Ebony's Fable

Leaving a modicum of attention to Navin and Truewater's planning, he turned to face his wife. "Can you try divining if there are any strong opponents to test some new skills with?"

The relaxed woman had a gentle smile when she dug into her mantle. The coin was hidden in her bodysuit, but the mantle covered the act of the suit spitting a coin out. Her liquid bodysuit also needed an upgrade after she evolved. Ebony himself hadn't gotten a combat-ready robe or just clothes in general.

He saw a hint of cheekiness in her eyes when she flicked the coin up in the air. Rotating slower than a snail in both their vision, he caught a flash of lightning and the expanding palm in his view.

Xin's clenched fist was shy of punching him in the nose. She shifted her slender fists aside to show her beaming countenance, "My husband's invincible here."

How is she so charming?

He didn't understand why it felt like he was on the losing end if she didn't end up flustered, so he grabbed her fist and slid his fingers in. Despite her strength, there was no resistance. Too bad she was already beyond getting flustered from public handholding. If only she didn't see that it was a normal thing outside of Elcra.

Anyhow, this did let his expectations down. Her foresight wasn't showing a good battle….and she wasn't exactly excited for a fight. There was a good chance he wouldn't be seeing both the Esctasy Lord or the armoured trespasser today.

"I'll handle the demons." Oplot bowed in their direction before walking off without looking back.

'Demon slaying is kinda their thing…' Ebony knew many forces closely related to what he knew as Buddhists were demon slayers. It wasn't just a saying, and 'demons' in this case meant literal people who demonised. Demons themselves weren't necessarily bad, and not all forces slay demons on sight but some were clearly no longer in control of themselves.

These demons seemed stable enough. Stable enough to follow orders or act on their own accord, that wasn't all about killing or even eating people. Still, the monk must have felt like it was his duty to put them on their 'right' path.

As for the safety of the monk, this man walked into a portal to a Saint Tetramyth and her entire army and came out alive. Unharmed.

No matter how weak Tetramyth supposedly are in this supercluster, the evolutionary gap was significant.

He wanted to watch the monk in the act, but was disappointed soon enough. The monk started preaching. A mental or spirit-based attack. He was likely testing if the demons were in full control over themselves or trying to get them out of senseless killing.

Clearly, almost all the demons did not like the pain of the unseen attack.

Oplot merely stood there and glowed with a golden light. Continuing to preach in an unknown language. It may be mumbles for all he knows. True to his title, he was invincible in the sense that nothing was hurting him. There were both physical and magical focused demons, but none with uncommon elements or odd tricks of a different system, mana-based, element-based. The monk was impervious to all.

'He's even tougher now.' Ebony recalled that if attacks don't exceed Oplot's defences, he couldn't even fill his damage bank capacity. Without this, Oplot generally did not have any offensive power. It was unknown how deep his damage bank was or its current fill percentage. At least with mages, Ebony knew how to gauge their mana pool's capacity at any time.

Unlike mana pools or life force, heck even his newfound perception for stamina, Oplot's damage bank worked on completely different logic. Ebony couldn't sense something no one understood. Oplot's stored damage did not include stored mana. It was very scientif—magically questionable. How can one store ice elemental damage to reflect yet have no mana for it?

He'd seen the damage reflection happen. Oplot can indeed use any element that he'd taken damage from. And, when ice was conjured or when an ice spell was withdrawn, the ice mana did come back into existence, but this mana does not exist on Oplot's body as far as he could perceive nor does Oplot have to use his own mana to reconvert into an element. He could only assume that this damage bank stored all sorts of energy in a storage he couldn't perceive.

Oplot was going at it the long way. He was not fighting, only preaching while tanking hits. Ebony couldn't tell if the man was taking any damage to store or if the attacks never even got past his base defence.

Scouting was left to the Painter of Animations, temporary life forms of plants and earth golems. Ebony could easily match their numbers, reach and speed, but he lost a bit of interest after his Wife's silent divination and spent his mental focus on testing other spells in the background rather than making this trip more efficient.

For example, creating a new thread that was taking most of his processing abilities right now.

First, a microscopic scale like the one on Dusk's tree form, to which he referred as Spine or the backbone of his Domain. Dusk was already bonded to the staff and shared a name, so the tree version was a proper spell.

Within the microscopic scale he cast, he made 3 holes for a wire around their flattened edges. He linked them up to another scale top and bottom, instead of layering them.

Spine was a ridiculous construct that Ebony could not achieve the same levels of runic layering within a short time frame. This was less than a thousandth of the number of layers Spine has but it would have to do for an experimental thread.

The thread became a wire.

Ebony tested its tensile strength and other properties before redoing it, when it can endure impact from all directions while but pulling it taunt causes it to snap rather easily. 'The strings linking them up aren't a good construct.'

Making ropes and wires with mana was hardly fresh. It might as well be the first mana manipulation training he did under a tailor's guidance. Creating his blend of braiding threads wasn't exactly inventive if it fails.

In fact, even his muscles were designed similarly. Wire making could be called one of his most trained constructs, along with runic ice scales and plum petals. He also knew this from certain fortifications he was suitable for, but didn't even consider.

However, it didn't take long before he conjured a construct wire with a working design he was satisfied with. His new mental processes helped immensely with the speed of experimentation and simulations with the data he received.

From now on, all the invisible threads or wires would be conjured in this design. He even had the runic formulation for increasing tensile strength optimised.

He ignored the serious looks he was getting from the mages…everyone but Oplot and Xin. Did they think he was performing a show or something?

Playing at the side, he had the help of his Wife to test this wire. She couldn't slice it till she was augmented and had to use Intent. Melting it was easier due to how thin the wire he made was.

The purpose of this new construct wasn't for making tough wires for mental or mana connection but he wanted to see if he could get his Will used to this formation. It was an attempt to toughen up the connection through Will and strengthen his Will Relay Buffers. If his Will was imbued in mana, and his mana was constantly forming in a certain way, it made sense to him if he could train his Will to be toughened up in the same way mana can strengthen when formed in a certain way.

'This is not even a 1/10,000 compared to Spine, I'll get Dusk to create a thread equal to the current Spine and make a few sets of combat-ready clothes.' Spine never stopped runic layering, always increasing. This pace only exploded after Ebony's evolution. With mana capable of getting compressed more, there was more space for runic layering.

The current largest Turtle Fort had a 1/100 Spine on it, but this ratio was changing fast since Dusk's focus was mostly on strengthening the main Spine.

Having created a proper spell in the past 6 minutes, Ebony moved on to the next task.

A large open space, no students to worry about. It was a good place to test his incorporation of his Clan Skill into his Flicker. The first Tier 4 Class skill of his needed an evolution. There were a lot fewer experiments required, a lot less creation needed. This skill had been with him since he was a child.

Treading Steps.

Even if he wasn't a spearman, this movement skill was one of the legacies his mother left with him. He saw a glimpse of the skill book up to the higher tiers, but everything only clicked when he saw Shi Tao use their Clan Skill. The snapping of muscles was far more violent than he assumed. The direction and angle required were also off.

Sadly, he no longer had the exact make-up of human musculature. Copying the skill exactly might even weaken Phantom's Flicker.

This wasn't an issue; he wasn't the only one who changed their musculature, and every member of the Shi used the Clan Skill differently.

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Shi Qiang used it in a defensive technique to toughen her body upon any contact. It even bounces off life-force, mana, Intent and Will.

Shi Tao only showed him the muscular technique, so he wasn't sure how she used it in battle.

Shi Ling used it offensively. One of her active skills was a palm strike. Once her palm touches her target, she would use their Clan Skill to induce a piercing kinetic force. It didn't require a palm, but it was clear that it was a Palm-based skill just like Ebony's old Quaking Kick.

His mother taught him the same way she used it, evasively. In a movement technique.

'But that's not the case now, is it?' Yet he was wrong, Treading Step or its evolutions as a movement skill wasn't evasive in nature. Not the way his mother used it.

He also used it to trick the perception of his opponents. It works most of the time. A blink-type movement skill could be disorientating to others.

The main point wasn't even the offensive use of the movement.

His mother likely used it for her gravitational delays of herself and her attacks. Specifically, for her spear art. Blink-type movement skill gives them a lot more range of motion and a ton more angles to attack from. With the ability to manoeuvre in 3-dimensional space, their art wasn't grounded to the floor. What's more, Shi Wu's spear strikes into the past or in the future and not just spatially, but that was from gravity magic, not her movement skill.

Phantom's Flicker had always been a part of Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts.

Focusing on editing the muscular control to emulate the same effect with his muscles would be the first objective. He was the designer, and he didn't exactly abandon human-like movement; he still moved human. So this step was easy. His control wasn't so bad that he couldn't emulate a few directed force snaps.

Next was what he wanted from his movement skill. It was neither speed nor distance. He already had both in spades, and fighting faster opponents was already a constant for him. Hence, he was looking at the 'weaving through physical matter with static 25% more ease' part of his skill.

This very sentence was part of the reason he took physical warping for raditative mana.

Since he took his hands off the power source, Ebony was radiating mana from his body again. This radiative mana's physical warping was not under his control yet. He'd been too protective of his environment and the people around him that he couldn't let any mana lose. Thankfully, Kong Jing's craft and her runes weren't damaged by the weak physical warping effect. It didn't warp her spatial mana and spatially compressed runes.

One reason for this was his new genetic trait. Transferring flesh through Will.

If he could 'phase' or move through physical matter, the risk of this new trait of his that he hasn't tested would be lower. There were still plenty of risks during the process, deformation, reformation of his body, mind and soul.

Would his soul be injured?

Would his mind be in any danger?

Most importantly….how does one even activate a trait that they were not born with?

This was like learning how to fly without wings or mana. What kind of energy was he supposed to grasp?

Clearly, Will and mana were involved, but how would his body, mind and soul be transferred along with Will?

He can inject most if not all his Will into an Apparition. 'Cloning' or 'teleporting' himself elsewhere. But his real body remained wherever it was. A silver of Will still kept him back in his real body.

This new trait of his supposedly gave his body, soul and mind the ability to deconstruct, merge with Will, and then reconstruct from Will. And also his mana chassis. Everything else of him should come along since his soul was already in the equation. He hadn't even found Muse yet because there was no need to if he hadn't figured out how to make use of this trait.

He didn't quite succeed with vibrating at certain frequencies like a certain comic book superhero to phase. However, Phantom's Flicker already helped him achieve a similar effect. He just had to bring it a step further and also blend Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts with it to cover his whole body.

'The vibrating thing does have its use…' Ebony contracted and expanded his muscles at different frequencies, causing Koawe and the Tower Head to jump into alert. His veins budged and slithered,and runic formations seemed to push out from under his skin.

"He's not under any attack…" His wife calmed Koawe down. The Painter of Animation was just a clone, while the humans weren't new to excessive movement under the skin due to muscular control.

Soon, he had the external layer of his muscles, closest to his skin to shiver at high speeds. While it did not help with going through physical materials, it did help with his radiative mana control by warping physical matter in a slightly controlled manner.

'I can do this the fully physical way, or try to incorporate radiative mana control from the get-go. Better to be able to do both, but the occasions that I would not have mana in my body are approaching impossible.' He looked at his bracelet. He suspected that even if the hibernating spirit that imprisoned him for years was to wake up and try her very best to absorb his mana, she wouldn't be able to consume fast enough.

He took enough data points to finish creating the spell within his mind and changed to pure power output to increase the speed of the skill. Besides an increase in stats, to improve the skill he fired off the snapping contraction of from the tip of his toes to his back at full power.

'I can increase stamina consumption by 48 times. Strain on muscles increased by 322 times, bones and nerves about half of that.' The very reason why he couldn't imitate his Clan Skill fully was how fragile his baseline was. Now that he knew what his new limits were, it was time for proper refinement and repetition to induce a Skill Refinement.

The speed increase for a stamina and strain draw back likely wasn't enough to evolve the skill.

Next, he considered the environment. For his skill not to cause any shockwaves or any force to land on the ground. He could also use mana to platform all his steps, but he tried to keep it as physical as possible so that he could activate it even if mana was interrupted by a spell or a Domain.

This was a bit trickier…he was moving with too much force to slip through. Yet, this was also related to the weaving through physical matter part.

'This Domain is starting to move….' Ebony slowed his skill refinement to a stop.

His wife seemed to read his mind once again and spoke up for him before he even thought to ask, "Found anything?"

She looked annoyed, but he handed her a dead stick before she could mumble.

If he handed her an ice conjuration, his mana would be a hindrance to her divination. They'd tested it when he got her to divine where a specific Number was. The most interesting result of that test was the fact that her stick would jump or shift for no apparent reason if his Number were to leave its body to transfer somewhere else. There was a time limit to this unscientific stick movement, and it couldn't keep up if his Number were to hop around their buffers a distance apart.

If she used Dusk as a divination rod, her divination would fail 100% of the time. It was close to tossing a person and using them as a divination rod.

Using any dense and pure mana of a different mana signature interferes with her divination. Most likely, interrupting the astral energy she was subconsciously using. They couldn't tell more till she could sense and manipulate astral energy consciously. In any case, it wouldn't be her focus for combat and was more of an auxiliary ability, even if she evolves. Her foresight would directly translate to combat ability, so he was looking forward to that.

He told her to check out the precognition trait, as she would likely have it genetically cheaper. Like the Tetramyths or insect-type races that also lean towards precognition.

It used to cancel out his predictions relatively well, but his evolution had made her precognition insufficient. Then again, they did not spar or train with each other much since he'd evolve. For one, he did not have full control over himself, and he had an understanding warrior as a wife. It was shameful to show themselves off in combat when they weren't in full control.

She denied the dead stick, informing him that divination will probably fail or won't be reliable.

Instead of putting Pigeon Scouts to work, he dipped into his Will and tracked down the source of the change in Will. It should lead to the core of this Domain, and likely a group of faithful believers offering souls to bring this Angel's power of influence over.

….It was surprisingly hard to do so.

This Will don't seem to link to each other through a thread of mana or an area of effect like Ebony's Relay Buffer. The Domain was acting on all of them, with Truewater showing why he was a weird mage. The man was suffused with Intent and not Will.

The rest of them, Ebony included, were starting to be affected by this Domain. Leaving Xin and Truewater to be the only people still untouched by the Domain, and could exert all their abilities. While Ebony was under this influence, it was clearly soul-based, and he was fine and dandy as far as he could tell. It was unlike the time he got his soul-eye frozen or the time when he couldn't sense his soul, but Muse sensed the Soul-Basilisk's reverberation on his soul.

In any case, it was better not to take his own sweet time and wait for the Domain to strengthen its influence.

"What an arrogant Angel who's not even in our supercluster…' Ebony overheard the Painter of Animations' real voice transmit from her unspeaking clone. She pulled out a pouch that consumed all of his perception around it.

'I can't mana discern that pouch.' He watched as she dipped a small brush into the pouch. The brush didn't change colour or become wet with paint. It came out as it was, but now he was no longer able to perceive the brushtip with any of his magical perception.

Then she painted on nothing but air once more.

'I see, that's void elemental material. She's using it as paint.' They sensed the Will around them disappear, and Ebony was able to figure out that the Painter of Animation just used a void elemental eraser-ink to wipe away the Will of this Domain.

Having seen the Void Tardigrade, Ebony wasn't interested in testing what the void element could…void out.

While she depended on items, Ebony still raised her threat level in his mind once more. And also to look out for any void elemental items and materials for sale. Sadly, he'd already seen the market, and even on a Regional scale, void elemental materials were not sold. Not even on any black markets Sophia knew of.

How is anyone supposed to carry around void? The pouch itself was a high-quality item.

Even Ebony's custom myriad bracelet cannot fit any void elemental materials. Spatially transporting void inside a spatial storage had been tested by people and scholars before, but if one were to move that spatial storage, the void would just eat through anything inside in its path. Then, eat its way out and destroy the spatial storage item. If it was a spatial spell, it would just eat through space mana instead. The void mana would then just stay in their exact spot unharmed. Void mana would act like that, but void elemental materials would still have a physical manifestation. Making it easier to transport, as these natural materials would already store the void mana.

"Oh, finally angered." The old Elf snickered and drew a circle before the same old Elf walked through a warp portal.

'So she really did draw a portal to warp Xin over. She can even directly draw herself into the World Dungeon.' Ebony saw the previous Painter of Animation dissolve into a puddle of rainbow liquid before flowing over to the real Painter of Animation's brush.

After her, he noticed wooden puppets floating in the sky, leaving sonic booms in their wake. A pair of them.

Finally indeed.