Ebony's Fable

Dusk, who had immediately been released to deal with the summoner's army, bolted back into his hands. His gravity cube escaped Spine and floated right behind him.

With a wave above his head, three plum bomb shells formed. Filling them with Coreflames took a moment longer.

The Spirit Possession Emperor flinched. His facial muscles twitched. "Put that staff down and we can still be friends."

"We're going to learn a lot about each other….friend."

"Urgh, go to hell."

That was not very nice to say to a 'friend'. Ebony didn't bother replying.

Charging a spell in the middle of battle, even a spar, was not something he did often. The Spirit Possession Emperor didn't exactly let him gather Will, imbue and fill up 3 high-energy spells without interrupting him.

Dusk sped up the charging speed of plum bombs by a lot, but the sheer volume of mana he was dealing with took time.

'Still not realistic, but multicasting does make it possible.' Ebony had the spare mental capacity to charge 3 different Coreflame plum bombs. This training field had its own gravitational field, as any respectable Xeng would train with variable gravity. That meant plenty of gravity mana he could use that would not affect the world outside the training field.

Spine and his bracelet vomited out the mountains of ice that also gave a boost of gravity mana. At this rate, he should conjure a continent for himself, and he wouldn't lack gravity mana just through conjuring tons of ice. Billions, trillions of tons of ice weren't a dream. If his Domain was crafted of ice denser than all the earth around him, and he had the volume, then gravity mana shouldn't be a problem even without his gravity cube. Except this would span tens to hundreds of thousands of kilometres to equal a single cube.

Dusk had a method of cutting the time needed to gather gravity mana from a large area. That was to make their future icy domain a place without gravity, storing all gravity mana around Spine and Dusk to begin with. The mana used to consistently contain them shouldn't be an issue for him.

That would reduce casting time altogether, but the lack of gravity might work in others' favour if they were used to the weightless feeling. It also increased casting time for the magnified field of gravity, and any gravity tunnel he creates would come from one direction instead of forming all across a large area, greatly reducing his readiness to zip himself around if he couldn't use Flicker for whatever reason. There were many pros and cons he had to balance.

Then all of Coreflame's Will started to be torn apart, including Sequester that shouldn't even have been sensed.

"At least act surprised." The Spirit Possession Emperor complained.

"You're going to tell me how any respectable summoner or mage can attack another mage's Will."

"You're a boring one."

"I hear that a lot."

Or so he says, but his Will wasn't being attacked. It was erased or consumed by something. A living thing.

A Spirit that eats Will.

'So it doesn't matter how well Sequester hides, if it exists, this spirit or multiple spirits of his can just eat up my Will?' Ebony changed his mindset and 'poisoned' his Will by imbuing the intent of having his Will be destructive once out of his control.

Seeing the shock on the summoner's face, it looks like his Will was indeed being consumed in some manner and not erased.

In moments, his plum bombs were back to charging up but with an additional instruction to their Will.

'I'm drained dry already, and they are barely filled with any mana at all.' Ebony held onto the three plum bombs. Adding too many functions to a single imbued Will into flames ran his Will dry at immense rates.

Looking at the plums, he determined they were essentially useless even with all the Coreflames due to how little mana they consisted of. Charging more mana would still increase their output in terms of flames, but the normal flames would dilute the Coreflames that have Will imbued. There would have no Preservation, Sequester or Diametric Unity effect if they were diluted by hundreds of thousands of times of mana that doesn't hold such an effect.

'How troublesome.' Ebony retrieved the Will from Sequester and Diametric Unity and recycled his mindset only for Preservation and a single plum but the Will loss was great, and he wasted most of it.

"That should not be possible. Your Will is like a moldable fluid that can solidify and reliquidify over and over again."

"Why is that impossible?"

"Its like having a conviction that the sky is blue. Then changing your life's conviction at the drop of a hat that the sky is green only to change that at any time to any colour of any shape with the same strength of conviction and belief."

"Conviction huh, to adapt is my resolve."

Unsatisfied with the refreshed plum bomb, knowing it would not harm this man, Ebony took bites of the plum and swallowed back all the Will to run Diametric Unity in Fabrication of Frostblaze Embodiment. His body flinched when vast quantities of gravity mana were trying to flow and settle in his body.

'Oh? This might do something interesting. Diametric Unity for augmentation over Preservation might be worth looking into.' Other than containing heat, Diametric Unity seemed to assist with conforming to various energy or elemental types.

"Too many stray thoughts, brat."

"You're right." Ebony nodded, then snapped his fingers and fell asleep.

His sleeping body raised Dusk and clubbed at the Spirit Possession Emperor's head.

"Hey hey! Smashing a Divine item on my head is not fair!"

Dusk replied in Ebony's stead, "feel free to use your own divine item."

❅❅❅

"Cheeky br--." The Spirit Possession Emperor hurriedly ducked the follow-up blow to his face. All thanks to Definite Event Fly, his possessed body avoided the blow.

The Amalgamation Falcon helped all the spirits possessing him to share the same senses.

He noticed that the Divine item was heavily sealed, so it wasn't really that scary now that he was sure about its current state. It made a lot more sense why a King could use it if its capabilities were sealed.

The Path of the Formless was as annoying as he recalled.

The ancient Doyen Tiger of his was constantly sending him emotions of how impressed he was at the young man's fluidity and ability to see the flow of combat. The Doyen Tiger also stepped onto the Path of the Formless thousands of years ago, before he contracted it, but it felt stifled and failed to go past what would be equal to Tier 4 of a Formless Art.

It is believed that one needs full mastery of at least a hundred other Arts or Masteries of the same tier to be equivalent to a user of a Formless Art in terms of battle fluidity and understanding the flow of all movements. This required number just keeps growing as one delves deeper into the Formless Arts to achieve true formlessness.

This young man wasn't there yet, but he approached it and was far deeper than the Doyen Tiger ever got.

'I'm too far away from my Domain….' The Spirit Possession Emperor pitied himself. He should've brought more of his summons with him.

As an Emperor, he owned land.

Land in the Spirit Realm.

All his summons were also his subjects. The surrounding Kings, relative to his ruling area in the Spirit Realm were his subjects too, so were their spirits. That was his Domain.

'I should've stayed home.' The situation he was in was no different from trying to kill the Esctasy Lord.

Needless to say, if this boy dies. He would die too. Too many people around can kill him, but just the fisherman alone was enough to make sure he couldn't even run or hide in the Spirit Realm.

Controlling his strength enough not to kill the boy was not easy when the boy kept ramping up and pulling off new methods to counter him. He was learning and improving so fast, it seemed like he was just recalling spells and techniques he had forgotten.

'If this goes on, the summons I brought won't have enough energy to supply me.' He swapped out the Purpose Consuming Axolotl and allowed the Giant Drive Elephant to join their amalgamation of possession over his body.

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They shouldn't kill him if he just beat this brat into the ground and force him to give up.

'Calm down, Phanny. Just a little boy. A morsel of your strength is enough.' So he says, but the Spirit Qi Whale was only portioning just enough energy for a morsel of power anyway.

"Just a warm-up Phanny." Wilbur the Doyen Tiger calmed his best friend Phanny as their largest provider of physical power. With Wilbur's skill and Phanny's power, he was not afraid of anyone in single close combat.

"There!" Silver, their resident Surreptitious Anima Serpent, warned them of the coming attack. Their brat of an opponent hid his presence and physical figure with his light-bending skill once more, but it couldn't escape Silver's eyes and Absolute's reflexes.

"It's a fake!" Absolute warmed Doyen at the last instant after Doyen moved an arm to guard the downwards kick. Absolute and Silver's senses overlapped, and they saw the child's body split into two forms, one chasing the other.

Doyen acted like he reacted to the fake and countered with a jab and step to close the distance to knock the green but mean fighter.

But their fist was caught and the martial fighter flipped his whole lower body up with their arm as a pivot and still landed that kick he prepared onto their shoulder. His ears felt the sharp slicing force when his head barely leaned away.

"Doyen, don't limit yourself to the ground. He's familiar with aerial and 3-dimensional close combat, too." Order, their binding Falcon commented.

"Lend me your wings again." Doyen didn't sound like he would take no for an answer.

"You don't use it well." Order complained.

"Good enough for this child."

"Fine." Order relented control of his wings.

"Ranya, release a little more." While his body was possessed, all he had to do was speak with Ranya, his beloved Spirit Qi Whale. Ranya alone was all he needed to keep tamed, and all other Spirits would listen obediently. Although some did need pacifying or bribing.

He still had plenty of leeway before reaching the strength that would equal the lowliest of Saint-ranked...people if those higher beings could be considered as such.

As an outsider, he had to be careful not to cross that line, or the Nebula Watch had more than enough reason to come kicking, and no one wanted to mess with the Nebula Watch. He'd been to enough natural Worldcores protected by Law to know what the Nebula Watch's standards were.

The best leeway he had was the fact that he was indeed an Emperor, and reaching their lowest standards for a Saint ranked power was not a death penalty since it was not rare to reach such strength even in their supercluster. Not that he'd ever been outside the supercluster, so he wouldn't know.

Feeling Doyen's high impression turns into prudence. "How much battle can one so young experience?" Doyen might have protected them well, but he actually hadn't landed a proper blow with all their power behind it either. At best, they exchanged blow for blow, but he hadn't brought out a good spirit possession combination to deal with the reflected vibrations and blowback of mana, while the young man had a body much too durable. And damn was the young man abusing his durable body to deal reflected damage to hurt them more than it would hurt himself.

Trading blow for blow simply didn't work in their favour. The young man who can't get the upper hand keeps forcing this exchange whenever he gets a chance.

"Master, get Molly Eight to possess you." Order suggested.

Molly, a water slime spirit quickly joined their entourage within his body. The brother and sister of Molly 1 through 99 were all his loyal pets. They were the mascots of his army, but Molly Eight showed surprising skill, so he kept her around instead of leaving her at home to raise his Spirits'...spirit

The water slime immediately went to butter up Ranya by rubbing her slimy body all over her. All within his Spirit Body, of course. They didn't have to be manifested if they were possessing him.

Luckily, his opponent was not an Intent user, and his usage of Will hasn't fully copied what Intent could do. Otherwise, their entire style would have to be centred around protecting his Spirits and his Spirit Body, since an Intent user can directly target the Spirits possessing him. There was also that annoying swordsman who once separated him from a large majority of his Spirits and cut their connection off throughout the duration of their battle.

That had been a real close call.

With Molly Eight, his movements became smoother, and the reflected damage sent into his body no longer harmed him. The water slime changed the state of the body to be half spirit, half physical.

The freezing attempts are weakened too.

He shook out of his thoughts after he got kicked in the face the second time.

"What's going on Doyen?" He complained to the expert fighter.

"Absolute and Silver are giving me mixed signals!" The old tiger rebutted.

"We're seeing different things, no, the same thing but different timings." Silver reported.

"Yeah, his mana traces we already got that down didn't we?"

"Something else, every time we contact,t we feel the impact a split second after contact." Doyen shook his tiger head in response.

"So what's the problem with that?"

"It's changing more than just a slow transfer of force, his body is moving backwards when he moves forward!"

"Please make some sense of what you're saying Doyen."

"Order cut off Absolute's senses for a moment. Just look through Silver's eyes." Doyen suggested the Amalgamation Falcon to seal away their resident Definite Event Fly's senses temporarily.

"No master! Don't open your eyes, it'll be our loss if we make any eye contact!" Silver hurriedly gave his strong opinion about Doyen's suggestion.

"Bah! I meant just use Silver's senses!"

The Spirit Possession Emperor let his Core Beasts take charge, and he watched from a third-person view.

Doyen let the young man swing their Divine item at his torso.

He 'saw' through their mana perception that the Divine Item struck their rib, but his body felt nothing. Doyen who ignored the scary weapon, struck back. In the midst of his materialised claw swipe, he felt the pang of large sums of infused mana explode at his ribs.

"Feel that? That's the delayed blow. Watch carefully, I think he's going to do that again."

Doyen drew Phanny's strength and rained down blows after he stomped the training field's floor and trapped them in the fleshy watery slime to block off the young man's escape routes and limit his evasive possibilities. The man's ridiculous magic body made it tough to conjure anything nearby, even with the constant tearing apart of the Domain's Will to allow any sort of conjuration to begin with.

Then he noticed what Doyen was showing them. Their attacks should have hit. All of them. The sensation of contact across Doyen's claws that grew out of his fists were solid but seemed to disappear moments later.

They weren't tricked by the visual illusions that relied on light refractions. They didn't even have their eyes open. He also easily differentiated between a physical body and the fragments of mana that copied the image of the body for a recursive impact for the same strike. Their claws should've ripped into or at least scratched against the metal-like body of their opponent.

"See, the impact isn't delayed. His entire being is."

"But we see him moving at a point in time, if he's moving, we see that in real time. And we know we're not getting tricked by his visual trickery and amazing use of ice magic. So what if he's delayed? We should just see it slowed."

"That's what I don't understand."

"So what. It's not a big issue, why the apprehension?"

"…Long ago. Long before you were born, Master. Before any of you came into existence. There used to be an individual who fought in a similar fashion but far more terrifying…no, it can't be…Master, I highly suggest you give it your all and stay on this man's good side. We should cut ties with anything or anyone that might get on his bad side as soon as possible."

"Calm down and explain yourself, Doyen."

"I can't tell you the reason."

"Why?"

"For our sake."

"I trust you. So should we go easy and let him win?"

"No. We beat him up as hard as we can, even if it risks the Nebula Watch kicking us out."

"That was actually our fifth plan of escape, so why not?" The Spirit Possession Emperor got Ranya ready. It was immeasurably annoying trying to hold back enough not to kill a mere King who's like a roach.

He dismissed Molly Eight.

Ranya fed Phanny. Phanny lent Order. Order breathed life into them all.

"Keep it coming, little Phanny." Doyen urged. This was hardly enough to get the Nebula Watch's attention, but it should already be enough for the average durable Emperor.

The Spirit Possession Emperor trusted the old tiger's assessment. It was surprisingly the wisest of them all, just due to how ancient it was and surviving more ordeals than all of them combined. As his Core Beast, they were the same and there was not a shred of doubt that the tiger was trying to bring harm to them.

"Palm of the Possessed." He ignored Doyen's protest to call it the Claw of the Possessed. Their spirit energy palm wasn't humongous, but it covered enough for it to be fast enough that their target couldn't dodge.

"Pl-an fa-il-ed." Absolute transmitted.

They winced when they felt the space around them fluctuate. A very bright star and mask brimming with mana had sealed this area even tighter.

Absolute must have sensed that the Nebula Watch's eyes were temporarily blocked, which meant their escape plan of being arrested by the Nebula Watch to run away had failed. "It's all that Divination Mage's fault." Silver's tongue slithered by their ears.

His eye twitched when the training field's floor was only cracked. 'Pretty sure I split continents with his palm, even if I'm not in my Domain now….'

"That tree actually withstood it?" Not exactly, the person inside was crushed along with most of the tree but the ice block didn't shatter into a billion pieces and merely split in two.

'I trusted Doyen but….unbelievable, a King actually survived.' It wasn't like they were possessed by his whole army or his golden trio, but still.

Despite the broken bones, the man stood on steady feet. Unconscious, and already retaliating. However, Palm of the Possessed did more than damage to the physical body.

It also stirred the spirit. The young King would feel like a baby in an adult's body.

Or so he thought, but in just moments, the man actually moved properly.

"It's no use, Master. He has mastered bodily instinct. His body doesn't require full or any mental commands to move. His spirit is shaken, but his body has learned to ignore all else. This is also what that individual is known for. One's mind might fail them. Their spirit might fail them, but their bodies never. A Primed body that breathes training and combat will merely be surprised by a shaken spirit."

"A fighting machine is all he is now. I see why he put himself to sleep."

"Tell me Doyen, then how are his augmentations stabilising?" The Spirit Possession Emperor held onto the Divine Item and already kept the Domain sealed within an encasement of his spirit army's Will.

"…Maybe his mind is also capable of ignoring the destabilisation of his spirit."

The Spirit Possession Emperor shook his head in regret. How was he going to put this master of the body and mind down for good without killing him?

'I should've brought sealing specialisation spirits with me.'

These old bones of his were going to be warmed up for real today.