Ebony's Fable

Xin stood with her fists on her hips and proudly declared that she could evolve without worrying about her house burning down in the middle of her evolution.

"Unlike your silly location of choice, this is the second safest place on Elcra so don't worry too much." Veronica was seemingly very curious about Dusk, the staff and the Will.

"Second?" Ebony didn't think the Xengs would be okay with calling themselves second in anything, especially regarding safety and strength.

"What's the confusion?" Veronica showed surprising ignorance.

"Where is the safest then?" He didn't think he would have to ask the obvious.

"The Garden of the Deceased."

"What is that place actually?" It was still a blank on his Will Relay Buffer network till this day.

"No one told you? It's a God's burial place. Why do you think this Worldcore is so prosperous?"

"…"

"Oh, that's supposed to be a secret. And don't go there yet or stupidly extend your Will over."

"Did you get what you were looking for over there?"

"…I did." Veronica's young version was also that of a beauty, resembling his wife in the softer features. But now that she used this face, she was yet another person who kept her eyes closed walking around Xienor.

Ebony can't sense Veronica's presence at all. It was like she wasn't here.

"Is holing up my most efficient route now?"

"For the moment. There is nothing much that can challenge you here, not in the way that's effective. You have all the ingredients, you tasted your first true Potential flood. Levels and skill levels aren't a concern for us. A King is but a stop gap. Once you hit 750, it's a pity, but don't dally like the others here."

"I don't have time right?" It would usually make more sense to spend more time in King ranked as the next evolution is usually seen as a mortal's last evolution.

"You know?"

"Mmm, I shortened my lifespan. I haven't checked how much I have left."

"Less than a hundred years."

"I see."

"You'll begin to show signs of ageing in 30 to 40 years. Then you'll grow old and die before my cute little granddaughter."

"She's not going to do something so silly, is she?" He referred to reducing her already short lifespan for a tiny bit of Potential.

"Not possible with Her blood. Soon age will not be an issue for her."

"Even with her lifespan consuming Core Skill that's going to get stronger?"

"Likely. Lifespan is one of the easiest issues to get around."

"What about your grandfather. He's dying of old age before all the other Xengs."

"Different cause. He is, in fact, older than most of us. Maybe even older than some of the second generation."

"Because of all the time dilation or dungeons he'd been to?"

"That, and more." Veronica raised her empty tea cup.

"Is he going to evolve then?" Ebony poured her another.

"Once you hit Emperor, you will know why we are unwilling to evolve less than perfectly."

"I know."

"…Did ancestors tell you?"

"There's no need. It's pride." There was also the talk about limited amount of concept and laws but that wasn't the main reason.

"Fair enough."

Head of a chicken over the tail of a phoenix.

"The Nings don't hate Xin as much as I thought."

"Only thanks to you."

"What?"

"First of all. The Shi Clan has not produced a man. Second of all, you're from the third generation. Lastly, I don't know why the older generation sees you very, very highly. But I did my homework since then. Shi Wu, I didn't know the name. Most of us younger generation have never heard of it. Searching for information with a name is easier for me than most."

"…"

"Your name, it might be the language you introduced yourself but I couldn't believe that it slipped my mind. You think us prideful…never mind."

"A-"

"Astral body resistance training will begin tomorrow."

"Thanks." He didn't address the abrupt change of subject.

Ebony eyed Veronica victoriously when his wife pulled him away to the house instead of her grandmother.

Then the older lady snirked, "Thanks for your hard work."

"Honey, help me move the tub over."

Ah, he was pulled over for a chore.

Anyway, Xin had already been ready for a long time.

Getting the special tub ready in her bedroom, she demanded a kiss on her cheeks from both of them before she closed the door on them. "Aish, this old lady will get out of your way."

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At that signal, Xin forced the door open and pulled him in for a proper smooch.

"I wasn't there when you woke up but…please be here when I wake up." She worriedly twiddled her fingers around.

"I will." He felt the charging warm embrace for the last time in a few months before he stepped out.

Even the pouring of Her Blood into the tub will be left to her.

All he did was arrange the elemental materials in her room. The Heartblood Essence and Her Blood were left to Xin herself.

'Roughly seven months….' Ebony put his boots on at the front porch.

There was no time to waste, and he didn't have company to relax with.

With less than a hundred years to live, it also meant less than a hundred years to be ready for his next evolution.

Seven months should be enough to hit level 750.

He stood at the door and waited.

Waited.

Then the essence grew still. Xin started her evolution.

"Uncle Wu, let's get started." He hopped into Xin's training field. This one should suffice even if it wasn't specially made for him. That was more suitable for Priming, but this would do for sparing.

"You. Join us." Uncle Wu hopped over from his boat in the pond. His jump caused the boat to dip and waves to ripple across the pond.

The summoner was helplessly dragged over by a fishing line on his collar.

Within Ebony's senses, this Emperor was much stronger than Ecstasy Lord. Another sparring partner was good to have. If only creatures weren't susceptible to soul attacks, the Ecstasy Lord didn't appear to be much.

"Haaa. How should we do this, little kids?" The summoner shrugged and rolled his shoulders for all the disrespect he had been facing in the past few weeks. This training field was special; he knew the moment he stepped in that they were spatially cut off from Elcra.

"You're a summoner and a tamer, summon whatever you got. I won't kill them."

"You're one, two men. I have an army."

Ebony raised a hand to catch Dusk.

"Th—tha.. Di-Divine!" The Summoner exclaimed while his eyes showed fear that turned to greed.

"Don't shout, it's just a staff." Ebony was actually speaking to someone else. He saw a few spirit bodies crawl out of the summoner's body. They were bluish, but they slowly changed colour and materialised a little before they even climbed out of the summoner's body.

'Storing spirit creatures inside his spirit body, and they can materialise a physical body. His skill set is quite…cool.' Ebony let mana leak out and conjure his own army. Quite a few of his Numbers wanted to take part. They also needed to know the difference about themselves now that they were the Will of a King.

"Looks like they want this staff very badly." Ebony quickly realised that those who couldn't control themselves and escaped the summoner's spirit bodies were ice and even a few gravity elemental creatures.

It was unknown if some of those who didn't exhibit any obvious elemental preference used sound magic or some form of arcane magic. Then again, almost all spirit creatures should use some form of arcane magic.

"Who the neatherfae are you?"

Ebony replied with a flaming sword to his face. The moment he did so, a tiger spirit overlapped over the summoner's physical body and the summoner caught his conjured projectile. Crushing it into an icy dessert.

"Let's see what we're working with." Uncle Wu patted his old back and lay in his favourite recliner that he uses if he were on the banks of a pond.

"Little Wu, don't you relax too fast. Let Auntie see if you've been lazing around." Veronica placed her hand on Uncle Wu's shoulder.

"…"

❅❅❅

'Ferocious fighting style.' Ebony's forearm had a fist indent as his body spiralled backwards after crossblocking the Summoner's punch.

Despite the most ferocious fighting style he'd ever seen a person use, it was surprisingly well-balanced and not weak in defence. A Tier 6 Ascendant Art trained to near perfection, barely keeping up with Ebony's Sovereign Arts. He only got hit since he was a bit slower.

And that was already very impressive timing for someone only slightly faster to hit him with a blow he decided was decisive enough that it required him to block.

As for the Summoner's magical mastery, that was even more impressive. Otherwise, he would still choose to dodge instead of block, but with the number of Spirits he had that were all Emperor,s his dodge paths were all locked down by even stronger attack paths.

The Apparitions did not hold a candle to the army of Spirit creatures.

"That Spirit Qi Whale is very much like me, don't you think."

"You're finally speaking, and that's the first thing you say!?" The summoner's mana materialised claws followed up, but Ebony already righted his body and caught the strike with his knee and elbow slapping down. A shadow of his free left foot kicked at the lunging tiger in the form of a human, followed by a dozen Shades.

The summoner raised his right hand to guard against the kick. A spirit turtle shell materialised and absorbed the sonic blows along with the blast of icy flames that tried to target him. Then, a fleshy nozzle grew out of the summoner's back and expelled every bit of foreign mana that managed to get into his system.

He was so adaptable to all of Ebony's intrusive spells, yet also beefing himself up enough to tackle a Domain Augmented version of Ebony.

The man had a seemingly endless flow of mana as well. Ebony deduced that it was due to the phantom of a whale right over the summoner's back.

His eyes were looking at a normal human wearing a cape, but Mana Discern was looking at a mana with tiger blood, wings of a falcon, scales and eyes of a reptile that avoided eye contact no matter how much he tried to force eye contact and weird, long hair all over that seemed to be a foresight or reflexive detector.

The Spirit Qi Whale that oversees all of them.

Ebony managed to make a preliminary Will suited for detection and imbued his eyes with it. He was slowly beginning to be able to see Spirit with traditional eyesight.

'Just like the Tetramyth's Powerhouse, but for energy. The Spirit Qi Whale is taking and refining all the weaker spirit creatures under his command and supplying him with the refined energy, be it mana or spirit energy.' It wasn't enough to impress him, but it did put power into all his enhancements for an indefinite amount of time.

All five of his Core Beasts gave him some active augmentation. But the Spirit-Qi Whale alone was enough to keep them all energised. Excluding the other spirits, they were relying on that wasn't possessing the Emperor Summoner.

In any case, it was clear that a large or seemingly inexhaustible energy source wasn't that uncommon for an Emperor.

"I know you can draw far more power from your Core Beasts. Don't need to hold back on me."

It was a pity that the Summoner-Tamer using 5 Emperor-ranked Core Beasts did not equal 5 Tier 6 compounding augmentations because each Core Beast seemed to be augmenting different parts of them instead of overlapping and compounding augmentations. Even so, it was all too obvious the Summoner was holding back.

"I'll probably be killed if I kill you. This is not where I'm going to die."

Ebony squeezed a fist and the Summoner coughed flames out. Sequester kicked in.

'So little….he did manage to expel a majority of Sequester too, Is it some of his Spirit creatures' abilities or is his natural body capable of expelling it?'

The cracks on his skin burned, sealed up and healed within moments. "Fine, you brat. I'm the Spirit Projection Emperor - Master of Spirit – Master of Self."

"…" Ebony cocked his head.

"Hurry up and introduce yourself, and let's get started."

"Is that a cultural thing…my apologies, I just evolved." Ebony also knew Elcrian introductions but this style was a bit unfamiliar to him.

"Haaa. Meditate and feel the depth of your soul, I know you can do that. Your calling should feel obvious, and you can voice it out. As a King, you are no longer a nameless Entity. It should be something along your Class or Classes. This is basic duelling courtesy throughout the Superclusters. Don't go out and embarrass yourself not even knowing how to introduce yourself. Heck, it's basic information you can find on Eidolon."

"Thank you for your guidance."

"Just hurry up."

Ebony did not worry about a sneak attack. Neither did he need to close his eyes. Its not like he wasn't meditating right at this moment.

'Feel the depths of my soul for my calling?' The instructions weren't clear, but he achieved the effect the moment he thought to do so.

Stillborne Sage – Frozen Momentum – Breaker of Will