Ebony's Fable

Praising their stealth, Ebony still didn't make any aggressive moves. Both Elves seem to take charge of this battle.

The two soul puppets were immediately noted not to have any human life force. Ebony sensed plant life instead, and the Elves must feel that more clearly than he does.

'I can differentiate creatures' life force better now.' The plant's life force was quiet, gentle. Animals were more intense but had a wide variety of additional…flavours to their life force. It was similar to how an individual's mana had personality. Still, he had better senses for mana by a long shot.

The wooden puppets had a living plant body and multiple souls inside them.

The only ones he'd seen hadn't even been able to hurt him when he ignored them before he evolved. These were clearly different.

Tower Head Sylvarith Dawnweave was a plant-focused mage. Taking control over the animated forest that the old Painter brought to life, his area of control was impeccable. Ebony stood to learn from the wide area control. However, it wouldn't fully fit using ice, gravity and vibrations method of control, so he didn't see many points where he could make use of that would be more suitable for him.

The leader of the Mage Association was a conductor of plant life, dancing and ripping the battlefield.

It would've been intimidating if it weren't for the fact that both their opponents dodged every root and vine. Some plants here shot explosive thorns, and their location and timing of use were exceptional. Ebony didn't think this mage had such good battle sense, but perhaps that was expected from the leader of the Mage Association.

Poison and rot pierced the wooden puppets thanks to the well-timed thorn explosion. A flex of mana from the puppets expelled the thorns and their wooden bodies cut out affected portions before regrowing back to normal.

Ebony's mana perception managed to perceive past their stealth coats deeper this time.

Their wooden faces were a lot more mangled than the ones hunting for his bounty…now that he think about it, they were probably there for his soul. Which meant they already knew about his soul before he evolved?

How did they not take advantage of his evolutionary period? Was the armoured man the only one they sent…one that was capable of literally ending him?

The Kings that stopped short of his house and couldn't get close barely counted.

Other than that, they might be waiting for his soul to evolve, which would also make sense if they wanted to harvest for both quality and quantity.

There was a lot less resistance than they were expecting, which is why they formed this scout group to figure out what ploy Lure were cooking by retreating so easily.

If only barely, the wooden puppets were getting suppressed by the two King-ranked Elves despite being Emperors. Ebony couldn't tell their levels due to their coats. Their wooden bodies were a bad match against the Elves.

The Painter of Animation didn't use her void paint again. She played an offensive-support role while Tower Head Sylvarith Dawnweave played the control-vanguard role with his mage. The animated plants weren't capable of stopping the wooden puppet's advance but under Tower Head Sylvarith's control, they were kept at a distance. The old Painter wasn't capable of drawing directly on the puppets' bodies and had to resort to drawing spells at least 300 metres away from the puppets. It was a distance enough for the puppets to deflect or dodge any projectiles while impaling animated plants close to them with a sharpened wooden arm or leg.

They could morph their wooden bodies, something the ones Xin killed didn't show the capability of.

Not only that, the head full of leaves they had were absorbing the animated life's mana to power themselves up.

'Martial? No, one of them has a rifle too.' Ebony was expecting soul attacks, but the puppets looked like they were fooling around. Then again, there were multiple souls trapped in one artificial body. That didn't mean they could manipulate souls. They were the result of one.

Hence, he was expecting the puppets to use an item and get close to attract souls. The only one who seemed capable of soul manipulation was Estacy Lord, and this Domain.

Ebony inched closer in front of his wife. Physical contact helped to get through the passive magic body. It was better to place himself in their path just in case. If there was one thing he knew, it was that the two of them had more highly rated souls than most.

The puppet's wooden body also made them many times more mana resistant and mana responsive compared to most fleshy creatures so they can probably withstand his overflowing wisdom to a degree. Mantle of Reservation was strengthened as he drew gravity mana closer.

Ebony suffused himself in Sequester – Fabrication of Frostblaze Embodiment. Essentially, this copied Entity Evanescence. Looking at his wife's confusion, it looked like he succeeded in hiding his magical presence. Next was turning both of them invisible.

Then he used his new Flicker with both hands out towards the wooden puppet's faces.

Mantle of Reservation pushed into their faces and flames of Sequester slowly injected into them….urgently.

'Their responsive wood bodies are taking my flames faster than the Demon's bodies. How convenient.'

This was not a good test of whether or not his soul was hidden thanks to Sequester because he had no proof that the puppets could perceive souls. They continued to stare at their Elven targets and rushed away from the earthen landslide that the Elven Painter drew using earth elemental paint.

Tower Head Sylvarith had managed to land another thorny arrow into them. This time, he made their internals blast into shards of wood and caused their bodies to morph uncontrollably. The goal was likely to make their wooden bodies reject the abomination of combined souls. However these puppets were already capable of morphing their bodies. A sign that their souls either adapted well with each other and their bodies, or they were already very stable.

He had a feeling the Painter of Animation had her perception of him but no one else did.

Ebony Flickered back to his wife's side after he was satisfied. He consumed about 50% of his Will, so this minute of away time was extremely draining on his Will.

'Where did you go?' her eyes asked.

"You were right, I might be shy of invincible here," Ebony replied through a whisper to her ears.

"We got a lead," Navin stated. Koawe nodded.

The humans and a single Frost Elf followed the Barrier King in his flight.

Koawe didn't bring his aerial partner, so they all shared Navin's arcane platform.

"What's the lead?" Truewater wiped his glasses with a cloth he pulled out of nowhere.

"We allowed the Will to attack my barrier skin. It took some time, but we stuck a curse onto their Will." Navin replied.

That was unsurprising. Will was transported by mana. Mana could be cursed with ease, and there were many mana-based curses. If he couldn't do that, the Elves wouldn't have let a human be King of the Empire unchallenged.

"No." Xin shot him down when he hadn't even said anything. He was itching to ask Navin or Koawe to let him taste a full blast of curse magic.

"It would do by research in curse-buffing runes good." He argued, knowing that she would relent when it came to their personal growth. Besides, he could always say it was for curse-magic resistance training.

That would work for sure.

Except curse magic didn't work that way. Depending on the curse, they all had different working principles and building resistance towards curse magic in general usually led to a skill along the lines of '1% + 0.001% more resistant to curse magic per level' type of resistance skill. And this was for baseline humans. More evolved naturally resistant creatures either fail to get the resistance skill or obtain an even weaker version.

While Ebony had not tested himself much, his study into curse runes had let him understand that he was mostly immune to any Tier 4 curse, no matter the type. This wasa base curse skill. Using purely runes, he had no idea how curse skill stacks, how their specialisation in a certain way could strengthen the curse, no Fortifications, no compounding skills. It was already hard enough for him to study into runes with the effect of a Tier 4 curse skill. Curse runes weren't exactly a widely studied topic.

On the bright side, his study into all other runes had exploded in success recently. He really wanted to go into Kong Jing's personal library. She must have increased her repertoire, and he could read Xenese, Gia and Elcrian now. How far has her self-made runic language Korun, come?

It didn't matter.

Ebony's Korun had already branched out and developed in his own direction for decades now. He wouldn't be surprised if the runic language skill changed, but the fundamental symbols were still based on Kong Jing's runic language. If Ebony encounters other runic languages and slowly incorporates them into this Korun, a mixture of about 30 runic languages, it would slowly be unrecognisable from Kong Jing's.

Needless to say, this was actually an easy task. There were numerous runic languages, too many to count. But many have a low limit bar. Most magic societies begin to develop their personal brand of runic magic sooner or later. This was a patterned observed in the universe over and over again. The limit of runes was the limit of the runic language development in copying skills.

Runes were pathways of mana in response to duplicate or create a spell or induce some sort of effect. A society whose highest limit was Tier 5 skills and spells would be extremely lucky to find runic development of a rune that can induce an effect equivalent to Tier 6. Of course, they can easily layer Tier 5 runes or put multiple Tier 5 runes to form a super formula that can easily output Tier 6 skill effects and more. These would usually fail due to other factors.

High energy cost. High material quality required. High mental energy or capacity to activate the complex runic formula, etc.

Hence, why mages love their towers. It was the accumulation of their powers and the sign of the peak of their magical prowess and research. With resources, their towers can output far higher power than any individual spell they could.

Out of 10 mages, perhaps 6 would delve into runic endeavours for their towers. Enchantment was more popular for equipment, scrolls and single-use or permanent items and structures in general, but runes were most lasting. If a mage was rich enough, they could use enchanted towers and just replace parts often or have spares to constantly output extreme firepower.

Technically, Ebony was looking into enchantment or at least, increasing the intensity of his runes to match enchantments. It's not like he was worried about the wear and tear of his mana, or Spine. Money also wasn't a problem.

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While his experimental Tier 4 Curse runes don't work on him, and neither does layering them do anything to him, it was hard to say if he really was immune to specialised curses when curses are very easily strengthened depending on the cost the caster pays. Because of that, curses were quite a priority for him. Even if mana wasn't the best energy source for curses in general, he had them in abundance.

Strong curses require the caster to disable themselves. Back when Koawe cursed the Old Hag, an Emperor-ranked Troll, he literally cursed himself to be unable to walk and was bedridden. As long as he wasn't dead, the curse would remain. Ebony is still not sure if there is a range limit.

It was unknown how many curses both Navin and Koawe were carrying right now, but both seemed fine and dandy. He recalled that Koawe uses total mana capacity reduction for combat-ready curses or mana regeneration reduction. Life force was usually more efficient, but not for the Frost Elves. Combat-ready curses basically meant it was to kill his target as fast as possible so that he could receive his mana capacity or regeneration back once his target was dead. The downside for these was that it usually didn't work immediately if his opponent was strong or resistant enough, and if he miscalculated, it would just make him a mage without mana, allowing his opponent to deal with him rather easily.

By specialising in curses, Koawe was weak in many other aspects. No exceptional movement skill or any reasonable physical ability. He was no combatant, just a very good curse mage who tends to deal fatal curses. It was not a projectile, and his hit rate was basically 100%. It doesn't require his mana to touch his targets, and this means it bypasses magic bodies with far more ease. While he was not a fighter, he was more adept at killing or causing deaths than most fighters.

Curse runes or even pure ability to use curses were relatively high in priority to Ebony. It was suitable for his abundance of mana in direct translation to power. He didn't need to put himself half-dead for a strong curse just by the quantity of mana he had.

He had trouble not with making a strong runic curse but making one that was beneficial. They were generally made to harm, not to buff. Runic curses can't exactly be cast onto his targets, and he knew nothing about controlling curses. From what he knew, just like Death, curses were closer to Aspects than it was to an element.

If he could, he would've already Willed it into existence. Will was supremely flexible in what it could produce after all. The Nebulian's Mandate could do practically anything, but at an extremely weak degree for most. Except for Saint Cormac, who seemed to have evolved and specialised better than most of his people.

Non-specialised Will would produce sub-par results at extreme cost. He'd tested while watching after his students, but he could drain his Will dry without achieving what he was attempting. Should the Mandate users try to copy his coreflames or even Will his frost flames into existence, the consumption may take hundreds of times more than it would Ebony. Thousands even.

He let the rejection go. Navin and Koawe couldn't exactly curse him when they were in a hostile Domain.

He heard his wife yawn, and it infected him too.

"I haven't slept for weeks." She explained herself to the water mage, who almost glared at her for distracting their senses. A moment of distraction was more than enough for a pointy edge to stab through their faces when they were the less evolved party present.

Ebony was in the same boat, and his increase in need for sleep didn't help. However, the increase in sleep requirement seems to have been cancelled out by his evolution, and it didn't get much worse than before he evolved. It might be a good idea to repeat the same thing if he needed a tiny bit of Potential in future.

Duke Truewater had a sphere of water conjured. Within it was a smaller sphere of ice that Koawe conjured.

'They've worked together before.' He noted that this was a combined spell they were fluent in.

While he could not tell what curse it was filled with, he could feel Koawe's overflowing essence get weaker over time. A dangerous game to play when he was in a hostile Domain. He was trusting his life to Navin's barrier spell. Then the ice melted into the water.

'Instead of holy water, they made cursed water. Cool.'

"You've come to take what's mine once more, Lord boy-ah." Ebony was the first to spot the Saint's statue. A bit bigger than the one outside the World Dungeon.

A man dressed in a flamboyant furred coat with light-medium armour underneath spoke up before the others in his party could spot them. He spoke Elcrian.

Past noble who'd left and returned, now part of Lure it seems.

Ebony was not interested in their politics, but apparently, Navin took over as King when he shouldn't have been. Though the same could be said for Truewater, not everyone accepted the decision. Those who didn't like it and left seemed to have returned.

'King ranked, but their auras are much closer to our group's in intensity.' The man speaking was an Emperor, and there was one more, but the rest of the group were King ranked.

"Stay out of this Mr. Rejuvenator. We know all about you. The others might be after your delectable soul, but my business is with the Lord boy."

They came prepared for curse magic. Mana Discern already informed him of all the anti-curse items they were wearing and a few people with the classes meant to remove or weaken curses, such as the Affliction Banisher.

"We are aware of your unspoken rules of balance."

Ebony cocked his head but his wife seemed to know what they were referring to.

"You will not act if we do not act against you. I'm not hostile, you won't be either. If I'm ignoring you, you will too."

"They got you." Xin nodded, seemingly more proud that others are asking him not to bother them than proud that others knew how to get him off their backs. "Should I?"

"Mmm."

"My husband won't interfere as long as your attitude remains."

Needless to say, this was Empire-Noble drama, and Navin didn't care to bring him into the equation. In fact, the Barrier King had been silent all the while, other than his briefings on their plan and goal here today. He did not need his wife's emotion-detecting skills to know that Navin was furious and was suppressing his anger. "Where is my wife!?"

Ebony grabbed Xin's hand and leapt off from the arcane platform, shifting his focus from this man to the source of this Domain. Unlike the man, this Domain---this Will already attacked and was still doing so. He would no longer be passive towards it, even if it means getting on an Angel's target list.

Leaving the Elcrian Nobles and Ex-Noble be, he helped search for Yvette's mana signature at least, but she was either hidden extremely well or not here.

Interestingly enough, the group did not laugh or sneer at Navin's demand. They were apprehensive, some fearful at the very shout. Yet they weren't fearful of Navin and reacted more so towards the mention of Yvette.

"She should be fine. She's also immortal." Xin reassured his judgment. These people probably didn't know where she was either.

It was not the first time he heard that Yvette was immortal, and hearing the same from his wife made him wonder to what extent the rumours go about her supposed immortality. No matter the rumours, the truth was that she was just the best healer there is around these parts. The lesser-known information was that besides arcane, which wasn't even her main form of healing, she was a blood, bone, flesh mage. Xin could smell the blood on a fellow blood mage any day.

Older Knights spread stories of Yvette's bone and flesh magic.

The Trolls did not like her.

Waltzing towards the centre of this group, who was already in combat with the two human mages and one Grandmaster Frost Elf, he and his wife were untouched by any cursed water raining down or the retaliatory spells. Ebony found a fellow bell user for Shi Ling. The King wielded a hammer to hammer at a stationary bell in the ground, the reverberations scattered the rain, but Truewater knew more than tricks to make it rain.

Not only were they prepared for curse magic, they were also prepared for Truewater. No surprise with the ex-noble having an understanding of the 2 oldest and strongest human noble lineages of Elcra.

However, their having a hard time was none of Ebony's business right now. The man even did his research on him, but that didn't mean he was going to sit aside. The Domain core was still on the offensive as they speak.

'This Domain Core already has Unfading Will.' This meant that this statue was already capable of regenerating Will and self-sustaining without the need for direct feeding of Will. Ebony's Will needed 2 to 3 weeks before the very first sign of Unfading Will starts to form.

Although his Will has strengthened and increased in volume, it still fades away.

This seemed like a lot of resources for a measly King's soul or a few billion Grandmaster and lower ranked souls.

Most of his Will and even mana cannot transfer across Worldcores without loss. He could barely receive any connection with Aegis, which was Sectors away within the Hex Region.

This individual might be an Angel, but sending Will across superclusters? There would be a loss of Will. This Domain Core may receive 1 point of Will for millions sent out, maybe more, unless Ebony was grossly underestimating this Angel, or there were more efficient ways he was not aware of.

The fact sitting in front of him was telling him both answers were correct.

'Apa's not here.' Ebony eyed every crystal bead placed on an altar beneath the statue. There were bowls of gems of different sizes, colours, shades and lustre but most were oblong, almost tear-shaped. They were soul beads. Containers for souls. Albeit low quality enough for Ebony's Mana Discern to get a name, since he knew this item.

Unfortunately, many were already emptied, but even if he could save their souls, these souls did not have a body to return to. They would die almost instantly the moment the soul beads were damaged. Most importantly, souls below a certain strength did not retain memories. They were already dead in a sense after being extracted into these beads.

Apa had his body retained, and as a King-ranked creature, there was a good chance he kept his sense of self even after being extracted from his body and mind. He couldn't find his ape friend in any of the retaken cities, so he was hoping to find traces here.

Xin's divination was no longer reliable due to the Angel's Domain.

He still didn't conjure any Scout Pigeons. He couldn't upkeep so many Pigeons with Sequestor, and his usual method of scouting would just lead to him being located or having his Will attacked. Perhaps it was his instincts that stopped him from spreading his Will everywhere the moment he entered Lacuna Expanse. Hence, no Apparition was walking the lands either.

While they were busy facing each other, Ebony and his wife stood beside the kneeling group of 3. They were kowtowing with the bowl full of soul beads and didn't look up. They wouldn't see him even if they did look up.

Nodding at his wife for confirmation, she returned the nod. He had to hold her hand in case he forgot she existed all of a sudden. That was the nature of Sequester. The mana itself would not know they existed in the same body. Even if this version was edited for stealth, he didn't want to test if he would truly forget. What if the counter and image in his mindspace suddenly go away, and he subtly forgets?

Sequester was meant for flames, not people.

'Well, my Will would run out and she would reappear, but that's besides the point.' Ebony gripped tighter.

He touched the statue that he'd avoided so far and started pumping flames of Sequester.

It rebounded half a minute after he started.

'She sensed it after all….oh well.' Ebony quickly detonated it before the Will fought back and removed all his mana.

In under a minute, his Will was almost down to zero. Casting a modified Sequester for two people put a drain on him.

'Not even close to invincible.' Ebony Flickered a Quaking Impact kick in the statue's torso. Bisecting the figure in two and scattering the Unfading Will by sonic vibrations to turn the statue to dust.

That obviously caught the attention of people around them. They also appeared back in sight and perception.

Xin's shoulders relaxed, a sign to him that the pressure on their souls faded.

It helped. He barely feels anything to his soul, so the indicator was appreciated.

This clearly pissed the Emperor, who was smashing his head into a barrier with a foot bogged by black water and the right side of his body frozen in ice.

'Koawe got a hit in, I didn't see it.' Ebony felt pity that he didn't sense how Koawe landed a hit with all his focus on himself and the statue he missed out on a display of magic.

A water mage and an ice mage were an amazing match with their spells.

The ex-noble had the classical Empire Knight build, but with an addition of sub-par Intent usage that allowed him to physically interact with spells that one wouldn't usually be able to without mana control.

The other Emperor did not make a move. He wasn't even around anymore. Ebony found him underground, inside a dome he could not sense through. A pure support mage or support class of sorts. That, or he was here purely as an anti-curse support. Ebony wasn't able to Mana Discern the man's class anymore.

So far, no one has been cursed. Ebony was leaning towards the second choice. A specialised curse resistance or purifier that can be cast over an area, or over multiple targets. His range had led to be undesirable; these pure support types would benefit a lot from range, but he was just a few dozen kilometres underground.

The Emperor's glare was not knocked away, even though he wasn't able to speak with water bubbling towards his face.

Ebony conjured his chair and took out a table from his bracelet. He retrieved the book about advanced magical organs of alien races he was reading when he was watching after his students.

"Dumplings?"

"Tea, please." He started to conjure Scout Pigeons with the foreign Domain crumbling and the risk of his Will getting infected dropping.

These people seemed to be well informed or warned, the few of them that managed to free themselves from Truewater's binding…drowning spell. They didn't receive the full brunt of the lake full of water, that was for the Emperor who could extricate himself with Intent and a mid-air capable movement skill.

"You cocky bastard!!" One of the full-plate armoured man standing near the 3 prayers yelled out with his greatsword already unsheathed.

"Stop!!"