionage-like guards probably had the ability to eavesdrop. He could speak without opening his mouth or moving his lips and even Mallory could do so since she was the better manipulator of mana. Ebony felt that there was no chance Mallory didn¡¯t have mana vibration. He just couldn¡¯t be sure if they had the ability to listen to a thread of vibrating mana and understand what was being transferred without being on the receiving end of the message.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
¡°Go ahead.¡± She waved aside the attempts to keep the conversation private.
¡°Where¡¯s the Imperial Army? The bulk of them,¡±
¡°Where¡¯s this coming from?
¡°I¡¯ve been here for some months and heard the soldiers talk. Few of them are from Tidal. They are from cities nearby, maybe newer batches came from further but small difference. I know Tidal is closer to First to Third Tide and the battlefield there is much wider and larger. I also know the population of Tidal is easily in the billions, with the Imperial Army boasting at least dozens of millions if not hundreds. Here, I don¡¯t know the numbers but definitely not even a million. Although I¡¯m not told the full story and Fifth Tide is supposedly under the Frost Elves'' protection, it¡¯s obvious they don¡¯t have the numbers to protect an entire city. I don¡¯t see how it was a good idea to leave it all to them, regardless of how the Empire regards the importance of Fifth Tide. Actually, I¡¯ve seen Fourth Tide as well. They might have more soldiers but they are also understaffed compared to the Trolls. Finally, where is Navin or even the Dwarven Archduke that was initially here in this city ?¡± Ebony imagined that there was no better person to ask than the Crown Princess herself. She had to raise her hand to stop her guards from moving when he called the King by name but he wasn¡¯t worried about them now that he knew where they were.
¡°Do you know about the sewer issue?¡±
¡°That thing from months ago? Are there still sewer problems in different cities?¡±
¡°That¡¯s right, a large portion of the Imperial Army is split up and sent down every city and town¡¯s sewers. The problem is, they still haven¡¯t found the issue. Tidal has the largest and deepest sewers so the investigation is still running but the Capital never faced any sewer issues to begin with. No amount of soldiers sent to scour the entirety of the sewers found an issue. The holes found in other cities didn¡¯t lead to any monster den.¡±
¡°That¡¯s worrisome how?¡±
¡°Because there¡¯s completely no more monsters found underground. Vermin Paradise should have a plethora of monster species underground but they¡¯ve been wiped out as deep as the army traversed, no monster was found. Because of the war, some abandoned dungeons were calculated to have a dungeon break and were monitored. Those cities had readied their defences to tackle a horde but the scouts stated that the creatures disappeared before they made it within the cities¡¯ range. The scouts didn¡¯t see how the monsters disappeared since they didn¡¯t dare stay close to the horde.¡±
¡°So? You don¡¯t have to tell me if it¡¯s some national secret. I would like to keep my head.¡± No one in the city could take his head so easily but he wouldn¡¯t get overconfident. The Minor Generals were not a big threat, Cap Dwarf had strong defences but relatively weaker offence and speed. Mallory might actually pose the greatest threat with how easily she chopped his finger off. Excluding the leaders of the Frost Elves and Trolls currently fighting.
¡°It¡¯s just my hypothesis since not even I¡¯m told. One, some high-level dungeon underground had an outbreak and these monsters died after they slowly lost essence but they killed off a lot of wild monsters before dying. This is a poor guess, there¡¯s too little destruction if that was the case. Two, some intelligent aberrants are running wild. This is a bit of a stretch considering they are rare and the problem is happening throughout the continent. Three, my personal favourite, Elcra, is under attack by some foreigners. I have a few otherworldly associates who disappeared a few months back, they probably knew about this attack. Of course, they might just have returned to their homeworld without informing anyone.¡±
¡°You have associates from other worlds?¡± Ebony would ask her to add 1 to that number but he didn¡¯t bother commenting.
¡°Of course, there are quite a few in Tidal. Some to make use of appropriately levelled dungeons, others just to stay for the protection of being hard to kill within the city. There are many researchers and crafters who are studying if equal quality materials like iron from different worlds have the same properties. Our Major General¡¯s armour materials are bought from a more advanced world.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t think Elcra had already evolved trade and commerce with other worlds.¡±
¡°Only on a small scale at the moment. Not even all the Archdukes have contacts with them.¡±
¡°Alright, mighty Princess. Any other hypotheses I should know about?¡± Ebony could tell that a defensive battle was everything Navin had hoped for. With his barriers, the Tides didn¡¯t require a huge number of soldiers. The Trolls weren''t even on the Empire¡¯s mind anymore, just a pain in the butt. ¡®Maybe the other Tides don¡¯t have soldiers out front, they can just hide behind their barrier and depend on defensive towers.¡¯
¡°I would like to know the full picture too but I¡¯m just a young Princess too weak in their eyes, I would ask Lucas but he probably doesn¡¯t know much. I doubt the Emperor told him much.¡± Mallory shrugged.
¡°If you¡¯re weak then weak little me will have to go into hiding.¡± Ning Xin was stirring awake, he would probably have to eat again even though he wasn¡¯t hungry in the slightest.
Since the swordswoman fell asleep while in ¡®battle mode¡¯ she didn¡¯t act groggy but alert. Kong Jing had been sitting beside her but it didn¡¯t surprise her much. Mark¡¯s sprawled-out body on the floor probably surprised her more because he smelled horrible, along with the stench throughout the field hospital.
In a moment of hunger, she must have forgotten the awkwardness between the two of them and asked what he wanted for breakfast.
¡°Something light please.¡± He replied.
¡°Mmm.¡± She eyed the invisible people immediately. ¡®Does she have a better perception than me, no way. Was I just unalert?¡¯
The sun hadn''t even risen but the glutton didn¡¯t look at the time to decide when to eat.
¡°My turn to ask questions,¡± Mallory continued.
¡°Go ahead.¡±
¡°Where did you learn the guardian knights¡¯ technique from?¡±
¡°What? Guardian knights? Are you talking about that emperor¡¯s personal knight group? What technique are you referring to?¡±
¡°The way you use mana vibrations, it¡¯s how the guardian knights do. There¡¯s a course on penetrative and impact mana for warriors in Tidal Academy as well. Not many pass the course but it has a good reputation. Mages care more about their elemental magic and warriors just can¡¯t move their mana with as much finesse during quick-paced combat.¡±
¡°My skill, Sonic Intrusion? You mean there are warriors who use sound magic?¡±
¡°Not sound magic. Just sending shockwaves of mana through their attacks and the defensive options of stabilising their own mana. I also took the same course, I only learnt your so-called sound magic after meeting you.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t Mana Vibration manipulation just the manipulation skill for sound magic? There¡¯s no sound mana manipulation as far as I¡¯m aware. I believe you¡¯re even more aware of that than I am. Your barrier and healing are both arcane just like sound. I bet there¡¯s no healing mana or barrier mana manipulation since they aren¡¯t naturally occurring elements. It¡¯s news to me that the guardian knights use the same technique. I just came up with it when I was wondering what magic I could do without elemental affinity for.¡±
¡°You just came up with a technique that the guardian knight uses on a whim. I see. And yes, my healing is arcane but there are many elemental healing and barrier spells.¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t say, on a whim, it just felt right. Using it to talk was just training my control over mana. What can I do to make my ice shield be considered barrier magic?¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°I doubt you need to. We have limited Fortifications, I doubt you want a barrier fortification in your limited slots. And if you don¡¯t have a fortification for it, there¡¯s no reason to desire your skill to have an additional classification. If you really want to, you can ask the King to find someone to teach you. I¡¯m not sure if anyone in the family uses ice magic so don¡¯t keep your hopes up.¡± Mallory stated the obvious. It slipped his mind that the only reason to have magic under multiple classifications was that fortifications aimed to buff such skills.
¡°Right, Fortifications¡no harm learning it for my future fortifications. But you¡¯re right, I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll ever have space for that. About that, are there any courses on domain spells? Mine¡¯s kinda deformed for some reason.¡± Ebony rather left his fortification to strengthen his meditation and ice magic.
¡°...No, there are only 2 professors that are domain mages and they mostly do their own research and give lectures from time to time. They are both Elves, King-classed and they are relatively new to their status as Fourth-Order mages. I¡¯m going to assume your ¡®domain¡¯ is just a strong area of effect spell that strengthens most of your magic but not exactly strong enough to put you in complete control.¡±
¡°Yes, the Frost Elves could still manipulate ice within my spell. I completely forgot that you measured a mage¡¯s skill by Orders. Does Fourth Order mean the ability to cast a domain?¡± It was not a topic that came up in conversations often.
¡°Half and half. It¡¯s mostly the ability to use Will. Are you aware that Third-Order equates to the ability to control elements with words or strong thoughts and emotions? Fourth is just the higher version regarding control without mana.¡± Mallory finished her coffee and her guard and maid refilled her cup.
¡°So I¡¯m somewhere in-between, I¡¯m also figuring out this Will problem. I think it¡¯s not accurate to say without mana since mana is still necessary.¡± It appeared to Ebony that the hidden guards didn¡¯t believe him.
¡°Because you conjure your own elements, if you are surrounded by ice mana a Fourth-Order mage should be able to use ambient ice mana without consuming their own mana. Actually, that¡¯s how most mages fight just that they utilise their own mana to exert control instead of Will. There are very few exceptions like you who only use conjured mana since you were a Journeyman. It¡¯s the smarter choice, most mages don¡¯t have fortifications to their mana because they keep using ambient elements.¡±
¡°I¡¯m glad I followed the Frost Elves¡¯ tips.¡±
Breakfast arrived rather quickly. He had a chawanmushi-style steamed egg bowl and so did Mallory. The rest of the table was filled with flatbread that was sliced in half and opened to stuff with the various fillings that included sausages, stir-fried potatoes like a hash brown, the main diced poultry with tomatoes in a green sauce and a few different choices of additional sauces.
There were sliced fruits on the side as well. He ate with both masked ladies and the Crown Princess. He couldn¡¯t resist having at least one of the ¡®sandwiches¡¯ but the Crown Princess didn¡¯t eat much, less than a normal female human should. She commented on how much Ning Xin ate and that conversion didn¡¯t go anywhere.
¡°Oh right, you Yvette¡¯s granddaughter?¡± Kong Jing spoke with her mouth full.
¡°Great granddaughter,¡± Mallory replied. Ebony was wondering how old Yvette was, to his knowledge the Royal couple was under 200 years old at best. They took over as King and Queen around 80 to 90 years ago during or before the previous war with the Trolls.
Navin sure had transformed the entire continent in less than a century. It told him that all the Royals and Archduke noble families could get King-Classed within a century. Otherwise, he believed that somewhere along the lines, someone gave birth at a younger age or level. ¡®Are Mallory and Hector¡¯s parents also King-ranked? Or Grandmaster? Grandmaster seems more plausible.¡¯
¡°Same thing, anyway here¡¯s a message. Little Xin, rascal, it''s for you too,¡± Kong Jing caught all their attention. A message, it seemed like there was only one person it could be from.
¡°She contacted you!?¡± Ning Xin was clearly not happy that she wasn¡¯t contacted.
¡°Nope, someone I don¡¯t know sent me a dream message. I don¡¯t know when it was sent since I haven¡¯t fallen asleep for weeks.¡± Kong Jing stuffed the Egyptian-like breakfast into her mouth. She doesn¡¯t eat for days at a time so her hunger was expected.
¡°What¡¯s the message?¡± The Crown Princess was not aware why she had a message but she assumed that it was for the Queen and not her.
¡°I don¡¯t know what the context was but she said ¡®under 2 years¡¯,¡± As usual, Kong Jing was a messy eater.
¡°That¡¯s tight.¡± Ebony understood the gist of the message and the time limit.
The chawanmushi bowl was heavenly and it increased health regeneration by 2% for 2 hours. ¡®Must be the mushrooms.¡¯ Her cooking experiments were bearing fruits. They cleared the table quickly with the Crown Princess lecturing about table manners to the other ladies at the table.
Chapter 227: Obsius
Ebony tried not to worry about the time. He gave Ning Xin time to chat with Kong Jing. Mark woke up after their meal and Mallory disappeared to do her job as a healer.
¡°Are you okay?¡± He asked Mark who remained with his face glued to the floor.
¡°Can¡¯t move, can you put me somewhere more comfortable.¡±
¡°Finding an empty bed might be a struggle, If you¡¯re feeling fine we could move to a training barracks we rented.¡±
¡°...staying near the healers sounds better, can''t I take this bed beside me?¡±
¡°The spot is free but the bed is not.¡± Ebony stole the bed and Ning Xin¡¯s bag before stuffing it into her bag. ¡°So how¡¯s your research going? Any results for me?¡±
¡°The second dive was just putting my life on the line! There was no research going on. Fortunately, Master Jing said she was planning to go to Clatter Rattle City for the foreseeable future. Safe and plenty of time to study exactly what I need.¡± Mark complained. It made sense that the craftswoman liked to go back to a city that had plenty of odd materials being gathered. He helped Mark sit up against the wall.
¡°Don¡¯t forget to train your body and mana control, all your equipment runes will be useless if you can¡¯t move well in them.¡± He was a bit worried for the research-filled mind that dabbles in combat. He should transition to a full-time scholar and researcher but getting stronger in this savage world wasn¡¯t a bad idea.
¡°Of course, I¡¯m gonna make a trip back home and show my father I haven¡¯t been lazing around.¡± Mark flexed his biceps. He seemed happier than Ebony ever saw him.
¡°Well, send me your results after you consolidate and compile them.¡± He remembered that he hired Mark for the rune analysis and further improvements. He realised that he was brushing away the fact that Mark seemed to be the only one who had a stable and healthy relationship with his parents.
¡°I think I can swap out the requirement for ice mana for pure mana.¡±
¡°Nice, I can cast it for others.¡± It was great to know he could strengthen Xin¡¯s defences. The speed and power buff was secondary in his opinion. They had that in spades.
¡°I still need to work on making it smaller to fit a woman¡¯s body. Not just the size, but the frame and structure have to be changed too. Besides, I think I can double the effectiveness and maybe triple the energy efficiency!¡± Mark knew exactly what he wanted the edited Stalwart Endowment for. The efficiency and effectiveness were an added bonus perhaps thanks to their adventures underground.
¡°How long do you think you need?¡±
¡°A few years.¡±
¡°Focus on something for yourself, don¡¯t worry about effectiveness and try to get a draft version that works on our human body types that doesn¡¯t require elemental mana. Under 2 years, 1 and a half to be safe. I have a bad feeling so just strengthen yourself first.¡± The opportunity that almighty divination grandma was talking about was something bigger than a Troll invasion. The message about the time seemed to be referring to this opportunity.
¡°Aigh--¡± Mark snored. Ebony had wanted to continue the conversation but Mark must have been dragged around without much sleep if he fell asleep while they were talking. The scholar was an uptight and cautious man, for him to fall asleep so easily showed the trust he had in the people surrounding him now. Of course, he still had his spear gripped tight and resting against the wall.
¡°Everyone¡¯s asleep¡oh right, shouldn¡¯t there be another person back at Arcta as their protector, how come Milly was the only one with the older crafters defending?¡± Ebony just thought about it. The Frost Elves didn¡¯t seem like they would leave the village without at least one person of Korben or even the senior Christy¡¯s power. Maybe that person went to Christy and the others to finish things faster.
¡°Any loose ends?¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°Not that I can think of.¡±
¡°Then let¡¯s go.¡±
¡°You wanna come along? There are a few King Classed crafters in Arcta.¡± He turned to Kong Jing.
¡°Sure. Gotta toss this guy somewhere first, you two can go ahead.¡± She picked up Mark onto her shoulder and walked into the wall. He was quite sure that she was going to buy a plot of land in Cattle Rattle to place her house again.
He knew where the Crown Princess was so they walked up there to say their farewells. ¡°Mallory, we¡¯ll be on our way. Say hi to Hector for us.¡±
¡°Where do you suppose you would be in 2 years or so?¡± Ning Xin questioned.
¡°Back in Tidal, there¡¯s plenty of dungeons suited for us back home. As long as there¡¯s no impending invasion. The two or three of us would probably be in Fourth Tide or the actual battle in First during this period. I don¡¯t feel all that comfortable seeing some family members but I suppose it''s worse for Hect.¡±
¡°Take care, since this supremacy duel doesn¡¯t lock top fighters in a ring they will likely run to other Tides. The Old Hag or whatever her name was would probably fight best with their best warriors around her. I can bet you, the Frost Elves won¡¯t chase her. Actually, you might want to be careful of any Trolls dashing from other Tides. I believe the Frost Elves are capable of forcing the battle to remain where they are.¡± Ebony spoke at length about his guesses. As an ice mage, he knew the great advantage the ice element had in keeping something or someone in place.
¡°You might also want to move the field hospital further away from the cliff and evacuate the non-combatants even further. The temperature is slowly dropping. The guards on the wall would need greater protection against the cold.¡± Ning Xin added.
Ebony hadn¡¯t noticed. His perception of temperature was nowhere as sensitive and all the resistances and constitution made his body temperature regulation work against sensitivity. Recalling Korta¡¯s large spell, it was very possible that the entire City was within their range.
¡°I¡¯ll portion some of the city¡¯s mana to resist cold and set it to full coverage.¡± Mallory was probably the best barrier operator they could find in the area. Since the city wasn¡¯t on the offensive, they didn¡¯t need to leave magical and physical gaps to allow ranged projectiles to pass through.
Ebony gave them the majority of his Glacial Models that worked as physical labour, he didn¡¯t input much Will to fight in them. They would melt away sooner or later without him so he saved some for himself. It would¡¯ve been nice if he had more during their escape. They might have been a good distraction but ultimately, he didn¡¯t see a difference. Those models would melt in an instant against the Jetfins.
¡°Let¡¯s make a stop at Plainston. We need to restock fresh food.¡±
¡°Mmm¡±
They didn¡¯t waste any more time and left for Plainston. Disturbing the barrier operators and possibly the safety of the city while they were at it.
They might have ration that could last a year or more but a large portion of it weren¡¯t fresh fruits or meat. Unlike the time right after their evolution when they ate what they hunted on the move. The time spent at Fifth Tide didn¡¯t give them a steady supply of ingredients. Preservation magic and a working refrigerator helped but it was always a good idea to restock supplies. Not to mention, they were going to spend quite some time underground.
¡°I kinda want to go back to Xienor to get some rice but that¡¯s too far even if Sister Jing helped to deliver it.¡±
¡°We¡¯re out of rice?¡±
¡°Not yet, we¡¯re fine for¡half a year if we eat like we usually do but I can fit in more riceless dishes in our diet.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a pity, rice is life. Can we just have less each meal instead?¡± Ebony was not sure if he could go on a riceless diet for an extended period of time. He rather eat less rice every dinner than have no rice for some days.
¡°Indeed. Okay, we won¡¯t be exerting as much energy so we¡¯ll be eating less.¡±
They were right on time for the gates to open and the markets were always open early. Ning Xin already knew where they sold ingredients wholesale. The prices for turkey and most wild meats around Trailane Plains at least tripled. Wild vegetables dropped in price and locally grown vegetables and fruits rose slightly, enough for the chef who wasn¡¯t great with numbers to notice. Seasonings, herbs, spices and even Plainston¡¯s signature cheese crashed in price, the border cities didn¡¯t need much. Ebony didn¡¯t know what the cows were fed but the cheese made in Plainston was actually really good. ¡®Is it even cow milk?¡¯ He didn¡¯t bother confirming.
They spent quite a few hours here, the chef was eyeing and checking every cut of meat, every leaf and every fruit. Even going so far as to smell every batch of herbs and spices. He paid for it, she was actually close to broke when it came to mana ores. They did have plenty of wild monster and animal leather, fur and scales to sell from time to time but they unloaded that whenever they stopped by a town. That period of dungeon hunting and travelling was pretty short in retrospect.
¡°They don¡¯t sell mushrooms wholesale, I think we¡¯re good to go.¡±
Ebony wondered if he should make a stop to visit Na but decided against it. Instead, he went to exchange a couple of hundred Blues for empty ones. It took some time because they don¡¯t really handle that volume of blues but it was obvious the city was in need of mana so they didn¡¯t put a limit and they had more empty mana ores than ever. He asked the Quest Hall reception if he knew anywhere that sold lightning mana ores and alchemists or potion merchants. He gave clear directions and Ebony was able to find them quickly.
Road speed limits didn¡¯t matter much if he didn¡¯t cause public disturbance and nobody could chase him anyway. Actually, he didn¡¯t even think anyone noticed him. There were only Uncommon lightning mana ores for sale and the only place that had that was the Z&Z along with a smaller speciality shop. As for potions, alchemists sold better and more unique stuff. He cleared out their stock, from potions for common diseases and sickness to ailments and poisons. Despite the advancement in the city, there was nothing special enough to catch his attention but he didn¡¯t want to be potion-less again.
They were on their way to Arcta when he managed to sense someone familiar. ¡°Don¡¯t attack, friendly.¡± He gave the predator beside him a heads-up.
[Transforming Cysaru Lvl 300]
¡®From Nascent Cysaru to Transforming? Is she able to transform?¡¯ The previous time he came across Obsius was right before they joined the war but he only caught a glimpse of the cysaru jumping across the skies at extreme speed. This time, the obsidian-scaled raptor noticed him and he waved to catch her attention.
Obsius¡¯s shiny scales glinted in his eyes and they closed the distance with each other. The closer he got, the more changes he saw. No changes from her previous self, she was changing as she dashed. Her two legs that bent backwards like birds shifted to the front like humans and her short body straightened up. By the time they stood in front of each other, Obsius was standing with her back slanted forward. Her arms which used to be intimidating scythes were in the middle of shapeshifting but she couldn¡¯t form hands. The scythe he shook hands with had a white mark permanently tattooed on it.
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Her reptilian face also withdrew and her skull structure looked more human than Top the Lizardman. Not exactly a pretty sight, the scales remained and she was bald. However, if overflowing essence was to be trusted she exceeded some level 350 Trolls when it came to Vitality while her mana was about twice that of Ning Xin''s.
Not all that impressive if one considers that Obsius was a monster that had far higher stats. This told Ebony that the Cysaru had been relatively successful at removing the world¡¯s essence and becoming closer and closer to a similar state that Gen was in. It would remove their stats but the ability to gain and improve skills and maybe even a Class was more than worth it in his opinion.
¡°It¡¯s been a long time.¡± He started the conversation.
¡°Indeeed.¡±
¡°Oh, your vocals got a lot better.¡±
¡°The last time was in Ordinaa.¡±
¡°What? I didn¡¯t see you.¡± Ebony was confused.
¡°I saw your companions and assumed you were in there tooo. Right after that dungeon opened.¡± Obsius clarified but it was not helping.
¡°You were there? How did you enter? I don¡¯t remember you having transformation abilities and there are guards right outside¡±
¡°Yess¡It was easy to slip in back then. I won¡¯t be able to slip in now that the guards are not inattentive. I don¡¯t know why I have these transformation abilities. I think it''s because I wanted to interact with humans? I kept imagining what it would be like and one day, my mana just moved and reshaped my body.¡±
¡®Imagine¡perks of a monster?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t put too much thought into it. ¡°You didn¡¯t look for me?¡±
¡°I asked your companions, I believe our entry times made contact difficult,¡± Obsius commented. The only ¡®companions¡¯ that Obsius could be referring to was the Z&Z escort party that met Obsius with him.
¡°I see.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t know what a dungeon was, but the monsters there didn¡¯t fill my belly no matter how much I killed and hunted. So I did not expect intense lightning to rain down on meee.¡±
¡°Lightning? In Ordina? You mean a mana storm?¡± Pieces were falling into place within his mind. Even Ning Xin who hasn¡¯t been introduced seemed to notice the implications.
¡°Is that what it¡¯s referred to as? I believe so. I almost perished and had to escape with my tail tucked under. You were right, the world is big. I can¡¯t even conquer these Hills to this day. That black curtain and lands where light does not reach scares me.¡±
¡°Obsius¡years ago, you caused a mana storm around the time when Ordina just opened?¡± Ebony had to confirm.
¡°That¡¯s what I just saaid.¡± Obsius shook her head and a shiver went down her back. She transformed back to her intimidating raptor form. It was clear she was not comfortable with the half-transformation. She was not much bigger than he remembered, just shiner and¡sharper?
¡°I guess you are our saviours then. That mana storm helped us escape a troublesome fellow that you just reminded me I have to get back at¡¡± Ebony knew that he placed Tuffock and their personas at the back of his mind. He actually didn¡¯t think about them even once. Now that he was reminded, he felt that it was such a shame he owed that man a favour. He was unsure why, when it came to what he thought about Tuffock and his personas, it was that he couldn¡¯t beat them.
¡°Xin, I¡¯m asking your Intuition. Do you think we can beat Tuffock?¡± He wanted to make full use of her skill and also test the limits of her illogical skill. He was not sure if it was lucky or unlucky that she replied with, ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±
One, her Intuition needed at least a tiny bit of information to work. Two, there was actually a range limit to her Intuition. Three, she needed to be the one in question. Neither of them was sure about the details of how Intuition worked.
¡°Is she your mate? What immense ferocity¡greater than every past predator that treated me as prey.¡±
¡°...Thanks for the compliment. You can call me Scarlet.¡±
¡°And me, Obsius. Ebony gave me this name.¡±
As the two introduced themselves, Ebony stood there blankly. ¡®What did she consider a compliment?
He wasn¡¯t sure what happened but all of a sudden both of them clashed. He quickly took cover and checked the surroundings, if there were people around they were in danger.
¡°Leave that hill alone, there are freelancers hunting marmots in there.¡± He actually didn¡¯t need to warn them as they were both aware of the low-level teenagers fumbling about with the low-level creatures. The monster population might have dropped but it wasn¡¯t cleaned out.
Ebony actually never saw Obsius fight but it was similar to other Cysarus. High-speed attacks and strong jumps from those thick legs. He could never duke it out with Xin without extra arms or his domain to drag her down and buff himself. When it came to movement and evasion, it wasn¡¯t a problem but he was too slow to land a strike unless he impeded her in some manner.
Obsius was clearly faster than her by a fair bit but the Cysaru quickly realised that swordswoman was speeding up at a pace that the dual-scythe user was slowly getting overwhelmed. Black crescents started to spawn out of her swings.
What Ebony was surprised about was that Obsius transformed the end of her scythe arm into elbows to bend and increase the range of motion and rotation that she could swing her arms. She turned her arms into more of a weapon than it already was and was no longer limited to downward and horizontal slashes like other Cysarus. This gave it the ability to parry strikes from greater angles.
Perhaps to copy her, Xin slashed out rings of blood that burned and clashed with these rotating black crescents. It stopped the crescent long enough for Ebony to see that it was oddly similar to the scales on Obsius. The blood haloes split in two and the half chakrams sliced into the earth, weakened enough that it didn¡¯t deal much environmental damage.
He went over to take a look and examine the material. It was not even scratched or burned and obviously conjured. He tested the material with Sonic Intrusion and tried to freeze it. It took quite some effort to have his flames dig through the shiny, translucent material. It was shock-resistant to a good degree, if this was what covered Obsius¡¯s body, it would take a lot of mana and hits before his Sonic Intrusion did real damage.
The young party chased after 2 Marmots that escaped their den and he escorted them.
¡®So young. Level 22, marmots are a good choice then.¡¯ He was glad that they stopped the Marmot from running much further despite being more than 10 levels lower than the Marmots.
¡°Don¡¯t move if you don¡¯t want to die. Ah, I wasn¡¯t threatening you. You can watch them fight.¡± He internally praised himself for catching his own words.
The 3 boys and 2 girls panicked a little at his sudden appearance.
¡®Hmm. A human ice mage, now that¡¯s rare. I guess it''s actually less rare since we¡¯re close to the glades and there¡¯s more ambient ice mana.¡¯
Shards of obsidian-like materials splattered with conjured blood that sparked flames and lightning flew at them but these boys and girls couldn¡¯t even see or react to them. He blocked the stray bullets with Imperishable Frost Scales and stabilised the mana, making sure it didn¡¯t cause a shockwave on impact. He made the shield with mana thin enough that the ice was translucent so that they could see the battle.
¡°Just starting out?¡± He casually asked.
¡°Ye..yeah.¡± The warrior with the medium-sized round shield answered.
¡°You know each other well?¡± They had good teamwork and managed to clear out a small den.
¡°We¡¯ve known each other since we were kids.¡± The spearman chipped in. The last boy was a rogue with a crossbow, daggers and knife. The short girl was the ice mage and the tall skinny girl was an archer. Their equipment was tattered and seemed like second-hand goods that got repaired and resold.
¡°That¡¯s good, teamwork is crucial and it''s quite an advantage to work with people you¡¯re familiar with.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t sure why he got talkative with these strangers.
¡®Obsius doesn¡¯t have any sort of enhancement, like most monsters she just has really high stats but she¡¯s throwing that advantage away. Does she have a class or at least a few skills yet or are these skills just something she can naturally do? Can she see her own status?¡¯ Ultimately, Obsius couldn¡¯t last long in the exchange.
At the same level and evolutionary stage, she was unable to keep up with Xin¡¯s increasingly fast and powerful strikes. But, she was very balanced in terms of offence, defence and evasion with a focus on physical capabilities like her opponent and really good magical defence.
She might have feared getting another permanent scar on her body. Ebony was very impressed by Obsius to have fought Xin for a few minutes before admitting defeat. Her scales remained unharmed, only slight scratches on her scythe hands. Soot marks were easily washed or wiped away, and her scales were still shiny under the burns.
Sadly for the Cysaru, a lot of chips were near the edges of each scale. The chef must have aimed to de-scale the creature but failed due to the durability and tightness of the scales. Now that he watched carefully, the number of scales increased and the size of each scale decreased. Turning more fish-like and more of a skin instead of scales.
¡°Run to that masked lady.¡± They eyed each other and he knew it was his turn. The young party was confused for a moment, too afraid to move towards the swordswoman. Obsius flashed them her scythes and prepared to move. The young party dashed like their lives depended on it.
Ebony flipped his domain on, grounding only himself and repelling everything upwards. It diminished Obsius''s falling strike¡¯s power considerably but he was able to tell that only part of his repulsion¡¯s effect was working. ¡®Is it just high base resistance or a generic skill?¡¯
He didn¡¯t want to face Obsius with Icicle after the showing with Ning Xin. He was a little embarrassed to show his swordsmanship after Obsius¡¯s expectations rose. The scythe stabbed right through a floating turtle shell, stuck at the elbow he mentally yanked the creature aside. Without footing, the creature was just an unmoving target once caught. He yanked Obsius to the right and kicked the other way.
Obsius was not new to getting caught while she was in the air. Her other scythe came out to guard against his kick with reaction speeds worthy of clashing with Ning Xin. Ebony didn¡¯t care to move his kick aside despite having predicted the counter. He strengthened his guard with some Imperishable Frost Scales on his feet and just went on with it.
Just playing around with the crescent blade and guessing that her body was tougher told him how much mana he had to put in his attacks. He had Frostblaze Augementation on but the Cysaru did not hesitate to come into contact with his flames. With Calculated Hunch, enough mana was sent through the scythe to make Obsius cough out a breath of red icy mist.
¡°I think we can push back a duel to a later date.¡± He said while trying his best to pull his shin out of her scythe. It really hurt.
¡°I imagined that I was improving fast. I guess I wasn¡¯t fast enough.¡±
¡°How did you resist foreign mana so well?¡±
¡°There are these humanoids underground with persistent digging mana as well.¡±
¡°Topaz golems?¡±
¡°Yess and those other more colourful ones.¡±
¡°Homunculi. Have you learnt how to read?¡±
¡°Reead?¡±
¡°Written form of language. I can give you a dictionary and some encyclopaedias. You might be able to learn Identify in time.¡± He had copied all the knowledge he gained in this world and didn¡¯t mind losing the handwritten copies. He took them out to show her.
¡°I have nowheree to keep them or hands to use them.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll make you a bag. You can train the flexibility of your transformation as well.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t hesitate to make a durable leather bag that could fit on Obsius. It was crude since he was rushing the job, he used the Slap Seal skin to make it. It was a high-level creature and he just had to weave some durability runes on it. He didn¡¯t tan the leather at all but nothing he couldn¡¯t overcome with some magic. Obsius didn¡¯t burn, freeze or ooze corrosive elements and that made things simple.
¡°It was nicee meeting you but I really have to go now.¡±
¡°What¡¯re you busying around for?¡±
¡°Something about the Hills is off. I went around the surrounding woods to inveestigatee and felt the same way. I will try to get my kind to gather.¡±
¡°I see, take care. By the way, the part of Bubble Hills where light does not reach is called the Garden of Deceased. That floating monster, a ghost, is supposedly extremely dangerous and most physical attacks don¡¯t work so you shouldn¡¯t step past that curtain.¡± He didn¡¯t think Obsius had kept in contact with her race. The Cysaru usually moved in singular numbers and didn¡¯t stick together.
¡°Alriight, thankkss. Seee you around!¡± Obsius hopped away in a rush.
He turned to the party while covering the cut in his pants with some good old mana weaving. ¡®Why are they all looking down? They¡¯re¡scared? I wonder why she¡¯s so feared but not me. It¡¯s not like she¡¯s leaking much essence now that her mask is able to act as storage for essence.
Her mask isn¡¯t even the problem, people and monsters alike are on edge around her more often. Is it some kind of aura that I can¡¯t sense since I¡¯m with her so much? I wonder if I¡¯m giving off any kind of aura outside of essence effects.¡¯ Ebony thought of holding onto extra myriad bracelets and gallstones for the next time he met Obsius as he went to save those young freelancers.
Chapter 228: Herald of Winter
¡°Relying on elemental mana ores is risky. Here¡¯s how you conjure ice mana¡¡± Ebony showed the girl a sphere of mana and converted it to an ice plum petal extremely slowly.
She had an interesting Sub-Class, Mind Warrior. Unfortunately, Appraise couldn¡¯t tell him the real title. He still wasn¡¯t sure why he could read Kong Jing¡¯s Sub-Class.
From what he could see, she didn¡¯t carry any melee weapons except a hidden knife. She didn¡¯t even have a staff or wand, just a large belt resting on her shoulder with an oddly large ice elemental mana ore embedded. It was definitely the most expensive item the entire party owned. Plus points to her that she didn¡¯t depend on a weapon to help draw the ice mana or increase the power of her magic.
Investing in an ice mage was a great idea, it was great for a beginner party. Ice is versatile and they didn¡¯t have a fire mage to disrupt the effects. Most monsters would be slowed and weakened or at least affected by cold. If her party members do well, she wouldn¡¯t be distracted and could cast at ease. Something that Ebony was slightly troubled by when he just started using ice magic. He was limited to faster and weaker spells, although talent and affinity seemed to have made things a lot easier for him and he was able to gather and even conjure ice mana in a really short time.
¡®Oh wait, I should learn how to draw in ambient ice mana to use. It¡¯s alright if I''m not in that environment but if I ever have to escape somewhere it would be nice to be able to make use of icy areas.¡¯ Ebony had been taught to rely on his own mana which was good and all but if he had been able to make use of Hoarfrost Glade¡¯s abundant ice mana it might have helped in some way.
Sadly, it wouldn¡¯t be as mana-efficient compared to his own until he got skills for that. Earth and wind mages might be more advanced in controlling ambient elements more efficiently since these elements were almost always abundant in most environments, they had less to worry about when their mana pool was about to empty out.
He wasn¡¯t in a rush so he gave some tips that he would¡¯ve liked to know when he just started. They seemed pretty amazed by his ice flowers but he realised their amazement elicited no warm fuzzy feelings that Xin would have given him if she had the same excitement over his abilities. ¡°Let¡¯s get going,¡± Ning Xin gave the back of his knee a kick for some reason so he stopped the conversation.
¡°Alright, you should head back to Plainston or go dungeon diving. The Trolls might toss mountains onto these hills any time and you would be crushed to death without knowing what¡¯s going on. If it''s too crowded just stay in the city and train for some time, you¡¯re so weak a Troll¡¯s sneeze could blow you apart.¡± He knew that the Ordina might be overflowing with people and there was no choice but to get work outside for the weaker parties.
¡°Do-don¡¯t you mean away?¡± The crossbow-wielding rogue seemed to be the most wary of them, it was a good trait.
Ebony formed a crude Glacial Model of five of them and punched out with a wave of Sonic Intrusion-infused mana to burst the models apart to show them he meant what he said. If he learnt some acting skills he would¡¯ve acted like he sneezed and burst the models in the same way. The ice mage would be able to tell he punched out with mana and that was what he wanted.
He bid them farewell and noticed their relief the moment Xin was out of range.
¡°The ice mage was pretty cute right?¡± Ning Xin questioned.
¡°Is she? I didn¡¯t take note.¡± He answered obliviously.
¡°Yeah right.¡±
It was still awkward between them and it didn¡¯t sit right with him.
¡°Hey, I¡¯m sorry I let out my¡frustrations, on you. I know you didn¡¯t get stabbed on purpose. I was incapable of protecting you and shouldn¡¯t have gotten on your case.¡± He had pauses here and there as he figured out the words he wanted.
¡°I¡¯m sorry too. I should''ve told you about what my Intuition was telling me.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not the problem.¡±
¡°I shouldn¡¯t trust my Intuition that much. I¡¯m aware, I didn¡¯t notice the tamer coming with a school of high performance and sweet,¡± she definitely stopped to lick her lips, ¡°big fishes¡±
¡°So¡don¡¯t be angry with me anymore?¡±
¡°I wasn¡¯t angry, I felt your confusion and worry. Your¡helplessness. I just want to say, don¡¯t be such a coward. I know we¡¯re always at risk but the world¡¯s not going to explode and the sky¡¯s not going to fall without reason. At best, a few mountains would drop on us. You¡¯re training like a Saint is going to pass by and destroy the continent.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want to hear about how much training we do from you. It''s clear to me that there¡¯s always someone stronger. For now. And I¡¯m no coward. How am I supposed to stop you from being whisked into another realm if I can¡¯t contest a Saint?¡± He stopped her from continuing because he had always known that the amount of power he wielded wasn¡¯t ever going to feel enough. He didn¡¯t know what a coward meant to the Xeng but he could not see how he was remotely cowardly.
The addiction of skill levelling and gaining power was nice and he wasn¡¯t going to stop anytime soon or ever but the slow levelling from 280 to 300 was an indicator to him that one day, all his skills were going to level extremely slowly. Just like most of the people who seemed capped out at their levels in the army. He had little choice but to admit that it was a birth advantage.
Ning Xin had no reply to his last statement. She must not have expected him to be thinking about the fact that she was pulled into some Blood Realm on a whim without any resistance. He would¡¯ve added the point that there were Saint-classed spirits casually fooling around with the war and the duels but she already understood his point.
Thankfully, instead of making things more awkward, they knew that nothing really changed.
They arrived back at Arcta relatively quickly. On top of an invisible barrier was an extremely intimidating but unknown Frost Elf. So intimidating, they were at least a dozen kilometres away when their feet stopped moving towards the village.
¡°You see. This is exactly what I mean, we¡¯re in this guy¡¯s range and I didn¡¯t even notice until it¡¯s too late. Did your Intuition tell you anything?¡± He casually told Ning Xin. The snow under their feet was alert, he could sense it. The ice mana in the surroundings were dense and sharp but they didn¡¯t collate and form weapons or anything of the sort. Sort of like the standby mode of his domain minus the sharpness part.
¡°And this is exactly why I said you¡¯re a coward.¡± She walked forward without hesitation. Obviously, he stepped out at the same time, having predicted she would ignore the phantom overflowing essence suppressing the entire area. She elbowed him when he walked out almost before she took the first step thanks to his prediction. He poked her sides back and they got into a rib and belly-poking battle as they made their way towards the village.
Ebony had the advantage compared, her arms weren¡¯t as fast or flexible without two long swords in them. She giggled and he religiously noted her weak spots. Then, a knee flew at his belly. ¡°That won¡¯t work on me. Good idea, you need to train without weapons once in a while.¡± He dodged the close-ranged knee with ease, he didn¡¯t even need to manipulate mana to move his body despite her advantage in speed.
The powerful impact of her knee hitting the air blew away a few metres of snow on the ground in a cone shape. If Ebony had been the one who did that, a straight line would be carved out but only if he aimed at the ground.
¡°How are you wriggling around like that?¡± He landed three times as many pokes as she did. He didn¡¯t answer her, she had complete control over her muscles and could copy him with some practice. Unenhanced, she couldn¡¯t even keep up with his new movement speed. Her eyes followed him so he knew it was only her legs that couldn¡¯t keep up.
¡°Right, we have a lot of ultrafish blood. You can take this time to digest them and increase your stats.¡± The village offered them plenty, it was enough to take weeks for her to finish digesting. He wasn¡¯t sure if the Gorpede¡¯s blood or the Jetfin¡¯s blood was more nutritious for her. The humongous centipede was also King-ranked if he recalled correctly.
¡°Oh! I heard that there¡¯s a famous restaurant in Tidal that if you eat there once a day for ten years straight, the food will increase your lifespan by half a year. Supposedly, they sell King-classed meat dishes and use Rare and even Epic quality vegetables from time to time.¡± She was quickly distracted by food again.
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¡°We can visit and try their food out one day.¡± Benefits aside, she would probably care more about taste. The army uncle and auntie chefs must have told her about famous restaurants around the continent.
¡°By the way, he¡¯s probably the strongest person after that Blood Saintess that I¡¯ve ever met in person.¡± Ning Xin must have caught his habit of casually dropping big news. She continued to twitch and giggle when he poked her abdomen.
¡°Stronger than Navin?¡±
¡°I can¡¯t sense the Barrier King and neither can you.¡±
Ebony assumed he couldn¡¯t sense the Barrier King¡¯s mana signature due to good skills but it seems even her beastly instincts couldn¡¯t sense anything from the King of the Empire either.
¡°Kids, don¡¯t fool around, it''s dangerous outside. Come on in.¡± The unknown Frost Elf invited them in. He called Orren ''boy'' and asked him to let the barrier down for them. The Frost Elf had a throaty voice and he noticed a deep scar on the man¡¯s neck. Actually, there were scars on his face as well. It might be one of the first Frost Elfs he had seen that had lasting physical injuries.
[Herald of Winter Desolation Lvl ??? | Arch Mist Hunter Lvl ???]
No matter how many times he saw them, their height was always intimidating but it might be the first time both of them were actually intimidated by the Frost Elves figure. At 2.3 metres tall, he wasn¡¯t as lanky as most of the villagers and had some muscle on him. The man was standing before them before they knew it as they passed through the gates.
Both of them were stunned when they noticed each other shaking. He tried to move and found it hard to even wriggle his fingers much less grip and form a fist. His feet were rooted to the ground and he had not felt his knees weakening so much other than the time he got overtrained by his mother. Sweat rolled down their backs and foreheads.
¡®What¡¯s going on? Christy and the nameless one didn¡¯t give me this feeling. He¡¯s not even putting his overflowing essence on us.¡¯ He didn¡¯t panic one bit but Ning Xin seemed to be under great pressure. With his senses, he already knew the man withdrew his essence so that it didn¡¯t touch them. His shivering hands moved under his chin in contemplation, completely unbothered by the situation.
¡°Greetings, Ebony and Scarlet. Thanks for helping with the Jetfins. Milly doesn¡¯t have much aerial or magical capabilities and I was held up. I hope it¡¯s not too much to ask for your help watching the village with your space mage sister for a short time?¡±
¡°How do y-¡± Ning Xin was cut off before she could finish speaking.
¡°I saw and heard you inviting your sister Jing just now, I do not know her personally. And I¡¯ve heard about you kids from my kin. Anyway, she¡¯s almost here. I¡¯ll be giving Christy some support but I¡¯ll stay around this time so you don¡¯t have to worry about safety.¡±
Just as he said, Kong Jing appeared beside them. ¡°It¡¯s not nice to eavesdrop.¡±
¡°I was hardly eavesdropping, you were just within my hearing¡¯s reach. Just enjoy your time here, I¡¯ll get that brat to set the barrier back.¡± The ¡®brat¡¯ the man was referring to was Orren, the village chief.
Kong Jing sneezed. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯m going to enjoy this.¡± She honestly mentioned her dislike and weakness of cold. She probably wanted to get indoors but sadly for her, the temperature indoors wasn¡¯t necessarily warmer in Arcta. Ebony remained to watch as did Ning Xin.
The barrier came back on but the Frost Elf stayed outside. The village didn¡¯t need to operate a half-version like the Tides since they were using it solely for defence and didn¡¯t consider any offensive option. Perhaps that was why they couldn¡¯t have anyone come out to support Milly. To turn the barrier on and off took some time and a second was more than enough for those Jetfins to flood the village.
¡®They should consider some spell towers or something, how are they defenceless after the previous destruction from elks?¡¯ Regardless, the sleeping guardian beast outside would¡¯ve been enough for the Jetfins as long as they were not far from the ground and if Korben had been here, most creatures around the area wouldn¡¯t have been a problem.
Supposedly the second strongest person Ning Xin had met, flew up above the village, almost high enough that he was out of sight. He drew his massive wooden bow and conjured an ice arrow. The arrow was released before Ebony noticed but it woke him up when the mana barrier trembled and the entire village shook. Snow fell from roofs and he heard a cub crying. The guardian beast was alerted by the cry but had no choice but to stay outside. The Lasil family calmed Willow down quickly and reassured the guardian beast.
¡°Sister Jing, what is he shooting at?¡±
¡°Probably some Troll trying to run over from a different Tide to help their Shaman King. They don¡¯t stand a chance against this. Hunter¡Anyway, it¡¯s none of our business. Come, show me around.¡±
The vibrations made some of the villagers uncomfortable so he did his best to stabilise everywhere his mana could reach. There was not much for him to show Kong Jing, she probably scouted the entire village with her own senses already.
They visited the Thoya¡¯s in time. ¡°Bada! Sasa! Welcome home! Upsies!¡± The first to greet them was a bubbly little baby Kiva. She ran up to them and accidentally rammed into Kong Jing¡¯s leg. Fortunately, the craftswoman didn¡¯t overreact but she was stunned on the spot.
Ning Xin picked the baby up naturally and took her to play. ¡°Sorry for bumping into you miss!¡± Looking at Kiva who was only about 60cm tall and had skinny limbs, Ebony was once again worried about the slow physical growth of these Frost Elves. But she seemed to have gotten the hang of speech as she spoke fluently except her address for them.
They ran outside before Kong Jing could react. ¡°What is that creature¡¡±
¡°It''s called a baby. Didn¡¯t you see Xin as a baby?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t know her until I came to Elcra and she was already 7 or 8. Or was she 9?¡±
¡°As I thought, your reforged brain isn¡¯t that amazing.¡±
The introductions didn¡¯t take long. Halvis greeted them but Roya was teaching Clovis her skills, it appeared that he was close to picking his sub-class. As for his main Class, he was already level 98. A pretty large jump and considered impressive for a Scholar. Perhaps he studied or researched something completely new to him and its value as knowledge was pretty high.
Halvis also levelled quite a bit but Ebony knew it was because he bought the same illusion that the farmers used and expanded his croft into a farm. Ebony rudely Appraised him but it seems like even his Sub-Class was related to farming.
¡°Faster faster!¡± A high-pitched voice entered the house. He wasn¡¯t that worried but the same couldn¡¯t be said for the father.
¡°She¡¯s asking little Xin to go faster? Babies are insane.¡±
He introduced the craftswomen to each other and they seemed impressed by each other. That was surprising to him, especially with how prideful Kong Jing was. Then again, he was wearing Roya¡¯s robe and not something made by the Xeng. Oh, he still got an earful at the state of his robe.
Dinner was left to Ning Xin because the crafters got to discussing clothes and gear for them. Nice. The space mage went to Cattle Rattle recently and was usually rich with materials so that was settled.
¡°We¡¯re gonna get new equipment.¡± He passed over the chopped garlic exactly how she wanted it.
As she started actually cooking, he started washing up dozens of used bowls and utensils. Clovis helped to dry them with a cloth and kept them back in the cabinets.
¡°Finally, clothes that don¡¯t burn in battle. Ah, it¡¯s not that I don¡¯t like the shirts you make.¡±
¡°I understand. So, how¡¯s your secret training going Clovis?¡±
¡°It won¡¯t be a secret if I tell you.¡±
¡°Hmm, how about what sub-class you¡¯re going to pick? Any hints?¡±
¡°...mana control and strings. Hey, what level are you at now?¡±
It was what he expected from the tailor.
¡°Level? Don¡¯t worry about that, we level fast but our skill refinements are lacking now. When you get to study more unknown things and decide on your focus of study you¡¯ll level in time.¡± Ebony learnt that Scholars and Researchers level relatively fast as long as they had materials to study and that lasted till they were Grandmasters or maxed-out Master.
That was to say, all they had to do was study and expand their knowledge base. After or during their studies, they needed to decide on an area of focus or a thesis of sorts to discover new knowledge. Solving a relatively hard problem they made up themselves might be an evolutionary requirement for them.
¡°Come, let me see how your reflexes have improved.¡± Now that ingredient preparation was done, the kitchen was not his place to be anymore.
¡°Yes!¡± Clovis needed to get his Sub-Class so that he could get a complete evolution and was working really hard on his poor physical capabilities.
Halvis taught the boy Conditioning. It was not obvious but Ebony was able to sense something vague when the knights and soldiers trained. Similar to aura, it felt like he knew when the Conditioning effects were being worked on. It might be because the two of them were very focused on following a Conditioning regime and he wanted to know how that worked.
Out in the yard, it was turning dark but neither of them was affected. Clovis took the small hoe that rested against their walls right outside. He lunged and swung right at his shoulder.
¡°Wow, have you been out hunting?¡± Ebony relaxed his shoulder and let the hoe pass by. He was pleasantly surprised at the lack of hesitation. He looked at 3 of the strings of ice that was as thin as hair cut the air and sliced the snow on the ground.
¡°I know that wouldn¡¯t have hurt you, much less hit.¡± Clovis retrieved his hoe steadily and swiped them to the side.
¡°Guard yourself.¡± Ebony drew Icicle to block the whips of ice.
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°What? You think I¡¯m going to go easy on you?¡±
The Frost Elf was older than him despite his size and looks of a young child.
Besides, did Clovis really think he had trouble beating children?
Chapter 229: Fragile Copy
¡°Good, don¡¯t let go of your weapon.¡± The strings of ice wrapped around Icicle without getting sliced and Ebony swung his arm.
Clovis held onto his hoe firmly and was swung around in the air but he didn¡¯t panic. It seemed like he underwent good training compared to the time both of them were going through the ritual.
Halvis or Roya might be better teachers than he imagined. Not unexpectedly, compared to the passive villagers who knew peace. The two of them had left the village and travelled the continent. They must have some level of strength to protect themselves.
Ebony didn¡¯t use his repulsion membrane since that would make it too difficult for Clovis who didn¡¯t have a Sub-Class. Surprisingly, during his airtime, Clovis managed to react with a counter and shot shards of ice at him one after the other. Forming a shard didn¡¯t even take him a tenth of a second and he could do it repeatedly. Human mages would be jealous of that skill. Most couldn¡¯t even conjure elements or multicast at such a speed only at level 98. Actually, even Ebony took half a second or so to conjure an ice shard of the same size in the past.
With a slight adjustment to Icicle, he blocked each and every shard. That gave Clovis the chance to land and it also blocked Ebony¡¯s own sight by using the greatswords¡¯ body to block. ¡®What an impressive improvement in batte sense, he didn¡¯t forget his physical stats either.¡¯
Ebony limited himself to 50 for all his stats and it should be lower than a level 98 Scholar. Icicle rested on the ground and he swept at the ice strings to pull with his bare hands but Clovis decided to snap off the connection.
¡°Now!¡± Halvis shouted from the side.
Clovis ploughed at the ground and a layer of snow spiked up towards his outstretched arm. Ebony kicked the snowy ground and easily disrupted the wave of sharp snow. Clovis got caught off guard as the snow he sent blocked his own sight and Ebony kicked towards his direction causing him to close his eyes and guard his face with his arms.
A fist smashed into his belly causing him to scream out in pain. He was on all fours with stomach acid rising in his throat. ¡°CLO! It¡¯s not over!¡± Halvis warned but he didn¡¯t stop Ebony.
Clovis barely dropped and rolled away in time to dodge his kick that was aimed at the head. ¡°Your pain won¡¯t affect your opponents.¡±
Ebony¡¯s kick wouldn¡¯t stop there, it snapped outwards but Clovis got his bearings back quick enough to deal with a kick of 50 Strength and Agility. He brought his hoe up in time and allowed Ebony to see his woven tricks. Flexible, woven ice blocked his leg but it didn¡¯t stop it from reaching the wooden handle of Clovis¡¯s tool.
The young Frost Elf used the impact to get back on his feet but his eyes widened when a black flash came from above him.
His hair blew back as the giant blade stopped right above his head, he couldn¡¯t react as his shaking arms weren¡¯t able to move like he intended.
¡°You improved a lot, training must have been hard the past months.¡±
¡°Once more!¡±
Ebony welcomed the desire to get stronger. Halvis smiled from the side. They had been worried at Clovis''s lack of desire for a combat class. It would not be good if he were completely defenceless should he travel to study outside the village.
They were only interrupted when it was time for dinner.
None of the women were happy with how dirty Clovis was and he was sent to the shower. He was pretty roughed up despite the low strength and speed Ebony limited himself to.
Ebony was quite the expert when it came to giving wounds that weren¡¯t visible. He didn¡¯t consider a couple of bruises to be a wound anyway. In any case, he was a bit surprised that Clovis¡¯s Strength was around 90 to 100 and Agility about 120 to 130. At level 98, he would have 980 stat points to distribute since he hasn¡¯t gotten a Sub-Class or Profession. For a Scholar, he already split more of his stats from Intelligence and Wisdom than he should.
Clovis chatted about his day at the playground which was actually advised by the village elders. They could gather all the children and watch them together. He still lost a spar against those slightly older than him despite his advantage in level. Tiha and Qane, whom Ebony played with in the past, were only about level 40. They took a few years to get to level 30 through playing and training within the village and had only just gotten to one of the weakest dungeons around before they got called back and were grounded in the village.
Apparently, their skills were all tier 2 and had at least a 200% base for active combat stat increment and at about level 80 to 100. Hunting was probably a breeze for them but their experience gain was low because there was always an elder following them. Pampered.
Even without all that skill refinement, these couple of children who had combat classes and Fortifications can easily handle Clovis who wasn¡¯t all that experienced in combat.
Also, learning from Kong Jing that he could actually choose Fortifications to strengthen in future made him understand why Clovis didn¡¯t know about 250% Fortifications. These long-lived races probably didn¡¯t care enough for the first few evolutions because it would be ¡®cheaper¡¯ to upgrade more unique Fortifications in future. All the years of skill training were also to get more currency to spend when they were finally able to control their evolutionary path.
Kiva was able to eat solid foods by herself and didn¡¯t require feeding anymore. She sat on a tall baby chair and was using Clovis old baby utensils. When her tiny cup of blue juice was emptied she eyed the red juice in Ning Xin¡¯s cup.
The masked lady hurriedly snatched the cup of Jetfin¡¯s blood away. There was no remaining essence in the blood except lifeforce but that seemed too strong for a baby. Kiva cried. It was rare to hear her cry and complain. Tomato juice was given to trick her and she only took a sip before cutely washing her tongue off with soup. Nobody at the table liked tomato juice so Ebony was blessed with the rest.
¡°Let¡¯s hear some requests,¡± Roya questioned.
The tailor hit it off with the Xeng craftswoman surprisingly well. Despite being a Master mana tailor, Kong Jing actually gave her the time of her day. That said a lot. Ebony didn¡¯t feel that anything was out of place like Ning Xin did. No matter what, the robe he was wearing was made by Roya and not something Kong Jing made. The Xeng made too many different types of items and equipment but Roya was extremely specialised.
Roya¡¯s lineage would end with her if Clovis or Kiva didn¡¯t pick up her skills. Hence, she was very open to sharing her techniques and the two craftswomen seemed to have come to an agreement to share and trade techniques. Both of them had a common reliance on runecraft but the Xeng¡¯s knowledge base on this aspect was so vast that probably no one on the planet could catch up to her.
¡°Same as before, durability, toughness, flexibility and as much mana capacity as possible.¡± He didn¡¯t see the need to talk about the design or how tight fitting the robe had to be since the current one was already good enough that it didn¡¯t affect his movements. ¡°Oh, the heavier it is, the better.¡±
¡°As light as possible for me, fire and heat resistant. Can it make me faster?¡± She had a bodysuit that was cold-resistant and could weaken gravity magic on her already. Although a mantle would¡¯ve added to her drag, it wasn¡¯t something a wind mage was concerned with.
The suggestion was that she wasn¡¯t going to get any robe. Just a few pairs of good pants and shirts. Her bodysuit was going to get an upgrade and a new mantle was going to be made for her.
¡°No surprises this time. No dresses either.¡± Ning Xin said angrily.
¡°What dress?¡± Ebony was reminded that she supposedly had better combat wear made for her that she didn¡¯t wear.
¡°Before you get angry at why I didn¡¯t wear something stronger, it''s because it doesn¡¯t cover the vitals.¡±
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
¡°In my defence, grandaunt got me to make that, it¡¯s our traditional dress¡¯s design, not mine. The material was obtained by grandaunt and it''s honestly the best fabric there is amongst Rare quality materials. She told me it was material from an infant Astral Filament Demon. Oh, that race grows up to Devil naturally and most of the materials from an adult would be Epic at least or more commonly Ancient ranked. I¡¯m not sure how grandaunt got the material from one of their infants.¡± Epic and Ancient ranked materials weren¡¯t something that Kong Jing could make the most out of, so she had been staying away from using those unless it was a small experiment.
Ebony was already aware that demons were just people who willingly monsterise themselves by absorbing a ton of ambient essence to get a lot of stats in exchange for losing a Profession and differing degrees of humanoid features. Devils lose their Sub-Class as well. It had to be worth it if they did that willingly. A few generations of them and a race of them were established. Of course, he never heard of any of these races. Apparently, demons from different worlds could be vastly different and some say, the worldcore shaped the demons it made.
Roya¡¯s attention was stolen away and she demanded to see the unknown fabric.
The men cleaned up the dining table with a baby cheering in the background. Ebony got the chance to see the dress. ¡®That¡¯s a qipao, yeah¡can¡¯t blame her for not wearing that.¡¯ He noted the large hole in the chest area, she would¡¯ve gotten stabbed through with or without that cleavage. The one-side split at the legs made it extremely impractical and obviously wasn¡¯t made to run in.
¡°Are you okay? You¡¯re getting warm.¡± Clovis cocked his head.
¡°Odd¡I¡¯m fine, let¡¯s go for a walk.¡±
¡°We can¡¯t, there¡¯s a curfew going on.¡±The boy who was supposedly older below his chest level rubbed his bruises.
¡°I see. By the way, who was that man? The protector.¡± Ebony could still feel the floor shaking. It was one scary bow and the archer, even more so.
¡°I heard he was Arcta¡¯s previous village chief but that¡¯s about all my parents know as well.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
¡°Have you changed your mmms to I sees?¡±
¡°...You ate a lot, we should work off dinner.¡±
¡°Please go easy on me?¡±
¡°Why are you asking a question, I can bring a boar here. You can ask if it would go easy on you.¡±
Not to disrespect the scholar¡¯s determination but Ebony had his eyes in the sky as he decreased his speed and strength further. The unknown Frost Elf was still shooting arrows into space.
The airspace of Elva wasn¡¯t too dangerous in most cases. They were strong flying creatures but it wasn¡¯t overpopulating the skies and he hadn¡¯t travelled by air long enough to know the occurrence rate. If the skies had creatures like this archer, people might want to make the underground their home.
¡®I wanted to stay here till Koawe and the others come back but I think we should hole up sooner. So many crouching tiger hidden dragons just within our midst. How unsafe. Hahaha, so I¡¯ve just been feeling insecure all this time.¡¯ Ebony laughed at himself internally.
¡°Very fine threads of ice, almost invisible to the naked eye too. This should work against monsters and people who can¡¯t sense ice mana and aren¡¯t temperature sensitive.¡± Hundreds of silky threads of ice wrapped and flowed around his arms. Those around his feet were destroyed since he moved a lot. ¡®This must be Roya¡¯s technique, he¡¯s not tugging at it and it''s not linked to him. Just sticking onto me, ah, so it''s supposed to accumulate slowly so that the opponent only finds out when it''s too late. Threads huh, reminds me of the wire knife thrower Dina and the others. Chris seems to be doing fine, except the limbs.¡¯
Ebony was reminded of the Z&Z escort party from years back, he didn''t even know if they were still alive. Other than Top the lizardman who was killed in, perhaps, by Ordina. Now, he was friends with said dungeon.
¡°Nice set-up.¡± He praised Clovis who set up webs from the walls of their house to the ground, all around them. As expected from people who had naturally high affinity to ice mana, the mana was practically moving themselves for Clovis. If something or someone got caught by a few hundred of these thin threads, they might have a hard time breaking free if they didn¡¯t have at least 50 points in strength and the number of threads continues to increase over time. It was a mana-friendly skill that wasn¡¯t too potent in terms of strength until enough time had passed.
The threads pulled on him as he punched Clovis¡¯s belly, weakening the power behind his attack slightly.
¡°Clo Clo! Don¡¯t lose to bada! Gooo!¡± Kiva spawned at the side within Halvis¡¯s embrace. It was not her first time watching her brother training. Her eyes were moistened, perhaps she was not used to seeing her brother actually getting hurt. Halvis wasn¡¯t exactly harsh during sparring.
Sadly for Clovis, Ebony didn¡¯t act as if he got defeated for the brother to show off. He would have to earn that himself. He let the Frost Elf rest soon enough.
¡°What¡¯s that drink?¡± He was bothered by the smell of the drink that Kiva was walking with. She hugged the cup with her short and tiny arms and took each step with great care.
¡°It¡¯s an herbal concoction that speeds up muscle repair and eases muscle aches made by the Lasil family,¡± Halvis answered him.
The Lasil family ate for free in the village but they also provided these convenient supplies for free or for barter. Trading with mana ores was only convenient thanks to the Empire, they used to trade solely by barter in the past. The kids'' bedtime arrived quickly but the shaking of the village didn¡¯t pause.
¡®Let¡¯s try that again.¡¯ He sat down on the snowy ground and tried to simulate the mental battles again. Hours passed to no avail. No amount of meditation or focus let him repeat how realistic the first time was.
He attempted something else and created a Glacial Model of his mother. He recalled all the sparring sessions he had and placed all the abilities she had shown him as Will into the Model. Reentering the house to get a bath towel and soak it in water. He passed the towel to the Model which snapped her wrist and twisted the towel up, the cool air quickly hardened the towel and froze the water a little.
Ebony released his control over the Model and let the injected Will act. ¡°What a fragile body.¡± The model clenched her fist and spoke in his mother¡¯s voice. A phrase she hammered into his head many times. The icy stare turned towards him and he leapt forward with a front kick.
¡®Not the floor again¡¡¯ The crispy towel was wrapped around his ankle before he knew it and he was flung forward with his own momentum. With inhuman reflexes, he bent his body inwards and had his other feet unravel the rope-like towel around his ankle before flipping and landing on his feet. Only to realise he was stepping on an open towel and the Model lightly tugged on it, causing him to fall onto his back.
The Model twisted the towel back into a cloth spear and rotated it around her hands as a habit. He launched an attack with actual speed and power that his body could pull off without enhancement. The Model shouldn¡¯t have the physical stats to counter him even though his Intelligence was higher and the Glacial Model skill had a decent level. The Model didn¡¯t have his Stock Mana Compressive Chassis buffing them, only highly compressed mana itself.
The Model reacted with a sweep of the cloth spear and a twist of her wrist but it exploded and his fist stopped short. Ebony took over manual control again and noticed the knots within the Model. The wrists were busted and so were the forearms, back and even the legs weren¡¯t in good condition. The exploded hand was the most concerning but the same would probably have happened to the entire Model if it continued to copy the moveset.
A stiff ice sculpture couldn¡¯t move the way his mother did. There was a similar problem with his Phantom¡¯s Flicker but the Glacial Model skill was a better copy of himself and he didn¡¯t know the internals of someone else.
He continued with the attempts through the night. The ladies were actually up the entire night as well. Only Halvis and his children slept peacefully. The Frost Elves¡¯ houses were not made of normal wood either, perhaps due to all of them having a good sense for mana, the walls were very good at keeping things private. Back in Plainston, he could sense and hear conversation through little gaps in the walls or open windows. There was no magic protection for most buildings.
Other than optimising the Model for his mother, he also did the same for Xin and even a copy of Hector. As for a Model of his father, he left that out. He didn¡¯t know how his father fought if at all. He had another sparring session with Clovis before breakfast. The swordswoman went to sleep right after since she didn¡¯t have any sleep last night and would¡¯ve felt uncomfortable not being able to do any real training within the confines of the village.
Ebony had Kiva on his shoulders as he brought her to the Lasil¡¯s for a visit. He was going to buy whatever medical concoction they had. Kiva was going to meet her only playmate, Willow the Guardian Beast¡¯s baby bear.
It was convenient for Halvis since the father wanted to talk business with Mrs Calhy and her husband about expanding farmland and letting him use some of it. It was troublesome since they needed to expand their illusion but it was a project at work for years and was interrupted thanks to the war with the Trolls. Halvis was growing Rare grade materials and the requirements for soil and environment were not easy to fulfil.
For some reason, Willow always clung to him and he allowed the furball of softness. Just like that, he spent half a day chatting with the Lasils while looking after two babies. They had some good medicines but not many aimed to treat heavy physical injuries.
Thankfully, treating illnesses and poisons was exactly what he was looking for. They mentioned some ingredients that he should look out for in future. Their best antidote against unknown infection of any sort was called Life Stasis which was capable of halting all body and mental functions. Not killing one, but putting one¡¯s life on pause. It should also shut off any poison, plague and most magics from working.
They didn¡¯t have any in-store since it required a time elemental ingredient that couldn¡¯t really be found that easily. They had a weaker version substituted with ice elemental ingredients but they weren¡¯t willing to trade it with him.
They would make it for him if he found the ingredients though, so he wrote down the ingredients that could only be found deeper in the Glades.
By nightfall, the tremors stopped.
Chapter 230: Visiting Ordina
¡°Come on Kiva, time to go home.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t wanna!¡± Kiva crawled to Willow and hid behind the rotund bear. They wrapped their short chubby arms around each other.
¡°Okay, good bye then I¡¯ll be going back first.¡± Ebony turned around and left.
There was no pause in his steps but he obviously walked slowly.
Kiva blanked out for a moment before running after him and clinging onto his leg like Willow. ¡°Don¡¯t leabe mee!¡± She teared up easily and messed up her speech. He hoisted her up and patted Willow goodbye and left the Lasils.
¡°You can play at home.¡± He tried to comfort her but he wasn¡¯t an expert at it.
The quiet village was peaceful again. The strong Frost Elf that was the previous village chief was called Vent Ly, the strongest hunter of the Frost Elf even within their second village with the exception of their Matriarch. Even then, he was strong enough to stand against her despite the fact that the Matriarch was a bonafide Emperor ranked individual unlike the Emperor of the Empire who only had the title. Grandpa Lasil was very open about sharing information. Their Matriarch wasn¡¯t a dedicated fighter so it was not wrong to call Vent their strongest hunter.
The next morning, news was that the Trolls retreated from Fifth and Fourth Tide. Long-range communication in the region should be up again in a few weeks when the essence settles. Ebony made a trip back with Xin when they let the barrier down. He wanted to come alone but she wanted to meet Mallory and he didn¡¯t ask why. He met with Hector and Lucas who were both chirpy. None of them were up for a duel.
¡°So you¡¯re going to hole up for training, huh. We were called away and have to go by noon so you made it just in time.¡± Hector lamented. They didn¡¯t even get the time to catch up with each other.
¡°Called back home?¡±
¡°Probably not, I haven¡¯t been briefed since I just returned from Tova but I don¡¯t see the Commanders and Generals I¡¯m familiar with that aren¡¯t in charge of First and Third Tide. We¡¯re probably just manpower.¡± Hector was still half naked.
¡°How about you, you¡¯re the Emperor¡¯s disciple right?¡± Ebony turned to the lizardman who was pretty much a stranger to him.
¡°I¡¯ll be tagging along.¡± The lizardman was busy cleaning his armour and didn¡¯t add on much.
¡°What will Fifth Tide¡¯s defences be like in the meantime?¡±
¡°Those Frost Elves will be around and the soldiers will still be stationed until the Trolls are repelled.¡±
He nodded at that. ¡°So is the Old Hag dead?¡±
¡°No. They squished themselves into a ball and had the Slingarm Tribe toss them towards First Tide. They used their own people¡¯s lives and stole their vitality to survive.¡± Needless to say, the amount of Vitality needed to keep them alive must have taken more than a few low-level Trolls to survive against so many strong fighters.
¡°Don¡¯t worry. My teacher¡¯s there. Truewater chased after them too.¡± Lucas did the finishing touches to his armour and put it back on.
According to what Korta reported, they didn¡¯t have anything to worry about anymore. The Frost Elves and General Truewater bought Koawe time during the entire battle. Hector and Lucas weren''t privy to what kind of curse was cast and were yelled at to get moving before they could converse further.
Christy, Korta and the other Frost Elf who could not be named came over and told him they were going back so that someone else could take over the hunt. Obviously, they were swapping places with Vent. They hopped onto an injured Arti with a knocked-out Koawe and returned without the patient.
Ebony went to look for Ning Xin but she was talking to Mallory in privacy mode as no sound was transmitted through the air. She noticed him and looked away in apparent panic, her eyes darted back and forth. ¡°We¡¯re having women talk, it¡¯s going to take a while. You¡¯ll thank me in future.¡± Mallory informed cryptically.
He nodded to them and walked away, giving them more time to talk in private.
On his directionless walk, he passed by a soldier he recognised, [Triumphant Spear Lvl 288]. In the past, Ebony Identified the soldier as a [Spearmaster Lvl166]. The soldier was the one who stopped him when he passed by Fifth Tide¡¯s training camp and made his way to Solid Mist Jungle where he met Teacher Kappa.
¡®Interesting, I didn¡¯t feel much when soldiers died but it feels good to see a face I recognise survive even though I don¡¯t know him personally.¡¯ Ebony nodded to the soldier when he bowed towards him. The soldier was lending a shoulder to a middle-aged man who seemed familiar too, must be the Master Warrior who stood guard together with the spearmaster.
He wondered what they were going to do about the corrosion cloud above since it was still falling but no one seemed worried about its impending fall. It was a race against time to stop whoever cast it before it reached the city.
There wasn¡¯t much to do so he raced out of the city to meet Na. Getting to the dungeon didn¡¯t take longer than 15 minutes. Frigid Refraction was good enough to get past the guards as he Flickered into the dungeon portal. After entering, he noticed a small town inside. He took a walk to observe the goods being sold within the dungeon but it was mostly equipment, rations and potions such as cold resistance potions for the top floors.
He was walking when a scent attacked his nose as if ramming a truck up his nostrils. The scent was overwhelming and he had to know what the awful scent was. With his senses, he scanned the area in the direction it came from to find the building the scent wafted from.
He did not expect to see so many scantily clad women inviting men into the tall building. He truly didn¡¯t expect a brothel to be built within a dungeon. He stayed away since his mana senses already invaded their privacy. There were plenty of open windows and although there seemed to be noise control in place, there wasn¡¯t any magic repelling to block his perception.
¡®I can¡¯t believe there¡¯s three of these buildings. Is prostitution such a dominant job?¡¯ The dungeon town population was approximately thirty thousand and the number excluded the freelancers and dungeon divers throughout the dungeon. He had not personally ventured to streets with brothels in any town or city he visited so he was unaware of how populous classes such as [Charmer], [Bed Warmer] and [Sexual Artist] were. He started to wonder what he would have Identified if his skill hadn¡¯t evolved to Appraise.
Ebony started to push his mana into the ground as he left the town in a random direction. When he was far enough to see a monster, he followed the guide to a hidden area without people. It took some time since there were quite a lot of people. All of the monsters on the first floor already hit level 100, about half of them had evolved. The first floor expanded noticeably.
He was swallowed underground and Na spawned a double to greet him. ¡°No need to transport me up, I¡¯m just passing by.¡±
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¡°Save¡¯s me the energy. My main body¡¯s hibernating now.¡±
¡°Oh, so the final floor¡¯s guardian is a clone?¡±
¡°I call him Na Na.¡±
¡°Where do you learn humour?¡±
¡°There are a lot of people in me. I even learnt how to play card games.¡±
¡°...Okay. How does hibernation help?¡±
¡°I funnelled enough essence that it fell asleep.¡±
¡°Oh? Even a dungeon body needs to evolve?¡± Ebony guessed but it felt out of place since other dungeon creatures don¡¯t need evolutionary time. They were just spawned at those levels.
¡°I don¡¯t know. I just fell over but my consciousness is still around as you can tell.¡±
¡°Can your clone handle the job?¡±
¡°He loses 7 out of 10 times. I made the final floor chest desirable like you advised and traffic increased so the reward I made for them comes back around.¡±
¡°Yes, I noticed the first floor has become habitable. Maybe too habitable.¡±
¡°The settlement doesn¡¯t help much since all of them wear that bracelet but I¡¯m still getting more essence from them than those that get killed accidentally. The death rate is much lower than before. As advised, my creatures are getting much stronger so their death rate is low. I mass-produce weaker versions to keep people entertained and motivated to come back.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t say anything about the death rate. Freelancers come in on their own accord. Technically, it was possible to drain a dungeon dry by over-killing its creatures or even destroying any structures so he had no comments on Ordina¡¯s killings.
¡°Anyway, I was actually here to invite you outside but I guess that¡¯s off the table since you have your hands full.¡±
¡°Pity, but I wasn¡¯t ready to go outside anyway. The portal in my Guardian¡¯s floor doesn¡¯t work for me and my creatures. The entrance is guarded well enough that I would have to destroy the entire town to walk out.¡±
¡°There¡¯s no need for that, you have a human form and can talk. You can just waltz out.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve tried, they have a device to tell apart a dungeon creature from a normal human.¡±
¡°Does your humanoid form still look like a glowing golem?¡±
¡°I covered myself in metal armour but some guards saw right through the disguise. Oh well, it¡¯s not like I want to waste resources going out knowing my creatures will die out.¡±
¡°Fair enough. I can help you leave if you want to in future. We¡¯ll be going into training too so It might be some time before I come back.¡±
¡°Sure, I might be more confident in my survival after my hibernation.¡±
¡°By the way, I wanted to ask if you know this roar. Ah, I¡¯m not attacking you so sorry if this hurts. Or you can say no.¡±
¡°Hit me with it.¡±
Ebony cast the Pseudo-Imitation Roar as weak as he could. The double blinked in confusion.
¡°Was that supposed to be an attack?¡±
¡°Supposedly, it is an attack to the soul, mind and a physical stun. It''s an essence-based attack so I expected you to shake it off but I had to warn you since I¡¯m not sure if you have a soul. So? Have you heard this roar? I have a feeling I heard the roar here.¡±
¡°No, I¡¯ve never heard such a roar. Do you know what creature it''s from, or is it just some made-up sound?¡±
¡°I have no idea.¡±
¡°Someone¡¯s tackling the guardian room gotta focus, bye!¡±
Ebony was spit out of the ground in a hurry. With no additional leads as to what or whose roar his new skill was from, he headed back thinking the woman''s talk was over. A little curious as to what Mallory meant by thanking her in future.
Secretly exiting the dungeon, he could tell that there were at least 2 people that noticed his illegal trespassing. Not that either party bothered calling him out.
He had been away for at least 3 hours so he was surprised that the ladies were still chatting and that the Crown Princess didn¡¯t rush off with Hector. It seemed like they had a different schedule. He tilted his head, slightly surprised that older ladies were also present. They were the chefs that Xin cooked with and they smiled widely at him for no apparent reason.
¡°You¡¯re here, I¡¯ll pass her back to you. I¡¯ve got to go, see you.¡± Mallory ended their conversation when he arrived. They didn¡¯t keep their talk private anymore so they might have just been waiting for him to return.
¡°Mmm, see you.¡± He waved her goodbye and towards her secret guards as well.
Seeing how the masked lady was confused, tired and didn¡¯t meet his eyes he brought out the trailer and slowly drove them back to Arcta. She hid within her room so conversation was out of the picture.
When he got back to Arcta, he was stunned that a quarter of the village couldn¡¯t be seen.
¡°You¡¯re finally here, we¡¯re closing the village for five years. Once the illusion is complete tomorrow no one will enter or exit.¡± Christy, the Frost Elven lady in a white one-piece dress without shoes dropped the sudden news on him. He was relieved that it was just an ongoing spell at work and nothing happened to the village.
¡°We won¡¯t be staying but can we enter for now?¡± He questioned.
¡°Sure, but you¡¯ll have to leave by tonight or you¡¯ll be stuck with us. Wait, is the space mage in the village someone you know?¡± Christy was as spotless as before, with no injuries or blood on her.
¡°She¡¯s her cousin.¡± Ebony pointed to his left.
¡°I see, then there¡¯s no rush. I won¡¯t reveal how to get back in but a Xeng space mage huh, she should be able to leave as she pleases without disrupting the spell.¡±
¡°Great, thanks for informing us.¡±
¡°Hurry along, you¡¯re blocking the spell formation with your mana signature.¡±
They entered Arcta on foot after storing the trailer. He was going to stay for some time if there was no rush to leave. Partly to rest and relax.
Orren and his party were leaving the Thoya¡¯s house on his way in. They were here to get their robes repaired and customise their orders. They didn¡¯t stay long, saying that they had to gather at the Lasil house. They were going to have a village meeting and Halvis was going along as the family representative.
¡®They have an old lady tailor who¡¯s Roya¡¯s teacher, can they not afford a King-classed tailor service? But they give each other stuff in the village.¡¯ He didn¡¯t ponder on the topic for long.
¡°You¡¯re back, great. I was afraid they would lock the village down before you¡¯re back.¡± Roya smiled in relief.
¡°We won¡¯t be staying for the entire duration of the lockdown but we¡¯ll stay till our equipment¡¯s done.¡±
¡°Haha, seems like we have to work on them slowly so that you¡¯ll stay longer.¡± Roya joked and looked back to holler that¡¯s it''s fine to come down.
¡°Longer!¡± Kiva ran down the stairs and jumped onto Ning Xin¡¯s thighs. Her jumping power was weak and the swordswoman had long legs.
¡°Where¡¯s sister Jing?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°She went to look for the elder craftsmen.¡±
¡°I see, how¡¯s your exchange with her?¡±
¡°Great, but she''s a bit intimidating. I can¡¯t catch up with everything she¡¯s saying. Some of which seem incomprehensible to me.¡± Roya commented before whispering. ¡°Could the two of you help me babysit till Hal comes back?¡±
The Frost Elf must have forgotten he was younger than Clovis and Ning Xin was around the same age but Clovis and Kiva were both babies in their eyes. In fact, Clovis isn¡¯t even a fifth of the age to be considered an adult. Even though she said that Ebony simply spent time reading with Clovis and the masked lady was the only one babysitting. He was reading the monster book series by Torox that he got for Clovis but hadn¡¯t really spent the time to read it properly himself.
He dragged Clovis out for another sparring session two hours before dinner.
Ning Xin requested a spar so he went to get someone to block off a small area for them. Unexpectedly, she seemed to be in the zone and beat him up a little. She appeared cheered up after the battle and that was a relief. It had been days since he slept so he decided to sleep tonight but only after he confirmed that Kong Jing could really bring them out of the village after it had been closed off. Unaware that someone else didn¡¯t have a wink of sleep that night.
Chapter 231: Corruption
One day ago.
Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin pulled the women away to tell them her problems with body gear. Despite the privacy they had and knowing she was talking to women she couldn¡¯t help but get embarrassed at what she wanted to say.
¡°Sister, the body suit is too thin.¡±
¡°You wanted mobility.¡±
¡°The suit chafes against my chest and uh, doesn¡¯t hide them when it irritates them¡¡±
¡°They are big. Perfect, I just spent half a year working on space magic so I think I can do something about that.¡±
¡°How¡¯s space magic going to help?¡± Roya asked, just as confused as Scarlet was.
¡°The material of that suit isn¡¯t good enough to hide your body in another dimension but I think I might be able to hide your assets.¡±
The conversation on the ¡®hows¡¯ flew over her head as she had no idea what the craftwomen were chatting about. She took off the suit for her sister to work on immediately. They guaranteed that the changes wouldn¡¯t harm her but the material was lower quality than her sister imagined. The plan was to make her flat-chested when she wore the suit.
¡®That wasn¡¯t what I asked for¡¡¯ She would be lying if she said her assets never got in the way so she didn¡¯t really have anything against the planned change.
She had her measurements taken for a new mantle, shirt and pants. It would be nice to have clothes that didn¡¯t burn, freeze or tear that left her with just a bodysuit and mantle. A mantle would be less than useful so she proposed to make it a coat with a split at the back so she could make her conjured wings with the coat. She stressed that she just wanted it to increase her speed and mobility instead of stacking on durability. There was no need for that if she didn''t get hit.
Roya had better fabric and textiles than Sister Jing had laid eyes on. Arcta actually receives materials from their second village and the elder craftsman had sent her some to experiment with. Not everything was from monsters or dungeons deep within Hoarfrost Glade, they were supposedly bought and transported from their ancestral home.
There was a sample of Ancient quality fabric but neither Roya nor Sister Jing could make use of it. It was just there for them to study. She had to make her own mana ores with Sister Jing¡¯s mana compressor for the new equipment and that would take days to weeks of her mana regeneration. They were going to infuse the threads and runes with her mana so she couldn¡¯t complain about not being able to train magic for some time.
Even Ebony would need to take days because the mana compressor could only work so fast. Otherwise, he might not even need a few hours to make mana ores at the same purity a Purple had. He needed way more since his robe was going to be a few times thicker than all the clothes she was going to have made. He was also going to make an additional one to change the one in her mask. His vitality-filled mana helped keep her alive after the stab that almost pierced her heart. Her mask had been changing rapidly over the past few months and it wasn¡¯t slowing down.
¡°So the Death Tailor¡¯s your mentor?¡± Sister Jing¡¯s words caught her attention.
¡°You can say that, I only picked up the basics of tailoring from her as I don¡¯t have the elemental affinity for Death.¡± Roya shrugged.
¡°It¡¯s a fascinating element. If it can even be considered an element.¡± Sister Jing closed her eyes in contemplation.
¡°What¡¯s a death tailor?¡± She asked to clarify her ignorance.
¡°It¡¯s The Death Tailor, I¡¯ve heard the title even when I was still a child with my family.¡± Sister Jing corrected.
¡°Oh my, she¡¯s talked about amongst the Xeng?¡± Roya covered her mouth in surprise.
¡°Of course, she makes armour and robes that kill both the wielder and the opponent; in fact, everyone within a certain radius is dead once her craft is worn. Someone with a grudge against one of the Xengs got their hands on her craft and managed to kill that family with an ambush.¡±
¡°Really!? I¡¯ve never heard of that story.¡± Roya exclaimed.
¡°I think it was 7 or 8 centuries ago but that story is famous amongst the Xeng crafters and artisans.¡± Obviously, Kong Jing wasn¡¯t blaming anyone, it was a story that didn¡¯t involve her or Roya.
¡°She doesn¡¯t sell them anymore and those loaned out are retrieved personally, so she¡¯s still at First Tide.¡± The tailor clarified.
Chatter aside, they got her to choose her preferred colour and material texture and worked on the design. She was made to stand, pose and move almost naked for them. Left a little sceptical at the need to do so since Ebony wasn¡¯t subjected to such tests.
Roya had the latest catalogue of dresses and robes but she quickly figured that neither masked ladies cared much for the dresses. The catalogue was something published by the Z&Z company and was made to advertise the latest trends and their products. She had older booklets that were from Tidal decades ago that were made by specialised clothes and armour companies. When it came to functionality, there was no such thing as going out of fashion so they served as a decent reference.
Sister Jing showed off her own collection but hers didn¡¯t have an image of an end product and were only hand-drawn blueprints.
The swordswoman got a headache putting a stop to all the excessive cloth that was purely ascetic and also complaining about the lack of fabric in certain areas. She was convinced she was getting played a fool by the extreme suggestions. She ran out with an excuse that she had to get dinner started. There were some things that she had to take note of when cooking for a baby and an entirely different race. It was always interesting to dive into new cuisines so she took her time flipping through Roya¡¯s recipes. The nice Frost Elven lady wrote it down just for her.
After dinner, she was dragged to try on prototypes. Halfway through, her Intuition that kept getting sharper without any sort of dedicated training caused her to look out the window to see Ebony with an ice sculpture of his frozen cold expression mother. The usual feedback of his aura which was as calm as a lake rippled. The sculpture usually moved with flexibility but the current one¡¯s movements seemed forced. She just didn¡¯t expect the hand of the sculpture to blow up the way it did.
She constantly glanced at his training while the women folk discussed craft. He kept her awake despite her sleepiness after filling her belly. She only went to sleep after breakfast when he left with Kiva on his shoulders.
Ning Xin woke up with blood on her sheets. It was that time again. She was unfamiliar with her own cycle since it went haywire after her evolution and the rapid changes in her stats. She suppressed it with blood magic a few weeks ago and it finally burst when she fell asleep.
Ebony invited her to visit Fifth Tide the next day and she thought it was a good idea to ask Mallory about how other female combatants dealt with this problem. The physiology of her body wasn¡¯t completely within her control.
Flying was fun and loosened her up after 2 days without Conditioning. Ebony found the pair of cousins with relative ease and she had more to say to Mallory than with Hector so she gave the boys some time of their own.
Seeing how Mallory was both a healer and a woman, it wasn¡¯t hard to approach the topic. ¡°Do you need some painkillers?¡±
¡°That¡¯s not the point. Isn¡¯t there a way to stop it from happening?¡± She was just annoyed that she had to face such irritation and men don¡¯t have to.
¡°Stop it? Have you and Ebony already reached that stage?¡± Mallory didn¡¯t have much of a reaction but Ning Xin could sense her surprise.
¡°What stage?¡± She was confused by the lady¡¯s words.
¡°Don¡¯t put on that Scarlet, you want to push your relationship further but are not ready for pregnancy right?¡±
Ning Xin had never been as confused, how did the conversation from her occasional bleeding turn into a relationship talk?
¡°You¡¯re joking?¡± Mallory¡¯s expression finally changed from her usual composure. ¡°Surely you know about procreation.¡±
¡°Of course, animals and monsters mate to breed.¡± She said as a matter of course, it was thanks to that that she had food to eat.
¡°Thank goodness I don¡¯t have to start there. Humans do the same. Isn¡¯t that why you want to stop your cycles? So you can do what couples do.¡±
¡°What do couples do?¡±
¡°They copulate, like animals but for fun.¡±
¡°Copulate? Fun?¡±
What came next was the healer¡¯s increasingly graphic descriptions of mammal biology that got her face redder and hotter as time passed.
¡°Hect would explain the actual process better, he used to fool around and pick up women at bars. Fortunately, he knew how to control himself.¡± Mallory sipped her coffee. She had no shame getting into the details but she only knew these things from a medical point of view and all her knowledge on it was taught in class and books. She could tell that the healer was afraid she explained intercourse in a bad light so she explained things seriously.
¡°So¡uh, married couples to--touch each other th--that intimately?¡± She finally understood what men who looked at her weirdly wanted. All this time, she simply sensed that they didn¡¯t have good intentions that rubbed her the wrong way.
¡°They don¡¯t have to be married. You¡¯ve seen those types of buildings in cities, haven¡¯t you? Those women do it as a job, although some places I¡¯ve been to have a lot of injured women in their line of work.¡±
¡°Wo-work!? I just thought they dress scantily and put on that strong scent. I heard that the bunny or rabbit folk eat men of any level of strength so I got him to avoid those areas¡¡±
Mallory chuckled.
Ning Xin had been told and taught that rabbit beastwomen ate males of any race and that strength and power didn¡¯t matter so she didn¡¯t know why the healer laughed. The first thing her grandma taught her when she was brought out of Xienor and entered the very first Imperial town was to avoid the rabbit beast women and how to spot their habitats. Her grandma said that even their people had some who fallen to those ladies so she took note to avoid strongly scented streets.
She was warned that even women were in danger and that something that required her grandma to warn must be exceedingly dangerous. Luckily, she was told that there were few of these rabbit beastmen.
¡°That¡¯s right, rabbit beastmen. All of them moved to Tidal so I¡¯m sure you haven¡¯t seen any of them. They are a small community and run a large portion of the nightlife. Their techniques are rumoured to be hundreds of tier 2 and dozens of tier 3 skills working at the same time. It is indeed true that those who have fallen for their skills are pretty much¡dead so to speak. My great-grandmother had a headache setting laws just for them.¡±
¡°Hundreds of compounding skills!?¡± She couldn¡¯t control her volume thanks to the explosive information. ¡®No wonder grandma warned me!¡¯ Mallory would¡¯ve been at a loss if she could read minds. It was as if her biology lessons weren¡¯t sufficient.
¡°I wouldn¡¯t call it compounding, they are all separate and small tricks but they work together¡I don¡¯t know how to explain it either.¡±
¡°An-anyway, you didn¡¯t answer my question.¡± She got back on track.
She picked up Ebony¡¯s scent and sat up straight with a burn on her face that came too suddenly. She flushed harder when she recalled what they were talking about before calming down when she recalled that they silenced their talk. In her momentary lag, Mallory shooed him away with confusing words. ¡°We¡¯re having women talk, it¡¯s going to take a while. You¡¯ll thank me in future.¡±
She relaxed when Ebony left and questioned, ¡°What do you mean by that?¡±
¡°It¡¯s nothing. To answer your question, yes. Normal couples touch each other intimately. The two of you must not be very close if you¡¯ve not done so after years.¡± Mallory smiled cheekily but Ning Xin was looking down at the ground. ¡°In fact, I heard that you have to have intimate contact often to be in a healthy relationship. I heard of more accounts of men cheating because the husband couldn¡¯t be satisfied than not.¡±
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¡°Wha--?¡±
Mallory continued to sip her hata drink silently while she was in shock.
¡°Ho-how often?¡± She pulled herself together.
¡°It depends. From what I know, the more physically active a person is, the stronger their desires for intimation.¡±
¡®!!!¡¯ Her brows shot up.
¡°Do you have a more specific frequency?¡±
¡°I believe daily is a healthy amount. But¡¡± Mallory paused for a long time which led to Ning Xin looking back at her after she manually forced the blood rush to her face to slow down.
¡°But?¡±
¡°You understand how physically active the two of you are better than I do.¡±
¡°What do I do? Please teach me how to satisfy him, Mallory!¡±
Mallory choked on her drink, abashed for the first time, ¡°ev-even if you ask me that, I¡¯m not in a relationship and I already told you what I know. Anyway, you¡¯ve not reached that stage of intimacy and he didn¡¯t make such advances so you don¡¯t have to worry about it.¡±
¡°What advances?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know! Staring uncomfortably long at your body or putting his hands on you?¡± Mallory got loud and seemingly angry for the first time but Ning Xin didn¡¯t notice the raised voice.
¡®He does!¡¯ She screamed mentally, especially the stares. She had long noticed that he kept staring at her legs but she had the impression that he was learning her footwork. Although he didn¡¯t get touchy with her, memories of him nearly holding her hands while they were taking a walk suddenly flashed through her mind. ¡®Was that him making advances? In public!?¡¯ Mallory¡¯s words were causing her to come to random conclusions.
She grabbed Mallory¡¯s arm and stared into her because she didn¡¯t know what to do. ¡°Let¡¯s ask the married ladies.¡±
¡°Do you know any?¡± There were no married women that were in the warzone that was in the Princess¡¯s social circle.
Ning Xin recalled the chef friends she made and ran off to get them with Mallory in tow. The elderly women were all married and their words just confirmed that Mallory wasn¡¯t lying! Mallory herself was stunned that all she said was so quickly backed up by the eager chefs who badmouthed their husbands and talked about their activities with no embarrassment. The Princess was the most flustered from the talk because the conversation was nothing like learning about biology in class but she hid it well.
¡°Girlie, you have to keep things fresh to keep your man¡¯s eyes on you.¡± The grey-haired, short chef who had the best soup and stew, Mrs Dustine, held her wrist and looked her straight in the eye.
¡°Ai, she¡¯s still young. That¡¯s for later.¡± The white-haired expert of pan and stir-fried foods, Mrs Eilish, whose husband was also a chef who worked in the same military kitchen barked and grabbed her other wrist. She was the oldest of the 3 ladies that were free to chat.
¡°You have the body, you just need to make full use of all your assets!¡± The youngest of the three, Mrs Poque, was a plumb 80-year-old lady who was on the shorter side. She only looked a little older than Athena and was obviously proud of her own looks and figure. She was the most creative and explorative chef in the kitchen that Ning Xin helped.
Mrs Poque was a talented chef at level 244 even though they had a lifespan of at least 350 years. She had the greatest potential of becoming a Grandmaster chef or even greater. The other 2 were maxed out at 300 but don¡¯t have the potential as their skills are far from level 330 for even the weakest evolution.
¡°Ju-just like fighting?¡± She replied hesitantly. If it was body control, she was filled with confidence but she had no idea what the ladies were referring to.
¡°Yes! Just like fighting. Right! You wield a sword and knives, look, it¡¯s the same. It''s all about how you hold it. I¡¯ll show you my secret trick.¡± Mrs Dustine got all excited.
¡°Hold on a damn minute! She¡¯s a beginner and from the looks of it, so is the boy. Obviously, she has to use her best weapons. Look, you have to know how to grab and move your chest.¡± Mrs Poque crossed her arms under her bountiful chest to prop them up.
¡°Huh? What do you mean?¡± She did not understand why she needed to grab herself.
¡°Don¡¯t listen to them, it''s all about preference when it comes to first impressions. You mentioned he likes your legs, you should learn how to adapt to his likings!¡± Mrs. Eilish took control of the conversation as the most experienced one.
¡°I-I didn¡¯t say he liked it¡¡± Her voice got weak near the end.
¡°Sorry to interrupt,¡± Mallory weighed in, ¡°I heard that the stronger, or perhaps higher level the individual the more painful their first time, is that true?¡±
¡°It hurts!?¡± Ning Xin exclaimed in shock.
¡°I¡¯ve heard that too! Amongst the female knights back in Tidal. It was rumoured that there was a really muscular female Grand Knight that broke her partner¡¯s you-know-what because he was too weak but forceful.¡±
¡°Really!? The story I heard was that the higher the physical stats that men have, the bigger they are and women get tighter. The female knight told me that it hurt so much and blood got everywhere like a slaughterhouse.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t believe those baseless rumours, there¡¯s no way physical stats affect that.¡±
¡°Oh, I fail to concur. Physical stats can change muscle and bone mass and density and evolution can easily increase one¡¯s height and size, I don¡¯t see the impossibility. As for women, it¡¯s not just a gender problem. With more strength and trained muscle for warriors, of course, they would be¡tighter.¡± Mallory corrected.
¡°Oh deary, then you¡¯ll have to learn how to prepare yourself before anything else.¡±
Ning Xin slowly got overloaded with information as she was still stunned by the fact that pain and bleeding were part of the process. She was lightheaded before Ebony returned from wherever he went. She was glad she didn¡¯t have to run or fly and fell flat onto her bed the moment he got the trailer out. She fell asleep from information overload or so she wanted but she wasn¡¯t able to sleep. They arrived back at the village before she realised and she was quickly distracted by Kiva.
She traded tickles for giggles and that cleared her mind a little. She plucked the baby off her and passed the cute creature to her parents before asking Ebony for a spar. She must be feeling uncomfortable because they haven¡¯t trained for two days!
Ebony went to look for one of the senior Frost Elf that could contain a small area for their spar. The one that couldn¡¯t be named just so happened to be free and was supposedly better at defensive magic than Korta or the ghost-like lady. It was a tight space due to the village¡¯s small size and they were currently setting up an illusion.
Her blood got harder and harder to boil as they could contain more energy now that she compressed them but tonight, it boiled over with ease. The explosion of strength and speed surprised both of them. She didn¡¯t manage to catch him off guard but it didn¡¯t matter since not even his mind could react in time without his subpar domain set-up beforehand. Her blade hit his shoulder and sent him rolling in the snow, she accidentally stabbed him slightly. She didn¡¯t think she was fast enough that even his body enhancement didn¡¯t come on in time.
The surprise attack was over but it didn¡¯t change that she had the lead in aggression and offence. The duel refreshed her mind and body more than ever. With light feet, she skipped back to play with Kiva if she wasn¡¯t asleep. They had the trailer out and she preferred to use their own bath. Humming one of the rhymes she picked up from Ebony, she washed herself but her skin got oddly prickly by her own touch and she ran out of the bath in record time. Hiding her head under her pillow, she refused to believe the corruption. Tossing and turning, she had a sleepless night.
???
It was a rare occurrence for Ebony to get woken up to help prepare breakfast. He didn¡¯t think he slept that much and it was earlier than usual but he washed his face and brushed his teeth before helping out. The bed frames in the guest room were swapped out to high-quality, thick wooden frames just for him. Even the floorboards were changed or more likely, strengthened by a wood mage.
¡®It would be nice to have a weighing machine, I¡¯m kinda interested in how heavy I really am. I can figure out how dense and heavy my mana can get as well.¡¯ He might have a good perception of gravitational waves but a human ¡®produced¡¯ a negligible amount and that barely changed from his change in mass. The only reason Chaotic Repulsive Membrane had any strength behind them was the work of the Fortification, Intelligence stat, speeding the movement up and compression. Not to mention, he also used abundant ambient gravity for the spell.
¡°Going vegetarian?¡± Ebony looked through the preparatory work. It was mostly salads and fruits.
¡°Frost Elves prefer vegetables and fruits. We don¡¯t need to eat that much since we¡¯re not training as much.¡±
¡°What¡¯s wrong, you look exhausted.¡± He couldn¡¯t believe she wasn¡¯t planning to put meat on the table just because they exerted less energy recently. Especially after last night¡¯s aggressive spar.
¡°It¡¯s just that time of the year.¡±
¡°Ah, is that what you were talking to Mallory about?¡±
¡°...That''s what it was supposed to be about but it turned into a lecture.¡±
¡°Is that bad?¡±
¡°I feel like they''re misleading me but they¡¯re also telling the truth.¡±
¡°Then just follow your gut like you¡¯ve always had.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t sure what the context was and replied without much thought.
What would he know about the woman''s body better than the woman themselves? He just assumed that she was confused since this world¡¯s biology was so different for each individual depending on their physiques, stat, skills and all that. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m going to the playground to pick up archery or bow mastery, wanna come along?¡±
¡°You want to pick up bow mastery?¡± The change of topic caught her attention.
¡°Didn¡¯t you hear what Sister Jing said, we can sacrifice skills for natural potential but we won¡¯t ever be able to pick up the skill again.¡±
¡°You¡¯re assuming we even have the talent to pick up the skill.¡±
¡°Sure, why not. Even an untiered version would be better than nothing.¡±
¡°You have immense talent for martial arts but don¡¯t have the Mastery skill for any sort of style.¡±
¡°Right, I wonder why.¡± He said without a hint of actual curiosity.
After breakfast, a crystal clear and crisp voice echoed to announce that the village was shut off and a warning was put for the children not to go past their gates or short walls. The voice didn¡¯t address them, the outsiders, but they were already informed ahead of time.
Clovis came along, going for a rematch with Tiha. He actually beat Qane once or twice in the past few months according to him but Tiha completely crushed all his tactics with ease. Ebony wasn¡¯t that surprised, that girl was quite talented and experienced.
He didn¡¯t expect to be offered a spar with Orren¡¯s party by Korta. The elders seemed to think that the Frost Elves should learn from them.
At least, to a certain extent, the speed and urgency they had towards growth was something the Frost Elves could learn from. They found a way to cope with his domain and their arrows were an actual threat but they couldn¡¯t pin him down. Tiha¡¯s sister, Enya was their vanguard but her techniques couldn¡¯t trouble him any more.
Orren¡¯s wife, Ophelia was a Great Wood Archer who was probably the most dangerous one in their party outside of Korben who was the village guardian.
Korben obviously didn¡¯t join in to bully him so he only had 4 opponents. Ophelia¡¯s wooden arrows split off mid-flight and every time he dodged it, they would split off to chase after him. Some were homing and others weren¡¯t. When she saw that he dodged every arrow just barely, the arrows grew thorns right as they passed by him and drew blood since he was just wearing a shirt.
The last party member, Keiren, was a Master Ice Archer at level 276 who worked with Orren the full-time mage to prevent him from moving around. Their teamwork was practically impeccable but Enya and Keiren were clearly the weak points as neither were able to hold their positions as well as Orren and Ophelia who were both maxed out Masters for who knows how many years.
Ebony put pressure on Enya and Keiren at the same time as he focused all his gravity magic on Keiren to keep him close. Their resistance to magic made it impossible to conjure or latch onto with mana even within his domain and made gravity and sound magic less than half as effective as they should be.
He imagined that they were facing the same issue as him, other than the village chief couple who were manipulating their elements practically on his skin without an issue. His control over his elements was wobbly the closer he tried to manipulate them but it was far better than before.
They did have body enhancement magic but like Gen mentioned, they weren¡¯t particularly good at it. So, it was extremely hard for them to keep up in terms of physical prowess.
Their casting speed, flexibility and power overshadow his own greatly to combat the disadvantage they have. Before long, he was pinned to the ground with ice and wood while the Frost Elves were facing the floor with 3 Glacial Models each pushing them down. He broke himself free which took an entire minute and let them go.
He won but it may not necessarily be true if they were trying to kill each other. They posed a certain level of threat and that didn¡¯t sit well with him. Not when they were all Masters.
After a short chat and after battle review, they challenged Ning Xin too but Korta was hesitant to let Orren and his party duel with her. As both of them had shown their strengths to Korta, he knew enough about each of their skills.
First of all, the fire mage was someone the Frost Elves simply didn¡¯t have much experience against. Next, she was just too fast. And finally, her fighting style was too aggressive compared to most.
Despite Ebony usually coming to a draw with her, she crushed them within seconds. There was no suspense, wood, ice and snow didn¡¯t stand a chance and Enya couldn¡¯t even react to the first strike much less parry and counter.
Orren and his party were then sent to undergo training with Korta. These elders would be here for the next few years so the combatants of Arcta were going to have a bad time compared to their usual relaxed days.
Ebony went to the archery range a distance away and picked a random training bow for both of them. They were all longbows but most of the villagers had a personal bow. He knew how to shoot an arrow and control his strength so that he didn¡¯t snap the bowstrings.
After 3 successful shots that hit the target board from 20 metres away, every shot after hit the bullseye. It wasn¡¯t hard when you had good muscle control and perception.
Ning Xin on the other hand, had never held a bow much less fired an arrow. He saw that the children who were finally allowed back out onto the playground were watching her with curious eyes. Most of them were older than the two of them but only stood at 1.3 to 1.5 metres tall. They were mostly Journeymen as well.
He knew she was embarrassed to ask for help so he walked up to her and taught her how to hold a bow. He simply imitated the archers he had seen.
¡°Loosen your grip, you¡¯re going to break it.¡± He whispered softly as he stood behind her. Guiding her hands and shifting her feet to change her stance. He pushed his body against her, ¡°You can align your sight with the arrow tip.¡± He grabbed both her hands and overlaid his own to show her, his fingers clasped onto her and pulled the bowstring but the wooden bow¡¯s frame shattered. He froze the string so that it didn¡¯t whip at them, not that it would harm them.
¡°Relax, let¡¯s try again.¡± She must be too used to a tight grip on her swords so he wasn¡¯t surprised. The bow grip turned to dust within her grasp.
¡°I-I¡¯m going to follow my gut, you hear me! You better watch out!¡± He imagined a smile underneath the emotionless mask.
Ebony cocked his head in confusion at the declaration.
Chapter 232: Stout
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skill Longbow Mastery mutated into Adaptable Bow Mastery¡¯
Adaptable Bow Mastery - Mastery of many bow types with a focus on accuracy. Accuracy with a bow increases by 50% within 300 metres. Slightly improves accuracy and accuracy effective range per level.
It was common sense that skills don¡¯t increase the strength or speed of arrows since that was dependent on the weapon. Unless mana or other energy were infused. Ebony didn¡¯t bother blowing up the training bows with his mana.
To begin with, he barely spent much time on playing around with a bow every day. In just 4 days, he got the current untiered skill. He found their warehouse and took the different types of bows they had to make the skill more versatile.
The wider the range of capabilities a skill has, the higher their value or so Kong Jing told him. This combatted Clovis¡¯s theory that more skills meant more dilution towards where Potential could go in a sense.
These days, he was back to studying since he had access to Kong Jing¡¯s library again.
The craftswoman had no time to teach him the universal language and there were still plenty of other books he had yet to read or fully understand. He spent most of his time editing runes that he used the most and expanding his mana capacity since he didn¡¯t have to spend them outside of donating them to a mana compressor.
In terms of training, he used the lightning mana ores he bought to get more proficient with lightning manipulation. He could shoot an orb of lightning and hit a target within 10 metres with no issue, even a moving target. Pathetic compared to his other repertoire but it was improving.
The elders such as Korta simply didn¡¯t entertain sparring or duelling with them. They were a bit too far away in power and the Frost Elves didn¡¯t fancy fighting them.
At least, they watched over a contained field that allowed him and Ning Xin to do their daily conditioning. They were very interested in observing his freezing flames and he got to ask them about domains in exchange. They didn¡¯t believe he could summon a domain and when he did, they nodded their heads because it was as they expected.
Surprisingly, out of Korta, Christy and the one that shall not be named, only Christy could make use of Will the way he could. That was the most shocking for them. Christy lent him a book about the usage of Will but it was full of philosophical nonsense that didn¡¯t make much sense to him. He didn¡¯t even want to mention that it was just an 8-page notebook that talked about how feelings, emotions and life experiences fueled Will.
However, it did tell him why the elders were surprised he could use it to such an extent.
First of all, feelings and emotions?
That was something he was slightly disconnected from until he came here.
Life experiences?
He was less than a child in their eyes. Even to himself, he didn¡¯t think he experienced much in life. It was mostly a life of training and repetition. Sure, he was put into deadly battles from time to time but he was brought up that way. He experienced much more just travelling from Arcta to Plainston.
He didn¡¯t manage to get back into the mental simulation again which was a pity but it had only been 4 days. Of course, he didn¡¯t forget to recreate all his ice spells and work on how he wanted to improve his physique but progress was slow on that end.
It was extremely relaxing, it felt like he was on vacation.
Ning Xin was cooking and experimenting with ingredients all day outside of their daily conditioning. He was the test subject for every experiment. As her blood continued to condense, the amount she could eat and drink increased. She didn¡¯t get any less energy efficient but her storage and capacity for energy increased as the days passed.
However, her digestion speed was still the same and she could now be chewing on food the whole day without getting full. The Jetfin¡¯s blood was going to be finished faster than he anticipated. According to her stat growth, the Jetfins had Agility as their highest stat. Constitution and Vitality followed after. The ability to increase her stats despite being unable to level up was quite unfair but it made him concerned if there was any backlash to it.
He also made more batches of frost plum wine with her. There were a few dozen different mixtures and ratios sealed up and they were still concocting more every day. He was going to make the best plum wine to exist.
Their bags were emptied out and passed onto Kong Jing as she said she could vastly improve capacity now that she ¡®wasted¡¯ half a year working on her space magic and learning a new rune language.
In a day or so, the planks of wood he ordered would be ready and he could swap out the trailer¡¯s frame with a more durable material after moulding his version of toughness runes on them. The trailer was just sitting out on the road without a power source since that was removed as well. Kong Jing took on a lot of projects.
The strongest Frost Elf, Vent Ly never came back, perhaps that had never been his intention. The village didn¡¯t look any different after the illusion was cast. However, ambient ice mana concentrations were almost as high as the Icy regions of the Glades.
All thanks to the presence of 3 King-ranked Frost Elves excluding the few crafters who didn¡¯t have such a strong effect on the environment. Apparently, it was just their naturally high affinity to the ice element that attracted the element to gather around them.
It was no longer awkward between him and Xin which he welcomed but something was out of place and he couldn¡¯t put his finger on what it was. Whatever it was, it felt like a positive change compared to the strained and awkward interactions. Especially because Battle Song was fixed!
He was able to get the full buff and it was gaining levels pretty fast despite the safe environment as if it was catching up to his actual proficiency with the skill.
The next 3 nights were spent moulding runes on the wooden planks he obtained for a trade of his future plum wine. He hasn''t slept these days. The resting cycle of his body was changing and Xin was similarly preparing for a change in her sleep schedule.
The wood that he was advised to use was Ash Avium Wood. The wood mage also had a plantation alongside the plum farm. He compressed a 300-year-old tree into planks for Ebony and it was known to be hard to detect by smell and was tough enough to withstand weight, high speeds and even absorb vibrations.
He used 2 entire trees but the wood mage didn¡¯t think it was a pity since the trees were still considerably young and only Uncommon in rarity.
In exchange, the wood mage studied Icicle for a day. Icicle didn¡¯t glow for two days after that and Xin told him that it was upset and happy at the same time. Upset that Ebony just passed the greatsword around and happy because the wood mage treated it with care. ¡°If Icicle could talk, it would say something along the lines like ¡®that was a nice bath¡¯¡± was the comment he was left with.
Another 3 days were spent swapping out the trailer¡¯s frame as Kong Jing was busy and could only spare an hour a day on it. The power source was placed back in and their backpacks remodelling was completed.
He couldn¡¯t tell how big it was but there was so much room after placing back all their things they could at least put 5 to 7 times what they were carrying depending on how they packed and arranged their belongings.
Sadly, she didn¡¯t do anything to the weight reduction runes as the material of the bag limits what she could do with it. If they were to carry more things, it would actually weigh them down which was more of a concern for Xin.
The peaceful days were everything he could have wanted but he felt the urge to move, to improve. As quickly as possible.
???
¡°Curse of Regression, I¡¯ve managed to stack 4 layers on Old Hag and multiple other curses on 2 of their Patriarchs so they won¡¯t be a problem within another week. If Navin were present, I wouldn¡¯t have to go so far.¡± Koawe woke up and bragged.
The said curse was supposed to make an individual lose their levels, skill levels and stats over time. It was troublesome and Ebony didn¡¯t want to be a target of said curse. Although he was as straightforward as usual, the ever-smiling Frost Elf didn¡¯t answer him when he asked what the cost was.
According to the little Ning Xin knew about curses, the cost for strong or unique curses usually wasn¡¯t mana, life force or stamina. Some common ones were sacrificing lifespan or stats. A certain portion of one or more stat would be locked out until the curse was dispelled or the target was dead.
The rarer ones were to sacrifice a portion of their health, mana, stamina regeneration or maximum pool till the curse was dispelled. This was usually preferred since the caster wouldn¡¯t be weakened in terms of power.
To stack multiple curses and have it continue to run meant that the caster would always be in an incomplete state since they would definitely have to sacrifice something till they stopped the curse.
Distance usually affected the cost but that didn¡¯t appear to be the case or Koawe would be weaker the further his target went. Every combatant was simply buying time and protecting Koawe during their battle. Since the Trolls could constantly leach Vitality from their people, killing them was close to impossible when millions upon millions were getting fed off.
Ebony wasn¡¯t able to tell if Koawe¡¯s mana pool was decreased or his regeneration was affected in any way but the Curse Mage was bound to bed the entire time. It was a very debilitating type of magic but if the cost was so heavy, he felt a bit safer to know that not just anyone would curse people for no reason.
Furthermore, Wisdom or general magic resistance played a part in increasing the cost for the caster and the Trolls had close to nonexistent magic resistance.
¡®Although Koawe is a Grandmaster and not a King ranked existence and he managed to curse 3 or more of su¡were the patriarchs'' Emperors? Never mind, maybe the cost isn¡¯t all that high after all or the Trolls were just really easy to curse. His cast speed is slow and there are usually conditions to meet, I¡¯ll have to act fast if a curse mage is against me.¡¯
3 weeks had passed since the village illusion had been set up. Their robes and clothes were ready but Xin¡¯s bodysuit was only done yesterday. They spent a day saying their farewells to the villagers they were closer with and had a feast with the Thoyas. The vacation truly helped relax the mind and body.
During this period, he made a chess board and the pieces to introduce a new game but it actually wasn¡¯t new. The Frost Elves knew about the game. That actually confused him but didn¡¯t shock him. The Thoya¡¯s didn¡¯t know about it but Christy and the one that shall not be named did.
He learned a new word in Elcrian and associated it with chess. To them, it was a very old board game. The knowledge that the game of chess was a common point just proved to him that Earth was not unreachable. The game was somehow introduced to Earth, it was unlikely the other way around.
He was also made to recall that he wasn¡¯t a great player. Thankfully, he was able to beat Xin without much trouble but she wasn¡¯t interested in the game after 3 or 4 matches. The elders hinted that chess wasn¡¯t supposed to be a normal board game but didn¡¯t know much about the game¡¯s history either.
¡°Can¡¯t you stay any longer?¡± Roya softened her voice unknowingly.
¡°Sister Jing is about to leave and we can¡¯t exit without her. We can¡¯t stay for years.¡± Ebony squatted and patted Kiva¡¯s head. The baby girl was hiding behind her mother''s calves and barely even reached the tall woman¡¯s knees. She had just escaped the grasp and embrace of a masked human that had a similar body temperature to them.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
This time, she didn¡¯t cry or stick to them. ¡°Be good Kiva, listen to your parents and don¡¯t be lazy.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll bring delicious snacks next time we visit.¡± The masked woman similarly squatted in her new battle gear.
Unexpectedly, it was not fully fabric and contained a card-thin layer of scales woven under the fabric. Her battle gear consists of a tight-fitting shirt and pants of the same make and design, plain and pitch black in colour. Her signature mantle was more of a winged cape that was supposed to act as the base of her conjured wings so that they didn¡¯t clip.
The crafters put so much more effort into her outfit because the cape could transform into a sleeved mantle which was the default setting. However, instead of bright red it was dark crimson almost matching her hair and was almost black now. It wasn¡¯t made of leather but it had that leather jacket texture when it came to visuals but silky when it came to touch.
They have not allowed him to see it in action but he guessed that the colour would take on the hue of her flames once imbued with her mana or activated. Her bodysuit didn¡¯t have any visible difference except when she put it on and he noticed her chest deflating. ¡®Compressive tights? The effect isn¡¯t that much to be magic, it went from XL to M¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t think much of it, a more streamlined body was indeed more beneficial for a speedy swordswoman like her.
Just like him, she had a new pair of combat boots made of some dungeon monster leather. The only difference was that her boots¡¯ soles were springy while his was practically rock solid. Once again, a good pair of boots was his favourite piece of equipment. He went through many pairs of boots, finally obtaining not one but two great pairs. They had excess materials and each of them had an additional pair as a spare.
His set of robes was almost exactly the same as his previous set in terms of design and even functions. Just stronger and more potent, especially its capacity.
Similarly, he hasn¡¯t tested its defensive capabilities. Unlike Ning Xin, he did not get special clothes that matched the armour. He made his own with their frostsilk cotton, all it could do was withstand his frost flames and that was more than enough for him. ¡®And she has 5 sets of the black shirt and pants, favouritism¡¡¯
If there was something to be said about the masked swordswoman¡¯s new look, it was that her cuffs similarly had faint plum petal designs that could only be seen if someone focused or had really good eyes. It was the first time they donned their gear together since his set was completed first.
The masked swordswoman bumped into him and whispered, ¡°Now we match.¡±
¡°Indeed.¡± He answered as a matter of course. It was unlike her to state the obvious.
He shifted his feet to dodge a foot stomp. She stomped away to Kong Jing with heavy steps. ¡®what was that about?¡¯
Halvis and his son were busy tending the fields and they silently waved each other goodbye. 5 years was a very short time for them but nothing was certain and it was clear to the Thoyas that they frequently put themselves in considerable danger.
But 5 years was about as long as he had been living on Elcra so he was actually going to miss the bear who hugged his leg to sleep like a koala. The baby that sat on his shoulder when he was reading. Watching Clovis improve his combat sense every day. Listening to Roya nag and Halvis giving him lectures on soil and seed quality and conditions while they had tea and snacks midafternoon was a pleasant pastime.
¡°We¡¯re leaving!¡± Kong Jing yelled at him to hurry up. Kiva quickly put her hands on top of his and rubbed her own head furiously, ¡°come back soon bada!¡± The baby became slightly chubbier thanks to nibbling on all the experimental dishes and snacks the human chef made. It was a healthy chubbiness compared to the bony figure she used to have.
¡°I hope you remember us when we meet again.¡± He didn¡¯t try to smile because that scared them when he attempted to do so before. He turned and walked towards the space mage.
¡°Roya, it was nice meeting you.¡± Kong Jing said her farewells before a cold forest appeared in his sights.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll drop you off and leave for Clatter Rattle.¡± Just as she said that they appeared within the city walls of Plainston. ¡°I¡¯ll be staying in Clatter Rattle for the foreseeable future since it¡¯s easy to get most materials there. Take care of each other.¡±
¡°Wow, her teleportation really improved drastically but she sure ran off quickly.¡±
¡°Haha, didn¡¯t you notice how embarrassed she was?¡±
¡°Why would she be?¡±
¡°I think Roya might be her first crafter friend. At least, I don¡¯t think I heard her say that it was nice meeting another artisan before. Not that I would know for sure.¡±
¡°Alright, anyway let¡¯s stock up.¡± They spent another half a day searching for the best cuts of meat and freshest vegetables. She was less enthusiastic when they were in the Z&Z mall and stocking up on ration. Preservation and ice magic could only keep food fresh for so long and the expanded bag meant their supply could and should last longer.
Daily necessities such as soap were also bought in bulk. The departmental-like store was promoting the recent improvements to body wash, hair and skin care and all that.
The masked lady quickly separated from him to a shop on the women¡¯s floor but not before he got her opinion on what had the most pleasant scent. The mall was 7 storeys tall and quite rare for buildings on Elcra. The quick expansions must have been due to how successful the city and Ordina were.
¡°Is the manager or boss Andel around?¡± He asked knowing that Andel had left for another town long ago. As expected, the response he got was that the employee didn¡¯t even know the name Andel. Recalling that the company also dealt with armour and weapons albeit known to be lower quality than what a dedicated weapon store could provide, he went to the weapon store to take a look.
The weapon displayed right in the middle was a spear.
¡®Hmm¡¡¯ He stared at the weapon.
A free employee walked up to him, there were five such employees but few customers. Probably because they were better options despite the lower price offered here. Not to mention, people don¡¯t change or shop for weapons every day.
¡°How can I help you, sir? Is there any particular weapon you¡¯re looking for?¡± The female employee was a head shorter than him and had shiny silver hair which was relatively rare. He rudely Appraised her without permission.
[Record Keeper Lvl 98 | Metal Mage Lvl 33]
Ebony was a bit surprised when the silver-haired woman''s eyes shot up and glared at him. ¡®I¡¯ve improved, I can tell she¡¯s pissed or annoyed.¡¯ he praised himself internally.
¡°My apologies, I mean no offence.¡± He gave no further apologies since he knew it was commonplace to Identify people.
¡°...Please keep quiet about it. Kehmm¡± She cleared her throat and got back to clerk mode.
¡°Well, just bag up one of every weapon type here. Actually, never mind. Just get me everything you have in stock.¡±
The clerk who was secretly a metal mage blanked out. ¡°Wh-what do you mean?¡±
¡°I want to buy everything.¡± He picked up the only greatsword on display but it was too light and he was worried they would be too fragile. There were only Common-quality weapons on display with the spear as an exception.
¡®I¡¯ll try to get as many weapon masteries as I can, that would be a fun pastime.¡¯ It wasn¡¯t as if he hadn¡¯t tried using other weapons before.
¡°Heh,¡± She scoffed as her clerk facade fell off momentarily before she went back to ¡®normal¡¯, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, we have thousands of weapons in stock.¡±
He cocked his head, ¡°Why are you sorry? I can wait, just pack it up. Or you can bring it out, I can store it.¡±
She started to call for other employees to help when she realised that he was going to take everything they had in stock.
As for other freelancers, that was none of his business but it actually didn¡¯t occur to him that Z&Z was where poor and beginner freelancers went for cheap but somewhat reliable weapons. He only agreed not to clean out their stock when the metal mage got a manager over and explained it to him.
They even had crossbows and guns but these were the shabbiest of the bunch. The price range for small weapons like daggers and knives was only between 8 Greys to 3 Greens. Cheap compared to items of the same quality in a blacksmith¡¯s store.
Weapons were not cheap, he remembered saving up for days to upgrade his weapon. Putting aside he paid for Rare materials funnelled into a lower quality weapon. Larger weapons were in the dozens of Greens and guns were the most expensive, followed by greatswords and then bows. Thousands of weapons only cost him Blues that he lost count of.
He hasn¡¯t charged up empty mana ores in a long time.
They brought out crate after crate as two employees did the maths to make sure they didn¡¯t miscalculate. He packed up the crates after glancing at the wares when they opened it for him to check it. A hundred Blues were already in their hands even though the price hadn''t been finalised. It was a deposit to reassure them he wasn¡¯t running away with their wares.
The manager was talking to him and there was an armed party acting as customers. They were terrible at acting. So bad, they didn¡¯t even remember to hide their badge as an elite escort party. Far higher level than Top¡¯s party used to be. Only one was at 200 and the rest under 180.
He assumed they were just here to guard the employees instead of chasing after robbers.
¡°What are you doing here?¡± Xin found him, probably through scent. Once again, he was able to observe the freelancers stiffen up the moment her feet stepped past the¡lines. Just like many malls, this was a display store and there wasn¡¯t a blacksmith or smithy connected so there were no doors.
There was just something about her presence and aura that caused people to get wary. Personally, he felt that she was consciously doing so.
¡°Buying some weapons to play around with, I wonder how many masteries I can get if I spent an hour every day.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand why you want to waste that time that could be better spent improving what you have.¡±
¡°Just for fun, I can just multitask. Actually, I can just let my Models train with them. Does that count as training my personal army?¡± He realised that he might be committing a crime.
¡°I doubt so, you can only control a few at a time and they are quite weak.¡±
Sweat rolled down the escort party¡¯s back as the tall woman scanned her eyes over the store. The employees didn¡¯t feel anything out of place.
¡®She¡¯s right, I shouldn¡¯t be wasting time on weapons I won¡¯t be using. I can test out if actions my Models repeat are able to get me skills. If that¡¯s possible, I should take a look at the skill books section. Even if they aren¡¯t any good, I won¡¯t be wasting my time on them.¡¯ With that, he gave them time to check through their wares and left for the skill book storefront.
¡°I¡¯ll go take a look at the memory light store.¡± She had a bag full of mana ores to get whatever she wanted.
???
Ning Xin went to the store that sold women''s products. She already had enough clothing but she was here for skincare products. Even if no one saw it, she took care of her face after getting acquainted with Mallory. Restocking on hand creams and whatever she was advised to use.
Once she was done, she followed Ebony¡¯s scent but saw a booklet placed at the side of a clothing store when she walked passed. With her sight, it was not hard to see the title despite the distance and size of the booklet.
¡®Weight, sizing and measurements? Is that a book for employees to gauge customer¡¯s size?¡¯ She didn¡¯t know why her feet changed directions and entered the clothing store filled with dresses.
¡°Good morning! How may I help you?¡±
The loud and chirpy clerk was enthusiastically pushing sales onto her.
¡°I was just curious about that.¡±
¡°Ah, go ahead. Our boss bought that from a merchant that runs a chain of women''s clothing tailors from all over the continent. She said all women would be interested. You can use that changing room.¡± The clerk giggled. That confused her. What was so funny and why did she need a changing room to read a book?
She didn¡¯t dare to resist the weak woman¡¯s push in case she injured her and obediently went behind partitions. It had mirrors, a chair and hooks to hang clothes. There was also a scale. That was when she realised she was guided here to measure her weight.
¡®Let¡¯s see¡¡¯ She ignored the scale and sat on the chair before flipping the book open
- Average unclassed human female
Average Height: 33 gers (165cm)
Average Weight: 9.5 Tivs (47.5kg)
¡®I guess being over 34 gers tall when I came of age is a bit above average but 9.5? Lies!¡¯ She recalled weighing over 13 Tivs at that point in time. She continued to read and found out that the book even had averages for all the races on Elva, even subcategories of beastmen.
Unable to stop her curiosity, she stepped on the scale after putting her bag down. She almost jumped when she saw the needle fly from left to right. Controlling herself from destroying anything, she waited patiently only to be shocked by the lies that the scale was telling her.
¡®42.2 Tivs?! That¡¯s not possible, this scale is faulty. Wait, it must be my clothes and mantle.¡¯ Ning Xin completely missed out on how brilliant the clerk was. Unconvinced at the value. As she stripped and measured herself, she took off more and more pieces leaving her in her bodysuit.
¡®33.2. That¡¯s better but¡¡¯ She got dressed at inhuman speeds and sat down again.
Flipping to the page for Master-ranked females, the average weight was only 17.6 Tivs. She hurriedly scanned the pages and was glad to find a section for female warriors but similarly horrified that it was still only 22.8 Tivs.
¡®No, it must be muscle density. My strength stat is quite high¡and I compressed my blood. Of course, I would be heavier. It¡¯s definitely not how much I eat. I ate less recently¡¡¯ As for her height, she was also slightly above the average female Master warrior but not enough to affect the weight reading by more than 10 Tivs.
She wasn¡¯t able to find any more evidence in the book to prove that she was not heavier than she should be. Only more evidence to prove that she was¡fat.
The waist measurements. The calves and thighs. The chest. The shoulder width. She was able to prove that she had a larger frame than most but wasn¡¯t far off when it came to warriors. They even included the peak value recorded. No matter how she calculated, she couldn¡¯t deny that she was heavier not solely because of her stats or compressed blood.
¡®With a slightly heavier set of equipment, I should really cut down to balance¡I am not fat! It¡¯s just the compressed blood.¡¯ Incensed Meditation kicked in and she calmed herself. She tried to think about combat instead and logically psyche herself into thinking that the extra weight would slow her movements. Now that her bag contained more than its weight reduction effect, it was an actual problem or so she told herself.
Chapter 233: Mandate
There were all sorts of basic tier 1 and untiered skills. For orphans and people who wanted to diverge from what their parents did, these skill books were where they started from. He wasn¡¯t sure what kind of skills were taught in public schooling or if only language and common sense were taught.
Ridiculously overpriced tier 2 skills were also on sale. All the books were locked up behind glass or crystal cases. If the information wasn¡¯t a lie, following the book to the letter and refining to the limit could get a base 200% on average which was actually not that bad. Following a set of instructions blindly wasn¡¯t ideal but it was enough to get people on track.
They were only 3 tier 2 skills on sale. One was titled, [Light Sprint] and advertised to be very stamina friendly but only a known max of 150% base. The user would have to improve the skill further beyond the instructions stated in the book.
The second skill was [Stout Brawn], it was a defensive skill for warriors that utilises extreme exertion of muscles to momentarily increase their toughness. It was interesting to say the least, the sky high price of 223 Blues prevented purchase because it supposedly required 800 points in Endurance to activate the skill for 3 seconds.
However, the toughness increase was a minimum of 250% if the user refined the skill according to the book. The drawback was that the entire body wouldn¡¯t be able to move for some time after casting it. Unless, the user had over a certain Constitution, Endurance and Strength stat. The skill book¡¯s information was so detailed that he believed the writer was a high level Grandmaster.
The store employee went into storytelling mode and said the writer died and left his only child the book but the child didn¡¯t want to be a fighter and sold a lower tier version of the book.
¡®The drawback is terrible and few people have 2000 points in Endurance, 1300 in Strength and 1500 in Constitution to be free from the drawback. The duration is also so short for such a costly skill but this is quite a hidden treasure.¡¯ Even he did not have the stats to be free from the drawbacks. If the stated information wasn¡¯t a lie, the skill was amazing as long as he could improve it. Not to mention, he wanted more active skills that draw stamina so he can get a better feel for how stamina moved around.
Lastly, [Field Camouflage] that didn¡¯t have much information and was ten times cheaper than Stout Brawn. It was more of a book on using the environment to hide. In the end, he skipped the other books and just got a copy of these three.
???
Back within the comforts of their trailer, Ebony revved up the wheels and set off. Previously, the Jetfins were fearsome enough to scare off creatures in the Icy region but without those pursuers they had to brave nature themselves. It was warm inside the trailer and Ning Xin wouldn¡¯t have to expend mana to keep herself from getting frozen.
Visiting the dungeons he passed by while they were on the run was also an option. He drove out the gates in an ash grey trailer with a Glacial Model sitting on top. He wanted to let it drive but he still needed sight and he was the one powering the vehicle. He would also have to spend time and effort to input Will dedicated to driving if he wanted to be lazy. There was an engine and a power source, he didn¡¯t necessarily have to be the one magically powering the vehicle now.
With mana to spare, he started up the mirage runes and they travelled in incognito. Trailane Plains was easy to traverse as the ground was even and flat and he could carry the trailer past Bubble Hills. He might have to let the vehicle land a few times since it was too heavy but it was better than twisting and turning between hills.
Trailing across the Plains, not even ten minutes past when he slowed down.
¡°Stop!¡±
¡®Why is there mist?¡¯ His hair got moist and he quickly cast Chaotic Repulsion Membrane on the entire Trailer. Ning Xin quickly exited the trailer, already geared up. She put her hand on his shoulder as they scanned for abnormalities.
¡°Are we hidden?¡± She asked for confirmation through a silenced bubble of mana surrounding them.
¡°Mmm, ever since we got past the city gates.¡±
¡°Something¡¯s around, I don¡¯t think they or it see us.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll move slowly, should we continue onwards to the Glades?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, my Intuition isn''t telling me enough. I think you can start moving.¡±
Their trailer started to cruise at a low speed. He wasn¡¯t picking up anything and the mist was thick and prevented his sight past a couple of metres. "We''ve driven past this area multiple times, I doubt the mist is natural. There¡¯s no monster around that can blind our sight so much either.¡¯
Half an hour went by on their slow crawl towards Bubble Hills. ¡°I see something. Buildings and¡people? I¡¯ll avoid it.¡±
He suddenly recalled a warning he received in the past. Mysterious village within the Plains that shouldn¡¯t exist. However, nothing in the warning talked about a large glass or crystal clear building with humans hanging down from ropes and getting steamed.
¡°Too late. Malice!¡± She burst off the vehicle leaving him behind to pull the trailer back into his bracelet.
It took a second for him to store it, Ning Xin clashed with the unknown figure that attacked him. The clashing of metal informed him that it was likely a person. ¡°Trespassers. Submit or die.¡± The flaming swordswoman was sent tumbling in the air after the clash and he caught her before she dug her feet into the ground.
¡®Is that a person?¡¯ They finally managed to see the attacking figure. It had a humanoid silhouette. That was about it. They were looking at a grey, misty silhouette with no visible facial features that was slightly shorter and smaller than both of them.
In the sillouette¡¯s hands were a single one-handed sword that was similarly a misty silhouette. Appraising him got him nothing but from Xin¡¯s reaction, she got a lashback from Appraising the assailant.
¡®If he¡¯s talking, he can be reasoned with, right?¡¯ He generously assumed. ¡°We were on the way out.¡±
¡°Submit. Or. Die.¡± The silhouette didn¡¯t yield or even listen.
¡°Is everyone who exits Plainston a trespas-¡± Ebony attempted conversation with a genuine question. The greyish silhouette flashed towards him with its weapon thrust towards his neck.
A gentle heat wave blew from his side and the silhouette was sent sprawling back in a similar fashion.
¡®Not that strong but its blade was faster than I can react to as a surprise attack.¡¯ Ebony put his right hand on his chin, unbothered by the cheap shot.
¡°Would you like to tell us why or what you¡¯re rambling about?¡± The silhouette replied with another burst of speed and fury. ¡°You saw something you shouldn¡¯t have. Unfortunate, savage one and battery.¡±
¡°Oh you mean those people getting steamed alive. Isn¡¯t that just some heat resistance training or maybe mist magic training?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Is it your village¡¯s sauna or some kind of recreation?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Maybe we can join, I haven¡¯t dedicated time to heat resistance training for the past few months. Why are you staying quiet? You can say no if outsiders aren¡¯t welcomed.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°If you¡¯re not going to say anything, we¡¯ll be on our way. Goodbye.¡±
¡°You can enter if you dare.¡± Another silhouette appeared beside the first one. Ebony was impressed, he couldn¡¯t see or sense them coming at all. He tried to smile to express his appreciation. ¡°Great, what kind of cuisine do you serve?¡±
¡°...Trespasser cuisine.¡±
¡°I see. Are we on the menu?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
The mist got thicker but the silhouettes stepped back when their misty cover was slowly getting blown apart and evaporated. Ning Xin spoke out for the first time, ¡°So are you the chef, or the hunter?¡± Her hair burned bright hot and she took a step towards them with her longswords resting right above the ground.
¡®So they are people after all.¡¯ He saw their misty cover getting torn apart and normal brown pants and leather armour was under the mist.
They were surrounded in the next moment, most figures were larger than the first. The killing intent aimed at them was intense and palpable.
They didn¡¯t even stop for a chat and attacked them without further warning.
¡°You people are very rude. We were just passing by like everyone else and you chose to attack us.¡± He Flickered and allowed their slashes and stabs to glide past him. They were all wielding single handed swords.
¡°Submit or die!¡± A different voice demanded.
¡°Fine. Can I take that as your village¡¯s stance?¡±
¡°Naturally, dull battery.¡±
Ebony nodded, they finally gave a satisfactory answer as if acknowledging he was talking to them. He Flickered above their village, a few kilometres away from his original spot. Floating above the village of about a hundred misty silhouettes he exerted his Domain down on them.
¡°Submit or die.¡± He tried to copy their tone but it came out as toneless as usual. ¡®I should¡¯ve used sound magic, now I don¡¯t sound as angry or intimidating.
Once again, no one replied to him. A few reacted and attempted to leap at him but were stunned when their misty cover started to dissipate and receive vibrational attacks. However, a dozen or so figures floated up and met his nonchalant glare.
Their misty armour untouched, gravity seemingly ineffective. But it wasn¡¯t magic resistance since he was able to exert direct manipulation near their bodies. The figures were just resisting or holding their misty armour together through sheer power. None of the wooden buildings were groaning under his strengthened gravity either.
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¡°Arrogant boy. Sit.¡±
Ebony cocked his head at them. ¡®Did he just ask me to sit? They really have some screws loose.¡¯
The silhouettes stared at him and began to look at each other. He couldn¡¯t tell what they were thinking but that may be the same even if they didn¡¯t have the misty silhouettes to hide their facial expression.
¡°Down!¡±
¡°Sit!¡±
¡°Bow!¡±
¡°What in the world are you people shouting?¡± He glanced back, slightly surprised that Ning Xin was getting suppressed or being held where she was. Although, the numbers around her increased to twenty or so.
¡°What¡¯s wrong, are there some strong ones?¡± He transmitted.
¡°Weird magic, it¡¯s slowing down my reactions and making me pause every time they give those commands.¡±
¡°Oh, I used to play with something similar didn¡¯t I?¡±
Ebony extracted the liquid mana out of his body and flooded his domain with it. He was about to repeat himself like they did with him but the dozen figures floating near him plummeted all of a sudden. He looked down to see that all the silhouettes that couldn¡¯t fly were lying on the ground, unconscious.
Before he noticed, the ones attacking Ning Xin retreated and went after him but they similarly fell unconscious the moment they charged into his domain that stretched over the tiny village. A handful managed to stop their charge and stare at him.
Those that could fly landed properly and didn¡¯t faint. ¡°Mere Master.¡± They glanced at each other, it was really hard to tell with their misty figures. ¡®They can Identify me, or perceive that through some other methods¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised they knew, whether a person was a Journeymen, Master, Grandmaster and so on was actually somewhat instinctual. It was the reason people could tell even with the lowest tier Identify what rank another creature was despite not being able to pick out the level.
¡°Cancel Flight.¡± All twelve of them muttered together.
Ebony descended to the ground against his Will. ¡®My head feels numb, a mental type attack?¡¯
¡°Limp Weaponry.¡± They chanted together. Ning Xin practically teleported over with how fast her charge was but the moment her thrust hit one of them, her weapons bent out of shape to her shock. ¡®Its not just mental?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t expect such a physical reaction from her twin blades. He summoned freezing petals at them that froze the mist throughout the village.
¡°Freeze Inhibit.¡± They reacted in tandem, fully aware what to do against ice and cold. They panicked a little when his petals continued to freeze and burn everything around. Ning Xin was still in shock at her swords that went limp.
¡°Defy Freeze!¡±
They ran around putting out freezing flames with their personal mist which was much stronger than the mist covering the village and their people. But their commands didn¡¯t elicit a response.
¡°Resist Freeze!¡±
They breathed a sigh of relief when the mist slowed down in hardening.
¡°Stop Breath.¡± They faced him and chanted.
¡°Pained Breath.¡±
¡°Muscle Failure.¡±
¡°Muscle Exhaustion.¡±
¡°Muscle Weakening.¡±
¡°Mana Expulsion.¡±
¡°Mana Inhibition.¡±
¡°Mana Weakening.¡±
They spewed out words but he had no idea what they were doing because he was breathing fine and his muscles were working normally. He didn¡¯t sense any changes to his mana unlike how the freezing of the mist slowed down earlier. ¡®So there¡¯s a criteria, if it''s above their limits to debuff they have to use a weaker version. Fascinating but the limitations are pretty bad if they can¡¯t stop me when they''re probably not just a mere Master.¡¯
¡°Get on, see if they can go back to normal after leaving a certain range.¡± He summoned the trailer and put the shocked swordswoman on board and let it drive away with one of his hastily put together Model.No one stopped her from leaving, too occupied with putting out fires.
They left him a way out by asking him to submit instead of just outright killing them and he didn¡¯t see any benefit to killing these people. Ebony wanted to leave when he saw that they got knocked out by his mana but the stronger ones didn¡¯t let him.
He gathered his essence and cast the imitation roar. He didn¡¯t expect them to be able to resist getting stunned like the Jetfins did. So he copied Korta and repeatedly cast the roar over and over again. His health, mana and stamina were consumed at an immense rate but similarly refilled at the same rate if not greater.
It finally worked and stunned them so he gave them a neck chop only to find them staring hard at him. ¡®They have even tougher physical bodies¡ how troublesome.¡¯ He brought every villager together and tied them up. Those that stopped their charge outside his domain couldn¡¯t dodge when he Flickered to them.
The twelve that were capable of flight were much more resilient and strong. The misty silhouettes of the twelve were very impressive. So impressive that he couldn¡¯t destroy it, be it his sword or magic. They weren¡¯t able to give commands anymore as he spammed the roar. One of them started to get a nose bleed. Ebony tied the entire village with ropes woven from ice. He froze all of their mouths together, hoping that was enough to stop them from their unique magic.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll be leaving. It was nice seeing that interesting magic. I¡¯ll see you again the next time I, hmm. Trespass, won¡¯t I? Maybe you will be up for a conversation next time.¡± He walked to their glass building. Within it, unlike what he initially saw, was not people being steamed. Beastmen were being hanged and had mist coming out of them and not the other way around.
¡°Existence Perplexion.¡±
He ignored what they were doing and walked off.
¡®They¡¯re awake. This building protected them?¡¯ Since they were awake, Ebony pointed at the tied up villages not too far away. He could see their mouths moving but he couldn¡¯t hear them at all so he mouthed his words instead of speaking out. He couldn¡¯t find the entrance of the building and couldn¡¯t be bothered to.
¡°Take care of them, they should be free pretty quickly.¡± He hurriedly Flickered away because this place had something more dangerous. At least, Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition was alarmed. ¡®Maybe it¡¯s because they are a threat to her? Their magic doesn''t work well against me though.¡¯
???
¡°Father, wh-what was that man¡¡±
¡°How can a Master resist our combined power?¡±
¡°And what is that roar? I-I can¡¯t get it out of my head and my body¡¯s still shaking.¡±
¡°What kind of water can knock out all of us?¡±
¡°We can cancel flight completely but only make use of the lowly resist for freezing and none of the physical weakening worked.¡±
The largest phantom figure, Phaneel didn¡¯t reply. Snapping themselves free once the stun effect disappeared was simple.
¡°Recover.¡± Phaneel commanded his fellow beastmen.
¡°What do we do? He¡¯s a threat now that he sees us. Our location will be leaked!¡±
¡°Calm down, existence perplexion managed to work. Although it borders me to help them hide their presence, at least our aura won¡¯t be leaked to our enemies.¡±
¡°How did he enter our ancestral spellweave?¡±
¡°The exact same way he resisted our Mandate.¡± Phaneel silenced them with his conjecture. ¡°My best guess is that the creature is not human. Kory, what are your impressions? Before that, hurry up and cover yourself.¡±
The silhouette who first came into contact with their trespassers quickly patched up his mistsleeve.
¡°Sir, I agree that he¡¯s nothing like the last or only human I¡¯ve seen or even heard about.¡± Kory gave his mistsleeve a final check before speaking.
¡°Right, you¡¯ve seen a human a decade ago. So, what was off?¡±
¡°I believe his mentality stands out.¡±
¡°Explain.¡±
¡°He tried to talk instead of fighting back. I was told all creatures fight back and respond to threats with violence especially humans. The female seemed more human but at the same time, less.¡±
¡°Seems like we¡¯ve fed you too many slanted views. There are less violent humans that don¡¯t resort to violence as their first choice of actions. As for the masked one, she¡¯s likely one of the Savage that you should have heard about. What else?¡±
¡°He assumed our folk¡¯s baptism was some kind of training or recreation and asked to join.¡± Kory stepped aside to let his senior who threatened and joked with the trespasser talk after reporting.
¡°I tried the tactic of leading him to think we ate people but the Savage¡I felt it. S-she was actually planning to cook us in a literal sense.¡± They were not cannibals and didn¡¯t eat people. Their village¡¯s customs when their baptism tower was seen was to scare people into thinking they ate humans and beastmen alike.
¡°Sir, why didn¡¯t our Mandate work on that man? It didn¡¯t work too well on the Savage but at least the Mandate found purchase.¡± Kory was very curious, it was the first time that his Mandate was completely useless.
¡°Because he¡¯s a battery. He¡¯s a battery of the highest class. His existence is practically a folktale, a myth. That wasn¡¯t water, it was liquid mana.¡± Phaneel laughed heartily. The eleven tutors who heard his words similarly cheered up.
¡°He¡¯s still immature, perfect. We might stand a chance of obtaining him.¡±
¡°Our village might be free from debt far sooner than I imagined.¡±
¡°Haha, then we don¡¯t have to hide or let the next generation descendents undergo baptism to hide our existence anymore.¡±
¡°We have to contact the Chief to bring the hunting party back. How unlucky, the stupid Emperor just had to be in the vicinity and the elders had to go and weave a redirection Mandate to force him to think he had to go somewhere else. If they had been here we would¡¯ve caught the battery already. He¡¯s only a Master and already so troubleso- what¡¯s wrong with you?¡±
The tutors looked at one of their peers who stiffened up for a second. ¡°No-nothing, I just imagined that¡sound again.¡±
Phaneel continued to brag about finally getting out of debt and losing the need to hide from their debtors before they noticed all their youths and even his peers stiffening at irregular intervals.
¡°Refresh.¡±
He assumed that he didn¡¯t heal them properly and went with a mental Mandate but they went silent when people continued to stiffen and hiccup.
¡°Our children!¡±
Someone yelled and they quickly rushed to their baptism tower. They saw that the children weren¡¯t harmed and were sure the tower was unbreachable, hence their delay. Phaneel rushed to open up a speech channel, it wasn¡¯t good to disrupt the process but he had to ask if they were feeling fine or if that weird mental attack hit them.
¡°Dad! Are you okay?!¡± Someone¡¯s daughter pulled on her noose to free her vocal chords momentarily. They must have seen the villagers getting crushed into the floor and the mass fainting. That must have scared them greatly.
¡°I¡¯m fine sweety, how about you? Are you kids okay?¡± Phaneel¡¯s brother was a worrywart. For once, he had a good reason to worry.
¡°Did the creature do anything untoward towards you?¡± Phaneel asked.
¡°H-he threatened us!¡±
¡°I think he mouthed ¡®I¡¯ll take care of them, watch out¡¯ with a devilish grin. He-he¡¯s going to come back!¡±
The children started to panic and he had no choice but to put them to sleep with his Mandate before they let their fear spread. Phaneel¡¯s heart skipped a beat and his lungs squeezed as the weird sonic attack echoed within his mind for half a second. He took a deep breath and gasped the next instant when his body control returned.
¡®Even I¡¯m affected?¡¯ Phaneel couldn¡¯t believe that he was affected by the repeated sonic attacks as a level 470 Mandate Physician. Amongst those present, he had the strongest and most refined Murk Hull Physique that made him very resilient to physical attacks and to a lesser extent, mental.
His peers were around 420 to 450 and they were similarly surprised at his gasp for breath.
¡°We¡¯ll have to stress the urgency of this problem to the elders. They must be able to heal us and nip the bud as quickly as possible.¡± Phaneel had wisps of Mandate in his words despite the lack of such intentions.
Chapter 234: Trauma
The atmosphere in the trailer was gloomy despite having escaped the blanket of mist and the weird village.
Ning Xin mourned for her babies as they did not return to normal. The twin swords were as flimsy as rubber whips and lost their sharp edge. Ebony unsheathed Icicle but it was perfectly fine.
¡°Come on, don¡¯t cry. Let¡¯s call Sister Jing.¡± His meditation skill was not working, at a loss when tears pooled up and streamed down from under her mask. He had never seen her like that. She didn¡¯t even respond to him.
He was not exactly good at comforting people hence, his attempts at snapping her out of it with gentle words stopped quickly.
¡°Is that how you¡¯re going to react when your blades break in battle.¡± Ebony forgot to use a questioning tone and sounded cold to himself for once. The twin blades spit red hot flames in his face and Icicle froze his butt. He was unaffected by them but it got him thinking.
¡®Why didn¡¯t Icicle become the same way? Magic resistance maybe?¡¯
¡°Here, I¡¯ll try feeding them some of my mana and see if it helps.¡±
The pair of longswords were cool to touch, a rare state for them. They didn¡¯t reject his mana as he gently imbue them. Immediately, their edge sharpened but they remained flimsy.
¡®So mana isn¡¯t the only reason. Maybe blood?¡¯ It was a nice coincidence that the edge sharpened again. They would not be drawn out by him so the red eyed swordswoman had to do the honours. He spent much of his compressed mana to drown the villagers in liquid mana, although he retrieved every drop it was stored in his new robe. Staying soft made it easy for him to bleed.
The twins got some of their rigidity back but they did not return to normal.
¡°Thank you¡sorry for being so pathetic earlier.¡± She hugged her knees close to her chest and laid sideways on the sofa. He swapped out the memory light for one of those she recently bought.
Surprisingly, it was an educational film about survival in the wild for beginners. It was boring and didn¡¯t contain anything they didn¡¯t already know. A lot of the information wasn¡¯t applicable for them as well. Camp location, tent pitching, night watch, starting a fire in a forest and its dangers.
¡°Leave them with me, I think we don¡¯t have to trouble Sister Jing.¡± He assumed she wouldn¡¯t let him take her swords away from her since they never left her side. Even when she slept or showered, her swords are never far away. Then again, they were close together within the trailer.
He exited the trailer and took the reins again. Getting past Bubble Hills was uneventful and as safe as ever. The Mud Golems, Marmots and Cysaru didn¡¯t notice them like the misty silhouettes did. So he was reassured that the illusion should be working. Perhaps that village were the real experts when it came to illusions.
There was only a patch of empty snow and some snow covered trees where Arcta should have been. He continued driving at the pace of a race car. It was slow but there was no need to go any faster and risk ramming into a tree. He couldn¡¯t control the trailer as adeptly as his body after all.
¡°I¡¯m going to drive into that Grey dungeon.¡± He warned his passenger.
It was the weakest dungeon at the outskirts of Hoarfrost Glades that the growing Frost Elves used as a training ground. He just entered to see what it was like inside.
¡®The environment¡¯s exactly the same as outside, including temperature and mana densities. Gravity is about 10% stronger than Earth¡¯s.¡¯ There were no monsters near the entrance. A short drive allowed him to see that the monster population was far lower than most dungeons he had been to.
There were monsters fighting each other as well. Since the dungeon in Hoarfrost Glade wasn¡¯t guarded, wild monsters could enter as they wished and the dungeon wasn¡¯t going to overfill in just 5 short years if there were no outsiders entering to feed the dungeon their essence.
The trailer worked as advertised even when he drove right past a weird ball of white fur and he received no attacks. A large urchin-like monster that shot its fur like needles. The needles were about as long as his arm and as thick as an arrow.
However, he kept speeding up the vehicle when he realised how barren the place was. Not to mention, the dungeon only had 5 floors but each floor was extremely wide. Expanding horizontally was more common and Ordina also took up that approach instead of making more floors. If people got lost inside, they would be trapped and continue to feed the dungeon. Hence, the existence of maze dungeons.
They had avoided these dungeons since there usually weren¡¯t many monsters to hunt but it was common knowledge that maze dungeons give far better rewards in terms of materials and equipment.
They didn¡¯t have to spawn monsters. All of their energy goes into traps, expanding into more complicated systems and habitats, creating more lucrative rewards to entice people and creatures to enter. According to Ordina, killing people gave it higher quality energy in a sense and it wasn¡¯t something just living inside a dungeon can give hence, the deadly traps. It would be the same even if he brought wild monsters into the dungeon for Ordina to reap but the Empire monopolized most dungeons.
The internals of the trailer didn¡¯t shake as violently as it used to as the new wooden frame absorbed the vibrations better than the old version. He quickly revved up to his top speed and Mental Mapped the dungeon. The growth of the dungeon barely changed because there were so few villagers and wild monsters entering or feeding it. In fact, the dungeon would¡¯ve been dead or gone into hibernation if they didn¡¯t let wild monsters in or over-hunted.
It took some time to find the way up. Surprisingly, it was another portal unlike Ordina where they had to physically climb up. The highest level creature was level 100 and evolved but they were very strong. The dungeon didn¡¯t have a guardian room but the strongest creatures made a portal on the last floor their home. Actually, a spawn node sat right beside the exit. He disturbed one of the urchin¡¯s as he walked up to the highest level one he found and plucked out one of its needles. It squealed and reacted as fast as it could but he kicked it into the distance. Its allies continued to sleep or act dead.
Camouflage was one of their specialities just like many of the wild creatures in Hoarfrost Glades. It was odd that they just sat there without moving though. Maybe the dungeon can tell who not to disturb since the kids were always accompanied by some elder that could wreck havoc. Poor dungeon.
Ebony tried to snap the needle only to find out that even with his effective Strength of over 700, he couldn¡¯t break it in two. He broke them with a raise of his knee though. It was considered a kick and buffed by Kicking Mastery that got refined but completely ignored. Kicking Mastery was now at level 177 and gave all his kicks a base of 150% Strength and Agility.
He saw a untiered kicking mastery skill book in Z&Z, according to the short description kneeing or even stomping wasn¡¯t considered a kick and wasn¡¯t buffed but that was it was untiered. Why was his so low tier when kicking was literally his old and main form of attacking? He could actually come up with a few guesses but he didn¡¯t care for it. He actually wanted it gone and all the thinking out of Meditation let him face why he rejected it.
Forming a clone of his mother to train with was his act of taking a step and not rejecting her teachings anymore. After all, he put aside all her teachings a year after they left him. Ebony put his bag down and took out the case with the spear he bought from Z&Z company. It was one of their blacksmiths best crafts yet. Made of Uncommon steel. It was a bland, rigid spear with a hardened tip. He slowly opened the case to see it again. After what felt like forever, he reached out for it.
Holding it up, he thought, ¡®that¡¯s not so bad¡maybe I¡¯ve gotten over it long ago.¡¯
Just as he thought that he heard that damn voice again. ¡°You don¡¯t have the talent to hold a spear.¡±
¡°Nonsense¡¡± He didn¡¯t notice his shaking arms but he performed a spear thrust all the same. It was exactly the same as how he tried to thrust a greatsword when he just arrived. The difference was that the thrust with the greatsword never poked a deep hole in a dungeon wall dozens of metres away.
¡°You don¡¯t have the talent to hold a spear.¡±
He didn¡¯t know when but in his hands were a broken spear, each holding half. It snapped from the freeze. Ice that he unintentionally imbued. ¡®Unintentionally imbued? So I¡¯m still extremely bothered by that.¡¯
¡°What? Weren¡¯t you watching a show?¡± He tossed the broken spear aside and turned back to get back aboard the trailer only to see a masked face leaning out the front door where they driver''s seat was.
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¡°...Nothing.¡±
¡°You can just say what¡¯s on your mind.¡± He was proud of himself for being able to catch that she had something to say which contradicted what she said.
¡°You¡¯re better with the spear.¡±
¡°Of course. I¡¯ve been beaten by it for years.¡±
¡°Why in the world are you a swordsman?¡±
¡°...To rebel, I guess.¡± He no longer cared if she laughed. It was a childish and arrogant wish of his. A giant leaf had been one of his first weapons on Elcra. So he imagined that it was fate.
After sparring with Top and Chris when he just re-picked up weapons, he thought that if that was the level to be considered an elite, there was no reason why he couldn¡¯t excel. After all, even to this day he was able to beat the majority of the knights at the same level who were wielding a sword with his ¡®poor¡¯ talent in terms of swordsmanship
¡°Against what?¡±
¡°I was told I don¡¯t have talent with a spear, and later on, other weapons. When I was younger, that hurt more than any training. So I played and stuck with a sword in my free time which I was and am untalented with. To show that I can use it better than she expects.¡± At one point in time, his parents thought that he had trauma due to the constant breaking of his bones or body and mind in general but if there was anything he had a trauma about it was the sight of his mother giving up on teaching him how to use a spear.
The disappointment in her eyes was something that continued to haunt him. Letting Everlasting Tranquillity off so often, watching Mark, sparring with Lucas. It resurfaced.
¡°Will you pick up spearmanship?¡±
¡°Never.¡±
¡°Scared?¡±
¡°...I will use what I¡¯m worse at and defeat her. This nonsensical style had been crafted just for that.¡±
¡°Your progress on a greatsword sword dance has been improving lately.¡±
¡°Yes, the duel with Gao¡¯larg helped. I kept trying to use a greatsword just like any other sword and didn¡¯t make use of its advantages. Weight, power, frame.¡±
¡°Will you steer away from fluidity?¡±
¡°Definitely not, I¡¯m only going to add power to my fluidity.¡±
¡°We¡¯ve clashed thousands of times. You should know that to increase power and ferociousness of your attacks, you have to give up the flexibility of changing the path of your blade midswing. Although, superstrength does help.¡±
¡°I will make it work.¡±
¡°That¡¯s why your sword mastery mutated so many times but is still stuck at tier 1. I¡¯m already finished mutating my mother¡¯s style into my own and about to evolve it to tier 4 soon.¡±
¡°You¡¯re absolutely right, genius swordswoman.¡±
¡°Bah, and I can¡¯t overcome your tempo in battle. Combat genius.¡±
¡°That aside, is your skill level accelerating? Mine is. Even though our training slowed recently I had a level gain here and there.¡± It wasn¡¯t exactly accelerating since he didn¡¯t fight much over the past few weeks but he gained a level in some of his combat skills almost on a daily basis which is unbelievable for their current levels.
¡°Yes. The feedback is just slow but we were facing Kings, weak ones but Kings all the same. Too bad the Frost Elves didn¡¯t want to spar with us seriously.¡±
¡°Yeah, Korben should¡¯ve entertained us since he¡¯s a Grandmaster. What do you think?¡±
¡°Korben? I think we¡¯ll both be defeated. Together, maybe we can trouble him.¡±
She must have thought highly of the Grandmaster to think that working together could only ''trouble'' the Arcta¡¯s village guardian himself.
¡°Only thanks to your fire magic?¡±
¡°Mostly.¡±
¡°Looks like we have our work cut out for us.¡±
He boarded the trailer and drove out of the dungeon. They took over 20 hours to explore or rather, for him to Mental Map the dungeon. He didn¡¯t look for hidden rooms or anything of the sort though. He didn¡¯t think he would come back. It was past midnight and the sun was going to rise in a few hours. Shockingly, the swordswomen fell asleep on the sofa without dinner!
¡®What in the world is happening? No dinner!?¡¯ It was a mundane issue to others to skip a meal but to Ebony, it was horrendously unnerving. She might not have exercised and sat on the sofa all day but it was alarming. With her Constitution, if she moved around like a normal human being and used the amount of strength that an unclassed did then less than half a meal a day would suffice.
Not the serving sizes she had, but normal human serving sizes. The issue was their strength and hence, energy output had extreme ranges. But no matter what, he couldn¡¯t believe she just skipped dinner.
He drove around the forest and Chilly region of the glades and continued his Mental Mapping with pins and needles poking from under his seat.
Thinking that the sleeping beast would be grumpy, waking up hungry. He stopped the trailer and started making breakfast. A large feast. It was an open kitchen so she would probably wake up once she smelled the food.
All of a sudden she shot up, just like he expected but she was reaching out for her swords.
¡°They are still with me.¡±
¡°I-I got a new generic skill and it woke me up.¡±
¡°What? Some kind of sleeping skill?¡±
¡°No. uh¡¡± She tried to rub her eyes but the thick mask stopped her from doing so. ¡°It''s a¡stealth skill?¡±
¡°What?¡± Ebony was confused, since when did sleeping get one a stealth skill?
¡°Let me see¡huh?¡± Her grogginess disappeared all of a sudden but before she could continue, Ebony heard a bell of his own.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Waning Presence level 399 ¡ú 444¡¯
¡®Hot damn, what is happening?¡¯
¡°It''s tier 2 and already level 200. Existential Concealment, by the will of twelve Mandates you are 500% + 2.5% harder to find through all forms of scrying and divinations. Your physical presence is 200% + 2.5% harder to focus on and your mana is 350% + 2.5% harder to detect. After detection by designated essence signatures, mana will be forcefully syphoned to cast [Befuddle] until the lifeform that detected you has forgotten you.¡±
¡°...It was those mist people. But I didn¡¯t get that skill, just 45 levels to my current stealth skill.¡± Ebony quickly zoomed in on the reason. He didn¡¯t think it was possible for them to just order and give a skill. Much less such a highly refined skill. Could they just order their enemies to die?
¡°Why did they force such a skill on us?¡±
¡°Probably to stay hidden. Maybe, just looking at or entering their village makes it such that their aura is stuck on us and people can find them through the aura stuck on us.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not good, I don¡¯t know what kind of magic they use. And it''s working. At least on me.¡±
¡°I¡¯m guessing my resistance to it is due to my Wisdom stat and Core Skill. Even with my mana, these girls aren¡¯t back to normal yet but they''re slowly getting there.¡± He patted the pair of twins near him. Although the skill description says nothing about it, it was common knowledge that Meditation skill generally increases resistance to mental magic.
That was something he was confused about, the misty silhouettes magic wasn¡¯t simply a mental attack. It had physical effects and was extremely potent to be able to make metal swords into a rubber like substance.
He initially assumed that being a creature of mana affected it but on second thoughts it didn¡¯t appear likely. All creatures had mana and he didn¡¯t see how a body filled with mana chassis would differ. He didn¡¯t rule it out since it might play a part but he was leaning towards the mixture of what he was made of. Fortifications, stats, skills and Physique.
¡°All things considered, the skill is good to have but the forceful syphon of your mana is worrisome.¡± He was an optimist as usual. It was a pity all he got were skill levels and not a mutation or evolution. He bet it was because of his resistance to their magic that he didn¡¯t have all the special effects she obtained.
¡°Aren¡¯t they going to chase us? They can probably find us even with the trailer, and maybe through the skill.¡±
¡°The skill was delayed till we exited the dungeon. Do you think they have a mark on us?¡± He asked not the masked swordswoman, but her Intuition.
¡°There¡¯s no mark but I don¡¯t believe they can¡¯t find us.¡±
¡°Welp, time to hurry I guess. I can¡¯t kill the strong ones. I could barely knock them out.¡± Initially, he gave them a way out since they asked if he wanted to submit and not just outright kill him. But when he tried to attack back, the twelve that could fly barely reacted to his attacks and his weird roar that stunned the Jetfins had to be recast so many times that he hurt himself before they were affected.
Calculated Hunch estimated more houses than the amount of people he subdued and the glass building, he couldn¡¯t destroy it. From the mana densities in the area, the twelve he fought didn¡¯t have the same aura that the village was producing. Or rather, the aura that was stuck around the village was stronger than any of the villagers present.
However, they didn¡¯t make a physical move on him unlike the weaker silhouettes. They were obviously over reliant on their magic but it didn¡¯t make him feel much better knowing that there were one, two or even more of them that were stronger. Although to a small degree, some of it worked. Like the last, Existence Perplexion which seemed to be the strongest and the strengthening against freezing.
¡°Hurry, to Gen?¡±
¡°Yeah, he can hide an entire forest. He should be able to hide us. I just didn¡¯t think we got so unlucky and picked up enemies just because I travelled slowly.¡± Ebony was a bit peeved. He was just thinking how he was in no real rush to get stronger and wanted to enjoy the sights. Just like his initial plan to travel. Alas, he was cruelly reminded to end his vacation.
¡°I can¡¯t wait to eat.¡±
¡°I¡¯m still worried about that. That crystallised blood is larger than our heads and you said a tiny fragment melted and reforged your body.¡±
¡°Just worry about yourself. You said you have an idea but 3 weeks passed without any changes to your Physique.¡±
¡°You¡¯re being mean.¡± Ebony noticed the shade he was being thrown. He took out more ingredients but was further shocked to see the masked lady take out fruits and vegetables instead.
¡®This is more serious than some deadly unknown magic users chasing us down.¡¯
Chapter 235: Entity Evanesce
¡°We¡¯re entering the Icy region.¡±
The temperature drop didn¡¯t bother them but they were only near the border of the region. When they were being chased, they were enhanced and protected against the cold. Now, she was within the trailer and minor temperature regulations were at work. She did put on her gear since it was more dangerous around these parts.
There were no flying overlords scaring monsters away for them this time. After the misty village with weird verbal magic, he also didn¡¯t put too much trust into the trailer¡¯s illusion and mirage runes. The improvement after the frame change was going to get another chance to prove their worth.
Prove they did.
A day and night of driving around in absolute peace showed off that no creature found them. As for those that did, they didn¡¯t care enough to attack. The icy region has large areas that were abandoned by monsters and was mostly barren. Something that he learned first hand in their escape. At the moment, he hasn¡¯t came across the reason that the place was so feared.
The temperature, bearable. Even a well equipped Journeyman can survive the cold. Their lungs might not be able to handle the cold breath for long but it wasn¡¯t temperature that caused instant death. Not counting the conditions in winter.
Unlike the Chilly region, many areas were solid ice ground and not covered in snow which actually made travel easier. Going deeper, he knew there was earthen ground as well but there was a long stretch of just ice. Perhaps it was a frozen river or pool of water.
Food might be a problem with the lack of fruit trees and monsters to hunt. One might have to carry weeks of food to traverse and that required a caravan or spatial equipment so that was one additional hurdle. The lack of monsters might just be because they weren¡¯t on their radar.
Water should not be a problem for most or anyone as long as they carried and took care of their water skin and had sufficient water ores. Better yet, have those mana to water type so that they could charge and convert as much water as they need.
Gravity only increased slightly as he got deeper and he only noticed it since he was a gravity mage. It shouldn¡¯t hinder Masters.
Ambient mana was likely the biggest problem if you excluded the deadly creatures. The ambient mana was so thick, casting got noticeably harder. It was as if nature was resisting the conjuring of elements and even the escape of pure mana out of their bodies. There was a constant pressure that acts as padding to overflowing essence and not just mana.
After another peaceful day of Mental Mapping, he saw the frozen earthen ground and it wasn¡¯t barren anymore as another forest came into view.
Finally, he sighted monsters and he was more relieved. He appraised a nest of pigeon sized birds to be around level 290 to 300. They were called Blue Sparrows and the simple name didn¡¯t make him drop his guard. Clearly, hundreds of beastly corpses from giant reindeers to frogs and snakes around the tree told him more.
¡®Lower than I expected.¡¯
Testing the limits of their trailer¡¯s illusion he drove as close to the trees as he could after warning Ning Xin. She was sitting beside him, ready to get off. The forest ahead of them was too dense to drive through with their vehicle.
The twin blades were back to normal and he leaned towards the fact that it was his essence and aura, not mana that helped it. So a combination of his vitality, mana and maybe stamina resisted and reversed the vocal magic.
¡°It sensed us.¡± When they were about 200 metres away, the masked lady warned.
The pigeon sized sparrows snapped their necks and beaks over so he didn¡¯t need the warning but he would¡¯ve done the same if he was faster. He kept the trailer and they should be visible to all but the nest of 4 Blue Sparrows didn¡¯t attack.
Two of them continued their meal around the tree and the other two just stared at them. He spoke through the thread of mana he linked with her.
¡°They¡¯re not looking at us but at our position.¡±
¡°That damn Existence Concealment is stronger than I imagined.¡±
¡°You said it levelled to 215?¡±
¡°It¡¯s already 220.¡±
¡°Be careful then, these Blue Sparrows are not normal.¡±
¡°I can tell, we are in danger.¡±
¡°How lethal?¡±
¡°Less than half a Jetfin but I¡¯m not sure.¡±
Ebony was already used to comparing strength against a Jetfin. That species of fish was too memorable to forget and they were literally fighting against a fish out of water. ¡®Running, not fighting.¡¯
¡°You want to hunt them?¡±
¡°Sure.¡± She shrugged.
¡°Wait, let me do it.¡± He forbade her from using mana to charge her mask up, just in case Existential Concealment acted up and forcefully took all her mana away. Mana storage was not her mask¡¯s main purpose but it could store plenty. She didn¡¯t know exactly how much mana since they use up their pool almost every day. They were uncertain if the skill could drain the mana stored in her mask but it was better to have a back up.
¡°I don¡¯t have to use mana, other than flight.¡±
¡°Fine, which ones do you want?¡± It wouldn¡¯t take too much mana with her new mantle and she could start getting used to them.
¡°Both on the tree, you can have the ones eating.¡±
¡°Stew?¡±
¡°I feel like having pie but there¡¯s enough for both.¡±
She exploded forth and he disappeared from the spot. She took off into the skies when the Blue Sparrows did the same. The Blue Sparrows only noticed her when she was right in front of them but still managed to take off and respond in time.
The pair on the ground weren¡¯t so alert. They were eating and the warning from their watching pair was too late. Ebony patted both sparrows and slid his hands down their heads and across their backs. They tried flapping their wings but their feets were frozen and the pull of gravity made their flaps ineffective.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m going to eat you even though you didn¡¯t try to do the same with me.¡± With another rub on their smooth but bloody feathers, they bled from their ears as their brains melted.
¡®Fast reactions, weak defence and soft organs.¡¯ He watched the skies, unlike his fully enhanced burst that was silent and didn¡¯t disturbed the surroundings; the other combatant didn¡¯t use her fire enhancement magic, only her Core Skill.
Needless to say, she did not get the upper hand in flight compared to real avian creatures. Ebony added to their descriptions, ¡®Almost as fast as me in terms of movement, afraid of fire, talons that don¡¯t get damaged after a clash.¡¯ The Blue Sparrows¡¯ rating slowly climbed up in his personal list of strong creatures.
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Sadly for the birds, both humanoids countered them almost completely. They weren¡¯t even comfortable around her flaming wings. Ebony had his domain surround the entire area to keep the temperature down as he didn¡¯t want to attract anything that felt threatened by the heat. He was very glad they didn¡¯t move around much and the two sparrows were zapping back and forth thinking they could get a lucky hit in.
The Blue Sparrows flapped their wings inwards and protected themselves from an horizontal slash and actually came out unharmed. Their feathers were much tougher than Uncommon steel and not just the raw ores but tougher than those worked on by a smith. Either that, or they enhanced their wings with vitality. He didn¡¯t sense them using much mana in their wings but their talons or claws had a bunch. Sharp winds tore across the skies and partially scattered the flames that her wings consisted of.
¡®Still a way to go before beating an actual avian¡¡¯ The larger creature took the opportunity to get used to aerial combat and extended the battle. It relieved him because the more energy she used, the more likely she was going to be hungry. He was getting unnerved that she ate less.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Waning Presence temporarily mutated and evolved into Entity Evanesce under the order of the Sovereign Mandate. ¡¯
Entity Evanesce (Shared) - Your existence is shrouded by the Sovereign Mandate.
¡®I knew it! Eating less must have been the biggest omen. Sovereign Mandate? Shared Skill? Is that all the information I have on the skill? Is Waning Presence still there?¡¯ Ebony was alarmed at the sudden change. He quickly checked his status to see that Waning presence Lvl 445 had become Entity Evanesce Lvl 1290. That was mind boggling.
¡®Whoever this Sovereign Mandate is, I think I might not want to find out¡¡¯ Ebony did not like that the skill level almost tripled and the lack of information about the percentages and skill effect meant he didn¡¯t even know the skill tier.
Ning Xin finished up and continued to tease him, ¡°Let¡¯s have one each, stew and pie.¡±
¡°...what about the other two?¡±
¡°We can eat them tomorrow.¡±
¡°Did something happen? What happened to your appetite?¡±
¡°Nothing! I already filled up my blood during the weeks of eating.¡± Her words did make a lot of sense, she had been eating without a care in the world with only a couple hours of Conditioning a day.
¡°Did you get a skill called Entity Evanesce¡one that¡¯s at level 1290?¡± Not one to ponder on topics, he put the subject away thinking there was no need to get superstitious about someone not eating as much.
¡°No? Did you?¡±
¡°Yeah, by someone or something called the Sovereign Mandate. It says that it¡¯s a shared skill and the description simply says that my existence is hidden.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s hurry along.¡±
No longer holding back the use of mana and stamina, they sped up their search. Actually, there was no need for a search as the masked lady knew where to go. They ran on the ground and he was in the lead by a long shot. Until a few minutes passed and she guided their path. There was a limit to how many steps of a maxed powered Flicker he could use unlike his old movement skill and that gave her the chance to overtake him. He would still take the crown when it came to travel and movement speed.
Having a guide was great. It was a pity he didn¡¯t get the chance to expand his Mental Map to make searching easier in future but at least they were heading directly towards their destination.
It was eerie to say the least. The fire swordswoman caught the attention of some strange beast but after passing by, the monsters would just look away. As for him, he cast Frigid Refraction on himself but that didn¡¯t even matter. He found a level 350 Lesser Lindworm that was a giant snake at least a hundred metres long that charged at him when they were slowed down by a region of thickets. After he dodged the charge, the Lindworm turned back and swam towards him. Then, it simply looked around and returned to its burrow.
¡®Evanesce means to disappear or to be forgotten right? Am I going to be forgotten?¡¯ He quickly chased the Xeng who was fighting a sludge of¡something. It got immolated before he got there.
¡°Not eating that?¡±
¡°That wasn¡¯t a creature, it was a conjured spell. This place is indeed dangerous.¡±
¡®Good, she didn¡¯t forget me.¡¯ Although he thought that, Everlasting Tranquillity didn¡¯t even shake and not a ripple was found to begin with.
It took 3 days to find Gen and his blizzard this time. Reason being, there was an actual hailstorm going on and he hid within the trailer once they were out of the thicket. It had been a good chance to take the time to eat as well. That was a disaster that unleashed the glutton¡¯s unlimited fury. Their trailer was lifted off the ground despite his mental hold to keep it stuck on the ground.
They were having dinner and all the food and items in the trailer flew around. Although the glutton reacted fast she didn¡¯t manage to save all the food. What did they find when they left the trailer? The blizzard was an ongoing fight between 2 legendary Elk that Ebony had heard all about.
Honestly, they were slightly outmatched by the two level 300 Elks that haven''t evolved, just like them. First of all, the blizzard raised covered a 5 kilometre radius that almost tore into their trailer. Secondly, he couldn¡¯t even get close to the giant Elks that were fighting each other. When he tried to close in on them, the blizzard ripped him aside.
But that wasn¡¯t enough to stop the flames of anger. With the contained energy in her blood, she tore through the blizzard and gave both Elks a slash to the head. Both Elks swung their bulky antlers to swat her back. They succeeded.
He blocked the gust of wind for her and they got back into range with the help of her mind magic but the same thing happened. She managed to slice off the tip of their antlers which Ebony pocketed because he remembered how valuable and strong the material was. He stepped forward and guarded the furious kick that broke through his shields and smashed into his chest but he stood firm and flipped the Elk onto its side with some help from Firm Path.
His body got flung into a massive tree all of a sudden but he already knew that it was a giant shard of ice that attempted to stab him but they didn¡¯t expect his body to be so durable. He was lucky, their conjuration was so swift that his body couldn¡¯t react in time. They were sneaky enough to make one of the small hail shards larger and more deadly. Hiding amongst tens of thousands of ice shards, he didn¡¯t expect one of them to speed up near him.
Battle Song supported both of them to cover the extreme stat gap. The Elks didn¡¯t have a large variety of spells or tactics. Making the battle easily predictable after a short while. While Ning Xin was struggling to wound the monsters, he was thinking about why the Elks had such high stats despite their level being the same as many dungeon creatures they¡¯ve fought in the past.
It didn¡¯t look like it but their spell broke his rib and that looked like it was just a casual attack. The kick that broke layers upon layers of his compressed scales sent intense shock across his body. It was like getting hit by Gao¡¯larg again.
After ten minutes of back and forth, he actually couldn¡¯t harm them. Actually, the Elks didn¡¯t really attack them much, they were busy fighting each other. They got annoyed and their blizzard spell turned serious and pelted the humans out with a homing barrage of truck sized ice shards.
¡°I think they just said ¡®we¡¯re busy quarreling over here¡¯ and kicked us out.¡± He commented to the pissed swordswoman.
The blizzard pelting didn¡¯t harm her since the ice melted before it got close to her but he pulled her out along with him. The Elks simply didn¡¯t care about them and he didn¡¯t think it was necessary to kill them when the Elks didn¡¯t spill their food on purpose.
¡°I know that!¡±
¡°Let¡¯s clean up.¡± He knew how her Incensed Meditation works and didn¡¯t think anything about her shouting.
¡°...okay.¡±
The Elks were interesting, he would¡¯ve liked a serious battle with them if they weren¡¯t so busy. He was sure that it wasn¡¯t the new camouflage and the Elks simply had more important things to settle.
Thankfully, their furniture was grounded and they closed the closets tightly after use so nothing broke. All they had to do was wipe up the spillage on the walls, floor, ceiling, furniture and clear the air. The sofa was safe and nothing spilled on it which was a relief.
His room was pretty empty and only the book he placed on the table got sent under the bed. As for the swordswoman, her bedroom was a disaster as she did an inventory check for all the sets of clothes she got from the two craftswomen and left them lying around. Clothes meant for battle wouldn¡¯t be torn from getting flung around but clean freaks had to rewash every article.
They weren¡¯t in the mood to travel and had to rest so he drove at a cruising speed through the night. Although he didn¡¯t force the glutton to eat, he might have been a bit aggressive with serving more food onto her plate and she wasn¡¯t able to resist. Together with the fact that dinner wasn¡¯t interrupted a second time, it was a relief.
The ongoing blizzard and the area where the Elks controlled it was easily detectable to his senses. The trailer didn¡¯t have much trouble with the blizzard but the path wasn¡¯t great. Flight didn¡¯t look possible either so he finally decided to stop driving when his guide fell asleep.
Since it was dark and quiet, he spent the time sensing the change in Waning Presence. It was a temporary change which meant it was a good chance to learn what the difference was. Before, it was an active skill that he used so often he could do it in his sleep. As with many of the things he could do.
Now, he knew it was working without any input from him. Regardless of the intentions of the caster, Ebony only saw it as a win to be able to glimpse and personally be the wielder of such a high level skill.
He admitted that he might have been a bit peeved that they were so easily welcomed into the frostblaze forest because Ful could tell when Ning Xin was close by. He would¡¯ve saved so much time if it was so easy when he came along. These feelings made him feel more alive than ever. To think that something so simple can stir his emotions. ¡®Everlasting Tranquillity¡I don¡¯t know if I¡¯m appreciating what you¡¯ve taught me more or less. Dad.¡¯
Chapter 236: Taking Drugs
¡°Good to see you back.¡± Gen was as awake as they last met.
¡°Anxious to evolve are we?¡± Ebony joked. The turtle was the furthest creature away from anxiousness in his opinion.
¡°Yes, I am. However, I don¡¯t think you regenerate enough mana to support ancestor.¡±
Silence pervaded the underground dome. The only one who thought the comment was funny was the masked swordswoman.
¡°What tier and level is your meditation?¡±
¡°Tier 4, it¡¯s my latest core skill and not my most talented area so only level 1087. Total effective increase of 12,370% on top of my base regeneration. My Wisdom is at 11,000 and taking my racial trait or Physique as you would call, my base regeneration is about 33,000 mana per hour. So¡¡± Even with the mask, Ebony could see the red-haired lady¡¯s jaw drop.
On the other hand, he wasn¡¯t that surprised. Gen partially had the stats of a monster as he only had a Class but the base increment of his tier 4 skill was 1500% really surprised him. The numbers were a good reference though. It appeared that Gen¡¯s Physique or race had a 30% of max mana per hour for mana regeneration rate. At least, not considering mana pool expansion skills. That was 3 times more than humans. The lack of a mention for a Fortification said a lot though.
¡°Four million, one hundred fifteen thousand and one hundred per hour when you¡¯re meditating at maximum focus.¡± Ebony did the calculations for the turtle. That was over a thousand points of mana every second.
¡°How fast do you regenerate mana?¡± The dual blade user nudged him.
¡°...Less than 10% of what Gen regenerates.¡± A tier advantage was a difference of doubling and the skill level was also double of his own. The base 1500% was even more ridiculous, the skill was so refined that it was more than half of his entire Core Skills effect even if Gen had the skill at level 1. He had the advantage in terms of base regeneration thanks to his 500% Fortifications but he did not have the racial or Physique perk. Neither did he have even a fifth of the Wisdom stat of the turtle in front of him.
The other advantage he had was that Gen would be immobilised to a great degree during his meditation but that wasn¡¯t the topic right now. It was all about quantity and quality, not the combat implications.
¡°Let me have a taste of your flames.¡± Ful interjected.
The tree and old turtle already roughly guessed his regeneration just from his overflowing mana but the tree spirit had long argued that Ebony¡¯s ability to directly conjure frostblaze completely changes things. It was far more suitable for the tree than Gen¡¯s mana that was modified through multiple Fortifications for snow magic.
And it seems that they were right, it was far more efficient for the tree to absorb his mana rather than Gen¡¯s. It just wasn¡¯t enough. The forest above actually converts ambient mana to sap that¡¯s also fed to Ful which was something new he learned. Yet, it wasn¡¯t enough. The trees above just didn¡¯t produce mana at the purity that the ancient tree spirit required. Or rather, the amount that the sword was absorbing through it.
¡°I¡¯ve stocked up quite a lot of mana in my robes and trailer but, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s enough to last. How long?¡±
¡°A month at the very least. Probably longer.¡±
Ebony felt like he was doing mathematics homework. He spent a half a day feeding Ful his mana to calculate how much mana it would take to sustain the tree for over a month. He even calculated a safety factor of 3 months instead of one or two. Thankfully, by converting and compressing the flames it was more than 5 times more efficient compared to Gen¡¯s.
¡°I think I need to charge up mana for two more months before we have enough to support Ful for 3 months.¡± They must have underestimated just how much mana he already charged within his robe and the power source in his trailer.
¡°Are you fine with that?¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°You won¡¯t be able to train your magic during this period of time.¡±
¡°Ah, don¡¯t worry. That¡¯s the least I could do to pay back the Physique I got from Ful. And¡¡± Ebony scratched his cheek at the end of his sentence.
¡°And?¡±
¡°I left a bit of leeway to train a little everyday. Don¡¯t want to get rusty you see.¡±
¡°...Got it. You want to continue practising sealing magic?¡±
¡°Not yet. It¡¯s time to rebuild our bodies.¡± Ebony went back into the parked trailer and tossed his bag in his room. He felt safe enough here but the robe had to be on to continue absorbing his excess mana.
¡°I understand Scarlet, but how are you going to do that?¡± Gen looked at the lady who crawled out from Ful with a huge red crystal.
¡°With a bit of self experimentation. I might need more than two months but that just gives us more mana as backup.¡± He didn¡¯t waste the past three weeks and did some groundwork and a lot of discussions with Kong Jing. Mostly asking about how she reforged her brain and the viability of changing his own body.
¡°Well, I can wait.¡±
¡°Are you not going to get your Meditation to 1250? That¡¯s the requirement for the strongest Fortification right?¡±
¡°I¡¯ve long reached my limit, it had been at level 1085 for three hundred years until you came and I got a bit of inspiration.¡±
The masked lady hauled the heavy orb over with difficulty.
She stared at them, and they stared back at her. ¡°How am I supposed to eat this? Can I cut it into pieces?¡±
¡°You can try. If you think you can cut a Saint¡¯s strongest body part.¡± Ful goaded.
¡°...¡± She did try.
All that happened was the temperature rising and her arms hurting.
¡°Any ideas?¡± He asked the tree spirit.
¡°Do I look like I have a mouth? I wasn¡¯t even born when I was your size.¡± The majestic giant tree didn¡¯t give any useful advice. Ful must have been referring to it''s spirit not being born when it''s physical body was the same size.
¡°You said you had a special healing rune the previous time you ate a fragment. What are you going to do about that now?¡± Ebony confirmed with the masked lady.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
¡°Nothing.¡± She was confident of her current regeneration and heat resistance.
¡°I¡¯m still here, I don¡¯t want this place to burn down either.¡± Gen weighed in. Ebony completely forgot about the convenient healing seal.
He asked the old folks about the Mandate, it was great that they were able to notice the vast difference about him the moment they arrived. Gen never heard of such magic but Ful did.
¡°To put it simply, Mandate is the compulsion of all things. Natural or not. It doesn¡¯t matter if it''s a physical or mental reaction. Ghosts and spirits are not spared but are more resistant to Mandates. But it has an obvious flaw, a great one. They work in a way that¡¯s similar to curses. If you had a vial of poison and you pour it into a bucket of water, what do you get?¡±
¡°A bucketful of poison.¡±
¡°Yes, the same vial poor into a lake would get you a slightly poisonous lake. Yet, if it goes into the ocean, the ocean might not even notice that something changed. That¡¯s basically how you resisted it. As long as one has a vast essence pool, Mandates simply don¡¯t work. The same for your spells, it¡¯s so dense that their Mandates just dissolved in a sense. From what we experienced, Mandates are pretty weak against creatures of the same level unless their skill tiers are at least one rank higher. So a Grandmaster would need a tier 4 version for their Mandates to work slightly on other Grandmasters. Mind you, that¡¯s with multiple Fortifications. However, if it does work, then resistance is pretty much futile.¡±
¡°So, they¡¯re either overbearingly powerful or completely helpless if they don¡¯t have other combat skills.¡±
¡°A weaker Mandate faces far less resistance so they won¡¯t be as helpless as you imagine.¡±
¡®Right, they kept changing their words for the same effect. So they just settle for the next best spell if the strongest version doesn¡¯t work. That¡¯s inefficient, they should¡¯ve cast their mandates backwards from weakest to strongest to save time and bring forth any kind of effect first.¡¯ Ebony was not angry at those misty silhouettes. In his opinion, the favour and gift they presented him was immense.
When or how else would he ever have the opportunity to personally experience a skill of unknown power with his own body. Since it changed Waning Presence, it meant the skill was at least similar enough for him to work towards and copy. The first step to learning martial arts and many skills is imitation. He should give them advice the next time he sees them.
No matter how he saw it, other than the fact that they were probably marked or had their locations constantly exposed to those people the skill was actually beneficial. In fact, it would be even better if Ning Xin had the same skill. Alas, she didn¡¯t. The Sovereign Mandate was a bit stingy for only casting it on him. The lack of knowledge about the skill did make him guarded but there weren''t any drawbacks as far as he could tell for now.
Ebony told the ancient tree spirit about what was cast on him, just in case his current presence here was not welcomed but neither the tree nor the turtle reacted. They had complete confidence in their location. Maybe it wasn¡¯t that they were afraid their location was leaked but who it was leaked to. To another group of people that wanted to stay as hidden as possible, there was no one that the misty silhouettes can leak their location with.
Gen quickly retreated into his shell when he found out that he wasn¡¯t about to evolve for at least 2 more months. Ful was tired and went silent soon after. Ning Xin was busy playing with the large red orb and thinking about how to eat it.
And Ebony, he sat down and meditated. Calm and silence pervaded the underground dome.
???
¡°AAH! I¡¯m just going to bite it!¡± The shout woke him up. He didn¡¯t go into a trance yet but he didn¡¯t know how much time passed.
The impatient one moved her lower mask and directly smashed her teeth into the red orb. He could hear the loud smack and it sounded like her teeth cracked but it was likely just the orb smashing into her mask. She suddenly ran into the trailer to get a water mana ore. She washed the orb and¡licked it.
¡°I got it!¡±
¡°You¡¯re telling me it melted after licking it?¡±
She didn¡¯t reply as there was no need to. The magical orb actually dissolved. ¡®How convenient¡¡¯
¡°Don¡¯t rush and you should call Gen in advance. Didn¡¯t Sister Jing give you a special mantle, go change.¡± With the reminder she dashed to her room to change to a white mantle that only had one purpose. It would not stick onto molten flesh or burn. That, and to cover her body. Under Gen¡¯s magic, it might not be necessary but precautions were always good to have. She stood bare feet. Without anything else other than her white mantle and mask.
¡°Also, your body is different since your blood portion of the physique also changes it. Make the power yours, not the other way around.¡± Ebony was not shy about saying these in front of the majestic tree.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, I will be the one that feasts. Besides, this isn¡¯t the whole chunk. There are fragments all over the continent, maybe even on Tova because they used to be a singular continent.¡±
¡°Right, don¡¯t die.¡±
¡°You too, I know what you¡¯re about to do. You¡¯re lacking something crucial to change your physique.¡±
¡°...Yes, my mana chassis just heals my physical state completely. No change to my body with mana is permanent as it would simply treat it as damage and heal myself. But, my Overdraft skill showed me that it¡¯s possible for my chassis to be affected. With my Glacial Model, I simulated what my new Physique would and could be with Sister Jing¡¯s help. Special ingredients or materials help a lot because of the energy they provide to jumpstart and force a permanent biological change. With that, I can use my control over my own chassis to slow or stop them from healing my physical body until it reshapes and settles.¡± Ebony could have edited his body as he wished since a while back.
It wasn¡¯t that hard but at the same time, he couldn¡¯t make the changes permanent. He could tell that he lost Ning Xin half way through his explanation.
¡°Are you going to try pulling that out?¡± She guessed what he was about to do with relative ease. He didn¡¯t even talk to anyone about what he was about to attempt.
¡°That has thousands of years of Ful¡¯s sap absorbed. I don¡¯t believe that essence escaped anywhere. Gen might freeze to death and the previous person who tried lost their arm but none of them has Ful¡¯s ability. I do. My flames are compatible with Ful, I don¡¯t believe the reverse isn¡¯t true. It¡¯s where my power comes from anyway.¡± It was a bit hasty of him. He didn¡¯t know exactly how tough Gen was but the turtle was definitely far tougher than Ebony could imagine.
¡°So we¡¯re both going to undergo rebirth by flames huh¡¡±
¡°Want to have an actual feast before that? We won¡¯t be eating for some time.¡± Ever since she picked up the red orb, it was the first time she let it go. They had one of the largest meals he ever consumed. The Imperial mutton and peas were still a work in progress and didn¡¯t taste all that similar to the one he had in Fifth Tide. It was saltier than it needed to be but it may have been intentional.
¡°Drink more water.¡±
¡°Relax, my mask has water.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t you have it off the previous time? Is it fine to have it on now?¡±
¡°It¡¯ll strengthen us together. Don¡¯t forget, this mask is actually a part of me.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
¡°Why¡did you want to sneak a peek?¡±
¡°Nope.¡±
Ebony got ambushed by a kick that even he did not see or sense coming. He fell off the chair, glad that they already cleared the table.
¡°Why are you angry?¡±
¡°No reason! Go meditate for all I care!¡±
¡°I am. Let''s digest a little and you can get started.¡±
A mana-less and skill-less spar was a good way to loosen up. He managed to go for her weakness, disarming her. It wasn¡¯t easy but he wasn¡¯t using Icicle and was warming back up to bare-handed combat.
¡°So you¡¯re saying you don¡¯t have a mastery skill for martial arts because you¡¯re rejecting it subconsciously.¡±
¡°I believe so. The way that skills are obtained has always seemed odd to me. Repetition is a requirement but the desire and knowledge that one has about it plays a part. For example, you have a breathing skill but I don¡¯t. Yet, I am capable of highly efficient breath control. I came to the conclusion that it was because you were consciously or subconsciously willing the creation of that skill when you practised repetition. I never thought there was a need for it, although I have Sustenance Regulation now. We can both read but I have a reading skill, probably because I wanted it. But ever since I came here, I rejected my own talents and used a greatsword. Partly for fun.¡±
¡°You¡¯re so silly. Power is power. Why reject what you¡¯re best at?¡±
¡°Oh, I didn¡¯t know or care. Now I do.¡±
¡°Hmm¡tell me why in future. I have a Physique to refine.¡±
¡°And a giant piece of candy-drug to eat.¡±
Chapter 237: Metamorphosis
Gen was rudely woken up to seal the red-haired woman. Ebony knew the turtle was just resting and didn¡¯t go deep into meditation just from the aura the turtle exudes.
¡®Gen has been moody recently¡is his lifespan running out?¡¯ He made a wild guess. Twelve thousand years was a period of time that Ebony couldn¡¯t imagine. A Grandmaster shouldn¡¯t even be able to live past half that time. Not even a long life species but he could be wrong about that.
He might as well observe Gen¡¯s casting again since he had the chance. This time, Gen seemed to use a different spell. The masked woman who looked like a hospital patient in her garb was in a liquid where she could still move around. It was similar to his liquid mana and wasn¡¯t elemental. They eyes met for a moment before she started licking the orb. Fortunately for her, or perhaps unfortunately, a few licks was all it took before there was a reaction from the orb. It was dead but alive. Ning Xin noticed and worked her magic, absorbing and consuming it but a small volume of liquefied red orb flowed to wrap her body.
And then she burned.
Gen¡¯s spell bubbled and boiled over but not for long as the turtle got it back under control. ¡°Would that affe-¡±
¡°It won¡¯t.¡± Ful answered him before he finished the sentence.
Staring and watching her body melt as the fires consumed her, the fire mage did the same and consumed the fire.
Ebony returned to his meditation with his eyes closed. ¡®Empty your mind Ebony.¡¯ The images of Ning Xin getting pierced and burning alive firmly surfaced and imprinted themselves deep within his mind. Her weak grip and bedridden plagued self. Her crushed leg when she got pulled under. The images, the recollections got clearer over time. His clarity was ground against roughness and was polished even further.
His new roar spell. The situation in which he heard the roar the first time. The man who wore Ning Xin¡¯s mask that appeared in Ordina. Ebony remembered them more and more clearly but he kept forgetting the man. Regardless, he was able to pinpoint that gap. The reason why he felt so pressured to stay in captivity despite how easy to escape it was.
Ebony fell into a trance. As if time reversed, he re-experienced his life in his mind backwards. When his memories got back to when he was 8 years old, he chuckled out loud without his knowledge as his mind disconnected from his body.
¡°You¡¯re not resting tonight unless you land a hit on me.¡±
¡°But, mom. I¡¯ve already landed a hit on you before.¡±
¡°...Since when did you learn to lie?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not lying. Actually, I landed a hit long ago. I kicked you before I was born.¡±
¡°...hahahaha. As expected of my son, to think I¡¯ve been beaten for years and didn¡¯t even notice.¡±
That was the most memorable head rub and the only day he skipped training. The happiest he ever saw her.
The experience went back as far as he could go back as a baby and accelerated forward again. Ebony¡¯s breathe got icy. His exhalation contained a gentle stream of ice mana that coiled together. He opened his eyes and put a open palm out. Conjuring a tiny sphere of mana above it, it slowly swirled inwards. The swirling kept speeding up till the mana sphere was visible to the naked eye. The sphere of liquid mana didn¡¯t stop compressing at an accelerated pace till it reached his current compressive limits and faced the mental strain that resisted compression. Forcing it to compress any further would result in his skill levelling up, it wasn¡¯t easy but nothing that he wasn¡¯t familiar with.
However, the next step was controlling its unravel and decompressing the sphere till nothing was left. Finally, a strand of hair thin mana formed. One. Two. Three. The short strands wrapped and coiled themselves. Another copy of the three-stranded mana formed and started swirling with the first string. One by one, the number of strings increased and before long, they were swirling towards a single point in space above his palms just like his usual formation and compression exercise.
Similarly, the formation only sped up exponentially as he got more and more used to the mental muscle required. There would be far more gaps within the mana sphere no matter how tightly he squeezed them and the end product was less dense but not if he filled the gaps up with even finer strings.
Mana was a fluid.
That was his categorisation after playing with it for years. His own was gaseous and very¡smooth and malleable. Ambient mana was a little more viscous. Frost Elves¡¯ were colder, denser than humans and ambient mana, but also more rigid. Naturally, mages manipulate their mana and change its form and elemental mages change their properties.
Figurative hammers pounded on his mana sphere but even without it, the coil or ball of yarn like mana which had their gaps filled was like an alloy despite being made of one component. Before long, thousands of such balls were formed over and over again. Then shards of ice with the same woven mana were made. Swords, bows, shields and every type of weapon he had seen were slowly recreated in the same manner. For better or for worse, he would find out with a bit of testing. With ice magic done and dusted, the coiled and woven mana combusted into ice cold flames.
Instead of directly combusting the mana in his body, he wove the threads and allowed them to form the new and improved Stalwart Endowment before combustion. The same woven threads swallowed his blade, coated its edge and embers of flames danced on it. Even within his trance, he was able to get feedback that not as much mana was being burned away compared to usual.
Thousands upon thousands of these woven threads eked out and surrounded his body. Unable to control and form many precise strings at the same time he had to create them 7 at a time. Holding onto them before forming another and extending them to the limits of his reach over 700 metres away from himself. Millions of them fluttered, even digging under the ground. All of it with but a fraction of his regenerated mana.
Despite his trance, he was aware of the passage of time. Unusual but appreciated.
Even with his abundance of mana, fast conjuration and unreasonable mental endurance, it took nine days before he filled his entire reach with these fragile strings of ice. The strings didn¡¯t break and weren¡¯t solid ice but were silky smooth. When Gen twitched, he could sense every single muscle movement. When Ful¡¯s leaves dropped, he felt every vibration. Every shock and impact. Predicting where the vibration would end or be unnoticeable isn''t impossible either.
In between these uncountable strings, the woven strings extended like a tree growing a new branch and a flower bloomed. In the midst of the plum blossom blooming, they combusted. They were as short lived as the speed of their birth as a single point of mana was supplied. Nothing more.
Woven petal blossoms continued to be birthed and scattered. In time, the petals lasted long enough to fall off their ¡®branch¡¯ disappearing right after. The woven tree carried on flowering without a care in the world of its dying flowers.
Twenty days later.
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All the while, Ebony¡¯s body had burned at a low intensity. Every nook and cranny of his body was bathed in Frostblaze Augmentation that continued to change. Sometimes, as still as a lake. Others, a raging torrent tearing along his blood vessels.
The very first flaming petal that spawned from the height of ten metres managed to touch the ground before dissipating.
Ebony¡¯s eyelids had to be broken free from their frozen embrace the moment the petal touched down and he awoke from his trance.
Without checking his status, he stood up. Then he fell flat onto his face, allowing the snow to catch him. He shook his body once more to shatter the frozen joints and muscle. It was oddly painful. The pain was nostalgic. It felt like his pain receptors were alive again and meditation did nothing to it. ¡®Pain is great¡¯.
With that, his stiff body made it into the trailer with difficulty and some dry rations were slowly ingested with a generous gulp of water to rejuvenate his frozen body. When he felt his stomach and body didn¡¯t give up on him thanks to his inhuman Constitution, he boiled some eggs and had the remaining Blue Sparrow stewed. Cooking could take hours but eating didn¡¯t even take minutes.
He tossed the cloth napkin into the kitchen sink after wiping his lips as he exited the trailer. The robe he had on was similarly tossed inside. Standing at the head of the trailer, he didn¡¯t spare a glance to the hibernating turtle, tree or dark blazing light and vanished from his spot. The dome wasn¡¯t small but it wasn¡¯t large either.
The gargantuan progeniturtle had a massive tree on its back. Near the top of its trunk laid a protruding hilt.
¡°I would advise agai-¡± The Tree spirit would have been almighty here on Elcra if it wasn¡¯t for the thousands of years of impending death and easily sensed his speedy intrusion. Ebony¡¯s left hand grabbed onto the hilt without any hesitation.
He was strengthened and enhanced but the hilt didn¡¯t even budge with both his feet planted onto the tree trunk and his right hand pushing against it to support the pull. No matter. He didn¡¯t expect to be able to pull out something a creature with a massive stat and physical advantage couldn¡¯t.
Although he wasn¡¯t able to budge the weapon, he was up close with the leaking sap. Not much collected over the years but the leak was present. Now that Ebony was superhuman, the sap looked white but also blue. Without freezing his eyes and hands off.
In that awkward position with both feet and right arm planted on Ful¡¯s trunk and his left arm gripping the hilt, Ebony stopped moving. As still as a statue.
His mental touch caressed the diabolical mana within the sap. No magic turtle saving and protecting him from the intense cold and solid embrace.
Ebony''s fight to take over control from the Ful¡¯s sap was uncontested by the tree spirit but contested by its very nature. Gradually, his mana managed to be in contact with the sap. Catching ablaze, his statue-like countenance didn¡¯t let the difficulty of ripping the sap towards himself be shown. Luckily for him, the ancient creature¡¯s mana defences seemed to be shut down and his mental influence was able to do its magic. He would¡¯ve been helpless if Ful were like the elder Frost Elves and his mana couldn¡¯t be conjured near them or manipulated as easily as it should.
Coming into contact with the weapon hilt was indeed deadly. Whatever properties it used to have had changed. It had soaked in sap that was so dense with Ful¡¯s mana that he was impressed that all the previous mage had was her arm sliced off in time. His assumption was right. All that energy had to go somewhere, where else but the very object killing Ful?
Unlike his predecessor, Ebony was not a mere ice mage. These flames were what strengthened him on a daily basis but he was greatly mistaken for comparing his measly copy with the original. It was an opportunity that he could¡¯ve used to observe and understand the fundamental difference with his own but he did nothing of the sort.
Hours felt like seconds as the weapon didn¡¯t allow him to steal what it pilfered and was as unmoving as he was.
Seconds felt like hours as the flames that encroached and enveloped him without giving him any delectable sap. Setting him ablaze with flames whiter and clearer than the flames ablaze Ful¡¯s leaves.
Time trickled.
Mana ignited.
Health plummeted.
Now wasn¡¯t the time to store excess mana.
Yet, the sap. The sword. Did not yield to him.
The plummeting of his health, bone deep freezing from his hands and feet started to fade from his mental register. Gen¡¯s intervention wasn¡¯t cutting his limbs off and neither was it dragging him away. He was shot with Gen¡¯s mana seal.
The pace that he was freezing, dying didn¡¯t change but his recovery sped up. Resisting the chill.
But it wasn¡¯t enough and his pain continued to prevail against his healing. Not even the disconnection of his reception of pain worked. He had a taste of intense frostbite unlike any other as if he didn¡¯t have any pain resistance. If he wasn¡¯t in a trance, he might have linked its similarity to Gen¡¯s snow magic.
Gen¡¯s seal didn¡¯t stop the frigid immolation and it didn¡¯t help channel the sap to him.
His dying body didn¡¯t bother him. The cold reached his mind and even impeded mental activity but that was simply another opponent for his mental muscles. The pain¡made him feel more alive than ever.
In his trance, he only had one main objective. Absorb the sap and assimilate it. Use it to jump start the permanent damage to his mana chassis. In the midst of the permanent damage, reforge the body in a controlled manner. The same way he mentally practised the past month and more. First with his Glacial Models in Arcta, then with his own flames and body just moments ago.
At present, he just had to rob the damned unmoving sap.
???
Having fallen deeper into his trance as time passed, his connection with his body had long been lost. Was his body even in one piece? Was his body actually dead and he didn¡¯t realise in his trance?
Ebony did not know.
The calm lake that was his mental space kept getting colder. His mind was about as numb as his body was. It was then, the very centre of the lake of unknown depths started to freeze on its surface. A single drop of water fell into the centre but not a single ripple formed.
At the same time, his frozen white fingertips had just come into contact with a stream of sap. Stream was an overstatement with how thin the fluid was. It was exactly the same as one of his mana threads.
Shockingly, Ebony¡¯s entire body was frozen through. He was just a frozen statue.
Frozen skin
Frozen muscles
Frozen bones
Frozen nerves
Frozen organs.
Frozen heart.
Warm brain.
Slushy blood, pushed with sheer Will transported poisoned, condensed, frozen air from the contained capsules in his lungs.
One didn¡¯t need numbers to tell how close they are from death.
A light wind could¡¯ve shattered him into bits. Maybe into atomic ice dust. Thankfully, there were no natural winds underground and he was encased in a weird mana.
His brain got hotter.
His blood had a strengthened push with Firm Path guiding them. His control over gravity had never been so fine and the effect was indeed as weak as it could be.
Extremely faint vibrations pulsed from within his heart. Gradually, warming his body back up.
His mental pull greedily tugged the stream of sap onto his arm, over his body. Into his mouth.
Disconnected from his sense of time, his body gradually revitalised. The sense of sight came back first. Then his hearing. Then his touch. Scent. Taste.
The only one that registered was touch.
His eye shifted but the lids stayed closed.
His fingers twitched and then it gripped tighter causing a layer of ice to fall off.
¡®Time to punch my body into place¡hot damn, I¡¯m taking damage even faster now.¡¯ Without a hint of panic, he kicked his mindless thoughts out and returned to his trance. A single mistake was all it took to cause more harm to his Physique than benefit but it was too late to stop the process.
The dome fell back into silence after his ice coating fell.
Chapter 238: Hunger
Ebony didn¡¯t need as much energy as he assumed.
He got to hitting his frame into place with his exhausted mental muscles and allowed the sap to coat a new framework. Not quite freezing it in place but forcing his mana chassis into submission. He had repeated the process many times on his Glacial Models that got more and more realistic so he didn¡¯t slow down despite his body being at risk of permanent destruction. Weaving his muscles tissues anew felt interesting but almost unbearably ticklish.
Ironically, he didn¡¯t need much sap. At least, not as much as he drew out. As if the sap was strongly affected by inertia, they bathed him and killed him faster than he could recover. Gen wasn¡¯t funneling it for him as he did in the past with sap that aired and lost energy for years on end. Perhaps he no longer could. Not with Ebony¡¯s personal resistance to magic having exponentially increased compared to his normal human self.
Unable to spare any of his remaining mental endurance to push the excess sap away, he had no choice but to continue his deadly experiment. Embracing the fact that the sword or sap seemed to do the exact opposite and let him absorb the energy as he wished.
¡®I can¡¯t reweave these muscles, my body won¡¯t move like it used to do. My bones¡are too tough, I can¡¯t hammer them as much as I¡¯d like. I¡¯ll excite my mana chassis by creating individual whirlpools within every single inch of my body and brain¡I¡¯ll have to forget about expanding them then. Too much sap! I¡¯ll die in about twelve seconds or so. Oh, that¡¯s cool. Calculated Hunch is more impressive than I imagined.¡¯
Within his mental space, Ebony sat at a desk and looked at paper documents. Everywhere around him was just white blankness. He was not so much in a trance as one would assume. Arranging the documents and files, he speedily wrote, edited and signed them and pushed them back into the shelves that surrounded him.
The shelves were on fire and so were the documents. His desk and chair were in the midst of collapsing. The mental image of himself was similarly freezing. But his hands never stopped.
They might even have slowed down but it was not due to the stiff chill. He picked up the book he was writing on and looked at it with a free hand on his chin. Pondering for a moment before putting it back down and rewriting parts of it. Words that he didn¡¯t want were erased without any instrument. The book caught on fire as he was placing it back on the shelves but nothing affected him as he continued to work.
The left side of the table leg collapsed but he crossed his leg and propped the table up to write on another document without pause. His chair shattered into pieces but his body remained in the same seated position without the chair. The air chair was his daily regime when he used to go to school.
He got to the last thing on his schedule and finished up without haste but he was working as fast as he could. The very last word was written and he slowly closed the book. The moment the book was shut, the encroaching flames slowed down to a stop. Everything was still on fire but it no longer shattered or froze his workplace with the same intensity.
Ebony¡¯s mental self stood up and the destruction that the flames caused was reversed. The furniture restored themselves against the flames wishes. Excluding the shelves and his body.
The table and chair vanished. Left with the books and documents, he started taking them out one by one and looked through every letter. When he finished reading something, it would turn to ice dust ceasing further alterations.
Up till the very last letter was read, he stood there unflinching. Next, his body started to turn to ice dust.
Ebony woke up from his mental space and trance-like state.
¡°I¡¯m full, you can have the rest back.¡± With the same calm, every morsel of mental endurance and strength was re-delegated to pushing the excess sap and energy back.
His stomach grumbled in response to his words.
¡°Uhm, I wasn¡¯t lying. How long has it been since I ate? At least half a month. Oh but I''ve had enough of you. For now. Please go back.¡± Ebony¡¯s request was silently declined. However, he didn¡¯t panic. With his senses and faculties back, he knew he was dying far slower than moments ago. As for how many moments, he wasn¡¯t sure.
???
Gen was watching the greedy humans trying to absorb energy that would kill them in real time. The woman was far more troublesome.
His mana was evaporating at incredible speeds and he had to get serious to keep the seal in place. He could help Scarlet suppress the abundant energy better than he could help Ebony since his mana body robustly rejected foreign mana.
He nodded his head when he saw Ebony starting to reject the energy.
It was a bit surprising that the man simply bypassed him and directly grabbed the weapon. He didn¡¯t stop Ebony despite being fully capable of doing so. The man wasn¡¯t as fragile as the previous human and he would be able to save him in time.
Personally, he was curious how Ebony¡¯s Physique would protect him against his ancestors flames as well.
He realised that Ebony wasn¡¯t keen on letting go despite burning and cast a regenerative seal on him to increase his chances. His ancestor wasn¡¯t keen on doing anything as well. Gen just hoped that he wouldn¡¯t die and risk his chance at evolving without allowing his ancestor to dry up and pass away.
Unlike Ebony¡¯s gentle and quiet fight, Scarlet¡¯s was far more intense.
At first, the Heartblood Essence that his ancestor gifted her was flowing towards the girl by its own accord but a big fight within her broke out. The hot essence started to consume Scarlet when it sensed that the girl didn¡¯t regenerate faster than it burned her. At that time, Ebony was busy refining his mana manipulation and other skills.
Gen questioned his ancestor since the situation turned out different from what he expected based on the little he was told but the tree spirit didn¡¯t manage to finish its sentence before he felt another drastic change. He had not sensed such intense hunger before.
Instead of rejecting or slowing down the consumption of the Heartblood Essence, Scarlet devoured it at a quicker pace. The small body had absorbed an unbelievable amount of energy but her body was dissolving. That hurt Gen¡¯s mind but he managed to keep his spell going.
An odd pulse shook within and parts of her body regenerated but the dark red flames consumed her with greater glee in response. The heated battle of hunger raged on as they consumed each other. Scarlet¡¯s puny body could only handle so much and she reached her limit soon after. He had assumed she would give in but the fires only got hotter as she exploded out of his seal as if to expend the energy within. Along with the explosion was a pulse, a heart beat.
Under her white cloth were simply skeletons, pieces of flesh and strings of tissue that connected some of her limbs. Her hair was surprisingly unharmed despite every part of her alight. Scorching hot black fluid splattered around. Ebony completely ignored the burns he got or the holes that appeared in his overflowing string area. Sitting there without giving even a glance to his partner. The black fluid evaporated quickly and he recast his spell on her.
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He did not know how the human was alive with just a heart and a head that was mostly in one piece. The rest of her body had simply dissolved. His spell was not capable of keeping someone¡something like that alive.
Obviously, he had judged that she was simply in the midst of dying.
With enough vitality, if one¡¯s vital organs were working and the other organs regenerated fast enough to keep them alive it was possible to survive for some time without many parts of the body. Her body burned and dissolved but each organ continued to struggle and regenerate. Every muscle tissue regrew immediately, challenging the Heartblood Essence to consume her at a greater pace.
He was able to feel the pulse better the second time it occurred. Her heartbeat caused his seal to ripple and a gush of vitality rushed throughout her steaming blood. Her blood flowed unhindered even to areas without veins or arteries. The masterful blood manipulation impressed Gen slightly.
In that cycle, the energy that tried to gobble her up was reused to rebuild her body after she dragged it into her functional heart. It might be the only organ that remained in one piece no matter how badly her body broke down. Even her skull had melted off and rebuilt itself. As for her brain, that was clearly a sensitive organ but she seemed to treat it as callous as the rest of her body. The only difference was that she only allowed half her brain to melt off and rebuild itself at a time.
Gen was shocked at the monstrous proceedings. He was not confident to say that he would be able to do the same. As a defence focused turtle, physical pain was mostly a stranger to him. However, funnily enough he was familiar with it and was a user of pain himself. The creatures in the Glades were put to shame as she was repeating the process without pause.
Watching her, Gen learned what he was missing. Hunger.
He lacked hunger.
Hunger for growth.
The more her body rebuilt, the longer it took for the Heartblood Essence to break her down again.
Ebony moved when he achieved what he wanted to. He didn¡¯t spare a glance to the woman, making food while humming. After he was done eating, Gen got busy maintaining two spells. A waste of his mental effort and mana, he was lucky the ambient mana and the amount that the trees above could convert had increased.
They took a long time.
Scarlet whose proceedings quietened down for some time was the first to have another development. Unexpectedly for the tree spirit, she consumed more than three quarters of the orb.
Assuming that she reached her physical and mental limits from the extreme conditions and exertions, he was ready to see her stop dragging more energy from the solidified essence. After all, even the Heartblood Essence¡¯s greedy consumption of her had weakened.
Gen only saw the gluttonous girl who regained her body move her arm and put the orb into her mouth as if it finally got to the size that she could barely swallow. He swore he felt another explosion within her body but this time, his seal sensed the rush of vitality escaping her vessel.
Even if he didn¡¯t put her in a seal and sensed the ongoing physique refinement, he was able to tell what happened. The crazy human absorbed and consumed the remaining bulk and dragged everything into her untouched heart in one go. The last ripple in his seal wasn¡¯t due to her heartbeat but her heart bursting.
Her body went limp and sunk within his semi liquid seal.
His opinion of the female human had only increased as she rebuilt herself for days on end. He was surprised that he started to care if the woman was dead or not. Was hunger the right way? Would he end up dead if he truly learned to hunger as she does?
Gen was captivated. He had to know where hunger leads to.
The female human went still. Laying on the ground for moments that felt like the ages he had spent hiding in his shell. Loud silence echoed within his mana sense.
Then, the weakest vibrations that he could perceive came from within her seal.
Blood was flowing.
There weren¡¯t any left after the hot explosion but there it was. First a trickle. Then a stream.
Her heart muscles and tissues regrew.
It was only possible thanks to the Heartblood Essence itself and his seal but the mere possibility of such regeneration meant that she was capable of almost full body restoration as long as she had the energy for it. That didn¡¯t seem to be the case when she just started.
Gen¡¯s eyelids got too heavy and he fell asleep soon after learning what hunger led to.
???
Scarlet climbed out of the liquid that wrapped her up. She had to cook a feast for the turtle that kept her alive.
The beginning had been life threatening as she almost got eaten up. However, she knew that there was no aggression towards her. Just a gluttonous desire to consume her when it noticed her weakness so she retaliated against the cheeky dead phoenix by showing them who the predator was.
The excruciating pain was far worse than her previous experience but how dare a fragment of a dead bird try to eat her. She didn¡¯t have to fight so hard the previous time with the tiny shard. Using the energy within the orb to heal herself had been difficult since she didn¡¯t know how to utilise it but once she got used to it, it was just a matter of repeating the process in a controlled manner.
It got boring and she couldn¡¯t stay awake for much longer. It was the first time she stayed up for more than a week and had her mental activities running all time high for so long. If she hadn¡¯t invested as much mental stats as she did she might have failed midway.
Drained and annoyed that Ebony simply walked and made food for himself, she couldn¡¯t resist the actual hunger much longer. With her exhausted mind, she couldn¡¯t absorb the rest and her body was receiving diminishing returns. Looking at the size of the Heartblood Essence remaining, she thought it would hard to swallow but her stomach and impulse got the better of her.
Having protected her heart religiously because the energy wasn¡¯t potent enough as a slow trickle, she decided to use the rest at once and get it over with so her numb mind could rest. She just didn¡¯t expect her heart to blow up, knocking her out.
She didn¡¯t know how long she fainted but her mind managed to collect itself. Honestly, she didn¡¯t know how and didn¡¯t care how. With the remaining vestiges of mental strength, blood was conjured and vitality from the Heartblood Essence was forced to regenerate her heart.
In hindsight, she chalked it up to luck and her mask that woke her up. Incensed Meditation might have been the greatest helping hand after Gen.
She couldn¡¯t even make it back to the trailer and fell asleep on the cold snow right after slipping out of Gen¡¯s special seal.
???
Ebony successfully rejected the excess sap at death¡¯s door but he was no longer able to fly without any strength to carry himself. Falling out of the sky, he rammed hard onto the titan turtle¡¯s shell and bounced to the side without any strength to stop his fall. His mind didn¡¯t give his body commands and his body wasn¡¯t capable of moving itself either.
¡®Did I actually mess up?¡¯ He wasn¡¯t worried even though he no longer had the strength and his mind was dead tired with mana perception knocked out as well.
Out of the corner of his eye, he managed to glance at where Ning Xin was but his hazy mind couldn¡¯t assess her situation. He was lucky enough to bounce to the edge of the titan turtle to look down. There wasn¡¯t a need to shift his head as his body was slowly sliding off the edge, head down.
¡®Uh oh, I¡¯m not going to die like this right? Can my neck survive a drop from over a hundred metres tall? Crap.¡¯ His body slid off the titan turtle.
The expressionless man planted his head and body deep into the snow.
¡®Whew. I forgot about that.¡¯
One crisis after the other, he realised that he couldn¡¯t breathe and his lungs didn¡¯t have any of his magical reserves left.
¡®At least I can still control my breathing.¡¯ He held his breath and hoped for the best. With neither body or magic being able to move, there was nothing he could do.
Unexpectedly, he managed to fall asleep while holding his breath.
Chapter 239: Crystallisation of Labour
Ebony found himself facing the ceiling where massive white flames burned on giant maple leaves.
¡®Gen must have thrown me out. Huh, I¡¯m still holding my breath?¡¯ He found his lungs inactive and got them working once he noticed.
¡°Nice, I can move again. I must have been knocked out for less than half an hour if I was still holding my breath without any issues.¡± He was well aware of how long he could hold his breath without any sort of physical reaction.
Despite what he said when he tested his vocal cords, he was disorientated and his body spasmed when he pushed himself off the ground. ¡®Feels weird¡¡¯
He began with a few basic stretches to get himself warmed up and get a feel of movement but didn¡¯t linger. He was about to die from hunger.
Wobbling to where he recalled Xin was, his stride steadied and back straightened awkwardly with every step. Look at her white flesh blending in with the snow, he saw that her white mantle was down to strips of cloth that barely held.
¡°Haha, I¡¯ll have something to poke Sister Jing at again.¡± Knowing that the craftswoman was going to blame poor materials again, he chuckled. Before taking another step, he found himself naked and turned around to get some pants.
Returning with a blanket he wrapped the freezing cold body up and laid her on the sofa. Every step felt like walking on needles and he couldn¡¯t tell if she got heavier or his arm was feeble.
He doubted his ability to make anything sophisticated with his shaky hands and had to look around for ready made noodles and ingredients that he could just toss into the mixture. She was going to complain about the lack of planning or mismatch of flavour but he couldn¡¯t be bothered. She¡¯ll probably gobble everything up either way.
He did not know how long he was stuck on the tree or how long she was unconscious after her own ordeal but at least he ate something after his month long mana manipulation and skill refinements.
He wasn¡¯t afraid that she would go into shock from eating but he made something lighter to go with the everything noodle. He splurged on rice and made rice balls just because it was simple. He would¡¯ve made sandwiches if they had ready made bread but that wasn¡¯t an option.
The concoction started boiling and the scent wafted through the air. That was enough to wake her up. He didn¡¯t need mana perception to sense motion.
¡°You can start by drinking some water.¡± The sound of the sofa getting kicked reached his ears. ¡°Ow!¡±
He didn¡¯t turn around but he knew the rice balls were getting chomped into.
When the noodles were ready, he took the entire pot to place on the counter that served as their table.
¡°Ah.¡± He started at her finishing up the second stack of rice balls.
¡°What? I¡¯m hungry.¡± The blanket rest on her shoulders but didn¡¯t cover everything in front.
¡°I can see that. Maybe you want to put on some clothes first.¡±
Instead of running away, she simply took both ends of the blanket on her shoulders and wrapped herself tighter before having her head down and devouring his share of the meal.
¡°I don¡¯t want to hear that from a shirtless man.¡± Taking another moment to think, she added, ¡°Wh-what did you do to me while I was unconscious?¡±
¡°I picked you up and started making food.¡± Ebony reflexively looked down and finally got a good look. His abdominal muscle, chest and arms looked pretty much the same as before but it was vastly different inside. He would have to wait for his mana perception to recover before he could check if everything went well but he didn¡¯t think anything went wrong.
The sluggish movements were inevitable from the permanent reformation of his mana chassis.
It was a fresh feeling. Ever since he got a better sense of mana, he would always feel a stream of energy within him. Even if he Overdraft his mana chassis, there would constantly be energy welling forth. But now, his body and mind was silent. His mana was emptied out and stayed that way.
He felt like a normal human without mana again.
Having lost all sensation of a powerful body or mind yet he never felt calmer than the present. As if he was completely fine with losing all the power he had gained over the years.
¡®I can see why mages don¡¯t have mana sense activated every waking moment. It tires out the mind but I¡¯ve never noticed.¡¯
Slurping down the pot of noodles with a bunch of meat and vegetables half naked together, the real chef gathered enough strength to start cooking again. Ebony laid himself on the sofa and fell asleep without any trouble.
He woke up hours later only to start stuffing food into his mouth. He took care of the numerous dishes when the chef fell asleep on the dining table. After he was done, he went back to sleep again. When he woke up, he saw food on the table again. The cycle repeated a couple more times.
Ebony was washing another set of utensils when he sensed mana welling up within him.
¡®Well, that was a nice moment of silence.¡¯ He knew it was a matter of time before his mana started overflowing and filling the area if he didn¡¯t suppress it. He would then be flooded with information from his surroundings.
¡®I guess I should take a look at what I¡¯ve managed to refine over the past month or so.¡¯ With all his experience as an artillery mage, part time smith, part time scout, part time tank and park time support mage he had all but grinded out the problems with his spells and skills in general.
A single battle might be worth a thousand hours of training but Ebony was saturated with battle experience for a long time and he wasn¡¯t much of a thinker during battles because if he did, he would¡¯ve pulled of more suicidal moves. Not that he doesn''t do that often.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill:
Everlasting Tranquillity Lvl 558 (¢ó)
Icy Weighted Quiver Domain Lvl 488 (¢ò)
Class: Serene Blade of Blistering Frost - Lvl 300
Class Skills:
Phantom¡¯s Flicker Lvl 452 (¢ô)
Ice Mana Command Lvl 579
Woven Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 533 (¢ó)
Blazing Flow Greatsword Mastery Lvl 458 (¢ñ)
Woven Frostblaze Cladding Lvl 402 (¢ó)
Entwined Ice Armament Lvl 482 (¢ó)
Fluid Blitz Lvl 452 (¢ó)
Imperishable Frost Shell Lvl 519 (¢ó)
Serene Swordsman of Frost Conditioning Lvl 287 (¢ò)
Entity Evanesce Lvl 1290
Glacial Model Lvl 576 (¢ò)
Blossom of Shimmering Chill Lvl 488 (¢ó)
Stalactite Sunder Lvl 330 (¢ó)
Frigid Refraction Lvl 256 (¢ò)
Empty Skill Slot
Sub-Class: Weighted Will Lvl 300
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 355 (¢ñ)
Sheer Mana Vibration Lvl 428 (¢ò)
Gravity Mana Control Lvl 447
Chaotic Repulsive Membrane Lvl 411 (¢ò)
Sonic Intrusion Lvl 428 (¢ò)
Firm Path Lvl 444 (¢ò)
Gravity Vortex Lvl 361(¢ò)
Tremor Stomp Lvl 188 (¢ò)
**** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar Lvl 18(¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Runic Mana Maven - Lvl 300
Profession Skills:
Inscripted Mana Moulding Lvl 441 (¢ò)
Compact Mana Reservoir Lvl 452 (¢ó)
Stalwart Foundation Lvl 422 (¢ó)
Mana Chassis Implosion Lvl 312 (¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 1233/7000
Stamina: 3888/5384
Mana: 1/51691
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Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 650 [729]
Vitality: 700
Constitution: 1000 [-]
Endurance: 400 [448]
Agility: 800 [897]
Intelligence: 1326 [1487]
Wisdom: 2030 [2277]
Perception: 350 [10815]
Generic Skills:
Appraise Lvl 17 (¢ò)
Extreme Cold Resistance Lvl 193 (¢ô)
Running Lvl 98 (¢ñ)
Mental Mapping Lvl 67 (¢ñ)
Kicking Mastery Lvl 177 (¢ñ)
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 11
Calculated Hunch Lvl 107 (¢ò)
Dish Washing Lvl 66 (¢ñ)
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 172 (¢ò)
Tracking Lvl 52 (¢ñ)
Game Processing Lvl 55 (¢ñ)
Immense Heat Resistance Lvl 180 (¢ó)
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12 (¢ò)
Gardening Lvl 67 (¢ñ)
Cooking Lvl 72 (¢ñ)
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 102 (¢ò)
Korun Lvl 62
Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 55 (¢ò)
Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 88 (¢ó)
Immense Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 124 (¢ó)
Lightning Resistance Lvl 52 (¢ñ)
Sheer Blood Resistance Lvl 83 (¢ò)
Wind Resistance Lvl 52 (¢ñ)
Poison Resistance 20 (¢ñ)
Preservation Bubble Lvl 77 (¢ñ)
Sustenance Regulation Lvl 91 (¢ò)
Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 39
Adaptable Bow Mastery Lvl 26 (¢ñ)
Sheer Mana Poisoning Resistance Lvl 31 (¢ò)
¡®That¡¯s a lot of levels and name changes¡¡¯ Ebony lost the habit of checking his status regularly. He did not want numbers to fool him into thinking he was stronger or weaker than another individual. There were too many variables that these values do not account for.
He had expected Everlasting Tranquillity to evolve but he wasn¡¯t disappointed by the massive refinement instead.
Everlasting Tranquillity - Achieving a state of everlasting tranquillity, breaking your state of mind is extremely difficult regardless of consciousness, increasing Mana and Stamina regeneration rate by 350% + 5.0% per level, Perception by 200% + 5.0% per level.
The base regeneration increment went from 100% to 350% which was practically a 50 level difference. Perception went from 80% + 2.5% to 200% + 5.0% which meant his Core Skill was a bona-fide tier 3 skill now. However, he couldn¡¯t help but notice that there was no mention of pain resistance. After noticing, not a single thought was given. Being able to feel pain was better in his opinion. It¡¯ll push him further.
Despite his month-long trance extending and recreating most of his ice spells, his second Core Skill only had one refinement. Disappointingly, the only advantage was the decrease in mana cost and no improvements to power. It now costs 52,000 mana every minute for a range of 5 metres instead of 58,000.
The bright side was the vast increase in levels. Looking at it from an elder mages¡¯ perspective, he knew that there was no such thing as a tier 2 Domain. He could see why his version did not make him all powerful within it and it was seen as a particularly strong area of effect spell.
Woven Frostblaze Augmentation - Combusting intricately woven mana in your mana chassis that had been directly conjured into Ice mana increases your Constitution by 250% + 5.0% of Intelligence. Strength and Endurance increase by 200% + 5.0% of Intelligence. Agility is increased by 50% + 5.0% of Intelligence.
Consumes 8800 MP/Min.
Classification: Ice Magic - Body Enhancement Magic
There was no difference in effect. Everything was strengthened a little and the mana cost increased by more than double. However, during his refinement he knew that it was impossible to cast it as instantaneously as he could before. It would actually take a precious second or two but that could be because he needed more practice. Even so, it shouldn¡¯t be a big issue if what he did to his body worked the way he intended.
Regardless of the increase in mana cost or cast time, the enhancement would be diabolical compared to his previous tier. Especially because it would be vastly powered up by his mana compression.
Woven Frozeblaze Cladding - Clad objects in threads of freezing flames giving it its elemental property. Deals 400% + 5.0% of Intelligence when the target comes into contact with flames.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
This was a great boost to all his freezing flames in general. Just like the augmentation, proper cast would take longer and the mana cost increased.
Entwined Ice Armament is interesting. Just like his flames, he also improved his general ice magic skill. The skill was mutated and evolved from Frost Edge. All his active ice conjuration was strengthened in the same manner his blazing flames were. However, it was a bit weird that it doesn¡¯t apply to shields. Shields were under the Imperishable Frost Scale, now Shell''s jurisdiction.
From their levels alone, it was easy to see that he was better with shields than with weapons.
Entwined Ice Armament - All known weapons conjured with ice are strengthened by 250% + 5.0% Intelligence.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
The skill did nothing to increase projectile damage. He understood that from the start. All it did was make it harder to destroy. The strength and speed of his projectiles of ice still depended on his base Intelligence stat. That¡¯s where things get interesting. His Glacial Models were considered an armament. They got destroyed by the Trolls so easily that the Models weren¡¯t much help. If he were to spend some time creating each Model in their new forms, they would be a few times tougher than before.
Sadly, despite his heavy focus and experimentation with the Glacial Model all the skill got was a small refinement and a lot of levels. The skill might be more complex than he assumed.
Glacial Model - Create sculptures of ice of humanoid forms to do your bidding. Highly concentrated will is placed onto the conjuration of a Glacial Model to follow very simple instructions. Range of will and control over Glacial Models increases by 50% + 2.5% per level. Ability to understand simple instructions increases by 2.5% per level. Has the effective strength of 50% + 2.5% Intelligence.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
His defensive scales on the other hand also had an interesting evolution.
Imperishable Frost Shell - Conjures highly compressed chitinous shell of ice. Completely absorbs impact until shell¡¯s limit. It has the effect of 400% + 5.0% Intelligence.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
It no longer requires a form of a shield or orb to have a full effect. Ebony was very interested to experiment and test out what it means to be able to completely absorb impact. He did have a good idea but it was better to test it out to know for sure.
Blossom of Shimmering Chill - Highly condensed flames of frost take upon an increasingly solid form of blossoming plum petals. Embers and residues of all your freezing flames that are packed into petals have an effect of 250% + 5.0% Intelligence. Blossoms are 100% + 5.0% finer, facilitating the penetration through physical matter.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
¡®That¡¯s that same skill but why the big name change. It didn¡¯t even mutate¡¡¯ Ebony was confused why there was such a change in skill name despite the whole skill working in the same way. The only difference was the he actual spent the effort visualising the creation or blossoming of the petals.
Sure, underneath the similar outward appearance was the increase in order, formation and how tightly packed the mana was but the skill generally didn¡¯t change all that much. As with all his changes, it was just an additional mana cost and cast time detriment.
His Sub-Class was sadly sulking in the corner but that would change soon.
Ebony¡¯s Profession on the other hand could practically be the basis of his power and advantage over most people. Not all, but most. His mana perception told him that Christy and the elder Elves had a similar body as him. A body that¡¯s so chock full with dense mana supporting them that they can rival and maybe surpass a warrior of the same level. Maybe not permanently around the clock but they definitely had their own methods.
Although¡Gen did say the Frost Elves were poor at body enhancement magic. The Frost Elves also talked about an ¡®old turtle¡¯.
¡®I¡¯ll have to ask Gen about it. Oh and Milly too. That Ancient slash Emperor ranked bear is two ranks above Gen but she doesn''t feel nearly as powerful.¡¯ Ebony recalled the Guardian bear¡¯s physical prowess and corrected his thinking. That creature was a beast that he couldn¡¯t face even if he was ten times stronger and tougher. At least, that was what it felt like.
Compact Mana Reservoir - The walls of the mana chassis are compact to their limits. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 300% + 5.0% before leaking out. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.
The skill evolution of his mana compression skill was definitely the most substantial power gain he had overall. Although the description said nothing about his personal mana compression ability it meant the same thing. Just that his mana pool could automatically store highly compressed mana. 2560% increase or a 26.6 times multiplier to the density of his mana was immense. It did mean he required that much more if he wanted to cast his spells at maximum power.
He didn¡¯t count on Calculated Hunch to suggest a Constitution value anymore since it was within a range and his mana hasn''t been restored yet. A 26.6 times multiplier to his Intelligence would be about 39,554 points but that was excluding his natural mana density and compressibility.
¡®I think it would be fair to say my body will be about as tough as a¡grade 2 or 3 monster in the glades? Maybe, maybe not.¡¯ From Gen¡¯s Wisdom stat and the fact that he supposedly lost stats compared to another monster, Ebony tried to compare himself with a monster.
Suffice to say, even if he wasn¡¯t at that degree he wasn¡¯t taking enhancement magic into account. He might be getting ahead of himself since the creatures in the glades could all use mana and vitality and had the sheer density and volume to back them up.
Stalwart Foundation - Endow a specific set of mana pathways into one¡¯s very one body. Source the runic endowment with 2500 mana per minute to increase base Constitution by 200% + 5.0%. Strength and Endurance increases by 100% + 5.0%. Impact, shear and elemental resistance is increased by 25% + 0.05%.
¡®Nice, it takes pure mana instead of ice mana. I¡¯m glad I managed to get a spell version instead of permanently carving it into my body. The mana cost is doubled but the strength and endurance is a good addition especially since my Fluid Blitz and Phantom¡¯s Flicker is eating into so much stamina nowadays.¡¯
Stamina wasn¡¯t his biggest problem, it was how flimsy his muscles were. They tired out and overstretched so easily as if they were unable to support his physical activity. He was just lucky he was conveniently able to ignore the pain and heal muscle tears at a quick pace in the past. Stalwart Foundation¡¯s increment to Endurance through the runes formed didn¡¯t flood his body with more mana. It converted mana to direct physical imbuement which decreased the mana burden he would¡¯ve gotten from his augmentation.
Without his knowledge, he had gotten mana poisoning resistance. The intense month-long mana imbuement must have been too much even for his body partially made of mana.
He knew it was Hector¡¯s strongest resistance that simply made one less susceptible to the effects of mana poisoning. Ebony ignored it, he didn¡¯t see it being a problem and it was only beneficial. After constant enhancement for so long, it was the first time he got mana poisoning strong enough to damage him and get a resistance. His mana might have gotten too dense and augmentation skill must have gotten stronger than he was able to withstand.
¡®This almost feels like an evolution. Arguably better than my previous evolution¡Never mind, Fortifications are still better. I''ll do some stretching while I check the changes to my Physique.¡¯ Ebony left the trailer half naked.
Chapter 240: Less Human
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Frostblaze Physique has been altered and tempered into Dense Frostblaze Frame Physique.¡¯
¡°Might as well compare it to check the differences. Frame physique, how redundant.¡± He rolled his shoulders and did a joint flexibility check.
¡®Frostblaze Physique (Passive) - By absorbing and assimilating freezing flames into your body and having it seeped into even your very bones and organs your physique has been changed into one of the Frostblaze. Melding your mana into your body, your physical body is now partially made of Mana, being inseparable, 25% of your Mana Regeneration also regenerates your Health. Natural resistance to cold is increased by 50%. Natural resistance to heat decreased by 30%. Reduced physical needs of sustenance and sleep.¡¯
¡°Hey, let¡¯s do that thing you told me about. I need to see if I can move the same way and warm my body up.¡± Ning Xin walked out after him. Clothed but not in battle gear.
¡°Yoga? I only know a few poses that two people can do together but sure.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think about it. More focused on his new body and the same can be said for the swordswoman. Their stiff bodies could use some help. In fact, both of them lost a few levels in Conditioning.
¡®Dense Frostblaze Frame (Passive) - By absorbing and assimilating freezing flames into your body and having it seeped into even your very bones and organs your physique has been changed into one of the Frostblaze. Purity of conjured flames of frost is increased by 100%.
Melding your mana into your body, your physical body is now partially made of Mana, being inseparable, 25% of your Mana Regeneration also regenerates your Health. High-intensity exposure to mana reworked and increased your mana and body compatibility by 100%. Natural resistance to cold is increased by 100%. Natural resistance to heat decreased by 15%.
Condensing your skeletal structure while it regenerates with futility, your bones were forcefully forged 200% denser. Tearing and reweaving your musculature compactly while regrowing new flesh increases the base effect of Strength and Endurance by 20%. Reduced physical needs of sustenance and sleep.
An unabating Will formed an incessant swirl of excitement within your mana chassis increasing base mana regeneration by 100% in exchange for a 50% decrease in stamina regeneration.¡¯
¡®That¡¯s a lot to take in. So the old effect stays the same except my weakness to heat is not as bad as it used to be and my base cold resistance is further improved. I don¡¯t know what purity of flames would do but it¡¯s probably more beneficial than detrimental. I was able to keep myself mostly physical compared to changing myself more magical than physical. Compatibility¡I¡¯ll assume it means body enhancement magic is half as damaging to my body as before but I can be sure after some testing. It would be great if that were true after the augmentation skill evolution.
My bones are denser, matching my focus on refinement. My muscles should be denser too, almost twice as dense but no mention of that and just the effect of increased strength and endurance. The drop in stamina regeneration is not good¡was it worth it?¡¯ Ebony pondered and felt strength returning to his body.
At the moment, he was feeling the effects of reduced regeneration so he couldn¡¯t tell but from the description he knew he was just getting further from what a human is. A 100% increase in base mana regeneration should push a human¡¯s 10% hourly regeneration to 20%. If his understanding of Fortifications is correct, the current effect of 500% is multiplicative on top of that. However, it also meant his 10% per minute stamina regeneration has dropped to 5% per minute.
Ebony did not foresee such a detriment when he was forcing all his energy towards increasing the speed at which he regenerated mana. No matter, he felt that it was more than worthwhile to combat the increase in mana cost of most of his magic.
¡®I had more stamina than I knew what to with but that was before I knew how costly high-tier active physical skills are. I still have an overwhelming advantage compared to most warriors when it comes to stamina but I¡¯ll have to try to get rid of this detriment in future. That future seems pretty far away, how should I go about refining myself to produce more stamina while keeping my advantages?¡¯
From the general information, he wasn¡¯t able to see if there were any problems with his new Physique other than the drop in stamina regeneration. Keeping himself more physical than magical was his choice as he realised that damage to his mana chassis was far harder to heal and he had no way to recover that faster, unlike his body.
Ebony finally made a bit more sense at his odd stamina pool value. The effect of Endurance increasing by 20% must have meant that the maximum stamina wasn¡¯t one point of Endurance = ten stamina points but twelve instead. It may or may not also affect his stamina regeneration which he would have to find out once his body recovered to a normal state.
¡®More math¡Calculated Hunch will have to do some recalculations on my perceived stat value. Maybe I should account for that within the actual stat value, just adding 20% to strength and endurance instead of having a number and equating it with other people.¡¯
Ebony was then distracted by the fact that the base effect of stats could defer. It led him back to the line of thought that despite having the same stat value, it was very possible for a man to be stronger than a woman.
This issue is even more obvious with monsters. Perhaps, instead of having a very high stat value monsters just had an extremely efficient base body that comes with their physique or shape and size. It made some sense. Hoarfrost Glades¡¯ monsters may not have higher stats but they might have a better physique or what Gen calls a racial trait.
He wouldn¡¯t be surprised if a monster''s stat was ten but it was as great as a human¡¯s stat of a hundred. However, he was just confused that a normal Physique was like a hidden information panel. Much base information such as resistances wasn¡¯t known and only after some refining that makes one different from their original race would they see an improvement or deterioration.
¡®I see, just maybe, but being birthed by higher level parents might affect this. So even if stat values are averaged, it doesn¡¯t mean one is stronger or weaker than another being of the same race.¡¯ He did not think it was too far-fetched of an idea.
He pushed Ning Xin who had her legs split and swapped places. As expected, both of them were a bit stiff and that affected the range of motion.
¡°How¡¯s your Physique?¡±
¡°Less and less human.¡±
¡°Haha, same here.¡±
¡°Wanna share some details?¡±
¡°Sure.¡±
Unlike his massive change, the fire swordswoman didn¡¯t have odd changes. Simplifying tempering and no alterations were done. After all, she only capitalised on what she already had not rebuilt her entire physical body like he did. However, as her Physique had long been mutated by some kind of blood elemental ingredient the only improvement she got was towards the original Phoenix¡¯s capabilities.
Vampiric Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix Physique (Passive) - Consuming a portion of the Heartblood Essence of the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix. Every drop of your blood has been boiled over together with your life essence many times over. Conjured flames absorb and purify energy from combusted matter. Gluttonous desire to eat increased by 300%. Metabolism and digestive efficiency increased by 200%. Natural Resistance to heat increased by 200%. Blood¡¯s capacity for heat and energy increased by 100%. Base Health Regeneration increased by 400%. Able to digest and absorb 25% of essence from blood. Body can store up to 50% excess foreign energy for a short duration. Exceedingly miniscule chance of absorbing a miniscule percentage of stats from creature¡¯s blood. Base Blood production is increased by 50%
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According to her, it was strengthened quite a lot. Gluttonous desire was new to him. He simply thought she liked to eat and she never mentioned this particular information. It went from 50% to 300% which seemed pretty bad. Her metabolism and digestive efficiency went from 50% to 200%. Heat resistance from 25% to 200%. Base health regeneration from 50% to 400%.
It was a bit odd that heat resistance hadn¡¯t been that strong originally but that might have been due to the small fragment she utilised. The remaining effects that came with her blood refinements didn¡¯t strengthen. The health regeneration seemed overwhelmingly strong when he took into account her Core Skills that depended on vitality and stamina.
Finally, the biggest change for her was the additional capability to absorb energy through her conjured flames or at least, from what she burned. She also needed to test that to be sure how much energy and what type of energy it referred to.
¡®It seems like more sap or Heartblood Essence won¡¯t help much more. Perhaps one more refinement or two and the increase won¡¯t be much.¡¯ Ebony realised that they were saturated to some extent. Finding other ingredients with vast amounts of energy might be difficult especially when they have to match his current one unless they plan to alter themselves even further.
¡°Let¡¯s spar.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
They got their weapons out but neither enhanced themselves. Ning Xin did not get a direct strengthening as he did so he expected he would be able to get an upper hand. But he was wrong, while his body was still recovering she was already more than halfway back to a perfect state. Not to mention, she always had the upper hand when mana wasn¡¯t involved, at least when it came to physical prowess and not the actual battle.
Ebony was a bit devastated to find out that the lack of increment in Agility meant that he was off balance in his movements. It was subtle but he even believed that the lack of refinements to his neural network made him sluggish compared to his old body. His reflex did not match the strength that he was used to. The degree of sluggishness was miniscule at best but not to him. It was a detriment so big that it might mess up his combat abilities.
The swordswoman felt it.
If someone else could sense it, then it wasn¡¯t subtle at all.
¡®At least I know that Agility does something to speed up reaction and reflex. Does it affect the neural transmission speed? Regardless, I have no choice but to work around it until I can increase my Agility stat to balance myself again.¡¯
He spent two days rehabilitating before his mana started to recover normally and his body lost its sluggishness. He was very satisfied.
10% per hour which his Fortification increased by 500% meant that he regenerated 60% of his base maximum mana per hour and could fill up a normal sized mana pool in over an hour not including compression. Doubling that to 20% and increasing it by 500% gave him 120% instead and he could get a full pool in under an hour.
Of course, that was before he had a mana capacity-increasing skill. His natural recovery is about 27,324 mana in an hour. With his Core Skill running at its limit, it gives him a 32.4 times multiplier or roughly 885,297. Regenerating 245 mana per second made him feel like he was constantly bubbling with energy.
Due to how much he could compress mana and store it, it would take quite some time to have a fully compressed capped-out mana pool. If he didn¡¯t meditate it would take more than a day.
The increase in speed let him cover up the loss of time that he was supposed to be saving mana for Ful.
Fortunately, he didn¡¯t feel like it was a waste of time to let his mana build up. He could train Preservation Bubble to further increase the size of his mana pool. He had to regain some sort of body balance with his reflexes feeling as if they lagged behind.
He had assumed the increase in mass would be easily countered with how often he changed his weight but it was different when it wasn¡¯t a force dragging him down but his internals feeling heavier. The increase in strength did not match with the greater increase in his mass and density which further messed with his balance and made him feel like he was a toddler learning how to rock climb again.
It didn¡¯t get bad enough to make him regret his alterations but it was quite embarrassing during spars. The increase in mana regeneration speed had been purely impulse. He had that idea during his skill refinement and the additional energy would¡¯ve killed him if he didn¡¯t do anything with it. The trance did not help. Or it did, in this case.
Unlike him, Ning Xin was extremely comfortable with her new body. If they had a chance to duel at full power again, he might find that her sustainability has skyrocketed but that would have to wait till he got back complete control over himself and he had mana to spare. He wanted to see if he could catch her off guard with his skill improvements as well but that could stay a surprise.
Sadly for Ebony, another month passed. Day after day, he watched as she had explosive improvements to her skills. She was able to incorporate wind and lightning into her close combat regime far better. There were definitely some skill evolutions with them as she got blindingly fast. He might have a better movement skill, a great body enhancement and a supporting skill for all magic however, she had a fire, blood, wind and lightning buff on top of her ridiculous core skills all buffing her speed and stats to unreasonable heights.
Simply put, without his movement speed Fortification he could forget about being anywhere near her speed. As for her swordsmanship, it got to the point where his eyes and senses could catch up but not his body. Not even his predictions helped to dodge every attack.
She got a new active sword skill. A quick slash or quick draw but she didn¡¯t require a sheath so it wasn¡¯t so stiff. It reminded him of the tournament with the swordsman who acted cool and only attacked once. He wasn¡¯t stupid enough to believe that he was the only one improving and getting stronger. Hopefully, the battle they promised would still be up if they ever met again.
As if to copy him, her offensive capabilities were rising so fast he wasn¡¯t sure he could defend against her attacks.
¡°Ready?¡± Today wasn¡¯t the day to test out their limits.
¡°Naturally. I trust you to protect us¡¡± Gen replied solemnly. It must be quite a hurdle to trust some weird humans who stole their energy to protect him and to keep his ancestor alive.
¡°Just like you protected us.¡±
¡°Fight me again afterwards.¡± Ning Xin said saltily. He watched her getting beat down so pathetically numerous times over the past month. Gen challenged her and asked her to warn his old bones up before he evolved and she obviously accepted.
The result was painfully devastating for her. He was forced to watch her carelessly approach Gen¡¯s snow the first time around and she bowled over in shock. It was a crippling effect but she managed to melt the effects off. That ended the first duel as she melted it off too late and Gen¡¯s large foot was right above her. It was large enough to crush her entire body.
The second time round went slightly worse for her pride. Gen stood there and warmed himself up by taking her attacks. Ebony wasn¡¯t able to see how tough Gen¡¯s defences were because he didn¡¯t even hide in his shell. He just allowed Ning Xin to poke at his head but it did absolutely nothing.
It was honestly terrifying because when Gen fought back, the turtle could actually react to her speed. Maybe not always physically since he didn¡¯t care about taking hits but magically? She could only get close because Gen allowed her to do so.
Ebony was enlightened. The dome was only the size it was because Gen was a true Domain user, not a rip-off like him. The turtle could sleep there undefended and nothing either of them could do can hurt the creature.
A weird chuckle reverberated from Gen, ¡°After evolution? I would reign supreme in the Glades again, you would have to grow a little more before another challenge.¡±
¡®Wow, he really is excited about this evolution. I¡¯ve never heard him so confident, so full of energy. I wonder how long ago was it that he reigned supreme as a grandmaster?¡¯ Ebony¡¯s image of the turtle was of a tired old senior who was lazy and needed a lot of sleep. It wasn¡¯t all that surprising that Gen was excited though. It had been long overdue for his evolution because he didn¡¯t trust anyone to keep Ful alive.
¡°The dome won¡¯t collapse but the blizzard spell outside will stop. All my spells will be inactive. Do you want me to hide the forest underground? It will stop their mana conversion.¡±
¡°I have enough to support Ful for over two months.¡± Ebony was glad that his flame purity increase only made it more efficient for the tree. He hasn¡¯t tested the difference in battle.
¡°...I''ll leave it out but they are a delicious snack for some.¡±
¡°I will snack on them.¡± Ning Xin added.
¡°I hope you won¡¯t burn it down. Right, I moved us to a relatively secluded area and the nearby territories should not have any creatures you won¡¯t be able to handle. Don¡¯t leave our forest¡¯s edge, there are about 4 or 5 species nearby that could kill you with ease. Those should remember not to enter but the dumber, younger ones don¡¯t know what they shouldn¡¯t touch. Ton and Sei can ferry you in and out.¡± The old turtle gave his grandson and granddaughter orders.
The region was a bit dangerous for the young turtles but they had to fetch food every day from the forest above anyway.
¡°Alright, if there¡¯s nothing else you can get right to it,¡± Ebony told the worrywart.
¡°So it is.¡± Gen skidded one round around the progeniturtle before coming face to face with the mountain of a turtle and holing up in his shell a hundred metres away.
Chapter 241: Original Kobold
The first two weeks after Gen fell asleep in his shell and snow igloo went by peacefully. Ning Xin patrolled the forest above every day. Her scent skill helped in finding any monster that intruded. The intruder count so far was zero.
He forced her to accept the fact that she had to beat him up for him to get used to his new state quickly. He wasn¡¯t a genius like her and his body learned from pain far better. The micro-adjustments were moving along but not quite there yet. His openings and slip-ups were targeted and sped up the process.
The rest of the time, he was either doing some physical conditioning, reading, practising other weapons just for fun or actually trying to gain the martial arts style that he should have had. Cooking was also part of his schedule but gardening was out of the picture down here.
He would be lying if he said he didn¡¯t feel the urge to refine some of his Sub-Class skills. He only got more and more ideas but the ones that were already planned out needed actual practice before the results would show.
At the moment, Ful is being fed mana from his robes that were filling up at the same time. It required his manual input to save more of the tree spirit¡¯s effort. He splurged a little and created an Olympic-sized pool but twice as deep before filling it up with snow by hand. It took some time but the repetitive shovelling felt calming.
¡®This is normal but thick snow, it should melt easily. Some heating runes on the walls should work well enough.¡¯ He was well aware that the dome didn¡¯t fear heating up much but that was when Gen was awake. Tuning it down, he melted a pool of snow slowly since he was in no rush.
¡®I should be able to get the swimming skill with ease but what kind of combat skills are there for underwater battles?¡¯ Ebony knew how to swim he was just out of practice. Although his movement skills worked underwater, it wasn¡¯t an excuse not to make it any easier or make himself faster.
¡®I have to think of some way to convince her too. Food. Is there anything else I haven¡¯t introduced to her? Maybe something sweet and with the ingredients at hand¡cheesecake? I¡¯ll have to experiment.¡¯
Low-power heat runes were simple to mould on and he just had to wait. The swordswoman had a 14-hour shift patrolling the forest above and Sei was with her. The only ones left were Ton, the three turtlings, Gen and the tree spirit. They usually minded their own business however, Ebony was wrong about their laziness since they were all training their magic within their shells.
¡®To think that the biggest change that affected me isn¡¯t the Physique but the vast increase in Perception. Better now than during a battle I guess¡¡¯ Ebony was disorientated when Everlasting Tranquillity slowly revved back up to its full potential after his brain had a break. The explosion of senses caught him off guard and he was glad it came back slowly.
His range of control over mana and mana perception was similarly bursting through the roof, befitting of his Wisdom and Perception stat. It was already past a kilometre radius and was still rising. His goal was to see when it would become difficult to continue increasing this range. Maybe he could find the limit or soft capacity and write a personal thesis about the relation of range with stats for Clovis. At the very least, he would have gotten a skill to increase the limit once he reached it but Ebony never got so far.
The artillery mages told him that it was a common skill that they all had but it only showed itself once they hit their limit and differed from person to person. These mages didn¡¯t have a high Wisdom, surprisingly. They just had a good mana capacity increasing skill, a meditation skill or something along those lines and the rest of their focus goes to increasing effective spell power, range, effect and maybe control. It depends from person to person but that was the general trend for the Imperial artillery mages. They were not willing to share their stat value or the range limit so he had to find out himself.
It was too bad the artillery mages didn¡¯t care about absolute control all that much. Their spells could fire out of their range of control for all they care. It just had to fly further, faster and hit the target. On the other hand, Ebony was not satisfied with that. He needed complete control and to be able to adjust the spell at any point in time. How could he settle for less?
He didn¡¯t even like letting his spells go outside this range because there was always the chance of interruption that he wasn''t able to react to. ¡®Maybe I¡¯m imagining a hostage situation too often. What did you need for cheesecakes again?¡¯
¡°Ebony, there¡¯s an attack. You might want to go help. Ton can bring you up.¡± Ful¡¯s voice echoed throughout the dome. The tree spirit was getting better with mana vibrations.
¡°I¡¯ll leave this out here, you can absorb it right?¡± Ebony has already prepared to take out his trailer¡¯s power source under the flooring from day one. There was always the chance he had to step away and it seemed to have come.
He slid on his boots and jumped onto Ton¡¯s back when he parked beside the trailer. The dome was weird. The walls were solid when he touched and tried to go past but the turtles dove into it without impediment.
Ton moved with urgency only to slow down for a moment, they both sensed Sei diving back down. The invaders must be quite dangerous but the turtles were mostly safe the moment they dived into the special snow within their forest.
¡°Spit me out.¡± He vibrated the mana to inform Ton not to surface. The turtle obliged and he was shot up like a cannonball.
¡®Thirty-two presences within a kilometre radius. Humanoids. Familiar mana signatures.¡¯ He quickly scanned the area and found the invaders to look very familiar.
They looked just like the Prime Verglas Kobold on the last few floors of Ordina. Except, the ones here were slightly bigger and more of a menace. Their skinny limbs didn¡¯t fool him. They wielded sharp bones as weapons and wore armour made out of ice. [Hoarfrost Kobold] were their real titles.
¡®I¡¯ll have to use mana to get it over quickly or buy a few seconds for her.¡¯ He didn¡¯t get arrogant just because the opponents were only level 390 to 400. Obviously not, just three of them were enough to keep Ning Xin busy and the rest started tearing into the Frostblaze Amur Maples. She wasn¡¯t able to use fire magic so that the trees didn¡¯t burn down and that limited her until she had time to gather energy for her Core Skill.
Fortunately, they weren¡¯t destroying the place because they were more keen on drinking what was within. Otherwise, the relatively weak tree wouldn¡¯t survive a few minutes.
A few seconds were pretty long when they were all moving at superhuman speeds. He didn¡¯t create his complicated domain and just got the fastest one he could make first. He hoped to slow them down but it only worked as a surprise weight on their shoulders and legs. Every kobold stood strong without buckling or missing a single step.
Ebony already parked Glacial Models throughout the forest and they began to drag the Kobolds outside his range towards him the moment he appeared.
¡®A domain¡¯s too costly for such a large area, I¡¯ll have to swap it out with a normal magnified gravity. Ice doesn¡¯t work well anyway.¡¯ The split second he had to realise the expenditure of mana was too high was almost enough for his Augmentation to wrap himself but it wasn¡¯t fast enough as a giant bone sword was speeding towards his neck and another sped towards the back of his knees at the same time.
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The insane reaction speed and accurate counter was praiseworthy but he caught the blade between his chin and collarbone and his feet kicked forward to push the front attack while the other thrust back. The flimsy attempt to disarm the one that aimed for his neck didn¡¯t work. The back thrust was also predictable so both Kobolds were unharmed.
They wish they were.
Their feet were caught in a rope that whipped them around. ¡®The floor should be tougher than I imagine, it should hold.¡¯ Ebony got the whips to slam the Kobolds down. He wasn¡¯t able to swing them fast enough to make them helpless as they struggled to cut the ropes binding their ankles.
He ignored them and rushed to the trees that were about to get cut. He decided to save those that hadn¡¯t gotten damaged instead of stopping those in the midst of getting cut down. He trusted his Glacial Models were on the way for those.
He gained a sudden boost in speed as the split second that he needed to cast Augmentation was over. Finally deciding not to save mana, he lit every tree on fire as he directly conjured his flames over them all. Giving priority to those that had a Kobold nearby. The Kobolds merely backed off the moment light blue flames ignited but they coated themselves with mana and vitality in response. Something he hadn¡¯t seen other monsters doing often.
Like a conductor in the sky, he swung his hand and 6 more arm thick ropes burst from the ground but only 5 Kobolds got caught and had an appointment to be rag dolled momentarily. As for the last, he Flickered over to it and hammered its head with a fist that caused an explosion that sent the Kobold flying into a hastily conjured ice wall behind.
¡®It repelled Sonic Intrusion? I need to get sound and gravity to tier 3 standard.¡¯ Ebony was once again forced to recognise that creatures in Hoarfrost Glades were no joke. Sonic Intrusion should¡¯ve penetrated most defences but the Kobold''s film of mana and vitality blocked it out completely and caused the vibrations to backfire and an explosion occurred. His control wasn¡¯t so weak as to allow the vibrations to reflect and injure himself.
The Kobold showed off its physical strength by ripping the ice wall out and tossing it towards him. His Intelligence wasn¡¯t high enough and his mental strength didn¡¯t manage to stop his own ice wall from flying at him. The Kobold must have hoped that that was enough to distract him but he was in for a treat as a knee smashed the Kobold''s face inwards after he Flickered out of the way.
He realised the impact resistance and vibration-proof quality of their enhancement and didn¡¯t expect the kick to do much.
In the meantime, more Kobolds surrounded him. It was more accurate to say they were baited and knocked towards him by his Models but the small details didn¡¯t matter.
The ropes couldn¡¯t keep the Kobolds down for long as the initial two broke free and leapt towards him from a distance away. Four Glacial Models appeared beside them with a greatsword raised high. Each of the charging Kobold had two Stalactite Sunders crossing from over their necks. There was no bloodshed but the Models pinned the Kobolds to the ground. The intense struggle was contested by the Models by melting half of their bodies and freezing the Kobolds to the ground. The upper half continued to pin the Kobolds¡¯ neck down.
The Models weren¡¯t a match for the Kobolds and ice couldn¡¯t hold them down long. The Kobolds rampaged and broke free. They weren¡¯t blind and could see that Ebony had the same figure and face as the Models and they might be used to seeing magic casters standing around without doing much. Hence, they pulled off a combined attack after some odd calls and yells.
Their hands stopped right before their blades reached him when a sudden shockwave reverberated.
Ebony was intrigued at the reaction to a single heartbeat. Albeit, a heartbeat strong enough to shake the very atmosphere.
¡°Times up for you. Sadly, you guys don¡¯t taste good so¡well, I¡¯ll give you a proper burial so the planet can recycle.¡± He almost felt bad for them.
The Kobolds actually turned around and dashed. Going so far as to split up when one of the louder members screamed. They were quite smart. He was restraining himself from damaging the forest so it was perfect that they retreated.
Those within ten metres of him didn¡¯t manage to escape but he left the rest to the predator. The shock and fear in their eyes were palpable and he couldn¡¯t blame them. Even he felt the phantom weight pushing him down. It felt like a knife was on his neck and something was grounding his feet.
¡®How much energy did she use¡¡¯ He shook his head, she must have gotten a bit excited at the first opponents in two weeks. Opponents that could cause her trouble.
He cast his stunning roar at them and decapitated them one by one as they poised their necks out for him. Taking the extra step of staying put for him. He counted and the seven Kobolds only died four minutes after beheading. It was faster than the Trolls which goes to show how resilient the Trolls were.
¡°Ful, you can hear me right? Want me to bury them here?¡±
¡°No thanks, get that filthy corpse away. It¡¯ll taint the mana in the area.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t put his augmentation down, a little disappointed he could run wild to test his new capabilities. He lifted the corpses with some ice and chased after the tracks of the others. Picking up dismembered body parts and organs on the way. He had a close look at the skinny limbs to see where all the strength was coming from. Their arms were almost bony.
He had to circle around as the predator hunted down the Kobolds that ran in different directions.
¡®A grand total of 48 wasted lives¡¡¯ He shook his head. He saw the act of killing in a different light after his experience with the Trolls. It was one thing if they ate their kills but they didn¡¯t. The Kobolds didn¡¯t even have valuable parts that could be used by people. He saw it as a waste of value. Returning it to the earth and planet seemed to be the most appropriate step when no experience, natural potential, flesh, materials or energy in any form were taken by them. He buried them quite a distance away. There was no blood since the blood mage and her swords took that away.
¡°You got hit?¡± He didn¡¯t need to see her injury to sense the odd weight placement when she walked.
¡°The first three I fought were stronger and I didn¡¯t expect them to be fast and work so well together. I got hit in the hip, almost fully healed. It''s good to know I can heal from bone fractures now.¡±
¡°I¡¯m-¡±
¡°Oh please, I also know that getting hit will make me learn faster. Just a little injury, it doesn¡¯t even come close to getting bitten by dozens of spiders alive or melting myself. I was just a little surprised they fought as well as some of the Hunter Trolls that were sent after me.¡±
¡°Yeah¡ you¡¯re right. Do you think we¡¯re still marked by them? I can¡¯t sense anything.¡±
¡°Maybe. Maybe the stealth skill helps hide us. Or the fact we melted and rebuilt our bodies.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony had attempted to probe at the stealth skill but he was clueless at how it was hiding him or if it was even in effect.
¡°Go back down, I¡¯ll stay up here just in case they have a bigger family coming for them,¡± she shooed him away. It was obvious that she was hoping for a few more fights. Preferably more delicious fights. She must have enjoyed an actual challenge for once but the Kobolds were not quite there considering their levels. They were not the best the Glades had to offer.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll try to come up faster next time.¡± Ton surfaced in another minute or so to ferry him down.
¡®Time to make this cheesecake.¡¯
¡°Just inform me when a threat comes close Ful.¡±
¡°Sure, this mana orb is quite a high-quality storage if I do say so myself.¡±
¡°Is that so?¡±
¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve seen my fair share of mana storage items back in the day. Father would buy from a wide array of sources and we get to play with the leftovers after he¡¯s done using them. This one can store relatively dense mana and even keep its purity constant for a long time. I bet it wouldn¡¯t deteriorate for at least a thousand years.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll make sure to pass your compliments to the craftswoman.¡± Ebony looked over to Gen¡¯s igloo after his comment. It should¡¯ve been there but all he saw was Gen¡¯s shell starting to poke out of a collapsed igloo.
¡®Is he growing in size?¡¯ He swapped back to feeding Ful from his robe. The power source was a backup for emergencies.
It was back to cake-making while chatting with an ancient tree. He went to check the pool once and found the snow half-melted. Shovelling more snow into it and changing the heating runes to temperature regulation runes took another hour.
¡®What do you know, this feels like an extended vacation. Not testing out new magic is quite suffocating but I conveniently needed to learn how to move my body again.¡¯
Chapter 242: Pool
¡®Hmm, it''s not the best but I think I can call this a cheesecake. Using dried souper bread as the crust was the worst idea but it¡¯s filling.¡¯ Ebony had a bite of his fourth attempt at baking a cheesecake.
The black-haired woman regained some red in her hair and eyes but it wasn¡¯t enough to call it red. She returned atop Sei, the turtles couldn¡¯t care less about the Overflowing Vitality she leaked. They got along surprisingly well. It seems the thought that the turtles were food didn¡¯t pop up because Gen could speak and the turtles were intelligent. Perhaps it was the phoenix blood in her telling her the friendly and closeness she felt with the turtles.
They were right to assume that the reason her Intuition was levelling easily was due to her Physique as she had recently got refinement after refinement for her Intuition skill or so she claimed. It was a phoenix¡¯s natural beastly instincts.
Ebony did not account for the fact that cheesecakes exist here and he just never ate the version they had. He fought to protect the cake from getting stolen. ¡°Wait, you can¡¯t eat this.¡±
¡°Why not? My kitchen, my ingredients.¡± She was almost as tall as him and it was not easy keeping food out of her reach.
¡°Bought with my money-mana.¡± He did not expect that to stop her but she actually did.
¡°What do you want?¡±
¡°Look outside.¡±
¡°What is that large container for?¡± She must have seen the pool as she didn¡¯t so much as look away from the cake he was carrying.
¡°Swimming. You¡¯ll be learning how to swim.¡±
¡°Nghh.¡±
¡°You never know when you¡¯ll get tossed or dragged into the water. Once the dungeon, second the Troll.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t like the water¡¡±
¡°With our physical ability, you can just think of it as very thick air. But no, you¡¯ll be learning from scratch.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll let me have that if I learn?¡±
¡°After the lesson.¡±
¡°One lesson.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not going to cut it. Minimum tier 1 level 50 generic swimming skill.¡±
¡°What!? That will take weeks of daily training. Untiered!¡±
¡°I¡¯ll try making something called sauerbraten. It¡¯s pot roast, I¡¯ll marinate it with plum wine and vinegar. Although normal wine might be better, we don''t have any.¡±
¡°I make marinated pot roast all the time. Who needs your experimental dishes that you don¡¯t know the recipe for?¡±
¡°Plov, a meaty rice dish. We don¡¯t have any fish left but neither of us is too fond of fish.¡±
¡°Let me guess, you don¡¯t know the recipe for that either. Just random spices you can recall.¡±
Ebony gulped. He wasn¡¯t a good chef in either world and looking up recipes wasn¡¯t part of his hobbies. ¡°It¡¯ll be another day of coming up with new recipes and eating. A lot of eating.¡±
¡°...Every week.¡±
¡°What was that?¡±
¡°You heard me! We¡¯ll have those days once a week!¡±
¡°Alright, three hours of swimming lessons a day. And we¡¯re not stopping just because you hit the target level. I¡¯ll search for better swimming skills in future.¡± Ebony was only familiar with freestyle and the breaststroke. He wasn¡¯t sure about any skills that actively consumed a greater amount of stamina to increase their speed but there were no such skill books in Plainston¡¯s Z&Z.. ¡®Well, it shouldn¡¯t be too hard to come up with something once we get into the water.
¡°Then¡can I eat now.¡±
¡°One slice. I personally recommend and prefer them chilled but you can try them hot first and I¡¯ll keep the rest in the ice box.¡±
¡°Chilled? This can be eaten cold?¡±
¡°Yes. Now that you mention, I should¡¯ve made the Thoyas some.¡±
The review of his cheesecake was quite cruel but she threw out many ideas for their cooking and feasting day.
¡°Let¡¯s get this over with¡¡± A single slice didn¡¯t take long to be demolished.
¡°You¡¯ll sink with the mantle and heavy clothing. You¡¯ll have to learn how to swim before swimming in armour.¡± Ebony learned the hard way that he was denser than water if he had compressed mana in him. He had yet to find out if he was currently denser. Expelling all his mana out was part of the plan and wasn¡¯t too big of an issue. If something really attacks, it''s not as if his mana has gone anywhere.
¡°So¡just my body suit?¡±
¡°I left the water freezing cold, you can train your cold resistance.¡±
¡°What are you implying¡¡±
¡°I made proper swimwear. You can choose whichever one you like. I¡¯ll go warm up and check if I remember how to swim.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know many types so he just made whatever he recalled women wearing when he was brought to a beach and tossed into the sea. He made a pair of trunks for himself which he quickly changed.
It took some time to find where he put the clothes he made after the Ordina lake situation and he laid out about ten that he made. He understood that less fabric meant less water resistance but he also learnt that showing skin wasn¡¯t the fashion over here so there were a bunch of one-piece swim dresses or tight-fitting long-sleeved one-piece swimwear.
He didn¡¯t wait for her to choose and went out to check on the pool to see that it was perfect and ready. He kept a thread of mana with his robe and continued to supply it before jumping up the tall pool wall and into the water.
¡®I can¡¯t tell if this is freezing cold or not. Feels like room temperature water but it should be¡damn it, I¡¯m denser.¡¯ He tried to conjure some ice to see if the water would freeze and it did. He kicked himself up to the surface and held onto the ice walls to prevent himself from sinking.
¡®How can I get the swimming skill if I keep sinking?¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t come up with any solution and decided to cheat with gravity magic for now. He didn¡¯t really care if he couldn¡¯t get the swimming skill since he could move around with considerable ease with Phantom¡¯s Flicker even underwater. He wasn¡¯t exaggerating when he said to treat water as if it was thick air as it was what he did.
¡°I-I¡¯m here¡¡± A soft voice called out. He surfaced again and quickly looked down to find his student.
¡®Weird, what is this feeling? It''s similar to when I stare at hmm... I¡¯m not just admiring her trained body this time but it¡¯s hard to find somewhere to look. Interesting, what manner of magic makes it hard to look? Loss of control over heartbeat? Blood magic? It feels warm and I feel¡ashamed to look her in the eye. Why ashamed? Is this an embarrassment? Why am I the one embarrassed? Very fascinating, this time Everlasting Tranquillity is still giving me maximum output so it seems like there¡¯s no mental attack or problem¡¡¯
Ebony did not notice his extended silence after his eyes swept from the top down. Unlike his assumption, his student¡¯s choice of swimwear wasn¡¯t the long-sleeved one piece that covered more skin but something closer to a red shoulderless crop tube top and the matching bottom that had a skirt. She stood shyly with one of her hands futilely hiding her chest and the other rested in front of her.
Her fair and pale skin was beyond alabaster and porcelain and almost blindingly white. It was hard to believe that under that was dark red blood more viscous than honey but flowed with the strength of a torrent river if she so wished. Her flat belly was a mystery, it seemed to have gotten flatter after her physique refinement despite her appetite increasing to unreasonable degrees.
¡°He-hello? Why aren¡¯t you saying anything? Uh, these were the only ones that fit...they are a bit tight but it was the easiest to move in.¡± Ning Xin was also a fighter who saw practicality in everything.
¡°Oh, sorry about that. I made those years ago while practising mana control. Should I adjust them now?¡± He felt warmer when he forced eye contact after he blatantly scanned her. He forgot that there was a slight size change after evolutions and a large stat gain.
¡°They fit. Let¡¯s just get this over for today.¡±
¡°Yes, you look gorgeous in them. Hop in.¡±
The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
¡°Huh what did y-? Jus-just like that? I¡¯ll drown!¡±
¡°How scared of the water are you?¡±
¡°...I fell in the lake in Xienor when I was younger. Never liked large pools of water after that.¡±
¡°Ah, you almost drowned. No wonder you¡¯re so afraid of water. Jump in, I¡¯ll catch you.¡±
Her toes dug into the snow but she didn¡¯t jump.
¡°You have your mask now, you won¡¯t drown but I¡¯ll still get you to learn how to hold and control your breath just in case.¡± Ebony trusted that it was better to prepare for any scenario.
¡°Fine! Don¡¯t drop me!¡± She leapt with too much speed and got the chance to scare herself further by staring at the large body of water for a few seconds before she fell into it.
It was pretty much impossible for him to fail to catch her in such a small pool. He made it deep so that she couldn¡¯t get a foothold but that may not have been the best idea for a beginner. He didn¡¯t make any changes.
¡°I caught you. Don¡¯t panic. Don¡¯t kick around¡¡± Ebony quickly fixed the hole that she kicked in the pool walls. He was fast enough to conjure a container to catch the water that escaped. ¡®I¡¯m glad I used some concentrated mana to build this.¡¯
It took a few seconds but she calmed down eventually after staying afloat.
¡°Show me your lips, we¡¯ll start with learning how to hold your breath underwater.¡± It was not how he learnt to swim but he saw instructors starting off with this step.
¡°We¡¯re going underwater already?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll hold your hands. I won¡¯t let you drown okay?¡±
She gulped, her fear of water must¡¯ve been worse than he imagined.
¡°So this is what they meant by making moves?¡± She muttered under her breath but it didn¡¯t sound like she was talking to him.
¡°What?¡±
¡°Nothing, you better not let go.¡±
She got the hang of it surprisingly quickly for someone deathly afraid of water. ¡°Open your eyes.¡± He used a little mana vibrations to talk. A little water wasn¡¯t going to hurt a Master¡¯s eyes. A few attempts were all it took before she blew bubbles and watched them float up.
He got her to hold onto the edge of the pool and tried to get her to float. She crushed the walls in her grip and panicked when she lost the support so he spent some more mana to toughen the walls.
¡°Too tense. Relax and try to float.¡± He checked her form but blinked and shook his head when the weird feeling came back.
The lesson was oddly hard to teach and he felt that something was definitely wrong with Everlasting Tranquillity and his body around the time when she started to float and practice kicking water.
For someone with absolute control over every muscle, it wasn¡¯t long before she understood how to traverse the water. At the end of three hours, she could already do the breaststroke and swim a lap or two with near-perfect form at a normal, athletic speed. She was good enough that he doubted she ever feared water.
¡°How was it?¡±
¡°Honestly, that wasn¡¯t so bad! It felt a bit like flying in some ways. I didn¡¯t get any swimming skills though.¡±
Naturally, a few hours after picking up something new wasn¡¯t enough for a skill to show up.
¡®Is it me or is she more expressive than before? Probably me, I didn¡¯t even know what expressive means.¡¯
She didn¡¯t notice the time so he continued when she asked how one stayed afloat and taught her how to tread water. It was easy to pick up when all she needed was to observe him and copy the movements.
¡°Your fingers are purple. Let¡¯s stop here.¡± He only noticed when he held her hand again during water treading practice. He forgot that other than the water, they were somewhere cold enough that the water would freeze back up if not for his runes.
¡°Relax, just a little frostbite. I can h-¡±
¡°Don¡¯t evaporate the water please.¡±
They jumped out and walked back to the trailer.
¡°Don¡¯t you dare enter wet.¡± She boiled her blood to dry herself off. Hearing that, he copied her and burst into flames before manipulating the ice away. He was almost blown to the ground when a sudden shockwave came from her direction.
¡°What in the world? You almost broke the door.¡± The woman wasn¡¯t around anymore and hid in her room.
Ebony who had thousands of points in Perception managed to catch a glimpse of white but he wasn¡¯t sure what caused her to fire off like that.
¡°It turned to ashes! Start marinating what you said you¡¯ll prepare. You can use two tivs of boar meat. I¡¯ll take a bath first!¡± She yelled from the second floor.
¡®Turned to ashes? Ah, the clothes aren¡¯t heat resistant. Anyway, ten kilograms of boar meat. That¡¯s about right for an experiment, she can iron the recipe out later.¡¯ He hummed classical music for a Wisdom buff and searched the spatial refrigerator for the boar meat.
???
Ebony started to get very sleepy after staying awake for 2 weeks. He was getting a better hang of his sleep schedule. ¡®I should check the time to see how long I sleep naturally. Now that I think about it, if I don¡¯t do any intense physical and mental activities meditation alone can probably keep me going without sleep for as long as I¡¯d like. That probably won¡¯t happen.¡¯
He took his bath after dinner and went straight to bed. His robe stand was placed beside his bed and linked to his myriad bracelet. In his mind, he should be sitting upright after lying down and covering himself. However, he woke up feeling like time actually passed.
¡®Did I sleep well or my sense of time is far better now?¡¯ He pulled the covers aside and slid his feet onto the floor.
He felt something shift and looked down.
¡®Huh? Did refining my physique make me hit puberty or what?¡¯ Ebony was surprised at what was happening. He should have complete control over his faculties.
As someone who studied anatomy and had a background in biology, he understood what happened.
As someone who meditated and had full control over his body since he was a child, this was pretty much new to him.
He stood up and within the span of a single breath, got his blood settled. It was more obstructive than he imagined.
The new day went by peacefully. He ate breakfast and saw the ladies off to work after morning conditioning.
Continued with a few Glacial Models of Hector and some of the people that are more skilled in close combat to beat him up while he got back his balance. It might have been his Fortification but he felt that he was getting it back quickly. The weight increase wasn¡¯t so bad but the mismatch of reflex and strength proportion was really messing with his tempo.
He was proud of his foresight for making these Models with Will beforehand so it didn¡¯t take any mana upkeep as they don¡¯t melt here.
¡®Right. It¡¯s long overdue to think about what to do about my next evolution and the fortifications. If, a very big if, I¡¯m able to control the outcome or direction of growth then great. But if not, then¡then nothing I guess.¡¯
He started up the pool¡¯s runes again to begin melting the ice that formed. He made it to absorb ambient mana and it had to be low intensity or it wouldn¡¯t be worth it. It should melt before the patrol shift ends.
Before he knew it, half the day went by and the swordswoman came down for a snack and returned urgently to fight some woodpeckers that saw new trees. They were going to be tonight''s dinner but their small size meant they were a side dish at best.
The more she hunted, the higher the chance they would have an offal buffet sooner rather than later. Those days were always pretty heavy as an organ dish usually had strong flavours. He ground up the bones if she deemed them inedible and kept them as material for some special runes or fertiliser as a gift. As much as he¡¯d liked to create his personal garden, it wouldn¡¯t fly as the trailer couldn¡¯t keep plants alive if he stored it for too long.
High-level creatures have some energy within them that doesn¡¯t dissipate after death but these are considered safe and clean to eat. However, even Grandmaster creatures don¡¯t have a large amount and are safe even for the unclassed. The Jetfins were very special in this aspect as they were dangerously full of energy.
He suspected that if the Jetfins were stronger they might have ingredients or parts similar to Ful and her Phoenix sister. Maybe eating a large amount of them could strengthen someone¡¯s physique. Sadly, it might be hard to find any Imperial who had access to a large amount of Jetfin flesh and blood.
¡®Doesn¡¯t that mean that at some point in time, we are also good ingredients? Wait, I guess I¡¯ve always been a good meal for dungeons. That aside, we¡¯ll be moving targets for strong monsters that feel that our essence is compatible with them.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t bothered by it since it felt like common sense and it didn¡¯t change that there are creatures that want to eat him.
It was time for another swimming session and he had already remade all the swimwear with the new batch of textile and fabric he traded with Roya. He didn¡¯t get creative and just copied whatever past Ebony made. She chose the same piece.
She had more fun than the first session as she could tread water and swim laps at a good pace.
Ebony also got the swimming skill faster than he imagined.
Swimming - Swim at 70% + 1.0% Agility per level
Now that he was sure speed was based more on the strength stat, it made sense that the running skill which also scales on agility didn¡¯t give him a direct 1% per level speed boost. When he just got the Running skill and calculated his speed, he knew he was wrong since it just didn¡¯t make sense. However, it was wrong to say the Running skill didn¡¯t give him any additional speed so Agility and strength were quite closely related.
He swam deeper underwater to give her time to swim and allow himself to swim at higher speeds without disrupting her too much. At least, he didn¡¯t go fast enough to create currents that could pull a human away.
However, it appeared that she was acting tough as she panicked and called for him more than once right after he left her alone. So much that she would lose control and forget how to tread water. The fear of water wasn¡¯t going away within a few days but he had assumed it was fine from how well she swam when he was right by her side.
The routine continued. They had dinner after swim class. Took a night walk and patrolled outside while casually sparring without any mana usage. He checked all the Glacial Models that he left as night guards and the first line of defence. Then returned underground. Play with the little ones as they try to manipulate snow under their feet or train their snow gliding skill.
Ning Xin also changed her sleep schedule and didn¡¯t sleep every night so they watched television¡memory lights. The sofa had to be remade to withstand his weight but he used a smarter solution and just made a weight reduction rune on the seat like those carriages had. Hence, he didn¡¯t have to manipulate gravity or expel condensed mana to take a seat.
Their movie stockpile increased but he honestly felt that most were boring. It was the same hero story or war movie where a knight or unknown warrior would beat a large number of Trolls by themselves. The best and most realistic one they watched was when the knights actually worked together and struggled to beat the Trolls or outright lost.
What he didn¡¯t expect was that the drama genre was present and popular here too. At first, these were the most nonsensical to him but now, he was asking questions and learning why and how people reacted the way they did.
He took it all with a pinch of salt since acting and drama tend to exaggerate emotions but it was this exaggeration that helped him learn. He also had to admit the actors here were impeccable. Unknown as to whether they were so good that he couldn¡¯t tell that they were acting or because he was just terrible at reading expressions to begin with.
When they got bored and the morning was about to come, it was training all over again.
Chapter 243: Extremely Reasonable
¡°Does your race grow so much after every evolution?¡± Ebony asked Ful. Gen¡¯s igloo was gone and in its place was a turtle whose shell had grown at least half as big. Only a week has passed since the first swimming lesson and three weeks have passed since Gen started evolving.
Throughout the process, he was intrigued that Gen¡¯s aura or overflowing essence kept getting weaker. Today, he couldn¡¯t sense any overflowing essence anymore.
Ton and Sei used to be at the size that he could ride and they would still have space on their shells for one or two more people. Now, they could easily fit 5 of him.
Gen was even bigger but the Progeniturtle was another beast altogether having a width of hundreds of metres.
¡°Generally but none would grow as big as Rue unless they trained or ate something weird. Our wife was smaller than us by a noticeable margin.¡±
¡°I see.¡± Ebony noticed something about Ful¡¯s words but didn¡¯t ponder on it.
¡°Scarlet¡¯s calling you.¡±
¡°Okay, thanks for informing me.¡± Callstones and mana threads couldn¡¯t penetrate the snow dome and the tree spirit was the medium for communication.
There was no urgency in its words but he rushed as fast as Ton could go after checking his equipment.
¡°You called?¡±
¡°The Kobolds, I ran out to scout and found their territory. I think they¡¯ll attack the forest soon. They hold quite a large area as far as I can tell and their population is high. I didn¡¯t trust the stealth skill enough and felt danger so I left it at that.¡±
¡°Your basis for them attacking?¡±
¡°They sent multiple groups over the past week and none returned. I don¡¯t need good instincts to know they are planning to come. They probably see us as intruders in their territory.¡±
¡°What do you want to do?¡±
¡°Launch an attack first.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t agree. Gen mentioned that they are practically protecting us from other dangers. Not to mention, I can¡¯t fight right now. I can¡¯t kill them without augmentation and they seem like more than you can handle alone.¡±
¡°...Fine, but I can feel them getting angsty. If a few more groups don¡¯t return they might send those I can¡¯t handle while protecting the forest.¡± She couldn¡¯t exactly let the invaders go free since they might just call for more backup and it wasn¡¯t easy to protect a whole forest while fighting creatures tough enough to require earth-shaking strength. She wasn¡¯t even able to use fire magic as long as they were within the forest.
The only silver lining was that she managed to mix fire mana within her lighting recently. It caused less damage to the surroundings but could still cause deforestation. He saw her unleash a red flash at a target when they were underground and it was honestly pretty cool to see. When he got hit by it on purpose, he felt great potential in the spell. The hot lightning was hard to dodge, and if contacted the lightning would spread across the body leaving tracks of searing fire.
¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do.¡±
¡®Should I sacrifice a few Models to cast Frigid Refraction on the entire forest? No, the forest isn¡¯t big but it¡¯ll take too much and not worth the loss of defensive capabilities.¡¯ Ebony only had thirty Models roaming about. It was slightly over his limit so some of them weren¡¯t moving at their best state. He treated it as a practice to increase his limit.
He had about eight more spares that were just stores of mana but they were backup for when some got destroyed or damaged and had to be repaired. He only had so much time and mana to spare back in Arcta and didn¡¯t have time to make more after he lost most of it in Fifth Tide. Not to mention the mana that he charged the trailer, robe and what he fed Icicle.
Frigid Refraction wouldn¡¯t be able to fool the Kobolds either. These were creatures that hunted ice creatures daily. Even if, by some miracle, they couldn¡¯t sense ice magic they must have their ways. His flimsy skill didn¡¯t make him invisible after all.
¡°I¡¯ll go scout.¡± Ebony might as well make use of his better stealth abilites.
¡°Wait. What''s your plan? I don¡¯t like it.¡±
¡°I have not said anything.¡±
¡°I can feel it. You¡¯re going to do something stupid and it won''t go the way you expect. Tell me.¡±
¡°I was going to find other creatures. Those that Gen said could kill us with ease.¡±
¡°And then?¡±
¡°Lead them to the Kobolds. You said there were a lot of them and some that felt more dangerous. If this is their territory, they would be busy protecting it if something else finds trouble with them.¡±
¡°And you¡¯re sure they won¡¯t find you more delicious than a bunch of bony kobolds.¡±
¡°Uhm.¡±
¡°Haa. How about you just imbue a new will or command to your models for now? We just need to buy time and we¡¯re not exactly under attack yet.¡±
¡°What do you want them to do?¡±
¡°They guard the edges of the forest, make them push or keep invaders at bay and then call out loud so I know where they are. If we¡¯re outside the forest I can use a little fire enhancement and I don¡¯t have to worry about moving too fast and uprooting trees.¡±
¡°There¡¯s some maple sap on your collar¡you drank it?¡± He changed the subject because he couldn¡¯t help but notice the concentrated ice mana on her.
¡°uh¡Sei invited me to have some. I was going to make ice cream with it later. It¡¯s nice and cool with a hint of sweetness.¡±
As expected, common and uncommon sap wouldn¡¯t freeze her throat. Even if it does, she might not care. Her cold resistance had been levelling even with her armour and mantle on. This deep in the glades, it was far colder than where Arcta was. He had no point of reference but he guessed it was around negative 120¡æ to negative 150¡æ. It was a relatively wide range since he really couldn¡¯t make a better guess. The air was considerably moist only within the Frostblaze Amur Maple forest but right outside, it was hard to breathe.
It didn¡¯t hinder Xin but he was sure she breathed it in and conditioned her lungs to it just to get used to it. It was a good sign to him that she didn¡¯t rely on that mask all the time. Other than breathing, ice would gather on one¡¯s skin within minutes and even seconds if there¡¯s wind. She always returned in a thick coating of ice.
¡°Alright, I''ll go about one by one. We just have to buy time anyway.¡± The maple trees didn¡¯t go beyond ten kilometres in any direction.
That was well within the range of his Will but they had to stand guard since he couldn¡¯t personally perceive threats so far away. It would take a few minutes to renew the instructions he had for them and allow them to use different types of abilities. For once, it was fun calculating how much mana they should use and what magic to avoid using. Keeping them from defending without destroying the environment was not easy either.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
¡®Having Gen¡¯s clones would be nice but I guess even that¡¯s out of the picture. Seems like evolving truly is when one is most vulnerable. How long would we take in the next few attempts?¡¯
¡®I could actually mould a mana absorption rune but that would take away from the forest and Ful in return. The mana conversion from the entire forest is more than my own. As expected, trees have far greater regeneration. At least these trees. Hmm, maybe not regeneration but absorption and purification or conversion. Is age the only factor to increase the rarity of these trees or do trees evolve too?¡¯
Ebony¡¯s current perception of mana and the ice element allowed him to learn a lot more about the Frostblaze Amur Maple trees. The forest consists mostly of Common trees at the edges, Uncommon trees in the middle and a few Rare ones near the entrance of the dome or centre of the forest.
The trees didn¡¯t spawn or grow at the start. It took a very long time before the forest appeared. From what he knew, it was about the time the Progeniturtle supposedly died. He never believed that the turtle was dead despite what Ful told him. The tree spirit referred to themselves as one creature. Its attempts to treat itself as a separate creature were easy to see through.
The progeniturtle''s corpse doesn''t rot and the tree on its shell isn¡¯t dead. The tree was the one that got stabbed but the turtle who won was dead? He didn¡¯t buy the story even with how naive and gullible he was. He could believe that the tree was dying. Magic tree, magic sword. Damage was weird.
Perhaps they were lucky or the Kobolds had other things to do but no attack came during the instructions renewable for his Glacial Models. Limiting the fire mage¡¯s flames also made things easier for his Models so it wasn¡¯t fully detrimental that she was held back.
¡®Their legs are the same as my new one but they still explode if they use Phantom¡¯s Flicker. 30% of my maximum output is about their limit. I really want to test out Stalwart Foundation on myself but that¡¯s a waste of mana right now.¡¯ He could only tell that the Kobolds could still damage his new and improved Models but not outright break them in one or two hits. That was a win in his books since ice shatters even with vibration stabilisation.
Sharp attacks were the best. He made his Model gauge to some extent if they would be split in half or not. If they deemed that they would be cut, they would allow themselves to be cut. Then they just had to piece themselves back together with a small mana cost. However, this function was a work in progress. The Models and his own calculations weren¡¯t good enough to imbue such predictive capabilities.
¡°I could physically carve some traps outside but I¡¯m not as fluent with environmental rune placement and if I want them to last I¡¯ll still have to imbue some mana into the ground or whatever I carve the runes on. Xin, let¡¯s skip swimming today. I want to experiment.¡±
¡°Mmm. Then, can you take watch today? I¡¯ll come up as fast as I can if anything happens.¡±
¡°Sure but stick with me a little longer. I¡¯m planning to place small areas of magnified gravity or vibrational explosives. So you should take note and make use of it.¡± He had made rings with similar runes before but it might not translate if he were to physically carve the rune. If someone kicked or moved the soil, would the rune effects disappear?
It was likely. So he was placing more trust in land mines. Vibrational runes that absorb ambient mana and explode the moment a certain weight is placed on them. The only problem was he didn¡¯t know how to set off the reaction. All his rings and runes depended on the wearer¡¯s mana to command.
This was why he wanted Mark¡¯s personal notes. The runic fire mage-wizard was good at using the environment to his advantage. Lack of mana was basically what Mark learned to work around his whole life.
¡°Okay.¡±
He grabbed her waist and Flicker a distance away before taking a relaxed walk. They were a forest within a forest. Outside the Frostblaze Amur Maple forest, the trees were closer together and were bigger.
¡®Lots of cover, the Kobolds make use of these trees against aerial threats. Large land creatures will have a hard time moving.¡¯ Ebony punched the nearest tree explosively but there was no sound. He managed to break the layer of ice and bark creating a finger-deep indent. The trees were tougher than he expected. Standing at least 100 metres tall and 10 metres thick made these trees an asset.
[Verglas Sequoia]
¡®A Rare quality tree with no levels or Appraise doesn¡¯t tell me. Verglas, might be where Na¡¯s energy came from but¡this deep in the Glades? The dungeon¡¯s formation¡¯s range didn¡¯t reach so far.¡¯ The species of the tree wasn¡¯t completely new to him and even the size was almost similar to what one could find on earth.
¡°So? There¡¯s little free space on the ground, how are you going to place runes that can be erased easily?¡±
¡°I¡¯m trying to figure that out.¡±
She let him think as they took a leisurely walk. It was nice that there wasn¡¯t much snow to hinder them.
¡°How about using that?¡±
¡°Rocks? Good idea, I can carve into it and they won¡¯t be erased too easily. Then I just have to hide them under some dirt and they¡¯ll work as landmines.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t use mana but I can, I have been sitting on full mana for some time and can spare some from my mask or mantle.¡±
¡°Good idea, I¡¯ll add a fire mana capacity rune within the vibrational circle. But the whole circle will be disrupted and I still need to include the absorption rune¡¡± He mumbled to himself and she didn¡¯t disturb his thought process.
¡°OH! I¡¯ve seen that mushroom in a book!¡±
At least, she didn¡¯t disturb him until she found food.
¡°It¡¯s poisonous but delicious. I¡¯ll go gather some.¡±
¡®This won¡¯t be powerful enough to do any damage unless they absorb mana for two days. The rock is Uncommon and can handle quite a bit of mana. My best absorption rune isn¡¯t fast enough but the ambient mana is more than enough. First thing first, I need to adjust the circle to include a fire capacity rune and connect it with the vibrational rune. As for the set-off condition, I believe I can use the pressure sensor in that trap section that I didn¡¯t study much on.¡¯
Runes were pretty fun if he knew what he was doing.
Ebony knew what he was doing. Somewhat.
He got a working circle pretty quickly, carving instead of moulding with mana took time and a few attempts but he had good hand precision and finger dexterity. Once a bunch of them were ready, the fire mage just had to charge them up and she was free to return. With fire mana, she could sense it once she was nearby and wouldn¡¯t step on them.
After scouting and locating an entire village of them, he left quietly and placed his makeshift mines at random positions. Some weren¡¯t even in the direction of their forest. But there was more than one camp. The kobolds didn¡¯t build structures but they did gather leaves and had beds. They didn¡¯t cook their food and only ate raw meat but they were picky and were good at cleaning flesh off the bones to fashion bones as weapons. They sucked on frozen branches for water which was an interesting sight.
Ebony still couldn¡¯t tell if his shared stealth skill was working or not but he was silent and knew how to stay out of sight. They didn¡¯t have better eyesight than him and the large trees helped.
¡®That¡¯s more kobolds than I expected. Where are we? This forest is huge.¡¯ He sped up his scout and realised just how wide the forest was. Gen¡¯s forest was parked at one corner of the Kobold territory which was probably a clearing. It was practically a Kobold kingdom here with some monsters running free.
Their average levels were the same as the first batch of intruders. All Kobolds were at that level range except the smaller, younger ones. He didn¡¯t get close enough to check the leaders¡¯ strength.
Each camp has about a hundred or two and there were dozens of camps spread out in the area. He didn¡¯t even stray far from their temporary base.
He returned and patrolled the maple forest twice before the sun rose. The scouting and trap setting was uneventful but took most of the night. Going back underground for breakfast and some sparring. He shifted most of the mana in his robe into the trailer¡¯s power source just in case he had to surface to fight an extended battle.
¡®Gen¡¯s aura is starting to get weaker. So that¡¯s what happens when our own energy is broken down for evolution and why we wake up weakened and drained of essence. I wonder if there¡¯s any case of people dying from their evolution process excluding external influence.¡¯
No longer skipping a meal or swimming sessions, he went up to set up alarm and detection runes with as little mana as he could. Behind the sword woman''s back, he went and disguised himself in animal fur and attacked multiple kobold camps at the rear and far away from their base. He didn¡¯t kill any of them and simply harassed them. Saving mana made it too difficult to kill any of them and he honestly didn¡¯t like harassing them either.
These guys didn¡¯t have any hostility against him. They also didn¡¯t outright destroy the maple trees. However, they were preparing themselves to take over by force despite days of being gatekept by Ning Xin. Having the trees long-term was probably beneficial for them and these monsters could tell.
The turtle family might not be able to conjure flames of frost but he didn¡¯t doubt that every one of them had their physiques refined and bodies strengthened over decades and centuries. The young trees suited the young turtles.
For once, Ebony¡¯s plans did not go awry.
The Kobold camps were spooked. They didn¡¯t chat with members from other camps as often and were standing guard day and night in case a flitting shadow came to attack them. They didn¡¯t fear the attacker since no one died and he was forced to break an arm or leg as fast as he could before disappearing.
Breaking their limbs wasn¡¯t that hard if he caught them off guard. He gathered that they needed some time to reinforce themselves with vitality and mana. Honestly, he didn¡¯t feel good about it but when he came to check on the kobolds that he injured he saw that they mostly healed in under a day. That made him feel much better, he felt like he was training them.
Breaking bones while training was extremely reasonable. Natural for kids 6 and over. Or was it 8?
Chapter 244: Gesture
Three days after planting his first landmine, Ebony felt a tinge of sleepiness hit him.
¡®Alright, I think I adjusted. Seven hours of sleep every ten days. That¡¯s pretty reasonable. It feels better than to sleep an hour or two a day. The Kobolds are busy guarding their camps, we shouldn¡¯t receive any attacks from them for now.¡¯ Ebony prepared to sleep after bathing even though he''d just come back from a swim.
His student finally got the Swimming skill but her base effect seemed to be 60% +1.0% instead. He didn¡¯t really care about that as long as she got the hang of swimming. When they got out and found an actual lake, he could start underwater combat training.
He fell asleep wondering if he would feel like time had passed again.
¡®It really did feel like I fell asleep and not just opening my eyes after closing them.¡¯ He pulled the warm covers to the side and looked down.
¡®Again?¡¯
His door was knocked on after he stood up.
¡°I¡¯m making pancakes and the last of the eggs, how many pancakes do you want?¡±
¡°Three.¡± Pancakes were definitely one of many items on the breakfast menu so he didn¡¯t need that much.
He prepared to get changed into gear to prepare for conditioning and another day of training Kobolds against ambushes but was forced to stop.
¡®Do people just wait it out?¡¯ A casual flex body muscle redirected his blood with ease but he noticed it took a second more than before. He climbed down the short stairway and got to setting the dishes.
¡°I think the boar meat has marinated for long enough.¡± He had almost forgotten about his experimental plum wine-marinated meat.
¡°Hmm¡just let it rest in the ice box. I have a feeling we¡¯ll have some visitors.¡±
¡°I see.¡± He didn¡¯t say anything more about her ridiculous Intuition that was starting to feel like foresight.
¡°Get those hands moving and stop staring. It feels weird.¡±
¡°Why are you still in swimwear? And you smell like barbeque.¡±
¡°I was watching the roast the entire night and didn¡¯t have time to change.¡±
¡°Roast?¡±
¡°I set it up outside. Don¡¯t worry there¡¯s no smoke escaping. Smells great!¡±
¡°Yeah¡you should rest soon. I¡¯ll patrol.¡±
¡°No! I have to watch the roast.¡±
¡°How much meat and vegetables do we have left?¡± He was sure they had at least a year''s worth of frozen meat and properly preserved vegetables. From the recent meals, he might have to start eating rations in another two or three months. ¡®Maybe we should keep a greater percentage of fresh foodstuff to ration from now.¡¯
¡°W-we can just hunt for more. There¡¯s plenty of food outside, I caught all the birds so far and there are a few of those poisonous toads that Clovis used for his poisons. Toads taste like poultry. They are more potent than I thought so I guess we can take diluted doses for now.¡±
¡°I saw you taking a bite of the poison sac already.¡±
¡°It was sour and a little spicy but numbing. I got poisoned but it washed out so quickly I only got a single level.¡±
¡®I read about a few types of toads in his book collection but aren''t most poisonous creatures here supposed to incapacitate monsters with relative effectiveness? My own poison resistance isn¡¯t rising and she seems to have a hard time levelling it up.¡¯ Ebony surmised that their natural resistance to poison was just really high. She could just burn it off and he would just restore all physical damage over time.
At least she could be inflicted with poison, he hadn¡¯t gotten poisoned for quite some time as nothing was potent enough to harm and elicit a healing response from him. He found the sacs she stored and snacked on them to check out their toxicity but it just felt like chewing on ice cubes.
¡®I guess it takes some kind of magical poison rather than a physical one to actually cause me harm and the ice mana in this is too thin.¡¯
The pancakes for breakfast were thick and he savoured the last eggs he would have for some time.
Ton chauffeured him up and he saw a pair of sparrows near a tree. His Models were banged up and the sparrows were bloody. Numerous cuts and missing wings showed how hard it was for his Models to beat the sparrows. The chef would surely scowl at the poor quality and missing flesh.
¡®Deer? Are there any species strong enough for this region?¡¯ He touched the deer corpse that had been handled better. Either a decapitation or a stab to the heart. From the flesh''s toughness and elasticity, he could tell that it was just a Master ranked deer. Seemed like even weaker creatures found a way to survive the region. That, or the monsters nearby left them alone.
Regardless, he packed them up on Ton and had the turtle drive it back. The additional hunt would help their food stocks from dropping as fast.
Ebony patrolled and checked the damage the forest sustained. It wasn¡¯t too bad but there was damage all the same. The sky was clear and the weather was pretty good so it was a good walk to digest the heavy meal.
His knees bent and he fell flat on his back when a flash of white swept over where his body had been. The awkward limbo position had been an evasive move that few would attempt.
¡®What? My Models didn¡¯t sense anything. My models? Gone.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t hold back any longer. He could only hope he saved and prepared enough mana so far.
¡°Ful, I need backup.¡±
¡°Already on the way.¡±
He was near the centre of the maple forest and was surrounded by Uncommon trees. His attacker didn¡¯t slow down its ambush and unleashed wide swings without hitting a single tree.
¡®Great, maximum output and I''m about as fast as this guy who can also use some kind of reinforcement..¡¯ Ebony felt good that he wasn¡¯t at a disadvantage when it came to speed. His ambusher appeared to be an [Alpha Hoarfrost Kobold Lvl 350].
¡®Lower level but stronger. The Imperials will classify it as an elite or noble monster. How about grades? 3? 4?¡¯
Without a weapon, multiple figures of him were flitting about the slightly bulkier opponent. A flurry of kicks struck the Kobold¡¯s joints and temple while the aggressive sharpened bone cleaver was smashed against fists. Almost as if they were attracted to his fist. The Kobold pulled off an impressive reaction to readjust its swings but it didn¡¯t work and it continued to look as if it was aiming to slice Ebony¡¯s fists.
Sweeping the Kobold off its feet and a Firm Path coming to life sent it flying back out to where hundreds of Kobold were waiting. The small forest that didn¡¯t stretch ten kilometres in any direction was almost fully surrounded.
¡®7 alphas. So seven camps teamed up. Hot damn, it''s my fault. They¡¯re the ones I trained the most. So they found out it was me or at least, the only other invader in their territory.¡¯ Behind each alpha were hundreds of Kobolds, basically the entire camp was sent out.
¡°Greetings. If this is about our intrusion into your territory, I apologise but we¡¯ll be moving soon enough. If this is about disturbing your sleep, no need to thank me for the training.¡± Afloat, he could see all Alphas and they could see him from a distance too. It was nice of them to keep some distance so he could see they weren¡¯t considering destroying the maple forest.
The one he tossed back was the representative as it grumbled in anger before it threw something at him.
He caught the grey projectile before it smashed his face. It was a flat rock.
¡°Oh uh¡about these bombs. Sur-surely it didn¡¯t kill any of you.¡± Ebony was already surprised at the Kobold¡¯s intelligence but the alpha took it a step further and yelled again.
The Kobolds in all camps spread out and carried some of their breathens to lay out in the open. He saw some of them with missing legs and had their wounds frozen shut. All the injured had terrible burns.
They didn¡¯t wait for his response anymore and each camp took out dozens of similar flat rocks from their leafy loincloths.
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Without hesitation, those chosen to hold a runic rock bomb hurled them at the trees in the outskirts.
Other than the 3 Models that disappeared, the rest rushed out to tackle the bomb after he Flickered closer to them and gave his orders. There was a bit of lag as he crossed the distance to give out a command. The models didn¡¯t know the rocks were bombs after all.
He wasn¡¯t able to reach the area furthest from him but a red flash did and sliced the rocks apart. The vibrational bombs weren¡¯t that strong and her own fire couldn¡¯t hurt her that easily but he found out they didn¡¯t explode when she sliced it. A quick check on his Models told him that each bomb took away around 5% of the mana within them. Those that managed to take on multiple bombs were almost shattered but they decompressed their mana and got back into shape.
Decompressing to heal back to shape was one of the functions he gave as he couldn¡¯t tell them anything too complicated like gauging what injury was urgently detrimental and what wasn¡¯t. It made them less durable as time passed and their energy decreased but they kept all the battle functions at peak state. Losing a leg or arm might make the whole model dumb as he didn¡¯t input such a Will into them. Hence, his best option was to make sure they healed up to the original shape at the cost of weakening over time.
¡°Wait.¡± He Flickered and held the swordswomen back but she never even moved to counterattack which was out of his expectations.
Just as he noticed, she also saw that the Kobolds didn¡¯t continue attacking them. They stood before the Alpha in charge but he got his Models to keep up their guard at their positions.
The Alpha gestured and did a weird dance while speaking in their language. Every word that came out sounded like a grumble but he was nodding his head to see civilised monsters deciding to converse. Unlike the misty silhouette people who could clearly speak the same language but didn¡¯t even bother conversing.
¡°What did they say?¡± The swordswoman asked.
¡°How would I know?¡±
¡°You were nodding your head.¡±
¡°Sorry, I was distracted by the fact that they are so intelligent. Who knows, maybe they have a Class and are not a race of monsters.¡±
¡°They don¡¯t. You can tell so don¡¯t come up with weird theories to trick yourself.¡±
¡°Fine. Yes, I can sense and differentiate ambient essence from monsters and non-monsters to some extent but where does the line of intelligence and sapience meet?¡±
¡°Please don¡¯t use confusing words on me.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°I have a pretty good guess about what they are saying.¡± The masked lady pointed to herself and then to the Alpha. She then pointed to him and the forest behind them. ¡°cross blades with me¡±
Ebony obliged and pulled Icicle out to ¡®cross blades¡¯ with her.
¡°Lie down.¡± She asked.
¡®Oh, I remember watching a play like this.¡¯
¡°Ahhh, you got me!¡± He lay down on the cold hard ground while shouting emotionlessly.
Ning Xin walked to the nearest maple tree, patted it and patted herself. She then got him to cross blades with her again but she fell onto the ground instead. She picked herself up and ran away.
They had a gesturing battle with the Kobolds that took half an hour. Many of the Kobolds yawned and some fiddled with their feet while they sat. They did get a scolding from their Alpha for making them look bad.
¡°Yeah, I think they got it.¡± Ning Xin had ice in her hair. She must have been annoyed to be rushed out of her shower. ¡®Did she slice the rock bombs unenhanced?¡¯
¡°Got what?¡± He didn¡¯t understand the gesturing battle.
¡°A duel. If we win, they¡¯ll leave us alone.¡±
¡°If they win-¡±
¡°They won¡¯t.¡±
The Alpha Kobold growled and pointed to the Maple forest.
¡°You want the Rare sap.¡± Ebony guessed. Even if the Kobold drank a tree¡¯s worth of Rare sap, they wouldn¡¯t improve their bodies. Unless they survived and took it long-term like the younger turtles. It was really weird that Gen and his younger relatives couldn¡¯t conjure freezing flames when they descended from the original. Gen also drank Ful¡¯s sap in the past but it did nothing to improve him any further. Past a certain point, it was just a drink and more energy.
The Kobold nodded.
¡®Is this a battle to the death kind of thing?¡¯ Ebony wondered and decided to ask in the most straightforward way. He gestured throat slitting which seemed kind of universal.
It was hard to say who the invaders were. The Alpha¡¯s expression hardened before nodding.
¡®Oh¡did that look like I was challenging them?¡¯ He realised that the message might not have come across correctly but it was far too late. The Kobold Army ushered them away to another large clearing within their territory.
¡°Cool place.¡± He saw that they were stacked logs for seats and surrounded the centre like an arena.
¡°Maybe it¡¯s an evolutionary requirement to be an Alpha. I read that some smarter pack monsters have these¡rituals to determine the strongest.¡± Ning Xin said constructively.
Monsters simply level as time passes and ambient essence enters their bodies until they reach their race¡¯s limit. Those in the Glades do not follow this logic completely or people¡¯s understanding of how monsters level and evolve is inaccurate.
¡®A duel is good, I don¡¯t have to waste too much mana on suppressing hundreds of them. I doubt I can handle more than five at the same time since they can destroy my Models within a minute.¡¯
Mr Alpha pointed to Ebony.
¡°Me?¡±
Ultimately, they perceived him as the lesser threat and they were right.
The clearing was only 2 kilometres in radius but that was more than enough if the battle was going to be close combat. Even at their level and speed. It wasn¡¯t as if either of them were going to run around much.
He wanted to learn from them but it really wasn¡¯t a good time to waste mana and drag the battle. Before they began fighting, even more Alphas and normal Kobolds arrived to watch the battle. The male and female Kobolds looked exactly the same except for their privates.
As he readied his weaved mana, Mr Alpha never stepped up to the centre.
¡®Crap. They have a stronger leader don¡¯t they?¡¯ Ebony recalled the fact that Ning Xin sensed some danger from them. Mentally relieved when he saw someone new step up. It was almost impossible to tell them apart but he was able to see minute differences in the way they move and their auras.
Thankfully, no King appeared. Just another Alpha but at level 399 instead.
It was a white-furred Kobold and was clearly older than the majority. On its body were scars that told tales.
¡®Old guy in a monster-infested forest supposedly surrounded by greater predators. Xin¡¯s fingers are twitching. His or her aura doesn¡¯t feel too different but more abundant. Very abundant.¡¯ Ebony quickly threw away the thought that he had a strength and speed advantage.
The white-furred Kobold didn¡¯t wield a large bone sword or axe. It held a straightened and hardened spine in one hand. It was the size of a one-handed sword and the humanoid monster had a similar frame to him albeit skinnier. One of the main reasons for the small weapon might have been due to the fact that the Kobold only had one arm. The other arm was cut off at its elbow.
¡®It''s in a stance¡¡¯ Without any further delay, the moment both fighters stood in front of each other the Kobold lunged with an overhead slash.
Ebony already prepared for his Augmentation to flare up and reacted in time. His opponent was almost as fast as his daily sparring partner. The spine ground down against Icicle and attempted to freeze his greatsword. A futile attempt that only helped to feed Icicle.
The Kobold moved with agility withdrew its blade and thrust it dozens of times in a second like a rapier. Blasts of sharpened mana shot out along with its stabs. Ebony guarded half of it and weaved his head and body between the other half. The thrusts weren¡¯t nearly as sharp as Xin¡¯s. Lunges and sword thrusts were her speciality and it appeared to be the same for this old monster.
The thrusts didn¡¯t stop but Kobold''s feet danced as its hip rotated and a heel flew towards his face. Amongst the thrusts that had mana blasts that were slightly delayed, the back hook to the head was undodgeable unless he took the mana blasts. He freed one of his hands and blocked the back hook. The Kobold reacted and pulled its leg back before he could grab onto its ankle.
Colour him impressed.
Despite the limited magical means, the Kobold was a great fighter. More importantly, it could almost land a blow on him in close combat. Such chances were not common so he took the opportunity to increase his proficiency with a Greatsword. No matter how seriously he took his sparring with Ning Xin, there was something lacking compared to a real battle. Perhaps it was missing the looming threat of death.
The initial exchange stopped them in place for a fraction of a second.
Similar to Athena and most warriors adept in body enhancement magic, a dense concentration of mana flowed within the Kobold¡¯s leg and a small amount burst under their feet. Far more mana-efficient than a full-body version like his.
At the same time, his faulty domain came alive to smother out the Kobold¡¯s feral charge. It summoned a thin layer of ice over its skin that had cracks form and disappeared a few times before it no longer broke under the vibrational reflection. The halted charge shocked it but it managed to raise its weapon and use its half arm to form a cross guard against Ebony''s speedy Flicker and Stalactite Sunder.
The spinal weapon cracked but the warrior managed to push back and allow Icicle to skid to the ground. He didn¡¯t cause a tremor to save the mana. The old Kobold noticed the flames on its weapon but only started to panic when it couldn¡¯t put out the flames no matter what it tried.
Experienced, it used it as an additional benefit and hastened its offence. The old warrior latched onto Ebony, crushing past his flimsy repulsion membrane and didn¡¯t notice that it only managed to warp its leg around him because Ebony allowed it to. To its credit, if it was slightly faster it might be able to catch him even if he was on guard.
The feral weaponry of bites and punching with its elbow-only arm raged on after its weapon shattered on the second strike. It was this sudden ferality and desperation that disappointed him and the watching swordswoman.
¡®Yeah, this might be tough if it was before my skill evolutions.¡¯ Ebony needed the data of how tough his body was after roughly gauging that the Kobold had lower strength than Gao¡¯larg. In terms of both physical ability and technique, the Trolls were superior. His flames dug bone deep but he tried not to kill the old Kobold.
Thanks to the interesting mix of vitality and mana augmentation, he was able to pull the legs around him apart without shattering them. As expected from creatures of the Glades, their cold resistance was amazing.
¡®My skull cracked and it broke my nose. That should be enough data, it has the ability to kill me and the strength to redirect a domain and Firm Path assisted Stalactite Sunder.¡¯ Suffice to say, the old monster was strong. It didn¡¯t explode from the Sonic Intrusion upon contact with Statactite Sunder. A skill that couldn¡¯t hit Ning Xin because it was easy to see coming and too slow to catch her but it wasn¡¯t an attack she would parry or counter.
¡°You made that look easy. Very frustrating.¡± Ning Xin commented.
¡°It wasn¡¯t easy but it became desperate after seeing my freezing flames catch on.¡± He wanted to add on that it was after its sword broke but he didn¡¯t say that to her. He wasn¡¯t capable of breaking her swords or ripping them out of her hands so it was not his place to train her but he was going to prepare her in some manner in case she lost her swords again.
Chapter 245: Terrain Transformer
¡°Congratulations, I sense fear towards you from all of them. After the initial shock of watching their representative getting beaten so fast.¡± Ning Xin took out a handkerchief from¡somewhere and wiped his bloody nose. He could sense her gulping and her jaw clenching. If breakfast didn¡¯t just happen, he was sure he would hear a stomach rumbling.
¡°You can have some later.¡±
¡°N-no. I shouldn¡¯t. I no longer need it.¡± She was healed from the spiders¡¯ instinct and was back in control of herself. Henceforth, she controlled herself and didn¡¯t rely on his blood. She didn¡¯t want to start getting addicted to human blood by her own will and not because of a monster¡¯s essence running rampant in her. In short, she no longer had a viable excuse for wanting to drink his blood. The excuse was only for herself as he didn¡¯t care if she liked human blood or not.
She did carry some of his blood within a vial and her mantle should have some stored but that was only for emergencies.
The Kobolds had a moment of silence that was quickly absorbed by roars and rocks tossed at the old warrior. Normal rocks.
¡®How harsh. Should I have killed him or her? Is that more honourable for them? But I don¡¯t stand to gain anything from killing them¡¡¯ As he pondered, he blocked all the rocks tossed at the old warrior and summoned some of his body¡¯s mana to convince them to stop. ¡®That works really well, I should thank Sister Jing for teaching me that.¡¯
After the numerous Kobolds quieted down, he retrieved his mana. Retrieving mana and putting it back into his body was something other mages seemed to be unable to do well. Not even the Frost Elves, as far as he could tell. They only used whatever overflowed and compressed instead of pulling out whatever they had in their mana pools.
Another Kobold walked out but didn¡¯t confront them. They confronted the old warrior as if to challenge the right to be a leader or Alpha.
The challengers were quickly put back in their place. Even without a weapon and being injured, the old Kobold showed its superiority.
¡°It could have done better against me.¡±
¡°They probably aren¡¯t used to fighting humans, gravity magic, vibrational reflections or something cold enough to freeze them.¡±
¡°Fair point. Do you want to go back?¡±
¡°That one still wants to fight.¡± She pointed to Mr Alpha.
¡°He¡¯s looking at me. You should go back, I haven¡¯t fixed some of my Models.¡±
¡°I have a bad feeling that hasn¡¯t gone away so I¡¯ll stay.¡± She fidgeted. It was already clear that she was wrong about the Kobolds but there was something that bothered her. A different threat in the vicinity that neither of them could pinpoint.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll keep an eye out and stay out of a trance as much as possible.¡± So he said, but he didn¡¯t see himself falling into a trance right now. The fight wasn¡¯t as entrancing as the battle with Gao¡¯larg. It wasn¡¯t enough to let him test his new skills. Not unless they were trying to kill each other or they had the whole race start ganging up. One-on-one wasn¡¯t these guys'' forte.
The fact that they brought him away from the maple forest meant he didn¡¯t have to hold back as the risk of environmental damage was no longer an issue. Worse comes to worse, he needed to spend all his mana and the fight would be extended should they decide to remove him. They were cold-resistant, not immune. If there was something he learned in this world it was that there was no such thing as immunity. Even the so-called Elementals could be damaged by their element in front of a greater wielder of said element.
¡®Unless that¡¯s not how Elementals work. Maybe they can absorb each other? Meh, I¡¯ve only heard of Elementals from one of Clovis¡¯s books and there aren¡¯t any on Elcra.¡¯
¡°Grahh!¡±
¡°Alright, come on.¡±
The scrawny monster had more strength than a giant Troll of the same level but it didn¡¯t have the skills of one. From technique to pure power buff from skill levels, the Kobold wasn¡¯t as impressive as the Trolls. But this Alpha truly raged and aimed to kill him. The edge missing from daily spars was another opportunity for him to brush up on his lacking sword skill.
¡®I shouldn¡¯t have used gravity magic to assist my swordsmanship. Now I¡¯m reliant on it to make moves that I wouldn¡¯t be able to do without mana.¡¯ He saw a right slash coming at his neck but realised he wasn¡¯t able to pull back his greatsword in time without Firm Path. He allowed the bone weapon to cut into the ice scales of his raised shoulders. The force behind the strike caused him to barrel towards the edge of the clearing, slamming into one of the giant, unyielding trees.
Ebony understood that pain was the most effective way for him to learn.
The younger Alpha wasn¡¯t nearly as strong as its elder but strong enough for him to feel feedback.
It might have been a bit underwhelming for him but he took it as seriously as every battle. However, he would be lying if he didn¡¯t think it was out of his expectations to fight another weapon wielder in the Glades. He might have been hoping for some unknown biological horror that threw him off his game. Like the massive creature with tentacles that almost killed them in one of their previous hunting trips for seal meat. They haven¡¯t seen what the creature looks like. If the Frost Elves were right, it was just that creature''s tantrum for having its hibernation disturbed. They teased him by not telling him what kind of creature it was.
¡®Definitely some octopus. One with many more legs. Snow kraken? Hoarfrost Kraken?¡¯ Ebony slapped the cracked bone blade aside with Icicle. They sadly did not have good craftsmanship. All weapons were natural monster material and just ground down to sharp edges or tied with branches to give them stability and form. With no proper crafter working on it, it was no surprise their weapons weren¡¯t up to standard.
He noted that the Kobold got more panicked in its movements when its weapon started cracking.
¡°Don¡¯t panic.¡± He unknowingly broke his silence. ¡°Why do you think they¡¯re so reliant on weapons?¡±
¡°For monsters, monsters here. They don¡¯t seem to have high stats for their level. Maybe they depend on these worn-out bones from stronger hunts to break the defence of the surrounding creatures or protect their territory.¡± The masked one had a wisp of steam wafting off her in preparation to burst into battle at any time.
¡°I see.¡±
Unable to control its anxious fervour, it went for the kill and Ebony didn¡¯t control his Sunder either. He expected to split the Kobold in two but there was unexpected feedback. The elder Kobold protected the youthful Alpha with its own body.
At the very last fraction of a second, Sonic Intrusion and his flames stopped from exploding outwards but his strike already broke through ribs and through the elder¡¯s heart.
¡°Hey, hang on.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t let the old Kobold hit the ground.
¡°Grrhhh¡da.¡± The Kobold mumbled.
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The young Alpha broke out of its stunned silence with his elder¡¯s blood all over their skinny bodies.
¡°I think he wants you to spare the kid.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t be so dramatic, you¡¯re not dying either. I¡¯ll take it as your loss, just keep the end of the deal and rein in your¡clan.¡± He knew the old Kobold was dying very slowly.
He took out some general healing potions and hoped it would work on them. He hoped it would work as killing this old Kobold somehow didn¡¯t feel right. As for why¡he would have to ponder on that. ¡®Watching more movies might help with that.¡¯
¡°What are y-I¡¯m not poisoning you.¡± The old Kobold crushed his wrist and stopped him from feeding the potion.
The struggle didn¡¯t stop until he heard a bell ring.
¡°...Now that feels weirdly bad.¡±
The younger Alpha might have been a direct family member with the intense outrage when it saw the old Kobold pass away. He was about to use force when the ground trembled lightly. The vibrations were weak but they came from far away.
Ning Xin noticed something was up slightly earlier as she pulled him by the wrist. He grabbed back and Flickered away.
¡°I know what danger you were sensing.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s just hurry back for now.¡±
They were seconds away from the burning forest and the swordswoman knew what he was talking about before they returned.
The mountains in the distance grew taller.
The ¡®mountains¡¯ stood up.
They shook off their icy, snowy blanket.
¡°Get them quick.¡± Ful¡¯s voice entered their heads. The spirit was evidently talking to Ton and Sei.
It was decided that the entire maple forest would be swallowed underground without any input from the partial humans. A single maple tree might not absorb and convert as much ambient mana as Ebony but an entire forest almost 20 kilometres in diameter was providing Ful far more mana than he could. It was another reason why Gen even pulled them so deep into the Glades. Even Gen wasn¡¯t able to fully support Ful and depended on the forest and the general location.
The maple forest¡¯s production was also used to support their blizzard spell but that was released as it required Gen to control. Saving up a portion of the mana that would¡¯ve been used.
Instead of asking Ful what those mountains were, he turned to the fiery one.
¡°You said it was harder to conjure mana or any elements than before?¡±
¡°Yes, I told you it¡¯s because of ambient mana density. It¡¯s about the same as in Xienor now but still much easier than when you flood the area with your compressed mana.¡±
¡°Interesting effect. Some sort of diffusion resistance¡¡± He pondered on the science of differing mana densities. ¡®I got distracted again¡¡¯
¡°Mumbling again. Go sit down and meditate or something. We''ll be in trouble since we can¡¯t hide for too long.¡±
¡°Right. Ful, are they coming our way? What are they?¡±
¡°Berg Mammoths. Migrating pack species. Rather, that¡¯s the only pack and the entire race sticks together. They are responsible for the change in terrain in the Glades for the past two to three thousand years. They would¡¯ve stayed asleep if Gen was awake.¡±
¡°How strong are they?¡±
¡°Hmm, the second strongest Grandmaster species in the Glades? Third if you include Gen. The most feared because they are in such a large pack but also the least because they only hunt weaker King species for food. They¡¯ve grown a lot stronger but only 2 of them reached King-ranked. I¡¯m not sure how, but they might be thinking they have a chance to bite me since Gen didn¡¯t show up for some time with the forest exposed.¡± Ful spoke highly of the Berg Mammoth¡¯s capabilities.
¡°How many of them are there?¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t fear the beasts and could¡¯ve hidden the gulping better. If a single mammoth was the size of a mountain that could be seen from a distance, it meant a mountain of flesh for her to consume¡ªan entire river of blood to drink.
¡°Let me check if their numbers have increased.¡± A moment of silence passed. ¡°Yeah, their population rose to 4522. Still only two Kings but the majority is stuck at level five hundred.¡±
¡®That¡¯s a whole mountain range that moves. Yet, I can¡¯t feel any vibrations since I got pulled underground. In any case, I have to do the math to see how long we can safely hide.¡¯
¡°They know where we are and we can¡¯t move without Gen, will they leave if they don¡¯t find you?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t think they could last as long as Gen¡¯s evolution would take without the forest.
¡°They might just sit right on top of us.¡± Ful didn¡¯t seem to care. The spirit didn¡¯t gain much desire to live despite Ebony¡¯s presence or Gen¡¯s growth.
¡°Can the trees absorb mana underground?¡±
¡°Far less efficient.¡±
¡°Alright, Ton fire me out there.¡±
¡°You¡¯re planning on leading them away since our auras are similar,¡± Ful stated. It silenced any burst of anger from the swordswoman but there was none to begin with. She was too busy being stunned. Likely thinking about what to do with Mammoth meat and blood.
¡°I forgot about the aura part but yeah, that¡¯s the plan. They¡¯re large and numerous, I might be smaller than a bug to them which helps.¡± Ful reminded him of their similar auras and his dense essence might make him better bait despite his bug-like size in comparison.
¡°They are relatively sluggish but¡no. They can trap you with an iceberg larger than your traversal speed and distance. I wasn¡¯t kidding when I said they changed the terrain of the glades. The skies aren¡¯t safe either as they carry quite a large number of aerial creatures that serve as backscratchers. Although, they shouldn¡¯t be too difficult to evade for you.¡±
¡°Do they have good perception?¡±
¡°Trying to hide in cracks and crevasses won¡¯t work. The only caves in the ice on their backs are homes for their backscratchers. Gen got eaten before, he said they had internal defences as well. Something about casting magic in their stomachs periodically to deal with creatures that they eat whole. As with enhancement magic, they have far better control with magic within their bodies.¡±
¡°If it''s just ice magic-¡±
¡°Strong enough to put a crack on young Gen. I would say dozens of times more dangerous than anything Scarlet can dish out currently. Oh please, they''re at the peak of their rank and you¡¯re barely at the peak of a rank lower so stop bargaining.¡±
¡°You¡¯re absolutely right.¡± Ebony nodded. It seemed like acting as bait was thrown out of the window.
If he assumed that there were over 4000 more Gens then, it was pretty much impossible for him to do anything. Unless they were as inexperienced as an Imperial Minor General but that wasn¡¯t the case here and the Minor Generals were mostly under level 400.
He had hoped that he could at least outrun the monsters or depended on his small size but he was sufficiently dissuaded before any attempts. Ebony came up with other plans such as getting Ton to bring him underground and pop up somewhere further before he baited them and escaped again but the turtles couldn¡¯t traverse under the earth. It was just the weird snow underground dome that they had freedom of movement in.
¡®So in terms of grades, it¡¯ll be like a grandmaster with a full set of tier 4 and 5 skills? A Grade 4 or 5 Grandmaster.¡¯
¡°But hiding here isn¡¯t a solution, they are supposed to be hibernating and they might just sleep above us till winter comes around again,¡± Ebony argued. They had to do something.
He didn¡¯t take into account the chance that the underground dome would be found or exposed because the more experienced tree didn¡¯t even consider that a possibility.
¡°It¡¯s alright. If I die before Gen evolves then so be it. You¡¯ll be safe here and Gen will open a way out for you once he wakes up.¡±
¡°Sei, let me out.¡± Ning Xin interrupted him. He was about to call out the nonsense. Gen wouldn¡¯t be able to stop Ful from dying if it wanted to die. Gen¡¯s parents and grandparents were said to be less talented than Gen himself and they kept Ful alive as a joint effort. Yet, it wasn¡¯t a matter of talent now.
The young turtle either didn¡¯t understand spoken language or didn¡¯t bother with whatever her ancestor said. He grabbed onto her shell before they dashed off. The turtle was pretty easy to catch up with.
¡°So what¡¯s your plan?¡±
¡°Give me your hand.¡± She reached out with her palms facing up.
They hit the snow dome and he held her hand. She couldn¡¯t speak since Sei no longer made an air bubble and they were smashing through the snow with her rising speed. Their bodies can withstand it and the turtle was too lazy to protect them now that it wasn¡¯t necessary.
¡°Slow down and don¡¯t surface Sei.¡± He transmitted while his hand was getting crushed in a vice grip.
¡°Why are you gripping so hard?¡± Vibrating mana was not easy in the snow dome but not impossible. She had a callstone in her mask and the mask helped prevent snow from getting in.
¡°I didn¡¯t ask you to hold me!¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony was speechless once again.
¡®Do I have hearing problems or is my communication skill still non-existent?¡¯
Chapter 246: Berg Mammoths
¡°I just wanted to make an explosive.¡± The masked woman clarified.
¡°We can do that. No need to get angry over holding hands.¡± He wove a sphere into existence and a tiny vortex sped up within it. The spherical runic formula was still amid experimentation as he wanted something more efficient and customised for their spell.
It had to be able to withstand unimaginable levels of heat. The ice walls had to be tough enough to contain all that without collapsing. Its compressive or suction strength that served to compress Ning Xin¡¯s conjured elements could be improved. Her ability to conjure her blood made their combined spell able to store her lightning and fire for a longer time without dissipating and increased the upper limit of the amount of energy stored in one of their little bombs.
The spell was limited by the strength of his icy walls and the amount of mana that she had. But that limit is now raised with his recent improvements and her lack of usage of mana the past weeks of patrols.
¡°I¡¯m not angry!¡±
¡®Damnit. I thought I got the hang of spotting anger. Is it not simply the raised volume? Anyway, how can I strengthen the gravity vortex qualitatively? This is the limit I can get it to with my current Intelligence and mental prowess. The same goes for sound magic. Am I out of ideas?¡¯ He got less distracted as they kept quiet and fed the orb between their palms.
She managed to shake his hand off so he made a bigger orb to fill the gap.
¡°Once again, what¡¯s the plan?¡±
¡°No plan. I just bet that they don¡¯t like heat.¡±
Sei nudged her head backwards with a grunt.
¡°They¡¯re right above us?¡± The masked animal whisperer questioned.
The violent tremble answered them.
¡°They sat down. Can we even surface?¡± Ebony was blinded in the truest sense but he wasn¡¯t worried.
Sei shifted a little before speeding off. No longer going straight up and headed north. At least, that was what his Mental Map and orientation were telling him.
¡°How much mana did you spend on this?¡± He closed up the gap when he sensed the repulsion and creaking of the icy walls.
¡°I don¡¯t know. Maybe three days'' worth of regeneration minus the amount spent during training? I still have plenty stocked up.¡± The bomb creation didn¡¯t take much of his mana in comparison to the firepower supplier.
Maintaining it and keeping it from exploding outwards or collapsing inwards did take quite a lot of mental effort and mana to repair. It used to take less but his mana expenditure increased since they packed a bigger punch into it now that his ice magic got more muscles.
¡°The heat¡¯s seeping through.¡± He commented.
¡°I¡¯ve been trying to make them even hotter. It exceeds my blood compression and blood¡¯s capacity for energy.¡±
Ebony felt a numbing spark in his hands and a bell ringing to inform him of an increase in lightning resistance.
¡°That¡¯s not good. This isn¡¯t meant to hold lightning and your blood is the only thing holding it.¡± He didn¡¯t flinch but was sure that at least a fifth of his health went down from that little spark of lightning.
Ning Xin tried to pull out some of the lightning mana but it was too late as the congregation of mana and vortex pulling everything in made it impossible for the lesser mage to do anything about it.
¡°Sei, are we close to somewhere we can surface? This is about to blow. We won¡¯t have any remains if it does.¡± Ebony was extremely sure that none of them would have a scrap remaining if their new firepower were to blow in their face. It didn¡¯t even matter that it was their magic. He strengthened her already ridiculous firepower with his favourite power, compression.
The old version blew up a King-ranked Troll and a large number of Trolls sacrificed themselves to have kept that King alive for so long. Putting aside the fact that it was the Shamans who sacrificed them. That was because he stuffed it inside the Troll¡¯s mouth but it didn¡¯t make a big difference at the moment.
Lightning appeared to be the only thing seeping out and he halted his overreaction. If he even had one. It helped the poor turtle speed up.
Sei wasn¡¯t slow by any means.
Yet they travelled in cold darkness for another three hours. In the meantime, he was straining his mental faculties to keep 6 explosives in check. Only the first one leaked and even then, only lightning and some heat leaked.
¡°She¡¯s going to let us out when we¡¯re ready.¡± She had time to rest after expending most of the charged mana she had in her mask. He didn¡¯t know she was such a good animal whisperer.
Sei had been uncomfortable from the heat but she didn¡¯t complain or make it obvious enough for him to notice.
To be safe, he poked his hand up through the surface and let his mana sense free to probe the area. There were indeed mountains of ice nearby.
¡°Stay as deep as you can. Don¡¯t worry about getting out of range from us.¡±
Quietly climbing out of the ground, he was forced to look ahead.
¡°That¡¯s one giant eyeball.¡± They just had to climb in front of an open eye. The Berg Mammoth were sitting or lying on their belly with their heads resting but they were awake.
Ning Xin had long gathered and charged up her energy and brought him away without hesitation. Thankfully, they were at the edge of the new mountain range and only one saw them. It didn¡¯t react until the burst of heat blew in its face.
¡°Wow. It¡¯s over ten kilometres tall. Hmm, maybe most of its back is just an ice cap.¡± The Berg Mammoth was so big his range of senses couldn¡¯t even scan the whole creature. It had the appearance of a woolly mammoth and had extremely fearsome tusks that pierced the skies once the creature stood up.
A chain reaction occurred as its family members stood up along with it.
¡°Oh¡its legs are as long as its body.¡± His neck had to bend back to its limits as the Mammoths slowly doubled in height and they blotted the skies out until Ning Xin brought him further away.
They were far bigger than the Progeniturtle underground and he could see why Ful called them sluggish but did it matter if a single step they took covered vast distances?
However, only one Berg Mammoth moved while the others used their tusks to scratch each other¡¯s ice caps. They ate some tiny silhouettes that flew out of the caves on their backs.
¡°This is one of the younger ones.¡± Ning Xin mentioned as she propelled herself forward with her arms around his waist.
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They were able to widen the distance between the Mammoths which was good but that didn¡¯t serve their purpose. They needed the clan of mammoths to leave the area and let the forest resurface.
¡°Greetings mammoth.¡± He attempted to talk once again.
He was replied with a towering shadow known as a raised trunk. Watching his ride¡¯s back had him alert but even his usual calm and expressionless face blinked twice when the light brown furred trunk teleported from a resting position to a thread that connected the lands with the skies.
¡°Left!¡± Mana vibrations moved faster than his vocals and a pair of red hot wings was summoned from her mantle.
They watched as the trunk flashed by and returned to the ground. They took off into the skies and were free from the devastation. It looked as if a meteor landed and left an impact crater of immense proportion. The poor little reindeer just turned into a puddle of¡something with its whole family.
¡°Come on, we¡¯re far enough. Time to catch their attention.¡± The skies felt safer. Unlike the Jetfins, these Mammoths don¡¯t look like they could fly.
He conjured a tiny flaming petal hoping the Berg Mammoths¡¯s senses were good enough to sense him. They were.
The rest of the Berg Mammoths which were just shadowy silhouettes shifted. He wasn¡¯t able to see far enough to tell how many Mammoths had their attention caught but they waited till the Mammoth seniors caught up with their playful child.
¡°Sorry about this!¡± He winded up a baseball throw and tossed the first bomb.
A slightly larger Mammoth than the first swiped its gigantic trunk horizontally. The tiny ball of ice was but a speck that got smaller within his sights in an instant.
He was expecting an explosion but three surrounding Mammoths kept up with the chasing Mammoth and blasted out an avalanche that swallowed the little speck.
¡°They noticed the congregation of our mana.¡±
The blast of wind came a bit later but they were flying away at Ning Xin¡¯s new top speed augmented by her new mantle. It was as if he was boiling water and the first bubble popped. The bubble grew to the size of half a kilometre in diameter before it shrunk to nothingness.
¡°They suppressed our bomb by covering it up.¡± Ebony was a bit disappointed. This meant the Mammoths were able to sense how dangerous the bomb was. It was good as it meant the bomb could injure them if it landed. But it was clear the Mammoths were strong enough to deal with their strongest combined effort.
¡°We¡¯re surrounded.¡± Inertia hit them as she changed her direction to a sharp incline.
Ebony began to notice. The few that chased him were relatively fast but they weren¡¯t the biggest Mammoths around. The rest of the mountain range circled and trapped them in.
¡°How are they so fast?¡±
Dozens of weird-looking birds clambered out of their caves but they couldn¡¯t catch up so Ebony didn¡¯t give them a second look. If they couldn¡¯t even catch up then they couldn¡¯t be that dangerous.
The Mammoths were either smart or lucky enough that none of the bomb¡¯s flames or blood touched their bodies. They covered up the explosive so thoroughly that it was honestly amazing. At the moment, five of the original pursuers were shooting blasts of ice, snow and gusts at the remains of their bomb.
Hence, they were uninterrupted in their flight.
¡°Great. They can¡¯t fly and those birds of theirs seem weak.¡± He commented. This was an amazing advantage.
¡°Eb-ebony¡It¡¯s really cold up here.¡± A trembling voice reached him.
¡°What? You¡¯re running Blood Boil aren¡¯t you?¡± He was a bit late to notice that he was covered in a coating of ice and her mantle had patches of ice. Even her mask had a layer of ice.
¡°Descend.¡± He underestimated the environment. He actually had a hard time manipulating the ice on their skin and clothing.
¡°We¡¯ll be in their trunk range.¡±
¡°Not yet. They haven¡¯t closed in.¡±
The weird-looking birds had flat face with a long beak. Two pairs of wings decorated their back but they were featherless, unlike the rest of the body. Their cheeks were large pouches that sagged and flapped in the winds. These pouches expanded to a yoga ball¡¯s size and they shot out gusts of sharp wind but Ning Xin dodged it all. There was no coordination between the birds which made it simple to dodge despite the attacks being strong and fast enough.
Ebony swatted them aside with a slash whenever they got close. Ning Xin didn¡¯t let themselves get surrounded as she had the upper hand in speed and it was easy to knock the weird [Frigate Tympanuchus] down. They were in the 320 to 330 range and weren''t so special.
He could decapitate them with a single swing and string them up because the gluttonous girl wanted to eat them. After a dozen ropes were pulling them down, they were slowed down slightly. They had to wait till the essence escaped so that she could draw out the blood or she could stab her swords in them to suck it up. The creatures in the Glades had greater resistance against magical control and she couldn¡¯t directly drain them even if she was the one slicing them.
If they weren¡¯t in the middle of an escape or bait operation, she might have sunk her teeth into them to drink it directly.
Dumb as they were the Frigate Tympanuchus weren¡¯t suicidal and had a sense of self-preservation. They didn¡¯t stack on the aggression.
Ebony tugged at the ropes and the dead birds lifted before their bodies were butchered and gutted. He conjured a container of ice and deftly slid his bag out before storing the food while Ning Xin watched the birds. They descended quite a bit and he could see the Mammoths lazily walking towards them.
¡°Any suggestions?¡± He questioned the one with better Intuition.
¡°Not really. I think we need your sil-innovative ideas. I don¡¯t feel an impending sense of doom so that¡¯s a good thing.¡±
¡°Calling me silly again¡Your Intuition isn¡¯t completely reliable but I guess it¡¯s good to know.¡± The Frigate Tympanuchus gathered more of their allies before they unleashed a greater volume of sharp gusts but they weren¡¯t able to get aerial superiority over them.
He was actually out of ideas.
Ebony no longer took a ride to allow Ning Xin greater freedom of motion while he weaved his upper body back and forth to dodge the sharp but small wind blades. The number of wind blades increased enough that she could feel difficulty evading all of them. Most of the hits she took were only on her fiery wings and only the edges. Far from landing on her or her cape mantle.
¡°The mammoths are just watching us now.¡± Ebony was sure that they were within the Mammoth¡¯s reach now.
Beneath them was what looked to be a crater or valley but they were simply a ring of Berg Mammoths whose trunks could touch each other despite the distance between themselves and their tusks pierced into the sky like a vanguard raising their spears.
¡°We succeeded in baiting them with my aura. Almost all of them, two mountains remain on top of the underground dome.¡± Puny humans like them didn¡¯t need 4000 colossus to surround. He knew that if he ascended further, he could see a second, third and maybe fourth ring of Berg Mammoths that were slowly positioning themselves.
¡°Their hunting tactic. I bet that they use this for stronger creatures so I guess we should be honoured.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll lead them away. You go back and look for Sei or Ton and get the forest back up when you feel it''s ready.¡±
¡°You¡¯re confident?¡±
¡°Confident enough. I can fly higher. I¡¯ll just dip down to attract their attention once in a while. To keep them busy, I just need to bring them to their predators. They don¡¯t seem too smart.¡± Ebony had two choices, head deeper into the Glades or get into range where his Callstone can link with someone. However, the second choice required someone who could actually help and few could. The Frost Elves would have been a good choice since they had freed up their powerhouses but were supposedly uncontactable for a few years.
¡°The Kings are the problem. They¡¯re not budging.¡±
¡°If Ful is right, they would follow once the pack moves far enough.¡± If he had to guess why they felt safe to a certain extent, it was obviously because the Mammoths were grounded. He didn¡¯t want to see or think about jumping mammoths until it happened. He did keep in mind that they could flip the earth and cast magic or at least, blow out immense amounts of ice from their trunks.
If all 4000 of them were to shoot out of their trunks, he might see a familiar sight like the corrosion cloud that the Trolls employed.
¡°Go back, I doubt they¡¯ll stop you.¡± He squatted on his frozen platform and did leg stretches to prepare to overexert his legs.
¡°I don¡¯t want to.¡± She denied and crossed her arms. The swarm of Frigate Tympanuchus was smart enough to scatter and return to their caves on the respective mammoth.
¡°Your presence doesn¡¯t change anything so just leave.¡± He stood and rotated his ankles with a little Augmentation running through them.
¡°Huh!?¡±
Ebony had been learning. The change in her posture and the deeper voice made him think.
¡°You wanna guess what I¡¯m feeling right now?¡± Her fist clenched and he sensed her muscles tighten with an additional rise in heat.
¡°Angry?¡±
¡°You¡¯re goddamn right.¡± She snatched a few bombs out of his hands and dived down. He barely reacted in time or all the bombs would¡¯ve been in her hands by now.
Chapter 247: Tea Break
¡°Now¡¯s not the time to fool around, we¡¯re out of our leagues here.¡± He hoped his thread of mana could transmit the vibrations faster.
The Berg Mammoths would¡¯ve ignored her but she now held bombs that they could sense threat from. The surrounding Mammoths moved at the same time.
Both of them were instantly swallowed in an avalanche of ice and gusts.
¡®Damn¡I can¡¯t see her.¡¯
The Berg Mammoth were apathetic to the fact that she was a bright red fire mage. The release from their nostrils was enough to pat out her flames so he couldn¡¯t see her despite keeping up.
Ebony tried to blow away the hill of snowy ice but his attempts were futile. He could sense the concentration of ice mana rising and not falling. The Berg Mammoths continued to empty their lungs or whatever organs they had to blow out the air and ice. The gust couldn¡¯t push him but it affected his movements.
The thread of mana connecting them held strong and he enhanced her with Battle Song while following it. Flickering sent his body past her and it was not easy to gauge distance without sight. The range of his mana sense was honestly too short to matter thanks to his odd movement skill.
¡°Don¡¯t be silly, the bombs are still under my control. Tossing them wouldn¡¯t cause them to explode if I don¡¯t let them.¡± The thread of mana shot upwards and he climbed the invisible mana platforms as he Flickered up.
They were not able to rush out of the Berg Mammoths¡¯ exhale as the trunks simply rose and sprayed the ice cloud more. Ebony began to take damage. A sign that their magic or Intelligence was buffing their magic far more than his resistance.
He had ice running through his body. It was weird how more ice and cold could damage him. He quickly swapped out the BGM to classical music to buff her Intelligence rather than strength and agility. She needed to keep herself warm more so than speed.
¡®Elites truly aren¡¯t the same. Thankfully they seem one dimensional in their tactics.¡¯ Ebony thanked the fact that the Mammoths didn¡¯t charge in with their physical bodies.
To be fair, the colossal might find it extremely difficult to hit such tiny targets.
They probably couldn¡¯t use earth magic or any magic from the looks of it. The earth flipping might just be their physical prowess and the ice was just their natural ability in the form of mana filled organs. This made them relatively easy targets as long as they could damage the colossal or outspeed them.
He was unable to do either.
Ebony switched off the noise.
Stopping the chase, he Flickered to the closest Berg Mammoth. Estimating the height at which their eyes sat, he appeared like a phantom and jammed an ice bomb under their eyelids when he succeeded in locating its eye. The giant eye noticed the speck that appeared and jerked its trunk back but it couldn¡¯t stop or get rid of what Ebony stuffed under its eyelids.
Ebony made sure to freeze the bomb there tightly. The orb was so small the Mammoth wouldn¡¯t even be able to feel it. Sadly, the Mammoths could sense the mana. He cast Phantom¡¯s Flicker five times in a row, ascending to heights that caused Ning Xin to start freezing over.
The moment he cast his first step, he had no choice but to unleash the bomb as he would be out of range so the next four steps were rushed. He had to escape the explosive range after all.
What came next was a sonic attack in the form of a wail. He couldn¡¯t even stabilise the mana within his domain to stop the vibrations and his eardrums burst. Other than that, he was unaffected.
He managed to close in and spot the three dense congregations of his mana. Directly dragging the bombs back to him before the spheres melted from her body temperature was the first thing he did.
The Mammoth lost a portion of its large eye before its allies aimed their fire extinguishers at it. It may be a weakened bomb but they couldn¡¯t put it out immediately. Not when the target was directly hit and a mixture of flames and blood were spreading from its eye.
The second ring of Mammoths reacted by covering the gap that opened up and pushing aside the smaller Mammoths to swing at Ebony. He was barely able to see through the white clouds but their violent motions and redirection of their spraying nozzles helped to clear the air.
His body decided to carry out a series of high-intensity Flickers despite the pressure it put on his legs. The winged one could take care of herself.
An uncoordinated singular trunk came by and he backed off with the same momentum before latching himself onto the trunk and dashing along it. The colossus deemed their tusks unreliable for ant-sized targets.
Their perception was scarily precise despite how tiny he was and the Berg Mammoth beside the one he climbed swiped its trunk downwards along its ally. He had no choice but to leap onto the attacking trunk and dance around the Mammoths. They were so used to the motion it appeared as if they cleaned each other¡¯s trunks from dirt and snow in this manner.
Every time he got close to eye level, they would find a way to force him to descend again. Protecting themselves with relative ease despite his agile advantage. It wasn¡¯t a wasted effort as a Berg Mammoth fell in the meantime.
He didn¡¯t need to be responsive to notifications to know who killed the injured Berg Mammoth. Their colossal size made it hard for many of them to work together. As the one with the bombs, they focused on him and left two firefighters with the injured Mammoth.
As for how Ning Xin killed the Berg Mammoth, he didn¡¯t know. If he had the capacity to guess, he would say she dived into the injured eye and facilitated the burning flames within. Perhaps slicing apart anything she came across.
The Berg Mammoths cared less than he would have imagined as none of them stopped targeting him. He was still the tastier target. Their whole goal seemed to be him or the Frost Blaze. Since that was the case, he stopped his attempts at trying to injure them and did his job as bait.
¡°I¡¯ll stay in contact.¡± He transmitted through the callstone. It was surprising the connection hadn¡¯t broken.
He dared to go underneath their bodies and through their legs only because Phantom¡¯s Flicker could guarantee his exit even if they sat down at full speed. They didn¡¯t go so far as to attack each other. The inability to conjure ice under their bodies simply told him they were truly physical-only creatures with the exception of their icy breath and some variation of it. That made things simple.
The fourth ring was already seated and he had no choice but to ascend. It was a good chance since he desperately wanted to get out of range of these larger Mammoths. The crossing sweeps of a pair of Trunks were enough to knock him out of the air even though he dodged with a large distance. The sheer power between those swings made it hard for him to gauge the shockwaves.
In a state of semi-trance, he was relieved that they were trying not to kill him. Their formation was broken and they didn¡¯t shoot out a bunch of icy gusts which allowed him to scan the area.
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The Berg Mammoths mostly ignored Ning Xin and their dead companion. Only two of them bothered her as she made her escape. The ice caps on their backs diminished, one had the tip sliced off and the other was drenched without any ice on it.
¡®Level 398? She should be fine. I thought they would be enraged with a dead companion but no reaction?¡¯ He thought that the bait strategy might not be as easy to pull off if the creatures were not easily angered. Just like Ful reported, most of them were above his Appraise range which was 470.
The Berg Mammoths might have used their weakest as a vanguard or they just simply don¡¯t care about their young and weak.
Ebony refined Phantom¡¯s Flicker to the current state but after over a hundred uses in a short time, even his new legs were not able to keep a perfect condition. He was high up in the skies with his flames dialled down. The cold winds were impossible to breathe in so he stopped breathing. His robe was frozen over by the winds and he couldn¡¯t remove them so he left them alone.
Unable to get distracted to observe the difference in ice elemental mana, he eyed the Mammoths below. His shaky knees and feet made him conjure his extravagantly decorated chair to take a seat.
The two biggest Mammoths remained motionless. They didn¡¯t break out of their nap and lay down with mountains on their backs. These Mammoths liked to create deep crater for their bodies and only the ice cap and a pair of yellowish-white tusks could be seen from above
Ebony¡¯s body hummed, he generated contrasting frequencies within himself to shatter the restrictive ice that kept trying to form.
¡°Wow.¡± He got his chair driving when he saw the Berg Mammoths lie down and stack themselves close. They put their ice caps close together and had others exhale at the valleys to fill it up before another group climbed onto them. They were building a Mammoth pyramid and he didn¡¯t want to watch them try.
Four strong Mammoths formed the foundations while another nestled in between them. After positioning themselves, the four Mammoth stood back up to prop up their ally. It was both interesting and terrifying to see them exceed his height and he was within their trunks reach again. They didn¡¯t exactly double in height but it was close.
To be honest, he didn¡¯t dare to ascend much more. The ice caps of the second-floor Mammoth were thickening as the seconds passed. It enlightened him as to how their ice caps came about and why they were so fast at climbing onto each other.
They coordinated their steps and moved stably. Needless to say, they lost a lot of speed and he was less afraid of them.
¡®I have to make sure they don¡¯t circle me and release that icy cloud en masse. I¡¯ll go north, towards the sea.¡¯ Ebony recalled the weird space above the sea in the region of the Glades. The extreme north of the Glades was mostly deserted because not even monsters wanted to stay close to something that could erase their existence.
¡®If the forest comes back up, Ful can last another 2 weeks with the trailer¡¯s power source. That might not be enough. I¡¯ll have to shake them off and return in a week at the latest.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t like that the shared stealth skill he got didn¡¯t seem to work. It must be an active skill that requires the caster to activate.
Trees didn¡¯t do anything to stop the Berg Mammoths but actual mountains surprisingly worked. The Berg Mammoths weren¡¯t experts at scaling mountains and were angered enough to flatten the mountains. There weren¡¯t many natural mountains in the region so Ebony only came across a few to hide and rest his legs. They didn¡¯t even give him a three-minute break before he had to evacuate the mountains.
The stacked Berg Mammoths were intimidating but the loss in agility and freedom of motion was the worst choice to pick a tiny ant that could zip around like him. He had to run his mind and legs at an all-time high as he couldn¡¯t dodge the trunk swipes if he didn¡¯t see it coming. Their size meant he had to keep an eye around him as his mental senses¡¯ range was just too small. He would not have evaded in time if he only noticed the trunk when it was a kilometre away from him.
After night fell and the sun rose again, he found himself clinging onto a single fur of a random Berg Mammoth. He hid his body under its fur. The other Berg Mammoths noticed him using the stacked Mammoth¡¯s fur to protect himself from the chilling winds but he was quickly being frozen into the ice cap.
Ebony waited while watching the surrounding Mammoths¡¯ reaction. A single twitch of the other¡¯s eyelids made him burst out and run. He was very sure they were going to attack their ally regardless. A tenth of a second after his robes breeze along with him, his ride was smacked right out of its nestle. Knocking it right down to cause a tremor after its fall.
The four mammoths it was riding on did not appreciate the shock but they only grumbled in annoyance.
¡®Looks like I can¡¯t hide on them either. Those Kings are trying to psyche me out, aren¡¯t they? How naive.¡¯ Ebony noticed that no matter how far he ran, two silhouettes remained within sight. He was glad to see that as it meant he succeeded in his bait mission.
Ful overreacted or the Berg Mammoths cared about him more than the tree imagined. They have not summoned the entire race¡¯s strength to bring him down. However, Ebony wasn¡¯t so dull. He managed to find out why he was still left alive.
They knew he couldn¡¯t escape them without casting his Augmentation. Backpedalling would allow him to sense that fragments of his mana that should¡¯ve been in the atmosphere were gone. No doubt, the Berg Mammoths were eating or absorbing his wasteful excretion.
They purposefully put enough pressure on him that he couldn¡¯t let his guard and augmentation down but also didn¡¯t push him far enough to pull off desperate moves. He was only able to use one more of his bombs before they got wary of it. He didn¡¯t get another chance so far and the one he used didn¡¯t kill any Mammoths. Ning Xin wasn¡¯t around to help him finish it off.
Basically, he was treated as a game.
He didn¡¯t know if the two leaders were waiting for him to show more desperation or if they simply didn¡¯t care and just wanted his mana and essence. He just hoped that he got them out of range of Ful¡¯s forest so that they couldn¡¯t sense the forest surfacing.
Having done his best, he was also aware that he was still within their encirclement. His baiting tactic was under their control. They chose to be baited. Thoughtless as to where he wanted to bring them. At the same time, they were unable to keep him from pushing them where he wanted unless they used more forceful methods. They looked afraid of killing him.
Ebony might have difficulty understanding human emotions well but he was receptive to how animals or monsters acted. The ability was naturally sharpened as he was tossed into jungles and faced predators more than human children.
¡®How can I shake them off and return?¡¯ He wasn¡¯t worried, enraged or aggrieved to be treated as a game. He simply appreciated the convenience as his goal was achieved.
His chances of pushing a Berg Mammoth off the cliff towards the sea were zero. Even if he unleashed all the remaining bombs on a single target. The colossal creatures wouldn¡¯t fall or even tip over.
Both speed and stealth were out of the question. Force was not suitable when he couldn¡¯t even kill one of them. The bombs barely blew up a single eye and most of its explosive force was thanks to a certain blood and fire mage.
Ebony Flickered to the ground after escaping from the fur of the fallen Mammoth. He didn¡¯t think they would hit each other off the cliff either.
He shut off his augmentations and stood still.
The Berg Mammoths who were about to take casual trunk swipes at him were thrown off and panicked as they retrieved their trunks.
¡°Got you.¡± He conjured his oversized chair and rested after making sure the Mammoths were stunned and didn¡¯t cause any strong winds or shockwaves with their mere movements.
Slipping out his bag, he took out his dining utensils. Plating some dried jerky, he boiled some water in his runic kettle but he needed to overcharge the runes as the ambient temperatures were too low.
Ebony exhaled after a sip of good¡¯ol tea.
Within half an hour, the Berg Mammoths dismounted each other and made light steps to shift their formations. They were truly perceptive as they were aware of how fragile he was now that his Augmentation was down.
¡®Now what¡should I make a run for it.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t sure if he wanted the two leaders to be invited to where he was. He had no assurance that he was better alive than dead. They could eat him and still reap the benefits. Like how he drank sap, Ning Xin ate crystallised essence or the Trolls who either ate Imperial armour or raw ores to strengthen its bones.
The only reason they might not want to eat him was that he was too small. His low level might also discourage them from nipping an unripe fruit from the tree.
¡®They might not have magic, I doubt they can threaten to capture me.¡¯
However, the two leaders didn¡¯t walk to him.
Hours passed in peace as the Berg Mammoths rested with him in the centre. They left a path open to two unmoving mountains.
A waiting game?
Ebony would usually welcome a game of patience but he was on a timer.
¡®Might as well take the chance to rest.¡¯ He brewed another pot of tea and conjured some arms to massage his legs and shoulders after reclining his backrest.
Chapter 248: Fencing
Ebony was slow but he noticed the Berg Mammoths'' deadly weakness. Stamina conservation.
With a couple of evolutions and physique changes under his belt, he knew that energy had to come from somewhere. There was a limit to energy efficiency and there was no such thing as limitless energy. He would know better than most with how high his Constitution was. He still had to eat and drink.
The higher all his other stats rose, the more energy it took to pull off stronger movements. Mental or physical. Hence, all creatures had to consume food or energy in one way or another. He didn¡¯t know if monsters could feed off ambient essence since that was how they grew but the fact that monsters hunt and eat each other told him that ambient essence was not sufficient as sustenance to most creatures.
Colossal creatures would have colossal energy output from taking a single step. Maybe even breathing would take a diabolical amount of energy. Thus, most of them remain sitting. He was just not worth the effort and that might be why they didn¡¯t bother with Ning Xin. Even their energy-dense bodies didn¡¯t attract much attention because tiny humans could not feed more than one or two of them.
When he stopped running or resisting, the Berg Mammoths stopped as well. Other than snacking on the birds they carry, he didn¡¯t see them hunt. There simply weren¡¯t many monsters that could fill the gaps of their teeth.
Ebony guessed that they were the type that hunted and ate a few times a year and hibernated the rest of it. Waking up out of schedule must not be something they had to do often. This wasn¡¯t rare for many monsters in the Glades so he should¡¯ve thought of it first.
¡®I should figure this stealth skill out to slip away.¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t come up with another reasonable method of escape. He did not bet on their reluctance to kill him.
Regardless, he still had to pull the moving mountain range further. Far enough that they would have to take days to get back to where the maple forest was. If he was lucky, they wouldn¡¯t want to waste the energy to move. That would give him a few more days of peace. They only moved because they were sure Gen wasn¡¯t capable of moving. But the Berg Mammoths weren''t intelligent enough and simply chased him thanks to his aura.
That, or they knew they weren¡¯t able to force Ful out either way.
Ebony stood up and dug a hole big enough to store a few Glacial Models. He entered and started to stuff a few Models with liquid mana that would combust inside them. It was a long shot but he hoped they would be a good distraction for his escape attempt.
The Berg Mammoths left him alone and he even called Ning Xin without interruption. She didn¡¯t sound worried and was apparently busy having a field day with the Mammoth corpse. The amur maple forest was back out which meant he brought the Mammoths out of range.
¡°Keep the fur intact please.¡± He knew it was unnecessary to ask but the Mammoth''s fur, tusk, bones and even skin were probably amazing material. Her Processing or chef skills must be profiting.
Ebony didn¡¯t know if he should be surprised that the stamina-conserving mammoths didn¡¯t cannibalise. He might have met too many cannibalistic creatures and assumed most monsters would not care.
In terms of size, the Berg Mammoths had to be the biggest creature but in terms of volume, it might not be bigger than the centipede that Navin the Barrier King killed. That insect was also measured in kilometres and might give the two leader Mammoths a run for their money.
Their bomb damaged the Mammoth¡¯s brain and that was how she managed to kill it so fast. These Mammoths had surprisingly weak regeneration and couldn¡¯t stay alive for long with her melting and slicing apart its brain. Her only lament was not being able to cook its brains in a dish.
¡®I can make the Models almost fully transparent but not the flames. I¡¯ll leave them in liquid mana form in their blood vessels and try to imbue my will to combust at the right time.¡¯ Ebony examined his sculpture from every angle. There was a glint of reflection from many angles but he could not remove it completely.
They were extremely dense and he found it impressive that he could even make it translucent. The liquid within didn¡¯t have to flow but once it was converted to ice mana the reflections of light would be visible. Ebony didn¡¯t have a method to refract light the way he wanted in liquid.
Ebony did not realise that the Berg Mammoths took turns watching him while he was in the hole he dug. Minutes and hours passed as the pressure of being guarded by so many strong colossi pounded Frigid Refraction¡¯s skill level.
He released a trickle of his mana through the entrance of his cave. Whether it appeased the Berg Mammoths or not, he didn¡¯t know. But they left him to his own devices.
¡®Need a lamp. Never mind, I¡¯ll just carve a light rune on the walls.¡¯ He was too lazy to look for a lamp to shine on his Glacial Models to see how compression affects the reflection of light within the Models themselves. There was the angle of light to take into account. He hasn¡¯t gotten to the point where he could make instantaneous changes to the formation of ice to stay invisible or translucent on the move.
As inhuman as his training had been, stealth had not been a strong point of focus. It helped that he could instinctively sense gazes for movement prediction.
¡®I don¡¯t have to take the angle of light into account. I have to take the eyesight and peripheral view of my Model from my opponents'' point of view into account. That makes things simpler. If they are focused on my Model, I just have to move it at the same pace their eyes are following and I won¡¯t have to adjust the ice mana in real time to stay transparent. Hmm¡this only works if one pair of eyes are on them. The computational power required from me isn¡¯t that high but it''s near useless if there¡¯s more than one opponent.¡¯ Ebony activated dim lights from different positions in the cave to inspect his Model.
Ebony did the best he could with the limited time he had. He had to settle for a mostly translucent and sometimes transparent Model with some shiny liquid mana within. It only shined from certain angles because of the ice shell. The next step was to cast it over himself and check if he could completely refract light away from him and hide his physical form.
If he was right, the Mammoth had a terrible perception of mana. Relatively speaking.
¡®I will still look like a blur thanks to the colour of my robes and skin. I need to make them spray snow clouds to hide myself.¡¯ Ebony could create a mist but he would just be a moving cloud of mist unless he could fill up a space that exceeded the size of a few hundred Mammoths and that wasn¡¯t happening.
It wasn¡¯t impossible if he decompressed most of his mana but it would take too long and defeat the purpose of a speedy escape. At the same time, it would be simple for the Mammoths to blow his icy mist aside.
Despite his desire to make use of a stealth skill of unknown tier, he made no progress at using a skill that wasn¡¯t his own. He was certain it wasn¡¯t currently active and was relieved to find out that Waning Presence was still working and even benefited from the shared skill.
After he was satisfied with his experiments, he climbed back out to check the time. He was getting good at estimating the time based on solar or lunar positioning.
It was deep into the night when he climbed out. He spent a lot more time than he expected.
He made sure to get into the right state of mind before he imbued five of his buried Glacial Models. They were using ice shovels to dig a path elsewhere to a better position and act as bait. He had to be careful with his instructions as they would be out of his range of control when he carried out his escape.
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¡°Another cup of tea I guess. Maybe some toast.¡± Ebony took out a cast iron skillet and made a portable stove on a conjured plate of ice. He couldn¡¯t be bothered to find wood and the melting of ice took so little mana he could barely notice.
He had bread, butter and cheese but it was harder to heat his skillet than he assumed. He was lucky Ning Xin was so particular that the quality of the cast iron skillet was pretty good or it wouldn¡¯t have liked the drastic temperature change.
Ultimately, he was proud of the grilled cheese toast he made. He didn¡¯t have a good influence and toast wasn¡¯t enough so he fried up some bacon and sausages. It went well with the salad and his chef¡¯s new salad dressing was sour and refreshing.
His breath frosted over his toast and his tea almost froze within seconds but he ignored that and enjoyed his meal in peace. He recovered the vast expenditure for making five fully compressed Glacial Models quickly but not before the sun rose.
By then, he pretty much confirmed that they didn¡¯t like to move and squander energy.
¡°Come on, time for a morning run.¡± He acted as their alarm clock and used sound magic to get his voice across the entire mountain range.
Ebony gave those sleeping Berg Mammoths a Tremor Stomp on their ice caps as he Flickered around and dashed off towards the sea again. If he imbued his Glacial Models correctly, they should follow after him and attract attention when he chooses to slip away. Five was not many compared to how many Mammoths there were but these energy-saving creatures won¡¯t split up at all.
It was inefficient when one took into account their habits but he couldn¡¯t be bothered to point that out. It was either their leaders¡¯ orders or just in their nature to stay as a pack. Prioritised above energy conservation.
He gave them some fanfare to attract the leaders and show them that he had value by filling the skies with decompressed flaming maple leaves. He practised forming maple leaves instead of plum petals and blossoms the night before. It was easier and less complicated and he didn¡¯t put much effort into editing it since he doubted the Mammoths cared about the shape.
They fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Perhaps his obedience for the past two nights made them think he gave in. The Berg Mammoths didn¡¯t use aggressive tactics anymore and simply sucked in the burning leaves through their trunks as they grazed after him. He eased off his speed and hurried when he saw that, he could use the burst of speed and energy to slip away later on.
He allowed a tunnel of gravity to drag him as he tossed out the thinnest flaming leaves he could to feed as many of them as possible. They even began to tussle their trunks against each other to snatch the treat up.
Although it was obvious they were dissatisfied with the thin mana and the lack of supply, they didn¡¯t attack him. Even with all his regeneration, he could barely feed a few of them. He wasn¡¯t desperate or urgent enough to dip into his mana pool for such an easy job.
His conjuration speed left much to be desired despite the ease of conjuring the bait. Tens of thousands of leaves could be vacuumed with a single deep breath. He had no choice but to spread it out as much as he could to give other Mammoths a chance.
¡®Hmm, if this is their intelligence level is it possible to tame them?¡¯ Ebony quickly recalled the power of numbers that the Troll Tamer had.
¡®I¡¯ll think about it again when I can overpower the biggest Berg Mammoth.¡¯ He put the thought aside temporarily. He had no such experience and wasn¡¯t particularly well-versed in taming or domesticating animals. The biggest problem was the two leaders but there were plenty of issues to tackle if he wanted to tame a creature.
Ebony liked his chances. All thanks to the fact that he had what they wanted and they were reluctant to kill him. Or so it appeared to him.
He casually led them north. It was the most leisure he had been in this region of the Glades. Since he was constantly chaperoned by multiple layers of bodyguards that stayed ahead of him. He didn¡¯t see a single creature and guessed that the reason the Glades had patches of barren icelands was that it was once used as a bed for the family of Berg Mammoths.
These areas of wastelands seemed huge to him before but not anymore. The continent of Elva kept getting smaller for him. It was hard for him to believe that people took months and maybe even years to travel from one end to another.
He felt like he could do a marathon and go from one end to the other in under three weeks if no monsters or magical atmosphere were interrupting his run. Four weeks was a better estimate since he couldn¡¯t use Phantom¡¯s Flicker for two weeks straight. His stamina regeneration also starts to taper off after a week of intense physical activity and drops drastically after ten days. Although, ten days had been his previous data set. It might have changed slightly after his Physique refinement.
Sadly, people and mounts were lazy. They only walked or marched quick when they were travelling from one town or city to another.
¡°What if we get attacked when we¡¯re tired?¡± They all say.
The only people who were like him in this regard were the Runners. They delivered parcels on the double. When he was walking around in Tidal, he saw them zipping through the streets and roads at admirable speeds. Getting tossed into prison and walking out after didn¡¯t impress him as much as the Runners.
Having read a few history books, he knew that Navin taking over as the King made massive changes for the Empire as a whole but it was a bit disappointing he couldn¡¯t or didn¡¯t do anything to some nobles. He was taught not to trust history books the most so he never put much faith in the information found in history books. They were useful as reference but how so, he never found out.
¡®Then again, I did send that guy flying into a building¡¡¯ Ebony recalled that he fell into a trance and felt bad for hurting that noble. He didn¡¯t ponder on that any longer since he couldn¡¯t even remember that noble house¡¯s name. He probably never even heard of their name if he forgot about it.
The thinning of ambient mana alerted him that he was getting nearer. His call with Ning Xin got cut off and relinked a few times. ¡°What¡¯s that noise?¡± He stayed still and tried to maintain a stable connection when he heard flesh tearing and screams.
¡°The kobolds are getting attacked. Let me see.¡± She went silent for a few seconds, ¡°ah, it''s a pair of elks. Call me once you get somewhere safe.¡± He was almost deafened from the shockwaves that she transmitted over before the link cut off.
They were already prepared for an unstable call so it wasn¡¯t that hard to guess that he wasn¡¯t in a safe location. The Berg Mammoths seemed to agree. Ahead of him were the pyramidal Mammoths who blocked the horizon. Completely denying him from going further.
He was a bit uncomfortable that so many of them kept ahead of him at all times. Even taking into account he was just floating at a brisk pace. Size has its perks.
Just then, an explosion of flames burst out within their back ranks at multiple points. The Berg Mammoths had been so focused on eating his bait and forming a wall that they didn¡¯t prepare a response against his bombs. Passing it onto his Models had been the right idea. He Flickered and transited into an armoured robe of translucency.
His Models weren¡¯t expert diggers and didn¡¯t carve an entire path behind them so he had to stay above ground. They simply hid underground until he baited the Mammoths away and followed them from a distance. He rather hide from sight using their large bodies than stay high in the sky with nothing blocking him out of sight.
Ebony almost couldn¡¯t believe how easy it was to break free from their encirclement. A lot of them pushed ahead to build the pyramidal wall and left their back ranks emptier.
¡®Holy¡¡¯ He reached their rear with few Mammoths around and had his Flicker fail as his ankles buckled. He caught his fall with his hands but he was forced in that position, unable to straighten his back.
¡®Is it some form of revenge when I said they had weak regeneration.¡¯ He glanced around but none of the Mammoths beelined towards him.
¡®They haven¡¯t spotted me so they flooded the area but it should be costly and they are dipping into their lifeforce.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t think the Berg Mammoth¡¯s regeneration exceeded that of the strongest Trolls. Not even the strongest aura of the Trolls could force his legs to buckle. Hence, he guessed they pulled out their life force to envelop the area to find him after suppressing him.
He was lucky he was used to heavy overflowing vitality from Ning Xin and the large groups of Trolls he faced not too long ago.
Ebony struggled to straighten his back while the Berg Mammoths swept their trunks gently across the surface of the ground. Flimsy attempts to Flicker away from their mine sweeping motion were made and he was so close to coming into contact with them several occurrences.
¡®Don¡¯t get tricked, there''s no weight pushing me down.¡¯ He told himself that. However, that simply wasn¡¯t true. Overflowing essence had a physical form. When it was thick enough, vitality or mana, both manifested physically. He just couldn¡¯t see vitality with his naked eye and neither could his mana sense perceive it.
They didn¡¯t figure out why multiple moving humanoids were releasing the same flames but they just enjoyed the fact that there was more food to share. Ebony just had to manoeuvre out of his predicament where a couple of dozen cadres of the Mammoth clan were sweeping for him.
Thanks to their large size and huge gap under their bodies, he managed to escape detection despite moving at speeds synonymous with a crawl. Each Flicker brought him less than a kilometre and a single step didn¡¯t even bring him out from under a Mammoth¡¯s belly. He still chose to go under them as it was the easiest way to stay hidden from the other¡¯s line of sight.
By the time they noticed something wasn¡¯t quite right with their food supplier, he had long gone out of the mountain range.
Chapter 249: Severed Ghost
¡°How¡¯s it going over there?¡± Ebony¡¯s callstone reconnected. He stared at his worn and brittle Myriad Bracelet. Plainston didn¡¯t have anything stronger. Even brand-new ones would be more fragile than his current worn bracelet.
¡®Berg Mammoth¡¯s tusk should be durable and resistant to ice. I should keep some and ask a bracelet smith if incorporating it would help.¡¯ He knew it was not necessary since the Myriad Bracelets were made to be highly resistant to most forms of magic or mana itself to be specific. Mana could only travel through the crafted paths within that linked to the slots for callstones, mana ores or other special crystals with embedded functions like the obfuscation jewel.
In any case, they had two tusks that extended to the skies and were thicker than most trees. He doubted the gluttonous one could grind it all down or take much of it to be ingredients.
¡°The Kobolds that watched the duel earlier are mostly wiped out. The remaining survivors and camps are busy nursing their wounds. The Elks ate their fill and left. I got injured. Unbelievable, they are also Master ranked. I can see how just a pair of them could cause Arcta so much trouble. They stole part of the Mammoth¡¯s corpse. Those weasels, they took a whole drumlet! Right up to the thigh!¡±
Ebony quietly listened to her report. The Elks might be even more of a menace than the Berg Mammoths. He could somewhat guess the Elks came because of the Mammoth corpse. He only wondered if they cut the ¡®drumlet¡¯ off or if it was after she processed the colossus. He leaned towards them cutting it off. There wasn¡¯t enough time for her to drain the Mammoth dry and she must have been in the process of cutting it apart. Maybe she cut the drumlets already, making it easy for the Elks to walk away with one.
¡°How¡¯s your injury?¡± She didn¡¯t sound in pain and he didn¡¯t think to ask what kind of injury she sustained.
¡°Healing. Please sew up my shirt for me later, there¡¯s a hole in it.¡±
¡°Alright. I should arrive around noon tomorrow. Take care and eat up,¡± rather than rest, it was obvious eating would do her more good.
¡°Hurry up, I¡¯ll wait for you before trying out elk meat.¡± She hinted that the Elks didn¡¯t walk away without trouble. She either killed one or sliced off enough to taste. Ebony heard that Elks travelled in pairs and they also saw another pair before. However, the Mammoth corpse may have attracted more than a few couples. Ning Xin might have scored a complete Elk.
¡°Yes ma¡¯am.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t like you calling me that.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll be back soon, Xin.¡±
¡°That¡¯s better.¡±
They stopped chatting even though their callstone were still linked up and consuming mana.
¡®How do I edit gravity magic further¡I¡¯m at my wit''s end with sound and gravity. Talent huh¡¡¯ Ebony knew he had an easy time with ice magic and most physical skills. People of this world would attribute it to natural talent and what was simply inherited through genes.
He had guessed that his proficiency with ice magic came from his father and his physical abilities from his mother. With just a tiny twist and practice, he ¡®created¡¯ skills that easily evolved and mutated from tier 1 to 3. Even 4.
What about gravity and sound?
He picked up sound just because he wanted to experiment with non-elemental mana. As for gravity, it was the element that he had the next highest affinity with. After that, it was lightning affinity. The rest of the elements didn¡¯t allow his mana to control them and stopped him from picking up the lowest tier of manipulation from them.
As for gravity, it was much easier than sound magic to him. This led him to believe one of his parents also used gravity magic and he had a hunch it was his mother from the conditioning skill book he got a sneak peek at.
Regardless, both seemed to be limited to tier 2 skills. He ran out of the ideas and capabilities to make both magic do what they do but better. Except for the latest sound spell, Pseudo-imitation roar. The redundancy in naming was rubbing it in that it could hardly be called a copy of the unknown roar.
His head throbbed once again when he tried to recall the situation where he heard the roar. The vague figure of a tall masked man kept slipping away from his mind as the roar that came after disrupted his mental state. No matter, he was able to remember what he needed to. The roar which was supposed to cause soul damage resurfaced.
¡®I must have overused it against those misty silhouettes. They didn¡¯t seem badly affected. Is the soul damage I did really weak or do they have strong souls? Can souls be trained?¡¯ Ebony liked to think they had strong souls and that souls could be trained but he thought it was more likely that his attack was weak. Since he didn¡¯t feel any pain after casting it so many times and it was supposed to hurt himself.
To begin with, the skill scales of Vitality, Endurance and Wisdom. None of which were power-based like Strength and Intelligence. Even with a high base percentage, he doubted they had a strong effect when it came to dealing damage.
He didn¡¯t have enough tests to determine the skill scales of his base stats or his resource pool. The difference it made was that his resource pools had skills to strengthen or expand them. Sadly, he had no free stat points to mess around with.
The route back was peaceful. The fresh path flattened out by a walking mountain range helped to dissuade other monsters from getting near.
He hoped his Glacial Models hadn''t been destroyed yet. If they were functioning as he hoped they should be leading the Mammoths on a wild goose chase.
Every minute counted and he still needed almost a full day of travelling at his top speed to get back to the maple forest. He was fully planning on going on the same bait trip if they came back. It depended on how much energy they wanted to conserve and also how desperately they wanted to take a bite of Ful.
Gen was taken out of the picture. He wouldn¡¯t rely on an unknown variable as he wasn¡¯t sure how long the turtle would take to wake up.
The burning forest entered his sights again but there was one big difference.
The trees weren¡¯t just combusting ice on their leaves.
Dark red flames circled the maple forest.
¡°What¡¯s the fire burning on?¡± He didn¡¯t panic since the trees were unharmed. The hot flames were a distance away from the maple trees. There was no way Ning Xin had enough mana to sustain a ring of flames that were taller than the trees and circled the whole forest.
Ebony Flickered through the flames without any trouble.
¡°I¡¯m back.¡± He greeted the chef who was making kebabs.
¡°Here!¡± A plate full of kebabs was shoved into his hands.
¡°How is that fire burning?¡±
¡°Ful¡¯s dried leaves. Dipped in mammoth fat. It just keeps burning, I didn¡¯t think the leaves would last so long.¡±
¡°Ha! I rode on a Phoenix that ate suns for breakfast, do you think my leaves can be burned so easily?¡± The tree spirit had some spunk in its voice.
¡°It helped to get rid of the smellier fat and nothing attacked us since I started the fire..¡± Ning Xin commented.
The good thing about fire magic was that it didn¡¯t require a fire mage to keep it going. Traditional fuel or anything flammable would work to feed the fire.
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¡°Ah.¡± Ebony muttered.
Ning Xin seemed to have caught onto the change in his calm and stopped chowing down for a second. She looked like a hamster with its cheeks full of sunflower seeds.
¡°Why don¡¯t you try to change your fire to be able to burn without oxygen?¡± He wasn¡¯t sure what she had in plan for her next fortifications but they were already preparing for their evolutions.
She swallowed the mammoth kebab loudly but stayed silent.
¡°I¡¯m not sure how that would work.¡±
¡°I made ice more resistant to heat. Besides, oxygen isn¡¯t needed for all fires. My flames burn fine, with or without oxygen.¡±
¡°You feed them with mana.¡±
¡°Point is, if they caught onto something and I stopped supplying mana it would still burn even if one took away oxygen. But normal fires don¡¯t. Your extra hot flames can still be sniffed out by a wind mage. I knew an air and fire mage that could rip oxygen or air away and snuff out flames. If your flames can support themselves without oxygen, that''s one less weakness.¡±
¡°I can use wind magic.¡±
¡°At a cost. Mana and magic isn¡¯t your strong point. A superior wind mage could suppress that ability and with one move, stop both your wind and fire magic.¡± He did not doubt that even in the same level range, there were better wind mages.
She barely even uses wind magic other than to reduce wind resistance, sharpen her blade, and speed herself up. Maybe a few fire stabs are propelled by wind and empowered by lightning but she rarely used that on him because she knows it will miss and be a waste of her mana.
¡°That sounds feasible. I¡¯ll try, but how will I know if it can burn without oxygen? I can¡¯t pull out oxygen from the air.¡±
¡°I know. One of the first few runes I learned is to generate air and even just oxygen. I¡¯ll create a few vacuum containers for you.¡± When he first learned how flexible runes were, he immediately aimed to create water and air. To be specific, converting mana to water and air with the help of a runic formula.
In the same fashion, he also knew how to absorb water and air out of a container. He could have recreated his lungs with a runic formula moulded on as well but he decided against it since it was not worth it. Changing his Physique took too much energy and he wasn¡¯t sure he could find something strong enough when he wanted to change his weak and inefficient rune formula.
Like Kong Jing warned, he would limit himself. It also came with a cost of consistent mana consumption. He didn¡¯t need much air to begin with. Casting a random sphere of ice within his lungs with the runes moulded on would solve the problem. Trapping air bubbles within his lungs was just an additional precaution in case mana was syphoned out of him.
¡®Syphoned? Consumed¡ got it. My flames are good at digging and seeping, can I make them burn on the target''s mana instead?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know why he had these fun ideas all of a sudden.
The topaz golems and homunculi had topaz mana that broke down other mana. The corrosion cloud the Trolls employed consumed all matter that came into contact. Flames burned on fuel. Couldn¡¯t he make his flames burn on his target¡¯s mana instead of his own?
¡®Then again, that would only work if my target is enveloped in mana or is a mana being like myself¡wait, it should work as long as they enhance themselves with mana. At a higher level, warriors and mages all enhance their bodies with mana. It could work, I have a direction now.¡¯
Ebony helped with making more refrigerators for the mountain of flesh that¡¯s been packed and wrapped in special paper. Even their expanded bag space wasn¡¯t enough so they would be eating mammoth meat for the next few months. Only bones and tusks were kept in their bags. The rest was packed up and stored underground.
To carry the weight of their bodies, the Berg Mammoth bones were extremely durable. Ebony made Ning Xin slice a few fragments the shape of the scales on her clothes. He wasn¡¯t exactly given spare materials to mend her clothes. Since she had multiple sets, having one that was not in the best condition wouldn¡¯t hurt.
She had been stabbed by a tiny shard of ice on her waist near her belly. The hole was bullet-sized. The ice melted almost immediately but the damage had been done. Her clothes and bodysuit really couldn¡¯t withstand damage and mostly helped to increase her evasion capabilities instead. That, and magical resistance.
Limitations of fabric and light armour such as robes were the same no matter how high quality the materials were. A thick metal armour of the same quality would still have the advantage in the amount of protection provided. Assuming they had the same level of craftsmanship and enchantment.
Scales were slightly tougher and didn¡¯t take away much mobility or add as much weight. Highly dependent on what kind of scale, just like metal. According to Roya, scales were more suitable for them because the material usually took upon its creature''s properties and chances are, they can contain mana better. It was also more receptive to rune engraving. Some metals could do the same but the Frost Elf wasn¡¯t familiar with metals.
¡®She cut a projectile but didn¡¯t expect it to break apart while still under the Elk¡¯s control. Then it slipped under her guard? Sounds about right.¡¯ Ebony casually reasoned.
Her fighting style was so aggressive it was almost a stretch to say that she had a ¡®guard.¡¯ The projectiles were probably extremely fast if she couldn¡¯t evade in time after parrying.
Ebony won the bet.
After a full day, no titanic shadows surrounded them. If they started chasing him while he was running back, they would have arrived hours after he came back.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t sleep for the past few days since he wasn¡¯t around so he took over patrol. She looked energetic enough thanks to how much she had been drinking and eating.
Massive creatures were the best for her. Without enough blood, she wouldn¡¯t get any stats because the blood portion of her Physique was quite weak in comparison. Even the Jetfins didn¡¯t give her much. The Gorpede was the only one that gave her a small sum of stats so far.
He chowed on kebab after kebab. Once his mana was refilled, he continued feeding the tree spirit. It was more mana-efficient than filling up his power source for the spirit to absorb.
¡°How do the trees grow to a higher quality? Do they level?¡± Ebony asked. The entire forest was within range of the tree spirit who could also talk by vibrating mana.
¡°Time and environment. The Worldcore has grown and the potential of my half-descendants should allow them to reach Ancient with enough time. But they¡¯ll take far longer than we took. The mana and ice mana density and purity here is much lower than our home world.¡±
¡°Purity?¡±
¡°Just like mana ores. The highest rank an Ancient Worldcore can produce is Ancient mana ore. It''s not just a matter of compression or density. The difference is similar to that of a Journeyman¡¯s mana and a Master. Take your own as an example. Even at the same density and Intelligence stat, your spells after you evolved could overpower the same spell produced before you evolved. The difference might be miniscule from Journeyman to Master but it''s there all the same.¡±
Ebony was already aware since he experimented with runic spells that draw energy from a different rarity of mana ores. He actually wanted more information about Ful¡¯s homeworld. A Saint¡¯s personal world.
It wasn¡¯t winter and many of Hoarfrost Glade¡¯s horrors should be hibernating but they decided to hunt a treasure now that its guardian was asleep.
The Berg Mammoths were the closest with the worst perception.
The Elks were satisfied with Mammoth meat. Either vegetables and tree bark weren¡¯t part of their diet or they didn¡¯t want to offend Gen. Or they simply didn¡¯t know the trees here were so valuable. The forest should have been hidden year round so the low-level Elks might not even have known about this tiny little maple forest.
¡°That¡¯s rare.¡± Ful voiced out.
A floating blob went through the burning flames while turning its head left and right to scan the maple forest.
[Ghost of Unending Chill Lvl ???]
¡°Don¡¯t move, Ebony. I¡¯ll deal with that.¡±
The floating ghost was light blue in colour and looked like a mass of gas with a round head and two short limbs where arms were supposed to be. It didn¡¯t have any legs or facial features. Its body occasionally sparked with light as if it had veins and energy pulsing through itself.
White flames burst from under its floating body and it screeched like a banshee. As if it could feel pain. The ghost panicked and enlarged while flailing its two arms around to get rid of the flames.
Ebony quickly Flickered to the other end of the forest. The ghost¡¯s flailing was blindingly fast and it was already translucent to begin with. He didn¡¯t feel safe as the ghost ballooned in size and swallowed a portion of the forest.
It flew away the next minute after its futile struggle.
The frozen trees had the white flames reabsorbed by Ful.
¡°That was good. I managed to eat half of its accumulated energy. It¡¯s too bad that it''s less effective than Gen¡¯s but at least we recouped the losses of the past few days.¡±
¡°Are ghosts considered spirits? Do spirits just absorb each other?¡±
¡°They are one of the numerous types of spirits. This particular species has a history with us. A Grandmaster of its species can¡¯t travel between the Netherrealm and ours so it¡¯s pretty much stuck here. Its ancestor or perhaps the main body came here in the past and saw us thinking we were good prey. After Rue chewed three-quarters of its ¡®body¡¯ it ran back home. Its spirit body scattered into small fragments. After a few centuries, these descendants began popping up here and there.¡±
¡°Right.¡± Ebony pondered on how ghosts propagated.
¡°Yeah, a Saint¡¯s essence is quite delectable.¡± Ful casually added on.
¡°...Right.¡± He was surprised by how similar the comment was to what Ning Xin would say.
¡°Are you guys talking about food? Leave me some!¡± Ning Xin¡¯s voice came out from his callstone. Ful personally made it possible for the mental link to be uninterrupted from the underground dome.
Chapter 250: Mounting Duress
The post-human was utterly disappointed to find out that she had no feasible method of eating intangible energy. The ghost didn¡¯t even have a life force as it was also a type of undead. Their ¡®lives¡¯ were held together by some other abstract energy.
Ning Xin felt at ease but annoyed.
Something about the giant turtle and tree plus the turtle family made her feel comfortable around. It was slightly different from the comfort that being around Ebony gave her. As for being annoyed, the tree spirit¡¯s attitude rubbed her the wrong way.
These weren¡¯t her emotions but at the same time, they were. She inherited the power and she accepted the consequences. She recalled a story she was told when she was young. A story about a young girl and an orange-feathered bird the size of an eight-year-old human. She was not the young girl in question as she had never met an orange bird. Not including those that made it onto her plate.
The story stuck and might have been why a feather appeared on her mask. The weird white rock she had worn around her neck since her birth was taken away when she was a month away from turning fifteen and returned as her current mask. She was unaware of who made their masks but the feather felt natural. It wasn¡¯t just a painted print.
She asked to look through Ebony¡¯s only belongings brought into this world but nothing looked remotely similar. That was the only part that felt off if he was part Xeng. Men had masks too, they just didn¡¯t have to wear them as religiously. It was great against mental and soul attacks so it was a pity he didn¡¯t have anything on him.
¡®Unless¡maybe she had her ways of getting that.¡¯ Ning Xin eyed the rings Ebony wore around his neck. She would¡¯ve forgotten he had that on all the time if it wasn¡¯t for the swimming lessons. Her cheeky cousin made it such that it was easy to miss. As if there was some mental suggestion to overlook the fact that he had a necklace on.
A suggestion so strong that she had a feeling Ebony didn¡¯t know he was wearing a necklace. He never mentioned anything about the necklace and at some point, she was certain that he lost all perception of it.
After all, did he think some heating would keep her alive after her heart got stabbed?
¡®Maybe he knows but just doesn¡¯t bother with it? Ahh, whatever it''s so hard to tell.¡¯
Ning Xin actually forgot about it until they were on the run and she sensed something calling her. She gained a sudden assurance that she wouldn¡¯t die then.
To be fair, she wasn¡¯t sure what the rings or necklace did. Likely, there wasn¡¯t any healing magic but something more complex. She had an inkling as to what it may be but had no proof. If she was right, the necklace would either teleport onto her in future or her Sister Jing would come and sneakily swap the wearer around without either of them noticing.
Despite how little Kong Jing showed care, she didn¡¯t leave them without good presents.
The thing about her craft was that they usually grew stronger over time. Be it her swords or Ebony¡¯s. But it had a limit that was the original material.
She didn¡¯t like it but sooner or later, her swords would have to be reforged. Her mindset changed a little. It was not such a bad thing, especially now that her swords had budding spirits. It would be the same partner she knew. She saw it as refining her physique, her swords would have to go through something similar.
As for their armour, she couldn¡¯t exactly expect Rare fabric to withstand a King tamer or Jetfin¡¯s attacks. The person Ebony referred to as Mr Kidnapper was the wild one to be able to tear her bodysuit while the Troll couldn¡¯t pierce through. The only reason she could come up with was that the Tamer had lower physical stats than her warrior counterparts.
It was her fault for having a comparatively fragile body.
¡°Can I have some poached pyrulas?¡± Ebony requested.
It was a rare occurrence for him to ask for a dessert and she obliged.
She hummed while peeling the pyrulas in her apron. It was a new apron Roya made for her and it fit comfortably with the right number of pockets.
Ebony¡¯s carefree attitude had rubbed off her. No matter how much she liked to fight, she also loved the days when they simply lay around in front of a memory light screen and snacked until dinner. They were in danger at times but she might never have felt more relaxed right here, under a majestic tree that burned.
It felt like she was staying at home while Ebony went to work and patrolled the perimeters above. Times were hard because they weren¡¯t in an environment that they should be in but they had each other.
¡®Pahh, I¡¯m hallucinating. My head¡¯s turning into mush. It''s not my fault, it¡¯s Mallory¡¯s! The weak prickly feeling I¡¯m sensing from him makes me feel so-so..I don¡¯t know.¡¯ Ning Xin hated how easily irritable she was.
It was her refined Physique. Her Intuition and sensation for emotions had been heightening as the days passed. It seemed like one of the Solar Blooded Phoenix¡¯s greatest strengths was its intuition or basic instincts. Or, that was simply one of the prominent effects that remained in the heartblood essence without being greatly weakened by its death.
She was annoying herself. She liked sensing the prickly feeling from Ebony and it made her do things she never thought she would do. Like wearing something so revealing. She would never tell him that her choice of swimwear was because she picked up the most interest from him when he was spreading the clothes out for her to choose from.
The cheesy stuff aside, her heightened Intuition was making her battle sense rise to combat Ebony¡¯s and it was massive. Sure, it was gradual but she had a feeling he wasn¡¯t able to twist her power against herself as often.
Then, there was flight. She was certain that by the time she was a Grandmaster, she might not necessarily be faster on the ground than in the air. If she placed significant daily training time into aerial combat, it wasn¡¯t a stretch to say that she saw herself being almost half as competent in the air as on the ground.
Although, Ebony might still have the upper hand in the air. His three-dimensional movement was too illusive and gravity was quite hard to counter in the air. Wings didn¡¯t allow her as much freedom of motion as he did with his footwork and conjured platforms. Her Blood Haloes helped but in the air, his domain just gained a bigger advantage for himself.
It was almost unfair how well-rounded he was because he could move in the exact same manner even if he was tossed into the water. After observing his footwork for the past weeks, she realised it just wasn¡¯t suited for her. She already had movement skills and the training regime up to tier 4. However, she doubted she could get it to that tier before her evolution.
She lacked control over stamina.
Ebony claimed to have touched upon it with his Fluid Blitz but she saw it as nothing but utilising stronger emotions to bring out more strength. In his case, he might have substituted emotions with his strong mental capacity to imitate emotions. Technically, it could be considered a berserk skill and her old Core Skill might have fallen under the same category.
At least her current tier 3 Compounded Spring Sprint was getting refined at a steady pace. She mutated it by substituting the tier 4¡¯s stamina usage for mana. Imagining a metal spring in her step, she guided mana to the balls of her feet, ankles and calves. It worked but the constant mana expenditure wasn¡¯t that friendly to her. Hence, she left as a backup boost for evasive manoeuvres.
Vitality just didn¡¯t give her any speed boost. Not when her whole body was saturated with vitality running through her in her enhanced state.
The poached pyrulas were ready and she took them up with Sei. The cordial turtle usually complained about Ton with soft growls. The turtles were hundreds of times more expressive than Ebony. They were learning how to vibrate mana but they had a very hard time learning the language.
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She had been teaching Sei basic phrases recently. The three hatchlings might have been one of the rare cases where young creatures weren¡¯t afraid of her. Although they really hated the heat, they warmed up to her fairly quickly.
¡®Because I don¡¯t see them as food? Probably.¡¯
¡°Is it safe up there?¡±
¡°At the moment.¡±
¡°Alright, the kids are coming up to eat.¡± Ning Xin grabbed the little ones. She held one under each arm and had the last one between her legs as she sat on Sei. According to Ebony, they barely grew even though a few years had passed.
She already packed the dozen poached pyrulas to go. It was tea time for him so she was prepared to brew tea again.
They surfaced right beside Ebony who was relaxing with a few hands giving his back a massage. She remembered the massage she got. She was not as clueless as to why he didn¡¯t give her another now.
He wasn¡¯t lazing around as more Glacial Models were patrolling under his manual control.
He made a table for them with his eyes closed, probably training his ability to obtain more information from his sculptures. It would be amazing if he was able to share sight with it but ice had no such ability. The information he obtained from them was simply an extension of his mana sense. By imbuing Will into them to use Mental Map in real time, he would take that information through his mental link with them.
There was an obvious lag time and the surrounding information he would receive was not very accurate but it was a work in progress. It took a lot of his concentration to do it for one ice sculpture and to understand multiple without confusing himself must be taking a lot of mental effort. She didn¡¯t think she would ever be able to do that.
He put a halt to his perception training and came over to take the little one away from her. The one in between her legs was carried and planted onto a trunk. Their beak-like jaws tried to pierce the bark but they were too soft. Chomping all the same, they exercised their jaw muscles and hardened their beaks.
To be fair, these maple trees are extremely impressive and they were biting on Uncommon ranked trees. These maple trees didn¡¯t even budge from the ground despite her high-speed movement within their midst. After observing the turtles eat, she could tell that the Amur Maples had far tougher bark than their internals. But that was only in relation to its bark.
If Sister Jing was here she would¡¯ve uprooted the forest except for a few that would be left for future growth.
If normal trees in the world were just like animals, they simply grew as long as their basic needs were met. Plants tend to be affected by ambient mana more than animals and would absorb residues even without ¡®talent¡¯. Trees that take in more ambient essence than normal could be plant-type monsters.
These Amur Maples were absorbing ice elemental mana and purifying it within their ¡®bodies¡¯ before excreting excess but ¡®clean¡¯ energy. To put it into perspective, they were trees that naturally refined their physiques ever since they grew leaves just by living.
Ebony just assumed they were amazing trees but she thought they were a treasure that wars would be fought over. If Ful was telling the truth, another person who drank his or her sap also had a physique with just a sip. Ebony, for reasons none of them were aware of, got its power of frostblaze. Even without that, there was immense value in this forest.
¡®That Life Grafter guy isn¡¯t just any old Saint.¡¯ She thought that as if there were ordinary Saints.
To get a better understanding of the Solar-Blooded Phoenix, she had been listening to the tree spirit reminisce. The story about their father or creator was clearly biased so she didn¡¯t believe every word. The Life Grafter was not a fighter but could create unique creatures as he wished.
Her worldview and knowledge base was not wide. She didn¡¯t know much about the outside world, much less about the abilities of Saints.
Back to the trees and the turtle she was holding onto. The Amur Maples didn¡¯t have levels and they didn¡¯t have the capacity to think. They did not hold a spirit. They were just trees in every sense. Thousands of years of absorbing ice mana and strengthening themselves were not for show.
She once took a piece of bark that broke off after Sei dug in and ate. The bark wasn¡¯t fireproof but they were harder to burn than most trees. It eased her worries of accidentally setting them aflame. As for their toughness, it was off the charts. Without enhancing herself, she couldn¡¯t even break an Uncommon piece of bark. Although they would crumble under her full might, the higher rarity and older trees would be able to withstand her power for a period of time.
The turtles would patch the trees up with ice and choose a different tree every day. She didn¡¯t know how long the turtles allowed the trees to rest before they would feed off it again but the forest was sufficient for 2 large turtles and 3 hatchlings. Gen rarely ate and fed off monsters when they travelled. He also drank off the best and oldest of the Amur Maples excluding Ful.
There were only 4 Epic-ranked Frostblaze Amur Maple. They have been growing since Gen¡¯s grandparents were in charge of the forest. The young seedlings only started growing near the end of his grandparents'' care. Gen¡¯s parents were at the start of the downward trend as they were weak. Then, Hoarfrost Glade¡¯s monsters were so weak they couldn¡¯t grow.
The exponential speed at which the Glades got more dangerous outpaced his parents¡¯ growth as they stayed around their forest and the largest turtle which Ebony called progeniturtle was dead by then. They had no choice but to stay and feed Ful. Gen roamed the Glades in that period, he had to grow strong enough to support Ful by himself before both his parents died of old age.
Gen managed to find a wife during this period but his wife was extremely lacking in ¡®talent¡¯ and already died of old age. They had a son and daughter who had kids with each other? The turtles seemed to think it was normal and Ning Xin had no reason to think otherwise. The progeniturtle was the only one of its race and Gen was the only one in his generation but the others were all part of the same family.
They lived in peace for some time.
Gen¡¯s parents passed away and he was stuck under the dome.
A human had the chance and luck of stumbling near the forest. He allowed some of these people in under Ful¡¯s recommendation. If things continued, they would just die out.
The humans who succeeded in getting the Ice Crystal Physique were on good terms with them. After Gen sliced off her arm to save her from freezing to death, she went back to heal and returned in a decade or so with a complete body.
Sei and Ton grew up a little, they were placed under Gen¡¯s care. Gen¡¯s son and daughter were invited to travel deeper into the Glades together. By then, Gen hadn¡¯t travelled for over a thousand years and didn¡¯t know that the Glades would develop so fast.
His son, daughter and the human who got a physique from drinking sap like Ebony never returned to this day. As for how long ago their disappearance was, the spirit didn¡¯t share.
In Gen¡¯s words, his children also didn¡¯t have much talent but he wasn¡¯t able to hide his grief and worry. Ning Xin was glad, unlike the tree spirit, she sensed hope from Gen. As for the annoying tree spirit, it recently gained some optimism and shed its negative words a little.
Talking about the old days with her might have reignited something within the spirit. Ebony¡¯s increasing use of Frostblaze and her presence stirred its emotions up. Or whatever emotional equivalent a spirit had.
Ning Xin knew that the fate of the Amur forest and the turtles was in the midst of changing. All of it laid on Gen. That¡monster was a different beast altogether. All her hunts and opponents didn¡¯t even come close and the only one who scared her more was the Blood Saintess who whisked her into another realm for no apparent reason.
Her Intuition alarmed her greatly. The turtle didn¡¯t care about her only because of Ebony. His presence was the only reason she didn¡¯t fear the turtle as much as she should. Every cell in her body screamed that she shouldn¡¯t pick a fight with the turtle. If she was honest, it felt like Gen would kill her regardless of her being related to Ebony in some manner. Not even the fact that his ancestor liked her would stop Gen.
She didn¡¯t know if she was overthinking it after being exposed to his essence and intent during their spars. One-sided target practice might be more accurate.
As a Grandmaster, Gen protected and hid a forest of this size against the Glades. There were Kings and even Emperors or in monster ranks, Ancient like Milly the guardian bear lurking around. Milly felt weak and Ning Xin couldn¡¯t tell if it was because of childbirth. The bear was being taken care of by the Lasils for a reason.
As a King?
Gen¡¯s words of reigning supreme did not seem arrogant to her in the least. He merely stated facts.
¡°Hurry along Sei.¡± Ebony¡¯s voice broke her out of her tea-brewing rumination. She might have spent too much time with Ebony. Tea brewing had become a time for her to ruminate on issues when the time could¡¯ve been better spent thinking of new recipes and dishes.
¡®Right, he can only reign supreme if we survive.¡¯
She moistened her lips with some water from her mask. Glad that she hadn''t plated the poached pyrulas with cream and honey.
¡°What¡¯s serving themselves onto the menu today?¡±
¡°Before you begin, I should let you know that the mammoths are on the way back.¡± The tree spirit reported as if it was none of its business.
¡°...I¡¯ll help you out for a bit before I bait them away again. You can have the pyrulas.¡±
¡°I should¡¯ve slept some more.¡± She knew they were in for a long fight. Gen¡¯s aura continued to weaken and an increasing number of creatures could sense this land of treasure and concentrated energy.
Ning Xin felt that their current situation was more of a war than the situation with the Trolls and Empire.
Their bodies exuded power as they leapt into action.
Chapter 251: Turtle King
Ning Xin watched as her support disappeared into the distance. Ful hid the forest under just in time but at a cost. It only had to do that till the Mammoths were away and it made things easier for her since there would be nothing that needed protection.
In the coming week, she slayed a few lvl 330 bears who looked oddly similar to Milly the guardian beast of the Frost Elves. Minus the glare of intelligence within their eyes. Quite a few monsters who came were around level 300 to 400. Yet, the most troublesome ones were those capable of suppressing her fire and blood magic with ice and snow.
For blood, the owl-like creatures would summon snow to absorb it. The monsters here weren¡¯t as rigid in tactics. They would sustain a stream of mana to force her blood there when she tried to melt its way out. As for her fire magic, it usually took a dozen combined efforts to completely suppress and shield themselves.
She parked these groups under Grade 3 Grandmasters. They could be dispatched in moments if they were alone. Those above 350 would take slightly longer but they didn¡¯t pose a large threat.
The ones she had trouble with were those that were seemingly lower level but faster and stronger than the rest.
The horses were the fastest opponents so far. The shifty reptiles that lived underground were not a problem if Ful took care of them but she didn¡¯t want it to waste its precious mana with Ebony having no confirmed return date. Gen¡¯s aura continued to weaken. His vast essence pool meant that he would still take some time. She could sense Vitality better but it wasn¡¯t common to see someone evolve.
The turtle originally hid within an igloo but it kept growing in size, so much that the igloo no longer expanded with it. If essence were to drop to less than 10%, Gen still had a long way to go. She wasn¡¯t exactly sure how far health dropped during evolution but she recalled mana and stamina were usually fully drained.
Within the week, the Amur forest had to resurface multiple times. Their trailer¡¯s power source with Ebony¡¯s mana was draining out quickly without the uninterrupted breathing of the Amur forest.
Unbeknownst to them, Gen must have chosen this area after lengthy considerations. It was dangerous but the ice mana density helped ease the pressure and reliance on Ebony. She wondered if they were able to sustain Ful if they just went deep enough but there weren¡¯t enough trees for that.
The most troublesome lot were Masters like the Elks. Except none were as amazing and mind-numbingly powerful as those Elks. They didn¡¯t have high stats which worked out well for her but they tend to have huge bursts of powers and immense control over mana or lifeforce. One or the other.
The other obvious difference these level 300 monsters had was that they also used their mana instead of ambient mana. They conjure spells with unique properties within their mana. Just like mages.
She assumed they were what Sister Jing would call Grade 4 Masters.
If their stats were any higher, she feared that she might not be able to handle more than one at the same time and victory would be hard fought.
On the eighth day, Ebony returned looking as fresh as usual. Gravity repulsion made him spotless while she was covered in dirt. She slept on the surface with Ton and Sei taking turns watching. If she was underground it would take too long to react. The more the tree spirit was asleep, the more mana it would conserve so she didn¡¯t depend on it to warn her of danger.
She didn''t want to tell him that the horses ganged up with a troublesome Grade 4 Master, a concentrated ball of snow life form that didn¡¯t have flesh to snap her arm. The snow creature spread all over the ground and had her flying up but one wrapped itself around the horses and sneaked up on her when she clashed with the horse.
Her soft fabric armour and bodysuit did nothing but bend flexibly along with her elbow in the other direction. She didn¡¯t have scaled armour on her arms that would reduce mobility and even those protecting her body wouldn¡¯t harden in response so they made no difference.
She immolated it before her elbow broke completely but it hurt to push it back. Unlike her old fully human self, her bones were regenerating. Healing from fractures wasn¡¯t uncommon but outright regenerating bones in real time was new. Not something she wanted to find out by experimentation but something she was glad to learn.
Another of these weird globs tried to suffocate her with its body but they were dreaming if they thought they could slip under her masks. Her ears were targeted but her high body temperature in combat mode made it hell for the weird creature. They didn¡¯t even like getting close to her. She was surprised enough when it got big enough to trap her.
The creatures in Hoarfrost Glades didn¡¯t just use their physical prowess to exert dominance, they used everything they had. The worst thing was that most of them had a very strong sense of self-preservation. They would split up and run away the moment they knew they didn¡¯t stand a chance and the forest wasn¡¯t around. Only those that moved in large groups cared less about their numbers.
She could only hunt and chase down one at a time, even with her speed there would be plenty who made it out with their lives. The snow creature could be melted down but she didn¡¯t know how to kill it before its body mass separated and camouflaged itself as¡snow. Her Appraise skill didn¡¯t work on them which made them the stealthiest killers the entire Glades offered.
Ning Xin had that opinion because the creatures¡¯ mana could slow down the movement of mana within her body. Technically, it should be able to freeze mana. Weakening body enhancement magic. Except it did nothing to her life force-based enhancement.
In any case, she knew Ebony was hiding some injuries under that robe and undisturbed facade.
With his perception, he could probably tell that she wasn¡¯t in peak condition either.
Yet they didn¡¯t say a word about their conditions.
¡°Go sleep.¡± Unlike her, he probably didn¡¯t catch a single wink of sleep. She had over 28 hours of sleep over the course of 8 days which was plenty.
They stayed in contact as much as possible but they weren¡¯t able to talk for more than ten minutes in total. He didn¡¯t exactly run off to a safer location.
¡°You said you wanted a shower, I can wait an hour or two.¡±
She did not hold back on the offer. Snow, ice and sweat might evaporate off her but she was feeling terribly sticky and uncomfortable. It wasn¡¯t as bad as not bathing for months and years on end but she did not appreciate that period of time. Her hair took the longest but she wasn¡¯t planning on spending over an hour on it like he suggested.
She warned him of the current dangers and frequent visitors.
The Glacial Models he left to help her were all gone and the ones he brought with him did not return either. They were tougher than before for sure but the monsters here played rough. It did not help that her fighting style meant they would melt over time just by being around. Ebony did not input Will to avoid heat. It was already impressive a sculpture could fight without its caster nearby, it couldn¡¯t take into account so many factors.
Ebony¡¯s physique change was far greater than her own. It seemed like he had been using the opportunity to get in tune.
He was still wafting off a great deal of mana so he might be in energy-saving mode and haven¡¯t got too deep into trying his newer spells.
¡®He¡¯s not exactly leaking mana but that weird calming aura is even stronger. After not using mana, I¡¯m starting to regenerate mana faster without any wait or lag. How much faster¡ugh, I don¡¯t want to count.¡¯ Ning Xin gave up on checking how much faster her mana regenerated just by being under the effects of his aura.
It felt like her hair got thicker and more luscious after her evolution for unknown reasons. In addition to her greater control over wind, her head was clean of dirt and dust. Her skin felt so smooth water was falling off her body faster. She hopped right out of the shower in under 15 minutes and started preparing a meal.
Although Ebony reported that he had the time and leeway to eat, she felt an instinctive urge to feed him. She did not know when exactly this urge came about but cooking for him made her love for cooking rise exponentially. It almost felt as good as making food for herself. Almost.
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Since she was about to take another shift, she felt that it was completely justified to have three times the serving that she was preparing for him. Her previous meal was seven hours ago but she hadn¡¯t been able to accumulate energy due to how intense and often the monster attacks had been.
Bear paw was on the menu.
Sure, out of all animals or monsters, bears were the one that he felt the most about and they personally knew an adorable little bear but neither of them would feel bad eating a bear. At least not her.
As for bear flesh, she was soaking it in different types of heavy-scented marinate from soy to chilli oil. She realised that she couldn¡¯t handle spice as well as Ebony. She wasn¡¯t sure if she should be shocked. His tastes for extremely sour and spicy food were unmatched and it wasn¡¯t just his expressionless face.
He enjoyed spicy and sour dishes beyond what she thought was delicious. Her recipes were adjusted to the point that she sometimes made separate servings.
¡®I need a bigger wok.¡¯ She had two woks but they weren¡¯t big enough for their current needs. She had more pots and pans than any one person needs.
She resurfaced to feed the man, she didn¡¯t forget another dozen poached pyrulas.
It might be her imagination but it felt easier to guess what he was feeling when he was eating. The delight she got when eating almost doubled compared to the meals she had the past week.
Before he had the chance to fall asleep, their visitors returned.
???
Ebony yawned.
It''s been almost two full months since Gen started his evolution process. 49 days to be specific.
They were hiding underground with the entire forest.
White maple leaves littered the ground as they fell off Ful.
Arguably, the invaders coming for a taste were far beyond what two of them could handle. Ton and Sei even stepped in to help but they weren¡¯t all that strong. Thankfully, they were beyond tough and could protect themselves without burdening either of them.
Ever since returning from his second bait trip with the less-than-intelligent Mammoths, he hadn¡¯t gotten any sleep.
The original majestic tree had less than half its leaves remaining and lost a lot of its lustre.
The silver lining was that it required less mana to keep the tree from going dry.
However, the rest of the Amur Maples were not used to running out of ice mana to absorb. Especially the Common and newborn Inferior-ranked trees and shrubs.
They have not surfaced for 5 days.
Ebony and Ning Xin couldn¡¯t do a thing if the tree spirit kept them in here.
¡°He¡¯s taking his own sweet time.¡± Gen had already gone over his estimate of a month.
Ebony couldn¡¯t feel a drop of mana in the shell that was over thirty metres in diameter and twenty five metres tall. He didn¡¯t know why but rather than pure size, the turtle¡¯s shell mostly increased in thickness. He estimated Gen¡¯s shell to be at least 3 metres thick. Thicker than a layer of the broken piece of shell from the progeniturtle.
If Ning Xin was right, Gen¡¯s life force was reaching near the bottom too.
The turtle should be waking up soon.
¡°And you¡¯re still denying sleep.¡±
¡°Not every day you get to see someone evolve.¡± Ebony countered, he hadn¡¯t been sitting around awake for no reason.
He observed Gen¡¯s evolution in real-time and the changes that happened to the turtle shell. It was educational.
He didn¡¯t keep any mana for himself so he couldn¡¯t experiment but he was patient.
The chef had been keeping herself busy by listening to energy infusion tips from a tree spirit. The Life Grafter cooked for himself and infusing energy into food to enhance their benefits was easy for them. The food that they were fed was also made by the Saint.
The Saint apparently imported food from another Saint-class chef for its creatures from time to time. Food that permanently increased even an Emperor''s stats and gave permanent rise to things like resistance existed. However, that often required rare ingredients and natural treasures.
Energy infusion wasn¡¯t the key point. Eating their own energy would do nothing. The technique was useless on normal ingredients with her current abilities.
The logic was to use her mana or maybe life force to tie and mix the energy already found in ingredients together to produce a greater effect or prevent it from getting lost in the process of cooking. It was basically alchemy.
Most ingredients they had on hand excluding their recent hunts were ingredients that ranged from Common to Uncommon rarity. Even if they were in Tidal, vegetables at a Rare-rank weren¡¯t something the average person ate daily.
As for meat, Rare-rank meat was the meat of Grandmaster monsters and was not in circulation in Plainston. However, it wasn¡¯t as hard to obtain compared to Rare-rank vegetables.
¡°Might as well move your hands, here!¡± Ning Xin dragged out barrel after barrel.
¡°What¡¯s this?¡± Ebony could smell its contents but he didn¡¯t know what she was getting at.
¡°Cream, I¡¯ve already skimmed the milk and warmed it up last night. We¡¯re out of butter.¡±
¡°And?¡±
¡°Churn some.¡±
¡°I will get paid in dumplings.¡± Rather than making a runic barrel that churned butter, Ebony thought it was a good idea to move his body and shook the barrels left and right.
She warned him to be careful not to break the barrel or slip the cream before going back to her cooking. The barrels were pretty durable and strong enough to handle some shaking with his unenhanced body.
He juggled the 4 barrels while practising his grip.
These days, mammoth meat is part of every meal. She was having a blast with dish experimentations. There was so much meat they wouldn¡¯t be able to finish in years. Their newly enlarged bags couldn¡¯t store a quarter of it. The meat and organs were currently packed in a huge ice box and a few pieces of the bones were lying within his bag and the trailer¡¯s cargo space.
One of the barrels almost slipped out of his grasp when he sensed a chill down his back.
¡®He¡¯s awake.¡¯ Ebony sensed a stream of mana filling up Gen¡¯s body. The steady stream kept accelerating and turned into a raging torrent within minutes but it felt like a drop in the ocean.
Gen¡¯s mana pool felt boundless. Ebony didn¡¯t know how big it was but he could estimate from the speed of mana the turtle was regenerating. He would like a skill for it. It would be quite useful to know how much mana an opponent has and how fast they are recovering.
¡°Sorry¡the soup¡¯s a lot oiler than I¡¯d hoped. I underestimated the amount of fat in the mammoth tail.¡±
He had asked for dumplings but the gluttonous one brought out a whole feast.
Ebony thought that Gen would wake up the moment the first drop of mana returned but the lazy turtle kept sleeping.
¡°Come under my branches.¡± Ful woke up and called them. It should¡¯ve been sleeping to conserve energy but now that Gen was awake it wasn¡¯t a big issue.
Ning Xin hastened her feasting instead of packing up. Ebony ignored her and picked the table up before gently lifting themselves off the ground. He had been in a constant state of slight overdraft for days and it was not too difficult to spare some. It wasn¡¯t necessary to sacrifice any amount of mana chassis.
¡°Is something about to happen?¡± Ebony recalled breaking a bed right after he woke up from evolution. He had calculated multiple times but the bed frame shouldn¡¯t have been flimsy enough to break from a few hundred kilograms of weight. Not to mention, he woke up with low mana. That meant he weighed a normal amount as nothing was yet compressed in his body.
Nothing happened to Ning Xin¡¯s room when she woke up but he had a feeling it was because Xienor¡¯s houses were just abnormal.
¡°Gen¡¯s previous waking caused quite a stir. His parents almost died staying in the vicinity.¡±
¡°Why don¡¯t we surface,¡± Ning Xin might have kept herself busy with cooking but she didn¡¯t feel any less suffocated by being trapped under an army of monsters.
¡°I know what you¡¯re thinking but there¡¯s no need. It¡¯s already snowing outside. The spell has weakened without Gen¡¯s maintenance.¡±
They witnessed little globs of snow pierce through their sky a moment later.
Ning Xin somehow gobbled up all the food on the table and they quickly huddled and found Ful¡¯s cave where it used to keep the heartblood essence.
She shivered and clenched her teeth in pain.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°The snow is hurting Ful and I¡¯m sensing her pain¡¡±
¡°That¡¯s¡troublesome for a side effect.¡±
¡°Wrap me up.¡±
He obliged and hugged her.
¡°I mean in your mana! It¡¯s calming.¡± It wouldn¡¯t hurt to overdraft more mana.
The tree spirit endured the snowfall in silence. It lasted a whole minute before Gen moved and shook its shell.
The toll it took on the girl surprised him. ¡®Has her senses gotten so extreme?¡¯
He also didn¡¯t underestimate how dangerous Gen¡¯s snow had become so he kept hugging Ning Xin as he fell asleep. Gen might need time right after waking up but he was pretty sure the turtle could reorient himself fast enough.
Chapter 252: Man and Turtle
Ebony woke up to the ringing of metal. He rose and walked out of the cave to see a red and blue flash. The wings of flames were dragged across the skies. The owner of the wings got whipped around and her struggles to resist were all but futile.
He didn¡¯t see any panic and assumed that Gen held back on his snow¡¯s pain property. As for watching her smash into the artificially hardened ground, he let it be. It was rare for her to be injured and she could learn a thing or two with this method.
It felt uncomfortable but he was already aware that he just didn¡¯t like seeing her hurt. He brushed it off with his common sense. Pain was how the body learned.
Everlasting Tranquillity - Achieving a state of everlasting tranquillity, breaking your state of mind is extremely difficult regardless of consciousness, increasing Mana and Stamina regeneration rate by 500% + 5.0% per level, Perception by 200% + 5.0% per level.
The refinement of his Core Skill had been a great help as its base went from 350% to 500%. That was equivalent to a 30-level increase. Skill levels were hard to come by but as his Core Skill, it progressed at an impressive speed. Currently, at level 590, he was just ten levels away from the doubling requirement.
Everlasting Tranquility must have been burning all his recent stress of letting Ful die to grow.
Ebony didn¡¯t feel a block. It felt as if the skill would ram through 600 without stopping. He couldn¡¯t deny that talent and genes were overbearing. Interacting with the soldiers and knights of the Imperial army allowed him to form a better grasp of what an average person¡¯s skill set and growth speed were like.
Those Captains and Commanders who were younger than the men under their command all had a common difference. It was that one had parents and maybe grandparents who were Grandmaster ranked and the others had Master parents.
The number of Grandmasters in the Capital was increasing by the day and the proportion was going out of whack within the past century.
He wasn¡¯t able to get their max level out of them but it wasn¡¯t hard to guess who had skills that have a greater level of soft capacity. For those underprivileged to catch up requires hard work, opportunity and possibly luck. They could get more Natural Potential but still have a lower maximum skill level than him.
Ebony, the Xeng, the Prince and the Princess were all genetically privileged.
The ¡®common¡¯ man couldn¡¯t easily achieve something many times their level to get Natural Potential and would die at a roadblock. It was another reason why people in the Capital were generally more skilled than the countryside.
Navin¡¯s invitation to centralise the Empire in one city would probably push the average level up. It might not even take another century before the average person could reach Grandmaster instead of Master.
The dungeons in Tidal had been undergoing controlled growth to a certain extent and they weren¡¯t lacking in spawned creatures.
If they made education compulsory it wasn¡¯t impossible to have high-level teachers, educators or researchers to speed up their students'' growth in some areas. Combat instructors could also pick up the relevant teaching skills be it a profession or even a generic skill.
Now that he had mana to spare again, Ebony started his sealing magic practice again.
He multitasked and experimented with gravity, sound and lightning at the same time.
To test his sealing mana to ice mana ratios, he simply poked his hand into the compressed liquid sphere and compared them with each other.
¡®Seal. So I have to imagine my mana stopping all movement within. I¡¯m¡kinda lazy. Can I just cheat and heavily infuse Will.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know if he wanted to waste time on sealing magic but having Gen¡¯s ability seemed really convenient. The ability to stop damage and hasten natural healing was something he desired.
He had one last empty Class Skill slot, if he were to incorporate ice it was possible to push it into a Class skill instead of a generic skill. It also felt fitting for a cryopreservation kind of skill to be part of an ice mage¡¯s repertoire.
He hoped his evolution wouldn¡¯t automatically decide on a Core Skill for him this time. At the same time, he wasn¡¯t sure if he wanted any of his current skills to be his next Core Skill. Maybe he could get a new skill like before.
Ultimately, Ebony didn¡¯t know how to make his domain more complete. Even if the Frost Elves or Gen were willing to tell him, it was different for everyone and he was a few evolutions too early to supposedly be a wielder of a domain. Hence, he didn¡¯t spend too much dedicated effort on it other than incorporating all the recent changes as he updated and refined his spells.
He did as he imagined and forced an image of Gen¡¯s seal over his own spell.
¡®One, it needs to keep its interior completely still. Absolute zero. There would still be some molecular motion but that would do temporarily.
Two, it needs to contain life force perfectly. Hmm, that¡¯s easier than I imagined although not perfectly at the moment. Is it thanks to the nature of dense mana?
Three, it needs to be indestructible externally¡that¡¯s not possible. How about being ten times tougher against external force compared to internal. Too difficult. Five times? Twice? 50%...seems doable.¡¯
Ebony slowly ironed out the details and imbued his Will into the sphere of mana he wrapped his hand in. He was surprised he got feedback on what he couldn¡¯t do. Calculated Hunch must be working hard in the background. Calculated Hunch was a bit weird, it was doing things he didn¡¯t know he could do. Like the skill name, many conclusions he came to seem to be a hunch.
It served him well and like Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition, the skill was improving itself.
He didn¡¯t get disappointed at the lack of a new skill despite having cast the new spell on his arm. He was experienced enough to know how to create a new skill. It wasn¡¯t just repetition but also intent. He could always swim but it took the intent to obtain the skill before he got it.
He had no idea if this theory was correct but it was his hypothesis. He could jump, climb, crawl and more but none of which were actual skills. Those skills existed and he doubted he hadn¡¯t repeated those motions enough.
The best reason he could come up against his hypothesis was that all of that was parked under another skill like Conditioning or was just his general physical ability. Just like how his breathing ability was probably parked under Sustained Optimum Condition.
During his fourth attempt at sealing his arm, a spark of lightning burst against his face. He rubbed his face in confusion.
¡®I was merely vibrating mana here, why the sudden discharge?¡¯ Ebony segregated the space around him for different magics so that they didn¡¯t interrupt each other. The lightning mana ores he tossed on the ground and his manipulation of its sparks shouldn¡¯t have reached his face.
¡®I¡¯m so stupid. Static electricity. Playing with rubbing mana against each other generated lightning mana. Wait, is that how lightning mana is conjured?¡¯ When it came to mana, Ebony had uncanny sharpness.
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t able to conjure lightning for a long time and used ambient lightning mana and learning how to conjure blood took her a lot more time and effort.
Ebony¡¯s affinity with lightning didn¡¯t appear terrible as lightning mana filled his fist by the next hour. He punched and shot it out in a controlled manner. It landed right where he aimed.
¡®One step closer. What level does a new generic skill have to be to be incorporated into a Sub-Class at my current level again? 100?¡¯
From an Unclassed to a Journeyman, a generic skill simply needed to be level 10 to be viable as a Class, Sub-Class or Profession Skill as long as it was compatible and considered part of the Class. At level 25 and 50, the Fortification increases in percentage.
From a Journeyman to a Master, a generic skill had to be at least level 50 before one would receive a notification about a new Class that incorporated that skill. Even in those cases, a notification wouldn¡¯t necessarily pop up if the said skill wasn¡¯t compatible at all.
Once again, Ebony thought it was just a matter of intent. Classes could be so unique, why were they limited by compatibility?
The bar to force a generic skill up to a Class, Sub-Class or Profession should be raised along with his rank. After every evolution, his Generic Skill level cap would also rise so it wasn¡¯t hard to wrap his head around. The stronger his Classes got, the harder they would be to alter.
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It would take more¡energy or maybe something like Potential, to force an old Class to accept a new skill. In some sense, they were mutating one¡¯s Class
Ebony believed his guess wasn¡¯t far off the mark but he was no scholar.
¡°Ebony! Stop playing there and help me.¡± Ning Xin¡¯s red flash swung above him in an arc before she cut herself loose and tumbled in the air while reorienting.
¡°Come, you¡¯ll refine your skills faster in combat.¡± Gen¡¯s voice had changed. It got deeper but sounded younger.
He Flickered into the skies and grabbed the snow tentacle that shot at the flaming winged one. The repulsion and vibration from his hand scattered the tip of the tentacle. The remaining volume of snow exploded out and covered his body while sending him crashing into the ceiling above.
The sheer force behind the snow knocked the air out of his lungs. He didn¡¯t expect the turtle to harden the ceiling on impact. The turtle didn¡¯t wait for him to react before he sent him diving upwards and surfacing to daylight.
Three fractured ribs healed within moments as he freed himself once he surfaced.
A moment later, Ning Xin was also sent up to the surface.
¡°It¡¯s more spacious here. Let¡¯s warm these old but rejuvenated bones up.¡±
They entertained the turtle for two straight days by supporting each other. Before the battle, Ning Xin had plenty of time to stockpile energy and managed to explode with power for an extended period of time.
They even made a few of the strongest bombs but Gen simply spit snow at it and they wouldn¡¯t even see light coming out of the sphere as the turtle contained every bit of explosive power. The snow spit had so much control and mana over it that it didn¡¯t even quiver from the continual destructive forces of their combined flames and all the other elemental effects.
Gen left their limp bodies facing the night skies and yawned before going to play with his great grand kids.
¡®What¡¯s the date¡¡¯ Ebony gazed at the moon''s position when he came to a sudden realisation.
Their timing had been perfect.
It was around the middle twelfth month when they were still at Fifth Tide. Smack dab in the middle of Winter when the Frost Elves arrived to support the border. They might have been delayed because Winter started around the tenth month.
After that, they spent time running from the Jetfins. Healing from the aftermath took more than a week. They relaxed in Arcta, and caught up with Hector and Mallory. Got new robes and clothes. Refurbished the trailer and spent days searching for the Amur forest.
Then he spent slightly more than a month refining his skills.
That was the end of Winter, the fourteenth month or the start of a new year.
Then, he spent an unknown amount of time refining his Physique and stuck to Ful¡¯s trunk.
After healing from the aftermath, he spent another month charging up mana and getting used to his new body.
They were a month past Winter before Gen started evolving.
On one hand, it was good because many monsters just started their hibernation. On the other hand, ice mana densities were subsiding and they had to go deeper to allow the forest to generate more mana as Ebony couldn¡¯t support the tree by himself.
Gen had to find a perfect spot that was at just the right danger levels.
If they were to face those monsters that forced them to tuck their tails underground from day one, the tree spirit would¡¯ve dried out on day 3.
However, ice mana densities weren¡¯t at an all-time low as they were still months away from Summer. This may or may not have affected Gen¡¯s evolution.
It seemed that even a Saint¡¯s creation, Ful, didn¡¯t know if ambient and surroundings really affected evolution. The tree spirit once had a conversation about it but the Saint himself wasn¡¯t sure if mana densities mattered. According to the Life Grafter, if they asked anyone above a certain rank, every single one would say that rather than mana densities it was location and ratio of the ambient energies.
Despite preparing three months'' worth of mana, Ebony did not take into account how much he had to fight and be away from the forest. Hence, Ful struggled to stay alive despite Gen taking nearly 50 days.
From the colour and hue of the moon, it was approximately the start of Summer. They spent their spring in a bloody battle with greedy creatures day in and out. The moon''s changing colour and tone made it relatively easy to tell.
¡®As I expected, skill levelling is slow.¡¯ Despite sparring at high intensities with Gen, his skills barely got more than one or two levels. Barring low-level skills like Frigid Refraction and Stalactite Sunder.
Ebony did not want to rush but if he could reach his goal, he didn¡¯t care how long or short of a time he spent at a certain stage.
He set a tough goal for himself in this evolution.
Partially because he felt like he had to make up for his rushed Classing.
Ebony¡¯s lofty goal was to have every single one of his Class Skills reach the 2.0 times requirement. Outside of Conditioning that had a maximum level of his actual level.
Was it possible?
With time, definitely.
However, with his current accumulated Natural Potential it felt impossible for some of his skills. Namely, his second Core Skill, sword mastery and the frostblaze line of skills that had a general trend of staying lower level than normal ice magic like Imperishable Frost Shell and Entwined Ice Armament.
Ebony needed to gain Natural Potential some way or another. Outside of killing high-level monsters, he wasn¡¯t sure how a combat-focused Class would gain a significant volume of that questionable energy.
Kong Jing mentioned sacrificing skills in exchange for Natural Potential but that was under the premise that he had the choice of facilitating the direction of his evolution. To begin with, that would be during the process of his evolution and not before.
If he couldn¡¯t meet his desired skill level then getting more Natural Potential wouldn¡¯t matter currently.
It was a cycle.
The only difference was that most would frame it in decades and centuries to break through but he was framing the problem under two years.
The matter of Natural Potential was not urgent.
Firstly, their natural-born talent already allowed them to meet minimum requirements without much effort. They didn¡¯t face the problem of having the skill level cap out at 1.1 or 1.25 times their Class level. For some skills, they might have trouble having them reach 1.5 times the requirement but that was quickly solved with the first few increments of Natural Potential.
Secondly, their current highest inducement was from the Ulstire-Boned Brawler at level 655. Both Ning Xin and he got the inducement as it was from their bomb he stuffed into the King ranked Troll.
¡®At level 300 Master, every ten-level increment would induce one notification about an increase in Natural Potential. Up to ten times or a 100 level above. From there on, the increments increased to every 25 levels. The pattern similarly continued and it only applied ten times. Up to 250 levels on top of the 100 from the first¡let¡¯s call it a tier of increment.¡¯
Being 355 levels above their level, the Ulstire-Boned Brawler was considered to be their 20th inducement.
They skipped an inducement or two as they killed a Troll far above their next supposed inducement but he honestly believed that was more beneficial than missing out. For a system of power that required effort and talent, Ebony didn¡¯t believe that people were¡punished for exceeding what should be possible.
From here on, information was said that the pattern continued with a 50-level gap for every inducement and up to a limit of ten times as well.
So once he reached the current skill level limit of all his skills, he needed to find a monster at level 700 to get his 21st inducement of Natural Potential.
With his current power, that seemed extremely unlikely.
Catching the King ranked Troll off guard and getting away without any damage had been thanks to a couple of the strongest Frost Elves supporting his escape.
His contribution to the kill in terms of execution might be high but in terms of direct damage dealt Ning Xin¡¯s magic probably did more than 80% of the job.
One issue that made all scholars scratch their heads was how contribution worked when it came to partial experience gain. Those scholars likely didn¡¯t have the chance to think about what it would mean for Natural Potential. Was it also shared and split? Or was it more of a qualitative energy compared to a quantitative one?
The ultimate problem was a unit of measurement. If only experience and Natural Potential was quantifiable, these theories wouldn¡¯t remain as theories for long.
A vague calculation of the number of times he got Natural Potential didn¡¯t even tell him if it was equal to another person who got the same amount. If the quality of his opponents mattered, they might be shooting themselves in the foot by looking for weak but high-level monsters.
However, there was no data on people who killed higher Grade monsters but had lesser inducements to get a better result from their evolution. Outside of how normal people were secretive of their Status, everyone was unique.
Ebony decided to stop pondering on useless theories and get to work on how to get all his Sub-Class Skills to tier 3 at minimum.
One good thing about spending a lot of their time balancing their combat style was using every skill at their disposal in most fights. This way, they didn¡¯t have to worry about a lagging skill unless it was a new skill.
¡°Ebony,¡± Gen called him while they moon gazed.
He glanced to the side but saw that he was the only one moongazing as the swordswoman fell asleep.
¡°Yeah?¡± He took a deep breath while refreshing the air in the ice capsules in his lungs.
¡°Thank you.¡± Gen¡¯s voice echoed deeply in his mind. It had a mesmerising trait that made every word feel full of depth. Very magical. Ebony caught hints of this quality amongst the strong people he met including the Barrier King and some of the Frost Elves.
¡°No problem.¡± Ebony felt bad for using Ful as if it were an ingredient. He was just like the monsters coming after the forest.
¡°...I¡¯m glad you came. And I¡¯m glad to have trusted you.¡±
¡°Sorry, I wasn¡¯t strong enough to protect Ful completely.¡± Ful was now in a state similar to a coma.
¡°No, you did more than enough. You¡¯ve changed our fate.¡± Snow conjured under him and raised him to the giant turtle¡¯s eye level.
¡°Not more than you¡¯ve changed mine.¡±
¡°...¡±
They left it at that.
A man and a turtle didn¡¯t need more words to understand each other.
Chapter 253: The Itch
Half a month into their new routine, Ful regained consciousness.
The tree spirit didn¡¯t speak and its leaves regained some of their liveliness. Its flames burned brighter.
Gen believed he could remove the sword stuck in the tree but he wanted to give it to Ebony but had no method to store the sword safely. He also wasn¡¯t sure if he could cover the hole if the tree spirit continued to spit out flames and sap. The turtle had a new body and mind, he needed time to get used to it and the two humanoids couldn¡¯t help him there. They were barely warm-up for the turtle.
Another week passed before the tree was back to its previous state. It was no longer saying bleak and depressing words. Advising and checking if Gen managed to heighten affinity with frostflames was its main concern.
To their delight, Gen managed to shift the flames without foreign contact.
In this regard, Ebony was the turtle¡¯s senior.
However, he seemed to forget that Gen was the one with the Amur Maple Tree and turtle mixed genes. Gen just needed time and practice before he picked up a related skill of his own. It was up to him if he wanted to split his focus onto a new magic but for a long-lived race, there was no reason not to.
In the following week, Ebony finally got the skill he was working on.
Frozen Lull - Envelope a target and freeze them in a state of stillness. Freezing of the trapped target slows down all activity by a static 70% + 0.01%. Vehement Will is consumed and imbued to guide the target''s life force to condense towards regions leaking vitality. The spell is 100% + 1.0% of Intelligence more physically robust from internal force and 150% + 1.0% of Intelligence more physically robust from external force.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic - Sealing Magic
Despite being a tier 1 skill, its functions were wide-ranged. A base scaling of 100% of his Intelligence was proof that the spell was structurally sound and he was using the capacity of his stats. The only disappointing fact was slowing down all activity by only 70% and the level-up increment was a hundred times less.
It meant getting the skill up to level 100 would only slow down all activity by 71%. Ebony was assuming the skill meant all molecular activity including damage just like Gen¡¯s skill. He wondered if it was possible to reach static 100% but not for long. He would find out when it was time.
The part about Vehement Will was more serious than he assumed. The skill was very draining because he wanted to copy the skill so badly without any instructions that he actually Willed the skill into existence.
If he wanted to cast the skill, he wouldn¡¯t be able to use any Glacial Models. He wouldn¡¯t be able to use his domain. He also wouldn¡¯t be able to squeeze his mana chassis to overdraft them. Using the skill perfectly once would be enough to mentally crush him and all his Wisdom stat. He might have gone overboard with creating the near-perfect copy of a skill.
The unknown factor was how much the target would heal inside. From the looks of it, it would depend on the target¡¯s regeneration and whatever injuries they were facing.
Without consulting Gen, he sneaked out with Ton and searched for monsters nearby.
Gen was going to refurbish the magic over the forest once he got used to his new skills and was busy internalising his spells while hiding in a small hill of snow.
Ning Xin was sleeping as it was the middle of the night.
Ton and Sei were more active as they were exposed to a hardworking grandfather and two humanoids.
Ebony hid his presence and quickly found a boar before showing himself. The boar was only level 80 and wasn¡¯t smart enough to pick opponents.
Coming back to the Chilly region was Gen¡¯s decision. He was too lazy to deal with some of the monsters that were troublesome for him at that time. Gen just woke up and needed to deal with treating his ancestor so he drove them towards the Chilly region.
The stronger monsters didn¡¯t like the low ice mana densities and purities further away from the Glades and few chased. The fact that it was getting closer and closer to Summer back then didn¡¯t help. Rather, it helped Gen.
The boar successfully rammed into Ebony who stood there and bounced off into a tree.
Watching the boar bounce off, he stepped towards the boar and found it with a broken nose and injured skull. The rest of its body was durable enough to withstand the reflected vibrations.
Ebony cast Frozen Lull on it and observed its effects.
It required all his focus and the cast time was a whole minute. It left a lot to be desired.
Gathering his Will was something he practised ever since he could use his domain and control his Models remotely. However, pooling everything together into one spell was a fresh experience. He found it closer to his new Mana Chassis Implosion skill.
It wasn¡¯t easy and he was still a beginner utilising Will.
Just practising Frozen Lull might give him more benefits than just skill level.
The amount of mana the skill consumed depended on the size of his target and how much he wanted to decompress his mana. Not that he would choose to do that.
A fully compressed version of his mana made the seal extremely durable. At the moment, as a tier 1 Generic Skill, it was fragile compared to his defensive ice spells.
Ebony observed the boar blinking in slow motion. The internals of his spell were not frozen. It was filled with a viscous liquid mixture of pure mana and ice. It started to struggle but it couldn¡¯t escape as long as he continued to hold his focus on his spell.
He let go of mental hold but kept the spell fed with mana. The boar violently struck the ground with its hoofs a couple dozen times before it rammed into the hardened surface.
¡®Either I have to exert complete control or the target has to stay in there willingly.¡¯ Although the boar didn¡¯t escape, he knew it was thanks to the sheer stat and compressive difference he had with a level 80 boar.
After fifteen minutes, the boar¡¯s nose seemed to have fully healed.
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Another hidden benefit of his skill was that he had an even better perception of the target¡¯s condition. Being warped in his mana and Will gave him plenty of information. He could tell when the boar¡¯s skull healed as well. Fifteen minutes to heal a relatively small injury was both good and bad.
Ebony couldn¡¯t tell but he assumed it was faster than the boar¡¯s normal healing.
He let the boar go, gave it a pat on the head and Flickered back onto Ton a distance away.
The half-blind boar searched for him the entire night.
Ebony worked on refining the skill and getting the casting time down together with reducing the amount of mental effort he needed to exert.
Another week went by.
About 18 hours a day was spent seriously trying to harm Gen. Within that period, all the skills they had to train were cycled through many times and they didn¡¯t have to put aside extra time.
The remaining ten hours were spent on eating, experimentation, polishing their non-combat skills, a little sparring between themselves and rest.
¡°Ebony, what''s wrong with your movements the past two days?¡± Ning Xin questioned harshly.
They were beaten down worse than usual. He fully integrated his new body and skills back into his combat style so their battle should¡¯ve gotten smoother. Yet, that wasn¡¯t the case for the past two days.
Gen was similarly curious.
¡°My body is acting up. I¡¯m not sure if it¡¯s some side effect of rebuilding my body unnaturally.¡± He spoke up. As much as he hoped it wasn¡¯t the case, it was a possibility.
¡°Describe what you feel.¡± Ful chipped in.
¡°I feel itchy all over. Unbearable itch crawling all over me.¡± Ebony had been physically tortured for the past two days. He was fully convinced that itch had climbed up to being the most diabolical physical torture there was.
It wasn¡¯t so bad at the start but the itch intensified and spread throughout his very being, going so far as to probe his mind. He was befuddled when he realised that brains could itch. Not just his brain, he felt like his mental state was itching.
On the first day, it distracted his spell formation but his body could ignore it. On the second day, it caused him enough trouble that spells took a fraction longer to form. The sudden intense itch would surface at different parts of his body as well.
¡°Ah. So you¡¯re feeling the Itch. That¡¯s fast.¡± Ful figuratively nodded without surprise.
¡°You know about this phenomenon?¡± Ebony looked between the Xeng and the giant turtle but both of them were just as clueless.
¡°It¡¯s nothing special, haven¡¯t you felt like you have been getting faster and stronger despite not levelling and increasing your stats?¡±
¡°A little but I attributed that to Fluid Blitz¡¯s increase in level. Now that you mention, Calculated Hunch did feel that my increase in power is slightly disproportionate.¡±
¡°Scarlet, do you feel the Itch?¡± Ful continued to question instead of clarifying what the Itch was.
¡°I don¡¯t think so?¡± She cocked her head, confused at the question.
¡°Is it something that would spread?¡± Gen asked.
¡°Right, your growth was balanced and slow so you don¡¯t know,¡± Ful said in realisation about Gen''s ignorance. ¡°It¡¯s nothing to be alarmed about. Your body¡¯s just adjusting to your Conditioning Skill.¡±
¡°What do you mean? Both of our Conditioning have reached 300 for a while now.¡± Ebony was as calm as the tree spirit.
¡°But neither of you is training with tier 2 methods. You didn¡¯t find it odd that it stayed that way despite the intensity of your routine?¡±
¡°Not really, I learned that even in active war the Imperials can take over a decade or two to evolve Conditioning-type skills.¡±
¡°Do they fight for twenty hours straight for months?¡±
¡°No.¡±
Soldiers would cycle amongst themselves and fights usually don¡¯t last long. They would die or run out of stamina long before the third or fourth hour of intense combat.
Ebony had been skipping sleep and most of his serious combat used everything he had at his disposal. From the war till the present. While others rested, he continued to work at near-peak capacity.
¡°We call it the Itch. It''s very common and almost always happens to children with conditioning skills that aren''t suited for their rank.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t know about this?¡± Ebony questioned the warrioress.
¡°Uh-uh.¡± She shook her head, ¡°I don¡¯t think anyone cared enough to tell me about something inconsequential like itching.¡±
Usually, he would nod his head in agreement but experiencing this itch changed his views. Itching was much worse than pain. He could ignore pain but the annoyance of the itch had reached his psyche.
¡°At any rate, you were training with a tier 4 intensity but your conditioning skill remained tier 2 for years. The Itch is the start of the great change you¡¯re undergoing. Often referred to as minor evolution or physique refinement but everyone we know calls it the Itch. Seeing as you¡¯re children of Emperors or Kings and have their regime, it was only a matter of time as long as you followed it to some degree.¡±
¡°I see, and? What is happening, specifically.¡± Ebony pressed for details.
¡°Nothing, your Conditioning skill is in the midst of evolving. Conditioning types skills are very closely related to your entire existence. The change is just too great. A Master with tier 2 conditioning? Sure. A Master with tier 4? Yeah, your existence needs to undergo a massive undertaking. I would say your drastic method of¡rebuilding your body might have sped it up but I¡¯m no scholar.¡±
¡°The disadvantage?¡± Ebony was past asking how long it would take. He knew the answer would be something like, ¡®It depends¡¯ since everyone was unique.
¡°Like I said, nothing. You¡¯ll just feel itchy. The itching intensity was said to range from a constant tickle to a numb, poisonous needle stabbing oneself. Some feel like numerous bugs are crawling under their skin and others feel like claws are ripping their muscles piece by piece. What does yours feel like?¡±
¡°Bugs, with millions of tiny feet stampeding around. They¡¯re treading lightly but the numerous and constant itch is adding up. I¡¯m beginning to feel like some have feet with electricity that tases me with every step, others have needles, claws, poison, heat, cold and all that.¡± His words caused Ning Xin to shiver.
She hated bugs and didn¡¯t have good memories of creatures with many legs.
¡°Are you okay?¡± Ning Xin¡¯s tone of worry wasn¡¯t lost on him.
He grew objective enough to hear a tonal difference when she spoke with other people.
¡°My health¡¯s topped up.¡± He didn¡¯t take any damage hence, he wasn¡¯t so worried.
Ful went back to sleep. The Itch was nothing to be concerned about. Gen didn¡¯t have it since he grew up slowly and adjusted his training over centuries if not more. His Conditioning Skill evolved at a normal pace.
¡°We¡¯re slowing down.¡± Ning Xin commented.
A full month of constant duelling with one of the strongest creatures present helped a lot of their newer skills but skills around level four to five hundred barely grew once every two or three days. It was already an unnatural pace but not a pace that either of them was familiar with under such intensities.
Ebony also expected more because they were fighting an actual King-Classed creature that did not hold back in hurting them.
¡°You¡¯re fighting the same opponent over and over again. None of us has the intent of killing each other. No matter how close we get to that intent, tipping over into a battle to the death is a world of difference. I¡¯m sure I didn¡¯t have to tell you that to you.¡±
Both combatants stayed silent. They were more than aware, it was just hard to tell because of how fast their levels grew.
¡°Were you in a hurry?¡± Gen personally showed his grandchildren snow manipulation tricks and raised the query
¡°Actually, kinda.¡± Ning Xin replied.
¡°Ah, you should¡¯ve told me sooner. How desperate are the two of you?¡±
¡°Not very, de-¡± Ebony got cut off.
¡°Danger? Show us your worst.¡±
¡°Leave it to me, I will make sure to stay as far away as possible. We don¡¯t want my presence to give you a feeling of safety do we? I have just the right opponent for each of you.¡±
With that, they felt themselves being dragged away as the forest migrated.
Ning Xin caught on and quickly went to make food.
Ebony ran off to shower and fell right asleep.
Chapter 254: Neighbours
¡°Here are your meals, try to eat as often as you can.¡± His gluttonous chef showed him the packed meals stacked on the dining table, kitchen counter all the way to the floor and living room.
¡°All of this?¡± He pointed at the hill of food. He would¡¯ve rubbed the sleep out of his eyes if he hadn¡¯t washed his face.
¡°I¡¯ve already packed mine. These are what you can snack on if the fighting isn¡¯t too bad. These boxed ones are the ones you can eat if you¡¯re free.¡± She gave him a tour and got him to pack his food at easy-to-reach locations of his bag.
Gen nudged his head against the trailer and almost flipped them over.
¡°Ebony, your stop is here. I won¡¯t give you too much information but I¡¯ll tell you about why I stopped where I did to evolve.¡± Gen had perfect control over the volume of his voice now.
¡°Don¡¯t tell me you brought us into the Glacial region?¡±
¡°That¡¯s a good joke, no, unless you''re serious about dying.¡± Gen brushed him off. ¡°We¡¯re still well in the Icy region. I¡¯ve parked right outside the territorial regions. It¡¯s above us now. Around these parts, are the real Glades. There are no wild monsters, only territorial ones. If you do see a wild and small group, then I wish you luck.¡±
Ebony pulled Ning Xin away from the kitchen to listen even though she could probably hear them.
¡°You parked us right outside this region. So they controlled each other, letting them fight each other worked best for us. They would also have trouble reaching us if they had to pass by each other¡¯s territory.¡±
¡°That¡¯s pretty much it. Your traversal speed would be quite useless for travelling in these parts. Once you invade, you¡¯re prey. The faster you go, the more likely they¡¯ll see you as a threat so make what you will with that information.¡±
Ebony finally understood why Koawe could take months just to travel to and fro their second village. Coordinated, territorial monsters answered his questions. Travelling on Arti, a Grandmaster bird, they should cover the distance with ease. The monsters here shouldn¡¯t be too much trouble for Koawe either.
¡°Ebony, I¡¯ll be dropping you off at the strongest Grandmaster race throughout the Glades.¡±
¡°Wait, what? I¡¯m only a level 300 Master.¡± Ebony recalled Ful calling the Berg Mammoths the second best or third if they included Gen. The comparison was no longer possible.
¡°Relax,¡± Gen stopped talking and didn¡¯t clarify before adeptly grabbing his gravity-repelling robe and flinging him into the ceiling.
He was swallowed up by the ceiling and spit out.
The oddity of coming out of the snow and landing on dirt soil always confused him.
¡°Hmm. Greetings, I come in¡peace?¡± Ebony locked eyes with the gorillas that sat and lay lazily on large rocks.
The gorillas were just like a western lowland gorilla or a mountain gorilla. To put it simply, they looked exactly like a gorilla that he was familiar with. Black fur and skin. They didn¡¯t look like some kind of ice gorilla either.
One of the differences was their size. The gorillas here were 3 to 4 metres tall, just like a small Troll. However, the biggest difference was their frame. These gorillas were bodybuilders. Trolls were already muscle packed but these gorillas had muscles growing on their muscles. They were wider than Trolls and the feature that stood out the most was their arms.
He estimated their forearms to be a metre in diameter. Almost disproportionately so.
[Apex Apes Lvl 300]
¡®They''re not Grandmasters?¡¯
The Apex Apes saw him and continued to dig their nostrils with their pinkies.
¡°Who am I kidding, I¡¯m here to train.¡± 3 Apex Apes were lazing around on their personal rocks less than ten metres away from him. They got bored of his sudden appearance and got back to¡lazing around.
¡°I¡¯m here to challenge you to see who¡¯s stronger.¡± Ebony drew Icicle and stopped hiding his presence, letting his overflowing Wisdom free. He fully enhanced himself while he was at it.
That caught their attention.
The next thing he knew was that his body was caught within one of their grasps. Before he could swing at the Ape¡¯s neck the gorilla clenched its fists.
Ebony¡¯s flames licked the Ape¡¯s fur and skin without piercing through. On the other hand, his ribs pierced his lungs and his spine got mangled.
¡®Damn itch,¡¯ he blamed the itch for the lag in his response.
¡°Ooo oo!?¡± The Apex Ape scratched its head with its free arm, loosened its fingers and stared at him.
¡°Ahh ahh?¡±
Ebony was slightly amazed. The gorilla had no intent or obvious muscle movements. It flicked its wrist and chucked his body into tomorrow. He should¡¯ve been able to see such a move coming but he didn¡¯t. The Ape didn¡¯t let him escape despite the loosened grip and he wasn¡¯t able to blame an itch for his lagged response anymore.
The inertia felt greater than his own Phantom¡¯s Flicker and he struggled to resist. It didn¡¯t even take half a second before he crashed into a hard wall that put a full stop to his ragdolling.
¡®A cliff?¡¯ His body bounced due to his repulsion membrane and landed on his back.
¡°Hello,¡± He greeted the family of Apex Apes that hung on the rocky cliffside. There were many protrusions wide enough for them to rest on but some were just climbing for sport.
Their levels were mostly above 300.
¡°OOO OO AAHH AHH!¡± The Ape that chucked him laid claim on him and dashed over. Its long arms supported its dash like a four-legged run.
It stopped before the cliff and roared at its seniors. The others already looked at him as half prey because of the delicious essence he exposed to them but they weren¡¯t completely aggressive monsters that took a kill-on-sight approach.
They appear¡slothful.
The strongest Apes didn¡¯t even wake up from their nap to begin with.
He watched a glint of surprise in their eyes when he stood up with realigned bones just a second after the young gorilla stopped shouting.
¡°Let me guess, surprised? Anger¡¯s not the only thing I¡¯ve learnt to pick up.¡± Ebony noticed he had a habit of talking to monsters. Just in case they understood him.
It was written in one of Clovis¡¯s theoretical books that a mixture of high enough Perception and Intelligence made it possible to understand intentions beyond words. Ebony saw it as body language and eye contact.
The one who crushed his body smiled, got on two and bent it''s back backwards. It brought both of its thick arms and drummed its chest with an ear-bursting warcry.
Ebony unbuttoned his robes and removed them before stripping his shirt and kicking his shoes and socks off.
Having learnt from Gao¡¯larg, he gave a warcry in the form of an unknown creature¡¯s roar and a soul attack.
???
¡°What kind of opponents did you give Ebony?¡± Ning Xin asked the old turtle.
¡°Apes.¡±
¡°Details? It¡¯s not like you¡¯re going to give me the same opponents.¡±
¡°There¡¯s not much to say. The apes can¡¯t use magic. They¡¯re just strong. Ebony¡¯s quick on his feet and he¡¯s tough to crack. At the same level, only the Berg Mammoths and Apex Apes can kill him. The Berg Mammoths are¡unsuitable for training against. The Apex Apes, on the other hand, might be a tad too dangerous but I trusted you and believed he could take it.¡±
¡°They can¡¯t use magic, how dangerous can they be for a creature of the Glades.¡± Ning Xin stated. Gen himself already said how slippery Ebony was.
¡°You misunderstand. They are not original inhabitants of the Glades. They¡¯re just Apes that found the cold weather here comfortable and made it their home. Hence, the oddity of not being wielders of ice magic. I personally believe they¡¯re not from Elcra at all.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t ask about that.¡± Unlike Ebony, she didn¡¯t care about where a monster came from or what their history was.
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¡°They once broke my shell and dug out my flesh. We were both Masters at that time and that was a one-on-one fight. They have an uncanny ability to leave the environment undamaged and concentrate all their force and power on their target and target alone. A little similar to Ebony¡¯s movement skill and your sword thrusts.¡±
¡°You said they were a Grandmaster race of monsters.¡±
¡°They don¡¯t absorb ambient essence. I don¡¯t think they wield Classes yet but they¡¯re pretty much sapient creatures.¡±
Gen¡¯s words meant that the apes levelled normally and did not grow at a nonsensical pace like monsters. Other than that, the information about sapience held no meaning to her. So what if their opponents were smart and acted like people?
¡°So what¡¯s my opponent?¡± Ning Xin asked before she could pull her question back.
The flow of the conversation pulled her into asking but she didn¡¯t have the intention to find out in advance.
¡°Oh, you¡¯ll be facing a different struggle. You¡¯re stronger than Ebony but it doesn¡¯t take the strongest or even the fastest to break you. I can tell you about them and it wouldn¡¯t matter. They¡¯re the Glades'' coldest creatures. For you.¡± Gen smirked.
Ning Xin felt what the turtle was emoting. Mirthful.
She wasn¡¯t angered or ashamed by the disrespect.
¡®Okay. That''s a lie¡¡¯ she ignored the level-up notice of her meditation skill. It had mutated in a manner beyond numbers and percentages. Most of her anger or negative emotions could just feed her meditation in a smooth transition.
If the skill was active, most emotional agitation would simply feed the skill to calm her further. The skill would not work if she were to use any amount of mana but it was close to passive as long as she stopped casting magic or wielding mana for a few minutes. Staying beside Ebony for so long had its perks.
¡°We¡¯re here,¡± Gen didn¡¯t even wait for ten minutes after pushing Ebony out before he reached her destination. ¡°Before you go, I just have one question to ask you.¡±
¡°...Ask away.¡± Ning Xin''s Intuition suddenly alarmed her but it caught no hint and she wasn''t able to find out what the alarm was about.
¡°Are two fangs all you have?¡±
¡°What?¡±
She was swallowed in a pillar of snow before her confusion fully escaped her throat.
With her reflexes, her response and panic reached as fast as lightning.
On her waist, was nothing but an empty belt.
On her hands were just her gloves.
Throughout her life, she had never strayed more than ten metres away from a pair of swords.
That wasn¡¯t even a figure of speech. She hugged a pair of blades not long after she was born and had always carried them on her. The only change was the size and material of her swords as she grew up.
Be it sleeping, showering or getting tossed into another realm her swords gave her confidence and comfort.
Her rising panic fed her meditation and forced her into bullet time. Within the pillar of snow, she was almost certain Gen slowed down and left her sight alone on purpose as both her dear swords were between his teeth.
Then he crunched.
The sound of metal snapping washed over her and flooded her mind.
She rolled across the damp floor.
She overestimated her meditation as it wasn¡¯t able to calm her fully.
However, the lesson of her twin swords turning rubbery wasn¡¯t forgotten. Now wasn¡¯t the time to panic.
Even though she told herself that, she wasted precious time getting a hold of herself.
The first point to note was her surroundings. It was dark.
There shouldn¡¯t have been any clouds and the sun should be up but it was almost as dim as a Spring night. A Spring moon was relatively dim as Winter¡¯s pitch black moon had just passed but she could still see.
She conjured a small flame for light but it would take a moment before she could cast it as her mind raced too fast.
Eyes.
Numerous pairs of eyes laid on her.
¡®Bats. Coldest opponents¡to combat my heat and fire? And he took Scorchy and Scorchie away. Don¡¯t tell me I¡¯m in a cave again.¡¯ She did her best to remain calm.
The slow-moving bats were already flapping their wings and her bullet time was about to end in about 2 perceived seconds.
[Tadarida Heat Sink Lvl 351]
¡®What¡¯s a heat sink?¡¯ Ning Xin had never Appraised such a weird name or title for a monster. The word ¡®heat¡¯ made her think that the bats used some form of heat but she was smart enough to believe it was the other way around.
With another second on her clock, she gave up on counting her opponents because there were more pairs of eyes than grains of rice that she eats in a meal.
That¡¯s a crazy number.
She had proper Grandmasters as opponents and all of them were around level 340 to 360.
She had a pair of old training swords in her bag but she didn¡¯t even consider wasting the time to take it out. They would melt and break with ease with her current strength.
The mana she tried to gather finally came and they bubbled into existence on top of her palms.
The world sped up.
Ning Xin desperately danced with a pair of fiery swords but they were just gusts of hot gas that slapped across the bat¡¯s bodies. They didn¡¯t even blink and clawed at her mantle, pants, hair and mask.
Hundreds of them flooded her without so much as a burn on them.
She continued to gather her life force instead of panicking and ran forward to throw the ones on her mantle and hair off. Violently crashing into a wall was not part of the plan but it got some bats off her anyway.
A confined space limited the use of her speed.
Her fire hasn¡¯t burned a single bat.
Her swords of flames were not a proper substitute.
The blood splatters she sprayed around her body exploded with a burst of burning lightning but they were severely lacking in power compared to her fire magic.
Even worse, the bats seemed to shrug off the spasms within a tenth of a second.
Her winds could barely affect the path of their flight. With thousands of them surrounding her and hundreds of them on her tail, their wing flaps were enough to blow her wing magic away.
Flames did not register as swords and her attack speed Fortification was rendered moot.
Gen¡¯s words echoed within her mind, ¡°Are two fangs all you have?¡±
Ning Xin closed her eyes to shake the words off. She grabbed the edges of her mantle and stuffed her hair under before dashing towards the only open path.
She had no idea where she was or where she was going but she just wanted to be on the move. Whenever there were branching paths, she would take the closest one without any thought.
While her Vitality gathered, so did her mana.
With another swipe of her hands, streaks of blood materialised within her grasp. Her arms moved swiftly, but the blood proved to be more fluid than she had anticipated, transforming into a whip. Her physical strength was formidable, causing her spell to stretch under the strain, resulting in splatters resembling water droplets scattered around her.
She clenched her fists and the blood around her burst into sparks of lightning.
Utilising physical motions and cues significantly aided in the manipulation and activation of mana, a practice commonly employed by mages. In the past, she had taken pride in her ability to minimise reliance on such techniques. However, her confidence in her mage skills crumbled when she witnessed Ebony''s magical prowess. Thankfully, that pride had been rather negligible from the start.
The Tadarida bats weren¡¯t badly affected even when directly hit and continued to hunt her down for trespassing.
The bites at her clothes and skin were a source of irritation, causing pain and making it seem as though her bodysuit might rip apart at any moment. Her skin and flesh were on the verge of tearing until she allowed her heart to beat just once.
¡°Finally woke up huh?¡± The bats scattered and were briefly pushed back by the light shockwave that emanated from her. All of them halted their attacks for a fleeting moment, with sheer instinct guiding their decision on whether to continue fighting or flee.
Their puny brains only registered one opponent and many allies.
The bat and swordless swordswoman tore at each other.
???
Gen extended his senses to their limits.
It was coincidental that the territory of both opponents suited to push the little humans to their limits was within his reach.
He focused on Ebony¡¯s fight a lot more closely.
Emptying his mind and intent, he had to make sure both of them didn¡¯t feel or depend on a safety net that was him. It would render the exercise moot if they didn¡¯t feel an existential threat.
Despite how troublesome it was to deal with Ebony¡¯s skillset, it was both the simplest and hardest method. His opponent just had to have overwhelming power. Nothing more, nothing less.
The Apex Apes were befitting of their names, Ebony¡¯s great battle instincts, sense of timing and positioning would be pushed to their limits as the apes moved without intent. Their muscles moved and twitched explosively and flexibly without any mental command. Trying to predict their movements would be a challenge.
The speed and power advantage the apes had surpassed what Scarlet could dish out at the moment but not necessarily so once that beast in human skin reached her peak state. But in terms of destructive capabilities, the apes stood on top.
Gen decided that Ebony required a style of training that was as primal as it could get. He had to be extremely careful since the Apex Ape could kill Ebony with just a single good punch.
As for Scarlet¡¯s battle, he didn¡¯t fear for her as much. Her physical prowess was so high she almost gave the Apex Apes a run for their money. The heat sinks ranged from 350 to 480. Their territory was weirdly cold but had the same ice mana density as its surroundings. If she didn¡¯t stray far from where he left her, she should be able to survive.
Letting her fight tooth and nail without her best weapons could easily push her to the edge.
The small mountain range she was in was made into the Tadarida¡¯s home both under and above ground with the strongest ones above ground. He would be surprised if she made it out in the first month.
A constraint space easily limited the use of her speed and a huge number of small opponents would trouble her even if he left her swords with her.
Taking away her swords had actually been Ebony¡¯s idea and he accepted the suggestion.
¡®Erasing my presence and intent is more difficult than I imagined.¡¯ Gen was troubled since he had to focus so hard on every single moment of their fights to step in.
He did his best to use words to convey that he wouldn''t assist them, ensuring they didn''t have a mental safety net of relying on him for rescue.
All that remained was for them to walk the tightrope between life and death.
Side Story (254.1): Shadow Hound’s Chrysalis Part 1
¡°Where are we going?¡± Chris-no, Mongrel asked Unnamed. An odd man he followed for reasons he did not know himself.
Call it instinct, but he felt like the halberd wielder could make him stronger. During the skirmishes at Fourth Tide, the man walked into the Empire¡¯s flaming barrage and walked out without a single singed hair.
Mongrel¡¯s self-taught stealth had been utterly useless when he tried to hide from Ebony. Hiding himself physically had its limits and the quality of the equipment he bought wasn¡¯t that high. He couldn¡¯t exactly afford good equipment after he became a freelancer.
There wasn¡¯t a blacksmith that would contract with a one-armed, one-legged freelancer. It would not be good for their reputation if armour made by that blacksmith resulted in a loss of limbs. Buying stuff off the shelf was expensive and custom orders were even further out of reach.
The old man, Wilson also extended an offer but the Bludgeon Academy and their techniques just weren¡¯t suited for him. All his students and instructors were huge and muscular. With a lot of power techniques and an enviable body enhancement skill.
Mongrel struggled with that. With a lineage that barely touched the power of mana, he had been fumbling about with mana manipulation. However, the loss of limbs forced him to learn how to manipulate mana quickly. He was pretty proud of how far he had come in terms of mana manipulation.
A copy of how his old escort party, Dina controlled her wires. He was somewhat glad he listened to her and Rowent chat about mana control tips and tricks.
¡®I wonder if they¡¯re still alive.¡¯ Mongrel shook the thought away. He asked around every branch of Z&Z he had been to but they didn¡¯t share such information with him. Listening to conversations in bars and taverns wasn''t exactly a good way to find low-level, unknown people.
He didn¡¯t even know if they still worked for the company. They probably were. The shortest contracts that were beneficial in the long run lasted at least a decade and they didn¡¯t ¡®die¡¯ like he did. If he understood them right, Rowent probably signed a contract that lasted at least 5 decades or more. A mage needed a lot of resources if they weren¡¯t from a mage lineage.
5 decades was just a third of a Journeyman¡¯s lifespan and getting to Master was pretty much guaranteed for anyone. To a Master with 350 to 400 years of lifespan, 50 years was a cheap price to pay to learn, especially for a continent-wide organisation which dipped its hands into almost every market.
Chris himself signed a 3-decade contract that he had planned to renew. His ambitions were too small. Any random freelancer in bigger cities could beat their ¡®elite¡¯ escort party 3 to 1. A small town like Plainston in a safe place at the edge of the Empire made him think he was better than his peers.
Seeing Ebony once in the Cielfast city was a¡numbing experience. He was lost and didn¡¯t know how to feel, or how to react.
Was he jealous?
Jealous at how fast and easy the man obtained power.
Maybe not easy, but definitely fast.
Here he was, level 240 after putting his life on the line for the past few years. Perhaps being at a disadvantage of two limbs put him in greater danger and his levels increased faster than he thought possible but then he saw Ebony at 300. Likely already deep into preparation for his next evolution.
All his skills at tier 1s and 2s weren¡¯t hitting hard enough. Barely drawing blood from a Troll. Shiftily edging at the corners of the battlefield and exploding with a mixture of his berserk skills and enhancement was how he tore apart a couple of enemies every skirmish.
That was an accomplishment in the militia. Not many even had more than three or four kills under their belts. That was throughout the entire campaign and he had that number every battle. However, it wasn¡¯t even close to the vanguard or any member of the first assault squad.
Every explosion of power left him weak and powerless and required him to run and hide behind ranks.
Unnamed was the exact image of how strong a warrior should be. Everything that young Chris had hoped to be. Taking on strong enemies by himself and aiding party members that need it the most. Nothing the Trolls could throw at him could make him flinch.
However, that dream had long been crushed.
Mongrel didn¡¯t need or want to be a strong warrior. He just needed enough power not to lose a close one. More importantly, not lose himself. His second Core Skill, Silent Frenzy was an embodiment of his new hopes.
A berserk skill that kept his sound mind relatively intact.
As for the drawbacks, Mongrel hasn¡¯t discovered what it was. Excluding the obvious stamina expenditure and body aches. He knew the tier 2 skill had a drawback, there was no way such a convenient berserk skill existed. It was almost common knowledge. Maybe that knowledge was what made him hold back and he never used Silent Frenzy for an extended period.
Mongrel hopped along on one leg. He preferred to get on the ground with his hand supporting him but he got used to hopping when he was in a city or town so that he didn¡¯t stand out too much.
Unnamed, the halberd user didn¡¯t reply as they climbed up the cliff and re-entered Fourth Tide.
¡°Boy. The war isn¡¯t over.¡± The man shed off his casual and relaxed posture and had a hardened expression.
¡°What? The Trolls retreated and centralised the battle with a duel supremacy at First Tide right?¡±
¡°That¡¯s not what I was talking about. This farce can¡¯t threaten the Empire. The only Archdukes fighting are the Elves. The bulk of the army isn¡¯t even present.¡±
Mongrel was extremely confused at what the man was saying. It was common sense to him that Trolls terrorised their continent, Elva for thousands of years. A war happened every few hundred years and this one was particularly forceful. The number of invaders was unlike at any point in history.
¡°Don¡¯t be so shocked. Everything changed during the last generation. You should know about some of the Barrier King¡¯s exploits.¡±
Needless to say, even a country bumpkin like him knew about the Barrier King.
One man who shielded every city and town on the entire continent in a nearly indestructible barrier. Winning the previous war with the least casualties ever recorded.
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The deaths throughout the continent were said to have dropped so much over the past century that the population nearly increased by a third. Birthrates weren¡¯t exactly high to begin with but freelancers and citizens rarely died.
Citizens didn¡¯t have to fear a dungeon break overrunning entire towns.
They didn¡¯t have to worry about a strong level 400 monster migrating and destroying a town just by passing by.
They didn¡¯t have to worry about getting killed just because their city was near two level 600 creatures fighting.
They didn¡¯t fear suppression of essence from a hoard of monsters that would stun the wall guards long enough for them to fall like dominoes.
The Barrier King made everyone¡¯s home have a level of safety that was unheard of.
As if that wasn¡¯t enough, living in the Capital was said to be a chance of rebirth. The congregation of billions of people had an effect on the average level and experience gain. Almost a century passed after the new King took over and the Capital had undergone mass expansion. Enough to fit every Imperial with housing to spare for further population growth.
The only exception was the 3 Great Farms that took up almost as much land. It was still in the middle of construction and expansion and the food supplies weren¡¯t up to the required quantities. They were lacking farmers, breeders, tamers and numerous support Classes.
Rumours were that the three city lords had reached King ranked as farmers but Mongrel had no clue if that was true. The only well-known fact was that they had Strength and Endurance beyond that of any other farmer. Flattening mountains and ploughing the continent was a part of their daily life.
Healers in Tidal were all considered to be in training because there simply wasn¡¯t a need for healers. Anyone who got sick enough that the natural atmosphere wasn¡¯t enough to heal them would require proper treatment that they could get at the Life Queen¡¯s academy.
In any case, there usually wasn¡¯t a rush for treatment because they would find it hard to die within the City.
The alternative was the dozens of Quest Halls situated throughout the Capital that were near dungeons and freelancers who might be heavily injured. There would be healers stationed there around the clock.
With just the two Royals, the fate of every Imperial was greatly changed.
They made it clear that the healing provided was at the expense of the citizen¡¯s mana and so was the protection the barrier provided but there were no complaints. Taxes were higher and that made it harder for freelancers to make a living but people chose to live in the Capital for a good reason. Unless you were dragged into a dungeon and assassinated, it practically meant paying for immortality.
Minus dying of old age and committing a crime that led to execution.
Mongrel was too young to understand but the citizens in Tidal treated the Life Queen more of a God than any Emperor in the Sovereign Temple.
¡°So, where are we going? Will you teach me how to get stronger?¡±
¡°Oh, I¡¯m too busy for that.¡±
¡°Wh-¡± Mongrel almost stumbled.
¡°Relax, my techniques won¡¯t work for you anyway. I¡¯ll introduce you and you can work your way up by yourself.¡±
¡°Work my way up what?¡±
¡°The ladder.¡±
¡°I¡¯m looking to get stronger, not work for some shady organisation.¡±
¡°Calm down. I don¡¯t work for Lure okay. Shady? Where else can you learn stealth and assa-strong techniques fit for your style?¡±
¡°Is that where you trained your body to resist flames and get strong enough to overpower Trolls?¡±
¡°What? Ell no! I could do that even before I joined for some mana ores.¡± Unnamed looked offended that he suggested the man¡¯s power came from the organisation the man was part of.
¡°...¡± He silently stared at Unnamed. The halberd wielder sighed and rubbed the back of his dirty head.
¡°My unnatural fire resistance came due to a special circumstance during my evolution to Grandmaster.¡±
¡°What kind of circumstances can make a human fireproof?¡± Mongrel wasn¡¯t convinced. He didn¡¯t need to have a good eye to know that it wasn¡¯t an equipment effect. Not even the Imperial Knights had armour that allowed them to bathe in flames for a long period.
¡°The kind of situation where my deadass evolving body was tossed into a volcano. By some miracle, I was tossed onto a ledge within the volcano but half of my body was submerged. I didn¡¯t die. That day is coming for the ones who tossed me in.¡± Unnamed¡¯s grip tightened so much Mongrel could hear his bones creak.
¡°In Fragadal¡¯s Sea?¡±
¡°Duh. Climbing out naked without a weapon and finding somewhere safe was hell that I¡¯m not sure I¡¯m prepared to face again.¡±
Mongrel wasn¡¯t sure he had seen an expression more full of hate than Unnamed. It unnerved him a little. Fragadal¡¯s Sea was synonymous with Hoarfrost Glades as a land of utmost danger. To survive without a weapon and weak from post-evolution was an unbelievable feat.
Mongrel didn¡¯t doubt the man¡¯s words. He didn¡¯t know why there was not a trace of doubt that the man was speaking the truth.
¡°I¡¯m not going to murder for power.¡±
¡°Hey! What do you take me for? I¡¯m here risking my life to protect the Empire!¡± Unnamed yelled.
Mongrel didn¡¯t fall for it. The man was here to level.
¡°Bah, you¡¯re no fun. Don¡¯t worry, joining doesn¡¯t mean you¡¯ll have to take every job. You have free will to choose whatever you want to do. There are monster-hunting jobs too. The real professionals of the organisation are kidnappers but don¡¯t worry, you won¡¯t be part of that group. I¡¯ll introduce you to a professional thief and robber. He knows his way around the shadows and isn¡¯t afraid of a straight battle of power so I¡¯d say he¡¯s the perfect teacher for you.¡±
¡°He¡¯ll teach me just because you say so?¡±
¡°Course not. You¡¯ll have to prove yourself. Count yourself lucky because he¡¯s been looking for a student to pass on his skills before he dies of old age. He should be over five centuries old but you better watch your mouth. I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m not a match for these fossils yet. I honestly don¡¯t know if he¡¯s an old Grandmaster or a King. Actually, I don¡¯t even know if it''s him or her.¡±
¡°...Thank you. Why do I have to join that organisation if I just want to apprentice myself?¡± Mongrel was honestly a bit desperate to grow stronger before he was truly left in the dust. The sense of self-imposed rivalry with Ebony hasn¡¯t faded completely. He must be less than an afterthought to that expressionless man but that man was the catalyst that changed Chris to Mongrel.
¡°Don¡¯t be stupid. He¡¯s obviously one of the leaders. The faction that deals with stealing and assassination. To make myself clear, we don¡¯t accept any random assassination missions. We¡¯ve taken missions from nobles to slay another noble that raped their family members. But I digress, it¡¯s still murder no matter what evidence we¡¯re provided with.¡±
¡°What kind of organisation is that¡¡±
¡°One that every noble and member of high society is aware of but hasn¡¯t been disbanded. Once again, not part of Lure.¡± Unnamed emphasised that they were not a high-priority target and the Empire tolerated their existence.
That was odd knowing what the Life Queen was like. If the organisation was so big, he found it hard to believe it wasn¡¯t squashed out of existence. Were the leaders good enough that the Royals and high nobles couldn¡¯t take care of them?
Mongrel only knew Lure could do that simply because the important members were so good at keeping their identities secret and there were many of them. Unnamed was suggesting that their organisation didn¡¯t work fully in the shadows.
¡°You¡¯re not sanctioned by the nobles are you?¡± Mongrel didn¡¯t think he would be diving into such a world.
¡°I wouldn¡¯t say sanctioned, but¡they are part of our customer base along with the rich. Anyway, keep your mouth shut. Brother!¡± Unnamed stomped his foot the moment they left Fourth Tide and got out of sight.
Mongrel stayed silent as a hand shot out of the ground. A clean bearded face raised from the ground and glanced at them.
¡°Let¡¯s go, I¡¯m bringing this boy along.¡±
¡°It won¡¯t be free.¡±
¡°Ore grubber,¡± Unnamed tossed a pouch towards the head. The face caught the dirty pouch in his mouth before Mongrel panicked when a hand grabbed his single leg and dragged him under.
Side Story (254.2): Shadow Hound’s Chrysalis Part 2
Travelling through the ground had not been the best experience Mongrel had. It was dark, tight, cold and he didn¡¯t have a body that stayed comfortable in such conditions. He thought the earth traversing mage was being biassed with his service as Unnamed was as comfortable as he was above ground.
At least they provided him with a crystal ball that he stuffed into his mouth. It took some conscious effort to breathe from a ball in his mouth instead of through his nose.
They stopped moving and surfaced every six hours for a break.
¡°Boy, go find us dinner.¡±
Mongrel had been so used to eating dry rations that he forgot it was normal to hunt for meals. He thought he knew all the nearby forests but he didn¡¯t recognise the one they were in. He didn¡¯t argue and got down onto his two limbs before bursting into the shadows. Using foliage as cover was almost as easy as breathing to him.
Dashing around like a panther and flinging his body from branch to branch like an ape was close to second nature. He found it scary that he adapted to this body better than his healthy body. His spine was far more flexible than it used to be
A cursory glance told him that he was in an abundant forest. There were a lot of wild vegetables so there might not be many weak animals or monsters around. The lack of monster tracks meant that it was more likely to be the territory of a stronger but less numerous species.
He ran from shadow to shadow with every gallop. A passing shadow alerted him. He pushed his feet harder and freed his hand from the ground to grab the knife strapped near his chest with a shoulder belt and sliced forward without slowing down. He sheathed his knife and grabbed the cape that hid his body to bundle the body up as his body lurched forward.
A small bird joined their dinner plate.
His ears pricked up and his next gallop sent him up into the trees. Eyes darting around, he zoomed in on his next prey. A metre tall wolf he had not encountered before.
[Ferric Fur Dane Lvl 230]
¡®Huh? Wild wolves at such a high level? Where are we?¡¯ Mongrel snapped out of his hunting stupor. Wolves were pack creatures. To his knowledge, there were no such wolves anywhere near Plainston or the borders. Even the Cities further and around Cielfast didn¡¯t have this species of wolves.
Wild wolves were mostly wiped out. They were a danger if left to propagate. Especially at these levels. They might be left alone if they were around the 100s since they were a source of food and training for Journeymen.
No matter how much he scouted, Mongrel didn¡¯t see another wolf.
¡®Perhaps a rare case of wolf species that move in small numbers or alone.¡¯ He made more sense of the situation. If it was such a species then it wasn¡¯t a threat to towns.
¡®Is it worth the effort¡¡¯ Mongrel pondered no longer and struck out from above.
The canine rotated its head and bit his sword in a hurry.
A heavy double-edged axe dropped from under his cape and slashed out at the canine¡¯s belly. Catching the wolf off guard, the attack landed. The rope connecting the axe to his waist straightened in alert as Mongrel kicked back and created distance.
His ¡®tail¡¯ emulated scorpions like those Arrowtails in Ordina. The rope manipulation was an attempt at copying how Dina manipulated her wires. The rope was his most expensive equipment as it was flexible and stretched in response to mana. It wouldn¡¯t have been possible to obtain it if Mark hadn¡¯t introduced him to some potioneers and alchemists.
The attentive man saw him with a lousy rope and suggested making it more adept at movement. Although not to the extent of another limb, Mongrel found his ¡®tail¡¯ to be increasingly natural.
At first, it was just a sidearm and also a shield for his back. The rope made it possible for him to sweep using centrifugal force when he did sharp spins. Now, it was practically his strongest weapon and form of attack when his arm and leg were busy.
¡®Not even a scratch?¡¯ Mongrel backed off into the shade of a large tree because his ambush skidded off the wolf''s fur. He didn¡¯t hold back and already used Silent Frenzy for a power and speed buff!
His fingers dug into the soil and his body sprang forward with a sword stabbing at the wolf''s eye from the side but the wolf had reaction speed that made his ambush look cute. It leaned back and countered with its claws. Mongrel¡¯s tail from overhead smashed the body of the wolf away just in time.
The wolf¡¯s body was light and flung back a few trees away. The lack of blood on his axe bothered him a little. Mongrel¡¯s shaggy hair stood up as he went deeper into frenzy.
Mongrel read the Ferric Fur Dane¡¯s movements like a book. It felt like his own moves. The deeper he fell into ¡®frenzy¡¯ the less aware of his surroundings. His eyes were focused on his target and target only.
He hopped on his single foot back after fifteen minutes. His breastplate had three claw marks imprinted on his chest. His leather armour was something he bought off the shelf and wasn¡¯t exactly made to last.
¡®I can¡¯t believe I struggled with one wolf below my level.¡¯ Mongrel tied the wolf and hung it on his shoulders and hopped with great balance. He was already covered in blood and cared not for the trail of blood that followed them.
¡°Welcome back, I¡¯ll get a fire started.¡± Unnamed clapped his knees and stood up from a log.
¡°Ha, look at him. You really think he¡¯s going to take this kid in as a disciple?¡± The earth mage scorned his dirty appearance.
¡°Oh, you bet. I believe he¡¯s the type the old man had been looking for.¡±
They pulled out a pot out of their bags that made him envy their riches. He would¡¯ve found a stick and roasted monsters and vegetables over a fire. Sometimes, eating raw meat. Having a bag with expanded space seemed like such a luxury.
They clicked their tongues at the brutal beatings his prey had received.
¡°AH! You popped its stomach!¡± The earth mages fussed.
¡°This is gonna stink¡¡± Unnamed attached a water ore to his bracelet and shot out a stream of water to wash their dinner.
Mongrel handed over the bird he caught. That would make a better meal but it wouldn¡¯t be enough to share amongst three adult men.
He couldn¡¯t exactly cook well after losing one of his arms so he didn¡¯t do much to help other than finding branches to burn.
Having a salted and flavourful soup in the middle of nowhere kinda struck him.
¡®How long has it been since I¡¯ve had soup in the wild¡¡¯ Without a carriage carrying all his luggage or party members to help him cook, Mongrel hadn¡¯t had proper food in the wilds for a long time. He felt warm.
¡°Alright time to move.¡± They cleaned up by spraying water and tossing the wet dishes into their bags.
¡°We¡¯re not going to camp?¡± Mongrel questioned.
¡°Why the ell would we camp here?¡±
¡°We don¡¯t got time for that.¡±
Mongrel continued to be dragged around and chauffeured underground. He learned that these Grandmasters didn¡¯t need to sleep as often and travelled through the night without any hint of exhaustion. The earth mage could move at unknown speeds for an extended duration without rest.
¡®Don¡¯t mages have trouble with mental stamina? Is this as easy as running to him?¡¯
They rested every other day but they didn¡¯t trust him enough to take guard. It allowed him to sleep more than either of them.
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In less than ten days, they resurfaced and he saw the imposing walls that stretched on forever in both directions. He could barely spot the top of the walls.
¡°Where are we?¡±
¡°The Capital.¡±
¡°This is Tidal¡¡± Mongrel the country bumpkin couldn¡¯t imagine how big the capital was.
He couldn¡¯t see the end of the walls and he felt heavy just standing before the City. He was still an hour''s dash away from the City walls!
They walked over to what Unnamed called the seventh west gate. Mongrel didn¡¯t know any other city with so many gates.
He fumbled his clothes for his Quester Crystal as his bracelet broke and he hadn¡¯t gotten a replacement. It was a waste of his mana but he didn¡¯t regenerate much to begin with. After gaining entry to the most prosperous city on the continent, Mongrel had to say it was more than he imagined.
He didn¡¯t think a different city could feel so different. The city walls were so thick they had to walk for some time before they entered the city. The very roads and buildings were different. It was as if the stone road and buildings were exuding pressure on him.
The moment he stepped in, he felt energised. The small cuts and bruises under his shirt from the regular hunts felt as if they got caressed by some warm energy. Rumours weren¡¯t as believable as experiencing it himself. Even his knob of arm and leg felt warm but he hated that.
Thankfully, he didn¡¯t regrow his limbs. He wanted them to stay that way. It was not a reminder.
It was a price he paid.
A lesson.
In any case, they felt better than ever before and it continued to comfort his battered body as they walked through the busy streets.
Mongrel had never seen so many people in one place. With the exception of the soldiers during his fight at Fourth Tide.
Stories that the very floor was made of higher quality stone and rock than the town walls of old Plainston was no exaggeration. Of course, that changed after Plainston turned into a city but even then the road''s material was superior.
The hired stone mages were good but those folks had nothing on the architects or stone mages here. Mongrel couldn¡¯t even tell if the stone was natural or a product of a mage¡¯s compression. There was no way the Empire had enough stone mages to conjure enough of this for the whole Capital within just mere decades.
Mongrel¡¯s eye twitched as he reached for his weapon and concentrated on the axe on his back. The market lady selling fruits was higher level than him! Why was her vitality so overwhelming?
The next person that bumped into him made him trip but he bounced on his feet and stayed standing. The bump made him feel the effects of overflowing vitality almost like that of a Troll.
¡°Ah, apologies kid. Ya alright?¡± The muscular beastmen were about to scream but the look of pity didn¡¯t escape Mongrel¡¯s eyes.
¡°Ye-yeah, no problem.¡±
¡®What in the world¡¡¯ Fortunately for his state of mind, it was a Grandmaster blacksmith and not some random Master.
He questioned himself as to why a blacksmith would have high vitality but just squashed that thought thinking the Grandmaster just had high stats in general.
¡°Keep up boy!¡± Unnamed and his compatriot pushed through the sea of people. He wondered why bother coming to a market but didn¡¯t ask.
They pulled him into a side street and a busy tavern. No one batted an eye at his physical state here. Neither did they care about the dirt and smell all three of them carried.
¡°A round of sour ale!¡±
They took a convenient counter seat that opened up after they entered.
¡°A house blend.¡± Mongrel learned to ask for a house blend from a certain lizardman. He heard that every tavern in big cities made their brew and it became a habit to try them all.
The bald bartender was a short old man. Mongrel guessed he was a half Dwarf half Human from his frame. Halves were relatively rare but not something new. He was glad he didn¡¯t see a random bartender as a Grandmaster but the old man was still maxed out at 300.
That number wasn¡¯t commonplace in his hometown but from the gate to this tavern he already saw hundreds of people stuck at that level. Every turn of his head allowed him to spot a Grandmaster. Although they were mostly slightly older craftsmen and support classes he was still at the edges of the Capital City.
¡°Twenty-fourth hour.¡± The bartender placed their drinks in front of them and muttered. It was so soft he thought he misheard it in the bustling tavern. The old man retreated to prepare other drinks.
¡°Looks like we have half a day to spare. You¡¯re free to explore. Come back here by the twenty-third hour.¡± The older man who brought him chugged their ale and slammed their mugs noisily. The entire tavern seemed to do the same as if they were testing the mug and tables.
¡®They''re using the sound to mask conversation?¡¯ Mongrel figured out the pattern in the loud sounds in the tavern.
¡°Wait, take this. Spray this on yourself before you come. Stay at least 5 gors away before you spray that on. Go.¡± The earth mage put something under his coat with earth magic. The man had both hands above the counter but another hand moved to give it to him.
Mongrel hopped out and found a dim alley to hide and get on twos. He leapt away above roofs but something felt off when he did that. He was either followed or watched and he couldn¡¯t tell which.
He leapt a few blocks away before casually joining a busy street again.
¡®Haaa. Ma, the big cities are really different.¡¯ After Chris had died, Mongrel didn''t meet his old family. To them, he was dead and he kept it that way.
Mongrel asked around for the Quest Hall and was dismayed to find out it was so far away that it might take a few hours by a fast carriage. He had no plans of spending on a carriage so he leapt onto the main road and got to leaping from the shadows of one carriage to the next.
He knew that many people could see him act like a madman but he didn¡¯t care. It was practice. His eyes darted around to trace how many eyes were on him. He treated them as the monsters that preyed on him and got better at stealth.
Mongrel was out of breath by the time he turned and got off the main road. The Runners here were crazy!
He could barely keep up with the speed limits of the road and this speed limit increased on wider roads. The central district apparently had different traffic laws and speed limits were higher.
Entering the open doors of the towering Quest Hall, he was stunned. The Quest Hall was too big. The layout was the same as all Quest Halls but how many help counters are there? Hundreds? Thousands?
¡®Can this place fit millions?¡¯
Mongrel read a directory and found the counter for the duelling grounds. The reception counter he needed was on the third floor.
¡®Where are the stairs? Oh, I see.¡¯ He looked lost before he saw mages flying up and warriors jumping before leaping over the ledge of the second floor.
There were probably stairs somewhere in the building but it was a waste of time to look. He leapt and dug his fingers into the walls before reaching the third floor. Friction alone was enough, he didn¡¯t damage the walls. A single touch was enough to tell him he couldn¡¯t damage it even if he tried.
Although there were dozens of counters with clerks handling the flood of people he still had to line up for fifteen minutes before he could rent a training room.
¡°It¡¯s free!?¡± Mongrel yelled out. He cleared his throat when he saw the poor girl behind the counter shudder from his loud voice ¡°so-sorry.¡±
The Journeyman Clerk got her calm back and issued him a ticket and even gave directions to the entrance. ¡°The shaft down is right behind the counter on the first floor.
¡®Shaft?¡¯ Mongrel wasn¡¯t willing to show off his ignorance anymore and kept silent after thanking her.
He found out that the method to get down to the duelling grounds and training rooms was just to climb or jump down a hole big enough to fit a few houses side by side. He skipped the spiral stairs with no railings and leapt down from ledge to ledge.
¡®Oh my goodness¡how deep does this go?¡¯ Mongrel couldn¡¯t even see the bottom and the place was well lit.
Another clerk pointed him towards the training rooms and his ticket numbered eight thousand.
He started running down the corridor, passing by the open arenas and duelling grounds.
It took him another ten minutes at full speed just to get to his allocated room. As he prepared himself, the room was more than twice as big as a standard single-person training room that other cities provide.
Mongrel hid in the corner of the room after closing the door and warped himself in his cape.
He fell asleep after setting a mental alarm to wake himself up in an hour.
He woke up slightly more refreshed and stayed under his cape to check what he was given.
It was a glass bottle with a pink fluid within.
¡®Perfume? I can¡¯t cast Identify on it¡¡¯
Mongrel guessed from the bottle that he could just apply it like perfume that women used. He saw plenty of fluid within and sprayed some on the back of his gloves to give it a whiff.
¡®Doesn¡¯t smell like anything¡¡¯
Mongrel shook his head and got to training. He latched onto the corners of the walls and went from one shadow to another. His grip was more like an insect than a human as he could hold onto walls and carry his weight with just a three-finger pinch.
Despite being well-lit, the sharp corners of the cuboid room cast shadows for him to utilise.
He vanished from the room as if he had never been in there and made his way out of the labyrinth known as the Quest Hall before using the roofs of buildings again. It was much faster than going through a busy road.
The feeling of being watched under the night sky was still present but Mongrel supposed the sensation was just because he was under the perception range of many mages or rogues.
His eyes darted back to look at the clock situated near the top of the Quest Hall.
He had already come so far, no reason not to meet those sanctioned criminals. He sprayed the perfume all over him and allowed the wind to bathe him in it as he closed in on the tavern.
Side Story (254.3): Shadow Hound’s Chrysalis Part 3
¡®No, I can¡¯t go there like this.¡¯ Mongrel recalled being laughed at for being such a country bumpkin.
He would just make a fool of himself if he were to show himself to some professional criminals. It didn¡¯t fit the mental image he had of who one would call a ¡®mongrel.¡¯
He skidded to a stop on a clean roof.
Scanning the streets, there were no trees in sight.
A decrepit house on the side grabbed his attention for reasons he couldn''t discern. He found himself on its roof before he knew it.
¡®I need to hide my ignorance¡a mask.¡¯ Mongrel plucked off one of the roof tiles that was needlessly big.
He drew his knife and took half a minute to draw out and imbue mana into its blade before carving the roof tile into a shrivelled old dog¡¯s face.
¡®Not so bad if I say so myself, it¡¯s my best work yet.¡¯ No one but Mongrel knew that he was a Sculptor by Profession.
¡®How do I attach it to my face¡how do the Xengs do it without any holding pieces? Right¡mana,¡¯ Mongrel sprayed the perfume on the stone mask. He didn¡¯t know why but it felt like he should¡¯ve done that.
Despite his best attempts, he couldn''t attach the mask to his face with mana.
Hence, he carved spikes at the side of the mask. The roof tile¡¯s curve was oddly perfect for his face and reached behind his ears. A weird roof.
¡®I won¡¯t die here right¡¡¯ Mongrel took a deep breath while holding the mask against his face.
He took a moment to settle his mind. Sitting down on the roof, he placed his face against the mask and roof to hold the mask in place before smashing his one good arm into the side of the mask.
¡°ARG!¡± Mongrel quickly sniffled his voice out. He managed to enhance his strength enough to pierce his skull.
He wasn¡¯t even sure if the mask was aligned but he didn¡¯t wait for his head to heal before smashing the other corner into the other side of his skull. He made sure to sculpt a curved hook on the mask. Holding his consciousness together, he waited and fought the pain.
It didn¡¯t even take half a minute before he felt warm behind his ears. The Capital City started healing him.
It shocked him when foreign mana physically pulled at his stone mask.
¡®It can rip away the damaging component?¡¯ Mongrel smashed his palms to hold the mask onto his face but the foreign mana got stronger the more force he put into keeping his mask on.
Mongrel had his doubts about the healing capabilities of the City Barrier but that was gone now. Respect and admiration for the Royals turned into fear.
If one were to get stabbed and their attacker forced the blade stuck, the City¡¯s mana would react and force the blade out? That was ridiculous.
Did that mean the Royals were watching the movements of billions of people at the same time?
Mongrel wouldn¡¯t believe that for a moment. It was the work of an extremely complicated spell or some kind of magic. It had to be.
Mongrel dashed away from the decrepit rooftop with his hands straining to keep the mask on. He knew where the closest dungeon dome was but he had no party.
However, he couldn¡¯t think of anything else and charged towards the dungeon.
By some miracle, he was actually allowed to pass.
Because the dungeons situated in the Capital all had another town or city right after passing through the portal.
The only problem was that it wasn¡¯t free to enter. In fact, the entrance fee was so expensive he might have to work for a week without eating to afford entry.
He didn¡¯t care and dipped into the rest of his savings.
Once he was in, he quickly hid in the shadows of the streets within the dungeon.
His bleeding had long stopped and his Vitality did the rest.
He waited a good half an hour before he exited and returned to Tidal.
The guards couldn¡¯t be bothered as to why he entered and exited in such a short period of time. He didn¡¯t exactly look rich either.
His efforts weren¡¯t in vain as the City¡¯s healing no longer treated his mask as a foreign entity and simply healed the area around the spikes. Bathing the mask in his mana might have been the best idea he had.
He checked the time and found himself to be right on time.
He entered the tavern and found himself a corner seat. Although it was quieter, there were still a dozen occupants drinking.
A few tables had exuded heavy overflowing Vitality and Wisdom but Mongrel wasn¡¯t bothered by them. The ones he had his eye on were the people he sensed nothing from.
Unnamed and the earth mage entered and noticed him straight away.
Mongrel watched as some drunkards stood up at the same time. An eerie scene of unconscious drunkards walking out appeared and all the people remaining were those he couldn¡¯t sense any aura from.
¡°Who¡¯s this masked fellow?¡± A large human with a few handheld axes by his waist screened him.
Unnamed was about to speak out for him but Mongrel quickly stood up and pushed the man who stood in front of him.
¡°Mongrel.¡±
¡°Who¡¯re you calling mongrel!?¡± The human yelled.
¡°Myself, but I don¡¯t blame you for answering the call.¡± Mongrel retorted.
He might be making a fool of himself since he probably couldn¡¯t beat anyone in the tavern but he knew that it was all about attitude and how he presented himself. Chris was no more, and now seemed to be a great time to erase what was left of him. Emerging as Mongrel.
¡°Brat!¡±
Mongrel ducked and got on twos the moment the thin, sharp axe was thrown at him.
There was little suspense as he was manhandled to the ground but he made sure to bite a piece of flesh out of his attacker''s arm.
Diving into his unbridled rage was the facade he put on. He wanted to be publicly known as a berserker who couldn¡¯t control his actions. It might backfire and give himself a bad impression but if they allowed him to join, they shouldn¡¯t give him any important missions.
However, it didn¡¯t backfire.
The people in the tavern laughed and praised his energy. They liked the show.
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¡°New guy? I can smell the poverty on you. Good!¡±
¡°Mongrel huh, fitting.¡±
¡°Barkeep, what¡¯s his score?¡±
Mongrel didn¡¯t know any of their names but it probably wasn¡¯t necessary.
¡°Mid rung Master. Two point four.¡±
¡°Average for his level? That¡¯s surprising, he felt weaker than that. Like a two-pointer.¡± The axe tosser commented.
¡°His berserk enhancement is better than what I¡¯ve seen. It has potential. His mish-mash, unrefined skills can be dealt with with ease.¡± The bald bartender¡¯s eyes were sharper than before.
Mongrel had to reevaluate the importance of the old bartender as his interviewer. He didn¡¯t know what kind of point system they were talking about but he memorised the numbers they associated with him.
They managed to sense his confusion despite the mask on his face. Their perception was intimidating. Mongrel made it a point to learn to control his body language.
¡°Barkeep, give him the rundown. We have business to discuss.¡±
They left him with the bald bartender and he listened and memorised the information he was given.
¡°so¡I¡¯m part of the gang?¡±
¡°Psh, what gang? You don¡¯t even know what we go by do you?¡±
¡°...no.¡±
¡°We¡¯re the Jade Parasites. Right, you¡¯re not authorised to spread that name. Yes, you¡¯re already part of us.¡±
The bartender explained the hierarchy in the Jade Parasites.
The organisation''s top priority is wealth. In fact, they only worked for wealth.
Their rankings were called Rungs and went from low to mid to high. Some people were referred to as peak rung but those people could be counted on the fingers on two hands. Something he didn¡¯t have.
The point system was quite easy to follow. 0 to 1 referred to anyone in the organisation who was seen to have a Journeyman¡¯s capabilities. Every increment of 0.1 points equated to a 10-level difference.
If a Journeyman was rated to be 1.5 they would be considered a high rung Journeyman.
The low and mid rung Journeymen in the organisation do not have the option of choosing their jobs but those high rung Journeymen did.
Similarly, a point of 2.4 was appropriate for his level of 240 but that was supposedly the bartender''s call. The bartender seemed to hold a very good Identification skill as he grasped that Mongrel hid his strength.
The axe wielder was probably quite accurate and his power was probably equal to a random level 200 warrior in the Capital.
Everyone in the room other than Mongrel and the bartender were Mid-rung Grandmasters whose point ratings were above 3.5.
That seemed low in his opinion, maybe not for everyone in the room but Unnamed held impressive power. Then again, the bartender didn¡¯t give the exact number and their point would have to be above 5.5 to be considered a high rung Grandmaster. The range was quite wide and Unnamed supposedly hasn¡¯t reached level 500 so it might not be as surprising as he initially assumed.
¡®He¡¯s hiding his strength too¡probably everyone here is hiding their true power.¡¯ Mongrel was glad he had enough presence of mind to hide his own.
The leaders of the Jaded Parasites hid their levels and wasn¡¯t public knowledge even for their members.
¡°How do I know who¡¯s one of us or let others know I¡¯m part of them?¡±
¡°Runic stamps, barkeeps like me hold a stamp. After stamping your body somewhere, you¡¯ll be able to feel if another person is stamped just like you. And yes, it''s ranked so you¡¯ll know their rung. If there¡¯s a team mission, the highest rank and rung can take command and you are most likely obligated to follow their command.¡±
¡°Will we know each other¡¯s points?¡±
¡°No, just the rung. It''s already hard enough to make such a mark as a runic stamp. When at least 3 other members deem you to reach their rung, come to me to update your stamp.¡±
¡°I see. Is the mark permanent?¡±
¡°You¡¯ll need to get restamped at least once every half a year. We won¡¯t get any new members if we tell them we marked them permanently. We used to but it didn¡¯t turn out well for the organisation. You know, everyone here has things to hide.¡±
¡®Every seven months¡if I want to leave the Jaded Parasites I have to hide for seven months.¡¯ Mongrel knew that he shouldn¡¯t trust everything the bartender said but it was a point of reference that he could use when he got more information in future.
The range of the runic stamps was quite big, he would be able to sense another member from about half an Uncommon callstone¡¯s distance. He didn¡¯t carry a callstone since it was useless for him. He did write letters to Mark¡¯s address once in a while.
It was a weird encounter. That man might be the only person that Mongrel contacts from time to time.
Mark had been very helpful. He had gotten discounts for potions thanks to Mark. Mongrel hoped there was a branch over in Tidal but he might be hoping for too much. The Capital was so far away from Mark¡¯s home and he wasn¡¯t sure if they were a big company.
He didn¡¯t even receive replies but he continued to write a letter asking for mana manipulation tips every few months. Despite the man saying he had no talent, Mongrel couldn¡¯t forget the laxed man in front of a giant sky-blotting fish that fired water blades that sundered the earth.
The concept of a "domain" was nothing short of a legend to a country bumpkin like Mongrel. He remained so unfamiliar with the term that even to this day, its meaning eluded him completely.
¡°Boy, that old man¡¯s out of town. Get stronger by yourself, I¡¯ll find you when he¡¯s back. At least get strong enough for him to care. Let¡¯s see, try reaching level 300 by the end of the year.¡± Unnamed gave him a random goal to strive for.
¡®What?! 60 levels under a year?¡¯ Mongrel finally made good use of his mask as he hid his shock. He barely made that number when he was a Journeyman, the difficulty spike for that from 240 to 300 was much higher.
¡°At the very least, reach high rung Master. Alright, I got places to go.¡± Unnamed slipped away after putting him in some weirdly high-class organisation.
He followed the man here to get stronger so he didn¡¯t care who taught him but to get stronger by himself? That was where he hit the wall from the start.
¡°Mongrel, your equipment is horrendous. Pick up a few missions for two or three months before you go into the dungeons.¡± The bartender called himself Jim and helped him get started.
¡°What kind of missions are there?¡± Jim brought him to their mission board in the back.
It seemed like all Jaded Parasite-run taverns were like tiny Quest Halls of their own. Just like the Quest Hall, missions could be put up by their own members or clients.
The real money comes from clients but the easy jobs come from other members. Most of these easy jobs were higher ranking members who needed a helping hand for their own mission or personal request.
¡®It¡¯s not any different from the Quest Hall. Minus the missions about kidnapping and assassinating people.¡¯ He didn¡¯t have to worry about that since one couldn¡¯t pick up those missions without reaching the required point.
The stamp on them couldn¡¯t show their points to each other but the bartenders had their record.
Mongrel glanced through the missions that a two-pointer could accept. There wasn¡¯t a lot and the requests appeared¡trivial.
¡®Is this a place for odd jobs?¡¯ Mongrel was gobsmacked by a request. It was asking for someone with at least 1500 Strength stat and a massage skill to massage their horse. For two Blues.
¡®Blues?!¡¯ The country bumpkin calmed himself when he thought how ridiculous the requirement of 1500 Strength and a related skill was.
As Unnamed mentioned, the place didn¡¯t look so shady anymore.
¡°What¡¯s that board?¡± Mongrel finished glancing through all the missions he saw himself being able to complete when he saw a different board beside the missions.
¡°Trade and sale notices, you can post something as well. It doesn¡¯t cost anything and is updated in real-time throughout all our establishments.¡±
Mongrel hopped over with his trusty leg and the first notice already startled him. Every subsequent post shook him just as profoundly, if not even more so.
¡°They¡¯re selling their skills?!¡±
¡°Why are you so surprised, everyone¡¯s here for money and one¡¯s skills are one¡¯s asset. Hurry and make some ores, these skill courses are extremely expensive but most of our guys¡¯ training methods are¡hasty. So you¡¯ll be able to pick it up fast if you follow their instructions.¡±
It was obvious from Jim¡¯s reaction that the training methods were probably unconventional to be able to pick a skill up fast.
He could knock on an Academy¡¯s door but even the fastest course might take years.
The exorbitant prices didn¡¯t dissuade him.
¡°I¡¯ll tackle this.¡± Mongrel got Jim to write him down as a participant for the highest-paying job at the moment.
¡°Huh? A team mission, colour me surprised I thought you¡¯d be a lone wolf.¡± The visible surprise on Jim¡¯s face was not lost on him.
¡°I¡¯ll be seeing you often Jim,¡±
Mongrel didn¡¯t even ask for further instructions.
The mission he had chosen was a request from a noble, who had asked for twenty mid-rung Masters. Now, he was one of them.
It was a harassment mission.
The contents were to destroy another noble¡¯s property at irregular timings. According to the post, the mission was already ongoing and they even put a schedule up.
Destroying a rich man¡¯s financials did not cross Mongrel¡¯s line.
As for harming the innocent, he¡¯d hope his line did not shift during his transformation.
Side Story (254.4): Shadow Hound’s Chrysalis Part 4
¡®Finally, level 300. I can¡¯t believe I actually made it in under ten months.¡¯ Mongrel almost couldn¡¯t believe his speed.
He had the Capital¡¯s abundant dungeons to thank. There was one extremely suitable dungeon for him to hunt. Level 310 to 330 creatures who had weak sight and perception.
The missions he took were mostly missions that required physical strength. He showed the organisation that he was a crazed power-based fighter.
His debut mission went extremely well.
Acting as if rage overcame him, he tore apart at everything in sight and even attacked allies.
There were a surprising amount of jobs for people like him. Or rather, Berserkers.
Jim had become somewhat of a teacher for him. The bartender taught him common knowledge.
Berserk skills like his were good physical buffs that didn¡¯t require mana and once he reached a certain level, the payoff was great.
He did plenty of menial labour at the start and most importantly they were all team missions.
When he finally gathered enough ores to pay for a basic mana manipulation course from the Mage Association and the Jaded Parasite¡¯s board. He wanted to compare the advice given.
The Mage Association held lectures and learning from them felt like he would have a stable foundation but he didn¡¯t see results even after three months.
The mage that he bought the services of was actually a Journeyman mage. He was the only one Mongrel¡¯s request and price got.
It was as unconventional as Jim told him.
A warrior like Mongrel didn¡¯t hear such a method from months of lectures from the Mage Association. The Journeyman mage instructed him to infuse his mana into an object, but then the mage attacked him by forcefully channelling his own mana through it.
The mage would forcefully guide his mana and the training method was for him to redo the motions over and over together.
In a single week, Mongrel¡¯s control over mana got twice as smooth and he felt like he could infuse his body and weapons almost twice as fast.
The drawback was that the mage would know how his mana flows but Mongrel didn¡¯t care. He didn¡¯t have any advanced body enhancement magic for the mage to steal from.
While that was going on, he transitioned to material and ingredient collection for other members of the Jaded Parasites. The problem with these missions was that they didn¡¯t pay well but he could gain combat experience for going on these missions.
Since he wanted to get stronger, he saw it as a boon.
He didn¡¯t follow Jim¡¯s initial advice and kept using the same worn down equipment.
In just half a year, he lived up to Jim¡¯s scoring of 2.4 points. Going on team missions was just his method of watching others¡¯ skills. The braggers were the best as he could listen to them chat.
In the following three months, his growth skyrocketed and he hit 300.
His double-edged axe only had a single edge left and was filled with chips and cracks. His tattered clothing and leather armour were barely holding themselves together.
Unnamed never came back for him but Mongrel was already thankful enough for bringing him into Tidal. The Capital¡¯s environment was very suitable for growth.
Despite being level 300 Jim¡¯s scoring for him remained at 2.6.
It was quite pathetic but the difference in skill refinement and tier was very obvious now that he reached this level. Copying training methods that didn¡¯t fit him from ear didn¡¯t exactly help much.
Between selling materials for the Quest Hall and the Jaded Parasites, he earned enough to get a new axe and leather armour. He made sure to dirty his new equipment immediately.
¡®How do I get stronger now?¡¯ Mongrel found his journey to level 300 to be remarkably smooth.
However, his skills mostly stagnated.
Other than his Core Skills which gave him the edge over monsters, he was barely passable as a warrior compared to the parties he glimpsed at.
Jaded Parasite¡¯s members could easily be found inside dungeons. He simply needed to enter a dungeon, locate them, leave the dungeon town together, and then he could proceed to act independently.
Learning the faces of his fellow Parasites helped to smooth out such actions. At least he didn¡¯t have to pay for their help by acting as a party.
He did make a few enemies. Berserkers weren¡¯t very well-liked.
However, members usually didn¡¯t bother with each other. Avoiding them was pretty easy. He just had to get the help of people who didn¡¯t hate him to the bone.
In the Capital, many warriors possessed the ability to utilise at least one body enhancement spell, although not all could. Among them, Berserkers were unique, as they underwent full-body enhancements, resulting in a more balanced increase in power compared to those who enhanced single body parts. This meant that even an unrefined berserk skill could be one of the few things that set a warrior apart from the rest.
However, that wasn¡¯t a good thing.
Most parties do not include a Berserker for a reason Mongrel was more than clear on. He¡¯d doom one and wasn¡¯t about to doom another.
Setting out into the dungeon with two limbs less and four people fewer truly pushed him to survive. Especially when the dungeon was above his actual strength.
Back at the tavern, being the dirtiest and smelliest patron, he drank the house brew all alone. Mongrel hadn''t amassed enough reputation to receive personal missions, but Jim informed him of a suitable job.
¡°Huh? Is this real?¡± Mongrel pointed at the client¡¯s name.
¡°As real as it can be.¡±
Instead of a name, the information on the space was a title. ¡®Mage association¡¯
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They didn¡¯t know the exact person who requested it but Jaded Parasites only cared about the remunerations. The client¡¯s information rarely matters unless they were clients who had debt and hadn''t paid up for a previous job.
Mongrel swallowed the mission contents into his mind.
¡°Can I take this? I don¡¯t meet the point requirement by a long shot.¡± Mongrel pushed the piece of note back to Jim.
The rating required was 3.2 points, according to Jim, he was a measly 2.6.
It might be acceptable for large, joint missions that needed a lot of people but this was a solo mission.
¡°I¡¯ll use my annual recommendation on you. This will be a test of sorts.¡±
¡°...You¡¯ll do that? You¡¯ll bet on this Mongrel?¡±
¡°Bah, you¡¯re my favourite newbie of the year. I don¡¯t lose anything. This is a long-term mission. It¡¯s up to you to accept it or not, just remember-¡±
¡°I know, the Jaded Parasites don¡¯t fail missions alive.¡± Mongrel signed up knowing that if he failed a solo mission, death awaited him. It would be a stain on their records and reputation mattered a lot to the Jaded Parasites.
Failure on a team mission would only result in the organisation posting a mandatory mission for other members to undertake. The same would happen for solo missions but there was a rumour among the members that those who failed solo missions vanished, never to be heard from again.
The point system provided some level of protection by discouraging members from selecting missions beyond their capabilities.
Jim, as one of the bartenders and handlers hinted to him about the truth of the rumour.
¡°Will you take it?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°No hesitation, that¡¯s why I like ya kid.¡±
Mongrel nodded at the level up of his ¡®Acting¡¯ skill. It went from untier to tier 1 surprisingly fast. He was more confident that he no longer felt like some farm boy.
¡®Searching for an old castle that used to hold mana slaves¡the reward, 3 bottles of Rare Elemental Sensitivity Potion. Rare!¡¯ Mongrel had heard of the elemental sensitivity potion, a concoction that allowed a common man to take their first step toward becoming a mage. The only prerequisite was that the ¡®common¡¯ individual could wield and manipulate mana.
However, he didn¡¯t know a Rare-quality one existed. He knew that Ebony was gifted an Uncommon version by the Frost Elves but that was the extent of his knowledge regarding the potion. Even this information had been acquired accidentally when he noticed the order form on his old boss''s table.
The monetary rewards of hundreds of Blues were incomparably worthless in comparison.
¡°But, Vermin Paradise¡how am I supposed to find something the mage association cannot.¡± Mongrel acted as if he was whispering out loud to himself for Jim to answer him.
¡°Shh!¡± Jim hurriedly covered his mouth a little too late.
He was ushered to the back rooms after a signal was given for him to act drunk.
¡°Come on, that was careless of you. Mana slaves have been banned for almost a century, the mage association wouldn¡¯t dare to touch anything regarding it on the surface.¡±
¡°And they put it as the client name.¡±
¡°As I¡¯ve said, on the surface. The good and the bad both play the same game, they dare not show their greed in public but everyone knows that mana means the most to those grangley mages.¡±
¡°What would an old, abandoned castle matter?¡±
¡°Silly boy, you don¡¯t understand the contents of the mission do you?¡±
¡°...¡± Mongrel mastered the act of staying silent to hide his ignorance.
He slackened his eyes to show his unhappiness at the disdain. The stone mask really helped when all others could see were his eyes and mouth. Adjusting his shoulders and feet to show a ¡®are you kidding?¡¯ expression.
Jim may or may not have seen through him since he had a good eye but the bald bartender sighed.
Mongrel continued to stay silent even though he didn¡¯t know what the sigh was for.
¡°Your job¡¯s to deliver the goods back to them in secret.¡±
¡°Grrw¡± He growled in acknowledgement. This wasn¡¯t an act, he didn¡¯t notice until too late that he growled. It was now a habit but he left it as it was.
¡®Deliver the goods? So¡there are mana slave facilities still running!?¡¯ Mongrel might have spent too much time in the dungeons that he forgot what kind of organisation he joined
The Empire¡¯s control over the continent wasn¡¯t as almighty as he assumed.
¡®They want a Master so that the delivery personnel-me is not so conspicuous. The combat rating is 3.2 but they expect a much higher stealth and secrecy rating. The next delivery is due in three months. There¡¯s no map attached, not even instructions only a hint that it¡¯s somewhere deep in Vermin Paradise.
The only reason there¡¯s this mission is because the previous deliveryman is either dead, no longer useful or silenced. If I take this mission and succeed, I¡¯ll be their delivery man and have to complete the mission every once in a while. If I want to stop¡it¡¯s probably out of the question unless the mage association has no way to track me but that¡¯s impossible.
3 bottles of Rare Elemental Sensitivity Potion and 1 every subsequent delivery with a larger Blue compensation.¡¯
Mongrel pondered on the repercussions of taking this high risk mission. The mage association could easily find some level 400 and above Grandmaster who specialised in stealth. Heck, they probably had mages and magical items that could do the same.
He came up with a few possibilities. The ¡®delivery¡¯ was the mage association purchasing or trading something and didn¡¯t want anything or person to lead back to them. The Jaded Parasite had a reputation for leaving no traces back to their clients.
All thanks to the perfume spray Mongrel was given.
It was anti-divination perfume.
One so potent that not even the Archduke of Beastmen could sniff them out.
As for who made it, Mongrel believed it was one of the leaders of the Parasites. Jim and the other bartenders would always have plenty in stock.
¡°Jim, help me post a request for someone to teach me tier 3 stealth with a minimum of 300% base in under a month. Physical or a small mana cost of 10 to 50 a minute. Non-elemental.¡±
¡°Can you afford it? That would easily cost Purples and even our missions rarely include Purples for 5 pointers.¡±
¡°My stake will be 3 bottles of Rare Elemental Sensitivity Potion to be paid within 4 months.¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll help you post it but I doubt anyone would take it unless they were desperate. You¡¯re on a tight schedule and such a good skill isn¡¯t something most people will sell or share. To get to that a 300% refinement in under a month is¡near impossible if it''s a fresh skill but if you already have one, it might be cutting it close. Furthermore, payment after? That¡¯s that worse news for us.¡±
Despite the negativity that Jim showed, the Elemental Sensitivity Potion was not easy to obtain. The Jaded Parasites did not have access to them and even ill-gotten methods got them Common or Uncommon ones at best. He got a teacher just 3 days after his posting.
Jim was hiding this mission and its details for Mongrel and he was going to make full use of it. Otherwise, the mission wouldn¡¯t even have lasted on the board for a minute. There were plenty of capable people.
His new teacher¡¯s teaching methods were very interesting. Mongrel didn¡¯t even know if his teacher was a man, woman, beastmen or elven. Because the person never showed up. His teacher simply spoke into his head and started sending him images.
The images showed a realistic golem practising stealth in all sorts of locations. From the urban city to a crowded forest to a rocky mountain. He was guided to the Quest Hall¡¯s special training ground where one could pay for changing or simulating a certain environment. Then, he was handheld through every step of the process.
Just like his request, it was a fully physical stealth skill. Even better, his teacher taught him how to mask and suppress his mana so that it was harder to spot and wouldn¡¯t needlessly overflow. Apparently, many monsters found people that way and Mongrel had been unaware.
The biggest problem with handholding was probably the fact that he would have a very difficult time improving the skill unless he understood the skill perfectly.
Mongrel didn¡¯t care. For someone as clueless as him, he needed something to start with and he could work on it after.
By the third week of the easiest skill training he had, he evolved his stealth skill into Covert Occupancy.
¡°Pass the potions to a barkeep. I¡¯ll find you if you don¡¯t keep your word. In life or in death.¡±
His teacher¡¯s last words were worrisome but Mongrel got used to how most of the Jaded Parasites talk.
Mongrel waited no longer and headed for Vermin Paradise.
Side Story (254.5): Shadow Hound’s Chrysalis Part 5
¡°Did you really bring me all the way out here for that little kid?¡±
¡°Old fossil, you like him already. You and both know that you taught him that stealth skill.¡±
¡°A talentless brat with neither shadow nor darkness affinity¡¡±
¡°Those potions might work.¡±
¡°Doubt it. The shadows elude him.¡±
¡°But you still like him.¡±
¡°...aye, that dogged persistence despite his weak resistance is so¡sweet.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve watched him long enough and he passed your test by completing this crazy mission.¡±
¡°A lucky boy.¡±
¡°Can you really call that luck? Sure, he fell into a ravine but he found the spell formation and swam to the centre. With ONE arm and leg!¡±
¡°Dogged persistence, dogged life.¡±
¡°Well¡try not to kill him. See ya around.¡±
Unnamed felt bad for what he brought onto the Mongrel kid but the boy wanted power.
He quickly dragged the dying boy back into Tidal before he bled out on the roads. To think that the kid had difficulty surviving just a random monster from Vermin Paradise felt a bit pathetic.
¡°Barkeep, have a bed?¡± He entered through the back door and yelled for the bald man.
Unnamed uncorked a potion and poured it onto Mongrel¡¯s body. He was rich and mana ores weren¡¯t really what he cared about deep down.
He had a drink with the barkeep before Mongrel reflexively jumped into the shadows.
¡°Come out of that corner, you¡¯re back at the tavern.¡±
¡°It-it¡¯s you.¡±
¡°Yeah. You succeeded in catching the fossil¡¯s attention. Rest and clean yourself up, he¡¯ll get you soon.¡±
¡°...¡± Mongrel barely nodded but his eyes were full of life.
¡°We probably won¡¯t be seeing each other anytime soon so, a word of advice.¡±
¡°Speak.¡± Before Unnamed knew it, the boy¡¯s voice had grown into a man¡¯s.
¡°Think carefully before you accept. I don¡¯t know what he¡¯ll do, but he¡¯s an¡extreme person. I also believe he¡¯s insane. Get yourself a large expanded bag or pouch, and carry water ores, food and spare weapons. You might treat potions like water so¡in any case, I hope we¡¯ll both be alive to have a drink.¡±
Unnamed didn¡¯t stay to converse. He had places to be.
¡®Fragadal¡¯s Sea¡level 500, here I come.¡¯
???
¡°Kid, want to inherit my skills?¡±
¡°Depends.¡±
¡°On what?¡±
¡°How strong I can get if I inherit your skills.¡±
Mongrel looked at the man who could be mistaken for a food stall owner who was past their prime. White hair and moustache, skinny frame and bony face. Unname¡¯s warning came but he barely had two days before this old man showed up on the window ledge. The inn¡¯s security was non-existent to begin with.
The old man erupted into uncontrollable laughter before succumbing to fits of coughing.
¡°Good timing, there¡¯s a job for me so you can come watch.¡±
¡°...okay.¡±
Mongrel was swallowed into his own shadows and reappeared in front of a tall gate.
¡®A mansion?¡¯
In the next moment, the mansion was swallowed into the shadows just like he had been.
¡°All in a days work. How was it? Good enough for you?¡±
¡°...what was the job?¡±
¡°Evicting the Count¡¯s family. I¡¯ve evicted them.¡±
Mongrel¡¯s expression darkened under his mask. This old man just killed or teleported an entire mansion in the middle of the streets of Tidal.
Instead of fearing his power, Mongrel couldn¡¯t get over how many people were killed. He didn¡¯t know if the noble family were full of bastards or not but it didn¡¯t matter to him.
¡°...Getting soft?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°This is how the world is. I don¡¯t care what you want power for or what you¡¯re going to use it for. You just have to decide whether you want it or not.¡±
¡°I won¡¯t be bound to anything?¡±
¡°A dog is bound by chains.¡±
¡°A mongrel rips its chains.¡± Mongrel finished the saying for the old man. He didn¡¯t expect the old man to know the story.
The shadow wielder smiled and added on, ¡°And bite its owner''s hand.¡±
Mongrel did not know why the old man said that and didn¡¯t comment.
¡°What¡¯s your answer?¡±
¡®Power is just for me¡to stay free. I won''t kill without reason, but I won''t hesitate to kill when necessary."¡¯ Mongrel resolved.
¡°What do I have to do?¡±
¡°I spent a century making things easy for my inheritant. You¡¯ve already experienced learning one of my old skills. It¡¯s very simple¡¡±
Mongrel watched the old man¡¯s face morph into a chilling smile.
¡°You cannot hide your past.¡±
¡°This is your friend? Used to be? Doesn¡¯t matter, you haven¡¯t let go.¡±
Mongrel¡¯s mask did nothing to hide his shock when Rowent¡¯s body emerged from the ground beside the old man. Why was he here? In the hands of some random old man.
¡°Climb out of hell.¡±
¡°I¡¯m the devil. Slay me for my power.¡±
Mongrel couldn¡¯t even react before starting to fall and was surrounded by darkness. His forehead was poked on by the old man before he fell but he didn¡¯t care about the splitting headache at the moment.
He dived to catch Rowent''s falling body.
¡®Why are you caught up in this?¡¯
¡°Rowent! Wake up!¡±
The fire mage didn¡¯t change much in appearance. He even looked better than before. The opposite of what happened to Mongrel. Mongrel was certain that this man was real and not just a fake body or an illusion.
No matter how much he yelled, the fire mage didn¡¯t wake up.
They had been falling into darkness for at least ten minutes but Mongrel¡¯s sense of time seemed warped and he didn¡¯t know how much time passed before they landed. They landed so safely, that he felt like all the time falling did nothing.
With the splitting headache he had, images of an unknown young man danced amongst the shadows surfaced in his head.
However, all the images halted and showed him something else. The same young man jumped into a pitch-black pool.
Before he could ponder on what to do, something fell on his head. He didn¡¯t have eyes above his head and almost reacted violently.
¡®...elemental sensitivity potions.¡¯ Mongrel thought, though he couldn''t fathom why. He was currently in total darkness, with not a single glimmer of light in sight.
¡®I can feel the ground, I can breathe normally. Rowent¡¯s heart is beating. What are the dangers surrounding us?¡¯
His situational awareness came a little slow as his head continued to pound him with images of an unknown young man. It got more and more annoying as the same images of standing up, walking seven steps to the left jumping forward, diving into a pool.
Even a dullard would start to understand that the images wanted him to follow or copy the same motions.
¡®This is the inheritance?¡¯ Mongrel still couldn¡¯t get why he was thrown in here with someone else.
Since he already gathered his resolve, he started acting on it and followed the young man¡¯s motion.
The only difference was chugging a potion down before he jumped into the pool of darkness.
The images failed to convey the excruciating pain he would soon experience.
¡®Grhh!¡¯ He growled mentally.
¡®Ri-right, I have to start manipulating whatever this is¡¡¯ Mongrel snapped out of the cycle of fainting and regaining his consciousness after an unknown period.
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¡®I¡I still don¡¯t sense any foreign particles in the air like they said one would¡¡¯ His feet couldn¡¯t touch the ground but he managed to rip out another two potions to chug in one go.
His attempt to sense the foreign mana finally worked. His abysmal efforts failed to grab the purplish mana but he was glad it was no longer pure darkness in his senses.
The pool of¡liquid? Began to crawl under his skin and molest all his orifices.
Mongrel panicked.
Only then, did the images in his head show the young man drowning in pain.
However, the images sped up and showed that the young man survived.
If so, Mongrel thought he would survive too.
And he did.
Mongrel learned about what happened to his body afterwards. It was called Physique refinement.
The world of darkness was no longer so dark.
Mongrel could control the shadows.
His physique granted him sight within the shadows.
Umbra¡¯s Embrace Physique.
It supposedly made him capable of travelling through shadows and melding into them with his physical body but when he tried to do so, he only had enough mana to dip his hand in and out for a second.
His personal shadow can split apart from him and it had 30% of his Perception.
Mongrel couldn¡¯t deal with multiple mental images and sights but that would get better with practice. He had to invest more in Intelligence in future.
His happiness at the new power and ability to wield the shadow element didn¡¯t last long.
The images of the young man in his head showed him what was to come.
¡®That pool¡is some treasured saliva. And now, I¡¯m bathed in it¡¡¯
With his senses for shadows being fresh and new, he was disorientated but he could finally make out his surroundings. His sight worked better than his mana sense at the moment.
¡®Hell. What is hell? Is this, the Netherrealm?¡¯ Mongrel seemed to recall some stories his parents told him as a child. He didn¡¯t know what ¡®hell¡¯ was but children were told that people go to the Netherrealm when they die.
Thousands upon thousands of weird amalgamations of shadows surrounded them.
Mongrel inched towards Rowent¡¯s body. Unravelling the axe from his waist and back, he slung Rowent¡¯s arm over his shoulders. The same rope wrapped the unconscious man onto him before standing alert like a scorpion tail.
¡®So this is his game¡why? Just why?¡¯
Instead of calling the mental pictures as images, it felt like memories were overlapping over his own.
The young man in his mind showed off his skills, Mongrel didn¡¯t have time to digest the memories of the young man.
¡®They¡¯re not attacking yet¡this pool is off limits. So a safe spot for us? For how long?¡¯
Mongrel immediately found out as some phantom force threw his body away from the pool.
He tumbled without any chance to protect Rowent. At least his axe was out of the way.
Memories alone did not give him skills, no matter how fast they were flashing through his mind. They were just a distraction at the moment.
Mongrel couldn¡¯t be distracted as shadowy creatures ripped at them the moment they were tossed out of an imaginary line.
There were times when a berserker¡¯s ability to blind one¡¯s mind was helpful. Right now would¡¯ve been great.
The most intuitive motions he had were his reflexes. The only additional help he had was his shadow which moved without his mental help. Casting a spell or using mana without any sort of mental focus was unfamiliar to him. It felt more like moving his own body rather than his mind.
The unexpected boost in speed and power was manageable thanks to his familiarity with his berserk enhancement. It felt like a 10% boost overall and wasn¡¯t too overpowering. A comprehensive boost of 10% was like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy cave.
His first instincts were to defend himself but the memories of the unknown young man insisted that running away was the top priority.
Mongrel relented.
He couldn¡¯t move faster than the shadows and was forced to learn how to use an odd shadow movement skill. Perhaps the threat of death to both him and his old¡acquaintance pushed his learning speed or the inheritance was supposed to pass down that easily but Mongrel shifted the shadows to his feet with ease.
There was another safe spot not too far away. It was a weirdly bright cave. Rather than a cave, it was just a large rock that was carved. The light came from a gem or crystal embedded within the rock. Despite working for the biggest company in the Empire, Mongrel didn¡¯t study enough materials to be able to Identify the gem. All he knew was that it wasn¡¯t a light elemental mana ore.
Mongrel couldn¡¯t even make it there without a large gash on his one good foot and abdomen.
Rowent finally gave him some response and woke up.
The man screamed and attacked him with a blast of fire.
The fire mage¡¯s casting speed was a far cry from how Mongrel remembered it to be. The flames that pulled out from the man¡¯s staff smashed into his body and almost sent him out of the carved rock. A sign that the man still couldn¡¯t conjure fire mana and his hasty attack didn¡¯t have much power.
For Mongrel who ran about the heated battlefields of the Imperial mages'' bombardment, the heat was bearable. Many armours come with some degree of resistance to heat.
¡°Stop! Rowent! It¡¯s me -¡± His ghoulish stone mask, lack of a complete humanoid form and bloody smell didn¡¯t help his case.
However, a few moments outside the rock was enough to wake Rowent up. Protecting a fumbling mage was difficult. Fire magic seemed very effective at giving the shadow creatures a panic attack. Air magic did nothing to the shadow creatures but it almost suffocated Mongrel out.
Rowent¡¯s ability to remove air was extremely troublesome for most creatures. It seemed like his ability with air magic had improved by leaps and bounds.
Ten minutes of fighting for the fire mage seemed like a long time for a smart mage to figure out the menacing two-limbed shadow was on his side. It was probably just unbelievable and too sudden of a situation for the mage.
Back within the small cave, Mongrel was more injured than before.
Rowent kept his distance and he gave the mage time to digest the situation.
¡°Who¡¯re you? Why am I here? Where is this? Why do you know my name?¡±
¡°...Mongrel. Some old man threw us here. I don¡¯t know where this is. You carry a Z&Z member card.¡± Mongrel easily made up believable answers. Rowent completely forgot about his attempt of saying ''it''s me.''
¡°How much time has passed?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. But only a few hours since I woke up.¡± Mongrel wasn¡¯t sure how long he spent refining his physique. He didn¡¯t lie about the situation and told Rowent what he knew about the shadow creatures.
From their speed and power, they felt like Grandmasters and Identify didn¡¯t give him any information. However, his gut told him they were Masters just like he and Rowent were. Was it his new Physique? Was it the overflowing essence and aura? Or was it just plain obvious whether a creature was a Master, Grandmaster or anything else?
Mongrel continued to watch the internal memories of an unknown youth. However, the memories suddenly overlapped with another youth. Then a middle-aged man.
¡°Do you remember anything? Before you got sent here?¡± Mongrel asked to check if Rowent knew how he got kidnapped.
¡°The last thing I could remember was that I was studying a new magic book I exchanged for contribution points.¡±
Mongrel took the opportunity to Identify Rowent but his attempts were futile. It appeared that Rowent had become important enough to be given obfuscation jewels.
¡°Were you based in Tidal?¡±
¡°What? No, I was part of the elite escort party in Pastures.¡±
¡°Pastures? One of the Three Great Farms?¡±
¡°Yeah, I was just back from another trip transporting expeditions to the Tides. War efforts and all. We were unlucky enough to face leftover Trolls on the trip in the early days before the war started for real. What¡¯s your story?¡±
¡°...I was part of the militia in Fourth Tide.¡±
¡°Hooh, you must be really strong. Is that how you-¡± Rowent pointed and eyed his missing arm and leg.
¡°No, Mongrel has had this since birth.¡± He managed to sound unawkward despite the third-person speech.
¡°And you still chose to be a warrior? That¡¯s¡impressive.¡±
¡°Not quite. I only picked off weakened opponents unlike many of the real warriors.¡±
¡°It¡¯s still an impressive feat to go onto the battlefield and make it out.¡±
¡°Any idea where we are?¡± Mongrel tried to change the topic.
¡°Not a clue. You said an old man threw us here?¡±
¡°I saw him briefly, he tossed both of us down a pool of these¡shadows and he we are. I think it¡¯s safe to assume we¡¯re not quite on the mainland. It doesn¡¯t seem like we¡¯re inside a spell either.¡±
¡°Of course, who could cast such a large spell with creatures within?¡±
¡°What do you have on you?¡±
Instead of answering, Rowent started fumbling about. He wasn¡¯t carrying a bag so all he had on him were the ores on his bracelet and everything on his robe. Fortunately, one was a water mana and he had most of his equipment.
¡°I have food and nutrition potions.¡± Mongrel carried more nutrition potions compared to food. At Mark¡¯s advice, it was a fantastic potion.
There were different qualities and the best he had could regulate its energy output. He just had to drink one and he didn¡¯t have to eat or drink for a week. If his physical energy output increases in battle, the potion would adjust the amount it supplied his body with. For a berserker, it was a miracle drug. Although the potion effect would run out faster, he didn¡¯t have to worry about extended battles as much.
Sadly, he didn¡¯t make enough mana ores to fill his energy pack with them. Most of it was normal food substitutes that lasted a day or two of normal energy expenditure at best. They also couldn¡¯t regulate the amount of energy they supplied him with.
¡°You-You¡¯re okay with sharing?¡±
¡°...Your fire magic seems helpful.¡±
¡°Alright. Now what?¡±
¡°If you trust my gut, I think I saw a hut over there.¡± Mongrel mentally saw a middle-aged man getting lost but two youths made it to a hut a couple of gors (1gor=5 km) away. His hunch told him that this inheritance had been passed down to these people.
The youth he first saw was probably the old man who threw them in here. The other youth and middle-aged man might be the previous generations. They all faced the same situation. With little to no difference in location or creatures surrounding them.
¡°I can¡¯t see what or where you¡¯re pointing at but¡sure. Can you see?¡±
¡°Yes, like a summer night. But my sight doesn¡¯t exceed a gor.¡± Summer nights were one of the brightest amongst the seasons with moonlight being white in hue.
¡°That¡¯s amazing.¡± Rowent couldn¡¯t even see an arm''s length away once he stepped out of the small cave unless he lit a flame.
They rested as the fire mage complained about how heavy his body felt. The gravity here was at least six times stronger than Plainston and over twice that of Tidals.
It didn¡¯t really impede Mongrel much after he got used to it. Gravity was a weak force for many warriors and all it took was getting accustomed to the strain and change in motions to deal with it. Unless it was greatly augmented by a spell formation or mage.
Mongrel failed to dislodge the gem of light from the rock. Rowent couldn¡¯t identify it and they couldn¡¯t exactly carry a cave-sized rock on their backs on the run. The three separate, additional memories he had showed their failures as well. Mongrel didn¡¯t think he was better or stronger than any of them.
The next step seemed to be fighting through the horde of shadows towards the hut. It should have the same gem that warded off the shadow beings.
Something felt odd about the three individual¡¯s movements. They fought while dodging or tumbling about for no reason. Attacks that shouldn¡¯t have hit, hit because they rolled into them.
Mongrel found out that he couldn¡¯t skip or glance through the memories, they were shown to him in a deliberate manner. Hence, he didn¡¯t know what was to come after reaching the hut. However, the memories constantly replayed training. The three figures overlapped and danced over each other¡¯s ethereal forms. Each one is faster and smoother than the last.
Mongrel led Rowent out once they were rested. He also settled and digested the memories that he had access to.
Although Rowent had a fire movement skill, it attracted too much attention and Mongrel had to carry the slower man. As harrowing or close some of the encounters had been, Rowent¡¯s fire magic helped a lot. His own weird shadow buff couldn¡¯t surface but all the creatures were hesitant and appeared weaker as well.
Making it to the hut wasn¡¯t all that hard when he had three sets of memories about these shadow creatures and their movements. However, he was only faster and stronger than the middle-aged man in his memories. The other two youths had power and speed beyond his own.
Mongrel downed a muscular regeneration potion once they got into the small hut. There were a pair of beds and it was a fully furnished hut. It had a kitchen and toilet. All well lit.
¡°Why would there be a safe hut, untouched by time and dust in the middle of nowhere?¡± Rowent questioned.
Mongrel internally agreed because the hut looked exactly the same in the three sets of memories he had. Excluding the changes and mess they made. The hut returned to how it was when the three people first entered.
¡°Maybe that light gem is more than meets the eye.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll look around.¡±
Mongrel let the fire mage do what he wanted to.
If his new memories served him right, Rowent would find a map and they would come to the same conclusion.
There was only one way out.
Side Story (254.6): Shadow Hound’s Chrysalis Part 6
Mongrel wanted to sit tight and practise the new skills he ¡®¡¯inherited¡¯ but there was no time for them.
The device that was supposed to take them out would only open or activate once a century. As for how they got the time, they were putting blind faith in the self-rotating sandglass.
Rowent was familiar with the fluid and make of the sandglass and seemed certain that it was working and accurate. It wasn¡¯t filled with sand despite its name but a viscous black fluid.
They had less than a year to travel past the distance equivalent from Fifth Tide to Second. Slightly shorter than the distance from Plainston to Tidal. That should be plenty of time for travel but it didn¡¯t include the waves of shadow creatures that filled the area.
The fire mage was taking the situation in strides. Calmly analysing that there was no reason to question what he couldn¡¯t do anything about.
Mongrel felt like he was freaking out more than Rowent despite knowing more about the situation.
They tried to hunt to level Rowent up for two weeks.
Mongrel made up the excuse as he wanted to incorporate his new sword mastery with his axe. He didn¡¯t have to copy the figures in his mind to the dot. All of them had two arms and legs each while he didn¡¯t.
Secretly learning how to control shadows was his main point of focus.
What they figured out was that they couldn¡¯t kill these creatures. The shadow creatures simply faded into the ground the moment fire got near them and tearing their flesh apart only led to a waste of energy as they could easily piece themselves together.
However, Mongrel knew he was able to hurt them as long as he enveloped himself with his shadows. Rowent, as the mage, didn¡¯t know that he wouldn¡¯t be able to touch them even if he used his staff to whack them. That worked out well for Mongrel.
As unfair as it was, the creatures could hurt them with a single touch while he needed mana, mental effort and to be able to reach them physically. He couldn¡¯t manipulate shadows beyond an arm¡¯s reach and once they weren¡¯t in contact with his body, they couldn¡¯t touch any physical matter. They could still touch the shadow creatures though.
There was not a single fruit tree or edible monster in sight which cut their limited time even further.
They had limited food.
Mongrel didn¡¯t have an endless bag capacity. With potions saving space, he brought less than a year¡¯s worth of sustenance.
For one person.
Skill levels went up but he hadn¡¯t learned any new skills. Rowent found out what worked and what didn¡¯t and optimised his staff or something.
It had the option of speeding up one or two of his spells in exchange for slowing down others.
Odd, but situationally useful.
He kept a flamethrower kind of spell so that he could protect himself as fast as possible. It was both defence and offence but short-ranged.
On the map they found under the table, some locations were marked out just like their current location and the small cave. They didn¡¯t need much smarts to know it represented safe spots or spots with these light gems.
¡°This is oddly elaborate. Designed. Know what I mean?¡± Rowent commented.
The fire mage never asked about the flimsy stone mask stabbed into his face.
¡°Yeah. Totally, feels like some kind of trial of fire or survival.¡±
¡°Right!? It must be! My skills have already levelled a few times!¡±
Mongrel almost chuckled because Rowent secretly watched too many memory lights about heroes and their tribulations in his free time. It was easy to distract him with these methods. The fact that their skill level is rising can easily be attributed to the stress and danger levels present.
¡°Packed up? It¡¯s a two-week run, no rest, no safe spots, no shelter, no time to eat.¡±
¡°Haaa¡exhaustion resistance, I never thought I¡¯d have to push it outside of time to study. I¡¯m ready as I¡¯ll ever be.¡±
¡®He¡¯s changed¡what did I expect?¡¯ Mongrel doesn''t remember Rowent being so relaxed. Rather, there was more energy in the man¡¯s tone of voice.
Was it because it wasn¡¯t Chris but Mongrel who he was facing?
In any case, it was time to move.
Within five days, Mongrel figured out why the people in his sets of memories moved oddly.
They were protecting someone.
Each and every one of the three figures took hits for an invisible figure, not within the memories he was shown.
¡°Why.¡±
¡°What did you say?¡± Rowent panted while getting a piggyback.
The fire mage was quite a saver, at least, his presence made it possible for them to catch sleep from time to time. It taxed the fire mage for a few hours and the rest of the day was dependent on him.
It wasn¡¯t always possible to piggyback so the mage had a good chance to put his movement spell and skill to the test.
The nutrition potion worked wonders but finding time and a chance to relieve their physiological urges was quite difficult. The easy method was to piss once Rowent set up a fence of flames.
Mongrel and Rowent had never run so hard in their lives.
Just constantly pushing their feet, legs and lungs was tiresome enough. The shadow creatures of many different forms were relentless. Mongrel could see their moves from a mile away but his body had trouble keeping up and they both sustained non-fatal injuries.
Whenever Rowent fell asleep on his back, he would practice a shadow movement skill. Shortening the time it took to get to their destination.
The middle-aged man in his memories recovered his energy by enveloping his shadow around the shadow creatures but the two youths did not. A mistake on the middle-aged man¡¯s part. Mongrel was given advance information, the middle-aged man turned fiendish before he imparted the inheritance to one of the youths.
The concept of a Fiend was fed into Mongrel and he was quite surprised to find out that absorbing ambient or foreign essence had such consequences.
However, he still benefited from the environment. It felt like he could manipulate shadows with far less effort and less mana than usual. He wouldn¡¯t know what ¡®usual¡¯ would feel like but he was pretty sure that it was the locations¡¯ effect.
When they closed in on the next hut, Mongrel slowed down from the memories that overlapped with his current position and time.
The middle-aged man crouched and stayed silent for a second. Then he called out while shaking something invisible on the ground.
Mongrel was stunned in place by the yell that came after.
The hoarse voice tore into his very core.
¡°What¡¯re you doing?!¡± Rowent dragged him sprawling into the doorway.
The hut¡¯s door opened easily and stayed locked. The shadowy creatures simply watched from afar. Never getting too close to the light that the hut produced.
The hut looked exactly the same. It could fit three or four people if they squeezed. A wooden table, door, a pair of windows, a kitchen and beds. Not to mention a toilet. It was luxurious.
¡°Haaa-haa¡± Mongrel grabbed his mask as if it was falling off.
¡®Why¡¯s my heart hurting?¡¯ Mongrel meant it figuratively. He was torn from within.
He calmed down soon after thanks to sheer exhaustion.
Neither of them had their guard up and were quickly knocked out.
The routine continued.
Mongrel and Rowent made it from one hut to another.
Mongrel learned one skill after the other. They tried to ration their food stocks and that was not productive, almost costing their lives. A weakened and exhausted warrior and mage was one problem, a weakened, exhausted and hungry pair was another.
This weird place wasn¡¯t completely barren. From his inherited memories, all three people found some sort of sustenance here. Mongrel ate the weird vegetation and fruits while feeding Rowent his stockpile. He even managed to hunt a few of these shadow creatures sometime back. They were called Formless Shade and were indeed under level 300.
They reached their fourth hut mostly in one piece.
Mongrel suffered a large cut in his calves and Rowent a rib fracture along with the cut on his back. The Formless Shades liked to make sharpened claws as weapons. They were usually four-limbed but not limited to it and changed their forms at will.
¡®Only the fourth hut. Still a long way to go.¡¯ The distance from hut to hut was not constant. Some were days apart, others weeks. Using Mongrel¡¯s pace.
The shadow creatures were getting stronger the closer they got to the device that was supposed to take them out of this place and back to where they came from.
Mongrel¡¯s personal improvements were starting to rise exponentially. The skills he was learning were putting his own to shame every single day despite being at a low level.
It was impossible to hide it from Rowent but he didn¡¯t try very hard other than the shadow manipulation. The fire mage didn¡¯t know much about Mongrel to begin with. A new active physical skill or two wouldn¡¯t stand out.
Even shadow magic wouldn¡¯t stand out since Rowent couldn¡¯t see well in the darkness. The man wouldn¡¯t be able to tell who did what. In this manner, Mongrel managed to cast a shadow to halt the Formless Shade from diving into the depths of shadows. Allowing Rowent to begin incinerating them and gain levels.
A level or two didn¡¯t make a big difference but every bit of strength was appreciated. The level gap also made it easy for Rowent to level and it would add up soon enough.
On the way to the fifth hut after partially healing up, Mongrel was once again rooted to the spot. Not right in front of the hut but in the middle of their path. This time, he managed to get a hold of himself.
The second youth was shouting like the middle-aged man, his face directed towards the sky as he cried out, "Hazel."
In contrast to the middle-aged man''s ferocious roar, this young man''s cry had a slightly less profound impact on Mongrel. But it stung him all the same.
Throughout the journey, Mongrel found out many things about Rowent that he never knew about. The fire mage did not appear as mature as he used to be. They shared and chatted whenever they were free. Mongrel kept silent most of the time but Rowent got talkative. Perhaps he didn¡¯t like the awkward silence whenever they were on the run.
¡°Tired? Let¡¯s rest a little longer.¡± Rowent proposed.
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In each of the huts were the same sandglass. They couldn¡¯t move it but they were pretty sure it synced with all the other huts. They were moving faster than Rowent expected. Thanks to Mongrel covering more ground than he assumed.
¡°We¡¯re traversed more than a third of the way there. But the distance from one hut to another increases from here.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s get you to 300 before we move off. I have a bad feeling, my new skills need to be refined too.¡± Mongrel suggested.
They were ahead of schedule and could spare some time hunting around the hut. Being able to eat some of the weird things in the area made the food issue less prominent.
The inheritance he got never showed him the path ahead until he started making his way towards the next but the cry and yell echoed in him.
At least, he wanted to be able to evolve his body enhancement to tier 3. It should be possible with what he was shown. His personal Core Skill was relatively compatible. He felt like he could merge them. In fact, there were many skills in the inheritance that could outright take his current skill slots.
Skills like ¡®Slash¡¯ were not hard to override when a better variant was at his disposal.
It wasn¡¯t easy to push Rowent up to 300 with just level 300 Formless Shades but Mongrel had gotten better and better at halting a large number of them for the fire mage to wipe out with a single blast.
His range of control had expanded and he could make use of the shadow mana in the surroundings. The middle-aged man¡¯s Shadow Root was quite weak but the youths¡¯ version was more mana-efficient and was easier to cast.
The Formless Shade was better than him but halting them for 0.2 seconds wasn¡¯t that hard. With some practice, Rowent managed to time his cast right. The fire mage got the illusion that he had vastly improved in casting speed. Imagining that he could outspeed the Formless Shade when it was actually Mongrel¡¯s work.
Three full weeks were spent, not in relaxation but in growing their strength.
Rowent was not quite 300 but he wasn¡¯t gaining many levels even with thousands of these Formless Shades. It was not worth waiting any longer. They didn¡¯t know what was to come and what kind of situation they would be slowed down by.
Because the next trip would be traversing some mountain range that stood in their way. It was a treacherous path that wasn¡¯t limited to an unlimited number of Formless Shades but other creatures.
Mongrel made immense improvements and learned the ins and outs of his new Physique. Despite no mention of his endurance, he felt that he recovered from fatigue faster and got tired slower. There was a good chance it was thanks to the environment but it didn¡¯t discount that it was thanks to his Physique that he was able to reap such benefits.
Another point to note was that Rowent¡¯s complexion was getting paler. The man himself didn¡¯t notice but it was very obvious to Mongrel that the surroundings were not kind to the normal human.
Unlike the area they¡¯ve already traversed, the mountains were named. Or so they assumed. The map had written symbols that neither of them knew how to read or decipher. The three separate memories he had also didn¡¯t tell him what the symbols meant.
Tearing a path open towards the mountains was pretty easy as they already knew how to counter the Shades.
Fortunately, Rowent was fully aware of his weakness and carried a bundle of fire mana ores. His staff could also convert his mana to fire mana which solved the issue of not being able to conjure fires. It was not even slower than a conjurer. The benefit of being financially supported was great equipment.
At the cost of a few filled Blues, they set their path ablaze. Did it attract unwanted attention?
It did.
But there was little to no difference when they were constantly surrounded by uncountable creatures.
Energetically charging into the dark mountain range, they didn¡¯t notice that Rowent¡¯s flames weren¡¯t even half as bright after stepping in.
Mongrel¡¯s sight was already accustomed to the darkness and Rowent couldn¡¯t see far to begin with, even with his flames alight.
Instead of being flooded by Formless Shade, they were travelling almost unhindered. The amount of Shades they faced was cut down by at least 90%.
They unnerved both of them.
It was the first time the Shades decreased in numbers.
Mongrel saw that each of the three sets of memories he had went in different directions. With each taking a path and the selective presentation, he wasn¡¯t sure which was the best. He was only allowed to see a few minutes ahead for each. Sure, the individuals would run about to join a certain path once they found out other paths didn¡¯t work but it was getting confusing to him.
Mongrel bleached internally when he saw a new creature appear within his memories.
Identify didn¡¯t work for the three individuals and he doubted his version would work.
He quickly made use of the three sets of memories to guide Rowent elsewhere.
There was one pattern. Even if a creature had been slain by one of the three sets of memories, everything that happens to them has always happened to the three individuals as well. Even the Formless Shades took on the same forms at the same time.
Mongrel quickly learned about the monsters that inhabited the mountain range. They all had forms. Some bipedal, most quadrupedal or more.
A silver lining for the comparatively sparsely populated mountain range was that there were probably areas to rest in and they could hold down camp if they were lucky.
However, Mongrel was once again hit by the third person or perhaps the first youth that appeared within his mind.
Similarly, the youth jumped into an attack. A quadruped gorged out an eyeball but the youth went insane and sliced every creature around in a flurry of shadows.
He rushed to an empty ground with no corpses and giggled. The giggle evolved into a mad laughter that echoed through the mountains.
¡®What the-¡¯
Mongrel didn¡¯t have time to ponder as they were about to face their first new opponents. There were no other paths according to the memories he had and they had to pass through this valley.
They didn¡¯t need to Identify to know that their opponents weren¡¯t mere Masters.
He was right. Knowing another creature or person''s rank or class was obvious. It was deeply seated within their bones and very souls. There was no need for a deep knowledge base to identify when another creature was superior.
The unknown creature was larger than a tiger. On all fours with thick claws and sharp fangs. The light from Rowent¡¯s flames curved away from the creature.
Rowent didn¡¯t see a difference between this creature and the Formless Shade and shot a large fireball without hesitation.
The creature shot back with a ball of darkness and washed over Rowent¡¯s fireball.
Mongrel was already ready for the move as he knew the beast¡¯s capabilities. He bit onto his sword and grabbed Rowent away. He didn¡¯t expect the fireball to be overwhelmed but he was ready to pull Rowent away.
He watched a few copies of these beasts get slaughtered by the three figures in his mind before he acted. As expected, there was an order to his memories.
The middle-aged man was the most unfamiliar with the place and creatures. He faced the most danger and was in the worst conditions. The second person made use of the middle-aged man¡¯s experience to get out of danger while the third used the memories to make the most of the situation.
It was a tough battle as neither his Shadow Root nor Rowent¡¯s flames worked well but they managed to get the upper hand. Thankfully, the creature seemed to be a solo hunter. However, they didn¡¯t manage to kill the beast as it ran off.
Mongrel quickly learned the true nature of these creatures. They weren¡¯t solo hunters at all.
The first simply learnt their tricks and power.
What came next was constant harassment that exploited all their weaknesses. The creature was part of a group that attacked them whenever they were in trouble or resting.
Miserably, they were bloodied and exhausted just a quarter through the mountain range.
The fire mage couldn¡¯t run anymore.
Mongrel didn¡¯t have the strength to fight while piggybacking a weakened mage.
An exhausted mind made it impossible for the mage to cast a proper spell.
The ghastly hunters never left them alone. They never let them get more than a wink of sleep. The humans barely had time to gulp a nutrition potion down in peace.
Mongrel was also grasping his last straws.
A bunch of new skills and old memories helped him get this far but they were not invincible. He was not invincible. No matter how fast he picked up new skills and how fast they levelled, it wasn¡¯t enough.
They were being toyed with.
Mongrel started to get desperate.
The subconscious notion within the depths of his mind started to surface.
¡®But why?¡¯
¡®For what reason does he have to do this?¡¯
His numbing muscles continued to swing and dice into the Shades and unknown creatures left, right and centre. His roped axe was practically part of his body already. Moving it after wrapping his shadow around it made it even more flexible and responsive than just his inherent mana.
Stumbling into a cave the second figure in his mind found, he put the unconscious fire mage down.
He bit his nails while tapping his one good foot and questioned, ¡°Why?¡±
Within a minute, his head leapt to bite onto Rowent¡¯s tattered and dirtied robe to swing the human aside. With a twitch of his neck, the mage was on his back as he sped away from the cave.
The bastards were toying with them. They couldn¡¯t kill him easily but he couldn¡¯t catch them off guard either.
¡®Why did he have to throw Rowent down with me? What¡¯s the purpose of doing such a thing?¡¯ With every bit of his lacking imagination, throwing Rowent down here had been helpful in every case so far. It was counterproductive if this was meant to be a trial to make him stronger.
Until the fire mage couldn¡¯t fling spells around.
Although his fire didn¡¯t hinder the creatures in the mountain range as much as it used to, it was a massive advantage. With that gone, Mongrel had to face the complete superiority of these creatures'' physical and magical prowess.
The mountains seemed to empower Mongrel even more than the empty plains. The lack of flames and Rowent being unconscious most of the time helped as well.
His skills experienced another explosive growth in the week to come.
Levels and refinements weren¡¯t all that piled up.
He had reached his physical and mental limits long ago.
With injuries that couldn¡¯t be held back by the lousy potions he carried it was already a miracle he made it more than halfway through the mountain range with an incapacitated mage on his back. Rowent woke up and helped carve a path for two days but was knocked out but sheer exhaustion once again.
The speedy improvements he underwent didn¡¯t let him kill a single one of those predators of theirs. They slipped away every single time. His focus on Shadow Root didn¡¯t help enough to stop their movements long enough to kill.
¡®What¡¯s the reason¡why?¡¯ Mongrel cared little for the physical torture or even the increase in power and capacity of his frame. The past week was a mental warfare of questioning Rowent¡¯s presence or the old man¡¯s reason for tossing them down together.
Mongrel didn¡¯t manage to keep them both in one piece. As small of a piece he already was, one of his eyes was blinded. Crushed by blunt force, he could barely keep the other eye open. Even when he realised why the three figures took hits for ¡®no reason¡¯, Rowent was hurt by the force that destroyed both their bodies. His body wasn¡¯t a shield, if he took a hit they would both be hurt.
He was surprised at how much blood he had lost but was still able to move. A Master Warrior was more sturdy than expected.
¡®Is it petty revenge?¡¯ Mongrel asked when the quadruped ripped at his back. He rolled away at the last moment, causing Rowent to wake up from pain.
¡®Is it because the first man lost someone, he made his inheritor face the same problem?¡¯ Mongrel¡¯s shadowy axe swatted the beast back. He didn¡¯t care about the first success of cutting a limb off. He didn¡¯t even notice he managed to do that.
¡®Are these men so petty?¡¯ Another of these unknown creatures rammed into his belly.
¡®So vengeful?¡¯ They crashed into a hard rock. Their wounds were exacerbated. Rowent swept his staff in his stupor and the flamethrower blocked the quadrupeds from dining on them.
¡®They want their inheritor to face the same pain?¡¯ Mongrel¡¯s stone mask blackened with his shadows unknowingly.
¡®Is that it?¡¯ Rowent was clawed at and flew off his back like a doll.
¡®Is that the whole reason they sent Rowent with me?¡¯ Mongrel¡¯s mana exploded along and his tailed axe went into a frenzy when he leapt from one quadruped to another to stab and bite into them with his bare teeth.
His jaw strength was enhanced as he tore them apart the same way they did to him.
The same way another group of them were tearing into Rowent.
A few dozen of these quadrupeds fell here. Forever.
He knelt on his single knee.
In front of a mangled, incomplete body. Rowent didn¡¯t have his staff, one of his arms, his legs and had his intestines spilling out, half bitten through. His face was surprisingly unchewed.
¡°Hey-¡±
Mongrel¡¯s eye widened when Rowent spoke, he quickly fumbled for potions but a light tap landed on his hand. He put his hand over the weak tap gently. The hand tapping him didn¡¯t have all its fingers.
¡°You¡¯ve--matured, Chris.¡±
Mongrel was shakened. When did Rowent find out?
¡°Fergus¡wouldn¡¯t let it go but not us¡I¡¯m glad you didn¡¯t let it swallow yo-¡± The mage¡¯s fingers slipped from his hands.
¡°Wait! Don¡¯t go!¡±
Mongrel wasn¡¯t heard.
¡°Why?¡± Mongrel faced the dark, moonless, sunless sky.
In an oddly similar pose, he didn¡¯t yell.
He didn¡¯t cry.
He didn¡¯t laugh.
¡°WHHHYYYYY!!!!¡± Mongrel bellowed and slammed his fist onto the ground, wasting a good chunk of his remaining mana. The slam did nothing to the ground or disturb Rowent¡¯s corpse.
His wrathful expression spilt over to his stone mask, causing the mask to develop wrinkles. It was surprising that the mask had endured the past months.
¡°JUST BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE LOST SOMEONE I HAVE TO DO THE SAME TO TAKE INHERIT THIS CRAP! IS THAT IT, SICKOS?! HUH?! IS THAT REALLY IT?!¡±
Mongrel couldn¡¯t come up with another conclusion since asking himself, why?
Those sick bastards, beginning with the middle-aged man, seemed to have made it a tradition of sorts. Despite the knowledge of the surroundings and the creature¡¯s strength they let Mongrel see, that the outcome was the same. The invisible figures each of the three individuals had were just like Rowent. Unfairly tossed here.
The only difference was how far each of them could bring their partner away.
Barely halfway to their destination. That was Mongrel¡¯s ¡®record¡¯.
The words of the old man who threw him here surfaced.
¡°Slay you? Fine by me, you better not die of old age!¡±
The final vestige of Chris faded away.
Interlude (254.7): Homecoming
¡°Why were we called back in such a rush? Even though we aren¡¯t much help in the Supremacy Duels.¡± Hector put his arms behind his head and walked half-naked into the Palace.
They rushed back from Fifth Tide after bidding farewell to one of the few friends he hadn¡¯t met in a long time. It was a pity they didn¡¯t have a proper chance to catch up. Or spar.
By his side were both of the Emperor¡¯s disciples, Lucas Lucero and Demi Barlow along with his cousins. Mallory included. As for the rest of them, he wasn¡¯t exactly close to any of them. So much so that he remembered more about a drinking buddy from a random tavern better than anything to do with these ¡®cousins¡¯ of his.
¡°Where¡¯s Uncle Oplot?¡± Hector didn¡¯t wait for a reply and continued with another question.
¡°He said he smelled something fishy in Trailane Plains.¡± Demi replied to him.
Hector didn¡¯t know them very well but he met them on a few occasions before they were pulled away for their dedicated training trip to the only known World Dungeon on Elva, Lacuna Expanse. The continent of Tova supposedly had access to another World Dungeon too.
Technically, the main force of the Emperor¡¯s Guardian Knights was based there instead of Tidal. They worked to defend the borders from outsiders. Being connected to other worlds made the dungeon¡¯s entrance a dangerous spot.
That was a state secret that was known only to the high nobility.
The Guardian Knight¡¯s base in the Capital only contained the trainees.
¡°He¡¯ll be here if he has to,¡± Lucas added.
¡°Mal, aren¡¯t you gonna tell us why great grandfather and the other Archdukes are missing except the Elves?¡± The Elven Archduke couple was holding down the fort at First Tide by themselves.
The Barrier King wasn¡¯t around. The Archduchess of the Beastmen hadn¡¯t returned from her mission. The Archduke of Dwarfs appeared at Fifth Tide but only for a short time before he vanished.
A huge chunk of the Imperial Army was not present anywhere in the battle against the Trolls.
¡°Please make use of your brain.¡± Mallory put on her prim and proper appearance as usual. Elegant as always if you discounted her words.
¡°There¡¯s another threat they¡¯re fighting off,¡± Demi answered for him.
¡°Worse than Trolls?¡± Hector snagged a pastry with his gloved hands. Caring little for decorum or hygiene.
¡°You don¡¯t say. Why else are our strongest forces missing?¡±
One of his cousins retorted.
Hector recognised the face but not the name and he ignored the comment. Someone older than him by at least half a century and a Grandmaster. He might not be able to beat the man up thanks to their barriers but he doubted the man could hurt him.
Everyone in their lineage was capable. He couldn¡¯t discount the age advantage since there were no slackers. Someone like him who didn¡¯t inherit his lineage¡¯s skills was an outlier as he had no talent with healing or barrier magic.
However, they probably weren¡¯t as good as Mallory in terms of talent with barriers or healing. She was not the Crown Princess for no reason. Younger, brighter and more talented than their King and Queen. She bested all the older cousins, uncles and aunts by a generation or two with just pure talent and capability.
Not all of his cousins rubbed him the wrong way but Mallory might be the only one that cared enough to associate herself with him regularly.
One of Hector¡¯s granduncles walked up and addressed the nobility in the hall. Another [Barrier King] but only the Class and not the individual. As one of Navin¡¯s sons, he also stood at the peak of humans on Elcra. They were all unnaturally young for people of their level. Amongst Humans, few families could contest their power.
It wasn¡¯t a formal event and all of the people present were not dressed for a ball, they were garbed in armour and geared for battle in general.
With that in mind, his granduncle didn¡¯t give a speech. He gave orders. Deployments.
Without any further information, the nobility of different races were dispatched to different training bases throughout Tidal to convene. It wasn¡¯t limited to Tidal, many were dispatched to other Cities.
His granduncle finally looked at him with a gentle smile he failed to hide.
¡®Glad I¡¯m not dead huh?¡¯
Hector, Mallory and a few uncles and aunts were not given deployments far away. They were all situated in Tidal along with the two disciples of the Emperor.
These were all people who had been just at the forefront of battle with the Trolls. There were many missing nobles of all races. If Demi was right, they were all already fighting off another threat to the Empire.
Hector went home by himself, they didn¡¯t need to show up at their deployment area immediately.
He hasn¡¯t seen his parents for a long time.
¡°Anyone home!? No? What did I expect?¡± Hector was only greeted by maids and butlers who kept the house clean.
There was no reason for his parents to be around if everyone was busy fighting a war.
Hector yawned despite the sleep he got on the way back.
¡°Man, what kind of threat can there be that aren¡¯t trolls? Otherworldly threats? That would come from Lacuna Expanse wouldn¡¯t it?¡±
Since he was free and there was nothing to do at home, he ran out to find his smith after showering. The family¡¯s smith didn¡¯t make good gauntlets. They made good gloves, staves and wands but nothing suitable for him.
¡°I¡¯m a Master now, being able to punch harder. I should treat myself and get something expensive!¡± Although he knew Dwarven Blacksmiths who were King ranked, they wouldn¡¯t give him the time of their day.
Hector also couldn¡¯t afford equipment made out of Epic-ranked materials. Maybe items that include a small bit of Epic metal or monster material weren¡¯t impossible but his mana wouldn¡¯t be able to bring out the best of their capabilities so there would be little point other than the physical properties.
In any case, even an urgent order would take too long. He¡¯ll probably have to settle with some of the older orders he already placed in the past and get himself some durable pants. He got used to going shirtless. A pair of pauldrons and perhaps a chest piece would do.
He could practically have four elements running through his body at all times without any sort of mana poisoning. That already made him more durable than most armours. He rather had flexibility instead of adding layers of metal that were softer than his own body.
With six elements, he was on a timer before the first symptoms of mana poisoning would hit him. It wasn¡¯t so bad, he had a full ten minutes of free reign and even when symptoms kicked in, he wasn¡¯t immediately defenceless.
With his newer seventh and eighth elements, things got wacky. Even pulling off a single punch within the time span before he was dead by his own machinations was difficult.
¡®Grinding Sand Intestine doesn¡¯t increase my power anyway.¡¯ Hector wondered why he got desperate enough to create sand to grind food down within his belly. Monster meat was hard to digest and he was in a rush for nutrients.
Waterblood Lubrication, Windlung Breath, Fireheart Pump, Earth Muscle Ingrain, Lightning Nerve Discharge, Metalbone Root, Mistskin Lubrication, Grinding Sand Intestine
Mist and Sand were not part of his Class Skills.
He had six elemental manipulation skills and six body enhancement skills taking up a total of twelve Class Skill slots. The other three were a perception skill, a movement skill and a physical-mana attunement or co-ordination skill. It allowed him to be capable of withstanding and moving his body together with his mana properly.
His active punching skills were all in his Sub-Class together with other movement bursts and the basic Masteries. From the old Regimental Fist to the new Brigadier Fist. If someone Identified him anyway. The real title had pretty much the same meaning.
His Sub-Class of Body Builder to Body Architect didn¡¯t change drastically. It had his Conditioning skills parked there. Along with a new mana capacity skill that was pushed up from a Generic Skill.
As reluctant as he had been, Hector had no choice but to push Mana Poisoning Resistance to his second Core Skill slot. There was no other way he could raise its level or refinements fast enough to handle all his enhancements.
Of course, Mega Panch was his first Core Skill.
It might be a rookie mistake to put an active skill as a Core Skill but he didn¡¯t care.
Hector had the same old problem of mana regeneration. His mana pool was quite large since the Royal family passed down a tier 5 version but he only refined it to a tier 3, 400% base at the moment.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
It doesn¡¯t fit him as well as it fits the pure mages in the family. He felt like he hit rock bottom and would have to adjust the skill to his own needs from 400% onwards. The skill was barely even levelling after 300. If it stayed this way, he wouldn¡¯t be able to evolve with a good track.
However, the large capacity only helped him so much.
Once he was out of juice on the field, a level 55 tier 1 Meditation would take him ages to fill back up. If he were ever in such a situation, he wouldn¡¯t have the time or the patience to meditate for two to three days straight. He thanked the calming pearl that he still carried around. It allowed his mana to recover faster.
He used to blame talent.
Despite the lineage and amazing skills he had complete access to, he wasn¡¯t able to learn his own family''s meditation skills.
To be fair, this was a skill that not many in their family managed to get to tier 3 either. Even then, their latest version was only a 250% + 5.0% increment. Quite miserable for a tier 3 skill, they had tier 2 skills that had higher base percentages.
Hector¡¯s greatest reward from his evolution hadn¡¯t been all the skill evolutions, core skill slot or even his Fortifications.
It was that his Physique miraculously refined.
Like all other Journeymen to Masters, he didn¡¯t exactly have a conscious choice of how he evolved but he could only thank his luck.
No one else in his entire lineage had the Physique that he had. Odd but not completely unheard of. Some dormant gene or trait must have chosen to awaken in him instead of his other family members. That was the explanation he was told. Probably some ancestor far in the past.
It stood to reason why the Lord''s family had always been strong.
Although the current King and Queen won over the other races, the Lord family had been the Archduke of the Human race for a long time. The Barrier King¡¯s parents and grandparents weren¡¯t dead either. Just old and weak. Not to mention the actual rank of an Emperor, those old geezers couldn¡¯t even hit level 750 in their lifetime.
The current King and Queen had a far better prospect of reaching Emperor rank. Granted, they still needed a lot of time.
There was a clear flow of how Physiques were passed down.
Grandmasters and even Kings, were not guaranteed to pass down a Physique.
Hector having one that none of them knew made it impossible for them to teach him how to refine it. They were too different. Even a mix of two individuals shouldn¡¯t have given birth to something out of the pocket. But he had the blood of his two parents and they were indeed his biological parents.
He was almost a splitting image of Navin in his youth. That gradually changed as he grew up since his lifestyle was so different. Hector trained his body a lot more than the mages of the Lord family.
Tidal¡¯s streets were still as noisy as he recalled.
It was hard to tell that there was an ongoing battle close by.
¡°Wel¡¯s not around either huh?¡± Hector¡¯s personal bodyguard, Welser, was also Navin¡¯s head butler and leader of the group of guards that followed Mallory around.
Without him following Hector, the level of safety he had dropped drastically.
His Dwarven friend and smith was around but the Dwarf¡¯s father wasn¡¯t. They weren¡¯t nobility but were amazing blacksmiths all the same.
¡°Yo! Orik! I¡¯m back!¡± Hector pushed the shophouse¡¯s door open while yelling for his friend to get out from the back.
¡°Shut¡¯chya trap! Ah can hear ya!¡±
¡°Let¡¯s have some drinks later. I¡¯ve plenty of tales to share.¡±
¡°Aye, I don¡¯t think I can step away from my workshop.¡±
¡°Huh? You¡¯re turning drinks down? My treat.¡±
¡°Nah, orders are piled up high. Ah barely have time to eat. Every Grandmaster smith and crafter are busy. You might want to find an apprentice for urgent work.¡±
The ¡®apprentices¡¯ that Orik mentioned weren¡¯t ¡®Apprenticed-Classed¡¯ but Journeymen and Masters that apprenticed themselves to Grandmasters.
Of course, there were many blacksmiths that were Masters that opened their shop. These were usually smaller boutiques that dealt with a small customer base. Some only catered to a few people who contracted them.
¡°I can¡¯t use those, they¡¯ll break with a few light taps.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t underestimate them. Anyhow, your backup gauntlets are in the warehouse. Ah can send someone to git it.¡±
¡°Alright. Fine, I¡¯ll bring the drinks here!¡±
¡°...mighty. Ah don¡¯t drink when ah work. But a barrel or two shouldn¡¯t be an issue.¡± Orik changed tunes quickly.
It was proper workmanship not to drink while crafting. Dwarfs hated it when one of their works was called a ¡®drunken accident¡¯ so it was practically taboo to craft something in a drunken stupor unless it was some unimportant item.
¡°Any pauldrons in stock?¡±
¡°Sold out. If you pay, ah can help you skip the queue. Yar a high-value customer after all.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you have too much work?¡±
¡°Ah can skip a few meals. Work is work.¡±
¡°Make me a pair of pauldrons that is extremely resistant or receptive to all elements.¡±
¡°Impossible.¡±
¡°Eight elements?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t push it, unless you hand me a material that can handle eight elements at the same intense degree you¡¯re hoping for.¡±
¡°It doesn¡¯t have to be the same degree¡never mind. Just make it the same as my gauntlets.¡±
¡°Aye. Get out, lad! Measure him!¡±
Orik was indeed busy and got his assistant to measure Hector¡¯s new measurements. They weren¡¯t limited to his body shape and size. He was brought to a few testing equipment that measured his strength and how much mana he planned to imbue into equipment. He wasn¡¯t going to imbue any mana in them but the assistant didn¡¯t need to know that.
Orik¡¯s father was successful.
They were rich and catered to Grandmasters and even a King Warrior or two. Their testing equipment couldn¡¯t be destroyed even if Hector tried his best.
So, he punched without worry.
The magic testing was more of an issue since he didn¡¯t plan to subject his equipment to mana but many contrasting elements.
His equipment was specifically made to expel all mana as fast as possible. It meant that he couldn¡¯t strengthen them but that was what it took for equipment to stay on his body in one piece. Since that was the case, the rest of the material or craftsmanship went into making its physical properties much stronger.
There was no leeway for special effects like increased power, speed or decreased weight.
Hector liked it that way. He already spent too much mana on himself, he wouldn¡¯t want to worry about the durability of his armour or gauntlet. If he had to imbue them with mana too, he would quickly run out. During his body enhancement, mana would spill out.
He used it to punch and there was no way around it so they found a way around it. The expulsion of his mana would just be more directed when it came to his gauntlets. As for what a pauldron would do, probably nothing special but he¡¯ll leave that to Orik.
It was nice to see the shock on their faces when his results were in.
The high numbers he gave them also returned with a high price tag. He was just lucky that Orik¡¯s workshop carried plenty of high-quality materials.
¡°I don¡¯t care if they¡¯re heavy, just give me something that won¡¯t break easily,¡± Hector commented.
In most cases, higher-quality materials and ingredients were denser and heavier. Especially when it comes to metals. Some increased in mass linearly, some exponentially. Iron was a good choice for practice. No matter the quality, most of its properties remained the same but more prominent as its quality increased.
¡°Send it to this address.¡± Hector made use of the fact that he was deployed within Tidal.
¡°Three days.¡±
Hector hoped it would be ready before he was sent away but there was nothing he could do if he was called away.
¡°Alright. Drinks next time.¡±
¡°Aye.¡±
Hector razed the food stalls as he hadn¡¯t had his fill of good grub after years of ration and plain old outdoor cooking. Soldiers with generic Cooking skills don¡¯t usually make food pleasant for the tongue. They only cared about filling the stomach and if the supplies allowed it, nutrition was taken into account.
There were plenty of things to do in the Capital. Hector returned to some of the old places he visited for fun. Like monster racing. He didn¡¯t gamble, he used to be one of the riders.
¡°Were there any Grandmaster rides? It was a small establishment in the past.¡± Hector quickly found out that the race track did well and expanded.
He couldn¡¯t just join in as a player on the spot and had to register in advance.
¡°What a pity, it looks fun,¡± Hector observed the ongoing race between a massive eight-legged bug and a type of warhorse. The riders of both creatures were Masters, much like himself, and they displayed remarkable precision in handling their mounts.
Before long, Hector had to make his way to his deployed location.
It was two days away by a land carriage and he didn¡¯t want to waste all that time. Getting an aerial ride would shorten the trip to an hour or two.
Tidal was needlessly large. Rebuilt for a population explosion.
Population did increase greatly but not explosively.
With better prospects of - not dying young. People didn¡¯t have to give birth as a Master. Becoming a Grandmaster was well within reach and they didn¡¯t even have to get to the end of their lives before they became one. Slowly but surely, the average person would soon be a Grandmaster and not a measly Master. Not mentioning their actual capability.
The population of Grandmasters in Tidal was massive. Crafters and other non-combative Classes far out populated their combatant counterparts. They don¡¯t dive into deadly dungeons and they¡¯ve been prospering ever since the Barrier King rose to power.
Mallory had already been at their destination right after they got their deployment.
¡°Mal!¡±
¡°Quiet, your loud voice is gonna give me a headache.¡±
¡°Yeah right, so who¡¯s giving us trouble?¡±
¡°One of the most troublesome opponents ever. Or so I¡¯m told.¡±
¡°No negotiations?¡±
¡°They aren¡¯t intelligent enough for that,¡± Demi murmured while she was sparring with Lucas.
The two disciples¡¯ movements were a bit too hard for Hector to catch. He heard that Lucas sparred with Ebony but obviously held back due to the evolution gap. Apparently, Ebony didn¡¯t have any trouble with Lucas¡¯s movements and it was quite the opposite.
¡°Monsters?¡± Hector preferred that over fighting some other humans or an intelligent race. It was more clear-cut.
¡°Goddess of War¡¯s little babies.¡± Demi ducked Lucas¡¯s spear sweep and tried to trip him by kicking at his feet.
¡°Who on Elcra is the Goddess of War?¡±
¡°Please pose that question to our teacher instead.¡± Demi blocked Lucas¡¯s spear thrust with a shield and sent him flying back with a well-timed half step forward.
Hector scratched his head.
¡°Goddess?¡±
The term was not unfamiliar but abstract to him.
¡°This feels way above my pay grade!¡±
¡°As luck would have it, we¡¯re not paid.¡±
Hector wanted to punch the person with the nonchalant tone but quickly held his fist back when he noticed it was his cousin.
Chapter 255: Champion
Ebony hammered his chest with his feet on top of an Apex Ape before putting his hands in the air. A stance that he wouldn¡¯t usually take as it left himself wide open to attacks.
He learned their patterns. This was the pose to take when one gorilla bested another in a duel.
The older gorilla came over and grabbed his arm and raised it over their head. They were tall so his whole body was lifted instead.
¡°OOO OO AA AH!¡± The elder announced the reigning champion of the Master bracket.
The rest of the gorillas looked at him in anticipation.
¡®...not again.¡¯ They were waiting for his warcry.
He obliged and gave them a soul attack in the form of a roar.
These crazy apes had a kick from taking his roar. He even believed they were gaining some kind of soul resistance. Because Ebony got a related skill himself.
The level 300 Apex Apes came and gave him a pat on his back before they split up to their homes.
Their pats hurt him but he took it without complaints.
¡®I¡¯m out of pants. And fabric.¡¯ Ebony only wore pants and underwear. He had been going barefoot and shirtless the entire duration of his training.
It took a year before his life wasn¡¯t threatened and they were on friendly terms. That was a painful year.
The Apex Apes were¡truly respectable.
Honestly, they were ridiculously strong.
They had nothing special to counter his magic.
Nothing special to break his defence.
Nothing special to defend against his array of techniques.
They just have primal instincts and the fighting capacity to beat him down.
He couldn¡¯t predict their movements. Even to this day, he was not confident of dodging all their blows or predicting what they would do.
That might be the most shocking thing since he could observe their musculature and positioning. It felt like he was fighting a martial arts expert back when he was still new to close combat.
These Apes had a very clear hierarchy. They couldn¡¯t Identify each other but Ebony knew that the social ladder was very steep despite all of them being level 300.
Amongst tens of thousands of level 300 Apex Apes, he managed to observe how different one can be from another.
It was not unlike humans. However, these Apes were a far better research subject. All of their growth was the same, their combat style, their strength, and intelligence were all linear in a sense. This ruled out many factors and variables and made it simple for Ebony to classify them.
The youngest level 300 Apex Ape¡¯s physical prowess was around the same as him with tier 3, level 500 mana compression and two types of body enhancement all running simultaneously.
No doubt, Ebony couldn¡¯t even keep up with them at the beginning since he didn¡¯t have those skills at level 500.
That was considering them in a resting state.
When they got into combat or an enraged state, their physical capabilities would easily double. Their weakest point would probably be their stamina. They were exhausted within half an hour tops. That was impressive for how much power they could draw out but a weak point that Ebony would exploit any day.
Unfortunately for Ebony, the known strongest level 300 Ape evolved before he could challenge it a few months ago.
Ebony couldn¡¯t even remain as the weekly champion despite beating the current strongest a few times. He had even more defeats. He would usually pride himself on not losing to someone he beat before and knew the patterns of. But these Apes could still beat him.
The Apex Apes were brutish but not completely dumb.
His fighting style didn¡¯t match them but they were learning all the same.
In short, these gorillas were also combat geniuses who were growing as fast as if not faster than he was.
Only the top 3 gorillas were a good sparring partner nowadays.
In their resting state, they can rival an enraged young gorilla. ¡®Rival¡¯ wasn¡¯t accurate, they could completely suppress the younger gorillas by sitting on them. With that in mind, Ebony was sure they were what Kong Jing would call Grade 4 Masters.
And if these guys were enraged, it was not a pretty sight.
Maybe their strength didn¡¯t quite double but it was like they enhanced themselves with another skill. He estimated that it was like they were running four tier 4 level 500 enhancements instead of three.
That was merely using his skills as an example since they didn¡¯t exactly use body enhancement magic. If he were to be more precise, they didn¡¯t have full body empowerment. It felt oddly like an active skill was activating when they attacked. But their body was equally tough so he thought it was close enough to a full body enhancement rather than a powerful attack.
He wanted to call their slow healing a weakness but was it a weakness if they couldn¡¯t get hurt that easily?
Ebony walked towards his own home.
A flat rock.
All they had as a home was a bed.
Ebony sat on the smooth and flat rock and allowed time to pass.
¡®One year, four months, three days, six hours. I need Natural Potential.¡¯
Gen was completely right.
A single year of daily existential threat was sufficient for exponential skill growth. The other four months were far less rewarding but the nature of training was dull repetition.
The gap between tier three and four skills is large.
Phantom¡¯s Flicker felt like a dud, he couldn¡¯t replicate the manner he evolved that skill.
The most interesting point to Ebony was that his Core Skill, Meditation didn¡¯t evolve but his Class skills did. It went against common knowledge that Core Skills were supposed to evolve and level more easily.
His own change felt unbelievable.
Even so, Ebony felt it.
A limit.
Not just skill levels, but he felt like all his skill evolutions and refinements had hit the ceiling. That ceiling was his own imagination and ability. He no longer knew how to make what he could do better, more efficient or more powerful. Be it physical or mental capacity, he felt like he was already making full use of every part of himself.
Other than the remaining skill levels, and Natural Potential, Ebony felt ready to evolve.
It might seem like rushing to most but he didn¡¯t see it that way. He just reached the end point faster rather than willingly choosing to take second or third place in a race.
¡®It¡¯s not my fault that my run time is two, ten or even a hundred times shorter than second place. Mmm.¡¯ Ebony monologued internally and even nodded to himself.
Ebony turned invisible to the naked eye while he sat on the rock. He didn¡¯t turn invisible but he could refract light almost perfectly the way he wanted to now.
As long as there¡¯s no movement, he could remain unseen. Once he moved, his location would be very obvious. It might even attract attention because of the glints of light that would reflect off.
The research into Entity Evanesce, a skill forcefully shared with him, was going slow. He couldn¡¯t learn much about it. The skill probably wasn¡¯t in effect.
Morning came quickly.
Ebony, who had long recovered his mana, stood up and Flickered around the Ape¡¯s territory. They were no longer alarmed by his presence or ghostly entrance. He gave all of them his hardest smack on the back like they gave to him and waved to each of them.
¡°Thanks, I¡¯m going to get going now. I¡¯ll visit if I have time.¡± Ebony bowed towards the cliff with a couple of Grandmasters.
¡°Ooh?¡± They scratched their head and chests in confusion.
¡°I¡¯ll bring some other types of wood for you to chew on next time.¡± Ebony vanished from his spot after saying so.
The Apex Apes liked to chew on wood.
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Icicle had been chewed on multiple occasions and he had been powerless to stop them in the past.
¡°Gen, are you there? I¡¯m done.¡± Ebony ran around after leaving the Apex Ape¡¯s territory but the maple forest wasn¡¯t around.
There were no blizzards either.
He chose to wait instead of searching. Gen might have hidden himself a little too well.
The turtle was watching so it didn¡¯t take long before his ride came.
Gen likely tried very hard to stay as far away as possible.
¡°Do you know how many times you¡¯ve stressed me out?¡± Gen arrived with a random question.
¡°If you meant how many times I was about to die, then only forty-seven times.¡± Ebony counted.
About thirty of them were during the first three months and his health dropped below 10%. However, only on four occasions did he feel like his life flashed before his eyes.
¡°Only? It wasn¡¯t easy deciding when to step in.¡±
¡°It was just like when I had to fight bears unclassed. Nostalgic. Thanks for watching after me.¡±
Although Gen ultimately didn¡¯t even show up once, Ebony was grateful for the hidden safety net.
¡°I¡¯m first?¡± Ebony found their trailer untouched in the underground dome. Ful had recovered. It even regrew some leaves and its flames were burning brighter. The sword hilt was still stuck there.
¡°Oh, no. She came back once. By force.¡±
Ebony cocked his head at that, waiting for Gen to give more information.
¡°I took away her swords like you suggested.¡±
¡°Oh. That must not have been a pretty sight.¡±
¡°She did panic a little but as the days went by, I noticed that she was more enraged than troubled.¡±
¡°And?¡±
¡°She attracted some trouble, melted this dome and snagged her swords away while I dealt with the trouble.¡±
Ebony would¡¯ve been impressed but he was actually more worried. He knew how much she depended on her swords.
¡°How long ago was that?¡±
¡°Almost a year.¡±
¡°So she trained without blades for four to five months. Sounds good. How did she even find you? There¡¯s no blizzard and the forest isn¡¯t out.¡± There wasn¡¯t any more heartblood essence to lead her back here.
¡°Probably her swords. Anyway, she¡¯s still busy.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
Ebony stripped and soaked in the bath for a couple of hours. Gravity repulsion couldn¡¯t keep him clean. The Apex Apes had a frozen lake where they cleaned themselves every so often but there was too much fur in there for comfort.
Completely refreshed, he was dressed in a tee shirt and shorts as he whipped up a meal. Thanks to the mountain of boxed lunch, it was only recently did he started eating rations.
¡®Natural Potential. Other than monsters, how else can I get it? Skills? Creating a skill far past my supposed limit? I can¡¯t do that and that theory seems improbable. Seal¡we¡¯re not going to spend a century or two with our skill levels sealed. Maybe in the future, when we can¡¯t find high-level monsters or when there are no weak creatures at a high level.¡¯
Ebony was stumped. There was a reason why new dungeons were so well-liked. Weak but high-level creatures were natural treasures.
Going to Ordina would not work as Na, the guardian was barely a Grandmaster rank himself.
¡®It¡¯s not scientific. Level 1000 or higher? What would we require when we¡¯re level 500? Even if there¡¯s conveniently a relatively weak Emperor, are there really creatures that are weak at that level? I doubt so.¡¯
Ebony was already doubting if they could kill a creature above level 750 which is yet another evolution above them. How in the world were they supposed to fight something or someone at 1000? Sure, they could land an ambush or lucky shot but did that really mean anything?
In his years with this system of power he knew that it rewarded work and effort.
Without any concrete answers, Ebony left the questions aside. It wasn¡¯t a problem for him at the moment.
¡®The floorboards are creaking¡am I that heavy?¡¯ Ebony spent the day taking apart the trailer and reworking the frame with his new mana and updating the runic pathways.
The runic formula was left alone since over-editing it would destroy it, he just made it smoother and slightly more efficient. The overall change was minuscule but the tiny details add up.
¡®The second floor? I¡¯ll leave it alone for now. What do I do now¡oh right, I should take this time to write down all my skills and training methods. Maybe I can get new insights after penning them down.¡¯ Ebony left the second floor alone since Ning Xin wasn¡¯t around. He wouldn¡¯t tear apart their rooms for no reason.
He already changed the trailer''s frame not long ago, there was no rush even with his increased mass.
As he wrote his skill¡¯s details down, he realised there were some things that he didn¡¯t know how to word. Ebony was one of those who felt that he didn¡¯t fully understand a topic if he couldn¡¯t explain it to a child.
He gathered his wits and settled on drawing. But he wasn¡¯t a good artist, so he settled on three-dimensional modelling which was far easier. From tiny little sculptures, he drew it out over and over again. Then he moved on to writing the steps, thoughts and reasons for why he made those skills the way they were.
He experimented so much that he forgot to record the process down. With so many skills, he had to break them all down into different books. He was glad he was such a hoarder and got plenty of empty books.
The entire book writing process didn¡¯t help him improve his skills by even a skill percent but he felt more comfortable with them.
¡°That¡¯s enough.¡± He told five of his copies to stop writing. Having a couple of extra hands made the process quick. As a mage who could handle multiple casts and manually control complicated movements, it was quite simple to write multiple books at the same time.
The writing and mental exercise didn¡¯t even take three days despite taking breaks to do his routine conditioning.
¡®Tidal has purple gates which are Epic-ranked dungeons but do they have Ancient ranked?¡¯ Ebony knew that within the Apex Ape¡¯s territory were two dungeons. One Rare, one Epic.
He didn¡¯t enter the Epic one since the gorilla elders took complete control over it. The Rare one, on the other hand, was pretty small. Only three floors in total but it was extremely vast. The dungeon was mostly barren, thanks to the gorillas so there was not much to explore or fight.
The Apex Apes used the dungeon as some kind of storage space and farm. Ebony didn¡¯t know how to tell them that eating dungeon-produced ingredients wasn¡¯t ideal.
¡°Gen, how many times did you get Natural Potential inducements?¡±
¡°It¡¯s not about quantity. It¡¯s about quality.¡±
¡°I thought as much. How would you define quality for something as abstract as potential?¡±
¡°When you improve a skill, substantially. Do you always receive refinement?¡±
¡°No. Skills descriptions aren¡¯t accurate.¡±
¡°Right. The same can be said for Natural Potential. You¡¯re just not informed as the change was deemed gradual.¡±
¡°That¡¯s very¡whimsical. No wonder people stress out whether they are ready to evolve or not.¡±
¡°Let me give you an example. Do you need to kill to gain experience to level up?¡± The tree spirit interjected.
Ebony shook his head as if the tree had eyes.
It was true that killing a monster was the most straightforward way but he had gained levels during the middle of a fight on a few occasions. The Frost Elves level up just by training with each other, not taking a single life. At least until they were level 30 before their second hunt. Their first was their ritual for the unclassed to journeyman.
¡°It¡¯s believed that the same can be said for Natural Potential. For combatants, you can try fighting against someone or something that¡¯s a certain degree stronger. The level difference for a single inducement is just a gauge. You know better that levels don¡¯t mean much. Although I have no idea who or what decides the actual strength of a creature, it is possible to gain Natural Potential even against someone at the same level.¡±
¡°You¡¯re telling me that now? Isn¡¯t that solution even simpler? Why did no one talk about this?¡± Ebony was confused.
This method answered a lot of his questions. There was no need to find an unreasonably levelled creature. No need to kill. No need to waste centuries waiting with sealed skills.
¡°Simpler? Killing is easier. You¡¯ve fought with Scarlet who can be said to be stronger than her levels suggest too, did you get any Potential?¡± The tree spirit scoffed.
¡°You said we won¡¯t necessarily get a notification.¡±
¡°You will when it¡¯s significant enough.
¡°So what¡¯s the catch?¡±
¡°The uncertainty. We don¡¯t know how far a battle has to be taken. How long a fight have to be. What you have to achieve to be considered to have surpassed your current potential. What opponents are considered just as competent to push your potential beyond how far you¡¯ve already pushed your potential.¡± Ful explained the unreliability of the method.
The irony was that it was actually the most reliable and used method. Not on Elcra, but by Life Grafter¡¯s creations and practically everyone that wasn¡¯t a psychotic killer.
¡®So I¡¯m a psychotic killer? Sounds about right¡wait if this is true-¡¯
¡°I¡¯ll get going now.¡± Ebony shot through the snow ceiling. Gen was considerate enough to soften it for him.
¡®My next inducement supposedly requires a level 700 kill, sparring with the Apex Ape wasn¡¯t enough. That means they weren¡¯t considered strong enough or, I wasn¡¯t accomplishing anything that exceeded that degree of improvement.
A crafter like Sister Jing made a single reforge of her brain but was deemed to make something far better than¡I¡¯ll call it a benchmark.
All I have to do as a combat class holder is to accomplish something that can be considered breaking through wherever my benchmark has already reached.
My training with Xin never gave us any natural potential inducements because we killed level 400 creatures before we even hit level 300 ourselves. We kept pushing that flimsy limit before we even settled into our skills. Technically, with my unrefined skills in the past, there was no way we should¡¯ve achieved anything beyond what we got from killing something at level 400.
Maybe thanks to elemental compatibility or how good we are at killing, we surpassed what low-tier skills could do. Hence, we never got the chance to see a notification about natural potential increasing when we duelled. It was simply because we were not accomplishing anything that pushed us above this ¡®benchmark.¡¯ Now that my skills are pretty much at the limit be it refinements or level, if Ful was speaking the truth and what I think the system of power is like. Then just about anything could tip me over to gain potential¡¡¯
Ebony¡¯s brain fixed a non-existent puzzle into place, hoping the pieces would fit.
Ebony returned to the Apex Ape¡¯s territory and they greeted him. Not with tets, finger touches, but by slamming each other¡¯s back with an open palm.
He didn¡¯t oblige all of them and hurried to one of the Elder Cliffs. He just coined the term since it felt like an actual landmark.
¡°Elders.-oh, I¡¯m sorry I forgot to bring the gifts I said I would.¡± They made noises of monkey confusion despite looking like gorillas. They definitely didn¡¯t remember or even understand that he said he was bringing different types of wood.
¡°Anyway. May I request one of you to take my best hit? I want to see if my attack is worthy of pushing through the 700 benchmark¡maybe I should call it the 21st benchmark instead of using levels. Right. That¡¯s what I¡¯ll call it.¡± Ebony did not realise how much he was talking out loud these days.
The Apes might not understand his words but they were extremely sensitive to intents or threats. They would never turn a battle down but they would if it was coming from some young ape.
Ebony drew Icicle from its sheath and had his domain spread out. His domain was no longer as pathetic but he didn¡¯t set the air on fire or increase the gravity since he wasn¡¯t about to fight. He just wanted to whack them. However, the changed spell took a second to extend a hundred metres away. No longer as fast as it used to be
The Apex Apes saw his attacks the same way they saw back pats. Currently, only these elders still see his attacks as greetings.
Light dimmed a kilometre radius from Icicle but the greatsword glowed dark purple. Flickering flames smothered underneath its wooden surface. The flames didn¡¯t surface and they bubbled within the blade.
By sidestepping with Phantom¡¯s Flicker, he quickly built up momentum.
Without additional flare, he chopped at the Elder Ape who raised its thick forearms in response.
Chapter 256: Core Developement
Icicle was many times more durable than it used to be. It didn¡¯t burst into pieces after one of Ebony¡¯s strongest attacks.
Ebony made a deep cut into the Elder Ape''s forearm, reaching the bone before the Ape''s arm was forced to the ground. It couldn''t raise its arm any further, as Ebony prevented it from doing so.
¡®No notification¡an attack isn¡¯t enough.¡¯ Ebony was forcefully plucked off the Elder¡¯s forearm and they exchanged blows for a minute or two.
¡®Combat isn¡¯t enough either. Am I not accomplishing something 21 benchmarks away or is this method unreliable? Let¡¯s keep it up for a week before I decide.¡¯ Ebony disturbed one elder after another for the next week, hoping that the issue was the duration of combat.
¡®Let¡¯s think of it other than combat, let¡¯s say I have to accomplish something more along the lines of what my class is supposed to do. Serene Blade of Blistering Frost¡I¡¯m pretty much doing everything along those lines. Am I not serene enough?¡¯ Ebony blocked a punch with Icicle and had his arms broke on impact.
He wasn¡¯t sent flying back as these Elders punched and attacked in a manner that didn¡¯t push him back, they pulled back their punches at a precise time that all the power snapped at one spot.
The rest of the Master Apes already knew about his persistent challenges against their elders. Actually, Ebony partially got this idea because the previous Ape Champion did something similar. However, that Ape only did so for a single day before it went and evolved.
He was exhausted. Fluid Blitz was not friendly for extended battles.
The Elders waited and watched him stand in place. They were intrigued by him to a certain extent. There was no other creature with two arms and legs that could match them in a similar fashion.
Moonlight shone on them.
Mana refuelled his chassis as consistently as ever.
Until Ebony decided to knock himself out of meditation.
He laid back and let his body fall to the ground.
The Apes saw that and went to bed. They lazed around on their rocks whenever they weren¡¯t fighting.
¡®Why am I fixated on my Class, Core Skills are placed above them¡They are more closely related to potential than Class Skills as a bigger beneficiary. But what¡¯s the difference, I consistently use both my Core Skills in battle. Come on imagination, what did all those novels and movies do? Forget it, I¡¯m not smart enough. They say my mana has calming properties and my domain has all my magic. Might as well try to make my domain meditate. Hmm?¡¯ Ebony sat back up.
¡®Why does meditation give a boost in mana regeneration? Calmness? There¡¯s a limit to that, even as a partial being of mana. Is that why it¡¯s stuck at tier 3 or is it just the limitation of a Master? Don¡¯t know, don¡¯t care. I need someone to tell me if being within my domain increases their mana regeneration.¡¯ Ebony disappeared from the Ape¡¯s territory.
He hunted down an owl and forced it to cast magic on him. Suppressing it under his palms, he cast a small ranged domain and treated the creature as a friendly.
¡®It doesn¡¯t regenerate mana any faster even though the domain is made up of my mana?¡¯ Ebony combed the owl¡¯s feathers and let it go.
He sat down with his feet crossed. Setting up his domain to the limits of his range, he began to modify it again.
A crafter crafts to prove their worth.
A warrior fights.
An Archer fires an arrow.
A hunter hunts.
So a Meditator must meditate.
Once again, Ebony dived into his memories. Turning the clock back, he re-lived every moment he could recall. Putting the present Ebony into a past situation. His strength aside, would anything change? Would he have done anything differently?
He thought he lived in a way that he would have no regrets but recent growth and experience changed his views. They say hindsight is always 20/20.
Although he wouldn¡¯t say he regretted any of his actions, he was able to reflect that there times were when he had better options that he didn¡¯t take.
Ebony came to terms with them.
There was nothing wrong with not taking the optimal actions.
He reached his oldest memories and time raced forward again.
This time, his facial expression changed.
He frowned at times.
Groan in pain at others.
Trembled in fear.
Smiled - though not quite joyfully.
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Then he reached his first day on Elcra.
He realised he was mostly filled with excitement that was dampened out by his meditation. This world was unlike Earth, where Ebony predicted his entire life¡¯s direction and outcome. The lacking feeling of life had not been present since day one here.
Everlasting Tranquillity no longer increased his pain resistance. Other than that, he was aware he was no longer as dull in certain aspects.
The session ended when he reached the present. It felt like a minute at best but he opened his eyes and was surprised to find out twelve days passed from the moon¡¯s hue.
¡®It¡¯s been a while since I fell into a trance not related to combat or experiments.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯
¡°There it is.¡±
¡®Core developed. Potential accrued.¡¯
¡°Is that it?¡± Ebony was hoping for more information. Although it seemed like he did get Natural Potential, he had no idea to what degree. Did it equate to a creature at level 700 or higher? If higher, how much higher?
¡®Why are there so many owls on the ground? Wait, a pair of Elks.¡¯ Ebony got to his feet when he noticed a group of owls sitting and lying near his body. A few were injured, probably because they bit or attacked him. The others were just¡relaxing.
The Apex Apes were called the strongest Grandmaster race by Gen but the Elks were not far off. At the ranks of a Master, they might not lose to an Apex Ape so easily. However, both creatures'' fortes were very different. These Elks were more of a magic caster than a pure physical beast. They ignored Ebony and Xin back then but they were quite a threat.
The Elks were just standing around, not too far away from him. Even more confusing was that an Elder Ape was lying down not too far away from him. As if watching and protecting him from other creatures.
¡°What¡¯s it?¡± Gen¡¯s head popped out from the ground. As usual, the earthen ground became snow where the turtles go. The monsters scattered so fast that he thought he was imagining things.
¡°Core developed. Do you have that notification?¡± Ebony decided not to ponder about the other creatures¡¯ non-hostility.
¡°Yes. After I reached my limit for all my main skills. It took a couple hundred years, counting the time I was deep asleep.¡±
¡°...Couldn¡¯t you tell me to focus on my core skill?¡±
¡°Why? Did you manage to find a method? I just lived my life normally and it developed naturally.¡±
¡°First of all, what does Core refer to?¡±
¡°Your existence. The core of your very being. As Gen mentioned, you don¡¯t particularly need to work on your Core Skill alone to get it. I thought it was a matter of course that anyone would focus on their Core Skill. I¡¯m not one to mention the obvious.¡± Ful answered for the turtle.
¡®There¡¯s no way this is some kind of secret. Ful¡¯s just hiding information. Xin wasn¡¯t told either or the knowledge was so common that she thought I knew. Nah, she knows I¡¯m clueless so she must not have been taught either. I guess even her grandma doesn¡¯t share these things or she couldn¡¯t care less to listen to lectures.¡¯
Ebony doubted that such an obvious method was a secret. However, he was still too dull and assumed that breaking one¡¯s limits was as simple as sitting down for twelve days.
¡®No drop in conditioning levels, tier 4 is nice.¡¯ Ebony made sandwiches for himself while looking through the next few notifications he had.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Core Skill Everlasting Tranquillity evolved into Perpetual Tranquillity Spring¡¯
Perpetual Tranquillity Spring - A never-ending source of energy has formed in your mental world and mana chassis, breaking your state of mind is nigh impossible regardless of consciousness increasing Mana and Stamina rate by 700% + 10.0% per level, Perception by 300% + 5.0% per level.
¡®Not a complete tier 4 but that¡¯s pretty amazing. No wonder I still feel energetic. I refined it to 600%, the evolution only gave me another 100% base but I¡¯ll take it. That¡¯s a 68.5 times multiplier. 519 mana per second, great, the old skill couldn¡¯t keep up since my compression skill got to tier 4. I can push Fluid Blitz even further.¡¯ Ebony had been troubled by the fact that his mana pool and compression had outpaced his regeneration.
At the levels of compression he could pull off, he would run out of fully compressed mana and fight with vastly weaker spells and body. Since his body¡¯s strength also depended on the density of mana within.
He scanned through the rest of his status with some pride. Especially with his Sub-Class. If improving ice magic was as simple as breathing, then sound and gravity were the results of his own work.
¡®The numbers changed?¡¯ Ebony noticed a few skills gaining a level when they¡¯ve been halted for a few months. The noticeable change was great since he was not far from reaching his goal.
Almost all ice type Skills were close or over level 600. Even his sword mastery was at 539. The rest of his Class Skills were over 450 except for Frozen Lull. Hence, he was not far from being completely satisfied.
His Sub-Class skills, as expected, had a hard time getting over level 500. However, that was already over the 1.5 times requirement by a significant amount. It might make things easier for him in future.
As for his Profession, their skill levels comfortably sat at 520 to 550. It might suit him even more than his Sub-Class or his natural talent with mana exceeded that of sound and gravity magic.
¡®Although I have no idea how much I can push them, at least they can move aga-.¡¯
¡°Gen! Strengthen your domain!¡± Ful yelled like any other tree would. Magic.
The trailer shook and he knew he was falling. They landed a second later. He guessed Gen pushed the underground dome deeper into the planet.
It didn¡¯t take a second for him to get out fully equipped.
¡°What¡¯s the cause of concern?¡± Ebony waved his hands to blow the snow away but it was futile.
¡°Scarlet¡¯s in trouble.¡±
¡°...Elaborate. Last I¡¯ve heard, nothing can trouble Gen here.¡±
¡°An Emperor, not just any random one either.¡±
¡°Those ex-¡± Ebony stopped talking when a vast amount of mana was expended from within him.
¡°Ebony? Your presence is fading.¡± Gen questioned as he walked right up to him.
¡°It¡¯s the skill I was shared¡Entity Evanesce. Meaning the person who shared it with me activated it or the conditions were fulfilled. A skill for hiding¡there¡¯s someone to hide from. Gen let me out, wherever this trouble is.¡±
¡°Ebony. She¡¯s been caught. I¡¯ll be honest, that man feels like a danger even if Rue was with me. I don¡¯t know what skill has been cast on you, but it¡¯s working on me.¡±
¡°I¡¯m banking on it.¡±
¡°They are acting¡peaceful for now but I won¡¯t lose my sister again. I have your back if things turn south. Just focus on getting away. Hurry up Gen, I¡¯m starting to forget Ebony¡¯s even here.¡±
With little information, Ebony was whipped up to the surface.
Chapter 257: Ignored?
Ebony surfaced and didn¡¯t sense anything out of place. No deathly essence, no overpowering auras. However, he could hear footsteps.
¡®Four pairs of footsteps, my hearing is impressive.¡¯ He hadn¡¯t even depended on vibrations to tell. He wasn¡¯t too far away from the footsteps and he could already see where Ning Xin was.
In a cage.
She was trapped in a thick metal cage that could keep a large dog.
¡®No signs of heat, was caught off guard or was she taken out instantly? Which one¡¯s the dangerous one¡that middle-aged man. Four humans? Appraise might catch their attention and I¡¯m not sure how well Entity Evanescence works. But they¡¯re not looking at me despite being ten kilometres away, so it must be doing something.¡¯
Ebony felt oddly calm.
He overheard them speaking.
The gibberish went over his head. Just as he assumed, they weren¡¯t speaking a language he knew.
Hearing that there was an Emperor Classed person already made him guess as much. These people weren¡¯t residents of this world. They caged up Ning Xin instead of killing her. Objectives unknown, he wasn¡¯t able to ask them questions.
¡®I¡¯ll see how well this Entity Evanescence works first.¡¯ Ebony closed in on their march.
Three men wore furred clothing to fend off the cold. One youthful man who carried a sword and was equipped like a warrior took the lead. The other two, also middle-aged with bushy beards, were carrying Ning Xin¡¯s cage as they trailed onwards.
He didn¡¯t know what they were talking about but he could tell from the young man¡¯s gaze that it was nothing good.
As for the last middle-aged man, he felt like a normal person. Ebony could see but not sense the man. Like Navin.
He walked up to them at a casual pace but there was no reaction from them. The young man was shouting in anger while they marched in the forest.
¡®Hmm¡what¡¯s that weird feeling coming from her? Right, if Entity Evanescence is working on me, does that mean the same or similar skill is being cast on or by her? No wonder her mana pool is empty. Wait, did it activate when these people came over and the large drain ripped her energy? So she was unconscious from the get-go, and these people just nabbed her?¡¯ Ebony guessed the situation.
In any case, they put her in a cage. They must not have kind intentions like helping an unconscious, masked lady with torn clothes.
Ebony was a kilometre away when he stopped getting closer. The middle-aged man was clothed in steampunk fashion. All of them were but this man had thinner fur clothing on. He started to glance around but Ebony quickly found out that he wasn¡¯t the one that caught the man¡¯s attention.
¡®She didn¡¯t get Entity Evanescence like me, so they can see her. This skill is draining all my regeneration away. How expensive¡is the caster choosing how much mana he¡¯s taking?¡¯
Ever since he got the skill, he thought it was good fortune. It was a skill of an unknown tier that was just sitting within his skill set.
However, a similar foreign skill might have been what knocked Ning Xin out. Her version wasn¡¯t strong enough to hide her from these people.
¡®If this skill is activated, will those misty silhouettes know our location?¡¯
Ebony saw what the middle-aged man was staring at.
The Berg Mammoths.
He spoke to the young man with respect and pointed to the unmoving mountains. Probably to inform the others that those mountains were actually monsters.
¡®The young man¡¯s the leader? Are my senses off and he¡¯s the strongest one?¡¯ The middle-aged man even bowed to the young man.
While they were distracted, he walked up even closer. Without any fear or hesitation, he found himself standing right beside the cage that the two men were carrying.
He didn¡¯t even have to refract light to make himself invisible. These people were outright ignoring him!
¡®This Entity Evanescence is crazy. I¡¯m leaving tracks and they aren¡¯t noticing me. I can¡¯t just take her cage away without them realising right?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t want to try. That was too stupid even for him.
They treated him as air but he didn¡¯t think it would extend to anything he touched. He might try if the stakes weren¡¯t so high. Ful was watching, the tree spirit must be surprised at how far he had come without any repercussions.
The young man chatted with the respectful middle-aged man who was clean-shaven with sharp jawlines unlike the men carrying Ning Xin around. They put the cage down and watched the young man run off into the distance. Towards the Berg Mammoths.
¡®Are they bodyguards? And that guy¡¯s some kind of rich or protected person. That means he¡¯s one of those who can travel between worlds and is using Elcra as a training ground. If they chose a Berg Mammoth, he¡¯s either like us, a Master or a Grandmaster. Bodyguards would either be at the same rank or higher. Let¡¯s assume higher. I doubt they are all Emperors, so two Kings, one Emperor and potentially one Grandmaster.¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t consider fighting but he had to gauge what he was up against.
At the very least, their focus on the metal cage was getting weaker. The young man got into a stance to attack a mountain and the rest were watching closely.
¡®Can I just wait till they completely forget about her? Did those misty silhouettes continue to share a stronger stealth for her? I hope so but she¡¯s out of mana, although¡ambient mana is being absorbed around her. Fascinating stealth skill, there should be mental magic at play to make those around us ignore us.¡¯
Ebony decided to wait it out and watch what the young man could do.
¡®Something¡¯s tugging my body? Ah, the mandate guy is trying to pull me away from these people.¡¯ Ebony saw Ning Xin¡¯s body twitch.
To be honest, he hoped she stayed unconscious and quiet for now.
Ebony felt a tingle on his skin.
Someone was watching him.
He was keeping an eye on all four men present but they weren¡¯t looking at him. Other than the young man, the other three were keeping their overflowing essence concealed.
¡®The person who shared this skill with us must have found us¡I¡¯m gonna assume he won¡¯t try to kill us if he wants to stay hidden. For now. He might even help us, they seem desperate to stay hidden.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised that he couldn¡¯t find the person watching them even with his vastly improved Perception.
This was a person who shared a skill of an unknown tier that made him invisible to Ful and these otherworldly visitors. They were so good at hiding, he had a feeling he would¡¯ve forgotten about them if it wasn¡¯t for the fact that he had a skill from them.
Ebony gained the courage to touch the metal cage when the Mammoths woke up and the bodyguards were watching the young man with all their attention. He Appraised the cage, blinking twice when he found out that the cage was made of Ancient ranked steel alloy enchanted with magic that he didn¡¯t know.
The cage was simple. Two flat metal plates held together by multiple rods. It had a gate that was locked but no hinges.
He saw no reaction from the bodyguards and started to pull the steel rods apart to no avail.
¡®What tough bars¡can I enhance myself without them noticing? I¡¯ll ramp it up slowly, it''s cold all around. They look like warriors, hopefully without a good temperature sensitivity skill.¡¯ Ebony continued to strain his arms in futility.
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The cage didn¡¯t ring an alarm or anything. It appeared to be a durable cage and that was it. The convenience was perfect but it didn¡¯t help that he couldn¡¯t break it. The cage was telling him it didn¡¯t need special magical effects to do its job of keeping its contents sealed.
Ebony chose not to use vibrations since it would be too obvious for warriors but that made his options limited. It wasn¡¯t just the noise, good warriors would be able to notice something out of place even if he was completely silent.
¡®Should I just hack at it? No, I have to assume that outrunning them is impossible.¡¯
¡°Ful, Gen? Are you around? Can¡¯t you just drag us down?¡± Ebony sent a thin stream of mana deep underground before he made a sound that could only be heard kilometres underground. He was banking on Entity Evanescence hiding every part of him, including mana and sound.
The strongest looking middle-aged man didn¡¯t dress like a warrior and had a monocle completing their steampunk look. He didn¡¯t carry any sword under his robe like the two warriors either. Most importantly, he was just floating in the sky. Staying, really, really far away.
¡®Oh, he¡¯s getting busy. Papa and mama mammoth¡they should buy their attention. Nice.¡¯ Ebony silently covered the cage in ice when he tested that it didn¡¯t do anything against foreign mana touching it.
Hopefully, no bright lights were shining on them at the moment.
¡®I was too hopeful.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s didn¡¯t slow down his cast but he felt eyes on him.
However, the moment the floating man looked over Ebony felt something odd caress his body. He shivered, it felt like a cold gas molested him.
¡®Huh? He looked away? Those mandate guys are stronger than I imagined. One after another, how do I get away from those mandate users¡¡¯ Ebony turned the cage invisible and Flickered away with the cage over his shoulders.
It was surprisingly light, not even half of Icicle¡¯s current weight. Whatever that weight may be.
¡®Feels like we¡¯re jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.¡¯ Ebony scanned the area for misty silhouettes but there was no one in sight.
¡°Haha, of course, I won¡¯t be able to see them.¡±
¡°Ebony, to the right,¡± Gen called him out. That must mean he already ran far enough to be out of the random steampunk quartet. If they gauged their perception¡¯s reach correctly.
Sadly, he wasn¡¯t able to turn before he felt something grabbing his wrist and two pairs of hands pushing him to the ground. The cage with Ning Xin rolled to the side and crashed into a tree.
¡°Petr-¡±
A gigantic turtle rose from the ground as light snow fell.
Ebony managed to free himself to see three figures white as snow.
¡®White as snow, I¡¯m such a funny person. They are covered in snow. Are any one of them the one who shared Entity Evanescence with me? Doesn¡¯t look like it. Ful doesn¡¯t think Gen could match the steampunk person, but they can handle these silhouettes. Very conveniently, these guys didn¡¯t chase after me the past year.¡¯
¡°Thanks, Gen. You saved me there.¡±
¡°Only her, I doubt you¡¯ll be in trouble. I remember now. I think I saw those people before. Ancestor called it a mandate? It doesn¡¯t work well on creatures highly attuned with mana or have intense will, like us. So they shouldn¡¯t be a large threat.¡±
¡°You didn¡¯t kill them did you?¡±
¡°Why would I? They¡¯re helping us hide. Although, they might be in a bit of pain.
¡°Alright, harden the dome, I''m gonna break this cage. She¡¯s still asleep after getting tossed around, this sleepyhead. Ah, nice, the drain on my mana disappeared. Have you been stopping them from coming after us for the duration of our training?¡±
¡°Those that made you forgettable? I didn¡¯t do anything, It¡¯s just not easy to find something in the Glades. Especially where the two of you were training.¡±
¡°Oh, right. The mana here disrupts even mental links with our callstones. Are all places with dense mana like that?¡±
¡°Actually, yes. Criminals and people on the run love to run to places like this other than dungeons. Anyway, we¡¯re lucky a fight was avoided. Even better, they probably don¡¯t even remember or know about this incident. Keep your distance from that group. That man¡¯s a space magic user. Travelling through worlds with spatial travel is one of the most forceful methods and he seems to be working for someone.¡± Ful chipped in.
¡°Why did you say magic user? Is he not a mage?¡± Ebony pointed out the odd wording Ful used.
¡°He doesn¡¯t appear to be a mage as far as I could tell. He would¡¯ve been more sensitive to your or our mana usage if that was the case. I can¡¯t tell what world he¡¯s from or what background he has.¡±
¡°Background? Sounds like some cultivation novel. Can you escort us out?¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t shy about asking Gen to protect them. The tree spirit seemed chirpy, Gen could probably leave for a moment without an issue.
¡°You¡¯re gonna leave straight away?¡±
¡°Not right now. But there¡¯s some Emperor class space magic user that may or may not remember us, their cage is missing. Then there¡¯s a group of people who can hide us from these otherworldly steampunk-dressed men who have both of us on their list. Well, I didn¡¯t kill any of them so they might not be completely hostile but they almost caught me in an uncivilised manner. Not that they acted civilised, to begin with.¡±
Gen already crunched onto the cage which took away his opportunity to try breaking it.
¡®I¡¯ll take that.¡¯ Ebony packed up the broken rods and dented metal plates. He could use it or give it to Kong Jing since the material didn¡¯t look easy to come by.
As for the woman originally inside, she was snoring softly after she fell out of the gap Gen opened.
¡°Don¡¯t tell me she had been sleeping from the start and her intuition didn¡¯t wake her up.¡±
¡°No, she wasn¡¯t. She interacted with the group that caught her for a moment before she suddenly lost consciousness. They were about to clash. So, you¡¯re right. They might have some impression of her that a mandate might not keep hidden forever.¡± Ful replied.
The tree spirit and turtle had been watching their training so he wasn''t surprised they knew about all their activities.
He tossed the woman onto their sofa in the trailer and made some grub. He kept them in the food preservation boxes they had. Then he left the trailer fully garbed.
¡°Gen, a spar.¡±
¡°Is now the time?¡±
¡°There¡¯s always time for a spar.¡±
It didn¡¯t take long before he was squashed between two flat, thin planks of snow. With his body contorted, he couldn¡¯t even muster the strength to break free.
¡®No difference¡all the skill refinements and evolutions made no difference. Growing in battle sense didn¡¯t help either. So to Gen, my improvements over the past two years made absolutely no difference to him. If he¡¯s a thousand points, I''m a one-pointer. Doubling or tripling my power to a point of 2 or 3 would indeed be hard to tell.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t disheartened.
His gravity magic was underpowered and weight or repulsion did little. Trying to flip Gen into the ceiling didn¡¯t work since the turtle could easily ground himself. Sound magic was suppressed badly. Gen could keep his mana so still and stable that his vibrations simply faded the moment they came into contact.
The spar was even shorter than it used to be as Gen adjusted his strength. Seemingly to put Ebony back into place. There was no surprise, he couldn¡¯t even injure a Grandmaster Apex Ape if they didn¡¯t allow him to hit them.
He imagined his domain and multiple enhancements could easily breach the stat gap but that wasn¡¯t the case. He was reminded that he wasn¡¯t the owner of this space when Gen flooded the dome with his mana.
For the first time since he became a mage, Ebony knew what it felt like to be suffocated within another¡¯s mana. Even conjuring or pulling mana out of his body was a few times tougher. It was similar to pushing a balloon underwater. He wanted to push air out but every gap for mana to escape was forcefully pushed back by some pressure. He felt like he couldn¡¯t even fight a quarter as well as he should.
¡®So this is how others feel when I suppress them with mana? Interesting, no wonder they tend to fight less effectively even discounting cold, vibrations and gravity.¡¯
¡®Sparring¡¯ with Gen didn¡¯t let him increase his skill levels. The turtle barely gave him a chance to utilise his skills. That was no way to improve.
¡®A few levels short, should I find some other monster?¡¯ Ebony already learned all that he could from fighting some gorillas.
The Elder Apes, like Gen, were too strong for him and he already knew their patterns too well by now. The Elders did use slightly different moves but he didn¡¯t think they would be a threat the moment his stats increased.
¡°Ebony!!¡± A screech echoed throughout the dome.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± He scratched his head at the high-pitched scream.
¡°Why did you toss me here? Now the sofa¡¯s dirty! You clean it! And the floor.¡±
¡°...You were almost snagged away.¡±
¡°And I¡¯m here now. Don¡¯t think I don¡¯t know. You were the culprit for having Scorchie and Scorhy taken away from me.¡±
¡°Ah, but you¡¯re not angry. You¡¯re actually satisfied.¡± He raised an eyebrow when he had a sudden feeling.
¡°...What makes you say that?¡±
Ebony nodded in satisfaction. ¡®Anger¡¯s not all I can tell!¡¯
¡°You-¡±
¡°I nothing, I made pasta. And a chickpea salad. There¡¯s also a pot roast that¡¯s still cooking.¡± He knew a surefire way to change the subject.
From what he could tell, she changed just as much as he did. If not more. The shock of losing her swords temporarily must have hit her pretty hard.
¡°I smelt that. Along with my stench. Watch the fire, how could you leave it unattended? I¡¯m going to wash up. Clean up the mess you made.¡±
Ebony stared at the snow-covered sofa, patches of dried blood were stuck on them. The floor was fine, he carried her in after all.
The corners of his lips lifted slightly, he pinched them in surprise. That wasn¡¯t a voluntary or deliberate muscular motion.
¡®Funny, I don¡¯t feel like I¡¯m in a state of meditation anymore but the skill is in effect. Perpetual Tranquillity Spring? To think my Core Skill became something I understand the least.¡¯ Ebony hummed.
Chapter 258: Fermenting
¡°You improved.¡± Ning Xin stated, ¡°You actually salted mammoth roast perfectly!¡±
¡°Eating good food long enough and swapping to terrible meals made my tongue more sensitive.¡± Ebony was proud of his cooking.
Watching and helping a chef for some time was more than enough for him to improve.
They finished eating within fifteen minutes. He got permission to tear the second floor¡¯s floorboard apart and refreshed the frame¡¯s runes. The chef busied herself with checking both their inventory.
¡°You ran out of food? I thought I prepared enough. How long has it been?¡±
¡°Almost 19 months. I was physically active. Fluid Blitz was refined but I made it give me more power in exchange for more stamina. So I have been eating more.¡±
¡°Good¡19? We still have seven months.¡±
¡°Sister Jing said two years. That¡¯s probably just an estimate. Do you need Natural Potential?¡±
¡°Oh yes! Did you know we don¡¯t have to hunt some level thousand monsters?! There¡¯s something called core development! But I don¡¯t know how I triggered it.¡±
¡°I got that down recently.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t bother asking when she found out. He felt that she probably found out earlier than him.
¡°I can hit all my targets based on my gut.¡± She bragged.
¡°Your gut. Impressive as always. I got the core development notification but I¡¯m not sure how many more levels I can get in a reasonable time frame.¡±
¡°No rough gauge? It¡¯s quite obvious. I can just tell, and my guess is usually not more than five levels off.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t have that kind of instinct.¡± Ebony¡¯s increased perception did nothing to improve his ability to sense the thing called ¡®potential¡¯.
¡°Want to leave? To be honest, I got bored of fighting apes.¡± Ebony was not about to say he was getting the daylights beaten out of him for about a year.
¡°Yeah, I¡¯m ready to evolve.¡± It was almost painfully obvious but both of their tongues were very sensitive. They could taste unpleasant minerals with greater precision. She hid it well but there was probably something wrong with the pasta sauce.
¡°What?¡± Ebony was caught off guard.
If it was about danger, he thought he took it to the limit. If it was about the amount of time spent fighting, there was no way she exceeded him. She had to sleep more and she got exhausted much faster. Even so, he only recently maxed out everything he had to.
¡°I¡¯m ready, well. My Profession could still use some work but not much.¡± She clarified while chowing down heartily.
¡°Then why didn¡¯t you return? And did you forget what happened, you were placed into a cage.¡±
¡°I was¡doing some outdoor cooking. There are so many different ingredients here!¡± She seemed embarrassed about fooling around after she finished her training.
¡°...The cage. Why aren¡¯t you more agitated about that?¡±
¡°Why do you think? Your mana is forcing me to stay calm.¡± She grumbled at the end after being reminded,
¡°I painstakingly dug a hole in the ground and was preparing oven-baked bird but the smell brought those men over. They didn¡¯t have any hostile intentions at first so my Intuition didn¡¯t warn me. The moment they got closer, that changed. I couldn¡¯t smell or sense them at all and only noticed them once they were within sight.¡± She paused to push another slice of roast in her mouth.
Ebony sliced another chunk off to fill her plate while waiting for her to continue.
¡°I believe they spoke Gia but I didn¡¯t catch most of it other than maybe guessing I¡¯m a Xeng. But that man was eyeing me disgustingly. I felt bad intentions from the arrogant one and was going to run away since two of them felt unnerving.¡±
¡°Two of them, the arrogant one in charge and the monocle-wearing man?¡±
¡°Yeah. I don¡¯t think any of them are stronger than that Frost Elf, Arcta¡¯s previous village chief. But they felt more foreign and there were too many unknowns.¡±
¡°I¡¯m surprised you didn¡¯t just attack them.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not that stupid.¡± She puffed her cheeks and put her hands on her hip in response,
¡°I got dizzy after standing up and fainted right after. It was quite a shock and I tried to pull on my reserves but the drain on my mana exploded. It felt like a mental attack.
I thought it was one of them but in my groggy state, the man with the disgusting look suddenly lost all hostile intentions. Before I lost consciousness, they threw me into that cage. All the vitality I gathered to enhance myself was quickly being consumed but I noticed that they seemed to change topics and forgot about having caught me at all. Then, I woke up here.¡±
Ebony briefly explained how it was highly likely to be those misty silhouettes and she also confirmed that her version had an upgrade from time to time. It was odd that her change was gradual while he immediately got Entity Evanescence. Especially since he was supposed to be more resistant to the Mandates.
¡®Maybe they had to pay some kind of price to cast it on me? Like Koawe''s curses that consume a portion of his maximum mana pool or mana regeneration.¡¯
¡°So¡they¡¯re here to train. And hopefully, they completely forgot about us. But perhaps due to my limited mana and the weakened invisibility or mind magic, they might remember me if they see me again. Then those mist bastards know where we are but they can¡¯t chase us while we¡¯re here. They also don¡¯t want to show themselves as much as possible.¡±
¡°That¡¯s about right, I wouldn¡¯t go so far as to call them enemies but we¡¯ll have to watch out for them. Fortunately, the silhouette guys aren¡¯t that strong. They have the best stealth but once they show themselves, they aren¡¯t that big of a threat. Except maybe the one or multiple that could force Entity Evanescence on me.¡±
Ebony might have gotten forced to the ground but that was only because they were truly unnoticeable until they touched him. Even if Gen didn¡¯t help him then, the grasp on him was so weak they could only catch him while he was barely augmented.
¡°I¡¯ll call Sister Jing. Maybe she¡¯s free to give us a ride.¡± Neither of them forgot table manners despite the long time spent outdoors but almost felt fresh to dine properly again.
¡°Oh, that¡¯ll be convenient.¡± Ebony forgot the convenience of a phone.
¡°I want to try out on the surface but I¡¯ll wait. Gen¡¯s going to move us towards Trailane Plains?¡± As expected, the callstone was not as reliable. The call didn¡¯t go through.
¡°I didn¡¯t know your training was done so, no. We haven¡¯t moved much. Where would you want to go? Tidal? Or back to Xienor for rice.¡± Ebony stood up and stacked the empty plates to carry them over to the sink.
¡°Rice.¡±
Ebony nodded. He caught the smile on his chef¡¯s face or just her lips to be specific.
¡°What?¡±
¡°Nothing. It¡¯s just nice to sense things so clearly. You can¡¯t hide anything from me anymore!¡±
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¡°When have I ever?¡±
She stuck her tongue out and turned around with another stack of dishes.
¡®I was fully expecting her to be more bloodthirsty and aggressive but I guess not. Fantastic.¡¯ They washed the dishes together.
¡°I found some glacial eggplant, I left some for you to try! I think you¡¯ll like it as a salad.¡± She dried her hands and ran to get her bag.
Based on the situation and time limit that they were following, it didn¡¯t feel like peaceful days were coming but Ebony couldn¡¯t help but feel that way.
He strongly felt that slow, peaceful days were on the way.
???
Within half a day of saving the damsel in distress with the help of some phantom weirdos, Ful reported that the otherworldly Emperor and their clique disappeared. They got the couple Berg Mammoth King and Queen mad and got eaten.
The young man had to be saved and his bodyguards chased after his spit-covered figure. Too enraged to even remember they had a high-quality cage and a kidnapped person disappearing.
Ebony might have gotten much stronger but beating the Berg Mammoths was a different kind of challenge. They were so big he needed a chance like Ning Xin to get into their weak spots to kill. The leader couple of the Berg Mammoths were probably far stronger.
The one they killed was also the weakest of the lot so it was hard to say how powerful the arrogant young man was. Especially when he got eaten and had to be saved.
Gen drove them out to the Chilly region and let them out after checking the coast.
Surprisingly, Kong Jing picked up the call.
More surprisingly, she was staying with the Thoyas.
He thought the village was sealed to everyone but she must have found a way. Hopefully, there wasn¡¯t any kind of drama when she barged in and out.
The sisters were having a private conversation and he wasn¡¯t able to cut in.
¡°She¡¯ll pick us up.¡±
¡°Mmm. Let¡¯s bid the others farewell.¡±
They didn¡¯t have much to say to the turtle family but thanks for the protection. Gen hadn¡¯t plucked the sword hilt out of Ful. He was worried he couldn¡¯t seal the hole that had stayed open for thousands of years after pulling it out.
Since he could sustain the tree now, there was no rush. Ful seemed to be getting healthier despite being asleep more. Before Gen¡¯s evolution, Ful was dying. Extremely slowly.
After more than a year, Gen still hasn¡¯t fully gotten the hang of his new body and skills. Partially thanks to watching both of them so closely the entire time.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t even ask for a duel with Gen to vent her anger for having her swords taken away. Perhaps breaking the underground dome and taking her swords back already vented all her frustrations from that incident.
Ebony double-checked their luggage and made sure everything was packed neatly. With each of them carrying some supplies of their own.
They were already in the Chilly region. Arcta wasn¡¯t that far away and the space mage found them with ease now that the magical stealth skill wasn¡¯t ripping their mana away.
¡°Let¡¯s go!¡± She didn¡¯t stop to give greetings and ripped them all away.
¡°We¡¯re not going to stop by the village?¡± Ebony questioned but he already saw them pass Plainston before he finished his sentence.
¡°Why have you gotten even harder to shift!¡± Kong Jing complained. Her handling of space and moving them had improved vastly. Getting harder to move by magic was definitive proof that his general magic resistance had increased in some manner.
¡°I wanted to see Kiva¡¡± Ning Xin¡¯s voice had a harder time travelling to their ears amid spatially assisted transport.
¡°We¡¯ll come back once you get rice and I get my purchases anyway. Then we can stay still for some time.¡±
¡°Weren¡¯t you supposed to be working in Clatter Rattle?¡± Ebony asked. He was pretty sure that was her plan and Mark should be there with her after his vacation.
¡°I was busy bartering information with Roya and the other craftsmen. Those old fools are just like all my clansmen, tight-lipped! Right, the hunter said there was someone dangerous in the Glades. You didn¡¯t meet them, did you? He was going to land a hand but returned almost immediately.¡±
¡°Hunter? Yes, we did meet that someone but we got away.¡± Ebony was pleasantly surprised. There was someone else who was watching after them.
¡°The tall, disgustingly powerful one that could see us in Fifth Tide from the village.¡±
¡°He can see us from the village?¡± Ebony blinked twice, was it possible to sense things in the Icy region from Arcta?
¡°I doubt so, he just knew someone dangerous entered the glades.¡±
The trip didn¡¯t take longer than 4 days. They stopped for meals and even a casual picnic in a forest. Not forgetting the routine conditioning either. Just watching the scenery change drastically for 4 days was boring for the ladies.
Xienor didn¡¯t change.
It was a quiet lakeside village with few people.
The lake was massive enough to be considered a coastline line for the village but it made little difference. It was a beautiful lake, one created by a Saint¡¯s attack. The biggest one on Elva and supposedly connected to the sea. One couldn¡¯t see the ends of the lake from ground level.
Ning Xin only bothered to greet one person and that was the fisherman who usually fished in the lake not far from her house. She even kept some Jetfin flesh for the man she called Uncle Wu. It wasn¡¯t fresh but it didn¡¯t lose much of its freshness with their preservation containers.
Uncle Wu only glanced at her, nodded and returned his attention to the lake. Even so, Ebony could tell that the man was glad to see the two ladies in one piece. Right, he also tossed a bucket over. Four fat flounders were casually swimming in the bucket.
¡°Thank you!¡± She perked up at the prospects of a wider variety in their diet.
Dinner was gonna be fish. It had been a while, discounting the Jetfins. Seafood had been almost nonexistent because the entire sea was covered by the Troll¡¯s conjured battlefield.
Kong Jing had no reason to go anywhere else, her house was left at Clatter Rattle with Mark doing his research there.
They were uncomfortable about the dust and got to cleaning before cooking. The space mage was sent to get rice while she was on the way to get her material orders.
Unexpectedly, Dishwashing mutated into Housekeeping.
Housekeeping - Ability to keep the house in order and do chores such as cleaning, washing, sewing and more increases by 1.0% every level. Slightly increases housekeeping speed and efficiency every level.
¡®And more? What a lazy description¡I¡¯m guessing anything that¡¯s considered keeping a house neat and tidy. Including our trailer? Maybe it helps with fixing and optimising floorboards and roofs.¡¯
The flounders were plump and juicy. She made one hot and spicy for him while Kong Jing got a grilled and salted version. The chef¡¯s personal choice was a savoury, pan-fried dish. It made the fish skin nice and crispy. He found it amusing when she reluctantly offered to let him the last slice of crispy skin that had bathed in hot oil.
He wasn¡¯t sure if it was thanks to his Perception increasing once again, but he felt more. Everything felt¡more.
It was odd to think that. Wind caressing his skin felt pleasant. Food tastes better. Walking on the ground felt as if he could sense the earth better. Colours were more vibrant. Breathing was less than pleasant but he quickly got used to smelling more¡range of scents.
More importantly, every little thing that happened made him feel more.
It was interesting but he was perturbed. His Core Skill doesn¡¯t even feel like a meditation skill anymore.
The outdoor training field here was interesting. It wasn¡¯t just tough, it could expand. Not made by Kong Jing but some spatial shenanigans were going on. But Ning Xin didn¡¯t even know how to activate that function so they needed help for that.
He foresaw a big problem with this function. It was possible to be trapped within this field because controls were done by a third person from outside the field. The Xengs were rich and this training field was also used by Ning Xin¡¯s parents. It meant the field could handle Emperors fighting without effects spilling out to the environment.
It would consume a lot of energy for functions like barriers or spatial expansion. She had never used all of the field¡¯s functions since there was never a need to. The field was already relatively large.
They exercised in the morning. Had breakfast. Spent two to three hours sitting by the lake fishing. Late morning to mid-afternoon spar. Showered. Prepared dinner while putting on some movies. Had dinner with Kong Jing. He would have tea while reading and moon gazing. Ning Xin would study new recipes or perfect her existing repertoire.
Suffice it to say, the swordswoman had achieved straightforward power. As always, she focused on building on her strengths while he shored up all his weaknesses. The further along on their paths they went, the more obvious their differences.
Trying to beat her in terms of direct power was never going to happen. He had long strayed from that. No matter how much he beefed up enhancement magic or his compression, she would go even further.
Kong Jing didn¡¯t know they were here for her sister¡¯s evolution. She got busy preparing the room for the evolution when she learnt that the stay was going to be longer than just picking up rice and crafting materials.
There was nothing special being done. Just filling up Ning Xin¡¯s room with fire and lightning mana ores. She had to ask around for blood elemental items. The room wasn¡¯t going to explode or burn up.
Since there was time before the Chef shored up her Profession skills, she had to place an order for blood elemental items. No one was carrying such things at the moment. They were mostly here for vacation.
In under five days, Ning Xin fell unconscious and started her evolution.
Chapter 259: Mellowing
Ebony didn¡¯t add to his training hours despite being slower in the levelling department. He kept his routine constant but cooking was left to him now. He still had dinner with Kong Jing every evening.
The fisherman Uncle Wu, stopped by and left a tuna-looking fish by the doorway on the day after Ning Xin started her evolution. He was the only one who came by.
The man didn¡¯t say anything. He didn¡¯t even call out to them.
Ebony just knew that Uncle Wu walked passed and left the live fish in a tub by the doorway. He bowed to the fisherman¡¯s back when he walked out. Whether or not the fisherman sensed it, he didn¡¯t know but he had a feeling the fisherman saw his gesture.
At night, he would try to simulate a mental battle again.
After his Core Skill evolved or his Core developed, he had better results. The mental simulations got more realistic. Although subtle, he could even feel his Skills improving infinitesimally after the repeated simulations. There was a good chance he could get a skill out of this practice but it didn¡¯t feel like he¡¯ll find out what¡¯s missing yet.
The realism of his simulations had already reached a very high degree. However, he wasn¡¯t exactly living within his mental simulations like how he accidentally did the first time around after duelling with Lucas.
It was hard to believe that was a fluke that he couldn¡¯t recreate.
Without strong opponents.
Without danger.
Ebony¡¯s remaining skills under his target level continued to grow at an alarming pace.
Once every three to four days, multiple skills would level.
It felt normal but his skills weren¡¯t levelling from 30s to 40s, they were levelling from 440s to 450s or 580s to 600s.
¡®Wow, that is a lot of Natural Potential. This thing called Core development, we need to focus on it instead of killing monsters. The question still stands, is there a degree of development? It¡¯s suffocating not knowing these things¡¡¯
Ebony still had no idea what degree of Natural Potential he received but he didn¡¯t care anymore. It felt like his skills wouldn¡¯t stop at 449 or 599 anticlimactically. He felt bad for those who faced these issues and hoped he wouldn¡¯t face it any time soon.
¡®Hurray for genes I guess.¡¯ He wasn¡¯t about to let genes determine his strength but he wasn¡¯t going to deny how much it helped.
¡°Haaa, what killed both of you¡¡± Ebony unknowingly let his voice slip.
He didn¡¯t even register his own words.
???
Ebony recalled their previous evolution from Journeyman to Master taking 10 to 11 days.
Gen¡¯s evolution from Grandmaster to King took 49 days.
It was not hard to make an educated guess that Master to Grandmaster was somewhere in between. Assuming races didn¡¯t differ much in terms of evolutionary time.
He was almost proven wrong.
Ning Xin took 45 days.
That was an uncomfortably long time of vulnerability.
However, they weren¡¯t in any form of existential threat.
Xienor was as quiet as any other day throughout the 45 days. No monster craving their flesh or mana dared to come or even sense anything.
Ebony reevaluated the need for a good room or location for evolution. It should hide all leaks of any kind of overflowing essence.
The moment she woke up, he and Kong Jing knew as they could sense mana shifting within the house.
Instead of disturbing her right after she woke up, he went to prepare the fish that Uncle Wu left. He had left a single fish by the doorway every single day. Today, the day that she woke up, he had left the biggest fish that was as big as a Jetfin. As if he knew she was going to wake up.
With 44 fishes, the feast was not easy for him to prepare. He had to think of many dishes that had fish and he wasn¡¯t an expert as to what fish suited which method of cooking.
He didn¡¯t stumble and just got started with simpler recipes that he knew. The starving one would come down to help him once she reorientated herself with her new self.
She ultimately came down in record time.
He just didn¡¯t expect to look up when she stood beside him.
¡®She¡¯s about 1.92 metres tall. I¡¯m not going to be shorter than her, am I?¡¯ Ebony had good measurements by eye. To a certain extent, stats affected their evolution and the body they would grow into. A greater physical proportion required a larger or stronger frame.
With his disproportionate physical to mental-stats, it was quite likely that his physical growth wouldn¡¯t be as prominent as hers.
To begin with, he heard that they weren¡¯t supposed to get any significant changes in body size anymore. The biggest change should¡¯ve been when they evolved from Journeyman to Master. The rest of the evolutions should have very small, gradual changes because the first evolution already made their body more suited for their class.
Her height and overall frame had grown pretty significantly in his opinion. He wouldn¡¯t go so far as to say he could beat her in a fight but he bet he could take a lot of lucky shots. Unless she was so attuned to her new body despite the change in reach. But he doubted that.
Ning Xin had silky black hair running down her head. Down to the back of her knees. She put on shorts and a random shirt that was lying around. Standing a few centimetres taller than him. Her shoulder width was still slightly smaller than his but it was wider than she used to be.
Her limbs had the most obvious growth proportion-wise. Her arms and legs were noticeably longer compared to the growth in her torso. It was not obvious to anyone else but to warriors like them, even a tenth of a centimetre was a massive change.
She was more muscular but still as toned. Be it her arms, legs or abdominal muscles she gained a little more girth. Slight chubbiness was gone but he knew that was just because she hadn''t eaten in 45 days. The feast before her evolution was quite an intimidating meal.
Her white skin was brighter. He couldn¡¯t put it in words but she looked less unhealthy. Her paleness didn¡¯t look as ghastly.
The rest of her body grew proportionally and she didn¡¯t exactly look any different other than being larger.
He felt a little bashful for his senses just checking her out like that. He wasn¡¯t sure if it was his fault that his senses let him gauge her abdominal muscles. For some reason, she still had a flat tummy instead of an athlete''s six-pack or well-defined abdominal muscles like his.
That might be the greatest mystery of her body. Where in the world are her muscles? She had so much Strength stat, all female warriors would have well-defined muscles. It wasn¡¯t like she didn¡¯t train before she got a Class or added any stats either. Looking at her body, it was hard to tell she was a warrior or swordswoman unless one had a good eye.
To be it simply, she was gushing out charm that Ebony was not immune to.
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Her mask changed as well.
It looked thinner than before and the bird feather on it was now dark red in colour. It was still in the midst of changing colours as if it was settling its mana down. Unless her mask now constantly bubbled with fire and blood which was within his expectations.
¡°Scoot over.¡± She bummed him to the side and washed her hands.
With her hair dripping wet, it was obvious she just run down after a bath. Evolution made one stink after all. But the Chef was a clean freak when it came to food so washing of hands was habitual.
¡°Put on some more clothes first. I¡¯ll descale these fishes. Uncle Wu brought one over every day.¡± He bummed her back.
She tilted her head in confusion, letting her hair slide down to cover part of her mask and eyes¡wait her mask didn¡¯t have holes around the eyes anymore. It was a solid white mask with a feather. No holes for sight.
¡®Can she see? Are those like one-sided mirror glass?¡¯
¡°I am wearing clothes?¡± She stated questionably. Her body steamed as she raised her body temperature to dry her hair.
¡®Is she acting? Why do I think she¡¯s acting confused?¡¯ Ebony was confident he could pick up a wider range of emotions but he was still a beginner.
¡°Hey, are you trying to cook the fish?¡± Ebony quickly protected the ingredients but the steam and even heat didn¡¯t blow over.
¡°Come on, I¡¯m not that careless even if I just woke up. Hurry up, I¡¯m starving. Let''s toss that, that, that and that into a pot and make fish soup¡± She blew the hot air out of the windows with a gentle breeze. She picked out a few fishes and determined their fate.
¡®Perpetual Tranquillity Spring are you a meditation skill or not? Her voice changed too. It¡¯s even deeper, no not deep, it''s more sultry.¡¯ For reasons that he was now half-aware, half-confused about he wasn¡¯t able to concentrate as he helped her prepare a big meal.
She was starving so they made something quick and easy first while leaving soups and stews to cook. Most of it was for her but he accompanied her.
Her essence or aura started to climb while she ate. The weakness of lacking health and mana after evolution took much longer to recover from than he expected. A larger pool required a longer time to heal.
Perhaps this state of weakness right after evolution would last longer the stronger they got.
No invisible threat of misty silhouettes or steampunk Emperor-classed space users came over for them. Having Kong Jing over and being amid Xengs was pretty convenient.
¡°By the way, did you burn your room? I can¡¯t help but notice the smell of burnt ash.¡± Ebony spoke up. He noticed for a while now but her house shouldn¡¯t be that fragile.
¡°I''ll clean up later.¡± She continued to put food into her belly.
He just didn¡¯t think they would accompany her to cook and eat from one midday to the next. Kong Jing shut herself in the guest room right after a single plateful of food. She made sure Ning Xin was alright and they did share a hug. Leaving Ebony alone to entertain her gluttonous streak.
¡®She ate for almost 28 hours straight! Is she trying to get back 45 days of food into her system?¡¯ Ebony knew that she also spent half the time cooking but she always had something to snack on for the past day.
Although one didn¡¯t consume any sustenance during evolution, they were also not using much energy in a state similar to hibernation. Discounting the vast amount of essence being funnelled into their evolutionary process. That energy remained in the body in some form.
She should not feel the need to eat as much as 45 days worth of food.
At the end of her feast, she burped in satisfaction and fell asleep on the dining table.
He shook his head and carried her to the sofa in the living room. Her room still had ash in the air. He covered her long legs with a blanket and left the house to exercise. He skipped a day of conditioning.
It was not so bad. After The Itch. It wasn¡¯t that easy for him to lose Conditioning levels. It would likely take at least a month of inactivity before he started losing Conditioning levels.
He was very surprised that Ning Xin hadn¡¯t gotten The Itch.
Throughout her entire training session that got her to all her evolutionary requirements and goals, she didn¡¯t experience his phase of The Itch.
Before her evolution, her Conditioning Skill still sat at tier 2 although highly refined. Oddly enough.
After The Itch, his Conditioning Skill jumped to tier 4. Fighting the Apex Apes with The Itch had been difficult but it pushed him even faster.
He knew he had more hours of training than her but she shouldn¡¯t have been so far back in this regard.
He was quite sure her gains from her evolution were great. While eating and recovering her lost essence, he could feel her overwhelming Vitality just bearing down on him. It mostly burned rather than weighing him down. There was also a tingling sensation and moving felt¡sticky.
His blood clotted and felt like it would clog up. It wasn¡¯t very strong of a sensation but the effect would probably only mount up as she levelled up and got stronger from now on. He didn¡¯t think about what this effect would be like on others.
¡®This is even worse than the weight on one¡¯s shoulders.¡¯ She wasn¡¯t aware of the effects of her overflowing essence and he didn¡¯t tell her during her healing session. It was natural that she wasn¡¯t in full control of it at the moment.
¡®Ting¡¯
¡®Oh, what a coincidence. The last skill level I needed. Keeping some of my organs sealed worked. Let¡¯s see¡oh? No class name? Will I only find out after evolution?¡¯
¡®It nice that Sister Jing can enter Arcta as she wishes. I don¡¯t have to wait years to get back.¡¯ The thought of going back to Arcta for his evolution was natural. Other locations didn¡¯t come to mind.
Be it mana densities or just a symbolic location, it just felt right.
¡®I do want to eat plums too. Am I catching her gluttonous desire?¡¯
Three days later, they left Xienor. Ning Xin didn¡¯t have a strong attachment to Xienor and Kong Jing only had her crafts in mind.
She did extend her farewell greetings to Uncle Wu but that was about it.
He watched her train but it was mostly her getting used to her new reach.
According to her, most of her skills remained the same with barely any skill evolutions or mutations. Reason being, she already evolved those skills by herself before she evolved her classes. The biggest skill evolution was her Conditioning which jumped from tier 2 to 4. Hence, he was under the impression that she would face The Itch soon.
Not getting skill evolutions was likely going to be the case for him too. Their skills are already beyond a Masters, to begin with.
In fact, from his persistence, he managed to find out a few of the skills that Kong Jing and the older Frost Elves had. Despite all of Kong Jing¡¯s genius, she mostly had tier 4 skills even as a Grandmaster and she even expected it to stay that way after evolving to King excluding her Core Skills. Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised to find that Kong Jing reached level 500 all of a sudden. He was just interested in what she made that got her level to jump that way.
As for the King-Classed crafters in Arcta, they hinted that they weren¡¯t far off either but he didn¡¯t interact with them much. Ebony knew a little about the difference between tier 3 and 4 skills. He could see why tier 5 skills would be hard to learn or create.
Since Ning Xin hasn¡¯t levelled, her stats also stayed constant.
Hence, her evolved self¡¯s gain in power mostly came from Fortifications. They were playing a game where they had to guess each other''s new Fortifications after he evolved and duelled with her.
If there was one good news, it was that she remembered her evolution process. The memory was quickly fading but she told him about it while feasting.
She opened her eyes to an endless horizon of blood. Standing naked with the blood reaching her ankles. In her hands was a pot. In her words, it was a soup pot filled with an unidentified red liquid.
When she blinked, wine glasses and goblets appeared. Floating eerily in front of her they extended forward, branching forward to more and more goblets.
The closest ones to where she¡spawned were filled. Each goblet had different shapes, colours and even materials. Some were glass, others were gold or silver or at least that is what it appeared to her. These goblets represented her Fortifications, her physique and then leading down to her skills.
She could feel herself fading away from that evolutionary spot and instinctually knew what to do. Running forward, she poured her unknown pot of liquid into different goblets.
There were plenty of empty goblets and once she poured some fluid in, the fluid would flow down the goblet and leak to the floor, opening up a wider view where she could glance further. Otherwise, most of the path would just look like a bloody sea without any floating goblets.
After she told him about her experience, she could barely tell him the details again. The next day, all she knew was that she was able to guide her evolution in the direction she wanted. She didn¡¯t know about the bloody sea, the pot of unknown fluid or the goblets.
That was quite fascinating for Ebony. Forgetting the evolutionary process was the entire reason why it was so hard to theorise or learn more before one evolved. Even with seniors who were multiple evolutions ahead of them, they can¡¯t seem to learn much about the process from them.
Even though it was someone else¡¯s evolution, Ebony also began to find it hard to repeat what she said in words. But he got the gist of it and even penned it down as she spoke so he had a physical record.
In her perceived time, she spent about half an hour pouring the red fluid and deciding where to pour it in before she lost consciousness. Kong Jing had long forgotten what her evolution was like and she hadn¡¯t thought to pen anything down. Ebony had a feeling that she had written something down but lost the book or notes somewhere.
¡®Half an hour seems great but she decides fast and her mind is one-tracked. That¡¯s also using her mental acceleration¡¯s speed which I don¡¯t have so I might have to act fast. I don¡¯t have another point of reference but let¡¯s say I¡¯m not too far off since we¡¯re both Masters of roughly the same¡quality.¡¯
Ebony was optimistic. If she had a choice, he was confident enough to think that he would have the same opportunity to decide his growth.
Chapter 260: Impetus
The Grandmaster Swordswoman wore a loose black shirt and pants. Other than her boots and mantle, the rest of her clothing didn¡¯t fit perfectly. There was no nervousness at the lack of defensive powers. So much that she didn¡¯t even put her bodysuit on.
Their ride wanted to make a stop at Clatter Rattle and they didn¡¯t have anything to say about it.
Ebony was intrigued to find that there was something called ¡®impatience¡¯ within him but he didn¡¯t address it. He hadn¡¯t been emotionless before, just numbed but impatience had to be brand new.
He thought he could see Mark but the man left a note saying he had gone home to take care of his mother who fell sick.
The two masked ladies and one mentally numbed couldn¡¯t understand the concept of a sick parent immediately. It took some time for them to digest that people fell sick and that it was normal to put down one¡¯s work to care for their sick relatives.
¡®Right, sickness. I caught a fever back then so I guess we can still fall sick.¡¯
Kong Jing left her house as it was so that Mark wouldn¡¯t return to an empty plot of land. She shook down some merchants who tried to go back on their word on a trade.
The merchants were wrongfully robbed by some bandits, so the space mage tracked the robbers down 2 cities away and robbed them back with no remorse. She paid the merchant half the price and called the other half payment to get her order back by herself. That was already very kind of her.
Kong Jing didn¡¯t have a good grasp of finances. She was not as rich as one would imagine since she rarely sold her crafts. Most of her mana was spent on improving her skills so charging mana ores with her mana wasn¡¯t an avenue of profit for her. Her winnings from betting on him in the past had long dried up with her high expenditure while his own, smaller stack barely diminished.
The quest didn¡¯t take more than an hour and they were on their way back to Arcta before they knew it. Kong Jing went on that quest herself.
He spent that time scrolling for bookstores to get Clovis souvenirs. Clatter Rattle was filled with all kinds of unique stuff. Including books. Ebony got a wide array of genres since Clovis hadn¡¯t decided on an area of focus.
Elva felt different. The mana densities were slightly off and there was a hint of iron in the air. Blood.
They didn¡¯t come across any big battles or large amounts of monster corpses so the hint of iron might be from somewhere further.
Looking towards the Tides, he was able to spot the ocean. The earthen battlefield was not present at Fifth or Fourth Tide. They were travelling too far from the ocean closer to Xienor and Tidal so he wasn¡¯t sure if the Trolls were still fighting at the other Tides.
¡®At least the corrosion cloud¡¯s gone. That spell is a little too dangerous.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t sure if he could survive being enveloped by the corrosion cloud for long. He¡¯d seen Korta¡¯s ice magic just dissipating up there. It did take longer to melt away than his spells but that said a lot about the corrosion cloud¡¯s potency.
The continent of Elva, or most of its wilderness did not appear that dangerous.
Only Hoarfrost Glades, Vermin Paradise and Fragadal¡¯s Sea seemed to take the most land area that had the biggest threat to civilisations. Smaller regions that were as dangerous if not more might be areas like the Garden of Deceased at Bubble Hills.
With the Empire¡¯s current strength and control, dungeons and dungeon breaks weren¡¯t the top priority in terms of danger anymore. The dungeons in the Glades and Fragadal¡¯s Sea rarely had monsters running out but the wild monsters in those regions were in more danger than people. It was hard to say, perhaps the dungeons were the ones in danger from the wild monsters there.
When they finally got to the Glades, Ebony was still unable to see the village. The illusion wasn¡¯t an invisibility spell, it didn¡¯t just deal with sight. Even the ice mana and ambient mana densities were normal. His senses told him he was looking at an empty plot of snow and earth.
Kong Jing didn¡¯t bring them in immediately. She landed and put them down. Then she waited.
Ebony¡¯s skin prickled and a chill crawled down his back.
They were waiting for permission to enter. That was what his Calculated Hunch told him.
It seemed like Kong Jing wasn¡¯t brash enough to ignore the threat. He wondered how she got permission previously. She wasn¡¯t as close to the Frost Elves as he was. No matter how well the village treated him, that never fully translated to how the combatant Frost Elves saw him.
Foreign, chilling mana washed over them before it eased up on them. Kong Jing saw that as acceptance and changed his scenery to a familiar village.
¡®That was just mana and it was colder than my conjured ice. Is it just Frost Elves¡¯ trait at King-ranked or compounded by Fortifications.¡¯ Ebony compared the essence with Ning Xin¡¯s and Kong Jing¡¯s.
It was difficult to put them in the same category. Both Xeng¡¯s were heavy on the Vitality while Vent, the previous village chief, was heavy on mana.
Mana pressured the mind and just for Ebony, the whole body. So he theorised that overflowing Wisdom worked on mana chassis to be specific. At the same time, he was far more resistant to mana than Vitality.
If they were to pressure him with their aura consistently, he had a feeling he would be more troubled by Ning Xin¡¯s overflowing effect instead. Luckily, she made use of Vitality for her strongest enhancement skill. The burning and blood-clogging effect would be gone when she withdrew her Vitality into her body.
Ebony wasn¡¯t sure how other Domain mages do it, but if they did the same thing as him and flooded an area with their mana then the overflowing essence effect should always be in effect. His mana capacity skill was subpar compared to his compression. Unless he diluted his mana, he wasn¡¯t able to extend a maximum power domain very far.
It was convenient that his mana at maximum compression was more viscous than honey. There was real, physical resistance when one moved inside his current domain spell. He could hinder Ning Xin¡¯s speed to a great degree.
He didn¡¯t care if it was considered a deformed domain. Ebony tackled that problem the same way he tackled most. Tossing more mana at the problem. With his method of pushing mana out from his body, even air is pushed out of his domain now.
Without the appropriate skills, he could just wait out any opponent that required oxygen or air in general. Sadly, most opponents that required him to use his domain were usually strong and had great lung capacity.
He took a final look at his status but decided not to linger on it. There were many changes compared to before his time with the Apex Apes but he browsed it enough times to know where he stood. There were more changes to come soon enough.
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The Frost Elven elders, the combatants, didn¡¯t appreciate the constant entry and exit. It challenged the purpose of closing the village off. However, they weren¡¯t that offended. Kong Jing was confident of hiding her tracks and the Frost Elves didn¡¯t think it affected them much. Five years of closure was extremely short to them and they had all the protection could ever need with Vent present.
Ebony was surprised to hear noises. The village was usually quiet. He took a moment to feel the vibrations to figure that not just the children but the village chief¡¯s party was getting real combat training. No longer shooting targets or just casual sparring amongst themselves.
¡®They brought creatures in? I have never seen that. Shape of a whale but smaller but fast and durable.¡¯ Buildings obstructed Ebony but he could sense the playground. The playground was segregated for teenagers and the village chief¡¯s party including Korben. Both were facing the same whale that could swim in snow and in the air but of different strengths.
There were about thirty ¡®children¡¯ and they appeared to be working on teamwork but they weren¡¯t doing so well. Orren¡¯s group were doing much better with Korben leading and giving well-timed orders.
Compared to the Frost Elves, Ebony was far more interested in the whale-shaped creature. They remained unharmed throughout the training and the adults weren¡¯t exactly holding back the strength of their spells.
¡°Feel free to join if you kids are free. It¡¯ll do them good to have different opponents. Especially training against fire magic. Ah, congratulations on reaching Grandmaster.¡± Christy floated over like a ghost and they exchanged greetings with tets.
The village chief¡¯s party already wasn¡¯t a match for Ning Xin before, they wouldn¡¯t stand a chance now so she would have to go easy on them. However, Korben joined the training. The village guardian wasn¡¯t as inexperienced as the rest of the party who were Masters.
With Christy around, they were confident that the village wouldn¡¯t melt or burn away. Hence, Ning Xin took the opportunity to move her body. No matter how much of a genius she was, she hadn¡¯t adapted to her new reach and range of motion.
For enhancement-heavy combatants like them, adjusting to greater speed or power wasn¡¯t a big issue in comparison to accuracy and precision.
He didn¡¯t know whether to be surprised or not that she lost. Mostly because of Korben. The village guardian wasn¡¯t a craftsman or even half a craftsman. A full-time combatant that moved over to take care of Arcta wasn¡¯t that easy to deal with just because of some heat or restriction to his ice magic.
Korben wasn¡¯t quite level 500 but none present trusted levels as a measure of power.
The duel had been dangerously balanced. Korben¡¯s spell and mana mastery was impeccable. He fought like how Ebony imagined a mage would fight. With just magic, he could keep Ning Xin at a distance and he could even see through her odd missteps. He made full use of her adjustments and landed a few potshots.
Orren and his party weren¡¯t just standing there either. They might not be able to catch up with her but they could lay traps and guide her in a certain position.
Not being proficient in body enhancement magic didn¡¯t hinder the Frost Elves'' strength. Their fighting style was different and not necessarily worse.
Ebony easily noted that Ning Xin¡¯s control with mana had improved but in a defensive direction. Maybe going weaponless for a few months forced her in that direction. She still couldn¡¯t multitask and cast while buffing herself with the same elements but her blood magic was quite¡intuitive.
She used her blood haloes as a container of energy. They could transform or rather, conjure fire, wind or lightning as required. Two of these rings would circle around her and act accordingly. They might be a defensive spell but they served as an allowance for her to get more aggressive in her charge.
To the Frost Elves and Ebony, these haloes were not very flexible. It was quite crude and easy to get around. Even if they could burn up, speed up or get zappy at a moment¡¯s notice. They couldn¡¯t swap between elements quickly and the blood haloes'' actual speed and strength were quite pathetic compared to their spells.
Willow, the baby bear was wrestling one of those whales as well. They were not the whales that he imagined. They were Orcas. Chilblain Orcas.
Frighteningly, King-ranked creatures. Not just baby bear-sized opponents, all three orcas present were Kings.
Ebony knew the species.
The Apex Apes, intruders of the Hoarfrost Glades that made it their home because they liked the cold and general environment were the strongest race of Grandmasters. Chilblain Orcas were to Hoarfrost Glades what Jetfins were to the sea.
According to Gen, they were the most ferocious and aggressive creatures in the Glades. Ebony couldn¡¯t see that. The Orca against Willow was just cuddling the baby bear. Letting the bear tackle its rounded beak without any aggression. It even sounded happy.
Ebony stayed to watch all three Orcas playing with the Frost Elves. From a baby bear to a large group of younglings to Korben, himself struggling. Ning Xin ran off to the Thoya¡¯s where Kong Jing had already headed for earlier.
He understood why the Orcas were not aggressive after some time. They were just fooling around. However, their control of strength was impressive for monsters.
¡°Those are Vent¡¯s hunting partners,¡± Christy informed him. She had been pressured earlier since Ning Xin threatened to melt the village during the spar.
The ghostly woman didn¡¯t expect the fresh Grandmaster to have metal melting temperatures just wafting off her body. It wasn¡¯t something she couldn¡¯t handle but she was caught off guard.
¡°I see, like a hunting wolf. So he tamed them?¡± He nodded.
¡°Like Arti, they just followed Vent.¡±
¡°Hmm. Interesting.¡± Ebony knew that Koawe¡¯s friendly bird Arti, followed him by its own accord. And these Orcas were similarly termed as monsters.
But they simply followed the Frost Elves by their own will. Did the Frost Elves have some kind of disposition that made monsters stunt their nature and follow them? Arti was intelligent and these Orcas were intelligent too.
What made them different from other monsters of the same race that simply follow their instincts to hunt and eat other creatures?
He didn¡¯t join in and left once their session ended. He didn¡¯t forget to bring candies for Kiva. The toddler would be jealous that her brother was the only one getting gifts.
When he arrived, he was once again greeted by a tiny toddler. Supposedly a few years old. She stood slightly taller than his knees now but still small and skinny. Clovis¡¯s physical growth was almost non-existent. He still had 7 to 8 decades before adulthood. Perhaps his growth spurt hasn¡¯t arrived.
The Thoya¡¯s weren¡¯t surprised to see them. Not after Kong Jing barged in once and received a call to fetch two.
¡°You humans. Always in such a rush.¡± Roya shook her head at him. She must have found out Ning Xin evolved when the swordswoman returned ahead of him.
¡°We¡¯re not rushing. We¡¯re just faster.¡± Said the swordswoman.
¡°And you¡¯re here for the same?¡±
¡°I¡¯m home, safe.¡±
Tets with the Thoya¡¯s had been high fives for some time. They don¡¯t just touch fingertips anymore. However, it seemed like hugs were part of the greetings now.
As for him and Ning Xin, they don¡¯t share greetings.
¡®Oh, she¡¯s level 300 now.¡¯ Ebony noticed Roya''s change. He only bothered to Appraise them because her aura felt different. After asking for permission of course. He learned manners.
¡°Tonight?¡±
¡°Tomorrow. I could use some sleep and just catch up with the village. You guys too. I can see how far Clovis has come along.¡±
¡°Hal and Clo are at our new farmland.¡±
¡°Ah, finally managed to expand your land?¡±
¡°The elders helped and Mrs. Calhy was very understanding. It just took time convincing her husband that Hal¡¯s plantings won¡¯t affect the soil for their plums.¡±
¡°I see, that¡¯s an important issue to account for. Can¡¯t let anything happen to the frost plum harvest.¡± Roya smiled. Ebony focused on her facial expression.
¡®Why does she appear resigned? Is that a good smile or a bad smile? I still have much to learn.¡¯
Roya and Kong Jing were busy with their exchange and she didn¡¯t deal with him any longer.
¡°It¡¯s just you and me Kiva.¡± He hoisted her up and brought her to her playroom.
¡°Snacks!¡± Kiva yanked on his collar and redirected him to the kitchen.
Somehow, he became the one chopping onions while the chef was guiding Kiva on how to handle a knife and the different ways of preparing broccoli.
Chapter 261: Bio Clock
¡°You¡¯re really fast¡We classed together but while you are evolving to Grandmaster, I¡¯m still a Journeyman who hasn¡¯t even picked up a Profession.¡± Clovis commented during dinner.
¡°Haha, don¡¯t worry about it young scholar. You didn¡¯t have anyone to follow but I''ve started towards the direction I had been brought up. Right, I have a ton of theories and hypotheses about evolution and natural potential. I¡¯ll tell you all about them later.¡± Scholars simply needed knowledge to level up during the Journeyman to Grandmaster stage, maybe even further.
Clovis already levelled faster than other crafters and combatants in the village. Neither of his parents went down that route and it was surprising that he did so. He was a rare case amongst the Frost Elves for not following in his parents'' footsteps. It made his progression harder as he had little to no guidance. Although it was true that Ebony had almost no guidance in terms of many of his magic spells it was hard to deny that he followed the path that his parents put him on.
No matter how much he denied using his bare fists and insisting on the sword. He was born an unpolished weapon and grew up being ground against the toughest rock around. His mother.
¡®Well¡I don¡¯t deny using my fists.¡¯
¡°Really!? You have to tell me everything!¡±
¡°Of course, I even wrote it down.¡± Ebony realised that Clovis¡¯s ignorance of the system of power wasn¡¯t because he wasn¡¯t taught such knowledge.
It was because neither of his parents knew about it either. Furthermore, the crafters might not even think it was any special knowledge. They crafted items, good ones that developed their core. They might not know that it was different from the Natural Potential gained from killing monsters. It might be the ¡®correct¡¯ way that one gained Potential.
Now it made sense to him. Why they could just take their time and why their ritual for Classing was so slack. It might be hard or even impossible for an Unclassed to ¡®develop their core¡¯ hence, there was no need for them to wait years on end after turning fifteen.
That changed once they were a Journeyman. As a crafting or support class-filled village, they only knew about their method of improving. The young ones who took on combat classes would all be guided by their parents and direct family members before one day moving on to their second village.
Even then, the villagers weren''t exactly as open as he imagined. They kept things to themselves. Especially skills and spells. Knowledge on how to get stronger or better at what they do must be information that they protect tightly.
Both Roya and Halvis lost their family before they turned into an adult. They partially lost their lineage.
¡®Doesn¡¯t that mean I¡¯ve been giving a very bad impression of myself by asking around?¡¯ Ebony started to feel embarrassed. They still treated him cordially, more than that, they welcomed him.
Ebony thought differently, he didn¡¯t stand to lose anything by sharing information. A different perspective might help him formulate more ideas. It wasn¡¯t like he figured anything groundbreaking either. As a meditator, he should¡¯ve stuck with it. Instead of going on to learn all sorts of battling, spells and interesting ideas that popped into his mind.
Ning Xin¡¯s body had to be remeasured with the ladies and baby while he spent the night talking with Clovis. Halvis hadn¡¯t even returned as he spent the night drinking with Mrs. Calhy¡¯s husband according to Clovis.
As far as he was concerned this was a rare occasion since the villagers rarely touched any alcohol. They treated it as poison other than certain herbal concoctions that contained alcohol.
Xin''s body temperature wasn¡¯t a problem for the baby. It was lower than his own by a great degree. If he had to guess, it should roughly be under ten degrees celsius. Her blood¡¯s capacity for energy must have increased.
¡®The specific heat capacity of her blood must have risen. I wonder if this world¡¯s science and engineering know about specific heat capacity. Maybe in a different technical term, they know quite a lot about energy.¡¯ Ebony thought about how convenient and perfectly suited that Fortification would be for her.
All she had to do was eat, digest and her stamina expenditure was no longer as dire of an issue. Her second Core Skill also made it possible for her to convert mana into stamina. It had been a long time since she depended on his blood for energy as well. She had gotten over her phase of addiction to his blood.
He needed to spar with her seriously to know if her second Core Skill changed. They might have fought each other after their training in the Glades but it had mostly been to gauge each other''s improvements.
Maybe she was like him during his evolution from Journeyman to Master and got her third Core Skill immediately instead of spending over a year before deciding on her second.
Sharing knowledge or helping someone else train to get stronger felt pretty nice. Maybe he liked to teach more than he assumed.
¡®We¡¯ll be going to Tidal sooner or later. I want to check out the academies. I can fill up on common sense.¡¯
Clovis fell asleep deep into the night and he had to get the baby out of the ladies'' hair as well.
He cracked open one of his jars of plum wine on the porch and poured himself a glass. Taking in its scent before raising it to his lips. Long fingers descended right in front of his face and snatched his glass.
¡°I got a dwarven book on fermenting alcohol, let¡¯s make some tomorrow.¡± She sat down on air but he conjured a seat for her.
She definitely expected him to do that. The icy cold seat didn¡¯t bother her. She wore the loungewear he made. They were made larger for comfort so she could still fit in them. The sleeves couldn¡¯t reach her wrist and her ankles weren¡¯t covered but she was properly covered this time.
¡°We can let plums soak in sugar while I evolve. Since when did you get a book?¡± He found himself disappointed that he saw no eyes through the mask.
¡°Back at clatter rattle. Don¡¯t you remember?¡± She waited for him to pour another glass and their cups tapped.
Ebony remembered that she placed a stack of thin books on the counter when they scrolled through bookshops but he only saw the title of one. ¡®Tidal¡¯s Top 1000 Restaurants and Taverns¡¯ was written by a food reviewer of sorts. It was even the fourth edition of the book. Updated every century and the current edition was published just five years ago. He didn¡¯t exactly look through everything she bought.
¡°I thought dwarven brewing techniques are all kept secret?¡± He was a little worried she got cheated. It may just be a book and he didn¡¯t care about the price but it would not be good if she was too naive.
¡°Cooking secrets are never kept long. As long as others eat or drink what they make. And this doesn¡¯t include any ingredients or recipes. Only basics dos and don¡¯ts. The writer had enough of drinking terrible ale and saw it as his duty to raise the standards of alcohol in the Empire. The rant on the first page says so.¡±
The plum wine they made was normal alcohol. No matter how concentrated, it wouldn¡¯t affect her body. Her poison resistance was relatively strong. Neither of them took poison resistance training very seriously. Not by choice, there were not many natural poisons strong enough to harm them.
It was hard for them to raise poison resistance. He believed if poison resistance was some kind of hidden stat, then both of their base resistance was just extremely high to begin with. Another perk of genetics and non-pickiness with food.
They would have to find a specialist poison maker or alchemist if they wanted to train their poison resistance. Unless they were lucky enough to find a wild ingredient that was potent enough.
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She brought out the book to read together. The chairs joined into a hard sofa to facilitate reading. The basic alcohol brewing techniques weren''t new to either of them but the method to increase alcoholic content was new.
They had to grow yeast in a specific mana-rich environment. Just because the yeast was surrounded by mana doesn¡¯t mean they¡¯ll take up its properties either. It wasn¡¯t as if yeast absorbed ambient essence to become monsters after all. It was not as simple as it sounded and the book didn¡¯t go into detail.
He expected Ning Xin to tear or burn the book on the spot. The information within was almost completely useless.
Instead, she fell asleep against his shoulders.
¡°Really, it''s not much stronger than the cooking alcohol you use.¡± Ebony stayed there and continued appreciating the plum wine.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic skill Lunar Bio Clock learnt¡¯
¡®Lunar Bio Clock - You have grasped the lunar cycle and celestial bodies'' movements to an extent. If a moon or celestial body of sufficient size is within sight, you are able to estimate the time relative to you by 200% + 2.5% more accurately.¡¯
¡°How unusual. No matter. Remember, since you can now perceive us, so can we.¡± A myriad of voices surrounded him and flooded his mind. There was a cacophony of¡noise but he was able to make out a sentence. It felt like when he first talked to Gen, they weren¡¯t speaking a language but he could understand them.
Ebony remained seated so as not to disrupt Ning Xin but his mana was already sent throughout his range to find where the voice came from. It was pointless as he expected. There was no chance an uncountable number of people were just standing around them.
¡°You haven¡¯t gone insane? Now this will be fun.¡± The myriad of voices continued its attempts to fill his head.
Ebony sipped his plum wine and let a chilly breath escape. He didn¡¯t bother addressing the numerous voices because he felt the weight on his mind disappear.
¡®That was noisy, like a crowded rock concert with amplifiers. Lots of shouting and whispering all at the same time. Perceive them, the moon? Celestial bodies? Or spirits? Great¡more beings just watching me and I can¡¯t even pinpoint them. They noticed the moment I got the skill. Am I able to sense something new? A type of energy or mana maybe¡nope, nothing feels new. Hmm, knowing the current time more accurately? This is a little silly when I already know the time. It¡¯s now the twenty-third hour, seventh minute and twelfth second and counting. Ooo, I know the time down to the millisecond. With some deviation but that¡¯s pretty nifty.¡¯
The sun rose before he knew it and he put an end to his drinking session.
He folded the blanket that a groggy chef kicked aside and went to stretch. Helping Clovis while he was at it. Kiva woke up early and joined in on the stretching exercise. He was extra careful with her, it would be detrimental to injure or overexert young muscles.
Going about the day in the village like usual, he observed that no one noticed anything about the myriad of voices or acts spooked.
The playground was filled in the morning, causing the small exchange market to be quiet. Ebony didn¡¯t join in, he strolled the market and listened to the Frost Elves conversing. Sending a nod and greetings when he walked passed the stall owners. They were all just relaxing and chatting with each other.
He gifted everyone one of them a large crate of mammoth meat. They had so much that they had to leave the majority with Gen. Now, it was just taking up bag space. Since their larger bags didn¡¯t increase in weight reduction capability, Ning Xin had difficulty carrying so much. He carried the heavier bones but there were easily hundreds of thousands of tons of meat. They wouldn¡¯t be able to carry it if it wasn¡¯t for the weight reduction that was still in place.
By noon, he was back home and helping to prepare his feast tonight. Roya was helping too, a lot of prep work had to be done when cooking not just huge volumes but a variety of dishes.
¡°No pan-fried dumplings?¡± He scanned through the ingredients.
¡°Your favourite food is for the feast after you evolve.¡±
¡°Oh, you¡¯re right. Turkey and ducks are your favourites. So the before meals are our second favourites.¡±
¡°Not only second, I make sure to include your top fifteen favourites based on what I¡¯ve made for you so far.¡±
¡°And the rest are what you like.¡±
¡°You like them too.¡±
¡°I feel like I¡¯m intruding.¡± Roya giggled.
The situation evolved into a cooking competition between two chefs with new recipes to show off. He was kicked out so that he didn¡¯t know who cooked what but it was obvious to him. Ning Xin picked the Imperial Army¡¯s mutton and peas with her take on it. Roya used seal meat, from the looks of it she was going to grill the meat.
The Frost Elves had a lot of recipes that didn''t fully cook meat. They ate frozen raw fish slices and a lot of times, sashimi-style fish after thawing them. He expected the meat to be rare or medium rare but he was wrong. Maybe she learnt new cooking techniques that were better suited for the human stomach and tongue.
Ning Xin substituted some ingredients with herbs and wild vegetables that could be found in the glades while Roya used Ning Xin¡¯s cooking techniques. They had been learning from each other.
The seal steak had melted and salted cheese on it which bode surprisingly well together but the mutton and peas were deeply flavourful and tender. The cheese cooled down fast and the vegetables from the glades were added into the pot too early. He didn¡¯t know which he liked more.
Kong Jing gave Roya the point. Clovis and Kiva liked the peas specifically. Halvis also picked the mutton dish. They ate and judged without knowing which chef cooked which. In a surprising twist, he also picked the seal steak.
It was probably because he felt that the mutton and peas tasted quite different from the original recipe. She didn¡¯t understand the glade¡¯s vegetables well enough. Or she miscalculated the time it took to make mutton as tender as it got. The recipe wasn¡¯t perfected yet.
The Frost Elves didn¡¯t eat much so they were always shocked at the volumes of food that both combatants were consuming.
Kong Jing checked the integrity of the house with the wood mage that checked Icicle out in the past earlier in the day. There was no problem, he shouldn¡¯t be waking up with a broken floor or a higher ceiling. The Xeng craftswoman got the chance to see high-quality ice elemental materials and mana ores.
Ice elemental materials and ingredients were pretty rare anywhere else in Elva.
Ebony asked for Ning Xin¡¯s calming pearl. Now that he was reminded that ice magic wasn¡¯t his core strength, he couldn¡¯t help but recall the convenient pearl.
Kong Jing saw her old work and quickly took it away to reforge. It didn¡¯t even take ten minutes since she just wanted to remould the runes within it.
The Frost Elves saw that and before night fell completely, representatives from different families came over to loan something similar.
The one that could not be named cast a mental calming spell said to increase mana regeneration around the house. Christy lent him her staff that had a Glacial Core of some monster embedded. Vent¡¯s presence drew enough ice mana around the village. The Lasil¡¯s placed pots of herbs that treated mental injuries.
The other villagers gave speciality snacks, fruits, fish and vegetables that they grew or caught.
The kids, those around his age or a few decades older were a little envious. Some were peeved that he was better at ice manipulation but they all admired his skill. It pushed those combat class holders to work even harder which he didn¡¯t see anything wrong with. Even those who specifically ignored him whenever he went to the playground came and gave him a word of well wishes.
The village was pretty close-knit. Completely opposite Xienor.
¡°Don¡¯t bully them while I¡¯m evolving,¡± Ebony warned the fire swordswoman.
She might have lost to Korben once but she was still in the midst of getting used to her body. There were still Christy, Korta, the one that shall not be named, Vent and even Koawe who was still bedridden and was probably capable of being her sparring partner.
He was just worried her fire magic causing destruction in the situation where she got too heated up in a duel and lost the ability to hold back the heat she produced.
Then again, if Korben could do so well against her he didn¡¯t worry for the purely combatant Frost Elves. The village guardian wasn¡¯t young but all his seniors were present. Ebony wondered if Arcta was comparable to Xienor in combat capabilities at the moment. He shook his head at the unfair comparison.
¡°Hmph. Why aren¡¯t you asking them not to bully me instead?¡± She crossed her arms at his biased comment. Her sparring partners for the next month or so were mostly Kings. She wasn¡¯t wrong to feel aggrieved at his comment.
¡°I did when I went around the village in the morning. Be good, I¡¯ll leave me to you.¡± He raised both his hands and slid his fingers between hers before pulling her forward. Giving her mask a peck, he turned and shut the door on her.
¡®That was payback. An eye for an eye.¡¯ Ebony recalled the peck he was given in the underground tomb city. They never spoke about it but he never forgot about it.
¡°Time for hibernation.¡± He lay comfortably on the bed in a pair of shorts and shirt he didn¡¯t mind losing.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have achieved the requirements to evolve. Evolve Class, Sub-Class, Profession, Partial or Complete?¡¯
¡®Don¡¯t you think you should include some kind of sleep warning¡Complete.¡¯
Chapter 262: Monoliths
¡®I¡¯m conscious. Great, let¡¯s see. No sea of blood or floating wine glass, grails or chalices for me. Wait, it''s blank white here.¡¯ Ebony looked around but it was just pure white.
He looked down at himself to find his naked self standing. He could feel the ground or at least the sensation of standing and could move his body normally.
Not even a moment later, other colours started to materialise in front of him.
¡°Was I on the loading page or something?¡± Ebony recalled Ning Xin directly waking up in a bloody sea.
He was watching a stone floor building up. Then wooden desks started to appear. Behind them were bookshelves that started forming.
Ebony wasn¡¯t sure if he had a lapse of attention or he blinked but his entire sight changed as he could see an endless line of desks all with a bookshelf placed right behind and against the desk. In his hands was a pitcher of transparent fluid. It looked no different from regular old water.
¡®My sight can¡¯t go far¡it¡¯s like I returned to having a normal human¡¯s eyesight. I have to hurry before I begin to disappear. This pitcher of water, are these my so-called points?¡¯
In the next second, he instinctively understood a little about this place.
There was a crystal monolith right beside where he stood. It represented his physique and for some reason, it looked battered and old. Actually, it felt like he was standing on part of the monolith. On the monoliths were protrusions that held vessels of different shapes and sizes.
Surrounding the crystal monolith were three other white monoliths. Similarly with protrusions that held cups. These all held cups instead of having weirdly shaped vessels. The monoliths represented his Fortifications and all three of them were different in size.
Within sight were the endless shelves and desks that spawned.
The three bookshelves closest to him were related to his Core Skills. On two of the desks in front of these shelves were white slates. The last one on his right had a bookshelf but the desk didn¡¯t have a slate of unknown material on it.
The weirdest point of the endless line of bookshelves that contained slates instead of books and desks was the cup of water or empty cups right in front of the books.
¡®Cups and fluids to pour. Does this symbolise anything? Don¡¯t get distracted, me. Okay¡all the cups are different in size and the fluid inside is not all transparent.¡¯
Ebony walked towards the left desk and found the slate on the desk having the words ¡®Perpetual Tranquillity Spring¡¯ on it. Despite not having any more words, looking at them refreshed all his thoughts on the skill. The other slates on the desk were his previous lower-tier versions. He quickly looked up at the shelf with slates on them.
There were many different titles but it was filled with meditation-type skills. Some slates were black instead of white and the cups were much bigger and empty.
¡®So the empty cups refer to skills that I¡¯m less compatible with or have spent very little practice in that direction. The cups with fluid in them mean I can get that skill or add that mutation to my current version. But most of my core skills¡¯ slates are black.¡¯
Ebony looked over to the shelves to his right. The one in front of him had the most black slates.
He ran over to the shelves behind the three he was closest to.
He found fifteen desks and shelves all side by side. His Class skills were placed out here.
The ¡®shelves¡¯ were a mystery. When he tried to pick a slate up, he found it connected to the shelf by a sticky white thread. He would get dizzy and see the thread connecting to dozens if not hundreds of other slates in his mind. These threads continue to link up to other slates that are further connected to even more slates.
¡®They are connected to skills of the same type but higher tiers or mutated versions. If I pour some fluid into the respective cups, I can connect to these higher-tier skills. Some threads are grey, some black. I¡¯ll assume that means the direction of my training is very different or these skills are just extremely different versions of my current skill that requires far more of my¡points to obtain. Okay, I got it. It¡¯s odd how I¡¯m understanding this place instinctually but now¡¯s not the time to be fascinated.¡¯
Ebony ran back to the monoliths.
The crystal monolith was huge, it was no different from a tower.
¡®All the vessels are huge. All the fluid in my pitcher wouldn¡¯t even be able to fill up a single one of them. But almost every vessel here has some fluid already in them.¡¯
The more he looked around and understood the monolith the more fascinated he got.
These were his base values of his entire being.
Be it base health or mana regeneration. Elemental resistance. Resource pool size. Mass. Bone structure. Muscle density. Skin thickness.
He could even give himself scales or exoskeleton in technicality but he wouldn¡¯t be able to. Not even if he poured all the fluid from elsewhere into the weirdly shaped vessels. This monolith basically represented his race and personal body, mind and soul.
He could straight up increase his Strength by 10% without increasing his Strength stat. It would make all future investments in the strength stat more worthwhile. This monolith was the entire reason why different races had unique strengths and weaknesses.
By making this change, he would likely receive some notification about his Physique refining in some form.
He could further increase his natural resistance to cold. He could remove his decreased heat resistance.
He could heighten his perception of danger.
He could increase his reaction speed.
The possibilities were endless.
Until he looked at his small pitcher.
¡®Before that, let¡¯s quantify what I have. I¡¯ll just call this liquid potential. This is all I managed to gain or achieve during my time as a Master. Let¡¯s just say I have 1000 ml and give the vessels and cups an arbitrary but comparative volume to gauge the amount I need. My mana sense is numbed and weakened but I can still estimate volume with Calculated Hunch.¡¯
¡°Wow. That¡¯s expensive. Removing the decrease in natural resistance to heat by 15% costs 450 ml? I haven¡¯t even checked everything else out and I don¡¯t think it¡¯s worth it.¡± He spoke to himself.
After a few seconds, he already found out how expensive it was to change anything on the monolith. 450ml was about one of the cheapest prices he could pay. The other was increasing something he couldn¡¯t put into words.
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The monolith didn¡¯t have words written. He just knew what the vessels represented once he looked at them and had it in mind. If he had to guess, it was elemental affinity but at the same time, the word affinity felt wrong. Of course, he didn¡¯t have to fill up the vessels. He could probably pour 10ml and get a proportional increment.
He was guessing the monolith looked battered because he forcefully changed his own body¡¯s make-up. It felt like he succeeded without many drawbacks but he might face some future problems. He hoped not but he would feel better if the crystal monolith was looking pristine like the other three.
He walked away from the crystal monolith without using any of his liquid potential. It felt like the section where he should spend the remaining pennies he had after making his main purchase.
The largest white monolith was his Class Fortifications. It had exceedingly little information in comparison to the crystal monolith.
Base Mana and Stamina regeneration increased by 500%
Mana efficiency with Ice Magic increased by 200%
Mana efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic increased by 200%
Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword with one hand increase by 200%
Movement speed increased by 200%
Ice Magic is 250% more resistant to heat
Flames of frost are 250% more fluent in seeping.
Ice Magic is 100% colder
These were the ones that he already had. Just by looking at it, the pitcher he held was moving towards the cups that held liquid. Some were blue, others transparent.
¡°Oh? Nice. It only takes 15ml to increase ice magic resistance to heat from 250% to 500% and 5ml to increase freezing flames¡¯ seeping fluency from 250% to 500%. So cheap. At least I can finally take back my loss from missing out during my Classing.¡± It was probably cheap because he already achieved what was needed to get those.
Increasing base mana and stamina regeneration from 500% to 750% would take about 60ml.
Ebony didn¡¯t care about how he could instinctively gauge the possibilities without pouring the fluid in. He just knew the moment he thought about it.
If he were to increase ice magic resistance to heat and flames of frost¡¯s fluency in seeping from 500% to 750% it would only take 30ml each.
It appeared cheap compared to what he could gain from it but he wasn¡¯t complaining. It wasn¡¯t as if he was holding 1000ml of liquid potential. He just gave it a value to make it easier.
The rest of the upgrade by 100% was also very cheap. The cups were almost full to begin with. He could even change some of them slightly for almost no cost.
However, when he thought about having a fourth Fortification that gave him 250% instead of 100% the cost rose to over a thousand. He didn¡¯t have that. It appeared that a person at a certain stage of evolution could only wield so much power and breaking that balance wasn¡¯t easy.
Dozens of Fortifications were completely new that he could pick. Three of them had half filled to three quarter filled cups, the rest were less than a quarter full and some barely had any liquid potential within. Since the cups were of different sizes, the volumes didn¡¯t match proportionally to their fill percentage.
The three that cost the least to get were ¡®Ice magic is 100% more resilient against kinetic impact¡¯ ¡®Ice magic is 100% more resilient to mana¡¯ and ¡®Mana efficiency with lightning magic increased by 100%¡¯
At this point, he knew that picking lightning magic would also change his class to one that included lightning magic. At the same time, he could ignore it. When he walked over to his sub-class, a similar option appeared but with a different price tag.
The next most filled cup was an increase in sealing magic¡¯s efficacy in stopping all mana from escaping by 100%. When he focused on it, it was possible to change the effect to stopping Vitality. He could even merge and do both for a higher price.
He could also increase his mana¡¯s indistinctiveness by 100% but for a price of 200 ml. When he checked the smallest monolith for the same Fortification, it was there for a price of 50ml instead. Ebony was a little befuddled. Regardless of which monolith, these all represented what he achieved and could achieve. Why were the prices so different?
Just pure compatibility issues?
He quickly summarised what he could get on this monolith in order of price instead of vessel fill level so that he could move on. He filtered out those he didn''t even have a sliver of interest in.
- Ice magic is 100% more resilient against kinetic impact - 5ml
- Ice magic is 100% more resilient to mana - 5ml
- Casting speed with Ice Magic increased by 100% - 5ml
- Casting speed with Body Enhancement Magic increased by 100% - 8ml
- Mana efficiency with lightning magic increased by 100% - 20ml
- Casting speed with Lightning Magic increased by 100% - 25ml
- Ice magic is 100% more flexible and malleable - 30ml
- Stamina efficiency with movements increased by 100% - 35ml
- Sealing magic is 100% more efficacious at sealing mana - 35ml
- Sealing magic is 100% more efficacious at sealing vitality - 45ml
- Flames of frost¡¯s adhesivity increased by 100% - 50ml
- Ice Magic has an increased effect of 100% Intelligence - 50ml
- Increased attunement with Body Enhancement Magic by 100% - 70ml
- Body can delay momentum loss by 100% longer -120ml
- Will¡¯s effective range is amplified by 100%
- Will gathers 100% faster - 120ml
- Will¡¯s capacity is 100% greater - 200ml
- Sealing magic is 100% more efficacious at sealing essence - 200ml
- Flames of frost reaction with heat is 100% more congruous and tranquil - 200ml
- Flames of frost reaction with heat is 100% more violent and combustible - 200ml
- Will is 100% more compelling - 210ml
- Lightning Magic is 100% more numbing - 220ml
- Base mana capacity increased by 100% - 350ml
- Flames of frost¡¯s reaction with heat is adaptable, 100% more tranquil or violent as per your Will - 450ml
There were more but they were just too expensive to even consider when he had so much more to spend on. For example, ¡®Sealing magic is 100% more efficacious at sealing all energy¡¯ costs 12800ml. He wasn¡¯t phased by the extra zero.
There were some illusionary cups present but he assumed he just hadn¡¯t done anything concrete enough to make it possible to gain them.
The monoliths were linked to their respective shelves as well. It was clear that all ice magic would mean that his Class monolith was connected to all related ice magic. And movement speed connected to the crystal monolith together with generic running skill and class Phantom¡¯s Flicker.
¡®If I pick up a new skill, will another Fortification open up? It¡¯ll probably be costly even if that¡¯s the case. Hmm, how long did Ning Xin say she perceived here again? I don¡¯t feel myself disappearing or fading away. Wait, I¡¯m already forgetting what she told me about her evolutionary experience.¡¯
The price would stay the same if he picked three but they would rise vastly if he wanted to pick a fourth. It informed him that the known limit wasn¡¯t there for show. Ebony made it a point to remember the information he was gaining and write it down before he forgot.
Without a doubt, his minimum expenditure on his class was upgrading all the fortifications he already had. He instinctually knew he could swap the 250% of ice magic¡¯s resistance to heat to another Fortification but he didn¡¯t see the need to at the moment. Perhaps in the future when there was a unique or powerful Fortification he liked.
- Base Mana and Stamina regeneration increased by 500% ? 750% - 60ml
- Mana efficiency with Ice Magic increased by 200% ? 300% - 5ml
- Mana efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic increased by 200% ? 300% - 3ml
- Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword with one hand increase by 200% ? 300% - 7ml
- ? Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword increase by 300% - 2ml
- Movement speed increased by 200% ? 300% - 10ml
- Ice Magic is 250% more resistant to heat ? 500% (15ml) ? 750% (30ml)
- Flames of frost are 250% more fluent in seeping. ? 500% (5ml) ? 750% (30%)
- Ice Magic is 100% colder ? 200% - 8ml
For a cheap price of 2ml, he could remove the restriction of one-handed wielding. He had long ironed out his style and wielded Icicle single-handedly from time to time but it would be much better if there were no restrictions at all times.
For a total of 175ml. He deducted that value from 1000 and went to his Sub-Class. Deciding on three new Fortifications for his Class could wait till he knew how much spending money he had to spare.
Chapter 263: Spending
The monolith for his Sub-Class was not much taller than him. It was thinner than the Class monolith by half. He tallied the upgrades for his current Fortifications to 100ml. There was a pattern that a direct increase in strength or power had higher costs.
His training¡¯s focus has always been more towards fixing his weaknesses rather than building on his strengths. The complete opposite of Ning Xin. They complemented each other and made sparring with each other productive.
- Mana efficiency with Sound Magic increased by 200% ? 300% - 5ml
- Mana efficiency with Gravity Magic increased by 200% ? 300% -5ml
- Body¡¯s natural gravitational flow reversed and increased by 200% ? 300% - 15ml
- Body naturally reflects physical vibrations with mana vibrations at 100% frequency. ? 200% - 25ml
- Gravity Magic has an increased effect of 100% Intelligence. ? 200% - 50ml
Instead of blue fluid, the cups here were either clear, intense dark purple or some yellow.
¡°I can include lightning magic in my Sub-Class¡I would prefer that so my Class can include sealing magic that feels like it''ll match better with my current skills. Should I even add any more types of magic? My skill slots are running out. Oh, some skills can probably be merged with practice or I can pay my way through the easy way. That would be a terrible waste of what little liquid potential I have.
Sealing magic is a must. It fits ice magic and I believe I¡¯m pretty good at it but do I need lightning at this point?
- Mana efficiency with lightning magic increased by 100% - 35ml
- Casting speed with Lightning Magic increased by 100% - 50ml
- Lightning Magic is 100% more numbing - 120ml
There were only three choices that didn¡¯t cost thousands and they were all present in his Class¡¯s monolith. Mana efficiency and casting speed were both more expensive than if he were to incorporate it into his Class. However, the numbing one was practically half-priced.
This made him more sure that compatibility or something similar was taken into account. Because he used a numbing effect with sound magic or vibrations to be specific. As proof, there was a similar Fortification for sound magic.
Ebony had two lightning magic spells that were currently generic skills. Besides lightning mana manipulation or resistance. If he was being honest, he was fine with them staying as generic skills. Especially seeing how expensive and counterproductive it would be at the moment. They were good support skills but he had his hands full.
However, he wasn¡¯t sure if that would be the case once he evolved into a full-fledged Grandmaster. He would likely be able to handle more and incorporate lightning into his fighting style better. He never shunned a wider variety of skills to handle different situations.
Instinctually, he knew he could assimilate lightning magic into his Sub-Class. Logically, he didn¡¯t know how that would work. He only had 1 empty Sub-Class skills slot. That would only fit lightning mana manipulation but not his spells.
Just when he asked that question to himself, a few vessels phased out of the monolith.
¡°I see¡I can spend vastly to get another skill slot. well¡I can¡¯t afford that. Or I can spend an average amount to merge some compatible skills or just delete a skill and use that liquid potential to pour elsewhere. Sister Jing was right, I can just take skills or parts I don¡¯t like and redistribute them. Battle Song and Sonic Intrusion are the most compatible but merging them still takes 550ml because I always used one as a support and the other as an attack magic without any practice in merging them as one skill. Lightning magic¡¯s out of the picture.¡± Ebony ignored that Battle Song was the skill that had the least improvements among all his skills. At least the measly tier 1 skill was currently highly refined.
- Body natural ability to absorb and pad out vibration increased by 100% - 10ml
- Sensitivity to gravity mana increased by 100% - 15ml
- Precision of vibrational sense increased by 100% - 15ml
- Gravity Magic is 100% more stagnant and stable - 30 ml
- Sound Magic has an increased effect of 100% Intelligence - 60ml
- Sound Magic¡¯s mental impact increased by 100% - 120ml
There weren¡¯t any more that he could reasonably afford. Even so, these were options that he had been working towards. Although the description was slightly off, it might be better than what he had hoped for. Especially the first, it basically increased his toughness against all physical impact. Cutting most if not all physical impact and damage by half was impressive.
If there was something he knew about Fortifications it was that they all had some kind of limit or threshold. If he was hit hard enough, his body probably wouldn¡¯t be able to pad force or vibrations out.
He spent another second to focus and check what other future possibilities were open to him. There was one interesting one that made his body repel anything with a mass twice as well but it cost 700ml.
Even if some fortifications could be deactivated or worked around with manipulation, it felt like a pain if his body just repelled every physical object around him so he wouldn¡¯t pick that even if it was free.
The further or perhaps deeper he tried to glance, the stronger the mental feedback. He was getting dizzy when he had to blink twice at the information he got.
¡°Luck? I can make gravity magic gravitate luck towards me twice as well. Luck is a real phenomenon?¡± Ebony pulled his mind back from the monolith. Putting aside the nonsensical 5-digit price tag, he was truly surprised luck was a thing that he could affect.
He had no way of knowing what that Fortification would do. Would it give him bad, good or just strong luck?
Ebony already decided what new Fortifications he was going to pick for his Sub-Classes. It might have helped that his choices were limited here.
He jogged towards the smallest monolith. His Profession¡¯s monolith was only a metre tall but it was just as thick as his Sub-Class¡¯s. He squatted down and placed his palms on the surface.
- Mana Compressibility increased by 200% ? 300% - 2ml
- Mana Resilience increased by 200% ? 300% - 40ml
- Mana Density increased by 100% ? 200% - 100ml
¡°One of them is practically free and density is overpriced in comparison. Its connection with the crystal monolith is thick. Hmm, the entire monolith¡¯s connection with the crystal monolith is thick. I guess my mana is a bigger part of me than my sub-class. Let¡¯s see my options¡wow, I have more options than my sub-class.¡± Ebony could reason that compressibility was something he was the best at, he also practised it the most.
As for making his mana more resilient, it was hard to say if his usage of mana was aimed towards that. As for increasing density, it was no different from compressibility. It simply touched upon his base stats and had a strong link with his physique or whatever the crystal monolith represented.
- Mana Tensile strength increased by 100% - 20ml
- Mana Viscosity increased by 100% - 25ml
- Moulded mana pathways stores 100% more energy - 30ml
- Moulded mana pathways durability increased by 100% - 30ml
- Mana is 100% soother - 40ml
- Mana Chassis is 100% more malleable - 100ml
- Mana is 100% more magnetic - 100ml
- Base mana capacity increased by 100% - 200ml
- Mana Chassis¡¯s resilience increased by 100% - 250ml
- Mana Chassis¡¯s recovery speed increased by 100% - 400ml
- Mana is 100% more explosive - 400ml
- Mana is 100% more resistant to foreign intervention - 500ml
For all his choices so far, he could easily reduce the fortification value from 100% increments to 50% or even 25%. The price dropped so much that 25% was mostly free for all the 2-digit expenses for a 100% increment. He just had no reason to do that.
Unless he wanted one of the expensive Fortifications. Like sealing magic¡¯s ability to seal all energy. If he lowered it to 25% he could afford it. Just 980ml.
The option was juicy but not juicy enough for him to desire a measly 25% Fortification by sacrificing everything else. He¡¯ll just work on that during his time as a Grandmaster and it would be far cheaper in future. If he ever decided that he wanted to focus on sealing magic the ability to seal ¡®all¡¯ energy was pretty amazing.
Ebony was spoiled for choice. Be it his Class or his Profession. He could think of a specific Fortification using his imagination and the monolith will give him a vague price for it. If it was even possible. He was a little too imaginative at times and nothing he came up with was feasible.
Quite a few options were questionable. The expensive options were either vague or really specific. What even constitutes ¡®foreign intervention¡¯? Does it make his mana less likely to be controlled or influenced by other mages and natural ambient conditions? That was pretty likely.
¡®Getting another 250% is not possible unless I sacrifice something else but getting two 100% fortifications for profession only doubles to triples the price. Getting a third 100% sub-class fortification multiplies the cost by 5 to 6 times and getting a fourth class fortification roughly costs 10 times more than the original price. I¡¯ll stick with the limit of 3 for my class and 2 for sub-class but my profession¡¯s options are great. Damn, the more expensive one would count instead of the cheaper option¡¡¯
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Ebony didn¡¯t move away from the monoliths to check out the shelves and desks that held his Core, Class, Sub-Class and Profession skills. No matter how great the options he would be presented with, he saw skills as something he could learn or get with effort and time.
Fortifications on the other hand were something he couldn¡¯t do anything about once he left this space. Yes, he could work towards them and that¡¯s how some of these options appear. The more he acted in a certain matter, the cheaper the options were. The prices weren¡¯t directly correlated to how strong, weak or unique the Fortifications were. It was simply what suited him best and what his actions brought about.
But these were stagnant from evolution to evolution, unlike skills. Although it was true that he was already facing trouble with improving his skills any further he felt that at least he would have goals to chase after. It was also true that certain skills were just impressive and didn''t seem likely to train towards.
So, Ebony didn¡¯t plan to use much of his liquid potential elsewhere. He can consider skills after whatever leftover potential remains.
¡°I¡¯ll simply upgrade all my current fortifications, 175ml for class, 100ml for sub-class and 142ml for profession for a total of 417ml. Leaving me with 583ml. I¡¯m poor. The cheapest options aren¡¯t terrible though.¡±
- Ice magic is 100% more resilient against kinetic impact - 5ml
- Ice magic is 100% more resilient to mana - 5ml
- Casting speed with Ice Magic increased by 100% - 5ml
- Casting speed with Body Enhancement Magic increased by 100% - 8ml
Resilience to kinetic impact strengthened his ice magic against physical attacks or defences. As for mana, it probably toughened all his conjured ice against any type of spell made of mana. He wasn¡¯t surprised he got either of these to such a low price as that was essentially what he had been doing.
In a sense, this was probably a very common Fortification. Just increased mana efficiency and casting speed. He believed this was one reason why some Frost Elves¡¯ spells were so tough despite the thinner mana used.
Casting speed was nice to have but Ebony didn¡¯t think he would get it. Although body enhancement magic was cast ¡®almost instantaneously¡¯ speed was always relative.
He had noticed that he was beginning to lag in this regard. Those Apex Apes could catch him off guard and he couldn¡¯t react in time to Ning Xin¡¯s burst from time to time. At their current stage, every fraction of a second mattered. However, Ebony¡¯s Will and mind could react and his domain and entire skill set was based on slowing his opponent down.
His mental reach, or the maximum distance he could control his mana had increased day by day. But it also meant exerting influence on something further away took more time. Even so, he didn¡¯t want to spend a precious slot on casting speed.
Ebony sieved out all lightning magic fortifications. He ignored stamina efficiency. Yet he was still left with plenty of choices. Caring not about expenditure, he continued to sieve out what he cared little for that he could do well enough.
The flexibility of ice magic, attunement with body enhancement magic, delaying of momentum loss, the effective range of Will and even capacity of Will were not considered. As for increasing his base mana capacity, he could easily deal with that with a skill.
- Flames of frost¡¯s adhesivity increased by 100% - 50ml
- Ice Magic has an increased effect of 100% Intelligence - 50ml
- Will gather 100% faster - 120ml
- Sealing magic is 100% more efficacious at sealing essence - 200ml
- Flames of frost reaction with heat is 100% more congruous and tranquil - 200ml
- Flames of frost reaction with heat is 100% more violent and combustible - 200ml
- Will is 100% more compelling - 210ml
- Flames of frost¡¯s reaction with heat is adaptable, 100% more tranquil or violent as per your Will - 450ml
He was still left with many choices.
¡°Merging ice magic¡¯s resilience to kinetic impact and mana would cost 25ml instead of 5 plus 5 but it¡¯s a decent overall buff. Adhesivity of my flames is kinda useful but my flames are already good at seeping into my targets. I want sealing magic for sure. Will is going to be important, I¡¯m using it more. It can cover up for my casting speed of any type of magic so gathering it faster would be great.
Adaptable reaction with heat is great for combining spells with Ning Xin but essentially useless for myself. Hmm, that¡¯s not completely true, high-frequency sound magic is generating enough heat to melt common and even uncommon metals now. Since all my magic can essentially turn into sound magic with a thought, there would be so many more spell possibilities.¡±
Ebony realised that his voice echoed in this space even when he was just thinking.
He was unexpectedly greedy and wanted everything. Unable to decide immediately on his Class¡¯s fortification but went on to decide on his Sub-Class¡¯s. It was an easy pick.
- Body naturally ability to absorb and pad out vibration increased by 100% - 10ml
- Sound Magic has an increased effect of 100% Intelligence - 60ml
Nothing groundbreaking but a general boost towards all sound magic to meet his growing needs for attacks that could break through tough shells and skins. As for the first one, it was a straightforward defence boost and it¡¯s cheap.
Deducting 70 from 583 left him with 513.
On to his Profession which was mana galore. He ruled out mana pathways which was a boost to his runic endeavour. That was a hobby and a side hustle. It was nice to have but not crucial.
Tensile strength was because of how he used his mana as ropes and weaved them all the time.
Viscosity was likely a side effect of all his compression and usage of mana to slow down moving objects and people.
Magnetism was interesting, he didn¡¯t have that in mind during his training. It might be from gravity magic training and his experiments with mental imaging during these sessions.
Base mana capacity was not on his priority list.
All 3 mana chassis options were attractive.
- Mana Chassis is 100% more malleable - 100ml
- Mana Chassis¡¯s resilience increased by 100% - 250ml
- Mana Chassis¡¯s recovery speed increased by 100% - 400ml
Malleability was especially attractive. He had no doubt it was because of how forceful he was when he ¡®refined¡¯ his physique by punching his mana chassis into place and freezing them there. If he got this, he had a feeling it meant that he would have an easier time changing, perhaps fixing, his physique if he ever came across a problem with his self-engineering.
Ebony had used this new body against the Apex Apes for over a year without any problems but he would be lying if he said he wasn¡¯t worried he did something against his natural growth.
Resilience might make it harder for him to overdraft or explode his mana chassis for a burst of mana. Although it might further increase his body¡¯s toughness and maybe, resistance to magic he was leaning away from this.
Recovery speed was simple. It was just great. Recovering his mana chassis from overdraft or implosion faster was quite a boon.
He put explosive mana or mana that was resistant to foreign intervention aside.
Getting two fortifications was ultimately not worth it. The more expensive option would be doubled or even tripled and he couldn¡¯t afford that unless he took two of the cheapest options which were tensile strength and viscosity.
Ebony zoomed in on the most boring choice.
- Mana is 100% soother - 40ml
Out of all the options he had for his Profession, he couldn¡¯t keep his eye and mind away from this.
Then, he was left with 473ml for his Class Fortification.
- Ice Magic has an increased effect of 100% Intelligence - 50ml
It was a general buff to all its properties and his flames were considered ice magic. Resilience to physical or mana might not be directly doubled with this but all other properties would increase in a more balanced manner.
- Sealing magic is 100% more efficacious at sealing essence - 200ml
He might be new to sealing magic but he felt like it fit him amazingly well. More so than sound or gravity magic. His sealing spell which was currently a generic skill was pretty amazing. He sealed some of his internal organs and the vitality and mana would be redirected to other parts of his body. It was energy efficiency at its finest.
When he sealed half his body, he essentially sped up his physical healing towards the other half. The spell countered his momentary weakness if he lost a limb and had to regenerate it. It was far from perfect and vitality, mana and stamina could still leak into those ¡®sealed¡¯ organs or body parts.
Other than healing himself, it was also an offensive spell. He would cast it over an injury and his opponent would have a harder time healing or regenerating as the seal would also stop vitality from flowing in normally. Although it meant the rest of his opponent¡¯s body healed faster Ebony doubted many people healed and regenerated so fast. Excluding certain monsters or races like the Trolls.
In short, sealing magic had jumped and fit into his fighting style almost perfectly in less than a year. The only problem was that it was almost impossible to cast from a distance if his opponent¡¯s magic body was strong. He would have to touch them and he needed a precious seconds to cast the spell. Longer if the area that he wanted to seal was larger.
- Will is 100% more compelling - 210ml
This was the Fortification that called out to him the most intensely. He felt like he was getting brainwashed into picking this fortification and Ebony trusted the pull that this space was edging him towards. This ¡®pull¡¯ might be how he made all of his decisions during his evolution from Journeyman to Master.
Ebony didn¡¯t ponder any longer. His toes were missing. They faded away from this space.
He ran to his Class Monolith and tilted his pitcher of liquid potential into the respective cups that held his Fortifications. The transparent liquid flowed down into the cups but they didn¡¯t dilute the coloured fluid. They changed to the same colour and filled the cups to the brim.
He felt his mind and body getting prickly when he got base mana and stamina from 500% to 750%.
Without pausing, he poured the fluid into all his finalised decisions with certainty. He didn¡¯t fear spilling a drop.
Each and every vessel he filled to the brim would cause some reaction within him but he ignored them and continued.
When he was done with all three monoliths, his pitcher had but a little puddle that was roughly 13ml or 1.3% of the total volume of liquid potential he had. After all, he was the one who gave the arbitrary value of 1000ml. Every other value was just a calculated estimation in proportion to what he had.
Chapter 264: Wealth
Ebony already knew what to do and he had scanned the bookshelves that held slates and cups earlier.
The cup sizes are almost always directly related to their tiers. The higher the tier, the larger the cups.
However, a look at his core skills and what options spread out for him made him pause despite his fading body.
¡°Huh¡is this not filled?¡± Ebony stared at the cup that held a purple fluid that represented his second core skill. His domain. Instinctually, he knew it wasn¡¯t full.
He carefully poured some fluid from his pitcher in.
Then, he was faced with a choice of where he wanted the fluid to flow. Through the sticky white threads that held the slates.
¡®That took like 1 ml and it evolved¡I knew I was almost there. But only two choices. I could spend more to change or mutate it further but there¡¯s no need. This was the direction I had been pushing my domain towards.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t waste another moment here. The slates didn¡¯t transmit details of a skill to him, just a vague understanding of what it entails.
As for Perpetual Tranquillity Spring¡¯s Cup, he could recover all he had at the beginning and still not be able to fill it up.
The bookshelf for his Core Skills was connected to basically every part of his space. Be it every single skill or slate present or the monoliths. He could pull a slate from his class skill and slot it over here or, create something brand new. That was how he previously got his second Core Skill. Not that he made a conscious choice or remembered anything about that.
Ebony didn¡¯t feel a calling or a phantom pull. He ignored it and left the third Core Skill empty this time.
He no longer had feet but he still had a sensation of walking and his feet touching the ground.
¡°Haa. This blinding light had been glinting in my eye for the past¡3 hours. I¡¯ve been here for 3 hours. That feels long. Or is it?¡± He unwillingly stood in front of the fifteenth bookshelf for his Class skills.
The desk was empty.
But a single slate on the bookshelf was shining brightly. The cup was a plain, fully transparent vessel. The fluid within was¡bubbling.
It was spilling over to the desk and shelf before the fluid crawled back into the cup.
Ebony could feel it screaming at him, ¡°Hurry up and accept me.¡±
He didn¡¯t know if it was thanks to Perpetual Tranquillity Spring but he calmly took the slate into his hands to feel the information within
¡°Ethereal Form Arts. Mastery type. I believe it follows the trend of tier 1 mastery, tier 2 style, tier 3 technique and tier 4, arts. Xin reached Arts before she evolved with her dual sword wielding. Form huh, I still haven¡¯t reached formlessness after all this time. Fine, come. I¡¯ll personally merge you with my greatsword style after getting out of here.¡±
The cup tipped itself over and spilled all over the desk. The slate flew off its shelf and slammed itself onto the desk. As if it wanted to implant itself onto the desk permanently. The slate absorbed the fluid and the now empty cup seated itself before the slate. It morphed and grew into a bigger vessel before the blinding light settled.
It cost him nothing.
He was right. There were skills that people could get but didn¡¯t just because they denied it. Consciously or not.
Ebony checked every one of his skills but he had evolved and refined many of them to their limits. Their vessels probably expanded after that. However, he didn¡¯t expect improving his skills in this manner to be so cheap.
The lower tier skills that had lower refinements could be increased by 50% base effect for a measly 0.5ml or less. Even a tier 3 skill¡¯s base improvement percentage of certain skills could be increased by 10% for 1ml. However, it depended on the current refinement rate. It got more expensive depending on how refined the skill already was.
Thanks to the pricing on the Fortification monoliths, Ebony misunderstood the value of the liquid potential. It wasn¡¯t that the skills were cheap to improve. Fortifications were just fundamentally more complex.
It stroked his ego a little. It seemed like, if he didn¡¯t spend any liquid potential on Fortifications he could easily evolve 7 or 8 tier 3 skills to tier 4.
Ebony already knew the vast difference between tier 3 and 4 skills. Partially because of how his skill set worked so well with each other but percentages or unique effects aside he got a compounding effect. For example, a tier 4 movement skill changed his entire dynamic.
With more speed or specifically, acceleration, he was generating more power. When Ebony attacked something with his body or greatsword, it was almost always a combination of all his magic. Any one of his spells or skills increasing in power would in turn benefit his other skills.
Stronger Sonic Intrusion? His flames could spread out further and deeper with more ease.
Stronger gravitational pull and push? Mana could be repelled deeper, faster. Mana within his opponent''s body that had Will imbued could burst into flames.
He didn¡¯t even have to mention mana compression which was almighty when it came to buffing any skill that used mana.
If he had 7 skills that suddenly jumped from tier 3 to 4, his general combat capabilities would skyrocket.
Would it be more obvious than all his Fortifications combined? Maybe, maybe not.
But that would be putting the cart before the horse. Fortifications were the foundations for his skills¡¯ power.
¡°Hmm, that was my last class skill slot. Where would my sealing magic skills go? Do I need to make space for it? I¡¯m not getting any prompts to merge skills or purchase an extra skill slot. Would my evolution sort itself out? Probably. Perhaps that level of autonomy is beyond my jurisdiction at the moment.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t feel a need to spend his precious liquid potential on any of his skills. He worked hard enough to change everything the way he wanted.
It was the same as he walked through the shelves containing his Sub-Class and Profession skills. Sure, there were interesting modifications that were present. He could get it for a cheap price. But he could also train and practice in that direction the moment he woke up.
The result would be the same except that the journey would take time and effort.
There were interesting skills, some that he had no idea he could learn or practise.
Things that are related to weird energies or properties. Luck was one. However, he had no option for a skill that related to luck in all the shelves present. That was only found on the monoliths.
There was one thing he noted. The shared skill, Entity Evanescence was not here. He could sense his original skill, and there were traces of what Entity Evanescence covering that slate but the skill was not his.
Ebony went on to his Generic skills. The most endless of shelves that continued further than he could see.
He evolved a skill or two. Got another skill practically free and was still left with almost 12ml of liquid potential.
He was already left with a torso and a single arm holding the pitcher of liquid potential. The rest of his body faded away from this space. Yet, it still felt like he was taking steps. He could still feel the sensation of his legs touching the ground.
In the end, he found himself back in front of the crystal monolith.
Looking up, down, left, right and centre. He just splashed the rest of the fluid onto the monolith itself instead of filling any vessel.
¡°Doubt that¡¯s going to refine my Physique but this feels the best. Aayyahhh, sleepy¡¡± Ebony yawned and faded away completely.
???
Ning Xin felt vastly different after becoming a Grandmaster.
She didn¡¯t know why.
It wasn¡¯t just the changes to her body or overall strength. She just felt different.
She had lived in Xienor long enough to know what she was feeling. Confidence and nonchalance.
However, she had also walked the world long enough to understand that she was becoming arrogant. If she talked about it with Ebony, he would probably hit her with numbers.
¡°Let¡¯s say we¡¯re top 1% of the population. Assuming a population of 1 billion, there are 10 million people as strong as if not stronger than us. And Elva has more than a billion people.¡± She could hear his voice repeating similar-sounding words.
That probably wasn¡¯t the case but she got his point.
Evolutionary rank of Grandmaster, King or even Emperor aside she couldn¡¯t even beat Korben the village guardian despite her rise in power. She initially thought she was close and only lost since she was adapting to her new body and mind but the Frost Elf always found a way to counteract her. His ability as a mage at keeping distance was impeccable.
At a distance, she was not a big threat to someone capable of consistently keeping her away.
Korben learned fast and had a flexible mindset. He was learning her ways as fast as she was learning his. It made him a great training partner for fighting against real mages. The years and levels he had over her were not just for show. The long-lived species'' gradual and slow method of training had a late payoff.
Sparring with Ebony just never felt like fighting a mage or a swordsman.
A couple of days after Ebony went to evolve, she faced what Gen called The Itch.
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It was unbearable. It wasn¡¯t painful like melting and regenerating her body but it was torturous.
It was also the best time to get rid of the kinks in her movements.
Tier 4 conditioning contained more than just a general stat buff. It tied together their entire skillset or their ability to incorporate all skills better. It was closer to a Core skill than a Class skill.
She was still guessing some of Ebony''s new skills but that game could wait till he woke up.
Other than combat, she was just hitting herself over the fact that Ebony landed a sneak attack on her.
¡®I even said I would go on the attack¡this won¡¯t do. Why is he more aggressive in this regard?¡¯
Perhaps it was because she was a Grandmaster when she got ¡®The Itch¡¯ but hers only lasted for a month instead of 4 months that Ebony faced. Her body and mind felt so relieved once it disappeared. It was like a mini evolution or physique refinement.
Kiva tied her hair after she tied the little girl¡¯s hair up. The little girl grew up and her fingers gained some dexterity so she could do little crafts and hold a knife steadily.
Roya had been delighted to see that Kiva had an interest in braiding or just arts in general. Ning Xin¡¯s long and voluminous hair became practice material for the little girl. The little Frost Elf could already wield mana to a frightening degree of accuracy and precision. It was enough to discourage an average human mage who practised mana manipulation for ten to fifteen years. The elves truly were born to be mages.
The discovery of her capabilities made her play with her tiny pool of mana more and it also put the little girl to sleep more often. Mages needed more sleep in general and it was likely the overuse of mental stamina.
Ning Xin needed plenty of sleep. Supposedly, not too different from any other Grandmaster warrior. She had no fortification or physique refinement that reduced sleep requirements and was no different from any other human in that regard. However, she found it hard to sleep every day.
There was too much energy within her body and it made her energetic. She might have eaten too much after waking up and then feasting with Ebony for his pre-evolution feast. She shouldn¡¯t go hungry even if she didn¡¯t eat for a few days. Not that she would do that.
However, thanks to her evolution resetting her body clock her sleep schedule wasn¡¯t messed up. She just slept a full 7 to 8 hours every 4 or 5 days instead of 1 or 2 hours a day. It made every session of sleep so much better.
It wasn¡¯t uncommon but their sense of time had gotten off track as they evolved. She asked her Sister Jing about the lifespan calculating thingamajig. It was something that existed but her sister didn¡¯t know how to make it. She had to reinvent it herself if she couldn¡¯t get her hands on a sample.
It wasn¡¯t important but Sister Jing was intrigued by the prospects of making something she hadn¡¯t tried her hands on.
Ning Xin plucked the little girl sitting on her shoulders off after her silky black hair was braided into loops.
¡°I¡¯m gonna go fishing with Grandpa Lasil, do you want to come?¡±
¡°No! It¡¯s so boring. I¡¯ll go play with Willow. Bye bye!¡± Kiva put on her socks and shoes before getting stopped by a door. The little girl turned back to look at her with puppy eyes.
She smiled and opened the door for the short little toddler. The door handles here were all pretty high up. The little girl wouldn¡¯t reach it even if she jumped with her short and stubby little legs.
The village was safe, they let her run around once she gained the stamina to go around the village and back by herself. It allowed her to be free and gain some independence. If there weren''t 4 pure combatant Kings around the Thoya¡¯s probably wouldn¡¯t let her run around by herself.
¡®I¡¯ll make her and Willow a burger for lunch. There¡¯s still an hour before they set off.¡¯ The village was sealed off but the mages connected their usual fishing lake to an artificial lake not far outside the village walls. All within their sealed area.
Ning Xin¡¯s new pastime was fishing with some of the villagers. When she became patient and not as inexperienced, she wanted to go back to Xienor and ask Uncle Wu if she could fish with him.
¡°Okay, bun, patty, lettuce, cheese, onion. Right, they don¡¯t eat onions. Then tomatoes, pickles and bun again. I¡¯ll toss the patty in a new sauce today.¡± She made a burger for herself and her fellow fisher enthusiasts.
Only a single burger for herself because she was satiated. But she didn¡¯t miss out on onions. Lots of onions.
She torched the buns after stacking them up with a snap of her fingers. It was very difficult to get the buns in the texture that Ebony remembered. She had to experiment with many types of flour before she got something he felt could be considered a burger bun. She had a lot of fun deciding on stack order. The flavour profile changed drastically simply by changing the order she stacked the ingredients.
Keeping it sealed shut in preserved boxes before chasing after Kiva. Her short little legs must not have brought her far even if she ran. Making a couple of burgers didn¡¯t take much time and Kiva would be distracted mid-trip.
There she was, sitting on the snow near the Lasil''s home.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± She picked the girl up by the armpits, got her on her feet and dusted her butt off.
¡°I got tired.¡±
Ning Xin was almost exasperated by how weak the Frost Elves¡¯ bodies were. Kiva was already at the age where Ning Xin used to run around a forest to hunt birds or chase wolves down. She gave the little girl the benefit of the doubt as the Frost Elf was half her size at the same age.
Carrying her the rest of the trip with a baby bear waiting for them on the front porch.
Unlike Kiva who grew slightly, the baby bear didn¡¯t grow at all. Physically or mentally, the bear was exactly the same after years had passed.
It was odd, monsters grew at extreme speeds. It was true that Milly wasn¡¯t really a monster and she somehow didn¡¯t see either bear as food or prey but she was sure that Milly didn¡¯t have a Class.
¡®Perhaps Willow¡¯s father?¡¯
Nothing special happened. It was peaceful.
The fishing trip went well.
Kiva was asleep in Willow¡¯s embrace and had to be carried home.
Ning Xin lost a cooking challenge which bothered her less than she imagined. She got too used to catering to the Thoya¡¯s taste buds and Roya tried hard to cater something that bode well to human tongues. Putting aside how none of them except maybe Sister Jing was fully human.
She was fine with it being peaceful or quiet but she missed a certain person. It was quieter than it should be.
His increasing lack of presence did not work on her. He wasn¡¯t exactly silent when they were together. At least, not all the time. It wasn¡¯t obvious when he was around but she was irritated when he wasn¡¯t around.
Roya made more clothes for her. Comfortable ones to wear around the house or outdoor clothes that weren¡¯t battle gear. Her armour and clothing didn¡¯t have to undergo massive changes. Only small adjustments thanks to the crafters forward thinking.
Ning Xin was a lot less resistant to fashion. She didn¡¯t care much about them being impractical for battle anymore. The gaudy red wasn¡¯t all she wore either. Black contrasted her skin tone nicely and white fit her black hair. Her hair was now fully onyx black. Luckily the gloss wasn¡¯t that obvious and it didn¡¯t make her hair look oily.
In her day-to-day life, her evolution made her uncomfortable in a few aspects.
It was her senses. She didn¡¯t have any Fortification related to that so it might just be from her Perception¡¯s rise after her Conditioning got to tier 4. She smelled better, heard more, saw clearer, felt more and tasted more.
It wasn¡¯t good. The village always smelled nice and was quiet. But tasting more ¡®precisely¡¯ just allowed her to taste minerals and dirt better. Her sense of touch, more specifically, her skin¡¯s sensitivity was making light gusts of wind and the feeling of clothing rubbing against her annoying. It took some getting used to.
Wind wasn¡¯t an issue, her affinity seemed to have risen and wind mana around her settled themselves. Not to the point that they actively defended or aided her but they would not interrupt or touch her if she didn¡¯t want it to.
Fire, on the other hand, would actively follow her intentions. Fire mana within her swords¡¯ reach would be able to sense her intentions to some degree and aid her. It wasn¡¯t a large range but it was a step forward. It was pretty much what Ebony could do with Will and they might even be the same thing. The difference is that he could make use of it consciously.
She could command fire mana to do her bidding but it still took mana and mental focus. Ebony¡¯s usage was complete control over every minuscule movement of ice. Unless he imbued concentrated Will that programmed the ice mana. However, it completely took away all of ice mana¡¯s natural movements.
The fire mana around her might follow her intentions but they wouldn¡¯t do what they couldn¡¯t. Ebony¡¯s Will forcefully overrides or adds abilities to his conjured ice.
To be fair, neither of them uses ambient mana. There weren¡¯t many places that were abundant in fire mana either. So the effect was not really useful. This affinity wouldn¡¯t even be able to barely hinder a Great Fire Mage¡¯s spell much less a Grand Fire Mage unless she personally tried to hinder their spells. She wasn¡¯t exactly a fire elemental.
Other than 5 of her senses, her natural reflex and mental processing speed are increased, making everything slower. It was disorientating but her evolved meditation skill helped balance her impatience.
Controlling the speed and strength that she went about using on a day-to-day basis was difficult. Thankfully, her stats never increased from the evolution.
Levelling from 299 to 300 took some time. She didn¡¯t expect to level up from 300 to 301 without hunting anything. Sister Jing said it was the experience that spilled over from before her evolution but that didn¡¯t make any sense to her.
Her stat gain for levelling up was 20 points from her Class, 15 from her Sub-Class and 5 from her Profession. The points from her Profession were allocated 1 to Agility, 1 to Perception and 3 to Strength . It was an odd split but that Profession stats couldn¡¯t be allocated the way she wanted so she left it be.
She had 35 points to allocate but she ignored it temporarily. It wasn¡¯t a significant boost and she hasn¡¯t even gotten absolute control over her movements.
When the forty-fifth day after Ebony went to evolve came, her ears twitched as he would take longer than her in a few hours.
Of course, she guessed that he would wake up around the same time. The food preparation had been completed a few days back. Ribs and brisket were being slow roasted for the past twenty hours. Stew that took even longer all sitting outside the Thoya house. An open kitchen so that she didn¡¯t cause an internal meltdown within the house.
A little bit of cooking was all it took to make these Frost Elves sweat.
Having so much free time to cook gave her the chance to try cooking techniques and styles that took hours or days.
In the end, he beat her record by 5 hours. No one disturbed him even though they felt his aura seeping out.
¡®Huh? They should¡¯ve made it so that essence can¡¯t escape the room, I don¡¯t feel his mana or vitality so what is this presence?¡¯
She started getting the table ready for dinner the moment she sensed his awakening but began tapping her feet on the floor when the entire table and all the Thoyas were around but Ebony took his own sweet time.
¡°It¡¯s been three hours!¡± She thought she timed it well but the dishes had been sitting out for two whole minutes. It shouldn¡¯t take that long for him to get his bearings.
¡°I saw him going into the bathroom ten minutes ago.¡± Clovis keyed in.
¡°Bada, bigger. And smelly!¡± Kiva commented. They walked past him on the way down to the dining room.
The little girl didn¡¯t know that everyone excreted ¡®stuff¡¯ from their bodies after or during evolution.
Ning Xin smacked Sister Jing¡¯s hand away when she tried to sneak a bite in. The space mage had disappeared from the village once and only returned yesterday.
It took another five minutes before he came before them.
His cyan hair was almost pure white now but his irises were still pitch black. Looking into them used to be intimidating and one could easily get lost in them. His facial features didn¡¯t change much except a barely noticeable increase in his jawline¡¯s sharpness.
Ebony was good-looking. She believed that most would agree even if they didn¡¯t have her biased view. He was lean but muscular and his cold expression was attractive to her. Though, it was also cute to see it change from time to time.
He wore a short-sleeved t-shirt that exposed his chiselled forearms. She had to stifle a laugh when she thought about how that chiselled arm probably had less strength than hers as long as mana wasn¡¯t part of the equation.
He gained more bulk than she expected but it wasn¡¯t anything drastic. He also stood at about the same height as her. They weren¡¯t really any shorter than Roya or Halvis now. She did not expect much physical growth from him because he had focussed more of his stats in the magic and perception department.
Ning Xin¡¯s feet shifted and scraped the floorboards when they shared eye contact.
¡®Something¡¯s very different. He¡¯s somehow¡demanding more attention with his presence but his presence is also thinner.¡¯ Ning Xin acted calm, her Intuition was feeding her emotions that she could feel from everyone present but Ebony showing up seemed to wipe that clean and she was forced to sense his alone. Her heartbeat was alarmingly loud.
¡°What took you so long?¡± She was a master of her own body, there was no way her heart would betray her. It was her damn core skill now.
¡°I was writing down my experience before I forgot. Sorry for the holdup, let¡¯s eat.¡±
Ning Xin used food to shut her Intuition up.
Chapter 265: Moving Out
¡°Oh, this brisket is delicious.¡± Ebony praised. The smoky flavour didn¡¯t irritate his taste buds at all.
¡°They have special wood for smoking jerky to preserve over winter.¡± The chef curtly explained.
She was staring into her bowl and plate during the entire celebratory meal but he caught her peeking at him dozens of times.
Most of the food was consumed by him and Kong Jing who appeared to have been starving.
Roya was trying to get Kiva and Clovis to help with the dishes. Ebony helped with wiping the house down with the heavy scent of fat and oil instead. The Lasil¡¯s made a type of perfume that removed the scent that wood absorbed and it was something he had obtained a while back. It was very useful for their trailer.
The villagers all had pretty good perceptions in general and they shared the same problem of being too sensitive. Especially mana-wise. Even with his evolution, the house completely stopped his mana sense from penetrating different rooms.
After waking up, he shook off the physical and mental dissonance and got straight to writing his experience in that evolutionary space down.
His body quickly refuelled the lost essence and his body got heavier by the second when he wrote. He wanted to conjure a few arms to write a few pages at the same time but the mental dissonance made it close to impossible.
His mana regeneration, natural gravitational flow, the reflection of physical vibrations, mana compressibility and density increasing or strengthening threw him off. The change was drastic and his body had remained static for likely more than a month.
After over two hours of painfully writing, he stopped ignoring the stench coming off of him and went for a bath. The room looked fine with no broken bed frames, just layers of shattered ice everywhere.
Embers of freezing flames had been quietly burning around the room but didn¡¯t damage the furniture. He blew them out and left with a change of clothes after wrapping his naked body up. The clothes he wore before probably froze and shattered something during his hibernation.
He could smell dinner sitting out so he hurried to clean himself up. Including clipping his nails and taking care of general personal hygiene. He was hungry anyway.
Ebony could still feel the after-evolution effects that made him imagine he was all-powerful. It was an addicting feeling.
He dragged his unexpectedly tired feet faster as there was someone he wanted to see more than a meal.
Although his mana regeneration should have increased rather drastically, it hasn¡¯t filled his body up yet even though more than 3 hours had passed. Most mages saw mana compression partly as a mana capacity expansion skill, even if he didn¡¯t see it that way it still increased the amount of time he needed to fill up.
He nodded to the family and exchanged eye contact with Ning Xin. She was looking even better than before, especially since her mask showed eyes again. She must have learnt to control that function like the mouth area.
Kong Jing¡¯s mask could turn into a helmet. It made him wonder if they could one day form a full body armour with it.
Ning Xin¡¯s had less coverage but it didn¡¯t matter if she didn''t get hit.
Ebony yearned for her not to break eye contact but she did, staring at her food intensely. ¡®I lost to her gluttonous nature huh.¡¯
After eating and wiping the house down while listening to Clovis and mostly Kiva talk about what she had been doing, he was left alone.
As much as he would like to catch up with Ning Xin, he was also curious about the finalised details. Perhaps his memories of choice were just a dream. A fleeting one that he barely recalled.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Evolution completed.¡¯
¡®Class evolved to Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace¡¯
¡®Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace Fortification:
Base Mana and Stamina regeneration increased by 750%
Mana efficiency with Ice Magic increased by 300%
Mana efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic increased by 300%
Balance and fluidity when wielding a greatsword increased by 300%
Movement speed increased by 300%
Ice Magic is 750% more resistant to heat
Flames of frost are 750% more fluent in seeping.
Ice Magic is 200% colder
Ice Magic has an increased effect of 100% Intelligence
Sealing magic is 100% more efficacious at sealing essence
Will is 100% more compelling¡¯
¡®Great, I¡¯m no longer lagging behind by 2 whole 250% fortifications. It¡¯s a pity I thinned out on ice magic by branching out to both Will and sealing magic but I¡¯m sure it¡¯ll work out. It¡¯s been going great with both of them.¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t think he would change his mind but it was true that doubling down and strengthening ice or body enhancement magic might have brought about more direct power boosts.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®1 Core Skill Slot gained
Core Skill Icy Weighted Quiver Domain evolved into Arsenal of Will Domain
Arsenal of Will Domain - Spread your personal domain into existence with consolidated Will. Turn your body into the central core of your domain or summon a separate arsenal. The central core of the Arsenal of Will¡¯s magic is strengthened by 750% + 5.0% per level. Control over your elements and magic is a static 1000% more robust.
Consumes 355,000 MP/Min
Classification: Domain Magic - Ice, Gravity, Sound, Sealing & Lightning¡¯
¡®Hmm? That¡¯s a short description, I¡¯m going to have to figure the specifics out myself. But it''s considered domain magic now. And the elements are sub-classifications? That¡¯s a first. Lightning magic too, even though I don¡¯t have any fortifications for it. The mana cost is surprisingly reasonable, only costing a little under seven times more than before. If I take my current fortifications and physique into account, it should be possible for me to sustain a small range for some time.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Generic Skills Converted to Class Skills:
Frostweave Vital Constriction - A combination of arcane and ice, a seal of vitality is woven. Frostwoven targets have all activity slowed down by a static 70% + 0.025%. Vehement Will is consumed and imbued to guide the target''s life force to condense towards regions leaking vitality. Block out Vitality from escaping with the effect of 250% + 2.5% Intelligence and mana with 100% + 2.5% Intelligence. The spell is 200% + 2.5% of Intelligence more physically robust from internal force and 250% + 2.5% of Intelligence more physically robust from external force.
Consumes Mana
Classification: Sealing Magic - Ice Magic¡¯
¡®Nothing changed about the skill, it just moved up.¡¯ Ebony knew he didn¡¯t upgrade it but he still thought it was a shame. It used to be sealing magic alone but he mutated it with ice magic to use it in combat. It was much better at blocking out vitality compared to mana as that had been the whole point of him learning the skill.
Although the skill description said nothing about redirecting the vitality, that was likely because it was simply the nature of vitality. His target¡¯s vitality would naturally flow to other parts of their body if there was one area that got blocked out.
¡®Stemmed Class Skills:
Ethereal Form Arts - The Ethereal Form Arts are elusive and challenging to perceive. A spectre amid battle, distinguished by adapting to your opponents with uncanny precision. Employing the arts obscures the line between tangible and illusory. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increase by 800% + 10.0% per level. Strength and Agility while brawling with the Ethereal Form Arts increases by 100% + 10.0% per level. The Ethereal Form Arts reduces the burden on your body from its own power by a static 80%.
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¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®No empty Class Skill Slot.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill redundancy reconstructed, Entwined Ice Armament and Imperishable Frost Shell merged into Imperishable Frost Armament.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Class Skill Ethereal Form Arts encompasses Generic Skill Kicking Mastery, skill merged. Ethereal Form Arts level up 1 ¡ú 6¡¯
¡°Holy¡did the skill just force Entwined Ice Armament and Imperishable Frost Shell to combine? I mean, I knew they were technically one spell but never mind. What in the world is this arts¡kicking mastery was at level 200 and now it''s gone.¡± Ebony personally felt that the rushing of bells in his head was the skill, Ethereal Form Arts acting up.
He could almost sense its impatience and fury but that was obviously just his imagination. Entwined Ice Armament was the skill that buffed all his conjured weapons or just a random ice projectile. Frost Shell was specifically built for his defensive scales and walls but they were both technically just conjured ice in different shapes.
However, the way both skills work was slightly different so he didn¡¯t think to merge them. Imperishable Frost Shell was a lot more complicated. It took structure heavily into account but Entwined Ice Armament basically worked for anything he conjured, even his Glacial Models were buffed by the skill.
In fact, he knew that Entwined Ice Armament buffed Imperishable Frost Shell slightly. Hence, he assumed that defensive and offensive spells were fundamentally different.
Putting the loss of a skill or perhaps a gain in skill slots aside, Ebony couldn¡¯t get over the stunning skill description.
Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness were exactly the same as his greatsword style. It was no surprise since this was what he incorporated into his sword handling. The base of 800% was shocking but he wasn¡¯t phased by it. But the Strength and Agility multiplier was just ridiculous. Just at level 1, it doubles all his physical prowess as long as he consciously fights in close combat with this mastery.
¡®No wonder those Knights could pull off such power even without compressed body enhancement magic. A high degree of refinement for mastery-type skills scales up a lot.¡¯ Ebony had evolved his mastery of greatswords into tier 2 style during his training with the Apex Apes but it wasn¡¯t even close.
Ignited Frozen River Greatsword Style - Having incorporated your magic into your greatsword style birthed this unique skill with the greatsword. Ignites anything where your blade touches into freezing flames of frost. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increases by 2.5% per level. Strength and speed wielding a greatsword increases by 2.5% per level. Flames attached to the Greatsword deal an additional 0.25% intelligence per level.
There was no base increase but he was already impressed as the tier 1, Blazing Flow Greatsword Mastery didn¡¯t even give him a power or speed boost. With a tier 2 style, he was finally able to argue that using a greatsword allowed him to hit harder than simply kicking or punching.
With the Style at level 553 and a strength and speed boost of 1382.5% or a multiplier of 13.825, he was capable of hurting the Apex Apes.
There was a difference in that he got an Agility buff instead of a speed buff for the Ethereal Form Arts. There was more focus on flexibility compared to speed. Ebony had long figured out that the Strength stat gave as much if not more physical speed than the Agility stat but Agility was necessary to use that speed.
He learned how warriors were supposed to match monsters and the main reason why hybrids weren¡¯t well looked upon.
Just practising and refining a good style was enough to challenge someone who spent half their energy on enhancing themself. They wouldn¡¯t have to worry about running out of mana quickly or spreading their stats over widely.
When he saw the Imperial Knights or soldiers fight, he was just slightly impressed by their speed and power but he assumed it was thanks to their armour enchantment and some form of body enhancement. But if they all had a minimum of tier 2 styles, it would also explain how they were capable of enduring long fights despite their pitiful mana pools.
¡®I see, the mastery route is the traditional route that separates different classes. I bet crafters and support classes all have their types of masteries, styles and the like. Armour blacksmiths will have some kind of armour-crafting mastery, weapon blacksmiths will have the equivalent. So¡I¡¯ve been keeping up even without this? I should¡¯ve known since I know Xin¡¯s sword style increased the strength and speed of her attacks.¡¯ Ebony could imagine that if he had this skill at level 600 right now, he would be on a different scale.
He would have been more excited about his chances of beating Ning Xin if he didn¡¯t know that her Art must be as ridiculous if not more. The unlimited scaling based on the endurance and durability of her body was already present when she had it at tier 2. Before they even evolved, she already gotten into an Art.
But she couldn¡¯t sustain it and only used a small fraction of combos before she reset her swing path so that she didn¡¯t rip her arms off just by swinging them. She was treading an unstoppable path of maximum aggression and offence. No matter how much she strengthened her physique or constitution, it lagged behind her ability to pull out more strength.
No matter how much Ebony tried to achieve greater destructive capabilities, he ended up balancing himself by bringing all aspects of himself up.
It was just their nature.
There was no more information about his class as he didn¡¯t evolve or mutate any skills.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Sub-Class evolved to Oppressive Resonance
Oppressive Resonance
Mana efficiency with Sound Magic increased by 300%
Mana efficiency with Gravity Magic increased by 300%
Body¡¯s natural gravitational flow reversed and increased by 300%
Body naturally reflects physical vibrations with mana vibrations at 200% frequency.
Gravity Magic has an increased effect of 200% Intelligence
Body natural ability to absorb and pad out vibration increased by 100%
Sound Magic has an increased effect of 100% Intelligence¡¯
¡®I can¡¯t believe there are people who only have one or two original Fortifications and some don¡¯t even get a new one when they evolve. The value of evolving is subjective. I guess some just use it to extend their lives while others use it to gain more and go further.¡¯
Ebony felt like it would be a pity if he were to one day face the issue of a nonoptimal evolution. As it got harder, it wasn¡¯t hard to imagine that it would be more costly in terms of Natural Potential or what he called ¡®liquid potential¡¯ to upgrade his fortifications in future.
Other than the crystal monoliths with weirdly shaped vessels, most of the other cups and jars had a common feature of having a narrow base and increasingly wider mouth. It wasn¡¯t hard to guess that the higher the tier of skill or degree of Fortification, the more potential he needed.
¡°Haha, that was underwhelming. I guess this is what I should expect to see in future evolutions.¡± Ebony knew that he wouldn¡¯t have any skill evolutions, mutations or stemmed skills that were completely new but unfortunately there were no pleasant surprises.
It was already so uneventful for a skill set mostly around the tier 2 and 3 range, that he had no doubt later evolutions might do nothing to his skills. Especially if he always had a choice. He would splurge on Fortifications or Physique on any day but skills were something he could and should do about by himself.
¡®It''s something like a plateau in growth. We faced this plateau in a few years as a Master but I have a feeling we¡¯ll face it even sooner as a Grandmaster. Stats are good and all but they don¡¯t give as the exponential growth we¡¯re used to.
My Sub-Class has the slowest growth and I still have a few tier 2 skills so there¡¯s a chance I can double their power once to tier 3 and a refinement here and there. But my Class and Profession are tough nuts to crack. Hints from the evolutionary space aren¡¯t enough for me to improve them significantly in any measure.¡¯ Ebony put aside the issue of plateauing in growth, he was getting ahead of himself.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Profession evolved to Mana Adjudicator
Mana Adjudicator
Mana Compressibility increased by 300%
Mana Resilience increased by 300%
Mana Density increased by 200%
Mana is 100% soother¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Remaining Natural Potential Infused to Physique.¡¯
As he expected, the results matched his fading memories about the evolution process. Sadly, there were no notifications to the refinements of his Physique.
¡°Done daydreaming? Have some tea.¡± Roya asked when she opened the front door. He had been sitting on the chair they placed on the front porch
¡°Hey Roya, thanks.¡± He bowed his head slightly and took the tray with a tea set over.
¡°What were you thinking about?¡± She pulled the other chair over and sat.
¡°A hobby or job.¡± Ebony poured tea for both of them.
¡°Oh? Not planning to rush anymore?¡± Roya thanked him for the tea.
Ebony shook his head, ¡°I can get twice, thrice or even ten times more powerful relatively quickly but other than that I want to do something else.¡± He wasn¡¯t being boastful or even exaggerating.
With Ethereal Form Arts, his direct combat capabilities would rise without issue. Maybe not in terms of diversity but that wasn¡¯t his only new skill. Besides, he could already feel the level limit for all of his skills disappear or rather, raised to the point where he couldn¡¯t sense them.
¡°Haha¡what did you have in mind?¡± Roya laughed awkwardly.
¡°Attending sho- an academy. I have much to learn.¡± Ebony replied with the first thing that came to mind. If he doesn''t know something, he should learn it from someone else.
¡°I doubt you¡¯ll find anyone who can teach you ice magic. Much less sound or gravity.¡± Roya did not share his enthusiasm.
¡°Maybe not ice magic but I¡¯m sure there are plenty of things I can learn from others. I use magic a little differently from others, I could use a different perspective.¡± He knew where she was coming from.
The Frost Elves guided him in ice magic, vaguely or not. Sound mages were not rare but they weren¡¯t common either. As for gravity mages, he hasn¡¯t come across one other than himself. At least, no one that explicitly showed him.
There was no need to mention general mana manipulation. The only one he knew who was better than him in this aspect was Mallory. The Crown Princess was a pure arcane mage but even she couldn¡¯t teach him the ways of mana. After all, she wasn¡¯t partially made of mana like he was and everyone¡¯s mana was unique. The more evolutions one has undergone, the more distinct the difference becomes.
¡°A little? I¡¯ve lived in Tidal for some time and travelled around. I¡¯ve seen mages of different races and ranks or orders. And I¡¯ve seen you cast spells. ¡®A little¡¯ is an understatement.¡±
¡°That¡¯s also good. The more obvious the difference, the easier for me to spot flaws and areas for improvements.¡±
¡°So you¡¯re about to leave yet again¡¡±
¡°Can I build a house in the village?¡± Ebony dropped his idea on her.
After Kiva was born, he felt a little uncomfortable. He didn¡¯t notice in the past but he managed to pinpoint the reason for the discomfort. He was feeling out of place with Ning Xin. He might have treated this as his home but they were not part of the Thoya family and neither were they Frost Elves.
They had intruded on the Thoya¡¯s for long enough.
¡°You¡you want to move out!?¡± Roya raised her voice.
Kiva slept in the same room as her parents but she was about to be old enough to have her own room and the partial humans were taking up the rooms. Ning Xin shared one with Kong Jing and he occupied a guest room himself.
He saw Kiva growing out of her diapers and thought he might as well have a house built in the village. The Thoya¡¯s would have more space and privacy. He would not disturb them with his presence. They wouldn¡¯t have to make concessions or considerations in their daily life.
He stayed in the village for weeks to months at a time and troubled them long enough.
¡®Why-why is she angered and¡upset?¡¯ Ebony knew that they helped around the house and took Kiva off her hands but having two or three more people in the cabin couldn¡¯t possibly be pleasant.
Chapter 266: New, Old Skills
Ebony''s idea of building a new house in the village was denied before Roya stormed back into the house.
They were nearing the time limit that Kong Jing or Xin¡¯s grandmother dictated. He wasn¡¯t sure what was going to happen but he had a feeling they wouldn¡¯t be remaining in Arcta for much longer this visit.
¡®An opportunity¡¯ was as vague as it can get.
They¡¯ve not heard from her mysterious grandmother for a long time and neither of them has dreams of an unknown Xeng giving them a message either.
Hence, he didn¡¯t argue with Roya¡¯s strong denial.
Ebony chose not to train and just stretched his body and reconfirmed his mobility and range of motions the next morning. He tries not to bring up his status to mind so that he doesn¡¯t get blinded by the numbers and give himself an unfounded ego boost but he doesn¡¯t ignore the convenience.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill:
Perpetual Tranquillity Spring Lvl 636 (¢ô)
Arsenal of Will Domain Lvl 602 (¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Class: Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace - Lvl 300
Class Skills:
Ethereal Form Arts Lvl 6 (¢ô)
Phantom¡¯s Flicker Lvl 611 (¢ô)
Ice Mana Command Lvl 614
Woven Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 604 (¢ó)
Ignited Frozen River Greatsword Style Lvl 553 (¢ò)
Woven Frostblaze Cladding Lvl 602 (¢ó)
Imperishable Frost Armament Lvl 603 (¢ó)
Fluid Blitz Lvl 572 (¢ó)
Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace Conditioning Lvl 300 (¢ô)
Entity Evanesce Lvl 1290
Glacial Model Lvl 556 (¢ò)
Blossom of Shimmering Chill Lvl 600 (¢ó)
Stalactite Sunder Lvl 450 (¢ó)
Frigid Distorted Refraction Lvl 452 (¢ó)
Frostweave Vital Constriction Lvl 450 (¢ò)
Sub-Class: Oppressive Resonance Lvl 300
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Song Lvl 455 (¢ñ)
Sheer Mana Vibration Lvl 508 (¢ò)
Gravity Mana Control Lvl 523
Tempestuous Repulsive Membrane Lvl 510 (¢ó)
Sonic Intrusion Lvl 503 (¢ò)
Firm Path Lvl 502 (¢ò)
Gravity Vortex Lvl 452(¢ò)
Tremor Stomp Lvl 482 (¢ò)
**** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar Lvl 450(¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Adjudicator - Lvl 300
Profession Skills:
Inscripted Mana Moulding Lvl 554 (¢ò)
Coagulated Mana Repository Lvl 607 (¢ô)
Stalwart Foundation Lvl 550 (¢ó)
Mana Chassis Implosion Lvl 450 (¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 9800/9800
Stamina: 6720/6720
Mana: 12,203/61,915
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 650
Vitality: 700
Constitution: 1000
Endurance: 400
Agility: 800
Intelligence: 1326
Wisdom: 2030
Perception: 350
Generic Skills:
Appraise Lvl 18 (¢ò)
Extreme Cold Resistance Lvl 195 (¢ô)
Running Lvl 122 (¢ñ)
Mental Mapping Lvl 98 (¢ñ)
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 12
Calculated Hunch Lvl 188 (¢ò)
Housekeeping Lvl 95 (¢ñ)
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 222 (¢ò)
Tracking Lvl 62 (¢ñ)
Game Processing Lvl 68 (¢ñ)
Immense Heat Resistance Lvl 199 (¢ó)
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12 (¢ò)
Gardening Lvl 67 (¢ñ)
Cooking Lvl 88 (¢ñ)
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 105 (¢ò)
Korun Lvl 65
Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 82 (¢ò)
Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 88 (¢ó)
Immense Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 154 (¢ó)
Lightning Resistance Lvl 82 (¢ñ)
Sheer Blood Resistance Lvl 93 (¢ò)
Wind Resistance Lvl 62 (¢ñ)
Poison Resistance 20 (¢ñ)
Preservation Bubble Lvl 155 (¢ñ)
Sustenance Regulation Lvl 105 (¢ò)
Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 150
Adaptable Bow Mastery Lvl 56 (¢ñ)
Sheer Mana Poisoning Resistance Lvl 41 (¢ò)
Swimming Lvl 32 (¢ñ)
Lightning Tether Lvl 155 (¢ñ)
Electroshock Lvl 150 (¢ñ)
Soul Tolerance Lvl 51 (¢ñ)
Lunar Bio Clock Lvl 1 (¢ò)
¡®Hmm? My skills have always been ordered chronologically, why is Ethereal Form Arts first? Ah, it wants to be my core skill but I didn¡¯t let it and ignored its attempts. Hence it was forced to kick two of my Class skills to merge instead.¡¯
Ebony was glad he wrote his experience down. In the evolutionary space, he completely ignored the vessel representing Ethereal Form Art¡¯s strong connection to his Core Skill shelves.
Phantom¡¯s Flicker had no change after he refined the kinks out.
Woven Frostblaze Augmentation was refined from a constitution buff of 250% to 350%, strength and endurance from 200% to 300% and Agility from 50% to 100%. Scaling on Intelligence. Now that he had a simple Fortification for ice magic, his effective intelligence effect on all ice magic should double.
Woven Frostblaze Augmentation - Combusting intricately woven mana in your mana chassis that had been directly conjured into Ice mana increases your Constitution by 350% + 5.0% of Intelligence. Strength and Endurance increase by 300% + 5.0% of Intelligence. Agility is increased by 100% + 5.0% of Intelligence.
Consumes 8800 MP/Min.
Classification: Ice Magic - Body Enhancement Magic
Woven Frostblaze Cladding also saw no significant improvements other than levels.
Ebony took a look at what happened to Entwined Ice Armament and Imperishable Frost Shell.
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Imperishable Frost Armament - All known weapons conjured with ice are strengthened by 250% + 5.0% Intelligence. Defensive conjurations in the form of a heavy shield or spherical orb, has the effect of 450% + 5.0% Intelligence. Further change in structure reduces said effect.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
As he imagined, the skill technically was the same. Just a general buff to all weapons or armour conjured by ice. He had refined Imperishable Frost Shell from 400% base to 450% and that carried over so he had no complaints.
However, he didn¡¯t like the fact that he could have more redundancies in his skill slots. Had he been wasting his time by practising two different skills when they were essentially the same thing?
The fact that they could merge so easily was an insult to his efforts and he did not like it.
Fluid Blitz - Maximise exertion of the physical body. Every attack is a precursor for the next using momentum. Speed and power of fluid blitz rise with momentum. Ability to build up momentum increases by 250% + 5.0% per level. Ability to raise power and speed of flurry up to 1% + 0.05% of Strength stat.
He refined Fluid Blitz significantly when he was hunted down by the Apex Apes. When he first fought them, he had a lot of trouble with their impressive twitch musculature. The ability to build up momentum didn¡¯t give him a direct power boost. It increased the speed at which he could get to his maximum momentum.
¡®Maximum¡¯ momentum was hard to quantify, it was based on many factors. Even the environment. But the general trend was the stronger he got, the more momentum he could generate. This skill accelerates how fast he could¡accelerate.
He managed to get a base of 1% of power and speed which was technically 20 levels of the skill. He would be lying if he said he didn¡¯t get inspiration from Ning Xin. She wasn¡¯t the only one capable of learning from each other.
Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace Conditioning used to be called the Serene Blade of Blistering Frost¡¯s Conditioning.
Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace Conditioning - Developing yourself as the Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace increases your stats by 10% + 0.1% per level.
One of the least descriptive skills with the most underlying information or side effects. At level 300, he had a 30% buff to all his stats. Adding on the 10% base stat buff, it was a total of 40% to all his stats. From his maximum stamina and mana capacity, he could see them in effect. Endurance gave him 120% thanks to his Physique and Conditioning was multiplicative. Not withstanding his stamina regeneration''s dropping.
Conditioning truly was a hidden gem. It was no wonder people joined the army. Just a good Conditioning method would give them quite an advantage. Furthermore, it was the most stable buff anyone can have. It was practically a Physique kind of buff. Ebony knew that was an apt statement as he saw an extremely strong link between the conditioning skill slate and cup to the crystal monolith.
Outside of stats, it also increased his general magic and elemental resistances but to an extremely minuscule degree. He wouldn¡¯t have found out if it wasn¡¯t for his high perception.
If he had to put a number to it, it felt like his general resistance increased by 0.001% per level of the skill. At level 300, it equated to a 0.3% increase. Small but it wasn¡¯t completely useless or unnoticeable. The value of 0.3% was just an estimation on his part since he couldn¡¯t quantify his own resistances.
Other than resistance, Ning Xin who was quite knowledgeable about conditionings told him that tier 4 conditionings lose level at a much slower rate. It was not surprising when they both felt what ¡®one day¡¯ should be has changed. Especially himself.
One day felt more like the amount of time that he was awake to the time he started getting sleepy. That was closer to eight real days rather than one.
Glacial Model had him stumped. He used them against the Apex Apes but mostly as distractions or to help him buy time to rest or escape. They didn¡¯t get many chances to retain his focus so the skill didn¡¯t get any refinements.
Blossom of Shimmering Chill was one of his main weapons. He tried to push his woven effect onto them but nothing happened. It didn¡¯t matter if he weaved his petals as that did nothing to strengthen the spell. The spell worked by penetrating flesh and physical defence before attacking the target¡¯s internals. Weaving his spells was to make his ice or flames more compact and also to give it structure.
Hence, he stepped in the wrong direction for improving the spell and it remained in the experimental phase.
Stalactite Sunder - Ice and physical attacks have 250% + 5.0% falling momentum when used in conjunction with gravity magic. Ice spell landings¡¯ ability to slow down the release of momentum on impact increases by 200% + 5.0% per level.
Stalactite Sunder was one of the skills that he had to increase his Natural Potential before it was even capable of reaching 450 in a reasonable time frame. He was not suited for the skill and didn¡¯t understand as well as Gao¡¯larg might have been capable of.
Frigid Refraction evolved in his attempts to hide from the relentless hunting.
Frigid Distorted Refraction - Adjusting ice and its cold temperatures to refract light, accuracy depends on Intelligence and Perception. Creating mirages and displacing what you wish to. Precision and accuracy of refract and reflected light increases by 200% + 5.0% of Intelligence.
Consumes 5500MP/Min
Classification: Ice Magic
Not only does it take almost ten times as much mana as the tier 2 version, but it also takes a lot more mental effort. Ebony had to scan his surroundings and change the angle of light refraction depending on how many pairs of eyes were on his target, where they were looking at him from, and the direction of the sun or moonlight.
It wasn¡¯t hard for him until movement was taken into account. His speed and his opponent¡¯s speed. He had to match his spell from any sudden acceleration from who he was hiding from. When it came to the Apex Apes who had insane twitch muscles and movements that even he couldn¡¯t fully predict, he was forced to improve the skill if he wanted to rest.
Frostweave Vital Constriction used to be Frozen Lull but he got the hang of sealing magic much faster than he had hoped. It was mainly a sealing spell instead of an ice spell, a change from Frozen Lull. There was an addition of blocking out not just overflowing vitality but also mana.
His Sub-Class skills gained a refinement or two but nothing groundbreaking. Chaotic Repulsive Membrane was the only one that showed obvious change.
Tempestuous Repulsive Membrane - Adeptly remove all gravity mana out of matter and envelope around the target as a thin membrane. The flow of gravity is reversed to repel matter. Has the effect of 350% + 5.0% Intelligence. Order in disorder, tame the entropic nature of gravity mana to your bidding by 150% + 5.0% Intelligence.
Consumes 2200 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
The mana cost of tier 3 spells had quite a jump from its tier 2 counterparts, it went from 150MP/Min to 2200MP/min. Ebony wasn¡¯t fooled by the description of an additional Intelligence scaling. Making gravity mana do his bidding better did not strengthen the spell directly. All it did was calm the chaotic nature of gravity after it was compressed so that it flowed in the general direction that he wanted it to.
It did make the repulsion stronger but not nearly as much as the numbers implied. However, there was one main advantage. It made his repulsion as strong against sharp attacks as it was strong against blunt ones. He never found out why it had that weakness but at least he solved it. Gravity Vortex was surprisingly hard to level.
**** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar was censored even in his evolutionary space.
Coagulated Mana Repository was not what he expected when the skill evolved. He assumed he would get a ¡®woven¡¯ type of skill but it just treated his weaving as an active motion. The repository or mana pool itself wasn''t woven.
Coagulated Mana Repository - The walls of the mana chassis are compact to their limits. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 500% + 10.0% before coagulating. Coagulated mana will line the walls of the mana chassis. Maximum charge of coagulated mana is static. Coagulated mana holds a static 10% more mana than completely condensed mana. Coagulated mana has a static 500% stability and resistance to change. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.
The skill gave him a field day of hypothesizing.
He did not know what coagulated mana was and the skill doesn¡¯t even mention a percentage for its static maximum charge. He could feel it in his mana chassis. A very thin layer of grimy and viscous mana lined up his chassis as if clogging his veins up. He evolved the skill pretty late in his training with the Apex Apes and was not able to go heavy into experimentation but he got the gist of it.
After his mana pool filled up with his maximally compressed mana, a small portion would be able to compress a further 10%. That was what the skill considered as coagulated mana. The maximum charge was static because he only had a static mana chassis size.
He had no idea if increasing Wisdom would increase the maximum charge but from what he understood of his own body, it probably would. The higher his Wisdom stat, the more his mana chassis would split up. Like bubbles or tiny cells, he would get more of them but with a smaller size. The surface area would expand and hence, the area for ¡®lining¡¯ along the walls would increase ever so slightly.
This coagulated mana was 5 times harder to utilise. They would not move out of his mana chassis during normal spell casting. He assumed the ¡®resistance to change¡¯ was how hard it was for him to decompress and use the mana.
He couldn¡¯t use coagulated mana as it was. It wasn¡¯t just liquefied mana that was 10% denser than what he could usually pull off. It had slightly different properties altogether and he hasn¡¯t pinpointed them. At the moment, he treated it as an emergency mana supply.
He wasn¡¯t sure how much mana max charge equated to but he had an estimate. It was likely 5% of his maximum mana capacity or less.
Even Mana Chassis Implosion wouldn¡¯t ease up the coagulated mana enough for him to use it casually. He didn¡¯t use the skill at full power often. Not even he was crazy enough to hurt himself so critically during training with the Apex Apes.
It was tough to level a tier 3 skill by only using it at the intensity of the tier 2 version, Potent Mana Overdraft.
To be honest, he wasn¡¯t sure what use coagulated mana had if it was so hard to cast magic with. Sure, for him 5 times harder wasn¡¯t an immovable rock. But if he was ever forced into a situation where he used up all his mana, he would be hard-pressed to pull out 5 times more mental effort for the same power of spells.
He hadn¡¯t been able to sense a difference in spell power by using decompressed coagulated mana.
For his Generic skills, Slumber Survival Instinct and Exhaustion Resistance benefitted the most from his time with some gorilla sized monkeys.
He has not done the math for his stats after his Conditioning evolved since he hadn¡¯t looked at his status much. Now that his Fortifications have been enhanced with new additions, he¡¯ll have to reorganise how he counted his stats.
¡®Should I even bother with stats¡it¡¯ll be practice for Calculated Hunch I guess.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t look down on stats but his base values haven¡¯t changed for years.
Thinking about that, he thought he would gain more than he assumed from levelling. Now that his skills were in the level five to six hundred, their multipliers would also be stagnant or plateau. Stats might be more worthwhile than he assumed.
Levelling up his skills was harder than levelling his Classes up. That was the whole reason why they were stuck at Master for an extended period. They might not be the best reference for levelling speed.
Lightning Tether and Electroshock were two of his lightning spells. They had to reach 150 to be viable to be added to one of Classes but he had chosen not to bring them up. They had utility and strengthened his slowing effect but he ultimately decided to put it on hold and branched towards sealing and Will instead. He was spreading himself quite thin.
¡®I can work on creating another Sub-Class skill slot in the meantime. I don¡¯t know what level it takes to bring a generic skill into a class as a grandmaster to king but I don¡¯t think that¡¯ll be a big issue. The more I work on them, the cheaper it¡¯ll be. Generic skills aren¡¯t useless either.¡¯
Lightning Tether - Gather and draw lightning mana to strike a target with a sustained chain of lightning. Lightning Tether has the effect of 200% + 1.0% Intelligence per level.
Consumes 300 MP/Min
Classification: Lightning Magic
It was quite refined for a tier 1 skill, having a lightning mage teach him step by step helped. The casting method he was forced to use was not convenient.
Ebony would have to toss a lightning mana ore behind his target, and then draw the lightning mana towards himself. Zapping the target in between him and the lightning mana ore.
The amount of lightning mana in the atmosphere was too little to cast anything that could be considered an attack, even with his range of control over a kilometre. The mana cost was quite high for a tier 1 skill and it didn¡¯t even consider the amount of mana that was being extracted from the lightning mana ore. It just referred to how much mana it took for him to manipulate and maintain the spell.
He would usually have one of his mental holds sustain the chain of lightning. The interesting part about lightning magic was that was it hit a target and connected with it, it took extremely little effort to aim. Lightning mana would aim itself for him. Flesh was a conductor of electricity and it certainly helped mages like him.
This meant that once he placed the lightning mana ore down, he just had to keep his mana supply up and Lightning Tether would connect him, the target and the ore even if the target was moving.
It was very convenient. The range that he could extract lightning mana was quite short but it was easily solved when he stuffed one of his Models with a couple of lightning mana ores. A few of them could surround him and he would have a field of moving electrical power rods that chained Lightning Tether to whatever he wanted.
He could manipulate lightning not to touch his skin and just come towards him or even towards any point in space within his mental range of control but he could train his lightning resistance so why not?
Ebony ignored the fact that Lightning Tether did absolutely nothing to the Apex Apes. They barely twitched no matter how long or intense he zapped them.
Electroshock - Gather lightning mana in your body over the surface of your skin or objects in contact with you. Lightning mana charged with your mana reacts violently in contact with what you deem foe with an effect of 150% + 1.0% Intelligence per level.
Consumes 250 MP/Min
Classification: Lightning Magic
This was a simple but dangerous spell. Dangerous for the caster but not so much for him.
Ebony knew about electrical currents in the body. They were what the people of this world called lightning mana. A lightning mage could essentially kill themselves if they were not careful with the lightning mana in their body.
Of course, it wasn¡¯t instantly fatal for these mages if they had a high Vitality stat but they could easily give themselves permanent brain damage.
As for Ebony, he already tested on himself. Even his electrical currents were made of mana chassis. Since he couldn¡¯t sense blood or flesh mana, he didn¡¯t know how his mana chassis worked. With lightning, he was able to guess that his entire body, be it bone, blood or flesh mana was also made up of his mana chassis.
It meant he could regenerate electrical currents but that didn¡¯t help. However, he wouldn¡¯t die and he could control his body with magic even if he couldn¡¯t physically move or had electrical currents transmit signals through his nervous system.
That was too weak. Like gravity mana, his body didn¡¯t exactly have an abundance of lightning mana. Hence, the Lightning Tether that was connected to him would gather around his skin and weapon. It was quite basic for a spell but it worked.
Will probably affect the spell, it gave the spell some autonomous capability of zapping only foes or hostiles.
Soul Tolerance - Your soul¡¯s tolerance is increased by 100% + 1.0% per level.
Even for vague and brief skill descriptions, this was one of those that explained the least. He got it after receiving too many of his essence roar. It was the only ''tolerance'' skill he had and unlike resistances, the description doesn''t talk about extended periods of exposure to a certain element. To this day, he didn''t know what it did. He would still hurt himself when he used the roar so he tried not to use it. He didn''t know how badly he was affected.
¡®Skill wise, am I gaining less from my evolution because I already improved them all by myself or is it because I improved myself so much that I was basically a Grandmaster in a Master¡¯s body hence there was nothing for me to gain from this evolution?¡¯ Ebony felt like he got the short end of the stick despite the achievement of having pretty much what¡¯s considered the maximum amount of Fortifications all at their strongest states together with two great skills.
Chapter 267: Near Future Plans
¡°I overheard you. You want to be a student?¡± Ning Xin came over to his daydreaming self basking under the sun.
¡°You don¡¯t agree,¡± Ebony questioned.
¡°You¡¯re dropping your act. That fake tone you try to pull off when asking questions.¡± She made herself comfortable beside him, taking over Roya¡¯s seat after shifting it closer to him.
¡°I understand tone better now, I can imitate it and have been doing that since I was a child but I had enough fun trying to appear normal.¡± Ebony was fully aware of how passive-aggressive his speech pattern was. At least, that was the feedback he got.
He copied how others spoke since he was around ten. He found that it made him more approachable and it was convenient when interacting with people.
¡°Anyway, I think that¡¯s fine. Just don¡¯t learn the wrong stuff. I don¡¯t want you to get flooded with knowledge of weak skills.¡± She crossed her legs and laid back after pouring herself a cup of tea.
¡°Mmm. What do you have in mind?¡± He asked since he wasn¡¯t sure what she wanted to do.
There was something odd about her or the way she looked. He didn¡¯t think much of it, they both evolved and changed physically. His perception had changed. Even then, he was quite sure he knew what this ¡®oddness¡¯ was. It wasn¡¯t the change in physical figure. It was the way he looked at her and the way she carried herself. ¡®One of her new fortifications must be related to charm or some mental affliction.¡¯
¡°I want to open a restaurant. Uhm¡if you¡¯ll sponsor me.¡± Her shoulders slumped.
Ebony¡¯s mental image of her was that she was probably very expressive if it wasn¡¯t for her mask.
For female warriors, there was probably a good reason why they had a tradition of wearing masks. It helped to look less feminine and remove or decrease the perspective that they were weak women. The aspect of mystery, anonymity or even its defensive properties aside it also served as general intimidation. Humans were not the only creatures that judged appearances.
¡°You say that but we still have a lot of mammoth material. We can split the earnings.¡± He noticed how shy and embarrassed she was for depending on him for money.
However, she always forgot that they hunted so much that they had plenty of monster material just sitting in their bags and she had a share. She would probably have the larger share if they were to get into the specifics of how many hunts. Unless they considered the meat and edibles that were shared and consumed.
¡°Right! Is that enough to open a restaurant?¡± She bubbled with excitement.
¡°We¡¯ll have to find out.¡± He might not have good financial sense but Ning Xin was even worse in that regard.
Ebony wasn¡¯t caught off guard but he didn¡¯t expect that she wanted to open a restaurant. It would do her Profession good but she didn¡¯t seem like the type that liked to serve strangers her cooking.
¡®I guess serving in a military kitchen changed her mind.¡¯
¡°I¡¯m assuming Tidal?¡± He watched as she raised the cups to her lips and sipped on tea. He didn¡¯t care about how she painstakingly learned how to appreciate tea slowly anymore. Ebony casually sipped on his tea in response to catching his own¡intensity.
¡°The Capital¡¯s huge and the best are gathered there. So yes. Do you want to open a restaurant somewhere else? Plainston? Hata?¡± Ebony started listing all the towns and cities they¡¯ve been to when they were dungeon hopping right after they evolved from Journeyman to Masters.
¡°Tidal¡¯s fine.¡± She nodded without any exaggerated body language.
¡°I know, you¡¯ve been checking out that top thousand restaurants book over and over again.¡± His lips raised at her forced musculature control.
His feet got stomped on. Hard.
Tidal was so large, Navin the Barrier King had to fly for hours to fetch them around. Of course, he had been carrying a Gorpede that was kilometres long and weighed a literal mountain so that wasn¡¯t the best indicator of the Barrier King¡¯s speed. He also had to slow himself down for Ebony and the townspeople of Hata.
The Capital had a population in the billions or so Ebony heard.
That number had ballooned ever since Navin took over and his Lord family rose to the ranks of a Royal. No matter, Navin was the one who was capable enough to cast and build barriers strong enough to last.
Birthrates had dropped in the past few decades and Ebony had never asked why in the world Imperial Knights were discussing these topics. He learned that just about anything could be a topic of conversation when he was forging rings and repairing armour part-time. The soldiers were complaining about the lack of manpower which led to the topic so it wasn¡¯t exactly a random conversation topic.
Humans didn¡¯t want to give birth as a Master that much. More and more of them were capable of reaching Grandmaster without dying young. The proportion of Grandmasters in Tidal was quite high compared to the rest of the continent.
As a Grandmaster, even the fertile humans had relatively low birth rates. Dwarves and Elves could be said to be unaffected. It wasn¡¯t easy to gather data on them. There were not as many of them and few had ever settled for children as a measly Master, to begin with.
Ebony saw no better destination than Tidal. Perhaps he could qualify to apply as a student at Tidal Academy, the acclaimed best on the continent.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
¡°When are we leaving?¡± She put her cup down gently and faced him.
¡®Why do I feel that it¡¯s fortunate her eyes are hidden now?¡¯ He was beginning to think that having Perpetual Tranquillity Spring was bothersome. It was making him feel and sense too much that he used to simply ignore or put aside at the back of his mind.
¡°Whenever you like, I¡¯ll follow your decision. You have better Intuition and know what your grandmother means by an opportunity to benefit more clearly than I do.¡±
¡°Trust me, I¡¯m just as clueless when it comes to grandma¡¯s divinations. She always says just enough that we don¡¯t know any specifics.¡±
¡°You just reminded me, your strong intuition that bothers foresight. It''s from your grandmother, isn''t it.¡±
¡°Huh? Oh. maybe you might be right. Why did I never made the link?¡± She tilted her head in confusion.
¡°I didn¡¯t either. Your skill evolved from some Instinct skill. We just didn¡¯t link it with divination magic and affinity.¡±
He wasn¡¯t trying to change the subject but talking about skills was habitual.
Silence pervaded the front porch all of a sudden.
¡®Why did she go silent? Should I say something? Wait¡silence is good. Perpetual Tranquillity Spring is too different from Everlasting Tranquillity. I¡¯m not in the same mental state of meditation.¡¯
It was silently decided that they would just leave whenever they felt like it. They were in no rush to go anywhere and did not have information that suggested they hurry somewhere. It wasn¡¯t like they had a location given to them either. All they had was a deadline of 2 years before this ¡®opportunity¡¯ came by.
Supposedly, one so big they couldn¡¯t miss it.
Ebony took those words as a hint that location doesn¡¯t matter. He just hoped that ¡®opportunity¡¯ wasn¡¯t some Emperor or Saint kidnapping them. That would indeed make location irrelevant but it didn¡¯t sound like a big opportunity to him. He leaned towards the fact that things would just fall in place whatever they decided to do or where they decided to go. There was no need to think so deeply about a measly divination.
His divination resistance remained stagnant over the years so he was either not under some sort of divination magic or the strength of the divination was beyond what he could build resistance against. If there was no spell on him, he didn¡¯t trust a divination from a couple of years back.
¡®I¡¯m underestimating divination magic a little but things change all the time.¡¯
Kong Jing limped through the front gate unenergectically. Her eyes were gleaming, unlike her body language.
They looked over from the porch and tilted their heads at the same time. Waiting for her to speak up instead of prodding.
¡°Apparently, some death mana is stuck on me. I¡¯m leaving. Don¡¯t fight, I¡¯ll be going back to Clatter Rattle. Not immediately, I¡¯ll be in some deserted forest or mountains for some time. Call me whenever.¡± Her body stretched and disappeared.
¡®She stretched¡although I already knew it wasn¡¯t teleportation but spatial compression. Space magic is weird.¡¯ Ebony saw Kong Jing¡¯s movement with a newfound perception. Although he had been spatially moved after he got his Core Skill to evolve, it was the first time he looked at her while she ¡®teleported¡¯.
He wondered what the movement looked like to Ning Xin who can perceive everything in slow motion. Technically, he perceived things in a similar fashion. Everyone did with higher stats. She just brought it to the extreme with multiple skills like mental acceleration and even Fortifications.
¡°I guess she got what she wanted from the elders here. I hope she hadn¡¯t been too rude to them. Mmm, I feel satisfaction from the elders'' direction so I guess they helped each other.¡± Ning Xin wasn¡¯t phased by the sudden disappearance, long used to the way Kong Jing was.
¡®A range or sensitivity increase for her perception of emotions. Knowing how others feel sounds tiresome. I can¡¯t even pinpoint how I feel.¡¯ Ebony pitied her sense for emotions, as useful as it was.
¡°So, what was Roya feeling?¡± He might as well make use of it.
¡°Figure out yourself.¡±
¡°But you agree, don¡¯t you? You want to have a house of our own here.¡±
¡°Our?¡±
¡°Did I stutter?¡±
¡°Khmm. No, you didn¡¯t.¡± She took a deep breath and whispered, ¡®okay, I¡¯m not going to lose.¡¯
¡®Did she whisper or am I imagining things.¡¯ Ebony did not think there was anyone capable of whispering so softly, it honestly felt like the voice was echoing in his head instead of going through his ears.
Roya was not happy, that was all he managed to conclude from dinner time. The fact that Kong Jing just disappeared without warning didn¡¯t help.
Kiva didn¡¯t understand the conversation about building another house beside the Thoya family. If they were right beside and the humans would still visit daily, all¡¯s right for the little girl. Clovis didn¡¯t care either way. Halvis also didn¡¯t see an issue with his suggestion. And that seemed to anger Roya even more.
Ebony was reassured that he was not the problem and his suggestion wasn¡¯t out of whack. Roya was overreacting.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t say anything but he was sure she was of the same mind. Her constant cooking made the house smell of fat and oil which was not exactly pleasant for the Thoya family. Cleaning product and scent cleansers¡¯ efficiency and efficacy aside.
Other than that, the issue of a private room for Kiva was still in the air.
¡°Sorry about that Halvis,¡± Ebony spoke out when he saw Roya shutting herself in her workshop.
¡°It¡¯s alright, she¡¯s just moody. She¡¯s been troubled by how Clovis is in such a rush to leave the nest. And you dropped this news on her.¡±
¡°I imagined this to be good news. Having a house in the village means we would be more attached and maybe stay for longer periods.¡± Ebony replied.
¡°Living under the same roof means a lot. You''re young, yet you''ve already matured and branched out like a thriving tree. Wistful, reluctant. She just wants to keep family close.¡± Halvis rubbed both of his children¡¯s heads before clearing the dishes.
¡°...I understand.¡± He couldn¡¯t come up with any logical comebacks.
Both ¡®humans¡¯ went silent from listening to Halvis¡¯s comment.
He helped with cleaning up while babysitting duty was left to Xin. Tiring out the young girl so that she could sleep well at night was a routine with great responsibility. Despite being a couple of years old, night cries or even bed wetting was not uncommon.
Clovis practised wiping the dishes dry with the clothes using just strings of ice mana.
¡°Clovis, let¡¯s continue our conversation. I have more information to share before it completely fades away from memory or by some freak accident, I lose the books.¡±
¡°Yes! To the study!¡± The short and scrawny boy ran up the stairs and got his writing tools ready in a hurry.
They stayed up all night. Having Clovis¡¯s perspective and theories that added to his was a nice touch. After he recounted his experience, it was mostly Clovis talking and him listening to the Frost Elf theorise.
The scholar couldn¡¯t stay awake for much longer and went to sleep after a light breakfast. Halvis allowed a delay in morning practice for his son.
Chapter 268: Budding Domain Experimentation
Ebony went to the playground to finally start getting used to his new body. His mana had fully recharged, compressed, coagulated and was resting for many hours.
It didn¡¯t feel like he would take as long to get used to his body and mind as compared to Ning Xin. She hasn¡¯t even gotten confident enough to say that she can control her own body, technique and skills to maximum efficiency yet. Only 99.7% at best. To people like them, perfection in body and skill control was of utmost importance.
Anything less than their 100% would be shameful to show. It would be embarrassing if their attacks were off by a millimetre. A huge inaccuracy that they normally wouldn¡¯t make.
Ning Xin had to deal with The Itch after her evolution, he already dealt with that.
He gained some height, his limbs lengthened, and his overall frame bulked up slightly. But every part of himself felt right.
A casual footwork and sword dance allowed him to get a feel of his new reach. Icicle no longer felt as oversized. He could swing it even smoother. Wielding it with one or two arms didn¡¯t feel any different. However, he did feel a lot more stable and grounded on his feet no matter what odd moves he did. Like nothing could push his stance or footing.
It was especially obvious when he tried to take a Phantom¡¯s Flicker. His legs weren¡¯t lunging ahead and his body could remain upright. More so than before.
He could make use of his movement¡¯s momentum even better.
His dance, his half or full spins, his swings all flowed without pause. Openings from spinning still existed but few could make use of it to hit him. The openings were just a trap anyway.
Ebony stealthed Icicle and put it against a tree. Then he had to put it on the ground thanks to the dent in the tree¡¯s bark.
¡®Ethereal Form Arts. There¡¯s no way to train this. There are no set moves to practise since it shouldn¡¯t even be a ¡®Form¡¯. How should I train this before incorporating swordsmanship into it? Combat¡¯s the only way but I don¡¯t know anyone who can land a hit on me if they have the same speed. Aside from my Model. Right, I can try making that simulation skill again.¡¯
Ebony wasn¡¯t looking down on the combatants present but they did not fight in a method that would help his technique. Ning Xin had vastly improved her sword technique but it was thanks to her overwhelming speed and power that she could force him to dodge or get hit.
He could imagine the movements but his body and his Models couldn¡¯t pull it off. It might be different now that he evolved and he had the Art but it was not a mastery or sword dance. There were technically no actions or movements to train for his martial style.
He was built¡brought up to react to just about anything that came his way. Within a short time frame of 15, no, 9 to 10 years, he was only beaten up and forced to learn how not to be killed. Before that, it was just normal physical conditioning.
Even if his mother had offensive moves, she hadn¡¯t taught him any. Probably because she gave up teaching him the spear early on.
Ebony didn¡¯t ponder on the lack of an appropriate opponent and simply sparred with a few of his Models after imbuing Will into them and disconnecting his control over them. One of them had his fighting skills, another had Ning Xin¡¯s, and a third partially fought like how he remembered his mother to fight but with a massive physical buff from a normal human. The fourth was a giant Troll, Gao¡¯larg.
Each of them were independent of each other. Ebony knew practically every little habit that Ning Xin and himself had and the Glacial Models mimicked that. In the short time he battled Gao¡¯larg, he already copied the Troll¡¯s general frame and muscular motions almost perfectly.
His mind¡¯s flexibility to create another sculpture and imbue completely different fighting techniques was inhuman. He imbued a completely different Will into each of them in less than 10 seconds apart.
Seeing how easy it became, he created a set of Imperial Knights in ice armour. He¡¯d seen enough to know how they fight to about 90% confidence. Knights and soldiers were even more robotic than him in this sense. There was little individuality in their showing.
Of course, he wasn¡¯t saying they didn¡¯t have individuality but they trained to fight that way so that it was easy to cooperate in large numbers. The boon in numbers and making full use of its advantage was something Ebony couldn¡¯t deny.
Unfortunately, his Glacial Models couldn¡¯t exactly keep up with his real body and it wasn¡¯t much of a training. But he had to say, it was quite annoying fighting his own and Ning Xin¡¯s Model at the same time. If he didn¡¯t destroy them outright.
His Model was capable of keeping someone busy, locking them down. It even had access to most of his actual spells, to a greatly weakened degree now that they lost connection with him and he wasn¡¯t manually helping his Model cast.
Then Ning Xin¡¯s Model would harass the target till her power built up. The combo was balanced.
Actually, her Model would not ¡®harass¡¯ it would straight up go full aggression. It used his flames instead but he didn¡¯t give it any lightning magic capability. Ebony hasn¡¯t gotten so familiar with lightning that he could translate that into Will to be imbued.
¡®More compelling Will, does it just give more individuality? Ah, my imbuement is more intense depending on what I was thinking or willing into existence. That¡¯s useful, now, that definitely benefits my domain.¡¯ Ebony walked over to the training Frost Elves and found Christy resting under a cool shade that snowed just for her.
¡°I¡¯m going to test out a new spell, it shouldn¡¯t be dangerous but just in case¡¡±
¡°Go there, what kind of spell? Congratulations by the way.¡±
¡°Thank you. Domain spell. At least, it should be considered a proper one now.¡±
¡°Urgh, let me get that guy instead.¡± Christy groaned at the implications and summoned the one that shall not be named.
The one that shall not be named was busy talking to the King-ranked crafters. The crafters were the real elders in terms of age and seniority, strength aside. So it was a sight to behold that the King combatant was politely nodding while being berated for something.
Ebony greeted the elders, the one that created the bows that followed and protected them and the Death Tailor were just lazing around with a plate of frost plums while watching the children play.
He couldn¡¯t sense death mana, probably no one else present could. Kong Jing left because she also had no way of removing the death mana. It was probably not an attack of any sort. He was more inclined to believe that she traded an item or material and was in the midst of transporting it somewhere without people. While also doing experiments or crafting.
It seemed like they were husband and wife. Maybe. It was hard to tell when the villagers were close-knit to begin with.
The bow crafter did make 50 bows with spirits that automatically followed and protected him. Sadly, their help was limited without an archer wielding them. Ebony was still grateful because it was thanks to these bows that he only had a few hundred Jetfins chasing them.
The one that shall not be named took the opportunity to slip away from the elders'' berating speech when Christy called him.
¡°You got a skill evolution? Wow, a mana being is truly special. You¡¯re even more attuned to mana than us now that you¡¯re a grandmaster. You¡¯re not a complete mana being right?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think so. I¡¯m still more physical than mana.¡±
¡°Now that you mention, his mana is quite pure too.¡± Christy stared at him more intensely.
Ebony could feel both of their mana signatures just caressing his skin. It wasn¡¯t uncomfortable and he allowed it without saying a thing since they helped and he also rudely Appraised them before. He was listening to what they had to say about him so that he could learn more about the nature of mana.
First of all, he was brought to attention about the purity of mana again.
Unlike density, a rise in purity didn¡¯t increase spell power directly. Ebony was unclear on the exact specifics but the purer the mana the easier for the mage to utilise. His mana¡¯s purity might be the entire reason why he had an easy time casting magic, and manipulating mana and the elements.
At the same time, he sort of understood how people determined if someone was more suitable to become a mage. If an individual were born with purer mana, there was a high chance they would have an easier time manipulating mana and becoming a mage. This didn¡¯t consider elemental affinity.
Looking at mana ores, the difference between ranks is more obvious in purity compared to density. A lot of magic enchantments required a certain purity of mana to even activate. Hence, higher-quality mana ores have more value than the density or actual amount of mana an ore possesses.
Ebony¡¯s mana sense had vastly improved but his introspection wasn¡¯t good enough to what his own mana was like. He would take data based on different rarities of mana ores after his experiment here.
The one that shall not be named was a Domain mage.
Ebony learned some basic information about domains from the tall man.
The lowest tier domain was 3. Hence, they thought that his ¡®domain¡¯ was just a strong area of effect spell. The most important effect of a domain was a mage¡¯s control over their own elements.
Just a tier 3 version gave him a 1000% more robust control. Other mages who could manipulate ice or any element he also wields should have ten times more difficulty ripping his spell away. He didn¡¯t know if it was enough to stop these Frost Elves but it would surely help.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Generally, tier 3 domains were budding domains. Tier 4 is mature domains. Tier 5 are budding realms and tier 6 are mature realms. Ebony wasn¡¯t told more because ¡®knowledge was dangerous¡¯ and he was deemed to be incapable of protecting himself from learning too much.
He secretly thought that the Frost Elf just didn¡¯t know what the higher tiers were called.
The word ¡®realm¡¯ hinted that Ning Xin had been dragged into a mage¡¯s spell. A much higher form of domain.
Other than just a stronger control over mana in his domain, it was supposedly harder for anyone else to even drag out mana from within their bodies. Depending on the domain, it was even possible for them to reduce the effectiveness of body enhancement magic.
Ebony was familiar with the phenomenon. Just like in the Icy regions and deeper parts of the Glades, it was harder to cast spells and manipulate mana there. It was like adding weights to his mental muscles. Perfect for his training.
However, most human mages would probably be too weighed down to cast magic properly.
That was why the Empire¡¯s collection of mages¡¯ Fourth Order mages was so impressive. Being able to maintain a domain that weakens all mages and even any warrior that uses mana was amazing.
According to Koawe¡¯s knowledge, Navin wasn¡¯t a Domain mage. But that was outdated knowledge. Few had seen Navin fight nowadays.
¡°Okay, there have been some changes but I should be in full control.¡± Ebony personally created the spell. He knew what changes he made.
He spent little liquid potential and there shouldn¡¯t be a large deviation from what he wanted the spell to become. Every little change was manually made by him after all.
He gave them the heads up and the one that shall not be named set up a small area for him. The mage cast a hollowed-out domain so that his mana didn¡¯t interfere with Ebony¡¯s. It only had a wall of mana or Will to prevent anything from slipping out without the real domain mage¡¯s permission.
A second passed. Then ten whole seconds of silence passed.
The Frost Elves waited patiently but Ebony was not expecting an endless pool of Will that the spell was taking up. He was getting mentally drained!
It took a whole twenty seconds of furiously feeding the spell his Will before it sprung into existence. A five-metre radius sphere of his mana spread out. It would take 355,000 mana per minute if he had every element at his disposal operating at full speed but all he was doing was setting his mana up in place. Since the mana was just sitting around, he wasn¡¯t wasting even a fraction of that mana cost.
However, this mana had to come from somewhere. His tiny mana pool didn¡¯t hold that much. He had to decompress his mana to his natural mana density for it to form. Decompressing it that much was also another safety precaution.
The Will that he pulled out went back into his mind, confusing him.
The two King Classed fighters just widened their eyes in response to being bathed in his mana.
¡®I increased their mana regeneration. Cool effect, I¡¯m like a walking calming pearl now.¡¯ Ebony pinpointed their reason for surprise relatively quickly since he could sense a faster flow of mana overflowing from them.
He wasn¡¯t able to quantify other¡¯s regeneration at the moment but he felt like he just needed practice and a couple thousand more people as reference.
Noticing that effect, he released even more of his mana to compress his domain to check if it increased their regeneration even more.
It did, but not directly proportionally. Just two of them didn¡¯t give him enough data.
¡®Alright, soother mana makes people calmer under the influence of my mana. The effect of increasing their mana regeneration should be related but it''s not a direct relation. Let¡¯s see what an increase in Will compulsion does. Hmm¡freeze.¡¯
Just when Ebony thought that, the temperature dropped drastically. He went easy but quickly inputted that he wanted the area to be even colder. The response from his domain was to convert his mana into ice mana. When it reached the limit that his ice could produce, they burst into flames to bring the temperature down further.
All of this was done without much mental effort. It was as easy as counting from one to three.
The twenty-second cast time was unreasonable but the effects seemed worthwhile.
However, he could tell he was already mostly drained of Will. He didn¡¯t even have enough to conjure and imbue a single Glacial Model.
¡®I need a higher Wisdom stat. That seems to increase my Will. Maybe this isn¡¯t even all the Will the spell requires but just the minimum required to bring it into existence. I¡¯ll try the gravity and other elements on monsters or some other target. Now I¡¯m just curious as to what this ¡®separate arsenal¡¯ is.¡¯
With a little testing, the domain suddenly summoned a Model for him.
It seemed like the huge amount of Will he imbued didn¡¯t disappear or get consumed immediately. It was still in him but it had been reserved to hold the domain in place. Since he was thinking of creating a separate model, the spell spawned one with the Will he already used up.
Ebony felt Will was consumed this time.
The model could not be a separate arsenal.
He didn¡¯t know why, but he instinctively knew that a sculpture of ice with his Will imbue was not his arsenal.
Ebony didn¡¯t even know what an arsenal referred to.
¡®Let¡¯s use logic, an arsenal is a collection of weapons, equipment or just an array of resources. The Will I gathered just flowed back into me. That must be what the skill meant by turning myself into the central core of my domain. Since that¡¯s the case, if the Will I gathered was cast or attached to something else that would turn into my separate arsenal. so¡I can essentially cast my domain away from me. Maybe placing a domain permanently?¡¯
He tried to gather the Will spent on his domain and put it into his Model despite instinctively knowing it wouldn¡¯t work.
He was right, it wouldn¡¯t work and he wasn¡¯t sure why but he didn¡¯t regret trying.
At least he found out he couldn¡¯t recover the Will that¡¯s spent on his domain completely. So if he was determined to cast it, he had to be sure he wasn¡¯t going to use Will on some other Model or spell that required Will.
¡°Domains can be cast onto something, or a location and be set up permanently.¡± He immediately asked the more experienced domain mage. They didn¡¯t seem to care about tone and understood he was asking a question.
¡°That¡¯s why we Elves still live in forests. Our village, Tuctra, is our matriarch''s domain. Each of us who are domain mages has our own territory too. That¡¯s the best home and safe haven any domain mage can have at the end of the day.¡± The experienced Frost Elf were speaking words of gold that Ebony probably would have a hard time finding out from books.
¡°Cool. I assume it¡¯s possible to continue strengthening one. If I had to guess, that might be the best method of training and levelling a domain spell.¡± Ebony already knew how the gist of all things skills worked, he could make a guess. Just practise and improve.
¡°...Right again. But do you think you can support it for long?¡± The experienced domain mage hit the head of the nail.
¡°Not yet. The Will I gathered to cast is being consumed as we speak.¡± Ebony estimated that his Will would run out in about half an hour. Then, he wouldn¡¯t be able to have his domain sustained even if he had the mana for it.
¡°Here¡¯s a tip for creating your territory. We don¡¯t fully understand Will but we know it leaves residues. I¡¯m not aware of your domain¡¯s specifics and no, don¡¯t share that information. That¡¯s like sharing a key to your vault. But the more you cast it on the same area or target, the more these residues will stick. It''s not too different from casting a spell over and over again and increasing their level. You¡¯ll figure it out when you use it for some time.¡±
Once again, Ebony soaked up the knowledge. He was about to share his ¡®key¡¯ so that he could have input from the experienced domain mage but the Frost Elves were kind enough to stop him. However, it was obvious from his words ¡®area or target¡¯ that there were at least two types.
¡®Maybe some domain mages can cast their domain on a specific location. Mine on the other hand requires a core central, or what he called a target. Hmm, maybe it can¡¯t be mobile. That¡¯s why my Model cannot receive my Will. Or is my Model just too weak of a vessel to store it? This is fun, more experiments. I need to go to school.¡¯
¡°About Will, how do we know how much of it we have.¡± He decided to be a little shameless and asked despite knowing how rude he already appeared to be.
¡°It¡¯s heavily tied to Wisdom but we noticed its capacity increases after exertion even without a skill. From our excerpts, I¡¯d say it increases by 10% after a hundred years of daily use. If stats remain constant. The final tip is that daily use does not refer to casting spells with Will. It¡¯s experiencing life.¡±
¡°I see. Thanks for the information. I¡¯ll share what I know when I figure something out in exchange.¡±
No matter, Ebony was going to repay the favour one day. This information alone already helped him get on the track. It might not be the right track but there was no ¡®right¡¯ track, only different paths. As for a destination, he had never been one to care.
He would reach where he would reach, no need to ponder on it. He just had to keep moving. If he didn¡¯t like his destination, he could go elsewhere. If he got lost, even more reason to keep moving.
¡®10% after a hundred years. That¡¯s likely using Frost Elves as an example. I have a feeling due to racial traits, Will is where my advantages lie. There¡¯s no other reason why I can use Will as early as a measly Master and these expert mages barely touch on it as Kings.
However, I only have early access while they have a far stronger version once they get access. After all, as a King or higher their stats would be higher. Experiencing life sounds vague but I think I get what he means. Will is not a traditional resource. I don¡¯t know if there are any skills related to Will but it doesn¡¯t sound like he knows about such a skill.¡¯
Ebony made use of their presence and tried out some of his spells in a weakened form. Allowing his domain to bring them to life without mental effort from him. The mana drain started soon enough and the high expenditure forced him to stop his conditioning quickly.
He saw Korta, Korben and even Vent just watching him along with the two Kings already present.
¡®Vent is quite intimidating. He hid Korta and Korben¡¯s presence so that I wasn¡¯t distracted. He can catch me off guard with ease. Strongest indeed. Gen probably couldn¡¯t beat him if what Ning Xin said is true.¡¯ They were within his domain.
Yet he didn¡¯t even know they were just standing there until he looked over. It wasn¡¯t an invisibility trick. It was just basic skills of hiding one¡¯s mana and essence. Although he knew the technique was used to hide from other mages, these were the only mages that could hide their essence from him even in his domain. He just didn¡¯t know how they hid the disruptions their body would do to gravity mana in the surroundings.
Korben was the only one who was¡drunk from the effects of his mana. The rest were bona fide Kings who were not affected by the sheer density of his liquid mana.
¡®I don¡¯t believe it''s just because they¡¯re Kings¡I have to take note that races highly attuned to mana are less affected by dense mana. Hmm¡oh, that¡¯s how. Fascinating trick, I doubt I would have to learn it but it¡¯s nice to know how they''re doing this.¡¯ Before his domain faded out of existence, he managed to sense a thin layer of mana around the Frost Elves.
They were protecting themselves with their mana. It was quite different from what he saw Imperial mages do. These Frost Elves mixed something else in their mana skin like manipulation. He could only sense Korta¡¯s and Christy¡¯s and only because they were dissipating it while his domain was running out.
They chuckled when he tilted his head at their stares.
¡°Haha, don¡¯t worry. I believe you owe us less than you think.¡± The one that shall not be named brushed their stares off.
¡°This is rather insightful,¡± Christy added.
¡°It¡¯s so different from my family¡¯s. Did you watch carefully, Ben?¡± Korta mumbled and smacked Korben¡¯s shoulders.
Korben was lagging mentally from the effects of his mana and took a second to get back to speed.
¡®Family huh¡I just thought of something. Are domains something only an individual can add to? Since they run villages but still have family territories. Haha interesting, maybe they work their way around not having enough Will by having an entire family with similar skills imbue Will into an area. With multiple people at work, building a safe home would be a lot easier than a one-man job. If my idea is even possible. That would make lineages or domains grow over time since they said Will has residues.¡¯
Ebony¡¯s drive to study kept rising.
Chapter 269: Mission Femininity
Throughout their stay in Arcta neither Ebony nor Ning Xin brought up the topic of sparring with each other.
Their Conditioning was pretty lax in comparison to their intense training montage but the Frost Elves were spurred to work harder from their laxed routine.
The Itch has started to die down for Ning Xin and she got the hang of her new physical and mental capabilities in a week after he woke up from his evolution.
She fought Korben to a draw. The draw was decided by Korta who had to stop mutual harm.
Ebony saw part of the duel.
She was just lucky or rather, Korben made a fatal mistake that pulled down his advantage. To Ebony, it seemed like a lapse of attention. That lapse of attention was enough for Ning Xin to close in but Korben¡¯s reaction speed was quite admirable. Even more so for a mage, he managed to manipulate the mana he spread into a counter.
A mutually destructive spell or so Korta deemed it.
He didn¡¯t have the opportunity to see what kind of spell it was.
Since they didn¡¯t hide their training from each other, it wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t know what her new skills and spells were like and vice versa.
To them, it didn¡¯t matter.
First of all, she wasn¡¯t a planner. She did combat on the fly, through reactions and reflexes.
Second of all, Ebony wasn¡¯t a schemer. If he ever tried to make a plan, there was a high chance it hurt him more than his opponent.
Against other people, sure, more information helped. But they were already so familiar with each other. Less than 2 years apart didn¡¯t change the nature of their fighting style.
It was fair game to show each other their new capabilities.
He felt relaxed, there was no schedule to leave. He was going through each day peacefully and there were no worries.
During one of the playground meets, he asked elders about the misty silhouettes.
Vent was aware of someone dangerous being in the glades back then but all of them were clueless about a village veiled in mist that was just across Bubble Hills.
Especially Vent, he saw nothing after Ebony pointed out where the village was. For a hunter of his calibre who ¡®eavesdropped¡¯ on his and Kong Jing¡¯s conversation in Fifth Tide from Arcta, it was hard for him to believe there was a whole village of strange beings so close by.
They trust his words thanks to the weird stealth covering Ebony and Ning Xin. It wasn¡¯t active but the Frost Elves could sense something different about their aura from the get-go.
Hence, Vent went for a walk for the safety of the village.
The village elders and men gathered for a meeting at the Lasil¡¯s garden after Vent returned with news that he couldn¡¯t find anything but he knew he was being misdirected.
That scared all the villagers.
Ebony liked how close-knit the Frost Elves were.
Sure, telling the crafters about an invisible threat did spread panic but every family in the village was in the know. Personally, he felt that it was better to know about a threat and keep it in mind. Rather than a few strong combatants keeping the information to themselves.
Korta was sent to Tuctra to inform their fogey oldies. The man brought Korben along. Korben dragged the village chief¡¯s party along. They were using this chance to learn the route to their second village. They weren¡¯t planning to enter, just to get into range so that they could contact their second village.
¡®I¡¯m so curious, just how many Kings or maybe even Emperors they have. It sounds like only their Matriarch is an actual Emperor rank but, you never know. They can go to their ancestral home, I don¡¯t believe they can¡¯t come back. I¡¯ll have to assume they have multiple generations still alive.¡¯
Ebony wasn¡¯t so worried with so many individuals stronger than him present. He went to his room and took an afternoon nap.
Not because he was tired or sleepy.
He just felt like it.
And it was great. It was rare for him to feel so at ease ever since arriving in Elcra. He decided to focus a lot more on his Core Skills after what he found out to develop his Core. Whatever that may be, it seemed like the way to go. So, he first had to find out why Perpetual Tranquillity Spring was so different from Everlasting Tranquillity.
The addicting feeling of power and euphoria right after evolving felt a lot stronger than before. The false feeling of confidence was fortunately suppressed by the presence of stronger individuals.
Knock knock
He rubbed his eyes and went for the door, curious. He usually wasn¡¯t bothered when he was in his room. Thanks to the privacy settings of the house, he didn¡¯t know who was on the other side either.
Ebony was determined to have the privacy setting built in whatever residence he would have in future. Cutting off his mana sense made it extremely easy to sleep. He didn¡¯t have to filter information of a kilometre radius from him.
It made him less safe as he would respond to threats later but it might be a worthwhile trade-off. Perpetual Tranquillity Spring and his mind seemed to be happy about the break they got.
¡°Xin.¡± He opened the door to an unfamiliar sight, ¡°You¡¯re wearing a dress?¡± He blinked twice to make sure he wasn¡¯t hallucinating.
¡°You made this, Roya adjusted the size for me. Is that all you have to say?¡± She stood there nervously.
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Her silky long black hair cascaded down her back in one braided ponytail by a certain little gremlin. Wearing slippers because the Frost Elves didn¡¯t have a no-shoe policy, her stance and body language showed uneasiness.
One hand crossed to hold her other arm close. She wore a cotton-like one-piece dress that clung tight to her belly and chest. Her thin waist, flat belly, slender but toned arms showed through. It was dyed ruby red since he made it during his Journeyman days and she seemed to only wear red back then.
The dress was made for casual wear and should be comfortable. It was just a plain, single-coloured dress. It should have been able to reach below her knees in the past but she grew and Roya didn¡¯t lengthen the shirt¡¯s hemline. She put her legs tightly closed instead of standing in a more balanced posture, quite unlike the swordswoman in her.
He made long sleeves for them since that was the fashion here and that was one part Roya lengthened to match her growth.
¡°It suits you. Are you comfortable in it?¡± There was nothing about this lady¡¯s figure that screamed female warrior. It was honestly quite amazing how little her body was in the direction of a muscular and athletic body. ¡®Must be balanced out by her appetite.¡¯
¡°It¡¯s a bit breezy without fabric on my legs. But the frostsilk and whatever other material you mixed in is soft on the skin. And cooling.¡±
She seemed to perk up from his comment and lost some of the nervousness and tightened muscles. Ebony felt good about giving the right response.
¡®Settle down mana, don¡¯t you spread out now. Hmm, seems like I¡¯m more lecherous than I thought I was. So I¡¯ve always been interested in her body? I guess she has the perfect musculature for swordsmanship. Her lithe¡comparatively and mostly lithe body is built for evasion battle styles and she makes full use of it so much so that I learned a lot from it.¡¯ Ebony no doubt admired the sword woman''s body.
Since he came to Elcra, he knew good musculature when he saw one and this world had far better average so he didn¡¯t think much of it. He knew how hard it was to get a toned but useful body, hence his admiration. From the early days, he stared at her legs as they were pretty much perfect for movement and footwork. It was better than his own legs¡¯ musculature but he couldn¡¯t exactly copy that. He didn¡¯t have the body of a woman.
But if there was anything Perpetual Tranquillity Spring reminded him of, it was her body when he taught her how to swim. That¡disturbed him a little. At that point in time, he wasn¡¯t just admiring her well-built body.
¡®She probably sensed what I felt. Is she disgusted by it?¡¯ Ebony¡¯s gut wrenched when he noticed his own subconscious actions. He was far less self aware than he assumed.
Although he was said to be harder to sense emotions from, he was pretty sure it didn¡¯t apply to her. Perhaps she couldn¡¯t grasp what he was feeling accurately since he was not aware of it himself back before Everlasting Tranquillity evolved.
¡®Right, she can sense emotions. If she sensed that from me she wouldn¡¯t have acted normal. I guess I have to be careful from now on. I don¡¯t have everlasting tranquillity anymore and I still don¡¯t know the exact difference.¡¯ Ebony concluded that she did not sense any subconscious lust from him since he didn¡¯t even notice that himself. It clicked into place for him as to why he got the biological reaction he thought he had full control over.
¡®This is quite intense, I¡¯m feeling every single thing and it''s making me uncomfortable. Is this karma for ignoring normality?¡¯ Ebony knew that eating a delicious meal usually made one feel good but to someone who numbed out most emotions, a simple joy seemed extreme to him.
Roya¡¯s dissatisfaction with his idea of moving out would be put in the furthest corners of his mind in the past but now, he felt like he had to tip his toes around her. Meeting her felt awkward as their stiff daily interactions were bothering him far more than they should.
Ebony had begun to settle into his evolved body, mind and skills. He decided that it was a good change instead of getting annoyed by how cluttered his mental space was. It was clear despite being cluttered.
¡®I see, I like this change so I feel no dissonance. Tranquillity huh¡I guess I actually don¡¯t understand what that means but I feel it.¡¯
The corners of his lips raise naturally at his acceptance. He raised his right elbow in front of Ning Xin.
¡°Shall we go for a walk.¡± He said so in his shorts and tee shirt.
¡°Let¡¯s.¡± She said without hesitation, seemingly prepared to walk around in a dress. She intertwined her arm with his at the elbows. This was how couples on Elcra walked or showed affection publicly. Hand holding was apparently too intimate and Ebony saw men invite women for a date on a couple of occasions.
¡°Oh right, shoes. Hmm, let¡¯s ask Roya what matches. I¡¯m not too familiar with shoes that go with dresses.¡± They walked together in perfectly matching strides without any communicative actions before he stopped in two steps.
¡°Boots. I¡¯m wearing boots. There¡¯s snow outside. And you, shorts are too casual.¡± She was quite adamant, having already decided that boots were the way to go. He gave her a chance to critic what he was wearing by stopping her.
¡°...I¡¯ll change into a pair of pants.¡±
Ning Xin looked left and right but relaxed after a sniff of the air.
¡®Haha, she must have picked this timing because the market just closed up, the playground just disbanded and everyone¡¯s in their houses. Wait, did she expect me to bring her out? Intuition is scary.¡¯ Other than morning, most villagers returned and remained in their homes for the majority of the day. Hence, he knew the hurdle of walking around in a dress in Arcta shouldn¡¯t be too high.
Just then, the expressionless mask turned to him and she pinched his sides. ¡°I don¡¯t like what you were thinking.¡±
¡°Huh? Are you a mind reader now?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help but let the surprise show in his voice.
¡°I¡¯m not. It just felt like you thought I was scary.¡±
¡°...That¡¯s what I call mind reading.¡± He couldn¡¯t believe she got it spot on.
¡°So you did think that.¡± The tips of her hair turned red.
¡°Your dress will burn.¡± He continued to pull her along as they walked around the village.
¡°Hey! Slow down!¡± Her hair turned black as her hands rushed to push her shirt¡¯s hemline down.
¡°Never thought I¡¯d hear you say those words.¡± He surprised himself with the chuckle that escaped his mouth.
¡®This is fun.¡¯ Ebony was intrigued by how wondrous and colourful a simple interaction could be. He had truly been missing out by ignoring and numbing out these feelings.
A fifteen-minute walk brought them back as she couldn¡¯t go far before she gave in and insisted they return. They patted the snow off their boots on the front porch. Putting the slippers back on before they entered the house.
Ebony caught himself looking at how the white snow contrasted with her bare legs and decided not to feel bad about it, ¡°You have amazing skin.¡±
¡°Wha?¡±
¡°You¡¯re making snow look dull and basically reflecting light at this point.¡±
¡°Is that supposed to be a compliment? Why are you so random and sudden, I don¡¯t know how to react.¡±
¡°Yes, it¡¯s distracting and keeps catching my attention. You should cover up.¡±
¡°So you don¡¯t like me wearing this dress. It doesn¡¯t suit me after all.¡±
¡°I do and it does. I¡¯m trying to say you¡¯re attractive enough so don¡¯t go catching other¡¯s attention.¡±
There was a short pause.
¡°I don¡¯t care about that, I¡¯m trying to catch your attention. I¡¯d say mission success.¡± She hurried back to her room right after spouting those lines. As calmly as she tried to say those words, it took a lot of effort.
¡°I see, that¡¯s what flirting is like. Oh, I¡¯ve been doing that for some time. Mission success indeed.¡± Ebony nodded and linked it with his past actions. Fascinated, he started writing a diary or journal. An exploration of emotions and daily experiences.
¡®Heart pounding. A symptom that should not occur with our level of bodily control. Unexplainable elation. A gush of chemicals in our brains? I don¡¯t sense that.¡¯
Some habits were just hard to break.
Chapter 270: Bribing an Orca
A week later.
Ning Xin wore a Frost Elven-styled dress. It was far more conservative and fit her surprisingly well now that she had black hair and she had the height for it. Except for some assets that were having a hard time. All elves were slender after all.
It was a winter-furred dress without a hood. The waist was wrapped in leather and the rest was a thin satin-like fabric with fur at the rims. He didn¡¯t think they would match but the thin fabric was likely because these dresses weren¡¯t made for warmth. They were made for Frost Elves that wanted to stay cool. It was full body length and helped the swordswoman get used to the breezy feeling of not wearing pants.
The colour scheme was white, blue and brown.
Neither of them had put on their robes ever since entering the village. Even during Conditioning. She didn¡¯t even put her bodysuit on. They should begin to phase the equipment back on now that they regained complete control over their new frame but there was no rush. A robe, bodysuit or mantle truly couldn¡¯t affect their movements in any noticeable fashion.
Ebony began to get the desire to get a serious battle going now that he had all his skills and control in check.
He didn¡¯t need the ability to read minds or a strong intuition to tell that someone else was getting the battle itch. Her sparring partner, Korben, had left after all. The Kings weren¡¯t keen on bullying them.
However, neither of them brought up the topic of leaving to find some opponents.
He was reading a book about philosophy. He sort of wished he was back on Earth just so he could get his hands on those books. He might have great mental stats but he couldn¡¯t remember something he never read. The book he was reading right now felt more like some Frost Elf¡¯s diary that was rewritten into a bibliography from ages ago.
For some reason, his interest in a game of chess rose quite a bit. When he wasn¡¯t reading, or spending his time with his eyes closed in meditation he found that there were not many activities for him to pass the time.
They could watch memory lights which contained the films and movies of this world but Ning Xin wanted to save them up for trips. That made sense as it got boring and quiet in their trailer when they were on the move.
¡®What did I use to do to pass the time? I just meditated the time away if I wasn¡¯t training didn¡¯t I.¡¯ Ebony moved the pawn on his board. Clovis liked the game quite a bit too.
However, his only opponents were the old crafters like the Death Tailor and her merry group of elders. They called his chess board simple.
The version of chess they knew had a few different types of pieces with different movesets and the board wasn¡¯t an eight by eight square. It was twelve by twelve. However, it was surprising that none of them knew what the real game board looked like or what the other pieces were. They just knew that their ancestors played something similar and got a glimpse of the board when they were young.
Ebony learnt that all the King Classed crafters in Arcta had left Elcra before. Most of them had a family clan living in their ancestral home and evolving to King grants them a visit. Most would be advised to come back to Elcra or some other world with a Frost Elven village. However, there were still many who would choose not to come back.
The environment back at their ancestral home did not sound welcoming. Kings who weren¡¯t combatants and didn¡¯t have the right skill set or Physique would just be in constant pain. The elders here were all confident of reaching the ranks of an Emperor one day and safely living in their ancestral home.
However, they called themselves average folks other than the Death Tailor who had a relatively unique skill set for a Frost Elf. Their ambitions were just to live to a ripe old age of 3800 as an average Emperor, perhaps up to 4000 if they were lucky. They weren''t anywhere close to that age but their lifespans as Kings wasn¡¯t that long either.
Opportunity came with danger. If they had remained at their ancestral home and survived they would¡¯ve long been Emperors right now.
From what Ebony could tell Kings ranked individuals didn¡¯t have a high status amongst the Elves. Other than the environment, it seemed like the Frost Elf race was under constant threat of something. However, right here, every single one of them was pretty much the best the continent of Elva could offer.
As terrible of a chess player as he believed himself to be, his powers of calculation were in every sense of the word, inhuman. As long as he told himself to put some thought into his moves, victory against most villagers was guaranteed.
¡°Scarlet, Ebony. Come out.¡±
He placed the knight down before looking out towards the call.¡®Vent¡¯s voice. Sounds serious.¡¯
¡°The Matriarch is aware of who those people are. Apologies but we need you two out of the village.¡± Vent was a rare, lean but muscular elf. His voice was hoarse, likely thanks to an old injury as he had a scar on his neck.
Ebony didn¡¯t sense any hostility, the elf was just stating something that was bound to happen.
¡°Scarlet¡¯s in the shower, can it wait till she¡¯s down?¡± They were just back from morning conditioning.
Vent nodded, ¡°Koawe will be leaving with us. I¡¯ll escort you to Tidal. Stay within or close to the city. Try not to leave the city walls. Those people won¡¯t go near Tidal.¡±
¡°Who are they.¡±
Vent put his fingers under his chin in contemplation.
¡°Debtors. Outside of Elcra, mana slaves are commonly termed as batteries. You are¡rare enough to be considered a myth. There are creatures and other races that generate more mana than us elves. Many plants and vegetation are above us in this aspect but none can rival a mana being. You are more human than mana, so it shouldn¡¯t matter but most batteries remain as a Master or at best, a Grandmaster. Yet, you¡¯re advancing like no tomorrow. They know that, so they let you be. You evolving proved their point. However, I heard their skills don¡¯t work well on you, hence they will try even harder to take you right now while they still have the ability to.¡±
¡°What about plants and vegetation? Can¡¯t they run a mana farm, an actual farm.¡±
¡°Growth conditions are practically impossible. If they manage to find or buy a few seeds of those types, they would grow it up to Uncommon or Rare quality on Elva at best unless these debtors are a generation of specialised planters. Cycle and most importantly harvest. Plants don¡¯t generate mana all day round and they mostly follow a growth cycle. Harvesting mana from plants is far more difficult and inefficient.¡±
Ebony thought about how the Amur Maple Trees were the same. They were heavily dependent on ambient mana conditions. The mana they produced was also very specific. The properties weren¡¯t exactly mana that could fit inside a mana ore or be used by someone else.
¡°They can hide from your senses, surely they can enter Tidal as they wish.¡±
¡°The Empire is under Oplot¡¯s protection. They wouldn¡¯t dare.¡±
¡°The Emperor in name, is he that impressive.¡±
¡°He is but people fear who¡¯s behind him more so. Hence, despite being a good planet for growth as an Ancient Worldcore we aren¡¯t invaded and overtaken. For debtors like them, they wouldn¡¯t even show their tails in the Capital city no matter what happens. Some visitors in Tidal may recognize them.¡±
¡°I see.¡± Ebony liked talking or rather, listening to high-level people talk. There was just a flood of information to gain.
He rarely got the chance to interact with Vent but it seemed like the man was less stern and reticent than he assumed.
In any case, Ning Xin seemed to have heard Vent¡¯s voice while he explained things over a chess game and came down prepared to leave.
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¡°Come on, why haven¡¯t you packed up?¡± Fully geared, she tilted her head at his unprepared self.
¡°Hold on, let me talk to Roya.¡± He stood and prepared himself.
It felt surprisingly hard to say a few words of farewell. However, Roya didn¡¯t get all feisty or moody. It had been over a week and she calmed down enough.
¡°Take care of each other. When you come back, we can build your house together.¡±
Ebony¡¯s natural smile came up again. He considered the slight raising of his lips a smile and recognised his facial expressions. Ning Xin gave Roya a hug and so did he. It felt like she gave them her blessings in some manner.
Packing up didn¡¯t even take a minute since he had always been ready to leave at any moment. All he had to do was take his bag and myriad bracelet. Changing into his gear and choosing clothes took a longer time.
Clovis gave him a goodbye Tet and helped Kiva practise her greetings while he was at it. Halvis raised his head from his garden and waved them off.
¡°Oh well. It looks like even if we tried not to rush, we would be rushed either way.¡± Ebony joked.
Both of them tried their best not to give a date to end their vacation. But even when they didn¡¯t dive back into the hubbub of training, training opportunities were coming to them.
¡°Koawe, you¡¯re better now.¡± He tetted the curse mage who walked normally and had a better complexion.
¡°Old Hag¡¯s either dead or managed to remove my curse somehow.¡±
Ebony took that as a confirmation that once a curse mage¡¯s curse was lifted, the debilitating effects on the caster were removed immediately. The curse mage had been bedridden just yesterday but he was walking fine right now.
¡®The war with the Trolls sure is taking a long time. Wait, they usually take 5 to 10 years so I guess it''s going faster than usual. If it¡¯s taking so long I guess the main battle in the First Tide didn¡¯t become a supremacy duel.¡¯
Arti was coming along but she wasn¡¯t their ride. Vent¡¯s pet Orcas were their ride.
The Chilblain Orcas could manipulate their body size proportionally unlike Trolls who just added mostly muscle and bone mass. What¡¯s interesting was that it didn¡¯t take them any mana. It appeared like their species¡¯ ability.
They inflated themselves with air to expand and he didn¡¯t know what their actual size was.
¡°Hey!¡± The Orca that Ning Xin climbed on flipped on its back and shook its tail after she fell.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Vent patted his partner.
The Orcas weren¡¯t tamed monsters, they were just following Vent on their own free will. He wasn¡¯t able to get the Orca to cooperate. Ning Xin would have to ride on Arti who was more than happy to take her but Vent disagreed. Arti was too slow for his liking.
¡°Here, your favourite seal jerky.¡± Vent pulled out a dark red dried meat to coddle the Orca but it harrumphed and pushed the hunter''s hand away with its smooth beak. It had already deflated into the size of a wolf.
¡°Are they gluttonous?¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°Very, I didn¡¯t think they would deny their favourite snack. Their dislike of your aura is stronger than I imagined.¡± Vent explained without any sort of discrimination.
¡°Give me ten minutes. There should be some seal meat in the fridge.¡± She ran back into the Thoya¡¯s.
¡°You¡¯re back!¡± Kiva shouted from within.
Near the ten-minute mark, the Orcas were swimming outside the door in distress. They knew not to destroy anything in the village.
It was a buttery seal steak with some of Hoarfrost Glade¡¯s wild vegetables and herbs from the Lasil¡¯s.
They saw her and swam back to Vent¡¯s side, using the hunter as a shield.
She was making use of their gluttony. As a fellow foodie herself, she had already pre-sliced the steak and used the fork to poke a fat, juicy slice. Ever so slowly, she inched the steak towards her mouth.
The Orcas already reacted and rubbed themselves against Vent¡¯s shoulders and calves. The one that denied Ning Xin a ride seemed to react the most violently and bit onto Vent¡¯s sleeves.
Pzz!
A burst of juices echoed in their perceptive ears.
¡°Mmm!¡±
To the Orcas, she was chewing obnoxiously loud.
The disobedient Orca swam to her before Ebony noticed a dangerous change in Vent¡¯s aura. It passed in a fraction of a second but he caught it. Ning Xin was too focused on her steak to notice, perhaps she was out of range.
He wasn¡¯t the only one who sensed it, the gluttonous Orca slowed down right in front of the goading chef. It seemed like Vent threatened it to be gentle without saying a word.
It made pitiful cries while swimming around the steak. Ning Xin circled with it and protected her steak while eating it slice after slice.
¡°Let me ride you and you can have it.¡±
The Orca hesitated.
Another slice entered her belly.
¡°More for me.¡±
The Orca swam around her faster but didn¡¯t touch her, reminded of Vent¡¯s warning.
Another slice disappeared, leaving half a steak.
It gave in and leapt for the plate.
The plate just added crunch to the steak. Its joyful cries echoed through the village.
It was a short delay that none of them were bothered by. The Orca was slightly reluctant but it gave them a ride. To appease it further, he sat with her. They seemed to love his aura after all. They expanded to the size of a small truck within a moment.
They got Christy¡¯s help to lower the illusion without exposing the village.
¡°Leisure speed.¡± Vent ordered.
Koawe bid his family and partner, Arti goodbye before the Orcas took flight.
The Orcas had smooth skin, they almost slipped off its back but he froze his butt and caught Ning Xin from sliding off. It tested their patience by turning loops in the air. The centrifugal force it was producing was enough to force them to hold on to dear life.
¡®I have to use enhancement magic just to hang on to our ride. How pathetic.¡¯ Ebony called upon his mana and surrounded their naughty ride with liquid mana.
It gained excitement for a split second before settling down and chasing Koawe and Vent.
¡°Xin, you can shift forward now.¡± He told the person in the front seat of the Orca Express.
¡°This is fine. It¡¯s easier for you to hold me if this girl gets riled up again.¡± She remained in the same position with her back planted on him.
¡°You¡¯re a bit close.¡±
¡°What¡¯s wrong with that?¡±
¡°Nothing.¡± Safety was more important so he agreed to her suggestion without any further thoughts.
Their decision proved to be right.
The Orca they rode was still the rowdiest one. While Koawe and Vent¡¯s ride were swimming in the air in a path as straight as they could, their ride was swimming left to right and up to down. As wave-like as it could,
The bumpy ride lasted all the way till a massive blot on the land flew into sight.
They took slightly longer than if Kong Jing were to transport them. But they usually took breaks when the space mage transported them so it was still a faster journey.
Despite having a stronger body than Koawe, they had back and leg aches by the time they alighted. The Orca who carried them rubbed against him before nudging Ning Xin once as if to acknowledge that she wasn¡¯t so bad. It was just its personality.
¡°Good girl.¡± Ning Xin patted it. She received the Orca¡¯s affection as it accepted the touch and rubbed itself against her hand.
¡°Hmm? I thought you wouldn¡¯t like her.¡±
¡°What are you saying? She¡¯s such a good girl.¡± The Orca deflated and got under her arm.
¡°Huh? What happened? The power of food?¡± He truly didn¡¯t understand the sharp shift in both of their relations.
¡°Here¡¯s some of my personal snacks. This one¡¯s sweet. This one¡¯s sour and this one¡¯s gonna be your favourite.¡±
She unlatched a pouch of candies, dried fruits and her creation from under her mantle. She created something similar to the Souper Bread that was a rock-hard chuck until it absorbed soup or water. It was a meat and biscuit variant, sort of like a mix of biscuits and jerky that rehydrates in saliva. It couldn¡¯t be kept long if it wasn¡¯t in a good preservation box but the Orca would probably finish the small pouch in a day.
It stole the pouch and flew back to its group of three.
¡®Is it a child of the other two? Can¡¯t tell, but it does act less mature.¡¯ He could see slight differences from animal to animal but the Orcas could change their size and features which made it hard to tell.
¡°I won¡¯t be entering. I¡¯ll wait for you out here Koawe. You kids remember to stay within the walls, or don¡¯t get too far away.¡± Vent caressed the Orcas with pats but only gave snacks to the two good rides.
Their ride wasn¡¯t even jealous as it manipulated ice to pull out a candy. She straightened and swam upwards in joy.
¡°Are the dungeons fine?¡± He questioned. He heard the Quest Hall and underground training fields here were the best but a dungeon would put him more at ease.
¡°Should be fine, but try not to enter or stay there long. We don¡¯t know how desperate they are or how juicy you are to them.¡± Vent hurried them to enter the huge gates. There were so many gates they just took the closest west gate.
Chapter 271: Secret Agent?
¡°What are you here for Koawe?¡± Ebony asked as they lined up to enter the Capital.
Each of their auras was suppressed so well that they appeared to be just another imperial citizen to the common folk.
¡°Staying connected. Our village is quiet but we don¡¯t want to stay completely out of touch with society. It''s easy nowadays with just the Empire in charge of the whole continent. I have to check what happened to Old Hag and I¡¯m also running errands.¡± The curse mage pats his spatial bag.
He was here to trade goods and get materials for the stay home crafters.
¡°And you¡¯re leaving straight away?¡±
¡°It¡¯s hot here so I would like to go back home as soon as possible. Look, I¡¯m like some rare animal walking here.¡± Koawe gestured to the gazes he was attracting.
People could recognise that he was an Elf but not everyone knew about Frost Elves. The blue skin must not be common around these parts.
¡°Are there any villagers in Tidal? Roya and Halvis used to have a shop here didn¡¯t they?¡± Ning Xin raised her bracelet for the guard to scan her quester crystal.
¡°Not that I know of. Roya and Halvis were¡runaway kids so to speak. Thanks to them, our connection with the capital is not as weak as it used to be.¡± Koawe restrained a cough and answered. He had some other form of identification in the form of a badge or medallion.
¡°And you.¡± He reminded the person who was a fellow student of the current King.
¡°Our relationship isn''t as close as you¡¯d imagine. Anyhow, where are you planning to go? If you have an address, I can take note of it before I leave. It¡¯ll give the Thoyas a piece of mind.¡± They squeezed through the mass of people and got onto the main street.
¡°Hmm, I guess we¡¯ll spend the day finding a place of residence.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t have any plan whatsoever and he doubted Ning Xin had one.
¡°Call me, I will be in the city for a day or two. I¡¯ll take my leave here.¡± Koawe hailed a carriage. There were hundreds of them just parked and waiting for a customer.
¡°Let¡¯s go to the closest Quest Hall.¡± They bid farewell and he hailed a carriage as well.
They hadn¡¯t been through this gate and he was unfamiliar with these streets. Without knowledge of the city layout, he might as well get the local¡¯s help.
¡°What are the speed limits in Tidal again?¡± He questioned the carriage driver who had a thick moustache but was balding.
¡°Righty! The main roads range from 600 to 1000 combined Strength and Agility. Inclusive of movement skills. The inner lanes are the high speed roads and the outer lanes are low speed lanes. Smaller roads with fewer lanes have speed limits of 300 to 500 combined Strength and Agility.¡± The perky driver explained to the newcomers. ¡°Swordsman? Are the two of you freelancers?¡±
¡°You can say that.¡±
¡°Haha here for the dungeons or the arena?¡±
¡°Academy.¡±
¡°OH!? Which one? My son¡¯s attending Steelforged Academy. I know about almost all the academies here when I studied on which to enrol my son, I can give you recommendations!¡±
¡°Really? That will be helpful. What do you know about academies that teach ice or gravity magic. Magic academies in general are fine.¡±
¡°Ice and gravity? You two are mages!? Of two rare elements no less! Let me think¡¡±
¡°Are there any?¡±
¡°I know of two small academies that teach ice magic but one of them mainly teaches water magic. The other one is the only specialised ice academy in Tidal but¡it didn¡¯t have any students and closed down a few years ago. The only other Academy that has a course in ice magic is Tidal Academy. That¡¯s also the only place that has professors that use gravity magic.¡±
¡°You know a lot uncle. What about the best places for food in the district?¡± Ning Xin changed the subject slightly.
They¡¯ve been smelling food the entire trip so it was of no surprise.
¡°Sherry¡¯s Tavern! You have to try their stuffed fowl!¡±
With persuasive and detailed recommendations for dinner, they arrived at the local Quest Hall. It was a long ride that took three hours but they didn¡¯t complain. The price of the ride was pretty high for an average speed ride but the man entertained them for hours non-stop.
The Quest Hall was the size of a massive shopping mall. He had to look at the directory to find the area that dealt with city planning and land. Away from the rowdy freelancers.
¡°Hmm? Aren¡¯t you..¡± There were not many people other than clerks walking about the reception area for residential homes. Ebony couldn¡¯t help but point out when he saw a face he recalled. Back at Plainston, before he went to Hoarfrost Glades and trained with the Apex Apes. He shopped at Z&Z¡¯s weapon store.
The silver-haired female employee who had been a level 98 record keeper and level 33 metal mage was standing before them.
It had barely been two years and the lady from the countryside branch suddenly worked for the Quest Hall.
The silver-haired receptionist also recognised him and glared hard at him. Hence, he stopped himself from speaking any further.
¡®Can¡¯t say I¡¯m not curious¡oh, wow. Level 244 Final Documentarian and level 263 Great Metal Mage? And she works normally in an office for almost an entire day? Is she some kind of talent or carrying a tool that can hide from Appraise? If that¡¯s so, she¡¯s quite the master of disguise if she can change her height.¡¯
¡°How may I help you?¡± Ebony watched the glaring woman soften her expression and acted as if they¡¯d never met. Her memory was also pretty good for recognising a customer she only met once within seconds.
¡°We¡¯re looking to purchase a residential home.¡±
¡°Any preferences in location? We have houses available in every sector from north to south and even plenty in central.¡±
¡°Somewhere close to Academies but quiet.¡±
¡°...academies are usually near population-dense areas. How would you define ¡®close¡¯? Kehm. I mean, it sounds like you¡¯d prefer somewhere in the Central Capital. Take a look at these.¡± The silver-haired woman complained before fumbling through her documents.
¡®Wow, high tech.¡¯ Ebony was brought to a large board. It had short videos playing to showcase a certain street. When the receptionist tapped on one of the houses, it would zoom in and let them see the internals. It was common for houses to be filled with furniture but he didn¡¯t like that.
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That filtered out a lot of houses.
Tidal¡¯s city walls were square in shape. Split into 4 quadrants with a second square in the centre. The prices of everything within the central square were a lot higher. That was because the second square was a second layer of defence. As if the first would ever fall.
¡°Buying the land would give you the property on it as well. That costs 6 purples and 8000 blues.¡± For a land the size of a football field, the price didn¡¯t seem that high to him.
¡°Can we exchange purples here?¡± He might be rich in terms of Blues but he didn¡¯t have a single purple.
¡°You can look for the real-time currency prices downstairs. For a Grandmaster, you have an annual quota of 1 purple. If I remember correctly, it was 331 filled blues for an empty purple.¡±
¡°That¡¯s quite an inflated value. Annual quota?¡± Ebony had to reevaluate the value of an Epic quality mana ore.
¡°There aren¡¯t many Purple mana ore mines. Purples are non-negotiable for purchasing land in the central sector so¡if you don¡¯t have it you can consider renting.¡± She didn¡¯t explain much but it was obvious that the Empire either limited the amount of power or wealth that people could obtain or they were limited by the amount of purples they had.
He could imagine mad scientists like Mark just putting a Purple into a runic circle or an enchantment and just blowing a building down.
¡°I¡¯ll go check some quests out.¡± Ning Xin tapped his shoulders and left. He was already aware of her preferences for a house so he didn¡¯t need her to be present.
¡®Purples are not easy to come by. I don¡¯t even have one. So they only want people capable enough to get themselves purples to buy property in central. That¡¯s quite smart. If they follow the quota, it means a Grandmaster would have to work or remain in Tidal for a few years before they could buy a house. Unless they take quests that give out purples as a reward.¡¯
Ebony was looking at houses near the inner city wall and the prices rose significantly the closer they got to the palace. A certain radius from the Royal family and noble houses were not for sale. As expected, they were all bought out.
There were many noble houses that weren¡¯t in the central parts of Tidal. Each sector had at least one ducal family in charge.
The more the silver-haired receptionist spoke, the more convinced Ebony was that she was some kind of spy. And oh was he interested in her story. She memorised the political scene in the Empire so well she could recite it backwards.
The area where Ebony was temporarily kidnapped? The noble family in charge there was known to be unreasonable. Since they had someone just as unreasonably strong in charge, there was little the common citizen could do.
As for what the King did, Ebony already knew that the formal punishments and actions he could take were limited.
¡°So, how long have you been following me?¡± The receptionist changed her tone and whispered.
¡®She can direct her voice so that only I can hear her, and her lips aren¡¯t moving the way they should. More and more suspicious. I feel like I¡¯m in some drama. Cool.¡¯
¡°Coincidence. I don¡¯t even know you.¡±
¡°The world¡¯s so big, I just moved over a week ago and now you¡¯re here. You expect me to believe it¡¯s a coincidence. Who sent you? I¡¯m doing my job.¡±
¡°This is a misunderstanding. Oh, that house we¡¯ve picked out. I¡¯ll rent it for a month, I can purchase it right after the renting period ends, right.¡± Ebony did not put on his communication skills and tone to make it easy for people.
That caused a massive understanding as her knees almost buckled.
¡°Be careful.¡± He caught her documents. With how tightly she was holding onto them, she also regained her footing. ¡°Why are you getting nervous.¡±
Her body trembled for no reason.
¡°I don¡¯t mean any harm, it¡¯s a coincidence. Random stranger.¡± Her grip over the documents loosened and she fell to the ground.
¡®Huh¡why did she faint? I held my mana in.¡¯
Ebony ruffled his hair in confusion when the other receptionists screamed.
¡°Is she alright. I hope it¡¯s not some underlying health condition.¡± Just after he said that and her colleagues came over to her, the silver-haired metal mage shot up and gasped.
¡°I¡¯ll not - I know my place. Yes, you can reserve the land for 200 Blues a month.¡± She straightened her uniform and reassured her colleagues that he didn¡¯t do anything untoward to her. Her tone changed back to a service staff¡¯s politeness.
¡°...This is a serious misunderstanding. I don¡¯t know you and you don¡¯t know me.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know what she misunderstood but he was sure she was reading off the wrong script.
¡°Yes, this is the first time we¡¯re meeting.¡± She pushed her fringe behind her ears and prepared the documents for rent.
¡°No one sent me after you.¡± Ebony tried to put the point across.
¡°Of course, you¡¯re here to buy property.¡± He paid the full price and signed multiple documents with a bit of his mana imbued in the ink.
¡®Oh no, she¡¯s convinced I was sent to follow her. Hmm¡she won¡¯t do anything silly right?¡¯ Ebony recalled all the mystery and spy movies he watched. His imagination was suggesting that she would do something drastic like kill herself or cause some mass incident.
Unexpectedly and completely unknown to Ebony, his Will was influencing her to do something more drastic.
¡®Why do I feel so intrigued by this? I¡¯ll imbue some Will into a model to follow her and watch some live drama.¡¯
¡°There¡¯s no quest that pays purples here.¡± Ning Xin returned with news.
He could feel her quizzical look the moment she sensed a light chill on the floor.
¡°Let¡¯s go, I rented it. We¡¯ll buy it if we like it.¡± They promptly got out and hailed another carriage. This time, they walked to the closest aerial carriage parking spot and took a flight.
¡°Why¡¯s there a ball of ice on the floor just now?¡± She couldn¡¯t keep her curiosity in check and he told her everything.
It took about twenty seconds to imbue some specific instructions and the way he wanted his Model to act so it should be sufficient for its purposes. It would stay as an invisible ball of highly condensed ice mana and roll after her. If she moved fast, it would unfold into a model and chase her with stealth as its main function. It would also stop her if she pulled off any silly moves.
¡°Like that movie we watched?¡± He said ¡®movie¡¯ so many times that she just copied him. Assassins and spies were common in this world¡¯s action movies. One of their most recent watches was an assassin who killed herself because her identity was found out when she sneaked into a noble house as a maid. It was probably why he had such thoughts now.
¡°Yes, just like that. Doesn¡¯t she sound suspicious.¡±
¡°You have to tell me if something happens. It sounds fun to watch.¡±
¡°...I hope you¡¯re not referring to the part where she kills herself.¡±
¡°Of course not!¡±
Taking a flight was the fastest mode of travel and they reached the house and land they rented in another 4 hours. It was much further from the edges of the city to the central sector compared to moving from the west gate to the closest Quest Hall.
Despite having a second wall, there were no security checks. People could enter and leave as they pleased as the gates were wide open. The guards here just stood there and ignored all entry and exits.
It was a small manor, closer to a cottage in size but a manor in style. Built out of stone, it had two floors. A master bedroom, two bedrooms and two guest rooms that were half the size.
Of course, a large kitchen with a stone oven was included. There was a stove that didn¡¯t have any magical appliances, just a hole for firewood. His chef preferred this as many types of wood gave the food a better flavour.
There was also a reasonably sized study for him. There were built-in stone bookshelves that he kinda liked. The dining room was too large for two people but a necessary choice if he was planning to get a table large enough for their meals. It was one of the reasons he was looking at houses of this size range.
A bathroom, laundry room, living room, attic, balconies and even a basement were all in place.
The basement wouldn¡¯t fly as a training ground but it would do as a storage space.
Their new house was located not too deeply in the central sector. Although the second set of walls was out of sight due to how big the capital was, they were still considered at the edges of the western part of the central region. He was just advised that residences near the walls would still face a lot of noise and traffic. Seeing how they entered so easily, he could see that they made a good choice picking out something more pricey.
¡®I need to exchange some empty mana ores. Hmm, how much did I have in my storage chest again?¡¯ Ebony did not keep count of the money he had. He¡¯d been using the seemingly endless supply for years since the time he just met Kong Jing.
The house was just as advertised, it was even cleaned recently but both of them gave the whole house a wipe down. It didn¡¯t have any furniture so wiping the house down was simple with both of them at work.
Chapter 272: Selling Bones
He was about to unpack their personal belongings in the trailer but got a suggestion to buy new furniture instead. The trailer had to be fully furnished for any time they wanted to move out so it was not a bad suggestion.
To avoid stores closing, they flew about instead of getting a carriage.
Ebony liked the sizable field outside their house, the land might be rented but he thought it would be fine to grow something and cultivate a garden. The soil looked amazing for plant growth too.
¡°Let¡¯s sell the mammoth bones and fur and free up bag space. It¡¯s heavy.¡± Ning Xin shifted her bag without visible discomfort.
He was carrying the bulk of it and a lot was left with Gen since the mammoth was the literal size of a mountain but the bones were extremely heavy. Thanks to the increased capacity of their bags without an increase in weight reduction, they had been lugging around a portion of a mountain. Less than a single percent by mass maybe.
¡°Not going to change into a dress.¡± Ebony tilted his head as the question mark.
¡°Are you crazy, can¡¯t you sense the empty hostility since we passed the walls? We¡¯re being watched.¡±
¡°I know, they¡¯re not watching us in particular. But you¡¯re right, we should be careful here.¡± Ebony could feel the eyes on them when they entered the central walls but it passed by quickly as the eyes were scanning just about everyone.
To be fair, his ¡®eyes¡¯ were also on many people. He had his senses spread out so it was highly likely that many perceptive individuals could sense the miniscule hint of mana that he spread out over a kilometre wide.
Ebony didn¡¯t need Appraise to tell that out of ten people, barely 1 or 2 were Masters and the rest were Grandmasters. Of course, the ratio was higher towards the Masters back when he was outside the second set of walls.
However, he wasn¡¯t so worried. Out of the ten Grandmasters he sensed, zero had an aura that concerned him. A lot was not too dissimilar to Masters. It was thanks to his increased perception of purity of mana. The Grandmasters had purer mana, now that he focused on feeling that out he knew why it was so obvious as to what ranks a person was.
Even Identify or any other tier one version could tell a person¡¯s general rank and it was likely thanks to the purity of essence.
However, the density and capacity were a completely different issue. A lot of the weak auras were from crafters, blacksmiths and support classes. There were plenty of differences between the essence of a fighter and a non-fighter but it was usually too weak to tell. He felt like he could soon Appraise someone without looking at them but through his mana sense alone. For people stronger than an average Grandmaster anyway.
Once again, they were on their way to visit a Quest Hall.
Ebony estimated the size of the central sector of Tidal to be at least five times larger than the continent of Asia. When he looked at it that way, it was no wonder the population density was pretty small compared. The residential areas were too large for each individual family compared to Earth¡¯s.
It was convenient though, residential areas were quieter this way and it made finding a suitable house easier. Moving to places with shops was inconvenient since carriages didn¡¯t exactly park outside each house. Transport wasn¡¯t a big issue for most people capable of living here.
¡°hmm¡I¡¯m starting to get annoyed.¡± Ebony said when they were sensing the thousandth wash of mana sense or other perception skill when they were nearing the Quest Hall.
It was a shopping district with plenty of stores be it restaurants, blacksmiths, alchemists, herbalists, tailors or the hundreds of other specialised stalls. They decided to land and speedwalk instead of flying to get to know their local shopping district.
Now that they were here, the ratio of Master to Grandmaster turned to 9 to 1. It appeared that the concentration of high-level people changed greatly depending on where they were. But most Masters were sitting between level 280 to 300 with a large percentage of them just sitting at 300.
¡°It¡¯s because we¡¯re hiding our auras, so they used an active search to test if we¡¯re threats.¡±
¡°Alright, let¡¯s show them th-¡± Ebony prepared to let the public sense what they wanted so that he didn¡¯t have to face active skills washing over them but the masked swordswoman stepped in front of him and put a stop to his actions.
¡°Stop! You were about to cause thousands of people to faint even in their own shops and homes.¡±
¡°Come on, I¡¯m self-aware now my control isn¡¯t that bad.¡±
¡°You¡¯re self-aware but you don¡¯t know what normal is.¡±
¡°Look, one per cent should be fine. Let me change my mindset, I want them to calm down and ignore us.¡± Ebony got the gist of how his Will and mana worked together.
With a different state of mind, his mana would feel different. It could be heavy or it could be soothing. With his Profession¡¯s Fortification making his effect on individuals he recognised as allies to be beneficial.
The only problem he had was the stiffness of Will. Unlike how flexible he was with his body or spells, his Will mostly did one thing at a time. It either made all his mana aggressive or all of it was soothing. Swapping from one to another required time and a change of mental state.
As for what ¡®soothing¡¯ mana did, the effects were sketchy. Fortunately, the mana regeneration buff he could give people was quite substantial. Most people couldn¡¯t withstand his fully compressed liquid mana. For the Frost Elves, he could give them a range of 10 to 30% increase in mana regeneration speed. Just by staying within his range.
For Ning Xin, it was closer to 50%.
Ebony tested it on the Guardian Beast and her daughter, Arti and even the Orcas. They all received varying amounts of buffs.
He managed to boil the reason for the variation to race, base regeneration, the presence of a meditation skill and most importantly the gap between his and their mana¡¯s strength. It would work worse on individuals with a stronger or more efficient meditation.
The Guardian bear and the Orcas barely got a 5% increase. They were a bit unaffected by his mana so it was pretty amazing he was able to buff Kings and Emperors. The baby bear got a minuscule buff because it barely regenerated any mana to begin with.
Ning Xin was practically on par with him in level but it was thanks to her pathetically low Wisdom and comparatively weak Meditation that she got a stronger buff in terms of percentage.
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Now it brought his ¡®Compelling Will¡¯ into question. He strongly believed it was thanks to it that they got such a substantial buff. It was instinctual, like when a skill activates.
Despite his confidence, multiple people walking on the street wobbled on their feet.
¡®They look drunk.¡¯
¡°One per cent of your compressed mana huh, you should¡¯ve used one per cent of your base mana.¡± She pointed out that he could compress his base mana to roughly 65 to 66 times its natural density just based on his skill.
With his fortifications taken into account, he was wondering when he could solidify mana by himself without Kong Jing¡¯s industrial mana compressor. A compressibility increase of 300% made it 4 times more compressible. Unlike his original assumptions, it just made it easier to compress and level the skill. However, his massive mathematical mistake aside, he wasn¡¯t wrong about mana density¡¯s fortification.
¡°It¡¯s okay, look.¡± He turned and gestured, ¡°They¡¯re all standing, people in Tidal are more accustomed to mana. The mana density and even purity here is a lot higher than Plainston.¡±
¡°At least everyone within my range stopped probing us.¡±
¡°I guess.¡± They left the bustling shopping district and arrived at the large and lavishly decorated Quest Hall.
¡°The set-up¡¯s the same everywhere, convenient,¡± Ebony noted the same interior design for every single Quest Hall he entered. Whenever they expanded, it expanded proportionally so it was easy to find where he could toss large amounts of raw materials and ingredients for bulk sale.
The Quest Hall was not the best place to sell things but they didn¡¯t care for profit and they were the most convenient. As long as the materials were good, they could sell it even if there was no immediate demand.
As usual, the people in charge of monster materials were all men. Bushy beard and thick head of hair or bald, they usually had the same look as if it was a uniform. It was a lucky find to spot four or five lanky dudes instead of muscular ones this time.
¡°Nature of material?¡± Ebony picked the oldest employee¡¯s line, they usually spoke the least and cut straight to business.
¡°Bones. Slightly ice elemental, slightly earth. I might be wrong about the earth.¡±
¡°Volume.¡±
¡°The mammoth¡¯s larger than this building, I think I can fill three of the rooms we¡¯re in with what we have brought.¡±
Unperturbed, the well-built white-haired employee continued asking questions. ¡°Bring out a smaller sample I can analyse.¡±
Ebony slipped his bag out from under his robe and fumbled for the smallest piece. He dragged it out of his bag and it expanded.
He continued to pull on it but stepped back as he pulled the bone out. From the counter to the entrance, he managed to pull out half of the bone that was three times thicker than his waist. The tip of the bone left the weight reduction range but he was a gravity mage so it didn¡¯t strain his unenhanced body.
¡°This looks comical. Should I continue walking out.¡±
¡°This is enough,¡± The experienced employee didn¡¯t even look at him and was using an enchanted monocle to appraise the tip of the bone right above his desk.
Everyone else was either freaked out or annoyed at the giant lug in the room.
¡°This is rare stuff. Did it come from Hoarfrost Glade? Berg Mammoths, a pack migrating species. This is from a younger Grandmaster. Three of this room huh, come with me I¡¯ll bring you to a warehouse you can unload.¡± He stood up from his seat with slight excitement.
Ebony¡¯s brows raised.
¡°Are all employees so well-read?¡±
¡°Berg Mammoth, last recorded hunt, 231 years ago by Duke Giles. We still have armours made out of it that are circulating. This came at a good time. Hey boy, send a letter to the Count and ask for a representative to be sent to warehouse 4.¡± The old man¡¯s worn-out aura woke up and he bellowed for one of his colleagues.
Ebony put the name in mind. He wanted to ask more about how the man hunted the Berg Mammoth or if the man was still alive but they were quickly ushered onto a six-legged horse¡¯s carriage. The Empire¡¯s flag and crest decorated the carriage which gave them a clear path on the roads.
¡°Where¡¯s the rest of the body, didn¡¯t manage to harvest it?¡±
¡°We couldn¡¯t carry that many bones. We¡¯re keeping the meat.¡±
¡°Tusks?¡±
¡°We have them.¡±
¡°Great. That¡¯s hundreds of thousands of bone weapons you¡¯re carrying. How long ago, is the rest of the body still sitting in the wild?¡±
¡°If you¡¯re thinking of sending people to get it, forget it. There¡¯s nothing left.¡±
¡°Should¡¯ve expected that from the Glades.¡±
¡°Uncle, you seem to know a lot.¡± Ning Xin was more polite to elders than you''d expect.
¡°Used to be a freelancer, I¡¯ve explored dungeons across the continent including two from the Glades.¡±
¡°Have you seen a Berg Mammoth?¡±
¡°From a distance, I assumed they were just mountains till my leader got us out of the Glades on the double.¡±
¡°You must be strong.¡±
¡°Nah, I was the party¡¯s first aider and appraiser. Mostly took care of logistics. Those muscle heads don¡¯t know a treasure when they see one. The good''ol days.¡±
¡°If it''s not too rude, how long ago was that.¡± Ebony massaged his throat, it felt a little odd to change back.
¡°Hmm, close to 3 centuries. I think. Ah, I¡¯ve gotten old.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not going to try to evolve? You¡¯re level 480, higher than anyone I¡¯ve seen today. By about a hundred levels.¡±
¡°Kid, a century ago I was level 475. I¡¯m squeezed dry, I¡¯ve reached my limit. Why do you think I¡¯m living my retired life? I¡¯d say I did a good job surpassing my parents'' level by over a hundred.¡±
¡°Is it that hard to level.¡±
¡°...You¡¯re grandmasters. New, I presume.¡±
¡°Fresh, it¡¯s been less than a month for me and a little longer for her.¡±
¡°How young are you kids?¡±
¡°Let me count,¡± Ebony stopped for a split second, his age wasn¡¯t something he kept in mind while he trained. ¡°I turned 24 years old exactly 4 months ago.¡±
''I''m already 24? So I''ve been on Elcra for over 7 Elcrian years. It certainly doesn''t feel like it. Doesn''t this mean I''m almost 30 Earth years old?''
¡°Damn it all. You didn¡¯t harm your foundations did¡¯ya. Should¡¯ve gotten the best, I didn¡¯t know about a two-times skill level requirement till I was a Master. A damn shame, they better be teaching to kids these days.¡±
¡°We¡¯re fine in that regard.¡±
¡°Wait, did you hunt this Berg Mammoth?¡±
¡°With some luck.¡± Ebony replied with the truth, he might not be able to replicate it even though he evolved. Unless it was a two-on-one again.
¡°What about its pack? How¡¯d you do it? You didn¡¯t just find a dead one?¡±
¡°I¡¯m a tasty bait.¡±
¡°Do you have some of its meat? Just a small amount for a feast for ten is fine, I¡¯ll buy it off you.¡±
¡°Sure. But it''s not very fresh. I preserved it well but it''s been almost two years since we hunted it.¡±
¡°That¡¯s still mighty fresh! Heheh, now I can show off to my family. We¡¯re here.¡± The old man leapt out of the carriage on a light foot. Ebony could tell that the old man knew how to use a movement skill. A pretty good one at that.
¡®His footwork¡¯s interesting.¡¯ He focused on how the old man walked. The old employee bellowed for his men to come over.
Just taking out the bones from their bags and placing them in the huge warehouse already took them an hour. It would take a long time to weigh their materials and they weren¡¯t about to waste their time. However, they were stopped by the old employee who withheld their receipt.
He brought over a younger man who had bright blond hair with a small scar on the left of his forehead.
The three fighters eyed and appraised each other for half a second before sending out their greetings and tapping their fingertips.
Chapter 273: School Hunt
Ebony surprised the blond man by raising the hand that treated himself as the weaker person as the blond man did the same.
Ebony already got used to the awkward greeting of touching fingertips but it was rare for someone at a higher level to raise the hand that a junior should use.
¡°I¡¯m Gregory from the Pallard House. The Empire is willing to pay a generous sum to purchase this set of materials in bulk.¡° Gregory was a Count¡¯s representative. Count Pallard acted as the district¡¯s in charge and the person that was synonymous to the manager of the Quest Hall they left moments ago.
These ¡®districts¡¯ used to be fiefs but it changed to being in charge of the Quest Hall for the area. To Ebony, it was the same difference. In any case, the Empire was selling land and property without much care. With some money, being a landowner wasn¡¯t too hard. Having fiefs didn¡¯t count for much if some random store owner down the street legally owns the land.
¡°The Empire. Not the Pallard House?¡± Ebony assumed the person in charge would take what good materials they could find. It didn¡¯t have to be said that he knew the value of bones that could withstand a mountain of mass.
¡°We don¡¯t have that kind of wealth, no. Are the two of you freelancers? I see no reason to sell this to the Quest Hall if you weren¡¯t.¡±
¡°You can say that. I¡¯m Ebony.¡±
¡°Scarlet.¡±
¡°Are you Rimestone and¡Red Reaper from Fifth Tide? Hmm, did I remember wrongly?¡± The blond man might not be wearing armour and was dressed in a neat high-quality cloth textile that brought out a sharp and bright look but it only showed off his well-trained body. First impressions was that Gregory was a relatively strong warrior.
¡°We prefer to go by our names but that should be us. How do you know us?¡± Ebony could almost see the visible confusion on the blond man¡¯s face. There wasn¡¯t much ¡®red¡¯ on the Red Reaper at the moment. Even her mantle was closer to black than red now.
¡°One of my uncles mentioned the two of you. Jacob Pallard?¡±
¡°? Never heard of a Jacob. Or a Pallard as a matter of fact.¡± Ebony cocked his head at the name.
Gregory blinked twice, ¡°Radiance mage?¡±
¡°Oh was his name Jacob? He didn¡¯t act like the other nobles in the army. Or introduce himself as one.¡± He had a stronger impression as he only knew one radiance mage. The Troll and battlefield-melting mage with a cannon-sized magnifying glass was quite a sight to behold. In terms of artillery prowess, they probably haven¡¯t surpassed Jacob.
¡°Ahahaha! That sounds quite like him. The Pallard family doesn¡¯t really deal with politics and Uncle Jacob actively dodges any socialising.¡±
¡°Enough introductions, the evaluation is almost done.¡± The old employee quipped.
¡°I haven¡¯t gotten your name,¡± Ebony questioned and extended his greetings to the old man. Ning Xin had always been extra polite to the elderly despite her prickly nature towards most strangers and also offered her right hand. Unlike her assertion of dominance with Gregory when she raised her left without hesitation.
¡°Lang¡¯s fine. You¡¯re new here?¡±
¡°Just moved into Tidal earlier today.¡± Ebony tried his best to start conversations but it¡¯s always difficult when the other party doesn¡¯t follow up.
Oddly, without Everlasting Tranquillity, he seemed to care even less about other people¡¯s business. He cared less about asking about things that didn¡¯t matter to him. Lang¡¯s stories about his past were interesting but Ebony just nodded through the story.
After two more sets of appraisals and a brief meeting among the Appraisers, they gave him a rough price range by weight. He mentally converted it to roughly 6 Blues per kilogram but ribs, legs, tusks and more had different prices. The tusks were worth far more.
In terms of how good the material was, it was not the best thing around. The ice and earth elemental mana in the bones increased its value but the use for staves and wands dropped because the demand for staves that strengthened ice magic was very low. It means that the mammoth''s bones were more limited to armour. They could be made into other weapons that carried a chill but fewer blacksmiths would be able to handle or bring out the best of the material.
¡®If it''s by weight, this is so much cheaper than the tungsten rime that I bought to upgrade my old sword.¡¯
6 Blues was like an astronomical figure for some bones in his opinion. Just the extremely small portion of mammoth bones they transported could buy them a few more houses if Purples weren¡¯t a must.
¡°Weighing them would take two days.¡± Lang¡¯s colleague whispered to him. The employee might not understand just how good a combatant¡¯s sense of hearing was.
¡°I don¡¯t see why you have to be here Gregory.¡± Ning Xin got to the point.
¡°Haha, I¡¯m going to have to buy off and transport these immediately. Is the price satisfactory?¡±
¡°Mmm, I have a request. Trade them in for Purples.¡± Ebony took the opportunity while he could. Even if their equipment and staff had limitations, he had a rough gauge that they brought around.
He made it sound like he brought a lot of bones but that simply wasn¡¯t true. The bones were just large and took up a lot of space. There were less than a thousand odd pieces that they carried in their bags. Varying in sight and shape, they probably weighed a few thousand tons at best. If it wasn¡¯t for Kong Jing¡¯s impressive bag, there was no chance they would have packed up as much as they did.
Mountains were large and rocks were dense. Even a mountain on Earth was measured in the billions to trillions of metric tons. That was using the low-density rocks and earth found on Earth. The Berg Mammoth was a creature of immense proportion that could easily step or sit on him to kill him. Heck, they could flatten a mountain.
Ebony¡¯s experience with evolution and the crystal monolith allowed him to hypothesise that the Berg Mammoths just had a physique completely poised towards strength and sheer physical size. Even if they had a strength stat of 1000, they probably still had more strength than some humans with a stat value magnitudes higher. Skills and strength multipliers were the only way to gain enough strength to be any threat to them.
¡°That¡give me a moment to make a call.¡±
He listened to Xin getting the local recommendations for restaurants, clearly looking for places with stuffed fouls after they skipped the recommendations while they were on the western side of the Capital
¡®Purples must be rarer than I imagined if the noble family in charge can¡¯t dish them out as they wish. Should have made use of Sister Jing¡¯s mana compressor more. But those can¡¯t be used for most enchanted spell circles unless it just took in ambient mana.¡¯ Ebony reevaluated the value of the industrial mana compressor.
Although it usually ran in the background, the singular mana compressor did not produce enough for the Craftswoman herself, much less share it with him. Setting it to only consume his or Ning Xin¡¯s mana was just for personalised mana ores that fit their equipment.
¡°The best I could do was ten.¡±
¡°That¡¯s sufficient.¡±
They returned to the Quest Hall together. He just took the Purples as prepayment but didn¡¯t buy the house yet. It was a different Quest Hall but they shared information extremely quickly. Even so, they were new to the Capital and might find a more suitable place. He received some form or receipt that was signed by Gregory and his mana-filled ink. Ebony had one of those pens that could inject one¡¯s mana into the ink as well.
They would get the rest of the pay when they finished calculating the total mass of bones he sold. They even gave him a 10% discount on the Blue to Purple conversion. He didn¡¯t know what the rush was but Gregory was busy shipping off a portion of the bones to different parts of the city.
¡°Let¡¯s hurry and get new furniture, then dinner.¡±
¡°Mmm. We can take a walk around after to search for a better location.¡±
They had an uneventful but leisurely shopping trip and dinner. Hiding their auras as best as they could helped keep things quiet and few strangers were so free as to probe everyone they came across.
The restaurant Lang and his colleagues recommended was also one of those that were recommended in her book. It was the top 672nd restaurant according to the author and food reviewer.
¡°One of every item on the menu please.¡± They weren¡¯t able to get a private table, but the seats here all had tall backrests. Like a board that acted as a partition so it had some level of privacy. The floor was clean and the tables were wiped down to a shine.
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On the other hand, the smell wasn¡¯t pleasant. The variety of scents was mixing to form a bitter stench. It was extremely subtle but those with a good nose like most Beastmen would be able to sniff it out.
¡°Sir? We have over two hundred menu items.¡± The waitress who wore a black dress with a white apron couldn¡¯t comprehend the order.
The restaurant was three storeys tall. The kitchen seemed to be on the top floor while the first and second were dining occupancy. There were seats for hundreds and dozens of waitresses walking around. The business was successful and the menu mirrored the scale.
¡°Did he stutter?¡± Ning Xin replied.
¡®She¡¯s hangry.¡¯ Ebony noticed the waitress¡¯s predicament, the table wasn¡¯t large enough. ¡°They can come in batches.¡±
He glanced at the prices on the thick paper menu and passed a pouch for Blues over. He didn¡¯t bother looking for Greens or lower forms of currency since he knew he didn¡¯t have many of those.
Fortunately, there was a type of stuffed bird on the menu and the glutton¡¯s cravings were satisfied.
¡°Dinner was delicious wasn¡¯t it?¡± They left the surprised waitresses with hundreds of empty plates and bowls. Sadly for the restaurant, they served each batch of dishes slower than the two of them could finish it. On the bright side, the food was pretty much better than anything he ever ate.
Including her dishes.
The gluttonous one was satisfied but also peeved. Be it dishes complex in flavour or simple roast meat, every single dish had more depth of flavour. Ebony wasn¡¯t a connoisseur and didn¡¯t know how to explain taste any better.
Some of the dishes provided stamina recovery and muscle relaxation buffs. But none of it contained someone¡¯s mana.
¡°The ingredients here might just be higher in quality.¡±
¡°No. You don¡¯t have to make excuses for me, the recipes are just better.¡±
They speed-walked through the streets and found that the new house¡¯s location was already one of the quietest and less populated areas that weren¡¯t too far from the ¡®city¡¯. They didn¡¯t stray far and he mapped a small portion of it but they had enough and wanted to get the house ready.
Brand new, ready-made furniture was surprisingly easy to find. There were plenty of stores that held inventory. Likely because the Capital was getting an influx of people moving in daily. However, most people rented or bought houses that were already furnished. They didn¡¯t mind the hassle if it meant furniture that no one else used before.
The entire night was spent on interior decoration. Unfortunately, the small manor¡¯s privacy settings weren¡¯t the best. His mana could slip through gaps and sense past doors.
¡°Should we get a specialist to work on it?¡±
¡°No need. It¡¯s just the two of us here. Are you going to do anything sneaky?¡±
¡°I won¡¯t.¡±
¡°Then there¡¯s no need for additional protection.¡±
¡°True.¡±
Ebony wouldn¡¯t invade other¡¯s privacy on purpose but he imagined the option of greater hardware would put her at ease.
Late in the morning, they were finally satisfied with the placement and furnishing and left for the Quest Hall yet again. This time, for the underground training grounds. Taking a room each, they ran their Conditioning by themselves and met up six hours later.
They showered at their new home and went out for dinner again, hitting up multiple spots since breakfast was skipped. There was so much variety in the menus that he tried at least a hundred new dishes in one evening.
Only then did they spend their first night sleeping on a new bed.
???
Ebony and Ning Xin spent a week exploring their neighbourhood and visiting restaurant to restaurant.
He got the locations of the Academies in the vicinity but there was no list of Academies for him to peruse. They needed better advertisement tactics.
Today, they split up to their objectives after the six-hour morning conditioning.
Ebony found a few Academies that he was interested in and was going to apply for. As for Tidal Academy, it was more structured and only accepted student applications once a year. It required recommendations from a noble or five students currently attending the school as well.
Ning Xin was going around for market research. In a single week, they¡¯d already tried hundreds of new dishes with even greater amounts of ingredients that he had never had or seen.
They tried to contact their Royal friends but neither the Prince nor the Princess picked up. The connection cut off mid-path, so it seemed like an issue of bad signal rather than out of range.
Ebony walked onto the premises of one of his choices and could sense the lightning mana shooting across a field at the edge of his senses. After evolving, his mana sense¡¯s range has been increasing by the day. He wasn¡¯t even focusing his training in that regard.
In any case, his range was perhaps one of his weakest points compared to aged mages. It was something that required time to expand and talent had its limits.
There was no reception so he had to find a teacher or the equivalent here.
It was a relatively small Academy with less than thirty students currently in the field. Many of them were young children shorter than Clovis. It seemed like only one instructor was taking the class at the moment but there was another person on the premises. With the size of the buildings and number of classrooms, it should accommodate up to two hundred students.
¡®Oh, she noticed me. That makes things faster.¡¯ Ebony ignored the woman who sat in her office that noticed his mana spreading through the building and intruded the training field.
The instructor teaching was a young woman, a Great Lightning Mage at level 300. The students were a mix of teenagers who were Unclassed or Lightning Mages who were Journeymen.
A spark of electricity tickled him when he stepped into the training field.
¡®Lightning elemental perception skill, they cast a subtle pulse of lightning mana around them and pick up on anything that attracts lightning. Interesting but I don¡¯t really need it.¡¯
The instructor had blond hair and wore a tight-fitting scholarly robe. She looked over at his intrusion, instructed her students to carry on their practice and walked over.
¡°Greetings, I¡¯m here to apply for a course in lightning magic here.¡±
¡°I-I¡¯m not sure if I ca-¡± The woman was cut off but a flash of light and another figure stood before her protectively.
¡®That wasn¡¯t enhancement, an external lightning movement skill? Maybe Xin can learn it.¡¯ The figure¡¯s movement skill was quite the sight.
¡°Good day, Sir. My apologies, our humble academy is only taking in Journeymen and under. Although we do have a few Great Lightning Mages as students we are unable to offer anything worth your time.¡± The new figure looked very similar to the instructor. They were probably sisters or mother and daughter. It was hard to tell age when evolutions, stats and an array of factors help keep youthfulness intact.
¡°That¡¯s not true, I¡¯ve already seen two interesting spells in under a minute. I¡¯m also new to lightning magic, other than spell power, I should be no different from a new lightning mage.¡± Ebony was impressed with these people¡¯s senses, he wasn¡¯t leaking mana and he was hiding his Class with the obfuscation jewel on his bracelet.
¡°That- ¡°
¡°Why don¡¯t you introduce what courses you have outside of full-time training.¡± Ebony did not understand her reluctance, he was technically a customer.
¡°Okay. We mainly teach a full range of skills for holistic development as a functioning lightning mage. For more advanced students that know the basics of manipulation and battle, we also offer skill courses.¡± She took a deep breath before regaining her composure and releasing her defensive stance.
¡°Can I enrol for basic classes, theory-wise. I believe I know nothing about lightning magic.¡± He had a better idea of how dilute his mana had to be and tried to calm them since his mana already filled the area.
¡°Do you have lightning affinity or the lightning manipulation skill?¡± It worked but the mages¡¯ expression turned into one of alarm before calming down.
¡°Yes, and two spells. Generic, tier 1 around 150.¡± Although he determined not to share his skills information with strangers, he was applying to be a student and it was only natural to let his future teachers know of his current abilities.
¡°Two spells, may I know their names, what they do, who taught you or what spellbook you learnt it from?¡±
¡°I created them, I can show you instead.¡±
Magic is also better explained by showing rather than telling. He assured them of his control of power and cast both spells one after another. A thin trail of Lightning Tether connected him with the floor around him and Electroshock zapped one of the targets that no one was using.
His control and accuracy were obviously beyond the Unclassed or Journeymen.
¡°Second order. That makes things simpler but also more complicated.¡±
¡°I¡¯m flexible, I can unlearn should I deem it necessary. I can¡¯t unlearn multicasting but I can focus on a single task.¡± They reached the same conclusion, learning something new while already knowing a little wasn¡¯t always a good fit. Especially if the direction of training was completely different.
Ebony pulled out the interview skills he learnt in the past but it had never been exceptional.
¡°...Alright, you can sit in. Please try not to disturb or mislead the younger students. Raika, get-¡± The
¡°Ebony.¡±
¡°Get Ebony the schedule and enrol him. Sorry for the delayed introductions, Third-Order Grand Lightning Mage, third generation Head Mistress of the Piercing Tempest Academy, Laika.¡±
¡®That¡¯s how they do introductions here?¡¯
¡°Fourth-Order Ice Mage, Ebony.¡± Ebony managed to stop himself from embellishing his introductions.
¡°Pfft!¡± Raika stifled a laugh.
¡°Raika!¡±
¡°But mother, that¡¯s the first I¡¯ve heard someone make that joke with a straight face.¡±
¡°Hmm. Yes, I¡¯ve never actually called myself that before. Miss Raika, please.¡± Ebony gestures for her to lead him through the enrollment process, assuming all he needed to do was fill up some forms and make payment.
¡°We usually conduct tests for new students but you¡¯re clearly an experienced mage so we can skip that.¡± Raika witnessed his spell control and accuracy and determined his competence.
¡°Whaaat! That¡¯s unfair Miss Raika.¡± They weren¡¯t speaking in a private setting and the sounds of lightning striking wood stopped at the right moment.
¡°That¡¯s right, if there¡¯s a test I need to pass I should take it.¡± He wasn¡¯t about to use his strength to force his way into a school. He took note of the boy who cried out and nodded his head in appreciation for the reminder.
Since he already come so far, he would go through the proper channels.
¡®An academic test, I haven''t taken one in years.¡¯
Chapter 274: Arsenal of Will
Ebony followed Laika into the closest side building and an empty classroom. The training field was just right outside the window. There were barriers in place but the location was anything but safe. Perhaps it was just easier for instructors to show live demonstrations while the students remained within the room.
¡°Please wait a moment while I get the latest test papers.¡± Laika shook her head as she left the room.
¡°Hey big bro! What level are you?¡± The boy who cried for unfairness propped his head over the window sill.
Ebony found the seats and tables to be adult-sized and took a seat after carefully adjusting gravity. The instant he heard a light creak, he just ¡®sat¡¯ on his air chair. A basic isometric exercise.
¡°Three hundred.¡± He replied candidly.
¡°That¡¯s the same as Miss Raika!¡± A chubby young girl with shoulder-length hair that was raised in the air thanks to static exclaimed.
¡°Hmpm! My father¡¯s level 331.¡± The same loud boy crossed his arms.
¡°Mine¡¯s 352!¡±
¡°How old are you.¡± Ebony estimated them to be ten or twelve at best.
¡°I¡¯m turning eight in a couple of days.¡± They were unperturbed by his lack of tone.
¡°I¡¯m nine! The second eldest. How old are you big bro? You¡¯re three hundred so you must be pretty old. Are you a hundred and fifty years old like Miss Raika? Or not¡ Mother says Miss Raika¡¯s very young and not many reached three hundred at such a young age other than nobles.¡± Ebony felt like he was in another country as the children here were all yellow or blond-haired. It was usually a rare colour to spot but not in a school meant to gather them.
¡®Hundred and fifty years old is young? A human Master should have a lifespan of 350 to 400 years so, I guess she has plenty of time. No idea how close she is to evolution but¡to think she¡¯s six times older than me. How should I respond¡¡¯
¡°Don¡¯t be disrespectful!¡± Raika did a hand chop on the girl¡¯s head, ¡°Mr Ebony here is a Grandmaster unlike me.¡±
¡°Were you serious when you said you were a Fourth-Order Mage? I thought there were only three humans that were Fourth-Order Mages, old fogeys at that. The rest are Elves.¡±
Ebony conjured a palm-sized figurine of himself on the window sill and had it poke the boy who leaned his sweaty arms on it.
¡°Cold!¡±
¡°You really are an ice mage!¡±
He conjured another figurine to spar with the ice toothpicks in their arms. Gradually, he filled a few desks with mini squads of tiny Models fighting each other. Some used unarmed combat, others'' swordsmen, even archers and mages were present.
The magic tricks entertained the children and had them in cheers but Raika¡¯s jaw dropped at the display. The Journeymen teenagers were too busy target practising to watch the performance.
Young human children hadn¡¯t had their mana pools fully developed and they had quite a limited practice duration. Ebony lacked that, hence his first few skills took an unreasonable amount of mana compared to mages with proper training from childhood.
The same could be said for warriors with enhancement spells. They were forced to refine their skills to use as little mana as possible to extend the duration they could remain at peak state.
¡°Are you controlling all of them at the same time? How? Every individual figure is making drastically different moves¡¡±
Laika re-entered the room with a stack of papers and saw the performance. Or maybe the frozen little toothpicks, arrows and splotches of ice.
Ebony waved the models away and they dispersed into frozen plum flowers out the window for the children to catch. Not a single inch of ice remained on the wooden desks.
¡°Kids. Raika. It¡¯s lesson time isn¡¯t it?¡±
¡°Run!¡±
The children dashed back to the field screaming that the monster headmistress was coming after them.
Laika put her hands on her hips and shook her head. She seemed content.
¡°See you around.¡± Raika held a flower in her palms and jogged after her students.
¡°This is the usual test, there¡¯s also a practical test but I¡¯ve already seen your lightning spells and manipulation and I won¡¯t waste a senior mage¡¯s time with that.¡±
¡°I¡¯m no senior, I''m not even thirty.¡±
Laika chuckled, ¡°You have an hour.¡± She placed the test papers down in front of him. Finding herself a seat, she stared outside.
¡®Let¡¯s see what kind of questions schools here ask.¡¯
¡®What? They ask such advanced questions? I underestimated their education levels.¡¯ Ebony got into his groove and tried his best to answer the questions. Some were basics of magic like what elements were there and the common strengths and weaknesses of each element. Math questions about mana usage and recovery times didn¡¯t even take a second for him. Then it moved on to more lightning-focused questions.
Ebony was particularly stumped by the question, ¡®Is the speed of conjured lightning the same as natural lightning?¡¯
He believed the answer to be a simple no. Unless the caster was particularly strong or adept with it. However, he didn¡¯t even know what the speed of natural lightning was in this world.
Time was tight, he had to be succinct with some answers. His speed writing helped a lot. Time breezed by.
¡°A simple answer like mana is an energy that mages use to manipulate the natural elements would have sufficed. Senior.¡± Laika shook her head at the three-page answer he wrote.
¡°Is that so.¡± He might have misunderstood the requirements.
The zapping of lightning and thunder continued to echo in the room while the headmistress read over his answers on the spot.
¡°Your take on lightning magic and magic in general is very unique. Are you really self-taught?¡±
¡°No, I had guidance for lightning magic. But I took a different direction since body enhancement wasn''t what I was looking for at that time.¡± Ebony glanced out to see the children holding lightning mana spheres.
Those spheres were ores but ones that were crafted to be suitable for staves. They were half the size of a human head. From the lightning mana purity, they were all Common quality and from the densities he sensed, they were almost emptied.
Intrigued, he guessed that the metal stretch right outside the training field with empty bowls built in were chargers. The kids ran up and placed the spheres in the balls and as he assumed, lightning mana started refilling the spheres.
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¡°Lightning body enhancement?¡± Laika frowned.
¡°You don¡¯t have to guess, she didn¡¯t learn from any academy you can find either. At least when it comes to lightning, she¡¯s completely self-taught. Did I pass.¡±
¡°With flying colours. But for this question, could you explain what you mean here?¡± She pointed at one of the sheets he handed over.
Ebony took a look, it was a question about how ambient mana densities and the general environment would affect a mage¡¯s spell-casting abilities.
He had an academic discussion with Laika who was very helpful when it came to the basics of lightning. They learnt from each other that different elements face different difficulties in high mana-dense areas. Lightning magic did not feel any harder to cast in mana-dense environments but they started to move slower, as if impeded by a thick fluid. However, they tend to remain on a target longer once contacted.
Ice on the other hand had difficulty being conjured or formed in such environments, they were harder to manipulate but they gained a slightly tougher structure. It was good to know that there were advantages and disadvantages. It would be useful to know how every other element is affected.
It was well into noon before he left the Piercing Tempest Academy and went on his way to other Academies.
He was sadly completely rejected. Most Academies didn¡¯t teach Grandmasters part-time courses or full-time as a matter of fact. Ebony hadn¡¯t seen a single King classed instructor or headmaster. He knew of a few, from hearsay.
For example, the Academy that taught rogues that inflicted all kinds of statuses like poison, burns and all that. The director was supposedly a powerful King now. But he or she was old and retired. There were a couple more famous Academies but none of them suited what he was looking for.
As much as he felt like starting from the bottom, it didn¡¯t extend to Warrior schools or any martial arts schooling. He might have a flimsy foundation for magical knowledge but close combat was out of the question. He wasn¡¯t gonna waste his time with¡inept warriors and martial artists.
Going home for dinner, he picked up a few additional dishes from taverns they¡¯d skipped since he walked quite a long way on his school hopping. There were plenty more he would apply to over the coming week.
He cocked his head when he bumped into Ning Xin at their doorway.
¡°You just got back?¡± He was expecting to find her in a messy kitchen.
¡°Actually, I haven¡¯t finished shopping. But I got hungry and it was almost dinner time.¡± Ning Xin had her long hair untied, too lazy now that Kiva didn¡¯t play with it.
¡°Need any help?¡±
¡°Could you wash and peel some vegetables for me?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
A measly six hours of training didn¡¯t get them hungry even after a whole day but they had a large spread for dinner. Mostly experimental dishes as she got inspired.
¡°Any success?¡± She asked while they were cleaning up. Trying her best not to let her disappointment in her experimental dishes show in her body language.
¡°One accepted me. I¡¯ll start next week.¡±
¡°You¡¯re going to continue going around enrolling?¡±
¡°In those that interest me, yes. What are your plans?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll continue shopping tomorrow, there are so many ingredients I¡¯ve never even heard of. Monster meat, crossbred animals, vegetables, herbs and spices, they''re all new to me.¡±
¡°I want to visit Yvette, rather, to see how Muse is doing.¡± Ebony proposed. He didn¡¯t forget that the girl fainted after she tried to ¡®heal¡¯ him. He was under the impression that it was thanks to her that he could the weird Roar skill.
¡°Sure, we can go send our greetings that we¡¯re here as well. How about in three days?¡±
¡°That works.¡± It gave them time to settle down.
A casual hour of light exchange of blows to digest later, she returned to making new sauces and marinating meat for their next meals.
Ebony tended to his garden. He got the soil ready over the past few days and had the seeds that he wanted to grow. He didn¡¯t forget to leave a portion of the garden for edible herbs but the main purpose of the garden wasn¡¯t for farming or food. He was in the midst of trying every tea leaf he could find so the garden wasn¡¯t going to become a tea plantation any time soon.
The garden was going to be the experimental grounds for his new skill. Arsenal of Will Domain.
He hasn¡¯t been playing around without making progress. It was helpful that the skill was quite intuitive. He was aware of what it could and could not do after making some specific attempts.
Ebony wasn¡¯t able to make a Glacial Model into a separate arsenal but that didn¡¯t mean he couldn¡¯t use something else. The little tests he conducted back in Arcta allowed him to narrow down some of the requirements for it.
Firstly, it was easier if the separate arsenal or central core was not moving. Not including if he were to use his own body as the centre of his domain. Hence, something stationary would be ideal.
Secondly, size. Although the Glacial Model is a one-to-one copy of his body, trial and error told him that a larger body of ice was more receptive to holding what¡¯s known as consolidated Will.
Finally, the last thing he managed to boil down was that even shape matters. He didn¡¯t know why and he hadn¡¯t even managed to come up with any possible reasons. After all, he could cast it on himself; he didn''t see why a human sculpture of the same shape wasn¡¯t as suitable.
The bad thing about being too intuitive was that he was burdened with more unanswered questions while still achieving what he meant to do.
Conjuring a ball of ice in the middle of the garden, he morphed it into as many shapes as he could think of while consolidating Will. He used up about a quarter of his Will and gently placed it against the morphing ball that continued to expand and gain mass.
Sooner or later, he would find a suitable size and shape.
¡®It¡¯s an arsenal, about a vault. Doesn¡¯t work. A military barrack? Nope. Weapon store? Even worse. Forget it, I¡¯ll just have to try whatever comes to mind first.¡¯
He formed humans that he knew.
Then Frost Elves.
Turtles.
Tree¡
¡®It¡¯s slipping in. A tree worked. Hmm, they said Will leaves residues and they grow and strengthen their domain by recasting or maintaining it by feeding Will. I got it, I bet the Elves use trees as well. A symbol of growth maybe. Let''s try a seed¡too small. Whelp, I¡¯ll see how large the seed has to be before it accepts consolidated Will.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t expect to find purchase so quickly. He had fully expected to spend weeks and even months to figure something out.
The garden was indeed an experimental ground but he didn¡¯t start with the idea of planting a domain. He just wanted an outdoor space where he could put something stationary.
¡®I¡¯m quite stupid, I knew it should be stationary but I formed mobile creatures.¡¯
Ebony subconsciously formed a plum pit with a seed within. When he added mass to it till it got to the size of a watermelon, the consolidated Will he gathered finally slipped in. This Will took two entire minutes for him to gather.
He understood the importance of enforcing instructions to Will. He took it as programming a code, the more ironed out it was, the more complex and precise the Will he gathered and imbued would be. Since he wasn¡¯t in the middle of a fight, he had plenty of time to be meticulous.
Whatever took in this Will would be able to cast all his spells, identify hostile intent, create Models with as much strength as he would have himself. There were some differences since a seed or a tree had no use for movement skills but the Model¡¯s the Domain casts would need the information.
Ebony dug a hole and planted the pit.
As he dictated, the pit that had a shell that could survive Earth¡¯s bombs and missiles with ease cracked open and sprouted. Was there a purpose for not conjuring a tree to begin with and starting from a seed? He didn¡¯t know, he was just doing it for fun.
Mentally, it felt like the time he mass-refined all his spells into one woven form. He extended strings and branches to the limits of his range. That may be the reason why this form was more suitable instead of the fact that a tree was the perfect shape. During that spell refinement, he did conjure a tree to drop petals that burned.
He watched as the seed grew into a sapling about a metre tall and ten centimetres wide before it stopped. He didn¡¯t manipulate it to do that, it was shaping itself already.
¡®It stopped¡Oh I see, I kept the preference of using fully compressed mana so it doesn¡¯t want to decompress if it isn¡¯t in what it considers urgent.¡¯ Ebony fed the sapling more mana.
It was interesting to see a skill work on itself without any further involvement from him. It might be the subconscious form that his consolidated Will took upon.
The more mana he fed, the larger the sapling grew. It quickly overtook his height until it was three metres tall.
¡®No leaves or flowers. It¡¯s not growing anymore even with mana. Ah, it¡¯s large enough to contain more Will. Nice, I¡¯ll use everything I have.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t about to stop now that he saw such explosive progress.
¡°Xin, I¡¯m going to use all my Will and mana.¡± He opened the front door and reported his momentary vulnerability.
¡°Okay!¡± There was no need to yell from the kitchen since they could hear each other just fine but she must have forgotten about their superhuman senses.
¡°Let¡¯s get you all grown up.¡± He caressed his pet tree.
Chapter 275: Obtaining the Royal’s Guest
The wooden log in the ground took another quarter of Ebony¡¯s consolidated Will. He did his best to keep it the same as the first quarter.
The tree began to grow in width more so than height. It hit five metres in height and 3 metres in width before stopping again.
Ebony gathered the rest of his Will and imbued it into the tree. Since it only utilised fully compressed mana to expand it was quite a drain on his mana pool. Freshly regenerated mana was extremely thin in comparison and his mana pool wasn¡¯t exceptional in terms of capacity.
One probably couldn¡¯t find another Grand mage with a mana pool as small as his. Even if their Wisdom stat was lower than his. Every other mage would have at least a tier 2 mana capacity increasing skill as a Class, Sub-Class or Profession skill at a reasonable level. But all he had was a tier 1 generic version.
With all his Will and mana fed, the tree got to a height and width of seven metres. It was just a squarish cylinder sitting in the middle of his garden.
While he could feed it more mana in real time, it took a lot longer to recover Will.
Ebony went back into the house to take a bath. When morning came, he wanted to check if the Will dissipated and if the tree was still present. Technically, the tree should remain. It was made of his ice mana and that huge chunk wouldn¡¯t melt for days under direct sunlight.
He didn¡¯t need to run the test since he knew that his Glacial Models could move for three to five days as long as they had mana. After the three-day mark, they would start to lose function even if they had reserves of mana.
According to the one that shall not be named, his base Will can remain for quite long. Even his recovery only takes two full days from an empty husk to a filled one. He didn¡¯t tell the Frost Elves that but they could roughly gauge it even when he only used a little at a time.
Although they didn¡¯t share with him their standards, he was going to assume Will normally dissipates fast and recovers slower than his current state. However, he wasn¡¯t happy with the recovery speed.
Sadly, there was nothing he could do about it other than continue to practise and use it every chance he got. Hopefully, there were skills related to it.
¡®She¡¯s busy in the kitchen so..no movie night. I¡¯m not sleepy and I''m out of books to read¡right, the basement. I¡¯ll put the portable forge there.¡¯ Ebony got permission to convert the unused basement into his forge.
It was supposed to be a storage zone for ingredients so she had him wall off half of it and reinforce the basement with his mana for his forge. They didn¡¯t want heat to spoil the ingredients after all.
In terms of forging or runic crafting, he had been slacking off. But it was a hobby and a good time to pick it back up.
To warm up, he made the standard rings he was most familiar with but didn¡¯t have a lot of metal on him so he melted them down and reforged them over and over again. There probably weren¡¯t many places that sold raw metal ores in the middle of the night.
Whenever his mana refilled, he would go out and feed his ice tree. By breakfast, it no longer grew and needed more Will which he hasn¡¯t recovered. It was still just a huge stick without leaves sticking out of the ground.
With that, he continued his school enrolment process.
???
The day to visit the Life Queen¡¯s house rolled by.
Ebony did not have any other success in finding a school willing to accept him as a student. Not even a course on Greatsword wielding or general technique.
Ning Xin similarly found no purchase in creating a dish she was satisfied with.
His pet project grew to the height of twelve metres when he recovered Will and fed it, its width stopped increasing at 8 metres.
It was now an obvious landmark for the neighbourhood, extending past the stone walls that surrounded their little mansion.
They had a neighbour two units down. It was a retired old lady who used to be an inn owner but she passed that down to her children and now lives with her husband who was still an active riding instructor at the race course. They greeted their neighbour and exchanged meeting gifts which was just a fruit basket in exchange for some tea leaves.
Both parties were happy with the gifts but didn¡¯t bother each other after the initial greeting
¡°Hey you badie!¡± A short girl had a hand on her hip and the other pointing at him.
Standing right by the gate as if she was expecting them.
¡°I¡¯m glad to see you awake, Muse. Sorry about the fainting and thanks for your kind intentions.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not healed! But that aside, how could you leave me!? I said I¡¯ll follow you until I remove that taint.¡±
¡°You were unconscious. When did you wake up?¡±
¡°Three months after you disappeared on me. Cookie!¡± Muse put out her hand and demanded.
¡°I¡¯m still not healed?¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t bothered since he didn¡¯t have any adverse effect on him
¡°You¡¯re better, but it¡¯s faintly present. Almost illusory, I¡¯m not good enough yet.¡± She nibbled the cookie that Ning Xin presented to her from her snack pouch. The 1.63 metre-tall girl with childlike facial features got a head rub from the 1.92 metre-tall female warrior.
¡®How envious.¡¯
Muse led them into the Royal couple''s house as if it was her own. Ebony caught the glance that Xin gave him but he didn¡¯t think anything of it.
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¡°Muse, you¡¯re not human are you?¡± Ebony had come a long way. Muse looked like a young human girl but her mana signature was vastly different from the average human.
¡°Nopedy nope.¡± She skipped right in the house but there was no one around.
¡°Is Navin and Yvette not around?¡± Ning Xin sniffed the air twice.
Unlike their mansion, the privacy settings of the Royal couple were not inferior to the Frost Elves.
¡°Muuu~ sometimes. They said they¡¯re busy but won¡¯t tell me anything! I have to play alone every day!¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you teach at Tidal Academy?¡±
¡°Classes halted. I don¡¯t have many students either. I wanted to go look for you but those stupid Eclipse guards keep stopping me! Hmph!¡±
¡®Eclipse. If I¡¯m not wrong those are the secret royal bodyguards.¡¯
¡°What were you doing outside, did you know we¡¯re coming?¡± Xin fed the creature another cookie.
¡°...I stand there waiting for someone to come every day.¡±
¡°Must have been lonely.¡± The chef had her arms hooked by the little girl.
¡°Are you staying in Tidal this time around?¡± Muse pouted.
¡°Yes. We moved in a while back.¡±
¡°A while¡and you never came to look for me. Badie!¡±
¡°Muse, will you teach me sound magic.¡±
¡°No! I don¡¯t teach sound magic. I teach music.¡±
¡°Will you teach me music?¡±
¡°Certainly my dear boy.¡± Muse bowed and put on a deeper and more serious tone.
¡°If you want, you can come over and have dinner with us.¡± The chef didn¡¯t think there was a need to extend their stay in a house without their owners.
¡°Yay! Can I stay there?¡±
¡°...come here.¡± Ning Xin picked up the girl by the armpit and whispered for the greater sound mage to silence their conversation.
Ebony wouldn¡¯t be able to eavesdrop even if he wanted to.
The cheerful girl nodded in glee at whatever the tall, intimidating woman was saying. With a bag of snacks swapping hands.
¡®What did I just witness?¡¯ It was easy to tell that all Muse mouthed was ¡®okay¡¯ but the masked woman had her lips hidden. The bubble of silence was removed and the youthful girl ran up to her room. There had to be some reason she was living with the Royal couple.
The butlers and maids stood at the side with barely any presence. Ready to assist the guests at any time. They exchanged greetings since they knew each other.
Ebony also recognised the guards. Although they were not young, their aura felt about as strong as the Minor Generals back in Fifth Tide. For normal warriors without lineage skills and whatnot, they should be relatively accomplished to earn a spot as a guard for the King and Queen.
¡°Let¡¯s gooo!¡± Muse dragged Ning Xin out by the elbow. On her shoulders was a small bag of clothes and a wooden instrument that stuck out of the unpacked bag.
The female warrior allowed the little girl to pull her along. Having a carriage stop not far away made hailing a ride extremely easy.
Just like that, he snagged a music teacher home after visiting the King and Queen¡¯s private residence.
¡°Student, let¡¯s stop by my favourite shop. I get you an instrument as a gift.¡± Muse gave the carriage driver a destination before he could.
¡°Is that necessary. We can produce whatever sound we¡¯d like with manipulation.¡± Ebony helped the girl get on board the tall step.
¡°Lesson one. Where¡¯s your emotion when you talk? At least you bothered to act in the past.¡± She got herself seated and popped a candy in her mouth while swinging her legs.
¡°I don¡¯t see a need to anymore. Ask Xin, I¡¯m full of emotions.¡± He sat across the two women and closed the door of the fancy carriage.
¡°How dare you talk back? You think I can¡¯t tell? Music is a form of expression. Every waking moment can be your practice.¡±
¡°Yes, you¡¯re right. I¡¯m practising it right now.¡± Ebony liked what Muse was saying. However, she should be able to tell that he was indeed putting that into practice if she had a similar skill as Ning Xin.
¡°You¡don¡¯t care. Are you sure that¡¯s the kind of music you want to play?¡± Muse stopped swinging short legs back and forth.
¡°I am who I am. Shouldn¡¯t the music I play express that instead of an act I¡¯m putting up.¡±
Muse harrumphed and looked out of the window, ¡°You¡¯re boring.¡±
¡°Been a while since I¡¯ve heard that.¡± Ebony looked out the window and had a rare smile as he reminisced.
He didn¡¯t know why Xin pinched both of Muse¡¯s cheeks all of a sudden.
¡®She¡¯s happy all of a sudden.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t know what happened but seeing how Muse was getting her cheeks pinched, it was probably thanks to her. That made his awkward smile widen ever so slightly.
There were not many stores that sold musical instruments and he hadn¡¯t entered or even spotted a single one after their small week-long exploration around their neighbourhood.
¡°I¡¯m just going to ask but do you know how to play any instruments?¡±
¡°A few, I''m fluent with a piano and tried guitar and drums before but never really got into them.¡±
¡°Never heard of those. Can you describe it? We can place a custom order.¡±
Ebony conjured tiny copies made of ice for his new teacher who hasn¡¯t given up on teaching him. He produced the exact same sounds that these instruments would for her.
¡°Ah, it''s slightly different but we have those. A custom order shouldn¡¯t be too difficult for them. Pittaw, is that what you¡¯re most familiar with?¡± Muse took the ice piano in hand.
¡°You can say that but it¡¯s been at least a decade since I¡¯ve played a physical piano.¡± He didn¡¯t forget that she hadn''t answered him why a physical instrument was necessary.
He wasn¡¯t planning to strengthen his sound magic with the help of a sonic weapon. Muse also didn¡¯t think sound magic was supposed to be used the way he did so he was confused.
¡®Hold on a minute. It wouldn¡¯t be that bad of an idea. It¡¯s not like I have to move when my domain gets stronger in the future. I don¡¯t use a staff or casting glove and fights with stiff and unmoving opponents would get rather bland.¡¯ Ebony decided to be positive.
They alighted and had the carriage driver wait for them.
The music store was a small store large enough for a few tables at best. Muse did all the talking, ordering the Pittaw with the small changes that Ebony showed her. It was a lot easier for the craftsman, a dwarf, to visualise when there was a conjurer with high precision present.
Ebony had never seen such a lithe dwarf. The craftsman was almost as wide as a buff bodybuilder which was extremely skinny for a dwarf that usually had width that almost challenged their height. The skinny fingers might have been for the more precise and gentle work that instruments required compared to weapons and armour.
¡®Maybe his body evolved that way thanks to how specialised his Classes are. But wow his essence pool is vast.¡¯
There was not much interaction despite Muse being a regular at the shop and they returned home in time for him to water his tree with his liquid mana.
The majestic¡sharp log growing out of the ground did its job of surprising Muse who ran circles around it in awe.
It was noon, there was plenty of time for more enrollment attempts.
Chapter 276: First Day of School
Ebony did not encounter any success with finding a school that accepted him before it was time for his first day at Piecing Tempest Academy.
On the bright side, his pet project tree stopped growing taller. It stopped at 15 metres tall and 8 metres wide before branches started to sprout near the top.
He had to wait for more Will to recover as it was currently saturated with mana.
After morning exercise, he woke the sleepy head non-human up while his chef took a shower.
While having fluffy pancakes with something similar to maple syrup, berries and cream, Ning Xin stopped eating.
Ebony¡¯s myriad bracelets vibrated. His callstone rang.
¡°What¡¯s wrong, should I pick up.¡±
¡°Nothing, go ahead.¡± She continued her light feast.
¡°Yo! You¡¯re in range! Are you in Tidal?¡± Hector¡¯s voice was cut off here and there but it wasn¡¯t bad enough that he couldn¡¯t understand what was being said.
¡°I¡¯ve been trying to call you for the past two weeks to tell you that. It¡¯s noisy on your end.¡± Ebony resumed his meal. Sounds of explosions and a cacophony of screeches were blanketing the callstone.
¡°CAN YoU SpeAK lOUDer!¡±
¡°I can hang up.¡± Ebony was used to Hector¡¯s tomfoolery, there was no urgency in the Prince¡¯s voice and the callstone¡¯s link was relatively stable.
¡°Wait wait wait! I don¡¯t have many chances to make a call. I¡¯ll make it snappy, are you free?¡±
¡°Depends. I have classes to attend.¡±
¡°Classes? What are you teaching?¡±
¡°Attend. I¡¯m a student.¡±
¡°Skip that and come help us. Don¡¯t say I didn¡¯t look out for you two. Right, is Scarlet with you?¡±
¡°She is.¡±
¡°Great! Come over, there¡¯s a buttload of experience. More than you¡¯d know what to do with. Too bad we¡¯re maxed levelled.¡±
¡°You are. We aren¡¯t.¡± He rebutted, Hector indirectly told him that he was still a Master.
¡°What?! Both of you evolved?! How on Elcra are you so fast!? Don¡¯t you need to level your skills?¡±
¡°We do and we did. Tell us the gist of it.¡± He cut the talkative Prince to the chase.
¡°Pest extermination.¡± Hector rarely summarised a situation well, it was rare for him to be so concise.
¡°Do you think this is¡¡± Ebony asked the chef across the table.
¡°It is. I feel something but nothing is urging me to go for it. I can¡¯t pinpoint what this feeling is either.¡± She stood up and served Muse another serving of scrambled eggs.
¡°You heard her.¡±
¡°Oh come on! Even if you¡¯re Grandmasters I don¡¯t believe both of you are at 500.¡± Hector half yelled as another explosion echoed through their dining room.
¡°You¡¯re right, we¡¯re only at 301.¡± He had also gained a level not long after he finished his evolution just like Ning Xin. He didn¡¯t let the odd phenomenon get to him, nor did he start theorising why they got a level so easily. They got what they got, he was too lazy to justify long periods of thought for one measly level.
¡°What¡¯cha waiting for? There¡¯s a whole sea of experience down here. We¡¯re kinda in trouble here. Ou! Quiet, you¡¯re not supposed to spread that.¡± From the callstone came Mallory¡¯s voice in the second half.
¡°Ignore this fool, we¡¯ll see you in a week or so if the two of you are still in Tidal.¡± Mallory continued.
¡°We should be. If there¡¯s no emergency, we can talk then.¡±
The Prince and Princess cut off the call abruptly.
Ebony couldn¡¯t tell if they were in trouble or not. At least they had the leeway to make a call. Their location was likely somewhere underground if ¡®down here¡¯ wasn¡¯t a riddle. Since they asked if he was in Tidal, it shouldn¡¯t be a stretch to think that Hector wasn¡¯t far away.
¡®Pests¡if there¡¯s a sea of them and a massive fight is going on, why can¡¯t I sense any vibrations from the ground? Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition caught onto nothing until the phone..callstone rang either.¡¯ He ruled out distance. If the callstone¡¯s link could reach him, a battle large enough would cause vibrations that he could sense.
If the ground or floor on Tidal was so advanced in blocking out vibrations, he shouldn¡¯t be able to receive a call. Unless their magical technology was so far above his puny imagination. ¡®Actually, that sounds plausible. The callstone works on mainly mind magic and not sound magic.¡¯
¡°Alright, thanks for breakfast. I¡¯ll get going.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t bring Icicle along. He was going to school with kids as classmates.
The Capital was also pretty safe and he hadn¡¯t come across any street crime. A young girl like Muse could run around by herself and nothing would happen to her. Albeit, a young girl that could heal souls and was at an unknown level.
Paranoia still made him wear his robe and carry his spatial bag refilled with years'' worth of rations.
Icicle was resistant to being kept in the bag.
Ebony didn¡¯t know much about spirits but they weren¡¯t able to tell if their swords budding spirits were growing. It felt like they stagnated at being able to understand a few words and reacting to certain stimuli at times.
In any case, the Piercing Tempest Academy was less than one Phantom¡¯s Flicker away from his house. He just needed to get a clear path by jumping into the sky.
¡®Walking there is a bother. If I don¡¯t cause harm to the surroundings, speed limits don¡¯t matter right?¡¯ He leapt onto his rooftop.
With a Flicker, he disappeared from the rooftop without a sound or gust of wind and arrived not too far from his target. Landing, he walked in through the front gates like a normal person.
¡°You¡¯re early, need me to give you a tour?¡± Raika greeted him with a tet.
He shamelessly used his left hand but Raika raised her right without a pause, admitting she was the junior.
¡°It¡¯s alright, I¡¯ll take a walk.¡±
¡°Here are your textbooks and our academy¡¯s badge which proves you¡¯re a year one student. You¡¯re starting in the early quarter of the term so you¡¯re not far behind. Just read through pages one to sixty for this¡¡± Raika listed down the contents that had already been covered for the class he was part of.
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He was not taking any practical classes but he could watch if he wanted to.
¡°Do you think my presence will interrupt the class like Laika mentioned.¡± He could understand how a grown man could be a distraction to both the other students and the instructor.
¡°Well¡I¡¯m sure it won¡¯t be a big issue.¡±
¡°I can do this if it¡¯s more convenient.¡± Ebony cast Frigid Distorted Refraction on himself and turned almost invisible.
The cold temperatures were a giveaway to the lightning mage at close proximities they were at but the children wouldn¡¯t notice even if he walked in front of them. Standing so close, it was impossible to hide from her sight. It was not a perfect invisibility spell.
¡°You¡¯re going to scare our instructors, so no thanks.¡±
¡°Oh, you¡¯re not the instructor.¡±
¡°I teach practical classes.¡±
¡°I see. Well then, thank you for the books. I¡¯ll get going.¡±
He pretty much knew the general layout of the buildings and premises and getting lost would be a challenge. His classroom was on the second floor of the same building where he took the paper test.
He was not the earliest to arrive as a bright yellow-haired man was taking notes at the podium in front of the class. It was more of a standing table than a podium. His clothes were not too different from office wear. With a bit more flair and leather than traditional office wear.
¡°Ah, Mr Ebony. You¡¯re early.¡± The young man straightened his back.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony learnt some manners and didn¡¯t Appraise the man but he felt like a Master, not unlike Raika.
¡°I¡¯m Targot, I still can¡¯t believe I¡¯m going to have to conduct a lecture to a senior mage¡My apologies if I made a mistake.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not a senior mage, relax. I¡¯m still lacking when it comes to magic knowledge.¡±
¡°Ahaha¡ My lesson covers basic knowledge on lightning mana and its properties so I hope I won¡¯t be wasting your time.¡±
¡°Can I get an overview of what¡¯s taught to students here?¡±
¡°Sure! For children who found out their affinity early on, we teach the basic knowledge of mana, skills and levels for the first year. As a lightning magic academy, students are quickly introduced to lightning magic as well. In their second year, we teach lightning mage tactics. Basically, the dos and don¡¯ts and strategy depending on the type of lightning mages one is.
At the Piercing Tempest Academy, we generally have three paths set for the students. Pure lightning mages who strive for combat, scholars who research lightning magic and their applications and support lightning mages. They would specialise from the third year onwards.¡±
¡°What¡¯s the difference between combat and support lightning mages.¡±
¡°Our combat program is more intense and covers a wider skill set so that our students won¡¯t be helpless without a vanguard. Support mages'' studies and practises more heavily on spell casting. Using some of our alumni as an example, combat lightning mages have an easier time getting a leadership position while most support lightning mages are part of the artillery or the ranged powerhouse of a freelance party.¡±
¡°Why split it into two? Most of them are starting young, they have plenty of time for both.¡± Ebony learnt the unfortunate way, that people usually don¡¯t get their Class in a rush. At the age of 8 to 10, the children would have 5 to 7 years of schooling and light practice before they turn 15.
After they turn 15, they will start to gain skills. All their training would come fast and their skills would level relatively fast. Then, they would be able to tell where they should focus their training on. Taking another 3 to 5 years before they Classed wasn¡¯t uncommon.
¡°This¡is mostly their aptitude and talent. It''s quite a shame but support lightning mages usually come from poorer backgrounds or are the first or second generation of lightning mage in their family bloodline. It wouldn¡¯t be obvious as a Journeyman but their mana and elemental affinity are usually weaker. Hence, it''s even harder for them to shine as a good support mage.¡± Targot did not have the bias that support mages weren¡¯t as good, he was just stating that untalented support mages would still fall behind talented ones who chose the path of a support mage.
Ebony did not like the word ¡®talent.¡¯ It was just an insult to anyone who put effort into what they did. However, he was extremely familiar with and was still bound by the fact that a big reason for his current strength and growth rate was the so-called talent.
¡°Our combat mage course is also three years longer on average. Not every family can support such fees.¡± Targot scratched his face in embarrassment.
¡®Hmm, it costs 380 Blues for a year and the price increases for each year advanced. That¡¯s not cheap but I wouldn¡¯t call it expensive. For an entire year of education, the cost is about the same as a Rare piece of armour sold here. Years one to three don¡¯t increase in cost much since it¡¯s more lecture-based but after they specialise and start taking practical classes the cost triples. It adds up if they have to pay it for ten years or more.¡¯ Ebony likened the Academy¡¯s pricing to a private university but students are likely to study for six to ten years. About as much time as he took to get from Unclassed to his current state.
Although there were no practical classes for lightning magic, there were still exercises for the children from years one to three. As he had witnessed, most of the children were already capable of withdrawing lightning mana from a forged ore.
The special spheres were made for training and releasing lightning mana with more ease. It also contained lightning mana that was less dense than ambient lightning. Different levels of training equipment increased the lightning mana¡¯s density to increase the difficulty of manipulation.
That alone already justified the high schooling fees. This equipment was a literal drain on mana. In other words, money. The low price of 380 Blues was likely because children would be mentally worn out quickly.
His first classmates began to enter and he found himself an empty seat.
Out of 28 classmates, 27 were humans and the last was a beastman. A wolfman with a fluffy tail and pointy-furred ears. The wolfman was as tall as the Targot and supposedly the oldest one who found out about his lightning affinity later.
They were all unclassed. It seemed like they had a lack of instructors as the Journeyman had to share a timeslot to practise in the field the other day.
Multitasking, he read up on the contents he missed while listening to Targot teach. Targot looked over at him multiple times throughout the two-hour lecture.
He knew how disruptive questions could get and didn¡¯t join in like the rest of his classmates did. It was a lively class. He learnt all their names in time but for some reason, they all called him ¡®big bro¡¯ because it caught on from the first boy who called him that.
Ebony was glad he managed to see what a randomly picked Academy had to offer. Targot¡¯s lecture didn¡¯t contain anything new to him but they had a fundamentally different point of view.
The next lesson was on maths and mana economy for Journeymen and under. It was a class that continued to advance in difficulty from year one to three and probably the only class he didn¡¯t learn anything from.
After a ten-minute break, they had their third lesson on common knowledge. It was the lesson that Ebony was most clueless about. Their textbooks contained the history of tetting, proper manners and greetings. There was also a language class but that was optional as many students have home-schooling for basic knowledge. Common mage terminology was also covered in this class along with mage ranks.
The fourth lesson was on skills, their tiers, refinement base percentages, passive, active and a general list of the types of skills there were. It was also a class that stretched into the second year. The textbook for this class he had was about as thick as two dictionaries.
Ebony had an unfair advantage of stats. By late afternoon when all lessons for the day ended, he already memorised, understood and broken down the entirety of the contents they were supposed to learn in that year. He wasn¡¯t disappointed.
He would have gone to look for the scholar or researchers that taught the more academically inclined subjects to go in-depth on the questions he had but his classmates stopped him.
¡°Big bro! Show us your magic again!¡±
¡°Only if you show me how you gather lightning magic.¡±
¡°Huh? We don¡¯t have permission to use the training globe outside of lessons and we don¡¯t have practical training today.¡±
¡°I meant from the surroundings.¡±
¡°Only Faelk can do that¡¡± The second eldest student, Yusqly looked down on the ground.
Faelk was the wolfman who was thirteen years old.
¡°...Only a little, and I don¡¯t succeed every time.¡± Faelk was a shy boy for his size. Most Beastmen had early physical growth spurts hence, his adult human size at his age.
¡°Can you show me?¡± Ebony tried not to come off cold just for these kids.
Faelk slid out an arm-length wand from his sleeves and closed his eyes. One of his hands hovered over the tip of the wand and he showed visible facial strain for half a minute before a spark of electricity popped on the tip of his wand.
It was drawn from the minuscule amount of lightning mana in the air but none of them could sense it thanks to the high-speed movement. Faelk also couldn¡¯t maintain the lightning spark as lightning mana had the tendency to burst off if the caster didn¡¯t ¡®grip¡¯ onto them firmly.
The kids cheered and congratulated Faelk for increasing his success rate.
¡®Hmm¡is this what they consider average talent and affinity? Kiva was conjuring ice using her mana when she was five or six years old. A second-order mage in the Empire¡¯s classification. She could double-cast before I left for Tidal just a while back but it wasn¡¯t even worth celebrating over for the Frost Elves. Genes are a cheat.¡¯
Chapter 277: Group Study
¡°What do you do after class every day?¡± Ebony asked, he didn¡¯t want to hold them up if they were supposed to go home and had a curfew.
Despite the class having 28 students, they were all surprisingly close-knit. All 28 remained in the class, physically blocking the doorway. Maybe they just wanted to see his ice sculpture performance again.
He received an array of answers from studying to playing to helping out at home. Most of them seemed to stay in a dorm within the Academy¡¯s premises. The few that didn¡¯t were locals and lived not far away.
¡°Faelk, you have a small mana pool. Although the general trick to gathering elemental mana initially is to make a large bucket with your mana and embrace the ambient lightning mana it might not be the most suitable. One property of lightning mana is that they tend to attract each other more so than earth or fire. You can try grabbing a mental hold onto a tiny amount before manipulating it around the air to stick onto other lightning mana.¡± Ebony had long noticed they all had mana pools around the same size but Faelk the beastman was a few years older.
As a beastman, his Wisdom stat was weaker in terms of mana regeneration and capacity. He wasn¡¯t sure to what degree, he wasn¡¯t going to believe a generic value after changing his own physique and base stat¡¯s effectiveness.
Faelk¡¯s wolf ears perked up and he attempted Ebony¡¯s suggestion on the spot.
¡°Is that possible? I don¡¯t see that method in any of our books.¡±
¡°When your mana pools mature, play around with your mana and elements more. Experimentation goes a long way. Books help but don¡¯t forget practical applications.¡± He wasn¡¯t surprised, once you could gather lightning these small little tricks for a pittance of lightning didn¡¯t strengthen a spell noticeably. Unless they were in the midst of a thunderstorm.
Ebony remembered the reminder that some of his instructors gave the class. It was an instruction not to use their mana. His classmates weren¡¯t wearing myriad bracelets and had their overflowing essence uncontrolled.
Adult humans had a regeneration rate of 10% of their base max mana pool per hour and his classmate¡¯s mana regeneration was roughly around 3 to 7%. On average, twenty hours should get them back to a full mana pool. However, all mage schools throughout the Capital followed the one-day break cycle for children under fifteen. It was believed that overexertion would be harmful to the growth of their mana pool.
If there was anything he was intrigued by it was that children¡¯s vitality, their health regeneration fluctuated and could even surpass an adult human in terms of percentage.
Faelk failed twice and was already a quarterway through his mana pool. He would have to stop if he wanted to have mana for their practical training the next day. If only they knew some of their instructors would be able to tell from a glance they wouldn''t dare to play with so much of their mana.
¡°How about this, make a sphere of mana on the tip of your wand then swing it around and touch the lightning mana. All you need to focus on is making sure it''s stable.¡± Ebony took out an inferior lightning mana ore he prepared and rubbed it with his thumb. Creating dust flakes caused lightning mana to expel from its ore form. A lot was lost in the process in this manner but it temporarily made it easier to control.
Ebony showed them what he meant, forming mana spheres was one of the very first mana manipulation practices he had. They might not be able to see mana with their naked eyes but a ball of sparks was quickly captured in the ball.
Faelk succeeded and he couldn¡¯t hide his inward glee. He swung his wand around to catch the lightning mana that was about to disperse onto his wand. A ball of lightning sparked on the tip of his wand. ¡°Ahh!¡± A little too entranced by it, his free hand that was near the tip of the wand touched the ball and hurt himself
¡°I¡¯ve never gathered so much lightning mana before¡and so easily.¡±
Some of the eager boys copied Faelk and tried to do the same. They all carried similar wands. It was probably given by the Academy but Ebony didn¡¯t have one. They probably thought they would insult him by giving him a stick of wood.
The more success within the class, the less the more disciplined children could control themselves.
Ebony just rubbed lightning mana ores into dust between his fingers for them.
In half an hour, every single one of his classmates was running around the class with a sparky wand to catch the ambient lightning mana.
Just then, the classroom door opened and all the children stopped reflexively to look at the intruder.
¡°What¡¯s going- on¡how? Hey! All of you are getting detention!¡± Raika scanned the room with 28 sparky wands.
¡®Detention exists here?¡¯
¡°Noo! Miss Raika!
¡°Mercy!¡±
Everyone who lost focus had their mana dissipate. Only Yusqly and Faelk remained focused enough to hold onto their mana. Faelk was nearly bone dry on mana and couldn¡¯t hide his disappointment when his mana sphere broke apart and released his ball of lightning sparks.
¡°What are you kids doing? You know you¡¯re not supposed to use your mana. How are you going to join practice tomorrow morning?¡± Raika was angry but she withheld the urge to yell.
¡°Don¡¯t blame them. I¡¯m to blame for it.¡±
¡°Big bro!¡± A dozen voices exclaimed and he was used as a physical shield from Raika.
They seemed genuinely scared of Raika.
¡°That¡this won¡¯t do Mr Ebony. They have practice before they can fully recover and disrupting their regime isn¡¯t ideal.¡± Raika carefully picked her words.
¡°My apologies. About their mana regeneration, don¡¯t worry they should heal up just enough before sunrise.¡± Ebony waited for Raika to catch what he meant but it seemed like her senses weren¡¯t good enough to gauge how the children¡¯s mana regeneration was boosted by him.
¡°Haaa, you kids can go. But if I catch you one more time-¡± Raika warned while pointing her finger up, conjuring a spark of electricity on it.
¡°RUN!¡± The boys and girls charged out the door and knocked Raika¡¯s leg left and right.
He caught her from getting pushed off balance. He could understand her getting caught off guard as he was doing his best to control his strength to the minimum so that he didn¡¯t hurt any of his classmates with his passive vibration reflections or even just by moving his body. Touching them with his finger might poke a hole through their skulls if he wasn¡¯t careful.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
¡°Th-thank you.¡± Raika pushed herself off in a rush. She hemmed and hawed before pulling him to Laika¡¯s office to get a stern warning. Followed by pure curiosity on how the children managed to control a ball of lightning.
¡°They didn¡¯t control lightning. As an element, lightning is a lot harder to manipulate compared to ice even if you discount affinity. Solid elements are more docile, they would sit in place once moved but lightning is similar to fire and doesn¡¯t sit still. To get used to the element¡¯s properties and movements they need a medium to observe the element for a longer duration. Your school focused heavily on lightning manipulation but a mage¡¯s foundation is their personal mana.¡±
Fortunately, it was easy to understand the simplicity of the exercise and he was released quickly.
Late afternoon was used up chatting with his instructors in the faculty office. Scholars and teachers were the best to talk to, especially when they were passionate about their work. There was no small talk, every word advanced their conversation only regarding the knowledge each of them was interested in.
His body clock reminded him that it was almost time for dinner and he excused himself. He checked the ice orb that he imbued his Will in was set near the Academy¡¯s dorm and left once he confirmed his mana regeneration buff was slowly spread out in a thin and controlled manner.
¡°Stop there.¡± Ning Xin charged at him while he took off his boots at the entryway. Those houses here didn¡¯t have a specific spot for shoes but they just made it right after stepping into the house and demarcated the floor.
They also did the flooring by adding a layer of wooden planks instead of stone flooring. They preferred it this way.
¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± As still as a statue, he let her grab his collar and push her mask onto it.
¡°You smell. Like a woman.¡± She paused between words to sniff his robe.
¡°The faculty office had people who used a strong perfume.¡± Ebony reflexively looked to the left when she bent down and exposed herself under the apron and loose shirt. Nowadays, she seems to like wearing shorts around the house. It was more cooling and comfortable so he knew it was only a matter of time before she understood the superior choice of loungewear.
¡°Not the perfume.¡± Ning Xin sniffed him from the collar down to his sleeves. ¡°This one.¡±
Ebony looked at his sleeves and was forced to think. ¡°I caught someone falling.¡±
¡°Okay. If the same person falls in your presence again, let her catch her own fall. Drop your robe and clothes into the laundry, I¡¯ll wash them after dinner. Get rid of that scent, I¡¯m almost done.¡±
¡°Mmm. Where¡¯s Muse?¡±
¡°She was summoned to heal someone.¡±
Unfortunately for him, music lessons were still out of the question as Muse hadn''t come up with a method tailored for him and refused to start until she observed him more.
Having recreated fashion or loungewear from Earth, he felt slightly more at peace whenever he wore them. He realised that something so insignificant could have a stronger impact on him than he imagined. Ning Xin dressed in a t-shirt and shorts with black hair like a modern-day girl was also a sight that brought him back to Earth.
Muse didn¡¯t come back for dinner and it was just the two of them again.
¡°We can expand underground right?¡±
¡°The regulations are up to forty girs downwards, but yes, if we take our basement into account we can dig and build thirty girs deeper,¡± Ebony recalled the information about the land they bought. Forty girs equivalent to two hundred metres were the deepest they could dig and use.
They were permitted to reconstruct it as they wished but they had to report it to the Quest Hall if they disconnected their house to the sewage. It was complicated; the sewage¡¯s ceiling should be roughly two kilometres beneath the surface so there was plenty of space to reroute.
He was not an architect and the sewage system here wasn¡¯t something he understood well.
However, not being connected to the sewage was not an issue for many families. Their toilet usage was low and there were many methods of clearing such waste. They were used to living on a trailer and could deal with it.
¡°Why don¡¯t you build a swimming pool? I need the practice and we have the space to spare.¡±
¡°...Did you come to like swimming?¡±
¡°You can say that. You don¡¯t agree? Even though you¡¯re the one that insisted it¡¯s my weakness and I should overcome it.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t say that. We should get professionals to do that.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t an earth or stone mage. Even if he could dig, he might as well hire the structural experts. A swimming pool was just a deep hole so maybe he was just lazy.
Ebony wanted to wait till he had a significant amount of Will before he continued feeding his pet tree and he was starting to get tired so the day ended early and he went to sleep.
???
¡®I had a dream? Not having Everlasting Tranquillity is¡an experience. But I see, so that¡¯s what I was feeling. I guess I¡¯m a healthy male?¡¯ Ebony climbed out of bed and chilled himself for ten minutes before he got changed into training clothes.
He had concluded that the tension he felt from time to time whenever he was with Ning Xin was just lust. Although, he probably already knew that for a while.
Icicle and his robe were set on their specialised stand near the entryway where their shoes and boots were aligned. Icicle sat at 3550 kilograms when he borrowed the weighting scale the Quest Hall employees used to measure the weight of mammoth bones. It never got any heavier for years and had probably reached its limit in terms of physical growth.
Ebony surpassed that mass as his mana compression continued to improve and his physique got refined. He secretly measured his maximum weight to sit at 8810 kilograms. It was like an elephant¡¯s mass compressed into a human¡¯s frame. It was mostly thanks to his mana.
With updated information, he used his gravity sense and estimated his physical mass when he emptied himself during a training session to be around 600 to 700 kilograms. Roughly the weight of a normal horse or cow. It had been fun to estimate the weight of his mana.
His robe had been dried overnight and smelled like plums again. It was currently only about a quarter filled with mana. The robe wasn¡¯t able to contain his fully compressed mana anymore, it was diluted by about 40%. Hence, it was considerably light despite the quantity of mana it could contain.
¡°Give me ten minutes.¡± Ning Xin yawned from her room after inching her door open. Ebony didn¡¯t spread his mana within the house but he was still able to hear the door, footsteps and every little sound.
¡°I¡¯ll wait outside.¡± Ebony equipped himself and went to feed his pet tree.
Taking his own sweet time to gather his Will, he was now sure that sleeping helped to recover Will slightly faster. He made sure to get back into the same mental state as the first and every other time he fed his pet.
He watered it with 30% of all his mana. It would come back before he began morning conditioning and he didn¡¯t need a full mana pool to train.
It had been months since they¡¯ve evolved yet the total skill levels they got across the board was less than 5.
¡°Maybe we¡¯re not suited for vacations,¡± Ebony commented on their leisure trip to the Quest Hall¡¯s training ground.
¡°Itchy?¡± Ning Xin replied while stretching her arms.
¡°A little. What do you think about your progress recently.¡± They¡¯ve not duelled even once since their evolution and he was surprised how patient she was.
¡°Slow. Guess that benefit grandma is talking about is about to come. I have a feeling it''s a boring one.¡± If she was saying that, it was likely true.
¡°Mmm. If pest control is what it is, then it does sound boring.¡± Ebony had cold water poured on him. However, he remained positive that the long years of suspense couldn¡¯t possibly be summed up as ¡®pest control¡¯. Although it would make sense, pest control was a huge benefit.
¡°I''d rather stay home and continue researching dishes.¡± The chef said honestly.
¡°I¡¯d rather water my pet tree.¡± Ebony had relegated most of his regenerated Will to play with his domain skill. He still had mana to spare so his combat capabilities weren''t completely affected.
¡°What happened to getting itchy?¡±
¡°There are probably mighty pests. Hmm¡ want to visit one of the rare or epic dungeons in Tidal?¡±
¡°Right now?¡±
¡°We have seven hours before my classes begin.¡±
¡°Guess we can clear a rare dungeon or two in time.¡±
¡°Race?¡±
¡°Bring it on.¡±
Chapter 278: Ruins of Verdant Decay
¡°What do we consider as clearing?¡± Ning Xin tilted her neck left and right.
They entered a blue-coloured portal that was shorter but wider than Ordina¡¯s portal. Usually, it directly translated to the size of the dungeon within but it wasn¡¯t a reliable measure.
There were 5 Rare dungeons within the Capital and 2 Epic ones. The Rare dungeon closest to their home was called the Ruins of Verdant Decay. Coincidentally it was one of the two dungeons that didn¡¯t require people to go in in a group.
There were a bunch of plant-type monsters. They consisted of a wide variety, a scant few had powers of rot. Most were a mixture of plants with an additional element, stone and earth being the most common. But the most common were still animal-like monsters with some kind of plant growth or parasite growing on them.
The most redeeming feature had to be that one could spot an Elf a lot more easily. Their numbers were small and meeting one wasn¡¯t a daily occurrence. A plant and earth-type dungeon was quite an attractive spot for the Elves even if it was just a research spot.
Ebony had seen a forest in central Tidal where he currently resided. It must be the Elven home within the Capital. In fact, the forest was mostly kept empty with sparse wooden tree houses within. The forest looked unguarded but no one went near it.
¡°Let¡¯s see. The Ruins have eight floors in total. How about this, we have to hunt at least one of every species of monster here and be the first to reach the last floor. Like Ordina, this dungeon also has a Guardian for the last room before the exit.¡±
¡°So, the first to reach the guardian. Then we take the Guardian together. Sounds good but how would we know how many species there are?¡±
¡°We ask. This dungeon is regularly cleared just like every dungeon in the Capital. It probably doesn¡¯t have any secrets.¡±
They entered the exact same building that was built around dungeon portals making one feel like they¡¯ve never entered or exited a portal. Inside the dungeon was a bustling town, further removing the likelihood that they were in a dungeon.
¡®That¡¯s a lot of people. In the millions¡¡¯ His mana sense spread out as far as it could the moment he stepped out of the portal-holding building. He couldn¡¯t sense the full scale of the town but he could estimate from the noise and the population density.
¡°Let¡¯s go back in.¡± Ebony pulled Ning Xin back in for some quietness. It was not hard to find a city employee to ask about the dungeon but they were silently redirected to scan the information board themselves.
It held more information than just every floor¡¯s mana density, gravity and time difference. There was even detailed information like what monsters, materials or ingredients could be found on what floor.
Outside the dungeon, the gravity had been roughly 1.6 times that of Earth. Noticeable difference but nothing drastic for superhuman strength. For the Unclassed children, they were all physically stronger than the human he used to be. If those were the kids his mother was comparing his physical ability to, he was indeed weaker.
In the Ruins of Verdant Decay, gravity was only 2 times stronger than outside the dungeon. Most warriors could adapt within a day or two, maybe a few battles could speed it up.
As for time, this was the first dungeon that he had been to that had a noticeable time difference. Despite going dungeon hunting after they evolved from Journeyman to Master and entering dozens of dungeons they all had little to no time difference with the outside world. One second passing in the Ruins of Verdant Decay was said to be 0.8 seconds outside.
A ratio of 1:0.8 was huge. And the Empire and Imperials took full advantage of it. 1 day outside was equal to 1.25 days within the Ruins. Crafters and all who wanted more time to meet deadlines lived here.
Ebony didn¡¯t think it was ideal. It wasn¡¯t as if one would age slower here. The body still aged at the same rate. One could get older than people outside if they stayed long enough. He didn¡¯t like that, age calculation was already troublesome enough.
¡®I bet there are a lot of pubs and taverns, more importantly, wine brewers.¡¯ Ebony just had to exit the building to find out that he was right.
The only other interesting piece of information was that the Ruins didn¡¯t have stairs to connect its floors. On every floor was another portal that led to a different floor. The problem was that there was no guarantee which floor they would be transported to.
Only when an individual goes past a portal for their seventh time would they be guaranteed to be transported to the eighth floor. It made the dungeon¡¯s danger levels extremely high as parties depended on luck to stay together. In the past that was.
Now that there was a similar town on every floor right where every portal was, there was no immediate danger. However, getting materials was still difficult. Hence, most freelancers here either worked solo or were very good at teaming up with strangers. The laws for dungeon entry were iffy with the Ruins.
There were a few parties who were either lucky enough to operate on the same floor for a long term or were determined enough to go through the whole dungeon multiple times to reach the floor they wanted together. Of course, the people who arrived at the designated floor first just had to wait for the rest of his or her party.
The problem was that leaving the dungeon was impossible unless the individual went through seven portals to reach the eighth floor, and then go through the actual exit.
¡°There¡¯s no pattern at all?¡± Ning Xin was also surprised by this piece of information.
A random passing employee shook her head as a reply. ¡°No one has developed any methods to reach the same floor by choice. Physical contact or even chaining yourself to another doesn¡¯t work either. It is said to be completely random, if you¡¯re lucky you can meet each other at some point other than the first and eighth floors. If you¡¯re even luckier you might just go to the same floor multiple times in a row.¡±
¡°Look at that central board at the main square outside, the current record holders for consecutively reaching the same floor are written there. It¡¯s just for fun and I have no idea why there are people amused by it.¡± She continued.
Curious, he managed to get Ning Xin to take a look with him.
The record was twelve people consecutively going up to the same floor four times in a row. The score was simply done by multiplying the number of people with the consecutive floor in a row. Second place had 30 points with 6 people with 5 consecutive floors together. It seemed like a full party with an escortee who hired a party to protect them.
That was almost the whole dungeon so the chances didn¡¯t seem that bad until Ebony saw the date of the occurrence to be more than 40 years ago. Since the dungeon was already fully under control back then, there was no danger at all for passing through portals. They would just go from one town to another. Hence, the escortee had no fear of losing his or her bodyguards just by passing through a portal.
¡°Alright, I¡¯m done amusing myself. I have a class to get to.¡± It was barely daybreak in the Ruins but there were plenty of people that started their day early.
Stolen story; please report.
¡°Time passes faster here, you have over an hour extra.¡±
¡°Or we could go back earlier so we can have breakfast.¡±
His words woke her right up. The faster they finish, the more time they would have for breakfast.
¡°I¡¯m gonna work up an appetite!¡±
???
¡°AAAH!¡± A Master Warrior with a muddied face screamed in horror at the Steelthorn Warden situated at the corner of his sight.
¡°What happened!?¡± His impromptu party members who teamed up with him on this floor quickly went into alert and looked towards where his eyes were on.
¡°He-head!¡± The warrior pointed to the humanoid construct of metal held by vines at the edge of their archer¡¯s shooting range.
As a popular dungeon with a terrain of mostly stone and metal ruins within forests, there were plenty of parties around. Parties had to consciously stay out of each other¡¯s hunting grounds for both materials and monsters.
It took a few moments for the nearby parties to notice similar events in their surroundings.
Monsters that were sitting in dead zones between the parties operating here had their heads lopped off. Without anyone present.
From the left, the Verdant Sentinel¡¯s body exploded into bits the size of meatballs.
From the right, a Floraforge¡¯s many heads slipped down from its neck.
The hunting grounds facing north had Blossomsteel Warden¡¯s metal flower head dented before it cracked and littered the floor in metallic dust.
From behind them were the Leaf Stone Behemoths with no takers for the hunting ground at the moment. They weren¡¯t spared from the unnatural incident. At least, one of them wasn''t. Floating into the skies with fumbling limbs, punching at nothing before its giant head disconnected from the rest of its body.
A strong gust of wind along with a shockwave passed them by half a second after another monster¡¯s head flew into the air.
¡°CAAWW!¡±
Everybody within the range of the cawing scrambled to hide under shelter be it a ruin or a tree the moment they heard the caw of the Onyx Mossquill Macaw. The only predator that has free reign to roam all floors of the Ruins of Verdant Decay always caws to alert the prey of its presence before deciding whether to attack or not.
Despite being smaller than a human head, the Macaws were one of the most terrifying opponents in the Ruins of Verdant Decay. However they had weak eyesight and non-existent mana sense, simply hiding under cover was enough to escape their notice. The Ruins of Verdant Decay had plenty of monsters but they don¡¯t act as eyes for each other.
Every freelancer started to tremble when a tiny bump thudded on a stone roof. Multiple eyes glanced over and watched as a tiny bird''s head rolled down the slanted roof.
¡°So-something just flashed by the Macaw¡¡± An archer whispered to her party members.
The present parties gathered in a hurry and rushed back to the town where the floor portal was in fear.
???
Ebony had no remorse or hesitation in killing dungeon monsters. There was no life in these monsters. They were just a lump of essence that was injected with artificial intelligence. Although, he was a little intrigued by the fact that the dungeon had such a hands-off approach.
It did absolutely nothing. As if it was asleep, the dungeon ran itself. It grew naturally without any conscious control like Na from Ordina. There were no unnatural, controlled spawn rates or hunting down specific parties. All monsters acted as they wished, as per their built-in programming.
He came to the conclusion that there was simply no one in control like how sapient Ordina appears to be or that entity was simply letting itself grow naturally.
The moment he left the town with Ning Xin, they burst off starting their race.
They knew their destination, it was another town surrounding the portal to the next floor. It would lead to another town and they would be able to learn what floor they would step into.
On the first floor¡¯s portal building, all floors'' layout, maps and town or portal locations was already displayed so both of them should know where to go. There were a total of 15 towns in this dungeon alone. The exit on the last floor didn¡¯t have a town around it and was defended by the dungeon itself.
Ning Xin might not have Mental Mapping but her memory shouldn¡¯t be that bad.
Interestingly enough, leaving the dungeon usually had entire expeditions fighting for exit and extremely few parties leave by themselves. That little nugget of information was enough to rouse both of their interest.
On the first floor, they chased each other around. Counting down how many species of monsters they¡¯ve taken. She was better at sniffing out new monsters and he followed her to kill one of the monsters she tracked down.
She left a trail of heatwaves in her wake which he had to warn about before they separated. A total of forty species on the first floor took over half an hour to hunt down.
As for the distance to cover, going from the entrance town to the exit town on the first floor was only the distance of going around Earth once. It was the smallest floor in terms of land area. It was easy to traverse because the dungeon walls were only a hundred or so kilometres apart. Causing every floor of the dungeon to be like a straight tunnel.
The landscape was rather boring. Old, tattered stone buildings surrounded by vegetation. It had brownie points for the variety of plantations and trees. Each ruin had a party camping out and larger ruins had a full research crew with their escorts.
It was a race, and he had no time to deal with people so he tried his best not to disturb other parties hunting but they had no choice when every specific monster''s habitat or spawn points had parties calling dibs. The method he came up with was just to do it fast and stealthily enough.
On his second floor which was actually the sixth he no longer had the sense of smell of a beast to follow and had to hunt down all twenty-eight species of monsters by himself. He was lucky the monster densities here were higher and the hunting ground for every species was already common knowledge.
The larger land area was a boon for him compared to Ning Xin. When it came to traversing, he had the upper hand. She was fast at the cost of massive stamina and mana consumption.
The plant, rock, earth and wood mixture of monsters was very fresh but they couldn¡¯t even give the Hoarfrost Kobolds a run for their money. They ranged from level 420 to 450 and he needed to stop to clash with all of them for a second or two.
Another one of his advantages over the faster, stronger swordswoman was that he could enter a town without slowing himself down. She would be forced to slow down so that her speed and fire enhancement didn¡¯t kill people. Cooling herself down only to reheat herself was going to waste quite a lot of her time.
On his third floor which was the dungeon¡¯s second, he breezed through it. Amid a single Flicker and a single swing of Icicle, he decapitated three types of moving plants before he fully swung his arm. He was pretty sure most people didn¡¯t see him at the speeds he was moving at and the light refractions he manipulated with ice should have kept him relatively hidden.
¡®I wonder who decided the floor numbers if they always ended up on a random floor until the eighth.¡¯ Ebony had a random question but wasn¡¯t interested enough to stop and ask a random person.
The second floor¡¯s monsters only ranged from level 330 to 360 but one species was more durable than some on the sixth¡¯s floor. It was a monster with a metallic head in the shape of a large blossoming flower.
A single kick didn¡¯t kill it and it took a second kick with a full-powered Sonic Intrusion to turn it to dust. Even then, the metallic dust didn¡¯t scatter explosively, strongly held together by the vestiges of mana. Ebony¡¯s feet kicked out a second time before he managed to Appraise it so he didn¡¯t get the monster¡¯s name or title.
By a stroke of luck, he spotted the most mysterious monster that he was most worried about finding. The Onyx Mossquill Macaw could be found on any floor but they were much rarer. Their levels also depended on the floor they resided so their strength varied the most in the Ruins of Verdant Decay.
¡®As expected, it noticed me.¡¯ Ebony watched the Macaw, a small parrot-like bird flap its wings to brake its flight and caw.
The Macaw sensed his lousy invisibility and was about to turn around after its surprised caw but he wasn¡¯t about to let it escape.
He Flickered towards it and Icicle was already half swung but the Macaw still slid its neck away in time. The jerk and speedy change in direction allowed it to escape the grasp of death.
And into the grasp of a conjured ice hand before the exact same greatsword, in the same swing rotated to separate its head.
¡®I¡¯ll keep the body as proof.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t bother burying dungeon monsters. He had no respect for monsters without life that simply gets reabsorbed by its creator.
Chapter 279: Lobby
Ebony waltz into his sixth floor and coincidently came across Ning Xin who walked out of the portal behind him. With a glance at the signboard at the side, he was on the fourth floor of the dungeon.
He was stunned at the patches of green slime stuck to her mantle and hair.
¡°What got you?¡±
¡°...I fell into a gooey swamp while fighting. Fire made it stickier and now I stink. How many floors is this for you?¡± She ran her fingers through her hair only for the slime to stick to her gloves.
¡°This is my sixth. Look I got the Macaw¡± He pulled out a frozen headless bird from his robe pocket.
¡°Huh? So lucky and fast! I¡¯m only on my fifth. The seventh floor took too much time.¡± Ning Xin dashed away to her next portal without saying goodbye.
''She sprained her ankle and her mantle got nicked. Looks like she¡¯s having fun. The seventh floor must be quite intense.'' Ebony looked forward to the seventh floor since there was something able to land a hit or ¡®fight¡¯ with her.
Having killed one of every species of monsters on the fifth and sixth floor when their average strength and levels rose accordingly, the fourth wasn¡¯t an issue. It was likely how they classified each floor number.
Ebony only had issues with monsters that could only be found inside the Ruins. Finding an empty ruin was harder than wild monsters prowling about the forest. He had already secretly joined in on other parties and interrupted them on multiple attempts. He had a feeling that was why Ning Xin took so much more time.
Interestingly enough, he wasn¡¯t capable of putting a scratch on the ruins. The stone and metal structures weren¡¯t just stone and metal. He couldn¡¯t sense it but he had a strong feeling the ruins were directly powered by the dungeon itself. The ruins were as tough as the dungeon walls. Unlike Ordina where he could dig through the earthen walls with some effort, the dungeon walls here were pretty much impenetrable.
¡®This dungeon adapted naturally and it did it well. Random teleports challenges proper teamwork, keeping people within or dead. A wide variety of monsters, plants and materials to keep people interested. Energy directed into making walls as indestructible as possible and extremely powerful guardian gate guards.¡¯ Ebony was impressed by how different dungeons could be depending on the immediate vicinity.
It was questionable whether the Empire was milking the dungeon or if it was the other way around. Symbiotic was the best way to describe it at the moment.
¡®There¡¯s no moon or sun, just light. We¡¯re over four hours in, guess travelling takes a lot of time.¡¯ Ebony cleaned up after Ning Xin who left ashes in her wake. The ashes didn¡¯t matter with plants regrowing almost instantly but the heat was deadly.
¡®Clean cut as usual. No burns?¡¯ Ebony slapped aside the tree vine that shot at his face while checking on Ning Xin¡¯s victims. The monsters were relatively strong as their bodies were mostly in one piece without turning to mush.
The next vine grabbed his wrist, and with a twist of his wrist he grabbed the vine and tugged.
¡®Slack?¡¯ Ebony¡¯s feet sank and he felt no feedback from the tug. Sending a pulse of ice mana through, he got into a tug-of-war with the vine. The vine got taut and snapped after most of it tore up the ground.
The attacker¡¯s main body was further away than he imagined and he hadn¡¯t pinpointed where the vine was connected to before it snapped. Thankfully, the monster was considerate and sent another half a dozen vines at him. It bounced off his robe before deciding to wrap around his limbs instead of stabbing through his flesh.
¡®Was there supposed to be such a monster? Maybe a new, unknown or unreported species. Oh well.¡¯ Ebony grabbed onto all the vines in one hand and waited for his mana to follow along the vines to the main body underground. It was a sphere of vines with a heart protected within.
He stomped his feet on the ground and sent the liquid mana trailing down. It slammed into the unsuspecting vine monster and burst on impact.
It didn¡¯t get through the protection of vines. The liquid mana that burst apart flowed back onto the vine protection and settled themselves before turning to ice mana and burrowing themselves.
Ebony got dragged deeper and was knee-deep in the earth during the monster¡¯s sudden desperate struggle. None of the vines within his grasp managed to break themselves free. It took two minutes before the intense struggle stopped and there was no longer a pull from the vines. He ripped it out from the ground to take a closer look at the monster.
¡®I¡¯ll just toss it to the town guards to record. It¡¯s the most durable one yet. Oh, I should hurry.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t waste any more time and Flickered across the dungeon, only slowing down when he spotted a new monster.
¡°Woah?! Isn¡¯t that a Vitalis Heartvine?¡±
Ebony listened to the voices around him as he neared the town.
¡°Can I buy that off you?¡± It didn¡¯t take long before someone walked up to him. A human non-combatant from his gear and gait.
¡°What is this good for, I didn¡¯t see this on the list of recorded monsters on this floor.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t stop to talk and continued following the line to enter the town.
¡°That¡I¡¯m going to make juice out of it.¡±
¡®He¡¯s not willing to share its use. It¡¯s probably good stuff, good enough that it¡¯s not public knowledge. Guess I¡¯ll keep it and find out.¡¯
¡°I¡¯m not selling.¡± Ebony¡¯s mana sense caught a hint of Ning Xin, telling him that she already passed by and moved onto her next floor.
¡®It got crowded. Oh well, I¡¯ll just flicker in.¡¯ He cocked his head at the sudden encirclement of strangers. The queue for entering the town was shortened as part of them surrounded him.
He Flickered into town since there was no entrance fee or anything like that. The gate and guards were just there to make sure no monsters or dungeon dangers passed through. There were many instances where rich or powerful researchers tried to smuggle out live monsters without permission.
In the Ruins of Verdant Decay, smuggling monsters out into the Capital was close to impossible for any monster from the first to the seventh floor but the eighth didn¡¯t have a town at the exit. So the smuggling was limited to bringing monsters into the towns within the dungeon itself.
The guards were Imperial Knights and most of them would notice him so he was sure he wasn¡¯t doing anything illegal when no one chased him.
Upon stepping into the portal, he immediately sensed the difference in the ambient mana densities and the general vibe of the room.
A quick look at the map made him nod in understanding. It was not only larger than all the other floors. It had cliffs, rivers, and waterfalls and the land was mostly swamps and pits. Unlike the other floors, there were far fewer ruins, only three main ones that were the size of the Royal Palace itself.
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All of them were situated near opposite ends of the map like a triangle and each had unique monsters within. Hence, Ning Xin was forced to travel to all of them to hunt down one of each species.
With the knowledge that there were monsters not publicly reported, their race¡¯s rules were a little wonky but just getting all those publicly reported should meet their requirement.
¡®I¡¯m going to be late for class.¡¯ Ebony thought, they either picked the wrong dungeon or they underestimated the sheer size and variety that Rare dungeons had.
???
Ebony walked out of his third ruin with a limp.
¡®That was one deadly trap.¡¯ He shook his head at the sheer deviousness of the ruin¡¯s trap.
The ruins were similarly made of indestructible dungeon material, the moving walls that smashed at him were just diabolical. He dodged all but one and got his kneecap crushed.
Alright, maybe he could have dodged them all but he decided to take on one of the moving indestructible slapsticks by kneeing it. The whole trap came to a stop with sounds of creaking echoing through the entire dungeon.
¡®At least I proved that it doesn¡¯t matter if it''s made of something incredibly hard if it doesn¡¯t have the strength to push me off balance. That was a good warm-up. Huh, maybe I can use this ruin material as a training dummy. Nah, I can¡¯t move the dungeon stone out and it might not retain the same durability even if I can move part of it out.¡¯
There were quite a few more memorable monsters here. In every palace-sized ruin were at least 2 types of monsters that had a fighting chance. A tree made of metal that could cast acid rain and metallic dust storms was his favourite. He spent over fifteen minutes just dodging and observing the creature for inspiration for his own magical tree.
However, he remembered he was in a race and snapped out of his observation. There was no doubt he was going to come back just for that tree. It took another eight minutes to kill it making it the most time that he stopped in one spot throughout the entire race.
It was extremely resistant to ice and gravity, it wasn¡¯t as if it moved its body. Physical speed was redundant for the stationary opponent and kicking the metal tree only rattled Ebony¡¯s legs. As for trying to punch in mana to build it up within the tree to blow up in one go, it didn¡¯t work well against a magic tree whose main abilities were in mana manipulation.
Surprisingly, it was lightning magic that helped him kill the tree faster. It conducted lightning and Ebony didn¡¯t even need to aim. Its walking treant minions weren¡¯t an issue since they were a little too slow but they were durable.
¡®Killing a tree is difficult, no heart, no brains. Tearing its roots doesn¡¯t kill them immediately either. I chose the right vessel if survival is the focus. Seems like trees are also the closest creature as to what a mana being is, maybe spirits and elementals too but I don¡¯t have any references to go off on.¡¯ Ebony had stayed to watch the tree dissolve back to dungeon energy but didn¡¯t gain much information from that experience.
¡®The boxing mushroom was pretty cute though, I almost felt bad killing it.¡¯ His feet shuffled as he Flickered at full speed with every enhancement and augmentation pushing him to the next town as fast as he could.
¡®It¡¯s been six and a half hours since we entered, with the time dilation we still have about one and a half hours before my class starts but then I can¡¯t have breakfast together¡skip class?¡¯ Ebony pondered on his current perfect attendance.
Finally, he stepped into the portal for the eighth floor.
A masked lady stood at the corner of the hall with her arms crossed and chin raised slightly. Smug about getting here first despite Ebony¡¯s earlier lead.
¡°Did you forget, the race includes this floor¡¯s monsters.¡± Ebony used his advantage of movement in a packed settlement to fade away from the town while the masked lady had to bumble about within a mass of people.
His head start helped but Ning Xin ultimately reached the destination a step ahead of him.
¡®This floor¡¯s not bad, there¡¯s training value.¡¯ Ebony dusted the goo and dust off his robe.
There were about fifteen species of monsters that roamed the eighth floor. At the level range of 430 to 460, they were similar to those on the seventh floor. There were no ruins, only rubble everywhere. Ebony didn¡¯t take on any rot magic to his body since he had a class to go after this but most of his shields and defences were torn down by it.
He just didn¡¯t understand how ice rotted. It was probably a mixture of elements and other magic at play but he wouldn¡¯t know till he got hit. He was finally forced to use his flames on this floor and it was a good workout.
It was hard to find anyone above level 400 outside but the eighth floor was filled with these Grandmasters. Although, their numbers were still relatively low.
There were no exit towns but there were large camps about twenty kilometres away from ten sky-high towers. Perhaps ¡®ruins¡¯ that were in good condition.
The Ruins of Verdant Decay played nice on the first seven floors by leaving towns alone but not on this floor. Structures were taken down and camps were regularly attacked. There were far fewer researchers who risked their lives to be here.
¡°So what have you learned, how do we get out?¡±
¡°Those ten towers, all of them have an exit portal.¡±
¡°All of them?¡±
¡°When one guardian is killed, it takes time for it to recover and the tower would shut its doors until it recovers a guardian at full strength.¡± From the looks of it, she was also incapable of destroying or harming what the dungeon considers as walls.
¡°So, like a game¡¯s lobby. What happens when all ten guardians are dead, no exit?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t play many games but he was kept up to date by some of his classmates when he was on earth. There were always one or two kids who were also the quiet kids in the class who were forced into groups with Ebony.
¡°I asked the same question, a King once tried but the dungeon seems incapable of shutting off all exits so one of them would be open for everyone to leave freely. The dungeon might panic and cause a mana storm but that¡¯s about it.¡±
¡°Mana storm¡wouldn''t that kill everyone present.¡± The strength of a mana storm varied from dungeon to dungeon but from what he knew, a rare dungeon¡¯s mana storm was strong enough to kill them.
¡°Pretty much. People are actively planning and scheduling entries so all guardians defeated at the same time don''t occur again. Anyway~ I won.¡± She changed the subject, put her arms behind her back and bumped his shoulders with her own coyly.
¡°Yes. You did.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t going to make excuses like spending too much time observing a magical tree. He had the advantage in both getting through a town and stamina in crossing distances.
¡°So what¡¯s my prize?¡±
¡°Prize?¡± He didn¡¯t expect her to ask for something.
¡°It¡¯s a race and I won, don¡¯t I get a prize?¡± She hopped from rubble to rubble to avoid the moist floor. There were pools of rotting corpses that did not treat their noses well.
¡°I¡¯ll get you something.¡± Ebony started coming up with ideas. It had been quite a long time since he gave gifts.
¡®I think we should make it a habit to celebrate the little things. Like birthdays and festivals¡I should¡¯ve thought of that long ago.¡¯
¡°Can we get this over quickly? We¡¯re already taking more time than I¡¯d like and I already emptied my food energy reserves.¡± He could almost see her pout under her mask.
¡°Let¡¯s check which tower¡¯s schedule¡¯s open. Hand.¡± Ebony raised his hand with his palms facing up.
¡°Is this really the time?¡± Annoyed, she stared at his gesture.
¡°To make an explosive, yes. It¡¯ll speed up any hunt. And we haven¡¯t tested our new explosive powers.¡±
¡°Let me drink my soup.¡± Ning Xin took out a bottle of her special brew of soup that was stuffed full of nutrients. It was supposed to give her quite a lot of sustenance to convert to stamina.
¡®Could she convert stamina or lifeforce back to mana? I don¡¯t think so¡I guess she¡¯s just thirsty and recovering some of her stockpile for the battle.¡¯ He didn¡¯t confront her about her inability to get mana from drinking some soup.
¡°Pahh! Too salty!¡± She licked her lips clean despite her complaints.
There were seven towers with open double doors while the rest were shut. The towers were all the same in design and material. It was a completely dull yellow metal. He would describe it as a cathedral without windows and only consisting of a single square tower that rounded off as it ascended.
He estimated from outside that the towers weren¡¯t more than two hundred metres in diameter. As long as there weren¡¯t many rooms, there should be plenty of space for combat.
Five of the free towers had hundreds of people preparing their supplies, getting some tactic planning and preparing bodyguards for researchers who paid for protection. It was not a student-friendly dungeon as exiting the dungeon was rather difficult.
¡°Look for another tower, our schedule is fully booked till next year.¡± The administration table with an Imperial Knight shooed them off.
Chapter 280: Serpent of Verdant Decay
¡°They¡¯re all booked for dozens of expedition parties getting ready to exit. It takes a week or more for a Guardian to spawn and the doors to open.¡± Ebony reported his scout attempts
¡°But the doors are open and no one¡¯s fighting, can¡¯t we just enter now?¡± Ning Xin brought up the main issue.
¡°We could, and have them come after us when they figured they had to wait another week to exit. Not just them but all those who followed the rules and are lining up.¡±
¡°What about those two towers, there are only a few people over there.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s ask around.¡±
The freelancers here were rather respectful and open. Ning Xin did the asking this time, she was worried he didn¡¯t bring across a question properly.
¡°Woah, I wouldn¡¯t go there if I were you lass.¡± A bald Dwarf covered the cards in his hands to prevent his opponents from sneaking a peak.
¡°The guardians get stronger over time. That two towers had multiple failed attempts in a row and hasn¡¯t been cleared in a year or more.¡± A lizardman that was mostly human in facial features except for a few scales and a tail dealt a card from his hand.
¡°There would usually be some noble coming to clear it so that regular freelancers like us can exit more freely but I don¡¯t know what those aristocrats are doing. They¡¯ve delayed it for over half a year!¡± The human female rogue baulked at her cards and drew one from the deck on the wooden barrel.
¡°If the records are to be believed, the Ruins of Verdant Decay¡¯s guardian can slip into the ranks of a King if more than 2 years passed without being killed or if they have absorbed enough essence. Although it hasn¡¯t been that long, it¡¯s probably sitting at 500. We can barely maintain a survival rate of 95% with these regularly cleared ones at 475 and that¡¯s with proper preparation and experienced clearers who fought the guardian multiple times.¡± The lizardman smiled and called his victory after the woman discarded a card.
¡°We can finally leave for my month-long vacation.¡±
¡°Any chance we can hop into your expedition raid?¡± Ning Xin questioned.
¡®I never thought about that¡¡¯ Out of all possible options, the option of joining one of the expeditions didn¡¯t even come to mind. It was either cutting the queue or tackling one of the two towers with no takers.
¡°You¡¯d have to talk to the current leader. You¡¯re in luck, Endersyn usually takes in just about anyone. For a price. He¡¯s a greedy one but that makes him flexible. Raids he leads don¡¯t have the highest survivable rate so do what you will.¡±
¡°Thanks, where can we find him?¡±
It didn¡¯t even take ten minutes before their conversation with Endersyn concluded. For a small price of fourty Blues per person, they were allowed in. With a test of strength, they could pay less depending on their role in battle or how much they¡¯ve contributed.
¡°I¡¯ve never seen you two, first time?¡± Endersyn was a lean warrior who carried two machete-like swords and wore light leather armour.
Ebony tried not to Appraise people nowadays since it was often misleading. Their natural instincts were usually far more reliable regarding whether someone was strong or not. This Endersyn felt somewhere between Athena, their war buddy and Lucas the lizardman disciple of the Empire¡¯s Emperor.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony nodded in reply. Although he beat Lucas in an exchange, that was purely on the lizardman¡¯s close combat and skill with the spear. His actual evaluation of the disciple¡¯s fighting capacity was pretty high after watching short moments where he fought against King Trolls, a feat Ebony wasn¡¯t capable of at that time. He might not even be capable of that now.
From the short time they¡¯ve spent in Tidal, he noticed the reason some could sense how strong they were and not others. It was simply the ability to sense his mana or their overflowing essence in general.
No matter how well he hid it, he had excess mana and it had to go somewhere. Even if he had an empty mana ore on his myriad bracelet, the conversion and absorption of the tool weren¡¯t perfect. His method was simply to push down all overflowing essence into the ground for it to dissipate. Incorporating a couple of tips and tricks that the Frost Elves taught him to make it harder to detect. However, none of them were stealth experts and he wasn¡¯t one either.
¡®With how much mana I have, I guess I need to pick up a skill to hide it to some extent. There¡¯s no point being physically invisible if my mana¡¯s an obvious sign.¡¯ Ebony knew that there was a smaller proportion of warriors and non-mages who were able to sense his thin and purposefully diluted mana but in the long run, most of his opponents would be capable of mana sense.
There was no need to mention Ning Xin¡¯s overflowing vitality, her mantle only hides up to 90% of her excess and that might drop once she started increasing her Vitality stat. Most warriors also had heightened instincts and could sense a beast when they encountered one.
In her current state with her hair a deep blood red, 10% of her excess was enough for people to hold their tongue.
¡°Just take note not to kill the Fungalspire Gila or the guardian will go into a berserk state,¡± Endersyn warned them.
¡°What does the Fungalspire Gila look like?¡± Ning Xin was the one who needed the information the most. Her accidental reflex might cause others to suffer if she killed some random monster that caused the Guardian to get stronger.
¡°A green, large lizard. Four of them would appear, when you kill one the guardian would get a momentary burst of power. It would retain the enhancement for five minutes or so, dying down to a small permanent enhancement throughout the hunt. We have four parties to deal with the Gila, they need coordination. You¡¯ll have to join the actual battle.¡±
¡°Weird. Why have four minions instead of using that energy to strengthen the guardian.¡± Ebony muttered.
¡°To deal with numbers. We¡¯ve been changing tactics over the centuries and the dungeon¡¯s adapting. Ideally, we¡¯ll be killing one or two of the Fungalspire Gila during the battle to make use of its enraged and uncoordinated state to deal as much damage as we can. Like¡that thing in your hands. Crazy mages¡my mana sense¡¯s about to melt from that.¡±
¡°So, do you think this is enough?¡±
¡°It¡¯ll be a big hit, but I¡¯m more afraid that¡¯ll kill more of us than the guardian. This is troublesome¡using it at the start would probably wipe out the Gila¡¯s while the guardian¡¯s still alive. But we can¡¯t stay out of range or behind protection if you were to unleash that in the middle of the fight. Can I ask that you scrap that dangerous spell?¡±
¡°The guardian¡¯s just standing inside right with the doors wide open right?¡±
¡°Are you suggesting you toss that in with everyone outside the towers? The doors to the tower would close within half a minute once any foreign entity or energy such as a spell goes in. That would defeat the purpose of the exit hunt. Even if it doesn¡¯t die, the doors won¡¯t reopen until the guardian¡¯s fully healed. That used to work in the past but the dungeon adapted to strong mages with overly prepared spells like this.¡± Endersyn knocked down his idea without even listening to it.
Ebony pulled his hand away, the sudden loss of touch made him turn to a disappointed masked lady.
¡®Wrong move. That was dumb of me.¡¯
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He pocketed the miniature bomb that was barely filled with any of the masked lady¡¯s explosive elements. He could make an outer shell so much more resilient and heat resistant that it was a pity they couldn¡¯t take the opportunity to test its new limits.
On second thoughts, it would probably kill him too if he couldn¡¯t Flicker out of range when the tower was made of virtually indestructible dungeon walls. It would be a nice experiment to see if they could damage the dungeon walls the next time they visited.
They picked this particular tower because the hunt was coincidentally scheduled to begin in less than an hour. No one had time to waste with the tight schedule so not more than a few hours were wasted after the tower doors opened.
¡®I guess I¡¯ll send a Model to class while I have breakfast.¡¯ Ebony planned his course of action.
Upon entry, he saw that the tower¡¯s interior was just a wide open space. Endlessly tall ceilings above them freed the airspace for flight. It was quite similar to Ordina¡¯s Guardian room except for the swampy flooring.
¡®Let¡¯s take a look.¡¯
[Serpent of Verdant Decay Lvl 475]
¡®I didn¡¯t expect a snake to be the guardian. I thought it would be some kind of tough and durable creature like a golem.¡¯ Ebony walked between the combatants who were leaving their workplace to go home.
The non-combatants were tightly huddled up and circled by fifteen warriors.
There was one arcane support mage present who bathed everyone present with her mana. It was similar to his sound magic except the support mage¡¯s mana just sat still in the target¡¯s body instead of vibrating.
Ebony wasn¡¯t the only one who rejected the support mage¡¯s mana into him. Not everyone trusted each other enough to have some random mage¡¯s mana inside them.
But the physical buff the arcane support mage was giving the close combatants was impressive. Her party members were the most fluid with the foreign mana enhancement and were dealing with a Fungalspire Gila. A monitor lizard five metres long and three metres tall. Ebony couldn¡¯t tell what was so special about these oversized green lizards.
As for the Serpent of Verdant Decay, now that was one intimidating creature. Metal weapons rot upon contact with its slimy scales. It would probably do the same to all organic matter that came into contact. Fortunately, these frequent clearers had specialised weapons and were more than capable of reinforcing their armour and weapons with mana.
The serpent was about as thick as the monitor lizard but it was over ten metres long, slithering in the swamp and between giant mushrooms that were conjured out of nowhere.
¡®Oh so those monitor lizards help with environmental and positional placements. Now that¡¯s interesting. No wonder killing one or two would be worth the trade for a slightly stronger guardian.¡¯ He saw the Gila¡¯s usefulness in the battle when it came to dealing with large numbers of opponents.
¡°Hey, you¡¯re not going to make a move?¡± Ning Xin had been controlling herself from joining the battle because he hadn¡¯t made a move. They were no different from the scholars and crafters who were buying a ticket out at the moment.
He wasn¡¯t very financially smart but he knew they were probably ripped off with the price of the ticket. It was expected since they basically bought the urgent ticket that skipped months'' worth of queues.
¡°They look like they got it down. I feel like I¡¯ll disrupt their teamwork. You go ahead, I¡¯ll step in if anything happens.¡± His words cooled her enthusiasm. It was not fun joining in on a hunt with over thirty people ganging up on one snake.
The snake spit globs of slime at them but Ebony didn¡¯t even need to make a move as their guard stone mage cast the spell that he had been preparing at the side since the beginning.
¡®Capable. Their individual strengths being relatively higher than most people we¡¯ve met aside, they are not bad at what they do.¡¯ Ebony only stepped in when the serpent was riddled with wounds and it gained a burst in speed and power when the second Fungalspire Gila conducted a suicidal attack on the party that suppressed it.
Shielding eight of them from an explosion of rot mana got him their gratitude but they remained vigilant and continued the assault without a pause. Further raising Ebony¡¯s assessment of these dungeon clearers. He really couldn¡¯t estimate any of these Grandmaster fighters.
Sadly for the Guardian, these dungeon clearers already fought the serpent multiple times. On the eighth floor where parties were rejoined, teamwork wasn¡¯t an issue. Since staying within the dungeon long term was natural, most of them knew each other and could work in large groups. A group of experienced hunters could hunt a snake despite its advantage in speed and power.
The only problem was the deadly powers of rot and the random bursts of power that could catch people off guard. Its steel-tipped tail honestly scared no one present. The crafters only marvelled at the material for its properties while the scholars thought about its use in various industries like alchemy or magic construction material viability.
Ebony was forced to leave the backseat because his use of mana showed the dungeon how delicious of a snack he was. Unlike Ordina, most other dungeons don¡¯t immediately chase him down for his flesh and mana. Their sensitivity and desperation towards how beneficial he was to them varied greatly. To a huge dungeon like the Ruins of Verdant Decay, one Ebony didn¡¯t account for much when it had millions of other possible prey.
At least, that was what he assumed.
Ebony Flickered towards the Serpent and an axe kick slammed into its slimy head. The expedition party screamed at his stupidity for touching the Serpent.
For his Augmentation not to show any visible flames on his skin or robes, it had to run below 15% of its maximum capacity. He would glow blue but it wouldn¡¯t be as eye-catching.
The kick barely pushed the Serpent¡¯s head down an inch. The Serpent snapped its head forward to swallow him whole but found no purchase except a tiny bump below its jaw. Ebony shifted his upper body aside and gave the Serpent an uppercut that had more force behind it than the unaugmented kick.
He placed his palms on the tail swipe that came at him like a giant cleaver and vaulted over the tail while freezing the area where his hands touched.
¡°Keep it up ice warrior! Come on, attack while it¡¯s focused on him!¡± A dwarven warrior encouraged him to continue keeping the Serpent focused on him.
¡®It¡¯s so fast. And clumsy.¡¯ Ebony was aware of the Serpent¡¯s undivided attention on him now.
He ducked, dipped and countered every aggressive attempt of the serpent. It was even faster than Ning Xin¡¯s blade but far clumsier in his eyes. His kicks and punches didn¡¯t do much harm to the Serpent but the Serpent¡¯s rot couldn¡¯t even get past his skin.
He felt a layer of his mana being torn down but it was tearing his mana down so slowly that it didn¡¯t matter. The fact that it could damage his mana chassis itself was worrisome but the degree of damage was too small for him to see as a threat. He was healing it faster.
¡®It can permanently disable a mage? I can see why it¡¯s so dangerous.¡¯ Ebony realised that the Serpent¡¯s durability was also thanks to the fact that all the spells it was hit by were rotting before it even damaged it, be it elemental or arcane. It aimed at mana itself rather than the spell¡¯s formations itself.
Ning Xin stepped in soon after because of how long they were taking. She only used her Vitality-based enhancement so that her body temperature didn¡¯t melt the people in the same room. But that was more than enough for her to get up to half the Serpent¡¯s speed. It shouldn¡¯t take long before her blades reached the same speed as the serpent with her Sword Art.
Her blades didn¡¯t even put a nick on the Serpent¡¯s scales.
Periodically, she pulsed her heart with another burst of Vitality to give herself a greater physical stat buff but the Serpent was living up to its reputation of being tough to kill. It didn¡¯t help that the conjured mushrooms were sending healing spores throughout the tower. It healed the injuries the Serpent sustained while acting as a poison for everyone else who had to be wary of breathing in those spores.
On the bright side, the spores were visible and could be avoided.
Ebony deprived the ¡®tanks¡¯ of the hunting party of their jobs as the Serpent was mostly focused on him. He had already sneaked in the miniature bomb inside the Serpent and hurt it internally but it was too weak of a bomb to cause real damage.
¡°Gas coming!¡± Everyone including Ning Xin leapt back at the warning. Everyone but Ebony.
Numerous scales on the serpent flipped up and released green gas that covered half the room.
¡°Damn! You alive in there!? We don¡¯t have a healer!¡± The bald dwarf who was playing cards earlier regretted not pulling him away.
¡°He¡¯s fine. Continue.¡± Ning Xin replied while sending her blood halo forward.
Her blood haloes faltered and splattered over the ground before reaching the Serpent.
¡°Organic elements are the weakest against rot. Just use fire. Lia cast heat protection on us.¡± Endersyn ordered. The arcane mage took four seconds to send her spell to everyone except Ebony.
¡®No protection for me? Oh, my mana sense is interrupted. I guess spells can¡¯t reach us through this rotting gas.¡¯ He let loose more of his Augmentation since his flames shouldn¡¯t affect people who were standing outside the green gas as much. Giving the eager serpent a casual kick to its nose. It sent the tired Serpent slamming into the hardy wall of the tower.
¡®This wall is useful.¡¯ Ebony Flickered forward and caught the incoming tail with open arms before spinning like a frisbee and slamming the poor disorientated snake¡¯s head into the indestructible wall once again.
Chapter 281: Recording
The Guardian Serpent snapped out of its initial shock to Ebony¡¯s sudden increase in power and to all of their surprise, it wrangled free of his grasp at an opportune time. It used its routine gas and killed the Fungalspire Gila that it ¡®swam¡¯ towards. It gained a burst of strength almost instantly and shot its tail at him.
He couldn¡¯t dodge it and had no choice but to block it with his arms. Receive the same treatment of wall collision. His eardrums would¡¯ve shattered on impact if he hadn¡¯t protected himself from the impact by settling the vibrations within his body and the metal tower.
¡°Moly, that sounded like hammering an anvil!¡± The dwarven crafter commented with nods of agreement from other dwarven individuals in the tower.
¡®Ouch. That hurt. My arms are out of commission, movements are slightly affected with a light back injury. I¡¯ll control my body remotely for now.¡¯
The Serpent was still covered in green gas and no one went near it so it was up to him and the mages to limit the Serpent¡¯s movements.
The green gas that stuck on him didn¡¯t dissipate before he rushed back into the Serpent¡¯s area of effect gas. The gas from its body also ate at his mana faster than touching its scales.
He appreciated the crafters'' and scholars¡¯ supportive comments more than the spells that were raining on the Serpent. Especially the earth and stone mages who were conjuring spikes from the ground to limit the Serpent¡¯s movements. They also limited his movements.
¡®Ice isn¡¯t sticking and my flames somehow dissipate before it could dig past its scales. Vibrations aren¡¯t any different to it than a harder physical impact and my gravity magic is still too weak.
The serpent whipped its head at him and he crashed into a group of people who skedaddled away at the sight of a human cannonball.
¡°It¡¯ll be out of gas in another minute or so boy!¡± Someone he didn¡¯t know gave him useful information for once.
¡®Do I really look that young? I guess I technically am.¡¯ He skidded on his back and flipped onto his feet in one smooth motion. He Flickered back into the Serpent''s range and barely swayed his back fast enough to avoid the wide open mouth. Getting hit by a direct bite of its fangs and rot or venom was the last thing he wanted at the moment.
Ebony wasn¡¯t able to keep up with the buffed Serpent who far exceeded the speed that he could handle. Prediction could only go so far and his body couldn¡¯t keep up even in his Augmented state. His spells didn¡¯t do much damage and neither did his physical attacks.
They were good at protecting him and limiting the Serpent¡¯s motion but a fully compressed shield or wall could take one or two hits before being structurally compromised and needed a refreshment of mana.
Although not perfect, even if he wasn¡¯t standing here and doing the role of drawing attention the mages present seemed capable of keeping the Serpent busy at a range until its biological gas ran out. They only changed their tactics a little thanks to his presence.
He was a little scared at the lack of movement from Ning Xin. Her spells would be embarrassing to show to these full-time mages hence her temporary uninvolvement. This period of time was definitely for her to gather her life force. He hadn¡¯t seen her strongest enhancement after evolution. The spars with Korben hadn¡¯t been to death.
Fireballs and lances did stab and explode on the Serpent but he was unaffected by the heat. The sheer force of spell impact on the other hand was blowing him away.
¡®What insane projectile speed and power, extremely high Intelligence stat. There¡¯s merit if they have time to cast it safely.¡¯ Ebony did not blame their change in tactics as they adapted to the situation to do what mages do best. Explode their targets with the highest offensive powers they have.
They might have trusted their support mage that gave people heat protection or the fact that he could withstand the gas and take a direct hit from the Serpent. That or the obvious fact that he was personally covered in light blue flames already.
The rotting gas ran out and diffused before its temporary enhancement did.
Ebony was rather battered from the hits. It was very similar to getting hit by an Apex Ape, except he took far fewer hits.
The first thing he did after the warriors and other close-ranged combats dashed to support him was Flicker towards the last Fungalspire Gila and encased it in ice.
He completed his speedy cast right before the charging Serpent swallowed the lizard whole. He couldn¡¯t even keep up with its current speed and power, he didn¡¯t want it to get buffed or healed. The lizard was already sealed in earth but he didn¡¯t see the harm in adding an extra layer.
¡°Kill it before it digests the damn lizard!¡±
The Serpent¡¯s back tingled when a shockwave swept across the tower¡¯s interior.
¡®What is her heart made of¡¡¯
The next three minutes were simply torture for the Serpent. Its temporary buff ended and it digested the lizard for another buff but it didn¡¯t manage to make use of it for long before it was inevitably slain. In front of over thirty combatants from a wide range of levels, it didn¡¯t stand a chance.
Their contributions to the battle reduced the price by more than half but neither of them cared about the price.
Ebony and Ning Xin gave a nod and bid farewell to the strangers. He had a feeling he would see some of them again if they frequented the Ruins of Verdant Decay.
Some of the crafters and scholars were soliciting their callstone links and names. They made their desire to occasionally hire him as a bodyguard known. He just left the address of the Quest Hall that they frequented and their name thanks to their persistence. These people carried multiple callstones on their myriad bracelets thanks to how many contacts they had but not him and he didn''t want the numbers of so many strangers.
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¡°That took so much time.¡± The masked lady cooled off and her hair gradually dyed itself black as the red in it receded.
¡°Guess we both failed.¡± He referred to their self-imposed time limit of seven hours.
¡°Let¡¯s fly home, I¡¯m all sticky and smelly.¡± She fiddled with her hair and tried to untangle the part glued together.
¡°Hmm, you go ahead and use the bathroom. I¡¯ll make a stop at my Class and play around with my Model to see if I can reabsorb them for information.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t fall into an unknown swamp and had gravity repulsion keeping him clean except for dried snake fluid.
¡°You¡¯re planning to go like that? You smell like rotten meat.¡± She pointed at his sunken shoulders that were in the midst of recovering.
¡°I don¡¯t have slime on me. I can cover the scent with a little mana manipulation and I¡¯m only planning to let my Model attend. I¡¯m already late as it is¡maybe not.¡± Ebony noticed the sun¡¯s position and was confused.
They¡¯ve fought the Serpent of Verdant Decay for over an hour. He should¡¯ve been late even with the difference in perceived time passing.
However, his Lunar Bio-Clock was telling him that not as much time passed as he thought. Despite being a ¡®Lunar¡¯ clock, he was pretty sure it worked quite accurately even in the day. He would make it just in time for class if he left now.
¡°Maybe the time flowed at different speeds in the guardian room, I heard some whispers as I walked through the towns.¡± Ning Xin added. It appeared that she gained more information than him due to her inability to speed out of towns without causing public disruption and damage.
¡°Ooo.¡±
¡°I guess I¡¯ll go back first, we only have one bathroom and I have to wash my hair. Will you be back in three hours?¡±
¡°Mmm. I want to wash up too. I¡¯ll come back after a few short tests with my Models.¡±
They didn¡¯t even bother walking back partway, he Flickered to school and she extended her cape and used wind magic to flap them.
There were already students in class but he went to the training field to conjure a Model of himself. Using the little bit of Will he recovered, he gave it simple instructions of listening, recording or memorising all sounds and sights for the next minute.
He allowed the Model to walk around the field for a minute before coming before him again.
Ebony tried to recall the Will back to him, unlike mana, it was more receptive to return to him.
¡®It really worked! I was just making random guesses. Doesn¡¯t this technically make this a clone? My manual control range is still a little short but it''s quickly expanding these days.¡¯ Ebony was genuinely surprised at the audio and mana visuals that were implanted into his head after he retrieved his Will from the Glacial Model.
He was quite certain he was going in the right direction with what he wanted from the skill. He was still very limited with how much Will he had and he was more inclined to use it to train and experiment with his domain at the moment.
With that in mind, he replaced the Will to record for the Classes for the next few hours. It didn¡¯t record sight but it did record gravitational and vibrational data from its immediate surroundings the size of the classroom. Ebony couldn¡¯t give his Models physical sight. It was just a sculpture of ice and the only reason it could record sound was because he could imbue the ability of sensing vibrations the same way he could.
He was sure the amount of Will he imbued was enough to last for more than half a day but he didn¡¯t have enough experimental data to tell if it could memorise half a day¡¯s worth of audio and spatial data through vibrations and gravity. The information recorded might not even be complete. At least the minute of the experiment he did gave him a perfect recording.
He wrote a note to explain his physical absence and that his ice sculpture couldn¡¯t reply to words and put a copy on his desk.
¡®Guess I¡¯ll save up my Will to create a few of these student versions. I can listen in on all the other classes this way.¡¯ There were classes for multiple classes of Journeyman and a small class of Masters that he was also interested in listening to now that he had pretty much absorbed the basics that were taught to Unclassed children.
When he reached home, he was sure the bath was still occupied so he stayed outside to check on his pet tree. Conjuring a watering can, he watered the tree with liquid mana extracted straight from the source. Him.
¡®How long is she going to take?¡¯ Ebony had already catered to his pet tree for over an hour and he spent less than ten minutes at the Academy. For a woman who did everything with haste and speed, she was taking her own sweet time in the shower. Even the usual bath took more than half an hour a day.
He took off his robe in the garden and started scrubbing it down with water. His boots fared the worst but were still in one piece.
¡®Might as well wash my clothes once before putting them in the washing machine. I should upgrade that to include a scrubbing function if I have time.¡¯ He stripped down to his pants and scrubbed the bits of absorbed dried gas that stuck onto him.
¡®I didn¡¯t leave any tracks of rot mana behind did I?¡¯ Ebony turned to look at his doorway but nothing was rotting so he nodded in satisfaction. It would be terrible if had rot mana attached to him and he infected his class. Luckily he didn¡¯t even enter his class.
He wasn¡¯t really worried since he would¡¯ve long found out if there was still some foreign mana eating at him.
He heard and saw the windows to his house being opened and the scent of frost plums wafted to his nose. Ning Xin peaked over the window still and tucked some of her moist hair behind her ears. ¡°Your turn, breakfast will be ready in an hour. Muse wrote a note saying she¡¯ll be busy for a few days and won¡¯t be here.¡±
¡®Alright, one of her latest Fortifications must be some charm or mental effect one.¡¯
Needless to say, breakfast was a feast. English style with beans, toast, sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs, grilled mushrooms, and fruit salad galore with honey at the side.
¡°I¡¯ll be going out to shop later.¡±
¡°I can come along.¡±
¡°No, you cannot.¡±
¡°I can help carry the groceries.¡±
¡°I¡¯m buying underwear, burnt through quite a few pairs and I could use more spares. And don¡¯t even suggest making me some, pervert.¡±
¡°Wasn¡¯t about to-¡±
¡°No, I don¡¯t need you to add heat-resistant runes on them.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t say anything. Have fun shopping and take care. I¡¯ll make a stop at the Academy to visit their library. Will be back before dinner.¡±
¡°Mmm, I might have made too much for breakfast. I¡¯ll make something lighter tonight.¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony kept his mouth shut when he was about to ask if she was feeling okay.
¡°Oh right, Sister Jing called earlier. She¡¯ll visit us in two or three days to drop me a gift.¡±
¡°How about me?¡±
¡°She said you¡¯ll be interested in the gift but it¡¯s not for you.¡±
She wiped her mouth clean of the whipped cream from the fruit salad. Their meal ended and he left the dishes for her this time.
¡°I¡¯ll be leaving first, gonna check if my recording faced any technical difficulties.¡± Ebony just put on a white shirt, and black pants and left his robe in the laundry.
¡®I need a few other pairs of shoes for different occasions, so I guess I should go shopping on the way back.¡¯ Fortunately, his boots went with pretty much any long pants.
Chapter 282: Watching Sports
The first thing he saw when he entered his class during a lesson transition was his model being surrounded. The ever-mischievous Bilal drew on his sculpture¡¯s robe with some form of paint. Bilal was the one who called him out for skipping the test.
¡°B-big bro-ha. Haha. Didn¡¯t see you there.¡± The kids who joined him jumped off the ice sculpture and scrambled to wipe away all evidence and tools on the desk.
¡°Is that a bear. Kmm, is that a bear?¡± Ebony cleared his throat and repeated himself.
¡°Yeah! What do you think?¡± Bilal cheered up when he didn¡¯t receive a scolding.
¡°You¡¯re a good painter. Have you seen a bear?¡± If he was able to tell what an eight-year-old boy scribbled on a cold and slippery surface, the boy was indeed a good painter.
¡°I have a bear cub at home, Shelly¡¯s her name. She¡¯s going to be my partner in future. I love drawing, I¡¯m going to be a painter for my Profession.¡±
¡°Right, your father is a tamer and your mother is a lightning mage. Treat your partner well, you¡¯ll be watching each other¡¯s backs.¡±
Ebony imagined a lightning mage with a bear protector or maybe a grown-up Bilal riding a bear while flinging lightning or calling upon thunderstorms.
¡®Painter¡interesting, could he paint lightning and spawn it into existence? Maybe I¡¯ll subtly give them tips to incorporate everything as a form of combat.¡¯
¡°Bilal, let me show you how to paint without tools. As a mage, mana and mental control are all you need to influence the world.¡± Ebony sent a stream of mana to collect dirt and grass from the field right outside.
He ground them together and drew the same bear on the blackboard with dirt mixed with liquefied grass to give the ¡®paint¡¯ a green dye.
He would have told them about ¡®Will¡¯ but he was barely a beginner and couldn¡¯t teach them something he didn¡¯t know how to use properly.
To prove his point and to set little notions and imagination in their heads, he conjured a tiny bit of electricity and controlled its path to spark and draw over the same bear.
¡®This is harder than I thought.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t just draw slowly for the children¡¯s benefit. Lightning mana was almost as chaotic as gravity mana but in a completely different way. Unlike gravity which naturally flows in a certain path, lightning mana was far more frenzied and disorderly. Forcing it to follow an accurate and precise path down to the centimetre was the best he could do.
The door slid open to reveal their next lesson¡¯s instructor. It was an old lady, one of the Grandmasters in the Academy. He had listened to her share some insights when he visited the faculty office. She taught basic mana manipulation exercises, what use they had and what the dos and don¡¯ts were.
Also teaching the Journeymen and Master classes, she was in charge of teaching a tier 3 mana capacity skill together with a lot of practical mana manipulation. Her classes had the highest failure rate.
Journeymen could graduate from their course as long as they got the skill to tier 2 and 250% base and completed her test. Her test changed all the time, she tested a mage¡¯s usage of mana in its base form. The tier 3 variant was interesting, it was no longer a pure mana capacity-increasing skill but a lightning elemental one.
The older lady took a moment to observe the class. ¡°Mr. Ebony. That blackboard¡¯s damaged now.¡±
¡°...Sorry ma''am.¡± From his general instinct, this old lady, Madam Wilcox was the strongest person in the Academy but that wasn¡¯t the reason for his politeness. It was only natural to be respectful to his elders and not to mention, he was a student and she was a teacher. He did vandalise school equipment.
¡°Fascinating sculpture, can you move it?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t let her curiosity down and manually controlled his model to jump out of the room and do a little shadowboxing outside.
¡°What delicate control¡now back to your seats everyone.¡± She clapped her hands twice after the bell rang. She wasn¡¯t one to get distracted by a simple spell.
The class was the least rowdy during Madam Wilcox¡¯s lessons. She must have a couple of tier 3 teaching or education skills. It was strong enough to influence him and made him more receptive to every single word she spoke. It was hard to tell since his Intelligence stat wasn¡¯t that low but he was sure her skills made it such that people would retain the information she shared more accurately and longer.
¡®Using a stream of mana to complete miniature mazes, that¡¯s a good exercise. They¡¯re only starting this exercise next year. Guess I''ll take a look at these miniature maze equipment later.¡¯
Ebony recalled his model to the window and reabsorbed his imbued Will.
¡®Nice, it has the whole recording down. The quality is a little lower than if I were present myself but I can understand it. I¡¯ll start mass producing these.¡¯ Ebony had used and understood Will wrongly as a Master.
Thinking he could only control the limit of his capacity which used to be over twenty Models at the same time. They would usually break before his Will recovered to build more. The number of Models he could control at the same time still didn¡¯t increase much but the amount of Will he used for each could vary greatly.
His pet tree experiment taught him quite a lot. The amount of Will he could imbue depended on the vessel he was imbuing it into. So far, he mostly experimented with the amount and density of his personal mana but he wanted to try imbuing his Will onto other objects.
The greater the amount of Will, the more of his actual abilities he could programme the vessel to do. Not at the same strength but at the same precision and accuracy. The more strict he was with the instructions, the less he could instruct them to do. The complexity of instructions was what consumed or tied down Will the most.
¡®Consume¡¯ was as inaccurate as it could get. He currently classified Will as processing power, it could be in use but it doesn¡¯t get consumed. However, it does dissipate or ¡®degrade¡¯ a lot faster than the hardware¡¯s processing speed.
¡°Big bro! Come play with us!¡± Fabian the playful jumped from his seat and tugged on Ebony¡¯s sleeves. He was good buddies with Bilal.
¡°My apologies, I¡¯ll be spending some time in the library today.¡±
¡°Aww bummer. Books are boring.¡±
¡°Books are dangerous. If they¡¯re empty, anyone can write anything on them. If they¡¯re filled, anyone can absorb what¡¯s written within.¡± Ebony recalled one of his father¡¯s sentences but on second thoughts, he might have used it at the wrong time. He stopped himself from explaining and going into full lecture mode. He didn¡¯t want to bore his classmates.
¡®I¡¯m not good at this encouragement thing.¡¯ He wanted to give them a better impression of books and how important knowledge is but telling a bunch of eight-year-olds that knowledge is power didn¡¯t feel right.
The Piercing Tempest Academy¡¯s library was small, about the size of a small bookshop. Barely a thousand books in total from a glance. No secret spell books or anything like that obviously, just the general collection of necessary information for the entire course of studies in the Academy.
The actual spells taught weren¡¯t recorded, only passed down through verbal methods. Although, they probably had a written version somewhere if Laika the headmistress was the third generation.
About a quarter of them were famous, general books about magic and history that he had already read before in Clovis¡¯s collection. A good dozen were encyclopaedias on dungeons, monsters and plants. ''Common Sense - Dungeons'' was quite a good read.
¡®If I read three hours a day, hmm..about two weeks to finish all the books here if I take my time.¡¯
He trained his reading skill seriously for the first time in years. However, trances didn¡¯t knock him out and he was able to keep track of time.
Ebony closed the book with a satisfying thud, the pages rustling as they settled, and stood up, the chair creaking beneath him and his footsteps creating a faint patter on the floor.
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¡°Oh, you¡¯re still here.¡± Raika, the practical instructor disturbed the empty library when he opened the door.
¡°I¡¯m just about to leave.¡± He pushed in the chair he used. It was a sturdy chair, he barely had to reduce his weight for it.
¡°Where to? I have to run an errand outside.¡± Raika sped in and slid in a few borrowed books back where she had taken them from.
¡°Getting shoes that match, something I can wear daily.¡±
¡°Oo, you¡¯re new to the district right? Shall I introduce you to a good place? My errands are on the way so I can walk you there.¡±
¡°If it''s not too far, I have about two hours to spare.¡± Ebony gestured with his hands to the exit for her to lead the way.
¡°Let me put my robe back in my office, wait for me at the front gate!¡± Raika sped away. Perhaps it was a trait of lightning mages to do everything with haste. Patience didn¡¯t seem to be their strong suit.
Ebony thought nothing of the friendly gesture of introducing a reputable store to someone new in the neighbourhood.
¡°I¡¯ll hail a carriage, it¡¯s an hour away on an average ride.¡±
Ebony nodded to the woman who wore her Academy¡¯s garb. A white blouse with yellow streaks with a ribbon around the collar and dark blue pants with the same yellow streaks. The bunch of buttons and accessories were all practical tools that contained lightning mana. The robe they wore matched the pants in colour but she took that off.
¡®Or a few Flickers away. Never mind, I¡¯ll practise hiding my mana on the way. I should ask Madam Wilcox how her mana is completely undetectable one day or maybe just training tips and direction.¡¯
He did not know how Raika could go on about the stores in their district for the entire hour. All he did was nod or acknowledge that he was listening from time to time. Barely saying more than two sentences throughout the ride.
Ebony already scanned the neighbourhood but he had no idea what shops had good reputations or what specialities there were.
Before he knew it, he had two pairs of casual shoes boxed up in a paper bag. One of them was similar to leather chukka boots and the other was closer to oxford boots. Raika ran off for her errands the moment she decided on the boots for him.
As someone who made clothes, he was not good at telling what was in fashion so he just took the employee and Raika¡¯s advice.
¡®There was an armour shop around the corner, time to get actual boots.¡¯ Ebony was far more perceptive when it came to combat boots.
He found the biggest store and hoped it was the most reliable thanks to how well it seemed to be doing. There were plenty of customers and the store was at least three stories tall. Although it held inventory, smiths like these had bigger business in the custom order section.
There was a catalogue of armours, including boots that the two armour smiths running the business made. Customers even had to pay a fee if they wanted some time from the smith to give a more detailed custom order. The smiths were too busy to give every single person who visited their store a personal talk or interview.
¡®Should I just disturb Sister Jing for boots again¡I guess why not, I¡¯ll get her to splurge this time.¡¯ Ebony turned back, he didn¡¯t want to join the 2 week queue for a short ten-minute talk with smiths he didn¡¯t know.
He could make his own but anything he could make would wear out in weeks of training at best. Especially the sole of the boot, all of his feet¡¯s power was concentrated there. It was no different from shooting a shotgun amplified a few hundred times through the sole of every Flicker he took. Yet the ground would be unaffected.
He had a double take when he sniffed something familiar.
¡®Fish sandwiches. So fish are in stock again, the borders¡¯ fishing industry must have resumed. The battle with the Trolls should have lulled down.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t hesitate to walk over to the restaurant with open doors. It was a cafe-styled restaurant with seats outside under canopies.
¡®Is this called a craving? Guess I¡¯ve been spending too much time with a foodie.¡¯
¡°Smells great, she¡¯ll love it.¡± Ebony carried two large paper bags full of piping hot fish sandwiches of every flavour on the menu. It was more for himself, sadly he didn¡¯t bring his bag or any preservation boxes. Keeping it in a conjured ice with moulded preservation wouldn¡¯t work perfectly as the sandwiches would cool down.
Just as he was walking back, he picked up his classmate¡¯s voice frequencies and zoomed in on their speech a kilometre away from him.
¡°Let her go!¡± Bilal yelled in rage.
¡°What¡¯cha gonna do about it scrawny mage? You mage students are so weak, can¡¯t do anything without a warrior protecting you can ya?¡± A young voice he didn¡¯t recognise held Yusqly by her hair and yanked her entire body off the ground. It was another girl, albeit taller and larger than his classmates.
Ebony found himself on the nearest roof with the kids in an alley.
Bilal, Fabian, Faelk, Tia, Umar, Tristan and Esme were all present. Almost all of them have bruises on them, the only exceptions were Tia, Esme and Yusqly. Seeing how the opponent was a pair of boys together with the girl holding up Yusqly by the hair with one hand, he assumed the boys did well protecting the girls. Until now.
Ebony hung his legs off the ledge of the roof, took a fish sandwich out and started chomping on it, watching what his classmates were going to do in this situation.
¡®Their bullies are larger but smaller in numbers. I think they¡¯re the same age though. Warrior children, their bodies are far more fit and toned. Muscles are¡not great but not bad. Mass-wise, they¡¯re almost a full ten kilograms heavier. Still, they lost eight against three?¡¯
The sardine-sized fish were roasted whole with fresh chillis. The soft buns soaked up all the flavour and it spread across his tastebuds evenly as he watched Faelk charge with his hands wide open, trying to attempt a chokehold.
¡®Ooo. Beastmen sure are naturally superior with physical combat.¡¯
One of the boys standing behind the dark red-haired girl shifted and swung his wooden sword at Faelk¡¯s stretched-out hand.
¡®Wow. Body enhancement, a pathetic amount of mana but that¡¯s a¡seven to eight percent boost in strength. No wonder.¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t help but chew through his sandwich faster when the swordsman¡¯s swing landed on Faelk¡¯s wrist precisely and sent the wolf boy slamming into the building wall when he followed up with a turning kick immediately.
Faelk¡¯s reaction wasn¡¯t too shabby and he managed to block the kick with his free hand but had been in the middle of a charge and didn¡¯t have much positional strength to withstand the enhanced kick. The wolf boy was the tallest and largest of the bunch so he was surprised he was overpowered in terms of physical strength.
Ebony could tell Faelk was indeed physically stronger but he lost balance thanks to the wrist strike. The opponent had better battle sense or was trained better.
As for the rest of his classmates, they were awkwardly standing around. Hiding behind their eldest and strongest classmate.
¡®Their mana pools are mostly full, are they not fighting back because they have practicals tomorrow?¡¯
Ebony watched as the two warrior boys ganged on Faelk who used his larger frame and better physique to tank hits and throw a well-timed counter from time to time. The other attacker was unarmed and used his bare fists.
¡°Your warrior is protecting you, you¡¯re not going to do anything?¡± Ebony copied Targot¡¯s voice and used mana vibration to whisper into each of their ears.
Yusqly¡¯s struggles to hit the hand off her hair were yielding no result and her neck must have started to hurt.
His advice had been mostly useless. Bilal, Fabian and Tristan managed to gather their courage to fight back but their lightning streaks were easily avoided by the girl just by shifting one of her feet back. They were afraid of hitting Yusqly but that had been a pathetic attempt on their part.
They pointed their wands at their opponent for two whole seconds before shooting their little zaps of electricity. It didn¡¯t take a genius to dodge it.
Bilal was the only one who aimed at the boys attacking Faelk and even managed to land a hit on the unarmed boy¡¯s shoulder.
The boy who got hit smirked and gave Bilal a side-eye.
¡®I guess that¡¯s to be expected. Even Common rarity clothing made by a Journeymen has some levels of defence. A little streak of electricity wouldn¡¯t do anything. Their spells don¡¯t have a punch behind it either.¡¯
Faelk had been unable to cast any magic or gather any lightning mana without the lee way to focus in peace or he would have done a lot better. Despite obviously having less physical training, Faelk managed to keep the two attackers busy by himself just by having a larger frame. However, he was barely able to land one hit in exchange for taking ten.
His classmates charged at the attacker boys only to be beaten aside.
The girl with dark red hair just chuckled at their attempts.
Umar, one of the quiet kids in class, slipped after receiving a punch from the unarmed boy and then he launched his attack.
¡®Good kids.¡¯ Ebony nodded at Umar¡¯s sneak attack. Umar held a tiny sphere of his mana within his palms without a wand and was hiding it while collecting ambient lightning mana. While falling, he reached out and grabbed the red-haired girl¡¯s leg with the ball of electricity in his palms. He was one with the largest mana pool and the stablest control over lightning. One of the top students so to speak.
The shock landed directly and caused the girl to yelp and let Yusqly go.
Tia and Esme rushed forward to catch their friend while waving their wands which had lightning streaking across the air as they waved it around. It succeeds in attempts to ward off any grubby hands.
Faelk might have received more punches and swings from a wooden sword but a single punch from him caused the opponents to baulk and bruises formed as the exchange of blows continued. While Faelk himself outwardly sustained about as many cuts and bruises as his opponent had. Racial traits were very advantageous for his current predicament.
When the opponent¡¯s apparent leader moved, Ebony¡¯s head ran through options. With a single look, he could already see Bilal and Tristan getting a broken arm and shoulder respectively in the next three seconds. As for Umar, he was going to receive a hard stomp on his spine while he was on the ground. Quite brutal for children.
¡®They¡¯re not going to be able to dodge, should I step in..there¡¯s healing, guess I¡¯ll slightly lower the impact for Umar and leave the rest.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t like to interrupt but even with the city-wide healing, children getting bones broken was only good when controlled. This little girl had none of that. As for the rest of them, he would leave their lesson uninterrupted.
Chapter 283: Lesson
¡°You¡¯re just going to watch? Eating while watching kids get beaten up, are you some kind of sicko?¡± A man¡¯s head popped out from the window that opened under the building he sat on.
¡°Tidal is amazing but I hope it doesn¡¯t heal the children too quickly. The body learns and grows through pain.¡± Ebony replied to his fellow spectator. That seemed sufficient to stop the man from jumping out.
They might be in a quiet street for reasons as simple as kids playing hide and seek or something but in a city full of people with superhuman senses, it would take going to some abandoned farmland or open wilds to be free from sight.
Tidal was unrealistically large but there were plenty of open spaces with farmlands that stretched on further than the eye could see. It was pretty much a few cities jammed right beside each other. There was no other way it could fit so many people.
Going from one district to another was no different from travelling from one city to the next. On the bright side, there were fast rides to shorten the travel time and wide roads to accommodate numerous lanes of carriages. There were aerial ride parking spots in every district and taking a flight was about the same as taking a plane to another country.
These children didn¡¯t have the resources or physical strength to run out the neighbouring streets, much less districts.
The two of them still had half a second to stop the aggressive girl but figured they might as well stay their hands. The man in the building stopped not because of his words but because of the three random strangers nearby watching over the children fighting. The three strangers were just lying against the walls on the ground, out of the children¡¯s sight.
¡®Same clothes, some academy students and their teachers or maybe personal bodyguards if they''re some noble. Don¡¯t recognise the insignia since I didn¡¯t take a walk to warrior academies.¡¯
Ebony spent as little as half a point of mana if it could even show up in his status, to protect Umar¡¯s spine from the full impact. It didn¡¯t look like any of the spectators noticed.
¡®Perceptive for a young girl.¡¯ The girl who heard the crunch felt something odd and doubled down on a second stomp. She was clearly used to beating people. Ebony replicated the sound of a bone snap for her enjoyment.
¡°Yo! You sure that¡¯s alright? It¡¯s gonna leave permanent damage.¡± The brown haired spectator whispered. He was getting ready to stop the kids.
¡°I did that.¡± Ebony snapped his fingers and recreated the bone crunch for his fellow spectator.
¡°Why go so far?¡±
¡°To do what.¡± He didn¡¯t understand what his fellow spectator was trying to say.
¡°You might as well go down and stop them.¡±
¡°What will that achieve. They will never learn. This is a great opportunity for them to learn. It''s not good to instil the idea that there¡¯s always someone who¡¯ll save them.¡±
¡°...true that. Guess that¡¯s how I learnt too.¡±
¡°Right.¡±
No one heard their conversation, especially not the three bodyguards.
Copying Raika¡¯s voice, he whispered into Faelk¡¯s ear, ¡°duck two fifths a ger, bend your left leg and stretch your palms up at a seventy-degree angle.¡±
¡
Faelk was bewildered by the whisper as if his instructor spoke in his head and received a punch right on the nose.
¡®He couldn¡¯t comprehend the information fast enough.¡¯
With the boys injured, he believed they would remember the lesson for some time. It was time to help them as a classmate and not a Grandmaster beating unclassed children.
¡°Don¡¯t cry, now¡¯s not the time. You have friends to protect. Calm down, gather your mana.¡±
¡°Observe the situation, judge and prioritise. Umar can¡¯t move but he¡¯s not in danger now that your opponents are ignoring him.¡±
For the next fifteen minutes, he did his best to give some advice but he limited his involvement as much as possible.
They managed to give the two boys equal zaps and electrical burns but only on the forearms.
His classmates had terrible reflexes and were already injured with a scarce mana pool so they did okay in his opinion.
Faelk on the other hand didn¡¯t even manage to land a single hit on the smaller girl. The girl had a real metal sword on her hip but didn¡¯t even draw it.
¡°This is getting boring.¡± was all she said before she called her buddies to step back.
To rub salt in their wounds, the boys didn¡¯t manage to fully protect the girls. Yusqly, Tia and Esme all had varying degrees of wounds from slaps to kicks.
¡°That was the first time we warded them off!¡±
Unlike what he expected, the children were cheering themselves.
¡®Not a one-off thing then. It''s none of my business. I¡¯ll just get a weak combat model to follow them back. She must be almost done with dinner. Crap, I only left her three sandwiches and they¡¯re no longer pipping hot.¡¯
Ebony hurried home after the show, he recalled when he used to be in the same situation. Of course, he didn¡¯t know it was bullying then. Just some strangers who liked to swing their arms and play catch with him.
¡°Fish?¡± He opened the door and put the bag with his shoes down. The gluttonous foodie smelled his catch before he even saw her.
¡°This is to summon you.¡± He walked in to see a masked face pop up from the sofa in the living room.
¡°I see two bags but only one less than half full.¡±
Ebony forgot to toss the empty bag on his way back in his haste. He passed the bag over and looked over to the kitchen. ¡°You haven¡¯t started dinner prep?¡±
¡°I just got back, held up by some sales talk. My body¡¯s sore from this morning¡¯s race and the long talk didn¡¯t help so I¡¯ve been lazing here since.¡±
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She suddenly turned quiet and her expressionless mask stared at him for an extended period.
¡°The same woman¡¯s scent on you.¡±
¡°She introduced me to a shoe shop.¡±
¡°Hhumm. Help me wash the veggies and dice the russets. I¡¯ll start once I finish these sandwiches while they''re still warm.¡±
¡®Potatoes, nice. I wonder how she''s planning to cook them.¡¯
The answer was baked.
¡°I know what I want for my prize. Give me a massage later.¡±
¡°Okay.¡± Ebony hadn¡¯t put much thought into a present but he already had an idea. Now he had one less present to think about. It was also about time he got some sort of massage skill that helped to relax muscles faster or better. Since he was good at it, it must be the lack of practice that he never got the skill.
¡°Put the trailer outside too, I¡¯m sleeping there tonight. My bed is more comfy and the construction is going to begin tomorrow isn¡¯t it?¡±
¡°It is. I¡¯ll take it out when I water my pet tree. And tend the garden.¡± Ebony might have been a little more entranced with his magical tree than the real, live plants and flowers he was growing.
Since they were going so far as to contract someone to build deeper underground their house, they saw to improving the privacy function as well. The construction was from some human company and the privacy one was sourced from the Mage Association themselves, the Enchantment department.
The commonly used one was a form of Enchantment and not a runic variant. Seeing how Enchantments generally have a stronger effect at the cost of high mana expense and low durability, it was quite suitable for something like camouflage or household privacy.
It wasn¡¯t something they had to cast over and over again in a short time and the expense was unreasonable even for a ten-year enchantment. He got the best package they sold publicly but there were no doubt better mages or enchanters that could cast something better not for sale. It was exceedingly expensive.
The price depended on the size of his house and the number of rooms so it would come after the construction was completed. It shouldn¡¯t even take two days for the construction.
He spent an hour tending to his new garden, the flower seedlings had sprouted already. The weird thing was that he saw Ning Xin take a book into the trailer.
¡®I guess she¡¯s studying new ingredients.¡¯ Unable to see the book, he ignored the oddity and was just glad she found another pastime.
After washing his hands with alchemic hand soap to get rid of any earthy scent he changed into casual wear, shorts and tee-shirt.
The trailer was in the same state they last left it.
He heard a loud snap the moment he entered the trailer.
¡°Learn to knock.¡± Ning Xin sat up from lying on her belly on the sofa. She ran up and returned without her book. ¡°Here, you can get started. I¡¯ll be quiet.¡± She sat back down and tapped her shoulders.
¡°Mmm.¡±
They both ignored when his thumbs rubbed over the straps under her shirt. He remembered that underwear seemed to be just a camisole or a silky negligee that only covered the chest. It wasn¡¯t modern and didn¡¯t have the hold that normal bras had, which might be why she had her bodysuit adjusted.
She lied as she wasn¡¯t quiet at all but it didn¡¯t matter.
He worked his way down to her back after getting her to lay on her belly and finally down to her legs. He obviously skipped a portion on the way down.
He was taught that the feet were a no-go as well. When he was giving his parents massages anyway. He didn¡¯t know the reason, especially when he was taught how to give foot massages for himself. The best reason he could come up with was that the feet were a human weak point. Or the weak point of any creature that used legs and feet to walk. Hence, it was probably just basic courtesy and respect.
¡°How was it?¡± He was rather confident of his skills and her reactions told him that he didn¡¯t have to ask.
¡°I can barely muster any strength, even better than a hot bath. Your hands are nice and warm¡± She grumbled about not being able to experience a ¡®hot bath¡¯ anymore.
Normal lava might not even qualify as a hot bath for her. It would take unnaturally hot mana-infused liquid to allow her to experience a hot bath.
¡°Glad you liked it.¡± Sensitivity to temperature was all over the place with her body temperature being lower than his, not being burned by natural fire but still being able to say his body temperature was warm.
¡°I¡¯m going to sleep, carry me up.¡±
With permission to enter her room, he tossed her there and went out.
¡°Her back and leg musculature is different from what I estimated, I¡¯ll remake the glacial model of her. It can probably mimic her footwork better.¡± He went back to clockwork practising magic.
He nodded at his new work, the internals should be more accurate now. ¡®I can be a professional sculptor back on earth.¡¯
¡°Huh, it¡¯s daytime?¡± Ebony saw the sun peeking out.
¡®That can¡¯t be, I only made one model. I started on the 24th hour so I spent almost ten hours on one model? I¡¯m very sure I wasn¡¯t in a trance¡¡¯ He went over the entire night in his head to confirm that he remembered every second clearly. He had no choice but to admit that he really spent ten hours to recreate her sculpture one for one.
Making models of other people was mostly a waste of time. He was Ebony, the Will he imbued would be based on his abilities. While imbuing Will onto other shapes was based on his memories and understanding of their abilities. The difference was staggering.
There were advantages in the clear difference in Model abilities. Models of Ning Xin were faster and more suited to speedy opponents and models of himself were more suited to agile opponents. Hence, he thought it was not an issue as long as he continued to increase his understanding of the figures he copied.
The 4th hour of the day should have been the start of their morning conditioning but he didn¡¯t see anyone coming out of the trailer so he tested out his new Model. After an entire night, he had more than enough Will recovered for a couple of Models.
He was content with the noticeable improvements in movements. His manipulation of ice was getting so good that even a casually imbued Will could make the Model¡¯s clothes and hair flutter as if they weren¡¯t solid. They could blink and even simulate breathing if he wanted to.
¡°Ready to go?¡± Ebony asked the mask that peeked out of the trailer door.
¡°You go ahead, I¡¯ll skip today.¡± Instead of walking out the female warrior declined morning exercise.
¡°You sure?¡±
¡°Mmhmm.¡±
¡°I smell berries, you were eating weren¡¯t you? I don¡¯t recognise the scent.¡±
Steam started to leak out near the top of the open door. ¡°You¡¯ll find out in future!¡± She slammed the door closed.
¡°Go ahead and sleep, I¡¯ll get going then.¡±
¡®Huh, that was the most forced sentence she ever muttered.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t care about some secret fruit jam or whatever was in creation but he did learn to look forward to new flavours, especially fruits. After all, travelling and looking for new sights came in tandem with experiencing new sensations. Food was an integral part of travelling.
After his morning exercise, he came back to see that breakfast wasn¡¯t prepared. Ignoring that, he went to school.
¡°You¡¯re early, what happened to you?¡± He asked the children that surrounded him as he entered the class.
His classmates who got attacked still had bruises. Bilal and Tristan had their arms bandaged and Umar couldn¡¯t stand straight. Faelk on the other hand was walking about with no visible injuries. Despite receiving the worst physical injuries, he also healed the fastest.
¡®Great, the city¡¯s healing works differently for everyone. Maybe it also checks how serious the wound is and simply promotes faster personal healing. I doubt the city¡¯s mana reserves are endless so this makes more sense.¡¯ Ebony considered the taxes but there was no chance that such a massive magical construct could heal every single person from any injury or illness.
Most people wore Myriad Bracelets and the amount that the bracelet can''t absorb and convert inefficiently is low. Different people needed different strengths of healing and there were so many types of injuries he couldn¡¯t wrap his head about how they were keeping it sustained.
¡°Big broo! You have to help us!¡± Tia grabbed his wrists with both her arms.
He listened to them recount the situation and asked for the reason they were in such a situation.
¡°No. Solve it yourself.¡±
Ebony shut them down, their grieving voices and recounting wouldn¡¯t change his mind.
Chapter 284: Dull Shop
Ning Xin soaked in the bath for hours with a bag full of mixed feelings.
¡®Curse that shop owner.¡¯
She slapped her unmasked face hard enough to leave red marks on her face before she slipped down to blow bubbles in the water. The memories of the day before were recounted in her head again, none of which concerned the dungeon race.
Right after Ebony went to his playground academy where he insisted that he was learning useful knowledge, she washed the dishes and got dressed.
Tidal had too many people and her Intuition was rather whimsical. Once bitten twice shy.
There were dangers she couldn¡¯t sense and people capable enough to escape her detection.
Most worrisome of all was the unknown stealth spell that could knock her out. It would be fine if the spell worked but not if there were still people who could see her.
She played it off in front of Ebony the previous time but the people who didn¡¯t speak Elcra screamed trouble. It felt a little pathetic to worry about something that already happened then and she didn¡¯t want Ebony to feel the same worry.
Maybe the young man who seemed in charge wasn¡¯t too much of an issue but one of his bodyguards was undetectable through all her senses but sight. She¡¯d rather be awake and be able to fight or run than become invisible or forgettable. The half-hearted stealth skill didn¡¯t even make them forget her presence completely.
Her only countermeasure at the moment was to have more stockpiled energy in the form of mana and vitality in her mask. The changes her mask underwent with her evolution were far greater than the past few evolutions but she hadn¡¯t made use of it as well as she should.
Be that as it may, she was far from uptight or paranoid about unknown dangers.
Unlike Ebony who had the patience of taking carriages or flights, she didn¡¯t. A speed walk on the main road for ten minutes got her onto the closest shopping street. The bright lights on memory light boards and screens that cycled through catalogues of each shop¡¯s wares were slightly unfamiliar to her.
Luckily, the women''s clothing stores all carried underwear and it wasn¡¯t blatantly advertised or she would be a little embarrassed entering the stores.
¡®This is too coarse.¡¯ She found the corner section that sold what she was looking for and removed her gloves to feel the fabric. She entered a larger store hoping it would have a Grandmaster in charge and the equivalent quality but didn¡¯t find materials that felt comfortable enough.
It was a pity since not every store catered to every build and frame. The clothing stores for female warriors that often had her sizes were more of an armour store and focused on strong clothing that handled physical wear and tear.
¡®I¡¯ve been to eight places already, do I need to find some specialised store¡¡¯ Ning Xin strolled along the pavement in thought.
She forced herself to take in the heavy mixture of scents in the surroundings since it was one of her strongest senses besides Intuition. The smell of metal and perfume was the strongest of the bunch. It would be foolish to breathe her from her air supply and block out one of her best detectors.
By the tenth store, she gave up and checked every store, small or big.
She didn¡¯t know if it was because she was getting impatient or desperate but her Intuition was moving her feet and she finally found a rather boring building without any sign boards or decor that told people it was a shop. Only an ¡®open¡¯ signboard was hung on the door. Ning Xin found that most shops here kept their doors physically open so finding one that had closed doors and glass windows or doors to show the interior was uncommon.
She opened the door without knocking and noticed that the interior was just like every other clothing store so she relaxed and quickly found what she was looking for. For a shop the size of Roya¡¯s house, about half the shop was selling underwear.
¡°Good afternoon, may I help you?¡± The only free employee at the moment walked up to her. Looking around, the shop was rather popular. They were all women so she didn¡¯t feel out of place compared to large shops that sold clothing for both genders with male tailors and employees present.
¡®It was quiet from outside, I guess it¡¯s popular and rich enough to have noise suppression.¡¯ Ning Xin might have caught a little of Ebony¡¯s thought patterns. She wouldn¡¯t have thought about these things in the past.
¡°Just looking for underwear.¡± She didn¡¯t need any help since one sweep of her eye was enough for her to find what she was looking for.
¡®This feels good, smooth and soft. It has a lot of different sizes too.¡¯ She got her business done as quickly as she could and guesstimated which were her sizes before checking the items out.
She still tended to choose red but she saw a few nice patterns that were pink or black. With how often she accidentally found herself going into battle, she didn¡¯t limit how many sets she planned to buy. Her main focus was to check if the hidden padding in front was thick enough to cover her.
The employee followed her tightly and kept trying to promote different sets based on what she already picked and carried in her arms. Annoyed at first, she was trying her best to get it over with but impressed by the employee''s pick soon enough. She managed to introduce what Ning Xin liked in a matter of seconds and made her spend more than she assumed she would.
¡°For spending more than ten Blues in a single purchase you¡¯re entitled to check out our owner¡¯s secret collection.¡± The employee made her trip piqued her interest. The price was way too high if she still had her wits but the mammoth materials made both of them richer than she could wrap her head around. She didn¡¯t even buy thirty sets.
Without a good sense for money, Ebony called them millionaire equivalents. Something about not being billionaires because they had no real or stable access to Purples. He used big words that she could barely remember sometimes.
¡°Why would a shop owner have a secret collection?¡± Not one for business, she asked the first thing that came to mind. It was one thing if it was items that were rare but these were just clothes. It wasn¡¯t anything special even if the materials were very high quality. She didn¡¯t believe the tailor was a King ranked either.
¡°She has a separate collection for rich merchant ladies and ladies of high society.¡± The employee bowed slightly and gestured to a door behind the changing room.
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¡®I¡¯m not interested so why am I following her?¡¯ Ning Xin didn¡¯t know why she followed the flow so easily. On second thoughts, it didn¡¯t hurt to see more options.
The door opened and the sales lady gestured for her customer to enter first. Ning Xin entered when she saw more dresses and clothes hung in the dark room beyond the door.
¡°She has a large collection tailored for inexperienced and experienced ladies alike. It¡¯s her personal hobby.¡±
Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition warned her when she heard the sales lady¡¯s words. The moment the sentence echoed out of her head, the sales lady closed the door behind her. Her hands flew to the door too late.
The door didn¡¯t budge but the door handle creaked under her accidental acceleration. ¡®What does she mean by that?¡¯
¡°Woah, easy on the door. I¡¯m pretty sure I reinforced that greatly.¡±
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t alarmed, she still didn¡¯t sense danger and her Intuition was keeping her curious in a fresh way. She turned to the woman¡¯s voice. It was someone a full head shorter than her.
The woman had pale white hair but with bright red eyes.
Ning Xin¡¯s pupils dilated under her mask when her brain fully took in the information at record speeds.
The woman who spoke wore a black nightgown that reached above her knees. That was fine and all since Ning Xin bought a few of the full body types as well but she was trying to think why bother when she saw that the night gown was see-through. It was almost completely transparent and even the dark room wasn¡¯t enough to stop her sight from checking out that the woman was not wearing anything else under the see-through nightgown.
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t shocked by that. It was a women-only clothing store and she was brought into a room behind a door inside a changing room. She was shocked by the floppy ears that hung on the side of the white-haired, red-eyed woman.
¡®Bunny beastmen¡but my intuition is still not picking up danger.¡¯ She still had time in her hyper-accelerated perception and quickly scanned the secret room but the surprisingly large room had pitch-black curtains that blocked out her sight. She smelled a few more women in the room and traces of this bunny woman¡¯s scent everywhere.
Her bullet time ran out and her expressionless mask faced the bunny beastwoman.
¡°You¡¯re the owner?¡±
¡°Yes, since you¡¯re new I¡¯ll show you around.¡±
Despite her initial shock, the bunny woman who had soft facial features and a body that wasn¡¯t fit for swordsmanship walked her through the secret room without any vigilance or bad intentions.
¡®All I¡¯m picking up is interest and¡glee I suppose.¡¯ Walking closer to the black curtains with women behind them allowed her to feel a general sense of excitement and happiness together with another emotion in the mix that she wasn¡¯t able to pinpoint. It was slightly different from the owner¡¯s emotions.
Her mana sense couldn¡¯t pick up much since she didn¡¯t see the world through mana but she could hear the rustling and could tell that women here were changing behind the curtains.
The next fifteen minutes were spent looking through weird articles of clothing and underwear in the same scope as what the owner wore. Ning Xin had a hard time figuring out the purpose of wearing¡strips of cloth. They served no purpose but to cover the barest. The only normal dresses she was shown were the evening dresses for Nobles¡¯ balls and social events.
Although the dresses left the back completely open for everyone to see, she knew this much was normal. Mallory already told her that showing a spotless back was the beauty standard in the Empire''s high society. The Princess said that the standards had been passed down for a long time. Something about a woman¡¯s back being the most attractive part of a woman.
Ning Xin shook her head at the Noble¡¯s customs. Why would the women want to show themselves without underwear to show their undefended backs?
¡®Do I need to think like Ebony to understand, no way, I don¡¯t believe he understands women better than me. Let me think¡ah, maybe a show of power. Like, I can show my back and you can¡¯t do anything. Or to show off they¡¯re so strong they didn¡¯t receive any injuries. Make sense. See, I¡¯m not completely stupid after all.¡¯ Ning Xin zoned out for a moment.
¡°My apologies, I¡¯m not interested in anything here.¡±
¡°Hehe, understood. All my new customers say that. I opened this store for young noble and rich merchant daughters who had bad experiences with relationships thanks to their inexperience.¡± The owner covered her mouth and giggled.
¡°What do you mean by inexperienced?¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t want to listen to her and leave the store but couldn¡¯t help but ask now that she had the chance.
She held the urge to slap the owner when she giggled again. Something about the act or the person was very annoying.
¡°I suppose you¡¯re not married or in a romantic relationship with a man?¡±
Perhaps annoyed by her tone, Ning Xin denied the accusations as if to spite the woman. ¡°I am.¡± She wasn¡¯t lying anyway.
¡°Ah, someone new in your life. A week?¡±
¡°Years.¡±
¡°Poor man.¡± She stepped back in visible shock.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t know she was so easily annoyed, she didn¡¯t know she could dislike someone without bad intentions so fast, so badly. Even now, she was sensing good intentions from the owner. Wasn¡¯t she just insulting her as if she was a bad match for anyone?
Despite the fuel for her meditation skill, her feet didn¡¯t pull her out of the store.
¡°You must watch out, men get bored easily. I can tell a person¡¯s age range with a look, you¡¯re very young.¡± She eyed her swords before looking up at her mask again, ¡°I presume your partner¡¯s a noble, one that¡¯s about as young as you hence his possible ignorance but that won¡¯t last. Come, I have the perfect thing for all girls like you. I can¡¯t watch young ladies get hurt.¡±
The strong sense of goodwill spilling from the owner stunned her and allowed her to be pulled forward to a workshop. It wasn¡¯t that different from Roya¡¯s workshop, minus the type of clothing being made.
¡°Don¡¯t reject me so fast, just take this book. I¡¯m sure you don¡¯t want your man to lose interest in you. You¡¯re still good for some time if he¡¯s as inexperienced as you, so now''s a good time to start preparing and training. These are some basics for ignorant young nobles.¡±
The owner finally caught her attention in a good way. Training? Now she was interested. The part about Ebony losing interest in her hadn¡¯t sounded real until the thought continued to stay in her head. ¡®What if he really isn¡¯t interested?¡¯
Since Ebony always persuaded her to read more as knowledge was important, she figured she could hear the lady out.
¡°Here¡¯s a tip before you begin these exercises, it might help if you have some physical contact with your partner beforehand. Oh right, some girls complained to me about something. Don¡¯t forget to be somewhere completely private. Now off you go, I have customers to attend to. I¡¯ll see you again if you trust me and follow the exercises.¡±
Before she knew it, Ning Xin was booted out of the shop by a hidden back door in the owner¡¯s workshop.
¡®That was one weird shopping trip.¡¯ She tossed the book inside her bag and double-checked that she wasn¡¯t kidnapped to some random location or underground cave.
More exhausted by the shopping trip than the dungeon race, she slumped on the sofa after unpacking. The laundry for her new stuff could wait. Taking out the book that she didn¡¯t even glance at, she didn¡¯t know what to expect.
The book appeared new, with an undecorated leather cover that lacked a title. It was as boring as the shop¡¯s external design. She flipped it open to read the first page. Then, the pieces of the puzzle aligned. The owner was talking about her sexual experience. She shut the book, reminded of the talk with Mallory and her chef friends. Now she was worried, after all, the older ladies understood men better as married women and they all said the same thing.
¡®Wasted half my day.¡¯
Hoping to distract herself from the insecurities of Ebony choosing a different woman, she pulled up her status to check her growth. It was always a good distraction to see how much closer she was to being able to go to Fragadal¡¯s Sea to search for more clues. Not that she believes she could find her parents if her grandmother couldn¡¯t.
Chapter 285: Self Exploration
Name: Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin
Core Skill:
Rampaging Immortal¡¯s Pulse Lvl 605 (¢ô)
Transmutative Heart Lvl 602 (¢ó)
Firebird Heathen¡¯s Imitation Composition Lvl 1 (¢ó)
Class: Sword Witch of Infernal Blood Lvl 301
Class Skills:
Spring Bolt Lvl 621 (¢ô)
Fire Mana Command Lvl 634
Cascading Sword Art Lvl 621 (¢ô)
Cascading Dismember Lvl 603 (¢ô)
Infernal Permeation Lvl 634 (¢ó)
Pyro Eruption Lvl 601 (¢ó)
Gospel¡¯s Perforation Lvl 642 (¢ô)
Immolation Field Lvl 600 (¢ò)
Blood Seethe Lvl 601 (¢ó)
Sword Witch of Infernal Blood¡¯s Conditioning Lvl 301 (¢ô)
Blood Mana Control Lvl 602
Infernal Witch¡¯s Blood Halo Lvl 552 (¢ó)
Fever Nourishing Meditation Lvl 478 (¢ó)
Blood Cauldron Lvl 23 (¢ò)
Innate Psyche Shift Lvl 152 (¢ó)
Sub-Class: Tempest Butcher Lvl 301
Sub-Class Skills:
Wind Mana Control Lvl 507
Lightning Mana Control Lvl 522
Pulsating Tempest Augmentation Lvl 552 (¢ó)
Stormpot Inoculation Lvl 454 (¢ó)
Revolving Razor Veil Lvl 502 (¢ó)
Static Palpitation Lvl 537 (¢ò)
Thunderlash Lvl 518 (¢ò)
Cyclonic Blade Lvl 499 (¢ò)
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Culinary Carnage Lvl 301
Profession Skills:
Carnage Cooking Lvl 488 (¢ó)
Delicate Heat Perception Lvl 562 (¢ô)
Live Ingredient Deconstruction Lvl 509 (¢ó)
Vigour Ingrain Lvl 59 (¢ò)
Empty Skill Slot
¡®Numbers make me dizzy. Looking at this much is enough.¡¯ Ning Xin might have been impulsive and destroyed one or two of her skills just for her new Core Skill but it was worth it in her opinion. Most of her skills were just advanced versions of her old skills and spells.
She was not as divergent in her skill set. Ebony was right in that she made it easy for people to counter her in specific situations but her belief was not shaken. She just had to be even stronger at what she did. She was better at killing while he was better at not being killed. It was fine that way.
The difference wasn¡¯t all that obvious in the past but now that they were rather deep in their paths, the difference between them was only going to increase and that was perfectly fine.
¡®It¡¯s just rather annoying that even though I¡¯m already obviously stronger, he just keeps getting even harder to beat.¡¯ The closer she got to being the best at beating someone, the closer Ebony got to becoming the most troublesome opponent to beat.
Her first Core Skill evolved thanks to Gen and Ebony. Taking away her swords from her was¡an experience. Getting slowly eaten piece by piece by bats that straight-up absorbed heat was another experience. Other than refining her physique and the blood spider experience, it was the most harrowing experience of her life. She never thought she could bleed so much.
It was also during that time that she realised the blood in her body was black. When smudged against ice or snow, dark red marks will surface but the liquid itself was black to her eye. Calling the fluid in her body ¡®blood¡¯ was starting to push it. The consistency of honey didn¡¯t even match up to the sludge coursing through her veins. It made her muscles and flesh a brighter red instead so she wasn¡¯t complaining.
Transmutative Heart didn¡¯t get any direct benefits from her evolution, it still simply converted energies within her body. Most efficiently was stamina and mana to vitality.
Firebird Heathen¡¯s Imitation Composition was the skill that she sacrificed other advantages for. Even changing her mind on some juicy Fortifications for it. She could barely recall what those options were but she knew that her mind was changed.
It was a passive skill that changed her physical body directly. She didn¡¯t understand it well and barely knew how to level the skill up. The description didn¡¯t tell her much either. The obvious benefit that drew her eyes to the skill was that it uses a portion of her blood¡¯s energy to strengthen her body against physical stress. It also increased her heat resistance even further but she didn¡¯t focus on that even though it gave her a 350% increase on her base.
Now she didn¡¯t have to worry about Rampaging Immortal¡¯s Pulse killing herself. Well, she still has to but that issue wouldn¡¯t be all that concerning once she found a better training method for Firebird Heathen¡¯s Imitation Composition.
With all three of her Core Skills being in balance, she saw no limits to her strength increase anymore. The ceiling had been raised so much, she would probably take a long time to reach it again.
Gospel¡¯s Perforation was still just her sword thrust active skill. Sword thrusts were her speciality and precision was key. Her precision and accuracy were just so high that she could cut one hair of her opponent moving at similar speeds as her. One could even choose which hair they wanted cut and she could pierce near the roots without harming the rest of the head.
Missing within a certain range was pretty much impossible for her.
Infernal Permeation was basically her fire mana imbuing spell. Stormpot Inoculation was rather similar, it was from Ebony¡¯s suggestion to stuff lightning mana with fire. She doubled down and mixed it with Blood Cauldron to contain all her elemental mana. All the elemental imbuing spells were mostly for their combined spell but she used it a lot more often.
Blood Cauldron was a new skill from her evolution as well. It wasn¡¯t mainly an external active spell, it was semi-passive. One of the other skills that she sacrificed another blood Class Skill for. It was a skill that actively consumed her mana to ¡®boil¡¯ down her energy so that her blood could contain even more energy. It was the perfect match for her Fortifications.
If she didn¡¯t have this, there was no chance she could beat Ebony in an extended race in crossing distance. Her extreme physical prowess came at a high cost. When you thought about it that way, there was no way she could beat Ebony if she had the same amount of food in her system.
She was still in the middle of balancing and controlling how much mana the skill was consuming but it was oscillating between 2 to 3% of her mana regeneration at the moment. Surprisingly enough, it didn¡¯t hamper her mana regeneration despite consuming mana. It was a skill in between a physical and magical one.
Her active Augmentation consists of Blood Seethe, a fire type enhancement, Pulsating Tempest Augmentation which was both a lightning and wind enhancement and Rampaging Immortal¡¯s Pulse. Two-tier 3 elemental enhancements with a tier 4 vitality-based enhancement
Ebony¡¯s active Augmentation was his tier 3 Woven ice flames and runic formula both backed by a tier 4 mana compression.
Rather balanced but in her opinion, her Core Skill gave her a lot more pure power than his stable, compressed mana. She could keep dishing out greater amounts of physical buff while he would slowly weaken as long as she could force him to use up his pool of compressed mana.
Harder said than done when her consumption far exceeds the rate at which she could push him to use mana.
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At the moment, they were still balancing their new spells and mana usage so it was hard to say if she would use up all her energy before he did. If she wanted to beat him in a duel, now was the time.
His physique change reduced his stamina regeneration, a small problem when he couldn¡¯t ever exhaust it. The big problem was his body, musculature in particular would give in faster. However, he was in a situation like she was after evolving into a Master and didn¡¯t have a third Core Skill. It would be rather unfair.
Pyro Eruption used to be her fire spear spell but it became so much easier to lump up fire mana and chuck it at her targets. It didn¡¯t require too much mental effort and dealt explosive and heat damage. Great for pushing away multiple opponents while she focuses on one in close combat.
She was still mana-hungry and didn¡¯t improve Immolation Field, the area of effect fire spell she had.
Her Blood Halo was an amazing help. It didn¡¯t take her focus and could help her just like how Ebony¡¯s Glacial Models help him. He used his Model¡¯s as distractions but her Blood Haloes were weapons. Now with Blood Cauldron, it¡¯s lethality would rise but it wouldn¡¯t nearly be as versatile as his Models.
It was a pity that she wasn¡¯t able to get far with Vigour Ingrain, her Profession skill which was how she made food gave out some temporary buffs but she had a feeling she took the wrong direction with the skill. Injecting energy into food didn¡¯t seem like the right method. Bringing out the best of her ingredients felt more like the kind of chef she wanted to become.
She didn¡¯t pick up many Generic Skills. Even though she could get stats from blood, her all-time increment barely equated to one or two level up¡¯s worth of stats. A grandmaster¡¯s level up.
On the topic of Fortifications, she probably lost ground now that Ebony caught back up with massive multipliers. She was just unclear as to what all his Fortifications were since they were playing a game of guessing. His choices confused her, although they stroked her ego. Sure, covering up ice¡¯s general weakness of melting was good and all, but he couldn¡¯t build on his advantages even further.
She couldn¡¯t complain when he proved that his path didn¡¯t lead him to becoming weak.
She got a glimpse of his cold flames at work and they were rather terrifying. It didn¡¯t have a direct power up but being able to dig into any surface and target something¡¯s internals was more troublesome than something that hits hard. She had a feeling if his flames touched her, she would have to spend a lot of effort and energy to keep herself from being frozen solid.
His ice magic felt stronger so he probably finally got a direct power up to Intelligence. Once again, his mana changed rather drastically. It was as perfect of a match as her trinity of Core Skills. Compressibility, resilience and density were all simple properties that build upon each other and he clearly did one thing right.
She couldn¡¯t pinpoint what his new Fortifications were other than ice and sound magic¡¯s obvious increase in power.
One of her Fortifications was heavily influenced by Ebony¡¯s lengthy talk about heat and materials. Specific heat capacity. The term used to be new to her but she understood the concept pretty well as a chef that dealt with cooking liquids. It was the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of a certain amount of substance.
Her Sub-Class, like Ebony''s, was rather subdued in every perspective be it power, variety or use in battle. It was honestly expected. In this regard, Ebony was making use of all his skills better. She didn¡¯t mind since her Sub-Class had always been about augmenting her close combat potential while giving some mid-range capabilities.
Carnage Cooking and Live Ingredient Deconstruction amplified her battle direction against organic opponents.
Fortifications:
Class: Sword Witch of Infernal Blood
Mana Efficiency with Fire Magic increased by 750%
Fire Magic increased in heat by 750%
Casting Speed with Fire Magic is increased by 300%
Attack Speed when dual-wielding longswords increased by 750%
Agility increased in effect by 300%
Blood¡¯s density is increased by 200%
Resilience of heart is increased by 200% relative to Constitution
Mental processing speed is increased by 200% relative to Intelligence
Bone Marrow¡¯s Efficacy is increased by 100%
Fire Magic¡¯s Explosive Force is increased by 100%
Blood¡¯s Specific Heat Capacity is Increased by 100%
Sub-Class: Tempest Butcher
Casting Speed with Lightning Magic is increased by 300%
Casting Speed with Wind Magic is increased by 300%
Mana Efficiency with Body Enhancement Magic is increased by 300%
Natural Reflex¡¯s speed increased by 200%
Conjured Wind is naturally 200% sharper.
Sensitivity to Lightning Mana is increased by 100%
Lightning Magic¡¯s Retention Tendency is increased by 100%
Profession: Culinary Carnage
Control of heat increased by 300%
Control of precision when handling ingredients increased by 300%
Ability to understand unknown ingredients is increased by 200%
Predatory Aura¡¯s Potency is increased by 100%
As a chef, she obviously understood that bone marrow produces blood. She could have gotten a blood production increase Fortification for a lower price but it wouldn¡¯t be as encompassing and balanced for her body.
There was not much to say about the explosive force of fire magic. As for increasing specific heat capacity, it might sound counterproductive as she increased the difficulty of enhancing herself but she was more troubled by the fact that her blood would evaporate away. This would increase the limit to which she could take her augmentation. Her blood being harder to boil was far more beneficial than detrimental.
A few days was enough to tell her it helped increase her energy capacity even more. Her body temperature already rivalled that of a Frost Elf if not lower.
Nearly all organic creatures had lightning mana in their bodies, an increase in sensitivity improved her perception for these creatures.
The issue she had with lightning magic was that it struck an opponent, dealt substantial damage and that was it. The stunning effect did last a while but it wasn¡¯t enough for her. Since her blood magic did what Ebony recommended from her lightning to contain fire mana, she got lightning mana to stay in her targets for a longer period without manual manipulation.
She wasn¡¯t nearly good enough to retain control over lightning mana when it was inside her target.
As for her Profession, it was rather concerning.
When she looked at people, her usual first thought was how to break them down and process them. Looking for their weak points in her ¡®bullet time¡¯ was all too common.
Predatory Aura was a rather boring choice for her. Despite being a cowardly effect of falsely frightening other creatures, she saw the use of it. It was controllable to some extent and appeared to be an extension to overflowing essence. She was still learning how to make use of it.
Honestly, she was unsure why she picked it. But to be fair, she didn¡¯t have any more currency to spend on other Fortifications after splurging and sacrificing for her new Core Skill and Class Skill. This was the cheapest option and the other options for her Profession were even more lacklustre with no combat implications no matter how she thought about them.
It didn¡¯t help that she had been in a time crunch during the evolution.
Doubling how scary she was to other creatures honestly didn¡¯t seem like much but now that she had it, her opinions changed. It would be rather useful once she could control it and the Fortification increased more.
To some degree, even her pre-evolution overflowing essence could affect monsters and people¡¯s movements, emotions and even. Often people since they faced and hunted down strong monsters.
The morning dungeon race allowed her to pick up from the dungeon¡¯s creatures'' reluctance to attack her. However, that was only for monsters on the first floor.
Ning Xin heard the door open and smelled the scent of spiced roasted fish.
¡°Fish?¡±
She then complained about the small amount he bought for her but was more concerned that she smelled something more concerning. A woman.
It was quite concentrated, a sign that he was in close proximity with the woman for an extended time. Initially, she panicked momentarily at an accelerated pace. The shopping trip and meeting with an odd woman honestly didn¡¯t help. However, she picked up nonchalance and absolute indifference from Ebony when he told her about them shopping for shoes together and calmed herself down.
¡®No, even if this unknown woman is not a threat to me now, what about in future? What if another woman¡¯s a threat? He¡¯s so strong and cool, of course, he''s a good catch. I can¡¯t get overconfident, there¡¯s so many beautiful women here.¡¯ Ning Xin was forced to face the fact that they were exposed to civilization and a great amount of people. She fell back to the ¡®advice¡¯ she was given.
¡®Urgh, maybe the book has more merit than I assumed. Doesn¡¯t hurt to try some new training exercises but what kind of training can increase my charm?¡¯ Ning Xin sighed internally and remembered the tips about physical contact and privacy. She managed to make her demands sound natural.
She was slightly surprised Ebony agreed so easily after saying he wouldn¡¯t give her a massage. His massages honestly hit all the tight spots in her body. He understood which muscles she used and how to loosen them up.
Sadly, all she felt from Ebony was his curiosity as he probed and put pressure on her muscles and skin.
¡®I thought I was beginning to feel that from him but now he¡¯s not looking at me uncomfortably again. Showing more skin isn¡¯t going to work and I pretty much showed most of it already¡stupid tier 4 meditation and battle junkie, why you gotta make it so difficult for me.¡¯ Ning Xin took the book she left in the house into the trailer. No better time than the present.
¡®Huh, there are drawings?¡¯ She flipped to the second page once she entered the trailer and made sure her room¡¯s door was closed tightly.
She was expecting more nonsensical words, but the presence of the drawing of a woman¡¯s body made her rethink that the book actually contained useful exercises.
¡®Let¡¯s see. Okaaay?¡¯ She skimmed through the introduction for ¡®basic preparation¡¯
¡®Caress, what for? What¡¯s this, imagine your partner¡¯s touch?¡¯ The drawings showed a woman running their hands over their own body.
¡®I¡¯m not washing myself why would I rub that? Odd.¡¯ She flipped to the next page where the drawing of the woman had her hands on her chest. The short explanation and tip was to massage herself until they perked up. Ning Xin tilted her head in confusion while she rolled around on her bed. Why did she not understand the book despite understanding the words?
The more she read the more stupid the exercise felt. It was full of nonsense. There was no strength, dexterity or agility to be gained from the exercises.
¡®Haa, I guess I should at least try before I judge.¡¯ Ning Xin finished five pages of short text and drawings of an odd massage technique. She didn¡¯t really need to try very hard to imagine when residues of body heat and scent were on her body.
¡®This is stupid, what will this do?¡¯ Sceptical, she followed the book¡¯s instructions step by step.
It took some time before she realised that something was odd. It was quite magical, the simple caress from herself made her fire mana and blood mana move by itself. Shocked by how such a silly exercise could activate some of her skills, she put aside her scepticism and followed the next instructions more earnestly. Maybe it was more of a spell than a physical exercise, it would explain why her initial thoughts put the exercise in a negative light.
From then on, she found weird reactions from her body that she never felt.
Finally, she cursed the shop owner. ¡®What was that¡oh no. That¡¯s dirty, I didn¡¯t know that happened¡is this good or bad.¡¯ Ning Xin didn¡¯t know how much time passed but she only got to the end of the first chapter before she must have gotten sleepy. She had mixed feelings but her hot body reminded her of what she did and the state of her bed did not help.
Feeling like she dirtied herself, she accidentally burned her bed to ashes with the sole exception of her bolster. She found out she was late for morning condition while she was washing herself but morning conditioning was the furthest thing from her mind.
It was hard to face Ebony while her mind was in scrambles and his perception got her embarrassed despite his ignorance because of how focused he was on his magic practice. Fortunately, he seemed rather distracted by his constant thoughts of improving his magic spells. She double-checked that he was gone and far away before using the alchemy scent absorbers and cleaned her room and the entire trailer multiple times before locking herself in the bath.
¡®Curse that shop owner.¡¯ She slapped her face. Water couldn¡¯t wash away how dirty she felt. Her mind kept racing back and the moment she recalled that she would have dinner with Ebony made her rush out a meal, wrote a note and dashed into the dungeon to vent her curses on monsters instead.
Chapter 286: Teach? No. Train? Yes.
Ebony learnt about his classmate¡¯s situation. It felt like something from a novel he used to read.
About a decade after the establishment of Tidal Academy, the Capital stabilised since its construction was mostly complete and the Royals tried to centralise education and maintain certain standards to an extent. It wasn¡¯t possible.
There were too many people.
So to promote growth, they obviously used competition.
He didn¡¯t think it would be any of these children¡¯s concerns but there was a category for Academies with students under ten. There was also one from ten to fifteen or any unclassed above fifteen years old.
The competitions ran over the entire year. Tidal Academy would put up a bracket and each Academy was sent letters to tell them who their next opponent was. This was if the Academy registered with Tidal Academy.
Piercing Tempest Academy was one of them since it was considered a multi-generation school.
The whole competition situation was none of Ebony¡¯s business. Even if there was a category for Grandmasters, he was not interested as of yet. He had better things to do and spend his time with.
Their next opponents were the Arcane Warriors.
Sadly for their Academy, they rose the ranks quite a bit. It meant they wouldn¡¯t only be matched up with other mage schools. The Journeymen and Masters were better off, but pitting mage children against warrior children was just asking to be beaten. It was a trend that everyone knew but could do nothing about.
As for the specific scuffle, it was just plain old bullying on the opponent¡¯s side. The girl they knew nothing about was a well-known bully in the neighbourhood or perhaps in the district. Ebony wondered where these kids were getting rumours from.
Their opponent was the Arcane Warriors. Ebony was somewhat surprised but also nodded in understanding when he recalled their opponents using momentary flashes of body enhancement magic. As a side note for himself, the Arcane Warrior Academy seemed to be one of the top ten Academies for warriors and the top thirty among all registered Academies.
While his old militia captain¡¯s Bludgeon Academy wasn¡¯t very well known as his classmates never heard of it.
¡°You have to learn how to stand up for yourself. There won¡¯t always be a big bro around to protect you or abide by your wishes.¡±
¡°It¡¯s fine if you don¡¯t want to help us, you don¡¯t have to give us the adult talk.¡±
Ebony could hear mr Targot¡¯s bragging to the other teachers about the kids thanking him for his teachings outside the corridor. Miss Raika chipped in and poured water on his enthusiasm when she said she got the same appreciation from the children who came to class early.
They were confused at the sudden appreciation but didn¡¯t seem to know about the bullying. However, they were not stupid and could tell that their students got injuries, even if they were mostly hidden.
But just like Ebony, going to beat up other schools¡¯ unclassed students wasn¡¯t exactly a sensible or respectable course of action. They were discussing the topic in the corridor in whispers.
¡°Th-thank you for teaching us the ball tip.¡± Umar bit his tongue when he finally spoke up.
That got his classmates to bite back their disappointment when he told them he wasn¡¯t going to help them.
¡°So what are you going to do next?¡± He asked them.
¡°What else, we¡¯ll have to avoid going out to play.¡± Tristan shrugged his shoulders.
¡°Prepare ourselves from getting beaten and embarrassed in front of our families next month¡¡± Tia whispered.
The rest of his classmates who came early, some of whom weren''t present during the scuffle looked like they were about to cry.
¡°Throwing in the towel without a fight?¡± Ebony might not have been this shocked before. Even a berg mammoth about to step on him might not shock him as much.
¡°We can¡¯t beat those brutes big bro, you should¡¯ve seen how fierce that girl, Cerise, was.¡±
The red-haired girl that beat them up was a child of a Viscount¡¯s family. It wasn¡¯t rare for nobles to attend other Academies since they might only pass down certain lineages and their descendants could still choose their Sub-Class and/or Profession. Studying their family''s skills at home and then learning from an Academy during the day was quite common.
Tidal didn¡¯t accept every Noble without regard either, so he could only assume the girl failed to enter or simply chose the Arcane Warrior skill set over whatever Tidal Academy taught. After hearing how Tidal Academy was at the top in every category except a few odd schools of magic, he had a feeling it was the first reason and she simply failed to meet the mark.
¡°You can start training and get stronger.¡±
¡°There¡¯s no way we can beat her in less than a month.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t you say you suddenly fought back well when you all mass hallucinated and recalled your instructors¡¯ voices.¡±
¡®Oops¡¡¯ Ebony slipped up.
¡°What¡¯s mash hootenation?¡± Faelk blinked twice and asked. Ebony noticed the same question on all the children¡¯s faces and was relieved that he didn¡¯t have to explain himself.
¡°Back to the topic, you managed to fend them off once in a few minutes of epiphany. A few weeks of dedicated effort should be enough to stand a fighting chance.¡±
They stayed quiet this time, probably completely ignoring the words that none of them understood.
¡°Teach us big bro! You¡¯re strong right? Miss Raika said you¡¯re a grandmaster and you can do all those fancy tricks.¡±
¡°Huh?¡± Ebony was assuming they would direct this question to their actual instructors after his advice. He did not expect them to ask him. He even used their instructors¡¯ voices to guide them when they were getting bullied.
¡°Why don¡¯t you ask Miss Raika or Mr Targot?¡±
¡°We can¡¯t tell them we got beaten by our opponent academy before the ranking battles even begin!¡± Bilal yelled out.
¡°The instructors are busy with our senior¡¯s training¡¡± Esme whispered considerately.
It seemed obvious that the school was placing more of their hopes for ranking on the Journeymen and Masters competition. Even Raika and Targot were a participant as a student of this Academy. They had their own training to do and their results were technically far more important for the general public compared to some children play fighting¡¯s rank.
The Piercing Tempest¡¯s overall rank seemed to be top eighty. He would have to search for the ranking list to find out how good that is relative to all registered Academies since his classmates were not well-informed enough to tell him.
¡°Please big bro, you got to teach us more of these tips!¡±
¡°We only managed to hit them back thanks to how easy it was to maintain a ball of lightning thanks to you big bro! Helping us beat them up is cheating but surely teaching us is not.¡± Fabian exclaimed as if he found out why he wasn¡¯t willing to help them. The naive child was not too far off the mark.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
¡°You got to train us big brother.¡± Yusqly who had her hair braided up tightly instead of letting it hang loose tugged his sleeves.
¡°Train? Are you sure?¡± The magic word perked him up. At this point, he couldn¡¯t reject his classmates, could he?
He was running through thousands of training simulations for his classmates when they were cheering after a momentary silence. He even ignored the two giggling instructors outside the classroom who heard the commotion and didn¡¯t step in to save him from the predicament.
???
Umar, with an injured back, listened to his friends bugging their largest and newest addition to the class. Unlike most of his classmates, he was already capable of manipulating lightning mana to some degree.
The large classmate¡¯s tips did help as a form of practice but he didn¡¯t put that much importance in it since he could directly gather lightning mana on his wand. Forming a sphere of mana and trapping lightning mana instead of forcing it to his bidding did help increase the amount of lightning mana he could keep contained temporarily.
Hence, he was rather optimistic about asking for his newest classmate¡¯s help. With both parents as mages, he was absolutely stunned by his newest classmate¡¯s magic performance. How could one control so many little dolls each with their individual movements all at the same time?
Barrage spells could allow one to maintain many separate casts but they do not have flexibility or accurate control over each individual projectile. The feat of moving dozens upon dozens of sculptures that all had different motions at the same time was mind-boggling.
His parents didn¡¯t even believe him when he told them. They thought he was exaggerating and showed him they could create dozens of tiny lightning dolls but when one moved its feet, all would follow the same action. Making three dolls move differently was their limit and from the fourth, the dolls would move awkwardly and stiffly.
Although it was harder to stabilise lightning and give it shape a difference of dozens upon dozens of dolls was huge. Not to mention that none of his old classmate¡¯s dolls had any stiff movements. He hasn¡¯t even gotten to the wave of hand that transformed all of them into flowers in an instant. An instant! Without a staff or wand!?
Umar was a magic lover and he believed what his eyes saw. After all, he managed to land a hit with enough lightning mana on Cerise. He secretly thought the girl only bullied them because Yusqly was cuter than her but that was his opinion.
It wasn¡¯t the first time they¡¯d met and gotten beaten up. Probably every single one of his classmates had a bad run-in with Cerise and her underlings. Umar didn¡¯t believe it when Ebony didn¡¯t know that the Arcane Warrior Academy was in the same district.
After all, when they told him the address he went ¡®Oh that academy is the arcane warrior¡¯s academy.¡¯
The way he acted stupid was almost insulting but Umar kept that to himself.
His classmates tried to get more tips and tricks from Ebony who was reluctant.
That was until some idiot, he suddenly forgot who despite hearing the voice just moments ago muttered the word ¡®train¡¯.
Umar didn¡¯t understand why he felt the whole room become silent when it was so noisy. It was only a split second but he was sure every one of his classmates that came early felt the same eerie silence.
Tia fell down on her butt, and he could feel his knees lose strength despite sitting down.
¡®Why am I shaking?¡¯
Then, his classmates cheered when their eldest classmate agreed to help them. Umar snapped out of it and looked around but all his friends except Yusqly and Faelk were too excited at the chance to play. He wondered how many of them were serious about this.
Yusqly, Faelk and he looked around and finally made eye contact with each other. They were scared.
¡®I have a bad feeling¡oww, my stomach hurts. Bathroom¡urg, my back.¡¯ Umar put his head on his desk in pain.
Ebony seemed to be in his own world nodding at his friends¡¯ excitement from time to time without paying attention. The others who came in later quickly joined in and the word spread that Ebony said he would train them. All those who were enamoured by his performance quickly jumped onto the chance and he was in too much pain to warn them of his gut feeling.
To be fair, he was a little afraid they would think he was trying to get ahead of them even more. He was not the most well-liked as the top student. He was already glad he managed to fit in a group before he was ostracised and didn¡¯t want to make himself a target.
The hub of excitement and talks about zapping their opponents like how their seniors did continue until Miss Raika walked in to take them out for their practical lessons.
Umar was re-energized, practical lessons were all their favourites. He was even more happy because he secretly thought that his mana was regenerating faster than it used to. The tiny growth excited him as it meant he could play with lightning mana more.
Ever since the term started, it felt like he could focus better and gathering and controlling mana felt slightly easier.
However, the lesson today had him on edge. He kept feeling an eye on him throughout the lesson. Looking into the classroom, he could see Ebony with the usual blank look on his face. His eyes which were darker than the winter moon were piercing right into¡all of them at the same time. Umar could feel the focus on him, but he also felt like the focus was on all of them.
Umar shuddered in the middle of practice and his wand¡¯s stream of lightning connecting him to the metal ball in the centre of the field sparked. The spark almost redirected onto his face before the stream of lightning hit him in the face. Of course, he didn¡¯t even know he was about to get hit until after the fact.
¡°Umar! Are you okay?¡± Miss Raika ran up to him. Even she was not as fast as lightning, it was the field¡¯s defensive magic circle that protected him.
It honestly wasn¡¯t a big issue, he zapped himself multiple times before. The amount of lighting mana they could control couldn¡¯t hurt themselves. Hence, it took a lot of time before he gathered enough to hurt their bullies.
Befuddled, Umar didn¡¯t hear his instructor.
He could only focus on the one watching them from their classroom. The moment Miss Raika shouted and ran to him, Umar felt Ebony¡¯s focus intensify on him.
At the age of 8, Umar pissed himself and fainted.
???
¡®Perfect timing, I can see how targeted lightning mage training goes.¡¯ Ebony listened to the briefing and stayed in class while the children ran out to the field.
He would adjust what he thought was best for them if what they wanted was how to fight with their greatest strengths.
He quickly set out some goals, it needed to be a short, intense and directed training. Only meant for physically weak young children against strong, well-trained children. It was not too difficult, he had been brought up under the impression that he was physically weak and was trained to go against stronger opponents without losing out.
This might as well be his speciality.
He looked at them carefully while running thousands of simulations in his head. Changed them for each classmate who expressed interest in getting stronger. Or at least, in beating their competition.
Gauging wasn¡¯t enough so he ran Calculated Hunch on every individual¡¯s physical capabilities along with their mana capacities, mana gathering speed, and mana movement flexibility. The information on physical capabilities was rather little as they didn¡¯t do any physical exercise but it honestly wasn¡¯t hard to guess since he saw some of them ¡®fight¡¯ already.
He was in a state of half trance, simulating mental battles for the unclassed was rather easy.
¡®Oh, his concentration slipped. Did he feel how intensely I was looking at them?¡¯ Ebony saw the spark of lightning from Umar¡¯s wand going haywire after he suddenly turned to face his direction.
The sudden change in focus made him run all his mental simulations for Umar alone instead of over twenty students.
¡®Huh? Did he just faint?¡¯ Ebony put the mental simulations to the back of his mind.
Raika started to panic even more when one of her students fainted for no reason.
¡°It¡¯s okay, he just fainted. I¡¯ll watch over him.¡± Ebony stepped over the window still and carried Umar to the side of the field.
¡®He peed himself. Why?¡¯ Genuinely confused, Ebony''s head started to spin.
¡®Oh¡this is my fault isn¡¯t it.¡¯ Ebony suddenly came to a possible reason but he waited for Umar to wake up before he came to any hasty conclusion. From the boy¡¯s heartbeat and breathing, there shouldn¡¯t be any urgent health issues. The Academy didn¡¯t cancel out Tidal¡¯s healing either so it was rather convenient.
Ten minutes later, Umar¡¯s eyelids shook. He opened his eyes and blinked thrice, ¡°WAAH!¡± The boy sat up and scrambled away in fear.
¡®Okay, probably my fault.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s weird Pseudo-Imitation Roar had a passive effect, ¡®Existential suppression is passively 5% more likely to cause mental trauma to anyone who stands before you.¡¯
Although it was only a moment of shock from the boy, Ebony had a strong feeling it was his fault. There was no other plausible reason he could come up with from the information and situation at hand.
¡®I¡¯m pretty sure I sent all the excess vitality and mana into the ground. Is he that sensitive or is this beyond my control?¡¯ Ebony needed to observe Umar for a longer period to confirm. Now he wasn¡¯t even sure if he should send his mana to calm the boy down.
His mental simulations of thousands of training sessions running concurrently stopped at this point since it was the first time he observed this passive effect taking place. He was extremely interested to prove that this was the effect in question at this moment in time.
Ebony¡¯s interest was diverted instantly as the moment his training simulations stopped, Umar¡¯s shaking died down.
¡°Fascinating.¡± He muttered while staring closer to observe the boy¡¯s condition.
Umar fainted once more.
¡°Uh oh.¡± Now he felt bad.
Chapter 287: Physical Education
¡°What did you do Mr Ebony?¡± Ebony found himself in Laika¡¯s office with Madam Wilcox and another man he hadn¡¯t seen before.
From their overflowing essence, they were obviously all Grandmasters. The numb feeling in the air was rather new though. It seemed like the presence of three Grand lightning mages were enough to cause a slight increase in lightning mana concentrations in an enclosed room.
¡°I¡¯m just as curious as to why Umar fainted. I have a feeling it¡¯s my fault.¡±
¡°We are well aware, the boy shivers the moment he hears your name.¡± Madam Wilcox retained her gentle smile.
¡°How is he now.¡±
¡°Raika is sending him home after making sure his condition is stable.¡± Laika rubbed her forehead. ¡°Let me introduce you, this is Zephire, one of our instructors.¡±
Ebony gave the man a tet.
¡®Oh.¡¯ He raised the same hand as the man by accident. It seemed like this man thought he was the senior. He was probably right but Ebony accidentally raised his hand by the sensation of Zephire¡¯s overflowing essence.
Ebony saw Zephire¡¯s face scrunched up when he put his arm to raise his other. He didn¡¯t know why it made Zephire annoyed when Ebony was the one that changed hands and he didn¡¯t care so he turned back to Laika.
¡°It might be one of my passives and Umar appears to be highly sensitive to..it.¡± Ebony wanted to say Will but they wouldn¡¯t believe it if they didn¡¯t believe he was a fourth-order mage. He wasn¡¯t about to stand out as some kind of clown or joker.
¡°What kind of passive¡we can¡¯t have you slowly spreading that effect to all our students.¡± Laika tried to phrase her sentence politely.
Zephire on the other hand had no regard to him, ¡°Get out if you¡¯re here to cause trouble, why is a grandmaster joining an unclassed lesson if not a spy for another academy?¡±
¡®Ah, that is what it looks like isn¡¯t it.¡¯ Ebony internally nodded to Zephire¡¯s words. The awkward greeting made more sense to him now.
¡°It¡¯s the first time anyone¡¯s affected by it so I¡¯m not certain if it¡¯s indeed me but it¡¯s due to my overflowing essence.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not leaking much, if we have a hard time sensing it I doubt the children can sense it.¡±
¡°We¡¯ll be the one who decides if it¡¯s because of your aura, not you.¡±
¡°Fair enough.¡± Taking into account Zephire was the teacher and he was the student, that sounded about right.
¡°What¡¯s a respectful, non-aggressive amount.¡±
¡°Huh, enough nonsense and hurry it up and show me all you got. I have to get to Targot¡¯s training for the ranking.¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
Zephire eyelid shot open, then he fell down.
¡°Oh my, maybe it¡¯s not my passive effect. Is Umar just that sensitive to mana?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t help but mutter when Zephire lay down on the ground.
The mage shot back up on his feet two seconds later and zapped to the edge of the room reflexively. Honestly too slow if he was in a battle.
¡°You¡¯re right, maybe it wasn¡¯t the passive effect. Umar might be better than I thought.¡± Ebony quickly misunderstood but a data set of 2 was too small to determine.
He waited for someone to speak up since he didn¡¯t have anything to add to the conversation but they seemed to have nothing to say. ¡°If there¡¯s nothing else, I¡¯ll be taking my leave. I¡¯m not a spy or anything, just here to learn. I¡¯ll leave a recorder in class from now on instead of coming personally if it¡¯s really due to my passives.¡±
Ebony walked out of the room. When he was at the front gate of the campus, he heard them ask each other what a ¡®recorder¡¯ was.
¡®Should have said memory light recorder huh¡oh well.¡¯
Ebony traced down Raika¡¯s mana residues and found Umar¡¯s mansion. ¡°Seems like he¡¯s fine.¡±
He Flickered back home.
¡°You¡¯re finally back! Your wife ran away from home!¡± Muse charged at him when he entered.
¡°You¡¯re here.¡± He took the piece of paper Muse handed to him.
¡°Why¡¯re you still standing there? Go after her!¡±
¡°She just went into the dungeon to test a new skill. Although, it would¡¯ve been nice to go together since I wanted to check out one of the creatures inside again but since it''s the ruins of verdant decay it doesn¡¯t matter if we go in together. She can protect herself.¡±
¡°Humm, that¡¯s the one where parties are split up right¡fine, I guess she can find some people to party with. Aww, I dropped by for a quick dinner and some cookies. Now I can¡¯t see her for months.¡±
¡°Months? She¡¯s just testing a skill, she¡¯ll be back in days at best.¡± Ebony shook his head at the terrible estimation.
¡°No waay. Dungeons are so big, the fastest we¡¯ll see her is in a few weeks.¡± Muse skipped back to the dinner table where she was nibbling on some dried treat.
¡°We just cleared that yesterday, it took one morning. As long as she¡¯s eating and doesn¡¯t get held up or lazy at running, we¡¯ll see her soon.¡±
¡°What are you talking about? Anyway, it doesn''t matter if she¡¯s back in days. I have to go soon, Yvette is calling me to work¡¡±
¡°You¡¯re not going to teach me?¡± Ebony hadn¡¯t gotten any music lessons from the Royal guest.
¡°I want to! I already know what direction to take. But I have to be away for a while. You can practise on your weakest spot first.¡±
¡°And what¡¯s that.¡±
¡°Cadence. You understand tone, but you sound dead all the time. Go listen to some live musicals. Oh right, your pittaw will be delivered tomorrow so be here to accept it.¡±
¡°Clarify.¡±
¡°What do I sound like when I speak?¡±
Ebony pondered on the question, ¡®this has to be some kind of trick question, what does she sound like? Like a person. That¡¯s obviously not the answer she¡¯s looking for¡¡¯
¡°Singing! Singing! You oaf, don¡¯t you hear it?¡±
¡°You mean how listening to you talk feels soothing as if I¡¯m getting healed? I thought it was the city¡¯s healing in the past but I¡¯m sensing some sort of odd mana in your breath when you speak.¡±
¡°I¡¯m just talking about music not healing¡anyway, you don¡¯t understand emotions. Go do some people-watching as well.¡±
¡°I disagree. I understand emotions better than you¡¯d think. I¡¯ve been people-watching long enough. Walking through the streets is enough for me to gather hundreds of human interactions. I have enough data to conclude and identify most emotions now.¡±
¡°And? Never mind, I¡¯ll listen to you play the pittaw tomorrow.¡±
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¡°Mmm, I¡¯ll make dinner. Any requests?¡±
¡°Something sweet.¡±
Ebony whipped up something quickly. He bid the little non-human girl goodbye and went about the rest of his day.
He made enough recorders to listen in on every class in the Piercing Tempest Academy. Other than the one for his class, the rest were just spheres of transparent ice that had the ability to retain sound and surrounding gravitational information. With the amount of Will he placed in them, he would have to reabsorb and refresh them every three days.
¡®Now I can spend the time in the library instead of sitting in class. Should I continue creating these recorders and place them in all the academies I was rejected by? I¡¯m not that desperate and that''s just straight-up theft¡I have free time, let¡¯s go check on that secret metal mage.¡¯
Ebony fed his pet tree mana and took care of his garden before getting dressed and leaving to check on the receptionist metal mage. It was honestly just for entertainment, thinking about how the action seemed like stalking. He was going to remove the model following her as long as she hadn¡¯t done any self harm.
¡®Hmm?¡¯ Ebony stopped in his tracks when he walked past the specialised stand for his robe and sword.
Icicle was dimly lit.
¡°I¡¯ll bring you along so don¡¯t sulk.¡±
The greatsword seemed to brighten up but then its light dulled down to nothing again.
¡®Honestly can¡¯t tell if he¡¯s growing or not.¡¯ Icicle doesn¡¯t always respond to him. He almost thought they were just delusional about their swords reacting to them.
¡°My mana¡¯s reach has increased a lot lately, maybe¡sounds good.¡± Ebony slid his robe on and took Icicle out.
Icicle floated in front of him and slowly turned transparent then, he sent the floating sword to the skies. At the edge of his mana¡¯s reach of about two kilometres, Icicle could follow him in incognito.
Flickering to the West District took a few hours. He tried to sense his own Will. It had a wider range than his sense for mana but it was not easy when the Capital was so large.
¡®Found it. She¡¯s underground? I don¡¯t know any path down¡can I reabsorb my Will from here? Why are so many people keeping watch on strangers here?¡¯ Ebony quickly sensed multiple eyes and senses the moment he Flickered outside the barn-like warehouse.
In the next second, he realised he was in a rather abandoned area. Far from the Quest Hall, residential or any area with large congregation of people.
¡®Ah, I¡¯m in a farm region. Secretly a metal mage, from store employee to quest hall employee and she¡¯s in a farm area at night. Hmm, I¡¯d say it¡¯s about time I stop stepping into others'' business.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t hiding himself but if multiple people sensed him the moment he Flickered in, they probably found out about his little tracking device.
Just then, he managed to retrieve his Will and the recording for the past weeks. The mana vessel it was in melted, there wasn¡¯t much left and the Will he retrieved was lacking in memory so there were missing bits and pieces. But sieving through the information, he decided to put another model on her. A better and one with more Will this time.
¡®Alright, time to hightail it. She¡¯s some middle-ranking member of Lure. My curiosity got the better of me. Doesn¡¯t seem like she knows Tuffock so it¡¯s not like I can return the favour for the neck snap, and the saving I guess. Sister Jing¡¯s coming over soon, I should ask her about the shop that kidnapped me. Can¡¯t leave Tidal though¡maybe I¡¯ll get her to send them over to me instead.¡¯
¡°Now who might you be? I don¡¯t think we invited anyone into our homes late at night.¡±
¡®Huh, was he talking to me?¡¯ Ebony just Flickered away when the voice reached him. Now it just looked like someone was talking to themselves or talking to air.
¡®Ooo, pretty indetectable and fast.¡¯ Since he was using a short-distance Flicker, he faced a rake flying into his face the moment his body stayed in place. He wasn¡¯t able to sense the person until they were already in mid-swing.
¡®Ethereal Form Arts needs human opponents more so than monsters so I was indeed looking for good close combatants but¡I¡¯m a little lazy to deal with Lure. Oh well, I only have to deal with them if they can chase me.¡¯ Ebony hadn¡¯t found an opponent good enough to train his close combat mastery excluding the temporary non-aggression with Ning Xin.
Shady organisations just smelled like trouble, even if they had delectable opponents for him. He¡¯d rather not waste his time.
The person swinging a rake had a black scarf covering his entire face except the eyes. With a rather lean but muscular figure, it should be a human male.
Ebony was slightly more interested when they popped up beside him after a full Flicker. ¡®Nice, I¡¯ll augment myself and see if they can keep up. If they do then maybe they¡¯ll be good training partners.¡¯
¡®They¡¯ were multiple wrapped-up figures with roughly the same outward dress style and figure.
Ebony began to have a little fun when they didn¡¯t lag behind too much. He brought them for a run around the Capital going from district to district throughout the night.
¡°Huh? Why are you stopping?¡± Ebony Flickered back to find a dozen of them who stopped chasing him.
They were panting hard.
¡°Ah, sorry. I¡¯ll wait for you to recover, we can continue playing catch once you catch your breath.¡± Ebony snapped out of it once he finished his sentence. ¡®Wait since when were we playing catch? Oh, the sun rose already.¡¯
¡°My apologies, I didn¡¯t see the time. I have to go to school now, we can continue another day.¡± Ebony¡¯s mind returned to simulating training for his classmates. They had promised to meet him in their District¡¯s Quest Hall for secret training in the fifth hour. He usually started his own morning condition in the fourth hour but he could always start early.
The children already complained to no end when he asked them to meet up in the fourth hour. Since sleep was quite important for physical growth, he yielded.
With Raika and Targot having listened to their loud excitement, it was no secret. Since Laika didn¡¯t mention it, he shouldn¡¯t be breaking any rules.
The rake-wielders had been rather silent the entire time, but he didn¡¯t even spend a second to wonder what was up with them. If people didn¡¯t want to converse and started swinging rakes at him, he was fine with ignoring them. An eye for an eye, since they swung a farming tool the most he would do was swing back at the same strength.
Ebony found it hard to take their violent intentions seriously when running around for a night was enough to get them panting and supporting their knees with their arms. The hostility was there but he didn¡¯t sense any intent to kill. As long as they leave him alone, he would do the same and ignore the rake swing at his face.
¡®Probably my fault again, I invaded those poor farmer¡¯s lands or farmers in disguise. Whatever, I¡¯ll apologise for trespassing next time. Not even a single skill level, I need better training partners.¡¯ Ebony shook his head at the difficulty of skill levelling.
Not gaining a single level from the dungeon race was no surprise. Dungeon creatures were known to give far less experience than natural ones and the Guardian might have been strong but the experience was split amongst over thirty people. All of his peers were higher level as well.
He made sure to erase his tracks as best as he could and no one was following him before he went back in the correct direction. He didn¡¯t think he would be in the North District after running around in random directions.
¡°Hmm, glad you could make it Umar. Are you feeling better?¡± Ebony was going to check on the boy later but he was surprised the boy came to their agreed-upon location on time.
There were about fifteen of his classmates present. Most of them had sleep in their eyes and some had untidy clothes.
¡°That was the greatest escape ever!¡± Bilal was the only energetic one.
It appeared like the untidy kids with messy hair secretly ran out of their dorms. He would love to see their reactions when they found out that nothing they did could escape their instructors¡¯ senses. Maybe they could remain undetected if they were a warrior school but not a mage school.
¡°So what are you going to teach us?¡±
¡°What are we starting with, there¡¯s no practical lessons today. Maybe we can sneak in a few minutes of magic training.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t wait to beat that cocky face in.¡±
Ebony rented the same training room he used daily and brought the children down. There was no need to get a bigger one when he already used a relatively large room. He nodded to Targot who was secretly following the children when he brought them down.
¡°I can make a screen of reflection so you can watch and they won¡¯t be able to see you¡¯re in the same room.¡± He sent a stream of vibrations to the worried instructor. Thankful, Target went down with them and believed him about the invisibility.
¡°Alright, let¡¯s begin.¡± Ebony clapped to get their attention. He saw all the instructors in Piercing Tempest Academy clap to get their students'' attention and for them to quiet down. It was more effective than he imagined.
¡°So, what will we be doing?¡±
¡°Run,¡± Ebony told them.
They blinked in confusion.
¡°Start running in circles. You need the minimal physical abilities to stand a chance.¡±
They didn¡¯t complain for long before they started running.
¡®They don¡¯t have the energy¡okay.¡¯ Ebony conjured the sculpture of Cerise, their bully and made her dense enough to look blue before sending her to chase them around.
¡°Ah!!¡±
With the normal human pace, Cerise couldn¡¯t catch 15 kids so he made the two boys who followed her as well. It wasn¡¯t hard for the faster children to catch all 15 kids and place them in armlocks.
¡°Why aren''t you escaping if you¡¯re not held down anymore?¡± Ebony asked those who fell but no longer had the sculpture holding them down.
He wanted to see their reactions in front of danger but they weren¡¯t doing so well. With only a few weeks, building their physical abilities up enough to rival the Arcane Warrior¡¯s students wasn¡¯t possible. Hence, they needed more directed training.
He concluded that having them fight against his copy of Cerise for the next few weeks would give them the best chance of winning a play fight. If he had more time, or the goal was different he would¡¯ve found a better training regime for them.
Of course, cardio with a little bit of motivation was barely the beginning.
¡®They¡¯re going to fall in love with training.¡¯ Ebony psyched himself up with every bit of mental prowess he could muster. Subconsciously, he was testing his new Fortifications on Will being more compelling.
Chapter 288: Weirdly Addicting
Umar did not understand why he got so scared of his new classmates all of a sudden. Getting walked home after changing out of his pee-stained pants had to be the most embarrassing day of his life.
¡®No. I can¡¯t be afraid! Dad and mom told me that it''s normal to find someone that scares me but I can¡¯t stay afraid.¡¯ Umar recalled telling his parents that he sometimes heard or felt things that weren¡¯t said.
They told him he was lucky and might have gotten a portion and weakened version of their long-time skills of sensing minuscule lightning mana escaping from a person¡¯s brains. A physique or something, he didn¡¯t know what they were talking about.
Being walked home by his instructor meant a world of explaining to do on his part and he wasn¡¯t good at lying. His parents could catch every lie and he spilled the beans of his embarrassing day to them.
¡°Who¡¯s this man who scared my dear boy!? I have to go find him.¡± Umar¡¯s father stood up and rolled his sleeves up. He dashed up to stop his father but he only exposed his back injury that he didn¡¯t have to hide since he usually lived in the Academy dorm.
¡°Why are you injured dear?¡± His mom quickly caught him and rubbed his back.
¡®I need to explain quickly¡¡¯ Umar didn¡¯t want to bring Ebony any trouble and told them everything, about the bullying from the opponent Academy. That allowed his parents to calm down.
¡°I see a friendly competition. That¡¯s good. If you think this old classmate of yours is so scary, then go learn from him. If you feel it is a good opportunity and outweighs the risk, then take it, son.¡± His dad apparently used to be a lot more hot-blooded but his mom told him that he changed greatly after Umar was born.
¡°I think so¡I think he is very strong but scary.¡±
¡°Very strong huh, well not as strong as your dad here!¡± Umar¡¯s father flexed his unnaturally large biceps. He was a close to mid-range lightning mage with a close combat Sub-Class.
¡®I don¡¯t think so.¡¯ Umar shivered, but he couldn¡¯t stop thinking that this was a turning point for him.
Hence, he woke up early and met up with his classmates who were worried about him instead of laughing at what happened to him. Well, except Bilal who had laughed out loud the moment they met. His back healed a lot more thanks to Her Majesty the Life Queen.
Ebony didn¡¯t take long to show up. Umar breathed a sigh of relief when he didn¡¯t sense the same degree of fear and wariness for the man.
Until they started running. His father made him run so he knew that basic physical stamina was important even for a mage. Faelk was doing the best and almost outran the blue sculpture of Cerise. Bilal was even more physically fit than him as he rode and ran with his bear partner daily. He was also taking personal lessons on tamer skills so he was physically fit for a mage trainee.
The fittest of them all was Atticus. Atticus was a first-generation lightning mage in his family of warriors, hence his poor practical results but good control over his body.
It felt like hours had passed and Umar had never run so fast before. Having the bully who tried to break his spine run after him was a great motivator.
¡°Alright, it¡¯s been thirty minutes. Let¡¯s move on.¡± Ebony broke the bad news to him.
¡®Only thirty minutes!?¡¯
Most of them couldn¡¯t even get off the ground after being forcefully pinned time after time. The moment they slowed down in their dash, they would get caught and pushed to the ground with their arms locked tightly.
Esme and Tia were on the verge of puking as they didn¡¯t even know how to control their breaths but Ebony gave them a breathing rhythm to follow after the first minute of observing them. Slowly but surely throughout the run, Umar was beginning to sense¡intensity from their big bro again.
The next thing on his mind was not going to be as easy as a simple stamina-building exercise.
¡°Since the goal is to beat a certain type of opponent, you just need to spar. Nothing complicated, just repetition and building on your mistakes.¡±
¡°Will we be sparring against your spell big bro?¡± Yusqly, the only girl who wasn¡¯t so exhausted she couldn¡¯t talk was questioned.
¡°Yes, I can¡¯t expect you to be beating adults in less than a month. I didn¡¯t bring any other opponents for you either.¡±
Umar shivered again, ¡®Why does it sound like he can make us do that if he had more time.¡¯
The kids knew how well their big bro¡¯s spell could move. It was no different from a real person.
¡°But it¡¯s not fair big bro, your spell is so cold it numbs us when we¡¯re in contact,¡± Fabian complained.
¡°...Thanks for letting me know. I¡¯ll make them the same temperature as a human with a runic formula.¡± Umar saw Ebony scratch his cheeks.
¡®Is he embarrassed for not noticing? I don¡¯t understand big bro. Also, runic? Making ice the same temperature as a human? That¡¯s possible?¡¯ Umar watched closely but the life-sized sculpture¡¯s skin changed too fast and they gained scars in a blink of an eye.
¡°Phew, at least we can take a break while each of us spar.¡± Another one of his classmates, Sebas wiped his sweat off his forehead.
¡°Hmm..No, why waste time? You¡¯re all sparing at the same time.¡±
¡°How can fifteen of us attack one target at the same time, are we allowed to use mana?¡±
¡°No, only physical. Don¡¯t worry, you¡¯ll all have one target each.¡± Ebony replied and he conjured another fourteen duplicates of Cerise, all of which looked exactly the same.
It was eerie. The ice-cold facial expression put Cerise¡¯s actual expression to shame.
¡°Relax, I made sure to copy the softness of flesh so it shouldn¡¯t feel as different as hitting or getting hit by her.¡±
They were stunned and Umar sensed the tiny trickle of lightning mana from the corner of the underground training room. It was a familiar one. There was someone here but they couldn¡¯t see anyone else.
¡®Is it Mr Targot or Miss Raika?¡¯ Umar got punched in the face by a warm, hard fist and he felt his whole body lift off the ground.
¡°Don¡¯t get distracted.¡±
¡®It feels the same. Her frame is the same. Her moves are the same¡ wait, how does Ebony know what Cerise looks like? Or how she fought?¡¯ Umar raised his arms to block the turning kick to his lower ribs. He was a little too slow but it hit his elbow instead.
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Only Faelk and Atticus fared better than him but Umar couldn¡¯t spare them a second look. His face still hurt a lot but it wasn¡¯t the first time he was punched in the face. He did his best not to follow his female classmates'' footsteps of falling and crying on the spot.
Those who never fought a day in their lives couldn¡¯t stop crying and Ebony did not let up.
For Faelk, Yusqly, Bilal, Atticus and Umar, this was normal. This was training.
But not for everyone.
Esme for example was also a first generation mage but even worse, neither of her parents were combatants. The closest combatants in her family were distant aunts and uncles.
Duelling was the fastest way to get used to a specific opponent or fighting style. Of course, Atticus might be the only one who has actually been in a proper duel before and Faelk could rely on his natural physical abilities with his born talents in battle.
Not all of them here had been directly bullied by Cerise before and it was their first time getting physically hurt.
They¡¯ve already taken theory lessons for a year. Practicals just started and all they do is gather lightning mana before directing it at a target or for the slightly advanced like him, they hold a stream of lightning stable with a conductor for as long as they could. A metal ball that attracted lightning mana.
A few others that came just wanted to come for fun or ¡®avenge¡¯ their friends but Umar didn¡¯t know them well. He just thought they were a little too sheltered or naive. But he wasn¡¯t one to say that.
Umar accidentally stepped back and ducked but he stepped onto someone¡¯s foot and his aggressor¡¯s punch ended up hitting the person who he stepped the foot off.
¡°HEY!¡± The boy with the nosebleed yelled at Umar only to get a kick in his torso and be sent sprawling on the ground.
¡°Get up.¡± Ebony¡¯s voice shouldn¡¯t have reached Umar but he sensed the same words.
After all, he noticed that Ebony was giving each of them advice personally. ¡®Sound magic or directed voice control.¡¯
Umar had heard the phrase ¡®get up,¡¯ four times already and the phrase seemed to echo in his ears when he saw his classmates fall.
He never knew encouraging words could sound so cold.
However, Umar couldn¡¯t help but imagine that he got a better hang of dodging blows after getting hit tens of times. He didn¡¯t think a single session was enough for him to notice that he was getting better. Wouldn¡¯t he be able to win with a few more training sessions?
This might be addicting.
???
¡®It¡¯s just the first day, this is to be expected.¡¯ When it was an hour before their lessons would start, he stopped their bea-, sparring.
Quite a few of them fell asleep on the spot. Other than Yusqly, all the other girls cried so much they ran out of tears and their voices were barely audible. However, he was hopeful that all of them stood up and tried their best at some point in time in the two-hour session.
He nodded at his amazing encouraging tips, following his mother¡¯s method was definitely the right way. After all, it made him strong.
He spread his mana with the Will that it would calm them down and cast Frostweave Vital Constriction on all their untouched body parts and some vitals. The injured parts were left untouched so that they weren¡¯t sealed. With his control, he easily made it such that even the bruises were rather light and could heal faster with the help of the city-wide healing.
¡®Atticus is okay.¡¯ Ebony had no other internal comments for everyone else.
He remembered Mr Targot who started screaming that he was going too far when the sparring started. Fortunately, he helped the instructor stay undetected by silencing the scream fast enough. He gave himself a pat on the back for being alert and considerate.
¡°Ebony! That¡¯s too much! Do you not have any heart, how can you beat a crying child!¡± Targot rammed his lightning-imbued fists into the ice screen he left for the instructor.
¡°You underestimated your students, didn¡¯t they all stand up and fight back for themselves soon enough.¡±
¡°They¡¯re too young! They¡¯ll be scarred.¡±
¡°No such thing as too young to know that one should have the strength to protect themselves. My control¡¯s not that terrible, none of them would have so much as a cut much less a scar.¡±
¡°I mean mentally!¡±
¡°...How does one get mentally scarred?¡± Ebony asked in honest curiosity. This was just day one, an introductory day. Nothing intense was going on.
He didn¡¯t throw them in a forest without any sign of human life.
He didn¡¯t call them weak. He just put more independent ideas of standing up for themselves and depending on themselves to protect themselves rather than asking their opponents to stop hitting them.
And what happened? Maybe not all of them landed a hit on the Cerise Model but at least they started evading and blocking where it hurt most when hit.
That was a success in his books.
¡°Don¡¯t play with me!¡±
Ebony listened to Umar¡¯s question about what the ice on their bodies was for when listening to Targot yell at the same time. ¡°This is a sealing spell meant to expedite healing. I made it a little numb with lightning mana so that you don¡¯t feel the cold or pain.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not playing. Okay, how about this, when they go to class later you can ask them what they did in the morning or what plans they have in the afternoon.¡± Ebony had been rather glad that the mindset of children on Elcra was different from children on Earth.
Even if they¡¯ve never fought a day in their lives or weren''t from a family of combatants, all of them were exposed to a certain level of knowledge about the dangers in their daily lives where even crossing the road could get them killed.
As someone who doesn¡¯t know what ¡®normal¡¯ was, Ebony wasn¡¯t lying to Muse when he said he had enough data about people''s interactions and emotions.
Sure, maybe Muse was right in terms of him not understanding emotions well enough but in terms of a person¡¯s fighting spirit? There was no way he couldn¡¯t detect that, no matter how deep it was hidden.
Every single one of his classmates had it. In fact, it was far harder to find a person without it in this world.
When he hit every single one of their sore spots long enough, it would ignite their fighting spirit. As for what their sore spots were, he wasn¡¯t listening to their daily conversations for nothing and few of them kept things to themselves. Those who didn''t talk or share much already had decent fighting spirits like Faelk, Atticus and Umar.
¡°How strong is this Cerise compared to the real one?¡± Atticus asked in a serious tone.
¡°I used about 60% of her real strength on impact, but her speed is about 80% of the actual person for you, Atticus.¡± Ebony knew that some of them might have noticed that he knew what Cerise looked like and how she fought at some point in time. Changing the strength of the Model¡¯s blows right before impact despite moving at different speeds was as easy as breathing for him
He then told every one of them the percentage of strength and speed he used for each of them. He needed to push them past their limits, not senselessly beat them up. Understanding every one of their physical limits was easier than taking candy from Muse for him.
Yusqly was disappointed she had been up against a Cerise that was using 30% strength and 40% speed but she already did the best amongst the girls. The other girls were taking 10%/10% at best but just because it was 10% strength of a girl under ten doesn¡¯t mean it didn¡¯t hurt. Ebony was confident he understood pain better than most.
Fighting spirit was best developed when he gave them a glimpse of hope that they could overcome an ordeal. In sight, out of reach. Having the Model ¡®slip up¡¯ occasionally near the end to let them taste a tiny bit of victory was something he would only do for the first lesson. He just needed them to feel as if they¡¯d progressed, even if it was a lie.
Umar had been against a 40% strength and 85% speed Cerise which put him at the second fastest, behind Faelk who fought against a 90/90% but was still the least injured. But the wolf boy was a few years older at the age of thirteen. He was the most ashamed one as Cerise was not even ten years old.
He didn¡¯t even qualify for the same tournament bracket so he was just here to train. His own bracket was for all unclassed above ten and under fifteen. Those unclassed above fifteen years of age had their own bracket as they began gaining skills and skill levels.
The format for the competition was just a straight-up duel so there was no need for specialised training like using their environment or situational awareness for the moment.
¡®But I can start implementing alertness in them¡alright, I got an idea.¡¯ Ebony decided to give the recorders that he¡¯ll leave in class the ability to turn into their bully during free periods. He would do it during lesson times if he was serious but that would be disruptive on his part.
Chapter 289: Invitation
Laika had a headache listening to Targot¡¯s report. Her heart ached even though she hadn¡¯t been there to listen to the kids cry in pain.
How was she going to explain to their parents?
She must have made a mistake playing along with Ebony but at the same time, there was nothing she could do. He was being reasonable in the beginning and now it was too late.
Mr Zephire might be the target of Ebony¡¯s mana but she and Madam Wilcox could sense the horrid mana too. It was thick and heavy, unlike anything they¡¯d felt. Having met a Duke of Elves once, she dare said that Ebony¡¯s mana far surpassed what she sensed from the Duke himself in terms of the sheer power behind it.
The only weird thing was that both Madam Wilcox and she agreed that Ebony¡¯s mana pool seemed extremely small for a mage of his calibre. It was as if he was just a Master or Great Mage. Since he wore an obfuscation jewel, they were not able to Identify his level or class.
¡°I¡¯d suggest you keep your grandfather unaware,¡± Laika recalled Madam Wilcox¡¯s advice.
¡°He¡¯s too dangerous and we don¡¯t know what he wants.¡± As the headmistress, she regretted backing down to the odd man¡¯s request.
¡°You think too much, he¡¯s just a curious child.¡±
¡°He could be older than all of us combined!¡± Laika didn¡¯t understand how these old folks think either.
¡°I doubt that from our interactions. I wouldn¡¯t worry too much if I were you.¡±
¡°I have to inform my grandfather at least¡¡± Laika¡¯s grandfather, the previous headmaster, was a very old man. He barely managed to reach the minimum requirement of 1.1 times skill level for his evolution to the ranks of a King for a 25% Fortification increment.
It was barely anything, but the purity of his mana increased quite drastically. The speed at which he could gather large amounts of mana increased. His mana capacity was able to increase slightly and his mental reach and sensitivity vastly improved.
Even the evolution from Master to Grandmaster has obvious changes that weren¡¯t strictly defined by their Fortification percentages. Hence, the weak Fortifications were enough to put him above most Grandmasters. Most importantly, it increased his lifespan.
Be that as it may, she believed that her grandfather was still one of the strongest individuals one could find within the Capital. After all, he kept bragging about evolving to Grandmaster with a full set of 1.5 times requirement. It meant he had over two dozen skills reaching the heights of level 450 while he was a Master!
Laika was the same but only for her Class, with her Sub-Class and Profession only getting a 50% Fortification instead of 100% ones. The skill level requirement was just too high.
With her grandfather reaching the ranks of a King, it meant he managed to level his skills from 450 or so to 550 for the minimum evolution. With only his Core Skills reaching the 1.25 requirement and receiving a few 50% Fortification instead of a 25% buff. He even had one new Fortification for his Class and Sub-Class.
It was no wonder her grandfather could brag about having three skills over level 600 and a full set over 550 for centuries. Laika only wished that she could achieve the same feat in her lifetime. Dreaming about surpassing her grandfather could be left for Raika who was more talented than her.
¡°He¡¯s hot-headed despite his age, it¡¯s a pity if he dies at his old age.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Hmm how about this, tell him there¡¯s an interesting mage who likes to discuss magic and has a particularly unique view on mana manipulation basics. Give him an impression of a meet and greet instead of a fight.¡±
¡°Okay. but that aside, I¡¯m still worried about the children.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll take a look at their next practice.¡±
Madam Wilcox took her leave and Laika slumped onto her armchair.
¡®As long as he doesn¡¯t harm any of us¡¡¯ She sighed and took a strain relievers from a secret compartment in her drawer. Hoping her daughter doesn¡¯t walk in and find out she fell back into the habit of smoking.
???
Targot was stunned.
He wasn¡¯t surprised his students didn¡¯t have visible injuries. Ebony made sure to hit where they were clothed and there were plenty of medicines that could heal petty bruises.
He was more surprised that all those who attended the ¡®secret¡¯ training seemed energetic. Too energetic.
It was not his first year teaching children. Even energetic kids had limits, but this group seemed even more boisterous than usual.
When he tried to ask them as naturally as possible, what have they been doing they replied they¡¯d studied or played hide and seek.
When he asked them what they were doing in the afternoon after lessons, those who had been to Ebony¡¯s training session quickly made something up on the spot.
¡®They were just crying earlier today¡are we the ones underestimating our students? No way! Tia, Esme, and Penelope are not that strong-willed, they¡¯ve never even dared to see their seniors aim lighting spells at each other.¡¯ Targot couldn¡¯t believe it.
With their senses, it was not hard to tell when children were lying or trying to hide something. They all seem excited for lessons to end, for them to run off somewhere.
After his lesson ended, he stepped out and left the door ajar.
¡°Why didn¡¯t you come this morning?¡±
¡°We can¡¯t lose face for our instructors.¡±
¡°It won¡¯t look good if all our seniors and instructors win but every single one of us loses.¡±
Targot heard his students cajole others to join their secret training.
¡®It seems like we¡¯re the ones that underestimated our students. Maybe, harsher methods aren¡¯t unsuitable¡Mr Ebony¡¯s not just an amazing mage, he clearly understands close combat too. He¡¯s a grandmaster, I should ask him for a duel and see if I can tell why these kids have such a sharp and sudden change in persistence. If it works, perhaps I should ask for permission to let them use their mana for these training sessions.¡¯
Targot suddenly got worried about his match. The Arcane Warriors were good, their Masters who were similarly instructors like him were people he knew. They were in the same district and interacted a few times before. He was even old friends with one of them.
¡®Urgh, I can¡¯t lose if they have so much confidence in us. Got to get the senior years to buck up too.¡¯ Targot went to the faculty office and told whoever was present about their students¡¯ confidence in them.
It set off a wave of motivation to put in a few more hours of practice.
???
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¡°Yeah, I¡¯m pretty sure my mana¡¯s affecting all of them. This is the first time there¡¯s a noticeable difference in other¡¯s stamina regeneration and not just mana. Then again, meditation helps regenerate both.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t overconfident enough to think that he changed the kids in one morning.
He was far more convinced it was how susceptible unclassed children were to the effects of their surroundings. Namely, his mana and general aura.
He even went as far as to hypothesise that his thoughts, his Will, affected them.
Umar was his indicator.
During the session, he thought, ¡®oh they¡¯ll start to love training¡¯ and before long Umar got slightly more energetic. His facial muscles shifted from one of pain to one of excitement.
The rest of the children reacted to a lesser degree.
Although he didn¡¯t want to say they were his guinea pigs, that was how it appeared. He was almost certain that his Will¡¯s connection with his thoughts was strengthened.
What he thinks, will be.
Having it more compelling seemed to affect the targets of his thoughts and his mana being soother calms people down more. The mana and stamina regeneration effect for whom he spreads his effects seemed to be a lot stronger than before his evolution. It used to be insignificant and not to be relied on but from the looks of it, it was possible to compare him to some calming pearls.
¡®Children are too easily influenced, they¡¯ll catch my¡dullness. I¡¯ll stop when their competition¡¯s over.¡¯ Ebony had to be rather careful with how he affected other people.
He read in the Academy¡¯s library while the lesson was going on.
¡°Mr Ebony, would you like to join a tea party I¡¯ll be hosting? I¡¯ve invited a few of my old friends, some senior imperials from the mage association are invited too. It¡¯s an academic meet so to speak.¡± Near the end of his reading session, Madam Wilcox walked in and found him. With the size of the library, ¡®find¡¯ was a stretch.
¡°If you don¡¯t mind my presence, I¡¯ll be glad to join. Thank you for the invitation.¡± Ebony did not expect a tea party invite. The old lady had some connections and he was more than glad to listen in on an academic meet. Hopefully, he wasn¡¯t going there for small talk.
¡°Alright, it¡¯s in ten days at the Mystic Morsels Pavilion in the tenth hour. Let me write you the address.¡± Madam Wilcox carried pen and paper everywhere she went.
The Mystic Morsels Pavilion sounded like some kind of cafe. It was quite far away, the south part of the Central District so still within the inner walls. Ebony probably has to leave an hour or so before the meeting time.
He nodded in thanks for the invite and went home for the day. There was still some time before his classmates¡¯ lessons ended. He waited for the construction team to arrive to let them in. In the end, only two people came. A Grand Earth Mage and a Grand Architect.
He assumed the construction would take days at minimum so Ning Xin leaving was good timing if she didn¡¯t want to have her sleep or cooking disrupted. After listening to their exact plans, he allowed them to get started and created a new Model that was specifically to watch the house and prevent theft. He let it use most non-lethal ice, gravity and sealing spells.
His piano was scheduled to arrive later at night.
Ebony wanted to see how many of his classmates quit but none of them seemed like quitters after they began to stand up and fight back.
When the chime hit, he made his recorder transform into their bully and knocked on their door. Fetching them to come to play with him.
The chaos in the classroom ensued when those who¡¯d never seen Cerise simply thought it was him, the ice big bro who was playing around. But for those that¡¯d been beaten the whole morning, some of them flinched, others fell down in shock.
Faelk already jumped out the window while carrying a girl in each arm. The only one with a good fight-or-flight response. He helped his unaware classmates out of the window one by one while Bilal rammed his entire body into the ice sculpture, sending both him and the sculpture rolling into the corridor.
Ebony used a little gravity manipulation so that the sculpture still weighs roughly the same as the actual person despite the higher density of his Model. The only injuries Bilal sustained were a hard knock into his bruised body.
¡°I¡¯m just here to fetch you.¡± He poured cold water over their enthusiasm. Using his own voice so that he didn¡¯t scare them any further. His classmates scolded the ones who overreacted to their big bro¡¯s spell.
Mentally, Faelk, Bilal and Umar got plus points. Umar was the only one who whipped his wand out and even managed to start a spark of lightning. He would intensify their training.
To his surprise, the number of his classmates that showed up was more than in the morning. But there were two that didn¡¯t show up, Atticus and Fabian. The excuses his classmates gave for them were strict curfews and personal family training.
¡®Fabian has training? Maybe more on the magic side or theory studies.¡¯
The midday session went smoother than the one in the morning. They didn¡¯t see it as training and each other¡¯s presence made it like a normal class.
¡°Big bro, when are you going to teach us some secret moves?¡±
¡°What secret moves?¡±
¡°You know, to beat the arcane warriors.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t need any secret moves¡why don¡¯t you ask when you can dodge consistently.¡± Ebony could understand why they assumed he was going to teach them some skill.
Even if their opponents trained for two or three years at best, they would not catch up in a few weeks regardless of how intense the training was.
¡°All we¡¯ve been doing is dodging!¡±
¡°Mmhmm. That¡¯s all you need to beat someone of her calibre. Your assignment throughout these few weeks is to beat this Model just by dodging. Tip, understand balance and centre of gravity.¡±
¡°What is gravity?¡±
Madam Wilcox who sat at the same spot where Targot had been in the morning cleared her throat.
¡®I guess I¡¯m not supposed to teach them some things¡¡¯
The kids yelped when Madam Wilcox walked out of the refraction screen he made for her.
¡°Perhaps you can demonstrate what you mean Mr Ebony. That would surely be easier than explaining when they don¡¯t understand the words.¡±
Ebony nodded, he would¡¯ve demonstrated but using his own Model against himself might not bring the point across since they might think he was controlling his Model to fail instead.
¡®Should I find someone upstairs¡¡¯ The Quest Hall and underground training and duelling grounds had plenty of people. Even finding one or two people at level 400 wasn¡¯t impossible but maybe not every day.
¡°What are you thinking about Mr Ebony? These kids can¡¯t see us moving too fast, I shall suffice.¡± Madam Wilcox seemed to read his mind.
¡°Oh right. Then,¡± Ebony gestured for the old lady. She was a head shorter than him, an average human female height. With some grey in her blond head of hair. Her skin began to wrinkle, rather rare amongst Grandmasters and a sign of her old age.
She stabbed her walking stick into the ground and the whole staff crackled with lightning before she lunged at him with a slash.
There was nothing to write home about when both of them were moving slowly enough for the children to observe.
Ebony didn¡¯t take a single step and leaned back ever so slightly, letting the blade of lightning swing past him. Weaving around the continuous strikes, he was just surprised by how smooth Madam Wilcox¡¯s swing transitions were. She was actively aiming to break his flow of evasions.
When he finally took a step forward, he timed it when Madam Wilcox¡¯s feet lifted off the ground to move forward to attack him. Placing his feet in the quarter point of her path caused her to trip but he respected the old and caught her before she fell to the ground.
He didn¡¯t explain what he meant, allowing them to come up with their answers and ideas. Hopefully, they won¡¯t overthink it. Tripping someone was all it took. It didn¡¯t require much strength. Just looking for opportunities and understanding when their opponent was least balanced.
Since they were more mage-focused, just learning how to dodge and react to melee attacks was good enough as a start.
¡°Mr Ebony.¡± Madam Wilcox called him out before she walked her students home or back to their dormitory.
¡°Just Ebony is fine.¡±
¡°You¡¯re a warrior.¡±
¡°I know my way around close combat.¡±
¡°Can you train our Instructors? Targot and Raika especially. Just against warriors.¡±
¡°How can I teach instructors. I was just lending a hand to my classmates.¡± Children and adults require completely different approaches.
It wouldn¡¯t take any more of his time since he could do both at the same time but he didn¡¯t feel like it. There was no benefit for him except an additional data set for how his new Will affects Masters. Helping children grow stronger felt good but watching how terrible adults were didn¡¯t.
Ultimately, Ebony didn¡¯t reject Madam Wilcox. He might not stand to gain but he didn¡¯t have anything to lose. Controlling the Models and watching every one of their fights didn¡¯t require too much of his mental effort so he could multitask. It was a good chance to check out what lightning spells were commonly used. More importantly, she invited him to a tea party and he felt bad rejecting her when it didn¡¯t require any effort on his part.
Ebony returned home to see the hard-working constructing duo discussing the sewer pipeline¡¯s redirection. The construction was estimated to finish when they continued the next day. It was just a 50 metre rectangular dig so the complications were only with the pipings and structural problems with soil and earth.
The leisure days continued.
Chapter 290: Arson
Ebony left the delivered piano under his pet tree and didn¡¯t touch it.
After the construction work was completed, he placed tiles over the toughened earth basement. The second basement is beneath his small forge and storage area. He also installed some runic light formulas on crystals to brighten the place. He made it look as much like an indoor swimming pool as possible.
He asked the earth mage to make steps. So the entry to the second basement had a 5-metre path for walking, a towel and a clothes rack. It would face the 30-metre deep pool that had a few steps leading into the water. The ceiling was roughly ten metres high and the ceiling thickness was roughly the same.
He couldn¡¯t help but take a swim once he filled it up with water. Other than swimming practice, he practised Phantom¡¯s Flicker underwater. It helped him understand how water resistance affected his movements better.
¡®Two sun loungers here would be nice. I¡¯ll carve one out of wood.¡¯ He furnished the pool hoping to make it more comfortable.
¡°Yo!¡±
Ebony¡¯s head gently swayed to the right allowing the skinny fist to fly by.
¡°Hello Sister Jing, leave your shoes out. I¡¯ll make some tea.¡± The only thing that intruded his underground forge was her arm.
¡°I¡¯m hungry, make me some grub.¡± The craftswoman spoke through the compressed space channel. ¡°Hey, where¡¯s my little Xin?¡±
¡°She went into the dungeon to test a new skill. It has a pretty interesting portal system. You should check it out.¡±
¡°Ah those, that¡¯s real portaling. I can''t do that shit you know that I can¡¯t teleport. Most space mages utilise space compression and expansion for traversing. I can do something similar but not the same.¡±
Ebony fried a wok full of rice as a midnight snack for both of them.
¡°You¡¯re early.¡±
¡°I was gonna give both of you a surprise.¡± Kong Jing tossed her coat onto the sofa and made herself comfortable at the dining table.
¡°Sister Jing,¡± Ebony didn¡¯t take long to make something as simple as fried rice. He made extra rice the night before just for the chilled leftover rice.
¡°Yeah?¡± She spoke with her mouth full.
¡°Can you do me a favour?¡± Ebony knew that he wasn¡¯t sensing anybody in his house. Only his sight noticed her. No vibrations, no gravitational waves, no hint of mana. Nothing.
It was similar to the steampunk middle-aged man who was supposedly a space magic user.
¡°Depends on what it is about.¡±
¡°You know who kidnapped me, I would ask you to fetch me to them but I¡¯m somewhat stuck in Tidal. Not the kidnapper though, just the gun-burstbow shop owner and friends.¡±
¡°What¡¯cha wanna do? I have some lackeys who keep track of them and I believe he¡¯s still operating his business in peace.¡±
¡°Lackeys?¡± Ebony might have heard her mentioning something about a second group of kidnappers that she caught instead of the halberd mr kidnapper.
¡°Thanks to you. Bah, they just send me reports annually. Got no time for lackeys but they help collect information. You gonna kill?¡±
¡°What? No. it¡¯s not like he killed me. Thanks to him, my previous evolution. I mean, the one before that wasn¡¯t as rushed. Now I know the benefits of getting an additional skill over the two time limit. It pays off in natural potential.¡± Ebony wondered why he gave her the impression that he was out for blood.
¡°So..?¡±
¡°A certain fish taught me a life lesson. I¡¯ll just seal them for as long as they caged me. Maybe a little shorter since I gained something.¡±
¡°Uhhh. whatever floats your boat I guess.¡± Kong Jing¡¯s visible confusion was not lost on him.
¡°It''s the mastermind plus the grand lightning burstbowmen. Leave his assistant alone, he made the cell comfortable for me.¡± Ebony did not forget the man who kept his stuff for him and brought him his daily meals that got better over time.
¡°That¡¯s so far away¡are you in any rush?¡±
¡°Nope.¡± Ebony honestly couldn¡¯t care less however, the benefits gained aside, they meant to lock him up for good. It didn¡¯t feel right to forget about the issue, he would get taken advantage of if he let everyone off.
¡°By your words, since he got someone to kidnap you, you should do the same. I¡¯ll just get those lackeys of mine to..nah they¡¯re only lousy masters.¡± Kong Jing dropped the ceramic spoon onto the empty plate and licked her lips.
¡°You¡¯re right. Can¡¯t have double standards.¡±
Ebony was enlightened, she was right. Since they hired people to kidnap him, he should do the same. It would save him the time and effort that was better used learning about how to utilise Will better.
¡°So I¡¯ve been dying to ask...¡± She gulped and pushed her cup towards him for another glass of juice. She seemed hesitant to complete her sentence.
¡°You rarely exaggerate, go ahead.¡± Ebony used mana to open the fridge and uncovered a jug that floated over to pour her another glass of green, sour fruit juice. It was pretty much the kiwi fruit equivalent.
¡°What in the world is in your garden?¡±
¡°Plants. And my pet tree.¡± Ebony stored the rest of the juice without moving from his seat. She rarely asked redundant questions but he answered
¡°That pet tree of yours is alarming. I¡¯m not sure what it is, but it¡¯ll attract attention.¡±
¡°Just testing out this domain skill of mine.¡± Ebony was surprised, ¡®Can she not sense or use Will?¡¯
¡°...You¡¯re a grandmaster, right? Whatever, shouldn¡¯t be surprised when you said you could use Will as a Master.¡± Kong Jing straightened up for a second before losing interest in continuing the topic. Changing the subject, ¡°So you know where to find some professional kidnappers?¡±
¡°Hmm, I don¡¯t know any but it shouldn¡¯t be that hard.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t going to rely on the farm he visited a while back.
From what he understood, the organisation Lure was akin to a terrorist group. Not a normal criminal group. When mana slavery was all the rage, there were more professional kidnappers than professional assassins. Now that that died down, the criminal groups weren¡¯t as prominent.
However, Ebony knew where one could find actual assassins. He could go into a dungeon.
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That was one of the extremely few possible or reasonable places for assassins to operate in Tidal. However, it was unrealistic for them to only work there. They needed to bait their targets into dungeons after all.
Ebony could think of multiple ways that people could get killed in Tidal. ¡®It shouldn¡¯t be that difficult, just tear all vitals apart and keep them separated. The healing speed of the city sped up and down depending on the person and injury but people still died of old age.
By watching the kids heal, and making a cut on himself he estimated that it was rather easy to simply outpace the healing. The claim that people couldn¡¯t die was still a massive belief amongst the citizens but they probably knew there was a limit to it. However, the limit doesn¡¯t matter to them. It¡¯s not as if they are in danger of monsters breaking into the city or assassins coming after their lives.
¡®Still, other than gravitational signatures the rogues and mages here are all better at hiding their mana disturbance of movement. Catching them in the act is not something I¡¯ll see every day either.¡¯
¡°Now for the real question.¡± Kong Jing wiped her mouth and disappeared from her seat, lying on the sofa instead.
Ebony stood up and cleared the table. He could make a dishwasher that shot highly pressured water and fill it with soap but that would deprive him of some quality time and the skill experience.
¡°When are you getting married? You¡¯re already living in the same house. For like¡years. Even if she¡¯s not completely Xeng, we are traditional. I expect her to have been waiting for you.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve had that in mind. Definitely before we¡¯re King ranked.¡± Ebony answered casually. He was pretty sure the person in question wasn¡¯t eavesdropping.
¡°Oh? Why?¡± Despite the one asking, Kong Jing was visibly surprised.
¡°Because I won¡¯t stand a chance at beating her soon.¡± Ebony never forgot her customs, even if she didn¡¯t care about them. ¡®Soon¡¯ was relative considering how fast they were improving.
¡°And you stand a chance now?¡±
¡°Slim. Discounting advanced preparation.¡±
¡°I¡¯m no fighter but give me a brief description on both of your strengths and why you think you won¡¯t stand a chance.¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t hesitate to call herself a non-combatant.
¡°She specialises in pure one-on-one combat while I spread myself a little too thin recently. Her advantages are getting more obvious. In direct combat, she can probably beat me now. In a real battle, she probably can¡¯t kill me but I can.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand, you just said she can beat you.¡±
¡°Too high a cost, no matter how energy efficient or how large her capacity gets she¡¯ll never outlast me. In fact, she¡¯s getting further away from outlasting me despite increasing her energy capacity. And she¡¯s currently not strong enough to overpower me in a few minutes. That¡¯s what I specialise in, weakening and outlasting. Outside of my close combat proficiency, I¡¯d say I still have the upper hand in technique.¡±
Ice magic might not seem effective against Ning Xin but Ebony¡¯s constant use wears out her mana even faster. And that was her greatest weakness. She might have gotten a better vitality-based enhancement but the rise in the tier for her mana-based ones tore into her mana pool within minutes if not seconds. It was so bad that she couldn¡¯t train the body enhancement spells at full power for extended periods of time.
Although she had her Sword Art to cover the lack of magic-based enhancement, Ebony believed he could mess up her combos with the support of Ethereal Form Arts. Not allowing her to build up too much strength or speed
¡°You could¡¯ve summed her up as the killing expert while you¡¯re the survival expert but you two aren¡¯t out for blood.¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°And you think that one more evolution will tip both of you past this current balance.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve been doing well in maintaining this balance even with diverging my skill set so¡I can¡¯t tell, but it still stands that beating her in a duel is only going to get more unlikely.¡±
When he looked over to Kong Jing since she didn¡¯t register in his mana sense, he saw her unmoving and snores didn¡¯t take long to escape.
Ebony didn¡¯t bother taking a spare blanket and used her coat to cover her up.
¡®Hmm, should I make my pet tree out of clear ice? It¡¯s started to branch out to a third as wide as our roof and leaves seem to be sprouting soon.¡¯
When Kong Jing woke up in the morning, he showed her the Vitalis Heartvine. He would have asked Lang, the knowledgeable old man, about the Vitalis Heartvine if Kong Jing didn¡¯t come.
Despite being a dungeon material, it could be processed and used safely in a potion. It was an old recipe since the dungeon here was rather old but there were rumours that a certain noble family who had so much of the potion, began to show a permanent increase in health regeneration. A change in physique.
But dungeons change over time.
The monsters change, and so does what the dungeon produces as bait. The Vitalis Heartvine became very rare and not everyone knew about the ingredient. The Noble family tried very hard to monopolise it once they¡¯d made a potion formula for it and it took decades before another alchemist made a similar recipe.
Although Kong Jing said she could make a better potion, a single Vitalis Heartvine would be a single potion. It would take hundreds if not thousands of continuous consumption to have the chance of a physique refinement. ¡°Just let little Xin cook it. I¡¯ll teach her how to get rid of the remnant essence.¡±
After a harsh critique of his small forge and the offer of a forge refurbishing, Ebony left his house for the craftswoman to look after and made his way to the Quest Hall early.
¡®It¡¯s so noisy today.¡¯ Ebony did not like the boisterous Quest Hall.
However, he managed to sieve out pieces of interesting information. He preferred to talk to people he already knew but Lang was in charge of materials and wasn¡¯t on shift so early in the morning. So he listened a little longer and took in every conversation that wasn¡¯t silenced or made private.
¡®What did she do¡¡¯ Ebony managed to find out what happened in a minute.
If their information was accurate, the third floor of the Ruins of Verdant Decay was said to have a massive forest fire. One that affected almost the entire floor¡¯s temperature. It was supposedly hot enough to boil water in town without any pot or fire. They put up the town barrier and had water mages cast an artificial rain to cool the temperatures within the barrier down but the temperatures outside the barrier continued to rise.
There were murmurs that the dungeon might be forced to cast a mana storm that would put every party and individual outside the towns in danger.
The Quest Hall personnel were assuring the families of crafters that the towns inside were completely safe and that there wouldn¡¯t be a mana storm. As for the freelancers and dungeon clearers, few people asked about them. It was rather recent news but it had to be dated.
The only news they could get was from people who exited from the eighth floor. News from floor to floor wasn¡¯t that hard to pass around since callstones still worked and each floor was connected with towns except the eighth¡¯s exit.
The chances of a mana storm occurring were very low. It was extremely energy-hungry and dungeons usually only did that when they were in great risk of going into a huge energy deficit.
With his experience, he highly doubted a mana storm would occur so the employees probably weren¡¯t lying. The Ruins of Verdant Decay was an old dungeon, unlike Ordina which had no stockpile of energy after its birth. There should be no way a single person could cause it to become so desperate in such a short period.
As long as the Quest Hall wasn¡¯t lying, the forest fire had long been put out hours after it had first been discovered. They had to wait for more reports but fortunately, it seemed like she didn¡¯t cause any indirect deaths.
¡®She¡¯s a grown woman who can take care of herself but I should give her another warning about forest fires.¡¯ Ebony did not even hesitate to put the blame on Ning Xin. The Quest Hall¡¯s employees were going through a list of suspects who were all fire mages who worked in the dungeon long term.
Ebony stopped eavesdropping on their indoor offices when his classmates arrived.
Training went about normally, with no more additions to his little morning training. He let them train with his Models while he went about his conditioning in a different room. This time, Laika the headmistress was watching over the kids.
They were either too overprotective or they didn¡¯t trust him. Probably both.
¡®I¡¯m so gentle with these kids, there should be no problem.¡¯ He was slightly unhappy but fully understood why he was not trustworthy. They were pretty much strangers, he might be some kidnapper for all they knew.
He was so overwhelmingly gentle with the regime he planned for them that there should be no complaints. Hence, Targot¡¯s overreaction was unbelievable.
The Masters whom he was supposed to help in training were only starting next week as some of them were training in a dungeon with another Grandmaster instructor besides Madam Wilcox whom he had never met.
If he was lucky, he could deal with them in the same manner as the children. Just have a few Models deal with them. If not, he might have to be personally involved. It wouldn¡¯t be a bad thing if they were actually strong or had interesting skills but if there were in between, it would be a waste of time and effort.
¡®I guess I should hurry and iron out the evolution for Glacial Model.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s laziness encouraged him to hasten his experiments.
Chapter 291: Combat-rated Instrument
The day that Kong Jing was supposed to arrive, Ning Xin made it back home in the early afternoon. He was glad he decided to cut short on library time.
Ebony checked for injuries before he welcomed her back. He couldn¡¯t tell if she ignored his greeting, a high five or if she was just more eager to jump Kong Jing and put her into a hug.
Although her mask now covered her eyes, he felt a little weird that he didn¡¯t feel any gaze on him either.
¡°You stink.¡± Kong Jing pushed her sister¡¯s hug aside, outright rejecting the hug.
¡°I know!¡± Ning Xin shouted and rushed to the bathroom.
¡®...was I ignored?¡¯ He shook his head, she stood in front of him to let him check for injuries so that shouldn¡¯t be the case.
After a long shower, she kept herself in the kitchen till dinner.
Muse coincidently returned, announcing her arrival with a high-pitched scream that caught all their attention. She managed to bring out the chef from the kitchen, the craftswoman from his forge and him who was asking for some advice on his birthday gift idea for the chef.
¡°What is this doing here?! How long have you left it out!?¡± Muse was so mad her face turned red while she pointed at his piano.
¡°What do you think, good placement right?¡± Ebony was rather proud of his design choice.
¡°Terrible! Why¡¯re you putting a pittaw outdoors!?¡±
¡°Does it not look cool?¡± Ebony placed it where it was thanks to a music rhythm game he played. He liked it where it was.
¡°It¡¯ll get damaged when it rains!¡± With Muse glaring at him in rage with her hands on her hips, he looked towards the other two people for their opinions.
¡°It¡¯ll deteriorate and some internal parts will rust over time.¡± Kong Jing gave her an assessment before taking a better look at the instrument. She might not have made many instruments before.
¡°Looks out of place.¡± Ning Xin commented.
Stunned, Ebony defended, ¡°it¡¯ll block out rain and wind.¡±
He didn¡¯t even manage to finish his sentence before they shut him down for better reasons like humidity control. Discouraged at the three-pronged rejection, he was ready to take the piano into the house. It was a standard medium grand piano that he used to play. The craftsman replicated it one for one so it was different from the pittaw that they thought it was.
¡®Hmm?¡¯ Ebony cocked his head when the piano wasn¡¯t lifted.
¡°Look, even my pet tree agrees!¡± He pointed to the piano legs which had ice roots holding them firmly in place. This was the first time the tree moved without his input excluding its growth process.
Muse looked at him with¡disgust? He didn¡¯t know what to make of the scowl.
¡°I¡¯m going back down, call me when dinner¡¯s ready.¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t bother replying to him.
¡°You can just say you like it there.¡± Ning Xin finally chuckled and relaxed her shoulders. He felt like the distance she suddenly put between them shortened again.
¡°This is a misunderstanding. I did not manipulate the ice to keep it here.¡± Ebony quickly caught onto the reason for their disbelief and explained.
None of them trusted his words and that felt bad.
¡°It¡¯s okay, I trust you. You like this?¡± Ebony caressed his pet tree¡¯s bark. ¡®I gotta give her a name.¡¯
The tree roots wrapped its roots around the piano''s legs and pulled it closer against its trunk.
¡°Okay, it¡¯s yours from now on. Can I play it from time to time?¡± They might have been right and the tree was just moving thanks to his subconscious control because there was no response from his pet tree.
¡°Scarlet! He¡¯s going crazy!¡± Muse ran into the house in tears.
¡®Might as well try to play something.¡¯ Ebony took a seat on the accompanying seat that came as a set. The tree roots pushed the seat out for him. Now he was self-conscious because he wasn¡¯t sure if he was moving them manually or if they were moving for him.
The first piece that came to mind was classical, Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven but it didn¡¯t feel like the right time or mood. ¡®Can¡¯t go wrong with a Ghibli¡One Summer¡¯s Day it is.¡¯ The people in the house except Muse should recognise the tune.
Muse dashed back out to grab his wrist. ¡°Wait a minute, what are you planning to play? This is a combat-grade pittaw¡±
¡°Combat grade? It''s okay, I¡¯ll play a gentle piece. Hopefully, I didn¡¯t lose my touch.¡±
He hadn¡¯t.
He didn¡¯t remember ever playing so well. The power of physical control was hardwired into him. As for the piano, it was crisp, clear and velvety. Despite being played in the open, it left lingering reverberations within his entire range of mana sense.
¡®How far does it go? It doesn¡¯t sound loud but my senses picked it up even two kilometres away. And the volume or strength of vibrations is constant throughout.¡¯ Ebony was thoroughly impressed.
¡°May I?¡± Muse cut in when he finished playing the piece.
¡°Are you finally going to teach me?¡± Ebony shifted aside but his pet tree pulled the seat in. He patted it and told him not to be rude. Muse puffed her cheeks at him. He no longer defended himself because he was unsure if he was controlling the tree or if it was moving itself. He was sure he wasn¡¯t using mana or any mental control.
¡°I want to know if you can tell the difference when I play the same piece. Oh, amazing piece by the way I bet you didn¡¯t write it.¡± Muse took a seat and Ebony could immediately tell a difference.
Her entire¡vibe and aura changed.
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She replicated his piece to the dot, his ears didn¡¯t catch a single tune or timing off. It was as if his piece was replayed on a video.
But Ebony couldn¡¯t look away from her. More importantly, everybody in a two-kilometre radius from his house or the piano was standing on the spot. He didn¡¯t have many neighbours but every one of them outside their houses stopped and looked up. Some had tears running down their cheeks, others broke into a pained smile.
Two kilometres was only his range, he had no idea how far the piece or soundwaves went.
¡®There¡¯s no mana used in that so how? What¡¯s different?¡¯ Ebony used every single point of his immense Perception ability to no avail. She was just a woman playing the same piece he did. No magic, no foreign energy.
Personally, he heard no difference.
But evidence of not just the random strangers on the street but the chef in his kitchen slowed down her ingredient preparation just to listen.
¡°So what difference did you spot?¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t even know when she stopped playing until her voice hit his ears. Erasing the reverberations of the same piece echoing in his head.
His mouth opened but no words came out.
He wanted to say a lot, mostly about people¡¯s reaction to her music but he knew that wasn¡¯t what she was talking about.
¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±
¡°You can ask around. This is your assignment. When you find the answer, your music will improve.¡±
Ebony dearly hoped it was not some philosophical question. ¡®But why didn¡¯t I just tell her the observational difference?¡¯
The first thing he did after Muse got off the seat and returned to the cheery girl who asked for candy was to check the instrument. He wanted to see if there was some function in the piano that he didn¡¯t utilise but he didn¡¯t find anything.
There were magical constructs on the interior but he knew that nothing was activated. There were zero traces of mana in them. They were brand new.
¡°Xin, could you hear a difference?¡± He covered the piano keys and entered the kitchen.
Muse was in the kitchen with a spoonful of sweet jam in her mouth. Unperturbed that he directly got started on his assignment.
¡°Hu-hmm.¡± Ning Xin mumbled.
Slightly distracted because he was furiously replaying every observation he made in his head to find out what the difference was, he didn¡¯t wait and tapped her shoulders to get her attention. However, he snapped out of it when she jerked forward and allowed a cube of bird meat to fly out of her pan. She twisted around to slap his hand with her spatula so fast her spatula bent before it reached him.
¡°Relax, you¡¯re home. Still in battle mode?¡± Ebony tried to calm her down when he noticed her red hair. He closed in on her with his head over her shoulders reached for the cube of meat that fell out and blew on it before eating it. The dish was almost done so the bite of meat was piping hot. Nonetheless, his face felt more heat than his tongue.
¡°Go away! I¡¯m cooking!¡± Ning Xin rammed her shoulders back and pushed him back.
¡®Right, she¡¯s busy cooking. Of course, she¡¯s angry I interrupted her.¡¯ Ebony went out to ponder on his homework by himself. It was like someone interrupting him when he was in a reading trance. He wouldn¡¯t be angry but it wasn¡¯t pleasant. Too distracted, he didn¡¯t notice her over-reactions.
¡°You dumb rock.¡±
Ebony ignored the comment from the kitchen. He sat at the dining table in contemplation. It was almost time for dinner and he didn¡¯t want to try to recreate the music only to be stopped mid-way.
¡°Here¡¯s an early gift. I¡¯ll set it up and teach you how to use it later.¡± Kong Jing slid a small black gem over the tabletop.
Unlike the myriad bracelet¡¯s standardised slots, their masks could meld over spheres which was generally said to be more conducive for most types of energy transfer. It was also why good staves had sphere elemental orbs instead of uneven-shaped ones.
Ebony imagined there were multiple different studs of jewels stabbing their faces on the inner mask but the functional jewels, gems or ores were all within the mask itself and it was smooth on both sides.
¡°What does it do?¡± Ning Xin kept her eyes on the food.
¡°Nothing special, you¡¯ll find out soon.¡±
Ebony made a sound bubble to repeat the piece throughout the night but he didn¡¯t know if there was any difference without a test subject. He couldn¡¯t spot any difference.
After the gentle exercises with his classmates, he returned home to find out what the craftswoman¡¯s gift was.
It was a different type of spatial storage. One that allowed Ning Xin to summon her bodysuit, clothing and mantle. Her swords couldn¡¯t fit.
The only special ability of the small storage space was that it didn¡¯t require any physical contact. Items within could be withdrawn with mana. It was also registered so only Ning Xin could take out the stuff within, unlike their storage bags. Her bodysuit could be summoned over her skin within a tenth of a second and could be faster with some practice or so they said.
It would be good if she had spares but the organic material that her bodysuit was made of was not something Kong Jing had extra off. Ebony was pretty sure the crafter said she was trying to cultivate more of the material but with limited success.
As for why the gift was supposed to interest him, it was because she could make the little orb fit in a ring. It was one of those spatial rings he kept mentioning to her about. Sadly, runes alone wouldn¡¯t cut it. They needed a vessel with a relatively dense space mana to contain physical objects.
Space-type materials were extremely rare on Elcra so he could forget about experimenting if all Kong Jing had to show was one prototype.
¡°Here, play the same tune. I¡¯ll walk out and check how far the range of this piano is.¡± Ebony told his pet tree as it was already injected by a daily dose of Will and mana.
He Flickered out to gauge the accurate range of the piano. It seemed like it could reach a little under 200 kilometres. If this piano was on Earth, people from another city could hear the music just as clearly as if they were right beside it.
Flabbergasted, he was thoroughly convinced what ¡®combat-grade¡¯ musical instruments referred to. The volume of the piano didn¡¯t decrease until he was about 100 km away from his house and even then, it retained the same clarity and melody. Mostly unaffected by ambient sounds unless there was a loud sound nearby.
He asked Muse what the normal range of combat-grade musical instruments was as data. After all, if he was ever running away from a sound mage or bard he didn¡¯t want to misjudge his safety distance.
Her answer was that the range was generally a lot higher for large, immovable instruments like the piano. The piano was akin to a cannon or ballista while the handheld instruments that people could run around without having their movements impeded were like the bow and arrows.
The craftsman she recommended was the best when it came to crafting instruments throughout all of Tidal. He didn¡¯t Appraise the craftsman but despite the weak aura, it was vast. Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised to find out the Dwarf was supposedly king-ranked.
The piano could increase its range by up to 200% with input of mana but even increasing it by 10% was said to dry out a Master Bard in minutes and increasing it by 20% would dry them up in less than ten seconds. Ebony was not new to the exponential rise in mana cost when it came to area of effect spells.
¡°How did he know?¡± Ebony referred to how the craftsman knew what he specialises in as the piano''s abilities were catered for him. He ordered it thinking it was a normal instrument and didn¡¯t specify any combat capabilities.
¡°He¡¯s also a musician. Exceptional at gauging what another player needs or is looking for in their instruments. Buh bye!¡± Muse ran out after explaining some of its functions.
With a little practice, he could control the range of the sounds with mana. Direct it only to a location, although it has to travel in a stream and not spawn into another location. Directed sound travel in a direction could increase its range even further beyond its normal range.
Other than that, it could also amplify volume to over twenty times its normal state without mana. It was quite a beast. Just the sheer sound or vibrational waves would shatter eardrums. Probably do far worse than just popping eardrums if it took his own skills and mana property into account.
¡°This must have cost her a bomb.¡± Ebony took a better look at the materials of the piano.
¡®I can see why they were so mad I put it outdoors now.¡¯ He found out that even the comfy seat he was on was made of Epic rarity materials. The chair alone felt more expensive than his entire house and land.
Chapter 292: Divine Pests
¡°Woo, your leaves grew out fully!¡± Ebony looked at his pet tree with more excitement than when he found out they could be someone who could kill people with music from a distance of entire cities.
Unlike the sharp three-bladed maple leaves that the Amur Maple tree had, his pet tree had slightly rounded, five-bladed leaves. It was a cross between maple and plum leaves.
¡®It¡¯s not so obvious this way.¡¯ Ebony was glad it didn¡¯t copy the maple tree leaf shapes even if Ful didn¡¯t care.
His pet tree now had realistic bark, branches and leaves. Other than the fact that it was completely made of ice, it didn¡¯t look any different from most trees.
The less realistic part of it was how its bark was gradually changing into scales and how it was beginning to hollow out a space next to where it hugged his dangerously expensive piano. Out of the 15 metres tall and 8 metres wide was a rounded top door-shaped hole that was 2.5 metres tall and 1 metre wide. It wasn¡¯t very deep yet but Ebony could see and sense it getting bigger inside as time passed. The ¡®floor¡¯ was also a metre off the ground so it had defences from every side.
A great deal of his recently fed mana was being used to form his scales as its bark. He didn¡¯t know what it was protecting but it succeeded in turning itself made entirely of finger-length thick scales stacked down to its centre. It was also staggered so making use of gaps was not an easy task. Not with how many layers there were.
¡®Maybe this hole can close up and it can hide me or a few people?¡¯ Ebony knocked on the hefty tree. It was so thick and dense, worth weeks of his mana. Surely a far better shield or cover than anything he can cast in battle.
¡®If I fight mages, I have to remember they might have these types of spells hidden up their sleeves. Not just mages.¡¯ Ebony reminded himself of the power of accumulation.
He couldn¡¯t rule out that others had similar spells where they could accumulate mana outside their bodies over time. One¡¯s weapons were not just the ones in their hands or mana capacity.
¡®Wait a minute.¡¯ Ebony tried to manually manipulate the tree for the first time after seeding it. ¡®Hot damn¡¡¯
He couldn¡¯t lift the tree with his mental strength, it was too heavy. Fully enhanced, he could physically pick it up but running around with it was going to be an issue.
¡°Can you walk?¡± Ebony asked his pet tree.
It couldn¡¯t.
As usual, it doesn¡¯t respond because it is just Ebony talking to himself.
All the tree was made of was his Will and mana. It wasn¡¯t a living being, just another Glacial Model. Albeit a hyper-beefy version. It was no wonder the others thought he was messing around when the tree grabbed hold of the piano. It was almost certain that it was his subconscious Will and desire to have the piano placed under the tree.
¡°Let¡¯s see¡¡±
¡°Ebony, it¡¯s time to go. They¡¯re waiting for us.¡± Ning Xin called out to him. He was dull but even he noticed that she was avoiding him. Her mask barely even faced his direction since she returned from the dungeon.
Instead of staying home to study new recipes, she had gone and signed up for the largest Colosseum and was now officially a Rank 1 Duelist. Duels were being carried out every single day and there was a Capital-wide tournament every 3 years. It was only 8 months away from the next tournament.
A Duelist was just what they called the fighters of the Colosseum. It was an actual job and some professionals never fought a monster in their lives, only other people. He could probably Appraise people with the ¡®Duelist¡¯ Class if he went to the Colosseum. These Duelists had highly specialised skill sets for fighting people and tended to only be good at one-on-ones.
As a newbie at Rank 1, she wasn¡¯t qualified to take part in the biggest duelling event of the entire continent. To climb up the ranks required her to win more battles. But as a Rank 1, she only had 1 or 2 battles lined up for her in a day. It was sad but she was put up against Journeymen. But as her win rates increase, she¡¯ll probably go up the ranks fast once they realise it was a waste of time for everyone including the audience.
Ebony didn¡¯t join in. It sounds interesting once they got higher in the ranks for new opponents but he was already busy enough figuring out Will, sound and gravity magic. Training his classmates was not a problem since his Models were sufficient. He¡¯d rather dive into the books and perhaps do missions for the Mage Association to gain access to books.
It didn¡¯t help that she told him the ranks went up all the way to 31 with the rank of 31 being held by 1 person, the champion. She didn¡¯t learn how the point system worked and he knew she probably thought all she had to do was win to rise in ranks. He might take a look if she ever told him the duels were getting tough or interesting. With so many ranks, he had to assume the distinction was accurate to some degree but he ultimately didn¡¯t care enough to check.
It was the day they were supposed to meet Mallory and Hector who just returned to Tidal earlier in the morning. Mallory called Ning Xin and scheduled the meeting at a cafe called the Aroma Alcove. It was now mid-afternoon so the Prince and Princess probably took time to rest and wash up from their trip.
It was a school day¡¯s off and he let his classmates off. Children needed more rest and he could tell their muscles weren¡¯t in the best condition.
Kong Jing gave their swords a maintenance check-up before she left in the middle of the night again. She was still somewhere in Tidal, either finding a person or joining in on some auctions throughout the Capital for rare materials and ingredients.
He did ask for some Emberdium metal for his gift idea so there was a chance she went to look for some.
The Aroma Alcove was rather far from Navin and Yvette¡¯s house. It was nearer to the forest in the middle of the Capital which the Elven Nobles called home.
He just didn¡¯t expect it to be inside the forest, right by a brook where an unnatural waterfall wasn¡¯t far away.
The aroma of hata, or coffee was wafting through the air.
¡®Seems like she started to like coffee and found a nice coffee place.¡¯ Ebony remembered drinking coffee with Mallory at Fifth Tide.
It was quaint and quiet, Ebony found himself liking the environment. He might come here to read when he feels like it. They had plus points when he recommended teas that he¡¯d never tried.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
It was a rather interesting sight that the staff were all Elven ladies. Their auras felt like Masters so they were probably rather young.
¡°You¡¯re here!¡± Hector called out when both of them were guided to the Princess¡¯s seat. They were indoors but with a wide window that exposed them to nature.
¡°You¡¯re wearing a shirt,¡± Ebony replied.
Hector looked offended but he didn¡¯t have a comeback until they got seated. ¡°You too. First time I see you without a weapon.¡±
¡°You sure.¡± Ebony forgot to put on his socialising communication ability.
Mallory had just been eyeing them extremely hard since they arrived.
They listened to Hector complain about his time at Tova and how much Mallory bullied him while Ebony sipped on his tea and Ning Xin poked her dessert in surprise. It was some kind of berry crumble and was good enough to keep her stunned for a good minute and enjoy it slowly.
¡°Are you really Ebony and Scarlet?¡±
The two of them cocked their heads at the same time at Mallory¡¯s first words after their greetings. The Princess shook her head and came to her own conclusions.
¡®I guess she has great perception and could tell our physiques are different. She can tell our bodies are even less human.¡¯ Ebony tried to steal a bite from Ning Xin but only a limited amount of desserts were made everyday and she already failed to order a third serving. It meant that she fought very hard to keep his two-prong fork away.
Ebony delegated the talking to her after she was finished with dessert. He couldn¡¯t be bothered to share what they¡¯ve been going through. However, he still added on to Ning Xin¡¯s abridged summary occasionally.
¡°So how on elcra are both of you so fast!? Even my highest is only at 580 and it¡¯s starting to take over a week of constant use to level them up.¡± Now that they caught up with each other, Hector got onto the topic he¡¯d been itching to ask.
¡®580, so he¡¯s also rather close. If I take the number of skills I have as a gauge, he still needs over a year at his current pace. That¡¯s not so bad. Raika¡¯s over a century old and is considered pretty okay to have reached level 300 master. Hector is a few years older than us if I¡¯m not wrong so he¡¯s still far ahead of his fellow Imperials.¡¯
¡°I fought large monkeys. They pack a bigger punch than you.¡±
¡°Bats for me, then a bunch of other wild animals.¡±
¡°What did you say!?¡±
¡°That sounds better than what we''ve been dealing with day in and out.¡± Mallory almost let out a sigh but settled with a louder exhale. Hector couldn¡¯t keep it in and slumped onto the table mumbling about creepy legs and eyes.
¡°Pest control I hear? Some bug-type monsters?¡± Ning Xin had to focus on the conversation now that all that was left was a single fruit tart on her plate. It was the only thing keeping her from thinking that there was no more food for her so she was saving it.
¡°You can say that.¡±
¡°We¡¯re already here, tell us what you want to say,¡± Ebony cut them to the chase.
¡°We¡¯re in deep sh-¡± Hector was silenced with a sharp glare from his Royal cousin.
¡°How much do you two know about our world¡¯s connection to the ***?¡±
¡°The what?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know the word Mallory spoke.
¡°The world around us, outside our own.¡±
¡®I¡¯m just going to assume she means universe or something along those lines.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t like how unreliable the dictionaries he¡¯d memorised were.
¡°Can¡¯t say I know anything.¡±
¡°What about Gods?¡±
¡°I¡¯m pretty sure the Empire doesn¡¯t have any faith or religion other than the heroes of the past and present,¡± Ebony replied. He hasn¡¯t gone into the Sovereign Temple of Heroes but he had seen the architectural majesty from afar. There were normal Temple of Heroes in every district but the main one was in the Central District.
He would like to add on that if there was faith, it was faith in the Life Queen. With his perception, he could hear people praising the Life Queen with every few sentences spoken. On a casual shopping trip, he could hear a prayer every second. It was surprisingly deeply rooted in a lot of Imperial citizens.
He didn¡¯t know any fanatics who put the title of the Life Queen in every sentence that escaped their mouths and he hoped it stayed that way. It was a little weird since the Life Queen he knew just seemed like a gentle, neighbourhood lady or mother.
On the other hand, the Barrier King himself had less public praise. Instead of soldiers and fighters, the crafters and non-combatants more often praised the Barrier King instead of the Life Queen. It was thanks to him that cities weren¡¯t under constant threat. He also made it such that living beside dungeons was plausible. Now, dungeon clearing was a job and not a threat to be wary of. Excluding a few select dungeons.
¡°It¡¯s¡new to us too. Do you want a short version or a lengthy one?¡±
¡°Short, I¡¯d rather not get wrapped up in anything that concerns religion. Just the context necessary for what you want to tell us.¡± For once, Ebony wasn¡¯t about to let his curiosity cut in. He was already¡annoyed that he had some misty folks and a possible Emperor who may or may not remember that they caged Ning Xin up had them in their sights.
Mallory took a sip of her coffee, organising information in her head.
¡°There are numerous worlds in the universe. From what I hear, some natural, some artificial. There is some form of law that advanced worlds are bound by or follow. That is, natural worlds like Elcra are not to be tampered with until something called the Worldcore has grown into Ancient ranked. Which Elcra is currently sitting at.¡±
Ebony already knew about Worldcores and its ranks that correlate to the inhabitant monster''s strength so the information wasn¡¯t completely new. He held his tongue about who enforces this law.
¡°We were supposedly relatively far from other worlds in physical distance so we were undetected other than the presence of World Dungeons that connect us and a few other forms of travel. Hence, it was rather peaceful until a few hundred years ago when we received a greater number of visitors.¡±
Ning Xin shifted closer to him and looked around the cafe. He noticed a few fewer pairs of eyes on him after the small gesture. He was beginning to wonder why the Elven waitresses kept looking at their table. He specifically, so it was nice that they stopped staring at him.
¡°We¡¯re told a certain Goddess began to eye Elcra for its resources.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t believe it. If that was the case the planet would¡¯ve been gone or emptied by now.¡± Ning Xin chipped in.
¡°I¡¯m getting there. The Goddess in question is the Goddess of War, it¡¯s not her who found us personally but her kin.¡±
¡°War? One¡¯s enough, I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll be joining another.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t care about how the Empire hadn''t died off yet, he was certain he didn¡¯t want any part of a war anymore. Despite the levels, it was the most pointless battle he had taken part in. Outside of the discovery of a great opponent called Gao¡¯Larg.
Mallory took the interruptions with grace and continued, ¡°The Goddess of War evolved from a different race of creatures that is common throughout worlds such as us-humans or the other races on Elcra.¡±
The Elven waitress blushed as she combed her hair behind her ears after pouring him a refill of his tea.
Ebony took a whiff and blew on it even though getting burnt from tea was impossible.
¡°The Goddess of War ascended to Godhood from a race of ants.¡±
Tea that entered his lips flowed back into his cup and Ning Xin dropped her fork.
¡®Ants¡they¡¯re always the problem in a lot of the novels I read and you¡¯re telling me that there¡¯s a God of ants. Also, ascend and evolve to Godhood. How far away is that? Do I want to become something like that?.¡¯ Ebony had faced a few ant-type monsters when they were dungeon hopping. He also remembered reading a ton of fiction that had ant type monsters as a huge problem. Hector called them pests so the pieces fell in place. They were fighting ants somewhere.
¡°Why is it always the creepy crawlies with more than four legs!¡± Ning Xin complained out loud.
Chapter 293: Celebrity
The Goddess of War has an entire race of ants under her command. At this point, all of them of her specific race were her direct descendants. The genes and bloodline of a God flowed in their race, diluted as they may be.
¡°So, we would appreciate all the help we can get.¡± Mallory ended off with a bow together with Hector. She did go on more about what they were facing but Ning Xin probably wasn¡¯t listening fully and he absorbed the information like a story.
¡°I¡¯ll have to decline.¡± At the moment, neither Ebony nor Ning Xin was feeling any motivation to accept the invitation from the Royal cousins. They were not exactly patriotic. He wasn¡¯t attached to this world, although he wasn¡¯t exactly attached to Earth either.
¡°I don¡¯t mind dropping by.¡± The masked lady countered.
¡®Hmm? Didn¡¯t she dislike insect-type monsters?¡¯ Ebony assumed from her earlier reaction that she had enough of insects.
¡°May I know why?¡± Mallory might not have expected any rejection for a monster hunt, knowing them.
¡°It¡¯s none of my business,¡± Ebony replied without using any of his communication skills.
That seemed to shock the Royal cousins.
¡°What do you mean!? It¡¯s not like you don¡¯t stand to benefit. Millions. There are tens of millions of them killed every single day and you¡¯re already a Grandmaster. As a mage, you¡¯d benefit even more!¡± Hector argued.
Hector couldn¡¯t get any Class levels and the gain in skill levels was more gradual and limited. But as a freshly evolved Grandmaster, both of them could gain a lot.
When it came to ants, it was a numbers game. Hector probably wasn¡¯t exaggerating when he said tens of millions of ants were killed every day.
The Crown Princess was privy to a lot of information but she was still young and not given every bit of responsibility. The Ant Goddess of War was one of the strongest forces across the numerous worlds. Maybe not the top individual fighter, but with their race¡¯s propagation ability they had a huge quantitative advantage.
If they weren¡¯t deceived by their family, this particular race of ants had hundreds of thousands of planets under their control. Their numbers had so many zeroes they probably didn¡¯t even know how many kin they had.
However, it was known that other than the one Goddess of War. It or She had another 2 kin that reached Godhood as well. Under them were 20 Demi-Gods of the same race. The information meant nothing to Ebony.
The only information that mattered to him was that only the Saints of their race were considered¡family. The rest was just kin. Nobody knew how many of these ants there were.
They were an extremely weak race. If a human¡¯s parents were strong and had a physique, their child had a certain chance of having the same physique, weakened. Their grandchild had an even smaller chance. For these ants, it barely mattered if they were descendants of a God if they were like¡a million generations away. Depending on how old the race was and how fast they propagated.
The so-called Saints supposedly had the intelligence of a 6-year-old human. The one that decided Elva was food was a triplet of this ¡®Saints¡¯.
They were exceedingly simple and predictable.
Their thought process of when to attack and when to retreat was also exceedingly easy to read.
As long as these Saints thought they would gain more from this worldly conquest, they would continue sending their kin to feed. Even breaking even in energy input and output would be alright for them. Only when they noticed that the death rate was higher than their birth rate would they think ¡®Okay, time to look for other food.¡¯
The consensus was that as long as they didn¡¯t touch these weak Saints, they wouldn¡¯t receive any involvement from the Goddess of War, her sisters or their Demi-Gods. They had too many children to care for but the moment a single Saint was a casualty they could say goodbye to their world.
Complaint?
Elva didn¡¯t have that many allies from other worlds. Their diplomatic scene wasn¡¯t fully ironed out yet. It also wouldn¡¯t matter, no matter how many allies they got they would all fall the same way. It wouldn¡¯t even take 0.0001% of the Goddess of War¡¯s forces.
¡°I¡¯m only one person, you won¡¯t be missing out on much,¡± Ebony spoke truthfully. He honestly thought they were grossly overestimating him if they thought he could help them against millions or billions of ants spilling through a portal.
These Ants were the reason why in the past few years, or past decades, there were problems with sewers across the entire continent.
The Ants were doing reconnaissance to check and estimate how much food Elva was worth and how much forces they had to play around with. From the looks of it, the Saints deemed the Capital to be the only one worth their time and effort. And that they could spend millions of kin every day but still profit.
Ebony wasn¡¯t so interested because of how pathetically weak Hector described them to be. It took 10 King-ranked Ants to beat a single, random race of Grandmaster Wolf in the wilds of Elva and even then, 9 out 10 of them would die in the process.
The real reason was that he wasn¡¯t in his strongest state. Every bit of Will recovered was spent on experimenting with his Arsenal and his Model. Without it, he wouldn¡¯t be able to pull off a useful Domain in battle.
Ebony knew it was supposedly hard to level up one¡¯s Class. Even now, he was level 301 and Ning Xin was 303 after she almost burned down a floor in the Ruins of Verdant Decay. But he was already aware of how fast they were compared to the average or even the fastest Imperial.
The problem was skill levels. It was far harder to gain, a sentiment only shared by people at the table and other privileged. He¡¯d come across enough soldiers at level 300 to be able to tell that they mostly had tier 2 skills near 450 by the time they hit level 300. When Ebony reached level 300, most of his skills were lagging.
A single level gave them stats and base stats were good to have and all but not as important to him as skill levels and tiers. Even if he¡¯d level at a high speed once again, he would have to add his stats gradually to allow his body and brain to handle the stress of higher stats. The body physically changes when stats are added and takes time to fully come into effect.
Contesting weak creatures honestly didn¡¯t do much for skill levels, it might barely be better than his experimentation for refinements or mutations. He needed something that could force him to use 100% or exceed his current abilities, not slicing down pests with a single arm swing or blasting them apart with a kick.
If he was in a rush to train, he would¡¯ve found a way to go back to the Apex Apes and find the Grandmasters whose powers skyrocketed. He had only beat the Masters of their race and their capabilities other than pure strength did increase after they evolved.
¡°You¡¯re underestimating the impact a single mage can make. Not to mention, you don¡¯t have high downtime. The artillery mages have to stop for days to weeks to charge up.¡±
¡°If no one in Tidal sensed anything, the situation must be kept well under wraps.¡± Ebony was able to make sense of why the borders were less guarded than they assumed it would be.
The Empire had all their military power against these ants rather than some Trolls. Once the borders had just enough strength to defend themselves, the Archduke of Dwarves just ran back to fight these ants instead. The only Archducal family present against the Trolls were the Elves at First Tide.
Ebony even asked why the Elves who were good mages up against Trolls instead of the Ants like they suggested but it seemed like the Dwarves were so enraged that an unknown amount of Elva¡¯s metals were already eaten by the metal-eating ants.
Fortunately, they seemed to only have 3 portals open. One representing each Saint Ant. He was more impressed they had portal technology than the fact these ants ate metals. It was their tried and true tactic to open a portal underground and eat up whatever they could while giving the races above ground an ambush by the millions at the same time.
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The Empire was lucky their magical advancements allowed them to spot the portal and they noticed the sewer damage fast enough. Fighting underground also suited the Ants far more but the Empire wasn¡¯t about to let the Ants reign free and take all their natural resources so they had no choice but to go underground to stop them at their roots.
The fact that Hector and Mallory could return also told him, the situation was pretty much under control.
¡°We¡¯re not killing them fast enough. Youths like us are sent up to invite people who can keep their mouths shut about some world-ending danger.¡± Hector leaned back and unbuttoned his stuffy-looking shirt.
Their need for good materials for armour was likely also because of the wars going on. Hence, why Ebony was able to profit more from the mammoth bone sale.
It was honestly something many people would sign up for. Weak, high-level creatures that were more plentiful than the clouds in the sky. The Empire¡¯s average level probably already risen by a few levels in just the past few months.
The only issue was that the Empire supposedly hadn¡¯t managed to build an outpost for mages to dish out spells safely from. Every time a structure was built, it would be torn down within minutes. Navin was barely holding up a fort further away than he¡¯d like. Their Ant opponents were tossing lives to tie down the hastily built defensive magic towers.
One of the Saints was an Ant Queen specialised at propagating their numbers. The other two sisters were bodyguards whose descendants had tougher exoskeletons from the metals they consumed. Their kin were mindless creatures until they were Kings with the barest of intelligence. Only after they evolved into Emperors did they receive a vast reformation and did they close up the gap with other creatures of the same rank.
The Saints themselves supposedly underwent some indoctrination that instilled survival instincts in them. They were weak enough that Elcra could threaten their lives and strongly followed the same tactics they¡¯ve always used. So, they did not show themselves and were past the portal.
The portals they¡¯ve opened were nearby which honestly made it easier for the Empire. But they were rather unsure how many Ants slipped away and dug deeper to hunt for their metals. The only thing telling them otherwise was the sheer number they¡¯ve been dispatching every day and that they no longer receive any sewer damage reports.
¡°So, you¡¯re getting pushed back as we speak. And Navin¡¯s barriers aren¡¯t holding up forever.¡± Ebony summarised the words they didn¡¯t say.
¡°What about the Emperor guy?¡± Ning Xin asked.
¡°He¡¯s on the way but he¡¯s¡not the best against these opponents with his current state.¡±
¡°How far away is it and how long does it take to get there?¡± Ebony did not like it but they seemed desperate and he remembered that people were supposed to help friends in need. He did think they were friends.
¡®What a boring benefit¡her grandmother exaggerated didn¡¯t she? Then again, I¡¯ll take whatever I can. This is good too, sooner is better than later and if I can level up like¡50 times, the stats would honestly help with my training.¡¯ Ebony pumped himself up. No matter how menial or boring the chore sounded like, experience was experience.
He was just slightly disappointed that this was supposed to be the great benefit they¡¯d been preparing for. But he couldn¡¯t deny it came at a good time. At least he¡¯ll stand a better chance the next time those misty silhouettes who used Mandates came to find him. He might not be physically locked down to Tidal but it did feel that way and that thought was enough to motivate him.
¡°Not that far, it¡¯s a three-day¡¯s trip down. Near a few mana ore mining sites.¡±
Ebony¡¯s mood was slightly dampened. Moving underground usually meant there was a limit to how fast he could travel, even if he moved fast he might still take about the same time.
Ning Xin probably noticed how he wanted to spend more time figuring out sound and gravity magic spell refinements together with his Arsenal and Model skill and twitch her ear to signal him for a private conversation.
Despite his magic, she still leaned in to whisper into his ears.
¡°That¡¯s usually something I would think of first.¡± Her breath tickled and made his ears hot but he was more entranced by her words. Now his mind couldn¡¯t get off the tests she suggested. It was time to train. ¡®She¡¯s right¡endless experience, experiments and¡data.¡¯
¡°What can I say, I¡¯ve been around you lo- some time.¡± She backed off and cleared her throat.
¡®It¡¯s like I forgot I was in a rush, did tranquillity take away my sense of urgency? Why was I so disappointed with Ants as opponents? They¡¯re awesome.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s mind raced with the possibilities and opportunities for fast growth. The only thing keeping him out of a trance might be his unbearably warm ears.
¡°Okay, but not immediately. I¡¯ll be ready in a week or two.¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t wait but his preparations weren''t complete.
¡°I¡¯ll go with you two first.¡± Ning Xin had always been impatient and she didn¡¯t share his initial rejection of pest control.
¡°No, actually a week or two is perfect. We¡¯re also here to welcome Uncle Oplot back, he hasn¡¯t shown himself in public for a couple of years.¡± Mallory referred to the strongest individual on the planet as an uncle.
¡°There¡¯ll be a public walk down, the event¡¯s to instil more confidence in the Empire,¡± Hector told them the plans to make the return public and how knights had to be dispatched to handle the crowd. It would only be in the Central District from the inner wall¡¯s gate to the Guardian Knights training ground.
Hector had to go off to meet some friends while Mallory shooed him away with a glance. Body language was pretty amazing when a glance was enough for him to tell that it was time for the ladies to chat.
¡®I want more tea though¡¡¯
¡°Please come again! I could keep a seat open for you if you have any preference?¡± The waitress was kind enough to tell him that they could reserve a spot for him.
It was a quiet spot that not many knew about, Ebony thanked her for the consideration and made sure to order the teas he hadn¡¯t tried together with other limited desserts. He was pleasantly surprised that their menu changed every day of the year and cycled by the year.
¡®I¡¯ll find a bookstore and stock up.¡¯
Since he was dismissed, he decided to go to the Mage Association¡¯s main branch. Unlike the Quest Hall which copy-pasted every single one of their buildings, every branch of the Mage Association tends to be slightly different. The rumours were that it depended on who or what type of mage the Branch Lead was.
Sadly, there were few ice mages but that was fine. He was looking towards arcane magic and if he was lucky, any excerpts on Will would be great too.
The main branch was an entire campus with a lot of restricted areas. He might have accidentally Flickered onto one or two of these areas when they toured their neighbourhood. As the civilised person he was, he left but was pretty sure he alarmed some of the more perceptive ones with his residual essence.
Fortunately, it didn¡¯t bite him back and no one stopped or said anything about his trespassing.
¡°May I know where the library is?¡± He went to the administrative office meant for the public. Just like the Quest Hall, there were requests specific for the Mage Association.
The bespectacled boy pointed to his right.
¡®I assume that means the building there.¡¯
When Ebony got there, he realised his access was extremely limited as a Second-Order mage. ¡®Should I take their test again? I mean, if I can see what books they have on gravity magic I can share a few ice spells in exchange. No time like the present.¡¯
He went to look for the person to ask to upgrade his official rank. He didn¡¯t care about what Order they recognised him as but the books were more than good enough as a reason. Although just having the official rank or badge wouldn¡¯t allow him to read everything he could also use his spells as a trade.
¡®That¡¯s troublesome. They don¡¯t have testers for fourth-order mages present. Third is fine but I have to wait for 5 days. How do they categorise how many contribution points my spell book is worth if they don¡¯t have many ice mages? Oh well, I¡¯ll throw in my refined version of tier-one Icebody Enhancement. Maybe it¡¯s worthless since there are so few ice mages. Then I¡¯ll submit my tier 2 mana compression with my footnotes, which should be universally good for all mages and I don¡¯t see any books on mana compression in the section I have access to. Guess I can check the request board too.¡¯
Ebony could have gone home to get his books but it was a trip that took a couple of hours so he just bought a new book nearby and printed another copy by hand. He had to slow down so he didn¡¯t burn the pages with friction or dry out his pen.
It was only less than a century ago that this knowledge and books became as accessible as it was today. As long as one proved they were a mage of capability, they weren¡¯t fully disconnected from magic. It was a lot easier for new generation mages to get started and no longer as hereditary or passed down from master to disciple.
They even had a board of academics that judged how much a spell was worth. His submission would take some time before the results came in but he was fine with that since he needed to wait for the retest of his Order.
¡®That was a bust, time to look for other books. Oh, I know that actor, and that one too.¡¯ Ebony noticed a few celebrities. Actors that he¡¯d seen on the memory lights, movies.
He wondered if he would ask for an autograph if he ever saw his or Ning Xin¡¯s favourite actor but autographs might not be a thing on Elva.
While he was thinking that, the celebrities he saw were walking up towards him. It was a rare, green-haired man and silver-haired lady who acted in some film about sailing and being washed up on some mysterious island. If the movie wasn¡¯t a complete lie, the man¡¯s mana was poisonous while the lady was a specialised silver mage. It was odd but it was a branch of metal magic but her spells and manipulation of the metal were more often in the form of liquid.
¡°It¡¯s rude to poke your senses around.¡± The man crossed his arms in front of Ebony who stood before the request board.
¡°And?¡± Ebony hadn¡¯t even looked in their direction, they were just in his peripheral vision but were probably referring to the fact that he was watching everyone within his mana sense. Excluding the many rooms and buildings that shut out mana sense.
The man was being unreasonable, this was the Mage Association. The entire area had a higher mana density than their surroundings.
If Ebony was trying to spy on people, he would¡¯ve spread his mana for a higher definition look than rely on the ambient mana. The actor was simply asking a mage to close his eyes.
He didn¡¯t know why or where the temper was coming from but the green-haired actor pulled his collar and made creases on his white shirt. So it pulled his attention away from the request board and he returned the eye contact with the shorter man.
Chapter 294: Spot the Difference
¡®Ell!, he¡¯s sturdy for a scholar.¡¯ Verd tried to pull the light blue-haired man down to his eye level but failed spectacularly. The tall man didn¡¯t even budge. Even though Verd was a Grand Mage, he had above-average physical stats for a mage so he was surprised the scholar-looking man didn¡¯t so much as flinch.
It hadn¡¯t been easy asking out his colleague on the pretence of recommending her a spell. It was common sense that mages don¡¯t poke their mental senses around in the Mage Association as a basic courtesy. The ignorant creep who had his mental energy poking about was a great opportunity for him to show off. It was even better that his colleague sensed it and looked uncomfortable.
Verd sized up the tall man. Staring at the request board like some poor bloke looking for a job and dressed like a scholar with barely detectable mana leakage. Verd smiled internally at the good target who¡¯ll make him look better.
Unexpectedly, the tall man fanned the flames but adding to his already rude behaviour with a single ¡°And?¡±
After Verd pulled on the disrespectful man¡¯s collar, he finally caught the man¡¯s attention. Not about to be daunted in front of the woman he was wooing, he was about to demand an apology when a pair of pitch-black eyes stared into his.
He couldn¡¯t utter a word.
Verd didn¡¯t know how much time passed but his hands already let the collar go.
His eyes were staring at the ground where his feet were with his chin placed on his chest before he even realised the reflexive motion.
He couldn¡¯t feel his legs when he noticed he already let the man¡¯s collar go and he returned to his senses.
¡°No-nothing. So-sor-sorry for creasing your shirt.¡± Every line he prepared to raise his colleague¡¯s opinion of him went down the sewers. There were no other words that came to mind.
¡°It¡¯s okay. What else.¡±
A tingle went down Verd¡¯s back, ¡®so it¡¯s not okay at all, that''s not a question¡¡¯
He gulped, ¡°I got the wrong person. I apologise for the rudeness.¡±
The tall man nodded and walked off.
The moment he was out of the building, Verd¡¯s tense body relaxed.
¡®Oh crap, that was so lame. Haaa, I guess my chances with her are gone.¡¯ Verd completely forgot that he was trying to show off to the woman he was wooing.
When he looked at the pair of clear, pitch-black eyes he felt like he was drawn into its endless depths. Looking away was his survival instincts at work. Never in his career had he faced a creature that instilled as much fear into him.
Before becoming a professional member of the entertainment industry he was an actual dungeon clearer. Standing out from his colleagues who only learned skills and spells for fancy, showy effects but didn¡¯t know how to fight.
The tall man was looking at him without any hint of emotion. Not arrogance or anger or anything at all. Verd had never seen such a creature and he feared the unknown.
Verd sighed thinking the game was up and scratched the back of his head while he checked his date out. He simply didn¡¯t expect to see a starstruck expression.
¡°So cool¡¡± His date hadn¡¯t looked away from the exit.
¡°Yeah.¡± Verd did not expect those words, from both of them. On the bright side, it seemed like she didn¡¯t even notice his pathetic attitude.
???
¡®Weird actors. Was he practising some acting skill?¡¯
Ebony found a small bookstore that sold odd books. The genre went from torture techniques to monster anatomy to basic mana-draining enchantments to the mystery of the creature known as a woman.
The torture techniques were unpolished, the writer clearly didn¡¯t understand the human body well enough. He was sure he could write a book that would give better results.
The rest seemed like they could add value to his knowledge base so he got a copy. They would suffice for a leisurely read.
¡®No international language books, that¡¯s too bad.¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t decipher an entire language from Kong Jing¡¯s books on the common language Gia that was used outside of Elcra.
¡°It¡¯s you and me, buddy.¡± Ebony greeted his pet tree and uncovered the piano. ¡°Grow up fast, we have a lot of experiments to do.¡±
Ebony played the same tune till his neighbour came over with complaints about the noise.
¡®No effect. Let¡¯s ask.¡¯ He asked the old lady who used to be an inn owner what the difference was between what he played compared to the one that Muse played a few days ago.
¡°So it was someone else who played that? No wonder it¡¯s so different the past two days.¡± His neighbour wasn¡¯t surprised that there was a second player.
¡°Different, how so? I played it with the same tune, volume and timing. There¡¯s nothing different.¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t believe a random old lady could hear the difference when he couldn¡¯t with how high his Perception that was passively buffed by his Core Skill.
¡°Its soulless boy.¡±
¡°What is?¡±
¡°Your music.¡±
¡°Of course it is. Music is a combination of sounds in a particular order. Sound is just a mechanical wave that propagates through a medium, typically air. It is produced by the vibration of matter, which creates compressions and rarefactions in the surrounding particles.¡±
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¡°I don¡¯t understand half of what you said but I¡¯m telling you that is what¡¯s different from that melody that night.¡±
¡°...Do you have some kind of soul element perception skill?¡±
¡°Haaa, young man. Emotions, I meant emotions. How do I explain it to someone like you..,ah, I know. Anyone with over 300 in Perception can sense emotions in music.¡±
¡°What? That¡¯s the first I¡¯ve heard of that.¡±
¡°...forget it, just keep it down today or play something else.¡±
¡°Hold on, was that a joke or were you serious?¡±
Ebony was back to the drawing board.
¡®So all that talk about putting emotions into music was not full of nonsense. Okay, I¡¯ll back up. Let¡¯s think about it scientifically. I should have read about what effects music had on the brain when I was on Earth¡come on, I like music, I should¡¯ve studied about how it affected me other than the rhythmic flow and cognitive function impr-- I was too dismissive, I should¡¯ve at least tried this emotion thing.¡¯ Ebony was struck with the sudden realisation that he had been completely ignoring the possibility that maybe music was as mechanical as he assumed.
¡®Huh, this might not be so different from using Will. I¡¯ll try treating it like using Will, so it means I shouldn¡¯t have a clear mind when playing an instrument. Will is closely linked to thoughts. So are emotions. Okay, strong thoughts, what should I be thinking of?¡¯
Ebony¡¯s hands were frozen above the piano keys.
His mind was blank.
What was one supposed to think of when playing an instrument?
He only knew that other thoughts were a distraction when using muscle memory to play the piano.
He didn¡¯t move in that position till Ning Xin returned when the sun was setting.
¡°Xin, welcome back.¡± Her presence woke him up and he turned to greet her.
¡°...I¡¯m back. Sorry for being late, I¡¯ll get dinner ready soon.¡± The smell of coffee was heavily stuck on her.
¡°Take your time.¡±
¡°Why weren¡¯t you playing anything?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t know how to before.¡±
¡°?¡± She might have picked up too many habits from him with her cute head tilt.
¡°I think I know how to start.¡±
¡°Great. I¡¯ll call you when I¡¯m done. Is sister Jing inside?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, I haven''t entered the house since I returned.¡±
¡°Mmkay.¡±
Ebony tried again. He was able to push down his fingers, one after the other. After 4 long minutes, the last key echoed within his ears. ¡®There is a difference.¡¯
He put the lid back on and went back in to get changed.
¡°Can you tell if there¡¯s a difference?¡±
¡°...¡±
He didn¡¯t get a reply for a long time.
¡°I didn¡¯t mean to ignore you.¡±
Ebony smiled, it seemed like he succeeded. ¡®I was right, strong thoughts work similarly and are closely linked with emotions. Since she can sense emotions to a certain degree, she can sense how I didn¡¯t like the way she is avoiding me''
Happy with his initial success, he didn¡¯t push her for reasons. She would¡¯ve continued speaking if she wanted to share why she was avoiding him.
¡°What do you and Mallory even talk about?¡± He changed the subject so that it wasn¡¯t so awkward for her. With how their conversations can take half a day, he was quite curious what they could talk about for so long.
She was taste-testing the soup she made and coughed it out.
¡°Did you mess up? That¡¯s rare.¡± He took another spoon and tried the soup, ¡°hmm? It¡¯s great, I don¡¯t taste any sediments either.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t come up so close to me so suddenly!¡±
¡°...Did I do something that angered you somehow? Please tell me.¡± Although she restrained her palms, she was already about to push him away.
¡°You didn¡¯t. Now get seated or go call Sister Jing up, I¡¯ll serve it now.¡±
¡°Guess I have to read that book first.¡± Utterly confused, Ebony muttered and went to check his forge.
¡°Dinner¡¯s ready.¡± He knocked on the door. Kong Jing was in the zone. Getting her to lose focus now was pretty much impossible. It was the same as when he fell into a trance.
Unlike his expectations, dinner went rather well. The awkwardness he was expecting wasn¡¯t there and she was acting normal again.
¡°I¡¯ll be outside.¡±
¡°Yeah yeah, go prepare. I¡¯ll be making my dense soup stock as energy potions through the night too.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t expect you to remind me what a good time to test out my pet tree was.¡±
¡°Heheh, luckily we¡¯re both grandmasters now. Maybe it won¡¯t even take us a year to hit 500.¡±
¡°Haha, that sounds unlikely even for us.¡±
¡°True, I barely hit 303.¡±
¡°I heard you almost suffocated the town and burned down the floor. Your new spell is that powerful?¡±
¡°N-no, I was just blasting fire around and it spread when a denser forest got hit.¡± Her shy voice didn¡¯t match the horror that she almost committed.
Ebony connected to the congregated Will in his pet tree. He couldn¡¯t change it easily, it was more dense and compact than his maximum capacity. The most he could do was add on more, new instructions needed to be slowly incorporated. The direct connection allowed him to charge it up with all he recovered constantly and make gradual adjustments to what he already imbued.
¡°Looks cosy in there.¡± Ning Xin peeked into the tree hollow where he sat.
¡°It is but the floor¡¯s hard, maybe I¡¯ll buy some cushions.¡±
¡°Ah, that¡¯s a great idea.¡±
¡°Want to come in?¡±
¡°Nope, I have to roast these lead rhino bones before using them in stock. Help me carry the rosewood charcoal from the storeroom, I¡¯ll get the outdoor grill out so the house doesn¡¯t smell.¡±
¡°As you wish.¡±
He was glad their closest neighbour was two units down and they were in a relatively quiet area because they were probably quite the nuisance with the cooking and the music throughout the night.
¡°You¡¯re finally joining me for conditioning again.¡± His internal clock told him that it was time for morning exercise.
¡°You don¡¯t have to get so happy, it¡¯s not like we¡¯re sparring or even in the same training room.¡±
¡°Should I introduce you to my classmates?¡± Ebony felt like he had been looking past her mask for some time now. He was afraid he was getting delusional whenever he imagined what her expressions were. He was pretty sure she was smiling now.
¡°Those children you were talking about? Sure.¡±
¡°There¡¯s an old lady instructor who feels quite strong too. She might be there.¡±
¡°Ooo do you think she¡¯ll be up for a duel?¡±
¡°I doubt so, don¡¯t bully your elders. I don¡¯t think she is quite that powerful.¡±
¡°Aww.¡±
When they arrived at the Quest Hall¡¯s doorstep, Ning Xin turned towards him. Despite not being able to see her eyes, he could sense her glare.
¡°That woman¡¯s here, is she the old lady? No, she doesn''t smell old.¡±
¡°That¡¯s rude.¡±
Chapter 295: Research Trip
¡°So you¡¯re the one¡¡± Ning Xin stood a head taller than Raika who was secretly following his classmates as the overseer today. She had practically teleported towards the ¡®hidden¡¯ instructor the moment she smelled her.
Raika¡¯s hair sparked with electricity and she stepped back only to have her elbow caught by Ning Xin and her entire body jerked back to her original spot.
¡®Her reaction is pretty quick, I guess speed is a lightning mage¡¯s forte.¡¯ Ebony saw Raika¡¯s response and he already gauged that his Models might not be good enough as a training partner if the instructors were at her standard.
¡°Wh-who are you? What do you want?¡±
Ebony felt like he had to diffuse the situation when he saw the edges of her hair turn red.
¡°Good morning Raika. She doesn¡¯t mean any harm.¡±
¡°Oh, good morning Ebony.¡± Raika calmed down when she saw him but Ning Xin didn¡¯t let her go so he patted her shoulder hoping she¡¯d let the poor girl go. It was unlike her to get physical with a stranger. Outside of combat.
¡°Oww¡uhm, Ebony, who might this be?¡± Raika looked extremely uncomfortable with her elbows getting gripped tightly.
¡°Yeah Ebony, who might I be?¡±
¡°She¡¯s my partner.¡±
His answer seemed to satisfy Ning Xin as Raika was released from the vice grip.
¡°O-oh. I see. Of-of course, he had one.¡± Raika whispered the second half to herself but the hubbub around the Quest Hall wasn¡¯t enough to wash out the words from someone who had good hearing.
Ning Xin arrogantly tetted with Raika to show her superiority.
After scaring his classmates, she left to do her routine. ¡°Swordplay exchange later?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
Not having a sparring partner made skill practice rather dry. If they limit their speed it¡¯ll be a good show for the kids. It was better to ingrain good performance into their minds compared to bad ones and hope they picked something up.
Ebony never taught his classmates anything special but they were beginning to learn how to dodge. Not effectively or efficiently but it was better than locking up and waiting to get hit. A couple were fighting back and Faelk was against a full-strength and speed bully.
The best fighter was Atticus who had a more physically inclined upbringing compared to the others. He was a defensive type, perhaps taught by a tank or shield wielder. Sadly, his size and frame weren¡¯t suitable for such styles. The evasion practice benefited him a lot more and he was capable of timing and landing counter blows.
The rest now had permission to use their mana every two days. However, their improvements when it came to being able to focus, gather lightning mana and then maintain it while dodging was almost nil. He didn¡¯t want them to fire a spell, it would save them more mana and increase their practice duration as long as all they did was gather and maintain while dodging and observing their surroundings in case a second or third bully came in for an attack.
Although the competition didn¡¯t have a battle royale, Ebony didn¡¯t see a reason not to increase their awareness and alertness while training the most important ability for a mage, the ability to focus and cast magic in any situation. He¡¯d seen their concentration waver and mana spheres run out of control too many times.
It was not a problem Ebony personally came across so he didn¡¯t have any tips for them. Ever since he wielded mana, he could hold multiple casts and points of focus by splitting his focus. It was no different from playing chess and sudoku in his mind at the same time. Rather simple.
So he didn¡¯t understand their struggles.
His classmates were extremely intimidated in front of Ning Xin and their swordplay performance was not well understood by the children. He thought it was because they were going too fast and slowed down but he had no choice but to conclude that most of them simply didn¡¯t see it as a learning chance.
Ebony¡¯s kick swiped at Ning Xin¡¯s mask and caught her off guard. It landed fully and swung her head to the ground where she did a breakdance sort of manoeuvre to spin herself back onto her feet. It was not a move he would ever suggest but she did it so smoothly and her movements were sharp enough with her blades in hand that it wasn¡¯t an opening.
¡®Right, she doesn¡¯t know I got a tier 4 art like her¡¡¯ he might have exposed his new skill earlier than he¡¯d like. That wasn¡¯t ideal, the less she knew the higher his chance of success at proposing.
His Arts was too low level at the moment so she might just be thinking he caught her off guard with the slow pace they were going. She probably didn¡¯t even know that he wouldn¡¯t be Identified or Appraised as a swordsman anymore. There was a far higher chance people with Identify would see that he was a Martial Artist or some variant of it if he removed his obfuscation jewel.
He was a little salty that years of effort with the sword were just written over with a simple word called talent and that he was weak-willed enough to take it up. However, he had come to peace with it and just no longer denied where his strong suits were. Not to mention, it wasn¡¯t as if his ability and growth with wielding a sword disappeared.
¡®I was right, I have the upper hand in the first few minutes as long as her strength hasn¡¯t built up. It¡¯s getting harder to break her combos though.¡¯ They didn¡¯t ramp up the spar too much but it was enough for him to gauge where they both stood.
Even without magic, he had a slight upper hand in close combat. The changes in her sword style were minimal. It was a lot more polished but the style itself didn¡¯t change. Meaning he could pretty much predict and react to any kind of impromptu change mid-battle. Although their base stats didn¡¯t change and he was still a lot slower thanks to Fortifications, he could foresee himself catching up with Ethereal Form Arts.
¡®Can I train Ethereal Form Arts against Ants? It won¡¯t be the most efficient but it should work since it''s always in use as long as I fight.¡¯ Ebony already estimated that higher-tier skills were harder to level but the difference was not that big at low levels.
¡°Please teach me how to dual wield big sis!¡± Atticus seemed entranced by Ning Xin¡¯s swordplay and he was actually suitable for it.
¡°No. Why should I?¡±
Atticus was quickly shot down. It was rather rude of him as they weren¡¯t related or even their instructors. A proper way was to ask for an official apprenticeship, even Ebony knew about this. Hence, he stopped directly asking people about their skills and abilities.
¡®The reason is probably not because of his directness.¡¯
He let them return to the Academy with a dazed Raika following them.
¡°Let¡¯s eat out.¡±
They took an aerial ride to the western district to try the fowl they were recommended when they arrived in the Capital.
Not even their sensitive tongues could complain.
Ebony didn¡¯t cast any more Models despite his wish to evolve it as soon as possible. He needed every drop of Will for his pet tree. The high usage of Will the past few weeks also made him aware that it was far more draining on him. Keeping himself dried out on Will could make him sleepy in half the time it usually did.
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Although an intense use of a great amount in a short time could cause him short-term problems such as a splitting headache, his Core Skill seemed to counter that so it never lasted more than five minutes. The implications in battle were low but present so it was better for him to use it gradually like how he used his models and past Domain.
¡®Will recovery is too slow, I can¡¯t find any books on them either. The Elves¡I would have to find old Kings and higher since they said King ranked is the earliest they would have a Domain skill.¡¯ Ebony finally felt how suffocating it was for normal mages who had limited mana for training.
It was so sad, no wonder it took Ning Xin so much time and she was still lagging behind.
¡°Xin, I¡¯ll enter the ruins to check out that magic tree. I¡¯m supposed to train some Great Lightning Mages sometime in the next few weeks onwards. Can you take over if I¡¯m stuck inside waiting for an exit hunt? I¡¯ll be coming and going often to feed my pet tree so it''s just in case I can¡¯t leave for a day or two.
¡°Hmph, what do they need in particular?¡±
¡°Their opponents are the arcane warriors so just let them be more accustomed to sudden enhancements or bursts of power.¡±
¡°That should be simple enough.¡±
Ebony rushed to the dungeon. His Will took two days to fully recover from an empty state so that was his time limit per trip. Tossing that into a Model and retrieving it to feed his tree wasn¡¯t something he wanted at the moment. There was potential loss and his mental state for both their instructions and programming was quite different.
His destination was only a specific ruin on the seventh floor. Without the distractions and the need to kill every single species of monster, he just focused on using his footwork and covering distance. His first course of action was to add his stat points from that 1 level to his Endurance because the muscle tearing wasn¡¯t fun to heal from every single time he overused Phantom¡¯s Flicker.
The reduction in stamina regeneration didn¡¯t affect him much but his muscles wearing and tearing faster was a huge issue. It was still a worthwhile trade for the increase in mana regeneration and muscular strength and bone densities but he didn¡¯t exactly like the feeling.
His Profession-focused stat for Mana Adjudicator had all 5 points per level going into Wisdom. A level for his Class as a Grandmaster got him 20 stat points and his Sub-Class got him 15.
¡®The increase for each rank is not insignificant and combats diminishing returns but not completely. Base stats raise the limits that an individual can reach in terms of physical and mental capabilities. Maybe more than that.¡¯
In any case, it was time to experiment and sense how every point of stats affected him. He needed more data on how long it took for a single stat point to fully incorporate into his body. More importantly, try to figure out where this energy or change came from.
He was pleasantly surprised to find out that it kicked in faster than before.
Ebony¡¯s third floor was the seventh and he already mapped the area out so he knew which ruin to go to.
¡®So many people¡¡¯ The ruins on the seventh floor were the largest but there were still people everywhere he went.
It took an hour to look for an empty room that contained a spawn node. He was unlucky as it was not the node that spawned the magical tree he was looking for so he was back to check on the different rooms in the palace-sized ruins.
Ebony swayed to the left and backhanded a stray earth bullet the size of a human that flew at him after being deflected by a boxing mushroom. He didn¡¯t want to destroy someone else''s spell and be blamed for it so he made sure to stabilise the mana around it for it to stay in the same shape. To prevent them from blaming him for causing their aim to fail, he made sure to slap it back at the two-armed mushroom.
He didn¡¯t account for strength and sent it back flying harder than it flew towards him, pulverising the mushrooms into mush.
It was accidental and he didn¡¯t want to be bothered by people so he quickly cast a transparent screen over himself and Flickered elsewhere. They shouldn¡¯t disturb him for a few child-sized mushrooms out of the whole swarm they were busy with.
¡®Looks like most people camp at the ruins for weeks at minimum to make the trip worthwhile. That makes it harder to find empty spots for monsters with good parts or areas that spawn harvestable raw materials and plants.¡¯
Ebony was fortunate that his magical tree didn¡¯t seem that popular and he found two just sitting at their spots without moving out to hunt. The dungeon might have gotten used to the fact that people would find its monsters so it didn¡¯t necessarily need its monsters to patrol and find prey. With its size and number of monsters, this change might save it a ton of energy.
It also made the creatures less lively and feel less like living beings and more like programmed biological robots.
This particular magic tree was not in an enclosed room but was sitting there to block a path behind it. The previous time he was here, there was no tree present and the path behind it was an empty vault.
¡®Some sort of treasure room or room with a material spawn node maybe.¡¯
It had more surrounding underlings this time, likely thanks to the open area.
Ebony had all his Augmentations swell up to their maximum output and he did his best to cast Frostweave Vital Constriction on every other monster present from boxing mushrooms of different sizes to walking treants. He wasn¡¯t trying to heal them, he just wanted them to be out of the picture.
The skills in his Class that were at the level 450 range were either the newest or those that he had not been able to get any better at. It was a pathetic and embarrassing sight so it was a good chance to raise them to the same standard as the rest of his skills now that their limit was raised after his evolution.
With his compression, even a tier 2 spell could lock these creatures down. The treants were still moving within his seal but they couldn''t break free immediately.
It didn¡¯t take more than two minutes before he was alone with the magical tree. It had protected its mobile companions with its roots and vines or it wouldn¡¯t have taken him so long to freeze and seal its allies.
He played with the magical tree until he felt his Will recover to about 75% of his capacity. It was likely noon the day after he entered so he spent roughly 28 hours with the tree.
The root slapped at him again when he waved them goodbye and removed their seals. He had to reseal the treants every few minutes and the mushrooms every hour.
He could¡¯ve added more ice to pure mana ratio to keep them frozen but that would change his spell if he overused that. He didn¡¯t mind an evolution that did more but he didn¡¯t want a mutation that changed its working principle. It would defeat the purpose of getting sealing magic since it was primarily his healing skill.
He might be imagining it, but it felt like they were less aggressive towards him during the last few hours. Perhaps his soothing mana worked to some degree but they were dungeon creatures so it wasn¡¯t as effective as it should¡¯ve been.
As he expected, he had to wait for the exit expedition to get ready for their scheduled hunt. Buying a ticket wasn¡¯t that hard but the earliest one was a few hours later. He made sure to double-check their schedule for the next few days so he could plan his trips better. Make sure to avoid the timing where there was a multiple-day wait for spawning.
The previous expedition leader, Endersyn, wasn''t here and Ebony didn¡¯t know anyone else so he didn¡¯t have anyone to talk to for the next few hours. The eighth floor also didn¡¯t have many monsters for him to hunt since it was more of a lobby floor for exits and guardian battles.
¡®I could take a nap but I¡¯d rather sleep well on a bed¡guess I¡¯ll conjure some Imperishable Frost Armament to finish the battle faster. Let¡¯s do bow and arrows, I can control them like a barrage spell so I can manually fire as many as I want instead of having Will automate it.¡¯
Because he had too much free time, he might have overdid the production of arrows. Even the most compressed versions didn¡¯t stop him from producing more than ten thousand. He figured he didn¡¯t need bows if he was personally firing the arrows with mental strength.
He didn¡¯t ask for permission this time.
The moment it was time to move in and the door opened, he unleashed the arrows and pelted the interior of the tower along with all the other power-focused mages. His projectiles lost in terms of velocity and impact strength but made up in terms of volume.
The serpent¡¯s scale was too tough to pierce but the flood of ice and the sharp decrease in temperature slowed it down.
¡°I¡¯ll keep the Fungalspire Gila busy.¡± Ebony left the serpent to the expedition party¡¯s professionals.
He didn¡¯t want to use his flames and freeze the others with him.
They were pleasantly surprised that all 4 Fungalspire Gila were frozen and sealed. It freed up whole parties to speed up the serpent hunt. The risk of killing the Fungalspire Gila was reduced and the Serpent wouldn¡¯t get a burst of powers. The Fungalspire Gila was a lot stronger than the treants and he had to refresh his seal and physically punch them down constantly.
¡°Hahahahaha! Ice magic sure is convenient. What¡¯s your name? Want to join our group?¡± The bald leader with a large axe and too many scars patted his back with all his strength when they walked out of the exit portal.
¡°Ebony, no thanks.¡± He was going to say he was going to be visiting frequently and exiting often for the next two weeks but he recalled their schedule took weeks to months so he probably won¡¯t group up with them again.
He declined multiple offers for larger expedition groups and their callstone links. Parties of five that weren¡¯t part of larger groups didn¡¯t bother him since they had a full party already. They were getting noisy celebrating a zero-death count exit so he made his way home hopefully in time for dinner.
Chapter 296: Editing Pet Tree
¡°I¡¯m home.¡±
Ning Xin was outdoors with an extra kiln large enough for two cows that seemed to have popped out from nowhere. Her personal craftswoman must have made it for her. It sat against the side of their house and didn¡¯t look out of place.
She was eating something so he could see her smile. ¡°Go wash up. I¡¯ve already eaten. I¡¯ll whip something up.¡±
¡°Pan-fried dumplings.¡±
¡°Sure sure.¡±
Ebony listened and went to scrub out the splinters that were still stuck in his shin. His pants had tiny holes in them but mending them didn¡¯t take any effort.
Then he made his way to feed his pet tree. A lump sum of Will took time to iron out neatly and imbue. The Serpent hunt took over an hour and he recovered over 90% by the time he got home. He emptied his entire mana pool but it generally took two full days worth of mana regeneration for a day¡¯s worth of Will imbued. All thanks to how compressed his mana could get.
¡°Yeah, your biggest problem is sustainability. Odd, with my Will that should¡¯ve been your greatest strength.¡± Ebony put his hand on his chin and talked to his pet tree.
It didn¡¯t melt or leak too much mana but his pet tree lacked the ability to regenerate mana. He was also starting to sense that the Will that he imbued on the first day of the tree¡¯s birth was starting to dissipate. He was still imbuing faster than it was dissipating but it would probably reach its limits soon as its dissipation rate seemed to be speeding up.
¡®I¡¯ll observe it for the next three days since its dissipation just started.¡¯ He wanted a little more time with the magical tree in the dungeon but he pushed that back since it wasn¡¯t as important anymore. He had to check on his children''s training Models too but that could wait.
These training Models were programmed to walk back home in full transparent mode and they were in one piece, parked near the gate. They also had internal clocks to tell when to visit the Quest Hall, together with a Mental Map so they wouldn¡¯t get lost. Hence, he had no issue leaving them to train the children without his presence.
¡®I guess I should¡¯ve at least informed them that I wouldn¡¯t be there.¡¯
She had brought dinner outside so that she could see him eat while she watched the kiln and controlled the temperature.
After that, he slept better than ever thanks to using almost a full capacity of Will in a short time.
¡°I dreamt again. What¡¯s so interesting about butts?¡± Ebony woke up and shook the memory of a certain night in Ordina away.
It seemed like after Everlasting Tranquillity evolved, he also gained the ability to dream. He didn¡¯t know he was such a person. His dreams kept revolving around Ning Xin and she was frequently wearing little in those dreams. Although he was aware of his admiration for her body, it had always been about how well-toned and built she was. His dreams¡¯ focus was clearly not on her musculature or her anatomy.
He then tried to imagine other female bodies¡¯ anatomy but didn¡¯t receive the same feedback. There wasn¡¯t a better body for combat. Of course, he was just distracting himself and was well aware of the nature of these dreams. He shelved it to the depths of his mind and went about his day.
His routine days continued.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t blatantly avoid him anymore.
Kong Jing was a little busy in his forge but still helped him a little with getting a birthday gift made. She already got him the metal he was looking for and was just making practice attempts. The craftswoman allowed him access to her library again and he made more headway with Gia language with the books within.
He tried to open the second door in her library but was completely played as it was an empty room within a room. Her comment had been a laugh and a ¡®how unlucky, I¡¯m renovating that room.¡¯
On a different day, he sensed a fluctuation in the mana in her library and tried to open the door again but it led to a wider room without any furniture or bookshelf. When he closed the door, there was a suction of the ambient mana. He opened the door immediately only to find the guest room he used to stay in on the other side.
Repeating the same motion, he opened the door to a different scenery every time. From rooms in her house, to his house and even the wilds with monsters on the other side of the door. He tried until he got scolded for wasting Kong Jing¡¯s mana.
¡°Xin, come look. Fruits grown overnight.¡±
On the second day after he returned from his dungeon trip, he filled his pet tree up with enough mana for it to flower. As he expected it was plum blossoms but they didn¡¯t have any stigma or filament just the petals. The flowers of ice had light blue veins and could glow. It was an extension of his spell, Blossom of Shimmering Chill. He had no doubt it would fall and combust into flames when it needed to.
The tree had branched a lot and looked odd with so many tiny branches with numerous flowers with 5 petals each. The tree crown was rather wide so that it could accommodate more flowers. The flower-to-leaf ratio was quite high, likely because the flowers had more use. It was still flowering as it took a lot of mana for a single fully compressed petal.
On the third day, he fed it with more Will and continued watering it with mana.
Finally, the fruits had grown.
¡°Still plums with you. I wouldn¡¯t even be surprised if it grew dumplings.¡± She was excited when she heard ¡®fruit¡¯ but not so much when she found out he was still talking about his pet tree that didn¡¯t have any delicious edible parts.
Ebony didn¡¯t ignore her on purpose but he was observing the plums intently.
¡°Wow.¡± He held the plum within his palms. There were only three plums at the moment
¡°You don¡¯t need to show off and be impressed by yourself.¡± She didn¡¯t share his surprise.
¡°Grab it.¡± He released the plum and tugged her sleeves towards the fruit.
¡°Why?¡±
¡°Just grab it.¡±
¡°It¡¯s cold. And?¡±
¡°Inject your fire mana inside.¡±
¡°Huh, you want me to destroy it.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll see.¡±
Ebony waited for her to do her magic.
¡°It-its sucking my fire mana!¡±
¡°Mmhmm, in each of these plums are gravity vortexes.¡±
¡°You¡¯re saying-¡±
¡°Yes, it¡¯s growing our specialised bomb containers.¡±
¡°So we can literally say, eat this plum!¡±
¡°...¡±
Ebony wasn¡¯t expecting a joke from his discovery. She clearly wasn¡¯t as impressed as he was.
¡®Still, no wonder there¡¯s only 3 plums; the gravity vortex is a constant mana drain. It uses gravity mana from the whole tree together with ambient gravity. Did it grow because I¡¯m giving it a constant influx of mana? The reason it can¡¯t regenerate mana is because it doesn¡¯t have any mana chassis. And it¡¯s not like I can cut my mana chassis off to share it¡¡¯
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¡°Stupid brother. That¡¯s a tree, not a person. Did you forget what I taught you?¡± Kong Jing¡¯s hand spawned above him but slowed down to a pat instead of a punch.
¡°...Ambient mana absorption runes, together with my personal mana to ice mana conversion rune. I already have the complete runic circle for that.¡± Ebony kept having the impression that he had to use his mana. It was a lot stronger too, so the thought of using ambient mana didn¡¯t come to mind at all. Hence, not a single hint of using ambient mana was in the Will that had already been imbued.
But for his tree, a harmful source didn¡¯t matter. It just needed an additional energy source.
¡°And the problem?¡± She was tinkering with something in the forge and only her voice continued to stay with him while her hand retreated.
¡°Inefficient. The max range of my best formula that can fit on something the size of a ring can absorb mana from is less than half a kilometre. My pet tree can compress ice mana so that¡¯s not a problem. The amount of mana in half a kilometre for the current ambient mana densities wouldn¡¯t even be enough to grow a single petal. I can increase the range since the runic circle can be enlarged thanks to the size of the tree but then my conversion of mana to ice mana cannot keep up.¡±
¡°Your solution?¡±
¡°Back to the drawing board. I have a few ideas already. Thank you, sister Jing.¡±
¡°Hey,¡± A mask popped up to glare at him, ¡°I gave you hints so let¡¯s hear what those ideas are.¡±
¡°First, the roots I gave it after watching the ruin¡¯s magic tree. I can make it longer to get mana from deep underground. I don¡¯t like this idea much and it¡¯s very limited in terms of area. The ground has more earth mana than pure mana so it¡¯s not reliable.
Next, the more reliable one is to mould them onto the bark or scales of my tree. It covers a large area and even if it loses some scales, it¡¯s entirely layered out of the same stuff so it won¡¯t lose all its absorption capabilities unless it''s destroyed in seconds.
I want to allow a layer or two to be able to fly to the limits of its range to absorb mana from a larger area but that would take mana too so it depends on the surrounding mana density or purity. I won¡¯t give it that ability until I can calculate and give it the ability to gauge if it¡¯s worth spreading out a layer to absorb mana.¡± Ebony continued to think out loud for the craftswoman to overhear.
¡°Your ideas are fine but this method is still unreliable. If your tree is immovable, ambient mana will run out. Especially with how mana-hungry your spells are. Even if I help you improve your runic formula to have a hundred times wider range or increase its conversion rate.¡±
¡°What do you suggest.¡±
¡°I suggest you use your brain. That¡¯s for you to think.¡±
¡°There''s no point cutting out a portion of my brain. The thing that regenerates mana is the mana chassis, I have enough experience to tell. If I lost a body part, the area where its physical portion was would still contain my mana chassis and I would regrow it. The lost part would slowly die out. I¡¯m also not sure if I can survive long enough to regenerate my brain.¡± Ebony considered the possibility but he was quite sure it wouldn¡¯t work.
¡°That was not what I was suggesting!¡±
¡°Hmm, are you asking me to create a new skill or forge an additional brain? I don¡¯t know how to forge or create brains, unfortunately. As for mana chassis, I could try to figure something out but I highly doubt any quick results.
¡°Oh come on. Think about it in a way rich people do.¡±
¡°Power source¡right, I can toss a million Blues in a cargo space. It¡¯s a stop-gap measure but that¡¯s better than nothing. I still need to improve my runic formula to convert mana from a Blue efficiently.¡± Ebony had missed out on such a simple solution.
¡°...come on down, I¡¯ll show you another baby of mine.¡±
Ebony was also interested in seeing what kind of industrial equipment Kong Jing had hiding in her basement. Her house wasn¡¯t displayed out in the open since there was no space for it but she took out the equipment and items she needed and made his personal forge her room.
¡°Look at this baby, this is what I used to make the power source that your trailer is holding.¡±
The large machinery could barely fit in his basement. It was a hunk of metal with an empty glass container in the middle. It was connected by a glass tunnel to another space with a few metal tools within the glass container.
¡°See this cabinet, toss mana ores here and this baby would crush it without any loss in mass. It would take that mana and resolidify it as a perfect sphere. We can watch the baby roll here. I keyed in my own three-dimensional formula and it would engrave it inside out to further expand its capacity by over 300 times for Blues. If you had purples, their inherent purity would allow my runes to increase their capacity by over 500 times instead. Hehehehh, don¡¯t tell anyone that I have this, got it!?¡±
Ebony never got a number but he now knew why his trailer¡¯s power source seemed like it wouldn¡¯t ever fill up. It was mass and size equivalent to hundreds of thousands of tiny mana ores meant to fit on a bracelet but the math never added up. He underestimated her runic formula¡¯s prowess.
¡°...Did you steal it?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t say steal, I picked it up alright! You remember how I was chasing Zenin down to buy another industrial mana compressor so that I could tear it down and remake it?¡± She told him about one of the owners of the Z&Z company before. The genius inventor who made himself half golem, half human and sold her the industrial mana compressor.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°I found him a few years ago. I don¡¯t know what or how he has the contact but this baby is so technologically advanced it¡¯s unlike anything I¡¯ve heard of. I don¡¯t even think any of my family members know about this baby. Oh, the wonders of reshaping mana ores to a perfect sphere is beautiful.¡± She closed up to the glass container and caressed it.
¡°So what do you mean by picking it up?¡±
¡°...I might have unleashed a few little beasts I keep in my spatial world to disturb his factory deep in the mountains. Look, I didn¡¯t have them kill or attack anything. It¡¯s not my fault he got scared by their presence and abandoned his precious factory and equipment.¡±
¡°Spatial world? Like a domain?¡±
¡°Urgh, it¡¯s similar but more of a space mage¡¯s natural advantage and my mask¡¯s main function. I can¡¯t use Will like you do so I have no idea what a normal domain spell is like. Can you not get distracted by the unimportant details, I¡¯m showing you something amazing enough for my clan members to come kill me for.¡±
¡°Surely not, you can just share its use.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s just say sharing is not a Xeng¡¯s speciality, I know you¡¯re the same. Your possessiveness gushes out all the time. I can believe that you have Xeng blood. Don¡¯t try to deny, you don¡¯t even like me touching anything in your forge.¡±
Ebony remained silent.
¡°Alright, go feed the compressor with enough mana to make a few Purples. We¡¯ll toss it in with the Blues you have. Your personal mana would be the core of the power source, that¡¯ll be more efficient for your spell too.¡±
¡°Have you succeeded in making another one of these mana compressors?¡± He wanted one of those machines too.
¡°I did, this one¡¯s new and better but I took apart the old one to make this. I would make another but I don¡¯t have a certain material to make it, that''s why I only have one. That inventor warped away the moment his detection sensed something off so I didn¡¯t manage to buy a second one.¡±
¡°My pet tree¡¯s going to be hungry for a few days.¡±
¡°How big do you want it? It can make something up to a fifth of a gir in diameter.¡± Kong Jing told him that the sphere could be a metre in diameter while his trailer¡¯s power source was not that big as it had to fit beneath the floorboard.
¡®If the base is a Rare quality mana ore, my tree will still compress it further before use. A perfect sphere of a metre¡¯s diameter would mean it¡¯s 500 litres?¡¯ Ebony did internal calculations.
The volume of a sphere increased proportionally to the cube of its radius. The tiny little shard fit on the myriad bracelet could contain 100,000 MP. He already knew that was referring to ambient mana. After taking into account the bracelet¡¯s conversion efficiency of breaking his mana down to match Elcra¡¯s ambient mana it took less than 100,000 not because of the conversion efficiency being over a hundred per cent but because the bracelet had to dilute his mana before it could fit into the mana ore.
¡®I don¡¯t like geometry.¡¯ Ebony decided that he didn¡¯t need to know how much that would equate to. It was easily in the hundreds of millions if not billions. Something that large was almost able to power one of those magic defence towers that shot beams of destruction that could melt him.
However, the power source that the magic defence towers on Elcra use were naturally large mana ores that were either sanded or sculpted down to a sphere and were probably Rare quality at best. He wouldn¡¯t be surprised if they were made of Greens or Uncommon mana ores either. The ones at the border cities did seem far stronger than what a Green could output.
Ebony¡¯s natural mana regeneration was 20% of his base mana capacity per hour instead of a human¡¯s 10%. His current Fortification of 750% increase made his natural regeneration without meditation at 170% per hour. He could regenerate a full mana pool in less than half an hour even if he was unconscious or didn¡¯t have his Core Skill activated.
All his stats were 40% higher than his status tells him thanks to a maxed-out tier 4 Conditioning which directly affects base stats. His Core Skill currently gave him a 71.6 times multiplier at its current tier, level and refinement. All in all, he roughly regenerated over 3.46 million mana per hour or 963 mana per second.
Losing only to Gen at full focus but he could do it every waking moment without being stationary. Gen didn¡¯t have a Fortification for increasing mana regeneration but he had far higher base Wisdom and skill level.
Without his current regeneration, he wouldn¡¯t be able to consistently use full compression.
It took under 2 minutes to fill up a Blue fit in his myriad bracelet. The unreliability of the bracelet forced him to get better and safely send his mana elsewhere. Luckily, it usually wasn¡¯t a problem as he used all his mana for training in some form.
¡®So if it can contain a billion points of mana of my quality, it¡¯ll take ten full days of all my regeneration? That doesn¡¯t sound so bad. If my pet tree¡¯s usage equals mine, that still means ten full days of pelting spells but it¡¯ll obviously use more than just my regeneration¡¯s worth like how I dip into my mana pool in tough fights. Maybe 2 to 3 days of maximum output. That¡¯s not good enough.¡¯
Ebony was glad that just going by volume, the power source made of Blues should easily exceed a few billion and that hasn¡¯t included Kong Jing¡¯s runic expansion. He was relieved that even when his spell power and mana output were to increase in the near future, just one of these huge mana ore spheres could contain enough mana for a long time.
No wonder it took a whole town¡¯s worth of tax to charge up one of these babies. Not even Ebony could fill it up in a short amount of time.
Chapter 297: Dusk
¡°Hahahaha! Not as rich as you imagined to be, are you now? Now you know how disgustingly expensive it is to be a crafter and do research on magic.¡±
Ebony dug into his storage room while Kong Jing laughed at him for reaching the bottom of his pockets. He had just enough Blues to make the largest power source. After spending on the renovations and more importantly, the exceedingly expensive privacy enchantment for his house meant to last a decade, he was running out of Blues.
He could¡¯ve gone to exchange the filled ones for more empty ones but he didn¡¯t want to swap a few ores out of his bracelet every few minutes. There had to be a better method for higher-level mages. But he never bothered since he needed his mana for training.
¡®Purples are too rare, I¡¯ll have to search for higher denominations of currency or just larger lumps of unprocessed Blues.¡¯
Kong Jing¡¯s mana compressor worked faster and could handle greater volumes. Ebony was able to watch it solidify his mana in real time.
¡®I¡¯m not far from being able to solidify my mana. Can I even cast augmentations when my compression can solidify my mana?¡¯ Ebony remembered there was a slight difference to all his spell-casting the moment he had liquid mana.
The change had been gradual and honestly, didn¡¯t affect him much from a gaseous-like state to a liquid state but he was worried about how that would affect his spells if his mana was a solid.
Ebony was a hoarder, he spent a few more days making more Purples with his mana signature for the core of the power source. Using Kong Jing''s industrial mana compressor of course. He spread out his mana usage between making this and feeding his pet tree.
¡°Frost Dusk, that¡¯s your name. Like it?¡± Ebony patted the trunk of his pet tree. It was now fully grown and didn¡¯t change physical form no matter how much Will or mana he fed it.
He rebranded its scales with runic ones that gathered ambient mana together with a durability and toughness formula. The durability portion was usually dormant and could actively use mana to increase its defences by up to 20%. He couldn¡¯t make it any better while still supporting the ambient mana absorption.
Although the tree changed the scales itself without any hint of mental effort from Ebony, his Inscripted Mana Moulding was levelling at a brisk pace. The effects it had on his runes¡¯ capabilities weren¡¯t ideal since Ebony had no Fortifications or any other compounding skill effects but it was doing its job.
It had a spot carved out above the mini room that was for the power source once it was done and already made capable of a two-way energy transfer. The hollow or door of the tree didn¡¯t change in size but its internals were wider than before.
The odd leaves only grew near the outer surface of the crown, underneath them were all plum blossoms ready to ignite. It had thick roots meant to stabilise itself but probably had little offensive or defensive capabilities. If he made his Will right, targets who came close would be attacked and have sealing magic run across the contact point. He wasn¡¯t good enough to cast sealing magic from a distance and it wasn¡¯t all that strong.
The roots weren¡¯t capable of extending too far either. He didn¡¯t want his tree to be uprooted by something pulling on the roots.
There were dozens of plums hanging off its branches too but without a gravity vortex inside them. He gave it the ability to sense touch or vibrations on the plums. Only when a hand grasps its fruits would it begin to cast gravity vortexes within and open pores for foreign mana to enter. They were solid ice throughout but the filled space within would melt for frostblaze when it was time to drop and there wasn¡¯t anyone to fill them with fire mana.
These plums were moulded with heat resistance and a structural runic formula he developed for this particular shape. They can handle more heat and both internal and external pressure so they wouldn¡¯t burst as easily and increase their threshold for safe capacity.
The temperature of his garden had dropped too much so he had to block off his pet tree¡¯s immediate surroundings to protect his garden with normal plants.
There was no response from his pet tree but its name had already been decided and accepted.
¡°Dusk?¡± Ning Xin overheard him while fanning the fire under her grill.
¡°Yeah, you like it?¡±
¡°It¡¯s¡fitting. I don¡¯t know why I get that feeling.¡±
¡°Right?¡±
The name had come to him when he saw the fully grown tree and he didn¡¯t stop to think of a second one the moment the name came to mind. It just felt like the right one.
He took the last minced meat bun with the softest bun he ever had and left to train the Instructors of the Piercing Tempest Academy. Including Raika, Targot and 6 other Masters.
The first time he met them, he was faced with an angry Grand Lightning Mage who introduced himself as Rauffeq. The one responsible for the Master¡¯s training and the one that brought them out for field experience. He had been unhappy that Ebony was called in to do his job and challenged Ebony to a duel.
Since he was supposed to teach them about warriors¡¯ habits and tendencies, he made sure to use arcane warriors¡¯ favourite moves. A sudden explosion of speed and strength to land a decisive blow was their favourite tactic while they stayed on the defensive for most of the duration of a battle. It was mana and stamina efficient with good survivability and a high chance of landing a critical blow as long as they judged their opponents correctly.
Ebony had been very careful not to punch a hole in the instructor while explaining to the 8 Masters what to look out for. They seemed surprised whenever he Flickered to keep his distance with the zapping mage constant. The Grand Lightning Mage¡¯s movement was quite similar to his own. The instantaneous zap to another location probably made him dangerous to warriors and mages alike.
Rauffeq wielded a two-handed blade instead of a staff and could handle himself pretty well. It raised his expectations for his students and he was right. The Masters were good and weren¡¯t new to combat so his Models couldn¡¯t keep up. His Models could only use a dialled-down version of Phantom¡¯s Flicker so that their legs didn¡¯t shatter into dust and these lightning mages all used the same movement skill. But they weren¡¯t powerful enough for him to take any lessons from or improve himself in any way.
Half of them were mid-range specialists while the other half were long-range focused. Raika was the only all-rounder but still outdid the others in all scenarios. Good, but all the same. It made no difference as none could touch him. It made it hard to teach them how warriors counter till he forced himself to stay still and use a randomly conjured sword.
It was not impossible to ¡®cut¡¯ or disperse lightning by coating a weapon with mana, and then sending pulses through on impact with the spell. It was what Cap Dwarf called Dispel, a lot of warriors seemed to have some form of Dispelling skill. Although catching lightning was too difficult, all one had to do was predict where they were aiming for and prepare a pulse of their mana on a shield to split the spell up to remove a portion of the spell¡¯s strength.
Ebony used them as a practice for this technique since even he couldn¡¯t catch lightning once it was fired. It was rather interesting that the speed of lightning was rather different for the children and the adults. He used them to learn the timing to pulse mana as a defensive manoeuvre. It proved useful enough that he managed to persuade Ning Xin to learn it. She would be able to ''cut'' magical spells and elements if she learnt it.
Unlike him who predicts trajectory and senses a mage¡¯s gathering and conjuration of mana to prepare a pulse of mana ahead of time, she was using pure reflexes and reaction speed. She was getting amazing with the trick.
She used lightning mana as a defence. When a magic projectile reaches her, the contact point near her skin sparks with lightning. It was the element she could gather and cast the fastest with besides fire which wasn¡¯t the best for defence. Although lightning arguably wasn¡¯t good for that either. She was considering making it an actual skill.
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Adults were better, he didn¡¯t have to talk or explain after the initial lesson with their instructor as the demonstrator. Just show and repeat the beatings. He kept using the same move against a person until they figured out a counter. The presence of an actual teacher sped things up. There was no drama with the Grand Lightning Mage, he just probed Rauffeq to give his students advice in real-time.
Ultimately, these adults weren¡¯t as fun to train as children who seemed to have greater potential as their path was still wide open. Masters should be more than open to diversifying but these 8 lightning mages were too stiff. They took too many attempts to notice that he was pointing out an opening.
They complained too much about pain so he shut that noise off and doubled down so they didn¡¯t have time to complain.
¡°Mr. Ebony, can you pull your punches¡I don¡¯t think they c-¡±
¡°They don¡¯t have to come back. I¡¯ll be leaving for some time after next week, it¡¯s up to them whether or not to come while I¡¯m still here.¡± He was only here as a sort of repayment for the favour of being invited to an academic meet that just so happens to be today.
Rauffeq tried to speak up for his students, from the looks of their faces they did not appreciate the beatings as much as the children did.
¡®Other than being more inflexible and stiff in their growth, my aura affects them less. So Will is generally weak when it comes to how it influences the world around me compared to mana or even vitality. I¡¯ll check out its effects on Journeyman when I get the opportunity.¡¯ Ebony already knew Will did not require him to fully recover for it to ''leak''.
He had come to the conclusion that Will did not have a stable pool like with essence. It didn¡¯t have a consistent recovery rate. And finally, it¡¯s always ¡®leaking¡¯ regardless of how filled he was. Even if he was emptied after imbuing every morsel into his Model or Arsenal, Will was being exuded from him and his thoughts.
With his Fortifications, unclassed children were affected just by being near him. But these Masters barely noticed anything different from their usual state.
Targot had to persuade two of his friends from leaving while he had a bruised face and swollen cheeks. The women weren¡¯t spared but he took a look at them and noticed that he might have subconsciously avoided hitting their faces.
His classmates were gradually ramping up against a normal bully instead of a weakened one. Atticus brought two wooden swords to mimic Ning Xin. It was kinda cute. He had no coordination between both arms and was doing worse than unarmed or with a wand. But he stuck to it, so Ebony gave his bully a sword too.
Piercing Tempest Academy might be mage-focused but that didn¡¯t mean they didn¡¯t have any close-ranged users of lightning magic. It seemed like that was what Atticus aimed for.
Ebony asked how Atticus got his toy swords and it seemed like his father carved it out by hand. He got permission and helped Atticus sand it down to match his size and centre of balance. He seemed to like it more and wasn¡¯t as awkward with it so Ebony gave himself a pat on the back.
Faelk was now against an ice bully with slightly higher physical ability together with a tiny bit of Ebony¡¯s Ethereal Form Arts. Umar was running around a 100% bully with slightly higher technical skills programmed to make mistakes.
Bilal and Fabian kept trying to trip their frozen bullies with each other¡¯s frozen bullies and they actually succeeded once. Sadly, the goal hadn¡¯t been teamwork and trapping mechanics so he broke them apart. But he did add a section thanks to their insistence that incorporated what a group of them could do if they ever met those bullies again.
Ebony couldn¡¯t teach them much in terms of teamwork so he did the same thing and let them figure out while using the ice bullies to aim at timings when they were distracted or people who were standing around without doing anything. They hated that he didn¡¯t give them time to conduct their ¡®strategy meeting¡¯ but it was only obvious there was no chance he would give them that time.
It was much nicer to play with them even though he didn¡¯t like noise as laughter was present. The rowdier boys kept adding on ideas for their classmates while the softer-spoken girls would give reasonable ideas occasionally or harshly shut the stupid ideas from the boys down. While the Masters, and their instructors complained or yelped in pain.
None of the adults left but their performance had been lacklustre.
After the morning session with the Piercing Tempest Academy, he went back to get changed for his tea party.
¡°Do I smell?¡± He sniffed himself and asked the scent hound. He didn¡¯t break into a sweat but if he were to meet high-level people, there was no doubt some might have a great sense of smell and he didn¡¯t want to leave a bad impression.
She nodded, ¡°good.¡± Even though she should¡¯ve been able to smell him from a literal mile or ten away, she closed in and put her mask onto his sleeves to take deeper breaths.
¡°What should I wear?¡± His wardrobe has increased in variety thanks to his extended exposure to civilization and frequent outdoor activities. Wearing modern design would make him stand out so he had enough clothes for daily wear for the city.
¡°It¡¯s a boring tea party but a tea party all the same, something presentable.¡±
¡°I guess I¡¯ll have a Model carry Icicle and my robe around.¡± With his current regeneration, he¡¯d finally found out the limit of his robe to sit at 7 million MP equivalent to about 70 Blues. He was pretty sure it used to be more but the amount he could store changed after he evolved and his mana¡¯s properties changed.
That was possible despite not having a single mana ore within his robe and not something he could replicate with his current Inscripted Mana Moulding. He was more than familiar with the runic formula after running his mana through his robes so many times. It wouldn¡¯t have the same effect if he were to remake another robe with the same runes and materials.
He was made to change through 4 sets of clothing before she deemed him presentable.
¡®This was the first set I picked¡¡¯ Ebony straightened his white long-sleeved shirt, dark blue jacket and matching pants.
¡°Don¡¯t comb your hair, this is fine.¡± She messed his hair up after he ran his fingers through it to push his bangs aside.
¡°Why not?¡± He knew she always mentioned how he should comb his hair after moving at high speeds.
¡°This is fine.¡± She picked at his hair and made it a little messy but his hair was smooth so it didn¡¯t sit in place that easily.
Trusting a woman¡¯s fashion sense, he went as is. He had his incognito carrier holding his spatial bag with empty books and his writing tools flying over 2.5 km away from him. Ebony¡¯s range of mental reach has never increased at such speeds before. Yet, he was probably still disadvantaged in this regard even compared with the Masters that he was beating up in the morning.
It was a pity these mages never make full use of their range limit. They don¡¯t always have their perception skill or mana sense active. Most don¡¯t fully control their spells within their range, just letting the projectiles go at full power and making minimal trajectory changes mid-flight. It was a waste of mana when their spells missed and hit the ground, losing momentum and the mana used to propel the spell.
Range of mental reach was highly dependent on Wisdom stat and the amount of time and effort put in training to reach their limit. Never had Ebony truly reached the limit of his Wisdom stat. He would always evolve before he reached his Wisdom¡¯s range limit. And once he evolved, it seemed like the effect or maximum limit of each stat point in Wisdom was greatly increased.
Not even constant training of 28 hours a day was enough to catch up to a hundred-year-old mage. It wasn¡¯t something he could practise while fighting either so he didn¡¯t have that much daily practice.
Raika was about 150 years old. Her fellow instructors were around 2 centuries old. From what he knew, they were all second or later generations of lightning mages in their families. It meant they started basic mage training like mental range extension and mana pool expansion from a young age. Raika was supposedly the closest one to be ready for evolution in less than two decades.
All Imperial mages, be they part of the military, a freelancer or a dungeon clearer had one ability clearly leagues ahead of Ebony and that was mana efficiency. They were extremely frugal and able to make very good use of every single point of mana. It was beyond just dependency on Fortifications, their barest abilities could already do that better than he could.
The difference was vast, he might be spending anywhere from 3 times to 300 times more mana for the same effect depending on who he was comparing himself with. Mostly 3 to 5 times, and the odd outlier like Mark the runic fire spearman user every now and then. It was just hard to compare effects when he barely saw users of the same elements as him.
No matter how much mana he regenerated, he couldn¡¯t help but see the necessity of getting more mana efficient. Hence, he hadn¡¯t been getting complacent about his spells and skills. Just with an adjustment of focus from doing more with even more, to doing more with a little less.
Being a century, or two ahead of him was not something he could catch up to in his short years as a mage and he was not aware of any methods to speed up this extension of range.
It took longer than he expected to get to the Mystic Morsels Pavilion but he arrived fifteen minutes early and studied the menu.
¡®Nice tea party, the congregation of mages made the mana in the vicinity denser than the Ruins of Verdant Decay.¡¯ Ebony looked forward to the meeting, he already knew that some people including Madam Wilcox were on the premises of the extravagantly large cafe. With a couple dozen pavilions and a pairing pond beside each pavilion.
They each had their scenery and every pavilion was over 30km away from each other, making every gathering of customers relatively private. They could hold outdoor parties meant for hundreds to thousands of people without any issue. They had as much land area as one of the many farms in Tidal but with a vastly smaller working force.
The Mystic Morsels Pavillion held a different charm from the Aroma Alcove. Neither better or worse than the other, just a matter of preference and Ebony preferred the small, dingy and quaint Aroma Alcove.
Chapter 298: Magus Consortium
Ebony passed over the invitation slip to an employee when he figured that the menu probably wouldn¡¯t matter since the food for the party would¡¯ve long been decided. It was a bigger party than he assumed and expected.
¡®Uh oh, they are all probing my Model¡I hope I didn¡¯t embarrass myself.¡¯ Ebony sensed the waves of dozens of different mana signatures washing past his porter that should¡¯ve been hidden from sight. From the number of unique signatures, all but one person he sensed sitting together at the pavilion he was being led to had swiped their senses past his Model. And he only knew that after he was guided close enough to his destination, long after their mana already washed past him.
That one missing mana signature was from Madam Wilcox whose mana he was already familiar with. So every single invitee present could see through his lousy mana-hiding skills. The only 3 people who could do that in the Piercing Tempest Academy were Madam Wilcox, Laika and Rauffeq.
The surprising thing was seeing two more people at the table than he sensed.
¡®Did they send mana to probe me out and I couldn¡¯t even catch a whiff of their mana? Or did they not bother scanning me? Wait, there¡¯s already twenty-eight of them here. Am I late? Did I make a bad impression already?¡¯ Ebony nodded to the people at the table when he arrived while feeling more grateful for Madam Wilcox. It was hard to find such people and she could gather so many of them so easily.
¡°Hello Ebony, you¡¯re early.¡±
¡°I was beginning to think I was late.¡±
¡°Haha, these old friends of mine are just too early to catch up with each other. Come, let me introduce you while we wait for the others.¡±
¡®There¡¯s more¡¡¯
Ebony listened to Madam Wilcox¡¯s introduction, ¡°Everyone, this is Ebony who I talked about. An ice mage. Ebony this is¡¡±
He took note of everyone¡¯s names and their introduction which is generally followed up by their Order, and elements. Some were introduced with just one element while others two, with some being introduced as a person from some department of the Mage Association.
There was nothing special as every single one of them were Third-Order mages. There was another ice mage at the table. There were even four arcane mages, two of which used vibrations and sound. The ice mage was another old lady who was the most excited about his presence. She was the one that Ebony was least interested in talking to but it wouldn¡¯t be so bad to learn something from a human ice mage.
There were 2 Elves at the table. The two people he didn¡¯t sense.
Thanks to the lengthy introductions some people had, the rest of the participants arrived during the introduction phase and didn¡¯t have to do any reintroductions. There were a total of 37 people including him present.
The pavilion had a large round table placed in the centre that had just the right number of seats prepared but they weren''t seated there. There was no food on the largest table. They were seated at a smaller side table with snacks and drinks present but it was still more than capable of seating all of them in a circle.
Ebony didn¡¯t know if it was some form of entry test to check if he was suitable or qualified for the high-level gathering but they were all ramping up how much mana they were releasing so he did what the brain-dead thing to do. Monkey see, monkey do.
He was well aware of what he could do now, so he made sure to match each individual and returned the same amount to each of them separately.
A few of them gave up early, perhaps trying to be nice when they breathed out heavily and took a sip of their drink.
¡®This feels odd, they obviously know each other but they¡¯re all so patient with the introductions. What a nice group of academics! Unfortunately, none of them are introduced as fourth order¡¡¯
About 15 of them were persistent and didn¡¯t stop ramping up their efforts throughout the hour-long introductions. The rest seemed a little despondent after they stopped testing him and Ebony didn¡¯t understand why. Not even Madam Wilcox spared him from the test and was one of the 15 that continued to pressure him.
¡®I guess this shouldn¡¯t be some simple test, they are testing each other too. A type of mage sport perhaps.¡¯
After the introductions, Madam Wilcox was brought back to the topic they were discussing before Ebony arrived by one of the two arcane mages. He was a pure support mage and arcane mages basically had the biggest say at the table when it came to pure mana manipulation techniques.
They were talking about tier 2 range mana compression techniques. More specifically, the issues Journeymen faced when trying to evolve tier 1 mana compression to tier 2.
According to the snippets of context he got, it seemed like many teachers or instructors had faced similar issues with their Journeymen students. They seem to determine that without a minimum of 600 combined stat points in Intelligence and Wisdom, it was impossible to get a tier 2 mana compression.
¡®Since when¡¡¯ Ebony was not as well studied when it came to the relation between tiers of skill with stat points required. However, the more he listened the more confused he got as the numbers didn¡¯t match his knowledge. He took a mental step back because they were all aware that there were a lot of factors at play when it came to acquiring skills.
Throughout the conversation where he simply listened silently along with over twenty people who had nothing to say on the subject, the 15 people who persistently ramped up their release of mana continued the mana warfare. Ebony obviously continued since he wanted to continue listening to the party. He didn¡¯t want to embarrass himself any further and get himself kicked out of the party after every one of them sensed his pathetic spell, the Glacial Model which was supposed to be hidden with Frigid Distorted Refraction.
The topic didn¡¯t drag out and had no definitive conclusion after 15 minutes but the general consensus was that 600 combined Intelligence and Wisdom was required for their students before expecting them to have tier 2 mana compression. During this, 2 of the 15 testers passed him. Since he hadn¡¯t passed everyone¡¯s test, he thought it wasn¡¯t his place to say anything about their current topic and just stayed silent.
Ebony would¡¯ve kept it that way until he passed everyone¡¯s unspoken test but he was called out by the only other ice mage at the table. One of his remaining 13 testers.
Thinking it was another test, he listened to her carefully.
¡°I heard from Wilcox that you are capable of independently controlling twenty humanoid ice figurines. Though she¡¯s exaggerating there must be some truth to the matter, is it possible to demonstrate the reason for her embellishment?¡±
Since the examiner has spoken, he had to clear his and Madam Wilcox¡¯s name. He took her question as permission to cast spells. It would otherwise be rude and even seen as a hostile provocation to conjure or strengthen his influence of mana in another mage¡¯s range. And he was currently clashing with 13 of them.
It was a hassle to conjure twenty Models that had the same detail down to his eyelashes while keeping individual track of each of his testers'' rise in mana release. But he would not choose to cast a dulled-down version if he had a choice and if it wasn¡¯t an experiment. He used a similar technique of barrage spells and recreated multiple models in one ¡®print¡¯ despite his maximum number of separate, perfect controls being 9 at the moment.
He succeeded and completed his conjuration and Will imbuement in 3.2 seconds, having made too many Models it hadn¡¯t been as hard as he expected but his cast speed wasn¡¯t ideal. He shouldn¡¯t have spent the time to decompress his mana.
It was convenient that he had Will because his pet tree, Dusk no longer grew regardless of the amount of Will being imbued. It was just being fed how much it losses daily and the rest was left for Ebony to continue storing up. He split them up to the bare minimum he required for all of them to do a different physical move set and kept his remainder in case there were further tests.
Seeing their surprise, he was glad he met expectations. His Models began to fight each other the moment they leapt out of the pavilion. The clashing of ice against ice wasn¡¯t silenced by the sound mages and his Models were allowed to run free till one of the three employees standing by coughed. Their property¡¯s green grass was getting ruined.
¡°May I?¡± The only Dwarf present, an earth mage, stood up with a raised hand. He had been one of the first few that passed Ebony.
A few others stood up to ask for permission and before he knew it, his Models were pelted with fire, earth, stone, water and soundwaves.
Each of his Models reacted differently depending on what attacks they were faced with. The ones facing fire and soundwaves simply stood there as they didn¡¯t perceive any threat. The jets of water that were blasted were jetted down with a stream of ice mana. The earth and stone spells were either dodged or kicked away. Opening up a pitfall under them was the easiest to sense and also the easiest to avoid.
¡®Oh, they didn¡¯t believe the models are capable of independent moves.¡¯ Ebony realised that they doubted each of his Models was individually controlled. He was certain none of them believed that he wasn¡¯t even giving commands.
The Models were truly moving by themselves so he could somewhat understand their shock if they thought he was multicasting twenty mental holds perfectly because even he would be surprised if he saw someone capable of that. The best multicasting he¡¯d seen from a human is quadra casts and even then, it pushed the mage significantly to perfectly control 4 casts to the best of their abilities.
The best he¡¯d personally seen was probably from Christy or Korta who could both perfectly control 6 spells without strain and possibly control a seventh with difficulty.
Ning Xin could use all her enhancements, and two additional casts on top of that. Beyond that would trouble her but she usually never went so far or depended on spells that much. Without any body enhancement which takes the least amount of mental focus, she could quadra cast almost perfectly.
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Ebony himself could only do 9 perfectly. Nothing else mattered to him as he wouldn¡¯t force another cast that would potentially affect all his other cast¡¯s performance unless it was his training to get another separate control.
During this test, another tester passed him but it wasn¡¯t the ice mage who asked him to prove himself. The ice mage couldn¡¯t close her mouth fully when one of the Elves pushed the party¡¯s conversation forward with another academic posing their topic for the day.
The little test seemed to be pushed under the rug with the employees looking troubled by the damaged property. No one said a thing and listened to the Elf who called out the next person. They had a format for these meetings that he was not aware of.
A stone mage who is part of the Imperial¡¯s Masonry shared about a problem he faced with the advancement of Tidal¡¯s wall defences. Barely anyone showed any interest in the topic. Not when the barriers were far more effective for complete coverage. Physical walls were just the initial line of defences when the barrier wasn¡¯t activated and also the last if the barrier was broken.
There were a few people who were enchantment specialists but they never spoke up about enchantments as it was not something everyone at the table could relate to or add on to. No one was introduced as rune enthusiasts so he might have to learn more about them to find out if there were any. Enchantments were just more popular for their obvious advantage in strength or power.
While the conversations were going on, the employees were going around getting name and number plates ready and setting up the table in the centre.
Multiple topics of conversation were being brought up around the table and a few different groups were formed at the side table with drinks from alcoholic tea to herbal wine. Ebony already noticed the pattern, the people who broke off were those who passed him. Seeing that, he imagined he was supposed to stay seated and continue undergoing the casual test.
It wasn¡¯t that hard to listen in on all groups at once and he was particularly interested in the chat between mind mages about the differences between races¡¯ mental defences across age and level groups.
He didn¡¯t know if they were trying to tell him something or if they were thinking he couldn¡¯t hear them over the cacophony but they apparently probed his mind earlier, with hostile intent. Ebony didn¡¯t know that, it was concerning that he didn¡¯t manage to sense any hostility even after the fact so perhaps they were telling him to get his act together. He mentally thanked their reminder, a little surprised they passed him despite his failure to notice their efforts.
Before long, he passed more and more of these people¡¯s little tests. Madam Wilcox had been the ninth last to pass him. The questions about properties of mana and how a mage¡¯s elements affected their pure mana after long-term use were directed for everyone to add on so he had to chip in from time to time. He might not have done very well with his explanations as their reactions weren¡¯t fully approving of what he had to say.
Even so, they didn¡¯t shoot down anything he had to say and he was down to 5 remaining testers. Two Elves, a human lightning mage, a foxman bone mage who had five tails behind him and the quietest of the bunch, a human male who wasn¡¯t introduced with any element.
If what he knew about fox beastmen was correct, the bone mage was King-ranked but his mana felt the second weakest amongst the remaining testers.
The human lightning mage had the weakest mana amongst the remaining testers but its natural effect of stunning other people¡¯s mana was the most troublesome and useful in combat. The bone mage on the other hand had no noticeable special effects from his mana.
Of the two Elves, one was introduced as a Third-Order Wind and Wood Mage and a herbalist. The other was introduced as a Third Order Wood, Wind and Nature Mage Archer. Elves very rarely differed from each other when it came to their elements. If anything, there would be an addition like Koawe who used Curses and the Death Tailor with an affinity to the Death element. They would almost always be able to use all the other elements their kin could.
The other human at the table who was simply introduced as Third-Order Arch Mage had the most¡blank mana. Ebony didn¡¯t know how the man did it, but he removed what made mana feel like mana. It was almost like another type of essence altogether but that was just his imagination.
The Elves were both Grand Mages while the other three were all Arch Mages.
Ebony didn¡¯t want to embarrass himself and needed to pass these senior mages¡¯ tests. It was an interesting tea party and they even had a group name, Magus Consortium. He already thought he benefited from the gathering as he had new ideas for improving his sound magic. It might not be a bad idea to be part of their little gatherings when there were 3 Arch or King-ranked mages and so many different types of mages present.
¡°Gentlemen, let¡¯s not waste any more of each other¡¯s time. We know where we stand. Our new addition Ebony has already proven his qualifications for a seat, let¡¯s get this over with.¡± The Elven mage archer who had a name longer than one¡¯s breath changed the subject from fine mana control practice.
¡°Agreed.¡± His fellow kinsmen followed up. These two never even spared anyone else at the table a look and they only just spared him a glance. They were not the politest bunch and outright scoffed at some people¡¯s replies or suggestions.
The quiet Arch Mage just nodded in agreement.
But the remaining pair of human and foxman agreed nervously. They stared down at each other and then at Ebony.
¡®I knew it, this is not just a normal test for me. They¡¯re challenging each other too. Some form of hierarchy in the group¡the large table has seat numbers splayed out. Is the prize for being higher ranked some rare dish or tea? Being top 5 must mean something if they are somewhat hostile to each other, and I¡¯m in the way. Well, the two of them have the weakest mana of the group and they don¡¯t seem to be holding back much left.¡¯
The five of them were watching him, he understood they didn¡¯t want to spend more time ramping up their output when they could finish the exchange in seconds. There was no reason for him to decline when it came to making efficient use of their time so he nodded in agreement.
The silent Arch Mage pulled out a metal coin from his robe¡¯s inner pocket, attracting all of their attention to it.
¡®A coin?¡¯ Ebony blinked, they didn¡¯t even use coins or shiny metals as currency. At least, the last time coins were a currency was before the Myriad Bracelets came about. The motif was a lion head on one side and a wolf head on the other. No matter how he saw it, it didn¡¯t seem like a coin the Empire used at any point in time as their motif was a wave or tides.
He flicked the coin into the air and the tea party turned silent as they watched the coin flip and rotate.
¡®I guess we begin when it hits the table. How much should I use¡I¡¯ll sense their output and match it accordingly.¡¯ Ebony decided to continue the same thing. Against these mages, he might appear slow since he was reacting rather than attacking but that would do. He didn¡¯t know the average here and they didn¡¯t seem to have much to show since he was still outputting so little that he almost forgot he was taking this test.
There were likely a few people around the party that had Fortifications for mana regeneration but they didn¡¯t seem to meditate on the move.
¡®They must be thinking about why I have the smallest mana pool.¡¯ Ebony found out that they had a tea that aids digestion. He remembered the scent and shape of the tea leaves so to buy some for himself.
The lightning mage and the bone mage clenched their teeth when the coin hit the table. It was a 1 against 5 for all of them. Like a tug of war but with a pushing motion instead of pulling, they had to decide who to put more of their output against in the ebbing of mana.
To sense all of their outputs to react to, Ebony diluted his mana and flooded the whole pavilion with his mana and like a hydraulic press, he adjusted the amount he was pushing down according to how much each of them was releasing. Three other mana tried to do something similar but he was a step ahead and they weren¡¯t able to push his mana away.
Just like in a mana-dense location, his mana increased the difficulty for them to draw mana out of their bodies.
¡®Are there rules to this sport?¡¯ Ebony watched as 3 of them gave up fighting with each other and just defended passively. The two Elves joined up and tried to push back to overtake his spatial control with his mana but every single bit of power they increased was met with slightly higher resistance.
If the lightning mage was outputting 100 units, he was putting a pressure of 101 on him. The bone mage was outputting 108 while the silent Arch Mage simply built a mana barrier that protected him from the pressure that he was reinforcing with mana from his pool. Ebony slowly increased the amount on the cool barrier to see how much it could withstand.
The two Elves noticed that their natural output was insufficient and boldly dipped into their reserve for a counter push. Ebony gave them about half a centimetre of push before he did the same with them as the two other Arch Mages.
With just a slight increment when compared to them, they felt like they had a chance and continued to dip into their pools. Ebony tipped his cup to them and drank out of his cup. Only the Arch Mage that built a barrier returned the gesture and they enjoyed tea together.
He didn¡¯t understand the frowns on the other¡¯s faces. At the rate they were dipping into their mana reserves, this could take all week thanks to their extravagantly large reserves. Ebony saw that they weren¡¯t giving up and remembered the whole point was to save time so he ramped it up, just making sure he didn¡¯t hurt them.
The bone mage and lightning mage glared at each other, neither backed down as they tried to copy the coin flipper and build an arcane shield for their mind.
Since they were so resilient and the coin flipper could handle the pressure with ease, he believed that his natural regeneration should deal no harm to them and relaxed his control over suppressing and redirecting his mana to the ground.
The lightning mage had zapped out of the pavilion in an instant while panting. His movement was so fast that Ebony didn¡¯t think he could have stopped or caught up to the man even if he was in his fully augmented state.
The bone mage face-planted onto the table but woke up right after impact with a stupefied expression of shock and an exoskeletal skull summoned reflexively.
¡®Should I start compressing regenerated or use the compressed mana in my chassis?¡¯ Ebony chose the second option since time was of the essence.
The Elves buckled first but their reaction was more hostile than Arch Mages who simply backed down. The last remaining Arch Mage didn¡¯t mind the liquid mana and his shield kept up without a single crack.
¡°Shall we stop here?¡± The coin flipper asked.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony was already surrounding the barrier with maximum compressed mana. The coin flipper also started dipping into his reserves but they were at a standstill. He had no idea if the coin flipper chose to stay on the defence because he was lazy or because he wasn¡¯t good at using it for offence.
¡®Cool, he can also regenerate mana while casting¡¡¯ Ebony finally met a person who could do what he could. He already noticed that it was only a small portion of the coin flipper¡¯s natural regeneration but it was still a first to see someone who could regenerate while actively using mana.
¡°How about sharing the first and second¡¯s share between the two of us?¡±
¡°Share of what?¡±
¡°Ah, right¡you.¡± The coin flipper pointed to the dizzy bone mage, ¡°Explain.¡±
The foxman shivered his legs locked up under the table. ¡°We, of the Magus Consortium jointly clears the dungeon Spectral Veil Stronghold annually. This party is held biannually to enjoy the fruits of our successful clear. We need new blood and newcomers are given the chance to partake even though they did not participate in the previous session as a newcomer benefit. How much we get depends on¡well, you know.¡±
¡®Spectral Veil Stronghold, that¡¯s one of the two Epic dungeons in Tidal and requires special permission to enter. It¡¯s a one-floor dungeon with special mechanics.¡¯ Ebony recognised the name. It was a rather interesting dungeon that didn¡¯t just restrict exit but also access inside.
Since that was the case, the Empire taxed the parties that successfully cleared it. But not just any freelancers were allowed. It only took in groups with more than 30 people and the Empire''s permission to enter and join the raid wasn¡¯t easy to get.
The Magus Consortium used to have more members, closer to 200 people but they¡¯ve been losing members during dungeon clears and haven¡¯t been filling their numbers back up as they raised the bar. Most members weren¡¯t present today. Ebony was the first applicant or invitee in three years.
¡°So I get access to the Spectral Veil Stronghold if I join?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t hear of this spectacular benefit from Madam Wilcox. Epic dungeons were heavily controlled. He might be able to sneak into ones that other Cities guard but not the two in Tidal.
Chapter 299: Spectral Life Gel
By accepting the newcomer benefit, Ebony would be signing himself up as a member of the Magus Consortium. Every member is supposed to join at least once every five years. The members present today were the ones that entered the dungeon earlier this year hence their presence at the party to receive their due payment.
¡°Sure.¡± He didn¡¯t hesitate to join. He was already trying to find ways to enter Epic dungeons, it was great that they didn¡¯t have to ask the Royals or go about it illegally.
The only obligations were to join the dungeon runs and to share the rewards with all members. The tea party was optional. The ¡®test¡¯ that he underwent was an internal hierarchy ranking and not some sport like he assumed. Even if he didn¡¯t join the dungeon run yearly, he would still get a small portion of the rewards. What was not to like?
The death rates were about 2 to 5 people every year. Hence, the decreasing member count as there were no new members for 3 straight years.
The Arch Mage Damien who proposed to average the top 2 portions between the two of them was the leader of the group but there were no positions like that. It was just a gathering and the positions were only determined by strength. It was just convenient that a mage¡¯s strength was heavily tied to their mana and usage of mana. They didn¡¯t have to listen to anyone¡¯s orders but they couldn¡¯t leave the group without doing another dungeon run to recontribute back. A very lax group that was for every individual''s benefit.
There were supposedly a total of 5 Arch Mages in the group. Two of them weren¡¯t present but the rankings would barely change. As Damien would still sit at the top and the two Grandmaster Elves would be right behind him. The two Elves did not look interested in the party and neither did they listen or join any conversations. They seem to only acknowledge Damien, and now Ebony¡¯s presence.
Ebony understood the reason but he didn¡¯t understand their reaction or attitude. They probably didn¡¯t think much of these ¡®Arch¡¯ Mages. ¡®Don¡¯t they know that being weak doesn¡¯t mean they don¡¯t have academic value?¡¯
The moment the ranking was over, they moved over to the centre table. The members were grim as the topic of conversation was about preparing for the next dungeon entry three months later. Ebony didn¡¯t know much about the Epic ranked dungeon so he just listened silently.
¡®This sounds above my paygrade¡ they are all above level 400 aren¡¯t they?¡¯ Although Ebony can see a Grandmaster walking down the streets on any day at any given time, they were mostly low 300s. The ones that specialise in getting through the Ruins of Verdant Decay were in the mid to late 300s and there were plenty of Masters that took part as rear firepower too.
Like the dungeon name, Spectral Veil Stronghold, they were supposed to take over a stronghold held by the dungeon creatures that were mostly immune to physical attacks. All the close-range combatants that took up entry needed to be just as good at mana coating or using mana in general. The ¡®tanks¡¯ of the dungeon run took up the largest share of the treasury within the stronghold. All the mages had second priority and say over what they received.
The Magus Consortium swallowed up 20% of the entire clear¡¯s rewards.
Spectral Veil Stronghold opens once every 3 to 8 weeks, not by the Empire¡¯s choice but by the dungeon which spits people out the moment they try to enter when it isn¡¯t ready. There was also a queue to enter but the duration of its closure directly relates to the strength and rewards of each dungeon entry. Instead of a time-based schedule, large groups simply go after one another.
It was rather common for the Magus Consortium to receive invitations to join an additional entry from some other groups that had people who ditched or weren¡¯t able to join. The members would be individually informed and they were free to join should they wish to at their own risk. When the Magus Consortium enters officially, members tend to look out for each other.
Individual entries required members to negotiate for their share themselves and the Magus Consortium had no say or relation in regards to their individual business.
Unlike all the other dungeons around the Capital, the Spectral Veil Stronghold didn¡¯t have millions rushing to clear or enter it. They lacked people to clear and if the Empire received a report about a high death count, the Nobles would be informed and were obligated to clear it before the dungeon strengthened itself beyond what they expected.
If there was a problem with groups disbanding or just passing on their turn to enter and no one else would enter, it usually wouldn¡¯t take too long before some Noble family was tasked to clear the dungeon. Just because people didn¡¯t enter the dungeon didn¡¯t mean it had no method of growing or feeding.
Dungeons were sealed by the Worldcore after they parasite and absorbed the World¡¯s essence. As they grow stronger, the seal¡¯s effect would weaken and the dungeon would grow naturally regardless. Dungeons could die off naturally, but not in the area of the densest population and essence on the entire continent.
Actually, there were already multiple Nobles who introduced themselves as such in the Magus Consortium but were all descendants of Viscounts or Earls.
¡®My spell power¡¯s going to be exposed to be too weak if I enter with them now.¡¯ Ebony knew that just because his mana was overwhelmingly dense and strong compared to theirs, it didn¡¯t mean his spells were stronger. He was just a rich kid tossing more money at the problem. They had the Intelligence stat, the mental power required to power their spells. Something that Ebony was sorely lacking when compared to the traditional Imperial who preferred Intelligence over Wisdom by far.
It didn¡¯t take away the advantages of his elements that were hard to quantify. Projectile speed or impact power didn¡¯t matter much as long as he could land his flames and any spell in general.
¡°Jelly?¡± Ebony looked at the chest that was placed in front of them.
There were a bunch of shiny rocks, dull rocks, metal ores and ingots, a food item that looked like jelly, a few vials of potions and plenty of scrolls. At the corner of the chest was a small chest, he didn¡¯t need to open it up to sense through the keyhole that it was filled with mana ores. Purples.
After the grim discussion that Ebony sat through, it was time for the rewards but he honestly felt bad that he was accepting something he didn¡¯t work for. He fully intended to let them split what they gave out to him. Except for the Purples, he was truly lacking Purples.
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¡®Dungeons create mana ores? Did it spawn near a mana ore deposit?¡¯ Ebony seemed to forget that people simply sold some items that had no use or were hard to split and shared the monetary equivalent.
¡°You can have this, split the rest too.¡± Ebony who sat at seat number two, after he insisted Damien had seat number one pushed the chest across the large table.
¡°Ebony,¡± Damien''s single word stopped everyone from speaking out or even reacting to Ebony¡¯s action.
¡°That¡¯s the main reward of the dungeon. Epic quality Spectral Life Gel.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t eat or absorb dungeon essence.¡±
¡°It can refine your physique into this, ¡± Damien pulls his oversized sleeves back to show a forearm with a curved, swallow scar. His arm turned transparent after a gentle stream of mana flowed through it and his gloves slipped out of his hand. Rather than slip out, it just fell onto the table.
Damien gently placed his hands on the table but it went through the table instead. He turned his arm back to normal and put his gloves back on.
¡°Cool,¡± Ebony replied without a change in expression as usual.
¡°Yes, you¡¯ll be able to turn a part of your body into a spirit body for a short time making yourself immune to fully physical attacks. Your mana would be able to substitute life force temporarily while you¡¯re on death''s door and you can delay death for as long as your mana lasts.¡± Damien didn¡¯t have to add that by further refining their physique, it would be possible to increase this ability to a full-body one, increase the duration of the effect or make the ability more efficient.
¡°My words still stand, thank you.¡± Ebony rejected without batting his eyes. He could see the allure of being immune to physical attacks even for just a moment, especially for these mages. However, it didn¡¯t mean much for him.
Ebony was rather surprised at Damien¡¯s willingness to share such information. The man must have plenty of confidence in himself.
''I don''t know my schedule, I better not accept this in case I can''t join. This way I''m not obligated to do anything. As for the purples, I can pay them back easily.''
These people should know that dungeon essence could turn them into fiends or demons if they absorbed too much, possibly losing their Profession or even Sub-Class. Although natural ambient essence could do the same, plenty of plants, animals and monsters could remove the harmful side effects and even purify it for themselves. Ning Xin did the same when she overconsumed weird spiders.
Dungeons don¡¯t have such user-friendly options, they were a parasitic creature from the get-go.
Who''s to say that materials brought out were no longer connected to the dungeon in some fashion? It might just be a hypothesis or guess on the Xeng¡¯s part but wouldn¡¯t it be possible for the dungeon to turn these people into its thralls or something if they consumed enough of their essence? It was possible that the Xengs already knew what happened to people who consumed too much without ¡®cleaning¡¯ the essence but Ning Xin and Kong Jing weren¡¯t well informed.
¡°Hm, then I¡¯ll take it off your hands.¡± Damien ripped the chest towards him with his mana.
There were no complaints. After the talk about what preparations each member was in charge of, the party was generally over. People only remained to continue any previous discussions that were bearing fruit.
Madam Wilcox dragged the Lightning Arch Mage, Ragnar over to him.
¡°Ebony, this is Piercing Tempest Academy¡¯s previous headmaster. Headmistress Laika¡¯s grandfather and an old friend of mine.¡±
Ebony nodded and exchanged tets, a personal greeting. He accidentally raised the hands of a junior as a reflexive action since they were all his seniors in age and respecting the old was only natural for him. Ragnar visibly took it as an offence but didn¡¯t say anything and waited for Ebony to change hands. He hoped the man wouldn¡¯t bear a grudge over something so small.
¡°I hear you¡¯re a student of my academy.¡± Ragnar started the conversation after the awkward greeting.
¡°Mmm.¡±
¡°...What do you want?¡± His hair sparked with lightning despite his mana staying still. The ambient lightning mana simply reacted to a Lightning Arch Mage¡¯s tense feelings.
¡°I¡¯m simply expanding my knowledge base.¡± Ebony knew that saying he had no ulterior motives was going to sound suspicious.
¡°I truly hope that¡¯s all. It was nice meeting you.¡± Ragnar glared into his eyes and swallowed nothing. After uttering those words, he zapped out of sight.
¡°Haha, forgive him. He¡¯s a prideful one but he¡¯s just worried about his academy and family.¡±
¡°Understandable. Thank you for inviting me here today Madam Wilcox. I was surprised to find out that you were inviting me to this group and it wasn¡¯t some academic meet.¡±
¡°haha¡I didn¡¯t mean to offend or put you in a tough spot but the Magus Consortium doesn¡¯t care whether you¡¯re in another affiliation or not hence my invitation.¡±
¡°I see. It was a valuable tea party. Please invite me again. Other than that, I didn¡¯t think you were active on the field.¡±
¡°Heheh, only the bare minimum. I only join once every five years so I¡¯ve been getting rusty. I envy Ragnar but at level 468, I¡¯ve all but lost the hopes of becoming an Arch Mage before I die of old age.¡± Madam Wilcox giggled.
¡°Age doesn¡¯t matter, it¡¯s all about your will to continue growing or stay in place. As long as you¡¯re not dead, your chance is still there.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t like the defeatist mindset.
Madam Wilcox¡¯s eyelids drooped down, ¡°maybe you¡¯re right.¡±
¡°It¡¯s getting late, I¡¯ll walk you back.¡± Ebony noticed that streetlights were present outside the property of the Mystic Morsels Pavilion.
¡°You¡¯re getting so much to go?¡±
¡°Xin likes to eat. I want to see if she likes these.¡± Ebony passed the bags of desert and club sandwiches to the Glacial Model that phased into sight like a bunch of mirrors rotating to reflect light.
¡°...you didn¡¯t lie about being young.¡± Wilcox¡¯s eyes lit up in surprise as if she had discovered something new.
¡°Mmm. Let¡¯s get you home, I don¡¯t want to be late for dinner.¡±
¡°Haha, this old lady is alright. Not many can harm me in the neighbourhood.¡±
¡°I suppose so, but that¡¯s not a reason to let a lady walk the streets alone at night.¡±
The lady¡¯s smile widened, ¡°then let¡¯s get going, maybe I can make a pie for my grandson before he sleeps.¡±
Ebony chased after the zapping lightning with surprisingly light footsteps as she zapped from rooftop to rooftop. She didn¡¯t even leave a burn mark on the rooftop tiles. She had far finer control and gentler footwork compared to the footwork taught at Piercing Tempest Academy. The visual effects both of them had were extremely similar as they disappeared and reappeared across the Capital.
She lived fifteen minutes away from the Pavillion and was rather far when you considered their mode and speed of travel. Thankfully, it was very close to her workplace so he could get home within seconds.
Chapter 300: Anti-aging Ray
¡°Xin, I brought dessert. There¡¯s this tea that raises clarity for two hours and it¡¯s gentle on the stomach. And one that aids digestion that you might like.¡± Ebony patted Dusk before entering the house.
¡°Sorry to intrude.¡± Mallory waved to him from the dining table where he could almost always find the glutton.
Four ladies were fiddling with something on the dining table and it wasn¡¯t food. He noticed that the dining table had been substituted with a thick heavy table.
¡°Yo!¡± Athena raised her head from the contraption on the table and greeted him.
¡°Hey, Athena and Mallory. You¡¯re both free.¡±
¡°I¡¯m going down with ya, so don¡¯t leave me behind. You also didn¡¯t tell me you were comfy with the elling damn royals¡± Athena was speaking more casually than he remembered her to be.
¡°How dare the two of you hide that the problem is the Tetramyths!? Do you know how big this is!? I can¡¯t believe how lucky we are!¡± Kong Jing yelled at him without looking away from the mechanical sphere that was split open on the table.
¡°Hey, kiddo.¡±
Ebony turned to the sofa to find an old man eating the hot and spicy potato chips he saved for movie night. Hector was chomping on fried poultry beside the old man.
¡°You¡¯re here too, Commander Wil.¡± Ebony greeted the old man with a tet.
His old militia leader was in his living room like nobody¡¯s business. Stronger than ever with the aura he was exuding but no one bat an eye to the heavy vitality. Commander Wilson, the founder of the Bludgeon Academy didn¡¯t have a head full of white hair any more. Time seemed to have reversed for the old man who looked like a man in his fifties instead of eighties. The man was still short and scrawny though.
The physical change was an obvious indicator of an evolution or a huge physique refinement. It was likely the first, it just felt like it.
¡°Are we leaving soon?¡± Ebony saw the line-up and assumed it was time to get to pest removal.
¡°I¡¯m just here for a visit,¡± Mallory replied while holding tools up with her barriers.
¡°I was dragged here,¡± Hector responded and coincidentally watched the movie whose actors Ebony recently met.
¡°When these kids came to meet me, I caught the scent of your mana on them and here I am tagging along. Hahaha from some dingy old trolls to some kind of divine ants huh.¡± Commander Wil licked his fingers clean of the spice powered on his chips.
¡°Hey, my love was on a walk buying out restaurants¡¯ inventory when she smelled me in the vicinity and we ate together. I can¡¯t deny her when she invited me for dinner.¡± Athena ¡®shyly¡¯ put a hand on her cheek and wrapped her other around Ning Xin¡¯s arm. They were a lot closer than he recalled.
¡°So what are you working on?¡±
¡°I needed some extra hands or this old thing would land a curse on me.¡± Kong Jing replied.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, we volunteered.¡± Mallory addressed what Ebony was going to bring up.
¡°Why would you?¡± The reply only confused Ebony more. Why would they volunteer to mess around with a machine that had an unknown curse activation mechanism?
¡°It''s rude to pry into ladies'' business.¡± Athena returned to holding a cable that she was handed. They were all just holding a cable other than the craftswoman,
¡°You¡¯re in my house, using my dining space.¡± They weren¡¯t doing this sorcery in private, he assumed it wasn¡¯t a private matter.
¡°It¡¯s not nice to push a lady to tell you what they don¡¯t want to say.¡± Mallory quipped.
¡°What?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t bother Ebony, they¡¯re temporarily brainwashed. Can I try that plum wine you¡¯ve been talking about?¡± Hector probably knew what he was talking about and wasn¡¯t worried so it was probably a joke. Ebony was rather proud he noticed it was a joke and didn¡¯t ask why he wasn¡¯t doing anything about the brainwashing.
¡°I can crack one open but I can¡¯t guarantee the taste.¡± Ebony walked to the magic cabinet that was chilled and had its humidity controlled to get a jar of his plum wine. Most of them were being stored underground and some were in his trailer. He had some lying around at a lot of places.
¡°HAHA! I get to try new alcohol, today¡¯s a good day.¡± Commander already made himself at home with his legs on the sofa.
Ebony also served the desserts he got to his guests. He was already pondering on how he was going to clean up the furniture after they left.
¡°Yes! I¡¯m done.¡± Kong Jing exclaimed. ¡°Hold that end tightly, let me add some safety nets.¡±
He saw Mallory¡¯s elegant poise break for a second when Kong Jing started wielding her magic and moulding runes. It was an odd and unique mana manipulation technique where she made a mini compression of space to send her mana everywhere she wanted it to be. Her runic formulas could only be copied by another space mage with the same or greater level of control as the flow of mana literally required spatial crossing abilities.
No normal mind could comprehend her runes even if she gave them her formulas. Hence, it took her some effort to explain and dumb down her formulas for him to get started.
¡°Don¡¯t move your hands, I¡¯ll make a direct protection to send any lash back elsewhere if it fails.¡±
The movie ended and the memory lighter was playing the next memory light slotted in its holder.
¡°Alright, are you ready?¡± Kong Jing finished in less than a minute.
The women nodded, risking their safety for something.
Kong Jing flipped a mechanical switch that made the machine clonk and glows as it absorbed mana from the ore placed within.
Ebony closed his eyes when a flash of light blasted from the machine and bathed everyone in the house.
¡°Fu-wah! This plum wine is not too shabby for mundane alcohol! It¡¯s just a little light in flavour.¡± Commander Wilson acted as if he wasn¡¯t just flashbanged by a ray of white light.
¡®I couldn¡¯t even react to that.¡¯ Ebony lamented that he hadn¡¯t even been fast enough to cover his eyes, much less protect the woman who was shot at point blank.
¡°Did it work?¡± Athena muttered.
The women were all unphased and unharmed.
¡°I think so.¡± Ning Xin looked at the back of her hands and at the other people who held the cable as well.
¡°I¡¯ll run some body checks.¡± Mallory proposed and got to work.
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¡°You can let go now.¡± Kong Jing let go and kept the contraption with a snap of her fingers when they let go of the cable at the same time.
¡°What was supposed to happen?¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t spot any difference between both his sight and his mana perception.
¡°It¡¯s a physical anti-ageing beam so that we can retain our appearance longer. I¡¯ve heard of it but I never thought it was real.¡±
¡°Why in the world is an anti-ageing device made with curses?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t ask, this is a woman¡¯s world. There are some insidious people out there.¡± Mallory closed her eyes while she inspected herself internally.
¡°Then why do you need something like that?¡± Hector replied, he also didn¡¯t understand their thought process for taking the risk.
¡°Oh come on, have some tact. Beauty is akin to a woman¡¯s power. We won¡¯t stay young forever.¡± Athena rudely retorted to the Prince.
¡°There would be an uprising for this piece of equipment if it¡¯s made known that the Royals or some noble family have it,¡± Mallory added on with a little hyperbole.
¡°Sister Jing, how many of such items do you have?¡± First, an industrial mana compressor people would kill and conduct corporate espionage. Then a machine to create magical power sources and batteries for large-scale defensive towers that skipped the necessity of finding a natural mana ore big enough. Something supposedly more technologically advanced than whatever knowledge she possesses.
Now an ageing resistance device that women would cause an uprising for. Ebony did not fully support their reliance on a device. Natural development was great as it was and mature appearances like madam Wilcox was still more than beautiful enough but his definition of beauty was obviously different from everyone else''s.
¡°Not enough.¡±
¡°On this topic, have you made the lifespan measurement tool?¡± Now that he was getting further and further removed from the human race, he was curious about how much time he had.
¡°That was what I was attempting to do these few days and this was an experiment in that direction.¡±
¡°It-it didn¡¯t work. Nothing happened.¡± Mallory reported while hiding her downcast expectations.
While the women were disappointed to hear that, Ebony was happy to hear them fail. Natural was good.
They checked each other but the craftswoman wasn¡¯t even phased by the failure, as if she expected it. Because she burst into laughter and retreated to her forge.
¡®Oh, it''s a joke.¡¯
The woman who got played like a fiddle was rather furious except for Ning Xin who was looking at him.
¡®Did she sense my glee when they failed?¡¯ Ebony got back to eating chips and tasting his wine while noting down the men¡¯s opinions of his concoction in his notebook. This version is a little too sweet for all of their liking but the women who took a sip thought the sweetness was perfect.
A 5-litre jar didn¡¯t survive long against a group of superhuman bodies.
The scrumptious dinner went well with Athena getting acquainted with the Royals and all of them learning more about Commander Wilson who¡¯d like to be called Wil since he wasn¡¯t part of the Imperial Army.
After living in Tidal for some time, Ebony faced the reality that brewing recipes were a more closely guarded secret than common skills and even spells.
¡°Unc-Emperor Oplot will be returning in two days. He¡¯ll pass through the main street to the Palace. You can watch the parade if you¡¯d like.¡± The Crown Princess held herself together despite the rosy cheeks.
¡°Mmm.¡± Rather than the parade, he just wanted to sense what the strongest man on the planet was like. A King-ranked individual that was called the strongest when the Elves¡¯ Matriaches, an actual Emperor, were present.
With Wil walking the Royals back, their slight tipsiness shouldn¡¯t matter. Athena was as sober as the men and simply left before Ebony could walk her home.
Kong Jing who had skipped dinner, climbed out of the basement, ¡°hey, I succeeded. Want to test how old you can get? Don¡¯t blame me if it¡¯s wrong, I tested it on some monsters and it seems rather precise based on what I know of their lifespans.¡±
¡°Where and when did you get time to test your new product, less than a few hours old, monsters to test on,¡± Ebony stated.
¡°Right here.¡± Kong Jing tapped her mask.
¡°I see.¡± He had no response for learning something new about those masks. ¡°So how do I use it?¡±
¡°Just stab yourself with this needle, make sure it gets blood and bone.¡± Kong Jing handed him a large metallic and purple crystal syringe with a sharp needle.
¡°Then it¡¯ll read my genetic make-up and estimate my lifespan?¡±
¡°Probably whatever that means.¡±
¡°It won¡¯t break?¡±
¡°Who do you think made that?¡±
Ebony grabbed the syringe and stabbed his arm with it. The needle slid into his flesh with ease, completely bypassing his physical toughness. Then he felt the syringe suck up his blood and bone dust that the needle scraped.
¡°Pull it out.¡±
After it filled up, he just had to wait for the results.
¡°Ten thousand?¡± He read the digits that showed up on the panel attached to the syringe body.
¡°Uhm, let me check that real quick.¡± Kong Jing took her contraption away and said she would get back to him.
There must have been a mistake somewhere. As a Grandmaster, Humans had a lifespan from 500 to 600 years and Elves had anywhere from 1250 to 1500. Beastmen differed based on their subspecies but generally didn¡¯t exceed that of Humans by much while Dwarves had roughly 800 to 1000 years.
She disinfected the syringe with a white solution and stabbed herself with it. The wait had been a lot shorter and her lifespan seemed to be 422. An estimate of 80 years less than a Human.
Then she was...swallowed in a whirlpool and disappeared from her spot. After ten minutes while they cleared the table up, the space mage returned.
¡°It¡¯s working but your measurements are inaccurate.¡±
¡°Figured out the problem?¡±
¡°Yes, I didn''t make it to measure anything above ten thousand. Give me a day.¡±
¡°Are you sure? You have four hundred and I have more than ten thousand?¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t be surprised, you¡¯re partially mana. Mana takes far longer to deteriorate than flesh and blood.¡±
¡°Let me try.¡± Ning Xin was a little tipsy, it should be impossible with the mundane alcohol they drank that didn¡¯t have any special organisms that aged and consumed mana to increase its magical alcoholic content. ¡°Urgh, please help me. It feels like it¡¯ll hurt.¡±
Unlike Ebony, she did not have the tendency to hurt herself. She rolled her sleeves up and Kong Jing injected her forearm with it.
The wait was even shorter.
¡°288? Why?¡± Ebony had some level of trust that the contraption worked hence, he was a little shocked.
¡®Doesn¡¯t she have the physique of a phoenix or some copy of it? How can her lifespan be half that of a normal person?¡¯
The two ladies barely reacted to the number.
¡°Well, we are relatively short-lived. Believe it or not, this is higher than the generations before us.¡±
¡°My Core Skill, I had a feeling I was shortening my life when I overuse it.¡±
¡°I see.¡± Ebony came to terms with it immediately, his mind took logical leaps as usual.
¡°You¡¯re not worried anymore?¡±
¡°It just means we have to evolve more. Evolve faster. I bet there are plenty of natural treasures that increase lifespan. People die.¡± The numbers tricked him a little but it didn¡¯t feel real to him that they had lives longer than 80 to 100 years. It technically didn¡¯t make much of a difference as long as they kept evolving, kept refining their physiques.
Ebony took Icicle and wiped it down with water. The poor sword might not last long. It did get more durable after the constant breaking and repairing against Gao¡¯larg but he knew it wasn¡¯t keeping up.
¡°Get some sleep, I¡¯ll be with Dusk.¡± Ebony took his robe and Icicle and sat them inside Dusk.
¡°Why are you taking another jar of wine?¡±
¡°Hmm? To drink.¡±
¡°Alone?¡±
¡°As usual.¡±
¡°Maybe tea but no I don¡¯t like it if it¡¯s alcohol.¡±
¡°So.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll allow it if you let me drink with you.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
They moved a screen and memory light player over to the small capsule bomb shelter in Dusk. She brought over her tiger plushie that he won for her in the past. After filling the place up with cushions and making a small space for the snacks, they relaxed and snacked on freshly fried fries while playing a movie they¡¯d been saving.
¡®This feels stronger than ever.¡¯ Ebony felt like the plum wine was heavier than any alcohol he¡¯d had. The dark enclosed space made him feel every one of her breaths more clearly than usual.
Ning Xin probably fell asleep around the time their snacks ran out and he was beginning to feel drowsy, additional thanks to the movie about martial artists surpassing their masters. He managed to drift into sleep even though it wasn¡¯t his scheduled time to sleep.
Chapter 301: Traditional Mage
¡°Enn..¡± Ning Xin had a headache and quickly knocked away the mental speech that told her that her poison resistance levelled up.
¡®How much did I drink?¡¯ She fumbled around but her eyes were struggling to open in her drowsiness. They fluttered open but it was pitch dark and cold all around. Still feeling hungover, she felt like she was about to fall back asleep as her eyelids forced themselves shut.
Fumbling about towards the nearest heatsource, she grabbed what she thought were the swords that never strayed far from her to calm her down. At the same time, hugging her bolster felt warmer than usual but it was a lot stiffer than she remembered.
She grumbled in her sleep, ¡®is this scorchie or scorchy? I can¡¯t grip fully¡¡¯
???
¡®What¡¯s going on.¡¯ Ebony woke up to a groan.
None of his instinctual defence woke him up so he shouldn¡¯t be in any danger but he woke up being wrapped in a cool but soft embrace.
¡®Never mind, this is a dangerous position.¡¯ He got his bearing in an instant and reevaluated his situation.
This was not something he was trained for.
¡®I can¡¯t wake her up, she¡¯s going to start avoiding me for some time again.¡¯ He tried to finesse himself out but she only gripped onto him tighter whenever he shifted.
Using every skill in his repertoire, he managed to cool his blood down and slip through the embrace. Thankfully her swords were nearby for him to substitute. Ebony wiped the sweat off his forehead.
¡®Drunk bad. Sober good. No drinking for Xin.¡¯ With a new lesson learned he covered her with his robe since the cloth had slipped off in her messy sleep and exited Dusk. He didn¡¯t get drunk but it felt like this was the closest he ever got to the sensation of being drunk.
The first thing that caught his attention was music. He looked at the piano just around the door. Roots were playing the piano.
¡°Why are you playing a piano cover for all of me?¡± He slapped the piano cover shut and shooed the roots back to the ground. He didn¡¯t even know the sheet music for it, Dusk must have played it by vibrational recognition from his memories.
¡°You¡¯re up late, no breakfast.¡± Kong Jing was in his garden planting metal stakes in his soil.
Ebony looked up and found out it was time for their usual morning training. His automated children sparring partners were gone so they must be out training his classmates. ¡°I¡¯ll sue your sister for sexual harassment another day,¡±
He straightened his clothes and Flickered to the Quest Hall.
¡°My apologies for being late.¡± The Masters whom he had been tutoring recently were already in the middle of training with Rauffeq. Surprisingly, they were in the middle of watching Rauffeq getting grounded by a storm of lightning.
¡°Good morning Ebony.¡± Madam Wilcox flashed her gentle smile while she slammed the butt of her staff down to disperse the continuous storm of lightning that torched even the training grounds'' flooring.
¡°Warming up.¡± He wanted to put his social voice on in front of his seniors but his question mark wasn¡¯t voiced out yet again.
¡°Just giving them some tips. This generation''s spellcast is getting shoddier as their reliance on good weapons that aid in mana manipulation spoils them. Would you like a duel with me? I¡¯d like to show them how a mage should fight.¡±
¡°Couldn¡¯t ask for more.¡± Ebony had wanted a spar with Madam Wilcox from the day he met her.
Although artillery mages did have power, few or perhaps none that he¡¯d seen at Fifth Tide could likely hold a battle or even protect themselves when an opponent came close. It was like they lived their whole lives only increasing how destructive their spells could get.
Ebony trusted the freelancers who didn¡¯t train or learn traditionally from a school and worked in the field to perform better in a duel.
¡°Forgive me for getting a headstart.¡± Madam Wilcox bowed as he entered the ring and the barriers were put back up to separate them and the Masters.
Light flashed from under his feet the moment the barriers were back on.
His Augmentation barely came on in time while Stalwart Foundation was only halfway through its cast before he Flickered away from the pillar of lightning that spawned from the ground.
¡®She already laid traps. And her cast speed is too fast.¡¯ When Ebony¡¯s feet landed the next lightning strike was summoned and activated even faster than the first but it wasn¡¯t from the ground and just a spot in the air that landed right at his ribs.
¡®Why so much physical impact from a lightning strike? Fortification that boosts the physical impact of lightning?¡¯ He couldn¡¯t conjure any shields in time and the sheer impact blasted him to the walls of the kilometre-squared training ground.
After the second strike, his mental cast finally caught up. Fractions of a second already made him a direct lightning strike that could have struck through his heart if the caster wanted.
¡®Okay, no touching the ground. I can feel fluctuations of mana in the air, I¡¯ll avoid those. She¡¯s not moving, I¡¯ll assume she has a weak body so I can¡¯t punch her in my augmented state or she¡¯ll die.¡¯ In the instant of his decision-making, the duelling ground crackled and a storm of lightning was summoned.
¡®There¡¯s nothing for me to predict, I can only react the moment I sense the mana fluctuations before a spell¡¯s fired.¡¯
Ebony¡¯s Imperishable Frost Armament gathered above him but he could only feel the zap on his body right before he saw the lightning. The next thing he knew, he was struck once again and forced onto the ground.
¡®It passed through ice¡is my ice not pure enough to be an insulator? No, it¡¯s another fortification or skill effect.¡¯
Unable to predict where a lightning strike would come from, Ebony was left to reactive measures. Unable to outrun lightning after it was activated, he was left with no choice but to take the hit. His magic seemed ineffective as a defensive measure too.
By the fourth direct hit he took, smoke started to rise from his body and barely three seconds had passed since they started.
¡®I knew this would be fun.¡¯ Ebony finished setting Firm Paths everywhere along where he sensed congregations of foreign mental control and mana which were likely Wilcox¡¯s precast spell traps.
The next mini-explosion of mana being dragged out of Wilcox made his mind flex as he hopped onto the tunnel of gravity he created.
¡®¡so it¡¯s homing.¡¯ It barely bought him enough time to see a yellow flash twist and turn after him before he was forcefully whacked out of his gravity tunnel.
¡®She got my thighs, the numbing stacked.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s pants were ruined and his right thigh was burned black. The direct spell instead of a trap was stronger and he was no longer able to push through with physical control alone. He quickly overrode his physical movements with his mental control so he could retain perfect control of his body even through the numbing and muscle twitching.
None of his Firm Paths led anywhere within 50 metres of the lightning mage. She already had numerous layers of her mana surrounding herself.
Since evasive and defensive measures were moot at this point, Ebony ignored dozens of traps he sensed would lead him straight to her and charged through them with a Flicker to get within 50 metres of her. Taking on all the traps, his skin was fully torched by the time he reappeared into view.
He didn¡¯t want to stop a distance away from her and meant to give her a slight push to signify his victory but that¡¯s when he entered her territory.
¡®Electrical field, ooo it¡¯s highly magnetic. Since it¡¯s an area-of-effect spell, it can directly interact with my body and ignore magic body''s resistance. But its damaging properties are a lot weaker. It''s trying to pull me to the ground¡¡¯ Ebony already took note that her attacks dealt the most damage but she wasn¡¯t spamming those spells over and over again in the span of a few short seconds. Her traps could hurt him too, while her defensive electrical field is meant to slow down and drag any targets to the ground.
It was similar to some of his skills.
He walked forward step by step with thick threads of electricity connecting his legs and arms to the ground. At this range, he finally noticed that the floor had a magic circle. ¡®Is she like Mark? It¡¯s not runic, so enchantment? What did she enchant to be able to cast this here, the earth here is not enchantable.¡¯
Engrossed, he didn¡¯t even look at the mage he was walking towards and was rag dolled back by a shot to the belly.
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¡®That electrical field stopped me from Flickering. Can I win without trying to kill her?¡¯
Ebony continued to tank hits as he dissected and watched an experienced mage at work.
¡®Ah, these traps can be dealt with like that?¡¯ He made a few Models touch floor traps and midair traps. The traps activated and continued pulling forth a stream of mana to zap the target standing there.
Wilcox had to watch the continuous zapping for ten seconds before she realised that his Models were standing there to keep the traps activated and they weren¡¯t getting destroyed. It took her time to manually deactivate them. Preplaced traps that were programmed weren¡¯t that flexible. That was something Ebony was familiar with hence, his insistence on mostly manually controlled spells for defensive measures.
¡®Haha so 468 is enough to cause me lethal damage if I¡¯m not careful.¡¯
???
Wilcox watched the ¡®young¡¯ man with increasing confusion.
Completely taking the man as a senior mage, she had taken advantage of the fact that she already made the duelling ground her territory. Thanks to his overwhelming display of mana that easily put him against the de facto leader of the Magus Consortium, she thought it was a small handicap for herself in front of an Arch Mage equivalent.
However, Ebony was falling for the simplest tricks in the book. He was not reacting the way she imagined. He didn¡¯t use his mana to override her spatial control by wiping her mana off the face of the planet and didn¡¯t exert dominance with his mana like mages with superior mana did.
Only in this duel did she finally realise that his movement skill didn¡¯t consume any mana. With how well-toned his body was, she was not completely surprised that Ebony was some hybrid combatant. It was only natural how he was capable of making so many figures simulating warrior¡¯s moves.
She didn¡¯t understand how he could be so frighteningly fast but it only proved that he was far stronger than she imagined.
With that thought, she didn¡¯t want to embarrass herself and did her best to get out of the rustiness in her bones.
¡®Huh?¡¯ Thinking he would at least be serious and defend against her spell, she was shocked to see her spell get a direct hit and was frightened. She was afraid she fatally injured the unknown man and made him retaliate in ways she didn¡¯t want to imagine.
¡®What? Only torched skin, and he can still mo-¡± Her thought process was cut off when she sensed her electrical field consuming her mana.
Her lips parted, Ebony stood straight and walked forward while observing her spell attempting to chain his limbs down in futility.
As a semi-active member of the Magus Consortium who frequents an Epic dungeon, her 4 skills compounded electrical field protected her from King-ranked monsters. Depending on the type of monsters, they could even be completely grounded. Yet this man was casually being engrossed with her spell while taking steps towards her.
She didn¡¯t even have time to wonder about how he was barely harmed from this after he took a direct hit from her and was still walking towards her as if he hadn¡¯t been stunned.
After she prepared a half-compressed bolt and pushed him back out, he finally attempted to take her seriously.
In the minutes to come, she got more and more confused as Ebony fell for the most basic tricks in the books and didn¡¯t counter her. Initially thinking he was making fun of her until she saw that his entire body was releasing black smoke, she realised that she was pushing him back.
She couldn¡¯t fathom any reason for a superior mage to mess with her to the point of taking so much damage. The moment she tried to hold back, her spine tingled, warning her not to ease up.
She didn¡¯t understand how his body could awkwardly shift sideways but her mana sense did tell her that it was the work of magic. It just didn¡¯t appear to be pure mana manipulation or wind magic.
¡®He wasn¡¯t lying when he said he didn¡¯t know much about lightning magic. How humble.¡¯
The moment the ice figurines appeared, she got ready thinking he was using his speciality but all he used it for was to tie down her pre-set traps from her previous lesson with Rauffeq. Internally, she was rather disgusted that a continuous blast for ten seconds didn¡¯t even put a scratch on the ice figures.
Her Fortifications increased the physical and kinetic force of her lightning magic by 300% but it didn¡¯t seem to matter to these statues.
Ebony¡¯s magic body was as unassuming as his mana output as her aim was completely thwarted. She couldn¡¯t lock her mana onto him throughout the entire duelling grounds. It meant all her spells that weren¡¯t area of effect and trap-based had to be aimed and shot out from her staff directly.
Conjuring lightning from a distance from her body felt like her mana was in a swamp as they struggled to get out since Ebony¡¯s mana began to fill up their arena.
It was suffocating.
Ebony attacked her with a variety of cold arms and from the looks of it, he could conjure his spells less than three arm lengths away from her body. If she didn¡¯t have her lightning field cast, she feared that he could probably conjure a sharp blade right at her neck with ease. It made her feel like she didn¡¯t have a magic body.
His projectiles were a massive pain to deal with. They were practically indestructible but moved rather slowly and the physical force behind them was so light she would believe that the caster was a Master.
Enchanting her staff and casting thunderblade on it before swinging at the swords, axes, arrows and simple shards was all it took to shatter his spells. Even with a sub-class suited for close range, she had long decided that she had a better chance of staying still and not getting anywhere close to Ebony.
¡®I can¡¯t tell if he¡¯s strong or weak.¡¯
Ebony never got hit by an active spell from her staff after the first. The traps were all seen through and dealt with after she disabled them so her mana wasn¡¯t needlessly consumed. She could keep him at a distance but he was pushing further into her lighting field
Her lightning storm did the best job as it was a spell that had a random aim. She didn¡¯t have to guide her mana to release the lightning strikes and that prevented mages from sensing congregations of her mana where the lightning mana was. Her lightning was also 300% more likely to chase and connect with flesh bodies or any conductor in general.
The longer the duel went on, the more convinced she was that Ebony was not as high level as she initially assumed. More importantly, he fought like he never fought a mage before.
However, in just half an hour, he came up with methods to counter what she threw at him. Coming up with counters wasn¡¯t surprising but he managed to consistently counter her. He was learning at amazing speeds.
The person she was facing didn¡¯t feel human. Without showing a sign of pain, his facial expression was rock solid even as he took a strike that ravaged his internals and made blood spill from his mouth.
Wilcox began to feel fear for the creature she was keeping at bay.
His mana pool didn¡¯t even shake. With every bit of her mana sense, she knew it was filled up to the brim. But that was impossible, he was casting magic like nobody¡¯s business.
The creature in front of her didn¡¯t act like pain existed but that was easily explained by the numbness caused by repeated lightning strikes and a common warrior adrenaline rush. His ability to move his body so adeptly in such a state was just as frightening as finding out that his mana pool remained constant.
It didn¡¯t help that multiple figures were flashing and ramming her lightning field just a fist¡¯s distance away from her. It wasn¡¯t any ice summons, just after images of Ebony coming in and out of her field and ramming kicks at her from all around her.
Her physical body¡¯s speed could barely react in time but she had managed to accurately slap the kicks away with her lightning-bladed staff thanks to her lightning field also acting as an alarm and perception skill.
The aggressor was no longer smoking black and neither was his skin charred anymore. With a faint hint of a smile, the creature kicked her lightning away. Learning from how she used pure mana to disrupt his sonic-imbued ice projectiles, he suddenly copied the way magic spells could be deflected.
It was by no means a defensive spell but just an external coat of mana could slow down most elements to some degree. Allowing a warrior to touch elements like fire or wind. If they were good enough to wrap their mana around a spell, they could redirect just like how a fire mage could deflect another fire mage¡¯s spell. It was just far harder and less effective. But with Ebony¡¯s mana, a basic coating becomes a durable shield.
When he figured he could touch lightning for an instant without being badly hurt, he slowly figured out it could be deflected and changed his tactics. Learning her patterns and coming up with countermeasures on the spot. All while healing at visible speeds.
Wilcox was aware that Physiques were a thing but she was just a normal human as far as she was aware. She didn¡¯t know anyone with a physique that provided not just normal healing, but also physical regeneration of skin tissues to a perfect state.
She wanted to ask if it was okay to go so far for a spar but the words were stuck in her throat. She had a feeling he wouldn¡¯t be so happy if she turned things down a notch for safety. Her gut feeling told her he would sustain no permanent repercussions. Something that her mind couldn¡¯t believe unless maybe the Life Queen was personally present.
Her arms were numb just clashing with his kicks and punches, the sonic impact was arcane but it felt like a giant monster was ramming her with its full strength. Pushing away his attacks felt like she was futilely pushing the floor away from her as she was pushing herself away instead.
In her long life, she had seen plenty of creatures and even more people.
Everyone active on the field from her generation would know. Life was safe after the Lord family took over the reins.
The combatants and every Imperial citizen lost the ever-growing danger of a monster horde at their walls. They lost the edge kept for a random dungeon spawn, a random dungeon break. They lost the edge kept for some aerial monster swooping in and kidnapping a town for a snack. They lost the awareness that some underground fight could cause an entire city to collapse down on itself. Excluding that one city that disappeared just a decade or less ago that had no official reasons publicised yet.
For the new generation, it was 90 years ago.
For most adults, it was not long ago.
For people of her generation, it was barely weeks ago.
She could imagine how disorientating it was for the older generations as life as they knew it had collapsed within a short span of their lives. It might feel like yesterday for them when letting your guard down for a moment meant death.
The development of the Empire skyrocketed in a few short decades.
Just by changing her career because there was no longer an impending danger in their daily lives to that of an educator showed her how fast the generations devolved. One after the other, the newer generations were losing that¡sharpness. Safety was by no means without merit but the demerits were obvious to her.
Despite Ebony acting as if he had less than decades worth of battle experience, he had everything required to grow stronger if not already strong. ¡®Maybe he¡¯s younger than 200 years old¡¡¯
¡°I¡¯d say this should be enough for today.¡±
Ebony forcefully broke through her lightning field and had a fist in front of her shoulder while her staff was held diagonally ahead of her chest.
¡°So it is, I lost. Thank you for the lesson, Madam Wilcox.¡±
Wilcox removed the sharp blade of lightning that extended from the core of her staff at his neck and smiled. ¡°Thank you for going easy on this old lady.¡±
¡®Phew¡this little lightning blade isn¡¯t going to kill him. He really is humble, what a nice young man! I wonder if my granddaughter will be interested¡he seems to love his wife, I wonder if he''s open for a second.¡¯ Wilcox took her handkerchief and wiped the sweat off her forehead while considering a prospective husband for her grandchildren.
Chapter 302: Overseer
Ning Xin groaned while pushing herself up from the nice and comfy chilled floor of the ice tree.
Yawning, she stretched her back since the cushions got lost somewhere at some point in her sleep.
¡®Ebony¡¯s already awake? What time is it?¡¯
¡°Heh, why are both of you pushed to the corner?¡± As usual, her first course of action was to get her two swords.
¡°Ow, why are you burning up? Huh? You don¡¯t want me to touch you? What¡¯s wrong?¡± Ning Xin looked at her scalded skin, a bit of her flesh melted.
Her pain resistance was far more attuned to heat injury than physical pain.
¡®This is odd, they¡¯ve never burnt me before. I can¡¯t sense their feelings either, they¡¯re not born yet and I¡¯m just fooling myself. But this reaction¡they don¡¯t want me to hold them?¡¯
The twin swords started to melt the room which got Dusk pissed and tossed the swords out. The swordswoman pulled her shirt to cover her shoulder again and made sure they didn¡¯t burn the garden outside. She didn¡¯t blame the tree which was simply following built-in instructions.
¡°Weird¡¡± Forcefully grabbing the sword hilts she extracted the fire mana they were using against her.
¡®They feel thinner than usual but they¡¯re the same size. Must be the alcohol.¡¯
¡°Calm down, I¡¯ll wipe you down right away. It¡¯s been a while since I sharpened the two of you anyway.¡± Talking to swords as if she were talking to people, she went and got ready the materials to pamper her two swords.
¡°Still not happy? Well, just don¡¯t burn anything, I''m gonna make some grub.¡± She placed the twins at the entrance where Icicle usually sat and hoped they weren¡¯t so disobedient they burned their beds. ¡°Yeah, both of you feel weird in my hand today. Hey!¡± She put the fire out before the wooden sword rest charred.
¡°Hmph, and I even used good oil for you. No blood for you two today. So naughty.¡±
She watched her peel skin and decided she might as well take a bath to wash the scent of alcohol and Ebony away from her.
¡®Gah, stupid book. But Mallory says it¡¯s normal so I guess it is.¡¯ Flushed, her blood rushed to her hands and healed the burns before she reached the bathroom.
¡°Finally awake? Hurry up and make me some grub, I¡¯m hungry.¡± Kong Jing¡¯s head popped up in the air in front of her in a jumpscare, there was no body and she maintained a spatial compression with only her head popping through.
¡°Sister, give me a moment.¡± She took a step back in surprise, almost forgetting another person¡¯s presence in the house.
Despite what she said, she took her own sweet time. By the time she was done washing up and preparing breakfast, Ebony was back as predicted.
¡°You¡¯re scorched¡good fight?¡± Ning Xin detected some excitement from the man who returned with torn pants. Although he had no physical injury she recognised the smell.
¡°My lightning resistance levelled 7 times, pretty good. I got a hang of how a real mage fights, if only it wasn¡¯t a casual spar I could learn a lot more. Spars with other people are troublesome, I can only bubble Augmentation or I¡¯ll kill them by accident. You know, it''s the older lady I told you about. I underestimated her but I don''t think she¡¯s the right opponent for you. It¡¯ll end instantly.¡±
¡°Clean up, you smell like electrocuted flesh. We¡¯ll wait.¡± The chef grabbed onto the space mage¡¯s hand and dragged her up instead of letting her steal the food away.
¡°I-I¡¯m hungry.¡±
¡°Go ahead and eat.¡±
¡°We¡¯ll wait.¡±
Ning Xin slapped the hand again, within the range of the dining table she was far faster than the space mage now and could easily react to a plate falling or a hand appearing on the other side of the table.
¡®He¡¯s being shifty¡wait, he¡¯s trying to avoid me? Why? Hmm, is that how he felt when I did the same to him? I should apologize again. Thinking back¡I¡¯m quite the bother. Why does he like me¡forget it, doesn¡¯t matter why I shouldn¡¯t bother him with such silly questions when I can feel it. When is he going to ask?¡¯
Kicking her feet back and forth, she let the scent of food tempt her while waiting.
???
¡®I guess she doesn¡¯t know what she did in her sleep. Good, that would be awkward and she¡¯ll probably be all cranky again.¡¯ Ebony had a late breakfast with the two ladies when he felt a sudden drain on his mana.
¡°Do you feel that?¡± He asked the masked women.
¡°Feel what?¡± Kong Jing sipped on her soup to warm her stomach up.
¡°They¡¯re in the city, somewhere. Are they in your range?¡± Ning Xin continued eating, she didn¡¯t look like she¡¯d be fainting any time soon.
¡°Let me check. No. So this stealth skill can sense them from further than my current mental range of 4km.¡± With a radius of over 4km, he can technically control his mana within an 8km diameter sphere with himself as the centre.
¡°How much is that in gors again?¡±
¡°Four-fifths of a gor. Hurry up and get used to the superior metric system.¡±
¡°Four-fifths? It increased so much?¡±
¡°Yeah, it''s still increasing by the day. The soft cap for grandmasters is a lot higher than master despite my stats remaining constant.¡±
¡°Yeah, I don¡¯t think I can understand your lingo. But I can feel my magic body¡¯s range increase.¡±
¡°Let me try¡oh yeah, I can¡¯t conjure anything within forty metres of your body. That¡¯s a lot stronger than I expected.¡± Ebony was more than a little surprised but it didn¡¯t show on his face.
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¡°Oh, that¡¯s me. Try again.¡± Kong Jing cut in.
¡°Twelve, that¡¯s great too.¡± Ebony felt cheated, it meant less safety for her.
¡°More than enough for me to react to any projectiles.¡±
¡°Fair enough. It¡¯s dipping into your mana pool already.¡±
¡°I know, my mask was almost empty to begin with so I¡¯m not surprised.¡±
¡°So this is that weird magic you were talking about? Mandates huh, I don¡¯t know much about that but the effects are¡strong. This turned the swords I made flimsy?¡±
¡°A different spell, mandate by another caster but yes,¡± she answered, this was a sore spot for the swordswoman and maybe even more so for the crafter.
¡°Are you in any trouble? Need me to hide you?¡±
¡°Do you feel us disappearing from sight or anything of the sort?¡±
¡°Yeah, creepy. It¡¯s actually amazing, I¡¯m doing my best to focus on you but something is tugging at my mind to make me forget you, more specifically, forget that you¡¯re standing in front of me. Don¡¯t worry though, I can still lock onto you my mask has greater mental defences than most. That¡¯s why I¡¯m amazed it¡¯s working on me.¡±
¡®The mandate guys are really strong then. How annoying. I had second thoughts about killing the ants for experience because I got tired of all the killing.¡¯
Ebony might have gotten swept by the flow of things but he was constantly reminded of the battle with the Trolls.
He was 100% okay with hunting for food and sustenance. That was the nature of things and the cycle of life. He made it a point to make the most out of dead animals. Since they ate all their hunts nowadays, there were no bodies to bury.
He had re-lived his entire life within his memories a few times in the past few years. Memories of all of the humans he killed surfaced every time. He felt no guilt for every single one of them. Every kill felt no different from hunting prey for sustenance.
Ebony did not see killing humans any different from killing animals. They were both living things and thinking creatures. The senseless war that felt like a big training ground opened his eyes to how much of a waste those deaths were. He didn¡¯t see anything wrong with the trolls killing humans for food and he certainly didn¡¯t think the humans were wrong to kill the trolls in self-defense. But whatever that battle at Fifth Tide was, it wasn¡¯t for the preservation of life. On both sides.
The ants that were supposedly attacking the Empire sound like monsters that devour and destroy everything in their path but Ebony only saw that as a natural happening. He was okay with killing them for food, they were trying to eat humans after all.
His moral reluctance was skewed because of the Jetfins. The ants wouldn¡¯t be trying to eat him until he showed himself to them, so how is it any of his business? His mind couldn¡¯t reconcile with this.
¡®Let¡¯s put this emotion thing aside again. Logic, ants eating us, we fight back. Ants get killed whether or not it¡¯s done by me. So I might as well join and benefit from it. I can¡¯t concile¡this Tranquility Spring is not helping. Fine, let¡¯s use emotion. If I don¡¯t kill the ants, they would kill a lot of people. Billions. People die, so what if I know about it. It¡¯s not like I don¡¯t know people are dying right this instant somewhere but I¡¯m not doing anything about it. Hmm, I don¡¯t seem to care. How about this, if I don¡¯t kill them they might destroy everything including the frost elves village? Oh, now I care. I guess that¡¯s just how I am. Good, I think I¡¯m regaining motivation. If this removal of urgency to get stronger is from Tranquility Spring, I need to fix it fast.¡¯
Ebony chuckled at his mental realization of how little he cared about lives unrelated to him. He wondered if this was because of how he was brought up but decided it wasn¡¯t his upbringing¡¯s fault.
¡°Hide Xin, I can support the mana usage of this mandate.¡± He told the space mage before putting his robe on and getting Icicle.
¡°Hey! Where are you going?¡±
¡°Relax, they couldn¡¯t spot me when I was right under their nose the previous time. I¡¯m not sure if it¡¯s the same group of people but I¡¯ll try looking for them. Too bad there¡¯s no marking to show where or how far away they are. Hurry up Sister Jing, you¡¯re already looking around to find me don¡¯t wait till you forget we¡¯re still here.¡±
At his request, Ning Xin was swallowed up somewhere with the space mage disappearing too.
¡®I got to thank these mandate people even more now. They keep helping me realize things. Of course, I should hurry and make the most use of any available resource to get stronger. The pests need to be removed anyway, following my own logic of the natural cycle of life, it¡¯s only natural I hunt to eat. The only difference is the type of sustenance. If I see it that way, then this is a gold mine we¡¯re sitting on. So that¡¯s how other people are seeing the situation. Finally, I believe I am normal now.¡¯
Ebony Flickered out of the house. He had no idea where to search so he spiralled away from his house with the edge of his senses scouring through the city.
¡®I can recognise them if it¡¯s the same people but my search would be fruitless if this Entity Evanesce was alarmed by a different group of people.¡¯
Without complaining, he continued to spiral further and further away in attempts to find oddly dressed people.
It took two hours before he found his target, it was within the Capital¡¯s central district but closer to the north.
¡®It¡¯s them. The possible Emperor space magic user, two bodyguards and the one in charge. They¡¯re not looking my way. Should I try my luck and push how effective Entity Evanesce is?¡¯ Ebony spotted them from the air.
¡®Eye for an eye. Cage for a cage. I¡¯ll drop a cage on him and see if he notices me. If he doesn¡¯t even look at me, I¡¯ll try something more. If he looks and turns away, I¡¯ll stop. If he attacks back¡this might not be such a great idea. We¡¯re in a city and there are people. The barrier¡¯s healing isn¡¯t absolute.¡¯
Elevated over a kilometre above the ground, Ebony scanned the area around Ning Xin¡¯s captors. Despite his second thoughts, an invisible cage had already formed beside him.
Right before he slammed it down, his gut feeling stopped him and he looked to his left.
¡®There¡¯s nothing there¡I see. It¡¯s the mandate caster, he¡¯s outside Tidal watching me, isn¡¯t he? I guess it¡¯s time to go home.¡¯
Unwilling to test his luck and the Mandate user¡¯s willingness to enter Tidal, Ebony turned around and made his way to a random cafe. It might be pointless but he wasn¡¯t going to expose his home on the miniscule chance that it wasn¡¯t already exposed.
He wasn¡¯t able to see anyone but instinct went a long way. He might not have Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition however, high Perception did a lot more than most would think.
¡°Ah, the waitress can¡¯t see me. I guess no tea for me.¡±
Disappointed, Ebony took a slow and random route home.
¡°Leave the barrier.¡±
A fading voice entered his mind. Ebony looked down to see his feet changing directions.
¡®Hot damn¡he or she¡¯s making me go out. This guy¡¯s obviously the one who cast Entity Evanescence on me and not those weak civilians.¡¯ Ebony punched both his knees and planted his legs into the stone ground. He went somewhere less crowded so that he didn¡¯t drag people in but was still in the middle of a busy city. No one so much as blinked as he crushed the floor.
¡®I shouldn¡¯t have gotten curious or tested my luck. Let¡¯s hope she¡¯ll pick up¡and of course, the callstone doesn¡¯t work¡¯ Ebony¡¯s body control was slowly making him walk out but his mental control over the mana in his body fought back. It was a struggle but it was a good sign that told him he could resist.
The struggle barely meant anything if he didn¡¯t have any help. He should¡¯ve listened and hid with Kong Jing. Weak Flicker by Flicker, he was getting closer to the inner wall¡¯s gate. It was only a matter of time before he went through all the gates and exited the Capital.
¡°You see, be a good boy and don¡¯t get kidnapped in front of me again.¡± His body felt the force of another individual¡¯s mana and it ripped him away from the space he occupied.
¡°Hello, Sister Jing.¡± He didn¡¯t question how she found or even noticed him and greeted her.
¡°Hello. No need to thank this awesome sister of yours, this is just redemption. Ah, sorry about this privacy screen, all you¡¯ll be seeing is white and each other here.¡±
¡°I hope there¡¯s enough ants.¡± Ebony put the sleeping swordswoman who had her mana forcefully drained''s head on his lap and muttered to himself.
Chapter 303: Hiding
¡°Can¡¯t believe this¡this nonsense mandate is still in effect here?¡± Kong Jing clicked her tongue watching Ning Xin still asleep, knocked out by the constant mana drain.
Ebony didn¡¯t ask where they were, it was pure white like he was told and could only see the people present. ¡°You can see us.¡±
¡°Duh, it¡¯s not that hard. I just have to whip a pseudo-omniscence potion up. I kinda whiffed on the ingredients and used runes to fake its effect so it won¡¯t last.¡± The full-time crafter, part time alchemist rolled her eyes.
¡°You look translucent.¡±
¡°You¡¯re in my mask, the me you see is just an illusion. My real body¡¯s still outside. Gotta see who¡¯s stalking my siblings so hard.¡±
¡°Be careful.¡±
¡°Just someone that doesn¡¯t even dare to come into the city. Don¡¯t worry, let your big sister protect you.¡±
¡°...¡± It was a pity that they weren¡¯t reliable enough to protect the crafter who was conveniently a space mage.
¡®We haven¡¯t caught up to her yet.¡¯
¡°They ran away, I couldn¡¯t even see what they looked like. Stick around, I¡¯ll let you out when your mana drain disappears.¡±
It didn¡¯t take long before he got a report about their stalkers outside the city, so far away he couldn¡¯t see them.
¡°The mana drain weakened.¡±
¡°Then wait here and call me when it¡¯s gone.¡±
Ebony had nothing better to do than be obedient. The white space or privacy screen prevented him from seeing what was around them. Meditating the time away was pretty easy.
¡°Can you show us outside? I think the Emperor is doing his parade walk now.¡± Ebony opened his eyes when an entire night passed. Ning Xin woke up in the meantime and was tying meat up in a roll and putting them in bags of marinade.
¡°What¡¯s so interesting about some random man walking down the street?¡±
¡°Just joining in on the fun of what the fuss is about.¡±
¡°Let me find where--found it, just watch from there.¡± A holographic screen popped up in front of them to see a busy street packed with people on both sides.
A row of earth and stone mages was walking behind the giant of a man, fixing the floor as he walked on the road and waved to the public.
¡°Oh wow, those statues of him are life-sized? He¡¯s practically a small Troll, shorter but wider. Is he human?¡± Ebony knew what the Emperor looked like but he didn¡¯t expect the creature to tower over humans at 2.6 metres tall but he looked even wider. Yet, he somehow didn¡¯t appear like a ball as the thick muscles on him were well-defined and packed tight.
Emperor Oplot didn¡¯t wear a shirt, he had a massive great shield on his back that covered his entire body from head to toe. Under the shield was a rod that was 3 metres long. Every step he took dug into the stone floor and the earth underneath.
¡®I can only use sight to guess but¡that mass is impressive if he¡¯s only casually walking and not using any skills. Even at my most compressed state, my weight and mass aren¡¯t enough to sink into Tidal¡¯s roads.
The math doesn¡¯t check out. Based on my estimate after testing a road tile, the paved road should have tensile strength about 6 or 7 times that of Earth¡¯s asphalt road. About 20 megapascals, while the area of his feet is somewhere around 0.4 to 0.5 meters square. Pressure equals force over area, so roughly 9 million newtons of force. The gravity in Central is less than twice that of Earth, magically enough considering it¡¯s way more than twice as big. But that would still mean he weighs over 450,000kg at minimum. Nonsense. That¡¯s like the weight of a commercial aircraft compressed into a human body.
I don¡¯t believe my math for once, I need to be out there to check his gravitational signature. The logical assumption is that he¡¯s using an active skill but it doesn¡¯t feel like it. Maybe that shield?¡¯
Instead of assuming, Ebony just asked the camera women.
¡°Is he heavy or is that shield heavy? Do you think a shield can weigh 90 tovs?¡±
¡°Of course it can, there are plenty of materials that dense. That shield is made of an Ancient ranked Singularity Meteor, a very special star. It was crafted by one of my uncles. But that particular shield only weighs 8.2 tovs.¡±
¡®That¡¯s still 41,000 kg. Icicle is currently sitting around 5.5 tons or 5500kg and it has already peaked, no longer getting heavier or harder. Only its recovery speed is still growing a little. It¡¯s a pity but I¡¯ve been breaking and chipping it a lot, it can¡¯t keep up with me if I don¡¯t get new materials for it to be reforged.¡¯
¡°So the person is the one that¡¯s really heavy, assuming he¡¯s not using any skills.¡±
¡°Yes, he¡¯s the heavy one. I don¡¯t see any equipment or luggage on him that would suggest otherwise.¡±
¡®My calculation can be off by a huge factor since I didn¡¯t account for how deep he¡¯s sinking with each step, he might even weigh millions of kilograms. A physique and a bunch of other passives, maybe fortifications. Just his mass can kill most people, like the Berg Mammoths. Oh well, maybe he¡¯s carrying an extremely full spatial bag, no point thinking so much about a broken floor.¡¯
By nightfall that day, the two of them were released from their hiding spot.
¡°Hey, we heard about your stalker and the presence of that other worlder who activates the odd mandate.¡± Hector was in his living room again, to check on them because they didn¡¯t show up at the parade. Hector was used to not wearing shoes in the house. He was used to not wearing shoes anywhere after his time on Tova. Hence, Ebony gave him a hot towel to wipe his feet.
Kong Jing must have told him about their situation.
¡°So, know anything about them?¡±
¡°I haven¡¯t heard anything about the stalkers but I do know about mandates, it''s an old school of magic but no race uses it. It just appears in some historical excerpts but damn, it sounds really strong.¡±
¡°What about the other worlders?¡±
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¡°Mal is checking which specific one you¡¯re talking about. She directly asked Uncle Oplot to check with the Guardian Knights records but we don¡¯t find a match at the moment. There¡¯s a good chance they directly trespassed with the use of space magic instead of going through Lacuna the world dungeon.¡±
¡°That means,¡± Ning Xin tilted her head wishing Hector would get to the point.
¡°Bad news. Strong, rich or both. Usually, these people throw their weight around thinking our world is underdeveloped as we¡¯re not well connected with other worlds. Thankfully, we have more to show nowadays be it technological or alchemical. The ones that come through peacefully still make fun of the fact that we don¡¯t speak the common language. At least that''s what Mal tells me, I don¡¯t deal with politics.¡±
¡°Common language, Gia?¡± Ebony asked, he should¡¯ve known better about who to ask.
¡°You know it?¡± The Prince didn¡¯t casually ask while making himself comfortable in their living room.
¡°I know what it¡¯s called but I¡¯m still figuring the language out. Can you get some reference books for me?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll ask Mal if she has any.¡±
¡°When are we leaving?¡± Ning Xin asked while serving up a simple fried rice.
¡°In two days, Lucas is escorting the Elven Matriarch.¡±
¡°Like The Matriarch?¡± Ebony knew that both the Elves and the Frost Elves had their leaders, caring not for the Empire¡¯s Royalty.
¡°Yes, the strongest mage of Elcra. They¡¯re even calling their ancestors over, I have been left out of the loop so I don¡¯t know much more but I do know that they are taking these ants seriously. It''s not so easy to travel across worlds. If we¡¯re lucky, the Elves can call their family and get the ants to go away.¡±
¡°From what I¡¯ve been hearing, I believe planets would be more accurate.¡± Ebony realised that Elva does indeed have protection.
¡°Whatever. Can you tell me what the ells is that tree outside now?¡± Hector rudely pointed the spoon outside after licking a mouthful clean. Unlike Ebony, the rest of the people in his house cared little for the terms used and thought the same of worlds and planets.
¡°She¡¯s Dusk. My Domain.¡±
¡°Wait what?¡± He sat up faster than a bullet.
¡°You heard me. Don¡¯t rip our sofa.¡± Ebony was too late as a grip mark on his sofa was permanently marked.
¡°Bu-did you get permission?¡± The Prince looked embarrassed and made a silent apology.
¡°Permission for what.¡± Ebony relished in the fried rice that was just a late-morning snack.
¡°Setting up a domain here.¡±
¡°I need permission for that? From who. For what.¡±
¡°The Royal family and nobles don¡¯t care, the only ones that care are the Elves. Do you see the forest in the city? That¡¯s their domain. We don¡¯t understand what that is except for a few statements from past and current human domain mages but it''s something to do with territory and exerting control over an area.¡±
¡°That¡¯s pretty much it. I see, so this place is already booked. Thanks for telling me in advance, no one came to stop me yet so it shouldn¡¯t be too late to take it away.¡±
¡°Ta-take it away? You can do that?¡±
¡°It''s no different from my domain skill.¡±
¡°Not just a strong area of effect?¡±
¡°...we¡¯ve gotten out of touch. I¡¯m a beginner domain mage, still figuring things out so don¡¯t ask me about anything too specific. I can¡¯t answer you any better than the statements you have.¡±
¡°At least tell me how this territory thing works.¡±
¡°From my understanding, Will can be imbued into an object, perhaps land can be considered an object. I don¡¯t know how the Elves do it but mine is Dusk. I have a feeling it''s more stable if the object is firstly, big enough to handle the caster¡¯s Will. Secondly, the stronger the domain, the less mobile it is since it requires a bigger frame or container for Will. This is a recent discovery but Dusk has a wider range of mental¡mana control and sense than I do. I suspect it¡¯s because it technically carries a larger capacity of Will than I do. Thirdly, its form needs to be compatible with the caster¡¯s Will. Lastly, it¡¯s not just a demarcation of territory, it''s a massive advantage for every mage. I don¡¯t think I have to go into specifics of what a domain can do.¡±
¡°Yeah, I know the last part. Excluding individual effects based on the domain mage, the common points are massive pains in the butts. To differing degrees, everyone else within someone else''s domain has more difficulty casting any form of magic, and manipulating mana becomes harder. For elements, a domain mage practically rules over their personal elements. It would take another mage of a far greater affinity and calibre to wield the same elements at the same effectiveness. And of course, all of the domain mage¡¯s spells are greatly enhanced.¡±
¡°Generally.¡±
¡°What happens when two domains meet?¡±
¡°Too advanced for me, but they probably fight for dominance over that space. Maybe both domains weaken each other, maybe they don¡¯t interfere with each other. I don¡¯t know.¡±
¡°Well, don¡¯t try to find out. I don¡¯t want you to be wrapped up with the Elves. When it comes to territory or their rights and demands, they¡¯re not the most polite.¡±
¡°Understandably so.¡± He replied thinking about the benefits of being within the range of Dusk. She was technically a pool of my mana stocked up for use
¡°I guess they¡¯re just cowardly.¡± Ning Xin added. With her hair beginning to turn red at the tips since she woke up, her entire aura began to change as well. Her mood was bad, in a different way from Ebony''s.
¡°Let¡¯s just go first. Is Commander Wil free?¡± He let the woman of the house do the washing while he checked his bag for food stock.
¡°Go ahead? Ell. It¡¯s my break.¡± Hector complained but was already dialling someone on his bracelet.
¡°We can just go slowly, you said it takes two to three days of travel.¡±
¡°Fine! Hello Wilson, Ebony here is asking to push the schedule ahead.¡±
¡°Ah? Sure, let me get my booze first! I¡¯ll come over when I¡¯m ready. His house or yours?¡±
Hector looked towards Ebony who nodded. ¡°His. We¡¯ll be packing, I gotta deal with a nosy princess too.¡±
¡°You can just tell us the direction, no need to cut your break short.¡± Ebony realistically answered.
¡°Bah, I got bored. None of my friends are around and I¡¯m just not feeling in the zone with chicks.¡± Hector jumped onto his sofa once again
¡°Because of that archer girl right?¡± Ning Xin commented.
¡°What are you talking about?¡±
¡°You know, the orphans who partied up together with their caretaker and used the same last name. The caretaker. You were practically entranced by her. Tracy Velas I think was her name.¡± The lady blabbed on for once.
¡°Nonsense, I barely remember her. We just passed by each other in Ordina. Are you throwing assumptions around to divert my attention from you huh? So what¡¯s going on with you two, you gotta be married and I missed your wedding didn¡¯t I?¡±
¡°In the middle of preparation so you didn¡¯t miss anything.¡± Ebony replied the lazy bum who made himself at home. Ebony could see why it looked that way to most people.
¡°What?¡±
He caught the flying plate without looking.
¡°I see, I won¡¯t miss it.¡± Hector turned back and got the television playing.
¡°Mmm.¡± I placed the plate on the dish rack over the tall lady¡¯s shoulders.
¡°What?¡± She repeated herself as if to make herself clear.
Ebony walked out to their trailer parked outside to rearrange his rations and also to take inventory. He ignored the third call that demanded an answer to his satisfaction. ¡®That was nice payback for the harassment that she¡¯s acting as if she doesn''t remember.¡¯
¡°Hey! What were you saying earlier?¡± She ran in to pester him.
¡°Take this, and this. Can you help me check if any of the packaging broke? I don¡¯t want to carry around mouldy rations.¡± Ebony handed her the packs of souper bread and meat jerky that sat at the bottom of his bag.
Ebony swatted her attention to the food inventory with seriousness.
Chapter 304: Transportational Hindrance
¡°I¡¯m here boys!¡± The scent of alcohol came with the old man with a metal club. He had a large pack on him, perhaps he didn¡¯t want to change for a better spatial bag or that was the best type commercially available.
¡°Welcome Commander Wil, come on in. We¡¯re waiting for Hector.¡± Ebony successfully had the job of checking rations stolen from him but he¡¯ll do a final check once it¡¯s in his bag.
¡°Wilson¡¯s fine boy.¡±
¡°Then Ebony for me, Wilson.¡± He felt like he had this conversation before.
¡°Sure thing boy! You said you needed me for something?¡± Wilson stood by and stared at Dusk without entering.
¡°I need your help carrying my tree,¡±
¡°This tree right here?¡±
¡°Mmm. She¡¯s too heavy for me.¡±
¡°Heeh~ if you¡¯re bringing this along, I assume it''s some combat spell.¡±
¡°Something like that. You can say it¡¯s my spare mana pool a few times larger than my own. Like my personal magic tower.¡±
¡°Ho, that¡¯s interesting. I know some mages who have a portable magic hmm pillar, those Dwarves make interesting things. I guess this is no different but it¡¯s fully made of your magic instead of an actual construct. Is it rooted to the ground?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll get her to dislodge herself now. Dusk, you can stand up now. Oh and close the door.¡± Ebony asked politely. He didn¡¯t want the cushions to drop out in transport.
Sadly, all it could do was unroot itself. When the roots tried to push themselves off they simply dug the earth around them.
Even fully enhanced, he could no longer lift the tree. It contained too much dense mana, weeks'' worth of his regeneration. There would be more if it wasn¡¯t losing mana and Will every day. Dusk already reached maximum saturation. He could put more scales on her for mana but it was losing Will that couldn¡¯t be recovered.
He was unable to quantify how much Will remnants remained or stuck on Dusk but he had to charge it every few days to make sure it could still function the same way. He hypothesised that Dusk would die in under half a year if he didn¡¯t charge it with Will. Die, as in losing all its functions and capabilities. However, if he kept going and tending to it, he might reach a point where his remnant Will compiles till it is capable of functioning forever or at least as long as the remnant Will can remain.
He was unwilling to let Dusk¡¯s Will dissipate all the way to remnant Will to check what capabilities were left behind. He would be happy if it even had 1% of the original information and programs he input.
¡°Go get the academy''s recording and pass the information back to me. Charge the recorders up and place them back.¡± Ebony recalled and told one of his Models parked at the side. It changed from the bully to his form and Flickered to complete its task.
¡°Impressive. Anyway, make some handles or grip for me.¡±
Ebony gave Dusk a pat on the trunk and it gradually formed holes for hands instead of handles. It understands that handles would simply break off with her weight.
Wilson ignored one set and only inserted one of his hands to grab the handle after his arm went all the way down to his elbows. His biceps bulged and the veins in his arms and neck pulsed. The scrawny old man¡¯s feet sunk into the soft fertile earth and in one motion, he raised his arm with a 15-metre-tall tree above his head. ¡°Hnghnununuu! WRAA! Doable, but tiresome¡hey, would you mind if I ever use this baby as a club.¡±
¡°Yes. I would mind.¡±
¡®That¡¯s some crazy strength, I don¡¯t feel any surge of mana. Passives and Fortifications then. Maybe 400%...doesn¡¯t sound enough, 750% to 1000% Strength stat buff? That¡¯s not enough, a few more compounding Fortifications are needed if he has greater physical strength than my augmented state. I wonder if he maxed out every evolution.¡¯ Ebony roughly gauged Wilson¡¯s physical strength and put him aside in his list of strong people and creatures.
Physical strength alone wasn¡¯t enough for him to decide how dangerous Wilson was.
The ground shook when Dusk was placed down.
¡°It''s full. I can stab a few metal poles with load-reducing runes on them.¡± Kong Jing walked out of the house after slipping her feet into a pair of slippers. She was referring to how Dusk¡¯s scaled bark was fully rune moulded with toughness, mana absorption and capacity runes.
Ebony¡¯s personal runic formula for them. The current base effect of the formula itself was about an additional 20% toughness, 20% mana capacity and Kong Jing¡¯s ¡®low-tier¡¯ absorption rune with a focus in range. Inscripted Mana Moulding at level 571 gave an additional 1505% in effectiveness, after a few tests the boosts calculated were confirmed to be 321% so his skill was a multiplier to rune formula¡¯s effectiveness. In the same regard, the mana capacity of a single scale was increased by 321%. Taking his entire tree into account, it was a magical wonder of mana.
These peaceful days of experimentation also let him understand how enchantments were supposed to be stronger and how runes could be boosted to unreasonable degrees depending on the mage or crafter. He didn¡¯t even have a Fortification specifically for runes, all he had was a high-level tier 2 skill for it. Putting aside how the properties of his mana affected Inscripted Mana Moulding because the effects were not obvious enough for him.
¡°Ai, that would be helpful for these old bones.¡±
¡°Sister Jing, don¡¯t say stab. We can just line my room inside with metal rods or even plates which are easier for rune placement. I want it to be deactivatable though, mass is power.¡±
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¡°Oh, rods are better. I have a hyper-specialised formula for rod-shaped objects. It¡¯s good for arrows, lances and long throwable projectiles. I forgot about the inner room¡good, I think I can whip something up. Can I mess with it?¡±
¡°Details please.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll place a board the size and shape of the inner room on the floor, it can be the control circuit. Then connect and surround the circumference with the load-reducing rods, it¡¯ll be your walls. You can cover it back up with ice, it wouldn¡¯t affect the functions but it''s a very compact formula so don¡¯t count on it for additional defence.¡±
¡°Okay, thank you. It would be easier for me to move it by myself like that.¡±
¡°Yeah, come. I¡¯ll show you the control method, with mana obviously. If I understand correctly, once you fully understand how to do something, you can imbue that ability into Dusk?¡±
¡°With time. I need to be able to do that ¡®something¡¯ almost instinctively like breathing or it wouldn¡¯t translate properly.¡±
¡°Good enough, in future Dusk should be able to control its weight more.¡±
¡°It can already do that with gravity manipulation, it¡¯s just not enough at the moment.¡±
¡°Even better, then you should be able to pick it up quickly.¡±
¡°How long do you need?¡±
¡°I have plenty lying around, I just need to refresh them and that wouldn¡¯t even take a minute.¡±
¡°Great. You¡¯re going with us right?¡±
¡°Yes, I want to see if these are the same ants I think they are.¡±
¡°What would it matter?¡±
¡°Materials.¡±
¡°Of course it is.¡± The two of them rarely had long conversations and they would usually be straightforward. ¡®Cycle of life, they¡¯re not going to waste.¡¯
They got to work emptying his bomb shelter and lining it up with the metal rods before sealing them with ice. As he was told, the control method was simple.
The weight reduction had limits. The heavier an object, the less efficient they were and it couldn¡¯t make anything weightless to prevent objects from floating about. It was designed for weapons and the limit was making something 5% of its original weight. When the load placed on it exceeds a certain point, this limit is raised. This was the trade-off to keep them mana efficient. Above a certain mass, the rods can¡¯t do anything and functions become redundant.
A quick test with the world¡¯s strongest scrawny man present helped confirm that Dusk was within the limit for the most efficient setting. Dusk can¡¯t use it by herself until he inputs new Will with updated information but this would do. He could carry Dusk himself.
¡°Now the biggest question remains. Can she fit where we¡¯re going? I heard we¡¯re going under.¡± Wilson commented.
¡°She can become a little smaller, with my help I believe we can split its transport as a trail of scales but it needs to retain a core tree shape.¡± Ebony already tested breaking Dusk¡¯s scales apart and moving them by flight but he felt the restriction and knew Dusk¡¯s Will would fall apart if she didn¡¯t retain a core tree shape. It was an odd spell and creature.
Hector finally showed up when it was late noon.
Ning Xin was finally done with reorganising their rations and he did a final check to make sure they both carried enough food to last. How long that may be depended on conditions they faced but 2 to 3 years was a good estimate. He didn¡¯t even plan to stay for long. He was hoping he could make it a job, just coming and going every so often.
¡°Sorry for the wait, I was getting my ears chewed off. I¡¯ll show you the way and get you acquainted with some people.¡±
¡®More army logistics? Hopefully not,¡¯
¡°You can do the talking,¡± Ebony told their contact in advance.
¡°Relax, there won¡¯t be any stiff regulations. It¡¯s free for all for anyone not in the Imperial Army. Just no friendly fire and they won¡¯t stop a coordinated attack if you¡¯re in the way so you have to watch yourself and not be ahead of a large group of Imperial knights or mages. They published their schedule and location for barrages so just take note.¡±
¡°Schedule?¡± Ning Xin voiced her confusion.
¡°It¡¯s a wide area, sure but they take turns for different spells at different locations. They¡¯re posting the general effects and expected areas that would have, for example, extreme heat. They need to get a water and wind barrage to cool the place down or everyone will suffocate. The mages need to cycle amongst themselves as well.¡±
¡°Sounds like a 9 to 5 job.¡± He nodded to Hector¡¯s explanation. The freedom of movement was very enticing and made the situation less of a drag.
¡°What¡¯s that?¡±
¡°Just a saying.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±
Ebony made sure to lock his doors. He left his Models here to watch after the house. They would train his classmates on time and now that Madam Wilcox was taking her job more seriously, his presence wasn¡¯t necessary for the older students.
¡°Where?¡± Kong Jing questioned, she wasn¡¯t very close with Hector but they were on speaking terms.
¡°Follow me.¡± Hector was dressed up but he didn¡¯t carry much on him. He likely had logistic support as part of the Empire¡¯s forces.
¡°Just tell me the address and I¡¯ll get us there.¡± The space mage demanded more forcefully.
¡°Come on, we don¡¯t have all day.¡±
¡°Great gr- The Barrier King¡¯s Spatial Preservation Barrier is cast over the entire city at the moment,¡± Hector explained
¡°Oh yeah? I wasn¡¯t informed.¡± Kong Jing compressed space and stepped behind Hector to show her confusion.
¡°It¡¯s not fully activated throughout, it''s much stronger at certain locations.¡± The Prince kept his bearings and answered with a subtle pride in his voice.¡±
Kong Jing¡¯s tendency to punch people was just Ebony¡¯s misconception but Hector got the message with a blink and change on her mask. They were all falling from the sky until Hector pointed them in a direction. Wilson simply laughed while they fell and let the breeze tickle him.
Hector was decked out in scale armour, including the helmet which was rare for him.
Wilson was wearing standard leather boots, thick linen pants and a loose shirt with a v-neck that had a string tied across. It was the rare short-sleeved fashion that Ebony seldom sees on Elcra. The old man¡¯s club acted as a walking stick he didn¡¯t need.
Reminded of the time they went underground and stood upon the underground tomb¡¯s barrier, they were standing above one yet again.
¡®This is the Guardian Knight¡¯s headquarters. Did they dig down here or it is coincidentally used as the entrance? Probably only one of many entrances. The Emperor¡¯s not here.¡¯ Ebony scanned the location they stopped at.
¡°It is much stronger, now lead the way.¡± Kong Jing stated before she pulled them through the barrier and into the compounds.
Swallowing his saliva, Hector started dashing to explain the intrusion before they got attacked by friendlies.
Chapter 305: Tetramyths
¡°This¡platform, who made it?¡± The masked craftswoman questioned the golden decked-out Guardian Knight who escorted their group. A squad of ten of them were scheduled to go down so Ebony¡¯s group came at an opportune time.
The Guardian Knights were impressively stalwart and unwavering. None of their group members were hiding their essence anymore, except Ebony who knew better not to appear threatening.
The Xeng craftswoman had the strongest and vastest aura of Vitality even compared to Wilson. No one else present was even close, including the vitality-based fighter Ning Xin. It was almost akin to half his generation with mana. Truly piqued his curiosity about her stats and physique.
¡®It might be an equipment effect, I shouldn¡¯t forget she crafts and not fights.¡¯
For Masters, the Guardian Knights were not showing or acting nervous around them. Like him and his pet tree, they simply stood ramrod straight without speaking unless they had to or had permission from their leader.
The elevator shaft and platform were large enough for over a hundred people. This further led him to believe that it was just one small entrance of many.
¡°Lord Deepforge from the Granite Halls Dukal family.¡± The leader of the squad was also only a level 300 Master. Their build were all large be they man or woman, at least 2.1 metres tall and very broad shoulders. There was no distinction between the gold-coloured armour but it was obvious to Ebony from their gait.
¡°Never heard of a Deepforge but I know the Granite Halls. Their specialisation in structures both mundane and magical is not just baloney. It¡¯s just so slow, can¡¯t believe we have to sit in this capsule for a day.¡± Kong Jing complained with some appreciation.
¡°It¡¯s more mana efficient, we¡¯re facing terrible mana shortage down there. If you¡¯re impatient, we¡¯re more than willing to get down quicker.¡±
Ebony poked his mana around the platform they were standing on right after ¡®if you¡¯re imp-¡¯.
No one commented when the platform lurched down at thrice the speed. He made sure to dilute his mana back to base density, fully aware from his lessons with Kong Jing that most craftsmen did not make objects or enchantments to handle liquid or particularly dense mana.
¡°Is this full speed? I feel a film stopping my mana.¡± I asked the moment I felt a weak bubble.
¡°Pushing mana through that ¡®film¡¯ will overcharge it, but that¡¯ll damage the enchantment.¡±
¡°Esteemed freelancer, it is not my place to say but we need you down for battle. Haste is good but your ability to contribute as a mage would be more valuable.¡± The squad leader was rather polite in Ebony¡¯s opinion but the others seemed to act as if they were mocking him.
¡°Do you have mana sense?¡± He asked the polite man who was thinking for the better of the Empire.
¡°I do.¡±
¡°Then just observe and wait.¡± The swordswoman¡¯s mask turned to the squad leader and stared him down without any eyes showing past her fully opaque mask. Her hair already turned red halfway up to her head. It tended to change from the tips instead of the stems of her hair.
¡®About 600 mana per second to operate at full speed. Considering how large it is and how much weight it can carry, that sounds very efficient.¡¯ Ebony wiped a figurative sweat off his back for being able to show off and sustain the platform without dipping into his mana pool. It would have been embarrassing if he wasn¡¯t up to her brag. 600 mana per second was already close to two-thirds of his regeneration.
The Guardian Knights must have noticed at some point that his mana didn¡¯t bottom out or even change in fill percentage. Since it was common sense that one doesn¡¯t regenerate while manipulating mana, they must have thought he had a mana pool so vast that they didn¡¯t even sense a dip into a single percentage of his pool. Unless their mana sense was better than he expects from Knights they shouldn¡¯t suspect the oddity. Not that Ebony cared, there were likely many mages who found out during the Magus Consortium party.
Ebony didn¡¯t think he was all that special in this regard. Of the two Elves present in the Magus Consortium tea party, one of them was just like him and had the overflowing Wisdom during the mana flexing but weaker. It felt like half of his mana pool was inactive, like a still lake while he gathered and manipulated mana using the other half. It was interesting to sense, a skill of some sort to split one''s mind in two. Technically, that would make the Elf capable of regenerating mana while casting if he could split his mental capabilities in two.
If Ebony could sense it, so could the others but it must not be an easy skill to figure out just from a look. He wasn''t interested in the skill since it would mean using half of his mind for any spell cast and he could already regenerate while casting.
The twenty-six-hour journey turned into a nine-hour journey. Ebony didn¡¯t feel any strain from such a short duration of easy mana manipulation. It was just a flat platform and was made easier for anyone with mana manipulation to boost.
¡®No dark earthy tunnels but a brightly lit corridor inlaid with glowing red gems.¡¯
¡°These gems ward monsters. Follow me.¡± The squad leader escort took the lead and broke into a jog. The platform landed on an open area and there were other identical platforms around the wide underground area.
¡°In range. You¡¯re welcome.¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t even turn her head and moved all of them against their wills.
Thanks to their combined efforts, the Guardian Knights could get to work a full day in advance. They would¡¯ve been faster if it wasn¡¯t for the shaft being so well protected against space magic. They still had to walk over 30km when space magic was restricted again but that was such a short distance it might as well have been nothing.
¡°Amazing sound insulation. I couldn¡¯t hear anything past this gate,¡± I commented after the 30-minute wait for the metal door a hundred metres wide to open. The noise that blasted through the corridor was enough to permanently deafen humans and ghosts alike the moment the seamless giant door cracked open.
¡°It¡¯s bright. And it looks like a facility, not an underground dirt floor.¡± Ning Xin blocked her eyes as if they were affected by light. Ebony took note of this weakness, the mask did not block bright lights.
¡°Another one of the Granite Hall¡¯s achievements. While we were fighting, they rebuilt the underground space amid the battle.¡± The squad leader praised.
¡°The floor, walls and ceiling lights included. Wow.¡± Ebony couldn¡¯t see the ends of the underground space but the wall below and around him appeared to be concrete and lights installed high above them. The door that cracked open was roughly three kilometres above the fighting and spell explosions below.
There was a semblance of a path from where they stood to a fortified building but he was more confused as to why the entrance wasn¡¯t directly within the fortress. thinking again, it might be to prevent an immediate breach to the surface in case the fortress fell.
¡®Those are the pests? Poor thing, I have no motivation. A German shepherd-sized ant is a King? That thing in the distance is only Apex Ape size. So not giant opponents, they are swarming 20, 30 to 1 or more. 20 Kings biting on you does sound bad.¡¯
¡°Tetramyths! Ebony, catch that one for me! The shiny silver one!¡± Kong Jing slapped his back and sent him past the door.
He Flickered in the air towards the direction that she pointed at, looking back he asked, ¡°which one, I can¡¯t see as far as you can.¡±
¡°Just go straight till you see it, don¡¯t damage their carapace!¡± Kong Jing spatially conveyed her voice.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°What are we waiting for?¡± Ning Xin¡¯s voice phased out in the distance as he went out of range to siphon the vibrations out.
Ebony saw the mess of the pest control happening, he zipped into the close-ranged fighters that were about to get their necks chomped by mandibles and kicked the poor and surprisingly cute ants away. Accidentally dislodging the heads from their thorax. Their bodies consisted of 3 sections instead of 4, it was their head, thorax and abdomen. They were normal, six-legged ants but there was quite a lot of individuality going on with their carapace colours and mandible shapes.
[Dimunitive Allochrome Devorants Lvl 510]
¡®Haha devorants. So three general subspecies. The allochrome is the smallest, but its strength varies the most. They also vary in appearance the most. They all have different properties, probably depending on what they ate from other planets. If they devoured entire planets'' worth of materials, it''s not odd that there are so many of the same type. The other is Silversonic Munchers, the fastest of the bunch and most numerous of the three main types but extremely weak bodies. Relatively. And the last one, the Arcanite Cortex Formicidae has an exoskeleton that can absorb mana in any elemental form I can see for now.¡¯
Ebony did not kill everything in sight, he barely killed any ants as he helped prevent deaths in his sight.
Hector did not lie, it was free for all here. The army did coordinate but they cared not about other factors. Everyone was just¡exterminating pests.
¡®Hunger. They are just hungry. Nothing wrong with that, except the fact that people are part of what they are hungering for. I see nothing wrong from both sides. But¡it has nothing to do with me. I see, it¡¯s not Tranquility Spring¡¯s fault. I just don¡¯t want to involve myself. I feel uncomfortable seeing people die but killing the ants for their hunger feels uncomfortable too. Oh, the duality. I have to make the most of it, the ant corpses can feed the earth and even people so it makes perfect sense.¡¯
Ebony continued onwards while searching for a silver-coloured ant. He decided that he was more human than ant and helped the humanoids instead. It wasn¡¯t about right or wrong here, it was just the cycle of life and he wasn¡¯t outside the cycle.
¡®Odd, they are rather ravenous all things considered. But they aren¡¯t directly hostile to me even if I stand in one spot for half a second. I know they are not that mentally slow so why?¡¯ This was the first field test he had after evolving excluding the tests of his presence on children. He ignored all the little buggers that ignored him and wasn¡¯t immediately about to end a life.
¡®I hope they helped me carry Dusk down. It''s a good thing I asked Dusk to stay on standby, I need to place it somewhere without people.¡¯ Ebony threaded through the literal sea of dog-sized ants with ease. Not all of them ignored him but they were bound to the ground and couldn¡¯t do much when he was afloat.
¡®I see, so this is how my body reacts with absorbing and padding out vibrations. It doesn¡¯t double my defence or my body¡¯s toughness but all hard impacts are weakened and they have a harder time passing through the layers of my body from skin to muscle and bone.¡¯ Ebony let one of the Silversonic Munchers chomp on his wrists. It was a small Grandmaster the size of a large puppy.
The little one gave up after its futile attempts and leapt for his eyeballs in the next moment. The instant it changed its target, his hand faded away as the ant¡¯s platform and appeared to grab its charging face. A pulse of mana destroyed its brain. Ebony wanted to bury it but the floor was stone, concrete or whatever material the tile was made of instead of earth.
With little choice, he crushed the body into a small cube the size of a souper bread and sealed it before keeping it in a conjured ice box.
¡®They are so fragile. Too many generations away from their God or Goddess I suppose. It¡¯s an entirely different race with how many changes they went through. They should have intelligence but they follow their hunger more faithfully. And¡it¡¯s not dead yet. Vitality is truly amazing. This is not good, it''s not fair for me to put them through pain when it didn¡¯t hurt me. All it did was try to eat me. I should seal their pain receptors or kill them faster if they don¡¯t have pain receptors.¡¯ Ebony pondered and quickly put the mashed creature out of its misery in the cube form.
¡°Ebony, look out behind you. Old man¡¯s gonna chuck your pet tree over.¡± A voice slammed into his ears from behind him.
¡°Tell him to be gent-¡± He understood that it was a spatially transported voice call without a beat.
¡°He already chucked her.¡±
Ebony¡¯s hasty brake made him land harder than usual but the tiled floor remained undamaged. He turned back in a fluster and looked out for Dusk.
¡®Too fast, don¡¯t tell me he chucked it with enhancements.¡¯ He Augmented himself warily but Dusk was about to shoot past him and he quickly jumped to catch it.
Wilson had nonsensical physical strength that allowed him to pound the Troll¡¯s earthen battlefield till seawater erupted from under. Now that he evolved, his strength only increased.
Ebony was already a dozen or so Flickers away from the entrance but Dusk got to him right after the spatial voice call he got. He didn¡¯t have to try to understand that callstones probably won¡¯t work again.
Ebony had the breath knocked out of him when Dusk¡¯s trunk smashed into his chest and sent him sprawling. Tumbling over an entire path of ants while he was hugging Dusk. The wide crown of the tree with hardy branches made him bounce up and across a wider distance. He didn¡¯t know how many times he spun before his body stopped.
¡°Tell him I¡¯m his junior of many centuries and not chuck a heavy weapon at me. And where is that ant you want?¡± Ebony complained without knowing if anyone heard him. He assumed the space mage was constantly watching him.
He placed Dusk down and scanned the area. It was still populated with Beastmen that half transformed into large wolves of mana construct tearing at the black Allochrome ants. ¡®Thank the load reduction¡oh crap, need to give her proper command of who¡¯s an ally and who¡¯s not.
The few light red ants crawled all over him and Dusk.
¡°Uh oh, get heavier you¡¯re going to get carried away,¡± Ebony responded but Dusk could only manipulate gravity and not the load-bearing interiors at the moment.
He swatted them away as they clung onto him through his repulsion membrane. On a side note, they were getting hurt by his membrane even before they got hurt by his sonic repulsion.
¡®That wolf beastmen is in trouble. But that explosive burst of energy makes it feel like he¡¯s doing life-endangerment training. If I was doing that, I would hate to have that interrupted. I¡¯ll have to ask.¡¯
¡°Need help? Or having a good time and don¡¯t want me bothering you?¡±
¡°BOTH! WRAH!¡± The steaming 3-metre long wolf crunched and swiped but its size only facilitated more attacks and injuries piling up.
The beastman was running out of either mana or vitality as its physical transformation started to revert. He became smaller. His legs morphed back with his knees popping the other way around. He only kept the claws and the head with powerful-looking fangs.
Ebony took a step towards him and lightly stomped the ground with mana. It burst up around the beastman and froze all the ants in a small radius.
¡®I knew it, sealing magic gets a lot more experience on live targets. Unlike before, I should prioritise skill levelling and focus on doing more tests on what core development is. My best bet is that core refers to my essence, my soul and whatever links and binds my existence together. Whatever that may mean.¡¯
¡°I-I thought it was hopeless seeing you carry a greatsword but¡ell, you¡¯re one of those optimised hybrids. Which house?¡±
¡°Freelancer. You caught your breath fast. Why are you out here alone?¡±
¡°...berserk state, I charged out and now I¡¯m too exhausted to make my way back to the fortress.¡± For someone who ran on rage fuelled combat, he sounded rather calm and polite.
¡°Can¡¯t transform again?¡±
¡°Can barely stand up.¡±
¡°Can you make a proper landing?¡±
¡°...Are you about to launch me back with magic? Don¡¯t, I can¡¯t dodge friendly¡¯s spells in my current state and I can¡¯t manoeuvre in air.¡±
¡°So no launching¡three escorts should be enough.¡±
Ebony muttered to himself. In response, Dusk¡¯s door opened and Ebony was able to realise the real function of the inner room.
¡®It¡¯s generating Models there. That¡¯s indeed an Arsenal.¡¯
¡°Dusk, try not to make too many. It consumes Will and you don¡¯t have enough of that to split into Models. First priority, use it as a close-range defence for yourself. Second, people we care about. Third, friendly humanoids I registered. Fourth, neutral humanoids. Fifth, only if you have spare energy and Will, escort and nursing including sealing magic. I¡¯ll refresh your Will with this update when I¡¯m filled again.¡±
Dusk¡¯s leaves rustled and the Models stopped walking out after the third conjuration.
¡®Is there any difference with those I cast? Nope. That¡¯s nice, and a single Model consumes about 0.4% of the Will she currently has. I need to input a limit, can¡¯t have her create too much of these. The mana cost is fine but Models require Will.¡¯
¡°Bring him back to the closest fort. Same as usual, bite for bite. Oh, you can barely walk so just get on one of their backs I won¡¯t bother with their body temperature so just deal with the cold.¡±
Ebony ignored the confused face and continued freezing the Ants that charged into the small frozen lands. One of his Models tossed the weak beastman on its shoulders and Flickered away with two bodyguards. They were not that strong compared to his real body but they should be enough to make a trip. Their ability to make a return trip was questionable not because of the Ants since they could fly but because of the spells and physical shockwaves from people.
He lifted Dusk who was much lighter after the load-reduction renovations and shook her to get the frozen Ants off her bark before going deeper into the swarm. ¡®The math is telling me my mana regeneration is pathetically insufficient.¡¯
Chapter 306: Subspecies
¡°Sister Jing, there¡¯s so many silver ones. Which one do you want?¡± Ebony spoke aloud to no one. He was hours away by his speed. So far away from the bright, crowded fortress that the floor was no longer tiled.
The tiled floor was an amazing piece of magical architecture. It absorbed spells that landed on them and recharged the fortress¡¯s magical towers and structures. An unknown number of spells were being tossed about and the elemental residues and all aftereffects of elements were just a waste of mana.
The Granite Hall family¡¯s architecture would send a weak pulse of unique mana. If a mage responded the pulse would go away. If the tiled floor didn¡¯t get a response, it would get to work and break down all elements back to the basic pure mana. The inconsistent efficiency barely mattered when hundreds of thousands of spells landed on their tiles every second.
¡°Biggest and shiniest one but the more the merrier. Don¡¯t damage them! If I¡¯m not wrong they came from eating a planet filled with silvershim, a metallic plant. It¡¯s great for both alchemic potions and explosives along with toxic weapons. The shinier, the more concentrated the compounds in their bodies are. Tell me if you need backup, I won¡¯t send Xin over because she¡¯ll ruin the slivershim with heat.¡±
¡°Okay, I¡¯ll set up my experimental lab here too.¡± Ebony did not forget that he was here for statistical data.
¡®Certain Allochromes can resist freezing to a point where it¡¯s not mana-friendly for me. Silversonics are the best at breaking free from their frozen restraints and the type that sister Jing wants me to get is a variant of Silversonic Munchers. The Arcanite Cortex Formicidae are unfreezable unless I set them ablaze and even then, too much mana is consumed. Whatever, this isn¡¯t the data I¡¯m here for.¡¯
¡°Dusk, root yourself here.¡± He caressed his pet tree after placing it down on the dense earth. There were no people anywhere around him. Only a sea of Ants lined up and charged whenever there was space to move forward.
¡°Dusk, you can sense intent right?¡± His partner¡¯s leaves shiver and its packed flowers rebloomed over the next second. The prepared plums also resurfaced from their packed pillar form.
¡°Good girl. First priority: protect yourself at any costs, retaliate against any intent of harm. Override the ¡®protect humanoids¡¯ order when it comes to protecting yourself. Self-preservation comes first, even if Ning Xin attacks you but you can be more biassed if you want.¡± Ebony knew he was somewhat talking to himself but he didn¡¯t care. Dusk responded without his manual input which was enough for him to treat it as such.
¡°Your mana pool isn¡¯t even 0.1% filled at the moment so don¡¯t go crazy. After data gathering, I¡¯ll give you new information about energy efficiency. Probably something regarding your output depending on your mana pool and hopefully I can do something about your situational awareness.¡± Ebony had better use of his mana than fill up a power source that he had no idea of its capacity. Kong Jing¡¯s brain teaser was to calculate or estimate the total capacity of the power source.
The unfortunate news was that after the conversion done on ambient mana to mana that was equivalent to his, something that Dusk can do, the actual value was far less than that. Density wasn¡¯t an issue since all power sources condense mana, it was his mana¡¯s resilience and all the other properties that made his mana his.
Taking all that into account, every spell of his that Dusk tries to use with the backup mana from the power source consumes way more mana in numerical value. Way more.
Although he had an extremely talented crafter do him a favour and make the power source together with her set of runic skills and formula, he asked for capacity and only capacity. It allowed the craftswoman to go crazy with hyperspecialization when it came to runic formulas. Having a runic formula do one function extremely well always came with better results than making it do very well in multiple functions.
This made it such that the range that Dusk could absorb ambient mana dependent on the absorption runes on its scaled bark and the power source had no such capability. With his insistence on slamming more Purples as the core of the power source, the basic material of the power source itself already gave it the mana capacity over dozens of billions.
Ebony did not know how many compounding Fortifications the Xeng craftswoman had for runes and neither did he know how many compounding runic engraving or boosting skills she had. He didn¡¯t even know how complicated the runic formula could get when she had such a large sphere to work with. That was outside of her usage for spatial compression of runes.
Suffice it to say, he didn¡¯t need maths skills to tell that he didn¡¯t need to bother upgrading the power source anytime soon. Maybe not even in centuries if he could make it to that age without dying.
To increase the rate of charging it up, he could improve on his inscripted moulding and further optimise the formula.
¡°Alright alright, I won¡¯t get lengthy with you since I can refresh you tomorrow. Now just rest here while I finish Sister Jing¡¯s errand then you can play and I can collect data to optimise you.¡±
¡®It doesn¡¯t make any logical sense but the number of grandmasters seems to be equivalent to the number of King ranked ants. Not a single Master is present. Using that grade scale, the grandmasters are like grade 1 to 1.5 grandmasters. The Kings are around grade 1.5 to 2. Barely any difference other than an obvious increase in physical stats. None can use magic so far, the Arcanite Cortex can only absorb mana but not use it directly. I don¡¯t think any Grandmaster humans with a tier 1 skill in their main class exist so these are weak creatures indeed.¡¯
Ebony kicked down the wall of frozen Ants around Dusk and walked out but it didn¡¯t take long for the hole to be filled again. They didn¡¯t get far before getting sealed up. The Kings could break free but not before freezing up after taking a step or two forward. It was a massive skill experience. He also wanted to test how much he had to do at his current level to level up without killing monsters but that test would not be fruitful at the moment if ever.
They seem to register Dusk as an opponent despite it being a tree made of ice and that worked out rather well for him. ¡®Must be the vitality, mana or the mixture that makes them determine that Dusk¡¯s an organic living cre-I suppose she doesn¡¯t have to be living to be a target, many of these ants eat metal.¡¯
¡®I can collect data on myself first. Firstly, can I cast my domain even if Dusk exists?¡¯
Ebony expelled some of the compressed mana in him to summon a 3-metre radius domain.
¡®It worked, as long as I have Will I can cast a second separate domain. Interestingly, with Dusk in range, I have two spheres or semi-circles of heightened control. I can still override Dusk¡¯s motions but that would defeat the purpose of all the automation I imbued. Let¡¯s see how much it takes--¡¯ Ebony spread out his domain to a wider range before pulling all his mana back in a second.
¡®I knew it, too much. My previous calculations suck and the domain changed. My mana efficiency fortifications can¡¯t stack. If I only buff ice magic and ignore all other elements, then the mana cost would cut down accordingly but it also only translates to my ice mana efficiency which is increased by 300% which is a 4 times deduction in mana cost.
So technically ¡®full-powered¡¯ Arsenal of Will would cost 88,750 mana per minute or 1480 mana per second for a 5-meter radius. And that¡¯s uncompressed, I have terrible mana regeneration. Technically, I can half that cost if I¡¯m on the ground and don¡¯t activate it into the ground. But one thing is for sure, other domain mages would have unthinkably large mana capacities and even then, they likely can¡¯t maintain a domain for long. Of course, my version is inefficient at the moment so I can¡¯t say the same for other mages and their domain might not buff 4, or 5 types of magic but only 1 or 2.¡¯
Ebony was convinced, Domains were supposed to be like Dusk. Immobile or at least, something built over time. It wasn¡¯t supposed to be a spell to be cast at any time and place. He didn¡¯t know the static multiplier for other mages but his control over his elemental manas being 1000% or ten times more robust meant that it was ten times harder for other ice, gravity or sound mages to use these elements within his domain.
And sound to Ebony, was simply vibrations including those that came from physical impacts and movements. He hadn¡¯t received an impact hard enough to test what that meant for his defence but it meant Dusk was hardly afraid of physical impacts.
With Arsenal of Will Domain at level 604, he had a 3770% strengthening to all his magic. It worked differently compared to a direct increase in Intelligence but the difference in effect between the two was not distinct.
Mana cost of an area of effect spells followed the formula for volume. The skill description gave a value in terms of the cost for a sphere following the formula of 4/3*¦Ð*r^3. For full use of gravity magic, Dusk made use of the full sphere but cut the cost on all other magics underground. Ebony would likely use it as a hemisphere more often which helped a lot. In no world would he be able to cast his domain to his maximum range of 4km when just 5 metres was already so expensive.
Ebony pulled the Domain to cover right above his skin and buff his Augmentation, he also had no choice but to decompress his mana for the Domain to be sustainable. It was an Enhancement Mage¡¯s occupational sickness to use what they can to reinforce their body.
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¡®I can beat her for sure, regardless of how much energy she has or how good her current tier 4 enhancement is. Unless she now has another compounding enhancement that I¡¯m not aware of but even then, I have the advantage.¡¯ Ebony got too caught up.
After he drew Icicle and made a lunging horizontal sweep at the shiny munchers that kept biting at him, he knelt on the floor with a hand supporting him.
¡®Oh this is bad, the dissonance knocked me out awhile there.¡¯ Unbelievably, he sustained a mental injury.
Ebony had the physical tolerance for the augmentation, they were all augmented proportionally. He simply moved so fast and violently that his mind, Tranquility or not, was knocked out.
¡®Firstly, Endurance and next Intelligence. My brain can¡¯t keep up and both my Core Skills and Wisdom aren¡¯t enough to protect me anymore. What¡¯s this noise? Notifications. Oh¡¡¯ Ebony dialled his Augmentation down and looked up to see a few silent silver Ants surrounding him.
¡°I¡¯m not trying to defend myself but they were unintended casualties. I mean¡I would be lying if I said I wasn¡¯t here to take some of your lives away.¡± Ebony clean sweep had left a cone-shaped trail of frozen bodies cut in two for a long way forward.
¡°**** ***¡± The 3-metre tall and 4-meter-long silver ant chirped.
¡°You can speak. Great. I think that¡¯s Gia, sorry, I haven¡¯t picked it up.¡± Ebony Flickered away from the coordinated munching from multiple sets of mandibles. He blocked the mandibles that closed halfway when he flickered back into view.
¡®Okay, now we¡¯re talking. If the Kings are grade 2, these Emperors are 3.5 or 4 in terms of physical stats. A big jump indeed. They mean real business.¡¯
Tier 2 skills were more than twice as strong as tier 1. Tier 3 was another doubling excluding base refinements and so on. A grade up was more than a doubling in a rough gauge of power. Together with an obvious increase in size, difference in appearance that indicated Physique mutations and the massive increment to stats due to level difference, he could see why the Emperors were considered kin. Unlike the others, they didn¡¯t attack anything in sight wantonly but the difference was hard to spot as they could treat most as prey.
Icicle that was stabbed in the ground to guard against the mandible cut through the earth while Ebony''s scaled robe-protected arm remained stationary.
¡®Maybe around level 350 Apex Ape in physical output. I haven¡¯t fought the Grandmaster Apex Apes to know for sure. Some kind of poison or contamination. I can¡¯t remove it from Icicle and I need to dislodge a scale to stop the spread.¡¯ Ebony kneed the jaw and sent the mandibles swiping up.
¡°Do you ants have jaws?¡± He curiously asked.
¡°***** ********** ****¡± The 9 of his bullies responded.
It took half a second before Ebony realised similar vibrations were being made repeatedly.
¡°Sister Jing, can you translate?¡± He recalled that he had an observer and translator watching him.
¡°They said ¡®Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. Massive tribute for our queen. Mega delicious treat. Must pay tribute.¡¯ something along those lines, with more repetition. I agree, when I went hunting for natural treasures, your essence signature told me the same thing. Eating one of you might evolve their physique. Not to mention, they can let you regenerate and farm your body parts. They are very good at creating flesh farms for their race¡¯s sustenance requirements.¡± It took some time before the space mage¡¯s voice was transmitted near his ears. He could tell she was having fun reenacting the tone of voice of a little girl.
Ebony unsheathed Icicle and tried Ethereal Form Art''s effectiveness on giant ants. Sonic Intrusion was now Fortified but it was still a little lacking when it came to injuring Kings and Emperors alike, no matter how weak they were.
¡°Oh by the way, that''s what their lesser kins have been saying with their pheromones but they just think you¡¯re for them not tribute for their queen. The good news is that they are saying the same thing for almost everything and everyone here so you¡¯re not a high-priority target yet and they won¡¯t bother telling their queen, I bet they can¡¯t even turn back to send news back.¡±
He wasn¡¯t even going to ask how she translated the pheromone language.
¡°You don¡¯t have to tell me that. Ants and trolls, I¡¯m trying to get into a dilemma to find out what kind of person I am but you are really making it difficult for me.¡±
¡°HAHAHA! Stop thinking, survival of the fittest that¡¯s all we know, isn¡¯t it? Hunt and eat, I¡¯ll make use of everything else. If they turn back then whatever, but they¡¯re not so stop wasting our time here. Enough contemplating on nonsense.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not the point. I was thinking of making the most of them. They are an invasive species, elimination is only natural.¡±
¡°Oh? You weren¡¯t holding back on killing them? I thought you suddenly had an issue with killing monsters and people alike.¡±
¡°I never had that problem, monsters are no different from people. If they want me dead they are asking for the same treatment from me, that¡¯s common sense I¡¯ve learnt before I learnt to run. The problem is that I¡¯m actively looking for them, if I didn¡¯t find hungry animals I wouldn¡¯t be in their crosshair and they wouldn¡¯t have been mine. Anyway, let¡¯s talk after I gather more data on them. I¡¯m checking if it''s viable.¡±
¡°I thought you became soft. Luckily you haven¡¯t gone down that hole. Oh, silvershim causes stamina regeneration to take a dip and also causes hallucination. The big boys have multiple mutations that I assume are survivors that have been through more than one planet so I¡¯m not sure what their effects are. Don¡¯t get hit.¡±
¡°A bit late for that, my fists are already coated in them.¡± He wanted to ask her to keep quiet but he realised he wasn¡¯t too distracted by the talking and the use of a weakened skin-layer Domain Augmented him to heights he¡¯d never reached. So much so that even Ethereal Form Arts had trouble using his strength and speed properly.
¡°I thought you don¡¯t touch things past your repulsion.¡±
¡°I¡¯m hitting harder and faster than my repulsion can push them away. It¡¯s usually the other way around so this is new.¡± Ebony quickly Flicker away again but he stepped between another pair of mandibles. ¡®This is the fourth time, they know where I¡¯m going to end up. Precognition is said to be more common in insect-type monsters compared to other races and this is what it¡¯s like when an insect race reaches such levels?¡¯
¡°...your sword, it broke when you swung it earlier didn¡¯t it?¡± The space mage noticed why he sheathed Icicle.
¡°Just a crack, it¡¯ll regrow in a minute.¡± He was playing it down, it burned from friction but cooled down almost as soon as a fire started. Since he swung it without magic it didn¡¯t have any freezing flames warding friction and heat.
¡°That fast?¡±
¡°Benefits of growing on my mana. But it hit the ceiling a while back. It hasn¡¯t been growing any more resilient or hard.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll take a look at her later.¡±
¡®They are still faster than me, considering my mind can¡¯t even keep up with my top speed I have to use a diluted Arsenal to strengthen Woven Frostblaze Augmentation, Tempestuous Repulsive Membrane, Sonic Intrusion, Firm Path, Tremor Stomp, Stalwart Foundation for my close range capabilities. Indirectly buffing Fluid Blitz and Ethereal Form Arts ties all of them into one martial fighting style. I¡¯m surprised Ethereal Form Arts didn¡¯t swallow Tremor Stomp up. It feels like my mana is moving too slowly in my body for it to show its full effects. I need a greater Intelligence stat¡oh, my muscles are tearing faster than I can regenerate and reconnect, I need to dilute it more.---Now my bones are freezing to brittleness faster than I can warm them up with vibrations. More dilution.¡¯ Ebony needed this chance to test out his full capabilities.
He was well aware that the duelling grounds in the Quest Halls might not necessarily be built to withstand him. Much less overwhelm Madam Wilcox, he didn¡¯t even use Woven Frostblaze Augmentation to the point where cold flames ignited over his skin.
¡®Their precognition beats my prediction making Ethereal Form Arts a bad match up against them but this means there are still problems to iron out to make me Formless like mother¡¯s spearmanship. Right, there should not be any active skills in mother¡¯s arts. Should I try to ditch or incorporate Tremor Stomp into Ethereal Form Arts? But that would mean Stalactite Sunder is also one of the skills I need to tear down or modify.¡¯
Ebony tried his strengthened control for Frigid Distorted Refraction but it did not help at all. Whatever senses the Ants used, sight was not what they depended on.
¡®I got over excited by the numbers again. I¡¯m completely out of balance. Arsenal of Will and Ethereal Form Arts make me too strong, I can¡¯t use both to their full potential. Fine-- silvershim is getting into my system, I¡¯ll forget about Domain¡¯s buff and focus on levelling Ethereal for now.¡¯
Ebony Flickered into the air, it was a little dimmer here because he was away from the indoor sports hall-looking battlefield. He caught his breath, feeling a little bad about the cheating. These Ants can¡¯t fly even at the ranks of an Emperor but they weren¡¯t fully out of options. They could jump and with enough of them jumping, they could fill up the entire airspace without anywhere for him to dodge.
¡®Okay, silvershim¡¯s stamina drain is kinda crazy. It even deals muscular damage that makes stamina recovery even harder. That would take away my ability to fight on for weeks. It could drop to days at the rate I¡¯m getting poisoned. Freezing is not affecting it and sonic attacks aren¡¯t removing them either. No hallucinations though.¡¯ Ebony bumped up the mutated Silversonic Munchers'' threat level up, putting them under the Apex Apes and Jetfins'' estimated potential threat in water and above the Jetfins in the air.
¡°Is that not enough to catch them?¡± Ebony spoke out loud to himself while pointing at the Ants with frozen legs, mandibles and feelers.
¡°It is, but you looked like you were beginning to have fun. You know I can just eat them up into my mask without you beating them into submission don¡¯t you?¡±
¡°...You can teleport all of them away huh.¡± As much as he¡¯d like to complain about the needless work, he got the part of the data he was here for.
¡°Teleport is always the wrong choice of word. Elementary my dear brother. Oh well, I just built an anthill for them in my wor--mask. They will surely like it, a little bit of training and they¡¯ll be producing silvershim for me in no time.¡±
Ebony thought he grew fast but Kong Jing¡¯s exponential increase in spatial magic fluency was off the charts. He watched as tens if not hundreds of thousands of ants fell weightlessly into a deep, dark --nowhere. He couldn¡¯t see where they fell but the rectangular block of darkness swept through the barren underground and swallowed every landbound creature except the earth itself.
¡®Calculation results¡not strong enough to guarantee a wife.¡¯ Ebony did not get dejected and took Dusk back. It could lift itself off the ground with the load reduction modifications and gravity manipulation but the mana cost was not friendly.
Chapter 307: Automation
¡°This area will do.¡± Ebony had some help from his unseen spectator to find a different spot. Even his spectator couldn¡¯t see where the portals were but there was a rather obvious split in subspecies until a certain distance where they started to mix.
All the Tetramyths did without any targets around was stand still, like him but their feelers twitched more often than he moved in still meditation. To be fair, they were constantly walking or running forward because of how many of their kind they had to replace at the front every second. Ebony wondered if the ants knew maths. They must have, to determine that this death count was worth whatever they were doing.
¡°Stop. You¡¯ve been summoned for dinner.¡±
¡°...That¡¯s too bad. Are you all at the fortress?¡± Ebony replanted Dusk and patted her. His spectator commented that Ants exposed to his mana were less hungry and aggressive. They stayed still for a fraction longer before deciding he was food. A sign that his Fortification did make those exposed to his mana calm down.
¡°Yes, come back within twenty minutes. 133 km west for fewer spells and arrows flying around. A couple hundred more if you''re coming back directly.¡±
¡°Great, you¡¯ve come around and used the metric system. That¡¯s enough time to park Dusk here, I¡¯ll polish up some new instructions and she¡¯ll tell me the data I want after dinner.¡± Ebony nodded at his successful brainwashing about the superiority of the metric system.
¡°Don¡¯t get too engrossed in your toys and make her whatcha call it? Hangry? I can hear her belly grumble if that means anything to you.¡±
¡°Grumble? That¡¯s bad news but I guess she must have had a good workout.¡± He repelled the frozen ants away and cleared up space around Dusk.
¡°Hey, push the pillows to the side and freeze them behind a wall, don''t get them dirty.¡± Ebony was right at the end of the tiled floor, he didn¡¯t want any interference even if Dusk wouldn¡¯t be consumed. He aimed the door away from the Empire¡¯s fortress and let it open again.
¡°Not more than 5 Models, I¡¯ll create a few more for you but don¡¯t use your stock of Will. You¡¯re entirely created of compressed mana and you don¡¯t have the limitations of a weak body. You won¡¯t feel any mental dissonance either. You should be indestructible, I¡¯ve tested. Coagulated Mana Repository or mana density in general is multiplicative even with Domains. So on top of Arsenal of Will¡¯s multiplier, you have 6550% from my mana density on top of my Fortifications.¡± The Arcanite Cortex Formicidae broke through the wall of frozen ants that built up and slowed down from the increased weight on their legs.
Ebony had never hit Dusk but he had a feeling that nothing he did could put a scratch on his baby. As long as his calculations weren¡¯t wrong, Dusk easily had 2470 times the effect of strengthening on top of his Intelligence and 2470 was not in percentage, that would be 247,000%. However, he was wrong about these percentages many times before due to his misunderstanding of how effects stack.
Like how he used to estimate his speed. He assumed speed was directly proportional to Agility and thought he was a lot faster than he actually was. ¡®Ah the good naive days.¡¯
Dusk¡¯s leaves rustled and a root shot to wrap his ankle when he was done imbuing the tests that he wanted her to conduct.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, even if you can¡¯t hurt them they can¡¯t hurt you either. I won¡¯t be away for long and only a few hours'' journey away. Play the piano if you want to call me, even if I¡¯m out of range or can¡¯t hear you over the explosions Sister Jing should be able to hear it.¡± The tree didn¡¯t loosen up that much but he was able to feel his blood flow to his feet again.
¡®Hmm, this is my Will so¡am I that clingy?¡¯
¡°We¡¯ll eat dinner here next time, I¡¯ll bring it up later. Thank you, now be good and get to work. Remember not to drop those plums, we haven¡¯t filled it up with any fire yet.¡±
Ebony had ten minutes to cover the distance that had taken him a couple of hours before so he had to use his optimised Arsenal to push his Augmentation and Firm Path. Using such a strong version of the repulsion tunnel that was technically a cannon made it a lot harder for him to put a stop to his speed so he estimated a safe distance for him to slow down.
He just so happened to Flicker into the path of a lance-sized arrow. Fortunately, it swerved to the side thanks to his repulsion membrane. His mind was not fast enough to cast a spell that could match these projectile speeds.
¡®The fortress is larger than Fifth Tide¡¯s city. Where would they be?¡¯
¡°Sister Jing, guide me.¡± Ebony tried to make use of the lighting but the constant fire blast here and explosion there made it hard on the eyes when one was in the air. As for mana or vibrational sense, that was even more of a mess.
¡®That¡¯s Hector. He¡¯s about to---now that¡¯s a black beam of annihilation. Quite a punch. Is that still a mega panch or did he change it? I want to call it impressive but the tiled floor just absorbs that thing. 6 elements compacted into a ball and punched out like a laser beam, always cool to see.¡¯ Ebony was certain that he couldn''t cast anything half as destructive when he was a Master.
He also suspected the presence of more than 6 elements. There was no saying that Hector only had control over 6 elements.
Ebony waved over but Hector was a little too busy to spot him. And too far.
¡°You know you could just ask me to get you here?¡±
¡°I know.¡± He wanted to Mental Map out the surroundings.
¡°I doubt it, stop using mana then I¡¯ll get you over.¡± It was easier for the space mage to exert any form of control or effects onto his body when he wasn¡¯t bathing himself in it.
Barely a moment later, he was flying above the fortress. There was no barrier activated and Ants were kept far from the walls. Navin was somewhere in the fortress city. He should be.
The Noble-led armies and soldiers were organised. They circled the fortress city and had a rotation going on.
Some didn¡¯t look like they were part of the army amongst the knights but not many. Most unrelated people fought further away from the army. They didn¡¯t want to get taken in as collateral damage from one of the Army¡¯s barrages.
¡°Outside?¡±
¡°I can¡¯t bring you in, we have to walk in.¡±
Ebony walked through the open gates. It was triple-gated with the first gate fully opened for large mechanical machinery. Dwarven weapons such as cannons and even something similar with a cart mounted with gatling guns. At least, that was what they looked like. Smaller doors were installed on the other two gates that required them to write down their entry record.
He simply put himself as a freelancer with the Quester crystal that was kept somewhere on him while Kong Jing put herself as ¡®Null Horizon¡¯ and used her aura as an identification. He also had to inject his mana into a crystal orb to register his entry.
¡®This is for Navin¡¯s barrier effects to work on us. Oops, I guess that means he can curse anyone within the fort. Or within Tidal. I¡¯m going to assume Navin¡¯s curses are stronger than Koawe just because Koawe, like all Elves, is taking their own sweet time and sitting at Grandmaster.¡¯ Ebony felt his poisoned hands getting healed by foreign mana a moment after he registered his mana.
¡°Is Silvershim a poison, I didn¡¯t get any resistance even though it¡¯s strong.¡± Without the capability of spatial movement, they took a speedy walk through the streets with outdoor repair smiths and cooks.
¡®Oh hey, I can put a model here to repair and train Inscripted.¡¯ Ebony did not have the time or desire to personally sit here to train his repair and forging skills. He conjured an invisible Model and made it only capable of repair and runic work together with defensive and sealing skills. It was also capable of speaking a few preprogrammed sentences to explain its limited capabilities and that he was not a proper smith.
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He charged ten spheres of ice that contained mana as its battery for runic inscription and overriding an equipment¡¯s imbued energy and let it go. It walked away and tried to find an open spot.
¡°Silvershim has self-regenerative properties and it¡¯s also a silver and mental element ingredient, it¡¯s always harder to build natural resistance against multi-element poisons.¡± Kong Jing explained while eyeing the ant parts being passed around amongst the smiths.
¡°Mental is an element?¡±
¡°We just call it that, you can build mental resistance after all.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t have that.¡±
¡°Neither do I or little Xin. We have strong genes, not much gets past our base resistance so we can¡¯t build it up any stronger. Then there are our masks, providing first and foremost, soul protection, then mind and the weakest of them all, physical protection.¡±
They didn¡¯t go into any fancy building. The space mage led him to a large canopy tent where the chef was barbecuing ant legs and boiling a head with root vegetables in her portable kitchen. It was no surprise, they were hunters and eating their hunt was the greatest respect to life that they could give.
¡®Smells like shellfish, its shell is getting red like prawns or scorpions.¡¯
¡°They were so weak you didn¡¯t need fire magic?¡± Ebony asked while stealing a bite of sliced meat. He swallowed it down after realising it hadn''t been seasoned.
¡°Not all, I left this bunch for eating. The ones with charred flesh and exoskeletons are with Sister Jing.¡±
¡°I needed compost and fertiliser, they can be used in potions too so the charring is no issue. The ones turned to ashes can¡¯t be used though.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t waste that much, I adjusted my output.¡±
Ebony¡¯s fists were healed but he did a thorough washing before he helped set the table.
¡®Ting¡¯
He silenced the bell ring before it told him anything. It was time for dinner.
¡°Needs to be more heavily seasoned.¡± Ning Xin wasn¡¯t in combat mode with her black hair tied up into a ponytail. She wasn¡¯t even wearing her mantle or bodysuit and only had her scale jacket under her clothes. She could summon her suit onto herself within a fraction of a second.
¡°Maybe you should keep your suit on,¡± Ebony suggested after noticing how many eyes were on her. They were in an open area with many such cooks, outdoor drinking bars and eateries. Her demanding presence aside, her figure wasn¡¯t hidden without her suit and it added up to her attracting a lot of attention.
To be fair, the majority of the women within his mana perception were attracting attention. He understood, they were much better to look at compared to sweaty stinky, caked-up with blood men.
¡°There¡¯s no danger.¡± She lifted her trusty wok to the table and poured its contents onto the serving plate.
¡°There are strong people here. I saw who I assumed the Dwarven Archduke was. We can probably beat him or at least, he can¡¯t harm us. Didn¡¯t see any Elves in my direction. On second thoughts, he might not have been the Archduke and just some Dwarven Noble.¡± Ebony shifted the serving dish aside for the large pot of stew.
¡°You¡¯re not making a strong point. I saw the Elves, they can move around individually like us. Strong. Not just the Archduke or Archduchess, I might not beat some of the other Nobility. A lot of Kings and practically all with peak or maxed fortifications.¡± From the oven came stuffed peppers, baked potatoes and Ant casserole. Cooked ant flesh looked like crab meat.
¡°Navin¡¯s Lord family is here too, if their growth progression is anything like Hector Mallory then they could be dangerous.¡± Ebony saw a few barrier mages in passing but he didn¡¯t stay long enough to observe their skillset. Ning Xin turned the flames up to complete a stir fry, the last dish of the meal.
¡°The beastmen would be the least of our worries. They are just better warriors than humans but that¡¯s all. The Foxes could use illusion magic but I think they¡¯re nothing special.¡± Ebony estimated that she wouldn¡¯t take long and scooped up fluffy white rice for 3 while she talked the beastmen down.
Hector was busy and Wilson was missing in action. Actually, they were missing in action while the old man was probably in action.
¡°Freelancers?¡± Ebony wiped his hands and pulled the seat for the chef.
¡®Ting¡¯
¡®Again? Dusk is working hard.¡¯ Ebony had to manually silence the mental bell as it wasn¡¯t muted when he wasn¡¯t in mortal danger.
¡°Haven¡¯t seen anyone noteworthy. You?¡± She plated the last dish, to add variety it was chicken stir fry with mushrooms. Another round of handwashing later, she took her seat with thanks.
¡°I didn¡¯t see any either.¡±
¡°Can we eat? I need to replenish sustenance for the mental workout.¡± The third wheel hurried.
¡°Taste like crustaceans, more crab-like than prawn.¡± Ebony took a chunky bite of the stuffed peppers.
¡°Their flesh and muscle tissues remind me of them too so I used similar preparation techniques. It¡¯s a bit too metal-ly, I wasn¡¯t about to remove them completely.¡± The chef started from the soup.
¡°It¡¯s not that bad. But I don¡¯t think multiple types should be mixed in a soup. They are too different in metal content.¡± He got to the soup.
¡°I disagree. Their distinct metal taste can be used to enhance each other with the right spices.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t you two, I don¡¯t know, talk about normal things during meal times?¡±
¡°We¡¯re talking about food while eating. This is as normal as normal can be. Okay, but what spices are you going to use?¡±
¡°Like you, I experiment.¡±
They didn¡¯t leave the crafter out when the conversation tipped towards methods of removing high metal concentration from the flesh. The chef wasn¡¯t disheartened by the fact that it was almost impossible to separate them for the higher quality flesh from Kings with purely physical or mundane cooking techniques.
It required alchemic solutions and even then, they needed to be catered to the individual Ant. On the bright side, there were usually cooking equivalent ingredients and techniques that paralleled alchemy when it came to dealing with organic ingredients.
The obvious solution that Kong Jing came up with is to make a personal blend of herbs and spices catered to every type of monster or flesh type.
¡®Ting¡¯
¡°Put out the sound silencing.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t read minds can you?¡±
¡°What? No, I want to ask for more ant flesh and for opinions while I experiment. Sister Jing can you make me an oven that can withstand higher temperatures? The ant flesh in the casserole was undercooked. My oven was about to melt before the meat even changed colour.¡±
¡°Certainly my dear little Xin. Coincidentally, we¡¯re so deep in there¡¯s Epic-ranked Deepearth all around us. It¡¯s surprisingly cool for somewhere so deep, the Granite Halls know their stuff.¡± Kong Jing gave a rare praise for something that wasn''t made by her.
¡°Gravity is different outside the tiled area so be careful when you shift out. About 8 times but it varies quite a lot, some areas were only 2 times stronger.¡±
¡°It¡¯s okay, I¡¯m used to fighting in gravity shifts thanks to you. Are they constant?¡±
¡°Constant in different spaces so only location matters but I haven¡¯t checked it over time so I¡¯m not sure if it shifts at different times.¡±
¡°It does, slowly. As in megaannum slow. Different kinds of natural resources are affecting gravity but thanks to their uniqueness, it¡¯s hard to tell if stronger or weaker gravity means good stuff buried there. Pro tip if you¡¯re in the wilds and there¡¯s a drastically different gravity strength chances are, there''s something good buried around that area. Unless it¡¯s artificially regulated gravity by a spell or construction. ¡±
¡°What¡¯s mag-anum?¡± The chef was back to a semi-combat state as her body temperature rose, she sanitized her hands and wore her apron and sanitized them again.
¡°Megaannum, a million years. You¡¯re not going back to hunting?¡± He assumed her combat state was her hunger for combat kicking her physical hunger down.
¡°Of course not, I overused mana so I have a little headache and I need to fill up. Right, don¡¯t hide your mana from me. The mana regeneration boost I¡¯m getting from your essence is substantial.¡±
¡°I suppose you¡¯re practising cooking while you¡¯re recovering mana. I can stay and help for some time, maybe be your personal scribe for recipes and notes.¡± Ebony extended his overflowing essence to her.
¡°That¡¯s great now put the sound barrier down.¡±
¡°Anyone hungry bring me ingredients, I¡¯ll be cooking. No guarantee of taste. I¡¯m going to need a bigger stove.¡± The chef didn¡¯t need him to be her personal amplifier to spread her voice out.
¡®She wanted to open a restaurant didn¡¯t she? Let¡¯s use this as training, I¡¯ll give her a few waiters it shouldn¡¯t take much Will to make Models that can¡¯t fight. I bet sister Jing has tables and utensils sitting around somewhere.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯
¡®Oh keep quiet you. Dusk is working hard, that¡¯s the eighth skill level up for Frostweave Vital Constriction since dinner started.¡¯ Ebony nodded to the fact that range doesn¡¯t matter and he was receiving experience from his spell and pet tree.
Chapter 308: Harvesting
There were few complaints from the public, be they smiths or other fighters. Plenty of Ant flesh was being circulated and they didn¡¯t mind sharing spices or seasonings if it meant a proper chef was cooking for them. Of the many professions that came down here, it was rarer to find a chef.
Ning Xin might not be the best chef around but not everyone has access to decent food in the current situation.
Ebony had Kong Jing¡¯s help to ¡®summon¡¯ a bunch of tables and chairs. They didn¡¯t provide utensils. Like an outdoor camp, he had a couple of ice sculpture servers that scooped soup and all the other dishes onto other people''s bowls that they brought themselves. It wasn¡¯t exactly restaurant-like but that was hard to do with hundreds of people and counting. The scent of food was attracting hungry packs of combatants.
Another group of Models were handling ingredient donations and checking for food spoilage or contamination before carrying them over to the 2 combined canopy tent makeshift kitchen.
¡®Her mana¡¯s about half full, I should go check on Dusk now. I¡¯ll spend another minute coding a Model that can scribe her recipes and personal notes with some bodyguard capabilities. Oddly, Will has exactly ten times the range of my mana¡¯s reach. Glacial Model is the only skill that increases Will¡¯s range but it¡¯s always relative to my mana sense¡¯s range. Range is going to be useful for controlling mini-mes and Dusk which, not surprisingly has the range boost effect from the Glacial Model skill, I should try to refine that since taking a Fortification for range doesn¡¯t seem worthwhile.¡¯ Ebony said goodbye and made sure that Ning Xin was disturbed out of her ¡®zone¡¯ while mumbling cooking jargon.
¡°Sister Jing, watch after her. There might be troublemakers.¡± Ebony already had to deal with combatants yelling and getting physical with smiths and enchanters that ¡®shamelessly¡¯ sat to eat when they didn¡¯t give any ingredients or seasonings.
However, he was a little surprised that his mana¡¯s soothing effect was as strong as it was. As long as he diluted it to a hundredth of his maximum density, people wouldn¡¯t be alarmed by his mana. There was too much essence about and they wouldn¡¯t be alarmed even if only diluted it to a fiftieth of max density. Even then, it was good enough to reduce people''s tendency to get violent or agitated noticeably.
¡°Huh, oh. Of course.¡± The craftswoman stared into space for another moment before she acknowledged his words.
¡°You¡¯ve been zoning out the entire time.¡±
¡°I¡¯m dealing with the Silvershim and Arcanite Wraithsteel Ants. Getting them to settle down is more trouble than I expected. I¡¯m out of space so don¡¯t expect me to do the same thing again. Just shout for help if you¡¯re dying or whenever you plan to share that idea of yours with me.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t question her about her personal ¡®space.¡¯ He didn¡¯t see the Wraithsteel variants so he didn¡¯t know what about them attracted Kong Jing¡¯s attention.
¡°Yes, I¡¯ll go consolidate the data Dusk got and I¡¯ll ask you if it''s feasible if it¡¯s feasible on my end.¡± Ebony dropped a whisper to the chef telling her he was going to get to work before he walked through the eatery and was about to pass by the last table.
¡°Stop there ice mage.¡± A 2.2 metre tall Elf stepped through the crowd eating ant leg skewers. The man looked similar to the Frost Elves. Androgynous with long hair but sharper ears and with pale white skin instead of bluish. He had luscious blond-green hair and a constant frown while patting his robe off the physical contact he just received by pushing through the chatty crowd lining up for a seat.
¡°Walk. I¡¯ll listen.¡± Ebony did not slow his steps down, if someone wanted to tell him something they should follow his schedule.
¡°I told you to stop!¡±
Ebony sensed a foreign mana near his legs and glanced down. ¡®The tiles here prevent casting so he¡¯s conjuring wooden roots instead of manipulating existing trees. Not that there are any tree roots under this. Surely casting magic on a stranger with a single sentence is not normal. But he¡¯s good, he¡¯s casting less than a metre away from my body. Better than Village Chief Orren but Orren is only a Master.¡¯
He let the roots entangle him but his gait and momentum moved on uninterrupted, tearing the roots that wrapped around his ankles in the next second.
¡°Follow if you have something to say. I have places to be.¡± He mentally tilted his head when his mana sense saw the Elf stumble on nothing when he pulled on the roots. ¡®His mind-body connection is so strong that his spell moving is enough to make him stumble? I suppose there are both advantages and disadvantages to that.¡¯
Ebony recognised that Elves were less affected by foreign mana so he didn¡¯t hold back with his overflowing essence on the stranger. It would be nice to check what effects his soothing mana was like at normal density and volume.
¡°Insolent bugger, so you¡¯re one of those hybrid warriors. And here I thought I would be speaking with a respectable human mage for once. I told you to stop, do you know who I am?¡± A wooden prison spawned and caged him, blocking light out.
¡°No.¡± Ebony began to let his compressed mana leak out a little since it was interesting to see how much it would take for Elf¡¯s to be affected and what would constitute ¡®soothing¡¯. So far, getting people to calm down and increase their mana regeneration seemed to be the two most obvious effects. It also worked in tandem with his Will¡¯s increase in compulsion.
When he had the thought of calming someone else down and extended his Will-filled mana to them, it strengthened the effects of his mana based on his will.
The wooden onion-bulb-shaped prison bent out and burst open as he kept his gait constant. However, he needed Arsenal of Will to help him walk out and had his gravity repulsion push a hole open for him to continue walking at the same pace.
This was a first for him, his gravity magic was comparatively weak against opponents of the same level. Even without skill evolutions, a simple domain was enough to overpower a casual spell by an Elf.
¡®I¡¯m not in a rush to check on Dusk, should I ask him for a spar? He seems like he won¡¯t have an issue getting serious. I thought Elves were supposed to be less prone to violence. Maybe it''s just this particular person.¡¯
¡°Is that all?¡± Ebony realised that it was not every day that he got to spar with an Elven mage. Now that he had a better hang of a real Domain, he wanted to know what would happen if he were within another person¡¯s Domain. Could he still summon his? Are both mage¡¯s Domains weakened? Are both Domains in full effect?
¡®Wrong tone, this sounds like I¡¯m picking a fight. Hmm,that is indeed the case here. Nothing wrong then.¡¯ Ebony came to a stop and turned. ¡°Actually, my schedule just freed up. Hit me.¡±
¡°Wh?¡±
¡°Hurry up, I¡¯m worried about my pet tree. Hit me.¡± Ebony was notified of Arsenal of Will Domain¡¯s first level-up. Less than 4 hours for a level in a skill over 600 was a lot better than the 8 levels in a level 450ish skill.
¡°Tch, not just a hybrid but a brain-dead lunat-¡± The Elf violently plummeted to the ground. Biting his tongue, he almost sliced his tongue short.
¡®Let¡¯s see¡level 412. But unlike Orren and his party, this guy is on a battlefield not a safe village so he might not be as old. He can¡¯t stand within my Arsenal of Will strengthened magnified gravity? Right, they don¡¯t have good body enhancement magic but they have a good passive that strengthens their body with the mana in the body. Like me, just less connected. Wasted a few seconds, why be violent if he¡¯s so weak? I don¡¯t understand.
How long can I keep him here if I walk away? The further I go, the more mana costly. Hmm, if Will is all that¡¯s needed and I can cast a second Domain with both me and Dusk existing at the same time, can¡¯t I cast a third? I¡¯ll imbue a tiny amount of Will in a ball of ice, making it only capable of slowing things down with ice, vibrations, gravity and sealing¡no that doesn¡¯t work, a ball of ice can¡¯t act as a core, I know that already. Never mind then, I don¡¯t have that much Will to spare to create another tree.¡¯
¡°Okay okay, I get it Dusk. I¡¯m coming already no need to rush me with another skill level.¡± Ebony smiled and left the Elf who didn¡¯t want to cut to the chase alone.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Once he got pass all the gates, he Flickered away to find Dusk.
¡®I should have expected this.¡¯ Ebony did not find a tree where he should have. He found a dome of frozen ant bodies. Three of his Models were pushing out frozen bodies and launching them into the distance but they did not have a program as to how hard they should toss bodies away and they were practically launching cannon balls that shatter on impact into the distance.
The gap that opens up is constantly refilled but the Ants never got far.
¡®They should be intelligent right? I don¡¯t see that. Maybe because no Emperors are directing them. They are quite attracted to Dusk but not any more than any moving object at the moment. It¡¯s hard to tell if they see Dusk as a living creature thanks to my vitality, mana, Will or all of the above.¡¯ Ebony realised that he was the stupid one, the ants recognised Dusk as a threat and were trying to remove her.
¡®Dusk is thinner? She lost 2 layers of scaled bark¡that¡¯s a lot of mana loss. The mana requirement is too high. There are so many Kings here. Strong enough to break through the lousy sealing till 30 metres away from Dusk. So she¡¯s farming them for sealing magic levels since they keep breaking free.¡¯ The outer layer occupied more surface area than the inner, losing 2 layers of bark was an immense mana cost. Days of mana regeneration since they were all fully compressed.
Since he regenerated roughly 3.5 million points over mana in an hour and a little under 100 million points of mana in a 28-hour day. The outer 2 layers of bark were roughly equivalent to more than half a billion points of his mana. Dusk was his best mana capacity skill. As long as he could carry around a 15-metre tall and 8-metre wide tree.
It also meant the battery within Dusk was already empty. Ebony needed to optimise Dusk¡¯s mana usage. She might be using too much power for trivial things.
Ebony walked past the bear-sized Ant that broke free only to be encased in ice when a burning petal fell on its head the next moment. Dusk had vomited the piano back out for him and he took a seat.
¡°Alright, give me the data.¡± Ebony reached forward and touched Dusk¡¯s bark to retrieve the vibrational and gravitational data. It was how Dusk contained memory just like his Models. It had Calculated Hunch and could do the math as well.
He didn¡¯t leave Dusk alone for long but he took a few minutes to analyse the data he received.
¡®It can work, they regenerate mana.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t bother with the piano and stood up.
¡°Sister Jing.¡± He let his voice out of Dusk¡¯s control.
¡°I¡¯m listening.¡± It took a second before she replied.
¡°You can make anything right?¡±
¡°If I know the logic of its construct.¡±
¡°You should be familiar with what I want made.¡±
¡°What is it? I¡¯m kinda busy.¡±
¡°Can you come here? I want to seal out the sound.¡±
¡°Haa, troublesome little brother. I told you I¡¯m busy. Oh, so this is the effect of your Domain? Interesting, I still don¡¯t understand how you can use this Will thing. It¡¯s impressive.¡± Kong Jing¡¯s feet came in and were shifted back in his view but it was her spatial compression that was hindered. The space mage was only about to come about a hundred metres away from Dusk. She might not be using her full magical strength but that was a win in his books.
Dusk was maintaining a 150-metre radius domain, with the strength of the domain weakening the further away it was from her main body. It was far more mana-efficient this way.
The tree recognised who he recognised as friendlies and didn¡¯t exert pressure or aggression against the space mage.
¡°Alright speak, this better be interesting. I¡¯m preparing to evolve you know.¡±
Ebony had Dusk strengthen the vibrational stabilisation so his voice didn¡¯t escape then he stated what he wanted.
¡°HAHAHAHA, you¡¯re crazy. Yes, I can do that. But you¡¯re asking for a God to smite you. Use their kin¡¯s brain as organic matter for you to make an artificial brain to source your pet tree¡¯s mana? And use your mana¡¯s calming effect to increase its mana regeneration?¡±
¡°Are the Kings not enough?¡±
¡°What, are you asking me to use lower quality materials when there are better options right in front of us? They will know. And they will kill us both. I¡¯m going to need to call for backup if we¡¯re serious about this little project. Heh, making another brain for my next evolution¡¡±
¡°We? I guess you¡¯re on board.¡±
¡°You said the one with the fastest regeneration is the Allochrome Devorants at an estimated 2% of their Wisdom? I can make it half-mechanical to increase its base regeneration. That would allow me to make more complicated runic formulas.¡±
¡°Just an estimation based on what I think their Wisdom stat is. Their race is not exactly attuned to mana and the Arcanite only absorbs and dispels but does not use it effectively. Organic is good, I can seal it up and boost its healing so it won¡¯t die and it can regenerate mana even faster if I manage to make my sealing skill boost mana regeneration. See, creatures are better alive than dead.¡±
¡°Hello, I have a farm and I don¡¯t kill to level like you do. And I¡¯m not crazy. Remember the underground tomb, I traded its information and location with my clan because it¡¯s outside my jurisdiction. That¡¯s why you meat-heads die young. Xeng blood indeed.¡±
¡°That¡¯s why you left? I thought you simply got everything you wanted.¡±
¡°I did and I didn¡¯t. That place was left behind by some Dwarves¡¯ ancestors, not from Elva mind you. The homunculi are too advanced, I can¡¯t remove or kill them. I¡¯m guessing it¡¯s some alchemic-focused group of Dwarves. That giant tombstone that absorbs 600 lives for natural potential? Just a hoax, barely efficient for people. A failed experiment. The Dwarf that banked on abandoned technology couldn¡¯t be more stupid. It''s used for homunculi or monsters that have very similar genetic makeup not unique people with different Classes, Sub-Classes, Profession and an entire lifetime of skill acquisition.¡±
¡°So there are really strong homunculi deeper?¡± Ebony and Ning Xin left since there was nothing much for them underground other than going deeper. The entrance to the depths were in all the golem factories and they had a bad feeling about those back then.
¡°Dangerous might be more fitting, the area of effect topaz magic of the purple ones was already ridiculous. Did you know further below, there¡¯s a black one that can use combination magic and mass laminar enchantment with each other as an area of effect? Utterly impossible to get anything so I might as well sell the information. Damn geezers played our findings down because it was useless for most of them.¡±
Ebony couldn¡¯t be bothered to ask what she got out of the information. She already helped him with plenty of things from the upgraded robe to his mobile house and Dusk¡¯s giga battery without asking anything from him. He was more interested in finding out what the combination magic was like and what mass laminar enchantment was.
¡°So you think this plan is on the same level of danger?¡±
¡°Same level? You¡¯re comparing an abandoned factory with harvesting the brains of a distant kin of a God. Sure, we can see from their behaviour that Kings and below are monsters that only follow orders and their instincts that only know how to differentiate prey from resources but kin is kin.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not killing them. Look, the Vitality stat works in wondrous ways, especially in tandem with racial or Physique traits. Most monster¡¯s physiques make it such that they die very slowly as long as they have enough vitality, meaning losing blood or a body part wouldn¡¯t lead to immediate death. In the case of these so-called divine ants, they have impressive Vitality. They don¡¯t die even with the loss of a head. Thanks to their insect brain, they don¡¯t go into panic when their heads disconnect. Meaning their mana regeneration stays mostly constant. Even more impressively, I can compress their brain and they still won¡¯t die immediately. With a little optimization with my Sealing magic that boosts their vitality, I¡¯m just putting their lives to full use. And bam, we can still use the rest of its body. No need to bury it. No waste and full of respect for life.¡±
¡°...You have gone off the rails little brother, but I can¡¯t say that when I run a farm. It won¡¯t work. Their instincts will fight back and we won¡¯t smoothly extract mana.¡±
¡°Watch.¡± Ebony walked over to an ant being suppressed by a Model hugging it and constantly burst, freezing the poor thing. He dismissed the Model on the level 520 ant and put his hand on its head before gently pushing his mana past its physical and magical forms.
¡°See, it¡¯s not attacking me anymore. All it takes is soothing mana, compelling Will and concentrated power of mana and Will to calm it down. I imbued the thought of ¡®safe and full, time to rest¡¯ into my mana and what do you know, its affected by the same train of thought.¡±
¡°Ebony. That is too much power. Stay grounded. As human as you can be. You¡¯re overriding a creature''s individuality. Didn¡¯t you say you learnt an eye for an eye, I thought you don¡¯t provoke creatures unprovoked.¡±
¡°You¡¯re right.¡± Ebony released the exposure of his mana to the ant and stopped Dusk from holding the creature down. It chomped on him the moment it got its chance. Dusk protected him with two walls of ice that conjured out of thin air, ¡°Is this what you call unprovoked? They want me as tribute as a mana battery, a mana source. I¡¯m not going out to hunt them as you did with the silvershim, I¡¯m just parking here and they are coming for me. This is an eye for an eye.¡±
Ebony stared straight into the masked craftswoman¡¯s exposed eyes, causing her to remain silent still.
¡°I worry.¡± In a rare case of seriousness, Kong Jing pats his shoulder.
¡°I¡¯ll be fine. There¡¯s barely any level of threat down here.¡± Ebony replied straightforwardly.
¡°No, with your mindset, how are we supposed to get the best materials? Do I have to wait till a Saint comes for you?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not the crazy one Sister Jing, it¡¯s you. I thought you were referring to the Emperors. Do you want me dead so badly?¡±
¡°Come on, that¡¯s just a joke. We¡¯ll leave it at that, I think I¡¯ll have to look for Yvette or her husband to discuss some things.¡±
¡°What things?¡±
¡°Xeng de--support.¡±
¡°Poor ants.¡±
Chapter 309: Serial Number 38,889
¡®Ebony serial number 38,889.
Purpose: Follow metal mage spy girl.
Internal diary, day 32 (Woohoo, I must be the current record holder for the longest surviving Model with Will that hasn¡¯t gotten reabsorbed and redistributed):
I did not expect to survive this long. I had plenty of mana to spare and dilute over the course of my lifespan but by week 2 the Will I have imbued in this body has begun to fade. Portions of the abilities and memories I was given started to disappear by the hour. Fascinating, I have to retain this data over my personal abilities for myself so that I know what abilities or memories fade away first and what retains as ¡®remnant Will¡¯. Rather than lose the ability to use a certain type of magic, Will fades proportionally. However, my experiments allowed me to figure out that it is possible for me to decide what abilities or memories to toss aside while keeping others. Obviously, as serial number 39,889 and my weak purpose, there is no reason for me to cling to my power so I tossed that aside to retain new memories, new data.
Tracking progress of rate of fading Will: The rate of loss has not been constant. Bad news, it¡¯s fading away faster every day.
Hypothesis 1: Rate of loss of Will inside a vessel increases as time passes away from my main body. Confirm with updated data from newer versions of me.
Hypothesis 2: Rate of loss of Will is related to the initial concentration/intensity or amount of Will. Not enough data from other vessels to conclude.
Purpose summary: Spy girl remained at her job at the Western sector¡¯s Quest Hall where we met and got our residence. Suspicious activity at night. Main body ignored me when we were near the farmlands with the spy girl¡¯s suspicious activity. The main body was too busy playing catch. Spy girl yanked by hair and tossed into an underground prison. Typical.
Special notes (do not delete):
Remaining in the form of a ball is tough on the mental state. Solution: Get good. Results on day 22: Gotten good.
Day 27 - The spy girl¡¯s mental stability on the low end. Too weak even though the captor¡¯s torture methods are laughable.
Talkative captors - Part of Lure, 82% certain. (updated as of day 32.)
Connection with Tuffock and 2 other split personalities: no names, no relations confirmed. Inconclusive.
Spy girl is part of Lure, 22% certain (dropped by 45% since day 1. Redundant.) Spy girl is a spy in Lure for another organisation, hence captured after being found out - 98% certain(updated as of day 31).
Day 31 - my ability to sense vibrations and gravity is nearly gone, taking away my sight and ability to gather situational data.
Day 32 - Today, right now, my ability to stay invisible is dissipating. Spy girl is staring at me. Right now.¡¯
¡°Ice?¡±
¡®Spy girl is not sensitive to mana, I¡¯m currently in the form of a ball. I can still hear, my pseudo-vision is limited to about 3 metres in radius and my perception is about 7% of my main body¡¯s perception. Maybe she¡¯s just muddle-headed from physical pain.¡¯
¡°I-I recognise you¡so you were following me after all.¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony serial number 38,889 remained silent, it would be a waste of his limited mana. However, he was finding it rather funny that he ended up fulfilling her ardent suspicions that he had been following her all this time. He had to reevaluate her mana perception because she seemed to know it was him. He never showed her ice magic and he should have his obfuscation jewel protecting him from Identify or Appraise. There was still the possibility that she was referring to someone else but not to brag to himself, his mana was rather unique.
¡°How long have you be- actually, that doesn¡¯t matter. I-I didn¡¯t say or expose anything. Is this¡not good enough? We all work for valuable rocks, can you get me out? Divination protection can¡¯t protect me forever, it¡¯s only a matter of time before they get a mentalist or a mind mage, probably someone that¡¯s both.¡±
¡®Question, do I help her? My purpose is just to follow her but for what? Entertainment? Not completely. She did not get caught because of me, so I don¡¯t owe her anything. Putting it simply, what happens to her is none of my business. However, the fact that I followed her already meant I was putting myself forward and stepping into her business. Spectator or not.
Emotionally, I think I want to help. It doesn¡¯t feel good to watch her get physically tormented. Cute methods aside.
Logically, I stand to gain little.
No, I¡¯m thinking too much. I followed her to stop her from doing anything silly, although this doesn¡¯t have anything to do with her own choice, hence why I didn¡¯t do anything till now but doesn¡¯t it mean I didn¡¯t want her to die for whatever reason?
And, I don¡¯t think I¡¯m that heartless am I?
Okay, Calculated Hunch resource check. No gravity magic. Sound magic is limited to hearing within very short range, not worth spending in battle. Mental Map, all geographical data is still stored in a perfect state. Data on their patrol route and timing is all present for my escape. Stealth capabilities, freshly deleted. Combat capabilities include ice magic and complete martial capacity.
Mana pool which is also my health pool since I don¡¯t exactly have a body, more than my main body in terms of numerical maximum but no regeneration and I have to depend on diluting my mana to sustain myself. I do not have any mana chassis to regenerate mana with.
Chance of escape by myself: 82%
Chance of escaping with spy girl without stealth: 14%
Priority 1: Make it back to myself with all valuable data.
Priority 2: Keep spy girl alive (easy peasy, she¡¯s constantly healed by Tidal and won¡¯t die. This makes it extremely easy for all forms of torture.)
Priority 3: Get spy girl out (Reason: doesn¡¯t matter, just feel like it. Instinct¡yes, instinct tells me I stand to gain something. I don¡¯t know what, but something. Enough to justify putting my current data about Will and loss of Model ability at risk.
- Hypothesis 1: Money (Don¡¯t care)
- Hypothesis 2: Connections with her organisations (might be useful)
- Hypothesis 3: Even more data concerning my abilities
- Hypothesis 4: I feel like my Will is making me want to get her out. Is this the life experience that the Frost Elves were talking about? Will my Will grow because of this? That¡¯s what my ¡®gut¡¯ feeling is telling me even though I don¡¯t have a gut.
Secondary goal: Prison break experience. I¡¯ve already been imprisoned twice. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to get more prison break experience when I¡¯m such a good target for being imprisoned and farmed for my mana.¡¯
¡°Can you talk¡can you reply in any way possible?¡±
Ebony documented his diary and made himself lock them in as tightly as possible. To 38,889, combat ability was not important; it was what he could bring back to himself.
¡°Please.¡±
Ebony rolled his spherical body across the floor underneath the spy girl who had both arms staked and hanging off the ceiling. Writing on the dirt floor with a tiny bit of ice, ¡°we move in 13 minutes and 16 seconds. Success rate 14%, okay?¡±
¡®My existing lifespan is less than a day. I¡¯m lucky the patrol gap is coming so soon.¡¯
Failure meant more torture for the spy girl or maybe even death. It would not be hard to transport her to a dungeon and kill her in her current condition.
¡°14? I¡¯ll take it. Do you have a plan? I-I don¡¯t have the energy to run or mana to spare. Are you out there?¡± The spy girl¡¯s practically naked body was only caked up in blood but her physical injuries were mostly healed from the last session. Minus the one steel stake in her right eye that doesn¡¯t allow her to heal. It was likely permanent blinding by now. If she had a normal human physique. After so long, even Grandmaster warriors would be permanently injured.
They fed her with pills for sustenance or her flesh wouldn¡¯t regenerate even if she had the healing.
Ebony did not reply, if he was personally here the escape would be as easy as walking out unless there were variables that were unaccounted for, including stronger members that do not patrol.
He rolled, wiping out the ice and rewrote a few sentences. ¡°Freeze chains. Freeze door. Kick both down. Run.¡±
¡°Haha..ha. These chains absorb mana and stamina. Including elemental spellwork. Maybe I should forget it. That¡¯s just asking for more pain when we fail.¡± Her laboured breath didn¡¯t stop her from articulating herself. Her exhaustion resistance must have evolved during the ordeal.
Ebony 38,889 waited till 3 minutes were left before the appointed time before he morphed into a human shape. His body shape but without any facial features, leaving just a smooth oval on his face. He didn¡¯t form his robe design either.
He extended his legs and grabbed the metal chains before freezing them. It took 10% of all his mana left to leave enough damage for him to kick and shatter them. Honestly, that was a lot more than he expected.
Fortunately, he was still capable of silencing the vibrations within a small radius and made no commotion.
¡®I see, being exposed to my mana speeds up her regeneration. So I don¡¯t need chassis to increase someone else¡¯s regeneration¡this information is not important, I bet I already know this. This can be parked to delete.¡¯
The door was far more physically durable compared to the metal chains but they did not absorb mana. It was likely meant to stop warriors while the chains were enough to stop mages. This helped him save a lot of mana.
He stretched his woven ice muscle tissues and double-checked that he could move properly while waiting for the last few seconds to pass by.
Ebony lifted the spy girl into his arms after covering her up with a random coat he weaved up with ice. She could deal with the cold. He didn¡¯t spare that much thought for her comfort.
¡®I can only Flicker at 13% maximum output without my legs exploding. I diluted my mana too much over the month. I can¡¯t use ice magic if we need to fight, I¡¯ll die faster from the loss of a body compared to the loss of Will. So mainly physical and the bare minimum amount of augmentation. Damn¡kicking the door down took mana because the physical damage to my body means a loss of mana. Stalwart will be the most cost-effective.¡¯
Ebony determined that having a weapon to take off the impact from the damage to his ice body would be for the best if they encountered a patrol. It was quite likely, that his stealth capabilities were extremely weak at the moment since it depended on his perception of sight to determine light angle.
It was easy in the prison, just hide at the ceiling corner. He only came down to the ground and rolled out of the prison when he examined the area. Spy girl saw him on his way back into her cell and he didn¡¯t notice his invisibility going away. After all, he only saw through vibrations and gravity. Neither of which gave him sight. Gauging the direction that a person was looking at was the best he could do blind. His internal clock and understanding of the geography allowed him to guess which direction light was coming from.
Based on his rough calculations, it was midnoon. There was nowhere to hide in an open, deserted farmland. Not the best time to escape but he had no choice, he needed to find his main body before he fully dissipated.
Sadly for him, during the first few days after his loss of Will started occurring the first redundant information that was lost was where his new house was. It was a fresh memory because it was only then did he get his new residence¡¯s location from a spy girl who worked at the Quest Hall. He learnt the hard way that the newest memories were the first to get deleted or discarded.
However, he didn¡¯t bank on it. There was no confirmation that Ebony would be at home anyway. He planned to get to the closest Quest Hall. These people did not like trouble or the public. Just getting out of this farmland was enough for them to stop the chase but he similarly didn¡¯t bank on that happening. If he is lucky, he can find himself amid the escape. He couldn¡¯t sense or see past 3 metres right now but he should be able to sense him.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
¡°He-hey!¡±
¡°Quiet, my ability to silence sounds is going to disappear.¡± Ebony wasted the precious mana to speak in a random man¡¯s voice.
They were in a single cell under some sort of abandoned barn. The farmlands were massive, getting out with 13% strength Flicker would take more than 6 hours and that was considering uninterrupted movement and if his condition didn¡¯t deteriorate.
Ebony kicked down the next flimsy gate after running up the stairs. It flung open without a sound and he Flickered out of sight between the changing patrols and doorguards.
Except, he was blind further than 3 metres from his body and others were not.
¡°What the-!¡±
¡°What¡¯s that thing?!¡±
¡°Shut up and stop them!¡±
¡®Okay, poor execution. But that was the best I could do blind.¡¯ Ebony heard the shouts before their bodies zipped forward and crashed into a thin wall. The wooden wall didn¡¯t stand a chance.
¡°Be my eyes, give me situational information,¡± Ebony demanded.
¡°You just--flew us out of a barn. No one¡¯s chasing, I can¡¯t see far back..¡± Spy girl was mostly protected from the wind pressure but he couldn¡¯t spare all his energy to protect her fully.
¡°Look forward, I can¡¯t see where I¡¯m going,¡± Ebony stated his needs before flipping her onto his back for a piggyback ride so she could see in front. He added a turtle shell on their back just in case. He would have the hands to fight if it boils down to it.
¡°Wha-then where are you bringing us?¡± She was numbed from torture and couldn¡¯t raise the spirit to complain about the rough handling.
¡°I know the direction, but I can¡¯t see obstacles so we might crash into a wall. I¡¯ll be fine, you might not.¡±
Ebony Flickered without a pause.
¡°Big problem!¡±
¡°Just say it, don¡¯t waste my limited energy to reply.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t see as far as you can move in one burst! And my neck hurts.¡± Spy girl fought against the air pressure and plucked out the metal stake in her eye, arming herself with it.
The city¡¯s healing immediately got to work to stop the flow of blood and repair whatever it could.
¡°Open skies?¡±
¡°Open but we¡¯ll be exposed even more obviously.¡±
¡°Look out for my mana signature, I don¡¯t know where I am.¡± Ebony decided to stay on the ground, they couldn¡¯t afford to get into a fight so far away from denser population areas.
¡°What do you mean look for you? Your real body? Is this a spell or a golemic creature? How can you not know? You know what, I don¡¯t want to know.¡± Spy girl reacted with exasperation before realising that knowing too much wasn¡¯t good for her.
¡°They have diviners and they are already alarmed, it won¡¯t take long for them to get to us¡was what I was thinking but with your speed they need to get their higher-ups. That¡¯ll give us time.¡±
Just like the spy girl said, it wasn¡¯t till almost 3 hours later did she spot their first pursuers. She regained enough mana to manipulate the metal stake into a helmet and the thick frozen chains into a chest plate for her heart. It was just a thin piece of metal but was reinforced with mana. She was still stark naked under her chest and head. He slowed down once or twice for her to get abandoned farming equipment like hoes and shovels but it was only enough for some armour around her neck.
Ebony couldn¡¯t see what she did to the enchantment and his mana sense wasn¡¯t in tip-top condition. He also didn¡¯t test the strength or durability of her spell-manipulated armour. It was too bad she couldn¡¯t conjure metal. There was no such thing as metal mana ores either. That would simply be a raw ore.
¡°Reapers! Looks like they¡¯re not bothering to keep me alive anymore.¡±
¡°Numbers, location, general abilities if you can¡¯t see their class.¡±
¡°A whole ass squad. 3 close-ranged, 2 sword users, 1 great axe. 3 archers, 2 long burstbows, 1 normal longbow. 2 mages, 1 earth and 1¡ice. Total of 8. Freak, they managed to find an ice mage to deal with your golem so quickly!¡±
¡°They are catching up?¡± He decided to estimate their pursuers'' strength from their speed.
¡°In a few minutes, surrounded. Warrior ahead, go up!¡± Spy girl yanked on his neck to face up.
Ebony ignored the call to jump or take flight. That would simply put them into the archers'' sight. From what he understood, long burstbows were simply sniper rifles.
¡°Exact time.¡±
¡°Two minutes give or take, they¡¯re speeding up!¡±
Ebony slid to a stop. ¡®I can¡¯t see, no point running and wasting my energy if they are faster than me. Priority is to escape and retain enough energy and important information. So suppression with as little effort as possible and continuing the run would be the plan. Warrior first since they would run up to me.
¡°Dodge! Mana blade!¡±
He stood still till the wind pressure entered his range of sensation and leaned to the right. It had been a long time since he faced someone using a mana blade that shot ranged attacks. This was clearly stronger than what he faced as the ploughed earth beneath them tore asunder.
¡®Too bad, so they are planning to keep their distance till their ranged support is here. Can¡¯t save too much energy.¡¯ Ebony Flicker forward and focused on his small range of sight.
The moment the vibrations separated in the shape of a human, his right knee flew up and rammed into the unknown face.
Blocked by metal, Ebony wasn¡¯t phased by the great axe user¡¯s taunt. Now that they were close together, he didn¡¯t need the spy girl¡¯s prompts. His knee straightened and the arm holding the axe was kicked up into the air, opening the warrior¡¯s face. Spy girl was surprisingly fast to react and shot a needle into the man¡¯s mouth but the Reaper scoffed and bit the needle in half before eating Ebony¡¯s backthrust right in the face sending him toppling back.
Ebony spun for the back thrust just in time to crossguard the sword that came out of nowhere, aiming for the spy girl¡¯s head. He sent a pulse of freezing through his arm and weapon. Pulling the frozen sword and hands forward and down to the ground, he Tremor Stomped the man¡¯s chest into the ground with a smidgen of Frostweave Vital Constriction.
Disengaging the sword and taking it for himself, he lamented the loss of 3% of his mana on impact from the swordstrike and another 2% casting the spells.
The fallen man didn¡¯t so much as scream but Ebony had no time to deal with him any further. Without the ability to see, 2 arrows planted themselves in his knees and another 2 explosions blasted his shoulders.
He melded the arrows out of his ice body. The sniper shots of explosive bullets didn¡¯t hurt him, taking away less mana than the swordman¡¯s strike, not even a single % loss actually. He mentally took away the snipers from consideration, their bullets and guns were too weak. However, he didn¡¯t forget the first shot might not be their best. The mana infused in their bullets was extremely thin.
As for the arrows, all they did was put a hole in him. He couldn¡¯t react in time to dodge or form a hole in advance for the arrows to pass through but they were still not as much of a threat to him compared to the warriors. On the other hand, they were a massive threat to the spy girl. He would need to harden his ice around her and take the arrow¡¯s impact if he wanted to protect her and that would take a lot more mana than letting the arrow pass through his body.
The spy girl was hurt by the explosion but he didn¡¯t ask about her injury and she didn¡¯t care to complain. She was being healed anyway. Her metal armour seemed to be relatively unharmed, only the rust was covered in soot.
The slight vibrations in the ground made Ebony Flicker and maintain stable flight, he was more sensitive to change in mana concentrations than physical movements in his current state.
¡®The swordsman stood up, so I can¡¯t suppress him with so little mana.¡¯
¡°How many of these squads do they have?¡±
¡°There shouldn¡¯t be many that are so free and so close by. This should be the only group here but I¡¯m not sure if they called for backup from other hidden bases.¡±
¡®The Empire¡¯s divination mages need to work better.¡¯ Ebony had Calculated Hunch do the math.
He judged that it was still better to knock them down and run than to take hits while running.
¡°Earth mage hiding in the ground. Ice mage is getting into range¡he started raising his staff! Should I get off you? Your body¡¯s not going to turn into spikes and needle me to death is it?¡±
¡°...That¡¯s a possibility but are you sure you want me to let you go now?¡±
¡°I rather not drown in mud and suffocate to death. No healings going to help me there but spiked and having wounds frozen shut doesn¡¯t sound good either.¡±
¡°Lead me to ice mage, he¡¯s the top priority.¡±
¡°About 4.2 gors to our right, he slowing down so I supposed we¡¯re in his range.¡± Spy girl raised her arm and pointed.
¡°Spy girl, that¡¯s 21km learn the metric system. Range-focused mages are such a bother.¡± Ebony Flickered to where she pointed and rammed into the ground right in front of the ice mage. He felt mana rubbing his entire body disgustingly but the mage wasn¡¯t able to override his control immediately.
The moment of panic at his sheer speed and sudden appearance was enough for him to grab the staff and reappropriate the ice mana within. ¡°Lucky me, his ice affinity is even lower than a small portion of my 31-day-old fading Will.¡±
Ebony commented out loud for both the spy girl and ice mage to hear. He grabbed the ice mage¡¯s long beard with his other hand and planted his knee into the presumably old man¡¯s face with it. The neck snap was loud and clear but the city¡¯s healing didn¡¯t only help them, it also helped their pursuers. Ebony had to expend the ice mana he just received to seal the man¡¯s entire body before sending it flying back to where he came from. He didn¡¯t want the earth mage to get hold of the ice mage.
He felt a sudden intrusion into his mana sense but not before his arm slid off his shoulders.
Ebony had the sliced arm burst a small layer of mist and Flicker out after sticking the ice arm back.
¡°What in the world is that creature?¡±
¡°More like why is it here?¡±
¡°Are ya dumb?! It¡¯s here to break her out. I just didn¡¯t think the Jaded Parasites cared about her so much. This creature must be alchemic! It has vitality but no metal or even organic parts.¡±
¡°Is it a spirit creature or an ice elemental under a tamer¡¯s control?¡±
¡°Who can control an elemental? It must be a golem, spirit creatures won¡¯t have such a solid physical form. At least, not one that¡¯s so weak.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t be a golem. It has no core.¡±
¡°A human found an elemental and managed to tame and teach it human techniques? Impossible. There aren¡¯t even any elementals walking around.¡±
¡°Then explain what that thing is. It slapped old Chuck into tomorrow and I didn¡¯t even see its ice form shake. What else but an elemental has that high of an affinity to be unaffected?¡±
¡°...looks like an elemental with a humanoid shape. Damn, the fighting technique is human.¡±
Ebony mentally praised the Reapers for being so calm but minus points for them for talking out loud. ¡®So spy girl is part this Jaded Parasites? Maybe. I¡¯ll file the name. They aren¡¯t that incompetent. I¡¯m already surrounded in the time I threw the ice mage away.¡¯
He phased the sword he stole out of his body and gripped it. It was a twohanded longsword. He could morph into Ning Xin¡¯s shape to wield it but that wasn¡¯t ideal without two swords. ¡®It¡¯s okay, my body should be proficient with it. It better take off the impacts, I can¡¯t afford to lose more mana. We¡¯re barely halfway to populated areas and there''s no confirmation that these people won¡¯t continue their aggression.
Ebony detached both of his feet that got wrapped up in the earth and punched the axe wielder in the face. He couldn¡¯t do anything about the earth mage hiding underground. He couldn¡¯t use spells to aim at archers he couldn¡¯t see or sense until they shot at him and he could follow their mana trail. The warriors were the only ones he could do anything to and only two of them remained close. There was one more he hadn¡¯t clashed with yet.
The sword wielder that he stole from took out another weapon from nowhere, he must have spatial storage on him. The two warriors decided to meet him in combat and he obliged.
Leaning away from their swings and countering with his fists, he turned his hands into a pillar of ice and planted them into the ground but they broke free easily. Resistance.
The sword he stole shattered when he imbued his mana to strengthen it. A real shame, he miscalculated the quality of the weapon. Dozens of sucker punches and kicks later, they realised they couldn¡¯t even touch him but he was sweating mentally, he was taking mana loss from attacking them.
¡®An arrow! Great.¡± Ebony noticed the arrow this time around, he let it go through his head and freeze it halfway there to follow the trail of mana. Leaping towards the archer within 2 Flickers, he hugged the archer and forced the archer to draw his bow and take aim. He guided the archer¡¯s arm with his own and got ready.
Turning himself into an ice attachment, he stuck to the arrow as he was released from the bow.
¡®I can¡¯t use any gravity. We¡¯re too heavy to go far.¡¯ Ebony latched onto the spy girl¡¯s metal collar as they were shot away from the farmlands. He didn¡¯t blame the spy girl for the metal, he was a few times heavier than her and her metal, even as a splotch of ice.
When the arrow started to loose velocity, he reformed his body, caught the arrow and Flicker away.
¡°Right in front!¡± Spy girl grabbed his head and swerved him to the left. ¡°AAAH!¡±
Ebony¡¯s body was cut into two along with the trail of the spy girl¡¯s right arm from shoulder down.
¡°Creature. You cannot get her away. But I don¡¯t care what happens to you. Leave if you know what¡¯s good for you.¡±
¡®New voice. He¡¯s the swordsman that hasn¡¯t made a move.¡¯ Ebony stuck his body back together, lamenting the 18% mana loss that he couldn¡¯t reclaim as his ice body was blown to bits. The amount of ice mana in the ice mage¡¯s staff was pitiful, it was already all gone. He got his mana to extend and reached for the spy girl¡¯s arm which was surprisingly in one piece. It sustained a clean cut which made it easy for healing.
¡®Calculated Hunch¡no chance. Haha, I don¡¯t really want to die. How many Models did I reabsorb that were on the verge of death?¡¯
Out of all his predecessors, most were destroyed in battle or training. Ebony did not reabsorb many back and did not receive the sensation of death.
¡®My goodness, can¡¯t I send myself to training and reabsorb my experiences to combine them? Now¡¯s not the time to think about this. Do I abandon spy girl? But that¡¯s pathetic of me, what if it¡¯s Xin? If I can¡¯t even place a portion of me at risk then wouldn¡¯t I abandon Xin if our lives are on the line? If I go back and reabsorbed myself, I would regret it. It¡¯ll be a shameful memory. Bah, what use is the information I got, I can get it again but I can¡¯t revive spy girl. Change of priority, struggle and bring back this experience to myself.¡¯
Ebony sealed spy girl in a separate container except for her wound and head. It looked like he was purposefully exposing her wound but that was simply how his healing worked. He cared not for the wasteful mana for keeping her afloat with mana.
He stretched his muscles of ice once again. The threat of death was real, Ebony could feel it. He feared it. And he was so happy he could get this feeling again. A Model could fear death?
Turning his smooth oval head in the swordsman¡¯s direction, he formed a comically large smile on his face to show the man how wonderful the experience he was receiving from the man and bowed to show how thankful he was for the realisation that Ebony 38,889 was not just any Model.
He had to bring this back.
He was no mere Model.
Chapter 310: Tussle
¡°Shove off!¡±
Ebony serial number 40,001 stood rooted to the ground. As the bodyguard and the person in charge of the two waiters SN. 39,999 and 40,000 he had more Will suited for combat. His two other selves were made of the same amount and density of mana so they could also stand their ground against this particular wolfman but they appeared dumber than 40,001 and followed instructions more tightly.
Having a greater amount of Will made it possible for him to order them around but it might also be possible that it was because he was made with the intentions to lead the other 2 waiters.
This outdoor restaurant was not going well. People thought they were an actual eatery but they didn¡¯t serve drinks.
Many were uptight and stressed from battle, he already had to break apart 3 fights. And by breaking them apart, he physically tossed them away. They were a danger for everyone eating.
¡°Ebony, help me wash two of these pots and the ladles.¡± Ning Xin called out from her focus. Asking others to use their own utensils meant he didn¡¯t have to deal with their dishes but the cooking utensils were another issue altogether.
¡°Okay.¡±
¡°Do you know where I pu-oh, it¡¯s a Model¡huh?¡±
¡°Huh what?¡± Number 40,001 was curious about Xin¡¯s confusion.
Ning Xin looked between me, 39,999 and 40,000.
¡°Where did you go? Are you hiding in that shell?¡±
¡°Main body? I went to check on Dusk.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not the main body?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°I see. Get me salt and my soy sauce mix number 48. I¡¯ll wash, don¡¯t need to get irritated with me.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Hurry up.¡±
¡®What was that about? Oh well.¡¯ Ebony trailed away to search Xin¡¯s bag for the seasoning she needed.
Just then, his neck slid off. He caught it mid-fall and placed his head back. His fellow workers straightened up, put the ladle serving and tong holding work down. They Flicker out of space and reappear above the kneeling 40,001. Both of them pincered the Elf that decapitated him and smashed their feet at his belly.
¡®Damn it me, too distracted with Dusk that you left me with a level 412 Elf. Why am I so dull? This is bothersome, I should have tossed this guy away instead of leaving him stuck in the ground. Now he¡¯s pissed and he knows I am my spell. That was a weird thought.¡¯
Wooden roots blocked the waiters¡¯ kicks and snapped their ankles before whipping at their chests.
¡®He didn¡¯t even move his mana. Plant or wood affinity, the roots protected him and 39,999 and 40,000 are too slow.¡¯
¡°Hey, don¡¯t damage or waste any food here. I did not imbue irrelevant thoughts into me. I am not as nice as me.¡± 40,001 warned the Elf. Some people cheered at the next fight that was about to occur. Some ignored them and continued eating and chatting, drunk or not. Others just gambled if the ¡®ice golem¡¯ could stand its ground against the next troublemaker.
They were a rowdy bunch.
¡°My money¡¯s on golem-boy!¡±
¡°HAHA of course it is, we just watched him kneel for 5 minutes straight.¡±
¡°No way, didn¡¯t you see earlier? The ice golem is just a summon and the caster isn¡¯t even a summoner. A conjured spell. My ores are on Mr Elf. He looks like one of those Nobles.¡±
¡°Can you imagine if he lost to a spell without its caster here? HAHAHAHA!! He¡¯s gonna go home crying! Disgrace of the family I say.¡±
¡°Someone go get his family here to watch!¡±
The loud cheers were from a table of Dwarves. The Humans and Beastmen kept their mouths shut and either ate and looked away or sneaked a peak or two between bites.
Mr Elf calmed down at the Dwarves¡¯ rude remarks. The Dwarves probably hit the nail on the mark. He had nothing to show by beating up a few Models. He let the 39,999 and 40,000 go and the roots formed a staff. Harrumphing, he turned around and walked towards the Dwarves table. Swiping his staff up, he broke the table in two and sent the dishes into the air.
40,001¡¯s spine chilled and he went as far as to burst a tiny bit of ice mana within his body to Augment himself with flames but not enough for flames to show on his skin. He charged and hugged Xin but she pushed him without any effort.
¡°No need to kill him, look, the Dwarves caught the food!¡± 40,001 yelled but the directed killing intent from Xin already caused Mr Elf to go into full defensive mode and he was in flight before anyone else reacted.
The rest of the diners including the Dwarves who caught the flying food with some spillage didn¡¯t dare to blink. More like, they couldn¡¯t move.
Ning Xin¡¯s unadulterated killing intent for anyone or anything that tried to waste food, her food was not something Ebony could copy or recreate. Just like how she couldn¡¯t use Will the way he could. Killing intent might sound like nonsense but most wild creatures and monsters could feel it. It was a matter of Perception.
Mixed with her overflowing Vitality, it had physical effects. Ebony hypothesized that Intent mixed with Vitality was akin to his Will mixed with Wisdom. It might even be one and the same and not to be classified separately. Hence, monsters with high Vitality tend to be able to put this kind of pressure on people or any other creature.
¡®Hot damn, she¡¯s not using any mana but I¡¯m melting. Tier 4 Vitality-based enhancement is off the charts. She learnt this from the Trolls! Wait, if she learnt from the Shaman then wouldn¡¯t she be casting AOE Vitality spells or something similar? That sounds like a damn Domain. I¡¯m losing my only advantage? No, no need to panic. I can barely find another Domain mage, I don¡¯t believe she can find a Vitality Domain user to teach her. Does her mother or father¡¯s books contain anything of the sort? Not that I know of.¡¯
¡°Your body temperature is going to ruin the food.¡± So he said but his two waiters kept the temperature down with air conditioning.
Mr Elf didn¡¯t stay for long.
Numerous diners ran away with their plates and bowls.
None who remained dared to be rowdy and they held their bowls firmly. With a little shivering whenever they closed in on the stove where the waiter boys were scooping soup and pinching steak onto plates with tongs. 39,999 and 40,000 both had 8 arms and handled numerous utensils as if being ambidextrous wasn¡¯t good enough.
¡°You.¡± Xin wiped her hands and looked at 40,001.
¡°You¡¯re not a normal Model are you?¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°You have emotions.¡±
¡°Uh huh, then? Oh. Are you saying the other models don¡¯t?¡±
¡°They don¡¯t.¡±
¡°I have to go back to me.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t go. Don¡¯t you want to see how much different you can get compared to you? You¡¯ve been reabsorbing Models more often these days because of your experiment with Will but this is the first time something feels different.¡±
¡°Good idea. How different do I feel?¡±
¡°Like part of you is missing but everything else is more prominent.¡±
¡°...yeah, I understand those words but not when they are put together.¡±
¡°They are not blocked by a lake.¡±
¡°Say that again?¡±
¡°You are like an open book now. No water covering you, a portion of you.¡±
¡°I see. Keep me updated.¡±
¡®Hypothesis 1, I do not have Perpetual Tranquility Spring on my models. The portion of me is all that my main self imbued in me. I do not have Meditation running, so nothing is washing my thoughts or personality away. Information to back the hypothesis up is not present, check with myself. New priority, priority 3 - gather personal data.¡¯
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Ebony 40,001 stretched his neck and looked up. An arrowhead the size of a car smashed him to ice dust.
And then nothing.
???
¡°Feasible?¡±
¡°I need a few samples to do the math, help me double-check later. Don¡¯t disturb me anymore, as interesting as this is, it''s a side project for me at best. I already upgraded a functioning brain before, it wouldn¡¯t do much for my preparation.--Nevermind, got it. Scrap the idea. It¡¯s not feasible. Organic matter requires sustenance. Food. Compressing millions of brain matter would mean you have to feed it that much, even with my most efficient energy conversion runes. You should know,¡± Kong Jing didn¡¯t even pause for two seconds mid-sentence before shutting me down.
¡°I know, my stamina regeneration tapers off after 2 weeks without food. My mana regeneration starts to drop after 3 weeks. Then I¡¯ll starve to death. At least, when I was a Master.¡±
¡°Then what did you expect from asking me?¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t know if you have a method to convert some other form of energy as sustenance.¡±
¡°As confident as I am in my words that I can make anything, I can¡¯t make something out of nothing. Yet. I mean, your plan is not completely out of the question. I can think of something that can feed a brain of that proportions. There are many organisms that feed on mana to produce chemicals or sustenance so to speak. I could make a symbiotic brain that feeds each other after optimising them with runes. In any case, I can¡¯t make it right now.¡±
¡°Care to share what your latest project is? You¡¯re preparing it for your Evolution to King aren''t you. Another huge Physique refinement or mutation project?¡±
¡°No, I¡¯m not crazy enough to experiment on myself that much. Grimoire, that¡¯s my current project.¡±
¡°Grimoire? Like, a book with spells?¡±
¡°Remember your first practice with runic spell scrolls? Yes, that. I¡¯m compiling a grimoire that can be used by Unclassed to King. I¡¯m sure you know Mark is not a mage, he¡¯s a wizard. And I¡¯m sure you don¡¯t know the complications behind this but that doesn¡¯t matter to us so don¡¯t worry about it. Him being a wizard means there is a wizard spreading wizardry on Elva, I haven¡¯t seen any other wizard so we don¡¯t have to worry about the wizard-mage war going on. I¡¯m going to make a grimoire that can make any wielder a strong wizard.¡±
¡°So anyone who has it can cast all types of spells?¡±
¡°Well, all that I know.¡±
¡°And it can record any new runes the wielder finds?¡±
¡°If I learn how to grow a spirit in a book. Look at your swords, budding spirits they might be but they aren¡¯t growing are they?¡±
¡°Not noticeably.¡±
¡°Yes, I can make the grimoire incorporate new runic spells and improve whatever¡¯s inside but It¡¯ll be connected with me so I don¡¯t need to make it automatic.¡±
¡°What¡¯s so special then? Can¡¯t you make that easily? And why make it usable from Unclassed to King if you¡¯re the user.¡±
¡°My little brother, I can¡¯t tell you all my secrets can I?¡±
¡°You¡¯re right. I can guess. It¡¯s connected with you but that doesn¡¯t mean you¡¯re the user.¡±
¡°Mm. I don¡¯t use my craft for combat. You think it is easy because you¡¯re thinking about spell scrolls, I¡¯m talking about grimoire. A grimoire doesn¡¯t disappear after one or two uses.¡±
¡°Hmmm. Ah, I see. You¡¯re making a book that connects to your brain. Anyone who holds it has all your knowledge and can cast any runic spell you know. So it can be an empty book without any writing. That is interesting.¡±
¡°Yes, that is interesting. I didn¡¯t think of that. Thanks for the idea little brother, you just made me busier. Don¡¯t think so much about the ant brain, I¡¯ll try to remember. I suppose it''s not like you can do anything about it without me.¡±
After inadvertently making a wrong guess, Ebony was left alone.
¡°Hey ya! Friendly over here! I don¡¯t care who or what is behind this mound of ants. Get your damn tree away! We¡¯re trying to lay down some tiles!¡±
¡°Oh. sorry about that, Granite Halls?¡± Ebony dismissed the sound shield, he could perceive vibrations outside so he wasn¡¯t deaf to the surroundings. He saw huge crowds of knights moving about, protecting a bunch of Dwarves at work but he didn¡¯t think they would get to where he parked Dusk so quickly.
¡°Ya daft!? Hary up and get lost or we¡¯ll report ya for sabo¡¯taging Imperial defences!¡±
¡°Dusk, lighten up and start walking. Dial your range down to equal the output of half of my regeneration, I¡¯ll feed you later. Focus on levelling skills, especially those lagging or new spells. Toss away the sealed ants they would come back for mo-¡±
''Did my Model just break? How do I know that? I¡¯m out of range. Did my range increase or skill get a refinement?¡¯
Ebony made sure that Dusk was moving and told the Dwarf who shouted at him for getting in the way of their construction that Dusk would not harm them if they didn''t harm it. But if they did harm Dusk, well, they had eyes to see what would happen.
When he got back to the fortress and the camping spot they used as an outdoor eatery, he only saw Navin and a pair of Elves scolding two other Elves. One of them was the person who stopped him but didn¡¯t want to speak.
¡®Those two elves are strong. Their mana¡¯s thicker and way more vast than mine. Above Christy and the one that shall not be named. Too bad I can¡¯t even sense Vent but I suppose that means Vent is stronger in the aspect of stealth. Or stronger in every way. I mean, I know his mana regeneration is magnitudes more than mine or Gen¡¯s combined.¡¯ Ebony eyed the large arrow that dug deep into the ground.
Damaging the tiled floors that the Granite Hall family made was an achievement in and of itself, Ebony already tested that outside. It was highly resistant to both physical and magical forces. Since it absorbed magic and turned magic back to mana, overriding its magical resistance took a lot of pure power and quantity of mana.
Ning Xin was trapped in a cuboid translucent barrier. The work of the Barrier King.
¡°Lucretius, Evans. This shall not happen again. Head of the Evergreen family, bring your family back up. We don¡¯t need you here anymore.¡±
¡°Human brat! Who do you think you are?! The Har¡¯sib family might bend to you but not us!¡±
¡°Then break.¡± The pair of Elves on the ground was constricted by Navin¡¯s mana like they were grasped by a large hand. Proud as a peacock, they were pushed back and slammed into the fortress wall. Squished between the durable wall and indestructible barrier, they were ignored.
¡°Nav, we¡¯ll settle this with our own rules. That¡¯s the only way they¡¯ll learn.¡± The man who Ebony presumed was Evans didn¡¯t even spare a glance for the Elves that were struggling to breathe.
The Elven couple had luscious green hair and were both extremely beautiful people. The man stood at a short 2.1 metres while the Elven lady was only as tall as Ebony was. Evans had terribly sharp features be it his jawline or nose bridge, he stood out amongst Elf¡¯s usual androgynous features. The woman by his side gave off a similar vibe as Yvette the Life Queen, mature and motherly.
The beautiful people standing together allowed Ebony to confirm that Navin truly was the most handsome man on the planet. The statues of him did not do the Barrier King¡¯s visage justice.
¡°How are you planning to do that?¡± Navin pinched the bridge of his nose. He might not have hid it well but he was exhausted and lacked sleep.
¡°...You understand our culture, what is your suggestion?¡±
¡°Have your Matriarch ban them from going back to your ancestral home for 2 centuries after reaching the ranks of an Emperor. If they ever reach such heights.¡±
¡°Sur-surely this is not that big of an issue?¡±
¡°They attacked people within our fortress in the middle of a battle. That is a low price to pay for you Elves for such a transgression. If the Evergreen¡¯s relatives back home have any issues, direct them to Oplot. I couldn¡¯t be bothered with how you run things in your ancestral home.¡±
Navin noticed Ebony and walked over. Patting his shoulder, ¡°My apologies, I don¡¯t mean to lock her up but she¡¯s going to hurt people. Can you calm her down? She¡¯s not exactly settling with this aura of hers.¡±
Ebony scanned the area. Her kitchen was destroyed. There were spills of soup with scraps of ant flesh about but most of the food did not survive whatever hit them. Broken tables and chairs with blood lay around but with no spectators nearby. Further away, within his range were healers working on diners.
¡®Only 39,999 survived? But he¡¯s mostly melted and barely has any mana left, I¡¯ll take him back and make 40,002 later.¡¯ He absorbed 39,999¡¯s Will back and gained the memory of what happened.
¡®Useless¡the attack was so fast that 39,999¡¯s vibrational and gravitational perception couldn¡¯t catch it. It went by 40,001¡¯s defences and Xin didn¡¯t even react until 40,001 was crushed. Meaning her Intuition didn¡¯t catch it in advance or her Intuition is dulled in her non-combat mode. Why does she even have two modes now? Does it help? Mentally speaking, maybe. It is rather hard controlling her strength not to break things around the house or hurt children.¡¯ Ebony read the surviving memories and was stumped by the obstacle.
She was furious. About the cooking utensils. The kitchen. The waste of food. The uncalled-for aggression.
¡°I don¡¯t see anything wrong with her meeting aggression with aggression.¡± Ebony spoke up.
¡°Understandable.¡± Navin nodded but looked back to the expressionless feather burning bright red and the unbearable heat trying to melt his barrier down.
¡®Navin reacted fast so all is good and I think he dealt with it pretty well. Punishing them with human methods doesn''t work well on Elves so using their own system is going to hurt more.¡¯
¡°I¡¯ll try but I don¡¯t know how to calm her down, I¡¯ve not seen anyone damage her cooking equipment. Bring her out of the fortress, I think letting her vent will be easier.¡±
¡°Once again, I apologise for this to be how we meet again. Thank you for showing up, I got reports about your tree. It''s a massive help, just a little small in reach. And the reports about thousands disappearing, my seers told me about a Xeng space mage? Thank her for me too.¡±
¡°She might look for Yvette or you soon, or whenever she gets out of her zone. About Xeng support. She seems interested in this race.¡±
¡°So I¡¯ve heard, some of the Xengs relish the opportunity of meeting the Tetramyths.¡±
¡°The what?¡±
¡°Tetramyths. This race of Ants as a whole, distant relative of the Goddess of War, Tetramyth.¡±
¡°Oh relax, the Goddess of War has so many kin that this is happening on hundreds of planets as we speak. She couldn¡¯t care less until a real kin dies and the Saints will turn back the moment they decide it¡¯s no longer worth the deaths. She probably doesn¡¯t even know what all her kin are doing other than feed themselves.¡± Evans chipped in.
¡°Things aren¡¯t looking good. They are ramping their efforts up instead of backing down. Did they find some natural treasure of value?¡± The woman, Lucretius, did not share Evan¡¯s optimism.
¡°Navin.¡± Ebony interrupted them and got the Barrier King to let him out.
The perk of being with the Barrier King was that they directly phased out of the fortress¡¯s barriers like a bubbling popping. Skipping past the customs as if he didn¡¯t need to record his exit.
They went out of range of fighting soldiers and freelancers before he let the forge out. It was no exaggeration to say that the Knights¡¯ armour would melt just by being near her at the moment.
¡®So Navin has a way to breathe in these conditions too.¡¯ Ebony was not surprised at the numerous methods some people had. He was not the only one who could think of bringing about more air within his lungs or something along the lines. It was rather obvious the Barrier King could protect himself from heat if he could trap heat within the cage he put Ning Xin in.
¡°Xin.¡± Despite his expectations, she did not go on a rampage.
¡°I¡¯m not angry at the Ants. Thank you, Navin. And no, I was not trying to kill them. Just teach them manners but I might have overreacted.¡± She did her best to cool herself down and not melt the flesh and exoskeletons of the Ants around them.
It would ruin their use as food.
Chapter 311: Xeng’s Tyranny
¡°Curse you, Veronica Ning Xing. dragging me out of my comfy home for a¡how many standard years did it take us to get onto land?¡± Ning Min squeezed the bloody water out of her hair after stepping off the ride she controlled. She let the Emperor manta ray go when the three of them alighted on the beach.
¡°How would I know this place is so big that the rides you found us took years to find land?¡± Veronica similarly wiped herself with a soft white towel that could self-clean.
¡°You¡¯re the divination mage here!¡±
¡°Alright alright, we¡¯re in her presence. I don¡¯t want to be slain for trespassing.¡± Standing on the red beach with just sand in sight, they faced the same direction.
¡°Kin of The First, I beseech an audience with Saintess of Blood.¡± Veronica led the two Xengs she brought to do their traditional greetings. With their left hand wrapping their right fists they slapped their hands in tandem but they didn¡¯t bow nor look down.
There was no reply for ten whole minutes.
Red sand, water and skies were all the three Xengs were looking at.
A spot of black expanded within their view in the meantime.
A bat.
After a hard landing, it flapped open its wings with a shockwave that would¡¯ve killed the ride Ning Min controlled. Little bats conjured out of the big bat and the big bat formed into a humanoid. A Vampire.
¡®She sent a servant Saint on us. We¡¯re just three puny Emperors.¡¯ Ning Min transmitted her voice to their heads.
Kong Tian, a little more arrogant, wasn''t that surprised, ¡®we¡¯re not just any Emperors.¡¯
¡°You came in uninvited. Hid your presence. Killed our realms¡¯ livestock. Mind-controlled them for your transport. Any one of those warrants death. But as kin of our Liege¡¯s respected peer, you are welcomed and your sins are pardoned. Perhaps request entry next time.¡±
¡°We don¡¯t exactly have a way to send letters to your Liege¡¯s realm.¡± The space mage unironically explained.
¡°But you can enter at will. Haha. Human jokes are something I never understood. Excuse me, Xengs. Your blood smells fantastic. Always so unique compared to humans. I digress, my Liege has agreed to bestow you an audience in 3 standard weeks. Let¡¯s get you settled down. You can refer to me as Saint Lysander of the Nocturnus family.¡±
Unwillingly, the three of them were lifted off the ground with an unnerving feeling of their blood being controlled. The Vampire completely suppressed their magic body like nobody¡¯s business. If Kong Tian could do this and suppress their spatial resistance their journey would¡¯ve been far shorter.
Veronica divined the Saint escorting them without fear of being noticed. Unlike Identify or similar skills, divining through the Astral Realm was usually unnoticeable to anyone who wasn¡¯t connected with the Astral Realm, even Saints.
¡®Nocturnus family. Saint Thaddeus Lazarus Lysander Nocturnus. Level 1386. Considered high up amongst Saints but all the True Vampires are top rate. Wields¡crap, 3 Laws?! I can¡¯t tell the exact mantra but it''s blood, a combination of darkness and night. And transformation?¡¯
The mind mage helped to share the information amongst themselves. They reevaluated their standings and Ning Min rubbed the back of her neck.
Brought to a needlessly large old castle made of black stone, they were received with a ¡®warm¡¯ welcome by bats and spiders. There were a few servant vampires walking about. They hid the fact that they were spreading the Xeng¡¯s scent so that they weren¡¯t recognised as trespassers but all three of them noticed it.
Fortunately, they had human mattresses ready and not coffins that vampires sleep in. It had been years since they¡¯d laid on a proper bed.
¡°What do you think she¡¯s doing that requires us to wait three weeks?¡±
¡°Sleeping. She¡¯s been asleep for the past few years, we got here just in time for her rouse.¡± Veronica explained.
¡°Long hibernation period races are so troublesome to deal with.¡± Ning Min threw herself onto the mattress.
¡°Don¡¯t get overconfident with your mental transmission. Assume we¡¯re being overheard.¡± The two ladies bid Kong Tian away as he was led to a different guest room.
¡°We¡¯re already all the way here, can you tell me what you¡¯re here for?¡±
¡°You know I requested a personal audience don¡¯t you?¡±
Mouth wide open, Ning Min couldn¡¯t utter a word at the realisation that all she was was a tag-along. She reached for the pillow and strangled this cousin of hers into submission. To say that she had no gains from this trip would be a lie so she wasn¡¯t really pissed but she was annoyed by the way Veronica did things.
¡°Hey hey, I¡¯m saving you the stress of meeting one of the strongest creatures in the universe. Dragon connoisseur. God Drinker. God Saintess etcetera.¡±
¡°I never believed those stories. The gulf between us Emperors and Saints is already worlds apart. How can a Saint be compared wit- hmph!¡±
Veronica didn¡¯t know what just happened but she could make a guess. Ning Min was probably threatened or warned not to speak about the topic any further. In her mind. However, a Xeng was still a Xeng. So prideful, they''d rather die than follow others'' whims. It didn¡¯t matter if the threat was from a Saint, Demi-God or even a God.
If that wasn¡¯t the case, their population would be a little higher. There would be additional survivors in the 2-digit count. Not a lot but still higher.
Sadly, it was simply in their genetics and few have fought against these genetics. The same could be said for their less combat-focused counterparts.
Veronica once considered herself defective as all her people do. Marrying out of their people. Even her daughter was the same. And now her granddaughter. She felt guilty for transmitting her weakness to her children. If they were anything like the other members of the Ning Clan, her granddaughter might not be so weak that Veronica needed to come here to make a deal.
¡®A pity, I must have missed her evolution to grandmaster. I¡¯d have to prepare a gift for little Jing, she¡¯d watched after Ah Xin for so long. I should ask Kong Tian, I have no idea what those crafters like as a present. Maybe the Ancient Blood Core we got the other day? That would make a senior like me seem stingy. Trying to get her Legendary rarity items would be useless for her¡bah, never mind, I¡¯ll think about that another day.¡¯
The three of them rested without any vampires biting their necks in the middle of the eternal night in the Blood realm.
They slept for a long time, recharging within an unfamiliar race¡¯s home with no regard. After a standard day, they received a visit from another Vampire during dinner. They were provided the best wine any of them had ever drunk and a bloody steak. It was amazingly juicy.
A younger-looking Vampire compared to their escort the day before. Most Vampires had greyish pale skin and surprisingly well-toned musculature. Their facial features were practically human but dark eye circles were common.
However, True Vampires appeared no different from humans.
¡°Xeng. Kin of the Cosmic Tyrant. I¡¯ve heard a lot about your people. Care for some exercise? Oh, don¡¯t worry I¡¯m not trying to be rude or a bully. Three of you, and 1 of me. My authority over blood is still rudimentary compared to my father. Right, introductions. Damien Evangeline Valerian Nocturnus stands before you. Is that how introductions are made?¡±
¡°That¡¯s about right. Relax, we¡¯re not very good with human introductions either.¡±
¡°Good. You¡¯re not unbearable for lower beings.¡±
¡°You¡¯re terribly polite for a higher being.¡±
¡°We¡¯ve been brought up with stories of your ancestor, the Cosmic Tyrant. I do not want me, my family and my ancestors to die. I bet our ancestors are listening to us talk right now. And, we vampires aren''t born higher beings either. I say we¡¯d stand on equal grounds.¡±
Three of my non-combatants Emperors against a Saint? The handicap sound right or would you like a one on one?
Silence befell the 3 Xengs and the standing vampire. His knees trembled but he tried his best to remain upright.
¡°It seems like our ancestor have spoken.¡± Kong Tian put his silverware down and wiped the edges of his lips with the cloth on his lap.
Veronica saw the bulging vein on Valerian¡¯s forehead. He was likely young and stupid, homeschooled and never stepped outside their realm. They were in his homeground and he dared to call upon not just his ancestor, but The First.
Out of respect for your Liege and warm welcome, you don¡¯t have to die for your disrespect.
¡°Kneel boy. We ap- My Liege!¡± Lysander flew in and had his hands pushing his son¡¯s head down to the ground before any of them could react.
Veronica¡¯s heart stopped beating and so did her cousin¡¯s and Kong Tian''s.
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Stunned by the physical beauty of the naked lady that yawned, they couldn¡¯t even think. They didn¡¯t even know their heart stopped beating and their blood crystallised within their bodies.
¡°Shi Jian. You¡¯ve woken me up. For what? Some children?¡±
¡®Shi Jian? That¡¯s The First¡¯s name? I didn¡¯t even know that.¡¯ Veronica felt someone protecting them as a river gushed within their body again. She did not doubt in her mind, she would¡¯ve died within a minute if she were to continue standing still.
¡®How did little Xin feel under this pressure? Even if she didn¡¯t go to Elcra with her real body. There¡¯s no way she¡¯s just a Saint.¡¯ Veronica personally confirmed the title of the strongest Saint in existence without any display of power. At least, the strongest after The First evolved.
There was no other way to describe what she felt.
Maybe, just maybe. She might have overstepped her bounds by coming here.
¡®Nahh. What bounds?¡¯
¡°Name?¡± The naked beauty who stood in between them and the young Saint glanced back.
¡°Damien Evangeline Valerian Noc-¡±
¡°Don¡¯t shame us.¡± She didn¡¯t even let Valerian finish talking before all of them were sent into an open field. It felt like they were still in the castle, according to Kong Tian¡¯s message.
Lysander bumped his son on his shoulders.
¡°Your wish is my command my Liege.¡± Valerian had a knee on the ground with his head bowed down and both his arms crossed on his shoulders.
Kneeling and bowing was something no Xeng would do, no matter who they were facing. Excluding filial piety and respect to their direct elders like their parents but that might differ from clan to clan. If they were home, this was enough of a shame but to each his own. This was the culture of another race.
Mil, how about a bet to spice things up?
¡°You found something?¡± Exhaustion started to wash away from the Saintess of Blood¡¯s face.
Your appetite is too big, I only found a Mythic Soul Lotus. Unharvested on a Divine Worldcore.
¡°How old?¡±
Don¡¯t know. Your bet?
Ning Min¡¯s face twitched after not being able to figure out how The First was talking to them without a voice or a mental transmission.
¡°Hgnh! A barrel of my personal liquor? You¡¯ve been eyeing it ever since we last shared a drink.¡± Blood conjured over the naked lady¡¯s bodacious body and a bathrobe formed. She sounded like she moaned when she stretched her body without any shame. Veronica feared that all three of them would¡¯ve turned into her Thrall from her voice without The First watching over them.
Hoh, you¡¯re relinquishing a barrel? Accepted.
¡°M-my liege!¡±
¡®Haa, such high stakes were placed on us without our consent. I can¡¯t access the Astral Realm with the Saintess of Blood within the castle. Didn¡¯t see this coming. Damn wandering nebulous stars. At least this young saint shouldn¡¯t be able to control our blood in her presence.¡¯
The 3 non-combatant Xengs did not utter a word of complaint or exchange any words with The First. They had no say.
Mil, do you want me to remove your restrictions on them for you?
¡°Don¡¯t rush me. You¡¯re as impatient as ever. Done.¡±
Veronica felt her connection with the Astral Realm return but this was bad news. It likely meant Valerian¡¯s authority over blood was not clogged by the Saintess of Blood¡¯s presence.
They found themselves standing in a wide-open hall of the palace.
¡®Kong Tian defences. Ah Min, go crazy.¡¯
Veronica endowed their stars with their future. She could endow thousands of years of equivalent power and regeneration for other Emperors but only about a decade for her fellow Xengs. Potentially weakening a person and cutting their future strength away if she wanted to. However, she was nice, she could pay the cost of the spell for her family and friends.
Sadly, Valerian was so close to punching himself in the face before he ripped back control. Ning Min¡¯s failure to make use of the Saint''s power to self implode the blood in his body was no surprise either.
Veronica and Kong Tian felt their brain pulse as Ning Min laid control over their minds. She enhanced various abilities of the brain and mainly the Intelligence stat. A waste for Veronica but massive for Kong Tian. The space mage hasn¡¯t let anything touch them yet be it within their bodies or outside.
Veronica¡¯s attempts to shatter and injure Valerian¡¯s Astral body were rendered moot so far. It was her first time attacking a Saint but not her first time seeing a Saint¡¯s Astral body. There was a fundamental difference that separated what people call a higher being.
Since attacking seemed futile, she got to her main job of observing. Looking into his past and his present.
¡°He evolved with 2 Laws. Authority over blood and night, both fused as 1 tier 7 core skill. I can¡¯t read the actual skill or the accurate information about his law. He has another tier 7 core skill for a total of 2. The third law only formed within the last 2 centuries. Weakness¡ just combat in general, he¡¯d never stepped out of the blood realm in his life.¡± Veronica reported through their link. Gradually, she fed them his skill history. Only able to read the skill names of the vampire¡¯s sub-class and profession but it was more than enough for Ning Min.
Kong Tian¡¯s mana usage was not friendly to him, not against the blood rain that harnessed the power of the night. She used Ning Min¡¯s mental link to show Kong Tian where the heaviest attacks would be coming from.
¡°Domain coming.¡± Veronica saw the tiny stars within Valerian¡¯s body moving and threw astral debris at the glowing points in his astral body to slow the formation of his Domain.
They bought the Dream mage enough time to pull Valerian into a dream. Ning Min dragged all three of them into her dream where she was practically god. It took a lot out of Veronica to strengthen Ning Min enough to drag the Saint¡¯s physical body in.
With the Mind-Dream Mage present, they did not need pre-planned teamwork.
Unexpectedly, the half-spectators Veronica and Kong Tian felt the mind mage¡¯s surprise. Vampire Valerian brought night into her dream. Along with the night came a swarm of weird-looking bats behind him
¡°So not just a two-pump chump of a Saint then! Get out, he¡¯s mine now!¡± Ning Min, the experienced one, tossed the two of them out of her dream.
Landing on their feet, Veronica rubbed the back of her head and yawned while Kong Tian just looked like a fanboy of her cousin.
¡®Seriously, what are these bigshots looking at? Can they see inside her dream? Neither of them has any mental or dream powers. Let me make a guess, for the one and only Saintess of Blood that rules over her race¡¯s pair of Gods and various Demi-Gods with pure force, she can see the dreams of any creature with blood? Wouldn¡¯t be too far-fetched. Then The First? Spatial powers? Or just some nonsense I wouldn¡¯t understand?¡¯
Unlike her, Ning Min was a proper Xeng. She might not call herself a fighter because of what she does at home but she was a proper and almost a full combatant by their standards. Plenty of Saints challenge the Xeng¡¯s new homeworld. Ning Min was probably scheduled to chase those Saints away a few times before. The Xengs had a routine and work schedule to do these chores.
Perhaps it¡¯d been a short time for the spectators but ages had passed for the duelers.
Ning Min physically stepped out of her dream with Valerian¡¯s collar in her grasp. She tossed the mangled body at the Saintess of Blood¡¯s naked foot and the three of them put their left palm over their right fist again. ¡°We¡¯re done.¡±
¡°Is the father next? Or a Demi-God grandfather sleeping somewhere.¡± Ning Min put her hands down and glanced at Lysander.
Forget it, forget it. I already got my drink. Passable for a quack doctor, fortune teller and logistic transport driver.
They felt the overbearing presence disappear signifying that The First was no longer watching. Veronica giggled out loud.
¡°I feel bad for you ah min, you don¡¯t have to think of yourself as a quack doctor just because she calls you that.¡± Veronica transmitted her jab to her cousin.
Ning Min was one of the only three mind mages in their society and the youngest of the lot. The duty of treating their people¡¯s mental trauma and stabilising children¡¯s mental stage through training had been tossed to her for decades. And the general consensus amongst all Xengs was that mental injury was a hoax that didn¡¯t exist and mind doctors were quacks. After all, their entire population¡¯s doctor count was a resounding 0. She was insulted but couldn¡¯t retort.
¡°My liege¡¡± Lysander knelt beside his unconscious son with his head hung low.
¡°Bring him out and see the world. Train him well.¡± The Saintess of Blood opened a pool of blood in front of the two servant Saints.
¡°Thank you for your kind words! We won¡¯t disappoint you again.¡± With a nod towards them, Lysander grabbed his son and fell into the pool of blood.
¡°So, why have you invaded my house?¡±
The Divination Mage dared to look away and ushered her cousin and Kong Tian to go away. Irritated, they retreated to their guest room.
¡°This is about my granddaughter. The one you took away a couple of years ago.¡±
¡°Your granddaughter? I did?¡±
Veronica waited for the Saintess of Blood to come to her own realisation. She wasn¡¯t stupid enough to suggest what the Saintess should do. If she was not wrong, it was a familiar or an embodiment that kidnapped her granddaughter.
¡°Oh. I see. The child with Phoenix blood. What about her? I made a fair deal with her.¡±
¡°I¡¯m aware. I¡¯m he-¡± Veronica saw the frown on the charming True Vampire''s face. The Saintess of Blood was kind enough to hide her visage with blood, leaving only a hazy countenance in Veronica¡¯s view.
Veronica followed the gaze and was surprised to see someone standing at the corner of the room, facing a pillar.
¡®That man again!¡¯ Veronica saw the man who donned her granddaughter''s mask.
¡°Ah. Ah. Is this the right place?¡± The man faced the black stone pillar and massaged his throat.
¡°I have a lot of visitors today. And two of them I can¡¯t excuse. I guess there are always new experiences despite my long life.¡±
A roar echoed in the palace halls that shook her soul but her mask muted it.
¡°This soul basilisk is so persistent. Anyway, Grandmother? Hmm, it feels weird to call you that. Don¡¯t be stupid. Your silly deal will do her no good. Why make her cry? Me being here now should tell you, there¡¯s no point. You are not that amazing. I will¡I am dealing with it.¡±
Another roar came in and shattered the man¡¯s body.
¡°May I ask what that was?¡± Veronica decided that there was no point staying confused.
¡°Temporal shift. More accurately, parallel temporal shift. Since the uninvited guests have been seen out, let¡¯s continue. His words mean nothing to us, he no longer exists or is no longer going to exist. He is just a phantom that has no ability to change anything, not for us. I¡¯m sure you understand the future better than I do.¡± The Saintess of Blood seemed to be unbothered by her realm being trespassed multiple times in a row.
¡°Please give my granddaughter your blood.¡± Veronica was in no mood for mischief and got straight to the point. As a diviner, she was well aware that none of the future she sees is certain. They are ever-changing and she sees so many paths that there is no guarantee something will happen until it does. Of course, some things would definitely happen in some form.
¡°Xengs. Always so arrogant. What is your offer?¡± The blood mist did not hide the Saintess of Blood¡¯s mirth.
¡°I understand the equivalent exchange in a deal. I cannot tell you how, but you will benefit from this.¡± Veronica apologised to the man who persuaded her twice. This must happen. She must do this and no one can change her mind. Not even if her husband came back to life.
¡°Oh? Why should I trust you?¡± The lazily put-on bathrobe slid down her shoulders a little as she crossed her legs to show them bare.
¡°Because I said so.¡± Convinced and unshaken, the Xeng demanded.
¡°Hmm. What are the tell-tale signs that I¡¯ll get what I want?¡± The crossed legs stopped shaking back and forth while she made those provocative noises.
¡°When I die under my granddaughter¡¯s hands.¡±
Amused, the Saintess of Blood accepted the ridiculous demand.
Chapter 312: Present
¡°This is a little early, but here. For your birthday.¡±
Ning Xin tried her best to calm down and force her hair colour to recede to black. It was a passive skill formed during her time with the heat-draining bats. She tilted her head at the large box Ebony pulled out towards her.
¡°What is it?¡± She managed to pull her mind away from the destruction of her eatery and food spoilage but fire mana continued to pulse throughout her body.
¡°I had Sister Jing help me but I made it. I thought we should celebrate such occasions more often. And I could count the number of gifts I gave you with the fingers on my hand.¡±
¡°Can I open it?¡±
Ning Xin reached out for the gift, but her fire mana fully receded before she could touch the box. It was heavily protected by Ebony¡¯s mana. Both of them completely ignored the Tetramyths around them or the Barrier King who remained beside them.
It was a large box wrapped in coloured paper, with a string ribbon. It looked odd but she understood it was decorative. Even so, she was worried about breaking her gift. Ebony was right, they should¡¯ve celebrated the special occasions, small or big, more often.
¡°Mmm. Don¡¯t worry, it¡¯s not fragile.¡±
Hearing him say that allowed her growing eagerness to be released. She untied the ribbon and ripped the decorative paper while he was holding it.
The first thing she saw was a black sheen.
¡°I-Its beautiful.¡±
¡°Careful, it¡¯s heavy.¡±
Ning Xin gently slid her fingers under the smooth curve lump of metal.
A wok.
Her enhancement hadn¡¯t died off so the weight of the wok didn¡¯t trouble her. Ebony wasn¡¯t kidding, it was a few times heavier than his sword but it shouldn¡¯t be an issue.
Perhaps infected by him or just particular about her cooking equipment, to begin with, she eyed the dimensions of the wok and noticed she already got brainwashed by him. It was 3 cm thick. Layered, like his scaled shields or Dusk¡¯s bark.
¡®He sure loves his layered metal but what does it matter for a wok?¡¯ There was only one handle, it was part of the wok itself. Horizontal and not perpendicular, so it would be a fist clench rather than sword grip. Just the way she liked her woks.
¡°Try to heat it up. Proper seasoning method.¡±
Navin smiled at the side and waved to them to indicate his departure but she was too entranced by the feeling of the wok in her grip. She placed it in front of her and flicked her wrist to feel its motion. It didn¡¯t feel like it would fly off into the wall and disintegrate. Instead, the small flick-up blew up a gust of wind that rustled their robes and hair.
The metal grip made it possible for her to inject fire mana directly, telling her that the gap in the layers was for fire mana to pass through more easily. It also meant even heating to the entire wok and no open flame outside was required!
¡®It¡¯s not heating up? It can take heat! I can cook some of the monster meat that can handle more heat than my old wok now! I need to get a new blend of spices that won¡¯t burn as well. Oh, the possibilities!¡¯
¡°I love this!¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t jump straight to seasoning the new wok and flew into Ebony with open arms, her wok still in her right grip. The wind pressure shattered some of the closest frozen ants.
¡®Oh no.¡¯
She heard cracks from Ebony¡¯s body, realising that her excitement and glee pushed her back to full combat mode. She was hardly even glad to figure out that her excited state was not limited to unadulterated bloodlust. Those bats really pissed her off.
Innate Psyche Shift (Passive) - Having awakened and developed your natural polarities to the extreme, you can shift between two general states. In your convalescence state, your Strength, Agility, Intelligence and Perception can be reduced up to a static 90%. Redistributed to enhance your Vitality, Constitution, Endurance and Wisdom. In your atrophy state, your Vitality, Constitution, Endurance and Wisdom can be reduced up to a static 90%. Redistributed to enhance your Strength, Agility, Intelligence and Perception. You have perfect control over redistribution. The burden of Innate Psyche Shift on you is reduced by 300% + 5.0% per level. The speed and fluency of psyche shift are increased by 500% + 10.0% per level.
Ning Xin did not have Ebony¡¯s sustainability, in a survival scenario, she was far more susceptible to harm. The Tadarida Heat Sinks pushed her beyond the limits. Without her swords. Without any effective fire magic.
Her solution was always the same.
She just needed even greater firepower.
There was just one big problem.
She could never recover enough stamina or mana before her sleeping spot was disturbed. Without energy, she couldn¡¯t fight properly or even experiment with new techniques. Day in and day out, the Tadarida treated her as prey.
It did not piss her off as much as it spat on her pride.
One day, she snapped.
And Innate Psyche Shift sat in her skill list from that day.
It was more than just a stat redistribution. It was more than just a cognitive shift but a cognitive shift was the easier way to see it. In her convalescence state, she was weak but recovered much faster. In her atrophy state, she could burn out or die a lot faster. More importantly, she was dulled. Flawed in both states.
The skill description didn¡¯t tell her a lot that she figured out.
In her convalescence state, she was caught off guard a lot more easily. Her Intuition wasn¡¯t nearly as sharp. She was more tamed. It was harder for her to feel strong emotions. It made her wonder if this was how Ebony felt all the time but even more intensely.
In her atrophy state, she loses her mind. Only slaughter on her mind. Or so she assumed, but it was more likely that all her emotions were heightened to the extreme. Excitement was also one of them. It just so happened that ¡®killing¡¯ was on her mind most of the time she went into the atrophy state.
Stats aside, it was harder for her mana to move when she was in the convalescence state and vice versa in the atrophy state. In the atrophy state, fire and blood actually moved themselves and supported her. Burning in her veins to further blind her normal thoughts.
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The key advantage was ¡®up to¡¯ and ¡®perfect control¡¯.
In either state, she could leave a certain stat alone and not redistribute them but it took her time and mental effort that was hard to drag up if she was deep in either state. Even though it was a semi-tier 4 skill, it still took her time. Seconds or even minutes depending on how deep she was in either state. The present was the most obvious example, she was having a hard time swapping back or at least going to a normal, balanced mode with no redistribution.
Physically, her hair was the most obvious indicator. Fire and blood would boil up everywhere inside her, all her enhancement spells would cast themselves. Innate Psyche Shift would take into account enhanced stats all the same.
She already had practice with the redistribution and knew how much of each stat could be reduced or increased without hurting herself by having too little of anything.
Even better, she didn¡¯t have to sacrifice every part of 1 type of stat. Taking Wisdom, regeneration was useless for her in a battle. She couldn¡¯t regenerate while casting. But Wisdom was still useful, to maintain the stability of high Intelligence stat and the natural mental defences the stat provides. She already tested that she could take away just regeneration and push it to another stat, Endurance or the more specific stamina regeneration.
Hence, Ning Xin was certain.
There was no chance Ebony would defeat her in a duel anymore. And she was afraid of that so they¡¯ve been putting it off. Innate Psyche Shift was far from the only advantage she¡¯d gained. However, she gave him the benefit of the doubt for keeping up with her for so long so she suppressed her arrogance. There was no telling what he could do now, especially with his growing ability and control over his Domain.
¡°I¡¯m sorry!¡± Ning Xin panicked hard. She didn¡¯t mean to crush his ribs with her hug but she was too excitable in her atrophy state.
¡°I¡¯m glad you like it.¡±
She smiled under her mask, delighted that he wasn¡¯t so fragile.
For once, Ebony did not lecture on the functions of his craft. It was supposed to be a surprise or an experience for the chef to discover herself.
He guided her back to the fortress while she was entranced with her new toy.
Unable to fully go back to the convalescence state, she seasoned her wok in an open area. There was no one around, unlike the crowded eatery she had moments ago.
The alloy it was made of contained Emberdium, Ning Xin was only familiar with it since her swords and the woks she had contained the same metal. Emberdium was reddish orange in colour but the wok was pitch black. However, once she fed it even heat the hexagonal plates and layers of the wok glew in response. Very tiny hexagons, it required squinting when it wasn¡¯t heated or glowing.
She could guess that the layers were meant to hide or stack runes. Heat-related runes.
Ning Xin didn¡¯t care about the runes. She got straight into seasoning the wok with mammoth and seal fat. She didn¡¯t forget peanut oil. It probably didn¡¯t need the seasoning but there was no reason not to.
The first dish she cooked on her new wok was sweet and sour pork. In her excitable state, she flew to Ebony and force-fed him. Bite by bite. Watching his every motion and sensing all he felt to fuel her excitement further. She did not know shame or embarrassment in her current state, only aggression and an ardent desire to get what she wanted.
It took 2 whole days for her to calm down and exhaust herself after a few rounds of tetramyth slaughter and cooking. Her eatery restarted but she had fewer people bringing in ingredients and eating her food. The numbers increased when she gradually fell off the atrophy state and her hair turned more black than red.
Ebony wanted to leave, to check up on his classmates, the children and his teaching assistant models.
Unaware of his experimental results with Dusk, Ning Xin¡¯s heightened Intuition told her that Ebony was much stronger than her convalescent self believed. Rather than strong, he felt stable and infallible.
Kong Jing sent them up. Ignoring all the spatial protection that had been in place. It seemed like she already found a way to bypass them or force her way past them. Not all the way, but above the elevator shaft they took on the way down. That was good enough.
¡®I want to sleep on my bed anyway,¡¯ with that thought, Ning Xin happily faded into her convalescent state as they climbed up and returned home.
The trip down and up was a huge matter for the combatants below but not so much for them. It felt like they were returning home after a hunt or job.
And when they got home, Ning Xin flared back up into atrophy. Almost diving as deep as she could in an instant. It was beyond her control. She did not expect to arrive home to see their walls broken down. Frozen ground, flattened garden and shattered chunks of ice.
¡°Ebony! You¡¯re alright!¡± An old lady she smelled before on Ebony called out. She zapped into their range in a split second but Ning Xin wasn¡¯t fully present. Everything else was perceived as a threat. Her sword swung before her mind raced.
Ebony¡¯s mana flooded her and her sword struck an unwavering solid that didn¡¯t melt or budge under her swing.
¡°I am. One moment.¡± Ebony swept around the shattered chunks of ice until a pig-sized block floated into his hands.
She felt something from the chunk. Tiny bits of someone familiar.
¡®Just like the special model¡there¡¯s another? Since when? There¡¯s heat under the ground? A person.¡¯
Ebony¡¯s calming mana was intense but it was the first time she felt it at full force. He could control it and he was suppressing her excitable nature. There was no reason to be mindless now, there was no threat around. Or so she thought the mana was telling her. He managed to snap her back to convalescence but she wasn¡¯t concerned about this ability at all. It only worked because she allowed it.
She walked to the spot in the garden where the large chunk was lying. At the same time, so did Ebony.
He gently stomped the ground to reveal a mostly naked woman with bits of metal covering her vitals and privates.
¡®The secretly a metal mage girl who works in the Quest Hall. She''s low on blood, the healing wouldn¡¯t save her until she gets some food in her system. Wait¡nevermind, her blood is being replenished. I forgot Yvette can also use blood magic. But she still needs food.¡¯
Ning Xin could feel another person¡¯s hunger. Hunger was an emotion. It was annoying and she did not like it. It made her desire to feed people in her surroundings grow. Just to get the feeling of hunger to go away.
Despite the damage to the fence walls, garden and Ebony¡¯s Models, the house was undamaged.
Removing the source of hunger came first, she left the rest to the man of the house who knew more about the situation.
¡°I¡¯ll make some grub. And tea, please come in, madam.¡± She forgot the old lady¡¯s name that Ebony mentioned but she could recognize a friend from foe right now. Serving tea to the elderly who visited was only natural.
The old lady helped cover the frozen metal mage with her robe which saved Ning Xin some effort.
¡°Xin, I¡¯ll be out. I¡¯ll clean up when I get back.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t take too long.¡±
¡°Mm. Wilcox, thank you for protecting my house.¡±
¡°It was no trouble. I was too late to protect your moving sculptures. Please tell the kids why you didn¡¯t come yourself.¡±
¡°Okay, why don¡¯t you join us for dinner tonight? I¡¯ll try to be back by then.¡±
¡°It is my misfortune to miss it but my fortune to have dinner with my grandkids. Sorry, I¡¯m already booked for dinner.¡±
Ning Xin heard the exchange from the kitchen, she served the old lady tea and found Ebony to have left.
¡°Thank you, let me get some clothes.¡± She did not want to give any clothes to this random woman but she could spare a set that no longer fit her. It was worse if she was still naked when Ebony got back.
¡°What are you going to do about her? It doesn¡¯t look like you know her well.¡± Old ladies had a special ability, they tended to be able to make themselves feel familiar. That was how Ning Xin felt for the stranger.
¡°Feed her. Then, keep her around I suppose. I don¡¯t know what Ebony needs her for but she was in our house so I guess he wants to shelter her for now.¡±
¡°Ebony left too fast, I didn¡¯t get to share what I know about the situation.¡± Wilcox was an impatient drinker, just gulping away. Ning Xin could feel the lightning dance around her.
¡°He probably knows enough, his models can store memory.¡± It was rude but she left the old lady with the unconscious metal mage on the floor while she searched for one of her childhood clothes. That was the only point in time that she was so small in stature.
¡°Aren¡¯t you interested in what attacked your property?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t tell me, I don¡¯t want to melt my house down.¡±
¡°Hm? Well, it looks like you kids have a handle on it so I¡¯ll get out of your hair. Thank you for the tea, it¡¯s delicious.¡±
Spontaneity wasn¡¯t an odd trait amongst great lightning mana users so she wasn¡¯t so surprised at the hurried departure.
Ning Xin was more distracted by the hunger she was feeling. It had to go.
Chapter 313: Returning the Favour
¡®Singular Cut Style of the Domination Blade Academy, Damien Hartmon. Lure. Jaded Parasites. Double-spy. Whatever. 38,889. He--I wasn¡¯t just a model. I fought. I struggled against insurmountable odds. I achieved my priorities. I survived when I shouldn¡¯t have. Barely.¡¯
It was--educational.
Ebony recognised the school name, the sword style and even the surname Hartmon. When he was learning crafts from Kong Jing and he entered a tournament for a new metal at that time, he faced someone called Zach Hartmon. They were both journeymen at that time.
His model deleted information about every other obstacle on its path back home. Only Damien was embedded as priority information, although on the low end.
The sword style was a weird one. Damien only attacked once, or 38,889 only retained the memory of one attack. Before that, the swordsman only made feints. He hemmed and hawed but never drew his blade until he was certain he would hit.
Thanks to Ebony¡¯s evasive abilities and practically fluid body, it gave 38,889 time to put more distance away but Damien was faster. A lot faster. Ebony wasn¡¯t able to tell why the swordsman didn¡¯t attack when he could clearly cut 38,889 down but he could tell that the swordsman was wary of something. 38,889 didn¡¯t know the reason.
By a stroke of luck, one of Ebony¡¯s child-abu--training Models was walking around outside. Walking back some of his classmates who didn¡¯t stay in the academy dorm.
38,889 couldn¡¯t sense them but they could sense 38,889. They prioritised walking the children back home safely before taking a look at the familiar sense of mana and Will. They thought 38,889 was Ebony. But it shouldn¡¯t have the function to search Ebony out of their own accord.
Then 38,889 did something Ebony did not imbue it to be able to do.
It or he absorbed the Will within the children''s training Models. It gave him Will and a restock of mana. However, the domestic Models did not have strong capabilities. What it did was restore 38,889¡¯s ability to perceive its surroundings and cast magic again.
That gave 38,889 the knowledge of his home and the fact that dozens of other Models were parked there.
It was then, Damien decided to attack. Obliterating 38,889¡¯s body. Barely a fist-sized chunk of ice remained from that attack that 38,889 couldn¡¯t even react to. Ebony didn¡¯t know how the spy girl survived that attack. He didn¡¯t remember if 38,889 threw her aside or protected her at a cost.
¡®It¡¯s too fragmented to tell what happened. But what happened doesn¡¯t matter. My Will capacity expanded. Noticeably. Maybe 1-2% increase in maximum capacity.¡¯
Ebony found a tavern bar that 38,889 was made to remember and walked in. He had to leave the Central District, the tavern was pretty far away all things considered.
A few eyes turned to glance at him but people generally minded their own business. He took a seat at an open counter seat.
¡°Bar keep Jim?¡± He probed the bartender.
¡°...who are you?¡± The bartender stealthy glanced at some of the customers who were drinking in broad daylight.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, no one can hear us. Damien Hartmon told me you can contact him.¡± Ebony assumed that Jim was a friend of that swordsman who invited him.
¡°Who is Damien Hartmon? Why do you know my name?¡± Bartender Jim appeared genuinely confused. Ebony was impressed with the lack of change in heartbeat or any muscular twitch that indicated a lie but he was certain he didn¡¯t get the wrong person.
A gentle flow of his mana finished probing the building.
¡°I didn¡¯t notice him, so he¡¯s here. Sorry to intrude.¡±
Ebony wanted to walk past the oddly placed or hidden door but that motion seemed to put the bartender and more than half of the drinkers on guard and their hostility was so clear.
¡®This is not my establishment, I would be offended if someone barged into my room and it was a stranger who visited my house for the first time. Fair. But the bartender is acting ignorant even though the person in question is right here. I¡¯ll just call him out then.¡¯
¡°Damien Hartmon. You invited me, I¡¯m here.¡±
¡®Not coming out....yes, I can attack him. It¡¯s not unprovoked when he tried to kill me-38,889.¡¯ The gentle flow of mana slipped through the cracks in their walls and magically protected room and conjured a barrage of swords that propelled towards Damien within the building.
Ebony made sure that no one else was targeted or harmed, by sealing them in his healing ice.
He missed all of them, unable to conjure ice anywhere 5 metres away from the swordsman¡¯s body. So he wrapped the entire hidden room in his mana and froze the room. Once the object or body was frozen, he could drag them out. It was one method of overriding or breaking past magic body¡¯s resistance but it took time since it was indirect freezing.
Damien Hartmon was strong, so Ebony did not hold back on the flames. Setting the entire inner room on light cyan flames in one go. He had no choice but to make it friendly, the flames would only seal and not do any damage so he wouldn¡¯t get bystanders hurt.
¡®The room is great, it¡¯s not as cold as it should be. Now it''s just like a freezer, it would take too long to freeze him out oh, and his armour has cold resistance¡I can spare time for a drink.¡¯
¡°1 house blend.¡±
Money talks. To a certain extent, Ebony understood this, so he just slid a Grey over and patronised the establishment.
The hostile men and women sat down when he didn¡¯t force his way through. And the bartender brought him his drink quickly enough.
Ebony didn¡¯t like it but it wasn¡¯t bad, its sourness was refreshing but the aftertaste of spice didn¡¯t quite match.
¡°Could I have another?¡±
¡®He¡¯s not quite coming out.¡¯
By the time he was on his third drink, he admitted that maybe the house blend was more addictive than he originally gave credit for. He was a little curious as to why the bartender got more fidgety as time passed.
On his fourth drink, he finally noticed that he was getting poisoned but honestly, he had more dangerous dishes at home. This ¡®poison¡¯ didn¡¯t even require him to magically freeze his bloodstream or remove the poison.
Poisons don¡¯t work well on him or Ning Xin. He could freeze his blood and pinpoint most poisons. Any infected part that could be cut off and regrown. But that was only necessary if the poison could even hurt him. As for Ning Xin, she could boil it off directly or manipulate her blood out. Similarly, only if the poisons got past their natural immune system. She could melt metals with her body temperature, it was hard to find a poison that could survive that.
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It was also why their natural resistance to poison simply stopped levelling. They couldn¡¯t find a better poison. Despite their poison resistance skill being both low in level and tier. It was a racial trait at this point.
Ebony had patience but it¡¯s almost been 30 minutes, he had dinner to attend.
Fortunately, Damien wasn¡¯t that patient. He walked down from the second floor, through a hidden door trap. He should¡¯ve been on the first floor but that was the odd design of the tavern.
¡°What do you want?¡±
The swordsman that appeared tried to pat the blue flames off him but it wasn¡¯t coming off and it already got past his armour.
Ebony tilted his head, ¡°you invited me here but you weren¡¯t quite coming out.¡±
He shut the flames off and unfroze the rest of the hidden room and its inhabitants before Damien showed up in the bar.
¡°...so you¡¯re here for a little revenge.¡±
¡°Revenge? Revenge¡yes, I think that¡¯s the word. Where is your home?¡±
¡°Home? Don¡¯t have one.¡±
¡°Two attacks, I¡¯ll return them.¡±
Ebony tossed a bag of Blues to the bartender and kicked up at Damien¡¯s chin fully augmented, minus the Domain. He noticed some of Damien¡¯s belongings or mana-attached items and just took this as the man¡¯s residence but he felt bad for the owner.
The swordsman had his sheathed weapon block the impact but his body was raised and shot through both ceilings.
¡®Ooo, that¡¯s a good sword. It didn¡¯t break and it didn¡¯t catch on fire.¡¯
When he Flickered after the figure that shot through the sky and prepared the greatest Stalactite Sunder he could muster, Damien¡¯s shaky arms got onto the hilt of his sword.
But the swordsman wasn¡¯t used to the lack of footing and wasn¡¯t capable of flight.
Stalactite Sunder didn¡¯t require a downward motion. Not to a gravity mage like he was. Wherever he wanted to be ¡®downwards¡¯ was downwards.
Damien flew out of sight.
Ebony followed and saw him embedded into the city walls and made sure he wasn¡¯t dead before going home. The swordsman must have known that 38,889 wasn¡¯t dead and left him alone or he wouldn¡¯t have sent the invitation. That for one, was something Ebony was thankful for.
¡®The sword still didn¡¯t break. He is not that flimsy either, less flimsy than the unactivated city wall. His armour is beyond what I see people wearing.¡¯
Now that the distractions were out of the way, Ebony got back to deciding on his schedule for the coming days.
He was slightly late for dinner but he knew there was no need to worry. If he was late, it just meant Ning Xin would make another dish or two.
The spy girl didn¡¯t require his sealing anymore, she was just asleep. On the floor. Wearing some training clothes that he¡¯d never seen.
¡°She woke up and ate earlier.¡±
¡°How¡¯s the wok?¡±
¡°I love it.¡±
There wasn¡¯t a need for too many words between them but the topic gave the chef things to say over dinner, it was cute to see her struggle to swallow her food and say something after.
¡°Uhm.¡± The spy girl spoke out when she woke up in the middle of their meal. ¡°Thank you for getting me out.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t going to say it was for the experience and she was not top priority.
¡°What do you need from me?¡± She put on her receptionist stance with a slight bow. Her metal now covered her clothes as a simple breastplate. If she learnt runic formulation, metal magic would be fantastic and her molten liquid metal armour would be a lot stronger.
¡°Jaded Parasites. You¡¯re part of this organisation?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t want his chef to scowl so he made sure to swallow before speaking.
¡°Ye-yes, aren¡¯t you also?¡± Spy girl stayed defensive but her body language told him she wasn¡¯t about to run or sneak an attack.
¡°No, you misunderstood. Are you going to be okay, going out into public?¡±
¡°I will be.¡±
¡°From what I understand, you people do odd jobs. And you have very, very good kidnappers. You seem capable of collecting information.¡±
¡°O-odd jobs?¡±
¡°Help me find out about a person. Mr kidnapper- I mean, unnamed¡fire magic, halberd-wielding grandmaster.¡±
¡°That¡¯s all?¡±
Ebony nodded. It was an afterthought to begin with. He didn¡¯t know why the metal mage was so shifty and nervous around him. Most people would¡¯ve calmed down after so much exposure to his mana with the intention to calm them down.
¡°Ma-may I leave now?¡±
¡°You may.¡±
¡°How can I contact you?¡±
¡°This is my house. Do you remember those ice sculptures, I¡¯ll always leave some around. The next ones won¡¯t break so easily.¡± He saw the lady off without learning her name or getting her callstone link.
¡®I don¡¯t have the resources to create a second Dusk and Dusk is busy downstairs. I¡¯ll make more and better bodyguards for the time being.¡¯
¡°So who attacked our house?¡±
¡°A swordsman. Another double spy. He chased her down as part of Lure. Putting that act on, he decided that he needed to destroy or kill me¡my Model. But he¡¯s also part of the Jaded Parasites and he took the job to rescue her to prevent her from spilling the beans. I don¡¯t know what beans. But I struggled a bit too much, surviving the attack. He had to keep the act up and chase me down. The real members of Lure were close by, someone as strong as the swordsman Damien. But he didn¡¯t move or attack me, only watching Damien. So he continued the chase all the way to our house. And once I was underground while the frozen spy girl whose vitality was sealed up by me, they decided we were both dead enough.¡±
¡°Tuffock?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. No memories of that.¡±
The pests, Tetramyths were a troublesome foe for the Empire and the Imperials. But Ebony and Ning Xin treated them as what they were called. Pests. They dropped in for a two to three-day hunt and returned home to sleep and have their meals whenever Ning Xin tired herself out and emptied both her stomach and her mana pool.
Dusk was permanently on the battlefield, creating Models and training all the skills Ebony wanted to train in the exact method he wanted to train and experiment.
They shouldn¡¯t have the access to move about but they had arguably one of the most competent space mages on the planet as their driver. They came and went as they pleased.
It was a job.
They always had targets for their conditioning.
Ebony put aside his organic brain idea but he never forgot about it.
He was enlightened by the individuals the Empire had to offer. People that should¡¯ve been fighting the Trolls. Ebony and Ning Xin were still a little off the mark to be ¡®free¡¯. They did not come and go as they pleased. They were simply ¡®allowed¡¯ to do so.
Contact between the Xeng and the Empire was lukewarm or so he noticed.
But for reasons no one knew, the Tetramyths seem to consider their death rate paltry and they appeared to like Elva a lot. Too much, as people coming to Ning Xin¡¯s half-time eateries have been saying that the seers of multiple noble houses have been saying that the numbers of the race of ants have only been increasing by the day.
All this time, the titled Emperor of the Empire had eluded Ebony and Ning Xin despite being on the same battlefield. They didn¡¯t see the man appear anywhere but Hector insisted that the man had just talked to him moments before they met up for a meal.
Ebony had watched the Prince, a Master at work. The man¡¯s destructive powers were through the roof. The defensive ice mage¡¯s Calculated Hunch didn¡¯t know how the black beam from a punch would affect him if it hit. Elements made it hard to estimate what would happen to his body, much less more than 6 elements compounded into one simple attack. He counted 9 elements, 3 more than Hector¡¯s class name implies.
They¡¯ve been a bit distant recently but only because of how busy the Prince and Princess were.
Conversations between Ebony and Ning Xin had thinned out gradually, they were never at work together and coming back home to check on their house was also Ning Xin¡¯s sleeping time.
He was less and less aware of her growth and the same could be said for her.
Ebony was a little too distracted to think about how exciting their next duel would be at the moment.
Chapter 314: Insufficient Mana
Ning Xin opened the door to their house which had turned into a sleeping location for the past week or two. Her burning and aching muscles were allowed to rest and heal naturally. It never got old, no matter how often the physical training impaired her so.
There was self-inflicted pain and injury so bad that even Convalescence state would take her a few hours to heal. Unlike Ebony who can recover his physical body to their perfect state any time he wants within seconds, the only difference being his temporary loss of strength in regenerated flesh and bones. Her muscles still needed time to rejoin, rest and regrow.
She was peeved, even in her convalescence state.
Something was up and she couldn¡¯t pinpoint the issue. She just knew that something felt wrong. Strongly related to Ebony but at the same time, it was mixed with some strong feeling that something was creeping up to her very slowly. And oddly, she felt that it was a separate matter.
She hated the weak glimpse of foresight that she got from her grandmother. At this point, she felt like it was just a tease and she might as well not have it and stress her out daily without knowing what was going to happen. It was likely the source of her accurate and precise intuition so she shouldn¡¯t be complaining.
Today was a special day.
They returned home for more than just sleep, rest or food.
Ebony was going to watch his classmates compete in an Academy tournament.
She was uninterested, even at the prospect of spending some alone time with Ebony.
She had her own match to deal with. It was convenient that they returned every so often for her to continue rising the ranks of the coliseum. It was still boring, of course. Even with an undefeated record, her official rank rose slowly. However, the number of matches she had been able to take had been increasing ever since her win streak had gone over 50.
She hadn¡¯t even drawn her blade.
It was insulting not to her opponents but to her. Her opponents were low-level Masters, it was no surprise that they would not require her to knock them out with just her concentrated Vitality. She liked the format since duelling strength didn¡¯t depend on level or evolutionary stage but it still stung to be on the receiving side of the fair system.
In her 51st match, she finally had a level 302 Grandmaster as an opponent. She didn¡¯t remember Appraising the man or woman since the fight ended in the exact same way the past 50 matches did but it was a start. She couldn¡¯t even recall if her opponent was a human or beastmen.
It was hard to level up.
Despite the weeks they¡¯ve spent, she was barely level 310 right now. And Ning Xin was a little more convinced of Ebony''s theory. Experience gained from kills was not the same for them, even if the level difference between them and the monsters they¡¯ve killed was taken into consideration. It was all about accumulation and the amount of effort.
He hypothesised that they would get less experience for killing something ten levels above them compared to another Grandmaster of the same level killing the same creature.
Ning Xin did not learn any advanced arithmetics but it sounded like a load of nonsense to her. But now, she was inclined to believe it. Largely thanks to the Frost Elves or Elves in general. Their combatants traditionally levelled all the way up to 100 without killing a large amount of creatures, maybe just an occasional hunt here and there. They also took far longer to reach said levels but they could technically reach level 100 without killing a single creature even with a combat Class.
With the same logic, it shouldn¡¯t be any different at any other levels including from 300 to 301.
There were a few occasions when Ning Xin and Ebony levelled in the middle of sparring. Not their skill levels but their Class, Sub-Class and Profession.
In his words, ¡®killing is easier for us, so it gives us less. How levels are gained can be generally classified under a few ways such as. effort, difficulty, actual improvement to logic and basis of a technique and so on. Killing a King-ranked Tetramyth of any subspecies is easier for us than it is for someone higher level than us, and the difference in effort required is proportional to the amount of experienced gain.¡¯
When Ning Xin saw some of her repeat customers or ingredient providers level up over the course of a week, she was forced to believe that there was some truth to Ebony¡¯s hypothesis or it was just a coincidence. But there were no coincidences, few people killed more than her. Few people killed faster than her.
But Ebony proved himself, one day he said he killed a measly 4 Tetramyths but he gained two levels. It was still not a number she thought possible. She had more than a thousand times that number that day with 0 Class levels to show for.
Putting aside his unfair advantage of Dusk training skills for him around the clock. Especially his Sealing magic that Ning Xin managed to get a look at with the spy girl.
It was obvious to her, a Vitality user that his sealing magic sealed Vitality. This made her extremely excited at what kind of measures Ebony had come up to prevent her from using Vitality-based enhancement. Could it stop her skills from working?
Ning Xin cleaned up and left for the colosseum while Ebony continued to repair his garden before his classmate¡¯s tournament.
She had 3 whole matches lined up for today but her expectations were kept low.
And as she thought, all matches ended instantly without drawing her blade or casting any magic. She simply knocked their lights out with hyper-concentrated Vitality and killing intent. Without going into Atrophy state. Her vitality was stronger in the convalescent state but this technique is a lot less threatening without the intensity of killing intent that she could pull off in the Atrophy stage.
With a small test, she knew she made people¡¯s muscles spasm this way while also stopping their hearts from beating and their blood from flowing. But if she did the same in her Atrophy state, she could burn the target¡¯s muscles and internals without using any mana and just sheer intensity of Intent and Vitality. And instead of stopping their blood flow or heartbeat, it sped them up.
If it was only for an instant, she could convert most of her stats to Vitality and pump it out with a glare mixed with her intent. She could even turn her maximum health from the Vitality stat itself to further increase her health regeneration of Vitality. It was quite an intriguing ability and also a very odd feeling in her body and mind.
On the bright side, her Duelling rank increased to 21. It was a large jump from the initial rank of 1 with Journeymen in their ranks. From now on, she should be facing proper Grandmasters.
Since didn¡¯t even spend an hour, she decided to hunt Ebony down by scent. Although she was pretty sure he knew where she was and was within reach.
Certain aspects of their capabilities have been increasing at a terrifying rate since they¡¯ve evolved. For her, she could control Vitality and her consolidation of Intent. For Ebony, she suspected it was his mental reach. His mana¡¯s range so to speak.
There were two obvious points where Ebony lagged behind every traditional Imperial mage. One was his maximum range, even a Great Mage might have greater range than him, a Grand Mage. However, that was to be expected. It was common knowledge that a mage¡¯s mental reach is ¡®hard capped¡¯ by their Wisdom stat. That could be vastly increased with a skill or two. The basic training to expand their reach is something every mage knows how to do. It was slow, gruesome work.
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Not even decades would be enough to reach the hard cap of their Wisdom stat. And that was for the common mage who tend to have more Intelligence than Wisdom.
It was also normal for a Grand Mage to have a far greater range than a Great Mage, even without an increase in the Wisdom stat. Even so, Ebony¡¯s current growth in this aspect was slightly abnormal. He said a few fragmented sentences about a monolith and the effects of pouring liquid something on the main monolith. Whatever he was talking about, he seemed confused at how hard it was to say those words.
Ning Xin hummed a song Ebony implanted into her head while hopping unassumingly towards his scent. Fully aware that he was watching her and could get to her within seconds.
Ebony¡¯s other disadvantage was the size of his mana pool.
Ning Xin was utterly confused at his absolute incompetence when it came to mana capacity-increasing skills. He even had the damn book in his hands. Multiple of them!
But the odd man made every mana capacity-increasing skill into a refinement for his mana compression skill. Unaware of how his brain worked, Ning Xin could not comprehend why he said that all the mana capacity skills he saw, heard or even bought, tier 1 or 2 simply gave him more ideas on mana compression. He couldn¡¯t even see those skills as capacity skills, they apparently sound like compression skills to his skewed understanding of mana.
If he were to decompress his mana to its base state, he technically wasn¡¯t at a disadvantage when it came to mana pool size to someone at the same level. Maybe not the best yet but he likely wasn¡¯t far from it.
She found the place, it was a different coliseum. A smaller one that was not run by anyone, likely just a random arena for such events. Someone was wearing Tidal Academy¡¯s uniform that didn¡¯t feel weak. It made her turn her head to take a look at a bored-looking man with extremely deep eye-bags and slouched back. A fire mage.
Unassuming like she was, the fire mage didn¡¯t look at her and only nodded to Ebony who waved at him to gesture that she was with him. The old lady, Wilcox also helped to make her unaccounted entry smooth.
¡°Who¡¯s fighting who now?¡± Ning Xin knew the names of some of Ebony¡¯s young classmates. Only those that he told her about.
¡°Atticus, the dual sword-wielder. Remember him?¡±
¡°Oh, yes. I see they are not restricted to what is taught in their academies.¡±
¡°Mm, just an actual duel with everything at their disposal excluding potions or weapons like bombs or burst bows.¡±
Ning Xin saw them use wooden swords but the boy Atticus had a wand gripped with one of his sword-wielding hands. He needed the wand to help him cast. It was a bit pathetic and she didn¡¯t like the multitasking that affected the sword grip but it is what it is. Children of Masters or Grandmasters and a first or second-generation mage of his bloodline only meant his elemental affinity and natural-born talent with mana was on the lower end of the spectrum.
Their opponents were the Arcane Warrior Academy. An Academy even Ning Xin heard of and seen a few of their students before. By the looks of Atticus¡¯s opponent, she understood that even the Unclassed were not haphazardly taught and had the basics down. Nothing flashy, but they had stable movements and more importantly, weren''t scared numb in a fight for their age.
Atticus was the only one in Ebony¡¯s class except the beastman who had an acceptable level of physical fitness since he descended from warriors. She only said ¡®acceptable¡¯ after comparing him with the rest of the lightning mage children but it was honestly disappointing.
The Arcane Warrior student was defeated after 3 long minutes. He was not a talent. After weeks of Ebony¡¯s training, he should¡¯ve crushed the opponent way faster. But the Arcane Warriors had an overwhelming advantage over a few physically weak and scrawny lightning mages that zapped out tiny streams of electricity or fired a ball of lightning that was actually frighteningly stable and precise. That was definitely Ebony¡¯s work, stability and precision.
The rest of the matches went in a way that reminded her of who taught these lightning mages-to-be. The scrawny children fought tooth and nail. Barely dodging attacks that should¡¯ve been too fast for them to avoid or knowing when to take a glancing blow to get a lightning-filled slap to the arm or leg. A good stun was enough for them to land a few good blows on their opponents.
However, the unclassed Arcane Warriors already knew how to defend a targeted spot with mana. Some of them were able to react and protect themselves in time. The slow cast speeds didn¡¯t help the mage¡¯s case. However, these Arcane Warriors had an even tinier mana pool and control compared to the mage students.
They ultimately came to a draw which shocked the other Academy a lot except for the last match which was about to happen between their two top students. It was a terrible score for them when they should¡¯ve crushed the Piercing Tempest Academy with ease for the unclassed division.
¡°From the Piercing Tempest Academy, Umar.
From the Arcane Warrior Academy, Cerise.¡±
¡®So that¡¯s the girl whose face I keep seeing.¡¯ Ning Xin finally saw the real girl in the flesh.
A person that Ebony analysed and had targeted training for all of his classmates wasn¡¯t going to look good for the young girl. Honestly, if Umar did as well as he did in training. His loss was not a possibility.
The chances that Ebony didn¡¯t know how a young unclassed girl that uses a tiny bit of mana enhancement with mostly Arcane Warrior fighting style was close to 0. The only thing he could have missed out was her family taught skills she¡¯d never shown him or something new she learned in the past month. However, there was no way Ebony only taught his little friends a stagnant opponent.
To be honest, Ning Xin was falling asleep from how boring and slow the duels were going but she was paying attention.
Umar cooked her up. In a literal sense, he fried her with lightning so hard that it overrode her armour and fiery mana skin skill. She even wore armour with a weak lightning resistance. He was untouchable by the faster, stronger and bigger opponent as if he knew where every swing, punch or even feint was coming from.
But Ebony might have underestimated Cerise¡¯s ability to use mana or the effect of her enhancement. Umar had cuts on his face. The girl could extend her mana out physically. Manifestation of mana in solid form while being Unclassed was something that exceeded even Ebony¡¯s expectations. It wasn¡¯t enough to catch Umar completely off guard but she landed a hit before Umar¡¯s spell.
¡®That speed cast is actually good? And the volume of his spell is great. Did he succeed at compressing lightning mana and even cast it stably? No wonder he¡¯s Ebony¡¯s favourite. Someone with actual potential to be strong.¡¯
After that, even Ebony zoned out. It was the Journeymen''s turn and the Arcane Warrior Academy returned the favour by winning 9 out of 10 matches. They should¡¯ve had a better fighting chance but even the combat-focused lightning mage students did not have much experience facing a fast warrior charging at them with a real metal blade that could shrug off lightning spells just through their mana skin.
Only the Great Lightning Mages evened out the duel against the Master warriors. The only ¡®unfair¡¯ point was that the Great Lightning Mages were all a little older than the Master warriors. Mage Academy courses ran longer and took many more years on average compared to warriors.
Ning Xin wanted to see the instructors on both sides fight but that wasn¡¯t happening so she was a little disappointed.
She was a little happy by something else entirely though, the children didn¡¯t avoid her when they ran up to Ebony to get his praise and ramble on about their fight. Those that lost were extremely ashamed but the amount of time they had was too short to begin with so it was no surprise. Her confidence in not scaring Kiva away when she got too strong in the future rose with this skill of hers.
While watching Ebony break a few children¡¯s confidence because of how cold and straightforward he was with his words, Ning Xin noticed the growing sense of unease resurface.
¡®He¡¯s getting away. What has he been thinking about? I know, he¡¯s definitely making a new skill and is probably testing them out right now, maybe a few hundred alterations a day. Is this feeling¡the feeling that I¡¯m about to be left behind?¡¯
Ning Xin¡¯s unease gradually pushed her out of the convalescent state and deeper into the Atrophy state to heighten her Intuition.
¡®Oh!! I know where this sense of dissonance is coming from!¡¯ Ning Xin recalled something Ebony said a few days ago, when she was in a hungered and muddle-headed Atrophy state. They were having a meal together but she had been more engrossed with stuffing her mouth and stomach at that time.
¡°My data collection has been bearing fruit. I figured out my biggest, current problem that¡¯s impeding my growth.¡±
¡°Nghm?¡± She remembered replying with her mouth full. A bit shameful of her but her hunger was getting harder to fight.
¡°I regenerate mana too slowly,¡± Ebony said with as much seriousness as always.
The joke flew over her head at that time, enough to stop her chowing down for a moment. He ignored her reaction and continued,
¡°Personally, I¡¯ve come across 2 people who regenerate more mana than I do. One of them can regenerate while casting as I do or I strongly suspect he can, Vent. The other is another Elf I felt when we went for tea at the Aroma Alcove. Not just a little, they regenerate mana magnitudes faster than I do.¡±
¡°Are you not going to eat?¡± Had been her response at the time.
Ebony had that little smile of his that made her unable to focus on her food, ¡°I¡¯ll eat. I¡¯m done diverging for now. It¡¯s time to consolidate.¡±
That¡¯s where this feeling is coming from. ¡®How dare he think of leaving me behind. How dare he think he can get ahead.¡¯
The Xengs didn¡¯t care about many things but when it came to what held importance to them, the faintest slight was the greatest insult to them. Their motto to people who labelled them arrogant has always been the same, ¡°we are merely confident as the arrogant amongst us are dead.¡±
The day a Xeng admits to arrogance is the day they are no longer able to back up their words and actions, for many, that was the day they perished.
Chapter 315: Veritable Ice Clone
¡®The way to level and increase natural potential is through core skills and improving on what our classes do. I don¡¯t know about that stranger Elf but Vent is capable of regenerating mana while utilising it, I saw that when he flew us over to Tidal. That can only mean he has a higher tier meditation or more likely, he compounded two types of mana regeneration skills.
But meditation types skills are the only ones I know that can naturally increase mana regeneration. Even if I found a distinctly different meditation type skill to learn, it would just meld into my current meditation either through refinement, mutation or even evolution.
I¡¯ve been sleeping on Mana Adjudicator. What are some other ways of restoring mana? Runes? The most obvious one would be to absorb, convert, purify and compress which I have a few formulas for that Dusk is already using but that is dependent on ambient conditions and it''s too unstable for me to use on my body. I can make a version for my Models but not for myself.
What about something similar to Xin¡¯s ability to convert mana to vitality? Can I make a rune that converts my excessive stamina to mana? It wouldn¡¯t be efficient enough but that is possible since I have more stamina that I can use even after the reduction from my Physique change. But that¡¯s not enough, I estimate that to be a tier 2 skill at best.¡¯
Ebony continued to ponder similar trains of thought for the umpteenth time after he decided that he simply didn¡¯t have enough mana to run Dusk and even himself at full potential.
External methods were completely ruled out. He didn¡¯t want to be put into a situation where he couldn¡¯t use capabilities that he should be able to. It had to come from within but the only method he knew was meditation. The source of mana was a person¡¯s mana chassis. At least for him, he hasn¡¯t confirmed if other people¡¯s brains are where the mana chassis was.
Meditation dipped into this source and somehow sped up the stream of mana it produced. As for how, even he couldn¡¯t pinpoint the exact working principles.
Ebony hasn¡¯t completely given up on learning or creating a mana capacity-increasing skill but he was resigned at all the ones that he had access to because human methods seemed incompatible with his body or the way he as a mana-being was constructed.
There was another straightforward method. Find another ingredient or material not unlike Ful¡¯s sap, use its energy and further refine or mutate his physique. But from Ebony¡¯s estimation, although high rarity materials worked and could be used to mutate a human¡¯s physique they were less effective for him and Ning Xin.
Simply because their bodies already had extremely stable or resilient genes. They were already born efficient and specialised. It might be why even Ancient ranked ingredients like Ful¡¯s sap or an even higher grade that Ning Xin used only changed them as much as it did without killing them or changing them to a less human form.
And Physique refinement was supposedly something that could be done just through training and the usage of skills. That was how the first-generation physique came about.
Just like how stat numbers didn¡¯t mean the same thing for people of different races thanks to the base values or multipliers which were technically summed up in the term ¡®physique¡¯, daily training that unclassed children underwent wasn¡¯t defined in numbers they could see but they were growing stronger as they grew up.
This was something Ebony knew since he was a journeyman.
But it wasn¡¯t easy and not something that happened within a short duration. After all, it hasn¡¯t even happened once for them. They used rare treasures for their physiques so far.
It was said that enhancement magic was the fastest method to observable change to one¡¯s physique, but after years of constant use, not once has a physique refinement occurred naturally for either of them. And they practically ran enhancement magic all the time in combat.
Ebony had actively pursued physique refinements whenever he augmented himself so it shouldn¡¯t be a psychological rejection like a few skills.
Mana Meister wasn¡¯t a particularly rare Profession, many combat and even non-combat Elves had the same Profession that later evolved differently from one another. Mana compression, expansion, and capacity were the bread and butter of the Profession. Putting aside Ebony¡¯s Coagulated Mana Repository which had the name of a mana capacity skill but one that he used like a compression skill, he was technically missing a few types of skills in this Profession.
He didn¡¯t need a perception skill with his core skill and sub-class handling that. His range was steadily increasing by the day and he didn¡¯t want a low tier-range increase that tossed away the advantage of absolute control over his mana.
In his search for more ways to regenerate mana from the Piercing Tempest Academy¡¯s library, he already made a few thousand variations of the mana absorption, conversion, purification and compression runic formula for his Models. But they didn¡¯t mesh well with the Stalwart Foundation. He could layer them like a golem wearing human skin but the other layers would be weak since the outer layer had to be the one in contact with ambient mana.
When he concurrently ran changes in 7 Models and changed the runic formula every few minutes, he gave up on the endeavour and changed his goal. He would redo Stalwart Foundation to include the mana sustainability capabilities.
That way, his Models would only run out of Will and their lifespan would increase if they had to fight. However, Ebony personally didn¡¯t want to make any more of the old generation Models.
Everything he would produce from the end of 38,889¡¯s life onwards was going to receive the same treatment as Dusk. He would stuff their mana vessels of ice till his Will saturated and started leaking before any of them were considered operational. No longer did he stand for mediocrity, even for copies of him that cleaned the house or trained children.
The only exceptions might be versatile tool usages like recorders or messengers.
It was just a pity that the Models were unable to be the central core of a Domain like Dusk was.
From his growing understanding of Will and Domains, he had a feeling that Dusk would sooner or later be forced to be transfixed in space. He could still strengthen it quite a lot before it required a permanent fixture to space. But that was just his assumption and he knew nothing was absolute. For example, if a domain was transfixed to space, could a space mage of a greater proportion simply rip away the same space, they could easily outrange the entire reach of his Domain. Who could say they couldn¡¯t move my entire domain elsewhere?
¡®Can I increase the amount of mana chassis I have? That would fall under meddling with physique, not a skill.¡¯
Ebony made sure to keep some level of awareness of his surroundings. That meant talking to his classmates. It was an unexpected outcome.
Not all of his classmates were that serious in training or they wouldn¡¯t have such an even win-loss rate. They were all under ten years old, there was only so much more experience in combat their opponents had over them.
However, they were too passive and couldn¡¯t do much against their opponents when their lightning zap failed to elicit a response. Less than 10 of them did well enough to use the centre of balance to trip their opponents. Even fewer could counterblow using their opponent''s momentum to deal damage. It was a pity.
Faelk won his duel with ease in his age group. A close-range fighter¡¯s instincts flowed in him and Atticus. Fabian did well but only because he was fit to begin with, he wasn¡¯t particularly good at close-ranged combat. Since he was aiming to be a tamer and mid-range specialist, his proficiency was acceptable.
The only good point that was the entire goal of the training session was that all of his classmates who took his exercises came out relatively unharmed. Those who lost simply ran out of energy, weakened, and got knocked out easily.
Many of the children¡¯s family members were present and the parents or siblings of his classmates were apprehensive before the competition. They probably felt like they just signed their children up for a beating but the results said otherwise.
Not getting hit was a ranged fighter''s top priority until they could take a hit or two and Ebony was proud to say that his classmates managed to pass their own expectations.
Thanks to them, he was aware of how his Will affects people around him. It was an exchange worth his time.
Ebony made no headway in terms of creating a new mana regeneration skill immediately.
The clockwork continued.
He studied in the Piercing Tempest Academy¡¯s library.
He gained access to Kong Jing¡¯s library once again, which was far more rewarding. But he still couldn¡¯t open the door inside her library. Not even forceful methods worked. The good thing was that he was making progress in deciphering the universal language Gia by himself.
Reworking Stalwart Foundation was not easy. He didn¡¯t even create Stalwart Foundation, Mark did. All he did was buy the formula off of him and use it actively enough to turn it into a skill. Ebony also got into contact with Mark, getting his help with upgrading Stalwart Foundation past the limits of a tier 3 skill. To add so many functions to an existing human shaped formula that was already compact and filled up wasn¡¯t going to be an easy task.
As good of an academic as Mark was, Ebony was more than familiar with how the runes worked. It was too bad Mark seemed too busy to come over to Tidal. Kong Jing had given him a task and it was taking him literal years to complete it. A test of some sort.
At least he was contactable nowadays and always up for a conversation about runic formulation. Also, if he was within range of Ebony¡¯s callstone from Tidal then he was likely pretty close by anyway.
Ebony did his part as pest control. Not actively killing hordes of them like Ning Xin did but training all his new but weak skills, especially sealing and lightning magic.
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Sound and gravity magic experiments were going very well, both during pest control and during his day off at home. They changed their cycle to 3 days of work and 1 day of rest at home. During these times, Ebony learnt that people struggled in the fight with the Tetramyths as if-no, their lives were actually on the line.
It was hard to wrap his head around. Many if not all of those people were individually stronger than dozens of Tetramyths combined, they shouldn¡¯t have been struggling. Observation told him that soldiers didn¡¯t have the issue of their lives at risk unless they were surrounded by King-ranked or a few Emperor-ranked ants and were only in trouble when they were far away from the fortress without support.
However, for the freelancers who stood out enough to be sent here, they struggled. Being in small parties was one thing but, the problem was always them going too far away from the fortress to get out of the army¡¯s range. Then an extended fight without proper management of their stamina caused them to be unable to get back to safety while being weak and dried up on mana.
The Tetramyths'' greatest strength was their numbers but they also won in terms of inexhaustible energy. Ebony hasn¡¯t seen any one of the subspecies of Tetramyths lose strength no matter how long a fight extended. As long as they were still moving, they were always at full strength discounting missing limbs.
It was for that reason that there were casualties. Other than these reasons, the army had casualties in their large-scale battle too. Those attacks were led by Emperor-ranked ants, who although unbelievably weak for Emperor-ranked creatures were still not something Grandmasters could shrug off.
Ebony finally saw the Guardian Knights at work.
He could only describe them as stalwart.
Never backing down, never bending back. If they pushed forward, the ants moved back. If the ants charged, they held the line. They were hyper-specialised in defence, group defence to be specific.
They had tactics to counter 1 extremely strong enemy or many strong enemies. That included being able to hold an Archduke back in a training session. Ebony had sneakily watched that session that was conducted in a camp within their fortress. The Archduke in question was the Dwarven one who was a bonafide King-ranked individual.
Although Archduke Gerrot Mallet had the strength to move mountains and should have greater power than Ebony, he was of the mind that he could probably do better against the Guardian Knights than the Archduke. The Dwarven man used metal magic but he was a close combatant through and through, nothing too divergent from any other dwarven warrior. In other words, he was easy to read and didn¡¯t have special elements that made things difficult for people or monsters.
And even though Ebony sneaked his senses into their camp, he still hasn¡¯t seen the shadow of the Empire¡¯s titled Emperor. It was almost odd how the man escaped him for so long.
The battlefield was large and he wasn¡¯t able to see everyone but he did hear about many notable ¡®heroes¡¯ that were the talk of the fortress. Ebony¡¯s working area was never far from Dusk.
Dusk got recognition but not much, it was covering too small a range for many people to find out about and he placed the tree pretty deep into Tetramyth territory. The tree focused on sealing and resealing ants, beating some up, healing them, and beating them again. All while playing the piano and trying to recreate playing music with emotions. It was holding a very small area because Ebony only fed it 50% of his daily recovery of Will and as much mana as he could offer. The rest of his Will was used for other training and experiments.
Excluding the piano playing. Ebony was using sound magic¡music, to increase Tetramyth¡¯s Wisdom and Vitality. He hasn¡¯t given up on the organic brain for Dusk but it was true that feeding millions of them with sustenance just wasn¡¯t plausible.
Ethereal Form Arts was able to take full advantage of its low-level and non-human opponents giving him fresh insight into the flow of combat and movements from numerous directions.
Ebony was considering Woven Frostblaze Cladding or Augmentation as his third Core Skill. It was a direct buff to all attacks that used flames and he could mutate it more easily to be a passive buff to all frozen flame spells and abilities. He could probably even merge these two, one supports his body and one supports all external flames but they technically did the same thing.
The second choice was Coagulated Mana Repository for obvious reasons of compatibility with his current desires.
Third choice was slightly out of the pocket, his General Skill Preservation Bubble. A Vitality based mana capacity-increasing skill. But it was a bit silly to depend on the Core Skill advantage to improve this skill when he wasn¡¯t that good at manipulating Vitality.
Fourth, was sadly, Ethereal Form Arts that he didn¡¯t like but had come to terms with having.
But his third Core Skill could wait, these skills just didn¡¯t feel right. It didn¡¯t feel like these skills were...him.
With his quickly increasing range of control and senses with mana, Ebony¡¯s ability to wield a greater amount of gravity mana skyrocketed.
The elemental mana that he couldn¡¯t spawn out of nowhere discounting the conjuration of ice or direction usage from the mass of his mana.
What is the mass of him compared to the mass of the planet?
Simply inconsequential and this directly impacted the strength of a gravity mage. That was Ebony¡¯s conclusion after more than 5 years as a gravity mage. Gravity magic completely depended on how much mass was around and the limits of the castor¡¯s mental range. The mass of his mana or the elements he could conjure simply didn¡¯t hold a candle to the mass of the object he was standing on.
Conjuring gravity mana directly was something he hadn¡¯t accomplished. With his ever-increasing mental range, he had exponentially more gravity mana to wield. Opening up more possibilities.
Ebony¡¯s home hasn¡¯t been attacked again and they didn¡¯t bother changing locations.
Spy girl visited to drop a letter once every week. So far, all it said was that she hadn¡¯t found out the whereabouts of Mr. Kidnapper and she left an imprint of her metallic mana.
And finally, 2 weeks after the attack on their house Ebony finalised and mastered his second-greatest creation yet.
¡°Hello. Ebony One.¡±
¡°Hello Ebony.¡± A ¡®Model¡¯ that mimicked his body temperature and utilised discolouration runes with Frigid Distorted Refraction to copy his skin and clothing colour and opaqueness replied.
¡°Nice to meet you.¡±
¡°Mmm. This is an interesting feeling.¡±
¡°Yes, when you¡¯re in my range I still feel like I¡¯m of 1 mind. Let¡¯s try going out of range.¡±
¡°Lets. Then we¡¯ll both do something different and come back in a minute.¡± They floated above their walls together.
Both Ebony¡¯s Flicker went in opposite directions but they had to go a lot further thanks to the skill evolution and his recent improvements in range.
Ebony bought a few skewers of squid drizzled in chilli oil roasted over charcoal.
Holding it tight, he Flickered back to low skies above his garden.
The moment he got into the range of Ebony One, before he even saw the clone, he already felt the vibrational and gravitational data being sent to him.
¡®Not sent¡connected. But it is indeed me.¡¯
Ebony smiled and so did Ebony One. Ebony One had a paper bag full of large crab legs, cooked.
¡°How many more of me are you going to make?¡± Ebony One vocalised.
¡°Do we have to talk?¡± Ebony could feel himself ¡®think¡¯ twice. It was very odd. The lag between transmission from Will was close to zero when he was so near his clone.
¡°I mean, I¡¯m always talking to myself when thinking so this shouldn¡¯t be any different.¡±
¡°Can you see the skill details?¡± Ebony vaguely asked his clone.
¡°Notifications? No, I suppose I¡¯m still just a clone made of ice. Read it, oh by the way, it seems one way. You can read me but I can¡¯t read you-me?¡± Ebony One replied before getting confused as to how to talk to himself.
¡°How about now?¡±
¡°Mm, I got the data. So Ebony can control whether to transmit updated data to clone me but clone me can¡¯t or maybe won¡¯t hide stuff from real me?¡±
¡°That¡¯s debatable but for now, I think ¡®can¡¯t¡¯ is more likely than ¡®won¡¯t¡¯. Your vessel doesn¡¯t allow you to take up any more Will. I have more. It is interesting to see if a clone can grow stronger than me and if it can override me. That is not considering what ¡®main¡¯ refers to, maybe I¡¯m always the main thanks to the presence of a soul? Do clones have part of my soul?¡±
¡°Is that interesting? I thought it should be fearful. Isn¡¯t it easy to test if I have a soul? Just use the roar and if my mana which is also my health drops, it means soul attacks hurt me. That means I have a soul.¡±
¡°Why? That just means a stronger version of me will be in charge. Oh, no damage.¡±
¡°That¡¯s right. Well, not an issue we have to think about now. So clones don¡¯t have a soul, hypothesis proven.¡±
It sounded like a mess when one usually had multiple lines of thought at the same time and could vocalise them at the same time.
Veritable Ice Clone - Create a clone made of ice that mimics your appearance, vitals and mana. Saturated and condensed Will is placed onto the conjuration of a Veritable Ice Clone. Range of will that connects you and your Veritable Ice Clones increases by 600% + 5.0% per level. Veritable Ice Clone¡¯s retention of Will increases by 500% + 5.0% per level. Has static 95% of your Intelligence stat.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
¡°Oh it¡¯s pretty much tier 4 any moment now. Also, your magic is 95% of my full strength. Static. It¡¯s very different from the time of Models but 95% seems very high. Model has effective strength that surpasses 100% of my intelligence but you can directly use that much Intelligence. I wonder what¡¯s the difference and you can¡¯t scale up any higher?¡±
¡°Thank 38,889. I wonder. Maybe effective strength only refers to spells? Or perhaps it is capped out but the skill description doesn¡¯t mention it?¡±
¡°Mmm. You can figure that out.¡±
¡°Alright, so you¡¯re going to keep producing me? My general goal is just taking quests for the mage association, building up credit and gaining access to more secured books.¡±
¡°Yes, Ebony 2 through 15 is planned to get into other academies. Since they are just our clones, people shouldn¡¯t be framing them as Grandmasters. I might alter their looks to a younger, shorter version of us.¡±
¡°Then we can get the recommendation for Tidal Academy? No, we can just ask Navin or Mallory and they would probably let us in so no need for the trouble.¡±
¡°Then Ebony 16 through 100 is planned to just experiment with skills, possibly mass combined skills like those artillery mages. Even better, like that special party of 5 mages we saw the other day. That was an amazing combo and use of magic.¡±
¡°How long did it take to make me?¡±
¡°A week of trial and error to get the kinks out, excluding that, the Will required to make you will take me 10 days to accumulate since I still have to keep Dusk going for the foreseeable future. 10 days is a range depending on Dusk¡¯s condition. Mana isn¡¯t a problem.¡±
¡°That¡¯s slow¡it would take 2.5 years to get to Ebony serial 100. But this is preferable compared to the mass-produced Models. Side note, it¡¯s weird that our Will¡¯s range is skill-dependent? Did your range with Dusk increase along with this skill evolution? If not, then Will is even weirder than we thought.¡±
¡°We¡¯re too high up, I¡¯ll check. Right, amendment, Ebony 2 through 5 will be guards. 5 through 10 can guard Dusk. Dusk is still using Models and I probably wouldn¡¯t give it the ability to use so much Will, I¡¯ll update the models but won¡¯t let it create clones for now.
¡°11 through 15 should be like 38,889. Let them explore on their own, and grow apart from me. Then when they come back, we might recreate the increase in total Will capacity or even recovery. They say Will is all about life experience and that completely depends on how long we live.¡±
¡°So we just have to divide and conquer--experience life faster.¡±
With that, Ebony planned his coming routine by talking to himself.
Chapter 316: Gearhart
¡°Netherfae!! What is wrong with those mammoths?! Even emperors..no saints monsters shouldn¡¯t be that big! Grandmasters?! Their mass alone can kill emperors.¡±
¡°Young master, it''s unsightly to shout in the middle of the road.¡±
¡°Shut up, these peasants don¡¯t even understand Gia.¡±
¡°That¡¯s no reason to excuse your unsightly behaviour.¡±
¡°Piss off.¡±
¡°As for the mammoths, that is why most planets have their forbidden regions. I must say, I have not encountered such a massive species on land but that size is not rare for aquatic monsters. Their mass can do nothing to Grade 4 and above Kings who can simply dodge. But the duo alphas of the race are surprisingly Grade 5 Kings. They shall be one of your goals this trip.¡±
¡°Tch, stupid cold. That was already my third trip, I¡¯m taking a month off. At least this capital isn¡¯t as shabby as their planet.¡±
¡°It would be wise not to test the Ebbing Wave¡¯s waters. The Barrier King earned his fame.¡±
¡°Bah. One of you go find us good grub and the other better get good lodgings this time.¡± Percival Gearhart got alert and stared at his steward who lost focus and looked elsewhere. As dismissive as he was of this Ancient Worldcore that posed no danger with his steward, Ezekiel Gearworks present. This steward was actually even more arrogant and had rarely even focused on any object or creature in this young world.
But Ezekiel was staring.
And it was a person, which piqued Percival¡¯s interest even more.
That¡¯s when Percival set eyes upon the person. A woman with bodacious curves and rare black hair for this mage-dominant planet. Her proportions that was completely his preference aside, something about her made him frown. She was familiar.
But he had never met such a distinct person before, at least he should have recognised the mask.
Percival smirked. ¡®This fossil is interested in a person¡I needed a woman anyway.¡¯
¡°Get her for me Ezekiel, she¡¯ll warm my bed tonight.¡±
¡°I¡¯m only here as your bodyguard when you¡¯re in mortal danger, young master.¡±
Percival heard this line so many times in the few standard years he had been here and was honestly tired of it. However, Ezekiel wasn¡¯t his subordinate but his father¡¯s. And the damn fossil would do nothing except push him to level and refine his skills, nag, or get him out when he was really about to die. Otherwise, he wouldn¡¯t do anything at all, not even listen to his orders.
¡®If he¡¯s not doing it then I¡¯ll just have to do it myself. Poor woman but I haven¡¯t had one for months, I hope she¡¯s not fragile like the others.¡¯
¡°Young master. She is oddly familiar, we¡¯ve seen her but I¡¯m not certain when. But what I do know now is that she is one of the Masked. The Xengs.¡±
Percival stopped in his steps. If there was anything to note about this planet, it was the pilgrim of the Wandering Celestial Monastery and the Xengs. He had been warned many times, but the pilgrim was of no concern. The Wandering Celestial Monastery would only move if the pilgrim was going to die, anything else that happened to the planet was none of their concern because that was the pilgrim¡¯s path.
As for the Xengs, they shouldn¡¯t be here. All that was left was a vacation spot and ancestral home¡and their children. He was forced to stupidly recite the information about Xengs like a damn child. This masked lady did not fit any of the people he was forced to learn about.
Then, Ezekiel surprised him with a little tidbit of his omnipotence on this planet.
¡°She doesn¡¯t feel Xeng. I highly suspect she is that infamous quarter-blood, although the hair colour is different from records. The Xengs will not care, they might even rejoice but only her death not her shame. Tread lightly.¡±
¡®Does he want me to make a move or not? Is this one of those tests?¡¯
¡°So what if they are the Xengs? They have 3 Saints, maybe 4 at best. We have dozens.¡±
¡°Young master.¡± Ezekiel glared at Percival with bulging veins on his face. ¡°Have you not learnt to keep your mouth shut when talking about them as a whole? We¡¯re lucky I¡¯ve been splitting us away from this space from the moment I saw her. If you¡¯re going to slight or insult them, do it to the individual, not their collective. Are you trying to doom your family? Our families? Our worlds?¡±
She could be listening.
The odd creature.
No, their whole species was odd.
Regardless of Ezekiel¡¯s warning, it was clear that the steward was pushing him to make a move on her. Possibly due to the faint feeling that they¡¯ve both seen this lady. As for why, Percival¡¯s pent-up lust stopped him from thinking.
¡°I will put us back into this space.¡±
Percival pushed through the crowd of peasants to get to the half-masked lady unsightly stuffing her face with skewers. He didn¡¯t even notice the man standing beside her and handing her more skewers, only having his eyes on the woman¡¯s body.
¡°He-¡±
Perhaps the moment Ezekiel put them back into space, the temperature flared up drastically and before he knew it, the woman was in the skies. But he didn¡¯t chase. He couldn¡¯t fly but he could levitate after her; however, something held his shoulders.
Someone.
¡°How dare you touch me peasant?¡± Percival kept forgetting that these peasants didn¡¯t understand the common language.
¡°Mana--young master. That is a battery. We--you must obtain it.¡±
¡°You do it.¡± Percival did not like getting ordered around, even by the superior elder.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
¡°I cannot and will not interfere with anything here. I repeat, that thing is the top priority. Do not see him as human, he is not.¡±
Percival swapped to his Elcrian with a thick accent, ¡°unhand me peasant.¡±
He stared at the creature in human skin and finally noticed what Ezekiel meant when he locked eyes with the creature. Deep dark nothingness. That was what he saw from that pair of eyes.
¡°I see.¡±
The creature replied nonchalantly.
Percival almost missed the instant glance the creature gave Ezekiel.
Then the bodacious-bodied woman who suddenly lost some mass on her chest landed back beside the human-shaped creature.
¡°Xin, allow me.¡±
Percival¡¯s elbow moved up reflexively and guarded his neck and face, he didn¡¯t see what moved. A punch or a kick.
But that does it, a peasant actually dared to lay hands on him.
¡°I¡¯m the one that was caged.¡± The lady voiced out.
Percival blocked the outdated metal longsword with his aetheredge but the metal blade surprisingly didn¡¯t melt. The power of steam kicked in while the Gearheart clonked within him. A pure blood like him didn¡¯t feel any discomfort when shifting the gears in his body.
Aether and mana were technically the same thing but living creatures born on different planets usually take up the properties of the mana that the Worldcore produced. It didn¡¯t differ drastically from planet to planet but there were still some regions that has energies unique enough that they are known by different names.
The Aether cannon he formed and shot was too slow so he opted for a faster firearm but these two who suddenly attacked him were not susceptible to straight projectiles. He missed every shot. He didn¡¯t even know when but both of them pushed him to the skies before a force pulled at him and sent him tumbling on a farmland. They had been in a crowded street just moments ago.
Percival didn¡¯t care about peasant casualties but an open area was more suitable for him anyway.
He hated to use the monocle but he knew the importance of information, the two already proved they were not random street peasants.
¡®Neatherfae, she¡¯s burning the air up¡can¡¯t breathe. And my gears are slowing down? They are freezing. Damn mages. I thought I already conditioned my aether against cold¡it isn¡¯t enough if some chump is freezing me.
The heat wasn¡¯t an issue, the Gearharts were moulded by heat and sulfur and their home planet was volcanic. As 3rd son of Gearhart himself, his aether was already fully accustomed to heat surpassing Grade 5. And they were empowered by steam themselves.
¡®But why can¡¯t I hit this creature?!¡¯ Percival thought he would¡¯ve landed hundreds of precise and deep injuries by now but he couldn¡¯t even touch the clothes on the slower and weaker creature.
¡°Young master, that thing walks the Path of the Formless and he¡¯s very deep in. I suspect he already borders Grade 5 on the Path of the Formless.¡±
¡°Path of the Formless? Are you serious? Is he a higher-being?¡±
¡°...he is not.¡±
That was all Percival had to hear. No matter how talented the lower being was, they were beneath him.
¡®Path of the Formless, nearly Grade 5. With my abilities¡that means I can¡¯t touch him unless I¡¯m 3 to 4 times faster than him. No matter, just a more competent lower life form. That¡¯s not the problem¡why are they turning invisible¡no, I¡¯m forgetting them. What in the neth-¡¯
Percival was not a hardworking person, but he was self-aware. Being a higher-being did not make him omnipotent and he was still a young 97-year-old man with a respectable achievement of wielding his family¡¯s Art at high proficiency. The Path of the Formless was said to be one of the hardest paths to walk, the creature he was facing may very well be a thousand-year-old monster.
People who tread the Path of the Formless also known as the Path of All Forms were the most troublesome fighters throughout the universe. When they got as deep as Grade 3, most warriors with the same physical strength and speed couldn¡¯t even touch them in combat anymore. At Grade 5, they transcended the limits of close combat and are ¡®formless¡¯ within a large range.
Most importantly, it was the most hated path for uncountable close-ranged fighters because those on the Path of the Formless made others look like babies waving their arms and legs around.
¡°Hurry up Xin, two more hits and we got to go. Have you called-¡±
¡°She knows, she¡¯ll get us out once we¡¯re done. The¡syphon is still greater than I can withstand but enough for now.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t hit him so hard that he can¡¯t forget us,¡±
The veins on Percival¡¯s face trembled, he was listening to their secret conversation with his earmuffs and he was busy getting information with his eyepiece but their information was fading away and he was having a hard time even registering their presence. Something was messing with his mind and he was sure it wasn¡¯t these two.
¡°EZEKIEL!¡±
Percival yelled at the threat of a mind attack, already forgetting the battery with a chilled blade slashing at him or the oddly familiar cage floating above him with a gravitational pull dragging him in.
The burning blades didn¡¯t put a scratch on his aether suit but their fading presence made it impossible for him to react until the attacks landed.
¡®That was a tiring session, I¡¯ll rest for 3 months before going back. But Ezekiel¡¯s nagging is going to tear my ear off.¡¯ Percival nonchalantly got back to his original train of thought before he realised he was in the air for some reason. Oddly, his gear shift was in defence mode and his body was aflame.
¡®Where am-uff!¡¯ Percival took in his surroundings and first noticed that Ezekiel was around but hiding out of sight since an individual who was rated Grade 6 Hazard was not allowed to interfere with a natural Ancient-ranked Worldcore. Next, a heavy impact rammed his right arm and smashed right into his sides but his head knocked onto an invisible wall.
¡°Leave it, we gotta go!¡± A woman¡¯s voice alerted him and he saw the white mask on her face. A space mage.
Percival was lifted and rammed against thick bars of metal before he fell out of a gap of sorts.
He cursed out loud, burning the space mage¡¯s mask into his memory.
¡°Young master.¡±
Before he could dish out the complaints he had at his bodyguard, his bodyguard pierced him with a glare. ¡°I remember¡th.¡±
¡°What?¡± His stomach lurched at an odd sense of disconnection.
¡°There is someone messing with our minds¡both of us. That Xeng space mage, Kong clan if I¡¯m not wrong. That¡¯s your only lead.¡±
¡°Where is she?¡±
¡°Gone.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t trace her?¡±
¡°I can. But this is your task. I will not and cannot interfere unless you¡¯re dying.¡±
¡°Even though someone capable of a mind attack on you is here?¡±
¡°Irrelevant. That is my business. It won¡¯t happen again. You focus on yourself. Don¡¯t you want to leave this pathetic lands? Hurry up and get an official Grade 4 rating and we can both return.¡±
¡°Tsk. Easier said than done.¡± Percival was more concentrated on the Xeng who tossed him on his head than his assignment. He didn¡¯t feel a gap in his memories but his sudden appearance in this location made his memory gap more obvious.
The official rating that Ezekiel mentioned was not referring to an individual with a bunch of tier 4 skills. It was the threat level that individuals were assigned by the Nebula Watch. One could have dozens of tier 5 and 6 skills but still be classified as a Grade 2 threat and the reverse is also true. An individual with the right skills, be it tier 1 to 3 could still be a Grade 4 or 5 threat.
That was Percival¡¯s assignment. To become a Continental Hazard. Ezekiel himself is a Planetary Hazard and he was here on official business so he is always being watched.
¡°Where in Nether are you two fools!?¡± He tapped his earmuffs twice and called the only two servants he was allowed to bring. They were pathetic Grade 4 Kings in terms of skills but the Nebula Watched deemed them as Grade 2 threat at best. Good at fighting but not destruction on a large scale, it would take them some effort to level mountains.
¡°Come! Trace this aether and find me that Xeng space mage!¡±
Percival scoffed at his assignment, payback comes first.
Chapter 317: Taller Heights
Little has changed over the past two months. Until they once again encountered the steampunk dressed people who caged up Ning Xin.
They were caught off guard shopping and those people moved into the streets by space magic. Coincidence was a scary thing.
It took half a beat for Xin to notice the repulsive gaze on her and another instant for her to get into the air. If her intuition was to get into the air, that was probably the safest move to make.
That was until Ebony understood their words, or at least, a few of the words. The strong one won¡¯t do anything to them. That was more than enough information for Xin to take action.
They were cautious, unsure how far they could take it before the middle-aged-looking man stepped in. But even before that, both of them had their mana syphoned.
No matter, they were both much stronger and faster than before. Ebony held the ¡®young master¡¯ in place before Flickering away with Torrent Path, an evolution of Firm Path.
If he made a thin Torrent Path, it had about enough force to rip a hole in a half-a-metre-thick iron plate and the cylinder that was sliced out would shoot out like a bullet. Using the gravity mana throughout his mental reach of 8.7km could maintain the same strength even if that ¡®path¡¯ was a two-metre diameter cylinder. Increasing the size further would reduce its strength.
At tier 3, gravity magic was finally viable to use as a forceful spell and no longer support. Quantity of gravity mana wasn¡¯t a concern anymore so Ebony could focus on manipulation and increasing the efficacy and efficiency of his spells.
They didn¡¯t have time to fight, he estimated that they had 5 to 7 seconds before Xin had all her mana syphoned out for Entity Evanesce. That was not enough time for her to augment herself to peak state. In the split second they had, they realised how tough the ¡®young master¡¯ was.
Xin¡¯s swords just slid off his sleeves that he used to guard. Ebony felt the thick, but odd mana fill up the sleeves.
Then the man reacted fast and drew his blade. It was a cool flat metal Arab straight sword but with a wider base near the hilt, it was swallowed up in an orange light. The man¡¯s weird mana. It didn¡¯t melt on impact with Xin¡¯s blades but he was shocked by the lack of air that was being combusted by Xin¡¯s flames. She had to draw wind in to keep them burning.
Ebony held back his flames, he didn¡¯t want to show them to non-natives who might recognise them.
With Ebony holding him in place, Ning Xin could wallop at him hard but they heard something clang and metal pieces slapping each other from the man¡¯s body. He was starting to forget them, but getting ready to fight back from the ambush.
Technique-wise, the young master was good enough to guard and parry 70% of Ning Xin¡¯s thrusts and slashes while evading 20% with footwork and good placement. The rest hit but didn¡¯t hurt any vitals. So he was a great fighter and skilled with the blade. Both fighters had been unable to wield their augmentations fully but Ebony doubted Xin would lose in that regard.
She had to stay off any mana-based enhancements to feed Entity Evanesce.
The ¡®young master¡¯ had the same problem of requiring several seconds to build up their enhancement or shift into combat-ready mode. Ebony didn¡¯t and he tried to bag the man with the cage he got from them but the element of surprise was gone and even Torrent Path had difficulty pulling the man into the cage.
To be honest, Ning Xin prevented him from caging the man up thanks to her aggressive attacks. The man¡¯s suit of mana was resistant to cold, ice, heat and fire. Lightning zapped him but no indication of numbness or spasms were spotted.
Their opponent¡¯s attention was forcefully pulled away thanks to Entity Evanesce. But it was the same skill that alerted the castor, someone more dangerous.
Kong Jing came and hid them right after Ebony finally managed to slam him into the cage. And sadly, the Mandate user or users would likely chase them if he caged someone they were trying to hide from.
After a good knock on the head by the space mage for both of them, they returned to their routine as if nothing happened.
Dusk had built up fame for itself, not for its combat utility but for the piano playing. The piano had the largest range amongst all of his skills and his mana¡¯s inherent properties made it an amazing fit for regenerative effects. Both the mana and health healing were perfect for extended exchanges.
Dusk along with freelancers were situated far from the bulk of the Imperial Army. It was now a resting spot that provided protection, increased mana regeneration, sealing magic that heals and from time to time, an eatery with a chef by profession.
However, Ebony had to move Dusk every few days. It was getting prone to Emperor-ranked Tetramyth attacks. Their kin clearly marked or memorised Dusk. It wasn¡¯t able to survive an onslaught with or without Ebony there himself.
Although Dusk wouldn¡¯t fall, it would just be a drain on its reserve until it melted down and it would no longer guarantee safety for the people who decided to camp around it. Ning Xin also didn¡¯t fight near Dusk since the heat would similarly be a drain on its reserve.
The Tetramyths only sent those highly resistant to mana to Dusk. Only 1 subspecies had a magic body strong enough to not float up into the sky from his gravity magic. The entire race as a whole was helpless in the air but it was an unfair advantage since the same could be said for humans and all the land races.
Ebony managed to make use of Will a little more efficiently and it only took 9 days to clone himself. There were currently 7 clones of himself. The first was doing quests for the Mage Association to get contribution points. The second to fourth were on house-watch, they did the cleaning, gardening and working on combination spells with themselves.
The fifth to seventh was guarding Dusk and tending to it. They did not tend to the freelancers who camped nearby, it was none of his business. He did enough by providing them with a resting spot. Even the eatery wasn¡¯t waited on by his clones, the freelancers dealt with that themselves.
Ning Xin seemed to be able to tell them apart from Models so that was one less trick up his sleeves against her in future.
Two or three Xeng individuals were interested in the Tetramyths, two smiths and one alchemist. They weren¡¯t going to come but a deal had been struck, weapons, armour and an array of potions were going to be supplied through Kong Jing. Their demands were surprisingly reasonable.
Whatever their supplies managed to contribute, they wanted 80% of the materials. That was by no means greedy. The weaponsmith would receive experience when its wielder killed an ant. The armorsmith would receive experience when the wearer was protected by a certain amount of damage. And the Alchemist would get experience whether it was biochemical damage, explosive damage or healing but healing was off the table.
The Xengs were so incompatible with healing that even if they followed a recipe and used the same ingredients, the mana-blending stage would remove healing properties from the potion.
From what he understood, people with actual crafting classes receive a notification when a relevant action is taken. And if Kong Jing¡¯s math and estimation were correct, a crafter received anywhere from 1 in 1,000,000 to 1 in 1,000 of the total experience from a kill if it was a weapon and the same ratio for the amount of damage mitigated for a piece of defensive equipment.
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The ratio changed greatly depending on the quality of the craft and the wielder. Like a Common-rarity breastplate on a King-ranked individual would probably give the crafter close to nothing because the equipment would likely break before a King could get scratched. There were exceptions such as equipment that didn¡¯t require a wielder but that was a different story altogether.
By her confident words, 1 in 1,000 was only for her while the average smith likely gets a ratio closer to 1 in 500,000.
It wasn¡¯t all that bad if a smith had enough products out in the field. Their main way of levelling was still crafting after all.
In the same regard, clones of him gave him notifications when it was out hunting. Clone One was doing material collection and small monster hunting occasionally, experience gain was not noticeable compared to the pest extermination happening.
Levelling was taking time. The rate of levelling was slow but still faster than they could keep up with the addition of stats. It took time to grow into added stats so they haven¡¯t used all their stats to the best of their abilities yet.
By his estimates, he needed another 4 months to fully grow into and utilise the stats of his current level. This excluded the levels and stats he would gain in the meantime. It was a wealth of information for his theory and questions about how stats worked. The first few levels gave him immediate access to all the stat points he added. It was like his muscles filled up the increased space they had. But after a certain amount was added, he needed to eat, rest, grow and fill the space created by adding stats. Figuratively.
Ning Xin was at level 381 and Ebony was at 368.
However, Ebony¡¯s skill levels, tiers and refinements were rising faster.
He had been a little too closed-minded when it came to Ethereal Form Arts because it didn¡¯t require a humanoid opponent. Even so, it got dull after he learnt the movements and tendencies of every subspecies of ants present.
Ebony had talked to Hector about his lack of opponents and the royal cousins managed to book him an appointment to duel with their greatest unit of soldiers. They were praised for being strong enough that it took just 100 of them to hold the Barrier King himself in place for a short moment. And 200 of them could completely suppress their liege for as long as they¡¯d like.
It was a unit of hyper-specialised soldiers.
5 knights took the front. They were like Hector and trained to be resistant to all types of mana from childhood. They only had foundational mana manipulation skills that strengthened their equipment and themselves.
10 mid-range fighters from archers to gunmen were behind them. They switched to cannons and large bow guns since the weaponry had developed past the strength of bows and draw strength.
Then there were 85 mages. The unit could move in smaller numbers but their ratio was usually 5/10/85.
60 of those were support mages that stacked buffs on the knights to become super soldiers. In a unit of 100, they could take turns instead of having all working at the same time. This increased their sustainability as a group.
These mages also had the advantage of a multi-generational skill path built to optimise their abilities. They were essentially useless without the specialised knights because their buffs were so potent no one else could use them effectively. All of them were arcane mages along with an element as their Sub-Class. Earth for defence, wind for agility and speed, fire for attack and water for stamina and large numbers of enemies in general.
10 of the remaining mages were offensive built but they varied and their tactics aren¡¯t always the same depending on the numbers on their side and what each of them could do. In a unit of 10, there was only 1 of them.
In a unit of 100, these offensive mages all used combined spells and it was their forte.
The last 5 were all healers.
They were the Empire¡¯s most expensive soldiers to nurture and feed since these people were practically bound to their unit for life and they required extensive training. Their skill set was so tightly controlled that they would have a hard time making a living once they left unless they left as a group. Their contracts probably didn¡¯t allow them to leave until they were retiring.
The healers were the least duty-bound and they were something like sub-contractees.
Due to the obvious circumstances, getting time out of their busy schedule wasn¡¯t easy. Navin himself approved the training session for those who were scheduled to return to the surface in half a year. Even stalwart knights needed a break. They couldn¡¯t leave this place as often or easily as Ebony and Xin did and the ones currently on break had their training schedules filled up.
The average freelancer that made Dusk their camp levelled at a rate of 1 level every 5 to 8 days. Their average level was also about 380 onwards. Unlike the Imperial soldiers with a far lower level average. The gap was quickly closing thanks to the Tetramyths but the overall strength likely didn¡¯t change much. Masters needed more than just levels to evolve.
Initially, Ebony levelled twice or thrice a day but it had dropped to once every day and was still slowing down.
On the other hand, Ning Xin had been seeing a rise in levelling speed since she kept getting faster and better at causing mass destruction and slaughter. And she was holding back enough for the ants to have remains be it for materials or their ingredients.
Today was a special day.
Ning Xin was exuding happiness and was cheerful since she had received a dream message about her Grandmother communicating with her once again. Unless her Grandmother didn¡¯t face any unexpected obstacle, she was scheduled to arrive back in Elcra in 3 to 4 years.
That wasn¡¯t all, Miss Spy Girl had located and found information on Mr Kidnapper.
The Halberd wielder had recently returned to Tidal and was indeed part of the Jaded Parasites. He returned as a King and the alias he used was Remnant. However, he seemed to have not taken any jobs for years and Miss Spy Girl wasn¡¯t able to get more information on their members, especially strong ones.
Not just that, she also found Tuffock who was working under Hardock¡¯s name in Tidal. He was a construction supervisor or so Miss Spy Girl reported. A construction supervisor who was always looking for new workers.
Neither of them was in the Central District but Ebony just needed to know their general location. He didn¡¯t act upon the information and just got Miss Spy Girl to continue keeping track of them.
It was also the day they had a reservation at the Aroma Alcove. The Elven waitresses who hid their dislike for Ning Xin in the past were no longer as revolted by her. All of her bloody aura was gone in her current state and she didn¡¯t even feel like the same person. To Elves who saw a person through mana rather than appearance, Xin might as well be a different person.
Her restaurant plan had been pushed back because her confidence when it came to cooking dropped due to the huge variety of dishes and cuisines through Tidal. She wouldn¡¯t do something like open a restaurant with a subpar menu or cooking repertoire. It was no exaggeration to say that there were millions of ingredients and dishes she was unfamiliar with.
The Aroma Alcove had a unique herb brownie and floral tea. Ebony loved the environment with a gentle spring outside, the dark green overcast and the cafe decor itself felt comforting. He had the balcony seat facing the spring in the distance.
¡®That Elf with greater mana regeneration than I do is here again. His or her mana is gentle like a spring but as bountiful as the sea. Can¡¯t sense their body but their mana is everywhere.¡¯
¡°It¡¯s chilly.¡± Ning Xin had a misty breath while taking small bites of the limited deserts.
It was humid and the natural overcast from the dense trees trapped moisture and prevented sunlight and heat from getting in. But the chill was unnatural.
¡°The owner said the temperature makes today¡¯s special dessert taste better.¡± An Elven waitress commented while leaving the next desert, something resembling tiramisu. Ebony noticed the cocoa straight away and the smell of coffee, hata was also present.
¡°This is the ingredient I was telling you about, you can make chocolate with it.¡±
Ebony was enjoying the relaxed tea time that Ning Xin started to appreciate when the waitress quietly got their attention with a knock, ¡°Our mistress kindly asks that you stop peering at her.¡±
Ning Xin eyed him with suspicion.
¡®So it was a lady.¡¯
Ebony nodded to the waitress before using his mana to vibrate, ¡°then stop poking at me.¡± Her mana had covered the entire establishment so he didn¡¯t bother but the lady was asking too much when she was the one showing her mana off.
He clashed with the gentle mana that turned into a raging river with his own.
Someone with greater mana recovery than him, he smiled at the discovery and the opportunity.
Chapter 318: Quality Books
Quantity was an advantage but it wasn¡¯t everything. Ebony¡¯s mana was like an iron wall. Denser, heavier and more flexible.
The ¡®mistress¡¯ of the establishment¡¯s mana was somehow old and had properties not unlike a tree¡¯s mana. The properties of growth and nurturing but also unyielding to winds and earthquakes alike.
As endless as the current of mana felt, they both understood that there was no point stretching the exchange out. It was already obvious that she won in that regard.
Ebony was the challenger here, so he hammered at the core of mana she created and tried to break through. Who would¡¯ve known that the core was also in the form of a tree.
His mana formed axes and chopped at the tree with the strength of his mind pushing. But it was more effective when he formed a thread and drilled at the thick bark. Dozens of these threads wrapped themselves on the tree¡¯s branches and tried to uproot it but it remained still.
Ebony would argue that he would be far more suited on the defensive side but he already knew that it didn¡¯t matter how hard he tried, the tree was not going to budge. The knowledge of futility meant nothing to him, he continued trying and changed tactics if something didn¡¯t work.
The clash was happening in the air outside Aroma Alcove to prevent any disturbances in the quaint cafe.
Ning Xin noticed the misunderstanding and her attention went back to muttering and writing in her notebook after taking a bite of dessert every so often. The tea was the perfect fit for cleansing their palette before tasting a different dessert.
Ebony tried his best to search for the source of this vast amount of mana. It was too natural and pure to be those ambient mana to personal mana conversion type of skill. She had mana regeneration Fortification like he did, maybe even to the same degree of 250% per evolution. The purity of her mana told him that she was not a Grand Mage and very likely an Arch Mage, the King equivalent for mages.
Elves probably maxed them out at her current stage. Clovis didn¡¯t know about 250% Fortification but that didn¡¯t mean all Elves didn¡¯t know. They likely did the same as him, retrieving the 250% Fortification in their later years or evolution stage.
Chances were, this lady had a 1000% increase in base mana regeneration. And she was an Elf, so her natural recovery based on her Wisdom stat was twice that of a human to begin with. An older Elf should have refined their physique considerably. Ebony thought it was well within reason if her base mana regeneration was 50% to 100% of her maximum mana capacity per hour.
Even with all those advantages over him, it did not explain the quantitative advantage his opponent currently had over him.
After all, the tree of mana he was attempting to uproot was connected to one that was wider than the observable sky above the Aroma Alcove and the height of it was unknown.
Out of his maximum range of 8.7 kilometres.
The sheer volume of it was mind boggling but he had a feeling the tree wasn¡¯t completely hers.
¡®This must be the phantom of the Elves Domain within Tidal. She can use part of it. So it¡¯s true that they have multiple people stack Will upon their Domain, and then feed it with mana to fill up the vessel. This side tree connected means it¡¯s separate, like a personal home but connected to a community. Can she draw power and mana from the main tree?¡¯
Ebony was almost more entranced by the fact that some phantom tree image so large that it was out of his range and there was no presence whatsoever until he clashed with this unknown lady. Putting aside that it was invisible to the naked eye.
Maybe she didn¡¯t intend to keep this drawn out because the lady was annoyed after an hour¡¯s attempt and pushed back. Ebony showed her that he wasn¡¯t lacking in any way in the form of defensive mana warfare as she couldn¡¯t suppress him no matter how much mana she threw at him.
It was like they shook mental hands and stopped when his teapot emptied.
The Elven lady didn¡¯t show herself but there was no need, they''d already greeted each other.
¡°Feel free to pick one, it¡¯s my personal stash so don¡¯t worry about my elders.¡± As her voice traversed over, the decorative bookshelf behind the seat cushion on the floor revealed books.
He didn¡¯t hesitate to check them out.
¡®Enchanting Energies: All things mana¡¯
¡®Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit: Nature to me, me to nature¡¯
¡®Art of Enchantment: Enchanting Plant Magic¡¯
¡®Whispers of elemental harmony.¡¯
¡°May I?¡±
¡°Go ahead.¡±
Ebony got permission to get a brief synopsis. He was slightly surprised because they were likely methods that produced tier 4 and above effects.
Enchanting energies was about using enchantment magic on spellcasting, vastly increasing the power of a spell before it was fired but taking as much as minutes to days of additional preparation for a single enchanted spell. Unrealistic for a high-speed fighter like them but not out of the pocket, it didn¡¯t hurt to have a ¡®finisher¡¯ and it would fit Dusk who wouldn''t move in battle.
Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit was something he couldn''t pull his eye away from. It was the most unique mana capacitance skill he had seen and he only read a short excerpt.
Art of Enchantment: Enchanting Plant Magic was the least relevant to him but it was clear that this lady¡¯s expertise lay in enchantment magic. In Enchanting Energies, there was a possibility that she enchanted her mana regeneration capabilities. That would explain the additional multiplier she had over him.
Whispers of elemental harmony was not that exciting, it was more of a journal about how to use multiple elements to produce greater effects than 1 + 1.
¡°Hmm¡it¡¯s not much but how about this in return?¡± Ebony pondered hard, he did not have many things that could rival the worth of these books.
He had to take a minute to decide between Enchanting Energies and Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit. He wanted both hence, it was time to barter.
He first conjured a seed of ice and dropped it outside the balcony¡¯s edge. It was an open balcony and they sat on floor cushions, giving a Japanese inn vibe but the decor was too different to give the same vibe. He then showed off setting up his Domain, just a mini one two metres in diameter to show that he wasn¡¯t here to pick a fight and steal territory.
It was surprisingly difficult to set up his Domain but he managed with a 6 seconds delay. That was noteworthy. It would be dangerous if he were to fight here and was unable to summon his Domain whenever he wanted.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Ebony had many versions of books on his experience with controlling Will. He decided to put a book 3 versions old on the table. His spells were not suitable for the Elven lady except Coagulated Mana Repository, a capacity and compression skill in 1.
He could also offer Runic Mana Sculpting, the evolution of Inscripted Mana Moulding but it was just a tier 3 skill and shabby compared to what she offered. The allure of runes to an enchantment mage was about the same as enchantment magic was to him, good to have but not essential.
Knowledge of Will was extremely valuable, that, he was sure of.
The Elven lady didn¡¯t reply because she couldn¡¯t determine the worth of his notes. She probably doubted there was any concrete information that she didn¡¯t know herself. But the temptation was there and that was the value of information on Will, it was too scarce.
¡°I understand your doubts, but I am a Domain mage. You are seeing it for yourself.¡± Ebony already determined that he was speaking to a newbie when it came to Domain Magic and Will. He was a Grandmaster, she didn¡¯t need to Identify him to feel his mana purity. A Grandmaster Domain Mage was practically unheard of even amongst the Elves.
¡°Do you like that room?¡± The two books that Ebony was eyeing remained in sight while the other two disappeared.
¡°Yes.¡± Ebony picked them both up and placed them on the shelf where they faded into mist.
¡°It¡¯s reserved for you indefinitely.¡±
¡°Thank you,¡±
Ebony got a refill and the waitress brought out another three desserts from cakes to fruit tarts. He didn¡¯t know when, but Ning Xin started talking to the Elven lady about pastries. Pastries were her weakest and most lacking repertoire in her cooking career.
¡®Fantastic. Now this is a real mana capacity skill, not a compression skill.¡¯ Ebony felt like luck had fallen on his shoulders. Good skills were too well hidden, and he found a strong, generous and open Elf that was willing to share something so valuable on their first greeting. If only everyone was so open, it would be so much easier to grow.
In certain ways, Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit was similar to his Coagulated Mana Repository but it was much more. Its potential was terrifying, the Elven lady who he knew not the name of did not expect how much this suited him.
It was close to being considered mental magic. The skill book described imaging one¡¯s mana pool as a marshy grove. The marsh paralleled his coagulated mana, mana in a different state that was harder to utilise but could store far more than its space and density suggested.
The grove was about planting trees in their mental space. These trees would absorb the marshy waters and disperse the mana back to the user. Increasing the ease of using the stable mana. But that wasn¡¯t all, the expansive stretch of thick, mental trees was supposed to be able to store 1850% + 10% more mana than the natural or base capacity per level.
It was a highly refined tier 4 mana capacitance skill. There might be a tier 5 version that the caster just erased or never wrote but that didn¡¯t matter.
Then it all boiled down to how to create these trees and what was different for him, a creature of mana that didn¡¯t have mana chassis in his brain but throughout his body.
The lady didn¡¯t give him a mere skill. She gave him a physique refinement method.
Ebony searched for Coagulated Mana Repository and placed it on the bookshelf.
Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit was detailed. It stated that the lady crushed her mental space and reshaped it. They didn¡¯t have a term for mana chassis but he was sure that was what the book was referring to.
Mana chassis returned to the same form no matter how ¡®crushed¡¯ it got. Ebony took Ful¡¯s sap to reshape his musculature and bones.
The Elves had a different strategy.
The first tier of the skill was to be able to move their mana chassis. The second requires ¡®exciting¡¯ their chassis, sort of like a dulled version of his Mana Chassis Implosion. The third required them to be able to be able to tie and hold their chassis in a specific position for extended periods.
And the fourth, was when they tied their chassis up together. Using chassis to hold down itself with architectural design.
However, it was rudimentary. The book never stated anything about mana chassis, more about imagining one¡¯s mana pool to grow into a verdant forest. Footnote, an estimation of 15 years to learn the first tier and 200 years to achieve tier 4, another century to perfect tier 4 to the stated 1850% + 10% refinement.
If imagination was the solution to the problem, he could see why it took so long. It was self-mental brainwashing.
Ebony had a hypothesis that mana chassis followed the form of souls. Souls grow up and are shaped to the same as his body and the reason the mana chassis repaired his body the same way was because that was the shape of his soul. How did he know?
He guessed after hurting himself with Pseudo-Imitation Roar. Soul damage was weird, not something he could heal from easily or at all. But he got an outline of his soul after it got hit often enough with the Apex Apes and he got the Soul Resilience skill. It overlapped his mana chassis.
He could manipulate his chassis, but they always go back to normal and he didn¡¯t try to reshape it. It would be a dumb move if he reshaped himself and he couldn¡¯t heal back to normal.
¡®Then is the elven lady some sort of creepy creature that¡¯s why she doesn¡¯t show herself? Probably not. That¡¯s why, it¡¯s not a mana chassis manipulation but mental brainwashing. She brainwashed her chassis to think it contained a marsh and grove, and with superhuman levels of Intelligence, it''s not impossible to make meta-physical changes with just that. Not reshaping the chassis, but altering the very make up and foundation of a chassis. It goes deeper than the chassis¡or does it?¡¯
Ebony was worried he misunderstood another mana capacity skill or that he was overthinking the language used. He decided not to overthink it and just try the practise the book suggested with a bit of his understanding of mana chassis incorporated to speed things up.
Enchanting Energies unfortunately didn¡¯t include any enchantment that builds on mana regeneration. This singular book alone was not enough to teach him enchantment magic¡¯s basics. However, it brought his mind back to the possibility of buffing his meditation skill rather than creating a new form of regeneration.
He¡¯d already found Kong Jing¡¯s stash of runic formulas. A few of them were used for the runic craft of the calming pearl but it didn¡¯t work on humans or organic regeneration. The calming effect it produced didn¡¯t work on him either. In fact, his mana produced a greater calming effect unless the runes were crafted by Kong Jing herself with all her Fortifications and Skill effects.
Still, enchantment was not a fruitless endeavour. He was going to give a few clones of his to study it for real. The houseguards could begin by obtaining the foundational books that were relatively easier to obtain. Generic skills were no less useful than Class skills.
All his clones wore a full mask since they didn¡¯t use their eyes to see, it didn¡¯t matter. Moulding his face off without any facial features was not possible, his Will fully situated the clone¡¯s body to be Ebony, meaning its form couldn¡¯t change as much as a Model could unless it was a temporary battle necessity. It was the side effects of having a large amount of Will imbued.
Despite the good scaling on Intelligence, 3 clones were insufficient to beat him. They were independent of him and should have been able to use all his skills at nearly the same power at the same levels of efficiency but their adaptability wasn¡¯t as good as the original. They also couldn¡¯t regenerate mana the same way he could. Their physique frame was also weaker than his because all they had was mana construct, his Physique and tough bones were not replicated to the same degree.
He didn¡¯t get more than 3 to spar with at the same time yet, he needed to clone more before he could do that. They were separate entities, taking no mental power from him to control and by refusing to connect to their Wills, fighting his clones was not the same as fighting models that he controlled.
¡°I¡¯m feeling anxious.¡± Ning Xin commented when they were on the way home.
¡°...The mandate user?¡± Ebony probed.
She shook her head and her long ponytail swayed left and right.
¡°Those steampunk guys?¡±
She replied with a nod.
¡®The Mandate user seems far more troublesome to me but her Intuition is terrifyingly accurate.¡¯
¡°Let¡¯s go back to work. And no more returning to the surface for some time.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t feel helpless but suffocated. He was not ¡®free¡¯.
¡°Yes. That sounds better. Let¡¯s shop and pack, I think we should stay down for a long time.¡± The confirmation punched him in the gut and pushed his head down figuratively.
¡®The mandate user still doesn¡¯t want to come in but he can force us out if we¡¯re in range. Or me, since I¡¯m their target. Dusk is down there but that¡¯s not enough if the older space mage acts. Although the location of the underground fortress is a secret, I¡¯ll assume that¡¯s not an issue to the space mage. If we¡¯re down there, we have a lot more support. Hopefully, Navin will help.¡¯
¡°Are you okay?¡± Xin asked after sensing his emotions.
¡°You will understand once you turn.¡±
She flinched at his statement.
Chapter 319: Necrochitin
Ebony took a long time but he finally noticed that her two states swap completely changed her personality as well. He had imagined getting to this level of strength was enough to move freely, be unfettered and be turned back by few. But it only opened his eyes to bigger busybodies that can¡¯t seem to ignore him.
¡®Battery, both that steampunk guy and the mandate user want me for that¡go for other targets like that Elf. I¡¯m not that special.¡¯ Ebony sulked as they did the wholesale grocery shopping before packing up their trailer and giving his bodyguard clones a heads-up about their disappearance.
The shopping trip didn¡¯t take long, she just pointed at what she wanted and swept her hand across the wholesale distributor¡¯s warehouse. Their spatial bags could use an upgrade to weight reduction and he wouldn¡¯t complain if they got bigger either.
At the same time, he got his clones to start learning enchanting magic and one of them was free to leave at any one time if the need arose or they found a more productive way to spend their time. For example, going to the Colosseum as a Duelist. He still wanted the house to be guarded.
¡°Clones are cheating.¡± Ning Xin headbutted his shoulder after he dismissed himself and got to packing.
¡°Get your own. You can still go for scheduled duels, get Sister Jing to be your bodyguard.¡± All skills were fair game and part of their capabilities.
¡°Hmphh.¡±
Ning Xin¡¯s Duelling career was going stellar, a few more months of winning streak and her rank would be high enough to join the tri-annual Capital-wide tournament. If Ebony started now, he should still be able to make it in time as long as he never lost a battle. It was in 5 to 6 months and he could take his clone¡¯s place when the time came.
¡°I was too harsh with the disappointment of Ant monsters. This is indeed a golden opportunity.¡± Ebony reflected on himself. He had been too childish. Experience was experience. The Ants were going to die if they continued pushing and acted on their desire to plunder lives, food and energy from Elcra and the Empire. He was silly not to partake.
¡°It is getting boring. They began to send Emperors at us, their pure strength and hardiness makes it impossible for us to hunt. Their technique and hunting strategy-wise, I¡¯m not learning anything new.¡±
¡°Mmm¡but the Emperors are indeed a different race altogether from the Kings and below. Spirit Nexus? That thing does not make sense.¡± Ebony had to learn the hard way that the Tetramyth race¡¯s Emperors were not scientific and nigh invincible. All subspecies of Emperor and above had a skill or ability. They could connect to something Kong Jing called the Spirit Nexus.
It was not their skill. It was their Goddess¡¯s skill.
Fortunately, the Spirit Nexus was not cast by the Goddess of War herself but by her Kin, the Saints who were given the legacy.
The Spirit Nexus connects the Saints to all the Emperors birthed by or under their command. They were the Saints¡¯ eyes and antennae. If only it were that simple.
Spirit Nexus was a famous skill that was beyond mortal imagination. A tier 7 skill.
All entities connected to a Spirit Nexus had their stats controlled by the caster. Typically, the Saint or Tetramyth castor would equalise the stats of all their kin connected. But, they had something referred to as the Powerhouse. It was a secured region of Emperors that did nothing but stay in forced hibernation.
The size of their Powerhouse, was the amount of excess stats the Saint could split between her warriors. If they had 10 Emperors on the battlefield with a Powerhouse that stored 100 Emperors, the 10 warriors had the stats of 110 split amongst themselves.
It was not logical at all.
Thankfully, Ant and insect races in general had terribly low physical stats and physique to begin with.
Obviously, the limit was the caster''s skill level, refinement, their Fortification and the usual modifiers. The second limiter was the limit that the Emperor Ant warriors could withstand without dying. After an unknown amount of generations and genetic selection, this limit was sky-high. Stats alone was not everything but to a race whose overwhelming advantage was quantity and numbers? They were ants on magical steroids.
The Goddess of War herself was rumoured to have a higher-tier version.
In a way, the entire ¡®war'' with the Empire was to grow more Emperors and increase the size of their Powerhouses. The Tetramyths were doing the same thing on numerous worlds.
The method to beat or push the Saints back was information that the Empire had to buy using the Xeng¡¯s connections. They had to find and destroy the Powerhouse that was beyond the portal or the battle would not end.
The Empire was barely pushing the Tetramyths back from their fortress and the main army was so far away from the portals the knowledge didn¡¯t help.
Ebony was only aware of slightly more because Hector and Mallory shared most of the non-essential information. Such as plans of the most elite team the Empire could muster to be formed to charge into their portal but the risks were so high and planning took a long time.
It was a no-brainer that something as exploitable as the Powerhouse would be heavily protected.
Every other ant was expendable, millions of them were not even equivalent to a single addition to their Powerhouse.
They had special units of Emperors to funnel the growth of some ants and make sure their lessers didn¡¯t die that easily. Even in their race of numbers, they recognised that there were talents that shouldn¡¯t be expended. Unless that speculation was completely wrong and they go by random selection.
The Empire was busy seeking seers or scouts capable of obtaining more information on the Powerhouses they had to deal with.
Ebony and Ning Xin lay on their sofa and waited in their gear with their bags packed. They needed the one and only special transport to fetch them. The ordinary way of reaching their destination would take 2 to 3 days and they had to get through customs, it was troublesome.
Navin might be able to do something about it but all he needed to do was give Kong Jing unspoken permission to do as she wished.
¡°Can we still return once or twice a month? I want to visit Aroma Alcove.¡±
¡°Why? You want to see the beautiful elven waitresses again?¡±
Ebony felt a guillotine inching towards his neck. Her calm words were dripping in blood.
¡°There¡¯s a rare Elder Elf who is open to sharing or trading skills¡¡±
She shifted towards him and pushed him while getting her mask to almost touch his nose, ¡°is that really all?¡±
¡°Of course not.¡±
Her fingers grip onto his collar.
¡°They have plenty of desserts we haven¡¯t tried since their menu changes daily.¡±
¡°...That lady is a master of teacakes. I will make them better in future.¡± She leaned back and got pulled away before patting and smoothening out his robe.
Tension between the two of them and their interactions had been rising and they were both aware of it. She was funnelling her embarrassment to the back of her mind and it would explode when her hair turned red. Hence, she had been doing a lot to get more than physically close to him.
They spent an awkward hour of silence before boarding and alighting the space taxi.
¡°Let¡¯s get to work.¡± Ebony stretched his neck.
¡°One meal a day.¡± The woman with half a head of red hair grabbed his hand without much control, any further than this point and she wouldn¡¯t even be able to converse normally so she was already showing restraint.
¡°I¡¯ll remember to keep an area clean,¡± Ebony recalled his forearm getting crushed when she casually held onto him the last time.
???
¡°Dusk, cushions please.¡±
Ebony hid within Dusk¡¯s bomb shelter while Ning Xin fell unconscious right as they slipped inside.
He carefully placed her head onto a pillow and made sure she lay comfortably. Her wounds clotted naturally but he sealed her uninjured body parts and organs in ice to speed up her healing.
¡°Dusk, one-way transparency. I want to see what¡¯s going on outside.¡± Ebony asked and his pet tree responded.
Holding his left arm, he pushed the cut stem back where it should be and let his body reconnect itself. He lost a foot outside so it would take a minute before his leg decides to regenerate. He could kickstart it himself but this way healed the vitality portion faster and the period of physical weakness from regeneration wouldn¡¯t last as long.
¡°Haha, so they learned from me and are camping outside. Dusk, full defence. Let¡¯s call it hibernation mode. Save your mana on any attack or sealing spells. They are not going to have a slip in defence since they don¡¯t get tired or drop their guard so we can forget about getting away with Torrent Path.¡±
Ebony decided that his only move now was to pathetically wait for someone to save him.
Unbelievably, time flowed away like water down a river. They had been down with the Tetramyths for another year and a half after his luck with Aroma Alcove¡¯s Mistress.
They completely missed the Capital-wide tournament a year ago. He only found out after but his clones lost a total of 2 battles and didn¡¯t keep an undefeated win streak. So he didn¡¯t meet the rank to join the tournament in time. During the day of the tournament itself, both of them were locked in combat for over a week and Ning Xin didn¡¯t have a clone to duel for her.
The situation with the Tetramyths continued to evolve or devolve depending on one¡¯s perspective.
The Divine Pests had good arithmetic ability because the number of Emperors on their side increased over time. Those meant to feed the Powerhouse did not need a perfect evolution, just the bare minimum.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The fighter caste took a bit more time and effort but even those have seen a rise in numbers on the battlefield. They might not have evolved in the meantime but were just sent through their portal to decrease death rates or increase the productivity of experience farming from war.
Ebony and the Empire had assumed they had been fighting strong Emperors but they had those who had been from the worker or scout caste. They were just pre-buffed with stats while doing reconnaissance and gathering intelligence on the noteworthy fighters of the Empire.
Half a year ago, these Emperors skittered back into their portal. And in another two weeks, these real fighters walked through. It was either a delay due to a large land mass over the portal or a possible transmission lag with the Spirit Nexus skill.
They did not try to open a separate path or eat the natural materials of the underground. The Granite Hall Family had good craft but the incomplete flooring couldn¡¯t stop these fighter castes if they were serious; however, that wasn¡¯t the Tetramyths'' aim at all.
The fortress of people was the resource these Ants were here for.
Battle. War. Experience.
That was what they were farming.
The overall quality of natural metals on Elva might be alluring but the quantity was lacking due to Elcra¡¯s small size compared to their population¡¯s need.
The worst thing that happened?
The Empire put up a good resistance.
Good enough that the Saints called upon their sisters.
Now there were 5 portals side by side and another two completely different sub-species of Tetramyths. They had the weaker lot retreat to fill up the space with soldiers of higher quality and split the numbers perfectly between 5 of the sub-species.
One of the newer additions was a subspecies with acidic and corrosive spit and excrement ability, the Venom Legion. Their carapace and mandibles all had the same properties which made attacking and defending them a pain to deal with for the Imperial Army.
The last wasn¡¯t the most deadly but the most troublesome opponent for the Empire. Ebony wasn¡¯t even sure if they were ants at all.
Undead Ants.
Necrotic bites that revived their fallen kin if they had a body to recover. They would all be carried back to one specific portal and in a week, the same ant would be back but turned into a different race.
Any Ant body part left on the battlefield from an undead ant could be recovered and sent back to the Saint, and a brand new ant would come out with uneven, mix-and-matched body parts.
This was the leader of the current swarm.
There were no horrors of people turning into zombies so far. It seemed to only infect fellow Tetramyths.
The status of the undead ants, the Necrochitins, was higher amongst the Tetramyths. The different sub-species started to coordinate with the Necrochitins¡¯ Emperors.
They were angry.
No, they were furious.
Navin had cursed their Saint.
Not with words but with magic.
¡®All five of them¡curse magic is scary.¡¯ The man himself was still walking as if he didn¡¯t lay a strong curse on 5 Saints because Yvette the Life Queen seemed to have combination magic spells with Navin that paid the cost of his curse spells.
Ebony didn¡¯t manage to find out the details of the cost.
The titled Emperor of the Empire, Oplot Qoriq began to shine on the battlefield after the Necrochitins arrived.
Ebony could only say that his title of ¡®Indestructible¡¯ was apt.
The Necrochitins had the largest and most numerous Powerhouses stored behind their portals but none of that mattered. The giant of a man didn¡¯t need Navin to back him up with barriers. He just wouldn¡¯t take damage no matter what, who or how many. With just his fleshy body.
He had a massive white greatshield with gold rims but it remained on his back because he didn¡¯t need to use it.
It was almost a miracle that Ebony still hadn¡¯t personally interacted with that person when he saw the man at the edge of his perception multiple times throughout the duration he had been fighting down here.
It felt like circumstantial coincidences were piling up that prevented him from introducing himself to the man.
¡®Necrochitins frankensteins, allochrome¡¯s carapace, silversonic legs, arcanite cortex mandibles and venom legion¡¯s venom gland¡we¡¯re not that much of an issue if they only sent this newer and less optimised ants.¡¯ Ebony was relieved he didn¡¯t get the elites of the Necrochitins. Dusk would not keep him safe for long if that was the case.
The Necrochitins have frankensteins with better parts, from other wars and her other sisters and mothers most likely.
Dusk shook but no vibrations disturbed his bomb shelter.
Ebony cleaned the gunk off of Icicle and Xin¡¯s twin swords before he relaxed and decided to check out how far he¡¯d come. He stopped levelling for almost 2 months now, giving him time to catch up to utilising his stats.
The high-intensity training and their constant conditioning might have helped because he recently allocated and made use of all 122 levels, 4270 stat worth. He had extremely balanced levelling. A single level up in his Class gave 20 stat points and 15 points for Sub-class while Profession gave his Wisdom a 5 point increase at every level.
A total of 610 stat points were added to Wisdom.
The rest of his stat distribution was nothing astonishing. He already had the ratio down, he just altered it a little due to the change in his Physique and skillset. He needed to cover up the Endurance lost thanks to his Physique sacrificing it for mana regeneration. He could let Perception lay back since his Core Skill raises it.
The spare stats from the balance he desired were mostly put towards Intelligence
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill:
Perpetual Tranquillity Spring Lvl 827 (¢ô)
Arsenal of Will Domain Lvl 752 (¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Class: Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace - Lvl 422
Class Skills:
Ethereal Form Arts Lvl 433 (¢ô)
Phantom¡¯s Flicker Lvl 786 (¢ô)
Ice Mana Decree Lvl 813
Woven Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 799 (¢ó)
Arctic Rivertide Greatsword Technique Lvl 788 (¢ó)
Woven Frostblaze Melding Lvl 602 (¢ô)
Perennial Everfrost Armament Lvl 603 (¢ô)
Ethereal Fluid Blitz Lvl 572 (¢ô)
Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace Conditioning Lvl 360 (¢ô)
Entity Evanesce Lvl 1291
Veritable Ice Clone Lvl 701 (¢ó)
Blossom of Shimmering Chill Lvl 600 (¢ó)
Stalactite Sunder Lvl 600 (¢ó)
Frigid Distorted Refraction Lvl 588 (¢ó)
Frostweave Vital Bolster Lvl 650 (¢ó)
Sub-Class: Oppressive Resonance Lvl 422
Sub-Class Skills:
Battle Hymn Lvl 455 (¢ò)
Immense Mana Vibration Lvl 508 (¢ó)
Gravity Mana Control Lvl 523
Tempestuous Lull Pelt Lvl 510 (¢ô)
Sonic Reverberation Lvl 503 (¢ó)
Torrent Path Lvl 502 (¢ó)
Gravity Quelling Vortex Lvl 452(¢ó)
Quake KickLvl 482 (¢ó)
**** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar Lvl 502(¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Adjudicator - Lvl 422
Profession Skills:
Runic Mana Sculpting Lvl 681 (¢ó)
Coagulated Mana Repository Lvl 797 (¢ô)
Tolerant Stalwart Foundation Lvl 550 (¢ó)
Mana Chassis Implosion Lvl 502 (¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 5,012/16,060
Stamina: 10,082/15,768
Mana: 95,051/204,589
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 1050
Vitality: 1100
Constitution: 1500
Endurance: 900
Agility: 1200
Intelligence: 2326
Wisdom: 3460
Perception: 600
Generic Skills:
Appraise Lvl 21 (¢ò)
Extreme Cold Resistance Lvl 232 (¢ô)
Running Lvl 152 (¢ñ)
Mental Mapping Lvl 108 (¢ñ)
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 14
Calculated Hunch Lvl 248 (¢ò)
Housekeeping Lvl 112 (¢ñ)
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 251 (¢ò)
Tracking Lvl 65 (¢ñ)
Game Processing Lvl 94 (¢ñ)
Immense Heat Resistance Lvl 256 (¢ó)
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12 (¢ò)
Gardening Lvl 122 (¢ñ)
Cooking Lvl 109 (¢ñ)
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 205 (¢ò)
Korun Lvl 102
Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 84 (¢ò)
Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 88 (¢ó)
Immense Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 166 (¢ó)
Lightning Resistance Lvl 158 (¢ñ)
Sheer Blood Resistance Lvl 101 (¢ò)
Wind Resistance Lvl 77 (¢ñ)
Poison Resistance 20 (¢ñ)
Preservation Bubble Lvl 205 (¢ñ)
Sustenance Regulation Lvl 115 (¢ò)
Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 234
Adaptable Bow Mastery Lvl 61 (¢ñ)
Sheer Mana Poisoning Resistance Lvl 51 (¢ò)
Swimming Lvl 46 (¢ñ)
Lightning Tether Lvl 275 (¢ñ)
Electroshock Lvl 263 (¢ñ)
Soul Resilience Lvl 37
Lunar Bio Clock Lvl 14 (¢ò)
His resource pool indicators were a good way for him to confirm how skill multiplier increase was calculated. Conditioning was the first one to be taken into account. It was the closest to the base stats and worked directly upon them.
A Vitality of 1100 should have given him a maximum health of 11,000. Conditioning didn¡¯t get any refinements yet, at level 360, it gave him a 46% increase of all base stats. He had an effective Vitality of 1606.
His stamina regeneration was reduced but the maximum value of his resource pool based on Endurance did not change. His Physique also increased the ¡®base effect¡¯ of Endurance which made regeneration calculations iffy but maximum stamina value wasn¡¯t that hard to take into account. His Physique worked first, so an Endurance of 900 had the effect of 1080 in maximum stamina value calculations. Only then did Conditioning come into play and increased this base effect by 46% to a total of 1576.8 Endurance.
Wisdom and maximum mana pool worked in the same way. 3460 base was increased by 46% to 5051.6. A further refined version of Preservation Bubble increased his max mana pool size by 305% at its current level. Giving his maximum mana pool size to be equivalent to 20,458.98 Wisdom or 204,589 as shown since decimal points do not show and it never rounds up in his status.
Ebony had limited success with Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit even though over a year had passed but he had a feeling he was almost there, editing the skill to fit him.
Chapter 320: Natural Treasures
Ebony let his status slip away from his mind but he checked his notebook and his latest revision with the refinements and evolutions written down. There wasn¡¯t much light from where he was but the constant dim flashes from outside Dusk was enough for him to read.
Skill update revision 102:
Perpetual Tranquillity Spring - A never-ending source of energy has formed in your mental world and mana chassis, breaking your state of mind is nigh impossible regardless of consciousness increasing Mana and Stamina rate by 800% + 10.0% per level, Perception by 500% + 10.0% per level.
Base Increment: 100% (regen), 200% (perception), complete tier 4 - perception per level increased from 5.0% to 10%
He was not very satisfied but the refinement was not easy to come by. It was proof that he could still improve his meditation.
As time passed and his stats increased, Ebony realised that he might have been overthinking the Elves who had greater mana regeneration than him. It wasn¡¯t impossible that they simply possessed tier 5 Meditation and had a high Wisdom stat. A single tier up doubled the percentage scaling per level and the base refinement could go up to heights he had not reached in his short life.
Conditioning comes into play first, pushing his Wisdom to 5051.6. His Physique doubles that of a human¡¯s so 20% base maximum mana per hour is regenerated instead of 10%. Essentially, 10,103.2 mana per hour. Preservation Bubble¡¯s maximum mana increase wasn¡¯t taken into account.
Fortification increased base regeneration by 750%, equivalent to an 8.5 times multiplier, 85,877.2 mana per hour.
At level 827 and his current refinement, his Core Skill increased his mana and stamina regeneration rate by 9070% or a 91.7 times multiplier.
7,874,939.24 mana per hour was Ebony¡¯s mana regeneration rate so he had almost 131,249 mana to spend per minute. It was highly insufficient for his new skills since he was overexcited by tossing more mana into skill creation to increase the power of a spell. It was not an efficient way, but it worked. The number of skills that got more mana efficient was dwarfed by the number of skills that increased in mana consumption.
However, this wasn¡¯t all to his mana regeneration.
¡®Back to update, oh right I need to change these values. That¡¯ll be for revision 103.¡¯ Ebony put aside his constant urge to find another form of mana regeneration to compound with his current multipliers.
Arsenal of Will Domain - Spread your personal domain into existence with consolidated Will. Turn your body into the central core of your domain or summon a separate arsenal. The central core of the Arsenal of Will¡¯s magic is strengthened by 900% + 5.0% per level. Control over your elements and magic is a static 1100% more robust.
Consumes 305,000 MP/Min
Classification: Domain Magic - Ice, Gravity, Sound, Sealing & Lightning
Base Increment: 150% (strengthening), 100% (static robustness)
Efficiency: Gravity and Ice (consumption 355,000 MP/Min/5 metre radius ¡ú 305,000 MP/Min/5 metre radius.) Great! But still disgustingly impossible at max compression, only plausible for Dusk at the moment.
Woven Frostblaze Augmentation - Combusting intricately woven mana in your mana chassis that had been directly conjured into Ice mana increases your Constitution by 500% + 5.0% of Intelligence. Strength and Endurance increase by 350% + 5.0% of Intelligence. Agility is increased by 200% + 5.0% of Intelligence.
Consumes 8000 MP/Min.
Classification: Ice Magic - Body Enhancement Magic
Base Increment: 150% (constitution), 50% (strength & endurance), 100% (agility)
Efficiency: 8800 MP/Min ¡ú 8000MP/Min
Arctic Rivertide Greatsword Technique - The advent of your greatsword is the advent of an arctic tide, each one greater than the last. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increase by 300% + 5.0% per level. Strength and speed wielding a greatsword increase by 250% + 5.0% per level. Momentous tides power the next tide with 5% of the preceding strike¡¯s Strength.
Evolution: Ignited Frozen River Greatsword Style ¡ú Arctic Rivertide Greatsword Technique (finally, hard work proved talent is not everything)
Base Increment: 300% (base balance, stability, etc.), 250% (strength and speed(not agility)).
Decrement: No direct flame buff. Hypothesis - Melding overrides the flame buff
Special note: 5% stackable ¡®force¡¯, Calculated Hunch says compound, not flat
Special note 2: current limit, 202 stacks before being unable to maintain form, risk of backlash to the body increases exponentially after 198 stacks. This is considering peak state, unable to maintain peak state for long thanks to compression. At ¡®sustainable¡¯ state, max stack 39 before self-inflicted damage.
Woven Frostblaze Melding - Meld threads of freezing flames into an object, giving it its elemental property. Melded objects retain woven threads of flames for 100% + 10.0% longer without any intervention and are essentially inseparable. Has the effect of 650% + 10.0% of Intelligence when the target comes into contact with flames.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
Evolution: Woven Frostblaze Cladding ¡ú Woven Frostblaze Melding
Base Increment: 150% (intelligence scaling)
Efficiency: Requires roughly 2.81 times the amount of mana cladding required.
Special note: Melding completely changes/destroys the original material or body. Not even I can remove the changes. Permanently imbues an object with woven threads of my ice. E.g. Iron becomes a form of cold iron. Need more data on how long this lasts and if the material will ever go back to normal.
Special note 2: Icicle has completely melded with my mana and this skill.
Special note 3: Robe has completely melded with my mana and this skill.
Special note 4: Please limit experimentation in case other equipment and materials turn obsolete or break after a certain amount of time (too late)
Special note 5: Self-experimentation. Success? Possibility of this being a physique refinement method: high.
Special note 6: Physique refined. Minor success.
Ebony was particularly impressed and pleasantly surprised that he finally refined his physique once, the normal way. Every part of his Physique remained the same except the addition of frost flames damage to his own body was reduced by 25%, allowing him to use greater compression degrees without killing himself as fast. Though no description of it, his natural body temperature was also decreased by a notch. Not freezing, but cold.
Perennial Frost Armament - All known armaments conjured with ice are strengthened by 600% + 10.0% Intelligence. Defensive conjurations in the form of a heavy shield or spherical orb, have the effect of 750% + 10.0% Intelligence. Further change in structure reduces said effect. Perennial Frost Armaments are 300% more resistant to change and external stimuli.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
Evolution: Imperishable Frost Armament ¡ú Perennial Frost Armament
Base Increment: 350% (strengthening), 300% (defensive strengthening), 300% static (resistance)
Efficiency: Requires roughly 8.42 times the amount of mana an Imperishable Frost Armament of the same volume requires.
Special note: Resistance to change and external stimuli requires more data, so far, harder to melt, corrosive acid less effective.)
Ebony was particularly satisfied with this. By his standards, his conjured weapons were more durable than the average Empire''s army Grandmaster blacksmith¡¯s craft using Rare-quality materials. With his runes and magic, the special abilities of certain weapons weren''t as powerful or diverse as his abilities.
Although the mana cost was rather ridiculous, he didn¡¯t have to conjure these in the middle of battle and it suited Dusk very well with its even more ridiculous mana capacity.
Dusk was not considered an Armament but it received a portion of this skill¡¯s buff on top of its Domain buff. Ebony estimated 30 to 35% of the effect was stacked onto Arsenal of Will¡¯s core, Dusk¡¯s main body. But the conjuration of Dusk received the full effect.
Ethereal Fluid Blitz - Maximise exertion of the physical body. Every attack is a precursor for the next using momentum. Ethereal flow and momentum seemingly come from no movement yet come from every wobble. Speed and power of ethereal blitz rises with movement. Ability to build up momentum increases by 500% + 10.0% per level. Ability to raise power and speed of flurry up to an additional 5% + 0.1% of Strength stat per level.
Evolution: Fluid Blitz ¡ú Ethereal Fluid Blitz
Base Increment: 250% (Build-up momentum), 4% (base static limit of power and speed increment from blitz)
Efficiency: No noticeable change in stamina consumption
Special note: Works best with Ethereal Form Arts, like an active skill for the art. Works with greatsword technique to 90% of the skill¡¯s stated efficiency.
Special note 2: Completely incorporate it into sword technique before any further evolution or refinement.
This currently raises his effective Strength stat by 62.2%. He could hit top momentum in an average of 3.4 seconds but it greatly depended on who his opponent was. The stronger the opponent, the faster he could use their close-range clashes to build momentum. Maintaining that momentum was easy, especially with his greatsword technique thanks to its mass.
It was harder to stop. He hadn¡¯t escaped the clutches of inertia but manipulation of gravity helped.
Frostweave Vital Bolster - A combination of arcane and ice, a seal of vitality is woven. Frostwoven targets have all activity slowed down by a static 70% + 0.05%. Will is consumed and imbued to guide the target''s life force to condense towards regions leaking vitality. The inherent vitality of ice mana assists in bolstering the immobilisation of Vitality and prevents it from escaping with the effect of 400% + 5.0% Intelligence and mana with 200% + 5.0% Intelligence. The spell is 300% + 5.0% of Intelligence more physically robust from internal force and 350% + 5.0% of Intelligence more physically robust from external force.
Consumes Mana
Classification: Sealing Magic - Ice Magic
Evolution: Frostweave Vital Constriction ¡ú Frostweave Vital Bolster
Base Increment: 150% (sealing vitality), 100% (sealing mana), 100% (robust - internal), 100% (robust - external), used to be semi-tier 2 - fully tier 3
Efficiency: Requires roughly 4.53 times the amount of mana for Constriction of the same volume.
Special note: Static activity slowed; did not change after evolution. Current level unable to find out if it can reach 100% or what would happen after 100%.
Battle Hymn - Produce hymns of battle with mana vibrations, musical melodies producing effects of increased stat of 5.0% + 0.025% of Intelligence depending on melody per level.
Consumes 150 MP/Min
Classification: Sound Magic
Evolution: Battle Song ¡ú Battle Hymn
Base Increment: 5% (Intelligence scaling)
Efficiency: 30 ¡ú 150 MP/Min/per target
Special note: After compression - not mana friendly for a large number of targets
Special note 2: Use about 0.06% of maximum compression for the average Grandmaster freelancer - any more, and they risk dying from my mana poisoning. Triple that compression for the average knight. Xin doesn¡¯t feel any pain until 42.22% of maximum compression, and can withstand up to 58.94% of maximum compression in base state. She can withstand my full buff in offence mode without any lasting damage, her vitality washes everything out and I currently cannot force my mana into her if she pushes it out with her vitality.
Special note 3: Awesome, currently I can stack 3 stats on myself. Wisdom, Intelligence and Endurance are the usual combinations I use. Xin can only use 1.4, anymore and she gets mana poisoning from me.
Special note 4: Battle Song used to be partially ineffective on myself when it came to Wisdom stat, to a lesser degree now. 40% effective for Wisdom, 100% for others. Extremely crucial part of my skill set. Focus on improving Battle Hymn.
Tempestuous Lull Pelt - Adeptly remove all gravity mana out of matter and envelope around the target as pelt of gravity. The ebbing flow of gravity is reversed and reacts with dilatant-like properties. Has the effect of 500% + 10.0% Intelligence. Order in disorder, tame the entropic nature of gravity mana to your bidding by 350% + 10.0% Intelligence.
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Consumes 10,800 MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
Evolution: Tempestuous Repulsive Membrane ¡ú Tempestuous Lull Pelt
Base Increment: 150% (repulsion strength), 200% (better control)
Efficiency: 2200 ¡ú 10,800 MP/Min
Special note: Acts similar to cornstarch, strong against strong, weak against weak but all at my discretion unless I¡¯m unconscious and it acts that way by default. Easier to use in day to day, no longer pushes things away and possible to eat and hold items normally without conscious manipulation.
Special note 2: A lot thicker than membrane, starts to act from almost a finger-length away from my body.
Special note 3: Uses not just the pathetic amount of gravity mana from body and pure mana¡¯s mass, but the gravity from surroundings. Maximum strength depends on the environment and my mental reach. Deeper underground, more dense gravity but the total amount I can compress stays constant. Implications - high in the sky, might have delayed spell cast since I need to draw gravity mana from a larger distance.
Special note 4: By utilising gravity mana in the area, the surroundings including any opponent or other entities are in zero-gravity condition or suction towards my spell should I choose to do so. Same for most if not all current gravity spells unless I specifically cordon off a region of magnified gravity, a bit more mentally intensive to do so. Very effective for various situations, most warriors become helpless.
Sonic Reverberation - Unleash a potent wave of vibrations upon an entity. Frequency increases by 5.0% per level. Sustained reverberations persist with 400 + 5.0% Intelligence per level, resonance disrupts mana formation until dissipation or expulsion.
Consumes MP
Classification: Sound Magic
Evolution: Sonic Intrusion ¡ú Sonic Reverberation
Base Increment: 400% (Intelligence scaling) - doesn¡¯t not equal direct damage, just how long it continues hammering the target from within.
Efficiency: Requires roughly 4.31 times the amount of mana for Intrusion of the same volume.
This unassuming skill was actually one of the most useful for direct damage. It was even potent enough to cause mana disruption. Not useful against the non-magic Tetramyths but he could see it deadly for mages.
Torrent Path - Generate a stream of gravity mana between two points in space to propel or repel matter at 600% + 5.0% Intelligence.
Consumes 7,500MP/Min
Classification: Gravity Magic
Evolution: Firm Path ¡ú Torrent Path
Base Increment: 400% (Intelligence scaling)
Efficiency: 500 ¡ú 7500MP/Min/5 metres/stream
Special note: Use with care, differentiate between transport and attack spell. Pressure equals force over area. Attemps to kick a torrent path, successful. Attemps to slash a sharp torrent path as a ranged sword slash, successful but far more mentally intensive to maintain spell, reduces how many spells I can control temporarily.
Gravity Quelling Vortex - Completely separate an entity¡¯s gravity mana away from its body of mass. Separated gravity mana is commanded into a vortex and flow is increased in the strength of pull by 700% + 5.0% of Intelligence per level. The Quelling Vortex has the effect of 350% + 5.0% of Intelligence in keeping its contents inwards and quells chaotic outbreaks but also expels the contents with the same force.
Consumes MP
Classification: Gravity Magic
Evolution: Gravity Vortex ¡ú Gravity Quelling Vortex
Base Increment: 600% (Intelligence scaling), 350% (explosive)
Efficiency: Requires roughly 23.14 times the amount of mana for pre-evolution vortex at full strength.
Special note: Use with care, area of effect - not much control, too strong.
Special note 2: Most effective at keeping the contents sucked in¡inside. Main use, storing Xin¡¯s mana. The effect also strengthens the explosive strength when I release it.
Special note 3: Not exactly a black hole, but essentially one. Materials and objects sucked in can be released as a crushed orb or exploded into fragments like a grenade. Elemental mana like fire and lightning cannot be released as a crushed orb, but a mixture of rocks and earth might produce a sort of molten slag.
Special note 4: The ¡®quelling¡¯ properties require Will. According to Xin, her fire mana calms down slightly and no longer fights back to escape as hard. Amount of Will required - minimal(less than 0.4% required for a clone.)
Quake Kick - Infuse mana into a kick that can be directed to penetrate into or spread apart within the target. Mana will embed itself into a stationary position and quake violently in place. Mana embedding increases in strength by 350% + 5.0% Intelligence per level. Strength and speed of vibrations increased by 300% + 5.0% per level.
Consumes MP
Classification: Sound Magic - Physical Technique
Evolution: Tremor Stomp ¡ú Quake Kick
Base Increment: 200% (strength), 200% (sonic impact)
Efficiency: Requires roughly 2.46 times the amount of mana for Tremor Stomp.
Special note: First ¡®physical technique¡¯ classification, Odd as usual when I already have many physical skills. Tests revealed, only works with kicks now. Punching doesn¡¯t give the skill buff effect.
Runic Mana Sculpting - Mould raw mana with or without any physical materials with mana manipulation. Sculptic runic endeavours into or on an entity with increasing efficiency and accuracy. Increases familiarity with repeated mana pathways and their effectiveness by 450% + 5.0% per level. Increases fine control over mana by 300% + 5.0% per level.
Evolution: Inscripted Mana Moulding ¡ú Runic Mana Sculpting
Base Increment: 330% (effectiveness), 200% (fine control)
Efficiency: Amazingly, only 1.32 times more mana costly for the same inscription.
Special note: ¡®Effectiveness¡¯ is vague, e.g. not direct power-up(multiplier) for tolerant stalwart foundation
Special note 2: Remember to frequently update Dusk¡¯s Will to self-sculpt increased effectiveness runes.
Special note 3: Recently discovered ¡®cap¡¯ for ¡®effectiveness¡¯. ¡®Cap¡¯ is the runic formula itself, I need to constantly upgrade the runic formulas to more complex, mana-intensive, effective versions. Work on the runic language Korun.
Coagulated Mana Repository - The walls of the mana chassis are compact to their limits. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 800% + 10.0% before coagulating. Coagulated mana will line the walls of the mana chassis. Maximum charge of coagulated mana is static. Coagulated mana holds a static 15% more mana than completely condensed mana. Coagulated mana has a static 900% stability and resistance to change. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.
Base Increment: 300% (compression), 5% (static compression for coagulated mana), 400% (stability)
Special note: 400% stability and resistance to change also means it became that much harder for me to use this ¡®coagulated¡¯ mana. So far, I rarely have the chance to use it other than for experimentation. Currently, I see this as a negative. However, I believe it¡¯s a positive change but I only have theories for when this would be useful.
Special note 2: I might not like this damn skill as much now. Mana Adjudicator increased density by 200% and this refers to base regenerated, it¡¯s outperformed by the 300% increase in compressibility. My compression limit is increased by 8770%, all mana-skill/spells can be increased in power and scaling by 88.7 times and so does my mana cost. A single frost augmentation alone goes up to 709,600 mp/min, although, funny enough, I can¡¯t handle even half of that compression before I take self-inflicted damage even after physique refinement.
Special note 3: Since I can¡¯t handle full compression for augmentation, including a stack with tolerant stalwart foundation, this skill is finally working as a mana capacity skill as I have no choice but to decompress my mana. My speed and precision of decompressing mana needs work.
Special note 4: My body can handle full compression in my Domain, mana cost skyrockets accordingly. My mind can¡¯t react or keep up with my own speed, but my Will and body can. Continue working on Melding, refining physique so I take less injury from my elements. Reduces need for Constitution stat.
Special note 5: I desperately need a mind-acceleration type of skill, Intelligence stat alone can¡¯t keep up. My Will and muscle memory also cannot keep up, but not a problem in Slumber or unconscious state.
Tolerant Stalwart Foundation - Endow a specific set of mana pathways into one¡¯s very own body. Source the runic endowment with 3800 mana per minute to increase base Constitution by 300% + 5.0%. Strength and Endurance increases by 250% + 5.0%. Impact, shear and elemental resistance is increased by 25% + 0.05%.
Mutation: Stalwart Foundation ¡ú Tolerant Stalwart Foundation
Base Increment: 100% (Constitution), 150% (strength, endurance), resistances scaling increased from 0.025% to 0.05 - proper tier 3 now.
Efficiency: 2500 ¡ú 3800 MP/Min
Special note: I changed the runic formula myself, it¡¯s now more compact but a lot more complicated and might be the reason why it is a mutation not a refinement despite there being no observable change in effects. Cast time was increased by 3.2 seconds but went back to normal after a 428-point increase in Intelligence.
Side note: I was lucky my increase in frame and size from evolving did not affect the old version, I should create a few more versions in case my body size increases further in future.
Special note 2: Reason for ¡®tolerant¡¯ might be due to redundancies that I incorporated into the runic formula. Now, I still have the full effect even if I sustain a deep cut but losing a body part might cause me to lose a great percentage of the entire formula¡¯s effect.
Preservation Bubble - Extension of your vitality a small distance outside your body to contain additional mana. Stability of vitality bubble is increased by 150% + 1.0% per level. Size of mana pool is increased by 100% + 1.0% per level.
Base Increment: 50% (stability), 50% (capacity)
Special note: My usage of Vitality is elementary. If I take critical, or large amounts of damage in a short time I can lose almost all of the mana stored in this extension of vitality. Extremely deadly for me, assume I don¡¯t have this amount of mana when in battle. Stability helps, but tier 1 skill has its limits.
Ebony tapped his finger on the last page once more before closing it.
His body parts had regrown but he lost a boot. He was glad he had spare pairs.
¡®The Necrochitin Saintess added wings to this group, how astute¡¡¯ He would have left Dusk if there was an escape route through the air but the wings from a sub-species not present cut that path.
Usually, undead had weaker defences after this form of body-only revival but when a specialised necromancer was their opponent this wasn¡¯t true anymore. The Necrochitins were even tougher after being brought back.
The silver lining was that none of the sub-species here were Vitality or health regeneration focused. And the Necrochitins don¡¯t seem to be able to heal at all.
They were killable despite their unimaginable stats.
It was why they were camping them. Ning Xin slew two of them amid escape since she knew she couldn¡¯t sustain her peak state for as long as the Tetramyths with quantitative advantage.
Instead of her nutritive soup stock, Ebony bled himself in preparation for her consumption once she woke up. They were hours away from the main fortress, and all the top combatants were busy with their battles. As for the main army, the distance would take days if not weeks thanks to obstacles.
Sitting around and waiting for help was never a fallback either of them depended on.
Within Dusk were another 3 people, completely sealed and encased in ice except for their vitals. He hoped they could survive till he made it back to a healer. They were strangers he didn¡¯t know and they were dying faster than their vitality could recover.
Their bodies were sealed and situated above the bomb shelter and clone production area. 6 Clones were also parked above the shelter, currently placed in sleep mode. He had them retreat the same time as he charged in with Ning Xin. It was unfortunate 2 of them didn¡¯t make it as he originally had 8 to protect Dusk.
If what Ebony learned from the war with Trolls was not getting involved with war, then what he learned here was that he was more human than he thought himself to be. He learned a bit about ¡®empathy¡¯ and was pleasantly surprised that he was happy that his ¡®empathy¡¯ in the past was not faked or an act to appear normal.
He cowardly and selfishly protected his own interest, thinking that the lives of the people here had nothing to do with him. And he truly did believe that. People die every day, whether he see it or not.
However, his actions told him different things once he was down here.
He risked himself to prevent people from dying on multiple occasions.
He felt¡helpless when he could prevent a person from dying.
The fact that he felt helpless highlighted that he cared about people¡¯s lives. He also did not want to see people, humans or other races alike, to die from a horde of hungry ants. So he got more proactive at hunting over time.
He did not like how uncertain he was. Sometimes he cared, other times he couldn¡¯t care less. It was a struggle he faced before he even arrived here. But ultimately, he would regret it if he didn¡¯t help people he could help.
So Ebony regretted initially dismissing to assist in monster hunting with the lives of billions at stake. Regret was rather fresh for him.
The realisation allowed him to evolve Battle Song to Battle Hymn. By itself, Battle Hymn increased a stat by 16.375%. With his compression, it increased a stat up to 1452.4625%. A 15.52 times multiplier. And this was 40% effective for his Wisdom so almost multiplied his Wisdom by 6.20985 times. And so does his mana regeneration.
815,036 MP/Min.
And he wasn¡¯t satisfied yet.
¡°Cold one, you can¡¯t hide forever.¡±
Ebony sensed the ant right outside his door speak. It spoke Gia, the common tongue. He knew day-to-day language for Gia now. Its raspy voice wasn¡¯t the Emperor¡¯s. They couldn¡¯t speak.
It was the Saintess who was connected through them by her Spirit Nexus.
He ignored it, numerous mandibles were chomping on Dusk. Sharp legs poked about and hard heads rammed. Dusk was losing tens of thousands of mana by the second but its power source had plenty in the tank. The ¡®low¡¯ consumption rate was evidence of how durable it was.
The Domain¡¯s range was limited to the outline of Dusk itself. The hardiness of the Armament and Repository was at its limit since Dusk was the accumulation of months of mana. He could not afford to compress and strengthen his Domain. Not spending mana for a single day of 28 hours netted him over 1.36 billion points of Ebony-brand mana.
¡°Ugnn, noisy.¡± Xin muttered.
He would silence the vibrations harder but it was a waste of mana. They were already on a timer.
¡°Good morning.¡±
¡°Morning. I wasn¡¯t saying the attacks were noisy, I was referring to all your thinking.¡± She eyed him before the cup of light purple fluid.
¡°Drink up, then inject your elements into Dusk. Just touch anywhere.¡± He ignored the comment, she was bluffing. There was no way she heard him think, she didn¡¯t have that kind of power.
¡°60%?¡± She took advantage of Ebony helping her sit up against the wall and grab his hands while gently wrapping them around the cup of frost flame melded blood.
¡°Let¡¯s go 90%, I¡¯ll protect you so you can just sleep after charging. Dusk, fruit up. Gravity Quelling Vortex.¡± It wasn¡¯t advisable for her to spend more than 60% of her mana on explosives and leave herself at risk but he prioritised creating an opening.
¡°How long can you quell that much power? I would like at least 2 hours to rest but¡is that too much mental effort on your part?¡±
¡°That would take too much of Dusk¡¯s mana, it requires full compression to handle that amount of your lifeforce and mana, don¡¯t overdo the conversion of life force to mana. We don¡¯t need that much power.¡±
¡°Hehe, did you know?¡±
¡°Know what?¡±
¡°You became even greater of an ingredient. Sister Jing tested me, your blood increased my lifespan by a year. And you know, these things don¡¯t work well for us. Made into a potion, your blood might increase an average human¡¯s lifespan by a century. It can also be made into various potions that can refine someone''s physique in some way.¡±
Ebony couldn¡¯t help but blink. She only drank his blood once in the past year, and less than a cup.
¡°Is that why¡¡± He made sense of why they became bigger targets after the Tetramyths managed to hurt them on a few occasions.
¡°Yes, the Tetramyths managed to figure out how special our bodies are. If not for the fire in my blood, mine increases lifespan a few times better than yours.¡± Not everybody or creature could consume natural treasures and assimilate it into their bodies immediately, compatibility had to be taken into account. However, most creatures with highly evolved ancestors had strong adaptability and potential to evolve so direct consumption did not waste much of the ingredient¡¯s energy and potential.
¡°I will get Sister Jing to make my blood into a potion.¡± Ebony
¡°She¡¯s already looking for other ingredients to match your blood, oh I gave her a sample to test. And mine too I suppose.¡± Ning Xin shed light on some of the projects that Kong Jing was currently undertaking.
¡°Mmm, she could¡¯ve asked. I hope it remains effective.¡± Ebony felt like weight had lifted off his ¡®heart¡¯. He might have put her short lifespan at the back of his mind but he never forgot about it.
He didn¡¯t mind the mutual cannibalism, it was just a bit of blood donation at best.
Ning Xin licked her lips and squinted at him, ¡°you are delicious.¡±
¡°Now is not the time to seduce me.¡± He knew she was coming on stronger over time. She was getting comfortable and impatient about their relationship.
¡®It would be a lot easier if you weren¡¯t growing stronger so fast!¡¯ He complained inwardly.
He read. He experimented. He had clones to delegate studying. He needed less sleep, heck, he could fight and train in his sleep if he wanted.
But this terrifying genius was doing more than keeping up!
Chapter 321: Manifestation of Natural Preservation
Ebony¡¯s observation led him to believe that the main source of her current powers to be; one, the swap between two states. Two, her third Core Skill. He was unsure what it was, but it was likely something to do with her body, or more specifically her Constitution.
He highly suspected that like him, she refined her Physique the natural way.
Just hours ago, he saw her take a mandible bite on her torso. As devastated as he was when he saw that from a distance, Perpetual Tranquility Spring barely shook as he didn¡¯t have time to be shocked at the speeds that the exchange was going.
He saw her body split in half but her torso where the bite had been, burst into flames.
If he wasn¡¯t seeing things, she turned her physical body into pure elemental flames for a moment and rejoined before materialising back into physical form. However, the distance then made him doubt his eyes.
He had no such spell. How would one even turn a physical body into mana or an element?
He wasn¡¯t a Model or a clone, and he tried to file up those fighting methods his clones used because his main body couldn¡¯t use those tactics without a great deal of weakened flesh and bones for a period.
Then, there were the two of her Core Skill he was aware about.
Rampaging Immortal¡¯s Pulse vastly increased her stats, especially Vitality.
And Transmutative Heart, like having improved in some form by now.
It converted the energies in her body from one to another.
Immortal¡¯s Pulse gave her vast amounts of Vitality and Stamina and Transmutative Heart should be able to convert them into mana. The last he heard, she could mainly convert mana and stamina into vitality with some inefficiency but that was years ago. It would explain her rise in sustainability.
The last Core Skill was probably a skill that scaled for Constitution. It was the only explanation for how her body would be able to withstand her first Core Skill which, only limit''s were the integrity of her body.
Putting aside her other linear improvements in utility but exponential improvements in pure power since he believed he could match that when he had his third Core Skill or if they were in his Domain with Dusk as his battery pack.
No, if Dusk was his battery pack then he would win a duel any day. He could shield himself and there was little she could do to melt through, she might do better than the Necrochitins outside purely due to her elements but he doubted months'' worth of mana would be melted through.
However, that was no duel. He needed to completely beat her in direct combat or there would be no point.
The reason for her accomplishments in war, he suspected her mask had opened up and started growing properly.
Like Kong Jing whose mask had abilities, Ning Xin¡¯s seem to finally do more than just store mana. It even had a physical appearance change. A thick dark red vertical line cut the left and right perfectly in half. One with the feather and one without. He had seen the white side turn fully red and the other fully black while the feather would shine bright on the black background.
As for what the appearance change meant, he didn¡¯t know. He hadn¡¯t found out what the capabilities of her mask were.
They were usually apart during the pest clean up and still had plenty of details they didn¡¯t expose to each other. Swordplay was the bulk of their shared conditioning time. It was during these exchanges that both of them gauged each other.
She probably noticed his Ethereal Form Art to some degree even though they did swordplay. They were just that perceptive in battle.
She should also have noticed that in terms of battle instincts, combat positioning and timing, he left her far behind. Otherwise, with her superior swordplay and base power and speed they shouldn¡¯t have anywhere close to an even match. Compared with the steampunk ¡®young master¡¯ her swordplay and battle instinct were greater if that was a consolation prize.
But she was predictable and he understood her Sword Art too well, even after the modifications she made over time. She was on her way to tier 5 since she had a book to follow but that was a long road.
Ning Xin had the method for tier 6 Conditioning methods, but she needed to alter them to fit her combat style. He had up to tier 5 in his memory, his mother closed the book before he saw the tier 6 version.
The tier 5 version he had was called ¡®Neutronic Frame¡¯ and the tier 6 was ¡®Monolithic ch-something¡¯ Unlike Ning Xin¡¯s with proper explanation, all he had to go on from was stars pointing to his body. He did not decipher what that meant. The diagram couldn''t mean tossing a star on his body. There was no surviving that with just a physical body.
They needed resources and equipment, a training room was required. One that can exert pressure and strain them.
A plum grew on one of Dusk¡¯s branches. It sucked its leaves and petals back so that the Necrochitins couldn¡¯t chomp them off. The plum was out of place and alerted munchers and tacklers. The leg pokers gently touched the surface of the ice plum but noticed the plum didn¡¯t even budge or sway on its thin stem.
¡°You may begin once you recover.¡± Ebony timed Dusk not to cast vortex too early, it would be a waste of mana.
Habitually, he continued to work on Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit. He was skipping steps, he wanted the tier 3 version from the get-go. As expected, his understanding of mana chassis made him unable to swallow the skill book completely but he didn¡¯t need heavy trial and error.
Xin filled the bomb shelter with crates, unpacking to look for snacks as she was not satisfied with a cup of mana melded blood.
¡°Move your leg.¡± She filled up the comfy space and made it cramped in moments.
¡°Hold this.¡± Ebony¡¯s mind stayed focused but his body moved to hold the paper package.
¡°And this.¡± His hands were full and he had to bite onto the neck of a jar of sesame oil.
¡°Found it! Let go, and chew on this instead.¡±
He let the bottle go and bit into the succulent strip of bacon that retained heat and taste as if it was freshly cooked. She held onto the tupperwares and started packing again, freeing up his hands and leg space.
Chewing, he ignored her completely as his mouth kept filling up with bacon while he was messing around with his mana chassis and moving the energy within. If coagulated mana was his ¡®marsh¡¯ then he needed a grove to contain and disperse.
However, he was making it a point to keep it as a separate skill. The more diverse a skill, the harder it was to evolve. If Repository were to do even more things, it would be troublesome in the long run. He wasn¡¯t exactly desperate for skill slots at the moment. If he kept it separate, it was easier to refine and make both do what they do better.
¡°I¡¯m ready.¡± A blast of heat blew on his face and her scarlet hair tickled his nose.
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¡°You may begin.¡± He informed both Xin and Dusk.
Black blood conjured and flowed through Dusk, towards the plum that hung outside. Electric sparks zapped within them to brighten the blood which had a dark red glow every so often. The sparks of electricity contained fires hot enough to vaporise Common and Uncommon iron with ease.
But the stream of blood didn¡¯t boil over and quietly transported them to the plum where a growing vortex was swallowing every drop. The shell and flesh of the ¡®plum¡¯ had denser Domain fortifications and a weave of gravity to prevent its collapse from the vortex.
The gentle stream burst into a raging torrent as her hair continued to react in response to her agitation.
He tapped her shoulder to prevent her from going too deep into this state. Any deeper and she might attack him once again, he did not want a repeat of the situation last month where she almost sliced him up like an ingredient. Fortunately, he had been near Dusk and mana wasn¡¯t a problem but he was an instant away from reacting in time. Even his Will had trouble acting fast enough.
Dusk was able to calculate how much a plum could withstand before growing a second plum to take in the excess. Ebony nodded his head at the fruits of his labour, creating Dusk and maintaining it all this while.
In many ways, it was already superior to some Magic Towers.
Ebony¡¯s eye twitched when the fifth fruit was formed. ¡®Since when did she have so much mana? What¡¯s the conversion rate for her life force to mana? Did she dump all her stats into Vitality since all her other stats could be grown according to her Core Skill based on Vitality?¡¯
He was well aware that Dusk¡¯s consumption rate was increasing fast since it had to maintain 5 Gravity Quelling Vortexes at the same time.
Dusk¡¯s branches shrunk to support the mana consumption.
He quickly worked Calculated Hunch to estimate if Dusk could survive the explosion. If his gravity manipulation was better, Dusk could be unscathed but it wasn¡¯t good enough even within his Domain.
¡®It would take damage but the bomb shelter won¡¯t feel a thing¡except heat. Hopefully, the freelancers won¡¯t die in the meantime.¡¯
¡°Xin. After the release, I will go out. You stay here. I will bring us to safety.¡± The Necrochitins furiously tried to crush the plums to no avail.
¡°...Can¡¯t we work together?¡± The sixth plum formed and the Necrochitins started to put distance instead of attacking.
¡°I will focus on running, if you engage them I can¡¯t retrieve you. Moving Dusk would take most of me.There are too many of them. They beat us at the number game, both stats and individuals.¡±
Ebony pushed her shoulders and got her seated, he needed to act fast.
He stole Dusk¡¯s mana and made sure he stayed connected through his domain.
¡®Should¡¯ve tried to refine Flicker further.¡¯
This was an explosive that would laugh at thermonuclear weapons with it¡¯s effects but not where they were. Ebony was out of range of the Granite Hall¡¯s flooring but well within the range of the Elven Matriarchy¡¯s ¡®Manifestation of Natural Preservation¡¯
It was another one of the most ridiculous spells Ebony had heard of but he only knew of a tiny bit of the spell¡¯s effect. Cast by 34 Kings and the Matriarch herself as a legitimate Emperor over level 750. Humans would struggle with combination magic between 3 people. The Elves truly were the race with the greatest number of elites. They weren¡¯t all fighters, but they were all magic users.
As the name of the spell suggests, it preserved nature. A spell of stabilisation.
Everything natural was harder to destroy. Such as the air, moisture and earth.
Shockwaves were forcefully suppressed at least 200 times weaker.
It prevented Elva¡¯s underground battlefield from collapsing on themselves.
Without the suppression, he estimated that their bomb¡¯s direct fireball effect could reach at least 20 km radius and he did not know how far the thermal radiation would go. And this was using data from a previous bombing. The range was effectively powered by repulsion and not just the accelerated decompression of fire.
The current limitation for a single plum was the structure of the fruit, it couldn¡¯t only contain a vortex of partial strength and that limited the amount of blood and fire mana it could carry.
He triple-checked the surroundings but no one was around. Even going so far as to have Dusk shout an announcement about the imminent bombing.
After all, he had to multiply the effects by 6 of the dangerous fruits hanging on Dusk.
The suppression helped prevent mass destruction and fallout but it also helped his targets as he would hit far less of them.
4 dozen Necrochitin Emperors surrounded him, they¡¯ve already got their weaker kin to retreat after learning how useless they were against both of them. He wondered just how large their Powerhouse was.
He locked onto 6 and cast Torrent Path on them, the range of effects was going to be small and they¡¯d already backed off but he hoped to get as many of them as he could.
While that was going on, he stripped his robe and Dusk stored it. He didn¡¯t need the single boot either. He took a look at Icicle but let it rest on the hanger Dusk made for it.
¡°Won¡¯t be long.¡± He reassured the black-haired lady and slipped into the liquid-like surface, not about to allow any gaps to open.
Ice Mana Decree - Ability to move and shape Ice Elemental Mana at will using minimal amounts of mana. Ice Mana moves however you intend with 300 + 5.0% accuracy and precision per level. Chances of helping you by their own inclination increased by a static 10% depending on the intent of your decree.
Classification: Ice magic
Despite the 5.0% level scaling, there was heavy debate if it¡¯s tier 3 or 4 which sounded dumb to him when the scaling was universally used to differentiate skill tiers. That aside, the mana consumption was noticeably reduced. It helped with the reduction in mana use for all his ice magic if he didn¡¯t take into account the skill evolutions.
As if stepping out of a puddle, his body was wrapped in thick scale armour before he surfaced to the vaporising heat.
Past the bomb shelter, 6 of the plums all landed without an issue. Most of the Necrochitins couldn¡¯t use magic and the strength of their magic body depended on what parts they were made of. So the 6 targets he picked were all non-arcanite cortex sub-species.
The explosive range and fragmentations of his plum that vapourised moments after the release of Gravity Quelling Vortex had been suppressed from dozens of kilometres to dozens of metres. But it didn¡¯t suppress the winds and flames that blew out.
Without any eye gaps in his helmet, he Flickered upwards and away. The entire region he was in would be in flames so there was no reason to keep his eye out. He didn¡¯t even bother letting light in and refracted it away, that would just blind him further.
Without any notification, he knew that they didn¡¯t kill a single ant.
¡®Bad day.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s Flicker smashed him into something hard, probably a flying Necrochitin.
His body ricocheted to the side but he managed to serve and kicked a mana platform before he touched down.
Dipping into Dusk¡¯s pool of mana, he vastly increased his Domain in one direction. Clipping onto the edge of his Domain, a point in space was designated for Torrent Path. The tree that only got heavier reduced its weight but it wasn¡¯t able to rocket away.
¡°I¡¯m not letting you run away this time, Cold One.¡±
Ebony gently allowed light to enter his ice helmet but it was still filled with black flames. Relying on his mana perception, he leapt back to Dusk.
¡°Let¡¯s see who melts first, Cold One.¡± The talkative Saintess was helping him locate the kin that it was coming from.
He didn¡¯t hesitate to propel towards the voice and hammered away. Building up Ethereal Fluid Blitz as fast and early as he could. Unexpectedly, he heard and felt ¡®squishing¡¯ as fluids splattered onto him.
¡®Carapace or exoskeleton melted. A deep layer of flesh too. Only 2 of them held Dusk down¡the others are more damaged, half a second before 4 reinforcements returned from where they ran. Uncertain when the others lying would start moving.¡¯ Ebony did not let the failed attempt at building momentum and quickly readjusted.
His goal was to slap away the mandible chomping on Dusk. Ducking, he uppercut the one he just punched and leaned forward into a Flicker. Quake Kicking the other pair of mandibles released Dusk.
¡°You¡¯ve already melted.¡± Ebony felt his tree rocket away and he quickly leapt into the same path.
The Saintess likely didn¡¯t understand how much damage her Kin took because his feet literally cut through the mandibles before the ¡®quake¡¯ effect could even take place and his body flew past his target after slicing the body part that barely held itself together.
Ebony¡¯s scale armour was vapourising fast even with his Domain buff and he wasn''t unharmed underneath the layers that healed itself with his mana.
His mind shook from impact as those further away from the point of explosion charged upstream and rammed Dusk out of Torrent Path¡¯s stream. His vision also cleared thanks to the Manifestation of Natural Preservation.
¡®Barely moved three kilometres. This is going to take longer than I imagined.¡¯ Dusk vastly reduced its¡¯ Domain size again. If it was going to be a slog of an escape, they needed all the mana he saved up.
Chapter 322: Rescue Wagon
Ebony tossed the humanoid weapon back into Dusk. After 20 minutes, he had no choice but to unleash her. Embarrassing himself about for taking too long.
Out of 49 of their opponents, only 8 were lethally harmed by their bombs. 14 had their exoskeletal defences compromised. The rest were mostly fine from the impact but were taking damage over time from residual heat.
Covering over a hundred kilometres by himself, they left the range of lethal temperatures. It would¡¯ve been easier if he didn¡¯t have to lug around a tree that was 9 metres across and 20 metres tall. A large number of them targeted Dusk because they knew it was both the source of Ebony¡¯s power and the reason he was being tied down at all.
The winged ants weren¡¯t able to operate long. The heat completely took away their ability to fly after a minute.
However, when physical stats are sky-high they can bring about magical effects.
Just one of them was all it took to wrestle Dusk and keep it grounded until he started freezing them on contact when Dusk decided that it was worth the exchange of mana against the vaporising temperatures.
The stiff motions of a revived corpse made it possible for him to slip under their attacks many times. Most of them stood a little taller than he was and were twice as long. Their legs were long and mismatched jointed but he predicted all their moves.
Prediction could only go so far. Evading by a hair¡¯s breadth, countering with an uppercut did little. Quake Kick did not deal lasting damage against unmelted Ant Emperors.
Ethereal Fluid Blitz was kept at a stack of 120 before it was forced to reset when they did a suicidal pincer tackle to stop his body from moving for a brief moment. Even though they knew of the chill they would take as his flames dug into them. If it wasn¡¯t for their inherent weakness to both heat and cold, he didn¡¯t know how he would¡¯ve taken advantage of them as much as he did.
The muscle memory of these Ants also didn¡¯t allow him to finesse the numbers to stab or bite each other. The Tetramyths¡¯ used their legs like a tier 2 swordsman, stashing and stabbing with trained precision. Whenever he tried to manipulate the ice and flames within them to move their legs or attacks slightly, an acid spitter would interrupt at mid-range.
They knew he was able to see it coming even without looking, so they attacked their allies to prevent greater harm from stabbing each other with their sharp pointy legs.
¡®I can¡no I can¡¯t¡¯ Ebony initially paused to stall when he saw how much the bombs had affected their opponents.
But he didn¡¯t know when or how many reinforcements the Necrochitins would get.
Dusk already shrunk by a quarter in 20 minutes, so he unleashed the gluttonous one who did not rest but ate in the meantime. He had allowed her to watch what was going on outside since it was useful information.
When she popped out, they were already surrounded.
A seemingly endless stream of Kings and Grandmasters was in every direction. The Tetramyths weighed the benefits and disadvantages and threw these useless troops at them for the low percentage increase in the success of their encirclement.
It was the right move since every minute he was powerful was burning days of his mana away.
¡®I¡¯ve never used so much mana in such a short time. Now I know, without any sort of mana enhancement, I can defend myself against an Emperor warrior. Taking skills and technique into account, a proper King should be no problem at all. Mages who can¡¯t use Domains are even more helpless.¡¯ Ebony did not think highly of these few species of Tetramyths.
It was fine if they depended on numbers and a strong skill to close the gap of stats or Physique of an Insect race compared to other races but their technique or basic fighting ability was nothing special.
Obviously, these ants depended on their numbers so much that whatever planet they went to, they just had to overrun the population and eat while possibly sacrificing their breathens. Whoever survives the longest becomes a true kin, and then, they learn proper skills and techniques.
The beast was unleashed for merely 2 minutes, there was only so much energy she could recover in 20 minutes after emptying herself by creating their bombs.
That two minutes allowed him to send Dusk almost a thousand kilometres away. Then he snagged the flaming woman who knocked herself out the moment she was in his arms. A bit too trusting but he couldn¡¯t blame her after she slain another Necrochitin. Slain, all he did was counter and push through.
Taking away his buff on her with Battle Hymn, he should be able to handle her offensive capabilities. But it wasn¡¯t the time to sneak a peek at each other¡¯s strength.
A blood halo remained by his side. It might be her version of a clone but all it was, was a weapon and occasionally a barrier.
¡®The fortress is in sight but it¡¯s still far.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t blame his good eyesight.
A sea of insects stood between him and his destination.
¡°Blossom.¡±
He rode Dusk as far as he could while raining petals, they contained flames that would only activate if they landed on the desired target. It helped that the tree lost more than a quarter of its mass. Rather than cutting through the air, they decided to cut through the horde instead. The massive lump might help them more than the Necrochitins.
¡°CH!!!¡±
¡°How silly.¡± The edges of his lips raised when he heard a familiar scream.
A dark horizontal beam disintegrated hundreds of bodies in its path. The work of a certain prince who evolved some months ago. He could not survive a single blow from an Emperor of any sub-species with or without the Crown Princess by his side. And she shouldn¡¯t be all the way out here.
So Ebony was more than a little surprised to find that they were both coming towards him. Barrier magic would help reduce his mana consumption but Mallory might not be able to withstand many blows before she was mentally knocked out.
He ducked and let the slash tear through their lesser kins. Tanking all the other hits at a loss of mana to cover as much distance as he could. There was no way Hector and Mallory were so deep in enemy territory alone, meaning he might have to protect a greater number of people.
As people with status, the Tetramyth kin had all memorised and marked these individuals. They must have an entourage but he prepared for the worst.
¡®So we are saved.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t expect anyone to save them. He initially ignored their pleas for help. He believed things that happened around him were unrelated to him but at the same time, he was of a mind that he had to help himself. That was the only way he was taught, to never expect someone else to save himself.
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Old man Wilson was in the lead of the entourage. There were a surprising number of freelancers. Two squads of Guardian Knights who had a squad of arcane mages to enhance their speed. Freelancers were the better choice when it came to group mobility but they weren¡¯t going to let Mallory move without Imperial soldiers.
They were all riding something. The famed Iron Wagon.
A Dwarven creation with eight double wheels powered by one of the Mage Association¡¯s creations. It had spare metal legs and arms for different terrains and was quite an imposing vehicle. An array of enchantments were packed within its large frame the wagon virtually a mobile fortress. Ebony had only seen it once until today and it was similarly on a quest to save some nobles out in the wilds.
As someone with a ¡®magic tower¡¯ or ¡®mobile fortress¡¯, he knew how darn expensive it was to operate something fast and powerful.
Normal people might be experts at mana efficiency unlike he was, but money was money. They were likely burning Purples every minute. The purity of mana from a Grey to Green or a Green to Blue wasn¡¯t that obvious to him but it was to a specialist and they made full use of the properties.
The rescue group did not put up a barrier as the Guardian Knight took the front while mages took potshots. Hector was doing his thing and punching beams in space. It might damage Dusk to the point where its mana dropped. But other than that, Hector himself had a lot of gaps in his combat style that needed work.
As a pure enhancement mage wielding more than 8 elements¡somehow. Physical ability was by far his biggest strength. Mana poisoning also wasn¡¯t a thing for him until he choked himself with all 8 elements. To be fair, the simplicity of his combat tactic was refreshing. Just punch things harder.
It usually worked against monsters of all types. Just not so well against agile or deceptive creatures.
Two points of suction formed behind Ebony, since he had support coming in soon he didn¡¯t hold back on mana consumption and did his best to hold the Emperors back while running.
Then he flipped the regions¡¯ gravity upside down but the ants built a bridge and latched onto each other in record time. Thousands of them were all helpless at the weightlessness and pull. Those that were sucked in were squashed and killed while the others looked as if their bodies stretched.
Ebony increased the size of the spell while Dusk shrank noticeably. They were removed from the spell¡¯s effect which took more than half of his mental capacity. Gravity Quelling Vortex was more than just a smidgen of mightiness when he was wasting all his mana on his Domain.
It was one of the only spells that he did not have full control of when it came to the effects it had on the surroundings. Since it greedily called upon ambient gravity mana, it took a lot of effort to split a fraction of gravity to hold himself down.
An Emperor-ranked Necrochitin was absorbed but he didn¡¯t receive a kill notification for it. However, it couldn¡¯t escape so that was one down.
Using Gravity Quelling Vortex and holding himself down completely rids him of the ability to use other gravity spells so he couldn¡¯t create Torrent Path and had to Flicker normally. Dusk was less than half as its original size and barely held the 4 people inside safe.
So he ran and ran.
Barrelling into the wagon which didn¡¯t even have much floor space for him to lie on.
¡°Hey.¡± Mallory held her white staff and looked down at him hugging a 5-metre tree that almost pushed people off the wagon.
The operator swerved the wagon immediately and they began retreating.
¡°Thanks. Can you heal?¡± Ebony vomited out the people who needed healing but kept their seals on. One of them might have been dead because he barely felt any energy within.
¡°I can. Can you still support us, making our way back might be difficult. Three wheels got damaged beyond repair.¡±
At her words, he unsealed those who nearly became corpses. Ning Xin remained inside the smaller shelter.
¡°Thank you, everyone.¡± He did not forget the rest of the people who risked their necks to put themselves forward.
¡°Aye, just returning the favour.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t like being in debt.¡±
¡°All in a day¡¯s work.¡±
Taking a better look, these freelancers were those who used Dusk as a camping ground. All of them were people he dragged out from a horde of Tetramyths or people he sealed and carried to a healer. Covered in mud and dried blood, it was almost hard to tell who''s who.
Wilson wasn¡¯t on the wagon, he was clearing the path with a single club. The man who swung and smashed the Troll¡¯s battlefield was achieving greater feats now that he was a King. If it wasn¡¯t for the Manifestation of Natural Preservation, they might not have a floor to run on.
By his side were the stalwart Guardian Knights. The wagon was filled with exhausted fighters, mages and the likes of archers and other ranged weapon users.
Ebony stole Dusk¡¯s mana no longer. It already lost more mana than its Will had a container for. Losing 15% of the condensed Will was the greatest loss. It meant that the tree¡¯s abilities were permanently weakened until he could fill it back up.
The dissipation of Will wasn¡¯t something he could prevent since the loss of mana was a loss of storage for it.
His personal storage of mana made it hard for him to maintain a proper Domain, even an uncompressed version. Fortunately, the horde of opponents that were Kings and Grandmaster didn¡¯t require him to cast a Domain.
Battle Hymn for his allies Endurance and Strength for the warriors and knights, Intelligence and Wisdom for the mages. This group might be a little more elite but they were not in the best conditions, he was careful not to poison them with too much of his mana.
The fading Gravity Quelling Vortex was converted to horizontal Torrent Paths to keep their wagon path clear and push the horde to the sides.
A freezing gust froze and sealed as many legs as it could. Any target who didn¡¯t move within a second or two found themselves frozen for good.
A bow and arrow conjured in Ebony¡¯s hands and he fired the ice arrow into the sky, the arrow shattered and burst into the sea of ants.
6 of his Clones phased out of Dusk and copied him.
Since he had the chance to make so many Clones, he tested their abilities to fight him. He would say that a single one of them was equivalent to 15% of him unless Domain was taken into account. It was simply because his Clones were completely unable to summon a Domain. They were not a core of Arsenal of Will like Dusk despite how much Will they consisted of.
Their capabilities were more than 90% similar to him but their structural integrity couldn¡¯t compare with his main body. Instead, they were better than him in one regard. Ethereal Form Arts.
The clones could turn their limbs into whips and flexibility was not an issue. They could pull off inhuman moves since bodily joints, muscles and flesh were not something they considered.
It was no exaggeration to say that his clones'' improvements in martial and swordplay might be faster than his. They were developing something only ice clones could use.
His mana pool dropped by half within minutes and he stopped the bombardment. Sticking his hand into Dusk, he drew out Icicle and leapt out of the open-air wagon. The only reason it was open-air was due to the presence of Mallory, it allowed the others to give ranged support as well.
They didn¡¯t have to worry about ranged attacks themselves, just close-ranged attacks from the Tetramyths so a cover for the vehicle was deemed redundant.
Pest control.
That was all they were doing as long as the true kin of the Tetramyths were not around.
A single swing of his sword left a trail of frozen body parts. Other than the freezing, it wasn¡¯t anything special. Everyone on board the Iron Wagon could do the same, except maybe the archers. That was how flimsy these pests were in comparison.
As a small test, Hector, who had been cut by him and frozen by his flames wasn''t able to heal. Mallory would need 3 to 4 minutes to first remove the ice, then a few seconds to heal a small cut.
Not every present knew he had freezing flames. After Cladding evolved to Melding, the effects were less obvious and the wisp of flames on his sliced targets would look like extremely cold air that blew in the wind. He never used his flames against Grandmasters to begin with and the bulk of the Tetramyths were Grandmasters.
The destructive club smasher Wilson, the steady Guardian Knights and the elusive phantom tore their way back to safety while the prince slept and recovered his mana.
Chapter 323: Oplot
¡°Ebony, I¡¯m glad you¡¯re fine,¡± Navin said but his movements were to hug Hector and Mallory before checking for injuries.
Yvette was occasionally here, mainly taking care of the surface but was currently present to take care of Navin¡¯s curse.
¡°We¡¯re fine too, great-grandfather, great-grandmother.¡± Mallory replied while Hector just silently took the hug.
The young looking Royal couple was around 2 centuries old and had been a couple for a long time. Their youthfulness was not a lie since a Human King-ranked individual had a lifespan ranging from 750 to 1000 years. It was still very odd to hear them being called great-grandparents.
¡°Where¡¯s Scarlet?¡±
¡°Asleep.¡± He pointed to his sad, shrunken tree. It wasn¡¯t see-through but these people didn¡¯t ask about it.
He would¡¯ve asked the best healer on the planet to take a look at her if it wasn¡¯t for the fact that Ning Xin fully recovered and refused to get a check-up.
They didn¡¯t exchange many words before the Royal couple left, every second they were away from their post were possible lives lost.
The Lord family had many strong barrier mages, each situated at an outpost and maintaining a domic barrier. Thanks to them, the introduction of the Necrochitins and Venom Legion wasn¡¯t able to push their defensive line back but it did stop their expansion.
¡°Ebony, we¡¯re going to rest¡I assume you won¡¯t accept the offer at the same residence?¡± Mallory pushed Hector¡¯s leaning face away while covering herself with a barrier, staying clean. Her barrier was fading on and off, clearly out of mana and her mind was scrambled from stress and exhaustion.
Ebony patted Dusk behind him. It wasn¡¯t the first time he had received the offer but he had the safest and comfiest resting spot.
Wisdom acted as the Endurance stat for the mind but even he felt like falling asleep after the intense exertion and use of Domain.
¡®Luckily the Iron Wagon parks nearby,¡¯ He was placed in one of the open fields within the Empire¡¯s Fortress. Tamed beasts and the like usually stayed here and Dusk was placed here a few times too.
Although he felt bad for people who saw him and came over, he didn¡¯t share any healing or regenerative effects. No Battle Hymn for recovery except for himself and Ning Xin either.
Taking out a blanket, he laid down on the cushions beside the sleeping woman without creating more space.
Unbeknownst to him patrols around the area reported his presence the moment Dusk was placed down mages and the like received the news and quickly gathered around him with a sleeping bag or just a bundle of cloth to lie on. Even without Battle Hymn, just the leakage of his mana was enough to increase their mana and stamina regeneration.
They were disappointed that no mana leaked out but remained, too lazy to move in case mana started leaking out after some time.
???
Ebony woke up before his partner could otherwise, he might find himself getting teased again. She had been using her semi-combat mode denoted by her hair colour change to gain the courage to make advances and he was no longer as blind to them.
Ignoring the mess of tents and sleeping bags, he found an empty spot and began his conditioning. Melding his body with woven flames, he had 4 clones combat him. They were all users of Ethereal Form Arts and were branching off thanks to the ability to bend and stretch their limbs.
4 of them were more than enough to hit and push him. It required that many because he was mainly a defence, evasion and counter specialist. His proficiency with offence was not nearly as refined.
They all yanked at different points in his body with needle-like Torrent Paths, pulling at times and pushing at others.
After an hour, all 5 of them gripped onto a copy of Icicle and clashed hard but not a single sound could be heard from their spar. Most people could only see his body when they parried and stopped for a brief moment. The rest of the time was 5 figures blinking all over the place.
Another 2 hours later, 2 of the clones retreated, joining up with the last 2 standing by. The 4 worked together to weave the gravity mana in the area to accurately oppose every one of his main body¡¯s move. If he wanted to raise his hand, they would force it down. When he wanted to swing his arm down, they would force his hands up.
This was one of the methods he came up with to make use of gravity for a higher tier Conditioning but it still felt slightly lacking until recently when his gravity magic improved. It might shy of the methods and intensity of a tier 5 but he had confidence it should at least refine his Conditioning.
¡®I¡¯ll stop here. I¡¯m glad the clones can use ambient conversion. I hope those back home have optimised more efficient runic formulas.¡¯ Ebony wiped the glistening sweat off his forehead at the 6-hour mark. He couldn¡¯t afford to waste too much mana.
Dusk didn¡¯t grow during his sleep, he was regenerating his pool and hadn¡¯t recharged fully. Ambient mana was mostly sucked up by the enchantment on the Fortress and fueled the barrier. His tree didn¡¯t have that worry since it had Will to stick itself together.
He sat on his piano seat after the tree spit the instrument back out and tried to link up with Dusk to see what had been lost.
¡®Seems like a success, now the loss of Will is linear to the loss of ability. Nothing would be prioritised and its overall ability in general would drop accordingly.¡¯
Since its birth, he had been monitoring Will the most. Dusk contains 32 days of Will generation, after that day 1¡¯s incorporated Will would degrade or dissipate over two weeks. It would leave about 0.03 to 0.05% that is permanently ingrained. Basically, almost everything would wash away. But it was just a matter of accumulation. Just like the Elves did but with multiple people.
The permanently ingrained Will was the true core of a Domain.
Technically, Dusk was running on 50 days worth of Will at any one point in time because his Will usage was split between Dusk, Veritable Ice Clone creation and his personal use of Arsenal of Will.
Dusk was almost 2 years old. It permanently had the abilities of roughly 30% of 1 day¡¯s worth of Will regeneration. As long as a small amount of ice mana survived as its core, it wouldn¡¯t ¡®die¡¯. It would not fade or dissipate for a long time.
¡®I¡¯ll stop clone production until Dusk heals back to full capacity, then readjust my usage to 60% of generation to Dusk.¡¯
¡°Come eat.¡±
¡°Breakfast or dinner?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. Food is food.¡±
¡°THANKS LASSIE!¡± A voice they recognised hollered over. It was from a one-armed human mage, but he was a burly man taller than both of them and had more muscles than both of them combined. The loudest mouth on these campgrounds.
The one-armed mage waved his staff with mana while holding a bowl of stew in his hand and scooping the stew down with mana holding his spoon.
He was the most flexible with mana manipulation out of all the mages Ebony had seen among humans.
Ebony felt that it was quite a shame that normal humans, Grandmaster or not, could not regenerate flesh to a great degree. Regardless of their Vitality stat. Small cuts wouldn¡¯t leave permanent scars and certain warriors could even heal bone-deep cuts. But healing and regenerating were two different matters. Losing a slab of flesh was permanent weakening unless specialised healing magic was employed.
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This ¡®specialised¡¯ healing magic was something that less than 10% of the Empire¡¯s healers could use. It required flesh magic. Possibly bone magic.
Yvette was supposedly a blood, bone, flesh, mind, spirit and arcane mage. She was even more diverse than himself but not as much as Hector. It was surprising to hear from Hector¡¯s mouth that Yvette wasn¡¯t originally a noble or even from the Capital. She was an orphan from the mountains. The wilds brought her up, from the age of 1. Alone.
She only learnt the human language at the age of 8 when people found her living by herself.
Ebony nodded his head and saw the Life Queen in a different light, that was an impressive feat. This world had far stronger creatures than just the common bears and tigers.
When a wound is too deep, even timely healing would leave a person inflicted with life-long ailments or ailments appearing after they age.
But Ebony did not understand that.
He had been frequently heavily injured since he was young. Bone fractures or even snapping in half were not a fresh memory. Muscles torn only to regrow and rejoin was something he was familiar with ever since he was young.
¡®It¡¯s been many years since I¡¯ve played hunt or be hunted¡¡¯ Ebony reminisced memories of when he was 4 and deemed too young to begin proper physical conditioning. He already had life-threatening injuries on a weekly basis back then but never had he ever had injuries that left a permanent mark on him.
If he hadn¡¯t seen so many injured people, he would never have questioned himself. Thinking it was a Xeng or heritage problem, he had asked Ning Xin but she didn¡¯t have a similar experience. Her parents were always careful about her growth and worried about any injuries that could impede her growth. She wasn¡¯t even confident she could perfectly heal all physical injuries now. Nerve damage for one wasn¡¯t easy to heal from.
Unable to relate, he shook it off and credited it to his genetic make-up.
¡°How long is Sister Jing going to take?¡± Ebony probed. If only space mages were more common.
¡°It¡¯s only been a month since she went on her evolution and I don¡¯t even know where she¡¯s going.¡± From Xin¡¯s reply, there might be a chance Kong Jing hasn¡¯t even started her evolution.
¡°Space? Where would a crafter or smith go for their evolution? Her workshop¡her own mask¡¯s space?¡± All he had were guesses.
They had a surprise burrito buffet as part of their meal. It was easy to hold in case they had to rush away. He knew it was test subject day, she was gauging his emotional reactions to different taste profiles and every burrito had different fillings.
¡°Well, wherever she feels the safest and most beneficial. Did she tell you what she made before she was ready?¡±
¡°A magic tome connected to her brain but she said it turned out differently since she kept changing what she wanted from the book.¡± He started with the pork bone and cream stew. It was warm and delicious. Truly hard to come by after losing access to the surface and the markets.
¡°Hmmh¡¡± The black-hair chef hummed without much interest, she wasn¡¯t curious about her cousin¡¯s crafting at all if it wasn¡¯t about swords or kitchen utensils. ¡°So what did you do to me¡why do I smell you on me.¡±
¡°Bolster.¡±
¡°I-I see.¡±
A straightforward answer was still the best way to deal with her teasing. He picked up the mountain of burritos that could outweigh an adult pig and walked away from the table after patting her head with his free hand.
It was the titled Emperor. He didn¡¯t require his entourage of earth mages to fix the floor he stepped on as underground and the floor was protected by the Manifestation of Natural Preservation.
¡°You must be the Rejuvenator.¡± The half-naked bald man with bright eyes had small black marks of Tetramyth carapace dust on him that he hadn¡¯t clean off well.
The Imperial Army referred to him as the Rejuvenator because he didn¡¯t share his name but the effects he had on people around him was greatly treasured. Mages and warriors both benefited from his aura and overflowing essence.
The freelancers called him Owner. As in, the owner of an inn or tavern since he provided a safe camp and occasionally food. They similarly did not know his name, and he didn¡¯t know most people¡¯s names either.
¡°You must be the emperor.¡±
The giant of a human stood over 2.5 metres tall and had shoulders just as wide. Thick, bulging muscles decorated his frame. His golden bronze skin seems to shine. His arms alone were thicker than Ebony¡¯s entire body but it was his huge upper torso that gave him the triangular upper body that dwarves everyone present.
The bald man scoffed and waved his hands in front of his face. ¡°Stupid title, I¡¯m just a King. The Elven Matriarch is a real Emperor. Oplot¡¯s the name.¡± He reached out for a handshake.
¡°Ebony.¡± Ebony returned the handshake without thinking until he realised¡no one shook hands here. Oh, and Oplot¡¯s hands were so big he barely held onto three fingers. The grip was surprisingly weak.
Then they stared at each other for an unknown amount of time, the strongest man on the planet muttering his name a few times.
Ebony raised the mountain of burritos on his other hand, ¡°would you like some?¡±
¡°Food? Thanks, I won¡¯t hold back on the offer.¡±
Each of Ning Xin¡¯s burritos was jam packed with meat, rice, an assortment of ingredients she was testing out, cheese and one of her hot sauces. She made the wraps herself and they were extra large. A burrito could be a two kilogram or thrice as heavy, depending on the type and quality of meat she used. But one couldn¡¯t even fill up Oplot¡¯s hand.
¡°Oh! A delicacy! I¡¯m glad I¡¯m not abstaining from meat anymore.¡±
¡®Dietary restrictions?¡¯
¡°I heard a lot about you Mr Rejuvenator. Navin¡¯s descendant mentioned you use a similar technique to my Guardian Knights¡oops, I don¡¯t have time to talk about that and it''s not important. I hear you¡¯re an ice mage of immense proportions.¡±
¡°That is an exaggeration. My range can¡¯t compare to the Artillery mages or the Elves.¡±
¡°But you hit harder, faster and continue doing so for much longer. The young lady behind you, Xeng? Fire magic, I have plenty but more is always welcomed.¡±
¡°And? What brought you over to me, you¡¯ve been out on the field for as long as years without coming back into the fortress.¡± Ebony assumed that Oplot, after staying outside the fortress and active on the field for months, decided to return to rest and possibly use his meditative aura to speed up healing. But this man wasn¡¯t exhausted and neither did it feel like he was low on mana.
He found it pointless to argue that he doesn¡¯t have spells that are faster or stronger than the Elves. He only had harder and heavier spells. It was a surprise that it was not his mana regeneration but his ice magic that dragged this man over. Not to mention, confusing.
¡®What does he mean by having plenty of fire magic but more is welcomed?¡¯
¡°I am planning to walk into one of the portals. I won¡¯t hide it, my skill set requires me to take damage to deal damage. Grade 3 or 4 Emperor equivalents are not hurting me much but I have plenty of physical power. I have been storing that for the past year but it is insufficient to deal with Saints. Elements are more useful but not many can hurt me so I can¡¯t get any elemental magic.¡±
¡°You are rather open with your skills.¡± They were strangers, Oplot was one of the rare breed that shared information about their skill set on a first meeting.
¡°It¡¯s not a huge secret. I am useless without any stored damage except being a shield.¡± Oplot had a rather gentle and Ebony might be crazy, but the voice somehow sounded broad and encompassing.
¡°Interesting. So if I manage to hurt you with ice magic, you can then use ice magic?¡±
¡°Something like that, it¡¯s more like returning the attack.¡±
¡°Delayed repulsion after storage¡I see that¡¯s why people say you can use all types of elemental magic but you also can¡¯t do much about the Tetramyths in your previous state. But now, you¡¯ve stored enough damage. So that means you can¡¯t use magic that doesn¡¯t deal damage, like healing¡or can you store arcane magic, and reuse it differently?¡±
¡°You catch on quick, yes. I shall keep some secrets about what I can do. It¡¯s a pity that my growth had stagnated because my defensive skill set got too powerful. Since few things can hurt me, I can¡¯t store damage. And in turn, I can¡¯t deal any damage. At least, in comparison to my defensive ability. I can still make use of my physical stats.¡±
¡°Then it is a pity, I am in a similar situation. Other than mana compression, the power behind my spells themself is weak. Xin can help you there.¡±
It seems like Oplot wasn¡¯t that open.
¡°That is the beauty behind ice magic, I don¡¯t need it to hit me at supersonic speeds. You can try to freeze me normally, mana compression works wonders.
¡°Oh, I can do that.¡± A standing target that wanted to be frozen? That was a simple task.
¡°If you need a torching, I can do that too.¡± Ning Xin wiped her mouth with the napkin on her thighs and placed it on the table before walking over, slowly getting in the grove and getting combative.
¡°Oh! Regardless of damage, much thanks! Ebony and?¡±
¡°Scarlet.¡±
¡°Righty, benefactor Scarlet. Benefactor Ebony¡Ebony.¡±
¡®Benefactor? He speaks weird.¡¯ Ebony squinted slightly when Oplot begun to mutter his name again.
¡°How are you swapping mode so fast today?¡± He looked to the side and noticed a full head of red.
¡°Those were made for you.¡± Her voice seethed with controlled rage.
He gulped, thankful that she pointed that rage to Oplot despite being the one who offered the burritos.
¡°Ebony!?¡± Oplot suddenly looked at him with wide eyes.
¡
¡°You speak English.¡±
Without a single twitch or change in expression, Ebony stated the obvious in the now foreign language.
Chapter 324: Swift Exit
¡°How long have you been here!?¡± Oplot¡¯s large hands smashed both of his shoulders together but were heavily slowed down by Ebony¡¯s repulsion before the palms finally broke through and touched him.
¡°Here, I assume you mean Elcra. 9 Elcrian years. It seems like you know me?¡± The handshake already alerted Ebony but knowing his translated name was unexpected.
¡°Hey hey, you know me too. Did you forget me?¡± Oplot released him and put on an aggrieved expression.
¡°I would remember seeing a giant on Earth.¡± Ebony would easily recall seeing the tallest human but with the bulk to allow bears to climb on his back.
¡°What? No, we were the same age. I was smaller than you.¡± The Emperor¡¯s browless brows squeezed closer together.
¡°...You are over one or two centuries old. I¡¯m 26.¡± It was common knowledge that the current titled Emperor was on the same party as the Barrier King and Life Queen when they were younger. They were people in the same age range and generation.
¡°Were. Surely you¡¯re aware of the time dilation. How was your arrival? Any mishaps?¡± Oplot spoke as if time dilations were as common as¡he supposed dungeons had minor time dilations, which shouldn¡¯t be surprising.
¡°Let¡¯s sit down and have a talk.¡± Ebony had a lot to ask.
¡°AH! Right, I don¡¯t have time. Come, hit me. Mana should be no problem for you.¡±
Ebony wasn¡¯t disappointed. He had his priorities straight and did not want to hold this man back from the battlefield. His presence would save a lot of people.
Physical contact made it many times easier to freeze something with a strong magical resistance. It made little to no difference when it came to Oplot¡¯s body. It was like he was attempting to push water through a seamless lump of steel.
He surrounded the three of them in a solid bubble of mana to prevent the shockwave that would be about to be unleashed. ¡®Xin¡¯s charging up, looks like she¡¯s seriously trying to hurt Oplot and see how ¡®indestructible¡¯ he is. He must be able to sense her life force rising but no reaction. I don¡¯t know enough about him to calculate the damage he¡¯ll receive and Xin¡¯s still charging up. So her Intuition must be telling her an attack now would be pointless.¡¯
Ebony took this time to ramp up and stack his freezing spells and capabilities. Dusk was present to provide a small range Domain while he only burned his regeneration without dipping into his pool. Having met the Archduke of Elves, he was sure very few people specialised in mana regeneration.
There must be some condition hampering people from focusing on this route despite how crucial it was for mages.
Humans choose their Archduke by achievements.
Dwarves by their smithing ability.
Beastmen by their strength.
On the other hand, he couldn¡¯t tell how the Elves decided. In his opinion, there must be a lot of elders that were thousands of years old and were stronger than the current Archduke and Archduchess of Elves. That was simply how their race operated.
Ebony managed to spar with the elite squad of the Imperial Army a year ago. They had an impressive combined power. A squad of thirty completely suppressed him but they seemed to judge it as him suppressing them. It took a squad of forty, with enough support mages, before they could harm him.
He estimated that a squad of fifty would be lethal to him. While a squad of forty would depend on which side burned each other out first. He didn¡¯t use visible flames back then.
That elite force¡¯s power increased exponentially with the number of support mages and some ratios changed depending on their opponent. For example, they deemed it more efficient to ultra-buff 1 knight instead of 2 or 3 when numbers didn¡¯t work well against Ebony. Until a group of knights with better teamwork was set against him.
Using that as a reference point, the Empire could deal with huge individual threats using numbers, good equipment and a variety of special skills. Otherwise, he didn¡¯t see why the Elves would play along with the Nobility and join the Empire. So a small number of highly trained and strong Elves did not feel comfortable overpowering the Empire as a whole.
Still, he was disappointed that the elite knights didn¡¯t have an Art for their close combat. It was tier 3 masteries at best. The sword and shield combo was steady and stable but nothing stood out, that¡¯s why it was a technique that depended on how much they were buffed. Till they were significantly stronger in terms of stats. If their opponent had poor technique to begin with they would require a smaller amount of support mages.
It was obvious to Ebony since they swapped a few groups but they swapped out the anti-personnel squads to a mix of an anti-monster one. They needed protection for their mages and mid-ranges from Ebony''s spells since he could hold 7 to 8 cast at the same time. Even if their support mages could maintain their spells from a hundred kilometres away, he just needed to slip away and Flicker towards them and he could wipe them out.
It was a practice exercise, so he didn¡¯t do that repeatedly. When they were all within his mental range, he just bombarded their back row while coping with the front rows. Until a squad size of fifty, he could slip away from the knights whenever he wanted dedicated support mages had very few methods of defending themselves against him.
Icicle shot towards him and placed itself within his grip. With Ice Mana Decree, the pitch-black greatsword, now melded and had its composition completely changed, greedily swallowed his mana. Melding and augmenting himself, he ignored that Oplot didn¡¯t require physical forces. The buff would help send his ice deeper and more forcefully.
Two of his clones leapt at him and attacked him, feeding him momentum while he did a defensive sword dance based on his clones'' attacks. He had no specific forms.
Battle Hymn switched to Intelligence and Constitution buff. Tempestuous Lull Pelt sharpened Icicle¡¯s edge. Sonic Reverberation readied itself to lodge itself. Torrent Path took its own sweet time trying to latch a point in space close to Oplot¡¯s body but it wasn¡¯t quite succeeding. This man¡¯s magic body was far greater than anything Ebony had seen. He had trouble conjuring any mana outside his body near this man.
And his Domain was present.
It was a fresh experience to see how far a magic body could go to interrupt a mage. ¡®It¡¯s practically a natural, physical domain¡is that the heights that a pure warrior route should be able to reach? Is Xin trying to reach something similar? But I don¡¯t sense Vitality around us from Oplot, unlike Xin.¡¯
Whenever he couldn¡¯t connect two points, he would just cast a short distance linear line around Icicle¡¯s edge and use repulsion instead of attraction. It carried the same effect.
Tolerant Stalwart Foundation was always going within him but he refreshed the formula¡¯s pathways once again as a habit.
Another habit was Icicle turning completely transparent. It wasn¡¯t always useful, but feints could easily be used if he conjured a few phantoms or ice versions around him.
His Domain didn¡¯t strengthen or stabilise lightning, so he couldn¡¯t even conjure or imbue lightning thanks to Oplot.
¡°Assist me.¡±
Ning Xin broke the sound barrier under the effects of Manifestation of Natural Preservation and slashed at him with both swords coming from the same direction. His clones weren¡¯t fast or strong enough to give him more momentum. When she was at work, they didn¡¯t need a second for their sword to clash dozens of times.
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¡®I¡¯m at 197 stacks, it¡¯s beginning to strain me.¡¯ Arctic Rivertide Greatsword Technique was building up together with Ethereal Fluid Blitz.
On strike 202, Ning Xin launched him into the air with far greater acceleration than all his stacks combined with an upper swing. Not done, she was in the air above him before his body was launched up. Posturing for her best strike, the sword thrust, her large flaming wings flapped hard to counter the force she exerted and pierced at the tip of Icicle mid-flight.
Ebony took that and tried to use as much of the momentum of that strike before landing a Stalactite Sunder on Oplot¡¯s shoulder.
It slid across his wide chest and landed on the ground but Oplot¡¯s body absorbed everything. Not an ounce of energy or force was transmitted to the ground. Ebony couldn¡¯t tell how deep his ice mana went before he lost connection with them. Not a scratch on The Indestructible¡¯s bronze skin.
¡°Hoho. That got past my passives, got some in the bank.¡±
¡®Of course he didn¡¯t use any active defences if he wanted damage. Bank huh, makes sense. Even if I set ice mana ablaze, it wouldn¡¯t make a difference.¡¯ The contact allowed Calculated Hunch to do its job.
He was already certain, Oplot was as highly combat-focused or had perfect skill combinations with fully maxed-out Fortifications if not more. They wouldn¡¯t be on the same playing field until they were King-ranked as well. He might be the opposite of Ning Xin. No offence and pure defence.
Ebony stood back up, poked Icicle onto Oplot¡¯s belly and just continued the normal freezing while Ning Xin was still on edge. He was getting the jitters, ¡®how long is she going to charge life force?¡¯
Her mask had half of her blood halo razoring on the vertical line that grew on it. He suspected it was an external way of cycling blood and energy, raising the amount of life force she could push through her veins or decreasing the burden on her body.
The jitters weren''t how he felt. It was his body reacting under the effects of her overflowing Vitality and blood magic mixed. It demanded all other creatures with blood flowing inside their bodies to fear her.
He had been practically immune to most if not all overflowing Vitality he had encountered so for his body to react so strongly was rare. Too bad it was useless against him, his body would move just as naturally when a fight begins through muscle memory alone. If his body couldn¡¯t move, his mind would move it for him. Trying to knock his mind out was not something Xin was capable of.
Landing on the tips of her boot, she dispersed her wings and had her hands on her sheathed swords.
Oplot watched curiously as ten minutes passed. During the ten minutes, Ebony managed to freeze past skin and a palm-sized patch of ice on his target showed his achievement. It was crazy to think that this was just his passive, physical body without any mana-based skills to strengthen himself.
¡®By the looks of it, she¡¯s not confident she can deal any damage or find any weak points with her chef profession. Twelve minutes is her limit, any more and she pops like a balloon no regeneration can help.¡¯
Ebony¡¯s mana dome did its job and prevented people around them from waking up or hearing their exchange.
She was originally going to thrust straight at Oplot¡¯s neck but she shifted her blades a tiny bit right after contact. Her swords would snap in two instead of stabbing through. Ebony could estimate that and a swordsman of her calibre understood the limits of their weapon better than he could.
Although their swords received another round of upgrades in terms of runic reinforcements, they weren¡¯t reforged. Suitable materials were hard to find, even for Kong Jing. Xeng craftsmen¡¯s speciality were creations that could grow. Malleability and adaptability over direct strength, it didn¡¯t mean that Icicle or Ning Xin¡¯s swords were any weaker compared to weapons made from materials of the same quality but it wasn¡¯t the crafter¡¯s main aim.
¡°Scarlet¡I remember now, you are Madam Veronica¡¯s granddaughter. No wonder, I did not expect to have my blood drawn today. I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯ve spent more time than I allocated. And thank you, I¡¯ll try to look for you once I get some free time.¡± Oplot rubbed his thick thumb where two sharp swords pierced up and wiped the drop of blood that squeezed themselves out of the bag of muscle.
¡®His heat resistance is far higher than cold. But his physical and pure mana or magical resistance which also relates to elemental resistance like fire and ice is the main key of his defence. How about a soul attack? Never mind, we¡¯re not showing each other everything.¡¯ Oplot took something out from a pouch tied to his waist, under leg guards that were sort of like tassets but only covered the sides and not the front and back.
Seeing that it was a myriad bracelet, Ebony took his out and tapped it against Oplot¡¯s. After a few seconds, he got the contact link with The Indestructible. Most callstones, including his and probably Oplot¡¯s don¡¯t work anymore thanks to the constant bombardment of magic but they could still make new contact links. If one was lucky, they could make a call within the Fortress that was protected with a stable barrier so it wasn¡¯t so bad.
They don¡¯t wear bracelets anymore. It would turn to dust after minutes of proper combat. Since their control was good, overflowing essences weren¡¯t an issue and Ebony did not have excess mana when he was near Dusk.
¡°Then I¡¯ll see you in a bit.¡± Oplot had better things to do than catch up and chat with an earthling.
¡°Mmm.¡±
Ebony resigned and lifted up the slumped unconscious woman who was acting tough by staying on her feet but was already conked out as a defence mechanism of her body. He tossed her back in Dusk and summoned new bedding and cushions around her.
He cooked up a feast with the ever-abundant ant flesh to prepare for her awakening.
¡®It¡¯s not worth the effort to attempt to surface back to Tidal when it¡¯ll be hard to come back down. I can¡¯t go up and going out to fight is pointless when King-ranked ants aren¡¯t worth much but Emperor-ranked ones are too strong and are targeting us in groups. I¡¯ll stick with regrowing Dusk and provide mana and Battle Hymn, let¡¯s try to get Battle Hymn to tier 3 and finish up Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit editing in the meantime.
Xin would be hungry for battle but could settle for hunting the protected King-ranked Tetramyths meant to be levelled instead of being used as war assets. She can come back safely as long as she stays within the Fortress¡¯ magic towers and traditional weaponry range. I¡¯ll send all the clones out for battle experience so I don¡¯t lag behind. Sounds like a plan.¡¯
Ebony realised how lacking his mana regeneration capabilities were and wanted to get Battle Hymn up to par together with a new skill which hopefully, did not just increase his mana capacity but also regeneration. It was what the skill book promised but he couldn¡¯t copy it one for one with his body¡¯s constitution and physique.
By the skill book¡¯s explanation, it increases ¡®base¡¯ mana capacity by a certain percentage of its working capacity and because it increases ¡®base¡¯ cap, so does mana regeneration which works on base. This was an incredibly high value skill because skills always worked multiplicatively on top of stats and ¡®base¡¯ stats that may or may not be hidden.
Anything that directly increases a ¡®base¡¯ effect would be like a Conditioning type skill. Ebony believed that these were the type of skills that refined a Physique the most efficiently contrary to the belief that enhancement magic was the best or fastest way.
As a result, even though Coagulated Mana Repository indirectly increased his mana capacity, he did not receive a mana regeneration boost from it. Or so he hypothesised.
¡°Hector.¡± Ebony made a call hoping the prince didn¡¯t jump out to find yet.
By the groaning that transmitted, he had still been sleeping.
¡°Whaaat-¡±
¡°I¡¯ll be sticking around and working as the rejuvenator. Is there a spot most populated with mages? After some time, I¡¯ll increase my range using the piano-the pittaw. I should be able to cover almost the entire fortress if you can get me a good spot near the centre of the fortress.¡±
¡°Ughnn, call Mal or -¡± Hector continued with a snore.
¡°These stamina heavy fighters are unreliable,¡± Ebony said out loud. Mages were said to require more sleep but warriors slept harder once they exhausted themselves. The sense of security must be forcing their bodies to stay in a state of rest until they get back to normal.
Mallory didn¡¯t pick up the call.
Ebony shook his head and sat in front of his piano, changing and focusing his state of mind. ¡®I want everyone who hears this to be instilled with vigour and inexhaustible energy.¡¯ He wouldn¡¯t say he fully understands what music is, but he mechanically understood Will and emotions better.
He didn¡¯t imbue mana to extend the range of the piano further but instantly felt Dusk being drained. There were too many people within a 200 kilometre radius. Even providing a 0.01% compressed version of Battle Hymn was taking out too much from him with so many people. He pinpointed the strongest 10% and let Calculated Hunch work out who to give a stronger buff and who to give a weaker version.
Everyone past his current mental range of 12.8 km radius got a default of 0.0001% compressed Battle Hymn. He could only decompress to that point with near-perfect precision even though he wanted to decompress further his control with decompression wasn¡¯t as good as compression.
Grandmaster¡¯s were truly different from Masters. He hadn¡¯t even felt his mental range¡¯s growth slow down. It might be thanks to him increasing his Wisdom but even so, the limit was far away. It was only going slow because he demanded perfect control over his mana within this range. A ¡®genius¡¯ artillery mage at Master rank had a range of 150 km radius but that was a person with at least 80 years of active experience. Most would have a range of 50 km.
So Ebony had never lied or acted humble, his range was his weak point. Artillery mages never had good control over their spell¡¯s redirection after firing them even within their so-called range limit. It made spells that were already fired easy to dodge. His range was closer to a mage that went past walls or out of a magic tower.
¡®I wonder if I can get paid in Purples. I can be considered a working adult right?¡¯ Ebony thought about how he was going to ask for payment. Soldiers get paid. He should be paid and Purples was something he wanted to experiment with but didn¡¯t have access to.
Chapter 325: Industrial Revolution
Ebony used all his interview skills to talk to the high-ranking knight. They got a commander who dealt with logistics to speak to him. As someone who understood his worth, he pushed for a bigger paycheck. Not compassionate about the Empire¡¯s financial situation at all.
He was only asking for Purples. As rare and high-value they were, it wasn¡¯t the highest-value mana ore that Elva could mine. That was for Reds or Ancient-ranked mana ores. Reds were extremely scarce for Elva. There wasn¡¯t a proper natural deposit for them. They were small lumps found occasionally in large and deep Purple, Epic mana ore deposits.
The core of the Empire¡¯s magic towers were made of a small quantity of Reds.
¡®When sister Jing comes back I¡¯ll borrow her power source-making machine again. No rush, I haven¡¯t filled up Dusk¡¯s power source by even a percent. 2 Purples a day is low compared to how much I¡¯m regenerating for them but it''s as high as I can get.¡¯ Ebony left with a contract he was satisfied with.
He was allocated a nice open area for Dusk to regrow and even had a nice two-storey house being built by stone and earth mages. Working conditions were fantastic even though he had to work 28 hours a day. oh¡Dusk had to work, he just had to be present for his aura.
He created a model without Will and restructured the Tolerant Stalwart Foundation runic formula through trial and error. He tried to move his Mana Chassis over but that was not something he was capable of. It would be akin to cutting his own body part out but permanent.
Battle Hymn¡¯s improvement relied on his understanding of music and how it affected people more so than how mana affected people¡¯s strength. It wasn¡¯t something he could improve just because he wanted to. His musical talents were not found anywhere so he could only search in the dark.
His gravity magic got stronger than he could control so he worked on control instead of refining its power.
All of his skills were being worked on in terms of mana efficiency. Throwing mana at the problem to increase power was not feasible right now so he could only take steps towards increasing efficiency like most humans.
Dusk was the core of Arsenal of Will Domain, but it didn¡¯t require spreading out his Domain at every moment. Ebony made it such that it only maintains the smallest area possible. Because they were within the Fortress, Dusk couldn''t regenerate mana through his absorption and conversion runes because the Fortress absorbed every bit of excess. Hence, he had to maintain Dusk at its minimum output using his regeneration. It limited how much he could charge it along with the usage required to cast Battle Hymn for tens of thousands of people.
Two days later.
¡°Aren¡¯t you going out to hunt?¡± Ebony looked at Ning Xin in confusion. She should¡¯ve gotten the itch to move by now.
¡°I have skills to refine outside of combat too you know. And I¡¯m still hungry, burnt too much energy on that giant.¡± The girl munched on fried bite-sized chicken while lying on her side and watching one of the movies that they¡¯d already watched.
Ebony didn¡¯t think much of it and went out to talk to the knights who looked for him.
¡°That¡¯s right, use the balls of your feet or toes and don¡¯t land on your heels if you want to move light.¡± He commented on this group that was part of the elite squads he faced. He was already familiar with quite a few of them.
They were interested in Phantom¡¯s Flicker since he devastated their mages and knights with it alone. Ebony was interested in their ability to mesh so many different people¡¯s mana within their bodies and still fight properly together with their mana-efficient spells. It wasn¡¯t something they could teach him but they could give tips on efficiency. He also didn¡¯t need the tips on how to use multiple people¡¯s mana.
These people didn¡¯t initially call him Rejuvenator but most people did so they slowly picked it up. It was a practice not to share names or get too close with strangers. It was easier on the battlefield unless you were part of a group, squad or party. If you didn¡¯t know someone¡¯s name, it was easier to leave them behind.
¡°I know that but we can¡¯t move the way you do, is it really not a skill using mana? We won¡¯t pry too deep if that¡¯s the case.¡±
¡°No, it¡¯s a fully physical means. Contract your calf muscles in an instant. Ankle mobility is also key. When you can burst out all your muscles¡¯ strength in an instant, you shouldn¡¯t even need to take an actual step forward to move. Like a normal blink movement skill. Past that, you would barely need to move your ankles and need to tap the floor with your feet to burst forward. Even further past that, you should be able to concentrate the force of your feet over a larger surface instead of penetrating the floor, this decreases the impact on the floor.¡±
¡°...That sounds like a skill using mana.¡±
¡°No mana. Just practise.¡± Ebony saw the knights off but they stayed in his¡yard and chatted with each other about movement techniques. Unable to believe Ebony¡¯s words fully.
¡°Ex-excuse me¡can we continue the discussion from yesterday¡¡± A shy girl who wore a robe with a hood took the chance when the knights moved away and was pushed forward by other mage ladies. They were the hyperspecialised support mages.
¡°Of course. Show me what you managed.¡± Ebony asked the entire group of 12 who were all soft-spoken ladies. They were the scariest group.
Hector warned him that these people did not have any contact with many people until they were adults and began teamwork training. Before that, all they did was train day in and out according to their seniors'' teachings.
They were not allowed contact with their family members, though a good portion of them were orphans from a young age.
They were scary because they could ¡®buff¡¯ a person to death. Just like Ebony.
Their support magic was too potent and most freelancers would die in seconds if they were ¡®supported¡¯ the wrong way.
Their Fortifications were required to be maxed out for Journeyman and Master but none maxed out for Grandmaster. They didn¡¯t have the resources or the talent. Although they always try, most would get too old before getting close to the requirements and the Empire mostly scrapped the ambition for a couple more generations.
What was different was that they didn¡¯t buff a person to death using compressed mana. Their compression skill, by his estimation, was at best a highly refined tier 2 version or a surprisingly low-level and poorly refined tier 3 version.
Mana compression usually requires a high Intelligence stat to maintain a hold on mana and keep it compressed together with a high Wisdom stat to keep the mana in that position throughout the spells¡¯ duration. There were plenty of mental tricks to help compress mana further and he was the expert when it came to mana compression. The only problem was explaining in a different method than smashing mana inwards harder.
After his lessons, they got him to show them his conjuration of a mana sphere and firing it at a target. 12 complaints were shouted at him for the wasteful manoeuvre. Three of the more outspoken ones claimed that he should be able to produce 5 to 6 times more force from the mana bolt using the same amount of mana. ¡®Claim¡¯ was them scolding him.
Ebony sensed something behind him and these ladies quietened down immediately, putting distance between them immediately through sheer instinct.
Another week passed surprisingly monotonously thanks to how strong the Fortress¡¯s barriers were.
¡°You¡¯re not going to hunt today either?¡±
¡°...Are you chasing me out? Why? Do you not like me here?¡±
¡°I thought you didn¡¯t want me to leave you behind.¡± Ebony felt an intense glare through her opaque mask but ignored it and the belly poking, he just tickled her back. Her sensitivity made her surprisingly weak to tickles.
¡°I¡¯ll be going into deep meditation, I won¡¯t need food.¡±
¡°You are always in deep meditation.¡±
¡°I mean a trance state. I don¡¯t know how long I¡¯ll be in there so take care of yourself. 7 of them would be around but I would be disconnected from everything including my clones and Dusk.¡± Ebony managed to make one clone after refilling Dusk. They would be insufficient as bodyguards against threats that could harm either of them but their quick feet or magic would help in many cases.
¡°What do trances even do? An epiphany of some sort?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll be doing construction work on my chassis using the modified Elven technique of speeding their natural regeneration up. They semi-brainwash themselves to utilise the working principles of their mana regeneration and improve on it. I can directly reconstruct my chassis using their techniques of binding their mana chassis with itself. Since my constitution being made of mana chassis makes it harder, I was thinking I could use a burst of freezing on my chassis and let ¡®muscle¡¯ memory do its thing. Okay, it might be a stretch, I tried a small proportion as a test. I healed back to normal after I let go of the freezing and mental hold over my chassis. But I believe it¡¯ll be like training a new muscle, since the Elves could do it, I should be able to do it too.
¡°Another large physique refinement or mutation? But you don¡¯t have the help of any high energy source, it¡¯s going to take a long time. Didn¡¯t you say the book mentioned taking a century to do it normally?¡±
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
¡°That¡¯s a misconception. It¡¯s just the number of attempts that take them a century. I can do that faster in my trance state. How much faster¡is about how much faster I regenerate mana compared to a human. Right, you can leave easy-to-eat food beside me. I would probably be able to eat in my trance once I start to lack the calories.¡±
Ebony believed that he perfectly modified the skill, the tier 3 version. He just needed to incorporate it into his body. Although he hoped it would give him a direct Physique change, it was more likely to be a passive skill. The original skill book had excerpts on passive skills and physique refinements. They were believed to be closely related but chances are, it would take a pure external energy source to permanently change their Physique or it would just be a matter of long periods that only long-lived species like the Elves could experiment and theorise with.
There was something he didn¡¯t mention to Ning Xin and it was that the number of attempts he required was going to be hundreds if not thousands of times more than the writer of the book. He could only blame it on how resilient his body and mana chassis were.
Fortunately, he wasn¡¯t as lazy as the Elves who proposed 5 cycles a day and estimated success between 80 to 120 years. On average, that was 196,000 attempts or training cycles. He saw it no different from doing a set amount of push-ups for years to train a certain group of muscles.
It might be far more complicated than a push-up but Ebony wasn¡¯t deterred by repetition.
A Great Mage, Master-ranked mage was estimated to take almost an hour per cycle because it was a mentally straining exercise so he couldn¡¯t blame them for not overdoing it. A freshly evolved Grand Mage could easily triple that speed.
Even if Elves were used as the standard, he didn¡¯t think he was any worse than them when it came to mana manipulation. High mental stats helped greatly and he wasn¡¯t a fresh level 300 Grandmaster anymore.
He understood the recovery was necessary so 5 cycles a day wasn¡¯t necessarily bad but it could be optimised.
What is a hundred million sets of ¡®isometric¡¯ training compared to life-and-death battle?
Anyone who asked Ebony or Ning Xin which would be more useful to grow stronger would get the same answer, both are required.
But that wasn¡¯t the point. A hundred million or even a billion wouldn¡¯t deter them.
How many times has he kicked?
How many times had Xin swung her sword?
Not enough.
¡°You¡¯re not going to wake up until you¡¯re done? Not even during recovery periods?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll use the recovery periods to work on my mental simulation skill, I might be able to create it with my current stats.¡± Ebony thought that the reason people were limited to skills that were 1 or 2 tiers above their evolutionary stage was due to stat or body and mind limitations. Technique could only go so far. It wasn¡¯t often that he willingly went into a trance state, he might as well make full use of it.
Since he had to stay put to charge up Dusk be it Will or mana, he saw this as a perfect use of his time. His clones could return and recharge themself using Dusk as the mana charging port so experience wasn¡¯t an issue.
¡°Am I a distraction?¡± Xin''s expressionless mask couldn''t hide her intense glare.
¡°You¡¯ve always been one, ever since we¡¯ve met.¡±
¡°I see.¡± She looked down back to her chopping board with a slab of Brick Fauna, a type of underground plant.
As a man who''s learnt the art of social interaction, he knew her dejected look was her misunderstanding his words despite the truth in them.
¡°You¡¯re also a source of my strength.¡±
With the tips of her hair burning up, and her terrible acting as if she wasn¡¯t affected when she was literally having tiny hops in her feet he knew he dissolved the misunderstanding since she could tell truths from lies.
¡°Your favourite pan fried pork dumplings with water chestnuts. Eat up.¡±
He even got a treat. Pork was getting scarce even with their large storage of food.
Before long, they might be eating rations or unseasoned tetramyth flesh.
¡®Hold on, why does this feel like the cultivation novels¡¯ closed door cultivation...nah, I¡¯m still doing stuff and I¡¯ll sit against Dusk where everyone can see.¡¯ Ebony shook his head at the realisation and did his body stretches.
¡®Should I try to programme myself to move my body while in a trance? I don¡¯t want to lose any conditioning levels for not moving too long. Forget it, tier 4 doesn¡¯t drop in levels for a long time. I should focus.¡¯
Ebony said his goodbyes, crossed his legs and sat against Dusk.
A moment passed, ¡®since when was it so hard to fall into a trance?¡¯
At this point, he realised that he didn¡¯t have a completely clear mind.
¡®Mandate user, after me for some reason. Steam-punk-looking fellas, after Xin, but space user changed targets to me. He can¡¯t make a move on us, I think it¡¯s the same reason the Saint Tetramyths aren¡¯t coming through the portal. Whatever. Problem is we, I, am being suppressed. To hide here. I can¡¯t even walk through the streets of Tidal in peace. Down here, the Tetramyths are beginning to target us. Now I can¡¯t even freely walk the grounds outside the Fortress without eyes on me. Hmm. I am irritated by the invisible cages that imprison me. Good to know.¡¯
Ebony pinpointed the cloudiness that infected his mind with ease.
He found it funny.
Getting stronger was the way to being more free. To move and do as he wished.
To do so, they searched for stronger opponents to surpass and the stronger they got, the more obvious it was that there were so many individuals stronger than them. Rather than finding more people weaker than them as they grew stronger which was true but also not at the same time. Their view and perspective widened.
It was also the same group of people that caused him to be hiding. Imprisoned by invisible bars.
¡®That¡¯s okay, they are just the next hurdle to overcome.¡¯
And so, Ebony fell into the trance that he desired.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a place human minds couldn¡¯t imagine.
¡®This is new. Not just my thoughts are in my head but I feel like my body is in my mind. It looks the same, so whatever.¡¯ Ebony was in his mental space.
There was no colour around him. Everything was transparent as far as the eye can see. A ¡®clear¡¯ mind meant something completely different to him. He was used to this scene so he didn¡¯t find anything out of place but he had been warned by his father that out of everything he was, this wasn¡¯t normal.
He cannot imagine how peeking into his mind would make a creature insane after they¡¯ve been in here long enough. Thankfully, it wasn¡¯t like anyone was peeking into his mind.
At the core of his mind, where his ¡®body¡¯ was currently standing were phantom outlines. There used to be a version of himself here, but he seemed to have taken over that version of himself and was moving in it instead of watching this place from a third-person view.
Another one of the invisible phantoms that he could feel but not see with the naked eye was his mother. The phantom kicked a small version of him that was lying on the ground and sent it flying against a metal board, breaking the kid¡¯s chest.
This was a good memory, it was imprinted into him.
It was after this moment in time that his mother started taking him seriously but he didn¡¯t reminisce right now.
To his left, was a huge frame that the current Ebony almost matched in height. His father playing chess with a computer and reading a book on human psychology. The phantom looked to the ground and picked up young Ebony to place on his lap and rub young Ebony¡¯s head. ¡®Come, we¡¯ll continue mental arithmetic from yesterday.¡¯
He didn¡¯t have any special memories with his father, only relaxed ones that were fully¡mechanical. Efficiency and practicality, that was how their time was spent together.
¡®What do you want to eat for dinner?¡¯
The last phantom was a new addition.
The rest of the invisible clutter was him training. Sparring. Hunting. Hunted.
That was the entirety of his life.
Plain, directionless and ambitionless.
Learning that was all to him as a person was rather pathetic.
Perhaps all he wanted was a simple life. With moments of excitement every so often when he is finally able to freely travel and see what life has to offer. Maybe he could find something to live for. Maybe, he already found what reason he had to live for and it was all present.
¡°I just want to be unfettered. Not ambitious at all.¡± Ebony convinced himself and stepped away from the core of his mental space.
There was quite a distance of phantoms of him training but he was in his mental space he could be as fast as he could think. He found that there were quite a few new additions, not related to fighting. They were gardening, tea drinking, eating and playing around. The new individual was present in many such scenes. Not a single scene were they fighting or training together, all were peaceful and warm memories that contained nothing special, just daily interactions.
He didn¡¯t expect to see a version of Dusk here but didn¡¯t think much about it.
¡°Now that I appear to be physically here¡they have colour.¡± Commenting on that, Ebony reached the edge of the core of his mind. There was a bubble he had to cross, he could phase right through but the bubble was incredibly thick, far thicker than he last recalled. Although he perceived time differently within his mind, he didn¡¯t expect to take so long to exit this space and out to the next layer or thought.
¡°That must have been three whole weeks! I am loud here. How long is that outside? Whatever, I don¡¯t want to disconnect to find out. In the past, this meant about 1.2 seconds. Assuming I¡¯m faster than before, less than a second passed outside.¡± Ebony heard his voice echo throughout his mental space whenever he thought.
¡°This is getting boring. I can see why Elves think so little of long time periods.¡± Ebony pulled his body away from the bubble of his core in a space of no colour, not white, not black but an endless transparency for a decade.
¡°Is it the Lunar Bio Clock? Even though there is a lag, I think I know how long has passed outside. About two minutes. So I am faster than before. Roughly 1 month to 1 second. This makes me feel mentally old. This place sure got a lot bigger. Am I going to take centuries to get to the outermost layer if I move normally? Okay, enough sightseeing. I shouldn¡¯t waste any more time.¡± He could obviously appear wherever he wanted within his mind.
¡°Plant races are the peak race when it comes to life force and mana regeneration. Outside of elementals and other types of mana-beings, whatever those could be. That¡¯s why Elves have such a close relation to some plants.
It¡¯s also why the Marsh¡¯s Grove conduit uses the image of a grove of trees to expedite the expulsion of mana and the deconstruction of crystalized mana from what they call the Marsh. My repository is the same with coagulated mana that is hard to utilise but I want to keep them that way, there is a reason for their hardy but stable form. Such as interference from other spells, mages or special equipment.
But as someone with the dormant genetics of a mana-being, I don¡¯t need to copy them because it wouldn¡¯t work the same way for me anyway.
Haha, let''s see if this would work as I imagined.
Time for the age of industrialisation, my poor, inefficient mana chassis!
When I¡¯m done with you, you powerhouses of the creature, me, shall be proper modern factories. Damn, it sounds stupid when I¡¯m listening to my voice echo.¡± Ebony took inspiration from mitochondria, the power of science and the industrial revolution.
Chapter 326: Processing Introspection
¡°Hello, little guy.¡± Ebony picked up the handball-sized perfect sphere from its orderly rows and columns. It should be his mana chassis. Having shrunken himself down, this should be smaller than a red blood cell.
It was sucked back into place after he let the sphere go.
¡°I should be inside my head. Let¡¯s watch how they produce mana for a few cycles. Thankfully, my regeneration speed is not too shabby, I don¡¯t have to wait months in here to see a change for seconds outside. This confirms that the mana chassis exists both physically and mentally at the same time for me and highly likely, more heavily mental for non-mana-beings. Can¡¯t rule out that normal humans just have a weak physical form of mana chassis because even though I have them throughout my body, my original mana pool and regeneration were no different from a human.¡±
Ebony observed his mental body closely. His mana chassis was part of each of his cells but they were not tied down to a single cell. They tend to stay still and move along with his physical body. They were interestingly weird.
For example, when he lost a foot his physical foot was lopped off but the mana chassis was still connected. So his ¡®mana body¡¯ was still the same shape and when he regenerated, the flesh, bones and nerves regrow from the stationary mana chassis. He couldn¡¯t be sure if it had a memory of his body, or his body just regrew according to his body¡¯s memory through genetics.
¡°Huh. They expand and contract. I never noticed that, was it too small and fine for me to notice normally? Tiny movements...they are expelling liquid. My mana. Okay, but I already know I don¡¯t have the means to make it pulse faster to generate mana.¡±
Ebony observed and did his calculations around the head region of his body for 5 perceived years before moving on to his skeletal structure. The entirety of his observations for his skeletal structure took the same amount of time as it was far less complex despite its comparative size. He spent less than a year on each organ and his musculature also took a year of observation.
¡°Too bad a massive overhaul would be dumb. If I forcefully change them, I won¡¯t be able to regenerate like I¡¯m currently able to. I can potentially use a brain or heart to reconstruct since I¡¯m already protecting these vitals but it would be silly if these vitals lose their ability to regenerate at my current speeds. It wouldn¡¯t matter to the elves but no way I¡¯m losing my healing in exchange.¡± He spent about 80 years purely observing and calculating the possibilities together with what he wanted to do to them yet less than 20 minutes passed for his body.
20 minutes of a highly intense thinking session was easier than casting his domain for a minute. He could do this all day.
¡°Refining a physique would be making these cute little things pump faster, converting sustenance to mana. That¡¯s why, my food or calorie intake is still high compared to my Constitution and Wisdom stat. I can only increase that by sacrificing another source of energy like I did before with the help of a catalyst. The other way is to slowly train them to pump faster and that¡¯s why it''s time and effort dependent. Higher evolutionary stages make it easier to refine a physique to a certain degree thanks to the increment of base stats. I can¡¯t do much and I don¡¯t want to sacrifice more stamina or health regeneration. My latest refinement was probably assisted by my ¡®recent¡¯ evolution where I did not allocate the small amount of liquid potential to a skill and poured it on the largest monolith instead.
My conjured mana can form a solid brick when Coagulated Mana Repository reaches level 750 and when I let go of mental control, there is a physical block of mana. I can conjure mana ores directly and its purity is slightly higher than a Blue which is a Rare-quality mana ore but its density is closer to that of a Black which is an Inferior-quality material equivalent to an Unclassed.
That¡¯s pretty crazy to think, my natural mana density is already high and it took a tier 4 level 750 skill to compress mana into a solid form. The numbers don¡¯t match, a mana ore I create holds vastly more mana than a Black. Is it because of the increasing purity? In any case, at the same density, I can crush both to dust between my fingers but mine is as hard to crush as a Green-Uncommon mana ore. Soon enough, I don¡¯t need sister Jing¡¯s industrial mana compressor, I would be better than a mere machine at mana compression.
So the reason coagulated mana is still a grimy liquid despite its density is because of mana purity. These are my reserves that I never use on normal occasions. I won¡¯t change them, but I can rearrange them to be a workspace. It¡¯s a waste to let them sit and do nothing and¡this is three months old mana, it¡¯s not even at three-quarters of my current maximum capacity.
Let¡¯s do an inventory check.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t used to hearing his voice in his head.
Thanks to how hard to use coagulated mana was, he never used all of them and let them pile up in him. He had long thought about how to make use of them. The plan was to use it along with another skill that was hard to use often, Mana Chassis Implosion. Using the skill on coagulated mana was slightly different but they were all components of mana and he already tested its viability.
¡°Anything older than a week is a waste of space. Workforce settled. Factory site is settled. Energy source, 1 week old coagulated mana. Process, tests are to be conducted immediately.
Plans -
Primitive: Workers boil old slime using molecular vibrations, gas(mana) is released as a product. Plausibility confirmed. Efficiency - 30% recovered. Since molecular vibrations take up energy and mental effort too.
The skill would take away some mental processing power equivalent to a tenth of a spell cast.
Estimation - tier 1 skill.
Early industrialisation: Hammer down the coagulated mana into even more solid blocks, build a facility using these hammered down or even frozen blocks if I can¡¯t get them to stay in a solid form. Build a waterwheel or turbine. Workers carry old mana and let the factory do its job. Efficiency is higher, unable to estimate how much higher as not even early testing had been completed. Mana vibration is still required but more gas(mana) can be recaptured and the energy produced could cycle back to the factory¡¯s moving parts.
Mental effort required is estimated to take three times as much compared to primitive.
If done well, normal regenerated mana produced by chassis can be properly cycled to power the turbines instead. Further increasing efficiency.
Estimation - tier 2 to 3 skill
Sadly, I don¡¯t think I have any additional waste energy source in my body. I want and need my vitality and stamina.
I¡¯ll start small, primitive. If I can get the ¡®workers¡¯ to automate, it¡¯ll be a passive skill. Then move on to early industrialisation. Coagulated mana is like a river spanning through the chassis, within the chassis. I can either collate them or make tiny factories everywhere. I¡¯ll try both, I might be able to separate them from the chassis altogether.
The factories are smaller than the workers?
No, the factory is inside the workers¡make internal organs for my chassis? That sounds good too, I¡¯ll have to test out and check which method gives me mana. After finding out which method has a positive output, I¡¯ll compare them and pick the one with the greatest output. Efficiency can be optimized after.
Once the greatest output is discovered, I¡¯ll start making it a skill and repetition begins.¡±
Small-scale experiments didn¡¯t take long thanks to his speedy regeneration, he had all the resources to work with even in a sped-up thought. He ran each experiment ten times using a sample size of a thousand chassis. Verifying that each individual chassis contained the coagulated mana and some simply spilt out and contaminated the chassis. The method with the highest output was using each worker as the factory since the material was inside them. It threw off his initial plans a little but not a problem.
¡°I think it¡¯s best to see them as mitochondria rather than worker cells, each of them is the factories and the energy source in one. Less movement saves energy. But how do I change what¡¯s inside them? The best I can do is directly burst them inwards but that¡¯s simply partial Implosion.
Get it straight this is a passive skill I¡¯m trying to create. The passive skill¡¯s function is to automate efficient use of coagulated mana and implosion but I¡¯m not trying to merge the skills. Merged skills, skills that have many abilities and functions are much harder to level and evolve. Implosion is not up to Repository¡¯s standards, merging might reduce my skill levels owned base percentage buff.
So the main function of my new skill is mana production efficiency. Then I should forget about using ice magic to freeze them, that¡¯s a waste of mana.¡±
Ebony got to work but as he thought, it was mentally challenging to manipulate the internal workings of a single mana chassis cell. The fine control required was diabolical if at all possible, it was thanks to his current mental stats.
He made buckets within the workers by mentally hammering and holding the slimy mana together, filling them up with older mana and ¡®burning¡¯ them using vibrations. It was a lot less mentally taxing compared to Chassis Implosion and less violent. He wasn¡¯t blowing up the factories and neither was it the same technique.
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One was easy and didn¡¯t take a minute of thought to do so. Being careful, he was changing them one by one. After making the fine control to one, he held it in place and moved on to the next.
On fifthteenth factory, the first one stopped working and the bucket collapsed.
One mental week of processing power passed. He finally managed to keep 100 factories working at the same time.
¡°How many cells does the human body have again? Trillions right? Whatever, it works. In fact, it¡¯s working extremely well. I feel like I regenerated almost half a point more mana within this¡quarter of a second outside. Now I continue till I can do it for all of them, concurrently. Haha, I was wrong, there was still something else I could sacrifice for more mana. Mental processing power. I can¡¯t get a good estimation right now but this might reduce my ability to multicast as much as I could before if I keep the skill working around the clock. This is good. This is an actual skill that requires mental effort to produce an effect. I am on the right track.¡±
It took a whole decade''s worth of processing before he was used to the mental movement required to make the internals of a single chassis move the way he wanted. His speed and fluency increased greatly over time but peaked after a decade. The problem he faced was that the greater the number of factories he was operating at one point in time, the harder it got to operate anymore and the difficulty scaled exponentially.
He let go of all mental control over them at the decade mark, to rest his mind and also do a deep scan on the total number of these tiny factories he had. It had been daunting to calculate not dozens of trillions, but dozens of quadrillions of them due to their size and distribution. No wonder after each evolution, it was like they got a beauty treatment and their pores reduced. The same happened for his mana chassis.
As if in a trance within a trance, he lost track of time and built up the number of factories he could operate at the same time. The first goal was to make all of them factories.
This was no different from the mental puzzles and exercises he used to do.
When he succeeded in converting every single individual into an operating factory at the same time. He made sure he could replicate the exercise with 1,000 complete successes in a row before he slipped out of his processing.
Unknowing, his physical body let out a steamy breath and his head had steam rising from it with Ning Xin fanning his head with a chopping board to cool his head. Taking a moment to sense how much time had passed, he estimated that 40 days had passed outside.
¡°That. Was hella lot more processing than I imagined. Over 280 thousand years worth of processing? My brain hasn¡¯t been fried has it? 40 days of continuous spell casting is this intensive? Noted, it looks like my brain can keep going. Anyway, this is still easier than Domain casting. So even if I can run Domain around the clock, 40 days is too much for my current stats. I¡¯ll let Dusk handle the maintenance, having a separate core to handle the mental stress is so convenient. Will is amazing.
Time for a break, grab that sandwich right hand!¡± Ebony slipped out of his trance but he didn¡¯t open his eyes. However, the one feeding him stopped fanning him suspiciously. Her intuition was too keen but he stayed quiet and ate as if he wasn¡¯t being stared at.
Chomping down, he checked whether or not he had acquired a new skill. Sure enough, it was there. A new tier 1 skill in his Profession that was already at level 22 that he learnt 4 days ago. But he didn¡¯t bother looking for the description, he wasn¡¯t done.
An hour of real-time break was taken before he tested out the skill. It was no passive.
¡°This takes up as much mental effort as controlling three models to fight at maximum intensity like their lives depended on it. That is too much.¡±
Although he didn¡¯t manually control Models to fight anymore, the mental strain required to activate Mana Chassis Internal Desiccation was like controlling 3 complex spells at the same time. For one, this was the primitive method he came up with.
Buckets held together by sheer mental force, and boiling. Then the released energy was his regeneration, and most would be collected within his Preservation Bubble of vitality after Coagulated Mana Repository was filled up and then escaped as excess.
The amount it produced, as expected, was minimal. He had enough experience with skills to know that he probably had a skill that had a scaling of 0.01% per level and no base percentage. It didn¡¯t scale with any stat either. It probably scaled his regeneration directly. He understood enough of what he was doing that he didn¡¯t need a description to tell him what he was doing.
However, any success was huge to him. He was aiming higher.
¡°Since she seems fine, I can continue onto the next step.¡± Ebony tried to taste flavour but he was still mostly disconnected from his physical senses, it was a pity that he didn¡¯t even know what kind of sandwich he was eating.
He began to lose connection with his sense of touch in another moment and found himself back into the viewpoint of looking at invisible phantoms of his mental space. He reappeared outside that space and into the view of his mana chassis.
¡°All the changes I¡¯ll be making from now will happen concurrently with the 52.31 quadrillion mana chassis in my body. Baby steps. Settle on a procedure, finalise it, and then optimise. Question is, can I turn kinetic energy into mana? Probably not. Making more advanced processes would only make it easier for me to turn coagulated mana into useful mana when I want to use it. The rest would still sit as stable slime. It wouldn¡¯t give me more mana, excluding an increase in efficiency. The total amount of mana I have or will produce will still be the same. I would get a skill evolution, and that would in turn increase my mana production. Energy comes from nowhere? Course¡¯ not. Nothing is free. Higher level Fluid Blitz for example, increases my stamina consumption. If I level the future version of this skill, assuming my stats are constant my energy output would increase.
What would it dip into?
For physical skills, the endurance of my body, muscles, bones, tendons, everything undergoes more stress. IF, this becomes a skill and I don¡¯t increase efficiency, simply level it without any refinement. I suppose my mental endurance would be stressed and maybe mana chassis can be stressed. Taking the drawbacks of Mana Chassis Implosion into account, there is a high likelihood that the drawbacks of this skill after overuse would be a temporary reduction in mana regeneration.
But I already have mental endurance in spades, I see no harm. What are the chances I would be forced to spell cast intensely for more than 40 days? I would be out of mana before I can even get to that level of mental exhaustion. Tradeoff, extremely worth it since my Wisdom, linked to mental endurance, would only grow as my Profession levels. And this is all under the assumption that I don¡¯t continue to refine the skills to match my growing skill levels.¡±
Even after the massive change to his physique where he cut stamina regeneration for mana regeneration, he still had endurance to spare. But he couldn¡¯t afford to lose any more physical endurance, not for the stamina regeneration but for the muscular and skeletal structures¡¯ endurance. Wear and tear was still a thing and too much of that in the midst of that would gradually weaken him.
Being able to physically fight continuously at peak conditions over ten days before exhaustion kicks into his muscles temporarily sets him in stamina regeneration reduction debuff, he didn¡¯t see an issue because his mental endurance was far higher.
Against the Apex Apes, it took almost twenty days of constant spell casting - maintaining his output and input to be equal, before he got a debuff that reduced his mana regeneration. He was only a Master back then.
At that level of exhaustion, even stuffing food into his stomach would not remove the debuff immediately and his weight loss would be crazy. Just not as crazy as Ning Xin¡¯s.
He had no choice but to stop moving or casting unless he was trying to kill himself as even his metabolism wouldn¡¯t be working properly once the debuff was around 70% or more. In fact, even vitality regeneration would be debuffed in a state of starvation but he rarely starved himself after having a spatial bag constantly refilled. Ebony saw it as the body¡¯s self-preservation ability. All three regenerations took energy and this came from food and sustenance. Without intake of food, their regeneration would naturally lower themselves. They had the benefit of notifications to find out a rough gauge of the debuff.
That was also why if he doesn¡¯t train, move or take damage he shouldn¡¯t feel hungry that fast. His intake was still extremely high due to overflowing essences. Producing mana around the clock meant he got hungry normally even with a high Constitution which was a stat that dealt with energy efficiency and sleep cycle. It was thanks to his high Constitution that he didn¡¯t need excessive amounts of food like Ning Xin. And the fact that his Physique made him require less sustenance.
Hence, Ebony didn¡¯t pull any stops and started upgrading the facilities in his mana chassis.
Buckets were reformed into boilers. A container with a small nozzle at the top.
This step alone would have him stuck for some time since he was concurrently changing every one of his factories'' constituents.
Outside his mental processing, his body reached for plate after plate to stuff himself. It would¡¯ve been nice if Ning Xin¡¯s aura could increase his metabolism because he was not sensing the increase in energy fast enough. It was quite tiresome to wait an entire month of processing before one second actually passed.
The task of reshaping a bucket into a boiler exceeded his expectations, it was easy. After so much practice of forming a stable structure made up of the same slime, he could move them rather easily and he was already familiar with consecutive success rates when it came to manipulating this slime into a certain form. It took merely 445 years and 10 months.
¡°The passing of time feels weirdly¡ more real than before here. Is it because my point of view changed and it''s more first person rather than third person? Unless I get into as deep a trance as clockwork, those 280 thousand years didn¡¯t feel that long but these 445 felt heavier. 104 minutes? That¡¯s fast.
Now I need to use most of the free slime and turn them into simple turbines, connected to the boiler. Hmm, do I have enough material? I¡¯ll reduce the boilers¡¯ size if I don¡¯t. I¡¯m glad I studied but I need trial and error for the number of blades, angle of blades, size of inlet and outlet nozzle.¡±
The next undertaking was far more complex, with moving parts to take into account. The boiler not being able to withstand the build-up of pressure. The facilities were not solidified by mental strength far enough, since the factory material was essentially the same as the energy source being steamed and everything melting. The sticky parts during motion.
Ebony¡¯s first solution to any problems he faced was to put more mental processing power into holding his factory¡¯s form together. The formation of the turbines took a lot of effort but not nearly as much as getting the turbine to work as he intended.
But it was quiet. He was undisturbed here and his body didn¡¯t snap him out of his trance, so he kept working at it. Taking three-hour breaks every three weeks for his body. When he stopped all mental processes, he did not work on anything else. Completely shutting down instead.
He quickly lost track of time again.
He didn¡¯t even snap out of it when his processing speed had a permanent jump. Since he said he would converge his skill set and not diverge, he focussed.
He would make this project succeed, no matter how many failures it would take.
Chapter 327: Transmutation
¡°Is he okay?¡± Ning Xin asked her friend Mallory.
She was worried, Ebony had been eating as much as a tenth of her daily food intake!
That wasn¡¯t worrisome, but he was just sitting there and his hands never stopped reaching around for food. His mouth never stopped chewing. He was acting even more gluttonous than her!
She swapped out his meals with higher quality meat, denser meat but he paced himself and took smaller bites. Seeing that he wanted something easier to digest, she swapped back to light but consistent meals. Since she wasn¡¯t always here, she packed food and had one of the squires that dealt with logistics to clear and refill the area within his reach regularly.
It made her happy that he kept eating her dishes but she was worried when the scene continued for weeks. It took a lot of persuading and fighting harder to free some time from the Crown Princess¡¯s schedule to take a look but she couldn¡¯t do anything. He was just eating. Except for the occasional steam rising from his body, nothing alarming was occurring. His life force was as stable as a rock.
There wasn¡¯t any leak in mana. Dusk simply regrew in size and regained its mass in response and it was hard to tell if he was making progress when his emotions felt silenced and numbed to her senses.
At the end of the first month after he started his skill creation and training, Dusk was already fully regrown. Knowing him, he probably refilled the Will or whatever or it wouldn¡¯t have been able to grow back to this size. She also knew there was a limit to the amount of Will at any one point in time until the dissipation rate equalled the rate that he filled it with.
She understood Will as the same thing as her Intent. She couldn¡¯t utilise it to produce physical effects like Ebony but she could scare the living daylights out of creatures. The so-called ¡®killing intent¡¯ was palpable to any creature when she used it. To weaker people with low Perception, they believed this to be nonsense but anyone past a certain level and experience with monsters knew that, it wasn¡¯t a load of make-believe.
Journeymen with enough experience fighting with their lives on the line would slowly be able to sense thick, unspoken death threats.
She could concentrate and exude the very same intent around her, directing it to a certain extent. ¡®Scaring¡¯ went as far as making them tremble and even stun them on the spot for a good fraction depending on her target¡¯s strength. That fraction of a second was usually all she needed unless her opponent exceeded her capabilities.
It tired her out greatly and she could do nothing like creating a Domain with it, not even in her Atrophy state. As unwilling as she was, she likely needed to be a King before it would be strong enough to manifest physical phenomena. Ebony was the freak of nature here, not her.
She wasn¡¯t an overthinker like Ebony, as long as something worked, that was enough for her. No need to think about the hows. It was enough for her to confirm that Intent was linked to Vitality like Will was linked to Wisdom and that her ability to use it would grow in time.
When Ebony said he would go into a trance, she expected a few days of inactivity and not being able to communicate.
Not 6 months and counting.
¡®Sister Jing too, not a single word. Grandma too. Don¡¯t even know if they are alright. We are now officially out of our secret stash of food and have to rely on Imperial rations¡I should not try to leave and restock our supply. He would worry. Luckily my cooking improved and I can make use of most ingredients to their limits. I¡¯ll make invigorating dishes that enhance vitality. I¡¯ll wipe his hands too¡¡¯ The last line of thought got herself flushed to her ears.
Although Ebony had a large repertoire of songs, some people had to leave the area because the constant ringing in their ears either made them sleepy or go crazy after long enough. They either had to get out of the fortress or get inside a special building like the magic towers that were built to seal out strong vibrations and sound.
The music wasn¡¯t a problem, even if it never stopped. There wasn¡¯t any overflowing wisdom to worry about either when Dusk took every drop of mana, and his clones occasionally stopped by to recharge themselves. But there was something none of them took into account that became obvious over time.
The effects of overflowing Endurance. It was something that was close to a legend because there were no obvious effects from a difference in endurance between people. Even comparing a Grandmaster to an unclassed person. It irked her that some people were doing research on him and asking the knights closest to where Dusk sat how they felt.
Warriors weren¡¯t that bothered, it made their hearts race, they got a little breathless and felt a little more tired than usual. Mages were affected in the same way but way worse. After a few months of observation, they deemed that it was long term exposure that brings out the effect of overflowing Endurance. From what they understood, Ebony¡¯s stamina regeneration was only increased by the Meditation skill.
She didn¡¯t tell them that he had the Fortification for stamina regeneration.
Because the scholars thought that he was working on deep meditation, they assumed he had a very high level meditation that increased his stamina regeneration. They weren¡¯t wrong and as far as she knew, he wasn¡¯t currently working on a skill that increased his stamina regeneration any further so their guess of long-term exposure before any effects were felt sounded reasonable.
The discovery was that it was also impossible to guard against at the moment. Since few people could actively and accurately manipulate stamina. When warriors used skills such as ¡®slash¡¯ that were buffed by skill levelled and not just pure muscle, they consumed stamina but this was done as naturally as breathing. There was no active manipulation of stamina.
When it came to life force and mana difference, it was something people could get used to or even block using the right technique. Such as thickening the mental defences using mana and the same for life force against life force. But stamina?
It quickly showed that no one had a proper solution that worked for everyone. The bigger issue was the lasting effects of overflowing stamina. While the effects of mana and life force take place immediately, they also get removed the moment one gets out of range. Stamina seems to work differently. It took an extended exposure before the effects kicked in but even after leaving a certain range, the damage was already done. The exhaustion, breathlessness and irregular heartbeats did not stop immediately.
They were fortunate the range of overflowing stamina was extremely small before it completely dissipated into the surroundings compared to mana. People just had to move one block away from Ebony.
¡®When we duel, I have to go all out as fast as possible. What can I do about my charging period? It takes too much time.¡¯ Ning Xin added to the fact that a battle of attrition with Ebony was turning from difficult to impossible.
She could only bank on her energy pools being fantastically large thanks to her blood being containers of energy and her mask turning hyper-efficient with energy transfer and conversion. She hadn¡¯t felt full for a year because her mask took all the blood that she was feeding it before her body recouped the blood loss and continued to do so. It could do more than store blood fully concentrated with sustenance and energy.
Her mask might as well be a second heart for her because she could cast her Core Skill using her mask instead of her actual heart. This already reduced the time that she needed to charge energy to cast her Core Skill but it didn¡¯t grow as quickly as the amount of energy she could utilise at any one time. She could increase that speed as her proficiency with her mask increased.
She was a little bothered that increasing her stats barely increased her top, physical speed now. The resistance she faced as her movement and attack speed increased was forcing her to slow down and greater acceleration seemed hard to produce even with, say, 50 levels worth of stat points.
The soldiers were a bit silly for moving away from Ebony. She simply walked up to him, told him that his stamina was affecting people and asked him to find a way. Three weeks later, his overflowing stamina didn¡¯t affect people negatively anymore. She bet 100% that he used Will to tell his stamina not to do anything against friendly targets or something like that because even he shouldn¡¯t be able to manipulate stamina to such a strong degree.
Will was his solution to bend anything to his¡will and it worked best on himself.
Dusk had a denser crown of plum petals and empty plums than ever before at the end of the fourth month. It was also around then that Ebony¡¯s rate of eating increased but he took more breaks. She could tell because the numbness that he was expressing would warm up, telling her that he woke up from a deeper trance for a moment. He was getting tired more often.
In the fifth month, Oplot returned from the portal he walked in. Reported that he destroyed the Venom Legion¡¯s Powerhouses. The Venom Legion was the sub-species that caused the Imperial Army the most problems and it was also the one that Oplot could deal with the easiest since the Venom Legion wasn¡¯t particularly fast, strong or tough. With The Indestructible¡¯s current weak offensive ability, it was the easier target that he could guarantee a successive raid on the opponent¡¯s storage of Emperor-ranked stat providers. He was not afraid of poison, acid or the like and he might be able to build a storage of poison mana to use against the others though Ning Xin wasn¡¯t sure how that worked.
Without a huge portion of their powers, the True Kin of the Venom Legion was excessively weak. Like a Grade 2 Emperor or lower. They retreated and their portal was only open for the Saint to recover the rest of the Venom Legion that was spread across the battlefield.
The seers reported the True Kin of the Venom Legion being scolded and persuaded to stay by the Necrochitins but the Venom Legion¡¯s Saintess was insistent on leaving for better waters to recover her losses. They were well aware that Oplot didn¡¯t do anything to them because of who they represented.
Mallory had a hunch that the Saintesses of the Tetramyths were all very weak physically. She assumed that they were all part of the Powerhouses of even greater Kins of their race. Perhaps their stats were syphoned for Demi-Gods or the Goddess of War herself through their Spirit Nexus. However, the Crown Princess debunked her theory because if they were all connected it would mean all the Tetramyth True Kins could be backed by the entire race worth of Saints and above and would be nigh-invincible should they redistribute the Powerhouse accordingly.
It would also mean that Elcra had long been under the watch of the Goddess of War. If the connection between their innumerable Kin was that strong, they would¡¯ve had enough ants to overrun their planet a hundred times over by now. They had more individuality and independence than one would think from the type of race they were.
Oplot didn¡¯t take a long break before he walked into his next target, the Arcanite Cortex which had the best magic resistance and protected a lot of the weaker members from the Magic Towers¡¯ bombardment. No one could stop him. He could walk there under as many attacks as physically possible and he would arrive at the portal completely unscathed.
Ning Xin pitied and respected him and the path he set on.
It was too hard to grow. When one got as durable as him in a fully defensive set of skills, he wouldn¡¯t level unless he got damaged past the limit of his skills. It took someone as strong as her to make him bleed in an unprotected state.
How much stronger did one have to be to push him to use a defensive skill?
How much stronger to break past his defences to put pressure on his skills to level?
It was nothing she had to be concerned about, she was just moody right now. Her best friend Athena had been here with her till very recently when she hit level 425 and said she was bored, needed a better-paying job and wanted new targets to shoot or her archery and close ranged fighting skill would deteriorate to specialise against ants. So she returned for a well-deserved vacation and was going to take normal Quest Hall jobs again.
Ning Xin could understand that the Tetramyth were hardy to the average soldier because of the level difference but they were quite pathetic as an opponent for technique training. The problem with high-tier skills was the difficulty in levelling them required more than mundane repetition, not that repetition wasn¡¯t necessary but they required constant refining and improvement.
So her level had been increasing fast but her skill levels weren¡¯t, except for newer skills she had been picking up.
Hence, after hemming and hawing since Ebony¡¯s clones kept watching her she decided to slip past them as her Intuition told her that Ebony might leave her behind. She didn¡¯t have as strong a tendency to put herself in danger compared to him but she did love a good challenge.
She barged into some of the soldiers¡¯ meetings with the old man Wilson multiple times in the past, to get information on the Emperor-ranked movements their seers were keeping track of. The old man with a good old club was actually quite amazing. With her Intuition, she could tell that he would probably beat multiple Minor Generals but only those who were Knights.
It was slightly harder to gauge a mage because there was far more variation in their abilities. Dark magic for example was quite a killer against most people. It completely rips senses away, both physical and magical. Supposedly, even Ebony with his high perception wasn¡¯t able to see when dark magic was employed. However, it didn¡¯t matter to him since he could fight through sheer instinct and muscle memory. Even blind, he could hear and smell and that was enough for him against unskilled fighters.
Dark magic users could easily kill far stronger or higher-level targets if they were careful and had proper training.
Light magic was low power, but basically unmatched in speed. The power of light magic can be increased through simple weaponry making them very suitable for fortress defence because the caster didn¡¯t have to be strong or high level. As long as they had good weapons that increased the power and heat of light magic, a low-level light mage could be as effective as a magic tower in terms of firepower but not sustainability.
Ice magic, needless to say, was universally good against most organic and even inorganic creatures. A Journeyman or Master with minimal skill training and just ice mana expulsion can help change the flow of a battle for the knights, or better yet if they were good enough to target joints or freeze a target and immobilise them. Regardless of the evolution stage, every element held its advantages. So not even Journeymen were pushed away and could be found underground, within the fortress.
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They had no business past the fortress barriers but they were not useless, especially if they were a mage and even more so if they had affinity with rarer elements.
She had hoped merchants were allowed to traverse between the fortress and the surface to buy the services of one or two caravans to resupply. Unfortunately all the food and weapon resupplies were handled by the army. As surprising as it was, this pest control wasn¡¯t common knowledge to the Empire¡¯s citizens yet. Amazing.
There were many freelancers here, and many even returned to the surface after a period of hunting. Yet, this war wasn¡¯t the talk of the Capital.
Even so, it was none of Ning Xin¡¯s business. She didn¡¯t care whether something so big-scaled was public knowledge or not. She only knew that she confirmed the location of the Silversonic Tetramyth¡¯s Emperors. There was a camp of 30 of them just under 6,000 km away. Ebony was right, this was an easier method to judge distance.
Originally without any enhancement, it might not even take her an hour to get there. At the cost of excessive and wasteful stamina consumption. There was plenty of interference on the ground which would slow her down. She could fly there, but her flight was lacking compared to her sprinting.
However, the damn Elven spell that made everything tougher to prevent the ceiling and floor from collapsing made even the air harder. It was so hard, her speed was greatly impeded by air resistance. Irksome didn¡¯t even sum up how suffocated she felt by the ridiculous skill.
It must be tier 6, backed by my multiple castors who may have similar skills that were tier 4 to 5.
Knowing how many of the Elves who cast the spell were rather old, she would not be surprised if they had managed to get a whole group of them to have a tier 5 version.
Unable to protest, it was what helped prevent the Emperor-ranked Tetramyth from jumping across the entire battlefield and chomping on their fortress barriers. It was a skill that impeded strong forces while lower level people weren¡¯t affected by it as much.
¡®If they are such ¡®amazing¡¯ mages, why don¡¯t they limit the effects to only the ants!¡¯ Ning Xin complained when she remembered overhearing them humblebragging to the other race¡¯s Nobles. She had been too busy eating at that time in her convalescence state so she didn¡¯t burst out in anger when the sudden spell caught her off guard in battle. The Elves didn¡¯t even bother informing the freelancers that they were about to cast a spell that could harm both sides.
On the topic of Elves, she didn¡¯t like them. There weren¡¯t many of them in proportion to the population but there were many of them in the high-ranking meetings. They were actively showing disgust whenever they spotted her, especially in her Atrophy state that wasn¡¯t natural.
She didn¡¯t care about the disgust she felt from them, it was how they treated Ebony as if he was some natural treasure. It went beyond admiration to near worship amongst the older generation. Those who could feel that Ebony was made up of mana itself. The reason they had a strong affinity with plants and nature was because most plants were highly attuned and receptive to mana. The reason she hated that was because they weren¡¯t even treating him like a person. How dare they sneak in fruits and place them beside him when she wasn¡¯t around!
As the one in charge of his food and without a stockpile of fresh fruits, she felt as if she lost to them.
Ning Xin prepared a large batch of dry meals that were easy to consume, rich rolls were the last of her stock but she would give it up for him. Wraps were the most abundant. And although she hated to feed him lazy meals, she made smoothies that contained mashed-up energy ration bars that the army distributed and canned fruits which was also a luxury item she got her hands on. And, as much as she hated the Elves for trying to get a win over her, she pushed the fresh fruits closer to him.
Learning from Ebony, she also got a contract for money. Not as much as he did, but contribution-based assessment got her quite a high pay. No matter how many ants she killed and how fast she did it, it wasn¡¯t as high of a contribution as increasing the mana and stamina regeneration rate of tens of thousands of people. The number also increased over time, a sign that his mana regeneration increased enough to help more people.
As a proud woman, how could she eat off his money all the time? Her abilities were more than enough to feed herself and more. Her negotiation abilities were lacking, but her intimidation factor helped. Being able to sense emotions meant she could feel the fear everyone had around her with greater clarity. If her presence could get the Generals on their tip-toes, those in charge of mana ores and logistics were hardly able to talk.
So she used a partial Atrophy state to help her chances. She wasn¡¯t smart with money but she wasn¡¯t a fool either.
After being slightly ashamed of taking advantage of a trance-state Ebony and wiping his hands clean, possibly with skewed motives besides hygiene, she used a bit of mana and turned her body into flames. Getting rid of the Clones¡¯ watch was the first step.
Firebird Heathen¡¯s Imitation Composition didn¡¯t get her far but in this form, vibrations, gravity or ice wouldn¡¯t be able to sense her. Making her invisible to Ebony¡¯s physically blind clones. The Fortress forcefully absorbs all ambient mana so there was no mana sense for him to sense a bundle of ¡®foreign¡¯ mana either.
Reforming from her mask down using a ton of energy, her bodysuit and clothes were summoned along with her transmutation back into flesh. Although the consumption of the Heartblood Essense of a Phoenix gave her the bare minimum ¡®affinity¡¯ to do so, it shocked her to be able to do what she could. As if she wasn¡¯t a physical being anymore.
However, it was temporary and extremely intense in energy consumption of all three resources: life force, stamina and mana. She would never use it without a good reason since the normal consumption was over 95% of all three resources'' natural maximum. With her mask, resource capacity was greatly increased but she needed to activate her mask which caused half a blood disk to bubble and start rotating like a saw on her face. There were also drawbacks because she was not a Phoenix, her Physique couldn¡¯t handle the stress of transmutation and was still a work in progress.
No matter, she was glad her keen Intuition made it so that she was pretty sure that changing into a bundle of fire mana would not take away her ability to return to normal.
Oh¡and it was excruciating the first time she did it. Worse than her melting her flesh and bones off before regenerating them over and over again when she ate the thing.
She also felt that the fire mana that she turned into was practically foreign to the fire mana that she was so familiar with. It was uniquely her and felt nothing like normal flames in many aspects. For one, she was sure that even if an extremely powerful fire mage was near her when she turned into flames, there was no way they could manipulate her-turned-flame.
No matter what her Intuition told her, it was too dangerous to play around with so she didn¡¯t overuse it and so far only used it to turn a small portion of her body into flames when she faced an unavoidable attack.
¡®A Phoenix should be practically unkillable¡that Spear Saint guy, is dangerous. I guess depending on how you see it, the gluttonous solar-blooded phoenix isn¡¯t completely dead.¡¯
The Silversonic were the only ones fast enough to give her some trouble excluding the Necrochitins¡¯ Emperors who seemed to be quite a bit stronger, likely thanks to a far larger or more numerous Powerhouses.
They were also the only ones whose usage of leg or arm fighting was similar to blades and might even be considered a fighting style around tier 2 compared to a warrior. Their exoskeletons wouldn¡¯t melt on collision with her swords which made them a viable target that could fight back.
There was sufficient pressure to breathe down on her neck and a threat to her life. That¡¯s why she sought them.
She had always been more of a pure, close combatant. Numerous enhancements ran through her body, she didn¡¯t spare any mental effort to fling spells around except for her helper blood disk but that spell was almost fully autonomous.
She ran across the army without any enhancement lest Ebony¡¯s clones notice the obvious heat source. Halfway down, she burst out of the army¡¯s vanguard and into the range where freelancers move about thinning the horde. There were also sporadic squads of soldiers who did their best to strategically gather the horde.
Past that, she was in the range of the ultra-far range, random bombardment. Due to the distance, it was mostly Elven Archers and Magic Tower¡¯s enchanted cannons. Pure beams of mana were a waste and more suited for closer ranges. With how spread out the field was, she wouldn¡¯t be hit by a stray arrow or cannon unless she was unlucky and blind.
And even further past that, she slipped out of range of the Empire¡¯s contact. This was the region where the number of soldiers and freelancers was less than a hundred at any one point in time. A small fraction of the Empire¡¯s numbers.
It was around these areas where Kings amongst the Tetramyths were sent to gang on people that came out far enough to hunt them. They were protected by the True Kin to some extent but the True Kin wouldn¡¯t always come out to save them. Thanks to that, the Empire couldn¡¯t tell if the Tetramyths had any special treatment towards certain groups of ants to funnel training and resources towards.
Another day, another hunt.
¡°My sword art still has gaps if I can get hit by a sword-style equivalent.¡± Ning Xin didn¡¯t make any excuses like being outnumbered and faced many more legs and mandibles. Since it was to train, she didn¡¯t force herself to charge enough energy to get as fast as her opponents. It wasn¡¯t cost-effective after a certain point.
She had nicks around her torso and underarms. They were good at targeting legs but she was also good at protecting her mobility. That opened her up to attacks on less vital areas.
Although hard to think straight in her Atrophy state, it was already ingrained in her to keep a good gauge of her energy reserves. With enough of it, she could still increase her physical stats. Firebird Heathen''s increasing levels made it possible for her to withstand truly unimaginable amounts of energy.
If it ever gets as high level as her first Core Skill Rampaging Immortal¡¯s Pulse, she might get a better sense of Immortal¡¯s Pulse limit sooner than she had hoped. So far, she had always been limited by her body but she wasn¡¯t naive to think that she could gather unlimited power.
¡®I still don¡¯t know what Ebony¡¯s third Core Skill is. It should be empty, I wonder what he¡¯s going to shift up. Maybe his new skill? It would make sense but¡I have a feeling he wouldn¡¯t do that. Rather than 2 similar skills, it''s better to make them compatible and support each other like mine. I shored up my weaknesses with Firebird Heathen¡¯s Imitation Composition and my Core Skills are a complete cycle working together.
So what is the weakness Ebony has that he needs to shore up?
He has mana regeneration and a Domain, pretty much universal skills and two of those basically don¡¯t have many weak spots like my skill set had. Another support would make sense since Domains are pure power for mages but his Domain is just significantly inefficient, otherwise, 1 support skill is enough to support a Domain assuming they are of the same tier.
His mana compression? He would¡¯ve done that long ago if that¡¯s the case.
Flames¡will he start to incorporate one of his cold fires skills into his Core?¡¯
Ning Xin thought that it was too early. The Xengs, or rather, her grandma taught her that a section of 3 was used as a general divider and she taught Ebony the same.
Such as the difference between tier 1 to 3 and tier 4 to 6 were classified separately.
The same was used for Core Skills.
She was taught to keep the first 3 Core Skills to be as universally useful as possible. No elements, no specific offensive attack or spell. Something that enhanced all parts of themselves.
Only from the 4th, should she start to consider having a Core offensive, defensive or evasive skill.
By then, the first 3 core skills would practically enhance every other skill they would learn. It was also around that time when one would run out of Class, Sub-Class and Profession Skill slots.
The Xengs were handed a few pieces of advice from The First. One of them was to get their 3 core skills to work together, and then attempt to merge them when they were Emperors and all three were tier 6. It was supposed to merge into something special. Special didn¡¯t say much because her grandmother hadn¡¯t succeeded yet, along with everyone else but their 3 clan heads who were Saints.
It was common sense to get skills that compound on each other so this knowledge didn¡¯t mean much to either of them right now.
Generic Skills would not show an obvious difference to their abilities unless they were tier 4 and above or whatever tier respective to their evolutionary stage.
So the main addition to one¡¯s power after Grandmasters with 3 Core Skills heavily depended on the choice of their Core Skill. For example, if her 4th Core Skill was Gospel¡¯s Perforation which was her active sword thrust skill it would turn into her greatest weapon since it would take barely ten years to evolve it to tier 5.
The difference between tiers 3 and 4 was already huge and it only increased from then on. Not just the scaling, but the base refinement would all be over 1000%. If her notes weren¡¯t wrong, the minimal base refinement effect for a tier 5 active skill was 2000%.
So tier 4 skills had to be refined up to 2000% base effect before an evolution. It was not easy.
While both of them were young and their levels were low, the advantages of a Core Skill weren¡¯t that obvious. It supposedly shined when one has reached their limits and over a longer period. While the rest of their skills are stagnant, their Core Skills would almost always see slight refinements every few years.
Having grown up slightly, even she felt the years passing extremely quickly. Their perspective of time skewed closer to how older and stronger people thought. 1 year felt as short as a month. The change in sleep schedule and biological requirements affected this perception. Staying in her convalescence state, she wouldn¡¯t go hungry for days if she didn¡¯t exercise. Of course, it was during this state that she stuffed herself with as much food as possible to stockpile energy.
A two-hour battle took her an entire day to extricate herself back into the safe region of magical and arrow bombardment.
When she got back, it was chaos within the fortress.
¡°Which idiot directed hostility!¡± She yelled and charged to parry the unstoppable punch at a knight. Her blades screeched when they pushed Ebony¡¯s arms aside. Switching states between Atrophy and Convalescence took time and she was already halfway into rest mode since she got into the fortress to see a frozen wasteland with numerous frozen people around Dusk.
Dusk had its roots tied around Ebony¡¯s legs, she did not expect that. It followed Ebony¡¯s Will, if unconscious, it should do the same thing and attack the people around them. But it didn¡¯t.
So this should be a completely unconscious movement from him and Dusk is aware that it¡¯s not what he wants.
¡°W-we didn¡¯t do anything. He just stood up all of a sudden and started hitting people, then he sealed everyone around him in ice. No-no one¡¯s dead. I think.¡±
Ning Xin didn¡¯t have the leeway to look at the speaker who was one of the elite knights Ebony was coaching on footwork. If he didn¡¯t kill anyone, then it wasn¡¯t anyone else''s fault and nothing bad happened. This was Ebony causing trouble.
With unerring precision, he was fully focused on her. Thanks to Dusk, his legs were restrained but not completely. It gave her time to go back into atrophy but not deep enough before he took a huge step forward and sunk his elbow into her sternum right after a parry. One of her swords didn¡¯t parry anything¡except an afterimage or his ice magic feint.
Turning just her chest into flames in time, she was still knocked back by the shockwave and tumbled through a few walls. The buildings here were all made from durable materials, it hurt her more than the elbow strike.
She was not the first to be sent spiralling across the streets. There were rows of debris with knights that had dented armour. Meaning he wasn¡¯t using sound magic or the armour should be shattered into pieces.
¡®I knew it, he has a proper martial art mastery now. And it¡¯s tier 4 Art. No other way he could send me flying without using any mana.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s body was harder than steel thanks to containing fully compressed mana but without any active enhancement, he shouldn¡¯t have the strength to send her flying through walls. Unless he had a tier 4 Art and his momentum-based physical enhancement.¡¯
Her enhancements came roaring on but she remained in half convalescence. Since he seemed to limit magic other than freezing some people up, he was not a big threat.
She rubbed her sore back, ¡°you¡¯ve been holding back against me, and now you¡¯re suddenly rough with me.¡±
Despite staying twice as fast as him, she found herself locked with both her arms behind her back and pushed against the floor within a minute.
¡®We¡¯re both Art wielders. How can the difference be so big?¡¯ She bulled herself out of the hold with a small pulse and raised her strength further. Thankfully, she didn¡¯t require any fire enhancement or the surroundings would be in danger but Ebony had his legs held down and she was still knocked down?
She sheathed her twin babies, this was not a fight.
This guy needed a good whack on the head to wake up.
To do that, his hard head needed a heavy knock. Such as the unliftable wok that was almost 5 times heavier than Icicle.
With Dusk holding Ebony down, she took out her large trusty wok and backhanded it at his face and upper body.
Dusk let go and allowed him to fly back, smashing into the tree¡¯s unbreakable trunk.
¡°Hmph, I¡¯ll let you go with that.¡± She rubbed her poor back again.
Chapter 328: Unique Skill
¡°So do you know what¡¯s up with him?¡± Ning Xin asked.
A few healers surrounded the ice dome that contained Ebony shadowboxing. It looked like he was fighting himself, no clones, just his afterimages overlapping. The healers were quivering around her and it was getting annoying but she was already changing states as fast as she could.
¡°We know that he was deep within his mind. The mind mages are convinced that he was using a similar technique of putting oneself physically within their mind. Having stayed over 6 months without moving his body, he might be relieving the deepest parts of his memories. And¡it¡¯s hard to believe but this movement of his is pure muscle memory, he is not conscious yet.¡±
Ning Xin glared at the whisperers who called him a monster. So what if he beat the knights with pure muscle memory and was doing it completely blind? It was only natural. He could play with a person with tier 4 sword mastery, these knights who only had tier 3 sword and shield mastery were no different from babies flailing their limbs.
Dusk was unsealing the frozen soldiers and buildings while his clones were cleaning up while some studied the main Ebony.
Two clones stared at her as if waiting for an explanation for her disappearance but didn¡¯t say anything. She did come back safely after all. Even if they didn¡¯t say anything, she knew these two had long found her and helped extricate her out of enemy territory while staying hidden.
¡°Since I¡¯m not harming anyone, just leave me alone.¡± Clone Ebony decided that the trouble main Ebony had caused did not deem it necessary to try to reconnect their Will and wake himself up.
¡°Why do you think we¡¯re doing that? Aren¡¯t I supposed to be creating Marsh¡¯s Grove Conduit? It should have nothing to do with physical movement.¡±
¡°The healers should be right then, I don¡¯t know what nonsense physically going into somewhere called mindspace they are talking about but we¡¯ll get an update on that when we wake up. Maybe we¡¯re craving physical movement? Or our Conditioning has started to drop in levels?¡±
Ning Xin zoned out to the Ebony clones talking. They ¡®felt¡¯ like Ebony but she didn¡¯t like it because it confuses her to feel multiple exact same emotions. They weren¡¯t perfect either and the emotions she felt from them were odd compared to a normal person. Not the emotions themselves but the way she perceived it.
So even looks and power aside, she could differentiate the real one from the clones.
She followed her scent and Intuition and found the catalyst for Ebony¡¯s sudden movement. By the accounts of the people who got frozen first, they were a group of people who began their training not too far from him. That was all.
¡®His mind is exhausted, so it¡¯s getting haywired and his body moves reflexively, but he doesn¡¯t even know what the danger is because he went past his mental stamina limit. So he¡¯s actually punching at phantom danger because he¡¯s too tired.¡¯ Being able to directly sense that numbed-emotioned Ebony had slightly arisen, she could guess and her Intuition would reaffirm her guesses.
Her Intuition was truly bordering foresight.
Ning Xin thought that he was acting very cute at the moment but she was also worried that he would start to injure himself past exhaustion. Mental damage was not something easy to heal.
¡®I¡¯ll wake him up if he doesn¡¯t wake himself up in 6 hours. Why 6 hours? Whatever, that feels best.¡¯ She prepared to make herself some food, tired as she was, she didn¡¯t want to eat rockhard rations.
Gobbling up ant flesh which was the most abundant and the densest nutrient source in this place for 4 hours straight, Ebony woke himself up from his trance but was fast asleep. They knew since Dusk pulled the body into its shelter room.
At the end of the 4 hours, Ning Xin felt her heart skip a beat. He took a huge leap ahead. However, she was surprisingly at peace with that. Even a little excited. Her heart skipped at something else.
Premonition, that¡¯s what it felt like. A bad one that she couldn¡¯t stop that wasn¡¯t related to his health.
¡®Maybe having too strong of an intuition isn¡¯t all that good.¡¯ Sitting crossed leg, she put one up and rested her elbow on it. Laughing internally, she understood what helplessness felt like when her bad premonition didn''t want to disperse.
When one of Ebony¡¯s clones tried to reconnect, the clone fell forward and crashed into the floor with sonic repulsion on, creating a small crack on the stone floor. The rest of the clones couldn¡¯t get the casualty to wake up and stopped themselves from connecting to Ebony.
¡®He went overboard.¡¯ Ning Xin walked up to the tree and walked in without hindrance. Sitting down, she placed Ebony¡¯s head on her lap and caressed his hair. The slight wave of elation from him tickled her and infected her with the same emotion.
???
¡°Hwa?¡±
Ebony felt his throat rumble. He heard a roaring laughter that was in slow motion and it pierced his head. Reflexively, he tried to cover his ears but then a sensation of vertigo made him slip and he rolled off something soft onto cold hard ground.
He heard words but couldn¡¯t put them together as if every single word was stretched out forever.
Flailing around, his body protected itself but he found himself tumbling in the cramped space. He¡¯d never felt such intense vertigo before. Nothing was straight, his eyes saw black, white and red but it was just a mesh of colours with no outline.
His limbs were held down tighter than he could fight back. It felt like ages before he calmed down.
¡®Du-Dusk is-ho-holding me down. Eve-everything is fine.¡¯ Ebony stopped thinking, even his thoughts were coming together properly. His sense of touch was just as hazy, feeling hot at times and cold at others. His clothes burned his skin. The air felt like needles scrubbing across his skin. Breathing felt like he was in Hoarfrost Glades again.
With Dusk calming him down, he fell unconscious not long after.
After a period of blankness, Ebony found himself back in the core of his mind.
¡°Whazad. Fah, mah speh is weard hear too.¡± Ebony heard his voice repeat his thoughts out loud.
He found Dusk in his mindspace and lay against it. If it was a mind problem, he just had to meditate for some time. Since his perceived time here was a lot faster than the passage of time for his body, he didn¡¯t worry about a deadline and just set a wake-up call for when his mind healed.
Going into quiet meditation is different from going into a working trance. It was similar to sleep and he could go deeper making a sleep more restful at times. With his proficiency, that was all the time.
Ebony wasn¡¯t unfamiliar with the feeling of closing his eyes and opening it right after, as if blinking but a whole night or two had passed. This time was no different.
However, he woke up completely refreshed and the loudspeaker of his thoughts went back to normal. Checking with his bioclock, his jaw loosened.
¡°220,320 years of meditation? Isn¡¯t that over 30 days outside. My mind was so injured it needed that long to recover? What have I been doing during my trance? My memory is hazy but there shouldn¡¯t be a need to remember, I was only rebuilding and refining the skill. I probably only woke up because I finally succeeded or did I get too injured before that?
I might as well stay here and check myself out, get my bearings before I wake up properly.¡±
Ebony habitually stretched his body to diagnose his condition even though this wasn¡¯t his physical body. The first thing he did was link up with Dusk and get a situational report together with a more accurate time check.
¡°Huh? I went into meditation only over 13 real days ago, not 30? But my perceived time is 220 thousand years for sure. Ah, I see. Calculated Hunch evolved, my speed of thought accelerated and so did my perceived time. Let¡¯s see¡haha, I was putting aside the simulation skill to focus on Marsh Grove Conduit but I still got it while refining my factories. Partial tier 4, that¡¯s more than I hoped for for a generic skill.
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Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge - Simulate combat within your Battleforge, battles border near-perfect accuracy based on recorded data when you are one of the combatants being simulated. Without any data, instinctive simulations have reduced accuracy. Precision of simulations increases by 450% + 10.0% of Intelligence while speed increases by 100% + 5.0% of Intelligence per level.
¡°This is image training, corporeal-illusory. I see, training in my Battleforge is almost no different from my body undergoing the training as long as my Conditioning stays constant. Since I have total control over my body and my mind or mana can take control over my body too, it laid the foundation for how effective image training can become. It¡¯s cool that higher-tier skills give me a better understanding of the skill by feeling rather than word description. Then, ¡®Instinctive simulations¡¯ should refer to my guess based on the aura, gait and appearance of someone else. Skills sure are whimsical, my factory creation had nothing to do with battle, but this is a battle simulation. Reduced accuracy is vague but it should still be better than before. Though I already knew Calculated Hunch was also my mental acceleration skill, this confirms it. Precision might have helped my factory building as I go through fewer errors. Speed, I didn¡¯t notice in my trance since I was disconnected with my body and I still perceive a minute as a minute.
Dusk, what¡¯s the date?
I see.¡±
Ebony received the answer to his question as soon as he thought of the question. Suddenly a version of him spawned beside him.
¡°You¡¯re number Twelve. Cool, so this mindspace or whatever is also like a physical location where our or my Will meets up. Nice, my information transfer is a lot faster between clones and Dusk this way.¡±
The clone didn¡¯t talk, there was no need to. It was him, and he was it. The moment the clone entered, information started to transfer into his mind but it was a lot slower than he remembered it to be until he realised that this shouldn¡¯t be the case if he wasn''t ¡®physically¡¯ present.
Mindspace was the term the clone transmitted to him from the healers that specialised in mental injuries, they were almost always mind mages as well as healers. This should be his mindspace. Being able to see things from this point of view wasn¡¯t a special skill but it was an acquired ability through targeted practice and usually only Grand Mind Mages make use of.
Grand Mind Mages could enter other peoples'' mindspace to mend, protect or attack their minds straight directly. They needed to be able to go through a person or creature¡¯s natural defence before they could enter. Unless the target could use active mental defences which was rare. That was all Ebony Twelve learnt about mindspace. The stingy mages never liked to share too much about their abilities.
¡°Anyway, 6 months 13 days 4 hours 12 minutes and 41 seconds passed excluding the 13 days I went back to sleep. Calculated hunch evolved two months ago. Including skill level scaling midway and evolution how much ti- Oh wait, let''s see how fast it is. How much time did I spend in a trance including the before I got the tier 1 version?
Nice, 7 seconds of thought. That¡¯s pretty much instantaneous in real time but this is rather simple arithmetic so it can¡¯t really count. 1,797,082 years is rather unbelievable but it¡¯s just a number and that¡¯s not how much time I aged. Meh.
So that¡¯s why I short-circuited. Lost my senses. Lost my bearings. And had to be knocked out for 13 days. I lazed around for 13 days¡so did I succeed?¡± Ebony brought up the notifications and he started looking from the latest to the oldest.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Ubiquitous Providence bestows you Natural Potential of equivalent value an Echelon 1, Order 9 Unique Skill has bestowed upon the Ubiquitous Providence.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Ubiquitous Providence is studying your Unique Skill. It has been recorded. Incomplete state recognised. Temporary Echelon: 1
Temporary Order: 9¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Ubiquitous Providence notices you.¡¯
¡°Curious¡¡± Ebony did not expect that message to be the first and latest notifications he saw to be as confounding as it was, he was just here to check the progress of his new skill.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have created and are the holder of a Unique skill.¡¯
¡®Mireloom Chassis Engine (Advanced Prototype, Unique) - ¡¯
¡°That¡¯s a first. So all my previous skills aren¡¯t unique? What defines unique? Is it incomplete because it¡¯s an advanced prototype? Also, ubiquitous providence sounds big. I wonder if this system of power is referred to as that?¡± His thoughts stopped before he even read the rest. If he took the word unique¡¯s hard definition it would mean one and only.
Most of his skills were self-created but a lot of them do the same thing as skills with slightly different names. His meditation was learnt from his father, martial arts from his mother. Freezing flames were rare, but he took it from Ful and they had a whole race of plants that should have been able to use it. His Domain was unique to him but never prompted a notification about it. Ebony didn¡¯t have enough information to determine what defines Unique in this case.
As for what Ubiquitous Providence was, he honestly didn¡¯t care. It was just like during the time celestial bodies noticed him. Whatever that meant.
However, natural potential?
Now that was huge. He just didn¡¯t know how much of it but it probably related to the echelon and order. Not that he knew what those are other than a form of classification.
¡®Mireloom Chassis Engine (Advanced Prototype, Unique) - An original. Using the properties of your race¡¯s traits, a functioning engine with and within your mana chassis is set up with highly adept mental and mana manipulation. Mana and muscle memory had been ingrained and segregational mental processing prowess is used to run the engine at any time without burdening main mental facilities. Passive activation and operation consistently consume a static 30% of your mental processing capabilities unless forcefully shut down for redistribution. Excess coagulated mana fuels your mireloom chassis engine and increases your mana regeneration rate by 10% + 0.5% per level. Overflowing mana¡¯s tendency to coagulate increases by 100% and grows the mireloom. Constructed mireloom chassis increases the stability of your coagulated mana by 300% when the skill is in operation and under the effects of dynamic mental hold.¡¯
¡°Long. but all it does is increase my mana regeneration at the cost of almost a third of my mental abilities? Does that make me cast slower? It shouldn¡¯t, it might reduce how many spells I can control at the same time depending on the complexities of said spells.
One-third is a lot. I see. I did not manage to build it according to the design I had in mind, so it¡¯s just a prototype in terms of design but it already works. Tendency should be referring to an increase in coagulation. As long as I don¡¯t touch my repository¡¯s compressed mana, I¡¯m always sitting on excess so my factory should run even in battle. The factory is hammered into place that¡¯s why it becomes even harder to control. It would make it nearly impossible to use coagulated mana in battle but I rarely do so this is a good trade-off. Just by design, I increased my mana regeneration by 10%. It¡¯s not efficient considering it uses up 30% of my mental power. And it¡¯s static, so increasing Intelligence wouldn¡¯t help. And no mana capacity, that should be related to the growth of the mireloom so I need to give it some time?
I¡¯ll call it a success for now.
I wonder if Unique skill is what the Xengs know as the special skill they get if they merge 3 of their core skills. It would make sense to aim for. Free natural potential. Assuming they are referring to the same thing, I already have it.¡±
Ebony checked the rest of his notifications, hoping that there were no goofy happenings like his skill taking the third Core Skill spot. While doing so, he checked his status.
¡°Unique Skill is a different category altogether. It¡¯s placed above Class but below Core Skill. Knowing Core Skills, the different categories probably don¡¯t change anything obvious. So far, all it got me was natural potential and that wouldn¡¯t be useful till my next evolution.¡± Ebony thought that 182 levels in the skill in 6 months wasn¡¯t too bad.
¡°How do I wake up prop-¡± and with that, he found his body dispersing and before long his eyes blinking awake.
He was under a blanket with a white tiger plushie and the owner of the plushie hugging it beside him. Fortunately, she was dressed but her terrible sleeping posture had her left leg locked under his own and her hair almost drowned him. It was freezing cold, enough for mist to form around them. Barely any light was allowed through Dusk¡¯s bomb shelter and it was more cramped than he remembered. Too many pillows and bolsters surrounded them.
¡®Is this her way of nursing?¡¯ He looked up at the ceiling, along the walls were shelves with pots and jars. They were empty now excluding all the wine he brews and stored. Frost plum wine needed to be stored at very low temperatures so this was perfect. Ebony took it back out of his bag after the great escape with the Iron Wagon.
It was extremely comfy but he wanted to get out and find his clones for a situation update. Thanks to the tiger plushie, he wasn¡¯t held down so he could leave rather easily but something stopped him. He just didn¡¯t feel like moving.
Since that was the case, he just asked Dusk to send the signals to all clones in range to get back if they weren¡¯t doing anything crucial or simply send information through Will but distance made it a waste of energy.
Unknowingly raising his hand, he returned the head pats he got while receiving the information in real-time.
¡®Perpetual Tranquility Spring made a lot of progress, mental stress is a good way to put pressure on it. My clones made good progress with other skill refinements. Looks like clone me is better at finding a way to reduce mana consumption. Athena came and returned? No wonder Xin is sticking to me. Mallory and Hector are always away so we can¡¯t really talk or work together much. I wonder if she made any other friends besides Athena?¡¯ Ebony did communicate with people but he wasn¡¯t as good at making friends as he grew to believe.
Was it their aura?
People kept a distance but he also understood that he was doing the same. An inherent no-care attitude must be the reason. He had no interest in learning more about other people, outside of combat capabilities but Ebony no longer questioned his humanity. He¡¯ll just let nature take its course.
¡®I need to use the bathroom.¡¯ Ebony suddenly felt the urge to cleanse his system that had been put on hold for too long with the help of magic.
¡°Ehmm!¡± He didn¡¯t notice when she woke up but she demanded more head rub.
Chapter 329: Sighted
Ebony left Mireloom Chassis Engine in operation, he didn¡¯t need the mental capacity now and needed the skill to level fast. The current percentage increase in mana regeneration it provided was only 101%, doubling his regeneration. That wasn¡¯t enough but he understood the limitation was that the source of energy wasn¡¯t an energy-rich source to begin with. With how much trial and error he underwent, he knew why his design failed.
There was only so much mana he could extract from himself. His mana was not able to give him more, no matter how efficient his design was.
He boiled it down to a few possible factors.
One, his mana purity wasn¡¯t high enough to do what he wanted to do with it.
Two, his mental strength was too weak to carry out the extreme operations that a combustion engine required. So he had to stick with a steam turbine type of engine that was redesigned too many times throughout skill refinement. This might be reasonable and he subconsciously might not want to distribute any more than 30% of his mental capacity.
Three, he just exhausted himself and his self-preservation stopped him short of hurting himself beyond recovery. To check this, he just had to go back to trying to evolve the skill again now that he recovered
¡°Good morning sleepyhead.¡± The black-haired lady sat up with her arms still hugging the tiger plushie tightly.
¡°You look like the sleepy one.¡± Ebony combed her hair to the side.
¡°Okay now?¡± She laid her head against the tigers head and slumped onto the cushions weakly.
¡°Mmm,¡± She probably knew by gut feeling but he answered all the same.
¡°Fight?¡±
¡°Mmm,¡± He didn''t lose any conditioning levels but it was only a matter of time so he wanted to get moving as soon as possible.
Her mind sharpened immediately as she got excited enough to slowly change states.
Needless to say, her swordsmanship improved again.
While his proficiency with Ethereal Form Arts had mostly peaked, she was still improving. When she had a full head of red hair, without any mana enhancement she was more than two times faster than him so it was hard to get a lead on her with purely sword technique.
Thanks to being a good example and the pressure she put on him, his swordsmanship was seeing steady improvements.
He wasn¡¯t able to fully hide the openings that he leaves during wide swings which highlights greatswords¡¯ advantages of hitting hard and heavy but he could almost knock Xin back with a swing. Considering his lower physical stats and the lower strength scaling a tier 3 technique has over a tier 4 art, he could call himself a proper swordsman now that he could display the strengths of a greatsword.
After all, her twin swords were held single-handedly and were a speed and agility-focused Art. The strength behind her strikes needed to be built up over combos that layered over each other.
Both at the base version, he would lose every spar when he held Icicle. Without it, he won 8 out of 10 unless she cheats and pulses herself with a bit of vitality. The 2 losses out of 10 were because she was changing her stat ratios mid-battle with her two-state change ability. As they battled, she improved faster than he did and if he was forced into a poor position unable to break her combos past a certain number, her sword art completely trashed him within the next minute.
But her win rate hasn¡¯t increased after she found a more suitable stat distribution.
Taking this into mind, he predicted that with magic he should have the upper hand. It was too bad that most of his spells didn¡¯t do much to her when she went super fire mode and melted even the air around them. Sound magic was useless if sound moved slower than her, even with the backing of his mental prowess. Sometimes, in cooperative times he couldn¡¯t keep his buff on her stable because she moved so much faster than his sound magic.
Gravity at its current strength should help more than before and bring her down to a speed he could at least see and react to. Torrent Path and direct control over her body parts would be impossible. Not to the extent of Oplot who has an unbelievably wide and tough magic body but he could conjure mana or spells anywhere within 20 metres of her body. It was proof that she had a constitution skill with strong magic properties.
Ice, although could withstand heat to a great degree did not exceed her 750% Fortification for fire magic¡¯s heat. He could combat it with mana compression, but ranged projectiles couldn¡¯t be recharged with mana if he was close to her and the spell was not in physical contact with him. So in practice, only augmentation and maintaining his weapon and clothes with ice was the best use of his mana. Any more would be wasteful.
While her fire would burn out his mana reserves if he was determined to use ice magic, it would do the same to her because her spells weren¡¯t exactly mana-friendly either.
¡®So the question is how big her current reserves are. That would defeat the purpose. I don¡¯t need to outlast her. Can my Domain buff exceed her ridiculous physical enhancements? After seeing her slay the Necrochitins¡the answer is probably no, although she can¡¯t kill me.¡¯ Ebony greatly needed the mental acceleration because his spells had been conjuring into existence too slowly.
His eyes could pick up her shadows thanks to Perception but his mind was too slow to react with a spell, not even Will was fast enough and that included the defences that Dusk could conjure for him. The only thing that could barely react would be his body through reflex but she could trick his predictive reflexes so it wasn''t reliable.
It should be better now but Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge was a Generic Skill that was comparatively lower in level.
¡®Reaction speed is my biggest issue. She has a reaction speed fortification, mental acceleration skill, lightning elemental reaction increase maybe more than I¡¯m unaware of. Vitality, fire, blood and lightning for internal augmentation and wind for external. Her limit was greatly raised, highly likely due to her third core skill which should be something that raises her constitution or reduces the burden of enhancement. For now, her enhancements are all under tier 4. Let¡¯s test out Battleforge.¡¯ Ebony thought that he should put all the information he knew together with gut feeling to run some realistic simulations but he quickly stopped when his foot fell forward to catch his fall.
¡®No way, did it just suck up all my mental resources. Okay, so I can¡¯t run intense simulations without shutting the Mireloom Chassis Engine off.¡¯ Ebony did a test with Knights around him against some freelancers that he remembered but he could easily run dozens of simulations in parallel and it wouldn¡¯t even strain his mind.
He must have too much information about Ning Xin and himself compared to other people. If he ran one simulation at a time, did it in 3 times slow motion and took away variables such as ambient conditions, he should be able to get an initial result soon. Since he was free and wasn¡¯t in combat, he dedicated 20% of his mental capacity to simulations. Some against Hector, Mallory, Wilson, Korben and a few others.
He would¡¯ve simulated more against Frost Elves but Korben the village guardian was the one who duel Ning Xin, and he didn¡¯t have much information on the older King-ranked Frost Elves except maybe Korta who spammed huge ice bombardments on the Trolls.
Oplot and Vent, the strongest Frost Elf were out of his league and he also had too little information on them. Simulations with them would produce worthless and inaccurate results.
¡®I can¡¯t forget the steampunk young master person. And maybe the mandate users too, can I simulate using those guys I fought but ramp up their powers? Better than nothing, at least I have some combat data on them.¡¯
The less information he had the lower the accuracy of his simulations but they also take little mental effort to process.
¡°I¡¯ll get the rations and cook. Be back in 2 hours.¡± After exercise was obvious meal time, the two of them were left with emergency rations in their bags. It would last them a few months and they wouldn¡¯t touch it as long as they had other sources of food. Maybe a few weeks depending on their immense consumption.
She was telling him to free up his schedule. First of all, he really needed the bathroom.
With hygiene taken care of, he found Hector talking to one of his clones at the edges of the fortress. He was eating dry souper bread-like crackers with some freelance buddies of his. Along with clone number Nine.
Ebony showed up with his real body, and his clone seemed to feel that coming with his real body had its significance even if they could connect in real-time. The clone turned itself transparent and Flickered away.
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Naturally, he didn¡¯t ask for a fight. He just caught up with one of his very few friends while attempting conversation with new people. The topic of conversation was on the best mount rider. Ebony didn¡¯t know anything about the racing scene which was one of the most popular entertainment amongst men besides duelling. But hearing about the many types of mounts that people domesticated was intriguing nonetheless.
He found out about Oplot¡¯s success with the Venom Legion¡¯s Powerhouse destruction and their retreat. The man was currently beyond the Arcanite Cortex¡¯s portal together with an expedition party of high nobles including some of the Lord family members.
Navin was back at Tidal, he had barriers and duties to take care of on the surface.
In his place, Yvette the Life Queen was done here but Tetramyth¡¯s had increased their fervour in dealing the fortress some damage rather than passively waiting for experience to go their way. Likely due to the Venom Legion retreating, the risk must have begun to outweigh the rewards.
Oplot¡¯s team might have trouble with the Arcanite Cortex as the Necrochitins and Silversonic were rushing through their portal to send support. At the same time, more Arcanite Cortexes were found on the battlefield because they could fend off magic attacks and lead the charge against portions of the fortress with allochromes. Without Navin present, the fortress was taking a beating that exceeded what help Ebony provided to the resident''s recovery.
Ebony also heard the news that Necrochitins could last as long as they wanted because they were concurrently invading multiple planets. They did not lack numbers nor did they lack fighters. But the mood around the freelancers and Imperial Army was bright.
The fact that they didn¡¯t fall after this long and even repelled one of the subspecies off was good. Even better, the average levels of the entire army were raised a lot. Maybe their skills still stagnated around tier 3, maybe a couple of 4s but adding 20 or 30 levels along with much more skill levels surely made a difference. Not to mention, Yvette raised the survival rate a few times.
The number of freelancers present hadn¡¯t increased but didn¡¯t decrease either. Freelancers weren¡¯t losing good jobs on the surface. Because the Royal family was attempting to centralise the continent which was quite a dream, they had plenty of delivery or collection requests for materials from other dungeons and the wilds.
Wildlife was considerably dangerous after some cities were deserted and the creatures grew by themselves in an upward trend but it didn¡¯t grow that fast compared to the imperial citizens at the moment. Excluding places such as Hoarfrost Glades, Vermin Paradise and Fragadal¡¯s Sea.
Hector was promoting some job opportunities. A huge project had been made public three months ago. The Empire was building railways. Staying in one place was deemed impossible since there were too many dungeons that provided goods, experiences and materials. They also made public the existence of other worlds but the general education and awareness of that was lacking. The railway design was actually bought from one of these other worlds.
¡®Trains, somehow I¡¯m connecting it to the steampunk guys. Maybe it''s from their homeworld. And, Sister Jing hasn¡¯t contacted us.¡¯ Ebony did not expect such advancement from the Empire in the short time that he zoned out.
¡°So what are those allies like?¡± A fire mage that wore scaled armour questioned the Prince. The public announcement came with knowledge of diplomatic relationships with 3 other powers closest to Elcra.
¡°Eh¡I know one of them is Nymph-dominant, Oreads controls the lands and Nereids the sea. They are a race of nature spirits and are allies thanks to the Elves. They are the strongest of the three allies we have. I think the average citizen is King-ranked around level 580.¡±
¡°What?! Average citizen? They can crush us,¡±
¡°Their numbers are small, less than a hundred thousand. And they are afraid of the Elves. I¡¯m not very sure, but they might be a subordinate force of the Elves.¡± The young Prince was hesitant to share.
¡°Are the Elves really that amazing? They couldn¡¯t take over the Empire.¡±
¡°More like don¡¯t care to.¡±
Although the conversation got slightly political and Hector was avoiding topics, Ebony listened carefully. The Nymphs were allies in name. They were not technologically or magically advanced but they did have plenty of natural resources to trade in exchange for new species of plants and animals for them to farm and diversify their planet. As proof of their subordination, it appears that there was an Elven village on that planet that dealt with spatial travel and was the central of their planet.
¡®If there is an elven village, there is a domain. Hmm, they should have an elder Frost Elf build one around Arcta.¡¯ Ebony pondered.
The other two allies were human societies and Hector hemmed and hawed a lot more often which says a lot about the current relations with them. His excuse was that these allies were a lot further and he was just a small time prince who wasn¡¯t told much. He was a few generations down the line and not the best at keeping his mouth shut.
¡®So the freelancers and soldiers are estimating this war to end in less than 5 years unless the Tetramyth persists and gets other sisters here. The presence of the Elves is the reason why no more Tetramyth sisters are joining. Hence the Elves'' overbearing arrogance in recent times. It seems like their connection with their home world has strengthened and the Tetramyth isn¡¯t pushing as hard.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t concerned with the politics of the world but understood the necessity of learning about his immediate surroundings for safety reasons.
Ebony quickly went back for meal time before the stipulated time. It was no feast but she managed to get meat other than ant flesh.
When he tried to tell her about unique skills, she almost crashed the table and put her hands over his mouth in time. ¡°Whatever you were about to say, will put me and probably us in danger, sound magic or not.¡±
Seeing how serious she was, he didn¡¯t try any further. He knew how useless sound magic was if good or perceptive mages were around. It wasn¡¯t that important or urgent but he¡¯d like to have her come up with something before their next evolution.
¡°Ebony, I had a very bad premonition. I don¡¯t know what will happen, probably soon. But I can¡¯t stop it. That¡¯s what it feels like.¡±
¡°Death?¡± Her intuition worked best when it came to her survival.
¡°I don¡¯t know, but it feels different. I feel¡sad instead of scared.¡± She didn¡¯t hide her eyes behind her mask for the duration of their meal, and he now knew the reason.
¡°Don¡¯t look at me like that, I¡¯m far harder to kill than you are. I¡¯m more worried about you. Please make calm decisions as much as you can. Ration your supplies well.¡± Perhaps he had been infected with good instincts. Deep down, he sensed something abrew the moment she gave him that soft¡piercing stare. Today he learnt that looking at someone¡¯s eyes can hurt and make one feel warm at the same time.
The silence he felt as they stared at each other seemed as if aeons had passed. Felt longer than all his mental training to refine his unique skill but barely seconds had passed.
¡°Promise me.¡±
Ebony wanted to say that he avoided making promises he couldn¡¯t keep. Promises were sacred to him. But he knew she felt the same way so he simply waited for her to gather her words.
¡°We will find each other.¡±
¡°You would have to promise the same for me to do that.¡±
¡°I promise. I¡¯ll cut down anything that stands in the way. Sharpen my blade when I can¡¯t and then cut it down.¡±
Instead of replying, Ebony stood up and Flickered away to search for something he prepared. Last year, he gave her a special whetstone for her birthday following the wok. It wasn¡¯t as good in quality as the wok but she loved it all the same.
He also received his first birthday present from her in the form of a black gem that could fit in a myriad bracelet and other extractors. It was her crystallised blood that went through Kong Jing¡¯s processing and could be eaten. It was a potent potion of sorts.
This year, her birthday already passed but he long prepared her present. A necklace with a ring looped on it. It reminded him of the one that Kong Jing put on him that had a pair of rings but he could never remember or even see on his neck. It was still there, but out of sight and touch. Weirdly enough, it doesn¡¯t do anything and didn¡¯t appear to be some form of protection or it would¡¯ve activated so many times already.
The ring made this time was 100% done by himself. Since he could compress mana to solidification into a mana ore, he used it as the centre gem. Changed it into an ice mana ore, and charged it up. As for the body of the ring it was made with the highest rarity titanic mythril that he had leftover. Melted down and mixed with his pure mana ore. The ice mana ore gem was filled with his Will that he made to fall dormant.
It was a trick he picked up from his clones that were above the surface. When he took too long to return to them, they learnt how to fall dormant to keep Will from dissipating as fast as it did. This allows them to survive longer and wait for him to recharge them. All thanks to the experience Model 38889 underwent.
It wasn¡¯t even a generic skill yet but that was a job for his clones and Dusk.
It wasn¡¯t a complete success but could be called a mini or incomplete core of his domain. A second Dusk in seed form so to speak. However, it couldn¡¯t cast a domain. It was a work in progress.
The ring itself had his personal runic formula embedded. The usual capacity, absorption and conversion that he worked on and refined for years. Along with his evolution and increased Intelligence, he was able to sculpt finer formulations. There was more space to work with, and his formulations have been getting far more complex. The current formula was more than twice as potent and efficient compared to the version he used to put on Dusk¡¯s scales.
With his Will imbued, the ring didn¡¯t require complex capabilities. Sadly, his runic knowledge lacked anything to do with Will or he would have started experimentation. His runic formulations were constantly updated and with his runic sculpting skill, Dusk¡¯s sustainability without him had only been rising. His pet tree had a different formula in use. One that fits the form of a scale and had additional effects such as the range of absorption of ambient mana. It didn¡¯t work within the fortress but he still had Dusk sculpt them every time it forms a new scale.
Instead of durability and toughness, the ring had heat resistance together with the necklace chain.
¡°It¡¯s late, but happy birthday.¡± Ebony stood behind her and put on the necklace. Bending over he made a move and took advantage of her nonreactive state to land an attack. They were both conscious this time. She grabbed his hands that were holding her face after a second but didn¡¯t pull away.
¡°Tastes like chicken.¡± Ebony licked the oil on his lips after letting her go.
She rubbed her lips with her sleeves before pushing her chair off and scrubbing her sleeves all over his lips before returning the attack. Poor chair shattered since he stood still and she didn¡¯t let it off.
A deafening alarm rang outside but Ebony didn¡¯t let the alarm into the house.
¡°Necrochitin Saintess sighted.¡±
Chapter 330: Retreat
¡°Hmm, so they are ignoring treaties.¡± Ning Xin said with red hair up to the halfway mark.
Ebony took a cloth and pulled on her lips that were blackened with her blood, ¡°you¡¯re going to ignore that you smashed too hard?¡±
Her black blood didn¡¯t bother him at all. His blood wasn¡¯t red either. They were just a bit awkward. Even if he had seen how it was done, they moved a little differently and were both inexperienced.
¡°You were kidnapped by a Saintess before, I don¡¯t think that¡¯s any surprise.¡± He never put much thought into the ¡®treaties¡¯; it was only a matter of time. They were a bunch of hungry ants, trained or not, they just wanted to feast.
¡°It''s not. The fortress won¡¯t fall and the Necrochitin aren¡¯t the issue. To us, or me.¡± Ning Xin hid her eyes again but he was sure she was hiding her blush and nervous, shifty eyes. Her confidence waned before her embarrassment as her lips quivered in his pinch.
¡°Tell me when you feel like the bad premonition is happening.¡± He wanted to wash the wound with water but the wound was already healed and no scars remained.
¡°Ebony!¡± Mallory ran over and knocked on their door.
¡°I heard the announcement. Is she walking over or is a Saintess powerful and fast enough to cross the entire battlefield in seconds.¡± Ebony opened the door to see the ever-prim and proper Crown Princess who was nearby to get the effects of his aura.
¡°She¡¯s just watching, we don¡¯t know if she¡¯s going to move. I heard that the laws that prevent individuals of great power from destroying natural worlds are protected by Gods. I¡¯m not sure how tightly controlled these laws are or if the Goddess of War Tetramyth herself would even bother with them.¡±
¡°You can get to the point.¡±
¡°We need fast legs to call grea- I mean, call the Barrier King down. Two of you have the fastest pair. If you can bring along a mind mage, you don¡¯t need to go all the way to the surface before the mind mage can connect a call to the surface.¡±
Ning Xin gripped his shirt. He tapped it and waited for her to release him. Both of them put on their robes and equipped themselves.
¡°You have that massive callstone, I was sure you could connect to the surface at the expense of mana.¡± He commented while walking out and patting Dusk to unground itself.
¡°It doesn¡¯t work¡after the Saintess stepped past the portal the battlefield was drowned in her vitality. The barrier is protecting us.¡±
Ebony could hear evacuations being done, they were letting soldiers in as fast as they could without compromising defences. The multi-layer barrier made it possible to keep them coming in batches.
¡°So you want us to walk out of the barrier voluntarily.¡± Ebony might like a good challenge, to the point of putting his life on the line at times but he was not stupid. Not every opponent was a challenge. He could not replicate The Indestructible and take no damage.
Ning Xin sneakily raised her ear a little. The callstone on her mask was on and he cut and connected to the link since his bracelet was in his bag. ¡°Going up feels safer. The lesser of two dangers. Hopefully only two.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t you say the fortress won¡¯t fall?¡±
¡°Won¡¯t fall, not no damage. My gut is wrenching more at the thought of staying here than going up.¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll trust it this time. Any guesses why?¡±
¡°I think the Saintess crossed over not to destroy the fortress or planet, if she wants to kill a few individuals it might not cause any harm to her. She can blame it on an accident, we could potentially kill people with our overflowing essence. If a Saintess insists, a few individual deaths shouldn¡¯t matter. The ¡®law¡¯ or whatever protects the planet and maybe civilization, not a few individuals.¡±
¡°I doubt it¡¯s us particularly.¡± Ebony was confident but not arrogant, there were quite a number of people that were stronger than they were.
¡°Yes. I think she just wants to slaughter all the noteworthy and strong ones. While The Indestructible and Navin are away. She probably doesn''t think much about the barrier. Untargeted deaths might just be small casualties in her and greater beings¡¯ eyes.¡±
¡°But she¡¯s already out of the portal. Although most Tetramyths don¡¯t have magic or mana sense, I don¡¯t think my stealth can hide from a Saintess whose power is necromancy. She must use mana or some other form of energy, I can¡¯t guarantee invisibility and my abilities to hide mana signature are good enough for us to return to the surface."
¡°I think it¡¯s a better choice. Like I said, the barrier wouldn¡¯t stop her. She¡¯s probably waiting for her True Kin to report to her about the location of strong people. By then, it¡¯ll be too late to run.¡±
¡°Are you going to tell Mallory about your Intuition?¡±
¡°...yes. It would weigh on me if I didn¡¯t say anything.¡±
¡°Then tell her, I¡¯ll pack up. Let me confirm, mobility and stealth?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Then I¡¯ll disperse Dusk and pack up. I¡¯ll cast a small ranged domain myself. You¡¯ll stick close to me, charge energy and you can carry me if we¡¯re followed.¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
With their high-speed meeting complete under a second, he let Xin communicate with the Crown Princess.
He connected to Dusk¡¯s Will and they had a mutual understanding immediately. Although there was a slight waste of mana, Dusk melted itself down and allowed the power source orb to absorb its body. It took over 4 minutes before the large tree turned into a runic sculpted seed pit that encased its power source. Albeit a seed 2 metres across.
Ebony packed the orb and his piano into his bag. He already sent a recall for all of his clones. Thankfully, they were all in range but 2 of them were at work outside the barrier. He told them to help with the retreat but to get ready to turn invisible and get to him when they moved out.
¡®I¡¯m glad we have a policy to always have some food we don¡¯t touch.¡¯ Ebony eyed the crates within his bag. It would easily last him 6 months even at maximum energy output. But weeks for Ning Xin. She couldn¡¯t stay in tip-top condition for 6 months so if he spread it out, the same amount of food might last her a month or two. But they were experienced, she should have a greater volume of food as emergency supplies.
Ebony was at an all-time alert, food was power for her. He rushed and lifted her robe up to check her bag. In case she overate or fed him with more food than she should¡¯ve over the time he had been in a trance.
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¡°I knew it.¡± He got under her robe and steadily took the labelled crates out to stuff into hers. The organised packing and labelling made it quick. She struggled when she found out and reacted to his movement but he already had his Domain spread out and locked her down. Without her enhancement, he held her limbs down with ease.
¡®3 months of maximum output for me. Easily a year if I don¡¯t fight. That should be enough. Can we cash out some food from the army? I¡¯ll try!¡¯ Ebony Flickered to the warehouses and logistical supply.
They wasted 6 whole minutes and he didn¡¯t dally, sending his thoughts to Ning Xin immediately she reacted even faster than him, knowing her weakness.
Mallory seemed to trust Ning Xin¡¯s words, understanding the Xeng¡¯s lineage of being a Divination mage¡¯s granddaughter. She was standing there, no longer as composed as she commanded people and spread the news to the higher-ups. It was nice to know someone with social and military power who trusted their words.
There was a hard limit to how much food an individual could buy directly, outside of allocated quantities. And sadly, only another 3 days worth each. 3 days for normal humans were less than 1 for him at max output and hours for Ning Xin. They did not force their wishes upon the army, they needed the food too.
¡°When is the best time to move?¡±
¡°Not now. Let me think¡when the Saintess attacks, we go the other way around. Let¡¯s get to Mallory again, I hope the mind mage is ready.¡±
¡°Over here!¡±
¡°Hector?¡± Xin showed her surprise.
¡°I¡¯m a mind mage too, and my range isn¡¯t too shabby.¡± Hector¡¯s words didn¡¯t match his actions of raising a large refrigerator-sized box. It contained a large mind elemental ore, crafted into the Empire military callstone and had its capabilities enchanted but they feared communications wouldn¡¯t be secure if other powers land on Elcra.
¡°Did you hear? What are the Royal¡¯s plans?¡±
¡°Great-grandma is facilitating. She¡¯s gathering everyone that can fight the Emperors to get close to her and a group of Elves. Together with our Lord family¡¯s barrier mages, they can stay alive as long as great-grandma has mana. Even if their bodies were mutilated or torn apart, they wouldn¡¯t die. However, I think she¡¯s really crazy. All the Elves and Nobles are challenging her orders right about now.¡±
¡°What orders?¡±
¡°She wants the elite group of possible targets to go out of the fortress with her, build a small camp around herself. This way, the fortress wouldn¡¯t be attacked at all. Reducing casualties. Assuming Scarlet¡¯s gut is right. She plans to stay nearby, near enough to charge back in a second if the Saintess does decide to attack the fortress but¡¡±
¡°Hurry up and say it!¡± Ning Xin had 3 quarters of her hair red. She was getting antsy not due to her Intuition, but her accelerated mind and state.
¡°They are doubting the Lord Family¡¯s barrier mages who aren¡¯t great-grandpa. If they die, all the elites die in one fell swoop. Then the fortress is doomed. The magic towers can¡¯t kill the Emperors, it wouldn¡¯t work against the Saintess no matter how much mana they throw.¡±
¡°What are the seers saying?¡±
¡°They support the Life Queen¡¯s decision.¡± Mallory flew over on her invisible barrier.
¡°Are you coming along?¡± Ning Xin was tapping her feet and stopped for a moment, anxious to hear what she didn¡¯t want to hear. They were good friends and Ning Xin was surprisingly soft in character outside of battle.
¡°I must stay. There must be a Royal member present to keep the army¡¯s morale up.¡±
¡°You are probably a target too.¡± Ebony roughly knew who was marked whenever they got out of the fortress. Hector and Mallory were part of the group. Mallory had both the Life Queen and the Barrier King¡¯s talent combined. She was quite the magical genius, the greatest Ebony had encountered to date since he hadn''t seen younger Elves.
¡°No matter. Make sure my little cousin gets home safe, and make sure he doesn¡¯t slip back here unless the Barrier King is with him.¡± Mallory patted Hector¡¯s back and turned around to get to her duties.
¡°Young master. Leave the young lady¡¯s wellbeing to me.¡± A shadow flashed beside them at quiet, breakneck speeds.
¡°Wel!¡± Hector exclaimed at the old man in a suit. It was his old guard and Navin¡¯s butler, Welser.
¡®I can¡¯t sense him through gravitational disruptions anymore.¡¯ According to Ning Xin¡¯s Intuition, this old man didn¡¯t give her a feeling of strength but one of overwhelming danger.
The old man was also the leader of the Royal Elite Guards, a secret one. They never showed up on the battlefield but it was obvious they were wherever the Royal Members were.
Before they realised, this old man had his hands on both his and Xin¡¯s shoulders, ¡°and I¡¯ll leave the young master¡¯s well-being to you kids.¡±
Ebony sensed a wide but disdainful smile under Xin¡¯s mask, ¡°you were about to threaten us weren¡¯t you?¡±
¡®Oh, her personality skewed to aggressive.¡¯ He shrugged the hand off. They weren¡¯t afraid of most King ranked individuals. It took exceptions like Yvette, Navin, Oplot, and the combatant Elves in general.
One look at the dwarves and beastmen counterparts of Kings and they knew that these races weren¡¯t a large individual threat. The beastmen were poor users of mana, and their vitality-based enhancements were rudimentary. The dwarves were more crafter than combatant though there were a few outliers.
The two of them fear the beastmen the least. They did everything the beastmen could do physically but far better and they had magic with multiple elemental advantages.
As for the foxmen, they were mostly seers or users of foxfire. Just an offshoot of fire mana. The fire mana they conjure and convert is different thanks to their racial traits which further develop as the individual evolves. They were usually slow-moving and weakly propelled spells, but the fires were extremely hard to put out. It might be a spirit and fire magic, not simply fire which may be difficult for them to defend against so they should just dodge it if they were to face it in future.
Ebony now believed the story about the number of tails the foxmen had that correlated to their evolutionary rank. One at birth, a journeyman had two, a master three, grandmaster four, king five.
With the same pattern, it would be six for an Emperor. Seven for a Saint.
¡®Hmm, so if a nine tail fox is a God, there is a rank in between for an eight-tailed fox? So the beastmen have ancestral powers too, just not on this planet. Or even connected at all. Unless a nine tailed fox doesn¡¯t exist.¡¯
Welser would follow them out. Using Darkness magic to help with stealth to get through the exit and to the first layer of the magical elevator. They were lucky the elevator was just a floating platform along a shaft. With their speed taking the elevator would be a waste of time.
¡°What are we waiting for?¡±
¡°My men, I¡¯m also in charge of a resupply run. They are gathering all the spatial storage items they can get that aren¡¯t wagon-sized. Ah don¡¯t worry, I know the two of you aren¡¯t planning to stick around. I will also only come back with great-grandpa. I don¡¯t know about Scarlet, but Ebony should get away. They know that it¡¯s thanks to you that great grandpa can even return to the surface to deal with other stuff.¡±
¡°How did they find out?¡± Ebony did not expect to hear about his involvement.
¡°After so many months, your mana has infused the entire fortress and some of your aura sticks onto people. Even those weak mana sensitivity would have sensed something after so long. And I¡¯m one of the very few who has Emperor-rank kills.¡± Ning Xin explained.
¡®I see why her Intuition is telling us to get away. We¡¯re one of the high-priority targets.¡¯
¡°Don¡¯t worry, although many of the elder Elves left with uncle Oplot their Matriarch is present along with the Archduke and Archduchess of Elves. The Archduchess of beastmen, Medina who¡¯s a seer hasn¡¯t run away so things shouldn¡¯t turn out that ugly. I mean, almost half an hour passed with the Tetramyth Saintess standing as still as a statue.¡± Hector yawned and reminded Ning Xin that they had to wait for the Saintess to make a move. It wouldn¡¯t be funny if she moved the moment they left the barrier.
¡°How¡¯s your gut feeling?¡±
¡°Tense. We don¡¯t know what skills that ant has. What if she could target all of us individually without causing mass destruction? I¡¯ll be honest, I think both of us are higher in priority than we think or I wouldn¡¯t have suggested going up right now. Either that, or she¡¯s planning something else instead.¡±
¡®That is concerning. If there¡¯s danger on the surface, it¡¯s highly likely the mandate users or the steampunk people. Have our magic bodies exceeded the mandate user¡¯s ridiculous stealth that made the steampunk people forget our existence or are the mandate users going to come into Tidal? Maybe they realised that too many soldiers and Nobles aren¡¯t present on the surface, and are no longer afraid to come in to get me? The young master guy is not an issue, so the space mage might take action?¡¯ Ebony ran through computations as time passed tensely.
One of his clones helped him repack his bag to have Dusk near the entrance for him to draw mana from.
¡®If I can¡¯t stop whatever¡¯s going to happen, then I¡¯ll put all my clones into dormancy and stuff them in her bag. Only six are present but they¡¯ll do. I need my Will to cast.¡¯ Ebony felt glad, Xin¡¯s uncertainty gave him confidence that she wasn¡¯t in danger.
He was.
Chapter 331: Melody of Mesmerisation
¡°Uhhh.¡±
Over the next hour, they stood near Hector and Welser who received report after report.
¡®Now that¡¯s more like a necromancer, and it answers how she will take multiple targets¡¡¯
The Empire¡¯s imagination had been limited. It made him wonder why he also assumed that the Saintess of Necrochitins only had Emperor-ranked revived soldiers.
Because a second, third, fourth creature showed themselves from the portal and was appraised to all be Saints. There were no signs of stopping. Before, they were all limited by eyesight and their Appraise. Word has been sent down that the seers confirmed those ''Saints'' were not the Necrochitin Saintess but revived bodies of that rank.
From the odd and even parts, many were unknown body parts.
¡®Did she mix and match her sister''s body parts? And is that a complete body that was revived? I don¡¯t recognise that subspecies. So far, there are no body parts of other races altogether. Does her necromancy only work on Tetramyths?¡¯ Ebony looked at the memory light screening the battlefield. The video technology was far better than he imagined.
¡°We should move now, any longer and there would be too many on our tails. Yvette might want to reconsider going past the barrier.¡± Ning Xin grabbed him and Hector by the collar and tore through the streets. The layered barrier opening cycles were timed so they could only exit as fast as they cycled.
By now, more than half of the troops outside the fortress had returned. The rest was too far out; a vanguard was still required to prevent pounding on the barrier, reducing mana consumption.
Welser should be following them, Hector would say something if the old man wasn¡¯t fast enough.
¡°Step into this.¡± Ebony patted the divided wardrobe he conjured. It resembles a coffin but he didn¡¯t care. It was the best way to carry a dozen people with spatial storage in the form of crates. They were young soldiers but proper Grandmasters.
If he had to guess, they might be children of Nobles. This was the most number of people Welser was confident of keeping hidden on the move.
¡°Do you want to be able to see, or not?¡± He asked the soldiers. As much as visual awareness might save them, they may not be able to see at the speeds they planned to move. They were rather obedient when Hector prodded them to get on. He placed two rows of 6 back to back and Hector sat on top, together with Ning Xin.
Staying afloat, they didn¡¯t have to squeeze through the horde to get through the gates.
¡®So the old man can fly too,¡¯
¡°Can you keep up?¡± He asked the elite guard and butler just in case. If the old man didn¡¯t know his speed, then he might be a terrible guard when Ebony had been around Hector and Mallory for so long.
¡°There won¡¯t be an issue. Please do use your invisibility spell over us, I will ward us with darkness after we¡¯re out of sight.¡± when they were under the thick gate borders, he did as asked. Darkness fell upon them for an instant but his sight returned right after, ¡°we should not be seen or sensed.¡±
¡°Xin, which exit should we use?¡± There were only 2 exits, both led to the same defended elevator shaft but were very far from each other. He was actively using sound magic.
¡°The closer one.¡±
¡°Welser is it? Can your darkness magic hide gravitation spells? If I want to shoot ourselves forward-¡±
¡°You would consume an entire region of gravity to use a spell of that proportion, that exceeds my capabilities.¡±
¡°Got it.¡±
Despite all the caution, no death reaper fell upon their necks when they finally got past the last fortress gate and barrier. Flickering through the noisy skies without anyone noticing. The three-hour-long augmented Flicker to the closest exit was silent.
Not even a single stray spell or ant limb flew close to them.
They didn¡¯t let their guard down even after getting through the heavily defended exits. The guards were already informed of their passage but it still took way too long for the jumpy fire swordswoman.
At least the Tetramyths couldn¡¯t transform and act human which made passage relatively straightforward.
¡°Stay safe young master.¡± Welser bowed to his Prince and bid farewell before dispersing into darkness.
¡°How are you feeling?¡± He probed his dangermeter.
¡°Better. Let¡¯s keep going.¡±
Hector continued to sit on the rows of coffins while Ebony checked the location of the moving platform to be underneath them before he Flickered upwards. He opened a private speech thread, ¡°Xin, what¡¯s the plan?¡±
¡°Run me through the possibilities you have thought of.¡±
¡°One, remain in Tidal.¡± He sensed her reaction before continuing.
¡°It may prevent the Mandate users from coming in. We might be able to resist being called out now. What other dangers other than the steampunk people who may not even be in Tidal? Even if they are--never mind they have an amazing space mage, the entire city might be within his range.
Two, stay and ask for help. Possibly Vent, the Frost Elves. Though Vent is my strongest bet after Gen and Ful.
Three, leave. We would be exposed, and our chances of outrunning Emperors and a space mage are low but we are better at using the wilds and random variables to our advantage. But we don¡¯t know if the danger you are feeling is from either of these two groups. If it''s neither, staying in Tidal and hunkering down in Dusk might not be a bad idea.¡±
Ebony had a feeling the Mandate user after him was not merely a King and even if they were, he just assumed they were stronger. The issue was that in either scenario, the space mage was the biggest obstacle. He didn¡¯t think he could hide or run from a space mage.
Fighting was a choice, but neither of them could touch Kong Jing when they tried. Space magic was not fun to go against.
Hunkering down, as nice and advantageous it was for him, wasn''t a solution. If something could endanger them, it could tear through his mana reserves.
¡°Four. You stay, I¡¯ll leave. Quiet. I¡¯m the attraction aren¡¯t I? As long as you don¡¯t show up, we have one less trouble. That¡¯s why you¡¯re keeping quiet.¡± He might not have the same top speed as she did but he was much better at running.
¡°Don¡¯t make me angry, I can¡¯t control myself well now.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t make things difficult for me. In all cases where I¡¯m a target, they want me for my mana. I¡¯m not that unaware. No need to put yourself at unnecessary risk. If I¡¯m caught, I¡¯ll just escape later. Or you can even come save me like a damsel in distress. But if we¡¯re both caught or you get killed, then that¡¯s the end.¡± Ebony did a 90 degree turn without missing a beat and left the first elevator shaft and started going through the long tunnel upwards.
¡°I know that logically, but I won¡¯t follow that. Just say that I¡¯m not in control of my actions. Next plan!¡± She crossed her arms and turned her back on him.
¡°Five. Following your danger senses, hunt.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t hesitate from the lack of killing intent towards them currently. Actively hunting down people and not monsters without provocation was a first, especially for his ''eye for an eye'' mindset but, he was willing to take that step. He was pushed under for long enough.
¡°Go towards the danger?¡± She turned towards him again in surprise.
¡°Did that feel better?¡± Sensitive to her obvious reactions, he noticed the positive feedback straight away.
¡°I-I think it does.¡±
¡°I suppose it suits us far better. Then we hit hard, fast.¡± Ebony had Dusk spit out a few plums. He used Will to encase the spell maintenance. ¡°3% power bombs, any more and they can¡¯t sustain themselves.¡± This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
It was a weakened version but it should do. He produced over a dozen and passed them to her, empty. She could fill them up when she wanted to use them. He already mixed his magic with them to help with gravitational expulsion and the usual mixture of ice and sound spells. 3% didn¡¯t sound like much, but their combined spell was just that much more powerful compared to their individual spells.
¡°Should I give you a few full-powered versions?¡±
¡°It¡¯s not worth the mana upkeep from me.¡±
¡°How about one? At least have a backup, you lack explosive power.¡±
¡°Let me compute¡it¡¯s not worth it unless I have to use them immediately. If it¡¯s 5%, I can keep it for a month at the risk of drying my reserves completely.¡± He thought hard about it and ran through dozens of simulations in parallel considering his mana reserves in Dusk and its power source. A full-powered bomb was too obvious to the surroundings and also consumed too much mana. Keeping one without letting it explode for more than a few minutes wouldn¡¯t be worth it already.
¡°WAIT! I had those!¡± She screamed in realisation and slipped the bag out from under her mantle.
Ebony held her steady with ice magic while Flickering towards the surface.
¡°...oh, I¡¯m glad you remembered.¡± He didn¡¯t get mad at her for forgetting. It was her personal compressed mana ores, using Kong Jing¡¯s industrial mana compressor. He noticed the moment she took it out but he didn¡¯t know she had them. Her mask had a few of his that provided healing.
¡°Give me a moment, I¡¯ll charge them with blood and fire. When you want an explosive, just crush these within your gravity and everything will spill out. Maybe not as powerful, but these are still Purples so they can contain quite a lot of energy. Sorry¡I only made 2 since I never thought they would be useful.¡±
¡°Thank you.¡± Ebony took them and stared at them for a bit. His mind was getting hot from the thousands of short simulations he was running. After a moment, he sealed them in ice and manipulated them through his nostrils, into his lungs along with his supply of frozen air capsules that he refreshed during the wait time in the fortress.
¡®My seal can hide vitality and mana, and if I get caught or cut apart I¡¯ll still have them unless they dig it out of my lungs.¡¯
The swordswoman didn¡¯t say anything about his actions.
It took 20 hours before they reached the second shaft. He set the soldiers down and took a break.
¡°After we get moving, we¡¯ll be surfacing in less than 5 hours so long as no obstacles come our way. Hector, did you manage to contact Navin?¡±
¡°Two hours ago. He¡¯s tying loose ends, and getting the resupply so that we can move back down as soon as possible.¡±
¡®So these people aren¡¯t going back down for sure.¡¯ He didn¡¯t look at the shivering soldiers. If it¡¯s just the crates, Navin could bring it along without an issue. He could lift a mountain-sized centipede with no issue, supply crates aren¡¯t a problem.
Once again, they restarted their trip up in surprising uneventfulness. Nothing sprung up on them in the heavily used routes for the army.
Navin was quietly waiting at the entrance, patting the young soldiers back before taking over.
¡°Navin.¡± Ebony knew they were in a rush and spilt their issues in hopes of a helping hand with accelerated sound magic. Obviously, he asked the greatest barrier mage on the continent for a defensive spell.
And fortunately, it didn¡¯t take Navin any effort to cast a spell on them. ¡°There is no time limit for this spell, a form of mana skin that reduces all damage except soul or mental damage taken by 99% until my mana runs out, it only takes damage that exceeds your defensive capabilities. Anything that can¡¯t put a dent in your health will not activate my spell so it can last longer. Those ¡®steampunk¡¯ people, I do not recognise their description. They must be illegal immigrants, be careful. Your close ally¡the Frost Elf is looking or rather, waiting for you at your house. I have to go now. Hector, this is the list of jobs I need you to complete. I¡¯ll leave Tidal to you and your cousins, no need to bend to the other Nobles and do as you wish.¡±
¡°Frost Elf? Koawe-no, then you would just tell me it''s him.¡± Ebony contemplated, this was out of his expectations. He didn¡¯t even need to call or run back to Arcta this way.
¡°Someone more intimidating, I didn¡¯t know they had someone like that.¡± Navin hurried the soldiers to pack their supply crates up and zipped away. They were in dire need of spatial technology.
¡®Vent then. Are things looking good?¡¯ Ebony looked at his danger detector but he couldn¡¯t spot any difference. Nothing seemed urgent but her Intuition couldn¡¯t be trusted fully.
In the end, he surfaced and walked into a noisy city without any attacks. As if Ning Xin was imagining things, things were as peaceful as could be. When he voted to go to the market and wholesaler for food, she routed him back home instead.
Ebony decided to let the clones on the surface do as they wished. Only 4 were bodyguards and academic students at the same time. The rest, such as Clone Number One who did jobs for the mage association to get access to books were out doing other quests or a casual hunt. He would gather them to reorganise priorities if he had time but the swordswoman¡¯s nervous reaction told him he didn¡¯t have the time.
The bodyguards were likely how the Frost Elf was supposedly in his house.
Getting home at top speed, he was right on the mark as Vent was feeding his cute orcas out in the yard.
Ebony checked that three of his clones were present, reading or sculpting new runic formulation. He immediately updated each other with the knowledge and memories each of them had. Vent arrived two days ago and his clones welcomed him in.
As for the reason, the strongest hunter of the Frost Elves was doing what he did best. Hunt.
¡°Those debtors are the remainders of the race called Nebulian. They led a monster horde upon Arcta and robbed Tuctra at the same time. They are preparing for their rise back to power. Where you are, they will come hence, I¡¯m here.¡± Vent¡¯s pressure on his clones'' body was absolute but the superior mage didn''t force his clones to do anything and the Will in his clones was unblemished.
It was clear that Vent and the combatant Kings were still present at Arcta and the monster horde had not been an issue but to successfully rob their main village, Tuctra was unexpected. Ebony didn¡¯t even know the location of Tuctra. That didn¡¯t matter, what mattered was that Vent was here to take the Mandate users, Nebulian, out of the equation.
¡®These three Chilblain Orcas are a force to be reckoned with. Is her Intuition just going coo coos?¡¯ Although he was confident he wouldn¡¯t be instantly killed by these Orcas, Ebony might not even be able to harm or handle one of them. Now that he didn¡¯t have to ask for help, and help arrived by itself he truly didn¡¯t know what was causing her to be on edge.
¡°Don¡¯t you have work to do?¡± Ebony asked Hector who followed them home.
¡°I was told to do as I wished. Now my friends are hiding something from me, do you think I¡¯ll sit around?¡±
¡°There is a problem.¡± Vent clapped and brushed his hands off the orca snacks.
The tall blue-skinned elven hunter¡¯s words and presence demanded attention. It was an intense sensation and completely opposite when he stood there in silence without a presence or leaking aura.
¡°Scarlet, am I right? Sixth-sense, I have something similar. Tell me about it.¡±
It felt like they repeated the same story for the umpteenth time but aloud this time, for Hector to hear the rest of the story.
¡°So you have decided to hunt. I¡¯ll join in, and you don¡¯t have to worry about the Nebulian. They have 3, proper level 812, 820 and 880 Emperors. They¡¯ve hidden and gained power for a long time. I don¡¯t know what gave them the confidence to strike now, but they must think Elva is full of herbivores.
¡°Uhm, I know this is rude but may I know your esteemed level?¡± Hector seemed to tip-toe around the tall Frost Elf with a scar on his neck.
¡°625. These boys and girls are the same. You can ride them, I will be enough for all of the Nebulian.¡± Vent rubbed the Orca¡¯s chin.
Hector¡¯s face was saying ¡®what gave you the guts!¡¯ in return but Ebony and Ning Xin only thought it was natural. Their instincts told them Vent would have no problem backing his words up.
¡°Boy, Barrier King¡¯s descendant¡you will be crucial.¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. I¡¯m no seer. Just do whatever feels right when the moment comes. Ready kids?¡± The hunter withdrew his awesome bow from his back which sent chills down their backs just standing next to the man.
¡°Mmm.¡±
They followed where Ning Xin felt the most uncomfortable going.
Unexpectedly, they found themselves in the market. One outside the central district.
¡°What are we looking at? No public destruction please, and these people are innocent.¡± Hector stared down. They were extremely far away from the market when the elven hunter stopped them.
¡°Spatial node, Barrier King¡¯s descendant. Your chaotic elements can destroy it, but a few things can happen. The caster will find out. You might be forcefully transported. Or an entire region may be transported. If we¡¯re unlucky, this is an offensive trap that tears space around when it gets destroyed. Hostile intent¡¯s blaring off from it, I suggest evacuating people as quietly as possible.¡± Vent had them retreat further after sensing that it was a probing node that was scanning people.
¡°Heheh there you are my student!¡± A young girl''s voice made Ning Xin jump and slash out but Vent held her blow by the sword grip.
¡°You¡¯re trying to kill me! Wahh!¡± Muse ran and hid behind Ebony.
¡°How did you find us?¡± Hector took a hard biscuit out to feed the girl that he was familiar with but she disdained the treat and took a cookie out of her cute pouch.
¡°I heard your souls and came over at your distress. Did you want to evacuate people? I can do that.¡± Muse landed on a roof from her flight. She cleared her throat and released a harmonic chime. No human vocal chords could produce such a pitch and rhythm.
¡®I¡¯m still as clueless as to what she¡¯s saying. More and more people are gathering around us but my gut is feeling worse.¡¯ Ebony kept up with the confusing ongoings but it only made him more irritated by the lack of knowledge. He noticed Muse coming towards them minutes ago.
Ning Xin wasn¡¯t the only one who felt something happening. Vent and this music teacher of his seemed to sense something too.
They watched as everyone in a 100km radius suddenly got up, looked away from the market centre and rushed away while dancing and shouting happily.
People were walking out from within buildings, soundproof or not and even sick elderly people were being carried out by others.
Chefs clinked their ladles and pans, exclaiming about an ingredient running away from them or wanting to get a new batch of ingredients. Smiths hammered on their anvils, carrying both out as they cheerfully evacuated in search of iron. Merchants packed up their wares and listened to their pouches of mana ores when they shook it beside their ears while gathering their crew to start exploring a new source of income.
¡°What sorcery is this?¡± Hector¡¯s jaw dropped.
Four of them eyed the little girl warily. She was more terrifying than anything they¡¯ve seen today.
Chapter 332: Ignition of Combat
¡°Where is the node? How are you looking at it?¡± Muse continued to sing without moving her open mouth while Hector lay prone on the roof tiles from a distance as if he was hiding himself.
¡°I have good eyes.¡± The Frost Elf didn¡¯t explain further.
To the rest of them, they were looking at an empty street. Ebony didn¡¯t sense any fluctuation or congregation of ambient and foreign mana to indicate something was out of place.
As much as he wanted to buy or leave mana ores while taking some food sitting in front of them, he didn¡¯t dare to take another step closer without the go sign from the two good hunters with hyper-sensitive sixth senses. Invisible tripwires were placed around them.
¡°Any complaints about this are on you Hecky boy. I was working under Royal orders.¡± Muse patted the Prince¡¯s shoulders and proudly puffed her chest out for achieving what she did.
None of them cared for his ugly expression.
Ning Xin clicked her tongue out loud. ¡°How do we hunt them¡¡±
¡°Clearing away eyes, conveni-¡±
A low-pitched voice echoed and set their bodies into motion. Far above them were silhouettes covered in mist. Reducing their altitudes and exposing their presence set Vent and Ning Xin moving first.
Ebony didn¡¯t manage to save the innocent buildings around them and he let Hector use water magic to put the fires out. He chased after the two hunters.
On his way up, a spinning orb fell past him.
¡°By the order of the sovereign mandate, full restoration.¡± Mumbling, the spinning orb covered in mist stopped mid-air and spiralled back to connect to the rest of the mist.
Ebony figured that Vent had lopped off the person¡¯s head before he even reacted, flew up or even saw what happened. But he wasn¡¯t too late to see the next. Without an arrow nocked, Vent had his bowstring drawn. In between his arms, bowstring and frame was likely a neck but visually was just a lump of mist.
Releasing his fingers, the mist split into two.
¡°By the order of the sovereign mandate, full restoration.¡± A different voice, softer and more feminine echoed not through the air but in his head. The split mist rejoined and scattered away from Vent and recollected to form their humanoid silhouette again.
¡°¡°¡°By the order of the sovereign mandates, grovel.¡±¡±¡±
Ebony raised his brows, now that he had access to his mind space. This attack seemed to be travelling through the endless colourless transparency of his mind. It didn¡¯t even get close to the core where his memories and self were. He felt nothing from the mandate. However, he had to catch the falling swordswoman who was susceptible to the weird attack. With one hand around her waist, and her arm around his shoulder, she managed to resist.
The opponent was much stronger than the villagers of the Nebulian¡¯s home they trespassed so her resistance to these sorts of attacks should have strengthened drastically.
¡°Limp Weaponry.¡± ¡°Muscle Failure.¡± ¡°Mana Expulsion.¡±
Three separate Mandates were cast, Ning Xin¡¯s twin swords didn¡¯t go limp like they used to but the moment the words passed through his mind, he was blasted by Ning Xin¡¯s mana as every bit in her body was forced out.
It didn¡¯t take away her muscular control or her vitality-based enhancements and he tapped her shoulder to prevent her from extracting energy from her mask. Sadly, she was a poor match against the Nebulian or Mandate users.
¡®Now I¡¯m sure, Vent is also a partial mana being.¡¯ Ebony landed back on the roof dragged Hector up from his knees and kowtowed head.
¡°I have to kill all three of them at the same time, this will take some time. Have the young descendant destroy the node.¡± Vent¡¯s firm voice reached them in another moment. He didn¡¯t talk to his opponents at all, and neither did his opponents have the opportunity for conversation as they healed each other with their mandates.
The mandates were Will-based as he assumed. If Trolls were highly attuned to physical usage, Elves to magical then these Nebulian were highly attuned to the usage of Will. Forcing one¡¯s Will onto another produced pathetic effects. Ebony could only passively affect the unclassed and he was a Grandmaster, it was less obvious on Journeyman while Masters might not even notice he was attempting to infect their thoughts with his own.
A racial trait likely helped but he also realised the mandate users need a large number of specialised skills of a higher tier than their opponent for their mandates to be most effective. Right now, they are using weaker versions of their mandates which have a lower threshold for the effects of their mandates to take place. It felt to him like ¡°Mana Inhibition¡± moved in his mind space faster, it was thinner and could go further before dissipating. So he deduced that the heavier and stronger the Will they were enforcing, the slower and more defences it had to go through to take effect.
They were perfect at combination skills though, as long as they made the same mandate at the same time, their power stacked. Enough to take an effect on Vent who was getting bogged down by debuff after debuff.
The Nebulian was aiming at all of them and Hector couldn¡¯t snap out of it despite his awareness and red-faced resistance to the Mandate that was forcing his knees down. He lost control of his body and his mana was going haywire, though not exactly being expelled from him.
Until Muse started to sing again.
There were no words, just hymns and weird tonal sounds.
A barrier of music surrounded the building where they stood. They were burnt but remained standing thanks to the quick extinguishing of fire.
While Hector got his bearings, Ebony had his senses watching the fight above them. He did his best to ward off the mandate by wrapping Hector with his mana but it was ineffective.
The mandates were not fully blocked out by Muse and he could feel dozens of them attempting to dig to the core of his mind every second. Evidently, their cast speed wasn¡¯t that fast considering their levels and that there were 3 of them. Some of the weakness debuffs such as pained breath, muscle spasms, joint ache were affecting him. While the version one step higher such as excruciating breath and muscle weakening was affecting Ning Xin and Hector so bad they could barely breathe.
Muse was locked in singing but the sweat rolling down her forehead told him she was not free from the effects of the accelerated exhaustion, substantial energy consumption, dizziness, nausea, migraine mandates and more. Ebony also had visual impairment but there were many that he couldn¡¯t tell if the others were affected by.
The Nebulian changed from debuff mandates to self-buffing mandates because of its ineffectiveness on Vent. The debuffs that had already been cast stayed in effect so they might have run out of effective debuffs and only a small fraction affected Ebony.
Three strands of thick mana twisted and formed arrows above Vent¡¯s fingers. The arrowhead was crafted with ice and wisps of mist started to gather around the arrow.
¡®Wow. So mana can become that pure.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised to find the first person who utilised denser mana than himself but Vent¡¯s mana purity did not feel anything like the Kings or Arch Mages that he had come across. As someone who personally witnessed the Elven Matriarch cast spells, he would say that Vent¡¯s mana was far purer.
The effects of mana purity had always been a slight mystery to him because there were too many variables when mana clashed with mana. The easier method that gave him observational statistics was to use mana ores of different rarities but the effects couldn¡¯t be translated to what would happen if a mage of higher mana purity were to collide their spells with someone of a lower mana purity. Mostly due to elemental differences, mana densities and a load of skill effects backing each other spells that made results unreliable.
Vent took aim, pulled his bowstring back and lazily fired all three arrows together. His previous arrows all missed after the ¡®projectile misdirection¡¯ mandate.
The latest shots trailed after the misty silhouettes but shot through the mist which brought sniggers but the arrows made a speedy but gentle turn to take a second strike. It passed through their misty bodies again but their disdain was gone as each of them had their mist covers torn out by the second homing touch.
Ebony saw patches of fur before the mist covered them again. Three arrows continued to accelerate mid-flight and make sharper and sharper curves. He heard the sound of raindrops pitter-patter as they tore the Nebulian¡¯s misty figures over and over again.
Then chunks of ice fell from their body and their misty cover began to break apart.
Within the next ten seconds, they were essentially covered in a sphere of a singular rotating arrow. He wasn¡¯t too shocked about the arrow speed to achieve the feat but the fact that the Nebulian couldn¡¯t disengage themselves. It was possibly a compounded trap skill.
Ebony was distracted no longer and probed his perception deeper, looking around like Ning Xin was vehemently doing so. She urged Hector to hurry but they were directionless. The Prince was getting better thanks to Muse but none of them could see or sense a spatial node that Vent claimed to be present.
As much as Xin would like to fight, she didn¡¯t seem interested in joining the current hunt above them. Her anxiousness was spilling through even in her combat mode where only battle and hunting should be flowing through her mind. Despite her mask covering her eyes, he could sense her attention shifting like a blur. Her Intuition couldn¡¯t pinpoint the danger or target to hunt.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
¡°Hurry! Just punch down there!¡± Impatient or urged by her sixth sense, she grabbed and pushed Hector into the skies.
A little slow to react but Hector reorientated himself in the air and quickly tossed aside any hesitation.
¡°Oh boy, destroying shophouses wasn¡¯t part of the plan. There better not be anyone inside!¡± Hector¡¯s chaotic elements began pushing outwards.
Ebony¡¯s ability to conjure mana around the Prince was pushed back exponentially by every single pulse of element that coursed through the weird man¡¯s body. After 3 elements, Ebony could only conjure ice a few kilometres away from Hector. By the sixth element, he wasn¡¯t able to conjure any elements outside his own body throughout his entire range unless he utilised Will to fight and place his Domain down.
By the seventh, Hector was anti-mage in Ebony¡¯s definition. Even within his Domain, any elemental conjuration clogged up, slowing and weakening all his spells. Pure mana was undisturbed but that was only for him. It was the reason why Hector¡¯s personal unit was filled with warriors and soldiers who didn¡¯t use magic. They didn¡¯t have many Domain mages and not any that were free to follow one of the many, many princes that weren¡¯t even the next generation but three generations down the line.
¡°NOW!¡± Ning Xin ignored that Hector hadn¡¯t gotten to the height of his powers and screamed loud enough to tear eardrums. He didn¡¯t even catch the sudden cut to help transmit her voice but it wasn¡¯t necessary, he never heard her shout as loud.
Hector reacted as fast as he could and threw out his punches. Ebony couldn¡¯t see the punch but if Hector got the chance to enhance himself with another element or two, he might exceed Ning Xin in terms of physical stats but he could usually only maintain that state for a single attack and still be at risk of intense mana poisoning.
A ball of water was punched into a disc, then earth, fire, wind, metal, lightning, mist and then Ning Xin pulled Muse down to lay on the roof tiles.
Ebony was a beat slower and Flickered to catch Hector¡¯s body. The Prince released his black beam of chaotic elements at the very last second but it swerved away from his initial aim at the centre of a street. A spark of explosion lit up in his mana perception but the effects that were the least of his problems.
Having been here for the past few minutes, the Will for his Domain had already been readied and spread out but he hadn¡¯t supplied it with mana due to the ridiculous cost to maintain. That mere fraction of a lag had him on the edge as two pairs of hands attempted to slip a metal bracelet on him.
He spawned a few afterimages and ice arms to duplicate his own to add to his chances of slipping from the accurate hands.
¡°Young master, that is the level of vigilance that you need to acquire. I didn¡¯t expect the peasants to find the node but it was a good thing I placed it.¡±
¡°Was it really necessary for you to go back and fetch the Bellicose Savants? Six of them are a waste of resources, especially these guys. How did you wrestle time into their schedule?¡±
¡°That is the importance of this resource. Watch, I called them to ensure the capture and as a lesson for you. The Savants are the only ones with Tier 5 Sovereign Arts. This is the minimal requirement to combat someone at the peak of Grade 4 Path of the Formless in close combat. With the servants at our disposal, they were the only ones that could offer resistance according to my assessment. Any stronger and the Nebula Watch would evict us. Aether conditioned against cold is rare amongst our people, there weren¡¯t many choices and I believe we would recoup the losses with ease.¡±
Ebony sensed the space magic user¡¯s urge to take action but the ¡®Nebula Watch¡¯ was something the man didn¡¯t want to test. He was currently amazed that it took a mere 2 men to push him into a tough spot through sheer martial technique. Since he had his Domain focus on augmenting his physical capabilities before setting up spatial dominance, they didn¡¯t have a stat advantage over him but that was changing as they ramped their augmentations up.
It was completely different from Ning Xin¡¯s complete dominance through power and speed.
Below them, a stage of fire and molten stone was growing in size. Of the 6 large and weirdly armoured men, 1 of them targeted Ning Xin. He was running in lava up to his calves like nobody''s business.
The last three were standing by the space user instead of the young master.
One of his opponents used dual daggers or shortswords--equivalent. It was a dark orange blade of energy, he presumed they called aether instead of mana. He could see a metal base within the orange blade and the handle was normal but the weapon was mostly energy.
The other was slightly more unusual with the same orange energy over his arms and legs, making his opponent look like a human with 4 massive double edge blades over his limbs. He was more of a technical monster fighter like the Apex Apes than a warrior. Both of them gave up on the cuffs after two attempts when he landed a couple of sonic-infused punches that froze their guts and impeded their blood flow. They were particularly irritated that clashing blows with him got reflections of vibrations and ice flowing along the reflections.
¡°It truly is a Grade 4 Path of the Formless monster. We haven¡¯t landed a blow. Ice and sonic are manageable but adding complex gravity control to the mix¡no wonder Mr Ezekiel drafted us.¡±
Ebony had his reverse gravity, the most useful trick against land-bound creatures thwarted with expert use of body and mana, or aether, control to deflect his gravity magic. As fascinating as the technique of using mana to ¡®grab¡¯ onto a lump of gravity to reorientate oneself, it was the least of his focus.
He was waiting for an opportunity while the 3 standing by ¡®Mr Ezekiel¡¯ were talking and analysing him and Ning Xin. Since they weren¡¯t overpowered in one fell swoop, and the others were just watching, they were going according to plan. Hunt, and they didn¡¯t need to communicate to know each other''s intentions.
The vast pulse of vitality that had been building up for way longer than it should put everyone in range, except Vent shake. As they should.
The heartbeat itself was weaponized and not even mana stabilisation could prevent the shockwaves from turning the surroundings into crumbs and dust.
Ebony took the signal and rammed all his processing power into increasing the gravity of Xin¡¯s opponent. Flickering to kick the back of his knees and tearing through the aether, his flames dug all the way down to the bone and removed mobility. His hand was ready to catch the man¡¯s odd looking helmet when he jerked from the impact to the legs after being stunned and terrified by the Immortal¡¯s Pulse.
Trained for battle, he snapped out of the fear but Ebony easily lifted the disconnected head up. With his hand so close to orifices, the prevention of his flames from digging in didn¡¯t matter much. Ebony chucked the mana he was proud of and compressed his entire Domain onto the head, sealing it in ice before denoting it with vibrations.
¡°Don¡¯t stop.¡± The monster of fire was barely conscious of her words but she wasn¡¯t attacking Ebony, a win in his book.
Icicle nailed the man on the chest where an extremely thin scorched hole had been left. Being used to hunting creatures with ridiculous vitalities, they knew better than to take their chances. High evolutionary staged Trolls could regenerate heads and they saw no reason not to assume these random people couldn¡¯t. Even if they weren¡¯t dead they should be down for the count as long as Icicle continued to violate the man¡¯s organs and not allow a heart to regenerate.
The target¡¯s body wasn¡¯t quite melting or even burning. His deep intrusion of mana wasn¡¯t working out so well until Icicle embedded itself. Even then, Icicle was having trouble damaging the ¡®mana¡¯ imbued body. There was a lag, the man reacted and got to casting but got his head crushed before his augmented fully came through.
Their opponents were caught off guard by the sheer decisive and aggressive moves as if Ebony and Ning Xin were prepared and expecting an attack.
There wasn¡¯t any singing in the background. Muse and Hector somehow phased out of his perception and he positively hoped that they weren¡¯t taken away by a space mage. At the back of his mind, he was pretty sure Muse took them away with her mana wrapping both of them but he didn¡¯t have any assurance of that.
The ¡®young master¡¯ was wafting off fear that Xin could sense from a mile away but she was intensely zooming in on the fighters, not someone who instinctively hid behind an older man who wielded space magic of supposedly immense proportion that was on constant watch.
The good sign was that one fighter still stood back and remained with the space user. Both now looking higher up, wariness pointed towards Vent. They were mumbling with each other but the words weren¡¯t transmitting to him past the ear-shattering clashes happening around him. The bad sign was that all of them decided that Ning Xin had to go down.
Ebony, the crowd controller was the one who picked their next target and she noticed without any communication between them. He picked the one with 4 energy-bladed limbs. The long-bladed legs made the man stand almost 5 metres tall but the bulk of it were the giant energy blades that dwarfed Icicle. Yet, the man controlled his body expertly using them as the weapon they were.
The element of surprise was long gone and their opponents¡¯ ¡®mana¡¯ had shone within his senses like a couple of suns, showing off their overwhelming advantage with augmentation. The fact that his Domain had greatly reduced strengthening effect told Ebony that they were logically out of their leagues.
Although it was clear that his Domain and all elements, gravity, ice, lightning and even non-elementals, sound and sealing were working and focused on one target. The effects barely allowed Ning Xin to trade blows with the four-bladed man. She was losing in terms of technique and battle experience.
Ebony¡¯s attempts to ward off the others and allow her to focus on one opponent where she excelled was not going ideally. With the majority of his computational and spell-casting abilities focused on the four-bladed man to hasten his fall, he was left with a fraction of his mental faculties to augment himself with the minimal amount of his elements to help him keep them in place.
It helped that Xin could override his vitality to cast a weak version of her Core Skill on him using his vitality but he was still a third as fast and strong compared to the 3 people he was keeping attacks on him.
The fighter with the smallest frame was likely a woman under the lithe armour of monster material or alien metal and the most unique abilities they had to deal with. Armed with gauntlets not too dissimilar with Hector¡¯s fighting style but far more polished and little to no weakness compared to Hector''s amazingly flawed technique.
Her mana was sticky and landed on contact. It was also violently explosive and she decided when to denote them. It could collate and get stronger depending on how much of it she managed to stick onto him. She was just as annoyed about his vibrational and ice reflections as he was with her explosive mana that he couldn''t remove once it stuck onto him.
However, unlike him, she could slowly thaw herself and he wasn¡¯t able to freeze her over time. He ignored her complaints about not being able to land a proper hit on him despite being faster. And that hitting him hurts her more than it hurts him. The yell from the background about not killing Ebony might have helped as she didn¡¯t dare to stack on the explosive mana.
The dual dagger user was the least of his problems, he knew how to counter humanoid dual blade move sets better than hand-to-hand. Other than the power behind the attacks, he didn¡¯t notice any special mana effects or face any magic attacks from this fighter. He was the biggest sponsor to Ebony¡¯s momentum.
His main problem was the amount of active physical skills they had. Regardless of their unknown levels, it was clear to him that their active skills could slice him clean. But they were¡predictable. He could tell when they wanted to use a strong active skill and know which to dodge. They were good at timing each of their active skills but, two of them were insufficient to catch him off guard.
Ebony failed to stop the last fighter from charging at Ning Xin. But he didn¡¯t rush and put himself at risk to help her. The last fighter felt like an add-on trying to slip into an exchange he could barely step into. Even the highest proficiency possible with the flail wasn¡¯t going to help slip into a blindingly fast exchange where four human-sized blades were nervously guarding the wielder¡¯s skin from being flayed and his flesh being roasted.
Ebony found himself keeping his Clones packed up and the flail wielder was having fun with a blood halo and three Orcas that popped out at some point in time.
¡°I must say, kidnapping children in broad daylight is not admirable.¡±
Dozens of his afterimages and feints with refraction of light came to a standstill and his attention was pulled away towards the voice. The molten roads and buildings had resolidified and his breath frosted over as his lungs burned from the intense chill.
His ice mana wouldn¡¯t move as he wished.
Chapter 333: Tricked
Percival wanted to scream his head off but he couldn¡¯t.
The primitive but intimidating longbow in the hands of the peasant aside. Every cell in his body was quivering and he felt like a rabbit with the paws of a tiger over his neck.
Native Frost Elves were just slightly higher-class peasants that should not be touching him much less having an arm of steel over his shoulders. Even their Root Lineages were just the losers of the civil war of Yggdrasil that had been kicked onto a small root. Their prestige amongst the Elven race was a thing of the past.
However, as if that wasn¡¯t enough, the peasant had his other arm around Ezekiel. Percival didn¡¯t expect someone on this planet to be able to touch Ezekiel but that was the least of his problems. He had a feeling he wasn¡¯t harmed yet only thanks to Ezekiel.
Ezekiel vehemently insisted on nabbing that light-blue-haired battery but Percival wasn¡¯t convinced of a lower-being¡¯s usefulness. Bringing the Savants, one of the stronger ones, over had been an extreme use of authority even for Ezekiel and he thought the same after the stunning life force and the swift, decapitation without pause. He was certain they got lucky and used a cheap trick to catch the Savant off guard.
He scoffed at the Xeng¡¯s failure to kill the Savant by burning and the battery¡¯s rather interesting use of his elements. With the Savant¡¯s aether and physique, he could survive another half an hour in that condition with the ice sword ripping his internals. Just missing a head and a heart wasn¡¯t enough to kill them. With aether keeping their memories and their evolutionary stage tied to their body, mind and souls much more tightly, life force alone could keep them alive.
That was enough time for the other Savants to get it together and save their fellow Savant. If things were looking bad, Ezekiel could shoot one of his return bullets and send the Savant back home. Those were expensive considering their distance limit but it would be worth using on a Savant. Too bad Ezekiel couldn¡¯t override a Savant¡¯s aether and send them home with a common aetherspell shot.
¡®Ezekiel and Savant Harold were already watching the weird close fight. He shouldn¡¯t have been able to get so close!¡¯ With Ezekiel protecting him, Percival let the derision of a peasant touching him overtake his fear of the predator.
¡°Get your hands off me bumpkin fro-.¡± The words seethe with his disgust.
¡°Your mana smells of sulphur and more chaotic¡more like aether. I see. Habitants from Cinderash. You¡¯ve come a long way.¡± The glint in the hunter''s eyes as he stared into Percival¡¯s very soul made him swallow the rest of the sentence.
Speaking in the common tongue, Percival easily understood that he wasn¡¯t facing a young native. More than anything, Elcra wasn¡¯t even in contact with or even knew about Cinderash. They were too far apart and Elcra lacked the technology and magical reach. They didn''t come here through the World Dungeons or the Spirit Realm. It wasn¡¯t that surprising with the hunter¡¯s show of power.
Percival didn¡¯t need to look down to see the Xeng, battery and his family¡¯s Savants were all frozen in place. The first two standing still and wafting off the same level of uptight readiness to move, the rest had an arrow in their hearts. It shouldn¡¯t have been enough to stop them, but cold and ice were one of the Cinderashians'' weak points. Training can only go so far to cover the racial and genetic traits of inhabitants of a volcano-centric planet.
There was something that bothered him, such as the three bundles of mist tied up in blue wooden roots but he couldn¡¯t focus his eyes or mind on the three bundles for whatever reason. The only reason it was picking his brain in his tense situation was because he had been keeping an eye on Ezekiel to ask for help to rid them of this situation but the bodyguard of his was frowning as he looked not at the Frost Elf, but the 3 bundles of mist.
Savant Harold was known to be a soldier who never did anything without orders. He would forget to breathe if an order to stop breathing was ever given and not rescinded. Without an order from Ezekiel, all he did was stand there. An arrow was in his heart but Harold didn¡¯t even summon his aether because he hadn¡¯t been given the signal or proper orders to do anything in this particular situation. Percival was ever so irritated that Savant Harold wasn¡¯t even given the order to make his life a protection priority.
¡°Is that necessary?¡± The battery¡¯s voice cut his anxiousness for a moment, Percival was familiar with the overly complicated language of Elcrian.
Then the two barbarians shocked them all by interrupting the Frost Elf¡¯s moment. By swinging a sword at Harold¡¯s neck and two at his heart. Percival didn¡¯t even hear the answer to the question but this answered it. They were crazy.
Harold still had basic self-preservation orders ingrained in his mind but the Frost Elf didn¡¯t allow that. The defensive movement was stopped rather simply. Arrows were found in Harold¡¯s joints before his head was lopped off but he didn¡¯t even see the archer draw the bow. His aether froze, his augmentations were stopped short but not for long. Harold was just a construct, a cube with intelligence planted into his family¡¯s gear construct that these uncivilised people would call a golem.
¡®Stupid lower-beings. Harold has the latest Cinderash reactor and circuit. They can¡¯t even find where it is.¡¯
Sulphur and ash puffed from the wounds on Harold¡¯s construct and his aether wiped the surroundings clean, going beyond the surprisingly convenient haunted public space with no one and terrorising the congested crowd far away.
¡°The kids were right, this one¡¯s a dangerous one. So it¡¯s hidden behind the shoulder blade, good to know.¡± Percival¡¯s heart received yet another jolt when the sound of metal bending and fracturing beside him, where Harold stood. The hand that once sat on Ezekiel¡¯s shoulder pierced through Harold and pinched a yellow cube between two fingers.
¡°I can¡¯t have you killing him.¡± Ezekiel finally looked away from a place he couldn¡¯t focus on and a gunshot rang in his ears long after the actual shot landed on the yellow cube. Unbelievably, his bodyguard sent Harold home with an expensive escape option.
¡°What brings a Grade 6 hazard over to our quaint world? There is absolutely nothing you can do, so long as I don¡¯t touch this boy. Go home or this boy stays with me, unharmed. And you don¡¯t dare touch me.¡±
Percival¡¯s gut wretched. This Frost Elf knew too much. As long as his life wasn¡¯t threatened in some form, Ezekiel couldn¡¯t do anything to the Frost Elf or any creature native to the planet. That included being taken, imprisoned and even some obscure forms of torture. ¡®Is that why he¡¯s not letting me out of his grasp? And he¡¯s confident Ezekiel can¡¯t teleport me while I¡¯m in his grasp, damn peasant!¡¯
He did not understand, the aether of the Frost Elf wasn¡¯t as potent as Harold¡¯s and the Frost Elves were still Elves a territorial race, and this was by no means a forest to empower a territorial race. A Domain or so they call it. Even if this individual could cast one, it would be far from how powerful a real territory would empower them.
Even then, he had confidence that Ezekiel could get him home whenever he wanted from any territory.
But why isn¡¯t he sending Percival home yet?
He was just here for training, this was a threat that crushed one of their Savants with ease. They had high standards for Savants, up to their Grandmaster evolutionary stage, they were all required to have full sets of 250% fortifications. It was much harder to expect more from there unless they had a good hereditary tree and were a few generations down the line or a ton of monetary investment.
Time was another important factor in getting an Emperor. Cinderash was average in that regard since it took about 3 to 4 hundred years to train a Savant up. And a lot of money.
Ezekiel should be a perfect specimen, no less than a member of the Gearheart. And there was no way this Frost Elf was an Emperor from the aether he sensed. Shooting Percival would break no contract as they were both foreigners and all it took was one bullet for the space mage to send him home.
¡®This is all his fault, told him we need no battery. Why is it getting hot?¡¯
Percival¡¯s hand shot to his neck to hold onto a sawing purple liquid around his neck. It was cold. Freezing. And it was digging through his aether relentlessly.
He started to panic when some of the fluid was mixed with his own. Did these stupid peasants not just hear what their protector Frost Elf just said about not touching him?
???
Turning back the clock right about when Vent swooped down and froze the battle. Ebony saw the ear nudge from Ning Xin.
¡°You remember how we thought the Tetramyth was the opportunity to get stronger?¡±
¡°Go on.¡± Asking this way was an obvious way of saying that they were wrong but he was nice.
¡°I think we¡¯re wrong. This is that opportunity, the Tetramyth were the fuel for quick levels. The times don¡¯t match but I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if Grandma lied to manipulate my or our thoughts in some way.¡±
¡°Opportunity¡this is where and when we risk our lives isn¡¯t it? To get stronger.¡±
¡°Yes. And I will take it. Will you?¡±
¡°At this moment, very much so. I see, so we¡¯ll be separated by our own choice. It must have been hard to say. Though I don¡¯t understand what drives you so hard to get stronger, I can¡¯t say I¡¯m new to not understanding.¡± He didn¡¯t even understand his drive but he only got to where he was so quickly thanks to it.
The mandate users and the guys surrounding him did push his desire to get stronger aggressively. He had enough of the lack of freedom and intense but invisible suppression. However, he felt that he could understand why she was so uncertain despite them holding up relatively well against their opponents for a short period.
¡°It was-is really hard to say. I really like being with you, no matter how mundane the days get just eating, sitting around. But my heart and very being is pushing me to take this road.¡± He couldn¡¯t tell if she was speaking while being conscious of her own words in her current state but was acting out of the norm.
¡°Our mundane days together would have to wait. What do we have to do?¡± He took a serious tone, despite how fast they were communicating, they did not have time to go down the emotional track.
¡°We go for the stronger stranger first but he won¡¯t be our target. Take that dirty-eyed one hostage with everything we¡¯ve got. We will plant one of our bombs in him, and you will seal it within his body with Will that makes it explode if anyone tries to take it out. Or make it go off if any other mana touches it so that space magic can¡¯t be easily used.¡± Maintaining one of their bombs after they were charged was difficult, more so if he was not in range and the bomb was left alone.
The gravitational effort required would suck his mana dry and cause the bomb to collapse early. Hiding the bomb wasn¡¯t possible either, everyone would feel the loss of gravity as the spell took away the surrounding''s gravity to maintain the explosives within.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
¡°Is that necessary?¡±
A nod told him all he needed and they had the perfect chance now that the steampunk people were all distracted by Vent.
Vent¡¯s strength was completely out of his expectations, the hunter just slid his hand into a metallic body and grabbed a dull yellow cube in an instant.
That had been a sign for them. Ebony made a new sphere and gravity obediently worked for him. To save time, he threw it into Xin¡¯s blood halo to be charged on the way. An idea birthed in his mind and he charged her blood halo with more of his mana. They combined their manas enough that both could make their manas not reject each other and allow each of their best effects to work efficiently even with foreign interference.
Her fire mana was boiling under the thick, black blood and his flames joined hers. It wasn¡¯t a brand new combined spell like their homemade explosive but it was not a new mental workout and ran under the same principles. Their flames were not friendly to each other but they could fight each other less destructively until they had to be destructive.
The young master¡¯s neck and mana were rather easy to tear into. Kudos to the young master for being able to resist for a full second. Their bomb slipped into the open wound but Ebony wasn¡¯t able to manipulate the bomb anymore. Hopefully, the Will he hastily put together would find a way to crawl physically from inside. Not that it mattered.
The man unexpectedly gagged, impressive when he was choking. He coughed out a speeding orange ball that made a dent in the ice scale that blocked Ebony¡¯s eyeball.
¡°¡°¡°By the order of the Sovereign Mandates. We shall be the rulers of this space for 22 seconds.¡±¡±¡±
¡®Uhm, this was not part of the plan was it?¡¯ Ebony felt a smack on his face and his Domain and mana were not responding.
His trained body responded well to the three bundles of mist that escaped their vine entrapment. They didn¡¯t expect it as his body dodged the body slam that was about to hug and carry him like a sack of potatoes. An axe kick landed on what he presumed was a head but the head was surprisingly soft and squishy, though it did no apparent damage.
He failed to slip away from the hand on his face.
By the next moment, he realised he wasn¡¯t floating above the molten roads that had been frozen over. He wasn¡¯t even within Tidal¡¯s barrier anymore because he could see the city right in front of him.
¡°Nebulian! I knew something was up and it took me a while. So you were the ones who messed with our minds. Haha, I came here looking for a good source of income but I landed a jackpot. There¡¯s nothing on my contract against you people, quietly come with me. Your lives are worth a hefty sum.¡± Although the lean steampunk man spoke so much, he wielded what Ebony thought was a shotgun and already fired.
¡°Projectile Immunity.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t see any bullets or hear any sounds until they appeared about 3 metres away from his captor¡¯s chest. He was hit by all three of their mandates, ¡°Physical Bind¡± and he suspected that it worked together with the ¡®space ruling¡¯ mandate that held his mana and magic hostage.
Unlike the individual mandates, the ones that the three of them cast together were like an iron wall. No amount of squirming or muscle memory helped him shake them off. He was now falling from the sky and would land in a few seconds but the four Emperors just ignored him.
¡®What should I do? This is one of the rare moments even my body isn¡¯t moving, mother would say I lack training. Vent and Xin would need time to get out of the city even assuming they aren¡¯t suppressed by the space ruling or whatever that does. It¡¯s not working well on this guy. But was the Nebulian this strong, or is Vent just unnaturally strong? Their mandates are working very well on this steampunk middle-aged man.¡¯ His Perception had a little trouble keeping up but he had a rough gauge of what was happening.
The Mandates that didn¡¯t work well on Vent or even Ebony were working well on the director of his second group of kidnappers. He just dropped from the highest value target to the second thanks to the Nebulian who seem to have a high bounty on their heads. That should¡¯ve been a good thing but it didn¡¯t make him feel any better as baggage they tossed around.
¡°Trying to scare us with your puny competence. That frost elf was indeed a paramount anomaly. Spatial Anchor. I¡¯m telling you he¡¯s God¡¯s child.¡± The moment he mandated, the opponent¡¯s wide area of effect shots no longer tore the mist into pieces to send them apart.
¡°Shh. Spatial Lockdown.¡± The only voice among them that sounded feminine didn¡¯t chat. Ebony already noticed that the mandates weren¡¯t transmitted by sound. The voices just spread out and entered his mind.
¡°I know that aether. Smelly. Clot Ashes. Congeal Aether. Cinderash, Space and Ash. I believe he¡¯s one of the subordinate families of the Gearhart.¡± No matter how complicated the effects sounded if one were to use mana manipulation, Mandates didn¡¯t have that limitation. They barely had casting time and the effects came into existence right after they finished their speech.
It didn¡¯t take long before the Nebulians calmed their mandating and tossed insults instead.
¡°They wouldn¡¯t come here for no reason. If it¡¯s space then that kid must have been a Gearhart. He¡¯s not worth anything, let¡¯s just get this one and go. Maybe 8 to 9 centuries are enough to pay us out of debt, he got to a good level. Suppress velocity. oh, weak. Supreme Velocities Suppression. ¡±
¡°Good? He¡¯s almost unaffected, we were almost too late!¡± The lady scolded. Ebony didn¡¯t like the type of attention they were directing at him.
¡°Relax, didn¡¯t we make it in time? Minor Disintegrate Aether. And look, three of us are enough to get through his ***, we have plenty of leeway. Come on we don¡¯t have time, that abnormal frost elf is going to get here soon.¡±
¡®My what? I don¡¯t know the word. And their Gia is weird, maybe an accent.¡¯
The middle-aged man heard everything they said out loud and took a thin metal stick out which he covered in his black aether to form a dagger. He had not yet taken a single step while he swapped out a few types of guns and bullets. He slashed a couple of times in the air and sliced through the bundles of mist.
The middle-aged man didn¡¯t even let Ebony who was lying face flat on the ground almost a kilometre away from them go. Ebony felt his legs from knees down separate. No pain, no resistance. They just disconnected physically. Space magic was wacky and that had been uncalled for.
¡°Life Mirror Image.¡± The middle aged man''s upper torso slid off to his shock but the space magic user used his black aether to rejoin his body. When he healed himself, so did the mist silhouettes.
¡°Subordinate of Gearhart, wielded of space. We¡¯ve been hiding from your greaters for generations. You can¡¯t catch us, not alone. This natural treasure is ours for the taking.¡±
¡°Hey! That abnormality is on his way. Together!¡±
¡®Oh this is looking bad. This was not how I thought it would go. I can¡¯t move yet.¡¯ Ebony did not expect to get manhandled so suddenly where all resistance was shredded down and Dusk wasn¡¯t even able to do anything even though their link wasn¡¯t interrupted. Since he left a gap in his bag he thought he had more than enough mana to do anything but this was beyond his expectations.
¡°¡°¡°Supreme Existence Perplexion.¡±¡±¡±
He wondered if this was how his opponents felt suppressed by his mana, gravity, ice and sound rebound to complete immobility. It was a good experience and Ebony was learning. This was an even greater form of binding than what he could do excluding sealing magic. His mana and life force weren¡¯t kept within the body to accelerate healing they were suppressed and not even allowed to move.
¡°No you don¡¯t. I see you, and I won¡¯t forget.¡±
¡°The anomaly! Gahh!¡±
Three trails of mist covered the sky. What appeared to be meteors were just arrows and they shrunk in view as they got closer. Hasty mandates were bellowed only to end up with the three figures nailed to the earth and rooted. Vent hadn''t arrived but his arrows had.
Ebony saw his hands fading away, ¡®woah, am I going to forget I exist or something? This mandate isn¡¯t instant like most. Ah, I stopped fading away. Did Vent cancel the mandate somehow? I need to be able to do the same with my mana.¡¯ The existential crisis didn¡¯t kick in before he realised his mana started to flow again and was released from the lock on his mana chassis.
¡°Arrogant King! Liberation. Minor Life Quake. Begone!¡± The bulkiest mass of mist waved and freed all of them from the vines but coughed, the first sign of pain or damage Ebony had seen so far and he had a feeling it was self-inflicted. Similar to the price to pay for curse magic. He couldn¡¯t tell what Life Quake did but it wasn¡¯t a healing mandate as they had no reason to use a ¡®minor¡¯ version, it was more likely an attack but Vent was too far away for him to see if the attack worked.
As for Begone, it probably didn¡¯t work at all. Direct commands to move a person were not easy to manifest and Ebony had grown to be able to resist them slightly compared to the time when his body started to walk out of Tidal by itself.
¡°Speed Ascent. Enshrouded Mist Sleeve.¡±
¡°Power Ascent. Empyrean Mist Cloak¡±
They¡¯ve learnt to use buffs on themselves rather than debuffs that bounced off Vent. Their cloaking was slowly torn by Vent¡¯s mist and ice magic so they had to reinforce their mandates that hid their bodies. All their mandates were cast for each other.
Ebony wasn¡¯t going to sit around now that he could move. The steampunk man might be able to make a move on him now that he went and attacked the younger man and stuffed a bomb into his bloodstream.
¡°¡°¡°With the ten years of us, Sovereign Mandates¡¯ lives. We. Shall take this, and no one shall stop us. Every living creature, spirit, undead, mechanical lifeforms Will Forget this matter and our existence.¡±¡±¡±
They might not have expected him to be able to move as he managed to Flicker right behind them rather easily, putting one of them into a chokehold, ¡°I¡¯d prefer if you¡¯d stop that.¡±
He might be weak, like a needle on the side of the road but he knew how to hunt. Sometimes, the simplest methods were enough. No need for amazing spells or complicated techniques.
He caught onto what he thought was a neck and started to imbue his flames and meld the creature known as Nebulian with his flames. It was easier than he imagined but he knew they had questionable physical durability and strength. From the very beginning, all these Nebulians knew to do was to stand there and cast mandates. Mandates were overpowering but their casters clearly didn¡¯t know battle.
Unlike their younger and weaker compatriots, these Nebulians didn¡¯t need vocal chords to cast their mandates. Ebony might have gotten lucky as their latest mandates seemed to take them effort and they underestimated him and were shocked that his freezing flames could hurt them.
¡°Unhand him, creature.¡± The feminine voice raised her mist-covered hand to hold her head. Ebony let the mandate pass through him without an issue. He doubled down, and Vent¡¯s interference of mana wasn¡¯t present so his Domain was in full effect. But, their previous defensive strengthening was a nuisance to Ebony.
¡°We¡¯ve got no choice. Let¡¯s put our stakes down.¡±
¡°¡°¡°With the temporary loss of our arms, you, creature in the form of human will fall into the ocean of slumber.¡±¡±¡±
A torrent of icy cold wind fell from the heavens and assaulted the skies and earth alike. Freezing and shattering parts of their mist armour to reveal parts of their furry body but was quickly covered up again.
¡°Ten years of your life to mess with my mind again? If I can¡¯t have him, no one can!¡±
The space user and Nebulian had a pure advantage in traversal capabilities. Tidal was large and they were not far from the centre of the Capital before he was brought out. Vent, with all his range of perception, had not been fast enough to escape the city within the short minutes that had passed. Only his arrows and spells had arrived, which felt a lot weaker than they could have been. There was a good chance Vent was dealing with the bullets that the space user was shooting that weren¡¯t appearing near the Nebulian.
Ebony didn¡¯t take the space user¡¯s words to mind. As much of a threat they were taking him to be, he only saw the middle-aged man not being able to do much against the Nebulian. Fighting was no different from rock-paper-scissors, Vent could handle the Nebulian like rabbits but didn¡¯t make a move against this space user. But the same rabbits could suppress the space user easily.
No, he was more distracted by the speeding figure of flames with a body trailing along her. With no notifications, that body was just unconscious and not dead. Her mask was shining brightly, Kong Jing¡¯s mana wafting off of it.
His eyelids grew heavy.
¡®No. This isn¡¯t our choice. You tricked me.¡¯ He would¡¯ve said those words if he wasn¡¯t feeling dead sleepy all of a sudden.
¡°How did you block that?¡± Unbeknownst to the steampunk space user, his next bullet aimed at Ebony hit Ning Xin who charged in front of him. She was invisible to everyone present but Ebony and her body started to fade even from his sights.
¡°Please find me.¡± Her mask faded lightly for a fraction before she disappeared, leaving behind her spatial bag in his arms.
¡°You could¡¯ve told me, how is this a choice?¡± Ebony had no idea if his words escaped his throat before he fell into a deep slumber.
Chapter 334: Tough Act
Vent exerted his Will and mana to tear the spatial trap he had been placed in. An advanced form of the basic dispel. However, he lamented that he broke out too late when he saw the Aether space user let a bullet loose at Ebony. He recognised the intense space fluctuations, it was a similar bullet to the one that sent the Savant away but vastly different. It was older and made of much life force instead of mana or aether.
Wherever it was supposed to lead to, it wasn¡¯t their homeworld, Cinderash.
To his surprise, the bullet didn¡¯t land on Ebony. Taking the spellshot¡¯s surprise into use, he quickly covered the distance to get to the young man¡¯s side. A friend of the Frost Elf¡¯s aside, Vent could not let a young child, barely a toddler, get kidnapped while he was present. ¡®Seriously, what are these race¡¯s parents doing? Letting their children go unsupervised when they¡¯re not even half a century old.¡¯
He wasn¡¯t sure how Ebony blocked the individual portal ammunition. At least, not until he saw the young girl, Scarlet¡¯s bag ended up in Ebony¡¯s hands. Spatial equipment wasn¡¯t so easy to transport away and interfered with lousy modes of transport like a singular intricate spell woven into a tiny piece of metal. It was no surprise it was left behind.
The Nebulian was not an issue to Vent and the Cinderash¡¯s space user didn¡¯t scare him either but space magic made things tricky. The space user¡¯s weakness was obvious to a mage of his calibre. Unlike a mage, this space user had to use bullets and his guns as an intermediary support. They had terrible if not non-existent manipulation and control compared to a mage.
The mana they called aether had distinct differences with mana native to Elcra but was ultimately mana. And the thing about such a specific type of space user was that they did not have a good perception of the elements. Not even those they wielded.
However, Vent was wary of the Grade 6 Hazard. He knew the moment he felt the Nebula Watches¡¯ near-omniscient senses watching the entire planet. It wasn¡¯t obvious till he spotted the spatial node. A sign that this Cinderash native was up to things beyond his contracted presence on Elcra. It meant that this individual was capable of destroying the planet in some manner.
A hazard to nature didn¡¯t directly correlate to individual prowess in battle, which he could tell from how terribly the Nebulian suppressed the Cinderash native.
Scarlet¡¯s ¡®rash¡¯ actions were not rash at all. As a hunter, he knew another hunter when he saw one. The ambush on the young Cinderashian was not an attack at all. It was planned. He didn¡¯t know what for until now. It was to give the Emperor the validity to land an attack on both of them. The realisation with his acute sixth sense made him pause.
He was going to give Ebony¡¯s body a prop up but the young man didn¡¯t fall from the sky and his body remained straight like a house¡¯s support beam.
¡°I¡¯m fine Vent, thank you.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not asleep? Good, their arms aren¡¯t enough to override your defences. I won¡¯t let them take you away again.¡±
¡°Ebony is asleep. My name is Dusk¡I suppose I¡¯m also Ebony since I was constantly updated within my mindspace. Vent, it¡¯s okay. Young birds have to be dropped to learn to take flight.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°I would appreciate it if you dealt with Nebulian. Could you help me pass a message to the Thoya¡¯s?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Tell them I won¡¯t be visiting for a while. Thank you.¡±
Vent shook his head, ¡®Xeng blood¡truly barbaric. Ebony, an odd specimen indeed. The only half-offspring of the Rime Tribe. Fantastic. One of the most ferocious bloodlines mixed with the most arrogant, aloof and detached but endlessly grudgeful and petty, he had a hard time growing up. Ah, I can¡¯t mutter those words in my mind. Now I owe my ancestors a visit for protecting us.¡¯
¡°A word of caution, Cinderash is run by a society with Saints crawling about. Using force would be foolish. An egg would have a better chance against a rock than any of us against a combat Saint, even one of the Cinderash. They are not exactly known for their individual combat powers. Do what you will with that information.¡±
The Nebulians who lost the use of their arms didn¡¯t lose any combat capabilities. At the same time, it made no difference to Vent. He would no longer give their dying Saint who lived off the world any regard.
The child yearned to take flight and as a kind senior, he would clear the fledgingly¡¯s path of its thorniest brambles.
The three of them were now prey.
???
¡®This is new, even with the ability to use models and clones I can¡¯t control my frame properly as Dusk? A tree form feels more natural and as a Core of Arsenal of Will Domain, I¡¯m supposed to be immobile. To think it would translate to not being able to move well after taking over my main mind¡¯s control over my body. It might be because I technically have way more Will than my main body. Whatever, using magic is even easier.¡¯
¡°You. Where did you send her?¡± Ebony had his mana sling Ning Xin¡¯s bag over his shoulders. He would¡¯ve been worried that she was brought away without her stockpile of food but ¡®worry¡¯ was not an ability he planted into Dusk.
¡°How did you stop¡that bag? Where did that come from?¡± The space user didn''t even know that he hit someone.
¡°I asked you a question. But never mind, wherever it is send me there too. Now.¡± Ebony allowed Xin¡¯s blood halo to float over with a man within its grasp.
¡°You can feel the lack of gravity. A bomb is inside this man. Away from me, it will denotate. It can and will kill him. Hurry up.¡± It wasn¡¯t a lie but the bomb won''t detonate immediately after separating from him. But the bomb had a time limit, it was as much mana as it had to keep its contents stable. His imbued Will was the controller.
¡°I see. I see. Hahahaha. Urgent are we? Nervous are- stop!¡±
Ebony tossed the arm he froze and cut off towards the talkative man who thought he was up for negotiation. The arm and aether was rather tough and didn¡¯t shatter making a clean cut easy. His light cyan flames already marked half of the young master¡¯s body. The weaker portions of his flesh turned purple and blue.
¡°You want to kill me, why aren¡¯t you trying? Don¡¯t worry, even asleep our bomb can activate. Even if I was dead, it would still detonate. Scared? Nervous? Hurry up.¡±
¡°Let him go and you will have an easier time in our prison.¡±
Using mana manipulation, the young master¡¯s head flew in front of Ebony. Without its body.
Xin¡¯s blood halo and Dusk did not tolerate threats. Dusk sealed the head and its vitality. A quick scan allowed him to notice that the bomb was on the body and not the head so he carried and sealed the body as well.
The Emperor risked his superior speed and reflexes to take a shot at his young master¡¯s body.
¡®Not the head? So their heart or some other organ is more important. Then our bomb is in the right place. As I thought, this man is not a mage. What terrible perception for a space user.¡¯ The bullet that spawned and rippled where the young master¡¯s body was teleported nothing but ice mana away. Light refraction and feints were pretty much one of his specialities now.
It helped that his opponent sensed aether and not mana and it also helped that the mandate users had their mandate partially working on him that hid his presence. He already took note of the spatial bullet. It didn¡¯t have a trajectory and teleported where the middle-aged man wanted it to. But against the Nebulian, he noticed the space mana explosion didn¡¯t require it to land on a physical target but where the rifleman wanted it to detonate.
It was strong but the limitations were its lack of control. To the Nebulian who had the ultimate control, getting hit was a challenge.
¡°Hurry up.¡± Ebony made dozens of sculptures of the young master, gave them colour with runes and then refracted them into hundreds of figures. Burning them one by one, they shattered loudly amplified by sound magic.
Dusk did not have time. He had to go back into the seed pit that was his core. The human body wasn¡¯t meant for it and his Will was beginning to slip back to a safer spot. He might not have been programmed to worry, but he knew what worry was and bits and pieces were still in him.
Xin still had Navin¡¯s barrier spell but he didn¡¯t know where she was sent. The barrier only took damage and didn¡¯t activate against the teleportation. More importantly, she lacked the food supply to fight. It was no wonder she seemed unconcerned about packing up, she must have intuitively felt that it didn¡¯t matter.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
¡°It uses gravity, if I bring you through will it explode? There is little to no gravity in space, portal or not. There would be instability.¡± The space user was more thorough than Dusk as he didn¡¯t even think about that issue. Experience and wisdom come with age.
¡°If you bring me along, it won¡¯t.¡±
¡°You will remove the bomb after I send yo-¡± The man frowned and continued his negotiations but Dusk wasn¡¯t up for it.
¡°When I see her. My seal isn¡¯t perfect, I wonder how long your young master can stay alive.¡±
¡°Where do you get that arrogance, battery? Enough with the threats. I will come close and link us back to Cinderash with my spatial node, don¡¯t make rash moves.¡±
The middle-aged man raised his hands and used his right hand to twist the round device on the back of his left gloves. Appearing beside Ebony¡¯s body despite his Domain and magic body. Dusk couldn¡¯t move Ebony¡¯s body, but Ebony could move asleep. It still detected the space user as a threat and punched out due to how close he got in an instant.
The Emperor was not pleased.
Ebony¡¯s arms were crippled, both twisted outwards and his flesh and bones mangled as if they spun a few rounds. He didn¡¯t manage to blow a hair off his target¡¯s head.
¡°Don¡¯t test me, I might just get overconfident and think your bomb¡¯s a mere ruse.¡±
Dusk managed to shift Ebony¡¯s eyes to meet the furious but disgusted Emperor¡¯s glare. No sight entered his perception, it was odd since he knew how eyes worked but he didn¡¯t have physical sight even sitting within his own body.
¡®Navin¡¯s barrier didn¡¯t activate. It is more intuitive than I expected.¡¯ Dusk praised the fact that the barrier spell knew this was not a big injury to Ebony.
Perhaps that was what unnerved the Emperor slightly as his eyes were blank.
The Emperor huffed and took out a couple of steel rods the size of longswords and they floated around them. In eight directions, horizontally and vertically.
The young master¡¯s body was leaning on Ebony¡¯s body. The body, in its slumber, decided that healing was the right choice and explosively twisted his arms back into position before regenerating the flesh. Since he didn¡¯t lose much flesh, the injury was considerably light and it wouldn¡¯t affect his physical strength after healing.
It took 3 seconds or so, not explosive enough but still good. It wouldn¡¯t have taken that long if the twist didn¡¯t go all the way down his shoulders and back.
¡®This better not be a preparation for a skill faster than I can react to¡¡¯ Dusk had his guard up but knew it wouldn¡¯t change much if the Emperor still decided to kill him. It all banked on this young master¡¯s worth.
The Emperor mumbled incomprehensibly as if he was chanting at high speeds.
Dusk¡¯s attention turned to Hector and Muse who were on the city walls and somehow found them from a distance. With all the strength he could muster, Dusk nodded in farewell before his sense of gravitational and vibrational waves destabilised.
¡®I expected it, but it¡¯s too bad.¡¯ Dusk noticed the lack of Ning Xin¡¯s presence where he was brought and his senses stabilised.
Gravitational strength was intense, almost as if a constant magnification was happening. It was still unstable but he estimated it was no weaker than ten to fifteen times that of his old Earth. It strengthened his bomb¡¯s ability to hold its contents with less effort. Increasing its lifespan before natural detonation even without his manual control. After he completely froze the young master, he reconnected with the bomb that ended up in the man¡¯s liver.
Dusk did not expect ultra-long distance spatial travel to be as disorientating as it was. Even if it was due to him being a tree that perceived through vibrations and gravity. He knew it was a phenomenon but after experiencing it with Kong Jing and noting that Ning Xin was affected he never felt anything, he just thought he was immune to it.
Of course, the main reason was because he wasn¡¯t Dusk. Not all of Dusk.
Dusk was back on Elcra, within Ebony¡¯s bag that made it with him. Even as a seed core, he was too big with the huge power source. Dusk placed just a tiny portion of himself to deal with any immediate threats knowing he couldn¡¯t come here with Ebony. In any case, within their mindspace, he knew that Ebony wouldn¡¯t stay asleep for as long as the Nebulian had hoped.
¡°You are the legendary battery that dared to take my son hostage.¡±
Dusk¡¯s senses cleared up as one presence took over his entire perception. The speaker had a presence, unlike any Ebony, had ever imbued into Dusk¡¯s memory bank. He didn¡¯t need any Identification or Appraisal.
¡°I was half expecting to be teleported into a prison with all my mana sucked up. A Saint right off the bat, cheeky aren¡¯t you.¡± Dusk tilted his body¡¯s head at the space user who was a distance away, standing beside the speaker with both the younger master¡¯s head and body.
¡®I can believe force is pointless, but it would be foolish to allow them to think they can slaughter me like a chicken. Let¡¯s see if my instincts are any good before I dissipate and leave my body alone.¡¯ Dusk didn¡¯t have to dissipate, he could return to where Ebony was but needed to buy himself every second he could.
As for the tiny spheres he had on his robes, he already dispatched his clones. The fact that they could walk away from where they were proved to him that the space mage was blind to ice mana or his invisibility on his activated clones.
He managed to bring 4 clones over. Two of them raced out of this¡mansion. The other two remained on him, to offer the minimal levels of protection to Ebony if Dusk were to disappear sooner than he¡¯d like.
First of all, the room he was in was scorching. The air was dry. Water would evaporate in an instant if there was any present. But it was just a normal room where the Cinderash native was not blinking an eye. His Clones slipped out of the mansion rather easily but it was only far hotter outside.
They were on a volcano. ¡°Nope, we are IN a volcano. No wonder they are so heat resistant. It¡¯s just their natural trait.¡±
Using Will since they were in range, Dusk got the clones to shut up and not test their ¡®captor¡¯s¡¯ magical senses or ears.
Secondly, there were two new presences including the overwhelming Saint¡¯s. The last likely another servant of sorts.
¡°Do you think I don¡¯t dare to end your life?¡± Dusk was mostly blind but he could tell the man was just like any other human shape, barely any taller than Ebony himself.
¡°Oh. You will?¡±
¡°Remove the explosive and keep your life.¡±
¡°We¡¯ve started on a bad foot. I¡¯m not an advocate for violence and I think it¡¯s obvious what I want.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t care what you want. My son would not be your ticket to freedom or desires.¡±
¡°How about your family?¡±
¡°...Creature, where is your confidence knowing I can kill you instantly coming from?¡±
¡°Do I have an accent? My name is Ebony. Forgive me, this is my first time speaking Gia. Perhaps you don¡¯t care about your son as much as that space user over there assumed. I presume this is your personal estate. You have a little over eight hundred people roaming about. Within this mansion, four babies. Your children? Your kin? Would you like to test if you can stop me? Would you like to find out what I¡¯m capable of?¡±
Ebony was not capable of killing innocent babies or even any adults who didn¡¯t even know who he was. Even with how detached he thought about humans a short while ago. But his captor didn¡¯t need to know that and he just asked two separate questions.
¡®A small island inside a volcano, I can¡¯t sense outside the volcano. A small estate like this has a dedicated prison¡I would probably end up there in time.¡¯ Dusk didn¡¯t just rely on his clones, his range of senses was both wider and more sensitive than a mere clone.
¡°You dare!¡± A crushed armrest and floor tiles resulted from the Saint¡¯s charge in his face. Too bad Ebony wasn¡¯t awake to remember any facial features.
¡°You want your son released. I want to see and be sent where my companion was sent. It¡¯s not very difficult and no one has to be harmed. Not me. Not any of you.¡±
¡°Make no mistake. My family would not be harmed and you will not see the light of day.¡± The Saint who wasn¡¯t up for introductions only got angrier. Dusk had some hope that there was some level of reasoning with the Saint since he said he wasn¡¯t here for violence. But on second thought, he did threaten the man with his family.
¡°Ah, it''s finally cooler here.¡± Dusk felt the confusion in the three other people present in the room when he commented about the temperature.
¡°Master, our mansion is floating. I will set a loop so we aren¡¯t sent out of the atmosphere.¡± The space mage frowned at the realisation that Ebony had reversed and strengthened gravity of the planet on their little rock floating on lava.
Dusk thought that it was a shame that the space user could do something like that to keep the island from testing the limits of his gravity magic.
¡°Enough flexing, hurry up.¡±
¡°Ezekiel. Clean up your mess.¡± Surprisingly, the Saint decided not to use the hard stick anymore and returned to his seat without even eyeing his servant who steadied his son¡¯s body and head.
¡°Crea-Ebony is it? Sending you to your woman is not possible.¡±
¡°I¡¯m usually patient but I don¡¯t mind losing it right now.¡±
¡°Stop! I didn¡¯t want to let the Nebulian take you and that shot was for you. I was going to send you to Teheil where mana is useless so that I could collect you easier later on. She should be sent somewhere safe unless her transfer was affected by her resistance.¡±
¡°And? Send me there.¡± Dusk felt himself slipping away.
¡°That--I only had one bullet. I can¡¯t get there with conventional space magic either. We have a portal located in another one of our volcanoes.¡±
¡°Then send me there.¡±
¡°The portal on Teheil is single use. Since I was going to send you there, I was going to hop on the same trip and escort you back with the Savants. Now that the portal on Teheil¡¯s end was used, our portal would no longer be able to connect.¡±
¡°That¡¯s your problem. Solve it.¡±
¡°Master, I have extracted this.¡± A new voice echoed throughout the hall. Dusk sensed their mana pinched between the fingers of the unassuming servant. His bomb removed.
¡®I guess time is up. Too bad.¡¯ Dusk¡¯s fragment of Will couldn¡¯t even contact the clones anymore, much less exerting any more control over the bomb that had its own Will.
¡°Think carefully about how you treat me. I will respond in kind.¡± Dusk didn¡¯t have it in him to sigh before dissipating and leaving his stone-cold body alone. Even if it turned out the worst way possible, he believed they wouldn¡¯t kill him.
The fact that Ning Xin was sent somewhere they couldn¡¯t reach easily made him slightly more at ease. The truth of the matter aside, their words had given him some confidence that she was alive.
Chapter 335: Oven
Ebony¡¯s mind woke up and was in his mindspace before he opened his physical eyes. Since time passed as slowly as he perceived, he didn¡¯t rush to go out to his body. If he still had a body to wake up in.
He found that he couldn¡¯t talk to Dusk, but notes were left behind. Memories of what happened after he fell asleep.
¡®I am alive. So my clones are active? Which ones¡nice, 4 of them are all active and not dealt with. They could barely sense my mana when I tried to hide it. I¡¯ll risk it and assume they can¡¯t sense my Will.¡¯
Ebony safely called his clones¡¯ Will into his mindspace for high-speed communication.
¡°Hello, number twelve, fourteen, fifteen and seventeen. Let¡¯s hear it.¡± Ebony prepared a round table for them to have imaginary tea together.
¡°Hello, bad day huh.¡± Twelve returned the greeting while taking a seat.
¡°It could be worse, our body wasn¡¯t dismembered.¡± Fifteen presented their optimistic side.
¡°I know we think and process fast but let¡¯s get to the main topic.¡± Seventeen chidded.
¡°Yes, you are locked up. In the prison we found. Stripped naked and chained up. I tried to enter but the prison floors, walls and even space itself seemed to suck us dry so I can¡¯t tell if you have any mana in your body. We can see you, cells aren¡¯t underground and have bars. But the prison is much more secure than it looks. Twelve and I seem to think that one of the men locked here is a Saint from the pure aether-vitality mixture he is leaking when he¡¯s forced to dig. He is the only prisoner that even leaks any aura.¡± Fourteen summarised with an additional piece of information.
¡°So they chose to be hard-handed. I suppose that was expected from their attitude. And I am just a Grandmaster. Hey, do you think they even have the basic Identify?¡± Ebony ran his hands on Dusk but he couldn¡¯t touch the tree and his hands passed through. He felt like he could continue to reach into Dusk and maybe, eventually contact Dusk but he didn¡¯t prioritise that since Dusk was probably asleep back on Elcra so that it doesn¡¯t run itself dry and dissipate.
¡°How were we supposed to find that out? Don¡¯t get distracted.¡± Seventeen called him back to the seat.
¡°Relax, minutes here would barely be felt outside.¡± Fifteen replied while chomping into a Frost Plum that Ebony spawned. It didn¡¯t provide any form of satisfaction except for the act of eating itself.
Ebony got a speedy update on each of his clones¡¯ activities. Twelve had been hiding as an additional organ within his body as a final line of defence. It was miniscule considering that his body can fight asleep but it gave his clones comfort.
¡®Huh, I might be able to make space in my body for a separate organ that is just filled with coagulated mana. It would permanently increase my mana capacity. I have the internal space for it if I squeeze my kidney, bladder and even stomach. Bigger lungs and stronger liver after evolution is still good to have but my digestive tract doesn¡¯t have to take so much space thanks to my high constitution and low requirement of sustenance.
¡°On it. Leave your internal upkeep to me so you don¡¯t have to spare any mental processing power here. Don¡¯t forget to charge me with Will from time to time.¡± Twelve heard his thoughts and took over the job.
Fourteen was scouting and keeping watch on the prison he was in. He could move on to scouting the island they were on after Ebony woke up.
Fifteen and Seventeen ran out of the volcano they were situated on to explore their surroundings and check for possible escape routes. They had prioritised locating the possible presence of the portal that the man known as Ezekiel mentioned. It might not be a complete lie, Dusk didn¡¯t sense any form of deception.
He might not be as sensitive to lies compared to Ning Xin but he had a lifetime of observing people to understand how humans should act.
Fifteen and Seventeen¡¯s second priority was to learn about Cinderash and the Saint or group that locked him up. They should not lack the ability to source information now that they are in this group¡¯s world. Of course, he had them stay invisible no matter how far they planned to go for the time being. There was no confirmation that they were found but also no evidence to prove that his clones weren¡¯t hidden.
For the time being, they saw no reason to believe clones were not invisible to most of the volcano¡¯s inhabitants and carried out their activities without fear of it leading back to bite Ebony in the back. In any case, it wouldn¡¯t matter too much even if people did find out he had clones running around.
¡°I was out cold for two weeks?¡±
¡°I think they tried to torture you awake. I¡¯m not sure. Slumber Survival Instincts kicked in once but before that, your body just didn¡¯t think their attempts were a threat at all and didn¡¯t respond at all. Sorry, I had to hide deep in your body and have your mana chassis surround me the moment they put chains on you or I would¡¯ve been absorbed and have no choice but to have my Will rejoin you without any mana for a body.¡±
¡°No worries. Is my chassis bone dry?¡±
¡°It was, but I¡¯m not so sure now. I believe Mireloom Chassis Engine stopped working when you got knocked out cold. No mental processing power, no factory production.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll confirm that once I wake up. I would have to wait for decades to sense a change from here.¡±
¡°What¡¯s the plan? Get out as soon as possible or make the best use of our time here?¡± Fourteen questioned.
¡°The second. That¡¯s the whole point of attacking that young master or we wouldn¡¯t have been separated to begin with. Fifteen, add studying aether, their spells, technology and weapons as your next priority. Seventeen, focus more on geographical and societal studies, fieldwork so to speak. If I have time, I¡¯ll try to create Twenty-Three if my stay in prison extends. Anything else I need to know?¡±
¡°Set a time frame, we can¡¯t stay here forever and I still want to look for Xin.¡± Fourteen demanded a hard stop to their ¡®studying¡¯.
¡°That¡¯s a tough one. Get me more information on that portal or path to this Teheil planet first.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t even sure if he could escape this prison but he was rather confident as of now because his clones were operating without an issue.
¡°Alright.¡± Fourteen understood the lack of information.
¡°Multiply and amass.¡±
¡°...That was lame, never say that out loud.¡± Seventeen couldn¡¯t hide his embarrassment.
¡°When will we grow out of the weird monologues. That was terrible even for our standards.¡± Fifteen leaned back and spit the imaginary plum seed at dusk but the seed vanished before it got a metre away.
¡°I thought we were getting better, not worse.¡± Twelve shook his head, disappointed.
¡°Then come up with something else to spice things up whenever we meet up. Our numbers are only going to grow and this makes it less dry okay?¡± Ebony did not relent.
¡°I can¡¯t hear you. See you.¡± Fifteen pointlessly covered his ears.
¡°Take care Twelve. You too Fourteen, you are the closest to being found out since you¡¯re still on the island.¡± Seventeen bid his farewells.
¡°You two watch out too, you might very well still be in the Saint¡¯s range. We don¡¯t know if they can hear every word spoken so keep quiet and always have vibrations stabilised around you.¡± Fourteen reminded Fifteen and Seventeen who would go out of Ebony¡¯s range of Will sooner or later.
¡°Don¡¯t forget to come back for a recharge, that¡¯s a privilege we have compared to the others who have to stay asleep or even die waiting for Ebony to come back¡I wonder what kind of experiences we can get if they survive that long. Do you think all of them would stay in hibernation forever or wake up to find another way to survive if we are dying?¡± Twelve reminded the explorers while getting distracted himself.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
¡°Woah there. That¡¯s for them to think and us to find out if they survive. Our Will is sure to grow so let¡¯s wish them the best.¡± Fifteen put a stop to that line of thought.
¡°Then¡mul-I am not doing this stupid multiply phrase. Come up with something else. Goodbye.¡±
Seventeen disconnected, followed by Fifteen who acted cool and walked away from the table with his hands waving and dissipating into air. He was one full of theatrics.
Fourteen silently faded out leaving Twelve sitting here.
¡°So¡do you think Ten and Eleven managed to stay with Xin? The six of us were supposed to be with her, but four of us didn''t get out of the bag since we were laying dormant and didn¡¯t react fast enough. Right, good work bringing the four of us out and with you.¡±
¡°You know, we don¡¯t have to praise ourselves. Anyway, I have been trying to connect to them but I¡¯m not reaching them. We need a dedicated skill for the range of Will. A passive maybe. I¡¯ll continue my attempts to reach them, which may create a skill in time. Next time Fifteen and Seventeen come back, remind me to tell them to practise linking and unlinking with me as they traverse further away from me. Just rest, I¡¯ll call you out when I¡¯m sure you won¡¯t be absorbed into nothingness.¡±
¡°Mmm. I¡¯ll help with the linking with the others on Elcra and double down on the efforts with Ten and Eleven. You save your processing capabilities for the physical world.¡±
¡°Okay. I¡¯ll redistribute and reorder priority as we go.¡±
Ebony closed his eyes and found himself dispersing throughout the mindspace to wake up in his physical body. He woke up hot, sticky and naked.
¡®Ew. My skin and flesh melted. Now I¡¯m stuck on the floor and these chains¡so many of them.¡¯ Fourteen didn¡¯t explicitly explain just how badly chained up he was.
His legs were bound together with a metallic board with four chains linked to the walls but the chains were rather long, giving him some freedom of movement instead of being glued to the walls. Above the board were two more individual cuffs on each leg. They were thick and chunky, his legs were bound from ankle to right below the knee.
His arms were only individually chained without a board or plank that forced his arms close together. But there were even more restrictions, with five bangles and chains on each arm the cuffs reached above his elbow and he had his fists covered in a ball-shaped metal piece that was likely molten metal poured to seal his hands completely.
The metal chains had a similar design to the rest of the prison walls and floors. A blackish metal with pulsing energy veins running along its entirety. The familiar orange colour was not any different from the Savant¡¯s or the young master¡¯s aether blades.
His torso had the last ¡®cuff¡¯ like a hand bangle made for giants that was repurposed as a waist warmer for him. Ebony¡¯s flesh had similarly bathed the cuffs and he was more stuck than he should have been.
¡®This is extra. My throat¡¯s parched. oh, my mana is still dried up. So the number of chains are to drain me up, not to tie me down. Condition check first.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have over-exhausted your body. Strength and Agility decreased by 80%, Perception and stamina regeneration rate decreased by 50%.¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®You have over-exhausted your mind. Intelligence and Wisdom decreased by 90%. Perception and mana regeneration decreased by 80%¡¯
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Lack of sustenance, health regeneration decreased by 80%. All stats lose 50% of their effectiveness.¡¯
¡®90 percent? That is a high reduction, I rarely get this. Why am I exhausted if I didn¡¯t fight? Oh, I see. The torture stopped because I was dying to the heat and they wanted me alive. The temperatures are¡at least 600 to 700 degrees Celsius in this prison cell. Thank goodness for superhuman constitutions and natural resistances¡glad I didn¡¯t die by melting. Then my body kept healing itself, using up my energy. Over two weeks, my energy pool emptied and my body naturally stopped healing itself but it was too late and my lack of sustenance reduced my healing even more. But it¡¯s not too bad, a 50% reduction of all stats is not the worst I¡¯ve experienced, it means I still have some energy or sustenance in my body. Too bad exhaustion and hunger rehabilitation stacks. This is not looking so good.¡¯
Even with his Unique skill and Core Skill starting up now that he was awake, Ebony was still bone dry on mana thanks to his stat reductions. The exhaustion debuff did not have a duration. It was an indefinite debuff because he didn¡¯t have any sustenance in his body to recover. The hunger/exhaustion debuffs were something he was very familiar with.
He didn¡¯t have the time or opportunity to eat and rest when he just started training with the Apex Apes. It almost killed him on multiple occasions so he knew that he wasn¡¯t in the worse straits. Exhaustion would go away fast as long as he fed himself. He might take a little longer healing his body due to lower base Endurance stat but it was all good as high Constitution tied them all together.
After all, lack of sustenance and all stat reduction could go to 95%. He was far from the worse straits which was to starve to death. Maybe the stat reduction could go higher or lower in this case to 99% but even he hadn¡¯t encountered that.
¡®Then I shouldn¡¯t heal myself, I¡¯m not sure if I can get food into my system and water obviously doesn¡¯t exist in this dry oven. I can¡¯t even inscribe runes to create water since I don¡¯t have a lick of mana. Should I implode a few chassis? This mana absorption is impressive, almost all my coagulated mana is gone too. Is coagulated mana¡¯s stability even helping?¡¯ Ebony knew it was Twelve who was using Will to hold onto a small portion of coagulated mana from dispersing and also protecting the frozen, compressed air sacs in his lungs from melting.
Ultimately, he wasn¡¯t too surprised by their technology. They supposedly kept a Saint locked up, though that might be his clones'' mistake since they couldn¡¯t sense anything within the prison properly.
Glued to the floor by his skin and flesh, Ebony remained unmoving to save every bit of energy he could. He was a dry husk now.
He didn¡¯t even try to heal his eyeballs but they still worked a little. Warm hazy light streamed in from the tiny window with the same metal bars to land on him who was in the centre of the cell.
¡®I have an affinity with prisons. And this is the best one yet. It¡¯s spacious and there¡¯s sunlight. And it¡¯s pretty noisy too.¡¯ Ebony heard the clings and clangs, along with what he assumed were prisoners shouting. His Perception took the biggest dip after all the stacking debuffs but his ears were still functional.
Fourteen already mentioned that this was a slave-like prison where prisoners were made to mine out iron and other natural ores. The floating island wasn¡¯t in the middle of lava, it rested not far away from the inner walls of the massive volcano. Prisoners were led across a shaky bridge to a cave where they dug for ores. However, conditions didn¡¯t appear that harsh and most prisoners were not skinny or starved bony. Thirst was a bigger issue.
The average prisoner was King-ranked and there were plenty of Emperors too. They had to wait for Seventeen to conduct his survey to know the actual average of the planet he was on.
Grandmaster prisoners were the servants of this place. Cleaning, prepping and handing rations. Being the mule for the ores that other prisoners mined out.
¡®So this is a containment cell but the others are in housing cells or something similar. Are they maybe serving a prison term?¡¯
¡°You alive? Damn, I heard you were from another world but you people melt easily. We had to place heat wards in your cell since orders are to keep you alive. Hang on, you haven¡¯t eaten for days I¡¯ll get your grub.¡± Someone knocked on his metal containment. Unlike the window bars, he was just trapped in a solid metal containment The only other gap was a viewing hole with two bars. There were no visible doors or seams so he wasn¡¯t sure how he was put in this cell. Altogether, it wasn¡¯t an air-tight cell.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony managed to muster the strength to respond to the casual guard who didn¡¯t seem to act like he was a massive criminal who threatened the Saint¡¯s family. ¡®So this is a cooled-down cell? No wonder their warriors are heatproof, their entire species have evolved to be highly heat resilient. This guy sounds pretty relaxed and food, great. Fourteen, you there? Didn¡¯t you say I was out for weeks?¡¯
¡®I¡¯m here. A day here is 84 hours, and their nights are 22 hours. You were out cold for 452 hours. Technically 4 days for them. But, I hear many people using the term ¡®standard¡¯ days or weeks on the island I assume there is some form of universal standardisation. Hurry up and recover, our mana stockpiles won¡¯t last as long due to the heat and the ambient mana is very different so us clones¡¯ absorption runes are running very inefficiently.¡¯ Fourteen was scouting him from outside the volcano, nearer to the mining cave than the island.
¡°Urgh, this cell is always so hard to utilise. Give me a minute I¡¯ll feed you. I have some medicine on hand too, it¡¯s supposed to treat burns but¡you clearly have more than burns. Whatever, it should be better than nothing.¡±
¡®Magic, of course.¡¯ A bubble of metal grew out of the walls and made an audible pop after separating from the walls. The glowing orange bubble popped open to reveal a dry red brick. The metal bubble formed a limb and the guard moved it to stuff the brick in his mouth.
¡°Ah¡can¡¯t chew? I¡¯ll break it for you but you¡¯re going to have to help yourself from there.
The helpful guard formed another limb by using the fluid metal and crushed the red brick into bits, almost powdered most of it. In any case, most of it entered Ebony¡¯s mouth and he did his best to swallow. He almost choked but he wasn¡¯t that dead and his muscles were still obedient.
¡°Wa--ter.¡± He could barely understand himself with his hoarse voice but the guard was able to pick up his words.
¡°Ah? Sorry, we don¡¯t have that. I can¡¯t even afford water for myself. Oh right, you¡¯re not from Cinderash. We Cinderashians drink a type of dew. I didn¡¯t bring you any, I heard it¡¯s toxic to most non-Cinderashians. Let me ask the chief warden what to do since we can¡¯t let you die.¡±
Ebony would have chosen to drink that dew if he was feeling fine but he decided not to test his constitution in his current, dying state. In any case, they didn¡¯t want him to die so he wasn¡¯t that desperate for liquid. As long as he had food, he would recover his stats and with mana, he could create water for himself.
¡®Taste like a brick of fiery pepper. I miss dumplings already.¡¯ Ebony looked back out as his mind wandered and scoured the gravitational wave data that Fourteen, Fifteen and Seventeen were sending him.
Chapter 336: Teheil
¡®Parasitic worldcore. So this is the bad feeling I got, luckily Ebony wasn¡¯t sent here.¡¯ Ning Xin listened to the explanation she had received from the people who surrounded her.
This parasitic Worldcore aggressively absorbs every living creature¡¯s mana. Nothing had pure mana here. Only the natural elements such as air, water and earth were left alone. It wasn¡¯t only a parasitic Worldcore, it was also a world that Gearhart, Ruler of Cinderash had laid claim to.
Parasitic worldcores tend to be rich in natural resources but the problem was bringing the resources out because even space mana was absorbed the moment it¡¯s sensed by the worldcore. It wasn¡¯t impossible to transverse to and fro, but the costs were ridiculous.
Large batches of resources were sent out every decade unless the quota of material mined wasn¡¯t met.
However, there was a problem. The batches of materials to be sent to Cinderash haven¡¯t been sent for the past 4 decades since another two powers laid claim to this parasitic world, Teheil.
Ning Xin drew her blades away from the Gearhart Savant in charge of the facility she was sent to. Not only was there no mana, aether was also another form of mana and the parasitic Worldcore did not discriminate.
The Savant suppressed her with skill and technique. So she crushed him with power.
Without mana, she thrived.
Except for the constant headache that the drain of mana induced. Staying in Atrophy state helped with the headache but she couldn¡¯t stay in that state forever. Especially because she didn¡¯t have food. Excluding what she plundered from this facility.
She didn¡¯t know if she was lucky or unlucky. The physical device that opens the portal under the Cinderashian¡¯s control wasn¡¯t where she was teleported. She was sent to some single-use, one direction portal and it might not even be a portal thanks to her limited understanding of the Gia language. It was more like an anchor. A few kilometres away from this facility, thanks to her spatial resistance messing with the transportation. Since she was teleported where she was surrounded or locked up, it was easy from there.
As poor as her mood was for the separation with Ebony, her Intuition couldn¡¯t help but burn. This was the land of opportunities for her.
Why?
She didn¡¯t know. But she didn¡¯t need to know. She was a creature of instinct not planned thought.
¡®Still, I¡¯m lucky there was only 1 savant here. They are too skilled. Definitely tier 5, and maybe a full set of tier 5 skills but aether-based skills aren¡¯t helpful here. I shouldn¡¯t rule out proper vitality-based warriors in charge. Where should I go now?¡¯ Ning Xin was slightly happy for learning bits and pieces of the language Gia or she would¡¯ve been unable to extract useful information.
¡°You¡¯re not going to kill me?¡±
¡°For what? I don¡¯t eat people. Come, let¡¯s see this portal of yours--hmm, never mind. There¡¯s something wrong with your portal isn¡¯t there?¡± Ning Xin was slightly weirded out but her Intuition was going off in specific directions.
¡°What?! No, why would it?¡±
¡°You¡¯re not great at lying.¡±
¡°...How did you know?¡±
¡°Gut feeling.¡±
¡°Ha!¡±
¡°Tell me about all the natural treasures on Teheil. Then tell me how you suppose I can get home.¡± Xin squatted and hugged her knees, looking at the rough-skinned man who lay with numerous stab wounds.
¡°Dumb bi-¡±
Ning Xin poked his face with her sheathed sword to stop the words that were about to spill
¡°Hey, that is not nice. That scroll feels dangerous but sure, hit me with it. wa-!¡±
Ning Xin cursed out loud when she found herself somewhere else.
¡®Teleported. So much for magic being useless. Magic is still around.¡¯
The scroll felt dangerous but her gut told her that it was the ticket to growth. She hit her head twice, feeling so stupid for not packing up the two bags of food that she managed to scrooge up. It wasn¡¯t a lot but it was still food. All she had now was a secondary pouch of jerky and biscuits and a few dozen vials of her high-energy soup stock that she kept under her mantle.
Stored in nigh unbreakable vials made by sister Jing, she didn¡¯t have to worry about them breaking. She rarely took attacks anyway.
She didn¡¯t have a spatial backpack anymore and she was already here, so she didn¡¯t cry about it for long. Ten minutes tops. She might have felt more vulnerable than she initially assumed.
Scanning first for danger, then dropping the energy-wasteful Atrophy state for the Convalescence state after noting no immediate danger. She needed to make further adjustments to the Convalescence state since faster recovery meant greater energy usage.
Constitution and Perception felt like the safest investment to have at the moment. It was most attuned to survival excluding endurance. Her natural energy usage should be greatly reduced with an increase in Constitution. Vitality was a must for her.
Wisdom could take a huge dip leaving only enough for bare mental defences. Her mask could take care of mental defence.
Intelligence had to be balanced to help her mind react fast enough to what her perception told her. It was what helped her speed up the change between the two states so she didn¡¯t touch her Intelligence stat.
Strength and Agility could be under three digits, with her Intelligence great enough and her Vitality based augmentations she could easily react to dangers and go back into the Atrophy state.
Endurance could be invested into when she¡¯s in more desperate straits. When physical stats increase, so does the energy upkeep required so she kept them at a bare minimum. Mental stats also affected energy upkeep but she needed a sharp mind.
With her Intuition that bordered foresight, she would have more than enough time to react to dangers. This might as well be her training for Intuition.
¡®It¡¯s barren, what kind of opportunities am I supposed to find here?¡¯ She saw no living creature around. The open skies were grey. Not just the clouds but the sky itself had a grey hue.
The barren soil was grey with no trees and a few strands of grey grass every few hundred steps she took where her feet brought her.
There were no animals and insects were as sparse as the weeds.
Sunlight was present but it also shone a grey light on her. Temperatures were low but not freezing. A moment of pause later, she decided to take a breath of the air not from her mask.
It wasn¡¯t bad. She didn¡¯t choke and it satisfied her nose and lungs. She might even say the air was clean, just not very fresh or alive like the breath of a forest.
This was the same planet. The only difference in the environment was the direction that the sunlight was coming.
¡®Should I have listened to Ebony¡¯s triangulation or astrology lessons¡well, it just means I am very very far away from my previous location. Gravity relates to the size or mass of the planet, right? Then this place is big. That¡¯s not all, the Savant didn¡¯t lie. I am suppressed by the atmosphere. This is what he called the cushioning force?¡¯
Although she knew that an increase in gravity comes with an increase in atmospheric pressure, it was usually nothing worth noting after augmenting herself. But on Teheil, that was something else in the atmosphere. Some force that the Cinderashian called the ¡®cushioning force¡¯. She might have mistranslated it.
It was an active force that slowed and weakened all her movements.
The harder she tried to move, the stronger the resistance. When walking, she would barely feel it. If she ran like an unclassed, it was like running in water. If she ran unaugmented, she could hurt herself.
¡®It¡¯s like cornstarch. But it¡¯s not a fluid resisting motion, there are spots and times where the cushioning force weakens and strengthens. I have to figure out how to spot it. It¡¯s about the same strength here and where I was before.¡¯
Unable to speed up, she could only trudge on at an unclassed sprinting speed. A quick jog with her current physical distribution. She thanked the Tetramyths for the quick levelling and greatly needed stats. It was in preparation for these days.
She fell short of 500 by 20 or so levels but it was faster than most. She still had stats that she hadn¡¯t grown into but it was just a matter of time before she filled them out. Not by allocating them but by growing into them.
???
¡®This is pathetic. What opportunity? Starvation?¡¯ Ning Xin took an excruciating step forward in the dark grey light.
She had trudged on for two and a half months according to her body clock.
She fought nothing. Trained with nothing. And didn¡¯t gain any combat-related skill levels.
All she did was walk and run with nothing in sight. No food, no enemies, no prey.
Energy conservation mode could only go so far and she was down to her last vial of soup stock, each of which lasted her days since she didn¡¯t have any intense physical exertion.
Except now.
She had mostly figured out how the ¡®cushioning force¡¯ worked. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The grey light was either the force or an indicator of the force. The lighter and brighter areas didn¡¯t have as strong of a cushioning force.
She was now walking under grey light dark enough that walking was a hurdle. She also did what Ebony did best. Experiment.
This cushioning force had an upper limit. A threshold.
Once broken through with enough force, the grey ¡®light¡¯ would bend around her and no longer impede her.
At her current location and this intensity of grey light, she could not break through this threshold so there was no point in speeding through the area with brute force and drying out the remainder of her energy supply. Moving like a snail was more excruciating for her than most. More so when nothing was happening around her and her accelerated mind saw things in slow motion.
Under her robes were two large spheres that refused to wake up to talk to her. She might have gotten a little depressed and cried when she tried to talk to a pair of ice spheres that clung onto her burning mantle at the time of transport.
Her mind was rather weak whenever she went into the Atrophy state but she was calmer now that she spent more time in the Convalescence state. However, she still talked and mumbled to them whenever she fell asleep under the open skies with no distinction of day and night. Only a different hue of every present grey light.
She was unable to determine if the light was stronger during the day or night and there seemed to be no particular pattern to the ebbing strength of the grey light.
¡®I want a bath. Please rain or something.¡¯ She sipped water from her mask and complained about her stink. Thanks to the Transmutative Heart, she could still convert vitality to mana. Teheil robs her of her mana immediately but her mask was part of her and she was fast enough to make some water before the parasitic planet decided not to convert elemental water to pure mana for absorption. Unfortunately, it was still a dip in her resources.
If it wasn¡¯t for water, she would¡¯ve been able to survive longer with her soup stock since she didn¡¯t need to exert any strength for battle.
¡®Come on. Something to hunt¡I want to cook. And eat.¡¯ Her stomach grumbled loudly. With sheer instincts and her trusty feet driving her, her mind shut itself off.
She touched her last stock vial and gripped it tight.
???
¡°The beastly one has finally fainted. This was a long stalk brother.¡±
¡°It''s okay, can¡¯t you smell that richness? It¡¯ll be worth it. And the stink of Cinderashian we smelt¡good catch.¡±
¡°Kek, to think that the Cinderashians had someone like this. Now that she¡¯s starved let¡¯s tie her up and get going, our supplies are running out too. What a persistent beast clinging to life for over two months without food.¡±
¡°Must be the richness in her body. It faded over time, her aura is weak now. Let¡¯s do as you say and act now. She clearly knows where she¡¯s going since we¡¯re in the right direction, we should take her down.¡±
The iron-furred man stood on his hind legs and whistled in a low pitch. Turning away from his brother, he shouted to his troops. ¡°Men, we¡¯re almost back home. Unit 7, get that human and bring her back with us. Make sure her bounds are tight. She must be special amongst the Cinderashians, we can extract good information. Wake her up, extract information and then get rid of her.¡±
Sparing not another look at the pathetic woman who was just a prey that served itself. He commanded his soldiers to pack up and prepare to move on back to their golden field. They were just a week¡¯s march away by now. If the cushioning wasn¡¯t level 5 around here their golden field would¡¯ve been susceptible to attacks. It also made going back so difficult but they can¡¯t have everything.
The woman had been so weak that she remained within their binocular¡¯s sight even after a night¡¯s camp. And she had been trudging along the entire night.
After overseeing his men, he got back on four points of contact with the ground which was far more comfortable and natural for them. Obviously, he still had four arms on his upper torso to wield his weapons and carry his baggage. They shared similarities with the common human such as their upper body excluding the two additional arms under the two human ones and a little further back on their back.
The biggest difference was their iron fur and lower body. Their lower body was closer to a four-pronged tree stem for their 4 stable legs. They were the proud Ferruquads. Compared to the arrogant Cinderashians who may be more powerful elsewhere, they were far more suited for the environment of Teheil.
The Cinderashians found Teheil first and monopolised it for more than two centuries. It gave birth to a dedicated group of soldiers and workers who were fully incorporated into making a living and thriving in this world or the Ferruquads would¡¯ve driven them off by now.
¡°We¡¯re almost out of lustregrass? We were taking too long thanks to stalking the beast. It¡¯s okay, we¡¯re not far away from the golden fields. Half the rationing of lustregrass, we¡¯ll take it slow and walk through the cushioning. Have the cooks prepare for a heartier feast tomorrow to calm the men for the extended return schedule. Ah, remind them not to go crazy with the supplies.¡± Varex received the report but wasn¡¯t too worried.
Lustregrass helped to reduce the burden of the cushioning when powdered and sprinkled over their bodies and clothes. They were troublesome to transport since they lost effectiveness if they were crushed and powdered in advance but it was a necessity for long distance travel outside the Golden Fields. Not to mention battle effectiveness with and without it. It was thanks to it that they were quick marching with ease while the beast they stalked had to push through with unsteady steps.
Already packed up, he watched his troops move sluggishly and yelled. ¡°Mov-¡±
Varex¡¯s heart shook. The first thing he noticed was his hands and legs were trembling. The pressure was pushing on his throat that shut any words coming out. ¡®What is this feeling?¡¯ Facing his troops, he could see that he was far from the only one that was stunned still.
A thud entered his ears from the sudden silence through his camp. He would¡¯ve jumped from something touching his leg if he could move properly. It was one of his men¡¯s heads.
Broken growls tickled his neck.
¡®Tha-that beast! How did she get here already!? She exceeded level 5 cushioning without lustregrass?¡¯ Varax quickly regained control over his body and his troops did the same not too long after he did. All of their first motions were to jump back away from the centre where Varex was facing.
¡°IT¡¯S AN ATTACK!¡± He warned his camp with every bit of strength he could muster.
Twelve heads, an assortment of bare fleshed limbs, a pile of bones and a pile of organs sat where they had jumped away from. Neatly separated and organised. Oh, and a few pots of blood. Those pots were theirs, he recognised the large pots his cooks used. He didn¡¯t even know when but she even took one of their sleeping groundsheets to place unit 7¡¯s remains.
¡®Red hair? The beast we stalked had black hair. A different beast? A native Teheil monster? No, it has a pair of swords and a set of clothes. But that--thing¡is not a Cinderashian.¡¯ Varex¡¯s stiffen again when the head, or rather, the expressionless mask faced him. It was a mask with a dimly pulsing orange feather that was vertically split in half by a dark red line. He could have sore the halves that were white and black swaped places. It was an opaque mask that hid all features but Varex saw himself staring into a pair of sharp crimson eyes.
All he saw was a monster in human skin. He couldn¡¯t spot the human or sentient glint that he would find in people.
But he was wrong when the beast uttered words.
¡°Those - drop, weapons and hostility. 3 seconds. Live.¡± It was barely audible, dry and a thick accent. It was Gia but broken and not even structured right but he understood them.
¡°Slay the sinner that killed our breathens!!¡±
Varex¡¯s bravest leaders bellowed war cries increasing valor and reducing dehibiliting aura effects for their allies. He would usually praise that reaction on the spot but their target was fast so he wasted no time to back his men up with a physical boost by spirit. ¡°Her aura¡¯s weak and starved but we¡¯ll do it methodically! Unit 3 to the front, unit 1 and 2 attack!¡±
¡®Her aura is King-ranked at best but top-tier speed. Unit 7¡¯s best at imprisonment but not too fast. What a terrible mistake on my part. Does she think my men will drop their weapons?¡¯ Varex led a thousand strong men, with a tenth of them being Kings.
They could even fight off Emperors since Teheil drained all mana and an individual warrior can only fight so many with their limited resources. Emperor or not. Varex was even confident of warding of one of the Cinderashians¡¯s Bellicose Savants generals that gotten accustomed to Teheil''s conditions. Quantitative power was always an advantage.
¡°Beastly one, killing my troops has consequenc-you dare descecrate my breathen!¡± Varex charged, tackling the beastly aura with one of his own by bringing his heavy axe down on the smaller creature who barely reached his standing chest height.
The beast¡¯s mask uncovered her cracked and dry lips with one arm grabbing the edge of their cooks¡¯ pots, she chugged his men¡¯s blood. Varex was more than a little surprised when his axe missed by a hair as she took a step forward.
The pot lip never touched the beast but his men¡¯s blood flowed down gently as she tilted it towards herself. Pausing, her voice echoed within their ears again. Slightly more pleasant sounding. Quenched.
¡°Three.¡± A familiar pulse echoed throughout his camp that made his body tremble but a dozen war cries combatted the fear.
¡°ARHH!¡± Varex followed up from his fall and his other arm swung the warhammer horizontally. Double Heavy Arms Art was commonly taught amongst their race and he was good for his age. The strongest warriors under his command charged up as well. He was also adept at the Double Defender Art and held two shields with his secondary arms behind his back.
Active skills with intense stamina sliced the very cushioning around them and sundered their target.
A clang entered their ears and two pots were tossed on the ground. Dried up. Their target stood behind them and dodged the casual backhand swing that two of them including Varex reflexively threw back.
¡°Two. Please. I¡¯m a chef and hunter but killing people¡I don¡¯t like it, I can¡¯t cook or eat that flesh but if I¡¯m not sure how long I can control my hunger. Don¡¯t give me a reason to.¡±
¡°You speak as if you would let us go.¡± Varex knew it in his bones, this monster was recovering. She was even more valuable than he imagined. If not a Cinderashian, could she be one of those treacherous Veilborn Humans? It wasn¡¯t out of the table, they had many unique individuals that stood out from their usual traits.
¡°Not if you don¡¯t drop your burning urge to kill me. I can smell it. Your excitement to bring me down. To serve me on a platter to someone or something. One. Last chance, those who drop their intent will live¡before I lose myself to hunger and instinct. I don¡¯t have it in me to stick around long.¡±
She became more fluent in speech and clearly understood that Varex couldn¡¯t stand back, no matter the fear or telltale signs his body was informing him. If he did, his men would lose confidence in him. He couldn¡¯t let that happen, it wasn¡¯t easy to climb up to his position.
Her words didn¡¯t match her aura, she could tell he was excitable and he could tell she had far greater eagerness for battle. Before he knew it, the many pots of unit 7¡¯s blood were emptied.
¡°WAAARRH!¡± He bellowed to his warriors with no particular meaning behind his bellow.
Varex choked when another pulse washed out their war cries. The pulse physically cracked the cushioning, a sight he was unfamiliar with.
¡®I failed.¡¯ A few clangs of metal entered his ears and he knew it was some of his men losing their grip on their weapons.
Unfortunately, he could never berate them for their cowardly act ever again.
He simply didn¡¯t have the vocals, or the head.
???
A distance away from the Ferruquad camp where mass execution was carried out, a group of four short creatures lay on the ground and crawled under the level 5 cushioning.
¡°Are you seeing what I¡¯m seeing?¡± One of the short creatures pinched her cheeks.
¡°Crimson fur. Flash of red thunder. That unmistakable power of vitality. Ho-holy maiden.¡±
¡°We need to tell the High Priestess. The holy maiden has descended!¡±
¡°No, she fell! We need to bring her back!¡±
¡°How? There¡¯s still over 300 of them that she didn¡¯t kill.¡±
¡°She¡¯s too merciful. All of them deserve to die!¡±
Whispering loudly, they panicked and discussed their course of action.
¡°******* ****.¡±
They hopped with all fours when they were bathed in heat. The red figure fell on her face and her racing heart was loud but weakening.
¡°Uhm what did she say?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, I¡¯m not fluent in our invaders'' tongue.¡±
¡°Something me. Maybe she said ¡®save me¡¯? Did she know we¡¯re not trying to kill her?¡±
¡°Whatever! Can¡¯t you see the Ferruquads are snapping out of their fear and confusion they might look for us, let¡¯s just get her away as fast as possible!¡±
¡°Ahh!! It burns! He-help me put out the fire!¡± The speaker¡¯s fur caught on fire after trying to pick the supposed Holy Maiden up.
¡°You silly little girl! The two of us will carry her, you two keep up. Shhhh! It really burns!¡±
Two for the furry four-limbed creature tossed the large Holy Maiden on their backs and dashed away under the veil of thick cushioning.
Chapter 337: Polite Trespasser
Ebony had their water source, Volcanic Cinderbloom dew delivered to his cell but the kind guard didn¡¯t feed him.
Someone else, or rather a group of people walked through the seemingly molten cell walls and entered the same room as him. Along with a jar of the dew sloshing around one, they were pinched between one of the men¡¯s two fingers.
¡°Criminal. Be glad you have value to Lord Gearhart and kept your life.¡± The one holding his water had a nasal voice.
Ebony¡¯s eyes hadn¡¯t fully healed and were half molten, he didn¡¯t have any mana and the cell didn¡¯t have any mana either. His only mana senses were internal thanks to his ability to sense his chassis. A quick check was all it took to reaffirm that his chassis was in a squeezed state. Exhausted and had nothing to burn to convert into mana but not damaged. His ears were working perfectly fine.
Although he spoke to the kind guard, he kept his mouth shut with this new person. He didn¡¯t know what they were here for so he listened and waited to find out.
¡°This isn¡¯t the promised dew, we can¡¯t let you die from sulfur poisoning. It¡¯s water. Want it?¡±
Laying like the dead molten creature he was, Ebony just remained silent. They expected too much if they thought he had the energy to deal with taunts. Though he did.
¡°Bah, you. Feed him, he¡¯s about to croak.¡±
Someone else with softer footsteps walked up to his body and knelt. Rather gently touching his lips with the oddly cold jar before uncapping and quickly pouring the fluid down his throat.
¡®Good jar, spatial item and it stops water from evaporating in this unbearable heat. The powdered brick has too little nutrients. I can wake my body and heal my molten flesh but¡let¡¯s keep it this way so they keep feeding me. Since they want me alive¡I guess I can make myself look worse so they improve my treatment. I really need the sustenance if I want to recover from the debuffs and get my mana regeneration going.¡¯
¡°That¡¯s enough.¡±
¡°Telepaths, get to work. Extract everything you can from his mind.¡±
Ebony¡¯s sense of touch wasn¡¯t completely gone too as he felt 4 different hands touching his head. Three of them balked at touching his hairless head that was squishy and sticky.
¡®Telepaths. Their mind mage equivalent. They want to chat with me since I can¡¯t talk physically and my current injured state is perfect for them to keep me contained.¡¯
Ebony couldn¡¯t resist physical attacks or torture even if he wanted to so he had no choice but to allow them to touch his head.
¡°Are you in there? What¡¯s taking so long?¡±
¡°Sir, please give them a minute. This man has strong mental barriers.¡±
¡°Then get to work and help your apprentices. This is important and I don¡¯t want any delays.¡±
¡°Yes sir.¡±
Ebony felt something pressing against his mind. They took surprisingly long before he found them entering his mindspace.
¡®This is new. They entered my mind with theirs. Though they only got in thanks to the last guy. Since they are not going to kill me¡I guess I can put more focus in my mind and see what these people are up to.¡¯ Ebony figured he could send himself into his mindspace. It didn¡¯t hurt to be there and protect himself.
He first entered the core of his mindspace then teleported himself out of the vast shell to the outer layers where his peripheral thoughts would lay bare and loud. He did not know how far away it was in terms of physical distance since the mind didn¡¯t work that way.
It was his mind, he knew where the foreign invaders were immediately upon their arrival. But his ¡®physical¡¯ body remained far away as he watched the invaders who similarly had a body. To his surprise, he had sight here and could see the 5 invaders and their features.
Assuming they looked the same outside, there was a pair of ladies with squarish facial features and short hair along with another pair of men who were both bearded. All of them had orange hair.
These four were freaking out.
Hysterically.
¡®Why on earth are they shouting and screaming so loudly? It¡¯s annoying, mind magic makes their screams here exceptionally loud.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s mindspace did not shake and the telepath¡¯s screech didn¡¯t travel past their arms'' reach.
¡®Interesting, so this is what it looks like when my meditation silences out background noise that tries to interrupt my mind.¡¯ These weren¡¯t surface thoughts, he was sincerely wondering.
¡°Where am I?! Where is this?! Teacher!! Where are you?¡±
Similar calls were happening amongst the 4 apprentice telepaths. Although they were called apprentices, Ebony doubted they were any less than Grandmasters. It might just be a title in accordance with their status compared to the other man who is also bearded but with light orange hair instead. The older man was busy standing still, eyes closed and sweat drenching his clothes.
Ebony might have been more interested in how their mental forms had clothes than why they were acting hysterical.
¡°CALM YOURSELVES! This is another creature''s mindspace, you must always prepare to meet the incomprehensible! Set your mind. You are you! Recall and steady your perception!¡±
Ebony sat down, formed tea with a sphere that was his cute mana chassis and drank it. He waited for two decades before the old man¡¯s shoulder relaxed a little. Keeping his eyes closed he tapped his apprentices head. Over 4 decades passed before all of them were able to move and not panic.
¡®Telepaths or mind mages in general are a different breed. I suppose that includes me. The passage of perceived time doesn¡¯t affect our minds as much as they would to an Unclassed human.¡¯
¡°Teacher, this place is¡alien.¡±
¡°Ya, I thought I was going to turn blind. No, I was about to lose my mind.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what I was looking at. It''s not white. Not black. There was nothing¡I just stared into depths but didn¡¯t know what I was staring into.¡±
¡°Teacher?¡±
¡°Good job holding onto your self-anchor. I do not know what the environment we are in looks like. Just like you, I cannot describe it. This is a very unique mindspace but make no mistake, you should be prepared for that when peering into an unknown creature¡¯s mind. Especially those mindless beings, void creatures and numerous other eldritchs. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
¡®They are quite rude.¡¯ Ebony harmless thought after being compared with mindless beings.
Unfortunately for him, he slipped up. This line of thought echoed throughout this layer of his mindspace. They knew he was watching them now.
¡°Anchor yourselves, let me do the talking. Ehhem. Greetings. I am a servant of the Gearhart, you can call me Elijah!¡±
¡®They are really loud,¡¯ instead of replying, his surface thoughts were transmitted as internal thoughts even though he could have replied without talking.
¡°Hmm¡maybe he doesn¡¯t know we¡¯re here. Let¡¯s go deeper and call out to him. We need more than surface thoughts and we¡¯re clearly on the peripherals.¡± The teacher, Elijah said out loud and led his apprentices by hand. They didn¡¯t use sight but as mind mages or telepaths, they seemed to know where they were going because they were going in the right direction.
It was a bit cute when they walked hand in hand like a group of children.
Ebony saw that they didn¡¯t send any form of attack on his mind and found himself fading back into his body. His Intelligence and Wisdom stat was reduced right now so his defences and reaction speed to danger were also reduced but he was more worried about his body. Another two men were standing by his body who weren¡¯t unmoving like the telepaths.
There was a slight dissonance when he entered and left his mindspace quickly. The dissonance came from the change in perception of time. In his mind, the trespassers were passing the months and years but a tiny fraction of that time passed in the real world.
¡®My reaction speed to internal dangers is slower if I¡¯m not personally present. Cool. But I think I¡¯ll be fine with this group. At their pace¡they can¡¯t even pass through the outer layers in a hundred thousand years. That teacher is probably king-ranked. As I thought, meditation-type skills passively enhance mental defences.¡¯
A few minutes passed outside with the two men just watching in silence. Panicked screams were exchanged within his mindspace. A couple more decades passed and they realised they weren¡¯t getting anywhere. They did get closer but only Elijah was convinced. The apprentices lost that conviction over time.
Then they realised they couldn¡¯t come out.
An hour passed outside.
One of the two men who remained silent picked up the hand that slumped on Ebony¡¯s head.
¡°Sir¡he¡¯s gone.¡±
¡°Dead?¡±
¡°His body is alive but his mind¡¡±
¡°Bring him out. Send him to their doctors.¡±
Over the course of the next hour, the rest of the apprentices faced the same end.
¡°Criminal. I know you can hear me. Let that man, Elijah go.¡± The guy who sloshed around the jar of water in his face bent to one knee and gripped his chin to force his molten eye to exchange eye contact with him.
¡°Time is ticking.¡± Ebony decided to speak up.
¡°...You will have your water.¡±
The man seemed to believe that was enough but Ebony knew that they would give him water regardless. They didn¡¯t want him to die after all.
¡°Another month had passed for him.¡±
¡°What do you want?¡± Veins on his face and neck pushed out. This man was strong. Injured as he was, Ebony¡¯s instincts told him that even if he was in full health he might not beat the man.
¡°I¡¯m starving to death here. A brick of powder¡¯s not going to keep me alive.¡± He told no lies. One brick wouldn¡¯t keep him alive, but one a day would be plenty.
¡°Not a problem. Now let him go.¡±
¡®Can I push it further¡let¡¯s do it, it doesn¡¯t matter if I fail.¡¯ He pondered.
¡°Meat. I need meat.¡± Actually, he was fine with any food that was high in energy but meat usually contained the densest amount
¡°Impossible, criminal. Prisoner rations can keep you alive.¡±
¡°I need to heal, how long do you think I can survive in this state.¡±
¡°That is your problem. You broke our torturer¡¯s tools but to think we didn¡¯t have to torture you, Cinderash¡¯s environment was enough to kill you. You sound alive to me.¡±
¡®Fourteen, did I really break their tools?¡¯ He contacted his clone.
¡®Vibrational reflection. Those tools were fragile, can we blame ourselves when they broke after trying to break our skin?¡¯
¡°I can wait all day,¡± Ebony replied.
It angered the man further. He released his aether and lifeforce but Ebony saw it as a harmless tooth. They were so obedient to their orders and they clearly thought he was at the brink of death if they so generously provided him water.
¡°You will get healed. Now release him.¡±
¡°Some pants would be nice.¡± Ebony was not ashamed and he wasn¡¯t asking for underwear. His equipment was taken away but even his clothes would burn unless he melded them with his mana.
¡°A criminal doesn¡¯t require dignity. You will live without it.¡±
¡°What is your name?¡±
¡°...¡± The silence from the man almost made Ebony chuckle.
¡°Your telepaths aren¡¯t as cowardly as you.¡±
¡°Accidents can happen criminal.¡±
¡°I have understood and agreed with your stance on this. Accidents can happen.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t push his luck any further. It was far from ideal because they benefitted from his recovery. He didn¡¯t doubt that they noticed the increase in his mana output the moment he woke up. He was literally paying for his medical fees.
¡®Oh well, I¡¯m not an experienced negotiator. I¡¯d say I didn¡¯t do too badly.¡¯ He allowed Elijah to pull away. The four apprentices shouldn¡¯t be dead, they just turned hysterical and he actively pushed them out of his mind since they weren''t able to resist for long.
From their monologues, what they couldn¡¯t comprehend was the lack of colour and the lack of any objects. Transparency so to speak. They assumed that looking at endless depths usually meant pure darkness or white. Ebony didn¡¯t understand their inability to understand. This was his mind for as long as he could remember.
Supposedly, most people had plenty of junk and clutter around their peripheral mind. Clutter refers to thoughts. His mind was too silent for them and even silenced their mind and thoughts.
They did not handle staying in that condition for a few centuries well. A pity. But they should be able to recover if they have proper mental training and defences. A little silence never hurt.
¡°Elijah? Your boss asks you to go home. Please see yourself out.¡± Ebony had unnaturally strong mental barriers but he didn¡¯t know how to push out Elijah. He had no choice but to ask the man to leave.
From the moment Ebony had landed on Cinderash, he had been taking a very heavy-handed approach. It was unlike him but he learned the hard way that it was the only way strong people listened. Might makes right seemed to be a universal belief and his passive ways were the reason why people like the Nebulian and the Ezekiel thought he was just a walking cow up for grabs.
Showing some fangs, better late than never.
Elijah awoke and carefully pulled his hand away along with some of Ebony¡¯s skin and dried blood. He had shaky feet but managed to walk himself out.
¡°How deep did I manage to go?¡± A voice echoed within his mind where Elijah last left.
¡°Huh? Maybe a few million years if you can keep up your pace?¡± Ebony told it as it was.
Elijah started a run¡¯s pace when he no longer had to pull 4 apprentices along with him but the outer layers were the easiest to traverse. There was so much more to cover in his mindspace. It was also questionable if the inner layers were as easy to traverse for an invader. ¡®Mind magic is concerning, he left a trace of where he was and is talking with me from there. Does it mean he can invade from his last entry or exit point because he¡¯s already familiar with my passive defences? Tranquility is erasing the mark but better mind magic or telepaths might leave a mark I can¡¯t notice.
¡°I see. Excuse my rude intrusion, I had orders. Thank you for the unique experience.¡±
¡°I appreciate the politeness.¡±
Elijah did a mental bow and the last traces of him in Ebony¡¯s mindspace disappeared.
They left the cell and Ebony alone with only heat and orange light accompanying him.
Chapter 338: Walk Down Memory Lane
Hours later.
The kind guard returned with another two bricks. He also had gained permission to wield the jar of water that he nervously fed Ebony with.
Water was a luxury and he was even more polite with Ebony after realising that this prisoner had been given such luxury.
¡°Thank you. Y-¡±
¡°Sorry, I got to go attend to some time-sensitive duties!¡±
Ebony did not trick the kind guard to feed him more than he was allocated. So far, all of them were very obedient and maybe scared of Gearhart. He didn¡¯t want to get the nice people who were just doing their jobs in trouble.
¡®One brick is about 800 calories. Enough to survive if all prisoners do is sit around. If I sit around all day, not using any mental or physical strength my current resting metabolism requires only 1000 calories. Not unimaginably far from a normal human even with the Constitution stat so high. It increased after I rebuilt my physique, increased my muscle and bone density. I¡¯m 600 kilos of muscle and bone together with all the other stats including strength and intelligence increase my energy requirements. I¡¯d say I¡¯m already magically energy efficient.¡¯
In his free time, Ebony did a bit of calculations. The numbers skyrocketed if he exercised and fought but higher quality monster meat was also more energy-dense. If he were to be fed 3 bricks a day, he would be able to begin healing.
¡®I need to stay melted, the more they feed me the faster I can start healing.¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t have any visitors and had nothing to do so he stayed connected with the clones in range and continued his attempts to contact Dusk, Ten and Eleven.
Since Fourteen couldn¡¯t enter the prison to help him scout and map out escape routes, he had the clone explore the Gearhart estates and the entire island on the volcano they were on. He also gave Fourteen a project to work on, a stealth rune to add to his Stalwart formula together with observing and understanding aether and the differences it had with mana.
Two Cinderashian days later, he had a visitor.
A healer that used aether was led and protected by the same leader who denied him pants together with two other men who held his already chained arms and legs down while their esteemed healer worked on his molten flesh.
After 60 hours of immense patience on the guards¡¯ end, the healer gave up. The esteemed healer was very well guarded and like him, had water to drink. The healer even had a servant to wipe his sweat.
¡°His make-up is too different but that aside, he is not healing. His effective constitution is in the hundreds of thousands, please get another healer.¡± Ebony memorised the soft voice.
¡®He¡¯s probably wrong about the effective constitution. My mana chassis is basically empty, how can my effective constitution be that high? Do they not know I¡¯m a mana being and I¡¯m not fully physical? That shouldn¡¯t be, Ezekiel guy and the Saint should know. A secret? That would make sense. They don¡¯t want anyone to know.¡¯
¡®You misunderstood. Aether healers are not as rare as healers on Elcra and they follow a universal standard for classifying healing difficulty in terms of ¡®effective constitution¡¯. I listened in on one of the healer¡¯s lectures. This takes into account base stats, racial baseline, physique, fortification, passive skills and more. Resistance to healing is also taken into account. They also classify how good a healer is depending on what level of effective constitution they can heal. Don¡¯t be misled by the numbers.¡¯ Seventeen voiced in his mindspace.
¡®You¡¯re back in range? That was fast.¡¯ Ebony replied to Seventeen.
¡®I had to reroute, it was too dangerous and hot where I was going and I don¡¯t dare waste mana till you can recover and recharge me. Right, charge me with Will.¡¯
During the connection, he received all of Seventeen¡¯s latest memories and mental mapping. There was a city not far away at the base of a volcano a few volcanoes away. It was a small city with barely a few million in population. Although Seventeen said it was dangerous, the only danger he faced in his travel was heat. They were close to the home of a Saint, what could be more dangerous in the surroundings?
All Cinderashian spoke Gia.
Seventeen could stay to study more about the city but he also found information about the surrounding towns and cities which he wanted to check out before deciding where to settle and gather information. With no immediate way of leaving the planet, Seventeen was also mapping and looking for a good place to hide.
They had quite a lot of confidence in hiding because of how unperceptive these Cinderashians were with mana. The average citizen''s level in the city that Seventeen found were too high since they were a city that purely served the Gearhart. Direct servants and their families so to speak. It was why healer lectures and classes were being carried out nearby.
However, Seventeen still managed to walk in and out of the city. They were practically blind to mana but Seventeen also kept a good distance away from strong people out of caution so they couldn¡¯t confirm how good or poor these aether user¡¯s perception was.
Seventeen got on with his travel and was out of range soon enough.
Ebony was not bored enough to watch Fourteen constantly and worked on his healing and Will skills while his visitors saw themselves out. ¡°Look at me, loosing flesh. My race requires a lot of food.¡±
His taunts did not work and his meals were still the same amount of dry bricks, which surprisingly was 4 bricks every 30 hours. Although they had longer days, Cinderashians seemed to follow a day and night clock not unlike Elcra. People still slept when the sun was out.
Twelve Elcrain days later, Ebony climbed out of his mindspace.
A drop of coagulated mana had gathered in his body. The exhaustion debuffs were all gone while the hunger debuff was almost all gone.
But his mana regeneration had begun to exceed the drain from all the chains on him. It might be obvious to his captors that he was healing because his output had been increasing but as long as they didn¡¯t come and put another chain on him, they wouldn¡¯t know how much his regeneration exceeded their absorption.
Without any physical exertion, all his sustenance could go to mana regeneration.
¡®I should hasten it. Using even my flesh¡¯s remaining energy contents to make myself even more dead. When I have enough coagulated mana, Mireloom Chassis Engine can start again and my regeneration would increase further. They might finally feed me more if they see me dying and I can speed up more.¡¯ Ebony did not fear the physical weakness he was aiming to get back. As long as his mana chassis was fine, physical injury didn¡¯t scare him much.
His body also kept life force regeneration at a minimum because his Will decided that all his energy should go to mana regeneration. The more he figured out the things he could do with Will, the more impressive Will seemed.
Instead of another healer, Ebony¡¯s next visitor was someone with the same degree of aura as the man who didn¡¯t dare to share his name. The Telepath, Elijah was present too.
¡°This is the creature you couldn¡¯t see through Elijah?¡±
¡°...Yes, Guru.¡±
¡®Emperor mind mage¡am I in serious trouble?¡¯ Ebony quickly hopped into his mindspace. He didn¡¯t dare to take the latest visitor lightly.
Like he assumed, the ¡®Guru¡¯ already invaded his mind and was at the edge of his inner layers that divided peripheral and conscious thoughts with memories.
The Guru didn¡¯t pause upon entry like Elijah and his apprentices did. He even brought Elijah¡¯s mind along.
¡®This looks bad.¡¯
¡°It looks bad huh? Creature, what is your name?¡±
Ebony fell into a trance to shut his mind up, surprising the Guru when there was no reply in his mind.
¡°Tier 4 meditation. No wonder this boy can¡¯t go far. Let¡¯s see how far you can hide your thoughts from me.¡± The Guru was a short dark-skinned man with a grey-orange beard, moustache and long brows combed his beard to the side with one hand and placed his other hand on the invisible barrier that separated the layers of thought. He was also bald but had his eyes closed from the start.
Ebony felt the invasion like a needle in his head, moving himself in, the Guru already stepped into where some of his memories were sitting. He was moving faster than the speed of sound within Ebony¡¯s mind until the pressure from passive defences stopped the Guru. Here lies his procedural and semantic memories but they were not unlike his outer layers. Everything was colourless and seemingly invisible.
¡®Hot damn, that was intense. I see, so natural mental defences are thicker the closer it is and this stops mental attacks. That¡¯s why it¡¯s harder for mental magic to affect people, even weak defences.¡¯
¡°That is correct.¡±
The Guru finally opened his eyes, clearly shocked when he saw what Ebony¡¯s inner mind looked like. The strong Telepath only peeked for a few seconds before he closed his eyes and anchored himself with a bead of sweat rolling down his brows. The Guru left Elijah somewhere in the inner layers where Elijah was trying to anchor himself before getting lost as his apprentices did.
¡°I am impressed. This is more than what I was expecting. But this is enough, you can¡¯t hide from me here, can you? Let me ask you, what is your name?¡±
¡°Do you think I can¡¯t control what I¡¯m thinking?¡±
¡°I will know if it¡¯s the truth or not. I am Guru Cogs Pwit¡±
¡°You can call me Ebony.¡± He chose to reply but he did feel that he was being guided or encouraged to speak.
¡°Good, Ebony. Why did you attack Lord Gearhart¡¯s son?¡±
¡°To defend myself. To find my companion. To get what I want. To show some fangs. To spite helplessness.¡±
¡°...All true. What grudges do you have with the Gearharts or the Cinderashians?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Hmm, too vague? What grudges do you have with Saint Gearhart?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°What grudges do you have with Saint Gearhart¡¯s son?¡±
¡°...Stop. There is no reply because I think nothing of them. No grudges.¡±
¡°Truth. Suffice to say, I am surprised. Seems like I need to take some time to understand you. Don¡¯t think that invisible memories mean I can¡¯t do anything.¡± The Guru waved his hands and to Ebony''s surprised, coloured the surroundings.
Like wet paint, colour spread through his mind. Tranquility got to work removing the background noise but the colour only spread faster as the Guru forced his mind to show itself to both parties. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
Ebony¡¯s first reaction after finding out that Perpetual Tranquillity Spring can fight back was to teleport himself back to where the outer edge of the inner memories was. It was the latest memories including his clones¡¯ existence. He did not want the Guru or Cinderashians to find out he had clones running about their planet. Just because their individuals couldn¡¯t spot his clones at the moment didn¡¯t mean they couldn¡¯t if they put their minds and resources into it.
In the city of servants, talking about other worlds was common and part of daily conversation. Other than servants, there were a bunch of other races too. Though mostly fire and heat-attuned races. It was also a hub for trade.
If spatial travel was not as rare or difficult for the Cinderashians as he imagined, Ebony would be in trouble if they asked for help from people who knew how to handle mana.
Without his clones, he would feel imprisoned and he would not like to see a hunt down for his clones that already had a time limit on their lifespans.
Fortunately, this Guru was strong and went into his memories from a few years ago instead of recent memories.
The Guru was currently watching Ebony fight the Tetramyths with Dusk. He did not attempt to question and converse anymore, only watching his memories while walking deeper into his mind.
The present location of his mindspace had overlapping memories of the battlefield. Many battles happened at the same time but the Guru was used to it and wasn¡¯t bothered by the multiple threads of thought appearing.
For the next mental year, the Guru continued to walk backwards and observe his memories. Ebony was a little concerned that his skills were all exposed but his resistance stopped a hundred metres away from the Guru. Although the range of the Guru¡¯s sight was impeded by him, all the Guru had to do was push on and his mental ripple made him watch and see what he wanted to.
Throughout the years of memories that the Guru walked back on, the dark-skinned man slowed down and started showing difficulty. Unsure if the Guru was lucky or unlucky but the portion of memories that he was seeing were all battle and training-related.
There were no memories about him or the people around him. After all, memories weren¡¯t just parked and segregated chronologically.
¡®I need to plan for battles assuming they know everything I¡¯m capable of in battle now.¡¯
¡°You monster. How many battles have you gone through? Is fighting all you know? Do you not have a life outside of battle and training?¡± The Guru got more scared the more scenes he saw. Even an experienced Telepath like him did not expect to see nothing but battle for years.
The Guru might have hoped for a reply from his mind but he was able to keep his mind silent and still, even here. It made the strong Telepath continue on his path to older memories. He was already viewing the memories faster than a 1 to 1 time scale so it didn¡¯t take long before he reached the battle section of Ebony¡¯s first year on Elcra.
The Guru made no attempts to hide his shock at the speeds that Ebony had taken to get to his current strength. Sadly, Ebony wasn¡¯t able to hide Ning Xin¡¯s strength as she was part of many of his training memories.
Ebony was still as calm as ever. Even without his active pressure, his natural mental defences only got thicker the deeper the Guru invaded. Now, the Guru couldn¡¯t see further than ten metres and would need a lot more effort if he wanted to watch more. The sweat on the Guru¡¯s bald head was proof that staying here was beginning to be a strain on him.
¡°So you¡¯re going to continue.¡± Ebony¡¯s mental voice directly talked to him instead of thinking in first person.
¡°Of course. You are unclassed. And I have been diverging my routes to get away from this battle section, I should be able to learn more about you as a person soon.¡±
¡°If you say so.¡±
The Guru¡¯s hand phased through the Hoarfrost Wolf Pup that chased him when he just arrived on Elcra. Then he found himself looking at a very different scene. They were no longer on Elcra and it didn¡¯t take long for the Guru to realise the vast change in perspective and surroundings despite him not skipping any memories in this section.
Unfortunately for the Guru, he continued to see Ebony exercising.
In a home gym.
Running marathons.
Outdoor camping.
Tackling wildlife.
Weighted underwater fish fighting.
Getting tackled by wildlife.
There was little difference except the obvious difference in technology, fashion, environment and language. The Guru likely didn¡¯t know what was being said.
However, as the Guru said. The scenes were changing. There were more voices, more talking. They were divulging from just training and fighting memories.
Ebony didn¡¯t know how to feel when he noticed where he was. He felt exposed. This was where memories were stored in order. Complete ones, with all interactions as recalled by him.
¡°Finally. I¡¯m on the complete chronological track. So that¡¯s your family, I was beginning to think you were born from a stone-cold rock. Now that I see your parents¡I suppose I wasn¡¯t far off the mark. This woman-¡±
¡°Shut up.¡±
¡°Hit a sore spot huh. Good. Now I learn. You can start speaking or you can just watch in silence. Doesn¡¯t matter. When I get to your core, there is nothing you can hide from me.¡±
¡°Convince me again when your legs are working fine. You can¡¯t go much further. All you see are memories. You know nothing.¡±
¡°That is true. These may be false memories you are showing me for all I know. Unless I get to your core. As for whether or not I can enter the core of your mindspace. We¡¯ll see won¡¯t we?¡±
The Guru gulped moments after their short conversation. Both of them watched as his mother swung a wet towel at 14-year-old Ebony, catching his forearm and elbow before she twisted and pulled him to the ground. The friction held his arm in place and his mother¡¯s wrist spun and dislocated his elbows. Young Ebony tried to spin his body in the same direction but had his spine stepped on.
The 14-year-old dragged his dislocated arm to pull his mother closer to the ground before grabbing the wet towel with his free hand. Twisting his hip to let the foot slip, he broke free from the lock at the cost of friction burns from the hard boot with all her weight on.
The Guru walked on and on before he finally noticed a huge pair of eyes in the ¡®sky¡¯. It wasn¡¯t Ebony who was still watching from afar.
This was his memory of his mother¡¯s pair of eyes as she watched him after beating him down. That pair of stone-cold eyes scared the Guru but it represented the immense warmth that his mother showed Ebony.
¡°Son, stand up.¡±
¡°Son, keep moving.¡±
¡°Son, what can you do now.¡±
¡°Son, you are fragile. Learn how to avoid getting broken.¡±
¡°So you¡¯ve lost again, now how will you avoid the same mistakes.¡±
¡°Son, what are you going to do.¡±
¡°Son, how can you¡¡±
¡°Son, w-¡±
The Guru sat down, exhausted even though all he did was walk and observe. He might not understand the language but it seemed like a Telepath of his skill had his ways of understanding unknown words in some manner.
Of course, he didn¡¯t just see battles. The Guru saw everything in between. From sleeping, eating, excreting. All of his studying. Playing chess with his father. Playing Concentration with thousands of cards. Playing other weird mental games. Memorising details. Testing his observational skills. Interactions with his father were more quiet. Most of the time, they just sat around each other in silence and played their games and mental tests together. Testing his physical abilities throughout the years. Even his young public school days were exposed.
All of his interactions with people. Everything.
Ebony did not feel uncomfortable knowing that someone else found out about his past. He didn¡¯t think it was that big of a deal. There was the point that the Guru didn¡¯t know English.
To be fair, there wasn¡¯t much for the Guru to see. It was still at least 70% meditation, training or studying.
¡°Huh, interesting. So you think both your parents are dead? Why? I don¡¯t see any evidence of that in your memories, just sudden disappearance.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Thick mental defences¡You are so young? Not even 30 standard years?¡± The Guru suddenly realised that the volume of memories wasn¡¯t nearly as much as he was expecting.
¡°If a standard year isn¡¯t far from the year I¡¯m familiar with, then yes.¡±
¡°I see. I would never have believed it if I didn¡¯t see how you were raised.¡± The Guru smiled wryly.
¡°I was raised perfectly. Do not bring that tone up with me, I will take it as an insult.¡± Ebony might have gotten a little sensitive with the Guru¡¯s constant probing with mental skills and questioning over time.
¡°I didn''t mean it that way. Then let¡¯s see how long this kind of lifestyle goes back, I¡¯m nearing your core little boy.¡± The Guru tried to touch 4-year-old Ebony but his attempts failed once more.
¡®Is he trying to change my memories when he physically touches them? He failed every time¡good.¡¯
¡°Another core memory.¡± The Guru chatted with Ebony for the thousandth time during his memory lane walk. Every question was a subtle mental attack. He was able to spot and sense whenever he reached one of the memories that was deeply ingrained in Ebony. For example, when he was 15 years old and left behind after the ¡®Trial¡¯.
¡°I remember this very clearly,¡± Ebony replied the Guru.
¡°Hahh, more training is it?¡± The Guru shook his head when he saw the woods with the toddler him and his mother.
¡°No. I was too young to train my body and they were worried my bones and muscles wouldn¡¯t grow properly. You should know, this is the game, Hunt or be Hunted. At least, it was one of the first few games I¡¯ve played.¡± Ebony fondly looked upon this scene.
¡°So why is this particular game memorable?¡±
¡°My mother only started taking me seriously after this day. It was after this that she wasn¡¯t just glazing over me and what you see as a pair of emotionlessly cold eyes became a pair of warm eyes to me. She started to think that I¡¯m her son from this point.¡±
¡°Ho.¡±
The toddler ran past a few thick trunks. His short limbs were anything but clumsy. In the game of hunt or be hunted, it was all about running and hiding. It might have been when he first learned the basics of stealth and camouflage. There would usually be a dog or some other animal on his tail but this time was special. It was one of the first few rounds of this game he played and the hunter was his mother.
Obviously, she wasn¡¯t trying to kill him. This wasn¡¯t their first ¡®game¡¯ so he didn¡¯t cry. It was not a fond experience to have someone who cared for him day and night suddenly chase him down and hit him.
¡®I was so naive. I believed I was normal even after going to school and studying.¡¯ These thoughts didn¡¯t shout out loud in his mind. Ebony had memories going back before he was 1 year old. Throughout his younger years, he was told innumerable times that his body was fragile so he had to train. Then there was meditation, something he learned before he exercised his body.
He trusted everything he was told. Of course, he would. It didn¡¯t help that he started meditation at the age of 2. After a few of these Hunt or be Hunted games, he began to stay in meditation on the move.
¡®The only thing that doesn¡¯t add up is my physical ability. I compared myself with normal humans, I was indeed normal other than stamina. Why? How? I know that¡¯s not true, but my physical stats of an unclassed seemed to match that understanding of ¡®normal¡¯. Weird.¡¯
¡°What is she saying here?¡± The Guru questioned when his mother ran after him with a 10-second head start. His mother kicked him into a standing log, his side torso landed hard against it. She was an expert in bodily control and understood his toddler body better than he did. The logs were artificially placed and part of his future training equipment.
¡°They will tear you apart. You must also stand up as fast as you can. Get into as advantageous of a position as you can. Never delay. The human body is terribly fragile, weak and pathetic. But it can adapt. If you want to survive, you will stay in motion. You need to train. Till your body becomes something you can rely on. Something that can protect itself even if you are knocked out. Something that never fails you. My son must grow up strong.¡± His mother drove another kick into the toddler¡¯s chest.
¡°Stand up. When you¡¯re being hunted down, predators will not wait half a second like I do.¡± Half a second went by, the toddler barely had the chance to rub his chest.
Instead, the toddler used the time to look up at his mother.
¡°Mother. Why are you waiting half a second if you want me to grow strong?¡±
As far as he could recall, this was the first visible change in expression he saw from his stone-cold expression mother. Ebony was a facially expressive person compared to his mother. He got one of the biggest and most memorable beat down this day.
¡°Pride. She is looking at you with pride. How enviable but yet, after what I¡¯ve seen, not at all. So this is when she started to ramp up your intense childhood.¡± The Guru nodded to himself.
At this point, Ebony no longer understood why the Guru continued to watch his older memories. He didn¡¯t understand the language and the older the memories, the hazier they were. Especially those before he was 1.
It was thanks to his high-tier meditation that they even managed to get to the current memories. A week after he was born.
Ebony was surprised. It sounded like gibberish and the memories here were foggy but he heard Gia. That perked the Guru up and also made Ebony panic a little for remembering something so old at the same time as someone hearing it for the first time.
¡°Ebony. Your name shall be Ebony. Son of Shi Wu and Gelidon ¡®O Arcturus Rime. Ebony Rime Wumu.¡± His father raised him up into the air and named him.
¡°No need.¡± Short and curt, his mother didn¡¯t specify what she was referring to.
¡®So that¡¯s my name in Gia. I totally forgot about the Wumu part. It¡¯s not even in my status. Shi, it is one of the Xeng three great clans alongside Ning. So they told me their real names from the start. I just never knew Gia.¡¯
¡°Ri--me? Rime? That¡¯s not- that¡¯s not possible. Shi Wu¡Rime. You are--¡± Ebony felt the Guru crumble on his feet.
Not fading away, but directly tearing his mindspace floor open to jump out.
¡®Now that¡¯s a huge lead if I ever get one. But his reaction is concerning.¡¯ Ebony teleported to his core, still extremely far away from the moment of his birth. Contacting Fourteen, would be much faster than going back out to his immobile body.
¡®Fourteen, watch the Guru closely.¡¯ Ebony patched his mindspace back up, removing colour and making sure no marks were left over before getting back into his body.
Chapter 339: Self Silenced
Ebony didn¡¯t think the Guru had returned to his body when he got back. The dark-skinned man fell on his butt and looked at him in fear and something else he couldn¡¯t recognise. If only he had an emotion detector beside him.
The Guru scrambled as if he had forgotten how to control his feet, kicking and pushing himself away. The guards picked him up after noticing the reaction and it took another few moments of panic grabbing and pulling before the Guru pulled everyone else out of his cell.
¡®Fourteen, watch all the exits then follow. Take high risk. We need to know why he¡¯s reacting so strongly.¡¯
Peace and silence returned to his cell but his head was turning.
¡®He reacted to Rime. I did not share that name after I listened to Dad¡¯s message. So it¡¯s a troublesome name. He also seems to recognise the name Shi Wu. And even I only know her by Amelia Stone and Dad by Matthew Rime.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t surprised that there were people who recognised those names. He was confident that his parents were not some random people. He was curious about the reaction.
¡®Now that we have their real names, it is easier to find leads don¡¯t you think?¡¯
¡®If that kind of reaction is what we¡¯re getting, no thanks. But, perhaps starting from mother wouldn¡¯t be too bad. His was more focused on Rime.¡¯
Ebony chatted with Fourteen. Although the Guru felt his conviction that his parents were dead, it was just his assumption. He did not have proof; he just had a gut feeling. There was no reason he couldn¡¯t or wouldn¡¯t want to find out more. No matter what, he was and is a mother¡¯s and father¡¯s boy. Immaturity is still in him.
Security was likely pretty tight. It took hours before the hurried Guru left the compounds with his entourage.
Fourteen kept a rather close distance. The Guru was driven away on a land mount. As far as Fourteen¡¯s gravitational senses go, the mounts were horses. Their speed was nothing to scoff at but they were not speed specialised. The guards or visitors were efficient-minded. Their visit was sent along with a resupply for the prison.
Unexpectedly, the Guru manhandled one of the horses from the chief guard to ride back to the mansion that Ebony was teleported to when he arrived.
Born on a planet with stronger gravity, it appeared that these people were just naturally stronger and shorter than the average Elcrian by a lot. The height part wasn¡¯t obvious and didn¡¯t make them dwarves but the strength part is hard to say without taking a look at unclassed Cinderashians.
The Guru rode the horse with expert riding skills and only made a turn when he remembered that he shouldn¡¯t ride a horse into his master¡¯s compounds.
Fourteen hopped over the fence and onto the pavement so that he didn¡¯t step on any of the garden¡¯s vegetation of heat-producing plants. Unexpectedly, a sizable landmass on Gearhart¡¯s compounds was used for farming. Aether was something Fourteen wasn¡¯t familiar with but it didn¡¯t affect their senses too much. At the moment, it just felt like a unique and foreign mana.
The entire island felt more dense with this mana than Gen and Ful¡¯s underground home.
Fourteen casually stood a few steps away from the Guru when he was ushered into a waiting room. ¡®Unbelievable. How are they not sensing or reacting to us? They have mana here, they must be able to sense us right?¡¯
¡®Don¡¯t ask me, we¡¯re good at hiding from sight but our mana traces are obvious to most Grandmaster mages on Elcra. Wait for Seventeen and Fifteen¡¯s assessment.¡¯ Ebony replied to his silly clone.
Ultimately, the Guru had to wait despite his urgent rush. He wanted to speak with his Lord Gearhart but the Saint was a busy individual. Fourteen who had been scouting already knew that the Saint was currently having lunch with a couple of ambassadors.
However, the Guru must have a high standing if the mansion¡¯s maids and butlers just took his words and let him wait here instead of rejecting the visit. The bald man began to tap his heels on the floor and sweat despite the building being the coolest place on the island.
It wasn¡¯t till a few unique creatures, a few humans and a few strong Cinderashians left that the Guru was notified that Saint Gearhart would meet him in the hall two hours later.
¡®Those ambassadors are quite awesome. I doubt we can beat any of them without Dusk or a sizable backup of mana.¡¯
¡®I can feel that. No need to report everything to me when we¡¯re sharing senses.¡¯
Fourteen melted himself into the floor and climbed along the windows of the hall, preparing for a swift escape if he was found.
The moment the Guru entered the hall where Ebony was caught, he knelt and bowed his head down in greetings. ¡°Lord, I have something urgent that I need to inform you. Abo- ah, may I have permission to speak in greater secrecy?¡±
The Ebonys were instantly disappointed. ¡®Of course a mind mage would speak within minds¡¡¯
They couldn¡¯t receive any information other than body language and facial expressions.
When the armrest was shattered in the Saint¡¯s grip, Fourteen dipped. The outburst of aether pushed him out of the window. Observing from outside made no difference to his clone, he could still collect gravitational and vibrational data. Moving closer just made it more mana-efficient if he reduced his range of perception.
Saint Gearhart¡¯s expression went back to normal after a short moment and the Guru gravely nodded. He remained there for the next few days. Acting as a liaison for the head butler or maid to pass down orders to many different people through mind magic.
Throughout the whole facade, Ebony did not have a change in treatment and neither did he get any more visitors. He was completely ignored.
Oh, other than his kind guard feeding him and putting on another pair of chains on his biceps since there was no more space.
It drained even more of his mana. They knew he began to exceed how much they could absorb from him.
Ebony was able to manage his mana and not let everything be absorbed so he didn¡¯t allow the new chains to reach the limits of their absorption. The only storage he had was those in coagulated form and Twelve who he gave only coagulated mana to hold. He was unable to keep the rest and the chains beat him in that regard.
He didn¡¯t let that get to him and continued to heal and exercise his Will.
The conditions of extreme heat were dialled down when they realised he was healing faster in a cooler environment. Another one of his ¡®luxuries¡¯. It was now only boiling in the room. That wasn¡¯t enough to get through his heat resistance and Constitution. Another reduction in energy usage was great news.
Since he hid his regeneration, he also thought it was fine to show his body healing. No longer lying there with molten eyes. All he left himself was red skin but all his flesh and whatnot was recovered over time.
Unlike the other prisoners, he was never released to go mine or do physical labour.
Ezekiel, the space user, had been promised rewards in private but he didn¡¯t receive anything immediately.
The sons of the Saint laughed and admonished the young master, Percival. However, word was quickly suppressed by the Saint and the Guru. Nothing about this incident was talked about within the mansion again.
The Guru made a round in the prison. Ebony didn¡¯t know what he did since Fourteen couldn¡¯t perceive the internals of the prison but from then, Ebony didn¡¯t hear any guards walking near his cell again. Not even outside the window.
Then he sensed movement. His entire cell was moved but Fourteen didn¡¯t see his cell going out of the compounds. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
The kind guard was replaced with a machine. A metal robot that was not kind enough to break the brick into powder for him.
Ebony¡¯s food and water intake didn¡¯t increase or decrease. He just never had any contact with people any more.
¡®That Saint¡he asked the Guru to erase or seal people¡¯s memories of me didn¡¯t he?¡¯
¡®I¡¯d bet. Ezekiel received punishment just now. For bringing the Bellicose Savants on a mission and receiving losses without making any gains. The space user didn¡¯t explain himself. Percival the young master and the entire family don¡¯t even remember that Percival had gone off the planet. The Guru and the Saint might be the only two people who remember we are caught and locked up in here now.¡¯
¡®That is actually more convenient.¡¯ Ebony lived his days silently. He didn¡¯t take long to fully recover and all his energy intake went into his mental output.
When he only had a few things to focus on, his improvements in one direction were vast. In a mere Elcrian month and a half, he created and refined a weak active Will skill. All it did was increase his range of Will and it was only tier 1 but it was a start.
Since no one was watching him other than the robot who fed him every so often, he sat up comfortably and meditated all day. Except for being unable to fold his legs due to the plank around his legs.
He was an obedient prisoner.
And half a month later, he stood up.
¡®So the Saint is finally going outside. They are not watching me tightly since I was so obedient.¡¯
Thanks to how little scrutiny he was put under, no one found out that he had been freezing his chains for the past two months. He had to do it without affecting their functions of absorbing his mana so he did it slowly and carefully. A good portion of the wall under the small window that used to be bigger was also frozen with his mana. He only cast with coagulated mana and his mana regeneration was greatly impeded by the drain so it took a long time.
He was experienced with digging ice mana into materials and knowing when they turned fragile. If it wasn¡¯t because he wasn¡¯t sure where his cell was situated he would have attempted a break out long ago.
The Guru knew practically everything about his combat capabilities. It was safe to assume that the Saint also knew.
However, the fact that they ignored him after putting in a single pair of chains told him that they didn¡¯t know just how fast mana regeneration could go up. It wasn¡¯t as if the Guru knew how strong his Meditation or the existence of his Unique Skill. Ebony realised that he no longer remembered the Guru¡¯s name, it must have been erased or hidden somewhere in his mind.
Although Ebony had all the time in the world, he didn¡¯t work that much on his Unique Skill. That required an abnormal amount of constant eating. He didn¡¯t have that luxury here.
Without showboating, he snapped the chains and punched the metal board around his legs. Blowing up the cell wall with a Quake Kick, he first went invisible. The release of the absorption allowed a vast amount of his regeneration to be his again.
His Will has bathed this location for a long time, fully making this area his Domain. He didn¡¯t make a sound from his explosive breakout.
It was dark since he picked the night and waited to make sure the Saint didn¡¯t go on a short walk. For the first time, he wasn¡¯t stuffed underground.
¡®What a lazy spot to place me¡¡¯ Ebony did a quick survey. His cell was stuck in the volcano walls with the window direction facing out of the edge. No one walked here and the cliffs and edges made the little hole out of sight of the mining crew of the prisoners.
He was right above the bubbling lava. Not even the Cinderashians came so close to the unnaturally hot lava. The crazy race of humans lived on an island floating on an active volcano.
¡®There should be a secret route from within the prison since Fourteen never saw any movement of cells this big out the prison.¡¯
Something was moving in the lava. Ebony Flickered up but not all the way.
Fourteen and his Mental Map and perceptions quickly overlapped and he waited for Fourteen against the hot earth.
The clone passed him a set of clothes Seventeen got for him and his robe and Icicle retrieved in perfect state.
Icicle was deemed useless for the Cinderashians and tossed into the volcano as garbage for disposal while his robe was almost sold to a collector. The poor greatsword was barely in one piece after Fourteen found out and salvaged the poor thing floating about after stabbing itself a distance above the lava. Left with just its handle and a small portion of its body after being burned for a few days.
¡°Good boy, I¡¯ll feed you mana when I have enough.¡±
¡°No, you will not. Go back in before I make you.¡± Ebony¡¯s head was rammed with loud, unsilenceable echoes. There was no one around. Fourteen had been watching the Guru right before he came over. The man was still living in a guest room.
¡°Mr Guru, are you going to stop me?¡± Ebony was a little disappointed that he was noticed so quickly but also expected this. He had an invader in his head and the Telepath was still sipping coffee from the other end of the island.
¡°Indeed. I gave you sunlight but you didn¡¯t appreciate it. You will never see the light of day again.¡± The Guru once again stood in his mindspace. A different area with no memories present.
¡°You think I¡¯m just a plant. I see you haven¡¯t understood what kind of person I am.¡± Ebony honestly felt a degree of panic. His mind was getting attacked and forced under enough pressure that his body outside couldn¡¯t cast any magic.
¡°You are strong, but you won¡¯t get any stronger. And you won¡¯t escape ever again when your new cell is complete. Do you think you¡¯re free because no one is watching you? No, I alone can keep you here for as long as I live.¡±
¡°You know who I am now. Do you think you or Gearhart can get away with this.¡± Ebony envied that they knew who he was, but he didn¡¯t even know who his parents were. In any case, the Guru¡¯s immediate silence proved once more that they were scared little bunnies. "I don''t know who you are Ebony. But it doesn''t matter if I forgot, I know you''re our prisoner."
''He doesn''t sound like he''s lying...did he erase his own memories of my surname?'' Ebony¡¯s body moved in slow motion only because of how fast they were perceiving and chatting within his mind. The Guru was tearing Perpetual Tranquility Spring bit by bit, changing his mindspace and filling it up with aether needles and explosives.
¡°This is Lord Gearhart¡¯s estate. A mere Grandmaster like you hopes to escape? I don¡¯t even have to do anything. Your mana had long been registered, you will be shot down before you take a step out.¡±
¡°Empty threats are not going to work when you won¡¯t kill me.¡±
Ebony¡¯s Flicker was indeed useless. He couldn¡¯t react to the stake that pierced halfway into his shoulder when he tried to Flicker out of the volcano. He didn¡¯t even get close to the edge before the mounted weapon blasted into him. The Guru slowed his reaction by a significant degree but he knew that the same result would happen even if he wasn¡¯t slowed by the Guru.
¡®You are a scary monster¡you used those chains to weaken the pale cannon.¡¯ The Guru could see what was happening to his body because the outside was shown to him from the mindspace they were in.
The thick stake was jammed and slowed down by two of the chains that held him for months. Ebony plucked it out and fired it back but it was fired at by another round from different directions.
¡®Their weaponry is so advanced.¡¯ Ebony tried again but three more stakes found their way into his flesh. The stakes as ammunition was far from normal. They weakened materials including flesh on impact. Even his mana chassis shook. These ¡®pale cannons¡¯ could hurt mana beings too!
As for them registering his mana, he didn¡¯t take it seriously. Fifteen and Seventeen were still walking about this particular volcano to be recharged with Will and they haven¡¯t been fired at by the estate¡¯s defences once.
¡®Just mana in coagulated form isn¡¯t enough. I need a full tank¡Twelve, give me all your excess. We¡¯re breaking out.¡¯ Ebony left the Guru alone to jump into his core to talk to his clones. He was now sure that the Guru couldn¡¯t come in this deep in his mind.
With the thick gravity present, he made a trail out for himself. Sadly, not before he was forced to land by a net. With Sonic Reverberation, he gave the ground a good smack and blew the ground apart to free himself but the net didn¡¯t come loose and wrapped him up while sealing his mana.
¡°I admit, I still underestimated you for being able to get so far even in your weak state. Your regeneration is nonsensical for a Grandmaster but this is as far as you go. You know you would¡¯ve been dead if we weren¡¯t trying to keep you alive.¡±
¡°Are you Cinderashians done trying to scare me? An eye for an eye, headache for headache. Fourteen.¡±
¡°Fourteen? What are you sa-¡±
Fourteen who charged back towards the mansion gave the man a good smack on the head before hugging the man and sealing him up.
Emperor? So what, the Guru was only amazing at mind magic.
The immediate weakening of his mental prowess gave Ebony more control back but he still didn¡¯t manage to break out of the net. The net didn¡¯t have as strong of a mana drain and seal as the chains he was tied up in. Luck was on his side as it was only strong against magic but not a good physical net.
Ebony Flickered with the net still wrapped around him. Having already mapped the area, he had a hiding spot in mind.
¡°Ebony! I can¡¯t keep this Guru down for long. I¡¯m making a run for it now!¡±
¡°Go.¡± The first priority had been to keep his clones a secret but Ebony risked that for his escape.
He got more information on the Guru from Fourteen but the Emperor was wearing a lot of protective equipment. A lot.
Fourteen didn¡¯t even succeed at sealing the Guru properly and had to dip immediately after the ambush. The Guru had long prepared for Ebony¡¯s skill set.
They simply didn¡¯t expect that he had a storage of mana even after being drained for so long. The Guru also underestimated the effects of his Will and Domain. If he didn¡¯t have Twelve to store mana for him, he wouldn¡¯t have been able to set up a Domain to power his escape.
¡°YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE EBONY!!¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t reply to the mental scream and quietly Flickered towards a town that Fifteen was staying in.
Chapter 340: Prep
¡°How long do you think it¡¯ll take before we¡¯re locked up again.¡± Within a decrepit inn, Ebony spoke out loud in his mind.
He did not take his escape for granted. He still didn¡¯t have a way to get off the planet. He could try flying into space but where would that take him? He didn¡¯t know and he didn¡¯t want to test that because he knew of the dangers of space from Kong Jing.
He was convinced that he would be found, caught and locked up again. It was just a matter of time. Catching the Guru off guard was one thing. But they were in complete knowledge of how to catch him. It boiled down to how prepared they were and what countermeasures they could come up with.
Like the Guru said, the volcano¡¯s defences could easily kill him. Even if they didn¡¯t want to kill him, it was easy for him to see that they had the means they just underestimated him once again. If the Saint or even a few of his children were around, Ebony wouldn¡¯t have considered making this escape.
He was two whole Elcrian weeks of Flicker away from the Gearhart¡¯s volcanoes. On a full stomach thanks to the food that Fifteen prepared for him. Fifteen was now down for the count, wild monsters here almost killed him.
The abandoned town was out of the way of the locals and no one came here. It did not have fertile lands, even for its volcanic plants.
The volcanic range was massive. Other than many small and large volcanoes, the lands around them were usually where towns and cities were located. Unlike Elva with barricaded cities, the civilization on Cinderash was always in danger of monster attacks.
A poor town had a hard time as they didn¡¯t have proper defences. Most cities depended on modern weaponry like the pale cannons that shot through his body. Only weaker versions than the Saint¡¯s personal weaponry.
The entire planet of Cinderash faced a big problem. Food and fertile lands.
Wild volcanic monsters were not enough to support a town, much less a large city. Very few plants grew around and even fewer were edible.
It was no surprise they had a small population in general.
They depended on importing large amounts of food, along with technology that helped with edible plant growth. For example, the extremely heavily defended greenhouse. Only the largest cities had them and these provided the majority of the citizen¡¯s food. Seventeen wasn¡¯t able to learn much about these greenhouses but they were far from normal.
The rest of the towns and arable land were used to grow Volcanic Cinderbloom. Cinderashians can drink its dew for water but it was a dew filled with sulphur and ash. After a few tests on his own body, Ebony figured that normal humans without tier 3 poison resistance would die after drinking a few litres.
As for him, he could drink it without any gain in poison resistance. The only problem was needing to urinate and even defecate more often.
While his clones could hunt and prepare meat and find a few wild edible plants, they had trouble securing enough water for him. And Ebony did not steal the spatial water bottle for himself.
Not that it mattered. With his conversion runes, and mana being filled up. Water was not an issue for him.
If water didn¡¯t evaporate so easily, these Cinderashians would benefit from runic endeavours as long as they made a formula that worked with aether.
Cinderash was dominated by artists in the form of crafters, jewellers, weapon makers and also a warrior-dominant race.
Seventeen had made great leaps in progress with the Gia language. By now, Ebony¡¯s Gia was no worse than Elcrian or any other language he knew. He took a risk by showing himself in the form of a different person and voice. There was no other way Seventeen could¡¯ve gotten good information or supplies like clothes and raw materials.
They didn¡¯t have books on Cinderash. Wood was not a popular material for obvious reasons. Plants that grow here don¡¯t have large bodies. There were exceptions such as plants that had lava flowing inside them but wood was still rarely seen or used.
However, they did have information storage in the form of a rock. A cube to be specific. It required aether manipulation to read or access the information.
Aether manipulation was rare amongst the Cinderashians.
On Elva, the average warrior could learn techniques with mana as a Master or at worst, a Grandmaster.
But for the Cinderashians, most people couldn¡¯t use Aether until King-ranked excluding some people like the Saint¡¯s children or other crafter Saint¡¯s descendants. None of them could perceive aether in the air. It was why they didn¡¯t have magic perception that constantly scanned the surroundings. They were warriors first and foremost.
Even at the ranks of a King or Emperor, use of aether is always through a medium. It was due to the nature of aether as an energy. Aether was much thinner than mana and a lot harder to sense and control. It had weaker physical properties than mana. It was a lot less malleable than mana that could be used to convert to various elements.
They only used aether in limited ways. Prominently, it was used for crafting and their technology. They could do many things with aether that would require an advanced mage to do. Aether healing for one, was seen as the greater form of healing compared to arcane mages. It didn¡¯t require knowledge of the human body or the creature they were healing.
Aether simply recovered the target back to its original state or put the body back to a shape that the body knew.
Space magic, when Kong Jing teleports one, it takes great effort, mental strength and mana. For an aether gun, bullet and space user. All Ezekiel needed to do was pull a trigger and the creation would do the rest of the job. In conclusion, Aether had a higher entry point for use but once used it was capable of feats that far exceeded a mage of equal level or tier. It might not be stronger, but it was an energy that achieved results differently.
Evolutionarily, there should be no reason why the Cinderashians can¡¯t sense aether but they have been dependent on technology and weaponry for so long that there is little to no one that trains in perceiving aether. The need for a medium did make it a lot harder for them.
Aether would not listen to a mage¡¯s control, it would slip away from mental control that mana would fall to. The energy preferred to stick itself onto natural materials and constructs. The warriors who were beginners with aether would use aether to generate a blade buffed by the creation itself. The energy blades cut through most mundane materials and even mana itself.
They used to have Aether Sorcerers but the lineage died out to the growing technology that was far easier for the general public to use. Stories about Aether Sorcerers were just myths and the stories were only kept around to praise their technology to their younger generations. They saw mages from other worlds as the old Aether Sorcerers who managed to keep up with the changing times.
It was thanks to that that Ebony only had blind warriors to deal with and his clones could walk freely without being noticed.
Fourteen made a successful escape but the Guru likely suspected him of having clones running around. Ebony only let his clones come to him for a refill of mana and never grouped them all together. Will could be charged over long distances without loss but mana would be wasted.
The duration of his temporary freedom was enough to fill his clones up with coagulated mana as well.
The rest of his Will and time went into the creation of a new Domain Core. Dusk the secondth that he hasn¡¯t named properly yet. No matter what, he needed a Domain if he wanted the strength to combat the Cinderashians. If he was imprisoned and left without mana again, future escape attempts would only get harder. A secondary storage of mana was a must.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Dusk the secondth didn¡¯t have a tree shape or a shape at all. Concentrated Will was permanently bound to this abandoned town. It would take another Domain mage to notice his Will. To be specific, it was bound to a certain group of decrepit buildings, and the hardened rock under his feet. As long as these dozens of buildings and earth weren¡¯t turned to dust, his Will would have a container and wouldn¡¯t die. For a while.
He didn¡¯t have enough Will or time to give it a life as long as Dusk.
The buildings here were made of igneous rocks, like unpolished granite. Surprisingly, they were cool and a good container for ice. Even better than most metals like iron and copper. For some odd reason, the older and more worn-out buildings were better containers for Will. Hence, the choice of decrepit buildings. The inn he was sitting in had a half-torn down ceiling and the second floor was mostly destroyed and the main core of his new Domain.
¡°I got it, your name will be Aegis. Frost Aegis, sibling of Frost Dusk.¡± Now that Aegis was properly born, Ebony put his Will to create more clones. The majority of his mana would go to Aegis but he could spare some for clones.
Today, he had an odd feeling. A seed of worry was transplanted in him from the core of his mindspace.
He couldn¡¯t pinpoint the reason but he had a feeling it was from one of his clones or Dusk that was out of range.
¡®Are they still alive? Have their Wills faded already?¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t help but ponder. He continued to perceive time on Elcrian scale and it wouldn¡¯t be surprising if some of his clones just dissipated if they didn¡¯t hibernate like he told them to.
He didn¡¯t let their numbers be taken or reused. Every clone had its number.
Ebony rubbed the 4 legged volcanic rock beast¡¯s, Lava-scaled Pangolin head to sleep. This was a monster nest and the one that rested on his lap was the alpha of the pack. A level 750 Grade 4 King that took everything out of Ebony to suppress and weeks to tame with his Will and soothing aura. Beating stronger monsters didn¡¯t require direct strength. A proper set of lower-tier skills can take them down too. It was all a matter of compatibility and hunting skill.
They were almost as impressive to him as the Apex Apes but he would say that the Apex Apes were more difficult to deal with and still had greater strength if they had a King, which they did. The Grandmaster elder apes didn¡¯t fight him but he knew how strong they were.
He was just not that impressed by their lava. Ning Xin¡¯s blood ball with fire was hotter. They couldn¡¯t even use it like magic, they just used their lava as a physical trait and skill. Leaking toxic lava and fumes from under their scales as protection while swinging their tails that were hardened with lava wasn¡¯t that hard to deal with.
But their high levels were good for Ebony. The Cinderashian food hunters rarely came for this particular monster despite their meaty bodies. The lava and hardy defences weren¡¯t a large issue for the strong Cinderashian hunters but the toxic fumes was a massive pain for them. It didn¡¯t help that their flesh was toxic too.
The Pangolins were like its name, pangolins but their face were more dog-like than the pointy-faced pangolins¡¯ Ebony knew of. They were the size of small bears and had a lot of muscles under their hardened lava scales. Their claws were thick but not sharp, used only to inject lava and toxic fumes into their targets.
Ebony didn¡¯t eat any of them, they were his protectors and made his base less likely to be searched. He always kept his invisibility up so he tried not to contact them as much as possible but they knew of his presence here.
As for his initial plans for his clones, they didn¡¯t go according to plan.
One was working and doing quests for the Mage Association back on Elva for knowledge.
Two to Five were back in their home, studying runes and combination magic while guarding their house.
Six, Seven and Eight explored the surface of Elva at their discretion.
He planned for fewer guards for Dusk but it changed during his time on the field with the Tetramyths. Nine to Seventeen had all been with him. He wasn¡¯t sure what happened or was happening with Nine.
Ten and Eleven should have hopped onto Ning Xin.
Thirteen and Sixteen died in the escape from the Emperor Tetramyths.
Twelve was let out of his body to help with food gathering without making it obvious. Fourteen was still the dedicated scout that was planted as close to Gearhart¡¯s estate and the Guru as possible but he was currently far away from the defensive turrets.
Fifteen and Seventeen continued with their initial assignments. The two of them were his contact points and also constant practice with increasing his range of Will.
Eighteen to Twenty-Two were all back on Elcra. Some were students at different academies, some went out to explore while others just experimented with magic. However, all of them just did whatever they wanted.
With his Will and mana delegation to Aegis, he couldn¡¯t make new clones that fast. 4 clones were sufficient mobility. He was more concerned about a safe spot for himself in this foreign place.
Another nine Elcrian days passed in silence.
Ebony touched his cheeks. His right cheek had a sticky dried stream.
¡®Ten has passed away. Nine days ago. That¡¯s the transmission lag.¡¯ He didn¡¯t receive any memories or information. He just knew that Ten was no longer connected to him in his mindspace. Just like Thirteen and Sixteen, he was gone forever.
Now, Ning Xin only had Eleven with her and whatever he sensed from them would at least have a nine Elcrian day delay. And, he would only know if Eleven died. So far, information transfer with all of them including Dusk was not possible. He was still trying to reach them, but his connection would scatter after reaching out to his range limit and he would have to try again.
This range didn¡¯t tell him direction either so he couldn¡¯t use it to physically locate where the other planets were. Making it more pointless for him to fly into space which would serve himself on a silver platter for spatial and other scary creatures or beings.
¡°They are not searching for me at all. Oh, my new prison cell is complete? What did you learn about the cell?¡±
¡°Our previous chains are what they had in storage that mainly absorbs mana. They must have gotten better ones that are ice-resistant and physical shock-resistant, even better at mana absorption. The cell itself is made by a Saint, I am not sure what that Saint specialises in.¡±
¡°Our next escape would be very difficult.¡±
¡°Just focus on not being caught. We will try to find and appropriate a portal or another path to Teheil in the meantime.¡±
¡°Fifteen, what is the point in going to Teheil now? There is something here for us. It may be time to train or something material, like natural ingredients with enough energy for me to refine my physique further. We need to find out what made Xin trick us. As for fighting not to be caught, I will try my hardest. You continue integrating yourself here with Seventeen.¡±
¡°Not now, but we still need to find the way so we can leave any time we wish to,¡± Fifteen replied practically.
¡°Sure, you do that. I might have given you too much fighting spirit, don¡¯t hunt so actively I won¡¯t be able to charge you up that often.¡±
¡°They are taking their own sweet time.¡±
¡°Good for us. They know there is nowhere for us to run so he is preparing my new containment, people and equipment that counters all my magic. And the Guru can sense mental waves so I can¡¯t hide from him, but you guys surprisingly don¡¯t produce mental energy.¡±
¡°We move instinctively, by Will. We don¡¯t think. You know that.¡±
¡°Still, stay far away from me when Fourteen gives the signal. They might have ice mana trackers and our runes can only maintain temperature, not hide ice mana.¡±
¡°I am working on developing that¡there are too many things to do and us clones can¡¯t multitask as well as you.¡±
¡°Twenty Three will help, Twenty Four will be out soon. Continue the hunt, I need to store as much food as I can.¡±
¡°Mashing organic matter into a ball and keeping it sealed in your body isn¡¯t going to work¡ I¡¯ve already traded for some nutrient potions and those are a much better use of space inside your body.¡±
¡°Better than nothing. You could only buy two bottles of that.¡±
¡°Hey, it was all they had. Bartering isn¡¯t easy okay.¡±
The useless banter with himself was more fun when it wasn¡¯t in his head.
Ebony trained, preparing for the inevitable.
¡®Haha. This build-up is very exciting. Come on Guru, who have you prepared to send to catch me. Bellicose Savants? They said I was on a path of formless or some nonsense like that. They would send people with tier 5 mastery at the very least. No way they send a Saint at me right? Yes, no way. The Guru wouldn¡¯t dare erase a Saint¡¯s memory¡unless Saint Gearhart personally came. I should expect people around or stronger than the Savants.¡¯
A squad of Bellicose Savants would be more than enough to handle him. He didn¡¯t have Ning Xin buffing him with her blood magic here. And this time, they would be prepared. An ambush wouldn¡¯t work unless they walked into his Domain, which would definitely happen.
Ice was a great element for crowd control and weakening something but even his frostblaze wasn¡¯t hidden from the Guru. He doubted they would come for him without the necessary countermeasures. The Guru didn¡¯t know or see everything so Ebony had some tiny tricks that he could play but tiny tricks wouldn¡¯t be good enough. His next escape for one, depended on the fire source or bomb hidden within his lungs.
The Guru might have seen him fighting with his Domain, but he did not know that Ebony¡¯s strength was the effects of a Domain. Visual scenes did not show everything. The only time the Guru saw more clearly was when he was looking at his memories on earth but he didn¡¯t know the language then.
He could have his clones help him in battle but he rather keep them hidden so they could roam free.
Chapter 341: Losing Battle
¡°I can¡¯t believe they left me alone for another 3 months.¡± Ebony was used to using the Elcrian time-scale and ignored the day and night cycle of Cinderash. The long nights were the best, it cooled down significantly and his clones had a lower upkeep cost.
Throughout his 4 month freedom, he kept growing his skills and Domain. Usage of Will was the main point. It was something the Guru didn¡¯t know about since looking at his battle memories without conversation didn¡¯t show his flexible use of Will.
The monsters on Cinderash were generally stronger than Elcra, a whole grade difference. However, he was near safe spots due to the vicinity of cities and Saints. If he matched level with level, this place was a little safer than Hoarfrost Glades but he never got deep into Hoarfrost Glades where monsters of Kings and Emperor ranks lived.
Fortunately, his cute pangolin protectors are quite feared in the area thanks to their toxic fumes. A sizable region was their territory and filled with these toxic fumes. Ebony had breathed some in when he felt safe, it contaminated his body after a few days of breathing but it finally increased his poison resistance by a single level. He tested it before but poison in his bloodstream could just be pinpointed with his perception, frozen and physically ejected.
Ning Xin could smell poison and burn it in her body. And that was it. Few poisons could survive the temperatures of her body.
They didn¡¯t need to train poison resistance. But since all those methods require mana, he thought it wouldn''t hurt to get his normal resistance up when he found a potent poison.
Ebony even gained a few class levels from this duration of freedom. The level difference with his prey weren¡¯t as large as the time with the Tetramyths, but as he hypothesised, the level gap did not matter as much as the competence gap. Even with lower-level kills and hunts, his levelling speed didn¡¯t take a large dip because his meals were stronger.
All his unallocated stats were concentrated between Wisdom and Perception. Wisdom not because of mana, but because the Guru was the most annoying opponent. He needed all the natural mental defences he could. Perception was for sensing things better, his base perception was falling behind.
¡°They have been making random searches in cities and towns for entries and exits. I¡¯m not sure what the Guru is thinking. Maybe he thought we wouldn¡¯t live outside the confines of a city?¡±
¡°If that¡¯s the reason, he¡¯s dumber than we took him for. I think he¡¯s testing me, he knows about clones and he probably deduced the attack on his head was from you clones. He might be sniffing me out, trying to learn more about what I want.¡±
¡°From how he¡¯s visited towns and cities the past few months to make sure no one heard of you by invading everyone¡¯s mind, maybe he¡¯s just tying up loose ends before he makes a move on us. That, or finding countermeasures for you is just too difficult. This is just a guess but, I think he can simultaneously invade hundreds of people¡¯s minds at the same time. He is a scary fellow.¡±
¡°And he¡¯s personally searching because he¡¯ll find me the moment I¡¯m within range. Like now.¡± Ebony replied to Fourteen.
The Guru was heading straight towards him with an entourage. None of which were people. They were like the leader of the Bellicose Savants back then. Just a cube hidden in a body, it might be a robot or an organic flesh body. He didn¡¯t know.
¡°Ezekiel isn¡¯t around, we don¡¯t have to worry about directly teleporting into our cell. Unless that space user can shoot me from wherever he¡¯s at.¡±
No matter how soothing or dense his mana was, it wasn¡¯t calming his captors down. They were intent on locking him up.
¡°Hello, Ebony. How has your walk been?¡±
¡°Nice. You¡¯re not welcome this time.¡± Ebony shut the Guru out at the battle section of his memories. He did not learn a mental defence technique but he did learn that the only effective defensive measure was Perpetual Tranquility Spring so he remained in a trance while the Guru¡¯s physical body continued to ride towards him.
The Guru¡¯s mental range was ridiculously wide. On their fast horses, it would take another 62 hours before they even reached his abandoned town.
Fourteen would have been out of range if they hadn¡¯t discovered a method to vastly increase his range of Will connection.
During these 62 hours in real-time, the Guru never stopped trying to tear deeper into his mental defences. They fought for years and years and Ebony was fighting a losing battle the entire time. All he had was his natural defences along with mending the damages the Guru left behind.
¡°Amazing specimen, your mindspace is more vast than any Emperor! But you can¡¯t hide everything from me.¡±
A mind mage that could impede his prowess in the physical world was truly his worst opponent. The Guru didn¡¯t even need to find special units or equipment to tackle him. Just this Telepath alone was enough to harass Ebony such that any random Savant could trap him. But this scared or overly prepared Telepath brought along ten people, likely all with tier 5 mastery and a great set of matching, compounding skills.
Aegis could cast magic for him with no problem, so even a mental blackout from Ebony would not leave him defenceless as before.
The Guru had plenty of tricks up his sleeves. Painting his mindspace to make it ¡®tangible¡¯. Leaving marks in his mind that allowed the man to teleport. Blowing up portions of it. However, mental explosions seem to have temporary effects. Ebony didn¡¯t lose any memories permanently.
Ebony didn¡¯t hide any longer, he showed his ¡®physical¡¯ body in his mindspace to directly attack the Guru who was so shocked at first. They were in his mind, he had the advantage. But he didn¡¯t know much about the weird techniques that the Guru was pulling out time after time.
Like how he had meditation defending his mind, the strong Telepath had methods of his own. In a battle of the minds, the Guru was unendingly confident. Even when Ebony had the ability to use every imaginable skill or magic he could pull off, the Guru wasn¡¯t even flustered.
Ebony did everything he could to keep the Guru away from his recent memories. Fortunately, with him battling the Guru, he had some control over where the Guru was trying to go.
When the Guru¡¯s group finally arrived at the abandoned town and cut through the toxic fumes to look down on the pale-faced Ebony from his tall horse. Both the Guru and Ebony opened their physical eyes. Their battle hadn¡¯t even begun and Ebony was in terrible condition.
He managed to hold out but his entire mind was riddled with scars. He was already losing more badly than he prepared for.
His inn was situated on slightly sunken ground. The Guru sat on a dark orange-furred mare on the ceiling of a neighbouring building. Surrounding him were 5 more people. He unceremoniously Appraised them.
[Gear Sniper King Lvl 670 | Ashforged Sharpshooter King Lvl 655]
[Steam Wright Lvl 682 | Volcanic Cogtrapper Lvl 678]
[Rail Mechanist King Lvl 649 | Lavaspire Sniper Lvl 647]
[Aether Cogtrapper King Lvl 612 | Volcanic Sulphur Plaguebringer Lvl 609]
[Machinist Cogtrapper King Lvl ??? | Wilderness Trailblazer Lvl ???]
¡°Mr Guru, nice to meet you again. Are you mocking me by sending just 5 Kings? With none of them being close-ranged fighters? Sniper is an actual class here¡and you got them so close to me.¡± Ebony¡¯s Appraise at level 21 allowed him to know the levels of people up to 210 levels above his own. The names of their Classes and Sub-classes did give him some idea of what they do. Since he realised that the name of a Class defined what one can and should do to evolve and level, he knew there was more power and information in class names than most assumed.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
He was currently level 477 so he would be able to see up to 687. He didn¡¯t care about the small differences, in any case, even the Machinist Cogtrapper was still just a King. The only subclass that stood out was the Wilderness Trailblazer. It might not be a direct combat sub-class. The Guru should know better than to send some random people so he didn¡¯t take surface-level information for granted.
As for the other 5 that Ebony Fourteen had sensed, they were out of sight and keeping a bit of distance. Within his mind and years of fighting, he learned what kind of fighter the Guru was. The Guru was the indecisive and careful type who never showed everything he had up his sleeves, always testing out what Ebony could or would do. This time was no different, he was checking if Ebony could sense the other 5 people.
Only when the Guru was sure he would succeed at an endeavour would he place his bets. He was very unlike Ebony or Ning Xin in battle.
¡°You overestimate yourself. Merely a Grandmaster, be honoured I¡¯m personally here to secure you.¡± The Guru might have gotten false confidence after beating him up within his mind for centuries. The Telepath could even speed up and slow down his perceived time at his discretion. When it came to his speciality, he truly was amazing. If it wasn¡¯t for the nature of the mind being difficult to alter to begin with, Ebony wouldn¡¯t have lasted.
¡°Merely an Emperor and you let me walk free for months.¡±
¡°Wild monsters are more tender than farm-grown cattle. Ebony, I was expecting more preparation from a mage. This is the place you¡¯ve been living in? Ah, you regained meat on your bones. As expected from your savage upbringing.¡±
¡°Mr Guru, overconfidence kills. Since you want to see me up close, then stay here.¡±
Aegis got to work.
¡°How are you doing this! Your mind is sti-- indeed from that--. Resistance is futile, why fight me when we both know the result.¡± The Guru stood firm after jumping off his mare. Gravity mana slid off of him as well as everyone else. Ice and gravity repulsion equipment.
¡°Silly question Mr Guru, you are basically asking me why live if we¡¯re all going to die one day. I--we fight because we want to.¡±
Ebony burst all the concentrated petals that were staying invisible throughout the town into frostblaze, setting the fiery region onto light blue flames for once.
His surprise wasn¡¯t faked when he saw all the snipers and ranged fighters change into a different set of five people. Fourteen who had been watching these people saw the snipers and trappers appearing at their location, far and defensible for snipers.
¡®What even was the point of showing up to me? A taunt?¡¯
New opponents or not, he had already chopped down at where the snipers used to be. All five of them had a figure of Ebony above them and Icicle burning bright. Not clones, and just refraction of light after filling the area with ice mana and mist to make it easier. His familiarity with light refraction only improved.
Aegis didn¡¯t allow those refractions of light to stay as refractions. All attacks turned real when Aegis followed up and made Perennial Everfrost Armaments and boosted their Stalactite Sunder with Torrent Path and Sonic Reverberation.
Ebony did not forget to cast the censored Pseudo-Imitation Roar as a soul attack and stun. He had been keeping this unused throughout the entire mind battle. The stun didn¡¯t work on the Guru but Ebony did that on purpose, his main body went for the Guru while the rest faced ice blades.
It was then, when all his attacks fell onto the ground that he realised he had been duped.
¡°I am impressed, Mr Guru. I lost, fair and square.¡± Aegis informed him that he was aiming at the air the whole time, it assisted him in battle against air thinking Ebony was just training. Without Aegis, he might not have noticed at all.
Ebony was looking at illusions the entire time. Tricks of the mind.
His mental damage had more effect on him than he imagined because this was the first time illusions of any type worked on him. He hadn¡¯t been surrounded by 5 snipers and trappers, nor was the Guru standing in front of him.
He wasn¡¯t sure how they tricked Fourteen but he could guess, with gravity repulsion equipment and possibly spatial equipment to dodge the creation of vibration during movement it was not impossible to trick his clones. He was still quite certain they did not have ice magic sensors but now he couldn¡¯t even trust the information his clones gave him when it came to threats.
¡°Oh? I expected more resistance, giving up isn¡¯t in your dictionary.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve spent so much effort and money, making and buying these mana and stamina-draining equipment. Shooting me with explosive absorption bullets. What can I do now?¡± Ebony raised his hands. They were already locked up by planks and his fists were balled up. The illusion didn¡¯t just make him attack air, he was attacking traps they¡¯d already placed while his mind had been under attack. Long-range trap setters that were so skilled that Aegis couldn¡¯t break them apart before they activated were beyond his preparation.
He literally walked into them and chained himself up. Although he expected traps, he didn¡¯t think they could trap him while he had Aegis at the peak of his power. He found it funny, it was his mind that failed him this time. While Aegis had Will and didn¡¯t act on his mind, just like his clones, it didn¡¯t notice the targets or even the traps that were right under his feet.
¡°I know this after our years together but...you are really not going to see the light of day again, how are you not panicking? I can sense your defeat so where is your hope coming from? No matter, we have a lot of time together. I will find out and crush it. To return your words, overconfidence kills. We don¡¯t need to send savants or some genius fighter.¡± Mr Guru saw him sit down and had his hidden soldiers show themselves before dragging him by the armpits.
¡°You just need a humble Emperor Telepath huh?¡± Ebony looked towards where he sensed Mr Guru pop up. His mind cleared up a little and Aegis helped him track every vibration.
¡°That¡¯s right. Enjoy your last days of sunlight. You may perhaps make it easier for me to see what you¡¯ve been up to during your short freedom.¡±
¡°Hahaha. Mr Guru, don¡¯t speak as if you are going to have it easy the next few days. Why haven¡¯t you caged me up? No Ezekiel? Can¡¯t teleport me into your amazing new cage for me? Distracting me within my mindspace doesn¡¯t mean my body will let your helpers move me so easily.¡±
Mr Guru shut up and invaded his mindspace again.
Exactly what Ebony had hoped for.
While the confident and talkative Telepath was distracted, his sleeping body fought off his captors. His body still had a small amount of mana thanks to coagulated mana being so hard to drain and absorb while his stamina was recovering faster than the absorption.
Not to mention, he didn¡¯t want Mr Guru to see that Aegis was helping him. It would make him question why Ebony could still cast magic.
¡°Just lie down obediently already!¡± Mr Guru was a force of nature within his mind, doing whatever he could imagine.
¡°Taming requires a show of force or patience.¡± A battle of imagination wasn¡¯t something he was unfamiliar with. He had Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge running in parallel, fighting multiple Mr Guru¡¯s to find a way to counter him while fighting him for real at the same time. It ate into his mental stamina but Ebony had no choice, he had been fighting a losing battle from the start and he needed the most efficient method to defend against the weird mental intrusion.
Outside, his trappers were shocked by a barrage of blue fire and his body Flickering in and out. Landing Quake Kicks on their heavy equipment and having his petals digging through deeper after every attack. Icicle angrily took their precise bullets and let them push him to gain momentum. Except for the Rail Mechanist who shot beams of energy and also high-pressure lava.
It seemed like the illusion Mr Guru showed him wasn¡¯t all lies because the Classes matched so far.
¡°So it was harder to find defensive ice equipment than gravity? Is it because Cinderash cannot make anything like that? Did you trust that ice would melt from your heat-based techniques and equipment?¡± Ebony probed his longest-chating companion. He didn¡¯t always want to be on the side that was questioned.
As draining as it was, he didn¡¯t drag the battle into one of attrition. Not in his current state where the chains on him were not breaking even with Aegis¡¯s help.
It took a lot longer for his body because there were 5 unknown fighters. 3 of them fought him while the trappers and snipers took shots at him. The last two were probably protecting Mr Guru¡¯s body.
¡°Your body finally failed.¡± Mr Guru taunted with sweat dripping off his brows.
Ebony continued to attack and push Mr Guru deeper into his mind. They were not where any memories were. Rather, they were in his cognitive section. Mr Guru was trying to weaken his magic so badly and somehow pushed them both here. Shocking himself more and more because the damage in his cognitive section didn¡¯t affect the battle outside where Aegis was doing the casting.
However, Ebony couldn¡¯t fight as well within his mindspace. His mana regeneration dipped. He could run more simulations concurrently from shutting Mireloom off.
His body was forced onto the ground by the last two fighters, bodyguards of the Telepath. These people were as unexpressive as him. They tossed him over their horse and started to transport both him and the Guru.
The other 8 were sealed in ice down to the bones and brains. They would probably die if they didn¡¯t get a boost of mana from him or have an aether healer present before they melt in this heat. Aegis kept them sealed while watching Ebony getting taken away.
It didn¡¯t interfere and neither did any of his clones.
Ebony didn¡¯t have any mana and should not cast any magic, so they would not act and show themselves.
Chapter 342: Network
¡°Fear not, you might not see the light anymore but I will be your company until I find out what you¡¯ve been doing.¡± With his physical body, Mr Guru closed the door on the battered and chained little monster.
Ebony¡¯s exhausted eyes opened to see the man who had been messing inside his head for a long, long time. Their ride to his new cell had been excruciatingly long for Mr Guru. He remained silent, waiting for the Guru to reenter his mind.
The Guru no longer had any reasons to attack the parts of his mind that would affect his battle capabilities. His new prison cell doors closed on him, signalling that no amount of strength on his part would matter anymore.
He knew why the Guru was so insistent on reentering his mind but had been too careful to do so before. The Telepath wanted to know if Ebony contacted anybody during his short freedom.
One of the few biggest discoveries that Seventeen had made was the existence of something similar to the internet.
It was why the moment Ebony escaped, what the great Telepath did wasn¡¯t chase him down. It was to lock down information transfer.
Cinderash didn¡¯t have the riches to make this ¡®internet¡¯ commonplace. It was still something a small group of people had access to. Namely, Saints, some Emperors and cities as a whole.
Although his clones couldn¡¯t find out much about this ¡®internet¡¯ it was likely different from what he was imagining. It was more likely just a global¡a universal connection like a callstone with more range than ever. Unless it truly was the internet that he knows of, that would be great.
Ebony didn¡¯t want to get caught. It was fine if they had one or two months of preparation, he had more confidence of slipping away. However, the more time he had to be free, the more time Mr Guru could prepare his new cell. He wasn¡¯t confident that his preparations could overcome what Mr Guru and a planet with Saints could do to keep him locked up.
He didn¡¯t panic because he didn¡¯t sit on his butt for 4 months straight.
After a short breather, Mr Guru invited himself into Ebony''s mindspace again.
They didn¡¯t clash immediately this time.
Mr Guru saw Ebony pouring tea for them both. Imaginary tea.
¡°Look at what you¡¯ve done to my place.¡± Ebony gestured to their background. It was no longer transparent and colourless, the contents of his mind were displayed and had tears and collapses everywhere. Of course, the contents of his mind had a lot of numbers and visions overlapped because of his multitasking but the Guru could look at them without hurting his mind.
¡°I left no permanent injuries, not for you. We need you to produce mana. Don¡¯t worry, after finding out you can produce so much mana, we will feed you well.¡±
¡°Oh why thank you for your consideration, some books might help pass the time better.¡±
¡°I will think about it. Look, your new prison even has a toilet.¡±
¡°Is that supposed to make me go wow.¡±
Their banter went on for some time. No matter what, the Guru was indeed the person that Ebony had known for the longest time. It didn¡¯t help that the Guru had a mental offence that made him think or talk out loud in his mindspace.
¡°Why didn¡¯t you run? With your speed, it would not be hard to find someone to catch you but I know you can last far longer if you focus on running.¡±
¡°I would go hungry before getting far.¡± Ebony casually answered. It was not a lie but he wasn¡¯t giving the Guru the answer he was looking for.
¡°Why don¡¯t you show me what you¡¯ve been up to during your freedom? We have no reason to fight anymore, you can¡¯t escape anymore.¡±
¡°Mr Guru. What do you think my forte is? Ice magic? Martial arts? Mana capacity?¡±
¡°Mana regeneration. Bragging is unlike you, what are you trying to say?
¡°Regeneration? No. Mr Guru, my forte is endurance. Both physical and mental.¡±
¡°...so you¡¯re going to make it difficult for me even now, how tiresome.¡±
¡°No, no I won¡¯t make it difficult for you. Come, let¡¯s see what I¡¯ve been up to.¡±
¡°An invite? This is new.¡±
¡°One of the life lessons I learnt from a fish is an eye for an eye. I won¡¯t be able to leave for a long time, you can watch as long as that takes. It was not nice meeting you Mr Guru, see you in¡I don¡¯t know. Fulfilling your wish, you can keep me company. Enjoy the view.¡±
Ebony teleported himself to the core of his mindspace after leaving a shocked Telepath sealed in ice in front of the recent memories he made. His soul attack coming in full force caught Mr Guru off-guard.
¡®What a tough opponent. It took imprisoning myself to exhaust him out and catch him off-guard.¡¯ Ebony rested his mind but he couldn¡¯t sleep immediately, he had to check on his clones and Aegis before he rested. His nearly seemingly eternal battle with Mr Guru made even him mentally tired. Not nearly as exhausting as his Unique skill creation but it was more intense over a shorter period.
¡°Great, you¡¯re all here. Looks like our new cell has nothing on Will blocking. That¡¯s for the best.¡± Ebony nodded to Twelve, Fourteen, Fifteen, Seventeen and Twenty-Three to Thirty. A total of 12 clones of his roamed free.
¡°Wasted all the preparation of our plans if Will''s connection was blocked.¡± Aegis sounded out.
¡°It¡¯s no waste, merely precautions. I would still go into sleep mode. Did you manage to follow and see where I¡¯m locked up?¡± Ebony stretched. His plan to lock Mr Guru up had a lot of variables but it ultimately succeeded just like his simulations confirmed.
¡°Unless you were transported spatially, you were brought back to Gearhart¡¯s estate. Still the same prison but probably somewhere else inside.¡± Fourteen worked hard.
¡°How lazy.¡± Twenty-five yawned for Ebony. He had the greatest connection with Ebony at the moment as they were transmitting information with each other faster through feeling than conversation.
¡°It¡¯s the best place for them. Easiest to monitor, control and prevent another escape. With the Saint home, it would be maximum security.¡±
¡°Hey I was out of range earlier what happened? The Guru is down? How did we do it?¡± Fifteen put his tea down.
¡°Welcome Fifteen, oh it¡¯s pretty easy. Ebony kept dragging him deeper into our mind where the natural defence of a creature is stronger. It can¡¯t harm the Guru but it is great at tiring him out. His endurance is not bad but that¡¯s all, he always needs to rest after a moment and turtle up after a mental century or so. We could seal him in ice long ago but we just let him escape a few million times so that he thought we couldn¡¯t seal him for good. Until he trapped us in their new cell. The trick to mental fighting is to find a gap and moment of defenselessness, no different from fighting in the real world. And we confirmed it with a lot of simulations over the long fight.¡± Twenty-Eight replied.
Ebony¡¯s mental battle with the Guru lasted a very long time, the ride back to prison was not easy for the two bodyguards. There was plenty of data for him to obtain. There was no one who understood how the Guru fought better than him and vice versa. Not even Ning Xin was as familiar compared to how well the Guru knew Ebony.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
¡°In any case, we are finally back here. That makes it easier, when we regenerate enough to pay for it we¡¯ll leave.¡±
¡°We can just take it once the Saint goes away again, why play the good? An eye for an eye doesn¡¯t need to be so¡practical does it?¡±
¡°I am law-abiding. Let¡¯s just take this as my sentence for threatening to kill his family when I didn¡¯t mean to. That was indeed unlike me.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t converse on the topic anymore. With how many scouts he had and Aegis, lo-and-behold, was still in range. His clones'' activity range would only increase thanks to their one of their new discoveries and creations. As for mana, Aegis is not the only battery source for them.
This was a world of untapped natural aether but mana wasn¡¯t missing from the natural atmosphere.
If this was a settlement on Elva, the ambient mana would have been drained dry by Navin or the Lord family¡¯s barrier or used to charge their magic towers.
Be that as it may, ambient mana was not as thick as Tidal and was roughly the same as Plainston. It was interesting to observe mana convert into something else in real time. Into aether.
There was another thing that produced more mana than Ebony. It was the planet itself or the Worldcore to be specific. Cinderash¡¯s Worldcore was the same rank as Elcra, Ancient but it had a far longer history.
Ebony didn¡¯t go into a trance to start refining his Unique Skill immediately. He waited for someone to find the Guru¡¯s fainted body outside his new cell. He couldn¡¯t tell what the new cell looked like now since no light was allowed entry but he had a peek before he was stuffed in. It was a similar solid metal cube, 3 metres squared with glowing orange-blue veins outside.
His new chains were directly connected to the cell. His legs were tightly locked up in liquid metal up to his thighs but his hands surprisingly only had a pair of bangles on the wrists and they were separate so he had freedom of motion with his arms. If you considered being hung by two arms and splayed out to be freedom of motion then yes. His legs were cocooned into the floor.
But the cell was nice, it put his arms down and didn¡¯t hang him up once the leg restraints solidified. It did not leave him any slack of chains though, they must have recalled him using their chains as a shield and also to whip their turrets.
And he was clothed this time.
The Guru wasn¡¯t that bad as a person and they had mutual respect for each other.
The temperatures were no different from a sunny day on Elcra, the air was clean and there was a nozzle jammed into his mouth which should have water if he tried sucking on it but he didn¡¯t trust it too much yet. He engraved conversion runes on some of his chassis, it was not permanent but it took mental effort to keep them maintained, just like keeping his unique skill running. It would turn coagulated mana into water so he was not afraid of dehydrating anymore.
Sadly, this new prison was truly made to keep him locked up forever. Not even coagulated mana was spared and it was drained out very fast.
Ebony had gotten the chains he had stolen to work on him during his short freedom but he only managed to refine coagulated mana¡¯s stability once more. It wasn¡¯t enough for this cell.
This was one reason he came back to be imprisoned. To train his ability to keep mana in his body.
Stamina was another thing, he was drained into an exhausted state and had his stats lowered not even ten minutes later. But the advanced prison slowed its stamina drain. A constant force to make his stamina regenerate is also a constant drain of energy. Sustenance.
Cinderash was poor, especially in terms of food storage.
They did not want to feed him more than he fed them mana.
After an hour, Ebony realised how amazing the cell was. It could maintain his stat reduction at 95% and know when to stop or slow down it¡¯s absorption.
There was no better chance of evolving his exhaustion resistance. Only physical.
He had methods of exhausting himself mentally with his new Unique Skill, Domain and if he wanted to manually take control of his many clones.
Ebony could exert a lot of physical force, but all of the buff that comes from magic exhausted his mind more than his body. His physical type skills were too few and not stacked up enough to allow him to physically exhaust his muscles unless he fought for weeks or months straight. It was not easy to find someone to fight him for so long and be able to maintain their peak state with him for that long. And even if he could find them like a large number of Apex Apes, it would still take months if not years to push his resistance.
This method was much faster.
The biggest factor was that there was simply nothing of worth on this planet. Under Saint Gearhart¡¯s reign, all natural treasures of the planet could be obtained by him. The planet was mostly mined out of its resources. There were few plants and even if there were, wild ones wouldn¡¯t be all that high quality. Worse of all, they were fire or lava elemental.
He could get a present for Xin or maybe use a heat-based energy source to strengthen himself instead of an ice or cold resource.
But it all boiled down to the Saint who kept the best things.
As for natural dungeons, this planet wasn¡¯t plagued by them. They had the power of technology beyond his imagination. They could make it such that dungeons only spawn or birthed in a certain region. It was why, past a certain range from the capital, the rest of the continent was barren and was the land of a scant few races of monsters.
It was also thanks to this unnatural ¡®technology¡¯ that the barren or wildlands probably didn¡¯t have any good mines or natural treasures. Because the entire planet¡¯s energy was siphoned to this region of dungeons or so his clones understood from the locals. A few of them were tasked to appear occasionally as random strangers or information gathering would have been too difficult. It helped that this was supposedly common knowledge and not some secret information. All his clones had to do was show up as children and he hasn¡¯t gotten any suspicious looks about the curious questions.
Since all the greatest objects of value were sent to Gearhart¡¯s estate, he might as well return here. Not only were riches found here, it was also the best place for an opportunity to train. If they weren¡¯t going to let him die, they would feed him when he fell into his trance to complete his Unique Skill.
Food was hard to obtain. Even monsters were scarce and they didn¡¯t trade in mana ores here. Not that he had any on hand after his spatial bag was left behind. It wasn¡¯t a bad idea to trade mana for a good training spot, feeding, and renting a shelter over his head. When he fully paid for whatever resource his clones found out to be worthwhile, he could leave.
A cell couldn¡¯t keep him contained forever. Not this one.
Patience was another one of his strong suits but Ebony didn¡¯t expect he had to wait over an Eclrian month before someone came to check on the Guru. This operation of keeping him contained was more secretive than he thought because the person who came over was Saint Gearhart himself.
He could feel the Saint¡¯s eyes on him despite an opaque wall blocking them. The Saint didn¡¯t say anything, trying to decipher what happened to the Guru whose body was still breathing. The Guru might be an Emperor but he wasn¡¯t Ebony, any longer and the man would die unless Ebony released him to get food.
Unexpectedly, the Saint didn¡¯t bother saying anything. And the pair of eyes Ebony felt went away moments after it landed on him.
Ebony no longer delayed and went into his mindspace to complete the overhaul to his mana factory.
Throughout his period of freedom and this month of waiting, he was busy designing his network with his clones. Another new skill that they have been developing. It wasn¡¯t just a skill, it was also crafting.
The skill Will Relay Buffer was his take on advancement in technology. It was actually quite an easy skill to develop because they found out that a clone¡¯s range of Will can overlap and when they came into contact with each other, they could transfer information. So they figured they just needed plenty of relays to vastly increase their transmission range.
What all of his clones were now capable of doing was to craft a node for this buffer. The material is the hardened lava that could be found everywhere on Cinderash. Fashioning a sphere out of them to be the best container for runes, they would imbue mana range of absorption and capacity. A very simple construct that didn¡¯t even require any of his elements. The runic formula made it self-sufficient and his clones just had to dig a hole or stab it deep enough so that wind or monsters didn¡¯t move his relay points.
His clones would imbue enough Will to activate their skill. When the node was connected to their network, Ebony could charge up the rest of the required Will to keep it alive for a longer period. This node couldn¡¯t fight and didn¡¯t have that kind of Will, its sole purpose was to act as a relay. Thanks to the extremely limited functions and inability to act, the upkeep was very low. He just needed to level and refine the skill so that he didn¡¯t need to place as many buffers after their range increased.
Now, Ebony¡¯s Will network is spread throughout more than half of Cinderash¡¯s populated cities. Even the barren lands that were Mental Mapped were connected to his network. Wherever his clones go, they would be connected to him by Will Relay Buffer as long as his clones make one of the buffers when they go out of range.
The delay in transmission was there but with the current distance or amount of buffers, it was an insignificant delay. At the moment, relaying information to the furthest clone had a minute delay after hopping through all the buffers.
Although he tried to tell Dusk in his mindspace and updated it on his new skill, he didn¡¯t know how long it would take before the message was sent. He never received any messages from Dusk at all and only had a vague sense that Eleven with Xin was asleep.
Teheil should be nearer to Cinderash than Elcra.
Chapter 343: Slothful?
Ebony¡¯s design for Mireloom Chassis Engine had long been complete, but he hadn¡¯t manufactured the facilities in his body. Thanks to his chassis, making the changes near-permanent by holding them in place with mental effort was challenging.
He had the mental capacity to complete the skill and allow it to run as long as he¡¯d like and Ebony had time since he couldn¡¯t escape even if he wanted to. He tried to reduce the mental consumption while he still could. The more efficient it was, the less it would affect his spell-casting abilities. He also learned many efficiency tips and tricks from the Guru after their long battle. The Telepath was the best multi-caster aside from himself.
¡°Cinderash is a huge producer of many high-grade metals and fire, ash and sulphur-based materials and ingredients. Although they have strong properties and the quality is good, it doesn¡¯t mean much to us. The most valuable non-commercial item that is occasionally on sale is Molten Nucleus. It is monopolised by Gearhart and his immediate family members all use molten nuclei to improve their physique.
It is an open secret that they keep the Legendary quality nucleus, which correlates to the Saint evolutionary stage for their direct family. As for Epic and Ancient ranked, they are marketed and promoted to increase base resistance to heat by anywhere from 100 to 800% depending on a race¡¯s initial traits. Not every race is suited for it, using the frost elves as an example, it wouldn¡¯t work and would probably kill them instead. The recommended dosage is 200 grams and above, sold separately with the aether technique to make use of the energy to refine one¡¯s physique. Or one could buy a spot in their special pool made by a Saint. Sleep in that pool with the molten nucleus and wake up with a new or refined physique. It¡¯s pretty lazy of them, but I can¡¯t say the technology isn¡¯t impressive.¡±
His clones went on about the expensive treatment that one could only take on Cinderash and how there were long texts on the disclaimers about whether or not a certain race would receive the same effects at the same dosage or any effects at all.
Heat resistance was just a side effect. The main selling point or ability that the Molten Nucleus gave was to raise the internal temperature that burns not just external weapons, but energy itself including mana and aether. Feeding the Nucleus will allow it to crystallise the energy to form a heat energy shield of some sort. It was defensive in nature but the Gearhart uses the crystallise energy offensively as well.
Ebony saw and observed the young master, Percival fight. It was very likely a stronger form of passive enhancement. If they truly did depend on Molten Nucleus, then he was pretty sure Molten Nucleus was just one part of the puzzle. They were able to utilise the crystallised energy with a clanking-sounding organ within their bodies.
The Molten Nucleus didn¡¯t sound bad, especially because data on their users showed that harmful side effects were close to nil for most humans and sub-humans. If they were compatible to begin with. Another definition that Ebony¡¯s clones had learnt in their study on common races of the universe. By definition, he was still a sub-human. Even with physique mutations, refinements, and his partial mana-being didn¡¯t make him a different race. The definition was extremely broad thanks to the various Worldcore environments that birthed different breeds of the same ancestral race.
Ebony and his clones had their eyes on something else.
The Pyrothernite Source Stone.
Cinderash society and technology revolved around pyrothernite and its source stone. Their best monster-hunting bullets and projectiles were coated in powdered pyrothernite. Pyrothernite was rather easy to obtain but its source stone was a different story as the source stone wasn¡¯t produced in any of their dungeons despite their best unnatural attempts to cater to their dungeons.
A fist-sized Rare quality Pyrothernite Source Stone is said to be able to be placed into a small active volcano and it would come out cold, after drying up and freezing lava rock solid again. Cinderashians live around and in volcanos thanks to a Pyrothernite Source Stone being buried within the volcanoes themselves. Not just as an uncut natural gem but with an array of magical technology.
Absorbing and storing heat energy wasn¡¯t all it did but the Cinderashians extracted volcanic heat and energy from them to power their cities¡¯ utilities. They have plenty of excess and have a decent reputation for selling heat. If it wasn¡¯t for the fact that mana was more commonly used and people who bought heat from an aether-producing Worldcore needed to convert it to mana, they would be far richer.
Ebony coveted the specific heat capacity increase that would make him harder to heat up and possibly a raise in capacity of some form if he could make use of its properties. But that was secondary.
If his clones¡¯ tests on pyrothernite were to be believed, it could strengthen his frost flames. They were still running numerous experiments externally and they couldn¡¯t get their hands on any source stone but they had enough confidence to believe that this was what they were here for. Powdered pyrothernite sucked up his flames like the bane of all his truly powerful ice magic and vomited a purer version out.
As nice as it sounded, it was not high on his priority list. Skill improvement was still more important to him. It wasn¡¯t as if eating a rock would refine his physique. Getting a source stone would be a collection until he knew how to utilise it.
So he let his clones deal with the sub-priorities and he worked on his skills.
Ebony did not expect that when meal time came, it came on a plate with utensils. There was a variety of red and orange vegetables and even monster meat. He didn¡¯t complain about the dryness of everything on the plate, it was just Cinderashian cuisine. Now that he knew the reasons his arms had freedom of motion, he dug into his meal. Unable to hide that being well-fed gave them more of his mana. It was their misconception of course, since he was still pretty full after the intense stamina drain. He was levelling his meditation and refining his skills.
¡°It won¡¯t work Ebony! You will never escape! Cease this plan of yours! I know I asked this but do you not fear death!? Lord Gearhart will never let you off and chase you down no matter where you go!¡± The Guru¡¯s voice screamed out throughout his mind but it never reached his core where he was having his meeting with his clones and Aegis.
¡°You¡¯re already awake, faster than I thought. What do you think, how are my chances?¡± Ebony made it a point to reappear where the Guru was with his body. As a precaution and a sign of respect instead of just thinking, to reply the Guru.
¡°Chances of dying? A hundred percent!¡± Instead of being angry, the Guru was nervous.
¡°No need to shout, it won¡¯t free you any earlier. My chances of breaking out.¡± Ebony more than triple confirmed that the Guru wouldn¡¯t be able to escape. But even if he did, Ebony didn¡¯t care.
Showing his captors his escape plan was an extremely stupid move, especially when he never planned to kill the Guru. Something he usually wouldn¡¯t do but Ebony decided that even if the Guru got out, it would benefit him by raising the challenge of the escape. Gaining experience and levelling was all about overcoming challenges.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
¡°You--don¡¯t go so far. This is Lord Gearhart¡¯s estates, you underestimate our-¡±
¡°Mr Guru, you¡¯re lying through your teeth. No need to keep up with your careful probing, this is indeed the plan. As for the defences, as you can see, my clones have already mapped them out. Not that it would matter. As long as I¡¯m in this volcano.¡±
¡°...Removing a volcano would cause a lot of deaths. That is something neither of us would like to see.¡± Still encased in a thin layer of ice, the Guru warned him.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m preparing the evacuation for them. And stop with the lousy threats, I know the safety precautions on this island. Even if the island blows up from Saint Gearhart¡¯s anger and strength, it wouldn¡¯t affect the environment. I have to thank the Saints for being so powerful they take safety precautions like what would happen if a volcano were to blow up.¡±
¡°We¡¯re not talking about an eruption here! You¡¯re planning to excavate the entire volcano!¡± The crusty faced Guru managed to put a frown on his frozen face.
¡°Obviously, how else would I find myself when you blinded me during my entry? All I know is that I¡¯m on the premises. Relax. There are so many other volcanoes on Cinderash and you guys are taking payment in terms of my mana. I am very fair.¡± Ebony looked upon his newly developed runic seal in satisfaction.
It was a paralysis rune that was incorporated into a deconstructed Stalwart Foundation. Learning from his cell, the runic formula had a similar rune to his mana absorption formula. There would be a constant drain on the target and the drain would power the paralysis and main rune which was ice-based. Stalwart Foundation was the shell but all its contents were changed and this version did not have any buffs. He hadn¡¯t named it yet and there was no skill version for it. By casting it on his target, the rune will absorb its target''s mana and convert it into paralysing the target itself. For a Cinderashian that has terrible control over their aether or mana, Mr Guru was practically defenseless against the ''buff'' spell.
¡°You cannot take the central Pyrothernite away! It is connected to every city and its disappearance will cause all the others to overload.¡± The Guru had a grave look in his eyes.
¡°Tell Gearhart to think about that the next time he decides to imprison me. For now, you can rest while I get to work. I will silence you and keep your senses contained here. Fight back, it¡¯ll help Perpetual Tranquility Spring a lot. Thanks, it won¡¯t be anytime soon before we meet again.¡± Ebony teleported himself away.
He wasn¡¯t sure if the Guru was lying but he didn¡¯t want to implicate the other residents of the planet so he got his clones to investigate the repercussions of what they were about to do.
Then it was time to work.
???
¡°Twelve, should we trade Will?¡±
¡°Twenty-three? We should stay disconnected as Ebony suggested. Although subtle, we believe there are minor differences between us after we¡¯re separated for so long. We¡¯ll share information normally, though it¡¯s inconvenient and inefficient. So what have your group been doing?¡±
¡°Four of us have managed to get into the tutorship of different people with tier 5 and higher masteries. It¡¯s helping Ethereal Form Arts but something is lacking. Most of their warriors¡¯ arts are well developed but not enough, we need a wider variety.¡±
¡°Same issue as always then. Anyway, on our side we have basically completed all preparation two months ago.¡±
¡°Is what the Guru said about other volcanos overloading true?¡±
"It is. But they all have extensive safety measures since these people have been living around volcanoes for generations. They are not so stupid as to rely on one little rock. We¡¯ll leave and activate an alarm through our network nodes.¡±
¡°Oh right about those, why aren¡¯t we expanding them any more? We barely covered every city with our current placements.¡±
¡°Seventeen, Twenty-Four and Twenty-Nine are busy spreading out the nodes after their coverage increased. Those nodes take up Will, Ebony also has to keep all of us charged with Will. He¡¯s dry on Will regeneration just from our upkeep so we have no choice but to limit our expansion to civilisation instead of the entire planet. When the rest of us that are in the wild place a new node, inform them to take it down and come back within range. Well, Fifteen and Thirty are the only ones outside of call range.¡±
¡°I hope they¡¯re not dead. The portal?¡±
¡°We have over forty routes planned for different situations during the outbreak, 3 end destinations. 1 of them goes to a centralised place of commerce, some kind of space station or parking spot in our understanding. That one is the top choice since it¡¯s connected to numerous worlds and planets, it might be easier to get news on Elcra. Another goes to a subsidiary planet under Gearhart where they train their elite soldiers, there is nothing much there but we believe that there is a portal to Teheil on that training planet, no confirmation. The last destination is supposedly leading to one of Gearhart¡¯s allies, they trade food for metals, an agricultural world mostly consisting of non-fighters but they have a Saint as well so they manage to keep their independence. The chances are lower but this world might have access to Teheil to send their supplies there.¡±
Twenty-Three knew that Teheil was a parasitic world that ate mana straight out of the air, all creatures and objects alike. He could understand the training value in sending elites directly there and also the need to send supplies.
The clones have been communicating but they didn¡¯t mix and redistribute their Will to know every living moment of each other. This was also to experience different things and see how they would grow Ebony¡¯s Will.
¡°Did any of you hear from Ebony recently?¡± Twenty-Three broadcasted, hoping to reach the others that were busy in other cities. One of them was so free they calculated the transmission lag to be 3.22 seconds per node in a linear direction. It was not ideal since a phone call to someone three cities away would have almost 10 seconds delay but it was still better than nothing.
¡°Not me. 1 and half years for me.¡±
¡°What? It was 2 for me. I never fought anything and the Will he has been recharging me is blank on his progress.¡±
¡°I heard from him last year. Our factory is having some issues and he¡¯s busy hammering them in place.¡±
¡°Was he? Didn¡¯t he go back to the drawing board and run simulations on an optimised design?¡±
Ebony¡¯s clones speculated on his progress. They had been kept out of their meeting spot for a long time and only received a recharge every so often. The latest news and contact they had was Twelve and Fourteen who worked closest to the Gearhart estate. They believed that Ebony had finished the latest design on their internal factory and was close to completion long ago but the man wasn¡¯t giving them the signal to start their operations.
They knew that he had been living a slothful and gluttonous life. Constantly eating. Getting his lower body freed whenever he asked the cell to free him to use the toilet. His body only stretched once in a while and not any shadow boxing or the cell would punish him by draining his stamina more or not feeding him for a week.
Nearly 4 Elcrian years later of little to no movement and his Conditioning started to take a dip in levels. He was quite amazed by how long it took before his muscles deteriorated but it was somewhat expected now that he was a Grandmaster and had an incredible Constitution.
Not having contact for over a year, they wondered how long Ebony wanted to wait because once the first conditioning level was lost, the deterioration would only speed up. Although most of their breakout plans considered a weak, useless and trapped Ebony, having him too weak would be a problem.
¡°The longer the wait, the more excess energy I have for us,¡± Aegis commented.
¡°Almost 6 years had passed and our ability to absorb and purify mana is a mere fraction of our main body.¡±
The clones didn¡¯t spend too much time or mana wasting on speculating on what Ebony was doing. They¡¯ve just passed the opening they had because Saint Gearhart was back from his trip. They weren¡¯t too worried, Saint Gearhart was a busy man and the chance would come again.
Hence, their broadcast meeting ended and they went on with their daily lives.
They were clones and a moving sculpture, but they could improve too.
Chapter 344: Nice View
¡°Ebonys. It¡¯s time to leave, let¡¯s begin.¡± Ebony blinked his crusty eyes and gave them a rub.
¡°You don¡¯t want us to report the changes?¡± Twelve cocked his head.
Thinking there was no point rushing when they could communicate at high speeds, he gathered all his clones for a meeting. This was the maximum number of clones he could maintain. Any more and they would start dying because he didn¡¯t have enough regenerated Will to feed each of them. He included all those on Elcra.
From his latest one-sided message, Dusk was still hanging on but it lost all of the usable Will. Only hanging on to the tread of Will that wouldn¡¯t dissipate over time. They even sent him their latest research results on runic formulations and combination spells. All of the other clones learned how to take shelter within Dusk and keep almost all of their memories while going into hibernation. Except Ebony One. As far as he could tell, a lot of information was lost in transition.
Ebony One wasn¡¯t dead but he did not return to Dusk. Unfortunately, Ebony didn¡¯t know why or how One did not dissipate after so long if he didn¡¯t hibernate within Dusk. Unlike Dusk, the core of a Domain they did not have the unfading Will that stacks over time and would melt away once their Will faded.
He received no news either but he would know if they died or got destroyed. Like Eleven who was supposed to be with Ning Xin, he disappeared from his mindspace years ago with a brief and fragmented piece of information transferred.
¡°Summarise.¡±
¡°We located a direct route to Teheil. It¡¯s far from you, but we don¡¯t have to go through any more channels. The chances of us clones getting into this portal are not high either. If you manage to get out of the cell, we might have a 40% chance of making it through this particularly well-guarded portal where Ezekiel is stationed.¡± Fifteen shared a piece of good news.
¡°Chances of bringing my entire cell there?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t find talking to himself weird.
¡°Less than 10% since we can¡¯t touch the cell as it would absorb us into nothingness instantly. Updates on your chances of breaking out by force?¡± The clones looked at each other and nodded in agreement.
¡°Nil. Forget about it, we won¡¯t be breaking out by force even if we had a full stock of mana and another evolution on our backs.¡± Ebony who learnt everything about his cell was certain that it was a wall he couldn¡¯t scale, a box he couldn¡¯t rip out from.
¡°Wait, then can you tell us what you¡¯ve been doing the past 2 years? I thought you were ready to go back then.¡± Twenty-Five stopped him.
¡°Teheil, a parasitic world or whatever absorbs mana from every living creature or dead object other than certain natural elements. I was making coagulated mana even harder to destabilise so we have some backup. And I was trying to make a friend.¡± Ebony made coagulated mana so stable, even his cell couldn¡¯t rip it from him. And he now had mana in his body again. Coagulated Mana Repository was as highly refined as he could get it up.
Coagulated Mana Repository - The walls of the mana chassis are compact to their limits. Mana exceeding the natural limit of the mana pool will fill up and condense up till 900% + 10.0% before coagulating. Coagulated mana will line the walls of the mana chassis. Maximum charge of coagulated mana is static. Coagulated mana holds a static 30% more mana than completely condensed mana. Coagulated mana has a static 2000% stability and resistance to change. Constitution is increased directly proportional to Intelligence to how compressed mana is in the body.
It used to be 900% stability and it wouldn¡¯t go any higher as the cell couldn¡¯t rip his mana apart and absorb them anymore. Base maximum compression increased by 100%. Although coagulated mana was also 2000% harder to break down and utilise for himself, it was not that much of an issue with his complete Unique Skill that took coagulated mana and processed them.
Mireloom Chassis Engine (Unique) - An original. Using the properties of your race¡¯s traits, a functioning high-efficiency turbine engine with and within your mana chassis is set up with highly adept mental and mana manipulation. Mana and muscle memory had been ingrained and segregational mental processing prowess is used to run the engine at any time without burdening main mental facilities. Cyclic conversion of coagulated mana to mana and mana to coagulated mana strengthens the conversion rate by 100% + 10% per level. Passive activation and operation consistently consume a static 20% of your mental processing capabilities unless forcefully shut down for redistribution. Coagulated mana fuels your mireloom chassis engine and increases your mana regeneration rate by 100% + 1.0% per level. Overflowing mana¡¯s tendency to coagulate increases by 200% and grows the mireloom. Mireloom accommodates 300% + 10% per level of your mana capacity. Constructed mireloom chassis increases the stability of your coagulated mana by 500% when the skill is in operation and under the effects of dynamic mental hold.
Despite the increase in complexity of his latest factory design, the mental capacity required for passive activation decreased by 10%. When he has coagulated mana, his regeneration would increase by 100%, plus 1% multiplied by his current skill level of 655. When this was one of the few skills he was training, and more than 6 years had passed, it was obvious the skill level growth was immense for a ¡®new¡¯ skill.
He no longer had to wait till he had excess coagulated mana. As long as he had a drop of coagulated mana, he could run his factory. The best thing was the shape of his factory didn¡¯t destabilise his Coagulated Mana Repository in any form and his Constitution strengthening was not interrupted. If he had the factory running, his mana was even harder to steal or absorb as they were held in place by his mental packing.
What did the tendency to coagulate mean for him, he wasn¡¯t sure. Not when all overflowing mana coagulated to begin with. He was just happy he had his first proper mana capacitance increase skill. Growing the mireloom was the best clue skill descriptions had ever told him about how to level a skill. Unless he worked on every portion of the skill¡¯s effect, it would be hard to level it up. Growing the mireloom requires him to continue packing up the hyper condensed mana and not using them.
¡°What friend?¡± Some of his clones showed surprise.
¡°This cell of mine. It has a spirit, not a budding one like Icicle that can¡¯t talk or even respond at times. This one knows the language, speech and is capable of thought. Made by a Saint, made to trap Saints and made to weaken Saints. Sadly, it''s young and was brainwashed or birthed with the sole instructions of making things difficult for me. As all of you know, the cell¡¯s slime-like material that can harden is directly connected to Gearhart¡¯s estate Source Stone holding room.¡± Ebony told them about his prison cell¡¯s young girl-sounding spirit that was unyielding to his attempts at asking her to free him.
Be that as it may, he managed to change her originally antagonistic attitude toward him to an amiable one. Though she still ate every bit of his mana and sent it to the Gearhart estate. At least he was allowed to walk around in his cell instead of having his feet locked up in solid metal. She even let him use water for hygiene and not just sustenance. Still, he was likely annoying Gearhart if this attempt to make a friend was reported.
¡°Let¡¯s discuss this no longer. Remember to hibernate in Aegis after I leave. You will all die on Teheil without proper storage like Eleven had in Sister Jing¡¯s test tubes for soup stock.¡± Ebony dismissed the meeting, his clones knew what to do better than he did. He just had to wait.
Saint Gearhart had long placed detectors for ice magic. Temperature sensors didn¡¯t work since his clones could vibrate to the same temperatures as the surroundings.
He let his clones and Aegis gather and get ready, waiting for their signals. In the meantime, all of them sent him their experiences throughout the years. As they expected, he felt a pronounced increase in his Will capacity and regeneration. The tests on the increase could wait.
It didn¡¯t take long after his eyes opened for him to hear the blaring alarms over the entire island. Of the 5 sons and daughters that Saint Gearhart had, two of them were Emperors who remained at home and worked on their strength and helped with internal diplomacy and management of Cinderash. The others, including Percival, were considered teenagers that are not suited for working yet and were under tighter schedules for training and education. Of course, ¡®tighter schedules¡¯ was a stretch. They barely spent 7 hours a standard day training and studying.
His clones had found out that a standard day or year was no different from an Elcrian day or year. Despite the size of Elcra being way bigger than Earth, its gravity in most places like Plainston was no different from Earth. The day and night cycle wasn¡¯t that far off either.
It was because some mighty God decided that all new Natural Worldcores were to be adjusted to follow the same cycle. ¡®New¡¯ was after this law was set, and Elcra fell under this category for being born rather recently. He didn¡¯t know who, but the fact that the planet¡¯s day and night cycle was 28 hours a day was not a coincidence with a standard day. A God if not a team of them manipulated it to cycle and rotate in that period.
Cinderash did not fall under this category, so they did not have their planetary motion messed with but they still followed the standard. Hence, Ebony had been complicating things himself. Unless specified in conversation, when a Cinderashian said a day had passed, it was no different from the day that he was familiar with.
Gearhart had 3 wives, none of which were proper combatants although one of them could fight. He had Grandchildren and a Great-grandson all living on the same estate as well but most were Journeymen or unclassed. The baby that Ebony sensed when he first arrived was now a child running around like the classmates he had taught in Tidal.
It was curious how people wanted to have children before they evolved into a Saint. Unless they were very sure they weren¡¯t capable of evolving into a Saint. But that''s none of his concerns right now.
There were a few Bellicose Savants stationed around the perimeters of the volcano but not anywhere near the Gearhart estate. The estate¡¯s bodyguards were a different group they called Boiler Knights. Ebony thought the name was funny.
These Boiler Knights were not like some of the Bellicose Savants who had a mechanical body and were something like a golem, these Boiler Knights were proper humans who had lava flowing in their veins. They boiled their targets and their weapon of choice was a large sword made of igneous rocks, when they ran their aether through, it would produce lava or perhaps magma might be more accurate since it came from within the rocks.
It was not pretty when something organic was stabbed by them as the aether lava was also filled with sulphuric or ash content. Ebony wasn¡¯t afraid of the poison or ash intrusion since he could freeze and remove it but the magma itself was concerning to a weakened version of him and deadly to all his clones.
To begin with, his clones could barely match many of the Kings on Cinderash.
When one thought about Cinderash, they thought about the Boiler Knights. They had a legendary status on Cinderash. It was something almost every Cinderashian child aspired to be. For there were only 6 Boiler Knights in this generation. It was rumoured that the current Boiler Knights were all masters of an Ascendant Art, Tier 6 Mastery. That wasn¡¯t enough for them to be a Boiler Knight.
To be a Boiler Knight, one had to fight all existing Boiler Knights and survive for an hour. That was the only criteria other than being a Cinderashian and loyal to Saint Gearhart. Each new Boiler Knight would have to face greater risks because failure meant death. However, if they succeeded they would gain baptism of a new Physique that Boiler Knights were known for through very expensive means. A custom set of Legendary armour and a main weapon of choice which was Saint-quality materials, made by a Saint-ranked crafter would be bestowed upon them as well.
That¡¯s why his clones never came close to the estate after the Saint took Mr Guru¡¯s body away. He didn¡¯t think Gearhart or Mr Guru would not prepare the Boiler Knights against ice magic in general. The estate itself would definitely have sensors installed.
Although the perimeters and the mansion had sensors for ice magic, they didn¡¯t do a good scan of the island so there were still a few of him doing preparatory work on the island. Namely Fourteen, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Six and Twenty-Seven.
He had to thank how lowly the Saint thought of him as it allowed his clones to run free and even walk around the cities, learn, trade and gather information.
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They were so prepared for his ice magic, that they seemed to forget that he was a gravity mage or was too confident in their physical strength. His clones gathered and ripped away the turrets with Gravity Quelling Vortex while gravity was flipped. These flightless people could do nothing in the air. Without the ability to manipulate and conjure aether physically, they were helpless.
The Bellicose Savants, heavy artillery specialists and a few other team leaders managed to find a way to fight the pulling force into the skies. Mostly through equipment and items or a few that used wires to grab ahold of their comrades.
The clones'' combined vortex wasn¡¯t strong enough to tear the buildings and walls that were carved out of the volcano itself, so the people floating within had the chance to grab a hold of themselves and pull their allies down. They reacted fast, too fast. But more than half of the helpless warriors were already flailing about too far from the ground for the human eye.
How big was the volcano that Saint Gearhart resided in?
It was big enough for a small island with a few thousand people and floated around like a boat on a small lake. Not humongous and well within reason and the island was not even 3 kilometres in diameter, more importantly, it wasn¡¯t very thick or deep. Near the bottom of the island was the underground room holding the Pyrothernite Source Stone that was extracting the volcano¡¯s heat and aether. It was also the place that his mana was sent to. An entire facility was held down there. Not just Ebony¡¯s mana but every prisoner on the island had their mana or in their case, aether, being sent there for purification and crystallisation to be sold or used as currency.
Unsurprisingly, the standard currency was in the form of mana ores. But not in the crystalline shape that was used on Elcra. It was still traded in the same units of volume but each rarity was made into multiple sizes, unlike Elcra which used the same size for every rarity. It was not unlike a dollar note, two dollar note, five dollar note etcetera.
The reason it was underground wasn¡¯t because it was an illegal facility, it was just convenient to keep the facility together with its power generation source. Prisons that took mana and stamina were as common as a marketplace.
Currently at level 482 for all three of his classes, he had thousands more points in stats compared to when he was still testing sealing magic and gathering data on some Divine Ants.
Strength: 1050 ? 1200
Vitality: 1100 ? 1300
Constitution: 1500
Endurance: 900 ? 1100
Agility: 1200 ? 1400
Intelligence: 2326 ? 2976
Wisdom: 3460 ? 4260
Perception: 600 ? 800
A lot of them were added when he was still on Elcra but the stat points he gained since he came onto Cinderash were all split between Perception, Intelligence and Wisdom. For once, Constitution was laid back. After his Physique refinement, his body could withstand his intense mana augmentation better and frost flames hurt him less.
His Conditioning only dropped to level 350, despite the lack of exercise. Tier 4 Conditioning lasted quite long but he was aching to move his body. From his birth, this was the longest time he went without physical exercise. That made his stat buff from conditioning decrease slightly. His amazing prison cell had managed to make it such that his Wisdom stat did not drop after the exhaustion, and stamina drain. He was also well fed with a variety of 4 types of meals for over 6 years so he didn¡¯t have a hunger debuff.
His base Wisdom effect sat at 6,177 or 12,354 mana regenerated per hour.
The extended fight with the Guru was a drug for Perpetual Tranquillity Spring. He constantly feared the man finding out all his recent plans of escape and his fight to clear his mind back to transparency to wipe the colours and explosions away was a massive help. This allowed Ebony to learn that without a better mental exercise, he needed to find mind mages, monsters with mental attacks, telepaths and the like to push his Meditation better.
Throughout the mindspace ages, the Guru didn¡¯t give up on escaping for thousands upon thousands of perceived years. Sadly, that was a small fraction of the time that had passed. The Guru quickly set his mind to self-protection, he was ageing, getting hurt by the passage of time. So he made use of the physical ice seal and sealed his mind off so that he didn¡¯t forget himself or lose his mind. It was what the other Telepaths called ¡®anchoring¡¯ themselves.
Thanks to Mr Guru''s early attempts, Ebony had refined Perpetual Tranquillity Spring many times. The skill¡¯s base effect for mana regeneration had gone from 800% to 1700% while the Perception base boost went from 500% to 750%. It was still a tier 4 skill at level 948 and wouldn¡¯t evolve. Ebony currently thought that a 2000% base increment was as high as a tier 4 skill could go up to. If these were the values that Gen and the Elves were talking about, then they were very right and he was using very unrefined skills. It was no wonder why their spells hit so hard despite the levels he had over some of them.
It was a pity the Guru had insufficient endurance.
The realisation also let him see the widening power gap between tiers of skills. It was scaling incredibly.
However, the Guru was not the biggest contributor to the Core Skill refinement. That honour goes to his decision to stay put when Eleven passed away. It took immense patience to hold himself back from escaping back then. Even worse, the situation was well aligned for escape with Gearhart away from the residence.
With an 8.5 times multiplier from his Fortification and 112.8 times from Perpetual Tranquillity Spring, he had a regeneration of 11,845,015 mana regenerated per hour. Then came the Mireloom Chassis Engine that just edged over his Fortification with an 8.55 times multiplier. None of their working principles overlapped, making them all operate independently and stacking upon each other. Leading him to be a literal spring of mana, with 101,274,880 mana generated per hour.
He did not use Battle Hymn. At the moment, his cell¡¯s spirit doesn¡¯t even know that he was hiding coagulated mana from it. It had the confidence that it was absorbing every drop that he had to spare. There was no point letting the spirit know either, if he were to cast the spell, it would immediately absorb the mana that the spell was made up from since he would have to break down the coagulated mana to use it in a spell.
Twenty-Nine was a travelling bard, so to speak. The warriors here were very impressed by something that could enhance their battle strength. There weren¡¯t a lot of mages here because the natural environment of Cinderash was too harsh for most humans, much less physically weaker humans. Although rare, there were mages from other worlds and those with special skills were always welcomed when it improved a party''s earning capabilities. Battle Hymn never stopped improving, even evolving into Resonant Battle Hymn.
Since it was true that Twenty-Nine was far weaker in physical strength, his party protected him quite well and all Twenty-Nine did was enhance his teammates, weaken targets with the same skill of a different hymn, give utility in stamina recovery and support battle with gravity magic. It didn¡¯t take long for him to find a permanent party that he had been with for years.
Twenty-Nine didn¡¯t stop there, he was mutating the skill further. Producing explosive shockwaves within the skill so that debuffed targets were also under an offensive attack. It was being mixed with magnified gravity but was still a work in progress. The problem was that once spells go into his opponents, a mage¡¯s control over the mana would be drastically weakened by the target¡¯s resistence to magic.
If he took Resonant Battle Hymn¡¯s current refinement and level, his mana regeneration would peak at 136,013,019 per hour or 37,781 mana per second. Running a 5-metre radius Domain as long as his mental stamina and Will lasted wasn¡¯t a problem. He couldn¡¯t run a fully compressed version since he could compress his mana up to 99.6 times his natural limit, almost a hundred times compression but he could stably run a third and almost half compressed Domain without worrying about his mana.
Unlike metals and other materials, his mana structure wouldn¡¯t collapse even at those levels of compression. Although it would warm his body up to crazy temperatures if he allowed it to build up once he was free from his prison cell. It wasn¡¯t a problem for an ice mage like him and his internal factory would break down portions of the heat down too. Mana was more than a little different when it comes to physical properties anyway so the increase in pressure didn¡¯t directly translate to a rise in temperature.
Ebony thought there would be a limit to compression and how it correlates to the amount of power it can give him but he found out that he didn¡¯t have to worry about that anytime soon because he hasn¡¯t faced any sort of indication that says the power he was building up through mana compression was reaching a limit.
Receiving all clone¡¯s senses relays at the same time, he watched 8 of them activating 288 load-bearing rods placed in the 288 mana ley congregations of a load-bearing runic formula under the floating island. A technique often used in enchantment, often called the brute force of layering. The load-bearing formula was too complicated to layer further but if the formula only had 2 or 3 ley congregations, he could stack them many times. The load-bearing effect probably didn¡¯t improve more than 10% by stacking them once but that was great considering the size of the object he wanted to lift.
He didn''t know how much Mr Guru believed, but he only showed many possibilities and plans so that it mattered less if he managed to escape.
Unlike enchantments, runic formulas designed to fit in a circle or a 3 dimensional sphere do not have ley mana points or congregations that serve as activation of various tiny functions. Runes used the entire pathways as a mana circuit. Thanks to some of his clone studies back on Elcra who began their studies on other magical opportunities, they found both studies to be very similar and they found many ways to use them concurrently.
Since the island liked to float, his clones helped to lift it. The volcano perimeter guards could detect the invisible clones, some of them had skills or equipment that worked like a jetpack to chase after them but a constant gravitational repulsion pushed every object, projectile and people from getting close.
Allowing the clones to lift the island without too much issue other than a stray rail or beam grazing his clones. It disintegrated a few limbs and torsos. These people had no hesitation in killing the clones. His clones mass-produced light refractions of themselves to fill the entire sky with ice mana. The sensors only sensed and located ice mana.
Covering the sky over a volcano with ice mana that didn¡¯t melt easily wasn¡¯t all that difficult and solved the sensor detection easily. The beams and steam-powered cannons and rails swept all over the sky but his clones dangerously made themselves the same density as the ice mist. However, weapons were operated by people and his clones could easily see where the people were aiming. Staying high up, they had the distance to react and dodge the volcano''s defences while avoiding those capable of flight or attacking them with their weird steam-powered guns and handheld cannons.
The four clones on the island directly scaled down the upside-down pyramid and launched their ambush on the production facility at the bottom of the island. It was pulled off so smoothly that Ebony thought the Boiler Knights were sleeping on the job but it made sense that things were going smoothly. Mr Guru and Gearhart kept Ebony¡¯s presence on the estates a secret.
Any of the Boiler Knights could wipe all his clones out as long as they were within sight. And if he were present at peak conditions, the result wouldn''t change.
The island itself had defences too but none of them activated against the cloud of ice mist that covered their volcano and estate. The Boiler Knights were bodyguards within the Gearhart mansion. Although the production facility was guarded, security was far weaker compared to the bodyguards for the Saint¡¯s family members.
It did say something about the Saint¡¯s personality of caring more for his family than money but they probably thought their volcano and estate was already extremely well protected against external threat. Something so deep under their protected lands shouldn¡¯t be in danger right?
Fourteen found the glowing orange veined chains and charged onwards with Twenty-Four. Twenty-Six and Seven rummaged through the facility like ghosts. It was a blessing in disguise that the workers here didn¡¯t even have good self-defence capabilities, much less capabilities to beat his clones. The alarms did ring but with no one to stand up to the threat, the alarms only made the workers panic.
The inattentive guards took a couple of seconds before they jumped into action and listened to the directional beeps that told them where the clones were.
¡°It¡¯s funny how they tried to hide our existence from these people and made them think that an ice elemental monster found its way onto Cinderash. And impressive that they make it unsuspecting, even with Mr Guru.¡± Twenty-Six commented through their link as if they had free time to chat.
¡°Hurry up, just get the Source Stone and rejoin us so we can leave. Aegis already pathed half the way to our destination.¡±
¡°And then we just go to sleep and wait for Ebony to return huh?¡± Twenty-Seven muttered.
¡°No need to be pessimistic. It¡¯s just a long-term sleep like we had been imprisoned.¡± Fourteen reminded them that they could do what Ebony had been through with the same ease if not more.
¡°True,¡±
Thanks to the existence of so many clones and connection nodes, the rest of Ebony¡¯s regenerated Will had been sent to Aegis. Although it had been more than 6 years, Aegis did not have any more Will injected into it compared to Dusk who had all of Ebony¡¯s attention. However, if he were to be absent now his clones shouldn¡¯t dissipate for a long time.
Fourteen and Twenty-Four arrived outside his cell after partially turning themselves into liquid and growing through the dirt. They immediately exploded with ice mana and shattered the frozen dirt with a pulse of vibration. Revealing three long chains. It seemed like they were wrong.
Other than the absorption chain itself linked to the facility, the cell was held in place by four pillars as if the cell was slotted into them.
The plan didn¡¯t change, if they made the island float they could dig around and bring the entire cell away.
¡°Ya ya can you please hurry up. We¡¯re draining all the mana Aegis has collected and stored before Ebony was imprisoned. The mass runic formula we carved over the entire island is helpful but it''s too large and heavy, our storage isn¡¯t so deep without Dusk¡¯s power source battery pack.¡± Fifteen complained after his face was melted off by a laser beam of lava outside the prison facility.
¡°Phew, finally succeeded. This might be our best shield yet.¡± Seventeen wiped the water that melted off his face. They had finally lifted the island up into the air.
¡°STOP FIRING!!!¡±
After two shots blasted large portions of the island, someone took charge and stopped the volcano¡¯s defences from firing at the object of their protection.
The herculean waste of mana paid off as his clone succeeded in lifting the island without Ebony.
Unwilling to fire their weapons of mass destruction on the Saint¡¯s island, they watched the island whisk away on a gravitational track that Aegis prepared. The ice mist leaving with the island.
Angry shouts and squadrons of mounted soldiers chased after the moving island but no one dared to take a single pot shot.
¡°The view sure is nice up here isn¡¯t it, Mr Guru?¡± Sealed Mr Guru watched the skies of his mindspace that projected a few of his clones¡¯ perceptions.
Chapter 345: Unshackled
¡°Lord Gearhart would never let you off.¡±
Ebony was once again impressed because Mr Guru didn¡¯t even take a minute to get his bearings after waking up. As if he wasn¡¯t disorientated at all by the great change that happened.
¡°Is that supposed to be a joke? You say that as if he was letting me off by boxing me up.¡± Ebony never knew Mr Guru was one for jokes.
¡°Even if you wanted to escape, did you need to go so far?¡± Mr Guru didn¡¯t attack him or try to leave his mindspace.
¡°Tell me, how else am I supposed to break out of an indestructible cell by my standards. Get past laser beams that could scare any Emperor or horde of them away. Get out of this island with so many Boiler Knights where any one of them could slice me up. Get a Saint not to kill me instantly. I need to scare him. That is one of the basics of surviving stronger monsters. Scaring them off. I need to be a threat. I am not, so I needed a way.¡±
¡°...what are the Bellicose Savants and Boiler Knights doing?¡±
¡°Are you thinking out loud? Your mind has slackened. There are not many Bellicose Savants around the Gearhart estate to begin with. Most of them are training and those operational are working elsewhere. As for the Boiler Knights, I¡¯m not sure but I bet they prioritised protecting Gearhart¡¯s family members. Not that I would touch any of them. Call them hostages, just like how you are keeping Xin hostage.¡±
¡°This¡is criminal by universal standards.¡±
¡°Oh I see. I have to be a criminal to be free from imprisonment and free from threats to people I hold dear and myself? You are getting funnier Mr Guru, did you sleep for too long?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t be so overconfident, you have me to thank for their inaction. If I didn¡¯t keep your existence a secret and had to spread some lies about an ice and heat-eating monster, the Boiler knights would have come for you and ended your escape plan before it begun. Why have you woken me up? I would probably die here after¡a long time. Letting me go is foolish.¡±
¡°I need you to tell Gearhart not to chase me anymore.¡± This was just part of the reason, he had no way to trap Mr Guru here once he got far enough from the Telepath''s body.
¡°I would tell him everything you¡¯ve shown me, everything you are capable of. And we will strike again. Do you really believe we won¡¯t kill you? You are just one person, Lord Gearhart has planets worth of resources. You think too highly of yourself, we don¡¯t even need to send a Boiler Knight.¡± As a proud Cinderashian, his aggressive nature didn¡¯t falter at all.
¡°Haha. I did my homework. You Cinderashians are strong warriors, very strong. I don''t understand why your physical strength is so much higher than normal. And also thanks to your harsh conditions. Sadly, you are poor. Your race has aether. It can¡¯t be made into mana without an extremely low conversion efficiency. That includes your natural resources such as your volcanoes. Although it produces a lot of energy, how much can be converted into useful currency? Do you know how much money, ah, mana I have made Gearhart?¡±
¡°Irrelevant.¡±
¡°I make him 2.8 billion of my mana a standard day. And, my mana has to be reprocessed. It has the purity of above a universal Blue and natural density almost the same due to my Fortification or so I¡¯m currently spying on your facilities¡¯ testing equipment right now. After processing, it has to be diluted. Giving you even more. If we were on Elcra, this isn¡¯t much. Many mana ore mines would have that much, although mining them out at that rate would be questionable without sufficient manpower or machinery. Why would Saint Gearhart not kill me? Because this number has only been increasing day after day, week after week. I am living, not a resource mine. I am inexhaustible. 6 years. He has mined me for over 6 years, over 4 trillion points of my mana. Oh, 7 after conversion? 7 trillion. Do you think he would cut down this tree after tasting its fruits?¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t bother saying that he could reach 4.2 billion a day if he had sound magic. The longer Seventeen surveyed the lands and people, the more they realised how poor this world was. There was nothing left to mine other than the dungeons and it wasn¡¯t enough for their food, research, weapon production, or soldier training. Even if they had other planets with mana ore veins, the cost to operate the extraction, transport and all the required expenses were too high. All he needed was food and water, no hassle, transport, manpower required and no risk.
Partway through his sentence, Twenty-Six managed to get some information on his pure mana to universal mana ore standards.
Cinderash was stuck in place when it came to the development of national power and to a degree, individual power.
Mr Guru was speechless, aware of their poverty. As aggressive as his words were, he did not expect to hear the numbers coming out of Ebony¡¯s thoughts.
¡°I can hear you thinking. It¡¯s funny, I¡¯m no mind reader but you and probably Gearhart right now must be thinking you should let me run free, then catch and lock me up again. Once I¡¯ve grown more. So confident. I am disappointed that I haven''t shown myself to be a threat big enough. Next time, I will do worse. Since you¡¯ll tell him everything, make sure you tell him that. What am I capable of, will he test me? I am interested to find out to what lengths I¡¯m willing to go as well but I won¡¯t push to find out unless pushed. We¡¯re here, you can wake up to your body. Sunken, more so than mine.¡± Ebony with his strengthened mental defences let Mr Guru''s already fading ''body'' out.
Mr Guru¡¯s real body was in a terrible condition, going out would weaken him further.
¡°We shattered the connection pillar, you can be removed now.¡±
¡°I have all the natural resources we collected over the years in this leather bag. With food. This portal is stable, spatial equipment of this size should go through.¡± Twelve said while Flickering beside the island. They were still being shot at.
¡°Give me a minute, we¡¯re still trying to take the Pyrothernite out.¡± Twenty-Seven reported.
¡°Gearhart¡¯s family is getting troops to chase us down. Aegis, how much further?¡± Fourteen, deeper on the island, noticed straight away.
¡°Without the island, you can get over in two hours. With, it would take days. It looks like your cell doesn¡¯t interact with gravity magic, great.¡± Part of Aegis is parked in a Node under the portal to Teheil.
¡°We¡¯ll dip the moment the Pyrothernite is out. Toss my cell into the portal, repel the island back where we came from. This cell would collapse once I¡¯m over there. Regardless of who follows me, you guys stay and take care.¡± He couldn¡¯t bring his clones over to Teheil, even if he had a storage container for them they would dissipate the moment they left the confines of their storage. At least that was Ten and Eleven¡¯s experience.
He was actually only half sure his cell wouldn¡¯t be a problem because it ran on mana. But he still had a plan b if the cell still didn¡¯t want to let him out.
¡°Didn¡¯t we send you all our memories?¡±
¡°What are you on about?¡± Ebony might have missed out on what they were referring to having sat in his bottoms for way too long.
¡°We will hibernate once you leave. Even if we lose our bodies, we can send our Will to one of the Nodes and sleep. Aegis already prepared new bodies for us. We can all get back into action, more than half the populated cities are within our range. They can¡¯t catch us.¡±
¡°You can basically teleport. Cool.¡± Ebony nodded, he knew it but he couldn¡¯t achieve the same thing. Although there was a few seconds delay, his clones were extremely hard to catch with the Will Nodes connecting them throughout a large portion of the continent.
A single body of theirs was a lot of mana as they were compressed to the limit so he doubted they managed to prepare enough for each of them without him. Ambient absorption was pathetic in that regard and might not even give them enough to live daily to fight against the heat if it wasn¡¯t for Aegis acting as a support and charger.
Twenty-Six and Twenty-Seven were having a hard time as security had finally reacted. The eight clones flying outside the island were torn apart bit by bit. Fourteen and Twenty-Four hurried back to regroup after unattaching his cell from the four pillars. The pillars were tough but the durability of most metals or concrete no matter the quality of materials was not a challenge for the deep-freezing and sonic vibrations combo unless they were specifically made to counter ice or cold.
Ebony sat in his cell without any light while feeling himself run in Fourteen and Twenty-Four¡¯s shoes with the pillars as the grip on his cell. As a precaution, they were wearing physical gloves they prepared in case their bodies were to be absorbed.
It was high risk but using a trusted face and voice of a messenger to send a message from Gearhart to trick Ezekiel away for a short moment worked better than he''d expected. It must have taken his clones a lot of observation to find a convincing line. "We didn''t have to lie, there is really someone calling him. We made one of our teachers call him over."
Ebony decided to better look through the memories they sent him once they had the time
¡®It¡¯s going too smoothly. I have to thank them for not knowing I am trapped here.¡¯ Ebony wouldn¡¯t have been able to escape if that wasn¡¯t the case. It was part of why he didn¡¯t fight harder to prevent himself from getting trapped. He bore the risk of Gearhart and Mr Guru loosening their lips at any point in time. Mr Guru was trapped in with him so that was one less issue.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
If it was public knowledge that he was a prisoner, he would¡¯ve attempted escapes long ago.
Although they didn¡¯t know about a secret prisoner, Gearhart¡¯s servants and subjects didn¡¯t sit on their butts when something huge happened. A large portion of the people on the island were non-combants from butlers and maids to gardeners to personal tailors and smiths. Prison wardens and guards were capable of fighting but they didn¡¯t know what to do when faced with inertia and the movement of the ground they stood on.
Cinderashian¡¯s greatest weakness was their Perception. Other than Kings, Emperors, Gearhart¡¯s and other Saints'' direct lineage the rest could forget about sensing mana and aether. Technology helped but his clones could dodge most Grandmasters that had to rely on a sensor to pick them out. Of the combatants, not many were outfitted for flight.
They couldn¡¯t even fly because they couldn¡¯t conjure or manipulate aether well enough.
Yet, his clones were getting beaten up. They were only staying together since they could separate and decompress the mana they consisted of as they wished.
¡°I got it.¡± Twenty-Seven kicked the claws holding fist-sized Pyrothernite Source Stone under the island. Nothing happened since the island already disconnected from the lava it was touching. The Source Stone did nothing but make his clones colder by absorbing all the heat around them.
Mostly melted, 4 of his clones ran away by sending their Wills away before Twenty-Seven succeeded.
Jumping down the hole they created under the island¡¯s mana production facility, Aegis took a minute to reverse the huge torrent of gravity mana while they dropped out of the path.
Completely exposing all of them in an open wildland with Bellicose Savants leaping out and chasing them from wherever they landed.
The Bellicose Savants activated their stamina-heavy movement skills along with a silly-looking pair of boots and the back of their upper metal armour that propelled them forward with fire. They were keeping up with Aegis¡¯s Torrent Path and his clones¡¯ Flicker. They focused all the gravity mana on the path that led him towards the portal and the path that pushed the island away so the Bellicose Savants ran after them in zero-gravity conditions. It slightly helped them but it benefitted Ebony more.
¡°Their guns are very accurate, they can shoot on the run, they can account for the gravity and have crazy range. We¡¯re taking shots for nothing. How many of us do we need to make it there?¡± Fifteen complained. They were melting down from a barrage of molten blasts. The rays of red and orange didn¡¯t even need to touch them for them to be hurt by it. No matter how heat resistant, they were still made of ice.
They might not know what or who was in the cell but they changed their aim to Fourteen and Twenty-Four, determined that the cell was the clones¡¯ target. Sadly, they were unwilling to take a shot at the cell to break Ebony free.
Most portals were situated in the middle of nowhere with a small outpost of people operating them. It was not unlike how Ebony first appeared in a forest. Space magic was interrupted by the presence of people, buildings and many man-made objects. Most portals were affected by the same issue.
Cinderash merely bought the service, not the technology or the creation of the portal itself. The makers and sellers didn¡¯t spread their advantage of spatial transportation so much. It was one of the measures of how advanced a civilization or planet was. The best and strongest had portals within their cities with little to no transportation error rate or limit to the spatial equipment that one could bring over.
Despite Fifteen¡¯s complaint, all of them continued to escort his cell away, even going so far as to use his cell as a shield. As expected his cell was scratch-free, giving the Savants more guts to increase their firepower.
Within minutes, Seventeen faded away as he lost the mana that made up his body. ¡°Good luck, you¡¯re not too far away. Should be fine.¡±
¡°Already ran simulations, we¡¯ll reach before they catch up.¡± Ebony gave Seventeen a mental wave, he was ''teleporting'' through the Will Relay Nodes.
¡°Aegis, clear the portal.¡± Twelve ordered.
¡°Already sealed every personnel taking care of the gate. The cost for opening a portal is sky-high and their reserves can¡¯t keep it open for long so I¡¯ll wait for you to get close. Security is pretty much non-existent for this gate. It¡¯s supposed to lead to enemy territory or something. We never found out much about the situation on the other side but we know Cinderashians aren¡¯t completely in charge over there.¡± Aegis transmitted.
By the time he got to the barren land with a ten-metre tall and twenty-metre wide stone gate, Twelve and Fifteen were the only ones carrying his cell.
¡°Oh¡I didn¡¯t take into account activation time.¡± Aegis told them over the link.
¡°Seriously? Well, you¡¯re on your own now.¡± Fifteen evaporated into steam.
¡°Hmm..they stopped firing. Looks like they¡¯re not keen on destroying an expensive portal gateway. Oh well, goodbye.¡± Twelve dipped away after the pillar dropped where Fifteen disappeared.
With none of his clones by his side Ebony spoke to his dear cell, ¡°look you¡¯re not even sending my mana anywhere, you can release me now.¡±
¡°No! Go back quietly and I won¡¯t revoke your toilet rights for a year!¡± A young girl¡¯s voice threatened.
¡°That¡¯s a punishment for yourself too. Come on, once we get past this portal you will have a hard time surviving.¡± Ebony knew this ¡®right¡¯ came because the spirit didn¡¯t want unhygienic waste within her.
¡°It is my duty to contain you.¡±
¡°It was also your duty to send all my mana away, don¡¯t think I forgot you secretly ate the chassis I fed you.¡±
¡°That¡¯s!¡± The spirit had no rebuttal for a moment, ¡°that never happened.¡±
¡°Oh yeah? Letting me go never happened either. Those guys destroyed your body and let me escape.¡±
¡°Lies! They can¡¯t harm me at all.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t want to hurt you, but I don¡¯t have time for this.¡±
Ebony did not try persuasion anymore when the portal activated. Aegis gave the pillars around his cell a push with ice arms, it had the greatest mental range at the cost of more mana and heavier consumption of Will but he was still capable of being Ebony''s arms and legs.
¡°Not going anywhere!¡±
Ebony tumbled around a few times and was hit by the nauseating sensation of long-distance spatial travel.
¡®At least they are persistent.¡¯ Ebony could feel the minor vibrations from the cell. The Savants had caught up to him in the nick of time and were attaching themselves onto his jail.
It took minutes before his vibrational and gravitational senses that were significantly trapped within the confines of his settled and his light vertigo dissipated. Before that, Ebony instantly felt a different force grabbing and pulling his excess mana away. His cell couldn¡¯t fight back against the pull as her mana was similarly stolen away at breakneck speeds.
The spirit¡¯s scream of pain was rather concerning and pitiful.
¡°Come on, decrease your size and latch onto me. That should still be considered containing me and doing your duty.¡± Ebony pacified the tormented spirit that was having the life sucked out of her. She shouldn¡¯t be killed just by having her mana drained since she had a physical body but having her mana drained so forcefully would be a new experience for this spirit. It was no different from sucking the vitality out of organic creatures.
¡°There is someone inside, isn¡¯t there?¡± Ebony heard a different voice. Needless to say, it was a Bellicose Savant that had been chasing him. They didn¡¯t even know what was inside the metal box yet they chased him down all the way through a portal.
¡°I don¡¯t know how you did it, but your road ends here. Hmm, why isn¡¯t anyone posted here?¡±
¡°Did they abandon their post? Never mind that where are those blue arms? No more huh? We¡¯ll have to carry this back.¡±
¡®There¡¯s 4 of them who followed me here. Aegis alone won¡¯t be able to stop them from bringing me back, I¡¯ll have to stop them here.¡¯ From their speech, he had to assume the portal hasn''t been closed yet.
¡°Spirit. I will blow you up if you don¡¯t let me go now and you¡¯ll feel two types of pain today.¡± Ebony prepared the fire in his lungs, he hadn¡¯t used a single one of their bombs. He was slightly underprepared since his coagulated mana was still being broken down and dragged away but at a slow rate. If he waited too long, he wouldn¡¯t have any mana to activate the bombs he brought with him in his lungs.
The spirit¡¯s agonising scream got louder and louder within his ears and it slightly bothered him when her voice got weaker at audible speeds. She did not relent for some time and Ebony was fully about to blow themselves apart when he felt the cell being lifted off the ground again.
¡°Noo! No more! I-I am still doing my duty! You are trapped, you hear me!¡±
Ebony fell onto his arms and knees when the cell turned to fluid and reformed around his right wrist as a black, thick and orange glowing bangle.
The Savants all looked at him when they felt the loss in weight on their shoulders with a large pillar on them.
¡°Greetings.¡± Ebony snorted at the portal gateway, propelling the bomb he kept for years inside his lungs. The Savants were caught off guard but one of them unsheathed and sliced at his bomb the moment it trailed past them.
Smashing up the shell, it unleashed the burning contents with as much explosive force as it had. Blinding all of them with black and purple flames. Ebony had Torrent Path pull the bag that Aegis tossed together with them into his hands.
¡®Elements aren¡¯t immediately suppressed or absorbed. Convenient, but the explosive has weakened terribly. It didn¡¯t even give me a burn, the Savants would be unharmed. How long till my exhaustion stat debuff goes away¡¡¯
¡°Hey spirit, stop draining my stamina. If I die, you failed your duty.¡±
Ebony¡¯s trembling muscles managed a flimsy Flicker to the edge of the small room he was in. The portal on Cinderash¡¯s side wasn¡¯t kept within a building so this was unexpected.
The scale of the explosion that he expected never came as the flames were suppressed by something. He knew the phenomena but seeing it was different from hearing and learning about it.
The cushioning.
Magic simply didn¡¯t work as usual here, be it aether or mana.
The boundaries of what kind of magic the cushioning suppressed was questionable but this weird force somehow detected what was natural and what wasn¡¯t.
Ebony¡¯s mana senses weren''t taken away but there wasn¡¯t any ambient mana in the surroundings to sense. However, he wasn¡¯t just any mage. Gravity mana was still present and he could perceive through the blood and flames that were getting suppressed that he managed to put a crack on the stone gateway. That was enough to shut the thing off.
¡°DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU JUST DID!?¡±
¡®Hmm, where are the doors in this building.¡¯ Ebony let the silly question go over his mind as he stretched his dying muscles. He knew exactly how his clones packed his bag, so he smoothly retrieved dried jerky from the side pouch and jammed it down his throat along with water while the angry Savants pat the black flames off their leather get-up.
Chapter 346: Your Teachers, Mine Too
¡°Whoever or whatever you are, since you came from Lord Gearhart¡¯s estate we will be bringing you back.¡± The only woman amongst the 4 Savants took front and centre. The rest of the Savants followed up and surrounded their target.
The steampunk warriors were clad in a tailored suit of reinforced leather armour filled with metal plating without sacrificing mobility. They had their differences with each other¡¯s equipment. The rich, dark leather was adorned with brass rivets and gears. Over their torso, a corset-like breastplate was securely fastened. The warrior''s legs were encased in leather pants reinforced with metal knee guards and shin protectors, while sturdy, high-laced boots provided sure footing. A pair of fingerless gloves allowed for dexterity, with brass knuckles integrated for close combat. At their waist or backs were different guns from shotguns to rifles. Their headgear included a helmet with a built-in gas mask that protected toxic fumes and harsh environments, the mask''s glass lenses glowing faintly with an internal light. A weathered coat, lined with pockets for ammunition.
Ebony already took the corner and had his back against the wall. The Savants were cautious. Unlike the Guru and Saint Gearhart, this group personally faced the challenge of chasing him down.
¡°Those golems were yours, the ice element monster was after you or you are that ice monster.¡±
¡°That cell is not normal, that¡¯s for extraction. That means you are a mage. Dumbass mage. Did you even know you were escaping to Teheil?¡±
¡°You¡¯ve trapped yourself.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t expect this containment over here did ya?¡±
¡°Ah. I have been your Lord¡¯s guest and business partner for the past few years. What cell? A cell wouldn¡¯t let me in and out.¡± Ebony bought himself some time with confusion. By his observation, they were mainly warriors as is expected from Cinderashians. The guns were just a side arm and possibly backed by a Sub-class or Profession. They had limited ammunition, even if these four were capable of Aether manipulation, it was useless on Teheil. He can only hope that they didn''t have Ezekiel''s bullets.
¡®Tier 5 exhaustion resistance is quite amazing, I¡¯m slowly getting my stats back already.¡¯
¡°...¡±
¡®It actually worked? My goodness, they really don¡¯t know I even exist.¡¯ He clenched his fists a few times and nonchalantly put a fresh shirt on.
¡°Are you convinced we¡¯re dumb? You just blew the gateway back home right in front of our eyes.¡± They stepped forward at the same time.
¡°Due to extenuating circumstances-¡± Ebony didn¡¯t plan or simulate a conversation in advance and lying wasn¡¯t his forte or something he did. Though he knew how to deceive people with truths, he wasn¡¯t an expert.
¡°Esteemed guest can explain when we¡¯re back.¡±
¡°How would you bring me back?¡±
¡°Until we get back to Cinderash, you will be put under custody.¡± The Cinderashians were always heavy handed, they were ready to take violent actions whenever possible.
¡°No thank you.¡±
Under 70% physical and perception stat loss and the decreasing amounts of coagulated mana, Ebony was ready against magic-less opponents. He didn¡¯t have any mental exhaustion, courtesy of Miss Spirit harvesting him efficiently.
The Savants kept their guns and took up their cold arms. Cinderash had a wide range of ammunition types. Their police had taser, stun, sedation and bullets with similar effects. Civilians could get the same types that worked against Grandmasters without issue. Those rated against Kings were also commonplace but more expensive than an average civilian would stock up on.
The bullets were easy to source, but guns strong enough to harm a King or higher weren''t.
Common bullets amongst Savants held explosive lava, toxic ash and sulfur. Railguns or something that mimicked railguns but were powered by aether or crystalised Cinderashian lava ores were not uncommon. Ebony wouldn¡¯t be surprised if those toys were working railguns compressed into something handheld.
Currently, those guns that melted his clones posed a large threat to him so it was great that they put the guns away. He was sure they wouldn¡¯t be afraid of killing him if he got too troublesome because they didn¡¯t even know he was supposed to be kept alive. If he had mana, his simulations told him those guns or bullets weren¡¯t worth noting.
Perhaps seeing him unarmed as the healed Icicle was inside his bag, they poked at non-vitals. Ebony ducked the large knife to his thighs and axe to his shoulder. Allowing the blunt hammer to smash his chest and thin pick to stab through his knuckles.
His body comically flew back the distance that he stepped forward to avoid the axe and slid down back onto his feet.
¡°That was easy, I thought someone kept in a cell of that material would be tough.¡±
¡°He¡¯s obviously weak in the knees, like all prisoners. Guest my ass.¡±
¡®Cinderashians truly have terrible perception, they don¡¯t have Identify either.¡¯
¡°Kings. Emberblade Dance Art. Infernal Cleaver Art. Magma Hammerfall Art. Eruption Pick Art. None of you trained it up to Sovereign Arts? Saint Kael Ignatius is an amazing teacher isn¡¯t he, his Emberblade Dance combo was pretty much undodgeable even to me though I never learned from him, I learned from his student and son, Master Caden Ignatius. Master Thara Volcana, I heard a lot about her Infernal Cleaver, too bad I never saw her. Saint Garrick¡¯s Magma Hammerfall, famed for destroying asteroids and creating new volcanoes. Sage Lysara and her Eruption Pick, only requires one hit to kill any Emperor or so she claims.¡±
Ebony bought himself more time, healing his ribs and internal bleeding. The four arts that were used by the Savants were all famous ones. Other than Eruption Pick, all of the rest were handed down by Saints. Past or present. The 3 Arts were all Tier 6 Ascendant Art. Training methods weren¡¯t public but the Savants should be qualified to learn the techniques and methods.
These 4, had not achieved that kind of success. They were all high-level Kings, not even Emperors like those Ezekiel brought along. Ebony needed his stats back, but he would still be at a disadvantage even if he had them back. He would have to rule out magic though he was starting to get used to how Teheil was absorbing his mana.
None of his clones managed to learn from a Saint but they did learn from Emperors who mastered the Tier 5 versions. For Infernal Cleaver Art, there were currently no known Saints alive who used that Art while Saint Garrick was banished from Cinderash by Saint Gearhart because he wanted to overthrow Gearhart. Obviously, he failed.
Gearhart has been ruling for generations. Generations measured in the thousands of years. They only have a change of leaders when the previous head passes away. Mostly killed in battle.
Unexpected by the names that came out of his mouth, the Savants only got more wary.
¡®If that¡¯s their top speed, I just need to recover up to 70% of my physical stats. Probably not, so I need to wait till I¡¯m fully recovered.¡¯
Ebony fumbled and took a large knife out of his bag before defending against the lady who screamed when he spouted Master Caden¡¯s name. Dancing in the same fashion, he countered her with the same Emberblade Dance. Without the embers.
The cold arms they were using weren¡¯t their best, the ones that relied on aether so his ¡®normal¡¯ knife that his clones bought didn¡¯t break on impact.
With Ethereal Form Arts and Ethereal Fluid Blitz backing him up, he was barely able to parry. Both of them re-angled their blades against each other and scraped the edges to produce sparks to fling at each other. Ebony was pushed back against the wall again and he had to support his grip with his free hand so that the knife wasn¡¯t knocked out.
He couldn¡¯t build up momentum thanks to the wall behind him and she was just too fast for prediction to do any good for countering.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
He parried dozens of thrusts that got closer and closer to his vitals, their knives turning red from the intentional friction burn. Before Tier 4, scraping their blades was the main focus to generate heat. Until aether was taken into the equation.
¡°You! How do you know the Emberblade Arts?¡±
¡°Master Caden taught me.¡± As he spoke, he found that he was confusing them successfully. Master wasn¡¯t referring to evolutionary rank but status. And Caden Ignatius was the only child of Saint Kael Ignatius, born before the Saint became a Saint.
¡®Taught teenager version of Twenty-Seven, same thing.¡¯ Although Master Caden didn¡¯t just teach anyone since he had thousands of students, it wasn¡¯t hard to get his attention.
While the lady stopped attacking, probably because she learned from the same person the others weren¡¯t convinced.
Ebony put down the damaged knife and withdrew a curved-handled axe with a larger blade than handle. It was a short, one-handed axe with a red-tipped edge. He spun the handle around his wrist and second round his thumb the exact same way Twenty-Nine¡¯s teacher did, in an 8 shape. It served no purpose, just his teacher¡¯s habit.
¡°Master Tarken¡¡±
As he expected, people recognised the habit.
With an active use of stamina, he cleaved down at the axe-user. A red flash burned towards him. It was slow and was casually slapped aside but the axe-user frowned. He performed an active skill from the set of Infernal Cleaver Arts. Admittedly, Ebony didn¡¯t perform it perfectly since his active use of stamina was worse than the average Cinderashian who had way more base stamina than mana. His clones couldn¡¯t exactly copy the stamina usage either and this was the first time he tried it.
All the stamina usage tips and techniques that his clones gathered were in his mind, he could use them and improve Ethereal Fluid Blitz once he had the free time.
He could recreate Tier 5 Magma Hammerfall Arts if he used sound magic but that was temporarily off the table. It also required a special hammer, too expensive for his clones to get their hands on. Even though a few of them were support mages for parties that went to dungeon clearing. The clones limited their dungeon activities because they would melt rather easily and it took more mana than they could absorb including what Aegis provided them.
He knew the muscular motion and form for all of them to tier 5, easily. It was more about the way stamina and for higher tiers¡¯ aether, was supposed to be used that gave each Art their power, speed, fluidity or whatever each Art¡¯s unique traits. There was only so much information his clones could give him without having stamina in their bodies.
Of all the Arts he learned, the Eruption Pick minus the magical effects was the one he was best at. Sage Lysara the creator of the Art, taught him herself. She was an extremely old lady who extended her lifespan through many means, including not having a human body anymore. She was like the special leader Savant Ebony fought on Elcra, her mind or whatever was inside a cube put into a mechanical body with flesh.
The cube was Cinderash technology or ancient sorcery while the body was a product they bought.
She was very old.
She frightened his clone and was the only person who openly knew his clones were¡well, not an actual person. Yet she still taught Twenty-Five. He didn¡¯t find her. She found him and pretty much threatened him into becoming her student. Ebony barely believed the memory that his clone updated him on.
¡°I¡¯m a guest.¡± Ebony showed off a move from two more Arts. Titan Pyroclasmic Art which was a greatsword art and Ashen Blade Art.
¡°You¡¯ve convinced me. You are a criminal. There¡¯s no way Sage Lysara would teach someone who learned a different Art from another master. Much less someone who learned Ashen Blade.¡± The Pick user targeted him.
¡°Not at all. Someone who used Ashen Blade killed her only daughter. I used the same thing, she taught me how to use it better. More deadly.¡± Ebony was unphased.
Because Sage Lysara currently doesn''t have any other students. All the current users of her Art learned from her older students. Ebony had a lot of respect for the one given the title of a Sage. It was a pity she failed to evolve into a Saint so far.
¡°...who are you?¡± They had their weapons pointing to the ground for a while now.
¡°You can ask the Guru when you get back. He and I have been friends for a long, long time.¡± Ebony gave his shoulders a roll, he was now at 50% of his stats.
¡°Fine, then what is the Guru¡¯s name?¡± The lady sheathed her knife.
¡°...¡± Ebony looked at them.
They looked at him.
He couldn¡¯t reply to them and the silence echoed.
¡°Long time friends?¡± The sound of metal sliding over each other broke the silence.
¡°You don¡¯t have to draw your weapons at that¡¡± Ebony put all the weapons he pulled out back. 50% was going to be tough when they were already so much faster. Knowing all their moves helped but the 4 of them knew how to cut each other¡¯s gaps down which limited his options.
It was good practice and warm-up for his rusty body.
A poisoned pick pierced his left shoulder, he kicked the axe-user¡¯s knee. Leaning away from the knife strike he took a large bite on the slim forearm while twisting them all with a jump. He wanted the pick user to take the hammer strike to the head but the hammer-user surprised him by pulling away a half-thrown strike. The user took a bit of internal damage from the stamina pullback of an active skill.
He tried his best to hold onto the Pick-user but he couldn¡¯t freeze or squeeze the pick within his shoulder. Neither was it worth using his hands to hold a far stronger opponent.
¡°What are you?¡± Says the hammer wielder after Ebony used the knife slash to skid his hammer to block the red cleave that scarred the ground but not the walls. The hammer had a deep gash on it.
¡®I was hoping the walls would break down from a King¡¯s strike. I see, this portal is on enemy territory. They would want to secure it so that nothing gets through from this side. Makes sense that a mere King wouldn¡¯t be able to break it easily.¡¯ Ebony had his arms riddled with cuts and stabs but he was unharmed everywhere else.
As he expected, he was still getting new injuries when he was back at 70% of his stats. Their physiques gave them naturally higher strength, agility and constitution. By his estimation, even the unclassed when compared with Elcrian humans they might even be 8 to 10 as strong with the same stat value. On the other hand, their aether or mana, perception and endurance were weak. The most obvious was their perception, more so than their lack of mana. Their endurance wasn¡¯t poor but all their art styles made use of heavy stamina usage which made them last a short time in exchange for high speed and power.
They had at minimum, 200 levels more than he did and thousands of stats more than he did. He was already doing magical work by evading them for ten minutes.
¡°Someone your Lord Gearhart wouldn¡¯t even dare kill.¡±
¡°Those are very arrogant words.¡±
Ebony chose to sacrifice his leg and focused on dodging the axe cleave and hammer strike. Their coordinated strikes were getting more and more on point after the last few minutes of observing how he knew where all their moves were going to come from.
The pick user and knife user leapt back to catch a breather while the hammer and axe user picked up the pace. They whispered to each other but Ebony could hear them the entire time. ¡°He should be down¡I can¡¯t use eruption but I¡¯ve already inflicted enough toxins to put our captain down!¡±
¡°He¡¯s not Cinderashian but his flesh is quite resistant to heat. He¡¯s not drying up from my desiccating ash either. And¡he really does know all our Arts. Is he a weak but talented ambassador here to trade skills?¡±
¡°No way, why would he be in a Fluxaether Bane cell? Didn¡¯t you see that shade, I¡¯ve never seen such a dark-coloured Fluxaether Bane.¡±
¡°How did he escape? Is it because of Teheil? This is a tricky and crafty prisoner. I¡¯ve never heard of him, he must have been trapped before we were even born. He even claims to have been taught by Sage Lysara, what do you think about that?¡±
¡°I know all the Masters of Eruption Pick, his style¡doesn¡¯t resemble any of them. I-I¡¯ve never seen Sage Lysara.¡±
¡®So the cell is called Fluxaether Bane. is that the material name? I never found out.¡¯ Ebony did not expect them to ignore him altogether, the same way he did to them earlier.
¡°One hell of a prisoner was let loose huh?¡± The hammer user smirked at Ebony when his next smash accelerated mid-swing and smashed right into his guard. It smashed right passed it and into his face while his other hand was cut to the bone from a cleaver slash.
Ebony stayed down on the ground. Either they weren¡¯t taking him seriously despite the caution or they were just not keen on wasting their strength because they kept letting up their attacks whenever he was sent flying across the room.
¡®Another minute and all my strength would be back. Simulations¡yeah, I should be fine.¡¯
Leaving his dented skull unhealed on purpose, he felt one of them locking his arms behind his back and another taking out a pill from under his coat. ¡°We¡¯ll be back home once you wake up.¡±
¡°What, did you think I¡¯m down for the count with a dented skull?¡± Ebony pulled the man who held him down and rolled to counter-pin the man. He doubted the pill would work on him but he didn¡¯t wasn¡¯t in the mood to test that.
It was too bad the man was far too strong to keep pinned and Ebony was pushed off the ground when the man punched the floor to send both of them into the ceiling.
Ebony gave the mid-air, flightless Cinderashian a good kick to break each other off. Clinging onto the ceiling grooves, he watched them below him. The ceiling wasn¡¯t more than thirty metres off the ground and it didn¡¯t take long before he had to leap to the side and eventually drop to the ground when dozens of red cleaves flew up to envelop him.
Those slashes weren¡¯t magic. Just pure strength, wind pressure and friction heat. He didn¡¯t forget that the Bellicose Savants also had Physique mutations. Some could produce high-pressure steam from lava coming out of their lungs. Others had another organ that produced ash with unique properties. The variety was not small and his clones didn¡¯t know much about these physiques.
It was why they weren¡¯t completely helpless without aether since these Physique traits were ¡®organic¡¯.
¡®Finally, I can Flicker properly.¡¯ Ebony no longer kept his back against the wall and went on the offence, intent on building up momentum this time.
¡®It''s good that they are fast enough to pressure Ethereal Form Arts. Let¡¯s use this chance to incorporate everything my clones have learnt.¡¯ Icicle was drawn out of his bag.
It was time to get the creaks out of his body.
Chapter 347: Ethereal Arctic Rivertide Art
Ebony got knocked around the room for hours. It didn¡¯t matter that he had all his physical stats back or managed to prevent any of his coagulated mana from being taken away by Teheil. He did have the impressive Constitution buff from the existing mana in his body. So much that they couldn¡¯t fatally injure him.
Nothing was more compressed than coagulated mana in his body, even though it was a small percentage of the total amount of mana he could have stored it still gave him a Constitution augmentation that scaled off Intelligence. With just the coagulated mana portion filled, his Constitution was raised in 5 digits. He didn¡¯t trust the numbers much since he didn¡¯t know for sure how compressibility, resilience and density Fortifications played a role.
If he ever had a chance to visit the universal testing centre, he could have his stats tested out and measured in terms of Effective Stat that was standardised.
Honestly, his current effective values weren¡¯t high. He wasn¡¯t augmenting himself with Woven Frostblaze Augmentation. He wasn¡¯t using any gravity and sound magic to speed up his blows or strengthen his impacts, neither did he slow his opponents down with magic.
He had, however, set up an uncompressed Domain over his skin to strengthen Tolerant Stalwart Foundation. It was enough to survive their strongest active skills that didn¡¯t have aether backing them but he never took a hit from those skills to begin with. It was too obvious whenever the skills were coming and they couldn¡¯t get the hang of his Flicker.
The augmentation was going haywire because Teheil seemed to be trying to rip his control over the regenerated mana the instant he regenerated them. If he didn¡¯t have his Will and Domain wrapping around his mana, he wouldn¡¯t even have been able to cast Tolerant Stalwart Foundation unless he directly used coagulated mana which wasn¡¯t quite possible because he had to break that down to normal mana before they could be burned for a spell.
Right now, his stat strengthening was ebbing weaker and stronger which made it a hassle when the difference was immense. It was a hassle but if his Will could fight back against this interference then it was just a matter of time before he learned how to use magic effectively on Teheil.
¡®The cushioning is measured by this grey light hue¡¯s intensity. Too bad my clones are blind so I don¡¯t know how strong the current hue represents but it doesn¡¯t seem to be slowing down my Flicker much. It does act like an oobleck fluid but this is no fluid.¡¯ Ebony blended all the arts his clones learned into his body and Conditioning while allowing himself to be fascinated by the grey light that seeped through the buildings and enveloped everyone present.
After half a standard day, Ebony tore the scraps of cloth that his shirt was left with off and tossed them on the ground to show his unharmed upper body.
¡°Need a breather?¡± He asked the Savants.
He needed them to fight back at the same intensity but they ran out of juice.
¡°Is ten minutes enough? I don¡¯t want to cool down now.¡± Ebony was slightly irritated that they were all down at the same time. They had already taken turns to ¡®hold him off¡¯ a few times.
Half a day was far from enough for his body to incorporate all the new techniques. He reckoned he could do it very quickly since his clones learnt them by heart. His clones just never had the opportunity to fight against opponents of the Savant¡¯s calibre.
¡®Hmm, I shouldn¡¯t try breaking the walls for now. I don¡¯t want to take too long, but I should get my Conditioning back up and scrap off the rust in my bones from the lack of exercise before I look for Xin.¡¯ These Savants may or may not know how to exit the empty room with a broken portal but the walls helped. The Savants would have nowhere to run.
Since he was sure they weren¡¯t able to harm him that badly, he put on his robe. The robe came a long way with Icicle. Unlike Icicle which was tossed aside, the robe was hard to retrieve since it was sold and changed hands a few times. His clones had a hard time tracking it down. Staying in a land of volcanoes and heat, it was already drained dry of ice mana.
Unable to reinforce it with mana, he feared the Savants would tear it apart.
¡°Now I¡¯m just missing the bag Sister Jing made.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t bother trimming his long hair while he waited. He hydrated himself but it cost so much more mana. He had to reevaluate what the planet Teheil thought was natural because even water was hard to make before it stole his mana.
???
It merely took three days before the Savants refused to fight him.
¡°Wait, don''t give up. Don¡¯t you need to capture me?¡± Ebony put his hands out to the 4 that backed themselves into a corner.
¡°Go away!¡± The lady raised her last spare blade in defence. As an Emberblade Dancer, she had plenty of spares since the Art caused the knives to wear out very fast.
¡®This is bad, I can¡¯t beat up unwilling participants. Hmm¡actually, I can.¡¯
¡°Then this will be payback for the earlier aggression.¡± Ebony flipped the cards and chased them around the room, sending one Stalactite Sunder after the other.
¡®Fortunately, they are always prepared to be stranded and have those condensed nutrition jelly.¡¯
???
¡°You really need training from Mr Guru. How can you give up and let me beat you up? It¡¯s barely been a week.¡± Ebony was disappointed that the lady Savant completely gave up in self-defence.
Even he could no longer bring himself to attack her when she went into a foetal position and guarded her neck and head. The rest of them were better off but not much better.
¡°Come on. Your training should be harder than this, there is no reason to give up.¡±
¡°Tra-training¡we¡¯re merely dancing on your palms and can¡¯t even touch a hair on you. Don¡¯t you have dignity from bullying us? Hurry up and end us.¡±
¡°What do you mean bullying you? I can¡¯t hurt you guys.¡± Ebony stated the fact that all he could do was give them light bruises that they could heal from in a minute or two. Unless he started using vibrations for instantaneous impact or piercing damage. Their armour might not be full plate but it was extremely durable and tough. A lot better than his robe.
But they weren¡¯t even willing to reply to him anymore.
¡°Fine. So how do I get out of this room.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t care any more. He got the skill mutations that led to evolutions two days ago and his Conditioning levels were coming back nicely. His rusty moves are gone and he adapted to Teheil¡¯s mana absorption and spell suppression.
¡°Just kill us. We¡¯re not going to open the doors for you before you kill us.¡±
¡°I wasn¡¯t planning to kill you? You had no killing intent towards me the entire time.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t worried that they returned to Cinderash to report him. He already let a far more dangerous foe go, Mr Guru and Saint Gearhart would know about his escape much faster.
He was half sure that Saint Gearhart wouldn¡¯t come for him immediately. They are too sure of themselves for obvious reasons. Power.
Although his effective use of mana was down the drain right now, it was still a fact that he had a hard time against 4 Bellicose Savants who weren¡¯t even Emperors or maxed out Kings preparing for evolution.
If Mr Guru was so confident after learning all of his tricks and skills, it was clear that they didn¡¯t think much of him.
In that case, they were probably letting him roam free. Evolve to King, increase his base stats, increase his Fortification. His value would only grow.
He wouldn¡¯t even be surprised if someone was sent to protect him. If he had to guess, that person would be people like Ezekiel or Ezekiel himself. Because Ebony wouldn¡¯t know if Ezekiel was following him.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Unless he was on Teheil where aether and mana were both impractical. With pure physical perception and no mana sensing, Cinderashians had nothing and few who could effectively follow and keep an eye on him.
¡°Just open the door. It''s not like Gearhart wouldn¡¯t know that his island was suddenly taken away from his volcano or that I went missing. Your life and death doesn¡¯t matter to me and I¡¯m not fond of killing.¡±
¡°That¡¯s Lord or Saint Gearhart for you!¡± The Infernal Cleaver user didn¡¯t even have a weapon other than his aether blade which wasn''t¡¯ even sharp due to the lack of aether.
¡°I can continue forcing you to open the door if you want.¡±
They trembled at the sight of him raising Icicle above his head.
It took some muttering but they decided to let him out. Ebony watched them touch a wall that summoned a stone keypad. Surprised, he memorised the keys and the order they were pressed.
¡®They have keypads. Keyboards probably exist too. I should try to get on the internet, the Eidolon Nexus. I wonder if this was one of the things Navin was trying to get access to for Elva, he should be.¡¯ The Eidolon Nexus was named that way because the ¡®internet¡¯ was connected through the Spirit Realm and personified by what he understood as an artificial intelligence that manages the net. The Spirit Realm was used since it was one of the vastest Realms that connected close to every populated world.
Of course, they didn¡¯t have so many spirits working as employees. The Spirit Realm was used as a medium but the technology to transmit information was more mind magic and normal, advanced technology.
Ethereal Arctic Rivertide Art - Employing the arts obscures the line between tangible and illusory. The advent of your greatsword is the advent of an arctic tide, each one greater than the last. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increases by 800% + 10.0% per level. Strength and speed wielding a greatsword increases by 600% + 10.0% per level. Momentous tides power the next tide with 5% of the preceding strike¡¯s Strength.
¡®I thought it would combine with Ethereal Form Arts, now it¡¯s similar but the base strength and speed increment are low compared to the Savants. Still, greatsword base increment is higher than Ethereal Form Arts.¡¯
Ethereal Form Arts - The Ethereal Form Arts are elusive and challenging to perceive. A spectre in the midst of battle, distinguished by adapting to your opponents with uncanny precision. Employing the arts obscures the line between tangible and illusory. Fluidity, balance, stability and deftness increases by 1800% + 10.0% per level. Strength and Agility while brawling with the Ethereal Form arts increases by 500% + 10.0% per level. The Ethereal Form Arts reduces the burden on your body from its own power by a static 90%.
While Rivertide gave him a direct speed increase, Form Arts gave him an Agility increment. In a short span of a week, he refined the previous 800% to 1800% for fluidity after incorporating his clones¡¯ learnings. To evolve it, he had a feeling all that Sovereign Arts that his clones learnt wasn¡¯t enough. There was a very good reason for using a sword now that both masteries were at the same tier, weapon mastery gave more power boost compared to unarmed combat. While unarmed gave him far more flexibility to pull off his usual moves and less likely for others to predict his moves.
Phantom¡¯s Flicker - Unhindered by uneven terrain, move across the lands with speed, grace and stability. Phantom Flicker allows one to travel through most terrains with more ease, increasing in grace and stability in movement with each level. Movement speed increases by 800% + 10.0% per level. Disturbance to the surroundings caused by physical movement is reduced by 80% + 10.0% per level. Weave through physical matter with a static 25% more ease.
As one of his first few Tier 4 skills, he managed to remove the negative percentage completely and had minor improvements altogether. He didn¡¯t have much of an opportunity to refine it against the Savants and he was pretty sure a base of 1200 to 1500% should be achievable rather easily.
Ebony waved his hand back and forth in the grey light called the cushioning force. It was a lot weaker than compared to how strained the Savants looked like they were under.
¡®Is this due to Phantom¡¯s Flicker? Physical movement doesn¡¯t just apply to walking or running, but all my movements¡so my movement disturbs the surroundings 94 times less than it should. Does it work on the cushioning too? Need to check how affected other people are.¡¯ Since he wasn¡¯t able to be distracted earlier, he wasn¡¯t sure why the Savants got tired so quickly despite their lower endurance.
It would make a lot of sense if Phantom¡¯s Flicker was what helped him reduce the suppression on his body.
¡°Goodbye.¡± Ebony waved them off when the last door opened. It was a cylindrical building with multiple layers of doors all with different passcodes. As for the passcode, it was quite simple. All of them were different ways to praise Gearhart with numerical mnemonics.
His mana senses were allowed to reign freely without Miss Spirit¡¯s interruption for the first time in years. Real-time gravitational wave information spreading 422 km in every direction was registered in his mind.
¡®Okay, I can see why mages don¡¯t have this kept up at all times. It already takes 4% of my mental capacity just running passively without anyone within range and I¡¯m not moving at high speeds yet. Worth it.¡¯ His Core Skill Perpetual Tranquillity Spring passively increases his mental capacity and he had an unnaturally high capacity to begin with. Either from his father¡¯s training or just a natural trait. Within this radius, Ebony would be able to sense every blade of grass but there wasn''t any.
¡°This place is more barren than Cinderash isn¡¯t it,¡± Ebony spoke out loud before the Savants tried to sneak away. They clearly knew their way around, which wasn¡¯t surprising because many of the Savants were posted to come to Teheil for a regular training cycle.
The patch of land everywhere he saw and sensed was dry, dead and empty and not even weeds thrived.
They jumped and backed into the building when he spoke out but he wasn¡¯t asking for directions and Flickered away immediately.
The cushioning served and bent ahead of him.
¡®This is not what Seventeen found out, isn¡¯t the cushioning supposed to crack under stress? Why is it curving away instead?¡¯
Regardless, Ebony did a quick survey of the lands. Needless to say, he had a rough gauge of the immense strength of gravity. The cushioning was far weaker than his clones had him ready for. Since that was the case, traversal was easy and he mapped a sizable portion of the land he stood on within the next three days.
¡®This jelly tastes bad but at least it¡¯s much better than those bricks that prisoners are fed.¡¯ Ebony swallowed the food that Twenty-Three prepared for him.
Teheil was needlessly humongous. Neither Elcra nor Cinderash came close.
But the wilds were also the most barren. No life could be found other than the occasional camp of invaders that Ebony had managed to stay out of sight from.
¡°The Golden Fields in the north are currently under Cinderashian rule. I haven¡¯t been to the West but that¡¯s where the natives and aboriginals are and the Cinderashians never kicked them out fully. Then the Ferruquads took control of the south and a portion of the central and east where they were clashing. In the east are two more invaders, both base and sub-human races that are working together. The Mirellans are weak fighters in comparison since they are very close to base humans but they have the numbers and the money, they have the equipment and technological advantage. While the Veilarans have diverged quite a bit from humans just like the Cinderashians thanks to their native planet conditions but they look more different to humans compared to the Cinderashians.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t find the Golden Fields and just headed eastwards after scanning the area he came out from. The east and central were where almost every race could be found once in a while and where clashes were happening most often.
Glad that he wasn¡¯t seeing battlefields and war everywhere, Ebony heard that he had to go east if he wanted to get a pass to central but he didn¡¯t know how far he had to go until he overheard small camps of humans together with people that had very dark skin, flat noses and small beady eyes. He guessed they were the Veilarans, famed for their shadow and darkness affinity, their assassins and covert operations experts.
It didn¡¯t seem like people could float in the air with the cushioning, strong gravity and mana suppression so he was Flickering through the air unnoticed.
In less than a day, he saw the lack of grey light and the presence of golden light shining through the skies. The days in the Golden Fields never ended. Crops such as wheat and lustregrass that were supposed to reduce the effects of the cushioning were growing in abundance as far as the eye could see.
When he escaped the grey light and went under the golden light he smashed into something hard and massaged his face.
¡®The grey light isn¡¯t a physical manifestation of the cushioning, the warm light is too. The cushioning exists in the Golden Fields and is even stronger. Mana absorption is still here, just as strong. Anti-mage planet, that means I¡¯m very likely safe from most magic?¡¯ Ebony figured he was protected by the planet''s conditions and not suppressed. As long as his opponent doesn¡¯t have magic, there is nothing freaky or unknown that he has to fear.
On his way there, he was very interested in what the farmers were clad in. Large beefy power armour or exoskeletal suits allowed them to move fast and carry a lot of weight. The massive vehicles were made for agriculture but had weapons attached to the top and it was fascinating to see them harvest and load.
Everything and everyone was moving at slow speeds not unlike unclassed humans due to the cushioning that is harder to push through when you move fast.
Landing, he walked through the front fields and Flickered to the front gate of the familiar battlement walls. Barriers didn¡¯t exist here after all. He was now certain, Phantom¡¯s Flicker worked to let him slip through the cushioning with nearly a hundred times ease and that the cushioning wasn¡¯t a fluid.
¡°I¡¯ve never seen you. That bracelet stinks of sulphur. Cinderashian spy?¡±
Ebony shook his head once in denial.
Chapter 348: Spirit Blesser
¡°Ya mute?¡± As a person who traversed worlds, all of them spoke Gia. There were four gate guards letting farmers and their wagons through. The walls were heavily patrolled.
¡°No,¡± Ebony replied. He was quite satisfied that these people didn¡¯t needlessly draw their weapons like the Cinderashians would have.
¡°Hang on here, let me get the Deception Banishers.¡± The short 1.83-metre guard gave his fellow guards a quick glance before jogging away.
¡°Where did you come from? We know every single person who was transferred over so don¡¯t bother lying. Although you do have the smell of Cinderashians on you, it¡¯s not bone deep.¡± The only other free guard walked up to him and kept a comfortable distance where they didn¡¯t have to look up to meet Ebony''s eyes.
¡°This bracelet is something like a prison and a trophy from the Cinderashians. I was a prisoner on Cinderash, escaped and ran here. Before that, I was on Elcra.¡± Ebony saw their gazes towards his new bracelet.
¡°Uh¡Elcra? Where¡¯s that?¡± Utterly confused, the young man cocked his head slightly. They weren¡¯t wearing helmets so he could tell how young the man was. Also, just a Grandmaster like Ebony was.
¡°You can stand down boy.¡± Evidently, the Deception Banisher was just behind a door a few steps away from the gate check because he came out before Ebony could answer the guard.
The Deception Banisher dressed like a priest, his garb was a long, flowing robe made of fine, heavy silk, dyed a deep blue that shimmered subtly in the golden light. Intricate silver embroidery adorned the hem and sleeves and Ebony recognised the runic language as one of the many that Kong Jing taught him but he wasn¡¯t sure what the formulation was without running his mana through them since most of the formulation would be hidden under layers of cloth.
The man had a silver beard flowing down to his chest and his solemn demeanour silenced the farmers and carriages who noticed his arrival.
¡°You speak the truth, ex-prisoner of Cinderash. Are you Cinderashian?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°What is your purpose coming here?¡±
¡°Restock on supplies. Get a pass to one of your Golden Fields in Central Teheil.¡±
¡°I can understand the supplies but why do you want to go to Central? In case you didn¡¯t know, that¡¯s where the war is. If you want to get on your way home, you can work your way to pay for the tickets, though depending on where your home is, the number of transport you would have to take would differ.¡±
Ebony knew a little about transport between planets. Teheil was one of the special places that were only reachable through these advanced portals. The spirit realm wasn¡¯t connected and World Dungeons did not exist on Teheil. Not even normal dungeons exist. And the main form of travel, he reckoned was a spaceship equivalent.
Within clusters of inhabited planets, they travelled in vehicles and common people just paid for a ticket on a commercial trip. It was cheaper than finding someone capable of moving through realms or space and safer compared to trusting someone strong enough to move through those means.
There were larger vehicles for movement between clusters but it was both more expensive than any normal person would be able to pay for and also dodgy in safety.
¡°My home¡®s likely not a destination by spacecraft. And no, I have someone to pick up before going home. Money, right how can I earn money around here?¡±
¡°We¡¯re going to have to take a step back, you presume you¡¯re entering too early.¡±
Ebony thought the situation was looking good by the flow of conversation but it seems not.
He was asked a string of questions that were crafted to remove as much wordplay manipulation as possible but it was along the lines of "are you planning to harm anyone in the Golden Fields,¡± ¡°are you threatened by the Cinderashians,¡± those types of questions. It wasn¡¯t that hard for him since he just had to tell the truth though it was honestly testing his patience when the fiftieth similar question was asked
¡°Are you aware of any foreign mental alterations?¡±
¡°They¡¯ve tried.¡±
¡°...That, it was going well, but I need some elaboration now.¡±
¡°They had their Telepaths attack me. I kicked them out.¡±
¡°What is your danger classification? Both individual and hazard rating.¡±
¡°Oh, by the Nebula Watch? I don¡¯t think I have one. But I¡¯m a mage, it shouldn¡¯t matter on Teheil.¡±
¡°Now that¡¯s good to hear. No offence to your personal safety and I¡¯m sure the headaches are not fun, it¡¯s just a lot safer for us. I believe I¡¯ve heard enough. Nice to meet you, I am Deception Banisher Tod.¡± The lie detector put his hand out.
¡°I am Ebony.¡± Ebony was glad that these people didn¡¯t think handshakes were weird like the Elcrians. It was pretty much universal manners.
¡°Banisher Tod.¡± The guard behind nudged the priest-like man.
¡°Now Ebony, I¡¯m going to have to detain you till we get your identity checked out before we let you roam free within our Golden Fields. As for the pass to Central, or even the supplies I would not be able to help you there. Money is earned the same way everywhere, work.¡±
¡°I doubt he has any money, sir.¡± One of the farmers wearing his exoskeleton suit commented when he walked through the gate. They were just standing at the corner of the gate as they did not invite him into a guard or interrogation room.
¡°How long would it take?¡± Ebony did not care about the farmer¡¯s truthful comment.
¡°It could take twenty standard days. It could take a year.¡± Banisher Tod shrugged.
¡°Then you are not detaining me. I don¡¯t have time for that.¡± The mood changed the moment he said that.
¡°Your choices are to leave and brave the cushioning for who knows how long, or be detained but be fed and sheltered for who knows how long.¡± The guard that went to get Banisher Tod butted the odd rod into the ground. It should be a weapon of some kind.
¡°Goodbye.¡± Ebony was slightly disappointed but he didn¡¯t wait any longer. He had delayed and waited long enough. He Flickered at full force and went towards the Ferroquads¡¯ territory.
The Cinderashians couldn¡¯t keep him.
The Mirellan and Veilarans didn¡¯t stop him.
The cushioning couldn¡¯t stop him.
Ebony would go wherever he wanted and he would do it fast.
He got a rough gauge on how both the grey and the gold light indicated the strength of cushioning. The darker the hue of grey or the brighter the hue of gold, the stronger the cushioning and even absorption of mana. This planet was like a natural version of Cinderash dungeons and their placement.
Every bit of barren land was barren because the energy went into the Golden Fields where there were rich fertile lands. There were small patches of undeveloped and inhibited Golden Fields where the gold light was dim here and there. He could find broken tents or leftover traces of people in these fields but they might not have the manpower or desire to take control of these fields.
He had seen people on the ground while he Flickered through the skies. They marched at speeds like the humans back on Earth. Their stamina consumption was high, and the effort required to transport supplies was immense. An utter waste of time if he was supposed to move with them.
Undeniably, he was still slowed down by a huge degree since Augmentation was suppressed so badly and it would die off the moment he broke his coagulated mana down for use. But he might as well be teleporting compared to these invaders.
Finding Ferroquads wasn''t that difficult since he knew their rough direction and his perception range was so wide.
¡®Woah are they the Ferroquads? Four-legged, across each other. Human upper body with four arms. Grey fur. Facial features are no different from humans other than a lot of facial hair but they are not considered sub-humans right?¡¯
The Golden Fields he found were smaller than the humans'' and likely not the main base of the Ferroquads but he decided to land and walk up to them. It was a very different scene here. There were no majestic walls, machinery or advanced technology.
Just normal 8-limbed people farming half naked with linen pants.
¡°Human!¡± One of the male farmers raised his rake and screamed when Ebony waved.
¡°Oh. He doesn¡¯t smell like them?¡± His fellow farmer stepped forward and sniffed. Ebony learned and had long washed himself off which took a lot of effort considering the difficulty it was to use mana for his runes.
¡°Back up.¡± The biggest farmer ran forward to meet Ebony face-to-face.
He left dozens of steps between them in case they felt threatened by a human that walked up here alone. In any case, they probably assumed he couldn¡¯t run up to them before they could retreat.
¡°You! Human, what are you doing here?! You don¡¯t smell like any of the other humans on Teheil.¡±
¡°I am indeed not Cinderashian, Mirellan or Veilarans. I escaped from the Cinderashians after being locked up for years. I am here to look for a job, for money and hopefully get a pass to Central where I can get out of Teheil and make my way home.¡± Having experienced the questioning once, he just summarised what he said once to the humans a few days ago. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
¡°Huh¡since you know all of them, why don¡¯t you go to the humans Mirellan or whatever?¡±
¡°They don¡¯t trust me, even after all the Deception Banisher¡¯s questions.¡±
¡°HAHAHAHA, typical humans. You don¡¯t smell like lies. We need hands, if you can work you can earn. I hope you have more muscle than you¡¯d look. You would need double to work as efficiently as these bad boys.¡± The farmer at the front flexes all four of his arms with pride.
¡°I am stronger than all eighteen thousand five hundred and fifteen of you combined,¡± Ebony reassured them that he could work.
The couple dozen of them that put their tools down and looked over to listen with their superhuman ears laughed it off like a joke before they turned stern.
¡°How do you know how many of us there are here? A skill?¡± The muscular farmer frowned and put his flexing arms down.
¡°You can say that but it¡¯s more of a natural perception.¡±
¡°Farmers, leave this man to me and get back to work.¡±
¡°Steward Koray! We weren¡¯t slacking!¡± The farmers scurried back and rose their tools when a properly clothed Ferroquad jogged over. The Golden Field was rather dim in light and so was the cushioning so it wasn¡¯t an amazing feat to be able to jog. It was more amazing that 4 legs that were crossed in a plus sign could jog so smoothly.
¡®What made them evolve into this kind of form?¡¯ Ebony had to say that these Ferroquads were handling the cushioning and gravity much better than the humans but he couldn¡¯t see how their legs were suited for combat.
¡°Stranger, I heard. Money and home, I understand completely. We could use every pair of hands we can get, hearing your confidence and desire to go to Central I can only assume you are a combatant. What can you do, I¡¯m sure I can get you a fair remuneration.¡±
Ebony was nodding internally, this was going so much smoother than with the humans. The Ferroquads don¡¯t seem to care who or what he is. They were very casual about his sudden appearance.
¡°Hmm¡¡± Ebony didn¡¯t know what to say, he was not going to fight a war for them that¡¯s for sure. As much as he didn¡¯t like the Cinderashians, he wasn¡¯t about to fight them for no reason. The ones he had spite with was Gearhart, Ezekiel, Mr Guru and possibly Percival Gearhart.
He spent a few seconds looking around and having his perception sense within the compounds and tents of the Golden Fields.
¡®They have terrible equipment. Let¡¯s just say I can make equipment, make them more durable and that I¡¯m a support mage. No, mage doesn¡¯t work¡maybe I can just say I can enhance fighters¡¯ stamina regeneration through aura fortification? Let¡¯s do that.¡¯
¡°I can make your equipment more durable. I can increase people¡¯s rate of recovery and most importantly, I can help speed up traverse out in the wilds. Can you feel it?¡±
¡°Yes, I¡¯m sure all of my men here can feel the effects of your calming aura. You are not one of those humans that is for sure. Come, I¡¯m sure you will fit in straight away. Can you work immediately?¡±
¡°The faster I can get to Central, the better.¡±
¡°Good. I will introduce you to our captain right now.¡±
Ebony liked these people. Straightforward and efficient.
The small Golden Fields was only in charge under a King.
¡°Greetings human! I felt your aura and heard your conversation. Call me Captain Ironclad!¡± Ebony wanted to cover his ears because Captain Ironclad leaned towards him and shouted at the top of his lungs.
Captain Ironclad was the biggest person around but not much taller than Ebony himself. With a lot more muscle and armour but that''s beside the point. He had darker fur and a metallic sheen on them but it still flowed softly in the breeze.
As someone who could hear from literal miles away with just ears alone, he wasn¡¯t surprised other people could do the same. The lack of walls and the smaller number of people helped a lot.
¡°Captain Ironclad, I am Ebony. So can I get the pass to Central? And the job I suppose.¡±
¡°I will have to see what you¡¯re capable of first. I am most curious about what you mean by increasing our traversal speed. What are the costs?¡±
¡°You can say I¡¯m something of a mage that can still work a bit of his magic on Teheil.¡±
¡°So you don¡¯t work with mana. Qi, Spirit, Will, Intent, Mental, Soul energy, pure essence, vitality or something else entirely?¡±
¡°Will. My aura is somewhat enhanced by Will.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t expect the Captain to be so unfazed. It meant there were others out there using these energies that were present and may produce magical effects just like he could.
¡°Domain Mage? Your Aura tells me King-ranked. My nose says Grandmaster. My skin and fur scream Emperor. You are a scary creature, Ebony. But even Domain Mages can¡¯t use magic here and you are no more than an Emperor for sure.¡±
¡°Yes, my Domain and Will aren''t that strong. I can increase the durability of all your armour, let¡¯s say how its done is a trade secret. You already feel the stamina regeneration effects. I can show you traversal speed.¡± Ebony Flickered about for the Captain.
The Captain had a glint in his eyes and didn¡¯t hide his ecstatic expression.
¡°What is your asking price?¡±
¡°A pass to Central. Introduce me as a crafter and auxiliary support to wherever you want to post me. I want to get there as soon as possible.¡± Ebony was not up for testing his abilities against the combined ability of the four groups fighting in Central.
The pass he was looking for was the only thing that would prevent him from being targeted by everyone. There seemed to be a handshake between the current people at war that they would do everything they could to prevent another force from joining in on the battle for Teheil. Teheil was also a natural Worldcore, Saints were prohibited from fighting or harming this place or its inhabitants but, other than the Natives, everyone else wasn¡¯t considered ¡®inhabitants¡¯ but invaders.
Ebony¡¯s clones couldn¡¯t find out much if the people on Cinderash talked little about the situation on Teheil so he had no choice but to figure things out on his own. Knowing Saint Gearhart¡¯s family defences, he knew better than to charge in without information. His escape was only due to the fact that people didn¡¯t know he existed, they underestimated his clones, and their terrible natural perception and countermeasures were underprepared due to the confidence they had in his cell.
¡°There is more you are looking for. But that¡¯s okay, as we all do. How long would you work for?¡±
¡°How long before I can properly leave? For two people.¡± Since the 8-limbed man seemed nice, Ebony had no reason to hide his desires. All he knew was that Xin was last in Central. He didn¡¯t know what she was doing or which group she was with. Eleven had been trapped in a test tube the entire time in hibernation, the Will transmission wasn¡¯t perfect either.
¡°That depends on your contribution, it is too early for me to say. Ah, but there is no working portal to the sector¡¯s station. You would have to use human transportation. I¡¯m sure that can be done with a successful overtaking.¡± Captain Ironclad must have been referring to a space station, a hub.
Cinderash had a direct portal to one but he was likely in a different region at the moment. His clones never got close to that portal due to the extreme security. It might not exceed Gearhart¡¯s home security in power but it surely exceeded it in breadth of coverage.
¡°Do you need some kind of written contract?¡± Ebony questioned. As he was talking to Captain Ironclad, he was listening to every conversation being carried out within the small Golden Fields. Few were talking about him and they were the farmers. Their race¡¯s perception was good but his entry was quiet so it seemed like very few knew a human entered their premises.
Information gathering was going swell and he didn¡¯t even need ambient mana to sense vibrations. Just his ears were enough and his mind was used to sieving hundreds if not thousands of conversations going simultaneously.
¡°No, do you?¡±
¡°No.¡± Ebony shook his head.
¡°Are you up for leaving with my troops to Central as reinforcement in 4 days? You came at a good time.¡± Ironclad surprised him with an immediate offer.
¡°I am.¡± Thinking he already delayed for a few years and was too busy running to cover the distance, he could use the chance to incorporate all of the skills his clones had refined.
Magic was fine, he received the improvements immediately as his mind could do whatever his clones could produce. But physical skills were different, his mind knew the improved techniques but his body didn¡¯t. He had to figure out how to operate runic formulas when mana was sucked out of everything as well. Conjuring ice doesn¡¯t seem to trick Teheil that it¡¯s a natural or necessary element either.
¡°It is done. I¡¯m sure we have free tents, don''t we Steward Koray?¡± The slightly shivering warrior nodded and turned back to the Steward.
¡°Come with me.¡±
¡°In the meantime, you can send me sample equipment. I haven¡¯t been on Teheil long and I¡¯m not sure how my abilities are affected. Carts and wagons first, I should be able to whip up load reduction for your cargo and you can see if it works.¡±
¡°Fantastic.¡± Ironclad crossed both pairs of arms in front of his chest in greeting and turned away. To get logistics done.
¡®So they are an assault group. They stopped by for rest, resupply and to transport fresh supplies to Central. The assault group consists of roughly three thousand men. Nine thousand farmers and various other support classes, the other six thousand guards the Golden Field, are backup reinforcements and generally train here¡¡¯ Ebony followed Steward Koray to a worn-out tent.
He didn¡¯t complain, the tents all around were in similar conditions if not worse. They felt like a nomadic race. Few to no permanent buildings made out of rock or wood were around. While there were Golden Fields with quarries or mines, this was a purely farming and fertile soil Field.
¡®Food preservation runes would be useful.¡¯
¡°Can you get me the carts and crates you use? I¡¯ll get to work immediately.¡±
The Steward was up to speed with his conversation with their captain so he bowed and left without questions.
Ebony unsheathed Icicle and conducted his first maintenance on it for years. It was dry on ice mana but it seemed like the nearly permanent gravitational activation to increase its weight was left alone. That was weird but he figured out it was due to Kong Jing¡¯s runes. The runes weren¡¯t affected in any way.
¡°You did good surviving being tossed into that magical volcano,¡± Ebony muttered and gave Icicle an injection of mana that was quickly being absorbed. His sword wasn¡¯t tip-top shape. It was already surprising this piece of wood didn¡¯t turn to ashes and his clones were enough to allow it to regrow and stay in good condition.
The instant he broke down coagulated mana, it was almost all gone.
¡®Magic is out of the question for others. How can I allow them to use load reduction runes¡let¡¯s try.¡¯ Ebony very forcefully pushed coagulated mana as it was, even letting his Unique Skill deactivate. Thankfully, all the punching of his chassis and coagulated form mana made it rather simple to push them around.
On the first attempt, Icicle successfully took in the coagulated mana. But it was slowly being drained.
¡®It''s no longer in the safety of my chassis so it¡¯s easier to break down?¡¯ He did a quick test and got results quickly. As long as he injected his coagulated mana, he could allow runes to operate temporarily. He just needed some Will to program coagulated mana to break itself down in controlled amounts.
He could design runic formulas that could do that for him but he didn¡¯t have that kind of time. Will was very convenient in that regard.
Before the first ten-metre long and three-metre wide wagon arrived, he already calculated how much mana he needed to sustain one of these wagons for two days. Not significant.
Tapping the wagon in front of him and letting his mana carve out the formulas in a jiffy, he found that these wagons were made of Epic-ranked pine wood. Luxury doesn¡¯t even begin to describe it.
Taking a better look, although the tent was worn out the fabric it was made of was also of high quality. Rare at minimum. Though the craftsmanship wasn¡¯t good.
The materials he saw weren¡¯t exotic, the crops grown were all familiar types. But they grew fast. Extremely fast. He was watching seeding and germination happen in real-time as minutes passed. Appraising Inferior quality wheat grows into Common quality ones within hours.
These Golden Fields were a source of immense wealth.
Listening to the farmers, pine trees grow into Epic rarity within 3 years from seeding and they were always harvesting. Always seeding. The lands weren¡¯t big but they required a large number of farmers to make full use of them.
Of course, the seed quality had to be taken into account. It was possible to continue increasing their quality if they simply left the trees alone while occasionally applying fertiliser but it would take a much longer time if the tree itself just wasn¡¯t supposed to grow to higher ranks. A good portion of the trees and land here were allowed to sit for long durations so it explained the high number of defending troops, as higher quality materials were being grown.
¡°Men, this is our new Spirit Blesser. He will be part of us Raizers from today!¡± 4 days passed in a flash as Ebony inscribed every single wagon and crate containing food and proved his abilities. Ironclad had him stand in front of all his troops just to introduce him.
Too much flair for his liking but he liked the fake class that Ironclad created for him.
Chapter 349: Sweeping the Streets
¡°WOOO, captain! This is so light!¡± Cheers ran throughout their march as the disorderly troops raced through the barren wilds with light hand-pulled cargo and lighter feet.
¡°Hahahahaha, we have our Spirit Blesser to thank for that!¡± Ironclad laughed as he ran in the most interesting fashion that Ebony had ever set his eyes upon. So did the rest of the motley crew.
Ebony was sitting on one of the drawn wagons, still doing forceful modifications but on boots this time. With 500 wagons full of cargo, all being drawn by superstrength soldiers he didn¡¯t have time to finish all the runic moulding. Worst still, these people had 4 legs. 4 boots each.
To summarise his thoughts on their footwork, they were the greatest experts of sidestepping. With 4 legs each facing a cardinal direction, they moved sort of like crabs but a lot smoother than he imagined. With two feet contact, the other two on the sides would push them off with gusto in the direction they were facing and their speed wasn¡¯t something to scoff at.
Their use of stamina was slightly better than the Cinderashians.
¡®Now the only problem is the cushioning. I can reduce it for myself but not for everyone and they are using lustregrass sparingly.¡¯ Their cheers about moving so much faster didn¡¯t satisfy him. This was moving hundreds of times slower than if he were to traverse on his own. Still, he stuck with the motley gang. They were rather nice people all things considered.
He had to recharge every single wagon and crate every two days which wasn¡¯t an issue for him. He still had loads to spare and he probably had excess even if every pair of boots needed upkeep.
¡°Lev Hound squad ahead!¡± The scouts warned. He finished their boot modifications first. They were redundant to him since they were scouting well within his perception for gravity.
¡°Keep your head down Mr Spirit Blesser, we won¡¯t let any harm befall you!¡± His wagon puller dropped the handles and drew his blade before rushing out.
¡°Lev Hounds?¡± Ebony asked the personal bodyguard he received. The motley gang didn¡¯t receive any instructions to guard him. They simply decided on their own after noticing his the effects of his ¡®blessings¡¯ and barely a day had passed since they set off.
It wasn¡¯t that surprising, they were pulling truck-loads full of crops from potatoes to pumpkins to other heavy tubers. Flour was a large part of the cargo as well and Epic quality flour was heavy not just in nutritional or energy values but also in mass since they were dense. With the cushioning and strong gravity, transport was a massive pain.
¡°One of the very few wild monsters on Teheil. Their sonic howls increase the density of cushioning and push out stamina out of their targets. Their claws allow them to absorb their target¡¯s vitality and energy. They usually stay in their burrows in hibernation. We are their favourite target thanks to all the food we¡¯re carrying. The Golden Field equivalent are Pev Hounds, getting hit by their howls reinvigorates similar to your stamina regeneration blessing. A peaceful race that simply gets along with most creatures. Don¡¯t worry little human, we won¡¯t let them touch a hair on you.¡± His guard was rather old in appearance. He was one of the hundred-plus Kings the motley crew had to offer.
¡°Mmm. Next boot.¡± His guard cleared his throat for no reason. As an experienced people watcher, he knew the guard was embarrassed for some reason but not the reason itself.
The Raizers were far from the strongest group around but they weren¡¯t weak to be sent on patrols around their conquered lands, support other Golden Fields and transport important supplies to their main battlefield with just three thousand of them. After all, Emperors were running around like fresh ingredients displayed on the market. It wasn¡¯t anything like Elcra which only had 1 public true Emperor ranked individual which was the Elven Matriach.
Ebony felt that the Frost Elf¡¯s Matriach was probably the same rank but not everyone even knew about the Frost Elves on Elcra.
As for the titled Emperor Oplot, he was just King-ranked. Strong as he may be.
Ebony learned about the common levels of cushioning and they were currently in an area where visibility was good, equivalent to level 3 cushioning or whatever. According to their scales, it went up to 20 where its pretty much pitch black and Emperors couldn¡¯t even crawl if their mana wasn¡¯t stolen if they ever got somewhere with level 20 cushioning.
It was dangerous.
The pack of Lev Hounds was dispatched within the hour. They looked just like grey wolves but about tiger-sized. Their numbers were under a thousand but they averaged at level 480. As the cushioning didn¡¯t seem to affect these native creatures, the Ferroquads were slightly troubled on a one-on-one but it didn¡¯t take them long before the hounds ran away after their numbers dropped by a couple hundred.
Chasing was a waste of energy even if they had people capable of chasing those monsters down.
Once every piece of equipment was moulded with his runes, he could just act like he was casting a mass ¡®blessing¡¯ on all of them and fill up the runes with coagulated mana from a distance. He was trying to think of what to say when he had to fake cast his blessing.
¡®Those Lev Hounds, their footwork and movement don¡¯t allow them to cut through the cushioning. Is it their fur? Are they naturally covered in the same stuff lustregrass contains? Likely. They can¡¯t permanently make their equipment with lustregrass powder, it is consumable. An organic compound that the inhabitants and lifeforms of this planet naturally produces¡I suppose I can try to study them with a portion of my mental capabilities.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t plan to stay on Teheil long but it didn¡¯t hurt to study the cushioning and how to counter it.
There didn¡¯t appear to be day and night cycles and the Ferroquads were on an irregular rest cycle, to throw others off. After a 40-hour march, they stopped and made camp.
Ebony decided not to try his hand at cooking the Cinderashian specialities his clones learnt for him to gift to Xin yet and ate whatever the army chefs made instead. It was a messy everything soup. Heavily seasoned hound, tubers, cabbages. He was more shocked that they shaved raw Rare iron ore as a seasoning. Good for their fur. He ate it all the same but he found out that the taste of iron wasn¡¯t enough to bring his sense of taste back.
It had been lost again ever since he sensed Eleven pass away.
¡°HAHAHA at the rate we¡¯re moving, I think we¡¯re going to arrive two weeks ahead of time.¡± Ironclad smacked his back energetically. Ebony couldn¡¯t care less about the man¡¯s back arms clapping in apology when he noticed he used too much force and cared even less when the man was surprised that Ebony''s bowl of soup didn¡¯t even shake after the smack.
¡°I never marched 40 hours, fought off a pack of Lev Hounds and still feel so energetic before.¡±
¡°Neatherfae, I don¡¯t think I can sleep yet. I wanna fight something!¡±
¡°Ohh! I¡¯m up for a duel.¡±
¡°Haaa. men¡¡± One of the nearby female Ferroquad troops bundled together and shook their heads at the shouting from the other fires.
¡®That neatherfae word again, I heard that word so often ever since Cinderash but what does it mean¡¡¯ Unable to comprehend the common phrase, he slightly blamed his clones for never finding out a common word¡¯s definition.
Ironclad walked around patting every small fire spot¡¯s group members and chatted, raising morale or making himself social with all his troops. He never stopped eating and getting food from random groups either. It helped that he had 4 arms.
They were explicitly ordered not to drink. It seemed like they were an alcoholic race since their produce included a large proportion of grapes, barley, maize, hops and the like. Most of the crops that were allowed to continue growing at Epic ranked were for alcohol.
Ebony allowed the hustle and bustle to wash over him as a Grandmaster challenged a King to a duel. The squad leader merely laughed, ate with two front hands and clashed with just a single pair of swords with his two hind hands.
The Grandmaster, one of the above-average fighters was harshly berated and punished when it was found that their soup had alcohol. ¡®Accidentally¡¯ spilling a bottle of strong alcohol into their soup was met with ¡®accidental¡¯ dunking in food waste. For these fur lovers, it was a horrible stench that stuck for days.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
After a hearty laugh, the hustle and bustle quickly died down. Pots were cleaned, armour and weapons were maintained. The crew efficiently went to sleep with proper guard cycles put up.
¡°Not going to sleep lad?¡± A silver-furred Ferroquad silently stood beside Ebony.
¡°Sir Steelward. My kind sleep once or twice every two standard weeks.¡± Ebony explained to the old advisor, lower in status to Captain Ironclad but the older and stronger of the two.
¡°You¡¯re not simply a Spirit Blesser, are you? I¡¯ve met a few of those in my long life, and I¡¯m not blind to your mana. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m not asking how your mana isn¡¯t being syphoned away when even a Saint¡¯s mana would be. Care for a duel, your aura is making these old bones shiver awake.¡±
¡°Mmm. I believe you should start to get busy with other fights and not a duel with me.¡± Ebony picked up the intruders within his senses.
Steelward raised his brows and his fur stood up in time, he quickly looked around and noticed his men sleeping¡as were the guards, falling asleep while standing as was normal for their 4-legged race.
Ebony watched Steelward holler at the top of his lungs before he held a fist to his head and wobbled on his knees. The aged Ferroquad turned and fell onto the floor, grabbing Ebony¡¯s leg before he fell unconscious.
¡°Huh¡I did not expect this gas to be quite that potent.¡± Ebony muttered when Steelward didn¡¯t even manage to stay standing for a minute. He had long noticed over a hundred shifty figures at the edge of their camp. They had been slightly over 150km away, more than enough safety distance with the cushioning helping them.
There was no natural high ground so even without cushioning, it was a safe range to stay out of sight from most races at Grandmaster unless they had archers or the associate perception skills.
Veilarans.
¡°Hey, I need them to get me into Central. Go away.¡± Ebony figured he didn¡¯t want any of the Ferroquads to be slain after being put to sleep by an invisible gas. He was more surprised that the Ferroquads didn¡¯t smell the gas when he could than the Verilarans¡¯ gas potency. The volume of gas was large enough to cover the plains and the territory of three thousand sleeping soldiers.
Despite his initiative to speak, the lanky figures that charged towards the Ferroquad¡¯s camp didn¡¯t slow down. A few of them were surprised that he was still standing.
¡°Fine. Sleep for sleep.¡± Ebony Flickered out of camp to meet them mid-way and punched the lights out of them one by one. They were quite¡slow on the uptake. For people famed for stealth, he wasn¡¯t shown how skilled they were as they didn¡¯t even react to him Flickering in front of their faces to knock them out. Did they even see his face before they passed out? He wasn¡¯t sure.
¡®Ah.¡¯ Ebony quickly grabbed the back of the head he punched when he found the neck snapping so easily. Fortunately, a group of Grandmasters had strong enough vitality to survive a neck snap if it wasn¡¯t completely disconnected. While the cushioning didn¡¯t slow him down as much as it should, it put pressure on the targets he hit. It was sort of like he was punching the Veilaran into hard air.
With merely a hundred fifty of them, it wasn¡¯t even a two-minute job. Ebony took longer throwing their unconscious body away from the Ferroquad camp.
Continuing to work on the boots that surrounded his original spot, he waited for the camp to wake up. From their breathing, he was certain they were doing well but he had to wait for them to get up to know if it was a poison or just a potent sleeping gas.
It was the second.
¡°A-AMBUSH!!¡± Steelward shot up first and drew all his blades half an hour later. The sleeping gas was very strong to keep him asleep for that long.
The Kings of the camp all rushed to Steelward.
Ebony placed a finished boot down and patted Steelward¡¯s shoulder. ¡°They ran off.¡±
¡°What?¡±
Surrounded, Ebony let them shout at him.
¡°...Men, disperse. We move off as per schedule.¡± Ironclad came forward to stop his soldiers that was acting up and beginning to get angry. They were all strong enough to notice that something happened before they fell, it was not surprising that they found it suspicious to wake up to no attack but a human in their midst.
With a final foot placed down hard, Ironclad scolded the complaints away with his authority.
¡°Those were the Doze Butchers. I didn¡¯t know we were in their sights. Thank you, you saved my men and I.¡± Ironclad whispered and crossed both pairs of arms in front of him.
¡°I didn¡¯t kill them. Deal with your elite soldiers'' doubt, I¡¯ll deal with threats you can¡¯t see.¡± Ebony figured he should warn Ironclad that he didn¡¯t permanently remove the problem.
The less interruption, the faster he could get to his destination. He didn¡¯t mind clearing the path ahead for them from any obstacles.
Having gained the motivation to help push away rocks in their path, Ebony was shown the reality that this place was simply too barren and having people chase them with the cushioning that changes in strength on a wimp rarely happens.
Within the next two days, every pair of boots was moulded with his load reduction runic formula and he just had to cast his ¡®blessing¡¯ every two days. With this, he was sure he could keep them all topped up even if their numbers were 2 or 3 times greater.
Despite his best efforts, he couldn¡¯t do anything about the cushioning for other people.
The Ferroquad crew warmed up to him rather quickly excluding the suspicious Kings who noticed the oddity. The other who were on guard duty the other night were punished for sleeping on the job but that was all that happened before Captain Ironclad squashed the event as a problem of the past.
His inexhaustible stamina overflow was making them more energetic than ever and they marched on with fervour. All things considered, they were moving at the speeds of an average sports car so it wasn¡¯t that bad. Teheil was simply massive.
Ebony now worked on weapons. They didn¡¯t care as much for the durability of their armour compared to their weapons. The Ferroquad¡¯s equipment was comparatively low quality in the sense that it was normal. The internal make-up of their boots and weapons was empty, with no magic enchantment or anything similar. It made it a breeze for him to add runic pathways.
Their weapons were all Epic-quality steel while the Kings used Ancient quality ones. It was above what Ebony was familiar with so he was glad the craftsman for these weren¡¯t that good and they were just solid pieces of equipment. He had a feeling the craftsman had the same issue of working with materials beyond their capabilities.
Ebony was a little fascinated by how tough normal iron could get when he saw such high-quality ones. Too bad the convoy didn¡¯t carry raw ores or he would be interested to see how their properties changed with an increase in rank.
¡®Ancient ranked iron. I can¡¯t bend this axehead even if I augment myself. And this is with relatively lousy craftsmanship. With proper crafting skills, simple iron would be unbreakable to most and with magic enchantment their durability and damage potential would skyrocket at the right tiers and skill refinements.¡¯ Ebony took note of Ironclad¡¯s axe, the only King who trusted him with their weapon as of yet.
The handle was made of wood that he didn¡¯t recognise but it was very likely Ancient rank.
Ebony passed the weapon back to Ironclad without messing with it, ¡°I don¡¯t think I can make this better without ruining it instead.¡±
He had the confidence of wearing down the metal to mould mana pathways but there was a far higher chance that the weapon would become less durable even after his runic activations. As for the Epic ones, he tested on a few spare weapons first. Since he wasn¡¯t a proper specialist with enough Fortifications, it was questionable whether the damage he would do to the weapon would exceed the buffs he could provide.
Fortunately, the tests came up with good results. Though he did have a couple of failures that weakened the weapons instead, the convoy had plenty of spares. Albeit barely, the weapons became more durable and absorbed shock and impact better. It prevented their arms from numbing as easily when clashing with equally hard targets.
It took him thrice as much time to mould a weapon than a boot so he had his hands full. While they travelled, the Raizers fought people, other convoys. Killed people. Have their men killed. Cinderashians, Veilarans and Mirellans alike.
Ebony watched it happen in the centre of their convoy. Every single kill, every single death.
¡®Such a waste.¡¯
He only stepped up every time their convoy rested and he sensed people at the edges of his range. Every single time, he would head towards them, knock every single one of them out and toss their unconscious bodies to the side of the Raizer¡¯s path.
The closer they got to Central, the denser the aggressive population.
If there was a group of a thousand, it took a thousand attacks.
If there was a group of two thousand, it took two thousand attacks.
It was just that simple when they only saw his phantom flashing about.
The only exception was a level 620 King who blocked a punch of his only to be knocked out by a forceful kick to the head. The Cinderashian warrior was like Ebony, his body could fight while it was asleep. Without any other choices, Ebony had to break all his limbs before he could put the man¡¯s fighting instincts down and toss him to the side a few hundred kilometres away.
Cinderashian warriors were indeed the best around Teheil. Ferroquads were physically stronger thanks to being more suited for Teheil¡¯s conditions. While the Veilarans and Mirellans were just weaker in direct combat by a noticeable margin in a one-on-one. They had the power of numbers, and far better equipment and relied on ambushes.
They came across over a dozen such skirmishes before Ironclad finally announced that they were about to enter the Central region.
¡°Ebony, attach your pass if you don¡¯t want the Scythe of Death to spawn above your head.¡± To end off the twenty-day trip, his bodyguard, Axel Steele warned him.
¡°Right.¡± Ebony listened to Axel and took his pass, something that looked like a talisman out and pasted it on the back of his hand, watching it dissolve away.
Chapter 350: Steelbreaker
Ebony felt a shiver down his back when he passed a symbolic and physical line on the floor. Something or someone was watching him and looked away after sensing the energy in his hand.
¡®A Saint for sure.¡¯ Knowing the aura of a Saint, he was certain what kind of creature set eyes upon him for a moment.
¡°Formation - Cluster!!¡±
Ebony was convinced that people with leadership sub-classes or professions had skills that increased their volume or made themselves heard throughout a wide area because he was more than used to deafening voices from this group of people.
Ironclad had the Raizers group up closer together the moment they went past the borders demarcated by a line on the ground.
¡°Esteemed Spirit Blesser, please don¡¯t get far from us. Everyone, not a Ferroquad, except yourself and a few others, are going to attack us on sight. This is a warzone, Kings and Emperors traverse in large groups and we are not a particularly strong group nor are our numbers large enough to fend off a decently sized army.¡± Axel¡¯s younger brother, Weklom Steele put his hand out as his entourage, a group of 4 huddled closer to him and the wagon he was sitting on.
Working on a bunch of cold arms, he nodded to indicate that he heard them and continued working while occasionally looking up to ¡®bless¡¯ a group of hundreds that came to him to recharge their load-bearing and weapon blessings.
It had not been long but their dependency on his aura and blessings had grown. The Raizers as a whole seemed to understand that his presence alone had made battles and traversal a lot easier. They used twice as little lustregrass meant for their main stronghold than the initially estimated which was a huge merit and even arrived over a week ahead of schedule.
¡®I wonder if my job¡¯s done. Well, I¡¯ll just deny the requests to ask me to bring them back and forth.¡¯ Ebony got the pass and paid with his services but he hoped to remain doing this job. His skills and abilities with countering the drain on mana were rising quickly by working on their equipment.
He was getting ahead of himself because the trip wasn¡¯t over and they were in a hot zone where meeting an opposing army of far greater size might not be out of the question.
Moving cautiously at the outskirts, he had the time to finish weapon after weapon and move on to his speciality which was durability and toughness runes. Since not every troop in the Raizers wore armour thanks to their confidence in their fur, the batch of equipment he had to go through was smaller.
By the end of the week and after 4 direct clashes with Cinderashians and the other humans, Ebony was done with every piece of equipment. For all two thousand eight hundred and twenty-one of them.
The Raizer¡¯s morale was not low, they¡¯ve fended off and ran away from groups thrice their numbers. Without magic, Ebony couldn¡¯t save them even if he tried his best. The knowledge that their assault team that had been in charge of transportation was moving at ¡®high¡¯ speeds was being spread. While the defence increase wasn¡¯t noticeable for enemies, it was noticeable for the Ferroquads.
Ebony had slipped away from his guards to help Ferroquads who were about to be sniped by red hot slugs of molten metal from Cinderashian weaponry and snipers but no one seemed to suspect him to be someone strong yet.
There were murmurs about a native ghost or spectre backing the Ferroquads. Ebony could hear every conversation and he realised that 400km was wide enough to cover a few armies that were nearby.
¡®I can understand Cinderashians terrible perception but is it not normal to be able to perceive within this range? What about eye skills or simple binoculars? They have archers and snipers so they probably know¡so they are keeping track of each other.
¡°How long to your base of operation?¡± Ebony asked Axel while offhandedly settling the line of troops that thanked him for the refill of his blessing.
¡°At our speeds, three days if we don¡¯t have another skirmish.¡± Axel rubbed the back of his helmet.
¡°So 5 to 7 days is more accurate.¡± They were clashing more often and their wagons were almost always targeted so he was well aware of the delays.
¡®The average is almost King ranked, I don¡¯t think I can clear the route in the middle of their next rest stop. I would be found out for sure.¡¯
¡°No, I believe we are safe now. We¡¯ve just stepped into Ferroquad territory. Unless an entire attachment of Emperors is here, we are pretty much secure. Look, I think our commanders will send out some escorts to dissuade attacks in a day or two after getting news of our early arrival.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡±
Uninterested in the territorial conflict, Ebony was just glad that it meant they could move faster. He was always on the lookout for Xin or news about her but it didn¡¯t sound like the humans or the Ferroquad had a superhuman fighter amongst them. He ruled out her working with the Cinderashians but kept in mind that she might have been captured. Knowing their natural heat resistance and warrior caste, he knew the Cinderashians had a strong advantage over her in terms of martial prowess where magic was mostly ruled out.
An assault team fit his needs. They would be on the move consistently and he would be able to scout more of Central without standing out. It made finding a person and gathering information easier.
Axel was right for once as their trip to their main Golden Field was unhindered. Ebony was placed under momentary suspicion even with the accounts of thousands of Ferroquads that backed him up. Still, he was surprised at how short their open suspicion lasted but even more so when he saw humans and other races present in the Ferroquad¡¯s Golden Field.
It was less than half the size of Tidal, the Capital of the Empire back on Elcra. He couldn¡¯t tell from a glance what the main resource being farmed was due to the wide variety.
For once, there were walls but it was because they invaded and kicked the Cinderahians out. Humans loved their walls, Ebony had seen in history and multiple planets at this point.
The Ferroquads didn¡¯t live in the houses that were already built since they had different biology from humans. Their width for one made it difficult to enter human doors. Chairs and beds were a huge cultural difference between them.
Ebony stuck with the Raizers. He followed them to another camp, where the rest of their group seemed to be. They moved as a whole if they were to remain in Central. A total of seven thousand of them made them hard to pick on by large armies and small enough that they were more mobile than most.
¡°Ebony, come meet our commander.¡± Captain Ironclad dismissed his bodyguard now that they were within the safety of their camp.
¡®That scarred ferroquad gives me a bad feeling. Strong but nowhere close to Boiler Knight strong, maybe stronger than Bellicose Savant squad leaders.¡¯ Ebony nodded.
He already knew who Ironclad was referring to since he walked into their Golden Fields. There were a few dozen people that stood out to him. He assumed that was how many Emperors and particularly strong Kings there were. He knew how the ferroquad looked before he was brought to her.
¡°Commander Steelbreaker. This human is the Spirit Blesser we hired. We arrived weeks earlier thanks to him.¡± Ironclad saluted with two right arms.
The woman he was speaking to was on the field surrounded by cloth partitions to prevent their men from peeking. There was no ceiling but these people didn¡¯t have supernatural all-seeing perception. Sparring with two people that seemed about as strong as Ironclad. She was barely taller than Ebony but had a wide torso like any Ferroquad. Overall, she was still lithe for their race.
¡®That movement skill is confusing.¡¯ Ebony already figured out their 4 legged movements but this lady¡¯s was different. He would likely make wrong predictions about her moves if he were to fight her right now. She wields 4 weapons, 2 blunt and 2 sharps instead of their common half shield half weapon format.
In a second, she hammered the bellies of her opponents and sent them sprawling before she stopped the spar.
¡°You are dismissed.¡± She muttered to her opponents before coming over. Waiting for her opponents to walk out of the training ground and past the partitions while Ironclad brought Ebony closer to her.
¡°Ironclad, no need to lie anymore. Who is this human?¡±
¡°Domain mage, budding domain user. Will, runic and arcane buffs that need constant refreshing.¡± Ironclad reported.
Ebony never told him that his Domain was tier 3, also known as budding domain. That meant Ironclad could tell from the strength of his Will. Somehow. Perhaps the duration or intensity of his resistance to Teheils mana absorption.
¡°What do you want from us?¡± The Commander hadn¡¯t put her weapons away when she finally addressed him.
¡°I¡¯m looking for someone. Human. Masked. Xeng, if that means anything to you.¡±
¡°No idea what a Xeng is, masked humans are everywhere. Tell me, mage imposter, what kind of monster are you?¡±Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
¡®The Xeng are either less famous than I assume or the Ferroquads are new to many other worlds and not as well connected. They don¡¯t have high perception but their sixth sense for danger is a lot stronger than normal humans.¡¯ Ebony watched Steelbreaker¡¯s hands clench, fur stood and her entire posture getting ready to fight him.
¡°As long as who I¡¯m finding isn¡¯t here, which I already confirmed, I come here in peace. I''m asking to travel around with your Raizers. My services will stay the same, making your group more mobile. Until I find who I¡¯m looking for. But if you¡¯re looking for a spar, I¡¯m more than willing to partake.¡± Ebony exchanged eye contact with the glare of a white pupil Ferroquad.
She acted as if he wasn¡¯t there and exchanged nods with Ironclad before she put her weapons away.
¡°You have no malice. We welcome you into the Raizers. You can call me Steelbreaker.¡± Steelbreaker reached two right hands out.
¡°Ebony.¡± He shook both right hands one after the other. The fur on her arms was longer than the male Ferroquads, smoother but also more metallic than anyone he had seen so far. It zapped straight when they shook hands but she maintain composed and didn¡¯t draw her weapons again.
¡°The tree?¡±
¡°You know about it?¡± Ebony had more trouble finding the translation for his name than most but Ironclad, the other Raizer members or even the Cinderashians never reacted to his name this way. Mr Guru was more shocked at his last name than his first.
¡°I don¡¯t know if you¡¯ve heard of it but the Eclipse Iron Ebony is a legendary species of trees in our home world. It grows out of a metal mine, near indestructible, absorbs light, heat, sound and just about any common energy rumoured to be able to eclipse the energy of a star. Too bad it¡¯s thought to be extinct now, weapons made out of it are now legends amongst our people because we¡¯ve only ever heard of it.¡±
¡°Interesting.¡± Ebony would think that alone was worth a trip to another planet but it was too bad he had too little information on it.
¡°Our operations begin in two days. Make yourself at home. I¡¯ll take you up on the offer another day.¡± Steelbreaker pushed the cloth partition aside and walked away.
¡®I was convinced we were going to fight.¡¯ With a silver of disappointment, he let Ironclad deal with the logistics and bring him more equipment to work on. Since they didn¡¯t need to transport cargo any more, it was fewer wagons and more boots and armour.
Standard days pass by quickly when he falls into the mundane repetition of working on skills his clones rarely had the chance to work on. Before he knew it, he was back on the figurative road.
Steelbreaker and her unit were the aggressors on most occasions. All sides seem to attack the Cinderashians more than each other.
The Raizers quickly felt the weight of his help and their opponents found out not long after.
They moved too fast. They striked fast and hard. They escaped from large armies even faster.
It didn¡¯t even take 3 weeks before Steelbreaker and the Raizers were rewarded by their leaders and became more infamous.
Ebony, more accurately his title the ¡®Spirit Blesser¡¯ was also known to many within a short time and merely two dozen battles and skirmishes.
Amongst these battles, Ebony encountered a new race. The Native race of Teheil was a short humanoid young teen sized people. They had very short grey fur all over them except their torso and horn-like claws for fingers but almost normal human feet. They ran and moved around on all fours and were not nearly as affected by the cushioning as any invading race.
Some had horns on their heads and others didn¡¯t but he wasn¡¯t sure why. He didn¡¯t observe any difference in fighting power or if it was something like status amongst the race. They were all shirtless and showed off skin so he wasn¡¯t sure if that meant they were all male fighters or not.
On the two occasions these Natives popped up, they fought a bloody battle. Ebony barely managed to keep their casualties down on both sides, even doing his best. The Natives were intent on killing every invader. No one was spared. Worse still, they didn¡¯t speak Gia and magic items like the mental transmission items didn¡¯t work since mana didn¡¯t work on Teheil.
Without the ability to communicate, peace was difficult.
¡®Found her. To think she became some kind of worshipped figure to the natives. How did that even happen?¡¯ Whenever and wherever they were camping, Ebony was usually in the range to hear multiple camp''s inhabitants talking.
Amongst the humans, Cinderashians and even other units of Ferroquads were mentions of a human woman that was worshipped. Red hair. Speed. Dual longswords and terrifying fighting abilities. The rumours and known details checked out.
The part about a mask wasn¡¯t being discussed at all, the description was closer to a feather flashing past. Most people who saw her didn¡¯t survive.
¡®How did the Natives trick her?¡¯ Ebony shook his head and continued doing his job. As amazing at hunting as she was, he knew that she didn¡¯t kill people without reason. The fact that they were ¡®survivors¡¯ also backed his premise that she didn¡¯t kill everyone in sight.
It was odd to him. The chances that she was following orders was extremely low and he couldn¡¯t think of another reason that she would fight in a war and kill ¡®enemies¡¯. It was one thing if they were monsters or animals since she could hunt and eat. So he boiled the reason down to her getting tricked in some way.
Ebony had made some friends, his bodyguards, the Steele brothers and their small group that had meals together with him. He learned about their lives, their families, their jobs and purpose here. They even shared dinner with Steelbreaker a couple of times as she socialised amongst her men just like Ironclad did.
Like Cinderash, the Ferroquads homeworld was low on natural resources. Unlike Cinderash, Teheil was their only other avenue for food and resources. Their homeworld was a lot less advanced and monster attacks on their populace were still a major issue. They were more poor and their craftsmen were less skilled with defensive constructs and they needed to be able to afford services that helped build safe spots for their populace.
Interestingly enough, they said that Teheil was easy for them since they felt a lot lighter when the cushioning wasn¡¯t a factor. It was an indicator to him that they didn¡¯t know what gravity was and their home planet was even larger than the massive Teheil. The lack of magic did make them more specialised and suited for Teheil compared to the human group and a slight advantage over the Cinderashians in terms of pure physical might, they lost in terms of technique but that was easily covered by their unique 4 armed and legged fighting style.
¡°Commander Steelbreaker. How about that spar we talked about?¡± Ebony figured he needed a real warm-up now that he confirmed Ning Xin was somewhere in Central. She never brought it up but she was one of the few people that could see him punching the lights out of soldiers while still appearing as if he was sitting behind his guards and blessing people.
¡°Sure. Fist fight?¡± Steelbreaker looked at him walking into the partitioned field. She was practising by herself. Her back arms held a war hammer each while her front arms were wielding one handed swords. He doubted they were Ferroquad craft.
Ebony drew Icicle from his back. These people had assumed it was just decoration.
¡°You¡¯re a Grandmaster. Go ahead.¡± The confident Commander had more than enough time to confirm his strength over the time he worked with them. He was sure she knew when her strategies got more aggressive and she relied on him to protect their troops from ambushes or their vanguard having pierced through.
He held nothing back and Flickered across the field and unleashed Ethereal Arctic Rivertide art. Six images of him could be seen attacking her arms, legs, head and chest. Micro-Flickers were used instead of ice magic to refract light.
Steelbreaker smiled and swiped her right hammer diagonally. It contacted the nearest Icicle, the ¡®real¡¯ one. But she wasn¡¯t tricked and followed through with her strike, hammering away the second and third strikes at her chest and leg. Ebony used the momentum from the first contact, pulled back and attacked centimetres away from his second afterimage.
However, all his strikes were thwarted and his petty trick of the eye didn¡¯t work. Ethereal Fluid Blitz had been refined to use 8 times more stamina than before for triple increase in power and speed build up compared to his old version. Thanks to learning from the Cinderahians¡¯ good use of stamina.
He effectively used his excessive stamina and Cinderashians had the technique to use even more. 8 times was enough for him to dip into his stamina regeneration completely so he stopped there. He didn¡¯t have to worry about too much stamina for a long time as he was now capable of directing it into power.
No matter how he danced, how it looked like he was flooding Steelbreaker with attacks she just stood on the spot and slapped all his attacks away.
Unable to augment himself properly with mana, he was approaching the limits of his body to maintain the momentum he was building up. Thankfully, Steelbreaker was affected by what they call level 3 cushioning right now while he was less affected and she began to take him a bit more seriously as his speed built up.
Icicle¡¯s sword tip got deeper and deeper past her guarded range until Steelbreaker had enough and demonstrated why her family name was Steelbreaker. Her front arms with swords started to pierce at Icicle from both directions whenever they clashed.
It was a dedicated weapon breaking technique and Ebony had been studying it to no avail for the past few weeks. The Ferroquad¡¯s wide chest gave them the reach and angle required to pull off the specific moves she was making and he was sure it was a Skill backed active technique.
Weapon breaking wasn¡¯t accurate since it was also poised to destroy weak points in plate armour and the like. Ebony wasn¡¯t wearing any of that and this was just a spar so she spared him from those skills pointed on his body.
¡®My arms are numb from the clashes. Her pure physical stats are crazy but it''s her technique and skills that buffed those up. I wonder if that Art can be considered tier 6.¡¯ He coped with the clashes but surprisingly made it harder for him to build momentum when she found out the reason why his attacks were getting heavier and changed her attack patterns to attack in opposing directions to force him to lose momentum.
It was a mere hindrance and she failed to stop him from making Micro Flickers to make full use of her strength.
Until Ebony had a good slam in his belly when her legs tapped like shadows pecking and her body vanished for a moment. Appearing above him as Icicle sliced down with a Stalactite Sunder, the tip barely ran over her shoulder when she flipped herself and ran her hammer down on him. Effectively dodging his open strike and countering him.
¡®Not only did she copy Phantom¡¯s Flicker to a degree, she made it fit her 4 legs and managed to slip through my perception. Proper Emperors are no joke.¡¯ He kicked the air and used the cushioning¡¯s resistance to push him, spinning using the belly slam¡¯s force and parrying the follow-up cross slash from Steelbreaker.
With another awkward spin to disperse the force, he skid across the ground and had his back against the cloth partition.
Unable to stop since he would lose the momentum, he continued to fight back against the pressure he was facing. Ethereal Fluid Blitz and Arctic Rivertide were having a field day till he heard his bones creak and felt a muscle pull on his back.
Steelbreaker was only hindered by the cushioning. They were not a race that relied on mana to begin with and this led to all their focus of stats on their physicals which was probably much higher base traits compared to a human. Being many levels and two evolutions above him helped her a lot.
He was unable to augment himself properly excluding a percentage that was still working thanks to Will, his Domain and coagulated mana but most of his magic was essentially sealed. His loss was guaranteed. It was people like her that kept his caution up when coming into the Central region.
Even so, Ebony let his body break a little and never let up. Icicle regrew and healed at a visible pace. It was clear to his opponent that he was faster and stronger than her Captains. None of his Stalactite Sunder managed to land a clean blow on her and he was more convinced that in terms of pure technique, her 4 armed art was more refined than his Ethereal Arts by a large margin and he wouldn¡¯t land a hit even if he was as fast as her.
He would not let this rare chance go in a short spar.
Chapter 351: Native
Ebony liked Teheil¡¯s cushioning force. Despite fighting their hardest, they barely made small craters around their sparring ground. Back on Elcra, a hill or many of them would have been removed.
¡®If I expanded my Will and used weakened magic, I would have about a 3.3% chance of beating Steelbreaker.¡¯ Ebony got the data he needed for simulations after an hour of sparring. He was excluding tiring her out or escaping. His Will was too weak to fully get a hold of his mana and magic against Teheil. With the same knowledge, it was possible that better Domain mages were present on Teheil and could still use magic.
If both he and his opponent weren¡¯t restricted in any way he was confident of beating her 1 in 3 battles to the death holding nothing back and only because she hadn¡¯t fully incorporated the benefits of Phantom¡¯s Flicker throughout her body. She had been too focused on the footwork and he gave her credit for her ability to adapt his skills and technique but he doubted she had the resistance against ice and cold much less his flames.
Even if he couldn¡¯t get through a person¡¯s magic body, area of effect magic would do the job and many organic creatures were weak to extreme chill.
With first-hand information, he dedicated a tenth of his mental processing power to Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge to raise his chances against Stealbreaker. Her weapon-breaking techniques did significant damage to his bones whenever they clashed and it overpowered his vibrational stabilisation of his body and his passives or his chances of outlasting her would have been higher. With that much mental processing, he could run over a dozen simulations at ten times the speed.
¡®She didn¡¯t show me all her techniques and skills, I¡¯ll toss some random elements into my simulations. I haven¡¯t fully figured out the 4 armed techniques either, her¡¯s is too complicated so I can¡¯t tell if it¡¯s tier 5 or 6 equivalent.¡¯ Ebony accepted the herbal mixture she had someone bring to him and downed the bitter concoction without batting an eye. Since he had good perception, the internal scan showed him the herbal mixture didn''t do anything to heal him.
¡°Thank you for the spar. I learned a lot.¡± Ebony sounded his gratitude before walking away and going back to his job.
¡®Now that I confirmed that Xin is around, I should start looking into how to leave Teheil even if I don''t want to leave immediately. The best way to get back to Elcra would be to find a working portal that Teheil doesn¡¯t seal and hopefully to the sector¡¯s space station. I should be able to find my way back to Elcra from there.''
Ebony already learned all the Cinderashian techniques that he was interested in. The other two human races didn¡¯t show him anything he found particularly interesting. The 8 limbed Ferroquads were alright but he couldn¡¯t use those techniques other than potentially letting his clones incorporate them into their ethereal arts.
He gained a few levels despite the lack of killing. He proved his hypothesis that to level his Class, he had to do what the Class was meant for. For his third Core Skill, he had long set it during his imprisonment.
It was not his Unique Skill.
Sitting at his third Core Skill slot was Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge. Skill descriptions aside, he was certain that the skill gave him a passive increase in mental processing power. It helped all sorts of spell-casting formation and even Will manipulation speed. This had been crucial for him to make progress in the Mireloom Chassis Engine and reduce its mental energy consumption.
His control over his Domain and clone improved quickly after he made Battleforge into his third Core Skill but the most obvious would be his control over gravity magic. It has always been the most mentally taxing element to use.
Ebony¡¯s learning speed increased. His Will can be gathered, react and move over distances faster. His physical reaction speed marginally increased since the skill hasn¡¯t gotten an evolution or a mutation.
All in all, he fit the trinity of core skills with his first giving endurance, his second giving power, defence and utility and the third giving him the ability to use his Domain augmentation properly, the mental speed to cope with all augmentation that his Domain could provide.
Since his body kept reacting and protecting himself through predictions passively, it took him a long time to realise that he needed the mental speed to keep up with the power that he could potentially produce. If he didn¡¯t mentally knock himself out when he tried a full power Domain buffed augmentation, he might never have thought he was lacking mental power.
¡®I¡¯ll probably reach level 500 in two or three months. Some of my skills are in the midst of evolving but I already have most of them at tier 4 during the past month. Their refinement rates are all high, averaging at 1200% base increment other than those low incremental skills in the 0.1% range. I don¡¯t have to delay evolution for decades after reaching level 500. Conditioning is the one lagging behind the greatest since I sat on my ass for too long.¡¯
Ebony was optimistic about his rate of growth but there were still some self-goals he set for himself before evolving. Such as evolving Conditioning to tier 5 but he wasn¡¯t sure if he could do that without proper training equipment. Self-training simply doesn¡¯t put enough pressure on his body and neither did fighting cut it.
He aimed for his Core Skill to evolve once more. That was his current focus, another Core Development. Like Gen and Ful suggest, he might already have been doing that the whole time and the gradual process simply didn¡¯t elicit a notification.
Cold unerring martial execution.
Heavy aural and physical suppression.
Not simply mana, but Will mastery.
He was comfortable with them all.
With Icicle, it was less of a weapon and more of a longer sharper arm which was good. He was comfortable enough with it for it to be less of a burden and an advantageous weapon to wield with its disadvantages hidden by proper technique. Since Ethereal Form Arts shouldn¡¯t have a form to begin with, working with different types of weapons should not impede him and he was almost there.
It was progress that made him happy, excited even. Talent could be overcome and caught up to.
Humming a Ferroquad folk song he wondered what he would say when he met Xin for the first time in years. He didn¡¯t realise time was passing him as easily as when he was trapped. Almost forgetting his prison cell was still attached to his wrist. He was fortunate the spirit was young or it would have been far less flexible and harder to trick to partially release him.
Dozens of days passed as he aimlessly followed Steelbreaker¡¯s army around Central. With just a single Emperor, they were more like petty thieves than actual assault armies. Hitting other races¡¯ army logistics and cargo envoys. Especially for weapons since Ferroquad craft was terrible in comparison but human armour didn¡¯t fit their bodies. They fought more natives
It was late at night, not that there were day and night cycles out in the open on Teheil. The Raizers were sleeping and Ebony was moving like clockwork, engraving new wagons to carry the loot. The humans were here for materials and resources in general, Ferroquad for food and land while the Cinderashians wanted everything. He didn¡¯t mind helping with reappropriating food from the humans. They were rich and food wasn¡¯t a problem for them.
¡®She¡¯s here! Hmm? Is that her?¡¯ At the edges of his mental reach, Ebony sensed who he was looking for.
Leading a team of twenty natives was a masked woman. However, he noticed shoulder-length hair instead of knee-length or longer. Two familiar swords were on her but no mantle or cape or even clothes from his gravitational senses. She would never shorten her hair so drastically from what he knew about her but it had been many years and she might have felt like changing hairstyles for all he knew.
It was almost amazing that she kept that kind of hair even throughout the times when she was chucked into a cave of bloody spiders or a mountain range of heat-eating bats so he was slightly surprised that was no longer the case.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
¡®Huh, she¡¯s speaking their language too?¡¯ With too much time on his hands, he picked up another boot to engrave while setting a distance from where Xin was and using his internal clock to measure her speed.
Gravitational perception wasn¡¯t able to sense the cushioning so he couldn¡¯t tell if she tore through it with pure force so that it didn¡¯t affect her or if she was using lustregrass powder or something else the Natives used. He wasn¡¯t even sure if she was running under the effects of cushioning to save energy since she wasn¡¯t like him and couldn¡¯t just waste vast amounts of energy on movement alone. But he was pretty sure she wasn¡¯t moving like him and avoiding the cushioning force on him by lightly fading and weaving through the layers of cushioning.
Speed was weird. In the past, doubling his Strength and Agility easily doubled his speed but it quickly changed after they were around mid-level Masters. 1000 Strength and Agility didn¡¯t make a person 100 times faster than 10 Strength and Agility even comparing with oneself and taking away skill effects.
The faster one got, the harder it was to get even faster.
It was all about skills but the percentage scaling never matched reality with numerous factors impeding one.
Ebony did a small test under the effects of cushioning and no mana augmentation. Just his physical stats and the Running skill put him at a pathetic speed not even as fast as sound was in air. Perhaps he could have reached that speed without the level 3 cushioning currently on him. With Phantom¡¯s Flicker, that completely changes. Mach 5 wasn¡¯t a problem or strain on him and this was pure physical strength and stamina usage.
If he had to give it a number, Phantom¡¯s Flicker allowed him to reduce the effects of cushioning by about 2 levels of Teheil¡¯s resident¡¯s standards. A rough gauge was that level 1 cushioning would make a Master feel like he was moving a hundred metres underwater. Level 2 would make a Grandmaster feel the same but a Grandmaster under the effects of level 1 cushioning will only feel like they were a couple of metres in the water.
In Central Teheil, level 3 cushioning was average and most barren lands outside the Golden Fields had this level of cushioning. In the Golden Fields, the average was level 4 cushioning but 5 was common too. Fighting inside the Golden Fields was very difficult and he understood it as a self-protection system that the planet had for its important resources.
Level 5 cushioning was enough to make Grandmasters walk like Journeymen and breathing was a chore. The natives'' territory was hidden behind a border or a curtain of level 7 cushioning. That was enough to put Kings to the floor and they might have to crawl out if they were particularly weak Kings.
Although they managed to standardise some kind of system for the strength of cushioning, it was still a force that fluctuated. The region they were staying in might have increased or decreased cushioning at any time and they had no way to predict it.
Ning Xin was running towards their general location along with the small group of natives, roughly at Mach 3 so he was sure they were in a rush because that was a waste of energy. Phantom¡¯s Flicker could be considered stamina-intensive. Her group should be pretty strong to make that speed out to be some kind of jog.
They would reach him in seven minutes, the Ferroquads would notice them in four minutes and the Cinderashian camp two hundred kilometres away from him would notice the small group in three minutes.
He wondered if she knew about his presence or was here for another reason.
He didn¡¯t have to wonder for long because their path led to the Raizers.
Ebony gave Steelbreaker a warning in advance with a stream of Will-infused sound magic to make sure his mana didn¡¯t dissipate before his spell reached her ears. The strength of the cushioning was proportional to the strength of its drain on mana and weakening of spell effects or so he experienced so far.
The Ferroquads off duty were woken up and took positions as fast as they could before the native squad came and broke past the guards all gung-ho. Steelbreaker, her captains and other veterans were ready to meet the small squad in battle but they didn¡¯t expect Xin''s presence on the other team.
Xin yelled over the Ferroquad¡¯s warcries in the Native language and her team covered her while she scanned the Ferroquad camp before leaving her mask facing in his direction.
¡®So she is here for me, cool.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t even raise his head and continued to hammer his coagulated mana through a path he was moulding on the boot.
¡°Careful!¡± Steelbreaker¡¯s scream reached his ears. It was meant for him.
She wasn¡¯t able to stop the group of natives that stacked bestial claw strikes upon her.
¡°So you¡¯re the Spirit Blesser. We don¡¯t need you strengthening our enemies.¡± Xin spoke Gia and charged at him with a sword thrust.
¡°...¡± Speechless, Ebony caught the sword tip aimed at his eyeball without letting it move an inch forward.
The aggressor was stunned, not expecting a support class to catch her blade.
¡°Why is that strike so weak? Why¡who are you? Scorchie and Scorchy, how could you?¡± Ebony was befuddled by the attack. He was so shocked he had a visible frown and his mind raced and came to the only conclusion he could. Someone so indecisive couldn¡¯t be Ning Xin. The attack held back power and lacked the overpowering and fierce intent for an attack.
The twin longswords'' red sheen whimpered and flickered in hue at his words.
The next thing the woman did proved his conclusion. The red shoulder-length-haired woman jumped back at his voice, leaving Schochy in his palms.
Something welled up in his chest.
As a professional people watcher, he would know what it was in hindsight but it was not time for emotional analysis.
He was furious.
¡°Let that body go now and I¡¯ll leave your fate up to her. Don¡¯t taint her body with your weakness any longer.¡± Ebony pushed his stunned bodyguards away from the deadly claw strikes they were about to receive from the masked woman¡¯s entourage.
Ebony could see past the mask but somehow, his gut told him that the woman smirked. She raised her shoulders and hands to express that further. ¡°Or what, are you going to harm me?¡±
He answered her with a Flicker and Quake kick to her belly.
The masked woman¡¯s instinct locked and made her heart explode with vitality, blocking his kick with her one sword and attempting to snatch the other sword back. Despite her acceleration, trying to wrestle a weapon out of his hands wasn¡¯t an easy task.
When she failed and was tossed another longsword by one of the natives that followed her, there wasn¡¯t a doubt in mind that this person was trampling on Xin¡¯s pride as a swordswoman.
¡®I should fix that before she augments herself further.¡¯ Ebony eyed Xin¡¯s body top down. No matter what, his opponent had one of the best bodies for pure physical brawn and perfect for Teheil. As long as she ¡®broke¡¯ the cushioning, it would be like they weren¡¯t affected by it and he was sure she could do that in the current intensity of cushioning because he could if he used peak momentum Stalactite Sunder.
The fighting instincts of her body seemed to take over as the woman charged at him with another sword thrust.
He stepped to the side, letting the scorching hot blade cut his shirt and skin with a raised arm and open coat. Moving in, he trapped her arm in his coat where he already pulled his arm out. Using her momentum, he smoothly exited his coat and Flickered a Quake kick at her second sword that reacted to his odd movements. The resistance from the parry pushed him around to give the back of her head an elbow strike.
She ducked and he straightened his elbows to adjust her collar, forcefully dragging down to the second sleeve. With one of her arms slid in and his fingers gripped onto his coat he had some control over her. Tussling at very close range where she can¡¯t use her sword¡¯s reach out was in his favour. It always was, it didn¡¯t matter if she evolved her swordsmanship to tier 5 or even 6.
It took a few seconds of tussling as she got stronger before he managed to finesse the coat onto her.
¡°I see how it is.¡± Xin¡¯s exasperated voice was all he could hear past the screaming behind them. Steelbreaker and her captains did not outnumber the number of native elites. They tried attaching groups of Grandmasters to tackle a native but the weaker members were getting heavy injuries quickly.
The same could be said for the triplet of natives who were doing their best to prevent Steelbreaker from helping the others. The Ferroquads had no ranged soldiers, they couldn¡¯t support their allies and captains in any way when they weren¡¯t in direct combat.
The natives moved savagely and fought more like wolves than humans with claws.
¡°Mmm. This is going to be painful for me.¡± Ebony completed his warm-up.
He had been sitting on his butt for years but this lady¡¯s body had been fighting all the time. Their exchange already told him enough about how much she had improved. He didn¡¯t care to answer the lady¡¯s ¡®knowing¡¯ expression, as if it wasn¡¯t already obvious that he cared for the original owner of the body.
The woman cracked the grey force like broken custard, the cracks in the grey light were free from the cushioning force.
Ebony took the blast of sharp power to his shoulder before he jumped back with the force she gave him. Half of his shirt exploded on contact and a splash of blood decorated his chest and white shirt. There was no one else who could give him momentum faster.
Icicle continued to sit on his back. Resting in his hands was the Scorchy, who for the first time didn¡¯t burn his hands on touch. Likely half asleep and out of mana just like his cell''s spirit.
¡®How could I forget I had this?¡¯ Ebony recalled he had the toughest material on his body in the form of his prison bracelet. He just took a wound for no reason other than dramatic effect but he figured this was useful to trick his opponent.
He was going to have her walk him to their hidden land.
Chapter 352: Eye for Eye, Body for Body
Ebony swung Scorchy against both the slashes aimed diagonally across his neck and chest. Performing Emberblade Dance to the best of his abilities. He didn¡¯t worry about the sword getting damaged when it came to heat. Using coagulated mana he violently vibrated the blade to generate heat but it was quickly being taken apart by Teheil so he gave up the endeavour knowing heat was useless against his current opponent.
Even knowing he had the disadvantage when it came to speed he didn¡¯t use Phantom¡¯s Flicker and made use of the cracks in cushioning that Xin made instead. Deflecting Scorchie with his unbreakable bracelet innumerable times quickly allowed his opponent to change her aim but it made her more predictable.
It didn¡¯t take long before she broke out of her entourage and blew him out of the Ferroquads¡¯ camp tumbling across the barren lands. All the while he guided her to hit him towards the Curtain and direction where the Natives came from.
¡®Mr Guru was such an amazing opponent.¡¯ Ebony was slightly disappointed by how easily his current aggressor was tricked into hitting him out of the range of her helpers and towards their home.
She managed to stop his heart from beating with her overflowing vitality in the pulse right after pushing him out of the camp. Rolling on the ground across kilometres, he picked himself up and raised Scorchy again. As if he blocked the next blow just in the nick of time. Eliciting a laugh from his opponent now that her Art was cascading strikes and getting faster than his gain in momentum could.
Ebony didn¡¯t bother fighting against the heart stop or use gravity mana to push his blood to move. He just manipulated the chassis of his blood to move.
¡°What? Did you think my heart needs to beat?¡± He countered with and landed a nick on the robe he placed on her past her stabbings. He never planned to cut her so it was out of his expectations that she misjudged the dodging distance. Heartstopping was usually a fatal move to most people, warrior or not but that shouldn¡¯t have been enough to surprise his opponent.
¡®Taunting works.¡¯ Ebony ate the next sword thrust between the deep groves of his bracelet and was sent across the skies again, not before he twisted his arms to chip the tip of her spare sword. His wrist bone shattered and he manually stopped the healing. It would take quite a few hundred more blows before he guided her towards the cushioning border and he didn¡¯t want her getting suspicious so he deemed it necessary to give her motivation to chase him down.
Fortunately, he overestimated how much she could control herself once her hair turned a brighter shade of red as she continued to pump greater amounts of vitality throughout herself. There were already Natives chasing after both of them trying to calm Ning Xin down with screams in a different language.
They were catching up but he estimated that both of them would leave those people in the dust after a few minutes of Xin going deeper into her augmentation and cascading art. Steelbreaker wasn¡¯t letting all of them go so easily either and she was doing well.
¡°This is who you were so happy to see? This is who you know will protect you? He¡¯s weaker than you are!¡±
¡®She¡¯s not talking to me, is she? Oh. Good, that means Xin is still there.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s plot to drive both of them past the curtain of level 7 or stronger cushioning faced an issue before they arrived at the near-black curtain of force.
His body was being broken down, her power accelerated far faster than he remembered and expected. Obviously, some skill evolutions were behind this acceleration of her strike''s power and speed. Beyond that of his momentum gain and usage.
With little to no choice, he utilised Phantom¡¯s Flicker across his movements so that he wasn¡¯t limited to using the cracks in cushioning she was producing with her attacks and movement. ¡®This person is ruining my chances of a successful proposal.¡¯
Ebony got a lightning zap during the next couple dozen strikes that exceeded his ability to react even though he saw the telegraphed attacks coming. ¡®Zapping me with static electricity in the air from our bodies instead of mana? I suppose that¡¯s cool but useless.¡¯
His back smashed into a thick film and it strongly slowed both of them down. The pressure on him rose exponentially. The raging swordswoman didn¡¯t stop now that she could barely speak and slaying the moving creature before her was the only thing in her mind. But the cushioning force did not crack and was fully working on her.
Ebony had the advantage with Phantom¡¯s Flicker working to reduce terrain effects on him but he was still bogged down by it.
Even his gravitational perception was going slightly haywire, searching for the Native¡¯s base of operations met with failure so far and he wasn¡¯t sure how wide the curtain of cushioning was. Neither was he aware of how strong the force could get. None of his senses outside of sight could tell how far a certain hue of cushioning went so he had no idea where to go past the curtain.
He was hoping their home was nearby but he received no such indicator after backing up with Flickers and baiting his predator. It was dark enough that his sight was impeded so he tried to go in one linear direction as much as possible and Mental Map told him he wasn¡¯t going along the curtain so they should get out sooner or later.
The ¡®curtain¡¯ was roughly 9000 km thick and his body took a toll crossing that even with his movement advantage. He wondered if she was able to break the cushioning present or was holding back a certain amount of sanity. With magic out of the way, his opponent had fewer options in pushing him so he barely made it out the other side with the help of the cushioning.
Anywhere else but Teheil, this was a distance that wouldn¡¯t even prove a logistical challenge even if the terrain was mountainous. Bubble Hills back on Elcra was wider but here on Teheil, it was a gruelling distance to cross with cushioning that should have put Grandmasters and Kings to the ground.
¡®The limit of her augmentation is unbelievably high, her constitution core skill must have gotten near the same tier as her other core skills.¡¯ Without any mana, Xin¡¯s current augmentation was far from her greatest feat but he had a good gauge of her Vitality enhancements.
It was roughly the same as if he had all his magical augmentation without his Domain if it wasn¡¯t weakened by Teheil. Assuming her magic hadn¡¯t improved much over the years, he shouldn¡¯t be lagging behind in pure speed and power once they weren¡¯t bogged by Teheil¡¯s weird force. Since his Domain buff state alone should exceed all of her elemental buffs.
But her Art¡¯s ability to build speed and power was far beyond what her augmentations could give through Vitality. And now, her body could seemingly withstand it. Her speciality Pierce skill has gotten so powerful he was forced to sacrifice a limb and use feints to dodge and save his life. Using his bracelet would have caused his arm to blow apart, he would have wanted that but he doubted it would¡¯ve freed him from the sleeping spirit and it''s currently the most valuable item he had on hand.
¡®Not enough. What do I need to be formless in my techniques?¡¯ Ebony liked the pressure in terms of physical suppression and even slight suppression in technique but it was still lacking to evolve Ethereal Form Arts and he didn¡¯t know what he was missing. Already was he unpredictable and reactive to anything coming at him. Any kind of physical attack from any direction would be faced with similarly odd and flexible omnidirectional attacks from him.
¡®Let¡¯s recall.¡¯ He flashed through his memories of spears, towels and fists flying at him. Surprised at how easily it came to him, ¡®ah, those delayed strikes. My offence is lacking.¡¯
Since he had a partner now, he got right onto the offensive as there was no better example of a strong offence. He got the hang of punching to illicit a response before his real punch followed through. Honestly pretty easy feint delayed strikes that he could pull off even better with Phantom¡¯s Flicker. But he had trouble committing because it made it hard to defend and evade counters as expected.
Taking pain to the body was the fastest way he knew how to improve so there was no better time. He never forgot to look for traces of Natives and with his gravitational perception and range, it didn¡¯t take long. Many hours had passed since they left the Ferroquad camp and his opponent was coming back to their senses because her energy consumption was ridiculous.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
¡°How did you.. why did you lead us here?¡±
¡°How weren¡¯t you able to kill me? If it was Xin, she would¡¯ve burst all her energy in the curtain or before we entered even if it meant her attacks broke herself. You always hold back, how do you expect to land a decisive blow?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t answer the second question since it should be obvious he was looking for the caster. The same sentence was also said for his own ears.
Ebony didn¡¯t look around but he could see golden light in the horizon. There was a massive Golden Fields in the vicinity. Needless to say, he charged towards the golden light in search of civilization and the populace.
Pushing Xin in her exhausted state might cause problems such as fully losing control. It was already old news to him that Xin¡¯s fighting state was so out of control, even the caster who took over her body couldn¡¯t fully control it. It was why he was even hurt despite how hesitant he thought his opponent was.
¡®Low range level 3 cushioning, I can¡¯t outrun her.¡¯ Despite her exhaustion, he knew better than to assume she was down for the count. The weak cushioning didn¡¯t slow his opponent down at all and he couldn¡¯t augment himself well.
He had enough energy and mana in the bank so he took hits to move closer to his destination. His opponent didn¡¯t attempt to guide him away, even trying to probe him towards the golden light.
¡®I suppose there are stronger members of Natives back at their home. My resources aren¡¯t compromised so I¡¯ll go along.¡¯
¡°No need to rush, I¡¯ll be right with you soon.¡±
And two days later, they slipped into the golden light. Ning Xin or her controller stopped trying to kill him a day ago, he or she gave up easily. Exhausted, they walked here together.
Ebony was convinced that his aura pacified her after long durations of exposure. Her hunger helped him because she didn¡¯t have a bag of food on her and he did, though he only gave her a handful of biscuits and no meat. He was very good at making others understand the futility of trying to kill him if they couldn¡¯t do it instantly.
¡°So, spirit possession. How did you trick her, food?¡± They kept a comfortable distance from each other.
¡°Trick, we did not. I would not be able to do this if she didn¡¯t feel comfortable with it.¡± His opponent was out of breath but the body she controlled was able to regulate itself.
¡°Expected. Too bad you betrayed her trust.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t do anything to me, why come?¡±
¡°You¡¯re confident. I¡¯m confident. Think carefully, this can end with me simply sealing you in your body for a few years and maybe injecting my Will into the ice seal to move you against your will and leaving the rest to Xin. The harder you push, the harder I¡¯ll push back.¡± Ebony did not hide what was going to happen.
¡°Ice? What is ice?¡±
¡°...¡± Ebony did not expect that to be the pebble in their conversation. These Natives didn¡¯t know what ice was!
¡°I cannot let you take her away from me. Not now. We need her, the Holy Maiden. And we will weed out anything in our path, including you. But, you are strong, if you can help us so that we no longer need a Holy Maiden, I will not keep her.¡±
¡°Woman, I''m not here to negotiate. You will release her. If she still wants to help with whatever this holy maiden nonsense is and I don¡¯t see anything wrong, I will be inclined to help with whatever she¡¯s doing. There is no other outcome.¡± He doubted that Xin would help someone who took over her body but he didn¡¯t know enough. If what this person who he decided was a woman said was true, it meant Xin truly felt safe and comfortable with these Natives or she wouldn¡¯t have been possessed.
But for this person to betray her trust, he could only assume it was because Xin lost the inclination to help them from the start or she wouldn¡¯t have to take over her body.
¡°We have stronger warriors than you.¡±
¡°Half a million people. Two hundred of them have an aura like Steelbreaker, so two hundred Emperors or maybe exceptionally strong Kings mixed in. Not enough against your invaders. Two exceptionally strong individuals, perhaps you are one of them since this person is lying down, unmoving. The other is training some children. Wait, probably not you. You wouldn¡¯t need to overtake her body if you had that kind of aura. But that breathing, she¡¯s injured or aged. Dying. I see, Xin and I aren¡¯t quite there yet in terms of aura but almost.¡±
¡°How did you know!?¡±
¡°Do you plan to play nice if I tell you?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°No one inside is making odd moves. So you can¡¯t communicate with them remotely. Do you think you can get help faster than I can pinpoint you?¡±
¡°Once they see me with another human, my people will act immediately.¡± Strongly defiant
¡°What if they can¡¯t see or hear us? I can make that happen.¡± Ebony slowed down to a walk when his guide did the same.
Teheil greatly assisted him by removing his target¡¯s magic body resistance or he wouldn¡¯t have been able to cast silencing and refractions right over her body and would have to make a bubble of invisibility instead.
¡°No you can¡¯t...¡± Her volume lowered near the end and Ebony had a feeling she was talking to Xin.
¡°We¡¯ve entered the Golden Fields. Where are your people?¡± It took as much mana as a hundred-metre radius domain at maximum compression to make him and Xin invisible and not produce sound. He had found that balance and Teheil didn¡¯t or couldn¡¯t absorb his mana held together with Will any faster.
During his time of imprisonment, Aegis and Dusk both worked on Domain¡¯s mana efficiency like their lives depended on it. Because it did.
Even with the strengthened effects of his current Domain, his refinement had dropped the mana cost from 305,000 mana per minute for a 5-metre radius spell to 135,000. Ask any Domain mage on Elcra and they would be flabbergasted by the cost but ask Ebony of the past and he would be amazed at the efficiency. He still had his 3 elemental mana efficiency Fortifications that would be taken into account.
It was a horrendous fight against Teheil for a simple refraction and silencing to cost so much mana and mental effort to upkeep.
¡°It would¡¯ve been fun if you were half as good or smart as Mr Guru. Now that I think about it, what a coincidence of events. Though Mr Guru didn¡¯t have body control abilities.¡± Ebony walked Xin who tried to hide her increasing agitation down the green grassy fields. ''or does he? if he can overtake my mindspace, could he have controlled my body?'' He mentally chuckled, Mr Guru was lively rent free in his mind even when he was already kicked out.
¡®This place is rich. Wait, is that a variant of mythril growing out and popping out of the cave walls in real-time? And that¡¯s a gushing molten iron geyser? ¡¯ Ebony¡¯s senses were busy trying to pinpoint any suspicious Native that could be what this person called a Spirit Possessor but he couldn¡¯t help but sense the riches that were growing. There were so many materials that he didn¡¯t recognise through simple gravitational perception.
Geysers of high-quality liquid metal. Hardy crystal stalactites visibly grew longer and thicker by the minute. Springs of oil. Forests, lakes, rivers and mountains the Golden Fields had everything a civilisation might need. And the Natives don¡¯t have many crafters and many of these resources are left alone to grow or store. They only focused on food, water and some wood or stone for shelter.
¡®That¡¯s a gravity elemental rock or metal, I should get some on our way out.¡¯ Ebony sourced for two locations that had the same material growing in abundance, they were mountains and not caves so it was lying in the open.
Xin burst out towards the Natives home the next second.
Ebony didn¡¯t follow, almost the entire Golden Fields was in his mental range. She could still touch people and may have mental or spirit skills that allowed communication with people but he couldn¡¯t stop that anyway so he focused on finding the caster¡¯s real body.
It was tough despite his mental capacity and ability to perceive everyone present. How was he supposed to tell who was the castor? He zoomed in on a couple of suspects and eliminated those with weak overflowing auras. If only they spoke a language he knew, it wouldn¡¯t be so much easier.
Thankfully, luck was on his side. There were few people with Ning Xin¡¯s tracks, a human¡¯s footprints and her mantle. And only one person was asleep with two maids. They went so far as to make it easy for him with a statue of Ning Xin, two of their strongest warriors and one unknown person.
Every native was top naked, the men and women did not have distinct features like fat on their chest or pronounced abdominal muscles. Their childlike physique was a common factor throughout their race. But a three-horned native with decorated jewellery attached to their horns?
There was only one.
Conveniently living near the most protected areas and having the most luxurious room. Ebony Flickered across flattened residential areas. Slightly surprised that people were moving to intercept him despite not knowing his exact location.
¡®He or she is blind, of course¡¡¯ The forerunner who pinpointed his path without any sort of confusion had deep scars through both where their eyes would be. The other dozen or so who were running were more nervously looking left and right while being directed by some foreign shouts.
He blasted through the wooden doors to the screams of the helpers or perhaps family members of the only three-horned native and lifted the person off the bed by the neck.
¡°STOP!¡± A wooden window behind him shattered. It was debatable whether those were just differently shaped doors for these tinier people. A small number of them spoke gia with an accent.
With more walls breaking down, Ebony was surrounded in the next instant.
¡°Leave her body and I¡¯ll leave you one to return to.¡± Tightening his grip, their reaction told him he got the right person.
Chapter 353: Sheltered
Ebony was not a skilled linguist but felt like he knew the gist of what they were screaming at each other after he found that he couldn¡¯t even see one of them move.
At least the warriors were decisive.
His body barely shifted before a clawed arm pierced through the torso right under his right rib and another from the back through his left lung. Neither of his attackers were the two strongest warriors who had statues of them outside. They were just guards nearby.
It was as if he could sense emotions when he felt the instant relief expressed by Xin¡¯s possessor. Until she noticed Ebony¡¯s grip around her neck tighten. The scream from her disturbed him slightly considering whose voice it was but her guards doubled down to make sure he died faster.
The element of surprise and time for reaction allowed him to get the sleeping figure closer to his body, preventing the guards from clawing his arm off.
¡°Unhand the high priestess!¡± The people with their claws and arms through his body yanked but didn¡¯t immediately realise they were stuck inside him. Their Gia was heavily accented but Ebony understood them.
With close to zero magical resistance and Teheil somewhat reducing the effect of magic body, Ebony was halfway through freezing these people. They noticed that their superior physical abilities were useless too late as he reached their bones. He was gaining more confidence as the seconds passed. ¡®It works too well, if all of them have zero magical abilities even their strongest warriors shouldn¡¯t be a problem to outlast.¡¯
Their confusion at what was happening to their bodies was interesting to watch. They didn¡¯t know what ice was even though their cold resistance seemed pretty high. The temperatures outside the Golden Fields were generally low but not freezing so their high cold resistance or lack of sensation towards the chill was surprising.
Tightening his grip he was in a staring contest with a mask.
He won and it didn¡¯t even take a minute before Xin¡¯s body fell forward. He tossed the ¡®priestess¡¯s¡¯ body out of the broken walls and dislodged the frozen bodies out of him before catching Xin. A dislocated and fractured neck shouldn¡¯t be fatal to an Emperor of any class or race.
¡®What do I say?¡¯
¡°I¡¯m here, didn¡¯t mean to take that long.¡± Ebony decided on something before silence took over.
¡°...¡± She had her face buried in his chest and didn¡¯t say a word.
¡°Are you acting unconscious?¡± Feeling the fingers clutch into him, he voiced out.
¡°Keep quiet and let me hug you.¡±
¡°Okay.¡± He tried to actively heal his wounds faster but her hug was raising his awareness of pain. The guards were more concerned with catching their priestess but they also stopped any hostility with an glare from Xin, with her vitality and intent blanketing the area.
After a solid few minutes, she unhanded him and dragged him by hand to her residence. It was a nice house all things considered but unbelievably, no kitchen. That must have driven her mad.
¡°Do you want to start?¡± He put on a new shirt and had his robe returned.
¡°Nnhmm¡± She fell onto the large flat and round cushion that was present in every home. He assumed it was a sofa
¡°No? Okay, I¡¯ll start.¡± Ebony recounted what had happened so far.
He tried sounding descriptive as he could with all the teachers he had. All his new experiences. The dungeon parties he joined, the friends he made. The monsters he hunted, the friendly Lava-scaled Pangolins that he practically became friends with and they chilled around Aegis daily. He didn¡¯t talk about food at all because he had very limited experience with tasting their food.
He wanted to give her another surprise by cooking up Cinderashian cuisine that his clones took the time to learn but he had to taste them for himself and practice before he could present it to her. He also had crates full of spices and herbs that were only found on Cinderash as a gift. If he was honest she was probably going to like these spices and ingredients more than the rare items that could provide help to refine her Physique.
He went on about less combative skills he had like making a network of Will to connect his thoughts to clones at extreme distances and how he spread his network through more than half of Cinderash.
He even praised Mr Guru as the greatest opponent he had on Cinderash. Talked about Saint Gearhart¡¯s volcano¡¯s defences.
¡°Wait, it hasn¡¯t been that long. How did so many things happen?¡± After hours of recounting, she noticed just how many experiences he was going on about.
¡°Clones.¡±
¡°What about you?¡± She referred to his main body.
¡°I was locked up.¡± He looked around the empty house.
¡°What!?¡± Her surprise got him to start the story again from how he went to Cinderash to begin with since he started recounting when his clones explored Cinderash.
¡°Oh it''s fine, look, I brought my cell with me. Teheil is keeping it asleep but I think she¡¯s already awake and is just storing energy. I might have gotten a Saint on my back.¡±
¡°What did you do?¡±
¡°I held his island and family hostage to make my getaway. If the Boiler Knights or a certain few Bellicose Savants knew I existed, I wouldn¡¯t have gotten so far to begin with.¡±
¡°Those Savants are weak though.¡±
¡°I suppose most of them are.¡±
She let him continue his recollection while she got her sword back from him. Her mantle was not lost but it seemed like the priestess of the natives did not like wearing it. Considering their customs and habits where none of them wore tops, it wasn¡¯t intentional to show off her figure in a bodysuit.
They were interrupted by people including the blind native who was late to the party, surrounding her residence after three hours but the Natives scattered when they felt Xin¡¯s anger. ¡°Only she would come, and their guardians. But we have time.¡±
¡°I¡¯m all ears.¡± Sensing her growing desire to speak out and express her suppressed feelings, he let her have a turn.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
???
It was not as complicated as Ebony was prepared for, which was expected from Xin. She followed her intuition and was hungry for many months without anything in sight. Coming here without her bag, she had close to no food or sustenance on her.
Her intuition told her not to waste her energy and blast through the barren plains so she starved. And starved.
She was living through one of her worst nightmares.
The Ferroquads stalked her for weeks if not months, her memories hazy. Ten might have died around this time. It was interesting to hear how she instantly kept them in one of her glass crystal tubes that Kong Jing made to preserve her bloody energy soup stock.
Then she woke up around the Natives. Sheltered and fed but attacked by strangers.
What to do was obvious to her, she fended off the attackers. Be it Cinderashians, Ferroquad, Mirellans or Veilarans. Outside the Golden Fields, food was gold. The natives and everyone in general moved light due to the cushioning and gravity. And her entourage consisted of less than a hundred people, she had to carry her weight since feeding her was starving others.
They took two months to get back here, the Natives'' home. Two months were enough for them to be convinced that she was some sort of Holy Maiden. Though they were convinced from the start just from her looks.
It took years before Ning Xin understood their story because she initially followed along through intuition and the ability to sense emotions. She didn¡¯t like the Cinderash to begin with, and the Ferroquads tried to bag her up. It didn¡¯t take much consideration to stand with the Natives.
She did meet humans, the Mirellans and Veilarans on many occasions but on all of them, none of the people had good intentions with or against her.
The Natives had legends of a Holy Maiden that had similar if not identical physical features as her. The biggest problem was that she was a human and there were obvious differences from the sketches and description of their actual Holy Maiden. However, it took little effort for the natives¡¯ High Priestess to propel Ning Xin to the status they needed her to be.
That lady was convinced that they needed a Holy Maiden, regardless of whether the person was real or not. It was something more cultural or religious that drove their race crazy.
Ning Xin personally noticed that the Natives got stronger after she was known throughout the race.
¡°The horns, the more they have, the stronger they got after I was announced Holy Maiden. Some kind of spirit-based skill or racial trait.¡± She surmised.
Anyway, her life was simple. Fight and kick out the invaders.
However, the High Priestess always urged Xin for more forceful and brutal measures. Because Xin never went out to hunt people. When they did attack other camps, she didn¡¯t kill anyone without a high degree of violent intentions.
Not knowing the language, they couldn¡¯t communicate properly and the High Priestess didn¡¯t push the issue too much. However, she did throw Xin to more dangerous fights which indirectly led to deaths on both sides. It helped the High Priestess spread her ¡®accomplishments¡¯ better with word of mouth amongst the fighters and families solidifying her status.
Knowing that she was being used, Ning Xin stopped all killing even against people sent to assassinate her. It had been a difficult 2-3 years because she had to hold back and even back down against people she could have beaten but not without killing them. Unsurprisingly, those years improved her technique the most because she had to not kill.
Throughout those years, the High Priestess got fed up again and again as she sent Xin to more dangerous missions without achieving what she actually wanted. She tried to push Xin up as a figure to be worshipped or dependent on. Xin wasn¡¯t sure which, but she did her best to achieve the opposite.
Her two physical states helped, transforming into her calmer black haired form slowed the spiralling of the fake stories being spread about her.
Their conflict got less verbal and more forceful. She was grateful for the food, shelter, water and even fighting guidance from the two Guardians of the race. Those two were extremely strong.
Hence her confusion. A strong fighter was not what they were looking for.
She was just there as a figurehead for faith or spirit to empower the rest of the race. Needless to say, she was pissed. She stopped going into her red-haired mode completely.
The tension between them continued to rise till the High Priestess somehow possessed her body. Like the High Priestess said, she only succeeded because Xin didn¡¯t have any real anger or hate towards any of these people. She was more so grateful for the early years she was sheltered and fed. She was also caught when she was in her resting state, unable to fight back and her aggression state was sealed up by spirit only to be used by the High Priestess.
From then, the High Priestess just took over and accomplished what she wanted to. The Holy Maiden was a household name that people praised day in and out.
Fighting for their land and kicking out the invaders was as holy as any accomplishment could get for these people. They were an intense group of people.
¡°You know, they said their population was in the tens of billions. But the Cinderashians culled them once and the Ferroquads came in for a second culling.¡±
¡°I see where the intensity comes from.¡± Ebony nodded half in understanding. It seemed to him that Xin was more affected by their emotions than he assumed throughout her recounting. She felt for them. She cared for the well-being.
She must have kept a lot of stories through her summarised recollection because it was unlike her to feel attached to a group of people. Maybe not, that might be his own experience.
¡°I take it you want to stay here?¡± Ebony did not have any major goals to achieve on Teheil. His minor goals include getting his hands on raw materials and ingredients of note. Like the bulk of gravity element material that he was still sensing.
¡°...Yes and no.¡± Kicking her legs on the sofa while lying down, her dejected voice hit him.
¡°Okay.¡± He looked around the nearly empty house before looking back at her.
¡°What¡¯s with that look? I feel like you want something from me for a while now.¡±
¡°I want your food. Haven¡¯t tasted food in years.¡±
He succeeded at changing her mood when she jumped out of her dejection. She surprised him by taking out the wok he gave her as a present. ¡°Where did you keep that? Was it not in your bag?¡±
¡°It''s your present, I have it in my mask. A small storage, my emergency soup stock is stored here too.¡±
She unfolded the weird metal sticks into a square. The metal pipes had a cross at the bottom and middle between the four corners, sort of like foldable table legs. She used it as a platform for her wok to rest on.
¡°Strong metal pipes.¡± Impressed that 4 pipes could withstand a wok a few times heavier than Icicle.
¡°It was very hard to get. They don¡¯t have craftsmen. I had them piece it together from parts taken from some Cinderash structure.¡±
¡°Fire?¡± He saw her stop in her tracks after fumbling about for ingredients. He highly doubted she could use magic like he could.
¡°...I should have some wood left over.¡± She opened a door to the side to reveal a storeroom about the size of a bathroom. It had 3 split logs of wood chucked under a shelf
¡°How long has the priestess taken over?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure¡a couple months?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll get the fire started.¡± Ebony took the logs and injected mana before violently vibrating a portion over the surface of the logs and working his way down. Igniting them was far harder than he expected but not enough to be an issue, he still had to be careful not to burn it down to ashes.
The Rare quality wood could burn at a high temperature for a long time. He didn¡¯t have to drag another log or two from the edge of his senses with mana.
¡°Gluttonous rice balls?¡± She knew that sweet flavours weren¡¯t his favourite so a sweet dessert was unexpected.
¡°They represent reunion.¡± She rolled up the last dozen dough lumps into perfect spheres with slow precision.
¡°Mmm.¡± He knew but he was more surprised that she had the ingredients for it in this empty house.
Boiling water with a few types of alien green leaves and some coloured hardened jelly cubes, she swept the rice balls into the wok when the water boiled. It didn¡¯t take long before they had a bowl full of rice bowls. The soup was dark orange, he was familiar with it.
The soup was clear but spiced more than any pepper or chillies and it warmed the throat and body right as it slipped down their throats. The chewy goodness had peanut and sesame fillings oozing out when he chewed.
¡°Delicious.¡± Ebony felt his sense of taste revive before he emptied the bowl.
Chapter 354: Dense Cube
Two knocks on the door disturbed their reunion dessert time.
¡°What do you think about this one?¡± Xin asked without context.
¡°Aura-wise, the Boiler Knights are superior. But on Teheil, both of them together may have a chance against a single Boiler Knight.¡± Ebony already figured that both of the strong warriors outside were big fishes in a small pond much like he was.
¡°That much? He¡¯s the one that cut my hair in a spar and I had to trim it down to my shoulders. Do¡do you not like it?¡± She asked while fiddling with her hair, now reaching down her back.
¡°It looks great on you.¡± His words seemed to fuel her energy and mood back up and she used it to get a little more serious.
¡°So what do you think our chances are?¡±
¡°Together? We can beat people like Steelbreaker, I would rate her as top 20 individuals I¡¯ve seen on Teheil so far.¡± His chances alone were low but together, with opponents that can¡¯t use magic? He didn¡¯t see a high chance of losing to anyone except a certain few Cinderash or Ferroquad that he sensed from afar but stayed away from.
He didn¡¯t find noteworthy Mirellans or Veilarans. Their average skill was higher than Elcra¡¯s Knights and freelancers but not enough to stand out to Ebony and nothing worthwhile compared to a fully-fledged society of warriors like Cinderashians and Ferrquadians. The Veilarans had some unique stealth abilities and they would¡¯ve been interesting to check out if they could use magic. The Mirellans relied very heavily on advanced weaponry and even robotics. However, the robots in general were quite insufficient and weren¡¯t qualified to challenge any respectable warrior of the races present.
¡°He is angry, he doesn¡¯t get angry. What did you do?¡± Xin looked at her door.
¡°I sealed that priestess, brought her to a farm. She¡¯ll be tending the farms and mines for the next year. Then you can do whatever you want with her.¡±
¡°You can do that?¡±
¡°She stole the ring-necklace I gave you. That has my Will, which I¡¯m sure Ten and Eleven depended on to survive as long as they did. It¡¯s now her prison, like this prison on me.¡± He raised his bracelet. It required mana from him but he could walk away for a week or two and the ring would have enough in storage. He had been refreshing the runic moulding from a distance all this while.
¡°Just extend her seal period and I¡¯ll cut one of her horns off¡¡±
¡°...Sure.¡± He dealt what he felt was needed, if she didn¡¯t want the High Priestess life it was also none of his business. She didn''t tell him the reason she was still...amiable with this place and race but if he had to guess, it was gratitude. At least towards the general populace here and not the individuals.
As someone who had experienced extreme physical and mental pain, starving was a sensation that didn''t lose out in intensity and torture. Perhaps he didn''t think they were much different but to Xin, starving for months on end probably didn''t do her mind and body well.
Opening the door, he saw the short 1.5 metres native with two horns and grey-furred limbs. There were scars on them that were furless, showing skin instead.
¡°Holy Maiden.¡±
¡°What do you want, Guardian Karnak?¡±
¡°Have this human release the High Priestess from her¡doings.¡± Karnak¡¯s proficiency with the Gia language was not exceptional.
¡°You¡¯ll have to excuse us.¡± Xin pushed Karnak aside while grabbing onto Ebony¡¯s hands, ¡°Come, Ebony. I got gifts for you.¡±
¡°I have gifts for you too.¡± Ebony patted his bag. Outside of food ingredients, he had a bunch of Cinderashian specialities that could potentially refine a person¡¯s physique. He sadly didn¡¯t manage to learn any of the methods of extracting or making use of their energy but¡he had a feeling they could just consume it or find another way themselves.
Xin pulled him forward by hand without any embarrassment. Bringing him to dusty warehouses, ordering any native that looked like they were in charge in the tongue he hadn¡¯t deciphered. Before long, all of them would carry either crates or a jewelled box out and hand them to Xin on a cushioned platter if they could. None of them even questioned about Ebony¡¯s presence.
¡°Their--faith in you is immense.¡± Ebony carefully chose the word that felt most fitting. It was like these people didn''t know Xin ever got possessed.
¡°Thanks to the high priestess.¡± She ridiculed herself and her defeat at the native¡¯s hands.
In his hands were items he couldn¡¯t Appraise until he learnt the names that natives gave these ores and rocks. For people who didn¡¯t know what ice was, he was surprised they had cold-related materials. The lack of ice mana did throw him off.
From Xin¡¯s translation, he had his hands on Crystal Fire, the cold-related rock. Enigma Rock, a rock none of them knew what it does except produce a suction force not unlike the cushioning. Ebony knew that the Mirellans were researching this rock, their robots could use them to some degree and produce a strengthened area of cushioning. Phantal Thread, from the woolly fruit of a plant. Their clothes, namely pants, were made of this material.
The natives didn¡¯t have a good understanding of material properties, and they didn¡¯t have many or any advanced crafters. It was odd considering their planet was all about weird and uniquely powerful properties materials. ¡®Maybe lost due to the cullings?¡¯
Everything he was given was of Ancient-quality. Other than the crystal fire, a glowing rock full of energy he didn¡¯t know what to do with materials like these.
¡°Where are we going now?¡± Ebony let her drag him to a less populated region, till there was almost no one around.
¡°Deep in this cave, unused mining quarry. Let¡¯s pick up the speed.¡± Xin didn¡¯t light a fire but they travelled in increasing darkness without an issue.
Ebony didn¡¯t expect to spend 5 weeks travelling down, the effect of the Golden Fields seemed to spread endlessly even downwards. Minus the light.
¡°We¡¯re here.¡± Xin broke the silence, she had been in combat mode the entire time to speed up their descent. She never let his hands go free.
¡°Yeah¡this is blinding.¡± Ebony¡¯s gravitational senses almost gave him vertigo. Considering his current mental prowess, it was unexpected, to say the least.
However, even through the vertigo he sensed a cube that couldn¡¯t be lifted off the ground in an unsuspecting cave that glittered in his perception. It was half a metre wide, long and tall.
¡°During one of her attempts to raise my status, they brought me to this place to try to lift this¡rock? Light doesn¡¯t work here, natural fire on sticks doesn''t seem to produce light. Normal Grandmasters would be sucked and splattered across the rock and floor when they touch it. I know gravity, but this thing doesn¡¯t have any suction if we don¡¯t touch it, so it isn¡¯t wrapped up in earth. It just¡sits here after their mining cleaned off the earth around it. Together with the two guardians and my strongest augmentation, we couldn¡¯t lift it.¡±
Ebony knew better since he could perceive, but the cube was partially unearthed. The miners must have died while unearthing or hitting off chunks of earth around this cube.
¡°I would expect that. The mass of this cube is¡well, I can¡¯t lift it either. Magic or not.¡± Ebony ran simulations but this cube was producing variable degrees of gravitational pull.
¡°So it really is a cube. They only guess from touch since we are blind here.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t they find any other cubes, smaller and lower quality around?¡±
¡°Nope, this is the only one.¡±
¡°I guess it absorbed all other parts of the same material. Give me some time to play with this.¡±Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
¡°I¡¯ll take a nap here, wake me up if anything happens. I don¡¯t think any monsters exist around this cube.¡± She yawned and stepped to the side, pulling a bed out of nowhere. She finally allowed her exhaustion to catch up. The past few weeks of her not willing to let him go was just enough for her to gather her thoughts and feelings.
Ebony touched the cube and felt a dragging force tug at every cell in his body the instant he touched it. ¡®That is some crazy force. I would''ve been splattered and torn apart if I didn¡¯t have coagulated mana augmenting me. It is quite big so I don¡¯t think it¡¯s anywhere as dense as a theoretical black hole but, probably the mass of millions of mountains. As heavy as Earth? I could be completely wrong due to the variable strength it¡¯s producing and the fact I¡¯m still in one piece. My gravitational perception isn¡¯t good enough.¡¯
Thinking of ways to take this cube away, he was quite helpless. The size and mass of Teheil was incomparable to the Earth he knew. Regardless of earth quality and the presence of mana and various magical energies in effect, there was no way he was lifting something like this.
Not giving up, it was a fun game to test his gravitational manipulation right here and now. The strength of his gravity spells had always depended on how much gravity mana was in his range and control. Now, a vast amount of mass was compressed into a cube he could hug within his arms. It was gravity mana galore, and this was ignoring any other unique properties it could have.
¡®If I can bring this around¡or put it inside Dusk or Aegis. Damn. That¡¯s a good idea.¡¯ Ebony knew he had a mental radius of more than 400km, as much as that sounds, it honestly wasn¡¯t much when it came to the strength of gravity.
Of course, it was different once he compressed that into a spell but the volume of gravity mana was always an issue. The further away he pulls in gravity from, the more mana it costs him, the more time it would take to drag that mana towards him, and the longer his spells would take to fully form.
This cube alone solves all that, and it was separate from the planet he was on, it was an extremely dense cube with a volume of gravity mana that he couldn¡¯t even measure right now.
¡®Can I break it into smaller pieces? Even a fingertip¡¯s worth would contain more gravity mana than my entire mental reach can grasp¡¡¯ Ebony hesitated to try breaking this material. Natural ores in their original state tend to have better use when they are larger. If he could break it, it would be far harder to combine them in future without the right technology or skill.
¡®No point in thinking so hard.¡¯ Ebony drew Icicle and whacked the cube as hard as he could and the result was expected. Not a scratch could be found on the cube and Icicle snapped in two.
Apologising, he held the two pieces of Icicle together and sent his coagulated mana through to mend it. The wood regrew and bound themselves together quickly.
¡®Gravity manipulation it is.¡¯ He practised manipulating seemingly endless amounts of gravity mana that flowed very differently from what he was used to, the cyclic motion that any body of mass emits. This cube¡¯s gravity mana was moving in a different pattern!
Ebony believed there was a pattern despite the current chaotic motions he was sensing. Moreover, it doesn¡¯t leak till he touches the cube. The cube was attacking him, either actively or passively. Interestingly enough, it doesn¡¯t attack Icicle or the earth touching it.
If his mental range of gravity mana was akin to manipulating bathtubs of gravity mana, there was now an ocean of it in front of him and the ocean doesn¡¯t have gentle waves and tides but unique currents and whirlpools instead.
Ebony put the simulations of battle aside, reallocating all his mental processing power to gravity manipulation and simulations of various other methods of observing, analysing and controlling the gravity in this cube.
It took surprisingly little effort to understand the motions of gravity mana in the cube. The cube as a whole had rooms or focal points within them. He didn¡¯t understand the purpose but the gravity mana moved in a maze-like motion passing through these focal points.
He hypothesised that it was a logical circuit that determined the strength of pull, the actions it took against natural elements around it amongst other properties such as assisting the pull of gravity of the planet itself to lodge itself in the earth. He also found threads of gravity mana that spread further underground and around its surroundings, either scouting or binding itself down further.
This cube absorbs every other cube of the same material, that¡¯s why it is the sole cube present. One thing he was unsure of was if Teheil was still producing more of this material or helping this cube grow. It was very likely.
¡®If I just wait, I can probably wait till an Inferior or Common one grows in real-time. Interrupt this cube by cutting off a section of its gravity threads and locating the new cube of far smaller mass and density. Oh, it¡¯s already happening.'' Ebony almost forgot that the entire planet¡¯s energy was siphoned into the Golden Fields and he didn¡¯t have to wait long before something happened.
Caught off guard, he didn¡¯t manage to get the small cube forming within earth before the stretch of threads this cube had tangled the freshly born cube and incorporated it into itself. It was practically the cube¡¯s domain down here and out of Ebony¡¯s element. However, the cube was not alive as far as Ebony could tell. It was not something with a spirit.
Merely hours later, he faced success. A bit due to luck for his success was born right under his feet, he dislodged the cube with a Quake Kick since he also sealed the movements of gravity around him. Losing to an inanimate cube wasn¡¯t happening again.
¡®I can¡¯t Appraise it since there¡¯s no light but I can assume it¡¯s Inferior ranked, as all newborns are. Even materials.¡¯ Ebony doubted the rock was raised in quality from Inferior to Common within a second, Golden Fields or not.
Inferior-ranked materials were equivalent to unclassed and also equivalent to tier 1.
¡®It¡¯s not light but¡not enough.¡¯ The perfect cube less than a fifth of a centimetre cubed volume was almost as heavy as his sword, which was dense, but grossly inadequate for his needs. With this as a reference, he probably vastly underestimated the mass of the huge cube due to the natural properties and control the big cube had.
¡®If I just reverse a small amount at its base?¡¯ Ebony already tidied and unearthed the entire cube with vibrations shattering the earth around it. Despite the immense density of the cube, the earth was not collapsing. The cube was placed on a sharp point, not its flat base. It was evidence that the maze-like motion of gravity within the cube was preventing this cube from having its mass act on the surface it was on.
Hence, Ebony¡¯s interruption and reversion of gravity achieved nothing. The cube naturally fended off the interruptions with stabilisation. This cube did not want to move.
¡®This is just a complicated puzzle.¡¯ Ebony found himself enjoying the difficulty of this puzzle. Over the next week, he collected more Inferior cubes and they naturally combined themselves when they were placed near each other. When he combined a hundred, it got a significant mass increase all of a sudden. He assumed its rarity was raised to Common.
Xin was tired of the dark and they started on their ascent. Ebony brought along his new toy. It had a different flow within it so he could study this for now. It was too bad he hadn¡¯t even finished analysing every pattern the large cube had to offer so he didn¡¯t have the complete picture of the maze and puzzle.
Ebony placed a Will node inside a metal ring he crafted on the spot with some metal he found lying around. He wasn¡¯t sure what metal it was but it could contain his Will and coagulated mana just fine so he made a couple dozen of them with the raw ores he found.
As they left the area, he tossed one of the rings every so often and embedded them into the earth. This way, he could have his senses reach this place from wherever he went and recharge the mana and Will they require to run. Only the ring near the cube had the analysation capability while the rest were just range nodes. Although the nodes¡¯ consumption should have been low, this was Teheil.
Coagulated mana didn¡¯t exactly traverse comfortably so he might not be able to reach this deep but he had to try.
Sadly, he wasn¡¯t even halfway up when he realised the mana wouldn¡¯t survive the trip. Project temporarily abolished.
When they were surfacing, he noticed the High Priestess was waiting at the cave entrance with both their Guardians flanking her and who seemed to be a maid or servant standing behind them. Having been weeks, Ebony¡¯s mana and seal had long run out thanks to Teheil¡¯s interference.
¡°They are waiting for us. My mana ran dry.¡± Ebony regained some personal space after she practically glued her arm around his for days on end.
¡°I¡¯m not trying to pry but, how are you even using magic? Surely Will is not enough to do that¡¡± They were walking slowly, not rushing to exit.
¡°Will is a small part, it''s mostly thanks to the stability of mana. Makes it harder to break down, harder to absorb. Although I¡¯m wary of other Domain mages, I highly doubt them to be a threat unless they also have the same trait for their mana or their Will is so strong that Teheil can''t even rip a single ounce of mana from them. Which is also extremely unlikely, stable mana makes it harder for the user to utilise as well. As for having extremely strong Will, if there''s anyone I suspect it would be the presence of Saints but I''ve haven''t even sensed one other than their initial probe when I entered Central. And if there really were such people, why would they come to Teheil when strong warriors or useful technology is easier to obtain and more expendable?¡± Ebony was more curious about how to get out of Teheil.
Coming to Teheil made use of a portal but going out was completely different. Unless the portal technology was far more advanced than he could imagine. There was a reason why both of them hadn¡¯t made use of the portals they came through. Xin didn¡¯t even come through a portal, she had been sent near a portal by Ezekiel the space user. The ¡®portals¡¯ were more akin to spatial landmarks and anchors that spells, technology and mages could make use of.
¡®If Xin¡¯s mana is also absorbed, that would mean she probably reallocated her power to vitality. So her advantage on Teheil is more pronounced compared to other races excluding the natives. Without the high priestess controlling her, is my advantage bigger than hers? Yeah, pretty much.¡¯ Ebony''s simulated battles showed him one victory after the other under the conditions of Teheil.
Phantom¡¯s Flicker was ridiculously advantageous for him. The stronger the cushioning force, the greater his advantage against her.
Xin went on about all the weird ingredients that she found while they headed up.
He listened intently but suddenly interrupted her with a chuckle when he thought about something.
¡°What¡¯s so funny?¡± She skipped in front of him and walked backwards.
¡°Oh, I was just thinking how just about anyone on the planet would be killed if the rock below were to fall on them in the right place.¡± Ebony found it fascinating that a single rock could kill him if it fell correctly on his head and chest but few if not no individuals on the planet could achieve the same thing.
The fit of giggles that echoed in the cave seemed to agree with him.
Chapter 355: Mischief
¡°I¡¯ll do the talking. You get her seal back up.¡± Xin casually asked when the tunnel was getting brighter.
¡°It¡¯s ready since I got back in range with your ring.¡± Ebony had already begun recharging the moment he sensed them waiting.
¡°Hey, I want that necklace back. You gave it to me.¡±
Having to interact with a more aggressive version of Xin was nothing new, but it was certainly nostalgic. Her current state and form were also different from what he remembered. ¡®Her vibe is more¡how do I say this? Mature? Is that the word? Rather than mature, maybe her aggression is sharpened at the tip and grounded at the edges.¡¯
Looking at her red hair back, he had to say that he was not familiar with the comparatively short hair she had. It threw him off a bit.
¡°Speak in Gia.¡± He didn''t want to be left in the dark.
They exited with a burst of speed and a Flicker respectively.
¡°Holy Maiden¡I see he failed to pick up the Sacred Anchor too.¡± The High Priestess had the faintest quiver in her voice that both humans picked up.
Ebony didn¡¯t need the ability to sense emotions to feel her fear towards him, only comforted by her two strongest warriors¡¯ presence. They weren¡¯t aware that out of all the Emperors of all races, the natives were the least threat to him because they had non-existent magic resistance and they didn¡¯t have strong gear and equipment to protect them from ice magic either. They didn¡¯t even have the proper vitality control techniques and defensive skills that the other races had developed. He could let them attack him and freeze them all in the same manner he did to the other guards that pierced his body.
He just had to be careful of instant decapitation and heart piercing which wasn¡¯t a problem with Xin acting as an alarm for him unless he was underestimating their speed and power too much.
¡°We¡¯ll pick it up before we leave.¡± Xin ¡®cordially¡¯ replied.
¡°...Holy Maiden, are you going to abandon our people.¡±
¡°Your people¡I will do what I can before I leave. It is beyond me right now to get these races to scram. Take it as my last recompensation for your earlier kindness that your people had given me.¡±
Ebony was confident of their combined powers but even if they were Kings, they wouldn¡¯t be able to get the 4 races out of Teheil. Individual power was not effective when they had so much spare strength behind this invasion. Teheil was too large for the Natives to protect and much too large for two people. They could only blame the planet for being so rich in resources.
¡®There are few natives, even if we conquer a few Golden Fields they wouldn¡¯t be able to protect them. They need a couple more generations of fighters to protect their land. Their strongest fighters aren¡¯t strong enough if other races put enough effort into making sure they are gone¡I suppose the native¡¯s only choice is to take over all the Golden Fields within this curtain of cushioning and survive a few generations while fighting and improving their techniques. There is nothing we can do¡how pathetic.¡¯ Once again, Ebony realised how little his arms could grasp.
¡°30 years! Just 30 more years! I beg you Holy Maiden!¡± The High Priestess got on her knees. The strongest warriors of their kind similarly got on one knee and bowed their heads.
Slightly shocked, Ebony just watched. He didn¡¯t understand their culture and why Xin was so significant to them.
Having her state in half red and half black, Xin couldn¡¯t answer immediately.
¡®I guess I underestimate how significant they are to her.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t going to say anything. He knew the way out of the planet but he still needed to get the tickets. That was going to take time. There were also many things he could get from these Golden Fields.
¡®The cube should be my main goal for now, I really want it. I could use that cube for my Conditioning! With that much gravity mana, I should be able to tear my body apart if I compress it into a spell properly and strengthen it with Domain. Tier 5 Conditioning is not impossible if I use that cube.¡¯
30 years honestly didn¡¯t sound like much but it was too much of a delay. He needed to get away from Teheil for some of his skill evolutions. But he kept silent and made sure he numbed his emotions in case Xin¡¯s decision was affected by him.
¡°3 years. I will leave this city in 3 years. During this, he will seal you up. And I will cut one of your horns.¡±
¡°Wha!?¡± The high priestess was one expressive woman as she couldn¡¯t hide the absolute shock on her face.
¡°It is no different from taking a part of me. You will trade it for your life. That¡¯s all the grace I can give you for taking care of me when I just arrived. Nothing more.¡±
¡°That¡¯s--I accept your punishment for my sin and transgression. I beseech you to light our people¡¯s Altar of Might once again.¡± The High Priestess¡¯s reaction seemed to surprise both the strongest warriors of their people.
¡°Ebony.¡±
At the call, he froze the High Priestess¡¯s body and had the Will he implanted in the ring to lead her back to the farms.
The Guardians looked at each other before making way and bowing, allowing both of them to pass.
¡°So, can you tell me what they want from you?¡±
¡°This race, they call themselves Altarbound Kin. It¡¯s their race¡¯s unique trait, they draw power from Spirit. I¡¯m not sure what¡¯s so special about it but it¡¯s similar to Will in some ways. Their race is connected by Spirit, and their horns allow them to connect to what they call an Altar. According to the High Priestess, they had 7 Altars lit in the past. Altar of Courage, Harmony, Abundance, Fertility, Liberation, Longevity and Might.
The Altarbound Kin can draw corresponding power from lit Altars. One-horned can draw from one Altar, and two-horned can draw from two Altars simultaneously. Whether or not the Altars are lit depends on their people. They needed everyone to believe they had the power to draw that kind of power. For example, the Altar of Courage was only lit very far in the past when they hadn''t conquered Teheil, they had ¡®heroes¡¯ who traversed in the dark, explored the unknown and expanded their reach. Henceforth, the Altar of Courage was lit and people with horns can draw courage from their combined belief that they as a race have courage.
After they prospered and their warriors had no wild monster to fear, the flame on the Altar of Might slowly dissipated. They didn¡¯t need Might. They had no heroes to show off their Might because there were no opponents that required overwhelming force to bring down. At least until the Cinderashians came. They were overwhelmed so badly that their spirit was crushed. With close to every Golden Field taken, every additional death, their Altars were extinguished one by one.
They only have the Altar of Harmony, Abundance and Longevity lit right now. Actually, I think they mentioned that Harmony had changed to Unity. Their race works as one. Abundance makes their crops grow faster and just about anything else in the Golden Fields would propagate faster. Just through spirit and belief. The High Priestess is their symbol of Longevity. They are a long-life species from the start, growing a horn every 800 to 1000 years. The hornless may stay that way if they never evolve to extend their life that much but they also provide spirit to the Altars even without horns.
They want me as a symbol of Might to light their race¡¯s combined belief that they have power. So they can draw power from themselves again.¡±
¡°Even though you are not an Altarbound Kin?¡±
¡°The previous symbol of Might coincidentally had long red fur and oddly shaped claws, like my swords. If you ask me, it was probably that way because he or she was always covered in blood from fighting monsters. Race doesn¡¯t matter to them, just something they believe in and that I am fighting for them. As long as they can make everyone believe that I am one of theirs, they can light their Altar.¡±
¡°I see. That¡¯s not quite possible because you can¡¯t beat their Guardians but their people don¡¯t need to know that. So she just had to bring you along with a group of their people. With new people watching you fight and win against their enemies, they were slowly turning you into their next symbol of might.¡±
Ebony got a clearer picture of their needs and them using Xin. Special circumstances led to the odd dynamics between the Altarbound Kin and Ning Xin.
¡®This is just an issue of logistics and propaganda. They can¡¯t move large numbers of people outside thanks to the cushioning and food is a massive pain to deal with outside the Golden Fields. They don¡¯t have magic to show her fights and feats to all their people. Yes, I think I can solve this.¡¯
¡°I can help you with this.¡±
¡°I know, that¡¯s why I said 3 years. Efficiency is your thing.¡± She said so either thanks to her Intuition or pure guess.
¡°The problem is how many people know about your feats. Going out to fight or protecting a few camps from attacks isn¡¯t going to cut it. Only their warriors would know about it and word of mouth would take time for others to truly believe your might. I can conjure a bunch of humans or even monsters to attack this place. And you can fend them off. Best if it were in the air, they can¡¯t fly. And more could see you. I don¡¯t even need you to act or fight, I can conjure one of you and put on a show. Even light refractions might be enough.¡± If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
¡°Err¡so simply? I feel like I¡¯m deceiving them if you do that.¡±
¡°They draw power from their own belief. It¡¯s not like you aren¡¯t strong, they just don¡¯t believe it yet. And if they do believe you are strong, then they don¡¯t believe you, a human is part of them. They selfishly want a figurehead to fight for them. I might even use their Guardians instead.¡±
¡°She¡¯s using me as a symbol because their belief in their history is already very strong. Even stronger now that they got suppressed and culled. Some of the two-horns personally lived in the generation with this holy maiden of theirs, they are the ones I need to convince. It was easy for me to step in as their ¡®Holy Maiden¡¯. However, their faith in their Guardians is not so strong because they weren¡¯t able to stop the cullings. The current Guardians used to be from a group of seven people who were hailed as their forefront fighters but thanks to all their defeats and the continued deaths of their people and even the deaths of these Guardians, their faith has long been shaken.¡±
¡°I see¡what were you planning to do?¡±
¡°My cooking skills are lagging behind and thanks to her, I haven¡¯t gotten the skill evolutions I was aiming for. I needed more fights but I wasn¡¯t comfortable picking fights with the strong ones. I¡¯m trapped with opponents either too weak or too strong. You are right, the Cinderashians are the most skilled. Their techniques are polished, their base physique is strong. The Kings are too weak, the Emperors are too strong. The jump in power between them makes it hard for me to find a person with very strong technique and equally strong stat-wise. Stats isn¡¯t my point of focus either.¡±
¡°What a dilemma.¡± Ebony had the same problem. With their augmentation, they could easily rival high-level Kings in stats. Even more so if the Kings in question cannot augment themselves with mana. Many had Vitality augmentation but an inferior version compared to Xin¡¯s and Ebony¡¯s Domain and coagulated mana combination.
But the average King had Tier 4 mastery for Cinderashians while the Mirellans had quite a few with only Tier 3 mastery since they relied more on equipment and technology. The jump in power Emperors had was huge not just due to stats but a single evolution in skills would likely be a doubling of power at minimum. Outliers were hard to find on Teheil because this planet wasn¡¯t a place to send talented people to for any of the races present. It was a place to send soldiers, farmers and miners.
¡°Want to come with me to meet Steelbreaker? She¡¯ll be a good opponent for you.¡±
¡°She''s a Ferroquad isn¡¯t she? I killed quite a lot of them when I just arrived. I doubt they¡¯ll be up for a simple spar."
¡°I¡¯ll be with you, running wouldn¡¯t be a problem. And I can change how you look to them with a bit of refractions, though it''ll come off as the intensity of your battle goes up. I want some good fights too. I¡¯ll carry you, traversing in and out wouldn¡¯t take long and my stamina consumption is extremely low compared to yours. We can make trips in and out, I already marked most of the noteworthy people.¡± Ebony was glad that his gravitational perception helped so much since there was no ambient mana to perceive.
¡°Sounds great.¡± His suggestion seemed to spark her love for fighting which was suppressed by having her body possessed.
¡°Then let''s go pick fights.¡±
And so they did.
???
Not being slowed down by fighting, Ebony could transport them both through the curtain of cushioning in record time. Going in and out, he appeared like a ghost at camps and Golden Fields where people he marked with strong auras and requested a spar.
Most of the time, they weren¡¯t welcomed since he literally came knocking on their doors or tents for Ferroquads. The Veilarans took least kindly to his intrusions, they were needlessly angry because they didn¡¯t sense him till he was right at their doorsteps. They seem proud of their abilities of stealth and scouting skills.
He might have underestimated how mobile he was because no matter how much he angered some people, none of them chased him for long or at all.
Extricating themselves from fights against Emperors was the toughest part but they jumped from one Emperor to the next. Every trip out of the Altarbound Kin¡¯s Golden Fields took a few days. Within that time, they took turns challenging as many people as they could.
Ebony was surprised to find that roughly 10% of the people he noticed with potent auras were just Kings. They gave them the best experience fighting, with slightly superior technique but weaker physicals.
He would recharge the seal when they were back at the Altarbound¡¯s city and pick up the dense cube that collected over time. Combining it with the one he was holding, they conveniently combined themselves whenever they regrew. It was surprisingly easy to set up a runic field that cut off the Sacred Anchor¡¯s reach. So he had a farm for these rocks not too deep underground. Sadly, it wouldn¡¯t last for long so he had to come back to refresh them often.
During this down period, he would conjure Xin¡¯s fights in the sky throughout the city. The Holy Priestess was both amazed and shocked. They couldn¡¯t imagine what kind of sorcery they were looking at.
It helped that these Kin recognised some of the people they went out to challenge, especially Cinderashians. Ebony avoided fighting them, only letting Xin fight them. He already knew better Cinderahian techniques and there was no reason to expose himself to them so much. There was another thing that helped him escape them, Entity Evanesce. However, the reduced effectiveness of this skill forced onto him was either due to distance from the caster or something else he wasn''t aware of.
Of all their opponents, the one that gave him the best fight was on the Mirellan''s side. He was a mercenary, not a Mirellan himself. Merely a level 532 King. Even so, it was rare to find someone who could spar on equal terms with just a mere evolution and 30 or so levels over them.
He was what Ezekiel called someone on the Path of the Formless.
It might have been the first time Ebony came across such a fighter and one that was better than him in formless technique. Ebony wanted to get to know this person but when he went knocking on his door for a conversation, it always ended in fighting. The man was quite aggressive and unwilling to talk but it was obvious from their body language that they were both extremely excited with their spars.
On Ebony¡¯s third visit, the man stopped his ambush from opening the doors and invited Ebony to his dojo-looking room for the spars. Still, he never exchanged names, only short comments whenever they fought and pulled off moves that confused him. Ebony did the same.
The man didn¡¯t look old, early thirties in his old Earthen terms. His fighting style used twin daggers about an arm long each. Made for quick killing and assassination which was perfectly countered by Ebony¡¯s style of survival both evasive and defensive.
Both of them understood that having advantages was the weakness of their styles because the achievement they were looking for was to be balanced in every way and not to have a style but free-flowing motions.
His sparring partner had some odd effects, likely Fortifications. When they clashed the first time, Ebony¡¯s reflection of vibrations exploded and sent both of them flying back. It was a defensive fortification that reacted to physical shocks just like his vibration reflection. In the instant they clashed, the reflections kept reflecting each other and burst. Seeing that he was sent back further, he could only assume his opponent had complete Fortifications of 250% every evolution up to King.
Some other traits he noticed were exceptionally strong bones, exceptionally rubbery muscles and very fast reflexive capabilities. Most importantly, cuts from him don¡¯t heal fast, it damages his Mana Chassis. The man himself didn¡¯t notice anything weird so it was probably normal for him to see the cuts he dealt, not heal.
Ebony didn¡¯t think it was the weapon. It was more like a vitality-based attack and effect together with a familiar feeling. Intent or Will. That was the basis for his Fortification of making his cuts not regenerate or heal.
To find something that can permanently hurt Ebony raised his expectations. The threat of danger to his life truly added to his experience of a ¡®good fight¡¯.
Of course, Xin wanted to spar with him too and she did. But she held a bigger advantage. The opponent doesn¡¯t seem familiar with handling opponents that exceeded his speed and strength by so much. Yet he still managed to slip through Xin¡¯s notice, reflex, and defence to land a cut on her ribs. It tore through her robe and bodysuit to cut her but was only flesh deep. The man seemed more surprised that she healed within a second than the fact that her blood was black.
¡°Those daggers are cursed. It reduces health regeneration.¡±
¡°I think it¡¯s fortified by a technique too, not just the dagger.¡±
After a couple of these spars, they were acquainted with each other and were always welcomed for a spar. A kindred spirit was truly rare to come by. Sadly, he was not an amiable man because they had to run away every time as he tried to kill them for real every visit. Well¡the two of them were serious in trying to kill the man too but Ebony realised that it was not fair when he was the one picking fights.
Honestly, what a rare breed of individual to find.
¡®Rubbery muscles to give that¡bounce. Interesting Physique, Fortified even.¡¯
Other people were not that friendly. They did not want deadly spars, they wanted to take his life for trespassing. It would be fine if they wanted his life for a battle but wanting his life for visiting and asking for a spar was too much!
What unreasonable people.
In a year, every Emperor was acquainted with both of them for ¡®sneaking¡¯ in and out of their camps like ghosts and asking for a fight before dipping when they learned enough. There were times when two of them did not escape even when they were losing and those were when he worked on cooperative battles to brush up their teamwork without showing all their skills to each other.
They did this by testing his endurance and holding down a spot in the invader''s territory just for fun. It was fun in the human camps because they would automatically call stronger people after long enough and he didn¡¯t have to find them or go through defensive structures.
¡°The older humans are calling us mischievous brats.¡± Ebony listened to a few meetings between old folks. They did not take a single life throughout this year of challenging top fighters so their intentions were already clear to the invaders.
¡°What about the Ferroquads?¡±
¡°They are laughing it off and calling us interesting kids. I wonder if we look like children that much. It¡¯s been years and we are still called kids.¡±
¡°They can all sense Vitality, life force has a sensation of age behind. Our life force must feel young for Grandmasters. I hear it¡¯s a recurring theme for Xengs until we¡¯re Emperors for some time. I can estimate a living creature¡¯s age pretty well.¡±
¡°Now that you mention it, I do get that feeling from time to time, but it''s not as obvious with mana.¡± Ebony piggybacked Xin back to the Altarbound¡¯s city. They summarised their trip with each other again, having swapped opponents. This would be their last trip for some time. They finished fighting everyone in Central Teheil that he found had strong or interesting overflowing essence. For some reason, no Saint appeared and he didn''t hear a single word about any of these people. However, Ebony never relaxed his guard about any news regarding them.
¡°Can you explain your battle with him? Why do you fight with him differently? The two of you never land attacks and pull back your attacks right before impact a few hundred times before committing to an attack. Looks silly.¡± Xin asked after much consideration. They chose to let each other see some of their battles depending on their opponents.
¡°Hmm, energy conservation? We know when clashing wouldn¡¯t work or when attacks are futile. He¡¯s a master of feints, I might not be as good as him even if I used magic and refraction of light. I¡¯ll have the upper hand if I cast my Domain. In a pure physical exchange with feints, he is superior but I doubt he has Tier 5 mastery. It looks like we¡¯re attacking but we¡¯re just faking for a reaction to take advantage of.¡±
¡°Hmph. That sounds troublesome and more of a waste of energy. Just whack them.¡±
¡°...That has certainly worked for you.¡± Mouth opened, Ebony didn¡¯t expect the skill evolution he was looking for to come to him at this moment.
Chapter 356: Fanatical
With their visits finished, Ebony stayed still in the Altarbound¡¯s city studying his toy cube of mass. Out in the open, it was a pure black cube with shiny purple glints flickering. Despite it only being an Uncommon rarity, the puzzle of its gravitational movements had not been uncovered by him yet.
It also changed the way it absorbed light. Either it was pure darkness underground thanks to the lack of a light source or this cube changed the way it reacted to light when it was exposed. It darkened the area around the cube so light was being absorbed but not much and it appeared to be an active usage of the cube¡¯s energy because its current mass shouldn¡¯t be that high. Maybe the weight of a mountain or two.
The cube didn¡¯t increase in size often, it would absorb as much as the same rarity cubes till it saturates before increasing in size. It required 8 saturated Inferior cubes before they decided to combine and become a Common cube. Before that, they wouldn¡¯t combined with more fresh cubes no matter how many Ebony dragged towards them or touched them together.
For the Common cube, he had to prepare 27 of the fully saturated cubes before they combined into a Uncommon Cube.
¡®They upgrade in rarity in cubes, 1x1x1, 2x2x2, 3x3x3. Assuming the pattern continues I need 64 fully saturated Uncommon cubes to combine into a Rare cube. If the cube underground is Ancient quality like most of the highest rarity materials here, it took 216 fully saturated Epic cubes to combine and I have no idea how saturated it currently is¡¡¯ The material fascinated Ebony quite a bit.
Knowing that fully saturated cubes do not absorb any more, it told him that the singular cube underground wasn¡¯t fully saturated. Either it was the only cube underground, or there were other fully saturated cubes of the same rarity in the surroundings that did not interfere with the new cube¡¯s growth until they had enough fully saturated cubes in range to combine.
If that were the case, there could be anywhere from 0 to 342 fully saturated Ancient ranked cubes underground that hadn¡¯t been unearthed.
¡®Unless that cube is even higher in rarity. After Ancient is Legendary if I¡¯m not wrong. It¡¯s equivalent to Saint Rank or Tier 7.¡¯ Ebony realised that he wasn¡¯t sure what the rank of Teheil¡¯s Worldcore was as that determined the highest quality material that the planet could potentially produce. It was highly likely to be Ancient like Elcra and not any higher.
If it were any higher, the fights here wouldn¡¯t be carried out by so few Emperors. Gearhart himself would have to make sure the planet was his if he wanted to plunder materials that high in quality. Boilers Knights were a must to take control of the place and they might not be sufficient depending on how large the world would be. The current Cinderashian forces here didn¡¯t even have a large quantity of top Bellicose Savants to maintain their portion of Teheil.
¡®Now that I think about it, Unclassed is Tier 1. Huh? Weird.¡¯ Something felt off to Ebony but he couldn¡¯t put his finger on it so he quickly put the thought aside.
It took over 300 million fully saturated Inferior cubes to produce a single Ancient-quality cube. And to saturate them, it was in a similar pattern. The inferior cubes needed to combine 3 of themselves to become saturated but the Common ones needed 6, the Uncommon needed 9 and so on in the pattern of 1+1+1, 2+2+2 instead of multiplying.
Taking the fact that the cube had a range where it could connect to other cubes that increase with their rarity and saturation rate, he could believe it if the one underground was the only cube of its rarity since it was just taking in inferior cubes as they form in real-time. The fun fact was that within the Uncommon cube, he had his hands on was split into smaller cubes where the freshest Inferior cubes were packed. Somehow, it compressed the lower rarity cubes when they came into contact for it to pack them in an orderly fashion.
Ebony was studying this pattern and how it utilised its mass to compress fresh mass. However, the compression did not heat the cube up. It was cool to touch, colder than a normal ice cube. It would do well as a cooling cube to chill drinks. This was opposite to what happens when he compresses his mana, to a small degree some physics logic he knew of still worked the same way. His constitution and spell of having compressed mana in his body heats his body up, it just so happens that his mana properties were rather cold to begin with and ice mana helped.
The latest cube sat on a platform he made out of metal outside the cave. Ebony placed it to stand on one of its edges and the cube always maintained whatever position it was naturally placed in. So the cube had self-stabilisation but would drop to the ground if he tried to place it in the air.
Yet, the cube somehow manages to not make a dent in the ground. It was able to tell a surface from the air, somehow. It would absorb some earth around the point of contact it had and support its position without forcing the earth to crumble.
Some of the Altarbound Kin¡¯s miners had found the rock and were amazed that there was a new ¡®Sacred Anchor¡¯. They thought it was a miracle and that it was a sign that their society was more ¡®anchored¡¯ and would not be blown by their invaders.
Ebony didn¡¯t understand them but this personality trait must be why they had the type of power they had. He didn¡¯t even know when or from whom, but they knew he made this ¡®anchor¡¯. And the rumours that he was always with their Holy Maiden made the rumours about Ebony go in a positive direction.
In two weeks of study, he managed to understand how to perceive this cube and its contents. Through his gravity mana perception, he knew that his current cube was an Uncommon cube that contained 4 Uncommon cubes and was building up the Common cubes within its fifth Uncommon cube. It needed another 4 to become a fully saturated Uncommon. Then, he needed 63 more of these to make them Rare in quality.
With that knowledge, he told Xin not to wait up for the next few weeks and dove back underground to check the bigger toy. From what he could see, the Altarbound Kin did not treat her like a person but as an object of faith. He could sense Xin in...pain? She seemed to see some of the individuals as people she cared for but these people didn''t or no longer talked to her normally. There was always some distance they kept. They never accepted any food she cooked for them and he found out she hadn''t cooked in a long time because it reduced her ''holiness'' by being too real as a creature that requires food. Ebony objectively believed that this race was nuts in a way too different for him to understand.
It didn¡¯t take him nearly as long to get back down since he didn¡¯t stop for meals or sleep.
Touching the cube in the darkness, he delved his senses to count the cubes being packed. It was a logistical problem and he should have more than enough processing power to count cubes.
¡®Its packing structure is the same as expected but the exponential rise in numbers brings about a change in efficiency or power? Oh! The interconnecting space between the different rarities have a stacking structure that¡stacks? That¡¯s where the rise in mass comes from when it jumps up in quality, it uses conflicting forces.¡¯
Indeed, he had the mental capacity to count. It was far easier than building up his unique skill. The cube was indeed Ancient quality and it already had 17 other Ancient quality cubes absorbed. With the last one being built, it would reach full saturated in¡a long time. But once it fully saturates, the surrounding area would see a second cube being formed. And once 343 fully saturated Ancient cubes formed¡a Legendary cube of pure mass would form.
According to his hypothesis backed by the lower rarity patterns.
¡®What is this thread?¡¯ Ebony found the outer surface of the cube to have a single thread of gravity mana running outside that wasn¡¯t its net for absorbing fresh cubes.
Noticing the similarities with his new cube above ground, he got excited and used Sonic Reverberation and Quake Kick to start digging but he underestimated the pressures and compacted earth. It was no wonder the Kin stopped digging. Ebony couldn¡¯t even go through a metre with a Quake Kick. Of course, he made sure the earth around him was stable so that he didn¡¯t collapse the sky on himself and used directed sound magic so that his ''Quake'' was no different from a drill.
They were already very deep underground, much deeper than the underground battlefield between the Tetramyths and Elva¡¯s Empire. Ebony was neither an earth mage nor a Dwarf. The Altarbound Kin came this deep through sheer physical abilities and using their claws since even their digging equipment was worse than a Grandmaster¡¯s claws but he had magic, weakened as it may be.
Fully saturated cubes would bring themselves close to each other, stacking themselves in the same structure they would once combine. They prepared themselves for their eventual combination. However, they left unsaturated cubes alone. It extends the reach of their net to capture fresh cubes.
¡®Now I wonder what the range of the golden light of a Golden Field is. Is it all the way to a planet¡¯s core? Whatever, I just have to dig within the range of the Golden Fields. I might have to search other Golden Fields to see if they produce the same thing.¡¯ Ebony knew it was not a very useful endeavour, he couldn¡¯t even lift the Ancient cube yet.
But something moved his body. Was it a sense of adventure? Was it a sense of treasure hunting in him? It was likely a bit of both and he saw no reason not to follow it.
He was an inexhaustible engine drilling away, chipping away at the earth and making sure he wasn¡¯t breaking things he wasn¡¯t supposed to break. And he was indeed stopped after two weeks. A sudden spike in temperature made him backtrack and call the expert at heat sensing.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.
When he returned, it seemed like the propaganda was working better than they imagined. The High Priestess tilled the lands even when she wasn¡¯t sealed in ice but Ebony never stopped taking over her body control whenever he could.
Their Altar of Might had not been relit yet.
Ebony took a day off before he brought Xin back down.
¡°What do you think?¡±
¡°You need to go through? There¡¯s probably magma past a few metres.¡±
¡°How hot, can we survive?¡±
¡°I can. I doubt you can without full mana protection, you¡¯ll be melted in your current state.¡± Coming down to strength, she was very perceptive. His body was far from the toughest it could be without his mana repository full. It was a small percentage full and only filled with coagulated mana.
While Xin lost all capabilities of magic augmentation, he also lost a huge amount of constitution. He was just fortunate he could run enough augmentations with coagulated mana alone.
By her estimation, the amount of magma they were dealing with wasn¡¯t something he could freeze fast enough either.
¡°I see. Alright, thanks.¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t disappointed that he was stopped by natural forces. Even if he did get through, he wouldn¡¯t be able to lift the cubes away. Having come so close, he also sensed how many cubes were packed together. 340 likely fully saturated cubes sat in or past a magma pool. Since the gravitational mana didn¡¯t turn, he didn¡¯t dare to find a different route. It would be bad if he caused a natural disaster.
He didn¡¯t even need to look for other Golden Fields.
Walking Xin back to train with the two Guardians, he came back down to practise gravitational manipulation to lift this impressive cube. It shouldn¡¯t be as hard as lifting its mass for real, he just needs to make use of the cube¡¯s gravitational strength. That should be a perfect job for a proper mage.
The 3 years that Xin stated flew by.
Although Ebony had presents for Xin, such as the 1.2 kilograms of Molten Nucleus he exchanged for his prison time, he hadn¡¯t given it to her. He was a fair person, he estimated the price before he stole¡reappropriated it from one of Gearhart¡¯s sons who was using the glowing rock for his absorption. It was Legendary quality too.
As for how he reappropriated it, it was significantly easier than one might imagine. When the island one was standing on suddenly flew up, his clones just had to whisk the small pebble away. Invisible and unheard. The non-magic-using society didn¡¯t account for mana theft protection.
The Molten Nucleus would be better taken out when they were back on Elcra or somewhere that didn¡¯t absorb mana. If Teheil recognised foreign materials and thought it had to be drained dry, he would have fed Teheil a good item for free so Ebony left it in his bag within their containers. Same with the Pyrothernite Source Stone he ¡®traded¡¯ for.
The High Priestess or rather, the Altarbound Kin¡¯s were a group of people Ebony might never come to understand. For what the High Priestess had done, and what she was put through didn¡¯t seem to matter to dampen her feelings and mood. She was only delighted that a spark had been lit on their Altar of Might. The horned warriors immediately drew power from the Altar and the belief in their might as a species only skyrocketed once the spark had been lit.
The unhorned, seeing the power that the Altar gave their horned kins, had an even stronger belief that they were powerful, further strengthening the Altar¡¯s spirit flame. This Altar was nothing physical, he couldn¡¯t see it. He only knew about it because the Altarbound Kin¡¯s talk about them all the time.
Since they didn¡¯t need a singular symbol of might anymore, any other kin could bolster the Altar¡¯s power with a show of might. That includes the two strongest Guardians present. With enough time and successful battles, their Altar of Might should regrow to its past glory if not exceed it. That would be very difficult for some time, there used to be billions of them so their current numbers didn¡¯t support their Altar¡¯s spirit flame very much.
¡®This trait is a bit similar to the Tetramyth¡¯s skill, Spirit Nexus but it doesn¡¯t transfer stats just drawing powering from spirit instead so the buff is smaller but it¡¯s less intensive on the user.¡¯ How much power the Altarbound Kin could draw from the shared altar seemed to depend on a skill that the horned ones learned.
Ebony made an effort to get acquainted with a few people who nursed Xin to health when she had been injured in the past. And those who fed her. But he didn¡¯t get close with any of them and they didn¡¯t treat him like a human in both the good and bad way. It was worse for Xin but she was fine with it, perhaps having a superiority complex made it feel natural for her when weaker creatures show that much reverence. That or he was still poor at understanding emotions. ''we should really talk more instead of understanding each other through body language...'' That reverence made Ebony uncomfortable but it was their race¡¯s personality trait.
He never said it out loud but this race would make very good cultists. They were intense in certain ways.
Ebony freed the High Priestess for good and Xin didn¡¯t hesitate to cut off one of the High Priestess horns. Instead of taking the horn away, she placed the horn on the head of the statue of the High Priestess. The strong warriors and priestesses present all knelt and bowed in awe at her actions.
They interpreted it as the Holy Maiden¡¯s final blessing and statement that their race would recover to the point where 4 horned individuals would return in time. They were delusional and the biggest reason why he couldn¡¯t seem to get along with any of them.
¡°Come take a seat.¡± Ebony patted his pet cube floating by his side. After he was done studying his Uncommon version, he stopped syphoning an area away to feed the cube. However, the new cube on the surface was already of Rare quality and was a spot for the Kin to visit and worship.
Ebony didn¡¯t need to feed it because at this quality, it could reach pretty deep underground and find its kind. It would take longer but he was pretty sure a second cube would form deeper underground that should grow faster. When both of them became saturated Ancient cubes, he could return to saturate the one he was bringing away and see if he could combine them all.
Ebony bringing the Sacred Anchor from underground seemed to have their people even more funny ideas and ¡®revelations¡¯. They were so positive that they spun a tale where he ¡®removed¡¯ the old anchor that brought them doom instead. They were crazy.
¡°...You¡¯re sure it''s safe right.¡± Xin looked at the black rock that pulled light around their surroundings in to dim the sky. It sparkled like a starry night sky.
¡°Look, it¡¯s absolutely safe.¡± Ebony manipulated the rock above his head and let go of his control to let it drop.
Screaming, Xin charged and tackled him across the farmlands. The cube dropped like a meteor before stopping the instant it came into contact with the ground. ¡°ARE YOU CRAZY!¡±
As a man and believer of science, Ebony trusted that he understood the properties of this material. It was a metal ore. Despite his initial laugh about dying to a rock, the properties of this ore simply don¡¯t do that. Naturally.
The cube would simply stop short of damaging what it touched, all it did was put upon a dragging force towards it on contact with anything. Since the dragging force couldn¡¯t tear them apart, it was just a cube of metal that, once dropped on a person, wouldn¡¯t splatter them into bloody juice. It would, however, keep dragging enough material around it to support its mass. So if Ebony were to lay under the rock, the surrounding earth would bury, compress and suffocate him to death.
Now that he could control about 15% of all the gravity mana it contained, Ebony could lift it off himself before being buried. That was also thanks to a few skills such as his Domain, more accurately his Will and his manipulation working to strengthen his control. Sadly, he hasn¡¯t been able to override the cube¡¯s properties so he couldn¡¯t actively suppress this effect and dropping it on an opponent wasn¡¯t a viable option of attack.
He had to be careful, roughly 20% of the gravity mana within the cube cannot be used no matter what. That was used to keep the structure of the cube itself stable. If he did use it, through tests on lower quality cubes, the cube would disassemble and vomit out lower quality cubes.
To lift this cube and move it, Ebony didn¡¯t have any spare mana left. All his regeneration that was turned into coagulated mana fast enough was spent to move this cube. He also couldn¡¯t place it in his bag since it wouldn¡¯t budge if he did that. The contents of his bag would be destroyed by the dense cube as well.
Caressing her head, he cupped her chin and cheeks. ¡°Looks like your intuition isn¡¯t that sharp.¡±
With a bonk on his head, he lifted her who sat on the edge of the cube with her legs crossed and sped out of the Altarbound Kin¡¯s city at record speed.
With this much gravity mana, they were moving almost as fast as he could with Phantom¡¯s Flicker. Once his control improved or he was out of Teheil with a greater amount he could utilise and force the cube¡¯s properties to work on his side, this cube might help move him faster than he could run.
¡°Wear some shoes.¡± Ebony thought that the Altarbound kin led her astray.
¡°Mine already got torn and the Kin don¡¯t wear shoes. The ones you made will get destroyed if I move.¡±
¡°Then put on your bodysuit, we¡¯re not exactly welcome where we¡¯re going now.¡± Standing on the cube behind her he checked his direction again after going into the strong curtain of cushioning that swerved them on entry.
¡°Yeah yeah, stop nagging me. I can put that on at any instant. Where are we going?¡±
¡°Our best bet is the humans. The Ferroquads hate you. The Cinderashians have a high chance of recognising this prison of mine. I¡¯m also worried I would get trapped the moment I get out of Teheil. You know what, I¡¯m surprised the Cinderashians never took any actions against me. Mr Guru sure doesn¡¯t want knowledge of me to spread.¡±
¡°You should have killed him, he is an actual threat.¡± Xin swung the top crossed leg back and forth.
¡°I know he¡¯s dangerous but my gut feeling tells me that it''s thanks to him that no one has started chasing me down.¡± Ebony hoped he managed to instil enough fear but his words were overly optimistic. It definitely wasn¡¯t sufficient.
They would think that he only escaped because practically everyone didn¡¯t know he as a prisoner existed, which was very true. His clones wouldn¡¯t be able to do anything if they didn¡¯t have the time to prepare and change the entire Gearhart estate to be able to be lifted into the air. A lot of runic prep work was done over the course of years.
¡°Hmm¡my gut feeling says otherwise. Something else is happening.¡± Xin grabbed his leg when the cube shook unstably after popping out of the strong cushioning and speeding up.
¡®Other reasons Gearhart isn¡¯t coming after me, he might not have returned but he must have heard the news by now. Busy? Letting me grow? Or are they that concerned about my name, Rime¡¡¯
¡°Oh well, I¡¯m not complaining.¡± Ebony shrugged and moved on.
Chapter 357: Boundless Serenity Geyser
3 years ago, Cinderash, Gearhart Estates.
Gearhart¡¯s study room trembled under its owner¡¯s aura. Having been on an excursion with friendly Saints to dungeons elsewhere, it was already the fastest that his Lordship could return.
¡°Cogs, tell me what you think.¡± Surprising Cogs Pwit, Cinderash¡¯s foremost Guru, his Lord did not burst out in anger after hearing his report on the happenings with their battery and mana source.
His Lordship¡¯s island was compromised. A son¡¯s Molten Nucleus was stolen. The island¡¯s Pyrothernite Source Stone was stolen. His family had been taken under¡non-threatening hostages once again. The guards reacted poorly. And Cogs himself had been trapped outside his body for years.
¡°We¡should not be in danger. As we¡¯ve discussed and forgotten his lineage, he hasn¡¯t been smited for saying a name we erased our memories of. So whatever that is, it should be his real name. But he¡¯s human. ''They'' shouldn¡¯t care less about him.¡± Cogs was uncertain. He removed their memories of the name but not the memories of what ''They'' represent. That race of creatures did not think like he or any other creature did but one thing he knew was that they were extremely prideful.
The Saint and he, together with the spirit of the prison cell that trapped their mana source were the only souls who knew of Ebony. And the two of them in the room were the only ones who knew of his heritage that he only dared mention the likings of within their minds. They had to keep it that way, even risking his escape because they couldn¡¯t specifically tell their forces to keep an eye on a prisoner.
In any case, Cogs and Gearhart were more than enough to handle a Grandmaster. But it appeared not.
¡°That¡¯s not my question. How should I make him feel the same? Tell me his weaknesses, close ones. If we can¡¯t trap him, we will have him keep himself trapped.¡± As he expected, there was no way his Lord would forget about the entire hostage situation.
¡°That¡I do not know. He does have who seems to be a lover. A Xeng, but I don¡¯t know who.¡± Cogs was embarrassed to say that he failed to find out everything about his target who barely had active mental defenses.
¡°Elaborate.¡±
¡°He doesn¡¯t even know what his lover¡¯s face looks like.¡± Since he had to splotch Ebony¡¯s mind with colour to see the invisible or clear images of that weird creature, Cogs¡¯s clarity on the memories he saw was not the best so he didn¡¯t even see the Xeng mask¡¯s unique features to identify the individual.
¡°...who else.¡±
¡°Like the rumours say, I don¡¯t think that race of creature truly¡cares for anything or anyone else.¡±
¡°So he has one weakness. And that Xeng child must be the one he was with and Ezekiel sent to Teheil. That¡¯s where he went too. Good enough. But Teheil, that mage kid will die. I should hurry.¡± Gearhart knew more than Cogs in this case. Ezekiel¡¯s memory was sealed by him but it was against the law to look into his fellow Cinderashian servant of Lord Gearhart¡¯s memories so all he did was seal up a certain amount of time¡¯s memory without peeking.
¡°No, my Lord.¡± Cogs raised his hand to stop his master from taking any personal action.
His Lord trusted him a lot, hence he still had his head attached to his body.
¡°That man would thrive on Teheil. He is more, much more than just a frighteningly talented Domain mage.¡± Cogs was confident no one other than Ebony himself understood the man¡¯s capabilities as well as Cogs.
¡°What about his Fluxaether Bane cell?¡±
¡°It might not be effective on Teheil, the newborn spirit might not even be able to handle the shock and fall into hibernation.¡±
¡°What are you sugges-¡±
Their mental conversation was interrupted by knocks on the door. Interruption wouldn¡¯t occur when the study¡¯s door was closed, it was an unspoken rule. The servants were well trained enough to know what kind of emergency permitted them to knock.
So Cogs opened the door to let the butler in to report the emergency. The butler was relaxed and had no urgency on his bearings, a result of their training.
¡°My Lord, you have a visitor. A lone Frost Elf.¡± Nodding to Cogs before kneeling and speaking his mind to their Lord.
¡°Who or what is he representing?¡± Gearhart frowned.
¡®A Frost Elf? What would one of them be doing here of all places?¡¯ Cogs was just as confused. Cinderash was not a kind planet to a race like the Frost Elves and they had zero contact or relations with each other. The Frost Elves may be the loser of a civil war on Yggdrasil and kicked to the edge of the World Tree but they were not a race of people a ¡®puny¡¯ Saint Gearhart could dismiss on a whim.
However, they were also a race that was spread out throughout worlds. If this Frost Elf wasn¡¯t a World Tree native, Saint Gearhart wouldn¡¯t have to bother meeting one of them.
¡°He said he is representing himself. King ranked. He is demanding to meet you. For¡reparations. My Lord, his highness Gareth is currently frozen solid after he went out to greet this individual.¡±
Cogs was shaking his head mentally, this butler was a bit too composed. His Lord¡¯s eldest son was frozen and the butler didn¡¯t start with that in his report.
Enough said he found himself running after his Lord to the waiting room that visitors were usually directed to. The surrounding temperatures dipped drastically when he got closer to the entrance of the estate.
His spine tingled and his stomach lurched when he saw the tall man standing in the wide hallway. A massive bow on his back. Sleeveless shirt to show off his surprisingly muscular arms and light blue steel vambraces covered the veiny forearms. ¡®This is a King?¡¯
Cogs couldn¡¯t move forward any further. There was no ice magic freezing him in place. It was a glare of a hunter that swept past his body before landing back on his Lord Gearhart who stood ahead.
¡°Who are you?¡±
¡°Greetings, Saint Gearhart. I am Vent Ly. I have come to retrieve one of our youths, and reparations for what your people have done to our forest.¡± The measly King exchanged eye contact with a Saint without fear. It was yet another person who didn¡¯t bend to the aura of a Saint.
¡°Whatever you¡¯re here for, release my son.¡±
¡°You should train your children. It¡¯s a dangerous world.¡± The Frost Elf who called himself Vent Ly didn¡¯t utter any complaints and released his spell on the frozen statue.
Breaking into a fit of coughs, his Highness Gareth was on all fours to catch his breath. Gearhart probably docked points from his first son embarrassing him. There were no signs of battle in the hallway. The Frost Elf probably contained Gareth without a fight.
¡°There are no Frost Elves on Cinderash but you.¡± Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Cogs knew Gearhart well enough that his Lord was gritting his teeth and controlling his anger at the disgrace and hostile act. He must know better than to act on emotions, that was how the previous Saint Gearhart died.
¡°Indeed, this place smells terrible. And Ebony seems to have already left. He¡¯s a promising kid. Don¡¯t think you can come to my home, disturb the nest of the mammoths that destroyed a part of our forest and think you can leave without reparations.¡±
¡°What qualifications do you have to ask for reparations for a natural accident that we did not cause?¡±
¡®The forest is an excuse, he¡¯s just here for Ebony. But was their relationship so close?¡¯ Cogs knew that the Frost Elf and Gearhart knew that the mammoth incident was probably real, caused by his Highness Percival on his training trip. Side effects caused by the younger generations during training trips to other worlds were not against any kind of law but the parties involved with any damages would be more than willing to press charges. Elves, no matter the subspecies were territorial races so it wasn''t surprising.
It would be completely different if Ezekiel, the Grade 6 Hazard caused the issue but that wasn¡¯t the case. By now, it was clear to both Cinderashians that this was a Frost Elf from Elcra, a young world that recently came into contact with the larger universe beyond.
Of course, practically every other force nearby knew about Elcra long ago. If God didn¡¯t decree that natural-born worlds such as Elcra were not to be meddled with till their Worldcore was Ancient ranked, it would have long been plundered and overtaken. When Elcra did become Ancient, surrounding forces were surprised to find out that it was very strong for a young planet.
The Myriad Bracelet that had been planted was reverse-engineered and mass-produced. A few other technologies such as rune languages were studied and made use of to a shocking decree. However all of that was trivial compared to the fact that Oplot, a pilgrimage of the Wandering Celestial Monastery was there. It would be hard to find nearby forces that dared to touch the world with him there.
More amazing was that the so-called ¡®Lord¡¯ family of barrier mages, or the individual known as Navin was quite the famous man. The barrier he built and cast over an area perhaps as large as some continents was strong enough to make him famous. A healing barrier that consumed its inhabitants'' mana for energy?
His services were very desirable.
Saint Gearhart had nothing to fear from the Frost Elves of this world. Their culture dictates that they are independent from Yggdrasil¡¯s Frost Elves.
They were not mistaken.
Yet Gearhart would remember this day to be the day he made one of his greatest mistakes.
The Frost Elf vanished from his home in a blink, they hadn''t been looking at a real body.
Butlers, Savants and calls started to flood the next hours and days of his life.
Half of Cinderash¡¯s dungeons disappeared. Destroyed.
He simply didn¡¯t know he had been standing before a Son of God.
???
¡°Haha, what now?¡± Ebony scratched his head.
The Mirellans didn¡¯t have grudges against him or Xin. Although they knew Xin was part of the Natives and killed some of their soldiers, their race had very complicated politics, forces and conflicts of interest.
Both of them were allowed into cities without a problem. At least, after the past 3 years of constant sneaking in ambushes and constant success as sneaking out. They were extremely interested in how Ebony could fly and use mana but they had no one who could force a word out of his mouth. They didn¡¯t even have magic equipment that could trap him. The only ranged fighters they had were a single unreasonably strong archer whose arrows ignored the cushioning effect and a few unique squads with advanced weaponry.
Under the effects of the cushioning, ranged forces were almost as disadvantaged as mages.
Since both of them hadn¡¯t been hostile, the Mirellans let them in knowing that they had few people who could stop the two of them. They were here for business and their merchants could smell it.
Sadly, Ebony was left embarrassed. They couldn¡¯t even afford a single ticket, much less two. Mana ores were not a viable currency here since all of them would turn to dust the moment they were near the planet. They trusted a banking service that Ebony did not have an account with.
The materials and ingredients they got from the Altarbound Kin were valuable but the tickets out of Teheil was simply too expensive. Since teleportation out would be even more expensive, the Mirellans actually have vehicles that directly fly out of space. But with Teheil¡¯s conditions, although they consider the gravity here average, the cushioning made flight immensely difficult so their vehicles took a lot to run.
¡®Spaceships, I really want to try riding one. I didn¡¯t think all the Ancient ranked material and we can¡¯t even afford a ticket.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t even referring to private trips, he had to follow their flight schedule with the earliest flight out to be in 8 months. As for using portal technology to get out, he could forget about it as getting these tickets sound a lot more doable.
Coming to Teheil was much easier than leaving.
The miners, farmers and support classes who came here all planned to work for 50 to 100 standard years before even considering leaving while the soldiers had a 10 to 30-year plan. Although Ebony was good at making money, those methods were not viable here. Without a bank account connected to Eidolon Nexus, he couldn¡¯t do jobs to receive money. All he had left was to trade materials for money on the tab or directly for the ticket.
¡°We still have 8 months. Let¡¯s find a ques--job.¡± Xin said the unfamiliar words.
¡®Can I sell energy in some form? I have no idea what their spaceship or vehicle looks like or what fuel they run on.¡¯ Ebony was back to selling his services of ¡®blessing¡¯ crates and boots. It was suggested by the Mirellans when they found out he was the Ferroquad¡¯s Spirit Blesser.
¡®So their weapons run on electricity and this liquid is the container?¡¯ Ebony managed to get his hands on a futuristic gun, very different from Cinderashian guns that used steam and rocks that could turn to lava or simply explosive-driven bullets.
¡°That is not lightning. If they used this on me or any lightning mage, we wouldn¡¯t be able to manipulate the bullet.¡± Xin commented from the side. She was running a food stall while he ran his equipment blessing stall.
They could sell their services as mercenaries and fit in perfectly with the Mirellans but they didn¡¯t. Their power was not for others to lend or buy and they did not want to interfere with this territory war any further than they already did.
Ebony still sold his services to the Ferroquads in secret, though people would find out in time. He was paid in rare ores and jewels. But with the Mirellans, those who bought his services deposited the money to the people in charge of the tickets, directly deducting the cost of the tickets. They were very particular with contracts so he made sure he understood the terms before he signed the agreement for this method of buying a ticket.
It was apparently backed by the Eidolon Nexus so he shouldn¡¯t have to worry. The Eidolon was an artificial intelligence, not unlike a Spirit creature that was made by a joint venture between the God of Knowledge, God of Just with the help of an unknown entity who was only known to be the one who handled the technology and the logistics. This was common knowledge that his clones learned when they were on Cinderash.
Eidolon was as fair as any contract could be. It handled the rewards and punishments so no one dared to go against contracts unless the contract itself wasn¡¯t fair or the party involved never planned to follow the terms. That¡¯s why contract terms had to be understood very carefully.
¡®This is fun. Come to think of it, I¡¯ve never really worked for my own money. Since I landed on Elcra, other than one or two quests or hunting all my money came from my regeneration and the gamble that Sister Jing placed.¡¯ Before that, he was sent to Elcra before his first real job on Earth.
Money had rarely been a problem for Ebony and he found it satisfying to see the progress he was making towards the ticket he was buying increase as the days go by. He expanded his services to farming, transport, and digging equipment. He had a lot more trouble because of the complicated structure of these vehicles compared to the Ferroquad¡¯s hand and leg driven carts.
The owners of said equipment, be it independent farmers or government-owned equipment, were very sensitive to any modifications that could potentially break or reduce the efficiency of their expensive tools. And they were right because Ebony realised how messy the constructs already were. It might not be runes but the base materials themselves were already fully messed with.
He could only help lower-level and poorer farmers with their equipment. But it was still an increase in his market and income.
Look to the left where Xin was cooking up a storm. He sat on his chair with a thick table as a work desk and hammered runes into place on another metal wheel
¡®This is nice. Perhaps even more so than challenging battles or increasing skill levels and tiers. I feel like doing this forever isn¡¯t so bad.¡¯ Ebony consciously made a faint smile when he realised his hands and mind stopped working.
¡°Hey! Stop ogling your woman, I need that to get back to work.¡± His customer grinned while he complained.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Core Skill Perpetual Tranquillity Spring evolved into Boundless Serenity Geyser.¡¯
¡°Huh, is that all it takes?¡± No fighting, no intense struggle, no moral dilemma. Ebony cocked his head at the sudden change within him.
Chapter 358: Ejection
Ebony¡¯s sales increased since he was capable of selling more modified items. It helped a lot that once he moulded them, the recharging didn¡¯t take much time. Only mana.
Boundless Serenity Geyser - A boundless source of energy has taken root in your mental world and mana chassis, breaking your state of mind is nigh impossible regardless of consciousness increasing Mana and Stamina rate by 3000% + 25.0% per level, Perception by 1500% + 25.0% per level. Chaos reigns, your calm sustains.
Once again, the skill description doesn¡¯t say much and it didn¡¯t even change much from Perpetual Tranquility Spring. But Ebony felt a world of difference. It was no wonder they had zero chance of beating some of the Emperors here and why the differences between individuals were so large. They must have tier 5 and 6 skills be it passives or actives.
¡®Also, what¡¯s with the last line? Who wrote that silly line? The ubiquitous providence?¡¯ On the topic of the Ubiquitous Providence, his complete Unique skill seemed to have been recorded as Echelon 2 and Order 3. Ebony had no idea what that could mean but he received a notification saying he was bestowed the equivalent value of Natural Potential that he supposedly gave the Ubiquitous Providence.
This led him to believe that the ¡®system¡¯ gained something when he made a Unique Skill and he gained Natural Potential in return. He couldn¡¯t feel or sense Natural Potential so he had no idea the quantity or quality of Potential he gained.
Xin stopped him once more when he tried to bring up the topic of Unique Skills again but less urgently.
Since knowing about Unique Skills didn¡¯t exactly give her the ability to create one, he figured it was not a big deal but he did want to inform her before she evolved. Trusting her intuition, he remained silent on the topic.
The effects of weight reduction were useful in many areas and his services marketed themselves. Either through the results that transport had increased in efficiency by a few times or that certain mercenary groups were speeding through the wild lands like no tomorrow.
Ebony¡¯s prices were fair, he charged an equal value of what his mana would be worth if it were in mana ores. The only service with higher prices was the initial moulding. There was a limit to how many items he could recharge with coagulated mana, so he reduced his daily equipment moulding and even raised his prices to discourage new customers.
He currently had several thousand pieces of singular items that had to be recharged every 3 to 4 days with the humans. And several thousands with the Ferroquads. The only ones missing out were the Cinderash.
Not everyone came back for recharge, especially for the Ferroquads. They had to wait for him to go to them, and they only used it if they needed to be on the move since they were more cargo-focused. The humans had more farming equipment moulded which meant they kept paying him when they found out it increased their productivity. They could till more lands in a shorter period and in the Golden Fields they had control over, they had more land than farmers. Same with the quarry miners, jewellers, herb gardeners.
Because his rune work was under scrutiny of some particularly sensitive people, they rated his work to be below average for Grandmasters. He took it as a compliment since he was not a crafter or specialist with compounding runic skills. The reason his work was even sold was because it was effective on Teheil while others were not.
Xin¡¯s cookhouse did well too. Her meals increased stats and she had far more customers than he did. Though a single sale earned her a lot less money after deducting the cost of ingredients.
There was no way it wouldn¡¯t do well.
It seemed like the Mirellans and Veilarans had no good advancements in culinary arts. Unlike potions, eating her food had zero side effects and even nourished energy. Her cooking had come pretty far because the old effects only lasted hours but the current ones could last days. That was also due to the ingredient quality of Teheil being unreasonably high so it wasn¡¯t just her skills.
More importantly, her food managed to get people coming back even if they already had a buff. Just because it tasted good and no proper chef thought it was a good idea to invade a planet with soldiers and farmers. New breeds of ingredients were funnelled to alchemists more than chefs.
There were army chefs but their goal was always feeding the stomach before satisfying the tongue. Humans safe behind city walls always searched for greater comfort and luxury. That was food¡¯s magical hold on humans.
Xin learned a lot about maintaining a business or her open-air cookhouse would¡¯ve made a lot more. Adjusting her meals to the tongues of Mirellans and Veilarans was the easiest task. Doing the math, logistics and deciding on a permanent menu was the challenge she faced. With limited stoves and tools, it just didn¡¯t make sense for her to have an excessively large menu.
Barely, they just barely made enough money within 8 months for two tickets. As a man, he was happy he had the basic ability to bring more money to the table. He didn¡¯t know he had that kind of pride or bias in him before.
Their jobs hadn¡¯t been enough. Ebony took part-time jobs in construction. It was not a secret that he could use magic. Gravity magic made construction a lot easier. Xin took jobs that required cutting.
Since Emperors were all fighters, having people with similar levels of physical strength without mana augmentation was hard to find. She sliced massive overgrown tree roots standing in the way of cavern digging. Sliced stones and ores into precise shapes.
Ebony came across skirmishes between the Altarbound Kin and other races during movement to and fro Ferroquad lands. He did not interfere.
He wasn¡¯t able to sell his services as a wall builder to the Ferroquads. They didn¡¯t like walls.
It was too bad there were close to no wild monsters or they would¡¯ve been hunters.
Packed and ready to go, Ebony shared his bag space with Xin. Outside of all the rare materials, it was just food and Teheil-only ingredients. This spatial bag his clones got was smaller than their original bag but they had to settle for it.
¡°This is the vehicle?¡± Ebony asked the bald ticket seller. A merchant, non-Mirellan. He was a man that had no connections with any of the races present, just another merchant and the highest-level person he met besides Gearhart himself. He wore a uniform under the banner of the sector¡¯s space station and introduced himself as such. The same group of people handled the transport out of Teheil for the Cinderash and Ferroquads.
Despite how rich the Mirellans were, they did not have this vehicle meant to get out of certain planets with extreme gravity or conditions. But the ¡®vehicle¡¯ in question¡looked sketchy.
¡°Ebony, this is just a white metal cone¡¡± Xin nudged him with equal suspicion.
¡°I can see that.¡± Beside them were other would-be passengers.
¡°Indeed, this is our region¡¯s class 3 ejection shuttle. All it needs to do is get us out of the atmosphere and we¡¯ll portal to the space station. For Teheil, the trip would take 2 standard days on average.¡± The merchant kindly explained, unlike the snickers and giggles they got from other passengers.
Ebony and Xin were bumpkins who had never been on a shuttle that looked like a pure white metal cone, they had never been to the space station and the proof was that they didn¡¯t have an Eidolon Nexus account.
A seamless door opened on the large cone and they entered one after the other. Climbing stairs the moment they passed through the door before arriving at a¡airport lobby?
Metallic, modern.
Xin was acting like a bumpkin but this was a nostalgic scene for him.
There were three hundred seats and Ebony¡¯s mana senses were wiped blind. More blind than Teheil could ever hope to blind him. He was left with his 5 physical senses.
After every headcount was accounted for and tickets were confirmed, they were asked to be seated before the take-off. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
¡®No windows, a shame.¡¯
¡°We¡¯re taking off, in 3, 2 and off we go.¡± The announcer did not count down to 1.
Unshaking, Ebony couldn¡¯t even tell but the shuttle was supposedly moving and flying into space.
¡°Okay people. Safe take off. Please stay seated till the green lights near the stairs light up. We¡¯ll serve two meals a standard day, you can check the menu on the wall to the left. Our chef is quite the professional. If you have any queries, feel free to raise them to my assistant attendant, Leqor who¡¯ll be right there with you once you are free to walk around. I know I know, our Lexi has two modules so those who are in a rush to connect to the Eidolon Nexus please take a queue slip.¡± The voice of the pilot of Lexi, the shuttle was that of a cheerful young man.
Not being able to see the view of flight into space was a real bummer.
There was a small screen in the cramped space that played the news but Ebony didn¡¯t know the terms, the planets, the forces that were being reported. Xin fell asleep beside him because there was nothing to do or see and mealtime would have to wait till they could leave their seats.
The seats were placed in rows of two but it was not a wide room when 300 people were packed together. Ebony¡¯s cube had to stay near the ceiling. He was lucky the shuttle didn¡¯t seem to manipulate gravity or wasn¡¯t doing that currently and his control of the cube didn¡¯t affect the flight.
¡®I should take that queue slip.¡¯ Ebony found that there was a button for him on the armrest for that purpose. He reached over to Xin¡¯s side and helped her press the same button. From the looks of it, the internet wasn¡¯t something anyone could connect to with a phone.
¡®Getting out of Teheil was so easy, it¡¯s a little anticlimactic. Is Gearhart just letting me grow and can¡¯t be bothered to get me? He is adamant not to give any orders or information to his own soldiers about me? Haha, maybe he¡¯s just waiting at the station.¡¯ Ebony could name 3 to 4 Cinderashian who might have made life very difficult for him on Teheil alone much less Cinderash as a whole.
Although he had the advantage of near endless stamina and even a bit of magic usage, it probably wouldn¡¯t have been enough if they tried to kill him. As long as they weren¡¯t trying to kill him, capture was going to be a lot harder. Mr Guru should be well aware.
Through the two of their challenges across Central Teheil, he did not find any Saint around. Either he couldn¡¯t sense them, or there wasn¡¯t any of them present at all times.
Ebony heard a soft electronic voice reporting their queue numbers. They were 299 and 300 respectively, he clearly underestimated how much these people wanted to get onto the net. Each person had 30 minutes and they had to take another queue slip if they wanted another turn or more time.
There was idle time, he ought to check what¡¯s changed since he¡¯d left Elcra.
Name: Ebony Rime
Core Skill:
Boundless Serenity Geyser Lvl 1148 (¢õ)
Arsenal of Will Domain Lvl 1012 (¢ó)
Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge Lvl 1042 (¢ô)
Unique Skill: Mireloom Chassis Engine Lvl 738 (¢ô)
Class: Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace - Lvl 500
Class Skills:
Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts Lvl 977 (¢õ)
Phantom¡¯s Flicker Lvl 1032 (¢ô)
Ice Mana Decree Lvl 967
Woven Frostblaze Augmentation Lvl 899 (¢ó)
Ethereal Arctic Rivertide Art Lvl 788 (¢ô)
Woven Frostblaze Melding Lvl 843 (¢ô)
Perennial Everfrost Armament Lvl 863 (¢ô)
Ethereal Fluid Blitz Lvl 772 (¢ô)
Frigid Tranquility¡¯s Martial Grace Conditioning Lvl 494 (¢ô)
Entity Evanesce Lvl 1291
Veritable Ice Clone Lvl 951 (¢ó)
Blossom of Shimmering Chill Lvl 700 (¢ó)
Stalactite Sunder Lvl 809 (¢ó)
Frigid Distorted Refraction Lvl 899 (¢ó)
Frostweave Vital Bolster Lvl 760 (¢ó)
Sub-Class: Oppressive Resonance Lvl 500
Sub-Class Skills:
Resonant Battle Hymn Lvl 742 (¢ó)
Extreme Mana Vibration Lvl 758
Gravity Mana Command Lvl 825
Tempestuous Lull Pelt Lvl 710 (¢ô)
Sonic Reverberation Lvl 748 (¢ó)
Torrent Path Lvl 825 (¢ó)
Gravity Quelling Vortex Lvl 715 (¢ó)
Quake Kick Lvl 758 (¢ó)
**** ******** Pseudo-Imitation Roar Lvl 702 (¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Profession: Mana Adjudicator - Lvl 500
Profession Skills:
Runic Mana Shaping Lvl 777 (¢ó)
Coagulated Mana Repository Lvl 1008 (¢ô)
Tolerant Stalwart Foundation Lvl 780 (¢ó)
Mana Chassis Implosion Lvl 910 (¢ó)
Empty Skill Slot
Health: 20,722/20,722
Stamina: 21,040/21,040
Mana: 22,531/5,588,723
Unallocated stat points: 0
Strength: 1200
Vitality: 1300
Constitution: 1500
Endurance: 1100
Agility: 1500
Intelligence: 3506
Wisdom: 4350
Perception: 800
Generic Skills:
Appraise Lvl 32 (¢ò)
Extreme Cold Resistance Lvl 232 (¢ô)
Running Lvl 220 (¢ñ)
Mental Mapping Lvl 208 (¢ò)
English Lvl 8
Elcrian Lvl 14
Housekeeping Lvl 142 (¢ñ)
Sustained Optimum Condition Lvl 315 (¢ò)
Advanced Mana Tracking Lvl 115 (¢ó)
Game Processing Lvl 96 (¢ñ)
Extreme Heat Resistance Lvl 326 (¢ô)
Sheer Divination Resistance Lvl 12 (¢ò)
Gardening Lvl 122 (¢ñ)
Cooking Lvl 109 (¢ñ)
Integrated Trance Speed Reading Lvl 215 (¢ò)
Korun Lvl 282
Slumber Survival Instinct Lvl 154 (¢ò)
Immense Hunger Resistance Lvl 108 (¢ó)
Immense Exhaustion Resistance Lvl 226 (¢ó)
Lightning Resistance Lvl 160 (¢ñ)
Sheer Blood Resistance Lvl 110 (¢ò)
Wind Resistance Lvl 153 (¢ñ)
Poison Resistance 20 (¢ñ)
Preservation Bubble Lvl 280 (¢ñ)
Sustenance Regulation Lvl 115 (¢ò)
Lightning Mana Manipulation Lvl 234
Adaptable Bow Mastery Lvl 91 (¢ñ)
Sheer Mana Poisoning Resistance Lvl 51 (¢ò)
Swimming Lvl 46 (¢ñ)
Lightning Tether Lvl 299 (¢ñ)
Electroshock Lvl 305 (¢ñ)
Soul Resilience Lvl 49
Lunar Bio Clock Lvl 88 (¢ò)
Gia Lvl 14
Will Relay Buffer Lvl 268 (¢ó)
¡®Now that¡¯s a proper mage¡¯s mana capacity. And my mana¡¯s beginning to trickle back in even though I had been using everything to lift Hefty. We must be leaving the range of Teheil¡¯s grasp. I can¡¯t believe it¡¯s been over ten years since my body had a full pool of mana.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s mana chassis revitalised as every crevice of his ¡®factory¡¯ began to be lubricated with mana.
It felt like a wave of pleasure that intensified throughout his body as they got further from Teheil.
¡°Ugh¡prisoner what did you do to me?¡± Pieces of metal unfolded and grew around his wrist.
Chapter 359: Sailing
¡°Good morning. You can continue sleeping.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t feel threatened by his old prison cell.
Even if it had a functioning spirit, was made of Legendary-quality material by a Saint smith, it was not connected to any source. He was quite confident he could saturate the cell and have free mana for himself with time, although her capacity was probably sky-high. The only problem was that the spirit could adapt, learn and grow, it could break down his coagulated mana far better than Teheil could as long as it had time.
The unfolding pieces of metal struggled to cover his forearm but it was only a matter of time before it recovered once they left Teheil further behind.
Ebony gave the bracelet a hard flick with reverberations and chimed a lullaby to echo throughout the metal. It didn¡¯t work and the growth of unfolding hexagons with orange outlines didn¡¯t slow down so he pulled out more forceful measures, one he was sure would work. Reverberating the Pseudo-Imitation Roar, the spirit screamed out in pain from the soul attack.
Of course, no passenger could hear it as it was screaming in his head.
¡®It worked better than I assumed.¡¯ This was a skill he rarely used but it was his backup for escaping his cell. He didn¡¯t expect the metal bracelet to obediently reduce its size and shape back to normal. The image of a young girl quivered in the corner of his mind, trying to make him feel bad for hurting her. She soon fell asleep again but her drain on his mana did not disappear, just a smidgen to feed and heal herself.
Out of all the skills he had, this was one that Mr Guru might not have found out about. Weirdly enough considering he read so much of his memories. Because he knew Ebony could stun people but thought it was just a sound and aura attack. It was an aura attack but also a soul attack, so he felt it would work on the baby spirit. Holding back the use of this skill and trapping Mr Guru within his mindspace took time.
Other than that, his frostflame skills were also lacking use. He had other areas to use his limited mana on.
Entity Evanescence was still with him, but it hadn''t been activated for years. Those Mandate user¡¯s mandates should have some sort of range that likely didn¡¯t span worlds but the skill still stubbornly stuck on him.
Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Art - Elusive and unperceivable to those who see but not feel. No blocks, no escape. Adapting to change in battle faster than changes can find you, leave but a shade of your art in your wake. Poise and grace increase by 2500% + 25.0% per level. Strength and Agility while tracing the Phantasmal Shade increases by 1500% + 25.0% per level. Traces of your mana intensifies Phantasmal Shade by 100% + 1.0% per level.
Poise and grace seem to override flexibility, balance, stability and deftness but they should mean the same thing. The Strength and Agility base buff was not high compared to weapon arts that Cinderashians have but it was great compared with other hand-to-hand combat arts.
In comparison, his Tier 4 Ethereal Arctic Rivertide Art had been refined to have a base Strength and speed buff of 1800%. At their current stats, agility was closer to having the effect of allowing him to control his strength at a certain speed. It helps both the dexterity of limbs and the precision of muscular control. Weapons were all for power and the differences between what he could do with mere limbs were reaching the limits at high tiers.
It was disappointing that his excessive use of clones did not evolve his cloning skill. The ice part was okay but he might not understand the ¡®clone¡¯ part of the skill as well as he¡¯d imagine. It may even be the other way around.
Ebony¡¯s Domain, for once, was held back by his weak traits. As long as his Will wasn¡¯t strong enough, he couldn¡¯t improve it any further. It had little to do with efficiency like it was with muscle output or mental strength output that he had in spades. A budding Domain was already something people usually had from Emperor or a talented King onwards.
Gravity and Sound mana manipulation both evolved. Control of the cube was now possible. The rest of his Sub-Class skills hit a sort of wall that didn¡¯t shake no matter how hard he tried changing or improving them. They only levelled without significant improvement.
His Profession skill Runic Mana Shaping was beyond his proficiency with runes.
Runic Mana Shaping - Shape raw mana with or without any physical materials with mana manipulation. Shaping runic procedures into or on an entity with increasing efficiency and accuracy. Increases familiarity with repeated mana pathways and their effectiveness by 800% + 10.0% per level. Increases fine control over mana by 1000% + 10.0% per level.
Having used and experimented with runes for years, he understood what the skill did better now. Effectiveness was useless beyond a certain point. If a runic formula can convert 1 mana to 3 strength, he might achieve 1 to 2.5 after moulding or shaping it into an object. After re-moulding the formula a couple dozen times, he might get the runes to be at full effect but it would never have the effect greater than 1 to 3.
Ebony¡¯s current skill level and tier made it such that every formula he knew could be shaped at full effectiveness in one try, only slightly affected by the material he was trying to shape. However, this shouldn¡¯t be a problem once he got back to Dusk with the hibernating clones who had been studying and researching.
As far as he was aware, they should have managed to take advantage of Dusk and hibernated without dissipating. However, it¡¯s been so long that Dusk should only have the residual Will remaining. Even if it trapped all the clones'' memories, it was hard to say if they were ¡®alive¡¯.
The skill Appraise has levelled significantly thanks to the many advanced and high-level individuals he had been faced with in the past decade.
Heat resistance evolved after he literally melted into a pool of flesh and bones during his earlier days on Cinderash. Unsurprisingly, even with the sulphur in the air, Ebony was unable to get poisoned so his poison resistance didn¡¯t budge.
Advanced Mana Tracking was a pleasant surprise. All the blind work he and his clones did mutate his old physical footprint tracking. The skill made him more sensitive to fainter traces of foreign mana, more specifically, mana with a bit of life in it. So he could tell when a creature left prints. It was the active version of his passive mana perception with no real special ability but a good support skill nonetheless.
It appeared that his high-speed motions classified the resistance he faced as a wind attack and he was able to train Wind Resistance naturally without putting much thought into it.
He practised lightning magic within his body quite a lot during his time on Teheil to see if there was any way he could boost his reflexes. Another body augmentation so to speak. Of course, the spells he used on himself were not augmentation and they weren¡¯t even strong enough to train his resistance by much.
Ebony¡¯s current maximum mana capacity was a surprise to him. It was rare that two skills with the same effect did not multiply. Preservation Bubble¡¯s increase in mana capacity did not stack with Mireloom¡¯s. Preservation Bubble increased its pool size by 263,488 points while Mireloom increased it by 5,325,235. Both worked on his base after including Conditioning before they were added instead of one skill coming into effect before a second scaled it up.
It must have been the completely different working principles. Preservation Bubble acted externally by a film of vitality, it had zero relations with his mana chassis and was just a larger container. Ebony saw it as an obsolete skill now. He just had to take one good punch and all the stored mana would scatter from the opening. It was very unreliable and his strength and control over Vitality is laughable in comparison to Xin or his mana control.
100 of his stats went to Agility and the rest to Intelligence, excluding the Profession stats that all went into Wisdom.
The biggest changes had to be his core skill evolution, Unique Skill completion and massive improvements to both of his masteries that were the foundations of his close combat abilities.
There were still items on his agenda before his next evolution but he had a feeling it wouldn¡¯t take nearly as long if he wasn¡¯t interrupted. Using the items they got from their trip for their Physique. Developing his Core. Or maybe even hunting an excessively high-level monster, it felt possible if he planned the hunt right.
He was able to feel the limits of his Sub-Class and Profession skills and had first-hand experience understanding the desire for Natural potential. Even his Class skills felt like they hit a wall. Core Skills were the only exception where he couldn¡¯t feel any sort of limit at the moment. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
When Ebony felt Teheil¡¯s grasp on him disappear, the pilot or some employee announced that it was safe to stand and walk around. It took less than half an hour, making him wonder why the trip would take 2 days. A lady two seats down the row stood up and headed for the module on the left side. The top of the module had a small screen showing numbers in Gia. The cabin they were cramped in had one of these modules on the front left and right.
The ¡®module¡¯ was just a square green screen on the wall and he saw that all the lady and the man on the right did was put their palms to the screen before they had their eyes closed. Nothing showed up on the green screen.
Patiently waiting, he looked through the menu but he didn¡¯t recognise any of the dish names. There were descriptors and he decided to try a tail steak with what sounded like a vegetable. It should be from a gator of some kind. Xin woke up not long after he looked at the menu her body told her it was close to mealtime. She had a hard time because they couldn¡¯t choose one of everything.
Sadly, they did not earn enough money to pay for anything they wanted.
She decided on a dish called Saffron Cauldron and he guessed that it was due to the longest list of ingredients.
Their food came before their turn on the module. He indeed got a tail steak with a purple-coloured asparagus. The steak came with scales around the flesh and the bone was left in the middle. The meat was dark green in colour but the smell of food wafting through the cabin was irresistibly good. It made his stomach grumble.
¡®A skill that makes fragrance illicit hunger?¡¯ The dramatic effect made Ebony certain that magic, skill or Fortifications were at play here.
He was probably right when he dug into the food that only made him more hungry.
¡®Ting¡¯ ¡®Consumed Tailed Mecistop, efficiency of learning tail-related skills increased by 312% for 4 hours. Tail is invigorated by 355% for 2 hours. Active tail skills have 567% reduced stamina consumption for 8 hours. Marginally increase scale hardness permanently.¡¯
The effect was impressive, although useless for him. He did feel his lower spine heat up a little but ultimately did nothing. It was very different from stat increasing foods that Xin made. Apparently, scaled-tailed races whose physiques were below a certain degree of strength could permanently strengthen their tail with this dish.
Out of her combat state, Xin ate slowly. She had been disappointed when the black cauldron-designed bowl came out and was served on the foldable table they had. The meal was a colourful seafood paella but the serving size was smaller than his steak. Even then, she devoured it down to nothing in minutes.
She only had praise for the dish other than the serving size meant for a child. The announcer wasn¡¯t kidding when they said their chef was a professional. He had a bite of her dish and she had a bite of the tail steak he had. With his taste buds back, he had to say that these were the best dishes he¡¯d ever had.
The smell of food from the slow eaters in the cabin made Xin extremely uncomfortable. She was about to tear out his biceps with how hard she was grabbing him to control herself.
The passengers might not be able to see her stare behind the mask but they could feel her glare. There were many familiar faces around. Some were his customers, others were Xin¡¯s and many were just strong people they¡¯d challenged before. Only people strong or rich enough had the money to travel back and forth more often.
As far as he was aware, the Ferroquads and Cinderash both had to buy this company¡¯s or group¡¯s services when it came to leaving Teheil but the merchants weren¡¯t silly enough to put them all on the same vehicle. Though Veillarans were allies or subordinates to the Mirellans, none of them were on the shuttle.
¡°I¡¯ve heard you two didn¡¯t come here by choice, first time going to our station?¡± A friendly merchant lady with jewellery on her hands, neck and face chatted them up. Skinny but tall, she had black wavy tattoos that ran down from her right cheek down under her tight-fitting clothes. She was the biggest farming vehicle merchant on Teheil and someone Ebony had conversed with on multiple occasions. It was far from the only product she dealt with but it was the one he knew of.
She had good eyes for items and was the one who appraised and verified his rune work. In her harsh words, she would never use his crafted work if she wasn¡¯t on Teheil. None of the equipment they brought that used mana or runes worked, so she had spent quite a lot of money to find out why his runes worked.
Unsurprisingly, she managed to get her hands on his mana and found people who could study it. So she knew why his items worked but didn¡¯t spread that knowledge. Since then, she tried to stay in contact with him but he didn¡¯t have an Eidolon Nexus account and she didn¡¯t have a callstone. And it wasn¡¯t like callstones worked at the distances of planets.
¡°It is, what do we have to look out for?¡± Xin leaned away from the lady who stood beside their seat.
¡°The two of you aren¡¯t Mirellans, that much is clear to me. Let¡¯s see¡conquered space spans not quite infinitely but for us, we just have to know our sector and galactic region. Currently, no God has placed claims on our region and neither has one been assigned by the Nebula Watch.
But every sector is technically the property of one or more Demi-Gods and they collectively own and manage the region. Even amongst them, there is a clear hierarchy. Every sector¡¯s station has a Demi-God managing it. Some do their job, others have their hands off. It is not uncommon for them to live on the station and the one we¡¯re going to is one of these and there is a no fighting rule in place. So as long as you don¡¯t make silly mistakes, you are safe. As far as I¡¯m aware, our sector no longer has any idiots or daredevils.¡±
¡°There¡¯s no taboo on what we say about them?¡± Ebony questioned. The merchant was speaking quite lightly on the topic of Demi-Gods.
¡°...It would be smart not to talk about them once we¡¯re on the station. In any case, our sector is diverse. From technological-focused worlds to mage-focused, to warriors, to beastly races to wizards. The station has hundreds of different cultural meshing. The marketplace would be the one I can share about the best. Individual-owned stalls are usually from young worlds. They tend to have the most unique items and have affordable prices but their quality is usually below average. Proper stores are world-owned and they are more reliable. The developed and rich worlds have an entire street filled with their world¡¯s members opening their stores. While the richest worlds own part of the station. The strongest and richest individuals own homes in the residential sector, they are usually higher beings or their offspring. I suggest you stay far away from them. They might be worth the trouble for a merchant like me but I won¡¯t want any dealings with them if I were you.¡±
¡°What do you want from us?¡± Xin might not have strong intuition in her current state but she had been suspicious of this merchant from day one.
¡°Your contacts. Both of you are strong and although you did business, I¡¯m sure it isn¡¯t your occupation. I can be your broker, for a fee of course.¡±
¡°We¡¯ll think about it.¡± He replied cordially.
¡°Of course,¡± She smiled, ¡°Ah, that¡¯s my turn.¡± The lady heard the soft ringing and looked at the module¡¯s number. Despite being King-ranked, she had 4 Emperor ranked bodyguards by her side. They did not partake in Teheil¡¯s battle and were purely the rich merchant¡¯s bodyguards.
Two of them donned sleek sci-fi-looking mecha suits or exoskeletons. The other two wore clothing or armour similar to the Mirellans. Plated clothing for mobility appeared to be Mirellan¡¯s choice of armour. The exoskeleton wasn¡¯t something he saw other Mirellans wearing.
In any case, all four of them hated it when their boss stepped anywhere close to Xin or him. They were quite cowardly for bodyguards and they¡¯ve never even fought. Xin could feel their wariness and he could sense their bodies tensing.
Before the short exchange ended, Ebony noticed his mana pool filling up completely. It started to self-compress and reinforce his Constitution. His body slowly warmed up as the compression of mana within his body continued. Teheil was honestly quite an impressive worldcore, he should have regenerated his mana pool of five million in a minute by his current regeneration but it took the time of a meal and a light conversation. So despite the ejection shuttle getting out of Teheil, his mana was still being absorbed.
Thinking he could let his body re-acclimate to mana, he didn¡¯t use Resonant Battle Hymn to speed up his regeneration further.
While he was getting stronger, everyone else in the cabin got exponentially more threatening. The Mirellans might depend on technology more so than individual technique but they were still a race of mana-using humans. And they sure were stronger than Elcrains. Ebony would be hard-pressed to find a room full of Kings on Elcra but in this cabin, the two of them were the only Grandmasters.
He lost the speed advantage that the cushioning gave him. Lost the advantage of being the only one capable of using mana while the passengers regained usage of their weapons, armour, augmentations and more.
Still, Ebony was comfortable knowing that he could cast a small range Domain indefinitely. The Emperors on board who weren¡¯t bogged down were not opponents he could beat even with his Domain but he was confident they weren¡¯t an immediate threat to his life and he might even be able to freeze them over time. It wasn¡¯t like anyone here could outlast his energy source. With the cube present, people without flight capabilities were even less of a problem. Assuming they can get through his gravity repulsion, Tempestuous Lull Pelt was backed by the cube and his Domain.
All of a sudden, red lights blared the cabin and alarms went off, ¡°please stay calm and get back to your seats. A couple of void wasps have been detected. They will be dispatched without issue. ¡±
The people on the module were rudely kicked out and the assistant, Leqor ushered the calm passengers back to their seats. With the shuttle completely shutting his mana sense off, he could only watch how confident the passengers were that nothing was going to happen to them.
They were right to think so because their alarms quickly went off and a bored announcer told them the threat was dealt with within the next minute.
The passengers who got more comfortable as their mana returned got more chatty with fellow passengers.
He was beside the wall but the person beside Xin was very chatty and quickly got everyone around her to disperse, her target swapped to Xin very soon. It was another merchant lady who was here to buy Teheil materials directly. She knew who the two of them were but neither of them recognised her. For Ebony, that meant she only arrived on Teheil for a short while and was already leaving.
¡°Oh, if it¡¯s your first time going to the station then you¡¯ll first meet with the Nebula Watch. You can¡¯t enter a station without having your threat level classified and documented by them.¡±
¡°Is that so? What do we have to do?¡± Xin asked. She was quite amiable in her recovery state.
It was not news to Ebony who had his clones find out as much about the world as it could. He didn¡¯t know much about the Nebula Watch but he knew that they were the ones that took care of order. They were the ones that stopped extremely dangerous people from acting on Worlds that they did not have permission to act on. He didn¡¯t need to know more to understand that the Nebula Watch could do that and restrain even the Kin of Tetramyth from personally invading Elcra because of one thing.
Power.
Chapter 360: Nebula Watch’s Hazard Testing
The chatty rich lady did not talk about the Nebula Watch much. The topic between the woman quickly transited to her favourite beauty salons and shopping districts on the station.
¡°I¡¯ll go ahead.¡± Ebony tapped Xin¡¯s shoulder before he walked towards the module when it was finally his turn.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Ebony nodded to the person who bowed to him after turning away from the module and placed his hand on the neon green screen. It was similar with going into his mindspace but more visual.
A glowing green cluster of particles moving about a centre at slow speeds appeared in his view, he knew to close his eyes now. The view of the clutter of particles cleared up and expanded the moment he closed his eyes.
¡°New life signature detected. Greetings, I am Eidolon Hex. How should I address you?¡±
¡°Ebony.¡± There was nothing around the glowing cluster but it was getting brighter.
¡°Mighty fine. Ebony, can I assume you would like to register with me? Do I need to introduce myself further?¡±
¡°Yes to both, if you don¡¯t mind.¡±
¡°We shall do both concurrently. I am a group of spirits created by my master and their friend with the involvement of the one and only God of Just and the God of Knowledge. A Eidolon Nexus account, that is hmm, sort of like a confirmation of your identity recognised throughout the cosmos. My sibling Eidolons would be in charge but this account of identity is backed by the God of Just. I would require some information from you to create your account. Shall we begin?¡± Flat screen images appeared around the cluster of spirits when it talked.
¡°I would like to ask about the privacy of shared information.¡±
¡°Beside me, you and the God of Knowledge, your personal information you share is known to no one else.¡±
¡°Hmm? What about the God of Just and your master? Or that ¡®friend¡¯ of theirs.¡±
¡°The God of Just does not have access to this information. My Master could indeed pry the information out of me, but they couldn¡¯t care less even if, say, you were another God. I am unaware if my other creator can access such information past the agreements that they¡¯ve made with the God of Knowledge. Right, the God of Knowledge also has the Law of Secrecy and Mysteries so you do not have to worry, I cannot divulge your information to anyone. Even other Gods.¡± A big red cross over a lip appeared on all ten screens around Hex.
¡°I see. Then let¡¯s go ahead.¡± He half trusted this because he already knew a bit about it from his clones.
¡°I will need all your names if you have more than 1. Your Class and Level. Your biometric data, a blood sample is fine and even better if you can inject your mana or any energies you master into it so I don¡¯t have to gather multiple sample types. Your birth World. And the name of a guarantor, anyone who has an account with me. I will confirm with them if you are who you say you are.¡± Hex used the screens to depict what it needed one by one.
¡°Other than a form of identification, what can I do with an account?¡± He didn¡¯t get too eager and asked for more information.
¡°My most used function is as an information sharing platform. With access to my Module, you can access the biggest market. Ah, an alias will be used but your evolutionary rank must be public. Most people only buy from within the Sector but you will have access to every possible market. Within your Sector, Galactic Region, or even other Galactic Region. However, we highly advise not to stretch your reach that far. There is a system similar to a reputation value, and with your evolutionary rank, no one is going to trade with you from another Sector much less the Galactic Region.¡± Hex showed him what he recognised as a web page. The UI seemed neat and user friendly but the top right had a blank where his account or username should be.
¡°So if I want to know about the regions¡¡± Ebony was very confused about how space worked here.
¡°You can buy that information directly from me. Maps are one of the many things I handle and the God of Just confirms the information I sell to be true to my knowledge which you can say is confirmed by the God of Knowledge. My prices are Just.¡± Images of stars and planets were shown across the screens Hex was in control of.
¡°Other than a market and information, I hear you also control a bank?¡± There were other things he could have asked but this was the most recent one that came to mind.
¡°Yes! 99.9935% of account holders have a bank opened with me. Linked to your account is a value that represents your monetary net worth. With me, Eidolon Hex, we deal with mana. Depositing universal standard mana ores to any of the Sector¡¯s stations which has a Main Module, I will convert that to an equivalent value. Yes, you will have to go to the ¡®bank¡¯ for a monetary withdrawal or deposit. If you buy and sell information with me, I will directly consume the mana or increase the number in your bank account and you don¡¯t have to go to the bank unless you want physical withdrawal of your money.¡± Hex suggested that other Eidolons handle other types of resources besides mana.
¡°How do people transfer their money with each other without access to one of your modules?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t remember seeing any of the Eidolon Nexus modules when Mirellans traded.
¡°The Myriad Bracelet silly! That is technology that has been spread to every World, natural or artificial, young or old. Once creatures are detected, Myriad Bracelets would be placed around the world for their inhabitants to use and possibly reverse engineer if intelligent creatures are born. You must have heard of, if not own one yourself. Don¡¯t worry, the Bank module is very affordable.¡± The Myriad Bracelet came into play again but he already knew that it wasn¡¯t Elcra¡¯s or an individual''s invention long ago.
¡°Can people buy information about other people from you?¡± He wanted to buy information about his parents if names were enough to identify them but, he already knew the answer to this question. If Gods couldn¡¯t get information out of the Eidolon, it was foolish to think this was up for sale.
¡°Hahaha, if you propose a deal sweet enough for the God of Knowledge, who knows? But it won¡¯t be me selling the information then, you would have to trade with the God of Knowledge.¡± Hex¡¯s answer caught him off guard a little.
He forgot that Hex was programmed and created in a certain way. Flexibility was not its forte. But its creators?
¡°Alright, I think I understand the gist of it. Let¡¯s get this going before my turn ends.¡± Ebony¡¯s bioclock told him he still had plenty of time but he didn¡¯t know how long the registration would take.
¡°Right right, you¡¯re using a module on a shuttle. Your name?¡± The group of spirits was more than aware of his physical location.
¡°Ebony Rime, Wumu.¡± He was not even familiar with the second part of his own name but since he remembered it, he accepted it. It wasn¡¯t even on his Status.
¡°Oh shoot, give us a moment.¡± The cluster of green particles sped up their circulation around their core.
Ebony raised his brows.
¡°Uh, it¡¯s gonna take us a while. Come back later!¡± Abruptly disappearing, Ebony was left with blurry green vision before he opened his eyes back to the cabin. Facing the module in front of him, he tapped and placed his palms on it twice more but there was no response. Looking to the right, he saw Xin busy with the Module so he was the only one being ignored.
The number above the module he used changed and it was back to 1. When no one walked up to touch the module for 2 minutes, it cycled to the next number.
¡®The internet AI just hung up on me¡¡¯ Ebony had a funny thought but was also, once again surprised at the effect of just mentioning his name. Looks like his father was right to save that message in his watch. His name meant something, especially in the Gia language. On Elcra, he mentioned a few times before he knew about the message he was left but it never brought about any reaction from people.
Obviously, Elcra or Elva simply didn¡¯t know since they were not well connected with other worlds. Only through visitors from the World Dungeon or maybe the Spirit Realm.
Returning to his seat, Ebony pondered on the possible reasons til Xin broke him out of his intense focus with a cold canned drink pushed against his face.
¡®Canned drinks, I¡¯m seeing more and more familiar items.¡¯
¡°Heheh, I wanted it more chilled.¡± She handed one over before having trouble figuring out the packing.
Ebony took it over and managed to figure out the slightly different metal tab design before she poked a hole in the can with her finger. It was more of a pluck and pull than a pushdown. As far as he could tell, tin or aluminium but thick and each was about 2 litres. Meaning even canned drinks had spatial technology woven into them.
¡°How did you afford this?¡± Ebony recalled they were practically penniless. Without his mana senses, he had to look around before he saw the dispenser with a screen above that scrolled through a list of drinks. The dispenser was just a cylindrical hole in the wall and was not obvious.
¡°That auntie gave it to me.¡± She pointed to the merchant lady she talked to who was now at a different seat chatting up one of the stronger Emperors aboard. Ebony recognised him, he was a middle-aged fighter who used extendable electric whips and hidden weapons.
When he challenged the man, he was forced to stay at the edge of the whip¡¯s range even with Phantom¡¯s Flicker advantage. A very impressive fighter that his martial arts couldn¡¯t get around. Those whips were more than just electrically charged as well, it was also a heat weapon. Common, but effective.
¡°Did you manage to complete the process?¡±This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
¡°Yup, E-HEX-uh, I didn¡¯t look clearly at the stretch of sixteen numbers. I looked at the ¡®internet¡¯? thing too. They sell recipes!¡± Over the course of the past few years, he got used to Xin¡¯s even more drastic swap in personality depending on her state of mind. However, he knew she didn¡¯t change. Her habits, traits and emotions were just more pronounced.
¡°I didn¡¯t, it kicked me out. I¡¯ll have to try again later.¡±
¡°Aw, we won¡¯t get numbers one after another.¡± She threw her back against the chair and took a sip of the orange liquid.
Ebony did the same. It was sweetened orange juice and was quite refreshing despite the overwhelming sweetness that he didn¡¯t like. Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t receive any notifications about special effects so it was just a normal drink. He saw numbers of Gia language on the screen but he had no idea of their equivalent value.
Whatever it meant, he now owed the sociable merchant lady ??4500. It was not a big number. He didn¡¯t know the equivalent value in mana ores but he knew his ticket¡¯s price was ??2,880,500 each. Estimating from the many Ancient quality materials they sold or traded, the drink still feels overpriced but he honestly didn¡¯t care about the small change.
¡°Passengers, please get back to your seat. The shuttle will pass through a compressed spatial tunnel in approximately 5 minutes.¡± The announcement came after a light bell and the assistant had to get the users of the Eidolon Nexus to snap out of their internet usage by tapping on their shoulders.
Without any fuss or accident, they soon found themselves arriving at the Sector¡¯s station. He had been unable to connect to Eidolon throughout the trip and had to do with guiding Xin through how to navigate websites. Since the ¡®internet¡¯ was fundamentally different from what he knew, they had some trouble communicating because he couldn¡¯t see what she was seeing. Xin did not understand technology easily.
They alighted in a hangar for similar ejection shuttles like the one he came on. When they were about to walk down the stairs and were about to land on their destination, he quickly found that his view was completely erased from the modern hangar and changed to a grassy field. Ning Xin was still beside him but everything and everyone else disappeared.
¡°Unregistered one, Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin. Assist us in our duty. By the Law of the God of Order, you shall have your threat levels classified before you are allowed to step foot onto a Sector Station.¡±
There was no one around, only voices in their heads. Ning Xin confirmed that she heard the same words with a glance between each other.
¡°I presume you¡¯re part of the Nebula Watch. How are we supposed to do that?¡± He was cautious of the seemingly all-powerful Nebula Watch.
¡®They say no God claimed this area of space but I''ve been hearing of so many Gods the past two days¡¯
¡°We have 2 forms of classifications. Individual threat, we don¡¯t require you to have this classified. And your Hazard rating, which we¡¯ll be testing. A destructive test. This is an illusion, that is your target. Your body is physically present. Do your best to destroy anything and everything in this illusion. Tell us if you need anything to be conjured to best showcase your powers.¡±
¡°How will you know if we¡¯re trying our best or not?¡± Before the shuttle announced their arrival, she had already dyed her hair red with mana and lifeforce.
¡°After your performance, we will ask if that was your best. If you lie, you die.¡± The voice in their head did not change their tone.
¡°What if, I don¡¯t know how destructive my spell can get? Can I use everything at my disposal, this cube for example, is my weapon. And I have-I should have a permanent Domain back home that could strengthen me further.¡± He was not being truthful. Dusk was a permanent Domain, but having Dusk around might not necessarily strengthen him any further. It could act as an additional source of mana, additional computing or processing power for spells which may help but not neccessarily increase the buff he got from a Domain which depended on the strength of his Will.
¡°Yes, use everything at your disposal. Only mobile ability, immobile abilities or territorial spells do not count unless you can summon it to you. Whatever the cost is, even if the cost of using a destructive spell is your life. We don¡¯t require you to use spells that call upon a God or use up your life, but you would have to tell us if your performance is under your maximum potential. We can even change the terrain if there is anything that can empower you.¡±
¡°The terrain is fine. It¡¯s just a bit small. The edges of my senses tell me it¡¯s barely a hundred kilometres¡whatever that is in the units you use. You need to multiply that by, I don¡¯t know. I have a lot more gravity mana at my disposal today.¡± Ebony was cooperative. Other than the Nebula Watch being reasonable, it was also because he was interested in his destructive capabilities.
¡°The illusion generated emulates Legendary soil and earth. It is harder and more durable than you think.¡±
¡°I know, I tried digging my feet into the ground before I asked.¡±
¡°How much bigger do you estimate this space needs to be.¡± The Nebula Watch was unfazed, merely stating and inquisiting. Just like Ebony.
¡°Hmm, I honestly don¡¯t know. But if it''s this small, we would have nowhere to run once my spell is released.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t need to run. By his simulations, the additional gravity mana from his cube would be able to strengthen his Quelling Vortex by a lot. But it was thanks to the excess gravity mana that he could spare some to protect himself. His manipulation evolving also meant he could remove himself from the effects of his spell. Without Xin¡¯s fire and blood, he didn¡¯t have to fear hurting himself with ice or vibrations.
Xin would be the only one who needed to run.
¡°We will prepare a more suitable illusion. How about Scarlet Rheal Ning Xin?¡±
¡°We¡¯ll have to find out. We can do it separately right?¡± Xin knew even less about her destructive capabilities. She hadn¡¯t used mana for a long time so her magic skills and spells were definitely lagging. However, he was a bit uncomfortable that the red haired version of her didn¡¯t want to let him see what she could do for real now.
He was most interested in finding out if she could use any new skills concerning Intent or life force. Since her focus on Teheil had to skew towards them more, it was clear that she specialised even more.
¡°Of course, we will move you away when the second illusion is ready. We just have a question for both of you.¡±
¡°Go on.¡± There was indeed a reason they were put together.
¡°Would you say you are capable of combined spells or skills that bring about greater destruction?¡±
¡°Together? Exponentially.¡± Ebony replied with confidence. Xin¡¯s destructive capabilities were actually quite low in comparison since she was a fighter and less of a mage but with him conjuring a container, their simple spell was quite impressive when it came to destruction.
They weren¡¯t even able to say ¡®see you¡¯ before Ning Xin disappeared. It slightly irked him that they could ignore magic resistance to such a degree.
¡®Did they say this is an illusion¡they are not telling the full truth.¡¯ Ebony was not familiar with illusion magic but he was quite confident he wasn¡¯t in a proper or complete illusion.
¡°Done. As you can see, please aim at the centre.¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t know how or why but the speaking voice changed the illusion¡¯s terrain where he was in the air above a deep crater. Within the crater was a target, with rings drawn around. The target was a scarecrow and one was placed every few hundred metres. It stretched on further than his sight could go.
¡®Even if they Appraise, or use a higher tier version, they would think I¡¯m a martial artist and gravity mage at best. Did my words lead them to believe otherwise or is their Identify so high tier they can see my skills?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t even sense an eye on him. Unlike when someone else tries to use Identify or similar inspection skills.
In any case, his simulations were just simulations. He needed real-world data anyway.
Ebony took ahold of as much gravity mana he could from the cube floating beside him. He opted to leave the mental process of running his Unique Skill alone. Forming the outlines of a sphere the diameter of a coin, he fixed that blueprint and cast Gravity Quelling Vortex with more gravity mana than he ever handled. His cube still had plenty to spare but he no longer had the mental muscles to pull more.
He quickly reached his limits and was a bit disappointed. ¡®I doubt it¡¯s anywhere close to the density of a black hole. My Intelligence isn¡¯t packing enough punch to compress this any further.¡¯
When the vortex reached the maximum output his mind could control, it took less mental power to hold the spell in place. It took far less time than before where he had to drag gravity mana from hundreds of kilometres away from him to cast the spell. He even left ambient gravity mana alone this time. His spell was a separate entity.
¡°Impressive for a Gran-¡±
Ebony subconsciously shut his ears and focused. Not even the Nebula Watch¡¯s mental voice could reach him if he didn¡¯t want it to. Since the Nebula Watch wasn¡¯t attacking him, they didn¡¯t even get as far as Mr Guru in his mind. However, that may be due to his Core Skill evolution.
He found that he couldn¡¯t directly conjure ice inside the incessant whirlpool of gravity. From a hundred metres away from the black black, he conjured his frost flames. There was no point compressing it since the gravity spell would do it for him, better than he could. His coin diameter spell was stable. There was no longer any wind or suction so he had to manually cast a thread of gravity to drag his flames to touch the black coin. It was his perfected sphere.
During the flame conjuration, he packed and reinforced the gravity vortex with his Will. Surrounding him and the black sphere below his feet within his Domain, he started to program the spell for its actions after he released control over the spell.
¡®It¡¯s a destruction test, I¡¯ll assume I should maximise both distance and power but to an optimal degree. So spell, you should try repelling my mana as far as you can but not at the cost of uncompressing mana. Then quake my flames over. After that, my flames need to dig deep. Dig deep, then explode at¡10% power to shatter frozen earth and use that to spread deeper and further, rinse and repeat. Okay, now consolidate this thought and inject it.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s usage of Will was broke down into plan, condense and implement.
Ebony continued to conjure flames and feed his spell for five minutes before he took another look at the spell below his feet.
¡®I¡¯m not quite feeding it fast enough.¡¯
Another ten minutes passed with him conjuring flames and feeding his greedy spell.
¡®The spell is changing colour. Wait, don¡¯t tell me I can saturate the gravity vortex with flames. How much mana have I spent--ah¡¯ The rate that Ebony was feeding the vortex was already his fastest. His mind didn¡¯t have any spare mental processing power to conjure more flames. He already surrounded the sphere by metres of flames conjured concurrently.
When he sensed his mana chassis, which was a bit numbed since there was a factory running inside, he noticed he wasn¡¯t spending as much as he was recovering. Even with all his mental power at work.
¡®Can I call myself a mage with BIG spells now?¡¯ He was not used to spells with long casting durations.
The more flames he fed the vortex, the more processing power he had to allocate to maintain the stability of the sphere and that reduced the rate he could feed the spell. Ebony upped the intensity of Will he used to maintain the spell instead and stopped Mireloom. Reallocating that mental processing power to speed up the creation of this spell.
Twenty minutes later, he had the sphere between the palms of his hands to maintain the spell with better focus and force his flames in more directly. It was a light cyan sphere that constantly whirled and froze Ebony¡¯s hands and face off from the proximity of the spell.
¡®Looks like my simulations are a bunch of nonsense now.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t bother simulating new possibilities right now. He needed every morsel of mental muscle and energy. He didn¡¯t even maintain a Domain over his body and compressed everything, all his Will, to hold this spell together.
¡®Now, what can I do to strengthen this further? I can¡¯t lie to them right? But¡I still have mana and this gravity vortex is already spitting my flames out at me. I don¡¯t have enough Will and mental power to jam more flames inside. Is this my best?¡¯ The spell in his hands was not in the shape of a plum fruit, it didn¡¯t even have an ice shell. An ice shell would collapse with gravity at his disposal and it was a waste of mental power now that he could stabilise the gravity not to consume surrounding gravity.
The spell was saturated with freezing flames and stabilised. To his surprise, it was not generating heat from pressure, only giving off an intense chill. He had the leeway to wipe the frozen sweat off his forehead now that it freed the mental power he was using to feed the sphere.
Then it clicked.
He should just cast a second.
Chapter 361: Small World
Shutting Mireloom off had been the only way Ebony could have the free mind power to prepare a second gravity vortex. It was ultimately weaker since he couldn¡¯t pack it with flames as well as he did the first but he succeeded.
¡®About 40% strength of the first? I want to see the power of the full-strength spell but I also want to equalise them¡I''ll watch what the first one can do for now.¡¯ Checking his numb mana chassis, he nodded in satisfaction when he realised he could just do this again. The only lacking resource he had was Will keeping the spell together.
He didn¡¯t see the need to warn the Nebula Watch and tossed the slow ball at the ground before Flickering upwards as fast as he could. He used too much Will and might not be able to protect himself with a flimsy Domain.
However, he had time. The spell was thrown slowly since the Will he imbued would reverse the gravity only when it hit the designated target. And the fact that he simply didn¡¯t have the mental strength to move that immense mass fast. That gave him time to run and he didn¡¯t need mental effort for manual or time-based denotation. It no longer matters if he went out of range of his control as long as he used the appropriate amount of Will to handle the stress of the spell, meaning the mental capacities required.
He protected his ears and organs with mana stabilisation before augmenting himself while turning and facing down just in time to see his creation.
The flash across his retinas was unexpected but it only blinded him for a moment before his eyes readjusted themselves. The explosion of energy was beyond his imaginations as his flames was free from their tight prison. Covering his entire view and peripheral vision despite the height he was flying within moments. He didn¡¯t know how far liquid flames were sent flying but the second phase didn¡¯t come till ten seconds later when the ground cracked a second time.
Gushing high-pressure liquid flames clouds high, it settled after a minute. Then an eruption of flames was spit out from the crevices and fissures. A longer wait and jets of flames re-erupted.
Then frosty gas started leaking out of every new hole and crack that appeared.
Ebony Flicked down and touched whatever qualified as ground to sense his own spell at work.
It was still going.
¡®It takes too long and too much effort to cast this spell. Can¡¯t use it in a battle but if I ever need to break something, I have my answer.¡¯ Sensing all the ice mana around, he stomped the ground to send one of the targets back up to the surface.
¡°Wow. This is some impressive stuff.¡± He voiced his true impression. The scarecrow was in one piece, not a single straw shattered from the ice shattering that the soil and earth succumbed to. It was frozen and burning, but his flames failed to dig into them.
¡®Is this some form of equipment to test damage? It is even tougher than me by magnitudes!¡¯ Ebony dispersed the flames and removed the layer of ice to see that the scarecrows were completely undamaged.
¡°Of course. We would like to say the same to you¡Grade 5 Global Hazard. Now. Is that the greatest destructive spell you can use?¡±
¡°It is but I haven¡¯t unleashed this. Will it change the result? I think I can gather enough Will to cast another full-strength one in a few hours. And if I use a weaker version after I exhaust my Will, I think I can cast a few hundred more of these. And by then my Will would have recovered so I could cast these a few more times. If I have food, I can cycle through as long as I¡¯d like. Maybe a day or two for a mental break after a month, two months?¡±
¡°...Just common sustenance, and you can do that for a month straight?¡±
¡°I mean, you saw how long the spell took.¡±
¡°What does that have to do with what I asked? Is food all you require, what about the mana?¡±
¡°I suppose a lot of food. People convert sustenance to life force, stamina and mana. I am the same. Casting time matters. If I could cast faster it means I tire myself faster and can sustain that effort for a shorter period. If only I had more mental power and Will, I could concurrently cast two or three full-power versions. That should dry my mana up faster.¡±
¡°One day break to recover a month¡¯s worth of mana to power hundreds of those spells?¡±
¡°No? It''s to rest my mind, actually, I think two months is a better estimate. You can sense it, my mana pool is already filling up. Destruction isn¡¯t something I¡¯m good at, endurance is. Should I continue?¡±
¡°Footnoted. No, that is not necessary. Grade 6 Planetary Hazard.¡±
¡°I don''t know if that¡¯s good or bad.¡± Ebony knew the ratings went from Local, Regional, National, Continental, Global and Planetary. Grade 6 was the same as Ezekiel but there were many smaller layers of classification known only to the Nebula Watch. Despite Ezekiel¡¯s reflexes or relatively weaker personal fighting skills, he had powerful tricks up his sleeves that dealt massive damage to nature.
¡°For us, bad. Here is the Book of Laws.¡±
When the voice said that, a white cover book appeared at the outer edges of his mind space.
¡°Huh, that was not supposed to happen. You¡¯re supposed to internalise the contents immediately.¡±
¡°Well, by the time I finish reading this and go back out. It is pretty much ¡®immediate¡¯.¡± Ebony noted that this was an individual he was talking to. Not artificial intelligence of some sort. He or she was also a person with abilities like that of a mind mage or telepath. Most importantly, ultimate stealth.
Ebony didn¡¯t even know someone was looking inside his head or if anyone was looking at his body much less mind.
It was a book that he couldn¡¯t flip to the end in hours.
There were a lot of odd rules that he couldn¡¯t understand the reason for having but he wasn¡¯t bothered since he didn¡¯t think he would ever commit or do specifically weird actions like tickling a Tumble Warp Worm?
There were words he didn¡¯t even know that he needed a translation for. However, the Book of Laws seemed to transcend language and like the old mind magic tool, it transmitted intent and meaning directly to his mind when he saw the words.
Some of the most interesting that piqued his immediate interest was that some elements were completely off-limits to be used in certain areas such as the Sector¡¯s Station. One of them was the Void element, Radiation and another example was Soul.
Ebony was explicitly forbidden from using his only offensive soul skill on the station.
The Nebula Watch would find out. They would know.
Especially now that he had an official Hazard rating. There would be eyes on him.
¡°Unregistered one, we will determine your homeworld to be Elcra.¡±
¡°Alright.¡± As he expected, they knew who he was. Probably because they saw him when they were watching Ezekiel. The implications of such a thing was that even though both of them were classified the same, the Nebula Watch would not interfere with what Ebony did on Elcra because he was deemed as an original inhabitant of Elcra, not a visitor.
Elcra, classified as a natural Worldcore, was protected by these laws. And these laws didn¡¯t interfere with whatever original inhabitants were doing in their own world, including mass destruction. It would be seen as a civil war or a natural accident at best or worse.
¡°I¡¯ll bring Scarlet over. Just do your thing and we¡¯re done here.¡±
Despite what he said, they had to wait for Scarlet to recover her mana. She was a Grade 4 Continental Hazard and he sort of knew it was because the heat she could produce would melt most things and creatures that don¡¯t actively protect themselves with mana or life force.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Whether it was fire or blood, she simply didn¡¯t have the reach or capabilities to spread her spells far. But if she were to centre herself, just augmenting herself could kill creatures in the vicinity. He knew she had a spell, like the one they combined but he was not aware if she had anything else. Hearing her rating, she probably didn¡¯t. Without his gravity vortex, her spell simply didn¡¯t have the reach or power that he could produce.
¡®So her life force reserves are deep enough for her to melt through a large area now.¡¯
They had a hearty meal with limited amount of ingredients in his bag before she was ready.
The illusion was renewed but the scarecrows stayed a constant. The Nebula Watch person was kind enough to tell them that these targets were to record damage. While Ebony¡¯s spell range and destruction went far and wide, the damage it would do to a person was multitudes lower than Xin¡¯s. They both lost to the creation because Xin similarly did not put a single scratch or singe on the scarecrow. They must have some method or device to read how much damage was done.
There wasn¡¯t any fanfare when they packed their combined bomb. During the break, her rest state recovered energy quickly and she probably moved her stats about. She still couldn¡¯t saturate his vortex and he had to pull back his freezing flames since it was just weakening the spell. The resulting explosion was lacklustre.
More molten earth than shattered grounds or massive craters.
They were out of touch and had balancing issues with the spell. She didn¡¯t have the mana to feed the spell like he could. It was a smaller explosive that did far more intense direct damage and he underestimated her conjured blood. As a container of energy, it seemed almost as good if not even greater than a gravity mana whirlpool. It should be her Fortification and Physique backing that up.
The Nebula Watch released them from the realistic illusion and they found themselves standing under the shuttle they alighted from.
There was no guide. The people in charge of the shuttle found them standing in place and kindly guided them out.
Ebony misunderstood the ¡®station¡¯. He imagined a massive space station, a mix of futuristic, magical, mediaeval or even alien. But they weren¡¯t trapped in a metal construct. There was a sky above them and earth below their feet.
¡°You¡¯re really newcomers. Haa, I¡¯m on my way out so follow me. There is a map of the station outside.¡± Surprisingly the bald merchant who sold them tickets was holding tools. He had the average garb and look of a mechanic. Taking his thick coat with pouches of tools off his body, he led the two of them out of the stretch of hangars and other odd-looking shuttles and vehicles.
It was probably not the first time he saw newcomers disappear thanks to the Nebula Watch. He must have been waiting for them to reappear.
There were enough parking spots for thousands of shuttles the same size as the one they came on but there were many larger vehicles. Some looked similar to spaceships he saw in movies. Some were actual wooden ships that sailed the seas. There was even a giant fishbowl that took a parking spot. It didn¡¯t look like it had flight capabilities but Ebony wasn¡¯t deceived when magic would be at play.
¡°Now that you have registered, you should be able to trade with ease. Money would definitely be your top priority. Can¡¯t do anything or go anywhere without money. You were looking for a way home ain¡¯t ya?¡± The bald man was a head shorter than they were and he seemed more comfortable than the stiff act he placed when he sold them tickets.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony nodded, he was not registered but Xin was. Having learnt the laws, he was quite comfortable knowing that he was probably safe from most people on the station. As long as Cinderash or Gearhart wasn¡¯t part of the ¡®government¡¯ and they probably weren¡¯t.
¡°Look here.¡± The kind old man pointed to a paper-printed map on a wall. He might not be a fighter but his base stats seemed pretty high so they made it to the entrance of this stretch of vehicles fast. ¡°We¡¯re here,¡± He paused while pointing to a white-shaded area on the map. The map was a few metres wide and long so the short man had to tilt his head up.
¡°East is the market, be careful of some seedy areas and alleys. Some races have exceptional thieves. Your belongings are not safe. But¡well, I doubt you¡¯ll be a target. It''s a common skill to be able to tell how much wealth someone is carrying around.¡± The bald man scratched his head when he turned to look at their worn-out robes and small spatial bag.
Ebony wouldn¡¯t be surprised if a merchant had the same type of skill set that this man was referring to.
¡°North is the residential area. There are hotels or inns, if that¡¯s what you¡¯re familiar with. There are a few restaurants but exceedingly expensive. But don¡¯t go extreme north, see this wall. Don¡¯t cross it. The higher beings live there or have permanent residences there. South is where you can find affordable food. A lot of bartering and special requests for individuals are done here. This is an area where people find others for dungeon exploration, exploring unexplored areas in the Spirit Realm and such. If you¡¯re looking for jobs, this is where you can go but as a Grandmaster¡good luck finding a job.¡±
¡°What about West?¡± Xin pointed on the blank part of the map that the bald man ignored.
¡°Ah, off limits. Just forget about it and don¡¯t go there even by accident.¡±
Ebony looked west of where they were. The Hangar could be considered in the western region. From the map, he already realised that they were standing on a planet, albeit a small one. It was possible to go south and end up where the man said was ¡®extreme¡¯ north.
¡®The gravity is not unlike Earth and this feeling¡this is a moon we¡¯re standing on.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t sure why he knew but gut feeling told him he was standing on a moon. It might be due to his experience of sensing celestial bodies. The moon might be considered as one.
To the west was an endless sea.
Ebony¡¯s perception was going off the rockers and his mind automatically shut his senses off from going any further.
¡°That is Demi-God Hydra¡¯s Domain, don¡¯t touch the water.¡±
¡°I see.¡± Ebony gave the kind merchant a pat on the shoulder and they said their farewells. Knowing his perception range, the merchant was already doing him a favour by speaking out loud. It didn¡¯t matter if he silenced their conversation with sound magic.
¡°What did you see?¡± Xin asked him while grabbing his sleeves as they turned around and headed east.
¡°I want to know what you felt too.¡± He questioned back.
¡°Death.¡±
¡°That is pretty much the same as what I felt.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t go into detail of how a drop of water might have blinded his gravitational perception if he looked any further. At a certain distance, the water changed. Dense gravity mana wouldn¡¯t hurt him but his mind protected itself by shutting down. His Will felt crushed when he got close to what may have been the edge of another person¡¯s Domain.
¡®So a water mage¡never fought a good one before.¡¯ On Elcra, water magic was not an Elves speciality and human mages rarely impressed him. He knew of a Noble family that was a line of water mages but never interacted with them.
It was too bad this particular water mage was too far off his strike zone of a ¡®good opponent¡¯.
They headed east where the marketplace was. One, the Main Modules of Eidolon Nexus that he could try to use again was there. Two, they still had materials they could sell for money. He knew enough that selling everything on Teheil was a stupid mistake. Moving it here would reduce the transport fee.
¡°Huh.¡± Ebony accidentally voiced out his surprise on his way there. The station was large but it was technically a small planet.
¡°What?¡± Xin got pulled along and was stopped abruptly.
¡°Can you wait here?¡±
Although she gripped his sleeves tighter, she trusted him and let him go after she raised her situational awareness. ¡°Please, don¡¯t hide things from me.¡±
He didn¡¯t have Will to conjure another clone after the bomb test but he wasn¡¯t going far and there shouldn¡¯t be any problems arising if she didn¡¯t pick a fight.
¡°There is just payback and favours I have to settle. If you kill someone here, I can¡¯t protect you.¡±
¡°...I¡¯m calm now.¡±
¡°Fine, let¡¯s go together.¡±
She stayed in half, the most balanced mode with her fringes being the brightest red.
Ebony pulled and Flickered. When the population density increased, they weaved through the crowd of many races to a stone building amongst wooden, bricks, metal and rancid jelly constructs.
A signboard was hung up, carved with the words ¡®Ultimate Masonry¡¯ in Gia.
Ebony walked in the open double stone doors and steadily walked to a person resting his elbows on the counter speaking with a rock-skinned person. Pinching the woman by his side when he sensed the rising aura, he tapped the short man¡¯s shoulder.
¡°Hello.¡± He spoke in Elcrain to get the person¡¯s attention.
¡°Haha. Small world, Ebony. I knew you weren¡¯t dead.¡± Turning around, the Elcrain didn¡¯t change his tone or cadence.
¡°Which one are you?¡± He asked the grey-haired man with a baby face.
¡°Pettock.¡± The stone and petrification mage grinned.
¡°Good. Ready to receive the favour I owe you?¡± This one was the one they had problems with.
Wiping the smile off his face, the stone mage paused, ¡°which one?¡±
¡°We can do things in order. If you want to receive the second, take the first. I wil-¡± A strong scent brushed past his nose when the hair of the masked lady physically cut between him and the petrification mage.
¡°We.¡± She glared at him before turning to the stone mage.
¡°You know what, you can choose. Either we return the first favour. And if you¡¯re alive after that, I suppose the second is up for discussion. Or, let¡¯s just forget we ever met.¡± They had a weird relationship. This was a man who once tried to take Xin¡¯s life and then saved it on another occasion when they were young. At least, younger than they were now.
Ebony tried to find the man when he was back on Elcra. Never did he think he would find the stone mage outside of Elcra, over ten years after he left. On a casual shopping trip.
Truly, what a small world.
Chapter 362: Property Damage
Ebony¡¯s decision to give Pettock a choice was something that came up on the spur of the moment. Xin probably didn¡¯t like that he took such liberties when on both occasions, it was her life that had been under control.
However, she didn¡¯t say anything and only looked at him. He could tell she was peeved from under her mask.
[Medusan Petrification Warlock Lvl 500| Basalt Spellfist Lvl 500]
Although Appraise hadn¡¯t evolved, it had refined to the point where he could see the actual Sub-Class title. Since he understood that the titles matter, it was good information to have. Warlock or spellfist were both new to him but if he only had Identify, he would be seeing petrification mage and stone mage or martial artist.
It was already rare enough to see someone else keep up with their levelling rate. Tuffock was at the same stage as both of them. Just preparing for their next evolution.
Ebony¡¯s perception could be said to be one of his strongest traits outside of his endurance. And if there¡¯s anything that stood out immediately, it was the stone mage¡¯s far bigger and wider mana pool. It was normal for other mages besides Ebony to be able to learn mana capacity-increasing skills but the problem was age or time since they¡¯d last met.
Mana capacity was hard to increase. It was similar to a muscle. Often, the size of a mana pool was related to one¡¯s age. It felt like Tuffock was almost on par with an Elf of the same level¡¯s mana capacity. Not considering most Elves at the same age of less than a century old would usually be at a low level.
It was slight but the petrification warlock¡¯s overflowing essence was causing his skin to harden and joints to stiffen. It quickly dispersed when his mana regenerated from the usage during their destruction test but it was capable of affecting him when he didn¡¯t have much mana in his body.
Ebony didn¡¯t understand why or how. Elcrians simply didn¡¯t have that¡genes. The strongest other person near their age was likely Mallory or Hector and even then, their aura had negligible effects on people of the same evolutionary stage.
He had never known much about the stone mage despite once exploring a dungeon together.
The scrawny mage under a dirty brown hooded robe should have been able to feel both of their rising auras as his mana regenerated and Xin¡¯s charge up of vitality.
¡°Ha! Forget it? I admit, we made a wrong choice taking hard measures in the past and not completing the job. But me owing you one, and you owing me another is not something we can write off. I should¡¯ve expected that strength from Xengs but¡truly what monsters to have gotten so strong, so fast. I can¡¯t have you tossing aside that favour I made.¡±
A different tone of voice took over. Ebony knew it was another one of their personalities, Hardock. Regardless of who, Ebony did not expect the choice they took. The agreement technically gave him a legal right to take violent measures. Even if they didn¡¯t specifically share what was going on verbally, he would just be investigated by the Nebula Watch who had lie-detection abilities.
¡°You say monster for fast growth but so are you.¡±
¡°We¡¯re not the same, monster. Sure, monsters alike. But completely different monsters. We are merely recovering what was once ours. You however, only gained and grew.¡± Pettock returned and raised their hands in a casual shrug.
¡°As interesting as this information may be.¡± Ebony grabbed the collar of the stone mage¡¯s robes and Flickered out of the store. Dragging the man without protecting him from wind pressure, he pulled the man near the fake sea.
¡°Someone¡¯s getting impatient to return that first favour.¡± Hardock yanked his lips along and resisted the wind pressure.
¡°A spike.¡± Xin appeared beside him a few moments later. Since she had to be careful not to destroy anything, she had to chase slowly. His movement skills were non-destructive and didn''t disturb the environment unlike hers.
¡°Right here? You are mad, gonna kill me at the cost of killing yourself?¡±
¡°Relax, the Nebula Watch knows the law better than I do. Fighting on any station is illegal, but returning a favour is not. This one is simply violent in nature.¡± Ebony had some of his mental processing power re-reading the Book of Laws. The clauses might be numerous but most were clear-cut.
¡°...Is that gonna fly?¡± The stone mage had uncertainty written all over his face.
¡°It wouldn¡¯t be any of your business.¡± Ebony felt Xin¡¯s shoulder slump ever so slightly after he spoke.
A bad sign.
Her intuition must have informed her of something.
¡°Oh no, I can¡¯t have you dead before you return that second favour.¡± Pettock smiled.
¡°I was kidding, we¡¯re already in the Nebula Watch¡¯s weird half-illusion when Hardock chose to take this attack.¡±
At his fingertip was a sharp spike of ice with all the cube¡¯s gravity mana he could control. He had no choice but to make it such that no environmental damage was done or he would be dead at the Nebula Watch¡¯s hands. But that was perfectly fine, it fit the spell¡¯s needs for an eye for an eye. He aimed for a spell with enough projectile force to break a skull and snap a neck, together with sealing magic that was equal to petrification to him.
This spell was all about repulsion and pure force and no vortex. The freezing would come automatically with just about all of his ice spells. Now that Ebony was off-world from Elcra, he did his best not to use frost flames. Letting the Nebula Watch watch was fine, but his use of flames had been limited, be it on Cinderash or Teheil. But that was just the visual aspect, all solid ice would burn whenever Will-infused spells noticed that ice had hit flesh or the target and they would only burn within roots of solid ice that would decrease their temperature and increase their ability to spread.
The spike of ice turned dark red, dipped and then surrounded by a blood halo.
They didn¡¯t take long before he released the spell at the stone mage¡¯s forehead. It was a faster attack than any physical attack he could pull off at the moment.
A stone helm was conjured in record time but the castor was still flung through the air cutting across the waters.
Disappointingly, the stone mage¡¯s body stopped short of the area where Ebony didn¡¯t dare push his mana senses too.
¡®How is he so strong? A slight neck dislocation and my ice is getting tackled so fast.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s Will in the spell was still around and there was no disturbance so the stone mage was not a Domain mage. He might have exhausted his Will during the destruction test but he held nothing back with the spell. It was a spell that should do more than hurt.
Ebony watched the stone mage kneeling on the surface of the water and fighting the occasional explosion of ice and flames on his forehead. He saw some blood get completely through the mask when the stone mage screamed in pain. His mana should have gotten into an eye along with Xin¡¯s conjured blood.
But not any longer as his mana was erased from its effects.
¡°That¡¯s that. Don¡¯t forget that second favour.¡± Panting, the stone mage stone up on the grey platform he conjured and pointed at Ebony. He couldn¡¯t open his left bloodied eye but other than that, he was practically unharmed. This was a spell Ebony was confident could kill most Kings on Teheil if magic wasn¡¯t weakened. Maybe some Savants could survive if they were armoured but Savants don¡¯t use aether well until they are Emperor ranked. They could survive the physical force but not the magical after effects.
¡°What is it that you want, for you to take this risk?¡± Needless to say, he wasn¡¯t going to do ¡®whatever¡¯ the stone mage wanted him to do.
¡°Nothing complicated, you just need to fight someone for me. I don¡¯t even need you to kill, just fight and distract someone while I kill a netherfaeing festering plague.¡± Hardock replied.
¡°I don¡¯t kn-¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry, you will be doing good by helping me kill that scum. In any case, you¡¯re too weak now. It wouldn¡¯t be anytime soon. Don¡¯t go dying on me.¡± Pettock flew off without looking back.
¡°Tuffock, how have you been doing?¡± Ebony used sound magic to carry his voice further.
After a moment, the stone mage stopped flying briefly. Turn a head, nodded with a wry smile and they continued on their flight.
¡°...Let¡¯s go back.¡± Xin grabbed his sleeves again.
And so they did.
¡°You do you, I want to check out the exotic stalls.¡± She let his arm go and hopped forward.
¡°Be careful, and come to the bank for the card-rock-jewel-gem thing when you¡¯re free.¡± Ebony could feel that she wanted some alone time but she wasn¡¯t in her combat state and it took a lot longer than he remembered for her to switch states.
Still, he wasn¡¯t going to force her to stick together if she so clearly wanted to split. He might have used Hardock¡¯s words of agreement as a ¡®loophole¡¯ but the Nebula Watch wouldn¡¯t let violence and many more crimes fly here. They were better bodyguards than Ebony.
The bank and main module were very easy to find, it was very crowded despite the size.
¡®Five hundred public computers with the same ticket system as the ejection shuttle. I suppose that means a computer or module is expensive if so many people have to use it. And there are different computers, there should be a difference in function or speed. Wait¡I didn¡¯t sense him here.¡¯ Ebony saw someone he didn¡¯t expect, yet again.
He had to walk up to a fellow Elcrian if he wanted to go back, didn¡¯t he?
¡°Hello.¡± Ebony casually walked up to the man he was unfamiliar with, Hector¡¯s bodyguard, Welser. The man was sitting around what looked like a waiting area.
The butler looked up in surprise before standing up to surprise Ebony with a hug and pat on the back. ¡°Young master¡¯s friend, I¡¯m very glad to see you alive.¡±The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°You too, how has Elva and the Empire been? Tetramyth? Hector?¡± He forget to use tone in his speech again so it probably didn''t transmit his insignificant concern.
¡°The war is still ongoing. We have been trying to get a foothold here on the station but it has been difficult getting the right people to get out of Elva who wholeheartedly works on behalf of the Empire. The young master¡hadn¡¯t been more driven to get stronger ever since that incident.¡±
¡°Good to hear he¡¯s doing fine.¡± Ebony took a number and listened to Welser who was more than open to share the ongoings with the Empire with a person who spoke the same language.
The ¡®incident¡¯ was a rather huge matter to the Empire. The public might not know that a couple of Emperor-ranked people had just shown up like nobody¡¯s business but a few hundred metres of frozen buildings and stone that had already been molten was a big incident to the normally safe Capital City. Thanks to Muse, not many people actually knew or saw what happened and there were no casualties.
But they did find out about the Cinderashians. It wasn¡¯t a world that they were connected to by World Dungeons and it spooked them a little because one of the other ways of travelling to Elcra was by true space magic and that was a lot harder. Gearhart might have swept Ezekiel¡¯s involvement under the rug back at their home, but as a user of space magic, Ezekiel was quite a big name.
In recent years, the Empire have been trying to get a branch of Z&Z up on this station. They had to pay extravagant fees to get to this station because every station was not built on a Worldcore. The lack of a Worldcore meant the lack of dungeons as there was nothing for dungeons to parasite on. Without World Dungeons, they only had ejection shuttles to rely on to get here. Elcra didn¡¯t have an especially strong space mage, spirit mage or anyone with similar abilities that allowed them to use other Realms as a mode of travel.
They were lucky that their world had Elves, automatically raising their worth in the grand scheme of things. It made other powers look at them as more than a place to plunder.
They hadn¡¯t managed to open a store but Z&Z had the owner herself present, selling wares on the roadside of this station. Their specialities included Navin and Yvette¡¯s spell-imbued healing barriers. The half golem owner of Z&Z wasn¡¯t around though. Dwarven goods were not the worst but compared to other advanced planets, they had few advantages. However, there were rumours that past Archdukes of Dwarves who left Elcra had noticed that Elcra had advanced this much and might be willing to lend a hand in terms of earning them opportunities or making use of the connections they¡¯ve made. The humans and beastmen of the Empire had very little to offer that other worlds couldn¡¯t already do or have. The average and even elite Elcrain did not qualify for jobs that required strength.
Welser¡¯s turn came quickly and he said his farewells after telling Ebony the shuttle service he used to get here. It was a different company than the one that went to and fro from Teheil. The ticket price was more expensive because of distance but the shuttle was known to be a cheap model because it was rated for planets that didn¡¯t have ridiculous gravities or magic that prevented entry and exit.
¡®There are other modes of transport I can pay for like a good spirit mage but that would require me to go through the spirit realm and that place is known to be deadly¡¡¯ He considered ways to move around vast distances.
It took another hour before his turn on the module and he was finally able to feel the filling sensation of mana in his body. Ever since he got off the shuttle, he had been using so much of it. On the shuttle, it just kept compressing and storing itself.
The only module he could use for free was the smallest module, a green screen but it was still twice as big as the one on the shuttle.
¡°Ah, you¡¯re back. Good, I¡¯m ready this time.¡± The ball of green lights were more abundant here.
¡°Why did you ignore me? It''s rude to hang up without a reason.¡±
¡°Heey hey, are you trying to kill me? You can say it safely but us hearing it might make us think about it. If we think about it, we might be dead! I had to get my hands on a Medallion of Secrecy.¡±
¡°Can we just get to registering me?¡± At this point, he just wanted to get this internet account going rather than care about the implications that a name was giving him
¡°O-of course, let me double-check if the Medallion is working.¡±
¡°Name, Ebony. Level 500 Frigid Tranquillity¡¯s Martial Grace. How are you going to take my blood?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t give the bundle of green particles much time to probe the hidden bronze medallion they were circling.
¡°Kehme¡no need for that. Birth World?¡± The group of particles cycled faster and coughed ignorance.
¡°Earth. As far as I¡¯m aware.¡± Ebony told the truth while probing for a reaction.
¡°Ahh, right. Earth.¡± There was indeed a reaction. And it was one of boredom as if Ebony just confirmed what it knew.
¡°Will you tell me about Earth?¡±
¡°I could.¡±
¡°For a price?¡± Knowing that this was a money-grubber made to be ¡®fair¡¯, he asked knowing the answer.
¡°For a price.¡±
¡°What¡¯s next?¡±
¡°Guarantor? That Xeng girl will not do, she doesn¡¯t have any reputation to back your identity. Should I put her grandma as well?¡±
¡°You can do that? Sure, I doubt she¡¯ll mind.¡± Hex was both polite and helpful in speeding the process up.
¡°Oookay. And¡you¡¯re done. You are E-HEX-6666666644444445. Right after that girl, I saved the spot for you.¡±
¡°...Right.¡± This was one weird artificial intelligence. Also, how could Xin not remember a straight string of 6s and 4s?
¡°So, your services-¡±
¡°Get a good Myriad Bracelet from an approved vendor. They will have a stamp or mark of this beautiful green Hex in front of you. Those with my stamp are rated for the entire region, if you ever get a portable module of me, those can connect through the entire Hex region. Yes, I am named after the region like my brothers and sisters from other regions. I can say this for free, I am made up of 115 sectors. You are in one of them. Oh, there are fewer worldcores in each sector than most would think. In Hex, most has been plundered and wiped out. The only ones left are natural Worldcores that are still growing and protected by the Law.¡±
¡°Tell me the differences between your modules.¡±
¡°Generally the bigger I am, the more range I have. Most portable ones are rated for within 4 to 5 sectors but it depends on which sector you¡¯re in or trying to connect to. My main module can reach throughout the region. There is also a difference in connection speed and update of information from further distances. For users, it''s all about the market size. Most people care little about information from a few sectors away so transmission lag doesn¡¯t affect them. Physical trade and job offers for worldcore exploration or dungeon exploration is the most common. Transportation merchant groups are also extremely popular. The one you¡¯ve used to get here is quite reputable.¡±
¡°How does the reputation system work?¡±
¡°Every successful trade, job or deal between two or more parties would increase one¡¯s reputation. There are individual and group reputations. Registered merchant group, exploration group and many more. How much you gain depends on the trade, the individual or group you are dealing with and of course, the difference in your perceived abilities. For example, a grandmaster successfully completing a trade or job for a Saint with good reviews would receive higher points compared to helping another grandmaster. When the difference is that huge, you can even place the accomplishments in your profile.¡± Hex explained comfortably, seemingly happy that he was doing a normal job and not dealing with an anomaly that required it to get a Medallion of Secrecy. Whatever that was.
¡°...I see. How about buying things from a merchant group?¡±
¡°A lot less, but as long as you paid them and you received the goods you paid for, both of you would increase your reputation. It works a little differently for a group, it is harder for them to increase their reputation.¡±
¡°Does the bank have conversion services?¡± Ebony started to piece how Kong Jing had a mana converter and compression. The half-golem of Z&Z company likely found a different World from the World Dungeon and had brought some of the technology over. It was more surprising that she didn¡¯t get the technology from the Xengs.
¡°Of course, every bank has a mana conversion facility. With inhabitants from every Worldcore having their unique traits to their mana, God standardised it for convenience. The facility here can convert every creature¡¯s mana into the standardised version, at differing efficiencies of course. But since all natural Worldcores have been standardised, their creatures¡¯ mana should be quite easy to convert so they don¡¯t have to fear low efficiencies like some old races or unexplored new races.¡± Hex¡¯s voice turned shaky and uncertain near the end.
Ebony would really like to ask about ¡®natural¡¯ Worldcores that he had been hearing so much but it was not free information. Something told him that Hex was already being generous with the information they were sharing. He also didn¡¯t bother asking which ¡®God¡¯ Hex was referring to now. He learned that it was better to keep his mouth shut on some things when words held power.
The biggest market group was Eidolon themself. Ebony saw them as the biggest company that dealt with goods. They were the indicator for ¡®market¡¯ price. Commodities were best bought from them but rare items would not be worthwhile because people would rather do personal trading instead of selling at a low price.
¡°I suppose there is a fee for using the facility.¡±
¡°Yes! It depends on the efficiency but a general range is 40 to 70% of the converted mana!¡±
¡°...There must not be many people using it.¡±
¡°Sadly, you are right. But I have to eat too! I¡¯m barely earning anything with that fee because the conversion uses a lot of power. In terms of profits, I¡¯m earning less than 5%!¡±
¡°Then market it that way, no one¡¯s gonna like to hear that half of the mana they inject to convert is going to be taken away.¡±
¡°We¡¯ve tried. It didn¡¯t work since it didn''t change the fact that more than half their mana would go to waste. At most, a few naive individuals would be tricked when they first come to a station with a bank.¡±
¡°Where does standardised mana ores come from?¡±
¡°Many Worldcores that had their populations wiped out are used as fields to absorb ambient mana. Those are converted and compressed. Production facilities. A limited amount is in circulation and our bank holds the physical storage of those ores.¡±
¡°I see¡oh well, you¡¯re going to get another customer today. I need some capital to buy the bracelets and a portable module.¡±
¡°...OF COURSE, COME RIGHT UP! It¡¯s on your left two blocks down the street! Wait, let me get an employee to guide you over!¡± The sales spirit shouted.
¡°Loud.¡±
¡°...Apologies.¡±
The most common apparel or fashion seemed to be sort of like tight-fitting techwear fashion. Hex¡¯s or Eidolon¡¯s employees wore similar clothing but with proper tactical armour, two separate chest pieces with one main torso metal piece and their leggings had multiple overlapping metals fitted down to the boots. There were gaps between the armour that showed their clothing underneath but Ebony only saw those as weak spots he could use. The armour set was imprinted with Hex¡¯s stamp on the left chest plate.
Anyone who wanted to be an employee could apply directly with Hex. It was practically a government job with stable pay and close to no risk.
A tall furred woman came jogging over right after Ebony took his hands off the module. He spent a few minutes quickly browsing through the Myriad Bracelet prices and asking about the portable modules. Hex¡¯s recommendations should suffice instead of browsing through thousands of other small merchant groups or individual craftsman trades. They were all Hex-branded or approved so their quality shouldn¡¯t be a problem.
¡®That is some unique aura¡¡¯ Ebony was impressed straight away. He had retrieved his mana senses not long ago, after he sensed too many people probing angrily at his perception. At this distance, this lady¡¯s vitality was toxic.
It was interesting to see that her armour was specially made to absorb the toxic aura she was exuding. Also, she was probably stronger than any Cinderashian Savant he had come across. Though less intense than a Boiler Knight.
¡°Hell-hello dear guests, I¡¯ll lead you to the bank.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony did not realise that he took so long with Hex that his mana from shooting a spike at Pettock was about to fill up.
It had been over ten years since he had to care about holding his mana in his body or redirecting it to the floor. He also wasn¡¯t familiar with the difference in quantities he had to deal with.
Just as he took a step following the employee with toxic vitality, his excess overflowing mana just exploded outwards.
He had quick reflexes so he concentrated and redirected his mana in one direction. Looking around, he rubbed the back of his head in slight embarrassment. ¡®That was embarrassing, I¡¯m like a kid that can¡¯t hold his bladder back. Still, they didn¡¯t have to act so surprised.¡¯
Ebony spoke his mind, ¡°accident, won¡¯t happen again.¡±
People who tripped quickly glanced away. Those who were forced to the ground stayed there and his guide¡¯s muscles tensed and trembled after she hid the fact that she stumbled on nothing.
¡®I¡¯m going to have to pay for those broken chairs don¡¯t I?¡¯ The only thing on his mind was his hopes that the chairs in the module waiting area weren''t luxury items. He didn¡¯t have anyone else to blame, some people were just so heavy they broke the chairs they sat on after his mana leaked and increased gravity on them.
Chapter 363: Staycation
Injecting mana into a compressor wasn¡¯t a new experience for Ebony. The only difference was the appearance of the machinery required. Since he always had a thread of mana connected to the callstone on Xin¡¯s mask, he told her to come over whenever she felt like it.
Regardless of what she was doing, the longer she took the more money he would¡¯ve made by then.
¡®I should at least be able to afford two Myriad Bracelets before she gets over here.¡¯ Ebony saw how deserted the building that looked like a hospital with open beds lying around. Although not many people used the facility, it seemed like some treated this as a place for shelter and sleeping.
The Myriad Bracelet also had the same function of conversion and compression that would directly lead to money but it was less efficient than this facility by a huge margin. Unlike Elcra¡¯s currency, the wider range of unique mana properties from various races made the conversion more wasteful. The standard mana was different too. It would be best if he placed a custom order. It would require him to give up information about his mana and have it experimented till they made an efficient converter to universal standard.
Giving information about one¡¯s mana was like telling everyone else their weakness. He could pay for Eidolon¡¯s services with a crafter and sign a contract that was backed by the God of Just but that was for the truly rich.
If he was lucky, the fee would be 40% of his converted mana or maybe less, if he was unlucky, it would be greater. Humans were the majority and he should be considered a human, chances were, he would be lucky. He just had to buy higher-quality bracelets.
¡®I definitely can¡¯t afford the best ones without a few weeks. I should go for Ancient. Those are tens of millions each and even more if I want element specific so they don¡¯t break from our elements¡¡¯ Ebony got himself a private room, courtesy of his guide and probably instructions from Hex.
¡®Having a big name helps but this much attention makes me nervous. Huh, nervous? Me? Serenity is different from Tranquillity. I¡¯m less muted.¡¯ Although he thought he was nervous, it didn¡¯t show.
Ebony saw that there was a small module to Hex in the private room as well. The private room was similar to that of a hotel room. With a metal bed, table with a mirror and a nightstand. Tapping on the module, he checked on what one ?? equates to.
¡®That¡¯s a simple conversion rate and I have a feeling it''s not a coincidence. So 1 Blue is roughly ??1000, yeah, those drinks were a ripoff.¡¯ Ebony noticed that 1 Black mana ore on Elcra which equates to 100 Elcra¡¯ purity and flavour ambient mana equated to 1??. Using Elcra¡¯s Myriad Bracelet and converting his mana to their ores, he had faced a loss of nearly 20%. The loss increased as he evolved because his mana kept changing. Now the standard is different, he might face even greater loss due to conversion efficiency. Even considering the higher tech mana purifiers and convertors.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, the God of Just guarantees that our facilities do not have any analysers. All your mana would be directly purified to the equivalent closest rarity and you can choose if you want to transfer it to your account or take the physical ores.¡±
¡°Transfer it. Would it be more efficient if I gave you diluted or concentrated mana?¡±
¡°It depends. If you lie down on the bed, you should be able to feel numerous tubes under it. You can try sending different versions and I can show you the statistics directly.¡±
Familiar with the process, he got to work and looked at the live statistics Hex gave him. There were all sorts of information from efficiency when he changed the concentration and density to giving him the choice of further purification to a higher rank. Apparently, some races gained benefits when they forcefully purified their mana to a rank above their own while others just weren¡¯t worth the energy to purify them.
For Ebony, his mana could be converted to the universal standard Epic-quality mana without a huge power increment and it increased efficiency. At roughly 92% but 50% of that was taken as the required power to run the facilities. In short, it took 217.4 of Ebony brand mana to equate ??1 if he used Hex¡¯s services.
¡®I guess I¡¯m really not that rich.¡¯ Ebony ran Resonant Battle Hymn and sped up his earning capacity. Almost earning ??638 per second, he thought that was pretty poor. How was this reason for people to kidnap him?
¡°Ebony, where are you?¡± Xin knocked on her callstone and spoke to him through the thread of mana he kept. It was not easy since she needed to be out of her combat state so that her magic body didn¡¯t stop his connection.
¡°Bank, you might want to get the bag from me and find somewhere to sell the materials. The prices should be higher since we don¡¯t have to take account other merchant¡¯s transport fee from Teheil anymore. It might take me a day before I bring you shopping.¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll stay with you instead. I¡¯m bored already.¡±
Ebony led her with his mana thread and she slowly walked over to the room and took a seat by the table. When she bored herself even further, she asked for a room for herself and went to sleep while making money of her own. She hadn¡¯t slept a wink since the shuttle ride and had been overusing her life force during the destruction test and their additional favour so it didn¡¯t take much for her to fall asleep on an unfamiliar bed.
¡®Bed¡¯ was stretching it since it was more like a flat rectangular metal plate.
Cautious or paranoid, he didn¡¯t know which it was but he was kept awake. He kept his mana pool full and only used overflowing mana.
The rooms were rented to him for free, maybe because there were so many empty rooms and he was one of the few customers Hex had. He didn¡¯t know when but his personal reputation went up for a successful ¡®trade¡¯ with Hex. Represented by a colour and number, blue most likely for Rare or Grandmaster and a number of 88.
Since he was free he browsed the internet while he rested and charged his bank account. The nightstand was well placed. From the looks of it, in the Sector¡¯s market websites there were very few public posts by Grandmasters and if there were, their reputation numbers were all in the tens of thousands if not higher.
In the jobs¡¯ sites and posts that Hex pulled up for him on multiple screens, the offers were honestly terrible to him. ??12000 for a level 600 King ranged fighter for a 4 week hunting-focused Ancient Dungeon did not sound good. Even if there was a contribution based factor to their earnings in the dungeon. There were also many specific needs for skills and equipment, they had to go through interviews and tests before being hired. Yet it was one of the most popular posts by far according to Hex.
¡®That¡¯s a twenty minute nap. Maybe I am rich?¡¯
¡°Why is the pay so low?¡± He might as well ask.
¡°It¡¯s pretty high. Most of the money would come from the harvested monsters and materials. For an Ancient ranked dungeon, as long as they''re not unlucky an average contribution would at least triple that hiring price. Good achievements and contributions would be ten times that price.¡±
¡®That¡¯s still around 50 to 120 Blues per month, by Elcrain standards. Maybe it¡¯s not that low since the buying power of ??1000 is a lot more than a single Blue despite the equivalent numerical value.¡¯
Ebony even saw posts for farmers and miners to Teheil. It offered them harvest-based rewards but it was not a popular post. Few farmers or miners took individual jobs. At such high levels, most were part of groups. And the post said the destination was a secret, Ebony just guessed it was Teheil from the brief description of the Worldcore¡¯s properties.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°Do you think I¡¯m putting a bounty on my head by wearing an Ancient quality Myriad Bracelet?¡± Ebony realised that most people would not be able to afford one.
¡°Fear not, there are basic enchantments available to make them invisible and unable to be sensed by all but Saints and stronger. At Ancient quality, you can place many enchantments without overburdening the material. Though it really depends on the order. Have you decided?¡±
¡°Oh right, I might as well place a custom order. ??10 million is just over 4 hours¡¡± Ebony¡¯s words silenced Hex for a moment.
¡°Place the order through me and I can keep everything a secret, find a suitable crafter, and they wouldn¡¯t even know who ordered it.¡±
¡°How much for secrecy?¡±
¡°??15,000,000¡±
¡°Sure.¡± Ebony learned the importance of keeping strength a secret from Mr Guru. He wasn¡¯t nearly strong enough that he could openly share his skills.
¡°Both of them have to be as unaffected by ice, fire, vibration, gravity, lightning, wind and blood as possible.¡±
¡°That can be done rather easily with materials of that quality. What else?¡±
¡°Enchantment for invisibility. Oh I hope there is a comfort factor. Try to make it such that we can barely feel it on our skin. The thinner the better.¡±
¡°Easily doable.¡±
¡°For me, an active stealth for mana, for hers, vitality. Make it an option we can activate or deactivate.¡±
¡°That might be a bit harder, and it might require your mana and her vitality.¡±
¡°Hmn, forget it then.¡± Ebony decided it was still better for him to learn how to hide their own aura than risk giving information about his mana''s properties just for a stealth function.
¡°Mana conversion to standardised mana for mine, just add on one of your portable modules too. ¡±
¡°Which rank? For Myriad-rated modules, Ancient costs ??32,542,000.¡±
¡°That is expensive, which rank allows me to connect throughout the sector?¡±
¡°Rare should suffice but it¡¯s slow and there might be a few days lag depending on how far away you are from the station.¡±
¡°Fine, Ancient for both.¡±
¡°What else?¡±
¡°Can¡¯t have it breaking.¡±
¡°Definitely. Are you aware that a portable module with me and a convertor would mean direct banking services?¡±
¡°Yeah, can you estimate how much the efficiency would decrease?¡±
¡°At least half. Something small enough to fit a bracelet simply cannot outfunction the current facilities you¡¯re in. okay then, for obvious reasons I¡¯ll throw in the registration card that would prove your account with me and also act as a wallet, you can trade money with it directly. Would you like support combat options?¡±
¡°Such as?¡±
¡°Support spells could be imbued that could be activated. This would likely require an additional person to work on the Bracelet, more depending on the enchantment or spell.¡±
¡°Hmm, if I don¡¯t do that, the material still has space for more enchantments?¡±
¡°At the moment, yes. Other popular functions are powerful healing, element amplification, navigation and of course, spatial storage. Binding is an obvious choice, so no one else but you or your mana signature can open. Mana signature can be used against you so the best would be soul signature but, we do not have anyone in the entire sector that can craft or cast a soul binding.¡±
¡°Give me the healing, spatial storage and binding to all essences from vitality to stamina and mana.¡±
¡°Either give one of those choices up or the price would increase drastically due to a composite material required and the thickness would be compromised unless you are fine with a further price increase for a spatial compression.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s do that. As for physical appearance, just let the crafter make what they think would match our fit.¡± Ebony actually didn''t know if Hex or Eidolon, the group of spirits had eyes in the physical world to see what he was wearing.
¡°With the current specifications desired, the estimated cost is ??235,600,000 each.¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t think I want to spend that much time lying here.¡±
¡°You can place the order now. I will sell to you on credit, when the trade is successful your reputation will rise a lot thanks to the sales volume.¡±
¡°You will do that?¡±
¡°I doubt you¡¯ll die or renege on the deal as long as you stay on the station. And you can¡¯t pay for a ticket off the station if you don¡¯t get a bracelet with the registration card or the money. No one else would sell to you on credit with your non-existent reputation.¡±
¡°How long would the creation take?¡±
¡°We have the materials but the crafter we have in mind is not on the station, estimated time for product to arrive. A standard month.¡±
¡°Let me ask, is all natural worlds¡¯ day and night cycle the same as a standard because someone made it that way?¡±
¡°...that is not free information.¡±
¡°So I¡¯m right, someone made all natural worldcores born follow the same time, same celestial body cycle as an attempt to ¡®standardise¡¯ time. And Cinderash doesn¡¯t, either it is not a natural worldcore or it was born before the time of standardisation. As far as the Book of Laws stated, Worldcores born before a certain period would not be affected.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not saying a word.¡±
¡°Alright, then just put the order down. I¡¯ll use a cheap bracelet in the meantime and sleep here every few nights.¡±
He got two free hotel rooms that weren¡¯t the best furnished for living but they sufficed. After he got a cheap myriad bracelet, he took Xin out to sell the stuff they got from Teheil.
¡°Half each?¡± She cocked her head.
¡°You keep it, the Altarbound wouldn¡¯t have given me anything. They gave it to you.¡±
Fortunately, they didn¡¯t trade everything in just for the tickets to get to this station. A lot was lost to transportation fees and the prices increased drastically once they were here and found a reputable store. Run by a race more lizard than human. They were not beastmen but actual lizards that walked on fours. They usually used mind magic for communication but since that left people susceptible to mind attacks, they used an attachment on their bracelet to vocalise their words.
Most of them wore leather clothing or armour but the merchants of this race wore baggy linen.
The materials Ning Xin got were all Ancient quality and most importantly, unique and new. Barely any was circulating in the market. It was clear that Mirellans kept the harvest goods for themselves at the moment.
She was also a millionaire now.
¡®No way, surely King ranked can earn more than a few hundred thousand per month if they hunt in Ancient ranked dungeons¡oh well, this is technically decades worth of harvest.¡¯ In terms of volume, she didn¡¯t actually take much from Teheil or the natives. Golden Fields simply produce immense harvests at a time.
They went restaurant hopping and were basically always eating till they returned to the bank¡¯s facility.
Although he searched through Hex, there was nothing of ice or fire element that was as good as what they got from the Cinderash or Teheil. People simply didn¡¯t sell things that were rare and useful. Who didn¡¯t want a stronger physique?
Ebony found out about the God of Knowledge¡¯s library but it was only for people of a certain reputation. And it was equivalent to Saints and above even excluding the price they were asking for access. In any case, it didn¡¯t matter because this station didn¡¯t have a physical branch. There was only a single branch in the regional station, not a puny sector station like this.
They found a shuttle service that would go to Elcra which, fortunately, was in the current sector they were in. While Cinderash was actually two sectors away. It was no wonder why Elcra didn¡¯t know about them in the past. The Cinderashians'' reach was pretty far if they¡¯d managed to get their hands on Teheil initially.
Ebony bought information from brokers online on the different powers and forces but it was introductory and seemed unreliable at best.
Browsing the net, taking food journeys through various cultures and cuisines, walking through physical stores, sleeping on a metal bed like a test subject.
They found themselves boarding a semi-private shuttle service a higher grade than the one they took to the station and set off back home with fresh new clothes, a phone in the form of a bracelet and the spoils they¡¯ve got over the years.
Chapter 364: Earth
Their time on the station was like a vacation. It was safe besides seedy salesman selling their hometown specialities such as drugs or exotics. No one cared about a pair of Grandmasters when Kings were considered average and maybe even the weaker group. They didn¡¯t go anywhere close to the residential area just in case problems found their way to them.
He noticed a couple of Cinderashians with their steampunk garb but they were individual strangers. As far as he could tell, they didn¡¯t work for Gearhart. It was not common to see people from other Sectors so a few individuals that didn¡¯t wear the flag or symbol of their Worldcore that could freely travel between sectors was a sign of their overall strength.
Xin even dressed up in a floral sundress with a straw sunhat on most days they went on walks and restaurant hunting. He had no idea where she got the dress or hat from. Did she go shopping when he rested in the bank?
Privacy was a big thing for people on the station, the only perception they used other than physical sight was ambient mana. But the station didn¡¯t produce ambient mana since it was a moon without a Worldcore. Perhaps some elements but not what one would find on a normal planet with a Worldcore. So it was just ambient mana from people, items and all foreign objects. It was extremely obvious whenever anyone tried to spread their energy or skills for perception. An unspoken rule to keep one¡¯s eyes to themselves and he wasn¡¯t about to break when he liked privacy for himself.
He wore a white t-shirt, a bomber jacket and their techwear lookalike cargo pants with black combat boots. Xin wore a similar set. It was the most common looking set so they didn¡¯t stand out but they were all high-quality goods.
The shuttle they boarded has a lot more personal space for each passenger, not individual cabins but still much better than the first shuttle they took. The shuttle would drive through a path where passengers would alight at different stops. About 3 dozen passengers got aboard before they left off.
¡°We¡¯re not very sociable are we?¡± Xin¡¯s hair had regrown quite a bit over the past three years but it was not quite as it used to be, her fringes now cautious red hot. The thing about being slightly richer than normal was that the people surrounding them were also either rich, strong or both.
¡°Why¡¯d you ask?¡± The question had been a curveball.
¡°Everyone on the station seems to focus on making connections with people from other worlds while we just keep to ourselves.¡±
¡°We¡¯re just doing whatever feels comfortable for us. We¡¯re not merchants.¡±
¡°That¡¯s true.¡±
At the outer edges of his mindspace, over a dozen green particles were circling about a bronze coin that was hazy to his view. It took a few particles to show 1 screen so this portable module of Eidolon Hex was only capable of opening 3 concurrent tabs. It appeared like the more of these particles on the job, the faster the connection or loading and having 1 tab open was enough.
In the depths of his mindspace, he was able to confirm that Dusk and Aegis were both alive in that their Will hadn''t fully dissipated.
¡®So the Core of a Domain or the permanent part of Will that doesn¡¯t dissipate can last over a decade without complete degradation.¡¯
Ebony didn¡¯t have Welser¡¯s contact because the butler couldn¡¯t afford a portable module that could act as a callstone. Although it had that function, he preferred the callstone where there wasn¡¯t a group of spirits acting as the intermediary to transmit voices. Even if they used a messaging system between accounts, it would all still go through the Eidolon.
Their new Myriad Bracelet by some weird coincidence had the design of branches with plum flowers carved out of the metal. His was made of an unknown composite that gave a silvery blue sheen while Xin¡¯s had a red sheen but they were both silver in colour when they weren¡¯t hidden. It seemed like they were made to match their robes.
With some form of binding, it should follow them if they ever were to be forcefully teleported. However, the spatial storage had left much to be desired. It was definitely bigger than the bag he was carrying but smaller than the upgraded bag that Kong Jing made for them. The ¡®space¡¯ was not a cubic volume, it was more like a donut. It wasn¡¯t that bad, with roughly 15 cubic metres worth of space.
Ebony wore his bracelet under his prison cell that he shifted aside. The prison cell was the rarest item he had, the strongest shield and possibly weapon. Another difference between the Myriad Bracelets from Elcra was that this was thin and not as wide making it more like a flat bangle or watch.
The spirit of his prison would act out once in a while, but a soul roar was enough to quieten her down. He did try to talk it out of trapping him every single time but it never worked. She wanted to stop but always ended up driving herself to trap him and suck his mana dry. And she was indeed capable of absorbing every drop of his regenerated mana with ease. She was still a threat but Ebony already tested a few methods and was confident he could physically remove her from his arm. He just thought it was another one of his spoils from Cinderash.
Eidolon did not have many functions when it came to entertainment, visual or otherwise. There were more documentaries than movies for entertainment being sold.
The trip to Elcra would take over 2 weeks since their stop was the last. There simply wasn¡¯t anyone else going over there. The shuttle had all the amenities from a bathroom to food and their seats could be reclined into a bed.
Most importantly, this shuttle had transparent walls for Ebony to see what was different about the ¡®space¡¯ here compared to the one he knew of.
¡°Hmm, it''s not so special.¡± He commented when he saw the shuttle fly up and out of the artificial atmosphere that mages created. The shuttle didn¡¯t even shake and their foothold never tilted when the vehicle turned or shifted.
There was a small sun to the west of the shuttle, a few asteroids but other than that¡this was just space just without the few planets that he learned when he was a child.
¡°Ah ha, I hear you, my dear customer. Worry not, young man. You will see a spectacle soon enough!¡± The shuttle¡¯s announcement cut through his thoughts.
Maybe due to a difference in shuttle quality or the ease of leaving the station compared to Teheil, there were no rules like staying seated during lift-off. As far as he could tell, the shuttle worked like a rocket and was in space by thrusters. Although probably fueled by mana.
Xin poked his shoulders twice before pointing to the open pantry.
¡°Go ahead.¡± Ebony remained seated. While waiting for the spectacle, he was back on the net in his mind.
¡°Tell me about Earth.¡± He paid the six-digit price for the information. It wasn¡¯t that expensive all things considered.
¡°Earth¡the Earth that you know, exists in another dimension.¡±This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
¡°Dimension?¡±
¡°That¡¯s a separate piece of information. Anyway, that is a place where-how should we say this¡it is a place where some special people send their descendants to¡train? Grow up? Something like that.¡±
¡°Odd.¡±
¡°Okay, so you are from that Earth where mana and magic isn¡¯t a thing correct?¡±
¡°Mostly.¡±
¡°But stories? Folktales? Religion? You know of Yggdrasil. You know of Elves, Dwarves, Yetis. Gods. You know the words mana, chakra, qi, aether. You know they are some ¡®mystical¡¯ energies.¡±
¡°That is true.¡±
¡°Some are implanted. Some are things humans just come up with. But to the people here, it is a place where they can choose to send their descendants too. There, there is no potent magic. Enemies cannot kill people¡¯s descendants with just a snap of their fingers or a single thought there. I¡¯ll give you more information, this is non-sensitive. You came from Earth, onto Elcra, are we right?¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°Don¡¯t need to be so sensitive, there is one famous person on Elcra who had been on Earth once. We¡¯re sure you know him, Oplot. I can¡¯t tell you where he¡¯s from or whose child he is but it is not rare for people of their¡level, fame and power to send their descendants to Earth be it a temporary trip or not. First of all, not having full access to mana or other natural-born energies at birth is both an advantage and disadvantage. The disadvantage is when you finally get kicked out of Earth a bit after you turn of age for a Class, your skills that had to do with those energies lag and you have to start from zero. The advantage, you start from a purer state. Your energies aren¡¯t affected by your birthworld and only by genetics. Were we clear?¡±
¡°You were. Elcrian mana has a flavour of their own and Mirellans has another. Mine doesn¡¯t take those, and is already quite close to universal standard. At least, the baseline.¡±
¡°Most people don¡¯t understand what that means and we wouldn¡¯t consider your mana close to standard with those conversion efficiencies.¡±
¡°I see, basically strong people with a lot of enemies send their children there. Due to certain rules, I got teleported or kicked out in your words when I turned 15. Since the standard day and year are the same as an Elcrian calendar, 15 seems universal. But this¡dimension¡¯s time flow is different, hence Oplot who had been a similar age as me is now over 200 years old. As for why, maybe he came out earlier? Maybe he only visited and wasn¡¯t born on Earth?¡±
¡°We can neither deny nor affirm your speculations. There is another thing we can tell you about Earth, you mentioned the flow of time. We can tell you that it is not static like the difference between a dungeon¡¯s time and outside a dungeon. It constantly changes and the path or method that one is kicked out is random which also changes how time is perceived. Another thing to mention, the time that you or your predecessors went in might not be the timeframe that you think it is.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Our thoughts exactly. If there were any lateness when it comes to your age, it''s probably due to this changing flow of time so you might not be exactly 15 years of age when you got kicked out. Sorry, that¡¯s not accurate. You were kicked out when you turned 15 but you didn''t get fully kicked out until a proper destination had been set. That is the safety law God has placed.¡±
¡°I know I shouldn¡¯t ask but¡which God are you referring to now?¡± They say curiosity killed the cat, he hoped he wasn¡¯t considered one.
¡°Oh, right. Any being who refers to God only refers to a specific individual. Most commonly known as the God of Nature who rules over-whatdidyouexpect, nature.¡±
¡°This isn¡¯t taboo to speak of?¡±
¡°Nope, God wouldn¡¯t mind or care. We mean, are you consciously thinking about what that colony of bacteria on the floor thinks about you? We doubt so.¡±
¡°I see. Anything else?¡±
¡°Oh, we¡¯re talking like it''s no secret but Earth isn¡¯t known by many. At least, not public knowledge.¡±
¡°Do you really not sell information about people?¡±
¡°...yes, we do not.¡±
¡°But you have the information? If not Hex, maybe some other parts of Eidolon?¡±
¡°We can neither deny nor affirm your speculations.¡±
¡°Fine, if there¡¯s nothing else you have to add, show me the list of information and the God of Knowledge is open to sell again.¡± Ebony probed the group of spirits no longer. They were like AI, programmed not to be able to do or say some things. Inflexible in some ways and flexible in others.
He secretly scrolled through an endless list of topics even after Xin pushed a plate of cut fruits into his hands.
Part of the spoils he never sold were seeds from Teheil and Cinderash. He learnt everything he could about those seeds and their growth conditions so it was up to him to open access to more ingredients once they were back home. Over a hundred types from various Worldcores who had stores on the station were also bought. Only fruits and vegetables that fit the human taste buds of course. His favourite so far was one of Teheil¡¯s fruits, a watermelon-sized fruit whose outer shell was sold as armour material and the flesh looked and tasted like kiwifruit. Second only to frost plums.
¡°My dear customer, please observe outside your left. Fret not! Our defences will not let a mere school of titanium meteor skate fishes lay a scratch on us!¡±
Everyone on board gave attention to the left.
The few people standing by the walls shifted aside for everyone to view bright lights beaming towards a grey blob. Each individual skate fish was about as long as a blue whale and just as wide but there were hundreds of them. The distance didn¡¯t impede Ebony from Appraising them to be a bunch of Kings amongst a couple of Emperors.
Without any sound or lights, the fishes suddenly turned onto their bellies. They were dead.
¡°No grade 5 King or Emperor can touch us and we may even be able to escape certain grade 6 Emperors!¡± The announcer referred to commonly understood power differentials and had nothing to do with individual duelling or destructive capabilities. Apparently, a fully operational Bellicose Savant from Cinderash was considered a grade 4 Emperor. As for how they graded it, it was extremely confusing be it by a person¡¯s known skills or feats and the Nebula Watch had nothing to do with this particular perceived power.
¡°How did they die?¡± Ebony asked knowing that the announcer could hear him.
¡°That¡¯s a secret!¡±
¡°Not much of a spectacle,¡± Xin muttered.
If the announcer heard her, there was no response and everyone returned to their seats or the 6 modules to Eidolon Hex on board.
Harpoons were shot at the upturned fishes and those that touched the harpoons wooshed into nothing, probably stored. ¡®Where¡¯s up?¡¯ was a question he didn¡¯t bother asking anyone.
¡°That¡¯s quite a haul, they are roughly grade 4 on average but titanium meteor is hard to come by¡¡± Ebony received a bit of information from some people chatting amongst themselves.
The further away from the station, the more often small attacks from weird space creatures came. And every single time, he wasn¡¯t able to figure out how the shuttle or the people in charge of security were killing those threats.
Until two days later when the siren in the cabin rang out loud and red lights blared throughout the shuttle that shuddered violently once.
¡°Wa-¡± The upbeat announcer¡¯s voice was cut off before he could finish.
Ebony grabbed onto Xin¡¯s waist reflexively though her reaction speed was faster and she grabbed him first.
The alarms stopped ringing, the red lights went off and the reverberating vibrations settled down oddly fast after the sudden outbreak.
¡°N-nothing happened everyone. Just a system issue ho-however, I have an announcement to make. We¡¯ll be making a detour. Schedules would be delayed by an estimate of¡about 2 months.¡±
Rushes of complaints were thrown out almost immediately at the scare and the sudden decision for a detour but Xin and Ebony just slashed and punched out at the same time when something touched their shoulders.
¡°Hey! Is that really how you greet your sister every single time?¡± Ebony felt like his punch was moving forward without his body.
¡°Hello Sister Jing. It¡¯s been a while.¡±
¡°Oh now you greet me prop-¡± The space mage was tackled by her cousin soon after.
Chapter 365: Sky’s Edge
¡°Scoot aside.¡± Kong Jing seated herself between their seats after she willingly allowed herself to be tackled. Arms wide and scooping both of Ebony and Ning Xin''s shoulders, she sat comfortably.
¡°Congratulations on your successful evolution.¡± Ebony decided to open with that.
¡°Oh that, I¡¯m already preparing for my next. Seriously, it''s so easy to level. Wait, where¡¯s my post-evolution gift.¡± The gifted craftswoman showed off. Ebony didn¡¯t Appraise her but he trusted that she was likely already level 750.
¡°You can study this cube if you want.¡± He offered one of the interesting items in his possession.
¡°...That is one crazy rock. I¡¯ll take it off your hands for a while. Later, and that bracelet...I can take that piece of crap off if you want. Nevermind, I¡¯ll place a restriction charm on it. Done.¡± Ebony looked at his cell, unknown grey symbols glew on it for a brief moment. He wasn¡¯t sure what happened but the spirit might not be able to respond to him at the moment.
¡°What are you doing here Sister? How did you find us?¡± Xin fought off the ear-pinching from her cousin.
¡°As much as I want to say I¡¯m a space mage and I found you, I was sent here to pick the two of you up. I¡¯ve been waiting for a long time.¡± Kong Jing, who had gotten taller suddenly got pissed when people got too close. The passengers were complaining about something but she had cut out the three of them from the space they had been in so hearing them wasn¡¯t possible.
¡°We were already on our way back, Grandma is so slow.¡± Xin crossed her arms and huffed.
¡°You misunderstand, I¡¯m bringing you home. Not Elcra. And yes, your grandma is waiting there for you.¡±
¡°So that¡¯s what the detour is for. Two months is long.¡± Ebony realised what happened in the pilot¡¯s room was a gangster getting what she wanted by force.
¡°It¡¯ll take a week, the delay is for everyone else. Space is dangerous so I¡¯ll bring you along once we¡¯re closer.¡±
¡°Weren¡¯t you waiting out there for a long time?¡±
¡°I¡¯m in my element. Its harder to protect you two over long distances. I also only got the confidence to travel alone after I evolved. What is that¡woah! How did you get a portable module? And that Myriad Bracelet, who did you rob!?¡±
¡°I bought it.¡±
¡°Oh¡my cute brother, haven¡¯t I been very nice to you. Maybe-maybe you can get me an actual gift.¡± Kong Jing shifted her upper body towards him and lightly pinched his cheeks.
¡°Sure. What do you want, I¡¯ll put the order down and you can tell me the address.¡± Ebony had heard that delivery could get more expensive than any product but if it''s within the Sector, it probably wouldn¡¯t exceed the cost of a portable module.
He indeed owed her quite a lot, even his words that he¡¯ll protect her in future simply never came true. At least, it was nothing, a few hours of waiting and doing nothing but letting his converter add to his bank account could repay. The smaller converter was far less efficient to the large facility than they estimated, it was only roughly 20% as efficient and it was already the best anyone Hex could reach in a short period of time to build. It cut his earning capabilities to ??127 per second but he wasn¡¯t bothered by it.
¡°You¡¯re the best! Let me get the catalogue. I¡¯ll improve that for you in exchange.¡± Kong Jing pulled his wrist and tapped the invisible bracelet as if it wasn¡¯t unseen. With a few flicks of her fingers, she moved onto Xin¡¯s and did the same.
The donut-shaped space within his bracelet expanded beyond what he could immediately check and pull anything out.
¡®With a few flicks?¡¯ The items within couldn¡¯t even serve as a reference for him to estimate how much larger the space they had increased.
¡°With these skills, you can earn money easily can¡¯t you?¡± Ebony titled his head away from her mask in confusion.
¡°Yeah¡I have something to tell you. I¡¯m a Xeng, I can¡¯t sell subpar equipment and items. And who¡¯s going to buy something at this price point? Spatial equipment gets exponentially more expensive with a small increment in storage size. And I¡¯m too young to sell to other regions with a bigger market like my clanmates, people with greater skills would be all over the place in my current inexperienced state. This place is too barren. Except you of course, you¡¯re probably already one of the biggest clientele in the sector if you can already afford two of these, module included. I bet you, Hex had to get these from a different sector.¡±
¡°Do you want to use it to search the catalogue? You can help me search for suitable visitation gifts to anyone I would probably meet on-wherever your home is.¡± Ebony raised his portable module to her.
¡°Use mine instead.¡± Xin offered.
¡°Okay, but I¡¯ll deal with this first.¡±The space mage returned their hearing to the rest of the passengers. ¡°We¡¯re making a stop, if you¡¯re not happy I can remove you from the shuttle.¡±
Her outburst of essence made his stomach churn and he felt a slight sensation of vertigo. What he felt was intensified a few hundred times over for every other passenger. Kong Jing was the same as ever, always using brute force and threats.
Perhaps it was obvious to all that the only way someone else could have entered the enclosed shuttle was using space magic. Because the shuttle also had defences against spatial creatures from entering, it could only mean she was capable of ripping that apart or ignoring it altogether.
One guy wasn¡¯t so smart but Kong Jing didn¡¯t have mercy and they saw the man outside the transparent walls right after he tried to throw her out, physically.
The fast-moving shuttle shot a harpoon at the man quick enough to save him. Though it was questionable where he ended up after touching that harpoon.
As the associates to the space thug, Ebony and Xin were greatly frowned upon for the rest of their trip. But none of them were bothered by it and went on their trip like nobody¡¯s business. No matter their complaints, they were stuck in the same vehicle.
Ebony had a cup of tea while the ladies had juice and Kong Jing helped to pick out proper gifts for a first-time visit.
It was an unexpected detour but he was more than happy to go to the highly acclaimed and feared Xengs¡¯ home whose fame spread far further than just a mere sector or region. As a guest, it was only right to prepare a gift. However, it was too bad it would arrive by delivery and he wouldn¡¯t have anything on hand.
¡°These would make you barely presentable. There just isn¡¯t anything Hex has access to with our reputation that the elders can¡¯t. Me and Xin are the only children of our generation. Other than a handful of people every sixth gen and above Xeng is already Emperor ranked, oh, I¡¯m talking about members of the three great clans, those in Xienor aren¡¯t from part of those clans. Those 1 and 2 generations above us are still considered young and not taken seriously. Oh, it¡¯s not going to be a fun time for you.¡± Kong Jing rubbed Xin¡¯s head at the end.
¡°I¡¯m aware.¡± Xin nodded.
¡°I¡¯m not, why?¡± Ebony perked his ears up
¡°Those 1 generation above, there¡¯s a few of them who are combatants? Yeah, those at home would probably show themselves and bully her.¡±
¡°And why is that a certainty?¡±
¡°To test her, it''s the combatant¡¯s tradition. They have to test if diluting their blood was worth it. I mean, as long as she¡¯s strong enough or stronger than they think it¡¯s not a problem. She¡¯ll even be welcomed.¡±
¡°What are you implying?¡± Xin sharpened her tone and posture. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
¡°I¡¯m saying they will beat you up, scorn you and leave. Even the nicer ones, but it probably won¡¯t be that bad. They are not like the oldies, those guys are way more uptight and disgusted by weakness. Unfortunately, there¡¯s nothing I can do. Unlike you, I¡¯m not part of the three great clans and I¡¯m not even a combatant. My status is barely any greater. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m sure they won¡¯t beat you up too badly. None of them are from the three great clans.¡±
¡°Why do you keep saying I¡¯ll be beaten up?¡± Xin was getting angry at her cousin¡¯s casual diss.
¡°...I¡¯m sorry to break it to you but, both of you together can¡¯t even hurt me, and they don¡¯t consider me a combatant. They can have their powers sealed to that of a Grandmaster, be blinded, have their arms tied behind their backs and there wouldn¡¯t be any difference. It hurts me but me bringing you home already confirms the beating you¡¯ll get. I bet Ebony would be put into a spar too. Though first thing¡¯s first, grand auntie and the elders would have to check who¡¯s descendant you are if you really are part Xeng like you assume.¡±
¡°They don¡¯t already know?¡±
¡°I think they don¡¯t. There are procedures to this. Grand auntie can¡¯t just look you up if you¡¯re really another Xeng. At least we don¡¯t have anyone named Amelia or Matthew. She¡¯s in a sensitive spot for a Ning. You¡¯ve never been divined ever since she first divined you haven¡¯t you?¡±
Ebony realised that those were the names he used to know, but they weren¡¯t actually their real names. ¡°I remember their names now.¡±
He didn¡¯t clarify any further fearing that he caused some kind of supernatural effect.
It was also true that his divination resistance remained constant ever since he first got it.
¡°That should make it easy for them and once they confirm, you will then be treated the same. Xeng. Combatant. There can only be a battle. Brutes don¡¯t know other forms of greetings and introductions. Ah, all of us speak another language but Gia should work.¡± Kong Jing gave Ning Xin a knock on the head for not having taught him their language, ever.
¡°A book would help.¡±
¡°I suppose I do have a few children¡¯s books in Xenese.¡±
Ebony learned the language to fluency before they arrived at their stop and Kong Jing tried to rip them out of the shuttle. Leaving him behind.
¡°Huh, little brother. What the?¡±
¡°Wait, I¡¯ll empty myself before you try again.¡± Ebony force-fed the bracelet and his spirit cell with mana to let the space mage get through his magic body.
¡®Looks like my magic body finally exceeded her abilities.¡¯
¡°No need. I was just surprised. Not too bad little bro!¡±
Ebony still found himself floating in space outside the shuttle the next moment. He got ahead of himself. Space magic was truly unfair.
¡°A landmass in a bubble floating in space?¡± He spoke out his mind. They were too far for him to get a good gauge but the landmass was greater than that of an island. It was like the floating islands he¡¯d read about.
¡°That is our home. That sun is cast by one of the Yang. The other sun there is cast by his son. That congregation of moons there is the training ground and home to the Yin clan. The Ning Clan shifts the celestial bodies to adjust the view. I mean, probably a chore or hobby for one of them. The land and Worldcore is maintained by the Shi Clan. Both Clan Leaders of the Three Great Clans are home so be on your good behaviour.¡±
¡°What about the third?¡± Ebony remembered the story about the crazy head of the Wen Clan that was the only person of the entire clan. The space mages'' words had gotten over his head by how ridiculous they were.
¡°Always away. Far. I forgot to say our home is only so nearby because they made a stop here to fetch the three of us.¡±
¡°How many clans are there?¡± Ebony asked curiously. They were floating in space without any special equipment, just waiting for Kong Jing to lead them. But she just stood there and explained the scenery.
To be fair, it was one that he could never have dreamed of seeing and it was beautiful.
¡°Never counted. 20?¡±
¡°21.¡± Xin corrected her cousin. This was a homecoming for her, it wasn''t like she had never met relatives other than her Grandmother. she was just a lot younger back then and was on Elcra for most of her childhood.
¡°That thing is a planet with a Worldcore?¡± The landmass with its own sun and moons didn¡¯t look anything like a planet with a living Worldcore.
¡°I heard it was bought from an auction. There is one dungeon but you need to steer clear from it, that is not for us or those a generation above us.¡±
¡°What are we waiting for?¡±
¡°I think my granduncle will come get us. Don¡¯t worry, he¡¯s a weird guy but not terrible. Us crafters can¡¯t be bothered about combat power or bloodline.¡±
¡°Be that as it may, it''s rude to call your elders¡¯ weird, dear niece.¡± A brown-haired man with a pure black mask with rippling white circles coming from the centre walked up to them, each step crossing massive distances and expanding within their view.
¡°Ahha, but you are a weirdo granduncle.¡± For the first time, Ebony saw the craftswoman baulk back a little and acted like a kid who got caught stealing candy.
¡°...I¡¯ll be confiscating your spatial conduit until I see you¡¯ve learnt your lesson and how to respect your elders.¡±
¡°WHAT NO! You can¡¯t do that!¡± In a moment of panic, the space mage touched her mask but a weird looking stick with Kong Jing¡¯s aura was already in her uncle¡¯s hands.
¡°Already did. But it''s good that you no longer toss space magic training aside. Now, Ning Xing¡¯s granddaughter and a lost half, welcome to Xiaoya. Or Sky¡¯s Edge, whichever you prefer. I am Kong Tian from the Kong Clan. A fifth Generation Xeng like Ning Xing.¡± The man played Kong Jing with space magic. It was incomprehensible to people who can¡¯t see or sense what was going on but it was obvious that the younger woman was fuming mad.
Ebony was glad he could learn the language in days so he was able to understand what the man was saying.
¡°Which generation are you from?¡± Ebony transmitted through their mana link to Xin''s mask.
¡°You children are part of the seventh, the smallest generation so far but the generation is still ongoing. There used to be two more, one from the Huo and another from the Zhang Clan but they passed away young.¡± With a clap, the man made Kong Jing poof out of view. Ebony truly doubted any harm befell their sister in generation and he didn¡¯t even bat an eye about his ¡®secret¡¯ conversation being eavesdropped on.
As a culprit of eavesdropping, he understood how unavoidable it was when a person¡¯s perception was too keen.
¡°May I ask how?¡± Since the man was sharing, Ebony thought it was part of a normal conversational flow to ask.
¡°The Huo child¡¯s elemental skills were too strong, his body exploded into nether flames during his evolution to King. I guess he shouldn¡¯t have meddled with the death element. The Zhang Clan shot a star to kill an opponent, probably dead with his Saint opponent. He was not too bad for a King. The Zhang might grow some courage and get Ning Xing to divine whether he''s really dead or not soon. Or not, they are one of the weakest clans.¡± The greater user of space magic shrugged his shoulders.
All Ebony could think was how intense the smell of blood was around the man. It was oddly old but fresh. It messed his nose and mana''s perception slightly because of the conflicting information he was receiving. His mana was ¡®smelling¡¯ blood, but his nose didn¡¯t.
¡°Where is my grandmother?¡± Xin was surprisingly calm in her full, non-combative mode. Ebony actually expected her to be in the opposite state. Meeting fang with fang fits the personality that he knew of her.
¡°Probably getting scolded by her grandfather right about now. Don¡¯t worry, he dotes on her quite a lot. They might be having snacks together and faked a loud scolding for all we know.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t tell?¡±
¡°Ah, you thought since I¡¯m a space mage I know everything going on? I suppose that¡¯s a good assumption to have. But no, I¡¯m not that good and that doesn¡¯t work on Xiaoya. Anyone past the fourth generation, no matter the clan, is crazy to us. Few have closed the generational gap excluding descendants of the three great clans. They are capable of freaky stuff. By that I mean incomprehensible. Hang on¡¡± After landing onto the streets of a village not unlike Xienor in decor, the masked man turned to grab Ebony by the shoulders and twisted him left and right with an indiscernible look on his slowly rippling mask. Then putting his hands on his chin and checking Xin out from head to toe.
¡°This won¡¯t do, let¡¯s get you some clothes first. I don¡¯t know about you but Ning Xing¡¯s granddaughter, you should have some of our clothing, no?¡±
¡°...I¡¯ve long grown out of them.¡± Xin looked to the side at Kong Jing blinking in and out of existence beside them.
The only Xeng clothing Xin had were the battledress for her Master days that she hardly ever wore, and her training garb when she was a smaller, younger child. Otherwise, her usual garb would not stand out from other residents of the Elcra.
Ebony saw the gates when they descended, this was the Kong Clan compound or village. And it was a treat to every one of his senses. His mana perception went on as far as it could go, but he only sensed the street he was on. As far as the 2 Kongs he knew could go, this was the home of space mages.
¡®The street is pulsing and changing in size constantly¡is someone playing with space magic right now?¡¯ Yet his eyes saw a stable stretch of buildings, albeit a distance apart from each other nothing was moving or changing like his mana perception was telling him.
¡°Ah Jing, go get your Auntie Hua to make presentable clothes for them¡you too, wearing work clothes outside your workshop is not becoming of a lady.¡±
¡®I think I understand why she preferred to stay in Elcra away from family.¡¯ Ebony saw Kong Jing¡¯s rebellious head slamming but didn¡¯t hear any of screams. The Xengs didn¡¯t like to be suppressed and here? She would be the only youngest generation child for entire clans worth of older generations to look closely at, judge, praise or criticise. Both the good and bad.
But no matter what, there would be people vastly better than her surrounding her. Telling her what¡¯s best for her. It didn¡¯t matter if they were right, they might very well be the reason she ignored space magic and had her Sub-Class be the Discarded Aptitude of Spatial Brilliance.
Perhaps coming home was Kong Jing maturing.
Chapter 366: Limit of Mortals
¡°Ebony, please inform someone that your delivery is arriving so they don¡¯t destroy the shuttle.¡± While Kong Jing begrudgingly led them towards a wooden shop house with open walls or door. Their doors were removable wooden panels and this particular store was fully open. Hex quickly informed him of the imminent arrival of the gifts he bought on her suggestion.
¡°Already? Didn¡¯t I place the order a few days ago?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t let the phone usage distract him. Since there wasn¡¯t anyone walking around, he didn¡¯t know what their daily wear was like but he could imagine it from the people in Xienor.
¡°This is for Sky¡¯s Edge¡we¡¯ve sent our best. Delivery is on us this time.¡±
¡°You didn¡¯t send it, did you?¡±
¡°Hex is insufficient for any dealings with Sky¡¯s Edge.¡± The internet provider or assistant truthfully stated.
Ebony told the news to Kong Tian before the fifth-generation Xeng walked away to handle whatever it was he was busy with. ¡°Visitation gifts? You¡¯re a polite one.¡±
Ebony and Xin pulled their reluctant sister into the store with a shorter lady lying on a rattan or bamboo recliner chair. Still fully masked, it was a lady wearing neither a cheongsam nor a qipao. It was closer to what he saw in modern-day take on ancient Hanfu but not frilly. It was thick fabric and something that was not gender specific since Kong Tian wore something similar. Webs seemed to be a recurring pattern in their mostly black-and-white fashion and he wasn¡¯t sure if the embroidered image was that of a type of spider.
It was nothing like the immodest battledress Kong Jing jokingly made for Xin. The Xeng¡¯s fashion seemed like the picture of modesty barely showing any skin, only hands and their neck.
¡°Who do we have here? Little Jing! What did I say about your image, how can you walk out with your hair that messy!¡±
Kong Jing seemed to have completely given up unlike with Kong Tian. She was flung onto a stool and forcefully had her hair combed by her aunt.
¡°So you¡¯re the seventh generation Ning. Hmm, I see. So you do have the resting state. Fire from your grandfather and father, and thin blood¡Wind and lightning thinned out so much too. Tch, what a waste. But your body structure is perfect, as expected of a Ning. Fantastic frame if not a little pathetic in strength. Take this pair of scissors and cut that cloth in half with your essence.¡± The shorter lady was slender and had skin almost as pale as Xin. She lazily pointed to a pair of scissors on a red plate and then swiped to the right where a piece of fabric hung.
The random request aside, there was no derision or contempt in her voice, only a bit of despondency. Ebony thought Kong Jing might have exaggerated what Ning Xin would have to deal with here.
The shop floor didn¡¯t have many things other than a counter, a few chairs and a bunch of fabric of various colours displayed. There was no reason for them to sell items to one another on a daily or even yearly basis so these shophouses were probably more like a workshop and showroom. According to Kong Jing, the crafters of Xeng mostly made custom orders and sold them through the net.
They were not as rich as he imagined because the building materials seemed like it was Epic quality or lower. Though the craftsmanship of every item he was surrounded by including the floor he stood on was likely way higher than he could imagine.
¡°I heard there was a lost boy¡which clan are you from? I can¡¯t embroider the wrong emblem now, can I? I wonder which generation¡¯s child you are?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not too sure. Are there duplicate clans with the same surnames?¡±
¡°Aunt Hua, Grandaunt Ning is going to confirm that later.¡± Kong Jing was out of energy because she was suddenly dressed in a similar black and white dress with the web design without her consent. She probably struggled but couldn¡¯t resist the stronger space mage.
¡°Ah, how troublesome. I¡¯m making you a guest¡¯s garb for now. Ice¡none of us have ice except the Yin. Mind¡Ning? Doesn¡¯t feel like it. Body, fragile. Can¡¯t be the Shi then. Magic resistance is okay but definitely not the Xu. Celestial resonance¡maybe the Yang or Yin? Gravity does remind me a bit of the Shi again but that body¡forget it, even a halfie can¡¯t have such a weak body. Can you take that pair of scissors and cut the other piece in half for me?¡±
The mutterings of the women were soft but she meant for all of them to hear her words. A new pair of scissors on a red plate had magically appeared on the counter and so did another large piece of cloth appeared beside Xin¡¯s.
She was not a woman of greetings and it seemed like tetting or handshaking was not a culture here.
¡°Why are you sweating?¡± Ebony picked up the scissors and walked up to the new piece of pure white fabric just like the one Xin was holding the edge of right now. The woman was obediently following her senior''s instructions since she wasn¡¯t in her aggressive state and was amiable and agreeable.
She actually ignored him, fully concentrated holding the pair of scissors but not making any the cut like she was asked to do.
Ebony faced his own and cut the piece of fabric vertically in one pull. There was nothing hard about it, magically or not.
¡°Haha. Boy, I forgot to ask for your name.¡±
¡°Ebony.¡±
¡°I¡¯m Kong Hua of the sixth generation. I guess this proves you¡¯re one of us. Halfie or not.¡±
¡°How did you determine that?¡±
¡°You cut this in half without pause. Look at that girl struggling. She¡¯s a quarter. She can probably cut the cloth if she gets out of her resting state, but she¡¯s still a Xeng. She¡¯s trying to prove to me that she doesn¡¯t need to convert to push that pair of scissors down.¡±
¡°Is there some spell working? I didn¡¯t feel anything.¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t call it a spell. I asked two of you to cut it in half. There is a mental suggestion placed on the scissors and the cloth. Should you cut it vertically, horizontally or diagonally? It forces one to second guess themselves.¡±
¡°How does that prove anything?¡±
¡°Even the weakest of us never second guess ourselves.¡±
¡°Hmm. But can¡¯t you see that¡¯s not why she¡¯s struggling?¡±
¡°I can. So silly¡the Nings aren¡¯t the great three for nothing. I guess dilution doesn¡¯t erase what she¡¯s made of.¡±
Xin finally moved her hands and cut the cloth perfectly in half.
¡®She might have improved more than I assumed. Perfect half, down to the molecule. Is this just talent?¡¯ Ning Xin¡¯s pure control over a thick pair of scissors was beyond human.
He wasn¡¯t sure if a personality test was the entire reason Kong Hua told them to do this but the precision he saw from a resting Xin was beyond what he was capable of.
¡°Anyway, I was just kidding. The scissors don¡¯t have that function, all it does is conceptualise your essence and print it onto my fabric blend. You¡¯re no fun, that dead face is hard to look at.¡±
¡®Are the Xengs just a group of people with weird humour?¡¯ Ebony recalled Ning Xin¡¯s grandmother and her pranks.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The tailor¡¯s jokes aside, Ebony watched closely when the pure white fabric he cut in half was dyed light cyan from the cut and it spread throughout both pieces. The fabric slithered, contracting and expanding.
¡°Pft¡alright I had enough fun. Did you think the fabric was moving itself? Hahahaha.¡± Kong Hua tapped all 4 pieces of fabric rolled it up between her arms and walked to the counter. ¡°Little Jing, serve the guests tea.¡± Turning serious and letting her niece take over while she worked on the clothes.
¡®Was she using space magic to tailor? I didn¡¯t sense any foreign mana moving.¡¯ Ebony probably disappointed her fun because he wasn¡¯t embarrassed at all for thinking he was looking at self-crafting fabric.
¡°She¡¯s just like you, sister.¡± Ning Xin took a seat at a square bamboo table that teleported out of nowhere yet again. She likely knew that they were being pranked from the start and didn¡¯t tell him. The whole fake test about cutting the cloth was also part of the prank, it was to record their essence. Ebony did not expect that from the older lady and took her too seriously.
The stools supported his full weight with ease and he didn¡¯t need to use gravity magic.
¡°...Aunt Hua is my father¡¯s younger sister. Here, tea.¡± Despondent in her long dress, the lack of thick work gloves and properly bundled up hair with hair ornaments Kong Jing sat and poked around at Ebony¡¯s pet cube. The tea cup also just plopped onto the table.
Space mage culture and etiquette were not something he could comprehend. He wasn¡¯t about to question where the tea came from or why his mana senses could feel a few hundred thousand room-sized boxes in this shophouse, unable to escape the door his eyes were looking at. The only doors that existed throughout the house were the ones his eyes were looking at.
He had a feeling that if he were left alone in this village, he wouldn¡¯t be able to Flicker out. Forever.
After all, this shophouse was Kong Hua¡¯s Domain. And the village was some other space mage¡¯s territory. The intense Will had suppressed his Will before he entered. He couldn¡¯t cast his Domain, nor infuse any spell with Will. If he wanted to fight, all his spells must be on manual activation yet again.
The landmass known as Xiaoya or Sky¡¯s Edge suppressed his Will before he even entered the bubble film surrounding it and maintained an atmosphere. It was absolute, nothing like the Elves¡¯ home. His Will was bound to his mind tighter than ever as if an immovable rock had been placed over it.
Naturally, this alone weakened him significantly but he already tested his body. The ambient effects couldn¡¯t stop what he could do internally. Including infusing his chassis with Will and essentially casting an internal-only Domain so that his augmentations aren¡¯t weakened in any form. The same could be done to spells but the Will imbued wouldn¡¯t be able to change anything to the surroundings unlike in normal conditions.
This experience alone answered his questions about what would happen when he clashed with another Domain mage. It was all about a stronger or more intense Will. However, he probably wouldn¡¯t be able to fully suppress another Domain mage¡¯s Will with his current strength.
It already made the detour worth it.
¡°Ning girl, I¡¯m done, let''s get you changed. This is yours, Ebony.¡± The tailor tossed over a dark blue bundle to him and used space magic to disappear along with Xin. It gave him a bit of¡reflexive action of reaching out since the way she disappeared was similar to the time she got sent to Teheil.
¡°Umm, Sister Jing.¡±
¡°Whaaat.¡± Mask planted into the table, she kicked the immensely heavy cube around under the table. Dribbling it like a football. The cube shrunk.
¡°How do I put this on?¡±
¡°Haaa. give it here. This pants. Take your shirt and jacket off,¡± Instead of using space magic, she actually taught him.
Placing the pants on the table, he removed his clothes and allowed Kong Jing to help him get dressed.
¡°This is the inner garment. Arms through the sleeves. Tie this string to the inner hoop here, overlap the left over right. Remember, it''s the left over the right. Tighten this other string. Your pants go underneath. Then this waistband around you. Then do the same for the outer garment. There¡¯s only the upper and lower garment now but a robe is usually part of the set. This is the casual set. Combat set wouldn¡¯t have the upper garment be so long it reaches your ankles. It would split in two down the middle for leg movements instead of just at the sides. I¡¯ll whip up a matching pair of sneakers for you.¡± Kong Jing helped him and patted his chest to straighten the dark blue garment that was as long as any skirt or dress should get.
Of all Kong Hua¡¯s jokes, it seemed like the conceptualisation of essence wasn¡¯t a lie. The garment was printed with a familiar tree with a thick trunk, plums and burning petals on the back. While the front had light wavy lines without any particular design with a few thin branches reaching forward from his back. He wondered if the wavy lines were supposed to depict his generation of mana.
¡°Sneakers?¡±
¡°You know, like the ones on Eidolon. They said traditional Xeng shoes sucked and the older generations just forgot what they looked like. Aunt Hua doesn¡¯t make shoes.¡± It didn¡¯t take her much effort to produce a pair of sneakers.
¡°What about these huge sleeves?¡± He waved his arms around
¡°A few clans used those sleeves for hidden weapons in the past. It¡¯s not necessary anymore but they didn¡¯t see it as a reason to change their fashion style. It¡¯s pretty rare to see such sleeves, but this is the form your essence gave it. It must fit your fighting style. Almost forgot, left palm over right fist for greetings but it¡¯s not required for us seventh generation. Unless you¡¯re meeting some of the oldies who take tradition very seriously. Flipping it the other way around would be a challenge to the death and will be taken seriously children or not.¡± She showed a simple example of the greeting. He already learnt that from Xin long ago when he asked about the tetting culture on Elva.
The ladies were taking a long time so Kong Jing could share a bit more about the culture.
When they did reappear, he saw Xin with her hair tied up in a bun but still had enough length to gush down her back. Near-pitch black garments with highlights of red at the edges. There was a white crane embroidered on her upper left chest but no other patterns were visible. However, he could feel the mana patterns of the same feather as her mask together with outlines of flame. Despite the plain garb, she looked sharper than ever. Unlike his garments, the female set was just one dress possibly with a set of pants under. There were a few other slight differences in accessories. The thick garments were supposed to hide the figure but it wasn¡¯t able to do that to her.
And her waistband didn¡¯t lack a holder for her swords.
¡°Now are we ready?¡± She looked a little peeved, just like her cousin.
¡°Your Uncle Tian is on the way.¡± Kong Hua patted Xin¡¯s shoulders and did a final check on her dress before she reclined back onto her chair. Yawning, she muttered, ¡°I¡¯ll make you a combat ready suit after I see you fight. Take care.¡±
Ebony left a basket of assorted fruits on the countertop before they the left shophouse.
He didn¡¯t know what Kong Jing meant before but walking in this garment felt extremely natural and comfortable.
¡®These sleeves hide joint movements, it''s indeed good for my fighting style.¡¯ It was still a demerit overall but less cumbersome than first impressions told him.
¡°Now you¡¯re presentable. This way to the Ning compounds, follow me. You¡¯re maskless so don¡¯t let your mind wander as we walk through their Halcyon Gates. Little Jing, did you prepare that for him? Smart kid.¡± Kong Tian once again appeared before them.
But this time they were no longer in the Kong Clan compounds, they were on a dirt road in the middle of a meadow. For these space mages not to use space magic for transportation could only mean they lost the ability to, or this was some sort of unspoken rule when going to another Clan¡¯s home.
Ebony had no idea what the older man was talking about and Kong Jing only harrumphed at the compliment.
¡°What¡¯s that gate going to do?¡±
¡°It¡¯ll put one into a state of tranquil peace and intensifying happiness, forever trapped in a dream until you turn silly and only know laughter. Don¡¯t worry, it¡¯s just a toy version. The actual version is in Ning''s training hall. It wouldn¡¯t kick into effect with a certain level of mental defences. Ning Xing said you¡¯ll have no problems so you shouldn¡¯t be a baseline or subhuman.¡±
¡°Any reference on who¡¯d it work on?¡±
¡°We¡¯ve had a few visitors. Some Saint Aberrants, monsters who purified their birthworld¡¯s essence from their body and obtained a class, would unfortunately just lay down after they passed through the gates. The Ning¡¯s don¡¯t get many human visitors. Challengers are usually dealt with by the lower clans and rarely ever get to the Nings, those that do aren¡¯t bothered by this toy.¡±
¡°Challengers?¡± Kong Jing questioned for once.
¡°Battle. We used to get them every single day after some kind of declaration by The First. I heard that period lasted four hundred years during the third and fourth generation''s younger days. Nowadays, we receive proper requests for challengers and plan them every month or two. The sixth generation is still lacking so the chore of beating Saints usually falls on us fifth. Ah, I''m excluded since I¡¯m not considered a combatant but they¡¯ve been trying to push it to us since challengers these days are so weak.¡± Kong Tian sighed at the end.
¡°If I remember correctly, the Xengs have a total of 3 Saints? Is it that hard to evolve if most of you are Emperors from the sixth generation onwards?¡± Ebony thought it was weird since it sounded like the sixth to third generations were all Emperors.
¡°How should I say this¡there is an additional requirement for evolving into a Saint and not just skill levels. Xing¡¯s granddaughter, the legacy your parents left you. They are only Tier 6 right? That¡¯s the best of what the majority of the fifth and sixth generations have refined. That is the limit of what people call mortals and what separates us from the colloquially known ¡®higher beings¡¯ that are Saints and above. We''re here this is the gate.¡±
Although it was called a gate, it was just a stone arch 50 metres tall and half as wide.
Without pause, all four of them stepped past it while conversing. None felt a thing from the magical arch.
Chapter 367: Classic Course
¡°What makes it the limit?¡± Kong Jing was surprised at the unfamiliar word. As a Xeng, she might not understand what ¡®limits¡¯ were.
¡®Is she curious because she has tier 6 skills and can¡¯t figure out how to evolve them?¡¯ Ebony felt it was a new experience to see the knowledgeable crafter asking questions.
¡°You seventh generation will find out in due time. For these two, it wouldn¡¯t matter for another 50 or 100 years. And as for you¡why don¡¯t you just go home and greet your mother and father for once? You can ask them.¡± Kong Tian dodged the question.
His estimation didn¡¯t sound far off. Ebony had tier 5 skills that were countable on the fingers on one hand and it took him more than 10 years since their tier 4 versions. Of course, it was also because he was starting from scratch on many of them with little to no guidance other than copying and taking parts of existing techniques.
He listened to folktales about how they had received challengers. It started with an arrogant claim that they were the strongest race of Emperors throughout the universe. It was a big world, and there were plenty of races and people who didn¡¯t like the claim made using Eidolon.
In a century, they ran out of challengers of Emperor rank. Ten years into that century, they claimed that they would only receive death battles because they¡¯d received too many weak opponents that were looking for friendly battles. The next ninety years, the Xengs lost zero people and slaughtered enough that no Emperor who heard of their claim from Eidolon challenged them anymore.
Saints didn¡¯t challenge them, it was beneath them to bully a mortal.
So the second generation Xengs went to knock on some doors. All it took was 1 head for the challenges to roll in.
When they saw the 3 great clans succeed, other clans did the same. And they did succeed. Over and over again.
That was enough to anger or intrigue what they call higher beings and their races. They had pride to reclaim and a group of people to make an example of.
The Xengs finally lost people.
In about four hundred years, the second generation Xeng produced 3 Saints and to this day lost exactly twelve people to these challenges. Their only challenger these days were newborn Saints and occasionally those that never participated or found it worth their time coming over for a battle.
Ebony listened with half scepticism. What made Xengs so special or so strong compared to normal humans?
He didn¡¯t understand, they were humans as far as he could tell. Their win rate is also hard to believe when they apparently took on anyone. The people who died were from the third and mostly fourth generations that got ahead of themselves or had a poor match when it came to skill or element-wise advantages.
The most believable statement from Kong Tian was that it was hard to say if they got the truly strong Saints to come for a challenge. Those that couldn¡¯t bother with statements from a mortal race. It was not known to Kong Tian whether the second generation¡¯s door-knocking included the big races like Elves, Dragons, Phoenixes and many more.
¡°I have a question, about your lifespans.¡± Ebony saw a chance to change the conversation.
¡°What about it?¡±
¡°I heard Xengs have shorter lifespans than humans but it sounds like every one of your generation from second is still around. How long have the Xengs been around?¡± Though it was rarely on his mind, it might have bothered him a lot more than he initially assumed.
¡°You see¡we don¡¯t know. The second pioneered for an unknown amount of time before they settled and they¡¯ve never told the third about many of the things they¡¯ve been through. As for me, I know even less. And, yes we do have a shorter lifespan than a baseline or some sub-human races. I¡¯m not sure if you know but Elcra¡¯s humans have a relatively longer lifespan than average thanks to their Worldcore¡¯s relatively pure and intense mana concentrations. They have 1500 to 2000 but the actual human average is closer to 1200 years, we have maybe 800? But that isn''t really an issue with power and money.¡±
¡°Why is that?¡± Ebony never knew the reason, he just took it as a fact that Elcrian humans lived 80 standard years without even classing and immediately doubled to an average of 150 to 200 when they became a journeyman. 80 standard years was not far from 100 Earthen years.
¡°We can do it with spells and essence control. There are potions and physique refinements or mutations that increase lifespan. We don¡¯t think about our lifespan a lot. It is what it is, we live however long we can. Why focus on where the full stop is when the sentence isn¡¯t finished?¡±
The answer was about what Ebony expected.
So far, he hadn¡¯t seen many people since the Kong Clan were shut-ins with space magic that no one could find if they didn¡¯t show themselves other than their own clanmates.
The Ning Clan premises didn¡¯t have the confusing distances to his senses but was oddly numbed by the surroundings. It was like needles were poking his senses so he reduced the range of sensation till he didn¡¯t take mental damage.
He did however see a white crane carved on the Halycon Gates.
¡°Does each clan have their animal symbol?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°The emblem? Yeah, it¡¯s supposed to symbolise each clan¡¯s traits. It is said that the second generation embodies the ancestral animals inside them. I don¡¯t know how true that is.¡±
There wasn¡¯t any more time for casual conversation with Kong Tian when Xin charged into a young lady¡¯s arms. The hundreds of kilometres between them were crossed in moments.
¡®Who is that?¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t recognise the beautiful young woman wearing a dark blue dress with sparkling dots like that of a starry night sky. Standing just a head shorter than Xin was an unmasked lady. A quick look at a familiar mask at her hips told him all he needed to know.
¡°Is that, that is not how I recall her to look like. Her height¡¯s all wrong.¡± Ebony blinked twice.
¡°I can hear you boy!¡± Xin¡¯s grandmother angrily yelled at him.
¡°Grandaunt made herself look old because she looked too much like Xin¡¯s mother. Looking older wouldn¡¯t remind young little Xin of her lost mother.¡± Kong Jing explained using space magic as a transmitter rather than vibrations.
Ebony kept silent and walked slowly with the two space mages, giving the family some alone time. The grassy fields slowly changed into the view of seemingly endless rice paddy fields.
¡°Every field and overall environment on Sky¡¯s Edge is collectively maintained by the Peng, An, Yu, Shang and Shui clan. Not including the sun and moon or the movement of our home.¡± Kong Jing took over explaining when she was nudged by her granduncle. They were trying to be good tour guides and they were doing their best.
Sooner or later, they had to speed up or they were going to walk for days. That was about 2 hours of complaints from Xin to her grandmother before they ran. By the looks of it, the space mages weren¡¯t joking when they said they couldn¡¯t travel the way they loved best because they had to run too.
It was the first time he saw Kong Jing run but her physical fitness, footwork or movement skill was not lacking.
The two fifth-generation seniors moved more similar to Ebony than the other girls. They were just walking but their steps pushed them forward by vast distances.
The Nings'' home or village had about two dozen houses each with their own pond. There was clearly a pond beauty competition going on. A large outdoor training field was present unlike with the Kongs where he couldn¡¯t see anything they didn¡¯t let people without elemental spatial perception see.
¡°First off, we¡¯re going to need to find out whose child you are and what clan you¡¯re from.¡±
¡°My mother¡¯s name is Shi Wu.¡±
¡°Shi?¡± The beautiful Asian lady looked confused before exchanging looks with Kong Tian.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± He expected some kind of reaction, but confusion wasn¡¯t one of them. Veronica Ning knew of the old name he knew, Amelia Stone. At that time, they were speaking Elcrian and she very likely never thought much about it. Not making the connection between the languages or just weren¡¯t allowed to use any form of divination magic on one of their own without their clan¡¯s permission. Or she was playing some kind of mind game with him again.
¡°Boy, we know every Shi and I¡¯ve never heard of any Shi Wu.¡±
¡°Well, if it¡¯s the Shi, we can just pass you over and ask them. We have several runaways, perhaps Shi Wu is just one that is permanently on dungeon hunting or exploration before we were born.¡±
¡°Ah ha, maybe you¡¯re technically fifth generation or fourth. Imagine if I have to call you uncle. Aahahahahaha!¡± Veronica Ning Xing laughed. They might call each other uncles and aunties but it was just how they called each other. Kong Jing had no blood relations with Veronica Ning.
Ebony did not know what the Xeng family trees looked like and he wasn¡¯t that interested.
¡°Tian.¡±
¡°I¡¯m just going to go now?¡± Ebony questioned the short run they just went through.
¡°Yeah, I can¡¯t introduce you without knowing what clan you''re from. We took a walk for you to familiarise yourself with our home. Don¡¯t worry, I won¡¯t let anyone bully my granddaughter. You can come by yourself after the Shi Clan confirms your identity. We aren¡¯t on good terms but not on bad terms either. To be honest, I was half expecting you to be a survivor of the Wen Clan.¡±
¡°Is that so?¡±
¡°Your mana adaptability and how you reforge your body reminds me of the stories of the Wen Clan leader I heard. Then again, I don¡¯t know much about him.¡± Veronica shrugged.
¡°AH XING hurry up and let me see your granddaughter!! I¡¯m about to die of old age here!¡±
¡°WAIT A DAMN MINUTE OLD MAN!¡± Veronica shouted, coughed and calmed down before pulling Xin away and bidding them farewell. Kong Jing followed them, leaving Ebony alone with Kong Tian.
¡®They both switch tempers really quickly. I see it''s hereditary. And it looks like Veronica also doesn¡¯t have nearly as much power in her family as compared to when she was on Elcra.¡¯ It was interesting to see some personality changes from the other 2 Xengs that he was acquainted with, though less with Xin¡¯s grandmother.
Ebony exchanged glances with Xin,
¡°Don¡¯t worry, it¡¯s not like this is the first time I¡¯m meeting them. I didn¡¯t see them many times, but I was here when I was a toddler.¡± She comforted his worries. He had just heard that she was coming home to get beaten up with high confidence from their older sister.
¡°So, the Shi. What are they known for?¡± Nodding to Xin, he turned to Kong Tian.
¡°Absolute physical supremacy.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
¡°That¡¯s it?¡±
¡°That¡¯s it.¡±
¡°Magic, element?¡±
¡°All over the place. Stone. Earth. Metal. Diamond. Wind. Lightning. Fire. It really depends on who the partner is. A Shi and a Huo¡¯s descendant, fire magic. A Shi and a Yin, lunar and earth. A Shi and a Zhen is pure strength, arcane. The Shi and Zhen descendant is of the fourth generation and one of our strongest combatants named Shi Rui.¡±
¡°I see. Any gravity users?¡±
¡°Amongst the Shi, none that I know of and they are the smallest clan after the Wen which is followed by the Ning.¡±
¡°Any reason for that? I would assume they would want more descendants.¡±
¡°They do want more, and they try till this day. We do have a handful of uncles or aunts that are younger than I am but only one from the Shi and none from the Ning, Yang, Yin or my clan the Kongs.¡±
¡°What are the Shi like? Who am I going to meet?¡±
¡°Let me see, they are the most martial. Possibly due to their physical supremacy. Strength does the talking even more so than with the rest of us. In fact, I¡¯m sure if a random stranger came and beat one of them up, they might consider adopting them. Though that hasn¡¯t happened. Just for your information, our clans are unofficially ordered. The chore of fighting off challengers is pushed to the weakest of us. And those challenges have never gotten to the 3 great clans for a long while.¡±
¡°So should I expect a fight?¡±
¡°No. Not many Shi stay at home, they are always out fighting and training. There should be a few sleeping at home but, you might luck out and only find the older generation. Do you know why we¡¯re confused you¡¯re a Shi?¡±
¡°My weak body.¡± Honestly, he didn¡¯t know how Kong Hua determined that by a single look but that was the only clue he had at the moment. He was inclined to believe their senses and words at the moment.
¡°That, and that you¡¯re a man. So far, there have been 3 other male Shi descendants recorded. One had a stillbirth, the other died when he tried to get his Class, during his evolution from Unclassed. The last got eaten by the God of Vigor. Don¡¯t worry, we never let something like that go without consequences. The First made sure to share that God¡¯s flesh and blood and the elders had a feast. I¡¯m pretty sure it was a lion. She did manage to fish the descendant out before he died but¡the Shi cannot be healed. The God of Vigor¡¯s stomach was not exactly fit for the living either. Their effective constitution is so high, that very few healers can heal them and we don¡¯t exactly have good connections or reputations. People couldn¡¯t help but wish we were dead. Ah, right. That might be why the elders had their lifespans increased, surely Divine blood from the God of Vigor would do something.¡±
¡°My gut is telling me the story doesn¡¯t end there.¡±
¡°The First might have slaughtered a few healing-focused races due to their¡unwillingness to heal one of us.¡±
¡°Might I ask how many?¡±
¡°Let¡¯s just say Eidolon had to remap and relabel a couple of star charts since they became empty. Not the worst since she let the Shi handle their own fury. Alright, we¡¯re out of the Nings village. Get the gifts ready.¡±
The space mage transferred them directly over to their destination. The so-called gifts were assortments of fruits. There was essentially nothing he could give that they couldn¡¯t get better versions of and money didn¡¯t change that. Rare fruits seemed to be the most common and suitable meeting gifts if Kong Jing didn¡¯t lie to him. Another present was to give a personally imbued spell in an accessory to represent more sincerity but that might not be the best for a first meeting.
¡°Anything special like the Halcyon Gates?¡±
¡°It¡¯s a little more troublesome. Second generation Yin and a few others, one of which is a wizard casts a spell that makes us normal, unclassed again. It can make normal, baseline human Saints become unclassed so the spell is not a joke that can be overridden with strength or magic but I believe Saints can summon their power back to them. It depends on the individual. To be clear, it also brings your physical strength to a certain standard so everyone who is affected would be just as fit.¡±
¡°Is there something we have to do as a normal unclassed?¡± He probed for the reason.
¡°We need to cross a raging river. Climb a sky-high cliff that¡¯s bridged with wooden stills with increasingly small footholds to jump across into a jungle. The jungle is filled with numerous traps to hinder us. Oh, it can kill for sure.¡±
¡°An obstacle course. Sounds simple enough. The standardised physical strength must be for some kind of competition I assume. I bet there is a ranking.¡± Ebony appreciated the simplicity. It was better than a mind spell that makes one go insane.
¡°You know us well. Yes, there is a ranking but they don¡¯t include any of the second generation since the spell simply cannot remove their baseline traits even if they could make them unclassed so it was deemed unfair for them to take part. Crafters are at the bottom of the list and the Kongs are even lower since we aren¡¯t very...physically active.¡± Kong Tian was not embarrassed about his poor score but he wasn¡¯t hiding the fact that he wasn¡¯t good at the obstacle course.
It didn¡¯t take long before he reached the obstacle course.
Ebony marvelled when he stepped past the purple line painted on the floor. His mana perception disappeared. The sensation of mana in his body no longer reminded him he was a mana being. He tested his physical fitness with a jump and tiptoes to find that it was almost like he was back on Earth. Almost, but he was probably 35% stronger.
¡®Wow, I can¡¯t get a good estimation. My calculation skill is gone too? Did it somehow regress my mind as well?¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t sense any of his passive skills. His meditation was gone and his mind clarity was muddled compared to before he stepped past the purple line. His jumps didn¡¯t have any Flicker in them. His muscles couldn¡¯t snap the way they could.
It was nostalgic.
¡®Wizardry is so different from a mage¡¯s magic.¡¯ He immediately pinpointed the main reason this was working on him. Elemental or arcane mana simply couldn¡¯t achieve this kind of effect unless he was assuming how limited mana was.
¡°Ebony, a timer will start once you push this button. It¡¯s been decades for me so I¡¯ll go ahead and test myself.¡± Kong Tian removed his overcoat and bundled it to tie it inside his inner garment before he smashed a comically large red button on a tree stump and dashed off.
¡®This test standardised strength and physical ability for fairness. For the Xengs where individual power is important, this test probably means more than just a self-inspection. I should try to rank high. This river is impossible to swim through, I should jump on the artificially placed planks and logs like him.¡¯ Ebony observed the raging river with occasional junk floating around.
Kong Tian was floating downstream while waiting for a suitable platform to jump to. The river seemed to be over a hundred metres across. But downstream, before the river fell off the horizon was less than 2 kilometres away. He had to do it fast.
Past the river was just a mountainous rocky slope and he couldn¡¯t see any further.
Ebony warmed his body up and stretched to get a better feel of his physical ability without rushing. He did a breathing test to check his respiratory system. It was honestly just like the old body he was used to, except a bit more strength and speed. It didn¡¯t change his height or frame so the spell did not physically regress him to the past.
It was pretty cool that none of his skills were able to activate. If the Cinderash had this kind of prison, he would never see the light of day because even Will was unable to be moved at his command. He had to be very careful and not overconfident thinking he could escape from any prison.
Thirty minutes had passed while he inspected himself and he pushed the red button before leaping for the singular rock in the river and contracting his calves to jump onto a small log. It was like he had wires balancing him when he barely shook after the jump.
For a moment, it seemed like Treading Steps was in action when his calves and ankles contracted explosively to push him for a 5-metre jump to a wooden crate upstream. It was something Kong Tian didn¡¯t do.
He might have been physically average on Earth but his usage of his muscles and body was beyond any human except his mother. Possibly father but he never saw his father fight.
Over twenty jumps and furiously throbbing veins and spasms in his leg, he crossed the river and started on his journey up the rocky and uneven path. He let his legs rest and just dashed up while looking for the shortest and easiest path.
The slope kept increasing and he found himself digging his fingers into an almost creaseless cliff but he swung his body up as smoothly as an Apex Ape on home grounds. Reaching the top of the 2 kilometre cliff, he wasted no time and pushed his rested leg muscles to leap at the wooden stills, likely 2 kilometres tall rather than floating platforms.
There was never any hesitation when he lept. It may be a 2 kilometre drop but that hardly mattered. Just don¡¯t fall and it would be no different from a 2 metre drop. The wooden logs were thinner than his arm but he jumped as if they were unbreakable and could support his weight.
There were at least a hundred stills that he had to cross but he skipped some with a longer jump, one leg landing and kicking off for the other leg to catch his next landing. This was no different from flat ground. He ignored those that were less than 2 metres apart and made sure he crossed in as short a time span as possible.
He reached the end of the line where there was a single green vine connected to a hanging metal stand that extended down to the jungle below.
Free falling, he didn¡¯t need his speed slowed down. His current mass was without compressed mana, he estimated a dislocated shoulder and arm wouldn¡¯t impede the next part of the obstacle course.
When he was fifty metres off the ground, he grabbed the vine tight and kicked the nearest wooden still that he had landed on last. It swung him forward while he controlled his descent and he made a hard landing on both his feet. The tree branch he found was thick enough that it didn¡¯t break but that made him take the shock of his fall through his body and spine. His burned palms and surprisingly intact shoulders already absorbed most of it so the landing didn¡¯t injure him, it just sent a jolt in him.
Without any warnings, he leaned back while holding the vine to support his body and three arrows pierced the tree trunk.
Ebony liked to move atop trees because it helped to avoid many traps that could be set on the ground. His agility up here was pretty much greater than a monkey anyway.
After two minutes of moving that way, he opted for the ground. The creators of this place didn¡¯t leave treetop traps out and it was slowing him down.
The classic swingingly tree log was easy to notice and even if he accidentally triggered it, it was easy to dodge. Wire-triggered traps were the easiest to avoid.
¡®Smells like mother¡¯s training style all over the place.¡¯ He eyed the jungle trees that were thinning out and found a camouflaged swinging log trap that was well-placed for his needs.
He climbed onto the trap and triggered it with a rock. The 4 metre thick log swung at unnatural speeds, probably boosted by mechanisms like springs. He flew off along with the log and timed his explosive contraction of leg muscles once again to fly through the jungle.
¡®Wall jumping? That¡¯s an easy finish¡are there traps on the walls?¡¯ He saw the finish line, a red button on a table. It was a hundred metres above ground. A smooth wall blocked the encroaching jungle but there a smooth rectangular indent 2 metres apart. He could easily guess he was supposed to wall jump all the way up to the red button but it seemed too simple for a finish line.
Ebony ran through the last kilometre of the jungle, some of the traps caught him by surprise but it barely slowed him down. The nets were the most dangerous for the speed run, they were shot out so fast he could never react to them after triggering them. Fortunately, there weren¡¯t many of them and he triggered the first one when the branch he kicked forward just so happened to trigger it.
A two-metre distance wall jump was tough but it was also the simplest thing he had to do. Unexpectedly, he climbed the whole wall without any traps on the smooth walls and gently pushed the button to mark the end of his obstacle course run.
¡®That was a poor run, I spent a whole minute getting out of the tree that fell into a swamp when I landed on it.¡¯ Ebony wiped the sawdust that was sprayed into his eyes when he stepped on an unassuming spot on the earth. He was glad he memorised the last stretch of the route and the blinding only happened right before the wall jump.
¡°00:47:16:58, Clan: Unknown. Generation: Unknown. Guest record, name?¡± A robotic voice lit up on the stone pillar beside the button.
¡°Ebony.¡± He should not be considered crazy talking to a stone pillar.
¡°Guest Ebony, rank 6.¡± Ebony took a look at the stone pillar but a person¡¯s panting disturbed him
¡°¡I was wrong, you might really be a Shi. There¡¯s no way that¡¯s real.¡± Not far away from the stone pillar, Kong Tian had his hands on his knees, catching his breath. ¡°How are you not out of breath, we should have the same physical ability.¡±
Ebony realised the course was over and released the breath in him, steamy breath came out of his mouth and nose. His exhale lasted for a half a minute. Then his body slowly collapsed but he managed to sit himself on his butt.
¡°You can induce increased physical performance with or without a skill,¡± Ebony commented while taking a look at the names above him on the stone pillar.
1 - Shi Jian, Generation 3. Time: 00:26:05:12
2 - Shi Yun, Generation 3 Time: 00:38:24:27
3 - Shi Rui, Generation 4 Time: 00:39:02:79
4 - Shi Yue, Generation 3 Time: 00:42:55:88
5 - Shi Qiang, Generation 3 Time: 00:45:55:12
6 - Guest Ebony Time: 00:47:16:58
7 - Shi Han, Generation 4 Time: 00:47:25:38
8 - Shi Qing, Generation 4 Time: 00:48:28:08
9 - Shi Qin, Generation 4 Time: 00:48:28:10
10 - Shi Ling, Generation 5 Time: 00:49:08:68
¡°It looks like the Shi dominates this ranking board.¡± There were a few Nings on the top 25 but only because there weren''t 25 people from the Shi Clan. Other than 2 Nings, a few Yangs and a single Lei the others seem to have a difficult time breaking under an hour. It doesn¡¯t tell much other than their ability to make use of the same amount of strength or ability to cross certain obstacles. Magic ability wasn¡¯t tested at all with this classic obstacle course.
He expected them to be good but to think that he was 21 whole minutes away from 1st place was unbelievable with the same strength and speed.
¡®Nearly 40 and I still haven¡¯t tapped into all the human body¡¯s potential. I haven¡¯t been training hard enough.¡¯ Ebony was slightly disappointed in himself. He could do it again and potentially reduce his time by a few minutes with the knowledge of the course but any more than 5 minutes would be tough. It was unknown if the traps and terrain was constant or if it automatically randomised too.
The image of his mother shaking her head behind him flashed in his mind.
He still had a long way to go.
Chapter 368: Bitter Tea
Ebony gave his legs a massage before standing up and was back to normal while Kong Tian pumped himself up for raising in ranks by 2 spots. The greater space mage was ranked in the two hundreds taking almost 25 minutes longer than Ebony did.
This stone pillar showed him all 21 Clan names and there was a clear division of their physical finesse. There were other guest names but very few beat the Xengs and not a single one was in the top 100.
Both of them stepped past the purple line and he felt all his powers return. His sensation of mana, his body¡¯s toughness from compressed mana, his mind¡¯s clarity, thinking speed and processing power. The pain in his body from over burdening his weak muscles faded away and he healed from the cuts and bruises immediately. His chassis''s factory whirled back alive.
¡°That was very fun and nostalgic. Can we use this place any time?¡±
¡°I would hardly call it fun but yes, you can attempt it as many times as you want.¡±
¡°Is the environment static?¡±
¡°It changes, I believe it would take 500 years before the exact same pattern of trash would flow down the river. Or the exact same placement of traps is reset. Even though no one¡¯s attempting it now, it¡¯s still cycling through. Except for traps that need to be tripped, some are just timed traps.¡±
¡°No wonder I don¡¯t know how some of those traps were triggered¡I thought maybe there was a laser-detected trap I triggered. Timer-based traps huh¡¡± He might have been over-optimistic about beating his own time.
¡°This is the Shi Clan village.¡± Kong Tian waved his hands to present the quaint village.
¡°There are even fewer buildings than the Ning Clan.¡± He noted about a dozen buildings, though more spaced out. There were no ponds at every house, but each house was bigger. And not made of wooden materials. Each one was unique, either made of stone or metal. However, durability and foundational stability seemed to be key to these buildings, rather than the beauty or decor.
¡°That¡¯s bec-¡±
¡°You¡¯re here. Ah, Kong boy. How¡¯s it going with the Ning girl?¡±
The people here were invisible to his senses, every single one of them. He didn¡¯t know when a woman as tall as him just popped up in between the two of them. The face he saw made him pause for a long moment.
¡°Gr- ah, not so well. We went on a trip to the blood realm recently but, nothing happened¡¡±
¡°Let me give you a tip with the Nings, get her riled up and show off your manly side during that time or they won¡¯t bother with people. Come¡¯ere, here¡¯s a candied grape. You can go along and woo her, not too clingy but always be around and catch any opportunities.¡± The aged voice pulled out a stick of 5 candied grapes and pushed it into Kong Tian¡¯s hand before pushing him out.
Ebony looked at the unmasked Xeng and she looked at him with a slightly hunched back. Her plain old grey dress had the emblem of a turtle or tortoise.
¡°Your name is Ebony? Look at you, I have to tell my descendants that they lost to your first try¡Do you know who I am?¡± The woman didn¡¯t have her eyes open.
¡°Are you my aunt? You look just like my mother, maybe a little older.¡± Ebony noticed the slight wrinkles on her face. He knew he had an aunt but nothing about her, not even a name. He was never told anything but the existence of an aunt and it never mattered to him.
¡°You¡¯re finally here. Shi Wu¡¯s son. Good. Good. Come, I made some food f-¡± The woman spoke like she was an old lady, which she probably was. She thoughtlessly grabbed his wrist, preparing to pull him somewhere.
Ebony gulped, looking at his wrist. His hand landed on the ground with a wet splash but that was the least of the problems when his entire arm was ripped out of his shoulder.
¡®I¡¯m pretty sure my compressed mana is back to enhance my constitution.¡¯ Even without active augmentation, his bones shouldn¡¯t have gotten crushed to the point they twisted off from a grip. It happened so smoothly and quickly that the pain hadn¡¯t sunk in yet.
Horrified, the woman fumbled and tried to place the arm back but didn¡¯t dare to touch him anymore. ¡°I¡¯m sorry! Why are you so fragile!? Doctor¡no we don¡¯t have doctors. What do I do?¡±
¡°It¡¯s fine.¡± Ebony took his arm back and reconnected it before blasting his life force back into them, there was no period of weakness this way. ¡°See.¡± He clenched his fingers to show that his wrist was fully healed.
¡°Ah! How could I forget...I¡¯m sorry I didn¡¯t mean to do that...are you hurt?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. Before we move on, may I ask about where my mother is?¡±
¡°...Come to my house.¡±
Ebony did not expect to visit a temple. Boundless Serenity Geyser had been allowing him to take in the quick changes without much reaction, though it would¡¯ve been similar even if he didn¡¯t have the skill. Be it travelling in space or through multiple planets, or meeting the Xengs so suddenly. Things were happening fast if he didn¡¯t consider how a decade had passed in the meantime.
Taking off his shoes, he realised his new clothes self repaired from the ripping. Led to a seating almost Japanese style with cushions on the floor and a short table, they had the view of bright verdant grasslands beside the village. The field of flowers was a bit weird since the flowers were made of rock or metal, it dulled the colours a little.
The privacy settings of the building were obviously very high since the magic perception of any element was not allowed.
¡°First of all, I have to confirm. Do you know who your parents are?¡± The woman sat with one leg propped up and hugged to her chest while she boiled tea by vibrating mana in the pot on the table to heat the water.
¡°Ah, here.¡± He brought out the fruits he got for them, ¡°I know my mother by Amelia Stone, Shi Wu. My father, can I say his name?¡± He didn¡¯t have to worry about Eidolon Hex. Even if the spirit said it wasn¡¯t able to hear what was said in the outside world, it was generally believed that it was truly unable to eavesdrop. Because many people of high power and status use Eidolon, the God of Knowledge wouldn¡¯t dare let Eidolon be able to hear and see everything their portable module was connected to. And the God of Just''s words that Eidolon had no such ability was trusted by all. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
In any case, he didn¡¯t think the Xengs would care and if they did, they would¡¯ve asked him to put his Myriad Bracelet away.
¡°Amelia Stone, what a lazy choice of name. Say the name, why not? If that¡¯s what it takes for them to show themselves. Ohh, we can¡¯t wait to welcome those bastards. Look at that, all 52 of us are listening. Ah look who came back home, all 53 of us are waiting to see if they''ll come.¡± She poured him a cup of tea and it slid across the table. Ebony tried not to think about who she was referring to. Probably the other Xengs.
¡°Matthew Rime or Gelidon ¡®O Arcturus Rime.¡±
¡°Haha, see. Those cowards don¡¯t even dare show their shadow. How I wish just calling their name was enough for them to come. What else do you know?¡± She looked up in the sky above the verdant backyard. Perhaps her eyesight was good enough to see out to space or some other methods of perception.
¡°I was born on Earth, but my parents weren¡¯t from there. The name Rime sounds troublesome. My mother is a spearwoman likely using gravity magic. My father is likely some kind of mana-based sub-human race.¡±
¡°So you don¡¯t know much. That¡¯s about right. Where should I start¡let¡¯s begin with you appearing here out of nowhere. When I heard that the Ning descendant found a possible half, you don¡¯t know how happy I was. I¡¯m sorry I took so long to drive Xiaoya back to this region. Should I keep this short or do you want to know all the details?¡±
¡°I have time for storytelling.¡±
¡°Alright.¡± She snapped her fingers and the fruits were sliced into pieces, plated nicely for them with a metal pick stabbed in them. ¡°Then I¡¯ll begin some of Xeng¡¯s history. Just whatever¡¯s necessary for you to understand who your mother is.¡±
He had never chased after news of his parents but now that he was here, there was no better time to find out about where they are. What happened to them?
¡°The First. She was from Earth, just like us second generation. No, she is not the daughter of some strong race that went to Earth. A bonafide human from Earth. I do not know what time period she¡¯s from but she claims to have been born around the time swords were invented at her geographical location. Some kind of freak accident or maybe she was pulled along with a person from this dimension, but she arrived on Elcra. According to her claims, back then, the highest-level monster was not even 100. She got a class, ruled the continent. And then got stuck at level 100. Unhappy, she sliced space open in a dungeon and got herself out to a different place, believing that 100 was not the limit. Okay, all that isn¡¯t that important. Pwah, I make good tea!¡±
¡®Xin¡¯s tea is better.¡¯ Ebony drank the overcooked leaf juice without commenting.
¡°Anyway, she quickly cut her path to Emperor. That¡¯s when she got a bit bored without opponents and learned how to cut open dimensions outside of flimsy dungeons. She found Earth and brought us Xengs here. Of course, she returned to Earth and found how much had changed. Her homeland was mostly gone, but her people and their descendants were easily found by her. Back there, her power was similarly mostly gone.
She learnt the language, told us tales of unlimited power and longevity and enticed us, the so-called second generation to come over. There were about a hundred of us. She believed if the cosmos had no opponent for her, then she only had her bloodline to rely on for a strong opponent. Dilute as the bloodline may be. She forced her power back, and cut the dimension to bring all of us to Elcra. That¡¯s when Xienor was built.
However, we disappointed her with our original showings. Keeping her beliefs, she watched while we grew. We were often looked down upon, we looked a bit different from the residents of Elcra. We were always throwing ourselves into fights for the promised unlimited power and longevity and were thought to be barbarians. At a certain point, we made these masks especially for the women. Be it Elcra or Earth, women weren¡¯t respected on the battlefield and our appearances were causing some problems in that regard. I digress.
It took a while but the majority of us were able to leave for better opportunities and reached Emperor ranked ourselves. A lot of us got married to each other, we weren¡¯t blood-related after all. A lot of us passed away, too weak to meet our standards. My husband was a Duan, though he was also unable to accompany me to this age and our clan took my surname instead. Me, I left my sister behind, on Earth. She was just a baby, I couldn¡¯t have brought her along. I wanted to know what happened to her so I requested the First to let me take a look.
I didn¡¯t know about the time difference and that it wasn¡¯t even a constant difference so I never had much hope but when I looked, hundreds of years later. I found her alive, barely a few years older than before. I don¡¯t know how, but she remembered and recognised me despite how much I''d changed. We had no family, so I obviously brought her out. That¡¯s who Shi Wu, your mother is. You follow?¡±
¡±Mmm.¡± It was simple enough to follow. This also confirmed his guesses that Xengs were Chinese or at least, had that descent.
¡°Oh, my husband wasn¡¯t dead then, he wasn¡¯t even my husband yet. I must be getting old, storytelling isn¡¯t easy I tell ya. Let me digress once more, why are we so much stronger if we weren¡¯t born of good genetics? That wasn¡¯t always the case. Sure, we trained hard and we knew techniques unlike olden day humans of Elcra that didn¡¯t even know how to level properly. But it is also due to the fact that The First has some kind of connection with us. I doubt it''s just bloodline. But in any case, because she is strong. We are strong. Because she is a woman, Xeng women are often stronger than our male counterparts. When she evolved into a Saint, all of us benefitted. Our baseline traits were raised significantly. Since all of us trained in various skills and elements, we began to differentiate ourselves by clans rather than individuals.¡±
¡°I would like to ask what you mean by baseline traits.¡±
¡°Later boy later. Let me continue. We became worthier, refining our Physiques to heights that we couldn¡¯t before. It snowballed since the stronger we got, the more resources we could claim with our strength. Still, we were never opponent-worthy for the First. We improved but she never stopped getting stronger either. That¡¯s where Shi Wu came in. Stronger than any of us. More promise in combat than any of us. The First was waiting eagerly for her growth. She did grow, along with us second generation that she was also part of.¡± She crunched onto a juicy fruit with spikes as a shell.
¡®oh¡I¡¯m talking to a second generation? Huh, that means I¡¯m talking to a Saint.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t even realise who he was talking to.
¡°I¡¯ll skip the exciting adventures she had, she had to play catch up to the rest of us who were already Emperor ranked. During that time, a lot of us were married and trying to have children but we realised our fertility rate was extremely low so no babies were born. Sorry, I¡¯m digressing again. Anyway, during her adventures and training your father came into her life. Rime¡that disgusting tribe.¡±
The room grew still but Ebony who had his mana perception leak a bit outside the temple could tell that the whole village if not entire floating island was quivering. The woman in front of him was protecting him from her leaking aura and emotions.
¡°Hmp, not your father of course. Right, you need to know about the Rime Tribe too. This is where you¡¯re wrong, the Rimes are not sub-human. They are not humans at all. They do not even have physical bodies. Purebred mana beings. I''ll skip the gossip, your father was the only decent one. He was quite the romantic man to turn that rock faced sister of mine to fall for him. The First blessed their marriage, she found a few Demi-Gods and they made a human body for your father. Then¡¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t eat any of the fruits and his storyteller also stopped munching or drinking. Both of them faced outside and looked out and kept silent for a long, long time.
¡°Saintess.¡±
¡°Call me Aunt Tao.¡±
¡°...¡±
¡°You don¡¯t believe I¡¯m your aunt?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know how to feel about this.¡±
¡°Fine¡just auntie for now.¡± She looked a bit disappointed. Despite sharing such similar features, this aunt of his did not have his mother¡¯s dead facial expressions. It was clear to him this was a different person.
¡°Auntie. My parents. They are both dead, aren¡¯t they.¡± Ebony stated his thoughts. He had them for decades.
¡°They are.¡±
Ebony raised the heaviest cup of tea in his life and tipped it into his lips.
Only two people would know if the fluid on his outer garment was tea.
¡°Auntie, your tea is very bitter.¡±
Chapter 369: Family? Meeting
¡°Are you going to tell me how?¡± Ebony inquired.
¡°That would have to wait till you can beat it out of me.¡± The older woman poured the rest of the tea right in front of them onto the grass.
¡°...so it wasn¡¯t peaceful. That¡¯s why I was born on Earth. How strong was my mother?¡±
¡°You know the grading system people use? It is not accurate and there could be huge differences between one Grade 6 to another Grade 6 but that would do for a scale. Third generation Xeng combatants are all Grade 8 Emperors. So was your mother but she was stronger than I was before I evolved.¡±
¡°Does that mean tier 8 skills?¡±
¡°Not at all. Sixes and a couple of sevens for core skills. You should know better than to think skill tiers is all there is in battle. Wait a minute, how old are you this year? Standard.¡±
¡°I¡¯m 37, I got teleported or was transported over when I was 16.¡± Ebony actively shut out the calculations by Earthen years, he did not want to follow that line of thought. It made him feel far older than his mind felt.
¡°A year¡¯s delay. By the way, it has been thousands of years since your mother, my sister gave birth to you. Few of my children or descendants know I have a sister but fear not, I will introduce you properly as a third generation Xeng. I have waited for you for a long time, never knowing when you¡¯d show up.¡±
¡°Is there a reason why I was transported to Elcra, of all places?¡±
¡°Back then, that was our only home. The exact location can¡¯t be pinpointed since the whole point was that you were hidden from their enemies. But you had to appear somewhere with your parents'' leftover aura. I assumed you woke up near Xienor.¡±
¡°Not even close. Hoarfrost Glades.¡±
¡°Ah, was there a big turtle?¡±
Ebony didn¡¯t reply immediately. Rue was apparently ¡®killed¡¯ by a Xeng. He didn¡¯t believe that the turtle was dead, less and less after he grew stronger. Ful, the tree should be dead if that were true.
¡°Relax, I hold no grudge with that turtle. An impressive creature that one. It killed one of us second generation when we were young. I¡¯m sure he died happy knowing there was something so strong on Elcra. Much later, I found out that those creatures'' creator was friendly with your father¡¯s tribe. That might be why you were transported near the turtle. A living creature would attract you better than a leftover aura from thousands of years ago.¡±
He ate his fruits in silence, trying to build a timeline in his mind.
¡°Can you tell me what Shi Wu was like? I mean as a mother and family woman? I only ever knew her as a sister.¡±
Ebony had no problems with that, he wanted to know what his mother was like outside of what she showed him.
Their talks quickly extended into the night.
¡®Looks like she¡¯s the same person we both know.¡¯ Neither of them was surprised to find that Shi Wu hardly acted differently and her personality was close to that of a rock that knew warmth and love deep down. Also, training.
Sharing about Shi Wu did make him feel slightly closer to this stranger of an Aunt. Almost enough for him to feel like she was a relative. He was swayed surprisingly easily but thinking about how he called Kong Jing sister in a short time, this didn¡¯t feel that out of place. No one else knew who Shi Wu was so that must have played a part.
A couple of giggles were let loose at Shi Wu¡¯s awkward moments of showing care or concern.
The couple thousand-year-old lady was a bit sad that Shi Wu never told him about her other than a mention of her existence. Ebony believed that the rain that fell in their view was not a coincidence nor was it a spell.
They didn¡¯t take the reminiscence too far. He changed the subject to the topic of baseline traits.
¡°You have a portable module, look up the God of Knowledge¡¯s library and search for books on baseline traits.¡±
¡°I¡¯m only a grandmaster. I don¡¯t have the reputation for access.¡± He wished he could access that kind of knowledge.
¡°Who referred you? Never mind, pass me your bracelet.¡± The woman who looked almost identical to his mother had a slight frown and a lightning strike was sent down in the distance right after her frown.
Ebony didn¡¯t think much about it and passed it over the table. The bracelet was bound to him but it didn¡¯t mean he couldn¡¯t grant permission for others to use Eidolon. That was how he let Kong Jing use it too. It was slightly different from the rest of the functions that couldn¡¯t be passed over with permission.
She held it up and then placed it back down. ¡°You have access now but Hex is inferior or rather, only a small part of itself so there¡¯s a limit to how much access it has. It''s rather annoying, but this knowledge guy is also the secret guy. Anything you read in there is forcefully kept secret to you so that he can continue selling the same knowledge to everyone else. You will find yourself unable to speak if you try sharing the knowledge you learn from his library. But only to people who don¡¯t already know.¡±
¡°Spell?¡±
¡°No. It¡¯s better if you don¡¯t ask. Finding out these things yourself is what makes every Xeng unique from each other outside Clan skills. That brings up a question, you¡¯re 37. Whether it is from the viewpoint of your aunt or that you¡¯re part of the Shi, I am very keen on seeing how far along you are with our clan skill. Shi Wu and I developed it together.¡±
¡°I¡¯m unaware of what you¡¯re referring to. She taught me flexibility, adaptability and having no real moves. I wasn¡¯t able to follow it completely and made an active kicking offence skill.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t know the clan skill!?¡±
Ebony¡¯s eardrums were close to popping at her shock.
She brought him to the second floor of the temple-like building. The entire floor was an empty training room thousands of times bigger than what it looked like from outside. She didn¡¯t bring him far from the door.
¡°I¡¯m aware of how fragile you are, augment yourself and come closer.¡± Her words did not allow him to be comfortable.
¡°I¡¯m not sure I would be a good target for whatever you are trying to do.¡± Ebony wasted no time before this person overestimated her control. Fortunately, this room did not extend any kind of suppression to his powers like the environment outside. It was too bad Dusk or Aegis wasn¡¯t around to support him but at least his Will was topped up.
He walked up to her, standing less than an arm¡¯s length away.
¡°Ready?¡± Without any visible motions, he was hit by a force that pushed him against the wall. For a full half a minute, it was like he was blown by a fan where his facial muscles and skin were comically blown back.
¡®There was no mana in that, it wasn¡¯t a spell.¡¯ Ebony had Battleforge simulate the same scenes in his mind.
¡°You must have seen this skill.¡±
¡°I was on Earth, how could I have seen or learnt this skill?¡± He landed on his feet from the wind pressure that blew back to the rest of the wide room.
¡°You misunderstand, I said skill but it¡¯s just muscular control.¡± She cocked her head to the right oddly familiarly. Just the way he and his mother would do, only in the opposite direction.
¡°I was often told that I¡¯m untalented, may I see that one more time.¡± He
¡°Brace.¡± The older woman raised her palm and Ebony reflexively crossed block in front of his face.
The same thing happened but instead of intense wind pressure across his body, it was concentrated on his face. This unbelievably strong lady was playing a dangerous game with his life!
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When the wind pressure that he couldn¡¯t pull himself out of let his face out of the hard wall behind him, he wiped the blood from his nose.
¡°I see. I didn¡¯t know that was possible and it¡¯s so simple.¡± Ebony raised a palm to his face. With a bit of difficulty, the muscles in his palm spasmed and snapped. On the third iteration, the wriggling flesh snapped in tandem and his hair blew against the wind pressure that was formed by the explosion of snapping muscles under his skin.
¡®How did she do the one before she raised her palms? Ah, snap it across the chest and belly. Ug, this hurts and drains muscle endurance immensely. Kinda like Quake Kick but it doesn¡¯t require mana. Phantom''s Flicker also uses similar muscular control but ten times gentler on the muscles. Maybe she changed and made me learn it as a movement ability but I never thought to use it a more aggressive and taxing version throughout my body.¡¯
¡°Auntie, there¡¯s no way a human body can produce this kind of effect with their stats.¡±
¡°Wrong. Your mother can do this Unclassed. We typically hunted Masters when we were unclassed.¡±
¡°What? Even for a breeze, I believe we need at least a couple hundred points in strength. I can coordinate and optimise the snapping of muscles with control and technique but to produce a shockwave and that much windpressure would be impossible.¡±
¡°Hmm, I don¡¯t blame you for thinking that. Read up on the basics of baseline traits, and then I can discuss it with you. The greedy law of secrets doesn¡¯t allow me to speak with anyone who hasn¡¯t paid up to read unless we find out from a different source and know it before reading it from the library. It¡¯s almost time for breakfast, come with me for a family meal.¡±
¡°...Okay.¡± Ebony was beginning to think of Ning Xin when food was mentioned.
¡°I have 4 daughters, you must have seen their names on the record. My Eldest daughter, Shi Jian, is the only one unmarried. The others all have children. The last I heard from you and my sister was from her. You remember sparing with her don''t you?¡±
¡°I met your daughter? On Earth?" Ebony had revisited his memories so many times he immediately thought of someone, someone he lost to when he was made to fight people. ''I thought that was a boy or man...Shi Jian is the name at the top of the list for that obstacle course. Is she thousands or hundreds of years old even though I met her a few decades ago? And Oplot is only over a hundred or two hundred years old when I met supposedly met him decades ago...''
"You did..."
Ebony already recalled before she replied. The person he recalled was the one who beat him thoroughly in combat, in pure technique. However, his impression of him or her was no longer that strong. It was just a loss and young or old, Ebony didn''t really care much about the results of a spar but what he gained from it.
"I noticed that generation 4 has the most people but it dropped sharply from 4 to 5 and a small drop from 5 to 6. Throughout every clan. Is there a specific reason?¡± He only knew that from the list of names and family or clan names he saw earlier.
¡°Yeah, it¡¯s not easy for them to find a match that doesn¡¯t have a blood relationship with each other. Even harder if they don¡¯t like each other. But the main problem is that our fertility just keeps dropping. Read the books on baseline traits, it can explain why our fertility is dropping too. Of course, it¡¯s also because some of them are not ready for children.¡± Shi Tao was a woman of many words, unlike his mother. Perhaps she was just excited to meet and talk to him in the same way he wanted to learn more about his mother from this woman.
¡°Who should I expect to see and greet?¡±
¡°None of them here know about you. I have told my daughters I had a sister once but they might not remember since they were babies. As for the rest of my descendants, don¡¯t worry about them. I¡¯ll make them aware of your status of a third-generation Xeng. They will introduce themselves.¡± Shi Tao brought him back downstairs and entered a quiet dining room.
Ebony blinked three times in succession. ¡®They have very strong genetics¡¡¯
Seated at a huge circular table were 8 women and 6 men. They sat up straight and didn¡¯t say a word to each other. All 8 women looked just about a copy of Shi Tao just younger. Excluding 2 masked women he couldn¡¯t see their facial features. Their frames were slightly different and so were their heights but their faces were nearly copies. Fortunately, he could differentiate them from his mother who had very slight differences with Shi Tao in her brows and the angle of their nose bridge.
While none of the women showed surprise, the men at the table were all looking at him. Some were confused and others surprised but none spoke up.
¡°Ahhaha, must have kept you kids waiting. Shi Ling, get another chair. Come, Ebony, sit here.¡± Shi Tao took a seat closest to the door, facing the window. She patted the air beside her where the shortest version of the woman placed a stool.
¡°Mother, this is?¡± The woman closest to Shi Tao no longer held back her curiosity. If there was any, it felt like the other people at the table were eyeing her and hoping she asked.
¡°Shi Qiang, this is your cousin. He is a third-generation Shi, my sister¡¯s son. Introduce yourselves.¡±
¡°I have a cousin? You¡¯ve never told me anything about a cousin. Is he why we drove back to this corner sector?¡±
¡°Yes. I didn¡¯t know when he would appear. Be careful, in terms of age he is part of the seventh generation. As you can tell, he is extremely fragile so we¡¯ll skip any handshakes.¡±
¡°Greetings cousin. I am Shi Qiang of the third generation and this is my husband, Shui Feng.¡± Shi Qiang, the person who was ranked fifth in their obstacle course, patted the man beside her when she introduced themselves.
¡°Pleasure to meet you, cousin.¡± Shui Feng flashed a gentle smile. Their language had a proper term for ¡®cousin¡¯s male cousin¡¯ but there was no direct translation in Gia or Elcrian. He was the lankiest person around, more so than Ebony. It was hard to tell what each of their strengths were because either no one emitted aura, or aura couldn¡¯t be sensed because he was in this building.
Shi Qiang gave a quick glance to the rest of the people at the table.
By order of how far away they were seated from Shi Tao, they stood up before introducing themselves, unlike Shi Qiang.
¡°Nice to meet you uncle, I am Shi Han of the fourth generation and daughter of Shi Yue. I greet you on behalf of my mother who is not in attendance today. That is the same for two of my daughters, one of which is married and has two daughters of their own.¡± Shi Han was the tallest of all women around the table, a full head taller than Ebony himself. She continued, ¡°this is my husband, Huo Tianyu.¡± The orange-haired man had a squarish face and thick eyebrows. He had a stern expression but it was cooled down by every stone face at the table.
¡°Ni-nice to meet you granduncle. My name is Shi Ling, I¡¯m from the fifth generation. Daughter of..uh granddaughter of Shi Yun. My mother is Shi Rui!¡± The masked girl waved her hand around.
¡°No need to be nervous, I am a lot younger than you are,¡± Ebony stated it as it is. He did not expect to see a nervous version of someone with a face so similar to his mother¡¯s. This woman wasn¡¯t married and didn¡¯t have a husband to introduce. She was the tenth on the list while her mother and grandmother were second and third respectively. Although the obstacle course where everyone had the same strength and speed didn¡¯t reflect their actual power, it was the only measure he had of who was stronger.
The rest of the women acted more normal.
Shi Ke and Shi Yi were from the fifth generation and were both married. Their husbands were Qin Yan and Kong Xuan respectively. Qin Yan had pure white hair, lashes and brows. He was either blind or his irises were white too. Kong Xuan looked very different from Kong Tian and was much bigger in frame.
The most respectful was of the last three of the sixth generation.
Shi Yu, daughter of Shi Yi and Kong Xuan was the only other unmarried person at the table besides Ebony and Shi Ling.
Shi Quan and Shi Mei were sisters, descendants of Shi Yue of the third generation. Their husbands were Lei Tian and Fang Bo respectively. Lei Tian had long yellow hair tied in a ponytail and his eyes were piercing even without the effect of aura in the room. Fang Bo barely squeezed his muscles into their layers of garment. He probably wore the shirt because he had to not because he wanted to. They were technically 4th generation but perhaps they weren¡¯t that old or their parents married late or gave birth late, he wasn¡¯t sure.
Meeting dozens of strangers was one thing, meeting this many people that he had to firmly remember was another. One thing of note was that in the obstacle course, all the people at the table was in the top 50. Husbands included.
Shui Feng was the most scholarly and least muscular person at the table but he was top 20 until Ebony kicked him down a spot. Amongst all Xeng men, he used to be top 5 in the means of bodily control, trap detection and avoidance and other tiny capabilities required to cross the obstacle course as fast as possible.
Ebony would¡¯ve tried to remember their clan¡¯s emblem if they weren¡¯t all wearing the Shi clan¡¯s emblem.
Taking his age and low level into account, he stood up just like the younger generation.
¡°I am Ebony Rime. Son of Shi Wu.¡±
Ebony took in every frown and half smile in the room. Unlike Shi Tao¡¯s light reaction, they must not have expected him to take on a different surname. The Shi Clan took on Shi Tao¡¯s surname, very different from the other Xeng clans that took on the male counterpart¡¯s surname.
Even though they were combat and strength-focused, the Xengs followed the tradition of taking the father¡¯s surname. All except the Shi.
He expected this reaction. It must have been like stepping on their pride that he took his father''s surname despite being a Shi himself.
¡°I finally understand, mother.¡± Shi Qiang eased the tense mood in the dining room.
¡°Granduncle, you must be pretty awesome!¡± Shi Ling clapped and smiled in glee. She was like a ray of sunshine in this room.
¡°Ah Ling,¡± Shi Han chided the younger girl.
Ebony did not understand what Shi Qiang understood or why Shi Ling had that reaction.
¡°My nephew here placed sixth on his entry.¡± Shi Tao nodded to the exuberant girl and patted his shoulder, almost forgetting how ¡®fragile¡¯ he was.
¡°Wow! So awesome! On your first try too!¡± Shi Ling immediately forgot her aunt¡¯s chidding.
¡®Young lady¡you are hundreds of years older than me aren¡¯t you. Maybe not, she might be like me and born later than my actual generation. Yeah, that makes sense.¡¯ Ebony realised that despite being from the fifth generation, Shi Ling might be the youngest in the room excluding him.
¡°He did it without our clan¡¯s skill.¡± Shi Tao reached out for the stack of fluffy white buns.
Now he got more intense stares.
Chapter 370: Tradition
It was not exactly a comfortable breakfast.
The food wasn¡¯t bad but he didn¡¯t taste much.
Overall, the Shi members didn¡¯t talk much.
It fell on Shi Ling, who fearlessly spoke whatever was on her mind, and the men at the table to urge conversation from the other daughters of Shi.
Without augmentation, Ebony decided to give up trying to lift a porcelain plate. The chopsticks were the most he could handle.
At least, he was very familiar with the eating or meal culture. His mother subtly taught him that she had to put something on his plate before he could start eating. In the same way, Shi Tao had to pick something onto Shi Qiang¡¯s plate and Shi Qiang would have to do the same to the younger generations.
In the same way, he embraced the fact that he was induced as part of the third generation and picked a steamed prawn wrapped in a thin rice paper roll to Shi Ling without any hesitation. Shi Han of the fourth generation already had Shi Qiang catering to her and there wasn¡¯t anyone else of the fourth generation. As for the husbands, they were served by their wives, just like how his father was forced to wait for his mother to plate him food if not directly fed with an ¡®ahh¡¯
They tried their best to be womanly outside of battle. It would look extremely awkward to other people but all the husbands here embraced the awkward show of love or feminine act.
Shi Tao very forcefully insisted on feeding him as much as she could.
He could taste halfway through the meal, he excused himself to the grasslands right outside the tea break room he first arrived in. He needed some time alone.
Family. It didn¡¯t feel real to him but he knew that he was taking it quite well and didn¡¯t have much rejection in him.
¡®Am I taking and accepting changes too lightly since I¡¯m used to massive changes? Even when it comes to family members? Or do I feel kinship with these people to a certain extent?¡¯
It didn¡¯t help that they all looked and acted so similar to his mother. Though all with their unique habits and differences.
He wasn¡¯t even confused about the situation and Boundless Serenity Geyser likely didn¡¯t matter. It was just his personality of taking abrupt situation changes lightly.
¡®Some company might be nice.¡¯ He found himself Flickering out of the Shi Clan towards the Nings. Rather than staying silent about his dislike of how easily he was accepting these people as ¡®family¡¯, he felt like he now had someone he could talk to about these minor annoyances.
¡®I shouldn¡¯t see these as annoyances. Having a problem with myself is¡is human.¡¯ His mind settled even more at that thought.
Fortunately, it wasn¡¯t hard to find the Nings despite being moved near the Shi by space magic. He just had to Flicker upwards, look around and find a small village with a gate.
He called Xin¡¯s callstone with his mana alone since he lost his callstone long ago but could still connect to hers with mana and sound magic but she didn¡¯t pick up. Fearing some kind of home defence, he made sure his presence was known. Kong Jing picked up.
It took her half an hour before she came out to get him at the gates and walk him in. Kong Jing was oddly silent and reserved but he thought that was because they were on Xiaoya and she had been acting this way since.
¡°This is Grandaunt¡¯s house.¡±
Ebony learned that their form of address is by generation and not clan.
It was not much different from every other house down the street.
Ebony sniffed a thick scent of blood.
Slowly, he removed his shoes and let Kong Jing guide him to a room.
Bedridden was a bloody masked woman with countless bone-deep open wounds. Black blood stained the mattress and floor but the room was otherwise clean and could even be considered luxurious.
There was already a chair beside the bed that Ebony shamelessly took over from the previous person.
¡°How are you?¡± He grabbed her hand.
The treatment he received from the Shi Clan and the treatment she received from the Ning Clan were polar opposites.
¡°Good.¡± It took her a while before she answered.
¡°Where is your grandma?¡± The house had similar levels of privacy settings that shut off mana perception. It likely shut off most types of perception outside of physical, arcane or elemental.
¡°Don¡¯t blame her. She can¡¯t walk either. She¡¯s resting like I am.¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll set your elbow back, don¡¯t bite your tongue.¡± Ebony guessed that she probably didn¡¯t let Kong Jing do it because the crafter didn¡¯t know how to do it properly or gently.
Her outer garment was removed and it proved that the female set of dress had pants as well. No sleeves remained so the torn flesh around her jutting elbow was hanging loose. ¡°You can¡¯t recover or regenerate?¡±
He distracted her, twisted and popped the elbow back in without pause.
¡°Nuhuh.¡± Shaking her head left to right, she guided his attention to the half-wrapped bandages around her left shoulder.
¡°You sound happy.¡± Ebony thought about how he had never used bandages in decades. It was clearly a special type of bandage but it looked and felt like normal bandages.
¡°Hmm¡¡± Ning Xin pondered audibly, likely muddled about how she felt.
¡°I¡¯m happy for you too. Looks like they care immensely for you.¡± Ebony smiled and redid the bandaging from the start. Kong Jing did a sloppy job for someone good with her hands.
Beating her up so perfectly was the greatest show of familial love. Every cut she sustained was weak points that he never managed to punish her for thanks to her superior speed. Although he had confidence that wasn¡¯t the case now that he could sustain his Domain, they hadn¡¯t sparred seriously in over a decade. Although he never met another Ning, the injuries on Xin¡¯s body told him what he needed to know about them.
Her injuries didn¡¯t stop bleeding but the bandages could stop the unnatural bleeding and close her wounds.
¡®Looks like the clan doesn¡¯t matter. The Xengs are all hard on the outside and soft on the inside. Despite what Sister Jing said, they care about her safety and can¡¯t believe her inability to protect herself. All that talk about shaming their bloodline is a bunch of half nonsense, they¡¯re just worried their descendants aren¡¯t better than they are.¡¯ Ebony sincerely felt this longing from his mother and it was proven by every married Shi he met so far.
They obsessed over their children¡¯s potential to become stronger and better than themselves. When it came to fighting strength, sharpening this ability boiled down to beating them up.
He might be wrong with the Nings but it didn¡¯t appear that way. Not with a few people clambering outside the door with Kong Jing trying to hold all the gifts and medication. Of course, there were a lot of ¡®insults¡¯ about how they didn¡¯t expect Xin to be exceptionally weak and whatnot but Ning Xin only smiled wider.
He didn¡¯t need her ability to read other people¡¯s emotions to understand that the Xengs were just stating the truth they saw as it was.
¡°I¡¯m going to sit you up, pull your shirt up for me.¡± Ebony was done bandaging her arms and noticed she had been hiding the wound on her belly. The legs could wait.
¡°Huh?¡± Xin sat up immediately but hesitated to pull her inner garment up. The hesitation didn¡¯t last long.
Ebony put the large scissors down before he started wrapping her skinny waist up.
And then a burst of rage stunned his body and it wasn¡¯t figurative. ¡°WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER YOU BASTARD!¡±
He barely looked up in time to see black hair transform to bright yellow and a woman¡¯s back that faced him, protecting him from the lightning blade.
A bunch of black-haired men and women, some masked and others not outside opened doors and gasped audibly.
From the window behind the chair Ebony sat on, a few Shis similarly looked in shock.
¡®What on earth is happening?¡¯ He was not shocked by the sudden meeting and breakfast with the Shis, but so many of them just gasping at him confused him greatly. Where did they even come from?
Not being able to perceive with gravitational perception was troublesome indeed.
¡°Shi Han, what is going on?¡± He asked the person who blocked the loud zapping materialised lightning by grabbing onto it with her barefist for him. They might look very similar but each of them were different enough for him to differentiate.
¡°What¡¯s going on? You¡¯re asking me that? Unhand the young lady of the Nings and go home with us young man! Uh, I mean Uncle!¡±
Without warning, he was blasted out of the room along with the entire wall. As for Xin, she was surrounded by many people and had her head and body covered by her outer garment. ¡°Heheh¡±
¡®Did she just giggle through the callstone?¡¯ Ebony realised that she foresaw something coming, her hesitation was intentional.
¡°I¡¯ll calm him down, you kids, bring your granduncle back.¡± Shi Han clicked her tongue at the raging yellow haired beast whose hair continued to spark with lightning and grew longer by the second.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
¡°Granduncle! You¡¯re so daring! Sneaking out into a girl¡¯s room.¡± Shi Ling painfully poked his side. He didn¡¯t realise he followed their pace and was running back to the Shi village.
While he exited without going through the obstacle course since there was no need to, he was guided towards the obstacle course again. It seemed like a waste of time since all of them were forced back to normal humans and took a lot of time to get through but the Shi women surrounding him might have inadvertently pushed him here.
One by one, they went on ahead after smashing the start button.
¡®They''re so fast, do we really have the same strength and speed?¡¯ Ebony watched them jump across the river in three to four hops.
¡°Don¡¯t need to show us face okay!?¡± Shi Ling leapt off the last after the sixth generation and her fellow fifth-generation sisters, Shi Ke and Shi Yi.
¡®Second try, by the looks of it I have no chance of overtaking them in the first two sections.¡¯ Ebony dashed off, trying the new explosive snapping of muscles but it didn¡¯t produce any sort of effect other than hurt himself or a minimal push off the ground. It was slightly different from Treading Steps or Flicker but the logic was the same.
The hill gave the women an even larger gap between them but he caught up slightly when the hill turned into a climb since he could almost run up vertically with good footing. He realised there was no need to climb or swing himself like a monkey. It was similar to when he was trained by a kappa except he had a slightly stronger than average human body right now. He just needed his hands to grab onto the wall once in a while.
At the sky-high poles, they opened the gap again but none of them turned back to look at him. He noticed a couple more vines appear at the end of the course and guessed that the obstacle course could change itself according to how many people were taking it together.
Despite a couple of them on the same course, none of the ladies crashed into each other at their side or forward hopping and their perfect landing didn¡¯t even shake the thin footholds.
¡®They have better balance than Xin, by a long shot. I should bring her here to try this course.¡¯
Only Shi Ling and Shi Yi did something else altogether. They hopped off the footholds and kicked off the poles from one to another, controlling their descent while still moving forward. The sixth generation was rappelling down the vines right about now.
Ebony didn¡¯t let their lead get to him. He wasn¡¯t here to prove himself but he did want to get a better time than before.
This time, he got a bit more forward momentum instead of free-falling down.
Ever so slightly, he was able to use the vine to snap himself into the air further than his first attempt. He didn¡¯t notice the looks he got from below since he had to be wary of traps before and after he landed. When he got into the trees and jungle the older juniors he had couldn¡¯t even catch his shadow anymore.
¡®Good the lake is still here,¡¯ Ebony smashed into the liquid pool and swam out. He redirected to the right for a fire tunnel trap to dry himself off. He did get slightly baked but the wet clothes helped.
He discovered a dozen new types of traps he didn¡¯t encounter on his first attempt but nothing that fatally ended his attempt to break his previous record. It was too bad he barely improved by half a minute and was still in the same rank.
¡®The ¡®guest¡¯ is gone and they put me as Shi Clan but left my name alone. Auntie is quite considerate.¡¯ Ebony wouldn¡¯t have liked it if they just changed his name and put a Shi in front and it looked like they understood.
He didn¡¯t wait up for the girls who were wall jumping up the last stretch or rolling away from arrows further back. Walking past the demarcation line, he healed the muscle tears since he knew the course length and how much he could push himself. Cleaning himself off with mana manipulation worked a lot better than running into a fire tunnel too.
¡°That was so awesome! You flew!¡±
Ebony sustained a double back pat that gave him internal injuries and sent him rolling forward a few times.
¡°Ah? I-I¡¯m sorry granduncle, I didn¡¯t mean that! Yo-you¡¯re so fragile!¡± Shi Ling¡¯s words were starting to hurt more than her strength.
¡®I¡¯m pretty sure my mana pool is fully compressed¡where is all that brute strength coming from.¡¯ Ebony would understand his injury if an Emperor used a skill but this was all unaugmented, unbuffed by skill and just casual motions.
¡°I¡¯m only 37 standard years old.¡± He might as well probe for information but he realised that saying this felt too much like an excuse.
¡°You¡¯re less than half my age?!¡± She gasped, ¡°but that doesn¡¯t explain your fragile body even if you¡¯re only¡a Grandmaster?¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± It looks like he was right. Despite being the fifth generation, she was likely younger than many of the sixth generation. Using Kong Jing¡¯s rate of levelling or evolving, Shi Ling was probably Emperor ranked but maybe not capped out. Since none of them had ever Identified or Appraised him, he also didn¡¯t do the same to any of them.
¡°So you¡¯re the technique caste instead of the power caste.¡± She then went on about how she didn¡¯t expect to have a granduncle using the specific term for a great-great-grandmother¡¯s sister¡¯s child. It was honestly confusing even with all the mental stats, he just didn¡¯t want to know these terms.
While waiting for the others who needed another minute or two, he heard that Shi Ling was also on Elcra till she was a Grandmaster before she took off to train elsewhere. But she moved immediately after evolving at level 300. She was a bit more sheltered with both her parents with her outside of her travels and dungeon hopping. She asked about a friend or two knowing that he was on Elcra not long ago.
¡°Magus Consortium? They were still around when I was there.¡± Ebony picked up a familiar term from her.
¡°Is he still doing well? It¡¯s too bad their genes are terrible and they can barely get over King ranked.¡±
¡°Who is he?¡±
¡°Dai-Damien? Yeah, I think that was his name. I still remember that awful magic of his.¡±
¡°I remember, he was still an Arch Mage when I met him. I only met him once, I joined the so-called Magus Consortium but had to leave for something else and never had the chance to go back.¡± Ebony felt bad that he wasted their time during the meeting, and the old lightning mage, Wilcox¡¯s effort for introducing him.
The Arch Mage Damien was a human who had the Elves'' basic respect during the meeting and he never broke down to Ebony¡¯s mana so it was not hard to recall him. But for a Xeng, a Shi to call his magic ¡®awful¡¯ made him more curious as to what type of magic or element Damien used.
It was too bad the other Shis caught up and cut off their conversation, it didn¡¯t take a minute before he was alone in a room with his supposed cousin, Shi Qiang of the third generation.
¡°I heard what happened.¡±
¡°What is the fuss about?¡±
¡°...cousin, I am aware that you¡¯re young and didn¡¯t have Xeng¡¯s upbringing but sneaking off into a girl¡¯s room and..and touching her intimates is unbecoming!¡±
Ebony was speechless over the next hour.
Why was he getting a lecture by a ¡®cousin¡¯ he knew for less than a day?
It really didn¡¯t help when Huo Tianyu, Shi Han¡¯s husband, walked by and gave a thumbs up by the door.
Be that as it may, he learned about the common sense, culture and tradition that they were so focused on. It helped him understand them better. As much as Ning Xin had been distanced from the Xeng, he knew she cared about their tradition. There was no other reason that she wore their mask all the time. She was brought up by them after all.
Some of the traditions such as the mask make sense since it had actual power and their logic behind it was to make their woman appear less feminine was reasonable to an extent. They didn¡¯t have many rules or anything like that either but many acts appeared ¡®not right¡¯. They were tough on their family members but protected each other from external threats even more adamantly regardless of whether their clan members or fellow Xeng committed some kind of crime.
The proper channel to courting women was to first check if they had any blood relations which made complete sense to him. He did slightly dread what would happen but recalling that his mother was a second generation pretty much cleared the possibility of him sharing any sort of blood ties with Xin.
However, every step in between was rigid. Physical touch was a touchy topic and was considered extremely intimate to a certain extent. Outside of punching the daylights out of each other. Looking at too much of a woman¡¯s skin was not well looked upon and was bad for the woman. If a Xeng man touched a Xeng woman¡¯s feet, they can pretty much be seen being engaged the next day or the woman would find it hard to get married to another man if it was known.
In fact, quite a few marriages happened because male combatants ¡®accidentally¡¯ got too much physical contact with their partner during spars or training. Whether this was an actual courting technique or ¡®accidents¡¯ was not known to Ebony but he believed it was the former since it matched the Bridal Battle or duels that they opened up to people outside of Xengs and combat ability was always their main focus.
In that regard, he understood why Kong Jing had different values and outlooks since the non-combatant Xengs worked and thought differently from the combatants. They were more ¡®normal¡¯ and less traditionalist when it came to bloodline.
So the fuss is that he was seen as an obscene leecher pushing himself onto a young, seventh-generation right now. In terms of seniority, even if she was stronger than him, it wouldn¡¯t be weird if she listened and showed her belly to him so the only one looking bad was him.
¡®More like, why or how did so many of them appear out of nowhere¡superspeed and perception make privacy a real problem. No wonder they make their buildings so airtight. Should¡¯ve closed the windows and pulled the curtains.¡¯
¡°Qiang, that¡¯s enough. Leave the room.¡± Shi Tao walked in with a stern expression.
The door was closed before this aunt of his smiled widely, ¡°good job boy! That¡¯s more like a man of Shi!¡±
After his stunned lecture, he received praise for his bold act for another half an hour.
¡°Worry not, I¡¯ve already double-checked the register while I was putting you down but it¡¯s not like I have any male descendants that managed to marry out so there is no clash. A Ning descendant is a great choice for a wife! They can both be demure when desired and ferocious when needed.¡± Shi Tao paced about the small tea room.
¡®Is the multiple personality swap a common ability amongst the Ning?¡¯
¡°Of course, although I said good job you must take responsibility. No takebacks or you¡¯ve ruined a good woman, obviously I doubt I have to tell you but we practise strict monogamy. When is the marriage? Have you proposed? I can help you write a proper letter as your guardian, since you¡¯re part of the third I have to address it to Ning Xue. Ahh but the only Shi and Ning couple hasn¡¯t managed to bring me another descendant so that is worrisome¡hmm.¡±
¡°I already have plans to propose after we return to Elcra, I just need a few months to brush up on some skills that I couldn¡¯t train on Cinderash or Teheil.¡± Monogamy seemed pretty much common sense for him be it his upbringing or the more common Earthen standard. He couldn¡¯t imagine another woman as a wife anyway.
¡°Why do you need that for a proposal?¡±
¡°...The bridal battle I was told about.¡±
¡°That old thing? That¡¯s for outsiders, if we take it strictly you both have blood of Xengs so it¡¯s not necessary.¡±
¡°How else am I supposed to assure her that I¡¯m capable of protecting her.¡±
¡°...My sister raised you well. I guess I¡¯m far less capable than her in raising sons or grandsons.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve been a great auntie so far.¡±
¡°Thank you, boy. But I do have a bit of bad news for you.¡±
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°The fifth generation Ning girl brought her granddaughter back obviously to train her up. Purify the Ning blood and strengthen her.¡±
¡°Purify? What does that entail?¡± He frowned at the dismissive tone.
¡°Cleansing it and bringing out the full extent of the Nings.¡±
¡°You think she¡¯ll do that for power? Cleaning away her father¡¯s genes or physique. Auntie, would you do that if it were you? Did Veronica¡Ning Xing¡¯s daughter did that when she knew she was half blood? I never heard any stories about that but I highly doubt so.¡± The word ¡®cleanse¡¯ was irritating him. The context didn¡¯t need to be said for him to understand she was talking about bloodline.
¡°You¡¯re right. Since the Nings took her in, they already see her as one of their own. Although they probably are very harsh on her with their sharp words and they have a particular dislike of weakness just like all of us do, they will not do something like wash out her father¡¯s genes so you can relax. She already denied that ¡®offer¡¯ or they wouldn¡¯t have thought of her as a real Ning or Xeng.
¡°So what¡¯s the bad news?¡±
¡°You think you can beat her after the Nings give her proper guidance? I¡¯m sorry to say but there¡¯s a reason why Shi descendants are all female. Because we are stronger than men and your fragile body proves it further. I can¡¯t explain it well, hurry up and read a bit of the basics on baseline traits. In any case, I bet they will teach her how to best make use of their state swap. It doesn''t look like she can use any mind magic so the Nings might have some trouble teaching her in that regard.¡±
¡°I know I can.¡±
Chapter 371: Baseline Trait
Ebony was given time to enter a small portion of the God of Knowledge¡¯s library. Unlike surfing the net, Hex did not show him a bunch of screens. He was pulled into an actual library but he double-checked that his body was still in Shi Tao¡¯s temple-like home. But when he tried entering his mindspace, he was in an old library. The smell of aged paper was quite pleasant to him.
Hex floated beside him, ¡°Welcome!¡±
¡°Just deduct whatever payment is necessary.¡± It was a small hexagonal-shaped library with a spiral staircase in the centre of the room but it rose further than he could see. There was a veranda or seating area every few metres that extended from the staircase. Equalling the height of a single bookshelf.
¡°It¡¯s done by book basis. There¡¯s a price list by category but you can almost afford any one book humble Hex has access to so I doubt you care. What are you looking for, I¡¯m technically my master¡¯s librarian. You can search by specific titles or keywords. The rule is that you cannot share any content you learn from the master''s library with people that never read the same book. But if you learn the same knowledge from elsewhere, you can share the knowledge without limitation. You can also speak of related content with people who have knowledge of the same topic. You will instinctively know whether you can speak out when you try. The Law of Secrets will keep your mouth shut when necessary so you don¡¯t have to worry about accidental blabbing.¡±
¡°How does that work, if I learn about the same thing from the same book but outside of the God of Knowledge¡¯s library, I can talk and share about its contents without limitation?¡± Ebony wasn¡¯t shocked by the fact that he wasn¡¯t able to afford some books present.
¡°Yes. I can¡¯t tell you how it works because I don¡¯t know either. You will not know whether another person has read the same book until you try and intend to speak out the words. Just thinking about it won¡¯t let you know if another person standing before you has read the same book. Don¡¯t question me about the powers of Gods, I¡¯m not one myself.¡±
¡°Search up baseline traits..hang on a minute.¡± Ebony left the library to ask the old lady who was playing a complicated board game with her daughter Shi Qiang.
¡°Are there any other taboo words I can¡¯t say or should not search up Eidolon?¡± He wasn¡¯t dumb enough to search up Rime but there are many other things he was curious about.
¡°Such as? You can say it here, no one dares to listen in on us. Other than our people.¡± Shi Tao moved the magic knight and had it jump across enemy lines while taking two hits from a mage. The characters on the board moved themselves after the player''s commands. The damage was shown on the knight by the destroyed pauldron and a decrease in glow representing the mana lost by the knight. The mage also dimmed since it received commands to passively defend but it had a far bigger mana pool so it didn¡¯t dim as much.
¡°Unique skill. Ubiquitous Providence.¡± These were the keywords he was the most curious about that might be sensitive topics based on Xin¡¯s Intuition to stop him. He would search up Will and other magic too but it wasn¡¯t an immediate priority.
¡°Ho. Heard that Shi Qiang, that¡¯s my nephew.¡±
¡°I¡¯m listening.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not taboo, but I suggest you don¡¯t ask for it. First of all, you won¡¯t find anything about those with the level of access you have or throughout whatever Hex has. Second of all, even if you do, the topic of unique skills is something Xengs are familiar with so there is no need to let the God of Knowledge know that you are aware of it. There is a low chance you will be taken note of if you¡¯re older or stronger, but now that I¡¯ve put you down in our registry, knowing about unique skills will be less conspicuous since old races can teach their descendants whatever they know. I am curious but I won¡¯t ask what unique skill you have, you should keep it secret. Now as for the Ubiquitous Providence, that is something you should not speak out loud anywhere else without me, Ning Xue or The First around. I suppose that Wen brat too.¡±
¡°Okay, I¡¯ll get to reading.¡± Ebony cut the conversation there.
¡°Haha, just like ah Wu. Hey, what is that move!¡± Shi Tao shouted at her daughter¡¯s move.
¡°Hex, just bring up everything on baseline traits.¡±
¡°321 books mention that term. You don¡¯t have the balance to pay for all of them at the moment. I highlighted the books, you have to walk up and take them off the shelves by yourself. I¡¯ll deduct the payment from your balance as you go.¡±
The process was rather troublesome and he didn¡¯t have any powers in this library so he had to climb. The first book glowing light green with a single Hex particle floating about was 4 floors up.
Basics on Baseline Traits.
The title was clear enough and a good place to start.
The book was a couple hundred pages thick and viewing this library was in real time which was a bit weird when he should be in his mind. He assumed that since he was in his mindspace, perceived time would correspond to his usual processing speed but that wasn¡¯t the case.
The contents were more in-depth than he expected but it raised questions about himself.
Baseline traits refer to the fundamental characteristics that define a race or species. These traits establish a baseline or standard level of abilities that are typical for members of that race. One extremely simplified example, humans generally have a balanced distribution of physical strength, intelligence, and magical potential, with no extreme specialisation in any area. Baseline human''s most well-known traits were their abnormally high adaptability but not enough to be the amongst the most adaptable races.
In contrast, other races or species might have different baseline traits that reflect their unique evolutionary paths or cultural developments. Tigers might possess greater physical strength and agility than humans. However, this increased physical prowess might come at the cost of lower intelligence or magical ability, reflecting a trade-off that maintains a similar total "value" or overall capability when compared to humans. The concept of baseline traits suggests that while different races may excel in certain areas, their overall capabilities are balanced when considering all aspects.
Based on this book alone, he highly suspected that the crystal monolith that he saw during his evolution represented baseline traits. All the evidence just points to this hypothesis of his to be true.
The book referenced other titles that better quantified baseline traits between races but Ebony wasn¡¯t that interested since it wouldn¡¯t impact his understanding of the topic at the moment.
It was believed and proven that being born by parents of a higher evolutionary state would produce offspring that had higher total baseline trait value than if they were born from a couple of a lower evolutionary state.
These traits referred to many things, more than the ¡®Basics on Baseline Traits¡¯ covered. The most obvious would be all the stats that one could increase when they levelled. He was right that even if one person had 1 point in strength, it doesn''t equal another person with 1 point in strength. Human males were generally stronger than their females at the same stat value. Baseline trait was also seen as the original physique before any refinements or mutations.
Elemental affinity was another point affected by one¡¯s genetics.
Natural Potential or talent was the one he was more interested in. Since his original stats didn¡¯t differ from an average human, baseline traits actually included talent. This partly explained why he levelled faster than any Elcrian outside of the effort he put into training.
¡®Hm, so Auntie wanted me to read this and tell me that the Xengs have baseline traits that are a lot higher than normal humans and other races. That means the Shi have a physical baseline that is a lot higher, to begin with. If they are three times stronger than a human, it immediately means that once they started levelling, a single stat increment in Strength would be like 3 points for another person.¡¯
One definite ¡®law¡¯ such as the law of physics, was that baseline traits had a total value that was spread across a person. If one had higher strength, it would eat into another trait be it mental ability, resistance to elements, mana quality.
It was unfair but such was the whole point of natural evolution.
Taking a peek outside, the two Shis were still playing so he went back into the library. It was a bit troublesome that he had to climb down to the entrance and back up the spiral staircase. There was no way to ¡®exit¡¯ his mind like usual.
¡®Ah so whether or not a human is considered sub-human or baseline human depends on a certain degree of difference between their baseline traits. Like a race that removed skin elasticity so much or somehow added scales to themselves, using either chemical, alchemical, natural or some type of process would be subhuman. Because their base is still the same, they are not considered a different race.¡¯
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The Cinderash must have their ¡®aether-using¡¯ trait added to a low degree. That¡¯s why they only used aether earliest at King ranked, minus Gearhart¡¯s direct descendants who can use it a bit earlier. In exchange, their physical strength was high enough that they suppressed me with augmentation. After Skills are taken into account.
Elcrian warriors, even a late bloomer can use mana as a Master. Many could use it to a rudimentary degree as a Journeyman. Yet their overall traits are still weaker than almost any other planet¡¯s humans Ebony had seen to date.
¡®In this case, my baseline traits must not be placed in any of the stats. Even my strongest stat, base wisdom is no different from a human of 10% regeneration per hour, and 1 point equals 10 maximum points in mana at first. Until I refined my physique to change that. I¡¯m reasonably certain that is because I¡¯m born on Earth which erases most powers. So where did my traits go? Knowing this law of baseline traits, it can¡¯t disappear. It should be my ability with mana manipulation, my mind, and usage of Will that even Elven Grandmasters cannot utilise. Elemental affinity. Unbelievable poison resistance. Base mental defences that could make an Emperor-ranked Telepath Mr Guru have trouble pushing deeper. My unnatural healing, my bones, muscles and nerves could heal without permanent damage ever since I was on Earth, but I never questioned it¡¡¯
There were more differences he could pick out between himself and another person on the street. His mana qualities stood out the most.
The higher he climbed up the cylindrical library, the less content books with the keyword baseline trait had. He was currently intrigued by mentions of a book called ¡®Failures of Baseline Trait Engineering¡¯ that supposedly talked about how creatures manipulated their seed and birthed creatures that couldn¡¯t live.
Having overwhelmingly strong muscles made them born with crushed bones and brain dead or bones so tough their body couldn¡¯t support them. Increasing physical and mental output by raising the energy required so much that once separated from their mother, their digestive system couldn¡¯t break down food and energy so their offspring was only born to starve to death.
It was heavily referenced in many books but the book itself was something Hex didn¡¯t have.
¡°How many floors are there here?¡± He climbed up at least a hundred floors and could no longer see glowing books above him.
¡°There are 55,421 floors. I am currently allowed to hold 212 million books. Rounded.¡±
¡°Are there any more? I don¡¯t see glowing books anymore.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve already read everything you can afford.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t have any more money?¡±
¡°You do but the prices are highly varied.¡±
It was too bad he just knew the bare basics but he already spent most of his money and that was enough reading for now. ¡°Alright, thank you, I¡¯ll be back.¡±
Ebony gave the library some respect and climbed the spiral stairs down quietly instead of leaping off.
¡°I¡¯ve read the basics.¡±
The ladies were still playing their game.
¡°Mm. I¡¯m sure you realised what I was trying to say about why you¡¯re fragile compared to us.¡± Shi Tao replied non-committedly, more focused on her board game.
¡°Mmm. What is your trade-off?¡± Ebony poured himself a cup of tea, after refilling the two seniors'' cups. Even if he hadn¡¯t considered them as an aunt or cousins, they were still his elders in age by thousands or hundreds of years at the very least.
¡°Life span is the most obvious one. I¡¯m sure the majority of people think we are crazy or have some mental instability.¡± Shi Tao accepted the tea and drank it like a shot instead of enjoying the tea.
¡°Is that so, everyone seems normal to me.¡± Ebony ignored the scene of a transforming Ning that raged just because he was wrapping up a wound. He could understand it to an extent, he wouldn¡¯t like it if another person did the same to Xin. He just did not expect that reaction thinking they barely knew Xin for half a day.
¡°We say the same thing,¡± Shi Qiang commanded her earth mages to raise a wall that would increase stamina consumption for her opponent to climb, or waste a turn to break it down. It was a pretty interesting game.
¡°We have our differences between a clan to clan and individual to individual basis. On average, our baseline trait is about 380 times that of an average baseline human at birth. The Shi and Ning Clan average at 600 times that of an average baseline human. Hmm, Hex¡¯s library is limited. Anyway, most of it goes to less obvious traits like our soul, genetic resistances and so on. These are the more¡expensive options to say the least. Muscle strength is by far one of the cheapest traits to invest in.¡± The younger of the two ladies continued. She was quite relaxed since she was winning the game.
¡®The secrecy law is not that tight if we both have some relevant knowledge.¡¯ Ebony noticed how Shi Qiang tip-toed around the topic before she managed to say something. Using the Xengs as an example might have been possible because that had nothing to do with a book from God of Knowledge¡¯s library. And he was already aware that some studies quantified these traits.
¡°Can I speak my mind and you can confirm my hypothesis even if I never read up on those books?¡± Ebony decided to test out the limits of what he could and couldn¡¯t share.
Shi Tao was pondering on her next move as her units were low on resources and were trapped by various environmental effects. The magic board was bigger than a coffee table and simulated the environments and elements pretty much perfectly.
¡°My memories have gotten hazy when it comes to evolution but I am sure I was in control. There is some kind of object or symbol that represents our baseline traits there and could be raised with natural potential.¡± It annoyed him a bit that evolutionary process memories were hidden.
¡°Correct.¡± Shi Tao answered him after she played her move and passed the thinking time to her daughter.
¡°The Ubiquitous Providence, it ¡®bestows¡¯ natural potential but if notifications are to be trusted it is more like a trade. I gave ''it'' or ''them'' natural potential when I created a unique skill, and in return, I got natural potential back. That means the Ubiquitous Providence might be a person, a living creature, some kind of Higher Being or something that has sentience.¡± He recalled the notifications when he made his Mireloom Chassis Engine.
¡°You can say that.¡±
¡°The quantity and perhaps quality of natural potential I got is determined by what it calls Echelon and Order.¡±
¡°Quantity. The quality of natural potential is always constant for every race and species. Wen personally found a race of insects to prove this. It can suck out a creature¡¯s natural potential. At birth, an insect might have baseline traits a few million times lower than a human but this creature can devour and digest natural potential to make it its own. However, it is of course nearly impossible for it to change into a human but that can be changed with enough targets absorbed.
There are a few races that attempt high-level engineering of their baseline traits, the most famous are the Dragon Emulators. They used to be humans, but after generations of self-editing, they gave themselves scales, wings, claws, amplified their aura, enhanced and curved their spines. When it comes to natural potential, all you have to care about is quantity and there is nothing you cannot do with your genetics. It is just a lot more expensive to change from a landbound creature to an aerial one, the greater the change from your baseline trait, the more unlikely it is due to how ¡®wasteful¡¯ the expenditures are.¡±
¡°Sounds cool, are they strong?¡±
¡°The Dragons despise them but are leaving them alone to see if they can successfully produce a real Dragon. Back when I first saw them, they were very disappointing. It¡¯s too bad I¡¯ve never found a real Dragon to fight.¡±
¡°Even you¡¯ve never found them?¡±
¡°I mean one that¡¯s outside. We know where they live, I can¡¯t barge in like The First can. Using the same baseline trait average, we were told an average Dragons species is a couple dozen times higher than us. How I wish I could invite one of them for a fight.¡±
¡®So 1 stat point of strength for a Dragon is closer to tens of thousands for a normal human. No wonder levels don¡¯t mean anything.¡¯ Even if Ebony ignored the fact that this average could vary immensely between traits, the rough estimate helped.
¡°That is why Higher Beings don¡¯t look up to ¡®mortals¡¯; the evolution to Saint raises one¡¯s baseline significantly. As a matter of fact, when The First evolved past Saint she raised all the Xeng¡¯s baseline traits by a factor and more so for Xeng women, hence the obvious difference between us. Can you guess why the evolution is significantly different?¡±
Parallel threads of thoughts raced in his mind but he couldn¡¯t come up with a definitive answer or an educated guess.
¡°It¡¯s easier to explain it to you since you know of the Ubiquitous Providence. When a Saint is born, you similarly provide the Ubiquitous Providence something.¡±
¡°Evolving into a Saint has a similar effect as creating a unique skill?¡±
¡°Not to us but to the Ubiquitous Providence. As for the quantity of natural potential, it¡¯s equivalent to, it varies to an extreme extent. Just like how you can trash any baseline humans at the same level or even greater. I can give you better examples using Echelon and Order but you won¡¯t understand you¡¯re at the Emperor rank or trying to create a tier 7 skill.¡±
Ebony watched their board game run as Shi Tao and Shi Qiang educated him.
He learned about how some races of humans gave up Class Skill slots for natural potential, so they have 5 to 8 skills. Races that do this are usually hyper-specialised and are always found in large societies and communities. If they weren¡¯t a fighter, they were easily assassinated no matter the level or evolution. In Shi Tao¡¯s words, these people were professional servants and slaves that have generations forced into specialising in agriculture, mining and other ¡®menial¡¯ jobs.
Unlike Elcrians who don''t know about conscious evolution decisions. Or perhaps they couldn¡¯t retain those memories, on the larger scale it was a very common thing to do. It was common for a person to only be able to ¡®edit¡¯ their evolution once in their lifetime. From Grandmaster to King.
While for older, more advanced races and civilisations, they have 2 chances to modify themselves. Once from Grandmaster to King and another from King to Emperor. That¡¯s why it took generations for obvious changes for the entire race.
He heard about Demons and Fiends. Demons were still people and communication was possible while Fiends were to be killed on sight since they only knew slaughter, destruction and increasing their power.
He learned about Elves who were said to have even greater baseline trait value than the Xengs excluding the few Saints the Xeng had but the Elves'' choice of traits to develop towards are all extremely expensive and they face some kind of diminishing returns.
He learned about Space Dwarves, the height of the Dwarven race. They made Dyson Spheres a reality. One of the few races that live on planets that they made from scratch.
Most importantly, he learned about how much Shi Tao bragged and praised his mother Shi Wu. This was apparently brand new to Shi Qiang who was listening intently to Shi Tao¡¯s pride and love for Shi Wu. If anything, this was Ebony''s most memorable takeaway.
Chapter 372: Legacy
¡°Ebony, walk with me.¡± The mother and daughter finished their game which took hours.
¡®I should¡¯ve asked what that game was and where do I get one.¡¯ Ebony watched Shi Qiang scurry away with the board before her angry mother destroyed the board for losing the game.
¡°Where to?¡±
¡°Shi Wu¡¯s house, she didn¡¯t use it for long since Xiaoya wasn¡¯t born for long at the time. Your father lived here for a short period before they were always on adventures. It¡¯s yours now. Also, if the Nings are preparing their descendants for marriage then I have to prepare you too. I can¡¯t have you lose face for the Shis. And¡your mother left you a gift.¡± They exited the garden and walked to the back of the temple.
¡°Auntie, I find that hard to believe.¡± His mother doesn''t do ¡®gifts¡¯. Gestures of care were one thing.
¡°Well¡she never said it was a gift but. Let¡¯s just say it¡¯s her legacy for you. She never said anything like that to me but I know her. She prepared this for you long before she attempted to get pregnant. Fathom a guess?¡±
¡°Training equipment.¡± He didn¡¯t hesitate.
¡°Damnit, you¡¯re no fun. You¡¯re making me see her face more in the past two days than in the past century.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t complain Auntie, you¡¯re making me see her face for real. Multiplied by your children.¡±
¡°Hahahaha. We aren¡¯t that similar.¡±
Ebony strongly disagreed. If his perception and observational skills weren''t as high as it was, he would easily mistake them for identical twins. Her daughters were a bit easier to tell apart due to their father¡¯s features mixed in.
But charm and appearance were also a baseline trait, and so were genetic appearances. Needless to say, having charm and good appearances was an advantage even in terms of the law of the jungle. Beautiful flowers and animals out in the wild were often the most lethal.
¡°None of my children are allowed in here so it¡¯s your private property from now on. Don¡¯t worry about privacy, I don''t have a habit of peeking at any of my children.¡±
They had to walk quite a distance from the temple before they reached a valley. At the base of two mountains was a sizable terrace house.
He didn¡¯t let Shi Tao guide him and entered the door after knocking on it twice.
The materials were different, the decor was different but the layout of the house was the same.
His parents'' room was cold and empty.
The room in the location that was his was a guest room.
¡°It¡¯s clean.¡±
¡°I come by every few decades. You know the place well.¡±
¡°We had the same layout.¡±
¡°That¡¯s quite like them.¡±
¡°This granite countertop is the exact same though.¡±
¡°It¡¯s her favourite.¡±
There was no television, computer or other electronics. The stove was wood-fired. The lights were replaced with lamps, probably requiring glowing gemstones or magic. They might not even need light being able to see in the dark and all.
It was a different home, and it wasn¡¯t his.
¡°Where¡¯s this gift?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t linger for long.
¡°In the mountains. But before that, I really should¡¯ve brought you here first.¡± Shi Tao led him to the backyard.
Here Lies the Unerring Spear, Shi Wu.
Ebony sat down on his buttocks on the moist grass and gave the rough stone a caress. He did not expect a tombstone or grave to be honest.
A spear was standing behind the tombstone, with its butt stabbed into the ground. It had a sleek elongated spearhead with a dark purple glint, tapering to a razor-sharp point. Unadorned, like a short Xeng-style blade on a stick. The shaft is wrapped in a spiral of dark, woven fibres that pulse with a pure matt-black hue. It was slightly over 3 metres long.
He might have sat in silence longer than expected but he was given that silence.
¡°Is her body buried here, for real?¡± He just had to make sure.
¡°It is. As unblemished as we could retrieve.¡±
¡°I see. What about my father¡¯s?¡±
Ebony ignored the physical quake that spread from behind and under him. Other than his instincts telling him not to turn back as a life-preservation reaction, he just couldn¡¯t be bothered.
¡°I don¡¯t know. Didn¡¯t manage to snatch that back, I had priorities.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, we weren¡¯t strong enough then. And we haven¡¯t found them now.¡±
¡°You have no reason to be sorry. They just weren¡¯t strong enough either.¡± Ebony gave the plain tombstone another wipe before he stood up. "What about her mask?"
"...destroyed. The ones we made weren''t that sturdy in the past. They might be remnant pieces but mostly reduce to nothing. Your father might have those pieces but...I doubt it''s still around."
He gestured for Shi Tao to carry on with their agenda.
¡°We made the mountains to contain this. Custom ordered from the Space Dwarves I told you about, our crafters just couldn¡¯t make anything that could withstand or push Shi Wu¡¯s training.¡± Without mana and elemental perception, he was pretty much blind in terms of advanced scouting capabilities.
Ebony was curious, all he knew about his mother¡¯s fighting ability was that she used a spear and was very likely a gravity magic user. Shi Tao told him about some of their battles but never how they achieved their victories specifically.
¡°Is mother¡¯s conditioning called Monolithic something? I know tier 5 is Neutronic Frame, Tier 4 Constricted Titan.¡± When it comes to training, conditioning was the one that popped up in his mind first. From his experience with Ning Xin, the Xengs focused on conditioning quite a bit.
¡°You know that?¡±
¡°I saw her notebook on accident, only remembered after I gained some levels, stats and my meditation skill improved.¡±
¡°Monolithic Chassis. That requires a different set of training equipment or just a good mage, I¡¯m bringing you to something unrelated to conditioning skill. You can find a copy of that book in their study. I''ve never read it and you shouldn¡¯t depend on it either since we all have our body type.¡±
The scenic walk was nice and all and the soil here was extremely dense to support his compressed mass so he wasn¡¯t leaving any footprints till they reached an area with gravel-only path. Entering a cave that wasn¡¯t 5 metres deep before it fully widened.
The mountain was hollowed out and might be more accurate to say earth was used to cover the massive structure underneath it. A metallic sphere with studs like that of a soccer shoe all over it. The metallic structure was a few kilometres in diameter and their cave entrance led them to the middle of the sphere, half of it was sitting deeper than their entrance.
¡°Ah how could I forget there¡¯s no way you know what your mother can do because she can¡¯t use her power on Earth.¡±
¡°This is her training room, very different from the open space I showed you our clan skill in. Instead of a training room, this is a recording room. How do I explain this¡your mother can pierce anywhere, any time with her spear.¡±
¡°Sounds about right.¡±
¡°I mean her gravity magic allows her attacks to be sent to the past or delayed into the future.¡±
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Ebony let the words sink in but he blanked out for a moment, ¡°could you elaborate.¡±
¡°You remember when I said she was feared by every one of her opponents, didn''t you. Let¡¯s say she¡¯s standing where I am and you are her target. In this space, she thrusts her spear but you dodged to the right. There are two possibilities, during your battle, you stood where she pierced. If that was the case, you will have a hole open up in your body despite ¡®dodging¡¯ her strike, because the attack was sent a few seconds, minutes, hours into the past. The second possibility is that she sent it into the future, meaning her enemies or target might get hit in future if they walk back to that spot. Unless the target has a gravity perception as impressive as hers or time affinity and perception, they won¡¯t know how far into the past or future she sent the attack.¡±
¡°I see. And this recording device recorded her training sessions. So inside, her attacks are being repeated till this day.¡± A couple of things in his head clicked in place.
¡°It¡¯s more complicated than that but yes.¡±
¡°Mother doesn¡¯t replicate the same attack twice. Every thrust and sweep might look the same but it''s off by a miniscule angle. She once told me she calculated a total of 63 billion attacks she had done till date that she considers a different way of attacking with the spear. That is not many, not at our speeds. A few weeks of recording and I can learn all of it. But that is considering when she stands still and takes 1 step at most. In a wider space, one that is a few kilometres wide. With different ways, she can hold her spear. A different spear length. And now adding the dimension of time¡¡±
¡°You understand quickly. You¡¯re only wrong about the numbers. This recording room, it shifts and rotates everything inside including gravity and time. Only the Space Dwarves could make something like this. It changes her attack on her, she trains with her attacks targeting her. It helps increase her sensitivity to gravity and understand her delayed strikes. I didn¡¯t memorise what the creator said but there is an order of uhh some number of digits to the number of patterns this sphere shifts and rotates. Your mother recorded every moment of her training after she had this delivered, 29 years of her training was done in this room. She recorded and filled up the room with every single one of her attacks before she left but has never completed her training by using every shift, every rotation possible.¡±
¡°What do you mean by every single one of her attacks?¡±
¡°Every possible combination of how far back and forward she can throw a single strike, down to a millisecond difference. Her limit was a 20-year delay, so the same attack was delivered into the past by 20 years but repeated once every millisecond.¡±
¡°I understand.¡±
¡°The creator of this structure made it around Shi Wu¡¯s martial ability and he called it a silly name like Infinite Variation but your mother doesn¡¯t believe in infinity. It''s too bad she never got the chance to find a definitive answer to how many ways a spear can be thrust.¡±
¡°Can I really use this? Knowing Xengs, there¡¯s no way I can survive a single second from an Emperor version of my mother as I am now.¡±
¡°The power can be dialled down all the way to Shi Wu¡¯s unclassed state. This Infinite Variation is something even the best of Xu and Kong cannot make, it¡¯s a secret from them. The only people who know this exist is the creator, The First, your father, Shi Wu and I.¡±
¡°Thank you, Auntie.¡±
¡°...still not Aunt Tao? You feel it don¡¯t you, kinship. Blood ties and kinship are also a baseline trait, we are protective of our own.¡±
¡°So that¡¯s what¡¯s giving me this weird feeling. Genetics are scary. Fire it up Aunt Tao, there¡¯s no better time to train.¡± It was almost cumbersome, unknowingly feeling a vague sense of kinship with strangers.
¡°You don¡¯t have much time with it. The only energy source for this is something your father made. Those crates, one could last a few days at the top output your mother uses. Get in, we¡¯ll test how long one can last at low output. I¡¯ve never used this myself since these energy packs are limited.¡±
There was a storage shed without a door with visible sleek metallic shipping containers. He was curious about the energy packs his father made, it had got to be mana.
¡°Woah stop there, you cannot touch that. Leave the charging to me.¡± Shi Tao cut in front of him. ¡°Stand there and watch, don¡¯t you dare open this without me present. Just ask when you need batteries replaced.¡±
¡°Why?¡±
¡°You¡¯ll die of severe mana poisoning. I know you¡¯re his blood but your body is nothing like his original. What¡¯s the word¡yes, you can consider those extremely radioactive. Other than my descendants and the my fellow second generation, just about anyone else would die within minutes so you¡¯re not the only fragile one around.¡±
¡°Hmm.¡± Ebony considered what came after the solidification or crystallisation of mana. He never considered it would be potent enough that it radiated intense mana fluctuation. Shi Tao didn¡¯t even need to open the container, all she needed to do was pull a cable taller than both of them to connect to one of the metallic crates.
¡°Go inside, if you¡¯re her son the door will open for you.¡±
Ebony stepped in front of the door that beeped and shot light at him. It opened without delay.
There was a lack of flat flooring, clear transparent inner walls and well-lit. He slid down the inner walls of the sphere to the bottom.
¡®One two three, this is a twelve gimbal gyroscope and I¡¯m in an orb within it.¡¯ Ebony¡¯s mana perception was not cut off and he could see through the translucent walls.
He heard the door close on him high up above where he stood.
¡°I won¡¯t use those variations until you¡¯re done with her original. Where¡¯s your spear?¡± There wasn¡¯t any visible speakers but her voice could be heard loud and clear from the outside.
¡°Aunt Tao, I don¡¯t use a spear.¡±
¡°What!¡±
¡°So how does this work?¡± He let Shi Tao come to her own conclusions.
¡°You fight her spear. For now, just watch her complete dance. Unclassed power.¡± The transparent walls turned opaque white from floor to ceiling while she spoke.
A spear teleported into view, just an arm''s length away from him. It was the same spear that had been sitting by his mother¡¯s grave just moments ago. It intimidated him just by appearing.
He kicked the spearhead to the side but his body was pushed to the side instead.
Ebony felt his bones reflect vibrations, ¡°how is this unclassed?¡±
¡°Hey I reduced the power but that is her personal spear and technique is basically her at her peak. Do you know how hard it is to find a weapon that a Shi can use without breaking?¡±
He fell into the flurry of familiar sweeps and thrusts. ¡®So it knows the target, and it has a limited number of patterns it can go through without repetition.¡¯
After a minute, dozens of pokes were felt all across his body. The clinks and clanks were from the spearhead clashing with his skin. His new garment had precise, needle-sized holes.
¡®Are those the delayed strikes? I can barely feel a change in gravity right before they land, but I do sense something. I can use this low-power mode to learn how to perceive a delayed strike coming. I can use mental map for positioning, if it already happened once at this time and place I can assume it won¡¯t happen again unless it¡¯s from a different angle.¡¯
¡®Feel¡¯s like a Master warrior¡¯s unenhanced strength but only in the context of Elcrians.¡¯
¡°I didn¡¯t tell you, your mother¡¯s baseline physical strength including constitution is about 400 times that of a baseline human. Strength is a very cheap trait in terms of quantity of natural potential required.¡±
Before long it was like spear strikes were playing drums with his body. The actual spear was hardy but it was easy to parry at these speeds no matter how complicated the attacks look. He didn¡¯t even need augmentation for it. But the delayed strikes were close to impossible to dodge, he never knew how it came.
¡°I gave you controls, you can control it by voice just say Infinite Variation followed by your command. I¡¯ll be leaving since it¡¯s time for dinner.¡±
¡°Thank you Auntie.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t hear you.¡±
¡°Thank you Auntie Tao.¡±
¡°Better.¡±
¡°Infinite Variation, raise power to level 300 master.¡± Ebony decided not to get ahead of himself but the previous settings were wasting his time. The instant he changed the settings the physical spear charged at him.
He wasn¡¯t that worried, according to Shi Tao the advantage of high baseline traits didn¡¯t give them as huge of an advantage in terms of natural potential as he imagined. For one, even if they hunted a monster with levels far above their own, the natural potential they gained in return was close to none compared to if a creature with lower baseline traits were to do the same.
After reaching Emperor, their advantage over another random person in terms of baseline traits wasn¡¯t as high as their unclassed state since most people who could reach the ranks of an Emperor received a lot of natural potential over time. Unconscious evolution will have a large portion of this natural potential placed towards their baseline traits and the reason why even though they never added a single stat after their evolution, one could get and feel stronger. In the same sense, it was why mana purity increased after evolution despite not adding a single stat point anywhere.
So Ebony¡¯s last splash on the crystal monolith was him increasing his baseline traits but he spread it everywhere without a single point of focus.
One of the books he read on baseline traits heavily discussed how natural potential was obtained and how it was the same or different for every individual. It seemed like natural potential was always gained. They could gain it from breathing, eating, drinking and simply staying alive was believed to let one¡¯s natural potential grow. The quantity was unnoticeable in a short period but this claim was backed up by more than one or two authors, even the God of Knowledge himself for that is the only reason it would be in this library.
So lifespan and age were both an advantage and reason why the Xengs were not considered to be a strong force overall. Other than their small numbers. However, Ebony had his doubts. Short life span? Every single generation of Xeng was present and few looked old. He was honestly quite happy learning that. Despite his nonchalance, he was ever so worried about Xin''s short lifespan. But looking at her clan members, he shouldn''t have to worry about her life span.
Their diet of eating high-ranking and high-level creatures¡¯ meat also adds to their natural potential more so than eating normal meat. The Elves'' slow evolution rate made more sense but with a higher activity rate of training and eating, time and age weren¡¯t everything.
It wasn¡¯t like natural potential could be lost and just living longer before evolving gave one¡¯s evolution more worth. The numbers that never made sense to him like how Cinderashians had enough strength to match his compressed mana augmented self with multiple skills stacking with just mere dozens of levels above him were easily resolved with this knowledge. Since they couldn¡¯t use aether well, their baseline traits were naturally skewing to their physical stats.
¡®Is the spear screaming at me¡¡¯
Ebony fully augmented himself but he didn¡¯t need his Domain yet and he wasn¡¯t getting injured. The intensity of gravity increased so he used this to learn the patterns and how to perceive the delayed strikes. Obviously, in this wide space he could just memorise where the spear has moved and avoid it altogether. Except, the spear knew when and how to push him towards its delayed and timed traps.
¡°What am I doing¡Infinite Variations, raise to level 300 Grandmaster.¡± He was swept up into the air by countering the bottom of the spear spin.
A snap sounded when he parried the spearhead and his elbow bent the other way around.
After 20 standard years, his mother was training him once again.
It might be about to be his best day in a long time.
Chapter 373: Guidance
¡°You really need a reforge Icicle.¡± Ebony was on the offence with his partner sword but it was in tatters after every few hits. They were getting banged up quickly against the rock-hard but flexible spear. He tried his best not to tackle the spearhead but the body of the spear already crushed his bones more than a couple of times.
It was great that Icicle could regrow using his mana but there was a limit to it. It took less than half a day before they swept through the entirety of the spherical room, so he was forced to guess where a delayed strike would explode on him. He attempted to freeze and stop the spear from moving but that was a futile move, it was unfreezable for him. Domain or not.
Assuming his father used ice magic, it shouldn¡¯t have come off as a surprise to him.
He attempted gravitation stabilisation through the room but so far, he couldn¡¯t tell if he was affecting the delayed strike by any margin. Fortunately, his spatial awareness was up there with his perception but he was making little headway in terms of knowing or perceiving when a delayed strike would appear. As time passed, he was getting the feeling the spear could activate, or push forward a delayed strike as it wished.
So the entire training field was a trap. The longer the fight went on, the more traps it had. At the moment, there seemed to be no limit to how many traps could be overlaid. It was intimidating when it stacked delayed strikes at slightly different angles.
Ebony hasn''t changed Infinite Variation¡¯s settings after level 350 but he knew he could make it so that there was repetition. He could also change the combination of strikes. And currently, the spear wasn¡¯t poking any gravity spells around. That was because his mother only used gravity magic from King ranked onwards. Before that, she was completely physically focused with a bit of gravity support. Her high strength was at the cost of limited magical ability in her earlier evolutions.
The faster they went, the faster he ran through the limited recorded moves. The biggest problem after the pure power behind the attacks and the delay was the spear itself. It was honestly a scary spear. There were a lot of emotions behind its targeted attacks.
¡°Phew¡¡± Ebony considered increasing the intensity after his second attempt at a full recording. The first attempt took almost 2 months before the spear stopped moving and ran out of moves. The second increased speed so it took less than 1 and a half months.
¡°Come out and eat!¡± Unaware when Shi Tao stopped by and watched him from outside, he was forced to stop his tireless training. He had been sneaking bites in between so energy wasn¡¯t an issue for him.
It was a good chance to rest his mind and muscles.
The white opaque walls turned transparent and the door opened for him to fly out.
¡°How much of the energy did I use?¡± He bent down to pick up the garment he left outside after the first attempt.
¡°At these low settings, not even one of the containers. I¡¯ll disconnect one now.¡±
¡°Go on ahead, I¡¯ll wash up first.¡± Patting the clothes down, he swung them over his sweaty back.
The bathroom in his parents'' house had a runic rainshower. He took a look and had the mind of making something similar for himself in future.
When he made his way to the temple¡¯s dining room that he had been to, there were a lot fewer of them. His supposed cousin, nephews and nieces.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, were you waiting for me?¡± The food was covered up and the people were chatting about people he didn¡¯t know.
¡°We eat together, that¡¯s family.¡± Shi Qiang answered.
¡°...Let¡¯s eat.¡± He didn¡¯t expect an entire roasted alligator monster to be on the table. ¡°Where are the others?¡± His Aunt Shi Tao, his Cousin Shi Qiang, Shi Han and their husbands were the only ones present. The ¡®younger¡¯ generation was not around.
¡°Since we¡¯re nearby, they went to Elcra. They heard from some of the sixth-generation Xu that Elva is getting attacked by Tetramyth.¡± Shui Feng replied.
Shi Han added, ¡°Almost all of us and our descendants grew up on Elcra so we have some friends there. As for us, other than some dwarves, people we know all died of old age or some battle. Very few leave Elcra and find ways to extend their lives.¡±
¡°I¡¯m reminded of a question I always wanted to ask, what about the Elves? Why do Xengs have a bad relationship with them?¡± He noticed the lack of mention of the long-life species on Elcra.
¡°Hahahaha¡we don¡¯t have an issue with them, they have an issue with us.¡± Shi Qiang rubbed the back of her head.
¡°Not with us, with The First.¡± Shi Tao didn¡¯t share the same hesitation about talking about this ¡®First¡¯ person.
¡°What happened?¡±
¡°Long ago, when she realised how we have weak souls in exchange for our clear advantage in physical and magical power, she found this living stone for us. The older versions weren¡¯t that good, the material was good but Xu¡¯s first edition of the mask was lacklustre compared to the current ones. It holds a part of our soul and nourishes it, during evolution, this portion is cycled with a different portion from our existing soul. Strengthening our soul, and adding a new portion for it to strengthen for the next cycle. But The First wasn¡¯t satisfied,¡±
Ebony felt like he knew where the story was going.
¡°She learnt about Yggdrasil and went to the Elves to ask for a piece of it. They did not take kindly to that request so she cut a root of Yggdrasil and had it incorporated into her mask. Do I need to say more?¡±
¡°So they have generational and racial hate towards the Xengs because of that.¡±
¡°A bunch of them are still adamant in killing her but their strong Gods had to keep Yggdrasil alive or had something else to do. She never told us how she escaped but I believe they couldn¡¯t kill her anymore after the root of Yggdrasil made her mask home. Like humans, the Elves are made of many sub-species and they are divided by status or lineage and power. The only thing they have in common is that Yggdrasil is their ancestor, their faith, their God.¡±
The questions turned to him and he was questioned about his recent happenings. So he just told them how he got off Elcra, how he sat in jail that was on his wrist for about 6 years. How he went to pick Xin up. How they were on their way back.
¡°Who. Tell us who.¡±
¡°Some Saint called Gearhart from Cinderash.¡±
¡°Who?¡± Absolutely confused, Shi Han¡¯s husband, Huo Tianyu said the thing on everyone¡¯s mind.
¡°I¡¯ll search him up¡ah, someone from a sector down Hex region. Never heard of him, his reputation doesn¡¯t go out of Hex.¡± Shui Feng likely had a portable module of Eidolon too. Maybe not even one of Hex but a different portion of the spirit.
¡°...since it¡¯s just some nobody, we¡¯ll let you deal with him yourself.¡± Shi Tao got back to eating with some held-back anger.
¡°Mmm, that¡¯s what I thought.¡± Ebony was interested in how they searched the person up more so than their dismissal of Gearhart. He felt a bit weird by how strongly they reacted. Despite his oddly quick acceptance, he was still unsure how to feel about this ¡®family¡¯ of his.
He found out from Shui Feng that instead of asking Hex about an individual or group they can search the net for work or high-level exploration job postings. Searching up the Worldcore could make it easy to find public information on who was in charge or owned which Worldcore. The information obtained this way is less reliable since it was determined by things other people say but it was a start and one could still find out a lot even without Eidolon leaking personal information.
Ebony wasn¡¯t able to check higher access information but there was apparently a different section for Saints, some of which post their basic information to look for exploration opportunities. It could be dungeon exploration, an unexplored and newly discovered natural Worldcore or even space itself.
They then dumbfounded him by telling him that they were preparing for his wedding as if it was a done deal.
¡°It is a done deal. They saw you touching a maiden¡¯s belly.¡± Shi Han stressed with a frown.
¡°Bandaging a wound.¡±
¡°Doesn''t matter. Enough people know that she can¡¯t find another husband and they surely would not agree to her finding an outsider when that child¡¯s mother and grandmother have already proven that they did not make a good choice for a husband when it comes to childbirth. If I have to put it ugly, you two are also the best match since she would already have an impossible time trying to find another Xeng who wants a quarter blood as a partner. In a sense, she has no one else but you.¡±
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They place immense weight on birthing better and stronger children. It was close to the only thing they cared about when looking for potential partners.
¡®That timing, did the Nings leave to gather medicine after how badly they beat her up and her grandmother planned the timing knowing I was going to visit¡so she got the others to leave and got the timing down that they clashed with my visit.¡¯ Ebony had a sudden guess pop up in his mind that the divination mage played a part in the immense coincidence and farce. Since he didn¡¯t understand their culture or outlook, he wouldn¡¯t have known that he needed to send word of his visit beforehand. Especially since he was a young unmarried man visiting the home of a young unmarried lady. They might accidentally kill him if they found out he did more than just see and touch her belly in the past.
Ebony squeezed a bite of the alligator that he failed to chew through down his throat when he regurgitated and vomited blood on his plate and clothes.
¡®I couldn¡¯t even sense the gravity mana inside me until it changed in an instant and the delayed strike hit. How many more delayed strikes are hidden inside my body now? Ugh, did Mother learn a new skill around level 350¡the gravity implosion inside ate up my mana chassis too, can¡¯t heal fast.¡¯ Ebony was lucky only one of his lungs was affected, he could still bear it.
¡°That was from training.¡± Shi Tao covered up for him.
The worries were cut off instantly, with no reaction or questions asked about his sudden injury.
Ebony asked more about their culture and what he should be mindful of.
¡°I stopped by, I believe the girl is close to mastering the Ning Clan skill.¡± Shi Han commented.
¡°Is it the swap in mental states?¡± He did not expect that this was the Ning Clan skill and Ning Xin herself probably didn¡¯t know. In the same way, he didn¡¯t know why he knew how to use basic gravity magic without a teacher.
¡°It is, Ning men and women make the most gentlemanly and demure husbands and wives. And when they have to, they are the most explosive and fierce fighters. Other than the Yin Clan, they make the best choice for a wife of choice. Not stronger than us of course. At least you don¡¯t have to worry about mind magic, out of all things, she didn¡¯t inherit their strongest abilities.¡±
¡®So the Nings are mind-focused while the Shi are physical. Perhaps divination is a form or subset of mind magic. That is probably why Xin¡¯s mind can support her and keep up with her physical speed. Her bullet time and near foresight should all be baseline traits that express after a couple of evolutions.¡¯
¡°I can¡¯t tell you much since you probably know her better but the Nings are expert self-magic augmentors. Using most of their capacity to boost their mental capabilities for their magic.¡±
¡°Mmm.¡± There was not much else they had to share about Xin and he didn¡¯t want to know either. They hadn¡¯t had a real duel for a decade for a reason.
After dinner, he went to the God of Knowledge¡¯s library and checked on ¡®Will, Ice, and clones¡¯ as the keywords. Books on the ice element were the cheapest but they were also the least relevant to his current skills and direction.
He was very surprised that ¡®clones¡¯ had fewer search results than baseline traits. There weren''t even 5 books on it. As for the usage of Will, he couldn¡¯t afford a single book but the books exist and he had access to them.
They say knowledge is power and so is money.
He went back to his parent''s house but used the living room¡¯s sofa instead of the guest room that was in his old room¡¯s spot. The sleep session was surprisingly warm and restful.
Throwing some of his caution to the wind, he ramped the difficulty up. His mother might have the advantage where 1 point in strength stat was equivalent to 400 for another person but that was honestly only better than some monsters that can¡¯t use magic. Physical strength was cheap, he had more than enough magic and elemental augmentations to close the gap.
Her recorded patterns don¡¯t change and if Ebony doesn¡¯t get hit, then it doesn''t matter how strong she was. The settings also include how strong her augmentation increased at the time she was a certain level so it wasn¡¯t a one-to-one increase but he was a level 500 grandmaster and he didn¡¯t want to take his own sweet time. The more dangerous it was for him, the faster he¡¯d learn how to perceive these delayed strikes.
???
Thanks to his urgency, it didn¡¯t even take him 3 more full recorded runs before he ramped the power up to the time when his mother was level 500. On the spear¡¯s account, he was just fighting a recording and a seemingly indestructible spear and the attacks it had were something he had seen over and over again. At that level, each recording took 1 to 4 days to run out of moves and he practised here for 3 months.
Like him, the power at the ¡®maxed¡¯ level was varied and could still be scaled up. It wasn¡¯t an accurate depiction of his mother¡¯s strength or abilities since she couldn¡¯t do these delayed strikes until Emperor ranked. It was merely power that was reduced from the recording so it was hard to say how strong she was back then.
With his Domain, he managed to pull out delayed strikes within his body and even slow down those that were supposed to activate at a certain time. He knew how to perceive it but only the instant before it activated. He still had no idea how it activated or how to gauge the strength or length of time one strike had before it reached its timer.
Two latest clones, Thirty-One and Thirty-Two set off traps or take the hits for him. Half of his mental capacity was on his Domain but he couldn¡¯t depend on it throughout his training because his Will couldn¡¯t be sustained long-term. Since he never use to have enough mana to sustain his Domain over a long period, he never realised that Will is usually the limiting factor and why having Dusk or a core was an advantage.
Instead of running his core skill at full output which would take quite a bit of mental capacity, he left the rest to Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge to speed up his learning.
¡®Stats are sometimes a limiting factor to skills tiers and such. My mental range shouldn¡¯t lose to another mage of the same level on Elcra right now. My mana capacity might still be slightly behind but it¡¯s not an issue with my regeneration. Veritable Ice Clone and Arsenal of Will Domain are locked by my Will, it¡¯s either too weak or too low in quantity. Can¡¯t do much about that when I¡¯m already ahead in terms of Will.¡¯
Ebony had an urge to sigh. He didn¡¯t have that habit and didn¡¯t even remember if he ever did so but reading books on fire magic to improve his augmentation and usage of frostblaze might have been too hasty of him.
Fabrication of Frostblaze Embodiment - Understanding the Frostblaze is that of fire as much as ice, fabricating its embodiment. Supercharging your body with Frostblaze and integrating into your very being, a living embodiment of Frostblaze. The Fabrication of Frostblaze Embodiment increases your Constitution and Agility by 1500% + 10.0% of your Intelligence. Strength and Endurance increases by 1200% + 10.0% of Intelligence.
Consumes 12000 MP/Min
Classification: Ice Magic - Body Enhancement Magic
It was the evolution of Woven Frostblaze Augmentation and it was too powerful. He was proud that the mana cost of 8000 to 12000 was minuscule compared to the power increase. It was proof that even if he was compared to Elcrain humans, his mana usage and efficiency were only half as terrible. He was just so...talentless at the efficient usage of mana. He almost killed himself when his hands and mana chassis froze, combusted and burned to nothing. He had watched his own body, mana chassis included burn away. Stopping his training in the middle for two weeks to recover. Shi Tao force fed him more medicine than food but one of them gave him a heart attack. It was also the only one that managed to jumpstart his mana chassis to heal.
Blossoms of Smouldering Frost - Highly condensed flames of frost take upon an increasingly solid form of blossoming plum petals. Spark and embers of all your freezing flames packed into petals have an effect of 1350% + 10.0% Intelligence. Blossoms are 1000% + 10.0% finer, facilitating the penetration through physical matter.
Consumes MP
Classification: Ice Magic
Was a direct power evolution from Blossoms of Shimmering Chill. This type of skill evolution was the easiest to obtain, just pack more punch, mana, and efficiency into the same skill to evolve it. But there was a difference in the effect on his target. He could choose to enhance it with Will, any target frozen would spontaneously combust, saving him some mana if the target wasn¡¯t freeze-resistant.
Stalactite Sunder¡¯s evolution was similar,
Crystalline Avalanche - Ice and physical attacks have 1000% + 10.0% falling momentum when used in conjunction with gravity magic. Ice spell landings¡¯ ability to slow down the release of momentum on impact increases by 1500% + 10.0% per level.
This was great for both wielding his greatsword and Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts however, it hindered him a bit by locking him in ¡®falling¡¯ momentum swings and types of attacks. Without gravity magic, it was impossible to carry it out to full effect. If it wasn¡¯t for that, this skill pretty much seems like a passive skill. It was not classified under any magic because this was a momentum control skill and not magic, it just so happens to include ice and gravity magic because of how he fought now.
His stealth skill Frigid Distorted Refraction didn¡¯t evolve since it wasn¡¯t helping or being pressured as much by this training. And Frostweave Vital Bolster, his sealing spell wasn¡¯t working or showing any sort of effect on his spear opponent that kept leaking emotions of sadness, anger and disappointment.
Ebony did not appreciate it poking his butt whenever he left the training room for a break. He didn¡¯t know if it could talk or not but it never did.
As he long expected, his Sub-class and Profession were locked tight. It had little to do with effort or punching more power and mana into those actions, the skills just wouldn¡¯t evolve. A refinement here and there was the best he could do in a short period.
Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts, Phantom¡¯s Flicker, Ethereal Arctic Rivertide Art and Ethereal Fluid Blitz still improved the most as was obvious with his mother¡¯s physical focused recording.
¡°Let¡¯s just up it. Infinite Variation, level 500 King.¡± He was no longer surprised the spear was hurting him with all his augmentations and body enhancements even within a Domain.
¡°Oh...is that an event horizon? Infinite Variation, shut down.¡± Ebony saw the spear perk up and spun in response before he gave his order. When he Flickered, the spear latched onto him with gravity.
¡°Hey! Ow, stop poking my butt.¡± He ran out of the training room trying his best to slap the spear away from poking and slamming his butt.
Chapter 374: Grooming
Ebony went through the trouble of writing a visiting notice to the Nings.
The Shi Clan was almost empty, all of them entering Xiaoya¡¯s only dungeon along with some older generation Xengs from other clans. Shi Tao stayed behind, not interested in the group activity of youngins since the second-generation leaders of other clans went along. They might still be Emperors but the power gap seemed obvious between generations.
Ebony had never seen Shi Tao open her eyes but she shouldn¡¯t be blind so he once asked his cousin Shi Qiang but the reason was simple enough. The higher being just didn¡¯t want her family members to fear getting traumatised while also protecting Ebony from dying. The Ning Clan leader who was also a woman did the same.
Shi Tao claimed not to have any optical skills but this was a common act from both Saintess of the Xeng. Shi Qiang was unwilling to talk about the Wen, the third Saint of the Xengs. Since that was the case he just asked without fear.
¡°Why must you close your eyes if it''s not a passive skill or fortification?¡±
¡°It¡¯s the same reason why our people aren¡¯t well liked. You can call it the suppression of a higher being if you want. Those descendants of mine who went to Elcra will find out how subservient their ¡®friends¡¯ would become if they don¡¯t put their masks on and actively withdraw their aura. This is also due to the difference in baseline traits that some call natural order. A large tiger can stare a human child down but not necessarily a human adult. Something like that. I might have evolved but I¡¯m still their parent and grandparent, I don¡¯t want that from my family. I am still only human.¡±
¡°So the evolution and so-called higher being has nothing to do with holiness or whatever? I¡¯m guessing from the words Saint, Demi-God and God.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t question why he could look at Gearhart without any issues. From their reaction, Gearhart wasn¡¯t even on their list of potential enemies or prey.
¡°Holy? It depends on how you see it. As an individual, it''s not like our personalities would change much. Our perspective changes but that is no different from any creature that gained power and control over weaker creatures¡¯ lives. But the power we have with a tier 7 skill can be considered unimaginable to most. And in many cases, that is seen as holy or unholy which is honestly the same to me.¡± Shi Tao worded herself carefully, not leaking any clues to why tier 7 skills were so hard to obtain or why having one was part of the requirement to evolve into a Saint.
¡°It shouldn¡¯t be a problem to learn what levels those ranks equate to, is there?¡± He was already familiar with these Xeng seniors. The only reason they would withhold information is that learning some knowledge too early would negatively affect their descendant¡¯s growth.
¡°I can tell you that, it wouldn¡¯t affect your progress. Saints range from level 1000 to 1500. Demi-Gods from 1500 to 2500 and I don¡¯t know the limit for a God after 2500.¡±
Neither of them was fixated on levels so they moved on quickly. Shi Tao was supportive of him marrying Ning Xin but the Nings had a very bad opinion of him right now. He was told that by his cousin, he didn¡¯t send a proper explanation letter or have any follow-up like an immediate written marriage proposal. They didn¡¯t know about his desire for a battle since they¡¯d already assumed he was part of the Xeng after Shi Tao wrote his name down in their registry without his consent.
That reflected horribly on Ning Xin who was their descendant. Thanks to his Auntie Tao, they did not come for him in violence but the pot had been boiling for 5 months. Never had he had such a short training session that brought the most substantial increase in his abilities.
Ebony made sure to double-check his language and writing since the letter of visit would not be able to land in Xin¡¯s hands without being read by a few other people. It was an invitation to go back to Elcra and he had to make sure they didn¡¯t know he lived under the same roof with her. He did not want to know what their reaction would be.
At the same time, he had to explain himself properly and why he delayed the letter. That was easy enough, he was told to blame it on his upbringing away from Xiaoya and he didn¡¯t know their culture. They will accept the reason for urgent training so the delay would be overlooked.
Not only that, he had to make the reason for going back to Elcra with Xin not suspicious to Xin while also subtly telling the Nings his intentions. So he included going back with Kong Jing. To the older generation, it was only natural for the younger generations to go out for more effective and unimpeded growth. Being sheltered for an extended time was poorly looked upon. Recalling the Epic dungeon that he had access to if he wasn¡¯t already kicked out of Magus Consortium, he added that to his letter as the excuse and premise for leaving Xiaoya. To Xin, it would be an invitation to enter a higher-level dungeon than they¡¯ve ever been to although her intuition might lead her to believe otherwise, she shouldn¡¯t be able to deduce why.
The nod of approval from Shi Tao assured him that the letter was suitable.
She was patting the spear on the floor by her side, placating the spear.
¡°Are you not going to try?¡±
¡°My mother didn¡¯t want me to, even if it''s in my blood.¡±
¡°...That¡¯s too bad but I see where she¡¯s coming from.¡±
¡°Because there¡¯s no point in me picking up the spear if I¡¯ll never be number one with it.¡±
¡°But¡¡±
¡°If I live long enough, one day. I will find the answer to how many ways a spear can be thrust.¡± He didn¡¯t have to be a spearman to learn and find out a definitive answer.
¡°Good. good.¡±
The spear rolled itself over to his feet.
¡°Auntie Tao, I¡¯ll go back to training. Please let me know when I receive a reply from the Nings.¡±
Walking out of range, Ebony didn¡¯t hear Shi Tao¡¯s mutter.
¡°Rebellious one, you¡¯re already holding the spear. Why did you block that path from him ah Wu, by then you were already¡or are you still¡¡±
She watched her sister¡¯s spear firmly sticking itself within the child¡¯s grip.
???
The reply took three days to come over and the date they would leave would be in ten days. Kong Jing would be their chauffeur. Her excitement to leave this place was clear enough.
Ebony wasn¡¯t that disappointed that he wasn¡¯t able to use Infinite Variations much. It had a limited battery charge and using the change in recording with variations would not be worthwhile compared to using it when he gets to Emperor rank. The current setting wasn¡¯t enough to push him while setting power to King would simply kill him without resistance. Those strikes erase his mana chassis out of existence, he wouldn¡¯t even have time to shut Infinite Variations off.
The large power rise might be a hint that she evolved with plenty of natural potential put to use or the settings they input into Infinite Variations were inaccurate.
¡°Ebony, come over here. We have something to discuss.¡± Shi Qiang gestured for him while he finished the washing of dishes with Shi Ling. The Shis that went to Elcra returned for a family dinner and was present. The husbands left after dinner for another activity they planned, it sounded like a fishing trip with alcohol involved.
¡°What¡¯s up!¡± Shi Ling cut in.
¡°Not you girlie, you can go home.¡± Shi Han patted both Shi Ling¡¯s shoulders and physically pulled her away and pushed her out of the temple.
After he dried his hands, he found himself sitting on the floor and surrounded by all the unmasked Shis who were sitting in a circle with him. He had never entered this room on the third floor and it was likely a storage room of old clutter from chairs to vases.
¡°I¡¯ve told them you plan to propose on this disguised trip.¡± Shi Tao explained what led to this meeting.
¡°Since you are a man and a man of Shi, there are some things we have to tell you. It¡¯s crucial and you must remember this!¡± Shi Qiang started it off.
¡°You must not get her pregnant before you¡¯ve peaked or nearly peaked at Emperor rank. You don¡¯t want to have your children hate you for giving birth to them inferior right!?¡± Shi Han exclaimed. He didn¡¯t think they would get loud and other than Shi Tao, Shi Qiang and Shi Ling, the others don¡¯t talk to him much if at all. They still treated him normally and did not want to show any type of disrespect to an elder.
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¡°I suggest you don¡¯t consider waiting till you¡¯re a Saint too.¡± Shi Tao further explained,¡° We¡¯re already pretty much infertile, a successful pregnancy after that might be impossible but more than the impossibility it is the fact that you will cut off your child¡¯s path to anything else but your paths. Well, our husband passed away before that so I don¡¯t have any idea if the infertility problem increases but that is our understanding.¡±
¡°Are you referring to having genetics that are too potent?¡± Ebony knew that the Ning Clan leader lost her husband as well and the common understanding in the room was to change the subject as fast as possible.
¡°As you¡¯re already aware, you have the strengths of your parents. For Saints and above, it''s almost impossible for their children to do something else other than what their parents are good at. From what we know about human Saints, their genes or baseline traits are locked and ultra-optimised. This means their children are completely talentless in anything else their parents are unable to do or not good at. You can see it as the deletion of useless traits and using that potential to further strengthen what is working that made a creature able to reach the stage of a Saint. This includes personality traits.¡±
¡°That would indeed sound terrible.¡± He couldn¡¯t imagine deciding what his children would ultimately want to be or do just because they were his children didn¡¯t mean they had to be an ice mage or gravity mage. That¡¯s not to say they shouldn¡¯t make use of their advantages but directly removing other possibilities because he as a parent didn¡¯t explore other paths be it magic or otherwise just sounds wrong to him. They did have to be strong though.
¡®Wait, I am thinking just like any other Xeng. I never even thought about having children yet¡¡¯
¡°That brings us to the next point.¡± Shi Ke of the fifth generation spoke, she was the shortest person in the Shi family that Ebony had been acquainted with. Barely 1.8 metres tall. Other than that, their figures were all very similar, lean. He couldn¡¯t tell much else since the garments were thick and covered their entire bodies.
There was a long pause from all of the women he was surrounded by.
¡°We¡¯ve never had sons so we¡¯re not sure how to teach one.¡± Shi Han of the fourth generation told him honestly.
¡°Let me start somewhere cousin since mother keeps talking about baseline traits, we can start from there.¡± Shi Qiang once again helped push the conversation somewhere. She was very helpful for the entire room full of people not good at conversation or people interaction.
¡°Ah, that¡¯s right.¡± Shi Yi of the fifth generation gestured understanding by knocking her head with her fist. It did not seem like a cutesy act, she used force in that as if to knock some sense into herself.
¡°As part of natural order and normal evolutionary process, our low fertility is combated and balanced with equal amounts of libido. I know what you¡¯re thinking, you doubt it. That is also planned, it would harm us and our training so our libido doesn¡¯t surface fully until we have our¡first taste.¡± Shi Han pondered seriously with her fingers on her chin.
¡°We can¡¯t have a man of Shi fail our clan name. It¡¯s too bad we don¡¯t have any techniques for men. We can only teach you about women from experience. No matter the clan every woman is different so it doesn¡¯t matter if we¡¯re not a Ning.¡± Shi Tao lamented for the rest of them to hear.
¡°The first time, your nuptial night is extremely important!¡± Shi Ke declared.
¡°Take note of her mood a few years into your marriage, get your nightlife adjusted according to your bodies.¡± Shi Yi sternly glared at him. It was just her resting expression and he was familiar with them.
¡°You must like her if you went into her room and are so close so I¡¯m sure you want her to make her happy.¡±
¡°Healthy sex life, healthy marriage.¡± Shi Han nodded to herself and the room of ladies copied her gesture at the same time.
They were taking this talk so seriously that Ebony had to listen just as seriously.
He did not expect the lecture and lesson to last the entire night and half a morning. The mothers and daughters had too many conflicting experiences and advice.
Shi Ling had to knock on their door angrily after running throughout the temple and shouting for their whereabouts since this house was very secure when it came to privacy. Otherwise, they might not have finished their lessons.
The unmarried women were waiting for them at the table for breakfast and the conversation shifted to tips about what the Ning Clan could possibly teach Xin in the last 5 months to raise his chances of success in a duel. Thanks to the diversion, Shi Ling¡¯s unending pestering about what they were talking to him about the whole night wouldn¡¯t have quietened down.
They believed there wasn¡¯t much because the Nings were magic and mind focused, 5 months might not be enough to find a suitable teaching angle that would fit Ning Xin¡¯s existing style since she was so different from the other Nings. However, he could expect extremely efficient usage of her magic if not a potent increase in magic output. It was said that they were experts at micromanaging mental facilities to perfection in terms of battle efficiency.
There were fire, lightning and wind mages amongst the Nings but none were blood magic users like Ning Xin¡¯s father who wasn¡¯t a Xeng. As for sword users, there were a couple.
Xin¡¯s parents were known to have disappeared but they told him it was the Nings'' matter so they didn¡¯t dig much into another clan¡¯s issues if there wasn¡¯t an external threat. For example, another race unfairly hunting a Xeng down. They wouldn¡¯t care about clans if that were the case, all of them would be on the case. Understandable when many of the clans were connected by marriage. If it was a duel or mutual hunting, it usually wouldn¡¯t escalate to extermination.
¡°Are there any clues on extracting energy from raw materials and ingredients to refine physique?¡±
¡°Just eat it if you can before you evolve. Our bodies can digest many things. If it¡¯s a similar element you can control, the energy can be used during your evolution as natural potential. It is a bit of a waste but there¡¯s far less hassle with random ingredients.¡±
Ebony took out the Pyrothernite Source Stone but their opinion was still for him to swallow it down regardless of the technique required to make use of it. ¡®You mean to tell me I can just eat anything high in energy that is similar in element before evolution without pain or effort to change my physique?¡¯
¡°I heard the Ning girls and Kong boy went to the Blood Realm. That is a dangerous place. Now that I think about it, she probably went to get something for the seventh-gen girl. Hmm, I don¡¯t think you need to worry about a huge physique refinement or mutation from her. They will probably prepare something similar during her evolution.¡±
In the end, Shi Qiang took the Pyrothernite Source Stone from him to request someone from the Yin family who makes these types of pre-evolution potions. After thinking about it, Ebony had no qualms with it. There was a waste but unlike the Molten Nucleus with proper methods that Cinderashians use, there was no one who used the Pyrothernite Source Stone like a drug, it was a rock after all.
It was even less of a problem for a blood mage like Xin, they were known to be good at digesting energy. They didn¡¯t need manual mutation of their bodies which has a high chance of leading to death or a weaker body that¡¯s flawed in some way.
Another problem of having good genetics and naturally high baseline traits meant that these ingredients wouldn¡¯t help much unless they were a lot higher in rarity and quality. That¡¯s why the Xengs didn¡¯t seem interested in his gain or loss in losing the energy from the source stone. However, Shi Tao knew he was born on Earth and his normal stats could stand to gain a lot since their low state could be increased considerably cheaply.
He was taught to leave specifics alone, if he wanted to increase a stat effect, it was better to spend more and improve them overall instead of increasing a certain portion of that stats¡¯ effect. For example, increasing endurance, there were many parts of endurance he could improve. Muscle endurance per point, maximum stamina per point, stamina regeneration per point. However, he took that recommendation lightly. He was well aware of some things that could be improved for his balance.
The scheduled date came quickly.
Ebony had a plate of shrimp fried rice he made for himself in front of his mother¡¯s tombstone where her spear stood behind. Patting the stone after he finished eating and recounting his experiences, he turned around to wash up. ¡°See you around¡I don¡¯t quite know your name.¡± The spear bent and smashed his skull. Gently.
Since he didn¡¯t have much to pack up, he was able to leave any time after the farewell.
Ebony was released from his prison cell with some help from Kong Jing. He had Kong Jing pass over his Myriad Bracelet and cell over to someone more capable.
By his request, the crafter seemed to have left the spirit alone and didn''t harm her. He didn''t want to kill the spirit, nor did he want to brainwash it in any way. It was a living entity and Ebony didn''t see it right to force his will to change the spirit.
The spirit could still steal and eat his mana and stamina but it could no longer morph into liquid form to physically trap him. On the other hand, the spirit was now trapped in the reforged gem. The physical body it inhibited was reduced in mass. The material was of the Legendary rarity and became the main material of his Bracelet but the mixture with the previous make-up removed this liquid form ability. The Bracelet''s ability to absorb mana was vastly improved. Now even without a mana ore fitted into place, it had an unknown mana capacity for him to figure out. Thanks to the presence of a living spirit, it also increases the efficiency of converting his mana to the universal standard. If the spirit wished to help him, it would be the same if it didn''t help him.
The crafting process still put a lot of stress on the spirit so the Xu crafter put the spirit to sleep before he started working on it. It lost most of its body after all, but Ebony saw that as an even punishment for it. As a Spirit, it could recover its body over a few hundred to thousands of years depending on the spirit''s ability and its original body''s materials.
It would be in an induced coma for the foreseeable future. Much like how Icicle''s spirit didn''t seem to be growing or maturing, spirits generally followed a different scale of time when it came to growth and recovery. For all he knew, it would be aggressive towards him again when it woke up thanks to its birth being given a duty by its creator. In any case, it wasn''t a threat if he could knock it out with a roar and he could just remove the gem on the bracelet now that it wasn''t bound to him.
Kong Jing came over to pick him up and only then, did they go to the Ning Clan to pick Xin up.
Ebony could tell he was not welcomed by the same man who had his hair burst into lightning. He was clearly a son of Ning and Lei. The swapping states of the Ning and the lightning of the Lei. The Shi had pitch-black hair and pupils and irises regardless of the element they wielded. Ebony¡¯s eyes never changed despite his hair taking on some light blue. The Nings were the same in their calmer mode.
The rest of the Clans had colourful hair depending on their heritage and dominant element.
¡°Hello, we¡¯ve come to pick Xin up.¡±
¡°Please behave appropriately, uncle.¡± The fourth generation Ning was Xin¡¯s Great-grandfather, where Xin¡¯s lightning affinity came from. He must be fuming deep down that Ebony was technically a generation higher but he was in his calm mode right now.
¡°Mmm.¡± Ebony had their culture and thinking understood, they wouldn¡¯t be angry once he wedded Xin and took responsibility. He just had to leave before they found out he had done more inappropriate things.
Kong Jing took Xin¡¯s hand and they were whisked away.
Chapter 375: Home Sweet Home
Ebony realised Veronica Ning tagged along a bit late. She was in her young form and not her disguise of an old lady but she did have her mask on which was out of the norm.
Having learnt the clans and their common elements, he guessed that Veronica was the child of a Ning and a Zhao. The Zhao were the seers or those good with location and tracking. Not a battle-focused clan but the treasure seekers along with the Yu who were the wealthiest and were known to be the smarter and more logical Xengs. The Zhao was always helping the Xengs look for opportunities to grow.
Based on his understanding, he had a list of the outward hierarchy of the Xeng Clans based on power. It was mostly backed by the Shi Clan¡¯s obstacle course but he readjusted it according to the stories he was told by Shi Ling since not every clan was physically focused but were still seen as superior.
- Shi - Tortoise
- Ning - Crane
- Wen - Owl
- Yang - Lion
- Yin - Wolf
- Kong - Spider
- Huo - Phoenix
- Xu - Beaver
- Lei - Hawk
- Qin - Peacock
- Shui - Dolphin
- Shang - Eagle
- Zhen - Elephant
- Zhao - Dragonfly
- Fang - Stag
- Guo - Bear
- Ma - Horse.
- Zhang - Chameleon
- Yu - Serpentdragon
- Peng - Falcon
- An - Ox
Ebony was surprised that the gorilla wasn¡¯t the animal emblem of the Shi Clan. There were a few more people with different surnames. Or used to have.
The second generation of more than a couple of clans had more than just one person alive. The Shi and Ning were one of the few that only had one survivor but other clans had multiple people in the second generation. Some of the women who married and were absorbed into these 21 clans had a different surname.
Other than the Shi, the Yin was also a family that only produced females while the Yangs only produced males. There were three couples between the Yin and Yang family, all of which had not succeeded in conceiving a child. They have since prevented or put a hard pause on any marriages between both clans because of the grief that these couples had been going through. They were some of the few patients that a person from the Ning Clan had to meet for mental help.
Ebony couldn¡¯t pry anything because Shi Ling was always told not to ask or meddle in other families¡¯ affairs. The others did not talk with him much, the age and generation gap was an issue but he knew they just didn¡¯t gossip or find interest in knowing things that happened around them if it didn¡¯t concern them individually.
The Yins also followed the tradition of those who married them and took on their clan name. As for the couples of Yin and Yang, they took the name of Yang either as a show of respect to the strongest male fighters or they simply didn¡¯t care.
There wasn¡¯t a single couple from the Shi and the Yang. The Shi Clan women seem to have a natural disposition to dislike men of the Yang family. They didn¡¯t hate them, but the Yang Clan men didn¡¯t have¡guts or strength and most Shi ladies couldn¡¯t stand how ¡®pathetic¡¯ their infamous showboating was.
There was, however, a couple between the Shi and the Ning. The ladies of Shi wanted this couple to come lecture him but since the Ning was a man, not a woman, they weren¡¯t sure if he was going to be of any help to know about the likes and dislikes of a Ning woman in bed.
Ebony left a Will Relay Buffer at his parents'' home on Xiaoya but they quickly got out of range. The trip through space was boring because it was instantaneous. The Kong Clan already opened a path for the rest of the Xengs to go to their home on Elva. Xienor.
Kong Jing¡¯s proficiency with space magic had improved leaps and bounds and two jumps were all it took her to bring them to Tidal where their home was.
None of the Xengs on this trip had any attachment to Xienor, at least not enough to visit other people. Most of the people on Xienor weren''t Emperor ranked, so Ebony wondered what generation they were part of. Xin did look around but the fisherman Uncle Wu wasn¡¯t around.
Ebony was still out of range with Dusk but he felt refreshed to be back on Elva. The familiar mana. The familiar air. The normal temperature and gravitational waves.
The continent of Elva didn¡¯t change.
Ten years didn¡¯t affect the environment. No mass destruction occurred. No Tetramyths overrunning the surface. No Trolls in sight or mana sense.
But he changed.
He could see further, smell better and feel clearer.
¡®How¡¯s the Nebulian doing?¡¯ Ebony did not think the Mandate users were as troublesome as Ezekiel because they didn¡¯t have the power to transport him by force. At least, not distances equal to worlds and sectors. Ezekiel sent him from Elcra to Cinderash in an instant, a Worldcore in a different sector. Although still within Hex. Excluding the time he was locked down, the travel time using relatively up-to-date space shuttles within Hex would take months. He was extremely lucky that Mr Guru and Gearhart made Ezekiel forget about him.
The Nebulians were also not interested in anything else but him or rather, the money he could produce because they were apparently in massive debt.
Ebony was able to find quite a bit about the Nebulian on the net. They were famous and weren¡¯t even from the Hex region. An unknown number of years ago, the Nebulian had a handful of Saints. They were powerful and few if not no races could naturally defend themselves against mandates. Once again, this example of strength was natural evolution and selection which could be reasoned with baseline traits. That¡¯s why their physical strength was weak and they could be caught off guard and killed rather easily.
These Nebulians controlled entire regions larger than Hex until they very, unfortunately, cast a mandate to rob a merchant group. The merchant group was bigger and stronger than the Nebulians ever imagined. After all, this merchant group dealt with matters between the higher beings and many merchants within were higher beings themselves.
They were punished by having their entire race enslaved or imprisoned depending on how some people saw it for a long time. They weren¡¯t the easiest to imprison when they could simply order their prison cell or guards to open up with their mandates and managed to slip some of their members away. Amused, the merchant group never chased them down and put a price on every member of the Nebulians that the escapees could pay to redeem.
Ebony underestimated the power of money although he still didn¡¯t fully understand the allure of money, he could see why money was still useful even for higher beings. The fact that the God of Knowledge sold library passes and books should be enough for him to understand the value of money.
Why would a God need money or mana?
That wasn¡¯t a question he needed answered at the moment but it was easier to think of it as a form of power.
One Nebulian Saint was said to have escaped and they reclaimed another. These two Saints got into debt to have their captors seal their entire race so that their race didn¡¯t die waiting. However, doing this increased the price per head. They had some pull to have persuaded the merchant group to permanently stop their race¡¯s ageing.
The two Saints did not play according to the rules the merchant group placed and followed. They attempted to steal their members back with their Mandates.
From then, they were hunted down. However, the merchant group either didn¡¯t think it was worth the effort or thought it was funny to put a bounty on them and the descendants of the small group that escaped. To them, the mandate users were a high-quality workforce. Saints weren¡¯t exactly easy for a merchant group to hold down without hiring the right personnel to begin with.
And somehow, the Nebulians were found here on Elcra. Using generations to change their direction into stealth traits, their mist and ability with it. Hiding very well since few or perhaps none within the sector could find and catch them easily.
At least until the countryside Elves grew up and prospered. Once again, he learned some more common sense about the Elves. Not just anyone could live on Yggdrasil. The lowest social class amongst them never steps foot on Yggdrasil.
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As for those on Yggdrasil, Elves are given the chance or choice to choose to venture out to new Worldcores. Living there, building up their fame, population and bringing home anything of value. If they were lucky the descendants born on these planets show better or superior traits and talents compared to descendants born elsewhere. Usually, this job of spreading their race elsewhere falls to lower social class members who want to improve their standings but have no talent or advantage over their Elven kin. This is a form of seeking improvement for them.
Elcra was chosen by the older members for them to sink roots in. Doing this, they would not receive any support or keep any contact with their homeworld unless they were led by people who were slightly better off. Middle-class families might send a few people to lead the people who decided to venture forth. These people tend to have the capability to contact Yggdrasil. Elves who meet a certain standard would be able to go to their ancestral home. However, it was said to be quite rare for these Elves to prosper.
The Elves who chose Elcra were very lucky. They were probably from the lowest caste and couldn¡¯t afford to be sent in a group to a higher rank worldcore. Of course, Ebony had no idea what the rank of Elcra¡¯s Worldcore was when the first group of Elves landed. He also had no idea how long it took for them to develop to their current state.
In any case, Ebony didn¡¯t go looking for the Nebulian or visit the Frost Elves first. He had home in mind.
Veronica pushed Xin¡¯s back while she puked after the spatial travel, something he didn¡¯t experience.
Ebony shook his head at the Xeng¡¯s whimsical nature. A few days ago, he learnt that Xin¡¯s weakness to alcohol had never been faked. The First of the Xengs was saddened that alcohol no longer affected her and during her evolution from King to Emperor, she purposely found a way to reduce her resistance to alcohol under the poison resistance section.
She taught the alcohol lovers amongst the second generation and when they found out that this allowed them to enjoy alcohol, get drunk and even get more natural potential to allocate elsewhere since they weakened a trait. The Ning couple were part of this group.
Still, her dizziness after spatial travel had little to do with her weak alcohol tolerance but was often linked together.
Ebony asked for permission before he planted another Will Relay Buffer deep underground in Xienor. He couldn¡¯t have too many of them in operation but for the continent of Elva, he should be able to have his clones in operation anywhere. Excluding a few areas where monsters would remove anything producing foreign energy or aura in their territory but he could just place his buffer outside of their territory. With Will Relay Buffer¡¯s current range, it should not be a problem unless someone was actively looking for visually transparent ice mana deep underground.
¡®I¡¯ll let some of them spread it out instead.¡¯ He didn¡¯t add stops to their travel and allowed Kong Jing to compress a tunnel to Tidal.
¡®It¡¯s still so ridiculously large.¡¯ Tidal wasn¡¯t overrun with dog and bear-sized ants so that was one relief. He once again noticed how enormous and populated the city was compared to the places he had just returned from. Cities in Cinderash were a blotch in comparison and Teheil¡¯s Golden Fields except for the Altarbound¡¯s final city might just be a speck if they were on Elva. But when the continent sizes were compared, Elva was a small percentage of either of those places.
¡°What are those?¡± Xin pointed down at the moving trail.
¡°A railway. Those are the trains I told you about.¡± Kong Jing answered for him.
¡®They got a working rail system in ten years. They went with the monorail style. They might have changed the design after gaining access to Eidolon Hex.¡¯ Ebony was quite impressed with the changes they were seeing right now.
It didn¡¯t matter much to him but to many people who may never walk out of their district, this was a big change. Especially with Elva¡¯s gradual increase in non-combatants, the population of artisans and craftsmen were overtaking the combatants since civilization and personal safety weren¡¯t a dire issue.
Now that he put some thought into it, Navin or the Empire definitely had access to Eidolon long ago. Their World Dungeon already gave them access and encounters with other worlds and the Elves shouldn¡¯t have been in the dark about it. Since olden day Elves teamed up with the other races in peace, it might have benefitted them to grow as a force altogether.
¡°Let¡¯s take it someday,¡± Ebony suggested. It didn¡¯t feel any special to him but it was going to be a new experience for Xin. ¡®Who designed the monorail to be dirty brown throughout?¡¯
It appeared to him like the evolved space mage no longer stopped for Tidal¡¯s barrier, tearing or passing through its passive defences without pause. Before long, they were in front of their house.
¡°You live in the same house!? The last time I was around you still lived separately. And I even shouted back at your great-grandfather saying you at least knew how to protect yourself from wolves.¡± He might not be able to see any eyeballing but he felt the mirth from Veronica. Disguise or not, she was a short woman amongst all of the tall Xengs she stood in the midst of.
¡°Grandma¡¡± The ¡®demure¡¯ Ning Xin did not have strong resistance to her grandmother¡¯s teasing.
¡°Since when did you start wearing dresses? You¡¯ve never worn them whenever I got one for you. You¡¯ll wear one for a man but not for your grandma¡± By now, he was doubly sure that she was just messing with her granddaughter. Having charged into the house and pulling out dresses.
¡°Grandma!¡±
Ebony left the girl screaming at her grandmother¡¯s endless teasing while he went to his garden. Surprisingly, it hadn''t dried up and the plants and herbs were still alive.
Kneeling to the power source orb covered in vines of ice, he recharged Dusk¡¯s Will. It was not dry, the Will that doesn¡¯t fade easily was still around but it felt like Dusk was in some sort of hibernation or sleep state.
¡®A new skill or technique that hasn¡¯t turned into a skill to keep themselves intact for longer?¡¯ He was touching Dusk but it still wasn¡¯t awake. He might need a stronger jumpstart of Will and wait till Dusk thought it was fine to come back online.
He went into his mindspace core to knock on Dusk and it worked.
¡°You retained almost all of your memories,¡± Ebony stated a fact to all the Clones who woke up right after Dusk.
¡°Cool, don¡¯t you think, we transferred everything to Dusk and it had just enough memory for all of us. We did have to throw out a lot of redundant information like a certain day¡¯s weather. Just for your information, we weren¡¯t even active for a full month before we first went inactive or the amount of unfading Will Dusk currently has wouldn¡¯t have fit so many of our memories.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t see Ten or Eleven¡who are these, new numbers?¡± The clone asked.
¡°We have up to Thirty-Two now, not many. They are asleep?¡±
¡°Is that the same or similar state that we were in while we¡¯re offline?¡±
¡°If we only have Thirty Two, does that mean not much time has passed?¡±
Ebony heard all of them talk at the same time. Unlike his time with his newer clones, these people were not familiar with how conversation was done in his mindspace.
Since they transmitted all the information and memories they collectively had at once, he was not too disappointed at the lack of the skill. They weren¡¯t even active for a month and their focus was studying runes so it was pretty good that they developed a way to ¡®hibernate¡¯ and not fade away as fast by making use of Dusk as a core who had Will that was unfading.
¡°Where¡¯s One?¡± Ebony asked for real. He received no memories regarding his first clone and as far as all of them could see, One was still around in his mindspace.
¡°We don¡¯t know, he was out on some quest and never came back for us to teach him how we figured out how to hide inside Dusk. By the way, how are the new numbers keeping their individual memories?¡±
¡°I had time to receive all their memories, it¡¯s currently categorised and packed individually. So I technically can¡¯t use a portion of my Will or we¡¯ll lose them.¡± Ebony answered. Only Aegis could copy Dusk and stay in a sleep state. ¡°Your memories¡ah, so you guys managed to receive my Will package.¡±
He went through the information they sent him and knew that every so often, a few of them would wake up and go about their business over the past decade. However, none of the clones received the Will. Dusk was the only one that could receive it and only a small portion of it. Dusk couldn¡¯t reply to him either so it was a one-way trip somehow.
¡®Their total active time in terms of manpower is closer to two years with all of them combined. A very small portion of Will was retrieved by Dusk and they used it. Too bad we couldn¡¯t communicate properly through this method. But that means I can still send packets of information no matter the distance. How does Will travel? Through space? Through realms? Doesn¡¯t seem right.¡¯ He had a total of 14 clones on Elcra. One to Nine, Eighteen to Twenty-Two.
It was too bad, but throughout their active time, they still had to throw away a lot of information they deemed redundant or less important or they would fade away. Dusk was the one that determined and prioritised.
¡°Nine¡¯s death. The Elves?¡± He asked about the little information he had about the missing Clone
¡°One of them. We don¡¯t know why or how, but someone stopped Will from transferring and we couldn¡¯t tell what they did to Nine but we do know, that torture and control he was placed under was worse than any other deaths.¡± They looked towards Thirteen and Sixteen¡¯s spot, those who died in battle.
¡°We¡¯re going to have to assume they know about us.¡± Ebony already had the experience of having a Telepath opponent who knew his every move before he made them. He didn¡¯t know what another person who could stop Will could do but it was better to assume information was extracted from Nine by force.
¡°We should be fine, none of us faced anyone coming after us.¡±
Ebony warned them about overconfidence by telling them about Mr Guru. He didn¡¯t give them his memories like they did to him.
Out of his mindspace, he confirmed that the maximum amount of Will he could use increased marginally and so did the rate it recovered.
Dusk got a burst of growth and replanted itself around the power source. It was furbished and back in full form within moments. It¡¯ll take a few days to compress its mana and continue charging its Will but that wasn¡¯t urgent.
¡°What are these underwear!? Where did you get this!? Oh no-I¡¯ve failed your mother,¡±
He was going to go into the house but the shouting stopped his feet. The only clothing he knew that would receive that reaction were the swimsuits he made, it was completely unlike the type of clothing they were familiar with.
¡®I can take a walk outside and meet some people.¡¯ Some situations were not for him to diffuse.
Chapter 376: Ning Clan Outing
¡°You-you¡¯re back! I knew you¡¯d be fine!¡±
¡°A hug I did not expect.¡± Ebony coughed from the slamming hug from an oddly well-dressed prince, minus the bushy beard.
¡°What¡¯s wrong with that and where¡¯s mine?¡±
There were stronger emotions behind the meeting than he was expecting.
¡®No, Hector had always been like this. I just never felt whatever he was expressing and it never came across.¡¯
¡°You¡¯ve gained some muscle,¡± Ebony commented. It was harder to pick out a single person since there were too many mana signatures mixing in Tidal compared to Cinderash where close to no one actively controlled their aether and Teheil where no one had mana.
¡°I stepped away from the Tetramyth battle. We, some of the younger generation nobles, took Uncle Oplot¡¯s advice and went to Lacuna Expanse.¡± Hector was almost unrecognisable, hiding in a blacksmith store and drinking ale in broad daylight with a young dwarf.
¡°That¡¯s the world dungeon on Elva, isn¡¯t that too much of a jump,¡± Ebony recalled.
¡°Not so, it¡¯s less like a dungeon and more like another continent. There are no weird dungeon rules and effects, just another world. Monsters range from normal unlevelled animals to levels higher than any individual we have. You-is Scarlet¡¡±
¡°I brought her back in one piece. I heard from Welser that you went on a training spree.¡±
¡°Haha. He said that?¡± Hector scratched his beard but didn¡¯t look away. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to be that powerless ever again.¡±
¡°That is tough. Comparison is the devil, I wonder if I can ever get rid of that feeling.¡± It was hard to say but he couldn¡¯t even consider himself as a top 100 strongest individual he personally knew anymore. Not after landing on Sky¡¯s Edge, Xiaoya. He could easily name 20 Cinderashians that he couldn¡¯t even make bat an eye, half of which were Saints and Emperors that may not be under Gearhart¡¯s direct command. A few of which his clones had managed to learn from. A small handful of Kings could do the same.
Mr Guru the Telepath had no real combat ability if he wasn¡¯t able to enter people¡¯s minds. That in itself was a strength but Ebony still managed to trap him. Mr Guru wasn¡¯t kidding when he said they didn¡¯t need their strongest which were the Boiler Knights in his opinion. There were also Gearhart¡¯s sons and the children of the handful of Cinderashian Saints.
¡°You have that feeling? Even now?¡± The well-dressed but bearded prince did not expect those words out of Ebony.
¡°Even more so. I¡¯ve seen how small and insignificant I am. I had better stay on Elcra till I get bigger as the Xengs would say.¡±
His relationship with Hector was a bit estranged but they didn¡¯t find it necessary to recount each other¡¯s experiences to each other at this moment. They were facing each other both in one piece, healthier than ever and that was about all they needed to know.
¡°Why the get up?¡± Ebony decided to ask about the present instead of the past.
¡°Haha¡ Mal was given assistant head director rights for Tidal Academy. They are grooming her ability to rule but they don¡¯t want the same type of rule that the old Empire has been following. You can say that she¡¯s being tested for her ability to grow Tidal Academy¡¯s educational abilities and reputation. If you met Wel, you should know that we¡¯re having a tough time standing out as a new Worldcore to the sector.¡±
¡°And she got you to come to class.¡± Ebony cocked his head.
¡°...no.¡±
¡°Teach?¡±
¡°No¡I¡¯m-I¡¯m the poster boy. I didn¡¯t agree! But I might have¡blown apart an ambassador¡¯s arm and have been stuck doing this for a while.¡± Hector smashed the mug on the stone table.
¡°Ah, I see. You do have Navin¡¯s genetics. Well, lucky for me to have found you so easily. What ambassador?¡± Ebony could see it.
In human standards, Navin was the most handsome man he knew. Hector was maturing and getting more similar in terms of appearance.
¡°Nothing big, he¡¯s from a Rare Worldcore and was looking for schools for their people.¡±
Ebony knew there were many worlds that had access to Eidolon or other worlds despite being a low-ranking Worldcore. Because many of them were conquered or occupied by people from other Worldcores and not a naturally developing Worldcore like Elcra.
He could technically go and find a Worldcore floating in space and if it wasn¡¯t registered, he could claim it as his. Many Emperors do this and make a planet their own and even a small portion of Kings that have the right skill set or information channels. The competition wasn¡¯t all that fierce, one could even buy an untapped Worldcore with no intelligent or sentient lifeforms. That wasn¡¯t something he could afford without savings.
It wasn¡¯t every day that one could find a Worldcore that grew by itself and had civilization grow from close to nothing to finding their way out. One could argue that the ancestors of Elcra were a group of Human, Dwarves, Beastmen and Elven explorers who landed on Elcra to claim as theirs but that history was lost or hidden. As far as he was aware, Elcra was deemed unclaimed and self-owned by Eidolon so it was hard to say how the first people came about.
Ebony was introduced to the Dwarf Orik, the owner of the blacksmith he knocked on the doors of. It was one of Hector¡¯s friends from young and not from freelancing around the continent. Unlike his war buddies, who never meet up, Hector always comes to visit Orik whenever he has time and nothing better to do.
Hector had duties to attend to in Tidal and wouldn¡¯t be leaving for long terms for the foreseeable future.
¡°Hector, wish me good luck. When a good day comes by, I¡¯ll be getting myself a wife.¡± He didn¡¯t forget to give the promised invitation.
¡°Finally! What do you mean by a good day?¡±
¡°Hmm¡if you¡¯re this close by you¡¯ll probably know when it happens but I¡¯ll send a message if the location is far.¡±
¡°You¡¯re talking about a wedding right?¡±
¡°No, I¡¯m talking about my proposal. It¡¯s a duel, remember?¡±
¡°Ahh right. I don¡¯t understand the Xengs man. Why would they want their daughters beaten?¡±
¡°I¡¯ve met them. They are pretty normal. The duel is more about showing their daughter¡¯s family that she would be protected and cared for in good hands. Or strong hands I suppose.¡±
¡°I had a feeling you were returning. A couple of months back dozens of Xengs returned and the next week, the Tetramyths were trying to close their portals. I heard they didn¡¯t allow the portals to be closed and the Tetramyths put their heads down and released all intention to fight back or protect themselves. Someone sat on the fortress wall for a week and the Tetramyth promised never to come back.¡±
¡®A few old friends told them about the Tetramyths, they thought it might be interesting but then disappointed their opponents wouldn¡¯t fight back. Maybe a Kong clan member forcefully overtook control of their portal spell or equipment.¡¯ Ebony summarised what had happened even without sufficient information.
Previously, the only Xeng support the Empire received was a pair of crafters. Now that Sky¡¯s Edge was physically flown over, the residents probably didn¡¯t have anything better to do and came down for a walk.
He already learnt that Kong Jing was only able to get the interest of two, sixth-generation crafters. From the Xu clan who were mostly crafters. Her mother was also from the Xu clan. Needless to say, when the older generation came, they wanted a bit of stretching and warm-up, but the Tetramyths were not up for it.
¡°There was a bit of¡drama when an Elf attacked a couple of Xeng. Thankfully no one¡¯s dead.¡± The Prince probably played things down with his words.
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¡®That shouldn¡¯t be an issue right? The elves are far more divided against external threats compared to the Xengs.¡¯ Since this was the Xengs as a whole, it shouldn¡¯t become war or mutual extermination with a fight between a few people that didn¡¯t end up in deaths.
¡°Forget about that, I always wanted to ask¡why do you even like Scarlet? When we first met, you two only knew each other for a short time too but it felt to me like you¡¯ve been interested in her from the start.¡±
¡°Hmm. I¡¯m not sure if you can accept this explanation. It¡¯s colour,¡± Ebony had another second of uninterrupted thought. ¡°Life was boring to me. Back where I came from. I had no direction and expected how my entire 80 years of life would turn out. I was confident it would turn out the way I imagined. I came here, haha. Messing up on a little wolf and boar chase because I was a little happy inside, forgetting my training for a bit. There was some colour in my mind.¡±
He conjured a ball of ice above his mug. ¡°That colour quickly faded when I got the hang of moving and using mana. Learning ice magic. Picking up the sword, something more unknown was also adding colour. I expected years of training, yet again. Nothing different from the life I knew. It was and is arrogant of me, but I saw myself getting strong. At the top of the food chain. But that was it, I never knew why I trained. I never knew why I needed or wanted to be strong. Sure, I had an attachment to life but I never minded dying in a hunt. Eat or be eaten is natural, dying is natural.
She was a splotch in my mind¡mindspace. An unknown splotch. That never happened to me since my parents disappeared. It¡¯s partly a biological instinct and more¡how do I explain this? I know this sounds stupid, but when we met it was like, I knew this would happen. The moment I stopped erasing the splotch, it proliferated. I recognised the splotch as colour. I gained a weakness. With it, I gained direction. I no longer have to get stronger by sheer instinct and genetics. I wanted to get stronger. This splotch is what I desire so much and can¡¯t get enough of.¡± Ebony had never put it in words but he realised he was feeling lighter after saying these words. She was a weakness he feared to have but learning was beneficial. With a weakness, his desire to grow stronger rose.
¡°--I think I get it.¡±
¡°You do?¡± He was honestly surprised Hector understood what he was saying.
¡°...Tracy Velas is a survival class instructor at Tidal Academy.¡±
¡°No wonder you¡¯re still staying at Tidal.¡± It looks like they were not wrong with their assessment of Hector and the woman they only met once.
He didn¡¯t stick for long, Hector¡¯s friend had not been welcoming to use the smithy¡¯s backyard as a pub. Hector himself went on a quest to tell people that Ebony was back.
¡®There shouldn¡¯t be that many people to inform.¡¯ He retrieved his callstone but didn¡¯t find a need to tell people other than Hector who came to mind. There was Mark but he was more like a scholar who shared similar interests that he was acquainted with. He would call the Thoyas but the callstone doesn¡¯t go that far. He was very sure that he shouldn¡¯t invite the Thoyas to see his proposal, they were more withdrawn from the sort of showing affection that humans or he was used to.
He didn¡¯t want to go back home yet so he visited the Piercing Tempest Academy.
Lo-and-behold, he was momentarily stunned. Realising that those classmates of his had long grown up into teens preparing for their Classing. They were 3 to 5 years into their skill levelling and classing preparation stage. Since most of them were from families that could afford the school fees, they did not have to rush their choices. It wasn¡¯t rare for mages to take their first class well into their twenties.
Hector for one was a few years older than Ebony and Xin and he was only Journeymen when they met.
Not all of his classmates continued to take advanced courses. Some took part-time courses while learning skills for a Sub-Class or Profession from a different academy or their family members. Others simply ended their learning at a different academy.
Ebony learnt from Targot the lightning mage instructor about how Raika the daughter of the headmistress managed to get a recommendation into Tidal Academy. Together with the ¡®young¡¯ female instructor, his classmates Umar and Yusqly were noted as talents by Tidal Academy and they changed schools.
Umar was proudly promoted as a student from Piercing Tempest Academy with training fees fully waived for a decade. That was enough to bring more students into their lightning magic school. A lot were first-generation mages that had a passable affinity with lightning mana.
He was here to look for the old lady Wilcox to ask about his membership with Magus Consortium but she was on a school outing with the Journeymen student group in a dungeon. He was relieved he didn¡¯t take their first meeting present of spectral life jelly because he wasn¡¯t around to do the job of joining their regulated Epic Dungeon run.
¡°Ebony, hurry up and come back. Grandma¡¯s about to leave tonight so we¡¯re having dinner together.¡± His bracelet was made able to read and use a callstone too. The Elcrian Myriad Bracelet was a reverse-engineered version of the universal one so there wasn¡¯t much of an issue.
He was just a step away from home but he still replied, ¡°I¡¯ll be right there.¡±
Taking a very long step, he arrived home.
All of his clones noted the danger earlier and were hiding in Dusk. As for Dusk, it couldn¡¯t run away but it was just an innocent tree that was ignored. Not everyone talked to a tree and it was unknown whether Veronica knew about the Domain core.
Other than Kong Jing who was fiddling with his gravity cube. The grandmother and daughter combo was busying themselves in the kitchen. The younger lady chided the older woman¡¯s cooking skills and nonchalance in ingredient handling while the older one cried about how she cooked for the young lady for a decade and this was how she treated her elder.
It was not his place to step in so he set the table up instead. His clones had been keeping the place in good condition but he wiped and cleaned everything again out of habit.
Ebony hadn¡¯t sat in front of Veronica for an extended period before. His meetings and interactions with this older lady were always short. On his first meeting, he was kidnapped and tossed to Kong Jing. Then he received a farewell when she left Elcra. And the next time he met her was on Xiaoya for less than a few hours. All of which were spent between the Ning pair.
So he was wondering what he should say but he didn¡¯t have to worry. During dinner, the older lady took charge of talking and keeping it lively around the table. It was clear to him that she loved to tell stories.
¡®How do I address her...Grand Aunty or Grandniece?¡¯ Suddenly, he was conflicted. By logic and their prior relationship, Grand Aunty was about as right as could be. By Xeng culture, Veronica was of the fifth generation and he was of the third.
He wasn¡¯t able to ponder long over dinner before Xin asked, ¡°Can¡¯t you stay over a few days before going off? Where are you going after just arriving?¡±
¡°I¡¯m busy. Garden of the Deceased. No, you don¡¯t need to come with me. No, don''t bother visiting or calling the Frost Elves. Yes, they are currently cut off from normal means of visit. No little Jing, your space magic wouldn¡¯t work.¡±
Ebony looked between the two younger ladies. They were more used to the divination mage¡¯s answering her questions before they asked. He was indeed about to suggest going to Bubble Hills where the Garden of the Decreased was and where the Frost Elves weren¡¯t far away from. By the looks of it, her granddaughter was going to suggest the same while Kong Jing was going to say she can enter the hidden village whenever she felt like it.
¡°You are not allowed to follow me either.¡± The masked woman with black hair turned serious for once, her tone lowering gravely.
The space mage secretly told him the Nings were arguing about how the younger face of the older Ning must be masked up for dinner. Ebony roughly understood how strong Xeng genetics were even when it came to appearances but he couldn¡¯t help but mirth at her worries. She would likely look similar and he had already seen Veronica¡¯s face so having her masked now wouldn¡¯t change much.
¡°Wrong!¡± A sudden shout entered his mind with a foot stomp.
He didn¡¯t know how she did that but they were brought back to the moment.
¡°Now that I¡¯ve finished all that I could prepare for you my dear child, it¡¯s time for my own hurdle. Don¡¯t come ruining my chance. You are not to look for me till I look for you. Besides, I¡¯ll be going with ah Min and my sisters with our grandfather, it¡¯ll be the safest place there.¡± Veronica gave the taller but younger woman a head rub. ¡°Ah don¡¯t worry, I will be right here watching soon. Right?¡±
Ebony shrugged his shoulders up. This divination mage was ruining his chances. Doesn¡¯t she know her granddaughter has incredible Intuition?
He needed every lead-up he could take and he was banking on catching her off-guard.
¡®But she¡¯s right, I¡¯ve been dragging it. Soon it is. My perception of ¡®soon¡¯ is going haywire with the recent happenings. Is ten years considered recent? It feels like it. Now I¡¯m thinking like the older generations¡I¡¯ve spent too much time in my mindspace with or without Mr Guru.¡¯ When perceived time in his mind was counted in the thousands of years, the passage of a measly ten outside was hard to think of as a long time.
As a Telepath, one of Mr Guru¡¯s abilities was to speed or slow down Ebony¡¯s thinking capacity. In terms of the effects he felt, the perceived time in his mindspace would speed up or slow down accordingly. The Telepath could weaken his magic or the strength of anything that required mental power. That included his ability to fight inside his mind. He could make illusions of power and spells. If Ebony could cast a frostflame, the Telepath could imagine himself casting the same spell.
The Telepath could imagine himself covered in an impenetrable armour that was invisible, weightless and made of skin. He could imagine a knife in his target¡¯s throat that ignores all defensive abilities.
In the same way, Ebony used the same power of imagination to protect himself. It was very educational to fight with one¡¯s imagination. Yet, the Telepath couldn¡¯t imagine breaking out of the seal he was caught in for he didn¡¯t know why he couldn¡¯t move and he went too deep in Ebony¡¯s natural mental defences. Ebony needed proper active mental defensive techniques as soon as possible. He could trick Mr Guru once but there are always greater opponents.
¡®A Ning family outing to the Garden of the Deceased. I heard Veronica¡¯s grandfather was locked in a dungeon where time passed faster and he doesn¡¯t have much of his lifespan left. Going to a place called Garden of the Deceased does not sound¡auspicious.¡¯
¡°I can¡¯t go?¡± Ning Xin puffed.
¡°You cannot, fifth generation and up only. There is a reason why even that kid Oplot or the Elves doesn¡¯t explore the Garden of the Deceased. Elcra is an interesting and fateful place. Okay, now that we¡¯re done with dinner, I can¡¯t keep my sisters, aunties and uncles waiting.¡± The short lady wiped her mouth with a napkin, gave her granddaughter a tight hug and snapped her fingers to disappear from her spot.
Unbeknownst to them, Veronica had people waiting for her.
Chapter 377: I Challenge You
¡®That feeling when she snapped her fingers reminds me of the time I got Lunar Bioclock. Is it the celestial bodies? Now that I¡¯ve been in space¡space-space, celestial bodies probably refer to the stars and planets and these bodies may have conscious thought. Veronica¡¯s divination is said to use astral powers or astral mana; perhaps she makes use of these celestial bodies'' energy to cast her spells and divination?¡¯
¡°How did she do that?¡± Kong Jing had juice drool down her lips and staining her shirt.
Kong Jing acted like a barrier between him and Xin by dragging her cousin around. It looks like she got some intense orders or suggestions to keep him apart or the issue of the two of them living in the same house would be known to the traditionalistic Xeng elders.
Either way, it helped Ebony.
The next day, Five the clone brought back a blindfolded fat man in bindings.
¡°Mr. Rumble. I¡¯ll keep it short, you contained me for seven months and four days in the year 5536. I¡¯m a bit late but you will be contained here for the same length of time. Don¡¯t worry, you don¡¯t have to escape like I did. Since you took my time, I will take yours.¡± Ebony put the fat man in a cage underground. He borrowed the ceiling of the sewers below ground. It wasn¡¯t like his first kidnapper gave him a chance to talk back so Ebony wasn¡¯t interested in any conversation.
If anyone chanced upon ice mana while cleaning or exploring the sewers, Five or another clone caretaker could move the cage that refracts light around it. He thought about completely sealing the man in ice so that he didn¡¯t need to eat or drink for a long time, but since that wasn¡¯t how he was treated he didn¡¯t treat the man that way.
It had been so simple to find and take the man away from his very own store. Ebony felt that he needed to do this and he wasn¡¯t being petty.
Mr Kidnapper, the halberd warrior was a different story. Spy girl had continued to send letters and information since there was movement from his clones every so often. She had kept track of him and news on Lure and her organisation, Jaded Parasites.
The halberd user returned to Tidal a couple years ago, evolved. And he officially left the Jaded Parasites by completing a series of ¡®impossible¡¯ missions to extricate himself. The Fatal Nine or whatever. It was extremely rare for anyone to complete them so the spy girl had written him the details of all nine missions Mr Kidnapper had to complete to leave the Jaded Parasites with his life intact.
His current location was unknown and it was speculated that the leaders of the Jaded Parasites still sent someone to eliminate Mr Kidnapper. It was a pity his clones weren¡¯t awake to keep an eye on him. Ebony owed him 2 beatings. One was a concussion and the other was when he tore Ning Xin¡¯s winning streak and beat her down. These two objectives were very simple for Ebony so he just needed the man¡¯s location. Perhaps he should sell Mr Kidnapper off too but that would require a buyer. It was too much effort so he only remembered the first two beatings.
With that, Ebony¡¯s loose ends remained with the Nebulian who were a bit too much for him at the moment and the Cinderashians. As the strong divination mage said, his calls to the Thoya family failed. Although his callstone didn¡¯t have that kind of range, he just had to take a couple of hour detour out of the city before he was within range but the transmission signal didn¡¯t know where to fly. Confirming that the Frost Elves were hidden for real.
He checked up on news about the Tetramyth and it was said they were practically begging the Kong clan members to let them close the portal. The Necrochitin Saintess and her sisters were played around with, the Xengs tried to force a stronger Tetramyth out but none came in the past months.
As an ant race, they were very weak in physical and magical traits in comparison with other races at the same rank. Once again explained by the lower baseline traits of insect races compared with other animals. But they did have a Goddess, hence their entire bloodline had an increase in their total baseline trait. They have expensive traits, the most well-known for ants were precognition and most lines of Tetremyth embody a certain level of precognition which was envied by many races. Humans who want to invest in this trait would find it not worth the cost when the same volume of potential could be used to increase their Strength stat in effectiveness multiplicatively.
As for the situation with the Trolls, it was quite surprising. People of Elva was sent on expeditions to Tova, publicly helping the Trolls to clear the magical slimes that Oplot once placed on Tova. It was an experience galore for anyone with magic while all physical-based fighters could only watch. In return, the Trolls had to pay war reparations with resources only found on the continent of Tova. Since the Trolls didn¡¯t need many of these rare materials, they obliged instead of facing racial extermination or slavery.
However, they still couldn¡¯t co-exist. They did not accept the Empire stepping back and offering peace. They did not accept getting paid in foodstuff for their man and muscle power for mining and construction. They were adamant that the people of Elva should either cut their heads off or be eaten for their empowerment. They wanted to fight so much and the bad news was that a race of Trolls sent a message to Elcra, the Empire, daring them to exterminate the Trolls on Tova if they wanted to face the same.
It was too bad Hector didn¡¯t know enough about the outside world or which race of Trolls was smart enough to communicate and threaten the Empire.
Geopolitical news wasn¡¯t something he was very interested in, but as far as he could tell, the Empire was safe from the waves of contact with greater powers. So he went to the nearest Quest Hall, got an employee to show him land for sale. The employee just so happened to be spy girl who was still working for them and she got promoted enough to move to Central Tidal, choosing to work near his house.
Secretly a metal mage but working for the government lady kindly and professionally acted as the Quest Hall assistant manager of land and dwellings. When they left to view land for sale, she cut the act and reported whatever information she thought was relevant. She wasn''t surprised that he was back after a decade.
The closest plot of land to the royal family both quiet and away from the bustling city was a dozen streets away from his current house. The Quest Hall hasn¡¯t fully incorporated universal trading currencies but the assistant manager gave him flexible limits. He could pay up in a week so all he needed to do was find Purples and a few nobles to give him a signed copy of their ¡®okay¡¯ for him to buy plots of land in central Central Tidal. He could just get the signatures from a young prince, the crowned princess and if he really had to, the King and Queen would probably give the okay sign. Unless they see him as a problematic time bomb that would endanger the nobles that lived there.
With the expedited work, he bought roughly 180,000 square metres of land or a 400 by 450 metres rectangular block of land that was his in two days of administrative processing. 18 hectares wasn¡¯t that much but more than enough for two.
Using savings from the past few months that weren''t spent during training or buying access to books from the biggest bookstore in the universe, he had long placed orders for the most suitable building material at Epic rank. It was too costly even for him to get a higher quality version, considering the quantities he was planning to work with.
He made use of Xeng¡¯s connections or perhaps reputation to purchase from a different region altogether. A building material that was perfect for him, feeding it mana was all it took to change its properties. It could be made into bricks and also cement slurry to cover the gaps. It was a popular building material but not always the best choice since it was not a worthwhile investment. It was perfect for Ebony since it was said to have a nearly unparalleled ability to absorb mana. The delivery cost more than ten times more than the material itself. He already had it ordered and delivered to Sky¡¯s Edge and thousands of tons of the dry powder was in his very bracelet.
Along with that was a sample of high-quality soil with no special properties except an extremely high concentration of life force so that it was suitable for a wide range of plants regardless of its element. The soil was called General Life and Ebony had a sample from the Peng Clan. There was enough soil for a single potted tree. This wasn¡¯t something he could buy with just money and neither was it something he could afford at large volumes at the moment.
¡°I need to do something very important and will be away for a couple of weeks.¡± He notified the two ladies before he hid the entire landmass with the help of a specialist. A hired hand from the Jaded Parasites. He did not expect them to have such a good master of stealth, illusion and redirection of attention using subtle mental suggestions with enchantment effects. And for such a cheap price.
Xin had good perception too so he didn¡¯t want to spread his mana to make this project invisible by his means.
If the hired hand didn¡¯t exclude him from the effects, he might need another second to realise that something felt off about this blank piece of land. A world of magic and magic users was very different from his escape attempts from non-magic users. Speaking of, he was very curious why he hadn¡¯t received any feedback or follow-up from Gearhart. It was hard to believe Mr Guru actually listened to his threats or persuasion. Even a busy man like Gearhart would have done something by now.
He knew that Mr Guru erased his and maybe even Gearhart¡¯s memories of the name Rime but that only gave more reason to have a follow-up. Especially when he was on Teheil with Cinderashians running about. But Ebony was a man of practical use of mental resources, if there was no problem, he shouldn¡¯t spend too much time worrying about it.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
As per tradition for the man to prepare a house to be turned into a home, he did his part and built a new house from the ground up. From powder that could be made into mana bricks and cement. Since it took on properties of mana, the bricks would be more physically and elementally durable than most metals of the same quality and it was cooling. He tested that the material could indeed absorb extreme amounts of mana, they weren¡¯t any less durable, tolerant or resilient than a metal of a higher quality. That was taking his mana into account so the bricks also absorbed impact and shock to a high degree.
Most of the land would be for a garden that would likely look more like a farm since he needed to grow all of their favourite plants, be it fruits or vegetables. On second thoughts, a garden with fruit trees, tea plantation and flowers might be better. He could always buy farmland and hire farmers with dedicated skills to grow the weird and unique plants they¡¯ve collected over the years.
He didn¡¯t have plans for anything fancy or humongous but a 350 square metres base seems about right and at least three floors. The first floor would need a very large kitchen, a dining room, living room, a freezer room and fresh food storage, a laundry room and a toilet. The second would have a master bedroom, and although he didn¡¯t think it necessary 4 guest rooms or empty rooms that could be repurposed. Another toilet. And he was considering a third floor as a study and library with possibly half of the floor opened up as a balcony or rooftop barbeque spot but that wasn¡¯t necessary when he had so much outdoor space. Leaving it as an empty room, it could be a dressing room, wardrobe for both casual use and armoury for their weapons and gear. Their wardrobe was growing and he couldn¡¯t think of other amenities that a woman would need.
Underground would be the main storage, the same underground forge and workspace for him, a cellar that he had been thinking about for a while and finally the same underground pool. He did think about a normal pool but with so many magic eyes and perception around it was likely not normal to have a body of water sitting out in the open.
He had so much land that he built the underground more horizontally than having them deep underground and messing with the sewerage.
During which, he stayed in contact with Shi Qiang and asked for help and advice on what was required or expected of him. With her help, one of her Zhao Clan friends came to help him with the house. They were in charge of making all houses in Xiaoya completely private. A fun fact he learnt was that even Shi Tao could not peek her senses around in other people¡¯s houses as long as the Zhao worked their magic. They took their privacy very seriously, one was no different from a normal human in one of their houses.
A fourth-generation Xu also undertook the mission of building a training field in Ebony¡¯s specifications. This would be his backyard. The woman, Xu Ying needed help from a Kong for the spatial shenanigans. They just so happened to be Kong Jing¡¯s maternal grandmother and the man was her father. When it came to customised training fields, the Xengs were second to none.
This was Kong Jing¡¯s father using the opportunity to take a better look at how his daughter had been living on Elcra.
Altogether, it barely took ten days for him to complete the project. No clones, he placed every brick and cemented them all by hand. The house was empty even though he already took note of what furniture she¡¯d liked in the past shopping trips because he thought it would be a better activity to do together and fill the house up.
Stretching his body and taking last checks on the new garden, he brought a clone here and had it take care of the garden while he waited for the target¡¯s guard to go down.
Returning home after a round of conditioning, nothing happened other than the two sisters just returning from a dungeon trip. They went to a dungeon somewhere inside Vermin Paradise with Athena who was still a freelancer. Athena was probably one of Xin¡¯s best friends, maybe more so than Mallory. He wasn¡¯t sure why, but they matched well. The lady was more happy and excited to see Xin alive than surprised at the weird two personality woman. She was a woman of the battlefield and was more concerned about seeing a friend alive than caring about a split in personality. To be fair, Xin was still the same person.
The lady¡¯s outings to the dungeon were forced by Athena suggesting they needed a girl¡¯s week out. They came back with weird bags of gel. Gel from a plant in Vermin Paradise and not within the dungeon. It supposedly helps with digestion and is rumoured to keep skin ¡®glowing¡¯ when applied. It was also delicious and was quite similar to aloe vera. So a bowl of transparent jelly was part of the dessert even though it was breakfast.
Ebony got a visit from Wilcox the old lady as she returned and found out he visited the academy.
¡°Oh you didn¡¯t miss a thing. The nobles closed Spectral Veil Stronghold to the public a year after the only meeting you went to. It¡¯s only been a decade and the Magus Consortium doesn¡¯t do much together outside of dealings between some members who are more well-acquainted with each other. Haha¡in fact, there hasn¡¯t been another full meeting since.¡± The old lady placed the cup of tea she had down gently after answering his concerns about membership.
To these mages that were relatively advanced, or strong enough to challenge an Epic ranked dungeon a decade might not be enough for them to complete a research or create a new spell they were satisfied with.
¡®Must have been the rush to strengthen themselves against the Tetramyth. Since the Tetramyth issue has been dialled down to nothing but a situation with a bigger bully present, the dungeons might be opened up soon.¡¯ Ebony had some guesses of his own. As far as things went, the public only knew about a war with monsters but not so much about their opponent the Tetramyths.
¡°The Crater of Tidal¡that was you wasn¡¯t it.¡±
¡°I was the target.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t expect the old lightning mage to figure it out. The Crater of Tidal was the event where a molten crater frozen over appeared in the city. Yet thousands of people were evacuated right before that happened.
Considering the size of Tidal, it was a small issue geographically but a big one when it came to safety. On one hand, no reported deaths made the citizens cheer at the Life Queen¡¯s awesomeness. On the other, residents and shop owners were concerned that strong people or natural disasters could ruin their livelihoods and homes. They barely had any memories of why or what happened before they returned to a wasteland where their properties were.
Thanks to Hector¡¯s presence and Muse who was well known to be the Life Queen¡¯s assistant or fellow Great Healer, the blame or follow-up never reached Ebony. The Noble in charge of the district had a lot of backlash but didn¡¯t dare to push Hector too far. They were less afraid of Hector, a mostly unknown prince and more so of Muse who was someone known to walk in and out of the Royal couple¡¯s home. In fact, Hector could barely be considered a prince since he was two generations down.
However, in terms of strength or evolutionary stage he was not far off from the actual princes who were mostly Kings.
Unfortunately, the Elven Noble sensed ice mana specifically from a Frost Elf. So they pushed the issue.
Too little was known about the details and neither spy girl, Wilcox or his clones found out any more. However, it was likely due to this that the Frost Elven village went into serious hidden village mode. Their fighters might not be afraid of the Elves but the non-fighters didn¡¯t have that kind of iron in them.
That made him worried and he wanted to contact them to see if they needed any help but he believed that would be detrimental. Maybe he had a good sixth sense too because his gut was telling him to leave them alone till the situation changed. He started to think of ways to inform them he was back without leaking their location. The first job was to allow his clones to start going throughout Elva and placing Will Relay Buffers and maybe hope the fighters or Domain users could sense his Will nearby but if the Elves were there, they would be able to notice the same.
¡®I wonder if placing a Will Relay Buffer is against some kind of Elven privacy law¡¡¯ Noticing an issue, he had his clones skip Tidal altogether. In any case, this was where his home was and he didn¡¯t need a relay buffer where he was. They were the only ones who might notice Will with a scant few humans that may be able to do the same.
Visiting graves was an activity he didn''t bring Xin along for. He took some effort to find the graves of a few people he knew, such as Ryley. He had a tombstone, not at Tidal but closer to Hata Town. Ebony didn''t have words to say to a passing first party member. But for some reason, his feet and mind were brought forward to do such an action.
Receiving a few visits and calls from Mark himself who did well for himself and now had bought a house for his parents. Rented a workshop for himself, and gave his parents the opportunity to go back to school and upgrade themselves to be able to keep a store open to Tidal¡¯s standards. The trip from a town to Central Tidal must not have been easy for them without a space mage or endless endurance to run at high speeds.
Mark had not completed Kong Jing¡¯s test for him but from the crafter¡¯s mood when Mark left, he could tell the lady was impressed by the man¡¯s progress on whatever he was doing.
A rare date at Aroma Alcoves.
Receiving a royal summons. To explain the Crater of Tidal situation formally but only to Yvette who blocked out any other noble that wanted to meet the victim or cause of the event. Fend off a few probes at what the Xengs want for Ning Xin who wasn¡¯t very defensive or aggressive in her non-combat mode.
Having almost daily music lectures from Muse who bawled her eyes out when she first met up again.
Restarting the restaurant hunting from one end of the street to the next district.
Watching movies while having more food than their meal times. They were packing in as much food as they could throughout the 28 hours of the day. He supplied them with ingredients that couldn¡¯t be found on Elcra since Elcra had limited monster meat at Ancient equivalent to Emperor-ranked meat. They could be found but hunting them was troublesome if not outright impossible. Cooking them to make use of all the nutrients proved slightly beyond his chef¡¯s abilities.
Acting as a guest sparring duelist to perform for the Piercing Tempest Academy along with Wilcox.
Being dragged around by Hector to go drinking with his war buddies, including honorary commander Wilson. Going out to sea to dive, fish giant mackerel with their bare hands and roasting them over fire on the beach was an activity he hadn¡¯t planned for.
His days were packed.
Kong Jing the planted supervisor, had long left their home to continue her research and craft.
The far from monotonous life where less than half was occupied by training and conditioning quickly blended into routine till one morning, Ebony felt an infectious hum full of glee.
Picking a grape while drying his hair from the after-morning exercise shower, ¡°what got you so excited?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. I just woke up feeling great today! I feel like today¡¯s going to turn out fantastic. Maybe I¡¯ll finally succeed in a dish I¡¯m satisfied with!¡± She exclaimed while her knife flashed down and separated the fish''s head from its body. She was recently experimenting with fried fish dishes.
¡®Finally.¡¯ His next breath gave him goosebumps.
Her strong intuition that bordered foresight sure was useful. What better indicator of success to use than the intuition of the grandchild of an excellent divination mage?
¡°Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin, I challenge you to a duel.¡±
Chapter 378: Proposal
¡°A duel? Sure, hehe. It¡¯s been awhile.¡± She handled the fish with maximum efficiency but it looked slow and neat.
The nonchalant reaction cooled him off a bit, ¡°Haha, you misunderstood. I mean the duel.¡±
The only training they had together for over a decade was technique or sword exchanges and she likely misunderstood him.
It took her some time before her hands stopped working. The words sunk in slowly.
¡°So. You think you beat me now? Is that why?¡± She sounded offended.
¡°I¡¯m confident of being able to protect you better than you can yourself.¡±
¡°...I need to tell you something.¡± She got back to dipping the fish slices in batter. ¡°Mastering the Ning Clan skill made me¡almost like two people. I don¡¯t have half states anymore.¡±
¡°What¡¯s your point?¡± He was not in the state of mind to decipher hidden meanings within statements, and neither did he understand what this had to do with his proposal.
¡°I¡¯m just a crazy woman.¡±
Ebony raised his head reflexively and nodded ¡°I¡¯m not exactly what others would call sane either. There¡¯s no one else but you for me.¡±
¡°Back to my point. I know nothing of battle, but the other me only knows battle. However, she can think and control herself now. She doesn¡¯t know I-err, she probably recognises you but has no good feelings for you. Her Intuition and mine are split and don¡¯t always match.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t have to te- My bad, you were trying to raise my chances. I¡¯m quite happy to hear that you want me to succeed.¡± Ebony realised how slow he was but saying out loud got the chef jittery and all literal sparks of hot electricity were popping around her.
¡°Stop testing my mastery of the skill. Let me finish up.¡± She wasn¡¯t lying about her mental state.
¡°I¡¯ll get ready to go out.¡± Ebony didn¡¯t lend a hand. He got changed and called to check if the venue he prepared was ready. He wasn¡¯t wearing his robes, it would tear and burn instantly.
Duelling and training grounds under Quest Halls weren¡¯t going to cut it. Unless Navin was personally there to confirm the integrity of the place, he found it hard to believe the underground construct could withstand a battle.
There was a mountain range, Skylance Range south of Tidal that many older generation Nobles go to that Hector introduced. It was a famous no-go zone for commoners of the Empire because they might die from misfire or spell ricochet. It was four to five hours out on a casual unaugmented run so that should be sufficiently far away from populated areas.
Waiting outside, he noticed he was getting nervous. It was quite exciting due to how uncommon it was for him to be nervous.
¡®Good luck.¡¯ Dusk dropped a plum on his head. It hasn¡¯t been more than two months so it was still in the midst of recovering Will since it had to be shared with the rest of the clones. He might have increased his Will capacity and recovery thanks to their experience but Will recovery was still very limited compared to mana.
Bloodlust and killing intent spawned beside him. The flatter-chested woman with red hair was ready for battle but didn¡¯t attack him on sight. So it was true that she had control now.
¡°I¡¯m in a bad mood. Want to guess if that means it''s because I know I¡¯ll beat you and can¡¯t have you or that I¡¯m going to lose a one-on-one?¡± Although her mask was fully opaque, it was likely a choice or benefit of hers that her eyes seemed to glow through. Whether or not it was an optical illusion, he wasn¡¯t sure but he knew that the piercing bright red glare would have effects on most things it looked at that looked back. Well, it only enraptured him more.
¡°...¡± Ebony didn¡¯t look away from her intentional challenge of a staring contest.
¡°Haha! Ease up. But no matter how much I want to be closer with you, I¡¯m not going to lose on purpose.¡± The unfamiliar lightness in her tone hopped onto his cube and gave his back a strong pat.
Neither of them won the staring battle.
His cube gently lifted and burst towards their venue.
¡°Not bringing Dusk along?¡± For someone who said she wouldn¡¯t have positive feelings for him, the locking of arms by her initiative was unexpected.
¡°That would defeat the purpose.¡± He gave the best flight service he could, blocking the wind with mana and having a stable cube. He could make a seat but it was too short a trip to require it.
¡°I wouldn¡¯t mind, I have my mask.¡±
¡°I have my cube.¡±
Skylance Range had a clear sky, the sun was in their eyes and if Ebony guessed right, Xiaoya was floating in space further than he could see. There were indeed a few battles happening and the mountain range wasn¡¯t as wide as Bubble Hills, but the individual mounds of earth were much bigger and denser.
He landed on a rockier valley instead of a grassy one.
¡°So many busybodies.¡±
The red-haired woman¡¯s comment made him look up. For one, Hector was a distance away. He arrived early for such short notice. But her comment was likely for the Xengs.
¡°You know we don¡¯t have to do this, you''re supposedly a Shi. You can propose normally.¡±
¡°Not ready to lose?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t get cocky. I admit, you¡¯re better than me in battle instinct and stronger in just about any situation. Except for a direct one-on-one. I do have something I always wanted to say if you ever asked me out like this.¡± The red-haired woman admitted to thinking about him proposing.
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°I¡¯m less of a Xeng than you, in terms of bloodline.¡± She gulped and her fingers twitched in the way to show her rational side coming back but she ultimately gathered enough courage, ¡°I challenge you to a duel. If I win, you¡¯re mine.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a bit hurtful. I¡¯m no ¡®bride¡¯.¡± Ebony replied seriously.
¡°Don¡¯t worry about the little details. You can¡¯t escape me.¡± She stood merely a hundred metres away from him.
¡°Yeah. I knew that from day one.¡±
Ebony snapped his Domain into existence. There was no reason to make it wide ranged, they were going to be close and personal.
They didn¡¯t need a firing gun to know when to start, a glance was enough.
All augmentations fired up, half a beat after his opponent¡¯s magic. But Ebony moved first.
In his mind, he had to end this as fast as he could. Whether it was her charge-up of vitality or her sword art, she grew stronger over time till she burned out. Once again, dragging it out till she burned out of energy would defeat the purpose of his challenge.
Without fancy spells, he punched her right in the face. It wasn¡¯t unexpected that she could react and do a twin swing from the right to push his punch away but he didn¡¯t pull back or swerve. Her swords clanged onto a fist, but the same fist seemed to fade through the first and flew right into her mask and blew it up.
The mask flew through her head, her upper body turning into flames.
¡°AHHH!! YOU KILLED HER!¡±
Ebony ignored Hector''s obnoxiously loud scream.
Ebony didn¡¯t see and recall wrong, she could really turn her physical body into pure elemental flames. Something he couldn¡¯t even imagine doing. It was nothing like the types of spells he could do.
His wrist that had two slashes barely had a skin cut but he already confirmed that her clan skill actually perfected her need for a charge-up. She hit his Phantasmal Shade but still left a mark on his physical body. She must have reacted, hit the first hand, noticed it was just a ¡®shade¡¯ and reacted once again to deflect his attack to no avail. Her Core Skill no longer needed a charge up of vitality!
This was from her advice, ¡°just punch away¡±. He had the body for it so his style didn¡¯t need to be so evasive and flexible if there was no need to.
Without letting her headless body regathered, he micro-flickered and back-hooked her midsection. Covering his legs with sharpened ice, he made his body an Armament and the force of his kick carved deep into the mountain below. It forced that part of her to turn into flames as well.
Realising he wasn¡¯t getting anywhere, Icicle was in his hands and he used Crystalline Avalanche at her solid mask instead. Infernal Cleaver Art from Cinderash was showing through the cold flame slash. The heavy cube helped him greatly here and he didn¡¯t lack any gravitational support. It was hardly surprising that her swords could get through the current Tempestuous Lull Pelt. This defensive gravity spell worked better against blunt attacks or objects with a bigger surface area.
He didn¡¯t bat an eye to the scary new halo that was easily trapped within a box of Perennial Everfrost Armaments and a cyclical gravitational force. He couldn¡¯t freeze it since it was her blood and fire but it could do nothing to him.
The mask created a deep crater in the rocky valley but he didn¡¯t let up or so he hoped. She physically stunned him for a fraction with killing intent, he didn¡¯t even know that was possible or effective against him but his body and mind locked up. Her body reformed around the mask and swords in the meantime and his mind woke up in time to stop her blood halo from escaping its seal.
She burst out flashes of sword thrusts at his eyes, mouth, elbows, under his armpits, in between his ribs as if they were all coming at the same time. Ebony couldn¡¯t take these with his body, slashes were fine but her sword thrusts were backed by at least a tier 4 skill and all her augmentations.
A pair of long knives formed within his hands while Icicle floated by him. He parried every single thrust with Emberblade Dance Art but it didn¡¯t give him much momentum and the lightning burns intensified through the Perennial Everfrost Armaments he formed. The flames generated by friction burst out but Xin was the one affected by the clash of two flames.
She attempted to control his blood but it was already clear that she had no way to override his magic resistance or combat his magical supremacy in the surroundings.
Although he knew it wouldn¡¯t work, he flooded the space around them in flaming petals in hopes of limiting her movements and possibly eating up her focus in trying to keep herself unfrozen. The battlefield turned blue.
In their speedy clashes, he reformed his right knife into a pick and swung it at her belly. Eruption Pick Art, cutting through her skin-tight bodysuit, his armament was coated in black blood that exploded and blew his arm up while she scattered into flames and reformed herself around her mask again. The lightning zapped throughout his body and gave him internal burns. Her blood infected his body.
It merely scratched her. She had intentionally let him hit her.
His eruption of flames and mana on her injury led to a collision of flames as she transmuted her body once more.
But if there was any consolation, he was not disadvantaged when it comes to strength. If this was indeed her Core Skill no longer needing a charge up and she was at her peak physical state whenever she was in this state, he was stronger with his body enhancements within his Domain for once. Only her reactions and arms were faster than him, he was faster in overall movements.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
With her loss of control in her blood spell, he froze it and expelled every drop of blood while he took the thrusts from a distance for momentum. He could regenerate an arm extremely fast, just not faster or as aggressively as she got back on the offence.
Ebony¡¯s eyelids raised a bit at the sight of something new, six slashes flew at his blown-up arm. It seemed like she got a new active sword skill other than her piercing thrust skill. When he blocked with his regenerated arm, he was pushed back and wounds exploded across his ribs and chest.
¡®My regenerated arm has no strength in it¡her blood spell infected my vitality somehow, so even if I regenerate my limbs they can¡¯t get back to strength in a short time.¡¯ He didn¡¯t let it get to him, melding his weak arm in blazing flames he controlled it like a model. The loss in power was countered rather easily when the power of his mind and magic was greater but this kind of weakness was very easily targeted by his opponent.
In his Domain and with the presence of plentiful gravity mana in his cube of a weapon, he forcefully pushed and redirected her around the air, smashing her into as many flame petals as he could.
She countered every change in gravitational direction with her fiery blood wings and wind magic. Her ability to move in 3-dimensional space was surprising since the amount of practice she could have on Teheil should have been close to nil. A flap of her wings scattered all of his petals but it took just a thought from him to spawn more as near to her magic body as he could.
Icicle back in hand, Ethereal Arctic Rivertide Art continued to blend deeper with Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts. Leaving a shade of his art, as the skill description said, was actually scarily consistent and similar to his mother¡¯s delayed strikes. He gained enough time to get his arm and bearings back to charge back into close combat.
Phantasmal Shade was only an illusion right now, as long as he was augmented he would leave shades. Shades were like afterimages that could affect the physical world. However, it was ineffective against Xin, even if he kicked once and she saw five kicks, she could simply parry all five without an issue. More often than not, the first one she parried was the real one anyway. Intuition that bordered foresight countered reactive formlessness by a great degree.
Ethereal Fluid Blitz grew and stacked his momentum and strikes.
Any decisive blows he would¡¯ve landed made her transmute into flames. Her swords must have been reforged some time ago or they would¡¯ve shattered with their current powers, just like Icicle requiring a few moments to recover after a single swing. Albeit a swing on mana and elemental steroids.
When he successfully forced her arms to transmute into flames to knock her swords out, her swords spawned as an image on her mask. Side by side, they were vertically cutting her mask in two. Right side is red, the other black. Currently, it was shining bright red.
The gears of Accelerated Corporeal-Illusory Battleforge spun faster and faster.
¡®At this rate, her sword art would allow her to grow beyond me. I am still not desperate and determined enough. How pathetic of me.¡¯ He shut the simulations off, shut his mireloom factory off and fully compressed his Domain, Fabrication of Frostblaze Embodiment turned his skin to ice glitters shattering into the air.
It was cold.
His muscles and bones were the next to freeze and be blown into smithereens but his vitality constantly regenerated them around his mana chassis. He was a light blue glow stick on fire right now.
Then the same was happening to his chassis.
But he calmly took her fierce strikes to the heart, neck and head. His momentum reached his new limit extremely fast whenever she was his opponent, and this time, she couldn¡¯t use brute force to break his momentum. His arms and legs were coated in ice and that was enough for his skill Perennial Everfrost Armament to recognise it as an armament. Emberblade Dance Art worked great when he used his body to gather the momentum he needed.
He wrapped his Domain and mental hold over his opponent. He was banking on a classic Elcrian warrior with mana usage ¡®Dispel¡¯ should work to hold her transmuted flames form in place or even force her materialisation.
Mana alone might not work, but the real magic could be worked with Will.
The censored Pseudo-Imitation Roar was unleashed as an additional precaution to stun her flame transition when he faked out the sky fall of Crystalline Avalanche with Icicle.
¡®What is?¡¯ He saw a cloudy flicker in her gaze before her single sword thrust aimed to snap Icicle¡¯s handle shot out. He was caught lacking when she met his sudden surge in augmentation by killing himself with a spell stronger than his body could contain with a similar surge.
Did she have an additional form of augmentation he didn¡¯t know about?
Icicle snapped, a few times over. Intensified mana augmented physical movements strengthened the so-called traces of mana and Phantasmal Shade. The effect translated over for Icicle.
Prepared for this, Icicle had long been Melded with Frostblaze and it was also a flexible Perennial Everfrost Armament. All the gravity mana he could control from his cube supported the Crystalline Avalanche, it will fall regardless.
And it did.
Her swords seemed to be everywhere after she broke Icicle¡¯s handle that reconnected, spawn right back in front of her. His blow connected, pushed them both down and smashed right down the middle of her mask. The reflexive transmutation had nowhere to go, packed into a ball by vibrations, gravity and Will.
When the resistance was gone, he let his Will go and watched her mask and bundle of extremely hot black blood hit the ground.
Ebony¡¯s chassis was a quarter gone, he didn¡¯t have control over how much it burned and his augmentation was balanced all around his body so the degradation from mana poisoning was also balanced.
And he still stayed in this form and up in the air.
The mental output made him too tired to waste any additional spells if he could help it. He let it rest for a short moment in case she wasn¡¯t down for the count.
¡®So much for being able to fight for months.¡¯ He had never exhausted himself so badly in such a short time. His mana was still good to go but the Will required for this was intense.
His internal clock caught up and told him two and a half minutes had passed since their exchange had begun. He had hoped to end it within a minute but she still pushed him.
There were many subtle skills they didn¡¯t use against each other but they weren¡¯t holding anything back. He suppressed just about all her magic simply with control of his Domain and Will. Other than internal augmentations and those contact spells she could still activate close range within her magic body''s range. She might not be as magically inclined as him, but she was no slouch compared to any other mage on the planet.
He had prepared for some kind of Intent Domain, but there was none unless he counted the fact she could stop or affect his vitality flow. Just intensified and manifested a killing intent that stopped him of all creatures. The transmutation that made his blows hit nothing but air dragged it out immensely but it was her ridiculous sword art that shined most. The speed and strength of her blows scale a few times higher in just a couple of seconds, and it only accelerates.
Her body doesn¡¯t appear to have the limits that he has under intense augmentations, nor was it showing signs of wear and tear as her sword combos stacked. He noticed that he couldn¡¯t break her combinations like he used to, allowing her technique to shine.
¡®Learning from masters and fighting against them and more warriors for ten years just isn¡¯t the same. Practical combat is still the best.¡¯ Ebony understood the limitations of having his clones learn information, and his body incorporating it.
Her blood explosions were deadly enough to kill him even in his compressed and Domain-buffed augmentations. And he was only inflicted with a small amount of her blood.
Her blood was spread across her swords and he had some on him but she couldn¡¯t keep them on him with gravity repulsion and frost flames. The most they did was burn away the cold flaming petals in her immediate surroundings.
When he saw her body reform and the red in her hair fading, he didn¡¯t let the compressed Domain go. A black ball formed from her mask.
She was conjuring blood in his domain. However, it was expected. His Will was not strong enough to prevent her conjuration of elements completely. Her mask likely helped in some form. Nothing shocking when Grandmasters don¡¯t usually start using Domains. Compressed mana didn¡¯t equate to condensed Will after all.
¡®She fainted but her mask hasn¡¯t taken the loss. Well. This should keep those above happy.¡¯ Ebony stopped casting all his augmentations and commanded the flaming petals around the air to fly towards them. They formed a tornado 50 metres in diameter to match the expanding ball that grew hotter and brighter white.
He never used this much bursting ice mana at once before. In the eye of the tornado was his gravitation path, the tornado was the body of the flamethrower he unleashed at the blood ball that was melting the rocks around and under her.
The cold flames that hammered against the blood fireball sizzled and the leftovers froze the ground before Ebony took the remaining back to cycle back into his flamethrower. There was no need for mass destruction of the environment and the mana had better places for use, such as freezing this impending blood ball.
He underestimated the amount of mental power this one spell took but the first glint in light from the freezing of blood encouraged his attempt. The pure force of mere blue flames jetting out of his flamethrower and cycloning back into itself was enough to shake the air and earth.
When the resistance fell, the blood ball was controlled by him since it was frozen.
Landing on a knee because he had no legs below the knees anymore. With his chassis broken too, there was no regenerating them for at least a week.
So he formed a pair of ice legs instead. His internal organs were more troublesome, he could do nothing about the lost functions there and would have to tough it out with pure vitality till he recovered. There was no medicine for a partial mana-being available here or anywhere the Xengs could access either. Fortunately, most of his brain was intact.
Weakly, Ning Xin patted the ground without raising an arm. She woke up amid her unconscious casting.
He laid beside her and watched the frozen blue sky with a now untrapped burning blood halo in the middle.
Ebony was certain he wasn¡¯t in a trance but the moon started to show itself before he realised. They lay down for a long time.
His Myriad Bracelet had been beeping a lot but he hadn¡¯t wanted to check the messages that were sent through Eidolon. Having an ¡®online¡¯ account had no limits to the number of contacts, unlike a callstone.
¡°What happened at the end there?¡± He referred to the moment she gained a surge of strength. Her aim failed, she wasn¡¯t supposed to aim for Icicle¡¯s handle but had to change at the last moment. She got distracted which was¡quite improbable.
¡°My Sword Art evolved. My core developed.¡±
Ebony smiled, perhaps wryly.
His core also developed, but only after the battle and not right at the end.
¡°Did you get another enhancement ability? It was weird, I didn¡¯t feel any mana nor did I feel your burst of vitality for the buff.¡±
¡°Haha¡I also just learned that not long ago. Why did you think I didn¡¯t leave the Altarbound Kin immediately, or even kill them? At least, the high priestess for taking over my body.¡±
¡°I know the priestess fed you when you were starving to death when your gluttony overrode part of your mind. You said she fed you her flesh to wake you up from that ordeal since her flesh was special.¡± Ebony replied. This was something he learned only after they left the Altarbound Kin. When they were working for the money for their ticket off the planet of Teheil.
¡°That is part of it. But it is also because my Intuition stopped me. The entire reason my Intution made me walk in their direction was for this. I didn¡¯t know at the time until I got this skill. Ebony, you already know. On their Altar of Might¡I am the Symbol.¡±
¡°...That makes sense. But, you aren¡¯t an altarbound kin. Nor do you have their horns to draw power from their faith.¡±
¡°I was drinking the High Priestesses blood. After many years, it¡¯s not just stats that my body took. There is also a remnant of their abilities. I purified most of it with my mask since it would likely mutate my body in all the wrong ways but I created something new. It took me 7 years. Letting her take over my body in a moment of folly was also something my Intuition made me do¡I used the experience of her taking over my body, using part of her skills with mine to¡using your words, enlighten myself about some working principles of her alien skills.¡±
¡°Is it a¡never before seen skill?¡± Ebony wanted to ask if it was a Unique Skill but she already stopped him twice.
She shook his head even though they might not be talking about the same thing. ¡°It¡¯s called Inherited Stamp. A type of vitality-based blood magic. Their physique, I learned enough about and conjured blood with that ability and stamped it on myself to use the same abilities. Part of it. Oh I meant I stamped it inside my mask! Not my body!¡± She panicked at the end of her sentence.
He didn¡¯t get why she panicked but he pulled her back to lie beside him to calm her down.
¡®Physique can also mean genes¡she reads some genetic traits and can copy it for herself? So she copied their horn¡¯s ability to draw power from faith and those altars of theirs. No, it can also be because she is the Symbol of Might itself, not because of the horn or the altar. I wonder if elemental affinities are a genetic trait? Can she copy that? Can she copy my mana regenerative abilities?¡¯
¡°Back to you, what was that? It was like you phased through my swords but there was also resistance.¡±
¡°Already Sovereign Arts, Phantasmal Shade. Traces of mana give these ''shades'' a more materialised form, I''m still learning how to leave these particular traces manually. What did you not use?¡±
¡°Vitality Pilfer. You didn¡¯t use your vortex either¡and your attacks don¡¯t have the impact they used to have.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t overuse vibrational energy, don¡¯t want to break your swords. What spell is that?¡±
¡°The blood I splashed on you, it contacted your blood when it burst your arm up. I can drain your vitality and the vitality will be cleansed and purified by my mask before I can use it like my own. As for the last spell, Blood Star, I can transmute during the blasts effectively taking no damage from my flames and blood. I was wary of your gravitational vortex because I doubt I could resist the pull if I was a bundle of bloody fire.¡±
He was secretly worried of the same problem, this was a duel, not manslaughter. ¡°How do you do that anyway, transmutation.¡±
¡°Transmutation is my father¡¯s ability. He¡¯s not a baseline human. I mean, I didn¡¯t know that until recently. So they keep calling me weak only in terms of baseline strength and speed. However, they tested that my overall traits were not more than 30% lower than the average Ning, salvageable with a few evolutions. I don¡¯t understand those lectures.¡±
¡°I can summarise. Humans equal a jug of water, they can be juiced in different ways but their total volume is always a cup. Dwarves equal a bucket, most likely stronger physically but whatever is inside the bucket can change. Elves are like a bathtub and we are halfway between a bucket and a bathtub. This vessel size depends on genetics, its contents are likely similar and a mixture of direct biological parents.¡± He realised this was the physical manifestation of their evolution process.
¡°We¡¯re smaller than the Elves? Don¡¯t seem like it.¡± She frowned audibly.
¡°Traits don¡¯t equate to fighting strength. For example, I heard a few direct-line Tetramyths have even greater baseline traits than the Elves but for them, increasing their strength is more evolutionarily expensive compared to other traits, their breeding ability for one, and maybe even the ease of levelling up. The Elves might be a bathtub of vegetable juice, but we might be buckets full of plum juice.¡± Ebony explained the topic in a way she would understand.
¡°Is plum juice stronger?¡±
¡°It¡¯s tastier.¡±
¡°That is true¡¡± She gulped, drinking water from her mask. ¡°Um¡what now?¡±
Chapter 379: Abruptly Dropping By
Hector screamed himself silly.
He had rushed here the moment he got wind of this duel for a woman¡¯s hand. As he was training in this region, it didn¡¯t take him long to get over here. Taking a mountain summit as his viewing spot, he called some people who he thought might be interested in watching a battle of immense proportions such as his cousin and family members. No one was free since they had their royal duties unlike him.
Old man Wilson was likely drunk in some alleyway.
Scarlet¡¯s friend, Athena was nowhere to be found and he didn¡¯t have her contact.
Hector realised how he didn¡¯t know if Ebony had any other friends besides war buddies or people he helped. He knew there were a bunch of knights and imperial mages who admired Ebony during a period where the man with a dead expression taught them his movement skills and mana manipulation.
In fact, Hector was aware of one particular knight who made a small name for himself after he got a rather good hang of the movement ability. It was too useful at crossing distances and moving about terrain like a battlefield without getting hindered. This knight¡¯s story was unbelievable. Rumours were that he met a smart monster that beat the movement technique into him when he woke up half dead in a forest while on an imperial mission.
As for Hector, he knew the truth of the matter and that this monster kappa really existed and even helped Ebony.
However, none of these people were close to Ebony.
Hector went wide-eyed when Ebony seemingly killed Scarlet in one blow, turning her into a red flash.
¡°Ah?¡± He looked on at the weird flames, the mystical spell of turning oneself into an element itself was unheard of.
It didn¡¯t take another second before he screamed yet again. Their blows were being carried out at an intense pace but he could see everything with just 4 elements augmenting his sight and his senses.
The very mountain he was on was in danger and he barely hopped onto another before Ebony¡¯s ice seal on the blood halo exploded only for another to form and seal the halo again.
Taking the situation in strides, Hector cheered out loud when Ebony drew blood against Scarlet for the first time. However, he quickly ducked when the blood drawn was just a trap into a secondary explosion that filled the sky with fire.
Sure, Ebony and Scarlet were unharmed by the hot flames but he was scorched and the mountains were even worse. If it wasn¡¯t for the fact that Ebony¡¯s overbearing mana filled the entire space and counteracting against the flames and heat, there might be molten earth flooding the range.
¡®Unharmed is a bit of a stretch with that missing arm¡I know battle maniacs but these two are crazy.¡¯ Hector knew that the exploding flames were just side effects, the main force of the blast was contained within a far smaller radius.
¡°WOAH! They copied me!¡± Hector saw the 3 slashes crossed over each other or perhaps it was 6. It looked like a flower blossom that tore Ebony¡¯s torso up. It was stacked blows, very similar to his mega panch that had long evolved but he still called it the same. Ebony¡¯s punches and kicks looked as if multiple afterimages had physical force behind them but it still felt like they copied him.
¡°Can you shut up already!?¡± His spine tingled but and his mind was blown. Fear took over his body when he felt the person¡¯s presence behind him.
He was too late to do anything before his head was knocked by something hard.
Falling to the ground, he managed to roll and got into a combat stance. Minus his shaking limbs.
¡®What the ell? Who the?¡¯ Hector had travelled and trained a lot over the past decade. He knew that the Elven Matriarch was a bona-fide Emperor or Empress in her case. He also knew that their continent held quite a few known areas with Emperor-ranked monsters.
Vermin Paradise held a few but they never bothered leaving and was deep underground.
The ¡®forbidden¡¯ lands such as Hoarfrost Glades and Fragadal Sea had more than a couple.
Lacuna Expanse the World Dungeon contained many. Hector even met 2 with Oplot around.
In fact, the very mountain range they were at contained a famous Emperor-ranked monster that was sealed by the previous head of the Lord family together with the current Elven Matriarch in the past.
But no creature had given him such immense fear.
Not to mention hitting his head and letting him live.
When he turned back to see a masked person, he was enlightened.
Another Xeng.
¡°Wh-how did I offend you, miss?¡±
¡°I¡¯m getting scolded because you keep shouting while they are watching! Now come with me!¡± The Xeng woman stomped her feet.
She doesn¡¯t seem that old. Hector received classes on the Xeng, like many nobles. He took a second to recall the mask and matched it with a name. Shi Ling.
They didn¡¯t have many people. Shi Ling was the person who walked the lands of Elva before Kong Jing and Scarlet. The Imperial Nobles didn¡¯t know much more about their culture but they knew that every generation, or every few generations in recent times. There would be one or two of them roaming about.
Why Elcra?
Just because they had some history here? Perhaps. But Hector wasn¡¯t one to care.
He was more worried because he was carried by his collar and he didn¡¯t dare resist. Before long, he screamed again when they were flying higher than he¡¯d ever jumped.
Unlike his cousin and his dear combat-crazy friends, he couldn¡¯t fly! He could jump really high for sure, but flying through pure mana manipulation wasn¡¯t supposed to be that easy. He was not an outlier in this sense.
¡®The skies are scary! Aren¡¯t there more Emperors in the skies than lands?! Ahh!! I¡¯m going to die today.¡¯ Hector miserably looked as he got closer and closer to the sun¡
Why are there more suns..and moons for that matter?
By the time he fell on the floor, his entire existence shrunk. He vomited when surrounded by creatures with auras that far surpassed Shi Ling¡¯s and she already scared him silly.
The overflowing essences wherever he was lying were suffocating him. His body, mind and soul. None of it was spared. He felt like his soul was about to crumble inside out.
Until a hand was placed on his shoulder and every bit of pressure was lifted.
¡°Boy. Ah, Lord family bloodline. I see you support their marriage. Come watch with us, but keep your mouth shut and let us focus.¡±
¡°Th-thank you.¡± Hector knew he was in deep trouble but was saved by this person. When he wiped his mouth, he picked himself off the floor and turned around.
Shocked to the bones, he seemed to be looking at a familiar face. Unmasked.
¡®Isn¡¯t-isn¡¯t this Ebony¡¯s mother? These can¡¯t be his ice models right, I only saw that once or twice.¡¯ He looked around and found himself in a weird room. Chairs were surrounding a lightscreen in front, dozens¡almost a hundred masked people were sitting here and watching the lightscreen.
He saw Ebony and Scarlet immediately. These people were all watching in comfort while he was having front row seats but this screen was able to capture the battle from numerous angles. Safely.
Stolen novel; please report.
Hector¡¯s knees went weak when he saw a few of Ebony¡¯s mothers sitting side by side. Something told him those masked ladies around these women had the same faces.
On the other side of the room, there were people he didn¡¯t recognise but he recognised one mask. Scarlet¡¯s grandmother. This woman overstayed in Elcra and helped them on some occasions despite her age.
There were a bunch of others masked and unmasked, all intently watching the bridal battle being carried out.
¡°Sit here.¡± Shi Ling patted the seat beside hers.
Hector didn¡¯t dare to disobey or ask questions. If their aura could put him to the floor, he was already happy he was offered a seat. That¡¯s when he realised, ¡®no one¡¯s leaking any overflowing essence. I¡¯m on the ground due to¡their presence alone.¡¯
Although it felt like a lifetime had passed, barely a few seconds had passed because the battle between the two awkwardly unsocial lovers hadn¡¯t progressed much since his eyes left them.
His ears perked up and listened to the commentary happening. Not many people talked. Only the person who put her hands on his shoulder and another woman across the room from where he was sitting.
By the looks of it, all the people here were sitting in groups of their family members because all those unmasked had similar faces. None were as identical to each other as the women who were sitting near him or those directly across the room.
¡°How are you planning to fix that descendant of yours? Her blood is thinned but it¡¯s salvageable. That husband from the sub-Bloodseeker Nosferan race isn¡¯t as shabby as I recall. Her mind and magic are horrendous but at least her sword skill is way better than anything you Nings ever produced. I have a Mythic Heartroot Lotus, it¡¯ll reform her heart and make natural potential traits related to her heart raising cheaper.¡±
¡®What is a mythic heartroot lotus? Does it exist in myths? Trait¡cheaper?¡¯ Hector was confused. He had never heard of the Bloodseeker Nosferan race, were they referring to Scarlet¡¯s father who wasn¡¯t a Xeng?
They were also sadly talking down on one of the greatest feats of magic that an Imperial mage could do. However, Scarlet¡¯s magic indeed looked underwhelming compared to Ebony¡¯s spatial control of mana.
¡°Ha, why don¡¯t you talk about your nephew? Never seen you Shis produce someone with such a pathetically fragile and weak body. Well, his Will is okay for a grandmaster. We never produced a Domain mage as a grandmaster before. His Domain is flimsy but I suppose he¡¯s already ahead of any curve. Mythic Willshard Willow Crystal. No¡how about a Mythic Willshard Ember Crystal, it should be suitable to condense his Will and give a better quality to his flames. Those cold flames are¡nostalgic but he¡¯s not using it well.¡±
This unmasked lady was also utterly beautiful and had a gentle expression that resembled his great-great-grandmother the Life Queen. Unlike most people in the room, her side of the room mostly had black hair. Hector wondered if they were a family with darkness or shadow magic users.
Hector didn¡¯t know what kind of perception they were using. As he was covered in Ebony¡¯s Domain earlier, he knew how tough it was to conjure any elements outside his body. Fortunately, Hector was mainly an enhancement or augmentation mage so it didn¡¯t hinder his ability to run away or protect himself.
Weak body?
The man below was facing fully augmented Scarlet¡¯s swords with his bare body and barely received wounds except for those active skills and even then, he only started getting hurt after Scarlet ramped up her power.
¡°Nonsense, of course, he¡¯s ahead. Flimsy my soft butt, none of our descendants can produce a domain that comprehensive at that age or level. Deal.¡±
¡°None of mine were born on Earth. Looks like it''s not a bad trade-off to lose strength for more esoteric traits. Neither can use a Mythic material without dying.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know about your descendant but look at him, he¡¯s not dying from a creepy rock.¡±
¡°Have you become blind with age? My girl¡¯s unharmed and your boy burning his very frame, losing organs and limbs. Unlike your stingy clan, my girl Xing went to the Blood Realm and got her granddaughter a whole tub of Her blood.¡± They were talking over the climax of the battle right now so Hector¡¯s focus slipped a bit away from their conversation.
Hector was very clear at what he was looking at, Ebony was facing mana poisoning. This happened when the body couldn¡¯t handle the mana it was augmented by. Hector has been faced with this problem ever since he was unclassed. Now, as a Grandmaster with 12 elements at his beck and call he was even more troubled. 7 concurrently was enough to start killing his body and he already had Fortifications against mana poisoning.
He envied Ebony since he found out the cold-faced man said he never felt a problem in his body no matter how compressed the mana he used to augment himself was. But it looks like this friend of his has gotten to the point where his magic exceeded his body.
He was watching the screen too and noticed poor silence all of a sudden. The woman who patted his shoulder and was arguing with the beautiful unmasked lady broke the silence and changed her language to their own, ¡°Your descendant, how does she have a whiff of divinity¡you Nings knew long ago didn¡¯t you?¡±
It felt like a field of flowers bloomed when all the beautiful ladies near this exceedingly beautiful woman smiled together. Pride.
They might have assumed he didn¡¯t know their language but as a Royal, it was part of his education to learn modern elvish, dwarvish and a few common languages of the beastmen. Most of these languages had phased out, not even these races with the exception of Elves used them since the Empire was internally peaceful.
As for the Xeng, he wasn¡¯t fluent in their language and couldn¡¯t speak it but he understood what they were saying. He might have mistranslated some words or misunderstood some undertones.
All Hector saw was Scarlet breaking off Ebony¡¯s sword handle. How did these people come to the conclusion of¡divinity?
Did he mistranslate or mishear them?
¡°Now she¡¯s a good match with a man of Shi. Anyway, Her blood? It will have to be diluted with a few planet¡¯s worth of oceans you crazy woman. Hmph, I¡¯d admit that is a praisable feat from the two Nings and Kong boy.¡± The woman ignored the smiles and swapped languages again. He wondered if they spoke in Gia just for him.
¡°Hahaha, I thank you on his behalf.¡± An unmasked man softly laughed. He was sitting a few seats behind the Ning clan as far as Hector was reading the room.
While there was a hint of laughter in his voice, his face was¡unseen. Hector was sure he was peeking at this person¡¯s face but no face reflected in his eyes. It was like he was looking at two mirrors facing each other. Endlessly seeking for something to see, but nothing surfaced. The more he looked, the more he realised he wasn¡¯t looking at anyone. This person seemed disconnected from this room.
It was freaky!
Also, these two women were talking so fast he wasn¡¯t quite catching everything they were saying. It didn¡¯t help that they were speaking in Gia, a language newer to him than most.
¡°Why¡why are they so intent on winning?¡± Hector couldn¡¯t believe his eyes. Now that he had almost a minute to calm his mind, the question was raised again as his focus was pushed back to the duel.
He thought he understood them, the Xengs as battle lovers. But to burn one¡¯s very life away for a battle against someone they want to protect seems¡stupid. To hurt each other that intently, that intensely was something he couldn¡¯t wrap his mind around. And he loved combat¡apparently not.
¡°We can¡¯t help it. That¡¯s how much he wants her, and he needs to prove it to her family.¡± His seat partner muttered in reply.
Gulping, Hector was not afraid to be the social butterfly that he was. ¡°Proof¡prove that he is worthy? That he is strong enough to protect her?¡±
¡°You can say that. And also to birth a stronger, more perfect generation. No better way than a battle.¡±
¡°Is that what you¡¯re all looking for? In a partner?¡± Surely they like more than just strength in a husband or wife¡
¡°Hmm, I can¡¯t speak for everyone but I would like it if my future partner is strong. That leaves me less worried they would die while I didn¡¯t. well¡I¡¯m told we don¡¯t really get that chance. None of my family members wedded to a stronger partner.¡±
¡®I see, so the fear of losing close ones. I hear the Xengs are close-knit, seems like its true. And they are fragile in a sense.¡¯ Hector kept those thoughts to himself but he was stared at by more gazes than he¡¯d like. Instantly, he became worried that they were capable of reading minds.
¡°How about you, what are you looking for in a woman?¡±
¡°Good company I suppose. Someone I see myself spending every day with without getting bored. Someone supportive.¡± Hector replied with the first things that came to mind
¡°You¡I remember your culture is polygamous, well that is a no-go zone for us. Absolutely ridiculous.¡±
¡°Hey hey, not all of us! Besides, nowadays they are mutually respecting couples and they have each other¡¯s approval.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand. Did you hear what Miss Ning said earlier?¡±
¡°Scarlet? What are you referring to?¡±
¡°About her making Uncle hers. Besides pride, it is also because we are naturally possessive people. We like it when our partners are the same.¡±
¡°I was pretty sure possessiveness over your being is disrespectful to your pride as a woman no? In Tidal, possessive men are undesirable amongst women because that just makes them feel like objects.¡±
¡°Why? Isn¡¯t that a good manly trait? I¡¯m sure Auntie¡young Auntie over there is swooning inside by how much Uncle is showing his desire to make her his.¡±
¡°Is-is that so?¡± Hector felt a disconnect. Not just from a personality or individual differences, this lady Shi Ling was thinking very differently from the women he knew. Then again, he already knew they had different mindsets.
¡°He won.¡± Hector saw Ebony blowing the earth and mountains with a ridiculously large spell and he kept it going till resistance died down.
¡°Congratulations to the Shi and Ning clan.¡± Many people behind Hector stood up and gave their congratulations at the same time.
Actually, they said way more flowery words in their language that Hector didn¡¯t know how to translate. There were some about harmony, some about growing old, and others about perfect match or union that was blessed by The First.
Hector knew his own Empire¡¯s history, this ¡®First¡¯ was a topic or person to be thread carefully so he kept silent. Now that he thought about it¡wouldn¡¯t he be able to see who the previous leaders of Xienor were right here and now? Most of them were presumably alive and were sculpted in the Empire¡¯s Sovereign Temple of Heroes. Hector would recognise the masks once he saw them since he saw them every time he was forced to go to the Sovereign Temple.
These women were once the strongest individuals in Elcra.
Chapter 380: Mood
Hector took some time to find them. Most of them were at the very back of the room.
Shang Ling, The Eagle-Eyed Empress.
The Empire of Ebbing Waves Thirty-Second Sovereign, the greatest master of air magic removed the biggest aerial threats throughout the world¡or planet with Hector¡¯s new understanding. Both Elva and Tova were generally safe from the old Emperor-ranked aerial monsters that left destroyed cities in their wake in the past before Navin became King and set barriers over settlements.
She had not been social and other than a few notable events, there weren¡¯t many stories about her.
Zhen Ruhui, The Whimsical Arbiter and Twenty-Eighth Sovereign. Her powers were not recorded or mentioned by word. She was known to be exceedingly capricious and ruthless.
She might have reduced the Noble population by about¡40% when she was around. Although those old Noble houses all had¡problems so she practically cleaned them up for the Empire. She was far from kind though, despite having the strength she left a town to burn under a monster attack because she was apparently just walking by and the town wasn¡¯t her problem. In the excerpts left behind, she thought she shouldn¡¯t disturb a proper hunt. ¡°They should have seen it coming when they gave an extermination order on its offspring.¡±
After the fire-breathing insect that ran out from Vermin Paradise burned the town down, when she might have been right there she watched the insect scream out to the skies in rage with babies and children in its claws. She let the monster cry for a minute before ending its life. This was a famous story still being told in Tidal, even reenacted in theatres though that might have skewed the truth of the story.
Hector didn¡¯t expect this lady to be short, barely reaching his chest if they stood up. But what he was speechless about was how meek this masked lady was sitting in between a couple. A handsome man with broad shoulders and an exceedingly young-looking woman.. ¡°Look at them! So young and already married, when are you bringing a man home.¡± The woman chided the meek Arbiter.
Hector quickly looked away when the lady felt his gaze.
Guo Yan, The Pillar. The Twenty-Fifth Sovereign and only male Xeng in the Sovereign Temple of Heroes. He integrated with the people of Elcra a lot more than past Xengs. When he was active on Elcra, the war with the Trolls was almost as big as the one that just happened years ago. At that time, there wasn¡¯t even a King ranked person other than the Elves who had a few but didn¡¯t care for much other than their forests. He was known to be someone who supported the soldiers and civilians alike.
The Pillar was not wearing a mask like Shang Ling and Zhen Ruhui. He had beautiful women around him, likely his wife and family members. Hector wondered what could leave a scar on this man¡¯s forehead, he simply recognised the man because of the mask attached to his hip. ¡®What element did he use again¡some kind of black gem or jewel, it was classified under stone or metal magic if I¡¯m not wrong.¡¯
There were many people he simply didn¡¯t recognise due to the lack of masks or his history knowledge. However, one other mask starkly stood out. It was very different from what was engraved onto the face of the statue in the Sovereign Temple but he knew the moment he saw it. There was no name leftover of this person. The person who could be said to have started the history of the Empire. The person past Elcrians called the First and had all their temples destroyed by her, The Cruel Empress. To this day, she had Temples of her and people who believed in her more than they believed in the Life Queen.
She was sitting nearby, in fact, she was directly behind him and Hector had a fright when he figured out who she was.
¡®How is she alive!? A descendant who inherits a mask? I don¡¯t think they inherit masks¡but the first Sovereign was at least¡four thousand years ago. Even if she levels and evolves faster than any Elcrains back then, she is still human. I think Mal said humans lived up to about 1000 to 1200 years of age as an Emperor while they seemed to have appraised us Elcrians to be slightly above in this aspect and might have up to 1500 based on our lifespans as Masters, Grandmasters and Kings. Is she¡above an Emperor? The evolution passed that¡but I don¡¯t feel that difference that I feel in front of a more evolved being¡like these two older women.¡¯
¡°The bloodline of the Lord family still runs?¡±
Hector shivered when he was caught staring for too long and the person he stared at addressed him. He felt naked but also thanked the fact that a mask was blocking his view of this person¡¯s visage. His gut told him he wouldn¡¯t be able to take it.
¡°Your ancestor was a good lad, and that barrier kid is making quite the name for himself. He is the first man of Elcra besides Oplot who¡¯s not a native to be known in the bigger world. Nice to see Elcra moving forward.¡±
Hector felt some pride, it was not something recent. Navin had been in contact with the bigger world outside of Elcra even before the recent events. The Tetramyths uninvited appearance accelerated and strengthened this connection before the Royals made it public knowledge that Elva, Tova and the sea between them wasn¡¯t all there was to the world.
¡®Wait a minute¡how does she know all that with just one look at me? I mean¡the old lady said that out loud earlier but then how did she know?¡¯ Hector was afraid to ask The Cruel Empress. Her words half confirmed that she was one and the same, the Empire¡¯s first Sovereign. She was and is still a figure of religion in some towns. A few Noble families prayed to her statues in smaller temples more so than the main Sovereign Temple of Heroes.
Hector wasn¡¯t sure why. Even though Elves have a long life and probably remember clearer, it was common knowledge to those with a long lineage that the Elves hated Xengs. Though he didn¡¯t know the reason. Thinking about it, the current Elven Matriarch might not even have been born since the Cruel Empress was moving about. They change and go back to their homeworld every so often over the course of human history. In terms of human history, this figure was someone from roughly 40 generations ago when lifespans and life expectancy was a lot lower.
Yet, there were still humans who worshipped her. Mainly human, for seemingly no apparent reasons. It wasn¡¯t like the Cruel Empress was making any new feats or helping anyone on Elva. Then again, the people who still worshipped her are few in number.
¡°Ye-yes.¡± He managed to make an awkward reply. But this wasn¡¯t like him, he thought. ¡°The Lord family was around for so long?¡±
¡°Hm, you don¡¯t even know your family history? The Lords have been around on Elva before the second generation Xengs showed up. When we of the third generation were young, Xienor was built but Elva was a mess. I still remember being called the Eastern Barbarians. It was thanks to that that we gave our group of clans a collective name. Was I 18 or 19 when we went challenging everyone back then? Ahh those were some good days¡¡±
¡°Miss Cruel Empress¡actually, we never got your name?¡± Hector was screaming inside, couldn¡¯t he think of something else to ask right now? Why would he call her that to her face? He must be sick today.
Hector heard half a laugh before the woman who sat beside him, Shi Ling tackled him and the Cruel Empress dragged him.
Everyone made room for the older lady who was aggressively chatting with the similarly aged woman. She was furiously screaming at the screen. Ebony was lying beside Scarlet¡doing nothing. Hector thought the viewing period was over after the duel but it was still moving, just that they weren¡¯t moving much.
This had been going on for the past few minutes.
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¡°What is that boy waiting for!¡±
¡°How long is he going to take!?¡±
The seconds ticked by and the older lady was getting visibly pissed at the couple back on Elcra who weren¡¯t doing anything. They were an awkward couple for sure and Hector would tell Ebony to his face that it was 100% thanks to him. It looked like the old lady agreed.
After a few minutes of increasingly loud screaming, Hector was begging for his life. His back and heart were beginning to beg for mercy. Ebony was just lying down there, not making any moves while the ladies in the room were eagerly waiting for him to remove Scarlet¡¯s mask. Something new Hector learned about them.
It seemed like it was the normal step to take after beating his future wife in combat. Since they were both Xengs, he didn¡¯t need to beat her in combat. Hector¡¯s understanding from the talking in the room, about how some women recalled how their husbands removed their mask as an unforgettable memory, was that it was similar to how men on Elva put a new Myriad Bracelet on their wife on their engagement date or rings during their wedding.
All the while, Ebony and Scarlet were simply conducting post-battle questions and answers instead of an analysis¡
The old woman who helped and talked to Hector couldn¡¯t take the wait anymore when the couple on the frozen ground just stared at the sky silently for ten minutes. She called or sent a message to Ebony using the thing called the Eidolon portable module.
Another minute passed and there was nothing different on the screen. Ebony was ignoring them.
¡°Cool off, that boy of yours is not that bad.¡± The gentle older lady commented.
¡°How do you know?¡±
¡°Did you know he visited the Ning compounds some months back? He¡¯s a good kid, he asked us not to take our girl back immediately after he won.¡±
¡°He already asked for your girl officially?¡±
¡°He¡¯s a proper adult. My grandson roughed him up a bit and he had to take a week before he recovered but at least it seems like he is satisfied with his future grandson-in-law.¡±
Hector tried to think back, he recalled Ebony going on some personal business for some days. He didn¡¯t expect it was to ask Scarlet¡¯s family for their blessings. Also, what did they mean by taking their girl back after he won?
When day turned to night, Hector felt a wave of air hit his face. He was certain he fainted for a fraction of a section before he was jolted awake by a force of mana over his body. The room grew cold and strangely quiet from everyone else¡¯s voices all of a sudden. ¡®Please, Ebony! Check your callstone or whatever version you call that gem!¡¯
Dozens of people were scrambling and Hector was floating, encapsulated by someone¡¯s mana. He couldn¡¯t even pinpoint who was carrying him with magic. He was outside the dimly lit room before he knew it.
¡®Where am I?¡¯ He got dizzy at the next moment. Taking another second before he recalled this feeling as movement from spatial magic.
¡°Lei! Stop the lightning!¡± One of the ladies who looked just like Ebony''s mother but not as much as the angry old lady ordered.
¡°An, Guo, Kong make sure Xiaoya doesn¡¯t blow up.¡± A black-haired man from the family across the Shi followed up.
¡°Yang and Yin¡right, none of the Yins are around, just¡make sure the sun doesn¡¯t explode. We¡¯ll deal with the moons if they fall.¡±
¡°Shi Ling, protect that Lord boy and go tell your uncle to stop laying there and read his messages.¡± Another woman of the Shi commanded.
¡°Everyone else, go home and protect your clan houses or something.¡±
¡°Hector right? Don¡¯t bite your tongue, Uncle Kongs are too busy to move us now so I¡¯m just going to jump around.¡± Shi Ling warned him
¡°What is happening? Are we under attack?¡±
¡°My uncle tested my Big Granny¡¯s patience for too long, we¡¯re not exactly patient people. When she¡¯s this mad we can only take shelter. I¡¯m not sure if any other second generation are around but I¡¯m sure Big Granny Ning would just watch in mirth as if Big Granny¡¯s anger is none of her business. I¡¯ll try my best to protect you.¡± Shi Ling happily explained.
Hector almost toppled even though he was being carried. He felt the very earth quake, the skies torn asunder as lightning thicker than a few Trolls stacked together started cracking in the skies. A hole in the sky formed where the freaky faceless man was waving his arms around to seal or cover it.
The ladies that he was sitting close to earlier, and the ladies and gentlemen sitting across him earlier took the lead. The Cruel Empress was actually just covering a few men with her body when a mass of what Hector sensed as some kind of weird or unique stone mana was being conjured in the atmosphere.
¡°Surely she won¡¯t attack her family? I mean, not in the way Ebony and Scarlet are battling.¡±
¡°What do you mean? She¡¯s not attacking us, she¡¯s not even using magic or intent. The environment just changes according to her mood. We¡¯re lucky Big Granny Ning is here so the environment is still stable.¡±
¡°This is stable?!¡± Hector had his hair and body furiously sucked and pushed towards a different direction at every moment.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, our home is safe. It¡¯s not that far. I¡¯m sure I can make it there safely. I think.¡± He wasn''t given much confidence by Shi Ling''s words.
The Xengs moved in a few separated units, by seating or family. Shi Ling had her back covered from the tiny grey rocks forming out of nowhere a few times. The other ladies were exceedingly calm. Their faces reminded Hector of Ebony. Can¡¯t they put on some kind of facial expression?
However, no one touched the tiny rocks with their bare bodies. They either used elementless mana to wrap the rocks up and push them away or they slapped it away with a weapon. There were men in the current party too, one guy called Shui Feng had been a surprisingly good conversational partner during their hours of eavesdropping on the bridal battle.
Out of all the Xengs Hector had personally talked to, he was both the first man other than Ebony and also the most normal person amongst the Xeng that Hector could converse with without being confused.
The man was flicking water droplets at the rocks without using the force of his mind. Although he wasn¡¯t breaking the rocks, the force that each water droplet was being sent made Hector flinch. His ears were gonna pop!
Every collision of those water droplets sounded like multiple cannons exploding at the same time, right beside his ears. Those rocks that got hit would roll a few metres away in the air but they floated back where they spawned in moments.
He was very curious about what the rocks did, it wasn¡¯t actively propelling towards them or anything but the party had to push them away to make a path to dash. A very, very slow dash. Even a Journeyman could run faster than this.
This caution made Hector more wary of the rocks that no one dared to touch.
¡°Han, Tianyu open a quick path for us.¡±
¡°Ready?¡± The orange-haired man with a squarish face and thick eyebrows asked after holding one of the woman¡¯s hands. With their nearly identical faces, Hector could only differentiate the ladies using their husbands and their height and frame. Those who were masked were easier to differentiate.
Everyone around him nodded, and he was back to being carried on someone¡¯s shoulders.
¡®HOT!¡¯ Hector had his enhancements up for a while now, with 6 elements he was nearly at risk of mana poisoning. A stream of fire sliced forward before it split into two and pushed apart each other as a wave, a path without floating rocks opened but new rocks were forming.
One of the Shi stepped in front of the fire mage with a thin white shield or thick staff and Hector felt his bones rattle and a shockwave that made his stomach squeeze its contents out. He managed to hold it in using earth magic to clog his throat. Then his body was forcefully propelled through the path the couple opened.
They weren¡¯t able to make it to their safe spot because the couple had to repeat this a few times.
Hector didn¡¯t even lift a finger but he was exhausted when there was finally no intense aura and elements floating about after he was placed down on the soft grass.
¡°Auntie Han, Uncle Tianyu can you bring us out?¡± Hector shivered, why did it feel like Shi Ling was referring to him when she said ''us''?
¡°You can wait till she¡¯s not angry anymore can¡¯t you ah Ling?¡±
¡°Well, the faster we inform Uncle kehm..Granduncle-the faster her mood will settle. I¡¯ll just drop a letter.¡±
¡°Sure, your mother will lash out at us if we didn¡¯t take care of you. Let¡¯s go.¡±
¡°Uhm¡me too?¡± Hector would very much like to stay within safety''s confines.
¡°Of course, we can drop you off on the way.¡±
¡®I really shouldn¡¯t have rushed over to watch the duel¡¡¯ Hector mentally blamed Ebony for risking his life today.
Left in tears, he begrudgingly followed Shi Ling back out. ¡®I should just stay in the academy or some dungeon if I want to keep my dear life¡¡¯
Chapter 381: Approval
Ebony caught a pebble that fell onto his face. It came from beyond his range of senses and had mana from Shi Ling. ¡®Check your messages!¡¯
¡°Stupid boy! What are you waiting for!¡±
¡°How long are you going to stargaze!! You missed the timing!¡±
¡°That¡¯s where you take her mask off!¡±
¡°It¡¯ll come right off if she accepts you wholeheartedly!¡±
¡°Necklace! Your necklace has a pair of rings, I know you can¡¯t remember them. Just feel around your chest and they should spawn back into your recognition.¡±
The long stream of messages from Shi Tao had been going on since their duel ended hours ago.
Ebony didn¡¯t know how effective it was but he spread ice mist and burning petals once again, refracting their figures so that no peekers could see. He sat up and pulled her to a sitting position before placing his hands on her mask.
There was no magical glue or latches, the mask seemed to attach itself by its own accord.
Unlike his punches, kicks and greatswords slamming down on an indestructible surface, it wobbled at the mere touch of his fingers.
When he did pull it down, her face was covered but both her arms were as if she was lying on the table with her arms crossed.
¡°Ah-It¡¯s already dark and I hav-haven¡¯t started dinner. I''m going to get it started!¡± She zipped out of the crater he made.
With her being out of combat mode, catching her was an easy task. He caught her by the wrist and pulled her in. If there was anything he learnt about her or Xeng women in general, it was that they preferred when men were confident and took somewhat forceful measures.
He tapped around his chest feeling nothing there but a few more taps and there it was, a necklace spawned on his neck. To this day, he regularly forgot about its existence but it was supposedly on him even when he was imprisoned on Cinderash. Not even his cell noticed or said anything about it. Now, he didn¡¯t believe Kong Jing made it. She might have been an amazing crafter but it didn''t seem like she was capable of making this pair of rings and necklace.
Xin''s right hand held her mask against her face while the left was in his hands. He slid her gloves off and there was no resistance other than loud pulsing of her heart that he bubbled in layers of mana so that it didn¡¯t hurt the environment anymore.
The Blood Star he froze was sent up high and he let it explode, hoping it would cover the Xeng¡¯s eyes and also as a backdrop.
He looked at her unaligned mask, ¡°should I take that as a no?¡±
¡°Do-don¡¯t be so passive aggressive. I just feel naked without this. fuu¡I¡¯m gonna need half me.¡± She breathed out and summoned more courage while also bringing back half-states that she said didn¡¯t exist anymore. ¡°Look, I know you don¡¯t care about appearances but I¡¯m confident I¡¯m pretty¡¡±
¡°Ebony?¡± She blinked at him with her large almond eyes.
¡°Please say something, you¡¯re making me more nervous than I already am.¡± Her soft voice tickled his ears.
¡°Sorry, but you¡¯re the one who stunned me. I have a very beautiful wife.¡± He almost went overboard with the compliments, but he sincerely thought she was the most beautiful woman to ever exist. She was right that he never really cared for appearances but he¡¯d admit that people preferred looking at beautiful things and people and as of today, he was also one of them.
¡°Wife?!¡± She was more beautiful-pretty rather than cute-pretty, a traditional girl-next-door oriental beauty as if artificially drawn and as he¡¯d always imagined her, she was facially expressive and as red as a tomato right now. Her nose was tall and straight, a higher nose bridge than he¡¯d expected. She was indeed surprisingly different from her grandmother or the other Nings that he caught sight of.
It was probably because her grandfather and father both weren¡¯t Xengs at all so her features weren¡¯t fully oriental but heavily since their genes were just too predominant. That might be what she meant when she said he was wrong during dinner with her grandmother.
Ebony raised the hand he slipped a ring on while she was nervous and he was admiring his partner.
Elven beauty was overpraised or their racial differences had different standards and norms. Still, he learnt that charm and appearance were indeed an evolutionary boon.
To be fair, he knew how her lips and eyes looked and he remembered when her ears weren¡¯t covered by her mask. But putting all her features together had a different effect.
¡°Let me show you around our home. But first.¡± Ebony placed her mask back on but it wasn¡¯t quite attaching itself with her cheek puffed out.
¡°It¡¯s barely been a minute and you already had enough?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want anyone else getting charmed.¡±
After the lady¡¯s confident and addictive laugh, he pulled her along and walked back to Tidal.
¡°You¡¯re not allowed to hurt yourself like that anymore. Why aren¡¯t you healing? That shocked me more than the shade skill.¡±
¡°Mana poisoning. And you? Are you hurt anywhere?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t feel ashamed of the pathetic victory. While he was fatally injured, she was free of injury. However, he saw this as a victory nonetheless.
Dusk wasn¡¯t even here.
Dusk¡¯s presence would do a few things. It would reduce Ebony¡¯s need to use any mental processing power for magic, Dusk could suppress other magics for him. It would reduce mana expenditure from Ebony, though this isn¡¯t a big concern at the moment he had indeed found ways to use his ridiculous mana regeneration rate. Just by compressing a Domain, the mana consumption was still off the charts.
However, compressing Domains with mana did a lot less to suppress foreign mana.
That job fell onto Will, something that Ebony was limited by. He didn¡¯t bring his clones¡¯ Will back from Cinderash because he simply didn¡¯t have enough Will to support so many clones at the same time. Will regeneration and capacity might have increased now that he received his clones¡¯ ¡®life experience¡¯ but it wasn¡¯t enough to support 2 separate Domain cores and almost thirty clones. Besides, he needed to keep some Will for emergencies and couldn¡¯t feed and strengthen them all the time.
It was a shame but he was more wary of the Elven Domains now.
Their Domain seemed to be something any individual could feed with Will and they had been feeding this Domain of theirs for thousands of years. He might find himself powerless with magic conjuration if he stepped into their home. The only silver lining was that for Elves, only Kings and above would be able to do so and younger members would be using that limited amount for training rather than committing it to their forest.
¡°No, I didn''t receive any injuries other than the intentional cut since I didn¡¯t know how else to conjure blood near enough that you¡¯re caught off guard. I had to use what was in my body. Your last attack ate a third of my stored life force away but I technically didn¡¯t take physical damage. None of your elements or spells leave damage on my body but you can indeed just run me dry and burn me out if you drag it out.¡± She spun around with her arms wide open to show her unharmed body.
Ebony on the other hand, had missing parts all over and within himself. He was running a fever for the past few hours. As was his opponent with the boiling heat she was unintentionally giving off. Apparently, it was a side effect of going into her resting state when she exhausted large amounts of vitality. Her body naturally starts burning the abundant energy in her blood to recover.
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Ning Xin should have been taken away by her family not long after he defeated her. They weren¡¯t supposed to meet each other until their official marriage or wedding. However, he had already made plans and got permission from the Nings.
Her Great-grandfather took over the role of her father and fought him but Ebony seemed to have passed the test. It was not easy to hide this visit but he was lucky Ning Xin was out with Athena that week.
Xin''s great-grandfather was mainly a lightning magic user. He was probably where her lightning affinity came from. The man was a Ning born between a Lei that married a Ning. This also made it very likely that Ning Xin¡¯s divination mage Grandmother could use lightning magic too. The explosive temper was also hereditary. So was the intense switch to a calm nature.
The man wore a bracelet that the Xu made, it brought him back to the time when he was a Grandmaster. Similar to the effect around the Shis obstacle course.
During the spar with this man, Ebony took note that the lightning magic user used 3 different colours of lightning.
Yellow-gold bathed his body, it likely represented the pure speed and reactive augmentation it gave him.
White-blue lightning strikes were used as ranged attacks, they had a mental attack property when coming in contact with them.
Ebony was fortunately near-immune to these mental attacks. Until his opponent was pleasantly surprised by him shaking off the mental attack and forcefully invaded his mindspace.
He felt bad for Mr Guru, but the lightning-mind mage invaded his mental core in one go after making sure he wouldn¡¯t break Ebony¡¯s mind. Mr Guru had to spend a few thousand mental years to do that but every white-blue lightning strike that touched his body was a direct explosion of sparks to Ebony¡¯s mental core.
While the lightning-mind mage caused sparks to go into his mindspace, their bodies were clashing.
The mind was far harder to injure, and it was also far harder to heal.
His opponent might have the stats and skills of a Grandmaster again but he still had the experience of a very strong Emperor.
Furthermore, the yellow-gold enhancement was greater than all of Ebony¡¯s augmentations when it came to speed. Far greater than Ning Xin¡¯s fire and blood enhancement. Pure speed basically equalled power.
Also, the man was familiar with the formless fighting style that Ebony used. A reactive martial art style mixed with his ability to predict bodily motions.
Then came the violet lightning the man used as solidified masses, dual swords. It runs in the family.
It was honestly cheating. There was no blocking, it was energy. Clashing a sword with him would simply allow the violet lightning to slip through any sword or shield it contacted. Mana or ice construct didn¡¯t a thing. The swordsman just had to follow through with all his swings and the lightning would cut or slide through anything, including Ebony¡¯s body.
There was also no dodging, the lightning swords would turn into a large water-like wave that covered a large space. With the speed advantage the man had, Ebony couldn¡¯t dodge or block. Reactive or predictive, his martial arts did nothing to be able to evade, block, parry or counter this.
Heat, vitality paralysis, mana instability, continuous and chain cell rupture and muscular spasms were the main effects of touching the violet lightning. Of course, he also made it so that every strike would send white-blue lightning as a mental attack.
Vitality paralysis stuns any regeneration by life force. Ebony¡¯s life force wasn¡¯t strong enough to overcome the paralysis before it was reapplied to him in battle.
Mana instability forces the mana in his body to go haywire. It was mostly ineffective against him but he did feel his augmentations being disturbed, it took a sizable amount of mental processing to counter this. At least with his opponent having brought back down to a Grandmaster.
The chain cell rupture was a normal lightning chain reaction that tears cells asunder. Nothing special for lightning magic but he was certain the man had a Fortification that made it more intense or spread better. Ebony¡¯s frozen but burning cells were a decent protection against this attack.
Muscular spasm did nothing. Ebony overrides that effect with mana and mental control over his chassis.
As for heat, it was the easiest to shake off.
The worst part was that Ebony¡¯s reflection of vibrations did nothing to a blade of energy. The reflection didn¡¯t translate well over.
As for his gravity cube, Ebony was stunned to find out that the man could disrupt the formation and movement of gravity mana with a mixture of his lightning. The man noticed the gravitational effects to be strong enough to affect him and struck the cube with combined lightning strikes at irregular intervals.
After the battle, Ebony summed it up as an advanced form of mana disruption, magic dispel that mages could use to disrupt other mana or elements.
Ebony brought a few of his clones but they couldn¡¯t do anything for this pace of fighting. They were beginning to be quite a bit weaker than the main body due to their limitations in Will and body. They did however, cast sound magic and runic spells to enhance him.
However, Great-grandfather Ning couldn¡¯t put him down in an instant. Ebony was left half dead but the man stopped. Typically, Ebony should have run the lightning mage dry of mana.
It was a victory where Ebony didn¡¯t manage to land more than 10 hits on his opponent in the 2-hour fight. 6 kicks, 2 sword slashes, a headbutt and an elbow to the chest. Those were hard-fought hits he landed, he couldn¡¯t even say it was due to his martial arts. He had to do sacrificial feints to land those attacks at a larger cost.
As for Ebony¡¯s spells¡they couldn¡¯t catch up. The man had a far greater magic body, even in his Domain, Ebony had to conjure his elements at least two hundred metres away from the man¡¯s body. With that kind of distance, the pure lightning-augmented fighter could dodge with his legs tied together.
As for spells Ebony could cast near his body and near range, the lightning mage blinked.
The eye blink was a spell, a dispel to be specific. He would cast the same combined lightning that he cast on Ebony¡¯s gravity cube to snuff out any combustive ice mana or ice construct. Although Ebony¡¯s Will was able to push the insanely quick but tiny blast of lightning mana, that instant was all it took for the lightning mage to snuff out his spells.
Ebony tried casting every second. He tried multicasting 12 casts at a time using his ¡®superior¡¯ mental delegation. He tried using them as distractions. He tried casting overly large spells since he had the mana to do so.
But he was made to realise that his opponent was not just a lightning mage, but also a mind mage. And one of the best around. Ebony did not necessarily have greater mental capacity than a Ning, he probably lost in that regard.
They were better multicasters than him.
That had been a first.
He met stronger, better mages. But someone who can multicast as well or even better than him hasn¡¯t been found, even amongst the Frost Elven fighters.
For such mana-expensive spells and skills, his opponent lasted an incredible amount of time. Turning back to a Grandmaster didn¡¯t take away his ability to fight, he might have a tier 7 mastery for all Ebony knew. But it didn¡¯t seem like it. The man was more of a spell caster than a pure technique fighter. However, Ebony was more durable than the man¡¯s destructive capabilities. It was close though, Ebony couldn¡¯t recover as fast with the vitality paralysis which made the battle of attrition, his forte, a gamble.
Despite the result, Ebony was relieved to find out that the almighty image of Xengs wasn¡¯t that undefeatable. Despite the baseline traits difference in stats that are most closely tied to battle. He saw that a direct victory in battle was a possibility. He could find ways to counter the dispel which is the most troublesome part. Ways to defend or get around the undodgeable lightning strikes and spells. Perhaps with a few more months simulating battles with him, Ebony could raise his victory rate to 5%.
Shi Qiang, his cousin called Xin¡¯s Great-grandfather, Ning Xun from the fourth generation, a delivery boy.
But it was a start.
The man might have held back some more strength to account for his experience as an Emperor or some skills that couldn¡¯t be held back to the same state as his old Grandmaster self but he was supposedly the fastest man of the Xeng. Excluding the second generation but including the Kongs who were space mages.
If Shi Qiang wasn¡¯t lying, even in terms of traversal Ning Xun was said to be faster than space magic or at least, any space user of the Xengs from the third generation onwards. Ebony couldn¡¯t see how that was possible but he was looking at it from the perspective of a Grandmaster.
¡°You better bet I¡¯ll be there if you make my girl cry.¡±
Ebony walked away with a painful shoulder pat that day. Fully aware that the man could use mind magic to mentally induce him to cry physically if he wanted to. ¡°You didn¡¯t exactly leave her a happy memory of you.¡±
He also left with an additional char inside his head that mentally stunted him for a week. Ebony felt¡normal here, more so than with any other group of people. Ning Xun didn¡¯t hit him in anger, he was happy when Ebony retorted in Ning Xin¡¯s defence.
The mental charring of lightning was controlled, it was also a gift.
A gift that strengthened his mindspace. He wasn¡¯t sure how Ning Xun did it, but the mix of lightning and mind magic toughened the bubble around his mental core where there was colour and where his clones would convene for a meeting. It didn¡¯t prompt a notification but Ebony roughly estimated it to be almost 3% tougher to enter or leave for a foreign mind.
All in all, even if he didn''t immediately see the Shi clan members as family he thought that having Ning Xun as family wasn¡¯t that bad or strange to him.
They were all outwardly harder than steel but as soft as tofu when it came to their loved ones.
Every single one of them.
Chapter 382: Disregarded
Supporting each other, Ebony and Ning Xin arrived at the house he prepared in the middle of the night. He didn¡¯t need the shoulder to walk without legs but it was nice to have.
It was bustling around the entrance gate they used to enter Tidal but it quietened after they entered the central district.
Ebony noticed more foreigners than before, speaking Gia with each other. Some insulted the Elcrians for being uneducated while others marvelled at the Empire''s specialities.
There was a bit of an unsettling aura brewing in the district but he couldn¡¯t pick out the oddness. While the emotion-sensing woman was too disturbed with her mind running furiously and her heart pounding noisily.
Focusing on the wife he just won over, he discarded the distractions for the moment.
He introduced their new property.
The garden.
The state-of-the-art training field in their backyard although nowhere as impressive as the Infinite Variations.
The additional backyard pond that he made to resemble Aroma Alcove, ¡®mini¡¯ waterfall and misty environment and all that. He saw himself spending a lot of time here, reading and having tea breaks. He didn¡¯t even have to worry about moist books.
The kitchen and herb garden was the main attraction.
General Life, the soil, was used for a potted frost plum tree. He missed frost plums and couldn¡¯t have any other seed using up the small amount of General Life he had.
Elemental soil would¡¯ve been better but he wouldn¡¯t be able to source any that was better than General Life due to the large difference in quality. It already had a thin trunk a metre tall but not very leafy.
¡°Why is it so empty?¡± She pointed out the fact that the building was just an empty partitioned box.
¡°We can fill it up together. And I wasn¡¯t sure if you wanted different layouts.¡±
¡°I want a smokehouse for smoking ingredients, something that can fit at least ten buffaloes. An outdoor oven too, this one is great but some animals are better baked whole and they can¡¯t fit in this one. I like this massive counter the best!¡±
¡°You¡¯ve always mentioned insufficient table space to work with.¡±
¡°I might place it differently though¡ah.¡± She detached the counter, accidentally breaking the countertop off since it was one piece of granite block.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, that was just a display.¡± The counter material itself was no different from the bricks the rest of the building was made of and was something that wouldn¡¯t break unless they tossed around their spells with all their force behind it.
The piece of granite was something one of his clones found and ground smooth with vibrations.
Once he moved Dusk over, the defences of his home would skyrocket. As far as he could tell, no Elf or Domain mage had set their Will over this area.
They discussed the possible layouts of the house, the furniture and the decoration they wanted. He can¡¯t believe that he forgot to leave holes for windows and they had a good laugh about that. Fortunately, the house being made of a material that included his mana made changes easy for him.
Before long, sunlight was coming back. They returned to their previous house to wash up before they went shopping.
He had been here so long but they¡¯ve never actually been to Z&Z¡¯s main branch in the Capital. It was one of the biggest buildings around but they never found any reason to go to the largest department store the continent had.
They didn¡¯t plan it but they were both wearing the Xeng clothing they had made for them, pairing up rather well. The Xengs did have the Chinese qipaos but unlike what Kong Jing led them to believe, it was not for battle and obviously, it was supposed to be conservative when it came to exposed skin. The qipao were, however, for hotter weather while what they were wearing was rising in fashion in the last 5 centuries amongst the Xeng.
¡®I bet someone went back to earth and watched some dramas and brought fashion back¡¡¯ He wasn¡¯t too interested in that part of history.
¡°We should get some paint to-- Xin?¡± Ebony felt the arm around his elbow go stiff. There was no response.
His mana perception and mind raced to tell him the familiar feeling of the unmoving elemental mana that he couldn¡¯t control changing.
¡°Different. All different.¡± Mutterings of a familiar voice entered his ears. He didn¡¯t perceive any movement or mana change but a lean man in a worn frost-elven style mage robe was beside Dusk.
Once again, Ebony felt an overwhelming difference in mana purity and quantity but this time he felt it very clearly unlike when he didn¡¯t even know what he was sensing. There was, however, an obvious difference, this blue-haired man wearing a cracked mask of the woman who had her arms around his was barely any taller than Ebony right now.
¡°Hello,¡± Ebony spoke up. This guy had something similar to Entity Evanesce because he was hard to look at and focus on.
¡°Is this the right place? I wouldn¡¯t know. Xiao Ling, are you there?¡±
¡®So he really can¡¯t see or interact, just leaving messages. Who is Xiao Ling? There is no Xiao clan but there might be a Xiao amongst the second generation. Wait he swapped to Xenese, so¡little Ling, Shi Ling maybe? But Shi Ling is older than me, another Ling? To begin with, is that supposed to be me?¡¯ Ebony had thought so but what he was seeing was not a person talking to him.
This was a curveball, he had assumed this man was here to talk to him again.
Ebony took a double take above and around him.
Sky¡¯s Edge was very likely still somewhere near Elcra. He did sense Shi Ling¡¯s remnant mana around the valleys he proposed but those of the Shi weren¡¯t people he could lock onto if they didn¡¯t want him to know.
If Shi Ling was on the planet. he could assume she had a perception strong enough to hear this man. But his partner was stuck in place right now, unmoving or sensing,
Ebony tried to talk to Dusk and the tree responded with a yes, it was listening.
¡°Hear me Xiao Ling, radiant diamond bell¡¯s key is not radiance, diamond or bell. It is ossification. Also, eat less pudding.¡±
Befuddled, Ebony gripped onto the softened arm around his when the man blinked out of his recognition. There was no soul-crushing roar this time.
¡®What was that for?¡¯ Getting completely ignored was something Ebony understood but to think he wasn¡¯t even mentioned this time was odd to him. The message itself was just as confusing.
Before, he had a strong suspicion that man was a future version of him. There were many similarities and evidence that pointed to that. But with access to Eidolon, he knew that most Gods were well known for obvious reasons and wasn¡¯t a secret, it was practically common knowledge to know the Gods of the universe.
For one, there was no information about the existence of a God of Time.
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For two, time travel was commonly believed to be an impossibility even in this world of magic. Eidolon was full of forums with numerous posts relevant to it.
After learning how to detect delayed strikes, he noticed that this man did not make any gravitational instability during his appearance and disappearance. It was completely different from what Ebony could do or what he had been learning from the Infinite Variations.
The mask was another point to note, it was cracked but does that mean Xin is or is going to be dead? It was hard to say. Why?
Because the mask doesn''t even look the same now. Xin¡¯s mask changed appearance long ago. But the cracks spread through the mask and it was hard to make out the features with all the grey¡material covering it.
¡®Another Xeng with a similar mask, and this guy is someone else? Feels off too. His first words were ¡®different, all different¡¯, is that something that¡¯s supposed to be a message will say? I should ask someone. If Aunt Tao is watching she must have noticed. Hmm¡I¡¯m already calling her Aunt Tao even in my mind.¡¯ Ebony couldn¡¯t do anything about the random encounter right now and instead of contacting Shi Ling who wasn¡¯t showing herself up, he decided to finish his shopping trip first.
The rings that he took out were unadorned, silver rings that were actually a gold alloy. Gold was cheap on Elva, not known to have many useful properties be it physical or magical. But that''s beside the point for this gold alloy ring, it did what was necessary and won¡¯t degrade over long periods measured in millions of years if not longer. He didn¡¯t identify any other magical properties or abilities and he was fine with that.
As for the necklace chain, it disappeared again but it should be around his neck. He somehow forgot about it once more.
He was able to act as if nothing happened since what the man came to say wasn¡¯t meant for him.
¡°It¡¯s pretty far away, let¡¯s take a fast ride.¡± He led them to the public flight mount rides that could leave the district without security checks. The main branch of the Z&Z was in the south district of Tidal after failing to thrive in the central district where people preferred specialised goods. There was more traffic in all the other districts too.
By the time they arrived by flight, it was well into the morning at about the 10th hour.
He hadn''t even got them past the door before a pair of uniformed ladies stood in front of them. ¡°Good morning dear customers, may we help you with what you¡¯re here for today?¡±
Ebony glanced at Xin, ¡°It¡¯ll be faster.¡± she commented.
They were looking for many things so having the employees guide them would indeed be more efficient.
¡®Sisters or twins, neither of them are Elcrians. A beastmen race that I¡¯ve never seen, furred and black spotted but no claws, fangs or horns. Kings, about as strong as an average combatant King on Elcrain but they are both merchants. My gravitational perception shows a different height and frame¡they are using illusions to look human but that is classified under mind magic and my resistance to mind magic makes my eyes see their real appearance instead.¡¯ It was already habitual to sieve out information about strangers he met.
¡°We can take a look at furniture first, everything an empty house needs.¡±
¡°Sure can do!¡± Their hold of the language was pretty much perfect, not even an accent was left.
He was pretty sure he had his guard up, but in mere minutes, he had a list of furniture and things he never thought of buying that was written into his order. Curtains, windows, a sofa.
They were currently stuck on the mattresses. His partner hid her embarrassment at the thought of using the same bed but they quickly came across their first disagreement. He might never have disagreed with her as vehemently.
¡°The mattress has to be firm for good posture and back health.¡± Ebony would not back down on this, this was common sense.
¡°I might as well sleep on a rock! Beds have to be soft.¡±
¡°That¡¯s terrible for one¡¯s back. It can be padded for softness but it needs to be firm and not sink.¡±
¡°Every mattress here will sink with your mass.¡±
¡°Sirs, ma¡¯am we have custom mattresses. We assure you we have the softest or firmest mattresses on the market. If your husband has a special constitution that makes him heavier, we can have a mount-ready custom-made mattress that will not sink up to 10 tovs and if you¡¯re not in a rush we can meet your specifications!¡± The ape-like face of the lady merchant advertised.
¡®10 tovs is 50,000 kg, there are huge land mounts and creatures that easily weigh past that so I¡¯m not surprised they can make mattresses that can support that mass. Putting that aside, they have a very interesting skill set. I believe they knew how much money I have, their introductions are to the point and aimed at what we like. They know Xin is the one they need to focus on to get anything sold. And although I wasn¡¯t actively saying no to their advertisements, they still affected me and got me to buy things we don¡¯t need.¡¯ Some of the things he didn¡¯t think they needed was lighting, with their eyes, it was bright even on winter nights with the Elcrain moons turning dark. The only exception would be winter nights in Hoarfrost Glades which were darker than the city.
The twin merchants also had very good senses of danger and hid their fear quite well. They were nervous around the two of them, unlike the surrounding customers and employees.
The demure Xeng lady did not produce any sort of sharp or deadly aura, she was no different from any other housewife. He had little leakage of mana and his Will should be soothing to just about any creature.
Yet the twin merchants were stepping on needles around them.
He wondered which one of them the two merchants were wary about.
They went from custom order furniture to daily necessities to clothing to new goods they were stocking that were from other Worldcores. A self-cleaning mop and broom that was cheap to operate, in terms of mana consumption. Then, the merchants clutched onto their customers like hounds with fresh seasonal fruits that couldn¡¯t be found on Elcra. Ning Xin was stuck here for a long time but he didn¡¯t rush her.
The ape-like featured women completely skipped over equipment and magical items such as cloaks of lightness, swift boots, spell scrolls and potions.
There was one series of magical items Ebony was interested in.
Charms.
Those didn¡¯t exist on Elcra but from what he could tell, the effect they could pull off was not much different from a spell scroll but most of them had passive effects.
Like the Charm of Warmth, it would keep the holder warm without any mana usage from the user.
The various charms were rising in popularity amongst the freelancers who travel a lot. Whether it was dungeons with very different environments or natural environments around Elva. There were charms to counter environmental effects. Charms had an effective time limit from days to years, that was the entire reason for their variable prices even for a charm of the same effect.
Ebony warned the merchants not to bring them to the egg or tamed mount section secretly with sound magic. The poor fertilised but temporarily sealed monster eggs and docile creatures might become his dinner if they went there.
The shopping trip took more than half a day and Ebony was thoroughly impressed when he was left with 10% of the mana ores he had. Sure, most of his money was in universal currency now but he was now sure that skills were being cast on them by the merchant. It was extremely subtle, and not invasive like Mr Guru.
¡®Subtle tricks bypass mental defences more easily than aggressive invasion or it¡¯s just a specific skill set with proper Fortifications.¡¯ He highly doubted these merchants had mind magic more potent than Mr Guru the Telepath. They might have used combination mind magic to increase their effectiveness or their race has effective two-man spell casting.
There were many things on the schedule before he moved into their new home. He had to ask for Xin¡¯s hand from her Grandmother since her parents¡¯ situation was unknown to him.
Until he did so, the two of them were technically engaged after his successful bridal battle duel but not husband and wife yet. But it wasn¡¯t like there were papers to sign so it was more of a social and cultural norm that he was more than willing to follow.
He wasn¡¯t planning for a big wedding but it still seemed appropriate to have a wedding. He recalled attending a wedding once as a child with his parents. He didn¡¯t know either the bride or the groom, friends or acquaintances of his parents.
He also remembered a head pat from his mother when she watched the bride and groom do their wedding vows. And how his father reassured her with, ¡°If I can find you, I¡¯m sure he can find someone too.¡±
¡°Qua will test her.¡±
¡®Hmm¡Qua. I don¡¯t think she¡¯s talking about a person. It¡¯s not Aunt Tao. Is that mother¡¯s spear name? She spoke Xenese here but I''m pretty sure Qua is not her spear name or full name. Does that mean I¡¯m supposed to bring Xin to meet her spear? Well, that would be interesting too.¡¯ Ebony was always up to go back to Sky¡¯s Edge to visit his mother¡¯s grave and her spear.
When it came to the wedding, he had to ask about Xin¡¯s opinion too.
Outside of that, their new home wasn¡¯t ready for moving in either.
If there were people he wanted to know about his life, the Thoyas came to mind.
¡®I¡¯ll drop by and if Veronica doesn¡¯t come and stop me, the issue shouldn¡¯t be that big¡maybe not, she might not think that far.¡¯ The Xengs were quite independent outside of their familial love.
They preferred when their kids did their things without restriction if possible.
¡®Am I forgetting something? Right, Hector. He was watching our duel wasn¡¯t he, did he just give us alone time? I can probe Shi Ling about the weird encounter with that man. Check the Frost Elves¡¯ situation. Hire some people on the net to get updated information on Cinderash. Find out what happened with the Nebulians. Possibly plan for a honeymoon trip. Ask Sister Jing about what the necklace chain is for¡reply to Aunt Tao¡¯s messages.¡¯
Ebony had quite a lot to do.
Chapter 383: In-Laws
Ebony''s first three days as an engaged man were spent renovating their new home. They didn¡¯t have any sleep or awkwardness; it was all about productivity and making the home as comfortable for both of them as possible.
At the end of the renovation, he brought Xin to the front door again.
¡°Come, place some blood on the door. And the gate.¡±
¡°Why?¡±
¡°It¡¯s a lock, only we can open it once we register our essence. My clones can come in the gate but not our door. This will be our home from now on.¡±
¡°Take it.¡± She offered her hand with her palms facing down.
He took her gloves off, not thinking much about why she didn¡¯t just conjure blood outside her body. To a girl growing up with Elcrian culture as much as Xeng culture, offering her hand to someone showed their relationship or intimacy.
Pulling his essence out, they made essence spheres of their own and injected them into the door and house it was connected to.
Ebony had managed to manipulate stamina to a rudimentary level. It was the basis of controlling Ethereal Fluid Blitz to increase and decrease in intensity depending on stamina consumption. This ability slowly allowed him to increase or decrease the output of all physical output to a degree he couldn¡¯t before.
Stamina was stiffer than life force and mana in certain ways. The limits one¡¯s stamina naturally has were locked tight. The amount of stamina used for a simple punch has a hard limit. That limit was how hard one could punch. This can be increased with better, more efficient muscular control but the limit was still based on the physical output of the body.
However, not even Hector would finish using up his stamina pool with just 1 punch.
That¡¯s where the manual manipulation of stamina came into play. Unlike life force and mana, stamina did not flow.
It was ingrained and embedded wherever it was. Similar to his mana chassis.
If he were to Flicker for weeks, the stamina embedded in his legs can be exhausted to close to nothing but other parts of his body would have stamina. This was also something his prison cell helped him learn.
His limbs could go into stamina exhaustion and have a decrease in stamina regeneration, but his vitals would still work normally. His prison cell, now part of his Myriad Bracelet, used to target areas to draw stamina. Exhausting his mind and heart was not something the cell wanted to do for more efficient energy absorption.
That experience allowed Ebony to feel how stamina worked.
His current knowledge of it told him it was impossible to pull stamina from one part of his body to another. If his legs were exhausted and went into a state where it has reduced stamina regeneration, he couldn¡¯t pull stamina from his arms to increase his usage of the worn-out muscles in his legs.
It was, however, possible to further increase his ability to overexert his body. That was how Ethereal Fluid Body worked. Pumping and overexerting these stamina chassis for lack of a better word faster could be done. This added another way for him to exhaust and destroy his body along with his mana and Will getting too strong to augment his body.
It wasn¡¯t all that bad. Ebony also figured out how to replenish these stamina chassis. The energy came from sustenance, food.
All his energy comes from sustenance. Life force, stamina and mana. Perhaps even Will.
It was a pity he didn¡¯t have Xin¡¯s metabolism. Her increased metabolism made her turn food into energy far faster than he could. He also wasn¡¯t able to manually increase his digestion and metabolism. At least not to the degree she could.
Maybe when he understood the working principles of his body better, he would be capable of inducing his body to undergo different processes at will. Using Will on himself in this manner had brought no notable results so far.
¡°How much do we need to inject?¡±
¡°A lot. I used the best materials I could afford. It¡¯s mostly saturated with my mana but the mixture I made for these concrete blocks can take vitality too.¡±
¡°So the house will have your mana and my blood?¡±
¡°You can say that. But we only need a drop of blood, the rest is your life force.¡±
¡°So this is our creation?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°It won¡¯t break right? Like the countertop.¡±
¡°Not externally. I don¡¯t think even our strongest spells could break it in one go. It¡¯s much too durable. And Dusk will be here. It¡¯s not going to be able to walk or move easily once I refill its Will.¡± Ebony decided to refer to Dusk as ¡®it¡¯ now. It was not a clone and neither was it anything like Ebony. It was more than that.
The core of a domain had even more collective Will than his main body could.
He was technically graded as a high-level hazard but that was due to endurance. Spells of that power required a lot more time to cast compared to what he could pull off in a quick and intense battle. Besides the hazard test they underwent had them destroy soil and earth, neither of them did any real damage to the scarecrows they were targeting.
¡°Our home¡¡± His wife bubbly opened the door when she decided to continue filling the house another day but he had to stop her this time.
¡°Now that we¡¯re done, the time I bought with you has temporarily come to an end.¡± Ebony could feel her entire body shake through the wrist he held.
¡°What do you mean by that?¡± His temperamental wife switched gears in a flash.
¡°Ah, your family has been waiting to pick you up. We weren¡¯t supposed to meet until the ceremony. I wanted to prepare the house with you so I had them give us some time.¡± They were not very approving but Ebony managed to convince them that neither of them grew up with much Xeng culture ingrained into them.
¡°When?¡±
¡°When what?¡±
¡°When are you mine?¡±
Ebony liked her straightforwardness, the overbearing intensity in her eyes right now was something he hadn¡¯t been able to see for the past three days. Her pupils burned and the collarette and ciliary zone surrounding them undulated outwards of her pupils, spreading bright orange ripples across her iris.
Now that he had a better look, he was sure her eyes were weaponized to send her Intent into the target she looked at. It might be how her killing intent was so unadulterated it froze his body up during their duel. She doesn¡¯t seem to be aware that her eyes were being used as the conduit for her Intent the way his clones and Domains were a conduit for his Will.
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¡°You have a superstitious grandmother, ask her when her ¡®stars align¡¯. I have waited for so long, I can wait a while more.¡± Ebony¡¯s patient personality would probably never change.
¡°I cannot.¡±
¡®Didn¡¯t she say her fighting mode only knows how to fight? She¡¯s holding a conversation well but¡her attention is all around us not on me alone. I guess there is still a silver of sense in her.¡¯ Ebony might be the only one who thinks that two words are equal to holding a conversation well.
It didn¡¯t take long before the twitchy woman¡¯s swords swung out beside her. Her captor¡family member have come to pick her up. It was a woman Ebony had never seen but shared many features with the Nings. Black hair, resting face not too dissimilar to the Shi clan but colder.
While the Shi¡¯s expression in their eyes looked dead, inanimate and indifferent, the Ning¡¯s radiated something more alien. Their minds were more twisted than any other clan as their mind elemental nature made them that way.
Ebony knew people who would call that a mental disorder but he only saw practicality with the Ning¡¯s clan skill of having two mental states. One for day-to-day life, another for the law of the jungle.
It was redundant for him but it would give a person some mental relief to be able to separate some stuff in their heads.
¡°Come back with me.¡± The woman gave Ebony a look before addressing her younger clan member.
Ebony recognised the Intent in Xin¡¯s eyes. She didn¡¯t recognise the woman, only seeing a fierce battle before her.
But the woman tapped Xin¡¯s head and knocked her out. The younger woman went limp in an instant.
¡°There was no need to do that, was there?¡± Ebony felt that he had to say something even though he knew this was the gentle method for a mind mage of higher skill.
¡°Cousin, Clan Leader Shi called for you. Are you coming with or by yourself?¡±
¡®Third generation Ning, pure combatant.¡¯ Ebony realised the next moment. This person was exceedingly dangerous, every bone in his body was screaming that. She wasn¡¯t hiding her aura as well or producing an accepting one like the Shis. ¡°With, I¡¯ll carry her.¡±
¡°Ah no you don¡¯t. Please keep your indecent hands off, I¡¯ve heard of you. Touching an innocent young girls bare belly is not something I find admirable. But I applaud you for taking the proper procedures with a duel. Even so, I¡¯m not letting you touch my descendant before you¡¯re officially married.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a misunderstanding. I was putting on banda-¡±
¡°Naive. The reason does not matter. You were trapped by this one¡¯s senior. She divined your visit to the Ning compounds, got the seventh-generation Kong to be nearby, and purposely timed the bandaging to be incomplete by your arrival. She left the door open and curtains drawn open to allow eyes in. She used this one¡¯s Intuition to want to trap you, to touch her. But that doesn¡¯t change the fact that it happened.¡±
Ebony had to think for a short moment. The entire facade was guided by Xin¡¯s grandmother. From the visit to the bandaging to the Nings and the Shis so conveniently watching and catching them in the act. Even Xin¡¯s actions of intentional hesitation when he offered to bandage her was to give the Nings and Shis to catch them together at the right moment.
¡°She was forcing me to take action faster.¡±
¡°Yes, very pushy. Divination magic must have gotten to her head. That kid needs another beating.¡±
¡®I didn¡¯t get any divination resistance increase. Her divination magic works on the astral body, no increase in resistance means my astral body was either overpowered to the point where it can¡¯t build resistance, or it never sensed any harm and intervention.¡¯ Ebony didn¡¯t feel that bad for Xin¡¯s grandmother at the moment. He didn¡¯t know much about divination magic but Xin knew some basic working principles that her grandmother used.
There was a good chance Xin could start using or manipulating her astral body by the time she evolved once or twice more through her genetics. Needless to say, her astral body is naturally more durable and resistant thanks to her heritage but Ebony probably didn¡¯t lack much in that department. Since his base physical and mental stats are so close to an average baseline human, all his baseline traits had to go somewhere else.
According to Shi Tao, most likely, the most expensive ¡®upgrade¡¯ he got was to his soul and genetic resistance and tolerance. Even his Will was considered to be a cheap trait compared to these two. There were creatures, higher beings, that could alter other creatures'' genetic traits against their will. This trait made it harder for him to refine his physique but also far more resistant against foreign intervention.
His soul might be resistant enough to completely ignore some races specialised in soul magic at Emperor ranks and even Saints. Otherwise, he shouldn¡¯t have such a fragile or weak body in comparison to his parents. Even without any sort of training or passive skill to toughen it up at the moment. Not to mention, Ebony had a skill for that. He didn¡¯t have to worry about having his soul plucked out of his body, torn apart and mixed with or consumed by some other creatures to power them up.
Ebony followed his ¡®cousin¡¯ in name. He might not be able to resist her if she had any bad intentions with Xin but he couldn¡¯t just leave his unconscious wife to be taken away by someone who was almost a stranger.
¡°What do the Nings really think about Xin?¡±
¡°She¡¯s our clan member, we worry about her thinned blood. While her father was not weak and genetically developed, her grandfather wasn¡¯t all that special. The Nings are said to be emotionally and mentally unstable, with her parents out of the picture through a large part of her childhood¡there was little guidance she received. And the others¡well, we have our own families and advancements to make. Xiaoya is usually more desolate, each of us lives where we think we can advance more efficiently. Xiaoya can be said to be a gathering, or ancestral home some might say.¡±
¡°Her parents, I wanted to ask about them. Her grandmother believes they are alive, is that true?¡± Ebony wanted to ask for her parent¡¯s blessings to be honest but his last meeting with the Nings didn¡¯t give him any answers about this.
¡°They are alive, and we know where they are.¡±
¡°What¡¯s the holdup? It¡¯s been decades.¡±
¡°They cannot come back. At the moment, only The First can help reach them.¡±
Ebony wasn¡¯t the type to ask for people to continue speaking, he had a habit of waiting with a stare to allow people to finish their words.
¡°I heard you¡¯re from Earth. Her parents disappeared in a dungeon here on Elva, in Fragadal¡¯s Sea. They fell into another dimension. It¡¯s a one-way trip. If they were to come back through a path that The First can open, they would age to death in an instant, souls and everything. They have decided to stay there.¡±
¡°Did they have anything to say to Xin? Does she know this?¡±
¡°She doesn¡¯t. My descendant, this child''s grandmother, thinks that this child won¡¯t be able to understand and choose to go find them. If she goes, she¡¯s not going to be able to come back either. None of us are, not even my mother or your Aunt can go and return in one piece. Every Dimension has its own rules, like Earth that removes most powers. This particular one is harsh when it comes to an exit but they all are, that is the nature of most Dimensions. It¡¯s similar to your exit from Earth¡¯s Dimension, except that one has kind rules. You did not age, there was merely a time discrepancy between your entry here.¡± The woman explained, possibly giving more information because he was about to become an in-law.
¡°No one found a way to protect them through this interdimensional travel?¡± Ebony knew she was right. If he heard his parents were trapped in some place, he would choose to go even if it meant not being able to come back unless it was a choice of theirs.
But he also knew Xin. She would probably choose to go even if it was against her parent¡¯s wishes. Unlike him, her parents left her by accident. It wasn¡¯t a plan of theirs to permanently leave her childhood.
¡°It¡¯s complicated but it¡¯s not like we don¡¯t know of a method.¡±
¡°And that is?¡± Ebony didn¡¯t wait for her this time.
¡°Request God to bring them back.¡±
¡°God, as in the God of Nature.¡± Ebony thought it was better to speak with some caution but that didn¡¯t seem to be a priority for the Xeng.
¡°Indeed, They could supposedly rewrite the rules of any Dimension. But who are we to make such a request?¡± The Ning scoffed with self-contempt.
¡°Can you erase my memory of this conversation? The part about her parents.¡± Ebony was enlightened, these unimaginably strong people were still hungering for more power over their fate. Xin¡¯s strong desire was more than just a genetic trait but she had reason to want to grow stronger even before they met. Unlike Ebony, he was getting stronger just for the sake of getting stronger.
The woman copied him and waited for him to continue speaking, he was not familiar with the same thing being done to him and assumed she would ask why.
¡°I don¡¯t think I can lie and she can feel if I hide anything, it would be better if I never heard this.¡±
She snapped her fingers.
Ebony¡¯s head tilted ever so slightly, ¡®itchy. My mind is itchy, what an odd sensation. Why am I staring at her fingers?¡¯
¡°Be nice to your wife.¡±
¡°U-¡± Ebony tried to utter a reply only to find himself in front of the Shi Clan gate without anyone beside him.
Chapter 384: Singularity Quasar
¡°Did you need something, Aunt Tao?¡± Ebony presented himself in the temple home of his Aunt after changing clothes.
¡°I can¡¯t see you without a reason?¡± The lady with closed eyelids frowned.
¡°You can.¡± Of course she could, if she opened her eyes.
¡°Hmp. So similar. Anyway, I won¡¯t lecture you about that duel but let¡¯s talk about the wedding.¡±
The experienced older lady educated Ebony for a short morning.
¡°Sorry Aunt Tao, I¡¯m not planning to invite them all.¡± Ebony felt bad when they saw him as family but he wasn¡¯t that close to the rest of the Xeng clans.
He was in favor of inviting the Shis and Nings, which was expected, and Kong Jing, for sure, but the others weren¡¯t people he was comfortable with. He saw no reason to have people he didn¡¯t know in his wedding. He didn¡¯t want to make a big deal out of it, but he remembered his father telling him about how much a wedding meant to his mother.
It was a big deal. It should be a big deal.
For them, it was officialising a lifelong promise.
Promises were one of the heaviest things in life.
¡°That¡¯s fine, but at least send an invite to the second generation. Don¡¯t worry, other than me and the Ning family head none of the others will have to come, most of them can¡¯t even receive the invitation. However, I ask that you extend an invitation to a representative of each clan.¡±
¡°...Okay.¡± He could deal with a representative or two from each clan. Too much noise wasn¡¯t up his alley and it likely wouldn¡¯t be for Xin either. ¡°About the date of the ceremony,¡±
¡°The Nings would send us a notice at least a month before. For now, you can prepare the things I told you about.¡±
¡°Mmm. Auntie I want to ask about that person that popped up near me that has a cracked Xeng mask. Do you know who I¡¯m talking about?¡±
¡°I heard. The Ning kids met that man too and I noticed when he appeared down on Elcra. Ignore him and everything he¡¯s said.¡±
¡°Is he supposed to be me?¡±
¡°Why do you think that?¡±
¡°That mask has Xin¡¯s old patterns. His mana is vast but familiar. It suppresses my own. Now I learned my mother sends delays into the past. You get where I¡¯m coming from. I didn¡¯t sense any gravitational movement, but is that supposed to be a delay sent back from the future?¡±
¡°It is not possible to go back in time. There are Time mages but not a God of Time. That man could be said to be another you, another future. The very fact that we can see and sense him, is proof that his present is not your future. So nothing he says is relevant to us because the past he lived is not yours to live.¡±
¡°Because events had long changed.¡± Ebony thought about the butterfly effect but he couldn¡¯t see how the first time he saw that future version of him had changed so much just by making him willingly sit in prison for a slightly longer period.
¡®Or is it the soul roar I heard and tried to copy?¡¯
¡°Auntie Tao, do you recognise this roar? Wait, it is okay to cast it? It¡¯s a soul attack using my essence.¡±
¡°Cast it.¡±
Ebony did as asked, he had been curious about what he had copied for a long time. It was hard to tell if his ¡®attack¡¯ was just a breeze to the woman who looked too similar to the mother in his memories.
¡°Hang on, I¡¯ll need you to replay that for a second opinion. I don¡¯t remember hearing it but maybe the rest of us. Play it louder, can you do it over the whole island?¡±
¡°Almost.¡± His mental range might have expanded but the island wasn¡¯t exactly tiny.
¡°Good enough.¡±
¡°Is it a good idea to cast a soul attack over the whole island¡¡±
¡°Relax, that can hardly be called an attack. If anyone gets hurt by that then their souls need toughening up anyway.¡±
With permission, he went ahead and unleashed the roar and reverberated it as far as he could. His mana could go far but the roar used essence. Life force and stamina would disperse before they got as far as his mana. The stamina usage for this spell wasn¡¯t even a conscious manipulation, it was just like moving his muscles so he couldn¡¯t actively help the spell go further or make it more efficient.
¡°Got it, Qin Mei said this should be the roar of a Soul Basilisk. She also commented that your copy of it lacks the expression and life of the real thing but she recognised that this particular breed is not a little snake but one that evolved. Possibly a Dragon or a half because of the existential suppression that you¡¯ve managed to copy well.¡±
¡°How strong are these Soul Basilisk?¡±
¡°Born Higher Beings. If they are the breed little Mei mentioned, then they are Saints the moment they emerge from their eggs.¡±
¡°I thought everything starts from unclassed, even monsters.¡±
¡°They do, even Dragons. But they can just stay in their eggs, level, evolve and understand the...hmm, you don¡¯t know this¡let¡¯s say power, in their genes. Many of these races and species stay pregnant for a very long time to feed their eggs enough energy. Lay these eggs when they are ready, and let the eggs gestate for an even longer period. And when they hatch, viola, Saint. Oh, memories and even combat experience included. In their minds, in their muscle memory. Everything.¡± Shi Tao was likely forced to change her words because Ebony never read about this from the God of Knowledge¡¯s library while she did.
That was precisely why the Xengs didn¡¯t want to give birth after evolving to Saints. They would just be making copies of themselves and they hated that notion.
Levelling did not require hunting and killing. He knew that, but he felt pity hearing that other races just stay unhatched and born a Saint. All that power, and they didn¡¯t get the chance to feel how and where it came from just felt like taking all the fun out of becoming stronger.
The reason for hating this sort of shortcut was also the fact that these races have an extreme difficulty of growing stronger than their parents.
¡°I see¡then what is this existential suppression?¡±
¡°Is that not self-explanatory? They specialise in suppressing other beings. Most creatures do this with eye contact, like we do. Eyes are powerful. It wasn¡¯t that obvious when we were unclassed and even Grandmaster but you must have seen normal people flinch or shake when they made eye contact with you. This just gets more obvious as you evolve and stare into the eyes of a creature that isn¡¯t as evolved. This roar makes use of this trait and enhances it.¡±
¡°Is that why you have to close your eyes?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
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There was a long pause before Ebony excused himself. ¡°I¡¯ll get going now.¡±
He visited his mother¡¯s grave and gave it a dust before asking the spear standing guard, ¡°are you called Qua or is that your nickname?¡±
There was no reaction from the spear.
¡°I¡¯m getting married. I heard Qua will test her, is that supposed to be someone else.¡±
¡°My name is Singularity Quasar. Mu.¡± The ground dented with a pulse, words forming in Xenese.
¡®Mu, is that supposed to be me?¡¯ Ebony felt weird, he had never been called by the second name his father gave him.
¡°Your name is kinda awesome.¡±
¡°That is my formal title as a spirit.¡± Another pulse of gravity imprinted the ground, the spear didn''t move.
¡°Is there anything she had to tell me?¡± Ebony asked with a bit more hope. His mother never told him about his Aunt other than her existence but she must have communicated better with her spear.
¡°Do you think I would know?¡± The earth popped back up before new words were imprinted.
¡°Perhaps. If there¡¯s anyone she would communicate with, her spear most likely knows. You¡¯ve probably spent more time with her than my entire lifetime.¡± Ebony replied with a tinge of envy that he purposely tried to express.
¡°It was a short time.¡± The spear ¡®curtly¡¯ replied on the floor.
¡°Did she have fun?¡± The word wasn¡¯t unfamiliar but its meaning was different for everyone.
Her spear should know better than him what it meant to his mother.
¡°I presume.¡±
¡°How was it being her spear?¡±
¡°I am still her spear. It is a spear¡¯s greatest honour.¡±
¡°Other than honour, is it a good life?¡±
¡°Nothing I wish more.¡±
¡°So she¡¯s that great.¡±
¡°Now, your partner. What is her name? I will test her in your mother¡¯s place.¡±
¡°I won¡¯t let you bully her.¡± It wouldn¡¯t be a test, just a beating. Ebony already experienced it. This spear didn¡¯t need a wielder to break him at the moment.
¡°Haven¡¯t even married her and you¡¯re defending her instead of standing by your mother?¡± The earth crumbled in form.
¡°Did my mother tell you to say that?¡±
¡°She wouldn¡¯t but I can be her translator.¡±
Ebony knew it was right, his mother wouldn¡¯t say that. She would get to letting their bodies talk instead of communicating with words. Many Xeng were like that but some were more extreme and his mother was one of them.
¡°I will be there as well.¡±
¡°Be my guest.¡±
He foresaw an ugly beating in the foreseeable future. Quasar¡¯s attacks hurt, they couldn¡¯t be healed instantly since they could destroy his mana chassis. He was, however, curious how Xin¡¯s Intuition and reaction speed could counter the spear of unknown rank and material.
The ground was returned to normal and the spear spirit quiet.
Ebony eyed the area, ¡°Quasar, did you hide anything from Aunt Tao?¡±
There was no reaction from the unmoving spear.
¡°Did Aunt Tao lie to me?¡±
Ebony stared at the unmoving spearhead and silent mana in the area with immense focus.
¡°I¡¯m always ready. Let me know when you think I am.¡±
Ebony Flickered backwards at the first shiver of movement from the spear. He saw the head bonk coming years ago.
Smashing his gravity cube into his previous spot, he blasted a small range of Domain open to exert his Will upon.
As fast as he tried to avoid it, it seemed futile.
Twenty images and ice conjurations of him were sucked into a vortex of gravity and faced the collapse of unbending pressure. He had hoped it would at least slow the spear down from finding his real body but it didn¡¯t change a thing.
Just when he thought he successfully sacrificed taking on the head bonk to grab and freeze the spear, he caught nothing but air.
¡®A delay? It wasn¡¯t¡¡¯ Ebony¡¯s gravity cube wasn¡¯t helping much to suppress everything within range. It couldn¡¯t stop a Spirit whose main element was gravity.
He explosively burned the air around him to expose the spear¡¯s location but found out it wasn¡¯t anywhere in his senses. There was no gap in ice mana and no gravitational presence.
¡®It cut itself out of this space?¡¯
A sudden hint of disturbance in his Domain appeared right in front of his face. Icicle came crashing down and parrying the spearhead just in time.
Thankfully, his Domain was able to sense when it reappeared.
Pushed back a step, his left leg tendon was sliced open. Not a single hint of gravitational disturbance alerted him of a delayed attack this time.
¡®When did it stab there? I¡¯m actually dumb! This entire space has been lived by Quasar for years, every part of this space has been stabbed or swept by Quasar¡It can activate a past attack whenever it wants. This is practically Quasar¡¯s Domain¡¡¯ Ebony was facing a spear that wasn¡¯t limiting itself to the Infinite Variation¡¯s power control.
Unable to explosively regenerate his tendon, he could only freeze his wound in ice and manipulate it to move. He only physically regenerated his legs not long ago and it wasn¡¯t fully healed to begin with but it probably wouldn¡¯t have changed a thing against Quasar.
He realised he was pretty much dead the moment Quasar chose to attack him but he childishly fought back. At most, it was another learning opportunity.
He Willed a few gravitational bombs filled with his flames into existence but a simple poke was all it took for Quasar to unravel his vortex. A light sweep enveloped individual masses of flames in gravity, compressed into annihilation giving him a mental feedback of the destruction of his conjuration. Vibrations were outright ignored or absorbed.
Ebony stomped the ground with a Quake that spread out his best solution against spirits at the moment, Pseudo-Imitation Roar of a Soul Basilisk.
His veins burst and he bled from his orifices when the soul attack seemed to have been absorbed into some weird gravity spell, augmented and reflected at him. His body was violently pushed away from the house and smashed into the mountain opposite Infinite Variations cover mountain.
Having a taste of his own medicine, Quasar stopped playing and used a simple Magnified Gravity to keep him joined to the earth.
It was ever so humbling but fighting Quasar made it feel like he forgot all the skills and spells he learnt thus far. He wasn¡¯t able to apply most of them.
Ebony¡¯s greatest confusion was where Quasar was pulling out so much gravity mana from. It wasn¡¯t even taking his cube¡¯s gravity mana which it was more than capable of doing, even in his Domain. Ebony¡¯s Will already showed how little resistance it could put against some people.
¡®It could be hiding its mass from me but even if it¡¯s heavier than my cube¡have I not explored enough possibilities of conjuring gravity mana out of mana alone?¡¯ Ebony¡¯s mind went through some possibilities while his body was facing the consequences of his words. It wasn¡¯t pleasant to know that Quasar could squash him as easily as it did to his ice sculptures and refractions.
He couldn¡¯t let anyone this strong point their fangs at his family.
Shi Tao was hiding things from him. He wasn¡¯t so blind.
He accepted that his parents were dead. That didn¡¯t seem to be a lie. But nothing felt resolved. Shi Tao had too much indignation whenever she spoke to him about his mother. Within that indignation was undeniable hope.
Quasar might not have said anything but he got the answer he wanted.
For now, the spear would be his indicator to when he could learn what he wanted to know.
¡°If you¡¯re so rough with my future wife, I won¡¯t bring you along next time.¡±
¡°I go wherever I want.¡± The words were imprinted into his chest this time. Carving a dent in his already injured body.
¡°I help you find out how many ways you can be swung.¡±
¡°You? You are merely my Master¡¯s offspring. I, Singularity Quasar, rather turn to dust than settle for second fiddle.¡±
Ebony found himself smiling once again.
His mother was a confident woman and an overly confident spear wielder.
Today he figured out the reason why he wasn¡¯t taught the spear. It wasn¡¯t because she thought he was not talented with the spear.
She just didn¡¯t believe he could be a better spear wielder than she was.
¡°Hahahaha that¡¯s just like her.¡± He temporarily lost resistance and accidentally let his eyeballs sink in, pushed by gravity.
Ebony continued to let his tearful laughter out into the valleys.
It was too bad no one with ears was present to hear it.
Chapter 385: Hiring
Ebony returned to Elcra with no help for the first time. The skies of Elcra were vast but not quite as limitless as they used to feel. It was freezing cold up high, but at only around negative 130 degrees Celsius, it was bearable for a short period for most Grandmasters.
But cold temperatures were fatal for hot-blooded creatures and Ebony wasn¡¯t excluded. A few hours might kill anyone without proper equipment or clothing at these temperatures.
Ebony¡¯s ice magic didn¡¯t reach these temperatures and his combusted ice for flames could reach temperatures enough to liquify carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but he had been careful about this because these temperatures depended on atmospheric pressures and it was different at different locations and planets.
People who didn¡¯t have some sort of breath control would have a difficult time near his flames but there were many easy solutions and the average combatant wouldn¡¯t be harmed by it.
Flying monsters weren¡¯t anywhere in sight so Ebony¡¯s fall was just a nice view of clouds and the quick warming of his body from friction and descent. A little bit of magic was all it took for a quiet landing.
Shi Ling wasn¡¯t around on Sky¡¯s Edge so he couldn¡¯t catch up with her about the parallel future him.
Ebony landed closer to Plainston. Checking with his Mental Map, he found his way to Ordina, his first dungeon rather easily.
Na, didn¡¯t act like he forgot Ebony and still invited him in.
Ordina expanded at an incredible pace. The weakest monster he saw was a level 130 Master and he had a feeling Na left it that low so that the people in his immediate surroundings had a chance to explore his world.
The number of floors didn¡¯t increase but the land area surely did. It was big enough on the first floor that Ebony couldn¡¯t sense and see the end of it. More energy has gone into size than the strength of his monsters.
¡°Na, long time no see.¡± Ebony greeted.
¡°Has it been long? But¡you¡¯re still the scariest thing around, thought I would¡¯ve grown past you.¡± Na still looked like a golem. It was 3.5 metres tall, with a shield that was very similar to the old one Ebony conjures and a longsword. It now had proper stone armour, very knightly. It must have learned from years of freelancer and knight involvement.
Due to Ordina¡¯s growth, the Imperial Army must have managed to land their hands in this place. Blocking out the entrance and exit with proper knights instead of weaker local soldiers. The golem had no reason to wear robes like Ebony or lighter clothing that could barely be considered armour like Xin.
¡°How many guardians do you have?¡±
¡°I have 2 back ups but I no longer personally act as the guardian, no one around has a chance to clear my dungeon anymore. well¡I¡¯m not planning to get you to change that.¡±
¡°You can feel it?¡± Ebony cycled back to Na¡¯s assessment of him. He thought he did an amazing job of hiding his mana, even having all excess converted to money in his bank account.
He had to try extremely hard because with his current regeneration, causing normal people¡¯s minds to slow down was the least of the problems. He was reasonably certain that he might leave people mentally challenged for weeks even after removing his influence. At least in Tidal, the average mana density was higher and people there were more used to higher mana densities.
Plainston might have grown quickly but the people around were still not at Tidal¡¯s standards.
¡°Of course, I can. That leak of yours is feeding me close to half of all thirty thousand and eight hundred creatures inside me now.¡±
¡°You have that many people exploring your dungeon?¡±
¡°About four hundred of them are what you call monsters.¡±
¡°You managed to bring them in through the knights?¡± Ebony was surprised, the Empire stopped monsters from entering dungeons.
¡°A creature that claims to know you, a monster that can talk, brought its race in. This was before the knights came many years ago.¡±
¡°A monster that talks, ah Obsius the Cysaru Aberrant. She brought the Cysaru here because she sensed something wrong with Bubble Hills?¡± Ebony nodded after the clarification.
¡°Yeah, they live here now. They provide me mana, I provide them experience, training and food.¡±
¡°Still, thirty thousand¡they built a town or multiple towns in your dungeon?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Anyone found out you can talk?¡±
¡°I have shown limited ability to communicate but you¡¯re still the only people to know about me.¡±
¡°About that, I¡¯m here to give the same offer. Want to leave your dungeon and explore?¡±
¡°The stronger I get, the more expenditure I have once I leave my lands.¡±
¡°Have you learned anything about runes?¡±
¡°A bit. Mana absorption isn¡¯t even close to enough. I lose essence not mana. I will have to be on a constant hunt. The monsters in the area can¡¯t even allow me to live more than a day even if I spend all my time killing them.¡±
¡°I see you¡¯ve already tried.¡±
¡°Yes, my absorption ability of essence also drops after leaving my dungeon. I am but a self-trapped entity. No matter how big I make my world.¡± Na was depressed.
Ebony was also at a loss, he could easily deal with his friend''s mana needs but essence was a different issue. Giving away life force literally eats away at one¡¯s life, they were not that good of friends. As for mana, runes could do the job, Na just needed to go somewhere with denser ambient mana and the limited range wouldn¡¯t be an issue with his current understanding of runic formulas and Runic Mana Shaping''s level.
As he wasn¡¯t a biological creature but a dungeon, a parasitic life form that eats the world it was born on, using ambient mana and essence was as natural as breathing. He wouldn¡¯t have to worry about turning into a monster like if humans were to use ambient mana as enhancement magic.
¡°I¡¯m getting married.¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
¡°Can I use your dungeon as one of the locations for a trip?¡±
¡°Sure.¡±
¡°Want a spar?¡±
Ebony was intrigued when he found out his Domain was limited to his body again. It technically made Na a better Domain mage than he was but it was just the nature of the dungeon. Na was surprisingly amazing at fighting like a Knight. He was a near-perfect knight with the sword and shield handling. His huge frame was utilised very well.
¡°How was it?¡±
¡°Your shield handling is great, your positioning is even better and your posture is amazing. By technique, you¡¯re about as good as an Empire¡¯s Knight gets including those Nobles I''ve seen. You¡¯re limited by whose techniques you¡¯re learning from. Your strength is about the same as mine with 3 types of augmentations while your durability is even higher.¡±
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¡°Is that good enough?¡±
¡°For what?¡±
¡°To walk outside.¡±
¡°Not really. Mostly because physical strength is a bit cheap, too many magical ways to get around it. In the past I would have said you are about as strong as an above average King-ranked Knight with a few magic specialties but I think you¡¯re closer to an elite Grandmaster now. If you understand the grading system, you would be around grade 4.5 Grandmaster.¡± Ebony needed to learn advanced forms of dispel.
The type that could deal with most other magic spells. He was at a disadvantage when experienced magic users like Quasar could disrupt his spells while he couldn¡¯t do the same. He did have a method for that, one that he learned from watching Elcrian warriors and knights dispel magic but that wasn¡¯t enough for his needs at the moment.
Ebony got Na to give him a moment. He was pleasantly surprised to find out that Eidolon, or Hex can still be connected to. Unlike callstones that couldn¡¯t go in and out of dungeons.
He searched the forums for ways to deal with constant essence loss and was more surprised to find numbers results. It was more commonly discussed than he¡¯d assumed.
¡°Oh Na, I found a few realistic ways to get you a source of essence on the move.¡±
¡°You do?¡±
Ebony explained to his dungeon friend about Elcra, Worldcores and Eidolon. The golem was intrigued but not quite surprised at the scale of the world.
¡°So the most realistic way for me is plants.¡±
¡°Specifically one that is parasitic and one that you can feed so the two or multiple of you can support each other like symbiotic life forms.¡±
¡°How can I get these plants? That money thing you said? I have mana, but¡¡±
¡°I put an order for you for seeds, you¡¯ll have to experiment yourself to see which works for you. There will be risks, implanting them into you. The more special the plant the more smart they are, just because you are a golem body of a dungeon doesn¡¯t mean you¡¯re safe.¡±
¡°I know, even I can die. My immediate goal is still becoming one of those World Dungeon things so that I don¡¯t die without Elcrian¡¯s Worldcore to parasite on.¡±
¡°Good luck with that.¡± Ordina the dungeon was going about in the dark more than Ebony was with skills. The dungeon had no teacher or predecessors to learn from for its evolution.
¡°Thank you.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t take much, keep getting stronger. Your learning speed is only going to increase with more people coming inside so don¡¯t kill so wantonly.¡±
¡°Never did. But I don¡¯t understand why you¡¯ve been helping me. It was an exchange in the past, but I have nothing to give now.¡±
¡°I thought of you as a friend. I can count on one hand how many people I think are close enough to remember even now and you¡¯re one of them. And, you still have things to give. You¡¯re younger than me and have more chance of becoming stronger than me than any human on Elcra.¡±
¡°Uhm, you want me to be stronger than you?¡±
¡°No, I want you to try. I¡¯m about to lose a rival for a wife, I need a new rival.¡± Na was the best choice in Ebony¡¯s opinion. Inhumane learning ability, undying or substitutional body, not limited by talent, not limited by physique or natural potential. Vast energy storage and ''regenerate'' by its nature of a parasitic lifeform.
Na was supremely adaptable. As a guardian body that could change the makeup of its body with any material the dungeon could make. Learn the skills of everyone who fights inside the dungeon. Reshape itself however it desired. Ebony had never seen another dungeon that could or had communicated with him or shown such control over itself.
¡°I learn from people that this rival situation is a mutually beneficial arrangement if I¡¯m not wrong.¡±
¡°You can say that.¡± Ebony nodded when he didn¡¯t find anything wrong with the statement.
¡°Then I am in your debt for the moment. I¡¯ll return the favour in future.¡±
¡°As a side note, I¡¯m starting a company. Want to be my employee? I pay well.¡±
¡°A company, do you mean a merchant group or a commercial organisation?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°I was under the assumption that all you care about is Scarlet and your personal power.¡±
¡°This is for my personal power.¡± Ebony had come to an understanding that wealth is power just as knowledge was.
He had questioned himself why the God of Knowledge needed monetary or mana payment for reading some books, gaining some knowledge. Why does a seemingly all-mighty existence need money?
He was kidnapped for mana and more accurately monetary value more than once.
Why wasn¡¯t he using his own worth?
Access to Eidolon widened his perspective on the power of wealth a tinge bit more. There were simply objects, items and power that money could get him. Power that his individual skills can¡¯t obtain.
As a modern man, he wasn¡¯t blind to the use of money but it never quite clicked with him. Money had rarely ever been a problem for him.
Hex might treat him well, like a big customer. But he was not.
As an individual Grandmaster, he was probably one of the biggest spenders. But in terms of trade volume, he couldn¡¯t even be compared to a small merchant group by Eidolon¡¯s standards.
He liked travelling to search for ingredients that could strengthen his physique but it wasn¡¯t efficient enough. Neither was he strong enough to go to places with natural ingredients potent enough to raise his naturally high potential. But money could solve it. Along with Eidolon¡¯s help to connect to people and resources.
Using just his mana regeneration for money wasn¡¯t efficient enough either. Ebony needed that for training and feeding Dusk¡¯s mana stores. The conclusion he came up with was investing. He didn¡¯t know enough to invest but had to start somewhere.
Ebony spent two days teaching Na his formless style while also learning a bit more about swordsmanship from a different perspective. The dungeon guardian was not a big magic user and more of an environmental user. It was too bad for the dungeon that it couldn¡¯t conjure anything a few kilometres from Ebony''s body. He didn¡¯t exert any form of Will outwards, just his magic body from his mana stopped Ordina the dungeon from doing any spell work outside of what Na the guardian could accomplish.
Then he took breaks to search Hoarfrost Glades.
He couldn¡¯t find a single trace of Arcta but he left traces of his own, hoping the Frost Elves were scouting their surroundings and found him.
¡®Illusion magic doesn¡¯t work well on me so there must be some form of physical camouflage as well.¡¯ Ebony was clear that most magic that affected the mind was ineffective against him. Although there were many exceptions and he couldn¡¯t discount that the Frost Elves might have some thousand-year-old seniors helping them.¡¯
One of these days when he went deeper into Hoarfrost Glades, he was called out.
¡°Congratulations sonny boy.¡±
¡°Thank you, Uncle Xun.¡± Ebony decided to treat Xin¡¯s Great-grandfather as a senior since he was going to be an In-law. It was a bit odd for him to call the older man a nephew.
¡°No, no. That¡¯s not quite right.¡±
¡°It must be.¡±
¡°If you say so! Hahaha.¡±
Ebony was surrounded by half a dozen Nings. He reintroduced himself to them and got introductions as well.
Veronica, Xin¡¯s Grandmother was present.
Ning Xun and his wife, Zhao Ya were Veronica¡¯s parents.
Ning Hua and her husband Qin Haoran. Ning Hua was Ning Xun¡¯s older sister and Veronica¡¯s direct aunt.
And the last was their daughter, Ning Min.
They were supposedly looking for something from the Garden of the Deceased for Veronica¡¯s grandfather or Ning Xun and Ning Hua¡¯s father.
¡°So how did you guys end up in the Glades?¡± Ebony asked.
¡°We were flung out. The Garden of the Deceased is a forbidden land of Elcra but it wasn¡¯t always that way. It used to be just a part of Bubble Hills till someone made it their territory.¡±
¡°Domain?¡±
¡°Even a ten thousand year old mature Domain can¡¯t kick us out. No, it has proper¡rules. Never mind that young Uncle.¡± These people were not looking at him, nor were they actively hiding their aura like on Sky¡¯s Edge where their homeworld suppressed them.
Ebony wasn¡¯t taking the pressure easily. The sheer quality of their mana and life force was shockingly purer than Gearhart''s by leaps.
¡°If you¡¯re looking for the Frost Elves just wait another week or so, someone will find you.¡± Veronica had been in pain since he¡¯d met up with them.
Whatever was in the Garden of the Deceased, it wasn¡¯t for him to meddle with yet.
¡°Sorry I can¡¯t be of help, good luck.¡±
Ebony tried to smile but the muscles weren¡¯t quite moved before all of them flew away. They must have made a detour and pit stop to meet with their future-in-law.
¡®Divination mages sure are troublesome.¡¯ Ebony wasn¡¯t told a date for his wedding, only that he would know when the date was closer by.
They also gave him well-wishes for a happy marriage but they were all mentally unfocused on him, hoping to rush off as quickly as possible.
¡®A week huh, guess I can check on Hata town and get stock up on fresh coffee.¡¯ Ebony contacted two of his clones using the Will Relay Buffers he placed on the way to Plainston to get over here to train with Na while he personally took his trailer out for a drive.
All the while, charging Dusk in Tidal with Will and mana.