Ebony's Fable

Ebony sat within his mindspace and observed his body.

The 'Palm of the Possessed' was simple, efficient and powerful. A blue hologram-like hand that spanned less than a hundred metres had spawned and slammed down at him so furiously fast all his body could do was chuck itself into the nearby Spine.

Within that split second where he was consumed, Dusk was instantly sealed by a mixture of Wills and his Domain was smothered. Even his augmentations were weakened, but that was because he already drained his Will dry trying to play around with his Coreflames so much.

To see Spine not just crack but split down the middle while the semi-solid palm smashed him all the same, somewhat phasing through Spine but still affected physically was almost refreshing. It was like water seeping through tiny pores and still smashing him along with his trusty tree.

Being able to kill someone and how powerful one was was truly not on the same scale. The Dullahan merely had a fraction of this combat prowess.

Ebony resisted waking up to take control.

He sensed tens of thousands of foreign Wills, perhaps spirits that he perceived the minds of. They were each fighting over control throughout his body. Some fought to control his heartbeats, others fought to settle within his brain. Most struggled to gain control over a muscle fibre in his body.

Hence, why his body was moving so awkwardly, but it was solved easily. Sort of like a controller with their buttons mixed up, his body quickly found the corresponding signals and just pressed the buttons to move like normal once more. This alone was training worthy to get him used to so that his body won't get stunned by the same effect in future.

There seemed to be an increase in the number of targets he had to simulate against all of a sudden, but they left almost as soon as they entered. In real time, anyway.

In the invading Spirits' perceived time, they were forced to live through time as his mindspace experienced an accelerated frame. Like any creature with high Intelligence.

It was normal enough since he wasn't a mind mage, and unless his opponents were capable of something similar and also strong enough to affect his mind then the time they perceived was whatever his mindspace experiences.

There were enough of them that almost lagged his processes though. With so many additional minds exposed to him and he was exposed to, the number of concurrent simulations he suddenly had to make exploded from the sudden invasion. His mind reacted naturally, but to condense so many of them was a huge load even on him. The natural defences of his mind prioritised mental capacity for spell casting, so there was a limit left for simulations. It was also equalised so each invader was fortunate to divide the number of simulations they could face in one moment. The longer that moment dragged, the more scenes they see and feel.

Some remained with him for a month, others for years. At least, these Kings and Emperors ranked spirits had some backbone and could face his simulations for up to decades.

In such a short time, it was like they invaded and left without pause. Unlike Mr Guru, who stayed for thousands of years. That was a long time, even the time spent in the real world wasn't short. That was back when his mind was slower, weaker and before it was trained to Tier 6 resistance by the Ning Saintess. Mr Guru could even change his imagination to a certain degree and affect mental time flow by slowing mental processes.

Amongst the spirits, a small portion of them seemed to meddle with mind magic. Their attempts were futile, but they remained the longest. Probably able to differentiate the simulations from reality a lot better and had a stronger resistance to these simulations that could be taken as an 'illusion' based attack, depending on how one perceived sensing his simulations.

With his Will at less than 15%, his Will regeneration wasn't able to recover as long as he kept depending on Will to defend himself against spirit-based attacks.

It was already his defeat.

But this was training. There was no stopping that due to exhaustion.

His body healed in minutes, with icy parts taking over the damaged mana chassis temporarily. Some greatly reduced regeneration or direct healing was interfering so he had to rely on weak conjured bones and joints that broke. Otherwise, he was in one piece as the palm attack didn't sever any part of him. Merely messing up his internal organs a little.

At least, not till Veronica put a stop to his training.

Ebony took a micro nap and felt his Will recover past 20%. He had to wake up and go back to sleep standing after ensuring his body that it was not reflex against any moving object.

'I need past 40% Will capacity to have enough Will for at least Preservation Augmentation, 50% if I want to sustain Diametric Unity Augmentation indefinitely. 70% if I want to sustain Sequester Augmentation indefinitely.' Was his estimation after this training session.

Will was channelled.

He could weaken or strengthen the effects of any of the Coreflames as he wished, but he took his current highest output as a gauge. He could technically go past this output with more oomph, but it received little improvement for an exponential increase in Will consumption as far as his tests went. Changing Will to adding and removing functions to variably adjust output.

At his highest output, Augmentation of Sequester is slightly more effective than Entity Evanescence if it's actively working. However, that was insufficient to hide from the Spirit Possession Emperor's wide range of perception abilities.

In all technicality, he could run multiple coreflames at the same time in the same spell but the individual coreflame effects would be diluted, and it would take more than 1 portion of Preservation and 1 portion of Diametric Unity to produce a flame effect with 1 portion of each. It would be closer to 3.5 portions of both to induce the effect of 1 portion of will for a double Coreflame spell. It is even less efficient for a triple coreflame spell, but the point is that it is more than possible to achieve it even if it's weakened.

That was essentially what was required to make a plum bomb that can withstand the energy, cooperate with Xin's elements and not scare the living daylights out of people near it with its energy signature. So, until he could optimise the consumption, making a 'full' powered plum bomb was going to be difficult unless Dusk helped with the Will consumption.

"The two of you can play together for the next few days. Little Wu here needs some training." Veronica demanded.

This was fine for Ebony, he wasn't done learning all he could from the Spirit Possession Emperor. There was no rush to hop onto the next lesson when he wasn't done with lesson 1.

Then again. This was not going to get him to level 750 within 7 months.

Ebony posted a large notice within his mindspace. Taking the giant turtle fort that was used to transport the survivors of the Empire's citizens, he posted a 'mission' to go to Tova. There were plenty of nearly empty dungeons only visited by wild monsters or the space slimes that took over the continent.

The last time he tried to cross the ocean with his turtle fort to study the Tova continent, his attempts fell short as he had other priorities. This time, making it there shouldn't be an issue. The giant turtle fort had a crystal large enough for him to stockpile Will for his Apparitions and once he had the consumption data, he could send the required amount of Will with Scout Pigeons to upkeep his clones.

With the Dungeon galore, the quantity of monsters wouldn't be an issue. For quality, Ebony wanted to set Lacuna Expanse as a destination, but it truly wasn't wise when the Angel's statues and Domain were still present there. It was one thing to go there shrouded in Sequester and another to send a hunting party of himself to level up.

There should be at least 1 or 2 Ancient-ranked dungeons on the Tova Continent.

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There was also the Spectral Veil Stronghold, but there was no chance he was going there himself at the moment. It was no longer worth his time.

Seven was going to bring his students in to watch and learn how mages fight in small to middle-scale fights. He can't always teach them one-on-one and neglect how to navigate numerous spells and warriors. There was a quota, and it was restricted access but he was sure Seven could find a way around it.

While he wasn't a fan of this type of accelerated levelling since it held no purpose if he couldn't use the stats immediately, he could simply Prime and train his real body at the same time.

He'd tried adding some of his unallocated stats. This time, instead of not being able to fully utilise the fresh stats, his maximum Prime Rate percentage dropped instead.

The indicator was nice to have.

At this point, his maximum Prime Rate wasn't too important since he hadn't reached the new maximum after his evolution anyway. By the time he reached it, the drop from adding stats would probably not be important anymore, as it would take years of Priming to get there. His maximum Prime Rate wouldn't increase till he reached the maximum to push it further, so there really wasn't any rush to increase his stats.

"I didn't agree to this shit."

The three Xengs ignored the Spirit Possession Emperor's comment and cleaned up the training field back to its original conditions. They couldn't feel any disapproval behind his words. As far as this training went, he stood to benefit.

Ebony didn't experiment with Will too much. Once the initial Coreflame experiments were over, he allocated a portion for growing Dusk, a portion for upkeeping and a bit of strengthening his Apparitions for their activities. Dusk took the large majority, leaving him with a small portion for his personal training.

'The palm of the possessed, besides the physical and magical harm it injects summons into his targets to disrupt their spirits. This also weakens him as he no longer has as many enhancement effects. He can be tricked.' Dusk who had been in the Spirit Possession Emperor's hands, suddenly faded into ice. It had never gotten caught to begin with, and the man had been tricked by a very realistic copy.

It hadn't even been sealed for real.

Dusk risked letting Ebony be unprotected by its power just to test if their opponent's perception can slip.

Dusk showed itself on his back again. It had been wrapped in Sequester, using its own source of Will so Ebony wasn't burdened.

"Let's swap." Uncle Wu demanded on the fourth day since Xin started her evolution.

"Good idea. Bring me to your Domain." Veronica picked the more suitable opponent and had the Spirit Possession Emperor taken away.

Uncle Wu's skill sets were specialised towards fishing. His battle tactics were expert baiting with mana traps. His offence circled around the mana wires and the fishing hooks. A mid to long-range fighting style.

He was not all that strong if Ebony was to be honest. He was great at what he did. He could keep Ebony at a distance and keep track of him and all his spells. He could even bait Ebony into traps over and over again. But that was it.

The traps didn't hurt him much. It may be the man holding back, and this was just teaching him how to spot traps and avoid being baited.

A very non-violent training where he was being shown the ropes without the pain to guide his learning.

This was nice once in a while.

The longer his teaching went on, the more Ebony realised that he was a goldfish in a fish bowl from the start. Just swimming around, going to the surface for food he was fed, but eternally trapped. He couldn't escape a certain range as the fishing hook would catch him no matter what. Once caught, he was released.

The same happens to any of his Apparitions still sticking around with him. They will no longer be able to split their Will to send it to safety, essentially making them vulnerable at any time once their ice bodies are crushed. They were a fish out of water once Uncle Wu's fishing hook hooked onto them.

And the fact was, he had been hooked even before their training began. Ebony's Will had been free to cast any imbued spells, but it was actually all allowed by Uncle Wu only in specific cases.

He tried to burn the man through the mana wires and the fishing hook but to no avail. The hook dematerialised….similar to the Spirit Possession Emperor turning his body half spirit to drastically weaken the effects of freezing.

He then attempted to flip the table and just burn everything since he had the mana to do so. Finally, he got to see Uncle Wu's Will in action.

The fisherman had mana with water-like properties. It was thick, viscous and potent.

Ebony was able to overpower the ocean of watery arcane mana with sheer volume of icy flames. The battlefield changed when Dusk got a proper foothold with the fisherman's mana pushed back. Then came a not-so exciting chase. The fisherman was very well trained but with nothing special to turn the tide. They were in a situation where neither could do anything to the other.

'Guess not all Xengs are genius combatants.' Ebony continued to pick out Will usage tips and mana baiting strategies to learn to avoid or use for himself. Very useful, all things considered.

Since Uncle Wu wasn't taking the approach of suppressing him with power but technique, it was also a good chance for him to test the wire mastery he wanted to pick up.

That appeared to be a challenge and Uncle started cutting his hair and deep into his skin with his fishing line that appeared out of nowhere. Already planted but inactive fishing lines.

'How does it spawn within my magic body? It materialises instead of being conjured?' He took notes and immediately implemented that.

Flinging wires around might just be more suitable for him than using a sword. He could see the flow of battle, the flow of movement. All he needed was to put the wires in the right place, at the right time.

He was still trying to understand how gravity infusion was affecting his body and did not achieve any success with imbuing that amount of gravity mana into an external spell. Otherwise, any time would be the right time.

Ebony saw the path of a noose around his neck going to appear any time. He focused gravity mana, infusing his chassis around his neck. He Flickered a side step half a step to the right. All his mental focus retained the gravity mana and his chassis where he last stood.

Then the fishing line noose manifested around where he first stood. He, who had flickered out of the way suddenly jerked back and was lifted into the air by the neck as if the noose had wrapped around his neck.

'Another failure…or is it a success that he can catch my past and it affected me, who has already moved out of the way? I can't tell if it's my technique working or Uncle Wu can catch me either way.' Testing new techniques against people who could see through and react accordingly wasn't the best course of action.

Once he was in contact with the fishing line, it was over. No resistance, excluding flooding the thread with enough mana to make Uncle Wu make the fishing line vanish again. There was no breaking or snapping of the fishing line. The fisherman was in control.

"I must say, I have not seen such a spell. But your application makes no sense. Once your body moves, I can see it move. Why leave a past version where I can catch while also physically moving enough where a mage who can deal with gravity mana can target both of you at the same time?"

"…still working on it."

'Most people can't attack a gravitational delay of something….' This should have worked.

Leaving delayed traps was just about what he learned from his mother's style. It should work in theory…just his opponent was able to target delayed mana chassis and was a master of traps himself.

Ebony hadn't been able to control when exactly a delayed attack would activate, nor was he able to pull his body back to where he left an infusion, but this second point was where he felt like he had diverted from the delayed attack patterns. Leaving points in space where he could reposition himself towards by having a strong gravity pull him back. He could also only leave 1 version of himself, not numerous, and he couldn't activate it whenever he wanted. It was timed instead.

Some success was an improvement from none.

In two days, Ebony managed to close the distance and see through the fishing line Domain filled with baits of Will and mana.

Uncle Wu's Will was concentrated in spots of mana that were close to no different in density or purity from the ambient mana. This made his mana pretty much concealed and his Will made doubly sure that nothing was out of place. The same was done with his fishing line.

Ebony's new wire art was less trap and stealth, more direct and controlling of space. Leaving them woven everywhere, attached to conjured ice, he was able to feel any instant changes a fishing line would manifest. The wires, even if not connected to his hands, would tug at his mind and his body and spells could react. With more refinement, he could get ready to infuse Dusk with this ability to better perceive within their Domain. He would leave the memory in his mindspace should any Number want to pick up and further refine the art.

Developing an Art within days wasn't that difficult. Phantasmal Shade Sovereign Arts technically encompass most other fighting styles. The only real trouble was ironing out wasted movements and reducing stances that would leave him undefended or in a position that would be hard to react to changes.

Uncle Wu was not especially strong in the traditional sense. Ebony adapted and learned his patterns quickly.

The fisherman kept coming up with counters. However, he could see that the man was a book learner more so than an on-the-spot problem solver. He lacked practice and real-time combat with humans, not fish.

There was probably an array of skills that simply didn't work well on the human mind that worked splendidly on fish.

'I expected too much just because he's a Xeng senior.'

After a night's rest, their training continued.